Dance Floor Drowning

by Brian Sellars

  ‘I can’t say definitely, but I'm sure it was nicked when it came to me.’

  ‘I expect it was that old rogue Sutcliffe. Don't worry, you don't have to tell me, but you’d better warn your mother anyway, just so she knows.’ He edged towards the group of gardeners and pretended to pinch a tomato from their display. ‘They look rubbish,’ he teased. ‘I can get better at Lambton’s for tuppence a pound.

  ‘Bugger off, them’s prize winners,’ cried one of the men in mock outrage.

  John placed a hand on the man’s shoulder. ‘Here, do any of you lot know owt about a tweed sports jacket found on the vicarage wall. I’ve a good idea who nicked it but …’

  ‘Huh, no prizes for guessing who that might be,’ one of the men said. His friends nodded and mumbled agreement. Billy heard the name Sutcliffe bandied.

  John nodded, agreeing with them. ‘Aye maybe, but nobody saw him do it. I can’t nick the old rascal without proof. So keep your eyes and ears open, fellas. It could be important.’

  Billy followed John Needham out into the fresh air. The allotments overlooked Rivelin Valley Road where a solitary car could be seen whining along beneath the lime trees. They parted at a low wall that encircled the shed. The constable went left towards the school and the police station at Hillsborough, Billy took the steep hill up to Walkley. He was due to meet his pals in the old greenhouse. By the time he got there, the sun was low in the late summer sky. Windows in the few houses scattered above Stannington Deer Park and Roscoe Wood reflected its brilliance like signal mirrors telegraphing across the tree filled valley.

  Yvonne did not move as he entered. Notebook in hand, she was sifting through the various bits of evidence and conjecture they had collected. Kick had been in the city’s main library poring over newspaper cuttings. He had been looking for reports of anything odd around the day of Professor Darnley’s death. The only thing he had found, and copied out in his spidery hand writing, was a report that Doctor Longden had complained to the City Council about the lack of public access to The Turret House, an intact Tudor dwelling on the site of Sheffield’s old Manor Castle ruins. In the article, Longden claimed that it was a public building of enormous historical interest and should be open to all.

  ‘What’s that got to do wi’ owt,’ Billy demanded sourly.

  Yvonne sat up and faced him defiantly. ‘Manor Castle was one of the places where they kept Mary Queen of Scots locked up. Kick did very well to spot it.’

  Kick gaped bemused. ‘Oh no, I dint do it for that,’ he said as if defending himself against some terrible accusation, ‘I just saw it was Longden’s name so I copied it out.’

  Yvonne sighed with despair and slumped back into her deckchair. She fanned her face with her notebook. ‘You two don’t know nowt. I’m gonna have to solve this case me sen.’

  She folded Kick’s hand written copy of the newspaper clipping and placed it in her notebook. ‘Manor Lodge was quite new then,' she told them. 'It would have seemed like a modern, luxurious mansion, fit for a queen; and she was a queen. That’s why they put her in there. I’ve seen inside it. My dad took me last summer. Somebody lives there, but you can go and look round. You have to knock on the door and ask the woman to let you in. She’s called the custodian. She can’t stop you going in, even though she lives in it.’

  ‘Well why is Longden complaining then?’ asked Billy.

  Yvonne opened her notebook and consulted Kick’s scrawled extracts. ‘He wants it open all the time so you can visit when you like without some old woman following you around coughing if you touch owt, or if you stand on a window seat to feel at the curtains to see if they’re really hand embroidered.’

  Billy frowned. ‘It says all that?’

  Yvonne ignored him. ‘Most of Manor Castle is in ruins, except that bit. It's called the Turret House. It’s gorra flat lead roof. The custodian told us it was one of the queen’s favourite places to sit and embroider in the summer time. Another woman called Bess of Hardwick, used to sit there with her. They were best friends. They sat together for hours embroidering.’

  Kick suddenly remembered something from the article and interrupted eagerly. ‘Yeah and the sewing they did is on show at Hardwick Hall and - er – somewhere else.’

  ‘The Victoria and Albert Museum,’ Yvonne said. ‘That's in London, my dad says.’

  Billy sneered. ‘So what. It doesn’t tell us owt. It’s nowt special.’

  Kick faced him angrily. ‘Well it is special, big eeyad! If tha’d just listen and stop being a mardy arse, tha might learn sommat.’ Billy shrugged and waited, disbelief sculpting his frown. Kick gathered himself and spoke calmly. ‘The thing is, I went and saw that old cust – custodian woman. She were very upset by this story. She said Longden went there all the time. She told me she never stopped anybody going in, and that all he ever did was look at the lead roof.’

  ‘Chuffin eck!’ Billy leaped to his feet and began pacing up and down the greenhouse aisle, rocking dead plants and raising dust. ‘There must be sommat hidden up there, but what? Longden must know what it is.’

  ‘The golden treasure?’ Kick cried his eyes sparkling.

  ‘No, don’t be daft,’ said Yvonne. ‘It has to be sommat small. I’ve been on that roof. There’s nowhere to hide anything bulky like treasure. It’s just an empty square with the flat lead roof that you can walk on. It’s got battlements all around the edge to stop you falling off. There’s a little tower in one corner with a narrow door in it. That’s where you go in and out to the spiral staircase up to it.’

  ‘I bet you could hide a letter up there,’ said Billy, ‘in a crack or between the old stones.'

  'Or under the sheet-lead roof, more like,' said Yvonne.

  Billy became increasingly animated. He paced about, breathless with excitement, as he tried to form his ideas into a credible theory. 'Remember what Missis Hepburn said? What if it's that letter – the Pagez Cypher?' Yvonne and Kick stared at him, transfixed, as they waited for him to go on. 'That could be what Longden’s looking for.' His animated expression invited them to see his point. 'It could be the other half of the Pagez Cypher,' he went on. 'Remember, Missis Hepburn said, the queen cut it into two pieces so her enemies couldn’t read it and find the gold. I bet that’s it.'

  Kick laughed dismissively, but could offer no alternative suggestion. Yvonne was eyeing him thoughtfully, her expression showing her deep reservations.

  Even more animated in the face of their doubting, Billy pressed on. 'I bet Doctor Longden discovered that Professor Darnley had the part of the letter that was stolen from – er – wotsit - Oxford library, and was looking for the other half.' He pointed at Kick. 'We've gotta go to Manor Castle and look at that lead roof. I think Longden has just handed us a massive clue.’

  'You really think it's about that letter?’ Yvonne's tone betrayed crumbling disbelief.

  'Or if it's not that,' said Billy. 'Worrif she left a message telling somebody else where to find it?' He turned his back on the pair and again stalked the length of the greenhouse. Then, turning suddenly he said, 'I read that they were always moving her about so that she couldn't build up regular contacts to pass messages to.'

  'So, now you're saying she hid the letter somewhere else and left instructions on the Turret House roof so her friends could find it.' Yvonne shrugged and sneered at the idea. 'This is crazy, Billy. You're just making it up. You're flippin dreaming,’ Yvonne snapped. ‘You can’t just invent things, Billy. You said yourself we need evidence. Nothing you've said can be proved. It's not evidence.’

  Billy sighed and flopped into his deckchair. He glared sulkily at Yvonne as she went on, ‘I agree that we should go and have a look for ourselves, but we shouldn’t expect too much.’ She closed her notebook and eyed Billy scrunched up in his chair. Her expression softened. Maybe she was being a bit hard on him. ‘All I mean is, let’s not get carried away,’ she said apologetically. ‘We’ll need an adult to go with us. That custodian woman doesn’t let kids in on their own.�
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  ‘I’ll get the doc to take us,’ said Billy. ‘He can drive us in his car.’ As he spoke he pulled a bunch of newspaper clippings from under his tank top. ‘I’ve got these. I saved ‘em specially.’

  Yvonne gave him a wry smile.

  Billy pretended not to notice, and smoothed out the ragged leaves of newspaper. He selected one containing a photograph. ‘Do you know who that is?’ Kick and Yvonne looked closely. It was a photograph of a silver haired man, wearing a dinner jacket. He was standing at a long table, laid out with white linen, silver candlesticks and Christmas holly. Seated around him were other equally distinguished looking men, evidently listening to him. ‘That’s Longden standing up. The bloke next to him is Professor Darnley. They were at a dinner at the Cutlers Hall last Christmas. Harry Clegg was there too. You can see him standing in the background. It says here that he wrote the story.’

  ‘Crickey! You went right back to Christmas,’ said Kick awed by Billy’s diligence.

  ‘Hum, amazing what you can find when you’re tearing up lavvie paper,’ Yvonne quipped harshly. Billy flinched and pretended not to have heard her.

  ‘What was the dinner for?’ Kick asked.

  Billy scanned the cutting to remind himself of the details. ‘It’s for the reopening of part of the museum that was damaged in the blitz. The thing is, as well as Longden, Darnley, and Clegg, I can also see the back of Chief Superintendent Flood’s scrawny bonce - look.’ He stabbed his finger at one of the happy diners’ heads. ‘I bet James Hepburn was there too and maybe even that Arthur Shrewsbury bloke who died. What chance have we got? How can we hope to beat ‘em? These toffs are all in each other’s pockets. They cover up for each other all the time.’

  ‘Maybe, but at the moment, they’re killing each other too,’ said Yvonne, adding chillingly. ‘There’s at least one corpse at that table. Who’s next I wonder?’

  *

  ‘I’m sorry I was a little short with you, Billy.’ Clarissa Fulton-Howard had pulled her car over beside Billy as he walked along South Road, a weighty shopping basket on his arm. The morning rush hour was over. Shopkeepers were busily building their pavement displays of everything from apples to tin bathtubs. He tried to move away feeling hemmed in by her sudden appearance and the shopkeepers’ frenetic activity. The sleek Rover 75 revved gently and edged forward to keep up with him. ‘I appreciate you coming to see me like you did. I had no right to be so offhand.’ She eyed his basket of groceries. ‘Can I give you a lift with those? Highton Street isn’t? Get in, I’ll drop you off.’

  Billy felt hijacked. He meekly climbed in, his feet tangling with a pair of muddy walking shoes as he slid along the Rover’s leather rear seat. The doctor laughed and shrugged. She hadn’t expected him to sit in the back. ‘Ooh, just like our new queen – hey?’

  ‘Sorry, d’yer want me in the front?’

  ‘No no, it’s fine,’ she said and steered out from the curb to head towards Highton Street. Billy liked the Rover, and didn’t fear for a second that it might not manage the steep climb up to his house.

  ‘Tell me, Billy; how do you know Doctor Longden?’

  ‘I don’t know him really. I just know who he is. I’ve seen him at Glossop Road baths.’

  Clarissa Fulton-Howard sniffed with unrestrained disapproval. Billy watched her in the rear view mirror. She saw him watching and switched her expression to a sickly grin. ‘Oh really. Do you like swimming?’

  ‘Yes I do. Usually I go a lot during the school holidays. There was a murder there, you know. A man was drowned. I never heard if they had a proper post mortem. Do you know if they did, doctor?’

  ‘Oh I’m sure they must have,’ she said. ‘The circumstances of a death – any death, must be properly established before a death certificate can be issued. The law is very clear. For example, what you told me about the woman in the old castle tunnels, that can’t be right. I’m sure someone has misled you there. I’d like to hear more from you about that.’

  ‘I don’t know anymore. That’s why I’m trying to find out.’ He rolled back deep into his seat as the Rover turned and began the steep climb up Highton Street. ‘It’s halfway up on the left,’ he said as a half empty bottle of scotch rolled out from under the front seat and bumped into his foot.

  ‘You and your friend seemed very well informed. Your questions were most succinct.’

  Billy wasn’t sure what that meant, but thought it sounded like a compliment. He eyed the scotch and pushed it gently out of sight with his foot, wedging it in place with one of the muddy walking shoes. ‘Well that’s cos we thought you knew Doctor Longden, and as he works at the morgue, he should know something about it. I mean for example, was he working there back then, during the war?’

  ‘Yes, but of course he wasn’t the director then, just a humble pathologist.’

  ‘So, who decides who they will – you know – autopsify?’

  The doctor smiled but understood him perfectly. ‘It depends,’ she told him. ‘Sometimes it’s the police or the coroner’s office. Most often it starts because a doctor, either in hospital or in general practice, refers it because they feel the circumstances warrant clarification.’

  ‘You mean they suspect sommat dodgy?’

  The Rover pulled into the curb and stopped. ‘Will this do?’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Billy, I want to help you. We should work together. I may be quite useful to you.’

  From her window, Missis Perks watched her son’s arrival in the shiny Rover. She recognized the driver and felt a flush of panic as she looked to reassure herself that her son was not injured or sick. Seeing that he was not, her relief, nevertheless, was short lived. A second flush of panic swept over her as she prayed he would not invite the doctor inside for a visit. There was no sugar left in the basin, and the tablecloth was not her best one.

  ‘Billy you must stop bringing doctors home. They’re not stray kittens,’ she said as he shouldered in through the door with her groceries. ‘What have you done this time?’

  ‘Nowt. She just gen me a lift. I’m her friend now. She likes me.’

  Missis Perks looked around her living room despairingly. Billy wondered briefly whether she was looking for a cucumber. ‘Honest mam. It’s alright. She just wanted to ask me about the murders. I asked her sommat an’ all. She’s norras bad as she looks. Though she does use too many mothballs.

  0o0o0

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  The newspaper article Kick had found and read out in the greenhouse, had greatly intrigued Yvonne. The memory of it still played in her mind. Why was Doctor Longden so concerned about public access to the old Manor Lodge? He was a pathologist not a historian. If anyone was going to write complaining letters to the council about such matters, she expected it would have been Professor Darnley. She wished that Billy's improbable theory could be right, if only because her desire to investigate the place was becoming irresistible. As the only one of the three to have already visited Manor Lodge, she felt duty bound to take charge of an expedition, and began by encouraged Billy to enlist Doc Hadfield as their “tame grown up” and chauffeur.

  The following morning Doc Hadfield parked alongside Manor Lodge’s crenulated ruins. With some relief, he released his unruly, squabbling passengers onto the pavement. Kick immediately scroamed up the wall and railings surrounding the castle site, for a better view.

  ‘Get down!’ snapped Yvonne. ‘That’s exactly the sort of thing that’ll gerrus chucked out before we gerrin.’

  ‘If we’re norrin they can’t chuck us out,’ Kick replied defiantly, but slid off the wall nonetheless.

  The sixth Earl of Shrewsbury built Manor Lodge, sometimes called Manor Castle, in 1516, as a luxurious hunting lodge. Mary Queen of Scots spent most of her fourteen years in Sheffield, imprisoned behind its walls. She is said to have found it most comfortable, which is probably why her ghost walks the old Turret House, the only remaining habitable part of the ruin.

  ‘Right, now listen he
re.’ Yvonne grabbed their attention and pointed to a sturdy, three-storey building topped with battlements, six ornate stone chimneys and a copper domed turret. It was a forbidding cube of weathered grey stone, that had stood sentinel before the crumbling grandeur of Manor Lodge for well over four hundred years. ‘The woman who lives in there is called the custodian,' Yvonne explained. 'She’s in charge of the place. She’ll only let us in if we look sensible and polite. So, no messing about, or acting daft.’

  The two boys sneered comically at each other. 'Oooo get her,' cried Kick. Doctor Hadfield raised an eyebrow. Such was the intensity of Yvonne’s delivery that he was unable to stop himself from feeling included.

  ‘She won’t let you touch owt, or climb on owt,’ Yvonne went on. ‘So you have to behave yourselves.’

  Hadfield nodded, already scared of the unseen custodian. Billy and Kick likewise, though they yawned and pretended to be bored.

  They approached the Turret House in silence. Its iron bound door creaked open spookily before they could reach out to its bulky doorknocker. A bespectacled, middle-aged woman popped her head out from the dark interior and welcomed them with a warm smile. ‘You’re my first today. Welcome to Manor Lodge. This is the Turret House. Have you been here before?’

  ‘My dad brought me,’ said Yvonne, as the woman led her into the gloomy interior. Billy, Hadfield and Kick followed. 'We went up onto the roof.’

  ‘And you can do so again today, my dear,’ the woman said, closing the door behind them and beaming brightly. ‘It’s lovely on a sunny day like today. But imagine how much more wonderful it must have been when all around was beautiful deer park, right down as far as the river and the walls of Sheffield Castle.’ She looked around dreamily, her hand encompassing the imagined scene with balletic grace. ‘The earl and his friends would be hunting and feasting, even the fine ladies …’ She paused and bent to take a closer look at Kick, who had stayed in the background, skulking behind Doctor Hadfield.