The Hissing of the Silent Lonely Room (The Christy Kennedy Mysteries Book 5)

by Paul Charles

  All too soon the music was over and ann rea looked as drained as Kennedy felt. They recharged with food and more wine.

  ‘It just gets better and better,’ ann rea said.

  ‘Thanks, it’s just practice and the magic ingredient,’ Kennedy replied.

  ‘Not the sandwich, you fool, her music,’ ann rea laughed.

  ‘Yeah, I know, I know. I mean it’s such a great record it must have been hard, in a way, to live with it.’

  ‘No, I think she was okay about it. She didn’t make the mistake that a lot of people make of trying to re-make it. In her book she’d made it, she was very proud of it and she had no wish to make it again. She was happy to move on to pastures new. It’s the sign of a truly great artist; one who can co-exist with their great work. Van Morrison made the classic Astral Weeks and, to my humble ears, he’s been rewriting it ever since.’

  ‘Oh that’s a bit unfair isn’t it? He’s done lots of great stuff. What about Moondance?’

  ‘Don’t get me wrong, Kennedy. He did make Astral Weeks and yes, there have been several other high points along the way but, in my humble opinion, he’s always re-writing his songs. It’s like he’s lazy or something and you just wish that he’d put some of that creative energy he was enjoying at the time of Astral Weeks into some of his other music. Mind you, with a voice like his, a voice to die for, what should he worry what I think?’

  ‘But even Esther’s songs—’

  ‘Oh, come on now, Kennedy, she’d been covering other territory. This new set of songs of hers was absolutely gorgeous. Probably the most commercial thing she’d even done. I’m not sure how she would have dealt with all of that pressure.’

  ‘What’ll happen to all those songs now?’ Kennedy asked.

  ‘They’re the property of the Esther Bluewood estate. They’ll make all the decisions. Maybe they’ll give them out to other people to do cover versions – and they’re certainly strong enough to stand up to a variety of interpretations,’ ann rea said, pushing her Beatle fringe back from her forehead, from where (as ever) it fell back into an identical position.

  ‘You mean Paul Yeats?’ Kennedy asked.

  ‘I hope I don’t,’ ann rea replied.

  Next Kennedy put on The Beatles’ Rubber Soul album and they listened contentedly to that. By now it was half past midnight and getting close to that awkward time of deciding who sleeps where. As they were on a promise not to discuss their relationship (or otherwise), this too was an issue to be avoided.

  Twenty-eight minutes later, they were in bed, semi-clothed and remaining so. Obviously neither felt like pushing the issue a step further, but both seemed content to take comfort in each other’s arms. Kennedy was dropping off. He could hear ann rea purring. Last night they’d spilt up. Supposedly for good. As ann rea purred gently, seemingly feeling very safe and comfortable in his arms, Kennedy resolved that they would have to do something about it and do something soon; “New Way, New Day” and all of that. But the new day would be another day. In his semi-consciousness he thought he heard someone, probably ann rea or it might even have been the ghostly singing voice of Esther Bluewood, saying something about love. He fought to try to recall what was being said and by whom but it was useless, he was falling under the spell of sleep. All issues of love would have to be resolved in a new way on a new day.

  He’d finally fallen under – he thought it was a matter of minutes but in fact it was about two and a half hours – when he was woken up by someone kissing him. Someone? It must have been ann rea. Or was it a dream? He felt unable to wake up completely from his sleep. He was being undressed. All the time, a shower of gentle kisses was raining over him. Head to toe. It was a blissful feeling and still he didn’t want to shake the sleep from his head. Perhaps he was scared it was a dream and he’d ruin it. He wanted to prolong and enjoy. For the second time that evening he felt he was experiencing the best there was to experience; once from the lips of Esther Bluewood and her beautiful music, and now this, from the lips of ann rea.

  He felt her climb on top of him and the sensation was like never before. Perhaps the butterfly technique had finally paid off, but now he was neither chasing nor resisting, not concerned about being too early or too late. He was simply lying there and he and ann rea were floating together, pleasuring each other. He knew what he was feeling, still not one hundred per cent convinced it wasn’t a dream; and he could hear her groans of pleasure as well. On and on they chased the butterfly, drinking in the rich, vivid scenes of the pleasure they were passing along the way. They got closer to the butterfly. It had slowed down to the point it was merely hovering. They were in the meadow and all was as they thought it should be, and, when there was nothing more left to look at and enjoy, they exploded together.

  In the afterglow, Kennedy drifted back off to sleep – if indeed he’d ever been awake. If indeed it had ever happened.

  A few minutes later, he heard sounds in the room again. This time he was sure it wasn’t a dream. This time he wanted to enjoy it more, if that was possible. He considered it for a moment, whether it was possible to enjoy love more in an unconscious state than in a conscious state.

  The disturbance in the room wasn’t ann rea; this time it was the ringing of the telephone.

  Kennedy checked the clock beside the phone: 3:10 a.m.

  ‘Hello?’ Kennedy said. He knew he sounded very groggy; he knew he was waving the butterfly goodbye for the night.

  ‘DI Kennedy, it’s Desk Sergeant Bell here at North Bridge House,’ Flynn’s night-shift opposite number announced. ‘Sorry to wake you, but they’ve just found a body. DS Irvine said I should contact you immediately. He felt you’d want to get over there right away.’

  ‘Who is it? Whose body have they found?’ Kennedy asked, his voice still sounding groggy, but his brain perfectly clear.

  ‘It’s Judy Dillon, the nanny in the singer-suicide case, sir.’

  Chapter 31

  KENNEDY LEFT ann rea to the remainder of her dreams. He hoped she was enjoying the peaceful sleep of the innocent.

  On his walk to Park Village West, the sharp, cold night air helped Kennedy shake the sleep from his head. There was a hive of activity outside Judy Dillon’s flat. Strong shafts of light from the house and the various police vehicles, spilled out into the night air, turning from white to cream. Kennedy had never been able to work out how that happened, or if in fact it was an illusion.

  The fingers of Kennedy’s left hand were twitching furiously by his side as he honed in on the light. He had a habit of doing this at crime scenes and whenever he knew the sight of a corpse was imminent. He used it to delay that final moment, walking in to examine the corpse.

  But Kennedy could never have properly prepared himself for the sight he was about to see.

  Judy Dillon, the nanny of Esther Bluewood’s two children, was lying, eyes still open, staring up at the Virginia Woolf painting above the fireplace. She was on her side on the sofa. Old coffee stains and fresher dark brown patches now contaminated the pretty floral pattern.

  Judy Dillon’s eyes had frozen in their final view. Whatever she had witnessed last had obviously been unpleasant. The panic she had experienced was recorded and frozen in her stare, testifying to the fact that this particular nanny had not passed willingly or without a struggle into the next world. Kennedy saw that a mixture of chocolate and spittle caused the new stains on the sofa. The stains were still damp. The offending objects were three bars of KitKat Chunky, which were protruding from Judy Dillon’s mouth. Two still fresh and unwrapped, the third uncovered and rammed further down her throat.

  In her final moments, Judy Dillon had been dressed in her usual elasticated black pants, half-covered with a pleated black skirt – part of the new style, Kennedy was assured by Irvine, but much more flattering on someone carrying half of Judy’s fifteen stone. Her black sweatshirt had been hiked up in the struggle, revealing her midriff and the bottom of a black bra. Her stomach seemed to carry folds of loose skin. Perh
aps she’d been losing weight faster than her skin could tighten. Kennedy wondered whether Judy had always been overweight, and if she’d ever considered herself to be overweight in the first place.

  There was slight bruising on either side of her nose, and her hands were frozen in front of her, giving her the look of an amply-proportioned opera singer, going for the final high note of the evening.

  She looked as though she was balancing precariously on the edge of the sofa. Kennedy wondered if maybe her murderer had moved her from her death position. There was a strong logic to this as the rest of the small living room was an absolute mess. Her prized books had all been pulled from their shelves and were now strewn carelessly around the room, some open mid-book, pages up, others similarly open, but jacket up.

  The journal!

  Kennedy recalled Judy words of protest several hours earlier as he and Irvine had confiscated the photocopied version of the journal, ‘No, you don’t understand, I can’t give it to you. I need to be able to give it to him. He’s going to be mad at me. I don’t like it when he’s mad.’ Kennedy hadn’t paid much attention to her pleading at the time. Who had she been talking about?

  Had the detective signed Judy Dillon’s death warrant by confiscating her copy of the journal?

  Kennedy wandered around the small room, taking everything in. The Scene of Crime officers quietly and respectfully went about their work, seemingly ignoring the corpse. Perhaps that’s how they dealt with the continued presence of death in their workplace, thought Kennedy. The wickerwork coffee table, which for some reason had managed to remain upright during the struggle, held an open blue cardboard shoebox, stuffed to the brim with Judy’s private stash of goodies. It was like she and the girls had been down to raid the tuck shop for a midnight feast in the dorm. She seemed to have a preference for Bounty Bars, Mars Bars and KitKats – original and Chunky. There were also packets of M&Ms and Rolos. The problem, Kennedy imagined, with both of these was that for someone of Judy’s girth, a packet of M&Ms wouldn’t seem all that filling, so she’d have to satisfy her hunger with Bounty Bars, Mars Bars or KitKat Chunkys.

  Kennedy himself had a sweet tooth, possibly even two, but he used them to taste not to consume.

  The murderer was either planting a misleading clue by stuffing bars of chocolate down her throat, or he was making a statement. Did this mean that Kennedy was looking for someone who, like himself, found Judy’s eating habits gross? Or was it merely someone who felt cocky enough to introduce a little confusion?

  Dr Leonard Taylor was kneeling on a cushion. A little blue number he always carried around with him for such occasions. Like a magician, he had a habit of being able to produce from either his person, or from his bag, an endless supply of useful items. Once he and Kennedy had been on a case and tea had been available in the police site wagon, but there were no cups. Taylor, quick as a flash, produced two polystyrene cups from inside his bag, not only saving the day in that regard but also providing two plastic spoons to transport and stir the sugar.

  Taylor was examining the corpse, humming away to himself as per normal. Was this his way of distracting himself from the reality of death, Kennedy thought. Kennedy recognised Taylor’s tunes to be classical or operatic, but that was as much information as he could have offered.

  ‘James tells me our victim was Esther Bluewood’s nanny, old chap.’ Taylor delivered his lines with theatrical precision so economical you’d have thought he’d an inbuilt editor.

  ‘Yes, indeed, Leonard, I’m afraid her light fingers may have been her downfall,’ Kennedy replied.

  ‘How so?’

  ‘Well, we visited her yesterday afternoon and confiscated a photocopied version of one of Esther’s journals. She hinted that someone was going to come looking for it and he’d be mad when he couldn’t find it,’ Kennedy said.

  ‘So, you’re feeling responsible, eh?’ Taylor replied, stopping his work momentarily.

  ‘Oh, you know—’ Kennedy began.

  ‘Don’t!’ Taylor lectured. ‘We must all take responsibility for our actions, old chap.’

  ‘I suppose so,’ Kennedy said quietly, but already his mind was elsewhere. Either Taylor knew this or else he’d completed his lecture. Either way, he returned to his humming and to the examination of the body.

  Kennedy considered the picture of Virginia Woolf staring down from over the fireplace, looking very grand, authoritative and educated; every inch the mistress of feminine literature. There wasn’t even the slightest hint of the insecurity that would lead to her downfall. Kennedy couldn’t help thinking about Esther Bluewood, another of her flock, one with her own set of insecurities, who had fallen prey to the evils of the world.

  Kennedy wondered whether Esther Bluewood had also admired Virginia Woolf. He found himself thinking about what he’d just said to Dr Taylor. ‘He’d be mad’ when he couldn’t find the journal. This meant, of course, that if Kennedy believed such a person called at the nanny’s flat and couldn’t find the journal and consequently murdered Judy Dillon then that person was a man. If the detective pushed this envelope even further and accepted the fact that the self-same person who had killed Dillon had also killed Bluewood, then Esther Bluewood’s murderer would most definitely have been a male.

  But this was pushing the bounds of credibility far beyond levels acceptable to Kennedy at this stage. He reminded himself he was an information collector and he should only accept such a conclusion when the evidence in its favour was overwhelming. Which meant that he couldn’t just yet remove the names of Rosslyn St Clair and Tor Lucas from the original murder’s suspect list. Mind you, he could definitely rule out Rosslyn St Clair as Judy’s murderer, as she’d have been tucked up in her hospital bed.

  But Tor Lucas, that was a different matter entirely. And equally if the ‘he’ Judy Dillon referred to had been Paul Yeats, then he could very well have sent his sister, Tor, to do his dirty work. Could he also have sent her to do his dirty work with Esther Bluewood? Yeats had already demonstrated, on more than one occasion, how desperate he was to get his hands on her journal. What was the big deal? Kennedy had read it through and had found several unflattering references to Yeats within the pages, but probably not enough to justify killing two people over, even considering Paul Yeats’ exceedingly large ego.

  ‘I’d say,’ Taylor announced, breaking Kennedy’s thought process, ‘that the victim was killed no more than five hours ago. I’ll be able to pinpoint a more accurate time after autopsy but for now, a guesstimate would be between ten and midnight. She was very crudely suffocated, probably leading to a heart attack. Someone blocked her windpipe with all this chocolate and pinched her nostrils together, probably with thumb and forefinger. I imagine our murderer sat on top of her and the poor victim’s weight would have worked against her. I would also guess that death wasn’t immediate. She would still have been able to gasp in some breaths of air via her mouth. The chocolate bars wouldn’t have provided an airtight seal, which would have meant she probably struggled for some time. I doubt if she put up much of a fight, though.’

  ‘Mmmm,’ was all Kennedy could find to say.

  ‘The fact that someone was trying to kill her, old chap, would also have been a contributing factor in her death, especially if it was a heart seizure.’

  ‘But wouldn’t that have made her fight more violently to save herself?’ Kennedy asked.

  ‘Normally yes, but you have to remember that she was very unfit, very unhealthy. She probably would have felt totally helpless and eventually her heart would have given out.’

  Kennedy had an idea.

  ‘Is there a chance someone could have been torturing her?’ Kennedy asked. ‘You know, while trying to get information out of her, she died by accident; I mean, before the murderer meant her to die? That is, if they did mean for her to die at all.’

  ‘Quite possibly, old chap, that would also give a better explanation for the presence of chocolate bars. I mean, you’re hardly going to try to kill someone
by shoving bars of chocolate down their throat, are you?’ Taylor replied.

  ‘Precisely,’ Kennedy said, a hint of excitement creeping into his voice. ‘Whoever it was just pushed it too far. In searching for the whereabouts of the journals, they just went that one step beyond. The poor girl probably kept protesting that she didn’t have it any more, he didn’t believe her and she quite possibly died accidentally.’

  ‘Now, you’re back to thinking that if only you’d left the journal there, she’d still be alive,’ Taylor said.

  Kennedy made to protest.

  ‘Don’t.’ Taylor reprimanded his friend for the second time that night. ‘Who’s to say that if you had left the journal and she had surrendered it to our suspect that they wouldn’t have murdered her anyway to hide the evidence of the journal’s whereabouts. They’ve already shown how desperate they were, or still are for that matter.’

  Kennedy knew full well that Taylor was correct. Wasn’t he constantly lecturing his team about not breaking police rules to accommodate individual theories? That can lead to the police breaking the law and where was that going to end?

  ‘What’s in this journal that is so explosive?’ Taylor asked, packing his instruments into his magic bag.

  ‘Well, I obviously missed something. I’ve read it through, but apart from Miss Bluewood being brutally truthful about certain people, there’s really nothing I’d consider explosive in it,’ Kennedy admitted.

  ‘Maybe you should have another read through, old chap?’ Taylor suggested, as he struggled to his feet. First he rose so that one knee and one foot were on the ground and then he pushed down with all of his might on his raised knee to hoist himself into a vertical position. He was still stooped over at waist height, so he put both his hands behind himself and massaged the small of his back. (Quite a difficult task owing to his girth and the chubbiness of his arms.) Eventually he worked his body into the fully upright position.