Murder in the Mail: A Diane Dimbleby Cozy Mystery

by Penelope Sotheby

  Diane paused for a moment, setting her mind to the appropriate tone.

  “Oh hello,” she began. “Yes, hello,” she dithered. “Can you hear me?”

  “Yes, madam. You are quite clear.” The voice became a little lighter, and the words were spoken slightly more slowly. Diane assumed he had to deal with many elderly people who were still mystified by phones in general.

  “Thank you. I never know with these mobile phones, you know.”

  “I understand, madam. How may I help you today?”

  “Help me, yes. I’m trying to reach my son. Could you get him for me?”

  “Your son? What is his room number?”

  “His name is Gary,” said Diane after a pause. “Gary Sandrake.”

  “Do you have the room number?” asked the receptionist again.

  “Gary,” she replied a little slower and a little louder as if she could not hear him or thought he was confused.

  “I will try to get him for you.” He was humouring the confused old woman, who may not even be sure what year it is. She knew that he should not be giving out information about clients over the phone, but Diane had convinced him that she seemed old and harmless.

  “Thank you, young man. Thank you so much.”

  “Please hold the line.” The phone clunked softly as it was placed on the desk and Diane could hear keys tapping swiftly in the background. A banging came through the phone as the handset was collected again.

  “Ma’am?”

  “Yes, hello? Did you get him for me?””

  “Ma’am, I’m sorry, but your son isn’t here.”

  “He what?”

  “He is not here.”

  “Oh dear. Did I get the wrong hotel? I can’t read his writing. Maybe it says Shacklesley. Or Shackleston.”

  “No, you have the correct hotel. Your son was supposed to check in yesterday and did not arrive.”

  “Well that is peculiar,” said Diane, who did not have to pretend to be a little confused. “I wonder where he has gotten to.”

  “Maybe he…” the receptionist hesitated. “Maybe he stopped off at another hotel?”

  “I suppose he could have. He’s usually so good about keeping in touch.”

  “He will probably call today and let you know where he is,” said the receptionist with a consoling tone.

  “Yes, probably. Well, thank you for your help, young man. I will go and wait for his call.”

  The receptionist thanked her for the call, and Diane cut the line. She was slipping the phone back into her pocket as Inspector Crothers opened the car door and climbed back in.

  “They were definitely here.” He reached around to buckle his seatbelt. “The hostess remembered because he pre-ordered an expensive bottle of champagne.”

  “Oh dear,” replied Diane. The Inspector looked over at her, staring for a moment, not quite grasping what she had said.

  “I’m sorry?”

  “If they ate dinner here but did not make it to the hotel, then this has become bleak.”

  “How do you know they didn’t… what did you do?”

  Diane recounted her conversation with the hotel receptionist and without another word, but with a definite scowl, the Inspector pulled the car around the driveway and back onto the gravel road.

  “I was trying to help, Inspector. They may not have been so forthcoming to a police officer.”

  “You need to leave this to us. We can’t have civilians tampering in an investigation.”

  “But we are left with one option,” said Diane, her face turning sallow.

  “I know,” said the Inspector. “Priorslee Lake.”

  ♠ ♠ ♠ ♠ ♠ ♠

  The short drive to the lake was taken in silence.

  Diane looked out of the windscreen, the colour drained from her face, her mind flicking through possibilities, eventualities, none of which gave her cause to smile.

  Inspector Crothers gripped the wheel of the car roughly; his knuckles matched Diane’s complexion. His annoyance at Diane’s interference was overshadowed by preparations for what was to come. Gary Sandrake was in the wind, and he only hoped that there might be a clue at the lakeside.

  The pop of gravel ended as the wheels of the car rolled onto the tarmac, the surface changing at the entrance to Priorslee Lake’s parking area. He guided the car through two wooden fence posts that stood sentry at the opening and entered an empty car park. The earlier rain and breezy day had kept visitors away, deciding on other pastimes that were dryer and warmer.

  The parking area was an elongated circle with space for around ten vehicles. A narrow path led off to the side through overgrown bushes to a more secluded spot. Inspector Crothers knew the location fairly well from its reputation as a spot for “adventurous” individuals to enjoy themselves. Several times people had been stumbled upon in the throes of lewd acts that had led to the police being called.

  Branches scratched at the doors and leaves buffeted against the windows as the car rumbled along the path. There were splashes and jolts from rain-filled trenches dug into the uneven road, harmless booby traps that made Inspector Crothers grind his teeth. He knew his worry about the noise that they were making was baseless as Gary Sandrake would be long gone by now, but every crunch of tire and groan of the suspension concerned him that their approach would be given away.

  An open patch of grass sprang from the lashing branches, the lane continuing as two rutted tracks, all of which was dappled with sunlight that poked through the overhanging trees. The space was larger than the lane would have suggested. Several cars could have parked there easily and given each other adequate privacy.

  The ruts led to the far side of the clearing and into another lane. Cutting across this was a stretch of unkempt grass that sloped gently down to the lakeside where reeds poked brushes out several feet into the water. On either side, trees dipped lank branches down as if frozen mid-sip of the lake waters.

  Inspector Crothers turned from the tire grooves and bobbled the vehicle to a stop facing towards the water’s edge.

  “Diane,” said the Inspector roughly. “You need to stay…”

  “Inspector,” she interrupted. “There appear to be patches of wax in the grass to my side of the car.”

  “Stay in the car.”

  The slam of the driver’s door was probably harder than necessary, and Diane watched as the Inspector stepped carefully around the car to observe the wax spots.

  “Candles?” Diane had rolled her window down and addressed the stooping Inspector. He grunted affirmation as he ran a plastic gloved finger over the patches.

  A breeze ruffled the branches overhead and the spotted sunlight flicked across the scene. A glint, faint and fleeting, caught the Inspector’s eye. A glint in the trees past the clearing. He turned his head to Diane and with a harsh stare reminded her of her place. Then, in a crouch, he made for the place where the ruts left the clearing, his eyes intent upon the location he had seen the gleam.

  Diane rested back in her seat, letting her head swivel to take in the surroundings. She would have enjoyed this spot, she thought, had it not been for the circumstances. Secluded and private. Perfect for a quiet picnic with Albert. Maybe a blanket down by the water, a bottle of wine and a nicely packed lunch. Maybe down within the semicircle made by the candles.

  As she scanned the grass, she spotted a darkened spot, an absence of grass near to the centre of the half-ring where she would have set her picnic. The door was open, and she was stepping lightly around the wax stains before she realized what she was doing. A glance over her shoulder convinced her that the Inspector had not seen her transgression. The flattened grass that she had seen as a dark spot came slowly towards her.

  Rounding each of the tangled bushes, Inspector Crothers stepped lightly over a puddle filling the tire track and walked along the central grass ridge. The ruts curved sharply, blocking his view with hawthorns and brambles. Still crouching, he made his way along the narrow pathway, ears alert for stray so
unds, eyes looking for the extraordinary.

  Diane reached the crushed spot in the grass and, leaning forward, stared down onto a small black box. It was a velvet-covered box with a clasp that held the lid in place. Using a pen that she pulled from her pocket, she snapped the latch back and levered the lid open. White satin poked out, a slit pushed into it where a ring should have been. Golden lettering inside the lid proclaimed, “Dazzling Jewels”.

  The car had been pushed roughly off the track and was wedged among some low bushes. The front end dipped as the wheels rested in a slight depression in the ground. The Inspector looked at the boot of the maroon hatchback, the license plate matching exactly that of the car Gary Sandrake was driving. Approaching slowly, the Inspector ran an expert eye over the surroundings for any evidence of ripped clothing from someone clambering from the driver’s seat, but found nothing. He turned his gaze back to the rear of the vehicle and saw darkened patches along the bumper and lip to the hatchback. He touched one of the spots lightly with his finger, and it came away sticky and deep dark red.

  Diane rose from her stoop and made to call for the Inspector, but her voice caught in her throat. As she had turned, she saw a bush that seemed to be worse for wear. Several branches bent crookedly, and the ground beneath showed the unmistakable signs of torn grass. Her eyes followed the disturbances and her legs did so too.

  The hatchback was unlocked and, standing several paces back, the Inspector pushed the release button. The hatch rose accompanied with the dry hiss of hydraulic hinges. The parcel shelf that hid the contents of the boot from outside view was dragged upward as well. The Inspector tensed, ready for a fight or fright, and was greeted with the latter. Gary Sandrake lay curled within, his head a splattered mess of blood.

  The bush gave way to the water’s edge, and reeds danced slightly in the breeze across the water. Diane moved to the water’s edge and, stepping into mud, her shoe gave way, and she fell heavily to the ground, rolling towards the reeds. She stretched out a hand swiftly and stopped her roll down the slope. She looked at the guilty shoe and saw a darkness in the mud, darker than the mud should have been. She gulped in a breath and looked away, out through the reeds that obscured the lake beyond. As she gathered herself to rise, a smudge of white pulled her eyes to her right, a smudge that quickly became more solid and less white. Her gaze fell upon a hand, bloated and tinged with blue and with only four fingers, a jagged stump where a fifth should have been.

  Chapter 5

  The traffic was still relatively light as Diane started her drive home. The police car had dropped her off at the shopping centre at just after four and quickly returned to the lakeside crime scene.

  Inspector Crothers had been calling in an ambulance and scene of crime officers when he had heard Diane yell. He had then called in everyone that the station could spare and some from a couple of neighbouring stations. Within minutes, the small clearing was cordoned off, and officers in white plastic suits were wandering around collecting samples and evidence. Two ambulances blocked both sides of the clearing where the track penetrated.

  Gary Sandrake was alive but unconscious. He had taken a severe blow to the head, was suffering from exposure, shock, dehydration, and numerous other issues from being tied-up with zip tie cuffs and locked in the boot. The Inspector had been reticent to give Diane more details other than no one seemed sure if or when Gary would wake up.

  Shelly Newsome had been dead when they pulled her from the reeds. It was clear that she had been in the water for at least a day; decomposition and fish had taken their toll upon the poor girl. There was not any blood, but the violence of the attack she had suffered could be seen from the rips upon her black dress and the puckered gashes across her forehead and face. Nobody could say whether she had been alive when her finger had been severed, and Diane only hoped that at least that one mercy had been given to her.

  The Inspector had instructed a uniformed constable to take Diane back to her car after the ambulances had removed their grisly cargo. No words passed between them as she walked away, just a glance from the Inspector whose face seemed to be part scowl, part sadness. She had looked away, letting the shock of her discovery slowly leak through her, numbing the tips of her fingers and toes.

  Yet all the while, even as she tried to control her mind and avoid recounting the details of the situation, something else kept distracting her, dragging her thoughts back to where it all began: the finger in the box.

  Once back in her car, Diane turned on the radio and put on some music to try to keep her from dwelling. The inane chatter of a couple of DJs did what she had hoped for a couple of minutes until the news came on and a report that had already been released about the discovery of a body at the lake. The blank look upon the torn face of Shelly Newsome came wavering back to her, and she pulled into a small layby to give her hands a few moments to return to usefulness. She laid her head upon the headrest and closed her eyes, forcing blackness into her mind to overwhelm the staring dead eyes.

  “Why?”

  She had spoken the word aloud but, as she did so, it occurred to Diane that she was not sure where she had directed it. Had it been a plea to a higher power, a request for reasons for the horrors of the world? Or had it been something else? “Why” seemed to be a question that needed answering in this case, and yet the question had eluded a response.

  Why Gary Sandrake? Why Monica Hope? Why a finger? Why now?

  The unanswered questions started to flood Diane’s mind, succeeding where forced distraction had failed, to remove Shelly Newsome’s face from the forefront.

  Why? Why? Why?

  Why any of this?

  Diane could feel that she was missing some piece of information, some half-glance, some casually spoken word or phrase. The thing that would crack one “Why?” and the results would cascade through the rest, ending at the doorstep of the killer. There was reason, no matter how twisted, behind all of the events, and that meant there were tell-tale markers that she had failed to see.

  Diane prided herself on her ability to think like other people, a little of the empathy that had made her such a good teacher and headmistress. She had realized early in her career that the parents and children that came before her were each unique with a story, a life, unlike any others. She had found that she could understand their feelings and attitudes after interacting with them for only a short time, her mind building a personality, a worldview around the casual remarks and inferences to which others might have been blind. She realized that listening to what people said was never as beneficial as picking up what they had implied or left unsaid.

  So why was it so hard for her to see what this killer wanted? Was it her reluctance to stare “into the abyss”? She did not think so. Writing about disturbed minds was her day-to-day life. Thinking from a skewed perspective gave her the plots and ideas that fuelled her books. She realized that the implication was that something in this sick series of events did not seem to belong. But what?

  Diane drummed her thumbs softly on the steering wheel, barely conscious that she was mimicking the beat thudding from the speakers. Her mind played over everything she knew, looking for a red flag or misplaced clue. And she found nothing but her own ignorance.

  With a sigh, she realized what she would have to do: start at the beginning again. Follow through everything that had happened piece-by-piece, meet everyone in order, and dig just a little bit deeper. Something would surface that would slot in like the final edge piece of a jigsaw, leaving the rest as merely clean-up.

  Gunning the engine back to life, Diane pulled out of the layby, merged with a steady stream of traffic and headed to Ironbridge.

  ♠ ♠ ♠ ♠ ♠ ♠

  “Only doctors and nurses inside. Understand?”

  Inspector Crothers watched Gary Sandrake through a thick glass door as the Constable replied with an affirmative. A thick strip of bandage ran over the side of Gary’s face and around the back of his head. Fluids dripped rapidly into the tube sticking
out of a limp arm that rest on the pristinely folded white cotton sheets.

  Crothers had cut Gary’s bindings and saved them in a Ziploc bag that was part of his standard dress code. The release had only caused Gary to crumple further into himself, and there was no sign of a physical reaction or relief. Gary had not even woken when being pulled from the car boot and his doctors were unsure when or if the unconscious state would ever change. There were plans for CTs and MRIs and other medical tests, but they were not going to help Crothers in the near term. He had a body with a missing finger, the finger and an unconscious man, and all without any obvious cause.

  He thought briefly of Diane Dimbleby as she had driven away in the squad car. Her face had been pale, and there was a tremor in her hands. He could not tell if it was from the fall or the body she had stumbled across. He had told her to stay in the car, and she had deliberately paid him no heed, which should have angered him. Instead, he felt concern for her. She may have been frailer than she looked, though he had the feeling that the only thing old about Diane was her body. There was a mind of steel in there. It could be dented by a hard enough shock, but it still remained and did what it was designed for. In this case, Diane would bounce back, and she would get back into the fray because she needed to. He felt a faint sense of relief that Diane would be safely out of the way for a while, yet she would keep asking questions.

  A doctor pushing through the doorway broke his reverie, and Crothers watched as the doctor flipped charts, tapped on a computer, and scratched his head. The Inspector was turning away when there was a shrill squeal followed by a crash of metal from Gary’s room. As he swung back around, Crothers saw that the doctor had stumbled backwards into a nearby tray of medications and was staring aghast at the bed, where a pale white hand had a grip on the doctor’s lab coat.

  ♠ ♠ ♠ ♠ ♠ ♠

  The large, detached house dominated the street, surrounded by smaller more cheaply built semi-detached houses. It had an angular appearance that was common in Victorian houses and clashed with the square-set buildings around it. Two broad windows flanked a large deep-green door that had seen better days, if not years. The windows vied with the door to express their need for a fresh coat of paint. Attempts had been made to renovate the exterior, though the painting of the red brickwork seemed to have been left half complete, the upper section of the building appearing like the untouched forehead wrinkles upon a freshly Botoxed face. An eroded plaque of stone protruded high up on the wall above the door, though the house’s given name and its date of completion were eroded to the point of nonexistence. Wide as the front of the building was, it was so much deeper, extending backward along a driveway to a small car park in the back.