Menninot glanced at Carmen Pharoah. "Would you like to?"
"If you wish, sir."
"I wish, I think. I'd like to root around here for a bit."
"It'll be more interesting than the P.M." Bill Hatch said, glancing at the building. "Fascinating to walk around, in other circumstances."
"Well, that's rank." Menninot smiled. "It has its privileges."
Though he did not admit it openly, Ken Menninot very rapidly came to understand Joseph Kelly's fascination. The opening of long-closed doors, the reaching back in time, the atmosphere, the spirits still in these vast rooms and endless corridors. He went to the rear of the house and then outside to where a Scene of Crime officer was examining the van for latents. Menninot asked him if he had found anything.
"Forlorn hope after this length of time, sir." The man stepped out of the van and stood up. "I don't know how long it's been here with the door open, but long enough for a layer of dust to settle and obscure everything. But I'll carry on. There's some nylon cord in the rear. It looks to me to be the same as the type used by the girl who hanged herself—if that's what happened. I've tagged it and I'll get it up to Wetherby for analysis."
"Good man. Would it disturb anything if I lifted the bonnet?"
"Not a thing, sir. I'll get the catch for you, it's in here somewhere."
Menninot opened the bonnet and took a note of the chassis number to put through the NVLCC computer at Swansea. Menninot was only on his second cup of coffee when the result came through by fax. The vehicle was a Ford Escort van, black, registered owner was Max Farr, twenty-three years, Ripon Road, Jesmond, Newcastle-upon-Tyne.
"A little local knowledge, please." Menninot held the phone to the side of his head.
"Anything to oblige." The officer of the Northumberland Police had a cheery attitude.
"Farr. Max Farr, Ripon Road, Newcastle-upon-Tyne. Do you know him?"
"I'll see."
Menninot heard the unmistakable sound of a computer-terminal keyboard being tapped . . . a moment's pause, then, "Yes, yes, we do know him. And so do you. Don't you do local checks? He's a mis per."
"Probably not anymore," Menninot said, feeling chastened for not doing local checks before phoning another police force.
"He was a student at York University. Reported missing in the summer the year before last, about twenty months ago. His file is cross-referenced to another mis per. Trixie Ellis, also a student, believed to be his girlfriend. Have you found their bodies perchance?"
"Perchance we have." Menninot went over the nuts and bolts of the find at Pately Hall.
"Sounds ominous enough. But at least we'll be able to put Mr. and Mrs. Farr out of their misery, though by now they'll have accepted the worst. Prior to that, he wasn't known to us. No record at all, a good lad, keeping his nose in the books. Do let us know if we can be of assistance."
"Certainly we will, though I confess on my waters I think the only thing we'll be asking you to do is break bad, but not by now unexpected, news to Mr. Farr and his lady wife." Menninot replaced the phone and pressed a four-figure internal number. "Collator."
"Sir?"
"Two files, please. One on Max Farr, a mis per of about twenty months ago. It'll be cross-referenced to another mis per of the same date, one Trixie Ellis. On my desk as soon as." Menninot glanced at the clock. Still only five p.m. A lot seemed to have happened since he and Carmen Pharoah were asked to go to a remote part of the Wold and rendezvous with two constables in an area car and a member of the public who had reported something suspicious.
The collator brought the files to Menninot. Both were thin, "mis per" only files, a single referral sheet, then nothing. When last seen, both Trixie Ellis and Max Farr had been living at 14 Doncaster Road, York.
Menninot went there. It was a rambling mid-Victorian terraced house which smelled of damp and Menninot fancied that it would be difficult to heat during the winter months.
"We thought they'd eloped." The young woman blinked behind thick spectacles. She was of short, spindly appearance, very bookish, not for her the cocktail circuit. "They had the front room, they shared it, they were a very together couple. Big Max and Little Trixie. Him so big and her so small."
"She was a small woman?"
"Oh, yes. She was self-conscious about it. She used to dress cheaply because she was able to buy children's clothes, no tax, you see, but she really yearned to be taller. The police looked round their room when we realised that they hadn't eloped, after about a week. But everything was normal, nothing had been packed, everything was there. A lot of cash too."
"A lot?"
"Fifty pounds. That's a lot. It would be to Max and Trixie. If they were going away they'd take that with them. They don't come from wealthy backgrounds. Max's father is a bank clerk, and Trixie's dad is a coal miner. It was after exams, but they both still had some course work to address. . . . Really it's a wonder we didn't get suspicious sooner."
"Has their room been relet?"
"Yes, it has, to another couple. And their possessions, Max and Trixie's that is, their possessions were removed by their parents. That was some few weeks and I mean some few weeks for the course."
"Oh?"
"Well, that was the time Karen Ovenhouse was kidnapped. You must remember that?"
"I do."
"She's on the same course as me, same course that Max and Trixie were on, Medieval English. . . . Very small course, so we know each other well. Karen doesn't have much to do with us, holds herself aloof a bit . . . but she was on the course . . . sits in lectures, seminars. . . . She was abducted just before the exams . . . then Max and Trixie vanished just after the exams. Then Karen turned up safe. . . . Talk about topsy-turvy. I was so glad to go home. Southampton never looked more welcoming.
"Is that your hometown?"
"For my sins."
"I see." Menninot paused. "So Karen Ovenhouse would have known Max and Trixie?"
"Yes . . . a small course. . . . But there was a bit of a class gap between Karen and the rest of us. We're all lower middle class or working class. Karen is practically one step down from the Royal Family. But yes, they knew each other."
"So, a close-knit course of students. Were you upset when Trixie and Max disappeared?"
"I'll say—people don't just vanish. But they did. Only Karen didn't seem upset, but that's her class, they're taught from a very early age to control and conceal their emotions."
"Interesting." Menninot nodded. "Very interesting."
Menninot returned to Friargate Police Station. He called in at the detective constables' room to see if Carmen Pharoah had returned from York City Hospital. She had. He found her sitting at a desk compensating for the lessening of natural light by having switched on the low-wattage anglepoise light on her desk.
"I see you're back from the P.M.?"
"Yes, sir." She glanced up at him. "Just writing up Bill Hatch's findings now. He'll be faxing his report to us as soon as possible."
"Can you give me the gist of it?"
"The male appears to have been stabbed in the heart."
"He can tell that from such an old corpse?"
"Apparently so. The heart muscle is still identifiable, as is the damage caused by the knife, as is the dried blood still evident on the shirt. Death would have been instantaneous. He would have slumped back against the wall."
"The manner in which he was found, in fact."
"Yes, sir."
"So what have we got, a murder/suicide? She kills him then strings herself up? Not unknown." He glanced at a picture of a black woman in a green swimsuit, standing on a pebble beach beneath palm fronds, and in the background dark clouds of an approaching storm. "Who's that? Your sister?"
"She'd love you for saying that! No, that's my mum, taken on a beach in St. Kitts. I was an early child. Very early."
"I see, so . . ."
"Well, it may not be so simple, sir. The woman had head injuries, a fractured skull. Probably not sufficient to kill her, but sufficient
to render her unconscious, semiconscious at least."
"Therefore not able to string herself up."
"Exactly. That's Bill Hatch's opinion."
"So, we're looking at the hand of a third person in all this."
Later, in his office, as the sun dipped fully beneath the skyline, Menninot closed the file on Karen Ovenhouse's kidnapping and picked up the phone on his desk and dialed the D.C.'s room extension.
"D.C. Pharoah."
"Carmen, Ken Menninot."
"Yes, sir?"
"Busy?"
"Nothing that can't wait."
"Good. Grab your coat, we're going to Leeds."
"Leeds?"
"Leeds."
"Karen was always so, so expensive." The woman in the scarlet designer dress sniffed into her gin, her feet sunk in the deep pile carpet. Oil paintings hung on panelled walls; the room smelled of wood polish. This was Leeds beyond Soldier's Field. This was Roundhay.
"Always expensive," the man echoed. The leather armchair in which he sat squeaked each time he moved. He stroked a Persian cat which lay curled up in his lap. "Not like you, my sweet."
The woman scowled. "I want to be expensive. I am expensive."
"I was talking to the cat."
"Men wouldn't look at me when I was carrying her." The woman addressed Menninot and ignored Carmen Pharoah. "So we didn't have another one. I wouldn't."
"Bought cats instead," mumbled the man.
"Sent her off to school as soon as she was seven."
"As soon as she was seven. Off she went."
"Then to university when she was eighteen."
"From school to university."
"We had to pay the fees, of course. No grant for the likes of us, for the likes of her. We're monied, you see."
"Monied," echoed the man.
"Then she gets herself kidnapped. Foolish girl. Paid the ransom. Police advised against it, but we paid anyway. One million pounds."
"Solved the problem, you see," the man said without taking his eyes off the cat. "She came back, dirty, wanting a bath and a meal. But otherwise unscathed. So our life could proceed."
"Proceed." This time it was the woman who echoed.
Ken Menninot and Carmen Pharoah stood and saw themselves out of the Ovenhouse residence. They doubted that their departure was noticed.
The following afternoon, when D.S. Menninot and D.C. Pharoah were once again both working the afternoon shift and so were able to pick up the case, they interviewed Karen Ovenhouse in the dean's office, at the dean's invitation, but in his absence.
"I felt they owed me," Karen Ovenhouse said calmly.
"You would have got more if you had waited to inherit in the fullness of time," Menninot replied, equally calmly. "I mean, we've visited your parents . . . what they must be worth . . ."
"That's it, you see, that's the motivation. I'm not going to inherit anything."
"You've been disinherited?"
"No, there's just nothing to inherit. There wouldn't have been anything to inherit if I had waited until they expired of old age. Short of murdering them, that is."
"Explain."
"Well, the house, the contents, it's all show. My father's business collapsed and he sold the house and its valuable contents to a finance company on the basis that they continue to live out their lives there . . . so they keep the image, remain the envy of their friends. . . . They got two million pounds for that house of theirs. Half for me is not unreasonable. They don't want a fuss, so they paid. I knew they would."
"Where's the money now?"
"In my bank account. Confess the manager's eyes opened when I paid the money in. But there had been no publicity, so no one knew that Karen Ovenhouse had been kidnapped. Better than his customers going into the red. It's in a high-yield account."
"So what happened in the house? I mean the ruin. Pately Hall?"
"Is that what it's called?"
Karen Ovenhouse was a tall, slender woman; in terms of appearance she was more of a businesswoman than an undergraduate. The Cartier watch, the gold bracelet, the pinstriped suit. "Well, they got greedy, dare say, it's the old, old story. I offered them ten thousand pounds each. For them and their background that's very big money. They had to take zero risk, the plan couldn't go wrong. We picked up the ransom using his van and got back to the house. . . . When they found out how much money was involved, they wanted more. He, Big Max, came at me with the knife. . . . I don't know what happened. . . . There was a struggle. . . ."
"Very convenient," Menninot said coldly. "In fact, the truth of it is that you got rid of them as soon as you had the ransom."
"Believe what you want to believe. We had a fight and she hit her head. I thought she was dead so I made it look like suicide."
"That actually killed her. At this stage, I have to caution you that if you do now mention anything . . ."
"No need." Karen Ovenhouse held up her hand. "I'll confess. I'll confess to everything, the ransom, my own kidnapping. . . . I'll do ten years . . . half of it in an open prison. My million pounds will have nearly doubled by then and I'll still be in my early thirties. I can cope with that."
"You don't keep that. The law prohibits you from profiting from a crime."
Colour drained from Ovenhouse's face.
"It'll be confiscated, 'sequestered' is the correct term," Menninot continued. "And it will be easy enough to trace since you told us it's in a bank account in your name. A false name, or an overseas account, and we might have a problem."
"I didn't know that. I thought . . ."
"You're right about the other bit, though . . . the ten years. . . . And I'd say that's minimum. . . . And I wouldn't bank on the open prison either."
Joseph Kelly sat in his small flat poring over an Ordnance Survey map of South Downs. There was a ruin there, just to the north of Brighton. One day to get down there, one day snooping, one day to get back. . . .
Copyright © 2012 by Peter Turnbull
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SPECIAL FEATURES
FICTION
OLD MAN GLOOM
by David Edgerley Gates
Art by Mark Evan Walker
David Edgerley Gates belongs to a rare breed: He's a short-fiction specialist, and has received two nominations for the prestigious Edgar Allan Poe Award and one for the Shamus Award for his stories. His tales are often of novella length and always involve a vivid depiction of his chosen setting, which is usually the American Southwest. This month he brings back the character featured in his last story for EQMM (see "The Lion of the Chama" 12/03), retired lawman Benny Salvador.
That year Aurora was one of the little Glooms who gather at Zozobra's skirts. She was thirteen. Her sister Angelina, at fourteen, liked to pretend she was too grown up for such things, but she fussed over Aurora's costume all the same, and when Fiesta came, she was as excited as any other child, anticipating the fireworks blooming in the night sky.
They got there early, Benny and Teresa and the girls. Aurora had been to rehearsals, but she wanted to be sure she was well ahead of time.
Teresa let her skitter away.
"She'll be fine," Benny said. He knew his wife was afraid she'd lose Aurora in the crowd. He had to admit that he was too, but God had given them wings to fly. You had to put your fears aside. You bent the bow, children were arrows. Anything that might have happened to them before was history.
"What if she has to pee?" Angelina asked him.
"You're asking me?" He had to take a leak himself.
It was the weekend after Labor Day. The war had been over for two years. Benny Salvador was still sheriff in Rio Arriba. Connie Navarro, the girls' mom, was working down south in Albuquerque, and visited every weekend. Their father, Victor, was up in Hanford. He tried to get back every few weeks, but to all intents and purposes, Benny and Teresa were their parents.
Teresa had delivered two babies, stillborn, so the Navarro girls w
ere her lifeline. His, as well. You played the cards you'd been dealt, in life or at the table, and occasionally you drew a good hand. Benny felt the deck had been kind to him, so far.
Zozobra was a marionette, thirty feet tall. He had a papier-mâché head and sticks for arms, draped in a tall white gown. People wrote their grievances on little slips of paper, and they were stuffed inside the puppet, so when the puppet burned, your grief went up in smoke, it was hoped. A new tradition, not as old as Fiesta itself, which dated back to De Vargas and the eighteenth century. Zozobra had been invented by a Santa Fe artist named Will Shuster, based on a Yaqui tribal ritual, an effigy of Judas, paraded through the village and then destroyed, with his sins. It had a primitive appeal, cathartic and celebratory, and Benny found it somehow reassuring. He'd long since lost his faith in the Catholic church, and avoided Mass. Aurora's First Communion was next on the immediate horizon. Benny knew he'd be bullied into submitting to it by the women in his life.
At dusk, bonfires were lit around the stage. The little Glooms danced at Zozobra's feet. The monster puppet dipped his head and groaned, flailing his arms. Then it was full dark, and Old Man Gloom himself fell to the torch.
Zozobra burned, his groans louder and more anguished. The pyrotechnics inside him began to explode, so not only did he burn, he sent off pinwheels of sparks. Then the skyrockets and Roman candles lit up. The audience laughed and applauded.
Off to his left, Benny heard three sharp reports. Even with the fireworks onstage, he knew gunshots. He told Teresa to stay with the girls and worked his way through the press.
Santa Fe PD had a presence, for security and crowd control, and they'd responded first. Benny was glad to see Johnny Lee Montoya there too. Johnny was a captain with the state police, and he and Benny went back.
The cops had established a perimeter. Benny and Johnny Lee showed them their shields, and were allowed in.
"What happened?" Benny asked the senior sergeant.
"Your guess is as good as mine," the Santa Fe cop said. He knew Benny Salvador by reputation.
Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine 12/01/12 Page 13
