The Case of the Deadly Doppelgänger

by Lucy Banks

  “Your comments seem rather rich coming from the man with the world’s most ridiculous moustache. Honestly, aren’t you aware that look died out with the 1920s?”

  Miss Wellbeloved wheeled on her heels and stepped firmly in between the two of them. “Pack it in this instant!”

  The two men looked mutinous. “He started it,” Higgins pointed out, throwing a furious glance at Ribero over the top of Miss Wellbeloved’s shoulder.

  “Well, now it’s time to stop it.” She looked at each of them in turn. “You both know how much this case means to us all. If we fail, I don’t want it to be because you two were too busy throwing your toys out of your collective prams.” She breathed in, then patted down her cardigan. “Kester, allow me to quickly show you the lounge. Then you can tell us how it looks compared to yesterday.”

  Kester scurried down the dark hallway, which still smelt unpleasantly of fish. Is that all they eat? he wondered, peering into the kitchen on the way past. It was so dingy in there that couldn’t see much, only an oven, which had been left open, a tiny fold-down kitchen table, and an old tea towel draped over the unit.

  He looked into the lounge, then looked back at Miss Wellbeloved. “Okay,” he said as he surveyed the scene in front of him. “I now see what you mean.”

  Grace McCready’s armchair had been flung over so that it rested on one side, legs pointing crazily at the window. The cushions and throws were strewn across the floor, and every picture had been thrown down, spreading smashed glass across the threadbare carpet. Even more disturbingly, the sofa looked as though it had been attacked with a knife. Large slashes spewed stuffing onto the seat. I hope the cat’s okay, Kester thought irrationally and instinctively surveyed the corners to see if he could spot it.

  “What do you make of it?” Miss Wellbeloved looked over his shoulder and squinted with concern.

  “It’s been totally trashed,” Kester said, staring round the room. He sighed. “It also feels very hostile in here, doesn’t it?” he said. Reluctantly, he stepped into the room. “I felt it yesterday, but it’s much more noticeable now. It feels horrible.” He didn’t like to admit it, but the room was making him feel a bit sick. The floral wallpaper started to twist before his eyes, and it made his head hurt.

  Pamela joined him, placing her hands on her ample hips. “It’s exactly the same atmosphere that Dimitri and I picked up at Deirdre Baxter’s house. Not to mention Jürgen Kleinmann’s. It’s the same spirit, I can tell.” She looked at him with interest. “Though it’s interesting that you’re so good at picking up atmospheres, Kester. Maybe you’ve got a touch of the gift too.”

  Kester shrugged, looking back round at the others. “The big question is . . . where’s Grace?”

  Mike shrugged. “Perhaps she ran away? Pretty shrewd move, if you ask me.”

  Kester shook his head and moved aside to let the others squeeze into the room. “No, that doesn’t make sense. None of the others had any chance to run away. This spirit seems far too clever to let a victim escape.”

  “Unless it lured her somewhere else,” Serena said, crossing her arms and giving Kester a baleful look, as though he was somehow responsible.

  Miss Wellbeloved tutted. “Serena, don’t start being prejudiced again.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I can hear it in the tone of your voice. Remember, this spirit may well have motivation to behave like this. We know it was locked up in the ground for centuries, after all.”

  “Or perhaps it’s just a nasty sod,” Higgins suggested. He stepped over the cushion and hoisted the chair back into place. “Jennifer, you must cease this naivety when it comes to spirits. Some are just downright evil. Accept it.”

  Ribero swept over to Miss Wellbeloved, then placed a proprietous hand on her shoulder. “Jennifer,” he began, casting a smug look at Larry, “I defend your right to defend the spirits. Your compassion is to be commended.”

  “Oh shut up, you blistering old git,” Higgins spat. “I’m just telling it like it is. I don’t hold with all this airy-fairy nonsense about spirits being like us. They’re damned troublesome, and they need sorting out, which is where we come in. Now, let’s get back on track here.”

  Miss Wellbeloved shook her head. “I can’t believe I’m hearing this.”

  “Let’s just focus on the task at hand,” Kester whispered and gave her arm a squeeze. “For what it’s worth, I’m sure you’re right. You usually are. But having another argument isn’t going to achieve anything.”

  She nodded and returned his squeeze with a grateful clasp of her own. “What should we do then? Shall I call the police?”

  “I think you’re going to have to,” Higgins said as he surveyed the mess. “After all, a woman’s life could be in danger here.”

  Serena picked up a cushion. She placed it gingerly on the sofa, as though afraid it might rear up and bite her hand. “Everything is filthy in here. Do you think that’s a clue to what happened?”

  Kester shook his head. “No. It was already pretty dirty yesterday. I don’t think they do much cleaning.”

  “It stinks as well,” Mike said, wrinkling his nose. “I thought it was you to begin with, Serena, but even you’re not quite that foul.”

  “Shut up, Mike,” Serena said smoothly and lobbed a cushion at his head. “Especially given that you look like a caveman at the moment. I notice that you seem to be enjoying the fact that you haven’t been able to change your clothes since we’ve been away.”

  “Well, this is my favourite shirt.”

  “It’ll be crawling off you and walking down the corridor soon, judging by the number of bacteria living in it now.”

  “Let’s move on from Mike’s bacteria, lovely though it may be,” Pamela suggested with a wave of the hand, as though fending off the smell. “Should we wait outside until the police arrive?”

  “Technically, we have as much right to investigate this house as they do,” Miss Wellbeloved said pertly. “Just because they wear shiny metal badges, doesn’t mean they have any more authority than us.”

  Kester scooped up the painting that had been hanging above Grace’s armchair. He remembered it now, the dreary Highland scene. The glass had shattered across the centre, and as he picked it up, sections fell out, tinkling quietly to the floor. The image bothered him, but he couldn’t work out why. It is a particularly gloomy picture, he thought as he studied the thick oil brushstrokes, glinting in the weak daylight.

  “That’s a bloody awful painting, isn’t it?” Larry said, peering over his shoulder. “Christ knows why anyone would want to hang that monstrosity up in their living room.”

  “It is a stinker,” Kester agreed as he turned the frame over in his hands. The label on the back told him the artist’s name—F Livingstone, whoever he or she might have been. Painted in 1962. The title of the painting was simple and to the point—Visions of Dundee.

  “Which part of Scotland is Dundee in?” he asked casually, wondering if there was a connection. He remembered that Grace McCready had said something about the landscape being close to where she’d lived when she’d been younger.

  Miss Wellbeloved ran her hand over the writing on the canvas. “It’s on the east coast. Why?”

  “Is it near where the Celtic brooch came from? The Angus region, or whatever you said it was?”

  She nodded slowly, then looked back down at the painting, eyes widening. “It is. Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”

  “What are you bloody thinking?” Larry Higgins said, grabbing the painting from Kester’s hand and studying it furiously.

  “The archaeologist told us that the knife embedded in the Celtic warrior was from the Angus region,” Kester explained, looking at the others with growing excitement. “Which suggests that the Celtic warrior himself was from the region. Not to mention the fetch that came down to Lyme Regis with him.”

 
Serena broke into a rare smile. “And of course, a fetch will only want to be in its homeland or with people from the area . . .”

  “. . . and Grace McCready was from the same place!” Pamela concluded triumphantly. “My god, Kester, so you were right. It is a fetch. And it’s latched on to Grace. Wow.”

  “That’s a bit of a coincidence, isn’t it?” Higgins scoffed, passing the painting back to Miss Wellbeloved. “What are the odds, eh?”

  “It’s not that surprising that someone from the region should turn up sooner or later,” Miss Wellbeloved replied, rubbing at the canvas thoughtfully.

  Mike nodded. “Especially down here. It’s a popular place with tourists and old people, isn’t it? Living the good life and all that.”

  “So, hang on,” Larry said as he paced around the room. “Let’s say I’m prepared to go along with the fact that she’s from the same place as this murderous fetch. I simply don’t swallow the notion that she coincidentally managed to stumble upon the spirit’s resting place and free it. That’s preposterous.”

  “Unless the fetch called to her,” Miss Wellbeloved interrupted, eyes glowing.

  “That would make it absurdly powerful.”

  “Given that it’s over 2,000 years old, that’s not impossible, is it?” Pamela added. “You know that they get stronger over time. Particularly if they’re angry about something.”

  “So she’s freed the spirit, and now it’s doing what it does best,” Serena concluded, eyes sparkling. “It’s fetching people.”

  “More pressing at the moment,” Kester interrupted, “is the fact that wherever Grace, is the fetch is too. Which means either she’s in danger or someone else is.”

  The others all gasped.

  “But who else is there left to kill?” Pamela said as she looked at the others with confusion. “It’s polished off all the members of the Ancient History Club now.”

  Miss Wellbeloved shook her head. She looked suddenly sick. “You know as well as I do, Pamela. A malevolent fetch won’t stop, not until it’s back where it belongs. It’ll simply move on to fresh victims—unless it finds a way to get home again.”

  “Then we need to get to her quickly,” Serena suggested, already moving towards the door. “There’s no time to lose.”

  “And when we find her, we can get that spirit stuffed into a water bottle before it can say ‘och aye’?” Mike said as he punched Kester on the arm.

  “Fantastic, casual Scottish racism as well as spiritism now,” Miss Wellbeloved groaned, slapping a hand across her forehead in protest. However, in spite of her comment, she looked more excited than Kester had seen her all week.

  “Now,” Ribero continued, taking to the centre of the floor and gesturing at them all in a manner rather like a ringmaster at a circus. “Where do we find this woman?”

  Kester pondered. He looked around the room for inspiration. The others waited expectantly.

  “Well,” he started, his brain whirring at greater speeds than it had been for at least a fortnight. “Let’s think about this rationally. If the spirit has latched itself onto Grace McCready, she either knows it’s there or she doesn’t.”

  “Let’s assume she doesn’t.” Miss Wellbeloved nodded. “What would that mean, then?”

  He thought again. “If she didn’t know the spirit was following her, then she’d naturally be scared that she’d be next on the list to get murdered. After all, she’s the only one left. So, she’d presumably try to head somewhere that she thought the spirit couldn’t get to.”

  “A church, perhaps?” Higgins offered.

  Ribero scoffed. “Edna Berry was killed in a church, you silly man. She got tangled in the bell-ropes, don’t you remember?”

  “Excuse me, don’t you dare tell me what I do and do not remember, given that you only bothered to join us on this job about ten minutes ago!”

  Miss Wellbeloved shot them both a disapproving look. “How about we presume Grace McCready does know the spirit’s with her? What are the implications then?”

  The implications aren’t pretty at all, Kester thought. The implications are: if Grace knows that the spirit is with her, then she had to know it was killing her friends. Which makes her complicit in the murders. He caught Miss Wellbeloved’s eye and could tell she was thinking the same thing.

  “I think we can safely conclude that she won’t have headed to the church,” he said, choosing his words carefully. “As you so rightly point out, Dad, the church is where one of her friends got killed.” He glanced out the window. Dark clouds loomed over the woodlands on the distant headland. It’s looking cold out there, he thought. I wouldn’t much fancy going up to the Celtic graves now, it’s about to pour down.

  “Hang on,” he said, holding his finger in the air. “The Celtic burial site.” He looked out the window again. “Could she have gone there?”

  Higgins rolled his eyes. “You’re just making this up, aren’t you? It all sounds like one big, silly stab in the dark to me.”

  “Of course I’m making it up!” Kester shouted, exasperation finally getting the better of him. “What else can we do? We’ve got hardly any time to get this case solved, and we have to make silly stabs in the dark if we’re going to get anywhere! Now will you please stop being so obstructive!”

  “Hmm, just ignore me then,” Higgins muttered. He folded his arms and glared mutinously out of the window.

  “Why don’t we split up?” Pamela suggested. “Some of us can head up to the graves, some of us down to the seafront, the rest of us into town?”

  “Unless she’s got a car and driven off somewhere,” Larry said. “Which is entirely possible.”

  Miss Wellbeloved pulled out her phone. “I’ve got to call the police,” she said, walking towards the hallway. “Pamela, I think your idea is probably our best option at the moment. We need to try to find Grace. If she has driven away . . . well, there’s not much we can do about it, is there?”

  “Sounds like yet another wild-goose chase to me,” Larry concluded, glaring at them all. “However, as that seems to be the way you lot do things, I’ll go along with it for now.”

  “Because you have no better ideas in that big thick head of yours,” Ribero added with a tweak of his jacket collar. “Isn’t that right?”

  Higgins scowled and stalked down the hallway after Miss Wellbeloved. “Whatever you do, don’t pair me up with that moron,” he grumbled, his voice echoing back to the lounge. The rest of them followed, returning with relief to the fresh air outside. The same seagull sat perched by the wall, beady eyes fixed on their movements with an impassive lack of interest.

  They quickly assigned themselves to teams, deliberately ensuring that Ribero and Higgins wouldn’t be within a mile radius of one another. Kester volunteered to head to the Celtic site, even though he knew it was likely to be the most sinister location of them all. He glanced up at the distant woods with a sense of foreboding. The trees sprouted from the headland, dark and ceaselessly shifting in the strong westerly wind. He could even hear the breeze passing through the branches if he listened carefully. Ribero offered to come with him, along with Serena—as they needed an extinguisher—Pamela, and, for some reason best known to himself, Mike.

  The others agreed to head into town, then on to the seafront to see if they could catch sight of a deranged-looking woman with white hair, plus a heavily pregnant daughter.

  “You’ll probably need longer than us,” Miss Wellbeloved said after she had got off the phone, scouring the woods with a squint. “So we’ll head up there to join you once we’ve checked the town. We’ll be as quick as we can. Make sure you keep your mobiles switched on.”

  “No point, is there?” Mike said. He waved his mobile in her face. “No signal. Don’t you remember? We couldn’t call the archaeologist the other day because his phone didn’t work up in the headlands.”

  She rubbed her
mouth thoughtfully. “Yes, that’s true. Well, stick together and be careful. If you do find Grace, you may well find the spirit too, and we know that it’s a tricky customer.”

  “You mean absolute bloody maniac out of our worst nightmares,” Higgins chimed.

  “No, I didn’t mean that at all. Stop trying to bait me,” Miss Wellbeloved said, raising a warning eyebrow in his direction. She gestured down the silent road, then nodded. “Shall we?”

  “If we must,” Pamela said with a cheerful nod. She linked arms with Ribero and Kester, and yanked them close against her squidgy hips, which gave gently against their weight like a well-sprung mattress. “Come on you two, let’s get going. I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’m keen to wrap this case up and get back home.”

  “Don’t let the Higgins take control,” Ribero growled to Miss Wellbeloved as they paced down the road. “The man is a halfwit. He could not organise a siesta in Spain.”

  Higgins snorted like a bull about to charge. “Honestly, what is it with you lot? Do you really think I can’t hear you? You whisper about as loudly as a stampeding herd of buffalo!”

  “Maybe we just want you to hear us,” Mike said, nudging Higgins in the ribs as he went past. “It’s more fun that way. I like seeing your face go all puffy and red. It’s like watching someone slowly over-inflate a balloon.”

  They parted company a little further down the main road; Miss Wellbeloved’s group headed straight down the steep hill, and Ribero’s team clambered over the stile and onto the winding grass path that led up to the woods. Judging by the profusion of nettles and brambles, it didn’t get used very often. Kester climbed through the tangled undergrowth, trying not to fret too much about the holes the thorns were making as they ripped at his trousers. I suppose I needed a new pair anyway, he thought. To his delight, his clothes were becoming a bit looser, which he hoped might be to do with his weight loss. Certainly this week’s stress must have helped burn off the pounds.

  He heard his father wheezing behind him and waited for him to catch up.

  “Are you okay there?”