Jordan Lacey Mystery 01 Pray and Die

by Stella Whitelaw

  There was a forest of For Sale signs on posts. Rick had said the owner of my purchases had gone into a hospice, not realizing that Ellen had taken vows and gone into the hospice to nurse the terminally ill. I’d bought Ellen Swantry’s button-back chair, her Persian rug and had her filing cabinet in my office all the time and not known it.

  Empty houses fascinate me. They still hold so much of past owners, echoes and feelings and dislocated thoughts. The overgrown trees completely hid my casual peering into the dark lifeless windows.

  I tried to act like a prospective buyer, making little squiggly notes on an old envelope. It looked as if the rooms had been stripped of furniture and carpets. There was little left of Ellen Swantry’s occupation—only discoloured patches on the walls where her pictures had once hung.

  A larder window around the back was very slightly open. It was only a crack but a little patient jiggling loosened the faulty catch. I found some bricks to stand on and pushed up the lower half of the window, then eased my leg over the sill and ducked my head down and under. The marble shelf immediately under the window took my weight and I was able to shift my knee onto it and swing my other leg up and in.

  When I was a WPC, I arrested some kids for doing exactly this, breaking and entering an empty house. They got supervision orders.

  The house had that damp, stale smell of creeping desolation. The red tiled floor was cracked and grimy, littered with dead flies and mildewed food particles. The kitchen was painted a ferocious dark green with more grimy tiles on the floor. It was desperately in need of modernization unless a time freak wanted to preserve a 1960’s enameled gas stove and a brown sink for a museum.

  I wandered about downstairs, depressed by the dismal surroundings and lost family feeling, half expecting the shadows to shift of their own accord. The bay-windowed front rooms had ugly cast iron fireplaces filled with dead leaves and soot and bird droppings. There was little sign of recent use. The back sitting room was cosier and the fireplace had been boarded up and replaced with an imitation gas log fire. Ellen had spent more time in here. A pile of old magazines lay curled on the floor and a No 6 knitting needle had escaped being packed.

  Upstairs were four good sized bedrooms. Three were bleak and musty as if they had been unoccupied for years. Only the big front bedroom held any signs of habitation. I imagined my Victorian chair and Persian rug in this room, in front of the fire, not used but there to fill a space. And there was a lot of space to fill. The ornate marble fireplace held the ashes of a long dead fire. Where the carpet had once lain were bare wooden boards, the worn pink linoleum surround scattered with small odds and ends.

  It seemed that in the last few years, Ellen Swantry had lived mainly in these two rooms, shutting off the rest of the house.

  I sifted the ashes carefully. Had she been burning old love letters from her husband or some younger lover from the past? A fragment had escaped the flames and using the corner of a magazine, I lifted it onto the palm of my hand. It had a lion’s head imprinted on it with a thin metallic strip about an inch from the edge. It looked vaguely familiar yet vaguely foreign. Half a printed word had survived… ‘ence’. I ran through the words ending in ence. It didn’t take long. The only one that made sense was pence. I grinned at my own joke and put the fragment in a plastic specimen envelope. I keep them with me for such instances. I would show my find to the clever man in the postcard shop. He might be able to identify it.

  Dark narrow stairs led to an attic. The skylight was shrouded with cobwebs, the area cluttered with cumbersome chests of drawers, bulbous double wardrobes and tatty bamboo tables that even Rick had declined to sell. They were destined for jumble sales, scout huts and bonfire night. I tried to open a couple of drawers but they were stuck and the smell of rotting linen put me off any further investigations. I’d had enough of groping round this sad old house. I needed light and air and a walk by the sea.

  There were facts I could check; their marriage license would give me the husband’s name and occupation. He could have been a Civil Servant during the war. But why should I? It wasn’t my case. But I was curious, one of my cat-like tendencies. And there would be immense satisfaction in solving this murder for the West Sussex police. They might regret giving me the push. I saw myself sauntering into the station, leaning on the counter and saying casually: “Oh, by the way, Skip, I know who put the nun on a meat hook.”

  I legged it out of the larder window and slid the window down behind me. The garden was overgrown and I thought I could see the reason for Ursula’s discontent. A concrete air-raid shelter, left over from the Second World War, straddled the boundary, probably shared by both house-owners during the raids.

  The squat concrete building was covered in weeds and brambles, the steel door hinges rusted solid. It must have offended Ursula’s fastidious eye for years. No wonder she was fighting to get rid of it. But its demolition would need the consent of both parties if the cost of it was initially met by both neighbours. I understood the dispute. It was a monstrous eye sore.

  I brushed off leaves and cobwebs and fetched my bicycle from where I’d hidden it in the bushes. What a strange morning. I felt I had stepped back in time to that war, long before I was born, still shaping people’s lives.

  Back at the shop, I washed up, made more coffee and sank onto the Victorian button-back. I needed more clients or First Class Investigations would wind down faster than I had started it up. The rhyming of FCI with FBI was no coincidence. Say it quickly and someone might be fooled.

  “I need to advertise,” I said aloud, startled by my own voice. It was the first time I’d spoken aloud that day. I picked up the phone, needing human contact. I checked with Rick that the filing cabinet, chair and rug had all come from The Beeches. He was usually open on a Sunday.

  “Why do you want to know?” he asked in his Sussex accent. “Cleared the whole house. Not a lot there. Some of the rooms were empty. She’d been selling off the best pieces. Made a few bucks.”

  “The chair and the rug were good.”

  “Old lady’s favourites. They hang onto those bits, however hard up they get.”

  “And can you remember where you found the filing cabinet?”

  “In the attic. Forgotten stuff. I didn’t touch the furniture. Not worth my time. Any complaints?”

  “None at all,” I said. “Have you got a long mirror? Sort-of nearly full length so I can see half of me?”

  “I’ve a 12 by 36 inch. Eight pounds.”

  “Good condition?”

  “Mirror is OK. Just a lick of paint. I’ll put it aside.”

  I had a sudden craving for oranges, juicy plums and a sweet Galia melon. The house had dried me up, sucked the moisture from my pores. I was dehydrated with thinking and tired of looking. I trawled the High Street for fruit. Doris wasn’t open and she didn’t sell much fruit anyway. She only stocked potatoes, onions, carrots and rock-hard swedes. Fruit was exotic.

  “We don’t do exotics,” she told me when I first shopped there. “Only apples.”

  I went to the huge supermarket at the back of town. It sold everything, in and out of season. It stayed open ridiculous hours and was teeming with itinerant families trundling trollies up and down the aisles, talking on mobiles.

  I took my bag of plums down to the beach, wiping them on a tissue, eating them as I walked, spitting the stones back into the bag. Grazing was a bad habit but my body over-rode my disapproval. I settled for a perch by the fishing boats. The tide was coming in, sweeping over the scattering of rocks and filling the gullies. Waves splatted the groynes with feathery plumes, speckled detergent foam encroached the sand. A low mist hung on the horizon, obscuring the sun’s rays. A few seagulls gathered hopefully at a distance then squawked off in disgust when they discovered the bits were orange peel.

  A frayed length of thin blue nylon twine lay nearby and I swallowed an orange pip. Ellen Swantry had been strangled with blue nylon twine. Some sort of motive was slowly coming to the surface. The files f
rom her house … they were evidence that she was no ordinary nun.

  I’d have to tell DI James. It wouldn’t be fair to keep him in the dark if they were at a dead-end.

  “Perhaps they’ll take me on as a consultant,” I said to a black-headed gull who was eyeing my snack. I threw him an orange segment and he flew off with it in his beak, perhaps thinking it was a superior kind of prawn.

  Perhaps they’d let me use the police computers in exchange. Now that would be a fair bargain. My fingers itched to get on a key-board and search for the information I needed.

  As I sat watching the waves, a familiar twinge cramped my abdomen. My time had come as they used to say in Victorian novels. I knew there was no way round the oncoming pain and nausea. The only panacea was a hot water bottle clutched to my stomach, a couple of paracetamol and the hope of sleep.

  Not surprisingly I overslept.

  The sergeant on desk duty looked up as I went in the next morning. “Common or garden bleach,” he said before I could say a word. “Near lethal dosage. You’d have had a nasty spell in hospital if you’d eaten that lot. Do you want to prefer charges?”

  “I’ve no idea who sent it,” I said, chilled. I’d forgotten the poisoned cake. “But I’ve gone right off carrots.”

  “Not surprised. Prefer chocolate cake myself.”

  “Have they seen the report upstairs?”

  “They know all about it.”

  “Aren’t they interested that someone tried to poison me?”

  “Lot of serious crime about just now. A near miss doesn’t rate much police time. A near miss…” He started chuckling. This was the resident comedian.

  “Can I see DI James?”

  “He’s out on a ram raiders job. Some kids last night drove a car into the window of an off license. They smashed most of the stock. Only got away with the canned lager.”

  “Ram raiders in Latching? What is the world coming to?”

  “But I expect he’ll see you when he comes in. He may want to shake you by the hand.”

  “Me?” I was mystified. We were hardly on hand-shaking terms. Suddenly I really wanted to see him. He was a sane person in a mad world. A few minutes would do, even if he was off-hand, remote, controlled. I was in a bad way. It was rampant hormones.

  “Our home-grown heroine,” the sergeant said, whipping out a local evening tabloid paper from under the counter. He smoothed out a page.

  There was a photo of the Amusement Arcade on Latching Pier with the manager, Jack, standing outside, arms akimbo, looking fierce.

  The headline was WOMAN’S FLYING TACKLE TACKLES THIEVES. I didn’t read any more.

  “You’re famous,” he smirked, tapping the paper. “Can I have your autograph?”

  CHAPTER NINE

  Publicity. That’s what I needed for FCI and now I had got it. The newspaper story had most of the facts right. What they didn’t know, they made up in their usual random fashion. They said I was 24, had flaming red hair and was a regular arcade player. Ten per cent right. I did have reddish hair. I tried to hide my elation.

  “Wow!” I said, hitting the air.

  “Careful now. Don’t let it go to your head.”

  “Free cuppas from now on, eh, Sarge?”

  “Don’t go twisting my arm, Jordan. I’m very sensitive to extortion.”

  I wished I had someone to whom I could send copies of the newspaper. There was no way I could send a copy to the trumpeter. Maybe I’d carry a cutting around and show it to him one day. My mind shifted into fantasy gear and his sugar-brown voice was admiring my courage, my fearlessness, my trigger fast reaction.

  “Miss Lacey? Jordan.”

  A man’s voice broke into my thoughts and I must have given him the smile that is reserved for another. He looked startled, taken aback. He also looked tired, deadbeat, undernourished, his face drawn and unshaven, brilliant eyes blank. His usual look.

  “Been up all night?” I understood.

  “Ram raiders,” said DI James. “Gutters running with whisky and gin. Tipsy dogs staggering home or sleeping it off in doorways.” He tapped the newspaper. “Who’s a clever girl?”

  “Training,” I said smugly.

  “Do you want a medal? We’ve got one in a drawer somewhere.”

  “No, I want five minutes of your time. I’m serious. OK, you know that someone has tried to poison me with carrot cake laced with bleach. Then someone tries to kill Cleo Carling by pushing her down the stairs to the cloakroom at the pier theatre. And there’s still the dead nun. I take it you haven’t found out anything about her death yet?”

  “And you have, I suppose?”

  “Yes.”

  I wasn’t going to say any more until he invited me in and took me upstairs to his office. This had to be official.

  “Two minutes in my office,” he said, pressing the key code that allowed me round to his side of the counter. “Not a second more.”

  “I don’t know why I’m doing this,” I said, following him.

  “Public duty.”

  “Public joke. And the joke’s on me. I’m trying to track down the writer of hate mail sent to an upright female citizen of Latching and I’m half poisoned, stalked, imprisoned, and nearly a witness to a gruesome murder.”

  “Jordan, you do exaggerate.” He went straight to a drinks machine and got two polystyrene mugs of instant coffee. It was mud-coloured and tasted the same. He took his black.

  “You drink too much coffee,” I said. “And eat too much junk food. It’s not good for you.”

  “Don’t try to change the habits of a lifetime.”

  “I make excellent coffee,” I hesitated. “One day, perhaps, you might like to try it.”

  He nodded, too tired to be more than distantly polite.

  “Look, I know Ellen Swantry is nothing to do with my case but in a way she is. She lives, or rather lived, next door to my hate mail client, Ursula Carling. They were embroiled in a legal hassle about an air-raid shelter that was built on both their gardens. But that’s by the way. I also bought some of Ellen Swantry’s house clearance furniture for my office …” James’s eyes were glazing over, darkly, ocean floor eyes. “Again, nothing to do with either case,” I added hurriedly, “but the point is that in the bottom drawer of a filing cabinet I found documents which must have been classed as A.1 Secret and Confidential during the Second World War. Something to do with the War Office.”

  “Is all this relevant?” he asked, clamping on a yawn.

  “Yes, definitely. Wake up, buster, we’re coming to the best part. And these documents refer not once, but several times to Trenchers Hotel. Now that can’t be a coincidence. Ellen Swantry was found murdered in Trenchers Hotel. Don’t tell me that there isn’t some connection.”

  He was dragging himself back from the brink of sleep. “Where are these documents? And what are they?”

  “They’re minutes of meetings. I’ve got them in my office. All dated during the Second World War. There’s a kind of code.”

  “I’d like to look at them.”

  “I hope you can make more sense of them than I have.” For some reason I didn’t mention the scrap of burnt paper with the lion’s head that I’d found in the fireplace of her bedroom. That seemed private to Ellen and I had a feeling for her. “Come round for them anytime.” He had a car. I was tired too.

  I was nearly out of the door when I remembered the other purpose of my visit.

  “Can I use the PNC, only very occasionally, I hasten to add. It takes a million years to find facts outside and it’s all on your database.”

  “No, you can’t.”

  “You could leave me, just accidentally, and look the other way.”

  “No.”

  “I am a heroine. I deserve better treatment than this. And think of it as police co-operation. You don’t get that from your normal run of the mill private investigator. I’m useful to you lot.”

  He was too tired to argue. “Two minutes,” he said again, his brain stagnating to a
halt. “And don’t spread it about.” He waved me away. I didn’t argue. I ran downstairs to the computer room.

  “Hi. I’d like to do a quick search,” I said to the startled WPC on duty. “It won’t take a second.”

  The national computerized database was always being expanded, thank goodness. It began as a record of stolen vehicles, then included details of criminal records. The National Fingerprint Collection can also be reached through the PNC. DNA records were the latest addition.

  I flicked through, trying to find Births, Deaths and Marriages, but I was out of luck. I searched for Marriages and Deaths, hoping to pin some names and dates to the Swantry household. Some hic-cup or perhaps I wasn’t using the system properly. And when did her husband die? Judging by the state of the house, she’d been a widow for a long time. Perhaps he had been a much older man.

  I tracked the Civil Service file, using Swantry and Trenchers and WWII. But I kept coming up against classified or use code for entry. Fat chance. I ran in some of the coded references used in the minutes and the computer hated them. Not listed … not listed, it displayed with monotonous dismay.

  “Thank you so much,” I said to the WPC. “Just what I wanted. A few things to check. Such fun, aren’t they?”

  “Depends what you mean by fun,” she scowled.

  “Better than the telly. All those confidential files. I bet you have a great time checking up on your neighbours.” I bit on my tongue. She looked offended. “But, of course, I know you wouldn’t do anything like that. Professional integrity and all that.”

  I fled before I could make an enemy. Jaws, again. It doesn’t take much to antagonize people. There are a lot of short fuses about.

  Back at the office I phoned the new Family Record Centre at Myddleton Street, EC1. I knew they didn’t do phone enquiries but the Press Office might come up with something if I put on a WPC voice and made it sound an official enquiry.

  They were so helpful. Everything was on micro film and it took hardly any time at all to zip through it. Oliver Swantry, 42, Civil Servant, and Ellen Robinson, 22, shorthand-typist, married at Marylebone Registry Office on 3 June 1954. Do you want a copy?” the nice press officer asked.