Jordan Lacey Mystery 01 Pray and Die

by Stella Whitelaw

  “I walked out, in the middle of the night, into the street. Walked anywhere. I don’t know where I went. Down to Shoreham, perhaps. The sea was always to my right. I could hear it pounding the shore. It was a strange walk. I was hoping they’d think the vagrant had scarpered through fright. No one would bother to look for him. He wasn’t important. Just another bed they could use after it had been fumigated.”

  “But why did you do it? You weren’t only getting rid of a difficult wife, you had also cut yourself off from Cleo.”

  “I know, I know.” He buried his face in his hands. “That was a big mistake. Somehow I had a wild idea I’d be able make things right, see Cleo and reassure her, somehow let her know I was still alive. But it didn’t work out like that. For a start, I had no money, no job. You can’t do anything without money. I became a has-been, a drop-out. What would she want with a deadbeat like me anyway? Sleeping rough … well, you’ve lost everything when you get that low. No, she should be finding herself a nice young man who’ll look after her. With me out of the way, they’d soon be queuing at her door, I thought.”

  “That was months ago now. Where have you been, Arthur? And it is you, isn’t it, who’s been sending Ursula all this unpleasant hate mail?”

  “Yes, it’s me.” He nodded, his face working. It looked like remorse. “What a fool. I don’t know why I did it. I wanted to scare her, to make her pay for the way she treated Cleo. Make her suffer. You don’t know how unkind she’s been to that girl, over the years, always putting her down, always at her, making life unbearable as if it was Cleo’s fault she was born. It’s no wonder Cleo left home.”

  “And the letters from Cleo?”

  “I don’t know anything about any letters. If Ursula said there’d been letters, then it wasn’t true.”

  “But she brought some to me. They were typed. Do you think Ursula might have sent those herself, just to frame Cleo, to implicate her? She does seem to have a kind of vendetta against her daughter.”

  “She’s a lonely and bitter woman. I always thought she hated Cleo because in some way the pregnancy spoilt things between her and Ted. Then having such a pretty little daughter…”

  I didn’t pursue it. He was confused enough.

  “Were you having an affair with Cleo?”

  “An affair?” Arthur looked shocked. “Heavens, no.”

  “You’re not her natural father.”

  “Sometimes she seems like a real daughter to me and I really love her.” He seemed more relaxed now, ready to talk. “Ted didn’t last long. Ursula drove him round the bend. Well, she would, wouldn’t she? Not happy unless she’s making someone’s life a misery. Cleo couldn’t stand it. She left home. But I had to know how she was getting on. We used to have lunch together in Chichester.”

  “And meet for tea and cake in Latching? Tea-dancing?”

  Another fleeting smile crossed his face. “My word, you’re a good detective,” he said. I accepted the compliment. No point in denting the image.

  “So you found out about the tea dances, did you? While Ursula was having her hair done, as usual, regular appointment. I just wanted to see Cleo and talk to her and make sure she was all right. You see, I love her. I don’t think she knows how much.”

  He savoured the words. I had to tread carefully.

  “So after you disappeared, you started bombarding Ursula with all these nasty messages. Is that right?”

  “I thought they might frighten her, make her life as scary and uncomfortable as she had made it for others. Ted, me, Cleo. We all had to put up with her. I wasn’t actually going to do anything.”

  “And a dead cat? Hardly an empty word.”

  “Oh yes, that poor cat. I found it in the road. A spur of the moment thing. Poor taste, I agree. It didn’t mean anything. What happens now? Will they send me to prison?”

  I wasn’t going to tell Arthur that he could be charged on several counts. It was an offence to send threatening letters through the post. Changing places with a corpse was also an offence.

  “And how about the carrot cake?” I asked, ticking another off my list.

  “Yes. I was watching you and Cleo having tea together in that converted church cafe in Chichester. Neither of you saw me. I was behind a pillar. It alarmed me a lot and I got very jealous of you. You sitting there with my Cleo. You looked as if you were getting on well together. I didn’t like the idea of Ursula hiring a private detective. Having my revenge was one thing, getting caught was another.”

  “So the poisoned cake was a warning?”

  “Something like that. I spiked a slice with bleach from the bathroom. We use a lot of bleach, having to share. I didn’t actually want to hurt you. I wanted you to clear off, leave us alone. It was none of your business. Sorry.”

  “But it was. Ursula employed me. It was my job to find out who was persecuting her. It is against the law, you know. And against the law to send someone poisoned cake.”

  “Well, I know nothing about the law. Life’s dismal enough. All I had was catching sight of Cleo occasionally from a distance and the summer job driving the mini-train. I’d managed to rent a really grotty room but it was cheap, no bed just a mattress on the floor. I bought some clothes from the charity shops, live on junk food and bread and jam. The only consolation is not being nagged by Ursula day and night, take your shoes off, put your laundry in the basket, wash up, dry up, go shopping, fix the car. You’ve seen the house. It’s a sin to even breathe on anything.”

  “So it was you watching Cleo at the jazz concert, was it? Creeping about in the dark, making her fall down the stairs?” I tried not to sound accusing, but facts were facts.

  Arthur shook his head. “No, Miss Lacey, believe me, I didn’t make her fall. That must have been an accident. Her high-heels, I expect, caught in something. Yes, I thought I could stand in the theatre somewhere and just watch her for a while and listen to the music and pretend to be civilized for a short time. It all went wrong when you spotted me.”

  “But I lost you and went after someone else.”

  “I slipped over the side of the pier and climbed down a girder, hung on underneath. The tide was coming in and it was raining. I got wet.”

  “But you dried off in time to go and see Cleo in hospital.”

  “Yes. I was sorry then that I had sent you the cake. You looked after my Cleo real well, getting the ambulance and going with her to the hospital.”

  I noticed the pronoun ‘my’. “I like Cleo. She’s a very nice young woman. Yet, all along, she’s been my chief suspect. But somehow I couldn’t believe it.”

  “Cleo? A suspect? You were way out there, miss. Cleo wouldn’t hurt a fly. She couldn’t. She’s far too gentle.”

  “Everything pointed to her. She had the motive and the opportunity. You see, Ursula had you nailed down in your coffin and cremated before she even told Cleo that you had died. Cleo was devastated, shredded. It makes a good motive for revenge, especially when it’s obvious that Cleo cared for you … cares for you,” I corrected. Tenses were not my strong point.

  Arthur Carling seemed to be faltering. His thoughts were more than he could bear. He slumped over the table, his head in work-scared hands. His emotions had wrestled him into the ropes. Did he have a labouring job now, the demolition of an old house? Moving rubble? I didn’t ask him.

  “No more, Miss Lacey. I can’t tell you anything else. There is nothing more to say.”

  He pulled off his woolly hat; his grey hair was stamped flat as if it had been painted on his head. He looked worn out. But I wasn’t finished yet.

  “Would you like some more tea?” I asked politely, like Eliza Doolittle.

  “I couldn’t swallow another drop. I’m drowned in the stuff. Let me go. I’ve got to get out of here.”

  His skin seemed to hang in folds as if his pretence had been glued on and it had slewed off. But I had to know more. He’d disappeared once, he could disappear again. Slope off to Shoreham. I might not get another chance to talk to him.<
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  “Arthur, please, sit down. I believe you and I will try to help you if I can. Things are not as black as they seem. Perhaps you can get your life back together. I know Cleo would understand why you did it and she would be so happy to have you alive again. Believe me. But I need to know a few more things. About the carbon monoxide poisoning. You must have known what you were doing could have a lethal effect. All that rubble down the chimney.” Suddenly I couldn’t imagine Arthur perched on a ladder. No way.

  “Carbon what? I don’t know what you’re talking about. Look, I’ve got nothing more to tell you.”

  “And did you follow me from the station at Latching the other night? Someone followed me and tried to throttle me, put a pad of chloroform over my face–”

  He groaned aloud. “No, no, it wasn’t me. That’s ridiculous. You got to believe me, miss. Where would I get chloroform? I’d never have done such a thing, never. Look, I’ve had enough of this. I don’t understand. I have to go. ” He stumbled to his feet, nearly pushing the table over. “I gotta find a Gents.”

  “Do you know the Health Club in School Street?”

  “Never been there. Not my style. Let me go, please.”

  He nearly sent the china clattering to the floor as he elbowed his way passed me and out of the cafe and into the cold day. I hurried after him, miming to Mavis that I’d pay her later. He went into a public lavatory on the seafront, the entrance marked Gents. That had been true.

  My head was spinning with all that Arthur Carling had told me. I believed him. It was the kind of stupid thing a man at the end of his tether might do, without thinking of the consequences. I knew what it was like to be rocked. Not by living with a woman like Ursula for years, but there are certain emotional events, like loving people who don’t love you back, that put you through a spin dryer till you don’t know which way you’re facing.

  I stumbled on a pavement crack, my thoughts in tatters. If it wasn’t Arthur Carling stuffing rubble down his wife’s chimney, cooking me in the steam room, fixing me with the chloroform … then who was it? Fear chilled to the roots of my hair. Someone else wanted me out of the way, thought I was getting too close to the truth. Perhaps I ought to put a quick ad in the local paper: HAVEN’T A CLUE. PI RETIRES THROUGH LACK OF LEADS. TAKING UP CROCHET. Then they might leave me alone.

  Arthur didn’t seem to be coming out of the Gents. I could hardly go storming in, waving my licence. Supposing he’d forgotten to take his angina medication that morning? Suppose the stress of the interview had taken its toll and he’d done an Elvis? I went up to a total stranger about to relieve himself in the Gents and asked him to check for Arthur.

  The young man was highly amused, cocked an eyebrow. “Anything else you want me to do in there, miss?”

  “No, thank you,” I said primly. “Just see that my friend is all right. Tall, middle-aged, greyish.”

  The young man took a long time. Probably sharing the joke with all the other occupants. I was starting to think I’d missed him when he came out, zipping up, still grinning.

  “No one in there called Arthur.”

  “Are you sure? Tall, fifties, grey-haired, shabby.”

  “Nope. Hey, I’m Joe. Would a Joe do? I could dye my hair.”

  I left the ebullient Joe to go fill up with beer again at the pub on the front, no doubt repeating the story a dozen times that day till the novelty wore off.

  How could I have missed Arthur unless there was another way out? He hardly looked fit enough or skinny enough to have climbed out of a window. There must be another exit.

  And what was I going to tell Ursula? I had solved her case. I said this to myself twice for confirmation. I’d done it. Arthur wouldn’t be sending any more missives, I felt sure of that. I could present my bill (minus days in hospital) and pay a few outstanding accounts with the money. And was I going to tell Cleo the truth? Or would it hurt more to know that Arthur was around, alive, and had purposely cut himself out of her life?

  Not my problem. I would write a straight report for Ursula. Typed. Professional. Call him an unnamed assailant. Get it done now. Never did like the clerical side of police work.

  I went back to my shop. Mr. Frazer was working inside, kneeling on the floor. He had finished pricing the books and was stringing up cheap paperbacks into bargain bundles.

  “People will buy the duds if there’s one decent book in the middle that they really want to read. Five books for a pound. What a bargain. Have you any news of my son yet? I saw the posters around the town. Very nice. Thank you.”

  I hit my head. I’d forgotten about Ben. “Not yet. It’s early days. Don’t worry, we’ll find him.”

  If only I could. That would really make my day. He must be somewhere. I would concentrate on Ben now.

  A woman came in and tried to haggle for the old fan. What did she think I was? A street Arab? I knew she really wanted it. Her greedy eyes were devouring the fragile silk, the threadbare embroidery. I didn’t want to sell it to her. She was the wrong person.

  I stuck to my six pounds, felt like upping it to twelve. She was about to flounce out, feathers all huffed like an indignant hen, when she produced a charge card.

  “Cash,” I said.

  “Really, you’re impossible. Everyone takes plastic these days. It’s a normal trading practice. You’ll soon go out of business, young woman, if you don’t move with the times.”

  I was putting the fan back in the window, carefully splaying it out when the woman opened a leather wallet stuffed with notes and laid out a reluctant fiver.

  “Six,” I repeated.

  She threw a pound coin on the counter. The coin rolled, teetering, as if practicing for a casino career. I was sorry she was buying it now and was half-inclined to say it was not for sale. But six pounds was six pounds and I hadn’t sold anything for days.

  “Please cherish this fan,” I said as I carefully wrapped it in ironed, secondhand tissue paper. “It once belonged to a very beautiful, titled woman. A lady in every sense of the word.” I stressed lady.

  All rubbish, of course, but I had to say something. Anyway, it might be true.

  She pursed her lips and left without even a thank-you. I fancied that her eyes glittered with triumph.

  “Probably worth sixty,” said Mr. Frazer, putting a hardback copy of Gone with the Wind with battered paperbacks entitled Love Me Bandit, Dangerous Vices, Lasso Larry and Cooking with One Egg.

  “I’ll never make a fortune.”

  “Is that what you really want, Jordan? To make a fortune?”

  I didn’t know what I wanted. I couldn’t find a glib phrase. My mind was a cage. I wanted to right wrongs, make people happy, spook villains, keep my shell-like to the ground. See the detective. Oh yes, I wanted to see him, touch his sleeve. I was hollowed out with wanting him. The stars were shedding ashes on my longing.

  I needed to strike up some sort of rapport with DI James. There was something going there. A cosmic dating. The computer in the sky.

  I wanted the kind of mortar that doesn’t wash away. Work that one out, buster, I told myself, hammering in the nails.

  The door swung open and an Arab walked in, red check headscarf round his head, flung over one shoulder like Arabs on television. He walked right up to the counter, tapped it, arrogantly.

  “I’ve come for the dough,” he said.

  I thought it was a hold-up. Something snapped. I went bananas. My voice rang out like a steel hawser. “Get lost, mister! You’ve come to the wrong place, mate. All you’re going to get is six pounds and some loose change, so piss off.”

  His jaw dropped like a sledge-hammer. He was pole-axed. “Jordan! Miss Lacey! It’s me, Rick. Remember, you owe me. For the desk.”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  He took a small black cigar out of his top pocket, flipped open a booklet of matches and struck a light. He bent over the flame but my eyes were fixed on the matches. It was a Hilton Hotel booklet, the same as I had found in Ellen Swantry’s bedroom.

&n
bsp; “Where did you get those matches?”

  Rick Weston glanced at the booklet. “These? Oh yeah, they fell off a lorry. Do you want some?” He delved into his pocket and brought out a handful, tossed them onto the counter. “I give them to all my customers. The feel-good factor.”

  He gave them to all his customers. Mrs. Swantry had been a customer. He flicked the headscarf, a token sign of where he was conceived. Mr. Frazer nodded to me as he slipped out into the street. I took a deep breath to straighten out on a wild line of thought.

  “About the desk, Rick. Thank you for getting it. I think it’s great. I know you prefer cash but I only have six pounds odd. Will you take a cheque for the rest?”

  “Don’t leave yourself short. You gotta eat.” His eyes swept round the empty shop.

  I made out a cheque for thirty-five pounds and gave him the fiver from the fan. It felt contaminated but I guessed he fiddled his taxes. That left me a pound plus to live on. I could do it. No gourmet caviar today. It was macaroni again. The feast with a hole in it.

  Rick took the money and blew out a haze of smoke. I tried not to cough. He hadn’t heard of asthma or pollution. The pungent smell clung to his clothes. “This place is a bit bare. You need some glass fronted cabinets.”

  “No glass fronted cabinets, thank you.”

  “How about a couple of gilt half-circle wall tables to stand things on?”

  “Sorry, I’ve enough furniture for the present.”

  “They’re out in the van. Wanna look? Classy. Look a real treat.” He cupped my elbow with stiff fingers and steered me onto the pavement where his grubby white van was parked. He had ignored the meter. He flung open the back doors and presented the tables like a magician. “Waddiya think?”

  I tried not to stare into the van. The tables were stacked to make room for a couple of mattresses propped on their sides. Both the mattresses were stained, smelled dampish, had beech leaves sticking to the blue ticking. On the floor of the van was an extending ladder. At the back I caught sight of a shovel and a sandy rimmed bucket.

  “You’ll never sell those,” I said lightly, putting my hand on a stain. It was still damp. Mattresses take a long time to dry out. I remembered the smell of boarding school dormitories.