Betty Church and the Suffolk Vampire

by M. R. C. Kasasian

  It was exceedingly curious but I wanted to know why Lavender Wicks thought it was. ‘In what way?’ I asked.

  Lavender leaned towards me. ‘If I stole a handbag—’

  ‘What makes you think it was stolen?’

  I thought the man she was arm in arm with might be Laurence Olivier. Whoever it was looked bored.

  ‘Your sergeant told me it was found in a ladies’ cloakroom,’ she replied. ‘If you found a handbag in a café you would hand it to the cashier on the assumption that the owner would return for it.’

  ‘Go on,’ I encouraged her.

  ‘But, if you had stolen the bag, you would take the cheques or…’ she stretched forward for her diary to reveal two pound notes and one ten shilling folded inside it, ‘the money. A driving licence is not much good to anyone, especially now we have identity cards.’

  She tossed the diary back on the table and leaned back, closer to me this time.

  ‘It is odd,’ I agreed.

  ‘Especially as the licence was found near the scene of a murder.’ She said that last word as if it was delicious.

  ‘Do you have any idea how it got there?’

  Most members of the public think of murder as exciting and I daresay the murderer and the victim find the experience stimulating too. It varies in its degree of cruelty from a sudden unthinking blow in the heat of the moment – what the French sensibly class as a crime passionnel – to calculated sadism but, to a police officer, murder is grim. It is sordid and represents thousands of man-hours of work and – if I am honest about it – unless there are witnesses, a fingerprint or a confession, the chances of catching the killer are slim.

  ‘Do you have any idea how it got there?’ I asked.

  ‘I’ve thought a lot about that.’ Lavender patted her upper arms like you might a favourite dog. ‘And the only explanation I can think of is that somebody took my bag just to get my licence – after all, they discarded everything else – then deliberately left the licence on the scene.’ She rubbed her arms tenderly.

  ‘Where did you have your bag in Corker’s Coffee House?’

  ‘It was careless of me, I know.’ Lavender grasped her shoulders. ‘But I’ve been going there for years. I just put it on the floor by my chair with a pile of shopping and I was sitting by the door, so I suppose anyone going past could have just picked it up and walked off with it.’

  ‘Were you with anybody?’

  ‘No.’ Lavender lowered her hands into her lap. ‘I can usually bump into someone I know but the café was heaving with RAF men and women. I think they had an outing from Hadling Heath.’

  ‘So the waitresses are unlikely to remember their customers from that morning,’ I surmised.

  ‘Do you know what I think?’ Lavender put her legs up again, her knees half an inch from my thighs. ‘I think somebody with a grudge tried to frame me.’

  ‘Do you have any idea why someone might do that?’

  ‘I have no enemies that I know of’ – Lavender Wicks shrugged – ‘though many a girl would like to sink her claws into my husband. Thurston must have acquired a few. People think show business is glamorous but it’s hard work and it’s ruthless. Speak to anyone who does amateur dramatics and they will tell you of the petty jealousies that people have over who has got the most lines or the best costume. The film industry is the same a thousand times over. That’s why I was so glad to get out of it.’

  ‘You were in films?’ Looking at my hostess afresh, I supposed I should not have been surprised. She was certainly pretty enough.

  ‘Only for a while,’ she told me. ‘I worked under my studio name, Lavender Lalique.’

  ‘Constable Chivers thought she might have seen you in something,’ I recalled.

  ‘Oh I doubt it.’ Lavender chuckled. ‘I was never a star like Thurston. In fact I only had my name on the bottom of the credits three times.’ She laughed again softly. ‘If truth be told, I hated it – hours of hanging about to speak two lines, one of which would be cut. Directors never noticed me but Thurston did. It was a whirlwind romance and we were married within six weeks. Perhaps you read about it in the New Movie Magazine.’

  ‘I’m afraid not.’ It was not a publication I subscribed to. ‘Did anyone in particular bear a grudge against your husband?’

  Lavender stretched lazily. ‘George Raft was said to be furious that Thurston landed the lead in I Fought the Mob but then George got Scarface, which more than made up for that.’

  ‘What brought you to Sackwater?’ I wondered. ‘We are not exactly convenient for anywhere.’

  ‘Which is exactly why we chose it.’ Lavender brushed a hair from her bosom. ‘Nobody pesters us here. Most people don’t even know who we are. No ghastly rounds of cocktail mornings or pointless parties, the only aim of which is to impress people whose only aim is to impress you.’ She left her hand where it was. ‘We still have a house in Chelsea but London is such a bore, especially with this phoney war dragging everyone down.’

  How awful for you.

  ‘How long have you been married?’ I put a hand to my shirt. The way she had looked at me made me feel a button might be undone. It wasn’t.

  ‘Ten years next January.’

  ‘But no children?’

  ‘If you had a figure like mine would you destroy it with babies?’ Lavender Wicks fluttered her eyelashes. ‘But what am I saying? You do have a figure like mine.’

  This was not the sort of conversation policewomen have with members of the public.

  ‘Will your husband be home later today?’

  ‘No. Why?’ She yawned ostentatiously. ‘Are you worried we might be disturbed? Wilson never comes in while I have… guests.’

  ‘Perhaps you could get Mr Wicks to give me a call when he does come home.’

  Lavender stretched languidly. ‘I know what people think.’

  I had a kitten called Cinders when I was little and she was very clever but she couldn’t purr as nicely as Mrs Wicks.

  ‘They think I married Thurston for his money – he is nearly twenty years older than me, after all – but I love my husband, Inspector Church. He is a generous man – he gave me all this. OK, I go to a lot of parties without him, but he is always working away and there is no point trying to keep me in a cage for I simply won’t be kept. Thurston knows he can trust me. I never even look at other men and he has no problems with my having’ – the smile switch clicked on and off so quickly I was worried she would fuse – ‘girlfriends.’ She tugged playfully at my sleeve.

  ‘Please don’t touch me, madam. I’m a police officer.’

  ‘Madam? Oh I like that.’ Lavender Wicks sidled up close. ‘Does it hurt?’

  More things hurt than she could imagine but she was not a woman I would choose to confide in.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Can I see it?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Perhaps I could make you feel…’ Lavender Wicks licked her lips, ‘better.’

  ‘I doubt it.’

  ‘When all this is over why don’t you visit me? You can come in uniform and perhaps you could borrow a truncheon.’

  ‘I’m afraid I won’t be doing that.’

  ‘Afraid?’

  ‘Just a turn of phrase, madam.’

  ‘If you say so.’ Lavender Wicks stroked her thigh, which was just as well. I wasn’t going to stroke it for her.

  *

  ‘You were quick,’ Pooky commented. ‘Usually, when she uses the snug, her guests stay for hours. Stupid, I call it. All that furniture in the white sitting room and they have to squash next to her on that little sofa.’

  ‘Does she have many guests?’

  Pooky shrugged. ‘Lots of Wrens recently. She likes women in uniform a lot. Very patriotic, she is.’

  65

  THE SACKWATER PIRATE

  I put out an order to bring in Freddy Smart’s father, Crake, for questioning and, unusually, it was Rivers who tracked him down – or, rather, bumped into him. Rivers had nipped round
the back of the Coach and Horses for a smoke – one of the many things officers are not supposed to do in uniform but do anyway – when Crake came out from an illegal out-of-hours drinking session and almost fell into his arms.

  ‘Ain’t an offence to buy a drink. It’s an offence to sell it,’ he told me and I could not be bothered to argue about that. We were in the interview room with Dodo Chivers in attendance, notebook at the ready and pencil poised.

  ‘We have found Millicent Smith,’ I declared and the flitting smirk he greeted that news with confirmed any faint doubts I may have had.

  ‘Oh yeah?’ Smart tipped his chair back. ‘Where was she?’

  ‘Why the past tense?’ I leaned towards him.

  Smart could have said he meant Where was she when you found her?’ But he stumbled with ‘I meant is’ proving that, if ever a man did not deserve his surname, it was this one.

  ‘Do you want to talk to her?’ I asked.

  ‘What?’ He rallied his scattered thoughts. ‘No.’

  ‘Why not?’

  Crake Smart tipped his chair forward again. ‘Yeah all right then. Bring her in,’ he agreed. ‘But I read about the House of Horrors and I’ll give good odds it’s her.’

  ‘You must have needed help,’ I said.

  Smart blinked. ‘Prove it,’ he challenged.

  ‘You made one mistake,’ I told him and his face ticced.

  ‘Oh yeah?’ He sat up straight.

  ‘Killing her on my patch,’ I told him and he relaxed.

  ‘Is that it?’

  Dodo stopped scribbling and said, ‘It is enough to have you dancing on the end of a rope,’ a little too piratically for my tastes but I couldn’t argue with the sentiment behind it.

  I stood up.

  ‘I have never yet not got my man, Mr Smart,’ I lied shamelessly. ‘Especially when I already know who he is.’

  Crake Smart’s smirk was a great deal less convincing this time, I thought, as I bade him a fond farewell.

  66

  THE TENANT AND THE CRONE

  I was sitting at my desk, my eyes heavy and head drooping. We were always told that the Germans were obsessed by rules but this time we were going to out-regulation them on every front. There had been an explosion of orders, information and advice that I was expected to read through. When the men or members of the public asked what to do in an emergency, I could hardly say that I thought I had seen a memo and could they hang on while I looked it up.

  One communication did grab my attention though. It was from the Aliens Department of the Home Office and concerned the Sternes. They were to be taken in without warning at our earliest opportunity in coordination with the army. It might take a while to organise that, I decided.

  The office phones had been reconnected and mine was right beside my ear as I slumped over a memo about a conference in Ipswich I had to attend, complete with minutes of the last meeting. The bell burst into life and, if I hadn’t been 100 per cent awake, I was now.

  ‘Ohhh mam…’

  ‘Algy?’

  ‘Lysander, mam. Oh please come quick. There’s screamin’ and all sorts of a tuh-do. Ohhh it’s reet ’orrid it is.’

  I exhaled, then took a deep breath. ‘Are you back at the House of Horrors?’

  ‘Ohhh I wish we was,’ Sandy replied with feeling. ‘It’s the Royal George ’Otel.’

  I knew the Royal George by sight – a mock-Gothic pile on the promenade – and by reputation as somewhere that didn’t care too much what its guests got up to, providing they paid their bills.

  ‘Are you there now?’

  ‘No, mam. They don’t ’ave a telephone so I’m using the police box on Clayton Road.’

  It would have been quicker to have come back to the station but the twins had a hopeless sense of direction. Their beat went along mainly parallel roads but they had still managed to get lost many times.

  ‘What exactly is happening?’ I asked firmly.

  ‘A man is being murdered,’ Sandy Grinder-Snipe shrieked so manically you might have thought that he was the man in question.

  ‘Well, run back and put a stop to it.’ The last time I read Duties and Obligations of a Police Officer this was one of the things we were supposed to do.

  ‘But we can’t gain access tuh the room.’ Sandy was sounding more northern and even more girly with every word. ‘Algernon is there and trying so very ’ard but ’e’s wearying apace and growing exceedingly bothered and distressed.’

  Oh dear God, what have I done to deserve this? I prayed silently. If it was that broken greengrocer’s window, that was an accident but I would own up and pay for it.

  ‘Calm down, Snipe,’ I said, continuing to talk over his indignant Grinder-Snipe, mam. He was not quite hysterical enough to forget to take umbrage over that. ‘How do you know somebody is being murdered?’

  I could hear my constable taking a breath before reeling off at great speed, ‘The man in the Blue Room were shouting and Mrs Andrews, the proprietress, knocked on the door but she couldn’t gerr in ’cause the door were locked on the inside and the noises continued, grunts and groans and panting and—’

  ‘Get to the point, Snipe,’ I butted in, sowing a row of tobacco strands.

  ‘Grinder-Snipe. I’m just setting the scene, mam.’

  ‘You’re not writing a three-bogging-part novel. What is happening?’ I licked the paper.

  ‘Mrs Andrews called the police – that’s me and Algy – and we went in and knocked and the noises were just disgusting.’ He took a gasp. ‘Oh it’s all tooo tooo ’orrible. We didn’t know what tuh do, mam, but we couldn’t tell Mrs Andrews that so we whispered in each other’s ears. Then Algernon suggested that I rang you. So I did.’

  ‘Oh good grief.’ My cigarette paper split. ‘OK, I’ll come and take a look. In the meantime, go back and help Algy,’ I instructed his twin. ‘And on the way, knock up Rivers. He’s at…’ I leafed through our address book. ‘Sixteen Ash Street off Victoria Road – that’s the side road opposite the Trocadero cinema – and tell him I don’t care how much his back hurts, he is to take over your beat.’

  Rivers was as close to useless as it’s possible to get without being certifiably useless, I knew, but we had to have somebody on the street. Besides which, why should he lie snug in bed when I couldn’t?

  ‘’E won’t be very pleased tuh see me,’ Sandy predicted anxiously.

  ‘Neither shall I,’ I warned him. ‘Go.’

  ‘Yes, mam.’

  ‘Have you gone?’

  ‘Not quite yet, mam.’

  ‘Go now.’

  ‘Yes—’

  I put the receiver down.

  Within a minute, I had my jacket, coat and helmet on, had grabbed the jemmy – which nobody had turned up to claim yet – slung my gas mask over my shoulder and was out on the forecourt.

  It was a drizzly night, the much-needed moon only a mean sliver between heavy splashes of grey.

  My bicycle was just round the side, behind a low wall out of sight of anyone who might be tempted to borrow it. I heaved it over, stuck the jemmy under my belt and set off, pedalling as fast as I dared down Tenniel Road to Bishops Street, where I stopped outside number 4, a terraced property indistinguishable – apart from the number and the pillar-box red paintwork – from any other on that long straight road. I could only identify it for certain by a very quick flash of the torch.

  Feeling a little guilty, I tapped on the door. There was no reply. I tapped harder and waited – nothing. I rapped and kept rapping until I saw some movement in the right of the two upstairs windows – the blackout curtain being removed and the sash window going up. An ancient crone stuck her head out, toothless as far as I could see without the benefit of my father’s equipment, and wearing a cotton cap tied under her chin in a style Charlotte Brontë might have regarded as old-fashioned.

  ‘Yes?’ Her voice was so quavering it was a wonder she had managed to make the effort. I didn’t know Sergeant Briggs lived with his moth
er – or was it his grandmother? I decided to play it safe.

  ‘Mrs Briggs?’

  She cupped her ear. ‘You’ll have to speak up, dear.’

  ‘I need to speak to your son on police business.’

  ‘What’s the little beggar been up to now?’ She pecked at the air with her hook nose.

  ‘Nothing…’ I paused in confusion. Had I got the wrong house? ‘Frank Briggs, I mean.’

  ‘I know what the bleedin’ bleeder’s name is,’ she snapped. ‘Wait there.’ Her head disappeared but other heads appeared in other windows across the street. I waited. There was a bit of a scuffle, then two heads appeared – the crone again, holding a lad of about fourteen by the ear. ‘What do you been up to now?’

  ‘Nowt, Mum, honest,’ the lad wailed. ‘’Part from smokin’ and drinkin’ and puttin’ dog poo in Mrs Glitter’s shoppin’ basket oh and thah dead newt through that vicar’s letter box.’

  At least that last one was one case I could close.

  ‘There’s been a mistake,’ I called up. ‘I’m looking for Sergeant Frank Briggs.’

  ‘What?’ The crone was incredulous. ‘Why didn’t you say so?’ Her head disappeared before I could explain why I hadn’t said so and I heard two slaps. ‘That’s for the smoking and that’s for the drinking and this…’ There was a barrage of slaps Buddy Rich would have broken into a sweat to produce on his drums, ‘is for the shit, you little shit.’

  No slaps for the newt then?

  Brigsy stuck a head out.

  ‘I have to go to the Royal George,’ I told him. ‘So I need you to coordinate things.’

  ‘Righto,’ he agreed with a disconcerting lack of curiosity. He glanced behind himself, then back at me. ‘Sorry about the confusion with my missus,’ he told me confidentially, ‘only we have separate bedrooms.’ My mind raced with polite ways of saying I didn’t blame him but came up with none before he explained, ‘To stop me pestering her.’