84
SHEEP
It was wet. Unlike in London, where the rain falls vertically and you can put up an umbrella to keep it off you, on the east coast the wind blows the rain almost horizontally. It was gusting so strongly that afternoon that the few people foolish enough to try their umbrellas instantly found them snapped and turned into inverted cones.
Dodo and I battled on, relieved to have turned the corner and be heading up High Road East so that the worst of the weather was being hurled at our backs now. Our faces glowed from the cold showers they had received.
Brook’s Hardware had a special offer on – two free wooden stakes with every mallet – and I wondered how long it would be before some innocent sleeping man was mistaken for a vampire and impaled through the heart.
I still couldn’t wear my false arm – my stump was too sore for that – but Carmelo had stuffed the sleeve of my coat, unscrewed the hand, put a glove on it and sewn the glove onto the sleeve for appearances. He had been a fisherman all his life and learned needlework repairing sails.
‘At least it never ever gets any worse than this,’ Dodo chattered as we passed Ye Olde Tea Shoppe reluctantly. I was tramping around Sackwater with Dodo because WPCs were too delicate to walk the beat on their own and couldn’t be accompanied by a policeman in case they were overcome by carnal desires on the street. The twins were on night duty – something else women can’t possibly do, for they might meet intoxicated or frisky men and unbalance their delicate female constitutions – and we were too thinly manned to put three officers on one round.
‘You should be here in a storm,’ I told Dodo.
Her eyes opened wide. ‘Is this not a storm?’
I pulled my collar tighter round my neck. ‘When it gets really rough the waves come crashing over the promenade and the sea spray lashes at you and you can hardly stand upright in the gales.’
‘Crippety-crikey, boss.’ Dodo shuddered. ‘Is that how the last WPC here got swept out to sea and eaten by a giant cod?’
‘Who told you that?’
‘Constable Walker.’ Dodo skipped over a little puddle into a larger one. ‘Oh blipperty-botheration.’
‘And you believed him?’
‘I was a little sceptical.’ Dodo Chivers shook her wet foot like a nurse with a mercury thermometer. ‘But Constable Bank-Anthony assured me that it was true, as did Constable Rivers, so it must be… true, I mean.’
‘They were pulling your leg.’
‘The rotters,’ she fumed. ‘I shall tell them a story about a man constable who got swept out to sea and eaten by a giant haddock and see how clever they feel then.’
‘I don’t think they will believe you.’
There were footsteps sploshing quickly behind us and I twisted round to see a man, bare-headed and coatless, racing up the hill, weaving through the pedestrians, crashing into an indignant corporal, stumbling away and staggering in our wake.
‘Save me,’ he panted. ‘They’re going to cut my throat.’
85
AGAINST THE DRIVING RAIN
I narrowed my eyes against the driving rain and peered back. A woman was trudging along with shopping in one hand and trying to drag two struggling infants up the hill with her other, but there was no sign of any sword-wielding homicidal maniacs.
‘Who is?’ I scanned the scene carefully.
The man raised an arm, pointing down the road so dramatically that the woman, who had drawn close, ducked and said, ‘Bleedin’ Nora, bleedin’ Nazi,’ and the man, realising he was giving a straight-armed salute, lowered his arm and told me, ‘Down there.’
He had no hat on and his mackintosh was flapping unbuttoned around him.
‘I can’t see anyone,’ I said.
‘Oh no,’ Dodo cried. ‘Have you gone blind, boss? Shall I call a doctor?’
‘No and no,’ I replied.
The man jumped and looked over his shoulder. ‘He must be hiding in a shop doorway.’
‘Who is he and is he armed?’ I asked.
‘Save me!’ The man grabbed my hand and pulled. There was a loud ripping noise as it came half away. The man looked at it and me in profound shock and, before I could reassure him, swooned limply onto the pavement.
‘Catch him,’ I yelled and Dodo just managed to grab a good handful of air before his head bounced off a lamp post to clunk on the kerb.
‘Ouchy-wouchy,’ she cried because somebody had to and he couldn’t. I knelt in the gutter to check his pulse. Until that moment, I had thought I couldn’t get wetter. A steady stream of drain water into my left shoe proved me wrong but at least the stranger was alive. His expression was almost serene now. He was well but badly dressed in the sense that his three-piece suit was of good quality but it was crumpled and his shirt collar was grubby. He needed a shave – there was a two-to-three day raspiness on his well-filled cheeks – and his eyes were under-ringed and breath sour from more beer than his body could absorb.
I glanced up. People were still hurrying by, heads down, but a gawkily constructed woman in her thirties paused.
‘Disgusting,’ she tutted, ‘what the police will do to innocent citizens. Did he look at you sideways?’ She had such a schoolmarmish air that I half-expected her to slap my legs with a ruler. ‘Fascisti.’
‘No he pulled my inspector’s arm off,’ Dodo chipped in.
‘He…’ The woman looked at my sleeve, which was dangling at a very odd angle now. ‘Oh my sixpenny straw hat. Do you need an ambulance?’
‘No, thank you. It’s all in a day’s work.’
‘It was cut off below the elbow,’ Dodo explained for me and for a second I thought the woman would crumple into the road, which would have been very inconvenient because a warrant officer was speeding by on his motorbike and sidecar, proving that it was possible for us to get even wetter still. But the woman walked unsteadily away.
‘That’s what happens when you skip Sunday School,’ a man trudging past warned his son.
Our man was starting to come round.
‘Oh my head.’ He touched the back of it, his eyes flicking wildly. ‘Oh Lord.’ He looked about him.
‘Nobody has come after you,’ I assured him.
‘Not to kill you anyway,’ Dodo reassured him. ‘We are trained to notice if people are being murdered.’
He struggled to a sitting position. ‘Your arm?’
‘It’s false.’ I got up a great deal damper than when I had got down. ‘Why did you think somebody was after you?’
‘Ohhh.’ He rubbed his head gingerly. ‘I can’t think straight.’
‘I think you need to see a doctor.’
‘No.’ He waved the idea away with spanned fingers.
‘How much have you had to drink?’ I held out my real hand to help him up but he shied away.
‘Not enough.’ He clambered to his feet, clinging to the lamp post. ‘The trouble is, I haven’t slept for three days.’
The rain had eased to a heavy drizzle now.
‘You need a coffee.’ I tried to straighten my glove but it was hanging limply by the cuff. ‘Come on. I’ll get you one.’
‘Oh goody-goody-gosh.’ Dodo kicked her toe playfully through a puddle, filling my other shoe. ‘And we cannot have coffee without chocolate cake. It simply is not done.’
Ye Olde Tea Shoppe was still open but, by the sour greeting Mavish Brittle, the manager, gave us, she had been thinking of closing for the day.
‘Don’t drip on my clean floor.’
‘Do you have a dirty one we are allowed to drip on?’ Dodo asked so sweetly that neither Mavish nor I could tell if she was being silly or smart.
We hung our coats on the stand by the door and settled around the nearest table.
‘Yes?’ Mavish hissed as if we had roused her from bed at dawn to ask if she was seeking salvation.
‘Three coffees please and do you have any chocolate cake?’
‘What if I do?’
‘Then we would like three slices.’<
br />
‘At this time of day?’ She rested her red knuckles on her narrow hips. ‘You’ll ruin your appetites for dinner.’
‘I think we’ll risk that.’
She shrugged. ‘It’s your funeral.’
‘Is the cake poisoned?’ Dodo whispered loudly and moistly in my ear. ‘If it is, you can have my slice. Daddy told me never to eat poison. It is very bad for my health.’
‘Funeral?’ Our guest ran his fingers through his hair in bewilderment, wincing when he reached the crown.
Mavish was off. She had an odd walk, as if the two halves of her body wanted to go in opposite directions, and she managed to make the short journey back to her counter look like an unrehearsed three-legged race.
‘So who frightened you?’
‘I feel very stupid now.’ He checked his hand but there was no blood on it. ‘I went to Casanova’s for a shave but there was quite a queue so I sat in the corner. I think I may have fallen asleep for when I woke up, Mr Casanova was waving a razor and saying “You’re next.” I panicked and ran.’
‘Is that where you left your hat?’ Dodo asked.
‘Hat? I suppose it was.’
‘Do you have your name in it?’
‘Name? Yes, I suppose so.’
‘Good.’ Dodo spoke as if declaring checkmate. ‘Then we shall know if you are lying when you tell us what your name is.’
‘Which is now,’ I informed him.
The man dug into his trouser pocket for a soiled handkerchief to wipe his hands. ‘My name is Maurice Leaf,’ he announced with great pride and a toss of the head that I think he regretted.
‘Where do you live?’ I asked as he winced in renewed pain.
‘The Mallards, Mallard Road.’ His chin was up and with some reason. Mallard Road was home to the cream of Sackwater – not exactly in the Rothschild league but way beyond my means, unless I seduced Mr Leaf, which I felt no inclination to do.
‘Do you often panic?’ Dodo asked. ‘I do.’
He eyed her quizzically. ‘Not until recently.’
Three very milky but not very hot coffees arrived with the last two pieces of chocolate cake. There was only that or ginger and nobody liked ginger, especially me. I hate ginger. So I got a Nice biscuit that wasn’t especially. It smelt musty.
‘So what’s happened recently?’ We were given one lump of sugar each. I lowered mine in, watching the coffee rise up, before I realised I was being childish and let it sink.
Maurice Leaf crunched on his sugar. ‘You don’t know?’ He snorted. ‘All those deaths – Ardom Dapper, Skotter Heath Jackson, Ian Henshaw – and you haven’t noticed?’
Dodo dropped her sugar lump from six inches up, splashing coffee into her saucer onto the until-now white cloth and, of course, me.
‘Well, of course I’ve noticed. I was there when Ardom Dapper died,’ I protested. ‘But why would you think you’re next?’
Dodo tried to cover the stain with her cake plate but only smeared it further.
Maurice Leaf took his coffee cup in both hands but he was shaking too badly to drink it. ‘Because I’m one of them,’ he said.
86
THE RAMS OF SUFFOLK
I watched Maurice Leaf slopping coffee over his cuffs.
‘One of whom?’ Dodo had chocolate crumbs round her mouth.
He loosened his tie, which was already quite loose. ‘It’s supposed to be a secret.’
‘One worth dying for?’ I asked and he clattered his cup down.
‘The Rams,’ he blurted out.
‘Which rams?’ Dodo asked with great interest as if she knew several.
‘The Suffolk Rams.’
I had heard of them. ‘Aren’t you a bit like Freemasons?’
‘Sort of,’ he admitted, mopping his wrists. Mrs Leaf would have quite a job getting that handkerchief clean, I pondered. ‘But it’s more of a social thing really.’
‘Then why the secrecy?’ I pressed.
Mr Leaf looked abashed. ‘Our activities are sometimes not…’ he struggled for words, ‘the sort of thing we might want our wives to hear about. I don’t mean other women,’ he hastened to explain, ‘but drinking games, pranks, that sort of thing.’
‘So not really like the Masons at all.’ Dodo sprayed crumbs onto the tablecloth before whispering to me, ‘Daddy is a Mason but that’s tippity-top secret.’
‘We are all businessmen well known locally so, when we book a room in a pub or hotel, we all wear ram masks to avoid being recognised,’ Leaf explained, then averted his eyes. ‘It sounds a bit childish when I say it.’
‘I don’t think so,’ Dodo assured him. ‘It sounds very childish to me.’
Leaf shrugged. ‘Doesn’t seem to matter now.’
‘So all those men you mentioned were Rams?’ I clarified. ‘What about Freddy Smart?’
‘What, that hoodlum?’ Leaf scorned. ‘Hardly our type of person.’
‘What about Hamish Peatrie?’
‘Who?’
‘Mr Hamish Peatrie was his name,’ Dodo explained indistinctly, her cheeks bulging with the last of her cake.
‘Never heard of him.’
‘You have now,’ Dodo pointed out.
‘Grant Herring?’ I suppressed a shudder. The memories of what I found after I forced my way into that room were all too vivid.
‘The one at the Royal George?’ Maurice Leaf looked to me for confirmation but I had my poker face on. It never won me much money at cards but it was useful for interviews.
‘He wasn’t one of us,’ Leaf said, ‘and I haven’t a clue who the woman was.’
‘Ian Henshaw at the Dunworthy Hotel in Essex,’ I prompted and Maurice Leaf reacted as if I had presented him with the cadaver.
‘Happy Henshaw, we called him.’ Leaf turned a paler shade of pale. ‘He was a founder member and thoroughly good egg. Everybody liked him. He didn’t deserve—’ Leaf shivered uncontrollably.
‘Do you know who his companion was?’
‘The one who got kidnapped?’ He shook his head. ‘Not Mrs Leaf is all I know.’
‘How many members are there?’ I nibbled my biscuit.
‘None now,’ Leaf told me. ‘Everyone quit after Skotter Heath Jackson. Didn’t save Henshaw though.’ He picked at his cake with his fingers before pushing it aside.
I could have eaten that.
‘I shall need their names,’ I told Leaf and he grimaced.
‘I had to vow to drink my own urine if I betrayed their names.’
‘Well, you cannot do that in here,’ Dodo said severely.
Though it might be better than the tea, I thought.
‘I could just arrest you for obstructing our enquiries,’ I suggested.
‘Might be safer in jail,’ Leaf snorted but then thought better of it. ‘I’ll send you a list first thing in the morning.’
‘Do you have any idea why somebody might want to kill you all?’ I dunked my biscuit in the hope that this might make it taste better. It didn’t.
‘Apart from you all being silly, horrid men,’ Dodo chipped in helpfully.
‘None at all.’ Leaf spread out his palms. ‘I’d be the first to admit we’ve been a bit boisterous at times but we’ve always paid for any damage. Nobody has ever refused to take a booking from us except SLAG, the anti-drink people, and our secretary only approached them because he misunderstood what they were about.’
‘We shall need to speak to you again,’ I told him.
‘Oh, do we have to?’ Dodo moaned.
‘And I strongly advise you to get that bump on your head seen to. Is there a Mrs Leaf?’
‘I hope so.’ Maurice Leaf half-rose to stuff his handkerchief into his trouser pocket. ‘We had a big row about my recent… erratic behaviour. I couldn’t tell her I’m scared shitless.’
‘I should hope not,’ Dodo scolded.
‘Closing now.’ Mavish Brittle came over. ‘Boil my beets! It’s like a chimps’ tea party in here.’
‘I haven’t made a me
ss,’ I piped up virtuously, just before a soggy bit of my dunked biscuit splotted onto the cloth.
*
Thurston Wicks rang the station. He had heard nothing more but demanded to know what I was doing. I explained that Lavender’s kidnap was being investigated by another force as she had been kidnapped in another county. Understandably, he was not impressed.
I got hold of Superintendent Thatchman of the Essex Constabulary, who was charming and only very slightly patronising. He told me he had all available men on the case and would appraise me of any developments, which I took to mean he would let us know when they had a result.
‘Trust a Suffolk girl to get herself kidnapped,’ he sniped.
‘Let’s hope we can trust an Essex policeman to rescue her,’ I replied but there must have been a fault in the line because it went dead.
I rang Thurston Wicks back and advised him to badger them and let me know if he heard anything. In an attempt to steady himself he had had a few drinks since we spoke, but only succeeded in unsteadying himself.
‘She’s not as strong as she likes to make out,’ he assured me, choked with emotion, ‘not a tough old bird like you.’
‘I’ll get our superintendent to find out what’s happening,’ I promised. ‘But he’s unwell.’
‘Vesty?’ Mr Wicks sneered. ‘When isn’t he? You need a proper man in charge, not that tinhead.’
And, much as I hated the sentiment and the way he expressed it, I feared Thurston Wicks might be right.
87
SWIMMING WITH PIRANHAS
We had coffee before the Ipswich conference started. I was, of course – apart from the waitresses and secretaries – the only woman there. We had six women constables in East Suffolk now and there were rumours one was to be given stripes, but I remained the only one ranked high enough to attend. Vesty should have gone but he was still unwell and we couldn’t send a sergeant, so I left Brigsy to bask in the glory of being the top policeman in all of Sackwater and District – heady stuff indeed, given our current plague of crimes, for an officer whose greatest triumph to date was catching a sheep rustler.
Betty Church and the Suffolk Vampire Page 33
