Betty Church and the Suffolk Vampire
Page 42
‘I thought you had a broken leg,’ I told Algy.
‘So did I, mam,’ he agreed.
‘And me,’ Sandy endorsed his brother’s statement.
‘But it were me truncheon,’ Algy rubbed his thigh, ‘what snapped. It felt like me leg though. It reeeelly ’urt.’
‘’E’s got a shocking bruise,’ Sandy assured me.
‘I’m glad you were able to come back on duty.’ I nodded approvingly.
‘I couldn’t leave Lysander to patrol alone,’ Algy said stoically. ‘He’s reet afraid of the dark.’
‘I am that,’ Sandy confirmed.
I sucked in some air and walked up the steps. On closer inspection, I was delighted to see Sharkey’s left eye starting to close up.
‘Were you following me?’ I asked Toby sternly.
He greeted the question defiantly. ‘Of course I was. You wouldn’t tell me anything so I’ve been trying to do my job. Besides,’ he winked, ‘you promised me a drink. I didn’t realise you worked with Himmler.’
‘Let him go,’ I ordered the twins, and turned back to my esteemed colleague. ‘You must tell me all about your trip to France.’ I smiled. ‘In the meantime, we have the murderers and kidnappers in custody down there.’
Sharkey pushed past me to have a look.
‘Bloody hell,’ he breathed. ‘Snared in barbed wire.’ He viewed me with a new respect. ‘And I thought I was ruthless.’
*
‘What will happen to Lavender Wicks and Poppy Castle?’ Dodo asked as she skipped back through the town with me. ‘Will they be hanged by their very pretty and quite pretty necks until they are dead? Or will they hire a clever ruthless lawyer who gets them acquitted on a technicality or concocts a cast-iron alibi? Or will they stage daring escapes to South America?’
‘They will not be acquitted.’ I jumped over a puddle and hoped Dodo did not think I was joining in her game.
‘Oh well done.’ She applauded, my hopes dashed.
‘But I doubt they will be hanged.’ I lit a roll-up and sucked the smoke in. ‘Judges don’t like hanging pretty women. I don’t think a good lawyer will have much trouble finding plenty of doctors to testify that they are insane – and, perhaps, they are.’
‘Of course they are.’ Dodo jumped with both feet together over the shadow of a plane tree. ‘Anyone must be mad who thinks that they can fool you.’
‘Well, I wouldn’t go that far,’ I protested modestly.
‘I would, boss,’ Dodo asserted confidently. ‘You always know everything. Why, only this morning, Sergeant Briggs asked me how long is a piece of string and I said that I did not know but you would.’
‘Well, it’s not that simple—’ I began.
‘So how long is it, boss?’ Dodo broke in, her big eyes looking trustingly up at me.
‘Seventy-nine units,’ I told her.
‘Du hast schöne brüste,’ she cried in astonishment. ‘Excuse my French but the man on the train taught me that means well done. I simply knew you would know.’
My German wasn’t up to much but I could take a fair guess at what part of a woman brüste referred to.
‘Let us play I Spy,’ Dodo suggested as we crossed the road. ‘You first.’
Oh good grief, I thought and was about to refuse when I remembered that Dodo had saved my life that night.
‘I spy with my little eye something beginning with “s”,’ I said. I had no idea what but there must be something that would fit the bill nearby.
‘“S”?’ Dodo stroked her chin and swivelled all the way round. ‘Oh that’s an easy one – cigarette.’
110
THE CORPSE IN BROWN PAPER
I used the reconnected phone in my office to ring March Middleton.
‘I shall not say that Mr G would be proud of you,’ she told me, ‘for I am not sure he was ever proud of anyone except himself, but I am, Betty, very proud.’
Coming from the woman who had solved the Mysterious Affair of the Sties this was high praise and, since that woman was Aunty M, I felt a lump in my throat.
‘I am sorry, darling, but I must go. Winston is getting sulky at being ignored,’ she told me. ‘Now he is trying to take my last garibaldi.’
‘So all the time I have been chattering on,’ I gasped, ‘you are entertaining Mr Churchill?’
‘Well, somebody has to.’ She chuckled. ‘Put that back, Winnie.’
‘We shall fight over the biscuit,’ a voice rumbled in the background as my godmother bade me goodbye, ‘but I shall never surrender.’
‘Goodbye, Aunty.’ I stubbed out my cigarette.
There was a silence when I went back into the lobby – not the normal quiet but the sort of thing you get as a woman when you enter a men-only bar – and I was almost sure I had heard shushing. Brigsy was behind his desk. His head bobbed down just late enough for me to be sure he had seen me.
‘What’s going on?’ I looked suspiciously around.
‘Nothing,’ Nippy Walker said nonchalantly but didn’t ask, as any innocent person would, ‘Why?’
‘Absolutleh nothing…’ Algy insisted.
‘At all.’ Sandy closed the sentence for him.
Rivers leaned against the desk from the public side trying to whistle something jazzy, but just made the sort of noise my father makes blowing through his briar pipe to clear the stem.
‘Why?’ Bantony enquired too late to be convincing.
I breathed hard. ‘If somebody has done something wrong, it will only make things worse playing silly games.’
Brigsy was scratching around with his matches, no doubt lighting his foul pipe to calm himself before breaking whatever bad news it was.
‘Ready,’ Brigsy called and then I knew. They were going to play some stupid prank and I would be expected to laugh to show what a good sport I was when I wasn’t. That was why Dodo wasn’t around. She wouldn’t have joined any practical joke against me.
Dodo came out of the back room. Her arms were behind her back in an ostentatiously casual manner.
‘Games?’ Superintendent Vesty materialised.
‘Welcome back, sir,’ I said enthusiastically.
Sharkey stuck his head nosily out of his office, scowled and stuck it back in again.
Two other figures struggled out from the back room – my parents – what the hell were they doing in there? – lugging what looked like a corpse in brown paper between them.
‘What—’ I began but Dodo burst out with, ‘Happy…’ and Brigsy was lifting something. It was a cake with innumerable candles and everyone joined in, ‘Birthday to you.’
And then I realised.
‘Happy birthday to you.’
Why was I the only one who hadn’t known?
‘Happy Birthday, dear’ – and here there was a mixture of Inspector/Inspector Church and a Betty from Vesty while I joined in with my guess of Superintendent – ‘Happy birthday to yooooo.’
‘You thought we’d forgotten, didn’t you?’ My father laughed.
‘As if we would,’ my mother protested as if I had directly accused them of such an act, ‘especially not your fortieth.’
‘I’m thirty-eight,’ I said weakly.
‘Oh don’t be so vain,’ she scolded.
‘Mumsy and I made it,’ Dodo declared with immense pride at the sunken lump on a plate. ‘Ginger, your favourite.’
Ginger? I hate ginger.
‘Lovely.’ I sighed.
‘That is how I knew you were at the pavilion,’ Dodo burbled merrily. ‘Because I was here getting things ready for your wonderful surprise when the telephone rang.’
That would explain why Brigsy hesitated before telling me nobody else was there.
‘Goodness,’ I breathed.
‘Blow out the candles, boss,’ Dodo urged and so I did.
‘Presents.’ She clapped, wild with excitement. ‘You first,’ she urged my parents and they plonked their gift on the floor. Its shape was looking all too familiar by now and made an all
-too-ominous clinking sound.
‘Oh for goodness’ sake, you’ve broken it,’ my mother snapped at me, though I had not had any contact with it yet.
‘Just like the vase that went on it,’ my father reminded me grimly and then the wonderful surprise as well as the wonderful present were ruined.
‘Well, open it,’ my parents urged and so I did.
‘Lovely,’ I greeted the smashed pedestal.
‘You can probably glue it,’ my father reassured me.
‘Thank you.’ I kissed my mother’s cheek.
‘We know you’ve always wanted it,’ she said.
‘Don’t be soppy.’ My father wiped his cheek as if a strange dog had licked it.
‘Me now.’ Dodo thrust a white paper bundle tied with white string at me. ‘Open-it-open-it-open-it,’ she chanted and so I did. ‘Nobody else has bought you anything.’
‘We thought about it,’ Brigsy assured me.
‘But we,’ Rivers said.
‘Decided…’ Bantony said.
‘Against it,’ the twins chorused.
I struggled with Dodo’s knots. ‘Has anybody got any scissors?’
‘Try this, madam.’ Brigsy passed me his tar-coated pipe-knife and I sawed through the string. A set of sharp implements clattered onto the desk, including two spikes.
‘You saw those in my handbag,’ Dodo reminded me. ‘But I crossed my fingers and told you they were nothing.’
‘What are they?’ I asked.
‘Well’ – she beamed like a proud mother showing off her firstborn – ‘I remembered you said you couldn’t knit with somehow mislaying your arm, so I got you a leather-working kit.’ She lifted a lethal-looking curved knife. ‘You can cut the leather with this.’ She picked up a spike. ‘And this is for creating holes,’ she enthused because, of course, these would all be so much easier to manipulate one-handed than simple needles. ‘You will be able to make yourself a new pair of shoes,’ Dodo promised. ‘They’ll be much nicer than the ones you normally wear off duty.’
‘Thank you.’ I forced a smile.
My father cleared his throat. ‘I would just like to say, on this auspicious occasion’ – he tucked his thumbs into the pockets of his red velvet waistcoat – ‘how very proud we are to see you in that uniform, my darling.’ For the second time in five minutes I had trouble swallowing. My father rarely praised me and very rarely called me that, especially not in company, and I was struggling to form a reply when he concluded, ‘Dodo.’
That did it.
‘Actually…’ I began but I still couldn’t do it. I couldn’t bring myself, after all the trouble everyone had gone to, to point out that this was October and my birthday is on 28 April.
‘I got you a little something,’ Superintendent Vesty confessed, quite shyly, I thought. ‘Forgot to wrap it though.’
‘Oh that doesn’t matter, sir,’ Dodo assured him. ‘Not with all your head problems.’
‘Head?’ Vesty touched his forehead in surprise. ‘I was having a chat with old Mr Bell,’ he reminisced.
‘At the left luggage office?’ I queried.
‘That’s the fellow.’ Vesty nodded, blister ballooning. ‘And he told me you needed one of these.’ He reached inside his jacket and brought it out – a bottle of smelling salts.
‘Thank you very much, sir,’ I said faintly. ‘I probably do.’
We hope you enjoyed this book!
The next Betty Church Mystery is coming in summer 2019
About M.R.C. Kasasian
The Betty Church Mystery Series
About The Gower Street Detective Series
An Invitation from the Publisher
About M.R.C. Kasasian
M.R.C. KASASIAN was raised in Lancashire. He has had careers as varied as a factory hand, wine waiter, veterinary assistant, fairground worker and dentist. He is also the author of the much-loved Gower Street Detective series, five books featuring personal detective Sidney Grice and his ward March Middleton. He lives with his wife, in Suffolk in the summer and in Malta in the winter
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About the Gower Street Detective Series
London, 1882
March Middleton, born 5th November 1862, was raised by her widowed father, a doctor, in Lancashire. She accompanied him on postings to India and Afghanistan, working as a nurse. Following his death she went to live with her godfather, Sidney Grice, at 125 Gower Street.
Sidney Grice, born 26th September 1841, attended Trinity College, Cambridge. Following a mysterious personal tragedy he disappeared for a number of years. After losing his right eye foiling an assassination attempt on Crown Prince Wilhelm, Grice returned to London to establish himself as its foremost Personal Detective.
With her sharp tongue and even sharper mind, March is sure she could help her guardian solve his cases – if only he did not think women too feeble for detective work. But even Grice must admit some puzzles are too great for even him to solve alone…
Set between the refined buildings of Victorian Bloomsbury and the stinking streets of London’s East End, The Gower Street Detective is for those who like their crime original, atmospheric, and very, very funny.
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First published in the United Kingdom in 2018 by Head of Zeus Ltd
Copyright © M.R.C. Kasasian, 2018
The moral right of M.R.C. Kasasian to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
This is a work of fiction. All characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
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A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN (E) 9781784978129
ISBN (HB) 9781784978136
ISBN (ANZTPB) 9781784978143
Design and illustration by Leo Nickolls
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