The Sinking Admiral

by The Detection Club

  Alice would hate it. Come to that, Greta would hate it too. And it could ruin their reputations and the careers to which they’d devoted everything.

  But that didn’t change the one crucial fact: someone had to rescue Tracy before she let her instincts dump her in a dead-end under-age relationship, perhaps with a baby, and no chance of using her brains or creativity, or anything else. And what future would that baby have?

  ‘Stop it!’ Greta shouted at herself, just as the front-door bell rang. She’d be worrying about that baby’s baby and the one after that if she didn’t get control of her imagination.

  She looked down at her watch. It couldn’t be Alice, having lost her key. Evening surgery still had another half-hour to run, even if it didn’t over-run, which it usually did. Crabwell’s inhabitants weren’t great droppers-in, thank goodness, so someone must need something.

  Greta pushed herself up out of the chair and ran down the narrow stairs, revelling in the scent of the roasting lamb. Good food and drink couldn’t change the awfulness of life, but they could give you comfort on the way.

  Hoping the smile she’d manufactured would look welcoming and helpful, she opened the door.

  ‘Oh,’ she said, letting the smile go as she saw Amy Walpole and the egregious Ben Milne on her doorstep. Greta’s dark, almost black eyes offered them no encouragement.

  ‘Can we come in?’ Amy said, trying to be charming. ‘Ben and I need to ask you something.’

  Greta allowed herself to look at her watch again. ‘I don’t want to be unwelcoming, but I haven’t much time. I’m doing some marking.’

  ‘It won’t take long.’

  ‘OK.’ Greta flattened herself against the door and allowed them to walk past her. Amy headed straight for the living room, where the fire was crackling.

  ‘Come on, Ben. You must see Greta’s paintings. She and Alice have been collecting for years. They’re amazing.’

  ‘I must say something to Mr Milne straight away.’ Greta stood in the doorway, feeling sure that Ben was about to sneer at her cherished artworks.

  ‘Yeah?’ he said, stuffing his hands in his pockets, to make his jeans even tighter.

  ‘I will not take any part in the film you are making.’

  He laughed, as though the very idea was ludicrous. She was tempted to tell him why: that in her view reality television was designed to make the stupid and malicious happy by allowing them to laugh at the even greater stupidity of the fools who agreed to be paraded on their screens.

  ‘That’s not why we’re here, Greta,’ Amy said quickly. She wasn’t a bad woman, her unwilling hostess observed, just not particularly clever or particularly interesting. ‘We’re in such a state about poor Fitz. I know we won’t any of us know anything for sure until the inquest…’

  ‘If then,’ Greta said, giving up the attempt to embarrass them into leaving the house by waiting at the door. She sank into her favourite armchair and felt the cushions rising up around her.

  ‘And so you see, we were wondering what you saw when you were with your Girl Guides on the shore last night. I mean, it must have happened while you were there. Practically.’

  ‘It couldn’t have.’ Greta had spent so long fretting over how and why Fitz had come to die that she was sure of that much. ‘We were alone on the beach. We struck camp at eight o’clock, packed up all the stuff except for the three tents, and left.’

  ‘Why did you leave the tents?’

  ‘Too heavy for the girls to carry. One of the fathers has a pick-up truck. He was going to fetch them this morning.’

  ‘And you say you all left at about eight?’ asked Amy.

  ‘Yes. And, according to everything I’ve heard, Fitz was buying drinks for everyone in the pub by then.’

  ‘How do you know that?’ Ben’s voice had a nasty suspicious tone to it. Greta breathed carefully to control her irritation.

  ‘Because my partner, Doctor Alice Kennedy, was having a drink there. It’s our custom to support the pub when one or other of us has a solo engagement elsewhere. Alice goes when I’m with the Guides. I go when she’s at a conference – or anything like that. She filled me in on all the local gossip when she got back a little after nine o’clock.’

  ‘And what about the Guides?’ Amy asked. ‘Were there any stragglers, who could’ve seen something?’

  Tracy’s threat was so vivid in Greta’s mind that she might have believed the other two could read it. But she was a rational mathematician, and she knew that wasn’t possible. Even so, she didn’t want to raise any suspicions by mentioning Tracy’s name.

  ‘Everyone left together,’ she lied.

  All the darkness in her mind lifted as she heard the engine of Alice’s beloved vintage MG outside the house. Everything would be all right now. These unwanted visitors would go, and she and Alice would solace themselves with lamb and Cabernet Sauvignon, and all would be right with the world – for tonight at least.

  CHAPTER SIX

  ‘You started filling up about one o’clock, right?’ They had just returned from their encounter with Greta – the pub was, temporarily at least, closed for business by the police – and it was the first opportunity Amy and Ben had had to look at what had been filmed on the Monday. At a table in the corner of the bar, hunched over his laptop, Ben was fast-forwarding through Stan’s footage of the Admiral’s last day alive, pausing occasionally to check the timings. He is attractive, Amy thought wistfully – but then, men often are at their most appealing when they’re absorbed in something. If only he didn’t fancy himself quite so much… But it didn’t matter who he fancied, because she wasn’t interested, was she?

  Peering over his shoulder at the blur of speeded-up images, she caught glimpses, whenever Ben slowed down, of desolate stretches of beach, the scrubby village green with its single, wind-blasted tree, the grim row of deserted shops, a lone cottage, mud-splashed and crouched under sodden thatch, and distant container ships on the grey sea. ‘You’ve made it look like one of those post-apocalyptic things. Like there’s been a… I don’t know, a nuclear winter or something.’

  ‘What did you expect?’ Ben sounded irritable. ‘It’s March and the weather’s crap. It’s hardly going to look like a tourist brochure, is it?’

  ‘No, but did you have to make it quite so dreary and miserable? There isn’t a soul about, and—’

  ‘There will be in a second. Look at that.’

  Amy looked. On the screen, the bar of the Admiral Byng was heaving with people, and she caught a glimpse of herself, head bent, pulling a pint. ‘If I pause it, can you see how many you recognise?’

  Pulling up a chair, Amy said, ‘OK. Left to right: that’s the guy who has the local newsagent’s – Sam, don’t know his other name – but I’m fairly sure he just stayed at the bar. I’ve seen that lot before.’ She pointed at a gaggle of ruddy-faced pensioners. ‘I think they live somewhere around here – not Crabwell village, but not far away. They don’t come in much, so I suppose they must have heard about you. They had a couple of bottles of Pinot Noir from Burgundy. It’s thirty-six quid a pop – first time I’ve ever sold more than a glass.’

  ‘They do look pretty well-heeled,’ said Ben. ‘All that mail-order cashmere. That’s what a final salary pension does for you.’

  ‘Don’t! The way I’m going, I’ll be working till I drop. I’ll be the barmaid equivalent of Miss Havisham, stuck to the pumps by cobwebs, and surrounded by bowls of mildewed peanuts.’ Why was she telling him that? Shut up, Amy, she told herself. Don’t give him ammunition.

  Seeing Ben’s grin, she braced herself for a clever riposte, but he contented himself with looking pointedly up at the ceiling. The fishing nets, lobster pots, and other bits of nautical tat decorating the wooden beams were a dust trap, all right, but Fitz had always been adamant that nothing must be changed. It was just a pity she’d not had time to have a proper go at cleaning it all before the film crew arrived. Before she could explain any of this – or even decide whether she wanted
to explain any of it – Ben nodded at the screen and said, in a neutral tone, ‘What about the Boden twins over there?’

  ‘Second homers,’ said Amy, relieved. ‘Two glasses of Merlot. We get the ones who can’t afford places like Southwold. Last time those two were in here, she spent ten minutes moaning to me about how there wasn’t a Pilates class in Crabwell. They’re not usually here in the week – not at this time of year, anyway, so that’s the attraction of you and your camera again – but neither of them went upstairs. He did, though.’ Amy pointed at a shabby, balding blazered figure hunched over the bar. ‘Bob Christie. Edits the local rag.’

  ‘This place has a newspaper?’ Ben looked incredulous.

  ‘Newspaper’s putting it a bit strongly – six or eight pages of not a lot, and I doubt we’ll have it much longer.’

  ‘No wonder the poor sod looks miserable. Boozer, is he?’

  ‘He enjoys a tipple, yes,’ said Amy, repressively. ‘Gordon’s, mostly. When he’d had a couple of those, he went up to see Fitz. I think he was up there for about half an hour, perhaps a bit more.’

  ‘So that brings us up to, say, two o’clock… Let’s see what happens then.’

  They spotted Bob Christie coming down the stairs at ten past two, looking, Amy thought, as if he might have had his glass refilled a few times from Fitz’s private supply. He didn’t return to the bar, but made his way, slightly unsteadily, towards the exit.

  Ben fast-forwarded, with stops and starts, through the next twenty minutes of film, until they spotted someone else going up the stairs to the Admiral’s office: a short, plump, figure wrapped in a puffa jacket with a hood, who moved furtively as if he was deliberately trying to avoid identification.

  ‘Any idea?’

  Amy shook her head. ‘I’m pretty sure I didn’t serve him, and he scuttled up there pretty sharpish, didn’t he?’

  ‘Like a rat up a drainpipe. Hoping no one’d notice, do you think?’

  ‘Certainly looked like it. Let’s see him again.’

  Ben ran the few seconds of film several times, but Amy was none the wiser. They fast-forwarded a bit more, until, twenty minutes later, the man in the puffa jacket descended as rapidly as he’d gone up, his face still averted from the camera. The speed with which he moved suggested he might be a young man. He made his way through the throng and – they assumed – out of the pub.

  ‘So,’ Ben took a notebook out of his laptop case, ‘Bob Christie, editor of the… what’s the paper called?’

  ‘The Crabwell Clarion.’

  ‘Bloody hell. I really didn’t think any local papers like that still existed.’ Ben made a note. ‘Followed by an unknown chubby rat-up-a-drainpipe male – let’s call him Rat Man for the time being – who went up at approximately two thirty and left at…’ he peered at the screen, ‘two fifty-four. Let’s see who’s next.’ They watched the next twenty minutes, during which plenty more people came in, the majority of whom were unknown to Amy, but no one went upstairs. Then, with the timer showing 15.24, Amy pointed out a willowy forty-something ash blonde in jeans and a fleece. ‘The Reverend Victoria Whitechurch, our vicar.’

  ‘Oh yes, I met her. Doesn’t look very clerical, does she?’

  ‘Well, perhaps the clergy have dress-down Monday or something. Anyway, she definitely went up to see Fitz.’

  They watched until they saw her go upstairs, and Ben paused the film. ‘Did she have a drink?’

  ‘St Clements.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Orange juice and lemonade. Like the nursery rhyme.’

  ‘What? Oh, yeah, course. Do you remember what everyone drinks?’

  ‘Pretty much. Hardly surprising, given what I do. You had a double Glenlivet and a Merlot.’

  ‘So I did. But why would the vicar go up there? Was Fitz religious?’

  ‘Not as far as I know. I certainly don’t remember him going to church, or even mentioning it, but – as I’ve already told you – I didn’t know much about him, and I’m not sure that anyone else did, either.’

  ‘You must know something. Come on, Amy…’

  ‘I don’t. And stop doing that melting brown eyes thing.’

  ‘What melting brown eyes thing?’ Ben did it some more.

  ‘You know perfectly well what. And I really don’t know any more than I’ve said.’

  ‘Let’s go back to Fitz and the suicide note. Suppose he did write it…?’

  ‘I’ve told you exactly why there’s no way he could have—’

  Ben raised a hand to silence her. ‘I said “Suppose…” Let’s just play with the scenario. What reasons might Fitz have had to top himself?’

  ‘I told you, he would never—’

  ‘Play Devil’s Advocate for a moment. What motive could he possibly have had to end it all?’

  ‘The business wasn’t doing well,’ Amy replied grudgingly, ‘but I don’t know the details – about that, or about him. It was all the act – the booming voice, the tall tales, you know… He didn’t let anyone get near enough to see what was behind it.’

  ‘The bigger the front, the bigger the back.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Something my grandma used to say. You know, a nice big facade, such as being a…’ Ben flexed the index and middle fingers of both hands in air quotes, ‘character, to hide the stuff that you don’t want to acknowledge yourself, or let other people see.’

  ‘I suppose. But,’ Amy added, feeling protective, ‘he was always good to me.’

  Ben sighed and turned back to the screen. ‘All right. What about her with the gilet, next to the vicar?’

  ‘No idea. I’ve never seen the man with her before, either. Or them,’ Amy pointed to the group of what looked like students behind the cluster at the bar.

  ‘Probably thought it would be a laugh, getting on TV. Not likely to know Fitz, are they?’

  ‘Doubt it. They were all drinking halves, and one or two of them went outside – for a smoke, I should think – but I’m positive none of them went upstairs.’

  ‘OK. So, the Rev Whatsit—’

  ‘Whitechurch.’

  ‘Whitechurch comes in at twenty-four minutes past three, goes upstairs at three-thirty and leaves at…’ Ben fast-forwarded again, until they saw the vicar descend the stairs, looking, Amy thought, a lot less sanguine than when she’d come in ‘… three minutes to four. Shall we go on a bit?’

  After stop-starting through another ten minutes of film, Ben hit the pause button and jabbed his pen in the direction of a lugubrious-looking individual in a dark suit who was standing at the bar. ‘Who’s that bloke? The local undertaker?’

  Amy shook her head. ‘We haven’t got one – at least, not actually in the village. Have to go to Lowestoft or Southwold for that. I don’t recall ever seeing that man in the dark suit before, but he must have been there a while, because I remember him talking to those second-homers – the ones you called the Boden twins. He had a sparkling mineral water. But I don’t remember seeing him go upstairs.’

  They watched a bit more, and, after five minutes, he did go upstairs. ‘Seems official,’ said Ben. ‘That suit, and he’s carrying a briefcase, look. Do you think he could be a rep from the brewery?’

  ‘No, because I’d have known about anything like that.’

  After fifteen minutes, during which a party of hearty, rosy-cheeked types, several of whom Amy identified as being stalwarts of the local branch of Young Farmers – ‘God, it’s The Archers now,’ was Ben’s comment – piled into the bar, the man in the suit came downstairs again, and left.

  ‘Four twenty-six.’ Ben made a note.

  They watched some more, but no one else went up before five o’clock, which was when Stan the cameraman had taken his statutory three-hour break, and the customers had begun to leave.

  ‘I think we’ve earned a drink, haven’t we?’ said Ben, glancing at the locked-down bar. ‘On me, of course.’

  ‘Of course.’ Amy got up and fished her keys ou
t of her handbag. ‘What would you like?’

  ‘Ooh… a nice sexy red, I think, don’t you?’

  Ben picked up his glass of Argentinian Malbec and stared at it intently. For a moment, Amy thought he was going to go through one of those annoying sniff-and-slurp tasting routines with a lot of jocular blather about body and being taken from its mother too young and needing to settle down, but instead he took a hearty swig and said, ‘Jolly good. Let’s get on with it, shall we?’

  What they were watching on the screen was fairly quiet during the first twenty minutes after Stan’s return at 8 p.m., but then things began to gee up a bit, with a party gathering around Fitz, who was now seated at the end of the bar. ‘He wasn’t downstairs all the time, though,’ said Amy. ‘I know, because at one point I looked around for him, and he’d gone.’

  ‘Are you sure? I thought you told me he’d said his plan was to get roaring drunk. Perhaps he’d just nipped off to the loo or something.’

  ‘Possibly – they’re on the ground floor, and I didn’t actually see him go upstairs,’ Amy conceded. ‘I just thought he might have.’

  ‘Fair enough. Let’s fast-forward a bit, shall we?’

  At 8.45 p.m., Fitz could still be seen at the end of the bar, now partially obscured by a group of Viking re-enactors, still in their tunics and helmets. Several had axes tucked in their belts, and one held a large spear, the tip of which was perilously close to the fishing net swagged across the top of the bar. ‘I remember them all right,’ said Amy. ‘Never seen them before, though. I suppose they’d heard about the programme, unless they were mustering somewhere—’

  ‘That’s Scouts.’

  ‘Well, whatever it is Vikings do.’

  ‘Rape and pillage, I think.’

  ‘Well, they were raping and pillaging,’ Amy avoided Ben’s eyes, ‘but they gave up because it was too cold. They brought their own tankards,’ she added. ‘Leather and horn things. They wanted mead, but we don’t stock it, so they had to settle for the Old Baggywrinkle instead.’