by Paul Charles
“True, I hadn’t thought about that. What should we do? Could it be… would it be better to try to find her, Miss Dipstick,” Russell couldn’t help smiling at the name, “through John B. Stone. Is there anyone in his past with a motive for murder?”
“Sorry, I can’t answer that. Look, we’ll do some more digging around to try and tie up the loose ends and if we come up with anything, anything at all, I’ll give you a shout,” Kennedy replied, and then added as an afterthought, “I think, though, it will turn out that your client has helped himself a lot by admitting his involvement so early on.”
“Good, look thanks for the chat. And the tea, your tea is as good as people say it is,” Leslie Russell said gratefully, and within seconds Kennedy was alone again (naturally) in his office.
So, who from his list of suspects would have the bottle to hire Anderson to beat up John B. Stone, or alternately, who would have had wanted to beat up Stone but would not have had the bottle to do it themselves? And if there was a Miss Dipstick, could that eliminate everyone from the suspect list apart from Miss Jean Stone? Perhaps, Kennedy thought, it was time for another chat with the senior Stone brother’s wife.
Chapter Thirty-One
As Kennedy entered Jean Stone’s house for the second time that day her found her surprisingly fresh and bright considering how close she’d been to a breakdown on the earlier visit. Perhaps she’d also learned how to master another of our American friends” qualities: a quick recovery.
To Kennedy’s trained eye, Jean Stone could be described as slim and would probably peg in at five-foot-nine tall, maybe even a wee bit more. He considered securing a search warrant to see if he could uncover the wig, long black coat and black lipstick, but decided it might be better to have a casual look around and not tip Castle off this early as to what he was up to.
Using the excuse of needing to visit the toilet, Kennedy tried a casual search but couldn’t find any make-up, let alone black lipstick. Mrs Stone definitely used make-up. She had effected quite a change since the morning by “putting on a face”. She’d given her features a lot more character, with eye-shadow, red rouge on her cheeks, false eyelashes, thickened-up eyebrows and a red, redefined set of lips. So perhaps she did her reconstruction business in the bedroom, or maybe even, more likely, her bedroom’s en suite bathroom, if such a hideaway existed. He couldn’t really risk wandering around any more, or could he? He heard the voices of WPC Coles and Jean Stone rabbiting away in the living room.
On the spur of the moment he took a left turn up the stairs instead of a right towards the female voices. Kennedy tried to avoid the creaks on the stairs. Now if it’s your own house you know where to avoid. But in a strange house every step taken is one step further into a minefield. Kennedy trod close to the edge of the steps figuring there would be less give in the boards where their support was the strongest.
His theory worked, worked that is until the penultimate royal-blue carpeted step before the landing. Luckily it proved to be a short, quiet creak and did not hinder Kennedy’s journey into the unknown. He found the second door off the top landing to lead to the master bedroom. He gently opened the door a little further, just enough to let himself in, and found a very feminine room. Lots of light blues, lime greens and cream drapes about the walls, windows and over the bed in a canopy. One entire wall, the one housing the door he had entered by, was covered in mirror. The mirrors were in two-foot-six sections which slid to right and left to reveal a large walk-in wardrobe. Surprisingly it was not packed with clothes but instead was working to about a fifty per cent capacity.
The majority (only just) of the clothes were female. Kennedy found what could be loosely described as a long black coat but he figured it more than slightly too dressy for a potential midnight assassin.
To the left-hand side of the bed was a dressing table with a few books resting on top: Dick Francis, Joanna Trollope, Caroline Graham and a tacky Mills & Boon romance. To the right of the bed was a large easy chair with a reading light suspended over it from the rear on a crane-type stand anchored to the floor with a heavy black base.
To the right and left of the easy chair were two dining chairs, and all three chairs had clothes hung about them. No sign, however, of make-up table or wig stand. To one side of the dressing table, facing the foot of the bed, was another door, painted light blue to match the thick carpet. The thick carpet Kennedy now felt his feet sinking into. He wouldn’t mind betting that neither Stephen Stone, nor any other human, would be permitted in this room wearing shoes. He opened the door to be greeted by nothing but darkness. Kennedy fumbled just inside the doorpost with his right hand and found a cord which when tugged threw a surprisingly large bathroom into brightness by way of several small low-voltage bulbs sunk into the ceiling. The bathroom was tiled, floor, walls and ceiling, in lime green. In fact all surfaces, excepting the back of the door and the large mirror above the sink and work top, were covered in the vile tiles. Probably not a pretty sight after fifteen pints of stout!
Three regal wig rests were positioned on guard on the work top. Two supported wigs, the third would have been at home in Duncan Goodhew’s bathroom. Sadly for Kennedy both the wigs on display were blonde, one baby-doll and curly and the other a French bop. But he was pleased to see that at least she did use wigs. For if she did, goodness knows what was going to be found hidden away elsewhere.
Every move he made about the bedroom and bathroom was magnified by the quietness of the rooms. He could still hear, just about, the two female voices from below. His own breath sounded like the wind through the trees on the top of Primrose Hill. He also felt that his heartbeats were vibrating down through his legs to the floor, through the floor to the ceiling of the sitting room where Coles and Mrs Stone were probably wondering what exactly the quiet-spoken detective was up to.
Time was deserting Kennedy as sure as the fact that Cantona had played his last game for Manchester United. But now he was so close, he had to find out if the trademark black lipstick was anywhere to be found.
Then all of a sudden he noticed in the mirror that the bathroom door was slowly being opened. It was ever so gradual but he could positively see the door inch its way inwards. He went through in a split second all his possible excuses. Lost my way. No toilet paper downstairs. I thought I heard a noise upstairs. I was looking for incriminating evidence - no, that wouldn’t do. That’s too honest, she’d never believe that, but the door was moving towards him slowly, in about seven seconds he was going to be caught. His worst nightmare: CID officer caught prowling in lady’s bathroom. Ah, the shame, what would ann rea say? Worse than that, what would Castle say? Searching a property without a search warrant? Oh feck it, he’d go ballistic, so what?
It was all in slow motion. The door kept inching its way towards him and all he could do was stand there and wait to be caught. He decided to wash his hands, at least he’d been seen to be there with the intent of doing something other than prowling. He could work it to his advantage somehow later, hell he’d seen criminals do it often enough, why not use one of the enemy’s tricks?
He felt maybe he should go to the door himself, implying that he had nothing to hide. Just at that moment the door stopped moving. What was happening now? Was this a surprise tactic coming up, or what? Then he heard a noise, like breathing but breathing with part of one’s nostrils blocked, a bit like purring. In fact a lot like purring. At that precise moment a large moggy strolled in, white as silk, tail arched high as if to say, “What’s going on in here then?”
Kennedy decided there was no time to continue the search. He killed the lights, closed both the doors and glided down the stairs, pausing at the first bathroom to press the flush lever, and walked in on Coles and Mrs Stone, who seemed so wrapped up in their conversation that they hardly missed him. At least neither acknowledged they had and gave him the impression he had easily enough time to seek out the incriminating evidence, if any such evidence indeed existed in this household.
Chapter Thir
ty-Two
And so it was that Kennedy returned to his office in silence; he felt a little guilty at prying around in the Stone residence uninvited. He was, and most unusually for him, tired. He hadn’t slept much last night, nothing to do with the TV, there never was anything worth watching on a Wednesday evening; Mondays, Thursdays and Fridays were the nights he found most use for his video recorder. He caught up with his viewing on Sunday afternoons, usually following a ninety-minute stroll around Regent’s Park and Primrose Hill. No matter the weather, his Sunday afternoon stroll was the most sacrosanct event of his week.
It (his fatigue) was probably due to his insomnia, which in turn was probably due to the absence of ann rea. Oh shit, ann rea. He’d just remembered that he’d promised to find out about Daniel Elliot’s daughter’s case. Oh well, she (ann rea) hadn’t rang back, so in a way he was off the hook.
“God, you’re a sight for sore eyes,” Kennedy gushed.
“Probably what the apostles said as well, sir,” a battered and bruised James Irvine croaked from just inside the door of Kennedy’s office. “Aye, and I probably look a lot worse than I’m feeling. Mind you I’m not feeling all that great. How’s things progressing?” Irvine continued, finding it slightly painful to speak. His copper hair, short-back-and-sides with neat parting, was severely dishevelled and he had a plaster and bandage across the blackness of the bridge of his nose. His usual ruddy complexion was a mess of blues, yellows and blacks, no more a suitable combination for a human face than it was for your granny’s patchwork quilt.
“Well, let’s see, Jimmy. Anderson claims he was hired by Miss Dipstick.” “Who?” Irvine asked incredulously. “A woman who dresses in black. Long black hair, black sunglasses,long black coat and black lipstick. Hence Miss Dipstick,” Kennedy explained. Irvine continued to stare blankly at his superior.
“It was funny at the time. You had to be there. Anyway she found Anderson, paid him to beat up John B. Stone, not kill him, mind you. That’s very important. Anderson claims that he was hired just to duff up Stone, just to scare him a bit. He also claims that Stone was breathing when he left him at the Fountain of Sorrow.
“So, do you believe him?” Sean Connery’s finest impersonator impersonated.
“Weeeeeell, I do and I don’t. I mean I don’t particularly believe him, but then again, there is no reason not to. He’s going to do porridge either way so he’s nothing to gain by inventing this person. And Leslie Russell is convinced he’s telling the truth.”
“Yes, sir, but he is Anderson’s brief after all.”
“Yes, I hear you. But I like him. He’s good, and I do believe him to be honest,” Kennedy stated.
“So any leads, then, on this Miss Dipstick?”
“We went back to see Jean Stone, obviously she had a probable cause and she looks like the right height and build, but I couldn’t find any black wig or black lipstick. I’m not sure it’s safe to rule her out, though. There’s just something too pat going on in the Stone household, she seems too… well, too okay. Let’s look at it from her point of view. She dates John B. Stone originally, we have to assume they were in love. She thought he was too in love with her and not ambitious enough. So she tries the older brother, Stephen. He appears to be more ambitious so she leaves John B. and eventually marries Stephen. As it turns out John B. proves to be much more successful. Jean and John B. meet up again at John B.’s mother’s funeral.” Kennedy was warming to this theme. He paused to consider how best to further his theory.
“They talk, she susses John B. still has a thing for her, perhaps she also has regrets. You know, regrets about forsaking love for a bank balance only to find she’d lost both. Mrs Jean Stone, the worse for wear on wine, gets involved in a bit of canoodling with John B. Maybe just to see if there was anything still there between them, or maybe just because she was very drunk. But John B. doesn’t want to stop at a bit of kissing. He wants to do the wild thing. She refuses, he rapes her. Now she knows he couldn’t really care less about her. He was using her to get back at his brother and in a way, his demented way, get his own back on her. She’s disgusted, embarrassed and angry. Her disgust and embarrassment vanishes with time but her anger doesn’t. It ferments into an ugly brew which is destined to boil over eventually. She bides her time. Then dons the famous disguise, complete with black lipstick, and hires Anderson to do the evil deed.”
“Is this not all getting a bit far-fetched, sir?”
“That’s the thing really, isn’t it? It’s so far-fetched that no one in their right mind would bother to invent it,” Kennedy surmised.
“I suppose you’ve got a point there. What about an alibi? Did Jean Stone offer any kind of plausible alibi?” inquired the bloodied and bruised DS.
“She told Coles that on the night in question she and her husband were at home together all evening.”
Irvine gave a sceptical grunt. “Exactly,” Kennedy concurred. “So where do we go from here, sir?” “Well, to be perfectly honest, I feel pretty empty myself. I mean toall intents and purposes we’ve solved this case. Castle was right all the time, Anderson was our man. Anderson’s signed his statement, so in a way it’s all done and dusted.” Kennedy looked like he’d said all he wanted to and now began to tidy his desk, but just as Irvine was about to leave he continued, “It’s just like in the movies, you know? The story is resolved, you get ready to leave the cinema. But the lights don’t come up, the credits don’t roll, the story moves on in a totally different direction and concludes with a final twist.”
“What, like Taxi Driver?”
“Exactly like Taxi Driver. It’s like I’m still sitting in my seat and the lights haven’t come up, and the credits haven’t started to roll, but…” Kennedy let the “but” hang in the air because he knew that if the projectionist was a certain chap called Castle then the credits would be rolling soon and rolling fast, followed shortly by the house lights.
“But we don’t have any avenues left to pursue, do we?”
Kennedy clenched his teeth, “Well then I suppose we’ll just have to look again. Look at all our original suspects. The basic flaw in all of this is that we are very short of female suspects. It’s either Jean Stone or - “ the DI paused, “ - or it’s Jean Stone.”
“Or,” Irvine added, massaging the bridge of his nose very gently (it was becoming very itchy and Kennedy’s mum would have had one for that: “it’s getting itchy “cause it’s getting better”) “It’s person or persons unknown.”
“Ah, Jimmy,” Kennedy sighed, “if that’s the case we’re missing something, we’re missing something big and we’d better start to dig back into John B. Stone’s life again. We’ve got to find something, someone who wanted to do him harm.”
“And who either has a female accomplice or is female,” Irvine added.
“Okay, take some of the boys and get stuck into it again, Jimmy, we need something, anything. There must be something out there. I can’t remember the last death, even of a crook, where no one seemed to give a feck. It’s usually, “Oh you know he was a really nice geezer,”“ or “He was a bit of a shit but he was real good to his kids,”“ or even “He got into all of this by accident you know, he was forced into it, really he’d a heart of gold,”“ But with John B. Stone not one person, particularly the members of his family seemed to be distressed in the slightest by his demise. I suppose this could work to our disadvantage, because it could mean that perhaps there was more than one person who had a reason to want him dead. Anyway, let’s do some digging.”
At this point Sgt Flynn tapped on his open door and Kennedy looked up. “I dug out that file you wanted,” Flynn announced, “it seemed pretty urgent, so I brought it straight up.”
“Thanks a million, Tim,” smiled Kennedy, taking the file and putting it straight onto his desk.
“I didn’t go through the file much, sir,” Flynn went on, “but I do kinda remember the case. I’d just started work here when the incident happened, so if you need any further background,
just give me a shout and I can go through it later for you,” the ever-helpful desk sergeant offered.
“Thanks. No, I think it should be okay. I just need to dig a bit of info out of it,” Kennedy replied. He was beginning to feel a little uneasy at using police time and resources to help a personal friend, albeit for a good reason. Mind you on the justification side he could remember lots of occasions during his short (fifteen months) relationship with ann rea where her background information had proved invaluable to Camden CID.
“No problem. I’ll leave you to it.” And with that Flynn, friendly as ever, nodded and left the room.
No sooner had he closed the door behind him when Kennedy continued on his original line. “Stone’s background, yes, let’s dig deeper into that. Let’s concentrate, but not exclusively, with the gentler side of the race.”
“I always try, sir,” Irvine smiled.
“Yes, so I’ve heard. However I think those activities may be somewhat restricted for a while, old chap,” Kennedy grinned as he eyed Irvine’s badly mangled face.
“Oh, I don’t know, sir. Sometimes the sympathy vote goes a long way,” the Scot replied and attempted to laugh, but this proved to be too painful so he moved the conversation back to business. “I’ve just been thinking, sir. If we assume your theory about Jean Stone is correct and we take it a stage further, what if the family know about it, know what she did and are closing ranks and painting the picture that no one cares about John B. so that we’ll think, if his own family doesn’t care about his death why should we worry. That could also be why Anderson’s been implicated. You know, throw a few scraps to the dogs. They could even have planted that half-eaten apple of Anderson’s to make sure we’d pick up the trail. We find Anderson, he’s been seen in the Spread Eagle with John B. on the night he’s beaten to death, we have a piece of evidence which puts him at the scene of the crime, and as you say, we’re done and dusted. But you’re right, it all is too neat, too pat. Perhaps I should go and see Jean Stone?”
