A Murder for Christmas

by David W Robinson

  “For my money that makes her a proper trollop,” Brenda declared.

  Sheila tittered. “Now there’s a word I haven’t heard in many a year.”

  “Well, let’s forget about language,” Joe suggested. “Let’s concentrate on getting George out of this mess.” He mulled over his thoughts for a moment. “What’s with this picture business and getting George to pose as the Leisure Services boss?”

  “Good question,” Sheila agreed, but offered no explanations.

  Brenda, too, was at a loss. “Telling everyone he was Director of Leisure Services could have been snobbery. She was a hoity-toity little slag and couldn’t bear the thought of anyone thinking she’d screw a common grafter like George.”

  “I like your description,” Joe chuckled. “Hoity-toity slag. All right, so what about the picture.”

  Again Brenda shrugged. “I don’t know. Usually it’s men who want pictures, and they want them in the nuddy, not fully dressed…” she trailed off and blushed under the amazed stares of her companions. “I’m not speaking from experience,” she floundered. “It’s only what other people tell me.”

  “Yeah, go on. We’ll give you the benefit of the doubt. So what was Jennifer playing at with George?”

  Brenda shrugged. “Every time I open my mouth, I put my foot in it, so I’d better shut up.”

  “Make a nice change,” Joe commented. He spotted Dennis Wright making for the bar. “Maybe it’s time I talked to someone who knew her a bit better. I’ll bring fresh drinks on the way back.”

  He crossed the floor and stood alongside Wright who was waiting for service.

  “Bad business,” Joe said.

  Wright looked down from his superior height with an expression that indicated he had only just realised Joe was there. “What? Oh, you mean Jennifer? Or do you mean your buddy getting caught out?”

  The American accent with British overtones grated on Joe, but not as much as the conviction in Wright’s final words. “Don’t believe all you’ve been told. George didn’t kill her.”

  Wright ordered a scotch and Joe placed his order with the second barman.

  “You’re sure of that?” Wright asked, half turning to lean on the bar and face Joe.

  “Never been surer,” Joe replied. “Listen, do you have time to talk?”

  “What about?” Wright demanded.

  “About what?” Joe corrected him. “I thought you was supposed to be educated.”

  Wright paid for his drink. “Don’t hassle me. I’m not having the best of Christmases. Now what do you want to talk about?”

  “Jennifer Hardy. What else?”

  “I have nothing to say to you.”

  “I think you do,” Joe said handing over a twenty-pound note for his drinks. “See, I’ll carry on asking questions here, there and everywhere until I prove George guilty or innocent, if he’s guilty, he’ll pay, but if he isn’t, I’ll get him off.”

  “If anyone’s going to ask me questions, Murray, it’ll be the cops, not you.” Wright picked up his drink and prepared to leave.

  “If you don’t talk to me, Wright,” Joe advised, “you’ll have to answer to those cops, and they’re dumber than me. They’ll see things in your answers that aren’t there, and they may even see guilt in them.”

  “I’m guilty of nothing,” Wright spat back. “And by the way, it’s Doctor Wright.”

  Joe purposely raised his eyebrows. “Doctor Wright? Hey, maybe you can tell me how best to deal with my lumbago. I get out of bed some mornings, and it’s…”

  “Knock it off, Murray. You know what I mean.”

  Joe glowered. “Then get off your high horse, Doctor Wright. My friend is spending Christmas in jail for a crime I know he hasn’t committed. By the same token, I don’t know that you killed her, but I do know you had a damned good reason to.”

  Wright looked away and through the far windows at a fresh snow shower. Joe studied his tanned features and realised that Wright’s eyes were unfocussed. He may have been staring through the window, but he was looking at something reflected in his mind’s eye.

  He focussed again, stared down at Joe, and then moved to one of the tables in ‘no man’s land’, nodding to Joe to accompany him.

  Once seated opposite one another, Wright sipped at his scotch, then put the glass on the table and toyed with it, turning it round and round through his fingers. “I didn’t kill her, Murray. Sure I had problems with her, but I would never murder anyone … or at least not for such trivial reasons.”

  Joe said nothing. He took a swallow of his beer and waited.

  “Jennifer and I go back a long way. Long before I left for America. She was in her second year and I was in my final year when I first met her. That would be, oh, about 1977 or 78. Sometime around there.”

  “Which university was this?” Joe asked.

  “Right here. Leeds.” Wright smiled, wistfully. “We had a bit of a thing, then I graduated and took off to Oxford for my masters and from there I did a little teaching before moving to America. That was in 82, and I’ve been that side of The Pond ever since. We kept in touch for a while, but then she married and the correspondence tapered off until it all but stopped.” He sighed. “Then Jennifer joined the Leodensians and a few months later, so did I.”

  “You were early members?” Joe wanted to know. “Only Tom Patterson told me that Jennifer was one of the leading lights in the LHS.”

  “And she was, but that’s because she still lived here in Leeds. So many of our members live elsewhere these days.”

  Joe nodded. “Can you tell me what the score was with Jennifer working for you in the States?”

  Wright took another mouthful of whisky. “She acted as my researcher and proofreader. Tom tells me you’re a writer.”

  “In a small way,” Joe replied. “Cases I’ve worked on, little puzzles and mysteries I’ve solved. I write them up, my friends Sheila and Brenda read them for me, and then I have them printed and put them up in my café for my customers to read. I don’t sell them … well, I do, but only as e-books. And I don’t sell many.”

  “No disrespect, Murray, but you’re not in my league. The kind of work you put out doesn’t need to be factually accurate to the nth degree. You could get away with the occasional error. I can’t. I’m a historian. An authority. My books are about history. They need to be factually precise. My reputation rides on them. One error could ruin me. So, when I finish a manuscript, I send it to a reader who must have a university degree in history and an interest in the area the book is concerned with. You understand?”

  Joe nodded again. “I get the picture.”

  “The reader checks the facts and suggests any corrections that may be needed. I make those corrections and it goes back to the reader. If he or she is happy, it then goes to the publisher. They edit and send it back, I make corrections and it goes back to the reader. When he or she is happy, then it goes back to the publisher again. The process is slow, time-consuming and expensive, but I cannot afford even the tiniest of mistakes to creep into my work. My reputation is too precious. If I lose that, I lose everything.”

  “Belt, braces and a long piece of string, huh?”

  Wright nodded. “When it came to Missing Pennies, I contacted Jennifer because one chapter was concerned with the Leeds pennies. If you’re not already aware, two valuable pennies were set into foundations stones in two churches –”

  “In Middleton and Hawksworth,” Joe interrupted. “I know all about it. My friend, Sheila, told me the tale. Please tell me about Jennifer.”

  “I invited her to stay with me in Alabama for a few months while the book was completed. You probably guessed that we renewed our affair.” A deep frown etched itself into Wright’s brow. “But it wasn’t enough for Jennifer. She wanted more. She wanted a life over there, a life with me. It’s not what I wanted, and that was the argument you heard in Debenhams yesterday.”

  Joe played with his glass. “I’m not saying I don’t believe you, but, you
know, that doesn’t square with her final words to you. ‘Please your damned self. You know what happens next.’ That sounded like a threat to me.”

  “It was a threat, Murray. You see, Jennifer was convinced that the reason I didn’t want her was because there was someone else. But that’s not so. I’m twice divorced. I’m not interested in settling down again. Not yet. Maybe not ever. I tried it twice and it didn’t work, and I don’t believe in third time lucky. Jennifer couldn’t believe that because of the way we were when she stayed with me. Hot. You know.”

  “I think I can remember,” Joe agreed.

  “She really believed I had someone else and, of course, you didn’t hear the whole conversation,” Wright reminded him. “You only caught the bits when Jennifer raised her voice. She threatened to tell my current lover about our past involvement.” Wright frowned and played with his glass again. “I put that badly. Jennifer specifically threatened to tell my current girlfriend that Jennifer and I had been lovers on many occasions. And that is what she meant by ‘you know what happens next’.”

  “But if there was no lover to tell…” Joe suggested and left it hanging in the air.

  “Which is why I didn’t take the threat seriously,” Wright agreed with a nod. “Tom Patterson brought all this up last night, in the bar. He spoke with Jennifer when she came back to the hotel yesterday afternoon, and he was worried, but I told him she wouldn’t say a word to anyone about anything.”

  “And now she can’t,” Joe pointed out.

  Wright’s tanned features darkened. “That’s not what I meant. I meant she wouldn’t say anything to anyone because, first, she would never find anyone to say it to, and second, if she started shouting from the rooftops, telling everyone what an asshole I am, she’d drive the final nail in the coffin of her hopes of ever becoming the third Mrs Dennis Wright.”

  “Sure, sure.” Joe hastened to reassure the academic. “Talking of Tom, he was telling me earlier that Jennifer’s performance last night was totally out of character. He says she was flirting with my friend, George, just to make you jealous.”

  “Tom is probably correct,” Wright agreed.

  “But it didn’t bother you, her dancing with George and then sleeping with him?”

  “Why should it?” Wright asked, defiantly. “I’d made my position clear many times, not only here in Leeds, but in Alabama and in our email exchanges.” Wright finished his drink and slid the glass onto the table. “And anyway, if I was looking for a third wife, Jennifer still wouldn’t be in the frame.”

  Joe’s eyebrows rose. “No? I figured her as a good looking woman.”

  “And she was, but she was also too fond of the bottle. And, she wasn’t the most difficult woman to charm into bed.”

  Again, Joe exhibited surprise. “Now, there you go again. Y’see, that’s exactly the opposite of what Tom told me. He said she was almost virginal when it came to men, and she didn’t drink.”

  Wright laughed, a short, sardonic little bark. “Good old Tom, the faithful little puppy.” He shook his head wryly. “Don’t misunderstand me, Murray. Tom Patterson is everyone’s friend, a hell of a nice guy, and he’d do anything to help a pal, but he’s had a thing about Jennifer for years. Even before his wife died, he was besotted with her. He looked at Jennifer through spectacles that weren’t so much rose-tinted, as totally opaque. If she stripped and put on a live show in this bar, Tom would swear someone had forced her to do it. He couldn’t see any wrong in her.”

  “And you’re saying she was no angel?”

  “An angel? Hell, no. Her marriage ended about five years back, maybe longer. She caught her husband out in an affair with a junior colleague, and Jennifer couldn’t handle it. But she ignored the times he’d caught her out with other men and overlooked it.”

  “Many?” Joe asked.

  “More than a handful,” Wright agreed. “And you don’t have to take my word for it. Try asking Oliver Quinton.” He nodded to the far end of the room from the police interview tables, where Quinton sat alone. “Jennifer had a three-month fling with him. It only ended a few days ago. I don’t know for sure, but I think she may have slept with Warren Kirkland, too.” Now he gestured to the other side of the room where Kirkland sat with a small beer.

  “Did she?” Joe asked. “So jumping George last night wasn’t entirely out of character, then?” He was speaking more to himself than Wright, but to his surprise, the academic answered.

  “Your buddy wasn’t exactly her cup of tea, Murray. He was working class and Jennifer, to put no finer point it, was an intellectual snob. She wouldn’t normally hang out with guys like your Robson.”

  “She introduced him as the Director of Leisure Services in Sanford.” Joe smiled. “George says she asked him to do that. And I know George. Anything to get into a pair of pants.” He paused a moment. “So there was still this element of making you jealous too?”

  “That and the booze. She had hollow legs.” Wright stood. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, it looks like they’re getting ready to call lunch.”

  “There is just one last thing,” Joe insisted.

  About to leave, Wright turned and looked down, his face a mask of annoyance. “What?”

  “There are a few suspects for this murder,” Joe explained, “and they include you and me.”

  The academic’s eyebrows shot up. “You?”

  “I had that argument with her in Debenhams and I argued again with her in the bar last night. I can’t prove where I was at the time she was murdered.” Joe paused to give his final words some emphasis. “Can you?”

  A wry smile crossed Wright’s lips. “No. I was in my room. Alone. Asleep.”

  ***

  Leaving Wright, Joe dropped drinks off with Sheila and Brenda, and then made his way across the room to where Quinton sat alone, nursing a glass of red wine.

  “Joe Murray,” he introduced himself. “I think we maybe got off on the wrong foot yesterday.” He offered his hand. Quinton looked scathingly at it and then shook it lightly, retracting his hand swiftly as if he feared contamination.

  “No, we got off on the right foot,” Quinton retorted. “You’re the nosy parker trying to get that murdering scum off the hook.”

  “Back off,” Joe suggested. “To begin with, George isn’t scum, and secondly, he isn’t a murderer either. Like I told the cops, George has no motive for killing Jennifer … but you have.”

  Quinton blanched, the colour fading from his tanned cheeks. “I don’t think I like you, Murray.”

  “Trust me, it’s mutual.”

  “And I don’t think I have anything to say to you.” Quinton stood and prepared to walk off.

  “Not even about the way you screwed Jennifer senseless in an effort to get hold of the Middleton Penny?” Joe deliberately raised his voice and the exchange attracted the attention of a few people at nearby tables.

  Quinton sat down again, his face now suffused with anger. “Speak to me like that again and I’ll make you regret the day you were born.”

  Feigning disinterest, Joe replied, “There are a lot of people who already regret the day I was born, but I’m not one of them, and most are behind bars.”

  The wealthy collector leaned across the table and lowered his voice. “I can buy and sell you a hundred times over, Murray. I can arrange it so that you, and that crummy little diner you run, just disappear off the face of the earth.” He stabbed his finger into the tabletop to emphasise his threat.

  Joe grinned and kept his voice down, too. “You’d have every driver from Sanford Brewery chasing you if you tried, and trust me, they’re tough cookies. Way tougher than me … or you. Let’s cut the crap, Quinton. I know all about you. I checked you out on the internet. Self made millionaire? My eye and Aunt Fanny. You made your fortune the easy way. Won the lottery back in 2004. You’re an ex-bank clerk from Sheffield, and the only reason you’re staying here this weekend is because you knew Dennis Wright would be here.” Joe paused to let his little lecture sink in. �
��Now why don’t you cut the crap and talk to me. Because if you don’t, you’ll talk to the law when I’m done telling them what I already know.”

  “You mean what you think you know,” Quinton corrected him.

  “I know you argued with Dennis Wright last night, I know you got short shrift from Jennifer Hardy last night while she was dancing and playing the fool with my murdering scum friend. I saw both incidents. I also know you’re keen to get your grubby little mitts on the Middleton Penny and I guess that you figured the best way to it is – was – through Jennifer Hardy.”

  Quinton did not respond.

  Joe went on, “Let me paint you a pretty picture. You’ve been into Jennifer’s knickers for some time and it’s not because you fancy her, it’s because you want the Middleton Penny. So you tried again when you got here yesterday and she told you where to get off. You’re not worried because Dennis Wright is here and you can turn the screws on him. Easy enough, considering he has a large black hole where his money used to be. So late last night, you sat in your room and came up with a plan, a means of applying pressure on Wright. You waited until the early hours of this morning and then knocked on Jennifer’s door carrying a bottle of wine. A peace offering. She let you in and the moment she turned her back, you killed her. You then planted a note, a cryptic drawing that could conceivably hint at Dennis Wright. The cops buggered the job up and arrested George instead. But you don’t give a hoot about that, because you’re getting away with it anyway, and it still allows you to say to Dennis Wright, ‘she’s dead, you’re next unless you tell me where the Middleton Penny is and how much it’ll cost me’. How does that sound, Quinton?”

  “A lot of hot air. Like most of the guests, I was in my room last night, all night. I didn’t come out until half past seven this morning.”

  “Can you prove that?” Joe demanded.

  Quinton shook his head. “No. Can you? You had an argument with Jennifer yesterday, too, so rumour has it. She was that kind of woman. Tough as old boots when she wanted to be. She’d argue black was white when she had it on her. You argued in Debenhams, if the tale is to be believed, and you certainly crossed swords in the bar last night. So you tell me, Murray. Did you kill her?”