A Murder for Christmas

by David W Robinson

  All around them, people began to leave their tables and make their way from the dining room to the lounge where the evening’s entertainment would be held.

  Checking her watch, Sheila finished her wine. “Why don’t you just ask Dennis outright?” she suggested.

  Joe, too, emptied his glass. “I may just do that. Come on, let’s go grab a seat.”

  Brenda gulped down the dregs of her wine and they followed the exodus into the lounge, where they joined the Staines, Captain Tanner and Sylvia on the table by the rear wall, which they had come to think of as theirs. While they took their seats, George went to the bar.

  “News, Murray?” Tanner asked.

  “Yes,” Joe replied. “It’s definitely the last time I go rooting through dustbins on Christmas Day.”

  Julia Staines grinned at Tanner’s obvious impatience. “Joe, are we certain that George didn’t do it?” With a cautious glance over her shoulder to ensure George was not on his way back, she said, “I know it’s unlikely, but even the mildest of men can turn nasty when they don’t get what they want.”

  Joe cast a mean eye on her husband. “Julia hinting at you, is she Alec?”

  “Oh yes,” Staines replied. “I can be real narky when I don’t get what I want, Joe. I refuse to do the washing up for days at a time.”

  “Very funny,” Joe grunted. “At the risk of boring you all, I repeat: George is innocent. I just can’t prove it yet. But have faith. I’ll get there.”

  As the clock moved up to the hour, the lights dimmed, the spotlight beamed on the stage and the announcer’s voice boomed around the room.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, for your Christmas entertainment, the Regency is proud to present, the versatile Tony Carmichael.

  Music burst from the speakers and Carmichael hurried into the room, radio microphone in hand, belting out the chorus to Slade’s Merry Christmas Everybody as he leapt onto the stage. Dressed in a dinner suit, he danced his way around the small platform as he sang, and he was less than thirty seconds into his act when Joe stood up.

  “Excuse me,” he said to the table, “but I haven’t had my after-dinner smoke.”

  He moved out of the room as fast as Tony Carmichael had moved to the stage, and made his way to the front entrance, where the bitter night greeted him. Hands shaking in the icy cold, he rolled a cigarette and lit it.

  “Hello, Joe.”

  He half turned to find Patterson behind him, taking a cigarette from his pack.

  “Hiya, Tom. You found the singer a bit OTT, too, did you?”

  Patterson nodded. “Noisy blighter.” He fired his lighter between cupped hands and for a brief moment, his face blazed in the reflected glow of the flame, eyes narrowed into an intense mask that reminded Joe of his Santa performance earlier in the day. Joe had long thought that Santa could be easily misinterpreted as sinister.

  Joe dismissed the illusion. “Police had anything more to say to you?”

  “No. You?”

  “Nope, but I did find Jennifer’s computer. It was in the rubbish out back.”

  Patterson’s eyes lit again. “You did? Well done, Joe. If you’d like to give it to me, I’ll make sure it gets to her family.”

  Joe shook his head. “I’m sorry, Tom, I can’t do that. Y’see, I’ve already had a look at it and there are certain things which may have a bearing on her murder.”

  Patterson’s features underwent another transformation, registering surprise this time. “You found her password, too?”

  “No. She didn’t have it written down, but it wasn’t difficult to guess. She’d been advertising it for long enough.” Without waiting for Patterson to question him further, Joe took the initiative. “Tell me, Tom, if Jennifer was in possession of information that may cast Dennis Wright’s, er, professional knowledge in a bad light, how rough would that be for him?”

  Patterson drew on his cigarette, the tip glowing in the night. Blowing out the smoke, he replied, “Catastrophic, I should say. But surely you don’t suspect Dennis? I know they had their differences, but I’ve known him a long time. He’s not a violent man.”

  Joe drew on his cigarette, and then stubbed it out. “Neither am I, but how many killers have gone to jail after being described as mild and inoffensive?”

  ***

  Joe returned to the lounge ahead of Patterson, and found Tony Carmichael entertaining the audience with a string of one-liners. He had disposed of the dinner jacket and his bow tie, wore a ridiculous, plastic Elvis ‘wig’ on his head and was rooting through a set of props in a battered old suitcase.

  Sidling around the perimeter of the room, signalling to his friends that he was going for drinks, Joe approached the bar, where Dennis Wright stood, staring moodily into a half empty martini glass.

  “Gimme half of bitter, a gin and tonic and Campari and soda,” Joe ordered, taking out his wallet.

  “Ice and lemon, sir?” asked the barman.

  “Yes, but not in the bitter.” Joe gave the young man a crumpled smile to show he was only joking. While the barman busied himself preparing the drinks, Joe half turned to Wright. “Still running on Alabama time?”

  “Huh?” The academic stirred as if he had only just registered Joe’s presence. “What? Oh. I see. You mean jet lag? No. I had plenty of shuteye on the flight over and I’ve been here 36 hours now.” Wright straightened up and looked around. “It’s this whole scene. Christmas. Not my thing at all, and it’s not the reason I came here.”

  A ripple of laughter ran round the audience as Carmichael cracked another joke. Joe watched him pulling on a glitter suit over his stage clothes.

  “Elvis,” he said. “Before my time, and I never really liked him, you know.”

  “He’s a god where I live,” Wright commented.

  Joe paid the barman, and Carmichael ran into a supposed emotional rendition of Lonely This Christmas. Joe tutted. “This guy doesn’t know what he’s talking about.”

  “What?” Wright asked.

  Joe picked up his beer, took a sip and waved at Carmichael, now gyrating around the stage as he sang. “This wasn’t Elvis Presley. It was Mud. Presley did a cover version on an album, I’m sure, but it was Mud who had the hit with it.” He placed his glass on the bar. “The guy hasn’t done his homework.”

  Wright smile thinly. “Why do I get the feeling, Murray, that you’re stood with me because you have done your homework.”

  Joe returned the smile. “Very perceptive. And right, Wright.” He turned and leaned on the bar, ignoring the show. “We found Jennifer’s computer.”

  “Good. I’m glad. Now you can hand it to her family and make their Christmas complete.” Wright stirred his drink and sucked the olive from the cocktail stick. “I assume there are things on it you want to ask me about.”

  “There are. And if you won’t talk to me, you’ll have to answer to Dockerty and Barrett in the morning.”

  “Has anyone ever told you what a pain in the ass you can be?”

  Joe nodded. “Plenya people, but I don’t care. I like to see puzzles solved, and at the moment, a friend of mine is being held up as the solution to this puzzle, when he isn’t. The cops have added one and one and come up with three. Right now, I don’t know who killed Jennifer Hardy, because I don’t know why she was killed. But you are the biggest suspect. You had the biggest reason to murder her.”

  Wright’s glum features darkened further. A flash of anger crossed his face, and faded just as quickly. “Listen to me very carefully. I did not kill Jennifer Hardy.”

  “I didn’t say you did,” Joe replied. “I said you had the biggest motive for killing her.” He took another sip of beer while Wright ordered a fresh martini. “I’ve had a good look through that computer, and I have a problem. It concerns you and her.”

  “Go on,” Wright invited.

  Joe watched Carmichael bring the song to a close and begin to throw off the absurd jump suit while acknowledging the applause.

  “If you’re going to watch the fl
oor show, Murray, why don’t you just leave the questions to the cops?”

  Wright’s words brought Joe back from his surly opinions of Carmichael. “What? Oh. Sorry. What was I saying, now? Oh, yes. In August, Jennifer sent you an email saying she had the solution to your financial worries. She said it involved making a few changes to Missing Pennies. You never answered her.”

  “Because her idea was crazy,” Wright replied.

  To Joe’s irritation, Carmichael ran through a couple of Christmas jokes that were older than most of the audience, and then ran into I Wish It Could Be Christmas Everyday.

  “This guy needs to learn what it means to put an act together.”

  “You know, Murray, I just said, if you’d rather be with your friends and watch this jerk, it’s fine by me. I don’t particularly like talking to you.”

  Joe swung on him. “Her idea was crazy?” he said, demonstrating that contrary to Wright’s opinion, he had been listening. “She never said what the idea was.”

  “Not in the email, no. She used her university email account, and there was too big a risk of it falling into other hands.” Wright straightened up, towering above Joe. “She asked me to contact her on Skype. If you don’t know, Skype is…”

  “I know what Skype is,” Joe interrupted. “I learned all about it earlier this year.” He pinned Wright with a meaningful stare. “I talk to my brother on Skype. He lives in Australia.” Bringing his lecture to a close, he asked, “What was Jennifer’s idea for saving your financial backside?”

  Wright took a long time answering. When he did, his response puzzled Joe.

  “Have you ever read The da Vinci Code?” Wright asked.

  Despite his mystification, Joe nodded. “Not bad. Bit over-hyped, but a clever piece of detective fiction.”

  “Leaving aside its literary merits, do you know what that novel did for the Louvre and the Dominican Convent of Santa Maria delle Grazie in Milan? You can buy tickets so see The Last Supper online these days. The novel sparked conspiracy theories all over the world and the debate is still raging.”

  Joe nodded. “And all because the book was a bestseller.”

  “Precisely,” Wright agreed. “That was Jennifer’s idea. Run a little speculation in the text of Missing Pennies, then hire a ghost-writer to build a novel around the speculation. She was even dating that greaseball, Quinton, to learn as much as she could about coin collectors and the lengths to which they’ll go to possess coins.”

  “Was she now?” Joe lodged the information amongst the other factors in his mind. “She suggested you speculate in Missing Pennies. Speculate on what?”

  “How much do you know of the George the Fifth pennies?”

  “A bit,” Joe admitted. “One was stolen, the other was sold.”

  “Correct,” Wright said. “The Middleton Penny was stolen sometime around 1970. The Hawksworth Penny was moved to safe keeping to prevent its theft, and it was later sold at auction. Now suppose the Middleton Penny was stolen to order for a wealthy crook like Quinton? You see, Murray, if you stole that penny and had it in your pocket right now, you couldn’t do anything with it. Before decimalisation, you could have spent it over the bar, but that would be tantamount to criminal negligence. There were fewer than ten minted so if you were the thief, you couldn’t sell it other than to a numismatist who was prepared to deal on the black market. Someone like Quinton, who, by the way, offered me ten percent of the value last night if I told him where he could get his hands on it. Whoever has that penny can’t display it in a museum or even a private gallery. Like the Double Eagle 20-dollar coin, its appearance would cause too many ripples, so the Middleton Penny has value only to collectors and they would have to keep it secret. If you think about it from that angle, you have the basis for a novel.”

  Joe grunted. “Sounds like a plan to me.”

  “Well, it didn’t to me,” Wright countered. “I’m a historian. I don’t dabble in fiction. My book, Missing Pennies is a factual account of rare and valuable coins from all over the world that have gone missing. I don’t speculate on where they are, I don’t speculate on whether they were stolen, I don’t even speculate on who might own them. I simply state facts. My book is aimed at academics and numismatists: coin collectors and others with an interest in coinage and currency. The book is not going to sell millions of copies, but it will help cement my professional credentials.”

  “Still,” Joe said as Carmichael brought his song to a conclusion, “Jennifer’s idea would have been nice, wouldn’t it?” He rubbed his thumb and forefinger together. “Make plenty dollar and solve money worry.”

  Wright sighed and looked away. When he turned back to Joe, there was no mistaking the anger in his eyes. “I don’t have money worries. Not that it’s anything to do with you or anyone else, but I dropped a packet on a Florida real estate deal. It amounts to about one hundred thousand dollars, but I’m not bankrupt. It was a case of bad judgement on my part. The guy pulling the scam has been arrested, but the investors have already been told they won’t get their money back. Most of it is gone, or so well hidden, it might just as well be gone.”

  Joe sympathised. “That’s too bad, Wright. I’ve known a lot of pain in my life, but none of it is worse than losing a shilling down the drain.”

  Wright glowered. “Are you taking a rise outta me?”

  Joe smiled. “Could be.” Before Wright could react, he pressed on. “Quinton followed you and Jennifer round Leeds yesterday.”

  “He did?” Wright’s features registered surprise. If it was faked, it was convincing.

  Joe nodded. “He’s on a photograph taken in the city centre yesterday lunchtime. I have to say, Wright, in that photograph, you and Jennifer looked pretty friendly.”

  “Because I have my arm around her shoulder?” Wright asked and Joe nodded. “It’s a professional veneer, Murray. Jennifer wanted a picture of the two of us together, the way we used to be, the way she wanted us to be again. I said no, but she pressed and I figured we have to work on the book tour together, so what the hell. But it was strictly for the cameras.”

  “The look on Quinton’s face tells me he didn’t believe that,” Joe said. “He was mad as hell. In fact, he looked to me like a man convinced he had just been robbed … or he was about to be robbed.”

  “Not by me he hadn’t.”

  “Tell me about Quinton.”

  “I already did,” Wright retorted and with another sigh, went on, “The man is rolling in money and he collects rare coins. He got in touch with Jennifer last year when he learned she was coming to Alabama to work with me. He wants the Middleton Penny. He offered me ten percent of its black market value if I could get it for him. The value of the Middleton Penny is estimated at a hundred and fifty thousand dollars.”

  “So he was prepared to pay you fifteen thousand just to tell him where it was?”

  Wright nodded. “Jennifer thought it would be a good idea. I don’t like the guy and I told him I wouldn’t lead him to it at gunpoint. Besides, as I told her, fifteen grand is chickenfeed at the side of the amount I’d lost on the real estate scam, and it simply wasn’t worth it. That’s when she started dating the guy and milking him for information. If fifteen grand was nothing, maybe the royalties on a novel would help.” He shook his head sadly. “She just didn’t get the full picture.”

  Joe chewed over the information. “So, when she learned that you wouldn’t go for it, Jennifer would realise that she’d been sacrificing her, er, well, you know.”

  “She’d been laying him for nothing?” Wright asked, and when Joe nodded, he agreed. “And she would have been pretty mad over it. That’s probably why she chewed him out in the bar last night.” He glared. “You’re looking for someone mad enough to kill her, Murray, look at Quinton. Not me.”

  “That’s not the way I’m thinking, Wright,” Joe confessed. “Y’see, what occurs to me is that Quinton is so obsessed with the Middleton Penny that he may be easy to con.”

  Wright frowned.
“What?”

  “Let me tell you how I see it.” Joe drank a little beer. “You have a large hole where your money used to be. Oliver Quinton has a lot of money at his disposal and he’s desperate to get his grubby little paws on the Middleton Penny. Jennifer, ever eager to become Mrs Dennis Wright, comes up with a little plan. She will lure him and Warren Kirkland into a false sense of security. It’ll take time, but she uses her finest manoeuvre, taking her panties off, to suck them in, er, no pun intended. She invites them here for Christmas and they turn up because they know you’re here. They’ve been assured that the owner of the Middleton Penny will be here. Jennifer latches onto George, and I know my pal. He’ll do anything for a laugh. She asks George to pose as a coin collector, the man in possession of the Middleton Penny. She even cooks up a picture of him holding what appears to be the penny. The idea is to get Quinton or Kirkland, or both, to her room, and negotiate a price with George. They hand over the money, George gets his legover, and everyone is happy; particularly you, because you have just secured a hundred thousand pounds, or however much for a fake penny.” He fixed Wright’s eye. “So what went wrong?”

  “Nothing,” Wright admitted and Joe’s heart began to pound. “It was a perfect plan. Except that it didn’t happen.” The academic shook his head sadly. “Quinton may be slime, and Kirkland may be supercilious, but neither of them are stupid. They know their coins. You couldn’t get a fake past either man.”

  “Not even if you, a world authority, produced it?” Now Joe shook his head, and turned to the bar. “I don’t accept that, Wright. If anyone could con Quinton or Kirkland into parting with money for a fake, it’s you. But something went astray. Maybe you got cold feet; maybe Jennifer got cold feet. Maybe you decided that you’d rather be in debt than saddled with her for the rest of your life. Whatever it was, it led to Jennifer’s death.”

  “You’re nuts. You know that?”

  “Maybe. But I will get to the bottom of this,” Joe warned. “Tomorrow morning, I have to report my findings to Dockerty in order to get an innocent man set free. There are people in this room with motives for getting rid of Jennifer Hardy, but as far as I can see, Wright, you have the biggest motive.” He picked up his drinks as Carmichael ran into his final number of the evening, O Come All Ye Faithful, which he sang in Latin. “And if you wanna attack me with a bottle of cheap wine in the early hours of the morning, you’ll find me in 306.” He marched off, skirting the perimeter of the room once again to return to his friends.