A Theatrical Murder
A Sanford 3rd Age Club Mystery (#13)
David W Robinson
Copyright © 2017 by David W Robinson
Cover Photography by Adobe Stock © DiViArts
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All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission of the author or Crooked Cat Books except for brief quotations used for promotion or in reviews. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales, is entirely coincidental.
Printed in the United Kingdom
First Black Line Edition, Crooked Cat Books. 2017
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The Author
David Robinson is a Yorkshireman now living in Manchester. Driven by a huge, cynical sense of humour, he’s been a writer for over thirty years having begun with magazine articles before moving on to novels and TV scripts.
He has little to do with his life other than write, as a consequence of which his output is prodigious. Thankfully most of it is never seen by the great reading public of the world.
He has worked closely with Crooked Cat Books since 2012, when The Filey Connection, the very first Sanford 3rd Age Club Mystery, was published.
Describing himself as the Doyen of Domestic Disasters he can be found blogging at www.dwrob.com and he appears frequently on video (written, produced and starring himself) dispensing his mocking humour at www.youtube.com/user/Dwrob96/videos
By the same author
The STAC Mystery series:
1. The Filey Connection
2. The I-Spy Murders
3. A Halloween Homicide
4. A Murder for Christmas
5. Murder at the Murder Mystery Weekend
6. My Deadly Valentine
7. The Chocolate Egg Murders
8. The Summer Wedding Murder
9. Costa del Murder
10. Christmas Crackers
11. Death in Distribution
12. A Killing in the Family
13. A Theatrical Murder
14. Trial by Fire
15. Peril in Palmanova
The SPOOKIES Mystery series
The Haunting of Melmerby Manor
The Man in Black
A Theatrical Murder
A Sanford 3rd Age Club Mystery (#13)
Chapter One
The drayman laughed. “Who in his right mind goes to Skegness at this time of year?”
Joe Murray scrawled out the order and passed it to Lee in the kitchen. Pouring tea, he said, “The Sanford 3rd Age Club, that’s who.” He studied the drayman, whose name, Joe was certain, was Glen. Rugged and cragged face, gnarled, yet strong hands, no trace of fat on him. But that was down to his job. Throwing beer barrels about all day tended to keep most of the draymen fit. Nevertheless, Joe estimated his age at somewhere in the mid to late forties. “You’ll know about the club soon enough. You’ll be joining us in a year or two.”
Glen laughed. “No way will you ever catch me with that bunch of dozy old tosspots.” Before Joe could react, he gestured at their flash new surroundings. “Anyway, it’s good to have you back on the right side of the road, Joe. The food’s a lot better here than it is at Sid Snetterton’s place.”
Joe passed the order to Cheryl, Lee’s wife, and glanced sourly at Glen. “It’s good to be back. Now bugger off so I can serve your mates.” He, too, waved, but his vague hand was aimed at the queue behind Glen.
“Plus you get a much better class of abuse at The Lazy Luncheonette,” said Glen. “So if you’re off to Skeggy how come you’re serving here this morning?”
“We don’t leave until ten and we’re still waiting on Pauline, Cheryl’s mate, turning up.”
“I’ll bell her again, Uncle Joe,” Cheryl said from behind him.
Glen wandered off to join other draymen who had already been served and his place at the front of the queue was taken by his mate, Barry. “Full English, Joe, and a tea, and give us two toast as well. We’ve a lot on today.”
“I’ll sell you two toast,” Joe riposted and poured the tea.
While he scribbled out the order, Barry asked, “Did they ever get to the bottom of who burned the old place down?”
Joe held out his hand. “Seven fifty to you.” Ringing up the sale, he dropped the money in the cash register. “Officially, no, but we all know it was Gerard Vaughan.”
From the new, open plan kitchen, Lee tutted. “According to Aunty Sheila, that’s slaver and you shouldn’t say it, Uncle Joe.”
“Slander, not slaver, you idiot. And it’s not slander. It’s the truth,” Joe said as Barry wandered off.
“I heard Vaughan was in Blackpool with you lot when the place went up,” said the next drayman.
“His sort can get things arranged. Now whaddya want?”
Whatever Joe’s personal feelings on the fire which wrecked the old Lazy Luncheonette or the question of Gerard Vaughan’s role in the incident, he had to admit that he had come out winning in the end.
Originally relocated to a couple of cabins on the industrial estate the other side of Doncaster Road, a billionaire friend, Sir Douglas Ballantyne, had stepped in and ensured that Joe not only secured a road-front place in New Britannia Parade, but he did so at an advantageous rent for the first two years.
Joe didn’t care much for the building which had replaced the old, ramshackle row of shops. Three storeys high, all glass and redbrick, the interior was nothing but office suites, which smacked of 21st-century Britain. Lawyers, accountants, the headquarters of a home improvement sales team, not one of the businesses dealt in hard cash. The old parade had consisted of several viable, well-established retail businesses, of which The Lazy Luncheonette was only one, all housed in a pre-war row of buildings which had basically been of sound construction, but which did not fit in with the new vision of Sanford according to the town council and Gerard Vaughan.
Since moving in a month previously, there had also been some crossed swords with the new tenants, many of whom complained about the heavy lorries parked around the back.
“They do real work,” Joe had snapped on more than one occasion. “They don’t sit on their backsides watching their pen scribble its way across a sheet of paper.” Having demonstrated his working class solidarity with the truckers who provided the greater bulk of his living, he then sent Brenda round the building with leaflets, to tempt the white collar workers to his establishment.
And it worked.
“The great thing is that most of the draymen and truckers are gone by the time the collars and ties turn up for work,” he told his two companions. “We get the best of both worlds.”
“And we still pull the shoppers from Sanford Retail Park,” Sheila added. “At this rate, Joe, you’re going to have to give us a pay rise.”
There had been minor glitches, like the time when a woman of oriental appearance came from one of the floors above and asked if he served sushi.
“I serve bacon, eggs, sausage, toast, and that kinda thing. Traditional English food, girl, and this isn’t a knocking shop. We don’t get many calls for a woman named Suzie.”
The woman branded Joe a chauvinistic, misogynist Little Englander, and it took a lot of work from Sheila and Brenda to persuade her that he had only been joking.
“He is neither racist nor sexist, but he’s also not politically correct.”
“He’s not very funny either,” said the young woman before stomping out of the plac
e.
This move into the new premises had not been without its difficulties. They first set foot in the building late in November for a look around, before taking possession during the first week of December, and learned that fixtures and fittings were up to Joe’s exacting (more stringent than they had ever been, considering someone else was paying) standards, and as the new Lazy Luncheonette opened for business they found themselves in the midst of the Christmas rush. The early callers, the draymen and workers from the industrial estate, were no more, no less, demanding than they were the rest of the year, but the mid-morning lull was gone, supplanted by the office workers from above and the glut of shoppers coming from the retail park. The result of this was the café’s eighty seats were full for most of the day.
Sheila and Brenda had to abandon their plans for a large Christmas tree because there was simply not enough room without creating a hazard for the customers. Joe and his genial giant of a nephew, Lee, had strung up lights and other Christmas banners here and there, but some of those had to be moved when the building manager, Vaughan, insisted they were a fire hazard hanging so near to the kitchen appliances.
“You’d know about fire hazards, wouldn’t you,” Joe had grumbled.
Vaughan, who had never hidden his contempt for the owner and staff of The Lazy Luncheonette, refused to rise to the goad, and gave Joe just two hours to move them. “Or I call the Fire Service,” he warned. “This building cost my company many millions of pounds, Murray, and I won’t have its safety compromised by an idiot like you.”
Joe reined in his temper. “Just remember your boss is a personal friend, Vaughan.”
“Ballantyne Investments may own Gleason Holdings, but your chum Sir Douglas Ballantyne left me as Managing Director because I know what I’m doing. And even he can’t get round the fire regulations.”
Joe realised the smug and supercilious property developer was only scoring points as he had threatened to do when Ballantyne’s bought out his company. The Lazy Luncheonette was on a preferential rent for two years, and Joe was quite happy to let Vaughan win the occasional argument.
“If it gets too serious, I’ll have a word with Sir Douglas,” he had promised his staff.
As it turned out, Vaughan’s irritations turned out to be just that, and through the skilled use of elliptical insults, they were happy to tolerate him.
Coming up to Christmas, Joe had been a good deal more chipper than they had seen him for a long time. He had gone off to Majorca for a week in October with his lady friend, Maddy Chester, and come back looking tanned and refreshed. The stresses and strains which had threatened his health earlier in the year had gone, and he was a reasonably happy man.
Sheila and Brenda had speculated on the cause, Sheila insisting it was money, Brenda claiming it had more to do with Maddy. Whatever was at the root of it, they were content to see their boss in this improved frame of mind, and even his insults to the draymen had a more humorous edge to them. It was as if he was enjoying life for the first time in years.
He did not even complain when the Sanford 3rd Age Club decided to go to Skegness for the weekend after New Year, and normally, such a plan would have him up in arms at the thought of leaving the business, already slack off after the rush, with his clumsy nephew.
“So what’s happening in Skeggy, Joe?” asked the next drayman while he waited for his beaker of tea.
“We’re going to see Hamlet at the Rep Theatre.”
The drayman laughed. “Alas poor Yorrick. I knew him well.”
“Horatio.” Cheryl corrected as she swept through, her arm full of orders. “I knew him, Horatio.”
“But that was before he ate the pies in this place,” shouted Glen from the table.
“If you don’t like the pies, bugger off back to Sid Snetterton’s place,” Joe ordered and checked his watch. “Cheryl, is Pauline coming or what? I have to go home and pick up my gear.”
It had never been a problem with the old café. Joe had lived above it, but the new place had no accommodation and he was confronted with a two-mile journey to his flat on Leeds Road estate. Lack of space was also the reason he had not brought his small suitcase to work.
Cheryl shuffled back into the kitchen and picked up her mobile. “I’ll try her again and if she doesn’t answer, I’ll ring my mother.”
With a grunt, Joe concentrated on the next customer, who was as surprised as everyone at the reason Joe had given for going to Skegness.
“Didn’t know you were into Shakespeare, Joe.”
“I’m not. I’d rather have Midsomer Murders to be honest, but Sylvia Goodson’s granddaughter is in the play and she and Les Tanner persuaded the club to go there.”
“Teri Goodson?” asked the drayman. “I remember her when she was a schoolkid. She was in an episode of Casualty or summat, wasn’t she?”
“That’s right,” Joe replied. “She played an injured victim caught up in a gas blast at a restaurant.”
“I bet she gave ’em the idea after your old place burned down.”
“Bog off.”
“Are you Joe Murray?”
About to serve the next customer, Joe was brought up short by the question.
It came from a shapely, middle-aged woman stood to one side of the queue. Blonde-haired, she had blue eyes which were anything but welcoming. They sent out a chill matched only by the inclement weather outside.
“I am Joe Murray, and there’s a queue here, lass. Get on the back of it.”
“I’m not here to eat. I’m here to ask questions.”
“Then come back after Easter. I don’t do trivia quizzes this side of Good Friday.”
“Mr Murray—”
Joe stopped what he was doing and cut in. “Take a look around you, missus. I’m up to my eyes in breakfast traffic, one of the hired hands hasn’t turned in and I’m supposed to be going away for the weekend. You want to ask me anything, come back on Monday morning.”
“Very well,” she replied huffily. “Can you tell me where I might find Gerard Vaughan?”
“Face down in the canal with any luck.” Joe pushed a beaker of tea across to his customer. “Try his office at nine o’clock. It’s on the fifth floor.” Using his pen as a pointer, Joe gestured upwards, then scrawled out the drayman’s order for a full English breakfast and took the money. “What makes you think I care where Vaughan is?”
“You’re the one who accuses him of burning down your old place.”
“I do,” Joe agreed handing over change. “But he’s warned me to shut up or he’ll sue.” He raised his eyebrows at the next drayman, and took an order for two bacon sandwiches.
“That’s why I need to talk to you.”
“You’re his lawyer?” Joe passed the order through and poured tea.
“No. I’m Denise Latham. An insurance investigator. And I need to talk to you about your old place burning down.”
Cheryl shuffled past Joe. “Pauline’s on her way, Uncle Joe. She’ll be here in ten minutes. She says her alarm didn’t go off.”
Taking his customer’s money, Joe gave change, poured out a fresh beaker of tea and passed it to Denise Latham. “Find a table, drink your free tea, and when Pauline gets here, I’ll speak to you. But I’m warning you, I can only give you a quarter of an hour.”
It would be another twenty minutes before Pauline arrived, took over in the kitchen which allowed Cheryl to look after the counter. The queue had begun to thin out, many of the draymen were already away on their daily rounds, and Joe finally sat with Denise by the window.
With an eye on the time, he reminded her, “I have to go home and get changed, and I’m away for the weekend, so make it snappy.”
“I’m looking into the deliberate firing which destroyed your old premises.”
“And you’re about the fourth,” Joe told her. “Loss adjusters, investigators, claims specialists, not to mention the fire service and the cops. I can’t tell you anything I didn’t tell them.”
“You collected
an awful lot of money on the back of that fire, Mr Murray.”
“No. I collected an awful lot of money on the back of the premiums I’ve paid for the last forty years.”
Denise ignored the remark. “You said you were in Blackpool at the time.”
“And I have seventy reliable witnesses to back me up,” he retorted. “I don’t claim to have been in Blackpool. I was in Blackpool. Unfortunately, so was Gerard Vaughan, but he’s a multi-millionaire and he was the one who wanted the place levelled, not me.”
“Confronted with a compulsory purchase order, you might have thought it worth your while to pay a torch, too.”
“Are you always this dim-witted or is it because you’ve just got out of bed?” Joe did not wait for her anger to surface, but pressed on with his point. “I was offered market value for the old place, which is precisely what I got from the insurance company. I was offered a sum to compensate for loss of trade, and the insurers paid me for consequential loss. In other words, why would I risk breaking the law when I could have had everything legitimately?”
“You were paid a considerable sum for your personal possessions.”
“Less than twenty thousand pounds,” Joe corrected her. “You reckon that’s why I did it? I paid a torch a few grand so I could claim twenty?”
“I’ve known it to happen.”
Joe sipped his tea. “This planet you live on. Are the pubs open all day?”
“Mr Murray—”
“Try shutting up and listening.” Joe realised he had raised his voice and half the café turned to look upon them. Taking a gulp of tea, he lowered his tone once more. “I was born and grew up in that old building. As a business, it was a success. I fought all the way against the council and Vaughan to stop them demolishing the place, and at the time it burned down, I still hadn’t lost. I was hell bent on holding them up for at least another few months. I had precious little to gain by torching the place, and an awful lot to lose, including my sanity. You wanna investigate the fire, that’s fine by me, because whoever set it alight should be walled up for blighting the community. But you’re looking in the wrong place. Try Vaughan, if you can find him, and when you’re through with him, go to the town hall and talk to Irwin Queenan.”
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