Murder at the Murder Mystery Weekend

by David W Robinson

  “It looks like a crocodile,” he said, studying the fossilised bones. He pointed at a drawing of the creature as it would have looked; its fins spread, elongated neck craning. “It certainly doesn’t look like that.”

  “Appearances can be deceptive, Joe,” Sheila told him. “I’m not so well up on dinosaurs, but perhaps they didn’t find it all.”

  “Like the search for Joe’s wallet,” Brenda said.

  From the museum, they ambled through more narrow streets lined with houses, many converted to small business premises, until they reached the shopping quarter. After a light lunch in a Tudor building near to Marks & Spencer, where Joe, as usual, complained over the price of toasted teacakes, they crossed the street and down a flight of steps to the riverside, and walked along under a giant, metal statue of what looked like gymnasts.

  “It’s called Empowerment, Joe,” Sheila lectured him, reading from her guide book. “Two people reaching to each other across the water.”

  Joe studied the steel structure, and looked across the narrow river to the other side where it was also anchored. “Yes, but it’s only thirty yards, isn’t it? It’s not like they’re reaching across the Atlantic.”

  “Yes, Joe,” Sheila said, unwilling to pick up the debate.

  “Hey, when you two have done discussing contemporary art, there’s shopping here.” Brenda jerked her thumb sideways to the entrance of the Waterside Shopping Mall.

  “Perfect,” said Sheila, and with a sad shake of his head, Joe followed them into the place.

  Chapter Three

  Known as the Gibson Suite, the dining room of the Twin Spires was dedicated to Wing Commander Guy Gibson, the man who led 617 Squadron on their most famous World War Two raid. All but the east wall of the room, which was blank, was bedecked not only with photographs of the man, but also of actor Richard Todd who had played Gibson in the 1954 film, The Dambusters.

  Tables for four were laid out in neat rows across the hall, with generous aisles between them, and Joe calculated that there was seating for well over 100 people. Against each place setting was a springbound notebook and a souvenir Markham Murder Mysteries pen.

  Several large screen TVs stood on large frames around the room.

  “I wonder what they’re for,” Joe muttered as he and his companions took their places at table four, at the front of the dining room.

  “Don’t you read the literature, Joe?” Sheila asked, brandishing a copy of the Markham Murder Mysteries leaflet. “The scenes are all recorded and they’re rerun during the day to allow people to get out of the hotel and catch up with the action later.” She pointed to the blank wall on the right, where a professional video camera, the kind used in TV outside broadcasts, stood on a tripod, its lens concentrated on the front, left side corner of the dining room where two larger, oblong tables had been put together to create seating for nine or ten diners. The area was unlit, dimming it from the view of the restaurant, but behind the table stood a tall easel with a map of southern England and Northern France pinned to it.

  Brenda, a pair of thin-framed, fashionable reading glasses perched on her nose, was also studying the leaflet. “The scenes are also shown on screen while the actors are playing,” she reported. “It ensures that those people sat right at the back don’t miss any of the action.”

  “And,” Sheila took up the narrative, “guests can ask for any particular scene to be replayed.”

  “I wish I’d never asked,” Joe grumbled. “So where does the action take place?”

  Sheila and Brenda pointed to an unoccupied area at the front.

  As the patrons began to fill the room, most, he noticed, had got into the spirit of the 1950s theme. He, himself, had forsaken his sensible, casual trousers and short sleeved shirts, in favour of drainpipe jeans, complete with large turn-ups, and a leather jacket he had borrowed from a fellow shopkeeper who was into the 50s. Many of the other Sanford 3rd Age Club members had entered the spirit of the evening. Captain Les Tanner had turned out in post-World War Two khaki battle dress (ensuring his three pips were in place on the shoulders) George Robson and Owen Frickley were dressed as teddy boys, while Alec Staines and his wife Julia had come out in formal evening dress, he in a tuxedo complete with bowtie, she in a spreading dress with plunging neckline lending her the appearance of Alma Cogan. For their part, Sheila had put on a pencil skirt and cropped jacket business suit, with a pillbox hat, and Brenda turned up as a teddy girl.

  “You look very James Dean, Joe,” Brenda commented as Joe removed his leather jacket to reveal his favoured and modern gilet beneath. “Or you did.”

  “And you look very, er, six-five special.”

  “Ooh, Joe,” Sheila cried, “I wouldn’t have thought you’d remember the Six-Five Special.”

  “I don’t,” he confessed. “Well, I do, but only just.”

  “Josephine Douglas and Pete Murray, your namesake.”

  “Don Lang & His Frantic Five,” Sheila echoed.

  “How the hell do you two remember it?” Joe demanded. “You were only toddlers, like me.”

  “Older siblings, Joe,” Sheila explained. “My eldest brother was almost ten years older than me.”

  “And my sister is a good seven or eight years older than me,” Brenda echoed.

  “Whereas your Arthur is only two years older then you,” Sheila went on, “so he wouldn’t remember it, either.”

  Many people had opted for demob suits, and styles which were more forties than fifties.

  “Difficult to pin down the early years of the 1950s,” Joe commented as the waiter delivered consommé for starters. “It’s only after Bill Hayley and Elvis showed up that young people began to define themselves.”

  Brenda tucked her napkin down her neckline and spread it to cover her white cotton top. “I wonder why this crowd chose the fifties.”

  “I think the map says it all, dear,” Sheila said. “It’s Southern England and Normandy: the D-Day landings.”

  Joe placed his napkin on his knee. “It also tells you in the guide if you read it.”

  “So you did read some of it,” Brenda commented, putting out her tongue at him.

  Joe was not listening. He was watching Melanie’s troupe take their table in the dimmed corner of the room.

  He had not been taking much notice earlier in the day, and the only one he recognised was the man who had been so familiar with Wendy Grimshaw. He was now dressed in a tuxedo and sporting a row of medal ribbons across the breast pocket. Despite their makeup and theatrical disguises, Joe could not see Melanie amongst them. He was not surprised when she appeared carrying a radio mike, and stood alongside the map.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, please continue with your meal,” she announced, her voice booming around the room. “My name is Melanie Markham, the producer and director of this weekend’s entertainment, and I’d like to give you some of the basic information you will need. Tonight is Colonel Gregory Haliwell’s 60th birthday, and he has invited a few guests to join him in the celebration.”

  Melanie gestured at the table, and the actor playing Haliwell stood up and took a bow.

  “With him are his wife and daughter, his daughter’s fiancé, two business acquaintances and the wife of one of those men, his biographer and a Romanian countess, also a business acquaintance. Over the course of the weekend, at least one of them will be murdered. The clues will appear as we work our way through the weekend. Can you unmask the killer? I leave you now, ladies and gentlemen, with Haliwell’s Heroes.”

  To a round of polite applause, Melanie ducked off to one side, and started up the video camera, and while a waiter dropped a plate of steamed fish before Joe, the lights came up over the party at the front. The actors began their work, their voices clearly audible through microphone pickups, and their actions visible on the multiple-screens.

  ***

  Swilling brandy round a large balloon, Colonel Gregory Haliwell tossed his newspaper onto the table. “Interesting item in The Times,” he said with
a throwaway gesture at the newspaper. “Exactly a year today since Lydia Beauchamp was found murdered. Naturally, it remains unsolved. One wonders what the devil the police do with our taxes, eh?”

  Alongside him, a dowdily dressed young brunette asked, “Lydia Beauchamp, Colonel? I don’t think you’ve mentioned her.”

  The colonel beamed benignly upon her. “You may be my biographer, Miss Dolman, but that doesn’t mean I have to tell you everything.”

  “Well, you can tell us, Daddy,” said his daughter Theresa from her end of the table, on the colonel’s right. “Who was she?”

  “British liaison officer with the French Resistance in Normandy,” Haliwell replied, and stretched across the table to pull the ashtray his way. “I never met the lady, but she had a fearsome reputation. Deadly with the garrotte. It was she and her team who gathered all the intelligence for our assault on Chateau Armand. You remember her, Wilson.”

  From the opposite end of the table, Captain Christopher Wilson, his regimental blazer bedecked with ribbons, shook his head. “I was never at Chateau Armand, sir. I was further North; with the 50th at Bayeux.”

  From Theresa’s vicinity, former Lieutenant Michael Crenshaw asked, “Chateau Armand, sir?”

  “Small place, a few miles south of Caen.” The colonel gazed longingly at the map. “Our finest hour. You’re probably not familiar with the tale, Countess Lucescu.”

  To the right of the table, beyond Wilson and his wife, a slender woman, her tight fitting, floor-length, spangled dress, clashing with her garish, red hair, spoke in an unconvincing middle European accent. “If it is D-Day, I know nothink of it. It was not until after the war that I had to flee my beloved Varna. When the communists took over the country, my fellow Romanians were not forgivink of the aristocracy.”

  “A hellish battle, Crenshaw,” Haliwell declared. “But you wouldn’t know, would you? I believe you were second echelon. Supply Corps.”

  “We came ashore on Sword, sir, and made our way inland from there. We took our fair share of flak.” Crenshaw replied. “Particularly from the Luftwaffe.”

  “Course you did, old man. Course you did, but I’m not just talking about fighters strafing us, you know. Chateau Armand was a Jerry stronghold, you know. Sits south of Caen, well hidden in the local country, and just off a major supply route for the Nazis. Well defended, too, and don’t listen to any of that tommyrot about the Bosch being ready to lay down their arms and surrender. They fought like demons. We had the superior numbers. Four hundred men to their one hundred and fifty, and we had some support from the RAF, but we’d been ordered to take the place intact, so the boys in blue couldn’t bomb the place. Three days. Three damned days before Jerry finally ran for it. And then we learned the swine had wired it with explosives. Brought the whole, bloody building down.” Lighting a cigar, pushing his brandy glass to one side, and drawing the large glass ashtray even closer towards himself, Haliwell turned to Wilson. “You sure you weren’t there, Wilson?”

  “I think if you cast your mind back, sir, you’ll recall that I was never at Chateau Armand,” Wilson replied, stretching across the table to flick cigarette ash into the ashtray. “Saw some pretty heavy fighting, of course, but none of the close quarter combat you chaps had. Tell you what, though, I did meet Lydia Beauchamp. Very briefly. Striking looking woman. Dark-haired siren, looked like a gypsy girl. Odd thing, though. She had no sense of smell. An accident or something, with explosives. Stopped off to pick up supplies, and then she was on her way to Caen.”

  The elderly woman at Crenshaw’s side clucked. “I do wish you would stop talking about the war, Gregory.”

  “Let me remind you, Sadie, if it were not for men like me and Captain Wilson, and Theresa’s young fella…” Haliwell gestured at Crenshaw, “you’d be grovelling up under the heel of the jackboot. We had to fight, woman, fight.” The colonel cast a sour eye on the man the other side of Theresa. “We were not sat on our bottoms shuffling money around.”

  “I’d have given anything to be there with you, sir,” said the man.

  “I’m sure you would, McLintock, I’m sure you would.” Haliwell’s tone was demeaning, barely the right side of scathing. “What was your problem again?”

  “Heart murmur,” McLintock replied diffidently. “Unfit for military service.” Like Wilson, he too, stretched to drop cigarette ash into the ashtray.

  “And Patrick’s job with the Treasury was as vital as yours in France,” Theresa defended him.

  “Nonsense,” Crenshaw retorted. He half stood, reached across the table, and stubbed out his cigarette.

  The colonel, oblivious to the problems he was causing for everyone, relit his cigar and drew the ashtray even nearer. “Now, Crenshaw…”

  Cutting him off, McLintock’s response was equally critical and aimed at Crenshaw. “Where do you think the money came from to pay for the supplies you shipped to the front line forces?” McLintock left a pause filled with meaning. “Or sold on at a profit.”

  Crenshaw let loose his rage. “What the hell are you suggesting? For your information, McLintock, I could account for every item that passed through our stores.” He, too, paused, before going on with unmistakable venom. “Which is more than may be said about the fivers passing through your books.”

  “Are you accusing me of embezzlement?”

  “Well, no one’s yet worked out where you came by the money to start up after the war.”

  “It was a loan from my father,” McLintock argued.

  “And if the rumours are to be believed, that’s not the only favour your father did you. Heart murmur indeed.”

  “I’ll show you how weak my heart is.”

  McLintock half rose, Crenshaw followed suit, Wilson leapt to his feet, and came half way round the table. During the furore, Countess Lucescu swapped her glass with Wilson’s. It was an act carried out so surreptitiously that none of the tablemates noticed.

  “Gentlemen, gentlemen,” shouted Wilson. “Remember where we are. We’re here to celebrate the colonel’s birthday and whatever our personal differences, this kind of behaviour is uncalled for.”

  The two men sat down, glowering, simmering at each other. Colonel Haliwell tapped his hands together applauding Wilson.

  The captain reached across his superior’s shoulders, and over his glass of brandy to get at the ashtray. “Excuse me, sir.” He crushed out his cigarette and returned to his seat.

  With the intention of pouring oil on troubled waters, Countess Lucescu asked, “Did I hear a rumour that there was a large amount of Nazi gold hidden at Chateau Armand?”

  To her surprise, the colonel rounded angrily upon her. “It’s utter balderdash, young lady. You hear me. Complete tosh. I know. I was there.” He pointed an accusing finger at her. “You would do well to learn some British manners, madam.”

  “Hear, hear,” said Wilson, making no attempt to hide his irritation with Zara Lucescu. “There never was any gold at Chateau Armand. You have my word upon that.”

  “But…”

  Wilson rounded on her with a glare that plainly said, ‘shut up.’

  Alongside the colonel, his plump wife sipped at her brandy. “I heard a rumour, too, Zara. One that says you were not entirely unsympathetic to the Nazi cause.”

  “Iss not true,” said the countess. “The whole of Romania was on the side of the Allies, but we were hoping they would help save the Soviets and the Bolsheviks from coming to power.” She dabbed at a tear in her eye. “You should see what they do to my beloved Varna, those German bombers. A city destroyed. But I am not responsible for the actions of my government,” she cried. “I am just one person. What can I do?”

  “Course not, m’dear,” agreed Haliwell. “You got out while the going was good. Chances are, the Reds would have had you shot or shipped off to some gulag in Siberia.”

  Captain Wilson clapped his hands together. “Enough of this bickering, ladies and gentlemen. We’re here tonight to celebrate the birthday of our good friend and bene
factor, Colonel Gregory Haliwell. I give you a toast. Colonel Haliwell.”

  They raised their glasses. “Colonel Haliwell,” they called in unison.

  Basking in their generosity, Haliwell drank from his balloon. He gasped, gagged, clutched at his throat, dropped the glass and fell, face forward onto the table.

  “Do stop being so melodramatic, Gregory,” insisted his wife as she shook him.

  The colonel did not move. Concern etched itself into the faces around the table. Wilson’s wife, Valerie pushed back her chair, rounded her husband, and pressed a hand to his neck.

  “Oh my god. He’s dead.”

  Facing the colonel, Theresa screamed and flopped to the floor in a faint. McLintock and Crenshaw hurried to be first to her. Zara put a hand over her shocked mouth, Mrs Haliwell sat stunned, Captain Wilson and Miss Dolman gawped.

  “Are you sure, Val?” Wilson asked.

  “I am a doctor, Christopher. Of course I’m sure.” Valerie looked around the table at the brandy glasses. Picking up the colonel’s, she sniffed cautiously at it. She put the glass down with a grimace. “Sweet almonds. Prussic acid.” She took in their shocked faces. “Potassium cyanide.”

  “But he drank from the glass earlier,” McLintock protested.

  “Correct, Mr McLintock,” agreed Val Wilson. “And cyanide works practically instantaneously, which means it cannot have been in the glass earlier. And you all know what that means. One of us put it in the glass. One of us is a murderer.”

  ***

  The lights at the front of the dining room dimmed and a spontaneous round of applause broke out.

  Abandoning her camera, Melanie appeared again. “There you have it ladies and gentlemen. Discord amongst Haliwell’s Heroes, and one of them is a murderer. But which one? There are clues already, but I will not give you any hints.” She smiled secretively at them. “You’ll find maps and an encyclopaedia here on the table, which may or may not help you in your search for the truth. The dinner guests will now leave the table. The police will not arrive until breakfast tomorrow morning when a mannequin will be placed in the colonel’s seat. The cast may be found about the hotel during the evening, and you are free to question them. Please don’t crowd them. If you see others questioning a member of the cast, don’t force your way in. Please bide your time. You’ll all have the opportunity. One last thing. The colonel, played by our wonderful leading man, Gerry Carlin, will be about the hotel this evening, but he will not answer any of your questions. He is, after all, dead. He will, however, answer your questions tomorrow, when he returns as Inspector O’Keefe of Scotland Yard.” Melanie paused a moment. “Thank you, ladies and gentlemen, enjoy your evening.”