“This is a holiday,” Melanie told him. “Get with it, Joe.”
“Thanks,” he replied, “but I’m happier without it.”
Melanie rushed onto the dance floor to join her friends, and Joe made his way to his table, currently unoccupied, where he found a covered plate of snacks and savouries close to his long-since, flat beer.
Casting his gaze around the room, he was not the only one sitting it out. In her corner by the bar, Wendy Grimshaw sat talking earnestly with Gerry Carlin, and a few tables along from them, the Kendrews were still deep in discussion. A couple more tables from them and the subject of occasional glances from Fliss Kendrew, Naomi Barton was immersed in her book.
While he ate and collected a fresh drink, his friends, indeed most of his members, left the dance floor only occasionally to rattle him. For the most part, they stayed up there, dancing the evening away to The Macarena, Staying Alive, I will Survive, Sinatra singing New York, New York, a selection of Beatles, Rolling Stones and Abba (Joe’s personal favourites, but he still refused to dance). As the time wore on towards midnight, the DJ, sensing he had the cut of audience’s jib, ran some Rock ‘n’ Roll, a little Glam Rock, and a few tracks from Queen, Madonna and more modern boy and girl bands, successfully intermingling them to keep all happy.
Sitting on the sidelines, the determined wallflower, Joe enjoyed the music and as the heat in the disco rose, he drank more and more beer until, by ten minutes to midnight, he was rolling and ready to dance. By then, the tempo had slowed with Sinatra, again, singing My Way, Engelbert Humperdink warbling the Last Waltz, to which Joe complained the celebration was supposed to be New Year, not a wedding. He nevertheless wandered around the floor with Brenda and Sheila in turn, before sitting out Queen’s We Are the Champions on the grounds that he could not understand the relevance and in any event, he could barely stand up any longer.
As midnight approached, people looked at their watches with increasing frequency.
“We’re into the last thirty seconds of the year, folks,” the DJ yelled into his microphone. “Get ready for the big countdown.”
People stood all around the room and began to link arms. Joe, the room beginning to spin before him, nevertheless kept his eye on his targets. Wendy was with her team, including Naomi Barton, and Gerry Carlin and Melanie had tagged onto them. The Kendrews were off to one side with members of the Sanford 3rd Age Club.
The DJ led the countdown in the final ten seconds, until he reached zero and a huge cheer went up. Somewhere in the distance outside a bell chimed the hour, fireworks lit up the sky and the hundred or so people in the Scampton/Gibson Room began to sing the first of three verses of Auld Lang Syne, each faster than the preceding one.
Hugs and kisses were exchanged all round. Brenda and Sheila had tears in their eyes. Joe knew why, but when he checked on the Kendrews, they looked no happier now than they had done five minutes previously. Wendy Grimshaw showed no emotion other than pleasure. His two companions had been widows for about six years, Wendy for less than twenty-four hours, and yet Brenda and Sheila still missed their husbands more.
The party would go on for another hour before Joe, weaving from an excess of alcohol he had not taken for many a year, escorted his two best friends back to their room and, bidding them goodnight and a final Happy New Year, returned to his own room, threw off his clothing and hit the mattress.
Minutes later, he was asleep.
Chapter Eleven
When Joe arrived in the dining room at eight the following morning, it was immediately obvious that New Year’s Eve had claimed many casualties.
The stalwarts of the Sanford 3rd Age Club were there. It would take more than fast-flowing drink and extended opening hours to put the likes of the Staineses, Les and Sylvia, George, Owen, Mavis and Cyril, off their breakfast. The cast of Haliwell’s Heroes were gathered next door, in the Scampton Room, so Joe could not account for them, but the Grimshaw Kitchens party was now down to three: Fliss Kendrew, Den Ellerby and Nikki Taplow. Wendy, Naomi and Kendrew were all missing.
Joe’s tongue felt the like the inside of an unwashed fleece when he arrived in the dining room, and he realised instantly that he wasn’t alone. Many people greeted him with a churlish, “Happy New Year” and he grunted by return. It did not take much to work out that hangover was the theme of the morning.
Brenda, too, looked worse for wear, but Sheila was one of the few not to suffer.
“All things in moderation,” she said.
“Yes, well, you had your do on Friday night, didn’t you?” Joe pointed out as he helped himself to cereal and a cup of sweet tea.
“Odd, too,” Sheila said tucking into a bowl of porridge. “Fish doesn’t normally trouble me. It’s usually only fatty foods.”
Joe ran an appreciative eye over her. Like him, she was razor thin. Unlike him, she looked younger than her 55 years. “Not something that troubles you, is it? Fat?”
“I do wish you two would stop talking about food,” Brenda complained.
“Very well, dear,” Sheila agreed. “We have other matters to debate, don’t we?”
“If you’re gonna ask me for a solution to Haliwell’s Heroes, don’t,” Joe warned. “I’m not saying another word about it.”
“We have more serious investigations than that, Joe,” Sheila replied, pushing her bowl away.
“Yeah, well, I’m not much wiser on Reggie Grimshaw’s death, either.”
“I’m not talking about Reggie Grimshaw, either.” There was an accusative twinkle in Sheila’s eye. “Last night you asked us to save you some food because you had to nip upstairs for, quote, a quickie. Melanie Markham wasn’t far behind you, and neither of you came back until after ten. What the devil were you up to for all that time?”
Across the table, Brenda cackled and then winced as her hangover bit back. Trying desperately to maintain a light-hearted tone through the headache, she said, “You randy old sod. I never knew you were that good, Joe. Any bloke who can make it last for an hour and a half can’t be all bad. Or did you fall asleep after a ten minute roll on the rug?”
Brenda pushed the plate away, Sheila picked at hers and Joe tucked in before answering Brenda.
“For your information, I was checking something on the Web.”
“I’ve seen those sites myself,” said Brenda, keeping up the ribaldry. “They normally charge.”
“I’m surprised you’re not on most of them,” Joe riposted, and before Brenda could take umbrage, he detailed the story Naomi Barton and Den Ellerby had given him, and what he had learned on his web search.
“I must say, it doesn’t sound like a motive for murder,” Sheila commented as the Markham Murder Mysteries crew began to take their places.
Noticing that Billy Norman (Captain Wilson) and Emma Pemberley (Zara Lucescu) were missing, Joe watched Gerry Carlin, again dressed as Inspector O’Keefe, push his trilby hat back while he pinned up fresh photographs on the board. They were covered in white tissue so their contents could not yet be seen, and he guessed they would be revealed during the next set. Satisfied with his work, Carlin reset the trilby to shade his eyes and joined his fellow cast members at the table.
Ignoring the work of the players, keeping his voice low, Joe explained his reasoning to his two companions.
“It still sounds thin,” Sheila whispered. “In fact, I should judge young Kendrew had a bigger reason for keeping Reggie Grimshaw alive.”
“That was my feeling until Melanie explained the alternative,” Joe agreed.
Brenda picked up the admission immediately. “Oh, so it was Melanie’s idea.”
“You know, Brenda, I don’t know how you put up with it.”
“Put up with what?” she asked.
“People have been giving you stick for years about your, er, adventures. I’ve had less than forty-eight hours of it and I’m fed up already.”
Before Brenda could rise to him, Melanie took centre stage again.
“Good morning, ladies
and gentlemen. Well, that was a wonderful party last night, wasn’t it? I hope your hangovers are not too severe this morning, because the inquiry into the murders of Colonel Haliwell and Kerry Dolman is about to become a little more complex. As usual, this scene will continue to play on the TV screens throughout the morning, and the cast and evidence table will still be there for your inspection. So without further ado, I’ll hand you over to Inspector O’Keefe and his investigation into the murders of Haliwell’s Heroes.”
***
“I asked you here, ladies and gentlemen because I have questions to ask of you all,” O’Keefe began, “and yet, Mrs Wilson, I notice your husband is missing. May I ask where he is?”
“He went to fetch Zara Lucescu,” Valerie Wilson replied. “She wasn’t here, and Christopher, my husband, feels you need to speak to her more than you need to talk to the rest of us.”
O’Keefe appeared surprised. “And why is that? Or didn’t your husband tell you?”
“I should have thought that was obvious,” Crenshaw declared before Valerie could reply. “Damned woman is a closet Nazi. And if you ask me, the colonel was about to expose her in his memoir, and that’s why she killed Kerry Dolman, too. She was afraid the colonel had already dictated those passages to Kerry.”
The inspector paced before the table. “We’ve looked into Miss Lucescu’s past quite extensively, Mr Crenshaw, and I can assure you we have uncovered no connections with the Third Reich.”
“She will have covered her tracks,” said McLintock, for once siding with Crenshaw.
“An interesting theory, Mr McLintock. She did indeed cover her tracks, but she’s not alone. So have a number of you.” O’Keefe glared at McLintock. “Including you, sir.”
The younger man almost exploded. “What? Are you suggesting I… How dare you…”
“It’s very simple, Mr McLintock,” O’Keefe took over from the blustering stockbroker. “You were educated at Warmingdale, an exclusive private school in Surrey, I believe, and won a blue on the track at Cambridge.”
“Yes. What about it?”
“Prior to your graduation in 1938, sir, there was no mention of a heart murmur in any of your school or university medical reports.”
McLintock opened his mouth to protest, but the inspector carried on.
“We also note that your father arranged for your family doctor to examine you at the outbreak of war, and it was that same doctor who pronounced you medically unfit for active service.”
McLintock was suitably outraged. “Are you suggesting…”
“I’m not suggesting anything, sir. I am stating that your supposed heart condition was a ruse, arranged by your father to ensure that you were not called up during the war.”
Crenshaw’s lip curled in contempt. “I always knew you were a fake, McLintock.”
“Yes, Mr Crenshaw, but let’s look at your case, shall we?” O’Keefe suggested. “You were a lieutenant with the service corps in the second wave of landings on Sword Beach, weren’t you?”
“Yes. In the bloody thick of it. Not sitting at home counting the profits.”
“Indeed not sitting at home counting the profits, sir,” O’Keefe agreed. “Instead, you were sitting in Bayeux counting the profits made from selling off army rations to the local population at black market prices.”
Crenshaw controlled his anger. “That’s a scandalous lie.”
“What you mean, sir, is that it was never proven. And neither was the disappearance of two, fully fuelled four-ton trucks, dispatched, according to your records, to supply units gathering round Caen, but which travelled to a chateau some distance from the city according to the account of one driver, who was subsequently killed in action during the battle of Caen in July, 1944.”
“There was nothing wrong with my reports,” Crenshaw insisted. “If those four-tonners were diverted, it was not on my orders.”
“Quite,” O’Keefe said. “We’ll see about that.” He swung to face Valerie Wilson. “And now, Doctor Wilson.”
She wriggled uncomfortably in her seat. “What about me.”
“I wonder, madam, could you be the same Doctor Valerie Wilson who was suspended in 1948 after misdiagnosing a myocardial infarction as indigestion, and who, it subsequently transpired, made the mistake because she had attended work while under the influence of alcohol. And that incident, Mrs Wilson, wasn’t the first, was it?”
“Now look…”
She was interrupted by the sound of running feet coming from beyond the door. Captain Wilson burst into the room, breathless. “Zara,” he gasped. “Inspector, you’d better come. She’s dead. Strangled.”
***
To generous applause, the lights were dimmed once more. Joe continued to write, Sheila and Brenda compared notes.
“Joe was right all along about us being wrong,” Brenda commented.
“I’m always right about you being wrong,” Joe said.
Melanie appeared at the front once more.
“The plot thickens, ladies and gentlemen, the clues are coming in fast. Have you yet worked it out? Our next scene will be at one o’clock, and the final act will take place at six this evening. The full solution will be given at breakfast tomorrow morning, and I must have your summaries by midnight tonight if you are to be included in the competition.”
As she reached the close of her little speech, Joe signalled to her, and when she stepped down to a round of applause, she crossed to him and crouched alongside him.
“I owe you dinner,” he said, purposely keeping his voice down, much to the annoyance of his companions.
“I don’t know that you’ve got to within five percent of the solution,” Melanie said.
Joe chuckled. “I need a little more information, and I’ll give you my notes at lunchtime. Now where do you want to dine tonight?”
“You like Italian food?”
“Nope, I prefer Yorkshire to Umbria, but if you want Italian, that’s fine.”
“Gino’s. It’s about two hundred yards down from the hotel. On the same side. Reception will give you the number if you want to make a reservation.”
Joe nodded. “Eight o’clock?”
Now Melanie nodded. “That’s fine, Joe.”
Satisfied with his arrangements, even more satisfied that he was irritating Sheila and Brenda by not telling them what he was up to, Joe took out his tobacco and as he relaxed in his seat, he half turned to cast his eyes about the room.
Behind their table, Fliss Kendrew sat alone, making notes, occasionally pausing to sip her tea. Her brow was knitted into a semi-permanent frown, and Joe felt for her. Ever since their arrival, or certainly since the first night, she and her husband had been the centre of attention, and the subject of whispers.
“A little worse for wear this morning is he, Mrs Kendrew?”
She looked up from her notes. Joe got the impression that if her eyes were daggers, he would have been impaled.
Fliss made effort to modulate her voice. “He’s unwell, Mr Murray. I don’t think he could stand the backstabbing any longer.”
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“You should be. You’re the one who started the rumours.”
If her husband was a man on the edge, Fliss was exactly the opposite. She was in total control. She simply no longer cared who heard or what anyone thought of her. As one who had never really cared about other peoples’ opinions, and therefore did not care who heard him, Joe understood at once. But that understanding did not preclude defending himself.
“If you take a step back, I think you’ll find it was your husband who stoked the fires himself.”
Fliss folded away her notebook, drank her tea and stood up, gathering her belongings. “That may be, but it didn’t take you long to fan the flames, did it?” Holding her head high, she marched to the door.
She did not make it. Before she could get there, the double doors crashed open and her husband staggered in. Dressed in his business suit, his shirt collar open, tie awry, he
was unshaven, his hair scattered about his head, and tears were streaming down his cheeks.
“Naomi,” he cried to his wife. “She’s dead.”
***
Silence engulfed the room. Joe felt all eyes turn from Kendrew to him. With a sigh, he stood up. “Sort him and her out, will you?” he ordered his companions, and while Sheila and Brenda moved to gently guide Kendrew to his table, Joe addressed the whole room. “Right, ladies and gentlemen, we appear to have another, er, situation. If you’ll all stay put, I’ll check it out.”
He left the dining room with a good deal less speed than he had after the announcement of Reggie’s death, and walked to reception, where Cliff Denshaw was on the phone. Seeing Joe, he ended his call, put the receiver down, and smiled a greeting. “Good morning, Mr Murray. How may I help you?”
Joe jerked a thumb back at the dining room. “We’ve just been told there’s another body.”
Denshaw continued smiling. “I assume you mean the Countess Lucescu from Haliwell’s Heroes?”
Joe sighed again. “No I do not. I mean Naomi Barton. Christ, man, didn’t you see Robbie Kendrew just now?”
The colour drained from Denshaw’s face. “I noticed him, yes, sir, but I was on the telephone. I didn’t take much notice.”
“Well, he says Naomi Barton is dead. We need to check her room.”
His hands shaking, Denshaw searched the key rack. “She’s in 107,” he muttered and took the appropriate key. Handing it to Joe, he went on, “I’m not sure, er, I can, er you know… handle this, Mr Murray.”
“Listen, sunshine, I need someone in authority up there as a witness. You’re the man in authority.”
“Yes, but it’s… could you not find someone else?”
The sigh this time was one of pure exasperation. “Get the key, come with us. I’ll ask Sheila or Brenda.” He marched back into the dining room where he found his companions now seated one table back trying to calm the distraught Kendrew. “Sheila, could you come with me?”
Murder at the Murder Mystery Weekend Page 16
