Dead Cold Mystery Box Set 3

by Blake Banner

  “When everybody arrived at the scene just moments later, it was to find a suicide. My good friend Henry spotted the inconsistencies, the lack of GSR on the old man’s hand, the trajectory of the bullet, the lack of scorching around the entry wound. But following the Holmesian dictum, eliminate the impossible…” I shrugged. “It seemed that the impossible was that it was murder, therefore, however unlikely, by some fluke the GSR had been blown away from the hand and the gun’s recoil had altered the trajectory of the slug, yadda yadda, in short, it was suicide.

  “But in fact, the impossible was that it was suicide. And if it was impossible for the murderer to have been in the room, then the murderer had to be outside the room. That meant he shot through a hole which he later covered up. Once you accepted that, it was not hard to see where that hole had been, because, as you correctly deduced, Henry, the shot came from the fireplace.”

  Henry did a lot of slow nodding, then smiled at Dehan. “I’ll ask you again, Carmen, how do you tolerate him?”

  She offered him a lopsided smile. “He takes me on these amazing holidays.”

  Inspector Harris was scratching his head. “But, hold on there a munit, are you sayin’ that Mr. Gordon Sr. mardard his own father and his own son? An’, if so, why is Mr. Armstrong in cuffs?”

  I shook my head. “No. Mr. Gordon killed his father and inherited the estate on the terms of the will, as you have described them, holding it on trust for the Armstrongs. But Mr. Armstrong did not know the terms of the will, and Mr. Gordon was not about to tell him.

  “Now, Mr. Armstrong was the gardener. He was familiar with the tool shed and he had no doubt about how his employer had pulled off the murder. The thing was, he would never be able to prove it, and so he he had no choice but to accept almost forty years of humiliation—and Charles Sr. did enjoy inflicting a bit of humiliation on those around him—working as a gardener in the house that he knew the old man had intended to be his.

  “Then, almost forty years later, he hooks up with a young lady who works as a secretary at the very law firm where Gordon’s will is safely stashed away. Now, if Old Man Gordon was obsessed with his heritage, so was Robert Armstrong, but in a very different way. It is not long before he tells his girlfriend, Lizzie, all about it, and she says to him, ‘Why don’t I sneak a look at the will and see if there is anything in it that we can use to claim your inheritance?’ But what she finds is a bombshell. What she finds is that as soon as Charles Sr. dies, the estate passes to the Armstrongs.”

  I looked at Armstrong and Lizzie. “They found exactly what Gordon had found all those years before, that the only thing standing between them and a fortune was another man’s life. And Armstrong already knew how Charles Sr. had done it. All he had to do was repeat the exercise.

  “But, there was a hitch, that safety clause that the old man had put into the will—if Old Man Gordon were to die before marrying Mrs. Armstrong, and upon his death his son were still alive and in residence at the castle, then the estate would go to his son.” I paused and nodded, looking at Pam. “But, of course, it was rumored all over the island, and nobody knew for sure whether it was true or not—that both Charles Sr. and Charles Jr. were Old Man Gordon’s sons. It was even odds that they were not father and son, but half-brothers. So they both had to be eliminated. Did you ever have his paternity checked, Pam?”

  She shook her head. “They were both as bad as each other. Charles was my son, not theirs. He was good and kind and gentle, nothing like either of them.” She stared at me a moment. “If he did it, why did he always maintain it was murder?”

  I shrugged. “What better cover?”

  She sighed, then looked at Mackenzie. “So what happens to me now? Do I lose everything?”

  He shook his head. “Not at all. Old Man Gordon was very concerned not to be taken advantage of. He was as canny as a Scotsman, even if he was an American. He had it written into the will that if he or his son were murdered, the trust would fail and the entire estate would go to his immediate next of kin. That would be you, Mrs. Gordon.”

  Armstrong leaned forward on the sofa, his face crimson and the veins in his head swollen and pulsing. He screamed, “Ut’s mine, you filthy, whooring bitch! Ut’s mine! D’ya hear! Mine!”

  She didn’t flinch. She watched him coolly and when he’d finished, she softly shook her head. “No, Bobby Armstrong. It’s mine.”

  EPILOGUE

  “It’s the Gulf Stream,” I said. “It comes all the way from Mexico, bringing warm currents and warm air.”

  The full moon was sitting about four inches above the horizon, laying a deceptive path of liquid light across an inky ocean to a soft, sandy shore, where small waves spilled onto the beach and then sighed as they withdrew back into the deep.

  Dehan pulled the bottle of white wine from the ice bucket we had stuck in the sand between us and refilled my glass and hers.

  “I don’t care,” she said. “England is supposed to be foggy and rainy, with cute red phone boxes and big green hedgerows. It is not supposed to have palm trees and white sandy beaches.”

  I shrugged. “This is Cornwall. Cornwall is different.”

  She sipped. “This is a weird island.”

  “It’s a weird archipelago.”

  “Good weird, but weird.” She was quiet for a moment, then said, “So Pam is paying for this?”

  “She insisted. She wanted to honor her husband’s commitment.”

  “So you thought you’d go for a two-week tour of five-star hotels in a self-drive classic car at two thousand bucks a week.”

  “It’s an Aston-Martin DB6, like the one James Bond drove. I thought it was fair. I ruined my tuxedo to save her castle, it was the least she could do.”

  She rested her head on my shoulder and we both sipped. “You’re about as weird as this archipelago, you know that.”

  “It’s why you like me. You’re as weird as I am.”

  “You never did tell me what your connection is with this place.”

  “Nope, but I will.”

  She sighed. “So where to tomorrow?”

  “I thought we’d stay at the Old Parsonage in Oxford and then move on to the Ritz in London. There we can go to the opera at Covent Garden before flying back on Friday.”

  She was quiet for a while, then said, “Back to the Bronx and the 43rd Precinct.”

  I nodded. A cool breeze blew in off the sea and touched our skin. I kissed the top of her head.

  “It’s the same moon, you know, here and there.”

  BOOK 12

  THE BUTCHER OF WHITECHAPEL

  ONE

  Our American Airlines flight was due to depart from London Heathrow at five in the afternoon. We had decided to be there two hours earlier so that we could have time for a martini in the bar before boarding. That meant we had booked our taxi to the airport for two. So at one forty-five, we were in the lobby of our hotel on Picadilly, settling our bill, while our luggage was taken out to await the cab, when my phone rang. The screen told me it was Inspector John Newman, the chief at our precinct in the Bronx.

  I thumbed green and he spoke before I did.

  “John, it’s John. I hope you’ve had a great honeymoon.”

  “Thanks, we have. Not what we expected, but interesting[1]. We’re just…”

  “I imagine you’re just about heading for the airport, are you…?”

  “Yup. That’s what we’re doing. Planning to have a…”

  “Here’s the thing, John. How would you feel about staying on a few days?”

  I blinked at Dehan, who was watching me without expression, then I held up a hand to the concierge and said into the phone, “Um…”

  “I realize it’s short notice…”

  “I just settled the bill, sir.”

  “I think you’ll find the reservation has been extended, as a courtesy…”

  I stared a moment at Dehan, then at the concierge, who was frowning at his screen. “Our reservation has been extended…?” I said, n
ot quite sure whom I was asking.

  Dehan screwed up her face and mouthed, ‘what?’ and the concierge looked at me with raised eyebrows and nodded.

  “What’s this about, sir?”

  “Your friend, Detective Inspector Harry Green, he’s asked Scotland Yard to request you as a special consultant.”

  “A consultant? On what, sir?”

  “Well, I’d better let him explain that. I think you’ll find he’s sent a car for you. Keep me posted, John. Enjoy your extended, um, honeymoon…”

  The line went dead. Dehan gave me a ‘what the hell’ shrug and the concierge said, “Shall I have your luggage taken back up, sir? It seems you are in the honeymoon suite for another week…” He raised an eyebrow. “Courtesy of Scotland Yard!”

  “Yes, please. It seems we are.”

  Dehan smiled and raised both her eyebrows dangerously high toward her hairline. “Do I get a say in this?”

  “Apparently not. That was the Inspector. Harry has a car on the way. He will explain more fully when we see him, but it seems we are consulting for Scotland Yard, my dear Watson.”

  “Super.”

  We didn’t have to wait long. Ten minutes later, a guy in his mid-twenties with short, fair hair and dark glasses came in, scanning the foyer as he walked. His eyes fell on us where we were sitting and he approached, removing his glasses and smiling without his eyes. “Mr. and Mrs. Stone?”

  We stood. “Are you the man from Scotland Yard?”

  We shook. “Detective Inspector Green asked me to come over and fetch you. My car is outside.” He glanced around. “Nice. We don’t usually put people up at the Ritz.”

  Dehan grunted, “Yeah, it’s a long story. Any idea what this is about?”

  “I think DI Green had better explain that, ma’am.”

  New York, like all American cities, was designed on purpose by men imbued with the ideals of the Age of Reason and empirical logic, who thought, for better or worse, that it made sense to lay out the roads in a grid.

  London was not designed on purpose. It grew organically over more than two thousand years, and the roads, lanes and streets—or at least most of them—follow paths laid down first by nomadic hunter-gatherers, then by cattle herders and farmers bringing their goods to market, and after that, by the increasing ebb and flow of people, drawn to the docks that send out ships and adventurers to the world’s greatest empire, and received its bounty in return; and to the narrow, cobbled streets and dark taverns of Westminster, where men plotted on how to relieve the Spanish of their ill-gotten gold, and how to squash upstart French emperors. The streets of London reflect all of that to this day.

  We wound and wove and wended our way among an extraordinary mismatch of buildings that comprised the ultra modern in glass and steel and the ultra ancient in crooked timber and plaster and all kinds of stuff in between, including ’30s functional and post-Blitz hideous. We eventually came out onto Whitechapel Road, which is long and dreary and ugly and seems to go on forever, until finally, we turned right at a large intersection into New Road. From there we made a left into Newark Street and right into Halcrow Street and stopped outside a dark blue door with a brass knob and a brass number 1 on it.

  The street was just seven houses long, and most of it was taken up with the police presence: There were a couple of uniforms outside the door in reflective yellow jackets, white police tape had been deployed across the length of the house, and there were two patrol cars, an unmarked VW, a crime scene van and an ambulance, all blocking the road.

  The driver smiled at us in the mirror, without making it look like a smile, and said, “DI Green will be inside. Have a good one.”

  We thanked him and climbed out. A uniformed sergeant approached with curious eyes that didn’t quite conceal a mixture of hostility and amusement. “Help you, sir, madam?”

  I didn’t hold it against him. I could imagine how the boys and girls at the 43rd would feel if a guy from Scotland Yard was shipped in to ‘consult’ for us on one of our cases. I smiled. “I don’t know. We were boarding a plane and DI Green sent for us. I have no idea what this is about.” I nodded at the door. “I believe he’s inside.”

  He nodded. “Your names, sir, madam?”

  “John Stone, this is my wife, Carmen Stone.”

  “Detectives Stone and Dehan,” he said, “Of the NYPD.” It wasn’t a question. He raised the tape for us to pass through.

  I said, “We’re supposed to be on holiday.”

  He grinned. “Not anymore, you’re not. Right at the top. Heads up: it’s not pretty.”

  We stepped through the door into a narrow hallway. The staircase ascended the left wall and on the right, a passage led past two doors to a small kitchen at the back. We climbed the stairs to a small landing on the top floor. There, a woman in a white, plastic suit frowned at us and said, “Who are you?”

  “John and Carmen Stone. DI Green sent for us.”

  “Oh,” she said. “The Americans. He’s in there. Try not to throw up, at least not in the room. It’s a crime scene.”

  She squeezed past us and we stood back to let her by. Harry appeared at the door and stepped out to shake our hands. “John, Carmen, let me prepare you before you come in and have a look.”

  I nodded. “I’d appreciate that. What’s going on, Harry? We were on our way to the airport.”

  He nodded and sighed. “I know, and I do apologize, but it will all become clear. John, I think you could be a real help to us on this.” He glanced at Dehan. “No offense intended at all. But John has seen this before. He knows all about it. Go on in and have a look, John. Be prepared. It’s not pretty.”

  The Brits have a genius for understatement. ‘Not pretty’ was a young woman in her mid twenties, naked, laid out with her hands nailed to the wooden floor. Her legs were spread, suggesting she had been raped, there was the handle of a kitchen knife protruding from her left, fifth intercostal where she had been stabbed through the heart and her belly had been cut open from her solar plexus to her pubic bone, post mortem. There was also a piece of paper over her face with the end of a meat skewer sticking out of it.

  The crime scene guys—the Brits call them SOCO—were dusting, examining and photographing the room. I had a quick look around. There wasn’t much to see at first glance. A white IKEA sofa, a chair to match, a coffee table and a large, flat screen TV. She was lying between the sofa and the TV. A door beside the sofa appeared to lead to a bedroom. I approached her head and hunkered down to look at the paper. The meat skewer was stuck through it, apparently into her eye. Somebody said, “Don’t touch that, please.”

  I looked up at Harry. He was leaning on the doorjamb. Dehan was standing next to him, frowning at the body. I said, “The eyes were perforated?”

  He nodded. “Both eyes.”

  “Post mortem?”

  “Yup.”

  There was writing, something printed on the paper. I knew there would be, and I had a pretty good idea of what it would say, but I had to inch around to read it. Harry said, “It says what you think it says.”

  I read aloud, “And them good ole boys were drinking whisky and rye…”

  I frowned, sighed and stood. “Who is she? Is she an American?”

  “Don’t know. No idea who she is.”

  Dehan jerked her head toward the bedroom door. “What about her ID?”

  I smiled at her. “The Brits don’t carry ID.”

  She raised her eyebrows and smiled. “No shit?”

  Harry gave a small laugh. “Not since the ’50s. They keep trying to force us, but we love to be awkward. So far, we have no indication of who she is. We’re tracking down the landlord…”

  “Who called it in?”

  “Neighbor downstairs, noticed her mail and her milk hadn’t been collected.”

  She nodded, then, after a moment, shrugged. “So what’s the deal?” She looked at me. “You’re asking if she’s American. She has part of the chorus to American Pie stuck to her eye… why are
we here? More to the point, why is he here?” She pointed at me.

  Harry went to answer and I said, “Let’s go downstairs.”

  Harry nodded. “Yeah, come on, we’ll go to the Blind Beggar.”

  Dehan winced at him. “Really?”

  He glanced at the girl nailed to the floor. “Yeah, sorry. The beer’s better than the White Hart. Let’s go.”

  We followed him down the narrow stairs and out into the late August afternoon. Overhead, heavy clouds were beginning to gather. He pointed to the unmarked VW and we climbed in, slammed the doors and headed at speed down Sidney Street, back toward Whitechapel Road.

  “You probably don’t notice it,” he said as he drove. “You haven’t been here for what, fifteen years? The capital is changing. Everybody’s leaving.” I looked out the window. It seemed to me that London’s eight million inhabitants were all out at the same time.

  Dehan spoke from the back seat. “Are you sure about that?”

  He laughed as he pulled up at the lights. “There are far fewer Europeans, and fewer refugees too. They’re leaving in droves because of Brexit. And a lot of the Muslim population, they’re worried that a far right government, hostile to Muslims, might come to power. They are seeing France and Germany as more welcoming, and Spain.”

  The lights changed and we crossed over and parked beside an old red brick Victorian pub with white stone embellishings, tall chimneystacks and elaborate scrolls around the date 1894 right at the top.

  The door rattled and clanged as we pushed inside. The public bar was almost empty. The walls were paneled in dark wood, there was an open fireplace, a long, highly polished bar with rows of big, wooden beer pumps, and a ginger cat sitting beside them, licking its paws.

  We found a table and Harry went to the bar to get three pints of bitter. Wile he was gone, Dehan gave me a once over and said, “If this were something normal, you would have told me about it by now. Why the big mystery?”

  I took a deep breath and let it out slow through puffed cheeks. “It’s what you’ve been asking me about since we got here, and what I have been avoiding talking about. Not…” I looked her in the eye. “Not because I don’t want you to know about it, but because it is hard for me to talk about. But I guess now we are going to have to, whether I want to or not.”