by Paul Magrs
‘I think so,’ I say.
Effie looks less sure. ‘I think you were making a whole lot of bother for yourself.’
Sheila smiles, as if she should have known Effie wouldn’t understand. ‘I told him I didn’t care what had gone on in the past. So long as he treated me proper. I know all his other girlfriends and wives, even his grown-up daughter, hadn’t met very pleasant fates. He was a dangerous man to be around. But I was seventeen and gorgeous and I thought I was invulnerable.’ She pauses and says, ‘Let me show you something.’
Sheila leads us to a concealed door and opens it with great ceremony. The space inside glows like a shrine and she lights a stick of incense and mumbles a prayer of greeting to the assemblage of objects within. Effie and I draw in our breath sharply at what we see.
A gold and green silken robe stands suspended, as if still occupied by his withered body. On a shelf above, a skullcap, and, beneath that, several jars and pots elaborately lacquered in gold and black. There is a photo in a blood red frame, of a refined-looking Chinese gentleman of advanced years. His hooded eyes are blank and dark and yet they still seem to project amazing malevolence across the gap of years.
‘Sweetheart,’ Sheila sighs. ‘This is Brenda and Effie, and they are here to help us. I know you would approve of them. They will get to the bottom of all this. They’ll find out who it is who’s wanting to hurt your Sheila.’ She looks to us and smiles proudly. ‘Isn’t he handsome? Look how wide his brow was. Just imagine how magnificently huge his brain used to be, plotting away inside there! He was a criminal mastermind! A complete genius!’
What do you say in these situations? I stammer politely and say, ‘I like his robe.’
‘Ah.’ Sheila chuckles. ‘That’s how he got his name. Mu-Mu Manchu. It was my pet name for him and it stuck.’ Gently she closes the door and bolts it carefully. ‘Good night, my darling.’
Effie is shooting me sideways glances.
Sheila picks up her story, sitting back heavily on her swivel chair. ‘So. 1974. We leave the big smoke. The dirty city. We leave the bright lights of my Soho and the dingy lights of his East End behind for ever. My husband gives up his various schemes to conquer the western world. It hadn’t worked out in the end, but he wasn’t completely disheartened. He didn’t think his life wasted. He’d had a smashing time, he said, and I don’t think it’s vain of me to think of myself as some small consolation.’
‘Indeed,’ Effie says.
‘So he was happy when we came here. He set me up with this place. The Hotel Miramar. He knew I would need some security after he passed on. Obviously, being ninety-two years older than me, he knew that I’d need something to see me through. And I flung myself and all my energies into this place. Into making it work. But, like I say, people weren’t always welcoming. They looked down at me, and I was just doing my best. “Never mind them, girl,” Mu-Mu would tell me. “You just do your thing.” So I did, vulgar as they might have found it. All-night gambling and the discotheque. Strippers and Grab-a-Granny Nites. Swingers’ weekends. Whatever I could think of to bring the punters in.’
Effie looks uncomfortable and I realise that hers must have been one of the voices commenting disfavourably on the Hotel Miramar back then.
‘ “Just be yourself, girl,” Mu-Mu would tell me. “There’s nothing wrong in doing exactly what you want and stuff the rest of them.” And he was right, bless him. He passed away three years after we got here. He didn’t get a chance to see this place at its best. He didn’t get to see what a success, a gold mine, I’ve managed to turn it into. He’d be so proud to see the naysayers so jealous of me. He died in 1977. During a street party for the Silver Jubilee. A fit of anti-British apoplexy.’ Sheila sighed. ‘I always told him he’d do himself a mischief, one of these days.’
We fall quiet, respectfully, at this turn in the tale. Effie is still trying to catch my attention subtly. I can’t look at her to find out what she wants.
‘So . . . what can we help you with?’ I prompt. ‘Won’t you tell us what’s happened?’
Great big tears are welling up in her green, glittering eyes. ‘I . . . had a letter, yesterday morning. What you might call a poison pen letter. It was saying the vilest things. Horrible, vindictive things. All about me and Mu-Mu and the long-buried past.’ She lets out a shuddering sigh and dabs her eyes with Effie’s lilac hanky. ‘Whoever wrote it knew all about everything. Everything that ever went on in our lives. They knew things that shouldn’t be known. Impossible things. Damaging things . . .’
I gulp. ‘Where is it? This letter? May we see it?’
Sheila looks at us sharply. ‘You’ll help me then? You’ll look into this?’
‘We’ll see what we can do,’ Effie says. Her voice is calm and determined, with only a hint of warmth to it. ‘But we’ll need to see the evidence, of course.’
‘Oh, thank you both,’ Sheila gasps. ‘It has really upset me, this. You wouldn’t believe how hideous it’s been. Someone dredging up the past like this . . .’
‘So where is it?’ asked Effie. ‘The letter?’
‘It’s in my room. Upstairs in the hotel. Locked away. I didn’t want to take any chances of it slipping out of my grasp. And I wanted to be sure you would help me before I passed it over to you.’
‘Sensible.’ Effie nods.
‘Is the writer of the letter threatening you?’ I ask her. ‘Or trying to extort money from you?’
‘No, nothing like that. Just saying awful things.
Gloating. Jeering. Letting me know that they . . . know absolutely everything about . . . Mu-Mu and me . . .’
I reach across the desk and pat her dimpled hand. ‘We will do our best. You asked the right people for help.’
Sheila tells us to enjoy ourselves. We have come all this way to see her and listen to her woes – the least she can do is offer us a few free drinks and a decent night out at the Yellow Peril. ‘Don’t even think about my dreadful story for the rest of this evening,’ she says, showing us out of her office. ‘Put it out of your minds. Enjoy. Make merry. And, if you will, return tomorrow and I will hand the horrible document over into your care.’
‘Very well,’ says Effie. I can see her eyes light up. She can’t wait to find out what the letter says.
At first I’m not so sure about us sticking around at the Yellow Peril for the evening. Effie’s not the kind to make merry at the drop of a hat, and it really isn’t my scene at all. But when Sheila opens the soundproof door and lets us back into the subterranean discotheque, something about the wild drumming and pounding of the music gets into me. It gets into Effie too, like a demon, like a spirit of devilment.
Next thing we know, having bidden Sheila good night, we’re having a twirl around together on the fringes of the dance floor. It must be a very popular tune this one, as it seems everyone is up on their feet, bopping about and grinning. Sheila has melted away into the crowd and it’s as if she has taken all her sadness and gloom with her.
Effie is puffing and panting and strutting about with her hands in the air. What’s got into her? Shimmying about. Dancing rings round me. Shaking her skinny old bottom! But I’m the same! I’m hopping about on one leg and then the other, the slightly slimmer one, the one that’s better at dancing. I’m clapping my hands in the air, in time to the beat. It’s a long time since I’ve gone on like this. We’re up on the checkerboard dance floor. We’re moving towards the centre. Somehow the crowd of busy, jostling show-offs has opened up a space and we’re bang in the middle! We’re in with the in-crowd! It’s Friday night and we’ve gone dance crazy!
‘What are we doing?’ I lean in, laughing, and ask Effie at the top of my voice.
‘I don’t know!’ she gasps. ‘But isn’t it great?’
‘What do you think about Sheila?’ I ask.
‘Were those tears put on, do you think?’ she bellows over the blasting music. ‘There’s certainly something going on here. Something a bit nasty.’
I pull a face
. Sheila seemed genuine enough to me. But what do I care? I’m dancing! I’m spinning around! I can hardly catch my breath!
And then I notice something that slows me down a bit.
There’s someone watching us from a table at the edge of the floor. He’s drinking a green cocktail and nodding in time to the music. An older gent with a crimson bald head, which he mops now and then with his handkerchief. He’s wearing a tweedy three-piece, rather antiquated. He must be lathered in here. The mirrored walls are misted up with steam. What’s he looking at? What’s so amazing about Effie and me? How come he’s not eyeing up all the young ones in their hotpants and what-have-yous? But he isn’t. The old gent with the silver ’tache – I nudge Effie and point him out to her – he’s watching us. He catches my eye and raises his glass to us.
‘Cheeky old thing,’ Effie mouths at me. We pretend to ignore him, shuffling our feet and jogging our elbows to a slower track.
And so the night goes on at the Yellow Peril.
I’m awake at three twenty. I’m sitting up straight in my bed and my heart’s thudding like an old boiler with its blue pilot light flaring like mad. Outside, in the hall, there’re these awful noises. Scritch. Scratch. And I’m frozen solid. I can’t budge an inch.
What is it with me? Come on, Brenda. You’re old enough and ugly enough. But I want to scream. There’s a scream wedged solid in my throat, as if I’ve swallowed a whole frozen chicken. Tap tap tap. Is it one of the guests? Have they come up the top flight of stairs to taunt me? To scare me in my bed?
There’s the hollow, clopping sound of tiny feet on the wooden stairs. I’m being haunted by midgets. Heavy, determined, club-wielding midgets.
Now I’m shaking. This is ridiculous. I’ve faced worse things than this.
But not in my home. Not up here in my attic.
There’s a pause. There’s quiet again. Then a distant tapping. Trip-trap-trap. Whatever it was is moving away. Trap-trap.
It’s gone.
I don’t want to go out there. I sit on my bed. I wrap my duvet about me and I sit there for more than an hour, staring at my door. Once, twenty-odd minutes later, I hear scuttling noises. Giant mice in wainscoting. But that’s an end to it for tonight. The worst night yet.
There have been several of these weird visitations in recent weeks. Each one has rattled me more than the last.
But I have to pull myself together. I have guests and responsibilities. I need to stow these terrible thoughts away and sleep a little more. Just a couple of hours. I need to rest in order to face the day.
I manage almost two hours of sleep. And then I’m up, doing star jumps, bathing, dressing, and seeing to my duties.
Soon I’m bustling between kitchen and breakfast room, seeing to cooked breakfasts and pots of coffee and tea. My guests are in pairs at the floating islands of their tables, bleary-eyed and crunching away on their triangles of toast, their cereals. As I pass back and forth with steaming plates I can see them casting each other sidelong glances. One of them – a young woman in a tracksuit – takes me aside when breakfast is just about finished. She’s used the pretext of asking me about local walks, and she expresses her concern about the noises in the night. I wring my tea towel in my hands as she leans in and looks so earnest and polite. ‘We just wondered . . .’ she said, ‘what it was, and whether everything is all right . . .’
What can I say to her? I try to allay her fears. But what can I tell her? I mumble something about my blundering into a small coffee table in the dark. Cheerfully telling her that’s what they must have heard. Even laughing about it, I am! But it must ring hollow, because she still looks concerned as she moves away. What will they be thinking? That their landlady’s a secret drinker, staggering about and falling on things at three in the morning.
I plunge into the kitchen and set about the washing-up. I listen to them all leaving for their Saturday out in the town; exploring the abbey and the winding streets. I’ve not given any of them my usual, upbeat spiel about what to do and what to see. My nerves are too shattered to do my job properly, and they all know it. This is no good. I’ll be losing business. I try to assuage my fears in the hot frothing water and the dinful clatter of claggy plates.
And I try to clear my head with a brisk Saturday morning walk of my own, togged up against the April breeze. I head down to the harbour and take huge lungfuls of salty air, watching the fishing boats sliding and jostling and the tourists getting pecked by undaunted gulls. I’m hurrying across the bridge then, on to the path through the old town, to meet Effie for morning coffee.
I dash through the narrow arcades of shops – yellowing books; glutinous home-made toffee and parkin; Celtic jewellery and dense, carved jet. Peering in one of those jet shop windows I notice a man in serge green tweeds, gaiters and walking shoes. As I scoot by, he obviously feels my eyes burning into the back of his head, because he turns and his ruddy face lights up. He grins under that silver ’tache of his, and gives a strange kind of salute.
It’s the old bloke who was sitting in the Yellow Peril last night. The old geezer who was watching me and Effie bopping about on the glass floor. I nod at him brusquely – not at all encouragingly – and hurry on by. He could be anyone. A pervert. Anything. But his smile snags a memory for me. I don’t know. I’m sure I’ve seen his face before. His manner is very familiar.
Never mind him, though. Effie will be getting cross as two sticks, waiting all this time.
I’m watching Effie divide up her sticky fruit cake with her fork. ‘Sheila Manchu lived the life of Riley,’ she hisses. ‘What was she saying? Swingers’ parties? Gambling and all sorts. And I’m guessing that’s not all. I bet that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Oh, yes. Whatever is written in that poison pen letter must be pretty strong stuff.’
‘I bet she’s got some hair-raising secrets for someone to expose,’ I say, blowing on my black coffee.
‘Yet she said that it wasn’t trying to extort money,’ says Effie. ‘Not that sort of letter at all. She really did sound spooked to me, by whatever it said.’
There’s that word again, I think. Spooked. Well, I’m spooked as well, as it happens. I’m always spooked, and just lately I’m more spooked than ever. And who can I tell? Who’s going to care? Who’s going to come to my rescue? No one will. Of course no one will. I’m on my own with whatever has started to trip-trap around on my bare attic boards in the middle of the night.
Effie goes on. ‘We have a job here, don’t we? To look into these queer affairs? Isn’t that what we were told late last autumn?’
I nod. ‘The abbess told us that we are both here for a reason. We are meant to team up and guard the gateway into hell. To keep an eye on who comes popping out. If you believe in that kind of thing, I mean. Destiny. Karma, all that stuff. I’m not sure whether I do or not. I believe in free will.’
‘You would do,’ Effie says pointedly.
I raise an eyebrow. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘I just mean that you’ve had to look after yourself, haven’t you? And take care of your own destiny.’
I pull a face. She’s quite right. I’ve had to make up my own rules for a very long time, and I hate the thought of being a pawn for someone else.
But we’re getting off the subject. I bring us back: ‘I still don’t think we should go running to help just anyone . . . and drawing attention to ourselves. If people think we go looking for trouble and danger, then we’re bound to find a whole lot more of it at our door.’
‘I thought you liked Sheila more than you expected to,’ says Effie through a mouthful of cake. ‘I must say, I was very happily surprised. I’d always thought she was a boring, blowsy floozy. But I found her rather simpatico, actually. And I was quite touched by the tale she told.’
‘I never thought I’d hear you talk like that about the owner of the Hotel Miramar.’ I shake my head. Then I remember, and tell Effie about the silver-haired bloke in the green tweed, saluting me in the street.
‘Perhaps you’ve got an admirer,’ says Effie dryly, casting her eyes up and down my outfit.
I snort. ‘I doubt that, lovey.’ Then I think – what if? Wouldn’t that be something! But surely not. Surely never again. I’m past all that. I’ve had my day. I don’t draw the stares the way I used to. I don’t catch the passing fancy of ageing men any more. But . . . maybe I do! Maybe I have! The thought is a novelty: a suddenly delicious one. I slurp my tea, just thinking about it, and have to dab my chin quickly. I’m light-headed with sleep deprivation and the idea of someone paying attention. I need to pull myself together.
‘Where would we start?’ I ask her. ‘Poison pen letters. That’s like real mystery-solving. Proper detective work, isn’t it? We don’t have those skills, do we?’
She shrugs, as if skills are the last thing you need.
I persist. ‘I mean, we say we can help. We claim to be investigating things. But really, we don’t know anything, do we? We can’t really do anything. We just blunder in . . . and often make situations worse than they were before . . .’ I’ve lowered my voice because there’s a new party arriving and shuffling in at the table beside us. This place is so tiny, it’s easy to give away all your business.
‘I can see you’re going to be no help today.’ Effie sighs. ‘Does a night on the razzamatazz always put you in such a negative mood the next morning?’
I bite my lip. I want to tell her about my noises, about the haunting. Somehow I can’t. Effie’s the one who really believes in ghosts. I’d be mortified to have spirits of my own, polluting my place. Effie would smirk, I’m sure.
‘I think,’ I say, ‘since we’ve as good as promised Sheila Manchu our help, we had better just get on with it. We need to see the letter itself and then we’ll get to the bottom of it. Somehow.’
‘I knew you’d do it!’ Effie smiles. ‘I knew you were looking forward to getting your teeth into a new mystery.’
‘Well . . .’ I say modestly. ‘I didn’t really mean it, when I said we had no skills. I think we’re quite talented, actually. Intuitive, rather than logical and intellectual.’
