“You found them easy?”
“Fairly. One or two which might have stumped me, but then I had help. Maddy, my, er, girlfriend lives in Cragshaven, just down the coast, and she knows Whitby quite well. But for her I’d have struggled with one or two of them. Particularly the one with the boat. Because there used to be a steam bus, or something, that ran in this town and she was called Elizabeth.”
Wrigglesworth smiled slyly. “My way of sorting the men from the boys, Joe. The information is actually readily available, if you read Whitby’s pages online. They sold the steam bus to Weston-super-Mare, and the boat belongs to me.”
Joe nodded. He and Maddy had already guessed what Wrigglesworth just confirmed. “And that’s how you know that the boat wouldn’t have sailed between you dreaming up the clues and us looking for them.”
“Absolutely.” The queue shuffled forward a couple of places. “Have any of the other clues puzzled you?”
“The final one, the nave in the Abbey, was easy, and I twigged the anagram of the clue referring to the hundred and ninety-nine steps very quickly. I did think that other people, the kind who might not do crosswords, could have struggled with that one. I could say the same about the anagram of Count Dracula, and how many of today’s generation would know that Benny Goodman is the King of Swing?”
Wrigglesworth laughed. “I can’t make it too easy, Joe, and as I’ve already said, all the answers are easy to find online.”
***
Sheila failed to put in an appearance even for the Abba tribute show, and for Joe, the entertainment was the only part of the night when he switched off.
For the rest of the time, his mind was obsessed with the murder of Kim Ashton, and trying to make sense of the welter of information he had before him. It was an impossible task. Of the six people concerned, Alan and Ben Foster, Lucas Wrigglesworth and Marlene Ellery, Tracy Huckle and Ronnie Ilkeston, he could not dismiss any of them, but neither could he pinpoint any of them.
Common sense suggested that Wrigglesworth and Marlene were outsiders. Because of his requirement to care for Marlene, Wrigglesworth would have great difficulty hiding the crime from her, which in turn meant that if he were the perpetrator, she would be working with him, and that would yield all sorts of complications when it came to getting away from the scene of crime quickly and unobtrusively. Joe’s years of experience, however, told him that common sense and murder rarely went together, and if the charity couple were unlikely suspects, they could not be completely exonerated until the finger could be pointed directly at the killer.
While the show bar resounded to Dancing Queen, Mamma Mia, Waterloo, and the audience filled the small dance floor jiggling and jiving to the songstresses of a more than adequate tribute, Joe ran the events of the last few days over and over in his mind, seeking that tiny clue which he knew would be in there somewhere, and which would crack the case for him.
It was a pointless exercise. The more he thought about it, the more his brain clogged up, the more distant the final clue receded.
He was still obsessed with the problem when he climbed into bed alongside Maddy, and before too much longer, she complained that he was more preoccupied with his thoughts than with her needs. Joe said nothing and attended to her requirements, but if he had chosen to say anything at all, he would have been compelled to agree with her.
Chapter Fourteen
The problem would dog Joe for what proved to be a largely sleepless night. Throughout the few hours of darkness, he dozed in fits and starts, but constantly woke, churning and turning the problems over in his mind, still seeking that one pointer to the guilty.
When Maddy disturbed him for breakfast, he was tired, groggy, irritable, consumed with frustration which burned through every fibre while he showered and stood before the mirror, shaving.
“It’s happened to me before,” he told her as they made their way down to the dining hall,” but always, always, when it comes down to the crunch I pick up that little something which closed it all up for me. This time, I can’t find it, and I know why.”
The lift reached the ground floor, the doors opened, and as they stepped out onto the thickly carpeted corridor, Maddy demanded, “Go on then, tell me why.”
They emerged into the lobby, and found Brenda bearing down on them, her face a mask of concern.
Joe disregarded her, and responded to Maddy instead. “Because the answer lies with the information Kim had hidden away.”
“You mean the information young Ben stole and burned?”
“Well, I—”
“Never mind your bloody murder mystery,” Brenda interrupted. “Sheila is missing.”
Joe scowled at her, and carried on talking to Maddy. “Ben might have burned it, but I don’t think—”
“Are you listening to me, Joe? Sheila is missing.”
Joe clenched his fists, and rounded upon her. “Brenda, she is not missing. She’s doing whatever she wants to do. That does not constitute missing.”
“It does when we can’t get hold of her. I’ve tried ringing, her phone just rings out and rings out and rings out. She doesn’t answer it. Joe, I’m worried about her, you should be, too. For God’s sake, how long have we known each other?”
Joe would have taken Brenda to task again, but Maddy came down on her side. “Brenda is right, Joe. Sheila’s been acting strangely all weekend, and although I didn’t think there was anything significant in the incident outside the jeweller’s, the fish and chip shop sounded as if it painted a different picture. If she’s now, suddenly incommunicado, then we should be concerned.”
Joe shrugged and flapped his arms uselessly. “What do you expect me to do? Whitby is a popular seaside resort, and it’s the height of the season. Do you know how many people there are in this town? Do you know how many hotels and boarding houses there are? Where the hell do we start to look for her?”
“With the police,” Maddy suggested. “Helen Dalkeith and Noel Calvin are here. They’ll speak to their uniformed friends, and at least they can get a search going.”
It made sense to Joe, but considering the other issues which had taken place over the weekend, he was not ready to admit it. “Helen Dalkeith is already determined to lock me up for life if she could find an excuse. If we set her people looking for Sheila, and it turns out Sheila’s been communing with nature up by the Abbey, it’s my neck on the chopping block.”
Maddy made an effort to placate him. “Don’t fret, Joe. I’ll speak to Dalkeith.” And with that, she marched off in search of the police.
Brenda glowered at Joe. “Thank God one of us has got some sense.”
“That’s kind of you to say so, Brenda.”
***
With eyes that could see everything, but registered nothing, Sheila looked out across Whitby’s curious pincer-shaped harbour. The Summer Queen, the boat taking visitors on a twenty-minute tour of the bay between here and Sandsend, was on her way out, carrying another load of passengers, and as she left the harbour, so a small fishing boat came back from her one or two days at sea. A large crowd had gathered at either end of the swing bridge, waiting for it to open and let a larger trawler pass, and all along the dockside and streets, people were enjoying the Monday morning sunshine and sea air.
In a second floor bedroom of St Mary’s Hotel, Sheila was too wrapped up in her own fulfilment to notice anything around, above or below her.
She was a woman of few appetites, and those that she indulged were strictly controlled. She had yielded to Martin’s advances because she believed that their relationship (one of the most closely guarded secrets in Sanford) had reached the point where intimacy was not only permissible but necessary in order for them to progress.
Peter Riley was the only man in her life. His passing, almost a decade ago, was the cruellest, most devastating blow she had ever experienced. He did not deserve to die at such a young age, and she did not deserve to be widowed while still under the age of fifty. The intervening years had seen no waning
of her love for him. No man could come anywhere close to him.
Until Martin Naylor, that is.
Even in her youth, Sheila was never a woman to entertain the one-night-stand, and she had been seeing Martin for over seven months, ever since they met at a Christmas party organised by her former employers, Sanford Comprehensive School, where he taught English and Literature to O and A level classes.
Thinking back on the last half year, it was obvious that they had been growing closer together. She had offered to make him a member of the 3rd Age Club, but he declined. He was not yet ready to mingle with the crowd she frequently described as a gang of middle-aged, born again teenagers. When Whitby was added to the 3rd Age Club’s summer schedule, she invited him to join them and he once again declined.
“I want to be with you, Sheila, and until I’m confident that you and I are settled in each other’s company, I really don’t want to intrude into your circle of friends.”
She understood. Over the treasure hunt weekend, it had driven her to distraction spending minimum time with Joe, Brenda, Maddy, and the rest of the 3rd Age gang, and then passing more hours with Martin, but she found his company stimulating, and after last night, she found more than his mere presence satisfying. And as if that wasn’t complicated enough, her phone never stopped ringing this morning, and all the calls were from Brenda.
She glanced across at his finely honed body, dozing, the thin, cotton sheet kicked off. For a man of his age (a year or two older than her) he kept himself in top-class, physical condition.
Such blatant nakedness, whether male or female, would normally have her turning away in disgust and contempt, but Martin’s post-coital nudity was not a form of exhibitionism, not a boast of his physical attributes, nor an arrogant display of his potential sexual prowess. It just was. A man who had satisfied the woman he loved and taken his fill of satisfaction from her (for the second time overnight). A man who was comfortable when unclothed in front of the woman to whom he had just made love. She too had lain comfortably naked without a shred of self-consciousness after their exciting interlude.
This, she concluded, was a different woman to the prim, proper, sometimes severe individual with the variable sense of humour and occasional acid tongue; the woman most of her friends knew, the Sheila everyone was ill-advised to cross.
This was a Sheila in love.
***
With the time coming up to twelve noon, Joe and Maddy returned to the Westhead empty handed. Neither the local newspapers nor the library could help them with newspaper articles that were years old, and as they entered the hotel, Joe finally admitted defeat.
It was an unusual situation for him, and he freely admitted as much to Helen and Calvin.
“I can’t recall any time when I’ve had to back down, but I have to confess, this business has me beat.” He took out his tobacco tin and began to roll a cigarette. It was almost as if the simple act of manual dexterity was a cover for his potential embarrassment. “Kim kept records of her work, her investigations, and I’m certain that they would lead us to the correct conclusion, but Maddy and I never found them, and you never mentioned them.”
If Helen felt any superiority over Joe, she hid it carefully. “No. We didn’t find anything like that either.” She sighed. “We’re left with half a dozen suspects, and we don’t have one single item of evidence pointing at any particular individual. As you say, Joe, we needed those documents, and I can only conclude that young Ben burned them.” She went on hastily to ensure they had not got the wrong end of the stick. “I’m not saying he did it deliberately. I appreciate that he was trying to preserve his mother’s reputation when he set fire to that scrapbook.”
Joe shook his head. “I don’t think so. Kim was no fool. She knew how much Ben disliked her, and she would not trust the more sensitive information to that scrapbook just in case he did get his hands on it. It might have been there, but she’ll have had a back-up stored somewhere else, and I’ll bet it’s saved in electronic format. An email attachment, cloud storage, whatever you want. No doubt your people will look into her web activities.”
“We will,” Helen agreed. “For now, I’d like to thank you for your efforts, Joe. I know we didn’t get off to the best of starts, but as Terry Cummins said, you have helped. It’s just a pity we couldn’t bring the matter to a more satisfactory conclusion.”
Joe got to his feet and shook hands, Maddy followed suit, and the pair came out of room 101, and as they emerged onto the corridor, Brenda hurried to greet them.
She was very much calmer than earlier. “I thought you were never going to get out of there. Keith is due in an hour.”
“What difference does that make to us?” Joe demanded. He was still angry after her earlier irritation. “I’m going back to Maddy’s, and I’ll be driving home tomorrow morning.”
Brenda appeared slightly abashed. “Yes, well, I’m sorry for the way I behaved earlier, Joe. Fact is, Sheila is in the bar. She’d like a word with us.”
Joe was pleasantly surprised, but reserved a stern glance from Brenda. “She’s turned up then? I said she would.”
“You did. She specifically wants to speak to you and me, Joe, and she’s insisted that you be present, too, Maddy.” Brenda chuckled. “Maybe she’s going to tell us some man was stalking her and going to kill her, which is why she did a runner.”
Joe, too, laughed. “The way I did in Palmanova? I don’t think so.”
They found the woman in question sitting by a window table overlooking the cliff top and the sun-kissed sea. For the brief time they had seen her, her mood over the weekend had changed little, and it did not appear to be any lighter now.
“Go cheer her up,” Joe said. “I’ll get the drinks.”
Maddy and Brenda joined Sheila, and Joe caught up with them a few minutes later, dropping a gin and tonic on the table for Sheila, a vodka and tonic for Maddy, and a Campari and soda for Brenda. Settling alongside Maddy, he sipped the head from his lager.
Sheila gazed from the window, and it was as if she was on her own, as if her three friends did not exist, had not arrived. Her eyes were as distant as her thoughts, and while the other three engaged in light banter at their failure to unmask Kim Ashton’s killer, she offered no comment, took no part in the debate, and as far as anyone could judge, did not hear a single word any of them said.
With his usual forthright approach, Joe broke the icy silence. “What is it, Sheila?”
She turned her head slowly, looked at him, and then turned back to gaze through the window again.
“We’re your friends,” Joe persisted. “If you’ve got problems, we’re here to help with them, but we can’t do that until we know what the problems are. And, to be fair, according to Brenda it was you who asked to see us.”
Still Sheila ignored them.
Brenda took a sip from her Campari, removed the glace cherry and chewed on it. “If I didn’t know better, I’d swear she was in love.”
She said it with the usual tongue in cheek, but its effect was most electric. It was as if someone had suddenly pressed the switch that turned on the flow of information.
Sheila heaved a sigh, picked up her glass and took in a gulp of gin and tonic. She put the glass back on the table, and toyed with it, turning it round and round in her slender fingers, her concentration honed on the glass as if it contained all the answers. Eventually, she lifted her head and delivered a bleak smile which encompassed them all.
“You, Joe, and you, Brenda, my oldest and dearest friends. That’s why I need to speak to you. Maddy, I asked you to join us because even during the short time I’ve been with you this weekend, I noticed that you and Joe were all but inseparable. It seems only right then that you three should be the first to know.”
The colour drained from Brenda’s face as she leapt to the obvious conclusion. “Oh my God. You’re terminally ill, aren’t you?”
The change in Sheila was as dramatic as it had been a few moments ago, but this time it was
much more pleasant. She laughed long and loud at Brenda’s opinion. “Trust me, Brenda, the amount he smokes and the amount you drink, I’ll live longer than either you or Joe.”
She allowed the moment for her humour to settle, then reached across the table and took Brenda’s hand. At the same time, she reached for Joe’s hand.
“What’s wrong with me goes back to last Christmas, and a staff party at Sanford comprehensive. For your benefit, Maddy, I was the school secretary there until I took early retirement after Peter died.” She drew in a breath and made her confession. “I met a man at that party. His name is Martin Naylor, and I’ve been seeing him ever since.”
The ensuing silence could be cut with a knife. Brenda gaped, her mouth and eyes wide open. Joe picked up his glass with a trembling hand and gulped down half the contents.
Of the three listeners, Maddy was the only one who reacted with a smile, and a further confession. “I had a feeling.”
Sheila turned her attention on Joe’s girlfriend. “You did?”
Maddy nodded. “Body language. The, er, alleged tramp who was hassling you outside the jeweller’s shop, and who badgered you for money outside the fish and chip shop. Joe and I got a second hand report on the chip shop incident, but I was with Joe when we saw you outside the jeweller’s. You didn’t look to me like a woman who was getting serious hassle from a street beggar. You looked like a woman who was insisting against a man who was protesting. You were going into the shop to buy him a gift, weren’t you?”
“And Joe’s supposed to be the observant one.” Sheila beamed a broad smile on them. “You’re right, Maddy. Martin is a teacher. Unlike Joe, Martin has to be smartly turned out, and I was buying him some cufflinks. He protested that I couldn’t afford them and I told him that was nonsense. They weren’t really expensive, and even if they had been, I wouldn’t have cared. They were a gesture of my feelings for him.”
“But outside the chip shop you were giving him money,” Brenda complained.
Murder at the Treasure Hunt Page 14
