The Royal Baths Murder

by J. R. Ellis

  ‘Oh my God – and we let him carry her out!’

  ‘Yes. It was skilfully done and we were concentrating on other things. That’s the great thing with tricks and illusions like this, as I’ve said to you before: misdirection; get people to look at the wrong thing and perform your trick while they’re not looking at what you’re doing. We were searching for ways out of the building and paying a lot of attention to the body. It was all over in a twinkling before we realised. They must have practised it many times.’

  ‘What put you on to it, then?’

  ‘Nothing at the time, obviously, but when I was in the café at Riverstone’s, I looked out of the window and I saw men loading up a van with containers; they were struggling because they were heavy. It stirred something in me, a kind of idea that I’d seen something that was not quite right but I hadn’t processed it, and then I remembered that Monroe had seemed to struggle with the basket going up the stairs to the entrance. Why would he struggle, a strong young chap like him, with a basket of towels? That basket would have been light if it hadn’t also had a person in it; admittedly a small, light person, but still a significant extra weight compared to just towels.’

  Andy was shaking his head and his hands were over his face. ‘I’ll never live this down with people back at HQ, sir. “Here’s Andy, Sergeant Stupid, who let a murderer be carried away in front of him.” Bloody hell!’

  ‘Well, tell them Chief Inspector Oldroyd watched the same basket go past, and if they want to laugh at me, send them up to do it.’ He slapped Andy on the back and laughed. ‘Cheer up, we’re nearly there now. We’ve just got to bring them in.’

  He looked away and his smile died. Doing that could be the most dangerous bit of all; he and Andy had already survived one murder attempt.

  Meanwhile, the net was also closing in on Derek Fenton for the second time, although he knew nothing about it. Ben Poole sat at home at his computer and smiled with satisfaction. His shots of Fenton and Sandford meeting had come out well. This, together with Steph’s evidence about Fenton curtailing the investigation for no good reason and the information from his council contact, should be enough to at least trigger an investigation. Fenton should not have been meeting in secret with a man he was supposed to have investigated. When bank accounts were examined and Fenton’s conduct of that investigation was scrutinised, Ben was confident that everything would start to look very dodgy.

  ‘What are you doing, Ben? I’ve brought you some coffee.’

  Geraldine was calmer after Ben had given her reassurances following Clare Bayliss’s visit. He wasn’t going to explain to her what was going on, but exposing this would be a big feather in his cap, as far as the world of journalistic investigation was concerned. There was a good chance that he would get opportunities with one of the national papers. Also, Amanda Rigby had called to say that they were in fact going to continue to employ him next year at the Crime Writing Festival, so it was good news all round.

  He got up. ‘It’s just the story I’m working on. Trust me, everything will be OK. I’d never do anything that would cause you stress or risk our happiness.’

  She looked at him and smiled. She did trust him. He took her in his arms and kissed her.

  At Harrogate HQ, DC Robinson was interviewing Steve Monroe in Oldroyd’s office. Robinson sat behind the desk.

  ‘OK, sir, we’ve just called you in to ask you something. Did you know anyone who regularly used the Baths who wore a diving suit?’

  ‘You mean, like for diving underwater?’

  ‘Yes. People sometimes practise going underwater in swimming pools, don’t they? Anyway, Chief Inspector Oldroyd is interested in someone who might have possessed a blue diving suit. Maybe they just wore it to swim in.’ A bead of sweat appeared on Steve Monroe’s brow.

  ‘No, I don’t. Why do you ask?’

  ‘Just because you know the people who use the Baths better than anyone else.’

  ‘I see, but no, I didn’t. It’s an odd thing to ask, isn’t it?’

  Robinson smiled. ‘Yes, I admit it’s unusual, but “Ours is not to reason why”, as they say; I’m just doing my job and—’ Robinson’s phone rang. ‘Oh, that’s the chief inspector now. I’ll just take this in the next room, if you’ll excuse me.’

  Robinson went out. Steve watched him go.

  ‘Yes, Chief Inspector . . . I’m just talking to him . . . No, I don’t think so . . . Oh, right. What takes you up to Harlow Carr, sir? . . . I see. Oh yes, that case . . . You’re going to walk back through the Pinewoods? . . . Good idea, sir; get some exercise . . . You’ll be back at four . . . Yes, I’ll see to it, sir. Bye.’

  Robinson returned to the office and had the distinct impression that Steve had just sat down. ‘That’s all for now, then, but it would be very useful if you could ask around the regulars at the Baths about this blue diving suit business. The chief inspector seems to think it’s important.’

  ‘I will,’ said Steve, and left the room and the building very quickly.

  Later that afternoon, Oldroyd was walking through the Pinewoods between the Valley Gardens and Harlow Carr. He had just reached the densest part of the woods and there seemed to be no one around. Birds were singing and squirrels were scampering up the trees. Suddenly a small figure wearing a balaclava appeared from behind a large beech tree, scuttled quickly and silently towards Oldroyd, and then jumped up and stabbed him in the back with a knife.

  Oldroyd wheeled round and threw off the assailant, who leaped up and lunged at him again, but more hesitantly, perhaps wondering why the first attack hadn’t had more effect on the target. Oldroyd moved quickly to one side and then produced a hand gun. ‘Don’t move,’ he said in his sharpest, most commanding voice. ‘And drop the knife. Now!’ She did.

  Meanwhile, Andy had managed to locate another person hiding in the undergrowth nearby. He signalled to DC Robinson to join him and they carefully crept up to the person and pounced. There was a struggle, but they quickly subdued their target and got the handcuffs on.

  ‘Andy, over here!’ shouted Oldroyd. Andy and DC Robinson appeared, pulling along a handcuffed Steve Monroe. ‘Get the cuffs on her as well and let’s have a look at her face.’ He lowered the gun. Robinson picked up the knife.

  ‘OK, sir.’ Andy removed the balaclava to reveal a ferociously scowling female face. He vaguely recognised her as someone he had seen around the festival. He tried to apply the handcuffs but she lunged forward and tried to bite and scratch him. He had to use all his strength to control her. She was like a wild cat.

  Oldroyd raised the gun again. ‘That’s enough of that!’ he shouted. She spat in his direction.

  Andy finally got the cuffs on with her hands behind her back. He took a firm hold of her wrists and they walked through the woods back to a road that bisected the green area and where two police cars were waiting. Oldroyd took off the old coat he was wearing to reveal the protective clothing underneath.

  ‘That was a strong thrust for such a small person. I’m going to have a bruise there.’

  He looked at the handcuffed figure in the back of the car. She was bent forward, concealing her face. There was no sign of a birthmark, as witnessed in the bar at The White Swan. It had clearly been a fake applied to confuse them. Steve Monroe was in the other car. Neither of them had said anything.

  ‘She’s a fierce little thing, sir. I’ve no problem believing she could have committed those murders, now that I’ve seen her.’

  ‘No. Let’s get them back to HQ. They’re silent now, but let’s see what a bit of cross-examination will do. They know the game’s up.’

  At Harrogate HQ, Steve Monroe and his girlfriend, Jade Darton, had been charged with the murders of Damian Penrose, Patricia Hughes and Susan Lawrence. They were in the cells, ready to be questioned. Oldroyd, Andy and DC Robinson were in Oldroyd’s office.

  ‘Well done, Constable,’ said Oldroyd, relaxing in his chair. ‘It worked like a dream.’

  ‘Thanks, sir. I like a bit o
f play-acting, you know.’

  ‘Well, it’s been a feature of this case. So he fell for it quite easily?’

  ‘Yes. He came in after we phoned him and I asked him about the blue diving suit. I could see it was a shock, but he tried hard to conceal it. I played it as though we didn’t suspect him at all and were just asking for his help. In the middle of this, I got one of the lads in the office to call me. I told Monroe it was you and went to take it in the next room, leaving the door open and talking fairly loudly.’

  ‘They were desperate to find out what I was doing and where I was, having failed to get rid of me before. Once you mentioned the blue diving suit, he knew I was on to how the first murder was done. From that the whole thing would start to unravel. They knew they had to try to dispose of me quickly. It was their only hope.’

  ‘So I improvised a conversation with you, sir,’ continued Robinson, ‘in the course of which I mentioned you were up at Harlow Carr and you were going to walk back through the Pinewoods. And I asked you what time you’d be back here and repeated that time. I finished by requesting that he try and find out a bit more about the diving suit.’

  Oldroyd chuckled. ‘Brilliant. I’m sure he never suspected you knew the truth, but by that time he was probably panicking so much that he was caught off guard. He never paused to think whether or not it could be a trap. I’ll bet he nearly ran out of the building to alert his partner.’

  ‘He did.’

  ‘And what a partner she is, sir,’ said Andy. ‘She’s bloody dangerous, like a little wild animal. She’d be capable of anything.’

  Oldroyd shook his head. ‘Indeed, and I’m sure she was the force behind the scheme.’

  ‘You took a risk out there, sir,’ said Andy, who knew that Oldroyd was occasionally willing to break the rules and that DCS Walker was prepared to turn a blind eye. ‘That gun wasn’t even real.’

  ‘I know,’ replied Oldroyd ruefully. ‘But I wanted to catch them before they could do any more damage or before they got wind that we were after them and disappeared. I’ve no doubt she had some great hiding places lined up. They would have been difficult to track down. I was the best bait and they took it. Thankfully, we don’t go around with firearms all the time in the British police force. This replica’ – he took it out of his pocket – ‘has served me well over the years. Criminals never think a police officer will draw a fake gun.’ He clapped his hands together. ‘Anyway, come on, it’s time we found out what it was all about, though I have a pretty good idea.’

  Jade Darton faced Andy and Oldroyd, with a solicitor present. She sat impassively, staring ahead with her hands on the table. She had very short hair and fierce blue eyes. Oldroyd could see that her small frame, only five feet or five feet one inch tall, was powerfully built. She blew out air, as if she was bored, and tapped on the table.

  ‘Right, I’m not going to pussyfoot around with you,’ began Oldroyd. ‘I don’t think you’ll blame me, as you’ve tried to kill me twice.’

  ‘Give me another chance. Third time lucky,’ she said abruptly, giving Oldroyd a twisted smile and laughing in a sinister way, which made the blood run cold in everyone who was present.

  ‘I can see that Damian Penrose had no chance against you,’ Oldroyd said. ‘We know how it was all done. You must have been planning it for years.’ She shrugged. ‘What I want to know is the motive. Did he steal your stories too?’

  Oldroyd was surprised to see her smile at him again. It was like the smile on a crocodile’s face.

  ‘Oh, Chief Inspector, you’re so keen to tie up all the loose ends, aren’t you? Well, since I can’t kill you and escape, I’ll tell you everything – let’s say as a mark of respect. We have a lot in common, don’t we? We both have minds that can create and solve puzzles, and we love illusions. By the way, I knew it was probably a trap today, but we were in a corner, and poor Steve was in a panic. He’s found it all difficult. If it hadn’t been for that wretched Pat Hughes ringing me at Steve’s house, you would never have tracked me. I knew then it was only a matter of time before you’d find out where I was. So we had to try to finish you off at Brimham Rocks.’ She shrugged again. ‘Luck didn’t go our way, and you always need luck.’

  Oldroyd sat stunned. The violent, spitting and struggling little creature had been transformed into an articulate and thoughtful presence, but one that was nevertheless deeply criminal. Before he could say anything, she resumed.

  ‘Anyway, to begin at the beginning, as the narrator says in Under Milk Wood. Do you like that play, Chief Inspector? I know you studied English at Oxford.’

  She was taking delight in surprising Oldroyd, and it was unnerving. This all seemed to be well prepared. Was she expecting to be caught? Even pleased about it in some strange way?

  ‘That bastard, Penrose. Yes, he betrayed me in many ways. You see, I was his mistress for a time. I’d been interested in writing crime stories since childhood; I’ve always had a penchant for the criminal.’ She smiled sardonically. ‘I first met Damian up here at the Crime Writing Festival several years ago and I followed him back to London. You probably think I was in awe of him, but I wasn’t. I had sex with him so that I could get him to use his influence and get my novels published.’

  ‘I take it this was during the time he was married to Susan Lawrence.’

  She grinned and shook her head. ‘Yes, poor Susan. All bark and no bite, as they say, Chief Inspector. She couldn’t survive for five minutes without someone to support her with plenty of money. But we’ll be coming back to her, won’t we?’

  ‘We will,’ replied Oldroyd, who was feeling somewhat overwhelmed.

  ‘After a while, of course, Damian moved on to other women. He deceived me but, even worse, he stole my stories.’ For a moment her eyes blazed and Oldroyd thought she was going to be angry again but she kept her control. ‘I had written some excellent crime stories with ingenious plots, and I gave copies to Damian. He said they were OK, but needed quite a bit more work. He promised to help me but he kept stalling and I sensed something was wrong. When his next novel came out, I knew what it was: he’d stolen the main idea from me.

  ‘When I confronted him, he laughed and denied it. When I showed him the similarities between his book and my manuscript, he said that the idea needed to be developed by a talent such as his. The ideas were nothing without the writing ability. It’s a wonder I didn’t finish him off there and then. I thought about it. We were in his kitchen, and there was a lovely row of sharp kitchen knives within easy reach. But no, I would never have got away with it.’

  ‘You tried to take legal action against him, didn’t you?’

  ‘Yes. Complete waste of time; don’t know why I bothered. No solicitor would touch it; said there was no real evidence. I couldn’t even prove I’d written mine first. I wrote letters threatening him with exposure, said I’d go to the press. He never even replied. He knew that no newspaper would take me on either without evidence.’

  Oldroyd glanced at Andy. This confirmed that she was the ‘little bitch’ referred to in Penrose’s diary. ‘I presume you knew that you were not the only woman from whom Penrose plagiarised. Esther Stevenson has a group of his victims who campaigned against him.’

  She frowned. ‘Oh yes, Chief Inspector, but I didn’t want anything to do with them. Their protests were mild compared with what I planned to do. I kept a low profile. The only people who knew about me and Damian were Susan, whom I’d met in the early days in their apartment in London, and Pat Hughes, whom I’d known in Harrogate when I was a volunteer years ago at the festival. She knew that I’d met Damian and that he’d eventually cast me off. She must have put two and two together, the same as Susan, who knew how Damian treated all his young female writers. She must have seen it happen many times. Eventually, of course, he ditched her as well for that Clare Bayliss, and then he got rid of her too. I could have formed an alliance with those two but they wouldn’t have been as reliable or as useful as my devoted Steve. He’ll do anything for me. An
d I’ll do anything for him, if you see what I mean.’ She flicked her tongue wickedly around her lips.

  ‘So you developed a plan together?’

  ‘I wouldn’t say that, Chief Inspector. Steve wouldn’t be capable of such ingenuity, but his help was invaluable.’ She sat back in her chair. She’s enjoying herself, thought Oldroyd. ‘You see, the thing about Damian is that he thought he knew me, but he had no idea who I really was. His understanding, like his writing, was very superficial. He might have thought twice about treating me the way he did if he’d known how’ – she searched for the right word – ‘implacable I can be.’

  ‘So it took a while to plan your revenge?’

  ‘Yes, I can be very patient until the moment comes and then I can be – fatal.’ She suddenly jerked forward. Like a praying mantis, thought Oldroyd. ‘Damian had used his influence in the publishing world against me; my career as a crime writer was effectively ended. So I thought: if I can’t be a success in fiction, I’ll triumph at the real thing. This plot was my masterpiece and it takes a lot more guts, imagination and attention to detail to enact a mysterious murder than to merely write about one. Just think of it, Chief Inspector: I was acting out my own narrative! How much more intense and real than being the author of some book that people take off the shelves or download on to their Kindle! The postmodern critics will be in ecstasy over it: “Jade Darton: The Crime Author for Whom Writing Was Not Enough”.’

  ‘So this was your bid for fame?’

  ‘Yes, and it’s worked. I’m almost glad you solved the mystery, because now the full story can be told again and again in all the newspapers and true crime magazines. My place in crime history will be unique.’