Detective Markham Mysteries Box Set

by Catherine Moloney

  ‘Gone where?’ enquired Noakes patiently. ‘What was he doing when you last saw him?’

  ‘Reading in his library. He’d had a restless night. I wanted to stay with him, but he told me to go and rest, otherwise the doctor would end up with two patients, not just one.’

  The asperity behind those words was authentic Sir Philip, concluded Markham.

  ‘How long ago was this?’ asked Noakes.

  ‘Three, four hours... I only found out he was missing when I looked in the library just now. I was going to search the house when you arrived.’

  ‘Check upstairs, Noakes,’ instructed Markham. He turned a steady gaze on the manservant. ‘You have a cellar here, yes?’

  The other’s face contracted with anxiety and hope. His breaths came as thick as sobs. Snatching up a torch from a rusty tool box, he cried, ‘This way!’

  As he followed, impressions crowded in upon Markham like phantasmagoria. Slippery walls. Ceilings stained by streaks of smoke and dust that stretched out like crooked fingers. Funguses resembling monstrous misshapen caricatures.

  And then, finally, they were underground.

  Markham did not need the domestic’s shrill exclamation of horror to tell him that they had found Sir Philip Soames. There he sat, still clad in his dressing gown, propped up against the wall at right angles to the spiral stone stairs. Most ghastly of all, his glittering eyes were wide open, the sensual lips drawn up over his teeth in a grimace, and the brow contorted in an expression of agonized defiance. A livid weal round his neck betrayed the mark of a garrotte.

  Feet thundered down the stairs. As Sir Philip’s man started towards the body, with eyes dilated, Noakes reached out and grabbed him.

  ‘No, fella,’ he said kindly but firmly. ‘You can’t do anything for him now. Leave it to us.’

  The response was a series of high-pitched inward screams alternating with the deep moans. The servant’s face now ran with saliva and tears, as well as sweat. The spectacle filled Markham with a profound repugnance. Observing Noakes’s gentleness, he wondered at his subordinate’s compassion and felt ashamed of his own intolerance. In a matter of moments, the object of his disgust had been manoeuvred out of the cellar, his departing imprecation echoing round the desolate space: ‘Find the devil who did this! Find him!’

  Markham turned back to the corpse. It was a sight to chill any beholder. Death had stared Sir Philip in the face, and the arrogance of his dynasty, bred in the bone, had dropped away in an instant of pure terror. It was the look of a soul on the brink of everlasting torment.

  But who had hurried him on his way and why?

  Markham’s eyes moved from the ghastly face, with its frenzied stare and clenched teeth, to Sir Philip’s hands. His gaze rested on the delicate fingers for some time as he wondered what they might have done. Revolted, he struggled against an impulse to vomit. What had happened in this strange shell of a house? Had children been abused within its walls? Had the school society Blavatskya been a cover for torture and worse? Where did Sir Philip fit in?

  Markham stood lost in thought for some time. Then he shivered. It felt as though the damp of the cellar was rising up from the earth like a disease. Taking one last look at the body, limp as a marionette but with traces of its former power, he mounted the stairs to rejoin Noakes.

  Mercifully, there was no sign of the manservant.

  ‘What a bloody mess.’ Markham looked helplessly at his subordinate.

  ‘Well, you were right about one thing, boss,’ Noakes said phlegmatically. ‘Sir Philip was in danger.’

  ‘But why, Noakes, why?’ The DI sounded at his wits’ end.

  ‘P’raps he’d found something out… Yeah, an’ then he was killed so he couldn’t spill.’

  Noakes was warming to his theme.

  ‘In which case, he could be innocent?’ Markham thought back to the body in the cellar. Somehow, all his instincts screamed otherwise.

  ‘One thing’s for sure,’ the DS said sententiously.

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘That poor bastard of a servant had nothing to do with it. He was practically gibbering out there. Thought he would collapse on us.’ Noakes frowned at the memory then roused himself to ask, ‘What next, boss?’

  Markham ran his hands through his hair in a characteristic gesture of frustration. Noakes was struck by the look of naked despair on the DI’s face. Something about this case was really getting to the boss. As if the investigation was somehow personal.

  Markham jerked his head towards the front door. ‘Let’s get back to the cathedral.’ He couldn’t define the sudden uneasiness that had seized him. ‘I want Woodcourt where I can see him.’

  ‘He’s going nowhere for a while yet, boss. Won’t he still be tucked up in that meeting with the suffragan bloke?’

  ‘Woodcourt’s the answer to the riddle, Noakes. If he’s covered his tracks all these years, then we’re dealing with something uniquely evil here.’

  The SOCOs had arrived. Time to go.

  As they made their way outside towards the car, Markham heard a sound in his inner ear. Like a soft growl or chuckle. As though some animal slouched at his heels. He whirled around and looked back at the house, now a sepulchre.

  Nothing stirred.

  Noakes was looking at him curiously.

  ‘Not enough sleep, Noakesy.’

  The other grunted sympathetically. ‘I’ll drive, boss,’ he said and Markham subsided with relief into the passenger seat.

  God, it was nearly Christmas. A time of innocence. A time for children. And here they were following a coffin trail to the House of God.

  He felt almost light-headed.

  The star went forward and halted over the place where the child lay.

  The age-old Christmas story. But no comfort to him. There seemed precious little chance that any sign or portent would lead them to Julian Forsythe. Unless they could break Woodcourt.

  Again, that spasm of unease.

  ‘Step on it, Noakes,’ he said tersely. ‘Blues and twos if you must.’ Then, his voice sinking almost to a whisper, ‘Can’t afford to let him out of our sight. Not even for a moment. I think we’ve got ourselves a serial killer.’

  The cathedral car park was deserted. Not a vehicle to be seen.

  Markham’s heart skipped a beat.

  ‘Where the hell’s the surveillance van?’

  Noakes shot the DI a look. Such vehemence from his self-contained boss was rare. Again, he had the feeling that something about this case came closer to home than Markham cared to admit.

  Still, there was supposed to be a static unit covering the cathedral. So, where was it?

  The two men stood uncertainly by their car under the gunmetal sky.

  Suddenly, Dr O’Keefe appeared around the corner of the cathedral. Markham’s heart contracted once again as he took in the principal’s anxious countenance and uncharacteristically headlong gait.

  ‘Everything OK, sir?’ Noakes’s voice sounded unnaturally hearty.

  ‘Not really, Officers.’ The usually suave O’Keefe sent Markham a glance of mute entreaty. ‘I seem to have, well, mislaid Canon Woodcourt.’ He gave an embarrassed laugh, but the forced levity could not disguise the shapeless suspicions dimly stirring in his mind. In that moment, Markham could tell that O’Keefe was filled with compunction for having wronged the canon even in his thoughts. Seeing this, he would have staked his life on the principal’s innocence of involvement in the conspiracy.

  ‘When did you last see Mr Woodcourt, sir?’ asked Noakes, stolidly unflustered.

  ‘Let me see … the meeting with Dr Harris – that’s the suffragan – had to be adjourned when he was called away. Some sort of pastoral emergency at the university apparently. The canon and I walked back to school together.’ O’Keefe scuffed his feet guiltily through the snow. ‘Dick suggested to your lads they drive round to the back and Joan would rustle up some hot drinks and food.’ Again, that nervous laugh. ‘Figured they’d drawn the short st
raw, you see. Not exactly The Sweeney.’

  ‘And then what?’ prompted Noakes inexorably.

  ‘I went off to check on Nat Barton. I’m almost certain Dick said something about needing to catch up with paperwork. It was a while before I thought to look for him.’ O’Keefe looked wretched. ‘I had some idea that the staff ought to stay together,’ he concluded miserably.

  The cathedral, thought Markham, the cathedral. Its bulk brooded before them like some great somnolent beast. As he looked towards it, the whole edifice seemed to vibrate with a mysterious warning.

  Snow blindness, the DI told himself as his vision suddenly blurred and dark spots danced behind his eyelids.

  His heart beat thick and fast, but through its throb he felt something else. A feverish tingling like an electric shock. As though a voice somewhere within the sanctuary cried out to him, ‘I am here! Help me!’

  Julian Forsythe! The murdered boy was beckoning him wildly, eerily, urgently to the site of his annihilation.

  I am coming!

  ‘The crypt.’ The words fell almost involuntarily from Markham’s lips. Under the same irresistible influence, he turned to O’Keefe. ‘Who has access to it?’ Markham’s voice was faint, as though the air had been sucked from his lungs.

  ‘They must have missed it in the sweep. Or been directed away from it. Do not disturb the dead!’

  ‘The undercroft is open most days between 10am and 4pm. Anyone is welcome to worship in the side chapels, though the Bishops’ Chapel is generally kept locked as it contains graves.’ O’Keefe now sounded distinctly strained. ‘Look, Inspector, you’re surely not implying—’

  Noakes cut across him. ‘Who has keys to the Bishops’ Chapel?’

  ‘Well, members of the Cathedral Chapter – the Dean, Precentor and Canons.’

  Canons.

  The two police officers looked at each other before moving as one towards the cathedral. When O’Keefe made as if to follow, Noakes barred the way.

  ‘Best you wait here, sir,’ he instructed in tones which brooked no argument.

  Later, Markham was unable to recall their route through the shadowy spaces down to the underbelly of the cathedral. But he would remember for the rest of his days the sight that greeted them at the threshold of the Bishops’ Chapel. The cavernous chamber was brilliantly lit by candles in great sconces, the air thick with heat and the smoke of some foul parody of incense. Woodcourt, clad in Eucharistic vestments, seemed oblivious of their presence. Had he used drugs to induce some hellish auto-erotic trance, Markham wondered in stupefaction.

  Julian Forsythe lay stretched out on a granite altar, seemingly asleep, surrounded by an array of vessels in brass, silver and copper. He had been dressed in some obscene outlandish garment which left his neck and shoulders bare.

  Woodcourt’s gaze met Markham’s, but it was empty, no vestige left of the civilized clergyman who had welcomed him to St Mary’s with such avuncular charm. The DI knew then that he had failed to see behind the mask of a killer who was right beside him.

  There was no time to process the transformation. Even as Markham threw himself at the deranged cleric, part of him noted the ornate candlesticks that he had last seen on the high altar. Curse him! Perhaps he should kill him, send him to his infernal master... He looked once more at the unconscious boy, and then at the curved scimitar gleaming in Woodcourt’s hand. Uttering an incoherent cry, he launched himself at the canon and felled him to the ground. The weapon clattered to the stone floor. Woodcourt’s expression remained the same, the cold flat eyes devoid of all expression. Initially transfixed by the scene, Noakes must have followed close behind, because he was lifting the unconscious boy from the altar, crooking him tenderly in his arms.

  Markham waited until Noakes, who had not spoken a word, had left the chapel, and then he proceeded to overturn the vessels from the filthy altar on top of its sacrificing priest.

  The red mist descended.

  As he loomed over the ordained killer, the blood roaring in his ears, the past caught fire from the present. Suddenly, Markham was back in that bedroom where the demon lurked and his childhood had ended. The beast beside the cradle. The stepfather whose memory he thought to have buried fathoms deep rose before him. He could almost hear that malevolent chuckle. Blindly, his heart full to overflowing, he seized a candlestick.

  15. Exhalations Laden with Slow Death

  Two hours later, Markham and Noakes sat waiting in a small side-ward at Bromgrove General Hospital.

  Markham hated these places with their endless corridors, harsh strip lighting and whitewashed walls which leached the colour from the faces of visitors and patients alike, so that everyone wore the same blanched pallor. He closed his eyes, transported to those last awful days at his mother’s bedside in this same hospital when, with pitiful incoherence, her face grey with effort, she had broken down and begged forgiveness for her failure to protect him. As dissolution beckoned, a film of contrition clouded her eyes like a shadowy harbinger of the final veil. He could still see the outlines of her cancer-ravaged body under the bedclothes and the softening of her drawn features as the morphine took effect. However deep her sleep, she clutched his hand as though it was a talisman she feared to relinquish – proof that she was absolved of guilt for those years of childhood abuse to which she had turned a blind eye. Somehow, he had found the words to set her free, compassion overcoming years of banked down rage. After it was over, looking down at her serene features, Markham felt that she was once again the carefree parent of his earliest impressions whose pale lips bore traces of the smiling tenderness she had always shown him. Like a spring that had long been buried underground, his anguish had gushed over him in a scalding flow. Around him in the hospital, babies were being born into the world. He found himself praying fervently that his mother was beginning the world. The world that sets this one right.

  While the DI was wrapped in his thoughts, Noakes studied his boss with an intentness he did not normally risk. Even with a quarter of an inch of stubble, his face putty-coloured and his suit crumpled, Markham had attracted a steady flow of admiring glances. His dishevelment and the violet shadows under his eyes mysteriously enhanced his air of distinction and gaunt, brooding abstraction. And then there’s me, thought Noakes resignedly. Talk about Beauty and the Beast!

  The guvnor had almost lost it back there. Hadn’t looked like himself at all. As though he wasn’t seeing the cathedral but was somewhere else entirely. His expression was murderous, full of black churning hatred, the veins on his forehead standing out like ropes and his face running with sweat. He looked capable of anything. Woodcourt would have copped it then and there but for the principal’s arrival on the scene. Thank God O’Keefe had ignored the instruction to stay put. His calling out to Markham broke the spell.

  Although oblivious of Noakes’s covert observation, the DI’s thoughts were running in the same groove. Back in the cathedral, the parameters of the rational world had dissolved so it seemed that his long-dead stepfather peered out at him from behind Woodcourt’s eyes. The demon had slipped his leash, plunging Markham into hell.

  If he had succumbed to the vile intoxication of violence which momentarily unhinged him, then it would have been game over. Glittering career and stellar prospects snuffed out in one fell swoop. Olivia’s faith in him shattered. Markham supposed he should feel grateful to O’Keefe for his intervention – the sharp cry which had brought him to his senses before he could smash Woodcourt to a pulp and beat him until he screamed for mercy. A small shameful part of him, however, craved that bloody retribution which as a child he had been powerless to exact.

  Of course, the principal knew. The long look he had exchanged with Markham held shrewd knowledge mingled with a pensive sympathy. Yet the DI felt obscurely reassured that O’Keefe would preserve omertá.

  How had it come to this, he wondered despairingly. Over the years, he had somehow managed to seal off that childhood violation, locking his squalid secret in a box. That box we
nt into a second box, which in turn was enclosed in another. Like those sinister Russian nesting dolls which, when taken apart, resemble a series of miniature coffins.

  But the memories would not stay buried, swarming to the surface in an unstoppable vampiric eruption.

  The pain. The shame. His stepfather’s rancid breath and questing, rasping fingernails.

  Seeing Woodcourt hanging over Julian Forsythe like some great bat had touched a hidden chord in Markham’s mind, bringing back the searing recollection of his own degradation in an illuminating flash more terrible than any lightning stroke.

  Oh God, Noakes was going to think he was off his trolley and liable to start climbing the walls any minute!

  ‘Right, Sergeant.’ Markham mentally congratulated himself that his voice was steady. ‘What’s happening with Woodcourt?’

  He grimaced at the other’s suddenly wary expression.

  ‘It’s all right, man, I just want an update on his mental status.’

  ‘The uniforms who delivered him to HQ said it was really freaky,’ replied the DC. ‘He just kept talking total gobbledygook while snickering one minute an’ crying the next.’

  For all his rigid self-control, Markham shivered.

  ‘The worst bit came when they went past Bromgrove Crescent,’ continued Noakes.

  Sir Philip’s residence.

  ‘Woodcourt gave a sort of shriek. Then he began gobbling and growling. Like an animal. Gave the lads quite a turn. Felt as though they had Hannibal Lecter in the squad car. They had to hold him down.’

  Markham fought down bile as he recalled the canon next to the crib in the entrance hall at St Mary’s – his hand resting proprietorially on Nat Barton’s shoulder – chatting cosily about the tradition that oxen in the farm sheds would be kneeling by moonlight in homage to the infant Christ at midnight on Christmas Eve, just as they knelt at His birth so many hundreds of years ago.

  Woodcourt, the Devil’s walking parody, narrating the sacred Christmas story.

  What a grotesque perversion.