The Cuckoo Clock Murders

by Roger Silverwood

  ‘Now tell me what exactly happened, Mrs Totty. You say you are the housekeeper here?’

  ‘Part-time, yes. Ever since they bought the place and had it converted. Start at ten, finish at three today. I arrived at around ten this morning. I knew they were here because his car—’ She pointed to the big silver Mercedes, ‘—was there. Unusual, though, because he always puts it in the garage. And they don’t come up here much, this time of the year. Well, she doesn’t come up at all, anyway, now. Well, I let myself in. I have a key.’

  ‘The door was locked?’

  She put her hand to her chin, rubbed it and said, ‘There’s a thing. No, Inspector. As a matter of fact it wasn’t locked, no.’

  ‘Please go on.’

  ‘I went into the kitchen, his study, the sitting room and the big lounge … the gymnasium … and there was no sign of life. I knew he wouldn’t be in the swimming pool this time of year. I didn’t call out or anything. I guessed he’d be in bed tapping into his laptop. He has it fitted up with a table so that he can swing it across. Mr Santana liked everything quiet, like, especially when he was writing. No radio, no Hoover, nothing like that. I made a pot of tea. He always enjoyed a drink of tea. Took it to the bedroom. Knocked on the door. No reply. Again, still no reply. Opened it and … oh dear.’ She shivered and rubbed her arms.

  The sun was shining and there was no breeze, but it was not warm.

  ‘Sit in here,’ he said. ‘We can talk in here.’ He opened the car door for her.

  As Mrs Totty got in, he looked round. The site was now a place of concerted activity. Dr Mac, the pathologist, had arrived. DS Ron Gawber’s car was pulling up behind him. The SOCO team were taking specialist dust-sucking machines into the house. The mortuary wagon was parking on some space in front of the big garage, and a young constable was putting up police signs down the drive.

  Angel walked round to the other side of the car and opened the door. When they were both settled he said, ‘Now, what did you find in the bedroom?’

  She swallowed. ‘It was Mr Santana. He was on the floor in front of the door. His face was grey with an expression of pain, but fixed, frozen like a black and white photograph. I knew he was dead. There was blood on his shirt, his hands, pullover, everywhere.’

  ‘And Mrs Santana?’

  ‘Unusual, that. She hasn’t been here since there was a leak in the swimming pool and the builders were brought in. Must be five years ago. I didn’t go any further into the room. She was in bed. Never moved. Even when I screamed. Must certainly be dead. Bit of a nightie and back of her head showing. Horrible.’

  He blew out a sigh. ‘Anything been moved?’

  ‘Yes. There was a candelabra at the side of the bed. And the candles were still lit. We never light them. I don’t understand it. They were just for show.’

  Angel rubbed his chin.

  ‘There must have been some trouble with the lights,’ she added. ‘The fuse box in the hall is open and some fuses pulled out and put on the table.’

  ‘Anything else?’

  She shook her head. ‘Don’t think so.’

  A mobile phone rang. It was Angel’s. He wasn’t pleased. He pulled a face and dived into his pocket. ‘Excuse me,’ he said and opened it up. It was the superintendent.

  ‘Yes, sir?’ he said into the phone.

  ‘Ah, Angel,’ Harker said. ‘Correction. It can’t be Felicity Santana dead in that bedroom. She’s just been on the phone to our reception, alive and kicking, reporting her husband missing. The telephonist put her on to me and I told her about the triple nine call from her housekeeper up there. She now understands that her husband is dead and that there is an unidentified woman in her bed. She is understandably extremely upset.’

  Angel blinked and pulled a face like he’d caught the smell of the gravy at Strangeways.

  ‘And she’s on her way up to you,’ Harker added mischievously.

  Angel’s lip tightened momentarily against his teeth, then he said, ‘Right sir,’ He was furious, he hadn’t yet had the opportunity to see either of the two corpses or check out their identities.

  There was a click and the phone went dead.

  Angel snapped the mobile shut and shoved it in his pocket.

  ‘Sorry about that, Mrs Totty.’

  She nodded understandingly.

  He was wondering what to tell her when Dr Mac, in his whites, arrived outside the BMW and tapped on the window.

  Angel lowered it.

  Mac pulled down his mask and said, ‘Excuse me, Michael.’ He looked pale and unusually agitated. He glanced at Mrs Totty then looked back at Angel. ‘You’d better come and … have a look at this … for yourself’. I can’t explain.’

  Angel frowned. He had never seen Mac acting so strangely. He was not a man who usually found words difficult.

  Angel got out of the car, leaving Mrs Totty open mouthed. He remembered the rubber gloves, tore open the packet and pulled them on. Then he nodded at the doctor, who hurried along, keeping to the plastic pathway laid by SOCO, through the front door, down the short hall to the open bedroom door.

  Mac pointed to the heap on the floor covered in sterile plastic sheeting. ‘Peter Santana,’ he said.

  Angel looked round. There were splashes of blood on the door, the door frame, the carpet and the wallpaper. He reached down and pulled up the plastic. The dead man was flat on his back on the Chinese carpet. He was slim, short and fully dressed in a suit, shirt, tie and black leather shoes. There was blood everywhere, particularly around the chest area. Angel took a close look at his face. The eyes were closed and a pair of spectacles were on the carpet next to him.

  Angel wrinkled his nose and sighed as he lowered the plastic sheeting.

  He looked at Mac who, with the nod of his head, invited him to follow him further into the room. He pointed to a silver candelabra, draped in melted pink wax with three candle stubs in it, on a bedside table.

  ‘That was still lit when I came in here.’

  Angel rubbed his chin.

  ‘And there’s no electricity in the place.’

  ‘What? Why?’

  Mac shrugged.

  Angel shuddered. He realized the room was cold. It was also eerie.

  Mac then pointed to the nearer of two large beds; SOCO had covered the bedspread and pillows with sterile sheeting. A mound down the middle, however, suggested there was a body, alive or dead, underneath.

  Mac went up to the head of the bed and Angel stood next to him. He wondered what was so special that he should be specially brought in before Mac and SOCO had finished their initial examinations. If it was something grotesque, he reckoned he had seen everything.

  He steeled himself as Mac, with a rubber-gloved finger and thumb, gently peeled back the plastic sheeting covering the pillows to reveal the pretty collar of a silk garment covering a pink hairy ear. He then pulled back the bedclothes until it became clear that the body wearing a woman’s nightdress was that of a dead pig.

  CHAPTER 2

  DI ANGEL’S OFFICE, BROMERSLEY POLICE STATION, SOUTH YORKSHIRE, UK. 1400 HOURS. TUESDAY 16 DECEMBER 2008.

  Felicity Santana parked her racy new Jaguar next to Angel’s in the police station car park and then accompanied him, causing a great buzz of excitement and a shower of testosterone from the men, gliding through reception and down the green corridor. The WPCs looked with interest and envy as she passed them by. Everybody noticed her great beauty and many remarked afterwards on how small she appeared to be in real life.

  Angel closed the office door, made Felicity Santana as comfortable as possible in his little office and then settled himself down in his chair behind the desk.

  ‘I’m all right now, thank you, Inspector,’ she said, pushing a moist tissue back into her handbag. ‘I’m a tough bird. It takes more than the death of my husband and the knowledge that after ten years of marriage he had an unusual predilection for a pig … to floor me.’

  Angel pursed his lips. ‘I am sure that is not the ca
se, Mrs Santana.’

  ‘A pig. It’s disgusting. What sort of a person will people think I have been married to? I would rather have had Peter caught in bed with a pretty, young actress. Dammit, there are plenty of those who would have been glad to have obliged. I could have dealt with that. It would have been simple competition. But I can’t compete with a pig. Just think what the tabloids will make of that, Inspector? My God. They’re going to have one hell of a party when that comes out.’

  She sighed and shook her head.

  He nodded sympathetically.

  ‘There are some questions …’ he said.

  ‘Of course. Let’s get it over with. I’m bound to be the chief suspect. Young wife. Successful actress. Married ten years to world-famous multi-millionaire producer and writer, Peter Santana. Co-respondent, a pig. I’m here to be shot at, Inspector. Fire away.’

  ‘Was your husband at all interested in pigs? Was there something pointed about the animal being a pig, do you think? Did your husband have any interests in animals at all?’

  ‘None at all, Inspector.’

  ‘Was he into “Save the whale” or “Stop puppy farming” or anything like that?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Did he support any animal charity?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Did you have any pets? Cats or dogs?’

  ‘Not a flicker of interest in them, Inspector. All the years I’ve known him. No. Not even a goldfish. I find this pig business utterly unbelievable. Dammit. He didn’t even eat meat anymore.’

  ‘He was a vegetarian?’

  ‘Only since his heart attack.’

  ‘Oh. It wasn’t to save the species or…?’

  ‘It was to save Peter Santana, Inspector.’

  He stifled a smile.

  ‘No interest in anthropology?’

  ‘Not unless it was profitable, or you could make a film about it.’

  ‘Your husband was a great writer. He’s written some best-selling books which have been made into blockbuster films. Could this pig in a bed have anything to do with a plot he was working on?’

  ‘My husband could – in his imagination – have written about a human couple being miniaturized to the size of microbes, strapped to a bee’s leg and deposited next day into the flower of a hollyhock without even moving from his laptop, so I am damned certain that he didn’t need to get a pig into his bed to heighten his imagination.’

  Angel shook his head. He was getting nowhere.

  ‘How do you explain it, then, Mrs Santana? A pig dressed in a nightdress in …’

  ‘I can’t, Inspector. I can’t. He’s never done anything like this before. Although Peter wrote some highly original fiction, he was essentially a practical man with his feet firmly on the ground. He was a businessman first and a creative man second. He simply had the skill or the luck to create and produce what people wanted to see and hear. He understood entertainment, when so many writers and producers did not.’

  Angel decided on another tack. ‘He was working on something?’

  She sighed. ‘He was always working on something. I don’t know what it was.’

  ‘He was writing for you?’

  ‘There would probably have been a major part in it for me, yes. Ever practical was Peter. Keep the money in the family, you know.’

  ‘What was it about?’

  ‘I don’t know. He never spoke about it until it was finished. I would be the first to read it. He valued my opinion. He didn’t always act on it, but I flatter myself that he was always interested to know what I thought.’

  ‘About your own part, or the whole thing?’

  ‘Both. Naturally I was interested in the character that he had written for me, but that wasn’t it all. I wanted to know what the thing was all about.’

  ‘So you have no idea what your husband was writing?’

  ‘Sorry.’

  Angel knew that there was a highly skilled computer team from specialist police agencies that he could call on; they could soon review Santana’s latest writing and see if it related in any way to a pig in a nightdress in a bed.

  ‘I suppose some other person could have put the pig in your bed.’

  She nodded. ‘I can’t think who.’

  She suddenly looked up and blinked thoughtfully several times. ‘You know, Inspector, Peter was not very strong. He was seventy-two, had heart disease. He thought he hadn’t long to live. Did an hour in the gym and walked an hour or more every day. He was determined to regain some of his strength after his heart attack. I don’t know the weight of that pig, but I doubt very much if he could have carried it by himself.’

  Angel wrinkled his nose. ‘That we may never know, Mrs Santana. And there is the business of the nightdress. The pig was dressed in a nightdress. Putting a dead weight of a pig into a nightdress would have been quite a job, I must say. That may have been a job for two people. We’ll see.’

  She held up her hands and shrugged.

  ‘Can I have the name of your husband’s GP?’

  ‘Of course. Dr Prakash. Very good man. He has a surgery on Bond Road.’

  ‘Thank you,’ he said, scribbling the name on an envelope taken from his inside pocket. He looked up and said, ‘Would you say you had a happy marriage, Mrs Santana?’

  ‘As happy as most people,’ she replied.

  Angel noticed that there was a slight tightening then relaxing of the lips. She clearly didn’t like the question.

  Angel rubbed the lobe of his ear between finger and thumb.

  ‘I know what you’re thinking,’ she said. ‘The difference in our ages.’

  ‘That’s a start. Mr Santana was seventy-two. I won’t ask you your age.’

  ‘I’m forty-two,’ she said boldly. She was only small, but she was very confident about her looks.

  Angel said: ‘And you look younger.’

  ‘Thank you. I have taken care of myself. And that’s why I am still in work and at the top of my profession. Some people would say that it was because I was Peter’s wife. I don’t deny that it helped, but Peter was such a man, Inspector, that if there had been somebody he had preferred in any part in any film he had written, he would have had her in and cut me out without a second thought.’

  ‘But that never happened?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Your husband was a very wealthy man. Do you know how he left his will?’

  ‘I certainly do, Inspector. Nothing complicated. Nothing tedious. He left everything to me.’

  Angel blinked. She had said it quickly, smoothly, unemotionally, like a scalpel cutting through an umbilical cord.

  He narrowed his eyes then licked his lips before he said, ‘I need to ask you about your movements and your husband’s movements yesterday.’

  ‘Certainly. Nothing very interesting, I can tell you, Inspector. We were at our house on Creesforth Road in Bromersley. We sleep in separate bedrooms these days. Peter doesn’t sleep very well, so that when he is awake he might tap away at his laptop that he has on a table he can swivel across the bed. He was working at that when the studio car arrived to collect me at 7.45 that morning. I knew our housekeeper would arrive at nine o’clock. He seemed happy enough when I called out, as I left the house. I did my stint at the studio. Everything went well. Got back home about one o’clock. Peter was up and dressed. Had lunch with him in the kitchen. It was only fruit and coffee. He asked how the shooting had gone. I told him. I reminded him that I would be out that evening – provided the sky stayed clear – for the night scene. He said he would remember. Then we began to discuss domestic matters … staff arrangements for Christmas. His PA arrived in the middle of it. He took his apple into his study with her. Then a man from the accountants called. Then the phone began ringing; it seemed non-stop. I finished my lunch and carried on with my own work. I had some lines to learn and rehearse for the night’s shoot.’

  ‘Was all that usual?’

  ‘Oh yes. Everybody wanted to see Mr Santana. He was quite masterful at seeing
only those people he wanted to see. His PA was good at marshalling everybody. At about three o’clock, it quietened down, and he came out of the study into the kitchen. I was talking about Christmas with the housekeeper. He grunted the usual thing about going to bed to write, took a bottle of his favourite water out of the fridge and went upstairs.’ She sighed then bit her lip. ‘That was the last I saw of him.’

  ‘Why was he out at Tunistone? Did he go there to write or what?’

  ‘I don’t know. It’s very odd. Completely out of character. When I left at six o’clock, it was pitch black, of course. I thought Peter would stay there in bed, either writing or sleeping, or reading or watching TV for the evening. I expected him to stay in his bedroom for the entire night. When I came home at about eleven o’clock, his room was in darkness, so I assumed he was asleep.’

  ‘Did you did notice his car was missing?’

  ‘No. I was brought home in a studio car. I didn’t go in the garage.’

  ‘So you thought he was in the house asleep?’

  ‘Yes, and I didn’t know otherwise until about 9.30 this morning. I took a tray of tea into his room and he wasn’t there. I was very surprised. It was completely out of character. I phoned the studio first. Spoke to William Isaacs. He knew nothing. Then I phoned his PA. She usually knows what’s going on, but she knew nothing. I never thought he would be at Tunistone. He’s fallen out of favour with the place lately and was thinking of buying somewhere in a warmer climate. Even when I discovered that his car had gone, it didn’t occur to me that he might be up there … not at this time of the year anyway. I waited a little while. I didn’t want to make a complete fool of myself. Then when he didn’t turn up and I had run out of ideas, I phoned the police station. The rest you know.’

  Angel nodded, not to convey that he was in agreement. There was a lot he didn’t know. But he thought it was a good point at which to break off.

  ‘You wanted me, sir?’ Angel said at the door.

  He noticed a strong smell of Vick. There was often a pong of a menthol medicament in Detective Superintendent Harker’s office.

  ‘Yes. Shut the door,’ he said. ‘Keep the warmth in, for goodness’ sake.’