Christmas Crackers

by David W Robinson

  “She noticed Arabella’s door open this morning,” Rowena explained. “Went in and found her there.”

  Ellery, the duty manager stood, his back to the door, blocking entry, as if guarding it.

  “What’s going on?” Joe demanded.

  “Well, we think the lady may be dead, Mr Murray.”

  “So Rowena has said. You mean you don’t know? Has anyone checked her?”

  Ellery blushed. “We don’t have a doctor in residence, sir.”

  “You must have a first aider,” Joe protested.

  Ellery pointed to the distraught chambermaid. “She is the first aider. She took one look at Ms Tremayne and was sick. She couldn’t bring herself to touch the woman.”

  “So what’s happening now?”

  “We’re trying to find a member of staff with the courage to, er…”

  “Get out of my bloody way,” Joe snapped as Sheila and Brenda hurried along the corridor.

  “Now, Mr Murray, sir, I really must insist—”

  “Just get out of the way, you idiot.” Joe grabbed Ellery’s shoulder and thrust him to one side.

  “Joe, what’s going on?” Sheila demanded.

  “Arabella Tremayne’s pegged it and there’s no one here with the balls to check her pulse. Can you get little miss reporter out of bed. We may need her fancy camera.”

  “Of course.”

  While Sheila hurried off to get Donna, Joe and Brenda stepped into Arabella’s room.

  The novelist lay on the bed on her left side, her eyes open, staring at the bedside cabinet where her gold award from the previous night stood. There was a small pool of blood on the pillow and sheets behind her head, and her brunette curls were matted with blood where a high-heeled shoe was pushed in.

  Joe touched her neck. “She’s dead.”

  “The Catwalk Killer,” Brenda whispered.

  Joe frowned. “What?”

  “It’s one of her novels. It’s about two or three years old now. I remember reading it when it first came out. The Catwalk Killer murders young fashion models by striking them on the back of the neck with a spike-heeled shoe. Really good, Joe. Really hard-boiled.”

  “Well, this one’s written her last novel.” He returned to the door, and spoke to Ellery. “She’s dead. Murdered.”

  The announcement was greeted with gasps.

  “You need to bolt this place up. Let no one in, let no one out. Call your local police station, tell them what’s happened and tell them they’ll need a team of SOCOs here pronto.” He turned to address the small crowd. “Ladies and gentlemen, you heard what I just said. The police will not let you leave until they have statements from you all, so whatever arrangements you may have made for this morning, you’d better forget them.” He addressed Ellery again. “Who found her?”

  The manager nodded to the first aider. “Claire. She was passing and noticed the door was open. She stepped in to make sure everything was all right, saw Ms Tremayne like that and panicked.”

  “All right. You get the cops here. When you’ve done that, you can come back here and seal the room.”

  “What will you do?”

  “Never you mind, but I’ll be done by the time you get back.”

  As the crowd broke up, wandering off, gossiping animatedly, Sheila returned with Donna Corley carrying her camera.

  “Wow. So I get to see the great Joe Murray in action, do I?” She took two quick snaps of Joe.

  “Stop buggering about and lend me your camera.”

  “I don’t like lending it. Can’t I come in and take the pictures?”

  Joe shook his head. “The chambermaid, Brenda and I have already contaminated the crime scene. Just loan me the camera. I have my netbook with me. I can download the images immediately.”

  “Joe, what are you playing at?” Sheila demanded.

  “Detectives,” Joe said, taking the camera from Donna and switching it on. “Sheila, you know as well as I do that when the cops get here, they’ll seal the room off, and they won’t let me anywhere near. Any hints or clues to the killer will be in the room, so I want a few photographs now, before the filth arrive. That way I can be working on it while we’re waiting for them to clear us.”

  With Brenda in tow, Joe returned to the room. He took pictures of Arabella from front and rear, then general images of the room and finally the bathroom, where the first thing he spotted was a pair of men’s Y-fronts sitting incongruously amongst the frilly panties.

  As Ellery arrived, he vacated the room, and ordered it locked and sealed.

  “The police should be here any time now, sir,” the manager reported.

  “Good. If they need me, I’ll be in my room.” He smiled at Donna. “Five minutes, kid. I just want to download those few pictures I took.”

  “Sure, Joe. I’ll see you guys at breakfast, eh? Gotta ring my editor. He’s gonna love this. Reporter right on the spot. Hey, would you leave me copies of those pictures on the camera, Joe? He’ll love them.”

  “Ghoul,” Joe grumbled and hurried along to his room.

  ***

  Fully dressed in jeans and sweatshirt (relieved that the dinner suit was back in the zip up ready for return to the rental shop), Joe was frowning over a gap in the numerical sequence of the downloads, when Detective Constable Baker knocked on the door and introduced himself with a flash of his warrant card.

  Joe invited him in, put the netbook into hibernation, and waved him to a chair by the escritoire.

  In his early thirties according to Joe’s estimate, tall and stocky, he was also punctilious and perfunctory in his approach; no small talk, purely business.

  “I’m told you examined the body, Mr Murray,” the policeman declared, his notebook and pen at the ready.

  “Only because nobody else had the bottle to do so,” Joe replied. “If I hadn’t, we wouldn’t have known she was dead and we certainly wouldn’t have known she’d been murdered.”

  “Are you qualified to say that it is murder?”

  “A damn sight more qualified than you by the look of your age. Who’s your boss?”

  “I’m running the investigation at the moment, sir.”

  “And don’t try to kid me, young fella. I’ve been involved in enough murder cases to know the form. It demands an inspector at the very least. You’re just the bagman, the statement collector.”

  Baker avoided the challenge. “I’m also told you asked for a camera and took photographs in the room. May I ask why?”

  “I’ll answer that with a question. Will you let me back into the room to have a look around?”

  “Can’t do that, sir.”

  “Then that’s why I took the pictures. Listen to me, son, because I’ll repeat what I said just now. I know what I’m talking about and I know what I’m doing. Brenda Jump and I went into the room. We will have contaminated it, but neither of us will baulk at doing whatever your SOCOs need to eliminate us from the inquiry. Right now, you have a body, and she’s been murdered like one of the women in one of her novels… so I’m told. You have no suspects, but I have, and the longer you fool around trying to stop me from taking over your job, the more time you leave him to get away.”

  “We’re professionals, Mr Murray, and—”

  “I’m a highly talented amateur,” Joe cut in. “I’ve cracked more murders than you’ve nicked speeding drivers. If you don’t believe me, get onto your headquarters in York and speak to DCI Cummins.”

  Baker’s features paled. “Mr Cummins? But he’s on his way here, now.”

  Joe’s face, by comparison lit up. “Is he, by God?” He took out his mobile and dialled.

  It rang out several times before being answered.

  “Cummins.”

  In the background, Joe could hear the hum of a car engine and the crackly whisper of a radio.

  “Terry? Joe Murray.”

  “Hi, Joe. What can I do you for? And make it snappy I’m on my way to—”

  “The Headland Hotel in Whitby,” Joe inter
rupted. “I’m there already. I was the one who checked the body.”

  “I might have bloody known.” Cummins laughed. “I’m about three quarter of an hour away, Joe.”

  “Yeah, well, I have your Detective Constable Baker here. Nice fella, but he doesn’t know anything about me and he doesn’t trust me.”

  “Put him on.”

  Joe handed over the phone and waited. For the next minute or two, all Baker could do was repeat, “Yes, sir,” several times while his ears coloured. Eventually, he cut the connection and handed the mobile back to Joe.

  “It seems I underestimated you and your connections, sir.”

  “You’re not the first, Baker. Now listen to me. I’m not here to show you up, I’m not here to steal your thunder. I’m here to help, and the first thing you need to do is speak to Rowena Armitage, the event organiser, and find out who Arabella was sleeping with last night, because he wasn’t around this morning when the body was discovered.”

  “How do you know she was sleeping with anyone?”

  Joe moved to the netbook, brought it out of hibernation and called up the photographs he had taken in the bathroom.

  Using a pen, he pointed to the various pieces of underwear. “See here, a pair of Y-fronts. Men’s underpants. Now look here and here.” Again he used the pen. “Good, old fashioned Marks and Sparks knickers, and a pair of black frillies. The reinforced gussets are for day to day wear, black frillies are for night time fun. So who wore the Y-fronts? You figure Arabella was into some game where she had all three on? It’s more likely that she was in bed with some guy last night, and like I said, he wasn’t there this morning. There were plenty of men at the awards do last night, but I don’t know Arabella, so I don’t know which one she was sleeping with. Rowena knew her, so the chances are she will know who the man is.”

  Baker closed his pocketbook. “Right, sir. Let’s ask her.”

  ***

  Rowena was in the dining room, toying with a bowl of cereal. She appeared to find it inconceivable that Joe could enjoy a full English breakfast after the horrible discovery in suite 401, but she was even more reticent when Joe asked her about Arabella’s lover.

  “I can’t tell you anything, Joe.”

  “Can’t or won’t?”

  “All right, so I won’t. It’s a matter of great confidentiality.”

  Slicing through a thin rasher of bacon, mopping up egg yolk with it before stowing it into his mouth, Joe pointed his fork at her. “It’s a matter of murder, Rowena. It won’t take long for Constable Baker’s pals in Scientific Support to work out that someone was giving one to Arabella last night, and they’re going to want to know who.”

  “If you know something, Mrs Armitage, you should tell us,” Baker said. “You could be prosecuted for withholding information if we consider it to be obstructing our inquiries.”

  “But he’s a married man,” Rowena insisted.

  “Then he shouldn’t have been jumping her, should he?” Joe pushed his plate away. “Listen, Rowena, I’m not moralising, but whoever he is, he left without his underpants. That, to me, sounds like a man in a hurry. A man who may have just committed murder. Now who the hell is he?”

  She shook her head. “He didn’t kill her. I’m sure of it.”

  “How sure?”

  “Because she was the goose laying the golden eggs.”

  Joe’s lightning mind made the connection at once. “Portman. Her agent.”

  Rowena nodded sadly.

  “Baker, get onto your people and tell them to put out an all ports on this guy. What’s his full name, and where does he live, Rowena?”

  “John Portman. I don’t know where he lives, other than it’s somewhere in London. Dulwich, I think. Joe, he made a fortune from Arabella. He wouldn’t kill her.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “Yes I do. John has a small client list and most of them are mid to low list authors. I should know. I’m one of them. I sell, maybe, five thousand books a year. I make more money teaching people to write whodunits than I do actually writing them. John’s commission from my sales is nothing, and the same goes for the rest of his authors. But Arabella… She sells millions of books a year. She’s the one who makes his living.” Rowena’s eye blazed into the two men. “Why do you think he was sleeping with her?”

  Joe shrugged. “Because he likes a bit of nookie?”

  Rowena shook her head. “He was sleeping with Arabella because she demanded it, and whatever Arabella wants, she gets. Didn’t he say that to you yesterday when you arrived?”

  Baker stood up. “If you’ll excuse me, Mr Murray, I’ll get onto Division and have them put out and APB on this man.”

  “Yeah, right, son.” Joe watched him hurry from the dining room, and turned back on Rowena. “Tell me about Arabella.”

  The woman shrugged. “What’s to tell? She was a bitch of the first magnitude. She started out as a reporter for some provincial newspaper, then cracked the tabloids as North Eastern Crime Correspondent. That’s where she took most of her ideas for her novels. She worked at it, and in those days she was a smashing woman. John took her on as a client on my recommendation, and he managed to place one of her novels with one of the big houses. It was an overnight success, and she’s never looked back. Word is she makes about five million a year from her books, TV, movie and radio serialisations. John takes twenty percent of that. It means he’s making a million a year from her. You don’t kill off that kind of income, Joe. But the money changed her. She became the bitch that she is.”

  “Was,” Joe corrected. “She’s dead.”

  Rowena’s face fell again and she stirred her coffee moodily. “You know what I mean. Worth a bloody fortune and suddenly she had no time for those people who had helped her on the way up. No time for anyone. And if she said to John, ‘give me a good seeing to or you’re out’, then he’d do it. He’d be too scared not to.”

  Drinking a cup of tea and refilling his cup from the pot, Joe tossed the information round his head. “Tell me about the novel,” he said. “The Catwalk Killer. According to Brenda, the way Arabella was murdered came straight out of that book.”

  “Brenda is right.” Rowena sighed. “The book was the subject of a big argument, but that was kept under wraps. It was never public knowledge, and I only know about it because I’m with John, too. It never came near to legal action, yet according to him, the young woman was insistent that Arabella had stolen the plot—”

  “Hang on, hang on, you’re getting ahead of yourself,” Joe cut in. “What young woman?”

  “She called herself Danielle Doyle. I don’t know what her real name was and, as I said, the story never became public knowledge. Apparently, Danielle claimed that she sent a manuscript to John Portman for evaluation. It was called something like The Model Murders. She never heard back from John. That’s not unusual in this game, Joe. Most agents and publishers have a thing called the slush pile, and manuscripts can sit on it for years. A year later, Arabella released The Catwalk Killer and this Danielle Doyle wrote to John claiming that Arabella had plagiarised it from the girl’s manuscript. Arabella insisted she had come up with the idea herself, but Danielle said the way the murders were committed was exactly the same as it was in her manuscript, so it must have been plagiarised. From what John told me, it looked like the story would be blown wide open, when Danielle Doyle suddenly backed off. The official line was she’d been threatened with a libel action, but privately, I always wondered whether Arabella or John had paid the girl off.”

  Joe’s puzzlement manifested itself in another frown and a gulp of tea. “What? This girl backed off for a small cheque when she could have had a bestseller?”

  “I doesn’t work like that, Joe. Let’s imagine that you wrote a novel and Arabella wrote one similar. Hers would be an instant hit. Yours may be better, but no one knows you, so you’d struggle to earn back the advance. Why? Because her name carries the book. Danielle Doyle may have found a publisher, and she may have
picked up, say, five thousand as an advance, but there would be no guarantee that the book would make that back, let alone any more royalties for her. On the other hand, Arabella would get an advance of maybe a hundred thousand because her publisher knows the book would make that back and more besides. If John offered the girl, say, fifteen or twenty thousand to shut up, then she would take it. It’s not, after all, the end of her publishing dreams is it? She would just have to write another story.”

  Joe pieced together the information into a shaky chain of logic. “Let’s just assume for the minute that Portman paid the girl off. Let’s also assume it was a lot more than fifteen or twenty grand. Let’s assume it was like a hundred thousand. Portman would want that back from Arabella. Let’s also suppose she came the heavy with him. Refused to pay on the grounds that she can live without him. You have the basis of an argument there, and it could lead to murder.”

  “This doesn’t sound the like the John Portman I know.”

  “No, but think about this. Now she’s dead, Arabella’s sales will go ballistic. They always do when authors or famous musicians die, don’t they? I don’t know who gets Arabella’s royalties but I figure Portman will still be entitled to his twenty percent.” Joe ruminated a moment and finished his second cup of tea. “Her dying could be the best thing that ever happened to him. I bet each of her books will do another so many hundred thousand sales on the back of it.”

  “You’re assuming an awful lot, Joe. It’s not John Portman as I know him. He’s a gentle soul.”

  “And an adulterer.”

  Joe glanced around the dining room and caught sight of a tall, slender and familiar figure weaving through the table towards him. As he stood over them, his brown eyes gazed from beneath a receding hairline, regarding them with curiosity and the pleasure of recognition, and his thin, almost cruel lips spread into a smile.

  “How are you, Joe?”

  “Fine thanks, Terry.” The two men shook hands. “Let me introduce Rowena Armitage. She’s President of the North Coast Crime Writers Association. Rowena, this is Detective Chief Inspector Terry Cummins of the North Yorkshire police.”