by Alan Beechey
“I should have told you. I’m very sorry,” Oliver admitted. “But there were reasons why we didn’t want the public to know about the murders.”
“We?” she queried.
“I’m helping Uncle Tim. That’s why I’m here.” He glanced nervously at the files, as if they might have evaporated while he was comforting her. “Are you sure you’re okay? I really need to find this information. It could save somebody’s life.”
She nodded, sniffing again and looking round the room in vain for a box of tissues. Oliver scurried back to the cabinet and pulled out a buff file from the hanger marked “jury duty.” He dropped it onto the desk and switched on the table lamp, throwing himself onto Harry’s upholstered work chair. Lorina stood up and came over, resting a hand lightly on his shoulder. Satan mewed softly, but was ignored.
“You’re very clever to be assisting Scotland Yard,” she whispered, watching him flick through the pages of notes in her father’s handwriting. He was concentrating so intently on the words in front of him that he didn’t notice her finger idly twisting the strands of fair hair that fell over his collar.
“Ollie, we had some nice times together, didn’t we?” she asked.
“Oh, sure. Ah, here it is. A list of his fellow jurors. I was certain Harry’s obsession with details wouldn’t let me down.”
Lorina perched on the desk, very close to the papers, twisting her neck and pretending to read the scrawled notes with him. She sat on her hands, keeping her knees slightly bent, as if aware that even the best-toned thigh does not look its best when pressed down on a flat surface.
“I forget how good-looking you are, in your own way,” she continued idly, perhaps aware she didn’t have his full attention. “You still think I’m attractive don’t you, Ollie?”
“More than ever,” he said distractedly, his gallantry on autopilot. Lorina smiled and placed her feet on the edge of his chair, burrowing her toes under his leg. He reached suddenly for the telephone on the desk and pressed the number of Mallard’s private line at Scotland Yard. Mallard answered immediately.
“I’ve got the list,” Oliver said excitedly.
“Does Harry have a fax machine?”
Oliver covered the mouthpiece and turned to Lorina. “Do you have a fax?” he asked. She shook her head and slid off the desk, which briefly caused her loose T-shirt to ride up to her hips. Oliver pretended not to notice.
“No, I’ll have to read you the names,” he said to Mallard. “Here they are, with some other information from Harry’s notes to help you pinpoint the right people. Nettie Clapper, Vanessa Parmenter we know about. Agnes Day, old age pensioner from Hounslow. Ingmar Twist, accountant, lived in Chiswick. Mark Sandys-Penza we have already. Boy, Harry didn’t like him.”
“Get on with it.”
“Sorry. Edmund Tradescant, marketing executive from Twickenham. Archibald Brock, we have. Spiller Bude, unemployed, South Ealing. Arthur Dworkin, unemployed—well, he was then. Rogers Fossick, sales assistant, Kingston. And Concepta Carter-Wallace, housewife, also from Chiswick.”
“That’s only eleven.”
“Harry was the twelfth.”
“No Gordon Paper?”
“No Gordon Paper,” Oliver confirmed. “You were right to treat him as an aberration.”
“So ignoring Paper, five jurors are dead. We known about Dworkin. That leaves us six to find—Agnes Day, Ingmar Twist, Edmund Tradescant, Spiller Bude, Rogers Fossick, and Concepta Carter-Wallace.”
“Correct.”
“Why does Edmund Tradescant sound familiar? Never mind. We’ll track them down. I wonder which is the Virgo. I don’t suppose Harry noted their birth signs as well, did he?”
“No such luck.”
“Ah well. Okay, bundle up that file and give it to Sergeant Welkin when he turns up. He’ll drive you home then bring it on to me.”
“Don’t you want me to come back with Welkin?”
“No, get some sleep. We have to make sure the rest of the jury is protected. I’ll call you later. By the way, who was on trial?”
Oliver lifted the exploring cat off the file and consulted the notes again.
“It was a man called Angus Burbage.”
“Really?” Mallard whistled. “That’s a famous one. He was convicted for trying to blow up a police station. Well, Burbage is certainly a likely candidate for the murderer, although I would have thought twelve simultaneous letter bombs would be more in his line, though. Why the zodiac stuff?”
“Style? Gamesmanship?” Oliver suggested. “But wouldn’t Burbage still be in prison after only two years?”
“I’ll find out. Although you’d be amazed at what you can arrange while you’re doing time. Good night.”
Oliver hung up and turned to Lorina, who was leaning against the door jamb, absent-mindedly biting the ends of her fingers. She had turned off the room’s main light.
“Thanks, Lorina. And sorry again.”
She waved the apology away as if it were no more than an impertinent gnat. “I remember the Angus Burbage case,” she said. “I suppose you’ll be looking at it again.”
“I don’t know. Now we’ve sorted out the puzzle, I don’t expect to be involved as much.”
Lorina threw her head back and stared at the ceiling. In the shaded light of the table lamp, she looked cornered, vulnerable. “Daddy and I used to have tremendous rows about Angus Burbage. He though Burbage should be shot, I thought he was a freedom fighter for the oppressed. That was in my militant period.”
“I recall your opinions vividly.”
“Nobody has to know, do they? I mean, it won’t come up again?” she asked anxiously.
“Why should it?”
“No reason. I was rather immature in those days, and I don’t want to be reminded, what with my job and everything.”
Oliver stood up and gathered the papers, without looking at her. It was true that, during their college romance, Lorina’s only diplomatic skill had been a useful ability to disguise herself as an unmade bed. “I didn’t think you were immature,” he said kindly. “You were strongly committed to a political viewpoint, and I admired that. However, I happened not to agree with you. I didn’t agree with Harry, either.”
“Are you leaving?” Lorina asked, after a pause. She had moved into the room again.
“There’s a rather forbidding policeman, who always reminds me of my great-uncle Henry, about to arrive to pick up these papers. I hope that’s all right with you, I should have asked.”
“Of course. But then what are you going to do?”
“I’m going home to get some sleep. It’s been a very long day for me and the ferret.”
They were standing shoulder to shoulder at the desk, neither looking at the other. He could smell the cream she had used on her face earlier that evening, feel the warmth of her arm through his shirt.
“You could stay,” she said quietly.
Oliver tapped the stack of papers noisily on the desktop to straighten them. “That’s kind of you, but I don’t want to trouble you to make up the guest room,” he said brightly. “It won’t take me long to get home this time of night. Not with a policeman driving.”
Lorina nodded. The guest room was not what she had meant. Oliver knew it too, but he had learned that feigned misunderstanding, while initially cruel, is often the cleanest way out of an awkward situation. The only casualty was Lorina’s opinion of his perceptiveness, never high anyway.
They both heard the car pull up outside. Oliver was at the front door before Sergeant Welkin could use the knocker. He handed Welkin the file, recovered the ferret, kissed Lorina demurely on the cheek, and was gone.
***
“Mr. Fingerhood—not even my husband has seen me naked. In fact, and I say this as a matter of pride, I have never seen myself naked.”
One of the advantages
of lying in a closed coffin, thought Mallard, is that you don’t have to risk injury by suppressing the overwhelming urge to laugh at your fellow actors—although he also admitted that bursting a blood vessel on cue in this production might be rewarded with a round of applause or, God forbid, another hug from his current director, Humfrey Fingerhood.
“But Mrs. Codling, I wouldn’t ask you to do it if it wasn’t artistically valid,” Humfrey’s voice pleaded. “This…is Shakespeare!”
Another advantage of lying in a closed coffin is that you have an opportunity to think. It was rather peaceful, in fact, after the harried days of the zodiac murders (that had now become the “Burbage Jury Murders”). Mallard hoped he would not have to make his entrance too soon.
“There will be people in the audience who know me,” boomed Mrs. Codling. “I think I speak for Mrs. Godditz and Miss Birdee when I say that we have little desire to parade in our birthday suits in front of members of the Theydon Bois Rotary Club.”
All the surviving jury members had been successfully located and given police protection. For some reason, finding Angus Burbage in the prison system was more of a challenge, but Effie was on the case, and Mallard felt entitled to a few hours of free time. So after Sunday lunch with the patient Phoebe, he had managed to avoid missing his third Macbeth rehearsal in a row and was waiting patiently for the climax of the scene where Macbeth visits the witches in their lair, transformed in Humfrey’s production into the catacombs of a Transylvanian castle. As the ghost of Banquo, blood-baltered according to the text, Mallard was to explode from the plywood casket soaked in gore. Humfrey had even suggested Mallard use scuba equipment until the moment of his appearance, so the coffin could be filled to the brim with red dye, but he had been persuaded—as much by the theater’s cleaning staff as by the actors—that a simple make-up job would be effective enough.
Humfrey also felt it appropriate for the witches to become so sexually aroused at this point that they rip their shrouds off and fling themselves rapaciously upon Macbeth, fangs bared and everything else besides. Humfrey’s last six productions had all involved nudity, including an all-male Arsenic and Old Lace for the Young Vic.
“I want a scene the likes of which Theydon Bois has never seen,” he had declared. Eyeing the three ample, middle-aged ladies cast as the witches, the other actors at tonight’s rehearsal were sure he’d achieve his ambition. Because the casting had taken place before Humfrey arrived, the witches had been selected for their general repulsiveness, not for their seductive qualities.
“Oh, Mrs. Codling,” Humfrey was now exclaiming. “Who is the master—the text or ourselves? No, it doesn’t say ‘they take their clothes off’ in so many words. But true art lies between the words, between the lines. When I read the Scottish play, I hear a voice in my head crying ‘Nudity, Humfrey, Nudity.’ I humbly bring you that voice, Mrs. Codling. Do you hear it too?”
“Oh, very well. But can we turn the heat up first?”
Angus Burbage, Mallard recalled in the dark, had caused mild flurries in the headlines at the time of his arrest and trial. His son Cliff, an habitual petty criminal in his twenties, had been arrested for a minor theft that, for once, he may not have committed. The young man had been released, considerably the worse for wear for his time in custody. Angus stormed down to the police station, but was met with a wall of indifference and even bravado in the face of his complaints. If Cliff wasn’t guilty of this one, the local inspector had more or less implied, then he was guilty of at least a dozen others that hadn’t been reported, and so he deserved all got. Angus’ reply had been a homemade bomb, left brazenly in the main reception area of the police station two days later. Fortunately, it had not exploded, but that did not prevent a conviction at his later trial, despite the support of several notable civil rights activists. He was sentenced to…how many years? The trial was nearly three years ago, surely he wouldn’t be out of prison already? Is that why he was so hard to find, or was it just the sluggish service Mallard had come to expect on an English Sunday?
“I suppose you want me to take my vest off, too?”
“Everything off, Mrs. Godditz. As nature intended. Follow my example.”
But if Angus Burbage was out of jail and taking revenge on those who convicted him, why should he risk early detection for the sake of engaging the authorities in an enigmatic and flamboyant series of murders? Was it a case of gamesmanship, as Ollie had suggested? A chance for personal aggrandizement through outwitting the police, his original bugbears after all? Perhaps Angus took more satisfaction from dumping six unsolved murders into Scotland Yard’s lap rather than completing a dozen ritual executions of his peers. The risk of that analysis, of course, is the possibility that he might start again, a new pattern, a new game, a new group of victims. Mallard made a mental note to offer protection to the court officials at Burbage’s trial and to the police officers who had appeared as prosecution witnesses.
“I must admit, Mr. Fingerhood…”
“We’re naked, Mrs. Codling, you can call me Humfrey.”
“Humfrey, then. I must admit there is a certain devil-may-care feeling of freedom that I have never experienced before. I just hope I don’t run into the vicar.”
How had Burbage identified the members of the jury? If Mallard searched, would there be evidence of tampering with the records? Burbage’s son, Cliff, was no stranger to breaking and entering. Or were court records on computer these days, accessible to a skilled and purposeful hacker? What else would Burbage need to know? Their current addresses—easy, the telephone book, or for those who had moved, some gentle inquiries. Something about the victim’s lives, to find out what would entice them to meetings with people they didn’t know. Harry Random’s life was an open book, he was even listed in Who’s Who. Contact with the victim always began with a telephone call. Did the killer fish for more information then, following up on the merest hints until he was able to offer the appropriate inducement? How much would Nettie Clapper or Vanessa Parmenter give away about their hopes and dreams to a strange male voice? And one other essential piece of information: their birthdays. Where did Burbage get that? He had to know all the jurors’ birthdays before he could determine whether the zodiac pattern would draw in a string of them. Was that available from the public records office? Can you find out birthdays from the main files or do you have to order up birth certificates?
“Tim.”
Or would the murderer have been more brazen, calling each person, perhaps several weeks earlier? “I’m calling on behalf of Tasty Crispy Wheaty breakfast cereal, and if it’s your birthday today, you could win five thousand pounds.” Who could resist supplying the missing information: “No, it’s not my birthday today, my birthday’s in October. The sixth.”
“Tim!”
And what other information had been gleaned but discarded in the search for a red herring pattern?
“Tim, come out!”
Stan, the interior decorator playing Macbeth, was shouting. Damn, Mallard must have missed his cue. It was hard to hear inside the box. Well, let’s make up for that. Even without the costume and make-up, he could give them a revenant Banquo to remember.
He snatched off his glasses, slipped them into his shirt pocket, and flung the lid aside with all the strength he could manage from his horizontal position. The plywood lid Frisbeed across the stage, knocking over a freestanding flat that represented a gothic arch. Mallard grasped the sides of the coffin and hauled himself to his feet, thrusting his arms ahead of him and extending his fingers as if he were a dwarf playing the piano. He stepped down nimbly from the plinth and stalked the blurry white figure ahead of him, which he assumed was Macbeth—Stan was still wearing his painter’s overalls. Remembering he would be fitted with fangs and a blood capsule, he bared his teeth and opened his eyes wide, allowing a demonic hiss to leave his throat. In two or three stiff-legged strides, he was in front of the dim, retreating figure, reac
hing out with the menacing hands until his fingers closed on…flesh?
“Actually, Tim, we just wanted to tell you that you have a phone call.” Stan’s voice, which did not come from the individual in his hands, dissolved in giggles. Mallard quickly put on his glasses to see whom he had accosted. To his credit, the stark-naked Humfrey was equally embarrassed. “I would never ask my cast to do something I wouldn’t do,” he explained weakly, while Mallard mentally clocked up the number of offenses with which he could charge the director, starting with indecent exposure and including conspiracy to commit a lapse of taste. He hurried away to the theater manager’s office.
“How’s the rehearsal?” It was Effie’s voice, familiar, com-forting.
“I just accidentally groped a naked man,” Mallard sighed.
“Don’t you hate it when that happens?” she remarked.
“Where are you calling from?”
“The Yard. Phoebe gave me your number. We’ve just found Angus Burbage. I thought you’d want to know as soon as possible.”
“Where is he?”
“Kensal Green.”
“Do you mean the prison, Wormwood Scrubs?”
“I mean the cemetery. He’s dead.”
“What?”
“Died in the Scrubs about six weeks ago. Of liver cancer. I’ll assume the name of the condition is an unfortunate coincidence.”
Mallard thought for a moment. “Then it’s not him,” he said carefully. “But it could be someone who blamed the system for his death in captivity. If Burbage died six weeks ago, it might take this long for his avenger to plan, research, and execute the murders. Let’s continue to pursue this.”
“Okay. So is he good-looking, this new boyfriend of yours?”
“I didn’t have my glasses on,” Mallard explained.
“They all look better that way. See you in the morning.”
Back in the auditorium, Humfrey had dressed, but the three witches were still enjoying their unencumbered freedom and had now taken to prancing around the stage, striking elaborate poses last seen during a pre-war visit from the Ballet Russe. The other members of the cast were slumped in the first row of seats, watching with a mixture of horror and amusement.