by Alan Beechey
“Cliff, I want you to tell me where you were at these times, starting with last Monday morning at six o’clock.” Just over a week since Harry was found, reflected Mallard. It’s a long time in murder, too.
In the corridor outside, Moldwarp almost sobbed out the news that a search of Cliff Burbage’s flat had revealed nothing.
“He has a lock-up garage, too,” sighed the lugubrious detective, as if confirming the start of Armageddon. “We found several items that we think will interest the local police—not to mention said items’ original owners—but nothing to connect him to the murders.”
Mallard took in the information stoically. “We can hold him for a while because of the assault on Sergeant Welkin. He also assaulted some members of the public when he was trying to get away from Sergeant Strongitharm. Who would have thought Effie would have that effect on the youth of Britain?” He watched Moldwarp carefully after this quip, because he had never seen the detective sergeant smile. He was disappointed yet again.
Back in the interview room, Cliff Burbage wanted to talk.
“I was working my stall every day last week,” he said. “Oh, apart from Thursday lunchtime.”
The Sagittarius. Could Cliff have been in the vicinity of a Piccadilly Circus rooftop? Or would he have an obviously concocted alibi?
“I had an appointment in Streatham,” Burbage continued. “I was there from ten until about one o’clock.”
“Who was this appointment with?” asked Mallard, still hoping the story could be challenged.
Burbage grinned. “My probation officer,” he said.
***
“Effie, I believe you have a date with Oliver tonight,” Mallard remarked casually, catching the policewoman at her desk as she was preparing to go off duty. Effie smiled to herself, continuing to rub Germolene onto her skinned hands.
“I said I’d have dinner with Oliver,” she replied. “Is this to remind me to get your favorite nephew home by ten o’clock?”
“I don’t mean to pry into your personal life, I’m sure,” said Mallard stiffly, although Effie knew very well that he was lying. “But if you see Ollie, ask him to give me a call tomorrow.”
“No luck with Clifford, then?” she deduced. “After all my hard work?”
“Your hard work is appreciated, as always, Sergeant Strongitharm. But I think Cliff Burbage is innocent of the zodiac murders.”
“I could have told you that,” she said casually, tossing the tin of antiseptic into a drawer and gathering the personal items that were scattered around her desk top.
“How, pray tell?”
“We’ve always agreed the killer is smart. Cliff isn’t. And we’ve seen the killer on videotape, riding a motorbike around Grosvenor Square. As we said at the time, it could have been a man or a woman. But whatever the sex, it certainly wasn’t anyone of Cliff Burbage’s ample build.”
“Back to square one tomorrow, then,” said Mallard blandly.
Effie paused, her open handbag on her lap, and looked soberly at her boss.
“No, Superintendent Mallard. We’re way past square one and don’t you ever forget it! The murders ended on Saturday. The intended victims are all safe. We’ve solved the puzzle—now we just have to find the person who set it. And this guy makes mistakes, remember. He is not the perfect murderer. For once, we’re in control of the game.”
Mallard held her gaze, enjoying the solemnity in her ice-blue eyes, the hue of the copper sulphate solution he used to make with his chemistry set, fifty years ago, just because he liked the color. He’d always liked that color. Even without her dimpling smile, and with the planes of her face set harshly to emphasize that she expected him to take her seriously, Effie was lovely. And that hair! If he were unmarried and thirty years younger—it was a conjecture, not a regret, Mallard respected the difference—but if he were…well, he’d be Oliver. And Oliver, thank the Lord, seemed to be making progress with this remarkable woman.
“Thanks, Eff, I needed that,” he said warmly. “Have fun tonight.”
He chose not to tell her about the meeting he had just concluded with his superiors, and the message they delivered.
***
“How do I look?” Oliver asked anxiously. “Does this shirt go with this jacket?”
“It’s only dinner with the girl, for goodness sake,” Susie Beamish sighed over her cheeseburger. “The shirt’s fine.”
Ben Motley had brought in the takeaway meal from Burger King for himself, but a ravenous Susie had pounced on him and offered to swap half his food for a helping of bread-and-butter pudding. After he had accepted, she smugly revealed that the dessert was at Raisin D’Etre, and to get it, he would have to give her a lift to work.
“Although, I don’t know why I’m bothering to turn up,” she had sighed.
“Business is bad?” Ben asked sympathetically.
“Raisins are no longer current,” she lamented.
Ben reluctantly agreed to drive her to Pimlico, noting that he had to be back at the house by ten o’clock to photograph a world-famous diva, who wanted to put her Motley portrait in the programs of all the world’s opera houses. Throughout the negotiations, Oliver had bobbed in and out of the kitchen more often than a Pavarotti curtain call. He had so far asked them to check on the accuracy of his parting (moderate), the quantity of aftershave he had applied (sufficient), the visibility of an incipient pimple on his chin (below the threshold of perception), and the accuracy of his parting again (deteriorating).
“It’s not as if this is your first date,” said Susie through a mouthful of burger, “although it’s been a while since I saw you with a woman. I was even thinking of taking pity on you myself.” She chose to ignore Oliver’s look of exaggerated terror but rewarded Ben’s guffaw by pouring sugar onto his french fries. He let her, knowing that passive acceptance would get her to stop sooner. Instead, he stood up and put his well-muscled arm around Oliver’s shoulders and compressed him heartily.
“You’re missing the whole point, Susie,” he said. “Oliver’s understandably nervous because of the lady in question, the divine Effie. What I wouldn’t give to be in his shoes!” He punched Oliver playfully in the upper arm and went back to the table.
“Yes, Ben, that reminds me,” said Oliver humbly, rubbing his unremarkable biceps. “I want to thank you for not moving in on Effie when you had the chance. I don’t think I could have taken the competition.”
“What on earth do you mean?”
“Well, you have so much success with the opposite, er, sex,” Oliver said, somewhat abashed. “But I notice that you left the way clear for me with Effie.”
Ben smiled, even though he was eating a sugared fry. “Oliver, my interest in Effie was purely photographic. There wouldn’t be any point in competing with you for her affections.”
“Why not?” Oliver asked testily. “What’s wrong with Effie?”
Ben looked at Susie, who looked back with a similarly puzzled expression. “Effie’s potty about you,” he said, with surprise. “I could tell immediately when I first saw you two together at Kew Gardens.”
“She hardly spoke to me that evening.”
“Exactly. A woman doesn’t play that hard to get with a man unless she really wants him to notice her. So go ahead, Olls, sweep her off her feet.”
“Well, she has been a lot friendlier,” Oliver said thoughtfully.
“Ollie, let me assure you,” said Susie, laying down her food and addressing him seriously. “Effie’s got the major hots for you. The pheromones were coming in waves the other lunchtime. We girls can always tell.”
The doorbell rang. Oliver started, stared open-mouthed at each of his friends, ran a hand through his floppy hair, and darted from the kitchen.
“Think he bought it?” muttered Ben.
“Of course. We were brilliant,” said Susie. “A few raised exp
ectations, founded or otherwise, will at least get him out of the starting gate.”
The kitchen door swung open again and Geoffrey Angelwine stormed into the room, flung his briefcase onto a counter, and collapsed into an empty chair. A disappointed Oliver hovered by the door.
“And on top of everything else, I forgot to take my keys this morning,” Geoffrey complained.
“Have a good day at the office, dear?” asked Susie brightly. Geoffrey glared at her.
“I have had the worst day of my life, and it’s all the fault of that bloody ferret,” he said. “I had to explain to Mr. Hoo, Mr. Watt, and Mr. Eidenau that the firm and one of its major clients are being sued for five million pounds by a litigious art student. How was I to know those toy Finsburys were only for publicity purposes until the lawsuit is settled? And today, the manager of the bookshop called to complain that I released a live wolverine on her premises. I don’t even know what a wolverine is.”
Behind Geoffrey’s back, Oliver checked his watch.
“So, did they fire you?” Susie asked gently.
“Fire me?” Geoffrey said with a bitter laugh. “No, worse. They promoted me. Apparently, it’s the best publicity anyone at the firm has managed to engender for a book since Bunty Devereux mistook William S. Burroughs for the author of Tarzan.”
“Then why on earth are you so—”
“Cross?” Geoffrey thrust a bandaged finger under Susie’s nose. “That’s why!” he cried. “My stitches have been hurting all day. I’m probably going to get rabies. And it’s all Oliver’s fault.” He turned to look at Oliver as if noticing him for the first time. “What are you all dolled up for?” he asked.
“Oliver has a date tonight,” said Susie proudly. “With—”
“Lorina Random, eh? You sly dog!”
“No,” Susie persevered, “With Effie Strongitharm.”
Geoffrey let out a cry and clutched his heart dramatically. Then he let out another cry, because the action had caused him to squash his damaged finger. “Oh! Oh! Et tu, Brute! There I am, suffering for the cause of your literary success, and all the time you’re running behind my back, stealing my girl!”
“Your girl?” they repeated in unison. The massed doubt caused Geoffrey to modify his indignation, but he remained defiant.
“Absolutely,” he averred. “I rather fancy my chances with Effie. She’s come to my aid twice now when I was in great distress. Times like that create a bond between a man and a woman.”
“Let me see,” Susie mused, “she helped you out of a pair of boots when you were scared of imaginary scorpions, and she took you to the hospital because you got a tiny bite from a very friendly ferret. Sounds like the perfect start to a beautiful romance.”
“I was getting around to asking her for a date.”
“And what would that take?” Susie persisted. “To get her out for a drink, you’d probably have to be savaged by a pit bull terrier first.”
“Dinner and dancing would entail the loss of at least one limb to a pack of coyotes,” Ben suggested.
“And I don’t think you could propose marriage unless you’d been bisected by a shark.”
“Laugh, I thought I’d never start,” muttered Geoffrey.
“Poor Geoffrey,” sighed Susie as she got up from the table. “Another evening at home, arranging your sock drawer. How are you going to do it this time, in alphabetical order of their pet names?”
“You know your problem, Susie,” said Geoffrey. “You’re a woman trapped in a woman’s body.”
“Ben, I’m going to freshen up and then we’ll head off.” She went out, following Oliver, who had quietly slipped away a few seconds earlier.
“Great,” grumbled Geoffrey to Ben, who was idly picking up the shards of his french fries with a dampened forefinger. “You’re all going off and leaving me. This is the story of my life, Ben. I have absolutely no luck with women. Do you know, I didn’t undress a woman with my eyes until I was twenty-three.”
“Really?” said Ben absentmindedly.
“Yes. And she was a nun. The religious guilt took away all the enjoyment. Besides she had a terrible figure, even in my imagination.”
“Really?”
“Yes. And I had to give up self-abuse when I caught myself faking an orgasm.”
“Really?”
“Yes. Well, not give it up exactly. Call it something different, which is the politically correct approach to personal transformation. I now refer to it as ‘intracourse.’”
The doorbell rang again, and they heard Oliver’s footsteps pass the kitchen door. The front door opened and closed. Geoffrey sighed.
Chapter Ten
“It’s not Euphemia?”
“No.”
“And it’s not Ephemera?”
“No!” Effie protested, with mock indignation.
“Then I give up,” said Oliver. “What is Effie short for? Effervescence? Effluvium? Effrontery?”
“I thought you’d given up,” she laughed. Their conversation was interrupted by the rare appearance of their waiter, a young man with a mane of blond, curly hair that rivaled Effie’s and a sculptured three-day growth of beard.
“Can I interest you in dessert?” the waiter articulated, his attention focused on his reflection in one of the large Victorian mirrors covering the distressed stucco of the restaurant. Narcissism was the principal theme of Gadzooks, the popular restaurant on Kensington High Street, which explained its enduring popularity with the young and fashionable. The lighting was bright, not just for the video cameras, which threw the patrons’ frequently famous faces onto large monitors dotted around the restaurant (a tip to the maître d’ would secure several instant replays), but also to enable those diners who insisted on wearing sunglasses indoors to read the menus. Where many restaurants allowed palm-readers to drift from table to table, Gadzooks had a psychoanalyst.
Oliver had chosen the restaurant because it was within walking distance of Edwardes Square, entailing a later promenade with Effie in the warm evening air as he escorted her back to her car—and possibly into the house. (He had not anticipated her painful ankle, and she didn’t tell him about it.) Susie had helped him get a reservation at short notice, although she had complained that the tryst was not to take place at Raisin D’Etre, “where I can keep an eye on you,” as she had put it.
Oliver and Effie ordered tea only, which caused the waiter to toss his head disdainfully and stalk back to a table of drunken debutantes and their escorts, who had occupied his attention for most of the evening.
“Effie is my initials,” she continued. “F.E. Do you see?”
“Boy, if you use your initials, you must hate your names!”
“I do.”
“So what are they? Ffrydeswyde Eulalie? Faustina Elfleda?”
She laughed again. “No, they’re Frances Erica,” she confessed, sipping from the single glass of wine she had conscientiously allowed herself as an off-duty policewoman who may have to drive later. She was having fun without alcohol, enjoying Oliver’s attentiveness, and almost forgetting the soreness of her scraped hands.
Oliver looked puzzled. “Those are nice names,” he said. “Why not use them?”
“My father’s name is Francis Eric Strongitharm,” Effie replied. “And every time I use my full name, it reminds me that he really wanted a son instead of a daughter.”
“I’m delighted he didn’t get one,” said Oliver gallantly. “In fact, I doubt I would be sitting here if he did.”
This remark pleased Effie. She had concluded several days earlier that Oliver’s immunity to the Strongitharm Look was attributable to the young man’s basic innocence, and she was almost pleased that her defenses had not proved impregnable to this rare property. Perhaps there were other men she had judged too hastily in her twenty-seven years, but Oliver may have been worth waiting for.
/> “But you use a different name too, for your writing,” she was saying. “O.C. Blithely. Where does that come from?”
“Blithely is just a made-up name that my editor thought sounded good for a children’s author. She said I do everything blithely.” Oliver thought back to the particular activity his ex-girlfriend had been describing and chose not to elaborate. “And O.C. are my real initials. O.C. Swithin.”
“What does the C stand for?”
“Chrysostom. It’s not that funny,” he complained as Effie spluttered into her napkin. “It was one of Mozart’s middle names.”
“One of them?”
“Yes, he had three. Chrysostom Wolfgang Amadeus. His first name was really Johann. I wonder why he dropped it?”
“Well, why did you drop your real name?” she persisted. “If you wrote as Oliver Swithin, you wouldn’t be mistaken for a woman so often.”
Oliver looked soberly at the candle on their small table. “Because ‘Oliver Swithin’ wouldn’t write second-rate rubbish about a pernicious ferret and a family of peripatetic field mice,” he said.
“I read the book you signed for me.”
“What did you think?” Oliver asked cautiously.
“I thought it was the best book I’d ever read…about a pernicious ferret and a family of peripatetic field mice,” she replied, her eyes twinkling.
“A dubious achievement.”
“But why resent it? Why does Oliver Swithin disparage O.C. Blithely, the hugely successful children’s writer?”
“Do you like O.C. Blithely too?” the waiter chipped in as he arrived with a tray of too many items for just two cups of tea. “I think she’s marvelous. Perhaps we could discuss this over a mochaccino later, when your friend goes home. You’ve noticed the debt that Finsbury owes to the writings of Derrida, of course. I’ve been asked to deconstruct The Railway Mice and the Bloated Stoat for Granta, you know.”
“The bill, please,” said Oliver firmly. The waiter shrugged and walked away, leaving Oliver and Effie wondering which of them he had been talking to.