Embarrassment of Corpses, An

by Alan Beechey

  “Crystal clear,” Susie brayed from the stove, scraping at the contents of the frying pan with a level of energy that could only mean the eggs had stuck to the bottom. Oliver merely nodded.

  “Now let me ask you this,” Mallard continued slowly. “There are twelve signs of the zodiac. And there are twelve members of a jury. But if you really wanted to disguise the jury connection, why would you choose an alternative pattern with the same magic number, especially when it failed to work for more than six of the intended victims? Why not a set of six or seven…or ten, such as Lewis Carroll’s Snark-hunters?”

  “So you’re saying that the killer wanted us to find the jury,” said Oliver.

  “Yes.”

  “Because he wanted us to believe that the deaths had something to do with the Burbage trial?”

  “Yes.”

  “But now you’re saying that the jury isn’t the real reason why these people are being killed, no more than their birth signs?”

  “It doesn’t look like it.”

  “Yet there’s no additional connection to be found among the victims?”

  “No. A third thread would be almost impossible.”

  Oliver sat back in his chair and stared at his uncle. “Then I don’t get it,” he said helplessly. “The only possible explanation takes us back to the mischievous serial killer playing Consequences—that it’s a game for its own sake.”

  “Of course that’s not the only explanation, silly!” exclaimed Susie, bustling over to the table with two plates, each bearing several steaming yellow pellets with green flecks and brown stripes. She placed them smugly in front of the two men. “Oliver, it’s perfectly obvious what Uncle Tim’s getting at. Ever since you spotted your precious patterns, you’ve been looking for reasons why a group of people had to die. Apart from the first one or two victims, you haven’t looked at any of them as individual cases. Sorry about the eggs, darlings, they caught a bit.”

  Mallard stared at the food, wondering how he could avoid eating it under the watchful eye of its perpetrator. Oliver, better prepared for Susie’s cooking, absentmindedly smothered the scrambled eggs in tomato ketchup. At that moment, Geoffrey Angelwine walked into the kitchen. Mallard and Susie greeted him, but Oliver was still thinking about Susie’s outburst. Eventually, he spoke:

  “The murderer wants to kill only one person. But he hides his real victim somewhere within an elaborately contrived sequence of deaths. Two sequences, in fact. And we spend so much time looking for the key to these sequences that we totally ignore any individual motivation.”

  “That’s it,” said Mallard and Susie simultaneously. She waved Geoffrey to help himself to the rest of the scrambled eggs.

  “So when, for example, poor old Archie Brock turns up in St. James’s Square,” Oliver continued, “we were conditioned by that stage to say said ‘Oops, another one for the zodiac murderer.’ We never bothered to ask if he might have any personal enemies down in Kent who wanted to kill him.”

  “It would seem so,” grunted Mallard through a mouthful of egg, which was strangely crunchy. He reached quickly for his tea again.

  “And so it didn’t matter that the murderer could only manage six murders out of a potential twelve,” cried Oliver, as Geoffrey joined them at the table. “As long as the intended victim was one of the six, he didn’t actually need to go any further. It all fits! Very good, Susie!”

  Susie covered her flush of pleasure by taking her plate to the sink. While her back was turned, Oliver grabbed his uncle’s plate and with a wink, scraped the offensive eggs onto Geoffrey’s, who immediately ate them. Oliver threw Mallard a slice of dry toast in compensation.

  “So who’s the murderer?” Susie asked as she returned.

  “Someone who had a personal motive to kill one of the six victims, evidently,” said Oliver.

  “I think we can narrow it even further,” Mallard claimed, munching contentedly on the toast. “Until we spotted the zodiac pattern, we were looking at each victim rather searchingly. We had quite a few suspects for Mark Sandys-Penza, the Richmond estate agent, for instance—his wife, his secretary’s boyfriend, his business partner, several competitors. But the murderer would want to avoid that kind of scrutiny. Now, I don’t think he’d have expected us to tumble to the zodiac connection until the fourth murder. So I think we can ignore murders one, two, and three.”

  “But the fourth one was Sagittarius, the mistake,” said Oliver.

  “That doesn’t matter, we know the intended Sagittarius victim was Edmund Tradescant. Is there anyone who might want to kill him? We never actually asked.”

  “I can’t believe Tradescant’s the ultimate target,” Oliver commented. “Imagine it from the murderer’s perspective—you spend weeks researching your victim, you discover one pattern to distract the police from your actual motivation, you discover another pattern to distract them from the first pattern, you gather the equipment you need, you set up a set of meetings, you execute one, two, three bizarre murders, and after that, when your true target is finally in your crossbow sights, you miss! I think the last thing you’d do is blandly go ahead with the next two murders, while Edmund Tradescant walks free.”

  “So that leaves us five and six—Vanessa Parmenter and Archie Brock,” Mallard commented.

  “Would it be the last one in the series?” Susie asked. “Isn’t that too obvious? The killer achieves his aim, so he stops. Wouldn’t he do at least one more?”

  “That’s what I thought,” said Mallard, throwing his napkin onto the table. “So today—my last day on the case—I’m going to look for someone who wanted to kill Vanessa Parmenter, the travel agent from Kingston.” He got up from the table, kissed Susie warmly on the cheek, and headed for the door. Oliver followed, draining his tea-mug. Susie started to gather their dirty plates, with a resentful glare at the ketchup skidmarks on Oliver’s.

  “Hold it!” cried Geoffrey suddenly. He remained in his seat, arms folded, as if seeking a parent’s approval for good behavior. “I’ve been thinking.”

  “And I thought it was an air-lock in the pipes,” said Susie.

  “What is it, Geoffrey?” asked Mallard with interest. Although he often felt that the young man’s belt didn’t go through all the loops, he also respected his intellect.

  “This is nothing personal, you understand,” Geoffrey continued doggedly, “but every time you’ve come up with some solution to these crimes, you’ve found the murderer one jump ahead of you. What if he’s still playing with you? You’re looking for the true target among his six victims. You just rejected five of them, on very logical grounds. But what if that’s what the murderer wanted you to do?”

  “Go on,” said Mallard thoughtfully.

  “You rejected victim number six, because he was the last in the series, and too obvious. But you may have tumbled to the jury connection sooner than the murderer expected. Might he not have been planning a number seven and a number eight? If so, number six wouldn’t have been last.”

  “Well, Archie Brock was the last in the unbroken sequence of zodiac signs, but we’ll check on him, too.”

  “That’s not all. Oliver said number four couldn’t be the ‘real’ victim, because the murderer continued to kill after hitting the wrong man. But what else could he have done? Surely the killer’s best bet would be to push on with the murders as planned until you spotted the jury connection. Then he’d seem to have a reason for coming back and killing Tradescant.”

  “Edmund Tradescant is back in the picture,” said Mallard. “Any more?”

  “’Fraid so,” said Geoffrey apologetically. “Your zodiac murders took place on a daily basis. One, two, three days—that’s not too long for a murderer to cover up his or her guilt until the police stop looking for personal motives and start hunting for a mythical serial killer. If I remember rightly, you didn’t really think Sir Harry Random’s death was a mur
der until after you’d already reached victim number three. You never even started to wonder if Ambrose or Lorina or anybody else had a motive to kill him. You only arrested Oliver.”

  “So you’re saying Uncle Tim should investigate all the victims individually?” asked Susie. Geoffrey nodded glumly, causing Oliver to slam his fist unexpectedly against the wall where he was standing.

  “Damn it, Geoffrey, don’t you understand?” he shouted. “We don’t have time to widen up the field again! Uncle Tim has to find this killer today!”

  “It’s okay, Oliver,” Mallard cut in softly, resting a hand on his nephew’s shoulder. “Geoffrey’s been very helpful. Very helpful indeed.”

  “But you don’t have time, Uncle!” Oliver wailed. “Not to go through all of them. Not by the end of the day.”

  “I’m not going to go through all of them. I don’t need to. I believe I still know where to look.”

  “Despite what Geoffrey said?” asked Susie.

  “Because of something Geoffrey said,” Mallard replied steadily, with a warm smile that somehow failed to convince them that he was content with the idea. “But I need a little time to think about it.”

  “Would you like me to come with you today?” Oliver offered.

  “No, no, you go to work this morning—we’ve used enough of your time for this case. I’ll call you later if I get anywhere.”

  “Will you let us all know?” Susie inquired insistently.

  “If I make an arrest this afternoon,” Mallard said, “you can all be there.”

  Chapter Eleven

  At ten o’clock that Tuesday morning, an elderly man cautiously read the name of Woodcock and Oakhampton, stenciled on the reeded glass of their office door. Then he pushed the door open and crept inside, in time to see Oliver, who had been half-heartedly composing a letter of explanation to Effie, crumple several pages of laser-printed text in disgust and hurl them unsuccessfully toward the wire waste-paper basket.

  The man cleared his throat. “Mr. Woodcock, perhaps?” he enquired. Oliver assumed the best greeting face he could manage, although his mind was filled with thoughts of Mallard and Lorina and, above all, Effie.

  “These are indeed the offices of Woodcock and Oakhampton,” he rattled off distractedly. “How can I help you, sir?”

  The man seemed perplexed. He was short and slight, and wearing all three pieces of an ill-fitting blue serge suit, which was at least one piece too many for the outside temperature. His oversize tie-knot was almost as wide as his neck.

  “Well, I suppose I’d like to see either Mr. Woodcock or Mr. Oakhampton, if that’s at all possible,” he said timidly.

  It was possible, because it was one of the days when both partners had turned up at Cromwell Road. However, Oliver had strict instructions to protect his employers from any caller who wasn’t a potential client. It had not been a challenge to maintain a flawless record.

  “Do you have an appointment?” Oliver asked casually, pretending to call up a calendar on his computer screen, although he actually flipped to his shopping list for the weekend.

  “No,” said the man. “I really called on the off-chance, Mr.…?”

  “Swithin,” said Oliver reluctantly, already seeing it on a promotional ballpoint pen or key ring or whatever personalized premium the man might use to support his sales pitch. “Mr. Woodcock and Mr. Oakhampton are both very busy today, sir, but if you’d care to leave a brochure describing your services, I’m sure we’ll get back to you if we’re interested.”

  He flashed the man a tight smile and deleted “condoms” from his shopping list to suggest the encounter was over. The little man hesitated and then cleared his throat.

  “I’m not sure you quite understood me, Mr. Swithin,” he quavered. “I’m not selling anything. I’m enquiring about engaging the firm’s services.”

  Oliver’s fingers slipped off the keyboard and landed in his lap. He stared at the visitor.

  “You’re a client?” he gasped.

  “Er, possibly.”

  Oliver had rehearsed the drill hypothetically on numerous occasions—usher the man unctuously into Mr. Woodcock’s office and then prepare coffee using the silver service that had been gathering dust in a creaky filing cabinet. But his curiosity was too great.

  “What do you think we can do for you?” he asked, hoping for an answer to the mystery of Woodcock and Oakhampton’s brand of business consulting. The man seemed taken aback.

  “I was hoping you could tell me,” he confessed. “You see, I’m thinking of starting a business. I want to manufacture Trilons.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Trilons. Ladies’ panty hose with three legs.”

  “Not too many ladies have three legs.”

  “No, no, Mr. Swithin. They’re to be worn by ladies with two legs, of course. You see, with a standard pair of hose, if a lady gets a run in one leg, the pair must be thrown away. With Trilons, she always has a spare leg to stand on. In, I mean. There are three different ways that two real legs can occupy three panty hose legs, you know.”

  Effie would have known that, Oliver reflected, and the thought caused a physical sensation in his stomach. Should he telephone her?

  “Anyway,” the man continued, “I was passing your building, musing on this, and your brass plaque was so encouraging that I called to see if you could offer me some assistance.”

  Oliver blinked. “Have a seat,” he said, indicating a maroon chesterfield near the door. He hurried to Mr. Woodcock’s door and tapped on the panel. Woodcock listened to him in amazement, threw down his Independent crossword puzzle, and bolted for the door.

  The visitor was quickly conducted into Mr. Oakhampton’s office and the door was firmly closed behind them. For five minutes, there was silence. Then Oliver heard a long bray of hysterical laughter. His first thought was that the little man had undergone a transformation into a murderous maniac, plucking a meat cleaver from the ample folds of his waistcoat; then it dawned on him that the sound was the unfamiliar voice of Mr. Oakhampton, expressing glee.

  The door opened again and the visitor came out, mopping his face with a red handkerchief. He looked at Oliver strangely and then dashed out of the offices. Next came Mr. Woodcock, oddly downcast, followed by the lean form of his partner, who was grinning broadly. Woodcock plucked his wallet from the depths of his trouser pocket, drew out a banknote, and passed it to Oakhampton. Then he went into his office and slammed the door behind him.

  “A fine day, Mr. Swithin,” Oakhampton called cheerfully. Oliver, amazed that his employer knew his name, nodded pleasantly.

  “A client at last, Mr. Oakhampton,” he replied. Oakhampton winked.

  “‘At last’ is correct,” he said. “He’s the last client in every sense.” He chuckled to himself.

  Oliver seized the opportunity. “Mr. Oakhampton, what do we actually do here? I mean, specifically.”

  “We do nothing.”

  “I know, but what are we supposed to do?”

  “Nothing.”

  Oakhampton sat on Oliver’s desk and twirled the rotary stand designed to hold ink-stamps. “Let me explain,” he said affably. “Woodcock and I have known each other all our lives. We’re rather well off and since we have a lot of time on our hands, we make the occasional wager. Well, we were discussing the merits of advertising one day, and I bet him that if we set up a company with a totally nondescriptive name, rented a set of offices, hired a staff, put ourselves into the telephone book, but undertook no publicity whatsoever, then sooner or later, someone would march in and try to engage our services. And so, we created Woodcock and Oakhampton, Ltd. to find out. You’ve just seen our first real client, which means I won the bet.”

  “How much did you win?” Oliver asked in amazement.

  “Ten pounds,” Oakhampton replied proudly. He hauled himself to his feet and jer
ked a thumb in the direction of his partner’s office. “Woodcock’s taken it bad. He rather enjoyed his time as a company director. Better leave him alone for a while.”

  “When did you make this particular bet?”

  Oakhampton thrust his hands into his pockets. “I think it was 1968,” he said. “May have been ’69. Ah well, fun while it lasted.”

  He headed into his own office and closed the door. Then he opened it again and put his head out.

  “By the way, Swithin, you’re fired,” he said amicably.

  Oliver found himself staring curiously at the telephone for several seconds before he realized it was ringing. He picked up the receiver as if in a trance.

  “Last call for the train to Woodcock and Oakhampton,” he intoned.

  “Oliver? It’s your uncle. Can you get some time off work after all?”

  Oliver shook himself into a higher level of awareness.

  “As much as I want, apparently,” he said.

  “Good. I want you to join me. I know who the murderer is.”

  ***

  Big Ben was striking five o’clock when Oliver scooted across Trafalgar Square. For the first time in weeks, the square was not bathed in brilliant sunshine at this hour, and its monuments and bollards cast only dim shadows. During the last hour, the cloud coverage had thickened ominously, and waves were slopping over the fountain’s rim. There were few pedestrians on the square apart from the group clustered around Mallard.

  “Sorry I’m late,” Oliver gasped. He surveyed the group. Some he expected to see—his uncle, Detective Sergeant Moldwarp, Detective Sergeant Welkin on crutches. Effie was there, but she did not look at him. Susie Beamish, Geoffrey Angelwine, Ben Motley—well, Mallard had promised they could be present for the grand unveiling. But Lorina too, presumably still unaware of the heartache she had caused him? And Ambrose Random, looking ridiculous in a caftan. My goodness, Constable Urchin has made a reappearance. And Dworkin. And there was Edmund Tradescant again. But who was that hefty type handcuffed to Moldwarp?