The Red Chairs Mystery

by L. D. Culliford

  The Pennycuiks had been a family of four. Daniel’s sister was called Francesca. As children, they were inseparable; and, although younger, Dan did indeed feel protective of Fran. In Holly’s dream, the family were wearing Parka jackets, and ‘Parker’ is a well-known brand of fountain pen, giving the first clue to the name: PEN. The white blocks on the corner of the brick building form the second part of that clue. These are ‘quoins’, a word sounding like ‘coins’; the coin in question here being a penny – so, not PEN but PENNY. The final clue is found in the image of a speedboat, travelling briskly, conjuring up the word ‘quick’, which sounds like CUIK. Put them together and that’s PENNYCUIK… But how was she to make the connection? Holly was far too sensible to expect help from the supernatural.

  ‘You’re very early for your appointment’, said the reception woman to Dan in a kindly voice. ‘Why don’t you go into the canteen and have a hot drink. I’ll call when it’s your turn’.

  Patients receiving treatment had special parking privileges, but Dan had been forced to wait up to twenty minutes even so on previous occasions. In addition, it was hard to gauge the traffic in the morning, so he preferred to set off in good time and wait if necessary, rather than risk being late for his treatment.

  The canteen was busy that morning, and he could only find a place to sit and drink his coffee at a table already occupied by a smart looking woman in her fifties who reminded him of one of the television newsreaders. She said ‘Hello’, and he nodded in return. They sat silently, with people moving backwards and forwards all around them, chairs and tables scraping the linoleum floor, until suddenly there was a lull.

  ‘I’m Linda’, said the woman in the unexpected silence. ‘Breast cancer… I had a mastectomy and a course of chemo. Now I’ve started three weeks of this too’. She waved her hand towards the door, indicating the extensive, modern radiotherapy suite. ‘What about you?’

  Dan was reluctant to speak about himself, but the atmosphere in this building was not like in other places. He felt alright about confiding a little in people, in strangers who he would not get to know properly and who, in turn, would not truly get to know him.

  ‘Daniel’, he said. ‘That’s my name… I’m called Dan’, continuing after a pause, ‘I’ve got lung cancer… That’s why my voice is funny’, he explained. ‘The tumour has grown into one of the nerves to my voice-box, you see. One of my vocal cords is partially paralysed.’

  ‘Oh, dear!’ said Linda.

  ‘It’s not too bad’, replied Dan. ‘I don’t get any pain; just a bit breathless sometimes… and a cough.’

  The loudspeaker on the wall above them came suddenly to life. ‘Linda Bingham to radiotherapy, please’, said a voice. ‘That’s me’, Linda announced. ‘I’d better go… It’s been nice meeting you, Dan. And good luck!’

  He said goodbye. ‘If it wasn’t for bad luck’, he was thinking, echoing the words of a blues song he remembered, ‘I wouldn’t have no luck at all!’

  Going home later, he realized that he was still incredibly angry. That night, he went to sleep exhausted, but woke again after only a couple of hours, rage coursing like fire through his veins. After tossing for a bit, he got up, went to the bathroom, had a drink of water and went to lie down again. After lying awake in the unkempt bed-sheets for another forty minutes or so, he decided he had to go and do something. Pulling on some clothes, soon afterwards, he went out into the night.

  ***

  Arriving at the golf club shortly before eight o’clock the following morning, Wednesday, Peter Harding was greeted by a very animated and unhappy John Tranter. ‘Come and look at this’, was all he could say, leading the Colonel around the clubhouse to the practice putting green where the words EVIL BASTARDS could be read, inscribed in two-foot high letters.

  ‘I reckon it’s a mixture of weed-killer and old engine oil has done that’, the head green-keeper said, sounding disgusted. ‘Who would do such a thing?’

  ‘The same one who left us a corpse and a couple of chairs, John, don’t you reckon?’ the Secretary replied. ‘I’ll get onto the police right away. Don’t do anything yet, of course; but do you think you can fix it?’

  ‘We’ll have to lift all the affected turf, fill in and re-seed it’, was the answer. ‘It’s the beginning of October now… Not the best time; but it might be alright if it stays reasonably warm and the seed takes. The members will just have to go around it for now.’

  Just under two hours later, Valerie Parton, Holly and Rich were seated in the darkened Secretary’s office, ready to view the CCTV images captured the night before. Other members of the police team were outside examining the hostile message on the ground. Peter Harding explained that the cameras had motion-sensors fitted, as did the car-park and clubhouse floodlights, switching on whenever movement was detected. ‘We’ve had some wonderful wild-life shots’, he added, digressing unnecessarily. ‘Deer, badgers, foxes, pheasants and squirrels mostly’. As a result of the advanced technology, they did not have to wait long after he pressed the start button before something of interest appeared.

  ‘You can see the beam of his headlights’, the Colonel was pointing at the screen, ‘But, clever fellow, he’s parked outside the range of the cameras.’

  ‘It might be a she, a woman not a man’, Holly mentioned.

  ‘I think you’ll see it’s a man in a minute’, Harding replied. ‘I’ve already had a quick look at these. We can’t see him yet because he’s hugging the hedge, underneath the lights and cameras, but his movement has triggered the devices. You just get a glimpse of him as he leaves the car park, coming round to the front of the building… There! You see?’

  He played and replayed that three-second section of tape several times for them, then switched over to another view.

  ‘Here he is now, walking along in front of the building, disappearing round the side’, the Secretary’s commentary continued. Holly made a note of the crouched, probably male, figure skulking slowly along, carrying what seemed to be a heavy container – like a petrol can – in one hand, and a large plastic bucket in the other. The images were rather fuzzy, and were in black and white, but it was still possible to make out that he was wearing loose dark overalls and a fully zipped track-suit top with the hood up over a baseball cap. The man’s face could not be seen.

  The next view covered the putting green, and the small group watched carefully as the interloper made his way to the middle of it, placing the two receptacles down on the grass, pouring a dark fluid from the can into the bucket and, fishing a long-handled brush from somewhere in among the folds of his overalls, begin writing his angry message. He did not seem to be in any hurry, but Holly was particularly interested when he seemed to take a long break from his exertions.

  ‘What’s he doing?’ she asked. ‘Can you play that bit again, please, Colonel?’

  The figure, his back to the camera, had straightened up, dumped his brush in the bucket, turned his head to the side, and suddenly bent down again, bobbing up and down a few times. ‘I think he might be coughing’, said Rich. ‘Let’s look at it again’, said Holly.

  In the end, they all agreed that this was the most likely explanation. The man had been convulsed for a few seconds by a paroxysm of coughing. Holly immediately went down to speak to the forensic men outside. ‘Look for spots of phlegm’, she advised them. ‘He was writing the ‘T’ when it happened. Look at the middle of this area carefully please. We’re looking for a sample of his DNA.’

  After he completed the message, the video-watchers saw the man as he took his bucket, brush and can, retraced his steps, marched across the car park without taking the trouble this time to conceal himself, and drove away. They could see the sweep of the headlights making a circle across the empty car park, but the vehicle remained out of sight. Back outside soon afterwards, the forensic expert told Holly they had found and collected two small pieces of turf on which were samples of
what might have been blood-flecked pulmonary secretions. ‘We’ve got the rotter’s spit, you mean? That’s wonderful!’ Holly, of course, was delighted.

  In the late afternoon at Greenings, it was time to take stock. With her boss listening in via speaker-phone, Holly ran through an update of the situation.

  ‘We still do not know the identity of Jane X’, she began. ‘We think she was left on the golf course, and possibly killed, by the man with the husky voice. He is probably also the man in the overalls who left another message on club property last night. We have not established a clear motive, but revenge of some kind seems likely. Having canvassed removals firms, neighbours, horse people, vets and even equine funeral services, we are no nearer to understanding how the red chairs and corpse were transported, despite the tell-tale evidence of horse blood on one of the chairs… Is that everything?’

  ‘I did phone several psychiatric units, Holly’, Sally Blackshaw piped up. ‘I worked out that Jane X, probably born around 1975, could have been treated somewhere for anorexia from roughly 1990 onwards. Unfortunately, with only an approximate age and no name, none of them could help us out. All I could clarify was that people from this area – women mostly, but apparently men can also suffer from eating disorders… These people would have been sent to Graylingwell Hospital before it closed in 2001, anyway to local psychiatric services, and then referred on to the eating disorders unit at the Atkinson Morley Hospital in Wimbledon, part of the Psychiatry Department of St George’s Hospital Medical School in Tooting.’

  ‘Okay… Thanks, Sally, That’s helpful’, said Holly. ‘Anything else, anyone?’

  ‘Yes’, came the unmistakeable, if slightly distorted, voice from the telephone speaker. ‘We are sure that Messrs Royle and Gryllock know more than they are currently willing to tell.’

  ‘Thank you, Ma’am’, Holly replied. ‘Where do you advise we go now?’

  ‘We have fewer lines of enquiry to pursue now, and a number of other cases to work on’, said the voice, ‘So I’m going to scale back the investigation and reassign half of you’. There was a pause before the DI resumed with a tone of finality, ‘DS Angel and I will discuss it in the morning and get back to you.’

  As Laura Garbutt finished speaking, another phone started ringing. Rich Baum picked it up then passed it to Holly, who listened intently for a few moments, said ‘Thank you’ into the mouthpiece, and put the receiver down gently.

  ‘Well’, she said, turning back to the assembled company. ‘That is a surprise! The forensic team have the DNA results from some phlegm they collected at the golf club this morning and they think they have a near match, but not one we expected… It turns out that the overalls man is closely related to the victim. They might be cousins, but they are probably brother and sister.’

  ***

  Dan Pennycuik missed his treatment that Wednesday morning, sleeping late after his strength-sapping nocturnal activities. He took a phone call in the early afternoon from a cancer specialist nurse at the centre, concerned at his absence that day. ‘I’ll be there tomorrow’, he reassured her. ‘Don’t worry.’

  Feeling rested, he was early again for treatment the next day, and was sitting in the canteen when the woman, Linda, came and sat beside him, putting her tea on the table between them.

  ‘I was looking out for you yesterday’, she said. ‘We cancer sufferers need to stick together, don’t you think? Support each other?’

  ‘I wasn’t well’, he replied defensively.

  ‘I’m not trying to make you feel bad, Daniel… On the contrary’, she said. ‘I have my husband to care about and look after me. He’s been wonderful about all this, especially when I went through chemotherapy, lost my hair and everything. But I sense that you don’t have anyone… Am I right?’

  ‘I had a sister’, Dan replied. ‘But she died.’

  ‘I’m so sorry’, the woman, Linda, responded, laying a comforting hand on his outstretched arm. ‘What was she like?’

  No-one had shown this kind of interest in him before, and Dan was cautious; but something made him want to unbutton himself to this strangely trustworthy person. To him, she gave off a real glow of compassion so, husky voice notwithstanding, he began to tell her about his life with his sister Fran.

  ‘Our mother’s name was Stella. She came from humble roots in Hampshire. Our grandparents, her parents, died before we were born. Our father, George Pennycuik, was a sea captain. I don’t remember him very well because he was seldom at home, always travelling the globe. I think he came from Scotland originally, made his way to Portsmouth and joined the Merchant Navy. He was older than mother, and he died of yellow fever in Argentina when I was only four and Fran was nearly nine.’

  Dan paused to take a sip of coffee before continuing. ‘There was no pension, so mother had to find suitable work somewhere, a job that included accommodation for us all to live in. That’s how she came to be a housekeeper. Her first position was with a family in Southsea, near where we had been living in lodgings while father was alive. Even though the three of us were sharing one bedroom, we liked it there. All the same, after a couple of years, when the children of the house went away to school, we had to move on. That’s when we shifted to Fotheringay House, near Ewehurst. An important judge had lost his wife some years earlier. His latest house-keeper was due to retire and my mother had got to know her somehow. It was this woman who recommended my mother to the judge.’

  ‘So you and your sister had a new home’, Linda interjected. ‘Did you like that one?’

  ‘We did at first’, replied Dan. ‘The judge was retired, a strict sort; but he was elderly and kept much to himself. We had the run of the place. It was a big house and there were extensive gardens too. I really liked one of the gardeners, who seemed to take a shine to me. I think I saw him as a kind of substitute for my father. But, I see now, he was probably just being nice to me as a way of getting close to my mother. He was a married man, though. She kept brushing him off, and because of it he seemed to become much less friendly to me. It was still okay. I mean, we weren’t unhappy… But then everything changed when the judge’s son came home for the school holidays. He was older than us and a real bully, so we tried to keep out of his way. When the judge became ill and finally died, of course, it all changed completely again.’

  He found it surprisingly easy to speak about these matters after so long a time. Indeed, he wanted to go on confiding in Linda, but the loudspeaker cut into the narrative. It was his turn, this time, to go for treatment.

  ‘I’ll see you tomorrow, then’, Linda called after him, waving, but that wasn’t to be.

  The 17th

  Chapter

  It was bad news for Holly that there were no matches for the sibling DNA on police computers anywhere. The identity of the man in the overalls was still a mystery. There was plenty of discussion in the room after the revelation from forensics, but no new ideas about what to do next. After a while, Rich Baum asked if he could leave a little early. It was his mother’s birthday and he wanted to visit her with a gift before his father was taking her out for an evening meal at The Fountain, their favourite pub in Ashurst, a meal to which a manifestly disappointed Rich had not been invited.

  The young man was distracted as he drove up to Halfway Bridge and turned right towards Petworth. He was listening with half an ear to radio, from which emerged the unmistakeable guitar sound of Hank Marvin, lead guitarist of The Shadows, Cliff Richard’s backing group from a long time ago. Ahead was a brief stretch of dual carriageway. Coming towards him at speed, overtaking a slower vehicle where the road started narrowing, was motorcycle, a broad-beamed affair, like a Harley. Rich hardly saw this speeding bullet. It was on him like a shot, forcing him to swerve left and brake at the same time. The BMW turned sideways, rear tyres skidding along the tarmac, the nearside one lifting some inches off the ground. To Rich it seemed as if the car hung for several seconds in the air bef
ore mercifully falling back to earth. Traction regained, it shot forwards, up onto the muddy verge and on, until the front wheels fell into space and stopped, overhanging a ditch. He tried to back out again, but the wheels just spun. Nothing had happened with the air-bags, so he sat for a moment, the world strangely calm and quiet after he switched off the engine.

  Fortunately, there was a signal, but not much life left in the battery of his mobile. The recovery vehicle, he discovered, would take an hour to reach him. He started explaining to his mother what was happening, to apologise and wish her well, but then the phone packed up. There were no houses in sight, but there was a lane nearby. Later, borrowing the recovery driver’s Android to make the call, he explained things to Holly who was still at Greenings.

  After briefly recounting his adventures, explaining why he had gone exploring, he said, ‘It was called Dean Lane... I could see a roof in the distance, and I thought I might find someone at home. As I set off, I also noticed an old signboard. It had fallen over by the hedge and was covered by overgrown grass and weeds. The lettering was faded, but I could just make out part of the first word, “Pony”… “Pony-something”. Then there was another word, but I couldn’t make that one out. Anyway, I had this great hunch, so I decided to take a look up the track. I knew I had plenty of time’.

  ‘Go on’, said Holly. She liked her staff to be thorough, but still wished he’d get to the point.

  ‘Okay’, said Rich. ‘I went about a hundred and fifty metres where I came across this almost derelict farm. All the buildings were locked up. There was no sign of life, although there were some fairly fresh-looking tyre tracks on the muddy ground in front of the main gateway to the yard. I knocked on doors and windows, but there was no response. The bell did not seem to be working.’

  ‘Were there any more signs?’ Holly asked.