Bad Penny Blues

by Barrie Roberts

  The entries read:

  Matthew Sutton, 14th May 1842, Murdered in Arizona 1884

  Mark Sutton, 12th March 1845, 26th November 1910 (never wed)

  Luke Sutton, 9th August 1847, Married Elizabeth Smith 1865, Died 23rd October 1901

  John Sutton, 22nd April 1848, Married Maud Barton 1864, Daughter Mary Jane born 1865, John lost at sea in passage to Australia 1865.

  When we looked up she was smiling at us.

  ‘Mary Jane Sutton,’ she said, ‘was my great-grandmother. She was brought up with Luke’s family and married one of their Smith cousins. Her daughter, Elizabeth Smith, was my grandmother. She lived till 1956 and I recall her well.’ She showed us a diagram in the first folder, setting out that side of her family tree and continuing down to her own son, Norman, and his three children.

  ‘So you see,’ she said, triumphantly, ‘you’ve solved a little mystery for me. Now I know what became of my great-great-grandfather.’

  ‘Excuse me a moment,’ I said. ‘I’m sure you’ve been very careful in your research, Mrs Wainwright, but that Bible note says Sutton died at sea.’

  She nodded. ‘Oh, I’ve known there was something peculiar about him. You see that entry about his marriage to Maud Barton? I’ve searched and searched in the records and never found that marriage and that’s because there wasn’t one. What I have found in the County Records was censuses in 1851 and 1861 showing a Maud Barton in Rendwary. She’d have been the right age to be his sweetheart, but she’s still there in 1871 as an unmarried woman. Then she disappears.’

  Sheila nodded thoughtfully. ‘So John Sutton left Maud Barton pregnant when he got into his trouble … ‘

  ‘And his family took his child in,’ said Mrs Wainwright, ‘and someone wrote that note in the Bible to tidy up all the loose ends. There’s no illegitimate girl there and no son convicted of robbery.’

  She seemed completely unflustered by the news that her ancestry was illegitimate, and I was about to ask her about the bloke who was murdered in Arizona when a car drew up noisily outside.

  She glanced out of the window. ‘Here’s my son, Norman,’ she said. ‘He’ll be so pleased to meet you. He’s always taken an interest in my genealogical researches.’

  She went to the front door and shortly we were introduced to Norman, a chubby, balding man in his forties who didn’t seem very pleased to meet us. In fact he seemed vaguely distracted while we were introduced. We explained our errand and he nodded without comment, then excused himself and his mother and drew her into the hall.

  While the family discussion went on in the hall, Sheila and I leafed through Mrs Wainwright’s fat file-folders, but she was back quite quickly. Norman was not with her and we heard his car drive away.

  Our hostess seemed a little flustered. ‘I’m afraid Norman can’t stay,’ she said. ‘He’s on his way to Bristol on business. Let me get you some more tea.’

  She returned from the kitchen more composed and I asked my question. ‘What happened to Matthew Sutton — the eldest brother who was murdered in Arizona? That seems a strange end for a lad from a West Country farm.’

  She smiled. ‘I think old Caleb thought that naming his sons after the Evangelists would make them saintly,’ she said, ‘but it didn’t seem to work. John you know about. Mark was a drinker and a wastrel by all accounts. Luke was the one who married and settled down and worked the farm. Matthew went to America when he was young. He fought in their Civil War.’

  She leaned over and leafed through one of her folders, turning it to show us when she found the right page. In the plastic pocket was a photograph of a short dark man with heavy whiskers. He wore the uniform of the Confederate States Army.

  ‘That’s Matthew,’ she said. ‘He sent that picture home.’ She turned the page to another photograph, a faded Victorian group. ‘He came home afterwards,’ she said, ‘and that’s him with his parents and his brothers — apart from poor John, of course.’

  The men in the photograph all resembled the description of John Sutton in his convict record.

  ‘But he went back again?’ I asked.

  ‘Oh yes. He couldn’t settle here, so he went back. He went prospecting and they say he made a good deal of money, but he was killed in Arizona.’

  ‘Murdered, according to your family Bible,’ commented Sheila.

  ‘Well, yes, but it wasn’t what you might call a personal murder. He and his companions were attacked by Red Indians and most of them were killed. Would a copy of that family photograph be a help to you, Dr McKenna?’

  ‘Marvellous,’ smiled Sheila. ‘I hardly dared to ask.’

  ‘Oh, you can have copies of anything I’ve got,’ Mrs Wainwright said. ‘It’s been so exciting to find out about poor John and to see your wonderful penny. Do you think that John might have given that to Maud Barton, Dr McKenna?’

  ‘It’s certainly a possibility. It’s great to know that he had a sweetheart and to know her name, Mrs Wainwright, but it’s too early to say if she was the lady it was made for.’

  ‘Well, until you prove otherwise, I shall choose to believe that she was. Now, I know you haven’t had much time to look at all my papers, but I’ve got most of them on computer and I’ve made you a copy of the disk.’

  She went out again and I blinked at the thought of Mrs Wainwright being computer-literate. She was back in a second with a floppy disk.

  ‘There you are,’ she told Sheila. ‘There’s all the family tree there, scanned-in photographs, extracts from news cuttings and so on, but if there’s anything else you need do please ask. Now I shall start looking for the record of his trial. That’ll be something new and interesting.’

  Sheila grinned broadly. ‘It looks like you’ve done most of my work on the Sutton family, Mrs Wainwright. I don’t know how to thank you and I’ll certainly see you get an acknowledgement, but there is one more thing — the farm where John was born. Is it still standing?’

  ‘Oh yes. It’s only about four miles from here. It’s not in the family now, but it’s still there.’

  She gave us complete directions for finding the farm and we parted very amicably.

  Chapter 6

  ‘Bonzer!’ exclaimed Sheila as we pulled away from Mrs Wainwright’s cottage. That little lady has saved me almost a sixth of my research and actually identified someone who might have been the girl the token was made for,’

  ‘Not to mention selling umpteen copies of your book to the whole of her enormous clan,’ I remarked.

  ‘Why’s that?’

  ‘Because, my love, I had a look at the folder Mrs W didn’t show us while she was outside having a barney with Norman.’

  ‘And what’s in it?’

  ‘Notes about the Confederate ancestor, whatsisname — Matthew.’

  ‘But she didn’t seem to know a great deal about him, apart from the fact that the Indians got him and his pals.’

  ‘Ah, but she did say that he was supposed to have made a lot of money.’

  ‘Don’t tell me! He found the Lost Dutchman Mine and then lost it again?’

  ‘Not quite. The notes suggest that he didn’t just come back to England once after the Civil War, he came at least twice. The second time was after one of his prospecting trips. Apparently they believe that he brought a load of gold and deposited it in the Bank of England.’

  She snorted. ‘Another secret deposit in the Bank of England! Like the Romanov’s gold and the pirate fortune that three thousand people in Cuba think is in there!’

  ‘Maybe,’ I said, ‘but she seems to believe it.’

  ‘And that’s what Norman was going troppo about,’ she said.

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Sharp ears, mate. Raised in the bush, you’ve got to have sharp ears.’

  ‘You weren’t raised in the bush — you said you went to a posh school in Adelaide run by nuns!’

  ‘Same thing, mate. When you’re smoking in the dunny you’ve got to be able to hear a wimple rustle at a hundred yards.
’

  ‘So what did you hear?’

  ‘Norman wanted to know what she’d told us and she said she hadn’t told us about Matthew. He said she shouldn’t have had anything to do with us. She said we might be useful, that we’d already eliminated any claim by the Bartons.’

  ‘So she knew at least something about the Bartons already, then.’

  ‘Well, she told us she couldn’t find John’s supposed marriage and she’d guessed that the Bible entry was a fake to put people off the trail.’

  I laughed. ‘I’ll bet old Caleb wrote that. Any man who names his four sons after the Evangelists has got to be the kind of pious fraud who’d write lies in his Bible.’

  ‘Do you think he was trying to cover up or trying to give the illegitimate line a chance at the money?’

  ‘I don’t think they had one anyway. If Matthew died intestate — and we lawyers are always warning people to make wills in good time, not to leave it till you’re holed up in a cave in Arizona with the entire Apache nation outside wanting to decorate their wigwams with you — then his brothers were his heirs and after that their legitimate issue. I suspect that, even if there were a pile of gold in the Bank, the Wainwright’s aren’t in line for it.’

  We found the old Sutton farm and photographed it, then made our way back to the motorway. I pointed out to Sheila the church with a weathercock that’s supposed to crow.

  ‘Yair,’ she said. ‘Pull the other one!’

  ‘No, seriously. It’s supposed to be specially constructed so that when the wind blows from a particular direction it crows.’

  ‘Travelling with you, Chris Tyroll, is amazing. Remember when you told me about those two tramps who murdered their mate in the garbo heap on the Ml?’

  ‘If you don’t want informed comment, you have only to say so. By the way, we’re coming to a Services.’

  ‘You want to point your Percy?’

  ‘Not really. It’s just that Mrs W’s crustless sarnies have worn off and I’m starving.’

  She grinned. ‘Why do people cut the crust off?’

  ‘Don’t ask me. I suppose they think it’s daintier.’

  ‘Daintier!’ Sheila snorted. Then they fill them with egg and cucumbers to give you the farts!’

  On a fine Sunday evening in early summer the Services were busy It was over an hour before we came out on to the car-park. Sheila’s car was gone. Definitely. We searched the car-park, but it was gone, stolen. So it was statements to the police, a cab into Bristol and two hours on the train and another cab to get home. A rotten ending to a nice, successful day, but don’t believe people who tell you that things can’t get worse. They always can.

  By the time we made it home we were both tired and irritable. I started upstairs. Sheila turned back, saying that she was going to feed Buggalugs.

  ‘He’s quite fat enough. One night without an extra meal won’t kill him.’

  ‘Don’t take it out on the poor moggy,’ she said. ‘He didn’t duff the car!’

  I was trudging on upstairs making my mind up to have Monday morning off, when Sheila called me from the kitchen.

  She was standing by the kitchen table in the dark, looking at a sheet of paper by the light from the passage. As I came in she handed it to me.

  ‘It was slipped under the door,’ she said in a puzzled tone. ‘What’s it mean?’

  It was a sheet of white, ordinary A4 size, with a couple of lines of text printed across the middle:

  DR MCKENNA — THERE ARE MORE WAYS THAN CHOKING WITH CREAM

  Sheila made for the back door while I stared at it. If I hadn’t been tired I might have been quicker, but it took a moment to dawn.

  ‘It’s a proverb,’ I said. ‘“There are more ways … ’”

  I broke off and leapt across the room but I was too late. Sheila had opened the back door and snapped the light on. As I reached her, I heard her choked gasp of dismay, then she turned quickly towards me, burying her face in my shoulder, panting and cursing under her breath. Behind her I could see the pool of bright, fresh blood glistening on the pale stone. Buggalugs lay on the back step in a pool of his own blood. His throat was cut right across. Another sheet of paper lay on top on his little black body.

  I pushed Sheila into a chair, snatched the second paper and slammed the door, throwing the bolt and snapping the outside light off. Then I poured us both a large whisky.

  We drank in silence. Sheila sat with her head hung down. When she reached the bottom of the glass she just reached out and poured another. I followed her.

  At length she looked up. Her face was white, making her mask of freckles into stark bands around her wide, wet eyes.

  ‘What the hell … ,’ she began.

  ‘It’s a threat,’ I said. I had read the second message. The paper slipped under the door was the first part. It’s a proverb — “There are more ways of killing a cat than choking it with cream”.’ I showed her the second paper’s text:

  CURIOSITY IS A FAMOUS WAY.

  ‘Curiosity killed the cat’, she recited dully, then her anger sparked. ‘It wasn’t bloody curiosity! It was some sicko who wanted to frighten me, so he killed that poor little moggy!’

  She gave vent to an incomprehensible snarl of rage, balled up both papers and flung them across the room.

  Afterwards we lay in bed, having made love with the intensity that only those sickened by blood and frightened by death can achieve. Tiredness notwithstanding, neither of us slept. I was smoking silently hoping that Sheila had fallen asleep, when she spoke.

  ‘I’ve been thinking,’ she said, ‘about the Briefcase Incident.’

  ‘So have I,’ I said, ‘and your car.’

  ‘You mean the car was part of it?’

  ‘Your briefcase was on the back seat.’

  ‘But it was the other case — the one with the newspapers in it. If he thought he was getting anything worthwhile he blew it. Mrs W’s disk is in my shoulder-bag.’

  ‘Fine, but he probably pinched the car to make sure that whoever did it had time to get here ahead of us, suss the situation out, do his dirty work and get clear away.’

  ‘But who? Why?’

  ‘Who I don’t know. Why is pretty plain from the notes. Somebody doesn’t want you looking into their family history.’

  ‘But if it started with the briefcase — I hadn’t advertised what I was doing then.’

  ‘No, but you were at the Family Records Centre, no doubt using certain years’ registers only. Maybe he was there, using those same registers, noticed you were using them and got to wonder what you were up to.’

  ‘But how would he find out before it was publicised?’

  ‘He couldn’t. That’s why he needed to prepare a briefcase as near as dammit like yours, follow you and swap them over, so that he got your files. I should have realised that nobody walks about with a case full of old newspapers.’

  ‘But what does he want?’

  ‘I thought he’d made that pretty clear — he wants you to stop.’

  There was a long silence.

  ‘What do you think I should do?’ she asked, at length.

  ‘I’m not going to advise you to stop. You wouldn’t take any notice anyway. But you need to be careful — very careful. So far he’s killed a cat, but people who hurt animals often end up hurting people. He’s unbalanced and he’s violent.’

  ‘No, I’m not going to stop. I’m damned if I will. But who is it?’

  ‘It could be anybody. The only half-way reasonable suspect at the moment is chubby Norman.’

  ‘Norman Wainwright? You mean … ’

  ‘I mean that Norman and his mum seem to think there’s gold about somewhere. He didn’t want his mother to have anything to do with us. Perhaps he’s decided to act alone.’

  ‘But, if the Wainwrights are chasing old Matthew’s gold, I’ve given them new information and new traces, surely.’

  ‘You’ve shown them that there’s quite possibly an Australian branch of the family �
� and you’re Australian.’

  ‘You mean he thinks I’m Cousin Sheila blown in from Oz to scoop the pool! He’d have to be crazy!’

  ‘Whoever killed Buggalugs was crazy, Sheila. Be careful.’

  She rolled half on top of me and pressed her face against my shoulder. ‘I’m not going to stop,’ she said, drowsily, and fell asleep.

  Chapter 7

  In the morning I phoned John Parry, an old friend and a good one. The big Welshman is a detective inspector at Belston nick. John is a bachelor for the second time around and the promise of a good meal will always draw him.

  Over lunch we told him the whole story and showed him the notes.

  ‘Laser printed,’ he mused. ‘Properly spelled. Not your average illiterate animal mutilator. Who knew you were in Somerset?’

  ‘Nobody,’ I said. ‘That’s why we thought of chubby Norman.’

  ‘Huh,’ he said. ‘Well, I can’t have chubby Norman taken into Bridgwater nick and sweated just because someone’s killed a cat in the Midlands.’

  He looked evenly at Sheila. ‘I suppose there’s not a chance that you’d … ‘

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘There isn’t and I wouldn’t!’

  He drew a deep breath. ‘Ah, well,’ he said, ‘having made the serious mistake of trying to stop you before, I shan’t push that suggestion any further. I would remind you, however, that in the past you and Chris have shown a regrettable tendency to trip over corpses rather larger than cats. I’d be grateful if you’d try and limit that aspect of the matter — or at least find them on someone else’s patch.’

  ‘I’m not terribly concerned about other people’s bodies,’ I said. ‘Only this one,’ and I laid an arm on Sheila’s shoulder.

  He nodded. ‘Same advice as I’ve given you before, boyo — and you’ve both ignored before — be very careful. Try not to be alone and be cautious about where you go and who you deal with. In the meantime I’ll see if I can think of an excuse for asking Somerset and Avon to find out where chubby Norman was last evening.’

  When he had gone, I removed Buggalugs’ remains from the doorstep and washed down the stone. I laid the cat to rest in a corner of the garden, a shady place behind the shrubs where he used to loll about on warm afternoons. I didn’t say a prayer over him, but I did mutter a curse on the psychopathic swine who’d killed him.