Strange Tombs

by Syd Moore

  ‘Hmm,’ I said and grunted. I thought that might take a while. ‘Well his dad’s being very tolerant and understanding.’

  ‘Perhaps tolerant, perhaps guilty: Mrs Jocasta Blackman, his mother, died in a shooting accident four years ago,’ Monty continued. ‘Blew her brains out. Nothing suspicious as far as we are aware, although …’

  My ears pricked. ‘What?’

  ‘Although Rafe Blackman married his secretary six months later. Two weeks after they returned from their honeymoon the new Mrs Blackman gave birth to a very healthy baby girl called Maisie. Maisie Blackman now has a new one-year-old brother.’

  Ah, I thought, that could well explain some of Nicholas’s surly behaviour. ‘And no foul play?’

  ‘None of which we are aware of. Although the police report is not what you’d call “thorough”. Mr Blackman had a lot of influential friends who were inclined to keep him out of the spotlight and move things on quickly for the grieving father and son.’

  ‘Very quickly indeed,’ said Sam.

  ‘The young Blackman however, appears to have no connections to Peacock as far as we can ascertain, until he got here. Though Mr Blackman senior currently resides in Chigwell, which is in Essex, and thirty miles from Damebury.’

  He let that settle in for a moment then promptly went on. ‘Second: Chris Devlin. Well you can wiki him. It’s all there. Bestseller, etc. I haven’t made a great effort because you said he wasn’t present when Mr Peacock died. Also he’s living in the US and the agencies over there haven’t responded with what we’d call “great zeal”.’

  I wrote down, ‘Devlin. No zeal.’ Then typed in ‘Imogen Green’ because Monty was already detailing the sixty-eightyear-old. ‘Unextraordinary career in Customs and Excise,’ he was saying. ‘Was married in ’67 to a co-worker, Terrence Green, later divorced. One daughter, in her forties with two children. They live in Bristol not far from Imogen herself. Who as far as I’m aware lives a quiet but comfortable life. She’s a member of a bridge club and regularly attends the WI on Wednesdays.’

  ‘A party animal, then,’ I said deadpan.

  ‘Well you may say that, Rosie dear. But all of us in this conversation are aware that appearances can be deceiving and indeed Mrs Green was born Imogen Zoppé.’

  Sam’s head popped up. ‘Not Zoppé as in the Zoppé family?’ he asked in amazement.

  ‘Indeed,’ said Monty.

  ‘Well I never!’ said Sam.

  ‘Who are the Zoppé family when they’re at home?’ I asked.

  ‘Oh they’re never at home, dear gal,’ chuckled Monty.

  ‘Travelling circus folk,’ Sam explained.

  ‘Imogen’s father was a strongman,’ Monty detailed. ‘“Samson the Iron Hercules”. Did all sorts of interesting things with cannonballs and metal bars.’

  ‘Ohhh-er!’ I said and winked at Sam but he wasn’t looking.

  ‘Her mother,’ Monty continued, ‘was a Mabel Dare, Queen of the Amazons. Strapping woman. Stunning to look at, a trapeze artist of great athleticism, who sadly ended her days in a wheelchair after a fall.’

  ‘Wow,’ I said, stuck for anything else to say. ‘Who’d’ve thunk?’

  ‘Who’d have thought indeed?’ said Monty. ‘Beneath the most conventional of exteriors lurks many a colourful past, I can tell you.’

  ‘Yep,’ I said. ‘I can confirm that,’ defaulting, as was my habit these days, to Mum and Dad. ‘They’d have worked hard to conceal that.’ I spoke my thoughts out loud. ‘I mean Imogen would have had to have worked hard …’

  Sam murmured an agreement. ‘Perhaps why she chose a path of superficial conformity.’

  Monty snorted. ‘Certainly worth bearing in mind as you move through your investigation. But on the surface no connection to anyone at Ratchette Hall,’ he went on. ‘Neither does Margot Lovelock. Who lives in a village in Hertfordshire with her husband, a former pharmacist, who has two adult children. Actually, he is her second husband. Her first was rather wealthy. Aristo. Society wedding with all the bells and whistles. Aunty Tabby might remember it if you jog her memory: there was some scandal, what with Margot being a commoner. At the time she was known as Goti, a successful glamour model. The sixties were very much her heyday. But she got respectable, donned an apron, became a model housewife and dutifully produced an heir for Peregrine, the husband. Unfortunately said heir died in his twenties and the marriage pretty much went downhill from that point on. There was a minor scandal over the divorce but by that time it was the nineties and only aristocracy batted an eyelid at that sort of thing, and I think Margot felt she was well off out of it. And well off. She had a good divorce lawyer.’

  ‘Cancer?’ I asked, referring to the son.

  ‘Eh?’ said Monty.

  ‘The heir. How did he die if he was young?’

  ‘Accident?’ Sam suggested.

  The ruffle of pages crinkled down the line then Monty said, ‘According to the Leeds Coroner’s report it was suicide. He’d been very depressed after the breakup of a relationship.’

  ‘Oh dear,’ I said. ‘Poor Margot. What a waste.’

  ‘Now here’s an interesting one,’ said Monty as if the others had been as dull as ditch water, ‘Starla Ocean. She runs some kind of clinic for cats.’

  ‘Mental Health,’ Sam added. His face betrayed no emotion.

  Monty paused. ‘Yes,’ he sounded doubtful. ‘I wasn’t sure if Peggy, the researcher, was having me on. Okay then, well the Starla and Catnip Mental Health Clinic for Feline Distress has been established for three years now. And it is flourishing.’

  ‘There’s a lot of depressed pussies out there,’ said Sam and looked at me.

  I wasn’t sure if he was making a point, thought it unlikely, but had a quick glower anyway on the off-chance.

  ‘Indeed,’ said Monty. His voice cut out for a second so we didn’t actually hear the last consonant sounded properly.

  ‘Is that what’s interesting?’ I asked. ‘You said she was interesting.’

  ‘Oh no,’ he said. ‘You see she was born in Brisbane Australia as plain Helen Boddle, but came over here sixteen years ago.’

  ‘Not enough depressed Aussie cats,’ I muttered to Sam.

  He nodded sagely, ‘It’s all that sunshine and surf.’

  ‘The “lucky country”, I think they call it,’ I added. I’d once had a boyfriend who didn’t stop going on about how friggin’ brilliant Australia was. ‘God’s lucky country,’ he kept telling me again and again and again.

  ‘Well,’ said Monty. ‘Ms Ocean got involved with an animal rights group and went down for her part in a kidnap plot.’

  Sam and I looked at each other, jaws having just crashed onto the car floor.

  ‘Good lord!’ said Sam. ‘You could not make it up, could you? Starla Ocean and “kidnap plot”. Two things I would not expect to be mentioned in the same sentence.’

  ‘Who did she kidnap?’ I asked.

  ‘The owner of a farm that bred rabbits for a research laboratory,’ Monty’s disembodied voice went on. ‘Served twelve months in the end. Underwent some kind of epiphany in prison. Came out, changed her name to Starla Ocean, started working for the “Dove UK project”, a peace movement. That was where she met her partner, Catnip Saggins, formerly Tracey. They’ve been together for seven years now.’

  I shook my head. All these people so seemingly ordinary. What strange creatures human beings were.

  ‘Next: Tabitha Montgomery. Need I say more?’ Monty’s voice was firm.

  I wrote her name down while her nephew banged on about vouching for her impeccable character, good sense, noble attitude and award for being a good egg or something. In the end I typed ‘Above suspicion blah blah blah. Never so much as missed a television license payment blah blah blah. It’s all on Monty if she turns out a wrong ’un blah blah blah.’

  ‘So next there’s Robin Savage,’ the agent continued, having ordered Tabby off the suspects list, if there was ever going to be one drawn up.

>   ‘Well, Robin at least has got to be straightforward,’ I said summoning up the Scotsman’s Scandi-knit jumper, cord trousers and thinning hair.

  ‘Indeed,’ Monty went on. ‘Runs his uncle’s business, Savage Books. Will inherit it when the elder Savage shuffles off his mortal coil. Robin Savage was educated at Ballen Heights, a private academy. Father was hoping he’d go into insurance like he had, but Robin had other ideas, erring towards books, arts and literature. He married in 1985. Two children, a girl and a boy, Janet and John.’

  ‘Janet and John?’ Sam asked. ‘I’m surprised he had such a sense of humour.’

  ‘Family names,’ Monty sniffed. ‘It happens.’

  ‘He mentioned a partner in the pub,’ I tendered. ‘I had the impression it was a man.’

  ‘Yes,’ Monty answered with speed. ‘Robin left his wife ten years ago for Ray, who he lives with now. It’s all very amicable.’

  ‘Is it really?’ Sam sounded sceptical.

  ‘Apparently so. Mrs Savage is remarried too. All of them get on. Ray and Robin were guests at her second wedding. But, moving on, Robin has nothing in common with Graham Peacock, apart from an interest in books. Ditto Cullen Sutcliffe.’

  ‘Actually Monty,’ I said, remembering that we hadn’t yet mentioned the events of the morning. ‘Cullen does share a quality with Graham Peacock, I’m afraid. As of this morning he’s also dead.’

  ‘By Jove!’ Monty exploded. ‘What the hell’s happening down there? And you didn’t think to mention this because?’

  ‘I thought it might have come up on your “tom toms”,’ I said, but my voice was weak. ‘You always seem so well informed.’

  ‘Clearly not today. You’ll have to bring me up to speed now,’ he insisted.

  Once we’d managed to relay everything we knew about the situation (which wasn’t a huge amount), he said, ‘Well I never. I had my eye on him. Thought he was a potential suspect actually.’

  ‘I think we all did,’ said Sam.

  ‘Interesting. Well, here’s the lowdown: parents are civil servants, his sister is a personal trainer. Sutcliffe graduated with a chemistry degree from the City University in London but was working as a pastry chef in an Eastbourne delicatessen, where his parents live. My sources tell me he was particularly skilled in the fondant icing department. Although, he had been applying to the army for a while. There had been issues with eczema. And his psych evaluation.’

  ‘No kidding,’ I muttered under my breath.

  ‘His uncle was in the army, but left it in the nineties to become a soldier of fortune. Got up to some rather nasty antics in Sierra Leone. But apparently Cullen adores him.’

  ‘Or used to,’ Sam said.

  ‘Quite,’ Monty agreed. ‘There was, however, an accusation of assault two years ago, outside a pub in Eastbourne but the charges were dropped. It appears to have been an alcohol-fuelled disagreement over a spilt pint.’

  ‘Yeah, I’ve had some of those,’ I said.

  Sam raised his eyebrows but Monty was already moving on.

  ‘So, to the Course Leader – Laura Daphne Taylor-Jacobs. She started off life as plain old Laura Taylor. Again, you can wiki her but I’d say the most extraordinary thing about dear LD is the number of books she’s managed to churn out: twenty-two so far. Very prolific. Not as productive as Mr Devlin to be fair, but acclaimed, and has also won prizes. Apart from that her life has been unextraordinary – degree in English from the University of Essex so has had links to your area. Did some inconsequential jobs, then a few years later took a masters from Leeds. Graduated with Distinction. Went into publishing. Has been with her husband, Jacob John Jacobs the journalist, for twenty-five years. Married him sixteen years ago and had a daughter a perfectly respectable year later. Eloise, apparently.’

  ‘Sounds like the title for a book,’ said Sam. ‘Eloise apparently.’ He looked at me and nodded at the same time, expecting a compliment.

  I thought it was more likely to be a pretentious eighties song from a group of young men with loads of make-up and crimped hair, so ignored him and asked Monty, ‘Jacob John Jacobs. He’s quite famous isn’t he? I think I’ve seen him on some of those Sunday morning talk shows. He has views. On lots of things.’

  Monty’s nasal twang came out as he said, ‘Ye-es. But he’s a left-wing liberal and isn’t particularly controversial. Though consider everything.’

  Sam and I muttered that we would.

  ‘Mrs Taylor-Jacobs did, however, deliver a course at Ratchette Hall a couple of years ago – Crime: Plots and Patience – which would indicate she and Graham were acquainted. I don’t think they have met since, but you could ask.’

  So Laura knew Graham. Actually, I think I kind of had that impression already. It didn’t feel like it was too much of a surprise, but perhaps we should tackle her about it.

  ‘Is that everyone?’ I asked. I was starting to feel a bit cramped in the car, balancing the laptop on my knees.

  ‘Just Jocelyn Vincent,’ Monty said. ‘Young and bright. Achieved a first in Business from Oxford. Her mother is Liberian, father from Dorset. Mum runs a cosmetic line, called IQ. Dad has his own aluminium window manufacturing company. Jocelyn works in IT for Sony. But she’s shown promise and is rising up through the ranks very quickly.’

  None of this came as a surprise to me. I’d pegged Jocelyn as ‘one to watch’.

  ‘Anything weird or unsettling about her?’ I asked, and shot Sam a look. I’d noticed the way, he’d lingered on her figure when we arrived. And although I was thinking that I possibly wasn’t the best woman in the world for my curator at the moment, I wasn’t going to set myself up with any competition. Jocelyn was pretty, intelligent and nice. There had to be something dodgy in that.

  ‘Mmm,’ said Monty. We heard more rustling. ‘There was an episode at school, once. She hit a boy over the head with a brick and then ran away.’

  ‘A violent nature!’ I exclaimed loudly. Sam blinked twice. He was as shocked as me.

  ‘Well,’ said Monty. ‘Says here she was nine at the time and the boy had, according to eye-witness accounts, been harassing her for a kiss.’

  ‘Still,’ I said, trying to watch Sam out of the corner of my eye. ‘That’s pretty outrageous. What a mentalist.’

  Sam narrowed his eyes and sent me an odd look: low eyebrows and mouth pulled to the right this time. Definitely not a smile going on there. He looked at his phone and angled it diagonally towards his mouth. ‘Does that conclude our list of suspects?’ he asked Monty.

  ‘Yes, I suppose you should be thinking along those lines. I take it we haven’t heard any more about cause of death?’ Monty asked.

  I remembered Scrub’s mention of Kitty, the medical examiner. ‘Graham Peacock, the medical examiner reported, was a cardiac arrest. But she also said something about “homicide by heart attack” being rare but not unheard of.’

  ‘Really?’ said Monty. ‘Well do keep me informed of the outcome.’

  ‘So that’s it?’ Sam asked. ‘There isn’t anyone else is there?’

  ‘No,’ said Monty. ‘That’s the sum of it.’

  I finished typing and saved the document. ‘Well,’ I said, shutting the laptop. ‘We’ll keep an eye on developments of course. Cullen Sutcliffe might also have died of fright. If he wasn’t poisoned by the snake bite. Or maybe it was a double whammy – fright and poison? Hang on does anyone know if Royal Pythons are poisonous?’

  There was silence down the other end of the line for a moment. Then Sam started stabbing his phone with his forefinger. ‘I’ll check.’

  Monty coughed. ‘The chances of being scared to death are quite low if you don’t have a heart condition or disease.’ Down the line something beeped. Possibly another laptop. ‘Completely depends on your heart functionality. As we know, Graham had a weakness there.’ He shuffled his papers. ‘Cullen, however, according to the records, had no such issues. He was young. He was healthy and fit. Apart from the eczema. He exercised regularly. The odds of him, in
particular, being scared to death are remote.’

  ‘But he said he was scared of snakes, Monty,’ I ventured. ‘Publicly, in the company of all the others at The Griffin.’

  ‘When was this?’ Monty asked.

  I thought about it then realised it had been less than twenty-four hours ago. ‘Yesterday!’ I said. ‘That can’t be a coincidence – Cullen announces his weakness, then we hear there’s an escaped snake on the loose, and then he turns up dead. That’s his greatest fear. Come on, Monty.’

  Monty continued. ‘Yes, I hear what you’re saying, Rosie. But in terms of shock – Cullen’s body, unlike Graham’s, would, in all likelihood, be able to deal with the output of adrenaline, even if he did experience intense fear for a short while.’

  ‘So then it was the actual snake bite that killed him,’ I concluded.

  To which Sam replied, ‘Ah, Royal Ball Pythons. That is indeed the species that escaped from the zoo. And these, it says here, are neither poisonous nor venomous. In fact they’re recommended as snake “starter” pets.’

  ‘Ew,’ I shuddered. ‘Freaky.’

  ‘Not poisonous,’ he said again and looked at me.

  ‘So,’ said Monty. ‘We’ll have to find out what the medical examiner says. If he has been poisoned, and if it was by a snake, then we can conclude it wasn’t the Royal Ball Python. Another species must have been purposefully introduced with the sole intention of biting him.’

  ‘Blimey,’ I said. ‘So it’s looking like two murders, then?’

  Monty sniffed, ‘You should most certainly bear it in mind.’

  ‘Is that a yes or no?’ I demanded, stupidly.

  Sam put his hand on my arm. ‘You know as well as I do that we can’t be so reductive. There is no way you can take a case of this complexity and reduce it to one thing or the other. If you do that, you boil away all sense, and then you don’t come to understand the “how” or the “why”. Come on, that’s what we’re about now – nuance, correct? Feel it.’

  He was absolutely right of course, to remind me of this, but I didn’t tell him that. Instead I did a pouty kind of pose and tossed my hair back.