by JL Merrow
“What, and burglary’s all right because you’re only an amateur? What are you, a modern-day Raffles?”
“Who?”
“Never mind. And just be grateful your mum never had a VHS player and a thing for Anthony Valentine. Looks like someone’s coming,” Phil added, but I’d already noticed the dark shape getting larger behind the Closed sign.
A second or two later, the door finally opened.
Uncle Arlo was not what I’d have expected from Amelia’s brother. For a start, where she’d been whippet thin and brisk in her manner, he was well-padded and gave off a sleepy air, like a spaced-out teddy bear. He had heavy-lidded brown eyes and—most unlike Amelia of all—a mop of naturally silver-grey hair. To be honest, if I’d met them together, I’d probably have assumed he was her dad.
Then again, when you looked at the bloke she’d married . . .
He gave us a slow, considering once-over. “Ah. The investigator and the psychic sidekick. Come in.”
Charming. Who was he calling a sidekick? Phil sent me a look, so I didn’t actually say it.
“Thanks for seeing us, particularly at such a sad time. I’m Phil Morrison, and this is Tom Paretski,” Phil said, putting out his hand. Uncle Arlo gave it a searching look for a mo, then shook it.
It didn’t seem worth the bother of sticking out my hand for his examination. What with me only being the sidekick and all.
“Do come on through,” Uncle Arlo said, in his ponderous way that made him sound twenty years older than he looked. He didn’t seem all that sad, the git.
I mean, me and Cherry have had our ups and downs, but I’d like to think if one of us popped his or her clogs, the other one would be a bit less business as usual about it all only a few days down the line.
Then I thought about my big brother, Richard, who I saw almost never and didn’t get on with when I did. Guilt rippled queasily in my guts. Nah, not all siblings were close.
Uncle Arlo led us through the sales area to the workshop, which was set in the final, and largest, barn of the three and smelled faintly dusty. Also metallic, but I’d been expecting that. The windows in this one were a lot smaller. There were around half a dozen benches, each with a semicircle cut out of the front as if for the comfort of some really fat bastard, which had a weird hammock thing set up underneath it. I s’pose it made sense, if you were working with diamonds and stuff. You wouldn’t want half your year’s salary disappearing through a crack in the floorboards.
No one was actually working there at the mo, but there were tools out on the benches. Racks of pliers with different shaped ends, magnifying glasses, and files of all sizes—the sort you file metal down with, I mean, not the sort you use to keep paperwork tidy. It looked . . . I dunno. Rougher than I’d expected, I s’pose, given all the dainty flowery stuff that came out of it. You see a bit of bling, you sort of forget someone actually had to beat and wrench the metal into shape in the first place.
I didn’t get to gawp my fill, mind, as Uncle Arlo kept on going until we got through the workshop and into a tiny, windowless office. It was definitely a bit on the claustrophobic side with all three of us in there. Maybe that was the intention? There was only one chair in the room: the one behind the desk. Uncle Arlo took that, leaving us to make our own arrangements. I shifted some files—this time of the lever-arch persuasion—and perched on the edge of the desk just to pay him back. Phil stayed where he was and loomed, which a lot of people in Uncle Arlo’s position would have found intimidating.
I was betting Uncle Arlo wasn’t one of them. He leaned back in his chair and looked at us expectantly.
Phil coughed. “Mr. Fenchurch, as I mentioned on the phone, I’m looking into the disappearance of a certain item of jewellery that belonged to the late Mrs. Majors. Do you know the item I’m referring to?”
He didn’t specify which Mrs. Majors, but then I s’posed either would do, really.
Uncle Arlo half smiled. “Well,” he said. And stopped. There was a pause. I thought about drumming my fingers on the desktop, but Phil would only get tetchy with me. “I’m assuming you mean Amelia’s diamond necklace?”
“That’s the one. You’re familiar with it?”
“Oh, absolutely. Yes.” He stopped again.
Getting blood out of a stone would’ve been easier. And more fun.
Actually, scratch that. Getting blood out of Uncle Arsehole would’ve been more fun.
“Can you elaborate?” Phil asked.
Uncle Arlo glanced at me, his smile getting bigger. “Do I need to? Can’t you just read my mind?”
“Not that kind of psychic,” I said shortly.
“Oh, what a pity. I should think it would be so helpful in your line of work.”
He was really starting to get on my wick. “I’m a plumber.”
“Indeed? Good heavens. A psychic plumber. Well, well. Do the drains speak to you?”
No, but I was starting to seriously consider shoving him into one headfirst so he could have a nice old natter. I drew in a breath, but Phil beat me to it. “Mr. Fenchurch, I’m sure you have things you’d rather be doing. If you wouldn’t mind just answering the question, we could stop wasting your time and let you get back to them.”
Uncle Arlo quirked a lazy eyebrow. “Well, I suppose I’d have to say I’m intimately familiar with the item in question.”
What, he’d shagged it? That was certainly how he made it sound. Definitely gave a whole new meaning to the name Fenchurch’s Fine Fancies.
Phil folded his arms. “Mr. Fenchurch, did you, or someone who works for you, make a replica of Mrs. Majors’s diamond necklace?”
Uncle Arlo’s lips drew together in a disappointed pout, presumably because the carefully worded question was ruining all his fun. “Indeed.”
I guessed that was a yes.
“And can I ask who commissioned the replica?”
Uncle Arlo steepled his fingers, stared at them a moment, then looked up and smiled. “Why, Amelia, naturally. That central diamond is worth close to half a million in today’s markets. She was concerned about wearing it in public.”
“In St. Leonards?” I couldn’t help asking. “It’s not exactly the crime capital of Britain.”
I got a pitying look for my pains. Well, from Uncle Arlo at any rate. I didn’t dare glance at Phil ’cos I reckoned it’d be a pissed-off one from him. “Amelia was a keen patron of the Royal Opera House, and of course her connection with the bishop led to a number of formal engagements.”
In for a penny . . . “Were you and her close?”
Uncle Arlo blinked, and for a mo, his face looked saggy and old. Was it an act? “When she was a child, yes. She was much younger than I, of course. I was more of a father figure than a brother in those days. But when she grew up . . . Well. Who among us can say we’re as close to our family as we’d like to be?”
Who indeed? Although, come to think of it, when I slung a glance at Phil, I realised he could probably tick that box.
Not that he was looking any too happy about it, mind. “What exactly was her connection to the bishop?” he asked, unfolding his arms and snapping out of it.
Uncle Arlo put his head on one side. “Didn’t you know? She met him professionally. Her profession, not his, naturally.”
Why naturally? Bishops got out and about a fair bit in the course of their holy duties, didn’t they? As borne out by the fact I’d known Greg for months and only met his boss the once. If he hadn’t been off doing whatever it is bishops do, where the bloody hell had he bogged off to?
“She organised an event for him? What kind?”
“Oh, I forget the details.” Despite the sleepy air, I had a feeling Uncle Arlo never met a detail he didn’t file away carefully under that artfully rumpled mop of silver hair.
“Back to the necklace,” Phil said doggedly. “Did she give you any indication as to what she was planning to do with the real one? Once she had your copy, that is.”
“I just assumed she would put it
in a safety-deposit box. Majors doesn’t have a safe at home. His sort never do.”
“‘His sort’?”
“Oh, you know. Old-fashioned. Entirely detached from the real world. Thinks keeping a shotgun in his study means he won’t get burgled.”
Alex Majors kept a shotgun? See, that’s the trouble with the countryside. You think, yeah, Britain, gun laws, you’re safe from being shot—then you find out half the homes this side of the commuter belt have an old shotgun knocking around somewhere that they got for “pest control” back in the 1950s.
Okay, maybe that’s a slight exaggeration. But I’d prefer it if fewer murder suspects turned out to keep the things.
I wondered if old Arlo had one too.
“So Mrs. Fenchurch-Majors didn’t tell you her plans?” Phil persisted.
“Didn’t I just say that?”
“How long did it take to make the necklace for her?”
“Oh, not long at all. Yes. Less than a fortnight, I believe. A simple piece to copy, once one got hold of the central stone—the cubic zirconia for the surround, of course, I had already. I didn’t charge her for the labour, naturally.” He smiled. “In fact I didn’t charge her at all. Dear Amelia. She was such a sweet little thing as a girl. Always so determined to get her own way. Much like her stepdaughter, in fact,” he added out of the blue just as I’d started to feel a bit moved by the mistiness in his sleepy eyes.
“Did they get on well together?” Phil asked, poker-faced.
Uncle Arlo chuckled, apparently fully recovered from that little attack of emotion. “Oh, dear me, no. Couldn’t stand each other. Two sticks of dynamite rubbing up against one another. Sparks and friction aplenty.” He rubbed his hands together as if to demonstrate.
If you asked me, it was a weird way to think about your sister and your step-niece, but whatever floated his boat . . . And Christ. That was an image I really could’ve done without: Uncle Arsewipe perving to lesbian porn starring his relatives.
“Of course, Violet’s devastated by her loss,” he added, not even pretending to be sincere. Well, either that or he was just really, really bad at it.
“Of course.” Phil gave him a direct look. “Do you get on well with your step-niece?”
“Naturally.” He smiled sleepily. “She reminds me so much of Amelia when she was a young thing. And of course, I should in any case hold her dear for Amelia’s sake.”
Huh. That didn’t exactly tie in with what he’d just told us about dear, dear Amelia hating the poor girl. And Christ, between him and Lance, they’d got me thinking about Vi as a teenager, not a grown woman who had to be pretty close to my age.
Maybe it was growing up rich that did it. Maybe, if you were rich, you could afford not to grow up.
Phil didn’t call him on it. “Do you have any idea who might have wanted your sister dead?”
Uncle Arlo met him gaze for gaze. “I’m sorry—I thought you were here to ask about the necklace?”
“I’m looking into the possibility that the two crimes are linked.” Phil kept his poker face.
“That’s absurd. And surely, in any case, a murder investigation is a matter for the police?” His expression hardened. “I resent your implication that my actions in helping Amelia had anything to do with her death.”
“Have you told the police what you’ve told us?”
“Of course,” he snapped. The sleepy teddy bear had woken up fully now. And probably wanted his breakfast.
“They didn’t mention that the replica necklace was found on her body?”
I froze—but yeah, Vi had told us that, hadn’t she? So Phil wasn’t dropping Dave in it.
“My sister was found in possession of one of her possessions? Dear me, how extraordinary.” It was a good thing old Arlo didn’t keep any potted plants in his office. They’d have withered and died at that tone.
Added to which, I might’ve been tempted to throw one at him.
Phil was made of stronger stuff. “Can you think of any reason why she’d have taken the replica of a very valuable piece of jewellery to a country fete?”
“I’ve no idea. Why don’t you get the psychic sidekick to ask her? And find the real necklace, while he’s at it—isn’t that what he’s famed for, and what you were actually hired to do? Now, if you’ll excuse me?” Uncle Arctic’s voice, as he stood up, could’ve cut diamonds.
I’d got to my feet when he did, which was just as well. A little bit of spit had flown out of his mouth and landed on the desk just where I’d been sitting.
“Look,” I began, but Phil grabbed my arm.
“Thanks for your time, Mr. Fenchurch. We’ll see ourselves out.”
I waited until we were on the other side of the Sorry We’re Closed sign. “Oi, why’d you stop me talking to him?”
Phil turned to raise an eyebrow at me as we walked briskly back to the car. A light drizzle had started to fall, and a few leaves drifted down from trees to complete the picture of autumn setting in. It was like someone had sneakily flicked a switch on the seasons while we were closeted in Uncle Arlo’s windowless office. “Let me guess. You were going to give him a rundown of the actual psychic talents of one Tom Paretski?”
“Well, yeah. I don’t want everyone thinking I talk to dead people. That’s just creepy.”
“And we need him to have this info because?”
“Because . . . ’Cos otherwise he’ll have the wrong idea about me?”
“So why do you give a toss what he thinks? He’s a murder suspect.”
“Well, when you put it that way . . .” We climbed back into Phil’s Golf, feeling a bit damp. “So what have we learned? Apart from that Uncle Arlo isn’t as cuddly as he looks? And before you start, no, I didn’t fancy him.”
Phil stuck up a finger, but only briefly as he needed that hand to put the car in gear. “Fenchurch is running scared, and he knows the necklace and the murder are linked.”
“He didn’t seem to know they’d found it . . . You know. In her mouth.” I blinked. “So it can’t have been him.”
“Or that’s just what he wants you to think.”
“Nah, it can’t have been him. Why would he leave something at the scene which links him to it?”
“People don’t always think logically after they’ve killed someone. Especially someone they love. Or hate, for that matter.” He was silent a mo, slowing down to let an oncoming car pass. Bit winding, the lanes around here. “I spoke to the woman running the Cats Protection stall—remember, they were next door to the reptile tent? She reckoned she might have heard an argument going on in there, just before you found her.”
“‘Might have’?”
“She was talking to someone who was interested in signing up as a volunteer, at the time. She didn’t hear what they said in the tent, only the tone, and she remembered thinking the tent ought to be empty, and maybe that was why whoever it was had gone in there to have their domestics.”
“‘Domestics’? Was it a man and a woman?” Because most people even nowadays tended to assume people were straight until proven otherwise, so chances were the thought wouldn’t have occurred to her if they were both female voices. Or both male, of course, but I was betting one of ’em had to belong to Amelia.
Unless, of course, there had been two murderers, and they’d had a row? Say, for instance, over putting that bloody necklace where they’d put it?
“She wasn’t sure. She was busy writing down this woman’s contact details before she could change her mind about helping out. Oh, and the row might not have been in the tent after all. Could have been behind it instead. Or the other side of the hedge.”
“I bet you were really glad you made the effort to look her up, weren’t you?”
Phil half smiled. “Ties in with it not being premeditated, though. All helps to build up the picture.”
I nodded. “Still looking a bit too pixelated for my liking, but yeah, I s’pose so.”
“And there’s another thing. You notice how the la
ck of any money changing hands over this replica necklace means there’ll be no record of the transaction in Fenchurch’s books?”
“So?”
“So we’ve only got his word for it she was the one who asked him to do it.”
“But if he’s lying about that, why admit to making it in the first place?”
“Staff. As in, he’s got ’em cluttering up the place during normal working hours. Maybe one of them stumbled across him doing it? Chances are he even farmed out some of the work to one or more of them—or ordering that fake stone, at least.”
“S’pose if you’ve got minions, you might as well use ’em,” I agreed. “So what, you reckon someone else got the necklace made, swapped ’em out while Amelia wasn’t looking, and then . . .” I frowned. “Someone got pissed off with her trying to pass the fake one off as real? D’you reckon she sold it? Nah, can’t be—her and Alex were rolling in it, weren’t they?”
“Alex, maybe. I haven’t been able to look into his finances yet. But her? Not a chance. Her and Frith were on the verge of bankruptcy before she married Majors. His other wedding present to her was a bailout for the business.”
“Huh. No wonder Vi didn’t take to her. She can’t have been too chuffed about the old man spending her inheritance on the new floozy.”
“Yeah. Speaking of Vi Majors, I’m going to need to speak to her again. See what she has to say about her uncle making that necklace.”
“You reckon she didn’t know?”
“If she did know, I want to know why she didn’t see fit to mention it.”
I bit my lip. “Could’ve been her, couldn’t it? If Vi did take the necklace when her stepmum thought she did—back when she called me in to find it—it could’ve been her getting the fake done.”
“Maybe. She’d have had to have reason for believing Fenchurch wouldn’t shop her to his sister, though, wouldn’t she? You’re forgetting something else too. Mrs. Fenchurch-Majors called you in to find her necklace, right? And you got interrupted before you could find it—if it was even there. But she never called you back to have another go, did she?”
“Well, she had all the fayre stuff to worry about . . .” I wasn’t even convincing myself. “Nah, if it really was worth three hundred grand or half a mill or whatever, she’d have had me turning that house upside down, wouldn’t she? Unless it just turned up?”