The Victory Snapshot (A Chris Tyroll Mystery Book 1)

by Barrie Roberts

  ‘I did it to myself,’ I said, ‘but if it’ll satisfy your taste for the dramatic, I was escaping a drunken driver.’

  Briefly I told her about the incident at my gate. I tried to play down any idea that it was deliberate, but I needn’t have bothered. She became more serious as the story went on.

  ‘Does this have anything to do with me — with Grandpa?’ she asked.

  ‘I doubt it,’ I lied. ‘If it was deliberate, and I’m not even sure of that, I’ve had attempts before. Some earnest lefties toughed me up last year for defending racists. The year before it was neo-Nazis having a go because I defended black men. One night I was crossing the square and a couple of guys were lolling about by the statue. As I passed by, one said, ‘Hey, man, what’s in the briefcase?’ I guess I was in line for a mugging, but the other said, ‘Lay off, man, that’s my lawyer!’ It’s a tough old town, Sheila, and some of the people I deal with are some of its toughest.’

  She smiled, but she also touched my hand across the table. ‘Be careful, Chris,’ she said. ‘I’d never forgive myself if anything happened to you because of me.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ I said. ‘I’m a card-carrying coward,’ but her concern warmed me. ‘Now then, what gossip did you drag out of Mrs Croft over tea and little cakes?’

  ‘I’m not sure,’ she said, ‘but I think I might have a clue. Mrs Croft — who, incidentally, prefers port to tea by a long way — says that she ‘did for’ my grandfather for four years. She was pretty cut up about his death, said she’d grown very fond of him while she worked for him. She said he was always very fair with her, and always remembered her kiddies’ birthdays. When she’d done her stint for him each day they used to have a smoke together, what she called a ‘cuppa and bikkies’ — ’

  ‘I know you’re a social historian,’ I interrupted, ‘but is there much more before we get to the clue?’

  She poked her tongue out at me, provoking wild speculation at those tables that noticed. ‘I was just setting the scene,’ she said, ‘so you’d understand the context. Anyway, a few weeks ago he asked her if she knew any people called Cassidy in her area. Well, she prides herself on knowing everybody in town, apparently, but she didn’t know any Cassidys.’

  ‘Why’d he want to know?’

  ‘She asked him that. He said he was trying to trace an old friend from years back, a Francis Cassidy that he knew during the war.’

  ‘Did he ever mention Cassidy to you?’

  ‘Not so as I remember,’ she said, ‘but I don’t believe he ever did. Well, Mrs Croft was a bit piqued at not knowing Cassidy, so she asked about the neighbourhood and someone told her that there used to be Cassidys in North Belston until about the 1950s and they lived in Greenwell Lane.’

  ‘It’s been pulled down,’ I said. ‘They built the Orchard Estate on it in the sixties.’

  She nodded. ‘I know. She told me. She also told me that, eventually, someone told her there was an ‘old Cassidy’ from the Greenwell Lane family still alive, but he was in an old people’s home in Wellwich.’

  ‘Did she know which one?’

  ‘No, but a couple of days ago, when they were taking their smoke, he thanked her for finding out about Cassidy and said he was going to see him.’

  ‘So your grandfather must have found out which one.’

  ‘Right. Now is that a clue or not?’

  I took a drink of wine and looked at her. ‘What makes you think it’s connected?’ I asked.

  ‘The letter,’ she said. ‘He wrote about ‘putting something right’ and ‘wanting to see right done’ before he died. That sounds like something that goes back a way. Then he starts looking for someone from years back. I’ll tell you something else too. You know what an upright character my grandpa was?’

  ‘Yes, indeed.’

  ‘Well, Mrs Croft says that from all she’s heard the Cassidys were famous villains — thieves, drunkards, what have you, always in and out of jail. I don’t reckon old Cassidy sounds like any old mate of Grandpa’s. He was looking for him for some other reason and he just said that to put Mrs Croft off the track.’

  ‘Sounds like it,’ I agreed. I took my diary out of my pocket and consulted it. ‘I’m in court tomorrow morning, but you can spend the morning ringing all the old folks’ homes you can trace in Wellwich and asking if Mr Cassidy is still there. When you’ve found him, we’ll go and see him. Ask him what he and your grandad talked about.’

  ‘So it is a clue?’ she said.

  ‘Indubitably, Watson,’ I said. ‘I reckon you deserve to share another bottle of wine with me as a mark of my regard.’

  ‘Thanks for nothing,’ she scowled. ‘I happen to be paying.’

  ‘It’s the thought that counts,’ I said, virtuously. ‘Has anyone ever told you that you’ve got a very attractive scowl?’

  When I reached the office next day, Jayne said, ‘Your sun-raddled Aussie academic is in the waiting room again,’ and smirked.

  ‘If,’ I said, ‘you ever refer to that distinguished Antipodean lady in those terms again, I shall dismiss you forthwith. Any court in the world would accept my justification after one look at her. Where’s the post?’

  She passed me the post folder. ‘It’s not the post you should be reading,’ she said, ‘but the ‘Guide to the Professional Conduct of Solicitors’.’

  ‘Thanks for the advice,’ I said, ‘but Dr McKenna is not a client. Have I opened a file for her? Have I opened a computer file? I am merely assisting a foreign lady in distress.’

  ‘Well, aah,’ she said, and went back to her word processor.

  Sheila was in good spirits. ‘I’ve located him,’ she said. ‘He’s at a place called Ferngate in Wolverhampton Road, Wellwich.’

  ‘Did you make an appointment?’ I asked.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘I wasn’t sure how you were fixed.’

  I flipped open my desk diary. ‘I’m free this afternoon. Let’s go!’

  Twenty minutes later a cab dropped us outside Ferngate. It was a large, late-Victorian building with a wide, gravelled forecourt flanked by beech trees. We stood in the porch and I pulled the old-fashioned iron bell-pull. Somewhere inside there was a distant ringing.

  Eventually the door swung open to reveal a harassed-looking teenager in a nylon overall. ‘Can I help you?’ she enquired.

  ‘We’d like to see the person in charge,’ I said.

  ‘That’ll be Miss Cromwell,’ said the girl. ‘Follow me, please.’

  She led us through a tiled and panelled corridor to the back of the big house, and out on to a glass-roofed verandah that stretched the length of the building. It was dotted with chairs, tables and loungers.

  ‘Miss Cromwell will be supervising luncheon at the moment,’ said our guide, ‘but if you’ll take a seat I’ll tell her you’re here. What name was it?’

  ‘Tyroll,’ I said. ‘I’m a solicitor.’

  We chose seats and the girl left. I sniffed the air while Sheila looked around.

  ‘A bit baronial, this,’ she remarked. ‘Is this on the National Health?’

  ‘I should doubt it,’ I said. ‘Private care for the elderly is a booming racket in this country. You buy a big old place like this dirt cheap because there’s very few sensible uses for it, hire a not very well qualified nurse to supervise and a couple of teenagers to do the work and sit back and count the money.’

  ‘What are you sniffing for?’

  ‘Analysis,’ I said. ‘Institutions all have characteristic smells. Schools smell of floor polish, paint and sweaty gym shoes, hospitals smell of ether, antiseptic and floor polish, prisons smell of boiled spuds, floor polish and sweaty people.’

  ‘And what does this smell of?’

  ‘Pee and lilac floor polish and loneliness.’

  A lean, middle-aged woman appeared at the door and made for us. She wore a severely cut dark-blue uniform with white plastic collar and cuffs.

  ‘Mr Tyroll?’ she said as she reached us, and stared from one to anothe
r of us as though Sheila might have been me.

  I rose stiffly on my injured leg. ‘Miss Cromwell,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry to call unannounced, but Dr McKenna here is from Australia and hasn’t much time. I understand that a Mr Cassidy is an inmate here?’

  ‘That is no longer true, Mr Tyroll. May I ask your business with him?’

  I was taken aback by her answer but I tried to conceal it. ‘We were told this morning that he was here,’ I said.

  ‘That will have been a mistake by one of my staff,’ said Miss Cromwell, unruffled. ‘Is this a legal matter?’

  ‘No, no.’ I said. ‘Not strictly. Dr McKenna is the granddaughter of an old client of mine, a Mr Walter Brown. We understood that Mr Brown and Mr Cassidy were friends and that they might recently have met. You see, Dr McKenna’s grandfather died the day before yesterday, and we wished to talk to Mr Cassidy as possibly the last person who had any conversation with him.’

  ‘What an extraordinary coincidence!’ exclaimed the supervisor. ‘They did meet. Mr Brown visited Mr Cassidy here on Tuesday afternoon. They had a long chat out here, but I’m afraid you can’t talk to Mr Cassidy. When Susan went to bring him in for his tea she thought he’d fallen asleep, but in fact he had passed away.’

  ‘Passed away!’ I echoed. ‘Was Mr Brown still here?’

  ‘Oh no. He’d gone about an hour before. So they both went on the same day. And their last meeting was here. How very curious and quite touching really.’

  ‘Yes, indeed,’ said I, while silently disbelieving that Miss Cromwell could be touched. ‘Well, in that case I’m doubly sorry to have bothered you. Good afternoon, Miss Cromwell. Thank you for your time.’

  We walked down the street to a callbox and rang for a cab. While we waited for it, we sat on a seat by a little green. I lit a cigarette. Sheila kept starting questions then stopping them in midstream.

  When I had finished my cigarette I said, ‘You’re a historian, right?’

  ‘Right,’ she agreed.

  ‘Do you believe in coincidence?’

  ‘Not for a moment,’ she said.

  ‘Nor do I,’ I said. ‘Your grandfather certainly wasn’t here the day before yesterday, but someone who used his name was. Someone who knew that Ferngate was expecting a visitor called Brown for Mr Cassidy, and knew that Walter Brown wasn’t coming. Then Cassidy dies just after that interview. I’ll bet you twenty quid to an Aussie dollar that your clue has just led us to another murder.’

  8

  I phoned John Parry from the callbox, telling him only that I had new and important information. When we arrived at the Rendezvous he was waiting for us at one of the back tables.

  Ruby, seeing a customer of her own sex, bustled over to wipe the table and take our orders. When she’d gone Parry said, ‘The whole division’s running round in circles because of Lord Kerrenwood’s visit, I’m trying to run a murder enquiry and you want to take tea. I hope you’re going to make it worth my while.’

  ‘Well, for starters I’m buying the teas,’ I said.

  ‘Must be important, then. Have you found anything in Mr Brown’s tin box? Or something missing from it?’

  ‘No,’ said Sheila, ‘but we’ve found something else. We think — ’

  I cut her short. ‘We think we’ve a clue to what Sheila’s grandfather was worrying about. Have you ever heard of a family of villains who used to live in the Greenwell Lane area, before the estate was built there?’

  ‘Have a heart,’ said Parry. ‘I’m not that bloody old! The Orchard Estate was built more than thirty years ago. Anyway, they were all villains, before and after the estate was built. Still are, most of them. You haven’t, I suppose, got a name?’

  ‘Does Cassidy ring any bells, sergeant?’ asked Sheila.

  ‘Cassidy, Cassidy,’ he mused, gazing past us while he raked his memory. ‘There’s something very faint at the back of my mind. 1950s you say?’

  I nodded. Ruby ambled down the aisle with the tea and Chelsea buns. The big Welshman was still gazing into the distance.

  ‘Three teas, six buttered Chelseas. Who’s paying?’ Ruby demanded.

  ‘He is,’ said Parry, pointing at me, then, as I laid the money on the table, ‘Ruby, you’ve seen every Belston villain for yonks. Do you recall a Cassidy family?’

  ‘Course I do,’ she said. ‘The Cassidys was famous in their day. There was three brothers and they was all crooked, but the oldest was the worst, Francis. He’d steal anything. When I was in me teens he was in and out of here week in and week out, then he’d disappear for a bit when he got locked up, but it never stopped him. He never stopped till he won that money.’

  ‘What was that?’ I asked.

  ‘Well, when he wasn’t thieving or boozing or in jail he was betting. Course it wasn’t legal then, all street-corner stuff. He came up on the pools in the end. He won thousands.’

  ‘And what did he do with it?’ asked Sheila.

  ‘That’s the funny bit, really. Everyone reckoned he’d have it up the wall in a week, but he didn’t. He bought a house. Posh area west of Wolves. Never seen him since.’

  She polished the table again with the corner of her apron. ‘Blood will out, though, I always says,’ she remarked.

  ‘How do you mean?’ said Parry.

  ‘Well, you two ought to know, you and Mr Tyroll here. You been nicking his family for years and Mr Tyroll’s been getting them off.’

  We both stared at her. ‘I can’t recall a Cassidy,’ I said and John Parry shook his head.

  ‘Well, you wouldn’t,’ Ruby said, smugly. ‘He had all daughters, you see. Four of them. That’s the Waltons, the Kennedys, the Beales and the Parsonses. Don’t tell me you don’t know them!’

  Parry and I both laughed ruefully at the too familiar names. ‘So what happened to the old man?’ he asked.

  ‘Oh, he’ll be dead now, or very old,’ she said. ‘Someone said he was in a fancy old folks’ home, but that was a few years ago,’ and she wandered away to her counter.

  ‘So what’s he got to do with Walter Brown?’ said Parry.

  It was my turn to be smug. ‘Walter Brown died about eight o’clock Thursday morning, right?’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘Well, he had an appointment to see Francis Cassidy at Ferngate — the old people’s home in Wellwich — that afternoon and someone called Brown kept that appointment.’

  Parry’s face was expressionless. ‘Go on,’ he said.

  ‘About an hour after Brown left, they found Cassidy dead on the verandah.’

  Parry continued to stare silently for a long time, then he shook his head slowly.

  ‘Oh no,’ he said. ‘I won’t buy that. You’re not saying that someone did a Bulgarian umbrella job on him on the verandah at Ferngate. I am not having it.’

  ‘You’ve got it, I’m afraid. It probably wasn’t a poisoned umbrella, but if you get Macintyre to poke about in Cassidy’s remains he’ll find a murder for you.’

  Parry leaned back from the table. ‘But what was Brown going to see him about? Those two must have been like chalk and cheese. They can’t have had anything in common, Chris!’

  ‘They must have done,’ said Sheila, ‘or someone wouldn’t have murdered them both on the same day.’

  Parry stood up. ‘Do you know how many murders we have in Britain?’ he asked Sheila. ‘About one a day for the whole damned country. England has the lowest murder-rate in the Western world, envy of all we are, and you and Mr Tyroll here have just doubled the rate on my patch in one day.’

  He turned away, then back again. ‘If you should be right,’ he said, ‘that would mean that this thing is turning very sticky indeed. You’d be well advised to leave it alone now, both of you.’

  Sheila looked genuinely innocent and I tried to. ‘I,’ I said, ‘will simply carry on trying to clarify instructions which a deceased client failed to specify properly.’

  ‘And I,’ said Sheila, ‘will carry on trying to find out what my grandfather knew that got
him murdered.’

  John Parry shook his head and hurried out of the Rendezvous.

  Back at my desk, I got busy on the computer terminal.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Sheila asked.

  ‘Calling up our file listings for Walton, Beale, Kennedy and Parsons,’ I said. ‘Ruby’s right. We’ve had masses of them as clients. There’s a juvenile Kennedy here with nineteen separate files.’

  ‘How will that help us?’ she asked.

  ‘It’ll give us addresses and phone numbers for this generation of the family, at least. With any luck we should be able to locate some older family who just might have an idea of what your grandfather had in common with Francis Cassidy.’

  Soon I had a scribbled list of addresses and phone numbers. Taking the phone I began a series of calls. It was the fifth call before I jotted another note and put the instrument down with a grin.

  ‘Got it!’ I exclaimed. ‘Granny Cassidy — Francis’s widow — is still alive and I’ve got her address.’

  ‘What are you going to do?’

  ‘We are going to call on the lady this evening.’

  ‘Her husband’s just died. Do you think it’s the right time?’

  ‘I don’t like to be heartless, but it may be just the right time. She may be in the mood for remembering old times.’

  She was. When we arrived at the address I had been given, Mrs Cassidy, a small, bright-eyed lady, was obviously pleased to see us, driving away a couple of sympathetic neighbours and ushering Sheila and me into her front sitting room. While she made tea we surveyed our surroundings.

  The house was a three-bedroom semi, standing in a tree-lined street in Wellwich, and the room in which we sat was comfortably furnished with quality items. There were photographs on several surfaces and I recognised some smiling juveniles that I had seen with less affable expressions. I was still examining them when our hostess returned with a tray of tea and biscuits.

  ‘That’s my grandson, Wayne Beale,’ she said, setting the tray down. ‘You’ve had him through your hands, Mr Tyroll, haven’t you?’

  I nodded. ‘How’s he doing?’ I asked.

  ‘Got a job now,’ she said, proudly. ‘He’s working for Kerrenwood’s, like his grandad used to.’