Polly Deacon Mysteries 4-Book Bundle

by H. Mel Malton

  I took an absentminded swig of my cold coffee and peered at the writing on the form, titled Luggage Retrieval Docket 23b. It had the BritRail logo at the top of it and lots of fine print at the bottom, the kind that says that the rail people are not responsible for loss or theft of personal belongings, etc., the kind of legalese that says more or less “you pays yer money and you takes yer chances.” Still, it didn’t cover BritRail employees who actively gave your luggage away to any Tom, Dick or Harry who asked for it.

  The name written on the ID part of the form was Derek Smith, and he had given a street address in Canterbury—surprise, surprise. Of course, it would be “Smith”—although the Derek was an original touch. The address was probably fake—at least, I was willing to entertain the possibility that it was just a fluke that he had scribbled down Canterbury. The ID number Old Reg had copied down was most likely from a bogus driver’s licence. Still, I wasn’t about to throw the scrap of paper away. It might come in useful if the trouble continued. It was possible that the guy was so dumb, or in such a hurry that he actually used his real ID. They never do that in books or movies, but I knew they did that in real life. You just have to read the “stupid criminals” excerpts in old Ann Landers advice columns, like the one where a guy wrote his bank hold-up note on the back of a personal cheque.

  If the guy at Gatwick and then at the luggage lockers did live in Canterbury, then he could easily be the same person who’d made the attempt again on the train. Maude had said he was sitting in the same rail car, but if he had been wearing a hat, I probably wouldn’t have given him a second look. I was too jet-lagged to notice anything except the ringing of the cellphones.

  The important question was: what was it about my damn puppet case that was so attractive to thieves? It wasn’t enough that it was labelled “fragile”. It was just a battered old instrument case. Perhaps the guy at Pearson airport and my Canterbury thug both actually believed that people carried guns in instrument cases and were both desperate to get hold of one.

  Back at Pearson, the gate security people had asked the usual inane questions: “Did you pack your bags yourself?” (to which I was dying to answer “no, my Mommy did”) and “Have your bags been with you the entire time?” (to which I might have said “No, I left them unattended for an hour or two in a busy airport, just for fun.”) They’d taken the puppet case apart, and hadn’t found anything incriminating (although the tiny penis on the policeman puppet might have properly been indicted for a lack of taste), but I suppose no airport thug could be expected to know that. Maybe they had me pegged as a likely drug smuggler. I’d searched the puppet case again myself at the B&B, but there was nothing there that gave me a clue as to what all the fuss was about. Still, I didn’t want anyone breaking in to the Pilgrim’s Rest and making another try for my poor puppets, which is why I was grateful to Mr. Frayne when he suggested I might like to put my valuables in the safe.

  I stashed the BritRail form with Derek Smith’s personal info into the little zippered pouch with Earlie’s and Mr. Fogbow’s business cards, drained the rest of my cold coffee and wandered out into the foggy Canterbury streets.

  From the “Welcome to the Canterbury International Puppetry Conference (CIPF)” brochure:

  University of Kent, Canterbury (UKC), is built on 300 acres of parkland overlooking Canterbury. It was founded in 1965 and is still growing and evolving. Modern buildings are surrounded by open green spaces, courtyards, gardens, ponds and woodland, and the view across Canterbury and the Stour valley all help to make Kent an attractive and friendly campus.

  The night before, I’d taken a taxi (the same guy who’d driven me from the train station, coincidentally, whose laminated photo ID thing identified him as Rajeet) to the registration location. I hadn’t seen much of the university then—just a looming bunch of buildings swathed in fog. This time I took a bus, having been given careful instructions by Mr. Frayne as to which bus to get on and where to wait for it. I was delighted to find that it was a double-decker—not one of those old fashioned red ones (which must all be in the same warehouse where they’ve stashed the red telephone boxes) but a modern one, all gleaming chrome with pseudo-leather seats. I went straight to the top (although the climb was a bit of an effort) and to the front, where the window offered me a vista like a big TV screen. The mobile phone crowd began to operate at once (“I’m on the bus”), and I noticed that many of them were not talking, but rather punching the keys carefully and staring intently at the little screens of their phones. I learned later that this was a feature called messaging, and that all the best mobiles offered it. Sadly, that blew my Pez-phone right out of the water. I’d have upgraded, if I’d known.

  The wild thing about being on the top platform of a double-decker bus, I discovered, was that it gives you a completely new perspective, which includes suddenly being able to see into the second floors of buildings. The bus didn’t run in the really ancient part of the city, so I didn’t get a chance to snoop through those compelling little mullioned windows where the buildings bulged out over the streets, but it was still great fun (and rather thrilling in a prurient kind of way) to get sudden glimpses into people’s kitchens and sitting rooms in the second floor flats we passed.

  Just before we pulled off the main road and started climbing into the countryside, I could have sworn I saw my Gatwick/train station thug, sitting at a table, smoking a cigarette and reading a newspaper. It was only a split-second thing, like one of those pictures flashed on TV during a commercial, and then he was gone, but I got a good look at his shaven skull, and there was that tattoo—the red crest with the devil with a pitchfork and the three blobs above it. I craned my neck to keep him in sight as we whizzed past. A street sign flashed by—Castle Road—and then we were into a kind of lane with trees on both sides, like a tunnel. I rubbed my eyes and wondered if I had imagined it. If it hadn’t just been my overworked imagination, it would mean that the thug had stupidly written down his real address when trying to steal my stuff from the luggage locker. This would also mean that he had been with me on the same train, which would also require me to believe that a) it was a coincidence that I happened to be travelling to his hometown or b) he had known who I was, where I’d be and where I was going, and was there waiting for me at Gatwick. The “b” option was completely far-fetched, so I chose “a”, the coincidence option. After all, Maude knew Donna-Lou Dermott. Coincidence does happen. Lightning can strike twice. I scrabbled in my purse and drew out the BritRail form again. There it was—Derek Smith, 26a Castle Road, Canterbury. Just like the personal-cheque bank robber. Just goes to prove that crime is the playground of the stupid. I resolved to go to the local police if there were any more attempts on my belongings. I had him—I knew where he lived.

  The Sprog chose that moment to make her wakefulness known—booting at my insides like a piece of undigested gristle. I placed my hand on my midriff and spoke soothingly to her as the bus trundled off into the Canterbury fog.

  Thirteen

  Pregnancy represents a true fork in the road of life. One can never know what would have happened had a woman gone the other way. To gain strength and connection with other women, share your story whenever you can.

  -From Big Bertha’s Total Baby Guide

  In February, the open spaces, courtyards, gardens and the rest of the UKC campus were not exactly attractive, in fact they were invisible, but the people were truly friendly, just as the Welcome brochure claimed. I got off the bus at the big sign that said “University of Kent, Canterbury”, and was immediately totally lost. I don’t have a great sense of direction at the best of times, and the fog was disorienting. The cab driver the night before had dropped me at an anonymous door, through which I’d gone, registered and stumbled out again in a jet-lagged haze. I would have to ask directions this time.

  I pulled out the brochure again, which I knew had some sort of campus map in it, and was leafing through it when a kindly young student-type touched me gently on the shoulder.
/>   “Do you need some help?” she said. She was fresh faced and cheerful, carrying an enormous, book-crammed backpack.

  “I’m trying to find the Cornwallis building,” I said. “I’m attending a puppetry conference—if you know anything about it.”

  “Oh, yes, I thought there was something going on there,” she said. “My college is right next door. It’s not far—just up that lane and take a right and the big glass door with the pillars on either side is it.” She gave me a little wave and went on her way, staggering a bit under her academic burden, and was swallowed quickly by the murk.

  Thick fog in England is an interesting substance. In Kuskawa we get fog sometimes, or mist, really, as we haven’t got the sea to make it the pea soup kind—just a bunch of lakes that belch out thin stuff from time to time. This fog was tangible, smelling of salt and sea, delicious, if cold and clammy. I knew that Canterbury was quite near the coast—it was touted as one of the most ancient port-connected cities in England, seven miles from Whitstable, a “popular harbour town”. I thought of Conan Doyle’s London fog, the kind of pea-souper that Sherlock Holmes waded about in. In Holmes stories, the fog appeared as a kind of secondary character, usually turning up to make things difficult for the sleuth, to add a kind of mysterious, dense and detached stumbling block to the task at hand. Now I understood it. “Just up that lane and take a right” was all very well, but the ground itself was hard to see, and there were trees on every side of the lane, hemming me in so I felt like a child lost in a maze and couldn’t shake the feeling that I was being watched. I guess this was a carry-over from the shock of seeing the thug in the window. I don’t usually let stuff rattle me, but this had. Perhaps I was on edge because now there were two of me to watch out for.

  It was an enormous relief when I found the pillars and the glass door. Inside the lobby, there was a comforting bustle and movement. I reached into my bag and pulled out my name tag, a little plastic pouch on a string which held a card with the Canterbury International Puppetry Festival (CIPF) logo on it, a Muppet face with the mnemonic coming out of a cartoon talk-bubble with “Polly Deacon, Canada, presenter” written below. It was my entrance pass, and I’d been warned in the welcoming letter to wear it at all times. I hung it around my neck and was instantly greeted by the woman I’d met the night before at the registration, whose label-on-a-string said “Phyllis Creemore, Canterbury, U.K., Organizing Committee”. It was she who had signed the letter of acceptance and welcome I’d received back in October.

  “Oh, Polly, there you are, dear,” she said, sailing into my personal space like a hockey player doing a bodycheck, grabbing my arm and steering me into the boards. “Everything okay at the Pilgrim’s Rest? Cedric is such a sweetie, isn’t he? I hope he gave you a good room and you slept well.” Cedric was Mr. Frayne. It would take me a while to get used to calling him that.

  “Yes, he’s very kind,” I said, trying to move back a little. She appeared to be fascinated by my belly, and her hand hovered nearby, ready to administer little pats. “I’m quite comfortable, thanks.”

  “Oh, goooood,” she said. “And you are coming to the opening address, aren’t you? Mr. Blaise Killington from UNIMA will be speaking about puppetry used as a form of disassociative civil disobedience in third world countries—you know—agitprop theatre and all that. He’s been arrested ever so many times, so it should be interesting.”

  “It sounds it,” I said. UNIMA, which stands for the Union Internationale de la Marionette, is basically the international puppetry organization. If you do puppets, it doesn’t make sense not to join.

  “And I am so looking forward to your session—it’s tomorrow afternoon, isn’t it? Is there anything you’ll be needing? Oh, and we’ll need your PowerPoint disk today so that our technicians can do a trial run.”

  “I’m not using PowerPoint, actually. A flip chart and a table will be fine.” She looked at me as if I were out of my mind.

  “Not using PowerPoint? Everybody uses PowerPoint.”

  “Not everybody, Phyllis. I don’t even have a computer.”

  “Oh.” She stepped back and examined me, chewing a fingernail as she did so. Reassessing, perhaps. “Oh. Well, then, that makes everything much easier, doesn’t it?” I got the implication. Not having bells and whistles also makes things much more boring. I began to feel a little niggle of doubt about my presentation. Should I have brought slides, at least?

  “How many people will be attending, do you know?” I said.

  “Well, there are several sessions running concurrently, so I expect you’ll get anywhere between ten and thirty,” she said. “You’re in one of the lecture rooms—very modern, you know. All the latest equipment.”

  “As long as there’s a flip chart—or a blackboard, I suppose, and a table, that’ll be fine,” I said.

  “Right,” she said. “A flip chart. I’m sure we’ve got one of those stored away somewhere. We don’t use them very often. As for a blackboard . . .” she went off in a gust of giggles, as if I’d suggested using stone tablets and a chisel. “We haven’t had blackboards for years, dear.”

  “Oh,” I said. Sometimes it’s hard being a Luddite.

  Phyllis steered me towards the Hospitality Room, where a breakfast buffet had been laid out, with tea and coffee, juice, muffins and fruit. As I’d made a pig of myself over Mr. Frayne’s fry-up, I didn’t think it seemly to gorf out on another breakfast, but there were fresh strawberries, which I couldn’t resist, and I discreetly wrapped up a bran muffin in a paper napkin and stowed it in my bag for later. The conference goers appeared to be a hungry lot, and the table was under siege from all sides, so I figured that the spread wouldn’t last more than a few minutes.

  I chose a small single-serving tin of apple juice, rather than a coffee. I didn’t want the Sprog to get too excited, especially if I had to sit in a lecture hall chair for goodness knew how long. I retired to a corner to sip it and watch the crowd.

  Puppetry people are a strange breed, when you get them all together in one room. I suppose any special interest group is the same—it wasn’t as if this were a symposium of actors or models, who tend to be rather decorative. Puppet people are frequently those who love to perform, but have perhaps found it more fulfilling to be the genius behind the strings, or the person under the counter with their arms above their heads, rather than being out there by themselves on the stage or screen. They are frequently eccentric looking, and usually muscular about the arms and shoulders. (It takes a great deal of strength to hold a five-pound puppet above your head for an eight-hour rehearsal, or longer if it’s film or TV work.)

  I was just finishing up my tin o’ juice when I saw someone across the room who looked awfully familiar. It took me a moment or two to realize where I’d seen her before. She turned around and looked directly at me, and I swear it was like looking into a mirror. She looked uncannily like me, or I looked uncannily like her, I suppose. She was pregnant, too. When our eyes met, I could see hers widen in the same kind of recognition. We moved towards each other like people in a dream and met in the middle of the room, hemmed in on both sides by other conference goers.

  She wasn’t wearing a tag-on-a-string. “Well, that’s odd, isn’t it?” she said, shaking my hand cordially. “We might be sisters.”

  There comes a time in every reader’s life when they will be asked to suspend their disbelief to breaking point. If this moment were something I was reading in a book, I’d begin harbouring grave doubts about the plot-building capabilities of the author and might even consider throwing the book away and picking up a good thick reference text instead. However, seeing as this was happening in real life, I didn’t have that option, so I searched quickly though my mental archives to see what I knew about the Author. Frankly, the Author and I are hardly on speaking terms, and I’d never bought the Old Man in the Sky theory, so there wasn’t much point in regarding this ruthless succession of coincidence, serendipity, weirdness, what have you, as God’s Will. I was aware, though,
that from the moment I’d surrendered my body to the inexorable process of hosting a bundle of dividing cells, destined to become a person, I’d been confronted at every turn by moments of “how weird is that?” In fact, I was coming to expect it, which is dangerous, because as soon as you start looking for signs, you’ll find a whole bunch.

  My double looked into my eyes. We both had the same colour and a similar cut of hair, our faces were not identical, of course, but eerily similar. We were even the same height, and though she appeared to be further along in her pregnancy than I was, we were both wearing the same kind of khaki trousers.

  We formally exchanged names. She was Alma Barrow, and she was there, she said, under false pretenses.

  “I’m not exactly part of the conference,” she said, “but I did so want to hear Blaise Killington, so I thought I’d just trot up here and try to blend in with the crowd.” Our voices were not similar at all. She had a dense, almost impenetrable accent—a flat and adenoidal sound that placed her somewhere in the Midlands, an accent that spoke of centuries of coal dust getting up the nose.

  “Do you live in Canterbury, then?” I said.

  “Oh, no—I’m from Birmingham. I’m here for this week’s pro-life rally, down near the Cathedral.”

  “Ah,” I said, on my guard at once. Anti-abortionists, at least the activist kind, are not my favourite kind of people. I felt obscurely disappointed, as if she were indeed my sister and had turned out to be a bit of a loony.