Over a sumptuous meal beginning with oyster cocktails, proceeding to plain Dover sole for me, roast wigeon-a wild, fish-eating river duck served only when in season—for Archibald and Ms. Swales, and topped off with sherry trifle, the conversation gradually shifted to a discussion of British mystery writers, and crimes real and imagined.
“... Of course, we Brits tend to call mysteries ‘thrillers,’ even when they aren’t thrilling at all,” Maggie said, sipping tea. “We’re accused of being claustrophobic in our approach to the mystery, although I must say I’m rather comfortable being cloistered in a room with a villain about to commit deadly mischief on someone else.”
I laughed. “I love cozy mysteries, too,” I said, “but have trouble plotting them. Your British writers seem to have a special knack for it.”
“I suppose. But I’ve lately developed an appetite for true crime, especially those with historical significance.”
Archie Semple chimed in: “We’re beefing up our true-crime list at Semple House. I quite agree with you. Truth, indeed, can be stranger than fiction. We’ve signed up a marvelous young chap to do a book on the Lydia Duncomb murder. A real sizzler.”
“I’m not familiar with that,” I said.
“Seventeen thirty-two, Tanfield Court, the Temple. No reason you should know of it, Jessica, being a Yank and all.”
“I haven’t been called that in years,” I said.
“Brutal murder,” said Margaret Swales. “Strangled in her flat. Her maid’s throat slit, too. The murderess, Sarah Malcolm, was escorted to the gallows at Temple Gate by a man of the cloth who’d fallen in love with her.”
Archie rubbed his hands together. “Bloody juicy stuff, wouldn’t you say, Jessica? The only surprise is that it didn’t take place in bloody Scotland.”
Margaret Swales laughed at the comment. “Yes, the Scots have had their share of gruesome murders, particularly up north, the Highlands, on the coast.”
Archie looked at me for a comment. I didn’t have one. We ended dinner on the pleasant note of Ms. Swales pledging to do a lengthy article on me and my new book, which delighted Archie.
As we were leaving Wilton’s, Aichie stopped to say hello to a man at another table, who was with three other people. “Marshall,” he said, “meet Jessica.”
The man, who was short and slender and expensively dressed, stood and shook my hand. “The Jessica Fletcher?” he said.
“Afraid so,” I said.
“A real pleasure. Archie’s star author.”
“I hope not,” I said.
“We’ll wrap things up tomorrow?” Archie asked.
“Absolutely. The solicitors will be there. Shouldn’t be a hitch.”
“Good. See you then, Marshall.”
Back in the limo, Archie asked whether I wanted to go to his club for a nightcap and further “chat.”
“Love to, Archie, but I promised my friends I’d meet them at the hotel. They’re quite content not seeing me very much, but I would like to spend as much time together as possible.”
“I can certainly understand that, Jessica. The fellow I introduced you to. Marshall Flemming. Flemming Publishing. Heard of them?”
“Can’t say that I have.”
“Very successful. Subsidy publishers. Pay them, they publish your book.”
“We have a number of those in the States.”
“Yes you do. Keep a secret?”
“I’ll do my best.”
“I’m about to buy Flemming Publishing. Should wrap up the deal in the morning. Bloody successful group. Offices in London, Biratingham, Edinburgh, and Glasgow.”
“Congratulations. Will it remain a subsidy publisher?”
“Absolutely. Not that I’m about to have Semple House publish subsidized works. I’ll keep it a separate division.”
“Why would you buy it if you don’t want to get into subsidized publishing?” I asked.
“Cash flow, my dear. My profit margins are being dreadfully squeezed these days. The entire publishing industry is feeling it. Having Flemming House’s strong cash flow will make all the difference, give me the financial wherewithal to go after bigger and better mainstream books.”
“Sounds like a prudent business decision,” I said.
“I think it will be. Well, let’s get you back safely to the Athenaeum. How’s Sally Bulloch?”
“As bouncy as ever. If I were to give her a nickname, it would be Buoyant Bulloch.”
He laughed. “Quite good, Jessica. She ought to write a book. Lord knows, she’s as much a fixture in London as—well, perhaps not as much of a fixture as Big Ben and the Tower, but close.”
I didn’t disagree.
We parted in front of the hotel with Archie handing me my itinerary for the following day. It was a busy one; getting a good night’s sleep was very much in order.
The Athenaeum’s lobby was bustling with well-dressed people. I made my way through them and entered the Malt Whisky Bar, which was even more crowded. Cigar and cigarette smoke created a heavy blue cloud over the heads of customers. I spotted my group in a far corner.
“Jessica, I was wondering whether you’d get here,” Jim Shevlin said, standing and offering me his chair.
“I made it,” I said. “But I’m not staying long. My publisher has set up a brutal schedule for me tomorrow, and my arcadian rhythms are annoyingly out of kilter. But I will taste a single-malt scotch, just because I think I should.”
To my amazement, Sally Bulloch was still going strong, flitting from one group to another, making sure they were happy and comfortable, exchanging quips, laughing and joking with her hotel’s guests, as she would do in her own home. That’s what I enjoy about the Athenaeum. It’s like being home in a room filled with friends.
It wasn’t until I’d ordered a scotch called Laphroaig, and winced at its intense peaty flavor, that I realized that Alicia Richardson and her husband, Jed, weren’t there. I asked about them.
“They took off on their own, Mrs. F.,” Mort Metzger said. “We ate here. Great food. But Jed and Alicia said they weren’t hungry and felt like taking a long walk. You know Jed. Like Ken, here. Never can sit still. All they talked about on the flight was fishing for trout and salmon. They sure love the outdoors.”
“I hope they know where they’re going,” I said to no one in particular.
I stayed with the group for a half hour before yawning, standing, and wishing them all pleasant dreams. It was as I started to drift off in my comfortable king-size bed that I thought of Jed and Alicia. They hadn’t returned by the time I left the bar, and I began to worry about them. London is a safe city by world standards. But still—
Blessed sleep displaced any further worries about them.
Chapter Three
My phone rang at six the next morning. It was Seth . Hazlitt. “Jessica,” he said, “we’ve got a problem.”
I sat up and rubbed my eyes. “A problem? What sort of problem?”
“Jed and Alicia never came back.”
I was wide awake.
“Ken checked in on them. You know Ken and Jed, always up before the sun. Nobody in their room. Ken checked the desk. Their room key’s still there. Never picked up.”
“Do you think—?”
“I don’t know what to think, Jessica, ’cept there’s got to be a reason for it, probably not a pleasant one.”
“Do the others know?”
“Nope. Thought I’d talk to you first before gettin’ them all riled up. Occurred to me your friend, Sutherland, might be a help in this.”
“Of course. He was out of town yesterday attending a conference in Birmingham. Came back to London last night, I believe. I’ll try him at home.”
“Meet me in the lobby in a half hour?”
“I’ll be there.”
Scotland Yard Chief Inspector George Sutherland answered on the first ring. “Jessica, so good to hear your voice.”
“Did I wake you?”
“No. I have an early meeting at t
he Yard. Always seems to be a meeting to attend these days, most a waste of time. How was your trip?”
“Fine. I—”
“I can’t wait to have you and your friends visit in Wick. I’ll be going up a day ahead to—”
“George, can we discuss this a little later? I have a problem I thought you might help with.”
“Anything.”
I explained the situation.
“I’ll have an all points put out on them immediately. Give me their names and descriptions.”
After I had, he asked, “Any hint of where they might have gone last night? A destination? A direction ? Do they have friends here? Relatives?”
“Not that I’m aware of, George. I’m meeting one of my friends downstairs in a half hour.”
“Ill be there.”
“What about your meeting?”
“This is a police emergency. See you in a half hour.”
Seth was pacing the lobby when I arrived. Ken and Charlene Sassi sipped coffee in a corner. I’d no sooner greeted them when George Sutherland strode through the door. He was as handsome as ever, six feet, four inches tall (no need to guess at his age any longer; I knew he was sixty-one), brown hair tinged with a hint of red, distinguished accents of gray at the temples. His eyes were the color of Granny Smith apples. This day he wore a tan trench coat over a blue suit, white shirt and muted red-and-blue-striped tie. His smile was wide and warm as he came directly to me and extended his large hand, which I took. He kissed me on the cheek and said, “It’s been too long since last laying eyes on you, Jess.”
I was aware that Seth and the Sassis were observing us, so I turned to them and said, “This is Scotland Yard Chief Inspector George Sutherland.”
Ken and Charlene shook his hand. George extended it to Seth Hazlitt. They’d met previously during one of my London trips, the one, in fact, that resulted in my meeting George. Seth had always expressed a certain reservation about George, probably because I’d demonstrated positive personal feelings for my Scottish friend on a few occasions. They shook hands.
“Now,” said George, “tell me about this missing couple.”
Ken Sassi told him about unsuccessfully trying to contact the Richardsons in their room, and that their key hadn’t been picked up last night.
“I’ve put out an all points bulletin on your friends,” George said. “Local police are looking for them as we speak. I suggest we gather together the rest of your party. Someone might have an idea as to where they’ve gone, what they intended to do last night.”
Soon, all ten of us, plus George, were in the lobby. Seth filled in the latecomers on why we were there, his announcement eliciting a variety of responses and comments. Mort Metzger, sheriff of Cabot Cove, who’d met George Sutherland in London at the same time Seth had, slipped from being a tourist back into his law-enforcement mode, sans uniform. He started issuing orders, and loudly questioned whether the London police and Scotland Yard were doing enough to find Jed and Alicia. George listened patiently, a thin smile on his lips. He’d heard this before from Mort when we were all together in London.
When Mort was finished, George said, “Every bobby in the city is searching for your friends. The Yard’s missing person bureau has also joined the search. I’m going back to headquarters to coordinate the effort.” To me: “Jess, I’ll keep in touch through you.”
“That will be difficult, George. I have a series of interviews all over the city.”
“No problem,” Mort said, up on his toes, chest puffed. “I’ll work with you, Inspector. We can talk lawman to lawman.”
“If you insist,” said George. He winked at me and left.
Mort addressed us. “I’ll stay here at the hotel command post. I suggest you work in pairs. We’ll divvy up directions and head out. North, south, east, and west. Somebody got a map?”
“I do,” Ken Sassi said, pulling one from his British Airways shoulder bag and handing it to our sheriff.
“Which way is the Tower of London?” Pete Walters asked. Pete has a deep baritone voice, which he puts to good use in radio. He does a daily show on the tiny AM station he and his wife own in Cabot Cove, broadcasting only from sunrise to sunset but keeping the community informed of its daily comings and goings, a weekly newspaper of the air.
Mort looked up from the map. “Why do you ask that, Pete?”
“Because that’s. where they were going last night,” Pete replied.
“Why didn’t you say so before?” Susan Shevlin asked.
“Nobody asked until just a few minutes ago. Roberta and I didn’t even know Jed and Alicia were missing until now.”
“How do you know they were going to the Tower of London?” someone asked.
“They showed us the tickets on the flight,” Roberta Walters said. “They wrote weeks ago for them. Alicia told me the guidebook she bought for the trip said that if she and Jed wanted to attend an evening ceremony at the London Tower—what’s it called, Peter? Ceremony of the Keys? Something like that.
“Ceremony of the Keys,” Roberta repeated. “If they wanted to attend it, they had to write at least six weeks in advance. So Alicia wrote.”
“The Tower of London,” Mort mumbled. “That’s where all those folks got killed. I read about it.”
“I suggest we get going,” I said. “The Tower is obviously the place to start looking.”
We were about to move out when Sally Bulloch stepped from the elevators. “What’s up?” she asked. “Early for sightseeing, isn’t it?”
I was about to explain when she said, “Too many kooks in this world, Jessica.”
“What do you mean?”
“You didn’t hear? There’s a demented bloke holding two people hostage at the Tower of London.”
“Two people?” Jim Shevlin said.
“Right you are,” answered Sally. “A man and a woman.”
“We’re missing two people,” I said. “A man and a woman.” I quickly explained our situation.
“Sally,” one of two desk clerks said, “there’s a call for a Sheriff Metzger.”
Mort took the phone. “That so?” he said. “Looks like it. Just heard about it ourselves. Okay.”
“Was that George Sutherland?” I asked when he rejoined us.
“Ayuh. Called from his car. Looks like it could be Jed and Alicia this nut’s got at the Tower.”
“What else did George say?”
“Says the guy wants to speak before Congress here.”
“The Parliament, you mean,” Sally said.
“Whatever. Says he’s a descendant of some British woman who was burned at the stake. Here. I wrote down her name.” He handed a slip of paper to me. Catherine Hayes. 1725. “He says this nut wants to talk to Congress—”
“Parliament,” Sally corrected.
“Parliament. Says he wants to clear this Hayes lady’s name. Claims he’ll kill his hostages unless he gets to do it.”
“Did George say he was heading for the Tower?” I asked.
“Ayuh. Reckon we should do the same.”
We piled into three taxis parked in front of the Athenaeum and headed for London’s famed Tower of London, also known as “the Bloody Tower” because of its nine hundred years of brutal history.
Being locked up there in Tudor times was synonymous with death-Anne Boleyn, Catherine Howard, Lady Jane Grey, Sir Thomas More, and Sir Walter Raleigh are just a few who spent their final days in the forbidding Tower and adjacent buildings. I’d learned a lot about it when researching a talk I once gave to the Mystery Writers of America. Many say that London’s first notorious murder occurred at the Tower when two little princes were suffocated on the orders of their uncle, Richard III, in the fifteenth century, in order to secure the throne for himself. Their tiny bones weren’t found until the seventeenth century, buried beneath a staircase.
Sir Walter Raleigh made good use of his time in the Tower. He was there from 1603 until 1616, and wrote his impressive A History of the World while a prisoner.
Today, the Tower of London is anything but a brutal prison. The famed Crown Jewels are housed there; fifty families reside within its walls, and use the 120-foot-wide moat, now covered with green grass, for picnics. Still, each time I’ve visited, I’ve had this pervasive feeling of doom, and torture, and death by decapitation. I ended my talk to the mystery writers by quoting from James Street: “There are more spooks to the square foot than in any other building in the whole of haunted Britain. Headless bodies, bodiless heads, phantom soldiers, icy blasts, clanking chains—you name them, the Tower’s got them.”
All silly, of course.
Except that now two dear friends were being held there by a demented man who threatens to kill them. unless he is granted his absurd request.
I quickly perused one of my guidebooks that had a section on London murders of yesteryear. Sure enough, there was a paragraph describing how one Catherine Hayes murdered and dismembered her husband in 1725, scattering his body parts all over London. According to the book, she was the last person to be burned at the stake in London for “petty treason”—murdering her husband.
By the time we’d crossed the city—past Trafalgar and down the Strand to St. Paul’s Cathedral—the scene at the Tower was chaos. Dozens of official vehicles clogged the streets. The police were everywhere. Areas had been roped off, keeping hundreds of onlookers at bay. We were kept from crossing the police lines until I spotted George Sutherland, who came directly to us.
“Is it them?” I asked.
“Don’t have their names, jess. The woman is a redhead and pretty. Fellow is husky, sort of blond hair. Leathery face.”
“Jed and Alicia,” I muttered. “How bad is it?”
“The man continues to demand time before Parliament He says that if he doesn’t get it, your two friends will join others who’ve lost their lives in the Tower. Intelligent chap, it seems. Spouts history when we talk to him. Seems to know a lot. But then he starts babbling about this long-lost relative, and the need to clear her name and reputation.”
“I take it he’s armed,” I said.
“We’ve seen two handguns.”
08 - The Highland Fling Murders Page 2