Bad Penny Blues (A Chris Tyroll Mystery Book 3)

by Barrie Roberts

  He broke off. ‘David,’ he said to his son, ‘pop across to my study, will you, and bring me the box file marked “Rev. Somers”?’

  ‘All good stuff for your book, eh?’ he asked Sheila while his son was away.

  ‘Fascinating,’ she said, ‘if you don’t mind me using it.’

  He roared with laughter. ‘After what the press has called me over the years there’s nothing you could say that could come near it. Do you know, I was a hero when the Falklands row started, because I wanted to send an expedition and chuck them out? Then it was “plain-spoken patriot Jack Garton”. Then a few weeks later I spoke on immigration and all of a sudden I’m “right-wing extremist Jack Garton”. If you believed everything you read about me in the papers you’d have expected I had babies for lunch. You write what you see, Sheila, that’ll do me. I might not like your opinions, but I’ll buy a copy and stick it in the family archives.’

  David arrived with the box file and his father opened it and extracted a bundle of typescript.

  ‘That’s the trial,’ he said. ‘I did track that down and have it typed up. Not that there’s much in it. Just evidence of respectable citizens that they were present when the Reverend Jerry made a speech calling on the rich to pay attention to the needs of the poor.’

  He thumbed through the pages. ‘Here it is,’ he said, and read, ‘ “If the society in which we live cannot arrange for those who do its necessary work to have sufficient for their needs — sufficient to support themselves and their families and to lay a little aside against hard times — then it is high time that we changed the ways of our society and brought in one that cares for all.”’

  ‘Not exactly revolutionary,’ commented Sheila. ‘And how did the witness manage to recall so exactly what Somers said?’

  ‘Ah, well,’ said Garton, ‘that witness just happened to be a Justice of the Peace who just happened to have pocket-book and pencil at the ready. So he said. After that inflammatory speech, the students got out of hand, a few windows were broken, the Riot Act was read and the militia went in. End of riot.’

  ‘And he got seven years’ transportation for that,’ I said. ‘Why, he was an early harbinger of the Welfare State.’

  ‘If you think I’m going to jump on that,’ he said, ‘you’re wrong. I’ve got nothing against the Welfare State, so long as it gets its priorities right and looks after our people first and weeds out the layabouts. Still, you weren’t looking for a speech, were you? I charge for them out of the House. Here’s something that’ll really interest you.’

  He dipped into the box file again and produced a bundle of letters tied with old white tape.

  ‘Those,’ he said, ‘are something you won’t have expected to find — those are Jerry Somers’ letters home to his family. How about that?’

  Sheila’s eyes were wide. ‘Really?’ she gasped. ‘That’s wonderful. So few of them wrote. Even by the end of transportation only a third of English people could write, so there are very few letters.’

  He handed them across the table. ‘Unfortunately the correspondence was one-sided and it dried up. His father couldn’t forgive him for bringing the family into disgrace and he wouldn’t answer him, nor apparently let anyone else. You can read it in there, his entreaties for an answer, but he never got one and in the end he gave up.’

  As Sheila delved into the letters, Garton turned to me. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘Chris, you’ve heard all my dark secrets. What are yours? What was your father?’

  ‘A fire-eater,’ I said.

  He laughed. ‘I should have known. Well, you certainly took after him in your own way. Was he someone I should have heard about?’

  ‘I doubt it,’ I said. ‘He performed under the title of “Captain Flambeau”. He juggled and swallowed swords as well.’

  ‘And your mother?’

  ‘She was Welsh — a musician. She met my father on the Fringe at the Edinburgh Festival in 1963 and forgot all her chapel upbringing and went after him.’

  ‘So you’ve got sawdust and music in the blood and you ended up a lawyer. What did your chapel-reared mum think about that?’

  ‘She once told me that Adolf Hitler said that by the time he was done any German would be ashamed to be a lawyer. I always thought that Adolf was a pretty nasty character, so if he was against lawyers it seemed like a good thing to be.’

  ‘He used them though,’ said Garton.

  ‘So he did — the kind that let him. I don’t fancy being that kind.’

  ‘Good for you,’ he said. ‘Good for you.’

  He puffed at his pipe for a few moments. ‘You know,’ he said, ‘we’re not all that different. You stand up in court and say what must be said for your client — whoever he is. I stand up at Westminster and say what has to be said for my conscience — whatever it is.’

  *

  Sheila sat on the train homeward bound, her eyes still gleaming at the folder of photocopies that Garton had given her.

  ‘Well,’ she said, ‘he may be a Fascist beast, but he’s a charming beast. Even you were getting along nicely with him.’

  ‘I was being polite for your sake,’ I said.

  ‘Being nice my foot!’ she said. ‘Don’t think I didn’t hear you sneak in Adolf Hitler’s name to see if you could get a rise out of him. Didn’t work, did it?’

  ‘I wasn’t exactly expecting him to leap up and start singing the “Horst Wessel”,’ I said.

  ‘Huh,’ she said. ‘He even told you how alike you are and you never said a word.’

  ‘Because we’re not the least bit alike.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know. He’s got a certain dark charm.’

  ‘Thank you, very much. You realise that he was only deploying his tweedy charm so that you will write about him nicely and say what a good bloke he is?’

  ‘Doesn’t look like he’s got a dungeon or a whip,’ she said, sadly. ‘But then, he doesn’t look like a nutter who’d murder a cat.’

  ‘Nobody looks like a criminal nutter,’ I said, ‘or they’d all be safely locked up.’

  ‘Well, you can’t suspect him, anyway.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because he’s given us all the dirt,’ she said, tapping the folder.

  ‘You mean he’s given you all the dirt he wants you to know. He’s also given you some amazingly good stuff for the book so you want to believe him.’

  ‘Cynic,’ she said and went back to poring over the Reverend Jerry’s letters.

  Once again, the darkness of the house and garden when we got back home made me search them both carefully. Once again, there was nothing to be found, and once again I startled the old man taking his fat little dog for its late evening drag.

  Chapter 10

  Sunday morning was warm and still, so we breakfasted outside. After food I was trying to read the papers, but Sheila was lolling about in bare feet, tight white shorts and a skimpy top.

  ‘I thought,’ I said, ‘that Aussies cover themselves in grease and clothing when the sun’s out, to avoid skin cancer.’

  She glanced upwards. ‘That,’ she said, ‘is not what I would call sunshine. Anyway, it’s nice to expose yourself without feeling guilty.’

  ‘You might not feel guilty, but it’s what I’m feeling that matters.’

  She unwound herself from the sun-lounger. ‘You poor old article! Once a morning too much for you, is it? Aren’t you allowed to do it twice on Sundays?’

  She raised a hand before I could respond. ‘No! Don’t worry, I shall take myself off and meditate beside the pool.’

  She sauntered down the lawn towards the little pool at the bottom. The fine weather had set the solar fountain spurting enthusiastically, which didn’t do me any good either.

  Half-way to the pool she called out, ‘My oath! Who cut the cheese?’

  ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘Your pool stinks,’ she said.

  I got up and walked down to join her at the poolside. She was right. The warm air was ripe with somethi
ng quite nasty and the cause wasn’t far to seek. A dead pigeon floated in the middle of the pool surrounded by a thin rainbow-coloured scum.

  ‘How did that get there?’ I wondered aloud.

  ‘Who cares?’ she said. ‘Perhaps it was flying over and dropped dead. Maybe it felt like a dip because it was hot yesterday and got drowned. The problem is getting the darned thing out.’

  I could see what she meant. The solar spray’s circulation of the water was pushing the bird’s corpse up against the fountain’s base in the centre of the pool, from which it couldn’t be reached from the shore.

  ‘I can turn the fountain off,’ I said, and opening the little control box on the pool’s rim I did so. It made no difference at all.

  ‘I think it’s caught in the fountain,’ she said.

  The pool’s not deep. Wade in and yank it out,’ I suggested.

  ‘Yair! And get Pommy pigeon’s toe-rot? No, thank you. Have you got a pair of gumbos — wellies?’

  ‘There’s a pair just inside the shed door. They’re mine, so they ought to fit you.’

  She scowled and ambled off to the little shed at the bottom of the garden, returning in a couple of minutes with the boots and a pair of gardening gloves. I was making ineffective attempts to swat the dead bird away from the fountain with a rolled-up newspaper.

  ‘You daft galah!’ she said. ‘You’ll fall in. Leave it to an expert.’

  She sat on the little stone bench by the pool and pulled on one of the boots. As she pulled on the second boot she gasped, then gave vent to a long, rising cry.

  ‘Oh, my God! Get it off me!’

  I spun around to see her sprawled back on the bench, her fists clenched at her sides, both legs working in the air like pistons.

  ‘Get it off me, Chris! Get it off me!’ she wailed.

  I snatched at one of her wellingtons and tugged at it, but she booted me away, gasping, ‘The other one! The other one! Get it off me, for God’s sake!’

  She was as white as a sheet, her freckles standing out like a spray of blood and her breath heaving between her desperate cries.

  I grabbed her right boot, managed to get a grip despite her writhing, and tore it off. As soon as it was off, Sheila collapsed on to the bench in a huddle, rolled up tightly.

  ‘Can you walk?’ I asked.

  She shook her head. ‘Not in bare feet,’ she whispered.

  I scooped her up and carried her into the house, leaving her on a couch while I found the brandy and poured us both a large one. I pressed the glass into Sheila’s hand and she uncoiled and gulped it down gratefully. As she drank I examined her foot carefully but found no marks of anything.

  ‘What on earth was it?’ I asked.

  She shuddered. ‘Don’t ask!’ she said. ‘Something moved in the toe of the boot as I pulled it on. Something wriggled! Go and look!’

  I left her with another brandy and went back into the garden. Picking up the right boot I shook it upside down. A thin plastic bag dropped out, inside which were the partly squashed remains of a spider — far larger than any British variety I had ever seen. I shook the boot again, then nerved myself and slid my hand into it. A piece of card was stuck in the ankle part. I pulled it out and read the message on it:

  NOSY MISS MUFFET SAT OF A TUFFET

  TO PULL ON HER WELLIES, ’TIS SAID.

  A GREAT HAIRY SPIDER

  WAS LURKING INSIDE HER

  BOOTS, AND NOW NOSY IS DEAD.

  Sheila was asleep on the couch when I went back indoors. I called John Parry and caught him off duty, so I invited him for a drink.

  While I waited for him, I went back to the pool and examined the dead pigeon more carefully. It was an ordinary, common or garden wood pigeon, the kind that, I suppose, occasionally dies in awkward places, but it hadn’t died in my pool. It had been put there and tied into position with a short length of fishing line tied to a stone. I left the evidence in place for John.

  When he arrived I gave him the latest details. Together we looked at the trap that had been set in the pool, then I cremated the pigeon on the rubbish heap.

  Sheila was dozing in the sitting-room, so we settled into the kitchen with a couple of beers.

  ‘You’ve still no idea who’s doing this?’ he asked.

  I shook my head. ‘According to you it wasn’t Norman Wainwright who killed Buggalugs. I can’t see it being Jack Garton, but I can’t really see it being Captain Smythe, either.’

  ‘I can check Smythe out,’ he said, ‘the same way I checked Wainwright.’

  ‘Would you?’ I said. ‘I’d be grateful.’

  ‘There’s not much more I can do,’ he said. The Chief Constable would not be terribly amused if he found me spending precious time and money on a spider in somebody’s welly, bach.’

  ‘Not just a spider,’ I said, picking up the plastic bag. ‘That bloody thing! Look at it!’

  ‘I think they call them bird-eating spiders,’ he said. ‘There’s a number of shops that sell them. They’re tropical and they can give you a nasty bite, I believe.’

  ‘It wasn’t going to bite,’ I said. ‘He didn’t want it to bite. It was there inside that bag so that it would be felt when someone pushed their foot in. That was enough.’

  ‘I never thought Sheila would be scared of spiders,’ he said. ‘Did you know that?’

  ‘No,’ I said, ‘and that makes it more puzzling and worrying. Who the blazes does know that and how do they know?’

  He frowned thoughtfully ‘The first episode — the cat. I always thought it was someone close to you — geographically, I mean.’

  ‘But surely, he came here to deliver his nasty little threat and came across Buggalugs by chance, didn’t he?’

  ‘No he didn’t,’ he said. ‘He brought with him two laser-printed notes that referred to cats, prepared in advance. If it really was Norman or the gallant Captain, then they must have known you had a part-time moggy. Now it’s worse, because he knows something about Sheila that you didn’t.’

  I nodded. ‘I can’t understand how he knew that Sheila would pull the boot on. They’re mine.’

  ‘Doesn’t matter, does it?’ he said. ‘If you had pulled them on, what would you have done?’

  ‘I’d have made a face when I felt the thing squash and pulled off the boot and shaken it out.’

  ‘Right, boyo, and Sheila would still have seen a dirty great squashed spider and the card and known it was for her. She’d have thought about what it would have been like if she’d put the boot on and I dare say that would have been worse for her than what actually happened.’

  Not long afterwards Sheila joined us. She had showered and her hair was still wet and she was wrapped in a dressing-gown of mine, but she had recovered most of her colour and was even smiling slightly.

  ‘Hello, possums!’ she said nervously. ‘Isn’t it nice that when I get fatally bitten by a giant spider, he calls his mate in and settles down for a gargle.’

  ‘Not at all, cariad,’ John said. ‘His first thought was to send for the forces of law and order to protect you. You knew it was a spider?’

  She screwed up her face. ‘I thought it was a spider. It moved like a spider. Was it?’

  ‘Yes, it was,’ he said, and showed her the plastic bag and the card.

  ‘So, it’s our friendly maniac again,’ she said, making a grimace.

  ‘Who knew you didn’t like spiders, Sheila?’ John asked.

  ‘Nobody here,’ she said. ‘You feel such a drongo, being frightened of spiders — particularly here, where you haven’t even got any poisonous ones.’

  ‘I’m scared of heights,’ John volunteered. ‘Put me two stairs up and I’m helpless.’

  She took a beer from the fridge and sat down with us, staring at the card and the bag.

  ‘It started when I was a kid. I don’t know why. We used to frighten each other at school about getting bitten on the bum by spiders in the dunny. When the school toilets were being replumbed and they put a temporary a
rrangement outside, I almost bust my plumbing staying out of it till I could get home. It’s just not something I mention to people, you know. It makes you feel such a galah.’

  ‘So nobody in England knew about it?’ John persisted.

  She shook her head. ‘Not even Chris,’ she said.

  ‘Somebody did, though, didn’t they?’

  Chapter 11

  Later in the day John ventured on dangerous ground.

  ‘I suppose,’ he said, ‘that your research is nowhere near finished, Sheila?’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘I’ve done the easy bit so far. I’ve found three families who weren’t very difficult because they know who they are and where they come from. I haven’t had a flicker on the other three. They might have died out, of course, but it’s more likely that they simply haven’t caught on to any connection because they don’t know much about their ancestry. If their names have changed since the 1860s, they wouldn’t necessarily make the connection.’

  ‘So what do you do next?’

  ‘I start trudging through birth certificates in the Family Records Centre and census returns.’

  ‘Where are they?’

  ‘They’re in the County Records Offices but they’re also on the Internet up to 1891,’

  ‘So you won’t have to travel to consult them?’

  ‘Well, it’s not just the census returns. These blokes shipped out in 1865 — right? I know where each of them was born from his birth certificate, and his parents’ names. I locate them in the County Census and work forward, looking for their children through the census records, and as I go I try to cross-check and fill in family details from any other references I can find in the County archive.’

  ‘How far does that take you?’ asked.

  ‘Down to 1891,’ she said. ‘The 1901 census hasn’t been released yet.’

  ‘And what do you do beyond 1891?’ asked John.

  ‘Well, so long as they haven’t shifted about too much, it should be possible to pick them up again from gravestones, baptismal registers, electoral registers, street directories, trade directories, local newspapers, but it’ll be pretty time-consuming.’