This Private Plot

by Alan Beechey

  “Are you still cross with me?” was his first croaky response to being woken with a firm shake.

  “I’m cross with everything,” she told him. “But I missed you.” She sniffed. “Have you been drinking?”

  “A couple of beers with my new friends, the Weguelins,” Oliver admitted through a yawn. “Sat here to think. Must have dozed off.”

  “Come on,” Effie said, hauling him upright. “Let’s go for a walk.”

  They headed for Synne Common, but this time they kept going along the main road, a single lane between shoulder-high hedgerows. Despite his grogginess, Oliver was still riding on the elation at his success—finally—in getting to the truth about the Weguelins. The unrelieved sexual frustration, the variety of bruises, rashes, and muscle strains, the prospect of three hours of amateur Shakespeare directed by a nitwit that evening…these things shall pass. The next day would return them home to London, the panacea, the remission of Synne.

  Effie was only half-listening, her mind still privately festering with anger and frustration over Reg Thigpen, and to Oliver’s relief, she barely reacted to hearing about the intercepted phone call from Tyler. By the time he finished, they were approaching the bend in the road where the workmen were digging.

  “And so we have our complete set, at long last,” he concluded. He became aware that the workmen had paused to study him.

  “Look who’s back!” he heard one of them say.

  “Including number five?” Effie asked him at the same time.

  “And look what’s he’s brought back with him!” The speaker gave a low wolf-whistle.

  “I had convinced myself it was Toby,” Oliver said, trying to ignore the workmen’s comments, “but what could Breedlove threaten him with? Closing his dig a day or two early? There’s no long-term source of revenue in that. And I still don’t get that ‘family secret’ reference. Toby couldn’t possibly have a family secret—that kid’s been an open book to me since he was born.”

  “You reckon Crystal Tipps there’s his girlfriend?” asked the third workman.

  “And Toby denies knowing anything about blackmail?”

  “Nah, he’d never get a looker like that,” said the first workman who had spoken. “She must be his nursemaid.”

  “So do the Weguelins, for that matter,” Oliver replied. “That’s their prerogative.” He noticed that Effie seemed unconcerned by the background observations. Perhaps she had long ago accepted this humiliation as the common lot for any young woman passing road works or a building site.

  “Or his nanny.” The workmen laughed raucously.

  “The deadline for your investigation is looming,” said Effie. What are you going to do with the information?”

  “She can sit me on her naughty seat anytime!”

  “Hand it over to Simon Culpepper and tell him to pick the killer,” Oliver said. Should he say something to the workmen and be prepared for another fight? He should probably wait for signs that the boorish running commentary was bothering Effie. “Maybe I’ll hold Toby’s name back.”

  “Miss! I need a good spanking, Miss!”

  “I wouldn’t worry about Toby,” said Effie. “Simon doesn’t think Breedlove was done in by any of his blackmail victims.”

  “Miss, did you put too much starch in my nappy or am I just pleased to see you?”

  “I know,” said Oliver. “He still believes it was suicide.”

  “Miss! I need to sit on your naughty seat, Miss!”

  “No, I meant he does now think Breedlove was murdered, but that it had nothing to do with blackmail.”

  “I already did that one. You never pay attention when we’re harassing women.”

  Oliver frowned. “This is new. Simon didn’t say anything about that last night. Was he visiting your vampire as well this morning?”

  “Is it me now, or did Kevin miss a turn?”

  “No, no, he wasn’t there.” Shut up, Effie, she said to herself, don’t let Ollie connect Culpepper to Snopp, alias Thigpen. “We passed him on the road,” she improvised. “Stopped for a quick chat. Simon says he thinks Breedlove was murdered because of his connection to some peculiar secret society. The Priory of Synne or something like that.” Good, get him to bite on that.

  “Yeah, you can cut my bread and butter into soldiers and dip them in my soft-boiled egg any day. Sorry, that one didn’t make sense.”

  “How cheerfully on the false trail they cry,” said Oliver, with another nervous glance toward the braying workmen. “How did Uncle Tim take to the Vampire of Synne?”

  “Hey, sugarlips, kiss this and make it better. Oh, by ‘sugarlips,’ I meant the girl.”

  Bugger, he’s back on the vampire. “There’s nothing to tell you,” she lied. “Tim and I both agreed that Snopp couldn’t possibly have murdered Dennis Breedlove. Excuse me a second.”

  She turned from Oliver and walked a few paces toward the digging crew, who, having finally gained her attention, resorted to delighted, nonverbal animal impressions. She stopped and studied them for a moment. The noises ceased abruptly, and each man became oddly obsessed with his feet.

  “Now tell me one more thing about the Weguelins,” she said, returning to Oliver’s side as if nothing unusual had happened. “They’re identical twins, right?”

  “Yes. Just like my mother and Aunt Phoebe.” He glanced over at the workmen, puzzled.

  “And identical twins are always the same gender?”

  “That’s right.”

  “So when they’re playing Sidney and Lesbia, one of the pair has to drag up and one doesn’t.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Which?”

  “What?”

  “Which one is in drag, the one playing Sidney or the one playing Lesbia?”

  “The one playing Lesbia, of course.”

  “So in real life, they’re male.”

  “Yes.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Oh, they’re male, all right,” Oliver said with confidence. “I saw them both without their disguises.”

  “And how could you tell they’re male?”

  “They had Sidney’s short hair. And I’m pretty sure that Robin had to add the boobs to become Lesbia.”

  “Women can have short hair, or so I’ve heard. Women can be flat-chested, too—I’m not far beyond that state myself. Certainly, Geoffrey isn’t going to be telling any jokes about my cleavage walking into a bar. And Lesbia’s the plump one, so wouldn’t she have to wear extra padding anyway?”

  “Yeah, but their names—Robin and Kim—they’re…oh.” He thought back over the earlier meeting. “They…they use masculine pronouns to refer to each other. Or wait, do they?”

  Oliver stood still in the road, baffled. That should take his mind off the vampire, Effie thought and kissed him on the cheek. There was only respectful silence from the audience in the hole. “Call yourself a detective?” she said wickedly. “Come on, let’s go and prepare for this evening’s entertainment.” She walked away, heading back toward Synne.

  “They have to be men,” Oliver called after her desperately. He was about to follow, when he felt a hand plucking at his sleeve. One of the workmen had sidled up to him.

  “Er, is that lady your girlfriend?” the man asked, clutching his cap tightly.

  “Yes.”

  “Ah. Good for you, John. Then on behalf of the lads, may I offer my profoundest apologies for our dreadful behavior. I am sick at heart. We truly appreciate your considerable restraint in not setting to and giving us all a damn good thrashing, which is no less than we deserve.”

  “No problem,” said Oliver, making to leave again.

  “No, no, fair do’s. You’re a gentleman, Chief, that’s plain as a pickle. Anyway, me and the lads had a bit of a whip-round, and we’d be grateful if you’d use this money to buy her some flower
s, on our behalf.”

  He handed over some dirty pound coins, keeping his head lowered so that he wasn’t tempted to look at Effie walking away from them in her tight jeans, as if he feared the seductive vision might turn him into a pillar of salt.

  “I’ll do what I can,” Oliver promised. “Now, if you’ll—”

  “Duchess, is she?”

  “What?”

  “Is she a duchess? Or some member of the Royals? Because they’re different, aren’t they? We all felt the magic when she looked at us.”

  “Ah,” Oliver responded, understanding. “No, she’s not a duchess. She’s a police officer.”

  “A police officer?” repeated the workman, brightening. “Maybe she can help us with our stolen hole.”

  Oliver stopped. “Your what?”

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Saturday evening

  “How big was the hole?” Effie asked, glancing over the photocopied cast list. The performance was due to start in about ten minutes, and the Royal Shakespeare Theater was, surprisingly, beginning to fill up.

  “About the size of a grave.”

  “Sounds familiar.”

  “Yes. They finished the work on the drains yesterday. They only had to come back this morning and fill in the hole. Somebody beat them to it overnight.”

  “Makes their job easier, I suppose.”

  “Not really. They had to dig it all out again.”

  “Why?”

  “Health and Safety. It was the wrong type of dirt. But they’re done now, and the road is finally open again to all traffic. We’ll be going home to London just before Synne fills up with tour buses again.”

  Home to London, Oliver thought with satisfaction. Although with a murder unsolved. He glanced around the theater. Quite a good turnout for the Theydon Bois Thespians, whose audiences usually had fewer members than the cast list, even when the players were trebling the parts, like his uncle’s Polonius, Gravedigger, and Osric. Oliver supposed that the play had attracted a number of tourists, foolishly trusting that any Saturday night performance in Stratford’s main theater might merit the three or four hours of their lives they’d never get back. His uncle had reserved the fourth row of the stalls for the Swithin party, and Oliver and Effie had taken the two seats closest to the aisle. The row behind them was filled with the same party of Japanese tourists he’d seen in Holy Trinity. He nodded to them.

  “Peculiar story, eh?” he said.

  Effie laughed humorlessly. “Not for these parts, it seems. Look at Breedlove’s list. Cross-dressing identical twins pretending to be a married couple. A vicar who runs a masturbation club for lonely parishioners. An online pornographer who’s seduced five deb sisters and, it seems, their mother. And a vampire who’s genuinely back from the dead.”

  “Back from the dead?” Oliver echoed, puzzled.

  Uh-oh. “I mean, he wasn’t expecting to have survived leprosy for this long.” Hmmm. Not the best recovery, Eff. Move on, though. “No wonder the late, semi-lamented Uncle Dennis had a field day when he turned to crime.”

  “Yes, but only two of the four were about sex. Dr. McCaw overestimated. And if victim number five had been Toby, I can guarantee that would reduce the McCaw Sexual Ratio to a mere forty percent.”

  He glanced to his left. A sullen Toby was sitting in the same row, separated from him by their parents and Aunt Phoebe, who were sharing a box of chocolates. Toby seemed distracted, and not just because Susie and Geoffrey, in the seats next to him, were necking as if they were in the back row of a cinema. Ben Motley, who had driven up from London to see the play, was sitting beyond them. Perhaps Toby’s gloom was separation anxiety from the Bard’s grave, Oliver wondered. Well, maybe during the intermission—oh please, let there be an intermission—he could treat his brother to a drink—oh please, let there be time for a drink—from the bar on the outdoor balcony, where Toby could enjoy the stunning view along the river toward Holy Trinity’s slim spire, visible above the weeping willows.

  “Now add to that a pair of peeping toms,” Effie was saying, “a work-shy village policeman, a disputatious sexton, a funeral that’s more like a stand-up routine, a stand-up routine that’s more like a funeral…the list goes on. I’ve seen everything. No, wait.”

  The tall, elegant form of Simon Culpepper passed the end of their row, accompanying a shorter man—well, most people would be shorter than Captain Stretch, Effie reflected—dressed in full Scottish garb, including kilt, sporran, and tam o’shanter, and clutching a serpentine walking stick. There was so much wild hair on the Scotsman’s face that it almost obscured the broad wink he gave her. Effie turned nervously to Oliver to see if she needed to explain Thigpen’s greeting—she’d already dismissed the idea of identifying him as Culpepper’s father—but Oliver seemed thoughtful and hadn’t noticed the newcomers, who took seats in the front row.

  “Okay, now I’ve seen everything,” she concluded, but then spotted the unfashionably on-time arrival of the entire Bennet clan—mother Wendy in the vanguard, a single file of daughters dressed as if for a court appearance (royal, not legal), inoffensive multimillionaire father, Lafcadio, bringing up the rear. With a susurration of silk and taffeta, they sidled into a row across the aisle, just as the lights in the auditorium began to dim.

  Humfrey Fingerhood stepped onto the stage to applause from the largely unsuspecting audience. Effie watched the slight figure with fascination; it was the first time she’d seen anyone attempt to bow using only his hands.

  Humfrey raised his eyes to the follow spot. “It is with the most abject and profound humility of an undeserving treader of the boards that a humble Humfrey Fingerhood—that’s Humfrey with an f—and his devoted troupe come before you in this hallowed shrine of the buskin and motley. We are, naturally, unworthy of the honor bestowed upon us this evening. But when Humfrey Fingerhood is called from the ranks of mummery to stand up and be counted for the Swan of Avon, to use Sam Johnson’s mellifluous epithet for his departed comrade of the the-ah-tah, Humfrey Fingerhood becomes erect…”

  After five more minutes, Humfrey reluctantly ceded the stage, and the production began with a blackout and the recorded sounds of a dark and stormy night. When the lights came up again, they revealed the silhouette of a crenellated battlement, with a steady snow falling—actually soap flakes shaken straight from their packages by the backstage crew up in the fly tower—and Humfrey still trying to grope his way into the wings. He collided with the edge of the proscenium, resulting in two loud, distinctive knocks.

  “Who’s there?” said Barnado, starting the play, to considerable laughter.

  “Nay, answer me,” responded Francisco, but his next line was drowned out by several audience members chanting “Nay-answer-me who?” in unison. Unfortunately, this flash of originality was not only unintentional, it was unique. Humfrey had despaired of coming up with any fresh interpretation of the play, and so the performance progressed in a straightforward and flavorless manner, little more than a text reading—literally so, for the actor playing Claudius, who carried his Penguin Shakespeare with him at all times.

  It was at the beginning of the second scene, a long, boring speech from Claudius about Denmark’s dispute with neighboring Norway, which Humfrey didn’t have the wit to cut, that Oliver sat upright.

  “Got it!” he shouted.

  Ignoring the protests around him, he stood up and leaned as far as he could across his parents and his aunt, beckoning frantically to Toby and scattering chocolates across the floor. Behind him, the row of Japanese tourists stood up simultaneously. Toby grudgingly got to his feet and sidled after his brother, who was also nudging Effie ahead of them. The three reached the aisle just as Mallard, as Polonius, had his first speech.

  “He hath, my lord, wrung from me my slow leave,” he began, distracted by the noise from the auditorium and visibly offended when it seemed that his first lines had cause
d his two nephews and his sergeant to storm noisily out of the theater.

  Oliver propelled Toby into the daylight, with Effie following. It was still two hours before sunset. The three marched across the theater’s parking area until they reached the river’s edge.

  “What the f—” Toby began.

  Oliver grabbed him by the shoulder and made him face the river. He pointed at a white bird, floating serenely on the water.

  “What’s that?” he demanded.

  “You dragged me out of Hamlet for ornithological advice? It’s a swan. Did you know a full-grown swan can break a man’s arm?”

  “Shut up!” Oliver kept pointing at the bird. “And what’s it swimming in?”

  “A river, duh.”

  “Which river?”

  “The Avon.”

  “Exactly. So it’s a Swan of Avon.”

  Toby seemed relieved. “Ah, I see. Yeah, Humfrey said that epithet was coined by Samuel Johnson, but he meant Ben Jonson. I guess we’re lucky he didn’t say Boris Johnson.” He sniggered.

  “Ben Jonson,” Oliver repeated. “Shakespeare’s old friend and fellow playwright. Who memorialized him in the introductory verses to the First Folio as the Swan…of Avon. That river there. Which runs through Stratford. Stratford-upon-Avon.”

  “Is this going somewhere, as the bishop said to the—?”

  “You claimed there’s nothing in the historical record that connects London Will, bosom buddy of said Jonson, to Stratford Will, dweller beside the Avon.”

  “Ooh, Toby,” said Effie, “you got served.”

  “Unless you’re now adding Ben Jonson, acclaimed playwright and the nation’s first poet laureate, to your expanding list of conspirators?”