Die-Cast (A Peter Marklin Mystery)

by Neville Steed

  ‘What did he actually say?’

  ‘I think it was, “It’s wonderful, darling, to be going where no one can reach me to nag at everything I do.” Something like that. It’s just that word “nag” — it’s what a man says about a woman usually. Made me a bit jealous because it reminded me I wasn’t the only woman in his life.’

  ‘You mean Lavinia?’

  ‘Not necessarily. John’s not exactly a one or two woman man, you know. I’ve always recognised that. However,’ she waved her hand, ‘I remember the impression I got was that someone had rung him that day to nag him about something or other. And I sort of assumed at the time it must be a woman.’

  ‘Men can nag, too,’ I grinned.

  ‘Women do it better,’ she grinned back. ‘Like we do most things.’ I bowed my head.

  ‘Anything else?’ I asked.

  She looked down at the big flower pattern in the carpet, as if the Chinese might have a solution for it all.

  ‘Not really. Other than that funny feeling that something else was occupying John’s mind other than myself that night, no. We actually had a super time, a super time...’ Her voice trailed away, as I could see her realisation grow that such a romantic idyll would probably never now be repeated — at least, not with that partner.

  I rose to my feet, and cleared my throat.

  ‘I’m sorry I haven’t been able to help you, really,’ she said, almost in a whisper. ‘I have a feeling a lot of us are beyond help now.’

  I went over and rested my hand on her shoulder. ‘Don’t think that, ever. I’ll do what I can, believe me.’

  She looked up at me, tears now welling in her eyes. ‘You don’t really think John had anything to do with Maxwell’s death, do you?’

  I shook my head. I hoped she would take that as a ‘no’, and I could excuse the action to myself as simply shaking up my brains.

  She came with me to the door. As she shook hands firmly (a strong girl in every way), she asked, ‘When do you think they will let me see him?’

  ‘Next week, I expect.’

  ‘I’m on the Frankfurt run next week. Hell, I can only make Thursday...and Sunday.’

  ‘I’ll tell Whetstone, though I can’t promise it will do much good. He’s none too keen on my interference.’

  ‘Thanks, Mr Marklin. You know my number?’

  ‘I know your number,’ I said, and made my way down the two flights of stairs, back out to my Beetle. But all the way home, I recognised I didn’t know her number well enough to be sure she was telling the truth about her last night with John Saunders esquire.

  *

  I did not bother about lunch until I got back. Better very late than never, Bing and I shared some cold meat and bits of salad from the fridge. (For some reason Bing loves cold sliced mushrooms. Maybe they are a delicacy in Siam.) I was so preoccupied with running over in my mind my encounter with the belle of British Airways, that I had forgotten all about checking on what mayhem Gus might have caused in the shop. After lunch, with my heart in my mouth, I went through. Everything, at first sight, looked pretty normal, but as I walked around I noticed a few gaps in my stock, especially where I usually kept my mint boxed Japanese tinplate cars, and, near the window, where there was normally a small stock of mint Spot-On die-casts, also in their original boxes. (I bought them from a vicar who had hit hard Church times.)

  I began cursing Gus for re-arranging my ordered disorder, before I noticed a note pinned to the wooden box that served in lieu of a cash register. I unfolded it with trepidation to see in Gus’s large and rather childish scrawl, ‘Not bad morning. Cash under grill in cooker. (I assumed that piece of information was more for any burglar who might call by than for me.) Sold Mercedes £300, Bandai £140. Truck with “Western” on it, Marusan £100. 1958 Lincoln, Bandai £200. Cadillac, Joustra £180. (These descriptions he’d laboriously copied off the boxes. From now on his patience had obviously run out, for he lumped all the Spot-Ons together.) Colecshion SPOT-ONS (7) = £310. P.S. Hope you don’t mind. Aded a bit to prices to cover my comishion. See you when my boat comes home.’

  My hand shook as I took the note back into the kitchen and reached for the money from under the grill. It was all there — nine hundred and thirty pounds. I didn’t believe it. Gus had sold more in one morning than I normally sell in a fortnight, or, if last summer was any guide, a month. And what’s more, he had added about ten per cent or so to my normal prices.

  For the rest of the day until Gus and Arabella sailed in, I caught up with my post and packed up a few toys that had been ordered from my monthly direct mail listings to be ready for mailing on the Monday. One of my correspondents actually enquired after Dinky’s rare Avro Vulcan, and was willing to pay eight hundred pounds for one in good condition. I wrote back regretting I did not own such a rarity, and was almost tempted to mention my Flamingo project to lessen his disappointment.

  Once I was reminded of the Flamingo, I couldn’t resist phoning Muir to see how things were going, and see if he could set a date for my viewing the finished master.

  He was courteous and dutiful as ever.

  ‘I’m working on the very last piece of lettering now, Mr Marklin. The “Die-cast in Dorset” piece. It’s a little more tricky, as I assumed you would want that a good deal smaller than the rest.’

  I agreed. ‘Any idea when I might be able to see it? I’m sorry to act like an anxious kid, but, as you know, I’m very excited about my first venture into toy making.’

  ‘Midweek, possibly. I have one or two things I must do, you understand. But I’ll give you a ring, say Monday, to confirm, shall I?’

  ‘Can’t wait,’ I said jocularly, but I might have guessed Mr Muir would take the remark literally.

  ‘Mr Marklin, waiting is what we must all do at one time or another. It’s not good for us to achieve everything we want at the touch of some magic button. That’s what’s wrong with today, don’t you agree?’ Before I could make any comment, Muir rolled on, ‘And anyway, Mr Marklin, don’t you think that waiting really makes the event when it happens even more satisfying and rewarding?’

  ‘Sometimes,’ I managed. ‘As long as something else doesn’t intervene in the meantime to spoil the enjoyment.’ I laughed. ‘Like old age.’

  Needless to say, Muir did not join the glee-club.

  ‘Ah yes, that’s true, Mr Marklin. Very true. But then one must replace the old enthusiasm with a new one, don’t you think? Perhaps one more fitting to the new circumstances.’

  I decided I had had enough home-spun philosophy for one telephone call, so I brought the conversation back to the particular.

  ‘So, midweek, you reckon?’

  ‘I’ll phone you Monday without fail, Mr Marklin.’

  I was about to replace the receiver, when he added, ‘And how is your investigation going? I read all about poor Mr Longhurst being charged. And now I gather, there’s some question of drugs being connected with that unfortunate film star family.’

  ‘Not with the family. Just with Maxwell.’

  ‘And a Mr Saunders, I think his name is.’

  ‘That’s right. Well, I’m not making a great deal of progress.’ Then the thought suddenly hit me. ‘By the way, Mr Muir, how did you know I was doing any investigating into this affair?’

  He answered immediately. ‘Ah, it’s very simple you see, Mr Marklin. I phoned your shop this morning to tell you how I was getting on, and a Mr Tribble answered and said you were up London way doing a little detective work on the...er...whole business.’

  I cursed under my breath. He continued, ‘He seemed very excited about life, I must say, your Mr Tribble. He told me all about his plans for this afternoon. Taking film stars for boat trips, I believe...’

  Good old Gus. ‘Yes, he’s not exactly a secretive man,’ I said with a chuckle.

  ‘Openness can be a virtue, Mr Marklin.’ I raised my eyebrows, not that he could see them.

  ‘Well, I wish you luck, Mr Marklin. We all need luck, as well as
good guidance in this life.’

  I coughed a reply, and with a ‘See you midweek’, was rather relieved to terminate Telecom’s time. Talking to Muir was enough to make the most righteous feel a trifle guilty. To recover, I added to my own guilt level with a generous measure of Johnny Walker, and awaited the return of Arabella and Dorset’s Mr Ten-per-cent, Bing soberly curled up on my lap.

  10

  I did not get the full unexpurgated account of the afternoon’s odyssey until Gus had poured himself home. For Arabella, quite rightly, did not want to hurt his feelings, although alcohol must have anaesthetised them somewhat towards the end. Lana-Lee, in her generosity, had brought a few bottles of wine on board to repay Gus for his kindness and trouble. The two ladies consumed one of them between them, Gus consumed the other three between him and the ocean.

  However, around 11.30 p.m., curled up with Arabella on my settee, the real story of the day’s events began emerging, and, I must say, I was quite glad not to have heard it before. Right from the start, apparently, Gus had been a bit OTT, partly because of his luck in having a rich American on a late holiday, drop in to the shop and buy all those tinplate and Spot-On toys (Yes, they all went to one man. Happens on rare occasions, especially with vintage collectors new in the field. They want to have everything all at once to try to catch up with the old hands.), and partly because he was performing, for the first time, in front of a ravishing and famous lady. Suffice it to say, Gus had brought some of his own booze aboard, and, indeed, was fairly tanked up by the time Lana-Lee and Arabella arrived at his boat.

  The captain’s declared destination was Weymouth. Needless to say, they were late starting as Gus had remembered to get everything clean on the boat except the sparking plugs. This the adults did not find amusing, but Tara-Lee did. She seemed to revel in trying to get the motor started, and was quite disappointed, apparently, when it did. They set sail, or rather, chugged off out the bay, round Durlston Head, and eventually reached Lulworth Cove, by which time Gus was regaling Lana-Lee with some of the racier stories from his repertoire as if he’d known her for years. It was at this point, as Gus was tying up to get Tara-Lee and company ice-creams from the kiosk by the pebbly beach, that he first fell in — luckily, before he’d bought the ices. So now Gus was soaked pretty much inside and out, and had difficulty untying from the jetty.

  However, he was still determined to get to Weymouth, which was starting to worry Arabella, as Gus had been known to run aground when he’s sober. But as Ringstead Bay hove into sight, Lana-Lee suggested that, as the wind was getting up, it might be an idea for Tara-Lee to take a walk, as she was no great shakes as a sailor. Gus conceded, and brought the boat as near to the beach as he dared and dropped anchor. As the water level was still too high for any adult in clothes, let alone a child, to make it to the beach, Gus insisted on carrying everyone on his shoulders on to the shore. At points, it would appear, Gus’s head was completely below water. Despite the discomfort of the porterage, Lana-Lee and her daughter seemed to be having a whale of a time, and Arabella was only too pleased the trip was proving a success as far as wound-healing was concerned.

  Gus decided to play hide-and-seek for the first time, I guess, for fifty odd years — and I mean ‘odd’. Tara-Lee, of course, was over the moon to have found an adult who was man enough to admit childish pranks still amused, and the walk up over the cliffs towards Osmington is alive with places to hide. Lana-Lee and Arabella brought up the rear in comparatively sober style, which gave my true-love time to engage her companion in more serious conversation.

  Well, for the first quarter of an hour or so, all worked like a charm. Lana-Lee began talking about her life in Hollywood, and how hard it had been to start in Tinsel City, and that all the glamour was only a paper thin covering for some pretty shady dealing and tough grafting at the top. And hard, and sometimes downright unpleasant work for the actors struggling to rise from the bottom. Arabella received the strong impression that Lana-Lee’s own climb to the top had been a damn sight steeper or more rock strewn than the cliff slope they were all now ascending.

  Anyway, after a while, Lana-Lee remarked she hadn’t seen Tara-Lee for a bit, but neither of them worried as disappearance is, after all, rather a key factor in hide-and-seek. It was not until Gus came perspiring up, his clothes still only half dry, and announced that he couldn’t find Tara-Lee anywhere, that everyone began getting worried.

  It was then that Arabella took charge, as Lana-Lee immediately began to get het up about all the child molesting and abduction that had been on the news in the area recently. Arabella could see all the good of the afternoon’s trip being undone in a trice unless Tara-Lee was found but quickly. She organised a fan-like search of the area around the cliff walk, the three of them some fifty feet or so apart, peering behind and in every hedge, looking in every hollow and dip, and even retracing their steps almost back to their starting point. But no Tara-Lee was to be seen.

  Lana-Lee, as you might imagine, was now near the point of collapse, and even Gus had sobered up enough to realise that Tara-Lee was unlikely still to be playing the same game they had initiated.

  They had just started a sweep of the cliff, some hundreds of yards inland from their first search area, after which, if fruitless, Arabella had determined they must immediately call in the police, when over the brow of a hollow way ahead of them appeared the blonde head and then the petite body of their quarry, and behind her, a couple of hikers.

  The tears and huggings went on seemingly for hours, according to Arabella, and eventually they wormed the story out of Tara-Lee on the boat ride home.

  She had decided to hide in one of the old concrete World War II gun emplacements that still litter the Dorset coast and which she had espied some quarter of a mile or so ahead of where she had left Gus with his watering eyes closed.

  ‘She said she was sure Gus wouldn’t find her there,’ Arabella said.

  ‘So that’s where she’d stayed all the time, while all you lot were imagining the most lurid of fates?’ I smiled, albeit with a certain note of sympathy in my actual voice.

  ‘No. That’s the point. She never got there.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Something distracted her.’

  ‘A cow?’ I tried, knowing cattle sometimes stray around there.

  ‘Not unless it was dressed in white.’ Arabella gave me one of her repertoire of knowing looks — ‘No, I’m serious’ variety.

  I didn’t get the point at first. ‘Dressed in white?’ I repeated as a question.

  ‘Peter,’ Arabella grinned, ‘you must be still dreaming of your air hostess date not to get the significance.’

  ‘White. White,’ I intoned, then the penny (amazingly corroded) dropped. ‘White, like rainy night, fetch Minic boxes from little old lady before doom-ridden party?’

  Arabella patted me on the knee. Nice feeling, that.

  ‘Clever boy,’ she said, then continued, ‘There may be no connection in this whole wide world, but as Tara-Lee described this sort of white sheet thing that seemed to beckon to her to come over to it some distance away, I suddenly remembered the ghost you said you saw that night, disappearing into or out of Lana-Lee’s hedge.’

  ‘Tell me again, what did Tara-Lee say it looked like?’

  ‘Like a ghost she had seen in an old Mickey Mouse cartoon on TV, a kind of Disney prototype of Ghostbusters, it sounded like. In other words, a sort of hooded figure in a white sheet.’

  ‘And she ran after it?’

  ‘Seems so. At first she was scared, and then, when it disappeared behind a hedge, she became intrigued. She thought it might even be Gus playing a prank.’

  ‘Where would Gus get a white sheet? He hasn’t even got one on his bed — they’re grey — let alone stashed away on a cliff.’

  ‘Children aren’t logical. Maybe she thought it was an old sail from a locker on the boat. Who knows? Anyway, she followed over to the hedge, found nothing, then saw it again one field over, still beckoni
ng.’

  ‘What did she do?’

  ‘She went to the middle of the field and sat down and waited. She thought, if it was Gus, he’d get bored and come out and join her. She was a bit too scared to go right up to the hedge again.’

  ‘Then what happened?’

  ‘Some hikers appeared after a while, and asked her what she was doing there. She explained. They then all went to look behind the hedge, and there was nothing to be seen. The hikers then advised her to go back to us, as we would, no doubt, be getting worried. So they saw her back to more or less where she had last seen us, and the rest you know. We thanked them, and then the hugging and kissing started, and Gus and I breathed just about the biggest sigh of relief Dorset has ever heard.’

  ‘I bet you did,’ I said, almost absent-mindedly. I was trying to recapture visually the details of my own fleeting ghostly encounter, but it had been all too fast to pull into any kind of focus.

  ‘We mustn’t go jumping to spectral conclusions,’ I said eventually. ‘Are you sure Tara-Lee wasn’t lying?’ I was in that kind of mood. That’s the trouble with private eyeing, I guess. You get so that you don’t believe anybody — even an eight-year-old.

  ‘I don’t know. Don’t think so, especially if you put it together with what Lana-Lee admitted to me on the boat sailing back, whilst Tara-Lee was learning how to bait a hook with Gus up the sharp end.’

  ‘Prow,’ I said.

  ‘Whilst Tara-Lee was learning to bait a prow up the sharp end.’ Arabella gave me an ear to ear smile. ‘I think she’d got so scared about Tara-Lee’s disappearance that she felt she had to tell somebody.’

  ‘Tell somebody what?’

  ‘For about the last six weeks before his death, Ben Maxwell had claimed he was starting to see things. Funny things. He began joking that he would have to give up alcohol and every other kind of stimulant if they continued.’

  ‘He saw sheets?’

  ‘Apparitions — ghostly apparitions, he called them. White amorphous objects in the bushes, flitting across the lawns. And he’d say he heard tappings on the windows at night. And he claimed someone was constantly interfering with the cassette tapes in his Cadillac. He accused Tara-Lee and his wife of trying to drive him barmy so that he’d go away.’