‘Dammit.’ He clenched himself together.
‘The body is still there,’ I reminded him. ‘We haven’t disturbed anything and we can tell you what Mrs Milligan, the victim’s secretary, said. We even have a photo of what might be the murderer’s footprint.’
‘The murderer left a photograph of his footprint?’ Dodo asked incredulously.
‘No, I got Mr Gregson to take a picture.’
Sharkey leaped at my words. ‘You let that man from the Gazette into the crime scene?’
‘I know I did,’ I said. ‘But he will not publish anything without my permission.’
Sharkey folded his arms. ‘And you believe that?’
‘I will stake my career on it,’ I asserted, aware that I already had.
43
THE DRAGON’S TEETH
Dodo almost but not quite skipped as we turned onto High Road East. ‘I see the sea and the sea sees me,’ she chanted merrily, oblivious to the curious stares of the public. ‘Where to now, boss?’ She had taken to calling me that lately and I didn’t mind. At least it was better than binspector.
‘Dolly’s Café,’ I told her.
‘Are you expecting to find a clue there?’
‘I am expecting to find a good pot of coffee and two iced buns.’
‘Is one of the buns for me?’ Dodo wondered. ‘I’m as hungry as a haberdashery.’
‘It might be, if you tell me who Lavender Wicks is.’
‘I do not know.’ Dodo put a hand to her helmet. She was having trouble with her new one. We had been issued with the military type, POLICE printed in black letters on the front, and you can’t pack as much hair into one of those as you can into the peacetime peaked helmet. People think it’s a myth that constables keep snacks in their helmets. I certainly used to, though I soon learned the hard way that it’s not a good idea to store chocolate in one on a hot summer’s day.
I thought I had given up hard hats for soft when I swapped my stripes for pips but the east coast could soon, as Teddy Moulton had predicted, be our first line of defence and we were all dressing like soldiers now.
‘Then why did you ask Mrs Milligan if she did?’
‘I thought she might.’
I stopped and pointed. Across the gap at the bottom of the road a destroyer glided, grey in the grey North Sea.
‘Goodness.’ Dodo crossed her fingers. ‘Good luck, boys.’ She waved both arms high above her head.
‘I don’t think they can see you.’
‘But they have telescopes,’ Dodo objected, ‘and look, those children on the prom-prom-prom are waving too.’
I could not help but wonder how many of those on that ship would survive the battles that must surely come and, feeling a bit self-conscious but even more proud, I gave them a salute.
Dodo blew her nose. ‘Sorry, boss.’ She hiccupped.
‘You’re allowed a tear for those men,’ I told her as we walked slowly on until we were at the seafront and the ship was disappearing around Angle Promontory.
The bell tinkled merrily as I pushed open the door.
‘My boy’s on that ship,’ Dolly, daughter of the original owner, told us, cups and saucers rattling with pride as she set them on the gingham tablecloth.
‘God keep him safe,’ I said and she chuckled sideways. The left side of her face had been paralysed since she had been attacked by a dromedary when there was a failed attempt to outdo Anglethorpe’s donkey rides. The creature had escaped soon afterwards, never to be seen again. Presumably it was washed out to sea. It’s hard to imagine nobody would notice a camel roaming the Suffolk countryside, though rumours had been rife that Bressinghall’s, the butchers, were putting it into their sausages.
‘It’s Adolf’s lads you want to worry about when my Alfie gets a crack at them.’ She placed the pot with the handle towards my constable.
‘Lavender Wicks,’ I reminded Dodo.
‘Oh yes.’ She dabbed the icing on her bun with her little fingertip. ‘Of Treetops House, Pinfold Lane. I found this.’ She slid a red booklet across the table like a croupier and I did not need to turn it over to know what it was.
I opened the cover.
DL2 No A 70827 Suffolk County Council Traffic Acts 1930 and 1934
Driver’s Licence
Lavender Wicks
Of: Treetops House, Pinfold Lane,
is hereby licensed to drive a motor vehicle of any description from 5th February 1939 until 4th February 1940 inclusive.
Fee of 5/- received.
The Controller, Taxation Department, County Hall, Ipswich.
Usual Signature of licensee: L F Wicks
On the opposite page under the stamped,
BURY ST EDMUNDS COUNTY COURT
was handwritten in Indian ink:
Date: 9th August 1939
Offence: Exceeding the speed limit in a built-up area
Date of Offence: 2nd August 1939
Order: Fine of £1.10/- and endorsement of licence.
A signature that looked like A Sniff but probably said A. Smith, then ‘Clerk to the Justices’.
And the stamped warning:
Must not be removed or defaced.
‘Where did you find this?’
‘On the floor in the hall, near Mrs Milligan’s office door.’
‘And why didn’t you tell Inspector Sharkey?’
Dodo rubbed her front teeth with the knuckle of her thumb. ‘I forgot.’
‘No you didn’t.’ I was not going to tell her the thumb habit was one of the things she did when she fibbed.
Dodo clipped and unclipped her handbag. ‘I wanted to tell you first.’
‘Have you any idea how angry Inspector Sharkey will be when he finds you’ve been holding back evidence?’
She repeated the handbag process. ‘Will he be as big a crosspatch as when I spilled ink on his trousers?’
‘Bigger.’
‘Oh dearie-dearie me.’ Dodo changed colour a few times before settling on white with a hint of fuchsia. She dabbed the pot with the tip of her little finger. ‘Shall I pour?’
‘Can you without spilling it on the cloth?’
‘Possibly.’ She nibbled her right thumb.
‘I’ll pour.’
‘I can manage the milk.’ Dodo confidently slopped it into my saucer. ‘He will be busy this afternoon, will he not?’
‘And this evening, writing his report,’ I confirmed.
‘When would he least like to be disturbed?’ She took a lump of sugar in the silver tongs, swooped it through the air and dropped it into her tea like she was bombing it, splashing her beverage onto the cloth.
‘In the evening,’ I said with some confidence. ‘He’ll be tired and even more grouchy than usual. One of the very few things we have in common is we both hate paperwork.’
‘That is when I shall tell him,’ Dodo decided and stirred a whirlpool into her tea. ‘Shall we go and see if Mrs or Miss Lavender Wicks is home?’
‘Why not?’ I agreed, unwilling to admit I could think of nothing more useful to do. The best lead I had for the killing of Ardom Dapper at the railway station was a definite sighting of the Suffolk Vampire in the vicarage gardens, which had turned out to be a cassock on the washing line. I had no reliable information either on the whereabouts of Millicent Smith. Some of the reports coming in now were so bizarre as to be insane or mischievous. An account of her on a balcony in Rome with Mussolini could have fitted into either category.
‘Why not indeed?’ Dodo pondered over her coffee. ‘Well…’ She grasped her chin. ‘She might not be at home and we will have had a wasted journey. She might be at home but hiding in her cellar, if she has one, and we will have had a wasted journey. She might—’
‘It was a rhetorical question,’ I interrupted before she could tell me Lavender Wicks might be a mermaid and forcing me to explain why mermaids can’t drive cars.
‘Oh.’ She raised the cup to peer at me over the rim. ‘I am not very good at spotting those. I am goo
d at spotting dropped licences and gentian violet stains though. Also I once spotted a dolphin going down Oxford Street. It was in a glass case though and not very difficult to spot. Why are you pointing to the tip of your nose?’
‘I am doing a shush sign.’
Dodo’s lower lip slipped out. ‘Is that because you want me to shush?’
‘I want you to enjoy your coffee in peace.’ I lied over the you bit.
‘Oh thank you, boss.’ She smiled so prettily that the man on the next table slopped his tea down his shirt.
‘What a nice man.’ Dodo’s voice rang around the café. ‘He did not even swear when he behaved in such a stupid clumsy way.’
I rolled a cigarette.
‘I do not want to preach…’ Dodo folded her hands primly.
Oh yes you do, I thought. ‘Then don’t.’ I inhaled the smoke deeply but the pleasure was gone, Dodo watching every puff in much the same way as a child might view her father getting roaring drunk. I pinched off the end. ‘Is it all right if I drink my coffee?’
‘Oh but you simply must,’ Dodo urged and even the desire to do that withered.
I gulped it down, trying to pretend I wasn’t scalding my throat, and stood up. ‘Come on. We have work to do.’
‘Oh but I have hardly commenced mine.’ Dodo’s pansy eyes brimmed as if I had stolen her Christmas present. For a second I nearly relented but it was bad enough being disapproved of by my parents without my usurper following suit.
‘Maybe you shouldn’t have spent so long not wanting to preach,’ I suggested, shocked at how nastily my words came out.
Dodo’s lower lip trembled.
Oh for Pete’s sake, how are you going to cope with the abuse the average criminal will give you? I wondered in dismay but only said, ‘Drink up while I go to the ladies.’
My constable looked about. ‘But there are not any ladies here.’
I put a half-crown on the tablecloth, went through the door at the back and relit my cigarette, feeling rather like I had at school when Sister Millicent was on the prowl.
Dodo was dabbing her lips when I came back.
‘I told the waitress you do not want any change,’ she told me brightly as we stepped onto the street.
I can think of one change I would like right now.
There were soldiers near the water’s edge, packing huge bales of razor wire under the pier and stretching it between conical concrete blocks designed to stop tanks rolling up the beach.
‘What are those cementy things?’ Dodo pointed with both hands.
‘They call them dragon’s teeth.’ I watched the timber groyne I used to dive off being bulldozed into splintered planks.
‘Well, they shouldn’t,’ Dodo said crossly. ‘It’s very misleading.’
44
THE MANGLED SHEEP MURDER
Pinfold Lane was an unmade private road on the outskirts of town. It was built into the edge of the sandhills and they were making determined attempts to reclaim their territory. The surface of the lane was sprinkled with sand and it was piling up at the sides. The houses were almost all expensive-looking dormer bungalows.
We had taken a number 16 bus to the end of the road. It would have been an easy cycle ride but there was no such thing as an easy cycle ride for Dodo. ‘Bicycles are a teensy-weensy bit too wibberly-wobberly for little old me,’ she had said when I had suggested she got one.
‘Why did they not put some of this sand on the beach?’ Dodo asked reasonably enough.
‘It’s too light,’ I said. ‘If the wind didn’t blow it straight back, the tide would wash it all out to sea.’
To prove my first point, a low gust swirled eddies around our ankles.
‘You know a great many things,’ Dodo remarked, adding, before I got too swollen-headed, ‘I presume that is because you have been alive so long.’
I wanted to tell her she would not reach my venerable age if she kept saying things like that but I only said, ‘Probably.’
Treetops House stood at the end on the left, just before Pinfold Lane disappeared into the dunes with only a faint dip to indicate where it was intended to go. Two storeys high with a flat roof, Treetops House was built in white concrete with steel-framed windows and a straight-fronted curved-sided upper balcony on pillars on its left-hand side.
There was a curving flower bed at the front, walled also in white concrete and planted with heathers and alpines. A double garage was attached on the right-hand side and I wondered if it was being used. Petrol rationing had already led many people to put their cars on blocks for the duration.
Dodo wrote DODO in the sand with her toe. ‘Would it not be simply toooo thrilling if Lavender Wicks were to be married to Thurston Wicks, the film star?’
‘I hardly think he would be living in Sackwater.’ I watched her name blow away. ‘Even if he did, it would be somewhere like Mallard Road.’
I rang the bell and waited.
‘Perhaps—’ Dodo began, but I was spared any bizarre theories about what the inhabitants might be up to by the door swinging open.
‘Yes?’
‘Pooky,’ I said in surprise.
‘Miss Betty.’ She drew back, taller and bonier than ever, her long frizzly grey hair dragged fiercely back under a starched white hat.
‘You are supposed to be making Submarine Spitfire aeroplanes,’ Dodo said accusingly, as if this was her maid caught in the act of betrayal.
‘Supermarine,’ I corrected but neither of them was listening to me.
‘I’m just visiting.’ Pooky glared at us both defiantly.
‘In a maid’s uniform?’ I objected and she tugged at her apron.
‘It’s all I have left.’ Pooky put her hands into her pockets – something my mother was always scolding her for. ‘The rest of my clothes got burned in a fire.’
‘But you left your old uniform in lovely old Felicity House. It was black and white and threadbare – the uniform, not the house,’ Dodo pointed out. ‘I know because I have played dressing-up games in it.’
‘Are you playing one now?’ Pooky sneered in a tone she usually reserved for men.
‘I do not believe I am,’ Dodo replied with less confidence than she should have.
Pooky’s dress was a nice claret with an apron whiter and crisper than a communion wafer.
‘You want the truth?’ Pooky crossed her osseous arms and, without waiting to find out if I did or not, gave it to me anyway. ‘You were a lovely sweet girl, Miss Betty, a pleasure to work for. I would have gone to the end of the garden for you, I would. Remember the fun we had with that old mangle?’ I didn’t remember the mangle, let alone its entertainment value, but – unlike Dodo Chivers – I usually recognise a dollop of rhetoric. ‘When we put your toy sheep through to dry and its innards exploded out. And the pastry cutter? Remember what we did with that? Oh’ – she clasped her hands ecstatically – ‘but your parents, they were produced in a very different factory from very different raw materials indeed. How can I put this kindly? Your parents were a couple of shitters.’
Pooky crossed her arms with a beatific glow as if she had just delivered an affectionate eulogy. I remembered Lucinda Lamb now, how I had cried and how my mother had sewed her up in the way she did everything – really badly.
‘I believe Miss or Mrs Lavender Wicks resides here,’ I said nicely.
‘Mrs Lavender Wicks do,’ Pooky admitted, taken aback by my failure to endorse her remarks.
‘Is she at home?’ I enquired. ‘By which I mean is she here and not that servant rubbish about not being at home to me.’
‘She—’ Pooky began.
‘Do not attempt to shelter her,’ Dodo warned fiercely. ‘In time of war it is a capital offence to impede the police in the execution of their duty.’
It wasn’t but Pooky probably didn’t know that. She probably didn’t know what a capital offence was either.
‘She—’ Pooky began again but Dodo had not quite finished.
‘No matter how
nice her name is, which it is, isn’t it?’
‘—is at home,’ Pooky finished.
‘Then kindly inform your mistress that we wish to speak to her,’ I instructed and Pooky looked at me sideways, the way she used to look at the grocer’s boy when he dipped into the biscuit barrel.
‘You’ve gone and changed since the day we met,’ she rumbled.
I hoped so. The first time Pooky clapped eyes on me I was in swaddling clothes and squalling because my father had accidentally sat on me. This time she seemed about to shut me out.
‘Oh please, Pooky dear,’ Dodo beseeched and my parents’ old maid softened.
‘Just takes a bit of manners,’ she lectured me and stood back to admit us. ‘And don’t forget to wipe your feet,’ she scolded, ‘properly.’
45
THE DANCE OF THE DEAD
We entered a big rectangular hall with Tiffany electric light fittings. It was decorated from the walls to the woodwork and ceiling to the deep-piled fitted carpet in tiny variations on white.
‘Wait here whilst I solicit her presence,’ Pooky told us with a well-oiled but never-before-seen curtsy and I wondered, from her choice of words, if she knew Brigsy or if they had seen the same film or attended the same finishing school.
Pooky passed through a door at the end.
‘Oh but this is lovely.’ Dodo swirled like Cinderella at the ball, caught sight of herself in one of the six white-framed long mirrors and swirled again in the opposite direction. ‘White as a walrus.’
Pooky reappeared. ‘Mrs Wicks will see you now.’
‘Oh I feel fizzy.’ Dodo staggered sideways.
‘Feel dizzy,’ I corrected her.
‘Oh poor you.’
Lavender Wicks was getting up from one of four long white boxy sofas arranged around a low aluminium-legged rectangular glass table. She was quite a tall young woman, about my height and athletically built with long well-toned well-tanned legs that she showed off below a short white cotton skirt. Her matching shirt was unbuttoned far enough to give a good glimpse of her generous proportions. If Captain Scott had had so much white in his house he might never have felt the need to leave home. Even the baby grand piano by the French windows was the colour of fresh snow.
Betty Church and the Suffolk Vampire Page 16