My father came out of his surgery and I wondered why he had even gone into it. The waiting room was empty.
‘If you’ve come to cause trouble.’ He wagged a warning finger.
‘If I’ve come to cause trouble what?’ I demanded. ‘Will you send me to my room? Oh no, you can’t because I haven’t got one.’
‘Hello, boss.’ Dodo skipped down the stairs.
‘She came to see me,’ I told my parents.
‘Oh dear.’ My mother clapped her hand to her forehead like nobody does in real life. ‘Are we back to you getting all sulky because we forgot to get you a cake on your ninth birthday?’
‘You forgot my ninth birthday full stop!’ I shouted.
‘What is a birthday full stop?’ Dodo puzzled. She had a pretty floral dress on that just about covered enough of her to stop her being arrested. ‘I have never had one.’
‘Get your uniform on,’ I commanded. ‘We are going to Pinfold Lane.’
‘Oh goody.’ Dodo clapped her hands. ‘Lavender Wicks and Pooky – what fun.’
‘Pooky?’ my parents chorused in bafflement.
It was then I knew I had my big chance. I hadn’t told them that she was working in Treetops House and had asked Dodo not to. I hadn’t wanted to hurt their feelings by explaining that their old maid detested them. Now that I had the opportunity and excuse to get a bit of my own back I found myself saying weakly, ‘It’s a very common name.’
‘Oh but…’ Dodo began, then, suddenly catching sight of my grimacing and hand-waving, changed tack to, ‘it is. Especially in Daddy’s part of our beleaguered country.’ And she was doing quite well except that she had her fingers crossed in full view of us all. ‘I shall go to get changed now,’ she said and set off meekly back up the stairs, ‘and hope I do not go to hell for telling a whopper.’
‘What has happened to the little Bettyboo I used to dangle off my knee?’ my father moaned.
I couldn’t remember him ever doing that but I took his word for it. ‘Why didn’t you come to see me?’ I asked.
‘Is your journey really necessary?’ my mother quoted piously from the posters.
‘Every drop of petrol we use is one less for our brave boys on land, sea and air.’ My father glared at me as if I had sabotaged a fuel depot.
‘You could have written.’
‘Don’t you know there’s a paper shortage?’ my father came back at me.
Of course I knew. We were being encouraged to use the back of old forms to make new reports.
‘Or rung me up.’
‘Ah,’ my father cried in triumph. ‘There I have you. I did ring and they told me they had no patient by that name in any of their wards.’
‘Though they did have a Mr Church who was absolutely charming. We had a lovely chat,’ my mother said as if that made it better.
‘When was this?’
‘Yesterday morning,’ my father said.
‘Well, he could hardly have rung this morning.’ My mother laughed tartly.
‘But I was discharged on Monday and spent a few days at Aunty M’s. I wrote and told you. I wrote you a lot of letters.’
‘Ufff, we haven’t had time to read all those.’ My mother flapped her hand up high above her head. ‘And your father was very upset to have missed you.’
‘Really?’ I softened a little.
‘Very,’ he confirmed. ‘I wanted to see if you could find me a nice wheel of Stilton before you left London.’
‘Why—’ I started to backtrack.
‘Because he likes Stilton.’ My mother rammed her fists onto her hips. ‘Is that against one of your precious war laws? Are you going to arrest your own father for liking cheese?’
I turned to him in the hope of a more sensible response. ‘Why couldn’t you have rung this morning?’
‘Does there have to be a reason for everything?’ my mother demanded.
‘Yes,’ I replied.
‘The phone isn’t working.’ My father, never very good at eye contact but even worse at taking an interest in décor, suddenly seemed to be fascinated by the wallpaper.
‘Have you told the Post Office?’
‘Oh that’s right,’ my mother said scornfully. ‘Try to get him into even more trouble.’
More trouble?
I folded my arms. ‘What’s going on?’
‘It wasn’t ringing.’ My father inspected his fingernails closely. ‘So I decided to fix it.’
‘There’s a lot of confusing wires in telephones,’ my mother contributed. ‘Instead of persecuting your poor father, you should be arresting the telephone people.’
‘Has it occurred to you it wasn’t ringing because…’ But I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t bring myself to put it to them that the phone hadn’t rung because nobody ever rang. I heard footsteps on the stairs. ‘There might be a fault at the exchange,’ I finished lamely, it seemed to me, but entirely reasonably, it seemed to them.
‘That must be it.’ My mother clapped her hands. ‘The exchange and the complicated wiring that broke itself.’
‘And that smell that you said was the drains—’ my father began.
‘I said?’ I broke in indignantly.
‘It was those horrible eggs you gave me from that horrible man,’ my mother said ungratefully. ‘They all went bad under the stairs.’
‘But that was weeks ago,’ I protested. ‘And I told you to put them in waterglass if you wanted to keep them longer.’
‘Oh.’ My mother propped up her breasts. ‘I thought you said to keep them in glasses of water.’ She wobbled them side to side with her folded arms. ‘They all exploded. It was disgusting.’
‘But I told—’
‘You need to learn to speak more clearly,’ my father lectured me.
‘You can speak clearly enough when you’re cheeking your father,’ my mother contributed.
Dodo rejoined us, looking much more the part.
‘And don’t go getting sand in poor Dodipops’s shoes,’ my mother scolded. ‘It took your father hours to clean them properly.
‘But you never cleaned mine,’ I burst out.
‘I think,’ my mother folded her arms, ‘that you are old enough to do your own.’
‘Bye-bye, Doadie-Woadie,’ my father grinned soppily.
81
THE FILM STAR AND THE FEW
Pooky admitted us.
‘He’s had a few,’ she warned us.
‘A few what?’ Dodo wondered. ‘Noses?’ she asked in surprise when Pooky tapped hers.
‘Drinks,’ Pooky clarified.
‘Tea would be nice.’ Dodo watched her own reflection. ‘If it is made properly but not if it is not. Oh, what happened to that looking glass?’
‘He threw a shoe and the mirror cracked from side to side.’ Pooky jiggled her profuse eyebrows. ‘Wait there.’ And went through the whiteness into a new whiteness, announcing, ‘The cops are here,’ in the same voice you might tell someone they’ve trodden in something.
‘I cannot believe we are going to meet Ajax Clarke, Private Eye.’ Dodo hopped excitedly.
‘Neither can I,’ I agreed, ‘because we are not.’
Dodo skipped. ‘Owwy-zowwy. I forgot it was poorly-sorely.’ She bent to rub her ankle. ‘Why did you not remind me, boss?’
‘I did not know you had forgotten.’
‘You could have asked.’ She pouted.
‘Send them in,’ the same deep voice I had heard on the phone said curtly and then, with the easy charm we all associated with Thurston Wicks, ‘You took your time.’
He was a tall man – not much under six feet from his brown-toed white-topped co-respondent shoes, his tan slacks and his rust-coloured pullover to his carefully slightly tousled much-too-black hair – not as big as he looked on the screen but I didn’t suppose anybody was. I had looked Thurston Wicks up in a couple of the stack of magazines Dodo had brought into work to show me.
‘I had no reason to believe it was urgent, sir.’ I emphasised the last word to show that I
had some manners even if my host did not.
‘I told you to come immediately.’ The big tumbler of whisky looked comfortable in his fist. ‘It doesn’t take much intelligence to know that means right now.’ There was an odd mix of faux upper crust and fake New York in his accent – how you might imagine Noël Coward imitating Humphrey Bogart.
‘It takes even less intelligence to know that the police are not at your beck and call and that, if you need an officer to come to your house, you should give her or him a good reason to do so.’ I looked into his eyes. Something of what I had seen described as emerald had been rinsed out of them and the lower lids were not exactly baggy but were losing their tone.
‘Where’s Sharkey?’ Wicks demanded. His jaw might still have been what Hollywood liked to call chiselled, for bone is strong, but the flesh was weak, hanging slackly in soft jowls. ‘He knows his manners.’
‘What a pity he did not teach them to you,’ Dodo murmured and Thurston looked at her sharply, not quite sure if he had heard correctly.
‘What?’
‘Inspector Sharkey is unavailable,’ I told him, which was all he needed to know.
‘Do you think he is being rude because he is drunk, boss?’ Dodo asked as if the man in question had just left the room. ‘Or do you think he is always rude?’
‘Why don’t you ask me that yourself?’ Wicks challenged, squaring up like she was a mobster on the streets of Chicago.
Dodo cleared her throat. ‘Excuse me, sir, are you being rude because you are drunk? Or are you always rude?’ she enquired nicely.
Wicks’s face broke into a grin, a brief flash of the suave, slightly roguish heroes he had made his reputation playing. ‘A bit of both, young lady.’
‘I ceased to be a young lady when I put on this uniform,’ she told him with great dignity.
Thurston Wicks nodded amiably. ‘Point taken.’ He put his glass down next to a coaster on a glass-topped table. I was fairly certain Mrs Wicks would not be happy to see him doing that. ‘As is my wife.’
I replayed his words. ‘Your wife is taken?’
‘In a word’ – he picked up a letter from beside a white vase filled with dead white roses – ‘yes,’ and handed it to me.
I HAVE YOUR WIFE. PAY ME £5,000 CASH OR SHE WILL DIE. DO NOT TELL THE POLICE. INSTRUCTIONS FOLLOW.
I read, realising too late that my fingerprints were on a vital piece of evidence and that his would be all over it too. The words were printed in pencil, so straight and regular that they must have been done with a ruler. It was signed, also in block capitals:
NAPOLEON SPARTA THE SUFFOLK VAMPIRE
I glanced at the back of the letter – it was blank – and put it on the coffee table in front of where Lavender had lounged when I met her. ‘Nobody touch it,’ I said, better late than never. ‘Where is the envelope?’ Please don’t say you have burned it.
‘It didn’t have one.’
‘So it was just put through the letter box like that?’ Dodo asked.
‘Naked as the day it was born,’ he agreed.
‘How rude.’ Dodo tutted.
‘Did your maid touch it?’ I asked.
‘She gave it to me.’
‘And she knows the contents?’
‘Unless she’s illiterate,’ Wicks agreed obliquely.
‘Napoleon Sparta?’ I wondered.
‘Oh that is easy-peasy-lemon-squeezy.’ Dodo jiggled animatedly. ‘Napoleon Sparta is a master criminal and Ajax’s arch-enemy.’
‘Oh,’ I said. ‘I don’t think I’ve seen that one.’
Thurston Wicks recoiled. ‘He is in every episode,’ he told me.
Which showed how memorable I had found them.
‘You were very good in Scarface,’ I reassured him, not sure why I was bothering.
Thurston Wicks winced. ‘That was Paul Muni.’ If it had been a hot summer’s day, I might have been glad of the ice in his voice, but it wasn’t and I was quickly coming to two conclusions: one, I hadn’t seen Thurston Wicks in anything at all and two, I had done too much pandering already. Here was a man whose wife was allegedly kidnapped and he was getting sniffy about being mistaken for another actor.
‘When did you get this?’
‘Half a bottle of bourbon ago,’ he told me. ‘First thing this morning.’
‘And I assume your wife is missing,’ I said.
‘Why would I call you if she wasn’t?’
‘You might be worried that it arrived too soon and that there is a plot to kidnap her,’ I reasoned.
‘Indeed,’ Dodo chipped in supportively. She had settled onto the same chaise longue she had shared with Lavender before and picked up the ball of knitting half-hidden under a cushion.
‘That’s a fair point,’ he conceded. ‘Yes, Inspector, Lavender has been missing these last ten days.’
‘Were you not worried?’ I wondered.
‘Lavender is hardier than she looks.’ Thurston Wicks flapped a hand. It was rather small and pasty for a supposedly tough guy. ‘She had to be with her upbringing.’
‘Were her parents poor?’ I asked.
‘What parents?’ He waved the idea away.
‘Oh but why did you not think to inform the police that your lovely wife had vanished?’ Dodo was inspecting Lavender’s work with a critical eye. ‘Or did you think to but not get round to doing it?’ She tugged at a loose loop. ‘Or did you think you could rescue her yourself like you did in The Black Hand?’
‘The Black Hand is a silent movie with Anthony O’Sullivan,’ he snarled.
‘So why have you waited?’ I asked. Was I the only one interested in Lavender Wicks’s fate?
Thurston Wicks rubbed his face in both hands. ‘I only got home last night and I found this.’ He passed me an even more mauled note and Dodo clipped on her spectacles to peer round my arm at it.
‘Darling, gone to stay the night with Poppy. Be back soon. Love and cuddles ex ex ex,’ she read out as loudly as she might have in a school assembly. ‘Oh how sweet – that’s me saying that last bit, not the letter.’
‘You think I haven’t read it?’
‘No.’ Dodo removed her glasses with great care before saying, ‘But your maid might not have.’ And then even I heard her – scuffling away down the corridor.
‘She’s seen it all right,’ Thurston Wicks assured us.
‘And who is Poppy?’
‘Lavender’s sister. She does secretarial work in her own muddled way. I rang her but she said she hadn’t seen Lavender in weeks, even though she lives locally.’
‘When did Wilson last see your wife?’
‘The afternoon of Tuesday the third.’
‘That was the day—’ Unusually, Dodo stopped herself in time.
‘I know about the goings-on in Essex,’ Thurston Wicks said grimly and suddenly he was a lost child. ‘But I suppose it could just be a coincidence.’
‘I do not think you are wise to suppose that,’ Dodo told him and he nodded.
‘Neither do I.’ His gaze dropped. ‘I read this woman wore a yellow scarf with birds on it. Lavender has one like that.’
‘They are very popular this year,’ Dodo enthused, ‘for ladies.’
‘Has she gone missing before?’ I kept a hold of both notes.
‘Never.’
‘Do you think it possible, Mr Thurston Wicks,’ Dodo asked slowly, ‘that your wife, Mrs Lavender Wicks, was having an affair of the heart?’
‘No.’ Thurston Wicks threw a bit more ice into the atmosphere. ‘Lavender is not interested in other men.’
I noted his emphasis on the last word with interest and wondered how much heart-throb Thurston really knew about her guests in her snug.
‘But the woman who went into the Dunworthy Hotel with that man did so voluntarily,’ I pointed out.
‘Did she?’ Thurston Wicks challenged. ‘How do you know what threats had been made to make her go in? How do you know he did not have a knife or a gun on him?’
‘Does Po
ppy confirm that Lavender was going to see her?’ I asked.
‘No.’ Mr Wicks tipped his head back. ‘But my wife often goes to stay with her sister without calling.’
‘Does your wife normally—’ I began.
‘Normally? You think this is a normal occasion?’ He took up his tumbler in that not-as-great-as-you-might-expect fist again. ‘Know what I think?’ Thurston Wicks did not wait for an answer, though Dodo was shaking her mop of hair as vigorously as a dog getting dry. ‘I think Lavender set off to see her sister but got kidnapped on the way.’
‘Where is her car?’ I wondered. I could not imagine Lavender walking or cycling into town and Pinfold Lane was not on a bus route.
‘In the garage. She must have been waylaid as she stepped out of the front door.’
‘Have you asked the neighbours if they saw anything?’ Dodo asked, very sensibly, for a change.
‘I am Thurston Wicks—’ The man in question tossed his head.
‘Dodo Chivers,’ my constable introduced herself.
‘I don’t think Mr Wicks had finished,’ I told her and she dropped her outstretched hand.
‘My reputation is everything,’ he announced so proudly I didn’t have the heart to tell him I had only become aware of him recently. ‘Do you think Ajax Clarke goes trotting round old ladies’ houses asking if they have seen his wife as if she were a lost kitten?’
‘Well, if he wanted Mrs Ajax Clarke back, it might be a start,’ Dodo reasoned.
‘You think I don’t?’ Thurston Wicks threw back the rest of his whisky.
‘It could be less alarming than it seems,’ I speculated. ‘Somebody, knowing that you don’t know where your wife is, may be trying to make you think they have her.’
‘D’you think that is likely?’ he asked in undisguised desperation.
‘No,’ I conceded. ‘But neither is kidnapping for money. Despite what you may have seen or acted in the cinema, it is a very rare crime indeed in this country.’
‘I have never come across it,’ Dodo weighed in with her vast experience.
Wicks was pouring himself another.
‘You are away a lot,’ I observed.
‘What of it?’ Thurston Wicks swung his arm round, showering me, the arm of the chaise longue and the carpet, but not himself, with Connemara Malt. ‘It’s the nature of my job and I give her everything.’
Betty Church and the Suffolk Vampire Page 31