Jane Hetherington's Adventures In Detection

by Nina Jon

  “You left alarm ringing to get rid of little mouse!” Maria said, looking at her as though Jane was touched. Jane realised how absurd it sounded.

  “In Estonia we have a tried and tested way to get rid of mouse. We hit over head with heavy object!” Maria said, escorting Jane over to the summerhouse.

  “But that would kill it.”

  “That’s why we do,” Maria said.

  Maria picked up some of the hair from the summerhouse’s floor, looking confused.

  “It’s for the mouse,” Jane explained limply, removing the batteries from the smoke alarm, which instantly fell silent.

  “For its nest?” Maria asked.

  “It’s meant to help drive it away. Hopefully it will have gone by now.”

  “If I see, I dispose,” Maria said, with a glint in her eye.

  “Please don’t tell me how you dispose if you do,” Jane said, leaving Maria sweeping up the hair from the floor.

  When she closed the door behind her, she could swear she heard Maria mutter, “I don’t know. Sometimes very clever lady. Other times stupid old woman.”

  She returned to the house, still thinking about motorbike rallies. She knew the best person to accompany her to a motorbike rally was Johnny Lambert, but as she couldn’t ask him, she’d ask the next best person instead – her near neighbour – Felix Dawson-Jones, the husband of her good friend Mirabella Dawson-Jones, the rector of Failsham. Felix had been a keen motorcyclist when a young man by all accounts. She telephoned him. He needed little persuasion.

  “I’ve been wanting to buy myself a Harley for years, but Mirabella won’t let me. Something about my reflexes not being what they used to be and the weight I carry,” he confided with a sigh. “But thanks to you, I now have an excuse to hire one for the day!” he said gleefully.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  The Fig Leaf

  I

  On the other side of Failsham, Johnny, still a long way short of the money he needed to take Charity skiing, was back by the roadside again, complete with sandwich board. This time, he didn’t have to wait long for a car to pull up alongside.

  “I drove past you the other day. Seeing you with your sandwich board gave me an idea. I asked my other half to do it, but he refused,” the female driver said.

  “Refused to do what?” Johnny asked suspiciously.

  “Walk around Failsham handing out flyers advertising our new wine bar – the Fig Leaf…” the girl said. Johnny knew there had to be a catch. “…wearing this!” she added, removing a rug to reveal a sandwich board lying across the back seat of her car. Johnny stared at it.

  “You’re kidding,” he said.

  “I’ve got a thong you could wear under it.”

  “You want me to walk around Failsham, wearing nothing but a thong under a sandwich board with a Fig Leaf painted on it! In March?”

  “Clothes will ruin the effect. Could be worse, we could’ve opened a place called the Frankfurter,” she quipped.

  “Very droll.”

  As Johnny hesitated, she said: “Seventy pounds for a few hours work – cash.”

  “One hundred.”

  “Only if you flirt.”

  “What’s your name? You’re very pretty.”

  “Not with me – with the punters. Get lots of pretty girls in, and the men will follow. Basic rules of the hospitality business.”

  II

  Johnny studied himself in a shop window. For a man wearing a knee length sandwich board with a Fig Leaf painted on both sides of it, a thong, a pair of open-toed sandals and a garland of gold ivy, he didn’t think he looked that bad. He rubbed his goose pimpled arms. He’d been warmer in the broiler unit, but not as well paid. He spotted a table of young women smoking outside a coffee bar. He walked over to them and handed out some flyers.

  “It’s a new wine bar opening at the weekend. Show this at the bar and you get ten percent off a bottle of wine.”

  “Do we get to see what’s underneath the sandwich board if we turn up?” one of the girls asked.

  “Cheeky,” Johnny said. “What about you, love?” he asked a young woman sitting by herself at another table. “You like a flyer?”

  “I’ll take all of them,” she said.

  “Don’t push it – one only. You have to pay to drink the place dry.”

  III

  Two and a half hours into his shift, Johnny stopped outside the gents. He realised he could only get in by squeezing in sideways or taking his sandwich board off. He chose the latter, leaving it and the gold garland in the alleyway outside.

  When he returned the sandwich board had gone and the garland lay scattered in pieces, as though it had been kicked against the wall a few times. Johnny looked up and down the alleyway, but there was no sign of anyone. Reluctantly he emerged from the alleyway into the main thoroughfare, wearing only a thong and the sandals. There was no sign of the sandwich board. A few people stopped to stare at him. Johnny dived into a nearby shop.

  “I don’t suppose you’ve seen anyone with the sandwich board I was wearing?” he asked the shopkeeper. “Someone’s nicked it.” The shopkeeper solemnly shook his head whilst his assistant collapsed with laughter.

  “Tea towel?” the shopkeeper offered.

  IV

  Johnny called Charity from the wine bar half an hour later. “The owner was none too pleased when I got back without her board, poor girl!”

  “She still pay you?” Charity asked.

  “Of course. For my troubles I got a hundred pounds in cash and a nice big slice of apple pie someone had baked her as a good luck present, so I’m happy. Tell you something, though,” he added. “Women are like animals when they see a drop-dead gorgeous, half-naked, virile young man running through the streets with nothing but a tea towel wrapped around him. Had I known this earlier, I wouldn’t have bothered buying all those clothes!”

  “Ha! Ha!”

  Johnny started to trudge home, his own sandwich board under his arm. A car drew up beside him, and the driver wound down the window.

  “Can you sing?” the motorist asked.

  Johnny stared at him. The motorist pointed at Johnny’s plea for work sandwich board. “Can you sing?” he repeated.

  “And dance,” Johnny replied, summoning enough strength to dance a quick jig.

  “I want someone to serenade my girlfriend for me,” the motorist explained. “Can’t do it myself, I’m tone deaf.”

  “By moonlight?” Johnny asked jokingly.

  “When else?” was the reply. “Her name is Emma Greenlee.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Hell’s Angels?

  As was her custom whenever she visited the Rectory, Jane stopped off at the churchyard where Hugh was buried to visit his grave. She was upset to find an empty can on it. She removed it, and the flowers she’d left there few days earlier. These she replaced with a fresh display. She noticed a tiny piece of moss growing on Hugh’s gravestone and picked

  it off with her fingernails. As she stood up, she saw Felix

  Dawson-Jones walking towards her, wearing leathers (suitable enough attire as they were off to a bikers’ rally) and carrying a large cardboard box.

  “Not more rubbish,” Felix said of the can in Jane’s hand. “Don’t people know what a bin is? Put it in here,” he instructed, shaking the cardboard box. She dropped the can into it. “I’ve spent the last hour clearing up the rubbish left here from the night before! Look at this lot,” he said, holding out the box. As well as some empty wine bottles and cigarette packets, there was a broken china elephant and the top of a child’s bubble-blowing kit lying in the box. “Sometimes I wonder what people think churchyards are actually for? Mirabella’s going to write a blog for the church’s website about the kind of things people leave behind in graveyards. We could open a Lost and Found, you know!”

  Felix continued his rant while they walked through the churchyard towards the Rectory. “We’ve found bags, books, jackets, shoes, fur coats, handwritten manuscripts,
and I don’t know how many candles. I couldn’t tell you the amount of candles I’ve found in churchyards in my time! Candles and churchyards go together like horses and carriages. The other day I found a pair of false teeth, and not for the first time. You’d think their owner would notice they weren’t in! I even found one half of a twenty pound note, someone had ripped in half. Unfortunately I couldn’t find the other half. Trust me, I looked!”

  Jane glanced in the box. There was indeed a candle in it. But no false teeth.

  When they reached the Rectory, Felix deposited the box full of rubbish on its steps, while Jane walked over to the motorbike parked on its front drive.

  “I borrowed it from my cousin,” Felix explained. “He’s another keen motorcyclist. It’s a Triumph Daytona 675 – the ultimate sports bike.” Felix sounded as excited as a child.

  Jane was just glad to see it had the sidecar she’d requested. The tragic death of her dear sister had left her with a terror of riding pillion. There was also her age and sciatica to consider. The rally was two hours drive away. As she climbed into the sidecar, Jane caught sight of Mirabella watching them from the front window, giving a slightly disapproving shake of her head. Jane waved as she and Felix set off for the rally, with him behind the Triumph’s wheel and she at his side.

  Jane and Felix had both believed their bike would be the only one there with a sidecar, but when they swept through the rally gates, a motorbike with a sidecar was on their tail. They parked at the end of the row of bikes with sidecars, as the motorbike behind them pulled up next to them. Its owners nodded to Jane and Felix, who nodded back. Jane climbed out of the sidecar, assisted by Felix. She was rather stiff and needed to bend her knees a few times to loosen up.

  She looked around. While many there were large, leather clad middle-aged men with beards, there were also quite a few women at the rally and children. Whilst neither Jane nor Felix could be said to be the youngest there, neither were they the oldest. The bike park was almost full. Motorbikes of every make and vintage were parked there, many as covered in images of snakes, mermaids, pirates, skeletons, and naked women as their owners were. Felix and Jane followed the crowd in the general direction of the rally, the noise of motorcycles and live music grew louder and louder as they approached and the smell of food, grease and tire-rubber grew stronger. Jane stopped to admire a giant fake snake wrapped around the frame of a bike, its head across the handlebars, only to shudder and hurry away when she realised the snake wasn’t foam, but stuffed.

  Once through the ticket gate, the two bought beers. Clutching a pint of beer in one hand, and a print of the photograph of Johnny’s father in the other, Jane and Felix strolled around the rally, hoping to catch sight of Pete Lambert.

  They stopped outside the central arena. The sound of screaming spectators, stamping feet and roaring bikes coming from inside the arena was nothing compared to the noise thrown off from the row of competitively revving motorcyclists waiting to enter it. The noise was almost deafening. Most of the men still had their visors up allowing Jane to look along the row. Of those whose faces she could see, none were the man she was looking for. A hooter went off causing Jane to jump and the bikes to roar into the arena, one after the other, each attempting a wheelie as it entered. When the last of the motorcycles was through the gates they slammed shut.

  They walked to some nearby stalls where Felix tried on a leather jacket. “Me?” he asked, giving a little twirl, his arms outstretched to show off the back of the jacket where, in red stitching, something half (naked) female and half-dragon was emblazoned. “Definitely,” Jane said.

  Felix returned the jacket to its rail and they carried on. They stopped by a stall offering bike repairs, where two men squatted by a Suzuki, deep in conversation. “Here’s your enemy,” one of the men said, holding a tiny sweet paper in his hand. “It was in the petrol tank!”

  The bike owner almost kicked his own bike over. “No wonder it kept stalling!” he said, before swearing a number of times in quick succession. “Who would want to do that to me? What harm have I ever done anyone?” he wailed, close to tears.

  “It’s the old green-eyed monster, mate,” his friend assured him. “It makes people go stir crazy, look what happened to old Kenny!”

  They walked on, all the while scanning the crowd. Felix pointed to a clairvoyant’s tent. Before Jane could stop him, he’d disappeared inside it, with the words, “She may be able to help.”

  Jane followed him. For the price of a pint of beer, Jane was allowed to choose a stick containing her fortune, from a pot containing many similar sticks. From inside the stick selected, she pulled out her fortune and read it out loud, “It says: ‘Join the dots!’” Jane looked at the clairvoyant. “No suggestions as to how?”

  The clairvoyant smiled enigmatically, while Felix shrugged.

  From there they joined a crowd watching a band on stage. “I don’t know about you, but I’ve seen quite a few people who could be Johnny’s father. Like that guy over there.” Felix nodded towards a man facing the stage, who was clapping along with the band. “I’ll give it a shot.” He walked over to the man and tapped him once on the shoulder. “Peter, is it you?” he asked. When the man looked blank, Felix said, “Sorry, I thought you were someone else.” Felix patted him on the shoulder and returned to Jane.

  “It was worth a shot,” she said.

  The two continued to walk around the rally. Now and then, one or other would approach a man about the same age as Johnny’s father and ask if he were ‘Peter?’ They had to stop when someone said, “.You’ve asked me that already? What the hell’s wrong with you? You fancy me or something!”

  Felix returned quickly to Jane, saying, “I think we’re going to have to try something else.”

  Jane stared away in the distance, wondering what they could do. She watched as some men raced their motorbikes around a makeshift track, weaving in and around haystacks. After a while she gave click of her fingers, which Felix immediately mimicked.

  “I know what we can do!” she said.

  With Felix buying them both a sandwich, Jane went to speak to the young man at the ticket kiosk: “I’m trying to find a friend of mine. We arranged to meet here, but I think he must have forgotten. His name is Pete Lambert.”

  “Could Pete Lambert come to the ticket sales at the North entrance, where his friend Jane is waiting to kick his ass for forgetting to meet her there,” the tannoy announced. While Jane appreciated the gesture, she couldn’t help wondering whether anybody could hear the tannoy over the din.

  A few minutes later the same announcement was repeated. This did the trick. Within minutes, two men arrived at the kiosk both claiming to be Pete Lambert. The two arrived from different directions. The young man in the kiosk pointed in the direction of Jane.

  The first man to wander over to Jane was far too young to be Johnny’s father. He had an irate looking girlfriend with him, who visibly calmed down when she saw the Jane who wanted to speak to her boyfriend.

  “Different Pete Lambert, I think,” she said.

  “’fraid so,” Jane said. “But thanks for taking the time.”

  As the young couple walked away, Jane heard him say, “See – I told you – I don’t know anyone called Jane.”

  While the first Pete Lambert placated his girlfriend, the second walked over to Jane. He was about the right age.

  “Well, as I don’t know you, I can’t be the Pete Lambert you’re looking for either. How many of us are there out there?” he joked.

  “Actually, you might be the man I’m looking for,” Jane said. “May I have a few minutes of your time, now you’re here?”

  “I think I should warn you I’m taken, love,” he said, pretending to back away, his hands mockingly raised in the air.

  Jane took out the photograph of Johnny’s father. Although the young man in the photograph didn’t look much like the man standing in front of her, the photograph had been taken nearly thirty years earlier. She showed it to Pete Lambert.
“This is a photograph taken many years ago of a man with the same name as yourself.”

  “And? What the hell is all this about? Who are you?”

  “I’m not from the Police, nor the Inland Revenue, or the Child Support Agency or anything of the kind,” Jane said hurriedly. “I’m just trying to help a near neighbour of mine to find his father.”

  “I don’t know who you are, or what this is about, lady,” Pete Lambert said angrily. “Even if I was your neighbour’s father – which I’m not – I wouldn’t tell you. If I’d walked out, then I didn’t want to be there, did I? If I knew the man in that photograph, which I don’t, I wouldn’t tell you. We mind our own business here, got it?” he said, having by now, moved to stand extremely close to Jane.

  She’d got it, but in case she hadn’t the young man at the ticket kiosk joined them. Not only that, but she couldn’t help noticing an angry-looking group of men advancing on her. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Felix appear, look alarmed, drop the sandwiches he was carrying and run over to her.

  “I think you’d better leave,” the ticket seller said.

  “Yeah! Clear off!” someone else said, even though he’d just joined the throng, and couldn’t have any idea what the argument was about. Jane thought it unlikely the group would beat up a woman of her age, but she didn’t want to give them any excuses.

  “We’ll leave immediately,” she said. “I’m sorry if I made you angry. I was trying to help a good friend find his father. A father he hasn’t seen since he was a child. A man, who for all we know, might want to see his son again.” She turned to Pete Lambert and said, “I’m sorry you’re not my friend’s father.”

  Jane and Felix walked away from the crowd as calmly as they could. Although they tried not to show it, they were both shaking and their pulses racing.

  “Holdon,” PeteLambertshoutedafterthem.Theybothstopped. They glanced nervously at each other, and turned around to face him. “Let’s have a look at that photo. One of us might know him.”