The Sinking Admiral

by The Detection Club

  ‘Apart from anything else, who in their right minds would commit suicide by drowning themselves in the bottom of a boat?’ Amy sounded genuinely distressed. Unsurprising really, after all, it had been she who had discovered the dead body.

  Surely, though, suicides couldn’t be ‘in their right mind’?

  ‘And if Fitz had been wanting to commit suicide…’

  Which you had already ruled out, thought Meriel, wishing Amy would get to the point and leave her alone. Amy, on the other hand, was trying to extend their conversation. There was information she wanted to elicit from Meriel.

  ‘… he would definitely have chosen a more comfortable way to go,’ she continued.

  Now that Meriel could agree with. The Admiral wasn’t one of your rough and ready types.

  ‘But the police seem to be getting nowhere,’ Amy continued, fiddling with a loose thread at her waist. She was, as usual, wearing a knitted top and nicely fitted jeans, an outfit that didn’t get in the way when serving at the bar and showed off her credentials (as Meriel liked to call a woman’s shape) whilst not being overly suggestive. No flies on Amy Walpole!

  ‘Ben and I…’

  Oh ho! So that was the way the wind was blowing, was it? Well, Meriel wished her good luck with the TV presenter.

  ‘We’re looking at the options.’

  Meriel looked up from dumping her onions in a pan with arachide oil – so much more nuanced than sunflower – together with cumin seed, suddenly alert. ‘What do you mean, options?’

  ‘Well,’ Amy shuffled her weight from one leg to the other a little uneasily. ‘Who was where at the time he was… that is, when Fitz lost his life?’

  Meriel didn’t like the sound of this. ‘You mean the pair of you are turning amateur detective?’

  A slight flush coloured Amy’s face. Meriel ignored how it suited her, softening her more usual severity.

  ‘I wouldn’t say that.’

  Which means that you are! Meriel moved on to prepping salad. ‘I don’t know why you think I could have anything to tell you. Last week I was as surprised as everybody else to hear of your awful discovery.’ She gave a neat little shudder.

  For a moment she seemed to have deflected Amy. All the flattering colour vanished from her face. ‘Yes, it was awful. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.’ Then she collected herself. ‘But that’s it, don’t you see? If we’re to make any sense of what happened, we have to have a proper timeline.’

  Meriel couldn’t help snorting. ‘Honestly, Amy, listen to yourself. “Timeline”? What does it mean, for heaven’s sake?’

  Strangely, this seemed to focus Amy. ‘As I said, we’re sorting out where everyone was that night after ten thirty p.m., which is the last time any of the staff saw Fitz.’ It wasn’t the right moment to mention that Ianthe Berkeley had gone up to the Bridge with the old boy. She took a deep breath. ‘I mean, you’d already gone, Meriel, leaving the kitchen, I have to say, in a terrible mess.’

  ‘Yes, well, I would have cleaned it up the next morning… you know, if it hadn’t been for all the police and…’ Meriel threw the last of the salad ingredients into a bowl and placed it in the fridge. A jar of dressing was already there, waiting for service. ‘It wasn’t as though I’d asked you to do it.’

  ‘No, but there was no one to help clear up the bar after it closed. You know we usually do that together.’

  Meriel was silent. This was another of her little peeves. Why on earth should she be expected to help with that task? She was a cook, not a waitress or washer-upper. If only her job at the Admiral Byng didn’t mean so much to her. She had started to help Amy just after the girl had arrived at the pub. Meriel could remember clearly the bedraggled and wretched piece of humanity that had turned up one rainy night three years earlier. They hadn’t met till the following morning, when Fitz had introduced them, but Meriel could see what a bad state Amy was in. She’d often wondered what traumatising life event had brought the young woman to Crabwell, but it was a subject on which Amy would never be drawn. So both women had their secrets.

  But Meriel couldn’t forget the warmth with which the Admiral had taken Amy in. Nor the way the newcomer had slotted easily into the role shortly afterwards when the regular barmaid had disappeared one afternoon with a brewery rep, neither to be seen ever again in the Admiral Byng. When, at the end of Amy’s first evening, Meriel – having finished clearing up the kitchen and sorting out the ordering that needed to be done the next day – saw how exhausted the girl looked as she took in the state of the bar, she had helped collect and wash the glasses and show her how the chairs went up on the tables so the floor could be brushed and washed.

  Amy had been so grateful and so sweet that Meriel had continued to help. After all, the additional hour was paid out at double rate. But there were times when it didn’t suit her to stay, and the previous Monday night had been one of them.

  ‘So where were you?’

  Meriel stirred the onions, just beginning to colour, and didn’t look at Amy.

  ‘Come on, what can it matter telling me why you had to leave so early?’

  Time to add the balsamic vinegar and brown sugar to the onions. She concentrated on careful stirring, trying to work out whether to tell Amy or not that she had seen Fitz leaving the pub and had snatched up her coat and hurried after him. Just because she had been working in the kitchen didn’t mean that she hadn’t been aware of the various rounds of drinks he had commanded, or the way he kept on referring to his ‘Last Hurrah’. Ever since their little talk up in the Bridge, Meriel had been worried. She couldn’t blame him for wanting to sell the pub, if that was what he had in mind. It couldn’t be making much money, there were nights when not more than two or three steak and chips were sent out of the kitchen. But what would happen to her if the pub passed into other hands?

  If you could cook, it was held that you could always get a job. These days, however, you needed bits of paper to prove you understood Health and Safety, weren’t going to poison any diners. And the wretched worldwide web lay waiting to spew out all the sordid details of anyone’s name you entered. Meriel had changed hers by deed poll after Sven had disappeared from her life, but that was no guarantee that some busybody wouldn’t somehow link Meriel Dane with the Merle Johansson who had so nearly murdered her husband.

  After it was all over, she’d been sent on an anger management course, and these days had much more control over the temper that had boiled over far too often, finally with disastrous results as Sven’s misdeeds had come to light.

  It must have been the effect of that last miscarriage. After discovering the text messages left on his mobile, for once abandoned in the restaurant kitchen when he’d been called out to discuss an outside catering job – at least, that is what he’d told her it was – she had then, with outrage simmering through every vein in her body, gone through the unbelievably untidy kitchen drawer where the bills were kept, and had found final demands and far worse.

  It had been the silly smile on his face as he walked back into the kitchen that had detonated the powder keg inside her. Meriel had snatched up the first thing to hand, which turned out to be the steel he used to sharpen his knives. She’d had no idea of the strength in her arms, developed by kneading dough and carrying heavy trays. She swung at his legs with all her might. He came crashing down onto the tiled floor, smashing his head against the stove. Blood poured onto the white tiles as, lying on his back, he bellowed in pain and bewilderment. With anger still raging through her, Meriel had raised the steel again and brought it down on his crotch. Twelve years later she could still hear his scream of agony. Then she had raised the steel again, this time going for his skull.

  It had been the fish delivery man who had caught her uplifted arm and wrestled the weapon from her. She had resisted for several minutes, then, suddenly, the rage had left her, as completely as a tide going out, leaving a clean beach.

  The fish man had rung the ambulance; the paramedics had called the police, an
d for the next few days Meriel had gone around not knowing what was happening, only that Sven’s most serious injury was the one that meant it was unlikely he would ever satisfy a woman again. The stove had fractured his skull, but his brain, such as it was, did not appear to have suffered.

  The case had received blanket coverage in all the gutter press: ‘THE CHEF, THE WIFE AND THE LOVERS’, ran the most popular headline. ‘COOKING THE BOOKS FOR MAXIMUM SATISFACTION’, was another. The Receivers had been called in, and the restaurant had been put on the market.

  Meriel had expected to be charged with assault if not attempted manslaughter, but Sven had not pressed charges, instead he’d decamped to Sweden the moment the hospital released him, chased by furious husbands and betrayed lovers.

  The aftermath had been terrible. The red-top press had chased her. Creditors had demanded satisfaction. Promises had meant that bankruptcy was narrowly avoided. Job hunting quickly revealed that no one wanted to employ a cook who could run amok in the kitchen, even if it wasn’t with knives. She had changed her name and finally there had been that advertisement in the Hotel and Caterer. Only after she had started work at the Admiral Byng and Fitz had been so caring, had the nightmare of the end of her marriage begun to fade, and she had gradually cleared her debts. But only just. If her job vanished, Meriel did not know how she would manage.

  That was why on the Monday evening before he died, only a week before, she had had to run after the Admiral and find out exactly what the position with the pub was.

  ‘Fitz,’ she had managed, out of breath after stumbling along the pebbled beach in her kitchen clogs, sea water from the outgoing tide squelching inside them. ‘I must speak to you.’

  He had turned, and she had recoiled at his contorted expression. He seemed to be in the grip of some passion.

  ‘Fitz?’

  ‘Yes, Mrs Johansson? What do you want?’

  She had gasped at his use of her former name.

  Back in the kitchen more than a week later, ‘It’s a simple enough question,’ Amy said insistently. ‘Where did you go after you left the kitchen that Monday? I know you weren’t here after 10.30.’

  ‘That’s my business!’

  ‘It won’t be when the police start questioning you. And they will. I’m surprised they haven’t already.’

  Meriel visualised the green-eyed Constable. Would she mind being questioned by him? She thought rapidly.

  Skilfully preparing slices of mango she said, ‘I have an alibi.’

  ‘An alibi?’ It was obvious that was something Amy had not considered. ‘What sort of alibi?’

  ‘I was in bed.’

  ‘In bed? Alone?’

  ‘Of course not, but I don’t see why I should bring someone else into this. He’s got nothing to do with the Admiral.’

  ‘If he’s perfectly innocent, then it can’t hurt to have his name.’

  Meriel sighed. Would giving Amy a name save her from further interrogation? She reached over and stirred the onion marmalade, which, on the side of a slice of her special boiled ham, was little short of perfection. However, for once the idea of blissful food failed to excite her.

  ‘He’s a fisherman,’ she said, her voice quavering slightly. ‘His name’s Jed Rhode…’

  Amy frowned. ‘Jed Rhode… I don’t think I know him.’

  Meriel summoned up reserves of strength. ‘He doesn’t live in Crabwell. He fishes out of Lowestoft. I went down to his place that night. He’s divine, just divine, darling,’ she managed to burble. ‘Hair the colour of old rose gold and shoulders like an ox.’

  Amy recognised the description. The fisherman was often hanging around Crabwell, and it shouldn’t be too difficult to establish whether the cook was telling the truth or not.

  ‘But,’ Meriel continued with something like satisfaction, ‘you won’t be able to check with him because he’s off fishing now and won’t be back for days.’

  Ben Milne had drunk more than he’d intended during the Sunday lunch with Willie Sayers, and after the MP left he’d continued drinking. Old habits died hard, and his mind was full of thoughts he didn’t want to think. Alcohol had always guaranteed oblivion for him. He’d even bought himself a litre of Teacher’s from Crabwell’s only convenience store (which, with delusions of grandeur, had entitled itself a ‘supermarket’).

  He was a functioning alcoholic who could restrain himself when he was working, and had once gone four months without a drop when he’d been filming in Saudi Arabia. But when idle he was still susceptible to hitting the bottle hard. And he was idle now in Crabwell. He’d finished any filming that could be done; Stan had returned to London. And Ben wasn’t anticipating any developments on the murder investigation until Fitz’s funeral, now fixed for the Wednesday. The events of the last few days had left him tired and restless.

  As usual, nobody would have known how much he was drinking. He just returned to his room continually for little sips from the whisky bottle – and frequent teeth-cleaning to deal with the smell. He was determined not to drink on the Wednesday itself – he’d need all his wits about him at the funeral. He had a feeling something might happen at the event that could be invaluable for his programme, and he was pleased he’d persuaded Victoria Whitechurch to allow Stan the cameraman to return to film the proceedings.

  It was late on the Monday evening when he was drinking red wine openly in the almost empty bar of the Admiral Byng that he had the call on his mobile.

  ‘Ben?’ The voice was slightly Welsh and vaguely familiar.

  ‘Yes, that’s me.’

  ‘It’s Griffiths Bentley… you know, the solicitor?’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘And I was just wondering… are you still in Crabwell?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Will you be at the funeral on Wednesday?’

  ‘I will.’

  ‘Good. There’s something I want to tell you about.’ There was suppressed excitement in Griffiths Bentley’s voice. ‘Something that might explain the circumstances of Fitz’s death.’

  ‘Can’t you tell me about it on the phone?’ demanded Ben, his journalistic instincts aroused. ‘Or I could come to your office in the morning?’

  ‘No, there are a couple of details I’ve got to check with other people. We’ll talk after the funeral on Wednesday.’

  And with that the solicitor rang off. Leaving a very frustrated Ben Milne sitting in the bar of the Admiral Byng.

  Soon after, he went upstairs to his bed, and the dwindling contents of his bottle of Teacher’s.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  There was no way around it, Amy said to herself. She would have to confront that little pseud Bob Christie again and try to get out of him some explanation as to why he’d lied to her at their last meeting.

  She recalled his demand that he be believed because he was a journalist, and almost laughed out loud. When had anyone ever believed a journalist? Weren’t they jostling with estate agents and politicians for last place on that ‘who-do-you-trust?’ list she’d seen in the paper the other day? He didn’t even seem to be a proper journalist, just a pretend one. All that nonsense with the green eyeshade… She had a momentary temptation to adopt a persona that would match his fantasy about himself – some kind of sultry ace-reporter with a slit skirt and a husky voice – and shook her head. She was becoming as mad as everyone else.

  It was another grey, windy, depressing day, but Amy was in a dogged mood as she tramped steadily along the beach and into the village, wondering what Bob Christie’s office would be like. It was hardly likely to be full of the ringing telephones and reporters banging away on manual typewriters that she remembered from that old Walter Matthau and Jack Lemmon movie. No, that was then and this was now: she guessed the place would be quiet, sad, and shabby.

  It turned out to be a small house next to a fish-and-chip shop, the door and window frames needed painting, and even the brass plate outside saying The Crabwell Clarion looked tarnished and neglected. Presumably Bob coul
dn’t afford a cleaning woman to polish it, but was too important to deign to do it himself.

  She rang the bell and was buzzed inside. The interior smelled of fish. She wondered if the shop provided Bob with food in exchange for old newspapers.

  On her left was a door with EDITOR engraved in big black letters on the frosted glass that formed the top half. She knocked, and a harsh voice shouted ‘Enter’, from which she deduced that Bob was in macho mode.

  The room dejected her. The front pages tacked to the walls were yellowed, the piles of newspapers on the floor were dusty, and Bob’s desk was covered in unenticing junk, creased bits of paper and an aged desktop computer in much-fingered cream plastic. The editor was wearing an open-necked shirt, a cardigan with holes at the elbows, carpet slippers, and the inevitable green eyeshade, which he certainly didn’t need in that gloomy room. And yes, he was still wearing mauve socks, though she hoped he had washed them since Friday. The whole effect was as depressing as it was obviously contrived. She was surprised he hadn’t completed the ensemble with a fedora, though a woolly cap with ear muffs would have been more in keeping and much more practical, since the room was freezing despite the best efforts of the one-bar electric fire.

  Unasked, she sat in the wooden chair opposite him. ‘The kettle isn’t working,’ he said. ‘You could have whisky, I suppose.’

  Amy was so cold she was tempted, but she shook her head. ‘I don’t want anything except to know why you were lying to me last Friday.’

  ‘What business is it of yours?’ he asked, in what was intended to be an intimidating bark, but came out as more of a yelp.

  ‘Let’s not go through that again, Bob. The funeral is tomorrow, and it’s time you cut the crap and told the truth.’

  He sagged in his seat and gazed at her wearily. ‘I had my reasons.’

  ‘Just tell me what happened with Fitz on Monday, Bob, and then I’ll get out of your hair. I’m sure you’re busy.’