by Brian Hughes
Seconds later Nurse Adeline Wagstaff pulled up alongside them, buttoning up her blouse in true Carry On fashion. She attempted to flatten her flyaway hair before closing in on the scene of carnage.
Staff Nurse Gubbins looked up as her shadow fell over them both.
“Phone York Street police station!” She held the old dear’s wrist between her thumb and forefinger, checking her pocket watch without conviction. “This time they really have got a murder on their hands.”
Chapter Seven: Of Consciences and Cassettes
Summary of Enclosed Video Evidence by Superintendent Hodges (Commanding Officer Greyminster Division).
For Official Court Use Only:
The following video documentation records the events surrounding the night of June 25th and the subsequent additions by Constable Parkins. The order and length of the records are as follows:
One) Eight seconds. Mr Bernhard Cooper’s apartment at Dunstable Avenue. Mr Cooper has lodged an official complaint against the CID for unnecessary intrusion into his domestic affairs. Stills from this section of the video are available over the internet. (Address: http://www.greyminsterpolice.com/ ageingtransvestiteinsuspenders.htm)
Two) One point five seconds. Blurred shot of Inspector Reginald Nesbit’s foot.
Three) Two seconds. Out-of-focus shot of small parade passing down Balmoral Terrace. Difficult to understand what’s going on. Parade interrupted by Constable Parkins’ grinning head. (Permission for use of camera not given.)
Four) Five minutes. Parkins removing the camera from the stock cupboard and blowing raspberries at the lense.
Five) Ten minutes. Offensive argument between Constable Parkins and Constable Robins. Involves Robins perched on toilet with trousers round ankles and camera balanced on top of door. (Stills available at same website address as above, although the Greyminster Chronicle has run the best of the bunch already.)
Commanding Officer’s Recommendations: Constable Parkins has been issued a reprimand. This videocassette is now completely useless. Recommendation for myself: Take it home and film the grandchildren.
(Superintendent Cuthbert Hodges.)
The eiderdown had been sewn together from patches and bordered with sumptuous lace. The pillows beneath it stirred as sunlight probed through the curtains and investigated the bedroom. Miss Duvall’s nose appeared from beneath the hem.
Following several confused mumbles she stumbled out of bed, not exactly the sort of woman you’d want to fraternise with first thing in the morning. Not if you’d already eaten breakfast, anyhow.
Presently she padded across the bathroom floor and studied her yellow eyes in the mirror. It had been a troubled, uncomfortable night, almost as though something was bothering her but she didn’t know what. Having said that, it might just have been the loose springs in her mattress giving her gyp.
“Now...” She rinsed the Steradent from her false teeth and popped them into the crack of her mouth. “What’s my agenda for the day?”
She mulled matters over.
“Stoughton’s Tailors first I reckon, to check up on that mysterious clothes label, followed by jam roly-poly with Verger Wilkins.” She marked these integral points off on her fingers. Then she brushed a ringlet of grey hair from her forehead apparently satisfied. “Right! Chop chop, Millicent old gal, there’s work to be done!” She stopped and shook her head. “No, Winifred, you old duffer! That’s not right is it? Millie’s in the hospital.” She scratched the end of her nose. “Stoughton’s first! Then pay a visit on the old goose and see how she’s doing.”
‘Coleman Pickett (Lead Singer of the Greyminster Operatic Society) to Supervise Re-opening of Lavatories:
The public toilets on High Street have undergone a major facelift recently. Phrases such as “Councillor Ordenshaw shags sheep. This is true! Signed Dolly” and “Don’t think you’re safe standing up! The crabs in here can jump!” have now been whitewashed over. New, luxury oak seats have been added to the bowls for comfort, the Gents urinals have undergone extensive defoliation and the leaking cisterns have been boarded up.
“The public toilets on High Street have long been an eyesore,” commented Councillor Ordenshaw. “These new uni-sex lavatories should help to re-establish civic pride. Our hopes are that the vandals will forget their misdemeanours of the past and join with us now in celebration!”
“It was a difficult job,” said Anthony Chadwick, decorator and plumber. “We have recorded all the phone numbers and measurements that were painted over, just in case anybody needs to renew their acquaintances.” (Currently the numbers are on display in the town hall.)
Coleman Pickett who will be opening the new restrooms this morning at 10.30 added, “Now perhaps people will stop using this building as a public convenience!”’
Extract from the Morning Edition of the Greyminster Chronicle
Felix Wetherby lowered the newspaper and chipped at his boiled egg without any real passion.
Then he tugged at the loose threads on his cardigan, stared for a moment at his worn-out slippers and fumbled with the ligature round his head. There was a smudged red stain across the bandage just above his temple.
A scuffle emerged from the chimneybreast and three Achimedes screws of soot soughed into the hearth. They were followed by eight scrabbling toes with pointed nails.
The tattooed gremlin checked about itself, caught sight of Felix hunched over his Morning Chronicle and grinned.
“Haven’t you had enough?” Felix snarled. With one worm-veined hand he battered the boiled egg from its cup.
The gremlin ducked, then grinned that bit more enthusiastically.
“I refuse to let you back in!” shouted Felix defiantly.
A shriek went up. A shriek that said, “Wanna bet?”
Moments later the two of them were rolling around in a violent struggle. The gremlin shoved its foot into Felix’s ear as though it was no more encumbering than a sock.
Despite his best efforts the old gentleman was fighting a losing battle.
With a wrench and a squeeze, followed by the sort of lunge of which only poll dancers are usually capable, the creature forced itself inside his head.
One temple bulged. A tattooed finger wriggled out of his ear again as though waving goodbye, the question mark ingrained on its tip seeming to take one last look around the room.
And then it was gone.
Felix shook his head violently, but nothing was going to dislodge his squatter now.
Stoughton’s Tailors was situated about one third of the way down Greyminster High Street. Its walls were a mottled grey-green beneath the slateworks’ chimneys this morning. The expansive front window was crammed with talcum-powdered suits and had the name “Stoughtons” emblazoned across its smoky pane.
“Well, by my guess, it’s very old...” Chester Stoughton Jr turned the enigmatic label in his fingers. Then he scratched his head until the wisps of grey hair around his ears straightened with static. One couldn’t help wondering what Stoughton Sr looked like if this refugee from the Pickwick Papers was the most up-to-date model. “I’ll have to check the ledgers from the last few centuries I reckon.”
“I knew it,” muttered Miss Duvall as the shopkeeper disappeared into his outfitting room. “Thought it looked too yellow to belong on a modern suit. And part of the lettering was bleached. Only a lot of sunlight would do that.”
She spluttered proudly, the bob of her chin sailing the tempestuous ocean of her saggy neck.
“Besides which,” added Pip. “It had a mouldy smell.”
“Oh...is that what it was?” Miss Duvall appeared to puncture. “I thought it was just the general air of Millicent interfering with my nostrils. Ah ha...”
Stoughton returned, removing his horn-rimmed spectacles from his waistcoat and manoeuvering them onto his snub nose.
He placed the thick tome that he’d been carrying down on the counter and turned the pages. Every so often a moth would wake up, catch its first glimpse of daylight in decades and then
find itself covered up again.
“There we go!” Chester Stoughton Jr prodded one barely legible line with his stubby finger. “1665...Size 48 inch chest. Funeral suit purchased by...”
He readjusted his spectacles as Pip and Winifred leant closer.
“Featherby? Heatherby?”
Stoughton pursed his mouth and blew smartly across the ledger. The Cox’s Pippins of his cheeks turned red as a cloud of dead skin shrouded the two spectators.
“Forty-one Caldwell Crescent.”
Slam went the covers decisively.
The shockwave blew Pip and Winifred back up straight.
Stoughton slid his glasses off his nose again and chewed one of their tortoise-shell arms thoughtfully.
“Of course, I doubt that the original purchaser still lives there.”
“Might be worth checking out though?” suggested Pip timidly, Miss Duvall seeming to have gone into some petit-mal of personal calculation. “I mean, it’s probably got nothing to...”
“After we’ve seen Millicent!”
Miss Duvall adjusted her bosoms and refocused on the world.
“The poor old duck’ll be wondering where she is by now I suspect.”
Let’s leave them there for a moment. Come with me, if you would, out of Stoughton’s front door.
Tinkle...there goes the bell...not many authors would be so considerate as to supply their readers with sound effects now, would they?
Along the pastel colonnades of High Street we ramble. Past the impressive Victory Hotel with its ‘Smoking Room’ and ‘Public Bar’ as announced across its windows in the same fashion as Stoughton’s Tailors.
On past the Bank of Scotland with its difficult to reach hole-in-the-wall due to the thicket of variegated ivy, until at last we reach an insignificant building sandwiched between the ‘Home Made Butty Emporium’ and ‘Ardwick’s Hardware.’
Anybody stumbling across the ‘Grand Re-opening’ of the public conveniences that morning might have mistaken the occasion for one of solemn importance. The building, with its swathes of clematis and its mock Elizabethan gables, didn’t look much different than normal however.
The words, “My mother made me a homosexual,” and, “If I gave her the wool would she make me one too?” were paler now due to extensive sandblasting. But other than that it looked the same as it always had done.
Nonetheless Greyminster Brass Band had turned out in their marzipan tunics, their buttons glistening and their collection box polished. They were blasting out the largo from the New World Symphony for the sole benefit of Mrs Wainthrop who had sat down on the bench beneath the adjoining poplars to rub her bunions.
Inside the renovated building a small crowd had gathered.
Mayor Thompson was trying to explain to Rodney Mungford, the photographer from the Chronicle, how the newly installed bidets worked. In the process he’d dislodged several bluebottles from the ceiling with a jet of water.
Councillor Ordenshaw stood at the head of the Women’s Institute. They were all stocky characters in sharp skirts with vicious looking handbags.
“Ladies and Gentleman.” Coleman Pickett of the Operatic Society bowed to the gathering, cutting the mayor off in the middle of a rant about asylum seekers. “It gives me great pleasure to...”
“Get on with it Pickett!” Gordon Thomson exploded. “We ’aven’t got all day! There’s a luncheon waitin’ for us back at the town ’all!”
A luncheon that had probably cost the electorate considerably more than the lavatory-refurbishment.
Coleman coughed and continued with brevity.
“For this great occasion blah blah blah...a short excerpt from Wagner’s Ring.”
“Very fitting,” came a mutter from the mayor’s direction.
Coleman drew in a deep breath.
He was remarkably weedy for an opera singer, Councillor Ordenshaw noted. All skin and bones wrapped up in crumples. She hoisted her handbag to her bosoms and took up the sort of stance that demanded great deeds be done.
What emerged, however, could hardly be classified as inspirational.
Far from Coleman’s haunting strains showing off the acoustics of the retiled building, the room was suddenly filled with a belch. It echoed into the rafters as one of the toilets slammed shut.
“What in God’s na...” Mayor Thomson never completed his damnation. At that moment the next lavatory along sent out a shrill whine, shattering the window.
Seconds later all three of the bowls were singing. Their lids popped up and down with rhythmic precision, guttural noises flooding the chamber.
As the onlookers listened the song began to rise in volume.
The middle bowl reached a particularly difficult aria and failed to hit its mark. Appearing to breathe down a pair of nostrils that it didn’t have, it tried again.
A gurgle emerged from deep in the cistern, the shiny new ball cock trembling loudly.
Gordon Thomson recognised the symptoms. He stepped back worriedly, shielding his fat face with his even fatter arms.
“Damn and blast! Sounds like the bloody thing’s going to clear...”
With an almighty burp a torrent of steaming liquid shot up from the lavatory, drenching the whitewashed walls, the shiny new wash basins, the parquet floor and, most importantly, the crowd of suddenly very damp dignitaries.
“...its throat!” Thomson concluded as an unwholesome nugget of effluent slid down his chin.
In the cubicle, the toilet responsible appeared to hiccup apologetically.
There follows one final scene for now, which took place in Greyminster Hospital about an hour after the events just related. Let’s join the affray at the point where Miss Duvall is struggling to unleash an uppercut from Pip’s grasp. An upper cut aimed at Staff Nurse Gubbins’ chin. It’s taking all of Pip’s strength to hold Miss Duvall down, her gothic boots only just keeping in contact with the floor.
“What do you mean? Of course I have the right to know where she’s been taken!”
“Miss Duvall!” Despite all attempts at acting nonchalent an amount of pleading had entered Nurse Gubbins’ voice. “Unless you’re a family member we’re not allowed to discuss individual cases with you.”
“I demand to see the doctor in charge!”
There was a squeak as Pip’s boots gave up the ghost. She suddenly found herself hovering about an inch above the floor, the full weight of her body only just restraining Winifred’s arm.
Sergeant Partridge rounded the corner, his helmet beneath his arm and the polished nub of his nose turning purple through hurrying.
“Ah ha! Segeant! Would you mind explaining to this...this...” Miss Duvall relaxed slightly allowing Pip to reach the ground again. “This...woman...”
She sought for a more apropriate description, couldn’t find one and bulldozed on.
“That I am Millicent Broadhurst’s official next of kin and would therefore like to know exactly why her bed is empty?”
Jack Partridge pulled up short before the feud and grimmaced. His eyes flicked back and forth between the two combatants. Almost terrified he reached into his trench coat pocket and pulled out his handkerchief.
Then he launched himself into unchartered but distinctly choppy waters.
“Miss Duvall...” he muttered, battling against the lump in his throat. “I’m afraid we’ve got some bad news for y’.”
Chapter Eight: Of Arrests and Atom Bombs
Greyminster harbour had once bustled with colourful trawlers. Yellow oilskins lichened with sea spray had battled with scavenging seagulls on the bustling quayside. Rigging had clanked and purred from duelling masts. Orange nets had lounged in the baking sun over fat grey walls.
That was once. Nowadays, of course, it was different. Since the government had decided that the seas off Britain’s coast were over-fished (as evidenced by the Chancellor of the Exchequer being able to fit an entire plaice in his mouth in one go) the humble fishermen had been forced to hang up their bobble-hats and torch t
heir vessels for a handsome pay-off.
Riddled with guilt that they’d sold-out their ancestors, the trawler-men shuffled off to more exotic climes where they could ease their consciences with indoor plumbing, leaving the predators from Ireland to claim the tempestuous seas for themselves.
For months the ancient harbour had burned furiously night upon night. Great plumes of red and yellow had swollen theatrically into the dark skies of industrial treachery.
All that remained in the end were the charcoaled stump of the harbour master’s hut, the fractured shell of the chandlers and the fallen bollards on the harbour wall. Broken, brown and solitary, much like the teeth of their previous owners.
Greyminster Harbour was now an abandoned, forsaken waste ground. In other words, an ideal location for anybody wanting to remain hidden from the townsfolk.
In the empty vault of the Ice House, Ethyl the bantam rested what could only be described as her elbows on an ancient tea-chest. She examined the crowd of oddities before her with a pessimistic stare.
The white rabbit in its chequered waistcoat was having difficulty hanging Pip’s favourite bangles around its neck due to the nails through its paws.
Gingerbeard the pirate was more than pleased with their trade however, Flinders’ flexible leg having quite a few benefits over his old worm-riddled bed-stump.
The collection of blackbirds, chaffinches, ducks and other members of the ornithological establishment argued amongst themselves.
The Martian was leaning out of the window on the lookout for new birds to enlighten with its helmet.
On a mound of dried kelp sat the battered blancmange. Its head (if it could be said to have had such a thing) was dressed with grubby bandages. It was chiming tankards in a drunken manner with the severely gummed artichoke.
Reaching a decision Ethyl hammered on the upturned crate and let out a squawk that demanded attention.