by Syd Moore
‘Spirit reveal yourself,’ I commanded as grandly as possible.
There was a single ring of a bronze bell, followed by the clash of a cymbal. An unexpected cackle of laughter stopped both me and MT in our tracks.
All eyes swivelled up over the tops of the screens to the mezzanine where a ghostly white spectre appeared to be floating. Dressed in a full skirt, corset and bonnet, the apparition was strangely luminous. In one bony white hand she held a horse whip, which she held up and cracked. We heard it slice the air.
MT whimpered.
With her other bony arm the apparition stretched out. Long fingers uncurled and pointed towards MT.
‘Elizabeth Brownrigg,’ I said, voice shaking and trying to concentrate on the script, despite the fact the officer had come back to continue whingeing in my ear. ‘Murderess. Killer of Mary Clifford. Did you, spectre, did you murder Seth Johnson?’
The bonnet swivelled from side to side and she appeared to float down towards us, a melancholy embodiment of evil.
‘Who did?’ I called. ‘Tell us, if it wasn’t you – who killed the chef?’
The other bony hand reached towards Tom, who was rising up from his chair clutching Mary’s and Sam’s hands to his chest and making a weird noise that sounded like glok glok glok. He wobbled his head feverishly in response. ‘No,’ he began, his voice on the brink of a howl. ‘It’s not true. I had nothing to do with Seth, she did it on her own. She’s crazy,’ he blurted. ‘She wouldn’t stop.’
MT threw down Tim’s and Femi’s hands once more. ‘Shut up, Tom, shut up. Can’t you see what they’re doing?’
But Tom wasn’t listening. Push had come to shove. He was totally absorbed in saving his neck. ‘MT asked me to research her – Brownrigg.’ He pointed at the apparition fearfully. ‘I helped her spray the writing on the wall and tipped over the bloody water. She let the rats out. I thought it was a prank. Not serious. I didn’t kill Seth. I had no part of that. And I didn’t know that Mary would end up a suspect. I was going to come clean. I was just waiting for—’
Mary let out a whimper and pulled away from Tom.
‘I didn’t mean to,’ he said, and tried to reach for her. But she squirmed away and put her hands over her eyes.
‘Oh, he did at first,’ MT said, and all our eyes snapped to her. ‘He only went with you, Mary, because I suggested it,’ she gloated. ‘He did anything I asked. Used to follow me round like a lovesick puppy.’
‘But then it changed,’ Tom whined. All eyes flitted up the other end of the table. ‘I fell in love … with you Mary.’
MT laughed nastily, ‘He’s weak. But he’s as much a part of it as me.’
Femi stirred to my left. ‘The ghost, she has gone.’
For a moment everyone stopped and looked up to where she had been. Nothing was there.
The voice in my ear took the opportunity to amplify and curse. ‘Tell Ray sorry,’ it said.
Personally I couldn’t see how this was going to lead to a conviction so I ignored the officer.
‘Tell him,’ it said again.
‘He’s sorry,’ I said.
‘Seth,’ said the voice in my ear.
‘Seth,’ I said.
‘Well, I’m not,’ MT piped up. Her hands were on her hips but she was moving her torso as if she was gearing up for a run. ‘Seth was collateral damage.’ She said it so calmly that Tim and Femi both gasped and shrank away from her. ‘You people, though,’ she said in Ray and Mary’s direction. ‘You make me sick. I’ve worked bloody hard, gone to university, got a degree and for what? To play second, third, fourth fiddle to a common thief, a conman who thinks he can buy class and breeding, and his fat lump of a daughter. You don’t deserve this … you’re nothing but a pair of criminals—’
I was contemplating the irony of this when Ray, who had been sitting stoically, jumped to his feet. I had never seen the barrel-like body move so fast. His face was like thunder, his fists clenched.
Within seconds he had leapt at the maître d’ and wrapped his fingers round her throat.
Now this was development was strictly off-piste.
I sent a helpless look at Sam who was just standing there looking stunned.
‘Forgive me,’ said the voice in my ear with an insistence I wasn’t expecting either. Couldn’t he see what was going on?
Ray raised his fist.
MT began to hit his chest.
Tom got to his feet.
Mary burst into tears.
‘Forgive me,’ urged the voice in my ear. The words needled into my head growing louder still. I needed my ears syringed, I thought as they started echoing in my brain, accumulating volume internally. ‘Forgive me forgive me forgive me …’
It was so annoying and I was so confused that I shouted out, ‘Oh, for god’s sake, shut up. You’re forgiven.’
For a brief moment there was silence, internally and out.
My random outburst had produced an unexpected pattern breaker.
Everyone looked at me shocked.
Ray turned obviously relaxing his grip, allowing MT to push him away. She fumbled in her jacket pocket and brought out something that caught the candlelight and glinted.
A powerful burst of wind exploded into the room. It carried a roar with it. All the candles blew out plunging us into darkness.
There were sounds of scrambling on the table. Metal. Clothes brushing. People gasping. Then a brief flash of yellow. The smell of sulphur. A smatter of dust descended on us. I had seen this before, and the last time it happened I had got into a fight that wasn’t mine and come off with a few injuries and a fat lip which meant I couldn’t wear lipstick for a whole three days.
I decided to stay put and root down in the mayhem.
Something was knocked over opposite. Someone shouted, ‘Argh!’ There was the sounds of footsteps, another crash. A gurgling noise. Someone else, a woman, screamed. A shock of white flew across the space.
To my left I heard Femi’s voice. ‘The evil one,’ he screamed. ‘She walks.’
Then a familiar voice rang out, ‘No, Ray, no.’
Someone switched all the lights on.
The chandelier and recess lights flooded the space.
I blinked.
Joel was standing up beside me. ‘Shit the bed,’ he muttered.
Across the room was a tumble of limbs and groans and huffs. I made out MT’s slim legs, which had lost their shoes, and astride her the black mop of Tom’s hair, his face in profile, lips drawn back in a lupine snarl. He was bleeding somewhere on his left arm. Though he seemed not to notice, for his right hand had curled into a fist. It was raised, pulled back, ready to punch into MT’s snarling face, but was held back from release by none other than Ray. He in turn was being held back by the white-clad bony arms of the phantom Brownrigg, aka Auntie Babs.
‘You’ve done enough, love,’ she was saying to Boundersby. ‘Leave it to the fuzz now. You need to look after Mary. Can’t do that in the nick.’
And then our séance was inundated with a surge of black uniforms. Jason Edwards’ men arriving just a little late, if you asked me.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Now that Auntie Babs had removed her hat and white wig she looked a bit more like her familiar self, despite her attempt at an eighteenth-century costume: a disconcertingly well-worn Anne Summers white(ish) basque worn over a long 1950s net petticoat. She kept the glistening ivory shawl draped around her shoulders though. It was still rather bracing as no one had yet adjusted the air con.
‘Thanks,’ I said to her, as she began the long job of cleaning off her luminous make-up. ‘You did a good thing there, with Ray.’
‘Some mug had to step in, didn’t they? I tell you, my old blister wouldn’t be too happy ’bout it though, would she?’ She sent me an accusing look and shook her head vigorously. A tumble of extensions unloosed themselves and dropped down about her shoulders. She’d had them on top of her head, as was the fashion in Brownrigg’s time.
�
�Still,’ she winked a heavily extended eyelid at me. ‘A friend in need, as they say. Poor Ray’s had such a lot of trouble and strife since he lost his wife.’
Auntie Babs rolled her eyes and dabbed at her arms while I contemplated the pile up of clichés and rhyming slang and waited for her to refer to Mary as a bin lid.
‘From what you’ve told me, this ghost business ain’t helped neither. Can’t have him going down, can we? Not with his girl to sort out.’ Bin lid a stretch too far then, I thought. ‘If Mary’s seeing things like what you reckon then he’s got to get her to the quack’s pronto, ain’t he?’
I nodded. ‘Yeah. I reckon he’s going to do that now the heat’s been turned down a bit.’
‘Family matters,’ sniffed Auntie Babs and gave me a funny look. Well, at least I thought it might she might be trying to communicate meaning. It was difficult to tell as her false eyelashes on the left eye had unpeeled themselves and were dangling over her cheek.
‘Fine words, madam,’ said Femi, setting down a teapot and mugs and some brandy glasses for the remaining séance participants. Joel, Agatha, Tim, Babs and I had all come off relatively unscathed.
‘Oh lovely, Mr Femi,’ Babs purred and reached out for a mug. The eyelashes finally suicided off into the dark folds of her cleavage.
Ray and Mary were in the kitchen with DS Edwards and a female officer, who might have been Victim Support. Sam was on the mezzanine making copies of the tapes before he handed them over as evidence.
Tom, under arrest, by the great glass door, was cuffed and being seen to by a paramedic. From time to time, he looked over and called, ‘Tell her I’m sorry. I love her.’ I noted it made Joel cringe.
Over the by the bar MT was sullen. Every so often she’d answer Tom’s wail with an insult. The glamorous façade, which had been oh-so-enticing and exquisitely constructed had pretty much come apart in the fight with Ray and Tom. She looked dishevelled, thin and sharp-edged. And rather unhinged. Her hair extensions were falling out, the nice nude lipstick had come off and she was bearing her teeth like an animal. The dazzling blue eyes that had once seemed so bright and full of intelligence now had taken on a crazed demonic aspect, which put me in mind of Jackson next door. Those eyes now flicked about the room as if tracking an invisible fly. A man in a green jumpsuit was binding her hand in a bandage while a nearby officer kept a steady watch.
‘Let me, Mrs Boundersby,’ said Joel, who took Babs’s mug and, having appointed himself ‘mother’, poured what he remarked was a proper cup of tea.
‘Oh, I’m not Ray’s missus,’ Auntie Babs simpered, yet the thought clearly warmed her cockles.
‘She’s my aunt,’ I told him. ‘Drafted in at the last minute to flush out the evidence.’
‘Oh yeah, I can see the resemblance,’ he grinned. ‘The nose, complexion and general luminous beau-tay.’
I regarded my aunt’s nut-brown wrinkly skin and extensions. She was much thinner than me, and privately, though she strongly resembled my mum, I could never spot any shared features. Bit sad really, as she wasn’t a terrible looker for an old girl.
Auntie Babs patted the back of her hair and giggled. ‘Thank you,’ she said, and sent Joel a wide toothy smile. Her two fleshy boobs, hoisted up inside the basque, quivered with delight.
Joel averted his eyes and tried to look unperturbed. ‘So, Rosie, do you think that you’ve got enough to send down MT?’ he said.
‘That’s not up to us,’ I said. ‘We were filming it all. She more or less admitted to everything. So I reckon it will hang together okay. The police have got enough to go on, surely, and anyway DS Edwards says he might have picked her up on the CCTV on Holborn after Seth’s murder. Or an accomplice that looks just like her with very dusty clothes.’
From the doorway Tom yelled something incomprehensible before he was finally evicted from the building and thrown into a waiting panda car.
By the bar MT let rip with a suitably maniacal cackle.
Agatha crossed herself. Tim turned his chair towards us so that he had his back to the bar. I handed him a brandy, which he necked.
‘Still can’t believe Tom dun all of that behind Mary’s back,’ Joel said sadly. ‘And MT – well, you just never know people, do you?’
‘True thing said there, young man,’ Babs piped up. ‘You’re very wise for your years.’
‘Thank you, Rosie’s auntie.’
‘Babs,’ said Babs and uncurled her taloned hand and held it out.
Joel shook it hastily, then backed away and changed the subject. ‘What was with that whole flour thing anyway?’
‘I think it was spur of the moment,’ I said. I’d thought this one through. ‘In fact, the whole murder was. I don’t reckon MT was expecting to kill Seth, but when she did, she thought if she hoisted him up and made it look like Mary Clifford, Brownrigg’s victim, then there was a chance the haunting spirit might be blamed. She’d read everything that Tom had dug up for her about the way Brownrigg murdered her charges. They were kids,’ I told them. ‘Mary Clifford was only fourteen.’ Joel, Auntie Babs and Tim flinched collectively. ‘This was the Brownrigg’s home. La Fleur.’
Tim shuddered and began looking around. Joel regained his composure, but Babs said, ‘Disgusting,’ and crossed her arms.
‘Of course,’ I went on, ‘MT knew the police wouldn’t buy the ghost theory. But then something fortuitous happened – she realised it was Mary who was upstairs. She knew Mary thought she was seeing ghosts. I’m guessing that MT might have googled conditions or just conjectured correctly that something was going on with her eyesight. So she took her chance to escape and burst the sack of flour either accidentally or to spread it all over the crime scene to clog up evidence or simply for the sack, because it was this that she twisted over her head to resemble a bonnet. It wouldn’t have looked convincing to anyone else, but to Mary who was having problems with her visual processing, it did the trick. Whatever her brain interpreted that night, in the dark, it processed it imperfectly, filling in details that weren’t there. Mary “saw” the ghost she suspected was already haunting the premises, complete with her trademark bonnet.’
‘How did she get Seth up there? On the hook?’ Agatha tutted. ‘She’s so scrawny.’
‘Joel told me that her dad was an engineer on Tower 42. Pulley mechanics are very simple. They enable someone to hoist something much heavier than themselves. There’s a pulley in the basement. Wouldn’t have taken much time or effort. Thing is, Seth wasn’t quite dead. His moans alerted Mary, who was upstairs.’
Joel took a moment to process this. I noticed that everybody else had stopped talking so they could listen in.
Tim stroked his beard. ‘But what I don’t understand is why she decided to do it in the first place?’
‘Well, it was the police officer whispering in my ear who suggested there had been some kind of set-up with Seth, some agreement to run down the restaurant, maybe so that MT could come in with her “investor”.’
I nodded at Sam who had come over with his suitcase full of tricks and put two tapes on the table.
‘That might be Henry Warren,’ I said to him as he slid the case along the table. Then explained to Tim, ‘She’s been dating him.’
‘Do you think Henry Warren knew what she was up to?’ Sam asked.
I shook my head. ‘Doubt it. He’s a bit of a hooray, but he’s also a legal eagle. Doubt he’d get his hands dirty. Too much to lose. He’s got a nice situation over in Lincoln’s Inn. I wouldn’t be surprised if MT was still working on him. Or if it was all in her head. She’s obviously a bit deranged.’
We all paused and glanced over to the bar, where the now fully bandaged maître d’ was being read her rights. And cuffed too by the looks of it.
Femi shook his head. ‘Get thee behind me, Satan, for it is written.’ Agatha crossed herself yet again. Auntie Babs and Joel simultaneously sucked their teeth then smiled at each other.
‘Such a waste,’ Joel muttered sadly, looking back at
MT. ‘Did she really see a ghost too?’
‘I doubt it,’ I said. ‘I think she realised she could make something of Mary’s sightings. I mean, everyone trusted what the boss’s daughter had seen. Why wouldn’t they? Certainly no one suspected Miss Boundersby to have a malicious agenda. And so if MT said she’d seen a similar sight, it was sure to be accepted too. Especially as it would reinforce Mary’s evidence.’
Tim shook his head. ‘However mankind changes outwardly, we still cling tenaciously to the old beliefs.’
I smiled, more than a little impressed.
‘Sounds like a lot of effort,’ said Joel and yawned.
The kitchen doors swung open and in came DS Edwards with Ray and Mary.
Ray looked across the room and saw MT being forced up. He stopped stock-still. Mary put her hand out protectively to restrain her dad if necessary. DS Edwards slipped in front of him, blocking his path to his former employee.
The officer bundling the hostess forwards began to forcibly navigate her through the tables towards the door.
As she passed us by, Femi shouted out, ‘You will atone for your sins. May God forgive you.’
Agatha mouthed, ‘Amen.’
For a moment MT managed to wriggle out of the policeman’s grasp. ‘Oh, shut your mouths. Bunch of low-rent losers. You can’t blame me for trying. I have ambitions.’ Her lips were pulled back, showing those artificially white teeth. The canines looked very sharp indeed. ‘And I was getting there too. Handling the outcome perfectly well, perfectly.’ She drew out the last word, drawing everyone’s attention. ‘Till When Harry Met Sally here showed up.’ She nodded her head towards me and Sam.
As final lines went it was a slight improvement on pesky kids.
‘I don’t think that’s true,’ said Jason Edwards, who had come up to needle her on. I wasn’t sure which of MT’s statements he disagreed with.
He set his face into a standard-issue expression of Metropolitan Police determination; then with a squeal, a clatter of heels and some localised restraining procedures executed by several more long arms of the law, Marta Thompson, chefkiller, femme fatale and scheming psychopath, was whisked right out of there.