The Indecent Death of a Madam

by Simon Parke

  ‘Men like that are beyond shame, believe me.’

  ‘I don’t believe you. Men like that are consumed by it. Enter his mind if you can.’

  ‘I’d prefer not to.’

  ‘There’s a theme of self-punishment here, the need to be punished. Here’s someone who can’t forgive himself for being deficient. There’s a deep sense of deficiency there, from a long time ago.’

  ‘We used to call them perverts.’

  ‘And he wants it covered up, of course. It’s a difficult feeling to look at. Yet now his worst nightmare beckons: he’s facing the prospect of his deficiency being exposed.’

  ‘I think he’s the one who’s been doing the exposing.’

  ‘He’s a proud man, Terence, a very proud man. Don’t let the relentless self-deprecation fool you. He would not want this intrusion.’

  ‘Then he should have killed Cherise, not Rosemary. Well, shouldn’t he? It’s Cherise who holds his guilty secret.’

  The abbot didn’t respond so they sat in silence. Why would Terence kill Rosemary? There was no apparent reason. But he’d certainly be uncomfortable right now.

  ‘So how did you know he chose Cherise?’ asked Tamsin. It had been niggling at her.

  ‘Oh, just something she said. It wasn’t rocket science. She told me of a man who was keen not to meet Rosemary, and who sent her out on a “recce” to make sure she wasn’t around. That was the word she used and it struck me as odd; it wasn’t her vocabulary. Who in Romford takes a recce? It’s too military.’ He took a sip of Tamsin’s coffee. ‘It’s very good.’

  ‘Your schoolboy detective work?’

  ‘No, the coffee; it’s very good.’

  And Peter found himself wondering if coffee was, after all, something you shouldn’t cut corners on. The Christian tradition had struggled with coffee ever since the advisers of Pope Clement VIII had pressed him to denounce the drink. They believed that coffee was the ‘bitter invention of Satan’ because of its popularity among Muslims. But experience trumped prejudice, when on tasting the brew the pope had declared that ‘this Satan’s drink is so delicious it would be a pity to let the infidels have exclusive use of it’. And now Peter, in a hot beverage epiphany, could see what Pope Clement had meant.

  ‘And what did Blessings want with you last night?’ asked Tamsin, glad that she’d led her uncle into a higher truth.

  ‘Blessings? Well, an unexpected conversation,’ said Peter. ‘Unexpected, yes.’ He relayed its content, about Blessings’ wish for a child . . . though without mention of the role she wished him to play. He didn’t wish for more sideways glances from Tamsin.

  ‘So Blessings opened her heart to you?’

  ‘In a manner.’

  ‘And told you how desperate she is for a child?’

  ‘A boy child.’

  ‘She doesn’t want a girl?’

  ‘This is about bringing a decent man into the world.’

  ‘Oh, and there goes a flying pig!’

  ‘There’s something here about her father, though I don’t know what. Martin alluded to it . . . some shame.’

  ‘But father-shame does not a murderer make. I’m not so impressed by mine, but I’d need a better reason for murder than that. Whereas a former arsonist who likes eavesdropping on private meetings sounds a great deal more suspicious. What’s young Francisco really doing in Stormhaven?’

  ‘Perhaps he’s short of alternatives. Offenders usually are.’

  ‘My heart bleeds . . . almost. Though I hope it’s Geoff.’

  ‘You what?’

  ‘I hope it’s Geoff. I hope Geoff is our murderer.’

  Peter sat with the comment for a moment. ‘Is that allowed?’

  ‘Police do it all the time.’

  ‘Why do you imagine that commends it to me?’

  ‘I’m just saying. It’s not a moral crusade or anything! You have a suspect you don’t like, and simply hope it’s them. It’s quite natural. I’m sure you do it.’

  ‘I don’t do it.’

  ‘It’s just a game, in its own little way, and it doesn’t mean it is them, obviously. Tara’s the much likelier candidate and I wouldn’t mind if it was her. She has murder in her, that woman, in a way that Geoff doesn’t, and she’s the main beneficiary. Who knows what went on between her and Rosemary? We have no one’s word but Tara’s. I mean, I don’t wish to be mean about your present love interest . . .’

  ‘And Martin?’ said the abbot, quickly. ‘His fingerprints are all over this case.’

  ‘Except where they matter.’

  ‘But could anyone but Martin have gathered that group of people together? And if so, why?’

  ‘He’s not a murderer, though, Peter. Do you think he’s a murderer?’

  The abbot submitted. ‘No, I don’t think he is, really.’

  ‘No, I don’t think so either. So we’re back with Tara.’

  ‘And with Terence, with whom we started. He’s a very good murderer, qualified at least.’

  ‘But does he care enough about anything? I’m not sure he cares enough to kill. So who would you like it to be?’

  ‘I can’t play that game, Tamsin.’

  ‘You can.’

  ‘No, really, it’s not in my nature.’

  ‘I’m waiting.’

  ‘Well, Geoff, probably – if I did have to play the game.’

  Tamsin laughed. ‘I knew you would.’

  ‘I mean, I’m not going to play it, but if I did . . . yes, definitely Geoff. He poses the greatest test for my compassion muscles.’

  ‘It’s hurting,’

  said the abbot. He was wearing only his underpants.

  ‘Just strip down to your undies,’ she’d said calmly when he walked in, and Peter had obliged, as if this was entirely normal in his life; something he’d been doing for years with women he hardly knew. And now he was lying on his front with Tara’s finger pressed firmly into his left buttock . . . and it was hurting terribly.

  ‘It’s meant to hurt, you baby. Not that hurt is the purpose, of course. Healing is the purpose – but sometimes there’s only healing in hurt.’

  ‘How very profound, you should be a vicar – aargh!’

  ‘As long as you’re within your pain threshold, that’s the main thing. Are you within your pain threshold?’

  ‘How would I know?’

  ‘You’ll know.’

  ‘Is there a red button I can press?’

  ‘It’s the rotation muscles around your hips,’ she explained. ‘They’re a little tight.’

  ‘They were fine when I came in.’ Tara laughed, ignoring him.

  ‘You may need to put a little ice on them when you get home. You probably know that already – or peas.’

  ‘Peas? What, fresh peas?’

  ‘Frozen peas.’ This man had been too long in the desert. ‘But not on the bare skin.’

  ‘Not on the bare skin – oooh!’ More pain.

  ‘And only for ten minutes, otherwise the muscles will react and start warming themselves again and we don’t want that.’

  But Peter’s muscles were reacting now and so he tried to think beyond it, mind over matter, to reach a place beyond the pain.

  ‘So you’d never been to Bybuckle Asylum before yesterday?’ he asked.

  ‘Why do you ask?’

  ‘Aargh!’ Her fingers were again tormenting his buttock, harassing the secret, hidden-away muscles. ‘I’m interested in the place,’ he said, recovering.

  ‘Well, you and Rosemary alike, then.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘It’s why she wanted the sheltered housing built there. Do you want me to stop?’

  ‘No,’ he said, truthfully. ‘As you say, sometimes the truth must disturb before it heals. But what was that about sheltered housing?’

  ‘Obviously Rosemary felt a duty to the space,’ she said, now working the base of his spine.

  ‘Obviously?’

  ‘But then that estate agent – the gross one – pul
led the rug from beneath her plan and changed the proposal.’

  ‘What proposal?’

  ‘All very last minute, Rosemary said – and she was angry about that. I knew when Rosemary was angry.’ Peter had now forgotten the pain.

  ‘What proposal?’

  ‘She felt they’d used her to get planning permission, that’s what she said, and then suddenly the plans changed, and her ideas were jettisoned from a great height.’

  ‘I see.’

  He didn’t see . . . but he wanted to.

  ‘All right, let’s have you on your back now, so I can do the front of your legs.’

  Peter sat up and turned himself over. Tara covered his upper body and right leg with towelling and then started to work on his left. ‘Can’t have enough towels,’ as she’d said to him yesterday. She put a little more oil on her hands.

  ‘So who’s the “they” in all this?’ he asked, trying to sound conversational.

  ‘The estate agent fellow.’

  ‘The gross one.’

  ‘The gross one, yes. I don’t know the others in the syndicate. There was someone else.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Rosemary was particularly angry with him.’

  ‘It was a “him” then?’

  ‘I think so, I’m not sure. Is that hurting?’

  ‘Not really, no. A little perhaps . . . actually, it’s hurting a great deal.’

  ‘She used to call him “the snake”, so I’d imagine it was a man.’

  ‘Can’t a woman be a snake?’

  ‘Possibly.’

  She now covered his left leg with the towel, and started work on his right, but whether it was painful, the abbot wasn’t sure now. His mind was too busy with connections – and questions.

  ‘So the estate agent wasn’t the snake?’

  ‘No, the estate agent was Geoff Berry, the one who likes dressing up – well, you know, acting. No different from us, really. Most people like us to dress up.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And some like dressing up themselves.’

  ‘Model Service is the local theatre, really,’ he said.

  But with that revelation – the link between Berry and the asylum – the abbot lost track of his prior question, still hanging in the air. He lay still for a moment and felt the pressuring hands on his flesh, so intimate, so satisfying . . . and he was suddenly back at the monastery.

  The nearest he’d got to such intimacy in the desert was when the barber Moussa came from Cairo once every two months to cut the monastery hair. He was not a gentle barber; no one would call Moussa gentle. He would grip the head in his strong hands and drive the razor over the skull with the roughness of a man who had many heads to shave before he could go home. Yet the abbot had enjoyed the pain, the fierce touch. It was the only touch to be had in the big sand; the only connection.

  And then he remembered his question. ‘Why did Rosemary feel a duty of care to the site of the Bybuckle Asylum?’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘You said she felt some duty towards it. “Obviously”, you said. I was just wondering what you meant and why it was obvious?’

  ‘Well, of course, she felt a duty towards it! I mean, don’t you know?’

  ‘Know what?’

  ‘She felt guilty in a way, given some of the consequences.’ Peter lay still, alert. ‘Very guilty . . . there was a lot of distress, you see, and some people never forgave her.’

  ‘Never forgave her for what?’

  ‘Your muscles are tensing. You’ll have to relax.’

  It was like an anxiety dream. ‘Just tell me what she did, Tara.’

  ‘I can’t believe you don’t know. I just assumed you knew. Do you really not know?’

  ‘Tell me,’ he said quietly.

  ‘It was Rosemary’s report that closed down Bybuckle Asylum.’

  Silence.

  ‘Rosemary’s report closed the place?’

  ‘She was commissioned to write a report on the asylum, which she did, quite objectively according to . . . well, people I’ve spoken to. I mean, she blamed herself on some level, but it was never her fault.’

  ‘You mean the closure?’

  ‘The place was dead in the water, everyone knew that. There used to be terrible stories about it. There was a room called “The End Room”.’

  ‘Yes, I know about “The End Room”.’

  ‘And she tried to brush it all aside, all the vindictiveness that came her way, and believe me, there was a lot of that. But I could tell, when I got to know her.’

  ‘What could you tell?’

  ‘I mean, years had passed, but she always felt responsible for closing it down and what happened next. I always said to her, “You’ve never really escaped from the Bybuckle Asylum, have you, Rosemary?” And let’s be honest, she didn’t, did she?’

  ‘Do you remember

  the report you wrote?’ asked her interrogator, who sadly had returned.

  ‘What report?’ said Rosemary.

  What was this? And what were they doing?

  ‘Your current predicament might give a clue,’ they said, indicating their lonely setting.

  ‘My report on the Bybuckle Asylum?’

  ‘Very good. You were quite feted after that, I believe.’

  ‘It was not a job I asked for; but one I did to the best of my abilities . . . and one with a correct outcome.’

  ‘Would have been better if you’d turned it down, Rosemary; a great deal better. Better for everyone . . . better for you.’

  She’d interviewed many people here in Gladstone Ward, staff and patients. And those in Victoria Ward – or ‘The End Room’ as they all seemed to call it. It was probably a better name. It was assuredly the end if you got dumped there. And the staff had been surprisingly open about that; there comes a time when speaking the truth is a relief, however much it condemns you. They’d spoken very freely, most of them.

  And now here she was again, back in Gladstone Ward. Only this time she was the one tied to the place, strapped to one of the few remaining beds.

  ‘You closed it down,’ said her interrogator.

  ‘The health authority closed it down.’

  ‘No, your report closed it down; everyone knows that.’

  ‘And why does this matter?’ asked Rosemary. ‘It was a blessing, believe me.’

  ‘A blessing? A blessing for who exactly?’ This line was almost snarled.

  ‘Bybuckle wasn’t fit for purpose. It was run by the staff for the staff. Not for the patients. No one should have to live like that. And some didn’t. There were at least four deaths in the bath over the last three years before it was closed. People shouldn’t die in the bath. Did you know about “The End Room”?’

  No response.

  ‘It was where the elderly were put, those with dementia and others reckoned beyond help.’ She could still smell the place after all these years. ‘It was where people were left to rot. Some hadn’t had a conversation in twenty years . . . or a smile. No one mourned the death of Bybuckle – apart from the small group of sadists, inadequates and time-servers who ran the place.’

  ‘And the residents, of course.’

  ‘They were all found alternative—’

  ‘Do you remember the day the cameras came in, Rosemary? Do you remember that day?’

  It was like a cross-examination, leading her blind through the evidence, when she didn’t know the charge. Though Rosemary did remember the cameras, and she now believed it had been a mistake, allowing them to film her conversations with the patients.

  ‘Yes,’ she said wearily. The ties around her wrists were hurting.

  ‘Remember the one who spat in your face?’

  ‘Yes.’ She remembered very well.

  ‘What did you reckon about her?’

  ‘What did I reckon? I remember that even the staff were cowed by her. She was a bitter, spiteful woman – and I don’t think she was mad at all. Malice and madness are not the same. One of the ther
apists said that her only pleasure in life was tormenting the other residents. She’d found a new form of power in her old age and didn’t want to let it go. Her name was Myra – Myra someone.’

  ‘Myra someone, yes. That sums up your attitude rather well. Myra someone. Also known as my mother.’

  ‘Your mother?’

  ‘We need to talk,’

  had been the gist of Peter’s phone call to Tamsin. And now they sat together in the interview room at Stormhaven’s quiet police station (and Tourist Centre). When open, it mainly handled missing dogs, aggressive dogs, lost property, found dogs, anti-social behaviour in Vale Road and incidents outside the school, where sharp-elbowed parents in large cars were becoming ever more dangerous at drop-off time. The police said the parents were the school’s responsibility while the school said it was down to the police. A community police officer from Newhaven had been told to ‘keep an eye’.

  So the recent murder of Rosemary Weller was a change of gear for the Stormhaven constabulary, and while the Lewes mob were handling the case, the Stormhaven nick enjoyed the reflected glory . . . and from time to time, some scraps of excitement. Like DI Shah’s occasional use of their interview room.

  ‘Geoff Berry is part of a syndicate trying to buy the land,’ said Peter, who always felt trapped behind a table.

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Tara told me.’

  ‘And she wouldn’t lie, of course.’

  ‘I don’t think she’s lying. Why would she lie?’

  ‘And remember this?’ Tamsin put a clear bag on the table. It contained the sticker left in Model Service.

  ‘Yes, Tara gave it to me.’

  ‘She did, yes. But now we know who put it there. Fingerprints all over the place. Like to take a guess whose wonderful fingers they belong to?’

  ‘Francisco?’

  Tamsin tried to hide her irritation. ‘Well, it was fairly obvious, I suppose.’

  It hadn’t been obvious, so how had the abbot known? A lucky guess, probably . . . just a lucky guess.

  ‘He wanted Cherise to stop working there,’ said Peter by way of explanation. ‘He told me in the kitchen at Black Cap.’

  ‘Right,’ said Tamsin.

  ‘He was obviously trying everything to make things difficult for the business.’