The Games People Play Box Set

by Barbara Gaskell Denvil

  Only two weeks ago, Pam had proved to him what could be done. Usually he was content to wait longer than two weeks between jobs. But the temptation was growing stronger, as it had in the past. With the barn still in his possession, he could be sure of time, and sure of safe passage. If he could get hold of a female within the area, he would be free to do what he wanted. In another two weeks he had a week’s holiday due. He intended to make the most of it. It would get harder, naturally, since the silly bitches would get more wary. Warnings of a sadistic murderer around would have them shivering in their fragile little skins and pissing their pretty knickers. But there was usually someone who had to go hitchhiking, or go hunting for her lost puppy. And if the worst came to the worst, he could always hire a whore for a day.

  Just another two weeks, and joy would be his again.

  Harry kept his word and came over early. Sylvia was waiting for him, and they sat together in the small dining room and had scrambled eggs for breakfast. Toast, steaming hot tea, soft stirred eggs, plenty of butter, and good conversation.

  It was all interrupted half way through.

  Lavender brought Fletcher to the table, smiling brightly. “My dear Sylvia, your young brother is here. What a loving family. Sit down, young man, and have breakfast. I’ve a mind to join you all.” She was navy from neck to toes with a semblance of uniform. Fletcher, on the other hand, wore a brightly patterned shirt of palm trees and coconut-snatching monkeys beneath a red woolly cardigan, over jeans and a pair of red socks and brown shoes.

  “Ah,” said Harry with a false and exaggerated welcome. “Fletcher. My friend told me you’d be coming, though I wouldn’t have expected quite so early. But join us by all means. And Lavender, of course, you’re always our guest of choice.”

  He’d practised that, and grinned. Sylvia found her napkin and buried her face, turning giggle to sniff. She managed to say, “Fletcher. And how long do you intend staying? Only enough time to collect the money, or long enough to ask for something else?” The cheque was ready, sitting beneath her plate and collecting drips of butter from the toast. She whipped it out and presented it to her step-brother.

  Having clutched the cheque fast and tight and thrust it in his pocket, Fletcher sat at the table and helped himself to toast.

  Lavender sat next to him. Fletcher seemed impressed. “No, I’ve booked into the pub for three nights. I like the countryside, you know, and a short break from my father’s woes is always attractive. I wonder,” he smiled at Lavender, who was pouring the tea, “if you’d care to join me for dinner tonight?”

  Harry and Sylvia stopped eating and Lavender held the teapot poised in mid-air. “I’d love to, but I’m afraid I can’t.,” she said. “I run this place, you know, and won’t take any evenings off during the week. Nor can I mix business with pleasure. A relative of one of our esteemed residents cannot become a personal friend of my own.”

  First eating everything possible, Fletcher eventually stood, nodded to Sylvia with mumbled thanks, and then said, “I shall get back to the pub. The roads are still rather swampy out that way, you know. But I shall drop in tomorrow for a chat.”

  “I shall be out,” said Sylvia.

  “Oh, I’ll make it early,” Fletcher said. “Join you for another breakfast, perhaps. The pub only serves croissants. I don’t like flaky French stuff.”

  Lavender waved goodbye. “What a pleasure.” Then turned back to Sylvia. “I could have said yes,” she pointed out, “but I wasn’t sure whether you’d like that, my dear.”

  “I wouldn’t have liked it,” Sylvia said, “but not for the reasons you might think. I dislike that boy excessively and he’s really not a relative. He’s my step-father’s son by a previous marriage, and he’s on my list of suspects as the Welsh Ripper.”

  Lavender blanched. “You can’t be serious, Sylvia?”

  “Well, actually I’m not that serious,” she said. “It’s highly unlikely. But he lives in Wales, and he’s a revolting little swine. He loved arson as a child and did everything he could to set fires, especially if he could trap small animals in the middle of them. And he only came to borrow money. That’s the only time I see him.”

  “Then don’t keep giving him cheques, and he’ll give up asking,’ Harry interjected.

  “I make the cheques out to my step-father. I know he’s always broke, because he pays off Fletcher’s debts, but he’s sweet and he once tried to be nice to me. He loved my mother. I don’t want to see him starve. And I can afford it.”

  “And what if he’s the ripper?”

  The Crooked Wager was a four story pub in the heart of the village, near the main road and backing onto a narrow river of trout and the occasional pike. It had once been called The Jolly Wager but after many years of patrons cheerfully asking to bet on who the owner had slept with last night, or who would win the next game of dominoes, the landlord’s wife insisted on changing the name, and it had shut everyone up. If anyone asked what the name signified, the landlord said sadly, “Ah, it’s a long and depressing story stretching back to Regency times,” and told them it was bad luck to repeat such a cursed tale.

  Fletcher parked his car around the back and pushed into the over-crowded public bar. Having never met Arthur or David Sims he had no idea he was standing next to them. Arthur was sitting on one of the high bar stools, silently contemplating the head of his lunchtime beer. David, perched on the next stool along, was drinking lemonade and looking sullen. The only empty stool was next to Arthur, and Fletcher sat there and ordered light ale.

  An elderly woman seated at one of the low tables, squeaked, “I know that boy. He’s only fifteen. He shouldn’t be in here.”

  Arthur looked around. “He’s drinking lemonade.”

  “He still shouldn’t be here. It’s not proper at his age.”

  The girl serving behind the counter attempted a smile at the elderly woman. “Tis alright, Mrs. Wentworth, honest it is, long as he don’t drink alcohol.”

  “How do we know if that’s lemonade or Vodka and lemonade?”

  “’Cos I says so, Mr. Wentworth. I served it meself. ‘Tis Schweppes.”

  Arthur turned with a snarl. “You leave my boy alone. He ain’t done nothing wrong.”

  “No, but you have, you old fraud,” said a far younger man who had been standing at the far end of the bar. “I heard that lad speakin’ afore. He says as how you beat him and hurt him. So wot’s this? A bribe o’ Vodka to keep the poor lad from telling?”

  “Bloody ridiculous,” roared Arthur and stood, glaring around, his back to David. David burst into tears. Two men in their twenties, glaring at Arthur, stood close. One picked up his pint of beer and tossed it in Arthur’s face. It splashed back over David.

  “We knows you be an abusive dad,” squeaked the elderly woman again. “I heard that young lad in tears afore. Now you wants him drunk to shut him up.”

  “If I wanted that,” Arthur growled, “I’d do it in private, you silly old cow.” He turned to his son. “Come on lad. We’re going home.” He grabbed David’s arm, and the boy spilled his lemonade.

  “Look. See! He won’t let me drink nothing. Starves me, he does. Beats me. I don’t wanna go home wiv him. He’ll kill me like he did my Mum.” David threw up both arms, his glass shattering to the ground as Arthur hung on.

  “Get the police,” squealed Mrs. Wentworth.

  “He’s the killer. Arrest him,” yelled Mr. Wentworth.”

  The two young men who had thrown beer in Arthur’s face now stepped close. They wrenched David from his clutch, tripped him, and smashed another glass over Arthur’s head. “You the killer? You like raping girls, eh?”

  Arthur squirmed, unable to climb up from the soaking wet floor boards as the same two men kicked him in stomach, chest and head. David rushed in, screaming, “Someone help my poor Dad. They’ll kill him. Call the coppers. Help my poor Dad.”

  “I thought your Dad beat you and killed your mother?”

  “No,” David yelped. “She
killed him. Reckon she beat me too.”

  “She couldn’t have killed him. This is him here.”

  “No,” David, purple in the face, was rushing in helpless and confused circles. “No. That be the fellow what kidnapped me, he did. My poor Dad’s dead. So’s my Mum. And I wanna go home,” and burst into tears.

  Fletcher, sitting carefully separate, was amused. Knowing none of these people, he saw simply an opportunity for an afternoon of entertainment. He stood and kicked Arthur hard between the legs. Arthur howled. Fletcher said, “Where’s the landlord? Call the police. We have the Welsh Ripper here.”

  The barmaid scowled. “This is bloody silly. I’ve knowed Arthur for years. And the lad isn’t right in the head. Leave them alone.”

  “I demand,” demanded Fletcher, “you call the police.”

  She did. The situation had turned into a brawl, and the two young men and Arthur were now scrabbling and punching. Arthur was bleeding from one ear and the nose, and one of the men was spewing beer. Three others joined in. David picked up a sliver of broken glass and thrust it into someone’s cheek, crying, “You leave me poor Dad alone.”

  Fletcher carefully stepped backwards, helped himself to someone’s beer sitting unattended on the bar, and avoided the scramble. Within minutes it was a fight involving ten or twelve customers, and the general swinging of arms, legs, fists and feet had overflowed outside onto the very wet pavement.

  Sudden Police sirens interrupted nothing. But Fletcher heard them, and promptly went upstairs to his rented room, to watch the developments from his window while remaining unwatched himself.

  Detective Inspector Morrison was doing his homework.

  Relieved to be no longer in the midst of a storm, he sat alone in the smaller tent and sorted patiently through the pile of papers. There were newspaper cuttings, official documents, handwritten notes, and two birth certificates.

  Interested and diligent, he now knew that Sylvia Greene had been born seventy seven years ago in early December, to her father Inspector Howard Greene of Scotland Yard in London, a highly respected officer who was awarded medals both during life and after death. Sylvia was the only child, and appeared to have passed a normal childhood, whatever normal implied, until she was nine years of age. For what reason was unclear, soon Sylvia’s mother Francis chose to divorce her homicide detective husband, and shortly afterwards remarried one Walter Rankling, an aspiring but never paid inventor of odd devices designed to do housework and gardening as ordered. Robots. Few worked. One did. It should have made him a fortune but behind his back his existing son Fletcher sold the rights for two hundred thousand pounds, which he then gambled away.

  Sylvia’s mother Francis managed to survive this life for several years but then committed suicide, throwing herself bodily in front of the express train from Canterbury. The train driver, devastated, almost committed suicide as a result. Walter Rankling survived, but Sylvia went to live with her father until her own marriage when she was aged twenty eight.

  She married a multi-millionaire named Mario Blashabic, of Croatian descent, and gave up her own thriving career as a radio announcer. Some years later, she began legal procedures to divorce him, citing physical and mental abuse. However, some months before the hearing was set, he died of a heart attack, and without leaving a new will and testament, the only surviving document had been made out soon after the marriage, and apart from various charities and business arrangements, he had left everything to Sylvia. They were still legally married on his death, and she therefore inherited without argument. He had no other close family to squabble over the case. She did, however, choose to revert to her father’s surname.

  Morrison leaned back, tented his fingers beneath his chin, and pondered. How convenient, he decided, that a multi-millionaire might die before the divorce became finalised.

  He quickly decided that Sylvia was an interesting character, and wondered what she might say if he called her Mrs. Blashabic.

  He also decided that he’d leave his investigation into Harry Joyce until the following day. He needed time to think.

  It was gone midnight when he decided to give up and trundle off to bed. But he did not sleep well. It was the interesting Sylvia Greene who was keeping him awake. He did not suspect her of murder. She was neither a likely suspect, nor was there any evidence, even circumstantial, that she might have committed any criminal act, let alone the tortuous slaughter of the so-called Welsh Ripper.

  But Morrison had other suspects, and Tony Allen, if he was the guilty one, could easily have involved, for whatever reason, his two associates Harry Joyce and Sylvia Greene.

  Mr. Allen had been on the coach and so had both opportunity and motive, presumably already knowing of his wife’s infidelity. On returning to England, he said he was taking his wife to the coast, yet did not do so and no one knew where he had gone. He might easily have travelled alone to Wales for the second two murders. Wales bordered Gloucestershire and the man owned a car. The final killing of Pamela Barnstable was as clearly traced to Tony Allen. He would have met the Rochester Manor maid on his visits there, and she would have recognised him and trusted him to give her a lift. Temporarily separated from his wife, he had no alibi. And rumour had it that his wife Isabel had moved in with Harry. A circle of intrigue and deception, jealousy and opportunity. Only that one man, perfectly fitting the figure of a nondescript but unhappy soul of secret hatreds, could complete the circle of Harry Joyce, Sylvia Greene, and the killer.

  On the following morning, Morrison spoke quickly and quietly with Detective Ralph Tammy. Red haired and stocky, Detective Tammy was one of Morrison’s favourites. “You’ve done it before,” Morrison said. “And to the best of my knowledge, no one at the Rochester Manor has met you yet. Right?”

  “I’ve been working in the office, or with the forensic boys. I’ve met no one else.”

  “You like cooking. So that’s what I want you to do. Get a job in the kitchens at the manor. The cook isn’t a suspect, but others are. I’ll fill you in once you get the job. With their general help and maid gone, and their handyman carted off to be charged for causing an affray and possibly abusing his son, they’re short staffed. They’ve advertised for a general help who can cook. That’s you.”

  Detective Tammy grinned cheerfully and nodded. “Good. More fun than paperwork and forensics.”

  “Washing dishes and stirring the custard?”

  “They’re bound to have a dishwasher, and I’m very fond of custard.”

  “I’m not sure how you’ll do it, but knowing you, you’ll find a way. I want all the information you can get on our three suspicious friends.”

  The younger detective had done undercover work before, but never before in a grand palace of old dears, half of them no doubt senile. “I’ll see what I can get until I run out of recipes,” he said.

  He got the job. No one else had applied. Pamela’s fate was too well known.

  13

  “Isabel’s gone. But I’ve an idea she’ll be back.”

  Sylvia sighed, “Lock up the house and move in here.”

  The storm two days earlier had apologised for its destruction with a rainbow of startling colours, but a new front with hail and wind had blown the rainbow arc away. Now there was sunshine on autumn leaf and a blaze of copper, rich crimson, mustard and turmeric golds, with touches of bright scarlet. Some trees already stood stark and bare, but leaf clung on where it could, sparkling with raindrops, dew studded spider webs, and a proud display of sun tinged shadow. Harry and Sylvia, wrapped in wool, sat in the garden. There was more privacy outside than in, unless they used Sylvia’s bedroom.

  Harry pulled the collar of his jacket up around his chin. The sunshine was bright but not warm, and the low gusts of wind were icy. He said, “I thought you had no spare rooms. Besides, I can’t afford it. Unless I apply for the cleaner’s job.”

  “That’s been taken. Some young man had the courage to apply this morning and Lavender grabbed him on the spot.” Sylvia f
rowned. “But I meant you could have my room here. I could go and share with Ruby for a couple of weeks until Isabel got the hint.”

  “Me take your room, while you have to squash in and share? That wouldn’t be fair.” Harry didn’t mention the alternative sharing situation which he was now busily imagining, not realising that Sylvia was imagining exactly the same thing.

  “Then I could come and sleep in your spare room for a week.”

  “It’s not very comfy or cosy. Definitely not pretty.”

  She nodded, expressionless. So he didn’t want her. “Alright. Change the subject. What do you think now about Tony being the ripper?”

  Harry scratched his ear lobe. “I can’t think it. He’s a bit of a bully by the sound of things, but his wife’s damned irritating. No excuse of course, but it’s nothing like a murderous fury. He could be. I doubt it. But anything’s possible.”

  “Rather vague for the Sherlock Holmes of Little Woppington on Torr.”

  “I haven’t got the right hat,” Harry grinned. “I’ll think better with a strong coffee in hand. Shall I summon the new slave?”

  “Yes.” Sylvia pointed. “Stick your head around that door. It’s the kitchen.”

  Delighted to be called by the very couple he was supposed to investigate, Detective Tammy trotted out to the garden bench, carrying the small tray with sugar, spoons and two strong café lattes. He delivered these with a grin and a tousled shake of his red hair. “I’m Ralf,” he said in a loud stutter. “The coffee machine’s new to me. I’ve been used to Lavazza. Hope the drinks ain’t too weak.”

  Harry sipped. “Perfect.”

  Ralf hovered. “I’ve been chatting to my new boss. You know, the cook. He’s Italian and I don’t always understand him, but he’s been talking about the murders. Must have been horrible.”