Old Moorhen's Shredded Sporran: The Belchester Chronicles Book 4 Read online

  ‘He said he was going out on the beat; left the station about an hour ago, said he’d be back at the end of his shift to get out of uniform.’

  ‘Grab PC Baldwin, then. He’ll do. He’s a big strong lad who’s capable of getting a dead body out of a cellar without too much trouble. Come on, man. Let’s get going.’

  The two men grabbed their outdoor coats, requisitioned Baldwin from behind the front desk, disturbing a very nice little read of the newspaper with his feet up for the duty desk sergeant, and sped off in Moody’s car.

  The inspector broke the speed limit the whole way to Belchester Towers, causing considerable wheel spin when he skidded to a halt at the front door. He was out of the car in a flash, and up the front steps, beginning immediately to pound on the front door in his eagerness for an arrest. This would be a feather in his cap, and no mistake.

  It took some battering and a fair amount of yelling before anyone answered his frenzied summons, and it turned out to be Hugo who greeted him.

  ‘Good afternoon, Inspector. How lovely to see you. I got Mrs Tweedie to give me a hand up the ladder, so that I could conduct you to where we have detained your man.’

  ‘Tell me where he is, you silly old coot. I’ll find him myself,’ replied Moody, virtually foaming at the mouth in his eagerness to take his prisoner into custody.

  ‘I think that’s rather discourteous of you. Nevertheless, if you would care to follow me,’ he replied, turning and setting off at a snail’s pace down the hall.

  ‘For the love of God, it’ll take us a fortnight to get there if I follow you. Why won’t you just give me directions, you long-winded old fool?’

  Hugo stopped in his dreadfully slow tracks, looked over his shoulder and said, ‘As we have taken the trouble to apprehend your criminal, the least you could is to show some courtesy, now you’re here. I’ll not take another step until you apologise for your extremely insulting comments.’

  Moody couldn’t believe either his eyes or his ears. Mr Triple-Barrelled had him by the short and curlies, and there wasn’t a thing he could do about it. He had no idea where they had Aldridge incarcerated, and he knew exactly how long it took to search this property as his men had already done it, and that didn’t include any of the outbuildings.

  His teeth gritted together out of frustration, he finally ground out the words, ‘I apologise for my bad manners. Take me to my prisoner.’

  Hugo stared at him, turning right round to face him.

  ‘Please,’ Moody added, with a sickly grin. He’d be drawing his pension before he set eyes on Aldridge at this rate.

  It seemed to take for ever, trailing along behind Hugo, but when they exited the main house through the door of the boot room, Moody realised that he had had no chance whatsoever of ever locating his man without this arthritic guide, as it seemed that Aldridge wasn’t even in the main house, but in an out-building.

  He noticed, with some puzzlement, the sea of straw, so old it was completely bleached of all colour, and the dried manure that seemed to adorn the yard outside the stables. The old boy was leading them towards the one on the end that had more of a pile outside than all of the others put together.

  ‘You’ve not got him incarcerated in a stable, surely?’ the inspector asked, in surprise. Surely it would have been easier and more convenient to have relocated him somewhere in the house, where the door could be locked to restrain him.

  ‘Not quite, but you’re getting warm,’ replied Hugo in playful manner. ‘Do you want another guess?’

  ‘No! I want to frigging well get there, you geriatric old wreck.’

  Hugo stopped dead again. ‘Mind your mouth, or Manda will have your guts for garters. She won’t be as lenient as me, as you well know, and she is a very good friend of the chief constable. I respectfully request that you button your lip, before we go any further.’ Hugo was definitely getting huffy. It was turning into a very trying day.

  With this threat in mind, Moody buttoned both of his lips together and followed on in complete silence, with the exception of a slight wheezing noise to his rear, which he failed to identify as Glenister and Baldwin venting their mirth at his discomfiture, as quietly as possible.

  He spoke again as they entered the stable. ‘Oh my God! He’s not in a cellar, is he? I can’t do ladders. Glenister, do something. I can’t go down a ladder. It’s a phobia I’ve suffered from since I was a child. Help me!’

  ‘We’ll get you down, sir,’ Glenister assured him, patting him, in this sudden unexpected weakness, on the shoulder reassuringly. ‘Baldwin and I will see you down, and back up again, in complete safety, won’t we, Mike?’

  ‘That we will,’ PC Baldwin assured the inspector, his honest country face bearing a smile of complete confidence in his abilities.

  Moody took a lot of help and coaxing to get down the ladder, even though it was a perfectly stable metal one, and not a worm-ridden, rotten wooden one that had been there before, but he changed to a completely different man when he reached the bottom, turned around and opened his eyes, which he had closed tightly, in fear, during his descent.

  ‘YES!’ he yelled. ‘THE BATTY OLD BIDDY’S ONLY GONE AND DONE IT!’

  ‘I beg your pardon, Detective Inspector Moody?’ enquired Lady Amanda in her most intimidating and withering tones, which were sharp enough to penetrate even this level of euphoria, and Moody gradually returned to the here and now.

  ‘I’m sorry, your ladyship, but this is just so marvellous. You’ve got the stolen goods, although there don’t seem to be as many of them as I’d have expected …’

  ‘We were in the middle of transferring them into the house,’ she interrupted, to explain.

  ‘Jolly good show. And you’ve apprehended a very dangerous criminal. The day couldn’t get any better. I don’t even feel so bad about having to get up the ladder. Oh, and by gad, I’ve just noticed that you’ve located Evergreen’s body, too. This is the perfect end to a dreadful spree of robbery and violence.’

  None of those present had ever seen the man in such a happy mood; so complimentary and smiley that he seemed to be a changeling – could it be possible that there had really been a visitation to his home during the night? Absolutely not, concluded Beauchamp. He had been his usual obnoxious self on the phone earlier.

  ‘Do you think you and your men could deal with taking in the prisoner, then return to clear out the rest of the loot and perhaps, move Evergreen to a more dignified resting place?’ asked the manservant, eager to get his pair of pensioner heroes of the day away, and putting up their feet with some afternoon tea. He didn’t want them overdoing things any more than they already had, then falling ill as a result, for he knew who would have to nurse them.

  ‘Certainly, my man. Now, let’s get the bugger turned over, if you’ll all excuse my French,’ said Moody, still beaming.

  ‘De rien,’ replied Lady A, Hugo and Beauchamp, in unison.

  Even that didn’t wipe the broad grin from the inspector’s features, but his two colleagues, turning over the prisoner to reveal his face certainly did, for the colour bled from his face as from a red sock in a whites wash when he saw who had been captured.

  ‘It looks awfully like …’ He stuttered to a halt, unable to utter another word.

  ‘That’s because it is,’ Lady Amanda almost crowed in triumph. ‘You said I was wrong in The Clocky Hen. Actually, I was one hundred per cent right, and what fooled you was the lack of uniform, the coloured contact lenses to change the colour of the eyes, and the fake sideburns, which you evidently didn’t even notice. I was right all along, and you didn’t even recognise one of your own officers with whom you had been closely working. My house-point, I believe, Inspector.

  ‘Do allow me to introduce you to Jimmy “the Jemmy” Aldridge, aka PC Spouph. You should have guessed from that name that there was ‘summat’ afoot. Spouph indeed! What have you been smoking? The man’s obviously a dab hand at forging paperwork.

  ‘I don’t know where you think you get
off telling me I can’t identify a man who’s actually been in my own house. And as for you, I think you should pay a visit to a well-known chain of opticians for some spectacles. You obviously need them.’

  ‘Dear God! Spouph even had the cheek to case out the joint before the robberies, when he was in uniform,’ gasped Moody in disbelief, blushing at what a blind idiot he’d been. He then remembered what he had said earlier in the case, pulled the sides of his eyes, so that they became slits, and uttered, ‘Ying tong, ying tong.’ He hadn’t got one over on the old bag after all.

  ‘Sorry, guv,’ mumbled Spouph/Aldridge from the cellar floor. ‘It seemed foolproof. But I’m not putting up my hands to them maids. They was nothin’ to do with me and I’ll not go down for them.’

  ‘Tell that to the Marines,’ Moody advised him.

  ‘No, honestly, guv. They was nothin’ to do with me.’

  ‘Come along you two. When these good people have left, I want you, Glenister, to help me up the ladder – I’m not so bad going up – and you, Baldwin, to see if you can get Evergreen in a fireman’s lift and follow suit. Then you can both come back down to get this villain up, and carry him to the car. I’m not taking those restraints off him until he’s safely behind bars.’

  The heroic four re-entered the house via the boot room door, which had not seen so much action since a much younger Lady A and her parents had hosted the local hunt, her father being MFH (Master of Fox Hounds) at the time, when the stables had been in constant use.

  When Amanda passed into the room where Enid had laid out all the stolen valuables that had been successfully returned to the house, she stopped dead and put her hands up to her mouth.

  ‘I know it looks a bit like a car boot sale,’ admitted Enid, ‘but we’ll soon get everything back where it belongs; don’t you worry about it.’

  ‘It looks just like an antique shop,’ said Lady Amanda in hushed tones of enchantment. Hugo’s brow furrowed with trepidation, and he found he was holding his breath.

  ‘That’s what I want to do,’ Lady A declared. ‘I don’t want to go back to doing tours of the house. That would never have worked, and look what happened when we tried it! I want to open an antique shop in one of the disused rooms here.

  ‘I can sort out all the stuff I really dislike, and we can do cups of tea and coffee, and have a little tea shop in the room next door. It’ll be an absolute joy, and I’ll feel that I’m doing something useful. There are hardly any antique shops in Belchester, and I can pester the council to put up a sign in the town, to point people in our direction, and we can advertise, too.

  ‘You see to interviewing for a new head groundsman, Beauchamp, and, while you’re at it, see about some new maids and general gardeners. I’m going to start going through the rooms to gather stock, once this lot is all put away, and ordering some tablecloths – no, strike that. I bet we’ve got tons of them in the various presses around the house.

  ‘The same goes for tea sets, pots, and spoons. I’ll bet there are cupboards just bursting with useful stuff. We shouldn’t have to spend a penny to get things going. Hurray! Life’s going to be so exciting. We’ll open after the honeymoon.’

  ‘I’m going outside for a fag,’ said Enid with a dismissive sneer.

  ‘And I’m going to buy you some patches and wean you off that dreadful, mood-altering drug,’ muttered Beauchamp.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Later

  It was several days later that Moody did them the courtesy to come up to the house with Glenister to take their statements. He didn’t want those four coming down to the station and ragging him about what a fool he’d been, as he’d sworn Glenister and Baldwin to secrecy about his little misidentification in The Clocky Hen.

  ‘Hello, Inspector,’ called Hugo as he espied the detective coming down the hall. ‘We’ve been ragging Manda by calling her “Eagle-Eye”, saying it’s her tribal name, ever since we apprehended that villain.’

  ‘Really? How jolly for you all,’ replied Moody, looking flustered. ‘I wonder if you could spare me a few minutes of your time – all four of you – to give your accounts of your involvement in the case that you so thoroughly wrapped up the other week?’

  ‘No problem,’ sounded Lady A’s voice from the drawing room. ‘Come on in and sit down.’

  When they had all complied with Moody’s wishes, he said, preparatory to leaving, ‘You know what that Aldridge said when you had him trussed up in the stable cellar? That he hadn’t done those women?’

  ‘Yes,’ they all four agreed.

  ‘Well, he’s sticking to that absolutely firmly. He’s quite happy to admit that he killed Mangel and Evergreen – the forensics department has got him bang-to-rights on both of those – but he’s adamant that he never touched the maids.’

  ‘And has the forensics department not got him bang-to-rights on those other two as well?’ asked Lady A, interested in what sounded like a bizarre little problem, given what the man didn’t seem to mind holding up his hands for.

  ‘No. It’s really weird, but they haven’t found any forensic evidence at all to indicate who killed them, so we can’t charge him.’

  ‘He’ll go down for a good long stretch for the two men and the robberies, though,’ chimed in Glenister, ‘so it’s not of vital importance that we nail him for the two women. We’ve got plenty on him as it is.’

  The Next Day

  Enid had arranged for Lady Amanda and her to go dress-hunting. She’d decided against having a rather middle-aged and non-fussy dress, thinking that, the last time she got married, she and her first husband had had almost no money, and she had borrowed a dress.

  This time Beauchamp said she could have whatever she wanted, price no object, and she knew he meant it, for she had seen his bank statement when he’d accidentally left it out on display on his desk top for a few minutes, recently.

  They headed for Belchester, which was just the right sort of town to boast three separate wedding shops, Enid determined that they should not return before the shops closed. She wanted her time in the spotlight, and Lady A could only comply with her wishes, whether she liked it or not. This was to be HER day, and nothing would spoil it.

  The first shop that Enid insisted they headed for was Bridal Dreamz in North Street. Enid nearly swooned with delight when she saw the rows and rows of pale, floaty meringues. Lady Amanda, on the other hand, wondered if Enid had taken her into a shop for hot air balloons by mistake.

  ‘You’ll never get me up in one of those,’ she muttered, out of her friend’s hearing, while Enid drifted along, her eyes like saucers, as she surveyed the sort of thing she had never had reason – or funds – to be able to look at before in her life.

  Very carefully, she selected an ivory confection large enough to hide almost an entire bridal party in its nets and layers. Putting that aside, she moved to bridesmaids’ dresses and began her mesmerised drift again, finally drawing to a halt in front of a pink froth that made Lady A wince, she watched her take it from the rail.

  Then she chided herself. Enid had not had much of a life, when one considered it. Her husband had been a pretty poor specimen who couldn’t provide anything better than one of the crumbling cottages in Plague Alley. He had shuffled off his mortal coil pretty swiftly, only for her demanding old mother to move in with her ‘just for the company’.

  She had spent years in and out of hospital for fairly trivial matters, almost as a means of self-defence, Lady A thought. Now she had Beauchamp, and was going to live in the big house. She deserved her time as star of the show, and it was only for a few hours of one day. She’d comply without a fight. Enid deserved it for all the things she had helped her with and done for her over the years.

  With her head bowed to hide the look of dismay and despair on her face, Manda held out a hand to take the frothy confection of lace and frills and headed towards the changing rooms, dismissing the help of an assistant, as she was perfectly capable of dressing herself, thank you very much.

>   Enid happily paired up with an assistant and headed for a changing room with a sign that proudly announced that it was the ‘Brides’ Transformation Suite’, with professional aid in the difficulties of putting on such a complicated garment,

  Enid emerged long before there was any movement from the other changing room, and stood admiring herself in a full-length mirror. Really, she did look like a princess, if one disregarded the age of the face at the top of the concoction. Still, plenty of women were renewing their vows these days, probably just to get the chance to wear the sort of dress they couldn’t afford first time round, so she would hardly stand out as unique.

  The curtains of the changing room that housed the maid-of-honour-to-be moved violently, and a low sort of growling noise began to issue from inside the cubicle. When Enid became aware of it, she stood her ground. She didn’t want to interfere, if her friend were at a delicate stage of the proceedings; maybe in an embarrassing stage of undress.

  The growling grew louder and became interspersed with little grunting noises, which rose to a crescendo and ended with a positive howl of rage and despair and a monster issued back into the body of the shop.

  It had short, fat legs which were working like pistons to propel it forward. From where the knees would be to above the top, was just a positive blancmange of pinkness, layers of delicate lace trailing in its wake like tentacles. It only stopped careering along and moaning when it collided with a sturdy pillar clad in mirrors, coming to a halt with a sigh like a steam train.

  ‘Amanda?’ enquired Enid, tentatively, although who else could it be? She had only just got used to dropping the ‘Lady’, as her friend had insisted she do since she and Beauchamp had become betrothed.

  ‘Grrrr, hrhlmph, ahhhhhgh!’ declared the devoured customer.

  ‘I’ll just get an assistant to help us, and you’ll be out in a jiffy.’ Even as Enid went in search of aid, she realised that, in the dress, she was gliding, not merely walking.

  She returned, pretty sharpish, with one of the shop’s employees, who feared for the safety of her stock. The apparition was now bending at what was probably the waist, and bowing up and down. An arm suddenly appeared through the material at the top, and the shop assistant moved in to intervene, before the inhabitant of the dress reduced it to unsaleable rags.