Inkier Than the Sword (The Falconer Files Book 3) Page 4

A hiatus of silence was broken, as he cleared his throat to repeat, ‘Five?’

  ‘Yes, Inspector.’

  ‘And have you any idea who might know this, and try to use it against you in this way?’

  Carmichael had slid his notebook out of his pocket and was scribbling away in his own version of shorthand. As Buffy Sinden slipped into a brown study, the sergeant thanked God it wasn’t something more comfortable she had slipped into. He began to suck his pen, as was his wont, and glanced across at the inspector, but all he received in return to his incredulous gaze was a mouthed, ‘Get your pen out of your mouth – you know it stains.’

  Carmichael was quite blasé about which end he sucked and had often interviewed members of the public with a black tongue and stained lips, which gave him a look of the living dead, and usually frightened the living daylights out of elderly ladies.

  But the silent advice made no impression on him, however, as he imagined the enormity of five terminations. Most women found it hard enough to agree to one, and then found themselves haunted by what might have been for years. And here was this woman, blithely saying that she had been driven to commit this difficult and morally muddy act five times! He was stupefied, and it took a good, long throat clearing from his boss to return him to his notes, and the case in hand.

  ‘… there’s only Tilly Gifford who works at the doctor’s surgery that I can think of. Even then, it’s only because she works there. I wouldn’t have thought anyone hated me enough to send that horrible letter.’

  ‘Let’s leave it there for today, Ms Sinden. I have the letter – thank goodness you had enough forethought to keep the envelope too – in an evidence bag, and I’ll get it straight off to forensics when we get back to the station. Now, if you will excuse us, we have another call to make in the vicinity.’

  Once back in the car, Falconer sighed gustily and explained as if to a simpleton, ‘Well, if you’ve never met one before, Sergeant, THAT was a man-eater and a half,’ and barely noticed when he received no reply. Carmichael merely sat in the passenger seat staring into the middle distance through the dirt-besmeared windscreen of the car, lost in his own thoughts. Five babbies!

  III

  After further directions from the obliging lady in the post office, they made their way back down Market Darley Road the way they had arrived, turned right at Tuppenny Lane, finding Forge Cottage at a junction where Farriers Lane joined it. The mist was beginning to disperse now, and the cloud cover was following suit, allowing the sun to peer myopically at the landscape below.

  Amy Littlemore answered the door to them, and bade them enter and take a seat in their over-furnished living room, where Malcolm was ensconced in a chair, a bulky pad and bandage covering the top of his head, and evidence of neat stitching on both of his hands. He sat very still, conscious of how painful movement would prove to be, given the state of his ribs.

  Amy sported a magnificent black eye and a dressing at her left temple. Her lower legs, visible beneath the just-below-the knee skirt she wore, were decorated with a number of bruises in various stages of colouring, varying from purple-blue, through black and crimson, to the yellow-green of the almost disappeared.

  For the first minute or two they were the perfect, if damaged, host and hostess, acting airily as if there were nothing incongruous in their appearance – for what could be more normal than Mr and Mrs Littlemore from the craft shop?

  At the first intimation that Falconer and Carmichael might want to enquire into the state of their physical health, and how they had obtained their injuries, they changed, quick as a flash, into snarling and spitting cobras, both as protective of their privacy as an animal is to its young.

  ‘What do you fink you’re up to, then? There’s nuffin’ gone on in this ’ouse that ain’t perfickly legal. There might’ve been a little scuffle, but no charges are bein’ brought, are they?’

  Falconer agreed that he was perfectly correct in that no charges had even been mentioned. Malcolm Littlemore was a big chap – in more than one way – and Falconer agreed that he, Malcolm Littlemore, had a perfect right to live his life as he saw fit, without any interference from the police, or any other namby-pamby, busy-bodying organisation, and he looked him fairly and squarely in the navel as he agreed with his host.

  Carmichael concentrated more on looking his height-equal in the eye, and couldn’t resist the temptation to offer a little advice from the heart. ‘I don’t think it’s very fair to hit a woman, do you, Mr Littlemore?’ he asked, leaning forward just a little. Malcolm Littlemore matched him look for look, and answered, ‘No, neither do I, son. And I mean that most sincerely. Now, git orffa my property before I ’elps yer on yer way – no offence intended, squire.’

  ‘And none taken, sir.’ Falconer’s voice was like a ricochet in its immediacy, and by the time the words had left his mouth, he was already pulling Carmichael by the arm towards the front door. ‘We’ll see ourselves out, if that’s all right with you, Mr Littlemore?’

  Back in the car, neither of them spoke, and it wasn’t until they were halfway back to Market Darley that communication resumed. ‘Carmichael, do you mind if I ask you something?’

  ‘Ask away, sir.’

  ‘Well, now you’re married, how …? Has there been any change …? Who …?’

  ‘Spit it out, sir. It might be solid gold.’

  Falconer spat. And it was. ‘That’s a very nice outfit you’re wearing today, DS Carmichael. Did you choose it to wear today, yourself?’

  ‘No way, sir. It’s a bit staid and middle-aged – no offence intended – for me, but now we’re married, Kerry leaves out my clothes for me the night before. She says it saves me five minutes in the morning, which gives me five more minutes to snuggle up in bed – beggin’ your pardon, sir.’

  She’d cured him! The clever little thing had cured Carmichael of his chronic colour-blindness and disastrous dress-sense, and without a word of criticism ever passing her lips. All she had to do was to offer to leave out his clothes for the next day the night before, and the promise of five more minutes in bed was enough of an incentive to rouse no suspicion in his mind, that there had been anything wrong with the way he dressed before.

  ‘She’s a very special lady, is your Kerry,’ he congratulated his sergeant, while smugly hugging to himself the thought that he would never have to start the day again with a rainbow Carmichael in his view (or in his company – and in public, at that!).

  ‘I know, sir. That she is,’ replied Carmichael, without the hint of a grin or a spark of understanding of the subtext. ‘And to change the subject completely, sir, do you think it would be a good idea if we got the area car to make a little loop that passed Forge Cottage whenever its beat took it through Steynham St Michael?’

  ‘Excellent idea, Sergeant,’ replied Falconer, pleasantly surprised at his partner’s joined-up thinking. ‘And I’ll get this letter off to forensics, to see if our spiteful little pen-pal left behind any clues to his or her identity. If not, we’ll just have to wait to see if anyone else owns up to receiving one. It’s unlikely to be a one-off, but you know how shy people can be about anything iffy in their past. It may take a bit of digging to bring a letter or two to the surface.’

  Chapter Four

  Clubs Are Trumps

  Tuesday 5th January

  I

  ‘Hello, Vernon darling,’ Hermione Grayling trilled into the mouthpiece of her telephone. ‘Will you be joining us tonight, to avoid the contemptible bitch? What do you mean, that’s physically impossible for you, if I’m going to be there? Naughty, naughty Vernon. I shall have to slap you on the wrist for outrageous bitchery – pardon the pun, ha ha,’ she cooed.

  It was the following day, and the two branches of the Steynham St Michael card club were due to meet that evening, to hone their skills for the inter-club tournament at the end of the month. Hermione was a founding member of the branch that played at the Ox and Plough, just across Crowhanger Lane from her house.

  The oth
er members, whom she was just about to remind of tonight’s meeting by telephone, were Vernon Warlock, her first call; Charles Rainbird, who answered in the middle of a possible transaction in his shop and was, therefore, rather short with her; and Dimity Pryor, who was sorting bags of goods donated over the festive and new year seasons, for she worked voluntarily in the charity shop opposite the bank in the High Street.

  Monica and Quentin Raynor were next, situated almost directly opposite her house on the Market Darley Road in their estate agency, and as Hermione made her gentle reminder over the telephone about the planned soirée, she waved to Monica from the bow window of her drawing room, Monica acknowledging her salute with a rapid wiggle of the fingers of her left hand.

  The two younger single gentlemen members were the last on her list, and Craig Crawford answered the phone on the first ring. As an accountant, he was also an accurate and cunning card player, and a respected member of the team, despite his tender age, which was estimated to be somewhere in the late thirties by those ladies who lived to gossip and gossiped to live. Craig was never difficult to track down, as he was self-employed and worked from home, home being a large, detached residence with considerable grounds, situated on the other side of the Ox and Plough.

  Hermione’s final phone call for that session was to Gabriel Pryor who worked at the bank, and lived rather out-of-things in Barleycorn Crescent, but good with money, meant good with counting, meant good with cards, and he had been allowed to join their select group because of his loyalty to figures, numbers, and amounts, even though he was not exactly one of them. ‘N-O-S’ was the opinion of most of the others in the group – Not Our Sort, but many a ‘needs must’ had been uttered, as they had justified his inclusion in their number.

  Hermione left a message on his answering service, as she knew she would have to, because Gabriel would be at the bank now, totting up his columns of figures and balancing somebody or others books or accounts, or whatever clerks did behind closed doors in banks. Miss Grayling was a snob of the first order, and made no bones about the fact, but she was so over-the-top with her prejudices and dislikes, that her snobbery lent her a humour of which she was not aware, and even someone pierced by the barb of her tongue always laughed about it afterwards, because it was not them who had ended up looking ridiculous. Everybody loved Hermione Grayling.

  There had originally been only one cards club in Steynham St Michael, and the club’s game had been bridge. After five years, however, old faces had left, and new ones had joined, swelling numbers to an uncomfortable level, and enthusiasm for the game itself had palled. About eighteen months ago, during the long summer break that allowed everyone to enjoy a decent holiday, the club had amicably split itself into two separate branches to admit yet more new members, and the breakaway branch now met in the village’s trendier pub, the Fox and Hounds, the current game for both groups being Black Bitch, played with two packs of cards, to add spice and danger to any flamboyant tactics.

  Bryony Buckleigh, an elegant and still pretty widow of sixty-two, was currently stretched out on her chaise longue in Honeysuckle, a des-res must for anybody with chocolate box leanings, also on the telephone, rallying the players of the now rival cards club branch to play, that evening. She had two less calls to make than Hermione because her group boasted three couples. Tilly Gifford was easy to reach as she was receptionist at the doctor’s surgery in the High Street, next to the church of St Michael and All Angels, and confirmed that she and her husband Tommy would be in attendance.

  Roma and Rodney Kerr – Chrysanthemums, Farriers Lane – were also a cinch, as their premises for the sale of ladies’ fashions and haberdashery items, tucked up next to Vernon Warlock’s bookshop in the High Street, was currently open for business, and Bryony’s second call lasted less than a minute. Her penultimate call was equally as short, as Amy and Malcolm’s craft shop had returned to normal hours, now that the December silly season was over, and the last name on her list was that of Buffy Sinden.

  The phone rang unanswered for quite a long time, and she was just about to hang up and try again a little later, when a nasal voice gave the number and announced that it was, in fact, Buffy Sinden speaking. ‘Whatever’s wrong with you, my dear?’ asked Bryony. ‘You sound like death. Are you ill or something?’

  ‘No,’ croaked Buffy, whose voice was hoarse from crying. ‘It’s nothing!’ The anonymous letter she had received had affected her much more than she would have considered possible, and she had had a wretched time of it since showing the epistle to the policemen the day before. Events that had merely been a convenience in her hectic past social life had suddenly been made real, with all the emotions and what-might-have-beens that that involved, and she felt as if she had been mentally shredded, held up for judgment, and been found seriously wanting.

  ‘It’s obviously NOT nothing,’ replied Bryony, knowing how happy-go-lucky Buffy usually was; how she shrugged off any overt or implied criticism of her man-filled lifestyle. She sounded positively crushed. ‘I’m coming round right away, whether you want me to or not. There’s something wrong, and even if I can just make you a good strong cup of tea and lend a shoulder to cry on, it’ll make you AND me feel better. I’ll be there in a couple of minutes,’ she concluded, put down the phone, and headed for the hall for her coat and her house keys. A short walk down Farriers Lane would take her to Buffy’s cottage, so she had no need of the car.

  II

  Both card groups were a member down that night, which rather complicated matters for the seven remaining members of their card-playing octets. The game of Black Bitch has many names, such as Find the Lady and Black Queen, but the game remains the same whatever its name.

  It is usually played by four people, all of the cards in the pack, with the exception of the jokers, being dealt out. The game is played in five rounds like whist, the first four having one of the four suits as trumps (hearts, clubs, diamond, spades is the usual order), the last round having no trumps. The art in the game is to win no tricks with hearts in them, as these count, numerically, against you in the finally tally. Two to ten score at face value, the picture cards scoring ten, and the ace, eleven points.

  But , one must also avoid winning the trick which contains the queen of spades, which adds twenty-five points to your total. The game is evil, not only in the hearts and spades trumps rounds, but in the fact that, before play is begun, and when everyone has sorted his or her hand, they must then pass on three cards to the player on their left. The queen of spades may not be passed on. But it doesn’t stop a player with an initially bad hand from passing, say the king, queen, and ace of trumps to their unlucky neighbour, or the king and ace of spades and perhaps the ace of trumps, to them.

  This is the part of the game that throws everyone’s initial strategy. These two groups had long ago abandoned this game, which had become childishly easy with familiarity, but played it still, unchanged in quartets of players in fours, but with two packs of cards, and passing on four if it was a ‘friendly’ game, six if it was a needle match.

  It will now become obvious what difficulties the loss of just one player to each club presented. Each player normally had to hold twenty-six cards in his hand, not an easy feat in itself. With a quartet down to a trio in each pub, the inter-club rules decreed that the two of diamonds from one pack be discarded, along with the two of clubs from the second pack, thus leaving a number of cards divisible by three, to be dealt. The consequence was that each of the now three players had to control thirty-four cards, without dropping the unwieldy mass on the floor.

  This situation arose rarely, but when it did, three players usually volunteered to sit-out of a game, three different players taking their place for the next game and so on. This not only relieved the pressure on those who would have had the well-nigh impossible task of holding so many cards, but allowed the various members of the groups to leave the small function rooms in which their meeting invariably took place, and go to the bar for a very welcome drink and
a bit of a gossip – a sop to the dummy, in a four at bridge.

  At the Ox and Plough the absent player was Gabriel Pryor, and Hermione Grayling was holding forth, defending her position as club ‘reminder’. ‘Of course I phoned him. I did it when I called all of you. But you know as well as I do that he’s at work at that time of day, and I always leave a message on his answering service, and he calls me if he can’t make it for some reason. I don’t know why he’s not here, but I did leave a message.’

  She was most indignant at the implied criticism that she had forgotten to call him, and broke off to take her mobile from her handbag, along with a little notebook. ‘His number’s in here. I’m going to call him now, and ask him what he thinks he’s playing at, leaving us a player short, and without a word of warning,’ and she proceeded to dial, pressing the button for speaker phone, so that they should all hear his excuse.

  Three times she tried to get through, and each time, after ten rings, the call went to his answering service. ‘There, I told you it wasn’t my fault. Something’s obviously come up, and he hasn’t even given us a thought.’

  ‘But that’s not like him at all,’ interjected Craig Crawford, one of his regular team-mates.

  ‘Well, like him or not, it can’t be helped, unless someone wants to waste even more time going down to Barleycorn Crescent to knock on his door, and see if he’s just not answering his phone.’

  But this suggestion bagged no takers. They all lived close enough to the Ox and Plough to leave their cars at home, so that they need not pay too much attention to their blood/alcohol levels. The temperature, although not bitter, was cold enough to be slippery underfoot, and a heavy sky promised snow in the not too distant future. A walk in the dark was not an inviting prospect.

  Hermione, Vernon Warlock, and Charles Rainbird charitably volunteered to sit-out the first game, as befitted their status as founding members of the club, and headed a little too enthusiastically to the bar, while the other players watched them leave rather wistfully.