The Saltwater Murder Read online

  The Saltwater Murder

  -A Posie Parker Mystery-

  L.B. Hathaway

  WHITEHAVEN MAN PRESS

  London

  First published in Great Britain in 2019 by Whitehaven Man Press, London

  Copyright © L.B. Hathaway 2019

  (http://www.lbhathaway.com, email: [email protected])

  The moral right of the author, L.B. Hathaway, has been asserted.

  All characters and events in this publication, other than those clearly in the public domain, or specifically mentioned in the Historical Note at the end of this publication, are fictitious and any resemblance to any real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the author, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser. Sale or provision of this publication by any bookshop, retailer or e-book platform or website without the express written permission of the author is in direct breach of copyright and the author’s moral rights, and such rights will be enforced legally. Thank you for respecting the author’s rights.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  ISBN (e-book:) 978-0-9955694-2-3

  ISBN (paperback:) 978-0-9955694-3-0

  For Flora

  Also by L.B. Hathaway

  The Posie Parker Mystery Series

  1. Murder Offstage

  2. The Tomb of the Honey Bee

  3. Murder at Maypole Manor

  4. The Vanishing of Dr Winter

  5. Murder of a Movie Star

  (The stand-alone novella, A Christmas Case)

  6. Murder in Venice

  7. The Saltwater Murder

  Contents

  PROLOGUE

  PART ONE: LONDON, Tuesday 8th July and Wednesday 9th July, 1924

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  PART TWO: WHITLEY BAY, Wednesday 9th and Thursday 10th July, 1924

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-One

  Twenty-Two

  PART THREE: LONDON, Friday 11th July to Monday 14th July, 1924

  Twenty-Three

  Twenty-Four

  Twenty-Five

  Twenty-Six

  Twenty-Seven

  Twenty-Eight

  EPILOGUE

  Historical Note

  Thank you for joining Posie Parker and her friends.

  About the Author

  PROLOGUE

  It had been a shock.

  The girl.

  Seeing her again after so many years. He’d been thinking about her a lot lately, had wanted to ask her one special favour.

  He wished he’d been better prepared. Wished he’d been wearing his wig and black gown. That feeling of power they gave him would have come in handy.

  But the London Courts were closed for the holidays, and even he, Amyas Lyle, King’s Counsel, wouldn’t have donned his heavy legal costume for the sheer sake of it. He frowned as he crossed dusty Serle Street and swung under the red-brick gate of Lincoln’s Inn, that secret enclave of London’s lawyers. He looked like an angry raven with one of its wings clipped. Dark and dangerously handsome.

  Tetchy. Thundery.

  He walked on slowly, cautiously, past the huge grassy quad of New Square, surrounded by its tall Victorian buildings, reminding him of his days at Cambridge, and on past the Gothic Great Hall. There was no-one about. Most lawyers disappeared off to the coast for a month, all of them anxious to escape the thick pollen-filled city air. But Amyas Lyle KC was a workaholic; he was famous for it. He never left Lincoln’s Inn in the summertime: this was his world.

  Amyas was the top barrister in London, and he dealt with financial fraud, defending men whose actions had led to misery for hundreds of people. He was also one of the richest self-made men in town, and Head of his Chambers. Not bad for a man just approaching his thirty-fifth birthday. No holiday could ever compare to that.

  And just before the summer recess he had received the news he craved above everything: a vacancy had arisen among the tiny handful of High Court Judges, and he had been asked to fill it. In the autumn he would become the youngest ever High Court Judge.

  Life was becoming exciting, and wonderful in so many ways. He’d packed off his wife and rowdy twin boys to France on holiday, and things should have been good.

  But things weren’t good. There was no use denying it.

  The fact was that Amyas Lyle was receiving a barrage of weird threats.

  Not that there was anything new in that. He’d had threats before, of course; it went with the job. Grubby messages from sad people who’d hated how Amyas had successfully defended the fraudulent criminals who had ruined their lives. But those threats had never amounted to anything and he’d laughed about them in the Clerks’ Room, made fun of the people who had sent them.

  But this post was different. Spooky. Strange. Anonymous postcards and notes which drivelled on about odd things. Inexplicable things: tears, secrets, saltwater. The notes had started off innocently enough, but just recently they’d turned sinister.

  On top of which he’d now had this sudden shock.

  The girl…

  Amyas Lyle replayed over in his mind the events of just fifteen minutes ago.

  He’d lunched at his usual Italian restaurant on Sicilian Avenue after his morning’s business at nearby Bedford Row and had been walking back through Lincoln’s Inn Fields, that green expanse of park in Holborn where folk came for a picnic or to sunbathe. He’d crossed the baking tarmac at the centre, with its tennis courts and accompanying rickety little café. And that’s where he’d seen her. And she’d seen him.

  They’d both stopped in their tracks, frozen.

  He, in his foolishly informal grey summer suit, carrying an armful of papers. And she, rising from her chair at the tennis club café, almost spilling her pink lemonade, bursting away from the company at her table like a ship cut adrift. She was a beautiful woman, just past her youth, but grown richer for it, bold in the choices she made: a careful silk dress the colour of a bruise, an expensive bobbed haircut, no hat.

  He had to stop himself staring like the boy he had been when he had loved her.

  ‘Why, it’s Mr Lyle, isn’t it? How delightful! But I’m not sure if you remember me? It was a long time ago.’

  A dry, warm handshake. A smile. The scent of Parma Violet.

  Even now, so many years on, those cornflower-blue eyes still sparkled like a perfect summer’s day, even if they were surrounded by tiny lines; even if they had seen too much. He’d kept track of her. Had heard she’d had a rough time of it in the war. Worse than most. That she’d lost most of the people dear to her.

  ‘Posie? Miss Parker? Of course I remember you. I was sorry to read of Richard’s death in the war. It was tragic.’

  A curt nod.

  Amyas Lyle had known Richard Parker at school. But the best thing about Richard Parker had always been his little sister.

  Two years younger, Posie had been a dreamy, cream-skinned girl, long dark hair in plaits, easy on the eye. The focus of many a schoolboy’s attent
ions. Amyas, like the others, had seen Posie at various speech-days and sporting events. A mere sighting of her could make his day back then, give him something to think about for weeks on end. He’d felt obsessed by her for years. Once, in 1910, when she was about eighteen and he was in the last year of his legal degree at Cambridge University, he had found the courage to ask her out to tea. But it had proved unsuccessful, and he’d not seen her since.

  ‘I’ve followed your cases in the newspapers, Mr Lyle.’ The grown-up Posie was smiling. ‘Congratulations.’

  ‘I have followed you, too, Miss Parker.’ Of course he knew that Posie was now a successful private detective in her own right. Famous, really. Who in London didn’t?

  ‘Would you like to join my friends and I for a drink, Mr Lyle? You might know Chief Inspector Richard Lovelace, of New Scotland Yard?’

  ‘Thank you, no. I won’t interrupt. But this is a real coincidence, Miss Parker. I was meaning to get in touch with you. A mere trifle, a legal thing. Perhaps best explained at my office? It’s confidential, and becoming rather urgent, actually.’

  ‘Oh?’ A raise of a perfect eyebrow.

  And suddenly, quite inexplicably, because he never asked anyone for anything, he found himself wanting to tell Posie all about the strange messages he was receiving. Messages which made him feel unaccountably panicky, which kept him awake at night. He felt like asking her for help. I’m out of my depth.

  But he managed to swallow down the panic, stick to the matter at hand. ‘Could you see your way to telephoning me in my Chambers, 20 Old Square? Later today or tomorrow? The sooner the better.’

  ‘Of course.’

  She was cool as a cucumber, he’d give her that. She didn’t show any surprise at his request. Just a calm professionalism. ‘Actually, I’m just about to go on holiday, Mr Lyle. So you’ve caught me just in time.’

  ‘Going anywhere nice, Miss Parker?’

  ‘The north. Whitley Bay.’

  He tried not to gasp but felt the blood and heat drain from his face.

  ‘You know it, Mr Lyle?’

  ‘No. Not at all. Not at all.’

  And now here he was in Old Square, outside his Chambers, standing dawdling like a fool under the shady cover of the ancient plane tree. Unsettled and uncertain. Not quite sure what he was doing involving Posie Parker in all of this.

  Whitley Bay…

  Amyas Lyle felt slightly sick.

  He pushed open the glass door to the Chambers. It was very quiet inside, with everyone away. Only George, the Head Clerk, could be seen in the Clerks’ Room, slotting slim papers into the pigeon-holes which honeycombed an entire wall. George turned, unsurprised at seeing the boss back promptly from his lunch. Amyas headed to his own large office over on the right, moving over the red plush carpet as silently and carefully as a cat.

  His calm cream-painted office with its view over Old Square was his private sanctuary, and the afternoon sunlight which flickered over the walls, dappling the room in green, seemed more than usually restful. It took Amyas a moment to realise that all of the windows had been opened and yet no wind blew through the room. It was boiling hot and airless.

  But something here was different. Panic caught again in Amyas’ throat.

  He looked about him, but could see nothing amiss. The red leather-bound legal volumes lining the walls, and the dark-wood desk with its neat stack of case-notes were exactly as he’d left them that morning.

  So what was it that was wrong?

  He felt a sort of sickness washing over him. Like being at sea.

  A movement behind him in the doorway caused Amyas to swing around, heart hammering in his chest.

  But it was only George, the Head Clerk.

  Amyas exhaled in relief, grabbing at the back of his chair. ‘You startled me, you fool. What d’you want to go creeping up on me like that for?’

  ‘I’m sorry, sir.’ The slight man darted forwards. He gestured around, before pointing at the desk. ‘I took the liberty of opening all the windows, sir. On account of that there delivery.’

  ‘Delivery?’

  ‘Aye, sir. That box there. Stinks to high heaven, it does. A Porter bought it, sir. A Fish Porter. Not half an hour ago. Came from Billingsgate Fish Market, in the East End.’

  Amyas couldn’t now take his eyes off what he had previously missed. A white, enamelled metal box, the size of a large shoebox, similar to those which pathologists keep samples in, sat centrally in pride of place on his desk’s blotting-pad. The legend ‘BILLINGSGATE MARKET’ was stamped roughly all along one side in blue.

  It hit him all of a sudden, his senses catching up. That was what was different: the smell of fish. The smell of the sea. Of saltwater.

  ‘I supposed it was a delivery of fish, sir. From the smell. In my opinion whatever’s in that box doesn’t smell too fresh.’

  ‘I don’t need your opinion on things.’ Amyas’ voice came out as a bark. ‘Just tell me: was there a note with it?’

  ‘Aye, sir. A white envelope with your name on it. Sealed and lying beside that there box. Looks the same as those others you’ve been getting recently, sir.’

  George shuffled awkwardly. He was only being paid for working mornings in this temporary, unsatisfactory arrangement, and he was anxious to be off. ‘Is there anything else, sir?’

  ‘That will be all. Now clear off.’

  ‘Very good, sir.’

  And now, alone, Amyas Lyle found himself reaching unaccountably for the brand new High Court Judge’s white horsehair wig and the red gown which had arrived last week from Ede & Ravenscroft and which hung proudly on a brass wall hook just behind his desk. It was as if he felt he had to be properly dressed to receive this missive. He put the items on carefully and sat himself down at the desk chair where he normally felt so comfortable.

  He looked at the envelope which had been addressed to him.

  George was right: it was the same handwriting as all the other strange notes which had preceded this one, all summer long. Nothing particularly special about the writing: black ink, plain curving letters which were clear to read but uninteresting on the eye.

  Amyas ripped it open and read the note inside. And then read it again.

  It made no sense, a bad attempt at rhyming:

  A lifetime of tears is what you caused me.

  A gallon of saltwater will be your undoing.

  Just wait and see.

  Amyas frowned. That mention of saltwater again.

  He found himself gingerly holding the white box, both palms flat on the cool metal top. He felt his heart hammering madly in his chest, his throat tight with fear. Sweat was beading on his brow in the boiling room and he wiped it away impatiently. What horror could the box contain? What mad crank was he dealing with here?

  Should he simply pick up the telephone and call the police? Hadn’t that man over at the tennis club café been something to do with Scotland Yard? An Inspector or something? Shouldn’t he go to them for advice, rather than asking for a visit from a woman who was as intangible to him now as she had been fifteen years before?

  Without further ado he opened the lid. Breathed a deep sigh of relief.

  Nothing.

  No fish, anyway.

  The metal box contained nothing more sinister than water. Brackish water with a very strong salt-briny smell.

  Amyas sniffed suspiciously and bent his head a bit lower. He looked at the note again: the writer seemed to have been quite literal about things; the amount of water in the box was probably about a gallon.

  And it was definitely saltwater. Sea water, probably.

  Looking closer, Amyas saw that sand seemed to move in a strange swirl through the liquid. Was it his imagination or was the water fizzing somehow? Starting to react?

  Suddenly he found his eyes were stinging like mad. What on earth?

  He drew a deep angry breath of air, but now his nose was running and when Amyas touched it he saw his hands were bright red with blood. Suddenly he felt as if h
is face was blistering and his ears were ringing, too. He couldn’t move.

  It was as if he was glued to his chair.

  His nostrils flared and then his throat and mouth dried up and he fought for air in a panic. Amyas couldn’t shout out. And anyway, who was there to hear him? He’d sent his Head Clerk home.

  He couldn’t feel his hands anymore. There was an intense heat tearing up through his whole being. Amyas was vaguely aware that the liquid in the white box was not just fizzing now, but steaming and hissing. An odd white mist was rising up from it.

  A poison?

  It reminded him of some nightmarish experiment from those days at school in the hateful chemistry labs. When Richard Parker had known all the answers.

  But Richard Parker was now dead and long gone. Dead in the mud of France.

  A gallon of saltwater will be your undoing…

  As Amyas lost consciousness, he had the uncanny sensation of being a small boy again.

  He was running along a pale beach somewhere, a holiday-place, a lighthouse in the far distance, feeling the sand beneath his toes. The strong stinging smell of the cold North Sea was filling up his nostrils; the sound of a small child’s laughter, finding something hysterically funny, and a woman shouting a warning in response rang out now clear as day. And then there was the suck of the sand giving way to the tide, pulling him in with the waves…

  As he breathed his last and the poison did its worst, his white wig fell off onto the desk in front of him.

  And Amyas Lyle toppled over, smiling.

  ****

  PART ONE

  LONDON

  Tuesday 8th July and

  Wednesday 9th July, 1924

  One

  Posie Parker, London’s premier female detective, slouched against the gleaming oak reception desk of the deserted barristers’ Chambers, a feeling of foreboding washing over her. She had been summoned here urgently and she was hungry, too. Just at this moment she could easily have wolfed down two hot bacon breakfast rolls and still had room for another.

  A highly-polished grandfather clock announced that it was exactly nine-thirty in the morning.

  There was no-one in the small unlit Clerks’ Room behind the reception desk, and Posie found herself staring at the honeycomb of wooden shelves which lined the walls, filled with documents all tied with the same pink ribbon. Legal cases, probably. All manner of problems, all awaiting solutions. There was an odd chemical smell lingering in the air. And she was sure she could smell recent burning, from over in the fireplace in the Clerks’ Room. But that would be crazy. Who would light a fire on such a hot July day?