A Christmas Case Read online

  She didn’t look at Rufus, either: with his stupid, silly, pretentious new beard, and she tried not to think of her brother Richard, and what he would have said if he could have seen his old friend now. Richard, who had died at the Battle of Cambrai in November 1917. Who hadn’t made Christmas. Who would never see another Christmas.

  ‘A mystery, you say?’

  Posie licked away the last remnants of her black-cherry-coloured lipstick, tucked her short bob behind her ear in what few knew was a gesture of nervousness, and stared into the red depths of the fire.

  ‘I can’t share the details of any Grape Street Bureau mysteries, either solved or unsolved,’ she said firmly. ‘It’s against everything I hold dear: namely, the confidence of my clients.’

  ‘All right, all right, keep your hair on, old thing,’ said Rufus, trying to pass the thing off as a joke.

  ‘Besides,’ continued Posie. ‘You said you wanted a personal mystery. Something which burned in each of us, even now. Something unresolved.’

  She looked over at Andromeda Keene, whose blank face was bathed in the red licking firelight, but who, just for a moment, seemed to sit very still, a centre of calm, unusually serious. Posie was sure that the Irish song Andromeda had just sung had held some personal connotation, maybe not a mystery exactly, but something unresolved for the girl.

  Posie felt suddenly, ridiculously liberated. This year had been a bad year. But there had been other years, worse than this.

  Such as 1903.

  And that had been a mystery.

  Not even Rufus would have heard about it from Richard, who must have kept the whole thing like a close-buttoned secret held tightly to his chest, carried about for years and years. In shame, or in puzzlement. Or in fear.

  In fact, Posie and Richard had never spoken of it together. It struck Posie as ludicrous now that she had never really spoken of this to anyone before. Although it had probably subconsciously marked each and every day of her life.

  What did it matter if it was spoken of now? She didn’t have to tell the whole thing, did she?

  Those dearest to her were gone.

  Dolly was asleep and Lovelace was out of earshot. The man who had given her the pink necklace of Murano beads which she sported tonight was miles from here. There was a certain comfort in receiving absolution from strangers.

  She stared at the fire. ‘This mystery has an unlikely beginning.’

  She smiled.

  ‘It began in Broadstairs, in Kent, on the South Coast. When our lives changed forever.’

  ****

  Three

  It had been the summer of 1903. A blisteringly hot summer.

  Posie had been eleven, and her brother Richard two years older. The age when the glitter of an English holiday resort, particularly in the company of one’s parents, is beginning to pall just a little, to feel tarnished.

  ‘We had money then.’

  Posie gave a nod towards Rufus. ‘Not masses like you, Rufey, but some. I think my father – who was a Vicar, so he certainly didn’t earn much – had inherited the money and he kept it for school fees for my brother Richard, and for the annual holiday, and for keeping my mother entertained; all her trips down to London, I suppose. So when we went on holiday we stayed at Broadstairs in style. It had to be the very best hotel. The Hotel Bristol. Year after year.’

  Up on the promenade, the Hotel Bristol boasted views over the golden sands of Viking Bay and to the glimmering sea beyond, and also of Charles Dickens’ holiday home, the fantastically named Bleak House, out on its scrag of cliff, up on the left.

  But for Posie and Richard, it was the bundle of shops on the seafront which were the main attraction, with their labyrinth-like troves of crystals and fossilised starfish, and cheap toys made out of glued-together shells. And the beach itself, and the ice-cream parlours which ran, one after another, all the way along the esplanade.

  In 1903, for all their attempts at hauteur, Posie and Richard were very much still children. And they liked childish occupations: the rock-pools and the crabs; the rollicking waves; the hot sand beneath their bare feet; the occasional game of table tennis, and chasing seagulls away from their fish and chip lunches.

  ‘My brother and I loved it there, we liked to enjoy everything about the beach. My father liked the simple life, too,’ Posie remembered. ‘He liked to do almost nothing on holiday. He would eat a hearty breakfast and then go to a small church – St Peter’s, I think it was called – for an early morning Mass, and then do very little for the rest of the day. He’d sit on the beach all day if he could, or, if it rained, he’d go and read the papers in the Guests Lounge at the Bristol, and nap like a cat. He was an easy man.’

  Posie smiled sadly. ‘But my mother wasn’t easy. Although we loved her for it. And so did many people. Everywhere she went, she turned heads. She was exotic. Dark, beautiful…’

  Here Posie avoided looking across to Mrs Fairbanks, whose exotic, dark, beautiful gaze, Posie sensed, rather than saw, was focused all on her story.

  Posie continued, choosing her facts with care, picking her words out carefully:

  ‘In fact, my mother was half-Italian. Which she played upon. She didn’t speak the language, but she added in words here and there to her normal conversation, to make herself sound the real deal. She looked the part, and she dressed the part. But she had never even been to Italy. Never come close. Not that you would have guessed.’

  Posie recalled, but blurrily, as though through a greasy magnifying glass, a small, dark delicate woman, laughing across the years, throwing scarves in silvery hues around her shoulders, gypsy-fashion. The woman wore a big puff of black hair piled high upon her head, her ridiculously small waist adorned with candy-coloured ribbons. Her face with its constant smile was unclear under the magnifying glass of time.

  ‘Her name was Rosa. In fact, I was named for her; Rosemary being both our names. And she loved to dance. My father would have done anything to make her happy, so we stayed at the Bristol, where there were tea dances all afternoon, every day of the week. So we effectively lost her during that time. And Broadstairs was becoming quite Italianised during this time, if you can believe it; with Italian restaurants and ice-cream parlours popping up everywhere. So we lost her in the evenings, too. She had many, many friends there.’

  Friends…

  Posie had given a very pared-down, potted version of the truth. She chewed her lip for a second.

  It was true that the Reverend Parker had adored his wife; constantly trying to make Rosa happy. He had never quite truly believed he had ‘got’ her, but the couple were like chalk and cheese, probably both disappointed in each other, both let down by early promises of something which had proved illusory. The Reverend Parker had quite literally picked up his future wife at the tail end of a tour through Europe after University. A chance stopover for a night at Folkestone, due to a delayed ferryboat from Calais, had meant he had ended up at the Imperial Hotel, where he had encountered Rosa, one of the dancers employed in the ballroom. She had been a professional dancer, on the full-time roll-call of the hotel staff.

  He had probably seemed to Rosa the very essence of a young Englishman with a sparkling future ahead of him. A sort of escape: good-looking in a trim, ruddy blonde English way; clever, funny, and, most importantly, rich.

  It must have seemed so.

  But the Reverend Parker’s tour through Europe and the monogrammed travel cases he carted around with him had been a present from a dear great-aunt, who wanted him to see something of the world. The same great-aunt who would later leave him something on her death which would mean the family would always be comfortable.

  But never, ever, rich.

  And Rosa, with her hot good looks and vague past, and her ability to make every man in the room follow her with their eyes, must have sparkled like a dark forbidden treasure.

  The pair had married within a couple of weeks, much to the horror of the Reverend Parker’s family, who, aside from the great-aunt, deig
ned never to speak to him ever again. And then they had travelled north, to start their lives as a newly-married couple at the Rectory in Norfolk, where the Reverend Parker took up his living.

  It had proved difficult.

  There were shortcomings on both sides. Rosa, with her temper, and her lack of any practical skills, was completely unsuited to running a household, let alone aiding and helping in a busy parish. The Reverend Parker didn’t help matters: academic to the point of brilliance, he was often absent-minded and inattentive. And of only middling wealth, as it turned out. For Rosa, the place, Norfolk, was far from London or anywhere bustling. It was completely lacking in smart hotels with tea-dancing and attentive company.

  And then the babies came! Fretful, and both dead ringers for their father. The blonde skin which never tanned, the cleverness, the wry humour, completely misunderstood by Rosa.

  Good times. Bad times.

  Screaming and door-slamming on the part of Rosa, and a resigned indifference, a perpetual apologetic shrug – which must have been infuriating – on the part of the Reverend.

  As a child growing up, Posie remembered her mother’s increasing absences more than her mother being there much at all. The excuses always the same: the tea dances which took her away on trains, steaming off to the south somewhere. And the trains which were frequently missed on the way back up again, with the inevitable stopovers in London: the hasty telegrams sent to Norfolk to explain a lost connection; a faulty engine, a mis-read timetable.

  Posie well-remembered the raise of the Reverend’s eyebrow as he read these chaotic missives calmly, before pocketing them, and ordering Susan, the Cook, to carry on as normal.

  ‘You were saying?’ Rufus cut in now, frowning. Posie coughed in some embarrassment, lost in her own reminiscences, outside of the story.

  ‘Ah, yes, sorry. Well, as I said, my mother usually disappeared in the afternoons on holiday for a dance. But this was a Saturday. It sticks out in my mind particularly, because she was with us. For once.’

  Posie and Richard had been out shrimping in Louisa Bay, passing time. They were coming down into Viking Bay – carrying their nets and chewing on peppermint rock – when they suddenly saw their mother. She was fully dressed in white – as if for a smart London outing rather than a trip to the beach – waving at them from the sands below.

  The children had scowled and hurried on faster, still wearing their damp woollen bathing things, thinking something must be wrong for their mother to have ventured out of the hotel. Was it their father?

  But no.

  ‘She wanted a walk. To clear her head. From what I don’t know.’

  Posie remembered the words clearly, the first and last time her mother had ever made such a request of her children:

  ‘Show me where you go, my lovelies. Somewhere wild, away from here.’

  ‘And so we walked. For ages.’

  Despite the fact that it was coming up for lunchtime and both children were hungry, and despite the fact that the beach was clearing, with most people returning to their hotel for a hot lunch. And despite the fact that a sudden wind had got up, and despite the fact that both children were uncomfortable; the wet wool of their costumes chafing their thighs as they walked, the sand rubbing awfully at their toes inside their wet canvas beach pumps.

  ‘Actually, being children, we just wanted our lunch, but we wanted to please her, too. So we didn’t complain.’

  The truth was they never spent any time with their mother, especially not on holiday. And the fact that she had sought them out was quite remarkable. It was the least they could do. So they walked. In almost silence, for it soon became apparent their mother had other things to think about, not focusing on their incessant babble.

  On they went. At some points on their walk Posie had had the distinct feeling someone was following them: that pin-prickly sensation she often felt as an adult was already kicking in, but whenever she turned around, no-one was there.

  Up over the cliff side they walked for half a mile, passing the smart-painted family villas and boarding houses, then down into the protection of Stone Bay with its steep approach down from the chalky cliffs, the half-moon of the beach exposed in ripples by the low tide, the rock-pools full and glistening. The beach was deserted.

  ‘This is where we come,’ Richard had said proudly, nodding around Stone Bay as if he owned it personally, as if it were in his gift to give her.

  ‘Shall we show you the rock-pools, Mama?’

  But Rosa Parker had not wanted to see the rock-pools. Both children had now sensed their mother’s attention was not really on them, and they had shuffled on reluctantly to the next great beach, another half mile on.

  ‘We ended up walking a good hour, Richard and I in our wet bathing-clothes. We ended up on the cliff-tops of Joss Bay, towards Margate. It was wild there and the sands below us were utterly deserted. The tide was far out and it was strangely beautiful.’

  Posie continued. ‘Up on the cliff-tops on the left were a couple of houses, and a clubhouse which sported bright red flags, skittering in the strong wind. The clubhouse belonged to the brand new North Foreland Golf Club, whose land ran right up to the cliff edge.’

  ‘I know it!’ cut in Rufus, nodding appreciatively. ‘I’ve played there a few times. It’s got the best golfing views in England! Bally fine club, actually.’

  ‘It was brand new then, had only just opened. There were posters and advertisements for it all over Broadstairs.’

  Posie recalled how her mother had looked all around her, and looked down at the beach of Joss Bay and smiled a serene smile which lit up her whole face.

  Posie nodded now, more to herself than the group in the red parlour:

  ‘It was as if something had led her there. As if she had arrived at the right place. As if she had wanted to be there – at Joss Bay – all along. Although she swore to the police, later, that she’d never been there before.’

  But something, some maternal instinct, had suddenly come over Mrs Parker, and spotting a fish bar among a parade of shops on the cliff-top, she had marched over, her children in tow, and ordered two portions of fried haddock and pickled eggs. Posie remembered it clear as day: mainly because both she and Richard hated eggs, but also because it was the first time in their lives they had seen their mother order anything food-related. It was also memorable because Mrs Parker had no money on her at all.

  Rosa was almost startled when the man serving the food stated the amount due, as if she expected the bill could be sent on to the hotel. It had been Richard, crimson-faced, who had paid up, scraping together pennies here and there from his purse-belt.

  ‘My mother bought us a fish lunch, and then we walked down and sat on the beach right up against the chalk walls of a small depressed hollow in the cliff – a sort of shelter – to eat it. It was the very last such sheltered spot on the beach, although we’d walked past several, all alike and all empty. Our spot was almost below the golf club. I remember it so clearly: the wind roaring and the sand stinging our faces and the cold, and the feeling of being absolutely alone in the world; the beach was ours.’

  Their mother had sat, transfixed, staring up to their left, watching the red flags of the clubhouse fluttering high above them.

  Posie had felt, rather than observed, her brother’s growing anger. If she looked back now, with the benefit of hindsight, she would say it was the exact point at which her brother’s childhood had come to an end. Not before, not after: the moment he had been let down by a parent, unforgivably.

  After half an hour Richard had stood up, shivering, saying he would go back to the fish restaurant and request a horse and trap take them all back to the Hotel Bristol, at their father’s expense: Posie was blue in the face, after all – couldn’t their mother see that? The spell being broken, Rosa Parker had risen, her face black with fury.

  But the fury had evaporated seconds later.

  For next to their own shelter, something was lying rumpled.

  ‘O
ur day, and maybe our lives, changed forever very quickly. For as we were starting to leave, in the very next hollow of the cliff to ours, we found a body.’

  Posie was aware that everyone was hanging on her every word now.

  ‘At first glance it looked to be some old blankets. At a second glance we saw there was a leg protruding out at a funny angle. Richard gave the leg a good poke, but I hung back. My brother managed to flip the body around, and we all saw it was the body of a man: good-looking and fair; not young. The man was wearing green-checked tweed golfing clothes which looked very new. His face and head had been pounded in. A golf club lay nearby. There was blood everywhere, not yet congealing. The stink was awful.’

  Several people in the room gasped.

  ‘It was my first dead body,’ Posie explained simply. She was vaguely aware of the Inspector’s presence back in the room again, and she wondered how long he had been there. At the same time she saw Dolly stand up, shake herself from her sleepiness and stroll from the room. She would have got up to help her friend but she had noticed Dolly looked extremely refreshed, as if the brief sleep in the green velvet armchair had done her the power of good. Perhaps she was just going to powder her nose?

  ‘So what did you do next?’ Inspector Lovelace cut in, professional interest raised.

  Posie shook her head.

  ‘There wasn’t much to do, was there? The fella was beyond help; he’d had his head staved in good and proper, probably with the golf club which was as brand new and unused as his outfit. It was all pretty hideous. I know it gave my brother Richard nightmares for years afterwards. My mother collapsed and had to go and sit in the fish bar. She sat for hours in mute silence.’

  Posie frowned hard, remembering: ‘Richard ran for a horse and cart to fetch the police from Broadstairs town, but it was ages til they came back: they’d thought he was just a silly lad, in it for a jape, apparently.’

  She sighed. ‘I stayed with the man’s body, though the thought of it made me sick and I had to keep turning away. I spent most of the time fighting off hordes of seagulls with my mother’s sun parasol. The smell of fresh blood was intoxicating to them – I had no idea they were worse scavengers than crows. And I had to stay, you see, for the tide had turned and it was coming in fast. By the time the police arrived, there was only a couple of feet to go before the man would have been underwater and there would have been no body to recover. I was going to try my best to haul him up, but it probably wouldn’t have worked. The man was too heavy. And I was only a little girl really.’