A Deadly Dedication, page 19
Before Penelope knew it, she’d wandered down a street where the lovely houses had all but disappeared to be replaced by massage parlors with seedy signs out front and run-down shops.
A creeping sensation came over her as she turned around to retrace her steps. She couldn’t help but think of Jack the Ripper lurking in the shadows, waiting for his next victim, and she quickened her steps. She imagined someone breathing down her neck and walked even faster.
A man came out of a door toward the end of the block. Penelope pushed her glasses up her nose and squinted into the distance. He looked familiar. Not for the first time, she wished she’d remembered to clean her glasses that morning—perhaps then she’d be able to get a better look at him.
He hesitated in the doorway, looked both ways, and then began to walk down the street toward Penelope. He had his head down and his hands stuffed into the pockets of his jacket. The closer he got, the more convinced Penelope became that she knew him.
As he passed her, still with his head bowed, she realized it was Terry Jones. He didn’t appear to have recognized Penelope although he may not have even seen her, with his head lowered and his gaze on the sidewalk.
She’d noted the building he’d come out of and paused in front of it on her way back down the street. The sign above the door read The Plaza Club and plastered on the sidelight windows were black-and-white eight-by-ten photographs of what were obviously female impersonators. Penelope was about to turn away when one of the pictures caught her eye. The face looked familiar, and she had a shock when she realized it was Terry Jones. He was nearly unrecognizable in heavy makeup, false eyelashes, and with a feather boa draped around his neck. So, Terry must have been buying that dress at Oxfam for his show. It was possible he didn’t want anyone to know about his alternate career. People of Terry’s generation might not have been as open to this sort of thing as people were now. Could he have been in a show the night Foster was murdered? And was that why he’d refused to reveal his alibi?
There was one way to find out, Penelope thought. She tried the door handle and was pleased to find the door unlocked. She opened it and stepped inside. The interior was dim, with the only light coming from the bar that ran the length of the space.
Round tables were arranged around the room with a small stage at the front. It was draped in a tired-looking red velvet curtain with gold braid trim. The air was stale and smelled like beer, sweat, and mold. A man in baggy gray pants and a white undershirt was pushing a sweeper across the worn red carpet.
He turned the vacuum off when he saw Penelope.
“I’m sorry, miss, but we’re closed,” he said as he approached her. “The next show is at seven o’clock.” He smiled, showing stained, uneven teeth. “Why don’t you come back then.”
“I’m not here to see the show,” Pen said, hoping her nervousness wasn’t too obvious. “I just wanted some information.”
A suspicious look wafted across the man’s face. “What kind of information? If this is about the taxes, you’ll have to speak to the boss.” He jerked his thumb toward a door at the back of the club.
“No, it’s nothing like that,” Pen said quickly, shaking her head. “It’s about one of the performers.”
His look of wariness increased. “Most of our performers prefer to remain anonymous like.” He rubbed his fingers together in a gesture Penelope couldn’t miss.
She got the hint. She reached into her bag, pulled out her wallet, and handed him several bills.
He sucked air through his teeth as he stuffed the money into his pocket.
“You have a performer named Terry Jones, I believe.”
The man frowned, drawing his unruly dark brows together.
“Terry Jones? That doesn’t sound familiar.” He tapped his chin with his index finger. “Oh, yeah, you must mean Miss Scarlet. That’s his stage name,” he added helpfully.
“Does he perform frequently?”
“Couple of times a week.”
Penelope was beginning to feel as if she wasn’t getting her money’s worth.
“Does he perform on Fridays?”
“Sure. That’s a big night. We get lots of customers on Fridays. He has a duet with Rosie L’Amour.”
“Do you happen to know if he was performing on the night of the Guy Fawkes celebration? November fifth?”
He scratched his chin, running his finger over the stubble.
“So far’s I know.” He touched his pocket as if reminding himself that Penelope was paying handsomely for this information. “Want me to check?”
“If you wouldn’t mind.”
He shuffled to the door at the back of the club and disappeared. Penelope checked her phone while she waited for him to return. Fortunately, she still had plenty of time before her return train to Chumley.
After a couple of minutes, the fellow reappeared. “Malcolm, he’s the owner of the club, said yeah, Terry was here performing that night.”
Penelope was relieved that neither he nor Malcom seemed to possess an excess of curiosity and didn’t ask her why she was asking so many questions.
She thanked him and, slightly poorer for the encounter, left the Plaza Club.
* * *
* * *
Penelope glanced at her watch. She still had a bit of time before her train was due to leave. She had yet to find a dress for Figgy’s wedding—Figgy had said to wear whatever made her comfortable—and she certainly didn’t have anything in her closet that was suitable.
The Kensington high street wasn’t far. She’d take a stroll and look in the windows. Perhaps something would catch her eye.
It didn’t take long for Penelope to reach the high street. She made her way down it, peering into boutique windows, until she came to Marks & Spencer. Surely, they would have something appropriate.
She glanced at their window display and was momentarily tempted by their enormous food hall, but she resisted and pushed open the door to the main store.
She slipped past the gleaming counters in the cosmetics department, where the air was heavy with perfume and the abundance of mirrors reflected shards of light across the area like lasers. After wandering around for a bit, distracted by all the displays, she asked a salesclerk where to find women’s dresses.
Penelope strolled through the department, studying the outfits on the mannequins. She knew she wouldn’t be comfortable in any of them. She began to go through the racks, pushing the hangers along one-by-one as she rejected the possibilities.
She was beginning to despair. As the maid of honor, she couldn’t wear her pantsuit for Figgy’s wedding. Figgy had given her carte blanche about the dress—long or short—she didn’t care. For that matter, she’d told Penelope she could even wear pants if she wanted.
Figgy was going to be wearing a very colorful Pakistani bridal outfit, so Penelope decided she ought to opt for something neutral so they wouldn’t clash. Her search through the racks wasn’t turning up anything—pretty dresses for sure, but nothing she’d feel particularly comfortable in.
She was about to give up when something caught her eye. It was an ankle-length dress, fitted, with long sleeves in a pale dove gray. Beryl had once told her she looked good in gray. She only hoped it would be long enough, given her height.
She took it into the dressing room, hung it on the hook on the wall, and pulled the curtain closed.
She had a bit of trouble getting the garment over her head, but finally it fell into place. She reached behind her, did up the zipper, and smoothed the fabric over her hips. It was perfect. It fit perfectly and she could move comfortably in it. But was it right for the wedding? Was it too plain? Or not plain enough?
Assailed by doubts, she decided to phone Beryl. She didn’t know why she hadn’t asked for her sister’s help in the first place, although Beryl could be a bit overbearing. She pulled out her cell phone and punched in Beryl’s number.
Beryl answered on the last ring, sounding breathless.
“Am I disturbing you?”
“No,” Beryl said, panting. “I was doing my Pilates routine. You should try it. It does wonders for your posture.”
Did she slouch? Penelope wondered, glancing in the mirror.
“I thought you were going to London?”
“I have. I did. I’m looking at a dress for Figgy’s wedding. I like it,” she said decisively, “but I wondered what you thought of it.”
“Oh.” Beryl sounded pleased to be consulted. “Show me.”
Penelope reversed the phone’s camera and held it up so Beryl could see her reflection in the mirror.
“What do you think?” Pen said after Beryl had studied the view for several minutes.
She hesitated for so long that Penelope feared she was going to veto the dress.
“It’s a bit plain,” Beryl said slowly. “But in a good way. I like it. I really do like it. It suits you. You’ll look lovely but you won’t be in danger of upstaging the bride.”
Penelope thought of Figgy’s bridal attire—there was very little danger anyone would be able to upstage that.
“So, I should buy it?”
“Definitely,” Beryl said. “Next, we’ll need to find you some shoes. Black suede heels would look lovely, don’t you think?”
“Just so the heels aren’t too high,” Penelope grumbled.
“That’s right. You and Maguire are almost the same height, aren’t you?”
“I’ve got to go,” Pen said, looking at her watch, “if I want to make my train.”
“Okay. We’ll talk accessories when you get back.”
Accessories, Pen thought as she watched the salesclerk carefully fold the dress and slip it into a Marks & Spencer bag.
And here she thought finding a dress would be the end of it.
* * *
* * *
Penelope ran the last few blocks to the station and arrived panting and out of breath. The train was already idling on the platform, and she managed to jump on just as the doors were closing. The whistle blew as she collapsed into a seat and the train began to chug its way out of the station. She paused for a moment to catch her breath, then unwound her scarf and shrugged off her jacket. Heat was pouring into the compartment, and she was already warm from her sprint through the streets.
She hadn’t had particularly high expectations of her trip to London, but she’d learned far more than she’d ever dreamed. The question was how to put it all together. It appeared as if Terry Jones had an alibi, so she could rule him out as the killer. Even if he had slipped out of the club early, he would never have made it back to Chumley in time. And she’d never managed to find a connection between him and Courtney.
Then there was the issue of the fire at Clementine’s bakery. What if that coffee shop owner’s grandmother had been right and had actually seen a man fleeing from the shop right before it went up in flames? Clementine might or might not have been guilty of insurance fraud, but did that have anything to do with Foster and his murder? Or with Courtney’s death, for that matter?
Foster was poisoned with sodium nitrite. Penelope had looked it up—it was a horrible death. The sodium nitrite inhibited the blood from transporting oxygen to the body, causing trouble breathing, a rapid heart rate and, ultimately, death. Where did anyone find sodium nitrite anyway? Gladys used it for curing bacon—could someone have stolen a bit of it from her shop? According to Penelope’s research, it didn’t take much to kill a person.
By the time the train pulled into Chumley’s ancient Victorian station, she felt as if her head was spinning. She decided to push all of the information and speculation to the back of her mind and hoped that her subconscious would come up with something on its own. It sometimes worked when she was trying to solve a difficult plot problem, so maybe it would work for this as well.
Two women, their arms dripping with shopping bags, got off the train with Penelope. She fished her key fob out of her pocket as she walked through the parking lot and beeped open the locks on her MINI. The two women pulled out of the lot behind Penelope, leaving it empty until the following morning when it would fill up again with commuters heading back to work in the city.
Mrs. Danvers was ecstatic to see Penelope and wound in and out between her legs, flicking her tail back and forth as Penelope attempted to hang up her jacket.
Her plan was to pour herself a cold drink, kick off her shoes, collapse on the sofa, and read but, try as she might, she couldn’t stop thinking about everything she’d learned that day. She sat on the edge of the sofa, rubbing the soles of her feet and going over the information she’d collected in her head.
Finally, she reached for her laptop, which was on the coffee table, and powered it up. She ought to be able to find at least one article on the fire that destroyed Clementine’s original shop in London.
It didn’t take her long to track something down—the Daily Mirror had devoted nearly a full page to the story, the article running alongside an ad for Sainsbury’s frozen Jumbo King Prawns.
The article featured a picture of Clementine’s shop as it had been before the fire and Penelope immediately recognized it as the same photograph that had been in the stockroom of the Icing on the Cake. Why on earth had Clementine tried to hide the truth about it?
There were several pictures of the rubble left behind by the fire. In some, you could still see smoke rising from the pile of charred wood.
Pen skimmed the article. There wasn’t much she didn’t already know—the facts were fairly straightforward. There was an interview with Mick Birdwhistle, who worked at the shop as a bakery bench hand and was bemoaning the fact that he’d now be unemployed.
Penelope clicked out of the story and closed the lid of her laptop. She flopped back on the sofa and rested her tired feet on one of the throw pillows. What an odd name—Birdwhistle. He must have known Simeon Foster since they had both worked for Clementine at the same time. Could there have been anything in Foster’s past that had led to his murder in the present?
Penelope decided to see if she could track down this Mick Birdwhistle. How many people in Britain could have a surname like that? It wouldn’t be as pointless as trying to locate someone named Smith or Jones.
She sat up and reached for her laptop again and in no time was clicking on the BT Phone Book site.
In less than a minute, she’d located the address and phone number for Mick Birdwhistle. She was pleased to see he lived in Lower Chumley-on-Stoke. She reached for her cell phone, then changed her mind. It wouldn’t be a far drive. She might get more information out of him if they met face-to-face.
It wasn’t that late. Perhaps she’d pop over to see him now. Hopefully it wouldn’t be a wasted trip.
TWENTY-FIVE
Mick Birdwhistle lived in a redbrick semidetached house on the outskirts of Lower Chumley-on-Stoke. It had a tiny front yard with a small patch of grass and ragged-looking juniper bushes under the front window. Penelope pulled into the narrow driveway and got out of the car. The yard was decorated with numerous garden gnomes—she counted four of them as she approached the front door. Smoke was drifting from the chimney, and she hoped that meant Mick was at home.
She rang the bell and while she waited, she glanced at the house on the other side. Lace curtains hung in the front window and a birdbath with dead leaves in it was out on the lawn.
She heard footsteps and the door was flung open.
“Mick Birdwhistle?” she said.
“Yes.”
He was short with small hands and feet, unruly white eyebrows, and a white beard that made him look like one of the garden gnomes decorating his front yard.
“I wonder if I could talk to you for a minute?” Pen said. It wasn’t the most brilliant opening line, but she couldn’t think of anything else.
“Sure. Come on in. Are you taking a survey?”
“Not exactly.”
Mick led her into a small sitting room furnished with a drab olive green sofa and a brown recliner with a hand-knitted afghan thrown over the back. A large-screen television sat on top of an old cabinet and a folded newspaper was next to it. A few embers from a dying fire in the fireplace still glowed red.
“Would you like some tea?” Mick said as Penelope took a seat on the sofa. “The missus always offered a nice cuppa to visitors. Sadly, she’s been gone for three years now. It was her chest.” He thumped his own with his fist. “We moved out of London because we thought maybe it was the smog that was doing it but, in the end, it turned out to be cancer.” He bowed his head.
“I’m sorry,” Penelope said.
She turned down the offer of tea and waited while Mick settled himself in the recliner. It appeared to swallow him, and only the tips of his toes reached the floor.
“I read an old article about the fire that happened at the bakery you used to work for in London—Clementine’s.”
“That’s right.” He nodded. “Burned to the ground, it was. A real tragedy. Put me and a lot of other people out of a job.” He fingered his beard. “Of course, Miss Harrison—Clementine—got the insurance money, so you could say she landed on her feet.”
Penelope had a sudden image of Clementine flying through the air like a character in The Wizard of Oz and coming to rest, with a slight jolt, on her feet. She shook her head. This was no time for silliness.
“Fortunately, I found a job at another bakery pretty sharpish. They’re always in need of a good bench hand. The missus said I had certainly chosen the right trade. Not everyone has a feel for dough, but I was a dab hand at it. And of course, not everyone can shape the dough into the special forms that a bakery like Clementine’s sells.”
