Embarrassment of Corpses, An (18 page)

Humfrey also felt it appropriate for the witches to become so sexually aroused at this point that they rip their shrouds off and fling themselves rapaciously upon Macbeth, fangs bared and everything else besides. Humfrey's last six productions had all involved nudity, including an all-male
Arsenic and Old Lace
for the Young Vic.

“I want a scene the likes of which Theydon Bois has never seen,” he had declared. Eyeing the three ample, middle-aged ladies cast as the witches, the other actors at tonight's rehearsal were sure he'd achieve his ambition. Because the casting had taken place before Humfrey arrived, the witches had been selected for their general repulsiveness, not for their seductive qualities.

“Oh, Mrs. Codling,” Humfrey was now exclaiming. “Who is the master—the text or ourselves? No, it doesn't say ‘they take their clothes off' in so many words. But true art lies between the words, between the lines. When I read the Scottish play, I hear a voice in my head crying ‘Nudity, Humfrey, Nudity.' I humbly bring you that voice, Mrs. Codling. Do you hear it too?”

“Oh, very well. But can we turn the heat up first?”

Angus Burbage, Mallard recalled in the dark, had caused mild flurries in the headlines at the time of his arrest and trial. His son Cliff, an habitual petty criminal in his twenties, had been arrested for a minor theft that, for once, he may not have committed. The young man had been released, considerably the worse for wear for his time in custody. Angus stormed down to the police station, but was met with a wall of indifference and even bravado in the face of his complaints. If Cliff wasn't guilty of this one, the local inspector had more or less implied, then he was guilty of at least a dozen others that hadn't been reported, and so he deserved all got. Angus' reply had been a homemade bomb, left brazenly in the main reception area of the police station two days later. Fortunately, it had not exploded, but that did not prevent a conviction at his later trial, despite the support of several notable civil rights activists. He was sentenced to…how many years? The trial was nearly three years ago, surely he wouldn't be out of prison already? Is that why he was so hard to find, or was it just the sluggish service Mallard had come to expect on an English Sunday?

“I suppose you want me to take my vest off, too?”

“Everything off, Mrs. Godditz. As nature intended. Follow my example.”

But if Angus Burbage was out of jail and taking revenge on those who convicted him, why should he risk early detection for the sake of engaging the authorities in an enigmatic and flamboyant series of murders? Was it a case of gamesmanship, as Ollie had suggested? A chance for personal aggrandizement through outwitting the police, his original bugbears after all? Perhaps Angus took more satisfaction from dumping six unsolved murders into Scotland Yard's lap rather than completing a dozen ritual executions of his peers. The risk of that analysis, of course, is the possibility that he might start again, a new pattern, a new game, a new group of victims. Mallard made a mental note to offer protection to the court officials at Burbage's trial and to the police officers who had appeared as prosecution witnesses.

“I must admit, Mr. Fingerhood…”

“We're naked, Mrs. Codling, you can call me Humfrey.”

“Humfrey, then. I must admit there is a certain devil-may-care feeling of freedom that I have never experienced before. I just hope I don't run into the vicar.”

How had Burbage identified the members of the jury? If Mallard searched, would there be evidence of tampering with the records? Burbage's son, Cliff, was no stranger to breaking and entering. Or were court records on computer these days, accessible to a skilled and purposeful hacker? What else would Burbage need to know? Their current addresses—easy, the telephone book, or for those who had moved, some gentle inquiries. Something about the victim's lives, to find out what would entice them to meetings with people they didn't know. Harry Random's life was an open book, he was even listed in
Who's Who.
Contact with the victim always began with a telephone call. Did the killer fish for more information then, following up on the merest hints until he was able to offer the appropriate inducement? How much would Nettie Clapper or Vanessa Parmenter give away about their hopes and dreams to a strange male voice? And one other essential piece of information: their birthdays. Where did Burbage get that? He had to know all the jurors' birthdays before he could determine whether the zodiac pattern would draw in a string of them. Was that available from the public records office? Can you find out birthdays from the main files or do you have to order up birth certificates?

“Tim.”

Or would the murderer have been more brazen, calling each person, perhaps several weeks earlier? “I'm calling on behalf of Tasty Crispy Wheaty breakfast cereal, and if it's your birthday today, you could win five thousand pounds.” Who could resist supplying the missing information: “No, it's not my birthday today, my birthday's in October. The sixth.”

“Tim!”

And what other information had been gleaned but discarded in the search for a red herring pattern?

“Tim, come out!”

Stan, the interior decorator playing Macbeth, was shouting. Damn, Mallard must have missed his cue. It was hard to hear inside the box. Well, let's make up for that. Even without the costume and make-up, he could give them a revenant Banquo to remember.

He snatched off his glasses, slipped them into his shirt pocket, and flung the lid aside with all the strength he could manage from his horizontal position. The plywood lid Frisbeed across the stage, knocking over a freestanding flat that represented a gothic arch. Mallard grasped the sides of the coffin and hauled himself to his feet, thrusting his arms ahead of him and extending his fingers as if he were a dwarf playing the piano. He stepped down nimbly from the plinth and stalked the blurry white figure ahead of him, which he assumed was Macbeth—Stan was still wearing his painter's overalls. Remembering he would be fitted with fangs and a blood capsule, he bared his teeth and opened his eyes wide, allowing a demonic hiss to leave his throat. In two or three stiff-legged strides, he was in front of the dim, retreating figure, reaching out with the menacing hands until his fingers closed on…flesh?

“Actually, Tim, we just wanted to tell you that you have a phone call.” Stan's voice, which did not come from the individual in his hands, dissolved in giggles. Mallard quickly put on his glasses to see whom he had accosted. To his credit, the stark-naked Humfrey was equally embarrassed. “I would never ask my cast to do something I wouldn't do,” he explained weakly, while Mallard mentally clocked up the number of offenses with which he could charge the director, starting with indecent exposure and including conspiracy to commit a lapse of taste. He hurried away to the theater manager's office.

“How's the rehearsal?” It was Effie's voice, familiar, com-forting.

“I just accidentally groped a naked man,” Mallard sighed.

“Don't you hate it when that happens?” she remarked.

“Where are you calling from?”

“The Yard. Phoebe gave me your number. We've just found Angus Burbage. I thought you'd want to know as soon as possible.”

“Where is he?”

“Kensal Green.”

“Do you mean the prison, Wormwood Scrubs?”

“I mean the cemetery. He's dead.”

“What?”

“Died in the Scrubs about six weeks ago. Of liver cancer. I'll assume the name of the condition is an unfortunate coincidence.”

Mallard thought for a moment. “Then it's not him,” he said carefully. “But it could be someone who blamed the system for his death in captivity. If Burbage died six weeks ago, it might take this long for his avenger to plan, research, and execute the murders. Let's continue to pursue this.”

“Okay. So is he good-looking, this new boyfriend of yours?”

“I didn't have my glasses on,” Mallard explained.

“They all look better that way. See you in the morning.”

Back in the auditorium, Humfrey had dressed, but the three witches were still enjoying their unencumbered freedom and had now taken to prancing around the stage, striking elaborate poses last seen during a pre-war visit from the
Ballet Russe. The other members of the cast were slumped in the first row of seats, watching with a mixture of horror and amusement.

“I feel so open, so liberated!” cried Mrs. Codling, pirouetting like a gelatin spinning top. “Oh, thank you, Mr. Fingerhood, thank you. Wheee!”

“Very good, ladies,” called Humfrey, clapping his hands. “You can get dressed now.”

But the witches continued to cavort upon the stage. Each had shed forty to fifty years of British lower-middle class repression and prudishness with their nether-garments. It was as if the unfamiliar nudity could finally expiate a lifetime of changing into swimming costumes on chilly English beaches beneath purpose-made, neck-to-foot sacks, donning winceyette nightgowns over their underwear to hide their bodies from their uninterested husbands, and even—in Mrs. Codling's case—covering the mirror with a towel before taking a bath.

“I am fire,” cried Mrs. Godditz, writhing in one place. “I am flame. See me burn, feel my heat!”

“I am water, I am a river,” sang Mrs. Birdee, the largest of the three matronly nymphs, flinging herself onto the floor and undulating without difficulty.

“I am a gazelle,” shouted Mrs. Codling, crossing the apron in a series of fleshly, floor-shuddering leaps. “I am lithe and beautiful. Watch me skip and jump.”

“I think we'll end the rehearsal here for tonight,” Humfrey muttered sheepishly to the other stupefied actors. “Nice stalking, by the way, Tim,” he added to Mallard, while the three ladies joined hands and began to circle joyously in the middle of the stage. “I don't suppose you'd care to join me for a cappuccino afterward?”

“I think not,” growled Mallard, finding the lower register of his voice. “My wife is expecting me.”

“Their husbands are expecting them tonight, too,” Humfrey replied nervously, with a nod toward the corybantic trio. “Frankly, Tim, I'm worried for my safety.”

“Don't be. By tomorrow morning, those men will either be very grateful to you, or…”

“Or?”

“Or they'll be dead from exhaustion,” Mallard said with a chuckle.

Chapter Nine

Oliver hated to be asked what he did for living, and not merely because he was embarrassed about being the pseudonymous creator of Finsbury the Ferret. He was nervous, too, when conversation turned to his job as the general factotum (or rather, facnullum) for Woodcock and Oakhampton, Ltd., since it inevitably meant he would have to explain what the firm did. And Oliver had no idea.

“I suppose you might say we're in the business of business,” Mr. Woodcock had said cagily, on the one occasion when Oliver had cornered him on the issue. “Yes, that's it. We're available for advice. If any potential client wants it. We…
consult
. Or rather, we are consult
ed
. Now how are you getting on with your stories about that toothsome Billy Field Mouse? Named after jazz great Billy Strayhorn, no doubt? No? No matter.”

Oliver never did establish what sort of advice would be sought from the jolly Woodcock and his taciturn partner, and there was no clue from their surroundings. Apart from the telephone and his word processor, the office's furnishings were all old-fashioned, although they seemed to have had very little use. Certainly, there were no dents or scratches on the polished oak filing cabinets and roll-top desks—which Oliver knew to be empty. And how many offices still had inkwells and rosewood-and-brass rolling blotters, which were unstained with ink? But the mystery had one advantage: Mr. Woodcock seemed chronically guilty that he kept Oliver idle and so encouraged him to use his work time for personal matters. Oliver hardly had to breathe his apologies for disappearing from the office to be with Mallard; and if he dared think he needed permission to attend Sir Harry Random's funeral on Monday morning, Woodcock would probably have leaped from the ground-floor window with remorse.

The hot day clearly added to the grief of the numerous mourners milling around outside the Barnes parish church—including several members of the Sanders Club, “a blight of Blytons,” mused Effie, watching from across the road—who appeared distinctly sticky and uncomfortable while they waited for their opportunity to speak to a dark-haired young woman in a short, black dress. Compared with his fellow writers, Effie thought Oliver looked quite presentable in a charcoal-gray Italian suit, neatly ironed white shirt, and subdued purple tie. She was almost prepared to overlook the black Reeboks and navy socks that completed Oliver's ensemble. And the battered leather satchel slung over his shoulder, which she knew always held a book and a folding umbrella.

“I suppose that's Lorina,” she hazarded, as she stepped out of Mallard's Jaguar, where she had been waiting while her boss went to the funeral. Oliver had crossed the road to join her.

“Yes. The prize geek beside her is the abominable Ambrose, her half-brother. He and Harry didn't get along.”

Oliver indicated an overweight young man, standing beside Lorina Random. He wore a brown corduroy suit and what seemed like a tea cozy on his long red hair, and he had the kind of fussy beard worn only by Baptist missionaries and beatniks in Walt Disney comedies. As they watched, Mallard emerged from the crowd and, after a perfunctory handshake with Ambrose, hugged Lorina warmly. Oliver, enjoying Effie's company, hoped his uncle would linger.

“Tim's always getting into embraces with attractive young women,” Effie remarked, remembering the lunch at Raisin D'Etre. “It must be the white hair. Or maybe it's a family tradition. After all, the young ladies concerned always seem to be your old girlfriends, Ollie.” There was an archness in the statement that caused an involuntary quiver to run between Oliver's elbows. But he noted that she had shortened his name for the first time.

“Susie Beamish was never my girlfriend,” he said starchily, “and Lorina Random and I broke up a long time ago.”

Across the street, the flower-decked hearse pulled away from the curb, and the mourners started to break into smaller groups. Lorina turned, caught sight of Oliver and gave him a broad smile. He waved distractedly.

“Who was the Virgin?” he asked quickly, before Effie could tease him about the exchange.

“Is that a question about your past dalliances?” she persisted with amusement, noticing his flinch.

“I meant, who was the Virgo. On the jury.”

“There wasn't one. And there wasn't a Virgo murder yesterday.”

“Then I suppose there wasn't a Sagittarius on the jury either, which would explain Gordon Paper,” Oliver reflected. “My guess is he was chosen as a wild card, to fill up the blanks.”

Effie smiled. “Actually, Ollie, there
was
a Sagittarius on the jury. And Gordon Paper was not so much a red herring as a flounder.”

Oliver's jaw dropped involuntarily. “Then what
are
the birth signs of the seven surviving jurors?” he asked.

“A Sagittarius, a Cancer, three Tauruses, and two more Aquariuses. No Virgos, Leos, Geminis, or Aries.”

“So all in all, not a particularly unusual distribution.”

“It depends how you look at it. We couldn't believe that a randomly chosen group of twelve people would each have a different zodiac sign. But if you're genuinely selecting juries at random from the population, there are more ways for that particular distribution of birth signs to occur than any other.”

“Really?”

“Oh yes,” she continued eagerly. “Its tidiness seduces us into thinking it's somehow mathematically special. But the one-member-per-sign distribution should pop up, on average, once in every eighteen thousand or so juries.”

“Although you're saying it didn't pop up this time.”

“No. Eighteen thousand-to-one are still rather long odds if you've already specified which jury you want to assassinate. But if you want to kill
any
jury that has that distribution, you'll probably have several chances during a typical year. In contrast, all twelve members' being Leos, say, should occur only once in nine trillion juries. American trillion, of course.”

“You like this probability stuff, don't you?” said Oliver with awe.

“I've always been good with numbers.”

“Then you can work out the tip this evening.”

If Superintendent Mallard had been a dog, his ears would have pricked up as he caught Oliver's last remark. Did Oliver and Effie have a dinner date? But not being alone, he was unable to pursue the issue. He had crossed the street in the company of two men, the ready-funereal Detective Sergeant Moldwarp and a clean-shaven man in his late forties, who seemed familiar to Oliver, although he could not remember from where.

“Thanks for waiting, Oliver,” said Mallard. “I thought you'd like to hear what Mr. Tradescant has to tell us.”

Tradescant. Edmund Tradescant. One of the jurors, thought Oliver, a name that Mallard had recognized when it was read from Harry's files, although Oliver had not. But where had he seen him before?

“I believe you have already met my companions,” Mallard said to the man. “Sergeant Strongitharm, Oliver Swithin.”

“Ah yes, the psychic,” said Tradescant, shaking Oliver's hand. Psychic? What was he talking about?

“We won't keep you long,” Mallard continued. “I think you mentioned when we met in Piccadilly Circus that you knew Sir Hargreaves Random.”

“Only slightly,” Tradescant replied. “I'm delighted to have this opportunity to pay my respects, but I doubt I would have come to his funeral if you hadn't requested my presence. I suppose you will get around to telling me why I'm here and why I'm in protective custody?”

“Very soon, sir. How did you know Sir Harry?”

“We once served on a jury together. I believe I started to tell you that before, but we were interrupted.”

“If I'd let you finish, we might have been at this point a lot sooner,” muttered Mallard ruefully. “You said you were in Piccadilly Circus for an appointment. Can you tell us about that?”

“Well, it's rather an unusual story,” Tradescant answered genially. “I had a telephone call the night before, purportedly from a man who worked for one of our competitors in the pharmaceutical business. He wouldn't give his name, but he claimed to be dissatisfied with his employer and was looking for an offer. He wanted to bring over the formula for a new drug, as an inducement for us to hire him. Naturally, I was intrigued, although I have to say we don't do business that way.”

“You have a commendable concern for ethics, sir,” Effie commented. Tradescant beamed at her, as if she were a favorite daughter.

“I'm delighted you think so, Sergeant, but the truth is that we don't hire defectors for our own protection. They're notoriously untrustworthy. You should never marry a man who's cheated on his wife, even if it was with you. Next time—and nobody cheats just once—you'll be the victim. But I was curious to see who this chap was.”

“So you arranged to meet in Piccadilly Circus,” Mallard prompted.

“Not immediately. He sent over a letter to my office the following morning, asking for a lunchtime meeting in the Circus.”

“Do you still have this letter?”

“I brought it with me,” Tradescant replied, reaching into the inside pocket of his jacket. “I was wondering if there was a connection between my clandestine appointment last Thursday and your desire to see me this morning.”

He produced a folded sheet of paper. Mallard took it by the corner and held it so they could all read the laser-printed words in Helvetica type:

Further to yesterday's phone conversation, please meet me in front of Lillywhites on Piccadilly Circus this afternoon at 1:00 p.m. I'll recognize you.

“Just that? No return address?”

“Nothing. It was dropped off at the reception desk of our office on London Wall, and nobody could identify the messenger. Well, naturally, I cancelled my lunch and went off to meet the man of mystery. And then I bumped into my old colleague, Gordon Paper. My initial thought was that he had sent the letter as a joke, but I quickly realized that it hadn't been Gordon's voice on the telephone. And then he dropped dead in front of me, shot by some crazed archer on the far side of the Circus. As you can imagine, it took my appointment right out of my mind.”

“And you never heard from the caller again?” Effie asked.

“Not a word. Does my presence here mean you think there really is a connection between Gordon's murder and Sir Harry's?”

“Can I ask something?” Oliver cut in. The pieces were falling into place in his mind. “Are you a Sagittarius?”

“As a matter of fact, I am,” replied Tradescant, open-mouthed. “Good heavens, you people really do have a sixth sense! I'm intrigued—go on, what else can you tell about me?”

“One thing, sir,” said Oliver seriously. “You're a very fortunate man.”

***

Later that morning, Mallard called Effie, Welkin, and the melancholy Moldwarp into the Scotland Yard conference room.

“Our killer makes mistakes,” Mallard announced to his three colleagues. “I hate to weigh the life of one man against another, but if Gordon Paper hadn't crossed in front of Edmund Tradescant a fraction of a second after the murderer pulled the trigger, then we'd probably be well on our way to twelve murders.”

“We might have spotted the jury connection, anyway,” Welkin protested gruffly.

“I doubt it. If Tradescant had died instead of Paper, then the first six murders would have consistently fit the zodiac pattern, and that would have been enough to hook us completely. The killer was fortunate to have astrology as his smoke screen—the zodiac theme has already been used by several other serial killers, especially in America, so it had an extra authenticity. Okay, we'd have been puzzled yesterday, when the victim wouldn't have been a Virgo. And we'd be scratching our heads when today's victim isn't a Leo, assuming we're even bothering to check birthdays by this point. But there'd be a Cancer for tomorrow, and a choice of three Tauruses for the next day but one, and our euphoria about being right and clever and perspicacious would surely have carried us through all the inconsistencies until the triple-decker horror-scope was complete and all twelve jurors were in their graves. No, Gordon Paper's accidental death saved seven lives.”

“An expensive mistake,” lamented Moldwarp.

“An ambitious kill,” Effie remarked. “Maybe the murderer wasn't such a good marksman, after all? Or maybe the distance across Piccadilly Circus was simply too great for the dead-on accuracy required? Either way, Paper's mismatch kept alive Oliver's belief that something else was going on, despite the odds against it that I kept quoting.”

“So the good news is, the murders have stopped,” Mallard concluded, noting Effie's sudden generosity toward his nephew. “The bad news is, we still have to find the killer.”

“I've been looking over the transcript of Angus Burbage's trial,” Effie told them. “It was a very clear case, no question at all of guilt. Burbage's fingerprints were all over the bomb and several people, not just police officers, heard him making threats. This was an important case, because accusations of police brutality against Burbage's son, Clifford, came up in the trial, and there was a subsequent investigation of the officers involved. It didn't lead to any prosecutions, however.”

“How long did Burbage get?” asked Welkin.

“Twenty years,” Effie continued. “It sounds stiff, but if that bomb had gone off, a lot of people could have been killed or seriously injured. And the incident occurred in the middle of a series of IRA bomb scares, which made it worse in many people's eyes.”

“Anything else we should know about from the trial?” asked Mallard.

“Angus Burbage gave an interview to ‘World in Action' after his sentencing. I've cued up what I think is the crucial part.”

She turned on the video player in the room—still in place from the viewing of Vanessa Parmenter's death. The monitor showed a tight close-up on the face of a middle-aged man smoking a hand-rolled cigarette. He spoke in a husky, educated voice.