The Fruit Gum Murders (22 page)

Twelvetrees put up a hand.

Mr Kyle came rushing up to him. ‘What's the matter, sir?'

Twelvetrees whispered, ‘It's my wife … she needs to go to the powder room.'

Kyle said, ‘Aye. That's all right, sir. Can she walk?'

‘Oh yes,' Lydia said. ‘I can walk.'

‘Right, ma'am, wait there. I'll just get an escort for ye,' he said and dashed off.

Lydia looked up at her husband, her mouth and eyes wide open and her hands shaking. Stewart Twelvetrees held her hand and said, ‘It'll be all right, darling. He's just gone to get help.'

Kyle returned with two security women. He said, ‘These two ladies will look after you, missy. You'll be all right. Just do what they say, and you'll be all right.'

‘Stewart, darling,' Lydia said, putting her arms out towards him.

‘It'll be all right, darling,' Twelvetrees said.

‘We'll be here, Lydi, waiting for you,' Nadine said.

The two women helped her to her feet and trooped off with Lydia between them.

The security team speedily checked Angel, Mary, Twelvetrees, Nadine Tinker and everybody else and asked them in turn to move to the east side of the hall. The check was completed in a few minutes. Then the team began searching the west side of the hall and suddenly a call went out, and a member of the team held his hand aloft. There was an interested murmuring through the patrons.

Kyle came running forward.

The man who had held up his hand pointed to something under a table a few yards away from where Angel and Mary had been sitting.

Kyle could be heard muttering something. Then he reached under the table and pulled out a glittering piece of jewellery. Then Kyle smiled widely and held it up to Mrs Mackenzie and Lady Muick.

He dashed across to the dais and handed it up to Mrs Mackenzie, who immediately passed it on to her ladyship.

Murmurs of pleasure ran throughout the hall. Even Sir Rodney Stamp managed a smile as he beamed at the half-clad young lady next to him.

Somebody started to clap, it quickly spread and the entire hall joined in and clapped enthusiastically.

Mrs Mackenzie rose to her feet and said, ‘May I have your kind attention for just a moment, please. I won't hold up the dancing any longer. Clearly someone attempted to take Lady Muick's necklace. They failed. It has now been returned to her ladyship, and I simply want to thank everybody on behalf of the committee for patiently allowing the security company to do their job. Thank you. The matter is now closed. Mr MC, would you please ask the orchestra to play some music?'

She sat down.

The MC immediately made the announcement. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, please take your partners for a quickstep.'

The orchestra began to play the introduction to ‘In the Mood'.

Angel saw Lydia return unescorted through the doors that led to the powder room and toilets, which were now open and unsupervised. She was still pale and kept her eyes looking downward as she found her husband in the crowd.

Angel rubbed his chin for a few moments, then his eyes wandered away from her and up to the girl on the dais. After a few moments, he stood up and without saying anything to Mary, who was talking to somebody, he casually walked across the corner of the room and then stepped up onto the dais.

Mrs Mackenzie said, ‘Good evening, Inspector. What can I do for you?'

‘Do you think that I could take a look at the necklace?'

‘I assure you that it's all right,' she said, ‘except that the chain is broken at the back near the clasp.'

‘Yes,' he said, ‘that's what I would like to see.'

She went across to her ladyship. ‘You know Inspector Angel?' Mrs Mackenzie said to Lady Muick.

The old lady looked at him vaguely and said, ‘Yes. Good evening, Inspector.'

‘Good evening, ma'am.'

Mrs Mackenzie said, ‘He wants to look at your necklace. Where is it? You put it in its case, didn't you? Where's the case?'

She ferreted around in several bags at the feet of the old lady.

Sir Rodney Stamp looked across at him, wrinkled his nose, yawned, then turned away. Angel took the opportunity to look more closely at the sparsely dressed young woman next to him who had come as a belly dancer. He stared very interestedly at her slim, brown abdomen.

Mrs Mackenzie meanwhile had found the jewellery case and opened it for him to see the necklace. ‘Tut tut, Inspector Angel,' she said with a flash of ill temper, ‘do you want to see this necklace or not?'

‘Oh yes, of course,' he said, turning back.

‘It
is
the genuine article,' she said. ‘It has not been substituted for paste or anything like that.'

‘No, no, I don't expect it has. I was curious to see how it was actually taken from around her ladyship's neck. Ah, I see it is a clean cut. It was simply removed with a pair of snips, cutters or pliers. That's all I need to know, thank you.'

‘Do you know who the thief is?' she said.

‘No, Mrs Mackenzie, I regret that I
don't
know. But I hope to find out quite soon.'

When he returned to Mary, he found that she was not very pleased. ‘What's the idea of making a fool of yourself like that, ogling that half-dressed girl up there on the dais? Half the room was looking at you.'

Angel shook his head. He frowned. ‘Were they? I didn't notice.'

‘And another thing, have we come here to dance or not?'

His head went up. He was listening to the music.

‘It's all right,' she said. ‘It
is
a waltz.'

‘In that case, madam,' he said with an exaggerated flourish and a bow, ‘would you care to accompany me in a bit of terpsichore?'

She couldn't help but smile. He held out his arms and they swished off onto the busy dance floor.

They reached the far end of the room and were enjoying the dance, the orchestra, and looking at the varied costumes – although Angel had spotted three Elvis Presleys and two Ann Widdecombes – when he saw Stewart and Lydia Twelvetrees and Nadine Tinker making for the exit. He blinked and pointed them out to Mary.

‘They're leaving early,' he said.

‘Could be Lydia's not very well,' Mary said.

‘She's certainly very pale.'

‘I wonder what's the matter?'

Angel shook his head.

SEVENTEEN

Stewart Twelvetrees drove the car up the drive to his house and stopped at the front door. The heat-sensitive lights flooded the whole area.

‘Out you get, girls,' Twelvetrees said to sisters Lydia and Nadine, who were in the back.

The car doors opened.

‘Do you want a hot drink to take up to bed, Stew?' Lydia said.

‘No. Don't bother for me, darling. I'm just about bushed.'

‘And I don't want anything, Lydi. I'm going straight up,' Nadine said.

The car doors slammed shut.

Twelvetrees drove up to the garage door and clicked on the remote. The door began to lift. He drove in. The door closed and he let himself in through the side door, which led into the hall. He locked the door, then checked the front door and went upstairs.

For fancy dress, he had been wearing a Victorian policeman's outfit. He undid the many buttons down the front of the long coat and took it off.

Lydia came in carrying a saucer with a glass of milk on it. She put it on the dressing-table. She dragged the big hat off and scratched her scalp. ‘I don't know who wore this before me, but I think they must have had fleas.'

Twelvetrees smiled. ‘Had a good night, Lydia?'

‘I've had better,' she said, throwing her bag onto the bed. ‘I've been to places where I
wasn't
suspected of stealing the host's bloody necklace.'

‘You were never suspected of stealing it.'

‘You don't know what those butch so-called women said to me in the toilet,' she said as she began unpacking her bag.

Twelvetrees was now undressed to the waist. He went out through a door that led into the ensuite bathroom. ‘What did they say to you?' he called. ‘They didn't accuse you of stealing it, did they?'

‘Not in so many words, but they wanted me to take
all
my clothes off. I took the coat off. That's all. I said I'm not taking anything else off. You can run that bloody machine over me if you want but you'll find sod all.'

‘And did they?'

‘Oh yes, and it triggered the damned thing. You should have seen the glee on their faces. But it was only the wire in the fastener on my suspender belt. Of course they were beaten then, so they packed their little toy up. But they wouldn't let me out of their sight – even in the lavatory cubicle.'

Twelvetrees came back into the bedroom a few minutes later dressed in his pyjamas and carrying a glass of water and a very flat tube of toothpaste. He put the glass on the bedside table and waved the empty tube at her and said, ‘We're out of toothpaste, love. I can't squeeze any more out of this one.'

Lydia was almost ready for bed. ‘I'll get some on Monday,' she said, then she dragged out a nightdress from under the pillow and went into the bathroom.

Twelvetrees dropped the toothpaste tube into the little wastepaper basket at the side of the dressing table. It landed on a used tissue, revealing something with a red handle. He bent down, pushed the tissue and the toothpaste tube to one side to reveal a small pair of cutters with red handles. He picked them out of the wastepaper basket, straightened up and looked at them. He frowned. He closed and opened them several times, then put them on the bedside table.

He pulled back the duvet and got into bed. He put his hands behind his head and leaned back against the bed head. He licked his bottom lip with the tip of his tongue. After a few seconds, he suddenly reached out for the red-handled cutters, looked at his fingernails and began to cut them. Then he swapped over and cut the nails on his other hand. He smiled, brushed away the clippings, replaced the cutters on the bedside table and returned his hands to the back of his head.

Lydia returned, rubbing some skincare into her hands. She looked at Twelvetrees and smiled sweetly. She turned out the light on her side, pulled back the duvet, got into bed and snuggled up to him. He put his arm round her.

‘I suppose I did enjoy most of tonight, really,' she said. ‘I was just being bitchy because those security people didn't believe me.'

Twelvetrees nodded.

She found an opening in his pyjama jacket and put her hand on his bare chest and made small, gentle, circular movements with her fingertips.

‘Did you enjoy yourself, darling?' she said.

‘It was nice seeing old friends,' he said.

‘Mmm,' she murmured.

Then suddenly he said, ‘Lydia, I want to ask you something.'

‘Yes, darling?'

He turned back to the bedside table and picked up the cutters. ‘I found these in the wastepaper bin. I wondered what they were doing there.'

Her eyes flashed. She quickly rolled away from him. ‘What? They're nail cutters, what the hell do you think they are?' she said.

‘I thought that's what they were. But what were they doing in the wastepaper bin, then?'

‘What do you think? They're faulty so I threw them out.'

‘Well, I've just cut
my
nails with them. They seem perfectly all right to me.'

‘Well, they're
not
all right. They stick. They're bloody faulty. All right?'

His face creased. He closed the cutters and opened them several times. ‘They work perfectly all right. Look. They don't stick at all.'

‘Marvellous. You've repaired them. Big deal.'

She turned over to her own side, pulled the duvet up to her neck and said, ‘Goodnight!'

Stewart Twelvetrees turned the light off on his side, settled down in the bed, closed his eyes; but he didn't get to sleep for several hours.

It was 8.28 a.m. on Monday when Angel arrived at his office. He looked down at his desk. That pot animal stared at him as it stood on top of the most enormous pile of paperwork; the monster made the pile underneath seem even worse.

He reached out, picked it up and glared at it. It glared back. He slammed it down. He rubbed his chin. He suddenly had an idea. He reached out for the phone and tapped in a number.

‘Yes, sir?' Ahmed said.

‘Come in here a minute, lad,' he said.

A few moments later Ahmed appeared.

‘Ah yes, Ahmed,' he said. He carefully picked up the pot monster and said, ‘Now, you like this … erm, unique figure, don't you, lad?'

Ahmed hesitated. ‘Well, yes, sir. Why?'

‘Do you think your mother would like this sort of thing? Is she into sheltering wildlife, save the whale, protect the … erm, pig and so on?'

Ahmed frowned. ‘Oh
yes
, sir.'

‘Well, I'd like to give you this.'

Ahmed's eyes lit up. ‘Oh,
sir
,' he said, taking the ornament.

‘You can give it to your mother, and tell her what a great lad she has for a son.'

‘Oh
thank
you, sir. Can I take it now and put it away safe somewhere? I don't want to get it broken.'

‘You can, lad. You can indeed.'

Ahmed dashed off with his trophy.

Angel sighed, then leaned back in his chair and smiled.

He pulled the pile of papers toward him and began to filter some of them out. Magazine subscriptions were being sought by the publishers of
Beekeepers' Weekly
, the
Planet Fortnightly
,
Cabbage Growers International
,
Natural Remedies For All
and
Kelp is Good for your Scalp
. He banished them all to the bin. He had just found another,
Navigation by the Stars
, when the phone rang.

It was Dr Mac.