The Book of Extraordinary Amateur Sleuth and Private Eye Stories Read online

  “At the time, I thought I’d been lucky. There was a charm he wore—we all had one. A silver mermaid, we had them made after the Mermaid Court days. He wore his round his neck. But when he was fished out of the Thames, it was nowhere to be found.” He gave a thin smile. “I said to myself, at least the water spirits are on my side. At least I’ve got away with it.” The smile faded. “But I was wrong. It’s been a life sentence.”

  His gaze drifted to the window. “There was a woman I loved. Annette. She knew I’d done it. She kept her silence, but she knew. And after that, she kept her distance from me too.” He turned back to her. “That prayer,” he said, suddenly. “We used to say it when I was little, me and my Mam. Me kneeling by my little bed… ‘Now I lay me down to sleep. I pray the Lord my soul to keep…’ ” His eyes watered. “I used to kneel there with Jason. Saying those words. I know he’s up there, with our Mam. But me—I can’t say those words no more.” He stared at his fingers. “Human flesh,” he said. “You’d be surprised. The way it fights against the blade.” He leaned back in his chair, closed his eyes.

  Agnes brushed his fingers with her own. “The God you prayed to, as a child. You could still pray…”

  He opened his eyes. “Who’s going to hear?” He shook his head. “No,” he said. “Whatever place I might have had up there with all the saints, I gave it up in that moment. There’s a place for me in Hell. And it’s a hell I’ve made my own.”

  ***

  Agnes left the hospice, walked through the twilight, the hurrying crowds. Julius’s words in her mind, that it’s about lightening the load. But that poor man is carrying a dead weight, she thought. A heavy, heavy weight.

  At the entrance to her block of flats stood the odd woman. She seemed even more threadbare and unkempt. She raised her hand, wagged an accusatory finger, then turned and walked away.

  The flat was chill and dark. Agnes switched on lights, heating. She poured herself a glass of wine, marveling that there was any left in the bottle.

  She pulled a book from the shelves. “We look for clues for the workings of God around us,” she read. “But the nature of faith means that we won’t know the clue until it comes to us, and even then we won’t know it as a clue.”

  It’s the sort of thing Julius would say, she thought. It’s the sort of thing he says when he accuses me of creating a mystery yet to be solved. Don’t tell me, he says, you’ve got that shivery feeling you claim to get when you sense a truth waiting to be revealed.

  She picked up the asphodel drawing. “When we’ve escaped,” Olivier used to say, “that’s when my life will begin.” And he never got further than a one-room flat in a deprived suburb of Marseilles.

  Beginnings and endings. Her eyes welled with tears as she placed the picture on its shelf.

  ***

  She woke to early slanting sunlight through the thin blinds, and a feeling of having slept very deeply. The clamor of the day, a motorbike’s roar, the magpies calling, the to and fro of a police siren.

  The siren got louder and louder and then stopped. The courtyard flickered with blue light.

  Agnes pulled on jeans and a fleece and stumbled out to the staircase.

  The street was blocked with cars, police, ambulance. The woman was standing by the railings, watching.

  “Another ghost,” she said. “Another unquiet spirit.” She turned to Agnes. Her hair was awry, her shabby raincoat unevenly buttoned. “They found a man in the river this morning. Drowned, last night. Kids, they found him.” She screwed up her eyes. “They say you’re a nun.”

  “I am,” Agnes said.

  “Don’t look like one. Don’t they wear them things, you know. Black and white.”

  “Not always,” Agnes said.

  “Jesuit, are you?”

  Agnes blinked. “Ignatian. Yes.”

  “Ah.” She screwed up her eyes. “Witches the lot of them.” She jabbed a finger at her own chest. “Mary. Named after Mary Magdalene. See the church up there? They say I was found in the doorway. Little baby, left there in a basket.” She turned back to the activity in the street. “All lies,” she said. “Had a ma and pa. Rubbish at it, both of ‘em. If I was dumped in the doorway, it’s because they’d forgotten all about me. Now look—” She pointed toward the ambulance. “Don’t know what they think they’re doing with that. A hearse, that’s what they need.” She gave a short laugh. “The kids thought it was a coat, floating in the river.” She turned back to Agnes. “Happens more often than anyone knows,” she said. “But then, people like us, no one cares if we live nor die. Not you,” she added. “You’ve got all them saints to keep an eye on you.” She gave a brief, cracked smile. “Funny thing is, the man they found. He was wearing a mermaid round his neck. You’d think a lucky charm like that, you’d think she’d have kept him safe. Like you and your holy spirits.” She tapped Agnes on the arm, then turned and stomped away.

  Agnes watched for a while longer. The ambulance started its engine, drove off into the traffic. The police cars dispersed. She was aware of a cold, shivery feeling.

  ***

  “Coincidence, sweetie.” Athena placed two mugs of coffee on the low pine table. “Another one. Sometimes I think we’re just figments of someone’s imagination…our lives all mapped out by some greater intelligence.”

  Agnes stirred milk into her coffee. “God, perhaps.”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t go that far.” Athena sipped her coffee. “But Asphodel Meadows. And now silver mermaids… And you say the witch on the stairs knew all about it?”

  “Not a witch. She’s named Mary after the saint, Mary Magdalene.”

  “Isn’t she the one who had seven devils cast out?”

  “Heavens. Fancy you knowing your Bible after all.”

  “Just the interesting bits.” Athena bit into her croissant. “Saint or witch, it explains her knowing all about weird drownings.” Athena licked her fingers. “At least you’ve got decent jam in your austerity kitchen.”

  ***

  That afternoon, Agnes was back at the hospice. She talked with a man in his nineties, a gentle soul whose gaze was shadowed with the horrors of Auschwitz. A woman of thirty-nine whose blood cancer had finally caught up with her, with her smart red suit, her black hair plaited in cornrows, her jolly stream of visiting friends. And now, as the sky grew pink behind the half-built city towers, she sat with Donald.

  “A drowning,” Donald said. “Last night.”

  “You heard?”

  “The nurses were talking of it.”

  There was a silence.

  “Donald,” she began. “They say this man was wearing a silver mermaid round his neck.”

  Donald levelled an even gaze.

  “They’re not very… I mean—it’s a rare thing, isn’t it?”

  “Well, that’s a strange thing,” he said. “Four of us. All on the sites. Victor, me, and Jason. And Scott. He was the fourth. But he married a Spanish girl, went off to live in Madrid.” He shrugged. “Maybe mermaid charms aren’t so unusual. Maybe they’re two a penny.”

  “And they don’t protect from drowning either.”

  He managed a smile. “A river death.” Donald’s eyes followed a passing bus. “Passing into Lethe.” He turned back to her. “The river of forgetfulness. But me—what frightens me, when I pass from this world to the next—they won’t let me forget.”

  Passing the church, under the gathering clouds, she saw a figure hunched in the shadows, realized as she approached that it was Mary Magdalene, idling by the gate as if in waiting.

  “This dead man.” She took hold of Agnes’s sleeve. “They’re saying he’d been drugged. Then dropped in the river.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Gossip. That’s all. Nothing better to do with my time. And these days, it’s all caught on camera, isn’t it. They’re looking for a woman, they’re sayin
g.” She dropped her grip, pointed at the churchyard. “There. That’s where they say I was found.”

  Agnes saw the arch of the church doorway, shadowed by the sunset.

  “And it isn’t true?”

  Mary Magdalene shrugged. “Who knows? I had a father who loved drink more than anything, and a mother too busy with her rage to care. Also…” She hesitated, and for a moment the brittle smile softened. “Also, here.” She took Agnes by the arm. “Look.” She pointed, to a small patch of earth, dotted with flowers. “It’s where the babes are laid to rest.”

  Agnes looked at the rows of primroses and violets, laid out as if newly planted.

  “The local women come here,” Mary said. “Those tiny souls are cherished here.” She relinquished her grip.

  “And you?” Agnes said.

  She shook her head. “No motherhood for me,” she said. “You and me—we have that in common, at least.”

  ***

  Back home, Agnes made an omelet for supper, a tomato salad. She sat and looked at the drawing on its shelf. She thought about Olivier, how they’d spray cheap perfume so no one would know they’d been smoking when they got home. Neither of them saying out loud that there’d be no one back home who cared.

  There was a knock on her door. Mary Magdalene, she thought, as she got to her feet. With more tales from the graveyard—

  A woman stood in the doorway. She had tired blonde hair, a thin raincoat roughly belted, worn flat shoes.

  “Sister Agnes?” she said. “I’m Annette Bradshaw. I—I hope you can help me. I need to see Donald.”

  Agnes settled her on one of the armchairs, made a pot of tea.

  “I’m sorry to track you down like this.” Annette hung her coat over the back of her chair. “But I didn’t know who else to ask. And that woman out in the street told me which flat was yours. She seems to know everything.”

  Agnes handed her a mug. “Mary Magdalene. She says that’s her name.”

  Annette managed a small smile. “I care about him, you see.” Annette had a direct blue gaze. “I know he thinks I’m keeping away, but—but he’s a good man. A good Catholic man. He deserves to die in peace. It was the nurses there who said you were visiting.”

  “He’s afraid of Hell.” Agnes brushed dust from the arm of her chair. “He says he’s sinned.”

  “I was there.” The words tumbled from her. “I saw him leave the pub, I knew that awful man was having a smoke out on the terrace. I knew that Donald was going after him. I went out too, I think I thought I could stop him… I was too late.” She gave a little shiver.

  “And now a second drowning,” Agnes said.

  “Yes, I’d heard.” She had work-roughened hands, bitten nails.

  “Mermaids,” Agnes heard herself say.

  Annette shot her a glance.

  “A silver mermaid charm, worn round the neck.”

  The blue eyes were fixed on her.

  “It seems odd, to me. Both men, wearing such a thing. A coincidence.”

  “If you believe in coincidence.” Annette shifted in her chair.

  “And you don’t?”

  Annette looked up. “When I was small, I was taught that God loves me. That he loves us all. My mom, that’s what she told us.”

  “But mermaids—”

  “Faith,” she said. Her voice was sharp. “Not coincidence. If anything’s laid down, it’s laid down by the good Lord.” She curled a lock of hair behind her ear. “A good Catholic woman, my mom. A wonderful woman. I always thought I’d be a mother the way she was.”

  “And—?”

  She shook her head. “It wasn’t to be. Too late for me now.” Again, the fierce blue gaze. “Sister—I need to see Donald. I want to make it better for him.”

  She got to her feet, gathered up her coat. “That song,” she said. “ ‘At last, I am free…’ They were playing it, that night. That’s what I want for Donald. I want him to be free.”

  ***

  The rain continued through the night. Agnes, up before sunrise, headed to the Community House in Hackney for Lauds. The nuns murmured the liturgy in the pre-dawn quiet. “Look upon my adversity, and forgive me all my sins…”

  Afterwards, the bus tires swished in the London rain. She got off the bus at the church, walked through the churchyard. She looked at the dotted rows of pink and yellow, drooping under the gray sky. A lone woman stood there in smart coat and leather boots, her umbrella splashing rain as if the whole sky was weeping for the mothers living still, mourning still.

  She was early at the hospice. She found Donald in his room, dressed and tidy, but looking tired.

  She pulled up a chair next to his. He reached to his bedside locker, opened a drawer.

  She saw, lying in the palm of his hand, a silver mermaid figure.

  “It’s beautiful,” she said.

  “Derek,” he said. “He made them for us. Silversmith at Hatton Garden, he was. We knew him from school. Went into his dad’s business.”

  “Donald—why would Scott have come back?”

  He gave a weary shrug.

  “And—who would want him dead?”

  He glanced up at her. “If it is Scott.”

  She held the mermaid between her fingers.

  “So—there were four of these?”

  He gave a nod.

  “Victor’s is at the bottom of the river,” she said. “And Scott’s—if this man is Scott—is with the forensic boys, I imagine. That leaves Jason’s,” she said.

  “No one ever found it,” he said. “We asked…when they—when they took him down. He’d always wear it. But…” He closed his eyes.

  She spoke again. “Annette came to see me,” she said. “Last night. She wants to visit you.”

  His eyes flicked open. “She does?” He straightened up, grew taller in his seat.

  “She’s waiting outside.”

  She led him out of his room, into the lounge area. Annette was there, walking toward them in pleated skirt and heels, her hair freshly washed.

  Donald got to her first, took hold of both her hands. “Annette,” he said.

  “I had to see you,” she said.

  ***

  Agnes left them alone. The rain had eased, and she went out into the morning, and the birds sang loud as the sun broke through the clouds.

  She walked to the graveyard. The green buds on the trees sparkled with raindrops. She thought about the clues that come upon you when you can’t see that they are clues.

  She was aware of the click of heels on the stone path. She turned to see Annette.

  “Thank you,” Annette said.

  “Was it okay?”

  “It was more than okay,” she said.

  They walked, slowly. They looked at the rows of flowers, fresh in the morning light.

  “The Asphodel Meadows,” Agnes said. “In the old stories. Where souls of ordinary people go. Only—here, it’s just London flowers. For London souls.”

  Annette paused, staring down at a patch of earth, a tangle of weeds between the well-tended borders.

  “Forgiveness,” Annette said. “That’s what we talked about.” She looked up at Agnes. “He is so frightened,” she said. “A brave man like that, a proper sort of bloke, to see him quaking with the fear of Hell…” She bit back tears. “If only I could help.”

  Look upon my adversity. The words sounded in her mind. Forgive me all my sins.

  “You could tell the truth,” Agnes said.

  Annette’s expression hardened. They stood silent by the graves, as the sun went in and the clouds gathered overhead.

  “I think,” Agnes said, “I think you have Jason’s mermaid charm.”

  Annette’s eyes filled with tears. After a while she said, “Ordinary souls.” She waved a hand toward the graves. “Is that what
you said?”

  Agnes looked at the spread of thistle and dandelions. She looked up at Annette. “You—your—”

  “My baby,” she said. “Our baby. Mine and Jason’s. But not ordinary. He was the most perfect baby in the whole world.”

  “He’s—he’s here?”

  Annette gave a small nod. She took a few steps, pointed at a space where a ragged rosebush drooped by the old stone wall. She seemed to crumple, as Agnes caught her by the arm, led her to a damp wooden bench.

  She sat, breathing, her hands over her eyes.

  “It’s not Donald,” Agnes said. “It’s not Donald who needs the dead weight of sin to be lifted from his shoulders. It’s you.”

  “I tried to tell him.” She took her hands from her face. “I said to him, the angels are waiting for you. It’s me who’s banished. Exiled from my baby…” Her voice cracked.

  “And—Jason?”

  “I loved him. We were going to get married. And then—”

  “He died.”

  She nodded.

  “Victor stole your child’s father.”

  Another nod. “I lost the baby. The shock of it…”

  “It wasn’t the knife wound that killed Victor,” Agnes said. “It was the person who led him to the water, who pushed him in.”

  Annette’s blue eyes were fixed on her. “Donald was drunk. He doesn’t realize how drunk he was. Sure, he pushed the knife into Victor’s side. But it was a flesh wound. The guy wouldn’t have died of it. And Donald saw him stumble toward the river. But what he didn’t see, because he turned and fled, was me. Hiding in the shadows. Taking hold of an injured man, a man stumbling, from drink, from shock. Leading him to the water’s edge. A push. That was all it took. It was high tide. The water spirits were on my side. One minute he was standing on the embankment. The next, splash. Into the waves, the darkness.” Her voice was level now. She went on. “But as he fell, he turned to me. As if to call for help. His mouth open in an O. His eyes pleading. As if I was there to be his savior, not his killer. And then, splash. Gone.”