The Book of Extraordinary Amateur Sleuth and Private Eye Stories Page 9

  I caught another cab to Kirton Close, a pleasant road not far from the offices of Harry Blackledge. It was where Raymond had his little pied a terre. The shiny sedan was outside. Extracting my trusty bit of wire from my wallet, I applied my skills to unlocking the trunk. After less than a minute, the black lid sprang open. I put my head inside and sniffed. The smell was unmistakable.

  Raymond’s house was a tidy little row house on the end, with a path down the side which led to a small garden at the rear. At the far end of the garden was a small hut. I approached it quietly and listened. There was no sound. I tapped gently on the door. Suddenly there was a shuffling noise, followed by a muted whimpering.

  ***

  Raymond was surprised to see me on his doorstep. Surprised, and not a little apprehensive.

  “Have you come for me to help you with your detective work?” he asked brightly.

  “In a way,” I said. “I’ve come for Silver Lining.”

  ***

  Raymond ran his fingers wildly through his hair. “It was a stupid idea that got out of hand. I didn’t really mean to go this far. I… I just got carried away.” It was a few moments later, and we were sitting in Raymond’s neat sitting room. I offered him a cigarette, but he declined. “Tell me about it,” I said, lighting up.

  “I just wanted to prove… I just wanted to show that I could do something daring on my own,” he said, his voice full of misery.

  “Prove to who? To Gloria?”

  He nodded. “To Gloria. To my dad. And I suppose to me, too. Gloria said I was like a little boy and my father treated me like one—always wrapping me up in cotton wool. I just wanted to show them what I was capable of. I know now I was stupid. I never thought through the consequences of what I did.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  “You mean…”

  “How you did it.”

  For a moment, a smile flickered on his lips. “I wanted it to appear mysterious. I loosened some sections of the perimeter fence to the kennels, just enough to allow me and the dog through. Then, just before midnight, I slipped inside and got into the kennels. I’d been working on the mortar of the gate of Silver’s run for a few days, so it was easy to slip the bricks out and loosen the gate away from its moorings. I didn’t want to use a key. I thought it might throw suspicions on Charlie or Gloria and get them into trouble. Besides, it was more daring this way. I’d brought some drugged dog meat and put it in Silver’s dish. That was another dramatic touch, really. I didn’t let her eat it. She was used to me and came quietly without any fuss.”

  “And then you hid her in the trunk of the car and drove her home, and now she’s in the garden shed.”

  Raymond nodded. “It was only then that I realized I hadn’t planned what to do next.”

  “Sure. You can hardly tell your father. He’d probably burst a blood vessel, and I reckon Gloria isn’t going to be too impressed with someone who steals his own father’s greyhound, not when she’s got Rod, the bulging boxer.”

  “Rod Merrison? Is she going out with him now?”

  “’Fraid so.”

  Raymond’s face melted into the glummest of expressions. “I am a fool. I guess they were right. I am like a little boy. And I made things worse by writing the ransom note. Well, I thought I ought to come out of this with something like £500. I intended to put the dog back. I wouldn’t harm her for the world.”

  It took all my strength not to pat him on the back and ruffle his hair. “You have talent and initiative,” I said. “I guess you just haven’t pointed them in the right direction yet. I reckon you need to persuade your dad to let you join up. They can use lads like you in the forces. If he says no, enlist anyway. You’re old enough.”

  He brightened a little. “I… I think you’re right, but…” The shoulders sank once again, and the furrowed brow returned. “But what am I going to do about Silver Lining?”

  “We’re going to put her back later tonight.”

  “You… mean you’re not going to spill on me? Tell my dad, the cops?”

  I shrugged. “What would be the point? Let’s just ladle the spilt milk back into the bottle, eh?”

  A flurry of emotions raced across his features: surprise, relief, joy, gratitude, and then a kind of dismay. “How did you know it was me who’d snatched the dog? Was I that transparent?”

  “Intuition, I guess, mixed with a few clues.”

  “Like what?” The young fellow was getting belligerent now.

  “Like the ransom note was typed on the typewriter on your desk. It blocks out the spaces in the letters e and a.”

  Raymond’s mouth dropped open. “You checked.”

  “It seemed appropriate. And then there was your obvious attraction to Gloria. I could see that you wanted to be ‘a man’ for her. Were you going to invite her round and show her what you’d done?”

  I’d hit the nail on the head, and he grinned sheepishly. “You are a detective, aren’t you?”

  I reckon, in these grim roustabout days, praise doesn’t come any higher.

  Around eleven o’clock that night, we sneaked through the fence at the kennels with a dozing Silver Lining and returned her to her billet. She looked happy to be back, and she soon curled up for a good night’s sleep.

  ***

  Raymond drove me home to Priory Court, my home base, just off Tottenham Court Road. He thanked me profusely for helping him and we shook hands. “Off you go, Corporal Blackledge,” I said cheerily. “You go and give the Germans what for.”

  Twenty minutes later, I rang his father. It was nearly one in the morning. A harsh, irritated, sleep-drugged voice rasped down the phone at me. “Who the hell is it? Do you know what time it is?”

  “This is John Hawke, and it is 12:51 precisely.”

  “Is this some kind of joke? What the hell do you want?”

  “Just to inform you that you’ll receive two shocks in the morning. Silver Lining has been returned to the kennels safe and sound, and I shall be around to see you with my bill for services rendered.”

  “You found Silver Lining!” His voice went up an octave.

  “Yes.”

  “This is on the level?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why, that’s bloody wonderful. Where was she? Who had her?”

  “You don’t really need to know, Mr. Blackledge. Just be satisfied that you’ve got the dog back and she’s none the worse for her little holiday.”

  “You mean you’re not going to tell me.”

  “No. We detectives have our code, you know.”

  There was a pause on the line, and then the voice came back softer and kinder. “She’s really back, my little Silver?”

  “She is. Good night, Mr. Blackledge. Sweet dreams,” I said, replacing the receiver.

  I poured myself a whiskey, turned off the lights, and drew the curtains back. I could see, far away across the rooftops, fingers of light searching the sky for enemy aircraft. It seemed that they were searching in vain. It was going to be a quiet night. I finished my whiskey and went to bed.

  Dodie Golightly and

  the Ghost of Cock Lane

  Paul Magrs

  London, 1968

  Dodie

  The studio was somewhere between Smithfield and Holborn, in a strange, wonky lane hidden from the main road. Timothy Bold kept laughing because it was called “Cock Lane,” but our Timothy’s always had a puerile sense of humor. Cassie said it was a dark, wicked part of London: near the location of old Newgate Gaol. A place full of secrets and never-solved mysteries.

  Dear Cassie—my loyal assistant—was only trying to cheer me up with this talk of macabre things. We were actually visiting the studios in Cock Lane for a very prosaic reason. Timothy had a friend at a London Radio station who was keen to interview me about my work. I had a new book out and so I thought, why no
t? Though I really loathe doing these publicity things. I’d rather be home back in Manchester dreaming up my next mystery.

  So there we were, deep under Cock Lane, in a boxy, airless room with no natural light. Talking to a fellow called Keith who claimed to be a great fan of mine. He was hairy and burly in a nasty caftan and I didn’t like the way he kept devouring me with his pinhole eyes.

  It was only when Timothy came back from the toilets looking terrified that things perked up.

  “There’s a loudspeaker in the lavs,” he said. “And you can hear what’s being broadcast live. And I heard something! Something really weird…”

  Keith was playing a lengthy piece of what he called progressive rock and had lit up a drug-flavored cigarette, so we had time to ask Timothy what on earth he was talking about. He looked really rattled, standing there in his cream turtleneck jumper and his purple flares.

  “It was a… a… scratching noise… You could hear it, really distinctly, all the way through your interview with Keith, Dodie. And then… then there was this horrible, hollow laughter, too! I thought I was imagining it. But it went on and on… for about a minute. It was definitely there.”

  By my side, the evanescent Cassandra had perked up at this mention of something spooky. She loves anything like this, as well she might. “Ask him if it was a woman’s laughter, or a man’s!” she urged me. Poor Cassie. She’s dependent upon me for making her thoughts and feelings known in the outside world. But generally I am happy to pass the poor dear’s messages on.

  “Cassie asks if it was a man or a woman laughing.”

  Keith the DJ frowned through his dirty-looking hair. “Who’s Cassie?”

  Timothy said, “Tell Cassie it was a woman. A crazy, bonkers, shrieking woman. That’s what I heard.”

  The DJ sagged in his seat and sighed dismally. “So! She’s at it again. We’ve had complaints, you know. Our listeners are hearing this quite a lot. Shrieking laughter. They think it’s us being funny or avant-garde, but it isn’t. Apparently there’s a hideous scratching noise, coming over the airwaves. It’s her. It’s that bloody woman!”

  His progressive rock record was coming to a turgid ending and he’d have to return to his program any second. Before we lost him, I asked, “Who? What woman?”

  Keith’s face went very dark. “It’s Scratching Fanny. She was once very famous in these parts.”

  ***

  We’re a great team, that’s what we are.

  Obviously, I’m the most effective in terms of solving actual mysteries, but that’s to be expected. Cassandra is great moral support and, being dead, she’s limited in what she can actually bring to the table. (For the longest time, the poor, dear thing didn’t actually realize she was dead. She can be quite a ditz. Discovering her own moribund status came as quite a blow, but she’s mostly over it now, I believe. She’s a very buoyant, cheery type.) Timothy is a glamorous, hedonistic, rather famous, idiotic boy. We were at school together and I adore him, of course. But he really is an idiot, and he’s usually the one who gets us embroiled in adventures and whatnot.

  That afternoon—following my radio interview in Cock Lane—we separated: Timmy off to the King’s Road boutiques to blow a wad of cash, as he delightfully put it; Cassandra to swoop and saunter around the ether, having an investigative rummage of her own, and myself to the British Library. I had a yen to do a spot of research on this Cock Lane phantom. With a couple of hours to kill under the august dome of the Reading Room, I could think of nothing more pressing than this business of Scratching Fanny. Yes, that is indeed what they called the ghost. It was back in the eighteenth century: everything was a good deal coarser in those days.

  Later, in a King’s Road coffee bar, I was sharing my insights with the others. “Samuel Johnson left the best account, as is to be expected.”

  Timmy slurped his frothy coffee from a smoked glass cup and gave every appearance of never having heard of Dr. Johnson.

  “That summer of ‘17— the ghost of Cock Lane was the height of fashion,” I explained. “The theatres, pubs and coffee houses would empty early, each evening, according to the good Doctor. The public flocked to one particular small, shabby wooden house hidden away on Cock Lane. And here there was a family whose lodgers had recently departed. One difficult, drunken woman had died of the scarlet fever—Mrs. Fanny Kemp—and apparently it was her ghost who had come back and was causing such a rumpus. Her slovenly widower had absconded, leaving their landlord and his young family to cope with the haunting and the hullaballoo and the sudden fame that a noisy apparition caused…”

  Well, Cassie’s eyes were aglow at the sound of all of this. She loved hearing anything about ghosts. It made her feel validated, I suppose.

  Timothy’s eyes were flitting around the coffee bar, checking out girls at the other tables. His attention span was appalling.

  Cassie was staring at me. “Do you think this ghost of Mrs. Kemp could still be there? Still scratching away on Cock Lane?”

  I’d looked at maps. I’d compared the tidy, perfect lines of the modern-day A-to-Z with the old, hand-drawn scrawl of the street maps of two hundred years ago. It seemed plain to me: the studio we had visited this morning was almost exactly on the spot of the house where Fanny Kemp had expired.

  Cassandra looked delighted. “If she’s still there… then I’ll know! I’m the only one who can find out for sure!”

  Cassandra

  This evening we are back at the studios. Timothy has managed to get an invite to a late-night live recording session for a band called Brontosaurus. Poor Dodie has to pretend she’s a fan of these tousle-headed young boys with their bongos and acoustic guitars.

  Luckily I don’t need anyone’s permission to slip inside any building and to float through the walls. I can check out absolutely anywhere I like and I keep telling myself it’s a gift. It’s a wonderful opportunity. And how fabulous for a wannabe detective! To be able to go anywhere, and learn anything!

  Yet still I miss being solid, alive, and in the actual world.

  Down, down through the concrete stories. I’m sifting and slipping through levels of history, on the hunt for active spirits.

  It’s not quite a year since I learned I was a ghost. There’s still so much I’m finding out about the business of being dead… Like this, for instance… this business of performing a kind of psychic survey and passing through the ages. I can picture how it was here, a hundred, two hundred years ago in the blink of an eye. Ah, look… here are the timbered buildings, all higgledy-piggledy in Cock Lane, as it was back then. And the crowds that came to congregate around the ramshackle house where the ghost was reputed to be active. My god, look at them! Dozens of them! Jostling, boozy, eager, and hysterical. They’re like a crowd going to the races on a Bank Holiday Monday, but they’re swarming into an obscure back alley and cramming themselves into a tiny dark house…

  At the entrance to which the owners—Mr. and Mrs. Parsons are selling tickets. He’s all feverish and excited, yelling that tickets are selling like hot cross buns. Everyone had to roll up! Roll up! Come and witness London’s acclaimed and infamous Scratching Fanny while she was still willing! At least Mrs. Parsons has the good grace to look embarrassed and appalled by her husband’s barking.

  I push closer through the hugger-mugger crowd. They’re burping and bustling and bursting with ripe epithets. They can’t wait to get inside to hear the lamentations of London’s most renowned phantom.

  I wonder if I could make a bit of cash like this? Would people in the 1960s be as keen on queueing to see a genuine ghost? I’d have to work on my noises and actually getting myself heard in the corporeal world. One thing I know: it takes a huge amount of effort to get people to hear you and to break through that gauzy veil. It ain’t no picnic. If Fanny really exists and she’s as noisy as they reckon, well, I take my hat off to her.

  It’s at this moment that someon
e catches my elbow and I gasp.

  I’m so used to being see-through and intangible, the feeling of actually being touched takes my breath away.

  There’s a very small, pale-faced girl standing beside me. She’s in a nightdress, looking rather glum and transparent. I know at once that she’s just the same as me. Ghostly and lonely. About thirteen, I’d say. She’s not having much fun.

  “I’m Elizabeth Parsons,” she sighs, leading me away from the crowd’s rumpus. “When I was alive, this was my home. It’s my house all these people are swarming to visit. It was me who slept in the room where that nasty Fanny lived and died. When she was carted off, my dad told me—you can have her room, our Elizabeth. And that was the start of it. I was kept awake by Fanny’s wailing visitations and her scratching at the wooden walls and floors and I was terrified. And when I told them, so were my parents. None of us slept for weeks and weeks. We were just about dead on our feet because of all the noise at night…”

  “Oh, you poor thing,” I gasp, trying to imagine what it must have been like to be this starving-looking child, at the mercy of a malevolent spirit. “But why was she so vengeful?”

  “She used to come to me and scream that she had been killed. She had been murdered in the very bed I was sleeping in. Her fella had murdered her with arsenic, she said. He used to bring her a mug of purl each night, and she thought he was kind. Beer and gin, all mixed up—she had a weakness and could never sleep without her tonic. He slipped in something deadly, she said, and told everyone it was the fever had carried her off. But Fanny knew better and she wanted the world to know… And so she made as much noise as she could. Her nails scraped and scratched against the wooden box of my room. Her screaming filled my head and made the rafters shake. She was a very determined woman…”

  We sail around the rooftops and chimney stacks together, cooling ourselves in the streaming clouds and taking a lovely, calm aerial view of the twisting streets and their human congestion. Together we perch on the roof of the old church nearby. “And now you’re haunting Cock Lane, too,” I point out. “Like Fanny, you’re unable to rest easy…”