Death in the Stars Page 6

  ‘Come on.’ She beckoned me to follow her. We walked along the corridor to a door painted green and with a small pane of opaque glass. She opened the door. A younger nurse was reading a newspaper. At a nod from the sister, she poured me a cup of tea. The sister and I sat side by side in two battered chairs. ‘I’m sorry to tell you that Mr Moffatt is unlikely to regain consciousness. He is in a coma. We have made him comfortable.’

  I should have known, and part of me had known since that moment in the chapel when I looked at his pinprick eyes. I knew that he had taken too much of some narcotic. But why? Perhaps the icy cold of that morning had affected his old wounds and caused him a lot of pain. It must be that.

  ‘Can nothing be done?’

  ‘Doctor thinks not. He tried to reverse the symptoms.’

  ‘Of narcotic poisoning?’

  ‘I can’t confirm that, and while there’s life and all that. The best of us can be wrong.’

  ‘I will take you up on the offer to let me to sit with him. I promised Miss Fellini I would.’

  She stood. ‘Come on. It won’t hurt and who knows, he may be aware that there’s someone by. I believe in miracles and prayer.’

  I followed her along the corridor. She touched her neck. ‘If you look at him here, you’ll see where the needle entered. His collar is stained with a drop of blood. I assume he injected himself?’

  With the screens around the bed, Billy Moffatt and I occupied a nook of never-never land where there was nothing to do but wait. When his lips were dry, I moistened them. With a damp flannel, I cooled his brow.

  Selina’s fears had seemed exaggerated. I recalled her words.

  Something bad might happen… Douglas Dougan… walked under a tram… Floyd Lloyd… delightful… a clever ventriloquist… accident on stage… crushed to death… something malign in the stars.

  Yet there was no malign force at work here, or was there? Had Billy brought about his own destruction? I could see quite clearly the needle mark on his neck. Selina seemed so sure that calamity was written in the stars; but placing a needle against flesh required a human hand. Would he be capable of reaching that awkward spot on his neck while holding a needle? I tried, holding an imaginary needle against my neck. Yes, that was certainly possible, awkward but possible.

  The letter from Giuseppe Barnardini, telling me of his recommendation, had contained a strong hint of what was behind my engagement. He had told Selina that if ever she needed discretion and investigation, she could do worse than turn to me. If something was written in the stars, then no human intervention could prevent it. If some malicious person were wreaking foul play under the cover of the alignment of planets or phases of the moon, that was a different matter. But who might that person be? As far as I knew, no other acquaintance of Billy’s was here. A total stranger would need to be mad to approach him and stick a needle in his neck. Billy would have struggled. He must have injected himself, and misjudged the dose.

  As I watched with Billy, I again went over my first meeting with Selina, searching for something palpable.

  I made myself go back to the beginning, to the day when Selina first called on me. Was there something I missed? Why had I been so foolish as to think this would be a simple assignment? Book an aeroplane flight, which anyone could have done for ten or twenty guineas; accompany her to Giggleswick, and return. Returning in the aircraft was now off the list for me. I would be struggling to find a seat on a train, together with tens of thousands doing likewise.

  What was it that should have set off louder alarm bells as she and I sat in my kitchen with a pot of tea and Mrs Sugden’s biscuits?

  She explained that an invitation had come out of the blue from the headmaster of Giggleswick School for her to view the eclipse from the Astronomer Royal’s encampment. She was curious and yet had misgivings. No sooner had she voiced these misgivings, she dismissed them. It was simply a feeling something may go wrong. She had a show every night. There might be the possibility of an accident on the railway or delay on crowded roads. She had never yet let down her public.

  Now that I thought back, it was clear that I should have pressed her more about those misgivings. Instead, I had simply listened and taken what she said at face value. She expressed concern about the time the journey would take.

  That was when I crossed my fingers and assured her about the safety of flying.

  We had both been right: she about the possibility of an accident; me about the safety of flying. Of course, there was more than one kind of flying. Who knows to what heights and wild regions Billy Moffatt’s drug-taking had led him? The ‘accident’ Selina feared had happened, and to Billy, although to me it appeared as a self-inflicted injury.

  I took Billy’s hand that was cold and unresponsive. He was far away, deep in his coma, but I spoke to him. ‘You’re safe Billy, safe from any more harm. And Billy, what did Selina mean when she talked about the possibility of an accident?’

  Answer came there none from poor Billy, still deep inside his coma.

  What pictures might be flitting through the shadows of his mind? I hoped they would be pleasant scenes, not mud, not the walls of a trench, not the scuttle of rats. If thoughts of his career on stage came to him now, I hoped it would be of triumphs, not of a hostile audience. And love, he must have loved as we all do. I had seen in his eyes that he loved Selina.

  How I wished he could talk to me. I did not even know who found him and where. One of the OTC boys I presumed. He may have wandered off to inject himself, perhaps seeking a quiet corner of the chapel, which some people might regard as sacrilegious. Perhaps it was during the tension of the countdown, or when the world turned dark and cold.

  I squeezed his hand, just in case. ‘Selina wanted to be here. I’m here in her place. She loves you, and so do all your admirers. Come on, Billy. Let’s have a miracle. Let’s say, God save Billy. If not, you know what they’ll say when they hear about you. They’ll all miss you. They’ll say it ain’t funny. Not one little bit. It ain’t funny.’

  If Selina had been right to think that two accidental deaths in a year were more than coincidental, then Billy’s collapse increased those suspicions.

  The possibility of foul play loomed large. If that were the case, then those nearest to Douglas Dougan, Floyd Lloyd and Billy Moffatt must come under suspicion. I thought back to the party, the eclipse party at Selina’s fabulous house.

  ‘Did I miss something, Billy? Was there someone at the party who might not be trusted?’

  The cast of colourful characters who formed the background in the wonderful world of Selina Fellini and Billy Moffatt stepped before my mind’s eye.

  There was Selina, of course. She was the person close to Billy, and to the other two men. But a murderess would not call in a detective, would she?

  Nine

  A Particular Interest in Obituaries

  At nine o’clock, Mrs Sugden, Mrs Shackleton’s housekeeper, was in the street with a bucket and shovel. She saw the messenger boy’s bike at the gate. Durkin the coalman had passed that way and Mrs Sugden had gone out to pick up any gift his horse may have left on the road, before anyone else beat her to it. Mrs Sugden collected horse muck for her gardening friend Stanley’s allotment. Stanley Belt was old and wizened as a weathered gnome but grew the sweetest carrots and cabbages known to man or beast.

  Triumphant, she finished her shovelling and straightened up, ready to walk back and take her booty to the heap in the back garden. That was when she saw the skinny red-haired messenger lad at the door. He was pushing something through the letterbox.

  Striding back along the street, she waved to him. A dignified figure with an air of natural authority, Mrs Sugden did not hurry but kept to her usual measured pace towards what she proudly regarded as her own front door. Strictly speaking, it was Mrs Shackleton’s front door. Mrs Sugden’s preference was to use her own entrance, to the annexe at the back of the house.

  At the gate, the messenger stood by his bike. ‘I’ve already s
hoved it through.’

  ‘Who is it to?’

  ‘Mrs Sugden.’

  ‘That’s me.’ She set the bucket down. ‘Where is it from?’

  ‘I fetched it from Roundhay from a big house set back and painted white.’ When she gave him a look, he added, ‘I was given it by a woman in a dark frock.’

  ‘Just a minute. I’ll see if there’s an answer.’ Mrs Sugden opened the door. She had expected Mrs Shackleton to be back by now and if she wasn’t, why not, that was what she asked herself as she picked up the letter. And why a letter when Mrs Shackleton was over-fond of the telephone?

  She opened the envelope, took out the sheet with the familiar handwriting and read it quickly. ‘Thank you. No answer.’

  The lad waited.

  ‘Just a minute.’ She found her purse and gave him sixpence, which was over the odds but when a letter came from Roundhay sixpence seemed more suitable than a few coppers.

  The lad thanked her, touched his cap and had mounted his bike before she picked up the bucket to take round to the back to the manure heap. She lifted off the tarpaulin cover, placed there when the weather turned warm on account of a recent glut of bluebottles.

  When she had deposited her prize and replaced the cover, Mrs Sugden made a plan. She had thought all along it was a bit fishy that Selina Fellini, who everyone went crackers for, should be asking Mrs Shackleton to book a plane for her, and to stop out all night at one of those parties certain people held. After that they were to go to a posh school in the middle of nowhere to see the eclipse. What good would it do anyone to forego a night’s sleep for half a minute of staring at the sun disappearing? The sun disappeared most of the time and no one thought anything of it.

  She reread the letter. All this eclipse business hadn’t done this comedian chap any good by the sound of things. It was just like Mrs Shackleton to have volunteered to sit with the poor fellow in hospital as if she still wore a nurse’s uniform and was under orders.

  Not that Mrs Sugden hadn’t been a bit curious about the eclipse. She was awake early, let out Sookie the cat and followed her into the dark wood at the back as the sun came up. She’d put on her gloves and, not being one to waste time, gathered nettles. There was no fanfare for the eclipse in Batswing Wood, though Sookie went very still and didn’t like it. Mrs Sugden saw the pattern appear on the ground as the moon blocked out the sun. A couple of the neighbours were there, including young Thomas with his mam. They exchanged a few words. Thomas seemed pleased enough. When it was all over, which was in no time at all, Thomas produced his pencil and sketchpad and straightaway began to sketch the pattern he had seen on the ground. While it was still in his mind’s eye, he said.

  Then it was back inside for a cup of tea and a slice of bread and butter.

  Mrs Sugden once more read Mrs Shackleton’s letter. Well this letter took the biscuit, it really did. She took a piece of scrap paper from the clip and made notes of what she must do.

  Alert Mr Sykes

  Look up the dates of the new moon for last June and this January

  Call on Mr Duffield at newspaper library for information about the accidental deaths of two theatrical performers

  a) Douglas Dougan (stage name Dougie Doig), dog trainer

  b) Floyd Lloyd, ventriloquist

  If this wasn’t a rum do, she didn’t know what was. It put paid to making nettle soup while the nettles were still fresh.

  Still, hers not to reason why. Though just what she was supposed to ‘alert’ Mr Sykes to she did not know. He could have the letter and work it out for himself. She began by going into the dining room, which served as an office, and taking down an almanac from the bookshelf.

  She found the information quickly and wrote:

  New moon, June 1926: 10 June

  New moon, January 1927: 3 Jan.

  She wondered which part of the country saw the new moon first. Probably that lot in London if they ever bothered to look up. She had never thought before that each month brought a new moon. It was something you took for granted. But what that had to do with people dying, she couldn’t think. People are as likely to die when the moon is new as when it wanes. Phases of the moon did not seem to her to be a great starting point for investigating deaths, if that’s what was going on. No ailing person Mrs Sugden ever knew had looked out of the window, spotted a new moon and thought, that’s me done for then. Time’s up.

  As she returned the book to the shelf, she caught sight of herself in the sideboard mirror, in her muckment of old skirt and hessian pinafore.

  In half an hour, she was spruced up and ready to set off. She took the shortcut through the wood along to Woodhouse.

  Jim Sykes lived on Beulah Street and it suited Mrs Sugden to walk along there. It was the kind of street where normal people lived. Two women in pinnies and turbans exchanged words across the street. Children too young for school played on the pavement and tugged at the gas tar in the gutter. It was melting a bit in the warm weather but not enough for little fingers to tug it out. A little girl in a patched dress and sandals too big for her had chalked a shop on the pavement. Mrs Sugden stepped into the road to avoid trampling her wares, a roughly chalked shape, probably meant to be a loaf of bread, an apple or potato, several small shapes that might have been sweets and something with ears. ‘Do you want to buy summat, Missis?’

  Mrs Sugden had a soft spot for children with a bit of imagination. She took a guess at the bread. ‘I’ll take a loaf, please.’

  The girl spat on her hand and carefully rubbed out the loaf. ‘That’ll be a farthing.’

  Mrs Sugden thought this could turn out to be an expensive day. She took out a penny. ‘What else can I have, to the value of a penny?’

  ‘Do you want the rabbit?’

  ‘Aye, go on then. I’ll make a stew with it.’

  She waited until the child carefully erased the four-legged creature and its two ears, and then gave her the penny.

  ‘Thank you, Missis.’ She rubbed out a tiny square. ‘You can have a free sweet for being a good customer.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  Mrs Sugden walked on.

  Sykes’s house was three more along, the door and window frames painted sage green, as were the two houses on either side, to show they all belonged to the same landlord. She tapped on the door but there was no answer. Jim Sykes would be out working. She had to hand it to him. He had a real knack for investigating for the insurance companies. It brought in a good income that kept them ticking over between other cases. He’d stuck at the last investigation until he proved that a claim for fire damage after a suspicious arson attack on the premises of a failing mill was at the instigation of the owner.

  Mrs Sugden knocked but there was no answer. She had already added her own message on the outside of the envelope, just in case there was no one in at the Sykes’s. All the same she waited a few minutes, in case Rosie was upstairs, and then pushed the envelope through the door.

  As she retraced her steps, the little girl looked up again. Mrs Sugden was ready to say that she wouldn’t buy anything else because she had no more room in her bag, but the girl just smiled and went on chalking, replenishing her provisions.

  By the time she stepped off the tram in town, Mrs Sugden had gone through several versions of what she might say to Mr Duffield who kept the library at the newspaper offices. This gentleman had called at the house with his wife, who was friends with Mrs Shackleton’s mother. The words married late in life might have been invented for Mr Duffield because that’s what he had done. His appearance had improved as a result. He no longer looked like a shabby man at death’s door. Now he was a smartly turned out man at death’s door.

  Mrs Sugden arrived. She did not take naturally to the telephone but now that she was here, facing the newspaper office porter, she wished she had picked up the wretched implement and telephoned to say she was coming. ‘I’m here to see Mr Duffield.’

  The porter looked up from his crossword puzzle. He saw a woman who look
ed as if she knew her own business, square of jaw with braided hair pinned up around her head and a smart hat. ‘Is he expecting you?’

  ‘I’m Mrs Sugden here on behalf of Mrs Shackleton. He’ll know who I am.’ And she saw from his eyes that he knew the name Shackleton. He picked up a telephone that appeared even more forbidding than the one that graced their hall. This one had several buttons attached.

  He spoke into it, and then looked back at her. ‘Mr Duffield will come down to meet you.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  She waited, while turning her attention to the faded photographs on the wall, taken from old newspapers.

  Somewhere far off, a lift rattled. Footsteps sounded along the nearby corridor. She turned to see Mr Duffield and was glad he was a few yards off and far away enough not to see her surprise that he had stopped dyeing his hair that dramatic black. It was now an almost clean white with just a touch of straw colour. It made his face appear less sepulchral.