The Indecent Death of a Madam

  Former scriptwriter for Spitting Image and Sony Award winner, Simon Parke is the author of the Abbot Peter murder mystery series and the historical novel The Soldier, the Gaoler, the Spy and Her Lover. Away from publishing, Simon is CEO of the Mind Clinic and enjoys the loneliness of the long-distance runner.

  This book is dedicated to the memory of

  Paul Carter.

  ‘Baffled, broken but compelled to praise.’

  Rest in joy.

  Author’s note

  Stormhaven is a thinly disguised version of Seaford, where I have the honour of living. The geography and the history will tend to be true, whether it’s the town station’s long platform or golf balls at the top of Firle Road. But the Bybuckle Asylum, the Stormhaven Etiquette Society and the Sussex Silt are invention, as are all the characters.

  And Seaford’s crime figures also differ a little from mine.

  Prologue

  ‘I’m not liking this place,’ said James, looking into the darkness, something he’d been doing for a long time now.

  They sat on the wet mosaic floor, just inside a door that said, in rotting lettering, ‘Gladstone Ward’.

  ‘It’s a roof against the rain,’ said his companion, younger than James and a fidget. ‘Definitely better. Definitely.’

  And it hadn’t been hard to gain access; no one cared enough to lock this building any more. They hadn’t cared for a long time. The flotsam and jetsam of empty cans, needles and discarded crisp packets lay scattered, shifting and scraping in the wind.

  ‘But it’s not, is it?’ said James.

  ‘It’s not what? What isn’t it?’

  ‘It’s not a roof against anything. Feel the damp.’ He ran his finger down the dripping walls. ‘We’d be drier in the sea.’

  ‘How would we be drier in the sea?’ Ben was literal, nervous and not best served by his energy drink. He was accidental company rather than chosen for James. They’d met outside the McDonald’s in Newhaven. ‘Anyway, it’s hammering it down outside. Hammering.’

  ‘I think it’s stopped.’

  ‘I don’t know about that.’

  ‘I’m going anyway.’

  ‘You can go – I’m staying!’ And then more quietly. ‘I’m definitely staying.’

  Silence.

  ‘And I can hear the cries,’ said James. ‘Can you hear them?’

  ‘What cries?’

  ‘Listen.’

  ‘Listen to what?’

  ‘Can you hear them? The mad. They’re still here, you know.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘Don’t you hear them?’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about sometimes. I need a piss.’

  He got up in a hurry and chose a wall too close to James: the splatter and the smell of urine too close for decency.

  ‘It used to be an asylum, Ben. A mental asylum.’ He said it in anger because he still had standards. He’d fallen some way from his former life but still had standards.

  ‘This place?’ said Ben, doing up his flies.

  ‘A loony bin. Used to hold hundreds of them here by the sea. This was the largest ward . . . Gladstone Ward.’

  ‘How do you know?’ said Ben, sitting down again. ‘How do you know all this?’

  ‘How does anyone know anything, Ben? Because they go and find out. It’s called an education.’ And James had had one. How else had he once been a solicitor? ‘I read about places. You should try it sometime.’

  ‘Why would I want to read about places?’

  James had been sleeping rough for four years after losing both job and family through alcohol. But he still had his dignity, or shreds of it . . . it came and went. And he liked to know where he was sleeping rough, the history of the place, and there was a lot of history along the south coast – rocks, Romans, Normans and Nazis. He couldn’t understand those who slept in a doorway without wondering who had passed this way before them.

  Ben was now looking twitchy. ‘I’m getting out,’ he said, gathering his things.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘There could be ghosts.’

  ‘Almost certainly,’ said James.

  ‘I mean there could be, if it was a nuthouse.’

  ‘I wasn’t thinking of staying.’

  James found no peace here. The walls were not kind, he could feel that; and he still knew the difference between kind and harsh. Perhaps he noticed these things more acutely since the wheels had come off his life in such spectacular fashion.

  And so together the two of them left the building, shuffling down the dark corridor with bags and overcoats. Not quite friends, not friends at all, but companions for now, stepping out into the night as the moon rose over the cold January sea. The rain had stopped.

  ‘We could go to Newhaven,’ said James. ‘I think I will.’ He wouldn’t mention the beach huts to Ben; that wasn’t knowledge he wished to share. Everyone has somewhere that they alone know. It keeps you sane. ‘There’s a shelter in the Sainsbury’s car park.’

  ‘I’m getting out of here,’ said Ben. ‘Simple as. Don’t care much where we go; anywhere but a loony bin.’

  They turned west towards Newhaven, a two-mile walk, away from the nuthouse, reckoned unfit for habitation. From its glory days – and there had been glory days – the Bybuckle Asylum on Stormhaven’s seafront had fallen rather low. Eaten by salt and ripped by the wind, it couldn’t even house the homeless these days.

  Though, sadly, it had further to fall . . .

  The abbot’s heart bolted

  like a startled horse.

  It was her. It was Rosemary, surely? After all these years . . .

  He’d arrived a respectful ten minutes early at the judge’s house, darkly called Black Cap. Was it named in melancholy, perhaps? Did they miss the death sentence, the drama of the death hat, the power to dispatch the repulsive from this earth? Was there a judge within these walls raging at their impotence? It was possible . . . and it was cold. The abbot lifted the large door knocker with freezing hands and hammered news of his arrival with two loud bangs.

  The door opened. ‘Greetings – you must be the abbot.’

  ‘The clues are there,’ said Peter cheerily, his habit clearly displayed in the porch light.

  The judicial welcome was polite, efficient and fast, and with his coat left on a hook in the hallway Peter found himself guided to a seat in the large front room, with the open feel of a medieval grand hall. The house grew out of this space, with Peter noting a gap where once an open fire had burned. The judge saw the direction of his gaze.

  ‘Under-floor heating made it as redundant as a coal miner.’

  ‘How very Roman,’ said Peter.

  ‘I’m sorry?’ It was spoken with some aggression.

  ‘Hypocausts were much used by the Romans in their villas throughout the colder climates in Europe and then Britain as they expanded their empire. They did need their heat.’

  ‘I think we all need our heat, Abbot. I presume that’s why you went to the desert? To catch some sun.’

  The abbot smiled. He could think of no response to such an inadequate observation. He’d lived in a desert monastery close on thirty years, for reasons he couldn’t necessarily name; but it hadn’t been for the tan. And he remembered the chill as well as the warmth – the cold, clear-skied nights, which on occasion required three blankets for settled sleep in his cell.

  ‘The open fire heats the chimney,’ said the judge in declaratory fashion. ‘My under-floor system heats the room.’

  Peter sensed that she wished her heating to be a modern idea, rather than something ancient; her own discovery rather than anything Roman.

  ‘It’s certainly a warm house to wal
k into,’ said the abbot, though his words were not emotionally true. The warmth was in the heating, not the host. They had met but not met; he’d been guided to his seat like a theatre-goer who was late for the performance, and now he sat with a cup of lemon and ginger tea in his hand, which wasn’t really tea, not in Peter’s estimation . . . and perhaps his face revealed his thoughts.

  ‘No builders – so no builders’ tea,’ said Blessings with a tight smile. And she must have surprised a few defendants when she appeared in court to take her seat. A black female judge in her attractive forties was not what you expected in these parts. It was hardly America’s Deep South, but Stormhaven was a place where the white population came to retire and further to harden their already harsh opinions.

  All sense of cold was forgotten, however, when the abbot saw her, or imagined he saw her. Rosemary? Could it be? Indeed, his hand shook and his tea spilled, burning hot against his thigh through the habit. She’d appeared in the hallway, talking with Martin Channing who’d also just entered the six-bedroom house in Firle Road. Well, they’d entered together, here in the posh end of Stormhaven. So were they together? And how did Peter feel about that?

  ‘So how are all our dear charities in Sussex?’ asked the charmingly smooth Channing as he removed his coat with careless ease. He was editor of the local newspaper, the Sussex Silt – a publication also known as ‘The Jackal’. It fed on the negative and nasty with a particular bent for celebrity shame, fraudulent local officials, any hint of adultery – and of course, Southern Rail. Or ‘Southern Fail’, as the paper always called it.

  It was Martin’s creation, this negative news-sheet, backed by a city hedge fund that handed over all moral decisions to their accountant, for while the paper was much reviled it was also much read . . . which was all that interested Channing. He’d never separated news from entertainment – ‘There is no difference!’ he’d say – and cared little for what the worried middle classes muttered over their claret and hummus. Here was a man who’d lunched with prime ministers in his Fleet Street days and knew only disdain for the rich and powerful. With a fine head of salt-and-pepper hair, he arrived on the south coast with a deep sense of mischief in the game that was life. ‘Nothing to be taken too seriously, Abbot, otherwise where would we be?’

  And so it was a polite question in the hallway, Martin to Rosemary: ‘How are all our dear charities in Sussex?’

  He was only feigning interest. The charities of Sussex were of no concern at all to Martin. And before Rosemary could answer, the editor’s attention had moved on. He’d glanced through the hall to the front room and seen his guest of honour, Abbot Peter, sitting with tea and a haunted face.

  ‘Looks like you’ve seen a ghost, Peter!’ he declared heartily, and Peter smiled back weakly because it well described how he felt. A ghost from the past, yes . . . though not some shimmering ghoul but a flesh-and-blood memory, melting the years away, the edifice of time crumbling, as if he was back in the Highgate Asylum.

  ‘Camomile, Rosemary?’ asked Blessings.

  ‘Thank you,’ said the ghost, taking off her coat.

  So it was Rosemary in the hallway, he knew now – or almost knew. What were the chances of another woman who looked so like Rosemary sharing her name? She was the right age, the age Rosemary would be . . . and suddenly the evening envisioned by the abbot was unravelling and a new fear appearing, making his neck sweat in winter. Would she recognize him?

  He had to hope not; that would be best. It was forty years, after all, and he wore different clothes now, very different clothes. She’d have no idea of his life since then, of his long stay in the deserts of Middle Egypt, abbot of the monastery of St James-the-Less. They’d had no contact after they parted – and perhaps, in truth, they’d had no contact before. It had been Peter left restless by events; what Rosemary had felt, he had no idea . . . and it was all so long ago.

  The front door opened again and two more visitors stepped out of the dark January chill. Polite greetings ensued, awkward more than kind, while hot drinks were organized and a plate of expensive biscuits appeared. Peter assumed they were expensive, as he’d never seen the like of them before and certainly not in the desert. Some even boasted gold foil, which was rather intriguing. And when all were seated, Martin – apparently chair of this select little group – made the introductions.

  ‘It’s quite wonderful of Blessings to play host again,’ he said and the judge nodded graciously. ‘That’s the penalty for earning so much, of course. No one else here has the space for such a gathering!’ Some nervous laughter rippled around the room. Channing had the ability to appear to be sniping at everyone. ‘And not to forget our guest,’ he said mysteriously. ‘Abbot Peter!’

  Heads turned.

  ‘A rare species, abbots,’ said Blessings.

  ‘Well, a pretend abbot really,’ replied Martin. ‘He hasn’t seen the inside of a monastery for a while . . . but clings to his old status for consolation.’

  It was further sniping from Martin but true enough. Peter had been in Stormhaven for over four years now, while keeping his clothes and title.

  ‘Word of warning, though, Abbot,’ he said. Peter looked up.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I’m afraid we are a rather secret society.’

  ‘Secret about what?’

  ‘So we don’t expect any sharing of details with the outside world. You must imagine that this place – and all that transpires here – is Bletchley Park!’

  ‘Bletchley Park?’

  ‘The code-breaking centre during the war,’ said Channing. It was a sharply delivered put-down, an explanation that should not need to be given, one that was slowing Martin down – and showing his guest up.

  ‘I’m aware of what it was,’ said the abbot. ‘I’m just struggling for the connection . . . with this.’

  He indicated the circle of six in which he sat, comfortably settled with tea and biscuits and with no obvious link to high-pressure code-breaking in cold huts designed to foil the Nazis.

  ‘The secrecy, Abbot! It was secret squirrel at Bletchley. No one could speak of what they did there, even to their nearest and dearest . . . just supposing the two are ever the same.’ Martin looked around with a naughty smile. ‘And when Churchill congratulated the staff on their work at the end of the war, he told them, “You were the geese who laid the golden eggs – but never cackled.”’

  ‘I see,’ said the abbot. ‘So this is a call not to cackle?’

  ‘They went to their deaths saying nothing, revealing nothing. Such honour! And we expect the same, do we not?’

  He looked conspiratorially around the group, who seemed to be in agreement with their leader on this one. Perhaps they were flattered to be part of a secret society, though Peter felt only the strangeness of the call.

  ‘There is an irony in a newspaper man demanding that no one tell their story,’ he said.

  Channing told everyone’s story, and still more eagerly if they asked him to keep it quiet.

  ‘There’s a season for everything, Abbot. You’re forgetting your Scriptures again.’

  Peter smiled . . . and tried not to look at Rosemary, who sat to his right in this strange circle.

  He was regretting coming. At Martin’s invitation, he was a guest speaker tonight at the Stormhaven Etiquette Society. He enjoyed speaking, believing himself not without skill in this particular line of work. But how he was regretting coming . . .

  There was a knock

  on Tara’s door.

  ‘Come!’ she said briskly, settling her glasses in her thick blonde hair, cut shorter now she was in her forties.

  It was Katrina, one of the working girls – though at thirty-two she was hardly a girl; her son was a teenager. Tara had seen them together in Morrisons, plundering the freezer section. She had warned her about shopping locally.

  ‘You never know who you might bump into,’ she said.

  ‘I don’t mind who I bump into,’ said Katrina dismissively.


  ‘No – but your client might. Particularly if his wife’s in tow. That’s heart attack territory.’

  ‘That is not my issue,’ said Katrina.

  ‘Why not shop in Eastbourne?’

  ‘Eastbourne is a graveyard.’

  ‘And Stormhaven isn’t?’

  But today they were alone, no teenage son in sight, with Katrina looking concerned in a Virginia Woolf sort of way. Her long mousy hair was pulled back above her serious lagoon eyes. She stood in the doorway with a cross around her neck, like a disturbed nun seeking the advice of her Mother Superior. But this wasn’t an abbey, it was Stormhaven’s only brothel, Model Service.

  ‘I’ve had a visitor, Tara.’

  Her voice was a little shaky. Tara had no time for shaky this morning.

  ‘It’s your job to have visitors, Katrina. Was he nice?’

  ‘He was a man.’ She did not say this as a compliment. She earned her living from men; she did not have to like them.

  ‘Did he pay?’

  ‘He paid.’

  ‘So all’s well.’ Why was Katrina disturbing her? But she clearly had more to say. ‘You didn’t indicate any trouble, Katrina.’

  They had a system at Model Service. There were cameras in the corridor and a buzzer by the bed, mainly for the girls’ protection, of course. But there was also the revenue to consider. Money was the first matter dealt with in this business; clients paid in advance for services rendered, and only after cash was handed over did things proceed. The girls had a small safe in their room where the money was deposited. Only once had a client tried to force the code from Katrina. She’d used the pepper spray on him, after which Tara had escorted him out with a rolling pin for support.

  And so Tara was thinking this was unusual . . . unusual for Katrina to be concerned by a man. She wasn’t the high-maintenance sort, one of those girls with endless needs and fragile time-keeping. She’d been a model employee since arriving from Poland three years ago. And she wasn’t your average sex worker – no one could call her that. She followed the pontiff on Twitter, and was inclined to offer papal pronouncements, which was unfortunate. Papal pronouncements were rarely helpful here – or indeed anywhere, in Tara’s estimation.