The Indecent Death of a Madam Read online

  ‘You think so, Detective Inspector?’ Tamsin didn’t think so – she’d just been fishing. ‘Being determinedly good is always an irritant in my experience, especially when, in death, the individual turns out to have been a madam and a keeper of whores.’ Blessings rolled her eyes. ‘Rosemary, it transpires, was the most appalling hypocrite.’

  Rosemary’s house

  was a detached red brick property in Claremont Road, half a mile from the seafront. It had three bedrooms and a bathroom upstairs, with a large-windowed front room, study/dining room and kitchen downstairs. It was all wooden floors, organic tea, vegetarian cook books, ordered, clean . . . but not what you’d call comfortable – not cushioned and cosy.

  ‘Not a place to relax,’ had been Tamsin’s first comment as they entered the house, now forensics had left. ‘But then, did Rosemary ever relax?’

  ‘I’m not sure relaxing loomed large on her horizon,’ said Peter. ‘She liked to make the most of each moment, felt guilty if she wasn’t, always had things to do. I didn’t realize quite how many things . . .’

  ‘I like it,’ said Tamsin. She sat down for a moment in the front room as the winter sun briefly touched Stormhaven like an angel of peace. ‘I mean, I couldn’t live here but I like it. No mess.’

  ‘No mess, no.’

  ‘Do you like it?’

  ‘Er, yes,’ he said, unsure, ‘and no.’ He did like it, in a manner. He liked the simple order, and some familiarity drew him; while something else pushed him away. It may have been the fact – yes, of course – that it reminded him of his childhood home in Eltham: ordered but not warm, and too much red and green paint making it dark . . . darker than it need be. Peter liked light.

  ‘But could you live here, Abbot? You know, had you been an item?’

  ‘We were never an item.’

  ‘No – but you wanted to be.’

  ‘A different person in a different life.’

  ‘So could you live here?’

  ‘I’d like more light.’

  ‘Anything else?’

  ‘I’d have a place to rest as opposed to sit. I’ve had a lot of sitting in my life. You sit in monasteries; you don’t rest.’

  ‘It was your choice.’

  ‘And it is, perhaps, a little too ordered. I might have made the place untidy.’

  ‘Ah, untidiness – a deal-breaker, Abbot, even for true love.’

  ‘You speak from experience?’

  Peter was forever asking questions about her love life, and she was forever closing the door on his inquiries. An uncle had no business to know these things; well, no one had any business to know these things. A private life was private. Though in truth, Tamsin had no concept of true love; it was a phrase she’d borrowed rather than one she’d known.

  ‘Shall we take a look in her study?’

  They stood for a moment in the doorway of Rosemary’s work room. The wooden desk, holding a computer and two fountain pens, was placed by the window looking out on the street. There was an armchair with a light stand behind. It was a working armchair, one where she sat to read documents, away from the desk. There was a spare pair of glasses on a small table to the side. The only other furniture was a bookcase, holding reference books concerning charity law, a Virginia Woolf novel, several publications on walking holidays in the Lake District and a book called Anam Cara by John O’Donohue.

  ‘Interesting reading,’ says Tamsin. ‘As in, not at all interesting.’

  ‘If your bookcase is your soul, it does make it a rather personal affair.’

  ‘What if it’s just your bookcase?’

  In the locked drawer in her study they found three files: ‘Charity’, ‘Church’ and ‘Model Service’. They were all in good order, a gathering of legal and official documents. It was the last of these that most interested Tamsin, and here they discovered what the abbot already knew: that she’d bought the property in Church Street with money left by her father. The business appeared to pay her a rather minimal rent while Tara Hopesmith drew a basic salary of £25,000 as ‘Premises Host’.

  ‘Doesn’t seem a lot,’ said Tamsin.

  ‘Sounds a fortune from where I’m sitting.’

  ‘That’s because you dwell in genteel poverty, Abbot. And Tara interests us, as the new owner of Model Service.’

  ‘And Rosemary’s friend.’

  ‘So perhaps she’ll give herself a huge pay rise to ease her grief, because she can, now that she owns it all. All in all, a pretty decent outcome for Tara Hopesmith once the dust of tragedy settles.’

  ‘Bit obvious, isn’t it?’

  ‘Most crime is obvious, Abbot. It’s just someone being impatient, someone snapping, someone thinking, for one mad moment, “Why not?” There’s nothing clever or subtle about most murder.’ Tamsin got up. ‘Time to go, I think. There’s nothing else for us here. I’ll take the files.’

  ‘OK.’

  Peter had wanted to take the files, to sit with her writing, her work . . . her life; but it was better he didn’t.

  ‘It’s better this way,’ said Tamsin, discerning well.

  ‘It is,’ said Peter.

  ‘And I’ll be in the car. You may want to stay a moment. You know . . .’

  ‘Thank you.’

  Peter heard her open the front door, and then her feet on the gravel outside. Tamsin denied it, but she could occasionally be thoughtful. He sat alone in the front room with the winter sun and the ticking clock.

  How strange, he thought. Time and tide stayeth for no man, as one scene becomes another. When he was being treated in Highgate by that wonderful young nurse, who would have imagined he’d be sitting in her front room forty years later with his body in a monk’s habit . . . and her body in a morgue?

  So who put her there?

  And then he noticed the small photo on the desk, two young girls – Rosemary and Sarah, surely? He looked again. There they were, one taller than the other, doing the right thing, smiling as one should, the smaller girl less certain, more ambivalent, as though dragged into the picture. Rosemary and Sarah, all those years ago.

  He’d like to find Sarah. She was out there somewhere.

  ‘I am the hollow man,’

  said Terence with a self-deprecating smile. ‘Not much of me here, Inspector, never has been.’

  Tamsin was wondering if he referred to himself or his home. It was a modern bungalow with functional un-matching furniture, as though bought as a job lot, a landlord in a hurry and without aesthetic care. Tamsin was struck by the absence of pictures, which left a lot of bare wall. There were one or two army photos, comrades in arms in faraway places, but no art to soften the wall lines or colour the space. They stood in a civilian barracks in Stormhaven, as though he was a lodger, someone passing through, with no sense of home. He could be packed up and gone in an hour; this is how it felt.

  ‘You were a soldier, though.’

  ‘I was a soldier.’ He saluted jokingly as he said it.

  ‘A much decorated major-general.’

  ‘Like a Christmas tree, yes. I know the jokes, hung with baubles – and thrown out as soon as Christmas is done.’ It sounded angry to Tamsin, though spoken in a carefree manner.

  ‘Are you angry?’

  ‘But then they never promised to care, did they? So what was I to expect?’

  ‘I agree,’ said Tamsin without sympathy. Why did people imagine their employers should care for them? Pay them, yes. But care for them? ‘And surely the truth is that you actually threw yourself out, Major-General, with everyone begging you to stay.’

  ‘I did evict myself, in a manner, I suppose. The Christmas tree that threw itself out the door – like a suicide bomber at a station!’ Tamsin watched him. ‘Don’t mind me, Detective Inspector . . . old army habits.’

  ‘You mean the self-pity?’

  ‘The tasteless jokes. But you have to learn to laugh, because every day, they could be walking towards you. The bombers; anyone can be a bomber. The woman selling you vegetables
or offering you some cake or asking for help. She might be wired up for paradise – hers, not yours.’

  ‘So you left the army?’

  Tamsin wanted to get back on track. Terence was dangerous; a disturbed and disturbing man, who stood some way outside conventional life.

  ‘Threw myself out the door, yes . . . sometimes, you just have to go.’

  ‘And a change of direction.’

  ‘I’m not sure we ever change direction, do we?’

  ‘I think you have.’

  ‘No, we just change our employment, which is not the same thing at all.’

  Nonsense, thought Tamsin. Your employment is your direction. What other direction is there?

  ‘Still, from war hero to the supermarket? It’s not a traditional career path.’

  ‘The hollow man is hollow wherever he is, Inspector. There is no career path that can save him.’

  Tamsin had no idea what made this man tick. Where was she to begin with him?

  ‘And you enjoy your work in the supermarket?’

  She tried to keep the question neutral, to keep the disappointment out of her voice. She understood ambition, but found the dismissal of ambition unsettling, cowardly even, risk-averse. Though those were not words ever used about the man on the sofa in front of her now.

  ‘I do,’ he said. ‘A different sort of battlefield.’

  Waitrose, where Tamsin usually shopped, was never a battlefield – except on Saturday mornings and Sunday afternoons; there could be some sharp elbows then. Morrisons was probably different. The poor and infirm shopped all the time, with so much of it on their hands.

  ‘Though I don’t remember seeing you on any shopping missions,’ said Blain. ‘Are you a traitor to the cause?’

  ‘I don’t shop there, no. I live in Hove, actually.’

  ‘Very nice.’

  Tamsin had never shopped in Morrisons, and could not foresee the moment when she would. She wouldn’t shop at Morrisons even if she lived across the road with only a Zimmer frame for transport. She’d get a taxi to Waitrose.

  ‘Daring raids into the warehouse for more yoghurt is the sum of my adventures now,’ said Terence.

  ‘They must be different days, Major-General.’

  ‘As I’ve said, not for the hollow man.’

  ‘But the loss of status? Surely . . .’

  Tamsin clung fiercely to status. She could not imagine it so carelessly tossed away, as something of no consequence.

  ‘Status is only in the mind, Inspector.’

  Tamsin was feeling around for another angle. The major-general, perhaps unsurprisingly, was a well-defended man who seemed to see her coming before she even set out. She’d need to find a crack in the wall.

  ‘So why membership of the rather exclusive Stormhaven Etiquette Society? It doesn’t seem like you, man of the people and all that.’

  Taunt him a bit, she’d try it.

  ‘Why not?’ The ex-soldier looked gently surprised. ‘We must all fill our days on this earth with something and I rather like decency. Something to be applauded, I think. It’s a terrible world without it.’

  ‘Without decency?’

  ‘What’s the use of a bus pass, Inspector – which is not so far away for me now – if appalling behaviour prevails on the bus? You know the sort of thing: loud music, vile-smelling food, shouting, mocking youths at the end of a school day and what they now call “man-spread” taking up half your seat? A bus pass in such circumstances merely becomes a free ticket to hell.’

  Tamsin had no immediate answer; she never used the bus.

  ‘There was a whole page on it in the Sussex Silt recently,’ continued Terence. ‘“Why public transport is hell!” was the headline. And while I don’t care much for the paper – Martin is a mischief-maker, of course – there were strong feelings expressed in the piece, a lot of anger. Whatever happened to discipline? I wonder sometimes.’

  Tamsin had heard that Blain had been popular with his soldiers, but she could not imagine him being soft on them. So a good man to follow, but not a good man to cross. His eyes bore into her now.

  ‘Perhaps you find etiquette a rather fanciful notion, Inspector, because you don’t travel on public transport. You miss a lot in a car, especially one as expensive as yours.’

  Keep calm, Tamsin. ‘So you like decency.’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘Did you also like Rosemary?’

  ‘Full of good works, Rosemary. Almost exhaustingly so, and one must support good works.’

  ‘But did you like her?’

  The major-general smiled wearily.

  ‘Must we descend into likes and dislikes?’

  ‘They are normal human experiences,’ said Tamsin, for whom ‘dislike’ was more normal and felt with force right now. An awkward silence followed, because Blain would not be jumped; though he did speak after a while.

  ‘We were captured and held for five days in enemy territory,’ he said. He spoke casually, as if this was of no consequence, as if he was telling her he’d decided to order an extra pint of milk.

  ‘Where?’ asked Tamsin, too eager.

  ‘A dry place. I’ve been to a few of those. We were held by bounty hunters after some navigational issues in the unit.’ He couldn’t hide his disdain. God help the soldier who’d made a mess with the compass. ‘I blame myself, of course. It was my team.’

  ‘There’s no accounting for idiots, though,’ said Tamsin, who worked with them on a regular basis.

  ‘They were just businessmen, our captors,’ said Terence. ‘Not soldiers, businessmen. People for whom war was business, but trying to arrange a handover to those less enamoured of us. These people could make money from us. Their potential buyers – well, they were different, and our prospects would not have been good had they succeeded.’

  ‘No.’

  He spoke slowly, words carefully placed. ‘We were looked after by a young fellow called Zak, who brought us our food, talked with us on occasion, nice smile. Quite a charmer, in fact – happy eyes and probably a good son. He even joked with us, practised his English and we all told him how well he was doing. He liked that. But on the fifth day, I borrowed his gun and shot him in the forehead.’ Tamsin froze for a moment. ‘He looked at me as he fell, as if surprised that I had ignored his kind and caring manner. But I couldn’t tell you whether I liked him or not. I just knew he was in the way.’

  Silence.

  ‘So did you shoot Rosemary?’

  ‘You do ask a lot of questions.’

  ‘You must know about interrogation, Major-General. It has a purpose.’

  ‘More purpose than outcome, in my experience.’

  ‘You’re not answering the question.’

  ‘And why answer such a damn-fool question? Would I be removed from the suspects list if I said no?’

  Tamsin felt weary. This man drained her – no, crushed her. Tales of his virtuous acts littered his self-deprecating path. But all Tamsin heard was contempt for everything and everyone; and a meaninglessness that suffocated her.

  This man could put a bullet in anyone, including himself. But had he put one in Rosemary?

  ‘So why join the Etiquette Society?’

  asked Tamsin, aware of the estate agent’s eyes mentally undressing her.

  ‘Oh, Martin can be very persuasive, as I’m sure you’re aware,’ he replied from behind his desk. His agency was round the corner from the station, along with the other estate agents in Stormhaven. They all nestled together, as if they weren’t quite important enough to stand by themselves.

  ‘This is you networking, is it?’ said Tamsin.

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘I’m told you are a compulsive networker.’ She threw that in because she didn’t like him. He was a lecher. ‘Is that your main interest in etiquette?’

  Geoff stayed calm. ‘Is that a nasty way of saying I get on with people and I enjoy their company?’ he said. Geoff had a large desk and was boss of his company; he felt a certain powe
r here. And what did women know anyway? ‘If it is, then guilty as charged. But if that’s the best you can do, then really . . .’

  ‘It’s your wisdom I need – not your offence.’

  ‘Then why be offensive?’

  Good line, thought Peter, who wondered the same. He sat in the background, happy to leave the chair where it was. Maybe house buyers eagerly pushed their chairs forward, to discuss their dream home with Mr Berry. But the abbot didn’t feel the need. He had a home already, was quite beyond dreams of that sort . . . and he was happy in the corner. From there you see everything, including Tamsin behaving poorly.

  ‘Do you know of the Bybuckle Asylum?’ asked Tamsin.

  Geoff laughed. ‘Of course I know the Bybuckle Asylum! It’s my job. I know every property in Stormhaven, Newhaven, Peacehaven – and Alfriston as well, if you’re loaded. Used and unused, sold and unsold, to buy, to let. You must remember I’ve been an estate agent in this town for over twenty-five years.’

  ‘Yes, I was wondering about that.’

  ‘Wondering about what?’

  ‘Well, with your experience, you’ll be aware that it’s a valuable site – the Bybuckle Asylum, I mean. You could build a fair few flats on that land.’

  ‘Not the classiest part of Stormhaven, obviously.’

  ‘You mean there is a classy part?’

  ‘There are some very desirable areas of Stormhaven, Detective Inspector. The Etiquette Society meets in one of them. But houses by the sea, disintegrating in the salt air, though popular on the holiday market, are not so highly priced.’

  ‘Oh?’ said Peter.

  ‘Fine views, obviously – if you like the sea. But terrible maintenance costs. So the seafront has great scenic qualities but is not one of the more sought-after areas in town. More for the Clacton clientele.’

  ‘The Clacton clientele?’ said Tamsin with undisguised merriment, all too aware that the abbot’s property had just been well and truly junked. And the abbot was thinking the same. Not one of the more sought-after areas? For the Clacton clientele?!

  ‘Brighton and Eastbourne have wonderful seafronts, of course,’ continued Geoff, unaware of the abbot’s address. ‘Much grander affairs than Stormhaven, full of both style and life. Stormhaven, in contrast, offers a determinedly derelict shoreline: a couple of tea huts, some appalling sixties flats that are falling down – and that’s your lot for seaside glory.’