The Mammoth Book of Best British Mysteries (19 page)

“Did what?”

“Made off with her. Did the husband murder her, or did she run away with Dan? Or did Dan do her in, come to that? And
how
was it done?”

“
Me
find out?” Toby blinked. “Don’t be daft. How can I?”

“You’ll manage. You can take old Ned with you to bottle for you this time. He was there in ‘67; maybe he can help. All water under the bridge to me. Now, listen to me,
omi
, and I’ll tell you the story. The husband did it, that’s what the gossip is. Everyone was sure of it, though they couldn’t pin anything on him. Pete Browning was her
manager as well as her husband and was greedy and jealous with it. He’d grown accustomed to her money, so he pushed Fay to keep right on singing, and she grew to hate it. There was only one
problem for Pete Browning: Fay’s fame went hand in hand with Dan Smith, and Pete was convinced that Fay was in love with him. He wanted her to go solo. She refused, said she’d give up
altogether if he forced her, and of course that confirmed his suspicions, especially since Dan had just moved in opposite with his wife.

“Anyway, Dan Smith never appeared at the fête that day, and there was a terrible row between Fay and the husband. Everyone could hear it. That had me shivering in my shoes, for when
Ned and I got down the evening before to test the pitch’s acoustics, I heard Dan and Fay were due to open the festivities, so I planned the whole show round the new puppets, now residing in
our loft. Instead, Pete opened the fête, with Fay singing solo. Dan never turned up.”

“What was she
really
like, pa?”

“Lovely, just as lovely as her pictures, all delicate and fair, and gentle, not a bit like you imagine a sixties’ hippy pop star. With her husky voice, well, she was spell-binding.
Since I’d played the pitch ever since they lived there, she’d talk to me sometimes. I reckon she was scared of her husband. She wanted to have kids, but Pete wasn’t having any of
that. Money, that was all that mattered. I don’t know whether she was in love with Dan or not, but I wouldn’t have blamed her if so, the life she led. He was a handsome devil, with more
than a streak of Romany in him. That’s why their signature tune was that pop version of ‘The Raggle-Taggle Gypsies oh’. And since she sang it solo that day, just before she
disappeared, some folks think she knew she would shortly be ‘off with her raggle-taggle gypsy’ like the song says. Most think Pete murdered her, though.”

“She actually disappeared during the fête, didn’t she?”

“That’s right,
omi.
The grounds run down to the Thames, and on the far side of the lawns from where I put the booth there is – or was – a boathouse with a longish
landing stage running out over the water, and a sort of covered porch and passageway round the building on the far side. Fay and Pete were such having such a humdinger in the boathouse, just before
she sang her song, that everyone was listening. It grew very silent because folks had already gathered by the river bank to listen to the formal opening of the fête. Fay’s voice being
higher, you could hear every word she was saying. ‘What have you done?’ she kept shouting. I remember that. I was just getting Mr Punch and his chums sorted to be ready for Ned when he
began banging the drum after the fête was officially open.

“Fay and Pete both came out onto the landing stage, as though they’d just remembered what they were supposed to be doing. Pete introduced her – he was black in the face with
rage – and it got blacker when she sang ‘Everything but you’ – that’s the song jazzing up Glück’s ‘What is life to me without you’ and then the
‘Raggle Taggle Gypsies’. She didn’t need any accompaniment, not Fay. You could have heard a pin drop. Then Fay went back into the boathouse, while Pete declared the fête
open. After that he went in, and a minute later there was a terrible scream that chilled me to the marrow. Inhuman it was. We all, and I mean all, rushed to the boathouse, thinking he was
strangling her, but when we got there, we found Pete there alone. ‘She’s gone,’ he blurted out, putting on a good show of amazement. ‘Gone back to the house.’

“But she hadn’t. She’d have been seen coming out of the boathouse door. Besides, Pete was a tightwad, and he made sure you couldn’t get into or out of the fête
without passing the cashpoints. Even Fay would have had to go through them. No, there was only one place she could have gone, over the side of the far passageway into the river. You couldn’t
see far because there was a bend in the river, so folks started spreading out along the bank, and another party went to search the fête grounds. I ran through the trees, followed by all the
world and his wife, to see if Fay’s body had been swept round the bend, for there was a fair old current running. Then I saw her lovely hat, all white and flowers on it, bobbing along the
river. A few of the better swimmers plunged into the water, but no trace of her was found. When there was no news by evening, Pete called in the police. The river was dredged eventually, but no
body turned up. Only that blessed hat again. Months later a body was dredged up, but it was too far gone to identify, and there weren’t no DNA testing in those days. So it was case unproven
against Pete.”

Sam paused, then continued. “Except in Maplechurch. I stopped in for a drink at the pub that evening.”

“And for the gossip, I bet,” Toby put in.

“Right,
omi
. That was flowing even faster than the beer. She would never have killed herself. Most reckoned Pete had strangled her and pushed her over the side into the river.
Others reckoned she jumped in herself, and swum off to join Dan. He was never heard of again either. Rumour has it they’re still busking on a Greek island, singing their hearts out for
pennies. Fay had left a will, so it turned out, that in the event of her death – which was presumed in due legal course – all her royalties from her music should go to charity.
Dan’s went to his wife of course, but Fay wouldn’t want Pete to touch a penny of hers. He could have the house, that was all. Fay was mighty scared of Pete. There was no question of
divorce, you see, and she knew he’d come after her if she just ran away.

“A few of them thought it was Dan murdered her, however, because she was planning to go solo. He knew that would end his career and preferred to end with a bang, not a whimper. Fay was the
leader in the partnership, of course. He was a passionate, headstrong chap, and they too had a stormy relationship, if you believed the tabloids of the day.

“The police questioned Pete endlessly, but in the end there was nothing they could do. There was no body to prove she’d been strangled and if he’d just pushed her into the
river in the hope she’d drown, there was no proof of that either.”

“So he got away scot free?”

“Oh no, son. Only Mr Punch does that. The whole of Maplechurch had Pete marked down as a murderer, and worse, murderer of both Fay
and
Dan. Where was Dan, they asked, if Fay alone
had been killed? Dan’s wife hadn’t heard a dickey bird from him. He’d just vanished. Pete shut himself up in the house and drank himself to death. The next time I passed that way,
five years later, I heard he was dead. Even so I never played the pitch again when the new folk bought the house. It seemed somehow disrespectful to Fay.”

“What do you think happened, dad?”

“I’m a
swatchel omi
, son, a Punch and Judy man, not a blooming Sherlock Holmes.”

“All right, I’ll take you on. I
will
be a Sherlock. I could even do a show based round it.” Toby’s eyes gleamed. “Think of the publicity for the show, if I
sort out what happened.”

Sam laughed. “You’ll do,
omi
, you’ll do. You just come back with the answer. I want to know which of ’em did it.”

“This where the booth was, Ned?” Ned was well past seventy now, and ready to throw in his drum and collection hat. He grumbled incessantly, but Toby knew that if
his father didn’t bottle for him, he’d never have the heart to find someone else, since he had a shrewd idea that talk of retiring was all for show. He’d die in his bottling
boots, would Ned.

Ned grunted in his usual fashion, and banged down one of the pegs as answer.

“What do you think happened, Ned?” Toby asked when the booth was up. His first pitch as professor. He’d mastered the swazzle, written his show, and was bursting to get going.
At the end of the day he’d have another show to plan: the true story of Fay and Dan. And then he’d be on the map.

“I don’t think. I bottles.” Ned snorted.

Shortly the gates would be thrown open, and the crowds would throng the grounds. There was no charge now to attend, for the present owners were a benevolent couple in their sixties. There were
other changes too, Toby reflected, from the last time his father played here. There was a double-glazing stand here to start with, and what would old Punch make of a bouncy castle? Still, Punch had
survived because he kept up with the times, and Toby uneasily wondered whether in the excitement of taking up his father’s challenge he had given enough thought to that aspect in his first
regular show.

“Point out to me where it happened, Ned, while we can leave the booth.”

Ned shot him a look but complied. “Not sure as I know.”

“Come on, Ned,” Toby said patiently. “You were there.”

Grumbling under his breath, and playing up his stiff leg as he hobbled along, Ned took him over to the far side of the lawns.

The boathouse looked derelict, and was roped off, whether to avoid accidents with rotting boards or to prevent morbid curiosity from fans of Fay Darling. Toby looked at the landing stage from
where his father had seen it, according to Ned, and then walked past the front of the boathouse to peer at the passageway from which it was presumed Fay had disappeared. His father had been right.
If Fay had come through the front entrance to the boathouse, she’d have been seen by at least some of the crowd, and so she must have gone over the side, of her own volition or not. Had she
planned her disappearance? The story had all the hallmarks. No identifiable body, singing those particular songs, Dan’s disappearance. Fay had had good reason to vanish. She’d probably
swum round the bend past the boundary to the gardens, climbed ashore and met her Dan. Romantic, really.

“What was Dan’s wife like?” he asked Ned.

Ned shrugged. “Never met her, did I?”

Toby sighed. “I thought Dad said you were to give me all the help I needed. You’re sure you were here that day?”

Ned looked pained. “Certainly I was,
omi.
Bottling, weren’t I? And now I’m a-helping. Just you follow me. This is the way everyone ran, led by your dad.” Making
great play of his hobbling, he led the way over the hillock of land around which the river curved. “The ‘at your dad saw were over there.” He pointed to the middle of the
river.

Toby looked at the rows of grand houses opposite, and the reed-fringed edges of the river, trying to imagine the scene thirty-odd years ago. Then he turned his attention to the wooded valley
garden bordering the river with its stream trickling down to join it. “I think she just landed there, met Dan and left. No one would have seen her if she kept away from the lawns.”

Ned sighed. “Good job you’re a Punch professor, not the real kind. You ain’t got the brains you was born with, young Toby. They’d still have to get out of the grounds.
There was a blooming fifteen-foot fence to keep her little ladyship in when her hubby got mad. And the grounds were searched thoroughly, believe me.”

“Then suppose she swam as far as the next property?”

“That’s what some said.” Ned seemed pleased. “To meet her lover,” he added with relish. “Funny thing is that with all the publicity in the papers, no one
claimed to have seen them leave the village. You’d have thought
someone
might have noticed. What’s more, their cars were still here, and no one came forward to say they’d
given a lift to two familiar-looking hitchhikers in disguise. How’d they do it?”

“She swam across the river to Dan’s house?”

“Listen,
omi
, if I’d been Fay and there was a wife like Dan’s ready to stick a knife in my gullet, I’d have opted for Pete to strangle me and have done with
it.”

This was getting him nowhere, and the show was about to start. Toby was getting frustrated.

“Who could be here today who would have been present in sixty-seven – at the house, I mean? Not the villagers. They’re no more use than—” Toby stopped himself in
time from saying “you”.

Ned looked pleased. “Now you’re talking. There’s a gardener I ran into. He was only a lad then, he’s head gardener – you can have a talk to him after the show.
I’ll mind the booth.”

The show! Toby had almost forgotten his debut was only minutes away.

“Oh, it was him what did it.” Adam Dale took off his sunhat, wiped his brow and sat down in his potting shed. Here, he said mysteriously, they could talk away from
the crowds. Talk he could, Toby thought to himself. If Prince Charles was right and growing things responded to being spoken to, Manor Court must have the biggest vegetables and flowers in the
country.

“Oh yes,” he continued, “that gypsy. Underhand, mean-looking Dan Smith was. The master had a temper, but he loved Mrs Fay. He wouldn’t have hurt a hair on her
head.”

“What about blacking her eyes?” Toby began to recall the footage he’d seen of Fay Darling in huge dark sunglasses on a winter’s day.

Adam hardly paused. “They had their differences, but murder – no – not even a
crime passion fruit
or whatever they call it. Mrs Fay – everyone loved her and so did
the master. Broke his heart when she disappeared.”

“She left her royalties to charity, not him,” Toby pointed out. “Doesn’t sound like a happy marriage.”

“Master told me afterwards that was his idea. He’d plenty to live on, and it would all go in tax anyway. No, it was that Dan was the joker in the pack, believe me.”

“You think Fay loved him?”

“Why else would she run off with him?”

“There was no proof she did.”

“They both disappear at the same time, to different places? Not on your nelly.”