Cherringham--Scared to Death Read online

  “Heard a noise. Saw — well — a van outside. Anyone know who it was who came to the house last night? Just before the fire?”

  “I’ve absolutely no idea,” said Alyssia.

  “Me neither,” said Val.

  Sarah watched Gordon and Karina shake their heads too.

  “No big deal,” said Jack. “Maybe … somebody lost. Or one of those annoying reporters. Ready, Sarah?”

  *

  As they drove away from Hill House down the narrow lane, they had to pull in to let a line of news trucks past.

  “Looks like we got out just in time,” said Jack, as Sarah pulled the Rav-4 back onto the road.

  “Hmm,” said Sarah. “Is it my imagination — or does the air feel fresher down here?”

  “Pretty claustrophobic place, for sure.”

  He waited until she had gotten onto the main road, then: “So what are you thinking, detective?”

  “I’m thinking forty-eight hours into this case — whatever it is — we still don’t really know what’s been going on. But now somebody’s died, it’s not about harmless pranks anymore.”

  “Agree. Would Basil’s heart have failed anyway? Nobody knows — but the stupid stunts didn’t help.”

  “So — assuming that the devil himself is not actually responsible for those stunts — then you think we carry on looking for exactly who is?”

  “Yep, I do,” said Jack, turning to her.

  She nodded her agreement.

  “Good,” he said. “So, let’s go back to the beginning. The skulls and the noose — well, they’re no big deal. Anybody could have done those. Easy. But the blood, the snake — that damned burning wicker man? They took some real setting up.”

  “And your instincts say …?”

  Jack looked out of the window at the early morning traffic, people racing in to work. Then back at Sarah.

  “Right now … I’d say … Gordon. Gordon the ghostwriter, as I like to call him.”

  Sarah laughed. “Reason he’s in the frame?”

  “Okay. First — that book he’s writing? Hardback bio of some old movie star that most everyone under thirty has never heard of — how many copies is he going to shift?”

  “Not many.”

  “Exactly. But — add into the mix the whole haunted house, devil’s revenge shtick and suddenly you’re talking TV interviews, documentaries, YouTube clips featuring him, conspiracy websites analysing the evidence. You name it. And now with Basil’s death — perfect timing by the way — and whaddya know? Suddenly book sales and his career look great.”

  “You’re not saying he actually planned all this to give Basil a heart attack?”

  “Yeah — a stretch. But who knows?” said Jack. “Basil’s heart condition was serious — and it wasn’t a secret.”

  “Wow,” said Sarah. “I must admit — he has all the contacts — see how the TV guys turned up again this morning? I bet he made the call on that.”

  “Totally,” said Jack. “He’s got a solid motive, for sure.”

  “How about Karina? You think she could be in on it too?”

  “She makes a big public show of disliking Gordon, but — well, you saw it too, hmm?”

  “Oh yes — something going on between them for sure.”

  “So maybe she fancies a share of the not inconsiderable spoils — that house must be worth a packet. Same, though, could be said about the beautiful Alyssia?”

  “Hmm, I’m not sure about that,” said Sarah. “Motive?”

  “Money as well? Fame? Another shot at celebrity?”

  “I don’t buy it,” said Sarah, shaking her head. “She looked genuinely upset last night — and this morning.”

  “Once an actress, always an actress.”

  “You’re all heart, Jack Brennan.”

  “Well, talking of hearts, she knew more than anyone that Basil’s was weak. Maybe she was already resigned to losing him.”

  He looked across at Sarah who gave him a sceptical glance.

  “Hmm, yeah, okay. A tad unlikely.”

  “What about the mysterious visitor — in the van?”

  “Right. Timing can’t be a coincidence, that’s for sure. Whoever it was left around ten minutes before the wicker devil went up in flames.”

  “But not much to go on.”

  “Yep — a dark van, with writing on the side,” said Jack. “That’s gotta cut down the suspects to oh … at least a hundred thousand.”

  He stared out of the window as they turned into Cherringham High Street. Shops and businesses weren’t open yet. He loved the feeling of the village waking up.

  Didn’t get that down on The Grey Goose.

  “Tell you what,” he said. “Drop me here, I’m going to grab a coffee and do a bit of thinking. Walk down to the boat later.”

  “Sure,” said Sarah, pulling up outside the village hall. “I might go straight to the office, get my head into some work. Fancy supper tonight? Pasta and wine?”

  “I’ll bring the wine,” said Jack, getting out of the car.

  “This case isn’t over, is it?” said Sarah.

  “Think not,” said Jack. “Fact, I have a suspicion it may have only just started.”

  “See you tonight,” said Sarah.

  Jack watched as she pulled away and drove off down the High Street. Then he walked across the road to Huffington’s, looking forward to a rare treat: a macchiato, the morning paper, and some time to think.

  11. Spaghetti Supper

  Jack knocked on the door to Sarah’s cottage and stepped back when the door opened.

  Sarah stood dressed in a witch’s costume: pointy hat, broom, the works.

  “What do you think?” she said. “It was either this or zombie — and, to be honest, zombie’s never been a good look for me.”

  “Wicked,” said Jack.

  “Oh, very clever,” said Sarah, turning and heading back into the house. “Come in, we’re sorting costumes for the weekend parties.”

  Jack stepped in, shut the door and followed Sarah down the hall into the big kitchen, where Daniel stood over a big costume box holding a plastic severed arm.

  “Hi, Jack,” he said. “Do you think axe murderer counts as a Halloween theme?”

  Jack grinned. “Think I’ll go out on a limb and say ‘yes’.”

  “Right!”

  He watched Sarah drag the box into the corner of the kitchen.

  “It’s our dressing up box,” she said. “Years ago it used to be little fairy dresses and spacemen suits. Now it’s mostly grisly horror!”

  Jack peered into the box and started delving into the layers of costumes.

  “You fixed for the Halloween party, Jack?” said Sarah. “If not, help yourself.”

  “Hmm, was thinking, maybe …”

  He lifted out a black cape with red lining.

  “Vampire.”

  He slipped the cape over his shoulders.

  “Not bad,” said Sarah. “Twenty years ago that started life as Little Red Riding Hood. Who would have thought it?”

  “Got any teeth?”

  “Think I have some in my room, Jack, I’ll go look,” said Daniel, loving this. “They’re really cool — blood stains and everything.”

  “Charming,” said Sarah, throwing costumes back into the box. “You hungry?”

  “You bet I am.”

  “Spaghetti prawns alla Cotswolds coming right up,” she said, picking up the bottle and heading for the fridge. “Prosecco — perfetto, Jack. Come and help me cook.”

  “Martinis first?”

  “Oh, but of course,” said Sarah, heading for the stairs. “You know where everything is. I’ll go get out of this witch outfit.”

  Jack set to gathering vodka, Noilly Prat, lemons, ice, and Sarah’s martini glasses which he’d bought her for Christmas, years back, and which somehow had survived the heavy wear and tear!

  “Let’s get to work,” he said, when Sarah came back into the kitchen, feeling almost as “at home” t
here as he did on The Grey Goose.

  *

  “How are the shallots doing?” said Sarah, now dressed in jeans and a track top, taking the wine from the fridge and opening it.

  “Softening nicely,” said Jack standing at the stove, stirring. “Mushrooms too.”

  “Okay,” said Sarah, “spaghetti time.”

  She took a big handful of pasta from the jar in the cupboard and scattered it in the pan of boiling water at the back of the stove, then turned to call up the stairs: “Daniel! We’re eating in ten, just to warn you …”

  “Can’t wait!” shouted Daniel.

  She turned to Jack.

  “So, I grabbed half an hour online, thought I’d get the skinny — as you call it — on our Mr McCloud.”

  “And?”

  “Very slippery customer. Worked as a low-rent investigative reporter for years. Local papers mainly. Once in a blue moon, the nationals. He got caught up in the phone-hacking scandal a few years back, but somehow slipped away with just a warning. Left behind a trail of victims. By all accounts, he did some callous and nasty reporting. Since then, he’s turned his hand to biographies — you know, footballers, criminals.”

  “Ghostwriting — his favourite word,” said Jack, adding another knob of butter to the pan. Then when it had melted: “Time for the wine?”

  “Yep. Pour away.”

  Sarah waited while Jack poured a cup of white wine into the simmering shallots and mushrooms. She reached up to the spice shelves, taking ingredients one by one and dropping them into the sauce.

  “Black pepper. Half a fish stock cube. Couple of drops of Tabasco. Perfect.”

  “Martini break?” said Jack reaching for his glass with one hand, still stirring with the other.

  “Cheers,” said Sarah, clinking her glass to his, then checking the spaghetti which now bubbled on the back burner. “Yes, so Gordon — a hundred shades of shady. And word from a publisher friend of mine — he got no advance on the Basil book and will be desperate for royalties.”

  “What about Karina? You get time to look?”

  “Yup. Back from New York for a good reason. Agent dropped her. Official line: ‘creative differences’. Real reason: too long in rehab, too choosy about jobs, and mostly too unreliable. Oh, and definitely Gordon’s on-again, off-again ‘other’ — seen together at B-list New York events, falling out of clubs at dawn, you know the kind of thing.”

  “So, both of them wouldn’t mind if Gordon’s career took off?”

  “Without a doubt,” said Sarah. “That wine reduced yet?”

  “Looks like it. Time for the prawns to take a swim?”

  “Let’s do it.”

  She watched as Jack tipped the bowl of cooked prawns into the pan, then called over her shoulder: “Daniel, two minutes and counting!”

  Then to Jack, as she tried the spaghetti: “One interesting little snippet I found while checking the gossip columns …”

  “Go on …”

  “Val Rayment is lined up to do a movie.”

  “No kidding?”

  “Yep. All very hush, hush. Big American director. Apparently he’s been doing test shoots at a secret location. Somewhere hot, I’m guessing.”

  “So that’s where he picked up the film-star tan, hmm?”

  “Exactly,” said Sarah, heading to the fridge and taking out the carton of single cream.

  “He kept that quiet, didn’t he?” said Jack.

  “Maybe didn’t want to upset Basil?”

  “That would be the generous interpretation.”

  “Cream now?”

  “Think so …”

  She leaned over his arm, swirled the cream into the sauce, waited for it to bubble. Then, while Jack stirred, she took the spaghetti, drained it quickly, and came back to the stove.

  “Ready?” she said.

  “Ready,” said Jack.

  She tipped the spaghetti into the prawns and watched Jack stir, folding the sauce and prawns into and over the pasta.

  “Smells fantastic” said Daniel, appearing at the kitchen door.

  “I think it will be,” said Sarah, grabbing a handful of basil and tearing it over the dish.

  “To the chefs,” said Jack raising his glass.

  “To us,” said Sarah.

  Then he picked up the pan, filled deep with steaming prawns and spaghetti and took it to the table.

  “Buon appetito!” he said.

  *

  “This is awesome, Mum,” said Daniel, emptying his plate and gesturing to the bowl. “Can I …?”

  “Help yourself,” said Sarah, then to Jack: “Daniel’s become a bit of a foodie now he works in a restaurant.”

  “Glad to hear it,” said Jack. He sat back and sipped his wine. “Maybe you’ll start cooking too, Daniel? Happy to share what little I know!”

  “Thanks Jack,” said Daniel, serving himself. “Definitely this recipe. So good!”

  Jack watched him dig in again.

  “Your mom says you’ve been watching the great Basil Coates in action?”

  “Yep. Um, I’m writing an essay on Gothic drama, looking at how horror movies reinterpreted the classics. Basil’s films are kind of cheesy sometimes — but they’re still scary.”

  “All down to the performances,” said Jack. “And he was without doubt a great actor. Sad loss to movies. Which ones have you seen?”

  “Mostly the early ones. There’s like a whole series set in Egypt with mummies. Um, that one with the ghost on the cruise ship? Oh, and a really terrible zombie movie!”

  “Yeah, I remember that,” said Jack. “They Rose in the Night.”

  “That’s the one,” said Daniel. “Some title, hmm? But — this is interesting — that’s the movie that’s got the skulls in it. You know — the ones you were talking about, Mum?”

  Jack looked across at Sarah who shrugged, then back at Daniel.

  “You mean the five skulls?”

  “Yep, laid out in a pentagram.”

  “Hmm. How many of Basil’s movies you seen so far, Daniel?”

  “I guess in total … seven or eight maybe? Most of the famous ones, anyhow.”

  “Your mum mention the hanging noose?”

  “Um, yeah,” said Daniel, chewing another mouthful of spaghetti. “That’s in Death of a Highwayman. Pretty grisly — there’s just his head left on the gibbet … Ha!”

  “Don’t suppose you’ve come across a burning devil?”

  “Demon of the Isles,” said Daniel. “Weird story that one — the devil takes the form of the hay ricks and terrorises all the villagers. So, they burn it and send it back to hell. The end. Pretty silly.”

  “How about water turning to blood?”

  “Oh yeah. Gross. That was in one of the vampire stories, can’t remember the name. The vampire drowns the milkmaid in a bath of it.”

  “Charming,” said Sarah.

  Jack put down his fork, took a sip of wine, then looked across at her.

  “Remember — Basil said something about these pranks all coming from his movies?”

  “Yeah, that’s right.”

  “Well, I’m just thinking. Back in the day, they must have had a whole team of special effects guys making those props. What if — some of them are still alive?”

  “You’re right. They might be able to tell us how the pranks were done.”

  “And that might give us a clue who did them.”

  “Easy enough to check,” said Sarah. “When we’re done eating, let’s take a look online.”

  “Daniel — you got time to watch any more movies?”

  “Sure,” he said. “It is school work, after all!”

  Jack nodded. “Um, let us know if you find one with snakes, hmm?”

  *

  Sarah put their coffees on her home office desk, pulled up another chair for Jack, and logged on at her computer.

  “Let’s start with IMDB,” she said. “That site has crew lists for every movie ever made.”

  She pulled u
p a list of Basil’s movie credits, then scrolled through the lists, looking for names that repeated across the films.

  “I guess we’re looking at special effects credits,” said Jack. “In the days before computers, they were the guys who built all the clever stuff.”

  “Okay, let’s see who we got …”

  Ten minutes later, she’d gone through all the Anvil movies and had a list of half a dozen names.

  “Now, let’s see who’s alive.”

  “Hmm,” said Jack. “If they were working in the fifties and sixties they’re going to be pushing at least seventy or eighty now.”

  One by one, she checked the individual credits of the special effects guys. All of whom, it seemed, had died.

  Except one.

  “Billy Gammon,” she said. “Worked on the whole Anvil series. Last credit 1985 — but no year of death. So, theoretically, he could still be going strong, at the age of … eighty-three.”

  “Hmm,” said Jack. “Can’t quite see him getting up to high jinks with flaming wicker men.”

  “Think you’re right.”

  Sarah put his name into a wider search engine, then: “Aha — look. Billy’s not the only Gammon in the special effects business. There’s a Tommy Gammon — and he’s still working.”

  “Let me look,” said Jack, leaning in. “Relative?”

  “Son, from the look of it. And he’s got his own company — Gammon FX, in the old Ealing Studios.”

  “Well whaddya know?” said Jack.

  Sarah did a quick image search.

  “How about that?” she said, pointing to the screen.

  A location shot for Gammon FX showed Tommy Gammon and some crew members standing next to a vehicle on location.

  And the vehicle was a dark blue van.

  With silver writing on the side.

  “Well, well. Fancy a trip to Ealing Studios tomorrow?” said Jack.

  “Wouldn’t miss it for the world,” said Sarah.

  12. Behind the Scenes

  The drive to Ealing took a lot longer than Sarah thought it would. The traffic into and out of London these days seemed to be in a constant state of rush-hour gridlock.

  And they both needed to be back in time for Lady Repton’s Halloween party.

  Lady R — a good and flinty friend — wouldn’t brook their missing it!