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  SOMETHING IS ROTTEN

  A Lambert and Hook Mystery

  J M Gregson

  This edition published 2008

  in Great Britain and the USA

  by SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS of

  9-15 High Street, Sutton, Surrey, SM1 1DF.

  First world regular print edition published 2007

  by Severn House Publishers, London and New York.

  Copyright © 2007 by J M. Gregson.

  All rights reserved.

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

  Gregson, J. M.

  Something is rotten. - (A Lambert and Hook mystery)

  1. Lambert, John (Fictitious character) - Fiction

  2. Hook, Bert (Fictitious character) - Fiction

  3. Police - England - Gloucestershire - Fiction

  4. Detective and mystery stories

  ISBN-13: 978-0-7278-7712-3

  Except where actual historical events and characters are being described for the storyline of this novel, all situations in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to living persons is purely coincidental.

  Printed and bound in Great Britain by MPG Books Ltd, Bodmin, Cornwall.

  To Anita Newton,

  The best theatrical director I ever knew.

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-One

  Twenty-Two

  One

  ‘Of course, the person we really need is your husband. His considerable presence would make our cast complete.’

  Detective Sergeant Bert Hook decided in retrospect that it was at that moment that he should have nipped the idea firmly and fiercely in the bud. Everything which followed could probably have been avoided, if he had only spoken up decisively at that point.

  He was never quite sure why he didn’t. It is very flattering, of course, to hear that your participation is important; that a whole enterprise might collapse without you. But Bert Hook was more armoured against flattery than most men. He immediately suspected it and wanted to know what was behind it when he heard it, and he was usually right to be sceptical. Few people offered you flattery without an ulterior motive.

  He didn’t want to be accused of being an eavesdropper. His wife Eleanor and this mystery voice were closeted together in the room beside the front door at the front of the Hooks’ semi-detached nineteen-sixties house. It was technically the dining room but, as well as chairs and a table, it had two comfortable armchairs: most important of all, it was the room in the house which was least used and almost always kept tidy and thus suitable for the reception of visitors. With two boys of eleven and thirteen in the house, and a husband who Eleanor Hook always maintained was an overgrown schoolboy, you couldn’t rely on order anywhere else.

  Bert couldn’t catch his wife’s voice as clearly as he had heard the cut-glass tones of her visitor, but he thought Eleanor muttered something diffidently about him never having been on stage.

  ‘Oh, his appearance is just what we need for the part, and he’ll manage the lines all right with a little coaching!’ said that confident, dominating voice. The woman offered this as not just her opinion, but as a fact that could not be contested. Bert had heard voices like that many times before. Indeed, from the age of twelve to sixteen, it had seemed to him that such voices had controlled his present and future life, with their firmly stated assessments of what he should study at school and what he should do and not do to earn himself an honest living afterwards.

  Bert Hook was a Barnardo’s boy, and he was quite convinced that the policies of the home where he had grown to adolescence had been dominated by the voices of worthy middle-class women of impeccable virtue and formidable decibel levels. He could not remember the voices of the men anything like so clearly. As a police officer, Bert had spent over thirty years dealing with a vast variety of dangerous villains. The men and women who worked with him believed that nothing could shake staid and reliable old DS Hook, who had seen it all and come out on top far more often than not.

  Perhaps it was only Bert who knew how he still quailed inwardly when he heard a voice like the one now booming so imperiously in the adjoining room.

  He couldn’t listen any longer without becoming an eavesdropper. DS Hook braced himself, drew himself up to his full height and marched determinedly into his dining room. He asked with bold and artificial bonhomie, ‘Do I hear my name being taken in vain?’

  He noted Eleanor looked startled but relieved. She said, ‘This is Mrs Dalrymple. You haven’t met her before. She organizes us all in the charity shop. Makes sure we operate efficiently and profitably.’

  Mrs Dalrymple laughed, a high, baying sound which sent a thrush away like a bullet from the eaves outside the window and chilled Bert Hook’s heart with a recollected horror. ‘Call me Maggie, for God’s sake! Everyone else does, nowadays. And your wife is far too kind to me, Mr Hook. You can only insist on so much efficiency when all your workers are part-time and unpaid.’The laugh with which she accompanied this disclaimer was reduced to a modest cackle. She resumed the conversation more earnestly and with a breathy intimacy which was even more unnerving. ‘How are your histrionics, Detective Sergeant Hook?’

  ‘Non-existent. The last time I appeared on stage was as a boy soprano in Oliver. I was one of Fagin’s urchins. Leaping about the stage in rags and trying to pick a pocket or two.’

  Maggie Dalrymple smirked happily at the thought of the stolid policeman as a diminutive street thief. ‘How delicious! And no doubt of happy recollection to you, now that you operate on the other side of the law! But you see, you are not without theatrical experience, after all. No doubt once you tread the boards again, the feel for an audience will come back to you. The roar of the crowd, the smell of the greasepaint, you know!’ She gestured with a vague right arm towards the ceiling of the low-roomed modern house and looked a little desperately towards Eleanor Hook for support.

  ‘We didn’t have greasepaint in Oliver,’ said Hook, feeling daring even making this small correction to his formidable visitor. ‘I thought it had gone out altogether, these days.’

  ‘I was speaking figuratively,’ said Mrs Dalrymple loftily, wondering if the phrase was quite correct. ‘But, of course, you’re quite right. And your knowledge shows how in touch you are with the modern theatre. You may not have had many opportunities of late, but I suspect that there is a small, secret part of you which has for years been longing to get on stage.’ She beamed delightedly at each of the two blank faces in turn. ‘We all have that yearning, you know. Well, most of us anyway. And I expect that Detective Sergeant Hook in his secret moments thinks that he is a bit of a Richard Burton manque!’

  Eleanor Hook did not dare to catch her husband’s eye in the light of this suggestion. She said, in belated support of him, ‘Bert is usually kept very busy at work. You wouldn’t be able to rely on him for rehearsals. When emergencies come up and he’s working on a serious crime I often don’t know when I’ll see him next.’

  ‘Oh, Gloucestershire and Herefordshire are sleepy counties for serious mischief. And this is a quiet
time of year for crime.’ Maggie Dalrymple spoke with the confidence which often comes from the wholly British combination of social standing and profound ignorance.

  Bert Hook was still contemplating the brazenness of this pronouncement when he slipped into the error of inquiry. ‘What was it that you were thinking of putting on, anyway, Mrs Dalrymple?’

  ‘Not me, my dear man, the Mettlesham Players. I am but a cog in the wheel.’

  Some cog, thought Bert. He said unwillingly, ‘I’ve heard of them. They have quite a local reputation.’

  Mrs Dalrymple preened herself: it was an awesome sight, especially within the confines of a modern semi. ‘We have our modest successes.’ Her tone indicated that they were anything but modest.

  Bert repeated his question patiently, ‘And what is the production you are contemplating at the moment, Maggie?’ He forced out the name, his eyes closing for a moment with his daring, as he rejected many years of subjection to formidable ladies like this in his boyhood. No doubt she wanted him to play some caricature of a policeman, a thicko uniformed fool who would flex his knees and say, ‘What’s going on ’ere then?’

  ‘It’s Hamlet, Mr Hook.’ Maggie Dalrymple tried not to look pleased with herself and failed comprehensively. ‘We shall bring a little culture to the masses in rural Gloucestershire.’ That sounded like a phrase she had used many times before. She misinterpreted the looks of surprise on the faces of her listeners. ‘It’s Shakespeare, you know.’

  ‘Yes.’ Bert was still trying to digest the ambition of this project with an amateur group: people who had probably never spoken verse aloud before.

  Eleanor Hook said loyally, ‘Bert knows quite a lot about Shakespeare. He’s almost completed an Open University degree. He specialized in English Literature.’

  Mrs Dalrymple looked for a moment totally shocked by this intrusion of the labouring classes upon the Bard. Then she continued, determined to turn the information to her advantage. ‘That’s all to the good, then, isn’t it? Mr Hook may not need as much coaching as I anticipated. I’m sure he’ll be absolutely marvellous, once he’s got the hang of it.’

  Bert tried to take the personal implications out of this. ‘If you don’t mind my saying so, Hamlet seems a rather ambitious choice, for both the players and their prospective audience.’

  Maggie Dalrymple looked for a moment as if she certainly did mind his saying so. Then she controlled her reaction, reminding herself of why she had come here and thinking of the greater good of the Mettlesham Players. She took a deep breath and said, ‘That is a perceptive comment, Mr Hook - or Bert, if I may be so bold. I see that you and I will be on a common wavelength when it comes to the literary and dramatic challenges of the piece. And in the ordinary way of things I should agree with you. But it just so happens that we have a quite outstanding candidate for the main role. We have a young man who is about to go off to drama school at the age of twenty-four and who I predict will be one of the foremost actors of the next generation. The chance to play the gloomy Dane is a great opportunity for him and a splendid windfall for us.’

  Bert failed to ask who this stellar presence might be, partly because his fearsome visitor obviously expected him to want a name. He said stubbornly, ‘It’s a very long piece for a village hall.’

  Mrs Dalrymple trilled a merry laugh. Her amusement was more spine-chilling than her earlier cackles. ‘And for the concentration of village yokels and lumpen milkmaids, you mean.’

  Bert hadn’t meant anything of the sort. He’d been thinking of the combined effect of amateur acting and rudimentary seating upon the buttocks of an audience who had been dragooned into attendance. He said desperately, ‘I wasn’t really intending—’

  ‘Oh, we’ve already got the mechanics of the production under control. Mettlesham has an excellent village hall, with a surprisingly large stage. And my husband has been good enough to pay for the hire of the hall for as many nights as we shall need, over the months of rehearsal. His firm’s gesture towards the sponsorship of the arts, he calls it.’ She smiled happily at this evidence of marital harmony, whilst Bert’s sympathy for a man he had never met rose sharply. ‘We’re hoping to attract a discriminating audience from a wide area, but it needn’t be too long for the locals. If we cut out Fortinbras and one or two other characters and shorten a couple of the soliloquies, we reckon we can get through it in not much over two hours.’

  Bert wanted to say that perhaps you should not be thinking in terms of ‘getting through’ the most subtle and intellectual play in the English language, but he knew that would sound priggish. Moreover, he was suddenly aware that the more interest he showed, the more he would be tacitly agreeing to an involvement in this ridiculous enterprise. He said resolutely, ‘Well, I shall look forward to the production with interest, but I’m afraid it would be impossible for me to be involved. I’m sorry to disappoint you.’

  ‘It’s a very important part. I’m not sure whether we shall be able to go ahead without you.’ Maggie produced a look of reflective disappointment, which did not deceive Bert at all.

  He smiled modestly. ‘I can’t think that a man who last appeared as a ragamuffin in Oliver can be vital to a production of Hamlet.’

  Mrs Dalrymple was for a moment overcome by the irrefutable logic of this. Then she said in a deep, actressy voice which sounded like a parody of herself, ‘Balance is important in Shakespeare. The best productions can come unstuck if they lack a confident ensemble, Mr Hook.’ She estimated this insight for a moment, then nodded with quiet satisfaction at the profundity of it.

  Curiosity, although part of the make-up of any successful CID officer, is always a perilous companion elsewhere. It now led DS Hook into a cardinal error. Before he realized that he was expressing a dangerous interest, he asked, ‘What part was it you had in mind for me?’

  He caught a glimpse of Eleanor’s startled face as he realized the mistake he had made.

  Maggie Dalrymple said magisterially. ‘It’s Polonius, Mr Hook. With your knowledge of the play, you will realize what an important role that is. Indeed, how flattering it is that I am here to secure your participation in our great enterprise.’ She gave Bert a dazzling, coquettish smile, which froze his marrow more than any of her previous expressions.

  Polonius! The doddering old fool who meddles his way to his doom! Bert had been hoping for Claudius, that devious, smiling, efficient villain who dominates the action of the play. He’d met a few Claudiuses in his years of serious crime and had always nursed a secret and totally unrealistic yearning to play the slippery king. Even the ghost of Hamlet’s father, booming magisterially through the mist on the battlements, would have been quite acceptable. But Polonius! Bert Hook wanted to laugh at himself and his own absurd pretensions. But he could manage only a sickly smile.

  Mrs Dalrymple studied him with interest. ‘You’d need a lot of make-up, of course. But although he’s usually played as a tedious old bore, he has a young daughter and might well in fact be about your age. And our director sees him more as a man of wisdom than a figure of farce.’ She beamed first at Bert and then at his wife, embracing the household in her bonhomie. ‘But all that will become clear to you in due course at rehearsals. I mustn’t get ahead of myself1.’ Bert Hook felt himself thrust back thirty years to his last days in the Barnardo’s home, when he had been steamrollered by ladies like this. Panic rose within him and he felt the blood throbbing in his temples. ‘I’ll need to check it out at work. Pm not quite a free agent, you know.’

  ‘Of course I understand. The nation’s interests must come first. The rising tide of crime must be resisted with every breakwater we can thrust into its path!’ Mrs Dalrymple paused for a moment, savouring her metaphor. Then she dropped her voice into her contralto temptress tones. ‘But even the most conscientious officer is allowed a private life. Indeed, I would say that dedicated officers like you need a very different range of interests away from work, if they are to keep their sharpness as detectives. Wouldn’t you agree, Bert?�
��

  This second use of his Christian name was the final deadly blow. Bert Hook said in blind panic, ‘I’ll check it out and let you know, Mrs Dalrymple.’

  ‘Maggie, please! I’m sure that we shall get to know each other very well over the next few months, Bert!’

  And with that final devastating statement, the galleon of modern drama which was Mrs Dalrymple sailed out of the house under full sail.

  Two

  Bert Hook’s encounter with Mrs Dalrymple had been conducted on the evening of Monday the sixth of November.

  As he drove through the Herefordshire countryside towards Oldford Police Station on the Tuesday morning, Bert was even more determined to make himself unavailable for the production of Hamlet. His recent studies of Shakespeare had given him far too much respect for the writer for him to risk involving himself in what seemed almost certain to be a disaster.

  It was one of those autumn mornings which seemed designed to clear the mind and assist good decision making. This seemed to Hook as pleasant a place as almost anywhere on earth - a touch of hyperbole, perhaps, but Bert was Herefordshire born and bred, and entitled to a little bias. The forest trees were still in full leaf, but the leaves were turning now towards the many shades of amber and orange which would allow them their full glory. The day was still, with a soft, low, morning sun lighting up the colours at the same time as it threw long shadows across the lanes. Winter frosts and snows might not be far away, but for the moment nature was at her softest and most benign.

  Bert had seen his boys on to the school bus at eight o’clock, and he had plenty of time to savour his journey. This relaxed introduction to the day hardened his resolve about histrionics: he would get John Lambert to forbid him to participate in Mrs Dalrymple’s absurdly ambitious scheme. It might be the cowardly way out, but it was foolproof. If his participation was vetoed by Lambert, then surely even the formidable Mrs Dalrymple could not argue with the edict of a Chief Superintendent. If she did, John Lambert would handle her firmly; the chief didn’t have all the baggage of being reared in a Barnardo’s home to contend with.