Rite Judgement E-Book

Pete Adams

• Herausgeber: Next Chapter
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Beschreibung

Heads roll. Corpses dance. People will believe what they want to believe.

After Sister Winfrede, leader of the second violins in the famous Nun’s Orchestra in Portsmouth, is found decapitated, both the police and the MI5 are called in to investigate.

More bodies soon follow, but the deceased don't seem to stay dead. One of the victims, Bea Flat, is seemingly resurrected and ready to conduct the orchestra, and ominous signs tell of a connection to something sinister.

Melding myth, legend and contemporary crime fiction, Rite Judgement is a story of good against evil, of mysterious events that you can never be sure actually happened, and above all of hope and the mind's capacity to believe anything that might make dreams come true. And in the middle of it all, Jack Austin and the DaDa Detective Agency.

Leseprobe

RITE JUDGEMENT

DADA DETECTIVE AGENCY BOOK 2

PETE ADAMS

HEADS ROLL – CORPSES DANCE

CONTENTS

Praise for Pete Adams

Books by Pete Adams:

The Rite of Spring

Author’s Note

Introduction

Prologue

I. The Dancers, the Players…

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

II. The Umble Pies Thicken

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

III. A Murmuration of Plebs

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

The End

Author’s Note

Next in the Series

About the Author

Copyright (C) 2021 Pete Adams

Layout design and Copyright (C) 2021 by Next Chapter

Published 2021 by Next Chapter

Edited by Terry Hughes

Cover art by CoverMint

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the author’s permission.

PRAISE FOR PETE ADAMS

“Pete Adams is the Salvador Dali of thriller writers”

– John Broughton

A politically correct / incorrect, risqué, mischievous, irreverent and,

ever so naughty, crime mystery thriller.

A real / surreal novel where life imitates art in TheRite of Spring

Yes, a very British revolution.

* * *

The semblance of truth:

You've got to accentuate the narrative

Eliminate the unprovocative

Latch on to the imaginative

Don't mess with Mister Verisimilitude

You've got to spread hope up to the maximum

Bring hate down to the minimum

Have faith in pandemonium

And walk the talk with attitude

Original song, Accentuate the Positive:

Sung by Byng Crosby, songwriters Johnny Mercer / Harold Arlen

“The imaginary is what tends to become real.” – André Breton

BOOKS BY PETE ADAMS:

The Kind Hearts and Martinets Series:

Book 1 - Cause and Effect – Vice plagues the City

Book 2 - Irony in the Soul – Nobody Listens like the Dying

Book 3 - A Barrow Boy’s Cadenza – In Dead Flat Major

Book 4 - Ghost and Ragman Roll – Spectre or Spook

Book 5 - Merde and Mandarins – Divine Breath

* * *

The DaDa Detective Agency – sequel series to Kind Hearts and Martinets:

Transitional novels:

Book 1 - Road Kill – The Duchess of Frisian Tun

Book 2 - Rite Judgement – Heads roll, Death and Insurrection

* * *

The Larkin’s Barkin’ series – East End of London gangster family saga:

Book 1 - Black Rose – A Midsummer Night’s Chutzpah – 1966

* * *

The Rhubarb Papers:

Book 1 - Dead No More – Rhubarb in the Mammon

To Carl Clauson, Director of the Hampshire County Youth Orchestra – in 2013 he staged a magnificent performance of The Rite of Spring, joining local dancers with the very accomplished youth orchestra. It made my mind buzz. I wrote notes throughout.

The Rite of Spring – the metaphor – at the end of this book I set out how I read the metaphor – but, for now, I leave the reader to draw their own conclusions (no peeking).

AUTHOR’S NOTE

This novel may shock you. If it doesn’t, I apologise. In parts, it may offend and, yes, I apologise…? There is a cavalier attitude to religion, exaggerated caricatures, but what would you expect of a real / surreal story. Is there a happy ending? That depends on your point of view, but, there is hope…

St Winifrede – Wikipedia According to legend, Winifrede was the daughter of a Welsh nobleman; her mother was a sister of St Beuno. When Winifrede decided to become a

nun, her suitor, Caradog, was enraged and decapitated her. A healing spring appeared

where her head fell. Winifrede’s head was subsequently re-joined to her body, thanks to the efforts of Saint Beuno, and she was restored to life.

The DaDa Detective Agency – PoliceDetective Jack (nicknamed Jane) Austin and his wife, Detective Superintendent Amanda Austin, retired and formed the agency. In his Oft-deluded parallel existence, Jack declared that his wife would henceforth be known as Duck, and himself as Dick. Now, Amanda Austin is a strong woman indeed and, at any time can disarm her dipstick husband, but occasionally, she allowed his follies to remain unchallenged, confident that the anticipated train crash would derail any of Jack’s pig-sty thinking (we think he meant big sky, but then again…). And, in this case, nervous that in retirement they would both become bored, she thought a low-profile detective agency would be quite fulfilling. All she needed to do was persuade her errant husband to select a new name, not being totally enamoured of the Dick and Duck Austin (DaDa), Detective Agency name, principally because she was a woman and not a bird and, if she had to be a bird, then why a fucking duck? She did, however, think her husband was a dick and so left that half of the nom d’agence, unchallenged. Maybe she could be Dorothy, a gift from God, or Daisy? Perhaps Dianna? Oh God, not Dee Dee. But she was lumbered with Duck and, DaDa. Maybe LaLa had a more appropriate ring to it?

Dada– Wikipedia – A European artistic and literary movement (1916-1923) that flouted conventional aesthetic and cultural values by producing works marked by nonsense, travesty and incongruity. Dada rejected reason and logic, prizing nonsense, irrationality and intuition. Maybe it helps to understand matters if we make a nonsense of them? This is what the DaDa series of novels seeks to achieve.

Umble Pie – A mediaeval pie made from the heart and entrails of a deer. If you upset the lord of the manor, you were sent to a lower table, where the fare was of poorer quality, and, made to eat umble pie (not humble – although this is the modern day derivation).

Ooh La Lovelies – a name inspired by Portsmouth fashion designer, Michelle Louise Finnerty and her company, Oh La Lovelies, producing beautiful haute couture, inspired from the fifties elegance mode – Michelle has kindly given me consent to use the name.

Illuminati – Wikipedia – The Illuminati are often alleged to conspire to control world affairs, contriving situations, infiltrating governments and corporations, in order to gain political power and influence and to establish a new world order.

Illusionati – Not very much is known of them, as you might expect.

“Every word that is spoken and sung here represents at least this one thing: that this humiliating age has not succeeded in winning our respect.”

Hugo Ball, referring to the Cabaret Voltaire. and it is equally relevant today.

INTRODUCTION

At the conclusion of the Kind Hearts and Martinets series and the immediate sequel, Road Kill – The Duchess of Frisian Tun, there was nothing. Just two stories evolving, one fleetingly surreal, but potent, the other very real and edgy and, they had begun to intertwine, like a DNA spiral. Was this an opportunity for change, or punishment for what has preceded us and, will continue, in another guise, or maybe both? And what strand will succeed; The People or The System? A new birth? Not a rebirth.

Martin Heidegger said: “There is no such thing as nothing.”– “Das Nichts”, the nothing. So, there is something? But, if it is not the right something, if it is a something that ignores the essence of reality, “authenticity” and, commits the vast majority of people into subjugation, “theyselves and notthemselves (ourselves)” for the profit of the very few, then that something needs to change. But who can we reasonably look to lead the way? The state? The establishment? They are a part of the problem, no? The church? Other religious faiths? They have their own power-base agenda, yes? Is it even possible to turn this juggernaut of nothingness, of denial of a real something, around? And what is authenticity?

Kurt Vonnegut said: “There is no reason why good cannot triumph as often as evil. The triumph of anything is a matter of organisation. If there are such things as angels, I hope that they are organised along the lines of the Mafia”

Well, it turns out the angels were organising, but could they combat not only the evil outside, but also, the evil within? Read on and find out…

PROLOGUE

There had been the Arab Spring. Well, what was called the Arab Spring, but there had been a spring, first in Tunisia, then Egypt, Libya, Yemen, Bahrain and Syria, Morocco and Jordan – all springs of varying degrees of success and all aimed at overturning an oppressive regime, or what at least was deemed to be oppressive, but had, in the course of time, been shown to be benign dictatorships, if that is possible?

To say that Britain faced, or needed a spring, might be pushing the analogy too far, but certainly the people felt oppressed by the establishment, comprised of the government, civil servants, banks and financial institutions, corporations, as well as wealthy individuals, all perceived to be in the grip and control of the elite; the one per cent. The people felt and were, in reality, disenfranchised. The elite, the Eton bunch, the old-money privileged, felt they had a God-given right to rule. A divine arrogance, established through generations of the same families, all moneyed, and all convinced they knew best. The plebs? Well, they should be grateful for what they got. The crumbs off their table.

To say Britain needed a spring would also depend on which side of the fence you sat, silver spoon in a bouche raffinee, or a rusty nail stuck up your arse. But, something was brewing, and it looked as if it was not just letters to the newspaper, tuts at coffee mornings and grumbles in the working-men’s clubs. This was different, there was a groundswell that was germinating, flourishing and growing in momentum. It had the hallmarks of a peasants’ revolt, led not by an uneducated Wat Tyler, but some more powerful and influential persons and organisations supporting the movement, goading it even, some for altruistic reasons, but others saw that a dystopian society made for more opportunities to make smash-and-grab raids on the country’s family silver. These unscrupulous institutions could do very well indeed, provided it went their way, which it was anticipated to do. As it had always done. But would it this time? They played a dangerous game and so what of the risks? The people would not see them until it would be too late.

On the other hand, would the power of the people be enough to overcome? And what was it they had to overcome? The enemy was nebulous and this had always been the way. Who are you fighting? Certainly in some cultures, as proven in the Arab Spring, the people had a known enemy that generally did not shield itself behind the pretence of a democracy and, the people had the will and the spirit; never say die. But did the British? The Brits had to be up for work in the morning, of course, but that was becoming less of an issue as jobs disappeared or people were slammed into zero-hours contracts. They would be up, but then a phone call; no work today. Idle hands? Maybe not, there might be something good on the telly, though this had been manipulated as much as it could with diverting news, often made up, of gung-ho sporting fixtures, jingoistic headlines, anything to distract the plebs, but even that interest was waning as people started to become aware of their cruel circumstances. It is hard to ignore hunger.

There were rumblings of discontent. The whiff of revolt in the air. A gathering storm, the big Mo. The established order was being challenged on several fronts and many of the traditional barriers, proven successful in the past, like starving the poor, disabled and sick, were being charged down. Revolution was being nurtured, but would it be a bloodless coup and, most of all, would it succeed? Read on…

PART1

THE DANCERS, THE PLAYERS…

ONE

Leonard Bernstein said,“If there is no one to play second fiddle, there is no harmony,”and it is reliably thought he did not refer to the brand of hairspray of that name. But, in this instance, may his words have been misconstrued?

However, it is true that if an orchestra is to have a long and successful life, the leader of the second violins needs to be a player of the utmost capability; though often it is considered the player sent to lead the second violins is sacrificed on the conductor’s altar, much like a virgin would be walled up by mediaeval builders, or the Romans sacrificed a bull and drank its blood; for the greater good. Should it therefore have come as a surprise that the second fiddle player, leader of the second violins, in the celebrated St Winifrede’s Convent Orchestra, The Nuns’ Orchestra, Sister Winifrede, who also taught geography at the St Winifrede’s Roman Catholic Convent School in Portsmouth, sat in a pool of sacrificial blood. The ensanguined floor, a crimson pool, was highlighted by a brilliantly intense shaft of light that seemingly had no terrestrial electrical source.

The nun had been decapitated, her body posed on a chair in her position as leader of the second violins. She was playing the violin, except there was no chin present to tuck the violin under. Regardless, she gave a peerless and chinless recital, playing a beautiful and celestially haunting tune, The Lark Ascending.

The decollated head of Sister Winifrede had been placed on the conductor’s desk, atop the score for Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring. Her wimple was missing and the nun’s hair, previously savagely cropped, had been superbly coiffed; she had the serene look of an Audrey Hepburn in her heyday.

It was June the twenty second, sixteen days after the Portsmouth celebrations of the seventieth anniversary of D-Day and the not so much celebrated, though thoroughly acknowledged in the newspapers, partial destruction of Frisian Tun, a previously enchanting middle class street in pretentious, so some say, middle-class Southsea (See Road Kill – The Duchess of Frisian Tun). An English idyll within the City of Portsmouth, a strategically important naval and commercial port on the south coast of England and, to pile conundrum upon Gordian Knot, this was just a few days after the revelation that the Duchess of Frisian Tun was none other than the notorious London transvestite gangster and socialite, Mad Frankie the axeman.

The social mores were all asunder. Unusual? Not really. So much was happening that was inexplicable? A collision of catastrophic events, too numerous to list. Something in the stars? Certainly the past few weeks had the pundits running panic stricken for their copy of Nostradamus, their Old Moore’s Almanac, but they should have waited for the revelation from Crumpet and Pimple, investigative journalists, as even more was to be exposed; something would need to be done.

And now there was Umble Pie.

Orchestra practice was at lunchtime… would it go ahead, if you pardon the pun?

* * *

To say Ernest, the caretaker at St Winifrede’s, was odd might be an understatement, though the degrading aspects of his job suited his purpose; he sought only promotion within his Order and, sacrifices had to be made.

Ernest sloped his head and cupped a hand to his ear as he drifted, broom in hand, toward the school hall, as if drawn by the tantalising scent of Bisto gravy, sniffing out an inspirational audio trail, not a mouth-watering aromatic fragrance, but a spooky melodic emanation. The elegiac chords bountifully suffused the corridors with an evanescent life, supplanting the ordinarily insensate passageways during lesson time, much as the gravy would enrich even the dullest roast meat.

Ernest tracked the haunting sound and soon arrived outside the school hall, the source of the music. He tipped on to his toes, for he had the appearance of an insignificant short man, which to all intents, he was. He was short and cultivated his insignificance, which actually came naturally to him and, if he had stopped to think about it, he might have realised this was why he was still lowly within the Order. He peeked into the hall through the porthole window in one of the double doors. He didn’t know about the importance of a second fiddle, or harmony, but he did know that orchestra practice would likely not go ahead later that morning.

The hall was a terrible mess and this would mean trouble. He would be blamed; he always was. He took in a panoramic view of the assembly room, a gloomy ambience to what was ordinarily a light and bright auditorium now seemingly subjected to an artificially created darkness, daylight mysteriously occluded. His comprehension of a gloom-saturated disarray was, however, short-lived and only cursory, as his focus was drawn to the body of the decapitated nun captured in an extraordinarily bright laser like beam, its illuminating journey picking up fairies dancing to the music; agitated dust motes, moving as if dancing a ballet to the tune being played, A bird going up, he thought. A minor distraction from the macabre scene.

Ernest stepped through the doors and into the hall. He was not nervous, he was buoyed with an excitement that would be inexplicable to a casual observer. He had seen scenes like this in books and read about such apparitions in the Order’s pamphlets. Was this his blinding light? A clarion call to arms, his calling? If it was, then Ernest was ready, up to the task and, as he thought this, so his body inflated with Holy Caretaking spirits. He stood erect as he filled his lungs with air to puff out his pigeon chest, the consequence of which was he got a nostril full of the sickly ferrous scent of blood, and the accompanying sensitivity of death and its incumbent fear tingled along his spine. His ersatz though righteous bravado fading rapidly, Ernest’s naturally occurring simpering cowardice reasserted itself.

Overcoming his pusillanimity, his faith instilling him with spurious bravado, Ernest approached the orchestra practice area, the chairs and spindly music stands set out like skeletons waiting to be given body and soul through musicians in habits with their musical scores. He was attracted not to the fiddling headless nun, but to the conductor’s rostrum, where a second ethereal sunbeam spotlighted a head atop the conductor’s table and, as he focused his stare, he could see that the score had been annotated with a scrawled note in red. Blood? He closed in for a better look. The scrawl tailed away to the bottom of the page where the red ink oozing from the ragged neck end painfully slowly dripped off the desk to the floor, forming a gathering of tiny splash marks outside a blackening, congealing pool. Ernest polished his bottle-end glasses and read the score annotation in handwriting that appeared similar to the Stravinsky notation above the title, it read: Give us a sign, oh Lord.The reckoning is yours – £73, plus tip. Ernie had not a clue what that lot meant and only now he thought he might have misinterpreted the tableau? This was not a call to arms for him but the fucking Druids, always troublesome at times of apostasy. Well, they would not disrupt his plans. His plans. Not this time.

Ernest Pugh was considered several picnics short of a shilling and he did nothing to dissuade people of this image – he encouraged it. But in this guise, he did make a fair caretaker at St Winifrede’s, which was a religious establishment considered lowly in his Order of Caretakers. His sister, Gladys Pugh, was the lay school secretary and she had arranged for her simple, oft-delusional, brother to get the job, where she could keep an eye on him. Although Gladys was not a nun, she did have empathy for the strict religious order and this was respected by the Mother Superior, encouraged even, but what would the head nun do if she was aware that Gladys reported back to the sainted, and much feared, HolyBarbaras? Hell hath no fury like a ratted-out Mother Superior, and then there would be the reaction from the Barbaras.

Kids can be cruel and the school children called the caretaker, a man in their view, diminished in stature and lacking in perceived mental faculties, “Hair Ernie”, and not because he had twenty three cross-combed hairs plastered across his bald top pate, giving the semblance of the railway track confluence at Clapham Junction, but because he had a toothbrush black moustache, very much in the mode of Herr Hitler. Or, they called him Blind Pugh, as a consequence of the bottle-end glasses he wore, which meant he could not reliably see beyond his politically questionable moustache and once, while cleaning the floor of the staff ladies lavatory, he cleaned rather too thoroughly the intimate regions of the headmistress, also the convent’s mother superior, as she bent down to pull up her gigantic knickers. They remain friends, the headmistress and the mop.

Blind Pugh he might be called, but Hair Ernie had a black spot or two up his sleeve and he sensed it was getting close to the time when he would be called upon to play his hand, which was at the end of the sleeve of his beige caretaker’s coat, the top pocket of which sported an emblem in a tawny fawn, with cream and pastel blue highlights – The Order of Christ’s Caretakers.

It was Hair Ernie’s task, as school caretaker, to make sure all was shipshape for the orchestra rehearsal and he discussed with himself and, a largely unresponsive nun, the mess around the second violin sister, who had now stopped playing; presumably distracted by Ernie’s interrogation. The caretaker eventually realised that his conversation was somewhat one-sided, albeit the answers lyrically sounded in the ether, much as he would expect of a vision. Turning to the conductor’s rostrum, he became aware that it was Sister Winifrede’s head, sans coif, who was conversing in reply, though geographically relocated. He did think she looked gorgeous with her new hairstyle. She had a beatific visage, especially glowing in the pencil beam of such high-ordered brilliance; Joan of Arc light, like.

He ceased his conversation with the speaking head in order to clean up the mess beside a violinist whom he did not recognise. In fact, he knew only that the nun was a violinist as she had a violin in her hands and he wondered now if it had in fact been her playing that beautiful tune? Were his eyes and ears deceiving him? What he did know for certain was there was a God-awful mess of what looked like ketchup. So he brought his new mop into use; the headmistress had confiscated the old one and she had jovially said to Gladys, one day in passing, that she had the cleanest pelvic floor in the school.

And so Ernie set to cleaning, but there was gallons of the gelatinous stuff, a veritable lake. Gradually he began to realise, as he talked to himself, that both this new nun and sister Winifrede, were likely one of the same penguin and one part, the head bit, no longer conversed and, the complementary part, the body bit, no longer played. In fact, there was an eerie silence in the hall, so much so that Ernie could hear his ragged breathing. He took a drag on his inhaler, for he was an asthmatic, and scanned the orchestral mirage as he pictured in his mind the nuns playing, a vision so real in this eerie silence. Were they asleep in this vision? Ernie was aware that nuns got up in the middle of the night to attend to their scooters, but slowly it dawned on the simpleton caretaker that both nuns were not sleepy Vespa enthusiasts, but were now indeed dead and that this might, in actual fact be, just one nun, albeit separated and in different places and the mirage of the full somnolent orchestra faded slowly along with the lark, which had ascended and buggered off.

After running on the spot for several minutes, Ernie felt a call of nature beckoning, but remembering his sister’s words about photographing any high jinks or merry japes that the kids got up to, in order to protect himself, he took his phone from his leather utility belt and photographed the scene. Ernie had been given a leather builder’s belt for Christmas by his sister and he wore this all the time, the loops and pockets containing a sink plunger, an unsavoury toilet brush, light sabre, handkerchief for blowing his nose and for storing bogeys, his spam sandwiches, a bottle of water, a bottle of Domestos bleach, his inhaler, and of course his phone. There were two further leather loops that secured the broom and mop so these tools, the religious symbols of his trade, dragged behind him as he toured the school, redolent of Clint Eastwood in The Good the Bad and the Ugly, at least Ernest thought so. Well, he certainly had the ugly bit.

He photographed the scene and went to see his sister, the school secretary, to report his find, adding first of all an apology that he was ever so sorry that he had not got the hall ready for orchestra practice and that it wasn’t him, honest.

The headmistress with her supersonic, mother-superior bat ears, overheard the conversation and stepped into the school secretary’s office and joined Gladys with her brother in a one-sided conversation. Eventually sense prevailed and the mum penguin suggested they go to see what the fuss was all about and she stomped off in the direction of the school hall, the floorboards vibrating from the not inconsiderable weight and determined manner of the big mum penguin’s deliberate step. It was said that the novices knew when the mother superior was approaching during periods of contemplative, enforced silence, by putting an ear, in the manner of deep and sincere prayer, to the floor, and like an approaching train, the novices would be alerted at their heavenly station and, were thus able to take up a more traditional angelic prayer-like stance in readiness of the approaching Thunderbolt Express.

When the mother, Gladys, and Ernie, reached the hall, there was still the lake of blood, a trail of size-thirteen bloody boot prints leading in the direction of the corridor, but no body and certainly no head on the rostrum, though the front page of the conductor’s score was soaked a claret red and defaced, if you pardon the heady pun. The mother superior launched forth a raucous guffaw, which caused Ernie to hide behind his sister’s voluminous skirts, while proffering his phone that still displayed the photograph.

After a moment or two of collective sounds of mirth, all at the expense of poor Ernie, the mother looked at the picture and then to the floor and the red lake. She lowered herself, which took several more minutes, at the same time giving poor Ernie disturbing lavatorial flashbacks and, by and by, she stuck her index finger, the one she uses to stir the communion wine, into the red viscous liquid, fully expecting to scoop up some tomato ketchup deposited by naughty children and, after a moment or two of holding in her mid-morning doughnuts, she suggested this might indeed be blood and that the police should be called and they were.

The police soon arrived. They did not know what to make of the situation, but did agree it was blood and, something horrible must have happened. After a cup of tea out of the convent’s best bone china, with digestive biscuits, for the mother superior never shared her doughnuts, they cordoned off a crime scene and orchestra practice was postponed.

TWO

The news desk at the Portsmouth Evening News received a message for either Cecelia Crumpet or Everard Pimple, the newly formed dynamic-duo reporting team, who had scooped exclusively and were now currently writing up in depth, following their banner headline splash of a week ago, a news item that had all government departments in a spin. Already there had been a flurry of resignations at senior civil-service levels, Mandarins nervously gripping their bottoms, the whiff of government ministerial, laxative-induced reshuffles in the offing, not to mention powerful corporate magnates stunned into eating what was being described by journalists, inaccurately as it transpired, as Humble Pie.

The message reported a civilised furore at the Roman Catholic Convent school of St Winifrede’s. A violinist in the famous Nuns’ Orchestra had been decapitated, the body and head having now disappeared, or so it was proclaimed. The note was passed on to the journalists, who were currently staying with the Austins at number 5 Frisian Tun, the Austins being the source of their scoop and a lot more besides.

To the uninitiated, the Austins were believed to have retired from their senior police jobs and their secret-squirrel positions in MI5 and had set up, in their new retirement personas, Ooh La Lovelies, DaDa – the Dick and Duck Austin Detective Agency. Jack Austin being Dashing Dick, he having allocated his long-suffering (over a relatively short period of time) wife, the soubriquet, with no additional superlative epithet, Duck. And those who knew the fairly recently dubbed Mrs Amanda Austin, likely as far back as when she was Detective Superintendent Amanda Bruce, would know that this strong woman, ordinarily a pillar of patience and understanding, would go along with her new title, (pretty much as she went along with being the wife of a well-known dipstick detective), allowing for the fact, should the occasion arise, as it most surely would, where Dick exceeded the bounds of her patience, which, as most also knew came with quite clear limitations as far as her new husband was concerned, she could slap him back into place. She would then say sorry, say that Duck loved Dick and then everything would be okay. Except it would start all over again – but isn’t this the way with prima donna dipstick detective men?

She did love the fifties fashions, though, especially the Ooh La Lovelies dresses, not that these suited Dick particularly, especially the scalloped necklines, though he did like the V-shaped deep cut to some of his wife’s dresses as this provided him with the occasional surreptitious opportunity for a “butcher’s hook” (Dick was a cockney) at his wife’s “Bristol Cities”. His notion of what he perceived as surreptitious was, though, pretty much blatant, his eyes out on stalks being a big giveaway to Duck, not that she minded, she loved the idiot, which led to many suggestions she get herself off to Specsavers and then a brain doctor. However, Dick did love the fifties lashings of ginger beer, except he didn’t like ginger, so he just had the beer. He did like the ginger-nut biscuits, though, which he dunked into his Dog’s Bollox ale. He was a tickler for Famous Five accuracy, he erroneously thought to himself and thus, broadcast to everyone, as he was prone to speaking his thoughts, a bit like the manner in which he would read, following a guiding finger; he spoke out loud reading as well. So you could see why it was necessary, every now and then, for Amanda to clump her dipstick. Life could be confusingly difficult at times for the reportedly retired detective chief inspector, though, we suspect, not as much as it was for the retired superintendent. And then, were they retired coppers or even retired spies?

* * *

That same day, nearly time for elevenses, which would have made it eleven o’clock in the morning, there or thereabouts, as it can sometimes take a while for the kettle to boil and the tea to brew, the conductor of the Nuns’ Orchestra, Beatrice Flat, not a nun, did not respond to Wanda Linley-Cloud’s repeated knock at her bedsit room door.

Coincidentally and curiously, for it is said she was long overdue a visit to Specsavers, Bea Flat was also the girlfriend of Aedd Murphy, who was a geography teacher at St Winifrede’s and brother to Sister Winifrede, leader of the second violins. Wanda had in mind sharing elevenses of camomile tea and Viennese whirls with Bea and talking through the planned orchestra rehearsal. Wanda, who was a member of the orchestra having once been a nun but left to get some and become a part-time window cleaner, was concerned that Bea was not ready for practice. This was unusual for a woman who had more than an authoritarian and controlling manner about her, although this could be diminished in effective power by the distinct nasal twang of her Midlands accent that people struggled not to laugh at.

After getting no response from her repeated rapping on the door and, seeking to preserve some skin to her knuckles as this could irritate when she dipped her hands in the bucket of water, in order to soak and wring out her chamois leather to clean windows, Wanda rattled the door. It was locked. She lowered herself to the keyhole, there was no key, which offered an unrestricted, though mini-porthole view into the room. Captured in an intense spotlight, she could see the body of Bea Flat, dressed beautifully in a bunched chiffon flowery-print dress, tulips we understand though flowers and agricultural crops in general are not my strong point, but the conductor was beautifully attired in a dress of some vegetation, but prone and also minus one head. The dress really suited the lady maestro of the Nuns’ Orchestra, even if she was a little on the chubby side.

Not able to gain entry, the room being locked from within, Wanda went out to the back garden and, collecting her double extending ladder that she always kept beside the dustbins, she scaled the wall to have a look in through the first-floor window of Bea’s modest bedsit room. The window was secured shut. Peeking through the window that she noticed could do with a clean, the scene she had espied through the keyhole was affirmed to her. The conductor’s body lay prostrate, arms stretched out as if in supplication at a church altar and it was highlighted in a pencil thin shaft of intense light. Bea was face down, except there was no face. The head was detached and similarly illuminated upon the bedside table. Wanda could not resist; she took a picture with her phone before she called the police and, after she returned to the ground and replaced the ladder, for she was most particular about a tidy back garden, she called the mother superior to suggest they call off orchestra practice. Wanda was then informed that rehearsal had already been postponed and so she relaxed and went back to her room for her camomile tea and Viennese whirls to await a visit from the cops.

The additional conundrum, which was to later fox the police, but not the Ooh La Lovelies, DaDa team, well Dick at least and it seemed that Everard Pimple concurred, was that the conductor’s body was locked within the room, secured from the inside. But later on, it had to be said, and after careful consideration of the photographs, Bea Flat’s hair, highlighted in the second beam of bright light, looked gorgeous. The new hairdo made the previously average-looking Rubenesque woman, attired as she was in a sumptuously dazzling floricultural dress, bunched with starched crippling petticoats (that might have been Crimplene), looked like a generously proportioned, nineteen fifties movie star. Well, she would have, had the head not been removed from the conductor’s comfortably plump body and placed on the bed stand with a conductor’s baton stuck up her nose. The head had been deliberately placed beside the bedside lamp, which was in the shape of a bust of Beethoven, whereupon it was easy to make the comparison as Bea had a strikingly similar hairdo as the composer. And beside both was a discarded nun’s wimple, which, upon later inspection, was found to have a note scribbled upon it, in red, blood. It said: Give us a sign, oh Lord.The reckoning is yours – with additional rinse and Composer set, £103.76 plus tip.

THREE

Meanwhile, back in Friesian Tun, the feelings of Pimple Minor, (for he was a minor as he had an older brother, Pimple Major, who was a Something in the City, though of diminished intellectual credentials, but exceptionally useful contacts), ran amok. This was not an extraordinary sensation for this dim-witted and fully inbred member of the British aristocracy; Pimple was the Honourable Viscount Everard Pimple, the fourth degree of rank and dignity in the British peerage, though people ordinarily called him Pimple. He was uncomfortable being called, “My Lord,” as would be his entitlement. Generally the family Pimple understated their rank. The mother, a fearful moose of a woman, was often referred to as just plain ordinary Dame Pimple and she allowed this, especially when she shopped in Lidl. Life was less complicated that way, not that you would know this, as the plebs lived in awe of the dame and generally were cast aside in her substantial bow wave, clearing the checkout aisle of the disabled-persons’ till, in order to accommodate the girth of the more than comfortably buxom dame.