Brighton Belle (28 page)

‘I’ll be fine,’ she said. ‘Honestly.’

The first of the team jumped down into the hole, covering his mouth and nose with a handkerchief before opening the coffin. McGregor moved forward to get a better view. ‘It’s him,
all right,’ he said as Father Grogan sprinkled some holy water into the grave.

It was set to be a long week of funerals. Crichton’s body had washed up near Bournemouth, identified initially by the very expensive and distinctive driving gloves he had been wearing, of
which, the housemaid said, he had been extremely fond. His face had been bashed on the rocks until it was almost unrecognisable. Lisabetta’s body would be released for burial now she had been
formally identified.

Mirabelle had surprised herself – she wanted to attend all the funerals. ‘Just to be sure, I suppose,’ she’d said.

‘You’ve been very brave,’ McGregor said kindly. ‘A rock, quite astonishing.’

Mirabelle breathed deeply. Being here in the churchyard felt like the most difficult thing she had had to do in a long time. She wasn’t sure if the memorial mass that was planned for
Sandor the following day would make things better or worse but, one thing was certain, she’d rather face down Mrs Velazquez again than have to attend any of the formal services that were
planned. She didn’t think she could cry any more than she had over the last few days. The loss she felt was profound and the sense of her own responsibility worse.

‘I wish ...’ The rest of the sentence disappeared from her mind as a woman with a bunch of daffodils in her hand came out of the side door of the church and walked along the main
path through the graveyard.

McGregor met her, barring the way.

‘I’m sorry, Ma’am. I’m afraid there’s police business here. The churchyard is out of bounds.’

‘Oh,’ she said, staring, Mirabelle noticed, directly into his eyes, ‘I didn’t mean to pry ...’ She paused, waiting for him to introduce himself.

‘Detective Superintendent Alan McGregor,’ he said, right on queue.

The woman smiled. She was neatly dressed and wearing immaculate make-up.

‘I come every Tuesday at this time, Mr McGregor. Father Grogan will vouch for me. I’m Mary Duggan. My husband is buried over there. I only want to leave the flowers on his grave.
Yellow, you know, was his favourite colour.’

Mirabelle shook her head. Jack’s favourite colour was red, the colour of blood. McGregor she noticed, however, seemed entranced by the widow. There was something quite pretty, even
vulnerable, about her as she stared up at him with her wide blue eyes.

‘If you don’t mind my accompanying you, I’m sure it will be fine to leave the flowers, Mrs Duggan.’

‘Please, call me Mary. Jack was in the detective force, in a way, during the war. He worked in Whitehall. I never really found out exactly what he did but you people do such a wonderful
job. It’s so terribly lonely without him.’

Mirabelle couldn’t believe the woman was peddling that line. Jack had hardly seen his wife for the last ten years of his marriage – they had, by mutual arrangement, kept separate
households. Mary had been utterly uninterested in what Jack was doing – not that he could have told her about it, anyway – and only seemed concerned about the latest round of cocktail
parties and spending the money he earned. If it hadn’t been for the twins they would never have seen each other at all. The idea that Mrs Duggan missed her husband seemed very unlikely.

But McGregor had fallen into step with Jack’s widow who picked her way delicately along the path, her black patent stilettos sparkling in the grey light. At the grave Mirabelle heard the
woman giggling at something he said. ‘You must call on me, Detective Superintendent. I make a wonderful venison stew – it’s a recipe that my mother handed on. She was a Forbes,
you know, very Scottish, very proper. From Nairn. It would be delightful to have a man to cook for again, I must say. Will you come on Friday?’

‘Well, that’s very kind of you, Ma’am ... Mary’ he corrected himself.

Mirabelle felt her colour heighten. At least, she thought, she didn’t feel like fainting any longer – more like kicking Mrs Duggan and her bloody daffodils right out of the bloody
churchyard and back home to her bloody venison stew. People were such a sham, sometimes. What was she doing here, flirting and giggling, while Ben was being taken out of the ground? McGregor should
have known better.

The men had heaved up the coffin and manoeuvred it onto the pathway before filling in the hole. It had been decided not to use the burial plot for anyone else – it would remain vacant for
all time. Who, after all, would want to be buried in a spot with such a chequered history? Perhaps they would erect a memorial but all that was for later. Ben’s box landed on the gravel with
a bump and the men turned immediately to shovel in the soil and close the hole.

Mirabelle heard the familiar click of Vesta’s heels on the path behind her and turned to see her friend clutching a huge magenta umbrella, almost falling as it was caught by a gust of
wind.

‘Spring storms, Mirabelle. Sorry I’m late. You holding up?’

Mirabelle nodded and looped her arm through Vesta’s slightly damp raincoat.

‘This came in.’ Vesta pulled an envelope from her pocket. ‘It’s the payment from the solicitor. Bert Jennings’ money for Romana Laszlo’s death. No one told
them! After all that!’

Mirabelle smiled sadly. She crumpled the envelope and flung it into the grave where it was covered immediately by a clod of damp earth.

Vesta looked down into the hole. ‘Yes, you’re right, I guess.’

At the other side of the graveyard McGregor walked Mrs Duggan to the gate and held it open for her, chatting pleasantly.

‘There’s another reason I’m late,’ Vesta admitted. ‘Mr Halley’s back. Never seen him so furious. I made him tea and toast but it didn’t calm him down
one bit. I think I’m out of a job.’

Mirabelle shifted her gaze from the flirtatious conversation that was clearly underway on the other side of the churchyard – details over timings for Friday night and if the detective
superintendent preferred a martini or a sidecar before dinner, no doubt.

‘You got fired?’ she said.

Vesta shrugged. ‘I hated insurance, anyway. I’m not sure how I’ll ever get back to normal life, really. After all this, I mean, I hardly feel like anything normal. I was
listening to
The Archers
on the radio last night and all I could think was why doesn’t anything interesting happen? I can’t believe they cancelled
Dick Barton
. I loved
that show.’

Mirabelle smiled. ‘Normal life. What is that?’

‘The thing is, I was wondering ... you know, if you might be interested ...’ Vesta continued.

‘Oh, yes,’ Mirabelle cut in, ‘I was wondering about that, too. Do you think we could keep Ben’s name on the door?’

‘It’s only fitting. And we could be partners? I mean, I’d be a junior partner, obviously. Because you, well, you’re just amazing.’

‘Sixty-forty’ Mirabelle held out her hand.

Vesta shook it. ‘But next time I’ll be damned if we have so many bodies. That’s all I have to say.’

‘We’re going into debt collection, Vesta. I worked for Ben for eighteen months and not one single person turned up dead.’

‘Debt collection
and
investigation then,’ Vesta insisted. ‘We got skills.’

‘Well,’ Mirabelle smiled, ‘you certainly proved that you’ve got potential. That’s for sure.’

The hole was half-full now and the coffin had been removed in an unmarked hearse. The police insisted on performing an autopsy before Ben could be reburied. It was a procedure that Mirabelle had
felt was quite unnecessary, but the law was the law.

‘Well, that’s that,’ she said.

‘Come on,’ Vesta took her arm. ‘Let’s get out of here.’

It took ten minutes to make it back to the Lawns. Vesta had decided she would have to throw away her shoes – they were squelching in a most unattractive fashion and the sole had come away.
‘Well, at least we won’t have to deal with that idiotic policeman any more.’

‘Absolutely We won’t. Ever again.’ Mirabelle trotted smartly up the stairs, drawing the key from her pocket. Vesta grinned. There was a gold sovereign hanging from the fob,
swinging from side to side. A drop of rain ran down the face and dripped off, making it look even shinier.

‘Mirabelle! How could you?’

‘Oh, don’t worry, Vesta. I think we’re due a little memento, don’t you? I had one made for you, too. Lucky pennies. Now, do I take it that you might be ready for a spot
of lunch?’

Author’s note

T
he quotes in the chapter headings are taken from a variety of sources and some have been deliberately misquoted to fit in with the text. Apologies
to those abused in this fashion, who include: Bertrand Russell, Thomas Foran, Victor Hugo, Sun Tzu, Winston Churchill, Immanuel Kant, Raymond Chandler, Napoleon Bonaparte, S.J. Perelman,
Machiavelli, Norman Sherry, Robert Bourassa, José Bergamin, Roger Kahn, Commander R.T. Bower, George Bernard Shaw, Lord Byron, Clement Atlee, Sophocles, Mark Twain, Alexander the Great,
Adolf Hitler, Sylvia Plath and extracts from various SOE operations manuals.

Questions for readers’ groups

1. Is it history if it’s in living memory?

2. Was rationing good for the country?

3. We don’t know a huge amount about Lisabetta – what do you think happened to her during and just after the war?

4. At what point, if any, is it right to stop hunting war criminals?

5. Did advances in forensics put an end to the amateur detective?

6. Is Mirabelle Bevan ‘curiously British’?

7. How did the post-war landscape differ in 1918 and 1945?

8. Without the 1950s, could we have had the social changes of the 1960s?

9. Would you have let Delia go?

10. How different is the racism Vesta encounters to the racism she would encounter in British society today?

11. What is the fascination of a female detective? What can they bring to the genre?

12. How does historical crime fiction differ from contemporary crime fiction?