Exit Stage Left (Kempston Hardwick Mysteries Book 1) Read online

  Contents

  Copyright Information

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

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  The Westerlea House Mystery

  The Westerlea House Mystery, Chapter 1

  Knight & Culverhouse Thrillers

  This book is entirely a work of fiction.

  The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

  The author’s opinions are not representative of those of the publisher.

  Published by Circlehouse

  First published by Circlehouse in 2011

  This edition published by Circlehouse in 2014

  Copyright © Adam Croft 2011

  Adam Croft asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

  ASIN: B004I438EE

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

  1

  The bell clattered as he closed the door behind him, shutting the cold winter air out of the Freemason's Arms. Loosening his tight woollen scarf, he approached the bar and signalled for the barmaid's attention. He seemed not to be interested in the vivacious curves of the young woman's slender body and placed his order without emotion.

  He took a sip of the cool, bitter liquid and placed the glass back on the bar, watching the marbled effect of deep red mingling with orange. He took a drinking straw from the box on the bar and plunged it into his glass, stabbing at the ice cubes as the vibrant colours became one.

  ‘Excuse me,’ he said to the man who had now taken the place of the young woman behind the bar. ‘Is tonight's act still on?’ He was well-spoken, his voice verging on the baritone with an accent which was difficult to detect. As he spoke, he gestured towards the poster which was taped to the wall next to the bar. The poster advertised that night's entertainment, a stage routine by Charlie Sparks, former staple of Saturday night television and now another washed-up has-been.

  ‘I should hope so,’ the landlord replied. ‘Had to pay him in advance. Bloomin' cheek, if you ask me. Not even been on telly in years.’

  ‘I don't watch much television,’ the man said, matter-of-factly.

  Before the landlord had a chance to reply, another man, dressed in limbo between smart and casual, threw his tuppence-worth into the ring. ‘Couldn't miss him twenty years ago! Hardly needed to pick up a magazine and he was in it. Oh, how the mighty have fallen...’

  ‘I don't read many magazines,’ the man said.

  ‘Blimey. Don't get out much, do you?’ the smart-casual, casual-smart man said.

  ‘On the contrary. I'm out too much to take notice of such things.’

  The smart-casual, casual-smart man did not quite know how to respond. In his half-professional, half-social style, he thrust out a hand. ‘Ellis Flint.’

  ‘Kempston Hardwick.’

  ‘Pleasure to meet you.’

  ‘Indeed.’

  Ellis Flint, again unsure how to react, chose instead to speak to the landlord. ‘Is he back there already, then?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Charlie Sparks! Is he already here?’

  The landlord's tea-towelled grip on the pint glass tightened as his cleaning action got audibly squeakier. ‘Yes. Backstage as we speak, drinking copious amounts of free booze and knackering my profit margins.’

  ‘Surely he'll draw a big crowd though, eh?’ Ellis Flint remarked, glancing sideways to Kempston Hardwick as if seeking agreement or approval.

  ‘Not if ticket sales are anything to go by. Sold eighty so far. Sure, a few'll turn up and want tickets on the door, but there's no way it's even going to pay for his appearance fee, never mind the bleedin' brandy he's knocking back in there.’

  ‘Maybe you could make a little extra cash on the side, eh?’ Again, Ellis Flint looked at Kempston Hardwick for some sort of reassurance.

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘Well, there's a few people who'd still love to meet him, me for one. How about I add a tenner to your coffers and me and my new mate Kempston here can go backstage and meet him for a few minutes?’

  Hardwick's eyebrow raised at Flint's casual bonding, but he said nothing.

  ‘Call it twenty and you can have all bloody night with him, for all I care,’ the landlord replied.

  The deal done, Ellis Flint enthusiastically grabbed Hardwick by the arm and led him round towards the back room of the pub, via the kitchen door.

  ‘You seem to know the place well,’ Hardwick remarked, smoothing the sleeve of his winter coat.

  ‘Oh, yes. Come here quite a lot. Helps me to unwind. Helped Doug out in the kitchen a few times, actually.’

  Hardwick noted the landlord's name for future reference.

  As they reached the solid beech door with the tarnished brass “PRIVATE” plate on it, Hardwick cleared his throat as Ellis Flint knocked, waited barely a nanosecond for a reply which was not forthcoming quickly enough, then entered the room.

  The man whom Hardwick assumed to be Charlie Sparks was tapping a cigarette out into an ashtray, a magazine containing images of scantily-clad women sprawled on the desk in front of him.

  ‘Ah, good timing. Another brandy, will you?’ Charlie Sparks said.

  ‘Oh, I'm afraid we're not members of staff,’ Ellis explained.

  ‘Well, bugger off out of my dressing room, then.’

  ‘Actually, we're quite big fans of yours. We just wondered if we might be able to say hello.’

  Charlie Sparks's demeanour changed visibly, as did Hardwick's, although for entirely different reasons.

  ‘Ah, I see. Well, of course. Always a pleasure to meet my fans. Do you come to many of the live shows?’ Charlie Sparks spoke intermittently between licking envelopes and stuffing them with signed photographs of himself.

  Ellis Flint shuffled awkwardly as he tried to think of a suitable yet inoffensive response. As much as he admired the man's fame, he wasn't one to pay good money to follow him around the country. Hardwick sensed Flint's discomfort and threw a curve-ball at Charlie Sparks, who wasn't really paying much attention anyway.

  ‘You must have quite a lot of fans. Do you get a lot of requests for photographs?’

  ‘Well, not many, no. I'm somewhat less in the public eye than I used to be, y'know what I mean?’

  Hardwick murmured. He was never sure how to respond to this idiomatic turn, if it required a response at all.

  ‘My agent tends to sort out that sort of thing. Speaking of which, he should be here by now, the lazy bugger.’

  Hardwick empathised with Charlie Sparks's disapproval of poor timekeeping, but this was overshadowed by his contempt for casual swearing. He tried to restrain the reflexive curling of his upper lip.

  Ellis Flint nodded his understanding, not quite sure of what could be said in response.

  ‘Anyway, time waits for no man. Going to have to love you and leave you, lads. The show must go on.’ Charlie Sparks rose and ran a hand through his Grecian-2000-laden hair before he turned on the ball of his foot, his shoes scuffing on the concrete floor as he headed for the door. ‘Thanks for com
ing to see me, lads. Really appreciate it.’

  Hardwick could tell that Charlie Sparks meant every word. For a man who had once enjoyed such fame and fortune and since fallen from grace, it was rather humbling that a simple visit from two strangers could brighten his evening. Not wanting to develop too much admiration for the man, Hardwick held the door open and followed Charlie Sparks and Ellis Flint back towards the main bar.

  2

  Hardwick ordered another large Campari and orange, straining to make his mellow voice heard above the noise of his fellow drinkers and the Alice Cooper song which had just come on the jukebox. Barely thirty seconds in, the music was cut as Doug, the landlord, began tapping the microphone and attempted to count beyond two. A shaven-headed youth at the back of the pub expressed his disapproval of having wasted ‘two soddin' quid’ on the jukebox barely seconds earlier. Doug responded with the sentiment that the eight o'clock start had been pretty darned-well advertised, if he might say so himself.

  Still unable to get beyond the number two, Doug resorted to booming the word 'testing' into the microphone over and over at a volume and pitch much lower, and a distance much closer, than anyone was likely to speak into the microphone all night. The equipment supposedly adjusted, Doug addressed the crowd with a ‘GOOD E—’ before stopping to adjust the equipment again following the loud boom and ear-piercing screech which emanated from every speaker in the building.

  The assembled crowd still rubbing their ears and mopping up their drinks, Doug tried the microphone a second time.

  ‘Good evening, ladies and gentlemen.’ Small screech. ‘Welcome to the Freemason's Arms.’ Another small screech made it sound as though he said 'Freemason's Arse'. ‘We have for you tonight a man who is known the world over. A man who is a household name throughout the country thanks to game shows such as Mind That Bell and Charlie's Going Ape. Many of you will be aware that he's also a legend on the stand-up circuit, so we're very pleased to have him here tonight. Ladies and gentlemen, Mr Charlie Sparks!’

  The crowd reacted with a mixture of spattered applause and the odd sarcastic whistle as Charlie Sparks took to the stage. It wasn't long before Kempston Hardwick's teeth started to itch at the blue “humour”.

  ‘Evening all. My wife's just started doing some exercise to lose some weight. She went out jogging the other day and stopped all of a sudden, thinking she'd had a heart attack as she had a sharp shooting pain under her left breast. Turns out she'd sprained her knee.’ The rotund jovial barflies nodded their ascent vigorously through hearty belly laughs. ‘I had the best dump of my life earlier today,’ the comedian went on. ‘It managed to touch the water before breaking off. I think you'll agree that's pretty damned impressive from the middle diving board.’

  Hardwick was mildly disheartened at the sight of Ellis Flint chuckling to himself at the two opening jokes, but then he wasn't all that surprised.

  ‘Not your sort of humour, Kempston?’ Ellis Flint remarked, having caught Hardwick's eye.

  ‘I’m not really one for comedy,’ came the response. ‘Not of this type, anyway.’

  ‘More of a sit-com man, are you?’

  ‘Aristophanes and Menander, mainly.’

  ‘Not heard of them. BBC Three, are they?’

  ‘More 3 BC, actually.’

  ‘Not sure I've heard of that one. Get all sorts on digital these days.’

  Hardwick murmured a non-committal noise and ordered another drink. As his eyes flitted from Ellis Flint towards the bar, they passed the focal point of Charlie Sparks, whereupon Hardwick noticed that he seemed to be perspiring profusely, his head and arms beginning to jerk.

  ‘I used to go out with a Welsh girl who had thirty-six double-Ds,’ the comedian began to slur. ‘All got such stupidly long names, the Welsh, haven't they?’ Charlie Sparks stood and held a smile as the audience lapped up his latest quip. Hardwick had barely noticed that the smile had been more than a little too drawn out when Charlie Sparks's feet started to buckle under him, the bulbous man's not-inconsiderable weight seeming to cause him some stability problems. A few moments of confusion reigned for the audience as he descended from the stage with an excruciated look on his face and headed towards his dressing room. Charlie Sparks was a man known for the occasional stage antics, but Hardwick was less than convinced.

  ‘Something's not right. Something's terribly wrong,’ he remarked to no-one in particular before following the comedian. His first thoughts turning towards preserving the scene, Hardwick cautioned the concerned bystanders to keep back.

  ‘Are you a doctor, mate?’ came the voice of a front-row audience member. ‘It's all right, I think he's a doctor.’

  Ellis Flint joined Hardwick backstage, whereupon he found Hardwick knelt at the side of Charlie Sparks, who lay contorted on the concrete floor.

  ‘Is he breathing?’ Ellis asked.

  ‘No. He's dead.’ Hardwick's eyes didn't leave Charlie Sparks's sweaty, lifeless body.

  ‘Heart attack?’

  ‘It somehow seems unlikely,’ Hardwick remarked, his suspicions aroused. ‘Oh no, this was quite clever. Quite clever indeed. Faster acting than usual. I dare say the dose must have been substantial.’

  ‘Dose of what, Kempston? What's going on?’

  ‘Look, Ellis! Can’t you see? The man's face! Risus sardonicus, the maniacal grin of a man gripped by tetanus poisoning!’

  ‘Tetanus? Bloody hell. What happened, did he cut himself?’

  ‘Oh, I very much doubt it. Judging by the speed of the reaction, this was no small dose. Certainly nothing which could have been administered by accident. Ellis, we're looking at a crime scene.’

  ‘Crime scene? Right,’ Ellis Flint said, as he rose to his feet and addressed the crowd which had now assembled outside the dressing room. ‘I’m afraid we'll need everyone out of the building, ladies and gentlemen,’ he bellowed to the thronging crowds.

  ‘No!’ came the bark from Hardwick. ‘No-one is to leave the building!’

  ‘Are you a police officer, mate?’ came the familiar voice from the audience. ‘It's all right, I think he's a police officer.’

  Hardwick slanted his head towards Ellis Flint. ‘Lock the doors. Let no-one escape.’

  Ellis Flint, his excitement roused, nodded and left the room.

  3

  ‘What happened, officer?’ Hardwick looked up at the pub landlord, not saying a word. ‘Doug Lilley, I'm the landlord here.’

  ‘We met earlier tonight.’

  ‘What's your name?’

  ‘Hardwick.’

  ‘PC Hardwick? DS Hardwick?’

  ‘Kempston Hardwick.’

  ‘Ooh, like one of those surgeons who's gone beyond Dr and reverts back to Mr, then.’

  ‘Something like that, yes.’

  ‘So what the hell happened?’

  ‘Charlie Sparks is dead, Mr Lilley.’

  ‘I can bloody well see that, officer. I mean how the hell did he die?’

  ‘If I knew that, I wouldn't be knelt here now. I'll need to speak to everyone here. Gather everyone together and get their names, please.’

  ‘What, all of them? We close in two hours.’

  ‘You're closed now, Mr Lilley. And we'll remain here for as long as it takes. Ellis, I'll need you to help me with the interview process,’ he said, as Doug Lilley stepped out of the room and began to usher the crowds to the far end of the Freemason's Arms.

  ‘You didn't mention you were a police officer, you dirty old dog, you,’ Flint said.

  ‘No. There's a reason for that.’

  ‘Undercover work, is it?’

  ‘Not a million miles from the truth. Unlike this man's death, it seems. I think it's about time we started interviewing people. No time like the present.’

  ‘What about the body?’

  ‘I’ve seen what I need to see. You can call the police now.’

  ‘The police? I thought you said you were the police.’

  ‘I can assure you I didn't, dear boy. First of
all, I'll need to speak with Mr Lilley, the landlord.’

  ‘Are you sure it's a good idea to be interviewing people if you're not a police officer?’

  ‘I don't think you'll find it's against the law. With a bit of luck, we'll have this matter sewn up before the brakes are warm on the Panda car.’

  Hardwick stood and straightened his coat before heading into the main bar, beckoning to Doug Lilley with a come-hither finger. Leading the landlord into the kitchen to behind the bar of the Freemason's Arms, Hardwick folded his arms and leant against the brushed metal work surface.

  ‘How long had you known Charlie Sparks, Mr Lilley?’

  ‘Known him? About an hour, since he first turned up here before the gig. If you mean how long had I known of him, then like most people in this pub I'd reckon a good twenty-five years or so. He was a massive star in his day.’

  ‘So I'm led to believe. What was the impetus behind Charlie Sparks playing here tonight?’

  ‘His manager, guy by the name of Don Preston, lives locally. Often gets some comedians and singers and what-not in here.’

  ‘What sort of comedians and singers?’ Hardwick asked.

  ‘All sorts, really. None as big a name as Charlie Sparks, though. Right coup, that one. He lives pretty locally himself, see. Over in Fettlesham, apparently.’ Hardwick noted the location of the village in his mind's eye. ‘There's not really much more I can tell you, officer. I'm afraid you'll need to speak to his manager if you want to find out more about him.’ Doug Lilley handed Hardwick a business card with Don Preston's details emblazoned on it.

  ‘Right. Well, thank you for your time, Mr Lilley. I'm sure the police will be along shortly and will probably want to speak to you as well.’

  ‘Police? Then who are you?’

  4

  ‘Ellis, I'll need you to come with me. We need to go and speak to Charlie Sparks's manager, a Don Preston. Lives over at Little Markham.’