Dead Funny

  Sylvia had bent down and was now extending a hand towards the corpse. “I’ll carry her to her room,” she said. “Her daughter Judy will be home soon. I don’t want her to be troubled.”

  “No!” I said sharply. “Don’t touch a thing!”

  Sylvia looked at me, astonished. “It was an accident, young lady. We can’t just leave her here. If Judy sees her mother like this she’ll be in therapy for ever.”

  But it was too late. At that moment, a theatrical sigh of immense weariness was followed by a series of thuds as several heavy bags were dropped on the marble floor.

  I turned to see a thirty-something-ish blonde standing amid a pile of designer shopping bags. She was the complete opposite of Sylvia: all lace and glitzy jewellery and heavy make-up. Her heels were scarily high, her bust was thrust forward in a menacing fashion, and she wore so much lipstick that I was surprised she could speak – it looked as though her lips ought to be gummed together. I assumed this was Baby’s daughter, Judy. “Sylvia,” she said, “take these bags up to my room, would you? And then fix me something long and cool to drink. I’m exhausted.”

  Sylvia didn’t move and Judy looked at her with a frown of annoyance. “Didn’t you hear me?” she said. “Why are you just standing there?”

  “Miss Ford,” Sylvia said slowly. “Judy, I—”

  “Yes?”

  “I’m afraid there’s been a terrible accident.” Sylvia stepped aside so that Judy could see her mother’s body.

  Judy’s eyes narrowed for a moment as she took the scene in. “Is she dead?”

  “I’m afraid so,” replied Sylvia.

  A strange look passed across Judy’s face: it wasn’t sorrow, it wasn’t shock, it was satisfaction. She tried but failed to smother a smile of pleasure. Her heels clacked across the marble floor as she teetered towards her mother and said, “Oh, for pity’s sake!” She looked down at the broken body. “Sylvia, you’d better carry her up to her room. And then I guess you should call a doctor.”

  “I think it’s a little late for that—” Sylvia began.

  “I can see that,” Judy said waspishly. “But he’ll need to sign a death certificate or something, won’t he? Go on, pick her up.”

  “You mustn’t!” I protested. “Don’t touch anything.”

  Judy looked at me and her eyes narrowed into snake-like slits. “And who the hell are you?”

  “This is Poppy. Her mother, Ms Fields, is doing some work for Miss Sugarcandy, or at least she was…” said Sylvia.

  “First I’ve heard of it,” snarled Judy.

  Mum stepped in front of me then as if to defend me from the savagery of Judy’s glare. I took advantage of it by slipping a hand into Mum’s pocket and pulling out her mobile phone.

  Then Graham and I edged casually back towards the front door and stepped outside. I dialled 999.

  It didn’t work.

  “You’re dialling the wrong number,” said Graham. “It’s 911 over here. And you probably need the country code too.”

  So, thankful for Graham’s nerdiness once again, I dialled the numbers he told me to and this time got through to the police.

  “I’m at Miss Sugarcandy’s house,” I explained quickly. “And she’s dead. It looks like an accident but I don’t think it is—”

  “Sure, honey,” said a crisp voice at the other end. “Now hang up so people in real trouble can get through.”

  “I’m not joking,” I said.

  “Yeah, right.”

  “No, really. It looks like she’s fallen down the stairs. Her neck’s broken.”

  The person on the other end sighed and said, “OK, sugar, but you’d better not be kidding. I’ll get a car up there right now. Don’t touch anything, and don’t let anybody leave the premises.”

  We went back into the house.

  Mum was saying quietly, “Surely the authorities ought to be told? In England if there’s a sudden death—”

  “There’ll be no cops,” Judy barked.

  “But—” said Mum and Sylvia together.

  “She had a fall,” Judy said firmly. “Anyone can see that. Sylvia, pick her up. And you.” She fixed Mum with a fierce look. “Whoever you are and whatever you think you’re doing here, you can go right back to wherever you came from.”

  “I don’t think we can actually,” I said. “The police say we have to stay here.”

  “You called the cops?!” shrieked Judy.

  “Yes. They’re on their way.”

  As if to back me up, the sound of sirens drifted in through the mansion doors, faintly distant, but growing louder.

  “Great!” sneered Judy. “That’s all I need. I’m going to my room.”

  “You can’t,” I told her. “We’ve all got to stay exactly where we are until they arrive. We’re witnesses, you see.”

  “Witnesses?” Judy screamed, her face growing as red as her lipstick. She glared at me. “To what? An old lady whose heel snapped? An old lady who took a tumble and broke her own neck?”

  “No,” I said, swallowing nervously but staring straight back at her. “Witnesses to murder.”

  was it murder?

  Tea was the only solution. When the police arrived we were confined to the vast kitchen while they examined the scene of the crime. Baby Sugarcandy’s furniture, fixtures and fittings looked like they had been magically transported from an old-fashioned English farmhouse, which was quite a surprise among all that steel and glass. Finding a copper kettle, Mum filled it and set it on the Aga to boil. Judy sat at the long pine table, picking off her scarlet nail polish and looking furious.

  Sylvia stood in the middle of the slate-tiled floor, her hands knotting and unknotting themselves, uncertain about what to do with herself.

  Graham and I retired to the far corner, where a warm, floral-scented breeze was blowing through an open window. Perching on high stools by the counter, I opened my body language book, and Graham opened his Guiness World Records. Neither of us read a word, there was too much going on for that. But the books were a useful screen to hide behind while we had a hasty, whispered conversation.

  “Are you sure she was murdered?” muttered Graham nervously. “It looked like an accident to me. The police won’t be amused if you’re wrong.”

  “Her hair was wet,” I replied. “And it smelt funny. Like she’d been bleaching it.”

  “So? Maybe she had,” said Graham.

  “With that posh dress on?” I said. “I don’t think so.”

  Graham looked perplexed as if the mysteries of hairdressing were utterly beyond his comprehension. “Well, you wear clothes to go to the hairdresser don’t you? And if you go to a posh salon you’d wear posh clothes, wouldn’t you? I don’t think that’s necessarily significant.”

  I considered. I hoped he wasn’t right. I mean, I’d only been to a salon once. Most of the time Mum was happy to trim my fringe with a pair of kitchen scissors but she’d made me go and have a proper haircut just before she’d won that prize at the Chelsea Flower Show. They had basins that you tipped your head back into while someone else washed it. “She was at home, Graham, not the hairdressers.”

  “She’s a star. She might have an army of stylists in the house for all we know. Probably got a whole salon upstairs.”

  I was beginning to suspect that Graham might be right, in which case I would be arrested for wasting police time. Oh dear. “OK,” I said reluctantly. “But why would she have been walking around with wet hair? When I went with my mum we had our hair blow-dried.” I shuddered. I’d hated every second of it.

  “Perhaps she got interrupted,” suggested Graham. “The phone could have rung, or someone could have come to the door…”

  “Mmmmm, maybe.” I didn’t want to let go of my hunch that things weren’t right. But I’d had hunches before that had turned out to be mistakes. Fighting a sinking feeling, I shut my eyes and recalled exactly how Baby Sugarcandy had looked. The soggy hair. The diamonds. “That’s it!” I hissed. “Got it. I know what w
as wrong. Even if she’d been in the middle of having her hair washed, surely she would have taken her earrings off first?”

  “That would seem to be the logical thing to do,” Graham agreed.

  At that point the kettle screamed to announce it was boiling and Mum dashed to take it off the heat. She was intercepted by Sylvia, who said with a contorted smile, “You’re a guest here. I’ll make the tea.”

  “Oh, I’d rather—” protested Mum.

  “I know what you’re thinking. It’s what all you British assume: Americans can’t make proper tea?”

  Mum blushed.

  “You’re forgetting Miss Sugarcandy’s English,” Sylvia said. And then she corrected herself. “Was English. At any rate, she had me well trained. She was fond of her tea. I do know how to make a ‘proper cuppa’.”

  She did too. A few minutes later Sylvia placed two cups next to me and Graham and, with slightly shaking hands, poured in a dash of milk, then the tea: boiling hot, not too strong. Then she dropped in three lumps of sugar each. “Good for shock,” she said, patting me awkwardly on the arm before going off to pour tea for Mum. I appreciated the thought but I didn’t really need the sugar: I wasn’t particularly shocked. Surprised, yes. A little excited, perhaps, but mostly absolutely riveted.

  After a long time in which Sylvia and Mum struggled to make polite conversation and Judy maintained a frosty silence, the kitchen door crashed open and a man who looked just like Friar Tuck in a suit walked in. He was so wide around the middle that he reminded me of a toy I’d once had that bounced back upright no matter how hard and how often I pushed it over. But despite his cuddly appearance there was a glint of steel in his eyes that said he wasn’t someone to mess with. He was the kind of man who was surprised by nothing, shocked by nothing and amused by nothing. I fervently hoped that my hunch about the murder was right. I didn’t fancy feeling his wrath pour down on my head.

  He introduced himself as Lieutenant Weinburger, and spoke first to Judy. “I realize this is a difficult time for you Mrs…?” He paused, waiting for Judy to fill in her name.

  “Miss,” she snapped. “And I’ve gone back to my mother’s surname since my divorce.”

  “Sugarcandy?” the policeman asked.

  “No!” she spat irritably. “That was her stage name. Her real name was Biddy Ford. I’m Judy Ford.”

  “Miss Ford,” he said, “your mother’s body has been taken away now. There’ll be a full post-mortem, of course, after which we’ll know more about what happened.”

  “Really! All this fuss over a broken heel,” said Judy. “Can’t you see it was an accident?”

  “Maybe it was,” the Lieutenant answered calmly. “But we need to be sure, Miss Ford. I’d like to ask you a few questions, if I may? Would you care to come through to the living-room?” He phrased it as a question, but from the tone of his voice it was clear Judy couldn’t refuse. She stood up and followed the lieutenant through the open door. We heard her heels clacking across the floor and a few seconds later she let out a wail of genuine distress. For a moment I thought she was suffering from delayed shock and her mother’s death had finally hit her, but then I heard her words.

  “My shopping! Where is it? What have you done with it?”

  I couldn’t hear Lieutenant Weinburger’s reply, but Judy’s cries of protest rang loudly through the house. “Taken it? But it’s mine! Why do you need to look through it?” Another softly spoken sentence from the policeman, then Judy’s exclamation, “This is crazy! Absolutely crazy! Why the hell do you need to check on my movements?”

  I could hear Lieutenant Weinburger saying something about “routine enquiries” as they moved away into another room. As soon as the door closed behind them the atmosphere in the kitchen instantly relaxed. Mum and Sylvia began to talk about the gardens and what Baby Sugarcandy had planned for them. Which was just as well because Graham and I now discovered that the floral-scented breeze wasn’t the only thing wafting in through the open window: we could hear the conversation Lieutenant Weinburger was having with Judy in the room next door.

  Once he’d reassured her about the safety and future well-being of her shopping, the policeman began by asking about her mother.

  “Did she seem happy to you this morning?”

  “What? You surely don’t think she killed herself?” said Judy with withering scorn.

  “Just answer the question please, Miss Ford. Did your mother seem happy?”

  “Yes, as far as I could tell.”

  “You sure of that? Was anything bothering her?”

  “Of course not!” exclaimed Judy. “She had everything, didn’t she? Money, a great house, a beautiful wardrobe. What could possibly have been bothering her?”

  “That’s what I’m asking you,” the lieutenant countered. “How long have you lived here, Miss Ford?”

  “I was raised here. Left when I was eighteen. But I’ve been back a year now. Eighteen months. Something like that. I moved in with Mother when my marriage broke up.”

  “And you rubbed along together OK?” asked the policeman.

  “Just fine and dandy.”

  There was a pause. I could hear the policeman’s shoes squeaking as he paced heavily about. Then he said, “You don’t work do you, Miss Ford?”

  “What has that got to do with anything?” replied Judy rudely.

  “I was just wondering who pays for your shopping. You had quite a haul there, you must have been hard at it all day.”

  “That’s none of your business,” she snapped.

  “Actually it is,” the policeman answered smoothly. “Someone dies unexpectedly, we have to look into everything, consider every angle. It’s what I draw my pay cheque for.”

  “I charge my purchases to my mother’s account,” growled Judy.

  “She must have been one generous lady,” Lieutenant Weinburger commented. He changed tack. “Did you see anyone when you left the house this morning? Waiting by the gates, say, or walking in the grounds – did you notice anyone who shouldn’t be here?”

  “No.”

  “You didn’t let anyone in?”

  “Of course not!”

  Lieutenant Weinburger cleared his throat. Then he said, “I have to ask, ma’am… Baby Sugarcandy was a rich lady, wasn’t she?”

  “Yes,” Judy agreed reluctantly.

  “Who gets her fortune now she’s gone?”

  “I don’t know the contents of my mother’s will,” Judy said coldly. “But I should imagine she’s divided everything between me and my brother. That would be the fair thing to do.”

  “Your brother?”

  “Toby. He’s away. Somewhere in South America, I believe, saving the rainforests or something. I don’t know exactly.”

  “We’ll find him. Thank you, Miss Ford, you’ve been very helpful.” Lieutenant Weinburger brought the interview to a close. But Judy hadn’t finished.

  “When will I get my shopping back?” she asked.

  “As soon as we’ve verified your movements,” he replied. “You can return to the others now, Miss Ford. Would you be good enough to send your mother’s secretary to me?”

  Judy gave one last, indignant sniff and then we heard her heels clacking out of the room and back across the hall. When she reached the kitchen, she sat down at the table and began to pick off her nail polish again, but I noticed a smile had crept into the corners of her mouth.

  Mum didn’t even attempt to talk to her. Curling up in an armchair near the Aga, she fell into a doze.

  “Arguments over money or property,” whispered Graham, “come number five on the list of the most common motives for murder in the USA.”

  “You think Judy did it?”

  “It seems a highly plausible theory, don’t you agree?”

  “Yes. She’s definitely dodgy. But what about that man we saw? Why was he running away? That was very suspicious.”

  Graham didn’t answer. Sylvia had left the room to speak to the lieutenant and now we could hear his vo
ice through the window.

  “Welcome, Miss…?”

  “Sharpe,” she answered. “Sylvia Sharpe. How can I help you, Lieutenant?”

  “How long have you been working for Miss Sugarcandy?”

  “A little over a year.”

  “Did you arrive before or after Miss Ford moved back in with her mother?” asked the lieutenant.

  “About a month after.”

  “Uh huh. And how did they get on?”

  “Well … fine, really, most of the time … but…” Sylvia ground to a halt.

  “Yes?” prompted the policeman.

  There was the scrape of chair legs as Sylvia moved closer to the lieutenant and we had to strain to catch her next words. “Well, strictly between ourselves, Lieutenant, money was getting to be an issue. Judy loves retail therapy – it’s virtually impossible to keep her away from the mall. They’d argued about it, but Judy seemed quite unable to stop herself. As a result of which Miss Sugarcandy had just asked me to close the accounts she had at several stores.”

  “Interesting,” murmured Lieutenant Weinburger thoughtfully. “And how had she seemed to you lately?”

  “Miss Sugarcandy? To be honest she’d been very tense. These last few weeks she seemed close to the edge: snapping for no reason, bursting into tears. And this morning she was…” Sylvia groped for the right word. “You know, it was almost as if she was scared of something. Or someone.”

  “Any idea who?”

  “I’m afraid not. She didn’t confide in me, Lieutenant. I had the impression that it might have been an old flame. There was a letter from England a couple of months ago that seemed to unsettle her, but she didn’t divulge the contents to me. I was her employee, not her friend.”

  “So who did she talk to? She must have been close to someone.”

  “Her son Toby. He phoned her regularly and they talked for hours. But no one else. You know, in lots of ways she was a very lonely woman. Many stars are, I believe.”