A Halloween Homicide Read online

  A Halloween Homicide

  A Sanford 3rd Age Club Mystery (#3)

  David W Robinson

  Copyright © 2017 by David W Robinson

  Cover Photography by Adobe Stock © DiViArts

  Design by soqoqo

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission of the author or Crooked Cat Books except for brief quotations used for promotion or in reviews. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales, is entirely coincidental.

  Printed in the United Kingdom

  First Black Line Edition, Crooked Cat Books. 2017

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  The Author

  David Robinson is a Yorkshireman now living in Manchester. Driven by a huge, cynical sense of humour, he’s been a writer for over thirty years having begun with magazine articles before moving on to novels and TV scripts.

  He has little to do with his life other than write, as a consequence of which his output is prodigious. Thankfully most of it is never seen by the great reading public of the world.

  He has worked closely with Crooked Cat Books since 2012, when The Filey Connection, the very first Sanford 3rd Age Club Mystery, was published.

  Describing himself as the Doyen of Domestic Disasters he can be found blogging at www.dwrob.com and he appears frequently on video (written, produced and starring himself) dispensing his mocking humour at www.youtube.com/user/Dwrob96/videos

  By the same author

  The STAC Mystery series:

  1. The Filey Connection

  2. The I-Spy Murders

  3. A Halloween Homicide

  4. A Murder for Christmas

  5. Murder at the Murder Mystery Weekend

  6. My Deadly Valentine

  7. The Chocolate Egg Murders

  8. The Summer Wedding Murder

  9. Costa del Murder

  10. Christmas Crackers

  11. Death in Distribution

  12. A Killing in the Family

  13. A Theatrical Murder

  14. Trial by Fire

  15. Peril in Palmanova

  The SPOOKIES Mystery series

  The Haunting of Melmerby Manor

  The Man in Black

  A Halloween Homicide

  A Sanford 3rd Age Club Mystery (#3)

  Chapter One

  Edgar Prudhoe, MP, cut the connection, closed his clamshell mobile and dropped it into his shirt pocket. “Done deal,” he said to his wife.

  Deidre returned a sour glance over her grapefruit half. “Anyone would think you’ve just bought the place.”

  The broad grin on Edgar’s tanned face slackened and faded. There were times when, with the best will in the world, he could not remember why he married Deidre. When he tried to recall those far off days of the mid to late 1980s, he could remember the music, the parties, the drink and the drugs, and the first time they spent the night together had remained firmly entrenched in his memory; a field in Glastonbury, Van Morrison, Elvis Costello, The Mighty Lemondrops, Carhenge built by the Mutoid Waste Company, trouble with travellers, the inevitable field of mud in the rain, and so many drugs on open sale. Sex under canvas and Deidre smacked out of her head most of the time. He was 21 years old, life was dynamite on a short fuse and exploded in a hedonistic joy of life.

  Two years later, they were married with a daughter on the way, and he couldn’t remember why he had decided to marry her. And it must have been he who decided. Deidre didn’t make decisions. Deidre couldn’t make decisions. If someone gave her an order (him for instance) she would either get on with it or return a tirade of verbal abuse as a refusal, but that depended on her mood and not an ability to actually make decisions.

  So what had happened in those intervening two years to change him from Mr wild, free and willing, to Mr average, marrying Mrs average in an average church in an average Lincolnshire town and then settling down in the average detached pad in the average suburb?

  Whatever it was, he often found himself wishing he could travel back in time, intercept his younger self on the way to the church and say, “Run for it. Get the hell out of here, now.”

  Popping his blood pressure pill onto his tongue, washing it down with a mouthful of freshly squeezed orange juice, he realised how selfish and unfair that thought was. Deidre had not been a bad wife. To his knowledge, she had never been unfaithful, and when they put on those lavish dinner parties, she was always immaculately turned out, the perfect hostess. She never complained about the time he had to spend in London and she never hassled him to take her along. When constituency matters called him to his local office on Saturday morning, cancelling any plans they had made for the weekend, she didn’t protest, and when election time came round, she was out with him every day, canvassing from dawn to dusk and beyond. Twice now, she had stood in the hall listening to his acceptance speech, applauding, supportive, just as the dutiful wife should.

  But privately, she was a mess. She didn’t bother dressing most days, crawling out of bed in the middle of the day, lounging around in pyjamas and a dressing gown, smoking cigarette after cigarette, knocking back the vodka like it was lemonade. Coming up to her 48th birthday, her strawberry blonde hair was now straw, straggling about her thin face like seaweed clogging the propeller shaft of a cabin cruiser. Her small, once proud breasts sagged when they had no support and those legs, which had so attracted him back in the 80s, now reminded him of pipe cleaners; thin and wrinkled.

  By contrast, he had maintained much of his youthful looks. Not by good luck, but by sheer hard work. Three sessions a week in the gym (Westminster when the House was sitting, home when it wasn’t) followed by a strenuous swim, careful dieting, only moderate drinking and no smoking. He was a man of force, someone to be reckoned with; but he was married to a rambling, sexless weed.

  Not that the latter troubled him unduly. There were natural compensations for the successful politician: other women upon whose attentions he could call when he felt the need. Nothing serious, certainly nothing long-term, but mutually satisfying adventures filling lazy afternoons in his Kensington flat. And if he felt the slightest hint of guilt, it was easy to rationalise. Those hours of fun helped keep him sane and allowed him to remain married to Deidre.

  Arguments were infrequent, but that was largely because Deidre rarely spoke to him or anyone else other than in her semi-official capacity as the Honourable Member’s wife. And when they did exchange words, it was usually her delivering the more forceful invective.

  Lifeless. That’s what the marriage was. Lifeless. And not his fault. Deidre’s. The woman simply had no get up and go. Hadn’t he just arranged a special treat for their daughter’s 21st birthday? Hannah, he knew, would be over the moon with the deal. Expensive hotel, ghost hunt and all that Halloween palaver. But Deidre… her apathy made him feel like…

  “You make it sound as if I’ve just ordered a pizza.”

  Deidre swallowed a mouthful of orange juice. Edgar wondered how much vodka was in the glass.

  “You’ve arranged a weekend at a hotel for her 21st birthday. I could have done that.”

  “No,” Edgar disagreed. “You wouldn’t be able to decide which hotel.”

  Deidre did not rise to the jibe. With a huff, Edgar picked up The Telegraph and read the gloomy headlines again. After years in opposition, now forming part of the coalition government, the party’s fortunes were wavering. Only to be expected, he thought. The government of
the day was always the least popular of political colours.

  He gazed across the vast expanse of lawn to where his daughter and her boyfriend lay, baring obscene amounts of flesh to the warm September sunshine. Hannah was very much the image of her mother in those far off days of Glastonbury. Rakishly thin yet curvaceous and attractive, with a naughty gleam in her hazel eyes.

  His stare shifted and focussed on the lean, muscular body laid alongside Hannah. Edgar’s lip curled. Callum bloody McGuire. Twenty-two years old, fitter than any dog belonging to any butcher, a bloody chancer who had set his sights on Hannah when they met at university and he realised who her prominent father was. A fortune hunter or Edgar had never seen one. Oh, he was all right on the surface; very much ‘yes, sir, I quite agree, sir, you have a point there, sir’. Claimed to have supported the party for years and couldn’t help himself agreeing with every word Edgar said; even those words decrying the values of modern students.

  Hannah was completely taken in by him, but Callum McGuire would have to get out of bed early to fool Edgar Prudhoe. And he’d have to get out of bed even earlier before he could get his grubby Scottish hands on the Prudhoe money.

  ***

  Cal yawned, shifted his sunglasses onto his forehead and glanced to his left at Hannah’s closed eyes. Lowering the shades again, he turned his head to look in the opposite direction, towards the patio where Edgar and Deidre were having a midday breakfast. Deidre looked drunk – nothing new there – and Edgar was glowering in his direction. Nothing new there, either.

  Cal turned his head once more to face Hannah. “Your dad doesn’t like me, Hann.”

  She stirred, her ruby lips forming a pout. Rolling onto her side, she stared into Cal’s deep blue eyes and smiled. “Dads are like that, Cal. If I came home with the crown prince of wherever hanging on my arm, he still wouldn’t be good enough for my old man.”

  “It goes deeper than that,” Cal replied, his Edinburgh burr contrasting sharply with her soft, Lincolnshire accent. “He really hates me.”

  She laughed, a silly, girlish giggle. “You’re paranoid. Look at the time you said old Dickerson had a downer on you because he only gave you an A instead of an A-plus in media studies.”

  “I was right,” Cal protested. “That video was worth an A-plus. He was just irritated because it was better than anything he could do. Anyway, I wasn’t talking about Dickerson. I was talking about your dad. He’s glaring at me now. I can feel his eyes burning into the back of my head.”

  Hann raised herself up onto one elbow and looked across at her father. She gave him a twee smile and he smiled back indulgently. “He thinks you’re a gold digger,” she said. “He thinks all my boyfriends are gold diggers.”

  “All your boyfriends?” Cal teased. “How many more are there besides me?”

  Hann lay back on her tummy, her head resting in folded arms, and laughed again. “That’s for me to know.” She yawned. “It’s one of the worries of having a father who’s filthy rich, I s’ppose. One day all this will be mine.” She gestured around the vast garden with her eyes. “Along with the untold zillions he has tucked away in the bank.”

  “But not until daddy pops his clogs.”

  “Pops his clogs? Where on earth did you hear that?”

  “Had to do a bit of research on idioms during my final year,” Cal said, “and that was one of the expressions the tutor gave me. Comes from the North, where working people used to wear clogs. To pop means to pawn them, and it means the widow would pawn the husband’s boots when he died. Pop his clogs. It came to mean someone’s death.”

  “Quaint,” Hann agreed. “Well, yes, I suppose when Daddy pops his clogs I’ll be a wealthy socialite. Until then, he keeps an eye on my boyfriends.” She grinned again. “If you want your share of Daddy’s money, you’d better marry me quick.”

  Cal returned her grin. “All right. Will you marry me?”

  “No. I want to finish university, then go round the world and have an adventure before I settle down.” She pulled her tongue out at him. “So you’ll just have to wait to get your hands on my money.”

  Hann turned her face away from him to sleep. Cal did likewise, but found himself staring into Edgar’s angry eyes again, so he turned once more and looked at the back of Hann’s head instead, inhaling the tantalising essence of her fair hair and imagining that hair spread across the pillows beneath him.

  “I wish you would pop your clogs you miserable old sod.”

  ***

  One hour later and a hundred miles to the north, Joe Murray looked out through windows of the top room at the Miner’s Arms and tried to ignore the protests coming at him from the monthly meeting of the Sanford Third Age Club.

  After a sweltering summer, the whole of Great Britain yearned for the cool of autumn, but there was no sign of an end to the heat wave yet, and the country baked in early September temperatures way above the norm. Outside, a heat haze wafted up from the dust dry road, bikers roared past devoid of leathers, couples and families strolled along in shirt sleeves and shorts, and the tables of the beer garden behind the pub were packed with Sunday lunchtime drinkers.

  Joe would give his right arm to be with them, enjoying a cool beer in the heat of the day, or sat in his back yard at home, reading and enjoying a beer of his own, straight from the chiller. Anything other than dealing with the rabble of third agers looking for trouble.

  He, Sheila Riley and Brenda Jump, as the management trio of the club, were seated on the podium, facing about 150 of STAC’s 300-strong membership, and Joe had never seen them in such a belligerent mood. Ever since the meeting began on the stroke of noon, they had argued with him, argued with each other, argued with Mick Chadwick, the landlord, and then argued with themselves again. It was as if the months of unrelenting heat had taken its toll on their tolerance, and they had decided that now was the time to vent the ill-feeling.

  They were a motley assortment. Some were widowed, some were divorced, others were still locked in happy or otherwise marriages. Some were still working, others had given it up through retirement, failing health, or simple unemployment. They represented a range of working types; professional, skilled, unskilled, clerical, practical, managerial. But the one thing they had in common was their age: everyone was over fifty. Many were at that time of life when every day the grim reaper did not come to call was a bonus, most had come to the conclusion that if life was a game of two halves, they were well into the second half. All had decided that now was the time to start enjoying life, and without exception they would argue black was white to secure whatever pleasure they could.

  In the centre of the crowd, Alec Staines exchanged harsh words with Cyril Peck, Alec jabbing a threatening finger at the air to ram home his point, while Cyril’s toothless mouth curled into a contemptuous, ‘you-wouldn’t-dare’ scowl. Les Tanner debated with his lady friend, Sylvia Goodson, shaking his head at something she said, and towards the rear of the room, George Robson gritted his teeth at something Mavis Barker was saying.

  Third agers, Joe thought. Like born again children. Who’d have ’em?

  Inhaling deeply, he rapped his pen on the table. “Let’s have a bitta hush, people,” he shouted above the mutinous hubbub. “Come on, calm it down and let me explain.”

  Seated at a table near the front, his regimental tie snuggled neatly under his Adam’s apple, pristine white shirt gleaming in the early afternoon sunshine, Captain Les Tanner laid a gimlet eye on the chairman. “There’s nothing to explain, Murray, only your usual level of inefficiency.”

  Stung into retaliation, Joe snapped, “That’s smart coming from a council pen pusher.”

  Someone at the rear of the room said, “Hear, hear,” and a further chorus of rhubarb anger rumbled across the meeting.

  Joe rapped on the table again. “Come on, folks. Calm it down. We’re gonna be here all day at this rate, and it won’t change nothing.”

  It was like trying to bring silence to a crowd at a football match.


  Alongside him, Brenda got to her feet and raised her voice. “Shut… up!”

  Silence fell; a silence broken only by the rattle of bottles beneath the bar where landlord Mick Chadwick was restocking the chiller.

  “For all your whinging,” Brenda went on, “Joe works his socks off for this club and he does the best he can. You asked him for a spooky weekend over Halloween and he’s arranged it.”

  “We appreciate that, Brenda,” Sylvia Goodson said in a voice calculated to pour oil on the troubled waters, “but we wanted to be together; all of us.”

  “Then you should have said something earlier,” Joe argued, taking the stand from Brenda again. On his other side, Sheila Riley wrote furiously, keeping the minutes of the meeting. “You keeping up with this?” he asked and she nodded. “If I’m speaking too fast, say something,” he told her, and turned to address his audience again. “At July’s meeting you asked for a Christmas weekend away, which I’ve arranged, and the details will be circulated once we get the leaflets from the Regency Hotel. Christmas is still sixteen weeks away. Then last month, you asked for a Halloween weekend. Halloween is less than nine weeks, and you think I can just drop onto a hotel and have them supply seventy to a hundred rooms, AND include spooky entertainment AND a ghost hunt? I’m a wizard in the kitchen, not the travel agency.”

  “If you’re a wizard does that make Sheila and Brenda witches?” George Robson called out. “Only the last steak and kidney pie I had at your place…”

  The rest of George’s remarks were drowned out in another sea of recrimination.

  Joe rattled for attention again and this time, Sheila stood up with the relevant documentation in her hand.

  “Here’s what we managed to arrange,” she said when order was once again restored. “We managed to get ten of you into rooms at The Feathers, Pocklington. It’s reputed to be haunted and there will be some form of entertainment on Halloween. Forty more rooms have been secured at The Palmer Hotel, near Elvington. The place has an old inn and stable house at the rear which is also reported to be haunted, and they’re putting on a midnight ghost hunt. The rest of you will stay at The Steeplechase Hotel, in York, and there will be an organised ghost walk during the evening of the 31st. Given the short notice, it was the best we could do.”