Treble Exposure

A Tessa Crichton Mystery

Anne Morice

• Publisher: Dean Street Press
• Year: 2021
• eBook ISBN: 9781914150340
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Crime & Mystery Literature
• Index: Literature

'How was she killed?'

'Strangled, I gather, with her own silk scarf.'

A murder involving a group of Americans on an English 'Mystery Tour' has actress Tessa Crichton investigating members of the group, including a young lady recently released from a psychiatric hospital who claims she is seeing ghosts.

When a woman is found strangled, Tessa is on the case, along with detective husband Robin. But it will be Tessa's insight that helps Robin to solve the case as events reach a suspenseful climax.

Treble Exposure was originally published in 1987. This new edition features an introduction and afterword by crime fiction historian Curtis Evans.

'A light hand, an engaging ease, and an inventive mind: all welcome qualities in the writing of crime novels.' Financial Times

'What makes her such good company - and the whole point of Miss Morice's book is to converse, as it were, with Tessa Crichton - is not her deductive skill but her shrewd eye and quick tongue for people and situations.' Daily Telegraph

1

I tend to think of my friend, Lorraine Thurloe, as a catalyst. It is not a word I often use, having something to do with chemical reactions, I understand, but it bobs up from time to time in scripts and it has just the right ring about it for Lorraine.

She might also be described as a thunderbolt, harmless in itself but liable to leave a chain of catastrophes in its wake. Furthermore, being American, her bolts tend to be on a larger and more thunderous scale than those nearer home and her wake correspondingly more extensive.

For this reason, and dearly as I love her, I react with a certain wariness at the sight of her handwriting on an envelope – especially one which is adorned with about four dollars’ worth of postage stamps – such as I received from her one Monday morning towards the end of last May.

I read it on the train going up to Oxford, the post having arrived half an hour before my departure from Beacon Square, when every particle of concentration was required for last-minute instructions for Mrs Cheeseman, in the atmosphere of mounting tension which always overtakes Robin when either of us has a train to catch.

Leaving my car behind had been something of a wrench, but after careful deliberation I had decided that it would only be a liability during my three-week sojourn in Oxford. All those colleges cluttering up the place make it virtually impossible to find a parking space and Robin had promised to give it a reassuring pat and to keep it tuned up to a lively pitch in such odd moments as he could spare from the demands of life as a Detective Chief Inspector at Scotland Yard.

‘The only trouble is,’ he had objected, ‘I thought we were both spending next weekend with your cousin Toby at Roakes Common.’

‘Yes, we are.’

‘So how will you get there without a car?’

‘Oh, cadge a lift, I suppose. There’s bound to be someone in the company who’s going to London for the weekend and Roakes is practically on the way.’

‘And how will they overcome the parking problem?’

‘By leaving their cars in the vaults of the hotel, I daresay, there to remain, clocking up parking fees till the end of the run. That’s their worry and they must work it out for themselves.’ Faith in the wisdom of my decision to travel by train got a major boost from the fact that we had whizzed through the first half of the journey and were already pulling out of Reading by the time I reached the end of Lorraine’s letter.

It began with the news of her impending visit to England, followed by endearing expressions of her enchantment at the prospect of seeing Robin and me again and then by the announcement that I would never believe this, but she would not be on her own, or even with Henry, but in the company of eleven other people, all but three of whom she had yet to meet. They were members of an ultra-select package tour, which some enterprising travel agency had laid on to cater specifically for mystery-story addicts. The object was to traipse with reverential footsteps around the haunts of such well-known characters as Lord Peter Wimsey, Hercule Poirot, Sherlock Holmes and a number of others whose names she could not for the moment recall, but felt sure I would recognise if I heard them.

It was quite hard to believe, as it happened, because, although she was an avid reader and whipped through every new novel and biography which Henry courteously ordered for her once a month from Brentanos, I had never, when the parcel was unpacked, seen more than an occasional crime story or thriller come tumbling out. With the sensation, however, that I was now reading one myself, I hurried on to paragraph one, page three.

‘Remember Lynn Finkelstein?’ it began. ‘Henry and I took you to visit her and Earl and their two daughters at their place in Conn, one weekend when you were last over (which is far too long, almost a year, by the way). Earl died soon after that. Collapsed with a heart attack at Virginia and Ed’s wedding and only lived a few days. Virginia’s the elder girl, the other one’s called Beverly, and at one time we all thought she was the one Ed had his eye on. Wrong, though, because he married Virginia and it was one great big, splashy wedding with about a thousand guests, foie gras flown in from France, along with the bridesmaids’ dresses and a couple of symphony orchestras thrown in.

‘It turned out to be their last extravagance, though, and Lynn’s been having a rough time ever since. First of all, the shock and then discovering Earl had spent practically every cent he made and, on top of that, there was Beverly’s problem, which was the worst horror of all. She was just into her second year at college at this time and Lynn was going out of her mind, wondering how she could afford to keep her there for the full course. She didn’t need to lose any sleep over that side of it, though, because it was about then that Bev started acting so strange. Up to then, she’d always been a good-natured, simple sort of girl, not a bit like her sister, but almost overnight there was this transformation. She stopped turning up for classes, which meant her marks took a plunge and that led to fits of depression and she just seemed incapable of pulling herself out of the spiral. At first, everyone was inclined to let it ride. They thought it was all on account of Earl’s death, but then it got so bad they called in the shrink and he diagnosed it as advanced manic depression and shot her into this hell-hole of a clinic, where they pumped her full of drugs which just seemed to make her ten times worse, and they said it might be years before they could get the treatment really right. Can you imagine? Poor Lynn, it was as much as she could do to pay the expenses of going up there to visit her, let alone finding the hospital fees.

‘The climax finally came when Beverly got involved in some brawl with one of the nurses. I never heard the details, but there was one hell of a hullabaloo. The nurse accused Beverly of having tried to throttle her and for a while the poor child was kept under guard in a padded cell.

‘That was when Henry persuaded Lynn to let him take over. She’d always flatly refused to accept financial help for herself, but since it was one of the girls she did manage to swallow her pride, on the understanding she’d pay back every cent just as soon as she got on her feet again, which, as you can imagine, was about the last thing to bother Henry.

‘Anyway, after a month or two everything did begin to look up. Henry had a hand in that too, I guess, because the first thing he did was to get Bev moved into Bella Vista, which is a really gorgeous place in upstate NY, more like some luxurious country mansion than a sanitarium, in beautiful surroundings and all the doctors and nursing staff friendly and relaxed. The best thing of all was that it meant only a forty-mile drive for Lynn so she was able to visit several times a week, which did them both good, and from then on Bev hasn’t really looked back. There was a trial period when she was allowed home for weekends and when that worked out OK they said she could live at home and just go to Bella Vista three mornings a week for what they call instructional therapy classes. That worked well, too, and about a month ago the head psychiatrist said she was ready to stand on her own two feet and what he recommended now was a change of environment. She had to put the bad times behind her and make a fresh start. He’s a wonderful man, incidentally, and it wouldn’t surprise me if he was motivated partly by the idea that this was what Lynn needed too.

‘OK, Tessa, I can just hear you thinking: “Lord, how Lorraine does go on!”, which I don’t for one minute deny, but I’m nearly there now and the end is where you come into the story. At least, I’m hoping it is (and so is Henry, which is sure to melt your resistance). Trouble was, you see, that getting Beverly fixed up with somewhere to go for this change of environment wasn’t all that easy. She couldn’t just go drifting off on her own, she’d need supervision and it would have to come from someone tolerant and understanding. The only one who seemed right for that job was Lynn herself, which wouldn’t have been much of a solution. In the end it was Ed, of all people, who came up with the answer. He’d read this advertisement for the High and Wide Travel Bureau, who were setting up a very exclusive package tour for mystery readers, and it started some bells ringing in that beautiful head of his. He remembered how during Beverly’s last few weeks at Bella Vista she had taken to spending a lot of time in the library. It was mostly light stuff she was going for, romance and suspense stories, that kind of thing, and the doctors took it as a good sign. They liked it better than ever when she invented some elaborate treasure-murder-hunt game for the staff and patients, with clues strewn around over the house and grounds. She really worked hard on it and they had a lot of fun, so it gave her a great confidence boost. Ed said this was the answer they’d been looking for and he talked Virginia into giving up their trip to Italy this summer and taking Bev on the Mystery Tour instead.

‘One of the scheduled stop-over places is Oxford, where they’re due to spend two or three days, going on walks round some of the colleges that figure in those books, taking photographs of each other standing on the exact spot where Lord Peter proposed to whoever it was, and this is where you have an important role. I remember you told me that you were doing this play in Oxford just about the time we’ll be there, which clinched it as far as I was concerned, and I have decided to become a mystery addict myself for those three weeks. How’s that for a new departure?

‘Henry’s all for it. Normally, he hates me to go abroad without him, but he sees this as a real constructive good deed, with maybe quite a lot of fun thrown in. What he means is, I guess, that it will give Virginia a feeling of security to have someone older – if not wiser – along. Like, if Beverly should have some kind of relapse, there’d be someone to turn to. If so, he probably flatters me, but then when didn’t he? Which reminds me. I’m going to be forty, for the very first time, next birthday, so perhaps this is a good moment to start learning how to become a chaperone.

‘Anyway, it’s all fixed and our party flies out from Kennedy on the 20th (almost as soon as you’re likely to be reading this) and their eyes will pop when I tell them – and I’m certainly going to tell them – that they’ll have a chance to meet the celebrated Theresa Crichton and, furthermore, that her husband is (or very soon will be) Deputy Head of Scotland Yard. We’ll be staying in London from Saturday morning through Monday, at the New Westminster Hotel. As I see it, that must be good news too, because with a name like that how could it be more than a block or two away from your house on Beacon Square?

‘Could you call me there some time late Saturday afternoon? We’re to see some Agatha Christie play in the evening, so make it before six, if you can, and let me know whether you’re still around, or in Oxford, or wherever.

‘Monday is a tight schedule, with an expedition to Baker Street in search of that famous apartment, sitting in at some trial at the Old Bailey and exciting things like that (Chamber of Horrors, for all I know), but I don’t intend being completely tied down and could pull out of part of the program, if you’re going to be around. And Sunday is a kind of rest day, when we’re on our own and can do what we want. What I want most is to see you and Robin, so do your best for me. Henry sends oceans of love and so do I, Lorraine.’

When I had finished unpacking there was just time left for two urgent jobs on the domestic front. The first was to telephone Mrs Cheeseman with a list of all the things I had left behind, so that she could pack them up for Robin to bring down to Roakes at the weekend. That done, I moved on to her counterpart in my cousin Toby’s household at Roakes Common, who is also the gardener’s wife and is called Mrs Parkes.

She answered the telephone in person and after a few polite preliminaries back and forth, I requested her to apprise her employer of the likelihood of there being one, and possibly as many as four, extra guests for Sunday luncheon. Some people might have seen this as a back-to-front way of going about it, but, with only ten minutes left before I was due at the theatre, it was by far the most practical.

In no circumstances does Toby answer the telephone himself and he can rarely be persuaded to speak into it, except in direst emergency. Furthermore, had I by some miracle or oversight succeeded in establishing contact, he would probably have forgotten all about the extra numbers for lunch within five minutes of putting the receiver down; whereas to Mrs Parkes it was a matter of some moment, as she demonstrated by saying:

‘Well, thanks for letting me know. I’d had it in mind to order a fillet of beef for Sunday, when it was just going to be you and the Inspector, but we couldn’t very well stretch that to six or seven, could we? I’ll have to think again. Anything particular you fancy?’

‘Absolutely everything, Mrs Parkes, you know me! But Mrs Thurloe will be among the party, so spare no effort.’

‘Oh, that’s nice,’ Mrs Parkes replied primly, no doubt reminded of the handsome leather bag with which Lorraine had presented her on her last visit to Roakes Common.

2

In the event, only Lorraine and Beverly turned up and Robin telephoned to say he could not get down till the evening, so the fillet would have stretched, after all. Still, there’s a lot to be said for roast sirloin and Yorkshire pudding, although it has to be admitted that neither guest seemed specially eager to say it. Lorraine cut up everything like a good girl, then swished it all round her plate like a bad one, while Beverly incurred Mrs Parkes’s silent displeasure by asking for second helpings of everything, without troubling herself to finish the first, and Toby’s by preferring tomato juice to wine.

They had arrived earlier than expected in a powerful-looking hired car, Lorraine having explained to me in advance that this arrangement would give Ed and Virginia the chance to go off somewhere on their own for a few hours, before they were sucked into three solid weeks of group activity. She had looked rather wan on arrival, but I had attributed this to a combination of jet lag and the fact that she was missing Henry, from whom she had scarcely been parted since their marriage five years before. However, as lunch proceeded I began to wonder if it was not simply the over-exuberance of her companion which made her, by contrast, appear more subdued than usual.

A table and four chairs had been set out on the back verandah for our coffee, but Beverly neglected hers in order to prance around and click away with her camera, which was worn on a gold chain around her neck. She appeared to be a somewhat indiscriminate photographer, though, close-ups of the coffee pot being treated with as much care as panoramic views of the house, and at one point she went down on her knees to train the camera on a poppy bud. All this, she explained to us, was to enable her to recreate the atmosphere for posterity, though it was hard to follow the reasoning behind this, one poppy being so much like another.

‘Still a shade on the manic side, would you say?’ I suggested when she had left us to explore the beautiful, beautiful garden.

‘Perhaps I’m wrong, though,’ I added, as Lorraine remained silent and glum, fiddling with a loose strand of binding on the arm of her chair and looking as though nothing in the world mattered so much to her as getting it back into its right pattern. ‘Perhaps she is simply a natural extrovert and all this excitability simply indicates that she’s back to normal?’

‘What depresses me,’ Toby said, ‘is how banal I can be in my instant judgements. All those carroty curls, flouncy skirts and freckles would have fooled me completely. The perfect Anne of Green Gables stereotype and the last girl on earth I would have associated with nervous breakdowns and psychiatrists. It is a sad admission for one who passes himself off as a professional playwright.’

‘You wouldn’t have been far out, at that,’ Lorraine told him, ‘she is a bit like that, always has been. What worries me is how badly she’s starting to overdo it. Imagine all that dancing around and squealing. Any minute, I was afraid she would clap her hands and say she was off to look for the Teddy Bears’ Picnic.’

‘She could well have found it, too,’ Toby remarked sourly. ‘The most unspeakable people park their cars and bring out their sausage rolls and Coca Cola as near to our boundary as they can get on Sunday mornings at this time of year.’

‘Do they really?’ Lorraine asked, looking startled. ‘I hadn’t noticed.’

‘You should know by now that you have to allow for a little exaggeration,’ I reminded her. ‘There was one historic occasion a year or two ago when no less than two cars were parked on the Common. It was contravening all the rules of the Doomsday Book, I need hardly say, and they were seen off, but ever since then Toby has been comparing the place unfavourably with Coney Island in mid-August. Perhaps he is partly to blame,’ I added, ‘for Beverly overdoing her act. All his wild talk and disparagement of things most people hold sacred is making her feel nervous and insecure.’

‘Oh no, Tessa, none of it’s Toby’s fault this time. The mood was getting a hold on her long before we arrived here. You ought to have seen the way she drove that car down the freeway.’

‘Which way was that?’

‘As though she had the wind behind her and no other car on the road. She was like someone who’d been drinking champagne for the first time in her life. Or had fallen in love for the first time. Neither of which seems very likely.’

‘Perhaps it was a mistake to hire such a powerful car?’

‘Oh, sure, I can see that now, Tessa, but I’d left all that side of it to her, you see. When I told her we’d been invited to spend the day here, she was all for it, and she offered to arrange everything with the hall porter, so I let her go ahead. Since she was goi...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page/About the Book
• Contents
• Introduction by Curtis Evans
• 1
• 2
• 3
• 4
• 5
• 6
• 7
• 8
• 9
• 10
• 11
• 12
• 13
• 14
• 15
• 16
• 17
• 18
• 19
• 20
• 21
• Afterword
• About The Author
• Titles by Anne Morice
• Copyright