Dead Funny (5 page)

“I saw him!” Sylvia gabbled. “The guy in the striped jacket! He was right here! I was just taking Judy a drink. He must have come from the pool. He ran when he saw me. I suppose he’s got away.”

Without a word, Lieutenant Weinburger pushed past Sylvia and headed for the pool.

We followed him, but we weren’t prepared for what we found there. Judy’s body was floating face down beside the inflatable crocodile, its rubber mouth gaping in a horrible grin as it bobbed beside her. I thought that Judy had been drowned like her mother, but as we got closer I saw that a length of oddly lumpy rope had been pulled tightly around her neck.

I looked at it, and my stomach heaved with disgust. Beside me, Graham bent over and was sick into a potted cactus.

Someone had strangled Judy with a string of plastic sausages.

“Bizarre…” Lieutenant Weinburger’s face was folded into a multitude of lines. “This is one crazy murderer.”

He was right, I thought. The obvious way – the easy way – to kill Judy would have been to drown her. So why had her killer chosen sausages as the murder weapon? I shook my head as I surveyed the ghastly scene. It might look insane, I thought, but there had to be an explanation. This wasn’t some random act of violence – it had been carefully thought out and precisely staged. Something tickled at the back of my memory again: if only I could dig deep enough I’d know why the murderer had used such weird ways of getting rid of his victims. And if I could work that out, then maybe Lieutenant Weinburger would be able to catch the man who had done it before he struck again.

A whole load of police cars with screaming sirens and flashing lights tore down the drive in search of the man in the stripy blazer, but they didn’t find him. An army of men in white boiler suits crawled across the grounds minutely examining each square millimetre of earth for clues, while a second army of men did the same to Baby Sugarcandy’s house and everything in it, but none of them found anything useful.

After giving her statement to the police, Sylvia ordered in a takeaway lunch. She sat with Mum at the kitchen table while we waited for it to be delivered. Graham and I took up our positions by the open window, and hid ourselves behind our books.

“Did you see the killer?” Sylvia asked Mum. “You were out in the grounds all morning weren’t you? Did you catch a glimpse of him?”

“No,” said Mum. “I’m not very observant, am I? I never seem to see anything. Not raccoons, not murderers, no one.”

There was a pause, and then Sylvia asked her, “Did the police tell you what happened to Miss Sugarcandy?”

“No,” Mum replied.

“It was so awful!” exclaimed Sylvia, wringing her hands in distress. “He drowned her – pushed her head down the … the toilet I guess you’d call it. Why? Why would anyone do such a thing? And now this! Strangled with sausages! And with that crocodile grinning next to her – it was such a sight!”

I had the feeling of eyes pressing on my skin again. I sneaked the tiniest of glances over the top of my book, and sure enough caught Sylvia’s eyes just darting away from my face.

“She was looking at us again,” I whispered to Graham.

“Probably just checking we weren’t listening,” he replied.

“Or checking that we were,” I said. And then a new thought suddenly occurred to me. “She must have known him.”

“Who?” said Graham, surprised.

“Judy must have known that man.” I looked at Graham. “When we first saw her she was bobbing around in the middle of the pool. If she’d seen a stranger – someone she didn’t know – she’d have made a fuss, wouldn’t she? She’d have screamed or something. And she’d have stayed in the middle of the pool and he wouldn’t have been able to reach her without jumping in. We’d have heard the splash from where we were. But we didn’t hear a thing. So she must have gone over to the side to talk to him.”

“That seems a sound hypothesis,” said Graham. “Maybe she knew him because she
did
get him to kill her mother – perhaps she
did
let him in. Let’s suppose she was after the money. But if they were in it together why would he have killed her?”

“Could they have had an argument?” I asked. “We’d have heard that too though, wouldn’t we? We were pretty close to the pool. Maybe he planned to kill them both all along. But why? What’s his motive? And how did he get in today? Do you think the same person let him in again?”

Graham shrugged but said nothing.

I had the nagging sensation that I’d forgotten something. It was like leaving the house without my homework – I felt there was something missing, something I’d overlooked. But the harder I tried to put my finger on it, the more it slipped through my grasp. Angry and frustrated, I stared at my book until lunch arrived and distracted me.

We gathered around the table while Sylvia unwrapped paper packages.

“I ordered in fish and chips,” she explained. “There’s an English couple a few blocks away who do them. Comfort food,” she added, putting the contents onto plates. “I figured we could all use some.”

“Lovely,” Mum said with false cheeriness, sitting down to eat. “Proper big, fat chips! Not like those skinny little fries you Americans seem to prefer.”

In response, Sylvia picked one up and looked at it in admiration, before taking an appreciative bite. “Big, fat chips,” she echoed. “You’re right. That’s the way to do it!”

I dropped my knife and fork. I was rigid with shock. As my cutlery clattered to the floor, Sylvia said anxiously, “Are you OK?”

“Say that again!” I hissed.

“Are you OK?” she repeated.

“No. What you said before … about the fries.”

“Er… Big fat chips?”

“No. The other thing!”

“Mmmm…” Sylvia took another chip. “That’s the way to do it?”

I slammed my hand on the table so hard that the salt and pepper pots leapt into the air.

Graham leant across and stared at me. “What is it?” he asked. “What does it mean?”

Memories crashed over me like a great wave. Chips. Salt and vinegar. Sand. Seaweed. Rubber rings. Lilos. Ice cream. Kids laughing. Screaming with excitement. Pointing. Red and white stripes. Velvet curtains. And there, high on the little stage, brightly painted puppets. The high-pitched screech of Mr Punch… Dropping his baby in the toilet… Throwing it down the stairs… Hitting Judy… The crocodile eating his sausages… And shouting with every victory, “That’s the way to do it!”

I felt the blood drain from my face, and then it seemed to rush back in a sudden gush that made me hot, pink and dizzy. I looked at Graham, my chest tight with excitement. “Punch and Judy,” I said breathlessly. “It’s all to do with the Punch and Judy show.”

“Yes!” Graham punched my arm in triumph. “Of course it is!”

Mum gasped and clapped a hand to her mouth.

“Call Lieutenant Weinburger,” I told Sylvia. “We need to tell him right away!”

But trying to convince the streetwise cop wasn’t an easy task. He looked from me to Graham and back again, his eyes icy blue pools of disbelief, but I carried on regardless.

“It’s a puppet show,” I explained. “Mr Punch is the bad guy but everyone loves him. He chucks the baby in the toilet and then throws it down the stairs. So that’s Baby Sugarcandy, you see? Then he does away with Judy and there’s a whole bit with a crocodile – like that green inflatable in the pool. I can’t remember how it goes, exactly, but I’m pretty sure the crocodile eats his sausages. And then he bashes the policeman.”

“He assaults a cop?” Lieutenant Weinburger’s tone was acid.

“Erm … yes,” I said.

“You guys
like
this show?” asked Lieutenant Weinburger incredulously. “You let
kids
watch it?”

“It’s very funny,” I said huffily.

“The famous British sense of humour, huh?” the policeman grunted. “Serial homicide inspired by a puppet show? I don’t think so—”

“But don’t you see?” I demanded crossly. “It all makes sense. It’s perfectly logical, to the murderer at any rate. But what we still don’t know is
why
he’s doing it. There must be some link with Miss Sugarcandy – way back in her past, maybe. Perhaps she once saw the show – or knew someone who performed it? The guy in the jacket – maybe he’s a Punch and Judy man! It would explain the red and white stripes.”

“A killer puppeteer?” Lieutenant Weinburger said, his eyebrows raised sky high with disbelief. “That’s the craziest thing I ever heard. But it’s a lead, I guess. We’ll have to follow it. I think you kids had better come downtown to the Police Department.”

I
was the only person who had got more than a passing glimpse of the killer, so it was me who was stuck in front of the police computer trawling the internet for information about the Punch and Judy show. It took
ages
. There seemed to be hundreds of sites and millions of photographs, and as I examined each one it seemed to get more and more hopeless. The man I’d seen was old. Even if he
had
once been linked with puppets he’d probably retired long ago. We might never find him.

Luckily Graham was there to help me. We’d been searching for two solid hours with no success when Lieutenant Weinburger came in. “Find anything?” he asked.

“Not yet,” I sighed. “But we’ll keep working on it.”

“This is police work, kid,” he said drily. “It’s one per cent inspiration, ninety-nine per cent perspiration. But I think I can give you a break.”

I brightened at once. “Really?”

“Yeah. I’ve been making some calls; digging into Baby Sugarcandy’s past. Biddy Ford, I guess I should call her. It’s midnight in England right now – I had to pull a few people out of bed so it took a while. Seems she was married before she became famous. When she was eighteen years old she got hitched to her childhood sweetheart. As soon as the Sugarcandies began to make it big, the band’s manager made her ditch him. Said it was marriage or a singing career – she had to make a choice. So she divorced the guy, changed her name to Baby Sugarcandy, and came to the States. When she got into the movies she married an actor, and had the two kids. It didn’t last, though. They split a few years later.”

“What was this childhood sweetheart called?”

“He went by the name of Len Radstock.”

“Type it in, Poppy. Go on,” Graham said.

Heart thumping, I entered his name into the search engine. Up came dozens of entries, mostly relating to Radstock, a town near Bath. I scrolled rapidly down through sites about town councillors, schools and shopping facilities. But then – on the fourth page – I found something else. A reference to a newspaper article about the May Fayre in Covent Garden, which seemed to be held every year to celebrate Mr Punch’s birthday. There was a list of participants’ names and it included Len Radstock. Hardly daring to breathe, I opened the page and found a photograph beside the feature. I clicked to enlarge it. Two dozen men stood in a line, each with a Mr Punch on their right hand. And there on the end was a man in a red-and-white striped blazer. He was unmistakeable.

“That’s him,” I breathed. “That’s the murderer.”

Knowing
who
he was didn’t solve the problem of
where
he was but it gave the police a starting point. In a slightly irritated fashion, Lieutenant Weinburger told his force about the new lead and where they should direct their attentions. Then he held a press conference to warn the public that a killer puppeteer was on the loose.

Meanwhile, we turned our minds to the question of motive.

“I still don’t understand it,” Graham said.

“What?”

“Well, what are we saying? The motive isn’t money, it’s revenge?”

“Looks like it,” I agreed.

Graham frowned. “I can see why he might be angry. I understand that nobody welcomes rejection. But why wait until now to do anything about it? It happened years ago!”

I considered. “People do strange things when they get older. I mean, Sylvia said Baby Sugarcandy was getting nostalgic – that’s why she wanted to have an English country garden. Maybe Len Radstock had started thinking about the past too, only instead of making him soppy, he became bitter. Maybe he thought she’d wrecked his life. He wanted to punish her for it. Her and her family.”

“But,” said Graham, “does that still mean it was Judy who let him in?”

“I suppose so. Judy wanted her mother out of the way for the money. I guess Len did the job for her.”

“Did she let him in the second time too?” asked Graham.

“Must have done,” I replied. “Maybe she’d arranged to pay him. She didn’t know he had his own plans for her.”

“Hmm, I see.” Graham nodded thoughtfully.

It all sounded just about possible, I reckoned.

“Do you think he’ll attack anyone else?” asked Graham.

“No idea. She’s got a son, hasn’t she? The eco-warrior. He might be in danger.”

“He’s in South America though. He should be safe enough there.”

After the press conference, the TV news had run a story about the Punch and Judy murderer. By the time Lieutenant Weinburger drove us back to the estate an army of reporters had gathered outside the entrance. He slowed to a crawl to ease the car through the crowd and ground to a complete halt as we waited for the gates to swing open and let us through. A police officer stepped forward and tapped on the window.

“You might want to talk with this lady, sir. She’s from across town. Says she sold a carnation to the old guy.” He indicated a stout woman in the crowd with an extraordinarily large flower pinned to her jacket.

She didn’t wait for permission to speak. Without warning she launched into her story, her voice loud enough for all the waiting reporters to hear.

“When I saw the picture of that fella on the TV I swear I almost died! I said to my sister, ‘That’s him! That’s the guy I sold a flower to only a coupla days ago.’ I remember it well because he said he wanted something real plain and tasteful and I told him, ‘Mister, Tasteful is my middle name.’ I did just exactly what he told me to: a single bloom with just one piece of greenery. Looked pretty small to me but I gather that’s the British taste.” She sniffed disapprovingly. “Anyway, he pinned it to his jacket and I have to admit he looked just swell. And that guy was so happy! He was acting like it was his wedding day. How was I to know what he’d do next? When I think of what happened after he left! Gee! If I’d the slightest idea he was homicidal I’d have called the cops right away. Baby Sugarcandy, too! D’you know I was one of her biggest fans? I bought all her records – way back when you could still buy records, now it’s all CDs and computer downloads. Lord, but it’s hard staying on top of all this new technology. Some days I wonder how I’ll manage to keep the store going with people ordering their corsages and wedding bouquets from halfway around the world over the net. I can’t figure out why they won’t just use the local store where they can choose their own flowers…”