Wycliffe and the Four Jacks

Book 0: The Cornish Detective

by W.J. Burley

Genres: Mystery; Cozy Mystery; Hard-Boiled; Police Procedurals; Traditional Mysteries; Crime Fiction

Synopsis

A murder committed in the night of dead. It's all a game for Detective Wycliffe to solve in a puzzling case. Writer David Cleeve lived exactly the way a bestselling novelist should live - in an opulent house set in a beautiful corner of Cornwall. But beneath the successful façade was a private nightmare. For at regular intervals a sinister and mysterious warning was delivered to him: a single playing card, the Jack of Diamonds. Then, one day, the card arrived torn in half - and that night a murder was committed. Chief Superintendent Wycliffe was on holiday in the area but, far from relaxing, he finds himself drawn into the investigation. Before long, there is more than just a single mystery to solve. As Wycliffe investigates, he uncovers a double murder, arson, and a whole series of crimes stretching back over many years . . . Why readers love W.J. Burley: 'First-class, old-time, hyper-ingenious whodunit.' Observer 'You can always count on Wycliffe ... he inevitably guarantees a good story, convincing characters and appealing landscape ' Financial Times 'Wycliffe teases out the truth with delicate skill that leaves the reader intrigued and convinced.' Mail on Sunday 'Gripping.' The Times Fans of Ruth Rendell, Val McDermid and Peter Robinson will love W.J. Burley: 1. Wycliffe and the Three-Toed Pussy 2. Wycliffe and How to Kill a Cat 3. Wycliffe and the Guilt Edged Alibi 4. Wycliffe and Death in a Salubrious Place 5. Wycliffe and Death in Stanley Street 6. Wycliffe and the Pea-Green Boat 7. Wycliffe and the School Bullies 8. Wycliffe and the Scapegoat 9. Wycliffe in Paul's Court 10. Wycliffe's Wild Goose Chase 11. Wycliffe and the Beales 12. Wycliffe and the Four Jacks 13. Wycliffe and the Quiet Virgin 14. Wycliffe and the Winsor Blue 15. Wycliffe and the Tangled Web 16. Wycliffe and the Cycle of Death 17. Wycliffe and the Dead Flautist 18. Wycliffe and the Last Rites 19. Wycliffe and the Dunes Mystery 20. Wycliffe and the House of Fear 21. Wycliffe and the Redhead 22. Wycliffe and the Guild of Nine * Each Inspector Wycliffe novel can be read as part of a series or as a standalone*

Release date: December 16, 2010

Publisher: Orion

Print pages: 224

Sample

Thursday June 16thAs usual Cleeve was in his library study by nine-thirty. He stood by the window gazing out over his own garden and the clustered rooftops of the village below, across the creek to the headland where a line of pine trees descended with the profile of the promontory in a perfect curve, almost to the fringe of white water and the sea. Grey slate roofs, the glittering surface of the creek, rising green fields, and the arc of the pines against a misty-blue windy sky. Rain in the offing.

Seven or eight years ago, when he first came to live at Roscrowgy, there had been twenty pines, now there were thirteen; gales and old age had taken an erratic toll. It was absurd, but each morning he counted them in a ritual act, not that he needed to, for any fresh gap would have been immediately obvious.

June 16th; on June 16th, 28 years ago …

He heard his secretary moving about in the next room; in a few minutes she would bring in his mail and then he would know.

He watched a fly, a large grey fly with a chequered pattern on its abdomen, crawling up the window pane; it reached the top without finding a way out and went back to the bottom again. He watched while the performance was repeated twice more, then he opened the window and let the creature out, to be whisked away on the wind. As a small boy he had often sought to appease a hostile fate by such little acts of grace.

There was a tap at the door and Milli came in with the mail. She had opened and vetted most of it – everything from his publishers and his agent, everything addressed to him as Peter Stride; she was not permitted to open his Cleeve mail.

He did not turn round, determined to be casual, ordinary.

‘Good morning, Mr Cleeve.’ Milli bright and brittle.

He said, ‘Good morning!’ with just the right degree of preoccupation.

Milli was small, with black hair and dusky skin; lithe and agile as a monkey; he sometimes thought she might be capable of all 30 classical positions, but not with him; athletic sex was diversion for the young.

‘Anything in the post?’

‘Nothing I can’t deal with.’

‘Then take it away. I want to get on with the Setebos revision, so Milli – no telephone.’ She was already moving to the door having left the Cleeve mail on his desk. Normally he would have added something facetious. ‘Tell ’em I’m suffering from premenstrual tension.’

It seemed all right but at the door she looked back and he fancied she had sensed his unease; not that it mattered.

Childlike, he counted to a hundred before he would allow himself to look at the few items of mail on his desk: four buff-coloured envelopes, probably bills; two white ones with typewritten superscriptions and a third, addressed in bold, well-formed capitals. That was it! He held the envelope for a time without opening it. When he did, he drew out a single playing card – the Jack of Diamonds. Along the top margin of the card someone had written: Thursday June 16th and the number four.

He sat at his desk and with a key from his pocket unlocked the bottom left-hand drawer. It was here that he kept his automatic pistol, the current volume of his journal, and certain lists which might be of use to his executors. There was also a cardboard box which had once held a hundred cigarettes. From the box he removed three envelopes similar to the one he had just received. From each of the envelopes he extracted a playing card, three Jacks of Diamonds identical with the fourth he now had, but each carrying a different date and number. He arranged them on his desk, from left to right: Saturday September 4th – 1, Tuesday March 8th – 2, Friday May 13th – 3, and Thursday June 16th – 4.

He stared at the cards for some time, then with a grimace gathered them up. He put them back in their envelopes and returned the envelopes to the box and the drawer.

Still seated at his desk he reached for the fat wad of typescript which was Setebos, picked up a ballpoint and set to work. He had thought the opening chapter good, now it had the impact of a wet sponge, but he persevered, making deletions and insertions, knowing they would come out again in a later revision.

Writers come in all shapes and sizes but Cleeve was a surprise to the few people who penetrated his privacy. They found it hard to accept that David Cleeve, who looked and sometimes spoke like a prosperous farmer, must be reconciled with Peter Stride, the sophisticated creator of the terrifying Manipulators in Xanadu and the sadistic Preceptors in Medicus. A generous build, an open countenance, a fresh schoolboy complexion and guileless blue eyes – these, with an exuberant moustache, sandy hair and freckles, must surely mean innocence and simplicity of soul.

The room darkened as clouds crept up the sky and the first flurry of raindrops spattered against the window. At eleven o’ clock Milli came in with a cup of black coffee and when she had gone he laced it with whisky.

He existed in two worlds; in this comfortable room with his books and the paraphernalia of his work about him; defined, secure and purposeful; and in that other world of more than a quarter of a century ago through which he had prowled like some feral young animal. That world was no longer real, even his memories of it were vague, like the recollections of a dream, yet it acquired fresh substance through those four cards.

He drank his coffee and when it was gone he went to the drinks cupboard again and poured himself a whisky. He took it to the window and stood there, looking out. A vestige of sunlight silvered the edge of the blue-black clouds and miniature white horses reared on the dark water of the creek, sending the sailing dinghies scurrying for shelter like a flock of frightened geese. During the next hour or so he made other visits to the drinks cupboard and between times sat at his desk brooding over the typescript.

Patricia would diagnose one of his Occasionals – her word for episodes which occurred without warning and at longish intervals, but always with the same scenario. He would start drinking in the morning, contrive some sort of scene over lunch, then continue drinking through the afternoon. In the evening he would go to sleep in a small bedroom near his study and stay there until morning.

The buzzer sounded for lunch and he got to his feet; he was not yet drunk, for his step was firm. In the corridor outside his study he paused by the open door of his secretary’s office where she was working, oblivious.

‘Milli!’ A bellow.

She looked up, startled and annoyed.

‘Lunch!’

Roscrowgy sprawled across the flank of a hill, two storeys at each end, single-storeyed between, built on split levels and accommodating to vagaries of contour like a Tibetan monastery. Cleeve had his working suite of rooms on the upper floor at one end, while the dining and reception rooms were at the other. He went down an oak staircase and along the length of a broad passage which had occasional steps both up and down; the floors were of polished wood with Afghan rugs, and the white walls were relieved by a series of large uniform pictures of a Graham Sutherland genre. Patricia’s taste; it reminded him of a well-endowed nunnery and he was accustomed to refer to the pictures as Stations of the Cross.

‘Bloody hell!’ An inarticulate protest.

The dining-room continued the monastic theme; oak floor with rugs, white walls, furniture in natural beech. The table was laid for five but the room was empty. He went to the sideboard and poured himself a whisky.

His wife came in silently and he did not see her at once. Cleeve might have been mistaken for a farmer but there was no mistaking Patricia Cleeve for a farmer’s wife. She was a Tull of the Oxfordshire Tulls and God had thoughtfully endowed her with features admirably suited to half-tone reproduction in The Tatler. Patricia was forty-three, nine years younger than her husband; an English rose, not yet faded; a blonde, with a pink and white complexion, but with large limpid eyes whose steady gaze could unsettle the most hardened conscience.

Cleeve saw his wife and turned away, but not before she had recognized the symptoms.

Carrie Byrne wheeled in a trolley of food; bowls of salad and other vegetables and a platter of sliced chicken-breast. Carrie, a Tull cousin of thirty-eight, occupied an ambivalent position in the household; somewhere between a member of the family and a housekeeper. In colouring, personality and opinions Carrie was neutral, a congenital ‘don’t know’. In Cleeve’s words, ‘Clay which had waited too long for the potter.’

They took their places at table; Milli joined them with a muttered apology. Patricia said, ‘There’s chilled fruit juice if anybody wants it.’

Cleeve mumbled unintelligibly. It was a relief to take refuge in the established routine of an Occasional. No one would question it. ‘Are we not to have the twins’ company at lunch?’ Ponderously aggressive.

‘I told you. Andrew is at the School of Mines today. Some vacation work he has to do for his course at the university. Christine is changing; she came back wet from the dig.’

Cleeve looked out of the window at the rain sweeping in from the sea. ‘What does she want to spend her time up there for? Surely at her age she’s got better things to do.’

Nobody spoke. Plates and bowls passed from hand to hand. With an imperious gesture Cleeve refused the salad but speared several large slices of chicken breast with his fork. Seated at the head of the table he munched the chicken with pieces of bread roll, scattering crumbs and eyeing the three women with sullen aggression. The syndrome was complete.

Christine came in; a slim girl of nineteen with her mother’s looks and her father’s colouring. She wore skin-tight jeans and a denim shirt; the bloom was intact. She sat in her place, glanced at her father, then at her mother – questioning; her mother answered with the faintest shrug.

At the age of three Christine had dubbed her father ‘daddy bear’, and it had never been improved upon. It spanned the whole repertoire of his moods, from playful, affectionate whimsicality to the aggressive unpredictability of his Occasionals.

They ate in silence; when it seemed that someone might speak the tension rose, only to subside again when nothing happened. It was Patricia who finally took the plunge: ‘How is the dig going, Christie?’

Christie responded with self-conscious enthusiasm. ‘Oh, very well. Of course, we spent most of this morning in the shed sorting out pottery sherds; there was nothing we could do outside, but Gervaise says that with any luck we should finish excavating the third hut by Tuesday or Wednesday. Of course, it all depends on the weather …’

Christine was a lively, kindly girl with boundless enthusiasm, searching for a cause; the present candidate was archaeology and she had given up her vacation to an Iron-Age dig in Henry’s Field, a site adjoining Roscrowgy. The enemy was philistinism in the shape of developers, farmers, tourist boards and planners of every ilk.

Cleeve made a sound which could only be described as a deep growl and turned to Carrie Byrne. ‘Did you hear that, Carrie? I don’t suppose you’ve been up to the dig this morning?’

Carrie, realizing that she was to be the focus of today’s scene, seemed to shrink into her thin frame like a snail into its shell. She said, ‘No, David, I’ve been doing the shopping.’

‘Pity!’ He mimicked his daughter’s enthusiasm with grotesque cruelty: ‘ “Gervaise says that with any luck we shall finish excavating the third hut by Tuesday or Wednesday.” Think of that now, Carrie! Of course it all depends on the weather.’ After a pause he said, ‘Gervaise …! Bloody pouf!’

Christie flushed but she said nothing. Cleeve glared round the table as though challenging a response and when none came he went on: ‘Who cares about the sodding huts anyway? Or the squalid little savages who lived in ’em? If it hadn’t been for their screwing we wouldn’t be here now and the world would be a better place.’

Patricia turned her steady, disquieting gaze on her husband. ‘You are being quite disgusting, David.’

‘Me?’ He feigned surprise. ‘Oh, I forgot! We don’t screw in the Shires, we “make love” or we “have sex”.’

Patricia said nothing but she persisted in her gaze until he lowered his eyes. The meal continued in silence; only Milli seemed quite unaffected by the exchanges; she behaved as though the others did not exist.

When there was no more chicken on the platter Cleeve got to his feet, pushing back his chair so that the legs scraped over the floor.

‘Aren’t you staying for dessert?’

He glared at his wife and turned away without a word. For an instant he seemed to stagger, but recovered his balance and walked to the door which he left open behind him. They listened to his footsteps down the corridor.

Carrie got up and closed the door. ‘David isn’t himself today.’ Carrie had an unchallenged mastery of the banal. Before sitting down again she went to the kitchen and returned with a bowl of fruit.

They helped themselves except for Christie; she got up from her chair: ‘If you will excuse me …’

‘Aren’t you having any, Christie? You mustn’t let father upset you like that.’

The girl was near to tears. ‘It’s so unfair. I mean, it’s his land; he gave permission for the dig and he’s even paying for it. It doesn’t make sense!’

Patricia looked uneasily at Milli, but she was busy dissecting an orange. ‘You must know your father’s moods by now, darling; he’ll be up there as usual tomorrow, telling you all what a good job you’re doing.’

‘Will he!’ Christie went out and her mother watched her go.

‘Don’t get up again, Carrie; I’ll make the coffee.’

While Patricia was in the kitchen the telephone rang; there was a phone in the short passage between kitchen and dining-room and she answered it there.

‘Roscrowgy, Mrs Cleeve speaking.’

A man’s voice: ‘It’s me.… Is it all right to talk?’

‘I suppose so; what is it?’ She had lowered her voice, so that she would not be overheard in the dining-room.

‘I must talk to you, can you come down?’

‘If I must.’ She was in no mood for her brother’s problems.

‘It really is important, Tricia.’

‘It usually is; I’ll be there in about an hour.’

‘Can’t you make it sooner? I’m really worried.’

‘All right, I’ll come as soon as I can.’

‘Thanks, darling! I know you think—’

‘I’ll be there as soon as I can, Geoffrey.’ And she replaced the receiver. She finished preparing the coffee tray and carried it into the dining-room. ‘Where’s Milli?’

Carrie said, ‘She’s gone back to work; she didn’t want any coffee. Was that Geoffrey?’

Patricia nodded. ‘He’s really upset. Of course, it’s money. I’m going down there. If anybody asks, I’m taking Biddy for a run.’

A few minutes later Patricia, followed by her English setter, walked down the drive and through the white gates. The rain had eased to a fine mist blown landward by the wind. The estuary and the bay beyond were a waste of grey waters under a grey sky; only the tower of the little lighthouse, like a stumpy candle, stood out white in the gloom. June in Cornwall; but tomorrow, or the next day, or the next, could be gloriously fine.

Down the steep hill, past expensive villas, hidden in their own grounds, to the fringes of the old village. Mount Zion Chapel, then Mount Zion Steps, leading down to the waterfront and the harbour – really a steep, narrow, cobbled street with steps at intervals to ease the slope. Several of the little granite cottages had been tarted up and three or four had been turned into shops.

Patricia made her way down the Steps among tourists, disconsolate in the rain. They turned to look at her and her dog, an unselfconsciously elegant pair. Near the bottom of the Steps a shop with a bow window exhibited a neat sign, gold-on-green: ‘Geoffrey Tull, Herbalist and Naturopath.’

There was a ‘closed’ sign on the door, but Patricia tapped on the glass and a man in his middle thirties came to open it. Geoffrey was fair and good-looking, a blond moustache glistened in the light. But his features were too soft and he was slightly overweight. He wore a green silk shirt and fawn trousers.

Patricia angrily evaded a kiss. ‘Don’t be so foolish, Geoffrey!’

He was immediately contrite. ‘Sorry, darling! But bless you for coming. I would have phoned before but I wanted to make sure that secretary of David’s wasn’t listening-in at the other end.’

Patricia snapped. ‘You know perfectly well that the house phone is a separate line.’

Inside, the shop was laid out like a small Edwardian pharmacy with gilded glass jars on the shelves and a battery of little polished wooden drawers behind the counter, each labelled with its white-enamelled plaque: Arctium lappa, Laurus nobilis, Spiraea ulmaria …

‘Come through to the back where we can talk.’

Biddy settled complacently on the doormat.

The back room was a laboratory-cum-kitchen where the herbal decoctions, extracts and tinctures were prepared.

They sat on stools. ‘Now, what is this about?’

He put on an absurdly guilty look, like a small boy confessing to naughtiness. ‘It’s about money, Tricia, dear.’

‘So I imagined.’

‘But this is worse than anything … Connors from the bank rang this morning and asked me to come and see him.’

‘Well?’

‘He’s stopping my cheques unless I can find a guarantor or pay off my overdraft.’

‘You must have seen this coming.’

Geoffrey squirmed. ‘Actually, Tricia, I didn’t. The money has been coming in pretty well lately; business is brisk, and I just didn’t do my sums.’

Patricia sighed. ‘Will you never learn?’ She shifted impatiently on her stool. ‘What exactly are you asking me to do? I’m not made of money, Geoffrey: I only have what David gives me and he likes to have some idea where it goes.’

Saturday July 16thIn a rented cottage on the waterfront Wycliffe stood at the window and looked across to that same headland and those same pine trees which Cleeve contemplated ritually each morning. Only the narrow road to the castle and the low sea wall separated . . .