The Mammoth Book of Best British Mysteries (54 page)

But while these extravagant rooms – albeit small rooms, designed for but one purpose – had rightly gained some considerable fame (particularly as the town was not noted for anything
even approaching artistic or historical significance) they had also achieved a certain notoriety that was not always welcome.

Such notoriety came not from merely from the time, in the late 1940s, when an exceptionally inebriated Jack Walker (father of the unfortunate Stanley, who was to meet his tragic end at the hands
of his wife when she administered a lethal dose of EXTERMINATE! into his bottle of beer) pitched forward rather unexpectedly – after failing to register the aforementioned double step leading
to the urinals – and smashed his head into one of the glass-panelled splashguards. The accident resulted in the loss of Jack’s left eye which, Jack being reluctant to wear a patch
covering the now vacant socket (“Makes me look like a bloody pirate,” Jack remarked to his friend Alan, down at the steel mill one morning soon after the incident), was replaced by a
strangely coloured (and shaped, for that matter) orb that more resembled the marbles his then six-year-old son Stan delighted in firing across the living room carpet than an eye.

Nor did it come only from the legendary night when Pete Dickinson was ceremoniously divested of all of his clothes on his stag night and reduced to escaping the Regal, staggering drunkenly
through Luddersedge’s cold spring streets, wearing only one of the toilet’s continuous hand towels (those being the days before automatic hand dryers, of course), a 50-foot ribbon of
linen that gave the quickly sobering Dickinson the appearance of a cross between Julius Caesar and Boris Karloff’s mummy.

Rather, the toilet’s somewhat dubious reputation stemmed solely from the fact that, over the years, its lavish cubicles had seen a stream of Luddersedge’s finest and most virile
young men venturing into their narrow enclosures with their latest female conquests for a little session of hi-jinks where, their minds (and, all too often, their prowess and sexual longevity)
clouded by the effects of ale, a surfeit of testosterone, the threat of being discovered, they would perform loveless couplings to the muted strains of whatever music drifted down from the floor
above.

The practice was known, in the less salubrious circles of Calder Valley drinking establishments, as “The Forty Five Steps Club”. The name referred, in a version of the similar
“honorary” appellation afforded those who carried out the same act on an in-flight aeroplane (“The Mile High Club”), to the toilet’s distance below ground –
three perilously steep banks of fifteen steps leading down from the ballroom’s west entrance.

And so it was that, at precisely 10 o’clock on the fateful night of the Conservative Club’s Christmas Party, it was to this bastion room of opulence and renown that Arthur Clark
retired midway through a plate of turkey, new potatoes, broccoli and carrots (having already seen off several pints of John Smith’s, an entire bowl of dry roasted peanuts – Planters,
Arthur’s favourite – and the Regal’s obligatory prawn cocktail first course) to evacuate both bladder and bowel. It was a clockwork thing with Arthur and, no matter where he was
nor whom he was with, he would leave whatever was going on to void himself – on this occasion, all the better to concentrate his full attention and gastric juices on the promised (though some
might say “threatened”) Christmas Pudding and rum sauce plus a couple of coffees, and a few glasses of Bells whisky. Arthur’s slightly weaving departure from the ballroom, its
back end filled with a series of long dining tables leaving the area immediately in front of the stage free for the inevitable dancing that would follow coffee and liqueurs, was to be the last time
that his fellow guests saw him alive.

“Edna.
Edna!
” Betty Thorndike was leaning across the table trying to get Edna Clark’s attention, while one of the Merkinson twins – Betty thought
it was Hilda but she couldn’t be sure, they both looked so alike – returned to her seat and dropped her handbag onto the floor beside her. Hilda – if it was Hilda – had been
to the toilet more than fifteen minutes ago, while everyone else was still eating, her having bolted her food down in record time, and had spent the time since her return talking to Agnes Olroyd,
as though she didn’t want to come back and join them: they were a funny pair, the Merkinsons.

When Edna turned around, from listening – disinterestedly – to John and Mary Tullen’s conversation about conservatories with Barbara Ashley and her husband, whose name she
could never remember (it was Kenneth), she was frowning.

“What?”

“He’s been a long time, hasn’t he?” she said across the table, nodding to the watch on her wrist. “Your Arthur.”

“He’s had a lot,” Edna said with a shrug. The disc jockey on the stage put on Glen Campbell’s “Wichita Lineman”.

“Oh, I love this me,” Mary Tullen announced to the table, droopy-eyed, and promptly began trying to join in with the words, cigarette smoke drifting out of her partially open mouth.
She took a long drink of wine and frowned. “Who is it again? Name’s on the tip of my tongue.”

Edna shook her head.

“What was it like?” the Merkinson twin who had been to the toilet said to the one who had not.

A shrug was the reply. “You’ve been a long time, Hilda,” she said, pushing her plate forward. Hilda noted that the food had been shuffled around on the plate but not much had
been eaten.

“Been talking to Agnes Olroyd.”

“So I saw.”

“She was asking me about the robbery,” Hilda said.

“Robbery? I thought you said nothing had been taken.”

Hilda shrugged. “Robbery, break-in – it’s all the same thing.”

Hilda worked at the animal testing facility out on Aldershot Road where, two days earlier, she had come into work to discover someone had broken in during the night – animal rights
protesters, her boss Ian Arbutt had told the police – and trashed the place.

Not wanting to talk about the break-in again – it having been a source of conversation everywhere in the town the past 36 hours, particularly in the Merkinson twins’ small two-up,
two-down in Belmont Drive – Hilda’s sister said, “How’s her Eric?”

Hilda made a face. “His prostate’s not so good,” she said.

“Oh.” Harriet’s attention seemed more concentrated on Edna Clark.

As Mary elbowed her husband in the stomach, prising his attention away from a young woman returning to a nearby table with breasts that looked like they had been inflated, Betty Thorndike said
to Edna, “D’you think he’s all right?”

John Tullen spun around, glaring at his wife. “What?”

“Who, my Arthur?” Edna said.

“D’you know who’s singing this song?” Mary asked her husband. “It’s on the tip of my tongue.”

“I’m surprised you can sense anything with that tongue,” John said as he reached for his pint of Guinness. “You’ve near on pickled the bloody thing tonight.
Whyn’t you slow down a bit?”

Edna said, “He’s fine. He always goes at this time. Regular as clockwork. Doesn’t matter where he is.” This last revelation was accompanied by a slight shake of her head
that seemed to convey both amazement and despair.

“I know,” Mary Tullen agreed, still wondering who it was that was singing. “It’s common knowledge, your Arthur’s regularity.” She had trouble getting her
mouth around the word “regularity”, splitting it into three single-syllabled words with the following “ity” barely covering a watery burp. “‘Scuse me,”
Mary said.

“But he’s been a long time.” Betty nodded to Arthur’s unfinished meal. “And he hasn’t even finished his dinner.”

“He’ll finish it when he gets back,” Edna said with assurance.

Behind her, somebody said, “There’s no bloody paper down there.”

Hilda Merkinson knocked her glass over and a thin veil of lager spilled across the table and onto her sister’s lap. “Hilda! For goodness sake.”

“Damn it,” Hilda said.

Edna threw a spare serviette across the table and turned around. Billy Roberts was sliding into his seat on the next table.

Sitting across from Billy, Jack Hanlon burst into a loud laugh. “You didn’t use your hands again, did you, Billy? You’ll never sell any meat on Monday – smell’ll be
there for days.”

Billy smiled broadly and held his hand out beneath his friend’s nose. Jack pulled back so quickly he nearly upturned his chair. He took a drink of Old Peculiar, swallowed and shook a
B&H out of a pack lying on the table. “If you must know,” Billy said, lighting the cigarette and blowing a thick cloud up towards the ceiling, “I used my hanky.” He made
a play of reaching into his pocket. “But I washed it out, see—” And he pretended to throw something across the table to his friend. This time, gravity took its toll and Jack went
over backwards into the aisle.

As Jack got to his feet and righted his chair, Billy said, “I flushed it, didn’t I, daft bugger. But I was worried for a few minutes when I saw there wasn’t any paper –
course, by that time, I’d done the deed. When I got out, I checked all the WCs and there isn’t a bit in any of them.” He blew out more smoke.

“Aren’t you going to tell somebody, Billy?” Helen Simpson asked, her eyes sparkling as they took in Billy Roberts’s quiffed hair.

“Can’t be arsed,” Billy said. “There’s some poor sod down there now – probably still down there: he’ll have something to say about it when he gets
out,” he added as he did a quick glance at the entrance to see if he could see anybody returning who looked either a little sheepish or blazing with annoyance.

“That’ll be Arthur.” Edna looked over her shoulder at Betty. “I bet that’s my Arthur,” she said. She tapped Billy on the shoulder. “That’ll be my
Arthur,” she said again.

“What’s that, Mrs Clark?” Billy said, turning. “What’s your Arthur gone and done now?”

“He went to the toilet ages ago.”

Harriet Merkinson shuffled around in her handbag, produced a thick bundle of Kleenex and she held them out. “Here, why don’t you take him these?”

Edna nodded. “Thanks, er—”

“Harriet,” said Harriet.

“Thanks Harry – good idea.” She passed the tissues back to Billy and gave a big smile. “Here, be an angel, Billy and go back down and push these under the door for
me.”

“You haven’t been down to the gents . . . have you, Mrs Clark?” There was a snigger at the last part from Jack Hanlon. “You can’t get sod all under them
doors.”

“Well, can’t you knock on his door or something?” She nodded to the table behind her. “He hasn’t even finished his meal.”

Hilda looked across at Arthur’s plate and noted that it didn’t look much different to her sister’s – the only difference was that one meal was finished with and the other
wasn’t.

When he got back to the toilet, Billy saw one of the waiters was already going into each cubicle to fasten a new roll of tissue into the dispenser. “Bugger me,
you’re already doing it,” he said to the young man, whose face coloured immediately. “Somebody tell you, did they? Was it Arthur Clark?”

The boy shook his head and the colour on his cheeks darkened. “It was some bloke, don’t know what he’s called,” the waiter said, shifting his weight from one foot to the
other. “Said he’d come down and couldn’t find a—” The boy paused, searching for the word.

“A trap?” Billy ventured.

The boy smiled. “Said he couldn’t find a trap with any paper.” He nodded to a closed door at the end of the line of cubicles. “He’s all right now,
though.”

Outside the door to the toilet there was a sudden burst of high-pitched giggling. “There’s a bloody waiter in there!” a girl’s voice said. Billy chuckled. Presumably only
the waiter’s presence was preventing the girl from coming into the gents with her partner and not the fact that the toilet area was filled with men, young and old, either standing at the
urinals or washing at the basins. Alcohol was a wonderful thing and no denying.

The chuckling continued and was complemented by the sound of feet hurriedly ascending the 45 steps back to the ballroom. A man Billy didn’t know wafted through the doors unzipping his
flies and grinning like a Cheshire cat.

Billy exchanged nods with the man and turned his attention back to the waiter. He was still smiling – until he saw that the door to the cubicle which had been occupied while he was down
here was still firmly closed.

“Has somebody just gone in there? I mean, while you’ve been down here.”

The boy glanced at the closed door and shook his head. “Not while I’ve been down here.”

Billy walked across and tapped gently on the door. “Hello?”

There was no response.

“He’ll be sleeping it off, lad, whoever he is,” a stocky bald man confided to Billy as he held his hands under the automatic drier. “You’ll need to knock louder
than that.”

Billy nodded slowly. He rapped the door three times and said, “Mister Clark – are you in there? I’ve got some tissues for you.”

No answer.

The bald man finished his hands off on the back of his trousers and moved across so that he was standing alongside Billy. Although he was short, a good six inches shorter than Billy and three or
four beneath the lofty height of the young waiter, the bald man had a commanding air about him. The waiter shuffled to one side to give the man more room.

The bald man hit the door several times with a closed fist and shouted, “Come on, mate, time to get up. You’ll be needing a hammer and chisel if you stay in there much longer, never
mind bloody toilet paper.”

Still no answer.

“He must be a bloody heavy sleeper,” Billy said. “Either that or he’s pissed as a newt.”

The bald man turned to the waiter. “Is there any way into these things? I mean, some way of getting in when they’re locked.”

“I don’t know,” the boy said.

“Well, can you find somebody who does know? And can you do it bloody sharpish?”

The boy turned around and ran to the door and disappeared, his clumping feet echoing up the steps to the ballroom.

The man lifted his hands and felt around the door. “Do you know this bloke, whoever he is?”

Billy shook his head and jammed the toilet tissue into his jacket pocket. “No. Well, I do . . . I know his name and that but I don’t really know him. His wife asked me to come
down.”