Stewart Sinclair, Private Eye: Part V

By Elizabeth Greenwood

Elizabeth Greenwood studied sculpture at St. Martins School of Art, and in Florence and Rome. She had a classical education, preferring Greek to Latin for the richness of its vocabulary and her sculpture with its reference to Greek mythology reflects this predilection; she is also a dedicated writer. Apart from poetry, she enjoys producing emblematic fiction based on Mary Poppins philosophical song a spoonful of sugar makes the medicine go down, thus fulfilling the writers task as entertainer cum moralist, Both creative activities date from early childhood. Although they were largely ignored, she was fortunate in having been born into a family where close relatives had universal minds, uniting a passion for Literature with a keen interest in Politics, the Cinema and Science, especially Space Science. Officially, she began her writing career by producing educational scripts for the BBC World Wide Services which taught her the invaluable benefit of dedicated researching. In later years, to counteract a tendency to create works of the imagination, she has applied herself to the discipline of academic work in the field of biblical studies with particular regard to the Dead Sea discoveries, now well-documented, which give insights into the rise of Christianity. Her particular interest in Sherlock Holmes as an innovative detective relates to his having been born in America in a play on Broadway where it was an immediate success, with a famous actor in the lead while Conan Doyle, the British creator of Sherlock Holmes, was serving with the Friends Ambulance Service as a volunteer front-line surgeon during the Boer war in South Africa.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse UK
• Release date: May 30, 2014
• ISBN: 9781496977670

Elizabeth Greenwood

Elizabeth Greenwood is the author of Playing Dead: A Journey Through the World of Death Fraud. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, VICE, O, the Oprah Magazine, Longreads, GQ, and others. 

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© 2014 Elizabeth Greenwood. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 05/15/2014

ISBN: 978-1-4969-7766-3 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4969-7765-6 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4969-7767-0 (e)

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

1. Day Trip

2. Boomerang

3. Something Suspicious

4. Ice Age

5. Rock-A-Bye, Baby

6. Trunk Call

7. Impact

FICTION by

ELIZABETH GREENWOOD

Utopia 2000 (1994)

Loftycross (1995)

Collected Short Stories and Four Novellas (2006)

Out of This World, a Space Romance (2009)

Sophie’s Friends and Other Stories (2011)

Stewart Sinclair, Private Eye, Part I (2012)

Stewart Sinclair, Private Eye, Part II (2012)

Stewart Sinclair, Private Eye, Part III (2013)

Stewart Sinclair, Private Eye, Part IV (2013)

Stewart Sinclair, Private Eye, Part V (2014)

OTHER WORKS

Nietzsche, Redeemer of Chance (1998)

Sigmud Freud and the Decline of The Judeo-Christian Culture (2008)

POETRY

Pebbles on a Beach (2011)

To my father Joseph John Greenwood Tilley

Who introduced me to Sherlock Holmes

DAY TRIP

DAY TRIP

Sebastian had met Sinclair a few times since the conclusion of the Corelli trial and on each occasion the feeling grew on him that things were not quite right. Perhaps the horse was sick?

‘Santa Fé all right?’ he asked tentatively.

‘I don’t really know.’

‘Trudy not keen on riding any more?’

‘To tell you the truth I’ve stopped taking her to the stables… There’s a problem with her.’

‘Not with her health, I hope?’

‘If you mean her physical health, no, there’s not; to all intents and purposes she’s perfectly healthy. No, it’s something psychological. She has a morbid obsession about the way her husband met his end.’

‘You mean at the hands of Corelli?’

‘Yes. At first I thought it was just a phase and she would grow out of it in time… You know how the judge in charge of the trial had been adamant about sparing the public the horrific details of how Corelli had made Brian Moore’s body turn into a mosaic…’

‘Yes, in order to avoid inspiring another psychopath…’

‘Well, Trudy is convinced I know all the details and she can’t understand why I won’t reveal them to her. She claims that if I really loved her I would tell her because she could then lay Brian’s spirit to rest.’

‘It’s a common feeling with the relatives of victims whose bodies have never been found, is it not?’

‘Yes; it’s considered a right. On the other hand, if she really loved me, she’d believe me when I say I don’t know and let it ride. The trouble is she and Brian never kept secrets from each other.’

‘You really don’t know?’

‘Of course not! You were on the case with me! Trudy is obviously in the throes of a deep trauma. I sometimes regret having made use of her to put pressure on Corelli at a time when we were making no real progress and had no tangible proof of his particular artistic bent; the man had a magnetic presence. I am afraid Trudy is in the throes of a psychotic disorder…’

‘Is it as bad as that?’

‘Yes… After Corelli killed her husband, he turned her into a Byzantine icon, a famous empress; that raised her into a transcendental sphere. I’m only a common garden detective.’

‘Oh, don’t say that! Don’t underestimate yourself!’

‘What would you say if I told you that Trudy visits Corelli in Bellmarsh Prison?’

Had the sky fallen on Sebastian’s head, the effect would not have been very different.

‘I don’t believe it! It can’t be true!’

‘It is true; I’ve tailed her there myself…’

‘You followed Trudy all the way to Bellmarsh?’

‘Yes; several times.’

‘Have you tackled her about it?’

‘No; what’s the point? The man has a magnetic presence; he knows about Brian’s last moments; I don’t.’

‘How did you find out?’

‘Not long after the trial ended, Trudy started taking day trips out of town, ostensibly to visit her mother. I didn’t think anything of it at the time; it seemed a perfectly normal thing for her to do in the circumstances, but after a few times I was struck by the kind of clothes that she wore on each occasion; they were the sort she used to wear when she went out to business. She also carried a brief case and looked immaculate.’

‘And so you were puzzled and you followed her?’

‘Yes. You know how it is; once a detective, always a detective. After I got to the station on her tail, the horrible truth began to dawn on me; it was the station for Bellmarsh.’

‘I can’t tell you how sorry I am to hear this… Trudy will have to go, won’t she?’

‘Yes; she’ll have to go.’

‘She can go to her mother’s. You’ll be better off without her.’

‘Yes…’

‘Have you still got the hens?’

‘Yes…’

‘They’re all well, I trust?’

‘Yes… Cordelia’s getting old…’

‘And what about Mrs. Curtis? Do you still see Mrs. Curtis and her daughter Rose?’

‘Occasionally. Trudy was not very keen on meeting neighbours after the publicity over the trial.’

‘Mrs. Curtis will understand; she’s very family orientated, isn’t she?’

‘Stop it, will you, Sebastian! I can’t stand commiseration. Besides, I may not have much time for socializing. There’s a new case in the offing.’

‘Oh, really? Oh, brilliant!’

‘Don’t rejoice too soon; it’s of a nature I have always dreaded:—the electronically-engineered kind, and I am not at all sure I want to take it on. You know how I have always had a phobia for such cases.’

‘Then, isn’t it time for you to conquer your fear, right now, at this juncture? There’s got to be a first time, so why not now when so much remains unresolved?’

‘You may be right, but please don’t rush me.’

In his heart of hearts Sebastian could not help registering a feeling of relief after the shocking news about Trudy Moore’s volte-face. An electronically-engineered crime was just what the doctor ordered, but there was an extra bonus attached to it. It was highly likely that by its very nature it would encourage Emmie, the child-like wraith, to come back and manifest, spreading balm over Sinclair’s heart after Trudy Moore’s betrayal. And also maybe remove some of his sense of guilt for having breached the Sherlockian code of ethics regarding relations with female clients.

F I N I S

BOOMERANG

BOOMERANG

There was one aspect of the new case which was auspicious from the start,—Sinclair would have no reason to rave and rant about the emotional indecency of distraught parents appealing to the public for help; the victims, first a daughter and then a son having taken their own lives following bullying on line. One had to be grateful for small mercies.

The fourteen-year old daughter had hanged herself first and the sixteen-year old son a few weeks later, claiming he could not contemplate life without her. There were no other children in the family, the age of the parents, who had married late, precluding the hope of any further issue.

The facts as Sinclair laid them before Sebastian were stark and Sebastian looked back on his enthusiasm for the new case as a rash emotion, born out of ignorance. However, there was a saving grace in tbe sense that Sinclair was not working on it off his own bat; he had volunteered to help Scotland Yard for personal reasons which Sebastian could not but commend when Sinclair put them before him, being highly sensible ones, showing the man had regained some equanimity after Trudy Moore’s betrayal. For one, Sinclair did not possess the facilities to scrutinize the material stored in the victims’ computers nor the right to remove the hardware from their house in the first place. It was safer to leave it to the experts and then, when they had done their work, to extrapolate on the results in conjunction with the coroner’s report. Of course, that did not preclude painful interviews with the teenagers’ parents for the purpose of getting an update on the psychological aspect which might give a lead on the very nature of the bullying tactics and the refinement behind them. In an age when governments made it an offence to express any kind of racist or similarly exclusive comment targeting people the on-line bully had a field day.

‘But you will be paying the bereaved parents a visit, on the quiet, won’t you? I mean officially to present your credentials as an adjunct of Scotland Yard?’

‘Of course; that goes without saying, Sebastian…’

‘And I’ll be there?’

‘Yes, but please no notebook.’

‘Oh, good! I feel that makes it less formal, which in the circumstances will be a help… I suppose you’ll want to see the crime scene, I mean where the suicides took place?’

‘Yes, but there’s no need for you to come in, if you’d rather not…’

‘I’m not very keen. It must be hard for the parents to have strangers wandering all over the room where their children…’

‘That’ll do, Barnard; there’s no need to dwell on it; things are bad enough as they are. We’re supposed to live in a civilised society which prides itself on its tolerance.’

‘What do the parents do for a living?’

‘The mother is an air hostess—always has been—and the father works at the airport as a kind of executive.’

‘It must have made the children very close?’

‘Yes, indeed. Very close and very dependent on each other for meals etc… I expect the mother will answer the door, don’t you?’ Sinclair asked, musing aloud, ‘it would be in keeping with the profession… I mean, on an aircraft the air hostess does the welcoming while the steward attends to the service.’

‘True.’

From the hallway, where the victims’ mother invited them in, Sinclair caught a glimpse of the husband slumped across the kitchen table.

‘I am afraid my husband is reacting badly to the intrusion. Why pick on us? We were just an ordinary middle-class family with traditional middle-class values. We trusted our children. It would never have occurred to us to monitor what they did on their computers.’

‘Please, Mrs. Sutton, this is not another official investigation. We just need a quiet word with you and your husband in order to assist Scotland Yard in their enquiries. Sometimes, such talk evokes reminiscences which eventually enable detectives to obtain valuable insights into a case which escape the Police due to the amount of administrative work they have to cope with on a routine basis. Perhaps if we all sat together round the kitchen table to start with and chatted informally, something might come of it. You see, in the old days, when people got poison pen letters, they took them to the Police for a calligraphy expert to look at them… Bullying on line is the modern equivalent of the poison pen letter. Poison kills and so does sorrow, as your son demonstrated.’

‘All right then, but just for a minute. Scotland Yard have removed the children’s computers; their experts will soon come up with facts.’

The father scrambled up to his feet as Sinclair extended his hand across the kitchen table to present his credentials:

‘Stewart Sinclair, private eye, and this is my assistant, Sebastian Barnard. For your information, this is an informal interview and no record of it will be kept. It sometimes happens in life that circumstances arise in which members of a family feel isolated from each other and that induces them to confide to relative strangers on line…’

As Sinclair spoke, the father kept tapping the side of his cup with a spoon.

‘We were always there for our children’, the mother said.

‘You know how it is, children like confiding in their peers… Were your children close? I mean did they share worlds which are mutually exclusive, like a boy would rather play soccer with his chums while a girl would prefer to ride a pony on her own?’

‘As a family, we were all very keen on Tennis’, replied the mother, ‘It was a good way for me to keep fit when I wasn’t flying and it kept the family together in the fresh air.’

‘Excellent idea. Well, thank you very much for your time. I dare say we’ll meet again although there are other professional detectives working on the case.’

‘Some people can’t put a foot wrong, can they?’ said Sebastian as soon as they were outside.

‘I feel sorry for the mother; she made a rod for her own back.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘She drew the children closer together all the time to compensate for her absence. Small wonder the boy took his own life after his sister committed suicide; there was nobody there for him… You know what they say about the way to hell being paved with good intentions. I would say that in such a dangerous world as the one we live in, parental guidance is more necessary than ever. Both children were at a difficult age when the hormonal balance in the body has not yet been stabilized…’

‘A sadistic on-line bully would know how to take advantage of that imbalance…’ mused Sebastian.

‘Yes… In many instances, bullies are spiritual blackmailers. But we shall know more when the experts at Scotland Yard release the evidence they find on both teenagers’ computers.’

Sinclair had only just flitted over the surface of his intellectual ambit not wanting to alarm the ‘boy’, as he continued to call his assistant despite the degree of maturity achieved by him during the course of their working partnership. The truth was the nature of that spectrum was pretty dismal.

People talked of global warming and other climate changes affecting the planet as though they were part of a radical process of disintegration which affected the cosmos heralding Doomsday while the immaterial aspect concomitant with that process seldom came into it. And yet that other aspect generated as dramatic a division in people’s hearts and minds the world over between those who proclaimed to be Christians according to the the basic principles of the Mosaic law and Muslims who strictly followed the precepts of the prophet Mohamed, suggesting a parallel end of the world, (the ‘last days’ of the eschatological prophets of which Jesus was one). So acute had the conflict between the two sides become that, as it escalated into violence of an apocalyptic kind due to modern technology, the idea of the end of the world had found its way into the political jargon of the day and echoed through the popular media after having been mocked by sane rational analysts.

It was pretty obvious to Sinclair that if such sombre thoughts had been conjured up by the simple fact of entering a typical middle-class home, it was because something about it had triggered them off, apart from the obvious tragedy of the double suicide, something that transpired right away, i.e. the abdication by the mother of the woman’s traditional role in the family which in her case had been made more acute by the father’s own occupation, both of them being employed at the airport, where life flowed systematically into unusual channels, between arrival and departure… As an archetypal person, the air hostess was a modern creation, just as the Vestals had been for a specific reason in ancient Rome, demanding qualities that set them apart from other women in the ordinary course of life… During the visit, the mother had displayed all those qualities one expected from air hostesses in times of stress,—the calm, the authority which were to be commended, but she had also shown an almost pathological form of selfishness in the way she considered her children’s welfare was subservient to her own requirements as an air hostess, like the need for fresh air and exercise. Thus, as a result, the ties between the two children became exclusive, throwing them into a close personal relationship, while she performed her duties to the public looking immaculate… And now both of them were dead and the concept of the end of the world was being presented to the public on Television as though it were a twenty-first century potentiality due to the escalating violence in the middle-east, causing many people to examine the values of contemporary society in Britain. But was it possible to stop the rot? To reverse the process and return to good old-fashioned middleclass values?

Waiting for the results of the experts’ findings during their examination of the suicides’ computers had triggered off the train of thoughts that continued to plague Sinclair as he stood outside Scotland Yard waiting for Sebastian These couldn’t have come at a worse time when he was still smarting from what he called Trudy Moore’s defection over to the enemy; and it was with a sense of relief that he heard inspectors at the Yard were at long last in a position to put all the detectives concerned in the know regarding the contents of the computers.

‘You’re late, to-day of all days. We were supposed to attend the meeting together, remember?’

‘I didn’t think you’d be finished so soon…’

‘I came out early; the others are still in there, in shock a lot of them; I didn’t see the point.’

‘Why? What did the computer experts reveal?’

‘Incest, pure and simple. The victims had an incestuous relationship and the on-line bully found out.’

‘Good grief! It can’t get worse than that, can it?’

‘No; that’s why I left the meeting. The experts’ finding confirmed a feeling I had that day when we had an informal chat with the victims’ parents… The mother was dominant. Although she was away most of the time, flying as an air hostess, life on the ground was organized in the best possible way to benefit her. As a result, the children’s ties with each other were made closer at a time when boys and girls normally grow apart through practising different skills. With the father also working at the airport, those two were left to live alone in the house and they turned to each other for solace and affection… . Nature is no respecter of persons.’

‘How do you think the bully found out?’

‘Maybe it was just surmise on his part in the beginning… You know how embarrassed and giggly some girls get about sex and he just led her on till she said enough for him to put in the thin end of the wedge and threaten her with telling… A sadistic bully, who does this for kicks, will have a flair for selecting likely victims.’

Sinclair paused to watch the other detectives leave.

‘When the Police removed the computers, they held a man in custody for questioning and later released him on bail…’

‘Is that of any consequence?’

‘Oh, I don’t know! I’m just thinking aloud.’

Sinclair paused and then went on.

‘Let’s surmise that the girl who committed suicide as a result of being bullied on line was the weaker partner of the two in the incestuous relationship, being the younger and most likely the more innocent one. Nowadays, at sixteen, a boy knows quite a lot about sex and may already have had several partners. In addition, he was the dominant male in the household, the father being away at the airport most of the time, as I’ve noted before. Here again, Mother Nature will show her hand; the role of the male is to protect the female as his own. Therefore it is fairly safe to assume that the brother was the stronger of the two partners and the more mature, character wise; he felt protective of his sister as a female especially in the absence of the father, the other male in the household. Now the question which comes to my mind is would somebody like that succumb too to the bullying which had driven his sister to kill herself? The answer comes back loud and clear No! It is not consistent. The brother was no sissy. There’s every reason to surmise that he initiated the sister to sex, being the more knowing of the two.’

‘But surely the Police have evidence that the brother was bullied on line too?’

‘Oh, yes; we got ample proof of that at the meeting earlier on to-day. It was a stratagem used by the bully to account for the death of the brother as somebody weak who could not face up to life without his beloved sister.’

‘You mean, the death by hanging of the first victim inspired the on-line bully with the means of getting rid of the second victim,—to make it look like suicide?’

‘Yes, Barnard, yes! It is a worrying thought. We may have an avenging angel, a judge, on our hands. You know what that means, don’t you? We shall have to go back to the house to visit a potential crime scene…’