Murder Under A Green Sea Read online

  This book first published by Mirror Books in 2019

  Mirror Books is part of Reach plc

  10 Lower Thames Street

  London EC3R 6EN

  England

  www.mirrorbooks.co.uk

  © Phillip Hunter

  The rights of Phillip Hunter to be identified as the author

  of this book have been asserted, in accordance with the

  Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  ISBN 978-1-912624-16-4

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a

  retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior

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  Every effort has been made to fulfil requirements with regard to

  reproducing copyright material. The author and publisher will be

  glad to rectify any omissions at the earliest opportunity.

  Chapter One

  Martha was wearing her best shoes when she stepped over her husband. She strolled over to the window, opened the curtains with a grand gesture and blinked as the bright, white morning hit her. When she felt able, she opened her eyes enough to see, to her left, the sun’s reflected light bursting back from the Thames, silhouetting a barge hauling its heavy load of tar-black coal. Then she looked directly down at Grosvenor Road and, from that perspective, tried to gauge what kind of day it would be.

  She opened the window and smelled soot and smoke lingering on the cold air. She heard the clack-clacking of a horse pulling a milk cart. She watched the milkman, a small figure, far down, far off, hunched over the reins, dragging on a cigarette as his horse plodded its way back to the depot. The horse seemed as tired as the man, its head down, its limbs heavy and slow.

  There was light traffic on the road below, a handful of people milling about on the pavement or strolling along. Nobody was doing much of anything urgent, which, she felt, was how it should be. There were too many people these days taking things far too importantly and getting very urgent about them all.

  She watched the movement four floors beneath her: a few cars stuttering along; a bus pulling to a stop in front of the chemist’s; one or two cabs searching for trade; a lorry carrying barrels of something, two nannies in neat uniforms chatting to each other as they pushed prams. It was all exactly as a Saturday should be.

  She continued to watch this casualness casually for a minute or two, thinking that it made her feel secure, for some reason, all this life, this motion; people doing their daily things, unaware of her observing them. It was as if the world wasn’t really complicated at all. And certainly not urgent.

  After that, she looked at Max. He was lying face down on the Persian rug. He wasn’t moving, as far as she could tell. He certainly didn’t seem to be breathing. Apparently, there was no life in him at all. Still, that was nothing new. She wondered vaguely whether you could drown in a deep rug. Or would it be suffocation?

  She decided she’d better go over and see whether the old man was, in fact, dead. She kicked his Oxford brogue with her powder-blue leather shoe. His foot moved and fell back to where it had been.

  She placed her feet in front of his eyes. She had very nice legs, she knew, and the heels on these shoes made her calves more firm, more shapely. Martha felt it necessary, every now and then, to remind her husband how lucky he was to have a wife with such lovely legs.

  Meanwhile, Max was not dead – a fact he was very much regretting.

  Of course, he could be dead, if he wanted to be. The trouble was that being dead would require that he first stand up, and that was something he didn’t think possible at that moment, or ever again.

  Martha opening the curtains didn’t help. Previously, his head had been thumping. Now that the bright morning light was trying to burn him to a crisp, it was thumping and splitting.

  He heard Martha approach.

  “Are you dead?” she asked his face.

  “Yes.”

  “Hmm.”

  “I’m not well.”

  “Well, you do look pale.”

  “I feel pale.”

  Martha sighed and glanced at her watch. “Get up, darling. Flora will be here in a couple of hours.”

  “I’m too pale to see Flora.”

  “That just seems rude, Max. Anyway, what time did you get in last night? Why didn’t you come to bed?”

  “I didn’t want to wake you.”

  Martha knelt and put a cool hand on Max’s hot cheek. Slowly, and with great care, Max opened his eyes. “You have beautiful legs,” he said.

  “I know, darling,” she said, as if he’d told her that the ceiling was above them. It was self-evident.

  She stroked his jaw.

  “I’ve got a lump on my head.”

  “It’s not on your head. It is your head.”

  “It hurts. My lump.”

  “Why were you drinking?” Martha said softly.

  “I was celebrating.”

  “Celebrating what?”

  He made an attempt to stand. Somehow, he succeeded. Martha rose gracefully, too gracefully, in fact, given the height of her heels, as if she were proving to Max how lamentable his effort had been.

  “Celebrating what?” she said again.

  “I can’t remember. I was too drunk to take much note.”

  Martha took a step back and looked her husband up and down. “Will you need any help crawling to the bedroom?”

  “Uh, yes.”

  She put her arm around his waist and he rested his arm along her shoulder and together, in a much-practised manner, they proceeded out of the sitting room and into the hallway.

  “Hitler,” Max said.

  “What, darling?”

  “Hitler. That little Fascisti bastard. That’s why I was drinking.”

  “You were celebrating Hitler?”

  “No. Not celebrating. He’s rearmed the Rhineland.”

  “Has he?” Martha said, straightening the vase on the sideboard they were passing. “My God. What will he think of next?”

  “And Mussolini’s invaded Abyssinia.”

  “Oh.”

  “You do know where Abyssinia is, don’t you?”

  “Certainly I do. My cousin Lewis went there when he was in Kenya. He lost a lot of money in that tea company, as I remember. In Kenya, I mean, not Abyssinia.”

  Max stopped walking and took his arm from Martha’s shoulders. He turned to face her. “Do you care?” he said.

  Now she looked at him. “Darling, if I could fly out and save Abyssinia, I would. But I can’t. And neither can you. Come on, let’s get you to bed.”

  She put her arm through his, but he brushed it off. “I’ll be all right, as soon as you stop moving the floor around.”

  “You aren’t going to be sick, are you?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Well, try not to be. I’m meeting my mother for lunch in Piccadilly, and Flora’s not in till ten today.”

  “I’ll do my best to save it all for Flora.”

  “If you would.”

  Max started again to move along the hallway, stopping now and then to wince in pain.

  “Oh, poor baby. I’ll get a wet cloth and some aspirin. And drink lots of water.”

  “Thanks.”

  They finally
managed to make it to the bedroom, where Martha helped Max out of his jacket, which she hung up in the wardrobe. “Who were you with?”

  Max sat on the edge of the bed and Martha stood behind him, gently rubbing his shoulders. “With?”

  “Last night.”

  “Oh. Uh, a man I knew once. From the regiment. Man called Daniel Burton.”

  Two small vertical lines appeared between Martha’s brows. She looked like a child who was attempting to decipher some mystery of life. “You know,” she said, “you’ve never mentioned meeting anyone from the regiment before.”

  Max didn’t have anything to say to that. He put a hand through his hair, slicking it back.

  Martha watched him for a moment, then put her hands on the back of his shoulders and kissed him on the neck. Max didn’t respond, and his body seemed to Martha to be rigid, tense. She removed her hands. “But you still haven’t explained why you were drinking,” she said. “And, besides, Hitler rearmed the Rhineland a couple of weeks ago. Start of March, wasn’t it?”

  “You remembered.”

  “Of course. You wrote a piece about it for the paper.”

  “Yeah. Buggers spiked it.”

  With that, Max fell backwards and lay still on the bed, waiting for death.

  Chapter Two

  When he awoke, Max felt at least reasonable. He’d drunk as much water as he could, and had taken some aspirins and seltzer. But it was the hair of the dog that did it, a large Scotch from the bottle in the bottom drawer of his tallboy. And sleep.

  He probably would’ve slept for another day or so if it hadn’t been for that racket in the kitchen. That would be Flora. Martha did everything silently and elegantly. Flora… well, Flora didn’t.

  He crept into the bathroom, shed his crumpled smoke-soaked clothes and had a quick cold bath. By the time he’d dressed in fresh clothes, Max felt ready to take on the world. Or, perhaps, get drunk again.

  He headed towards the noise of clanging and bashing and muttering.

  Flora was a willowy girl, too much limb for elegance, too much opinion for decorum, and far too much lip for anything, really, except working in solitude or with an understanding employer. She’d been inherited by the Daltons when their previous maid – Flora’s mother – had been forced to hand in her notice so that she could spend more time with her father, Flora’s grandfather, who, as a result of senility, or possibly alcohol, had been sliding downhill for some time to the point where he’d been arrested for an offence referred to only as ‘public lewdness’.

  Or, as Flora put it, “He went out in his briefs and flashed himself to some ladies.”

  Flora’s mother had explained to Max and Martha simply that the old man was ‘unable to look after himself proper.’ Max had given Flora’s mother a donation ‘for the general wellbeing of her father’.

  When he entered the kitchen, Flora was on her hands and knees, her rear end poking up while her head and shoulders were stuffed into the oven. She cursed and mumbled, and Max heard at least one mention of bleedin’ duck fat. At least, that’s what he thought he’d heard.

  Max cleared his throat, sending Flora’s skull bashing into the roof of the oven. She cursed and clambered out, rubbing the back of her head.

  “Hello, sir,” she said, climbing to her feet and straightening her pinafore.

  “Flora, please don’t call me sir,” Max said for the hundredth time. “Call me Max.”

  Flora sniffed. “Sorry, sir. Mrs Dalton said you was feeling a bit delicate, so I thought I’d better leave you.”

  “Mm,” Max said, knowing that Flora would never have used a word like ‘delicate’ unless Martha had emphasised it, which was a dig at Max, one of her sarcastic asides. He went over to the sink and gulped some tap water from a white tin mug.

  “Shall you be wanting a breakfast, sir?” Flora said.

  “Ugh,” Max said.

  “Eggs is good for hangovers, Eric says.”

  “Eggs is?”

  “Oh, yeah. I could do ’em scrambled on toast.” Flora smiled. Her face was flushed and there were beads of sweat on her forehead, sticking down wisps of dark blonde hair.

  Max didn’t particularly want eggs, or anything else for that matter, but Flora seemed eager to help, and he didn’t want to disappoint her. “Eggs’ll be fine,” he said.

  He took a seat at the small table and watched as Flora dropped one of the eggs on the floor and a piece of bread into the sink. Still, she managed to make a decent meal and Max ate it with surprising relish while Flora quietly abandoned the oven and set about ruining the rest of the kitchen.

  “Overdid it a bit last night, eh?” she said as she scrubbed the life out of the ceramic sink, throwing the odd handful of scouring powder in for good measure.

  “Yes.”

  “Well, I hope you had a nice time.”

  “I don’t really remember,” Max said around his eggs. “It had something to do with Hitler and Abyssinia.”

  “Abbey who?”

  “It’s a country. Mussolini invaded it a few months ago.”

  Flora shivered and scrubbed the sink harder than ever. “Mussolini. I don’t like him,” she said. “Them uniforms give me the frights. Him and Hitler and Stalin. Never trust a bloke in uniform, my dad says.”

  “I agree,” Max said, finishing his meal, laying the knife and fork on the plate and patting himself down, trying to locate his cigarettes.

  “It’s like the whole place is getting ready for a war,” Flora was saying, getting into her stride now. “I mean, what’s a bloke in uniform for if it ain’t for a fight?”

  She stood up and arched her back to straighten it then ran the back of her hand over her sweating brow. “I reckon the only people doing well are them making uniforms.”

  Max was silent for a moment, jaw tight. “Too many bloody uniforms and nobody gives a damn what those uniforms mean,” he said, darkness in his voice. “We’re sleepwalking towards another damned Armageddon.”

  His eyes blazed for a moment. He became aware that Flora was quiet and still, her arms held tightly by her side, the scrubbing brush still in her grip. She was breathing heavily, her mouth open. And her eyes were wide, staring at Max.

  “Give me a fag, Flora,” he said.

  She reached into the too-large pocket at the front of her pinafore and removed the packet of cigarettes and a box of matches, which she handed to Max.

  “Thanks. If Martha notices the smell, I’ll own up, so you might as well light one yourself.”

  Flora smiled and chucked the scrubbing brush into the sink. “Thank you, sir.”

  He passed the cigarettes back and Flora lit one up and leaned back against the kitchen worktop, eyeing the dirty frying pan that she was now going to have to clean. Scrambled eggs were a bugger to get off. Almost as bad as bleedin’ burned duck fat. She sucked the smoke down deeply and let it out slowly. Max had a go at that and burst a lung. He could feel the smoke grate the membranes inside.

  “God,” he said, eyes watering.

  “Me Dad,” Flora said, by way of explanation.

  “He’s a docker, isn’t he?”

  “He’s a foreman,” Flora said. “Has blokes under him.”

  They were quiet for a while. Max seemed momentarily to drift away and Flora seemed to be waiting for him to return. “I’m sorry I got angry just now,” Max said finally.

  “Don’t bother me, sir,” Flora said, though Max knew that was a lie.

  She’d been with a man a year or so earlier, and he’d been rough. Sometimes, Flora had come to work with a black eye or a dried cut on her lip. Neither Max nor Martha ever made mention of it, but they offered to put Flora up in the study should she ever find herself in need, as they put it. She was scared of the violence that emanated from men, and Max felt ashamed. “I just become…” He sighed, not knowing exactly what he became.<
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  “It’s them bleedin’ uniforms, sir,” Flora said. “Pardon my French.”

  “Yes. And the men wearing uniforms are crushing those who aren’t.”

  He glanced at Flora. “You know what they’re doing? In Europe? They’re dividing people up and stomping on the ones they don’t like. Stalin’s doing it and Mussolini. Hitler’s doing it. He’s the worst of them, making the Jews and Gypsies scapegoats for everything. Taking away their citizenship.”

  Flora looked down at her hands.

  “Didn’t you hear about that?” Max said.

  “What’s that?”

  “The German citizenship laws.”

  “Uh…”

  “In Germany.”

  “I don’t really know about all that sort of stuff, sir. Eric does. He’s very well read up, reads books and broadsheets.”

  Eric was the young man who worked as an assistant to Mr Stone, the butcher. Eric and Flora had been going together for a few months and she now rarely entered into conversation without mentioning his name, often in relation to whatever subject was at hand. Eric, it seemed, was a paragon of knowledge, as well as a skilled butcher. And a decent man to boot.

  Martha had suspicions that Flora’s constant praise of Eric was because she was secretly in love with Max. The more Flora praised Eric, the more Martha felt convinced. It was as if Flora subconsciously felt the need to convince everyone that she wasn’t really in love with Max at all, and that Eric was clearly the one for her. And Martha, being herself very fond of Flora, went out of her way to ignore her suspicions.

  It was, in its way, one of the politest love rivalries in history.

  The two male counterparts in this affair, being men, were completely oblivious of all the subtleties. Indeed, they were each perfectly happy to admire the other’s qualities to the point where Flora became confused as to who she was supposed to be marrying.

  For Eric’s part, he was smitten but had suspicions that he wasn’t good enough for Flora. Every time she entered Mr Stone’s shop, Eric would seek to win her affection by slipping her the odd sausage or beef offcut.

  On occasion, he would give Flora – in lieu of his own – a pig’s heart, wrapping it in newspaper and placing it in her basket with a wink. For Eric, this act was of great importance, and took on symbolic significance. It was his telltale heart. Eric never stole this offering, though, since he would always admit his action to Mr Stone and ask to have the amount docked from his wages, which, having himself once been in love, Mr Stone would mostly fail to do.