Calamity in Camberwell Read online

  Copyright © 2018 by Alice Castle

  Design: soqoqo

  Editor: Christine McPherson

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission of the author or Crooked Cat Books except for brief quotations used for promotion or in reviews. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, and incidents are used fictitiously.

  First Black Line Edition, Crooked Cat Books. 2018

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  To William, Ella and Connie, with love

  Acknowledgements

  Many thanks to my mother, Anita, my brothers, Clive and Marcus, and my sisters-in-law, Zahra and Valerie, for all their support, and to Connie and Seth for their patience.

  Thanks, too, to all the friends and readers who have been so generous in their enthusiasm for the first two books in this series, Death in Dulwich and The Girl in the Gallery. I’m indebted to Marie-Louise, Jeanette, Estelle, Susan and Ann, Clare and Lucy for their kindness. I owe so much to Christine McPherson, my wonderful editor. And special thanks to Laurence and Steph at Crooked Cat for making it all possible

  Alice Castle

  About the Author

  Alice Castle was a national newspaper journalist for The Daily Express, The Times and The Daily Telegraph before becoming a novelist. Her first book, Hot Chocolate, was a European best-seller which sold out in two weeks.

  Alice’s first and second books in the bestselling London Murder Mystery series, Death in Dulwich, and The Girl in the Gallery, have topped Amazon’s satire detective fiction chart. The fourth instalment, Homicide in Herne Hill, will be published by Crooked Cat this autumn with the fifth, Revenge on the Rye, to follow next year.

  Find Alice’s website at www.AliceCastleAuthor.com. Alice is also on Facebook at https:// www.facebook.com/alicecastleauthor/ and on Twitter at https://twitter.com/DDsDiary

  She lives in south London and is married with two children, two step-children and two cats.

  Calamity in Camberwell

  The Third London Murder Mystery

  Chapter One

  Beth Haldane leaned forward in the driver’s seat to twiddle the car radio dial. ‘We found love in a hopeless place’ was blasting out of the tinny speakers of her Fiat 500. She knew some Dulwich wags would say the lyrics were hilariously appropriate for a visit to her newlywed friend, Jen Patterson, in Camberwell, but Beth wasn’t like that. The area, with its wide Georgian streets, herds of red buses sweeping towards central London, and the optimistically-named Butterfly Walk shopping centre, was fine. Absolutely fine. Though, of course, it wasn’t quite SE21. But she still loathed the song.

  Just as she’d found the comfortingly stuffy tones of Gardener’s Question Time instead, the car in front of her shuffled forward a couple of feet and she had to follow suit, slamming her car into gear, lurching on a little, then yanking the handbrake again. Oh, the joys of the rush hour. Though why it was called that, when no-one was able to rush at all, was one of life’s mysteries, she thought, with a flick of her heavy pony tail. Maybe it was the whoosh of drivers’ blood pressure ascending as the centipede of traffic wound its way down East Dulwich Grove, past the no-nonsense gates of the College School and the red brick behemoth that was the old Dulwich Hospital.

  She was one of the lucky ones in this traffic jam, Beth knew. Her deadline was still a good hour away. She didn’t need to fetch her ten-year-old son, Ben, from his class until 5pm. But something was definitely getting to her, even if it wasn’t the gridlock. No mystery; it was guilt. She’d finally taken the plunge. She’d booked Ben in for tutoring to help with his assault on the citadels of privilege or, in layman’s terms, the looming Wyatt’s entrance exam.

  Wyatt’s was the most prestigious boys’ school in the area and, some said, in the whole of the south of England. Part of her knew that he didn’t need a single extra lesson, and they would then still have been able to afford the odd takeaway, but a slightly greater part of Beth’s tiny frame had given in to nerves and the urgings of her frenemy, Belinda MacKenzie. Belinda had been relentlessly having her three children tutored in every possible skill since they had first started to put one foot in front of the other, in ways which their mother had decided were variously too slow, too awkward, or too fast. She was a great believer in the improvability of human nature, which Beth did sympathise with, and hurling money at problems, which was where Beth usually parted company with her.

  But this time, Beth had somehow allowed fear and peer pressure to overrule common sense. To onlookers, her long fringe, sturdy build, and diminutive stature might say adorable little Shetland pony, but inside, Ben’s exams made her feel like an overbred dressage horse, nostrils flaring, quivering with nerves before going into the ring to do utterly impossible things with her hooves. Except that she couldn’t go into the ring at all. It was down to her boy, and while she had total faith in him, she’d somehow have even more if they just went with this. So she had found herself filling a coveted spot when one of Belinda’s protégées had had to drop out. Normally, a chat with her wonderfully sane best friend, Katie, would have set her straight, but as Katie had waded into tutoring ages ago, Beth felt that she was probably being foolish resisting. And she didn’t want to blight Ben’s chances. If the exam went belly-up, she certainly wanted to believe she had done everything possible for her son.

  So, poor Ben had already been dropped off at the tutor’s house by Belinda in her enormous 4x4 battle bus, right after school, and now Beth was chugging along to be in position to pick him and two of Belinda’s lot up after the lesson. She intended to stop for tea and gossip at Jen’s house beforehand, but if the traffic got any worse, she’d only have time for a quick hello on the doorstep.

  Beth looked across at the package beside her on the passenger seat. It was a small wedding present, which she’d had tucked away since the summer. She’d bought it online and it had arrived too late for the simple ceremony, held at the Horniman Museum on the South Circular, but she was hoping it would be just the thing. Hard to believe it was already three months since the service, just after all the kerfuffle at the Picture Gallery and before the long summer holiday. It was second time around for both Jen and her new husband, Jeff Burns. They must have pots, pans, and plates aplenty between them. But nothing like this, she thought, patting the gift fondly.

  On the car radio, Bob Flowerdew and Pippa Greenwood were getting aerated about rhododendrons. Beth, only too happy to swap vicarious exam panic for a pleasant plant-based reverie, wondered if GQT was only allowed to hire presenters with horticultural names. The show was all-action, no-holds-barred garden porn for people like her with tiny dysfunctional plots but whopping imaginations. She was soon enjoying a lavish fantasy in which her own kicked-to-bits back yard became an oasis of beauty, and she was being begged to join the elite Dulwich Open Gardens mob. She was just cutting a ribbon on her miraculously-transformed garden with her own monogrammed secateurs when the car in front zipped forward. From that moment on, the traffic unsnarled as easily as though a signal had been given on high. Five minutes later, she was drawing up outside her friend’s home.

  Jen’s little house wasn’t part of the huge sweep of grand tea-caddy houses on Camberwell Grove itself, but clung to the edges of one of these fine terraces. It was a converted coach house, once home either to a pair of high-stepping carriage horses owned by one of the big houses round the corner, or the coachman himself. Beth thought the origin
al builders would probably have allowed two horses a bit more space than this dinky cottage provided, though she was sure it would have been considered ample for servants. It was a two-storey building, done over in stucco to ape its grand neighbours, but dwarfed by them. There were two pretty shrubs on either side of the bright blue front door. Despite her addiction to GQT, Beth had no idea what kind they actually were. All she knew was that, as far as she was concerned, Jen’s was the prettiest house around.

  Beth wasn’t a fan of the inhuman scale of Georgian architecture. She would have been lost even in the entrance halls of those big slabs of places up the road. Their massive first floor drawing rooms – a major selling point, with their ceilings dripping intricate plasterwork – had all the charm of airport hangars for her. No, if she had to buy a place in Camberwell herself, Jen’s house would be it.

  Beth pressed the bell. She heard a slight scuffling from inside, and it was a minute before the door was flung open. Jen’s cheeks were flushed, but a bright smile of welcome was pinned on her narrow, attractive face.

  ‘Beth, lovely, it’s you! Been ages…’

  ‘Since the wedding, I think. It’s been mad. I haven’t seen you at the school gates.’

  Jen’s daughter, Jessica, was at the Village Primary with Ben, and usually the women did a fair bit of idle hanging out while the kids were busy with the important stuff inside.

  ‘No… well, we’re trying a new routine. Come in, come in,’ said Jen, leading the way hurriedly to the kitchen. Like Beth’s own, it was an extension to the house, invisible from the front and tacked on at the back in the 1960s when no-one had cared much about planning permission or, apparently, architectural style. The room was a basic cube but had just been refitted, Jen’s first action on moving in.

  Beth cooed over the beautiful boulangerie-style floor tiles while Jen closed the door to the hall, put the kettle on, and rooted in the pale grey cupboards for mugs and tea bags. When they were settled at the table, Jen fussing over a scattering of Jess’s clobber, Beth smiled expectantly. ‘So? Married life? Bliss?’ she said lightly.

  Jen looked up briefly from the pile of books and comics, then concentrated on aligning edges, neatening the pile. ‘Course! Fantastic. We had a great honeymoon – well, sort of honeymoon, as we had Jess with us, too – in Italy. Then back here, and just, well, settling in, you know?’

  Beth didn’t really. It had been so long since James, her husband, had died, she could barely remember that half-a-couple, ‘we’ not ‘I’ state of mind. She smiled a little wistfully.

  ‘Anyway, what about you?’ Jen changed the subject. ‘Any further on the slavery thing?’

  Everyone had been fascinated, and horrified, by the discoveries Beth had recently made in the dusty archives of Wyatt’s School. What could have been a public relations disaster for the centuries-old school, though, had turned into a triumph – for Wyatt’s, and for Beth. She’d promptly been put in charge of a rapidly-created research institute, bringing the disreputable past of the founder, Thomas Wyatt, to light.

  ‘I don’t want to jinx it, but it’s going really well,’ said Beth, flushing a little with excitement as she outlined her plans for the institute. Jen was one of the few friends she could really discuss work with. Though now something of an IT guru, working behind-the-scenes wonders for local companies, not to mention manning the barricades of Belinda MacKenzie’s personal firewalls, Jen had been a journalist back in the day. That meant she and Beth had a lot in common, not least the fact that both had now had to abandon their first loves, career-wise, and diversify to make a living.

  From the outside, it often seemed that the other mothers at the school lived charmed lives, gliding between their chariot-sized cars and multi-million pound homes, with gaggles of perfect, Mini Boden-clad children in tow. Beth knew full well that appearances could be deceptive, and there was much beneath even the smoothest of surfaces. But women who worked and enjoyed it were in shockingly short supply where they lived, so Jen was special. She hadn’t always been single. There’d been a long and dreadful on-off phase when her faithless husband, Tim, had seemed to be oscillating between Jen and a younger version – a woman called Babs Pine. But eventually, after keeping the playground mummies amused for a while, there had been a divorce, and Jen had officially joined Beth in the very select local lone mummies club. Like Beth, she had little family support, as she was an only child whose elderly parents had died long before, and this strengthened their alliance even more.

  ‘Are they letting you have a free hand? Really letting you delve into the context?’ Jen wrinkled her lightly-freckled nose. ‘I’d imagine that, being Wyatt’s, they’d quite like to airbrush some of what went on.’

  Beth paused for a moment to think. Her first impressions of Wyatt’s had not all been positive. She’d been intimidated by the centuries of prestige, and by the polish of the Headmaster and his team. But beneath the daunting efficiency were warm hearts, which had welcomed her and rapidly adopted her as one of their own.

  ‘I can honestly say that they’re not like that. They’ve really faced up to the whole issue and want to be as transparent about it as possible. And, of course, as a bit of a side effect, that sort of candour does also come over rather well.’ Beth smiled from under her fringe.

  ‘Ah, that Dr Grover. Loved him that time on Newsnight. I must say, he is pretty dreamy.’ Jen flicked the teabags out into the sink with a teaspoon, and they were exchanging a chuckle when the kitchen door flew open.

  ‘Dreamy? Who’s dreamy?’ It was Jeff, Jen’s new husband, with a mock-angry expression on his face. A big cuddly bear of a man, with thick, tufty hair and a five o’clock shadow so heavy it had almost reached beard status, he towered over slender Jen and made Beth look like a My Little Pony doll.

  Jen laughed and pushed him playfully away, sloshing milk into two mugs. ‘Don’t be silly. Want a tea?’

  ‘Now that’s more like it. Beth, how’re you?’

  ‘Great, really good, thanks. Didn’t know you were here, Jeff. Working from home today?’

  Jeff was in IT, too, though Beth was hazy about the details of his job. And about quite a lot of the nitty-gritty of the tech world, if she was honest.

  ‘Can’t a man hang around in his own house any more, without facing the third degree?’ Jeff lowered his eyebrows and gave Beth a stage glower, before breaking into his usual easy grin. ‘Few things to sort out. I’m on a temporary secondment at the moment, gives me a bit of flexibility, you know? I’m just doing a bit of troubleshooting with a new package we’re installing. It’s running late, of course. Plus, it means I can keep an eye on the wife.’

  Beth, who was all for flexible working and had a habit of stretching the concept as far as it could go, and back again, nodded intelligently and hoped he wasn’t going to explain too much about the project. ‘That must be great, the two of you working together,’ she said. There was a loud clatter as Jen dropped the teaspoon into the stainless steel sink. ‘Oops.’

  ‘Butterfingers,’ Jeff said fondly. ‘So, who were you two talking about, before I so rudely interrupted?’

  ‘Er, Beth was just saying Dr Grover’s very attractive. I was disagreeing, wasn’t I?’ Jen said, with a meaningful look at her friend.

  A little surprised, Beth stepped up. ‘Yes, he’s not, um, everyone’s cup of tea.’ This was a downright lie; there wasn’t a mother in Dulwich who wouldn’t consider trading in her current model for Dr Grover, given half a chance. Particularly the mums with boys, as Dr G held the key to admissions in his hands, as well as possessing brains, charm, charisma, and lots and lots of nice ties. He somehow made the simple act of wearing one look sexy. Eat your heart out, Christian Grey, who had to do so much more with his to get pulses racing. But that seemed to be unsayable, all of a sudden. Beth looked down into her cup. Oh well. Not long till she had to pick Ben up.

  ‘So, where was it this summer? Algarve? Lake Garda? Montpelier?’ Jeff plonked himself at the table, briskly shoving Jess’s
comics right down to the other end. ‘Not that much of a tan, so I’m thinking maybe Normandy?’ he said, casting an eye over Beth’s perpetually wan complexion.

  Beth smiled. They’d lucked out this summer, and spent a week with Katie in an Airbnb villa. ‘A week in Corfu. So beautiful. Have you been?’

  Jeff’s face immediately darkened. Jen came round behind him and put a hand on his shoulder. ‘Jeff’s ex has a house there,’ she said quietly.

  ‘Oh? I’m sorry,’ said Beth. ‘Well, how about your honeymoon? Italy, Jen was saying?’

  Beth had hit on the right topic. Twenty minutes later, they were only halfway round the Uffizi, but Beth had to dash off to pick up Ben. At the door, she turned to Jen, while Jeff loped back up the stairs to his laptop. ‘Jess? Where’s she? Do you want me to pick her up while I’m driving around?’

  ‘Actually, she’s got footie practice this afternoon, so another time if you didn’t mind, that would be great. But she’s at her dad’s this week, so he’s doing the honours,’ Jen said, rolling her eyes and using that dry tone people seemed to reserve for their exes.

  ‘All week? That’s tough on you.’

  Jen smiled wistfully. ‘Yeah. I really miss her. But it’s good for her to have some time with her dad. Great to see you, Beth.’

  ‘Can I pop in next week? I’ll probably see you at the school gates but that’s always such a rush. This is a nice way to catch up – and it’s lovely to have something to do while I’m in Camberwell,’ Beth said, hoping she wasn’t being too frank. The shopping centre wasn’t exactly Bluewater. But Jen was brilliant, as always.

  ‘Course, I’d love that. Same time, next week.’

  As Beth unlocked the car, she suppressed a shiver. For the first time this year, she felt a real hint of autumnal chill in the air. Then she slid behind the wheel and turned the key in the ignition, consciously trying to switch her thoughts as well. It would be good to see how Ben had got on, then she’d whisk him home for a super-quick supper and cosy early bed. He’d be excited, she’d got his favourite Spiderman comic waiting for him as a treat.