Long Tale Press

CHAPTER 1. My offence is rank! It smells to Heaven. - HAMLET

THE first murder was before an audience, in a picture-postcard English village, ten miles from the roar of the M1, on a temperate summer's day, the kind that nudged Shakespeare into lyrical bliss.

Perhaps more lovely than this day, yet not more temperate, the Queen of Scotland stood nervous in battle helmet and breastplate. A tall blonde, she gleamed in the afternoon sun but muffed her opening monologue. Her shrill quaver stumbled through hesitant silences, loudly whispered prompts, and shouted suggestions by merry playgoers. And she the conqueror of England, Hamlet's bride-to-be. The acting was so woeful I resolved to slip away after singing my ballads during the first interval.

Thunder and lightning. Enter three witches bearing a crowned corpse. FIRST WITCH: Let magic spells now crown his head. Hamlet shall rise up from the dead SECOND WITCH (dropping his legs): Sweet Prince, welcome to thy grave awakening.

The audience groaned. They hear better puns on telly any night, yet I suspect Wiley Wil scribbled this gag early in his script to keep the peasants in good cheer. I do this myself sometimes, by using a fun ditty to melt straight faces and ease the tension of opening night.

THIRD WITCH (stirs smoking cauldron): Bubble and boil, for Hamlet toil. Three times rewarded he. FIRST WITCH: One is snowdrop. SECOND WITCH: Two is thistle. THIRD WITCH: Three the rose for thee. HAMLET (sitting up): What riddle is this? Th'arithmetic of memory has me dunced. Ambition now just o'erleaps just revenge, the one cries justice, t'other just is. I live again, exposing what is mortal and unsure to all that fortune, death and danger dare.

An offstage bugle blares. The Queen of Scotland jerks palm to ear while raising her trident with the other hand: "Hark, my captains are victorious."

THE WITCHES CHORUS: Hail Hamlet, King of Denmark. Hail Hamlet, King of Scotland. Hail Hamlet, King of England. Hail snowdrop, thistle and rose.

Enough, I'm thinking. My agent had booked me as "Sheil B. Wright, balladeer", to entertain these yokels in the heart of England but Shakespeare leaves me brain-dead. Even this allegedly genuine sequel to Hamlet, Prince of Denmark failed to interest. Anyway, I had to pee.

I left my tearoom lookout above the market square, and threaded my bulk through the busy, close-grouped tables. A large turnout had been drawn to the play's first performance - first, that is, for four hundred years. Townies and farmfolk from afar had descended on the village to watch the newfound masterpiece performed by local amateurs.

My upstairs window gave a perfect view, like a theatre's side balcony, and preferable to the front seats down below where sat the dignitaries. As I squeezed past patrons towards the tearoom's exit, Hamlet was still boldly declaiming.

Do I yet live? Does a second birth barb my senses, for no such sting accompanied sweet death? Begone you hags, revenge is sweeter when aid is absent.

Clumsily, hastily, I bumped from the table maze to the stair landing, black rafters overhead, the Ladies Toilet blessedly near, just a couple of steps down. Drat! Engaged! I scowled at the little red word on the lock. Someone was in there, yet I could not wait.

Noticing a Gents' on the other side of the landing, I sneaked in there quickly, locked the door and occupied the single pan. Blessed relief. My eyes closed as I sat there humming the germ of a song to be developed, the title already settled: Whenya gotta go yagotta.

The Shakespeare drama, unearthed locally, was star event of the Maggots Wallop bilberry festival, and I was classified as "supporting artiste". My repertoire of olde-english folk songs, with harp and zither, had been arranged by my London agent.

With less speed than my entry, I emerged from the cubicle to be met by a roar. The dull theatrical voices had accelerated to an ear-piercing din, coming from the open door of the Ladies Toilet. Now vacated, its emptiness revealed a window gaping immediately above the players. Strange, I thought, that a battle scene should come so early.

I strode across to the window and looked down. The horror was too realistic.

Hamlet lay flat, his back pressing the boards, his brow pierced by an arrow. Right between the eyes, and the blood still washing his face. The screams I heard were coming not from the actors but the audience.

On stage, the hags clutched each other. Two warriors stood like shocked statues, while the Queen of Scotland, agonised by this real drama, had found accusing confidence. She was pointing up at my window. I must have appeared there, heavily framed, a split second after everybody lifted their eyes, tracing the Queen's pointed forefinger. What they saw was me.

2 O, for a horse with wings! - CYMBELINE

I JERKED back, heart in fast tempo, trying not to accept what I had seen. Nothing would draw me to the window again, but by inclining my head to one side I could make out a brutish man.

His modern tweeds showed he did not belong to the Bard of Avon's Hamlet sequel. He had pounced from the wings or from the audience. He hovered over the victim like a crow pecking roadkill. Any producer casting for a villain would rate him first choice. He had the glower of a bulldog and a flat hairless skull that reflected a tiara of sunlight. He held a mobile to one ear while his other massive hand signalled to someone beyond the crowd.

The Queen of Scotland was still oggling my toilet window, and so were many others. Time to get out of here. I turned for the door and bumped into a hulk in police blue.

"Gotcha! Don't move." Since he was blocking the exit and gripping my hair with an unfriendly mitt that threatened unorthodox scalping, I had no option. I froze, then I squealed.

"You're tearing my hair."

"Stand in that there corner. Say nuffink." His words came slow and heavy, like boots on a regular beat. The hand that released my ruined twenty-guinea coiffure snatched a talkie to his bully lips. "Got the fiend, guv. She wuz near away, but I nabbed 'er orlright." His puffy eyes narrowed in concentration, then bulged towards the window. "Weapon guv?" They swivelled back to me. "Where's your crossbow?"

Stupid question. Why would anyone expect a singer to have a crossbow? A crossbow fired a bolt, a rather short arrow. Now it dawned. That arrow in Hamlet's head had seemed smaller than one might expect, and the gruesome thing had shown no feathers attached.

"I don't have a crossbow," I told the scowling cop.

"What's that then?" His lips and bulbous nose jerked my attention to one corner. I had noticed the metal object earlier but paid it no attention. Now I focused on it. "A curtain rod?"

He gave me a pitying glare. "It has got an 'andle."

"Some kind of spear? Left by one of the actors?"

"There's no sharp end what I can see."

Now he mentioned it, I couldn't see one either. Furthermore, the handle he referred to looked like it should be on a pistol, and there was also a trigger guard. In fact, on close scrutiny the item resembled a pistol with a grooved rod along the top of its barrel stretching about four feet. I had seen something similar in Australia when doing a gig at Bondi.

Some blokes in wetsuits had squelched to a beachside bar shouting for cold beers, and a couple of them carried these metal rods with the pistol grip. "I think it might be a speargun," I told the village bobby.

He grinned. "Whatever 'tis, your dabs will be all over it. Nice." He flourished a soiled handkerchief, draped it over his palm and seized the metal shaft. We marched out, plod and prisoner, only to be ambushed by the little greyhead who earlier had served my cup of tea. The granny smile she had worn then was now gone within a gritty challenge.

"Here, you! Hoi, where are you taking my customer?" Her pink frock of scattered white daisies was protected by an apron of white vinyl that bore the stains of a busy day, just as her plump face and cherryripe cheeks bore the wrinkles of life. A silver hairbun and fluffy slippers enhanced this badge of character. After all, homely was the ambience at Gran's Teas.

Bulging and cuddly but never frail, she blinked urgently , through thick-lensed spectacles, and her pale, kitchen palms went high in a posture that said to the policeman, Stop!

"Outa me way, Gran. I'm taking her quick-smart to the nick."

"But she hasn't paid."

"She's just done for Mister Holler."

"Oh dear," said Gran and stood aside. This sweet-faced oldie, I'll tell you now, could be a holy terror, a fact I learned when involved with her on the murder trail. Behind those granny eyes she is shrewd and intuitive and possibly still recalls, as I do, our mutual fascination for village intrigues. Mild on this occasion, she watched Bullycop push me to the stairs as I shouted back, "I'll pay later, I promise."

Outside, in the crowded market square, more coppers were herding people away from the stage. This was already being designated a no-go crime scene by ribbons of plastic.

"It wasn't me," I protested to my captor. "Listen, I saw a bloke. Up there on the stage, probably making sure of a clean kill."

"Tell that to the hanging judge."

"No, no. you do not understand. I saw this brute, right on the stage. Bald head, bulldog mug. You'll catch him if you're quick."

He grunted. "I already been quick, and caught you red-handed. Weapon an' all." Villagers following us were growling in agreement. "To the gibbet!" somebody snarled.

"Not before trial," growled the bobby. "Get back, you lot. She'll get the gallows soon enough." He did a scything skip at their legs with the speargun. His fingerprints would now be all over it.

Did England still have capital punishment? Surely not. Dread doubt surmounted my dread alarm. Could this village of ancient custom also cherish its own barbaric laws? "I am innocent," I yelled at the mob.

A crone yelled back. "We'll stone you in the stocks." I had noticed, at first arrival, this ancient apparatus on the village green. Now the locals united to bay, "Stocks, stocks, stocks."

THE police station was my refuge. Coated in trendy glass and concrete, it crouched at a corner of the cobbled square, contrasting its aged neighbours. It was diagonally opposite Gran's Teas and that infamous toilet window.

My situation, fearful enough, was also devastating to self-esteem. I had come to this foreign land to entertain the Poms, part of a cultural exchange through the Australian Arts Council. Oh the shame, the trauma, to be accused of murder. When you're nudging 40, overweight on the scales and overdrawn at the bank, that's a nasty shortcut down the showbiz gutter.

Bullycop shooed me like a prize goose. Inside, a uniformed brunette at the counter lifted sad eyes to me before I was whisked without pause to a door with black letters: Superintendent T.E.K. Squint. Strange name, but there you are.

My captor rapped twice, somehow imbuing this with the deference due to rank, and prodded me in with the speargun. Eyes downcast, cheeks hot, shoulders slumped, I heard a weary grumble. "Okay, let's have your name."

On the desktop, hairy hands like plump spiders had been about to dig a fork into a pie. They hovered, suspended from massive wrists that strained the cuffs of a brown tweed suit. My eyes climbed, up tight sleeves to brick-stack shoulders, squat neck and . . . I gasped and gaped.

Returning my gaze was the evil dogface. Those hirsute fingers had held a mobile and had signalled an accomplice while I watched from the window.

3 Be what thou wilt, thou art my prisoner. - KING HENRY VI

"COPPED her fleeing the scene, guv," grinned the bobby. "An' she claims some nasty git did it an' then jumped on the stage to make sure. Dead sure, heh-heh. Bald head, ugly mug, an' a ginger Hitler mo." This last detail I had never volunteered, but Squint's ginger moustache jiggled to accompany a dangerous glower, "Thank you, Constable Bully, go get me a cuppa."

It did not escape me that the constable's name fitted his behaviour. English names often reflect a family characteristic down the generations, and Bully's attitude shouted an accumulation of ancestral nasties. Squint, on the other hand, was not squinting at me. His gaze was level and open. I noticed he had dogbrown eyes, yet nothing like soft spaniel, more the bull-terrier kind. He had the body of a wrestler but the voice of a scholar, as if physical power made a loud voice unnecessary. He directed it softly at me while the eyes flared hostility. "Now then, your name."

"Sheil B. Wright."

"Possibly, but give me your name."

"That's it, that is my name." Feeling guilty about it was ridiculous, and no family traits had been involved in its selection. "As on my passport. I'm Sheil Wright, the middle initial B stands for bugger-all."

A frown rippled up and over the Super's bald skull, the mock tiara that had gleamed when I saw him commanding the death scene. "Your parents named you that? Bugger-all?" Now his soft country burr held a trace of mockery, perhaps contempt, yet never compassion. The dog eyes waited.

"No, the B stands for nothing," I clarified. "They christened me Shirley, then I changed it for a business reason. Needed something unusual. I'm an entertainer. On exchange from Downunder. Sheil B Wright, she'll be right, get it? A common Australian phrase. I was brought here to sing at your bilberry festival. I wish I hadn't come."

"Best pie in the world," he said as if mention of the festival reminded him of the feast on his desk blotter. "Devised in the Middle Ages, right here in Maggots Wallop. We grow England's healthiest, tastiest bilberries." He stabbed with the fork, spurting purple juice. "Why were you at that window? Tell me."

Watching the oozing face of the pie, I recalled Hamlet's deathmask, and needed to vomit. Determined this wouldn't happen, I pushed my wrist against tight lips and held my breath. Bad enough the possibility of being hanged, without the added shame of spewing over the Super's pie. In such situations, one acts promptly and without much thought. Stepping to a hatstand near to the desk, I raised my manacled hands and grabbed a deep black bowler.

"What are you doing?" growled Mister Squint. "Put my hat back."

I had it beneath my chin, ready for emergency. Heavily I blew out, tensed midriff muscles as if to seek a high note, and, thankfully, the nausea passed. Gently, like handling a large emu egg, I placed the bowler on his desk. "I am sorry, couldn't help it, thought I was going to chunder."

Maybe he had never heard that Aussie word before, and hopefully did not know its meaning, for he ignored my little drama to demand again. "The window. What were you doing there?"

I sang my torrent of excuses. He listened and munched, contented and composed, a man who had found Life's supreme pleasure. The tea arrived in a large mug of bobby blue. None for me. "Take off the bracelets," he ordered. Bully did so with surly and undisguised reluctance.

Superintendent Squint's own strong fingers were thrusting his fork at pie entrails. "And when did you arrive? Where had you been staying?" Past tense. He wiped crumbs from his mo and slurped tea while I heard his last question with new distress. It suggested I might henceforth be accommodated in the nick.

"The Hotel Endswell," I said. "Ophelia suite at the rear. I booked-in early afternoon and went straight to the play. I never met those people before. My gig was arranged by my agent. Look, I do not even know who was murdered. I mean, apart from his being Hamlet. What possible motive could I have? I'm new to your country. Total stranger."

"The victim was Guido Holler, owner of our county newspaper."

"A man of influence then."

"A man of many enemies." He pushed the empty plate aside, burped gently, and pulled a keyboard to replace it on his red-spattered blotter. Peck, peck, peck went his fat fingers. As electronic beeps echoed from beneath the desk, he reached down for a printed sheet and passed it to me. "Here is your statement. Please read it through before signing."

"But you didn't take notes."

"Voice activated." He waved to a row of pin-lights on the wall behind him. "Technology. Our magic weapon. If only more crims realised that. Oh sorry, Miz Bugger-all Wright, I meant to say people, more people. We fully respect your rights as a suspect."

"Innocent until your computer says otherwise?"

"Something like that. Ah, here is some extra science." A policewoman had entered to take my fingerprints and to gently swab my mouth with cottonwool on a lolly stick. "To harvest your DNA," she explained sweetly.

Afterwards they did my face map, iris image and voice graph. As if this wasn't enough to impress me with forensic science, Superintendent Squint insisted with a twitch of hairy lip, "Let me show you how smart we are. What is your car registration?" I gave the number and his fingertips tapped before he peered at a nearby screen. "Not stolen. Ford Fiesta manual, hired at Heathrow Airport this a.m. and you paid a deposit of £100 by Visa card held in your name, expiry date November 2020."

"I am flabbergasted." I meant it, but he was still showing off his rozzer artillery.

"Your home place of residence is Useless Valley in the southwest of Western Australia, where you occupy a cottage on a smallholding of 20 acres owned by your parents. You are unmarried, age 39, weight 96 kilos. Your private medical record confirms you fit apart from a benign mole your doctor zapped from your left breast two years ago. Currently your bank account is overdrawn by 63 dollars and sevcen cents. Careerwise, your biggest success was five years ago, with a song that reached No. 16 on the Tamworth country charts, entitled Fancy, our Clancy's a Nancy. There's more, we now have you tight and secure in our records. Just so you understand that you cannot escape. We could quickly apprehend you anywhere in the world."

Reaching below the desk, he withdrew a huge plastic bangle that was tinted blue and tossed it to me. "We are going to lock this on. It fits round your ankle and tells us where you are at all times. Either ankle will do. Suit yourself. Once locked, only my thumbprint can release it. Now, after I configure it into the works, Miz Buggerall Wright, you may go. But do not leave the district."

"You're letting me go?" It was a silly question when he had just demonstrated how thoroughly I was trapped in his data web.

"Like I said, technology. That anklet allows us to shadow you everywhere by means of a computer chip, and we can find you in a flash. The old days of plodding and guessing are long gone. Modern detection uses the ultimate digital wizardry."

"So I am not actually under arrest?"

"Not yet. You are a person of interest, helping with inquiries. The lab might find evidence on the speargun but pending some incriminating outcome you can return to your hotel."

Noting my amazement, he mouthed that word again, "Technology," wiggled his thumb at me, his cuff-locking thumb with the techno-magic whorls, and pointed to one of the monitor screens as he stabbed his keyboard. I saw the stage, the actors, and the toilet window above them, dark and empty. Hamlet was addressing the audience, although there was no sound. Arms gestured, twisting this way and that to accompany Hamlet's mouth, while the other actors kept changing position, brandishing swords, shields, a flag and, among the witches, a thorny wand.

Movement at the window showed a dark figure, hunched as if aiming a rifle, which I guessed would be the speargun, then Hamlet staggered backwards showering blood. His golden crown rolled bloodily across the stage. I saw the Queen of Scotland, her back to the window, snatch at her ear and then examine her palm as if for a stain. Then she twisted towards the window, her trident like a blackboard pointer, and there was I, peering out for all to behold.

"We have cameras covering every part of the village," boasted Squint. "Some are thermomotion, some are permanents, and we also have movie scanners of course. That may sound an extreme routine for a population of less than five thousand, but Maggots Wallop is at the forefront of forensic methodology." His fingers played another silent tune on the keys. "Some of it is still experimental, but the gadgets we trial usually find their way into national acceptance. We test, England follows." As he spoke, he conducted instant replays of the murder, over and over, and from at least three different cameras.

Mesmerised, I was seeing what had caused the screams that drew me to the toilet window. The force that felled the actor seemed to come invisibly. Faster than the eye and no telling where it came from, although that shadowy figure holding the speargun suggested the obvious. One moment Hamlet was basking in a wordy soliloquy, the next he was hurtling flat beneath a crimson cloud. The witches were grouped in their rags, the warriors converging on the Queen, the stage a confusion of costumed performers. And me up there presiding over the carnage.

"With all your cameras," I said, "you should be able to spot the killer taking the speargun into the Ladies Toilet." "It is true that a speargun would be easily spotted," he agreed, "being rare in Maggots Wallop. We are a hundred miles from the coast. No local person that we know of owns one, and our digital surveillance has failed to show one. But actors were wandering about with all sorts of weapons preparing for the play. Spears, longswords, pikes. Among that lot a speargun might avoid camera and even public notice. Or it could have been disguised. Naturally, we cannot operate the cameras on private property, and certainly not in the Ladies Toilet."

"That's a shame." My quip was half serious. "It would have cleared me." He nodded without humour. "No doubt. However, the forensic evidence can do that, or prove your guilt, when the lab sends me its report. I do accept one thing in your favour. If you killed Guido Holler, it is unlikely you would be silly enough to stick your head out the window." Then his lips wriggled, doubtless from unfamiliarity, into what I took to be a smile, and I knew he was going to say something less in my favour.

"Expert computer analysis will sift the camera images from all the different angles. There is a chance you'll show up carrying a speargun. And as for motive, we have a million data banks to sort that out, here and in Australia, your land of origin. Just remember, you cannot get away from us with that monitor attached to your ankle. So good day, Miz Sheila Buggerall Wright."

(c) ann.morven@optusnet.com.au

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