The Snuffbox Murders (2 page)

Empire Studio, Fish Box Passage, London WC2, UK.

2200 hours. Bank Holiday Monday, 25 May 2009

The night sky was as black as a policeman’s boot.

A voice in the dark called out: ‘Car for Miss Razzle.’

‘It’s here, sir,’ the man at the studio door called.

The stage exit door suddenly shot open into the dark lane, and a tall leggy blonde in the four-thousand-pound dress and twenty-thousand-pound necklace stepped out into the night.

‘Goodnight, Miss Razzle.’

A group of eight or nine young people rushed up to her, waving books and pens.

‘Can I have your autograph, please, Miss Razzle?’ a young man in a duffle coat said.

She made a squiggle in his book. Then a flurry of other books appeared under her nose. Her eyebrows lifted. The corners of her mouth turned downwards. She sighed. She scribbled into some of them whilst still progressing towards the Bentley, the door being held open by a driver with a peaked cap.

There were a few whoops of delight and happy chattering as the fortunate autograph hunters drifted away.

‘Straight home, miss?’ the driver said.

She nodded, slumped into the back of the limo and closed her eyes.

The car sped away through the city northwards to Staples Corner, the M1 and on to Bromersley in South Yorkshire.

It was half past midnight when the driver pulled on to the drive of The Manor House on Creesforth Road.

‘Here we are, miss,’ the driver said, ‘in record time I think.’

He rushed out of the driving seat, opened the rear door, then opened the boot and took out a small suitcase.

She climbed out. She shivered in the night air and made a dash for the front door. The driver followed with the suitcase. Heat sensors activated a bright light over the steps.

‘I can manage, thank you,’ she said.

‘Right, miss. Goodnight.’

Rosemary Razzle fished in her clutch bag and took out a small bunch of keys. She unlocked the front door, picked up the case and went in as the Bentley purred quietly away.

She closed the front door. ‘Charles,’ she called. There was no reply. ‘Charles, darling, I’m back. Where are you?’

There was a light in the kitchen. She went down the hall into the room. He wasn’t there. She called again. Then she opened the door to the basement steps to the cellars. The light was on. There were two cellars. One was very small and was empty. The other was sealed off with a steel-covered door with a large combination lock screwed on to it. She tried the door handle but it was locked. Next to the wall was a telephone. She quickly snatched up the receiver and tapped the figure 9 on the dial pad. She could hear it ring out in the earpiece. She let it ring and ring. There was no reply. She knew something dreadful had happened. She put a hand to her chest. Her heart was pounding. Despite the cold, she felt hot. Her face was red and she was perspiring. There was no reply. At length, she pressed the cancel button on the phone and tapped in 999.

She went up the basement steps and into the kitchen. She filled the kettle and switched it on. Then she switched it off and went into the dining room to the drinks cabinet, grabbed a bottle, found a tumbler and poured herself a half-glass of brandy. She turned as if she had heard a noise from the front door. She put the bottle down, dashed into the hall, up to the door, opened it and looked out. There was nobody there. She returned to the dining room, made for the brandy then heard the doorbell ring. She turned back again and answered the door.

As the door opened, the light shone on two uniformed policemen.

Their mouths opened expectantly as they recognized the famous and beautiful Rosemary Razzle. It wasn’t everyday they got close up to a real live celebrity actor.

‘Mrs Razzle.’ They knew who she was from her regular television appearances. ‘I’m PC Donohue and this is PC Elder. We came as soon as we could. What’s the trouble?’

She nodded. ‘Come in, please. It’s my husband. He’s in his workshop. Locked in. Something’s wrong. He doesn’t reply. I’ve banged on the door, and tried to speak to him on the extension phone, but there’s no reply.’

The two young men followed Mrs Razzle down the imposing hall, through the huge kitchen to the basement steps.

She wiped an eye with the back of her hand.

‘He’s in here.’

‘Can’t you open the door, miss?’ Donohue said. ‘Haven’t you a key?’

‘It’s a combination lock. I don’t know the number.’

‘We’ll see if we can break it down, miss.’

When the policemen tapped on the door, they knew they wouldn’t be able to force their way in. It was a heavy steel door with a combination lock in the centre.

PC Elder tried the handle and pulled it. It didn’t shift. He banged loudly on the door with his asp. It made no impression.

‘How do you know your husband is in there, miss?’

‘The light is on. The switch is on the outside and it’s on … he often works long hours in there. Where else would he be at this time of night?’

‘Is there any other way in? Where are the windows?’

‘There are no windows and there is no other way in.’

‘There is a phone in there?’

‘Yes. I phoned him. He didn’t pick up. Please do something. He might have had a heart attack or something.’

Donohue saw a phone on the wall. ‘Does this connect to the phone in there?’

‘Yes.’ She rubbed her long white manicured hand across her brow and said, ‘You just dial 9 and hold on, but I’ve done all that and he doesn’t answer.’

Donohue picked up the phone, tapped in the single digit and listened. After a few moments, he pulled the phone away from his ear and said, ‘Can’t hear it ring out.’ He put his ear to the steel door.

Rosemary Razzle said, ‘You can’t hear anything through
that
.’ Then she breathed in noisily and said, ‘Oh. This is useless. You’re not doing anything. Time is going on. My husband might be in there dying.’

‘What else can we do, miss?’ Donohue said, replacing the phone.

She turned away and ran her hand through her hair. She turned back. ‘I’ll have to get the man out that built the thing. He’ll surely know how to get the door open.’

‘If we phone him, he might turn out more quickly for us. What’s his number?’

Her face dropped. ‘Oh dear. I don’t remember his name. He works for a security business in Sheffield. It’s his business, I think.’

‘Try Yellow Pages.’

She rushed off.

The two policemen looked at each other, looked skywards, then shrugged. Donohue grabbed the door handle and yanked it several times. He fiddled with the combination lock and tapped in a few random numbers and tried the door handle. Nothing happened. He kicked the door. It didn’t budge.

Donohue’s RT blared into his ear: ‘Sixty-two, come in sixty-two. Where are you?’

He told the sergeant where he and Elder were and explained the situation. He was told to stay there with Elder as long as they could be useful, but to keep in touch, then they made their way up the steps into the kitchen.

Mrs Razzle came in from the hall while looking into the phone book. She lowered the book on to the kitchen table, feverishly whipping the pages backwards and forwards until she found the page she wanted, then ran her finger down the small print. She stopped as she found a particular name, and read off a number. She then reached out to the phone fixed to the wall next to the large American refrigerator and tapped in a number. It rang a long time. As she waited, her eyes flitted across the room at the brightly lit, spotless kitchen and the two policemen standing by the basement door looking at her.

They stared at her, noticing the sculptured silver-blonde hair, the slim figure, the long legs covered by a white dress and the necklace with the big diamonds twinkling in the light.

A man suddenly answered the phone. ‘Yeah?’

She caught her breath. ‘Is that Farleigh Security?’ she said.

‘Yes. Brian Farleigh speaking.’

‘This is Mrs Charles Razzle, you might remember building a security workshop in the basement of our house for my husband?’

‘And security lights outside the house, sure do, Mrs Razzle. But, what’s the matter? What you ringing me at this time of the night for?’

‘My husband is in the workshop … the door is locked … and I can’t get in.’

‘Maybe … maybe he wants to be on his own?’

‘You don’t understand. He doesn’t answer the phone. He must have been in there hours. I think something may have happened to him.’

There was a pause.

‘You don’t know the combination?’ he said.

‘He keeps changing it. Is there another way in there?’

‘No, Mrs Razzle. I think you know that there isn’t.’

Her face went scarlet. Her lips tightened. ‘There must be
something
you can do?’

Farleigh sighed. ‘I’ll come straight over. You’re the big house at the far end of Creesforth Road in Bromersley, aren’t you?’

‘Please be quick,’ she said and slammed the phone back on to its hook.

The two policemen had made some tea for Mrs Razzle and themselves, and were sitting at the kitchen table drinking it. Mrs Razzle had left hers and was walking up and down holding a glass of brandy and sipping from it from time to time in silence, occasionally darting out of the room to check on the front door.

The police officers had tried talking to her about her life and work, and about her husband, but she mostly answered in monosyllables. They had managed to elicit that he was an inventor in the throes of something important that he needed to keep secret until it had been registered with the patents office. His particular work necessitated a secure room, and she explained why she was so certain that he was in there.

She was leaning against the worktop, breathing noisily, looking up at the kitchen clock, watching the second hand sweep little by little round the dial, while the other hands indicated that it was almost two o’clock in the morning, when the front doorbell rang. She banged down the tumbler, ran to the door and opened it.

A big, suntanned man in a suede coat stood on the step smiling at her.

‘Mrs Razzle.’

‘You’ve been a helluva time, Mr Farleigh,’ she said.

He looked at her in surprise, jaw dropped. ‘Came as quickly as I could,’ he said as he dragged two valises into the hall.

‘You know where it is. Please make your way there.’

He bustled down the hall, into the kitchen, nodded at the two policemen, went through the door to the basement and down the steps.

Mrs Razzle followed close on his heels, with the two policemen behind her.

At the security room door, Farleigh lowered the valises to the floor, turned to Mrs Razzle and said, ‘You’re certain he’s in there?’

‘Positive,’ she said. ‘And he must be ill or something’s wrong, otherwise he would have answered the phone.’

Farleigh rubbed his chin. ‘Hmm. There’s only one way I can open this door, Mrs Razzle. It will take some time.’

Her eyes flashed. ‘What? I expected you to open it straight away. You built it, after all.’

He shook his head. ‘It’s a security room, Mrs Razzle,’ he said as he took off his suede coat and draped it over the newel post. ‘Access is not supposed to be easy. That’s why it’s called … a
security room
.’

‘There’s no quicker way?’

‘Only dynamite.’

‘Well, use that then.’

He grinned. ‘We’d need permission from the local authority … that would take a month … anyway, down here we might blow a hole in the sewer. And you wouldn’t like that.’

She threw her hands up in the air and said, ‘Well,
do
something!’ She breathed in noisily and turned away. She turned back, looked at her watch. ‘It’s ten minutes past two already.’

She made for the stairs.

The policemen stood back to allow her to pass.

Then she turned back to Farleigh. ‘I will be in the kitchen. Let me know as soon as that door can be opened.’

She marched up the steps into the kitchen.

Farleigh looked at the policemen, grinned, then busied himself securing a small processor to the door lock with magnets then, from that, a lead to a USB port in a hand-held computer powered by mains electric from a socket low down on the wall. That done, he began a search for the combination. Starting from zero, illuminated red numbers ticked progressively on the small LCD screen. The lock had a six-digit combination number, so he said it might take a long time.

The policemen, who were on the basement steps leaning over the handrail, watched fascinated. Over Farleigh’s shoulder, they could see the numbers slowly tick away. After ten minutes, they became bored and went upstairs to the kitchen.

Mrs Razzle was nowhere to be seen.

Donohue went into the hall. Through an open door, he saw a light. He wandered towards it. It led into the drawing room. The light source was from a pretty lamp on a small table next to a large luxurious sofa. He saw Mrs Razzle full length on the sofa apparently in a deep sleep. She looked like the fairytale princess from some extravagant Hollywood movie. He enjoyed just looking at her. All that was missing was the music from a hundred-piece orchestra. His eyes travelled to the table where he saw the tumbler half-f of brandy. He didn’t want to disturb her. He crept quietly out of the room and returned to the kitchen.

PC Elder was looking at an electric kettle that was about to boil. He turned to Donohue. ‘Does she want a coffee? Do her good.’

‘She’s flaked out.’

‘Not surprised with all that brandy she’s sunk. Do you think she’d mind if I had another cup of tea?’

‘Shouldn’t think so.’

‘It isn’t as if they’re hard up,’ he said, looking up and around meaningfully.

Steam began to come out of the kettle. It clicked off.

‘What does
he
do?’ Elder said.

‘Invents things,’ Donohue said. ‘You’ve heard of Charles Razzle?’

Elder frowned. ‘I think I’ve heard the name.’

‘Musical tin-opener. Portable flushing toilet. Robot floor-cleaner. He’s well known. Been on the telly. He’s reputed to be working on something big.’

‘Really?’ Donohue said as he poured the water into the two cups. ‘That’s why he built this security workshop, patents, and all that?’