The Sedgemoor Strangler and Other Stories of Crime

Star Struck

On that September evening the sun was a crimson skull cap, and a glittering cope was draped across the surface of the sea. I was leaning on the rail at the end of the pier where the fishermen liked to cast. By this time they had all packed up and gone. A few unashamed romantics like me stood in contemplation, awed by the spectacle.

I wasn’t aware of the woman beside me until she spoke. Her voice was low-pitched, instantly attractive.

“You can already see a star.”

“Jupiter,” I said.

“For sure?”

“Certainly.”

“Couldn’t it be Venus? Venus can be very bright.”

“Not this month. Venus is in superior conjunction with the sun, so we won’t see it at all this month.”

“You obviously know,” she said.

“Only enough to take an interest.” Up to now I hadn’t looked at her. All my attention had been on the sky. Turning, I saw a fine, narrow face suffused with the pink light. She could have modelled for Modigliani.

“This is an ideal place to stand,” she said. “It’s my first time here.”

“I thought I hadn’t seen you before. Did someone recommend it?”

Her eyes widened. “How did you know?”

“A guess.”

“I don’t think so. You must be intuitive. I always read my horoscope in the local paper, the Argus. This week, it said Friday was an evening to go somewhere different that gives a sense of space. I couldn’t think of anywhere that fitted better than this.”

“Nor I.” The polite response. Privately I haven’t much time for people who take astrology seriously.

As if she sensed I was a sceptic, she said, “It’s a science, you know.”

“Interesting claim.”

“The zodiac doesn’t lie. If mistaken readings are made, it’s human error. Anyone can call himself an astrologer, and some are charlatans, but the best are extremely accurate. I’ve had it proved again and again.”

“Right. If it has a good result, who cares? You came here and saw this wonderful sunset.”

Only later, hours later, still thinking about her, did I realise what I should have said: Did the horoscope tell you what to do next? The perfect cue to invite her out for a meal. I always think of the lines too late.

She’d made a profound impression on me — and I hadn’t even asked what her name was.

Idiot.

I played the scene over many times in the next few days. She’d spoken first. I should have made the next move. Now it was too late unless I happened to meet her again. I went back to the pier and watched the next three sunsets. Well, to be truthful I spent most of the time looking over my shoulder. She didn’t come.

I couldn’t concentrate on my job. I’m a sub-editor on the Argus. My subbing was so bad that week that Mr Peel, the editor, called me in and pointed out three typos in a single paragraph. “What’s the matter with you, Rob? Get your mind on the job, or you won’t have a job.”

Still I kept thinking about her. I can’t explain the effect she had on me. I’d heard of love at first sight, but this was more like infatuation. I’m thirty-two and I ought to be over adolescent crushes.

It took a week of mental turmoil before I came to my senses and saw that I was perfectly placed to arrange another meeting. The one thing I knew about her was that she read — and acted on — her horoscope in the Argus. My paper.

The horoscopes were written by a freelance, some old darling in Tunbridge Wells. The copy always arrived on Monday, banged out on her old typewriter with the worn-out ribbon. Vacuous stuff, in my opinion, but she was a professional. The word-count was always spot on. Each week I transferred the text to my screen almost without thought.

This week I would do what I was paid to do — some sub-editing.

First, I looked at last week’s astrology piece and found the phrase my mysterious woman had mentioned. Go somewhere different on Friday. A sense of space will have a liberating effect. She was an Aquarian. Finally I knew something else about her. She had a birthday in late January or the first half of February.

I picked up the piece of thin paper that had just come in from Tunbridge Wells with this week’s nonsense. Aquarians had a dreary week in store. A good time for turning out cupboards and catching up with jobs. I could improve on that, I thought.

“Saturday,” I wrote, “is the ideal time for single Aquarians to make a rendezvous with romance. Instead of eating at home in the evening, treat yourself to a meal out and you may be treated to much more.”

One word in my text had a significance only a local would understand. There is a French restaurant called Rendezvous on one of the corners of the Parade, above the promenade. I was confident my lady of the sunset would pick up the signal.

The day after the paper appeared, I wasn’t too surprised to get a huffy letter from The Diviner — as our astrological expert in Tunbridge Wells liked to be known to readers. It was addressed to the Editor. Fortunately Mr Peel’s secretary Linda opened it and put it in my tray before the boss saw it. Was the newspaper not aware, The Diviner asked in her letter, that each horoscope was the result of hours of study of the dispositions and influences of the planets? In seventeen years no one had tampered with her copy. She demanded a full investigation, so that the person responsible was identified and “dealt with accordingly.” If she was not given a complete reassurance within a week she would speak to the proprietor, Sir Montagu Willingdale, a personal friend, who she knew would be “incandescent with fury.”

Rather over the top, I thought. However, I valued my job enough to compose an abject letter from Mr Peel stating that he was shocked beyond belief and had found the perpetrator — a schoolboy on a work experience scheme who had mistakenly deleted part of the text on the computer and in some panic improvised a couple of sentences. It had gone to press before anyone noticed. “Needless to say,” I added, “the boy will not be experiencing any more work at the Argus office.” And I added more grovelling words before forging Mr Peel’s signature.

After that, I just hoped my initiative would produce the desired result.

You have to be confident, don’t you? I booked a table for two on Saturday evening at the Rendezvous.

They opened at seven and I was the first in. The manager consulted his reservations book and I stood close enough to see he had plenty of names besides mine.

“I expect you’re busy on Saturdays,” I said.

“Not usually so busy as this, sir. It’s remarkable. We’re popular, of course, but this week we were fully booked by Thursday lunchtime. It’s like Valentine’s Day all over again.”

I hoped so.

Before I was shown to my seat, others started arriving, men and women, mostly unaccompanied, and nervous. I knew why. I was amused to see how their eyes darted left and right to see who was at the other tables. I would have taken a bet that they all had the same birth-sign.

The power of the press.

In the next twenty minutes, the restaurant filled steadily. One or two bold souls at adjacent tables started talking to each other. In my quiet way, I was quite a matchmaker.

Unfortunately none of the women resembled the one I most hoped to see. I sat sipping a glass of Chablis, having told the waiter I would wait for my companion before ordering.

After another twenty minutes I ordered a second glass. The waiter gave me a look that said it was about time I faced it — I’d been stood up.

Some of the people around me were on their main course. A pretty red-head alone at a table across the room smiled and then looked coyly away. Maybe I should cut my losses and go across, I thought.

Then my heart pumped faster. Standing just inside the door handing her coat to the waiter was the one person all this was set up for. In a long-sleeved blue velvet dress, she looked stunningly beautiful.

I got up and approached her.

“You again?” I said. “We met at the end of the pier a few days ago. Do you remember?”

“Why, yes! What a coincidence.” Her blue eyes shone with recognition — or was it joy that her sun sign had worked its magic?

I suggested she joined me and she said nothing would please her more.

At the table we went through the preliminaries of getting to know each other. Her name was Helena and she worked as a research chemist at Plaxton’s, the agricultural suppliers. She’d moved down from Norfolk three years ago, when she got the job.

I told her I’ve lived in the area all my life. “As a matter of fact, I’m a journalist. Freelance. Which Sunday paper do you take?”

“The Independent.”

“You’ve probably read some of my stuff, then.” A slight distortion, but I didn’t want to mention the Argus in case she got suspicious.

“Do I know your name?” she asked.

“I don’t expect so. It’s Rob — Rob Newton.”

“It sounds familiar.”

“There was a film star. Called himself Robert. Dead now.”

“I know! Bill Sikes in Oliver Twist.”

“Right. And Long John Silver. He cornered the market in rogues.”

“But you’re no rogue, I hope?”

“No film star, either.”

“What brought you here tonight? Do you come regularly?”

“No,” I answered, trying my best to give an other-worldly look. “It was quite strange. Something mysterious, almost like an inner voice, told me to make a reservation. And I’m so pleased I acted on it. After we spoke at the pier, I really wanted to meet you again.”

The waiter came over, and I ordered champagne before we looked at the menu. Helena said something about dividing the bill, but I thanked her and dismissed the idea. After all, I had my own words to live up to: you may be treated to much more. The champagne was just the beginning.

“How about you?” I asked after we’d ordered. “What made you come here tonight?”

“It was in the stars.” She could look other-worldly, too.

“Do you really believe they have an influence?”

She smiled with confidence. “I’m certain of it.” But she didn’t mention the horoscope directly.

After the meal, we walked by the beach and looked at the stars. Helena pointed to the group that formed Aquarius, her own constellation. “Let me guess,” she said. “Are you an Aquarian also?”

I shook my head. “Capricorn — the goat.”

She giggled a little at that.

“I know,” I said. “But I’m well behaved, really.”

“Pity,” she said, and curled her hand around my neck and kissed me.

Just like that, without a move from me.

I had to be true to the stars, didn’t I? I took her back to my flat and treated her to much more. She was a passionate lover.

We went out each night for the next week, clubbing, skating, the cinema and the theatre. We always ended at my place. It should have been perfect and it would have been if I’d been made of money. It was champagne all the way for Helena. She had expensive tastes, and since that first evening she didn’t once offer to go halves. It was very clear she expected to be treated to much more — indefinitely.

On the Friday it all turned sour.

We’d been to London because Helena wanted a meal at the Ivy, and the Royal Ballet after. I should never have agreed. I had to take money out of my savings account. Even so, I was horrified at how much it all cost. She didn’t even offer to pay her train fare.

“So where shall we go tomorrow?” she asked in the train at the end of the evening.

“How about a night in for a change?”

“Saturday night? We can’t stay in.”

“I’ve got no choice,” I said. “After tonight I’m cleaned out.” Which should have been her cue to treat me for a change.

“You mean you can’t afford to take me out?”

“It’s been an expensive week, Helena.”

“You don’t think I’m worth it? Is that what you’re saying?”

“That doesn’t come into it. I can’t go on spending what I haven’t got.”

“You’re a freelance journalist. You told me. The national papers pay huge money just for one article.”

At this stage I should have told her I was only a lowly sub-editor on the Argus. Stupidly I didn’t. I tried bluffing it out. “Yes, but to earn a fat fee I have to have a top story to sell. It means months of research, travel, interviewing people. It’s the old problem of cash flow.”

“Come off it,” she said. “You’re a typical Capricorn, money-minded, with the heart and soul of an accountant. I bet you keep a cashbook and enter it all in.”

“That isn’t fair, Helena.”

She was silent for a time, staring out of the train window at the darkness. Then she said, “You’ve been stringing me along. I really thought you and I were destined to spend the rest of our lives together. I gave myself to you, body and soul. I don’t throw myself at any man who comes along, you know. And now you make me feel cheap, keeping tabs on every penny you spend on me. It puts a blight on all the nice things that happened.”

“What a load of horseshit.”

“Pig!”

When we reached the Station she went straight to the taxi-rank and got into a waiting cab. I didn’t see her again. I walked home. At least I didn’t fork out for her fare.

I forgot about Helena when I started going out with Denise. Do you remember the red-head who smiled at me in the Rendezvous? She was Denise. I saw her in a bus queue one afternoon and there was that double-take when each of us looked at the other and tried to remember where we’d met. I clicked my fingers and said, “The restaurant.”

We got on well from the start. I was completely open with her about my bit of astrology-writing in the Argus, and she thought it was a great laugh. She admitted she always read her horoscope and had gone along that Saturday evening in the hope of meeting someone nice. Such openness would have been impossible with Helena, who was so much more intense. I told Denise about Helena, and she didn’t mind at all. She said any woman who expected the guy to pay for everything wasn’t living in the real world. To me, that was a pretty good summing-up of Helena.

“Was she out of a job, or something?” Denise asked.

“No. She has a good income, as far as I know. She’s a scientist with Plaxton’s, the agricultural people.”

“You wouldn’t think a scientist would believe in star signs.”

“Believe me, she takes it very seriously.”

I don’t think we discussed Helena again for some time. We had better things to do.

At work, I’d been keeping a look-out for letters postmarked Tunbridge Wells, just in case The Diviner decided to write back to Mr Peel, but nothing came in except her weekly column — which of course I set without adding so much as a comma. My brown-nosing apology had done the trick. I continued with my boring duties, looking forward to the weekend, when I had another date with Denise. So when a packet arrived for The Diviner, care of the Argus, I did what I routinely do with all the other stuff that is sent to us by people wanting personal horoscopes, or advice about their futures — readdressed it to Tunbridge Wells and tossed it into the mailbag.

On our date, Denise told me she’d had an ugly scene with Helena. “It was Monday lunch-time, in the sandwich stop in King Street. I go there every day. I was waiting in line and felt a tap on my arm. She said, ‘You’re going out with Rob Newton, aren’t you?’ — and made it sound really hostile. I shrugged and said, ‘Yes,’ and then she told me who she was and started telling me you were — well, things I won’t repeat. I tried to ignore her, but she kept on, even after I’d bought my baguette and drink and left the shop. She was in a real state. In the end I told her there was nothing she could tell me I didn’t know already. I said I had no complaints about the way you’d treated me.”

“Thanks.”

“Ah, but I only made it worse. Talking about you treating me was like a trigger. She wanted to know what my birth-sign is. I didn’t say I was Aquarius, but she said I must be, and started to tell me about the piece she’d read in the Argus. I said, ‘Listen, Helena, before you say any more, there’s something you should know. Rob works for the Argus. He wrote that piece himself because he fancied you and knew you believed in astrology.’ That really stopped her in her tracks.”

“I can believe it.”

“Well, it’s time she knew, isn’t it? She’s a damaged personality, Rob.”

“What did she say?”

“Nothing after that. She went as pale as death and just walked away. Did I do wrong?”

“No, it’s my fault. I ought to have told her the truth at the time. It’s a good thing she knows. Her opinion of me can’t get any lower.”

I woke on Saturday to the sound of my mobile. Denise, beside me, groaned a little at the interruption. “Sorry,” I said as I reached across her for it. “Can’t think who the hell this is.”

It was my boss, Mr Peel. “Job for you, Rob,” he said. “Have you heard the news?”

I said, “I’ve only just woken up.”

“There’s been a letter-bomb attack. A woman in Tunbridge Wells. She’s dead.”

“Tunbridge Wells isn’t local,” I said, still half asleep.

“Yes, but it’s a story for the Argus. The dead woman is The Diviner, our astrology writer. Get there fast, Rob. Find out who had anything against the old dear.”

I could have told him without going to Tunbridge Wells.

The police arrested me last Monday morning and charged me with murder. I’ve told them everything I know and they refuse to believe me. They say I had a clear motive for killing the old lady. Among her papers they found a copy of the letter to Mr Peel complaining about her column being tampered with and demanding that the person responsible was “dealt with accordingly.” They spoke to Linda, Mr Peel’s secretary, and she confirmed she’d passed the letter to me. Also in the house at Tunbridge Wells they found my reply with my poor forgery of Mr Peel’s signature. They say I was desperate to keep my job and sent the letter and must have sent the letter-bomb as well. Worst of all, a fingerprint was found on a fragment of the packaging. It was mine.

I told them why I handled the package when it arrived at the Argus office addressed to The Diviner. I said I now believe the bomb was meant for me, sent by Helena under the mistaken impression that I was the writer of the astrology column. I said I’d gone out with her for a short time and she was a head-case. I also told them she’s a scientist with access to agricultural fertilisers, which any journalist would tell you can be used to make explosives. She’s perfectly capable of constructing a letter-bomb.

To my horror, they refuse to believe me. They’ve interviewed Helena and of course she denies any knowledge of the letter bomb. She says she stopped going out with me because I’m a pathological liar with fantasies of being a top London freelance. Do you know, they believe her! They keep telling me I’m the head-case, and I’m going to be remanded for a psychological assessment. My alteration to the astrology column proves that I’m a control freak. Apparently it’s a power thing. I get my kicks from ordering people to do pointless things — and from sending letter-bombs to old ladies.

Will nobody believe I’m innocent? I swear everything I’ve just written is true.