17 A Blue Movie

Christie’s Detective Agency Two Part 17 THE BODY IN THE LIBRARY

“I want you to see this, Horace,” said Jenny quietly to Horace next morning, standing next to an elderly television set that hadn’t been there yesterday.

“What is it?” asked her number two as he flopped into what had become his own chair.

“It’s a film,” replied Jenny, “or rather, a rather cheap video that I got funny looks buying, but I heard a rumour.”

She produced an elderly VHS video tape. “I had to get hold of a machine to play it,” she added, “you wouldn’t believe how cheap a second-hand VHS player is now that they’re no longer supported. And I brought my bedroom telly in. You won’t guess what’s on this tape!”

“I’ve never had much to do with tapes like that before,” muttered Horace, not sure what to say.

“You’re merely a youngster,” grinned Jenny, “but when I was younger than you they were all the rage. I spotted this in my favourite charity shop and couldn’t believe my eyes!”

She held the video case out to him and its lurid cover showing an attractive young woman wearing a tiny g-string and nothing else pulling a shocked face at a suited man Horace thought he recognised, but for the moment wasn’t quite sure where from.

“Bearing in mind this is quite a few years old,” she said, “and the bloke on the picture is credited as Leslie Pritchard.”

“Leslie… Pritchard…?” murmured Horace, frowning, “isn’t that what the brother of the man Lofty Foster murdered was called?”

Jenny nodded. “Now, I don’t think I should let a young lad like you see what’s on this lest it corrupt him,” she teased, “that picture on the case is nothing.”

“What about a young woman like you? Might it corrupt you too?” he countered.

“Young woman? That’s so kind of you… but if I put this on for a couple of minutes you might get some idea what I’m thinking.”

She switched the video on. The picture quality wasn’t anything like as good as that of a modern television image, but that didn’t matter because he was greeted by the young woman from the cover picture smiling straight at the suited man as she erotically undid his trousers and, slowly and seductively, slid them down his legs while he grinned in a simpering way at her.

“I know him…” hissed Horace, surely it’s … it’s Mr Leslie, librarian extraordinaire, but years ago…”

“It is,” acknowledged Jenny, “and as you can see and as you put it, he’s very extraordinaire. But the woman?”

“Girl, more like. She can’t be much older than sixteen.”

“With b***s like that? I wish I’d been so well endowed at that age! But don’t you see who it is?”

“The dead Damsel woman, Damsel Eagerhill but when she was young…” whispered Horace, concentrating. “And what on Earth is she going to do to him?”

“Something unsavoury,” murmured Jenny, switching the video off, “and if you get any ideas of me doing it to you you might try thinking again…”

“Jenny!” he almost exploded, and she grinned back at him.

“Well, you might see what I’m thinking about the case,” she continued in a more normal tone of voice. “There’s history here. History we know nothing about. But the video exists. It’s a commercially produced product, sleazy but not too blue, if you see what I mean, as long as you don’t find nudity unpleasant. But once upon a time it must have been available. Probably one of these things that came in a plain brown package if you order them from Amsterdam!”

“So Damsel was into strip-tease,” murmured Horace. “I might have guessed: all the clues were there, the way she dressed when we went to the pub, embarrassing, it was, and not just for me. Two old blokes at the bar might well have had heart attacks at what she was flashing!”

“I was thinking more about our so decent and always seemingly modest Mr Leslie,” said Jenny, “but then, that wasn’t always his name, was it? Mr Pritchard on the credits, so this tape was made before he changed his name and now, I think, I know why he changed it. He didn’t want it getting round amongst the literate types that he’d taken his trousers off for a camera.”

“And not just his trousers,” murmured Horace.

“Quite. So he changed his name and everything like that was comfortably in the past and then questions started to be asked about poor old Lauren Foster. In his mind if in nobody else’s his past might come back to haunt him when he thought his real name might come out in a police investigation. And the only person who really knew about him and his private parts was Damsel, who no doubt got that library job and kept it because he daren’t sack her even though she could be a moody miss.”

“So he killed her,” said Horace thoughtfully. “When it looked likely that questions might be asked about that name change, and that his past might come back to challenge his claim to decency and morality, he knew why and guessed what people might think and got rid of the only person who knew.”

“He did have a steady reputation,” added Jenny. “He’s unmarried, never been married, and I always wondered whether he was gay, not that it would matter these days. And that’s a good thing. But way back, say when this old video was recorded, it might well have caused a lot of talk. Wrong, I know, but homophobia was once as bad as a disease.”

“Do you still wonder whether he’s gay?” asked Horace, “now that you’ve seen some of this video?”

“That doesn’t mean anything,” she told him, “a gay man can have his trousers taken off him by a pretty lass as easily as a straight man. I once thought one of my husbands might have been gay, or at the least bi-sexual. I still wonder even though we’ve been divorced for several years.”

“Put the film back on, just for a minute or two,” asked Horace, “I want to see if she does look like Damsel.”

“Of course she does. I’ve read the credits. He’s Leslie Pritchard and she’s Damsel Beauty. Wrong surname, but she kept her Christian name.”

“Then, and not long after he undressed for the video, he became Dorian Leslie, and hoped that would be the end of it. Go on, let me look at her for at least a couple of seconds!”

“You, Number Two, are a pervert,” replied Jenny, and she switched it back on. After a couple of minutes Horace hissed “there! Look, on her inner thigh where the sun never shines, or shouldn’t, that’s got to be a birthmark.” He pointed at a ruddy mark on the woman’s flesh high on her thigh. “And she’s still got it. She flashed it in The Miller’s Arms the other evening. We all saw it.”

“Then, my perverted young friend, you saw more than was good for you!”

“But, Jenny, I should think it’s why she died. Why she was killed. If anyone got their hands on this tape like you did, then it’s the one thing on her body that probably hasn’t changed!”

“I’ll bet you’re right,” she sighed, “not that she ever flashed her thighs in the library. But she did like to wear almost nothing when she was socialising, and somehow this video has emerged into the light of day.”

“Which in itself is odd,” said Horace thoughtfully, “where did you say you got it?”

“At my favourite charity shop come cafe,” she replied, “and as you say, it is odd.”’

“How do you think they got hold of it?” asked Horace. “It all seems such a coincidence.

“Quite right,” mused Jenny, “I go there a lot and they know me. I’ll go and ask if they remember who donated it.”

“And I’ll come with you if that’s all right,” said Horace, “I could murder a special coffee!”

“Poor boy, so early…” sighed Jenny, winking at him.

© Peter Rogerson 12.10.2

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