Old Cases New Colours (A Dudley Green Investigation) (The Dudley Sisters Saga Book 9) Read online

  OLD CASES NEW COLOURS

  DUDLEY GREEN ASSOCIATES

  PRIVATE INVESTIGATION AGENCY

  MADALYN MORGAN

  Old Cases New Colours © 2021 by Madalyn Morgan

  Published Worldwide 2021 © Madalyn Morgan

  All rights reserved in all media. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic or mechanical (including but not limited to: the Internet, photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system), without prior permission in writing from the author.

  The moral right of Madalyn Morgan as the author of the work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  CHAPTER FORTY

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

  CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

  Acknowledgments

  Formatted by Rebecca Emin

  www.gingersnapbooks.co.uk

  Book Jacket Designed by Cathy Helms

  www.avalongraphics.org

  I would like to thank editor Nancy Callegari and proofreader Maureen Vincent-Northam.

  Thanks also to Jeanie McKinlay who was the highest bidder for a copy of She Casts A Long Shadow in the 2020 auction for Children In Read. As promised I have named a character after Jeanie. Thank you, Children In Read and The Authors’ and Illustrators’ for giving me the opportunity to contribute to such a worthy cause.

  Old Cases New Colours will be auctioned for Children In Need this year.

  Old Cases New Colours is dedicated to my mother and father,

  Ena and Jack Smith

  CHAPTER ONE

  Ena sat on the narrow step between the office and kitchen. As the Cold Case department, a top security facility of the Home Office, access to the kitchen was through an archway. Now, as the private office of Dudley Green Associates, Private Investigation Agency – advertised discreetly in The Lady Magazine and boldly in The Times – there had been a door fitted. To keep the attractive feature of the arch, Ena had designed a door in the style of a French-window with lattice squares instead of glass for windows. With panels on either side, she thought the door very stylish. It complemented the room perfectly and when closed added to the privacy needed for potential clients to talk about their investigative needs in confidence. Discretion was key. Like a doctor’s surgery, anything discussed in the office of Dudley Green Associates would be confidential.

  Ena leaned against the door and closed her eyes. Had she done the right thing? She had gone against Henry’s wishes, again. Even though his name was on the brass plaque on the wall next to the front door, she had ignored him. She had also ignored the advice of her sisters who were unanimous in their opinion that it would be best to find offices in a different location for a new company. Like Henry, they’d suggested somewhere that didn’t have bad memories. Ena sighed. She hadn’t listened to Henry or her sisters. She had done what she always did, gone headlong like a bull in a china shop and done what she wanted.

  Ena yawned, opened her eyes and looked around the room. It was empty but for two telephones on the floor where there were once desks and where, when delivered later, there would be desks again.

  She liked the office. There was something about it that felt comfortable. She liked Mercer Street and Covent Garden, but it was more than the building and the area. It was, as always, the people. Ena had been fond of the men she worked with when it was the Cold Case department of the Home Office. She looked over to where her friend and colleague, Sid Parfitt, had worked and still wasn’t able to think of him without emotion rising in her throat. Sid, being older, had been protective of her. During the war he had been a codebreaker, first at Beaumanor and then at Bletchley Park. He was a clever man. He was also a bit of a fusspot, which made him thorough.

  It was because of the work Sid did on cold cases that he was killed. Ena had spotted Frieda Voight in Oxford Street; a woman she had worked with during the war and whom she had exposed as a spy. Henry had stated that it was impossible to have seen Frieda because they had been to the funerals of her and her brother Walter ten years earlier. When Sid got close to finding out the truth about Frieda Voight, he was murdered on Waterloo Bridge and his body thrown onto the Embankment. Ena wiped tears from her eyes.

  Her other colleague, Artie Mallory, who worked with her and Sid on cold cases, was in his early thirties. He was tall, had dark, wavy hair, wore fashionable clothes – blazers and slacks and open neck shirts. He was also very good looking, which often got him into trouble. In contrast, Sid wore dark suits, white shirts, wouldn’t be seen without a tie – and you could see your reflection in his shoes.

  With regard to work, Artie had been as casual as Sid had been precise. Sid worked until he had dotted all the i’s and crossed all the t’s, whereas Artie was always ready to leave the office at five-thirty and head for The Salisbury pub, or a club in Mayfair. Ena laughed. Sid was never late for work while Artie often tipped up half an hour late with a hangover. Artie was a chatterbox who loved to gossip, Sid on the other hand didn’t engage in rumour or hearsay. He didn’t speak unless he had something to say. He was what Ena’s mam would call, ‘economical with his words’ except when he and Ena were on their own. Only then did Sid relax and talk more. Similar to Ying and Yang in Chinese philosophy, her ex-colleagues complemented each other, they worked well together and, more importantly, they got results.

  Ena looked around the room. ‘No 8 Mercer Street has some good memories,’ she said aloud. ‘And it’s the good memories I shall focus on!’ Besides, she liked working in such a vibrant location as Covent Garden. The market was expanding, shops were springing up along Long Acre, as were cafés – Coffee Bars – cafés selling strong Italian coffee with music blaring out. Jukeboxes were the latest craze and in some of the coffee bars there was live music
at night. Young men with floppy hair strummed guitars and sang moody love songs. Sometimes there was a duo, or a band of three or four musicians playing rock music and singing in American accents like Elvis Presley, Bill Hayley and Chuck Berry. Covent Garden, Leicester Square and Soho were full of life – and Ena liked being part of it.

  Loud banging brought her out of her reverie. The builders in the flat above the office had finished their tea break and gone back to work. She pushed herself up, crossed the room and taking her handbag from the windowsill she pulled out a notepad and pen. Ena then turned the pad to landscape position and drew a square that almost filled the page. Adding double lines for the doors and window, she then sketched where she would place her desk and the rest of the furniture she’d bought – hoping, as the delivery people had promised – they would arrive early that afternoon. She smiled. There hadn’t been a window when Sid worked there. Standing in exactly the same spot as Sid’s desk had once been, light from the window would now shine directly onto her desk. He had been gone for more than a year, but she still missed him.

  Ena wondered about the nature of work she’d be asked to do as a private investigator. Butterflies stirred in her stomach and she took deep breaths. She was excited to be starting a detective agency and hoped the work would be exciting too. When she first began investigating cold cases for the Home Office the work had fascinated her. She often worked long hours and sometimes didn’t get home until late. Henry worked for MI5 at the time and his hours were equally long, the pair of them often too exhausted at the end of the day to do anything but eat and fall into bed.

  Frieda Voight, the spy Ena had worked with during the war – and who had come into her life again the year before – was the last cold case she had worked on. Frieda had killed herself, which led to the personal assistant to Henry’s boss at MI5, Helen Crowther, committing suicide and framing Henry for murder. Ena had been instrumental in the capture of Crowther’s sidekick, a sociopath named Shaun O’Shaughnessy, as well as the ousting of a top German agent – Ena’s boss at the Home Office, Director Richard Bentley. Bentley had recruited several German agents and promoted them to powerful political and military positions during the thirty years he’d been at the Home Office. What would have been a huge scandal had been hushed up. Bentley was tried for treason, found guilty and hanged, the others had German passports and were in prison. Ena had been called in as a witness for the prosecution at Dick Bentley’s trial. Although the trial had taken place behind closed doors, someone had leaked it to the newspapers and it made the front pages of them all. Ena had neither read the newspapers nor cared about Bentley’s fate. It was too personal and too painful. For almost a year she had kept her head down, spent time with her family in the Midlands and then stayed at home. She needed to spend time with her husband – and she’d enjoyed it, but being a housewife was never going to be enough for Ena.

  Henry had left MI5 almost a year ago and now worked for GCHQ. He often went in to the office early and worked late, so with the new decade of the 1960s, Ena decided it was time she returned to work. She was unaware of exactly what she wanted to do, but when she saw the “For Sale” sign on the wall of her old offices in Mercer Street, she knew where she wanted to work. It took her from New Year until March to gather the money together to buy the premises, late June to knock it into shape and refurbish it and a further month to decorate it. The latter she did herself because she’d almost run out of money. Now, in the summer of the new decade, she was beginning a new career.

  The role of spy catcher, unearthing spies hiding in the shadows of respectability and exposing people who held senior positions in the country’s security services, was too much responsibility for one person. The job made her feel grubby. She’d had enough of dishonest and corrupt people. Working on cold cases for the Home Office, she had no choice but to work on cases that landed on her desk. She had a dilemma. She was good at what she did, so, why not work for herself in a private capacity? However hard it might be until she got to grips with the business and establish a good reputation, it would be better than working for Spooks. As her own boss she could turn down cases if she thought they were morally or ethically opposed to her conscience, were illegal, or if the client was disreputable.

  Ena took a long deep breath and smiled. She was determined to make a success of the investigation agency, and rather than reminiscing over the past, she would look forward to the future and everything a new venture was bound to bring.

  Ena got to her feet. The banging from upstairs had quietened. Later she would go up to see how the builders were getting on, but first the new worktops and kitchen cupboards needed cleaning.

  CHAPTER TWO

  ‘Hello?’

  Hearing a male voice in what she thought was a locked office, Ena looked up. ‘Ouch!’ She had forgotten the cutlery drawer in the kitchen cabinet was open. ‘Artie?’

  Artie Mallory, her colleague from their days working together on cold cases, sounded as surprised to see her as she was to see him. ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Cleaning. What does it look like?’ Ena touched the top of her head where an egg-like swelling had already begun to form. Thankfully, no traces of blood were evident on her hand, meaning she hadn’t cut her head.

  ‘I thought you were going to rent offices above the coffee bar in Maiden Lane. I went in there and the chap behind the counter said you’d decided against working upstairs so I popped into the theatre and the stage doorman showed me your advert in The Times.’

  ‘It’s been in The Times for two days. It’s in The Lady too. Neither ads have brought in any business.’

  Artie looked around the empty office. ‘I’d say that’s a good thing. You’re not ready for business yet.’

  ‘I should have been. The Home Office did everything at a snail’s pace. The paperwork took an age as everything was tied up in red tape. Then, when everything appeared to be going to plan, the furniture people let me down. Anyway, we’re back on track now.’

  ‘You and Henry?’

  ‘No, just me. Henry’s at GCHQ.’ Ena dropped the cloth she’d been cleaning the cupboards with into the bucket, dried her hands and put on the kettle. ‘Which begs the question, why aren’t you there?’

  ‘I’ve resigned,’ Artie announced with an air of grandeur, giving a wide berth to the area in the middle of the room, where the dead body of Helen Crowther, the mole at MI5, had been found the previous year.

  As the kettle began to whistle, Ena looked over her shoulder to ask Artie if he wanted tea or coffee. She laughed. ‘I scrubbed the floor within an inch of its lino-ed life before the new carpet went down. There was nothing to see anyway.’

  ‘I know. It’s just the thought…’ He gave a dramatic shiver. ‘You’re not really going to work in here are you?’

  ‘Why not?’ Ena carried two mugs of steaming coffee into the office and put them on the windowsill. Side-stepping the middle of the room, Artie joined her. Ena laughed again. ‘So,’ she said, taking a sip of her coffee, ‘to what do I owe the pleasure?’

  Artie dropped his gaze and then looked up at her shyly. ‘I’m looking for a job and I can’t think of anyone I’d rather work with than you, Ena. Since you’re the Dudley, and Henry is the Green, I was hoping I could be the Associate.’

  ‘Henry’s only a sleeping partner and it would be fun to work with you again—’

  ‘So I’ve got the job?’

  ‘No, Artie, I’m sorry. If I could afford an associate, you’d be the first person I’d ask, but I just don’t have the money to employ anyone at the moment.’

  Artie sighed heavily. ‘I understand.’

  ‘I don’t think you do,’ Ena replied. ‘Every penny the Home Office gave me when –’ Ena put up her hands and made quotation signs with her forefingers – ‘I was made redundant, and most of Henry’s golden handshake when he left MI5, has gone into buying this place and the flat above. I don’t have a bean left. I couldn’t pay you a salary, Artie. Not at the moment, anyway. St
ick it out at GCHQ for a little while longer and as soon as I get some work – and I’m paid for it – we’ll talk again. Just give me six months to get on my feet.’

  Artie’s mouth fell open. ‘Six months? I’d be a shadow of myself by then. That is if I don’t die of exhaustion first.’

  Ena put her hand on her old colleague’s arm. ‘Is Highsmith that bad?’

  ‘Ye-es! Rupert doesn’t need an assistant, he needs an errand boy,’ Artie said. ‘He treats me like he’s the Head Boy of a public school and I’m his Fag. Character building, he calls it. A way of getting to know each other. Huh! I told him, I said, Rupert, I am thirty-eight years old! I am not an eleven-year-old child living away from home for the first time.’

  ‘You’re talking in the past tense. Artie, have you resigned?’

  ‘I would have, but he got in first and let me go. He got accounts to pay me until the end of the month though.’

  ‘That was good of him.’

  ‘I’ve earned every penny and more.’

  Ena laughed. She knew Rupert Highsmith well. She had crossed swords with him on several occasions in the past. ‘I’m sure you have.’

  ‘He insists we remain friends. No hard feelings and all that,’ Artie scoffed. ‘I’m not sure Highsmith knows the meaning of the word, ‘friend’. Still, whatever we are, we’re meeting for a drink tonight.’

  ‘Is there any chance Highsmith will give you your job back?’

  ‘No.’ Artie grinned. ‘I kind of implied I was coming to work with you.’

  Ena blew out her cheeks. ‘Oh, Artie! It would be lovely, but…’

  ‘We worked well together before. And, you said on the day Highsmith offered me the job at GCHQ that if I changed my mind —’

  ‘I did, and I meant it.’ Artie’s face lit up. ‘But, as I said, I can’t afford to take you on at the moment. Not you, not anyone.’ Artie looked downcast and absent-mindedly stirred his cooling coffee. ‘As soon as I can afford an associate, I’ll let you know, I promise you, Artie.’