Contact Tracing Leads To An Unexpected Find
'Randall's Haberdashery, how can I help?'
'Hello, could I speak to Margot Randall please?'
'Yes, I'll go and find her, who am I speaking to, what is it concerning?'
'This is the police in Compton Norton, it's about your delivery driver Rogerio Marsden'
Ms Treadwell dashed to the back of the stockroom, where Margot was deeply absorbed, carefully checking off of a delivery of expensive handmade shawls and throws. Wondering if she'd ordered too many.
'It's the police.... something to do with Rogerio'
Thrusting the phone towards Margot, as though it were burning a hole in her hand.
'Margot Randall speaking'
The Police had been summoned to Compton Norton Cottage Hospital to deal with a highly distraught young man. Desperately looking for an A&E department they did not have. Covered from head to toe in swollen purple lesions. He was In a state of panic, flailing and shouting crazily about plague infected curtains The hospital was immediately closed and cordoned off. The man was taken by air ambulance to Whittlechurch Trust Hospital, isolated in a sealed ICU unit where he remained in a critical condition.
PC Monica Dawson's job was now to piece together the man's movements. Rogerio Marsden, where had he been that day? Gradually pulling together a list of people he may have been in close contact with. Asking them to self isolate until an ambulance could get to them. All quickly leading to this call to Randall's, and to Margot.
'Do you hire Mr Marsden on regular basis Mrs Randall?.'
'Yes, we use his services, have done for the last two or three years.'
'Where was he delivering for you recently'
'Oh, only the one delivery today, a very local one in Brimmingham. Is Rogerio all right?'
'No, I'm afraid he isn't Mrs Randall. Mr Marsden is seriously I'll in hospital I am afraid. Could you tell me what he was delivering and to whom, please?'
'It was some rather unusual curtains to a Ms Julia Goodall-Smillie'
'Unusual, in what way?'
Margot attempted to abbreviate for the police the whole elaborate back story of the curtains. But found herself incapable of the task, instead adding great dollops of dramatic relish, the strange heat, the purple staining, her uneasy alarmed concerns about them. Going on and on. Even as she spoke she had this surge of panic, maybe she shouldn't overdo the melodrama. But failed to stop herself, she was like this dam that once burst had to release every last drop of pent up water.
'This might have serious repercussions for your business Marge. Tone it down, sound more sombre, more caring and professional. Maybe I could sue that dratted fabric company for loss of business, for recklessly endangering the health and lives of me and my staff, for selling faulty merchandise. Legal vengence will be mine.'
How her mind raced ahead of her.
As Margot spoke, Monica at the other end of the phone she became excitedly alarmed by what she heard. Here was the source of it all. Taking down the details of the fabric manufacturer, the address of Randall's and Ms Goodall-Smillie's. Telling her to close the shop immediately. Stop any customers from leaving the premises. To wait with Ms Treadwell until the police and ambulance arrived.
An hour later the whole of Brimmingham was caught up in the housebound equivalent of a whirl of alarm. A police cordon had been erected around Randall's, and Francine's little cottage. The normally peaceful little Georgian cul-d-sac where Ms Julia Goodall-Smillie lived, had become a hive of CSI and TV news activity. A barrier blocked off the entrance to the road. No one, not even residents, allowed out, nor in. Grumbles of outrage, stirred up by cockeyed theories, were passed around in great measure. Telephoned from house to house. Semaphored along each picturesque side street. Settling like dust around the collision of old codgers, informally gathered on their mobility scooters beneath the medieval market cross.
Meanwhile, the number of masked individuals appearing, blue gloved and dressed in white hazmat suits, seemed ever increasing. Once all necessary back up was in place, there was a move towards the house. A police team ascended the doorsteps, knocking loudly on Julia's front door.
'Its the police, Ms Goodall-Smillie'
With all the noise and kerfuffle that had been going on outside, if Julia had still been conscious the door would have opened long before now. She'd have stood looking disdainful, and with all her customary flair for heightened syntax and foul language, would have bellowed.
'Could you inform me what the fucking hell is going on? Which person is in charge here ? I want to speak to that numbskull right now!.'
But there was no such appearance, no such response, no such imperious voice to be heard echoing along this elegant rural street.
After a couple more hails, the team, with hand held enforcer battering rams unceremoniously shattered the door off its hinges. The fact that the door was eighteenth century and part of a grade two listed Georgian terrace, caused a collective sharp intake of breath. Mainly amongst the residents locked away behind their own ancient doors. They looked on in abject horror, whilst phoning the County Council's conservation department to check whether such behaviour was quite the done thing. The Facebook page for Enjoy Brimmingham More rose up into a state of apoplexy. Never had so few had so much to complain about.
On the threshold, the heavy duty police grunts hovered briefly before backing away to let the onsite forensic pathology team thoroughly,. One look inside made everyone exclaim.
Shiiiit!
'Hello.......Ms Goodall-Smillie.... are you there?....are you OK?
No response.
Cautiously they stepped into a once elegant hallway now completely infested with a network of vivid purple veins and glittering winking eye shapes. Running across walls, around light fittings, stairwells and newel posts. A mouldy rancid aroma assaulted nasal passages. A two person group split off upstairs, the main group turned left into the front room. Stepping whenever possible over or around the veins, which spread like fan vaulted peacock feathers across the floor and ceiling. In the middle of the front room lay a disquieting spongy foetus like mound.
The lead forensic investigator spoke via com link.
'We've found a body..a body form. It's moving, well, its making breathing like movements, but I cannot be sure its actually alive. Everything in this room weirdly pulses. If this is her she could be comatose. The body form has purple skin lesions similar to the guy in hospital. But much more advanced. There are several major tendrils spreading out from the curtains that are enveloping this.... form. It appears to have become woven into them. I really don't understand what it is we are dealing with here.
I suggest we exit the building and consider what our next move should be. This doesn't feel at all safe to me. All units vacate the premises ASAP follow the established exit protocols, to the letter please!'
From then on over the following days the forensic team moved with extraordinary care, slowly moving through the house. Whilst efforts to discover a way to contain 'the purple plague' as it had become known, progressed. It had taken a while for Retinal Hemorrhage, the rather recalcitrant fabric manufacturer, to relay the information that they might try a common mordant dye fixing agent, in a high concentration. This might at least neutralise it. Which it did. The house and those in the surrounding area evacuated whilst a thorough fumigation was done. The mordant agent sprayed everywhere, outside and in, to prevent any likelihood of resurgence.
What was left of the body of Ms Julia Goodall-Smillie, once released from its cocoon, partly liquified, could then be pronounced officially dead.
Rogerio Marsden having struggled to keep a hold on life in ICU for several weeks, suddenly pulled through and was now on the way to a full recovery. Making a life changing decision to live in Thailand, to join an eco village,to join a Buddhist monastery, or find a wife there. He'd not yet decided which.
Everyone else connected via Randall's, including their fortunately very cautious seamstress Francine, were relieved to be found clear of infection. What with prolonged, direct skin contact with the fabric being apparently the primary vector of transmission.
Retinal Hemorrhage ended up being litigated or investigated on so many fronts. All their fabrics impounded, tested and then destroyed. So in the end they did a runner. Before their links to a Swiss based Dark Material Arts Commune emerged. Funded, on the surface at least, by a perfectly respectable Hedge Fund, also now suspended whilst other links were checked out.
Randall's itself never quite got over it. In the febrile imaginations of Margot and all her staff, simply handling any curtain fabric made their skin crawl for a long long time afterwards. The hardest thing was tolerating and keeping patient, with having to politely accommodate the heightened level of wariness and bizzare apparel of their customers. Sporting a range of improvised liberty silk scarves with holes cut through for eyes, ski goggles. truly grubby tweed face masks and badly adapted gardening or motorbike gloves. The Covid pandemic and half baked recollections of the war, both had a lot to answer for.
But then a strange epilogue to the weird tale of Ms J Goodall-Smillie and her infectious 'devil' curtains surfaced. Disturbing and enigmatic in equal measure.
Compton Norton Chronicle & Advertiser - Another Plague House Discovery
After weeks of increasingly odd revelations coming from the Brimmingham 'plague house', you might be forgiven for thinking things could not get anymore baffling or alarming. Recently the police stumbled across another body in the house. This time the death was not a result of the strange infection. It was the murdered body of a woman in her thirties, found in an old chest freezer in the house cellar.
DNA samples and dental records have both confirmed that these were the remains of a woman, who went missing from her cottage in Lower Pullingham six years ago. Early indications, as yet unconfirmed, are that she had been held captive for some time, before being killed. Her death being probably two years ago. Police are appealing to people in the Brimmingham to Compton Norton area for any information regarding past sightings of this woman near the house or local vicinity. She was quite distinctive as she was an unusually tall person, well over six foot five inches. The police have released a photo of the woman and her chosen name at time of death - Simone Calvin.
Appendix
If you would like to read all five episodes of Curtains My Dear, Curtains again, in one complete sequence, click the link in Labels for Curtains My Dear Curtains or The Friday Serial. This should pull up all the previous episodes, hopefully in the right order. Blogger can sometimes act a bit contrary.
Thanks for reading. Hope you enjoyed it.
There will be another The Friday Serial, once I've thought of an idea to write about.
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