‘I was chatting to nice Mr Barnes.’
‘What about?’
‘That’s none of your business, Craig. You really mustn’t keep prying into every nook and cranny of my life. I simply won’t allow it.’
He kicked at the carpet again. ‘Sorry.’
‘I’ll forgive you, dear boy, but don’t do it again. Now, take a look at this.’
Neville held up the latest Collector’s Treasure – Queen Elizabeth the First complete with red wig, starched white lace ruff, gold stomacher and a red velvet gown sewn with a lot of sparkly, coloured glass jewels.
‘Do come and give me your invaluable opinion on how this looks. I don’t want to go over the top.’ He smiled at Craig. ‘You know me. I can get quite carried away.’
Inspector Squibb was no more appealing over the phone than in person.
‘Good of you to call me, Colonel. The old girl did tell us about that.’
‘She seemed very sure of her facts, Inspector. She says she saw Mr King leave after she’d finished watching the BBC six o’clock news. She insists that he left at about a quarter to seven.’
There was a faint sigh. ‘I’ve come across a lot of people like her in the course of my career, Colonel. Especially old women living alone. They like nothing better than to call attention to themselves. They make things up, if necessary. Anything to feel important, for once in their lives. Sometimes they really believe it; other times they just get muddled. Sometimes it’s to get revenge as well as attention. And I dare say Miss Quinn’s nose was out of joint at missing some of the action. After our investigations, I’m quite satisfied with everything that Mr and Mrs Barnes told us and they say they both saw Mr King leave the Hall just after six.’
‘Well, I thought I should let you know about it, Inspector.’
‘As I said, sir, I appreciate your calling me.’
The colonel put down the receiver. Duty had been done. Now surely he could forget all about the unhappy business of Lois Delaney. Put it out of his mind for ever. Miss Quinn had been mistaken or confused, to put a kind interpretation on it. If she had been watching the six o’clock news when Bruce King had actually left, she would not have seen him going. Like Stanley Barnes, the television evening news was probably a high point of Miss Quinn’s day. The time when she sat glued to the screen, oblivious to all else, to focus vicariously on the world’s disasters and miseries and scandals. Even on the weather forecast, for heaven’s sake. The fact was that Miss Quinn, the arch-snooper, was by no means infallible. She had spotted Jeanette Hayes ringing Lois Delaney’s doorbell on New Year’s Eve, but she missed seeing Roy Ward doing the same earlier. Nor had she seen Neville Avery taking his lamp to Mr Barnes for repair. And whoever she had seen going out of the front door couldn’t have been Bruce King. If, indeed, it had been anybody at all.
Thirteen
The colonel had not bought any new shirts since before Laura had died. There hadn’t seemed to be a great deal of point, and, in any case, the ones he already owned had been perfectly satisfactory until recently when he had begun to notice a frayed cuff here, a worn collar there. Time, perhaps, to make a trip to Jermyn Street where the January sales would be on. He’d make a day of it and stay the night at his club.
He phoned Alison to invite her to lunch.
‘Not your gloomy old club, Dad,’ his daughter told him. ‘Let’s go somewhere else.’
They arranged to meet at a restaurant he had heard of but never been to. One of the ‘in’ places.
The next day, he drove to Dorchester station, parked the car and caught the train to London. He took a taxi to his club, deposited his overnight case and went on to Jermyn Street where he bought four new shirts – expensive even in the sale, but undoubtedly worth it. He knew they would look good and wear well. For the hell of it, he also bought two new Italian silk ties – not in the sale.
He arrived early at the restaurant in Soho, before Alison, and waited for her at the bar just inside the entrance, people-watching with interest. The atmosphere was the opposite of the conventional decorum of his maligned club – full of buzz and action. It was obviously popular with the theatre crowd because he recognized several famous faces, one of which had been at Lois Delaney’s funeral. This was, after all, in the middle of theatreland. The other customers were mostly young-ish and looked and sounded confident and highly successful, whatever their path or profession. They’d have to be, he thought drily, glancing at the prices on the menu he’d been given.
Alison arrived on time, dressed in her smart London clothes. Like her mother, though in a different way, she had style. As the song said, you’d either got it, or you hadn’t got it. You couldn’t buy style in a shop, or send for it from a mail-order catalogue; it was unbuyable and indefinable. His daughter’s face lit up as she saw him and her smile reminded him for a second of the young Laura, her mother, and made him catch his breath.
‘Hi, Dad! Great to see you. You’re looking pretty good.’
‘So are you, darling.’
They went through to the dining room and were shown to the table which Alison had pulled strings to get. The head waiter addressed her by name and his daughter was plainly on very familiar ground.
‘The food’s marvellous here, Dad. Nothing at all fancy, but they do it brilliantly. You can have things like sausages and mash, if you like, or shepherd’s pie, or corned beef hash. The calf’s liver’s wonderful, so’s the saddle of lamb and the Barbary duck’s pretty good. I usually have the seared scallops.’
He chose the shepherd’s pie. Naomi had once given him a simple recipe for the same dish but in his hands it had been a disaster. Cooks were born, not made, he reckoned; rather like gardeners. The wine he’d ordered arrived and they clinked glasses. Alison looked happy. He knew that she was extremely good at her job and had been made a director of her company, but he wished, in his old-fashioned way, that she would get married and settle down and have children. All she would ever say on the subject was that she had never met anyone she’d want to spend the rest of her life with, or who’d want to spend his with her. ‘You and Mum are a hard act to follow,’ was usually her comment. ‘You set the bar pretty high.’ It saddened him to think of her reaching his own age and still being alone. At least, he had the memories of his years of happiness with Laura to keep him company.
She asked him about Eric. ‘How on earth did you manage to cope with that spoiled little horror, Dad?’
‘I managed,’ he said with a smile. ‘He’s not as bad as you think. As a matter of fact, we got on rather well in the end.’
‘Good for you. I think I’d have strangled him if it had been me. And I’d probably strangle Susan, too, if I were Marcus. I hope she doesn’t go and spoil the next one rotten when it finally arrives.’
There was no love lost between his daughter and his daughter-in-law – not so surprising when they were poles apart.
‘How’s that ratty old cat? Still with you?’
‘Unfortunately.’
‘Well, he’s company – of a kind.’
‘You make me sound like some old woman.’
‘That’s the last thing you’ll ever be. But I wish you’d come back and live in London, Dad. You’re miles away and it must be pretty lonely down there.’
She had wanted him to buy a flat in London – taken him to see several possibles – but he had decided against it. Alison had her own busy life to lead and he had no wish to intrude upon it. Also, London was an expensive place to live on an army pension and not much else.
Marcus and Susan had often tried to persuade him to live near them but he had resisted that, too – for different reasons. Susan would want to take him over. She’d want to come round daily with healthy casseroles and organic foodstuffs, and keep calling him Father, which he hated.
‘London can be a very lonely place, too.’
‘True. But there’s such a lot going on here. You’d never get bored.’
‘There’s quite a lot going on in Frog End.’<
br />
His daughter pulled a face. ‘Jumble sales and whist drives. Deadly lectures in the village hall.’
He said drily, ‘Not to mention the Venture for Retired People.’
‘The what?’
‘Never mind. There’s plenty to do, believe me.’
‘Are you still treasurer of the summer fête?’
‘I’m afraid so. It’s practically a job for life.’
She pulled another face. ‘After everything you did in the army, it seems a bit of a let down. You really ought to move back to civilization.’ She leaned forward, lowering her voice. ‘Hey, Dad, do you know that woman?’
‘What woman?’
‘The one two tables away on your left. She keeps looking at you.’
He glanced in that direction and encountered a steady gaze and a smile. Not young, but considerably younger than himself, and the smile was definitely come-hither. Or maybe he was imagining it? If he wasn’t careful, he’d end up like Major Cuthbertson, convinced that every attractive woman was lusting after him.
‘No, I don’t know her.’
Alison said, amused, ‘Well, she fancies you, Dad. You’re still a very good-looking bloke, you know. Still knock ’em in the aisles. No chance you’ve met anyone else, I suppose? Marcus and I would be thrilled – so long as she was good enough for you and you’d be happy.’
He had met someone, as it happened, and he had become obsessed by her – but not in the way that Alison meant. A dead woman whom he had never known when she was alive but who he could not get out of his mind.
‘No, I’m afraid not.’
‘Oh, well, we live in hope. It’s bound to happen – sooner or later.’
The shepherd’s pie arrived, together with the scallops, and it was as good as Alison had promised. Even better, in fact.
She said suddenly, ‘I read all about Lois Delaney’s suicide in the papers, Dad. Couldn’t believe she was living in Frog End. I wouldn’t have thought it was her sort of place at all.’
‘It was only temporary.’
‘Did you ever meet her there?’
‘Not exactly.’
‘What do you mean, not exactly?’ He explained.
She stared at him in astonishment. ‘You were the one who found her? You didn’t tell me about that. How on earth did that happen?’
He explained a bit more. No point telling her about his ridiculous conviction that the corpse of Lois Delaney had wanted to speak to him, and that she had not committed suicide at all. Alison would think he had started to go senile. ‘I just happened to be there. Pure chance.’
‘Good heavens! It must have been horrible.’
‘It was certainly very sad.’
‘Funnily enough, I met her agent, Magda Dormon, before Christmas – at a publicity do. Quite a character. She dresses like a man and acts like one. She started talking to me about Lois Delaney and saying she was going to make a big comeback. It’s the sort of thing all theatrical agents say, of course. So-and-so’s going to hit the big time, be a big star, go to Hollywood, make a big comeback. It’s part of their job. I didn’t believe a word of it, really. Lois Delaney was long past it, wasn’t she? She must have been seventy at least.’
‘She was exactly my age, as it happens,’ he said drily. ‘Sorry, Dad. But you know what I mean. There aren’t many good parts for women once they pass the thirty-five mark. Let alone later.’
Rex Farrell had called Lois Delaney’s agent a fearful old dyke, but he had also said that she had been very loyal and done her best. To the end, it seemed.
He said, ‘Is she a well-known agent?’
‘Magda Dormon? Yes, she is, though she’s getting a bit past it, too. I’ve seen her in here once or twice. I think her office is somewhere nearby.’
They had chocolate soufflé afterwards and then coffee.
Alison looked at her watch.
‘Lord, is that the time! I’m really sorry, Dad, but I’ve got to fly. I’ve got a meeting at two thirty. Don’t you move, they’ll get me a taxi. Thanks so much for the lunch.’
She kissed him and rushed off and he finished his coffee and paid the bill. When he left the room, the woman at the nearby table smiled up at him as he passed. He smiled back. No, he hadn’t imagined it.
He collected his coat and the Jermyn Street carrier bag from the cloakroom and asked the girl in charge if she knew where Magda Dormon worked.
‘I’m afraid I don’t, sir.’
The doorman was better informed. ‘Miss Dormon? She’s a regular customer here, sir. Her office is on Shelton Street. Just around the corner. I believe it’s a few doors down on the left.’
He walked slowly along the street, peering at doorways until he saw the brass sign that he was looking for – small and in need of a polish: Magda Dormon. Theatrical Agent. Inside, the building was dark and dingy, the staircase uncarpeted, the paint flaking. Somehow he would have expected Lois Delaney’s agent to work from somewhere much better, but then he knew nothing about the theatrical world. Perhaps agents were judged by their results, not by their surroundings. At the top of the stairs he found a door with another sign – painted on wood this time. When he knocked, there was an answer from within that sounded like a harsh croak. He opened the door cautiously.
A small, squat person was sitting on the other side of a desk, dressed, as Alison had described, in men’s clothing dark suit and waistcoat, white shirt, red and white spotted bow tie. The hair was cut short and dyed bright orange, the head broad, the nose flat, the mouth wide and rubber-lipped, the eyes bulbous. He was reminded of a frog – an exotic, brightly-coloured foreign variety, a very distant cousin to the humble green ones that lived in his pond at the cottage. He would not have been surprised if the nicotined fingers that held a cigarette had been webbed.
‘Miss Dormon?’
Another harsh croak. ‘Yes? What do you want?’
The ashtray on the desk was full of squashed stubs, the air thick with stale smoke. The colonel had smoked plenty in his time before he had given up, but he’d forgotten how disagreeable the habit could be.
He introduced himself. ‘I’ve come about the late Lois Delaney.’
‘What about her?’
‘I believe you were her agent?’
‘For more than thirty years. She never mentioned you.’
‘No, she wouldn’t have done. We never actually met.’
‘So, what are you doing here?’
He explained as best he could. She looked unimpressed. ‘You still haven’t told me why you’re here.’
‘Frankly, I’m puzzled by her suicide. I understand that she’d been offered a leading role in a Noël Coward revival in the West End?’
‘That’s right. Judith Bliss in Hay Fever. Damn good play and she’d have been a big hit.’
‘Her husband, Mr King, testified at the inquest into her death that she’d asked him to put up money for it.’
‘Can’t think why she’d bother to do that. There were already enough backers in the bag.’
‘Mr King said Miss Delaney didn’t trust them not to pull out.’
‘Codswallop! It was all fixed. I told her so. She’d no need to ask him for a brass farthing. Besides, she knew the score with Bruce. It would have been a waste of breath. He lost a packet once before backing a play she was in and raised merry hell. Can’t blame him, really. Anyway, they were getting divorced, so he wasn’t going to feel any obligation, was he?’
‘I imagine not.’
‘Of course, she might have asked him just for the hell of it. To get up his nose and make him look a mean bastard which he was. I wouldn’t have put that past her.’
‘Was she looking forward to returning to the West End?’
‘What do you think, Colonel? She’d been out in the cold for years. When I phoned her about it, she was thrilled to bits. Over the moon. It was a wonderful chance for her and, like I said, she’d have been a big hit. Lord knows why she went and killed herself, the silly goose, but then she was always
unpredictable. Up and down, all the time. Maybe she got cold feet. Maybe she decided she couldn’t cope after so long away from the theatre. She used to suffer from bad stage fright in the early days and it never really goes, you know. Maybe she was afraid of failure and bad notices from the critics. They can be crucifying unless you’ve got a hide like a rhinoceros, and she hadn’t.’ A long, choking drag on the cigarette, a sideways look from the bulging frog’s eyes. ‘Actors are like children, Colonel. They need their hands held a lot. Someone to keep telling them how wonderful they are. I did my best with Lois but I couldn’t be there all the time.’
‘I’m sure you did everything possible, Miss Dormon.’
‘I just wish she hadn’t done it. It would have been good to see her back again. She was a class act. A real star, and there aren’t many of them left.’
The croak had softened and he realized that Magda Dormon’s regret for her late client was genuine – not just for the lost percentage.
‘Yes, it’s a great shame.’
‘Nothing to be done about it, Colonel. She’s gone and there’s an end to it. The show must go on.’
He offered his sympathy and left.
He walked down Charing Cross Road and went into Foyle’s bookshop to browse through the military history section. His mind, however, kept wandering back to Lois Delaney. Damn it, why couldn’t he forget all about her? Why did thoughts keep nagging at him?
Magda Dormon had not understood why Lois would have bothered to ask her soon-to-be-ex husband to back the play, but the agent had not seemed very surprised at Lois Delaney’s suicide, given her unstable temperament, her volatile moods and the fact that she had suffered badly from stage fright. The twin sister had not been surprised either for much the same reasons, except that she had not mentioned the stage fright because she had probably not known about it. After all, she had seen very little of her sister once they had grown up. It was their old nanny who had been close to Lois Delaney: the one whom she visited regularly in Caister-on-Sea; the one to whom she told everything and who always understood. Nanny Oliver.
There were more than twenty residential homes for the elderly in Caister-on-Sea and the colonel had walked the bleak sea front and the windy side streets to call at seven of them before he struck lucky.
THREE SILENT THINGS a cozy murder mystery (Village Mysteries Book 2) Page 16