Murder in the Morning

by Betty Rowlands

  Doctor Mortimer gave a pale smile and murmured something about refreshments.

  ‘Not for us, thank you,’ said Melissa firmly. ‘We’ve got a train to catch.’ She took Iris by the arm and steered her towards the exit, cutting short his speech of thanks.

  ‘What’s the rush?’ Iris wanted to know. ‘Train’s not till six thirty.’

  ‘I want to look for Lou Stacey. The poor girl’s very upset.’

  ‘The child with the clown’s face who won the Shield? Saw her go tearing off. What’s up with her?’

  ‘I’ll explain later.’ They had reached the main entrance, washed along by the departing crowds. ‘The car park’s probably the best bet.’

  ‘Not that way. Students park round the back.’ Iris piloted Melissa along a corridor, out through a side entrance and along a path leading to a service road behind the building. They had just reached the gate when a sleek sports car with its hood down tore past, slowing briefly at the junction with the main road before racing away with a screech of rubber and a swirl of exhaust. Rick Lawrence was making his exit from Ravenswood.

  ‘Didn’t have the girl with him,’ said Iris.

  ‘Oh dear!’ lamented Melissa. ‘Where can she have got to?’

  ‘Over there.’ Iris nodded towards the footpath leading from the students’ car park. Lou came trudging towards them, still clasping the shield in her arms and dragging her feet as if ready to drop from exhaustion. When she saw Melissa she ran forward and fell on her shoulder, weeping noisily.

  ‘He wouldn’t even speak to me!’ she sobbed. ‘He’ll do something silly, I know he will!’

  ‘Nonsense!’ said Iris briskly. ‘Made his gesture . . . got it off his chest. Where’s your hanky?’ Lou fumbled uselessly in her pocket and Iris pushed a tissue into her hand. ‘Take this and mop up, you look a sight.’

  Lou blotted her eyes and blew her nose. An awed realisation of who she was speaking to chased some of the misery from her face.

  ‘Oh, Miss Ash, thank you, you’re so kind!’ she stammered.

  ‘Where can we get some tea?’ demanded Iris.

  ‘The refectory’s open till five.’

  Iris glanced at her wristwatch. ‘That’ll do if we get a move on.’ She marched back towards the college building with Lou and Melissa trailing behind in single file like goslings after a goose.

  It was a quarter to five, the refectory was almost empty and the frenetic energy of the blue-overalled staff as they wiped tables and upended chairs made it clear that further customers were neither expected nor welcome. Ignoring the hostile glances, Iris installed her charges at a table and strode across to the counter, returning with three cups of tea on a tray.

  ‘Looks ghastly but it’ll have to do.’ She took a mouthful from her own cup, grimaced and set it down. ‘Just as foul as it was in my day!’ she observed. ‘Now Lou, what’s all the tragedy about?’

  Lou leaned on her elbows, tugging with nervous fingers at her spiky hair, and gave a huge, melodramatic sigh. ‘Oh, it’s such a mess,’ she groaned. ‘I don’t know where to begin.’

  ‘Then let me guess. You’re in love with Rick, he fell for . . . what’s her name?’

  ‘Angelica.’

  Iris grinned. ‘Sounds like cake decoration!’ Lou’s red lips wavered into a smile that earned her a nod of encouragement. ‘So Angelica spurns Rick and he salves his wounded pride by publicly knifing her portrait. Is that it?’ Lou opened her mouth but Iris hadn’t finished. ‘Not very bright, was it?’ she said dismissively. ‘Shouldn’t waste time feeling sorry for him if I were you.’

  ‘You don’t understand!’ Lou declared with passion. ‘What she did was diabolical! It would have sent anyone over the top.’ A tear fell off the end of her nose and plopped into her cup.

  ‘Stop grizzling and tell us then!’ commanded Iris. ‘We’ll have to go in a minute; the staff are giving us dirty looks.’

  ‘It’s all such a mess!’ Lou repeated, scrubbing her face with the mascara-blackened tissue. ‘There was this party for Angy’s birthday. Rick’s parents organised it with her Uncle Vittorio and her Aunt Rosina – her parents are dead you see – and Rick brings out this ring and puts it on Angy’s engagement finger.’

  ‘So Rick and Angelica are engaged?’ asked Melissa.

  ‘Not any more, and they never were, really. I mean, he’d never actually proposed to her, he just assumed because they’d been going together, she’d . . . well, I suppose he thought it would be a romantic thing to do. He’s like that.’ Lou gave a wistful sigh, as if recalling happier times.

  ‘So Angelica said “no thank you” and handed back the ring?’ suggested Melissa. Lou’s lip curled.

  ‘That would have spoiled the party, wouldn’t it? Angy hates to see people unhappy and she hates scenes. She always looks for the easy way out. And there was this jolly crowd of Italians and their guests, happily guzzling their pizzas and their spaghetti alla Bolognese, and dotty old Aunt Rosina crying “Mama mia!” and shedding tears of joy into her Chianti.’ Lou emptied a packet of sugar into her lukewarm tea and flailed it with her spoon. ‘She couldn’t upset all those lovely people, could she? Oh no!’

  ‘But she didn’t want to marry Rick?’ Melissa pursued.

  ‘No, but she didn’t want to part with all the goodies either.’ Lou’s eyes sparked with malice. ‘She had a fancy ring that’d belonged to one of Rick’s great-great-aunts, and then when we got home that night Aunt Rosina dived into an old tobacco tin and handed over five hundred pounds she’d been saving up for her wedding dress.’

  ‘You were there?’ asked Iris.

  ‘I live with the Carolis, and Angy and I are supposed to be friends, would you believe? I’d been going out with Rick and he called round for me one evening and saw her.’ Lou’s voice trembled and tears welled again but she fought them bravely. ‘They were on different courses and they might never have met if it hadn’t been for that.’

  ‘So what happened next?’ asked Melissa.

  ‘She took off.’

  ‘Left home, you mean? Don’t tell me she took the ring and the money too?’

  Lou nodded. ‘They were hers, weren’t they? Nobody asked if she wanted them; they just handed them over and she took them. That’s what she’s like. Life is one big cherry tree and if the best cherries fall into her mouth, why shouldn’t she eat them? Someone else can clean up the stones after she’s spat them out.’ Lou finished her tea and slammed down her cup, making the spoon dance in the saucer. ‘Poor Ricky,’ she whimpered.

  ‘Conceited young fool!’ snorted Iris. ‘No right to take the girl for granted. Should have asked first and saved a lot of grief all round!’

  Lou looked indignant. ‘He only meant to make her happy and she’s broken his heart!’ she protested.

  ‘Rubbish! Fractured his ego, that’s all. Shouldn’t have hopped off with Auntie’s money though. That was naughty. Any idea where she’s gone?’

  ‘Not yet, but she’s sure to be in touch with her aunt. Old Vittorio’s furious with her at the moment but he’ll come round. Everyone forgives the lovely Angelica . . . except me, that is. I can’t forgive what she’s done to Rick.’

  ‘He’ll survive,’ said Iris drily.

  ‘Do you think he might come back to me?’ said Lou pathetically, mopping up a fresh trickle of tears.

  Iris’s eyes held a mischievous twinkle. ‘Quite possibly,’ she said, ‘but not if he sees you looking like that. Go home and clean that muck off your face!’ She stood up. ‘Must be off now. You all right to get home?’

  ‘Oh, yes thanks, I’ve got my bike.’ Lou turned from one to the other. ‘You’ve been so kind.’

  ‘Forget it,’ said Iris. ‘Done my friend here a favour. She’ll write a scorcher about an Italian family vendetta, only the villain will knife the real girl, not her portrait!’

  Lou gaped at Melissa. ‘Are you a crime writer?’

  Melissa nodded, smiling.

  ‘Surely you’ve heard of Mel Craig!’
said Iris.

  ‘Of course!’ said Lou, once more overawed. ‘I should have recognised you, only . . . ’ Her cheeks turned pink and she fidgeted with the strap of her bag.

  ‘Only you had other things on your mind.’ Melissa patted her shoulder. ‘Don’t worry about it.’

  ‘But I should . . . I saw you in Bookworm on the box last month! I remember thinking, I couldn’t believe it when you said you had a grown-up son. You look ever so young!’

  ‘Well, thank you,’ said Melissa.

  ‘What do you know, I’ve met two famous people today!’ Almost cheerfully, Lou shouldered her bag, said goodbye and left them.

  When they reached Paddington their train was already in the station.

  ‘Thank goodness that’s over!’ Iris threw her coat on the rack, settled into a window seat and combed her hair with her fingers.

  Melissa, sitting opposite, winced as the stylist’s careful handiwork disintegrated.

  ‘That Mortimer’s an idiot,’ Iris continued. ‘Must have been everyone’s second choice!’

  ‘That’s just what I thought,’ Melissa agreed. ‘I could see you suffering while he was telling everyone how wonderful you are. I was the one who talked you into doing it – I hope it wasn’t too much of a bore.’

  ‘Shan’t hold it against you,’ said Iris. ‘Worth it to see that fool’s face when young Rick knifed the picture!’

  ‘Angelica can thank her stars it was only the picture he knifed! Some girls have the cheek of the devil.’

  ‘Partly his own fault. Knew a case like that once.’ Iris grew reflective. ‘Student in my year thought this girl was pining away for love of him and all the time she was having it off with someone else.’

  ‘Don’t tell me this guy vandalised the girl’s portrait as well?’

  Iris cackled. ‘Not he! Blacked her eye and then beat the hell out of the other chap. Sensation of the summer term!’ She yawned and closed her eyes as the train began to move. ‘Let’s get home for some peace and quiet.’

  Three

  A few days later, Melissa looked up from tending her garden to see Major Dudley Ford approaching along the track that connected her own and Iris’s cottages with the lane leading to the village of Upper Benbury. She always thought of him as an eccentric, slightly comic individual and his appearance today reinforced the impression. The open collar of his baggy shirt was frayed and his amply cut khaki shorts, a relic of his service in the tropics, flapped round his thighs. He had evidently been sitting in the sun, for his bare knees were salmon pink above long woollen socks. Sinbad, his fat King Charles spaniel, rolled along behind him; at the sight of Binkie sprawled on the path outside Iris’s front door the dog plunged forward, yapping excitedly, then skidded to a halt as the cat formed a croquet hoop, spitting defiance.

  ‘Heel sir!’ ordered the major, flourishing his stick above Sinbad’s nose.

  ‘What’s going on?’ Iris appeared, snatched Binkie into her arms and cuddled him protectively. ‘Oh, it’s you, Dudley. Do wish you’d keep that beast under control. Did the nasty doggie frighten him then?’ she crooned into the cat’s ear.

  Seeing the opposition immobilised, Sinbad began yapping again.

  ‘Quiet!’ Ford’s normally florid face turned a deeper purple under its crown of thick white hair. Then, remembering his manners, he gave an affected bow. ‘Good afternoon, Iris, good afternoon, Melissa. My good lady asked me to deliver these.’ He handed each an envelope. ‘We’re giving a little drinks party on Friday evening. Just an informal affair to welcome our new neighbours to the village. I do hope you can come.’

  ‘What a kind thought,’ said Melissa. ‘Thank you very much.’

  ‘You’ve decided to forgive them, then?’ said Iris with a smile that held a hint of malice.

  ‘Eh? What’s that?’

  ‘The newcomers!’ Iris raised her voice a decibel or two. ‘You’ve forgiven them for having the cheek to come and live here?’

  Ford coughed. ‘Yes, well, the real culprit was old Freda Gallard for selling the land.’

  ‘Can’t blame her. Henry Gallard left her with hardly a bean to her name.’ Iris and the irascible old warrior had fought in opposing camps over the elderly widow’s battle to secure planning consent for four houses in part of her garden.

  ‘Hrmmph!’ Ford glowered, then remembered that his mission was one of friendship. ‘Well, now it’s done we have to let bygones be bygones. I must say,’ he went on condescendingly, ‘the two families who’ve moved in so far seem quite a decent class of people. Perhaps you’ve seen them around?’ Iris and Melissa shook their heads and he beamed at having information to impart. ‘Chap called Shergold, some sort of academic at Stowbridge Tech with a mousey little wife, and a civil engineer. Kent, I think the name is, or Essex . . . some county or other, haahaahaa!’ When he laughed he sounded like a sheep with something stuck in its throat. ‘Young Mrs County’s a smart little filly,’ he added with a leer. ‘Make some of the wives round here sit up, and the husbands too, haahaahaa!’ Well, I must be getting along.’

  With a jaunty wave of his stick he retreated, oblivious to the lukewarm response of the two ladies to his jocular remarks.

  ‘What an old gossip he is!’ remarked Melissa when he was out of earshot. ‘However does Madeleine put up with him?’

  Iris grunted. ‘She’s as bad as he is. Proper old busybodies, the pair of them. Only invite people to sus them out. Do it for all the newcomers; got the treatment yourself, remember?’

  Melissa did remember being entertained by the Fords one evening soon after her arrival. She had appreciated the opportunity of meeting some of the local residents but had no recollection of gratifying anyone’s interest in her own affairs. Rather the reverse.

  ‘I seem to remember asking quite a few questions myself,’ she recalled with a smile. ‘Writer’s natural curiosity, you know.’

  ‘That’s probably why you’ve been invited. They’ll pump you later to see if you’ve found out anything they haven’t.’

  ‘What a cynic you are!’

  ‘You’ll see.’

  ‘We’re going then?’

  ‘Might as well.’

  On their way home from the drinks party at Tanners Cottage, the Fords’ draughtily genuine Queen Anne residence, Melissa and Iris, in mellow mood, exchanged impressions of the new arrivals in the village.

  ‘Eleanor Shergold’s a bit of a mouse,’ observed Iris. ‘Nice little thing, though. Didn’t take to what’s-his-name – the husband.’

  ‘Rodney? Neither did I,’ agreed Melissa.

  ‘Self-opinionated ass!’

  ‘Yes, isn’t he. He informed me,’ here Melissa began chanting in exaggeratedly sonorous tones, ‘that he has a Pee Aitch Dee in history, is Head of the School of Extra-Mural and Non-Vocational Studies at Stowbridge and is writing a book on neolithic burial mounds. Declaimed it like an actor reciting a Shakespearean prologue. When I asked his wife what her interests were and she said she did a little painting, he practically squashed her flat.’

  ‘Never mentioned her painting to me,’ said Iris, sounding a trifle piqued. In recent months she had developed an interest in nurturing amateur talent.

  ‘Probably scared off by your reputation. Incidentally, Doctor Shergold,’ Melissa gave the title an ironic emphasis, ‘has offered me a job.’

  Iris’s jaw dropped. ‘Doing what, for goodness’ sake?’

  ‘Running a writers’ workshop. I said I’d think about it. He said I could have a free hand, and it’d only be one afternoon a week,’ Melissa continued, in response to Iris’s dubious frown.

  ‘Up to you. Couldn’t work for that pompous twit myself.’

  ‘I think it could be fun.’

  Iris shrugged, then gave a grin that fleetingly reduced her age from fifty-something to twenty-something. ‘Talking of fun, did you notice our Dudley making up to Harriet Yorke?’

  ‘I did.’ Melissa chuckled at the recollection. ‘She is rather dishy, isn’t she? Madeleine
was fairly baring her teeth. You could almost see the vitriol dripping into the avocado dip!’

  ‘I’ve had an idea!’ Iris came to an abrupt halt by the roadside and made a sweeping, melodramatic gesture with her arms. ‘How’s this for a plot for one of your novels? Ford and Shergold are both after Harriet, who is found in a cowshed with a hayfork through her gizzard. Whodunnit, Madeleine Ford, Eleanor Shergold or the postmistress?’

  ‘Iris, you are a goose!’ cried Melissa, and the two women laughed like schoolgirls and devised variations on the absurd theme for the rest of the way home.

  Four

  The Mid-Cotswold College of Arts and Technology, known to its administration and lecturers as MIDCCAT but to most of the residents of Stowbridge as ‘the Tech’, had long outgrown its nineteen-sixties campus and at various times had acquired further properties in other parts of the town. The School of Extra-Mural and Non-Vocational Studies was quartered in a draughty Edwardian house, supplemented by a group of prefabricated buildings in the extensive gardens and presided over by Doctor Rodney Shergold. In his office on the ground floor, the learned doctor planned his courses, wrote his reports and made pronouncements to his staff to the accompaniment of feet tramping up wooden staircases and the scrape of chairs on the uncarpeted floors of the rooms overhead. It was here that Melissa found him when she arrived to conduct her first writers’ workshop.

  It was a large, well-proportioned room with a high ceiling and tall sash windows which had a dwarfing effect on both the furniture and its occupant. There were bookshelves along two of the walls, a wooden cupboard, a filing cabinet, some chairs and a table and two desks. On the smaller of these a covered typewriter proclaimed the territory of the part-time secretary, who was not at the moment in attendance. Rodney Shergold, sharp-featured, bespectacled and balding, sat at the other making notes in the margin of a closely-written sheet of foolscap, his head propped on his free hand, the epitome of a dedicated scholar.

  ‘You’re in very good time,’ he commented, raising his head after what appeared to be a deliberately measured interval.