Murder in the Morning

by Betty Rowlands

  Melissa shook her head. ‘I’m not saying Eddie’s incapable of violence but in this case I think you’re on the wrong track. According to Ken Harris, she has a cast-iron alibi. She was in her office all Tuesday afternoon and went straight off for a couple of days on some residential course.’

  ‘People do sometimes manage to leave their offices without anyone noticing.’ Sybil was not going to abandon her theory without a fight and, thinking of Rodney Shergold and his spare jacket, Melissa could not dismiss the idea out of hand.

  ‘Supposing she slipped out during the afternoon, perhaps to go home for something she’d forgotten?’ Sybil continued eagerly. ‘She might have gone up to see Angy and found Delia Forbes there . . . ’

  ‘Playing sex games with Angy on the bed? You’re not serious!’

  Sybil’s jaw dropped. ‘Really, Melissa, that’s quite disgusting! I’m surprised at you!’ It hadn’t taken much to disturb the woman-of-the-world pose.

  ‘I can’t believe that finding Angy having a cup of tea with a middle-aged housewife would have incited Eddie to commit murder,’ said Melissa flatly. ‘Anyway, the police will have checked everyone’s movements very carefully and if Eddie had left her office during Tuesday afternoon I’m sure they’d know about it.’

  ‘So really, we haven’t achieved anything by going to visit that per . . . to visit Eddie?’

  ‘One interesting fact emerged after you’d gone.’ Melissa told Sybil about the missing sketch. ‘So far as we know, the police aren’t aware of its existence. In spite of what Eddie said, it’s possible that Angy gave it to Delia but if Eddie’s right, then it looks very much as if Delia – or someone else – took it. But why? And how did she manage to do it without Angy knowing? Eddie said she was very meticulous about counting the sketches as she put them away.’

  ‘Let’s ask her?’ suggested Sybil. ‘I’ve looked up her number.’

  ‘Could do.’

  Sybil picked up the telephone and dabbed at the buttons with a well-scrubbed finger. ‘Funny,’ she said after a moment, ‘I’m getting the unobtainable tone.’

  ‘Try again.’

  Sybil tried again, with the same result. ‘The line must be out of order. Never mind, I’m going into Cheltenham tomorrow to the library. I’ll call round and see her . . . it’s only just round the corner. If she’s out, I’ll leave a note.’

  ‘Fine.’ Melissa stood up and moved towards the door. ‘I think I’ll be going now. I’m going to have a word with Chief Inspector Harris this evening.’

  Sybil’s eyes sparkled. ‘You will keep me posted, won’t you? This is really quite exciting!’ Her face grew sad again. ‘You know, I do so hope Angy wasn’t really like that. I hate to think of her and that . . . and that Eddie . . . ’

  ‘I’m beginning to think that under the charming exterior, our Angy was quite amoral,’ said Melissa thoughtfully. ‘If Eddie was going to offer her security, she might have gone along with it.’

  ‘But it’s horrible!’ Sybil wrinkled her nose as if she had suddenly detected a smell from the drains. ‘If that’s what was going to happen, then the girl’s better off dead!’

  ‘You can’t mean that!’ exclaimed Melissa, appalled.

  ‘Oh yes, I do!’ Sybil’s features set in a blank mask of prejudice.

  There was no point in arguing. Melissa descended the stairs to the front door with Sybil following. ‘I’ll give you a call if I learn anything interesting from Ken Harris.’

  ‘Oh yes, please do!’

  When Melissa got back to the college it was after half-past five and the car park was almost empty. The rush-hour would be at its height, with long tail-backs at the busiest junctions; she resigned herself to a tedious journey home. Approaching a set of traffic lights where she normally went straight on, and where the queue ahead seemed to stretch into infinity, she realised that only a few cars were waiting to turn left into the Cheltenham road. On an impulse, she joined them.

  It was six o’clock when she reached the outskirts of the town and the traffic had dwindled to a trickle. She found a parking space near the Queen’s Hotel and strolled across Imperial Gardens where a few tourists were admiring the spring flowers and chestnut blossom in the Promenade. Ten minutes of easy walking brought her to the cul-de-sac where Delia Forbes lived.

  It was almost like turning the clock back a couple of centuries. The tiny Regency houses had no doubt been listed to spare them the attentions of developers; from the state of the paving stones and the grass-studded cracks in the roadway, it seemed that the town council too had passed them by. Yet the houses themselves were trim and well maintained, with bright varnish, window-boxes, polished doorknockers and newly-painted railings. There were a couple of trees on the pavement and between them one or two cars were parked. A blue Mini arrived and began manoeuvring into the limited space remaining as Melissa picked her way along the uneven path and knocked on the door of number three.

  Almost immediately, the ground-floor window of the house next door flew up and the head of an elderly woman popped out between the curtains like a character in a Punch and Judy show. Beneath a halo of white hair, her face had the texture of a withered apple.

  ‘She’s away!’ the apparition announced.

  ‘Oh dear!’ Melissa was nonplussed. ‘Have you any idea when she’ll be back?’

  ‘Eh?’ A shrivelled hand made a cupping gesture. ‘You’ll have to speak up!’

  Melissa approached the railings which separated the house from the path. ‘When . . . will . . . she . . . be . . . back?’ she shouted.

  ‘Went this morning. Back in a day or two!’ the old woman croaked. Her face lit up and she waved to someone behind Melissa. ‘Evening Miss Matthews!’

  ‘Evening, Mrs Rogers!’

  Melissa swung round. A young woman who had evidently just got out of the Mini was approaching. She walked briskly, carrying a manila file in one hand and a bunch of keys in the other. She was smiling at the old woman in the window; she nodded to Melissa as she climbed the two or three stone steps leading to the house.

  Mrs Rogers leaned out. ‘Thought you were never coming!’ she grumbled. ‘Been expecting you since Thursday!’

  ‘Today is Thursday!’ Miss Matthews gave Melissa a sidelong glance as she inserted a key in the lock of Mrs Rogers’s front door.

  ‘Excuse me, do you live here?’ asked Melissa.

  Miss Matthews shook her head. ‘I’m a social worker,’ she explained. ‘I call round and see her once a week to make sure she’s got everything she needs. She manages pretty well on the whole but she’s a bit vague. I’ll be glad when the neighbour gets back from Australia.’ She jerked her head towards number three.

  ‘Australia?’ echoed Melissa in bewilderment.

  Miss Matthews nodded. ‘Visiting her daughter. Mrs Rogers misses her dreadfully. She’s awfully good about popping in to see her. The poor old lady loves a bit of company and her legs are bad so she can’t get out much.’

  ‘I don’t understand,’ said Melissa. ‘Mrs Rogers said Mrs Forbes went away this morning and . . . ’

  ‘Oh, don’t take any notice of that!’ said Miss Matthews with a grin. ‘She’s been saying that since last November . . . I suppose it’s wishful thinking.’

  ‘Last November! There must be some mistake! I’m talking about Mrs Forbes at number three.’

  Miss Matthews nodded. ‘That’s right. Nice woman.’

  ‘Are you going to stand there gossiping all day?’ demanded Mrs Rogers peevishly. ‘It’s me you’re here to see!’ She treated Melissa to a baleful glare.

  ‘Just coming.’ Miss Matthews opened the door and stepped inside. ‘You could put a note through her letter-box if you want to contact her,’ she suggested. ‘I believe someone comes in to pick up the post from time to time.’

  ‘You don’t happen to know . . . ’ began Melissa but the door had already closed. Simultaneously the window slammed shut and there was nothing but a quivering of curtains where Mrs Rogers’s face had been
.

  Melissa walked back to her car, trying to make sense of this new development. Obviously, the Delia Forbes who had been attending Angy’s art classes and whom she suspected of having taken one of the sketches, was not the Mrs Forbes who inhabited number three Regency Terrace. Yet the address was correct; maybe there was a relative – a sister-in-law or another daughter perhaps – living there . . . but in that case the phone should still be working and there would be no need to arrange for someone else to come in to pick up the post. It was all very strange.

  The day had been cool and overcast with intermittent drizzle but now the sky had begun to clear and the dappled clouds made a patchwork of blue and pale grey with a hint of hazy gold. When Melissa reached home, Iris, in slacks and a baggy sweater, was leaning on her gate studying the sky as if assessing the prospects for tomorrow’s weather. She waved as the Golf drove past.

  ‘Had a good day?’ she called as Melissa closed the garage door after putting the car away.

  ‘Not bad. It’s nice to get a glimpse of the sun, isn’t it?’ Melissa strolled across, leaned against Iris’s fence and closed her eyes, listening to the bleating of young lambs and the chuckle of a solitary starling on the roof. ‘Oh, isn’t this peaceful!’

  ‘Something on your mind?’

  ‘Sort of.’ Melissa opened her eyes and glanced round. ‘Your cousin gone home?’

  ‘Gone to London for a couple of days.’ Iris yawned, stretched and pushed up one sleeve to scratch an arm. ‘Not sorry to have a break. Nice fellow but visitors upset the routine.’

  ‘He’s coming back then?’ Melissa felt no particular interest in the man’s movements but it was comfortable standing here, chatting to Iris about things totally unconnected with the death of Angy and the attendant anxieties and problems. She felt disinclined to go indoors and start preparing a solitary supper.

  ‘At the weekend. Staying till Wednesday, then back to the States. You must have supper with us . . . Sunday any good?’

  ‘Yes, I’d like to.’ Melissa pulled her sagging weight from the fence. ‘I suppose I’d better go and sort out something to eat for this evening.’

  ‘You look tired,’ said Iris critically. ‘Come and have a nut burger with me.’

  Melissa hesitated, considering the rival attractions of a grilled lamb chop cooked and eaten in solitude and a nut burger in sympathetic company.

  ‘With fried onions and mushroom sauce,’ tempted Iris.

  The lamb chop would keep until tomorrow. ‘Thanks, that’d be lovely.’

  ‘That was really delicious,’ said Melissa, laying down her knife and fork.

  Iris grinned at her over the rim of her glass of mineral water. ‘Nearly turned it down in favour of some filthy meat dish, didn’t you?’ she said, a hint of malice in her eyes. ‘You’ll find your brain works much better on my kind of diet.’

  ‘Maybe,’ said Melissa. ‘I’m not disposed to argue about it this evening. What do you make of this business about Delia Forbes?’ Over the nut burgers, she had put Iris in the picture concerning her encounter with Eddie, the visit to Angy’s flat and her subsequent trip to Cheltenham.

  Iris thought for a moment, turning her glass to and fro on its painted wooden coaster. ‘Very rum,’ she said. ‘Could be some straightforward explanation, though. Have you told Harris?’

  ‘I’ve been trying to get him but there’s no reply from his home. He’s not on duty so he and his wife must both be out. I’ll try again later.’

  ‘Seen that artist fellow lately?’ The grey eyes were sharp as razor-blades.

  ‘You mean Barney? I saw him in the staffroom this afternoon but he hardly spoke to me.’ Melissa had pushed this small incident into the back of her mind; now she remembered it, she realised how much it had hurt.

  Iris appeared absorbed in a study of her glass. ‘Just as well,’ she observed.

  ‘You still think he killed Angy, don’t you?’ said Melissa resentfully.

  ‘No idea. Just want you to be on the safe side. Know what you’re like . . . can’t resist poking about when you get a whiff of mystery.’ She got to her feet and picked up their empty plates. ‘I’ll go and get the pud.’

  ‘I’ve been thinking,’ said Melissa while Iris ladled out dollops of home-made fruit yoghurt, ‘whoever has been coming to Angy’s class and calling herself Delia Forbes must know the real Delia is away.’

  ‘Makes sense.’

  ‘Could it be the same person who goes to the house to pick up the post?’

  ‘No reason why not.’

  ‘So where do we start looking?’

  ‘Neighbours?’

  ‘Unlikely. Old Mrs Rogers has lost a lot of her marbles but she’d surely know if it was someone actually living along there.’

  ‘So it’s someone from another part of town.’

  ‘Whoever it is has presumably been coming regularly since last November so he or she must have been seen by other people. It was probably the old woman who told Miss Matthews but I don’t suppose she’d have the vaguest notion of the day or time.’

  ‘Assuming whoever it is comes regularly. No guarantee of that,’ Iris pointed out.

  Melissa sighed. ‘It’s going to be difficult to get hold of this person. I wonder if the police are doing anything about it . . . I must try and contact Ken Harris.’

  ‘That girl you saw . . . you say she’s a social worker?’ said Iris, brandishing a tablespoon. ‘More yoghurt?’

  Melissa held out her plate. ‘That’s right. What of it?’

  ‘Isn’t that Eddie’s job?’

  Melissa almost choked on a spoonful of yoghurt. ‘So it is! Suppose Miss Matthews is based at the same office as Eddie! They discuss their cases and Miss Matthews mentions old Mrs Rogers and how much she misses her neighbour. So Eddie knows the real Delia Forbes has gone away and won’t be back for a long time . . . but so what?’ The burst of enthusiasm died as swiftly as it had kindled. ‘It couldn’t possibly have been Eddie who impersonated Delia and anyway there’d have been no point when she lives in the same house as Angy.’

  ‘But another colleague might . . . someone who’s in love . . . who’s been having an . . . is a close friend of Eddie.’

  ‘You mean, someone who had been having a lesbian affair with Eddie? Hears her talking about Angy and is madly jealous? Iris, you could be on to something!’

  Iris winced at this unnecessarily blunt reference to Eddie’s sexuality, having already made it clear that she held similar views to Sybil’s. However, she pursued this new line with enthusiasm. ‘Would have been easy, wouldn’t it? Assume Delia Forbes’s identity, go to the art class, get to know Angy and wangle an invitation to her flat. Didn’t your detective johnnie come across something like that in one of your books?’

  ‘That’s right . . . Mirrors of the Dead.’

  Iris, normally strongly critical when she saw Melissa becoming involved in some mystery, was quite carried away with her theory.

  ‘Of course, she’d have to cook her report sheet or whatever they call it,’ she went on, becoming – for her – positively prolix. ‘Or she might be a part-timer who’s free on Tuesdays anyway.’

  ‘It’s certainly worth looking into.’ Melissa glanced at her watch. ‘I’ll see what Ken Harris has got to say. I think I’ll be getting home if you don’t mind. I want to try him again this evening.’ She got up and began clearing the table.

  ‘Leave that. You push off. Keep me posted, won’t you?’

  ‘Of course. Thanks so much for the supper.’

  There was still no answer from Ken Harris’s number. On impulse, Melissa called Barney.

  ‘Melissa! Why are you phoning?’ He sounded uneasy.

  ‘Why did you rush off like that this afternoon?’

  ‘I had to get to my class.’ He was hedging; she could tell by his tone.

  ‘You aren’t usually in such a hurry.’ There was silence. ‘It’s DCI Harris, isn’t it? He’s warned you off.’

  ‘Sort of. He told me he’d
said much the same to you.’

  ‘He hasn’t any right to interfere!’ said Melissa angrily.

  ‘He suspects me of killing Angy and he’s trying to protect you. I can see his point.’

  ‘Well I don’t believe you did and he isn’t going to be able to prove it.’

  ‘He’s having a darned good try. He’s taken away some of my clothes for forensic tests.’

  ‘Oh, my God!’ A cold tongue of fear licked Melissa’s spine. ‘What did he take?’

  ‘Several things . . . slacks, a sweat-shirt. The trouble is, I can’t for the life of me remember what I was wearing the last time I went to see Angy, or on the day she died. It’s all a blur.’

  ‘Well, of course it is. That should prove you’re innocent. I mean, if you’d really done it you’d have had a story ready to tell the police once the body was discovered.’

  There was another pause before Barney said, ‘It’s nice of you to call, Melissa, and thanks for believing in me.’

  She was on the point of telling him about her investigations but it was all so uncertain and there was no point in raising false hopes. ‘I do believe in you Barney,’ she whispered. ‘See you soon.’ There was a lump in her throat as she put down the phone.

  She went upstairs and spent some time soaking in a hot bath. Presently, relaxed and generously anointed with body-lotion, she wrapped herself in a fluffy towelling robe and went back downstairs. It was ten o’clock; she brewed a pot of tea and made one more effort to contact Harris. There was still no reply; it would have to wait until the morning. Then she remembered that she had promised to keep Sybil in the picture but decided that could wait as well. Later, she was to ask herself if the decision had made any difference to subsequent events. That was something she would never know for certain.

  Sitting on the edge of her bed and sipping her tea, she began jotting down notes of the day’s events, separating them into facts and possible explanations. It was rather like working out the details of one of her plots: circumstances capable of more than one interpretation; actions which might or might not be innocent; individuals who might or might not have a genuine motive, the means and opportunity to commit the crime. The difference was that when constructing a plot she was able to invent clues that would subtly direct her readers in the direction of the guilty person while strewing their path with red herrings. In this case, her thought processes were negative, seeking before all else to draw suspicion away from Barney but lacking the vital scene-of-crime evidence which, if Harris’s attitude was anything to go by, pointed strongly at his guilt.