“By Jove, I like your spirit,” said the man.
“Let’s just assume he has a gun, lass,” chimed in Mr. Warren.
“You’re right,” Flora conceded, “because it seems to me he’d have to be the biggest dimwit alive to hitch a ride without a means of protecting himself. For all he knows we could be a couple of homicidal maniacs going on our wicked way after digging graves all afternoon.” She raised her hands, grimy palms up.
“I’ve a feeling his sort doesn’t scare easy,” Mr. Warren whispered as he swerved around a lorry and sent a cyclist pedaling into a shop doorway.
“You’re wrong,” said the bank robber in a weakened voice as they bounced over a couple of potholes. “Your driving has the potential to scare me to death. Forget what I said about speed, old chap. We don’t want some busybody of a policeman hightailing after us.”
“You don’t have to worry about that,” Mr. Warren replied equably; “we turn here,” he gave the steering wheel a mighty spin, “onto a country road that hardly sees any traffic at this time of day.”
“I don’t want to be a pain in the rear, if you will pardon the pun,” said the man in the backseat, “but I do have a tendency to car sickness. It helps if I try not to think about it, so how about telling me a bit about yourselves?”
“You’d find us ever so boring,” Flora assured him.
“Not at all. I’m a people person. One has to be, in my line of work. I offered my gun to the woman standing next to me at the bank, explaining that it would get her to the front of the queue in a hurry, and she repaid my kindness by going into hysterics. But let’s get back to you two.”
“We’re on our way back from a funeral,” Mr. Warren told him.
“Not someone near and dear, I hope?”
“My grandfather.”
“Left all alone in the world, she is,” put in Mr. Warren. “Her mother died when she was tiny and her father,” he cleared his throat, “was also taken away from her at an early age.”
“Poor little orphan! Please accept my condolences.” The man sounded so completely sympathetic that it was easy to forget he was a bank robber.
“Grandpa took a fall.”
“Wasn’t pushed, was he?” Interest added a slight cockney edge to the man’s voice, where before it had been upper-crust. And the thought flashed through Flora’s mind that he had many voices and probably almost as many faces.
“Of course he wasn’t pushed,” she retorted as the car slammed to a stop and immediately lurched forward again. “It was an accident. Grandpa must have turned dizzy and—”
“Sorry to interrupt your sad story, my dear. But the truth is I’m beginning to feel somewhat dizzy myself. One regrets looking a gift horse in the mouth, but our friend’s driving doesn’t appear to agree with me. So, if it wouldn’t be too much bother, I’d appreciate being put down at the next corner.”
“If you say so, mate.” Mr. Warren managed to sound disappointed as he drew to a bumpy stop. “I don’t suppose,” he added as the rear door opened, “you’re the sort that takes from the rich and gives to the poor.”
“Afraid not!”
“Just thought I’d ask, but if that’s not in the cards,” Mr. Warren reached down the side of his seat and pulled out a sheet of paper, “perhaps you’d fill out this evaluation form—shouldn’t take but a minute—and put in a good word for me with the boss.”
“I’d be delighted,” said the man with what sounded like genuine enthusiasm. “Many thanks for the lift.” So saying, he climbed from the car and was instantly swallowed up by the mist.
“Interesting people you meet on this job,” was all Mr. Warren said as he shifted gears and took off in what Flora hoped was the general direction of Gossinger Hall. She felt a little shaken, but she wasn’t by any stretch of the imagination close to hysterics. Hadn’t Grandpa instilled in her from an early age that people from their walk of life did not make scenes, even when no one important was looking?
“Imperturbability,” he used to say, “is the first requirement of a good servant. We are not easily distressed, Flora, and rarely impressed.”
As the car bumped on down the road, Flora closed her eyes and pulled up mental snapshots of her happy childhood, when the world beyond the village existed only in the magical universe of make-believe and she had believed Grandpa would live to be as old as Noah in the Bible. She was sorry when Mr. Warren placidly announced that here they were, back safe and sound at Gossinger. Knowing that when she went inside all the happy memories would be blacked out by the dark shadow of the garderobe, Flora went into the kitchen reluctantly. Mrs. Warren, looking almost like a stranger in her best hat and coat, was there with Mrs. Much and Mr. Tipp.
Sally Warren was a woman who thrived on trouble of all sorts, big and little. And fifteen minutes of enthusiastic retelling of her favorite deathbed stories had ensured that quite a festive atmosphere prevailed. Admittedly, there weren’t any balloons or crepe-paper streamers, but little sandwiches, butter-cream fancies, and gingerbread were set out on the table, along with the big earthenware teapot and milk jug.
I can’t do this, thought Flora. I can’t sit down to a party tea, with people who want to celebrate the fact that the name that Death pulled out of the hat this time wasn’t theirs. Grandpa is in that dark hole in the cemetery with nobody to talk to him but the wind. And he never did like people who moaned....
It was with a feeling of almost giddy relief that Flora realized there was something she had to do, right away. She had to phone the police station and tell them about the bank robber. It would be criminal to keep quiet and help let the man escape just because he had been a bright spot of sorts in an otherwise horrible day. Grandpa had spoken quite a bit about people who broke the law and how they ruined the lives of ordinary people like himself and Flora.
Chapter Seven
Twenty minutes later, Vivian stood in his impeccably well-bred way, at the tower sitting room window, with a cup of tea in his hand and a lock of hair falling fetchingly over his forehead. He was chilled to the bone, despite having remembered to pack woolen underwear for this visit, and he spoke partly in the hope that exercising his vocal cords would help warm him up.
“A police car just drew up outside,” he said.
“You’re making that up, young Vivian.” Lady Gossinger brought a hand to her throat and her eyes bulged even as she turned toward her husband and attempted a lighthearted laugh. “It really is awfully naughty of him to tease us, don’t you think so, old bean? What do you say, shall we make him stand in the corner?”
“Let me take a look, m’dear.” Sir Henry moved with noticeably lagging steps to join his nephew at the window. “It would appear, my dear,” he said at length, “yes, I think I can say quite definitely that it would appear to be a police car.”
Lady Gossinger made a gurgling noise that she hoped would be taken to be the wind.
“Even if it is a police car,” contributed Miss Sophie Doffit in her most soothing voice, “it does not mean that there is a policeman inside.”
“That’s true,” Vivian Gossinger said gently, “but given the law of averages, I’d say it’s a pretty safe bet.”
“Then,” Cousin Sophie plucked at the sleeves of her pink cardigan and came up with an answer, “they’ve undoubtedly come about the television license. With all you have to do, my dears,” she encompassed Sir Henry and Lady Gossinger in her smile, “I don’t suppose you remembered to pay it, did you?”
“That must be it.” Her Ladyship seemed desperate to grasp at straws. “My sister Edna will have such a laugh when she hears about this. Time I was taken down a peg, that’ll be her thinking. But it’s not as though we’re going to be in serious trouble, is it, Henry?”
“Of course not, m’dear.” He crossed the room to stand beside her, but not close enough to be touching. “Sensible chaps, the police, won’t hear them carrying on as though a murder has been committed.”
A heavy silence settled, like dust covers, over
the room and at least one of the occupants had trouble breathing. Then Vivian said that he would go downstairs and see if he could find out what was going on, and Cousin Sophie gamely offered to accompany him, in the hope perhaps of buttering up the police with an offer of cheese scones.
“Well, now m’dear ...” Sir Henry took a seat across from his lady when they were alone but was unable to think of anything else to say.
“Another cup of tea?” she suggested and, receiving a negative shake of his bald head, sat studying her brogue shoes. They still bore traces of mud from the graveside. Terror lodged like a chicken bone in her throat. Does Henry have an awful picture inside his head of me luring Hutchins into the garderobe on some diabolic pretext and shoving him headfirst into the antiquated W.C.?
Lady Gossinger had not been present when the dead butler had been found, but Vivian had described in unflinching detail how the man had been wedged in up to his ankles. And Henry, desperately trying not to break down, had added that Hutchins had been spared plunging three stories to his death by the caving in of the ancient stonework.
Why would the police be here if not because they suspect foul play? Her Ladyship’s mind darted this way and that, like a laboratory rat desperately seeking a way out of its cage before a giant hand came down on the scruff of its neck. Should she confront the issue head-on and ask Henry if he suspected that by telling her he was about to change his will and leave Gossinger Hall to Hutchins he had led her down the primrose path to murder?
“We need to talk about Mrs. Much,” she heard herself say instead.
“What’s that, m’dear?”
“She’s given notice; says she’s found a better position.”
“Ah!” said Sir Henry.
“Wouldn’t you say it’s jolly suspicious, her bunking off at a time like this?”
“How’s that?”
“I didn’t like to say anything and worry you, Henry,” Lady Gossinger drew a rallying breath, “but I’ve come to wonder if the woman is one-hundred-percent honest. One of the briar rose teacups is missing and—” She was about to add that this being the case, one could only wonder what other dishonesty lay within the scope of Mrs. Much’s villainy, but Sir Henry interrupted her.
“Oh, that!” He looked decidedly awkward. “Broke a cup m’self the other day. Forgot to mention it, sorry about that, m’dear.”
“Well, it wasn’t the only thing that’s gone for a walk.” Lady Gossinger took a restorative sip of tea. “I can’t find that shoehorn—the nice long one with the horse’s-head top that my sister Edna sent us for a wedding present. Now, why ever are you looking like that, Henry?”
“Got it in my bedroom, Mabel; been using it to practice m’golfing. Should have said something, but thought you would worry I’d send a ball through the window.”
“You have every right to keep your little secrets.” Her Ladyship had no trouble sounding noble. The conversation—whilst not going the way she had planned—was not a dead loss. “Perhaps you have trouble believing I mean that, dear,” she managed to squeeze a tear out the corner of her eye, “especially after the dreadful way I carried on when you told me you were planning to leave Gossinger Hall to Hutchins. But as God is my witness, Henry, I regretted my outburst the moment it was out of my mouth, and I’ve been tormented ever since by the thought that the man’s death may have been a judgment on me for being so dreadfully un-Christian.”
“Wouldn’t think so.” Sir Henry chewed the words over thoughtfully. “All of us known to fly off the handle at times. If anything, I blame m’self for the way I handled the matter.”
“How awfully dear of you, Henry!” Tears that were real this time moistened Lady Gossinger’s eyes. “I’ve been worried you might think that perhaps it wasn’t an accident after all and that I ... well, you know, had a hand in what happened to him.”
“Rubbish, m’dear. Thought never crossed my mind.”
“I suppose the thing to do,” her Ladyship sniffed without worrying whether doing so might be considered common, and continued, “is to fix on what we are going to do about poor little Florie.”
“Been doing some thinking about that m’self,” Sir Henry said.
“What I would like to suggest, old bean,” his wife said with a watery smile, “is that we send her up to Bethnal Green.”
“To live with your sister Edna?”
“Of course not, dear, I wouldn’t do that to my worst enemy.” Her Ladyship was so carried away by her own magnanimousness that she almost let slip that no one should be subjected to Edna’s dreadful grandson. And that wouldn’t have done at all. Lady Gossinger had not told her husband about the boy trying to force his way into this room on the day Hutchins died. For reasons lodged in the dark corners of her soul she preferred to keep that bit of information under her garter belt. “No, what I have in mind for poor little Florie,” she continued, “is to let her have the flat above my parents’ old shop for a while.”
“Thought it was already occupied.”
“Not anymore. The tenants were obviously fly-by-nights: After ten years at a ridiculously cheap rent, they’ve moved on to greener pastures.” Lady Gossinger tensed, thinking she heard plodding footsteps on the stairs. Did they herald the arrival of the police? A heart-thudding moment passed in which she waited for a fist to thump on the door. But nothing happened. “I received a letter of intent to vacate a few days ago, Henry,” she said, still sounding a bit rattled even to herself, until she realized that she was hearing the approach of the tea trolley. Mrs. Much tapped and entered the room.
“All done, are we?” she inquired with a smile, sounding, thought a disgusted Lady Gossinger, like a ward maid talking to a patient sitting on the bedpan. Really, it was a pity the woman had given in her notice, or she would have had to be sacked on the spot. As for Mrs. Much’s fancy new job, her Ladyship didn’t believe a word of it.
“No, we are not finished with our tea yet,” she replied in a voice that was the fruit of all those long-ago elocution lessons, and would have had Edna in stitches. “Run along, do, Mrs. Much, and come back in half an hour.”
“Hate to put her to all that trouble, Mabel; all those stairs, you know.” Sir Henry, having visited his private chapel that day, in addition to attending the funeral service, was in a particularly Christian mood.
“Oh, don’t you mind about that,” Mrs. Much assured him with cheerful familiarity. “I’ll be glad to get back to the kitchen. Things were getting interesting when I left. And there’s nothing I like more than a little mental stimulation, unless it’s scrubbing the right sort of house from top to bottom on my hands and knees.” Mrs. Much gave a happy thought to getting away from this house where she was sure more than one poor lass had been put on the rack for burning the breakfast toast.
“Go on,” said Lady Gossinger in a voice as chilly as the dregs in the teapot.
“I’m sure you’ll get the whole story from Mr. Vivian. Such a nice young man. He came down to the kitchen just minutes after the policeman arrived to talk to Flora and Mr. Warren about what happened. Constable somebody-or-other, and he sounded confident as ever you could wish that they’ll be making an arrest very shortly.”
Her Ladyship made a choking sound.
“Fred Warren?” Sir Henry asked. “I can understand this copper chap having a word with Flora, but why the dickens is he talking to Warren?”
“Because it was him what drove the getaway car,” Mrs. Much explained reasonably.
“The what?” Sir Henry looked only a couple of degrees less dumbfounded than his wife.
“For the bank robber.”
Lady Gossinger stood up and immediately sat down again. When she could find her voice, she crisply ordered Mrs. Much to start at the beginning. And somehow she managed to look deeply shocked when the woman revealed what she’d learned of Flora’s ride back from the funeral with Mr. Warren and the man in the backseat. But inside, her Ladyship was singing—in a rather deep baritone—a paean to joy and reprieve. How silly
she’d been to think the police would suspect foul play in Mr. Hutchins’s death! The very idea was nonsensical. But if the bank robber had walked into the tower sitting room at that moment, her Ladyship would have been tempted to kiss him full on his wicked lips.
Instead, she succumbed to her pent-up passion by bestowing a peck on her husband’s cheek when Mrs. Much left the room with the loaded tea trolley.
“And Sophie thought the police were here about the television license.” Sir Henry let out a lengthy sigh. “Couldn’t have been that, of course. Don’t have a television. Poor little Flora.”
“Yes, terrible experience for her, after all she’s been through,” agreed Lady Gossinger. “But life goes on and she’ll find herself on the mend when she goes to Bethnal Green.”
“Are you sure that’s for the best, m’dear?”
“Don’t you, Henry?”
“Well, I had thought we’d need her here. May take a while to replace Mrs. Much, and with Hutchins gone ... you do see the difficulty, m’dear.”
“We still have Tipp,” said her Ladyship.
“Not suggesting he fill Hutchins’s shoes, are you?” came the unusually testy reply. “Wouldn’t do, Mabel. Never said as much before, but never really cared for Tipp. Listens at doors, you know. And peeks around corners. One day the fellow’s going to hear or see more than’s good for him. Kept him on because his family’s worked here since time began ...” Sir Henry stopped. He looked pointedly toward the door, which nobody ever seemed to remember to close properly on their way out. Nobody, that is, except Hutchins, who had also never committed the solecism of tapping before entering a room.
“I wouldn’t doubt that’s Tipp out there now,” Sir Henry continued in what he believed to be a whisper.
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