by Ann Purser
“Never mind Mrs Rix. Cleanin’ help is not that easy to find. Now you just sit down here and tell me what you’re up to.” He was proud of Lois, but sometimes found it hard to assert his head-of-the-house position when she was in this mood.
Lois knew she needed Derek on her side, so fetched the shiny brochure and handed it to him. “This’ll tell you,” she said. “I’ve more or less decided, but I’d like you to agree.”
“Well, thanks very much. Very honoured,” said Derek. He opened the brochure and looked at the photographs of attractive men and women in police uniform helping grateful people out of a number of difficult situations. Two of them, one a policewoman, were sorting out a fight between two hefty youngsters. “Here!” said Derek, alarmed. “I don’t want you getting into no fights! We need you in one piece here at home. Fine mess we’d be in if you got beaten up!”
“Mum’d help,” said Lois. “She’s come round to the idea.”
“Told her before me, as usual?” Derek thought of making something serious of it, but realized his best course of action was compliance. Lois wouldn’t like the job. Not with the police! No, better go along with it for the moment. “Not much good my objecting, then, is it?” he said. Lois bent over and kissed him enthusiastically, and he grabbed her round the waist. “Time for a quick one, then?” he said. “Or shall I get arrested?”
♦
Mrs Rix, Mondays, was waiting for Lois on the doorstep of her foursquare Edwardian redbrick house in Little Farnden. They were two of a kind, Lois had decided, Mrs Rix and her house. Secure and dependable and pleasant enough, provided you did not overstep the mark. Mrs Rix’s husband was the local GP and the house had an appropriately reassuring air. Although Dr Rix was in partnership with other doctors at the medical centre in Tresham, he maintained the old tradition of a village surgery in his house, reserving a small room as consulting room, with an even smaller room for waiting patients. There was seldom a queue and the older people appreciated not having to travel into Tresham on the bus to see the doctor.
Mrs Rix ran a neat and orderly house, with a regular routine. Lois never moved the ornaments from their ordained places, never pinched off dead heads of flowers that might be saved for seeds. In some of her other houses Lois was encouraged to make suggestions of all kinds, but not here.
Dr Rix was approaching retirement, but still carried out his duties as doctor and chairman of the parish council with dedication, kindness and warmth. When he first came to the village as a handsome, newly-married young man, he had been shy, and the nearest he came to joking with patients was a pat on the head for a six-year-old malingerer with a jovial “I expect you’re longing to get back to school!” But his confidence had grown, and now he was an indispensable institution in the village. They knew they’d never get another like Dr Rix.
When Lois opened the latched gate and saw Mary Rix waiting for her, she knew the doctor would already have beaten a hasty retreat into his study and immersed himself in The Times. He couldn’t bear the whirlwind upset of Lois days; the roaring of the old Hoover, her opening of windows even in the depths of winter, her involuntary bursts of song in a loud and tuneless voice.
“Morning, Lois,” said Mary Rix, with only a small smile. “We were beginning to think you were ill?”
Lois shook her head. “Have I ever let you down, Mrs Rix?” she said. “I’d always let you know if I couldn’t come. No, Derek and me had something urgent to discuss.” She made it sound like a matter of life and death, and Mary Rix’s irritation turned to sympathy, as Lois had intended.
“If there’s anything we can do to help…”
Lois nodded at Mary, and took off her coat, collecting cleaning things from the cupboard. “Doctor in his study?” she said. Mrs Rix nodded. “He’ll be gone shortly, though. Another call from Miss Hathaway…a creaking door if there ever was one!”
It was so unusual for Mrs Rix to say anything at all about the doctor’s patients that Lois turned to look at her in surprise.
Mrs Rix’s face was set hard, and she banged the cutlery drawer shut with a rattle. “Right!” she said. “I must get going, Lois. It’ll be coffee break before we know it.”
Lois headed for the doctor’s study thoughtfully. She’d seen Miss Hathaway outside the village shop on her way to work and she’d looked fine to Lois. Smarter than usual, with her hair done in a new way. Lois shrugged. There were plenty of ailments not visible to the naked eye and Gloria Hathaway was probably one of those who kept a medical dictionary by the bed. She paused, and then knocked at the study door.
“I shall be on my way, then,” said Andrew Rix, smiling at Lois, and touching her arm gently as he moved towards the door. “Give you a clear field, my dear,” he added. Lois had a soft spot for the doctor. He always treated her with unfailing courtesy and this was a scarce quality in Lois’s world.
♦
Gloria Hathaway’s cottage was like a tea-cosy: thatched roof, diamond-paned windows, criss-crossing beams, hollyhocks in summer, holly berries in winter, and a crazy-paving path up which Dr Rix now strode in the damp November air. He was still a fit, strong figure, never giving way to the self-doctoring temptation of his profession at times of stress. Dear Mary was his medicine! The perfect wife, he often told her, but knew from her expression that she still thought herself otherwise.
Miss Hathaway’s door opened a few inches and her small, freckled face looked out. She glanced beyond the doctor and saw her neighbour, the community nurse, hovering on the footpath between their gardens. “Ah, Doctor,” she said. “You’re early…”
“It’s a Lois day,” he explained, and as she opened the door wider, he stepped inside.
∨ Murder on Monday ∧
Three
Lois had filled in the blue card with her name, address and telephone number, but hadn’t ticked the box asking for a Special to visit. She could just see the boys scowling in the kitchen while she gave a cup of tea to the enemy. No, better to keep it as separate from home as possible. She would wait to be summoned to the station.
“Very good!” laughed Derek, when she explained it to him. “Summoned to the station…yo ho…very good!”
“All right, all right,” said Lois, “it’s not that funny.”
“What time’s your train, Mum?” said Josie. “See? station…get it?” she explained to Douglas and Jamie. Jamie still didn’t get it.
“Oh yeah,” shrugged Douglas, refusing to be amused. “Don’t matter what she says, it’s the cops. You want to watch out, Josie Meade,” he added maliciously, “else they’ll be checking on your school bag…” He made a swift exit upstairs then, too swift for Josie to follow.
“What did he mean, Josie?” said Lois sharply, and stepped forward to look for herself, but Josie nipped smartly out of the door and through the gate.
“Anyway,” said Derek, as if nothing had happened, “it says here you can go to an Open Evening – gives a phone number of the Specials Project Officer – blimey, what’re you gettin’ yourself into, Lois?”
Jamie had picked up another leaflet and wouldn’t give it back. Lois reached out to cuff him lightly round the ear. “Watch it, Mum!” he yelled. “Says here you got to be calm and restrained…and only apply force when necessary…”
“I’ll teach you what’s necessary, young man,” said Lois, as he ducked. She sank down on to a chair and looked at Derek. “Shall I give up now?” she said.
“Give up what?” said her mother’s voice, and she appeared in the kitchen, a big stately woman, hatted and gloved, her specs glinting in the light. Before waiting for an answer, she continued, “Come along you lot,” and like an experienced sheep dog, she rounded up the boys and all were gone.
“Time for me to go, too,” said Lois, clearing away the breakfast remains.
Derek was still absorbed by the leaflet. “I’ve got an idea,” he said. “I could join too, then we could be like Dempsey and Makepeace.”
“More like Morecambe and Wise,” said Lois. “Anywa
y, I haven’t decided…not finally.”
“Hey, wait a minute!” said Derek urgently. “Says here Specials are volunteers and don’t get paid!”
“‘Course they don’t, if they’re volunteers,” said Lois breezily, and ran upstairs to tidy the kids’ beds before she left for Professor Barratt, Tuesdays.
♦
Professor M.J. Barratt, MA, PhD, had lived in Long Farnden for only a couple of years. “Though it seems like more!” said his wife Rachel, often. She was a friendly soul, anxious to be loved, and an embarrassment to her two teenage daughters. Malcolm Barratt had given up the Chair in Law at the University of Hull at an earlier age than was customary. He awoke one sunny autumn morning, when the trees were fiery reds and golds, and the world seemed to stretch away from the close confines of the university, full of mystery and promise. He knew quite suddenly that it was time to move on. Rachel was not pleased. She loved the academic world, though, as she said loudly and with a self-deprecatory laugh, she was no academic herself. But she felt the reflected glory of the professor’s wife and liked the social life with other wives who were willing to talk about subjects of interest to Rachel. She was horrified at the thought of moving house, putting their trust in a new school for the girls, and the idea of starting out again in a strange and different community filled her with apprehension and reluctance.
Malcolm, however, was adamant. Over the years he had grown used to turning a deaf ear when Rachel began any protest or disagreement with the words “I don’t wish to argue, Malcolm, but…” By the time she had made herself miserable at the unlikely possibility of finding a niche as pleasant as her present one, he was already planning the kind of house they would need for his future life. Plenty of room, a study for himself on the top floor, well away from the girls’ incessant pop music and Rachel’s voluble friends, big garden for him to subdue, and, most important of all, situated in a village with a life of its own, but near enough to a motorway and a quick means of exit to the rest of the world. Rachel was still stressing the danger of moving the girls’ schooling at this time of their education, as he stood up to find the road map of the Midlands and prepared to draw a circle, radius forty miles, where they could begin to house hunt.
By a process of elimination, they made a list of six villages, and set off for an estate agent. The right house, with most of the requirements fulfilled, turned up in Long Farnden. “Long Farnden it is, then!” said Malcolm delightedly, and with the good luck that had accompanied him throughout life, it proved to be exactly the right house, in the high street of Long Farnden, near the fast-growing town of Tresham, East Midlands.
It had gone more smoothly than Rachel would have thought possible. Malcolm was a new man, fired with the thought of the intoxicating freedom he would experience as a freelance consultant and future author of a succession of authoritative books on his special interest, sexually motivated crimes of murder. Rachel kept this as quiet as possible in the village, wishing in her heart that it had been, say, Contract Law that had inspired Malcolm to great heights.
The first person to call, once the two large removal vans had been emptied and driven away, had been Mrs Mary Rix, wife of the doctor, who walked up the driveway bearing six new-laid eggs and a smile of official welcome. They learned from her that the village was very friendly, full of activity for all tastes, and, of course, known as ‘Farnden’ without the ‘Long’ to ‘villagers and the cognoscenti’.
“Lex loci,” Malcolm had replied, with a flourish, and Rachel had sighed. She did hope Malcolm was not going to scupper a likely entry into Farnden society by showing off. But all this was now in the past, and the Barratts had settled down into Farnden life, become involved in village affairs, the parish council, and the playing fields committee. They felt they belonged, and would have been hurt if they’d heard themselves still referred to by the long-term inhabitants as “the newcomers in the high street.”
Lois had been a blessing to Rachel. Recommended by Mary Rix, she had fitted in well, adjusting herself to Rachel’s way of running her house, and adept at avoiding Malcolm in dark corners. From Lois’s point of view, the Barratts were no trouble. A newish house, always tidy and neat, and her money always ready in an envelope tucked behind the kitchen radio. She wasn’t sure that they would stay in Farnden, but they seemed settled enough. She knew Mary Rix and Evangeline Baer were both regular visitors, and that even Gloria Hathaway had fluttered her way up to the front door once or twice, passing Lois on her way out. Shame she chose the very days when Rachel Barratt had gone up to London to meet her aged mother for lunch. Still, Lois was sure Prof Male would have been kind to her, solitary soul that she was.
Malcolm had quickly opened up the attics to make himself an airy space more suited to an artist than a law professor. He had a long workroom, lined with bookshelves filled to overflowing, a large desk for his computer and accessories, and a neat corner devoted to his sound system and large collection of Early Music CDs. There were two small rooms off this study – one with a double divan where he could rest his large frame when he had a knotty problem to unravel, and the other a starkly white shower-room and lavatory.
“Self-contained,” he said proudly, when showing friends around. “You could be up to all kinds of mischief up here, and nobody would know.” He’d said that to Lois, and she’d given him her best icy look.
This morning, Lois began as usual by cleaning in the attic study. Malcolm welcomed her in and chatted as she worked, getting in her way and puffing out pipe-smoke which seemed to follow her wherever she went. This Tuesday morning, he was particularly talkative. A weekend bonfire party on the playing fields had got out of hand, and, as Malcolm said, “four or five yobs ran amok.” At first, the crowd had been tolerant and good-humoured and the vicar, the Reverend Peter White (Lois’s Thursdays), had appealed to their better natures. Fruitlessly, as it turned out, since the rioters had then nicked a box of sparklers, lit them all at once, and thrown them, fizzing and spitting, into a group of children.
“Were they hurt?” asked Lois, startled into standing still for a minute.
Malcolm shook his head. “Not seriously,” he said, “but they had burns and were treated for shock. Lucky thing that Janice Britton was there, and caught one of the young sods. Took him off to the police station double quick.”
“Ah,” Lois said, “is that…er…the Janice who is a Special Constable, by any chance?”
“Right as always, Lois,” said Malcolm. “Tough as old boots, she is.”
“Needs to be,” said Lois, and bent down to plug in the Hoover. Glancing sideways, she saw the eminent Professor picking up a paperclip from under his desk, ogling across at her upturned backside at the same time. Sneaky bugger, thought Lois. He doesn’t give up. She switched on the Hoover and roared it as close as she dared to Malcolm’s feet. “Excuse me!” she yelled, and he had no alternative but to get out of her way.
Half an hour later, Rachel appeared at the door of the bedroom where Lois was changing sheets. “Coffee’s ready,” she said. She could never persuade Lois to sit down with her in the kitchen, like her daily had done in Hull. It had been the perfect way of picking up the local gossip. Now she had to follow Lois around the house, receiving the odd snippet of information as and when Lois felt like delivering it.
“Thanks,” said Lois. “I’ll come and get it. Oh, and Mrs Barratt…” Rachel stopped at the head of the stairs, looking back hopefully. “This Janice, who’s a Special Constable…d’you happen to know where she lives?”
“In the council houses,” said Rachel swiftly. “Why, Lois? Surely she doesn’t need a cleaner in that little box of a house?” Lois shook her head, but said nothing more. Let her wonder. Council houses indeed. Lois’s had been a council house, and she and Derek were now proud owners. Lots of people on the Churchill owned their houses and had built extensions and porches and put in modern bathrooms. Little box! Rachel ‘Posh’ Barratt should have seen the house where Lois grew up. Two up, two down, and few mod c
ons.
The coffee steamed on the big pine table, and Lois was very tempted to sink down on to a cushioned chair for five minutes. But this was against the self-imposed rules of her job. Never think yourself a friend of your employer, as they mostly think differently. Rachel sat at the table, leafing through a women’s magazine and eating home-made biscuits. Poor woman, thought Lois. What a life. She felt momentarily sorry for her, not having a job or a life of her own, always second fiddle to those snotty girls or randy Malcolm upstairs.
“Have you heard?” she said, relenting a little. “Seems Miss Hathaway isn’t well…mind you, she looked all right to me in the shop yesterday. Doctor was on his way, though. Nothing serious, I hope…” She took up her coffee and went quickly back upstairs before Rachel could require more speculation on what this could mean.
∨ Murder on Monday ∧
Four
Evenings at 18 Byron Way were as peaceful as in any family of five. If Derek was not working late, he had his tea with the rest of the family, and later on, after a wash and change, set off for an hour or so at the Dog and Duck down on the Ringford Road. Lois washed up, made an heroic effort to get the boys and Josie to do their homework, watched television and waited for Derek to come home and give her the news from the pub. The house was quiet by midnight.
This evening the routine was broken by Josie announcing she wanted to go to a disco that night at The Hut, a youth group organised by the local happy-clappy church and patronised by the estate’s teenagers when they had nothing better to do. Its reputation was of a respectable, but boring effort on the part of crusading adults to counter teenage crime on the estate, and so thought by Lois and Derek to be safe enough for Josie.
Now Derek looked up at the clock, and said, “She’s late.”
“Only half an hour,” said Lois. “They’ll be back in a minute.”