A Meddler and her Murder
Page 17
‘Oh, well,’ said Mrs Hellon, looking at the Hon. Con’s handiwork with something like despair, ‘I suppose you’re the one who’s going to lie in it.’
‘That’s right!’ agreed the Hon. Con, having a good laugh up her sleeve because, of course, she’d not the slightest intention of spending any time in bed that night at all. The minute the house was quiet she was going to be up, up and away, giving Teresa O’Coyne’s room a thorough and searching inspection.
Indeed, it was only the prospect of her midnight high jinks that kept the Hon. Con going through the dreary hours that lay ahead as she washed up, tidied up, polished silver and carried in endless buckets of coal. At ten o’clock even Mrs Hellon’s attempts to put Satan out of business were exhausted.
‘Would you like to watch the news on television? She asked.
The Hon. Con barely had the strength to shake her head. Mrs Hellon approved. ‘No, I think we’d both better have an early night and then we can get off to a good start in the morning. I must say, looking at this house, one does wonder if Josie ever did any work at all. I’ve always suspected that all her talk about her nerves was just a cover for sheer idleness. Nobody,’ she informed the Hon. Con with every appearance of sincerity, ‘ could call me houseproud but you just can’t keep a place of this size decent by lying in bed untill gone nine o’clock every morning.’
‘I’m not much of a one for getting up at the crack of dawn,’ confessed the Hon. Con through a jaw-cracking yawn.
‘Nonsense, my dear! Mrs Hellon patted the Hon. Con on the arm. ‘I know a good, hard worker when I see one, don’t you worry! However, I’m not quite as young as I was and I need my full quota of sleep – so don’t you dare bring my early morning tea up a second before half-past seven!’
The Hon. Con promised from the bottom of her heart that she wouldn’t and staggered off to her room. There she undressed and put her pyjamas on. They were her best pyjamas and looked jolly smart in their blue and white stripes. Army surplus, of course. The Hon. Con had been going to bed for years in army surplus.
She was so tired that she didn’t dare risk lying down in case she fell asleep and never woke up again, so she sat bolt upright in a daft little chair, all upholstered in yellow satin and with a seat whose dimensions were noticeably inferior to the Hon. Con’s own.
By eleven o’clock the Hon. Con could endure it no longer. She pulled her duffle coat on and crept out on to the landing. Outside the door of the spare room she stopped and held her breath. Beyond that portal lay both Mrs Hellon and the baby whose cot had temporarily been moved out of the nursery. There was no sign of a fight. The Hon. Con listened hard but the door was stout and well-fitting and she couldn’t hear a sound from either of the room’s occupants.
Well, no point in hanging about! She tip-toed back to her room, collected her torch and a large screwdriver, switched off her bedside lamp and set off through the darkness of the house.
Teresa O’Coyne’s room was somewhat isolated from the other bedrooms. To reach it you had to go down the stairs to a half landing and then ascend another short flight to the room itself. The Hon. Con’s computer brain ticked away with its habitual efficiency, registering that Teresa O’Coyne’s room was much further away from Josie Hellon’s than she had imagined, that Teresa would not have to pass the master bedroom to reach her own, that the landing and stairs were thickly carpeted and that there didn’t seem to be as much as a single squeaky floorboard anywhere.
The Hon. Con, most unwillingly, began to have second thoughts. Maybe the au pair girl could, after all, have taken a man up to her room without rousing her employer. The Hon. Con tried to close her mind to the possibility.
She reached Teresa O’Coyne’s room and tried the door. It was not locked. Gingerly she pushed it open. There was a very faint squeak and the Hon. Con immediately reinstated Gilbert Hellon as the prime suspect, with his wife as a willing accomplice. The squeak was barely audible but the eerie stillness of the house was getting on the Hon. Con’s nerves and she was blowed if she was going to fall over backwards to be fair.
She shone her torch around the room. It looked exactly like a thousand others but the Hon. Con still felt the hairs rising stiffly on the back of her neck. Good thing she wasn’t a cowardycowardy-custard, she thought. It took a real effort, though, to step right inside the room and an even greater one to close the door and switch on the overhead light.
The curtains were drawn back and the blank, black square of the window looked strangely menacing. The Hon. Con stared hypnotized at it for several seconds before she realized the danger. To anybody watching from outside the house that uncurtained window would be shining out like the beacon of a lighthouse. The Hon. Con put her torch down and wiped the palms of her hands down her duffle coat It was some minutes before she could steel herself to make the effort but, in the end, she forced herself across the room and dragged the curtains to. She was horrified to find that her hands were trembling. It must be colder than she thought.
With a start like this, it is not surprising that the Hon. Con’s inspection was neither as thorough nor as dispassionate as she would have wished. Not that the room itself was in any way disturbing. The wardrobe, the dressing table and the chest of drawers were modem, rather flimsy pieces of furniture in a lightish grey wood. The bed, in size something between a single and a double, was covered with a pink bedspread. The Hon. Con tentatively raised one corner. The bed wasn’t made up and there was nothing but a threadbare under-blanket stretched over the mattress.
The Hon. Con took a deep breath and glanced back uneasily at the door. The last thing she wanted, of course, was to be caught bending by Mrs Hellon Senior, but it would be quite nice to see another human face.
A square green carpet on the floor with brown linoleum round the edges.
It was a jolly cold room.
Bare, too.
And creepy.
Creepy, my eye! The Hon. Con gave herself a shake. It was just that there weren’t any ornaments or clocks or bits and pieces around such as one would expect in a young girl’s room. The Hon. Con opened a drawer in the dressing table. Empty. So was the wardrobe, except for a shabby macintosh hanging from a coat hanger.
Even the Hon. Con could see that the bedroom had been cleared of all traces of its last occupant. She wondered who’d done it. The police? Had they impounded all the girl’s possessions as evidence or something? Or was it Mrs Hellon Senior who had tried to lay the ghost.
The Hon. Con wished she hadn’t thought about ghosts.
Not that she believed in them.
She opened a few more drawers, just in case they were stuffed with clues overlooked by the police. They weren’t.
She bent down to see if there were any bloodstains on the carpet. No bloodstains.
The Hon. Con straightened her back with a creak which went round the walls like a pistol shot. Honour, the Hon. Con decided when her heart beats had returned to normal, was satisfied. She switched the light out, whipped the curtains back and fled from the room.
Back in her own sanctuary she locked the door behind her and dived under the bedclothes. A person unacquainted with the heroic cast of the Hon. Con’s nature might have thought that she had got a bad case of cold feet, but such a person would have been mistaken. The Hon. Con was a little on edge, perhaps, but detecting is a nerve-racking business. She wrapped the sheets rightly around her and assured herself that she would have spent the rest of the night in Teresa O’Coyn’s room if it would have done any good.
The Hon. Con was blessed with a conscience as innocent as that of any new-born babe and usually had no trouble at all in dropping off to sleep. As a matter of principle, she didn’t believe in insomnia – as lesser mortals don’t believe in mental telepathy or flying saucers – and so she was extremely puzzled now to find the hours slipping slowly away and she was still wide awake with the events of the last few days twisting endlessly round and round in her head. Mr Hellon chased Adam Spennymoor who chased Torquil Pollo
ck who chased Josie Hellon who chased Mr Welks. Holy smoke, what was old Welks doing there? The Hon. Con turned restlessly. Oh, why couldn’t they all just go away and leave her alone?
Oh, blimey! Now it was blood-stained daffodils!
When six o’clock struck the Hon. Con chucked the towel in. She got up, got dressed and went downstairs.
Chapter Fourteen
The kitchen was chilly and unwelcoming. The central heating hadn’t yet switched itself on so, after some deep thought, the Hon. Con turned on the oven of the electric cooker and sat huddled over that. After a bit she got up again and rooted round in the cupboards. She found a packet of baby rusks and returned to her chair to munch disconsolately.
It was the dark hour before the dawn and the Hon. Con was feeling pretty low. Not that she would ever have dreamed of admitting it, but she was getting rather cheesed off with this detecting lark. There were too many kicks in it and not enough ha‘ pence. You worked your fingers to the bone and got precious little in the way of thanks for your trouble.
The Hon. Con hugged her aching muscles and turned the oven up a bit higher. What a way to spend your life, eh? Well, she’d come to the end of her tether. Soon as she decently could, the Hon. Con was going to pull out and go home to bed Even with old Bones casting a blight, Shangrilah was infinitely preferable to this dump.
In spite of the extreme discomfort (which she was enduring without complaint) the Hon. Con did manage to doze off every now and again for a few minutes. It was during one of these shallow cat naps that she became aware of a strange noise outside. She opened her eyes and stared in the direction from which the sounds were coming. Somebody – or something – was padding quietly up to the back door and clanking! The Hon. Con swallowed hard and reached for the breadknife though, heaven only knows, its serrated edge wasn’t going to be of much use against headless spectres dragging their ghostly chains along behind them.
Almost as soon as she had formulated this ridiculous picture, the Hon. Con realized that the rattling was not coming from any supernatural appurtenances but from milk bottles. She dropped the breadknife back on the table and strode across to unlock the back door.
The milkman was in the process of depositing two pints on the back step and, from the way he did a good six inches of vertical take-off, you’d have thought it was his turn to see a ghost.
‘Jesus Christ!’ he gasped, squinting up at the Hon. Con out of a face that had gone dead white. The Hon. Con stared back.
‘There’s not been another bloody murder, has there?’ asked the milkman, dropping his crate of bottles with a clatter and straightening his back. ‘Jesus, you jumping out at me like that’s given me a proper turn! Bloody hell, I thought, don’t say there’s another one been snuffed!’ He puffed his cheeks out. ‘Strewth, I reckon I’d better come inside and sit down for a minute!’ He gave the Hon. Con an accusing glare. ‘You’ve made me come over all queer, you have!’ He pushed past her into the kitchen and sat down, as if of right, in the chair by the cooker. ‘I wouldn’t,’ he announced with an injured air as the Hon. Con stood helplessly in the doorway, ‘ say no to a cup of tea, either, missus.’
‘Oh.’ The Hon. Con took a grip on herself and, after some deep consideration, filled the kettle at the tap. The awkwardness of her actions boded ill for the tea.
The milkman, however, was still preoccupied with his own troubles. ‘ First time in all the months I’ve been coming here,’ he informed the Hon. Con in an aggrieved tone. ‘Money always left out in a little tin box, see? Never saw nobody. Ever. If they wanted another pint, they used to stick a note in the empty. For all I knew, this place’ – he waved his arm round the kitchen – ‘ could have been inhabited by a tribe of bloody blackamoors.’
‘Is that so?’ said the Hon. Con, rather haughtily.
‘Except this one morning, see? Tuesday. I come along, up the path, same as usual. Two empties, two full ones. Got me book out and ticked ’em off, see? Some chaps don’t bother if it’s just the regular order but I like to keep myself straight. Doesn’t take but a minute.’ He broke off to direct a hopeful glance at the kettle. ‘Mind you, I reckon she thought I’d gone.’
‘Oh?’
‘You’d better be warming the tea pot now, missus. That kettle’ll be boiling in a minute.’ The Hon. Con began hunting round for a tea pot. ‘ Yes, you’re all the same, you ladies!’ resumed the milkman with an indulgent laugh that in more normal times would have brought down the full force of the Hon. Con’s fury on his head. ‘Don’t want a chap seeing you before you’ve tarted yourselves up for the bloody day, eh? She was unlucky, though.’ He sniggered to himself. ‘ I couldn’t find my bloody pencil, see? Usually keep it behind my ear but for some bloody reason or other, I stuck it in me pocket. Well, she must have been waiting behind the door, listening. Doesn’t hear a sound. Thinks I’ve cleared off. Opens the bloody door and there I am, large as life and twice as handsome! Bloody hell you should have seen her face! Surprised? She was bloody flabbergasted!’ He watched the Hon. Con as she tipped the warm water out of the pot. ‘Four spoonfuls, missus! I like a good strong cup.’
The Hon. Con, who drank more tea than she made, was quite grateful for the instructions.
The milkman resumed his reminiscences. ‘‘’Morning, missus,’’ I said. ‘‘’Morning,’’ she said, trying make out that she’d expected to find me standing there. They do, you know. Never let on that they’ve been trying to avoid you. ‘‘ Cold morning,’’ I said – and it bloody well was. She just sort of nodded her head. Here,’ – his voice rose as he saw the Hon. Con using her initiative and reaching for the kettle – ‘ you sure that’s boiling?’
The Hon. Con raised the lid. ‘It’s all bubbling.’
‘All right! Well, get cracking missus! You don’t want to let it all boil away.’
The Hon. Con obediently filled the tea pot and, with that delicate operation off her mind, tried to clear up a few points which had been bothering her. ‘ Who are we talking about?’
The milkman sighed impatiently. ‘The woman who lives here, of course. Mrs Hellon. The one who found that girl who was murdered. That’s what I’m telling you, isn’t it? That very morning, when Mrs Hellon had her tongue hanging out for a cup of tea, this Irish judy was lying upstairs, dead as a doornail, but nobody hadn’t found her yet. See? And let that bloody tea draw for a bit, for God’s sake! It’ll be like something squirted out by a bleeding wire-haired terrier if you pour it now!’
The Hon. Con put the tea pot down. ‘You mean, the morning after the au pair girl had been murdered, Mrs Hellon was down here at’ – she glanced at the clock – ‘seven o’clock waiting for you to arrive with the milk?’
‘Crikey, you got cloth ears or something? That’s what I’ve just told you, isn’t it? She must have been dying for a cup of tea. I get lots of ’ em like that on my round. We all do. They use all their bloody milk up the night before and then come over all shirty if you’re a couple of minutes late. Not,’ said the milkman piously, ‘that I ever am, of course.
‘And this was unusual behaviour?’
‘It was bloody unique.’ The milkman expertly removed the silver top from one of the bottles. ‘ I told you. That’s why it stuck in my mind. First time Mrs Hellon had ever been waiting for me and that very morning was the one she found the girl killed. Funny, isn’t it? That’s why it gave me such a turn when you jumped out like a bloody jack-in-the-box. I thought history was bloody well going to repeat itself. Four lumps for me, missus!’
‘Did she mention Teresa O’Coyne to you?’
‘Course she didn’t!’ said the milkman scornfully. ‘Why should she? Nobody knew the kid was dead then, did they?’
The Hon. Con absently dropped five or six lumps of sugar in her own cup, which was a pity because she was supposed to be slimming. The milkman’s story was pretty trivial in itself but, to the trained mind, it presented some fascinating ideas.
‘You’re sure this was Tuesday morning?’ she asked.
‘And you’re sure she was waiting for the milk to come?’
The milkman stood up and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, ‘ What else? Soon as she thought the milk had come, she nipped out, didn’t she? If I hadn’t mislaid my bloody pencil, it’s odds on I’d never have seen her at all.’
The Hon, Con watched the milkman ease his shoulder bag into place and settle his cap at a provocative angle. ‘Were the police interested in your story?’
‘The police?’ The milkman frowned. ‘What’s it got to do with the police?’
‘There’s been a murder,’ said the Hon. Con severely.
‘I know there’s been a bloody murder, missus,’ snapped the milkman, ‘but what the hell do I know that’d help? I wasn’t even near the house until something like seven hours after she was killed, was I? Look, I’m as conscientious as the next bloke and if I’d anything to tell the police I’d go round and tell ’em, wouldn’t I?’ ‘You did call at the house before the body was discovered,’ the Hon. Con pointed out.
But the milkman had had his cup of tea and he’d got the rest of his round to finish. He couldn’t afford to spend any more time chatting up lonely old birds who just wanted somebody to talk to. He’d done his good deed for the day. ‘ Yes, I know I called here before the body was discovered,’ he agreed in a voice which demonstrated just how patient he was being, ‘but that doesn’t mean I know anything about the bloody murder, does it? You know your trouble, missus?’ He opened the door and grinned, patronizingly at the Hon. Con. ‘You’re like most ladies. You can’t think logically, see? Well, ta-ra for now and, if you can’t be good, missus, be careful!’
It was not the sort of farewell speech that the Hon. Con usually took lying down but now she just gaped stupidly at the door which the milkman had slammed cheerfully behind him. She could hear him going whistling and clanking off down the path but it was only when everything was quiet again that she made any move.