So like each other had they become, living and working together over the years, that Falconer was finding it difficult to tell them apart. They both dyed their greying hair an improbable shade of chestnut; both tended towards plumpness, they dressed in similar late-middle-age clothes, and both wore glasses. It was these latter that gave Falconer the only clue as to which was which. Vera’s glasses had red frames, whereas Letty’s were black.
They sat opposite each other, the armchairs hauled round so that they could face the dining room chairs in which the detectives were seated. ‘I suppose, being of the same age group, in a small place like this, you’ll probably miss Mrs Finch-Matthews?’ asked Falconer, in a rather arrogant manner, in Carmichael’s opinion, but the inspector had met his match in the Gorman sisters.
They both leaned forward in their chairs, taking on the quality of demon twins as their faces grew dark. ‘Couldn’t stand the woman!’ they declared in unison, leaning back as if choreographed, each with an audible sigh.
‘Why?’ queried Falconer, surprised by their vehemence.
‘There was an incident involving the dinner money, some time ago.’ Letty began.
‘It’s all right, I’ll tell it, sis. It was a mix up, that’s all. Letty’d been given two different bags of dinner money, and mislaid one.’
‘I’d just forgotten about it. There was only ever one bag, except for this week, when some of it came in late.’
‘Let me tell it: you’ll only go and get upset again.’ A bell sounded in the room that housed the post office. ‘You go and see to that customer, and I’ll finish off the story here, Letty.’
As Letty left them, her face beginning to get flushed with emotion, Vera carried on with the story, to get it finished before her sister returned. ‘That Finch-Matthews bitch only went and accused my own dear sister of thieving, and said she’d go to the head post office and complain, so that I’d have to give my own flesh and blood the sack.’
No love lost there, then. ‘And where exactly was the money?’ asked the inspector, surprised at the venom in the woman’s voice.
‘She’d put it under the counter instead of in the safe, because someone came in right after it was dropped off – it was a separate bag, left here a good two hours after the first one, and Letty simply forgot, because she’d had a customer to deal with, and she’d already been to the safe with the first bag, earlier. It was an oversight anyone could have made, and it just got shoved behind some of the stamp books. We didn’t find it until after closing time the next day. Letty was in a right old state by that time, and I’ve never forgiven the old biddy since.
‘She said some horrible things, that still upset my sister to this day, and if I’m brutally honest, I’m glad she’s dead, and I expect Letty is too. So there!’ Vera Gorman had surpassed the evil twin look now, and looked positively deranged with hatred, and then her face just cleared, and the sweet old lady looked out of her eyes again.
‘Still, what’s happened can’t be changed, and I think that’s about all I can help you with, Inspector. Would you like a top-up of tea? No? Sergeant? Oh well, I’d better let you get on with your investigation, instead of listening to the reminiscences of a rambling old woman.’ She smiled as she said this last, and Falconer wondered if he’d imagined the evil old hag who had hissed her hatred at him only a minute or so before.
‘You’ve been very helpful, Miss Gorman, and your sister, too, of course. We’re grateful you could spare the time to see us,’ he thanked them, exchanging a look of profound puzzlement with Carmichael, as they rose from their hard wooden seats.
‘What do you think, Carmichael?’ he asked, when they were out in the open air again.
‘Mad as a bag of ferrets,’ Carmichael gave as his considered opinion on the post mistress. ‘Where to now, sir?’
V
This constant traipsing around repeating questions over and over again could prove to be very tedious, but they’d had a fairly good hit rate so far, and Falconer had decided that they’d finish the morning with the properties in Forge Lane, grab something to eat, then work their way down Four Stiles, finishing in Cat Hanger Lane, which was near where they had left the car. That was about as much as they could fit in at the moment, and he hoped to be a bit closer to finding out who was responsible for the murder by the end of the day.
So far, Carmichael’s garish outfit had raised no eyebrows, but he ran out of luck as they approached the front door of High Gates. What they assumed were Harriet Findlater’s parents were stuffing suitcases into the boot of an elderly car, while Miss Findlater herself was wringing her hands, and whining, ‘Are you sure I can’t come with you? I’ll be frightened after what happened last night, you know I will.’
‘Don’t be such a baby, Harriet. And nothing happened last night, except a bad case of over-active imagination on your part. You’re fifty-seven years old. When are you going to grow up? You know the three of us will be too much for your gran, but I’ll tell her you’ll come and see her by yourself before the new term starts,’ barked the elderly woman, her husband nodding his agreement as he got into the driver’s seat.
‘Mr Findlater? Mrs Findlater?’ called Falconer, taking a punt. ‘I wonder if I could have a word with you before you go away. I can see you’re in a hurry, but would you be kind enough to spare me a minute?’
‘You’d better make it quick, young man. I presume you’re plain clothes policemen, here about the murder?’
‘That’s right, madam.’
‘Well, make it quick, will you? My husband doesn’t like to drive fast, and we want to get to my mother’s sometime before midnight.’ It was only eighty miles, but Mrs Findlater liked to appear a long-suffering martyr.
God, she was prickly, Falconer thought, before launching into his opening gambit. ‘I wonder if we could ask you a few questions about that tragic incident at the school on Thursday?’
The two detectives had just about come into focus for Mrs Findlater’s elderly eyes and she let out a hoot of laughter as she nudged her husband and pointed at Carmichael. ‘Going to a fancy dress party, son?’ she chortled, her husband now out of the car again and wheezing with mirth at her side.
They had enough to do today without having to deal with George Burns and Gracie Allen, so Falconer decided they could wait until they came back. They’d probably get enough out of their daughter, who was much more in the thick of things. ‘When are you coming back from your trip?’ he asked, trying to keep his voice polite, and not glare at them for their rudeness.
‘Monday,’ the old man informed them, the first words he had spoken since they had laid eyes on him.
‘We’ll come back when you’ve returned home,’ he informed them. ‘Perhaps we can take this opportunity to have a word with your daughter?’
‘Take it!’ This was Mrs Findlater again. ‘At least it’ll give us the opportunity to get away without another bout of her whinging and whining about prowlers that only exist in her over-active imagination.’
What an evil old bag, he thought, as he smiled at Harriet, and motioned towards the front door.
‘Bye, all!’ the old couple called through the open windows of the car. No one answered them, the three figures already on their way into the hall of High Gates, all of them wishing the ghastly old people a really foul journey, and an even worse stay.
‘I’m so sorry about that,’ Harriet apologised, as she showed them into an over-furnished sitting room, fussy with patterned curtains, patterned carpet, and patterned upholstery, and far too many little tables covered in silver-framed photographs. The fact that most of the photographs were either pre-second world war, or of a selection of dogs and cats, was a testament to the quality of her parents’ relationship with Harriet – or lack of it.
‘I’m afraid they’ve got rather cranky in their old age. Don’t think they’ve singled you out. They’re like that with everyone, except when they’re down at the pub sinking a few sherbets. Drink seems to mellow them a bit, as far as other
people are concerned, but nothing makes them any nicer to me.’
‘That must be awful for you,’ commented Carmichael, genuinely horrified.
‘Oh, I’ve got used to it over the years. I never left home, you see, except to do my degree and my teacher training. I’ve got my bedroom upstairs, and a little sitting room, so we don’t have to get under each other’s feet very often.’
‘And what happened last night? You mentioned something, and your mother wasn’t very nice about it.’ Carmichael wanted to get to the bottom of that one. He was horrified that parents could show such coldness to their own flesh and blood, for his family was happy and close-knit.
Harriet gave a big sigh, and stared at him with a wry face. ‘It was probably only my imagination, like Mummy said.’
‘Tell me. Not everyone’s like your mother.’ Falconer was interested too now that Carmichael had brought up the subject.
Shrugging, she began to explain in an apologetic voice. ‘They were out at the Ring o’ Bells, and I was here alone. I thought I heard someone trying to turn the back door handle, and I also thought I heard someone moving about in the shrubs. We don’t have any outside lighting, and the street lights don’t really penetrate the trees.
‘Neither of them has a mobile phone, and I was scared stiff, with what had happened to Audrey the day before – and in broad daylight.’
‘I’m not surprised. So what did you do?’ This one was definitely down to Carmichael. He had just the right touch with people who had been hurt, or were upset.
‘I managed to get out of the house, and hared off to the pub. And when they saw me …’ She broke off, and her eyes flooded with tears.
Carmichael moved over to sit beside her and put his arm round her shoulders, to show he was on her side. ‘What happened when they saw you, Miss Findlater? We won’t tell anyone anything you confide in us. Honest Injun!’
Harriet managed a watery smile, amused at the schoolboy still inside this giant of a man in his garish clothes. He made her think of the Pied Piper of Hamelin.
‘Instead of smiling, or asking me what was wrong, they looked so horrified, and sort of disappointed. It was only for a second, but I saw it on their faces, and I wanted the ground to swallow me up, in case anyone else had seen it. I felt about as popular as a fart in a lift,’ she finished, making Carmichael laugh out loud at the expression, which he had never heard before, and would certainly not have expected of so respectable-looking a lady as this.
‘You had every right to be scared, Miss Findlater,’ interjected Falconer, now that she was back on a more or less even keel. ‘There’s a murderer on the loose out there, and who’s to say there’s not someone else on his list?’
‘Inspector Falconer’s right. If anything like that happens while your parents are away, dial 999 at once, lock yourself in somewhere with the lights out, and just wait for assistance.’
‘Changing the subject,’ Falconer began, ‘Can you tell me what your relations were like with Audrey Finch-Matthews? Were you bosom buddies, just colleagues …?’ He let the sentence trail off, giving her an opening to be absolutely straight with them, with no witnesses.
‘We existed in what you might call a state of slightly uneasy truce.’
‘And why was that?’ The inspector had definitely taken over, and Carmichael had understood what was going on, and was already out of her sightline, over by the window, scribbling away in his notebook, with the very tip of his pink tongue sneaking out of the corner of his mouth, as if in search of air.
‘It’s no secret that I wanted to be given the chance of the headship when Audrey retired, which she would have done at the end of the Christmas term when she turned sixty. We’d both been at the school for decades, and, as usual in my life, I was always the bridesmaid, never the bride. I’m only a couple of years younger than her, and I thought she might have considered giving me a chance, just for a short time, for all the years I’ve supported her in the role.
‘And she just said ‘no’. Point blank! And when I asked her why …’ The tears were threatening to return, and Carmichael stuck his notebook in his shirt pocket and moved over beside her again on the sofa.
‘It’s all right, Miss Findlater. You can tell us. Sometimes just telling someone else about something unpleasant that has happened takes the sting out of it, and makes us feel a bit better.’
Where did he get all this stuff from? thought Falconer. If he’d been on his own with her, she’d probably be hysterical by now, with him wanting to grab her by the front of her sensible jumper and pull her up to eye-level, while he told her to just get on with it and stop acting like a five-year-old. He had to hand it to the younger man – he was good with emotion, whereas he, Falconer, was all at sea with it, and simply didn’t know how to cope.
‘Sh-she s-said I was useless with ch-children,’ she gulped. ‘She s-said I had n-no control, and that I ought t-to take early retirement when she w-went. I’ve n-never w-wanted anything m-more than a little while, to have m-my t-turn at the helm.’
‘Well, she’s dead now, and she can’t queer your pitch, so surely that’s something to look forward to, isn’t it? County might put you in as a caretaker headmistress.’ Falconer was trying his hand at bringing a smile to her face – but unsuccessfully it seemed. Miss Findlater burst into tears, and crushed her face into the material of Carmichael’s shirt as if her world had come to an end. Carmichael put his arm round her shoulders again, and muttered ‘there, there’ quietly to her, while delivering a ‘look what you’ve done, now’ look, at his boss.
‘I’m sorry if I’ve upset you, Miss Findlater, but I’m just not very good at feelings, and yours seem to be very hurt.’ That was a better effort on Falconer’s part, and she lifted her head and sat up straight, reaching into the pocket of her navy blue trousers for a handkerchief.
‘I’m so sorry to make a fool of myself, but I have to keep everything buttoned up when Mummy and Daddy are at home. And Audrey and I used to be such friends. It was a knife through my heart when she suggested early retirement to me. I thought I was going to pass out with the shock of it.’
‘Moving on, did you see or hear anything unusual on Thursday morning? I know we spoke about this the other day, but I wondered if you’d remembered anything in the meantime.’
‘Not a thing, I’m afraid. It was just another day at school, and there was nothing out of the ordinary, except for people coming in throughout the morning and leaving their cakes for the bake sale, so that made it rather busier, but nothing unusual happened, to my knowledge.’
‘Did you see anyone at the school that you didn’t expect to see?’ he asked.
Harriet had a fleeting memory of a face she thought she’d recognised, but that had been at the bake sale, and nothing to do with Audrey’s murder. ‘Just “the usual suspects,”’ she answered, with a feeble attempt at a joke.
‘That’s fine, Miss Findlater. We’ll come back when your parents return. Perhaps they may have noticed a stranger, or someone acting oddly.’
‘I doubt it,’ she replied. ‘The only ones who act oddly around here are those two,’ and at this feeble sally, she did manage the ghost of a smile. Maybe she was beginning to learn how to stand up for herself, after all these years.
When she’d waved them off the premises and closed the front door, Harriet went into the dining room to the sideboard to treat herself to a small sherry. There were going to be some changes around here, she thought, almost light-headed with rebellion.
It was lucky that she didn’t know how drastic those changes were going to be, or how soon they would occur.
VI
They could raise no answer to their rings and knocks at Laurel Lodge and a quick look through the small garage window revealed the absence of a car. They’d have to catch up with the Chadwicks some other time, as it looked as if they had taken advantage of the good weather to go out for the day. Maybe they’d even gone away for Easter, but Falconer thought that unlikely, as they hadn’t let some
one at the station know, and all those who had been spoken to on Thursday morning had been asked not to leave the area without informing the police.
They encountered the same lack of response at Copse View, the last house in Forge Lane, on the other side of the road, and just to the east of the holiday homes. Through the inadequately curtained windows was revealed a property that looked unloved and uninhabited, but they’d better check out who was supposed to be living there, or who the last inhabitant had been.
That left them with Blacksmith’s Terrace to tackle before lunch, but that shouldn’t take long, as all the residents were holidaymakers, only here for a week or two, and unlikely to be involved in what appeared to be a very local murder.
They started at the eastern end, so that they would slowly be working their way towards their lunch break, and approached number five to find the Graingers in a similar scenario as that in which they had come upon the Findlaters.
Virginia was putting soft holdalls into the boot, and Richard was placing cardboard boxes full of provisions on the back seat when they approached. As Virginia loaded, she maintained a quiet monologue, more to herself than to her husband.
‘I’m not doing it again. I don’t care what anyone thinks of me, I just can’t face going through that sort of thing for a second time. It was the worst period of my life, and we came here to get a complete break, and try to exorcise it from our minds – or at least I did. It’s not respectable, and it’s frightening, and I’m not staying here to get mixed up in it again. Ooooh!’ she cried, startled, as she noticed Falconer standing beside her, waiting for her to finish, so that he could speak.
‘Who are you, and what do you want?’ she asked abruptly.
‘Steady, Ginny! Whoever he is, it’s not his fault you’re rattled, is it?’ her husband said soothingly.
‘No: you’re right Richard, of course. Where are my manners? What can I do for you? We don’t live here, if it’s directions you want.’
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