Love, Honour & O'Brien

by Jennifer Rowe

  As the two groups closed in on her from opposite directions, Una reached the door of her haven and swung around, at bay. She clutched Holly’s wrist with her good hand and drew her closer, as if for protection.

  ‘Una, what are you up to now?’ Cliff Allnut asked mildly. ‘Who is this woman?’

  Una tightened her grip on Holly’s wrist. ‘For your information, Ms Cage is a private detective,’ she announced. ‘She is going to prove that Andrew was murdered.’

  ‘What?’ shrieked Dulcie, and Lily actually hissed like a cat.

  That’s torn it, Holly thought. She couldn’t believe this was happening. She concentrated on not looking at Eric.

  ‘Una—’ Allnut began.

  ‘And what’s more,’ Una went on, raising her voice, ‘until we have the proof we need to call the police back, Ms Cage will be staying here in this house to ensure that there won’t be any repeat of last night’s attempt on my life.’

  Holly’s head was swimming. ‘Ms Maggott—’

  ‘No one tried to kill you, Una,’ Sheena said, her Irish accent very much in evidence. ‘It was a pure accident. You forgot to put the brake on your wheelchair, that’s all. Or maybe the brake is worn. If you’ll just let Eric take a look at it . . .’

  Una jerked her chair back into the doorway, shaking her head.

  ‘It was one of you!’ she said. ‘You all knew I was sitting on the front verandah after dinner. One of you crept up behind me, snapped off the brake, and pushed me down those steps. I heard it. I felt it!’

  She brandished her bandaged arm at them. ‘If I’d fallen any way other than I did, I’d have more than a sore arm and a cut on my forehead. I’d have broken my neck! At the very least, I’d be flat on my back in hospital right now, with a lot of fusspots checking my bone density, and pneumonia around the corner. Don’t tell me that’s not what you wanted! I know!’

  Holly looked around the semicircle of faces. Sheena, frowning. Eric, worried. Lily, sullen. Dulcie, flushed and outraged. Cliff Allnut, his lips pursed. Was one of them acting? Had one of them pushed the wheelchair down the front steps last night? Surely not. Surely it was just another one of Una’s paranoid fantasies. Why would any of these people want to kill her?

  Because she won’t stop saying Andrew was murdered?

  The last thought drifted into Holly’s mind and clung there. She shook her head, but the thought refused to be dislodged. Remember the rings, she told herself. No one but Andrew and Eric could have stolen them, and you decided it wasn’t Eric . . .

  ‘Una, if you really think there was an attempt on your life, you should speak to the police, not a private detective,’ Allnut said evenly.

  Una narrowed her eyes. ‘Oh, yes, you’d like that, wouldn’t you? The police already think I’m irrational, thanks to you people. If I complained to them, I’d have social workers crawling all over me in two minutes, making reports that I’m senile and need to go into sheltered accommodation for my own safety. With you or Dulcie getting my power of attorney, most likely.’

  She paused, scowling malevolently as Dulcie spluttered and Allnut shook his head and sighed.

  ‘But it turns out I’m not as helpless as you all think, doesn’t it? The police might let themselves be fobbed off with a pack of lies about Andrew, and my sanity, but Ms Cage is a different story.’

  ‘Clearly,’ said Allnut, looking at Holly with distaste. ‘But before you invest any more money in Ms Cage, Una, you may be interested to know—’

  ‘I’ll be calling the police again when I’ve got some hard proof that Andrew never left here,’ said Una. ‘And Ms Cage is going to supply that proof. She’s going to search this house from top to bottom till she finds his things, those spoons he’s supposed to have stolen, and the mug he drank from on Tuesday night. And if any of you object, or try to stop her, we’ll know why.’

  In the paralysed silence that followed this announcement, there was a knock from the direction of the open front door. The ute driver was leaning against the doorjamb. His vehicle idled on the gravel behind him, the brown dog panting in the back. His face was quite without expression. It was impossible to tell how much he had overheard.

  ‘Sorry to interrupt,’ he said lazily. ‘I just need a word with Una before I push off.’

  ‘Martin!’ Galvanised, Una sent her wheelchair zooming forward, dragging Holly with her and forcing Dulcie and Allnut to jump aside.

  The man’s blue gaze flicked in Holly’s direction, then flicked away again.

  ‘Won’t come in, Una. Boots,’ he said economically. ‘I took a quick look around the boundary, like you said, but I couldn’t see anything.’

  ‘Aha!’ Una Maggott sat up straighter in her chair. ‘You’d swear to it?’

  ‘Turf ’s still pretty spongy,’ said Martin. ‘A ladder would have dented it well and truly, especially after the wet. But it’s as smooth as when I set it.’

  ‘What about in front of the gates? On the gravel?’

  Martin shrugged again. ‘It doesn’t look like it to me. Unless someone’s done a pretty good filling and raking job since.’

  Una glanced triumphantly at Holly.

  ‘Thank you very much, Martin,’ she said. ‘And thank you for coming at such short notice.’

  ‘No worries.’ Martin unhitched himself from the doorjamb, nodded casually at the company in general, and strolled towards his vehicle.

  ‘I wonder how much he’ll charge you for that?’ Dulcie asked spitefully as the ute door slammed and the dog barked.

  ‘I doubt he’ll charge me at all,’ Una said, pressing the remote control to open the gates and turning her wheelchair around. ‘And if he does that’s my problem, isn’t it, Dulcie? Not yours. The main thing is, he’s confirmed that Andrew did not use a ladder, or anything else, to climb over the fence on Tuesday night.’

  ‘McNish didn’t need a ladder,’ Cliff Allnut said loudly. ‘He had an accomplice who helped him from the outside— threw a rope ladder or somesuch over the fence, probably. A female accomplice.’

  Holly tensed.

  ‘Rubbish!’ Una Maggott snapped.

  Ponderously, Allnut drew a minute, leather-covered notebook from his breast pocket.

  ‘Last night was the final straw for me, Una,’ he said, in a serious, more-in-sorrow-than-in-anger tone. ‘After years of service to your family, like my father before me, to be accused of . . . well, I decided I had to do something about it. So first thing this morning, I went down to Springwood. I was planning to stay longer, even give up golf if necessary, but as it turned out there was no need.’

  He opened the little notebook. ‘That’s why I’m here. It seems that, whatever he told you, Una, Andrew McNish had a girlfriend.’

  15

  ‘Rubbish!’ Una Maggott repeated, after the briefest possible pause.

  Allnut consulted his notebook. ‘A short, plumpish girl with mouse brown hair, possibly in her mid-twenties, but could be much younger,’ he said. ‘Wearing a pink and white striped jumper, pink trousers and a pink knitted cap. First sighted with Andrew McNish three weeks ago, cuddling and kissing outside the Commonwealth Bank in Springwood.’

  Holly wondered if the age thing made up for the short, plumpish thing. She was glad she’d had her hair streaked. She was glad that after a week of near starvation her cheekbones were showing. She resolved to get rid of the pink and white sweater with the horizontal stripes.

  ‘Who was your informant?’ she found herself asking crisply, and marvelled at the way terror could bring out unsuspected inner reserves.

  ‘Mrs Felicity Wigg, one of the Springwood taxi drivers,’ Allnut said, with an air of triumph. ‘The real estate agents I wanted to see were still closed when I arrived, so I decided that while I was waiting I’d speak to the taxi drivers parked at the rank beside the railway station. Local taxi drivers, I’ve found, always know a lot about what goes on in a place.’

  Again he consulted his notes. ‘Mrs Wigg knows Andrew McNish by sight. She read that old a
rticle about him in the Gazette, and now and again after that she noticed him around Springwood, buying coffee and so on. For a while he was often with a glamorous redhead—she thinks they worked together. Then the redhead dropped out of the picture. And about three weeks ago—she’s not sure of the exact day, but she thinks it might have been a Monday—she saw him with this other girl outside the bank.’

  Una was looking thunderous. Allnut eyed her reproachfully and flipped over a page of his notebook.

  ‘But that’s just the beginning. Mrs Wigg was in fact the taxi driver who brought McNish here last Sunday—picked him up from his place in Clover Road. She remembers it well because the next day—the very next day, mind you, Monday— she had to go to the Clover Road house again, to drop off the same girl she’d seen with McNish outside the bank. The girl had tried to disguise herself by bleaching some of her hair, but she was still quite recognisable. She had luggage with her, and seemed in a highly excited state—possibly on drugs. She let herself into McNish’s house with a key.’

  ‘So!’ hissed Dulcie. Lily gave a harsh little laugh.

  Una was gripping the arms of her wheelchair, breathing hard, her face a mask of fury. Holly was paralysed. Her inner reserves seemed to have evaporated.

  ‘There’s an interesting side-note,’ Allnut went on, turning over yet another page. ‘The next day, Tuesday, Mrs Wigg was having lunch in her cab when a man she describes as—’ he consulted his notes ‘—“medium height, mid-fifties, looked like a heavy drinker”, showed her a photograph of McNish and asked if she’d driven him anywhere lately. She wouldn’t admit she’d told him this address, but in my opinion she was lying.’

  O’Brien, Holly thought glumly, remembering the taxi receipt she’d found in the dead man’s shirt. Twenty dollars.

  Una seemed to have recovered some of her poise. Her inner reserves were apparently inexhaustible. ‘How much did you give this Wigg woman to tell you all this, Allnut?’ she growled.

  ‘Twenty dollars,’ Allnut said with dignity. ‘It’s what she asked for, and it seemed only right to pay her for her time.’

  ‘Pay her for telling a pack of lies, you mean,’ Una spat. ‘I might have been able to believe that Andrew was involved with some glamourpuss redhead, but a fat little teenager on drugs is another matter. When you lie, you shouldn’t over-elaborate, Allnut. It’s always a mistake.’

  Allnut went brick red and literally bared his teeth. For an instant his mild, slightly sheep-like face looked quite savage.

  ‘If I were you, Miss Cage, I would think very carefully before continuing to take instructions from Miss Maggott,’ he said to Holly. ‘There is such a thing as a professional code of conduct, you know, even for private investigators. Good morning.’

  He turned and walked rapidly out the front door, slamming it behind him.

  ‘Great exit, but it won’t do him much good,’ Sheena murmured to Eric. ‘The gates are shut. How’s he going to get out?’

  ‘Climb the fence, I guess,’ drawled Eric. They both sniggered. Lily confined herself to looking disdainful.

  ‘Una, how could you!’ Dulcie stormed predictably. ‘I’ve never been so embarrassed in all my—’

  ‘You’d better get that boy of yours out of bed and bring him down here, Dulcie,’ said Una. ‘Do him good to see what daylight looks like—and Ms Cage will be up to search his room in a minute.’

  Dulcie bridled, then scurried for the stairs.

  ‘Ms Maggott, I can’t—’ Holly began in a low voice.

  But Una had turned her attention to Lily. ‘Why are you still in the house?’ she demanded. ‘Didn’t I tell you to leave?’

  ‘You said I could stay till the weekend,’ Lily muttered.

  ‘Yes, well, it’s the weekend now, isn’t it?’ snapped Una.

  Lily pressed her lips together, raised her chin and swept to the stairs. When she reached them, she grasped the newel post and turned gracefully, the perfect, tragic picture of a blameless heroine accused.

  ‘Andrew McNish was taking advantage of you, Una,’ she said in a trembling voice. ‘It’s not fair to turn me out, with less than a week’s notice, just because I said so on Tuesday night! I only did it because—’

  ‘Because you lost your temper and showed your true colours when I said I was going to leave him all my money,’ Una broke in contemptuously. ‘I know. I saw your face.’

  ‘I didn’t—’

  ‘Don’t lie! I know what a sneaking cat you are. I know you’d been trying to pump Andrew for information ever since he’d arrived on Sunday, cosying up to him, batting your eyelashes, inviting him to your room. I know how spiteful you got when he told you he wasn’t interested. He told me. We laughed about it.’

  Lily’s face sharpened with anger. Her top lip curled, revealing small, even teeth. Suddenly there was a squirrelly, feral look about her.

  ‘And if you killed him you did it for nothing!’ Una spat. ‘I was finished with you a month ago, the moment I found out what a liar you were. Whatever you did, whatever you said, you were never going to get your hands on my money. Never in a million years!’

  ‘You’re mad!’ hissed Lily, and bolted up the shrieking stairs.

  Eric gave a low whistle.

  ‘Get about your business, Eric!’ Una barked at him. ‘You too, Sheena! I don’t know what you think you’re doing, standing gawping there like a couple of tourists.’

  ‘You’re a one, Una, you really are,’ said Sheena, shaking her head. ‘Why are you going on with this? You can’t fool me. You know perfectly well that Stiff Cliff was telling the truth. Andrew had a girl. That’s why you’re so angry. Your tame detective knows it too. It’s written all over her face. If she’s got any decency at all she’ll leave you to it.’

  She gave Holly a hard stare then turned and stomped back towards the kitchen, with Eric slouching after her.

  Una Maggott looked up at Holly. Her shoulders slumped. Suddenly she looked almost defeated.

  ‘He swore there was no one,’ she muttered, almost to herself. ‘He lied to me.’

  Holly’s heart was wrung with a mixture of guilt and pity. ‘Yes,’ she murmured.

  Now was the time to admit why she was so sure. I was the girl in the pink striped jumper, Ms Maggott. I was the girl with the key to Andrew’s house. He lied to me, too. He dumped me, and stole my money . . . But the words were still framing themselves in her mind when the woman in the wheelchair shook her head and straightened her shoulders.

  ‘I should have known,’ she said softly. ‘Oh, Andrew was a twister. A user and a twister. A chip off the old block.’ She raised her eyes to the portrait of the smirking, black-suited old man on the wall and, bizarrely, she smiled.

  Holly stared at her. What was she saying?

  ‘I’ll tell you a story, Ms Cage,’ Una went on, almost conversationally. ‘I left Australia six months after my father sold his business and installed Lois, Andrew’s mother, in this house. My employer, Alexis Delafont, had decided to return to France, and had asked me to go with him. His offer was good, and there was nothing to keep me here. In fact, I had every reason to leave.’

  She looked around the entrance hall, her eyes dwelling on the grand staircase, the cedar panelling, the stained glass of the front door.

  ‘Come in here,’ she said suddenly. ‘I want to show you something.’

  She turned the chair around and wheeled herself into her room. Holly hesitated, then followed, hovering cautiously just inside the doorway. The gods and pharaohs, bright in the morning sunlight, stalked relentlessly towards the bay window. She was relieved to see that the snake seemed to be asleep. It wasn’t moving, anyway.

  Una was fossicking in her desk. She slammed a drawer and rolled swiftly back to Holly’s side holding out a large photograph.

  The photograph, which looked like a recent enlargement of something much older and smaller, showed a man, a woman and a stocky, dark-haired girl of nine or ten, squinting into the sun on the front steps of 9 Horsetrough Lane
. The photograph had been taken from a distance, but was clearly a family group. The mother had her arm around the girl’s shoulders. The girl was looking up at her father, who was staring straight ahead at the photographer with that teasing smirk Holly recognised from the portrait in the hall. In front of the three lay a flat apron of white gravel, and stretching away to their left and right was a park-like vista of lawn and trees. The house behind them looked elegant. There were no bars on the windows, and tendrils of creeping fig were just beginning to soften the walls.

  ‘That was how this house looked when my mother, father and I first came here,’ Una said. ‘It was absurdly large for a family of three, but my mother’s parents had left it to her, and my father liked the idea of living in something so grand.’

  Her lips twitched, whether in amusement or resignation it was impossible to say.

  ‘I already loved the house when we moved in. I’d often stayed here overnight when my parents went out. I’d help serve the guests’ breakfasts, and do the beds with my grandmother and the maids. I thought it was all very glamorous. I grew to love the place even more over the years we lived here, and when I got older, even after I started work and got a flat in town, I always thought of it as home.’

  Holly glanced from the photograph to Una’s face. The grey eyes had warmed. The harsh lines beside the mouth had softened. Then the face changed again. It was like watching wax harden and crack in cold water.

  ‘Then my mother died, and less than a year afterwards, Lois moved in,’ said Una Maggott in a flat voice. ‘After that, I couldn’t bear to come here. Lois was quite impossible— featherbrained, greedy and common as muck, but my father was besotted with her. She played up to him appallingly, trailing round all day in transparent negligees and high-heeled slippers with swan’s-down on the toes. The perfect old man’s darling.’

  An expression of fastidious disgust flickered across her frozen face.

  ‘The few times I came here after she moved in they went on as if they were alone. Champagne at all hours. Screeching and giggling. Playing infantile games. Chasing each other from room to room. My father had actually bought black satin sheets for the bed. The bed he’d shared with my mother for over thirty years.’