Mrs. Malory and a Necessary End (Mrs. Malory Mystery)

by Hazel Holt

  “I expect she thought Marcus sounded more distinguished.”

  “All of a piece with her silly pretentiousness. And now I hear she’s managed to get him on the council.”

  “I believe she gave dinner parties for all the influential people—or people she thought were influential.”

  “I heard about that. Alan Berwick and Robert Mabey—influential! Heaven help Taviscombe if they’re influential.”

  “It seems to have worked,” I said.

  “Oh well, I suppose he can’t make the council any more inefficient and useless than it’s always been.”

  “Well, at least he has some connection with Taviscombe. He told me he used to spend his school holidays with his aunt, Miss Seaton. What was she like?”

  “A difficult woman.”

  “Difficult” usually meant simply someone who disagreed with Mrs. Dudley, but the force with which she said the word indicated something out of the ordinary.

  “It’s no wonder,” she went on, “he’s grown up to be such a poor creature, brought up by that woman.”

  “He did say she was a bit austere.”

  “Well, I suppose that’s one way of putting it. As you know, Sheila, I have my standards; I belong to a generation that knows right from wrong and I have very firm views on how people should behave.” She paused for my nod of approval. “But Edith Seaton still lived in the Victorian age. No idea how to bring up a child—of course, she never married, even though she was quite wealthy.”

  “I gather she was fond of bridge.”

  “Fond—she was obsessed by it! She used to have afternoon bridge parties—the only time she ever saw people—and really, you’d think every game was a matter of life and death. So stupid. All card games are a waste of time when you could be doing something useful.”

  “Did you play bridge?”

  “Well, I could, of course, just enough for social purposes. Everyone did. I went to one of these parties once, but really, I couldn’t bring myself to go again; such a dreadful atmosphere.”

  “I imagine she’d have been quite unpleasant if people didn’t take it as seriously as she did.”

  “She had a very sharp tongue. A lot of people never went again.”

  “I’m not surprised.”

  “Of course, there are always a few who are prepared to put up with unpleasantness where there’s money. Vera Parker was one of her hangers-on. Vera used to tell me about that poor child, how strict she was with him, never allowed to make friends with local children—so sad.”

  “Marcus—I mean, Mark—said she left him the house and the money because he was her only surviving relative, but he did say she was quite fond of him.”

  Mrs. Dudley smiled pityingly. “Well, I suppose you would be fond, in a kind of way, of someone you’ve dominated completely.”

  “I suppose that’s why he married Norma. I mean, perhaps he needed someone who’d boss him around.”

  “She knew when she was on to a good thing. His parents had made a lot of money abroad but they were killed in an air crash or something and he inherited everything. That’s when she married him. He set up a business of his own somewhere in the Midlands, Kidder minster or Redditch—some peculiar-sounding name like that. Vera couldn’t remember. Well, when I say he set it up, she was the driving force.”

  “I can imagine.” I took another slice of ginger cake. “I believe she didn’t get on very well with Miss Seaton. Mark didn’t say anything directly—I suppose that would have implied criticism of Norma and he adores her—but that was the impression I got.”

  “She would have disapproved of anyone Mark married. I suppose if he’d chosen some little mousey creature she would have accepted it and bullied her, too. But to be faced with someone as strong-minded as herself—well!”

  “Oh dear!”

  “And it’s not as though the girl was anybody. Edith Seaton was a terrible snob. She would have swallowed her feelings if there had been good connections, but there was nobody—no family and no money. Apparently she’d just been some sort of typist who’d managed to get her claws into him. So after the first couple of times they weren’t invited down there again.”

  “But she still left him the house and money,” I said. “She could have left it to a charity—is there a Home for Indigent Bridge Players?”

  “He was the only surviving relative—she had very strong opinions about the importance of the family. She may have disapproved of Norma Stanley, but it would have taken something really terrible for her to have disinherited him.”

  “I bet she’d be turning in her grave if she knew how Norma has modernized the house, and she’s planning a swimming pool!”

  “That doesn’t surprise me in the least—just what I would have expected of that sort of person.” She looked at me inquiringly. “She must be very difficult to work with in that shop of yours.”

  “She’s not easy,” I said with feeling. “Though, strangely enough she’s been distracted lately. There seems to be something on her mind, and she’s hardly been in the shop at all.”

  “Well!” Mrs. Dudley said triumphantly. “That confirms it.”

  “Confirms what?”

  Mrs. Dudley leaned forward. “Vera Parker, when she telephoned me a while ago, said there was some problem about money.”

  “Really? But Mark is very well off.”

  “It’s all about investments, so Vera said. Well, not Vera exactly—she’s in West Lodge now and she’s become very friendly with this man there, Harold Porter. He’s been in there ever since his wife died; men are so helpless. Apparently he used to be something to do with finance and he knew the Stanleys.”

  “Oh yes, I remember him, a nice man. He and his wife used to come to Brunswick Lodge—”

  “Yes, yes,” Mrs. Dudley interrupted me. “He told Vera that when the Stanleys first came to Taviscombe, Mark had just sold his business in wherever it was and was looking round for suitable investments. They had some sort of stockbroker in London, but after a while she decided that she was a financial genius and more or less took over. Well, you can imagine! Vera and I have been waiting for the crash to come.”

  “And you think that whatever is on her mind is something to do with these investments.”

  “Well, of course,” she said impatiently. “What else would it be? I must telephone Vera this afternoon after she’s had her rest. Harold Porter will be very interested, too.”

  I saw, with pleasure, that she was seeing a whole new vista of gossip and speculation opening up before her.

  After I left I went down to the seafront to get a breath of fresh air. The terns, back from their summer banishment, were lined up on the rails, waiting hopefully for human largesse, while the larger gulls circled overhead, making louder demands. It was a calm, overcast day. The sea and sky merged into a sort of pearly gray blur while the sea itself hardly seemed to move.

  As I was standing there, thinking with satisfaction of Mrs. Dudley’s new animation, a car drew up beside me and Bob Morris got out.

  “I thought it was you,” he said. “I was going to ring you.”

  “Has something happened?”

  “I finally managed to get up to Birmingham to see John Barlow.”

  “I hope he was more forthcoming than his mother!”

  “A bit, but he was a mass of nerves, so frightened that anything he might say would convict himself or his mother.”

  “Not surprising he’s nervous, I suppose, if you think of both his parents!”

  “I did finally manage to get out of him that, in desperation, he’d confronted his father when he went to the shop. He didn’t tell his mother what he was going to do, just said he was going out.”

  “That must have been what I heard when I gave her a lift home that afternoon. I was sure I heard voices when she was in the kitchen making the tea. Obviously that didn’t go well.”

  “No. His father’s comments were particularly brutal, I gather, and when he’d finished, the boy said he just rushed
back home, threw a few things into a bag and got a bus into Taunton to catch the Birmingham train.”

  “Wendy told me he’d gone back to university,” I said. “I suppose she had some muddled idea that university seemed more normal, and, of course, she didn’t say anything then about the row with his father. So when I spoke to him on his mobile, he was actually in Birmingham, not Nottingham.”

  “That’s right. Apparently the only person he felt he could turn to was this person who’d been sympathetic and tried to get him into the college of art.”

  “So his father was still alive when he left him. Or do you think he was lying and that he went back later and killed him?”

  “Well, he did have a strong motive and he didn’t have an alibi—I mean, his mother’s word wouldn’t really be enough.”

  “True.”

  “He said he caught the six thirty bus to Taunton to get the Birmingham train.”

  “Difficult to prove.”

  “Almost impossible.” He paused. “But I was lucky. On the off chance I asked the woman in the refreshment room if she’d been on duty that evening and she had. And she did remember him.”

  “No!”

  “It seems he ordered a coffee, and just as he was about to drink it, the Birmingham train came in and he chucked it down on that ledge over the counter and rushed to get on the train. Of course, the coffee went everywhere—all over the cake and sandwich display. A terrible mess to clear up. You can imagine how something like that would have stuck in her memory!”

  “How amazing. And she was sure it was him?”

  “I’d got a photo of him from Mrs. Barlow—you can imagine how difficult that was—and she identified him from that. But she said she’d noticed him specially when he came in because he was so agitated.”

  “What a tremendous piece of luck! So John has got an alibi.”

  “Absolutely.”

  “And that’s the last of your real suspects,” I said almost reluctantly. “Nobody else with a real motive?”

  “Not that we know of. Oh well, I must be getting along. I’m collecting Dad and taking him back to supper with us—it makes a bit of a break for him.”

  “That’s nice. I’ve been meaning to drop in on him—I found a DVD of that Victorian kitchen garden program and I thought he might enjoy it.”

  “Sounds like just the job, as he would say. Thanks very much.”

  Rosemary rang me next day, sounding much more cheerful.

  “Thanks, Sheila—a real transformation!” she said. “She’s hot on the trail of Norma Stanley now. In fact, she asked me to drive her to West Lodge to have tea with Vera Parker and this friend of hers. She likes going to West Lodge—it means she can feel superior to all the inmates there because she’s still living at home.”

  “I thought she seemed more herself when I left. Fancy her going out!”

  “I know. It’s been ages. She made me go all through her wardrobe with her, item by item, before she decided what she was going to wear.”

  “That is a good sign. And it will feel like old times for Vera Parker again, so everyone’s a winner.”

  “Do you really think there’s something wrong with the Stanleys’ finances?”

  “I don’t know, but it would explain why Norma has been so offhand about the shop—something I never imagined would have happened.”

  “Oh well, I expect Mother will get to the bottom of it,” Rosemary said confidently. “She usually does.”

  The noise of a crash from the kitchen and a sharp yelp from Tris made me ring off hurriedly. Needless to say, it was Foss, who in his investigation of the dishes on the work top, had knocked off a bowl of stock (mercifully cold), which had splashed Tris and shattered into many pieces. Tris was whimpering and demanding comfort, and I suspected that Foss had taken refuge from my wrath under the duvet in the spare room. The Herculean task of clearing up this mess drove all thoughts of Norma Stanley right out of my mind, at least for the moment.

  Chapter Eighteen

  The next couple of days when I was in the shop, Norma hardly went out at all. Instead she spent a lot of time in the storeroom—rearranging the stock, she said—and sorting through the stuff put aside for the dealers. But quite often when I went through she was just standing, some garment or object in her hand, apparently lost in thought.

  “I wish to goodness she would go out,” Jean said to me. “It gives me the creeps to see her mooning about in there. It doesn’t look as though she’s actually doing anything—and that’s not Norma! Anyway, having her there makes me feel awkward about going through to the kitchen to make the tea. Not that she seems to notice.”

  Anthea, too, when I saw her at Brunswick Lodge, was also puzzled.

  “Whatever’s happened to Norma?” she demanded. “She’s hardly come to any committee meetings and she sent a message—didn’t tell me herself—that she couldn’t organize the transport for the sixty/forty sale. After all the fuss she made about doing it! And she phoned Julia to say that she wouldn’t be able to write to the man about that string quartet after all. Well, Julia was furious that she hadn’t even gone to the arts committee meeting to explain. It’s left her in a very difficult position.” Anthea couldn’t keep a note of satisfaction out of her voice since she and Julia (to put it mildly) don’t get on.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “She’s not been herself at the shop. Perhaps she’s got something on her mind.”

  “That’s all very well,” Anthea said. “But if you take on these things you ought to see them through. I suppose she’s too busy pushing poor Marcus on the council—telling him what to say at council meetings, I daresay.”

  “Perhaps,” I said. But I was wondering what Mrs. Dudley had found out. It must have been something really serious to account for Norma’s unusual preoccupation.

  I was quite busy the next few days. Thea had a bad cold so I collected Alice from school (Norma didn’t even make a sarcastic remark when I left the shop early) and gave her her tea. Afterwards, when she’d done her homework, we watched my ballet DVDs while Alice gave me a running commentary, enthusiastic if inaccurate, on the performers, frequently prefaced by “Hannah says….” Hannah being the fount of all ballet wisdom since she had actually seen Swan Lake at Covent Garden.

  “So could we go, Gran? At Christmas. It could be my Christmas present. I wouldn’t want anything else!”

  I made the usual noncommittal reply (“That would be lovely—we’ll see what Mummy says”) and suggested that she might give Tris a run around the garden before she went home.

  When I went to have a new battery put in my watch I saw Marcus in deep conversation with the jeweler over what looked to be a very expensive diamond-and-ruby ring. The jeweler seemed to be examining it closely and commenting on it. Marcus hadn’t seen me, so I said I’d call back later to collect my watch and went out of the shop quickly. It occurred to me that Marcus might be selling some of Norma’s jewelry and I didn’t want to embarrass him.

  “Goodness,” Rosemary said when I told her. “Things must be in a bad way. Norma’s got what Mother calls some very nice pieces—I suppose they’d fetch a bob or two.”

  “I’ve more or less given up wearing rings,” I said, fingering my wedding and engagement rings, “except for these. I looked at my hands one day and saw how veined and wrinkled they were and it seemed like an insult to decorate them in any way! I’ve put them on one side for Thea and Alice.”

  “I know. And don’t you find necklaces feel so heavy nowadays? Pearls are all right, but that ornate gold-and-lapis one that Aunt May left me just gives me a headache. I don’t suppose Delia would want it—too old-fashioned—or Jilly, for that matter. Still, I suppose they could always sell it.”

  “Like poor Marcus.”

  “Poor Marcus,” she echoed. “Bad enough when there was plenty of money—Norma would be all right with the ‘for richer’ bit, but not so good with the ‘for poorer.’ Especially if it was her bad judgment that caused it, though I bet she’d be th
e last one to admit that.”

  “I’m sure Marcus would never even suggest it,” I said. “He obviously adores her, no matter what. He’s obviously completely under her thumb.”

  “Talking about being under the thumb, Mother has set me an impossible task. She says she wants a small table for the sitting room.”

  “But there are hundreds of small tables in that sitting room—you can’t move without running into one!”

  “Ah, but there isn’t the right small table.”

  “Oh.”

  “The one she wants has to be of a certain height, a certain size and of the right color wood. Oh yes, also of the right period and the right price.”

  “Oh dear.”

  “Exactly.”

  “So what are you going to do?”

  “Go and see what they’ve got at the auction rooms. And you are coming with me. Please.”

  “You want someone to blame if it’s wrong?”

  “Yes. So will you?”

  Taviscombe is unusual for a town of its size in having rather a good auction room. I suppose it serves a wide catchment area where there are still some quite large houses with expensive pieces that might be up for sale. I thought Rosemary might actually find a table there that fulfilled all Mrs. Dudley’s requirements, except, perhaps, the reasonable price.

  There were only a few people there when we arrived, looking over the items ready for the next sale, so we were able to have a good look round.

  “Just look at that splendid chiffonier!” I said. “Who on earth would have room for a massive thing like that? And that enormous wardrobe—I bet you could wander into Narnia though the back of that.”

  “I can’t see any small tables,” Rosemary said, “except this one, which looks far too expensive.” She indicated a delicate Regency table with small gilded sphinxes for feet.

  “I don’t think that’s quite what your mother has in mind, anyway. There must be a sale catalog somewhere. Let’s go and see if we can find one—I expect Rory is somewhere about.”