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

by Hazel Holt

  “Guess what,” Rosemary rang me in some excitement. “Harold says that Norma is liquidating some of her assets.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “I think she’s selling some of her shares and things.”

  “People do—they invest in something else.”

  “Yes, but Harold says it’s very odd that she’s selling things at the wrong time.”

  “The wrong time?”

  “Something to do with the state of the market, Harold did explain. Anyway, he thought it was most peculiar.”

  “Perhaps they are going; they might need extra money for that. Anthea was saying that Marcus hadn’t been to some of the council meetings—it’s all of a piece. But why all the mystery?”

  “I know. Usually Norma can’t wait to tell everyone what wonderful project she’s embarked on. Unless… unless it’s something bad, disgraceful even. She wouldn’t tell anyone then.”

  “What on earth could that be? Perhaps Marcus has had enough and has left her,” I suggested, “and she’s getting out with everything she can lay her hands on.”

  “Not likely. Anyway, he can’t have gone—I saw him in the bank yesterday.”

  “In the bank? I suppose you didn’t see what he was doing there?” I asked hopefully.

  “Um, no, not really. There were a couple of people in front of me so I couldn’t see. Whatever it was, the girl on the counter was away for quite a long time. Sorry.”

  “Oh well, it was too much to hope for. Still.”

  “Absolutely.”

  I did ring Alfred Lyle’s wife about the Kipling first editions but there was no reply, so I pushed the box of books farther out of sight to prevent Norma finding them, put the whole thing out of my mind and concentrated on other things. Norma’s absences were becoming even more frequent. When Jean challenged her about them she replied evasively, even placatingly.

  “I’m so sorry,” she said. “I do know how awkward it must be for you and I do appreciate it. It won’t be for very long, I promise you.”

  “So what do you make of that?” Jean demanded. “Norma being conciliating—I couldn’t believe my ears. I was so flabbergasted I couldn’t ask her what she meant before she was off again.”

  “‘Not for very long,’” I said thoughtfully. “I wonder….”

  “Wonder what? You mean she might be giving up the shop?”

  “Yes…” I broke off. Somehow I didn’t feel I wanted to share my theory about the Stanleys leaving Taviscombe with Jean. She would probably challenge Norma about it, and I didn’t want her alerted to the fact that anyone knew what she was planning.

  “Yes,” I repeated. “It would certainly explain things.”

  “But why would she do that?” Jean demanded. “After the way she’s worked to get things her own way here—all that arguing with Desmond. It doesn’t make sense.”

  “Perhaps now Marcus is on the council she wants to concentrate on that.”

  “I suppose it might be that,” she said reluctantly. “But where does that leave us?”

  “They’ll probably make you manager,” I suggested. “After all, you know more about the shop than anyone.”

  “Oh, I don’t want the responsibility. No, they’ll bring someone in from outside and heaven alone knows what sort of person we’ll get.”

  “Well, whoever it is,” I said, “they couldn’t be worse than Desmond and Norma.”

  “There’s definitely something up,” I told Rosemary. “The question is what.”

  “And why. What on earth would make Norma want to up sticks just when everything is working out so well for her? It doesn’t make sense.”

  “Unless something we don’t know about has gone wrong. Maybe she’s done something wrong and is going to be found out.”

  “Such as what, for goodness sake?”

  We were both silent for a minute. Then I exclaimed: “Desmond—perhaps she murdered him!”

  Rosemary looked at me inquiringly. “But I thought she had an alibi.”

  “Only from Marcus. But,” I added reluctantly, “there’s no sort of motive, except dislike.”

  “It would make sense, though—I mean, make sense of why she’s behaving like this.”

  “Well, yes. But why now?”

  “Perhaps your inspector chum has uncovered some new evidence.”

  “I suppose….”

  “There’s no reason why he would have told you, especially if it’s something he’s still working on.”

  “True. And I can’t very well ask him.”

  We were both silent again, considering the possibilities.

  “So what exactly happened that day? I mean about Norma.”

  “Let me see. Oh yes, Desmond gave us one of his lectures about how badly the shop was doing and how it was all our fault. As you can imagine, Norma took it all very badly.”

  “I can imagine.”

  “As soon as he’d gone she flounced off home.”

  “Flounced?”

  “Well, you know what I mean. She was absolutely furious—just snatched up her coat and stormed off.” I stopped suddenly. “I’ve suddenly remembered something. She took her coat, she grabbed it from the peg where we hang them on her way out. But—but I’m pretty sure she didn’t take her handbag.”

  “So?”

  “I don’t know if her handbag was there the next morning when they discovered Desmond’s body, but if it was there I’m pretty sure Bob would have asked us all whose it was, and he never mentioned a handbag. I’ll check with him.”

  “And Norma hadn’t tried to go in to work that morning?”

  “No, she was still having her migraine. At least that’s what Bob said when he tried to contact her about the till.”

  “Aha! And none of you thought she had a migraine when she went off.”

  “Goodness no—it was just that she was livid with Desmond.”

  “So,” Rosemary went on, “she could have come back later that evening and killed Desmond and seen her handbag and taken it away then?”

  “Hang on, let me think. I’m sure there was a gap when someone could have killed him before that poor girl came in and saw him when she robbed the till. Between seven and nine, I think it was.”

  “Too much to hope that someone saw her.”

  “Bother Miss Paget and her TV! Still people do use that back alley as a shortcut. It’s not impossible. I think I’d better have a word with Bob.”

  But when I asked for him at the police station, they said he was away on a course.

  “What do they do on all these courses?” Rosemary said crossly when I told her. “Snatching him away like this when he’s in the middle of a case. Oh well, I’ll have to get on to Harold again and see what he’s turned up.”

  Alas, Harold had no more news for us. “A broken reed, Mother says,” Rosemary reported. “So I don’t know where we go from here.”

  Norma continued to come and go at the shop at erratic times, and Anthea said that even Denis was contemplating action at Brunswick Lodge.

  “He’s calling an extraordinary committee meeting,” she said with some satisfaction, “to ask her what her intentions are. And if she doesn’t deign to come to that, we’ll vote her off in her absence.”

  “Can you do that?” I asked. “I mean, does the constitution allow it?”

  Anthea is a great one for the constitution.

  “We’ll do it, even if we have to make an amendment!” she said grimly.

  It had been a particularly tiresome day at the shop. There were very few customers, and we always found standing about boring. We could have done useful things in the storeroom, but it was a hot, sticky day and, with no real ventilation, it was like an oven in there, so we just hung about, drinking tea and longing to go home. To make things worse, Norma hadn’t come back to go to the bank and we had to “hide” the takings. Jean was particularly vociferous about this.

  “After what happened when Desmond died,” she said, “you’d think she’d make a point o
f being here. I mean, if only she’d told me she wasn’t coming back I could have gone myself. Now it’s too late. It isn’t,” she continued bitterly, “as if I haven’t had to do it umpteen times before when she’s gone swanning off.” She thumped her empty tea mug down on the counter. “Anyway, it doesn’t feel safe having all that money in here.”

  “It’s not an enormous amount,” I ventured. “Today hasn’t been a very good one—it never is when it’s sunny. Everyone’s on the beach or the seafront.”

  “That’s as may be. It’s the principle of the thing. Well,” she said resentfully, “if something happens and the place is robbed again, don’t let anyone blame me!”

  When I eventually got home I was feeling fractious, too; the car was hot and the road was closed and I had to go miles out of my way to get home. The house, too, was hot and airless and the animals, who also hate the heat, were particularly difficult, picking at their food or, in Foss’s case, refusing it contemptuously and demanding “the other food.” I left the back door open so that they could go in and out without persecuting me, and went to change into something cooler. Because I was irritable, I wrenched my pearl necklace off and broke it. Fortunately, there were knots between the pearls so they didn’t scatter, but knowing I’d somehow have to make time to take it in to be mended made me crosser than ever. So when Tris came into the sitting room bearing a large crust that I’d put out for the birds and began chewing it messily on the carpet, I spoke to him sharply. He flattened his ears and looked at me anxiously and, of course, I felt dreadful.

  “Oh, poor Tris, I’m so sorry—I shouldn’t take my bad temper out on you!”

  While I was getting him some treats to assuage my guilt, Foss came in (attracted, as always, by the thought of Tris having something he didn’t) and so he had to have some, too, and by the time I’d done that and made my supper (half a grapefruit and a poached egg on toast), I was more or less recovered. But I was still wondering where Norma had gone off to this time, and what on earth was going on.

  In the sitting room, with the windows open and a gin and tonic to aid concentration, I tried to think of a satisfactory motive—any motive—that might have led Norma to kill Desmond. As far as I knew they’d had no sort of contact outside the shop and it seemed most unlikely they’d known each other before the Stanleys came to Taviscombe. The only thing I could think of was that somehow Desmond had found out something discreditable about Norma; after all, we knew very little about her past. But even if that was so, it would be difficult to find out what it was. Unless, perhaps, there was something illegal about her finances—our only hope there was Harold, and although he’d been very helpful (“How on earth did he find out all these financial things?” I said to Rosemary. “I wouldn’t dream of asking,” she replied.), there was obviously a limit to what even he could do.

  The next day I took my necklace in to be mended. To my surprise I found Marcus there again. This time he saw me come in, and, just for a moment, he looked slightly embarrassed though he greeted me with a smile and a half wave of the hand before turning back to the jeweler. Fortunately the assistant was busy with another customer and, by pretending to look at a showcase full of watches, I was able to have a good look at what Marcus, who had his back to me, was doing. He seemed to be interested in a diamond pendant. I heard the jeweler say, “As you can imagine, we don’t have much demand for pieces of that quality—you’d need to go to London for something like that, Hatton Garden perhaps. I could give you the address of a reputable dealer there, if that would help?”

  Unfortunately the assistant was now free so, reluctantly, I had to leave this fascinating conversation and get on with my own business.

  Needless to say I phoned Rosemary right away.

  “Why would he be buying Norma more jewelry?” she demanded. “She’s already had her birthday!”

  “It didn’t sound like ordinary present buying,” I said. “More sort of commercial—I mean, Hatton Garden diamond dealers?”

  “Oh, I don’t know—Eva Makepeace kept going on about that diamond bracelet her husband bought her for their ruby wedding. He bought that somewhere in Hatton Garden.”

  “Yes, but… it didn’t sound like that. Not personal.”

  We were both silent for a minute. Then Rosemary exclaimed triumphantly: “Of course—realizing their assets!”

  “What do you mean?”

  “What if they’re moving abroad and want to put their money into something portable, you know, like the Russian aristocracy did in the Revolution.”

  “But why go to all that trouble? Why not just transfer their money somewhere abroad?”

  “Perhaps they couldn’t do that, perhaps they’re running away—from whatever it is that’s making them move—and don’t want to be traced?”

  “But surely they’d have a job getting them out of the country; what about customs?”

  “Oh, I’m sure there are ways,” Rosemary said airily. “People are always doing it in books and films.”

  “How?”

  “I don’t know. They could hire a helicopter, or Norma could go back and forth wearing a few bits at a time—lots of ways.”

  “I suppose you may be right,” I said doubtfully. “Still, it does sort of make it likely that they’re planning to move abroad. Oh dear, I do wish I could speak to Bob about all this. He’d have ways of finding out.”

  “I don’t think we’re doing too badly,” Rosemary said cheerfully. “You must just keep your eyes and ears open when she’s in the shop—listen to her phone calls.”

  “I’ll do what I can, but I don’t think she’s likely to do anything incriminating there when she could be doing it at home!”

  But as it happened Norma did take a call when I was in the shop kitchen. The storeroom door was half open and she didn’t know I was there.

  “And you have confirmed the flights to Zurich for the thirtieth? Excellent. And the car hire? Very good. I will be in touch next week to confirm the final arrangements. Good-bye.”

  At that moment Jean called her into the shop to deal with the person who valued the porcelain for us and who had a problem. So while Norma was tied up with that, I was able to leave the kitchen and the storeroom without her being any the wiser.

  “Switzerland!” Rosemary was delighted. “Swiss banks and all that—they really must be going.”

  “But on the thirtieth,” I said. “That’s less than a month away. And they’re hiring a car; they could be going anywhere.”

  “Not necessarily.”

  “And I’m sure it’s difficult to actually go and live in Switzerland.”

  “Lots of celebrities do.”

  “I expect that’s different.”

  “So come on. If they’re going soon, we haven’t got much time.”

  “To do what?”

  “Well… Talk to your friend Bob when he gets back. He ought to know they’re leaving.”

  “I don’t know if they can while the case is still going on.”

  “Wendy went to Birmingham.”

  “But she has an alibi. And you must admit, even Bob must see it all looks very suspicious.”

  “Perhaps.”

  “Anyway, I’m sure Norma will have thought of some very good reason—business or whatever—for them leaving. After all, Marcus’s firm was something to do with abroad. She could make it look as though it had all been arranged ages ago. We know that she’s only just started to liquidize her assets.”

  “I don’t think Harold would be willing to explain to the police how he knew that.”

  “Oh, I’m sure the police can find out that sort of thing,” Rosemary said airily.

  “That’s all very well. But even if they could, I don’t think it would be proof.”

  “We need to find something, and fast.”

  “Yes,” I said, “but what?”

  We were both silent for a moment. Suddenly it all seemed very difficult.

  “I suppose,” Rosemary said slowly, “they must have made arra
ngements for their furniture and stuff to be moved. I know—I’ll ask Andy Seymour.”

  Andy Seymour ran the only large removal firm in Taviscombe.

  “He’ll think it a bit odd—your asking, I mean.”

  “Oh, I’ll think of something.”

  “And does his firm do shipping abroad? They might have got someone from Taunton, or even Bristol. We’d never find out if they have.”

  “Well, it’s worth a shot.”

  Alas, Andy Seymour proved to be another broken reed.

  “So it must be a Taunton firm,” Rosemary said. “We must try and keep an eye on the house.”

  “I don’t see how that would help,” I said crossly.

  “We might be able to find out where they’d gone.”

  “Yes, possibly. But they might leave before the move. If it’s as urgent as all that, they might have to get out as soon as possible. Anyway, if they were still there and anyone saw the removal van, surely someone would ask awkward questions.”

  “We’ve got to do something before the thirtieth; we haven’t got much time.”

  “Well, Bob should be back long before then.”

  But when I phoned the police station they said that he’d gone on leave.

  “That really is tiresome!” Rosemary said. “Where do you think he’s gone?”

  “I don’t know. But even if I did, what use would that be?”

  “Well, you’re on good terms with him. You could just give him a quick phone call.”

  It seemed a bit of a long shot, but when I was passing the end of the road where Bob’s father lived, on an impulse I went along to the house and rang the bell. Old Mr. Morris was very welcoming.

  “Come in, come in. It’s good to see you.”

  He led the way into the conservatory and, after I’d admired his fine display of pelargoniums, we sat down and he said, “It’s good to have a bit of company. Bob and Molly are away.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes, it’s very sad. Molly’s mother, Amy, lives in Sidmouth. She moved down there after Alfred died. You remember him—he used to work at Woods in the furniture department. Well, she went to live with her sister, Maureen, but she died two years ago, so Amy’s been on her own.”