Murder a la Mode

by Patricia Moyes

  “Who else has keys?”

  Olwen considered. “Miss French, of course. And Teresa and Patrick and Miss Field. And Helen had one.”

  “Nobody else?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Well,” said Henry, “thank you for telling me all this. You were quite right to do so. For the moment, keep it to yourself.”

  “Of course I will.”

  Henry smiled encouragingly. “I can imagine how distressing all this must be for you,” he said.

  “I’ll be all right,” said Olwen. “I’ve got plenty of work to do.”

  She stood up, and Henry had an impression of mingled youth, vulnerability and toughness. Olwen Piper had all the intensity and quick emotionalism of her countrymen, but she also had strength.

  “Good girl,” he said, smiling. Then he added, “Later on, this evening, probably, I’d like to take a look at your flat, if I may.”

  “Of course, Inspector. What time?”

  “It’s difficult to say exactly. May I telephone you?”

  “Very well. I’ll be at home from about five o’clock until I go out to the theatre.”

  Olwen wrote down her telephone number in strong, neat handwriting, and went out of the office, leaving Henry to the job of questioning Ernest Jenkins.

  The latter was a tall, thin youth, white-faced, with sharp, humorous features. He agreed cheerfully that he was one of Style’s darkroom assistants, and that he had been on duty the previous evening, helping Michael Healy.

  “Not that I ’ad much to do,” he admitted. “Mr. ’Ealy, ’e likes to make ’is own prints, if it’s anything important. Won’t even let you in the darkroom while ’e’s working.”

  He agreed that he had made a fresh Thermos of tea for Helen at about half past eleven, but had not taken it to her office. Michael Healy, he explained, had been angry because he had abandoned a print he was reducing in order to make the tea, and had called him back to work. The word “reducing” rang a bell in Henry’s mind.

  “Isn’t that what you use the cyanide for?”

  “That’s right.”

  “What does ‘reducing’ mean, exactly?”

  “Makin’ the print lighter,” said Ernie. “If the neg’s very contrasty, like, you can’t get the light part to print without the dark’s too dark. So you reduce it.”

  “How?”

  “By rubbin’ the dark part with cyanide.”

  “How much was in the bottle when you used it?”

  “More’n half full,” replied Ernie without hesitation.

  “What’s the procedure for getting cyanide from the cupboard?”

  “Ordinary like,” said Ernie, “Fred ’as the key—that’s the chief printer—and we ask him for what we want an’ sign for it. But last night was Collections, see.”

  “So who had the key?”

  “Mr. ’Ealy. That’s to say, the cupboards was all open, and I just took wot I wanted.”

  “And he didn’t lock them up again when he left?”

  “I dunno when ’e left. ’E sent me ’ome about midnight.”

  “How did you get out of the building? Did you have a key?”

  “Me? Blimey, no. It’s easy enough to get out, though—one of them locks you can always open from the inside, and then slam, like a sort of super-Yale.”

  “I see,” said Henry. “Thank you, Ernie. That’ll be all for now. I may need to see you again later on.”

  “I’ll be in the darkroom, guv, worse luck,” Ernie said cheerfully, and withdrew.

  Left alone, Henry assembled his somewhat scattered thoughts. In the heightened atmosphere of explosive temperaments, he realized, he had allowed his investigations to get out of sequence. He telephoned to the sergeant, and asked him to bring the dead girl’s handbag to the office. It had, the sergeant assured him, been tested carefully for fingerprints, but, like the Thermos flask, bore no evidence of having been handled by anybody other than Helen herself. The cyanide bottle, the sergeant added, bore no fingerprints of any sort.

  The contents of Helen’s handbag were not very rewarding. There was a gilt powder compact and an expensive lipstick, two large dirty handkerchiefs and two clean ones, a comb, a fountain pen, and a key ring containing three keys, one of which Henry recognized as a twin to Olwen’s. The pigskin wallet-purse contained eight pounds and some small change, together with the stubs of several theatre tickets, a receipt for a pair of shoes, some visiting cards, and the unused half of a day return from London to Hindhurst, in Surrey. A small ivory card case was filled with Helen’s professional engraved visiting cards, replicas of the one on her office door. There was also a small diary, and Henry turned to this with hope, only to be disappointed, for the entries were no more than brief records of business appointments. Two items, however, caught his attention—one dated a month previously and the other on the last day of Helen’s life. In each case the entry consisted of a single word—“Doctor.” Henry looked again at the railway ticket. The date of its issue coincided with the date of the first doctor’s appointment—a Saturday. Here was something to be followed up, but in view of what Olwen Piper had said, the explanation seemed sadly obvious. Henry sighed, returned Helen’s possessions to her bag, and sent for Teresa Manners.

  Teresa walked composedly into the office, and as soon as she said, “Good morning, Inspector,” Henry recognized the high-pitched, aristocratic voice which he had heard earlier in the corridor.

  Even Henry realized at once that Teresa possessed what Margery French had described as “fashion flair.” It was only on very close inspection that he registered the fact that she was not a very beautiful woman, for her impact was shattering. She was very tall, with the figure of a model, and she wore a straight dress made of scarlet jersey, which gave the impression of being the most artless of garments, but which was, in fact, most intricately cut and seamed. Round her neck were hung about ten long golden chains of varying calibre, and one slim wrist was circled with as many gold bangles. Her bleached hair was exquisitely set, her make-up smooth and flawless. The fact that her face was slightly too round and plump, her eyes too close-set and her forehead too low, simply did not register. She sat down and crossed her elegant legs.

  “May I smoke, Inspector?”

  “Of course.”

  Teresa brought out a gold case from her enormous crocodile handbag, selected a cigarette and lit it from a matching gold lighter. She reminded Henry of a thoroughbred racehorse, with her brittle wrists and ankles, her unmistakably “county” air, and her slightly jerky, nervous movements. She was obviously making a great effort to keep herself under control. Pursuing his analogy, Henry decided that she might, under stress, take the bit between her teeth and bolt.

  Henry took her gently over the first fences. She confirmed what he had already been told about the previous evening—the working session at the office, Goring’s arrival and invitation, the brief champagne party, the drive home. She agreed, shying slightly, that she had been into the darkroom several times during the night to speak to Michael, and that she had noticed the Thermos flask standing in the storeroom.

  “By the way, Inspector,” she added, “can Michael and I take our cases home today? It’s most inconvenient without them. Michael did bring a toothbrush home in his briefcase last night, but all my make-up things and so forth are…”

  “I quite understand,” said Henry. “Yes, you can take them.”

  “Thank you.”

  Henry then took a deep breath, and approached the tricky part of the interview. It was surprisingly easy.

  “I believe that you were very friendly with Miss Pankhurst?”

  “Yes, I was.”

  “Both you and your husband?”

  “Yes. Both of us.” There was no hesitation at all. Then, rather surprisingly, Teresa added, “Especially Michael, of course.”

  Henry was intrigued. “Why do you say that?”

  Teresa considered for a moment. “I don’t know what Olwen Piper has been saying to you�
��”

  Henry said nothing. Teresa went on, speaking very fast. “All sorts of silly rumours were going round about Helen and Michael. Some of them may have reached you. They weren’t true. At least, only half-true. Helen was brilliant, and I’m a half-wit, as anyone will tell you. She and Michael had a lot in common. They used to dine together. Go to the theatre and concerts. Things like that. Perhaps there was even some sort of a mild flirtation. I didn’t know and I didn’t care. If there was, it couldn’t have mattered less to any of us. Things get exaggerated in a small world like this, you know. My marriage is perfectly happy and always has been. Helen was my friend.” She spoke in short, cropped sentences, with pauses like exclamation marks between them.

  “Since you knew her so well,” said Henry, “can you tell me anything about her private life and her friends—outside of you and your husband?”

  Teresa looked a little startled. “No,” she said. “Helen didn’t have friends outside the office, as far as I know. Uncle—I mean, Mr. Walsh—has adored her for years, in his funny way. And of course Olwen had a sort of schoolgirl crush on her.”

  “They seem to have been a strangely assorted pair to share a flat.”

  “Yes, they were. It only happened because Helen was too good-natured. Olwen arrived a year ago, fresh from university, as assistant to our features editor. She had nowhere to live and knew nobody in London, and Helen’s sister, with whom she used to live, had married and gone to Australia. So Helen took pity on Olwen and fished her out of some ghastly hostel and gave her a room in the flat. It was only intended to be the most temporary arrangement, until Olwen found somewhere else to live—in any case, it would have been far too expensive for her. But then the features editor left suddenly, and Olwen was promoted and took over, and with her extra salary she found she could pay her fair share of the expenses. She begged Helen to let her stay on, and Helen was soft-hearted…and anyway she’d been finding it a bit of a financial load, running that flat all alone. So…there they were.”

  “Has it occurred to you, Miss Manners,” Henry asked suddenly, “that Helen might have killed herself?”

  There was a dead silence. The question had obviously taken Teresa completely by surprise, and she could not make up her mind how to answer it. Henry had a strong suspicion that her hesitation was caused not by any doubts about coming to a truthful conclusion, but by speculation as to which of several replies would be most politic.

  At length she said, “Frankly, I hadn’t considered it. Everyone seemed so sure…” She checked herself. “Now that you mention it, I suppose it is possible…”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Oh, no reason. I mean, people do commit suicide for the oddest reasons, don’t they? If you say she did…”

  “I said nothing of the sort. I asked for your opinion.”

  Teresa raised her hands and dropped them again in a gesture of bewilderment. “How could I possibly know?” she said.

  “You were a great friend of hers.”

  “She certainly didn’t say anything to me that could have…”

  “I’ve been told,” said Henry, “by several people that she had been nervous and unhappy lately. Didn’t you notice that?”

  Teresa looked profoundly nervous and unhappy herself. “Well…that is…I thought she was a bit tired, yes.”

  “You don’t think,” Henry pursued, “that her friendship with your husband may have gone deeper than you guessed? That she may have been deeply distressed by her conflicting loyalty to you and affection for him…”

  “Yes, that’s quite possible.” Teresa spoke firmly, and with a sort of relief. She seemed to have come to a decision. “Yes, the more I think about it, the more feasible it seems. Of course, it wasn’t Michael’s fault. How could he have known? Helen wasn’t the kind of person to wear her heart on her sleeve, but she felt things very deeply, and she had been worried and upset. Yes, now that you explain it, I’m sure that’s what must have happened.”

  Henry looked at her with considerable scepticism. Not for the first time that morning, he had the feeling that some sort of disorganized conspiracy was at work to conceal some inconvenient fact from his knowledge. Patrick, with typical ham-fistedness, had made it obvious; Margery French had handled it adroitly; Teresa Manners had done her best, but had neither the intellect nor the wit to improvise when taken unawares. The question now was to decide which of the three could most easily be persuaded to tell the truth, and the best method of making them do so. For the moment, Henry decided not to rush things. After all, he still had to speak to Michael Healy.

  Emmy looked at her beautiful niece with some concern. “I don’t like the idea of you being mixed up in all this, Ronnie,” she said.

  “Uncle Henry said I could help him!”

  “He had no right to,” said Emmy severely. “You must keep well out of it. Murder may be Henry’s business, but it’s not yours!”

  “But don’t you see, Aunt Emmy—everybody knows who Uncle Henry is, and if someone’s got something to hide, they’ll never give themselves away to him. I’m such a nit, nobody will think of being careful of what they say in front of me. I shall be able to find out masses of things that he can’t.”

  “Everybody must know by now that you’re Henry’s niece.”

  “No. Only Beth, and she’s promised not to say a word. Beth’s an angel.”

  “Angel or not, she’ll tell everyone just the same,” said Emmy with relief. “So you see, you won’t be able to do any good. In any case, I won’t have you playing at being a detective. Murder isn’t glamorous, you know. It’s a nasty, sordid, dangerous business. I don’t know what your mother will say.”

  “She’ll pretend to be horrified, but she’ll be all agog for the latest juicy bits of news,” said Veronica, with brutal candor. She looked at her watch. “Heavens, I must go. My sitting’s at twelve. I’ll come along this evening and tell Uncle Henry what I’ve found out.”

  “Of course, we’d love to see you this evening, dear, but…”

  “Can’t you just see the headlines?” said Veronica gleefully. “Model girl solves murder mystery. ‘We were baffled,’ admits Chief Inspector Tibbett of Scotland Yard…”

  “Ronnie!” Emmy was genuinely shocked. “Don’t you dare!”

  “Must go now. See you this evening.”

  “Ronnie…”

  Veronica blew her aunt a kiss. “You’ll see,” she said ominously. And with that she was gone.

  By the time that Henry had concluded a routine but unproductive interview with Alf Samson, which merely confirmed what he already knew, the office clock stood at ten minutes past twelve. Henry dialed the number of the studio, and was told tartly by Ernie that Mr. Healy was in the middle of a sitting and could not be disturbed.

  “Very well,” said Henry amicably, “I’ll come along to the studio.”

  “No visitors allowed,” said Ernie positively.

  “I am not a visitor,” said Henry. “If either you or Mr. Healy want to argue the point, talk to Mr. Goring about it.”

  The mention of the great man’s name had an immediate effect. “Oh well,” said Ernie, resignedly, adding, “Mr. ’Ealy won’t like it, I can tell you.”

  “Too bad,” said Henry. He rang off, and went along the corridor to the studio.

  The studio was a huge, high-ceilinged barn of a room. Clearly this part of the old house had been completely gutted and reconstructed to accommodate it. Lamps and screens, electric flex, and junction boxes made it something of an obstacle race to get in at all; inside, there was a hushed and cathedral-like atmosphere which it would have taken a brave man to shatter.

  The whole place was dark, except for a brilliantly lit area at one end, where a girl whom Henry recognized with difficulty as his niece Veronica stood in a circle of blazing white light, against a background screen of crumpled silver paper. Her honey-coloured face had been plastered with thick, pale make-up, and her eyes darkly and boldly outlined in deep brown. True to her threa
t, she had also used the same dark brown to outline her sepia mouth. She was wearing a long, slinky black dress and an extravagance of diamonds, and she looked a good ten years older than her age. The most startling thing of all, however, was the fact that she held in her right hand a thin chain which was attached to the collar of a large and dangerous-looking cheetah, which was engaged in sniffing and pawing the ground with obvious ill-humour.

  Facing her, a tall, slim man in shirt-sleeves stood with his head bent in dedicated concentration over a small camera on a tripod. In the dim background, Henry could make out two other female figures—Beth Connolly and Teresa Manners.

  Without looking up, the thin man said, “What’s the reading, Ernie?”

  Ernie darted out from the shadows, holding a small light meter in his hand. He approached Veronica and the cheetah with reluctance, and shoved the meter to within an inch of Veronica’s nose.

  “A hundredth at five-six,” he said.

  “And the reading on the cheetah?”

  Tentatively, Ernie extended his arm and brushed the cheetah’s nose with the light meter. This clearly displeased the animal, which sat back on its haunches and let out a ferocious growl. Ernie jumped back like a frog into the shadows, and Teresa let out a little squeal. Veronica remained motionless, apparently unconcerned. The photographer looked up, annoyed, and saw Henry.

  “There you are at last,” he said irritably. “For God’s sake, do something with that animal of yours!”

  “But…”

  “Make it stand up and prowl towards the camera.”

  “I’m not…”

  “Ernie!” bellowed Michael. “Make the bloody thing get up and walk towards the camera!”

  “Mr. ’Ealy, I don’t like to…” came a thin wail from the shadows.

  “Go on, poppet. Walkies,” said Veronica sweetly. Without altering her pose, she prodded the cheetah gently in the backside with the sharp toe of her satin slipper. The cheetah rolled over on its back and began to purr.

  “Marvellous!” cried Michael. “Hold that! A little smile, Veronica! Head a bit to the left…that’s it! Wonderful! Terrific! Now kick the beast again!” The camera was clicking like a ticker-tape machine.