by Pam Weaver
‘We’ve had a letter.’ She beamed. Was it all right to call him by his Christian name? Why not – they were friends now, weren’t they?
Gus put down the corner of his paper. ‘Oh?’
‘He’s coming,’ she said breathily. ‘Oswald Mosley and Diana are coming to my soirée.’
‘It wasn’t there!’ Lena’s eyes were wide with fright.
She had run down the garden, where Eric was busy picking runner beans. He spent every moment he could in the garden and, since the beginning of summer, they had enjoyed the fruits of his labour. Broad beans in May; carrots and peas in June; and now runner beans. Eric had never grown anything before, but by now he was convinced that he had green fingers. His lettuce crop had been spoiled by slugs, and the cabbages had suffered from cabbage-white caterpillars until he’d covered them with old net curtains. One of the men from the yard had told him to put some cider vinegar, sugar and water in a bottle, along with some bits of banana skin. It sounded a bit far-fetched, but when he put one bottle on the ground and hung another from a low branch, sure enough, he bagged plenty of unwanted garden pests.
‘Eric, did you hear me?’ Lena cried. ‘It wasn’t there. Jim always kept all his papers in a gramophone-record box and now it’s gone.’
Eric scrambled onto the path. ‘So who took it?’
‘I don’t know,’ cried Lena.
‘Damn and blast it!’ said Eric.
‘What are we going to do?’
Eric ran his fingers through his hair. ‘When I told Jim, he was quite reasonable about it,’ he said. ‘Maybe she’ll be the same.’
‘But supposing someone else has taken it?’ Lena wailed.
It was obvious from the look on his face that Eric hadn’t thought of that. ‘Then we really can’t leave,’ he said. ‘If someone like the police took it and we do a moonlight flit, they’ll come after us. They might even think I had something to do with Jim’s death.’
‘They didn’t find us last time,’ Lena said.
‘And I’ve thought about that long and hard,’ said Eric. ‘Mrs West could hardly tell them the whole story, could she?’
Lena looked slightly sceptical. ‘Oh, I wish this was all over,’ she said brokenly.
‘I know,’ said Eric, slipping his arm around her. ‘But, right now, all we can do is sit tight.’
Lena dropped her head onto his shoulder and cried softly.
* * *
Later that night, in her bed at Imogen’s house, Ruby reflected on their conversation. Her friend was right. Her own fears about Jim changing his mind about the baby didn’t add up. There were a few other things that didn’t add up, either. The shepherd’s pie worried her, for a start. What she needed was someone to bounce her ideas off – someone who wouldn’t pooh-pooh everything away. She had to do some serious thinking; sensible thinking. There was a logical explanation somewhere. Imogen had promised to keep quiet about the baby’s father, and Ruby believed she would. Yes, and she could confide in Imogen about other things too. After all, she told herself as drowsiness crept closer, two heads are better than one.
CHAPTER 27
Just lately, Ruby slept a lot. The weather was hot and dry, she was exhausted by her grief and her body was struggling to cope with the last stages of her pregnancy. It was difficult to motivate herself to get on with anything.
She sat in the summerhouse with a jug of fresh lemonade. Imogen’s little springer spaniel, Dusty, lay panting at her feet. The only sound came from the breeze as it rustled the leaves of the wisteria and the lilac bushes. Both had long since shed their flowers, but they used the summer months to gain strength and grow taller and thicker. Across the lawn she could see a three-seater bench with wrought-iron legs and a pattern on the back. Behind the seat was a forsythia tree, and a robin, half-concealed by one of the branches, was singing his heart out. Jim once told her that the robin is the only British bird that sings all year round. Fiercely territorial, in the spring its song is not so much for the joy of living as a warning for other birds to stay away. Now, in summer, its song was slightly more subdued. Ruby stretched to ease the discomfort in her back and sighed. Later in the evening a scream of swifts would fill the air as they swooped and dived for small flying insects and flies. Dusty would chase after them, barking like mad, even though he hadn’t a hope of catching one.
The thought of actually going through Jim’s stuff was daunting, but Ruby had his gramophone box with her. She had to make a start somewhere. She began by separating everything into distinct piles, using the lemonade jug and her glass to stop the papers blowing away. A third pile sat on a chair, with a cushion on the top. The largest pile was correspondence relating to the crosswords. She was surprised to see how appreciated they were – Jim had letters of thanks from readers, as well as magazine editors. There was no need to do anything about them. She had already received letters of condolence from the editors of most of the magazines, so they were well aware of what had happened.
The letters from the newspapers were slightly different. They were quite old. Nothing very up-to-date, and she supposed that was because the police must still have the most recent ones. They had taken papers away from the house as part of their investigations. The subject had been covered by the inquest. Ruby was surprised by how nasty some of the writers were. Several people called Jim a traitor to his country, which – although grossly unfair – was, she supposed, their honest opinion. But she drew the line when people wished him dead, or that someone in his family would get cancer. She read all the letters, just in case there was something she might have missed and, by the time she’d finished, she wanted nothing more than to burn the lot.
‘What are you doing?’ Imogen’s sudden arrival in the doorway made her jump. ‘Sorry,’ she apologized immediately. ‘I didn’t mean to startle you. You looked so preoccupied.’
Ruby explained what she was doing.
‘Can I help?’
‘I’ve been through that pile,’ said Ruby. ‘Some of it’s pretty awful stuff, but I don’t think I need to do anything about it.’
‘You should at least take down names and addresses,’ said Imogen.
‘Do you think so?’ asked Ruby. ‘Surely they will have made them up.’
‘All the same . . .’ said Imogen. She hurried indoors to find pen and paper.
Ruby made a start on the miscellaneous pile, and before long came across a small wodge of newspaper cuttings about a missing baby. At first she couldn’t make out why it would be of any interest to Jim, but as she read on, she began to feel uneasy, especially when she came across an envelope and a letter from the Bournemouth Daily Echo:
Dear Sir,
I enclose the cuttings you requested on the Christine West case for your perusal. If, at the end, you have any information that could lead to the whereabouts of Christine, this paper is keen to be the first to know. We never pay for information appertaining to a criminal offence, but it is not beyond our bounds to see that such information is rewarded.
Yours sincerely
Thomas Bailey-Smith, Editor
Ruby frowned. Jim seeking a reward? That didn’t sound like a characteristic of his. He had very little interest in money. There had to be another reason why he was collecting information on this case.
Imogen was back and was copying names and addresses into a small exercise book, but the weather was about to change and the light levels were becoming much lower. They had just decided to go back into the house when Ruby suddenly said, ‘What do you make of this?’ She had been putting everything back into the gramophone box when she’d dropped an envelope, and several bits she’d not seen before fell to the floor.
It was hard for Ruby, given her bulk, to reach them easily, so Imogen picked them up. As she thumbed carelessly through the pieces of paper, she shrugged. It was only as a cutting of a knitting pattern fluttered from her grasp that Ruby made the connection. There was a brilliant flash, followed almost immediately by a heavy clap of thunder. The knitting patte
rn was held by a paper clip to a newspaper cutting about a little girl who was missing.
Ruby drew in her breath noisily. ‘Oh no!’
‘We’ll be fine,’ said Imogen, thinking that the storm was frightening her. ‘I’m sure we can get back indoors before the rain comes.’
‘It’s not that,’ said Ruby, handing Imogen the knitting pattern. ‘My next-door neighbour’s little girl, Jean, has got a rabbit just like that; and what’s more, she fits the description of the missing child.’
Effie looked around her sitting room and smiled with an inner glow of self-satisfaction. She was surrounded by the great and the good, including Oswald Mosley and his wife Diana, Norah Elam, the BUF County Women’s Officer for Sussex, and the Reverend James Crosland, the vicar of Rustington. They were the cream of society, but it didn’t end there. She had persuaded Alfred Keene, a former Olympic fencer, to come; and Jessie Matthews, a popular singer. She had tried to get Michael Redgrave, but he was busy on an Alfred Hitchcock film called The Lady Vanishes.
She and Gus had spent a small fortune on this evening. She’d virtually bought up the local nurseries. There were potted plants all over the garden, in the driveway leading to the house and dotted around the summerhouse. Watson had shaved the lawn to within an inch of its life specially for the occasion, so it was a great shame that they’d had a violent thunderstorm just before her guests arrived and the grass was far too wet to be outdoors.
As well as everything else she’d been required to do, Freda Fosdyke had made sure there were flowers in every room; but in the event, they had to be confined to the laundry room, because it turned out they made Diana sneeze.
The trio was moderately good, but in Effie’s view it was a little unfortunate that the cellist looked like a you-know-what. She hoped Oswald wouldn’t notice. She gazed at him admiringly. He was charismatic and charming, and those piercing black eyes of his seemed to look right through you. He noticed her stare and smiled.
‘So, Effie,’ he said, tearing himself away from the conversation he was having with the local police chief, ‘I understand that you and Gus are fairly new on the scene.’
‘Actually we were married in Worthing thirty years ago,’ said Effie, patting the back of her hair, ‘but then Gus was posted to British Cameroon.’
‘Ah yes, I remember,’ he said. ‘You were with the Colonial Office. Twenty years?’
‘Yes, well almost.’
‘My dear Effie,’ he said, ‘I can hardly believe it. You must have been a child bride.’
Effie smiled coyly. ‘You’re teasing me, Sir Oswald. I am no spring chicken.’
As he moved on, she felt a hand caressing her bottom in a most intimate way. Effie hadn’t been touched like that for years and she shivered with excitement.
‘In my experience, a good rooster will give any chicken – spring or not – a more contented cluck,’ he whispered into her hair. ‘Well done, my dear. An excellent party.’
Effie blushed modestly, but although she revelled in all the attention and the accolades, she hadn’t a clue what he meant.
CHAPTER 28
No matter what position she took up, the ache in Ruby’s back persisted most of the night. She tossed and turned, but it wasn’t until the first hazy light of a new day seeped through the curtains that she realized she might actually be in labour. The contractions, if they were contractions, were not painful, but she had the distinct feeling of something tightening and then relaxing inside. She lay quietly, glancing every now and then at the clock as the sensation continued. Before long she was uncomfortable again and the pains were returning every five to six minutes. The baby was definitely coming.
She decided against waking Imogen. She would only panic and most likely insist that they went to her mother’s place immediately, even though the baby wouldn’t be here for hours. No, let her sleep on. Ruby would tell her at breakfast time.
To occupy her mind, Ruby went over the conversation they’d had last night during the storm. She had already guessed that Jim thought Jean was, in fact, Christine West. It wasn’t a pleasant thought. She liked Lena and had every reason to be grateful to her, but if she really was Marlene Amberley and had kidnapped her employer’s daughter, then there was no getting away from the fact that she was a criminal. She couldn’t ignore something as big as living next door to a child abductor, but what was she going to do about it?
Discussing Lena the evening before had given Ruby the courage to open up to her friend. ‘Can I bounce a few other things off you?’
‘Go on,’ Imogen encouraged.
‘You won’t laugh?’ said Ruby.
‘I promise,’ said Imogen with her hand over her heart.
Ruby could see the smile tugging at Imogen’s lips and looked away.
‘I’m sorry,’ said Imogen. ‘Don’t be cross. I will listen, I promise. Go on.’
Ruby took a deep breath. ‘Let’s begin with the shepherd’s pie.’
Imogen was startled. ‘The shepherd’s pie?’
‘On the day Jim died, I’d left it in the oven ready to cook for tea,’ said Ruby in all seriousness. ‘I forgot all about it. When I went back home to pack, before coming here, my mother found loads of flies around the meat safe, and the shepherd’s pie was still inside. Two weeks after he’d died! I found Mum wrapping it up to chuck in the bin.’
‘So? I don’t understand why that should bother you,’ said Imogen. ‘If it was in the way, when he went to . . . do what he did, he must have put it in the most logical place.’
Ruby shook her head. ‘My Jim was a typical male,’ she said. ‘It wouldn’t occur to him to place it anywhere else but on the kitchen table.’
Imogen looked thoughtful. ‘Perhaps, for once in his life, he was just being considerate.’
‘He was supposedly about to take his own life,’ said Ruby. ‘Would putting the pie in the meat safe be uppermost in his mind?’
‘Point taken,’ said Imogen.
‘Come to think of it,’ said Ruby, ‘I left his lunch in the meat safe, which means he must have died sometime during the afternoon. Which brings me to the iron.’
Imogen leaned back in her chair. ‘A shepherd’s pie, and now an iron?’
‘It was on the seat of his wheelchair,’ said Ruby.
‘Well, he must have . . . he probably – maybe he . . .’ Whatever scenario she conjured up, Imogen could see that it wouldn’t work.
‘Don’t you see? The iron must have been put there after he vacated the wheelchair.’
‘Could the police have put it there, after they’d examined the kitchen?’
‘I suppose so,’ said Ruby, ‘but why would you put an iron on the seat of a wheelchair?’
Imogen nodded. It was a conundrum. ‘The way I see it, you’ve got two problems that can possibly be explained away,’ she said. ‘I hardly think they would merit the police looking into this further.’
‘Then there’s the monkey,’ said Ruby. ‘I’ve been wondering why Jim would take Wilfred and Biscuit with him. He loved those animals, especially Wilfred.’
‘What about the note? Did he leave a note?’
Ruby shook her head.
‘Didn’t you have any inkling that he was depressed?’ asked Imogen, shaking her head in disbelief.
‘Jim wasn’t depressed.’
‘They say that people who commit suicide hide their true feelings from those they love,’ she observed.
‘He wasn’t suicidal,’ Ruby insisted. ‘Why should he be? As I went out of the door, he had a telephone call from someone called Sir Hubert Temple. I bet that was another commission.’
‘Can you be sure of that?’
‘Well, no.’
‘Ring him and find out what he wanted,’ Imogen said. ‘Have you got his number?’
Ruby shook her head. Imogen picked up the telephone receiver.
‘Operator, would you get the number for Sir Hubert Temple, please?’ There was a long pause and then she said, ‘Are you sure? Thank you.’ S
he replaced the receiver. ‘There’s no subscriber with that name in the area.’
‘Jim had everything going for him, Imogen,’ Ruby insisted. ‘Why should he want to die?’
‘Listen, Ruby,’ said Imogen, ‘if he didn’t die by his own hand, then there’s really only one other explanation.’
‘Exactly.’
‘You’re beginning to frighten me.’
‘I’m frightening myself,’ said Ruby.
They stared at each other in horrified silence. ‘But surely,’ Imogen began again, ‘the police would have realized?’
‘They didn’t know Jim,’ said Ruby, moving the cushion from behind her back as she tried to get more comfortable. ‘Ever since that day I’ve been trying to work out how he got into that oven.’
‘He got down and shoved his head right in,’ said Imogen. ‘How else could he do it? Oh, and he put the shepherd’s pie in the meat safe first.’
‘Does that sound logical to you?’
Imogen blew out her cheeks.
‘He couldn’t kneel,’ said Ruby. ‘Explain to me how someone who can’t kneel could turn on the gas tap and then push themselves right up against the jets.’ Imogen opened her mouth to say something, but Ruby raised her hand. ‘Did I mention that he was under both oven shelves as well? Wouldn’t it have been easier to take the shelves out first?’
‘I’ve no wish to be unkind,’ Imogen began again, ‘but if a man is determined to kill himself, he’ll find a way to do it.’
‘If my husband had really wanted to do such a thing,’ said Ruby, ‘there were plenty of strong painkillers in the cabinet. I heard my father warn him once not to exceed the dose. Jim knew they could be dangerous.’
Imogen’s eyes grew wide. ‘Oh, Ruby . . . I don’t know what to say.’ She got up and went to the drinks cabinet and poured herself a sherry. ‘Want one?’
Ruby shook her head. Imogen came back and sat on the sofa with her feet curled underneath her. ‘So if someone bumped him off, who could it be?’
‘I don’t know.’
They’d left it there. They had to. Ruby was tired and needed to put her swollen feet up. Now, lying in her bed with the baby coming, she was finding it harder and harder to concentrate on anything else except the pain. Jim had told her Eric was coming to the house later that afternoon. In view of the newspaper cuttings, and the fact that Jim had actually written to the editor of the Bournemouth Daily Echo, perhaps Eric . . . No, she refused to believe that. She didn’t know why Jim was planning to see Eric that day, but . . . She shuddered. The thought that Eric might be responsible made her feel sick. After a while she told herself it couldn’t possibly be him. It would have taken two people to force someone into the oven. Eric couldn’t have done it alone – unless, of course, he’d had help. A wave of horror swept over her as another thought came rushing through her mind: Eric and Lena together?