‘You haven’t done the kitchen yet.’
‘We can’t stay no longer. Liddy’s not feeling up to it. Anyway, we only does the kitchen once a week, on Mondays. Claire keeps it clean, the rest of the time.’
Oh. Ellie looked round for her handbag. ‘I’ll get your money.’
‘It’s Missus Rose that pays us.’
‘Not when I’m home. I told you; this is my house, and I pay the bills.’
A weak smile. ‘That’s not what it says on the contract.’
‘I need to see that contract. Apparently, Rose hasn’t a copy.’
A wince. ‘We don’t have no copy, neither.’
‘No copy of the contract, no need to pay,’ said Ellie.
Rose cried out, ‘Oh, but—’
‘No, Rose,’ said Ellie. ‘This has gone far enough.’
‘He’ll sue you!’ said the cleaner.
‘Not without a contract. And who’s “he”?’
The woman fidgeted, twisted a curly lock of hair, grimaced. ‘Claire will sort it.’
Ellie nodded. ‘Yes, I need a word with her.’
Rose was distressed. ‘Ellie, you don’t understand—’
Ellie agreed. ‘No, I don’t. I don’t understand why the house was empty when I returned. I don’t understand how they could have taken you out on such a wretched night, when you can hardly walk. I don’t understand why the furniture has been moved around and why the thermostat keeps getting turned down—’
Dolores grinned. ‘Claire’s orders. It’s bad for the furniture to have the heat on, especially in July.’
Ellie kept her voice down with an effort. ‘It’s my house, and if I want it warm, then that’s the way it’s going to be.’ She made herself stop. Dolores was only obeying orders. It wasn’t her fault.
‘And,’ said Dolores, ‘your furniture was in the wrong places. Beds should always face east. What’s more, the master of the house must have pride of place by the fire, and not his wife, who should submit to him in everything.’
Ellie threw up her hands. ‘Beds must face east? I can’t sit where I like in my own house? Whatever nonsense is this?’
‘Oh, I’d forgotten about that,’ said Rose, frowning. ‘Claire explained it all to me. Luckily, my bed is in the right position, but yours wasn’t. Tomorrow the decorator’s coming to paint the downstairs in green, which is the best colour for the people of the Vision to live in. There, now! I remembered that all right, didn’t I?’
‘I’m going mad!’ said Ellie.
Rose said, ‘It’s all right, Ellie. Claire will explain everything when she comes.’
‘In the meantime,’ said Ellie, reaching for her handbag, ‘I’m going to pay these two cleaners what is owed them, plus a bonus in payment of their next two weeks’ wages. I will not be requiring them again. Oh, yes, and I will require a receipt.’
‘You can’t! We’ll get into terrible trouble!’ said Dolores.
‘Watch me,’ said Ellie, taking out her chequebook. ‘If your boss – whoever he may be – wants to make an issue of it, I’ll get my solicitor to look into the matter of a non-existent contract made with an elderly person in the absence of the householder. Understand? Now, who do I make the cheque out to?’
‘He’ll flay us alive!’
Ellie snorted. ‘Flaying went out of fashion some years ago.’
‘You don’t understand. If we don’t work, we don’t eat.’
‘You should have thought of that before you decided to ignore my wishes. Shall I make it out to Cash?’
‘No. We’re not allowed to handle—’
‘Yes,’ said Liddy, holding out her hand for it. ‘I’ll explain it to the boss.’
‘He’ll be furious,’ said Dolores, showing the whites of her eyes.
Liddy took the cheque. ‘It’s money, and we need it. As she says, be your age.’
Dolores turned on Ellie. ‘You’ll be left without anyone to clean for you!’
‘That’s my affair, not yours.’
‘You won’t get your old cleaners to come again. They said, didn’t they, Liddy?’
The younger woman nodded. ‘They said.’
‘Tough,’ said Ellie. ‘Now, if you have any keys, I’d be glad if you’d hand them over.’
Dolores fished some keys out of her pocket and dropped them on the table. ‘We’ll be back.’
Ellie lifted her eyebrows. ‘I’ll see you out.’
Almost, she banged the front door after the two women. When she returned to the kitchen, she found Rose attempting, unsteadily, to get to her feet. ‘Oh dear, whatever will Claire say? You shouldn’t have done that, Ellie. They’re nice girls, and they do need the work. They were only obeying orders.’
‘Not my orders, and not, I think, yours,’ said Ellie, feeling rather inclined to cry. ‘I think this Claire must be something of a bully. Let me help you back into your chair.’
‘Claire, a bully? No, really.’ Rose passed her hand across her eyes in a vague fashion. ‘She told me all about the right way to live. She said we must think more of others, and share what we have, so that we will be rewarded with the Blessed Vision.’
‘A vision of the Blessed Virgin Mary?’ Ellie knew that Catholics often found it helpful to centre their devotions around the mother of Jesus.
‘No,’ said Rose. ‘That’s not it. At least, I don’t think so. I do get muddled nowadays. I remember now: it’s the vision their pastor had, the one who heads up this special church of theirs. Claire says he’s teaching them how to travel along the road of life.’
‘She’s got the right idea, but perhaps has been too enthusiastic about putting it into practice. Now I’ll make a couple of phone calls and get down to cleaning the kitchen.’
She made her way to her study to make the calls and found that the cleaners had been moving furniture around there, too. There was a pile of letters on her desk, both for Thomas and for herself. Bother. Thomas had his study in the library at the end of the corridor. Ellie’s part-time secretary would normally have separated out the wheat from the chaff, disposed of the junk mail and placed Thomas’s correspondence on his own desk. Now Ellie would have to sort them out herself. And, her computer had been disconnected for some reason. She reconnected and switched on. Nothing happened.
For two pins she’d have burst into tears. She restrained herself.
First things first. She rang the cleaning agency she’d used for years, and fortunately Maria answered the phone. Ellie and Maria were doubly connected. Not only did Ellie use the cleaners Maria’s agency supplied, but Maria was married to Stewart, the General Manager of Ellie’s charitable trust.
Many years ago, Stewart had been married to Ellie’s ambitious daughter Diana. That marriage had not lasted, since Stewart had never been flamboyant enough for Diana, even though he was a good man, solid in every way. Diana had moved on to a man she considered a better prospect, and in due course Stewart had met and married Maria. Between them, Stewart and Maria had created a comfortable home for Stewart and Diana’s son, and they’d added a trio of lively little girls to the family, who adored him and whom he, in turn, adored. Ellie was a frequent visitor to their house, where they made her feel very much at home.
‘Maria, this is Ellie. I only got back last night and—’
‘We wondered when you’d be back. How did the trip go?’ Maria’s tone was cool.
‘Thomas had to go on to this seminar in Chicago, but I was worried about Rose so I got an earlier flight. Maria, what’s been going on? I came back last night to find the house in chaos and Rose had been taken out to some church service or other, when she obviously wasn’t fit. Today there were a couple of new cleaners who wouldn’t take a blind bit of notice of anything I said, and the woman I left in charge is conspicuous by her absence. I don’t want to worry Rose, but can you tell me what’s going on?’
A sigh. ‘Oh, Ellie. I don’t know what to say. We’ve been working for you for ever, and know how you like things, but this Claire woman
… We didn’t know what to think when she began to change things around. My girls didn’t want to do it, but Claire said she’d been left in charge and you’d be pleased when you saw what she’d done.’
Ellie said, ‘Humph!’
Maria half laughed. ‘Yes, I thought that too, so I asked to speak to Rose on the phone. Claire said Rose wasn’t feeling up to taking calls.’
‘She’s not well. I’m worried about her.’
‘Yes, the girls were, too. It was your usual two; Amy and Anna. I suppose they were a bit tactless, and of course it didn’t help that Anna recognized Claire from when her friend’s daughter disappeared—’
‘I seem to have missed something here.’
‘It was some time ago, maybe five months? Six? One of Anna’s friends had a daughter called Gail, who disappeared after quarrelling with Claire. Gail was an almost-sixteen-year-old girl with rampant hormones, not interested in school, often played truant, got in with the wrong crowd, you know? Skirts up to here, hair and nail extensions, but that’s how they all dress nowadays, isn’t it?’
‘Disappeared?’ Ellie frowned. Had there been something in the local paper about it? ‘Didn’t the police decide she’d gone off with a boyfriend to a pop festival or something?’
‘Well, yes, and she did phone her mother to say she was all right and living with a new boyfriend, but there’s been no sign of her since.’
‘So, not murdered, then? How does Claire come into it?’
‘Claire and Gail lived in the same big old house, which is divided up into flats. Claire had seen the girl hanging around the Broadway late at night with a man and told her mother, who grounded the girl, forbade her to go out at night alone. Gail hated Claire for telling on her. To rub it in, Claire offered to pick Gail up from her drama club after school in the evenings, and Gail said that was treating her like a child and, well, you can imagine. They were not on good terms. Gail was seen to get into Claire’s car one evening and never seen again. Claire says she dropped Gail at the front entrance of their house and then drove round to the back to park, but the girl’s mobile phone was found in her car next day, and a girl like Gail doesn’t leave that in someone’s car by mistake, does she?’
‘I think I remember seeing the girl’s picture in the papers. Honestly, it looked as if she could take care of herself.’
‘Agreed. Claire told the police that Gail was jailbait and had probably gone off with an older man who’d been seen hanging around the drama club at night – a man who’s never been traced. Gail’s school friends said she’d got a boyfriend of her own age, but apparently he was in the clear. The police put out an appeal for information, but no one came forward. After a while she rang her mother to say she was having the time of her life and had no intention of returning home, so that got Claire off the hook. Rightly or wrongly, Gail’s mother is convinced that the phone call was fixed, that in some way Gail was kidnapped and induced to make the call. She thinks Claire lashed out at Gail, killed her, and has stashed her body away somewhere. She hasn’t any evidence, of course, but … when did that ever stop someone thinking the worst?’
‘The phone call was genuine?’
‘The police said so.’
‘So when Amy and Anna came here to work and found Claire asking them to do things which they didn’t like …?’
‘There were words. Anna went for Claire, which she shouldn’t have done, of course, though perhaps it was understandable. The upshot was that Amy and Anna left, swearing never to return. We asked Claire if she’d like us to find someone else, but she refused.’
‘She’s found a couple, but they’ve turned the house upside down, moved all the furniture around and wouldn’t listen to anything I said. They’ve gone. So, can you get Anna and Amy back for me? Or if not them, can you find me another couple of good cleaners, to start as soon as possible?’
A sigh of relief. ‘I’ll do my best. I’m glad you’re back, Ellie. Stewart’s been worried about you too, and the children have been asking if you’re going to bring them back a present from across the Pond.’
‘Of course I have, or rather, the presents are in Thomas’s luggage, as I came back in a hurry with only a tote bag. How is Stewart? I understand Pat’s been away, and there’s a pile of correspondence on my desk. I’d better schedule a meeting soonest. There must be lots to catch up on.’
‘Stewart’s fine. I’ll get him to ring you. About Rose …?’
‘Yes. She’s very frail. I think we’ve got to the point where I do need someone living in to look after her. Not Claire. She was passed on to me by … well, never mind that now. I employed her without checking out her references, more fool me. So, can you find me someone to replace her?’
‘I’ll do what I can. I’ll ring round and get back to you, but—’
‘Thanks, Maria. Oh, I must go. That’s the doorbell.’
Actually, it was someone playing a tune on the front doorbell. Or, not a tune, but a rhythm. Only one person did that. Hurray!
Ellie opened the door and hugged the young woman standing on the doorstep. ‘Oh, you blessing!’
Vera had until recently been Ellie’s live-in housekeeper, but had moved on, with her teen son Mikey, to complete a business degree and to marry her childhood sweetheart.
Vera hugged Ellie back. ‘Am I glad to see you! I’ve been coming by on my way to work most days, but—’
Ellie held the girl at arm’s-length. ‘Let me look at you! Marriage suits you!’
‘Do you think so?’ Vera reddened, pleased. She was wearing a good white shirt over a black skirt, both bought from better shops than she’d been able to patronize before. Working clothes for her new job at the hotel? Her fair hair was caught back at the nape of her neck, but it had been fluffed up around her face in becoming fashion. Her complexion glowed with health and happiness. ‘I wanted to check on Rose, but—’
There was a heavy tread in the driveway. Claire, looking cold and cross. She was dressed in black from head to toe and burdened with packages.
Ellie and Vera exchanged glances. Vera stepped aside while Ellie confronted the newcomer. ‘Ah, Claire. I wondered where you’d got to. We need to talk.’
Claire bared her teeth in a smile. She gave Vera a sideways glance which ought to have been put in a sheath. ‘Ah. Your old housekeeper. She’s been round, bothering me, wanting to see Rose all the time, which is never convenient. If you think I’m late for work this morning, you’ve got another think coming. I’ll have you know I was finding some decent clothes for Rose to wear, her present wardrobe being fit for nothing but the dustbin.’
‘We’ll discuss that in a minute,’ said Ellie, who had to admit that Claire had got a point. ‘Vera, would you like to go through and visit with Rose for a while? Claire and I need to have a little chat.’
Vera had always been quick on the uptake. She disappeared down the corridor to the kitchen area.
‘Now, Claire,’ said Ellie, leading the way into the sitting room and experiencing another moment of dislocation when she realized her own comfortable chair was still not back in its usual place.
Claire followed, talking as she displayed the clothing she had brought. ‘Two vests with long sleeves, white, with pants to match. Two pairs of jogging trousers, easy for her to pull up, two long-sleeved sweaters and socks to match.’
Ellie wanted to laugh. The trousers and sweatshirts were all black. Rose never wore black, and neither did Ellie. It was, perhaps, a reaction to a time when so many women went into black clothes in mourning for the loved ones they’d lost in the wars of the previous century?
‘It was good of you to think of Rose,’ said Ellie, ‘but it’s my responsibility to see to her wardrobe. I will pay you for the underclothes, but not the other things, which you can return to the shop. Rose never wears black.’
‘She should do so now. We should all be in mourning for our sins.’ Claire was very much in earnest, clutching the clothes to her protectively.
Ellie didn’t know whe
ther to laugh or scream with frustration. ‘I’m sorry if you feel like that about it, but I don’t, and neither does Rose.’ She sank back in her chair, suddenly overcome by fatigue. ‘Sorry … jet lag … catching up with me.’ She closed her eyes for a moment. Was that the telephone she could hear ringing, or something in her head?
Claire said, ‘Hold on a minute,’ and clip-clopped out of the room. Ellie relaxed, but all too soon Claire was back, putting a glass of something to Ellie’s mouth. ‘Drink this. It will help.’
Ellie sipped. Something sweetish? Medicinal? Ellie tried to push it away, but Claire was insistent. ‘Down the hatch. It will do you good.’
Ellie swallowed. It wasn’t unpleasant, but there was quite a lot of it. She took a couple of deep gulps, and then another two. One more. And managed to wave the glass away. She opened her eyes. Claire’s mouth was opening and shutting. She was saying something which didn’t make sense. Something about a Blessed Vision.
‘What?’ Ellie tried to get to her feet. She could manage it, if she concentrated. Blessed Vision? Blessed Virgin? No, no. She shook her head to clear it. She must have misheard.
Ellie believed in God. She believed in prayer and reading the bible, and in trying to live as a Christian should. ‘I’ve never heard of this Blessed Vision.’
‘But you should,’ said Claire, pushing Ellie back into her chair and patting her arm. ‘There, there, now. There, there.’
Ellie subsided into her chair and enquired within. She did feel a bit odd. Jet lag, of course. She ought to take it easy.
Claire was saying something about a vision that transformed sinners … What nonsense. She crooned some words that didn’t make sense. Her hand was on Ellie’s forehead. ‘… must welcome the Vision into your life. Let the light of the Vision shine into the dark corners of your soul. See how your sins cower away from the light. Let it flood every particle of your being. Shed your old self … Let us lead you into the light …’
Her voice was hypnotic.
Ellie blinked. She felt light. Lighter than air. Light in her head.
Murder by Suspicion Page 3