Withering Heights

by Dorothy Cannell

  “Only three hundred and twenty-two as of nine-thirty-seven this morning. I’ve fallen off a bit since a week last Tuesday. That would be-”

  “Yes, so it would,” said Mrs. Malloy. “You’ll pick up your speed again, Melody, once you get that library card. By the way, did you ever get over Mr. R?”

  “Thirty-six years ago today.”

  “Well, happy anniversary.”

  “I woke up at six-thirty-one and thought, Let Edward Fairfax Rochester have his Jane Eyre. And then it came to me. It was just a book! Quite a nice little story, not badly written, but that’s all there was to it. Fiction has its place; I can admit that now. I should have renewed my library card. But I have my living to earn.” Melody was now dusting between the keys with a cotton swab. “And in the evenings and on my days off I have other claims on my time. There’s my small flat to clean, and-”

  “A gentleman friend?” Mrs. Malloy inquired coyly.

  No response.

  “Not”-Mrs. M’s smile vanished-“Mr. Scrimshank?”

  “I did have a glimmer of hope twenty-two and a half years ago as of last Saturday that something might be developing between us, but it flickered out before he finished that morning’s dictation. And subsequent events, coupled with certain doubts”-she was now digging even more assiduously between the typewriter keys-“have led me to believe that Mother was right in saying very few men are what they appear to be. And the worst are the kind who look like they’d never do an underhanded thing in their lives, let alone something criminal.”

  Mrs. Malloy and I exchanged startled looks.

  “What doubts?” Mrs. M asked sharply.

  “I can’t get into that now. I have a dozen letters to finish in seventeen and three-quarter minutes if I’m to get out of here by five-thirty.” Melody rammed a sheet of paper into the typewriter. “So if you and Mrs. Haskell will excuse me, we’ll have to talk about this another time.”

  “This evening, then.”

  “Thank you.” Melody’s fingers were poised above the keys. “But I have a prior engagement. I always spend Saturday evenings with a friend.”

  “Male or female?” Mrs. Malloy was instantly sidetracked.

  “A person who, like myself, is a keen knitter. It makes for quite an intense bond. The hours fly by. Sometimes we hardly talk. There’s no need. Our knitting pins do the communicating for us.”

  “I never saw you so much as cast on a row of stitches!”

  “My life has gone in new directions. We have a very active knitting circle in Milton Moor. Some noteworthy people belong.”

  “Well, if that isn’t wonderful! It makes me feel a lot better knowing as how you’ve at least been reading patterns for jumpers and cardigans instead of giving yourself over body and soul to the telly. But you can’t go leaving Mrs. Haskell and me in suspense over what you was saying about Mr. Scrimshank.”

  Melody merely compressed her lips. They weren’t purple but might just as well have been. It was an expression I knew well. Neither did Mrs. Malloy’s response differ from what might be expected.

  “If I walk out of here not knowing, I’ll be up all night with palpitations and a doctor will have to be sent for, unless I’m rushed off to hospital with an oxygen mask stuck to me, which is something I’m sure wouldn’t suit the shape of me face. Is that something you really want to happen, when we’ve just had this nice reconciliation after forty years?”

  Melody appeared to think this over. She got up, opened the door, looked outside, and returned to her seat. “I had to make sure he wasn’t listening.” She lowered her voice. “It all connects up to Mr. Gallagher’s disappearance. There’s nothing concrete, just these uneasy thoughts that might mean something and might not. My… knitting friend says they don’t amount to anything that Mr. Scrimshank couldn’t easily explain away. Suspicion isn’t evidence.”

  “Start from when you first became concerned,” I suggested.

  “I always thought it curious that he kept the Gallaghers’ records in the safe in his office, rather than giving them to me to file, and that he took to sending me off on some trumpery errand when her ladyship and her husband came in to talk to him.”

  “Why do you think that was, Miss Tabby?”

  “It started a couple of years ago. Mr. Gallagher came on his own one Monday morning at-”

  “No need for the twiddly bits, Mel.”

  “You’re right, I need to hurry this up.” She looked nervously toward the door. “He could come in for those letters. I’ve never been a second later than promised when putting them on his desk. On that occasion Mr. Gallagher did something most unusual. He came in here to talk to me about being surprised that what should have been sound investments had done so poorly over the last few years.”

  “Did he sound suspicious that Mr. Scrimshank had mishandled the funds?”

  “He talked about the country going downhill, blamed the economy on the present government, all that sort of thing. Then Mr. Scrimshank walked in, looking rattled. The door was ajar and he could have heard. My knitting friend says it’s understandable Mr. Scrimshank wouldn’t appreciate Mr. Gallagher discussing his financial affairs with me. And that it’s not strange about those records being in the safe when there was a friendship as well as a business relationship.”

  “True.” Mrs. Malloy pursed her lips.

  “There’s more.” Melody’s voice dropped lower and she spoke faster. “It has to do with the woman who came in to clean at night, after the office was closed.”

  “What about her?” Mrs. Malloy and I asked as one.

  “Mr. Scrimshank sacked her. He said she had been stealing. Small things: paperweights off his desk, a little box for holding paper clips. I’m sure she did it, because my coffee cup went missing, and of course I hadn’t moved it. Like everything else on my desk it had its precise spot, never a half inch to the right or left. Even so, I felt sorry for her.” Melody paused to glance again at the door. “She seemed a pleasant enough woman. Of course, I didn’t approve of the way she bleached her hair. Mother would have described her as blowzy. Her name’s Frances Edmonds and-”

  “We’ve met her and the husband. Just as we was leaving to come here.” Mrs. Malloy turned to me. “Who’d have thought! Betty Hopkins with her nose for crime is all pally and free as a breeze with a kleptomaniac.”

  “Ariel told me Frances stole things,” I said, “but it seemed best to take some of what she says with a grain of salt.”

  Melody, her fingers scratching at the typewriter keys, continued hastily. “I came into work one Friday, which I don’t do as a rule because the office is closed. Naturally, I have a record of the time and date, but… anyway, there was some filing I wanted to get done. What surprised me was seeing Mr. Scrimshank’s hat and coat on the hall tree in the alcove by the side entrance. So I went down the hall to his office to let him know I was there. The door was open and I could hear his voice. Frances Edmonds was with him. Mr. Scrimshank wasn’t shouting or going off the deep end. He was speaking in a low calm voice, but I could hear every word. She was crying buckets and begging him not to turn her over to the authorities. I froze where I was, afraid to move because… well, whatever she’d done, I didn’t want her to know that I’d heard.”

  “You always were a softie, Mel.” Mrs. Malloy sniffed audibly. “It’s the reason people like meself got to walk all over you when we was younger.”

  “He said the alternative to criminal proceedings was for her to write a signed confession that he’d keep in his safe. She said she would, crying even harder, thanking him over and over… groveling. That was when I got myself together and crept back down the hall. I didn’t stay to do the filing. There’d been something about the way he’d looked at her, like he knew he’d got her in his pocket. I tried to forget about it, but of course you know that’s an impossibility for me, Roxanne.”

  “It’s the way you was made. I can see now, as it was wrong of me to find it irritating. ‘Course there was that time you had to go
and remind me in front of Mother that I’d broken her George VI coronation mug, but never mind that.”

  “There’s more, isn’t there?” I said.

  Melody nodded. “I came here another time when Mr. Scrimshank wasn’t expecting me. Again some filing I wanted to get a head start on. That was the evening after Mr. Gallagher disappeared. And”-she paused-“it was like turning on the television and seeing the exact same program you’ve already watched. As before, Mr. Scrimshank’s door was open, not all the way but enough for me to see that he was again with Frances Edmonds. He was saying that he wanted her to phone him from a public box.”

  “And?” I asked.

  “That was all I heard. I was quicker off my feet that time and didn’t stay to do the filing. But I didn’t dwell on it, not until it came out in the newspaper that Mr. Scrimshank had received a phone call from Mr. Gallagher. Then it crept into my mind that Frances Edmonds’s signed confession had put her under his thumb. The police might check where the call had come from. He couldn’t risk them simply taking his word that he’d heard from Mr. Gallagher.”

  “It wouldn’t matter what Frances said when she rang.” I looked at both sisters. “She could have recited a poem or read him her shopping list. The important thing was to establish that Mr. Gallagher was alive and well.”

  “Instead of dead and buried on account of finding out Mr. Scrimshank had been embezzling Lady Fiona’s money.” Mrs. Malloy sucked in an outraged breath. “Blooming hypocrite! Scaring that poor Frances into thinking she could be going to prison for life if she didn’t knuckle under and do as he said. It looks as how Betty Hopkins is right about there having been a murder, only she had it that the wife did it. But then, to be fair, she doesn’t have the experience in solving murders as do me and you, Mrs. H!”

  How true! We had guessed right off the bat, before setting eyes on him, that Mr. Scrimshank was the culprit. He must have been in a state when Lady Fiona sold Cragstone, if that’s where he had disposed of the body.

  “My knitting friend said there could be any number of reasons Mr. Scrimshank wanted Frances Edmonds to phone him. And I should try talking to her. But I can’t risk Mr. Scrimshank’s finding out. What if she told him and he gave me the sack… or worse? I’ve never shared a bed with a man, let alone a grave with one. It doesn’t seem fair to the wife. In addition to the fact I’d prefer to stay alive.”

  “I don’t like the idea of you still working here,” said Mrs. Malloy, in a scolding older-sister voice.

  Melody squared her shoulders and elevated her chin. “I have no choice. Somehow, someday, I’ll succeed in getting into that safe. I have never seen Mr. Scrimshank open or close it, although I have been constantly on the alert during the last year and a half. When I think he might be going to do it, he always closes his door. On every opportunity provided by his absence, I go into his office to try out various sequences of numbers, all of which I have recorded so as not to duplicate them.”

  “Melody, be careful!”

  “Don’t alarm yourself, Roxanne. I take the notebook home at night. There being a finite number of mathematical possibilities, I am confident that given time I shall succeed. And once I get my hands on the Gallaghers’ financial records and make copies, I will quickly discover how Mr. Scrimshank managed to pull the wool over their eyes for as long as he did. And now if you and Mrs. Haskell will excuse me, I must type these letters. As it is”-eyeing the clock-“I shall be thirteen and a half minutes putting them on his desk.”

  “I’m staying.” Mrs. Malloy addressed her bent head. “I’m going home with you when you leave. You’ll just have to cancel your friend’s coming over.”

  “I suppose I could.” Melody returned to her typing. “But you’ll have to wait outside until it’s time for me to leave. It will put Mr. Scrimshank in one of his moods if he walks in and thinks you’re going to keep me from finishing on time. Oh, and Roxanne?”

  “Yes, Mel?” Mrs. Malloy had joined me at the door.

  “It will be good to pour my heart out. An answer to prayer. A miracle, really. I feel I can go forward now”-a hand reached for a tissue and a nose was blown-“in getting my typing back up to speed and… all the rest of it.”

  I eased out into the hall on the assumption that the sisters would share an emotional embrace, even though they would be seeing each other again within the hour. There could be tearful murmurs of affection, regret voiced over the wasted years, and promises made never to be nasty to each other again. Not a moment for onlookers. I expected to stand looking at the blank walls for several minutes, thinking up schemes for unmasking Mr. Scrimshank, not only as a murderer but also as the evil prankster at Cragstone. But Mrs. Malloy followed me promptly. And before I could think further than how unlikely it was that our selected villain would look much different in prison gray than in his pin-striped suit, we were in the parking lot.

  “I wanted to give Melody a hug, Mrs. H! But I knew we’d both break down, and that wasn’t worth risking. It would never do for that man to suspect her of being human, with the eyes and ears to go with it. It’s safer for the poor little cabbage”-more vigorous application of the hanky-“for him to go on seeing her as a robot incapable of absorbing information beyond what’s been programmed into her for the job. Let him keep thinking she exists for no other reason than to pound that typewriter. Remember what he said to us about his having thought she’d been manufactured? Hateful, sneering thing to say!”

  “I’m glad she agreed to spend time with you this evening,” I said. “Perhaps she’ll ask you to stay the night.”

  “Well, I can’t do that, can I? The Hopkinses would worry that I won’t be back to help with the tea tomorrow. And you and me has to have a confab about what Melody’s been telling us. Now off you go, Mrs. H, I’d like to be alone till she comes out. Get me thoughts in order. I’ll take a taxi back.” She patted the Land Rover’s side as if it were a horse eager for a gallop.

  7

  Getting into the driver’s seat, I nosed my way out of the alleyway into the high street, which was even heavier with traffic than it had been earlier. But at least I now had my bearings, making it unlikely I would take a wrong turn on my way back to Cragstone House.

  Why hadn’t I spotted Mr. Scrimshank as a murderer the moment he opened the door? It was there in his eyes, that nasty dull brown color, with no eyelashes to speak of. I pictured him seated at his desk thinking up his next move, instead of doodling like a normal person. Though Betty might have been wrong about Lady Fiona’s being the one who did away with her husband, I now thought it sadly likely the man was dead.

  But always the silver lining. I was no longer fixated on Val and whether Ben was one of the rare people ever to call her Valeria, or why after all these years she’d remembered that the uncle he’d worked for in London had been named Sol. People don’t need to be in a relationship of a lifetime to remember such details. What did keep popping into my head was the thought of Mrs. Malloy’s bag of toffees. I was starving. But there was no hope of her having left them on the backseat. They would be on her bedside table, along with a framed photo of herself, adding a personal touch to her room away from home, as advised by her favorite travel magazine.

  Slowing my driving to a crawl, I focused on Mr. Gallagher’s demise. Could it be that her ladyship and Mr. Scrimshank had been partners in bringing it about? One thing seemed clear. The Gallagher money had been severely depleted. Tom and Betty had said so, and in addition Lady Fiona had sold her ancestral home.

  What if she’d found out her husband had squandered her fortune through bad investments or riotous living? Maybe he’d had a gambling problem or bought racehorses that went lame. She could have lost her head and decided he had to go. What if Mr. Scrimshank’s offense was not embezzlement but covering up the losses on paper in an attempt to rid her ladyship of a motive for murder? Had he really been desperately in love with her for years? It was hard to imagine, given his desiccated appearance, but let’s not forget old Lord Snearsby’
s searing passion for his forty-year-old female ward in The Faulty Fortress.

  My mind went to the portrait of her ladyship as a young woman. She was beautiful and, according to Ariel, in love with a man her parents considered unworthy. What if that were because he was a mere accountant, rather than a member of the gentry? What if that man were Mr. Scrimshank, and despite the passage of time he’d continued to worship her, so that when she went to him begging for his help in concealing up the murder, he’d agreed to make up that story of a phone call? Far more convincing to the police than her ladyship saying she had heard from her husband. Had Betty thought along those lines? Was that her reason for inviting Mr. Scrimshank to tea tomorrow afternoon, to see if he and Lady Fiona avoided eye contact when Mr. Gallagher’s name was mentioned?

  I had arrived back at Cragstone. Having driven through the gateway, I was about to pass the Dower House when someone stepped almost in my path. Fortunately, I was driving so slowly a three-year-old on a tricycle could have zapped past me, or I might have knocked the person down. But I had applied the brakes in the nick of time, and when a face appeared at my window, I quickly rolled it down.

  “I’m sorry,” said a quavering voice. “I thought you were Val, but I see you’re not. On you go, I won’t keep you!” I was looking at a very old, much wrinkled lady with scant white hair twisted into a knot on top of her head. Her surprisingly sharp eyes were sufficiently dark as to be almost black.

  “Are you Miss Pierce?” I asked her.

  “That’s me, and you’ll be one of the guests of the new owners at Cragstone. I remember this car now; I saw you arrive earlier.”

  “We brought Ariel home after an overnight stay with us.”

  “Oh, yes! I heard by way of Mrs. Cake.” The black eyes gleamed. “The things children get up to these days. What is the world coming to? My Mr. Nigel would never have pulled such a stunt. You’ll know I was his nanny?”