Mavis brought over cutlery and paper napkins and laid the table at speed. She put a glass of orange juice in front of me and then disappeared into the kitchen. I could hear her banging saucepans around, the electric egg whisk buzzing, plates clattering.
“Come off it, Jordan. I know you’re working as a private investigator, a private eye, like on the telly.” She planted a big teapot on the table and shuffled cups and saucers about, throwing on spoons with deadly accuracy. “And you were the one who tackled that thug on the pier, weren’t you? Saw it in the paper. Pity there aren’t more of you about. Back bone of Olde England.”
“You’re simply guessing.”
“My friend, Doris, told me. You know Doris, she works in the little grocery store near your secondhand shop.”
“Oh, Doris,” I murmured. Doris had been talking. “It’s first class junk … good stuff.”
“We go dancing together every Wednesday afternoon—to the tea dances at the Pavilion.”
“Tea dances? Do they still exist? I thought they went out with the Thirties.”
“You’re not living, girl. They’re thriving. Four pounds at the door and a cup of tea and cake thrown in. Mind you, their cakes aren’t up to much but the dance music is strict tempo and there’s plenty of partners.”
“I didn’t know that men could still dance,” I said. “I thought it was a forgotten social grace.”
“It’s mostly retired gentlemen with good memories and strong legs,” said Mavis with a frustrated sigh. I remembered the way she had looked at James. “Nothing much else works. Their equipment is in retirement. But they’re nice movers.
“Arthur Carling used to go to the tea dances regularly,” she went on, liberally spreading butter on a slice of toast. The golden globules fell through the aerated holes and spread on the plate like drops of molten sun. “He met a young woman there. Always the same woman. They pretended that they hadn’t arranged to meet, but they had. They didn’t dance much. They sat in a corner and talked.”
“How did you know it was Arthur Carling?” I asked.
“From his picture in the papers. He won some chess competition. Arthur Carling went to the weekly tea dances while his wife was at the hairdressers. After the dance, at five on the dot, he would go and pick up his wife in the car and take her home. My sister works in the hairdressers.”
I groaned. Mavis, Doris and her sister were better sleuths than I was. So Arthur had been seeing someone, sitting in corners, eating stale cake. “What did this young woman look like?”
I didn’t really want to know. I thought I knew already.
“Small, dark, slim, late twenties. Hair straight and bobbed. Pretty smile.”
Cleo … It couldn’t be a coincidence. Cleo had been meeting her stepfather on the quiet but she had said as much. Now it was confirmed. She had been meeting him on a regular basis and in Latching. But she said she never came to Latching. Or had she said she never came to Latching now … I couldn’t remember her exact words.
I had been dismissing Cleo from my enquiries but she kept coming back like a bad penny. How much had they liked each other? Cleo had been nine years old when Ursula married Arthur. He’d looked a few years younger than Ursula in that photograph on the pier. The age gap between Cleo and Arthur might be only twenty years, making her 29 to his 49 in that last year. Not too much of a problem.
“So?” I said casually, licking crumbs off my lips. “Why are you telling me all this?”
“Well, Ursula Carling is one of your clients, isn’t she? Doris has seen her coming to your shop. And there was that awful business of the poisonous fumes in her house, knocking her out. Someone is out to get her, mark my word.”
“Mavis, is there anything you don’t know? Are you working for the MI5? How did you know about the carbon monoxide?”
“First thing she did when she came out of hospital yesterday was to phone for a hair appointment. Besides, I keep my ears open in the cafe. You’d be surprised what people talk about. Perhaps Mrs. Carling ought to have police protection.”
“The police would want danger money.”
Mavis nodded. “She’s an awkward lady. The girls in the hairdressers hate doing her hair. She’s so fussy and it’s never right. They’re always having to give her free blow-dries because of her complaints.”
“But none of this merits trying to kill her.”
“Perhaps it was meant to scare her.”
Like being trapped in a derelict hotel all night was meant to scare me. Someone knew we were after them, someone who thought we were getting closer. I couldn’t see it myself but the signs were there.
“Your policeman friend comes in here regular. The one you fancy.”
“I don’t fancy him,” I said.
“He drinks an awful lot of black coffee. It’s not good for him, all that caffeine. You should tell him.”
“None of my business,” I said. I knew he ate too much junk food. I knew his system was overdosing on caffeine. I wanted to make him a prawn salad, feed him strawberries from my mouth.
I went to pay for my breakfast but Mavis wouldn’t take any money. She told me to have this one on her.
“I’ll call in a favour sometime,” she winked. “Might want somebody following.”
I nodded but hoped that she wouldn’t. I didn’t want to destroy her faith in me.
The murder of Ellen Swantry was still on my mind. Something was eluding me like a bird singing a flat note. I felt sure I had missed a vital clue at The Beeches. Not surprising since I had been on tender hooks, expecting to be caught by the Bill at any moment. I would not have minded being caught by James although it would not have improved his unfairly low opinion of me.
It was important that I trawled round the house again, this time with permission. I called the estate agents and made an appointment for later that morning. They jumped at it, not many people were interested in the big old house. Then I went through my props box and kitted myself out as a respectable middle-aged matron, complete with plum-coloured felt hat.
“Cor, you look as if you’re going to the Tory Women’s Annual Conference at Brighton.” Doris grinned, putting down her duster.
“How did you know it was me?” I asked crossly, tugging down the hat brim. I thought the sober tweed suit, buttoned to the neck crepe blouse, pearl earrings, and excruciatingly uncomfortable court shoes clamped on my toes had completely obliterated the casual laid-back Jordan Lacey.
“Is this a disguise?”
“Of course it’s a disguise. You don’t think I would actually want to wear these clothes. They’re disgusting.”
“You can’t disguise your eyes,” said Doris tactfully. “The eyes are the mirror of the soul. Here, try on my glasses.”
The counter went out of focus, blurred, zapped the beginning of a headache. I quickly took them off.
“Wow, that’s some prescription,” I said, blinking. “Too strong for me, Doris. But I get the idea. Tinted glasses would be useful.”
“I’ve got a stigmatism,” she said.
“As long as it doesn’t stop you tea dancing,” I threw in to confuse her. She gave me a weird look. A point to me, I thought.
The estate agent’s representative was a youth in his late teens, first job, first suit, first client perhaps. He was very nervous, sweat beading his pale brow unless he was in for a dose of flu.
“Good morning, Mrs…” he consulted his notebook. “Jones.”
“Good morning,” I said pleasantly, using a deeper voice. “I’m sure this won’t take long. I like the look of this house.”
“Great.” He unlocked the front door and we stepped over piles of junk mail on the floor. “This is the hall,” he said unnecessarily. He knew all the patter. It could do with modernization, could be very comfortable, needed doing up, good solid condition, possibilities. I went into raptures over the ornate cornice moulding, the carved oak banisters, the hideous fireplaces. He began to relax, thinking he had a sale, planning how to spend the commis
sion on his new girlfriend.
He took me upstairs. “This is upstairs.”
He’d go far, this boy.
The front bedroom grate still had the charred remains of whatever Ellen had been burning the day before she moved, but more leaves and soot had fallen down the chimney, adding to the mess.
The litter of feminine bits and pieces were still there, swept into a corner where Rick had probably tipped out a bedside drawer before loading the cabinet onto his lorry. I longed to turn them over.
“What a wonderful view,” I enthused from the window.
“And this is the bathroom,” said my helpful guide.
I clucked over the stained claw-footed bath, the prehistoric lavatory and rusted pipe work. The other bedrooms were empty as I knew but we had to look at them. We were downstairs and about to leave when I said: “Oh dear, I’m sorry, I’ve left my gloves upstairs. I’ll just pop up and get them.”
I raced upstairs before the boy wonder could follow me. I went straight into the front bedroom and down onto my knees, scooping a handful of the charred matter from the fireplace into a clear specimen envelope I had carried in Mrs. Jones’ large leather handbag. I also shovelled all the stuff from the bedside table into a supermarket plastic bag and hoped he wouldn’t register its sudden appearance on my arm. He didn’t, being much too busy pointing out the garage, the shed, the amazing rose bushes. All this gushing was wearing me out. I was getting verbal fatigue.
“Thank you so very much,” I said. “I’ll let you know. I really, really love the place.”
“I don’t think we have your phone number,” he said, consulting his notebook again.
“It’s ex-directory,” I said, hinting mysterious and famous and being plagued by fan calls. They didn’t have my address either which showed how efficient their office was.
“Have you time to look at the back garden? It’s a bit of a mess.”
“Yes, I’d like to see it.”
The back garden was a tangle of weeds and uncut grass. I gestured to the air-raid shelter which straddled the boundary with Ursula’s house.
“What’s that?” I asked.
“A relic of the war. An old air-raid shelter. It ought to have been demolished years ago.”
“What’s in it?”
“Garden tools. Maybe There’s no key for it so I’m not sure.”
I couldn’t get back to the shop fast enough, striping off the hat as I went through the door, kicking off the shoes. I bet I had got corns.
The surgical gloves, compliments of Latching Hospital, were in the filing cabinet. The charred bits had to be handled like gold dust. I shook them gently onto a sheet of white blotting paper, separated them carefully with tweezers and removed the leaves and other debris.
I still had the original fragment and put it on the edge of the sheet. Although I couldn’t fit them together, it was clear now that they were scraps of banknotes. But I didn’t recognize them and couldn’t make out the denominations.
James had to see these. I put a sheet of cling-film over the bits to stop them blowing about and rang his direct line. He answered first time.
“Detective Inspector James.”
“It’s Jordan. I need you. I mean, I’ve found something interesting at The Beeches. I think you ought to come and see them.”
“Did you break in?” he asked suspiciously.
“Of course not, don’t be silly. As if I would. It was an authorized visit.”
“I’ll be round right away.”
Afterwards I wondered how he knew where my shop was. He’d been to my bed-sits but not to the shop.
The coffee pot was filtering out its perfume of love very nicely by the time James arrived. Two mugs were set on the tray and I had loosened my hair. I knew he wouldn’t notice but a girl had to try. He was wearing a dark polo-necked jersey and casual belted trousers. Where was the tie? Where was the suit?
“This is my day off,” he said. “But I had dropped into the office.”
“Sorry. I won’t keep you long.”
“Long enough for a cup of coffee, I hope,” he sniffed, flicking through the old books on display. “So what have you got to show me?”
I sighed. Work always came first. I took him through to the back room and he went straight over to my desk. He bent over intently, moving a few pieces with a tip of a lead pencil. He’d forgotten all about coffee.
“Where did you get this stuff?”
“At The Beeches. They were in the grate of the upstairs front bedroom, Ellen Swantry’s bedroom. I think your people missed them when they went through there, thought they were bits that had fallen down the chimney. I don’t blame them. It’s easy to miss some things.”
“Will you stop talking, Jordan. I can’t concentrate. They’re banknotes but the like of which I’ve never seen before. British, I think. I hope forensics can determine what they are and when they were burnt. The Bank of England ought to be able to identify them, even bits as small as these.”
“Ellen Swantry burnt them. I’m sure she did. I’ve got that feeling. Who else would be in her bedroom? She was hiding something and this might be what she was hiding. These banknotes could be why she was murdered.”
“Dear God, preserve us. You’re turning into another Miss Marples. Nuns don’t get brutally murdered for a handful of banknotes.”
“I don’t think they’re forgeries but they might be. Although there’s a metallic strip.”
“I’ve no idea if they are forgeries. I had noticed the strip. I’ll make a call.”
He took out his mobile and phoned the station. He asked for a car to bring over exhibit trays and other equipment that he would need to transport the fragile pieces to forensic. I tried not to listen or look pleased. Then he sat down on my Victorian button-back and glanced at the coffee pot.
“You may have found something useful,” he said grudgingly. “We’ve never discovered anything remotely like a motive. We were at a dead-end. Sorry, not a joke. I know how sensitive you are.”
“You don’t joke,” I said, pouring out two mugs of coffee and opening a packet of honeyed oat crunch biscuits. He took one and bit into it. Thank goodness, he was normal with biscuits. It was strange, a kind of intimacy, having him there, sitting on my antique chair. His long legs were stretched out, asking to be tripped over. I moved very carefully.
I hoped the police car would arrive discreetly. I didn’t want their flashing lights to scare away any prospective clients. James read my mind.
“Don’t worry, Jordan. I asked for an unmarked car, again knowing you are a sensitive soul.”
His sergeant was in plain clothes too. I smiled my appreciation and found a third mug. They packed the scraps with infinite care. I was impressed.
“Will you let me know? I mean, if you find out anything. I am an interested party after all.”
“I’ll tell you exactly what any member of the public is entitled to know. Nothing more, nothing less.”
“That’s not fair,” I said, instantly regretting the expensive biscuits. “I’m being helpful. At least you could tell me what you find out.”
“There’s no question of you getting any priority information,” he said as his sergeant carried out the boxes to the waiting car. “I’m grateful that you took civic responsibility by informing me of your find. I won’t ask how you got into The Beeches, but you look cute in that suit. Are tweed, pearl earrings and crepe de Chine coming back into fashion?”
I had totally forgotten to change out of the matronly house-hunting clothes. And now he was laughing at me. His eyes glinted like the ocean.
“Why are you always so deliberately rude to me?” I glared.
DI James checked that his sergeant was out of hearing. “Because you deliberately provoke me,” he said.
“Provoke you? I don’t understand.”
“You have this little girl-lost look in your eyes that always makes me want to hold you tight and kiss you, so the vampires won’t get you.” He was standing far to
o close to me.
“So why don’t you?” I faltered, holding onto the doorway for support.
“Because I’ve got more sense,” he said, striding away.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The plastic bag of flotsam from Ellen Swantry’s bedside drawer stood unopened in my office for a whole day. I couldn’t bring myself to check it, busied myself with other work. It seemed an invasion of privacy, like going through her laundry basket. I had begun to like the woman.
She had rattled around in that big old house, living in a degree of gentile poverty, only able to afford to heat two rooms, selling off the furniture and pictures, yet continuing to fight for what she thought were her rights in regard to the boundary dispute with Ursula Carling.
It must have been a wrench to leave her home and devote her few remaining years to the terminally ill, then to die herself in mean and despicable circumstances. She didn’t deserve such an end. Or did she? No one knew much about her.
People’s bedside drawers hold secrets. They fold their daytime selves away into them before they sleep. Mine has no secrets because it isn’t a drawer. I have a long two-shelved coffee table for my books, clock, night cream from The Body Shop, inhaler and a little teddy-bear who looked so sad on a charity stall at a summer fete that I had to give him a home. I carried him hidden inside my T-shirt all day like a third bosom. His ears have perked up a bit and he’s not so lonely now with the arcade bear Jack gave me beside him.
Finally, I could put it off no longer. I tipped out Ellen Swantry’s secret self. She flooded the floor.
Hair grips that had lost their grip sprinkled in patterns, hairnets floated like grey cobwebs, bills, receipts, a half used tube of intensive hand cream; a crumpled horoscope cut from a newspaper that told Ellen this was going to be a wonderful month. Perhaps heaven was wonderful. She knew now, one way or another. A half-eaten tube of Rolos, damp and mildewy; a packet of Welldorma sleeping tablets with several empty bubbles; letters.
I thumbed through the letters. Several were from the Order of St. Helios saying how delighted they were with her decision to join them and detailing the necessary arrangements. I’m not surprised they were delighted. Ellen Swantry had apparently offered them the proceeds from selling The Beeches. It made sense. She was going to leave her home to make a new home with them.
Jordan Lacey Mystery 01 Pray and Die Page 14