Mrs. Nettle sat with her beaky-nosed face tucked into hunched shoulders. “I don’t see that even if Gertrude Large had found out about Miss Whitcombe’s deception, she’d have been all that bothered. Certainly not enough, if you’ll forgive my speaking so plain, Mrs. Haskell, for her to wonder if she didn’t ought to report the matter to the C.F.C.W.A.”
“You don’t think that, working for Brigadier Lester-Smith as she did, Mrs. Large might have been worried he would be lured into a serious involvement, even marriage, with a woman of deceptive practices?”
Mrs. Nettle grew pensive. “Put like that, I can see it could’ve made for a problem with Gert—her as was always honest in her dealings, besides being fiercely loyal to all those she worked for. Making it difficult, I suppose, for her to know where her duty lay.”
“Brigadier Lester-Smith doesn’t win any prizes in truthfulness himself.” Freddy’s words sat me back in my seat.
“What, just because he’s taken to tinting his hair?”
My cousin grinned through the ragged edges of his beard. Then he sobered. “Sorry, Ellie, I know you’re fond of the brigadier... as you call him.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Ben and I spoke one on top of the other.
“Mrs. Nettle and I also made a couple of discoveries today during working hours. One being a gold watch I found in Lester-Smith’s bedside table.”
“So?” It was now quite dark outside, but with the lights on, there was no reason the kitchen should suddenly have seemed to dim, or that Tobias jumping down from the rocking chair should have presented such an elongated shadow.
“That watch was engraved.” Freddy made matters worse by drawing the words out slowly. “It was a retirement gift presented to your friend, Ellie, after thirty years of employment as a law clerk. He’s not a brigadier. He doesn’t even have the hyphen. Lester is his middle name. So isn’t it just as likely that Mrs. Large was worried that Mr. Smith was romancing Clarice Whitcombe under false pretenses and that she was agonizing over whether she had a duty to warn the poor woman before it was too late?”
Chapter 13
Wipe mirrors with a flannel rag wrung out of warm water and dipped in a little whiting. The gilding must be merely dusted, as the least dampness may injure it.
Lying in bed that night I tried to focus on cheerful thoughts. None springing readily to mind, I struggled to believe Freddy was wrong about Brigadier Lester-Smith—that the engraving on the gold watch meant nothing. Perhaps it was true that he had been a law clerk for thirty years, but had maintained a second career, working his way up to brigadier on the weekends or at night. And that in reward for his service to God and country he had received official permission to hyphenate his name. Unable to convince myself this was likely, I began making excuses for him. Probably the other boys at school had called him Carrots. A boy like that would yearn to show the world one day what a brilliant success he’d made of himself. And when that didn’t happen, he’d made it up. To me, he would always be Brigadier Lester-Smith and I wouldn’t—not for a second—listen to the voice whispering inside my head that there might be a grain of truth to the belief expressed by such as Mrs. Malloy, that a man who dyed his hair was not to be completely trusted.
Where are you, Mrs. Malloy? My mounting anxiety coupled with fatigue made it impossible to think clearly, yet sleep refused to come. So I replayed the other piece of information Freddy had brought back from his workday with Mrs. Nettle regarding Tom Tingle. They’d found his current checkbook in his rolltop desk and in looking through the entries saw that in recent months he had written several checks, each for ten thousand pounds, to the same individual—one Lucia Frondcragg. Also in the desk was a letter, one line of which had leaped to Freddy’s eye: “I appreciate the help, Tom, but I feel as though I am taking blood money.” Signed by Lucia—suspicious to say the least!
Finally, I latched onto a relatively cheerful thought. If either Brigadier Lester-Smith or Tom Tingle were the villain, there could be no reason for Clarice Whitcombe to have made up that phone call from Mrs. Malloy, let alone have murdered her. Ben and Freddy certainly hadn’t taken my concerns seriously. Every fifteen minutes or so I began to doze, and each time I was jolted back to awareness as if some badly behaved nocturnal child had sent a ball slamming against the bedroom window. Unable to stand it any longer, I climbed out of bed and tiptoed over to the chair where I had left my dressing gown. A glass of milk might help me sleep.
As a rule I rather liked prowling around the house during the dead of night, but as I went along the gallery to the stairs I heard a rustle from above. Perhaps a bird had got into the attic. I wasn’t about to go up and check because it seemed to me entirely possible that the shadows up there amused themselves by moving objects from place to place just for the fun of it. I found myself picturing that attic as a nursing home for aged, decrepit, or otherwise unwanted household goods. Their pasts now half forgotten, their futures as uncertain as the boards creaking under my feet.
Upon switching on the kitchen lights I recovered my sanity—what there was of it. I heated my milk and settled into the rocking chair with Abigail’s green notebook. It was comforting to read about such prosaic topics as how to prevent fruit stains from becoming permanent: wet the stained spot with whisky before putting in the wash.
To clean hairbrushes and combs, use two teaspoons of supercarbonate dissolved in half a pint of boiling water.
Holding a piece of velvet in front of a steaming kettle will restore the pile.
One should stuff up mouse holes with rags saturated in a mixture of cayenne pepper and water.
We didn’t have mice, as far as I knew, and if we had, Tobias would have expected me to mind my own business, but I savored this and the other pieces of housewifely wisdom anew, despite having pored over them many times in recent days. They brought back the kind and gentle ghost of Abigail Grantham, banished the spooks from the attic, and restored the past as an ally.
How hard people had worked before God gave us Hoovers! My eyes drifted shut. To imagine a pre-modern woman slogging through her housework would have been exhausting even in the middle of the day. It was now, however, two A.M. I knew I should finish my milk and return to bed before I had to crawl up the stairs. But the hard kitchen chair was so comfy I found myself nodding off again. My head slumped forward and must have hit the table because I heard a thump, actually two of them, before I was reclaimed by muzzy sleep and dreamed that someone was opening the garden door and creeping into the kitchen.
It wasn’t a dream; it was brutal reality. I shot awake, my heart hammering away as I gripped the arms of the chair and forced myself to turn and face the intruder. What I should have done was pick up my cup and slosh the remains in his or her face. Unfortunately there was only about an inch left in the bottom. But at least it would have been something to do.
“Good morning, Mrs. H.,” said the new president and fellow member of the C.F.C.W.A., as if arriving at a perfectly acceptable time of day. “The front of the house was dark, so I was forced to come round back.”
“Mrs. Malloy!” I stumbled out of my chair.
“No need to look at me like I’m a ghost!”
“I’m just surprised.” A huge understatement. For a good part of the day I had been picturing her dead and buried. But her fake leopard coat was undeniably real and the only thing even slightly unusual was that instead of her usual supplies bag she was carrying an enormous holdall that was unzipped halfway. It looked commodious enough to have accompanied her on board ship as she moved to Australia.
“A good thing I didn’t give you back the key when I left Chitterton Fells,” she continued while I was still trying to unlock my jaw. “When I saw the lights on through the glass in the door I knocked good and loud a couple of times, but you didn’t rush to welcome me with open arms.”
“I thought”—rubbing my brow—”that I’d bumped my head.”
“That doesn’t surprise me.” Mrs. Malloy gave me a pained look fro
m under her neon-coated lids. “Would you mind turning off the overhead light, Mrs. H., and just leaving the one on by the back door? I’m getting a headache that threatens to turn something cruel.”
“Oh, what a shame!” Hustling over to the light switch, I agonized over what had brought her here in the middle of the night. Mrs. Malloy teetered over to the table to deposit the holdall and stand fussing with it before removing her coat, revealing a purple velvet dress underneath.
She rested a hand on the table as if to try and stop the room from spinning. “As I was saying, it wouldn’t surprise me if you’d got a migraine of your own, because in your right mind, Mrs. H., you’d be pouring me a cup of tea and asking if I wanted any brandy in it.”
“I’ve been worried about you.” I scampered to put the kettle on and shuffle Tobias off the rocking chair so she could sit down. “I was sure there had to be something wrong for you to go off like that.”
“Sorry, I should have sent a postcard saying I was having a lovely time. And I did try to phone, but the bloody line was engaged. And I had a train to catch to London.” Her butterfly lips, colored cherry red to clash with her frock, drooped. I fetched a bottle of brandy from the pantry and liberally laced her tea before handing it to her. “Here’s to you, Mrs. H.,” she toasted me by raising the cup to her lips and taking a deep swallow. “You’re a port in a storm.” A tear slid down her cheek, creating a channel between eye and chin.
“Have a little more brandy,” I urged, torn between sympathy and the urge to know what latest catastrophe had befallen her.
“Just a couple of drops.” Holding out the cup she roused herself to supervise. “That’s not even a drip, Mrs. H.! Forty of them wouldn’t make one drop.”
“How’s that?” Upending the bottle. “Now please, Mrs. Malloy, you have to tell me what’s going on and let me help you if I can.”
“I got back on the last train out of Victoria. Arrived in at a little before ten. And although I can’t say I was feeling like a dog with two tails, I was doing all right--considering. Until I walked up me garden path. That’s when it really hit me for the first time they was all gone. Gertrude and Winifred was good through and through, and I’m going to miss them like you wouldn’t believe. Then there’s Trina . . .” Mrs. Malloy reached into her purple velvet pocket for a hanky to wipe her eyes. “I was fond of her—well, as fond that is as you can be of someone you don’t ever so much like. I’m not about to say now she’s gone that she deserves a halo the size of a dinner plate. But Trina did do wonders for the C.F.C.W.A.; there’s no getting round that. She got us thinking like professional women. It was her that organized the Christmas bonus club. No one can take that away from her, Mrs. H!”
“Of course not.”
“Going back into the house tonight was the first time I was really spooked. It come back in flashes to me, like finding Trina’s body with a knife that I’d used time out of mind—stuck in her back.”
“Awful!”
“I tried to get meself to sleep.” Mrs. Malloy continued to dab away with the hanky. “But as if I didn’t have enough to think of already, I kept wondering how you and the hubby, along with Betty Nettle and Freddy, got on today. So take a load off, Mrs. H.,” she commanded magnanimously, “and tell me if you found out anything, without me there to give you all a poke in the ribs.”
“Mrs. Malloy!” I protested. “I want to hear about your day first.”
“Not till you’ve given me the scoop.” She was adamant.
So I told her. And she nodded and pursed her lips as the particular revelations required.
“You turned up a sight too many secrets,” was her comment. “Now we’re stuck thinking any one of them— plain Mr. Walter Lester Smith as he turns out to be, Miss Whitcombe, or Mr. Tingle—could be the one we’re after. True, you didn’t find nothing much at the Misses Millers’ house. But I say we put our money on them. Like I read in one of them crime novels, often it’s what you don’t find that counts big. But I’m with you on one point, Mrs. H., I’d just as soon it wasn’t our brigadier. Bleeding shame! Him thinking he had to play the part of the big-I-am to get by in life. The man should have talked to me. I’d have set him straight about how to deal with the stuck-ups!”
I couldn’t tell from the look Mrs. Malloy gave me whether she included me among that obnoxious group; just in case, I got up and poured her more tea with another slosh of brandy.
She settled back in the rocking chair. “Well, it’s not like we’re done checking out the possibles. There’s still Sir Robert and her ladyship to be put under the microscope.”
“We’re supposed to go to Pomeroy Hall today,” I reminded her.
“That’s been changed, Mrs. H.”
“Really?”
“Sir Robert rang up before I left the house this morning, or I suppose I should say yesterday, to say her ladyship was under the weather — a bad cold that’s gone to her chest — and it would be better if we left the cleaning at least till the end of the week.”
“Didn’t you find that a trifle suspicious?” I stopped, cocked my head, and looked at Mrs. Malloy. “What was that?”
“What was what?”
“It sounded like a teeny-weeny sneeze.”
“Power of suggestion.”
“I suppose so.” I got to my feet.
Mrs. Malloy was behind me, breathing heavily for a person who had done no more than stand up and take one and a half steps. “Mrs. H., there’s something I’ve been getting round to telling you about, but I needed to get meself together before giving you another shock.”
I didn’t have to ask what she was talking about; I was staring at the holdall, which she must have unzipped when she set it on the table. The sides were spread open. Sleeping peacefully inside under a fleecy pink blanket was one of the most beautiful babies I had ever seen. No wonder my cousin Vanessa and Mrs. Malloy’s son George had named her Rose.
“Little love!” Her grandmother bent forward to touch her damask cheek.
“She’s adorable,” I whispered. “But why is she here?”
“Because George isn’t her proper father . . .”
“No need to screech like that, Mrs. H., you’ll wake her.”
“Sorry!” I gulped. “But this is all such a surprise. I feel as though I’m taking part in a performance of The Importance of Being Earnest”
“It all came out just after I went to live with them in London. George has always been the neat, orderly sort. Gets that from yours truly. And one Saturday afternoon when Vanessa was having a rest, painting her toenails and such, he thought he’d do a little spring cleaning. Don’t it make you want to spit? But then I always did say no good could come of men thinking they was as good as women and had a God-given right to help around the house. Meddling is what I’ve always called it. And of course I make an exception for Mr. H., him working in the line of duty to help solve the murders. And I’m not saying as I blame George. Feed a man nonsense, and he’ll eat every scrap.”
Mrs. Malloy heaved a voluminous sigh. “He came across a letter in a drawer to Vanessa from the other man. The bugger had spelled it all out—how he was sorry about the baby, but he wasn’t the marrying sort and he was glad she’d found some chump to play the role of Daddy.”
“Oh, poor George!” My heart ached for him as well as the beautiful baby in the holdall. “I really thought Vanessa cared for him.”
“You’d have changed your tune might quick if you’d heard her when George confronted her. Believe you me, Mrs. H., I didn’t need to stick my ear to the keyhole. You could’ve heard her a mile away. Turned everything around to suit herself, she did.” Mrs. Malloy smoothed out the pink blanket with a trembling hand. “Talked about how George had all sorts of unfulfilled needs a wife could never meet, as well as throwing in how he’d insisted I move in with them. Well, that’s when my boy flipped his lid good and proper. He told Vanessa straight, he’d been forced to ask me to help out because she’d shown not a jot of interest in little Rose
from the word go.”
“No wonder I hardly heard from you.” I put my hand on her arm.
“George, being soft as they come under all that business sense, tried to patch things up. But Vanessa kept right on acting the injured party. The day of Gertrude Large’s funeral there was another blazing row. No way I could walk out, not knowing what I’d come back to, because”—Mrs. Malloy’s voice cracked—”even though it’s turned out I’m not this here baby’s gran, she’s come to mean the world to me, has my Rose. I’d even got to the point of thinking, Bugger growing old gracefully, as they call it, and switched me hair color back from that silly schoolgirl red and threw out me miniskirts. Then this morning, just as I was about to leave to come here, I got a phone call from George. All in a panic he was! Vanessa had bunked off to Italy in the night. The baby was howling her little head off. And he didn’t know how to get the bottle in her mouth or the nappy on her bottom.” Mrs. Malloy blinked away a tear. “Well, enough about me, Mrs. H., I need to give you this.” Reaching into a side pocket of the holdall, she handed me a letter, which I unfolded. I recognized my cousin Vanessa’s writing:
Dear Ellie
It turns out I’m not cut out to be a mother. I know you like it, but then you never had a career such as mine to give up. So giving bottles and changing nappies all day and night probably seems like heaven to you. If you hadn’t married, things might have been different. I could have hired you as a nanny for Rose. You’d have had your own room and television, and we’d all have been happy. As it is, I’m being offered some fabulous modeling jobs. Thank God flawless perfection is back in vogue again, instead of the shapeless nymphet look that was all anyone wanted for a while. I am off to Italy for three months, and even if I wanted to do so, it wouldn’t be fair to drag the baby along. She’ll be much better off with you, Ben, and your little people. And don’t let me forget Freddy: for all his weird ways he’s a whiz with children. I’m also sure Mrs. Malloy will be glad to help out. Even after what’s happened she’s bound to have an interest in Rose. Now don’t go thinking I’m sticking you with this responsibility for life, Ellie. Who knows? I could change my mind. Let’s just think of the arrangement as temporary until I make up my mind. Don’t hate me. I’m really not a complete cow. If I were, I would have sent Rose to my mother.
The Spring Cleaning Murders Page 22