She wandered back to the landing and tried another door … Ah, much more like it. No mistaking this for a spare room! It was spacious, well padded and well mirrored, with modern chromium wall lights, thick cream carpet and an enormous bed draped in a coffee-coloured satin counterpane. Piled on a small chaise longue were a couple of hat boxes and three delivery cartons marked Harrods and Debenham & Freebody. Tissue paper and bits of string festooned the floor.
Rosy regarded these sombrely, curious as to her aunt’s last purchases yet somehow disinclined to take a look. Besides it was nothing to do with her: that was Mrs Gill’s elected domain – it was her task, hers and that of the Red Cross people. She examined the dressing table with its plethora of pots, powder and scent bottles – Chanel, Schiaparelli, Molineux. She could take some if she chose, shove it in the bag with the photographs. Nobody would notice or care.
Surveying the choice Rosy felt guilty … Not because she was tempted but precisely because she was not. That was just it, she didn’t want the damn stuff! The moment of sudden sentiment experienced in the drawing room did not revive itself here; and though surrounded by the intimacies of a life so recently extinguished, her sympathy was abstract rather than personal. Yes, she mentally saluted the wearer of the scent, the woman who had so eagerly unpacked the dress boxes; but she felt no real affinity. The link with Marcia was too fragile: her aunt had been like an actress seen from afar, notable but never known, never really felt …
Abruptly she turned from the dressing table to the wide mirrored wardrobe; and sliding back the panels started to flick through the racks of clothes. Jackets, skirts, two pairs of linen slacks, floral tea frocks, evening gowns, and finally coats: a couple of tweeds, a Burberry, and a grey sealskin bolero. But next to them, encased in a plastic cover, was indeed the full-length mink. She removed it from its hanger, laid it on the bed and started to close the cupboard doors. But as she tried to slide the panels one of them jammed; something had got in the way – a shoe, a fallen coat hanger?
She peered beneath the trailing hems to the clutter of footwear below; a shoebox lay caught against the runner. Impatiently she pushed it aside, but as she did so the lid fell off to reveal not evening slippers or sandals … but a large, black, glistening lump of coal – a piece of coal tied up in a jaunty tartan bow.
Rosy gazed down at it stunned by the raw incongruity. The adornment alone was strange enough, but what the hell was such an object doing among the silks and furs of her aunt’s wardrobe? A scrap of paper was stuffed beneath the thing, and gingerly holding a corner of it between finger and thumb, she drew it out and studied the begrimed inscription: To fuel the flames of memory, the scrawled writing announced.
Absurd! Meaningless! The sort of vapid punning cliché one might find in a Christmas cracker … But perhaps that’s what it was: some jocular souvenir, a piece of arcane festive ephemera. Come to think of it, she did remember Marcia babbling about a magnificent Hogmanay ball she had attended in Edinburgh just before the war. Didn’t they do something with coal up there – first-footing or some such ritual? Yes, probably that was it – a rueful keepsake from gayer times. It was amazing the sentimental value people attached to bits of junk … And with a pang she recalled the squashed half-smoked cigarette found in Johnnie’s wallet after his death, and which even now she kept lovingly wrapped in a box by her bedside. Again she felt a flash of empathy with the dead woman. But the flash was doused by the thought of the outlandish helmet gracing Marcia’s demise, and for one risible instant it crossed Rosy’s mind that her aunt might have been a carbon fetishist.
Dismissing such shameful frivolity, she glanced at her watch and firmly slid the door shut. Then lifting the coat off the bed she slung it over her arm, and without a backward glance left the bedroom and started to walk down the stairs.
‘My God, but you gave me a fright!’ a voice said. ‘Thought the place was haunted!’
Rosy froze, her free hand clutching the banister. She peered down into the hall and saw the crown of a brown pork-pie hat – and then the short neck and squared shoulders of the Collinger woman (or was it Bollinger?) whom she had met at Marcia’s funeral and glimpsed earlier in the National Gallery.
‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ she called down nervously, ‘I didn’t realise there was anyone here!’
‘No more did I,’ replied Miss C or B accusingly. ‘You’re the niece, aren’t you?’
By this time Rosy had reached the foot of the stairs and was able to confirm that she was indeed the niece.
‘Hmm,’ said the other, appraising her quizzically, ‘I wondered if you would turn up again. Collecting some of her things, I suppose.’ She gestured towards the coat on Rosy’s arm.
‘Oh, nothing really, just a couple of items – this coat is for someone else,’ Rosy explained, and felt ridiculous for sounding so defensive. Why should she have to explain herself to this person? And then emboldened by her own annoyance, she said coolly, ‘I am sorry, I know that we have met but I’m afraid I don’t remember your name. You are …?’
‘Vera Collinger,’ the woman answered. ‘My own memory being good, I know yours to be Rosy Gilchrist.’ The latter observation was delivered rather as a magistrate might address a reluctant witness.
Rosy nodded, not sure what was expected, but inwardly asked herself what the hell the woman was doing in the house. ‘You were obviously a friend of Aunt Marcia’s,’ she began tentatively.
‘I knew her well,’ responded Miss Collinger (a remark which, Rosy noticed, did not actually admit of friendship). ‘We were together in the war and afterwards kept in touch on and off for old times’ sake. As a matter of fact I lent her a number of books which I am rather keen to get back before the scavengers set in, hence my being here.’ She indicated a bulky haversack by the hall table.
‘Ah, good,’ said Rosy politely (wondering uncomfortably whether the word ‘scavenger’ held a personal reference), ‘glad you found what you wanted. But, er, how did you get …’
‘Get in? Well I have a key of course, to the basement door. Had one for ages. I’m going to drop it off at the solicitors on my way back, they are on my route. No use for it now, not after what happened.’ She paused, staring hard at Rosy as if challenging her to pursue the subject of the murder.
But other than murmuring something about how frightful it had all been, there was nothing that Rosy felt she wanted to say about the business, particularly to a comparative stranger and let alone one as abrasive as Miss Collinger. She shot a covert glance at the haversack. What books? Had Marcia been a keen reader? Apart from the Edgar Wallace in the drawing room she did not recall seeing any – crowded bookshelves being conspicuously absent. Her mother’s voice came back to her saying laughingly: ‘Despite my sister’s brains she never reads a thing other than the columns of Harper’s Bazaar!’ An exaggeration no doubt; but all the same it seemed curious that Marcia should have been the recipient of so large a loan of Miss Collinger’s reading material …
‘Anyway,’ the latter said brusquely, ‘I must be off. Things to do. Glad to have met you again.’ (She didn’t sound particularly glad.) And shouldering her literary swag she marched off in the direction of the basement kitchen, from where the distant slamming of the door announced her exit.
The house returned to its silence and Rosy was left standing irresolutely in the hall, clutching the fur coat and contemplating the now darkening donkeys.
As with the other intruder, she had retrieved what she had come for and there was nothing to delay her further. And yet she hesitated, curiously loath to detach herself for ever from surroundings which, after all, held no special meaning. So not quite knowing why, she found herself wandering back into the drawing room, its corners fading in the gathering dusk. But what still remained clear was the brightly jacquard curtain dividing the rest of the room from the alcove housing her aunt’s desk and radiogram. Earlier, knowing that this was where the victim had reportedly been found, Rosy had carefully avoided the area. But whether it was
the startling encounter with Miss Collinger or simply an access of morbid curiosity, she now felt impelled to confront the space. She swished back the curtain and stared into its depths.
Just as she had remembered: the rather ugly walnut radiogram, its surface strewn with sleeved records, a two-seater sofa bearing the faint imprints of its last occupant (Marcia presumably), and of course the handsome Regency writing desk inherited from a maternal grandparent. A sort of moral duty, not desire, made Rosy briefly scan the carpet between it and the sofa where apparently the body must have lain.
To her relief there seemed nothing to betray any trace of the gruesome find – and she had no intention of going down on hands and knees to make a closer analysis. The forensics would have done that; the niece certainly wasn’t going to! She recalled Leo’s allusion to the truffle hound, and just as in the bedroom she had an unseemly urge to giggle. But the impulse was stifled by the sight of the desk’s lower drawer half pulled out – or half pushed in. Either way, somebody (presumably the police) had been having a hasty rummage, for a jumble of rubber bands, paper clips and what looked like old postcards had spilt on to the carpet.
An instinct for order made Rosy automatically stoop to replace the things and close the drawer. But as she did so she saw something else on the floor: a curling mottled-green feather; such a feather, in fact, of the kind that Miss Collinger had sported in the crown of her hat at the two earlier encounters in the gallery and at the funeral. Rosy recalled the glimpse she had had of the woman’s head and shoulders from the top of the stairs, and visualised the felt trilby with its characteristic raised rim. The image was clear in her mind, and this time there had been no feathery embellishment … Dislodged perhaps during its wearer’s searches?
She stared at it in annoyance. The nosy old bat, she must have been in there. Looking for books in a shallow desk drawer? Doubtful. Most likely having a good old snoop. But snooping for what? Something specific? Or was the pursuit nothing more than the inquisitive intrusion of the living into the privacy of the dead, a prying rummage for unconsidered trifles? Either way the thought was distasteful. She glanced around for a waste-paper basket, and seeing none impatiently thrust the feather into her pocket.
Oddly unsettled and encumbered by coat and holdall, Rosy walked as quickly as she could to the turn in the road which would take her back to the solicitor’s office. If she hurried she would just have time to return the key before the place closed and thus save herself a repeat journey the following morning.
When she arrived the premises were still well lit; but clearly the office girl was a zealous timekeeper, being already clad in hat and coat and busily yanking blinds and closing windows. Rosy slid the key across the counter murmuring mild apologies for being late, adding, ‘Still, that’s two keys from The Larches back in safe custody; this is the one for the front door.’ She smiled.
‘What?’ said the girl absently.
‘This is the front door key that your colleague lent me earlier this afternoon, but I gather a friend of my aunt was also intending to drop a Yale one back to you – for the kitchen door, I think.’
‘Not as far as I know,’ replied the girl indifferently. ‘Maisie left at two o’clock and I’ve been here ever since. There’s been no one in, except Mr Pensnip, and he’s been stuck in his office at the back all afternoon … A good thing too,’ she muttered under her breath, and stooped to adjust a stocking seam.
‘Oh well,’ said Rosy, ‘I daresay the lady forgot and will slip it in tomorrow.’
‘Probably,’ replied the girl. Her tone carried little conviction or concern, and rather pointedly she snapped the clasp of her handbag shut with a loud click. Rosy took her cue and retreated to the street, where feeling justified by her impedimenta she hailed a taxi home.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Twirling a monocle like a slingshot, Miss Collinger bellowed that one feather didn’t make a summer, and that naturally what she always carried in her haversack were the Crown Jewels together with a King James Bible and copious pictures of donkeys. If Rosy Gilchrist had any other bright ideas she would be glad to hear them!
Bathed in a clammy sweat Rosy awoke and lay staring blearily at the first hints of light creeping through the gap in the curtains, and tried to recapture the shape of the dissolving dream. There had been more, definitely much more … But even as she willed the images to re-form, they slipped and melted into a muddled limbo, and she was left only with an aura of a hollow house, a hectoring voice, a slamming door, and in a distant bedroom the insidious stale aroma of a fading scent … Had the mink coat featured? She didn’t think so. Nor, perhaps surprisingly, that peculiar lump of coal. What a ridiculous place to keep such an object – even if it was tied up in tartan ribbon!
Closing her eyes again, she stretched and turned on her side, her thoughts also turning back to the questionable Collinger woman. Questionable? Well, yes, she was rather – elliptical, not quite straight. (Who of us is? the question occurred; but the day was too raw for such reflections.) Still, perhaps after all, and like herself, the visitor had entered the house for a perfectly legitimate reason and there really had been books in that satchel thing … But if so, where did they come from? No bookshelves, no tables strewn with heaped-up volumes, no sign of any accumulation by Marcia’s bedside … and now she came to think of it, even the Wallace had been a library edition.
So if there weren’t books in the bag, then what was? Had the woman simply been looting the house, picking up whatever took her fancy in the way of ornaments and porcelain? Possibly – but rash, surely. After all, there was the question of probate, and the solicitors would already have made an inventory of the most valuable items. She must have known that. Despite the gruff gaucherie Miss Collinger did not seem especially foolish, rather the reverse. (Rosy remembered how keenly she had regarded her in the hall, how quick she’d been to recall her name … and how deftly she had dealt with – and glibly lied to – Professor Dillworthy at Marcia’s funeral.) Besides, what about the acid allusion to scavengers? A deliberate feint? Perhaps, but the note of disdain had seemed genuine enough. No, there must have been something else in the bag, neither books nor conventional valuables. What?
But the hour was too early for such probings. Why waste valuable snooze-time in pondering the contents of the Collinger rucksack? There would be plenty of time for that later – should she care. Perhaps the thing was of no account anyway, she mused sleepily as she began to drift into the final doze before dawn: probably just full of the old bat’s groceries, nothing to do with Marcia …
The next moment she was wide awake, her mind suddenly focused. That was it! Of course the bag was an irrelevance: it had been full from the outset and had no link with the house at all. The tale of the books had been an impromptu pretext to conceal the fact that she was indeed after something specific, something likely to be in Marcia’s desk, i.e. not artefacts but papers – letters, documents, even a diary perhaps. The woman would have arrived a good while after Rosy herself, and been on the premises for no more than ten minutes … but long enough to get to the alcove and start raiding the desk. She must have been kneeling there when she heard movements in the room above, and hastily pocketing her find – or intending to continue the search later – scuttled out into the hall to confront whoever might be coming down the stairs; and the bulky haversack she had happened to bring with her, and which she had dumped by the table, suddenly became a useful prop in creating her excuse!
Impatient to confirm her suspicions, Rosy slipped out of bed and padded into the passage to the hallstand where she had slung her raincoat the night before. She scrabbled in the pockets and drew out the feather. Yes, it was definitely intended to grace a hat, its underside even bearing traces of adhesive. Surely her first instinct had been right: in size, style and colour the feather matched exactly the one she had seen stuck in Collinger’s hatband at the funeral. She smiled grimly; the old trout had lost a feather, but ten to one was keeping the key for another try!
‘Far be it from me to interrupt your investigations,’ said Greenleaf’s superior mildly, ‘but are you quite sure that this artist chap is as clean as he sounds? I mean, it’s all very well to assume that only a total innocent would be crass enough to boast he was the last to see the victim, but how do we know he isn’t bluffing – using admission as a means of denial? It’s been done before.’
‘Not with a cast-iron alibi it hasn’t,’ retorted Greenleaf. ‘We’ve checked his story about the taxi driver and catching the boat train at Victoria. He was on it.’
‘But are you sure about the time of crime?’ his boss persisted. ‘I don’t entirely trust that new pathologist, too cocky by half. After all, if he’s miscalculated by just forty minutes we stand an even chance of pinning it on the painter.’
‘Motive?’
‘Oh, I expect something will emerge – sex probably, a lot of it about.’
‘Not where I live,’ replied Greenleaf gloomily.
‘After all,’ the other continued, ‘didn’t you say he likes blowing his own sexual trumpet?’
Greenleaf’s imagination momentarily quailed, but he nodded.
‘Well there you are, then – painter makes a pass, lady laughs like a drain, painter piqued and clocks her one. Simple!’
‘She wasn’t clocked, she was shot; and besides, what about the coal bucket?’
‘Artistic licence. They get funny ideas, these creative types. Probably thought it would add a splash of colour or something. There’s a chap called Dali, for instance, who’s always—’
‘Doesn’t explain the pistol, he would have to have come prepared,’ said Greenleaf woodenly, and wished his superior would go back to the canteen and stop wasting his time with damn fool comments.
A Little Murder Page 7