Cynthia Manson (ed) (53 page)

“ ’Fraid that rabbit won’t
run, old girl,” said the Hon. Con with evident relish. “No outsider could
infiltrate this blooming building—you know that. We’ve had every door manned
all afternoon to keep gate-crashers out and our dratted brats in. Nor,” the
Hon. Con raised a lordly hand before Miss Jones could voice the theory that the
killer might have concealed himself in the Club earlier on, “is it any good you
thinking of that door where Lyonelle Lawn was sitting. That’s a proper
emergency exit, you see. You can only open or close it from the inside with
that bar thing. Well, the late lamented might possibly have opened it up and
let her murderer in, but she jolly well didn’t close it behind him after he’d
gone out. No, we’ve just got to face facts, Bones. It was one of us. And my
money’s on Rose Johnson—with Felicity Fowler a good each-way bet.”

Miss Jones was reluctant
to be the hand that threw the spanner, but she had no choice. “I’m afraid it
can’t be one of us, dear.”

“Why not?”

“There are only two ways
of reaching the spot where Mrs. Lawn was killed, dear. You have demonstrated
that we can forget about the emergency door. Well, that only leaves the route from
the Margaret Thatcher Hall, along the corridor past the cloakrooms.”

“So?”

“I was on duty on the
door from the Margaret Thatcher Hall, dear, all afternoon, without a second’s
break. After Mrs. Lawn and the four ladies on duty in the cloakrooms went through,
nobody else did—apart from the kiddies, of course.”

The Hon. Con didn’t look
best pleased. “You prepared to swear that on a stack of Bibles, Bones?”

Miss Jones shuddered. “I
should hope that wouldn’t be necessary, Constance dear,” she said reproachfully.

“All right,” said the
Hon. Con, whose thought processes under pressure frequently achieved the
velocity of light, “somebody sneaked through after the party was over and you’d
gone to the kitchen for a cup of tea.”

Miss Jones was no slouch
when it came to spiking the Hon. Con’s guns. “I was the last person to arrive
in the kitchen, dear. Or almost the last. Certainly both Mrs. Johnson and Lady
Fowler were already there. Besides, if poor Mrs. Lawn was killed after I left
my post by the door, that would mean she had only died a matter of moments
before I found her.” Miss Jones swallowed hard as she recalled the scene. “I
don’t think that was the case, dear. The blood seemed to be quite—”

The Hon. Con was growing
impatient. “Then it was one of the four lassies on duty in the cloakrooms. One
of them could have sloped off any old time, nipped round the corner, stuck the
knife in La Lawn, and Bob’s your uncle!”

Miss Jones’s head was
already shaking. “But you heard them yourself, dear, complaining that they’d
never had a moment’s relaxation and that they never left their cloakrooms all
afternoon. They’ll be able to give each other alibis, won’t they? I mean, each
couple will be able to—”

If there was anything
that got right up the Hon. Con’s nose it was hearing blessed amateurs using
technical terms like “alibi.” “There’s such a thing as collusion!” she snapped.
“Or conspiracy! Two of ‘em could be in it together.”

“Now don’t be silly,
dear!”

Miss Jones’s reproof was
feather-light and her smile indulgent, but the Hon. Con was never one to take
criticism lying down. “Hope you’re in the clear, Bones,” she said nastily. “Because,
if anybody could have slipped away during the afternoon and done Lyonelle Lawn in,
it was
you!”

The idea was so absurd
that Miss Jones even managed a little laugh, though with a fresh corpse only a
few feet away laughter was neither very easy nor appropriate.

“Then it’s one of the
kids,” said the Hon. Con indifferently, as though Miss Jones was in some way to
blame for this conclusion. “It’s the only answer—and it’s not beyond the bounds
of possibility, is it? I wouldn’t put anything past those evil-minded little
horrors. Do you know, I didn’t get a thank you out of more than a couple of ‘em
all afternoon? Talk about manners! Yes, one of ’em could have come out to the
cloakroom and popped round here to kill Lyonelle as easy as pie, having first
nicked a knife at teatime, I shouldn’t wonder. That explains why she didn’t put
up a struggle or anything. I mean, who expects getting knocked off by a
nine-year-old, eh?”

Miss Jones had had a
pretty gruelling day so far, what with the children’s party and finding a dead
body and everything, but it was all as nothing compared with the crisis she now
faced. She would like to have fainted, but she daren’t. Oh, why, oh, why hadn’t
she just let dear Constance pin the murder on whomever it was she wanted to pin
it on in the first place? There would have been a little unpleasantness, no
doubt, but it would be as nothing to the storm of fury and outrage that was
going to erupt when the Hon. Con started pointing the finger of suspicion at a
group of innocent children and innocent
Conservative
children, at that. Even Labor-voting
parents would have been horrified, but the parents of this lot—well, running
amuck and foaming at the mouth would just be for starters. Miss Jones’s mind
shied at the possibilities: tarring and feathering? Being ridden out of
Totterbridge on a rail? Lynching?

Miss Jones moistened arid
lips. “Constance, dear—” “You know my methods, Bones,” said the Hon. Con
grandly. “When you’ve eliminated the impossible, what you’ve got left is
it—however improbable. And you’re the one,” she added, turning the knife, “who
did most of the eliminating for me.”

“Constance, dear, you can’t
go around making wild accusations against some poor child who—”

“I know that. Bones! Drat
it all, I haven’t had more than five minutes to get to the bottom of things,
have I? I shall have to leave it to the cops to tie up a few loose ends and
pinpoint the actual murderous little thug who did it. I am well used,” the Hon.
Con laughed bitterly, “to having my case snatched out of my hands by so-called
professionals the minute I’ve cracked it. I gave up expecting any credit for my
achievements a long time ago.”

“In that case, dear,” suggested
Miss Jones with a cunning born of panic, “why not leave the whole thing to the
police? Let them solve it themselves. Why should you help them? They never help
you.”

The Hon. Con thought a
minute and then drew herself up proudly. She made a striking figure in her red
Father Christmas suit and her flowing white whiskers. “Not in my nature to be a
dog in the manger, Bones,” she said modestly. “Now, while we’re waiting, why
don’t you improve the shining hour by making a list for the cops of all the
kids who went past you this afternoon on their way to the cloakrooms? Better
stick ’em in chronological order with an indication of the times where you can.”

“A list, dear?” bleated
Miss Jones. “How can I possibly make a list? Every child at the party went out
to the toilets at some time in the afternoon, and most of them more than once.
You know what a shambles it was. Besides, I don’t know more than a handful of
them by name. How could I?”

The Hon. Con shrugged a
pair of shoulders which would have looked better in the front row of a rugby
scrum. “Hope the cops don’t think, you’re trying to obstruct the course of
justice,” she rumbled with sham concern.” ’Praps they’ll try and make you do it
with photographs. You know, one of each kid so you can shuffle ’em around like
a pack of cards till you get ’em in the right order.”

“But, Constance,” wailed
Miss Jones, ever prey to her own sense of inadequacy, “half the time I didn’t
even see the children’s faces! They were wearing those stupid animal masks. You
can vouch for that, dear. Those who’d got them wore them the entire afternoon
and—”

But the Hon. Con was no
longer listening. Her somewhat protuberant eyes glazed over as they always did
when sheer, undiluted inspiration was about to strike. “Golly!” she breathed in
an awed voice. “I’ve got it! I’ve blooming well got it!”

“Got what, dear?”

“The solution, Bones! I
know who done it!”

“Again, dear?” The words
were unworthy, and Miss Jones was ashamed of herself for uttering them.

Luckily the Hon. Con was
still up there on Cloud Nine. “It stands out a mile. It was that dwarf!”

“Dwarf, dear?”

“That midget who was with
the circus entertainers. Oh, come on. Bones, rattle the old brain-box! You can’t
have forgotten that crummy bunch.”

“I haven’t forgotten,
dear,” said Miss Jones, who could sometimes turn the other cheek almost
audibly. “It’s just that—”

“He put on an animal mask
and walked right past you,” explained the Hon. Con jubilantly. “Twice. Both
ways. Coming and going. You just took him for one of the kids and didn’t give
him a second thought. Deuced cunning, eh? And he was the one who dished out the
animal masks in the first place, wasn’t he? You all thought he’d gone potty,
but it was part of his sinister plan. Premeditated, see!”

Miss Jones took one of
her deep breaths. “Constance, dear—”

“Now don’t start
nitpicking, Bones! Because it all fits. He knew where Lyonelle Lawn was going
to be on duty and that she would be tucked away all on her own because he
overheard Rose Johnson and Felicity Fowler having an argy-bargy about it.
Remember? He and the rest of that grotty crew were standing there lapping up
every word— and there can’t be many Lyonelle Lawns kicking around, can there?
Oh,
heck!
” The Hon. Con’s
lynx-like ears had caught the distant wail of a police siren. Little Mrs.
Bellamy must have made it to the phone box in spite of some fervent prayers to
the contrary. “Listen, Bones, are those circus people still in the Club?”

“Oh, I shouldn’t think
so, dear. They must have gone ages ago. You could check with Miss Simpson. She
was on the front door and would have let them out.”

“Curses!” The Hon. Con
had been picturing herself tossing the miniature miscreant bodily into the arms
of the Totterbridge Constabulary. That would have caused a few astounded jaws
to drop, all rightie!

Miss Jones’s mind
meanwhile had been running on more mundane lines—such as slander and criminal
libel and the bearing of false witness and what sort of damages a court might
award to an outraged and injured midget against the rambunctious and wealthy
daughter of a peer. Dear Constance never appeared to her best advantage in a
court of law. She would keep telling the judge how to run the case and—”Constance,
dear!”

The Hon. Con hitched up
her Father Christmas trousers impatiently. “What now?”

Miss Jones put it as
simply as she could. “Why should this midget have killed poor Mrs. Lawn!”

“Good grief, Bones,
detectives don’t have to prove motive. Thought everybody knew that. All you
need do is establish means and opportunity. Well, that’s what I’ve done. And I’ll
bet he nicked the knife from the kitchens here.”

“But he must have had
some reason, dear.”

“The stage!” The Hon. Con’s
imagination always worked best under pressure. “Lyonelle Lawn used to be on the
stage, didn’t she? Well, so’s that midget. They probably met up somewhere. You
know what theatricals are like—all nerves and tension and things. There’d be a
feud, I expect, or maybe she spurned his lascivious advances, or—”

But the time for
leisurely speculation was past. Masculine voices and the tramp of heavy feet
could be heard coming from the direction of the Margaret Thatcher Hall. The
Hon. Con prepared herself for the encounter, smoothing down her scarlet tunic
and fluffing up her white whiskers. “It’s all a question of psychology, really,”
she whispered in an attempt to allay her chum’s only too evident distress. “I’m
deliberately leaving this motive question for the police to solve for the sake
of their morale. You follow me?

It’ll give them the
chance to make a contribution and earn a bit of kudos—and it’ll stop ’em
getting too shirty over the indisputable fact that I’ve unravelled the mystery
and tied the whole blooming case up for ’em before they even got here.“

People in the advertising business
said the Christmas party at French & Saunders was the social event of the
year. For it wasn’t your ordinary holiday office party. Not the kind where the
staff gets together for a few mild drinks out of paper cups, some sandwiches
sent in from the local deli, and a long boring speech by the company president.
At F&S it was all very different: just what you’d expect from New York’s
hottest advertising agency.

The salaries there were the highest
in town, the accounts were strictly blue chip, and the awards the agency won
over the years filled an entire boardroom. And the people, of course, were the
best, brightest, and most creative that money could buy.