The Measby Murder Enquiry (28 page)

AS SOON AS Roy walked into the breakfast room, he sensed a strange atmosphere. It was very quiet, for a start, and then he realised nobody looked up from their cornflakes and nobody said, “Good morning, Mr. Goodman.”

What had he done? Was he being sent to Coventry for some gross lapse of polite behaviour? Of course not. He sat down at his usual table, and looked anxiously into the hall for a sight of Ivy coming to join him. Had something happened to her, and he had not been told? He was about to get to his feet to investigate, when Mrs. Spurling hurried in and made straight for his table.

“Ah, Mr. Goodman,” she said. “May I sit down for a moment, just until Miss Beasley joins you?”

So it wasn’t anything to do with Ivy. Roy said of course she was welcome to sit with him. He looked at her enquiringly. “Is there something I should be told?” he asked.

“Well, yes. I have some sad news for all residents at Springfields. The others have been informed, and are naturally rather shocked. I am afraid that in the night Mrs. Worth died very peacefully in her sleep. Young Katya was on night duty and was with her. Holding her hand, the girl reported to me this morning.” Mrs. Spurling sniffed, and Roy could see she was genuinely upset.

“I’m so sorry, my dear,” he said. “I believe she had been in your care for a long time?” The noisy old thing had been at Springfields for as long as Roy could remember, though he had never actually met her. She had been like Mrs. Rochester, upstairs in her room and never seen. She had certainly been heard, though! He recalled many a night when he had awoken to hear her bellowing for attention.

“Thank you, Mr. Goodman,” Mrs. Spurling said, visibly pulling herself together. “I suppose it is the nature of my job to lose friends now and then. Springfields is my family, you know.”

Roy could not quite reconcile this with the number of times he had overheard Mrs. Spurling cursing under her breath and vowing to give in her notice the very next day. But then, he reasoned, who wouldn’t do the same, put in charge of this lot? He glanced round the dining room and was relieved to see Ivy approaching from the hall.

“Perhaps you could break the news to Miss Beasley, Mr. Goodman?” Mrs. Spurling said, getting up rapidly from the table. “And thank you so much for your support. Mine is not always an easy billet, you know.”

She nodded a greeting to Ivy, and then crossed the room to answer a beckoning finger from another table.

“Good morning, my love,” said Roy, struggling to his feet. He reckoned that when he ceased being able to keep up the little courtesies, he would give up. But then he looked at Ivy’s smiling face, and knew she would not let him give up, whatever befell him.

“Bit quiet in here, isn’t it?” she said, looking round. Her voice sounded louder than usual in the silent room.

“There’s a reason for that, my dearest,” Roy said, and explained to her gently and considerately what had happened to poor Mrs. Worth in the night.

Ivy raised her eyebrows, shook out her table napkin and arranged it neatly on her lap. To Roy’s extreme surprise, when she looked at him across the table, her eyes were twinkling, full of mirth.

“Ivy!” he said, hoping to forestall any indiscretion. “You did hear what I said? The poor old lady died in the night.”

There was a kind of smothered snort from Ivy, and then she took a deep breath and said that she hoped that where Mrs. Worth had gone there would be a plentiful supply of Juicy Jellies.

Roy passed her the milk jug, and asked if her hand was steady enough to pour the tea. “How had she seemed when you looked in on her last evening?” he said, hoping to sober up his unaccountably cheerful beloved.

“Awkward as ever,” Ivy said matter-of-factly. “Mind you, I thought she was a bit more breathless than usual. Didn’t stop her shouting at me as I went back downstairs, though. Maybe it was what they call a last gasp.”

“Katya was with her, apparently,” Roy said.

This sobered up Ivy immediately. “Where is she? Gone off duty, I suppose?”

Roy nodded. “I expect Mrs. Spurling will give her time off today. Probably the first time she has witnessed the grim reaper coming to collect his harvest.”

“I’ll find out as soon as I’ve had breakfast. The girl might need to have a little weep.”

Roy marvelled once more how little he actually knew of his Ivy. Tough as old boots at the announcement of a death in Springfields, and then full of compassion for a young girl far from home and doing her best to make life more pleasant for a bunch of oldies, who, it had to be said, were most of the time full of complaints.

“Would you like me to come with you?” he asked, but knew the answer before Ivy spoke. She shook her head. “No thanks,” she said.

“No? Right, well, I’ll be in the lounge with the newspaper, ready to go up to Tawny Wings. At your disposal, madam,” he said, and smiled very fondly.

 

 

GUS WAS ALREADY in the Enquire Within office, and greeted Ivy and Roy with a cheerful smile. This was not returned, and Deirdre, who had answered the door and accompanied them up the stairs, knew at once that something was wrong.

“Now then, Cousin Ivy,” she said, sending a warning look at Gus, “you and Roy could use a good strong cup of tea. Right?”

“Thanks, Deirdre,” Ivy said, and Roy said that he would appreciate that. The wind had been cold as they made their way to Tawny Wings. “And added to that,” he said, before Deirdre left to make the tea, “we had a bit of sad news at Springfields this morning.”

Deirdre sat down at once. Her mind flew around the various possibilities, but strangely enough, considering it was an old folks’ home, she did not consider a death of a resident, not even Alwen Jones, who had certainly looked a bit middling lately.

Gus asked the question for her. “Who was it, then, Roy?” he said, as sympathetically as he could manage.

“Mrs. Worth,” Ivy said baldly. “The old trout who yelled a lot, and whose husband was gardener for Mr. William Jones, and who got pregnant from a secret assignation with the said William Jones. Joe Worth never knew the boy wasn’t his, and William, or, more likely, George Jones, paid up to keep Mrs. Worth quiet. And knowing what we know about her, he must have paid a lot.”

There was a stunned silence, broken finally by Deirdre saying that if there had been a son, why on earth were there never any visitors for poor old Mrs. Worth?

“The boy, named Samuel, aged eleven, was run over by a brewery lorry and killed outright.”

Roy looked at Ivy in astonishment. “Did she tell you that, Ivy?” he said.

Ivy nodded. “Last night, when I went up to see why she was yelling again. She was quite lucid, for once. Sometimes happens, so I’m told, just before the end. My mother did the same. Sat up in her bed, straight as a die, and announced that she wanted to live. Then she lay down again and breathed her last. Odd, really.”

Gus was puzzled by Ivy’s apparent indifference to what must have been something of a shock to Springfields. Then he noticed Roy surreptitiously handing her a clean white handkerchief. Ivy turned away, as if to look out of the window, and Gus saw her pat her cheeks swiftly and hand back the handkerchief. So, thank goodness for that! He could not believe the old thing was so completely stonyhearted.

When Deirdre returned with the tea, Ivy said it was time they got down to business, and she personally was anxious to hear how they got on in Measby.

Gus looked at Deirdre. “Will you start?” he said.

“No, you.”

“Right-o, but feel free to correct me if I get anything wrong.”

“Oh, for goodness’ sake, get on with it!” said Ivy.

And so Ivy and Roy listened with interest to an account of a visit that had turned up some very strange facts.

“First of all,” Gus said, “we had great trouble finding Doris May Osborne. We tried at the shop, but the shopkeeper was no help. In fact, he did his best to persuade us to forget all about the cottage for sale, and hinted that it was already sold.”

“O’course, we didn’t believe him,” chipped in Deirdre. “Nor did we accept that his boss had gone on holiday to New York and hadn’t said when she’d be back! He was clearly making it up as he went along, wasn’t he, Gus?”

Gus nodded. “Which, of course, made us all the more keen to find out what was going on,” he added. “In the end, Deirdre reminded me that Doris May had said she lived at the Manor, and we decided to call there. So off we went, up the long drive, to a very impressive manor house of Tudor origin, if I’m not mistaken.”

“Is that relevant?” said Ivy shortly.

“Could be,” Gus replied defensively. “In my experience, Ivy, every little detail can be relevant. So, as I was saying, the house was very impressive and very expensively maintained, Deirdre reckoned.”

“Yep, just like Doris May herself,” Deirdre said, taking over the narrative. “Talk about manicured lawns! And the flowerbeds immaculate. We pressed the bell, and waited.”

“Yes?” said Roy, who was beginning to side with Ivy in wanting them to get to a few important points.

“After a while,” Deirdre continued, “we heard footsteps coming towards the door.”

“And it opened slowly with a terrible creak, and there stood Adams the butler, with only one eye and a menacing leer on his sallow face!” This was from Roy, and spoken with a completely straight face.

Silence. Then Gus gave a shout of laughter. “Point taken!” he said, and patted Roy on the shoulder. “Come on, Deirdre, let’s be brief.”

Deirdre was looking distinctly offended, but she shrugged her shoulders and said that Gus should carry on.

It was an interesting account. Doris May had finally opened the door and invited them in. She had been pleasant and polite, but firm in her confirmation that the cottage had been sold. She was sorry, but had gained the impression that Mrs. Bloxham had not been seriously interested in it, and so she had accepted an offer from a subsequent approach. She had apologised if they felt they had wasted their time in coming over to Measby.

“So we left. Nothing much else we could do. Then, as it was nearly lunchtime, we went to the local pub for a bite to eat. And that was when it got really interesting. Go on, Deirdre.”

“Well, we got into conversation with the publican, and naturally we mentioned the sad business of a possible murder and that nasty stuff about the old man’s demise.” She looked at Gus.

“And he said,” Gus carried on slowly, determined not to be done out of his moment of drama, “he looked at both of us as if we were barmy, and said, ‘What murder? You got the wrong village, mate.’ ”

“That’s right,” said Deirdre, “that’s what he said. ‘What murder?’ ”

DOWN THE LONG Measby farm track, Max and Margaret huddled over a small fire which Max had lit on their return to base, the run-down cottage once occupied by a misguided artist.

“This place will be the end of us,” Margaret said gloomily. “Damp through and through, no matter how many fires we light. Look at the paint peeling off the ceiling! And there’s our Doris, rich as Croesus, with her designer outfits and smelly scent. You’d think she would at least slap a coat of paint on this hovel before she rented it out. She owes us, after all we did for her when we worked in the casino.”

Maxwell sighed. “Maybe,” he said. “But remember how much we owed her. Both of us gambling away as if there was no tomorrow! She says she wrote it off, but would you trust her? And think how little we pay in rent. We wouldn’t get anywhere else as cheap as this.”

“But why don’t we just pay a bit more? After all, we should soon have money in the bank when she gives us our share, and the strong possibility of more to come. Doris has got a list, y’know. Surely we could shell out for a bit more comfort?”

“There is another thing you seem to have forgotten,” he said coldly. “We are not exactly anxious to be known around here. Keep our heads down. That’s what we agreed. The next thing you’ll want is to join Measby WI! For God’s sake, woman, be thankful for small mercies. When the job’s done, that will be the time to enjoy the fruits of our labours. And miles away from here.”

“Oh, shut up, Max!” she said, and threw another log on the fire.

A shadow passed by the window, and then a knock at the door sent Max scuttling upstairs. “It’s that farm bloke,” he said as he went out. “Get rid of him.”

The farmer touched his cap politely, and said he was sorry to disturb Margaret, but he had a message for her. Well, for her husband, actually.

“Sorry, he’s not here,” she said blandly. Lying came as naturally as breathing to Margaret.

“Well, perhaps you could pass it on. A visitor was here looking for you. A woman, in a big black car. She seemed disappointed to find that you were away, and I said I would tell you she had called. Didn’t leave a name, I’m afraid.”

“Thanks,” said Margaret. “I’ll tell my husband when he returns. Probably some old business associate,” she added and shut the door firmly in the man’s face.