The Spring Cleaning Murders (19 page)

“I’d be glad to help.” I refrained from adding that I would love to oversee the renovation of the entire house one day. And so I left, thinking that life was indeed odd. I no longer believed Tom Tingle was a menace to himself, let alone anyone else. I even hoped we would get to know each other better.

It was after three when I got into the car. Even so, I doubled back past my own house, just to make sure there wasn’t smoke billowing from the windows or any other sign of trouble. I was just picking up speed again when I saw Clarice Whitcombe approaching The Cliff Road from Hawthorn Lane. Stopping, I rolled down the window to say hello. I hadn’t seen her since Mrs. Large’s funeral.

“Hello, Ellie.” Clarice looked embarrassed; her eyes didn’t quite meet mine and she was fidgety. She was neatly turned out as always, in a raincoat and sensible shoes, but the woolly hat she wore was slightly askew and she had on only one pearl earring. “I’ve been meaning to have you round,” she said, “only I don’t know where the time goes. It’s not as though I’m busy like you. No husband or children to keep me occupied . . .” Her voice trailed off. Clarice was now peering up and down the road, on the lookout, I supposed, for the bus that stops close to the vicarage gates at half-hour intervals.

“Have you been able to get back to your piano playing?” I asked, and she jerked around to face me as if I had slapped her.

“No, I haven’t. Not once.” She wrapped a hand around her wrist and wiggled her free fingers. “I’m still having trouble with this silly old arm. Actually I’m going down to see the doctor about it—that’s where I’m headed now.” Her face was turning pinker by the minute. “But I really do want to have you over, Ellie. I’ve been thinking about you quite a lot and hoping perhaps you would be kind enough to advise me, because one of my problems is I’ve absolutely no eye for color.”

“It’s really not difficult,” I reassured her. “You just need confidence in picking what you like. Then everything falls into place. And it’s relatively easy to coordinate fabrics with the wallpaper and so on.”

“But I wasn’t exactly thinking about home furnishings.” Clarice was looking more awkward by the minute. “What I’d like to know is how to choose the right shade of lipstick and eye shadow.” She dabbed at her lids. “To help smarten me up, make me more attract— Well, just to look better, really. I know I’m past the age of being a glamour girl, but I thought that with you being younger and always seeming so pulled together ...”

“Me?”

“Oh, but you are,” she said. “You’re lucky having such pretty hair and that fresh complexion, but you also know about the other stuff. Walt . . .” She exhaled shakily. “Brigadier Lester-Smith said once that a lot of women could take tips from you on how to wear makeup without making clowns of themselves.”

“That was very nice of him.”

“‘Just what a woman should be,’ is how the brigadier described you. But not in any wrong way, Ellie. He made it clear he didn’t... wouldn’t... hadn’t even for a minute harbored an improper thought in his head where you, a married woman, were concerned.” Clarice was now so red her face could have stopped traffic. Could it be she protested too much? Was she perhaps concerned that Brigadier Lester-Smith harbored forbidden feelings for me? It was hard to imagine he had said anything to foster such an idea. Unless—my mind ran rampant—he had been trying to make her jealous? Schoolboy behavior from a man closing in on sixty. But as my mother once told me, men in love often behaved like oversize children.

“Clarice,” I said, “you don’t need makeup tips from me, or from anyone else for that matter. You look wonderful the way you are, as your own self. Don’t risk losing that. Other people”—the brigadier’s name hung in the air between us—”might be very sorry if you did.”

“Or he ... they might think I was trying too hard to please.” She shuddered visibly. “Yes, perhaps you’re right, Ellie. But I would appreciate your advice on the house, how to make it more inviting—well, livable, I suppose, is the word I’m looking for." Clarice again looked down the road. “And now I’d better be getting to the bus stop or I’ll be late for my . . . my appointment with the doctor.”

“I can take you,” I told her. “I’m going to Dr. Solomon’s surgery.”

“Oh, but he isn’t my doctor,” she said quickly.

“That doesn’t matter. I’m not in any great rush; I’ll be glad to take you where you need to go.”

“But it isn’t in Chitterton Fells,” Clarice sounded panicky. “If it’s all the same, Ellie, I’d rather take the bus; that way I wouldn’t feel I was putting you out and could enjoy the journey. I’ve got a good book with me.” Patting her handbag, she inched away from the car.

“Well, if you’re quite sure.”

“Oh, absolutely.” She almost nodded her head off. I drove away, feeling uncomfortable at having put her on the spot. My guess was that she had an appointment with a psychiatrist. Something readily understood, given her parents’ joint suicide. That must have been the most awful shock, especially after spending her life at the beck and call of two people who had been totally absorbed in each other. Poor Clarice Whitcombe! Surely if there were any fairness in life, happiness would be forthcoming, for both her and Brigadier Lester-Smith. He’d had his own share of sorrows. The two of them were still on my mind when I left Jonas’s mirror at the repair shop.

Dr. Solomon’s waiting room was packed, mainly with elderly people coughing and younger women with toddlers staggering around their chairs. The receptionist looked harried and the magazines were so dated only an antiquarian could have found them of interest. For the first twenty minutes I had to stand, wedged in between the children’s book rack and the window. When I did get a seat, it was by the door, so I kept getting banged into by patients coming and going. The wall clock ticked out the minutes with excruciating slowness. I spent the next hour checking my watch—hoping the two timekeepers would get into a race, because surely the place would thin out by four-thirty. Then four-thirty came and went, and I began to fret; with several people still ahead of me, what if Dr. Solomon closed the surgery without seeing me?

It was well after five when a weary-looking woman with a child squirming under each arm staggered out of his office, and the receptionist called my name. She actually had to say it twice because by now I had forgotten it, along with why I was there. But the doctor, no doubt refreshed from his holiday, was in great form. He waved me into a chair, repositioned himself behind his desk, and greeted me as if I were the first patient of the day. I explained that I had come about Jonas, spent five minutes voicing my concerns, and waited for him to say something brilliant.

In fact he didn’t say much. But he said it at considerable length, going back and forth over the same ground like a farmer trying out a new tractor. The gist of his conversation was that he didn’t think there was anything wrong with Jonas other than old age slowing him down. What Jonas needed was good food, adequate rest, and something to stimulate his emotional and physical energy.

“Try and get the old boy out more,” Dr. Solomon suggested. “Take him on car trips to places he’s always liked.”

“Jonas hates riding in a car for any distance.” I knew I sounded uncooperative, but it was the truth. “And the only place he likes is home.”

“Then encourage him to potter outside, find someone he can talk gardening with; old people love to pass on what they know to the next generation. Keep his spirits up, that’s the best medicine, but I will stop in and look him over.” The doctor flipped through his calendar and said it would have to be early the next week. I thanked him and rose to leave. Dr. Solomon walked me to the door, where he placed a kindly hand on my elbow. “Ellie, Jonas has had a long and healthy life, you have to face up to losing the old boy one of these days.”

“But not now? Not soon?”

“I’d say he’s got at least a couple of good years left to him.” The doctor patted my shoulder. I said good-bye, feeling hopeful, if not entirely reassured.

I asked the receptionist if I could use the phone to ring home and got Ben at the third ring. He said he’d been back for half an hour, that Freddy was still there, and the twins wanted to help cook dinner. Everything being well under control, I felt no need to rush home. I told Ben about wanting to return Brigadier Lester-Smith’s raincoat, but promised not to dawdle over endless cups of tea.

It was a short drive to the brigadier’s house on Herring Street, only two doors down from where Mrs. Malloy had resided. Roxie. Not only had she failed to show up for Mrs. Large’s funeral, she hadn’t returned my subsequent phone calls, either. Both times I had talked with Vanessa, who had promised without enthusiasm to relay the message. My lovely cousin hadn’t been forthcoming about the baby or her husband, let alone how she enjoyed having her less-than-aristocratic mother-in-law on the premises. Of course, Vanessa had a master’s degree in self-absorption. The only topic she broached was the possibility of landing a tip-top modeling assignment.

Looking anything but a fashion plate in my non-designer raincoat, I parked the car in front of the brigadier’s terraced house with its neat square of garden. There were flowers in the borders and a dwarf cherry tree that shivered in the breeze. I was just about to push open the green-painted gate when I heard footsteps, and I turned to see a woman of about thirty-five or forty scurrying towards me. She was wearing a flamingo-pink sweater over tight slacks. Her arms flapped as she came, making her look like a long-legged bird attempting flight.

“Come to see the brigadier, have you, love?” she panted.

“I’m returning his raincoat.” I rearranged it over my arm.

“Is that so?” Her false eyelashes flickered. “Nice to meet you. I’m Marilyn Tollings from across the street.” The name didn’t ring a bell, although Mrs. Malloy might have mentioned her. “And you are?” The woman took hold of the gate to prevent it swinging against her legs.

“Ellie Haskell.”

It was clear my name also drew a blank and equally obvious that Marilyn Tollings was a nosey parker. “You wasn’t here earlier, was you? Just a half hour or so gone it must have been. No?” She sized up my shake of the head. “Well, if that doesn’t take the biscuit! Two women coming to see our prim and proper brigadier, almost back to back! But don’t worry.” Marilyn Tollings gave me a poke with a fingernail, which was sharpened to a point. “She’s not there now. I was at the bedroom window, you see, on the lookout for my hubby—he works funny hours. That’s how I happened to see her—the woman you say wasn’t you—going up the Brigadier Hoity-Toity’s path. She was wearing a raincoat just like yours.” Marilyn gave me another jab. “Only now I think about it, she had on one of them woolly hats, although I couldn’t say as to color. My eyesight’s not that great.”

If this was true, she had probably weakened it spying on her neighbors through a pair of binoculars. Saying I had no idea who the woman might be, I reached for the gate, but Marilyn Tollings didn’t take the hint. “Funny thing is she went halfway down the path, then stopped like she’d found herself in the wrong place and went back out to the street.”

“She must have realized she had the wrong address.”

“I suppose.” Marilyn didn’t sound eager to be convinced. “Trouble is, I’m the sort that’s inclined to worry about people. Even ones I don’t know from Adam. And it seemed to me that woman was scared half to death. And when I thought you was her come back, I had to nip over to see if everything was all right. You hear such dreadful things these days about women being raped and murdered while people that could have helped turned a blind eye. Doesn’t bear thinking about, does it?”

“No.” This talk of crime did make me I realize I had left the car keys in the ignition. But I would be in the brigadier’s house for just a couple of minutes. Besides, it would take someone really desperate to steal the old crock.

“I always feel sorry for women that live alone.” She shook her head. “As I said, my hubby’s gone a lot. But that’s not the same as being a single woman, is it? They’re a target for crazies, I always say. There was a Mrs. Malloy that was on her own living next door but one to the brigadier. She’s gone to live with her son and daughter-in-law in London. Much the best thing for her and, I’ll say it as shouldn’t, likewise best for Brigadier Lester-Smith. Roxie Malloy liked to think she was in thick with him, and that sort of thing can be annoying to any man, let alone an elderly bachelor.” Marilyn Tollings edged closer and the waves of musky perfume would have brought round bodies in the morgue. “He does have that hyphen in his name, but that’s nothing to me; not when I was brought up going to Spain every year for my holidays and had an auntie that had a downstairs toilet.”

“Really?” I fought an insane urge to whap Marilyn Tollings with the brigadier’s raincoat.

“What went to Roxie Malloy’s head was having friends in high places. She was in with the woman who dropped dead the other week. A Mrs. Large, that worked up at Pomeroy Hall for Sir Robert and her ladyship. You’ve heard about Lady P., haven’t you? The new one he married just a few months back. Maureen Dovedale, she was. And what a change for her! Gone from working in that poky little corner shop with a post-office counter to being a lady of the manor! I’d be scared stiff of putting a foot wrong and mucking things up for myself. But then, there’s them that can hold their own in this world better than others. The woman that’s staying in Roxie Malloy’s house doesn’t mix with anyone on the street. Not so much as a hello or goodbye if she sees you. That’s a big mistake in my book, because it makes sense for neighbors to look out for each other. Like I said, awful things can happen to a woman living alone.”

I nodded while trying to remember which of her Magna Char chums Mrs. Malloy had said would be looking after her house until it went on the market. Then, as if having heard enough of Marilyn Tollings’s chatter, the skies lowered themselves with a bang of thunder and a few portentous drops of rain landed on our heads.

“Looks like Brigadier Lester-Smith will be getting his raincoat back in the nick of time.” I gave Marilyn Tollings a farewell smile and pushed on the garden gate. “Nice to have met you.”