The Spring Cleaning Murders (21 page)

“What I don’t understand,” I told him, “is why you came down when I rang the doorbell.”

“I thought it might be some . . . thing important.” He was rewrapping the towel around his head to prevent more drips going down his neck. And my heart, even at that inappropriate moment, went out to him. He had thought—hoped—it was Clarice Whitcombe at the door. She for whom he had colored his hair in hope she would find him more attractive if he looked younger. I remembered now that his crinkly locks had looked redder at the Hearthside Guild meeting. I had put that down to a trick of the sunlight coming through the windows. But it hadn’t been an illusion. Perhaps he had experimented with color shampoos before moving up to a real dye job. I also remembered his urgency to get off the phone when I rang to say Ben had his raincoat. Hadn’t he gasped and said something about “ten minutes”? Poor Brigadier Lester-Smith, who would be heartsick if Clarice Whitcombe found out, but still had been unable to resist going downstairs in his towel-draped head to answer the door in case it was her outside.

“Perhaps, Brigadier,” I said, “you shouldn’t wash it out before the police get here. It gives you an alibi of sorts, doesn’t it? Because we may be asked to describe our movements during the last hour. Although, if it turns out that Trina has been dead longer than that, it shouldn’t matter.” I turned back to Mrs. Malloy. “Why aren’t they here already?”

“Who?”

“The police.”

“Oh, them.” She resettled in her chair. “Maybe I forgot to phone them. Could be I sort of blanked out. Everything is pretty much of a blur until you two walked in.” Her butterfly lips worked and her rouged checks showed signs of cracking, so I didn’t press the issue. Instead I looked around for the telephone, remembering that Mrs. Malloy had one in the kitchen, but having no luck spotting it until she helped out by saying it should be under the tea cosy. I spied the cosy lying flat on a little table with the phone beside it. While I dialed, the brigadier picked up the bottle of gin.

“Do you think you should have any of this just now, Mrs. Malloy?” he said. “It might give a wrong impression to the police.”

“You think they’d rather walk in to find me sitting knitting, with a body on the floor with a knife in its back?” she flashed back.

“No, but you don’t want them thinking you’ve been at the bottle, Mrs. Malloy.”

“I’d appreciate it, Brigadier,” replied Mrs. M. at her most uppity. “Indeed, I’d appreciate it most awfully if you’d stop standing there like a genie let out of that gin bottle and pour me a good slug. If the police can’t understand I’ve never needed a drink more in me life than at this buggering minute, then they should be the ones sitting home knitting.”

It was hard to hear myself talking into the phone, let alone make out what was being said on the other end. But apparently I explained myself sufficiently well, because within minutes of my putting down the receiver, the house began to fill with policemen. Or maybe it only seemed that way. Perhaps there were only two at first. But they did so much tramping about and fired so many questions that I quickly felt I was in the middle of a stampede.

I was worried about Mrs. Malloy. She had been accompanied into her tiny sitting room by a Detective Galloway. The door closed behind them and did not reopen. Meanwhile, the brigadier and I took refuge in the hall, which had lost several of its china poodles in the past hour. We were questioned briefly: What time had we arrived at the house? How did we find the body? What, if anything, had we touched? And last, but most important, what had brought us to 27 Herring Street?

The brigadier explained that he lived two doors down, I had stopped at his house to return a raincoat, and we had both heard someone scream. I explained I was curious why the person looking after Mrs. Malloy’s house in her absence wasn’t out in the street with the other neighbors. Our personal policeman wrote things down, looking as though he believed us. Part of basic training, no doubt.

“You thought the scream came from out in the street?”

“Yes.” The brigadier and I both nodded, he nearly losing his turban in the process.

“Sir, why do you still have that towel on your head?” The policeman cocked an eyebrow.

“You’re going to have to explain, Brigadier,” I said.

“Quite so.” He gulped before manfully meeting the policeman’s eyes. “I appreciate that, under the circumstances, this”—tapping his turban—"could look suspicious. But I assure you, sir, that I am not trying to hide a head wound caused during an attack upon Miss McKinnley. I don’t think I have spoken to the woman above a couple of times.”

The policeman was looking impatient, and Brigadier Lester-Smith, apparently being of the same persuasion as myself—that you only had to tick off a member of law enforcement to find yourself handcuffed, tried, and sentenced to life imprisonment all in the space of minutes—glumly removed the towel.

“Good God!” said the cop.

After that little episode I asked permission to telephone my husband. When I got through, it was Freddy who answered, saying Ben was putting Abbey and Tam to bed.

“What is this?” My cousin sounded genuinely alarmed. “Cleaning women dropping like flies all over the place!”

“Trina’s murder may have absolutely nothing to do with what happened to Mrs. Large.”

“And you’ve been reading Gullible’s Travels!”

“Freddy, tell Ben I’m fine, but I’m not sure how long I’ll be. Mrs. Malloy may need me for a bit. Sorry, I have to go now.”

I found Brigadier Lester-Smith washing the dye out of his hair at Mrs. Malloy’s sink. No doubt in fear and trembling as to whether he would even have a scalp left. The results, surprisingly, weren’t as ghastly as might have been supposed. He was more crimson than carroty, but that was surely better than having hair that was frog-green.

Mrs. Malloy came out of the sitting room—looking, I must say, as cool as a cucumber sandwich. Putting detectives in their place was all in a day’s work for her. She had removed her coat, and the taffeta frock she wore would have been suitable for a cocktail party, or at a pinch—being black—for Trina McKinnley’s funeral. Not a word did she speak to me or the brigadier. About half an hour later, Trina’s body was removed, and the house was suddenly bereft of policemen.

“Bloody hell!” Mrs. Malloy splashed gin into a glass and downed it in a gulp. “I’m too old for being suspected of murder.”

“They can’t think you did it,” I said. “If they did they would have asked you to accompany them to the police station.”

“I’m sure that’s so,” agreed the brigadier.

“I suppose they searched the place while I was in with that Detective Galloway—checking to make sure I hadn’t switched clothes and hidden the bloodstained ones away if I hadn’t had time to get rid of them.” Mrs. Malloy gave one of her snorts before pouring another gin. “Flaming cheek, but it’s not like there was anything for the buggers to find, leastways that I know about.”

She went instantly from bravado to looking worried. The purple and bronze shadow she was wearing on her lids reflected in dark smudges under her eyes, which widened as she glanced over at the little telephone table. Dropped down beside it was a black plastic handbag. Mrs. Malloy’s own bag was on the kitchen table—fake alligator with a flashy gold clasp. The other just wasn’t her sort of thing at all. It was cheap and utilitarian. Trina McKinnley’s? Where had I seen it before?

“Whose bag is that?” I asked.

“Mine!” Mrs. Malloy knew which one I meant. “Can’t a woman have two bleeding handbags without you making something out of it?” Her hands shook as she poured herself another glass of gin.

“Silly of me,” I replied quickly. “I’m not thinking straight.” Obviously, she wouldn’t say anything in front of Brigadier Lester-Smith. The trick would be hustling him out the door without arousing his suspicion. Luckily the brigadier looked preoccupied, as well he might after such an evening. He did, however, very kindly invite us back to his house for a restorative cup of tea and a bite to eat.

“Thanks ever so, Briggy old stick.” Mrs. Malloy mustered a wan smile. “But just for now I’d like to sit here with Mrs. H. and have a good sniffle. Can’t do that in front of a man, can I? Make me lose all me sex appeal, it would. And say what you like, you’d never feel the same about me.”

She had said just what was needed. Giving his dressing gown another tug, Brigadier Lester-Smith headed for the door, murmuring that he wouldn’t intrude one moment longer.

“Like as not I’ll come by for that cuppa later,” Mrs. Malloy offered by way of consolation. He departed with his stained towel draped over his shoulder. I was reminded of a boxer leaving the ring—bloodied and not exactly prancing on the balls of his feet. The moment the back door closed behind him I turned to Mrs. Malloy.

“Now let’s hear about that handbag that isn’t yours.”

“And who made you Scotland Yard?” She reached again for the gin bottle, but I got to it first and planted it at the far end of the kitchen table.

“Not another drop until you start talking.”

“Oh, all right, I’ll tell you!” She caved in more readily than I had hoped. “You and me go back a long way, Mrs. H., you could even say we was family with my George being married to your cousin Vanessa.” The name stuck in her throat, but she finally spat it out. At some point I would have to ask Mrs. Malloy what had kept her incommunicado for so long, but I wasn’t about to distract her now. “I suppose what it really comes down to, Mrs. H., is I trust you. Leastways,” she had to add, “more than I do most people.”

“Butter me up all you like,” I replied bracingly, “but you don’t get another drop of gin until you spill the beans.”

“Oh, bugger!” She heaved a soul-wrenching sigh. “I can’t carry this thing on me own! But you’ve got to swear, Mrs. H., you won’t go running to the police.”

“I can’t promise that. Not until I know what’s involved.”

“Oh, to hell with it! I’ve already given the game away, so I guess I might as well tell you the lot and hope you see things the way I do. You’re right—that bag’s not mine, and it didn’t belong to Trina, neither. It’s Winifred Smalley’s and it weren’t over there by the phone when I got here. It was right there next to the body.”

“And that’s when you went screaming out into the road?”

“I did nothing of the bloody sort.” Mrs. Malloy ruffled up like an outraged chicken. “I’m not one of them hysteria types, and well you know it, Mrs. H!”

“Then it must have been Trina when she saw that knife coming at her. I don’t know why I was so sure that scream came from outside.”

“Or it could have been Winifred. Not the bravest woman in the world, she isn’t. But that’s all to the good in this case. Because if she’d done it, she wouldn’t have gone screaming outside to alert the neighbors, now would she?”

“People don’t necessarily behave rationally when they’ve just killed someone. Think it through, Mrs. Malloy. If Mrs. Smalley walked in on Trina’s body, why didn’t she stay and phone the police?”

“Always got to put a spoke in the wheel, that’s you, Mrs. H.! I’m telling you, I know Winifred Smalley. The woman wouldn’t hurt a fly, let alone Trina. They was like mother and daughter. Besides, where’s the motive? Answer me that, Mrs. Clever Dick?”

“Maybe they got into an argument about Mrs. Large’s money.” I saw Mrs. Malloy’s face go blank. “You don’t know about the will, do you? Why don’t I make us a pot of tea and we’ll take it into the sitting room. If that’s all right?”

It was a mark of how truly worried she was that Mrs. M. allowed me to bugger about her kitchen without so much as pointing me in the direction of the tea caddy or telling me to wipe off the kettle before putting it on to boil. She did wince when I rattled the cups and saucers while putting them on the tin tray with the thatched-cottage design. But she followed me meekly into her sitting room, where her coat lay on a chair—a leopard-patterned easy chair with a garish yellow footstool dangling scarlet tassels. We could have been in a sultan’s pied-a-terre. There were cushions on the floor, incense burners, a statue of a Greek god sporting a fig leaf, brass urns, and sparkly sequined elephants with gold fringe. The latter reminded me of the set of fake ivory ones I had unearthed during my assault on spring cleaning. I decided to give them to Mrs. Malloy for her next birthday.

It helped to fasten on the mundane pleasures of life. It made murder seem far-fetched. But there is no living in a dream world for long. I poured our tea, stirred in milk and sugar, and handed Mrs. Malloy her cup.

“What were you saying about Gertrude Large’s will?” She put her feet on the yellow footstool and eased off her shoes. “And I don’t want no talk about how there’d be no need to ask if I’d come back for the funeral.”

“I didn’t get the details that day.” I sat down on the faux-lizard-skin sofa. “Mrs. Large’s daughters did mention when I saw them at the service that they were heading down to see their solicitor. But it wasn’t until they met with him that they got what must have been the surprise of their lives.”

“Spit it out, Mrs. H.!”

“That Mrs. Large had left almost everything she had, something like fifty thousand pounds, to Trina McKinnley—insurance money from her husband’s accident.”

“Well, I’ll be blowed!” Mrs. Malloy put down her teacup before she dropped it. “I knew about the insurance; we all did in the C.F.C.W.A., but I’d no idea it was such a bloody windfall!”

“Does it seem odd to you that she left it all to Trina, except for a hundred pounds each for her daughters?”

Mrs. Malloy pursed her lips and thought for a moment. “No, I can’t say it does. You see when Frank— that’s Gertrude’s husband—was laid up, she gave up working for a while to take care of him. But you know how hard it is to nurse a man with the hiccups, let alone one that’s bedridden. And from the sound of it, Frank wasn’t what you’d call jolly when he was well. So after a bit Gertrude went back to work to get out of the house. There was a visiting nurse that came in regular, but Trina pitched in, too. She’d shifted her work schedule around so that she could stay with Frank a couple of hours two or three times a week. And she used to go in and help turn him and whatever on weekends.”