The Spring Cleaning Murders (26 page)

For a while the murders receded to a back cupboard of my mind. But by Sunday afternoon I was back to thinking about very little else. Even trying to stay busy in the kitchen factory or playing with the children didn’t help, because the morrow hung over everything like a black drape on a coffin.

Mrs. Malloy, Ben, and I were to go to the Miller sisters at nine and on to Clarice Whitcombe’s at one. Unfortunately, Dr. Solomon had promised he would come and take a look at Jonas on Monday. But the doctor rang early on Sunday evening from his car phone to say he was in the area.

“Would it be convenient for me to stop by?” he asked, “because tomorrow looks like a tight squeeze.”

“That would be great,” I said.

When he arrived, he told Jonas, who was not best pleased, that he had been wondering if his favorite patient had had any more trouble with bronchitis, and brooking no argument, he bustled my friend off into the study. Afterwards, Ben walked Dr. Solomon to his car. Fabulous news.

“Jonas is in better shape than many men half his age,” was his pronouncement. “Make sure the old boy gets regular doses of the prescribed medicine—moderate exercise, plenty of mental stimulation, and fresh air. And you can tell your wife to stop worrying.”

At any other time my heart would have sung, but I was feeling more jittery by the minute, which made Freddy’s boundless enthusiasm for our prospective adventure—as he insisted on calling it—hard to take. Even though I was grateful that he and Mrs. Nettle were the ones who would be doing Brigadier Lester-Smith’s house, along with Tom Tingle’s. I wasn’t cut out to be a spy, which surely was a job more suited to skinny people, who are better able to fade into the woodwork or wallpaper if things went wrong.

It had been agreed that the two work parties would meet at Merlin’s Court at eight-thirty on Monday morning, for a quick cup of tea and a final boost of moral support. Freddy showed up early, looking disgustingly chirpy and eager to know whether he would look more like a proper char if he stuffed his ponytail under a hair net and wore matronly earrings. Ben was suggesting a floral pinny when Mrs. Nettle arrived. But where was Mrs. Malloy?

We drank our tea and I went upstairs to see how Jonas was coping with the twins. He was reading to them from one of their favorite storybooks, and I told him there was cereal and a compote of plums, peaches, and figs for breakfast. And a quiche and salad in the fridge for lunch. But it was clear Abbey and Tam wanted to hear more about the little dragon who lived in the time between long ago and right this minute. So after hugging them and reminding Jonas yet again that he must telephone if there were any problems, I returned to the kitchen. Still no Mrs. Malloy. And it was now a quarter to nine.

“It’s just not like her.” Mrs. Nettle stood looking hollow-cheeked and beaky-nosed, hands clasping her giant bag of Abigail’s Homemade Cleaning Products. “Punctual to a fault, that’s Roxie.”

“Perhaps she missed the bus,” offered Freddy.

“Could be.” Mrs. Nettle started tapping her foot, picking up the beat from Ben, who’d been at it for several minutes.

“We’ll give her another five minutes,” he said, looking, I noticed even in my distraction, like any woman’s dream char. His teeth were as white as the open-necked white shirt he wore under a thin navy sweater, and Beau Brummell’s tailor might have fitted his crisply ironed khaki slacks. My dress was also navy, dug out from the back of my wardrobe, because I’d decided it would make me look serviceable. I’d also twisted my hair into a housekeeper’s bun at my neck. It would have been disheartening to reflect how easily I had succeeded in making myself into the archetypal domestic. But as the clock ticked closer to nine, all I could think about was that nothing short of calamity would have kept Mrs. Malloy from being here.

“We’ll have to go on without her,” said Ben. “Perhaps she got mixed up and thought she was to meet us at the Millers.”

“Oh, but she wouldn’t have,” I protested. “We went over the arrangements more than once.”

“I don’t know.” Mrs. Nettle brightened a little. “She hasn’t been herself, Roxie hasn’t. I’ve got the feeling it started before the murders. Look how she didn’t show up for Gertrude’s funeral, after saying she’d be there.”

“That’s right.” Ben visibly relaxed and I struggled to look positive, even as my insides continued to tie themselves into knots which would never come undone.

“Did anyone think to phone her?”

“I did,” replied Freddy, “twice, while you were upstairs, coz. Both times the line was engaged.”

“Or off the hook,” I managed.

“But then I rung back,” proffered Mrs. Nettle, “and that time there was no answer.”

“So she got a late start and probably has gone straight to Tall Chimneys, assuming we’d have the sense not to wait for her.” I was breathing just a little easier as I followed Ben out to the old convertible. Freddy and Mrs. Nettle took the other car and, when we reached the gates, took off in the opposite direction,

It was a fresh, breezy morning under clear blue skies, but Tall Chimneys looked as it always did—a house stuck permanently in the winter of the soul. Its narrow-eyed windows squinted on a world they would have preferred always shrouded in dense fog and chilling rain. And those chimneys were sufficiently off-kilter to suggest they were deliberately cocked, the better to listen for the malevolent cawing of crows and the howling of wolf-like dogs.

The Millers’ Norfolk terriers were certainly woofing their heads off from the back of the house as Ben and I approached the front door. Vienna promptly admitted us with a deep-voiced greeting.

“How professional you look, and so punctual!” Understandably, she looked a little uncomfortable at the switch from meeting us as social acquaintances to our showing up as the household help.

Were rumors already flying around Chitterton Fells that Ben and I were on the brink of financial ruin? If so, it would keep suspicious minds from wondering why we had taken up this line of work. With every step I took down the hall to the kitchen I kept hoping to hear Mrs. Malloy’s  chattering voice—to  no  avail.  She  had  not arrived. And Vienna said she had not heard from her.

Madrid almost immediately materialized in the kitchen in a flutter of gauzy garment that sadly emphasized her middle-age spread and mocked her flowing Lady of the Lake hair. Ben and I might have been a couple of spectral figures she saw only as floating transparencies until Vienna said, in a voice that was at once firm yet cosseting, “You look chilly, dear. Why don’t you wrap this around you?” She plucked the shawl Madrid had been wearing on my last visit from the back of a chair. “You remember Ellie and her husband ...”

“Ben,” he supplied, his gallantry making him appear increasingly miscast for the role of someone who was about to don a pinny.

“So nice to meet you properly.” Vienna smiled warmly at him while not taking her eyes off her sister. “Madrid, there’s a little bit of a mystery. Mrs. Malloy was meant to have been here.”

“She won’t be coming.”

“Really, dear?”

“Clarice  Whitcombe  rang to  say  Mrs.  Malone”--Madrid paused but none of us corrected her—”had tried to get in touch with us, but our line was engaged. You know I was on the phone for ages working out the final details.”

Her sister nodded and explained that they had to be in London tomorrow and the following day for a dog show.

“Clarice said Mrs. Malone had also tried to ring the Haskells but couldn’t get through to them either.”

“We were trying to call her,” I said.

Madrid was now floating about the kitchen, half draped in the shawl. “So I was to pass on the message that something has come up and she can’t be here. Does that put you in an awful bind?” Her gaze actually zeroed in first on me, then on Ben. “After all, I suppose being a proper char, she was supposed to do the work while you two showed her how to properly apply these cleaning products you’ve invented.”

“Oh, we can manage.” I hoped my voice did not sound as hollow as I felt.

“Are you sure?” Vienna was now steering her sister away from the cooker, as if afraid it might be too taxing for Madrid, were she to attempt to put on the kettle. “If you’d rather come back another day with Mrs. Malloy, that would be perfectly all right.”

“We wouldn’t think of it.” Ben began unpacking our bag of products produced in the Merlin’s Court kitchen factory. “You’ll want the house shipshape when you come back from your trip.”

“That’s true.” Vienna sounded relieved, even as the awkwardness in treating us as employees as well as social acquaintances again became visible. “I’m always so busy with the dogs, and Madrid isn’t sufficiently fit for housework, so that things have really got behind here. Dust everywhere you look. When Trina—such a terrible tragedy—returned from her holiday and took over again from poor Mrs. Large, she wasn’t able to give us as much time as before. Just half a day a week, because she took on her friend’s clients. Trina said she felt she owed it to her, and of course Madrid and I had to respect that. A very decent young woman in her own way.”

“Absolutely,” I agreed.

“Ellie and I will do everything we can to pick up the slack.” Ben managed to sound enthusiastic without overdoing it.

So, saying she knew we must want to get started, Vienna conducted us on a quick tour of the house with Madrid alternately trailing behind or disappearing in the middle of a sentence. It seemed hours, although it was probably only ten minutes, before Ben and I found ourselves alone. It had been a relief to hear that Vienna would be occupied most of the morning grooming the dogs. And Madrid had announced that after breakfast she was going out for a long walk, something she did most days because she had always felt at one with the outdoors.

“It certainly doesn’t sound as though they suspect us of being here to snoop.” Ben smiled encouragingly at me as he surveyed the sitting room, where we were watched only by the portrait of Jessica above the fireplace.

“There’s no reason for the sisters to think we’re up to something if their consciences are clear,” I whispered.

“A dog with a ring painted on its paw.” His eyes were riveted.

“It’s a ruby, her birthstone.”

“Wacky, but then there’s something creepy about the entire house.” Ben pulled a face and opened a bottle of furniture polish.

“It feels worse today.” I shifted up close to him. “But maybe that’s because I’m so on edge about Mrs. Malloy. I’d feel better if one of us had talked to her.”

It was difficult to get my mind back on track and my body into action, but somehow I managed to put myself on automatic. In the next hour, while Ben briskly polished, wiped, and Hoovered, I poked through desk and dresser drawers, searched cupboard and wardrobe shelves, growing increasingly convinced that we were knocking ourselves out for nothing. I was wishing I could go home and sit quietly, trying to figure out where Mrs. Malloy could be, when in a tabletop box on Vienna’s bedside table I found a small stack of love letters. They were dated twenty years earlier. Written by a man who claimed to love her deeply, even as he grew increasingly impatient because she wouldn’t leave her sister—until the time was right. Obviously that time had never come. It sounded like a Victorian sort of love affair and I replaced the letters feeling impatient with all three people concerned. But there was no hint of anything sinister.

Ten minutes later I found a letter in a bureau in Madrid’s room. It was dated a couple of years back— from a woman who was a member of a recovery group for people who had faced the loss of a beloved pet. I felt a faint stirring of sympathy for Madrid. Was it her fault that she didn’t have the emotional strength to overcome what for her might have seemed equivalent to losing a child? It was still hard for me to identify with her, much as I doted on Tobias, but the fact that I was not proud of prying into other people’s lives made me a little less judgmental.

One o’clock arrived and somehow Ben had managed to make the house look as though we had both been working. Vienna was warm in her praise and thanks. She paid us without looking too embarrassed, and my husband and I left Tall Chimneys without seeing Madrid again.

“That got us nowhere,” was Ben’s response as we drove the short distance to Crabapple Tree Cottage. From the sound of it, he, too, was losing his enthusiasm.

“There wasn’t time for a thorough search.” I leaned back in my seat, feeling spent. “But I’m not sure it will help however many times we go back. I’m beginning to think we’ve been barking up a tree where no cat is holed up.”

I was to feel even more guilty when Clarice Whitcombe greeted us enthusiastically upon our arrival at Crabapple Tree Cottage. The furniture she had brought from her old home still looked too big for the place, but there were signs that she was settling in: a vase of daffodils on the hall table, fresh curtains at the windows, and a collection of comfortingly old teddy bears grouped on top of the kitchen cupboards. The grand piano still dwarfed the small sitting room, but it looked as though it had been recently polished.

Clarice did not display any of the embarrassment Vienna had shown. She offered Ben and me lunch, which we refused in accordance with the rules of the Magna Char—fibbing by saying we had already eaten. And afterwards, while Ben remained in the kitchen, she accompanied me into the sitting room, where I tried to look highly motivated.

“I’m so impressed,” she said, taking the easy chair across from me in front of the diminutive fireplace.

“Why’s that?” I spread the duster over my knees and straightened its corners, my mind on Mrs. Malloy.

“I’ve always been awed by people who take life by the horns, Ellie, because I’m not that sort of person. I just let the years roll over me. The neighbors where I used to live thought I was a saint, staying on to look after my parents, but the reality was I was born spineless. While you and your husband”—her face, as pleasantly old-fashioned as her skirt and blouse, lit up like a child’s—“you are both so brave! Him giving up a successful business and joining you in this wonderful new venture. Not caring what other people think. Just living your own lives. I really don’t know whether to clap or to cry.”