The Spring Cleaning Murders (27 page)

It was my turn to feel embarrassed.

“I only hope you’ll still be able to spare the time to help me redecorate,” Clarice went on.

“Absolutely. The hope is that we will be able to incorporate the production of Abigail’s Homemade Cleaning Products into my interior design activities. Perhaps even open a little shop, with space for Ben to serve morning coffee and lunches.” All true, but—because I had come to spy on her, I was convinced I sounded the world’s most inept liar.

“It all strikes me as wonderful.” Clarice fidgeted with her hands. “Since coming here, Ellie, I have tried to break out of the old mold, become a shade more adventurous. I even went over to Walter’s ... I mean Brigadier Lester-Smith’s house the other evening . . . after going to see the doctor about my wrist.” Now clasping it with her free hand. “It seemed to me that in this day and age a woman should be able to make a friendly overture without being considered brazen. But after taking a couple of steps to his front door, I panicked and scampered away like a naughty little girl. Then I lay awake half the night wondering if he had seen me—or if one of the neighbors would say something and he would have to write me off as loony.”

“We women do agonize about that sort of thing,” I agreed. But had Clarice told me about that visit, not because she lacked real friends to confide in, but because she wanted to establish that her being in Herring Street had nothing to do with Trina McKinnley’s death? Her account tallied with Marilyn Tollings. But a sneaky suspicion arose in my mind. What if Clarice had gone up the brigadier’s drive by mistake? After realizing she was at the wrong house, had she scuttled off to her meeting with Trina, next door but one?

With a glance at the mantel clock, I suggested as nonchalantly as I could that I really did need to be getting to work, especially as Ben and I were lacking Mrs. Malloy.

“You did get the message from her that I passed on to Madrid Miller?” Clarice stood up, looking sorry that our chat was winding down.

“That there had been some emergency.” I nodded. “Did Mrs. Malloy sound particularly agitated?”

“I thought so, but you can’t really go by that, Ellie, because I don’t know her, remember.” Clarice’s gaze wasn’t on me as she spoke. It was fixed on a small bowl that I hadn’t previously noticed on the carpet to the side of the door. Set down next to it was a box of starch, and without having time to analyze why, my heart started to thump.

“I forgot to take that away,” she said.

“What’s in the bowl?” My legs walked me over to it and I stared down at the milky liquid it contained.

“Just starch and water. My mother used to have me mix it into a thin paste for getting out...”

“Bloodstains?” I murmured too quickly—because now I wouldn’t get to know if that was what Clarice had intended to say.

“Of course you would know about that old-fashioned remedy for one of life’s little problems.” She sounded genuinely admiring. “My mother was a fount of such information, even though I never knew her to do housework. We always had help until I took over. What happened here”—pointing at the carpet where the bowl and box of starch sat—”is that Mrs. Grey, the little cat from down the road, paid me a visit this morning. And it was only after she got into this room and I saw the streaks of blood on the floor that I realized she had cut one of her paws.”

The telephone rang at that propitious moment and Clarice went off to answer it, leaving me feeling weak at the knees. Suddenly I saw it all. Mrs. Malloy had arrived at Crabapple Tree Cottage that morning, having got the schedule mixed up. Shortly thereafter, Clarice had let slip that she had murdered Gertrude Large, Trina McKinnley, and Winifred Smalley. Naturally Mrs. Malloy had taken umbrage, and not being a woman to mince words, had spoken her mind in no uncertain terms. Whereupon Clarice had added another woman to her list of victims. And, tut-tutting at the inconvenience of it all, had phoned Tall Chimneys to deliver a fake message from my beloved Mrs. M. I buried my face in the duster. It was too cruel! She had been restored to me only to be shoved headlong into eternity.

I tried to tell myself that the story about the cat could well be true, that I was allowing my imagination to overcome common sense. If Clarice had murdered Mrs. Malloy, she would surely have got rid of the bowl and the box of starch, particularly when she might guess I would know their purpose. But then again—the ugly thought would not be held at bay—she might have decided to leave that small task until she had completed the even more pressing one of disposing of the body. And that could have so distracted her that she had let a crucial piece of evidence slip her mind.

It was difficult to get back to sleuthing, since now every part of me, not just my teeth, seemed to be chattering. Ben came into the sitting room from the kitchen and I almost accused him of sneaking up on me. He realized something was up, but I muttered that I couldn’t talk about it now. And while he again took over the real work I opened drawers and dragged out the contents. Nothing of interest turned up until I raised the top of the piano stool and lifted out its contents. To say I was shocked is to put it mildly. Clarice Whitcombe was not what she claimed to be. And I was all fingers and thumbs as I replaced the evidence. Not a moment too soon! She came silently into the sitting room and knew my face had to be on fire. I stood fanning myself, hopefully looking as though I had overexerted myself polishing the furniture, until my heart stopped pounding. Did she suspect, from the way I avoided looking at the piano, that I was on to her?

I was desperate to tell Ben what I had found but I retained enough sense to wait until we were away from Crabapple Tree Cottage. But when we got into the car in the late afternoon to drive home I couldn’t bring myself to talk about it. Not until I’d had a cup of tea.

Abbey and Tam swarmed all over us when we came in the door. And we immediately had to see to getting tea for them and Jonas, who looked remarkably fit given his day with the children. Then we had to wait for Freddy and Mrs. Nettle to show up, which they did half an hour later. They appeared to be on excellent, even chummy, terms. Jonas took the twins into the study to watch a favorite television show. And we four sleuths sat down in the kitchen to talk.

“Clarice Whitcombe has misrepresented her piano-playing skills in a big way,” I said. “I found sheet music for ‘Mary Had a Little Lamb’ and other beginner pieces. Along with a notebook containing instructions of the most basic kind from her piano teacher. Such as ‘Paint a dot on middle C if that is the only way you can find it.’’

Freddy irritated me by laughing. “That’s all you and Ben came up with after four hours of snooping at Crabapple Tree Cottage?” He gave Mrs. Nettle a conspiratorial wink. “So the poor dear is just a beginner instead of being able to pound out Beethoven, Mozart, and Bach without having to look at the music! Lots of people exaggerate their talents, coz!”

It was clear from Ben’s and Mrs. Nettle’s expressions that they were in agreement with Freddy.

“But given what I know of Clarice, she would die with embarrassment if she was found out. She probably got started in the pretense when Brigadier Lester-Smith saw that very grand grand piano taking up three-quarters of her sitting room and assumed she could play.” I leaned forward, elbows on the table. “She wouldn’t want to disillusion him, but then Clarice was in the soup because he wanted to hear her play. She had to come up with an excuse. Which was that she had injured her arm. Buying her time to start taking lessons and hope she would discover she had a God-given ability to make ‘Mary Had a Little Lamb’ sound like Mozart. I’ll bet she was off to a lesson when I met her on the afternoon of the day Trina McKinnley was killed.”

“But I don’t think these deceptions amount to a woman leading a double life.” Ben pushed a plate of biscuits my way.

“The trouble is”—my heart ached more than all the other muscles I had exercised that day because I had so wanted this love story to have a happy ending—”I can identify with Clarice’s insecurities. She could have worked herself up into an irrational state where she felt trapped, with no way out of the lie, when cornered by Mrs. Large, who had found the evidence in the piano stool. She’d picture herself branded as a liar not only to the man she loved but to the entire village. Perhaps Clarice went into the study at Tall Chimneys to beg Mrs. Large not to spill the beans. And then lost her head.”

Mrs. Nettle sat with her beaky-nosed face tucked into hunched shoulders. “I don’t see that even if Gertrude Large had found out about Miss Whitcombe’s deception, she’d have been all that bothered. Certainly not enough, if you’ll forgive my speaking so plain, Mrs. Haskell, for her to wonder if she didn’t ought to report the matter to the C.F.C.W.A.”

“You don’t think that, working for Brigadier Lester-Smith as she did, Mrs. Large might have been worried he would be lured into a serious involvement, even marriage, with a woman of deceptive practices?”

Mrs. Nettle grew pensive. “Put like that, I can see it could’ve made for a problem with Gert—her as was always honest in her dealings, besides being fiercely loyal to all those she worked for. Making it difficult, I suppose, for her to know where her duty lay.”

“Brigadier Lester-Smith doesn’t win any prizes in truthfulness himself.” Freddy’s words sat me back in my seat.

“What, just because he’s taken to tinting his hair?”

My cousin grinned through the ragged edges of his beard. Then he sobered. “Sorry, Ellie, I know you’re fond of the brigadier... as you call him.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Ben and I spoke one on top of the other.

“Mrs. Nettle and I also made a couple of discoveries today during working hours. One being a gold watch I found in Lester-Smith’s bedside table.”

“So?” It was now quite dark outside, but with the lights on, there was no reason the kitchen should suddenly have seemed to dim, or that Tobias jumping down from the rocking chair should have presented such an elongated shadow.

“That watch was engraved.” Freddy made matters worse by drawing the words out slowly. “It was a retirement gift presented to your friend, Ellie, after thirty years of employment as a law clerk. He’s not a brigadier. He doesn’t even have the hyphen. Lester is his middle name. So isn’t it just as likely that Mrs. Large was worried that Mr. Smith was romancing Clarice Whitcombe under false pretenses and that she was agonizing over whether she had a duty to warn the poor woman before it was too late?”

Lying in bed that night I tried to focus on cheerful thoughts. None springing readily to mind, I struggled to believe Freddy was wrong about Brigadier Lester-Smith—that the engraving on the gold watch meant nothing. Perhaps it was true that he had been a law clerk for thirty years, but had maintained a second career, working his way up to brigadier on the weekends or at night. And that in reward for his service to God and country he had received official permission to hyphenate his name. Unable to convince myself this was likely, I began making excuses for him. Probably the other boys at school had called him Carrots. A boy like that would yearn to show the world one day what a brilliant success he’d made of himself. And when that didn’t happen, he’d made it up. To me, he would always be Brigadier Lester-Smith and I wouldn’t—not for a second—listen to the voice whispering inside my head that there might be a grain of truth to the belief expressed by such as Mrs. Malloy, that a man who dyed his hair was not to be completely trusted.

Where are you, Mrs. Malloy? My mounting anxiety coupled with fatigue made it impossible to think clearly, yet sleep refused to come. So I replayed the other piece of information Freddy had brought back from his workday with Mrs. Nettle regarding Tom Tingle. They’d found his current checkbook in his rolltop desk and in looking through the entries saw that in recent months he had written several checks, each for ten thousand pounds, to the same individual—one Lucia Frondcragg. Also in the desk was a letter, one line of which had leaped to Freddy’s eye: “I appreciate the help, Tom, but I feel as though I am taking blood money.” Signed by Lucia—suspicious to say the least!

Finally, I latched onto a relatively cheerful thought. If either Brigadier Lester-Smith or Tom Tingle were the villain, there could be no reason for Clarice Whitcombe to have made up that phone call from Mrs. Malloy, let alone have murdered her. Ben and Freddy certainly hadn’t taken my concerns seriously. Every fifteen minutes or so I began to doze, and each time I was jolted back to awareness as if some badly behaved nocturnal child had sent a ball slamming against the bedroom window. Unable to stand it any longer, I climbed out of bed and tiptoed over to the chair where I had left my dressing gown. A glass of milk might help me sleep.

As a rule I rather liked prowling around the house during the dead of night, but as I went along the gallery to the stairs I heard a rustle from above. Perhaps a bird had got into the attic. I wasn’t about to go up and check because it seemed to me entirely possible that the shadows up there amused themselves by moving objects from place to place just for the fun of it. I found myself picturing that attic as a nursing home for aged, decrepit, or otherwise unwanted household goods. Their pasts now half forgotten, their futures as uncertain as the boards creaking under my feet.

Upon switching on the kitchen lights I recovered my sanity—what there was of it. I heated my milk and settled into the rocking chair with Abigail’s green notebook. It was comforting to read about such prosaic topics as how to prevent fruit stains from becoming permanent: wet the stained spot with whisky before putting in the wash.

To clean hairbrushes and combs, use two teaspoons of supercarbonate dissolved in half a pint of boiling water.

Holding a piece of velvet in front of a steaming kettle will restore the pile.

One should stuff up mouse holes with rags saturated in a mixture of cayenne pepper and water.