The Thin Woman (14 page)

“Moved into that blooming big ’ouse, ’ave you? Ooh, in’t you brave! I’d rather die than live up there. Fair give me the creeps, it would.”

“Fortunately, you don’t have to sacrifice yourself.” Dorcas sounded very much the games mistress repressing a chatterbox pupil, until she ruined the effect of her quelling gaze by asking avidly, “Have you heard sinister rumours about the house? Anything mysterious—apparitions? Smugglers? Licentious carryings on in the olden days?”

“Don’t know about them things.” Brassy reached casually over to another table and handed Dorcas a coaster. “But me granny says she wouldn’t set foot in that chamber of ’orrors if she was paid a thousand quid. The ’ouse of misery, she calls it. Worked there donkey’s years ago as a maid she did. The old bag’s eighty-three and sharp as a tack. Remembers back to the days when the old gent were a young lad. Eh, but that one turned out queer, didn’t ’e, living like a bloody ’ermit and all? I ’eard tell ’is fingernails was two foot long and his. ’air all matted to ’is scalp like a scab.” Brassy’s pale yellow eyes behind the gummy mascaraed lashes bulged slightly with excitement. “Go on, you can tell me!” She smiled ingratiatingly. “Close-mouthed Sally they call me. I never spread nothink around. What was the old brute really like?”

“Enough of that, my girl!” Dorcas’s long thin nose fairly quivered with indignation. “You are speaking of a person recently deceased.” A gentle nudge of my foot told the defence league to cool it. I had no desire to dry up this source of information. Brassy’s disclosures might be full of inaccuracies,
but they could still provide some insights into life at Merlin’s Court.

“Can’t fault a person for being interested.” Brassy gave her apron a pert twitch.

“Of course not,” I said soothingly. “Especially when Merlin Grantham led such a secluded life. Isn’t it true that no one from the village had seen him in years? Well, there you are! He became the local monster, sprouting horns and a tail. Even the family doesn’t know why he shut himself off from the world, with my great-aunt Sybil standing guard at the gates.”

“She’s another funny old ’en, an’ all.” Brassy tilted the coffee pot and added a trickle to each cup. “Granny says Sybil Grantham was born with false teeth and an ’airnet on. She used to come to the ’ouse for long ’olidays when she was small. Strange, Mr. Merlin didn’t leave the place to ’er, but they always was an odd package was the Granthams. Makes me laugh, does me granny; she says Mr. Merlin’s father had a face fit to curdle a pint o’ fresh cream and put a hen off laying. Made ’is wife’s life a living ’ell. Passed on she did when the boy were young.”

“I had forgotten that,” I said.

Brassy pulled up a chair and joined us. Fishing into the pocket of her frilly white apron she unearthed a battered packet of American cigarettes and lit up. “Sad, i’nt it”—she blew smoke into our faces—“when a kid loses ’is mother. From what gets said in these parts I ’spect the late Mrs. Grantham done ’erself in. Well, in them days, with a bugger for a ’usband, what else was a woman to do?”

“What indeed?” Dorcas and I looked at each other. Brassy watched avidly while I searched in my purse for a tip. Feeling rather like an undercover agent sliding a little something into the hand of a paid informant, I handed her all my loose change. “Your granny sounds like a woman with a long memory.” If I hoped this hint would encourage her to suggest a meeting with the old lady, I was to be disappointed. Brassy merely shrugged and tucked the coins in her pocket.

“Typical old age pensioner, can’t remember where she last stuck the chamber pot but can tell you who was Lord Mayor of London in 1926. If Gran says that ’ouse is spooked, it is.” She paused in gathering up the cups. “Haven’t you never thought it weird that in a house that big there ain’t no cats nor dogs? I saw a flick at the town ’all once, all about extra-sensory prescription it was; and animals have it worse than people. They won’t go nowhere that the vibes ain’t right. Think about it! Mr. Merlin never as much as kept a Chihuahua about the place.”

“Doesn’t mean a thing,” pooh-poohed Dorcas. “Not everyone is a canine friend. Chew up slippers, make puddles on the floor. Fond of the little beggars myself, but mustn’t expect everyone and his great-aunt Maud to share the same tastes.”

Brassy shook her head. “Even if the man ’ated dogs, every old ’ouse keeps a tabby cat about the place. I ain’t never met a mouse yet that knew diddle about birth control.”

Remembering the calling cards left by mice in the pantry, I began to think the lack of feline protection was a little strange. Buttoning my coat, I informed Brassy that the house now possessed a resident cat. “I brought my kitty down from London,” I said, “and with all the hunting on the premises, he doesn’t have to set a paw outside for entertainment. He thinks he’s died and gone to heaven.”

“Happen ’e will one of these days if you don’t watch out.” Brassy went off in search of more conversation in the form of new customers and Dorcas and I hurried out onto the pavement. The hour was nearly 5:00 and the street lamps were already lit, but it wasn’t raining. We would, if we hurried, reach the post office before it closed; however, I would have to forget about telephoning Ben.

“Rubbishy superstition!” Dorcas swung her arms briskly as she marched down the street, the end of her tiger-striped scarf flapping out behind her. “Wouldn’t give that woman’s nonsense another thought if I were you.”

“She didn’t frighten me.” Pushing open the door of the newsagent’s, which housed the post office in its rear, we
stepped over the threshold to the jangle of a small bell. “I’m not afraid that something dark and slimy is going to rise up through the night, clutch Tobias to its scaly breast and fly off with him, tucked between its ivory claws. But that woman did make one observation.… I think, subconsciously, I already realized that the drawing room lacked something.”

“Pardon my saying so, but no extrasensory perception needed there.” Dorcas closed the door behind us. “Room hasn’t been properly cleaned in twenty years.”

“But there should be dog hairs adding to the squalour and a scroungy mutt or two stretched out on the hearthrug, hogging all the heat from the fire.”

“Sorry. Can’t see where all this leads. But not to be ignored of course. Any information you collect will help build a psychological profile of Merlin Grantham, very important that you know what made the man tick.”

Behind the post office grille a young man was sorting letters. He did not immediately look up. “What would really help”—I set my bag down on the counter and turned to face Dorcas—“would be talking to someone like that waitress’s granny. As a former housemaid she could tell us not only about Uncle Merlin, but about his parents. They must have played a part in forming, or warping, his character, but I know next to nothing about them.”

“May I be of assistance?” The young man straightened his horn-rimmed glasses looking, I thought irreverently, like a new priest eager to hear his first confession.

“A dozen twelve-pence stamps, please.”

“Staying in the village on holiday, or just passing through?” The young man swung open a large green book and began unpeeling a strip of stamps.

“Neither. We live here, or I should say, a few miles outside the village. A relative of mine recently died.…”

The young man’s jaw dropped slightly. “Is either of you ladies a Miss Ellie Simons? Yes? Well, I call that a real stroke of luck your walking in like this. We close in five minutes. Did you come by car?”

“Yes, but …”

“Hold on, I’ll be right back.”

The young man disappeared like a magician behind a long reddish-brown plush curtain and returned carrying a large flat package, wrapped in brown paper and bound with string. “Found it here leaning against the counter this morning,” he explained. “No postage, only the names Mr. Bentley Haskell and Miss Ellie Simons. Bit of a cheek really, I thought, no explanations, no stamps. The whole business rather put me on the spot. I recognized the names, you see. In a village this size there’s always talk when new people move in, but technically”—he leaned earnestly forward—“rules and regulations being what they are, we are not supposed to encourage persons to cheat the Royal Mail. My supervisor gets back from his holiday tomorrow and I was going to ask him how we should handle the matter. Still, as you are here, I’ll hand the package over and have you sign this receipt. A good thing you came by car—that hill’s a regular puffer.”

“Where,” asked Dorcas, as we crossed the square, carefully carrying the package between us, “did you get the piece of paper on which you wrote your shopping list?”

“From the bureau in the drawing room. I tore it off a little pad. Why?”

“Because I am now certain Bentley did not write ‘Post Office’ on the back of that list; logical thing would have been to write postage stamps, or airmail letter forms, etc. No need to mention post office at all; such items are not found at the butcher’s or the candlestick-maker’s. Sorry to say it, but dimwits both of us. Tripped over Clue Number One without seeing it. Have to do better than this in the future.”

“Funny!” I opened the car door and gently eased the package between the front and rear seats. “Only this morning you told me to be on the lookout for suspicious pieces of paper.”

“Wasn’t speaking literally,” disclaimed Dorcas, taking her seat.

“The ploy was risky though. I might have written my list on a scrap of cardboard or a piece of paper towel.”

“Treasure hunting is a game of chance, not an exact science. But I’d say the odds for success were good this time. Most natural thing in the world to look in that bureau for the right-sized piece of paper and tear off the top sheet.”

I backed carefully out of our parking space. “Okay. Now we have to ask ourselves who is in cahoots with Uncle Merlin. That package did not shuffle into the post office on its own, and it seems sensible to assume that the note was written after his death. He would hardly have left it lying on his bureau collecting dust while he waited to die.”

Dorcas nodded enthusiastically. “My guess is that on the day of the funeral, the go-between, who we will assume is a neutral person, possibly either the lawyer or the vicar, followed instructions and under cover of the general turmoil at the reading of the will, quietly replaced the old pad of paper with a new one.”

“The doctor was also present for a while, but the person I think Uncle Merlin would have included in his little schemes is Aunt Sybil. Whether she agreed with him or not she would carry out every order and keep her mouth shut, which means there is no point in our trying to ferret anything out of her. She could have caught the bus down here this morning. There’s a bus stop not too far from the gates. She could wait until the post office was busy, lean the package up against the counter, and walk out unnoticed.”

“And she, more than anyone, had the opportunity to leave the note,” agreed Dorcas.

We had reached the station, and the next five minutes were taken up with locating Dorcas’s luggage and stowing it aboard. Back in the driver’s seat I followed the wavering beam of the headlights up the ridge of the hill, still thinking about Uncle Merlin. “Something about this situation,” I said to Dorcas, “strikes me as a little too pat. The family is called down for inspection, the stage is set, and the old man conveniently kicks the bucket. I know the doctor said he had a heart condition but …”

Dorcas’s long thin nose quivered like a bloodhound on the breakfast trail. “Are you suggesting that Uncle Merlin took a leaf out of his mother’s book and did himself in?”

“I wouldn’t put it past the diabolical old fossil. He wasn’t the type to sit around kicking his heels when he had cleverly arranged other people’s lives to his satisfaction. The kicker is I really can’t see now he could have accomplished it. The doctor did say pneumonia.” I reached the iron gates and drove on down the driveway.

“An interesting theory.” Dorcas nodded. “And murder would be even better, but I expect the truth is simpler. The man set his plans in motion and then closed his eyes in final sleep.”

“Yes, even God would think twice about keeping Uncle Merlin in the waiting room beyond his appointed time.” I drew the car up under the archway between the house and stables. “Help me out with this package, will you? The groceries can wait. We must find Ben and show him the Number One Clue.”

“Hope he isn’t one of those fanatics who refuse to cut string and insist on unravelling it knot by knot with their teeth,” said Dorcas.

CHAPTER
Nine

“Ladies and gentlemen,” cried Ben, “let us start the bidding at one hundred and fifty thousand pounds for this remarkable painting, subject auburn-haired Edwardian lady holding lap-dog, artist unknown. Come on art lovers, all proceeds to the Bentley Haskell personal charity fund. Do I have a bid? Do I see a hand waving in the far corner …?”

“That,” I snapped, “was an obscene gesture indicating that if you don’t climb down from that chair-cum-soapbox, I am going to tip you off.”

The proceedings surrounding the opening of the package had rapidly degenerated to a mood of extreme giddiness, mainly because our expectations had been dashed. I think we had all expected a skull-and-crossbones map (laminated to a drawing board for easy viewing) signposted “To the Treasure.” The reality was the portrait described by Ben. The auburn-haired lady might have considered herself lucky if her likeness fetched five pounds at a side-alley second-hand shop. We knew one thing about the artist—he wasn’t descended from one of the Old Masters.