Murder at Mullings--A 1930s country house murder mystery (7 page)

‘I'm so pleased you understand.' Florence surprised herself by kissing Doris Thatcher on the cheek. ‘And you're right; I am concerned about my family, especially my mother, leaping to the wrong conclusion. She's still a romantic. Even in older age she's a romantic. It comes from her getting a glimpse of life's brightness when she was in service before her marriage. Holding on to that memory got her through all the drabness and hardship that comes with bringing up a family on very little money in a house desperately in need of repair, with the landlord refusing to do anything about it. Then my father died, shortly after I started at Mullings. Years later, Robert wanted my mother to come and live with us when we got married – it was a case of the more the merrier at Farn Deane – but she wouldn't. By then my sister Ada and her husband had two babies and my brother Fred's wife was expecting.'

‘No need to tell me you've done all you can to help out.' Doris set the saucepans on the cooker to air out.

‘Ada and Fred look out for her on a daily basis – they both live just around the corner from her – and that's worth more than money. I'm glad we've had this talk, Doris. Tom's wife Gracie and I get on very well, but I've gathered from things she's said in the past that she doesn't believe a man and a woman can be friends without hoping for more. You've made me realize that I've been unfair not to take George to see my mother, which I know he'd gladly do. If it makes her happy to think there's something in the works, he won't mind, and I shouldn't either.' Florence smiled. ‘I could take along one of Mrs McDonald's steak and kidney pies.'

‘What just happen, if memory serves me right, to be a favourite with George,' said Doris, looking around the orderly kitchen with satisfaction, ‘but if I was you I'd let your mum have a chance to fuss over the two of you, even if she has to buy one at the corner shop. Let her feel she's still up to putting on a little show now and then.'

‘I think you're right,' said Florence.

She broached the subject of the outing to George after they'd left the Thatchers, and he was obviously pleased. She already knew that he regretted having few family members of his own, especially since losing Mabel, and Florence didn't need to be told that what mattered to her had come to mean a lot to him.

A couple of Sundays later, George met her early in the afternoon at the village end of the Mullings woodland path, then they drove the twelve miles to her mother's home in George's elderly car. They had decided on going early in the afternoon and staying for tea, rather than putting her mother to the business of preparing a cooked midday meal.

Florence found herself surprisingly glad to be heading further away from Mullings. George's substantial bulk gave her a feeling of security that had nothing to do with anticipation of her mother's reception of him. They had reached that stage of their relationship where they could sit in companionable silence, and she was grateful that they did so now after conversing for the first few minutes. She had been unusually on edge for the past few days, for some nebulous reason that she couldn't put her finger on.

The tenor of life at Mullings during the week had been different from usual, in two ways that were apparent to all. One was the introduction to the household of a four-month-old puppy. His Lordship's beloved old Labrador had died in the spring and he'd stated at the time that it would be a long time, if ever, before he could give his heart to another. Lady Stodmarsh had told Florence she was biding her time until the moment felt right to contact the breeder and ask him to select and deliver the perfect little successor. When the surprise was revealed, Lord Stodmarsh had been delighted as much with his wife's thoughtfulness as with the adorable, but rambunctious bundle of fur. By the second day the newcomer was making his presence felt by bouncing out of nowhere and everywhere at the sound of approach, or padding up silently. Either way he quickly mastered the trick of getting under as many feet at one time as possible. On the Wednesday afternoon Mr Grumidge had been forced to sidestep the puppy to avoid tripping over it; even so, he'd almost dropped the tea tray that he was bearing down the hall to the drawing room. Florence had been in the hall to witness the incident having just come downstairs after taking a reel of navy-blue thread up to Miss Bradley's room. Seeing that Mr Grumidge had not entirely regained his balance, she had opened the drawing-room door for him so he wouldn't have to pause to set the tray down on the side table before doing so himself. They had laughed about it afterwards.

‘One more wobble on my part, Mrs Norris, might well have meant disaster. That china is irreplaceable!'

The second difference from life as usual was that Ned's maternal grandmother, Eugenie Tressler, had come to stay for the week; something she customarily did twice annually. Ned called her ‘Granny', to distinguish her from Lady Stodmarsh, who was ‘Grandmother'. Never in the years since first meeting Mrs Tressler had Florence seen any indication that here was a woman who had on two occasions suffered a mental breakdown and might at any point, as Nanny Stark had so brutally suggested to Ned, need to be permanently confined. If anything, Mrs Tressler had the look of a capable schoolmistress. Any slight abstraction on this visit was understandable, given that she had made an appointment with her dentist on the day following her return home.

‘Granny's pretty sure at least one tooth has to come out.' Ned had grimaced on passing this information on to Florence. ‘She admits to not being all that keen on facing up to the pliers, and yet she intends to show up like a soldier and do her bit for the Empire.' He'd added: ‘I know I don't always treat her as well as I should, Florie. I could be less stingy about going to stay with her in the summer hols, but I do see she's really quite a brick.'

Admittedly, Florence's encounters with his maternal grandmother were usually brief, but they always included a pleasant greeting or enquiry from Mrs Tressler, and either at the start or end of each visit she expressed appreciation for Florence's kindness to her grandson. Ned had the Stodmarsh colouring, but it was from Mrs Tressler he had inherited his thin face and angular features, which somehow served them both well. ‘What's the use of a face that's beautiful or handsome, if it doesn't have a stamp on it?' Florence couldn't remember if she'd read that, or thought it.

She now became vaguely aware of the road slipping past the car windows in blurred glimpses that faded, half-formed. It was the same sort of feeling that had accompanied her attempts at figuring out the cause of her edginess. Surely it stretched things to call it unease. She had taken into account that neither the puppy's arrival, nor Mrs Tressler's visit, could be expected to occur, especially in conjunction, without a ripple.

Lord and Lady Stodmarsh always welcomed Mrs Tressler with great warmth, but Florence had picked up that William Stodmarsh and his wife did not put on any marked show of enthusiasm. Though it was never mentioned, the entire Mullings staff would have needed to be deaf not to know that Mr William had a roaring temper and never exerted himself to be pleasant to anyone. A frequently overheard bellow was, ‘I want peace at any price!' That the walls were left vibrating must not have struck him as an incongruity. The irritation of being forced to rise from his seat more often than usual in acknowledgement of an extra woman's entrances and exits would this week have been exacerbated by the puppy's exuberance.

Mrs William Stodmarsh's Christian name was Gertrude. She was a stout woman of the well-corseted type who, it would seem, had come to terms with her husband's truculence, or was perennially oblivious. Florence was never sure from the stolidity of her manner which alternative was more likely. Either way, she did not perceive Mrs William Stodmarsh doing more than was obligatory on Mrs Tressler's behalf. Her one weekly outing, other than church, was to get her graying hair finger-waved. Her main daily task was arranging the household flowers – an activity for which she had an admirably artistic flair. Otherwise she did little to occupy her time.

Then there was Miss Madge Bradley. Since coming to Mullings in the early part of the year, this cousin of Lady Stodmarsh – one of the second or once removed sort – had noticeably exerted herself to be congenial and helpful. In no way could it be said that she had projected an aura of gloom by dwelling on the distressing, pitifully humiliating, experience of being left standing at the altar, waiting for a bridegroom who never showed up. But what seemed to Florence so commendable about Miss Bradley's subsequent attitude had been viewed with less enthusiasm by Ned.

‘I know you'll think it beastly of me, Florie, but sometimes I'd like to tell her to put a sock in it – all that falling over backwards to please, I mean; it gets on a fellow's nerves. So unnecessary! Admittedly Uncle William and Aunt Gertrude haven't done their stuff, but it stands out a mile that's just the way they are. She has to realize there's no chance the grandparents will one day decide to toss her out in the cold after inviting her to stay here for as long as she chooses. Even though she's not his relation, Grandfather has made it clear he has no objection to having her – offering to teach her to play chess and even sometimes inviting her to accompany him on his walks. If she's a hair of sense she has to see that's pretty big. Everyone knows he's always preferred to go on his own with his dog.'

Florence hadn't pointed out that Ned had missed an important point. Of late there hadn't been a dog. A hint of mischief had suddenly gleamed in his expressive eyes.

‘You don't suppose, do you, that old Pimcrisp might take a fancy to her and take her off our hands? She is a vicar's daughter, after all.'

In Florence's view, this must have made what had happened to her all the more painful. All those dutiful appearances at parishioners' weddings, all those coy remarks by the insensitively well-meaning, that one day it would be her turn, that there was always a Mr Right around the corner and she mustn't give up hope … The comments would be bothersome if she wasn't hoping, or make it harder to keep a smile on her face if she was. And then that day that was to be hers … it didn't bear thinking about.

There was another thing Ned was missing. Miss Bradley had previously only met Lord and Lady Stodmarsh at occasional large family gatherings. The letter inviting her to make her home at Mullings must have come out of the blue, and she might well have feared it a whimsical impulse liable to be regretted at any moment. What she needed was time to gather her confidence, to begin to acquaint herself with people from Dovecote Hatch of her own generation. Her difficulty was having been left in straitened circumstances on her parents' deaths. There were, however, positives. She was a perfectly presentable woman, educated at an excellent school, and with only a little effort could be quite attractive in a rounded, wholesome sort of way, with that curly dark brown hair and eyes almost of the same colour. Perhaps given time she would begin to dress in clothes that flattered her, a more interesting choice of colours than navy or gray. Currently everything she wore she had made herself, and unfortunately she wasn't a particularly skilled needlewoman or knitter. Nor was she blessed with any creativity to compensate.

Ned had told Florence on the Friday before his maternal grandmother's visit that he fully expected Miss Bradley to make a complete pest of herself by fussing over Mrs Tressler to the point of not allowing her to pick up her own teacup, and insisting on taking the puppy outside every five minutes to do ‘its little jobs'. But he had to admit she seemed to have gained some sense at last, if only for that week, and had instead been ‘sufferable', neither underdoing nor overdoing things.

Florence had taken that to mean Miss Bradley had been jolly decent. So where did that bring things in her search for a source of what had been niggling away at her? Nowhere, except for convincing her there hadn't been any disturbing event. George roused her back into focus.

‘Is your mother's road down this way?'

‘Yes, the next left after that garage.'

The town of Westbridge had grown even more smoke-grimed and crowded over the years, but Mrs Wilks' house, jammed in between its neighbours, had been given a sketchy new coat of paint by the current landlord, son of the old one. In return for this largesse, he'd upped the rent five bob a month. ‘Bloody thievery,' Florence's brother Fred had called it, but Mrs Wilks had taken it in her stride.

Florence had hoped that the money she and Robert, then she on her own, had sent every month would be spent on comforts for her mother, such as a new carpet, furniture and wallpaper, but the interior was still the same, threadbare and down-at the-heel. She supposed without being told that what was left of the money, after providing for absolute necessities, went to help out with her two siblings and the grandchildren. And she couldn't begrudge this if it made her mother happy.

Mrs Wilks opened the door to them and ushered them inside with a crease of a smile that preventing her lack of teeth from showing. Never having been a demonstrative woman, she did not kiss Florence but extended her hand to George, saying it was nice to meet him. His warm response helped overcome the dingy and disheartening appearance of the dark, narrow hall, but inside his head he could hear Mabel's opinion: ‘It's a house to feel sorry for, like it's been left to its lonesome long ago – that staircase don't look like it's got the energy to go up or down one more blinking time.'

What Florence was noticing with a pang was her mother's yellowed white hair and wrinkles. Had she looked so old a few weeks before? She was only sixty-three. Could it be that the lank navy dress and cardigan were the cause, or had she just woken from a nap? She'd been such a pretty girl once – prettier than Florence had ever hoped to be; photographs provided the proof. The curly, dark hair and deep blue eyes suggested some Irish in her background.