“That explains it,” I said.
"‘Course,” Mrs. Malloy picked up her teacup, “it would’ve been nice if Gertrude had left me and Betty Nettle and Winifred Smalley a little something to remember her by—say a few thousand for old time’s sake.”
“She made Mrs. Smalley the trustee.”
“Meaning?” Shooting up in her chair.
“That she got to ration out the money to Trina. And there, in my opinion, is what makes it particularly bad for Mrs. Smalley that you found her handbag by the body. When that comes out, the police may think she killed Trina over a row about the money.”
Mrs. Malloy shook her head at my numbskull thinking. “The trouble with that bright idea is that it should have been Trina doing the stabbing. Hoping that with Winifred out of the way she’d get control of her inheritance.”
“I realize that,” I said, “but what if it turns out that in the event of Trina McKinnley’s death, Mrs. Smalley herself would be the one to inherit?”
“Just who was it gave you the scoop on Gertrude’s will?” Fear flickered in Mrs. Malloy’s eyes before flaming into annoyance.
“I’d rather not say.”
“You don’t have to.” She laughed scornfully. “It was that Bunty Wiseman, weren’t it? I remember now! Her ex was Gertrude’s solicitor. And I never did think that man could keep quiet, short of padlocking his mouth. He ought to be struck off or unfrocked or whatever they call it.”
I remained determined to name no names. “Nothing was said to me about what would happen to the money if Trina died. But it would certainly complicate matters for Mrs. Smalley if she becomes the beneficiary by default.”
“Making it even more bloody important the police don’t find out about her handbag!” Mrs. Malloy leaned wearily back in her chair. “They’ll never buy the notion of Winifred walking in on the body and dropping her bag before she ran off in fright.”
“What if it was Trina who picked up that knife in the first place.” I sipped at my tea without tasting it. “Just to scare Mrs. Smalley into seeing the sense of shelling out the money in large amounts. And in the course of struggling to get it away from her, Mrs. Smalley struck the fatal blow?”
“Oh, I’ll give you Trina had a filthy temper if anyone pressed the wrong buttons. But”—Mrs. Malloy shook her head—”she loved Winifred like she was her own mum. The only thing they ever argued about was Trina’s boyfriend.”
“Joe.” I got up to refill our cups.
“That’s right.” She twisted her lips disparagingly. “Joe Tollings, Mr. God’s gift to himself.”
“Did you say ‘Tollings’?” I spilled tea all over the tray.
“I just spoke to a woman named Marilyn Tollings when I was going into Brigadier Lester-Smith’s. I thought I’d never get rid of her. Don’t tell me she’s Joe’s wife!”
“Been married to him these past ten years at least.”
“I met him with Trina at Mrs. Large’s funeral.” Forgetting the tea, I sat back down. “It was Mrs. Smalley who got Trina to take over from Mrs. Large at Merlin’s Court. And there was an awkward scene on Monday. Bunty Wiseman was there when Joe arrived to pick Trina up. And, no surprise, he’s also been carrying on with Bunty. When Trina came into the kitchen and saw them together she picked up on the vibes. But she didn’t cut Joe down to size in front of me. It was Ben who heard the two of them arguing as he drove through the gates on his way home for lunch.”
“And you couldn’t have told me this sooner?” Mrs. Malloy looked as though she would have liked to hurl the yellow footstool at me and follow it up with a couple of sequined elephants. “Because if this don’t shed a new light on the miserable business, I’m a monkey’s Great-Aunt Mabel. Joe Tollings always did have a violent streak. I think that’s a good part of why Trina fancied him. She saw herself as a lion tamer, cracking her little whip.”
“Dangerous.”
“A suit and tie never was no challenge to Trina. I can’t say as I worried about her like Winifred did, but I weren’t all that easy in me mind when Trina offered to come and stay here while I was gone. ‘What if his wife finds out the two of you are carrying on?’ I says to her. I don’t want me front door being kicked down or rocks thrown at me windows by the woman scorned. But cocky as anything, was Trina. She saw it as some bloody game—dangling herself in front of Marilyn Tollings’s nose, so to speak. And look where it got her! Joe goes and chops her when he finds out he can’t shake the money tree. It was just bleeding bad luck that Winifred walked in and found her.”
“Let’s say that’s the case.” I stirred in my chair, having grown cramped and chilly. “Why didn’t Mrs. Smalley go to a neighbor’s and phone for help?”
“Because she was buggering scared she’d be blamed!” Mrs. Malloy spoke as if to a dimwit.
“But what if it’s worse than that?” I suggested. “Suppose when Mrs. Smalley arrived, the killer was still on the premises, either in the house or lurking outside. Waiting to make sure no one was about when he took off down the road. And when Mrs. Smalley screamed upon finding the body he—we’ll say it was Joe—grabbed her and dragged her away with him.” My voice ground to a standstill. Awful images swam around in my mind. I should not have put ideas for which there was no foundation in Mrs. Malloy’s head.
“I guess I’d better give Winifred a ring.” She heaved herself up, looking as though she had been hit with the yellow footstool, and I trailed after her into the kitchen to stand hovering as she dialed her friend’s number. “No answer,” she said bleakly, hanging up.
“That doesn’t mean something’s happened to her,” I tried to sound nonchalant.
“No, she’s just bleeding done a bunk.
“I really think you have to phone the police.” I put an arm around Mrs. M.’s black taffeta shoulders. “You should tell them about the handbag and let them take over. If there’s the smallest possibility that Joe, or whoever else it might be, has made off with Mrs. Smalley, we can’t waste time!”
“Oh, go on with you!” She shrugged away from me.
“We’re letting our heads cloud our judgment, Mrs. H., or however the saying goes. What I ought to do is call an emergency meeting of the C.F.C.W.A. That shouldn’t take long, seeing there’s only Betty Nettle left to call. Although I guess we could make you an honorary member, just for this evening.”
“Mrs. Malloy, you mustn’t shilly-shally.”
“I’d better have a drink,” she said, and on reaching for the gin bottle discovered it was empty. “Bloody hell!” She padded across to the pantry on her shoeless feet and emerged seconds later, her face at half-mast. “That was the only bottle. Now what am I to do?”
“Phone the police.”
“Nothing doing! You nip down to the brigadier’s and ask to borrow a cup of gin. Can you remember that, Mrs. H., or do I need to write it down for you?”
“All right.” I was about to let myself out the back door when a thought occurred to me. “How would Mrs. Smalley have got into the house if Trina was already dead?”
“She had a key. All members of the C.F.C.W.A. had keys to each other’s houses.” Mrs. Malloy sighed deeply. Two of her friends dead and one of the others up to her neck in trouble. It had stopped raining, but the night was thick with cloud and the wind nippy as I hurried out onto Herring Street. There were no neighbors hanging about. They’d probably all trotted back inside after the grand finale—Trina’s covered body being removed from the house.
One car did slide past me as I was about to step inside Brigadier Lester-Smith’s gate. I was thinking how Marilyn Tollings had rushed across the street to ask if I were the woman in the woolly hat and raincoat she had seen earlier. Sheer nosiness had been my assumption. But might she not have had another motive? There was no doubt Joe’s wife had reason to hate Trina McKinnley if she knew about the affair. Had she been craftily covering her tracks in saying she didn’t know the woman living in Mrs. Malloy’s house? My God! What if she’d gone there to have it out with Trina and ended up sticking a knife into her back? Then just suppose that when she was leaving the scene of the crime she saw my car pull up. And thinking it unlikely she could get all the way into her house without my seeing her, she had with wickedness aforethought made a big production of talking to me! A gutsy sleight of hand.
I stood for a moment at the gate where I had talked to Marilyn Tollings, seeing myself getting out of the old convertible, trying to picture exactly when I had first seen her. And suddenly my heart gave a thump that actually jolted me sideways.
My car was no longer parked outside Brigadier Lester-Smith’s house. It was nowhere in sight. It was gone. That fact took longer than necessary sinking in. And then I found myself running back to Mrs. Malloy’s house. Suddenly the front door opened and she was standing there. To hell with her cup of gin, I thought, and was about to spill out this latest development, when she broke in ahead of me.
“Good of you to come back, seeing as your hubby just rang up, Mrs. H. And you’ll need to phone him back, because he’s all of a twitter. Seems the police paid him a visit to say they found your ruddy car on a deserted lane not far from here. And a few feet away, half in a ditch, was the body of a woman. No identification in her coat pockets, but one of them policeman knew her by sight.”
“Mrs. Smalley? “I whispered, rushing forward. And Mrs. Malloy could only nod brokenly before sagging into my arms.
“Who is this Mrs. Smalley, and why are we talking about her at this time of the morning?” Jonas sat up in bed and scowled first at me, then at the bedside clock, looking even crosser when he saw it was almost ten A.M.
“She was a friend of Mrs. Malloy’s.”
“So what’s that got to do with the price o’tea in China?” My grouchy friend folded his striped pajama arms and begrudgingly shifted his feet so I could perch on the edge of the bed.
“I met her in Bellingham’s cafeteria just after Mrs. Large died and again at the funeral. She seemed a very nice woman.” I was having trouble getting to the point. The words kept skipping about inside my head, instead of lining themselves up into neat little sentences. Not surprisingly, Jonas grew more impatient by the second.
“Nice! I’m woke up to talk about some nice woman! If you’ve a mind, Ellie girl, to marry me off to this Mrs. Smelly, you’d best think again. I’ve long ago forgot all I ever knew about the birds and the bees and I ain’t working myself into a froth trying to remember. Stares me in the face, it do, that you want to be rid of me.” His face settled into even deeper lines. “And can’t say as I blame you. A useless old man, that’s all I be these days.”
“I don’t want to get rid of you.” I got up and kissed the top of his bald head. “And how can you talk about being useless when I need you more than ever?”
“What’s happened?” Jonas shot up higher in the bed. “Something wrong with Ben or the little ones?”
“No, it’s about Mrs. Smalley. She is—was—a friend of Mrs. Malloy’s, a member of their little housecleaning organization. Last night she was knocked down and killed by a car. My car. I’d left it parked outside Brigadier Lester-Smith’s house with the keys in the ignition, of all stupid things, and whoever took it ran the poor woman down. If that isn’t dreadful enough, Trina McKinnley was murdered—stabbed to death in Mrs. Malloy’s kitchen. I was with Mrs. Malloy when the police arrived in Herring Street and I didn’t leave until after they finished. By which time Mrs. Smalley had been found in a ditch off Bramble Wood Lane, just a few yards from the abandoned car. I’m not a suspect”—I choked on the words—”because I have an alibi for the time of death. So I suppose there is one small bright spot in all this.”
“Mrs. Malloy’s back home?” Jonas fastened on this piece of information as he covered my hand with his and studied my face with anxious eyes.
“I still don’t know what brought her back, or why she didn’t get in touch after Mrs. Large died; we never got round to talking about that. All I know is she took the coach from London yesterday evening and walked in to find Trina’s body with a knife in the back.”
“That do be three.” Jonas kept hold of my hand.
“Yes.” I nodded. “All members of the C.F.C.W.A, and only one of their deaths appearing to have been accidental. And now Mrs. Malloy is riddled with guilt because she didn’t mention the handbag.”
“Whose handbag?”
“Mrs. Smalley’s. And Mrs. Malloy kept quiet because she didn’t want the police thinking her friend had murdered Trina. I think she may even have wiped off the knife handle, in case Mrs. Smalley had touched it. When Ben phoned about Mrs. Smalley, Mrs. Malloy rang the station, pretending she’d just found the handbag. By then it was clear what had happened. Mrs. Smalley must have walked in on the murderer and either ran from the house to be chased down the road by the killer in my car or she was dragged outside and into the car to be taken to Bramble Wood Lane and dumped in the road. Oh it’s too awful!” I covered my face with my hands. “To think of her being run over as she tried to get away.”
"
Try not to think on it, Ellie girl.”
“She was such a frail little person.”
After an almost-sleepless night I didn’t have much energy to spare. Ben had got the children up and dressed, given them their breakfast, and taken them to school on his way to work. I had hoped he would at least take the morning off, but I hadn’t said anything. Even talking to Ben had been too much for me at that point. Instead I’d drunk most of the pot of tea he left for me, nibbled around the crust of a piece of toast, and after forcing myself to take a bath and wash my hair, came up to see Jonas.
“Do you think the police have any ideas?” He resettled himself in the bed and sat stroking Tobias, who had leaped out of nowhere to land on his middle.
“They didn’t take me into their confidence, but I think it very likely they’ll want a word or two with Trina’s married boyfriend, Joe, and his wife. She may have known what was going on and decided not to stand for it.” I got up and moved around the room, straightening things that Jonas wouldn’t want straightened and looking at the faded rectangle of wallpaper where his mirror had hung.