“But we want to go outside and play with him.” Abbey was inching ever closer to Tom. She wasn’t a child who readily took to strangers. So I found myself feeling ashamed of my suspicions. And I found myself picturing him as a sad little garden gnome who got continually showered with pebbles instead of rain and rarely got a glimpse of the sun.
“Darling, you can play with Mr. Tingle another time.” I picked up my daughter, who was suddenly all flounces and fury.
“Not another time. Now!”
“Me, too.” piped up Tam.
“Perhaps your mummy will bring you to my house one day.” The smile Tom Tingle gave my children was surprisingly disarming. “I’d like that. It gets lonely all by myself.”
“We’ll come,” I promised as the door closed behind him and Ben.
“Was he at the meeting where Mrs. Large . . . left abruptly?,” asked Freddy.
“Yes,” I replied, my mind full of questions again and no answers. I was trying to remember if I’d left my handbag in the drawing room or upstairs in my bedroom when someone knocked on the garden door. Before I could take a step towards it, Bunty Wiseman whipped into the kitchen.
“Thank God!” She flew at me in a whirl of black miniskirt and jaunty matching jacket, her short curls a silvery blur and her voice wavering on the brink of hysteria. She was ever a woman who knew how to stage an entrance, but I sensed her alarm was at least two-thirds real. “I was so afraid you’d be out having a romantic lunch with Ben.”
“Ben’s in the garden.”
“I saw three men standing under a tree, but if he was one of them, I didn’t notice, which is hardly a surprise, seeing I’m off men entirely at this moment. Even Lionel. You wouldn’t believe how chilly he acted when I went to see him just now and told him about how my getting mixed up with Joe Tollings has properly landed me in the soup.”
“Calm down, Bunty. Take a deep breath.”
“That’s easy for you to say.” She flung herself into a chair. “Here am I, suspected of a double murder and about to get the sack if I’m back late from lunch again. And don’t tell me it’s my fault for carrying on with married men, Ellie. I might murder you. And that won’t put me in well with a judge and jury.”
“The police think you killed Trina McKinnley and then stole my car and rode over Mrs. Smalley?” I plopped down in the chair across from her.
“You bet I’m a suspect! Why wouldn’t I be, after Joe blabbed to them about us? He told the police I’d found out about him and Trina, and I was jealous enough to kill her. The lying creep! He knew I didn’t give two hoots who he slept with. For me it was just the occasional night out and a bit of a giggle. I told you, Ellie, I wanted to make Lionel sit up and take notice.”
“Don’t the police think the murders were done by either Joe or his wife? That’s what Freddy heard from the girlfriend of a local constable.”
“They’re up there on the list—him and his Marilyn.” Bunty ran manicured nails through her impish curls. “But that didn’t stop a frigging detective inspector from banging on my door as I was getting ready for work and asking questions about my whereabouts last night. And wouldn’t you know, for once in my life, I was home with no way to prove it. I even left work early—at a little after four, because I had a rotten headache. Me, who never gets headaches! After making myself a cup of tea I went straight to bed. Nobody phoned. So where does that leave me? Looking guilty as sin, is where.”
“I’m sure you’re worrying unnecessarily,” I said lamely, knowing that in her position I would be planning farewells to my nearest and dearest. “You can’t be placed at the scene of the crime if you weren’t there.”
“Darling, Ellie, you’re so naive.” Bunty’s impossibly blue eyes welled up with tears. “How do I know that Joe didn’t leave a couple of strands of my hair by the bodies? Or that Marilyn didn’t strategically drop a hanky with B.W. embroidered on it. If she knew about Trina she could have known about me. Murderers do that sort of thing all the time in books. Of course”--Bunty brightened just a little—”I’m not at all sure Joe can read.” She sighed again and grabbed my arm. “Ellie, you have to help me.”
“How?”
“Oh, I don’t know.” She got up and prowled around the room, found the dish of beetroot among the luncheon leftovers by the sink, and nibbled a couple of slices, dripping juice down her hand. “Crikey! Does that look like blood, or am I really going round the bend?” Turning on the tap, she slooshed herself off before leaning dispiritedly against the sink. “You’re my friend. And I’m depending on you to get me out of this jam. I don’t care how you do it. Confess to the murders yourself if that seems easiest. Bugger!” She looked up at the clock. “I’ve got to catch the bus and get back to work or I’ll have to go to jail a pauper, and I’ve heard the inmates pick on poor people unmercifully.”
“Bunty, I’m sure you’re going to be all right.” I trailed after her to the door.
“I suppose so.” She did a fairly good job of propping her pretty mouth into a smile. “I really only came by for a little moral support after Lionel failed to offer any. Damn him! I never want to see him again.”
I stood looking at the door that had closed behind her, wondering if I should telephone Lionel and urge him to at least provide her with legal advice, when a different idea flashed into my head. I raced out of the house to catch up with her in the courtyard.
“Bunty!”
“Yes?” She turned so fast, she fell into my arms.
“Do something for me.”
“What?" Taking a couple of steps away from me.
“Use your real estate connections to find out what you can about why the Miller sisters, Clarice Whitcombe, and Tom Tingle all moved to Chitterton Fells.”
“I don’t know how that’s likely to help me.” Bunty pursed her lips and shrugged. “But if it’s important to you, I’ll slip old Mr. Ward a sleeping pill and poke through the files.”
Bunty flitted off down the gravel drive, and I went back inside determined to find my handbag and set off for Mrs. Malloy’s house before something else interrupted me. I had just unearthed it from under a sofa cushion in the drawing room and was debating whether to bother with a raincoat when the garden door banged open, and Mrs. Malloy herself marched into the kitchen with Betty Nettle trailing two paces behind.
“Where are you off to, Mrs. H., all done up to the nines for dinner?” So much for the woman I’d been picturing dead in her dining room. It was true my shoes were only slightly down at the heel and my dress was clean and pressed, but she was done up like a dog’s dinner in a purple brocade suit with black satin trim and rhinestone buttons. The hat perched on her head sported a spiderweb veil befitting a woman in mourning. Mrs. Nettle was suitably drab in shapeless black, as became any friend of Mrs. M., but I didn’t see her as a woman who would willingly sit on the sidelines of life. Not with those shrewd eyes and beaky nose.
“You’ve done something different to your hair,” observed Mrs. Malloy, plonking her bag down on the table and stripping off her lace gloves. “Combed it, maybe that’s it, Mrs. H. But Betty here and I didn’t come to ask if you’d like to pose for the cover of Vogue—like your cousin, my daughter-in-law.” She stood nibbling on the corner on her purple lip before beckoning to Mrs. Nettle. “You two met at Gertrude Large’s funeral, so there’s no point in me going into lengthy introductions. Enough to say, Betty’s a woman of sense, Mrs. H., so I hope you’ll listen to her like you would to me and make up your mind to help us see justice done.”
“It’s a pleasure to see you again, Mrs. Nettle,” I said, “and a great relief to know that you’re all right, Mrs. Malloy. I rang you a couple of times this morning and was just about to go to your house.”
“Me and Betty was out having a meeting at a cafe near where she lives, and we come to an important decision, Mrs. H.”
“Yes?”
“We want to make you an honorary member of the C.F.C.W.A. Or rather”—amending the pronouncement before I had time to get above myself—”we worked out such was our only course under the circumstances, because whatever your faults, you’re a woman who’s not afraid to stick her nose in where it’s not wanted if the situation demands. And right now, three noses is definitely better than two.”
“Thank you,” I said, offering Mrs. Nettle a seat. "Does this have to do with the murders? And if so, do you think Mrs. Large was the first?”
“What a question!” Mrs. Malloy snorted. “It makes me wonder if you haven’t gone soft in the head since I’ve been away. ‘Course Gertrude was murdered! Trina, who for all her funny little ways was sharp as a thumbtack, must have found out who done it and decided to put the squeeze on whoever it was. It don’t seem right to use words like blackmail when talking of the dead.” She heaved a sigh that threatened to pop the rhinestone buttons. “But there’s no getting round Trina was a greedy guts when it come to money.”
“But she’d just inherited a bundle from Mrs. Large.”
“And Winifred Smalley wasn’t going to dish it out big while Joe Tollings was in the picture,” Mrs. Nettle put in. “Now, if he’d murdered Winifred first, I could be persuaded the police was on the right track. But men like that don’t bump off girlfriends that’s about to lay the golden egg. Not even if they have had a row.”
“Then it could have been his wife,” I felt bound to say as I paced the kitchen. “And the police have already questioned my friend Bunty Wiseman, who was also seeing Joe.”
“Poor innocent lamb!” Mrs. Malloy somehow managed to convey an accusing look in my direction even with her head bent.
“Well, of course I don’t want Bunty accused.” I banged the kettle down on the cooker and began foraging in the cupboard for cups and saucers. “Nor, for that matter, do I want Joe, unlikeable as he is, or his wife blamed for a crime they didn’t commit. I can’t help thinking that Mrs. Large may have been the first victim of foul play. And that the person who killed her was one of the people she worked for. Perhaps someone she had found out something about. Something damaging to their reputation or general happiness. And I wouldn’t doubt for a minute that Trina, who counted every knickknack on every piece of furniture in this house the one morning she worked for me, found out why Mrs. Large died and who was behind it.”
“Trina rung me up evening before last,” supplied Mrs. Nettle, “and I wish I could remember exactly how she put things. Trouble is, she caught me in the middle of me favourite TV program, but I’m now sure she was talking about blackmail.”
“Give Betty a cuppa, Mrs. H.,” said Mrs. Malloy, “and see if that unclogs the pores in her brain.”
“That’s it!” Her friend sat up to attention. “Trina said something about pores—leastways I think that was it. I didn’t catch the first part because I had the receiver away from me ear because it was getting to a really good part—lots of lovey-dovey—in the program. But then she laughed loud enough to get me attention and said—now let me think.” Mrs. Nettle drew in her bushy eyebrows and her beaky nose probed the air, sniffing out the memory. “Yes, it’s coming back to me. Trina said like it was the best joke in the world, ‘It never rains but it pours pennies from heaven. And I’m sure old Gert would tell me to stick it to the rotten sod.’'"
“So she never said nothing about pores, like on your nose.” Mrs. Malloy had to nitpick.
“No, but it was you mentioning the word that jolted me memory, and I just wish I’d paid proper attention to what Trina said before the bit I’ve told you, because it seems to me she did mention finding something. But there you are—I wasn’t listening when I should’ve been.”
“You didn’t ask Trina what she meant about the part you did hear?” I asked, handing Mrs. Nettle a cup of tea.
“No, ‘cause she hung up, like she wanted to leave me wondering, I suppose. But one thing’s for sure, Mrs. Haskell, if Trina said that much to me, she’d have spilled even more of her guts to Winifred. Them two was like mother and daughter.”
“Maybe she invited Mrs. Smalley round last night,” I suggested, “so she could tell her the whole story face-to-face.”
“That would be Trina.” Mrs. Malloy gave a grudging nod as she took her teacup. “Always a one that liked to build up the suspense. Not to speak ill of the dead, but I can see her enjoying telling Winifred she wasn’t going to be entirely dependent on Gertrude’s money. They’d get into spats, just like a regular mum and daughter, Trina and Winifred, but they always come round in a day or so.”
“Lots of people saw the wrong side of Trina.” Mrs. Nettle pulled a hanky from her black breast pocket and blew her nose. “It’s easy to see people only one way, make some into saints when they’re not and the other way round. But most of us is a pretty mixed bag.”
Mrs. Malloy sipped at her tea, for once without complaining that it had too much or too little milk. “The point is, no one gets to murder my and Betty’s friends even if they do slip up of a now and then and decide on a bit of blackmail. Not and get away with it, they don’t. So there you have it, Mrs. H.; you sit yourself down and I’ll read you the bylaws of the C.F.C.W.A.—skipping over the big words so as not to confuse you. Then if you’re ready to commit body and soul to the C.F.C.W.A., which basically means wearing an apron with pride and never admitting to using spray polish, you get to be a member until this matter is sorted out.”
“But what about the gavel?” queried Mrs. Nettle. “We can’t open a meeting without one of us banging on the table for order.”
“I thought you’d have it.” Mrs. Malloy rounded on her. "'Course not, it went in the coffin with Gertrude, as was only proper seeing she was president.”
“Then we’ll have to make do with a rolling pin for the time being. I’m sure Mrs. H. has one as she can spare until we can get us another proper gavel. And there’s no sense in arguing about who gets to use it, Betty. I elected meself president last night. Now don’t go hanging your head, because you get to be everyone else—vice president, treasurer, recording secretary, and ways and means charwoman. Think of it this way: I get the glory but you get to do all the work.”
I handed over the rolling pin to our invaluable president. “What I want to know is just how the three of us are going to solve the murders. What can we do that the police can’t?”
“Go and clean them houses where Gertrude worked.” Mrs. Malloy gave the table a rap that sent our teacups into orbit. “See if we can’t find whatever it was she came across in digging out drawers or cupboards that had her all upset. The only problem as I see it is not arousing suspicion by you taking up a life as a char, Mrs. H.”