Lois Meade 01: Murder on Monday (EN, 2002)

Ann Purser

Lois Meade

Murder on Monday

#1

2002

Lois Meade, as local cleaner in the village of Long Farnden, has a close and intimate knowledge of many of its inhabitants. She doesn’t encourage gossip, but when local spinster, Gloria Hathaway is brutally strangled, it seems that Lois is in the unique position to find out invaluable information about the murder. She begins to investigate the strange goings-on in her clients’ lives and why they were all so closely connected with the dead woman. However, in the process she not only uncovers many hidden secrets within the village, but also within her own family. Danger also lurks close by as Lois becomes embroiled in the deeply hidden passions and emotions smouldering beneath the façade of idyllic village life.

I
n the damp, raw cold of a winter’s evening, the women sat in rows in Long Farnden village hall, not listening to an elderly Land Girl’s memories of ‘Life on the Farm During The War’. Most of them had switched off soon after she began, when it became clear there were to be no memories of passion in the pigsty or tumbles in the hay. Soon they were thinking of other things, of husbands, lovers…husbands’ lovers.

In the village hall kitchen, a gloomy room smelling of drains and unemptied rubbish bins, Miss Gloria Hathaway, small and trim and used to being obeyed, cursed and wrestled in vain with the control dial on a rumbling, rocking tea urn, full of boiling rusty water. It was her turn to make tea and she had laid out the cups and saucers, plates of cakes, sugar bowl and milk jug. Everything was ready, and now this wretched woman would not stop. She could hear her voice droning on about unwilling tractors and rampaging bulls, and tried again to calm the angry beast in front of her. The kitchen was full of steam and she could hardly see the numbers of the dial. In any case, it didn’t matter. Even ‘off’ made no difference. The thing was out of control and she backed away from it.

She didn’t hear or see the door out into the night open quietly behind her and the black shape slip into the kitchen. She pushed back her sandy hair from her damp face and turned around to go for help. Blasted thing! Typical of that lot in there…Then she saw the black shape coming towards her, arms outstretched as if to embrace her, eyes glittering through the steam. She gasped and stepped back, caught between two horrors. “No!” she choked. “What…?” But before she could finish her sentence, the black-gloved hands had her by the throat and ineptly strangled…

“Any questions, anybody?” asked Mrs Evangeline Baer, as the Land Girl finally came to a halt. The women knew better than to ask, and Mrs Baer continued quickly, “Has someone told Miss Hathaway we’re ready for tea?”

But Gloria Hathaway had missed her cue, and after the women went into the kitchen to see why, things were never the same again.

L
ois Meade walked angrily along the frosty pavement of Byron Way on the Churchill Estate, relieved that her house was now in sight. It would be quiet and deserted, and she could have a coffee and wind down. With the children all at school and husband Derek at work, she wouldn’t have to explain about the flat tyre and her humiliating struggle, and the long walk up from the garage in Tresham. She passed by where her in-laws used to live, and thanked God old Mrs M could no longer rush out and drag her in for tea and criticism.

The Meades had been a bit above Lois’s family socially. At least, that is what Derek’s mother had thought. Derek’s father had his own electrician’s business, which Derek subsequently took over. Lois’s parents were backstreet Tresham folk – her father had been in the same shoe factory all his working life – and were respectable enough. They had one child, Lois Jennifer, who, despite doting parents and a happy home, or perhaps because of them, had been a rebel from the start. In playschool, she had been withdrawn after she’d kicked a little boy in the face, despite her protestations that he’d stuck his tongue out at her. And by the time she was a teenager, tall and already beautiful in a dark, skinny way, with a lively brain but an absolute determination not to use it on school work, she was in constant trouble. She smoked at thirteen – always plenty of fags around at home – and had not bothered to conceal it. She had experimented with alcohol and rejected it only because she did not like the taste, and was not averse to a little light shoplifting in Woolworths. Lois grew up with the wrong friends and quite often on the wrong side of the law.

It was all mild stuff with never any more serious results than a severe caution from kindly policemen, but her mother, who could be formidable when required, eventually faced Lois with an ultimatum: either she changed her ways, or it was a job in Woolworths (this appealed to Lois’s sense of humour) with no prospects. Lois’s mother had a friend who could work it, so she’d better decide. A dead end job, or a new leaf; that was the choice. Lois chose the dead end job because she knew that it was the wrong choice, and there she had met Derek Meade. He had collided with her on a crowded Saturday and it was lust at first sight. Added to that, she made him laugh a lot, and had clearly never heard that the customer was always right.

Lois and Derek had started off their married life in Byron Way and Lois had matured, finally, under Derek’s benign influence. He had not tried to change her because he loved her as she was – stroppy, fierce and strong-minded. But after three children had come along, a delight in motherhood and a latent sense of responsibility had brought out the best in Lois. To her great surprise, she found she loved babies in just the same soppy way she’d despised in others.

Derek’s mother had been thrilled with her first grandchild, Josie, pleased that the second was a boy, Douglas, but when the third, Jamie, arrived, she’d fled back to Ireland, from where she sent postcards, hoping everything was well with them and looking forward to seeing them soon. Lois had not minded. Her own mother lived close by, and in her unfussed, straightforward way had helped out wherever needed. She took the boys to school, long after they considered it necessary, brought them home again, and was always there. Josie, Lois’s only girl, came and went with her mates on the estate, but occasionally dropped in on her grandmother to shelter from her mother’s wrath and listen to tales of Lois’s own dodgy adolescence.

Derek’s father had set him a good example, and he was never short of a job. He covered a wide area in and around town, and claimed he had found Lois’s job for her. When Jamie had started school, she had announced that she’d be going out cleaning. “It’s all I know,” she’d said practically. “And we could do with the money.” The kids had frowned on this, mainly because of the loss of status with their friends.

“They’ll say you’re a skivvy,” Josie had said.

“So?” replied Lois.

But she had relented and said she wouldn’t work in Tresham but look for jobs outside the town, in the villages.

“Think of the petrol money!” Derek had said. “Hardly worth it…”

In the end, it was Derek who solved the problem. He’d been rewiring an old house in Long Farnden, six miles from town, and been asked by the owner, Mrs Baer, if he knew of a cleaner. Evangeline Baer ran an art gallery in the converted barn at the rear of the house, and as it prospered she had less and less time for keeping her house as pristinely clean as she liked. Lois had suited her well and she had recommended her to friends in the village.

Now all Lois’s mornings were taken up with Long Farnden houses, and on Derek’s advice she had added the petrol money on to her rate of pay. On her first morning with each new employer she explained that she treated her cleaning as a business. “You’ll find me reliable and trustworthy,” she announced. “And I shall expect the same in return. Money regularly each week, and cash, please.” One or two of them raised their eyebrows, but finding her as good as her word, they toed the line. When they met at local gatherings, they talked of Lois with respect and some awe.

“We’re all a bit frightened of her!” said Evangeline Baer to the doctor’s wife, and she wasn’t joking.

Lois knew this, of course, and had no compunction in summarily leaving one job where she’d had to wait weeks for her money. She enjoyed her business, including one unexpected aspect which she found a great source of amusement and interest. She had her own unique position in the village: a close and intimate knowledge of five of its houses and their owners. Her declared policy was not to gossip, but this did not mean that she was an unwilling recipient of all kinds of juicy items. As she said to Derek, she knew more than ever appeared in the parish magazine, or on the noticeboard outside the village hall.

A family with three growing kids is expensive, and when Lois started with Mrs Baer, it had been hard for the Meades to find the money to buy the battered old Vauxhall Astra for Lois to drive to work. But with a bit of help from Lois’s mother, they’d managed it, and up to today she had been travelling without mishap.

Today she’d had her first flat tyre. She had felt the steering become heavy and suddenly the car had veered towards the kerb. The entrance to a free car park was fifty yards further on, and she’d bumped along slowly, turned in and stopped in a corner space away from the road. The front nearside tyre was completely flat and beginning to rip apart where she had driven it on the rim. “Sod it,” she’d said loudly, and a little old man, struggling into a vehicle adapted for disability, had turned and looked at her and smiled.

“I’d help you, duck,” he’d said, “but I ain’t quite up to it now.”

She had sighed, assured him she’d be fine, and set about finding the spare tyre. An hour later, her hands covered with grease and dirt, Lois had had to admit defeat. She had failed at the first hurdle, unable to move the nuts that held the wheel. She’d phoned Derek on his mobile, and he’d told her to get help.

He was twenty miles away and in the middle of a job that couldn’t be left. “Get Fred from the garage opposite,” he’d said. But it was Fred’s day off, and she’d been told to leave it there and they’d see to it when they had time.

“Yes, it would be today,” they’d said, but couldn’t tell exactly when. She’d set off on the long walk home.

Now she approached her front door and noticed with alarm that it was ajar. She stepped inside the kitchen warily and saw Josie perched on the edge of the table, reading a magazine.

“What are you doing home?” she said, and was unconvinced by her explanation of a free afternoon from school. Lois was a parent governor at the local school and was well aware that she of all people should be able to put a stop to truancy in her own family. “How did you get in, then?” she said.

“Gran let me in,” was Josie’s reply. “She was coming this way to see her friend along the road.”

“Huh,” said Lois, and reached for the kettle.

Josie was fourteen and already attractive in an adult way. Her soft, thick hair hung straight and long and shone from constant brushing. She was dark, like Lois, with the same brown, gold-flecked eyes. But she had spots, and suffered.

“Did you get that stuff?” she said.

“What stuff?” said Lois.

“The spot stuff! Oh God, I suppose you forgot!”

“Don’t swear,” said Lois mechanically, stirring the tea bag round in her cup. One law for her and another for her children, Derek often reminded her. “And no, I didn’t forget. It’s in that bag, and it’ll cost you a week’s baby-sitting money. I don’t know why you bother, Josie. All kids get spots at your age.” She was cold, tired and irritable, and even as she said it she knew she was being unfair. Spots had been the end of the world for her, too, at Josie’s age.

“You’re late, anyway,” said Josie, and Lois softened and told her about the flat tyre and the long walk. Then there was another thing that had delayed her, and she hesitated. Josie persisted. “What else, then? Shouldn’t have taken you this long.”

“Blimey!” said Lois. “What is this? The Spanish Inquisition, or what? Well, if you must know, I went to the cop shop, seeing as I was passing…”

Josie looked at her in alarm. On the Churchill Estate, anything to do with the police meant trouble. “What’s up, then?” she said.

“Nothing,” said Lois. “Just went to ask something. Here, give us the milk…it’ll be off by the time you’ve finished twiddling it about.”

The visit to the police station had not been a sudden impulse. Lois had been feeling restless lately. Her cleaning business was fine and the money regular, but she thought about things on her journeys to and from Long Farnden. Several times over the last few weeks she had remembered her father’s words. He’d always said she’d regret her wasted schooldays, and she had jeered. “A good brain’s a gift,” he’d said. “Reckon it’s a sort of sin to waste it.” She had recoiled from this hangover from her father’s chapel-going youth, and dismissed him out of hand. For God’s sake, she had a whole life in front of her!

But now, with all the talk around of education later in life, she’d wondered. She had brought up the idea of evening classes in a conversation with her mother, who had said firmly that she thought Lois had enough on her plate for the moment, what with Derek and the kids. Lois had thought some more. Back to school? It’d be like surrender, wouldn’t it? No, not really me, Lois had chuckled. I can read and write and that’ll have to be enough.