Missing: Presumed Dead (36 page)

“Daphne was magnificent,” Samantha laughed to Bliss a few minutes later, as they raced Doreen's wheelchair into the Olde Curiosity Coffee Shoppe just off the High Street. “‘We're just going to take my old friend for a walk,' she said to that nurse with pneumatic boobs. ‘Oh you can't do that, Madam,' she said, sticking out her chest like a bloody guardsman and Daphne said, ‘Piss off, you silly little nincompoop,' barged her out of the way and shoved the wheelchair through the French window shouting, ‘Tally Ho! Doreen. Chocks away.'”

“I'm pleased to meet you again,” said Bliss, stooping to introduce himself to Doreen once they had pulled her up to a table in the restaurant.

The twin flush of excitement and fresh air coloured Doreen's cheeks, and she spent a few seconds composing herself as Daphne, her impishness returned, nudged him and drew his attention to an austerely dressed mustachioed woman in a funereal black hat across the room at a window table. “See what I mean about lah-di-dah,” she scoffed, as the woman withered the waitress with a complaint about the temperature of her coffee. “She's no more a lady than ...” she paused, realising to her horror that she was just about to say Doreen Dauntsey.

“I called you the other day,” piped up Doreen feeling left out. “But you didn't come to see me.”

“Sorry,” he said, feeling it was hardly a good time to tell her that Jonathon had stood sentinel.

“Chief Inspector Bliss bought the Colonel's goat,” Daphne explained, leaning into Doreen as if the wheelchair might have affected her hearing; speaking as if such a purchase gave Bliss an excuse for his apparent tardiness while painting him as a man of substance and credibility.

“The Colonel's goat?” whispered Bliss questioningly. “You told me it came from the butcher's.”

“You bought it did you?” said Doreen, seemingly impressed.

Daphne ignored Bliss and answered to Doreen, clearly and loudly pronouncing each word. “It came from your husband's home originally, didn't it, Doreen?”

“Did it?” asked Bliss, taken aback, but he was left out of the loop as Doreen reminisced with Daphne. “Oh yeah. I know all about the goat. Wellington told me about it before he died.”

“Wellington?” queried Bliss, then remembered Daphne's delight at discovering the Colonel's christian name on his sarcophagus.

“Was
that
true then?” asked Doreen, ignoring him again while apparently referring to some well known anecdote of which Bliss was not privy.

“Oh yeah,” laughed Doreen with the cackle of the elderly and frail. “I'd forgotten all about it. It was something of a joke apparently. The old goat was the regimental mascot and it got loose one day as he was taking the salute.” She paused for a sharp breath, then continued. “He said it bolted across the parade ground, knocked a load of guardsmen ass over tit, then stopped right in front of him and pooped.” She paused to join Daphne in a laugh, adding, “Ruined the parade 'pparently – men falling all over the place, couldn't stop laughing. So when he retired they had it killed and stuffed as a going away present. He hated the damn thing and swapped it for a decent bit of sirloin at the butchers.”

“I don't blame him,” said Bliss, finally getting in a word, mindful that he too had received the proverbial bit of sirloin. “I hate to interrupt, but we don't have long,” he continued, summonsing Samantha from the doorway where she had been standing guard against Jonathon and the matron. “Sergeant Holingsworth. Perhaps you and Miss Lovelace would like to sit at that table over there.”

Daphne was clearly affronted. “Will you be alright, Doreen?”

Bliss gave her a nasty look. What did she think he was going to do? Tuesday lunchtime in the middle of a restaurant – arm up her back; smack her in the gob; thumbscrews?

“What did you want to tell me?” he asked as Samantha led Daphne reluctantly away.

“Jonathon didn't kill Major Dauntsey – don't listen to him. He's a very silly boy. He thinks he's protecting me but no good will come of it,” she said, leaving Bliss intrigued to note her avoidance of the word father.

“I know that, Mrs. Dauntsey, I worked that out already. But the question now is ...” he leant close, “Who did kill him?”

Technically, he should've cautioned her. She was, after all, the prime suspect, though the evidence was shaky to say the least.

“He was shot you know,” she said distantly, as if recalling some character from a play or book.

“Yes, I know, Mrs. Dauntsey. But who shot him? That's the question.”

“Oh – I've no idea,” she said, shaking her head as if she'd got a nasty taste. “A German, I guess, although I couldn't be sure.”

Bliss's face clouded in bewilderment. “Let's start again,” he said. “I think you're a bit confused.” Then he looked her carefully in the eye and articulated precisely. “Your husband came back from the war badly wounded – right?”

A sudden sharpness in her eyes turned her instantaneously into both hunted and haunted. Her face drained to white so rapidly that, for a moment, he wondered if she'd died, then her hand flew to her mouth and she started eating away at a nail.

Realising there was a problem, he gave her a few seconds to recover before asking, “Shall I try that again?”

“No … No … No … I understood you,” she muttered, then changed her face, and the subject, so fast he presumed she'd had some sort of seizure. “The doctor told Jonathon I should go to Switzerland for treatment. Can you believe that, Inspector?”

“Yes ... but ... ” he started, then his mouth froze in indecision as an important, though elusive, thought gnawed into his mind.

“Wouldn't that be something – Switzerland,” continued Doreen, with a faraway look.

“Yes – It would ...” he said, but wasn't listening. What was it that she had said?

“I think I'd like a fresh cream meringue,” said Doreen, cutting into his thoughts, spying a refrigerated display case. “With a real maraschino cherry on top. Would you mind, Inspector? Only the food at the home is ... well, I'm sure you know.”

“Sorry,” he said, giving himself a shake. “Did you say meringue?” But his mind was still miles away. He'd found what he was looking for and was puzzling over it.

“With a maraschino cherry,” she reminded him.

“Oh yes. Of course you may,” he said, signalling to a waif in a waitresses uniform.

“Mrs. Dauntsey ...” he started questioningly, but she held up a spidery hand, indicating that the meringue was next on her agenda, and they sat in silence awaiting its arrival; Bliss checking his watch, wondering what Superintendent Donaldson was doing; wondering what plans were being concocted to oust him; wondering how long it would take Jonathon to track them down; wondering when the killer would strike again.

The slender young woman was back with the meringue in a few seconds and Doreen eyed her critically. “Skinny as a cheap chicken,” she muttered as soon as the girl was out of earshot, then took a bite. The confectionary exploded in a sugary snowstorm, dusting the bodice of her navy blue dress and giving her a coughing fit. Daphne sprang to Doreen's side with surprising agility, towing Samantha in her wake, giving Bliss an accusatory stare. “Oh look at the mess,” she moaned, and set about cleaning up her old friend.

Doreen was still coughing but Bliss couldn't contain himself any longer. “When I asked what happened to your husband,” he began, “you said the Germans shot him. But how did he get home with a hole in his skull ...?”

Doreen creased in another convulsion of coughing and Daphne roughly pushed him aside. “Now look what you've done.”

Backing away, he focused on the diminutive grey-haired figure, a plethora of thoughts bombarding his mind, then all the cherries clinked into place and the jackpot came out so fast he had a job to keep up: The returning Major was unrecognisable; barely able to talk; refused to see Patrick Mulverhill the reporter; was in possession of another man's dog-tags; and, finally, most decisively, had been shot by a German. Bingo!

“The man in your attic wasn't Major Rupert Dauntsey, your husband, was he?” he breathed, astounded by the clarity of his own revelation.

Doreen's head went down, her hands flew to cover her face and she gave a startled cry.

“Now see what you've done,” said Daphne rebukefully, as her friend burst into floods of tears. “Are you alright, Doreen?”

Doreen was anything but alright.

Chapter Fifteen
_____________________________

A
storm was brewing at Westchester police station. Superintendent Donaldson had pressed the panic button a little before ten in the morning. Exhausted of ideas, nerve and executive toys he called the Assistant Chief Constable with rising concern about Bliss, the death threat and the goat. Detective Sergeant Patterson, summoned by phone, strolled cockily into the superintendent's office, coffee cup in hand. “You wanted something, Guv?” he said, with enough political
savoir faire
to know that indispensability outranks rank, and flopped into a comfortable looking leather armchair.

“Yeah, Pat. There's still no sign of D.I. Bliss – you've no ideas have you?”

“Like I said on the phone, Guv. I ain't his social secretary.”

No need to be like that, thought Donaldson. “Well, you'd better get the men together in the parade room at eleven for a briefing ... The Assistant Chief's coming to lead the enquiry,” he added as he picked flakes of chocolate from the groin of his trousers. “Bloody biscuits,” he mumbled. “Well ... what are you waiting for?”

“Thought we were supposed to be searching for Dauntsey's victim,” grumbled Patterson with no attempt to move, “Not poncing around after Bliss.”

“I don't give a shit about Dauntsey at the moment,” Donaldson's voice rose as he stood, snowing crumbs onto the floor. “Everything is on hold until we find D.I. Bliss – do I make myself clear?”

Patterson, seeing himself as unofficial envoy for the world, pushed for more information. “What's he supposed to have done, Guv?”

“What on earth makes you ask that? The man's missing for God's sake – might be murdered for all we know.”

Patterson's face contorted. “Murdered?” he echoed.

“Why?”

Bliss was anything but dead. In fact, in the charged moments following his revelation about the identity of the body in Doreen's attic, he found himself widely alert to his surroundings. Previously unnoticed objects now appeared as if through a lens, and he was surprised to find the coffee shoppe walls deep in bric-a-brac: polished horse brasses, gleaming like old gold, hung on black leather straps; shiny copper kettles and silvery samovars with ivory handles filled every niche; a weird collection of papier-mâché masks adorned the wainscotting: white-faced Pierrots; red-nosed clowns; devilishly horned Satans with flaming vermilion hair; grotesque, gruesome and macabre masks; whimsical, fanciful and capricious masks. And, although every mask differed, each facial image was tortured by a pair of eye holes into which, and out of which, came only darkness, and, through which he saw a mirror of Doreen Dauntsey.

Doreen had sunk into a torpor, staring rigidly into the middle distance, trying to see both into the past and future at the same time, while mentally fighting against hideous images of the body in her attic. The intensity of her mental battle spun off brain-waves that disquieted every head in the room; drawing the sour-faced woman in black from her window seat to hover, nosily, unladylike, just six feet from the wheelchair; causing a group of elderly patrons to wrap shawls and summer jackets tightly about them; dragging the spindly waitress back to their table.

“Something wrong with the meringue?” she enquired.

“No, no – it's fine,” said Bliss, waving her off.

Daphne, peering unselfconsciously into Doreen's sightless eyes muttered, “I think the old turkey's snuffed it.”

Samantha put her hand on Doreen's pulse. “No, she hasn't, Daphne – don't exaggerate.”

Daphne, unconvinced, furiously fanned a hand in front of Doreen's stony face. “Well, she looks fairly dead to me,” she said, measuring death by degrees.

“Be quiet,” hissed Samantha, then softened her tone. “Doreen love. Squeeze my hand if you can hear.”

The spidery fingers tightened a fraction.

“She squeezed,” declared Samantha with relief and Bliss bent over her shoulder, whispering, “It could be a stroke – I'd better get an ambulance.”

Doreen's thin voice whistled through taut lips. “No. I'll be alright. Please don't make a fuss.”

The sinister looking woman snorted, catching everyone's attention, then returned to her table, her veiled face giving nothing away.

“Maybe she was an undertaker's scout,” Samantha joked later when she and Bliss were snuggling warmly together on her couch, and, although he laughed, he couldn't help wondering if the old witch hadn't had a walkie-talkie linked to a funeral home in her black clutch-bag.

Doreen went back inside her mind: seeing a dapper little Major with a sharp brain and no chin getting married and going to war, and a ragged bundle of bandages coming home – still chinless; asking herself the questions that had tormented her for half a century:
So – Just
when did you realise the major wasn't himself? When
did you know the pompous little toad hadn't come
back? Was it days; weeks; months or even years?

It wasn't years. I was still pregnant when he ... when “the thing” came back. It couldn't have been years.

You weren't expecting him to come back at all were
you? That was your plan, wasn't it?

No, it wasn't.

Don't lie, Doreen.

I'm not.

Bloody liar – you've always been a bloody liar.