Murder at Mullings--A 1930s country house murder mystery (25 page)

‘Oh!' Surprisingly, Lamorna sounded as though she savoured this display of masterfulness. No man had ever dared attempt such a thing with her before. ‘Well, yes, I am horribly upset. Mummy and Daddy won't help with the flat either. They said they couldn't possibly go against Regina.'

Ned cringed. ‘You weren't going to ask them. You promised you wouldn't.'

‘So I did, but …'

‘I told you I'd think of some other way.'

‘So what have you come up with?'

‘Well, I can talk to Seymour Cleerly, Grandfather's solicitor – mine now – and see if he can't find some loophole to free up the funds we'll need. He's a decent chap …' Ned's voice trailed away. He didn't think it at all likely anything would come of the attempt.

Lamorna seized on his hesitancy to begin weeping again. ‘It's all too cruel! I was just saying to Mummy and Daddy that the only hope is for someone to murder that heartless witch!' Her voice rose. ‘Are you listening to me, precious, or are you beginning to wish you hadn't proposed to me?'

It crept in upon Ned, that he was close to regretting his impulse of the previous evening; that what he'd really wanted was to remain forever in the dizzying delight of love's enthrallment, with his feet never touching the ground and every breath an intake of glorious anticipation of when he'd see her next. The guilt arising from such cowardly thinking caused him to respond forcefully to what she had said.

‘Of course I don't wish I hadn't asked you to marry me. As for Regina, I'd gladly murder her; I just have to think how to do it without landing in the soup!' At that moment he saw movement through the gap in the doorway. Someone – or perhaps several people – was in the hall. No need to worry about Regina as she was gone for the day visiting the Stafford-Reids – unless she'd returned unexpectedly. And, anyway, neither she nor anyone else would take what they'd overheard seriously. The house was full of people bound to have wished Regina underground almost daily.

‘Would you really – for me?' Lamorna had brightened.

Irritation surged as it might not have done if she had been in the room with all her physical enchantments. ‘Just joking,' said Ned, ‘as I know you were too.'

‘No, I wasn't,' came the petulant reply, ‘although I'll admit it would be more convenient, as I told Mummy and Daddy, if she were hauled off to the Tower and had her head chopped off. I'm not usually bloodthirsty,' she added reassuringly, ‘but that flat in London means everything to me – you do see that, don't you, darling?'

Ned winced. ‘Yes, of course. Look, I have to go … sweetheart. I'll phone Cleerly when I get back from taking Rouser for his walk. I have to see to him now.'

‘If he's more important than I am!'

It was several prolonged moments before Ned could replace the receiver and go into the hall, now empty of any presence but his own, then head down to the lower regions, where Rouser was always to be found when not in his company. Although Mrs McDonald did not want the dog in the kitchen when meals were being prepared, she was always willing to supply him with a bone to take into the scullery. Ned was not sure that he was ready for a talk with Florie. There was so much to get sorted out in his head first, and even when that was done, wouldn't it be cowardly to cast himself upon her for moral support? But on entering the kitchen he found her engaged in conversation with Alf Thatcher and saw at once that she was distressed. She turned to him, hands clasped.

‘Troubling news, Ned.' She never called him that in front of others. ‘George Bird collapsed on the green early this morning and required help getting back to the Dog and Whistle.'

‘I'm sorry.' Ned forgot his own worries – the feeling of being a rat caught in a trap. He pulled a chair out from the table for her to sit in. ‘Any word on how he's doing?' He directed this to Alf.

‘Popped in to see him half an hour gone, Mr Ned. He insisted he was fine, just a dizzy spell, and didn't want the doctor. Said he'd refuse to see him if he showed up. Irritable, he was. That's not like Birdie by a long chalk. I don't know that I did right coming to tell Mrs Norris, but I felt she'd want to know, seeing they was friends once upon a time.'

‘I'm so grateful you did.' Florence sat down. ‘I want to see him, but would he resent my showing up after putting him out of my life as I did? The last thing I should do is upset him.'

Alf rubbed his chin. ‘Perhaps it'd be best to leave him be till it's clear he's on the mend. He could be annoyed that I told you. My Doris is forever telling me I stick my oar in where I shouldn't, but somehow I got to thinking a while back that whatever pulled you two apart, you was meant to be together.'

‘I'm not as sure as I once was that my reasons had validity and now it has to be too late for me to step back into George's life and offer support if he's ill with something more than he claims.'

‘Leave it to me,' said Ned. ‘I'll go along and see him. It's about time I started thinking beyond myself, Florie.'

Something in his voice told her all was not well with him and that it probably had to do with Lamorna Blake, but this was instantly overshadowed by worry about George. Could it be heart trouble, or something equally serious? She had not cried in many years, but she did so on going up to her bedroom after Ned and Alf had left. Robert's death had been anguishing, but unaccompanied by regrets. She must not allow them to consume her now; but it would not be easy to hold them at bay if Ned did not bring back encouraging news from the Dog and Whistle.

O
n the day after George Bird's collapse on the village green and Ned Stodmarsh's unhappy realization that he wasn't as glowingly enthused about becoming engaged to Lamorna Blake as he should have been, Florence's cousin Hattie Fly rose, as she always did, at six in the morning. After attending to her ablutions, she descended the narrow staircase and crossed the dim strip of hall to the kitchen.

In appearance Hattie epitomized the drab old maid on the shady side of fifty with indeterminate features, salt-and-pepper hair scraped back into a small bun and steel-rimmed spectacles perched on her nose. There was, however, a lightness to her step and a sparkle to her eyes – even when, as now, merely anticipating putting on the kettle for a cup of tea – which revealed that, far from believing herself short-changed by life, she was entirely contented with her lot. She was grateful to still be living in the house where she had been born. Hurst Row was a back alley off Kings Cross, and number twenty-nine was jammed midway in the sooty-bricked Victorian terrace. All the houses opened directly on to the street and had little in the way of back gardens, but the neighbours were in the main friendly, and just around the corner were several small shops that supplied household needs. Hattie considered herself supremely blessed that her home had an upstairs bathroom and lavatory, which many such dwellings lacked.

That the house did appear to have seen better days beyond the exterior grime was undeniable, but it was cheered inside by the smell of polish, shining brass, cozily hued curtains, and the comfortable three-piece suite in the front room, bought from a neighbouring family who were emigrating to Canada. Hattie had loved her parents dearly and, as their only child, begrudged not one moment of taking care of them in their infirm old age. Nor did she mind the necessity since their deaths of housing lodgers to supplement what she earned from taking in ironing. There had been a series of them, always two a time – though never a couple – occupying the pair of bedrooms at the top of the stairs, leaving for her use the tiny boxroom a half-flight up from them. Mr Page, a middle-aged shoe salesman, had now been with her for three years, and Miss Toffee Jones, aged twenty-five, for four months.

Mr Page was an ideal lodger, pleasant but unobtrusive. Hattie knew little more about him than she had done when he'd first arrived – that he was a bachelor and did not eat fish, except for kippers, which he liked to have for breakfast three times a week. Hattie, in addition to breakfast, provided an evening meal for her lodgers if they wished it. Mr Page more often than not ate at a restaurant on his way back from work. Toffee usually had dinner with Hattie and made a cheerful table companion. She always insisted on helping with the washing-up afterwards, which extended their conversations, often inconsequential, but occasionally otherwise. During one of their chats she'd mentioned having recently stopped seeing her young man.

‘We found out we didn't suit,' she'd said lightly. ‘No broken hearts.'

Hattie, who'd quickly become fond of Toffee, wasn't sure she believed this; the girl struck her as the sort to put a brave face on disappointments. Toffee was obviously not her real Christian name, but one that suited her perfectly. Her shiny bobbed hair and eyes were a warm brown, and the hair had a silver streak at the front. Hattie had assumed it was artificial, but Toffee had told her it resulted from being delivered by forceps and that her mother had died after giving birth to her.

Her father, a groom turned chauffeur, had passed away when she was ten. But she'd been fortunate in being from that time housed and educated at a private school by his employers until she was sixteen, at which time the son decided he was in love with her. Realistically, his parents' generosity had its limits. They had informed her kindly but firmly that it was time to make her own way in the world, with fifty pounds to support her until she found a job. According to Toffee, this had been not only reasonable but an exciting opportunity to spread her wings. Was this another case of her putting on a brave front? Being alone in the world at so young an age must surely have been somewhat scary. She had for several years now worked in a bookshop and said it was her dream to have one of her own. Like many young women, she was neither particularly pretty nor sadly plain, but there was a woodland nymph quality to her that had its own appeal, coupled with a vitality that was a breath of fresh air in the old house.

Hattie brewed her pot of tea and turned on the wireless before sitting down to enjoy it. There was the usual mention of what Parliament was doing, or rather not doing, before the announcer turned to the brutal stabbing on Monday evening of Ethel Joiner, aged sixty-nine, a long-time resident of three, Ockton Drive, Moorhead. A police search continued for the suspect, twenty-five-year old Arthur James Leighton, who had fled the scene after being discovered standing over the body with a bloodstained knife in his right hand by a friend of Mrs Joiner, at present wishing to remain anonymous. Mrs Joiner's nephew, Mr Bernard Brook, had provided information to the effect that his aunt had recently taken Mr Leighton, a struggling artist, into her home because she believed in his work and wished to assist its continuation.

A terrible thing, and it had happened not more than a couple of miles from Hurst Row. It was typical of Hattie that, in addition to sorrow for the victim, she felt a pang for the perpetrator. Such a dreadful burden to have to live with, whether caught or not, because surely the wicked had some conscience left in them.

Hattie still felt guilty for having once passed a blind man in the street without putting anything in his mug. She had been worried about her cousin Florie, who was then struggling with a problem relating to a suspicious death in the house where she was housekeeper, but that was no excuse for Hattie not digging into her purse for a half-crown. That murderer, if there had been one – and Florie had seemed less sure of that recently – had not been discovered. She had never, of course, breathed a word of this to Toffee Jones, but had seen no harm in telling her about Lord Stodmarsh's subsequent remarriage to a woman named Regina Stapleton, who had brought an ornamental hermit with her to Mullings. She hadn't needed to explain to Toffee the nature of this oddity. She'd instantly said she'd read about them in an old book in the shop where she worked.

‘How interesting that your cousin's mother had worked for the new Lady Stodmarsh's family, the Tamershams, you said, years before; but life is full of coincidences, isn't it?' Toffee had sat looking thoughtful. ‘Makes you wonder if there's some unseen force moving us around like pieces on a chessboard, doesn't it?'

Hattie had agreed she'd sometimes felt that way. She now turned off the wireless before pottering into the front room to open its curtains and do a quick dusting. The vase on the windowsill contained a bunch of flowers Toffee had brought in on Monday evening. Decidedly she was a kind, thoughtful girl, always happy to handle some errand such as putting letters Hattie had written into the pillar box. Mr Page had left his copy of the
Evening News
on the brass tray-topped Indian table in front of the couch; she picked it up as she always did and took it back to the kitchen to read later before putting it in the dustbin. She was tempted to look through it at once to see what was written about the murder – there was nothing on the front page – but Mr Page would be down at seven for his breakfast and it was now twenty minutes to that hour. Hattie cut the rind off the streaky bacon, which he preferred to gammon, and put it into the frying pan. When he entered the kitchen precisely on time, she set before him an oven-warmed plate with the bacon, fried tomatoes and fried bread.

‘Very nice, Miss Fly,' he said with, as ever, an inclusive look at the filled toast rack, butter dish, jar of marmalade and brown glazed teapot. At twenty-five past seven he bade her good day, collected his hat and coat from the hall tree and left the house. There was something very soothing in Mr Page's unfaltering routine and yet Hattie had sometimes wondered if he didn't occasionally feel the urge to do something that would surprise her along with others – such as parting his hair to the side rather than in the middle, or having a lie-in at weekends once in a while.

Toffee Jones did not live life to a pattern; she was either in a rush to get to work on time or had so much extra she would take old Mr Turner's dog for a walk. She was the sort of girl who was unbothered by being caught in the rain without an umbrella, laddering her last pair of stockings, or a cat jumping in through an open window on to her lap. The pity was, she'd once told Hattie, that nothing in the way of grand adventure had yet presented itself to her since setting out on her own, but she lived in hope of it doing so one day. There was never any telling whether she would eat breakfast. When she did it was tea and toast.