Paws for Alarm (8 page)

‘Oh ...' After a moment, the blankness cleared and my mind began to function again. I recognized her from Lania's dinner party. ‘Good morning, Mrs Thing.'

‘Good morning ... Mrs Harper.' She gave me a strange look. I hoped we were going to get on all right.

‘Please, call me Nancy.' I stood up quickly and held out my hand. ‘I'm awfully pleased to see you again, Mrs Thing. It's very nice of you to come and help us out.'

‘Um ... yes.' She took my hand tentatively and released it immediately. She didn't seem pleased to see me. Maybe she thought we'd always be out of the house when she came to clean. Come to think of it, I'd prefer it that way, too. Then I wouldn't have to feel guilty about sitting around in my bathrobe with the dishes in the sink and the beds unmade.

‘Well ...' I kept smiling but my mind had gone blank again. What did I do now? Should I suggest she go ahead with her work? Would that sound insulting? Maybe I ought to offer her a cup of coffee? But I had just emptied the pot and would have to make more.

‘Well ...' She glanced around the kitchen and then at me. ‘I expect you'll want to go and get dressed.'

‘Oh, yes. Yes, I do,' I said, gratefully leaping at the chance to retreat. ‘I'll just ...'

‘Don't bother about me.' She interpreted my hesitation correctly. ‘I'll just get on with things down here.' She began clearing the table.

I smiled nervously at her and fled.

I stayed out of sight for as long as I could. When sounds of activity below began to die down, I guessed that she must want to come upstairs and clean up here. Meanwhile, I had made the beds and done some preliminary dusting. It didn't look quite the pigsty it usually did when the twins were around.

‘Uh ...' I went to the head of the stairs. ‘I suppose you'd like to do up here now, Mrs Thing?'

‘In a minute.' She glared up at me. I had miscalculated. She had not finished. Far from it. She was on her hands and knees in the hallway, scrubbing away at the streaks on the parquet flooring.

‘Oh, I'm so sorry about that. The twins had new roller skates and they started trying them out inside the house before I could catch them.' I knew without being told that the Blake children would never ever have dreamed of doing anything like skating indoors. I wondered if she had noticed -

‘I see you've moved the jardiniere.' She had. She had probably counted every chip.

‘We're going to buy a replacement,' I said guiltily, starting down the stairs. ‘And we'll hire a sander before we leave and do the hallway properly. Please, Mrs Thing, don't bother about it. We'll fix it.'

‘My name is Mrs Dover –' She lurched to her feet and glared at me, eye-to-eye. ‘Dover, as in the port of.'

‘Oh, I'm sorry.' I could feel myself going red. ‘I thought – I mean, Lania said –'

‘Oh, I know where you got it from, don't worry. I know what that one calls me behind my back. It's all part of the airs and graces she gives herself, making out that she's too above people like me to remember our names. She doesn't dare call me that to my face, I promise you.'

‘Oh, dear,' I said. ‘I'm so sorry, Mrs Th – Mrs Dover. I do apologize most earnestly.' I was growing furious, with myself as well as with Lania. I should have realized that Thing was an unlikely name from the way Lania had rattled it off.

‘Don't worry, I know it's not your fault. And I'll tell you something about that “lady”. She's not all she pretends to be – not by any means. Lania – hhmmph!' Mrs Dover sniffed. ‘Her real name is Lana – so that just shows you, doesn't it?'

‘Er, yes. Yes, indeed,' I agreed cravenly, wondering what I was being shown.

‘She stuck the “i” in to make it sound lah-di-dah, but she started out as Lana, all right. And I happen to know for a fact that she's got a sister named Marlene and a brother named Orson. I've seen letters from them. So she needn't go around trying to pretend she's so upper crust. Her and her Mrs Things!'

She turned on her heel and marched up the stairs, nodding her head vehemently at every step, still muttering under her breath.

Thoroughly demoralized, I fled to the kitchen, shook the money for her salary out of my purse and left it on the kitchen table, then checked that the kids were still okay out in the yard.

‘I've got an errand to do,' I told them. ‘You stay here and be good. Tell Mrs Dover her money is on the kitchen table, if she asks. I'll be back later.' Then I left the house.

There was no doubt about it. No way was I ever going to be in the house again on Mrs Dover's cleaning day.

Nonetheless, as the day wore on, I found myself immoderately cheered by the realization that Lania was only, as Beatrice Lillie had so aptly phrased it, ‘Every other inch a lady'.

The knowledge stood me in good stead after dinner that evening. Hazel had served a delicious meal and we had adjourned to the living-room for coffee and liqueurs, the twins settled in a corner with a video game belonging to her absent children. Hazel sent an occasional wistful glance towards them and it occurred to me that she must be very lonely, trying to fit into the life of a new community, with her husband always off on business and the children away at school. I was about to remark sympathetically on this situation when the doorbell rang.

‘I'll go –' Hazel said rather apprehensively – and unnecessarily. Certainly no one else was going to answer the door in her house. She sent us an almost pleading glance and hurried out of the room.

We heard the front door opening and then a babble of voices. One voice rose above the others and I froze. I turned to Arnold and saw that he had paled. We exchanged a look of mutual helplessness and despair. We had been set-up.

As Lania and Richard reached the doorway, Lania was laughing at something he had said. She took one look at us and stopped laughing.

‘Don't blame us,' I said quickly. ‘This wasn't our idea.'

‘Actually –' Hazel edged them further into the room, closed the door and leaned against it, cutting off any escape for Lania. ‘It was my idea. Mine – and Richard's. We felt the awkwardness had gone on long enough. It was an accident, for heaven's sake – and you
do
live next door to each other. You can't carry on like this all summer.'

‘That's right,' Richard chimed in. ‘Time to kiss and make up –' He caught the look Lania flashed at him and faltered. ‘Well, make up, anyway.'

The silence seemed to go on for ever, punctuated by random bleeps from the corner where the twins, happily oblivious, were annihilating astral aliens.

Lania looked as though she wouldn't mind disposing of a couple of troublesome terrestrial aliens herself.

‘Come, come –' Hazel gave a nervous laugh. ‘
Please
–' Her voice quivered with genuine emotion.

‘I have so few friends in this town. I can't bear it if you're not speaking to each other.'

‘Jolly awkward,' Richard agreed. ‘The children playing together, getting on so well – and the parents on the outs.'

‘
I'm
not on the outs,' I said pointedly. ‘
I'm
not not speaking to anyone — and neither is Arnold.'

‘There now –' Richard turned to Lania. ‘You see? It's all up to you. What do you say?'

We held our breath.

‘Oh, all right,' Lania said ungraciously. She forced a smile. It
was
an accident, I know. But I put so much time and effort into coaxing that hedge into shape –'

‘That's enough now,' Richard said. ‘We're going to forget the hedge and start all over again.' He turned to Hazel. ‘How about that coffee and liqueur we were invited for?'

‘Coming right up.' Hazel moved swiftly towards the kitchen.

‘Well ...' Lania forced another smile and looked around the room. ‘Isn't this cosy?' She found a seat in the farthest corner. Diplomatic relations had been resumed, but it was going to take a while before they went beyond the bare courtesies.

‘Just the way it should be,' Richard said expansively. He seemed to be secretly relieved; he had not been at all sure which way his cat would jump.

‘Here we are.' Hazel wheeled in the hostess trolley with fresh supplies of coffee and exotic bottles – all unopened. I wondered if this was the first time she had entertained in a long while.

Possibly it was the first time she had entertained in this house. There was a curiously bandbox look about it. All the furniture was new and shining, the rugs seemed not to have been subjected to any wear and tear. The room had not the conscious spotlessness of Lania's drawing-room, it was more like the impersonal background of a hotel. There were no family photographs on the wall or on any of the gleaming surfaces. Only the video games the twins were playing with gave evidence that there were children somewhere in the background.

That wistful expression on her face when she watched the twins had betrayed how much she missed her children.

On the other hand, she might be enjoying the chance to have an uncluttered home for a few weeks. It would get that lived-in look fast enough when she had her husband and kids back. She might then be wistful about the good old days when she had been running a bachelor-girl establishment, with no one to tidy up after.

‘I think you'll like this.' Hazel set a liqueur glass beside my demitasse. ‘It's framboise – my favourite.' A swift glance at both fragile objects gave me the sudden dizzying impression that I was a child again partaking of a doll's tea party. I lifted the glass to my lips and my head cleared – this was no child's drink.

“That's what I call raspberry juice with a kick,' Arnold approved. ‘Would you mind telling me where we can find a bottle of this for ourselves?'

‘There's a little shop in town –' Lania cut in before Hazel could reply, unable to resist the temptation to give advice. Hazel caught my eye, smiled, and leaned back and left her to it.

The conversation lost its constraint and went smoothly from that point. By leavetaking, most of the cracks in the Harper-Sandgate relationship had been papered over. We were back on an almost friendly footing again.

‘You've been great.' Arnold turned impulsively in the doorway and hugged Hazel. ‘You must come to us next time.'

‘I'd like that,' Hazel responded warmly. Too warmly. They were right underneath the front porch light and I could see her arms tighten around him.

A nasty little suspicion curled through my mind: Hazel was missing more than her children.

I would take this up with Arnold later. I turned away and caught the look that passed between Lania and Richard. They had noticed, too.

‘You can stay, if you like,' I told Arnold sweetly.

‘Just coming –' Arnold dropped his hostess guiltily.

‘Don't hurry on my account. Any time you want him –' I laughed merrily to Hazel – ‘I'll swap him for a rusty toasting fork.'

‘Don't tempt me,' she laughed back.

After all that, it was highly ironic to realize that Lania would have begun speaking to us again on Saturday in the normal course of events.

Not that it was normal for the police to bring Arnold home.

He'd been in London all day – as usual. He'd warned me that he might be a bit late as there were a couple of bookshops in Charing Cross Road he wanted to visit. I knew Arnold when he got into a bookshop – he looked on them as libraries with price tags – he was almost impossible to dislodge until the place closed for the night.

So I wasn't surprised at how late he was. Annoyed, but not surprised.

I turned the oven to its lowest setting and worked off my irritation by whipping cream with a manual eggbeater. When the doorbell rang – just like him to forget his key again – I ignored it. I heard the twins' footsteps racing for the door. Then:

‘Hey, Mom –' Donald shouted gleefully. ‘Guess what? Dad's under arrest!'

‘I am not!' Arnold bellowed.

I dropped the eggbeater on the table and it rolled to the floor, scattering dollops of cream all the way. I was vaguely aware of a delighted Esmond advancing upon this unexpected largesse as I dashed for the front door.

I took one look at Arnold – held upright by a policeman on either side of him – and screamed. I had never done that before. But I had never seen Arnold in such a condition before, either.

He had a black eye, a large bump on his forehead and a graze on his cheek. One arm was bandaged, his shirt bloodstained, his glasses bent askew. He held himself strangely, as though there might be a cracked rib or two.

‘It's all right, honey,' Arnold said. ‘It just looks a lot worse than it is.'

‘Arnold! What happened?'

‘I don't know.' He shook himself free of the policemen. ‘I was waiting for the train. There'd been a big game somewhere today and Waterloo Station was full of soccer hooligans. But they were at the other end of the station. I thought we were okay down at my end. There were several of us waiting for the platform gate to open.'

‘It was a fight!' Donald's eyes gleamed. ‘Did you win, Dad? What do the other guys look like?'

‘It was no contest,' Arnold snapped. ‘The last thing I remember, there was shouting and suddenly all the hooligans charged towards us. We scattered. I felt a thump between my shoulder blades. It spun me round. Fortunately, I flung my arm up –' He paused thoughtfully and went off into one of those analytical asides that are going to drive me crazy someday.

‘It was sheer instinct. My hand went automatically to my throat to protect it. It must be one of those gestures arising from race memories: always protect the jugular vein. I'd had no idea I was going to do it. It was –'

‘Arnold!'

‘Just as well you did, sir,' one of the policemen said. ‘From the looks of your arm, he was stabbing for the heart.'