Strangeways to Oldham (9 page)

 ‘Dammit!' she muttered, rather strongly for her, and nudged Hugo to get him moving. ‘I've left Beauchamp outside with the Rolls. Told him to use my mobile to try to get a picture of the cove leaving. We'll just have to follow him now, if we want to find out where he lives.'

‘But there was nothing left to him in the will. We've hit a dead end,' protested Hugo. ‘If he wasn't left a bean, why would he want to kill old Reggie like that? It doesn't make sense, Manda.'

‘It does!' she insisted. ‘It's just a complicated puzzle, for which we don't have all the pieces yet. I
know
that young man did for Reggie, and I have the evidence locked securely in my safe to prove it. We'll just have to find out who he really is.'

‘Perhaps he was Reggie's home nurse,' suggested Hugo, rather swamped with things medical at the moment and not enjoying it one jot.

‘‘Brilliant!' quoth Lady Amanda, and rushed to catch young Mr Williams before he left. She managed to grab him by the sleeve of his jacket as he was heading out of the room, and asked, in as casual a fashion at she could muster at short notice, and with such excitement flooding her mind, ‘Who is that young man who stayed on for the reading of the will? I don't think I've been introduced.'

‘That was young Mr Foster – Derek Foster,' he answered, unsuspectingly.

‘And how did he know Reggie?' she asked, her face a mask of innocence.

‘I believe he used to provide nursing care for Mr Pagnell, before the departed had to be admitted to a home for full-time care. His mind was wandering so much he needed constant supervision, lest he wander away and get lost, I believe.'

‘That's very interesting, Mr Williams. Thank you so much for your time and trouble. Do you happen to know where Mr Foster lives?' This would really be a coup for them, if she could get his address.

‘I'm afraid I haven't the faintest idea, my dear young lady. He answered an advertisement I placed in the local paper, asking him to contact us. This, he did, and our only other contact has been by telephone.'

‘Cow poo!' declared Lady Amanda, as they got back into the Rolls. ‘I thought we had it all neatly stitched up there, and now we've lost him. Waiting to talk to that old twit has cost us time we couldn't afford. If I'd thought about it harder, it would probably have been better to follow him to find out his address, then we could have delivered him to Inspector Moody as a nicely wrapped-up parcel, specifically addressed to the Department of Public Prosecutions.'

‘But he didn't get the money or the house,' protested Hugo anew.

‘No, but he was Reggie's home nurse. There's more of a tangled plot here, than I thought. Did you manage to get a photograph, Beauchamp?'

‘I shot off a couple, and one of them's not too bad. He moved in the other one, and he's just a blur.'

‘Good-oh!' chortled Lady Amanda. ‘A very successful surveillance job, Beauchamp!'

‘Beecham,' muttered their chauffeur, but under his breath.

‘So, what do we do next, Manda?' asked Hugo, all ears, now that the game was still afoot.

‘We show the photograph on my phone to Nurse Plunkett, to see if she can positively identify him, and we proceed from there. It's time we visited Enid again, anyway. I promised we'd visit her every day, and I've not been too good at keeping my promise.'

Chapter Nine

The weather cleared up after luncheon, and a watery sun shone in a pale blue sky. This was grist to Lady Amanda's mill, and she insisted that Hugo have another go at learning to ride the motorised trike. His protest were squashed as easily as swatting a fly, and at two thirty he found himself being escorted outside, wearing an old-fashioned crash helmet, and a pair of gauntlets – 'Lest you fall off and scrape your hands,' Lady Amanda had reassured him.

Except that all this protective gear just made him even more apprehensive about the venture, but he knew there was no escape. Once Manda had you in her clutches, there was no way out. A man resigned to his fate, he allowed himself to be led over to ‘that contraption of Satan himself', as he mentally referred to it; but never out loud, for fear that Manda should hear him, and brand him a coward.

‘Get on it, then you can just try pedalling, without turning the motor on, just to get the feel of the steering; that sort of thing,' she commanded him. And he did push like the very devil on the pedals, but they moved so very slowly, that Lady Amanda eventually took hold of the back of the saddle, and started to push him, to get him going.

‘Don't do that, Manda! It's too fast!'

‘Stuff and nonsense! Here, let me push you a little faster – feet on pedals, old boy,' she puffed, heaving him along with all her strength, her hands now firmly on his back.

‘Argh!' screamed Hugo, as his feet met the pedals, and found the turning movement irresistible, and were compelled to join in. ‘Manda!' he wailed, ‘You forgot to tell me where the brakes are.' And thus, hooting and yelling, he propelled himself, slowly but assuredly, into the trunk of a venerable oak tree.

Luckily, he had been travelling at a very low speed, and neither he nor the tricycle came to any harm. ‘Now, Hugo,' ordered Lady Amanda bossily, ‘here are the brakes, just under your hands on the handlebar.' She pointed at each brake handle. ‘Have you never ridden a bicycle before? It's just the same as that.'

‘A skill, I'm ashamed to say, I never mastered,' admitted the hapless jockey.

‘You just squeeze them gently, and you'll come to a stop. When the motor's going, you just turn this little knob, then activate the brakes.'

‘I don't think I want to try it with the motor today, Manda. It's frightening enough without it.'

‘Humbug! But, as you wish. But we'll have another go with me pushing, just so that you can try out the brakes. Here we go!' and she fastened her hands firmly against his back, and began to propel the tricycle forward with ever-increasing speed.

‘Argh!' yelled Hugo again. ‘It's much too fast, Manda. Slow down!' the latter being a hopeless request. Lady Amanda had no more intention of slowing down than she had of flying to the moon without the aid of a rocket.

‘And away!' she cried, removing her hands and stopping, as she saw Hugo's unwilling feet relentlessly drawn to the pedals again. ‘And steer round the tree, not into it, this time.' She called this last instruction after his figure, retreating down the drive at a sedate three miles an hour.

Hugo, however, did not find it sedate, and considered the idea of propelling himself, at all like this, a truly frightening experience, at his age. As a wooden bench hove into view, not far ahead of him on his current trajectory, he could hear Amanda calling to him to operate the brakes, and he clutched desperately at the two little levers below the handgrips of the handlebars.

The trike stopped, as suddenly as if it had run into a brick wall, and Hugo found himself unexpectedly flung across the handlebars, where Lady Amanda found him draped, when she caught up with him, shortly afterwards. ‘What happened this time?' she asked, amazed that anyone could make such a muddle of riding a tricycle. Did he never have one as a child? she wondered.

‘I pulled on the brakes, like you said, and the thing felt like the Titanic when it ran into the iceberg. It just stopped, only I didn't. Give me a hand, old thing, will you? I'm rather stuck, and need a bit of help.'

Lady Amanda obliged, and sat him gently on the bench he had nearly tried to reduce to matchwood. Having moved the tricycle to one side, she sat down beside him, and announced, ‘We'll have another lesson tomorrow. I really think you're getting the hang of it now, Hugo. But before we finish for the day, let me give you one more demonstration.

‘I want you to observe very closely exactly what I do, and how I do it,' she cajoled him, as she mounted the conveyance that had caused Hugo so much distress.

‘Like this,' she called, looking over her shoulder at him, as she tricycled off. It was unfortunate that she was not paying sufficient attention to the direction in which she was headed. As Hugo observed as closely as he could, he suddenly observed that she had disappeared, as if swallowed by the ground itself.

‘Manda, where are you?' he called, rising to his feet and beginning to totter towards the spot that she had simply ceased to occupy. ‘What's happened to you? Are you all right?'

A series of strangled cries, still out of his sight, arose from a little way ahead, then Lady's Amanda's head seemed to appear from out of the ground. Hugo stopped his snail-like progress, shocked rigid by the appearance of her head, and called, ‘Have you gone down a hole or something?'

‘No, Hugo,' replied the erstwhile tricycling teacher, daintily spitting out the flower-head of a daisy. ‘I just completely forgot about the ha-ha! Haha!'

After the application of a little iodine, and the partaking in of afternoon tea, they climbed into the Rolls to visit Enid Tweedie, to instigate her second debrief of the investigation.

They found her in a day room, socialising with other patients, and generally having a right good old time. As they entered the room, she noticed them and waved, announcing to the room at large, ‘Look! Here are my friends Lady Amanda Golightly and Hugo Cholmondley-Crichton-Crump. Aren't I lucky to have such attentive friends, coming here to visit me?'

They ushered her out of the room as discreetly as possible, which meant, in Lady Amanda's case, ordering her to get on to her feet and get straight back to her quarters, so that they could have a little private chat together.

Back in her own room, Enid plonked herself into the only armchair, proprietorially, leaving her two visitors either to stand, or perch on the bed. Given their ages, they chose the latter option, and Lady Amanda began her interrogation.

‘Have you found out anything more about that chap that murdered Reggie? Has Nurse Plunkett spilled any more beans?'

‘She spilled a bedpan yesterday. In the corridor,' Enid informed them with glee. ‘Matron gave her absolute hell for it, and she's threatened to ask for a transfer to another location. She said she could be treated like dirt at home by her family, and didn't see why she had to come here six days a week for an extra portion, considering what little she gets paid.'

‘You're treating this like a visit to a holiday camp, my girl, and that won't do at all.'

‘Oh, but I love it here. I'm having a very good time. I'm feeling so much better, and I'm having a really good rest. Thank you so much for arranging it for me, Lady Amanda.'

‘Giving you a whale of a time wasn't the reason I booked this little visit, originally, was it, Enid? I want you here to gather information, so that we can bring a killer to justice. You're just not taking it seriously,' Lady Amanda chided her, and when you were chided by Lady Amanda, you knew about it, all right.

‘But I am, my lady. Honestly! It's just that nobody else seems to have seen your chap. The time you came in visiting, when he'd not long left, is a very quiet time. It's when all the patients take an afternoon nap, so there was hardly anyone around.'

‘Cunning swine! Did Nurse Plunkett know his name? We think we have it from our own investigations, but I'd like confirmation.'

‘She thought he was known as ‘Del', but that's all she could tell me.'

‘Is she on duty this afternoon?' Lady Amanda wanted to know.

‘I think so. I'll give a little buzz, and see if I can get her to come down here, so that you can ask her what you want to know yourself.'

Nurse Plunkett was available, but Matron was not happy about letting her ‘socialise' with the patients. When, however, she found that this had been a special request from Lady Amanda Golightly, she capitulated. There was no way she'd win a fight with that formidable woman, and her title was the deciding factor.

‘How nice to meet you, my dear,' cooed Lady Amanda, a dove of peace, for the moment. ‘I wonder if there's anything more you can tell us about that chap you said they call Del?'

‘I'm awfully sorry,' the little nurse replied, ‘but I don't really know him. He just works for the same nursing agency that I do.'

‘And which agency is that?' the cooing had become a positive purr of persuasion.

‘Edwards's Nursing Agency. It's run by Malcolm Edwards,' she informed them, then Lady Amanda remembered her mobile phone, and took it out of her handbag, selected the good photograph taken by Beauchamp after the funeral, and showed it to her, saying,

‘Is this the man called Del?'

‘That's him. I recognised him straight off, but I really don't know anything more about him,' she replied.

‘Well, thank you very much for what you have told us. You may go now.'

Nurse Plunkett seemed nonplussed by this abrupt dismissal, which was something she had not been subject to since she was at infants' school, but left the room nonetheless, feeling that to disobey might bring down, if not quite the wrath of God, then at least the wrath of Lady Amanda, and she didn't think there'd be much to choose between them. She'd heard tales of this woman's first visit to the home, and if she'd intimidated Matron, and ‘sprung' one of the patients, then she was a force to be reckoned with, and not to be crossed.

Chapter Ten

The next morning, Thursday, Hugo took breakfast in bed, leaving Lady Amanda free to carry out a little errand she had been meaning to do since Hugo had moved in. She set off into what promised for now to be a fine day, on her trusty trike, for the centre of Belchester.

Travelling through the city centre on her trike was a completely different experience to going through it in the Rolls. One saw so much more, and Belchester was really a very pretty little place, if one raised one's eyes above shop frontage level. Above the sea of plate glass windows with their gaudy displays of wares, one became aware of the history of the place, and the time it had taken to grow to this wonderful mixture of styles and ages.

The latest additions to the terraces of shops had been Victorian, as the city had luckily avoided any bomb damage during the war, and these facades were typical of their era, many of them gothic revival in style. Other buildings had graceful Georgian frontages, unfussy and clean-lined. Moving back through time, one eventually encountered Tudor buildings, with their exposed beams and mullioned windows with leaded lights, above ground-floor level.

Although Lady Amanda's family had caused Belchester Towers to be built nearly two centuries ago, true Belchester families still considered the Golightlys to be incomers – Johnny-come-latelys; mere upstarts – so deeply buried were the roots of these ancient families in this very old city, which still boasted substantial and respectable remains of its venerable Roman walls.

The cathedral itself had been built to serve a living community that already possessed a considerable history, and not just to venerate and pray for the souls of the dead.

Some of the history of this long-established city could be easily read, if one only aimed one's gaze upwards, and Lady Amanda never tired of examining this mixture of architectural styles. This was not her business today, though, and she headed her tricycle for the post office: the goal of her errand.

Her business done, she headed back to Belchester Towers, encountering Hugo just exiting his bedroom, as she appeared in the entrance hall. ‘Morning, Hugo,' she called cheerily. ‘A bit cream-crackered after yesterday, were we?' she enquired solicitously.

‘'Fraid so, Manda. I'm not getting any younger, you know.'

‘None of us is, Hugo. I've been into town, and I've got something here for you, that I know you need,' she replied.

‘Ooh, what is it?' asked Hugo, eager to see if she had bought him a little present.

‘It's a post office form to have your mail redirected to this address,' she answered, disappointing him. ‘We've been collecting your post from the nursing home every time we visit Enid, but she'll be out soon, and then it'll be a real drag, so I got this form for you to fill in. If you can get it done before this afternoon, Beauchamp can drop it in for you, and Bob's your uncle.'

Hugo heaved a great sigh of despair. ‘Whatever's the matter with you?' Lady Amanda enquired, surprised at his reaction. She thought he'd be pleased to get his mail organised.

‘I bet it's got “full name” on it somewhere, hasn't it?'

‘Of course it has, Hugo. If they didn't know that, how would they know which mail was yours for redirection?'

‘I thought so.' Hugo sounded really down in the dumps.

‘Whatever is your problem,' she asked, puzzled.

‘Hugo Cedric Ethelred Raleigh Tennyson St John Cholmondley-Crichton-Crump,' he replied, looking downcast.

‘Oh crumbs! Great-grandmother's father?' she enquired, thinking how Enid Tweedie would lap up the information that Hugo had yet another name that wasn't pronounced as it was written.

Hugo knew, without asking, that she was referring to ‘St John'. ‘Yes,' he intoned dolefully. Back then, ladies hadn't thought of tacking their maiden name on to the end of their husband's surname, so I got lumbered with it, as a memento of times long ago. There's been a St John in the family since Great-grandmama's day, but I shan't be carrying on the tradition, thankfully,' he explained, with a rueful smile.

‘See what you mean, Hugo. Well, if you like, I'll fill it in for you, and you'll just have to sign it. What d'ya say,
compadre
?'

‘I say – thank you very much. That's most civil of you, Manda. You can imagine how I've dreaded filling in forms, all my life.'

‘I can, but I had no idea you were quite so encumbered! You poor sausage!' she replied, taking his arm and leading him into the drawing room.

‘I never knew you'd been living only about ten miles out of the city,' commented Lady Amanda, as they sat in the morning room sipping their morning coffee. ‘The last I heard, you were living in Town.'

‘I came back here when I retired, then I had to go into that horrible home, courtesy of the advice of old Dr Anstruther,' he explained.

‘So what happened to the family home then? It was huge, as I remember, with quite sizeable grounds.'

‘Papa had to sell it after the war. That's when we moved to where I ended up. I closed the house when they died, and returned to it, as I just mentioned, when I became eligible for my pension.'

‘And you never looked me up?' asked Lady Amanda.

‘I thought the Golightlys would be long gone. Thought the house would probably be offices, or some sort of ghastly institution by now, and I already had problems
getting around
, and checking that out was one of the things I,' here, Hugo paused for effect, ‘never
got around
to! Haha! Mild joke there, you know.'

‘Very witty, old bean. You seem a lot more cheerful than when you first moved in,' commented Lady Amanda.

‘I'm getting used to having company now. I must say, it was a bit of a shock to the system at first, if you don't mind me mentioning it, Manda.'

‘Not at all, Hugo; and I must admit that I felt exactly the same, but it's amazing how adaptable we humans are, and how quickly we get used to new circumstances, isn't it?

‘By the way, apropos your current house, I've had a few calls from estate agents who have clients who would like to view your house.'

‘So long as they keep them securely locked away when they're not in use, I have no objections whatsoever. I'm quite looking forward to an increase in income, and I doubt I'll return there – oh! Was that out of order, Manda? Maybe you don't want me hanging round here long-term.'

‘Of course it wasn't “out of order”, as you phrase it, Hugo. I didn't expect you to go back to independent living. We seem to be jogging along all right together, and I'm sure we'll get into a way of living that allows us to have company when we want it, and a little solitude, when we feel in need of some.'

‘You are a kind girl. Always were.'

‘The estate agents were surprised to get the chance of letting a house the size of yours. I thought your parents were downsizing!'

‘Well, you know how Mama and Papa liked to entertain, and they thought that, although they might have lost their grand house and all its fine grounds, at least they could afford to buy somewhere where they could still entertain – weekend parties; that sort of thing – and have their friends and family to stay.'

‘How very sensible of them not to buy some ghastly little bungalow on the coast and moulder away there, for the rest of their lives.'

‘They had a great time for their remaining years,' Hugo informed her. ‘And it was so much cheaper to run and maintain a house of that size, that they found they could entertain frequently, and, for a couple of those years, they even spent the winter in the Caribbean.'

‘And now you shan't moulder away either, in some seedy little nursing home. We're going to get your knees and hips sorted out, then we're going to have some fun!' predicted Lady Amanda.

‘But aren't the coffers a bit depleted?'

‘Well, I act as if they are, to all and sundry. I'm doing a very good job of publicly displaying the ‘mean gene' I inherited from Mummy, for I don't want people making approaches for loans or donations to whatever scrape they've got into, or for their pet charities, but no, the coffers are in very good order, but I fully intend to see that they are severely depleted, by the time I pop my clogs.'

‘How did your parents manage after the war? I mean, the county was in a terrible state, and so many of the people like us just went under.'

‘If you promise to keep it under your hat, Hugo, I'll tell you. But there's not another living soul knows this. Except, probably, Beauchamp. He is all-knowing and all-powerful, in his way.'

‘Cross my heart and hope to die,' said Hugo, in an excited voice, and miming the actions as he spoke.

Lady Amanda lowered her voice, and whispered at him, ‘Daddy was big in the black market during the war; and, in fact until the end of rationing in the fifties. When that died out, he became an arms dealer – very hush-hush, don't yer know. But not a word of this to a living soul – not even Beauchamp, even though he knew all along what was going on. Thing is, it's just not talked about. Bad form and all that, as well as it being rather illegal, and liable to be frowned upon, even in these more liberal-minded times.'

‘Good Lord! I had no idea!' Hugo was suitably shocked, right down to his pale-blue silk socks.

‘Oh, don't look like that! I never had anything to do with it. I wasn't even born when all this underhand business was going on, and anyway, it all ceased when Daddy and Mummy died, but the coffers were overflowing by then, so I've just lived off what they made, ever since.'

‘But how did you feel about living off money that was earned on the black market and by the sale of weapons?' Hugo asked, still suffering from the trauma of what he'd just learnt.

‘I just considered that money was money. I could either own up, and hand it all over to the government, or I could spend the rest of my days in comfort, wanting for nothing, but acting much more impoverished than I am.'

‘You always had the larder well-stocked, whenever we came over, and your parents never seemed to stint themselves with anything. Couldn't understand it at the time, but you never seemed to do without, like a lot of others we knew did.'

‘Never had to. Daddy still got deliveries from Harrods and Fortnum & Mason's; he just arranged the delivery of their wares differently. He used to get them to deliver to a meeting place about thirty miles away, in a plain van. The deliveries were always after dark, and Daddy just drove off, collected the goods, and drove home in the Rolls. He'd just bought the car then, and was inordinately proud of it. He also left the cellars well stocked with fine wines, in the same way. Was that so wrong of us, Hugo?'

Hugo thought for several minutes, then looked up and exclaimed, ‘You did exactly right! I know the black market was wrong, but, with a choice between deprivation, and an uninterrupted lifestyle, I know what I'd have chosen. Let's have some fun! I'm up for that! Is that why you didn't get requisitioned during the war?'

‘Absolutely not! That was because Mummy ran a “knocking shop” for the American soldiers nearby, and that was considered to be her contribution to war work.'

Hugo actually blushed at being told this. ‘Manda! How could she?'

‘Oh, quite easily, as it turned out. She used the room next to yours as an office, and just approached it as she would any other business venture. Even had an extension for the telephone installed, so that she could take bookings, for the higher ranks.

‘It was good money; it kept the servicemen from pestering local girls who wanted to be left alone, and it gave those who didn't the chance to earn a little extra money in very hard times. It was all, of course, kept as hush-hush as possible, the main drive never being used by either client or employees.

‘There were several unofficial entrances to the grounds, and if anyone commented on the number of guests we seemed to have, we passed it off as enthusiastic entertaining. We explained the lack of vehicles by citing the shortage of petrol and coupons, and said our friends were very imaginative in their means of transport.'

‘So your father was a black marketeer and a gun-runner, and your mother was a brothel-keeper?' Hugo asked, hardly able to believe what he was being told.

‘That about sums it up!' said Lady Amanda, in a very matter-of-fact voice.

‘You make it all sound so reasonable, Manda.' Hugo spoke in a horrified voice.

‘Well, it was! It was business at its most basic level, and everyone was a winner. You can't be squeamish, when you're faced with either bankruptcy, or a little dodgy business. It was dog-eat-dog back in those days, as you well remember. We all have choices to make in life, and our way to make in the world, and, I must say, I've certainly enjoyed the benefits of my parents' ill-gotten gains, as are you, now.

‘May even sell the whole bang-shoot one day, and buy a luxury villa in the Caribbean. I'd take you and Beauchamp, of course, if you wanted to come, and I'd employ some staff, so that Beauchamp can have some sort of retirement, too. I don't think I would survive very well in a dingy little flat somewhere. I'm quite at ease with myself. Does this make any difference to the way you feel about me and this place, Hugo?'

Hugo sat wreathed in silence for another few minutes, and then looked up at her again. ‘Not a jot, old girl!' and he smiled. ‘One can't change the past. All one can do is make the best of the present, and hope that the future is a little further away than tomorrow, and that it treats us kindly. Oh, and by the way, I'd love to come with you; warm my old bones in some Caribbean sunshine, for the rest of their days, which I hope will be many.'

‘That's that, then! And remember, not a word to a living soul!'

‘Be like Dad. Keep Mum!' Hugo quoted, from a wartime poster. ‘Loose lips sink ships!'