Murder Among Us

by Ann Granger

  Markby soothed him without great success. "And then

  you'll be able to get on with the business without either

  us or the press bothering you." Schuhmacher growled.

  Markby glanced at his watch as he left the hotel. He ought to finish his round of visits with another talk to Zoe Foster. The Alice Batt Rest Home was only a few minutes away, as Eric had forcefully pointed out. What was more, should Markby's niece, Emma, be helping out there this afternoon, she'd be thinking about setting off for home about now and he could take her back to Bam-ford by car.

  There was a temptation when one had no children oneself to develop strong ideas about how other people should bring up theirs. Markby was well aware of this trap and tried to avoid expressing anything like criticism or helpful advice either to his sister or to her husband. The warning about the prowler in the district had been different. That had been his duty as a police officer.

  Generally the problem didn't arise, although he did feel they nagged at Matthew too much about his school-work and that they could, surely, have taught Vicky not to break everything she touched. Vicky in a greenhouse was a gardener's nightmare. But he was fond of the kids. He was Emma's godfather as well as her uncle and he sometimes felt Paul and Laura should keep a better eye on her. Emma spent every Saturday and all her free hol-idaytime at the horses' home, fine. But the lane leading down to it was lonely and even to get that far Emma had to travel alone by country bus to descend at a remote wayside bus-stop surrounded by fields. He had mentioned this to Paul before. Paul had replied, rather tersely, that if it was raining he drove over and fetched his daughter home. "What's she supposed to do if it's not raining?" Markby had been tempted to retort. But knowing the answer would have been on the lines of

  "She gets on the bus and mind your own business!" he had with difficulty kept silent.

  Perhaps, as a policeman, he was over-sensitive to danger. But as he passed the bus-stop where his niece would have been waiting, he scrutinised the deserted grass verge intently and when he turned off the main road to drive down the lane, he kept a sharp eye open for her sturdy little form in gumboots and old anorak, stomping along the roadside. She was not to be seen. Perhaps, as it had been raining, Paul had driven over today and fetched her.

  Markby pulled the car over to the verge by the gate and stopped. He got out and surveyed the ramshackle stable yard. The horsy odour of which Eric had complained immediately made itself known, a good country pong. He opened the gate, refastening it carefully. There were some animals grazing in a paddock to his right, ponies and a large and very ugly donkey with something wrong with its front legs. As he watched, it lurched forward to find a fresh patch of grass. In a spirit of goodwill Markby paused to lean on the fence and whistle at the beast. It looked up and rolled back its upper lip showing fierce yellow teeth and its lop ears flattened. He was rather glad it was slow on its feet. He suspected that if it could have charged him down, it would have done.

  He resumed his way to the yard where Zoe was talking to a stocky, shock-haired young man in a motor cyclist's leather jacket, holding a crash helmet by its straps. Markby recognised him as another of the committee members, Robin Harding. The machine over there was presumably his motorbike. He recalled that Zoe had spoken of Harding's help. He wondered whether the young man was attracted here by the notion of good works or the opportunity to impress a pretty girl.

  "Good afternoon!" he hailed them. 44 My niece around anywhere?"

  They broke off their earnest conversation and faced him. "Oh, hullo, Mr. Markby!" said Zoe. "Emma? No,

  108 Ann Granger

  sorry. I haven't seen her today. I expect the rain earlier kept her away."

  "Right," said Markby, relieved. "As you may know, I'm investigating Mrs. Bryant's death, after all. Since you're both here perhaps I could have a word with both of you?"

  "Kill two birds with one stone?" said Robin drily.

  "Something like that. I've just called on your landlord, Miss Foster."

  The expression on her freckled face clouded. "What did he say?"

  "About the place? Not much. This is a difficult time for him, of course. For all of you, I dare say."

  "I should think so!" Robin burst out before Zoe could reply. "Zoe's worried sick! Don't ask either of us to feel sorry for Schuhmacher! I only hope you're not going to badger Zoe every other day just because she had the bad luck to find Ellen's body!"

  Markby let that go but he saw the girl wince. "I saw Miss Mapple earlier so I'm particularly pleased to see you two. It enables me to tick the historical society off my visiting list, apart from Mr Grimsby. I hope to see him later."

  "He runs Grimsby's stationers and bookstore," Zoe said. ' 'But I suppose you know that. You could find him there."

  "Ellen Bryant also ran a shop," Markby got to his subject rather neatly, he felt. "So she and Mr Grimsby had something in common."

  "If you're suggesting Ellen and Grimsby were having an affair," said Robin scornfully, "forget it! If you said 'sex' to Grimsby, he'd take you to the appropriate shelf in his shop and sell you a book on it. If his shop has any such books, which I don't suppose it has. He's an old pedant and his mind works like a cash register."

  "I've always found him very pleasant," said Zoe, looking slightly surprised at this condemnation. "He isn't that old. I'd say about forty-five."

  "He's all right. I didn't say he wasn't. But the chief

  inspector here was suggesting he and Ellen indulged in bouts of purple passion and I'm just saying, no way."

  "Actually," said Markby, "I suggested no such thing."

  "It's what you meant."

  "What about Ellen's relations with the rest of you? I understand Miss Mapple and Mrs. Bryant didn't get along well, but were either of you friendly with Mrs Bryant?"

  "Who told you Hope and Ellen didn't like each other?" Robin returned pugnaciously. "They weren't best buddies but they served on the same committee and got along as well as was necessary."

  "I think Ellen niggled Hope a bit on purpose sometimes," Zoe confessed. "Actually—" she flushed. "I got on quite well with Ellen. I thought she was probably nice underneath but a bit outspoken and didn't tolerate fools gladly. She was clever herself. Look how well she ran that shop. She could be a little cryptic in her remarks. Sometimes it was difficult to know just what she did mean. Perhaps Hope misunderstood Ellen and of course Hope does—oh dear, this is awful, talking about people. But Hope does sometimes sort of invite people to make fun of her."

  "And Ellen did that? Make fun of Hope?"

  "Yes, but who doesn't?" Robin said firmly.

  "I don't!" Zoe protested.

  "No, you don't, sorry! I didn't mean you!" Robin gazed down at his companion.

  Love's young dream! thought Markby unkindly. That complicated matters. He wondered if the girl realised he was smitten. Probably not. No doubt she thought about her old nags and nothing else.

  "Miss Foster, when you say people might have misunderstood Ellen, could you give me an example?"

  She fidgeted about, redder in the face than ever. "I can't talk about other people, that wouldn't be right. Anyway, it would be what do you call it? Hearsay, that's it."

  "In a court of law, but we're not in a courtroom, are we?" Markby prompted gently.

  "Funny old job you've got, haven't you?" Robin interrupted. "Collecting gossip like this and always trying to prise out people's secrets."

  "Have you got any secrets you'd rather I didn't know?" Markby eyed him coolly. This young man was beginning to annoy him. Someone ought to take him down a peg or two.

  Robin had flushed. "No, of course not! Mind your own business!"

  "Right, Miss Foster?"

  "Secrets? I have got a sort of one. Actually, I'd quite like to tell you and get it all off my chest. It's such a silly thing, but I keep thinking about it and it makes me ashamed of myself because it doesn't show me in a very good light."

  "Zoe?" Harding was beginning to look both surpris
ed and alarmed. "What are you on about? You don't have to tell him anything, you know! He's fishing. Let him fish."

  "I feel I should like to tell someone and sort of expiate it. It makes me look a bit of a fool and mercenary as well."

  "For goodness sake, Zoe!"

  "Mr. Harding!" said Markby crisply. "Would you mind keeping quiet and letting Miss Foster speak?"

  "I told you I got along quite well with Ellen!" Zoe began quickly before the irate Robin Harding could explode. "On several occasions she came out here on a Sunday afternoon and we went for a walk over the fields. We talked mostly about the campaign to save Spring-wood Hall and things which were in the news around Bamford. I talked about my problems here at the Rest Home and how difficult it is to raise money."

  Zoe paused. "As a matter of fact, I've had some quite generous donations recently from readers of that newspaper which published the story about how we're threatened with eviction here at the home."

  MURDER AMOMQ U5 111

  Oh no, prayed Markby. Don't get off the subject, not just when you were beginning to prattle along so nicely! Aloud, he prompted, "You didn't talk about yourselves, you and Mrs. Bryant? I mean, did she tell you where she lived before she came to Bamford?"

  •Tin not sure. She was from Australia originally but came over here a long time ago. She said she might go back there one day for a holiday. That's all I remember her saying. But what I wanted to tell you was this—one Sunday as we were walking and I was describing how chronically hard up we were, she started saying how well the shop was doing. She'd been surprised at her success. She made a joke about it, morbid really. 'At this rate,' she said, Til die a wealthy woman.' Then she said, she'd had to find someone to leave it all to in her will. She said, 'No family, no friends, that's me! But I haven't forgotten people who've been decent by me.' I understood her to mean she had made a will and I thought—" Zoe was by now crimson. "I thought she meant me, that I'd been decent to her and I wasn't forgotten! I know it's awful, but I really thought she meant she'd put me in her will, or not me exactly, but the Rest Home—"

  "Zoe!" yelled Harding.

  "Shut up!" Markby ordered him unceremoniously. "But she hadn't, Miss Foster, as it turned out, had she?"

  "No. I wish she had remembered us. I don't mean I wanted Ellen's money for myself. It just would have been nice if she'd only left the home a couple of hundred pounds. We really need it."

  "Please, Zoe!" Harding pleaded.

  "Will you be quiet, Mr. Harding!" thundered Markby.

  "And of course I didn't want her to die. I wouldn't want anyone dead. It's just that apparently she left the lot to Margery Collins. All of it, the shop as well. I do think she might have been kind enough to remember the horses. But then, thinking it over now, perhaps she thought that by telling her how much I needed money,

  I was sort of begging or trying to put the idea in her head, and that's why she didn't leave us anything. Still it was a shock to hear Margery had everything. I really thought Ellen had made a bequest to us."

  This time Harding wouldn't be silenced. "For God's sake, Zoe! Don't say another word! Don't you realise you're telling this nosy copper that you've got a motive for murder?"

  Mine

  Deirdre the chambermaid smiled provocatively at Sergeant Pearce. She had dimples in her plump cheeks, curly fair hair, a pink and white complexion and a remarkable figure. In a very few years' time she would no doubt be a fat, untidy slattern, but right now she looked like the milkmaid from a child's nursery rhyme picture-book.

  "She's a right old cow," said Deirdre, tailoring her vocabulary to suit her appearance. "If you want to know about Hope Mapple, you ask me, I'll tell you!"

  "I am asking you," said Pearce, eyeing her with some unease. For the past five minutes she had been shifting steadily nearer to him, inch by inch, and the gleam in her round blue eyes was positively predatory.

  "She said she wanted someone to do light cleaning. She put a card up down the job centre. I didn't fancy it really but they kept on at me down there to go after a job and grumbling about my unemployment benefit so I went and took it on. Just to keep them quiet at the job centre. I didn't like the place as soon as I saw it, and I didn't like the look of her, either! Snoopy sort, creeps up behind you. Now here, at the hotel, it's really lovely. All the furniture new and smelling nice, lovely curtains and that. I wouldn't half like to be able to stay here. I took the job on here like a shot."

  "But you took the job at Hope Mapple's. . ." prompted Pearce.

  "Yes. Light cleaning!" Deirdre snorted. "You want to see that place of hers. Full of smelly little dogs, it is, and a lot of old arty junk. The dogs leave their fur

  all over the furniture and if you so much as brush against one of the weird paintings or clay pot things, she lets out a shriek like you'd tried to murder her." Deirdre paused. "As a matter of fact, if anyone had tried murdering old Mapple, I wouldn't have been a bit surprised. She gives art classes over at the loonybin and I reckon they ought to keep her in there. Don't know how they tell her from the patients! I was sorry about Mrs. Bryant from the wool shop. I thought she was really smashing looker. I never understood why she didn't have no man in tow." Here Deirdre's eyelashes drooped suggestively. "I mean, it's natural, isn't it? A woman likes to have a man around and men like it, don't they?"

  Cripes .. . thought Pearce, quickly judging the distance between himself and the door. "You told Mr. Schuhmacher that Miss Mapple and Mrs. Bryant quarrelled."

  "You bet they did!" said Deirdre sapiently. "You should have heard it."

  "But you heard it?" Pearce persisted.

  Deirdre's assurance faltered a little. "I heard her side of it. It was all on the phone. But I didn't need to hear the other side. Calling each other names, they were. Well, I only heard old Hope. But she kept squawking 'how dare you?' so I reckon Mrs. Bryant was giving as good as she got. And good luck to her. I had a few things to say myself to old Mapple when I left. You know what she did? She said I ate her rotten chocolates! I never touched them! I'm on a diet..." Deirdre paused and simpered. "Well, I was then ... but I mean, I didn't want to end up like a matchstick, did I?" She preened herself, her pneumatic breasts thrusting against her overall.

  Pearce thought that it was unlikely Deirdre could ever be reduced to matchstick proportions. "No ..." he said weakly.

  "Like plump girls, do you?" asked Deirdre archly.

  "That's not what I'm here to talk about!" retorted Pearce, scarlet and sweating.

  "I get off at four. I'm free this evening. You free?"

  "No, I'm working late—all week!" said Pearce firmly.

  Deirdre sighed. Then she remembered where she had reached in her narrative and her air of offended innocence returned. "Never touched her sweets. It was them dogs! Horrid little things, all small and yappy and bite you if you tried to pat them! They had those chocs. All I did was to pick the box up from the floor, empty it was by then, and old Mapple came in and found me with it in my hand. So, of course, she started yelling at me and saying I'd eaten them! Blooming cheek. That's when we fell out good and proper and I walked out. Threw down me duster and tin of polish and told her she could do it herself. Not," added Deirdre, "that I suppose she did because before I went there the place hadn't been touched in weeks. Thick with dust and the kitchen—gawd, you should have seen it! Fridge full of tins of dogfood, stinking to high heaven, and you couldn't get in the bathroom to clean it! Full of old Hope's knickers hanging on a line. Here—" she grinned. "You ought to see them! Like barrage balloons. I mean, I'm not slim, but she's well, like a blooming elephant. I wish I'd seen her running about in the altogether. It must have been a sight!"

  "Yes," said Pearce. "I didn't see her myself. So that's all you can tell me?"

  "You wouldn't think..." said Deirdre dreamily, ignoring his question, "that any bloke would fancy old Hope, would you?"

  "I'm sure I don't—"

  "But one must've because he gave her the chocs ..."

  Pearce, who
had risen to leave, sat down again. "Who did? How do you know?"

  "Because there was one of them little white cards on the box. I was just dusting the table when the box was

  116 Ann Granger

  new, still all wrapped up in cellophane, and sitting on it. That was the day before I found it empty on the floor like I told you. There it was with the little card stuck on it and I thought, blimey, old Hope's got an admirer, must be one of her students from the loony-bin! Naturally I just took a quick look while I dusted it, you understand."

  "Yes. yes!" said Pearce crossly. "What did it say?"

  "It said. 'With kindest regards. Charles.' I call that a pretty crappy message. You'd have thought he'd have written something a bit more passionate, wouldn't you? I mean, if he'd gone to the trouble to buy the chocs in the first place. Milk Tray they were. I like Milk Tray myself. I like the orange CTeme one-

  Grimsby, thought Pearce. "You're sure about this now?"

  "Course I'm sure." Deirdre eyed him. "If you're working late all week, they got to give you some time off next week ..."

  Emma scrambled out of bed and stood in her pyjamas listemng intently. Her toes curled up with tension, sinking into the deep nylon pile of her bedside rug which was imprinted with a pattern of a prancing pony. It was spookUy dark and she would have liked to switch on at least her bedside lamp. But a tell-tale strip of light might have shown beneath the door and someone passing by could notice. Even Matthew on his way to the bathroom might have opened it and demanded to know what she was doing, ordering her to hop back into bed or he'd go downstairs and tell Mum. Elder brothers were like that.

  From below came the faint noise of the television set and her parents' voices. Praying that the floorboards wouldn't creak and betray her. she tiptoed across to the cupboard and with the aid of a torch located the clothes which she had stacked neatly at the bottom ready for tonight's expedition.

  It was goins to be cold out there, she realised, so she