Murder By Committee

by Veronica Heley

  Ellie remembered that Thomas had in the past written books and held down an important job in a college somewhere. The car was certainly pricier than those usually run by parish vicars. Good for Thomas.

  Thomas steered Ellie into the front seat, making sure that Felicity sat in the back. It pleased Ellie that she was given the front seat - the seat of honour - while Felicity had to sit in the back. While her husband had been alive, Diana had always been given the front seat, and Ellie had had to sit at the back. She hadn't thought it had mattered at the time, but she saw now that it had mattered, quite a lot. It had rankled, definitely.

  ‘Are you all right there in the back - front?’ asked Thomas, while the engine obediently roared into life.

  ‘Oh, I usually sit in the back,’ said Felicity. ‘Arthur likes to have his dog on the front seat, though I've wondered sometimes if it's entirely safe.’

  There wasn't any suitable answer to that. Thomas turned into the road that wound up the hill to Mrs Dawes'. ‘Onwards and upwards,’ he said. Ellie kept a sharp lookout but no cars seemed to be following them as they wound round corners to the steepish road in which Mrs Dawes resided. It wasn't far from Ellie; you could almost sling a shot from Mrs Dawes' front garden into Ellie's down the hill, but it took a while when you followed the roads.

  ‘Pretty,’ commented Felicity, getting out of the car and gazing at the neat front garden, full of heathers, miniature cyclamens and white Japanese anemones. ‘What are those pink things called?’

  Ellie didn't want to get cross with Felicity, but really the girl was intensely irritating. She curbed her annoyance; not everyone knew the names of garden flowers. ‘The tiny ones are called cyclamens.’

  ‘Oh, I know that. No, those lily-like ones under the viburnum. You've got some in your garden, too, but yours are a paler pink.’

  Ellie could have kicked herself. Why did she keep assuming that Felicity knew nothing about anything? ‘Schizostylis. A bulb. Pretty, aren't they?’ ‘Mm. I'd like some in my garden, but … oh well. Arthur bought a whole lot of cyclamens for indoors last winter, but they didn't last.’

  ‘It was too hot for them inside, I expect,’ said Ellie. ‘Indoor cyclamens like to be kept cool, or their leaves turn yellow and they die.’

  ‘That's exactly what I said, but he didn't take any notice. Perhaps he'll listen to me next time.’ Her smile faded as she remembered there might not be a next time.

  Thomas rang the bell and peered through the front window, tapping on the pane.

  Someone thump-thumped their way to the door and let them in.

  ‘Mrs Dawes, you shouldn't be on your feet,’ said Thomas, ushering the others inside.

  ‘How exactly do you expect me to manage if I don't get up to let people in? My friend Mrs Mays was with me all morning, and she was up and down answering the door to people, bringing me flowers and fruit and I don't know what else, till her poor legs gave out on her, and now she's nodded off in her chair, poor soul. Her grandson brought her down to spend the day with me. Now she's dozed off and I'm making use of her Zimmerframe, dratted thing.’

  Mrs Dawes slowly led the way into her small sitting room, which was crowded with too much furniture, including a large, highbacked chair in which dozed a tiny sparrow of a woman. Mrs Dawes was in a plum velvet housecoat with her bad knee heavily bandaged, but her colour was good, and she'd managed to dress her jetblack hair as usual. There were the remains of a sandwich lunch beside both ladies' chairs.

  ‘You're marvellous, Mrs Dawes,’ said Ellie, kissing her cheek, and depositing the bottle of sherry on her hostess's coffee table.

  ‘Don't leave it there, dear, or Mrs Mays will be wanting some too. Put it in the bag on the side of my chair. It's all very well people bringing me things, but they don't realize that what a person really needs is another pair of legs. Good ones, this time round.’

  ‘Can I do anything to help, Mrs Dawes?’ enquired Felicity, doing her polite-little-girl act. ‘I could cook something for you for tonight.’

  ‘There's enough food in the kitchen to last me a week.’

  ‘Did you mention people had brought you flowers?’ Felicity looked around, but there were no flowers in the room. ‘Shall I arrange them for you? I'm quite good at that.’

  Ellie held her breath. Felicity couldn't know, of course, that Mrs Dawes was the head of the flower-arranging team at church, that she was renowned throughout West London for judging at flower shows. She attended conferences on flower-arranging. She was invited to steward at the Chelsea Flower Show. Felicity's offer was rather like a toddler offering to help David Hockney paint a portrait.

  Mrs Dawes let the girl down lightly. ‘Just find a bucket - there's one outside the back door - and put them all in water. That would be helpful.’ As Felicity darted off, Mrs Dawes signalled with her eyebrows to Ellie. ‘Why's she still around?’

  ‘It's a long story,’ said Ellie, settling cushions behind her old friend, and making sure a stool was close enough so that Mrs Dawes could put her foot up. ‘She's got it into her head that her husband might want to kill her, which may or may not be true.’

  ‘Probably is,’ said Thomas, neatly stowing himself into a chair in the opposite corner.

  ‘Ah. Sir Arthur. Now, did you say you'd heard about the woman whose garden he destroyed? That was a dreadful thing to do.’

  ‘Yes, I've been to see her,’ said Ellie.

  ‘Oh,’ said Mrs Dawes, deflated. ‘Well, did you hear what he did to the odd-job man? Sir Arthur refused to pay his bill, would you believe! Only, I can't remember his name.’

  ‘It'll come to you in the middle of the night, I expect,’ said Ellie.

  ‘That's just what I said, dear. I said, “What's his name?” And Mrs Mays - she's a little bit deaf, you know, and I had to shout - she said she didn't think she'd ever heard it, but he did some work for her niece over the other side of the Avenue, and she'd recommend him to anyone.’

  ‘Do you have her niece's name and address?’ asked Ellie.

  ‘It's Trisha, that I do know. But have I ever heard her married name? I don't think I have, and I'm not waking my friend up to ask her now. It's the house with the strange pagoda-like structure over the front gate, you can't miss it. She'd had this man in to take up and relay her front path. They're all old tiles on the front paths around here, and they crack and shift about till they're quite dangerous to walk on and have to be taken up and relaid on a new foundation.

  ‘She said this chap told her he'd been doing some work for Sir Arthur, edging paths in the back garden. Sir Arthur insisted on having original Edwardian tiles around the flower beds, the ones that look like rope edging. You can get repro, of course, any amount, but the originals are hard to come by. This chap couldn't get quite enough of one type so he got a few repro which look exactly the same, almost. He said it would take a sharp eye to notice the difference, but Sir Arthur saw and refused to pay his bill, and wouldn't let him take the tiles away either.’

  Ellie said, ‘I wonder, did he try to get his own back on Sir Arthur?’

  Mrs Dawes shifted in her chair. ‘I don't know what you mean, dear. What could he do?’

  Ellie grinned. Mrs Dawes knew very well what the man had done. ‘He sprayed some graffiti on the door of Sir Arthur's garage, didn't he?’

  ‘What was that?’ asked Felicity, entering the room with a charming arrangement of chrysanthemums in a vase. ‘Were you talking about poor Paddy? I told Arthur I couldn't see the difference between the two lots of tiles, but he was livid. I tried to clean the paint off, but I don't think I made a very good job of it. Where shall I put these?’

  Mrs Dawes expressed approval, in a grudging sort of way. ‘Not bad for a beginner. You should come to my flower-arranging classes on Thursday morning, Felicity. Put them on the mantelpiece for the time being, and I'll just give them a tweak here and there later.’

  Thomas looked at his watch. ‘We ought to be going. I'll pop in again tomorrow, Mrs Dawes, if you'll let me know what
I can bring you?’

  ‘Nothing, vicar. But Ellie …’ Mrs Dawes beckoned Ellie to come closer, and whispered in her ear.

  Ellie nodded. ‘Of course. I'll bring some in tomorrow.’

  ‘What?’ asked Felicity, but Ellie just shook her head and said they must indeed be moving.

  There were only a few friends to whom you could mention the delicate matter of your bowels, and Ellie was not going to give Mrs Dawes' whispered request airtime.

  Ellie said, ‘Don't get up. We'll see ourselves out.’ She saw Thomas slide a box of chocolates into the capacious bag that hung from the arm of Mrs Dawes' chair, but pretended not to notice.

  Felicity got into the back of the car, and directed them down the hill and towards the park. ‘The home that Mummy's in faces on to the park. It's not an old building, not really, but they're talking about pulling it down because not every bedroom has a bathroom en suite, and that's what's needed in future. I don't know how I'll manage if Mummy has to move out till it's rebuilt. I've tried to talk to her about it, but she refuses to believe it will ever happen. It's too worrying for her to take in. I mean, she's happy at the home now, or as much as she can be, given the circumstances. She does get a sherry before meals, and she has a nice room on the ground floor overlooking the park, but of course the company's not what she's used to.’

  ‘I suppose anything would be a comedown after the manor,’ said Ellie, trying to be polite. Trying not to think about cars whizzing round corners and crashing into them … or snipers taking potshots at them from the horse chestnut tree on the corner.

  It was all nonsense, of course. Sir Arthur hadn't the faintest idea where they might be at the moment.

  ‘Here we are,’ said Thomas, parking neatly in the forecourt of a rambling, sixties-built place. ‘I do drop in here from time to time to see someone, though I don't think I've had the pleasure of your mother's acquaintance, Felicity. Would you like us to come in with you to see your mother, or shall I spend some time with my old friend?’

  ‘Oh, do come and meet her,’ said Felicity, exhibiting signs of nerves. ‘Mummy will love to have someone new to visit her. She doesn't get many visitors and has to keep herself to herself here because … well, the other people are not quite … you know?’ ‘Compos mentis?’ said Thomas. ‘The one I visit can beat me at chess any day.’

  ‘That's not quite what I meant,’ said Felicity, with a tinge of colour in her cheeks.

  Ellie wondered if the girl was a snob? Or was it the mother?

  Felicity's mother Anne was ensconced in an armchair by one of the windows of the large sitting room, with a moustached elderly man bending over her.

  ‘Oh dear,’ said Felicity, hanging back. ‘She's got the commodore in tow. It's lovely for her to have an admirer, of course, but he does bring her gin when he shouldn't, and he takes her on outings which sometimes … oh well, I must be pleased for anything which makes her happy.’

  The commodore was wearing a blazer and grey slacks. His hair was thick and plentiful, but his eyes were reddened and watery. Anne seemed to be flirting with him - until she caught sight of her daughter, when she pressed his hand and told him to run away and play. To Ellie's amusement, the commodore kissed Anne's hand before leaving the room.

  Ellie saw what Felicity meant when she said her mother could pass for thirty - with the light behind her. From a distance she gave the impression of being quite a young woman; fragile and lovely.

  She was beautifully dressed in what Ellie recognized as designer clothes, topped off by a Hermes scarf draped around her neck. A cashmere rug had been tucked in over her legs. Her hair was died blonde and perfectly arranged. She wore a fine string of pearls, plus several diamond and emerald rings on her fingers. Her hands and neck gave away her age and - when Ellie got closer - she could see a fine network of lines about her mouth and eyes.

  Ellie disliked the woman on sight. How much did it cost Felicity to keep her mother dressed and coiffured like that? How could Anne let her daughter beggar herself that way?

  Felicity stooped to kiss her mother's cheek. ‘Mummy dear, may I introduce some friends? This is Thomas, who-’

  ‘I know you,’ said Felicity's mother, smiling up at Thomas. ‘You come to see that disgusting old man in the corner there. You'd far better spend time with me.’

  ‘Madam,’ said Thomas, bending over her hand in a manner suggesting that he'd like to kiss it too. ‘A vicar doesn't choose his parishioners.’

  ‘But he can choose to visit a lonely widow now and then?’ She was a coquette. She was signalling she'd be very happy to flirt with Thomas, and Felicity was looking pleased, like a cat who's brought its kitten something amusing to play with.

  Anne looked beyond Thomas to Ellie, and her mouth took on a downward curve. ‘Who's this?’

  ‘Ellie Quicke, another widow,’ said Ellie, grimly contrasting her own workaday attire with that of the exquisite Anne. ‘I'll just go and talk to that disgusting old man in the corner there. That is, if you'll introduce me, Thomas?’

  Thomas obliged. The ‘disgusting old man in the corner' was a particularly clean old man who had once been tall and well built. An old soldier? There was something in the way he held himself which made her think that. Now he'd shrunk to a skeleton, but his eyes still gleamed bright under shaggy eyebrows, and he still had all his marbles.

  Thomas said, ‘Perce, good to see you up and about again. I'll pop in to see you as usual in the week, but can you look after this lady for me for a while? I have to visit with someone else this afternoon.’

  Perce - short for Percy? - patted the chair beside him, on which Ellie duly sat. He said, ‘Found someone else to pay court to her, has she, our Lady Muck?’

  ‘You're not her favourite either, I gather.’

  ‘She never lets a day go by without telling us how she's had to lower herself to live here. If her daughter weren't beggaring herself to pay her bills in this place, she'd be down the council home, and serve her bloody well right.’

  ‘And you, Perce? Old soldier, aren't you? Why don't you put your medals on, to show her what's what?’

  He crowed with laughter, shook a bony finger at her. ‘Got me weighed up, have you? Well, we have to take our fun where we can. I admit she rubs me up the wrong way. One of these days, when I'm carried out of here by the back door, they can tell her about my chest full of medals and I shan't half have a laugh. Catch me passing the time of day with her before then …? She's had three husbands so far, did you know that? Looking around for a fourth. The commodore's too old and short of cash, so he's no good to her that way, though she doesn't mind his spending money to take her on outings and keep her supplied with gin. I hope Tommy knows what he's doing, getting so close to her.’

  ‘Tommy's a wily old bird,’ said Ellie, enjoying herself very much. ‘So are you, my dear.’ The sharpness faded from his eyes and, with a trembling hand, he extracted a large clean handkerchief from his pocket, and wiped a tear from his cheek.

  ‘Tea, Perce? Choccy bikkie?’ said a middle-aged woman in an overall. She handed him a mug, which he accepted with both hands. She put a plate with a biscuit on the arm of his chair. ‘And you, dear?’

  Ellie accepted a cup of strong tea, but declined the biscuit. Perce managed not to slop his tea, but it was obviously an effort. Parkinson's disease? Advanced. Across the room, Thomas and Anne were animated, in flirting mode, while Felicity looked on, proud of her mother and, for once, smiling contentedly.

  When Perce had finished his biscuit, he said, ‘Why did you come to see her?’

  ‘Her husband - her first husband - has been trying to build fences with his daughter, but she's fiercely loyal to Anne and won't have anything to do with him.’

  ‘Why should you care?’

  She gave an answer which she thought would appeal to him, and which also happened to be true. ‘I don't like to see dumb animals suffer.’

  ‘From her mother … or from her husband?’

  ‘What do you know about
Sir Arthur?’

  ‘Anne talks about “my daughter, Lady Kingsley” all the time. Duchesses or dustmen, all the same to me. I can tell you this, though, Anne's afraid of Sir Arthur.’

  ‘Do you know why?’

  ‘Because he put her in here? Because it's his wife who pays the bills?’ He shrugged.

  ‘Isn't she a bit young to be here?’

  ‘She can hardly walk. Both legs were broken in an accident and the tendons damaged. She was drunk, of course. She'd be drunk all the time now, if she could get it. She always asks her visitors to bring her in some gin.’

  ‘What sort of accident?’

  ‘She tripped and fell down a flight of stairs and through some glass doors. They say. Or was pushed.’

  Ellie was startled. ‘What do you mean by that?’

  Seventeen

  Perce played dumb. ‘What? What's that? An old man's ramblings don't mean anything.’

  He hadn't been rambling. Ellie tried to work out a new scenario, involving Anne. ‘You think her son-in-law caused her accident? Why would he want to do that?’ She answered her own question. ‘Oh. Because she expected to be reinstated at the manor when he married Felicity, and he wouldn't have liked that? But … she's stuck in here, so how could she doctor a pizza and deliver it to Sir Arthur's house?’

  ‘Is that what someone did?’ He laughed till he got hiccups, and then let his hands relax so that she had to rescue his mug before it fell to the floor. He slumped in his chair, closing his eyes, and letting his jaw drop. He was closing the conversation by going to sleep on her.

  He'd made Ellie extremely uneasy. She looked around for Thomas and Felicity, who were now bending over Anne, taking their farewells, promising to come again on the morrow; Yes, of course dear Mummy, don't you worry about anything. Anne was saying, in a carrying voice, ‘Couldn't you just take a little more care with your appearance, Felicity? For my sake, if not for your own.’

  A grim-faced woman was watching them from the doorway, and as they left, she drew Felicity to one side. Thomas and Ellie tried not to look as if they could hear what was going on, but of course they could. ‘Your mother's been out again! She bamboozled the commodore into giving her a lift into the West End to have her hair done. Of course, she hadn't enough money to pay the bill, and they've been on to us, wanting to know who to send the bill to, and you know it's absolutely out of the question for us to …’