The Case of the Dotty Dowager

by Cathy Ace

  As he slid into the leather-upholstered seat of his Aston Martin, he checked the contacts list on his phone. He knew just the man. He’d propose drinks at the American Bar at the Savoy at seven p.m. He didn’t think he’d be refused.

  FOUR

  By two fourteen p.m. Christine, Mavis and Annie were inching around Sloane Square in the comfort of Christine’s vehicle. Annie stopped grumbling about how the Friday afternoon rush out of London seemed to begin at ten a.m., just in time to let out a scream as an apple core flew in through the window of the Range Rover and smacked her in the face.

  ‘Flamin’ ’eck!’ she exclaimed. ‘Ain’t got nowhere else to put it?’ she shouted out of the window at a surprised young man on a bicycle who almost swerved in front of a Mini Cooper that was wriggling through the knots of traffic surrounding them.

  ‘Just close your window, Annie,’ suggested Mavis.

  ‘I shouldn’t have to,’ retorted Annie sharply. ‘People shouldn’t go throwing things like that about. Could cause a nasty accident. We should have left earlier. Where the ’eck is everybody going at this time of day? I’ve never been able to understand why people feel the need to flock out of London at the weekend. I’ve always been able to live my life quite happily without ever venturing too far afield. Except on proper holidays, you know, like to Cyprus, or the Red Sea.’

  ‘Oh, come on, Annie,’ said Christine. ‘We got away as soon as we could. We’ll all just have to exercise some patience. It might take us longer than we’d hoped to get out onto the M4, but we will get there, and we will get to Talgarth tonight. At some point. Now please let me concentrate for a while?’

  Annie settled into silent grumbling mode, Mavis looked calmly at the chaos about her, and Christine cursed quietly as she nudged onto Symons Street, heading for Draycott Avenue.

  The women of the WISE Enquiries Agency had first crossed paths when Christine Wilson-Smythe’s grandfather had met an untimely end while residing at the world-famous Battersea Barracks for retired servicemen. Between the four of them, they had, rather unexpectedly, managed to solve a tragic serial killing spree. At the time, all the women had been gainfully employed in their chosen careers. Shortly after they’d met, Annie Parker was made redundant from her job as a receptionist at a firm of insurance and reinsurance brokers in the City, Carol Hill had been advised by her doctor to avoid the stress of her work as a computer whizz for a global re-insurance giant if she wanted a better chance to conceive, Christine Wilson-Smythe had decided she’d had enough of the people she worked with at Lloyd’s of London, and Mavis MacDonald had taken advantage of a retirement package offered to her by the Army, and had stepped down from her role as Matron of the Battersea Barracks.

  Having agreed to work together, they’d plumped for the name WISE because Carol was Welsh, Christine was Irish, Mavis was Scottish, and Annie, for all her Caribbean heritage, was English. Annie had tried to get the others to agree to call themselves WISE Detectives, but she’d been voted down; her three partners wanted to be thought of as ‘enquirers’ rather than ‘detectives’, so she’d had to agree. However, Annie being Annie, she’d never agreed to shut up about her opinion, so she persisted in voicing her love of all things gumshoe and hardboiled, much to the chagrin of Carol who, to all intents and purposes, would do absolutely anything to avoid a confrontation of any sort in life.

  Qualifications, trade association memberships, letterheads, business cards and discreet advertisements had all been arranged by Carol and Christine who, between them, had the best business heads of the group. They were still a few months away from their One Year Anniversary, and they all knew they preferred their new lives to their old ones, but couldn’t live on air. Even Christine, whose father, Annie always claimed, had more money than God, wanted to make her own way in the world, so needed income to prove a point, if nothing else. But times were tough. They all knew it. Missing pets, wayward husbands and wives, minor fraud or pilferage, and being employed as mystery shoppers to check up on customer service levels, couldn’t support four households.

  As Christine finally managed to drive at more than twelve miles an hour along the Cromwell Road she said, ‘As soon as we’re out past Brentford and on the M4, can you phone Carol at the office and put her on speakerphone so she can talk to us all, Mavis?’

  ‘Och, aye,’ replied Mavis unthinkingly. ‘But we need to talk about her before we talk to her,’ she added seriously. ‘We have to decide what we’re going to do when she has the baby. We three know very well that she’s the glue holding us all together. It’s also obvious, especially on occasions like this, how much we rely upon her expertise at excavating the information we need to be able to do what we do when we’re in the field. We three only have ourselves to worry about. With a bairn on the way, she’s mentioned to me that she and David are trying to find somewhere bigger to live than that tiny flat they’ve got over in Paddington. And I understand why. You cannae swing a kilt in the place, let alone raise a child. She’s much more worried about our finances, and their income levels, than she’s letting on about. It’s clear she loves what she does with us, and for us, but I think she’ll reach a point where she’ll have to put us second and her family first. So, what can we do to make sure we don’t lose her?’

  The silence that met Mavis’s questions told her, more clearly than any words could, that neither Christine nor Annie wanted to discuss the future of the WISE Enquiries Agency at all.

  ‘You two can’t go sticking your heads in the sand and hoping it’ll all turn out all right in the end,’ admonished Mavis. ‘It won’t. Not if we don’t plan for it. Head in the sand? Rear end in the air. A very vulnerable position. We must discuss our options and come up with a plan of action. Even if that is to dissolve the business and all move on in some other way. There. I’ve said my piece.’

  Christine hooted her horn at a motorist who didn’t deserve it. Annie chewed the inside of her cheek.

  ‘Girls?’ prompted Mavis.

  ‘I don’t want to think about it now. I’m driving,’ replied Christine, obviously delighted that she had a half-decent excuse to avoid the conversation.

  ‘Well, you can listen, at least,’ replied Mavis tartly. ‘Annie, speak up. Do you have an opinion? I know you usually do.’

  Annie sighed. ‘I don’t want to think about it, but you’re right, Mave, we have to be practical.’

  Mavis MacDonald tutted twice, quickly and quietly. Annie knew why.

  ‘Sorry, Mavis,’ Annie added sulkily, then she clenched her jaw, stretched her neck and tossed her head. ‘Right-o then. I’ll come clean. I don’t want to think about it because it’s even bigger than just the work thing for me. I’ve known Car for a long time, and we’ve done a lot of personal stuff together. We were proper mates. Of course things changed when she married David and they bought that place near Paddington, and I got it that it made life easier for her so she could get the train to see her family in south Wales a bit easier. But she seems to go an awful lot. Especially now.’

  ‘It’s to be expected, dear,’ said Mavis patiently. ‘A girl likes to spend time with her mother when she’s expecting. She wants to ask questions about what it is she really can expect, what it’s like to be a mother – if you see what I mean.’ Mavis turned to peer at Annie, who skulked in the back seat like a rebellious child.

  ‘Yeah. Right. Wha’ever,’ replied Annie, flirting with her second formal warning of the day. ‘So, as I was trying to say, in a moment of friendly openness, I expected things to change when Car moved over to be nearer Paddington, but we got back on track with each other after a while. But with her being preggers, you know, not drinking and all that, well it’s put a bit of a dent in my social life. And it’ll be even worse when she’s had it. The baby. So it’s not just that I’ll miss her ’cos of work – I already miss her in my life.’ Annie folded her arms and returned to full-sulk mode as she added, ‘Thoughtful enough an opinion for you, Mavis?’ Annie’s mouth became a thin, determined line.

/>   As Mavis looked around at Annie again, she smiled. She also saw the expression on Christine’s face. Grim. ‘Och, you’re a big softie, Annie, and we all love you for it. No matter how gruff your exterior, we’re all privileged to see beyond the hard coating to the soft center. And I know you’re right. If she left us, you’d probably miss her most of all, because you’re true friends and have been for a lot of years. But she’s moving onto a different chapter of her life, and we mustn’t make her feel as though she’s letting anyone down by fulfilling her dreams of motherhood.’

  ‘I didn’t mean that,’ cried Annie plaintively. ‘I just – I just miss her a lot, already. I don’t want to think of a time when I won’t be at least working with her. I’d miss her too much then.’

  Mavis faced front again. ‘We all would, dear. As I said, she’s exceptionally good at what she does, and I believe we’ve only really ever required her to use a tiny percentage of her skills. Which is good for her, because she’s less stressed. But, if we are going to carry on being able to have her work with us, then we need to work out how we’ll do it. Carol could be largely home-based and still be our information gatherer and dissem-inator, and keep the books and other administration details in good order. Let’s all acknowledge that neither of you two are any good at that side of things, and I might be good at organizing people, but I have no real ability when it comes to online research, and so forth.’

  Both Christine and Annie muttered to the effect that they both understood technology and could use it, but they couldn’t make it do the amazing things Carol seemed to be able to manage.

  Mavis’s practical voice continued, ‘So, maybe we should all think about working from our respective homes, and meeting for cases in the field only. That way we could do away with the need to carry the cost of having an office at all. We’re all used to using technology to keep in touch at least. I realize it’s an unusual idea, but maybe we should consider it, because then any money we make could go into our pockets, not into a landlord’s.’

  Annie sounded glum. ‘Yeah, maybe you’ve got a point, Mavis. It would save a lot of travelling into an office every day, and I don’t know how much longer I can go on like this. I know I bought my flat dirt cheap, and I haven’t got a mortgage or nothing, but I do have bills to pay, and I think I can do that for another couple of months without much income from WISE. If this duke pays up on time I might get another couple of months out of that, but it’s doing my head in, not knowing if I’ll be able to pay what I owe down the road.’

  ‘I know what you mean,’ chimed in Christine.

  ‘Oh, come off it, Chrissy, doll,’ snorted Annie. ‘You’re a wonderful, beautiful, bright girl, and I love you like a kid sister. But don’t try to tell me you’ve got the slightest idea what it’s like to worry about paying bills for electricity, water, gas and the like. You don’t pay those bills. You live in a house your father owns, with everything paid for you, and a free car to boot. It’s not the same at all. I know you want him to see you can make a go of this, especially since you packed in the career he’d always wanted for you. But to say you understand what it feels like to live hand-to-mouth is not fair to us that has to do it.’

  Christine literally bit her lip, then said, ‘Sorry Annie. I didn’t mean to insult you. But I do have my own issues to deal with too, you know.’ She sounded hurt.

  ‘We all do,’ added Mavis.

  ‘Yes,’ mused Annie, ‘we all do. How’s your mum doing, by the way, Mave?’

  Mavis defiantly pushed forward her chin. ‘“As well as can be expected” is an overused phrase in the world of healthcare, but in the case of my mother it’s both accurate and as informative as possible without my listing a whole raft of medical terminology which will mean nothing to you. Her mind has recovered somewhat since her stroke, but her speech and mobility have not. Duncan, you know, my eldest, visited her last week. I’m sorry to say she didn’t know him at all at first, then she was convinced he was my father. It was very upsetting for everyone. Though he did tell me that he had a good look around the home she’s in, and is still impressed with the cleanliness and general attitude of the staff there.’

  ‘Gordon Bennett, Mave, I dunno what I’d do if Eustelle was like that. Breaks my heart to think about it,’ said Annie.

  Mavis replied stoically, ‘If the time comes when your mother needs constant care and attention, of the type you cannot give yourself, you’ll find somewhere she can live with as much dignity as possible. That’s what all we daughters, and sons, do. We have little choice. At least you won’t be leaving her with strangers despite decades of nursing experience that you had believed would, one day, prove to be at least a wee bit useful.’

  ‘Don’t feel guilty, Mave,’ said Annie gently, reaching forward and touching her colleague on the shoulder. ‘You know she needs more help and care than even you can give her. And you said her room’s lovely, so it’s better she’s there, in Dumfries, near where she’s always lived.’

  Mavis nodded. ‘I know you’re right, my dear, but I’m afraid it doesn’t help.’

  As the Range Rover began to fly along the M4, past rows of glass-clad office blocks, Christine said, ‘A good time to phone Carol I think, Mavis?’

  Mavis dialed the office.

  ‘WISE Enquiries, how may I help?’

  ‘It’s us, Carol,’ said Mavis, ‘you’re on the speakerphone. We’re calling in for updates and briefings, if now’s a good time to do that.’

  ‘Hullo everyone,’ said Carol, dropping her pseudo-English accent, which she used as her ‘telephone voice’, and reverting to her natural Welsh lilt.

  ‘Anything happened since we left?’ asked Annie, leaning as far forward in her seat as possible, but still shouting.

  ‘Quite a lot, actually,’ said Carol. She sounded as surprised to be saying it as her colleagues were to hear it.

  ‘What?’ asked Annie with excitement.

  ‘The Serious Crimes people called from Brixton about Mrs Monckton, the money and her nephew,’ said Carol.

  ‘Again? What do they want now?’ asked Annie in exasperation. ‘I’ve given them a full statement already. Twice. What more do they want?’

  ‘Well, that’s the thing,’ said Carol mysteriously. ‘I think that there’s more to it than you might think.’

  ‘Out with it, Carol,’ said Mavis.

  ‘All right then,’ replied Carol, obviously disappointed that she wouldn’t be able to string her colleagues along for longer. ‘You know that detective sergeant you’ve been dealing with from the Brixton police station, Annie?’

  ‘I certainly do,’ piped up Annie, quite perky now. ‘Six foot two of sex on a stick. Dark, brooding and a smile as wide as the Thames at Greenwich. What’s he want? I hope it’s me.’ She giggled throatily.

  ‘I think your luck might be in, Annie,’ said Carol, a chuckle in her voice. ‘He did all he could to get your personal mobile number from me, but you know I wouldn’t give it to him without your say-so. I told him that if he needs to speak to you about the case then he can keep phoning the office and I’ll keep asking you to phone him back. But I didn’t get the impression it was official business he wanted to talk to you about. I’ll text you his number so you can phone him if and when you like.’

  Annie glowed as she listened. ‘Oh, come off it, Car. I haven’t got a snowball’s chance with him. Bill. Funny that a man named Bill would, in fact, join the Old Bill.’

  ‘So,’ pressed Carol, ‘do you want me to give him your mobile number or not?’

  ‘Yes. Feel free.’ Annie snapped more than she’d meant to.

  ‘OK, thanks,’ said Carol, sounding exasperated. ‘Other than acting like some sort of virtual matchmaker, I’ve emailed the contracts to His Grace the Duke, and he’s signed them and faxed them back. I’ve booked you three a family room at the Coach and Horses Inn at Talgarth. It’ll sleep up to six, is a reasonable rate, and they proudly promote the fact that they have Wi-Fi in the room, though you’ll have to buy the
password for twenty-four hours’ use. They serve dinner in the pub there until ten o’clock. After that there are sandwiches at the bar. Breakfast is also served in the pub, and it’s included. Checkout is eleven o’clock. Annie, there’s a bus from Talgarth to Anwen-by-Wye that goes from right outside the pub you’re staying in tonight, to almost outside the pub where you’ll be staying in Anwen-by-Wye tomorrow night, which, oddly enough, is also called the Coach and Horses. I’ve booked you in there for two nights as Annie Parker, as agreed. Use the credit card that doesn’t have the company name on it. And don’t forget to get receipts. For everything. All of you, but especially you, Annie. All you need is some sort of little pouch, like a separate purse, to keep them in. It’s not that difficult, and I can’t charge them to the client if you don’t give me the receipt. Either that, or I have to spend ages getting duplicates, or additional information from the credit card company. So, charge everything you reasonably can to the cards you have, and keep receipts for the cash you spend. Right?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Annie as though responding to a nagging parent.

  ‘Good. Now the bus you’ll be catching, Annie, leaves Talgarth at half past ten tomorrow morning, and will get you to Anwen-by-Wye at twenty past two. Mavis, Christine needs to drop you off at Hereford station, where you can be collected by the dowager’s handyman, Ian, in her car. The train you would have arrived on is due at the station at eleven twenty-two a.m. Christine, I suggest you get Mavis to the station by eleven a.m. so she can be inside and check on the arrival of the train, before the driver arrives, so that her cover is complete. OK?’

  The three women in the speeding vehicle chorused, ‘Yes.’

  ‘Good girls,’ quipped Carol. ‘Other than the logistics, I’ve also managed to gather a lot of information about the Twyst family, Chellingworth Hall, the background of Anwen-by-Wye, a little about the village itself and some of the people who live there. That’s where I need to do some more digging, and I’ll get onto that as soon as I hang up here. I’ve emailed everything to all of you. Annie, did you remember your charger for your tablet?’