EQMM, Sep-Oct 2006

by Dell Magazine Authors

  "Word pro-cessing. Well, there's a thing,” said Vera, impressed.

  "All I'm saying is, it can't be hard, if your bloke can do it and my bloke can do it. I've a good mind to have a go at it, you just see if I don't. I can't go on like this with my legs. I deserve a bit of luxury, I do, after all these years.” Her chin jutted out aggressively. Vera was slightly taken aback. She had never heard her friend speak so bitterly and assertively about anything save the price of port. She tried to shift the subject onto more neutral ground.

  She said, “You're sure you can manage both of them?"

  "Don't you worry your head,” said Ethel. “I'll do your Mervyn Monday, Wednesday, Friday. Then I'll go have a nice bit of lunch in the caff in Camden High Street. And I'll do Mr. bloody Jolyon Carstairs in the afternoons Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday, Saturdays is when I do his windows, see. No problem. You go off and have a lovely time with your Sandra. Get yourself a drop o’ sunshine. You can do the same for me when I go see my Norma in Clacton."

  "I'll send you a postcard, Ethel,” said Vera, “nice postcard from Margate. That'll cheer you up."

  And they finished their drinks, Ethel and Vera, very pleased with themselves and their arrangement.

  * * * *

  Very nearly the first thing Ethel did, on her first day chez Mr. Mervyn Fincham in his ground-floor garden flat, was to go through his desk. She had every opportunity to do so, since Mr. Mervyn Fincham, after letting her in, went off to take his constitutional stroll in Regent's Park, only a step away.

  So Ethel had all the time in the world to put his study to the sack. Well, “study.” It was really just an alcove in the large living room. His desk was a large old roll-top affair, with many drawers and a venerable Remington typewriter in the place of honour. There were lots of papers, cuttings and sheaves of pages clipped together. A quick shufti through this lot and a heap of correspondence told Ethel that Mr. Mervyn Fincham earned a precarious living writing short stories, occasional articles, and book reviews. She found copies of a couple of American mystery magazines, brightly coloured things with brutal men with guns on their covers. Flicking through them, she found stories under Mervyn Fincham's name. She didn't bother to read them. “Gentleman's Relish,” one was called; “And Little Lambs Eat Ivy” was the other. Stuffed in the desk's pigeonholes were letters and contracts from editors, and other assorted correspondence. Vera had been right about the typewriter and she was right about the telephone, too, Ethel discovered. How could someone live without a telephone? Then she tried the desk drawers and found them to be locked. That was not a problem. The late Bert, who in addition to his many other qualities was an accomplished thief, had, very early on in their marriage, initiated her into the Mysteries of the Lock. Because, as he told her, another skill is always useful in life, and besides, You Never Know.

  She took two of the hair grips with which she was always well endowed, and following the delicate instruction she had received, tackled the top right-hand drawer, which opened to her with a grateful little sigh. There were folders inside.

  Ha. First, a thick, packed brown folder, with a title in thick black felt pen. "Double Space," it said. Underneath there were other folders, which seemed to be notes, untyped, written in Mr. Mervyn Fincham's spiky handwriting, and appeared to be the outlines of other novels that he had in his head but were as yet unwritten. There must have been ten or twelve of these folders, each with ten pages of tightly written notes, swatches of dialogue, character descriptions. There was enough in these folders to keep Mr. Mervyn Fincham busy for years, Ethel thought. To keep anyone busy for years. Mr. Mervyn Fincham was a book writer on the quiet.

  She looked at the clock and settled down to read Double Space. It was a crime novel whose principal characters were, curiously enough, two writers of crime fiction who clearly, even in the first chapter, didn't get on. Things were obviously shaping up for a scrap.

  She read contentedly for an hour and a half, and then had to stop and hoover and give the place a flick of a duster. When Mr. Mervyn Fincham came back, the place was clean and smelling slightly of Pledge. Ethel had noticed that if you sprayed a little furniture polish into the air around the front door, people didn't bother checking too much.

  Fincham said, “Very good, Mrs. Hoskins.” He was a tall, lanky man with a beaky nose and an untidy shock of black hair. He had a furtive look, Ethel noticed, a hunched-shouldered, guilty sort of stance, and a horrible way of talking out of the corner of his mouth, while avoiding her eyes. He looked like a man who was simply waiting to be found out. He looked like a man who had been found out and was talking to you in the prison exercise yard, where, Bert had told her, everyone talked like that. It wasn't surprising that he had no friends, looking like that. Ethel couldn't imagine anyone wanting Mervyn Fincham as a friend or even an acquaintance.

  "I do my best to oblige, I'm sure, sir,” she said. Hermit or no hermit, eccentric or not, his money was as good as anyone else's.

  She left at twelve and walked down the road to the caff, where she had a nice piece of liver and bacon, and thought about Double Space. There was a sizzle of excitement running through her body. He might be a long streak of piss, she thought, but he knew how to write. It had gripped her from the start and she wasn't easy to grip. Agatha didn't grip her like that. She had only finished about a third of what Mr. Mervyn Fincham had written and she was looking forward to reading the rest on Wednesday.

  And then she'd see.

  But in the meantime, she had Mr. Jolyon Carstairs to sort out. Who was a very different kettle of fish. Mr. Jolyon Carstairs lived in a vast apartment, on the second floor overlooking Regent's Park. Mr. Jolyon Carstairs was not eking out an existence as a short-story writer like Mervyn Fincham. He had written books, lots of them. One whole shelf of his bookcase was filled with copies of his works. Ethel had sneaked one of them home and had read it. It was not much cop, she told herself. She couldn't make head nor tail of it. People wandered around, nothing happened, other people wandered in and more nothing happened. But in the blurb, Mr. Jolyon Carstairs was hailed as “a master of the psychological mystery story.” Whatever that meant. If this was crime fiction, then Ethel was a monkey's uncle.

  In crime stories, people did things, terrible things, and were either caught or they weren't. This empty stuff of Carstairs's was not up to snuff. But Double Space, now there was a crime story for you.

  To have a good crime novel, what you needed apparently was a good plot. The rest, well, that came along on its own. Mr. Mervyn Fincham appeared to have good plots coming out of his ears.

  Well, he wasn't the only one, she decided as she began Mr. Jolyon Carstairs's housework the next afternoon. The trouble with Carstairs, she had decided long ago, was Carstairs. He was a pompous man who affected a small goatee and usually wore velvet jackets and bow ties. He had very little hair and eyes that looked as though they had been painted on. As Ethel watched him tittupping around the flat after her, his feet clicking on the parquet, she always had the urge to put out a foot and squash him.

  It was a relief as always to leave his flat. Her last long-established duty was to prepare a large pot of Mr. Carstairs's nightly infusion of hawthorn and verbena, which was apparently good for warding off all manner of ills, and which, according to him, Mr. Carstairs liked to sip, lukewarm, in the evenings. Ethel had taken a little trial sip once and once was enough. It tasted like something you would spray on tomatoes. He was welcome to it. Perhaps it was to help him sleep. She had noticed, in his bathroom cabinet, lots and lots of different sleeping pills. Mr. Carstairs evidently had an overactive mind which wouldn't leave him alone at night. Interesting.

  The next day was Wednesday, so she went bright and early to Mervyn Fincham's to spray furniture polish into the air and read the rest of Double Space. She had been right. It was good. Mervyn had almost finished it; she could see where he was going with the plot, or at least she thought she could, and she could think of a twist or two that she would put in if she were h
im.

  "If I was ‘im,” she said to herself as she vacuumed cursorily round the steddy, “I'd make the first bloke the second bloke's brother. That's funnier. And, into the bargain, I'd give the copper a stammer. That's different and that's funny, too. And ‘e doesn't know nothing about how to pick a lock, neither."

  Well now. All you need is a good plot. But for a good plot you have to set it up. If you want to get on Woman's Hour, that is.

  The next day, Thursday—and she was keeping count because Vera was due back now in ten days or thereabouts—was her day for Jolyon Carstairs.

  On this day, Jolyon Carstairs went into his study and was surprised to find in the middle of his desk an African carving of heavy brownstone which he had brought back from one of his researching trips to Benin, or Dahomey as it had been when he was there. And which normally lived with other similar artifacts in the lounge on a special low table. He picked up the sculpture, which was an idealised representation of a lanky mother and child. It was an ugly old thing, he had privately always thought, but you had to bring something back from Africa, didn't you, and he had always told people that it had been presented to him by a shaman and that it had curative powers. He had actually bought it with others in a street market in Porto Novo for three shillings.

  "Mrs. Hoskins,” he called.

  Ethel appeared at the door in pinafore and turban. She was carrying a mop and was wearing pink Marigold gloves.

  "Yes, sir?” she said.

  Jolyon Carstairs held out the carving.

  "What on earth was this doing on my desk?"

  "I've no idea, I'm sure,” she said. “P'raps I was dusting it and carried it to your study in an absent-minded moment. I'll put it back in the lounge, shall I?” She took it from him, handling it very carefully.

  "A place for everything, Mrs. Hoskins, and everything in its place,” he said.

  "To be sure, Mr. Carstairs. My mother always said as much. It was her motto."

  "Was it,” he said with total disinterest, and sat down at his desk and fired up his computer, not wondering why Mrs. Hoskins had gone straight back into the kitchen with the carving.

  "Everything in its place,” she said as she wrapped the carving carefully in newspaper and put it in her bag. “I'll give him everything in its place.” Then she attacked the floor with her mop and with ferocious concentration.

  Later that morning, Jolyon Carstairs looked round the living room door where Ethel was dusting the mantelpiece.

  "Mrs. Hoskins,” he said, rather hesitantly, though not knowing why; for heaven's sake, she was the cleaning lady.

  "Yes, sir,” said Ethel, turning.

  "You wouldn't have any idea—that is, can you explain what has happened to a pair of shoes of mine? Brown brogues they are, in fact. And I can't seem to lay my hands on them."

  "I'm sure I wouldn't know, sir. I never touch your private things, as you know. Perhaps you've mislaid them. Left them at a friend's house or something."

  Jolyon Carstairs frowned.

  "Left them at a friend's house? Why on earth would I do that?"

  "I don't know, I'm sure, sir,” said Ethel in a tone that indicated that she was very clear that some people had peculiar habits that were none of her business. “They'll turn up, I'm sure they will, Mr. Carstairs, don't you worry your head about them."

  He stared at her for a moment. “No,” he said, “very well. But it's very mysterious."

  "Mysterious as may be,” said Ethel, “but my mother always said that there were more things in heaven and earth. And she was right."

  Mr. Carstairs considered the dictum offered by Ethel's mother and traipsed despondently off.

  The following day, Ethel was pleased to see that Mervyn Fincham had written another ten pages of Double Space since her last reading.

  "Good boy,” she said, reading busily, “that's it. You hammer on."

  The she went through the contents of the other folders in Fincham's desk.

  "He's got the touch, has the boy,” she told herself, “this is good stuff. Bert would have liked this one."

  One of the pages in one of the folders interested her particularly. It was apparently a piece of dialogue which Fincham was trying out. It read:

  "You utter bastard. It's people like you that give the human race a bad name. You are a pretentious, untalented, unprincipled little swine and my only hope is that someday someone will give you the thrashing that you so richly deserve."

  Interesting.

  On Saturday, Mr. Jolyon Carstairs began to feel he was losing his wits. He went into the lounge, where Ethel was up on a stepladder, cleaning the high windows, a task she always left for Saturdays, because Mr. Carstairs was often out on a Saturday afternoon watching cricket, or involved in other gentlemanly pursuits, and she could spread herself.

  "Mrs. Hoskins,” he said, cursing himself for the diffident tone Mrs. Hoskins always produced in him, “I'm sorry to trouble you, but I wonder if you have seen my light overcoat. It's beige, perhaps you know the one I mean, and I can't seem to find it anywhere."

  "An overcoat, is it now?” she said, looking down at him from the stepladder. “Well, dearie me, I can't say, I'm sure. It was shoes the other day, wasn't it? And today, it's an overcoat. Well, I can't help you, sir, I'm afraid."

  "Yes, and the shoes never reappeared, either,” Mr. Carstairs said petulantly. “I don't know what's happening."

  "Well, if you don't, then neither do I, Mr. Carstairs,” Ethel said in a voice that conveyed pity and wariness, as though she was wondering whether some people were quite right in the head, which was precisely what Mr. Carstairs was beginning to wonder. He wondered what life was coming to. He wondered if he was starting premature Alzheimer's.

  At five o'clock Ethel went home and prepared to rest on the seventh day, as prescribed. God had rested on the seventh day, and Ethel followed his example meticulously, if not religiously. What was good enough for God was good enough for her, she was fond of saying. We do not know if God played bingo on His seventh day, but that was what Ethel did anyway, winning four pounds and a blue washing-up bowl, very useful. She spent the four pounds on port and lemon, which she drank alone because Vera was still in Margate.

  On Monday, she spent a pleasant morning at Mervyn Fincham's, getting up-to-date with Double Space. He'd done a lot of work over the weekend, she was pleased to see, adding at least twenty pages. And he was setting himself up for the ending, she could tell.

  And so was she. But there were still a few wrinkles to iron out.

  One of them ironed itself out with no help from her. On Tuesday afternoon, on arriving at Carstairs's, she was pleased to learn that Mr. Jolyon Carstairs had a meeting with his publishers, which couldn't have suited her better. As soon as he had gone, she went to her capacious bag in the kitchen and took out a sheet of paper, and took it to the study where she crumpled it and placed it in the wastepaper basket. Then, donning her pink Marigolds, she set to work on Mr. Carstairs's computer. Happily, Carstairs himself had put paper in the printer only that morning. Mr. Carstairs's absence gave her a clear two hours in his study, which is all she had been hoping for.

  She left at six, after preparing his herbal infusion this time with extra special care.

  * * * *

  Vera was not called to give evidence, which offended her not a little. After all, she had been the permanent cleaning lady for Mervyn Fincham, even if her friend Ethel had been her replacement during the crucial period. On her precipitous return from Margate, after reading the horrid news in the Daily Mirror, she offered herself up at the police station, was perfunctorily interviewed by a police inspector, and was then shown the door with no ceremony, with the promise that the authorities would be in touch if it proved necessary. It had evidently not proved necessary. It was Ethel who was the star, and Vera was merely the understudy waiting vainly in the wings for the call to come.

  Still, she had a little reflected glory—after all, she was on the sidelines, even if she wasn't play
ing in the match—and even this tiny touch of fame earned her the right to several Gin and Its in the Ring O’ Bells.

  She had to admit, reluctantly, that Ethel stood up well in the witness box. Under examination and cross-examination, her jaw stood out like a rock and her eyes never flickered, and she spoke in a clear voice.

  Yes, she had undertaken cleaning duties for the deceased. Yes, she had arrived as usual on the morning of Wednesday the eleventh. At about eight forty-five, sir. On entering the hall, she had heard raised angry voices coming from the apartment belonging to the deceased. What did she do then? She opened the front door of the flat. And what did she find? Nothing, sir. What did she hear? She heard the sound of hurried footsteps from the lounge. When she went to investigate, she found the French windows open, and at the end of the garden, she saw a running figure open the garden gate and disappear into the road. Then what did she do? She went to the study, where she expected to find Mr. Mervyn Fincham. And did she find him? Yes, sir, but he was sitting slumped in his chair, with blood streaming from a horrid wound. He was clearly without life? Yes, sir. Yes, the witness would like a glass of water, thank you, I'm sure, Your Lordship. And what had she done then? She had called the police, who arrived in ten minutes. Was she able to identify the person she had seen at the end of the garden? No, sir. She had only seen him for a second. Did she know of any bad feeling between the deceased and the person in the dock, Mr. Jolyon Carstairs? No, she didn't meddle in the affairs of her employers, sir, it wasn't her place to. Very commendable. And after she had been interviewed by the officer in charge of the investigation, what had she done then? She had taken her bag and gone round to Mr. Carstairs's apartment. But this was a Wednesday. Was not her day for Mr. Carstairs a Thursday? Yes, but she had been feeling a bit wobbly recently, so she had previously asked if she might change the day to give herself a full day free on Thursday to relax. And when she arrived at Mr. Carstairs's apartment, what was his comportment? Comportment? Behaviour. How did he behave? Objection: Calling for an opinion on the part of the witness. The witness might answer. He behaved peculiarly, he appeared a bit doolally. Doolally? You mean not in command of himself. That's right, sir. Did he appear to you as a man might if he had recently committed a serious crime? The jury were to disregard that scandalously disgraceful question.