The World's Finest Mystery...

by Ed Gorman

  "Sound so horribly smug."

  "I don't mean to. Blame it on my childhood, Eileen— growing up in a vicarage with parents who knew how to be happy. And then there was dear cousin Aggie quite content to be a bit odd in her purple trousers and enormous sun hats."

  "But you don't have the right."

  "What right?"

  "To pretend to be such a goody-goody. Not with the way you carry on. Making Daddy so unhappy. Do you want to know what Aunt Mary calls you?"

  "No."

  "Well, you're going to hear it. She says you're a tart. She says you were never good enough for him to begin with. That your father was just a country vicar and your mother was only good for making jam."

  "Aunt Mary is a very disappointed woman, but that's no excuse for you talking about your grandparents that way. I wish they could have lived so they could have known you. They would have loved you so much."

  "Yes, like you do, when you're not too busy being nice to Mr. Connors. I wonder if he really was sad that his wife died in that accident? I wonder if it really was an accident…"

  "Eileen!"

  It was Andrew's voice speaking to her now. And she came back to her surroundings to find herself seated across from him at a round table in a corner of the dining room. It was the same table where she had always sat with her mother. It was all the same. The bottle green wallpaper with the burgundy frieze. The mantelpiece crammed with Victorian vases and jugs, barely giving the heavily ornate bronze clock room to breathe, let alone tick. The same swagged and fringed velveteen curtains framed the lace at the window. The only difference Eileen could see was the small vases on all the tables, each containing sprigs of flowers or a couple of roses. There were red roses at their table. One was still fresh. The other was beginning to droop.

  There was no one else in the room but them. "Eileen," Andrew said again. "Look at me! Please, darling, take your hands away from your ears."

  "I didn't realize." She blinked and let her arms fall to her sides. "I must have been trying to shut out the voices."

  "Talk to me instead."

  "I can't." She spoke to the roses and somehow her lips kept moving. "I hated her, you see. You can say I was a child but that doesn't change anything, does it?"

  "But you must have loved her once."

  "Oh, yes I did! We had such wonderful times together when I was little. She would take me for picnics and bicycle rides and make up stories to tell me at night. It was only about a year before the… end that I became so angry with her. Everything she did seemed wrong to me."

  "Lots of girls that age feel that way." Andrew reached for her hand, then changed his mind. She was like a bird ready to fly away at the least movement.

  "I was at that really plain stage. Gawky, spotty faced. And knew people were thinking, even saying, she'll never be a beauty like her mother. Aunt Mary said I should be glad of that, and the way she kept saying it made me begin to notice things that I never had before. All those letters Mummy got. The flowers that came that she didn't want Daddy to know about— she let him think she had bought them herself. The times she went out for lunch and came back looking the way I felt when I got home late from school for no proper reason."

  "It's a pity your Aunt Mary didn't move out and make a life for herself."

  "She couldn't. Daddy needed her. He wasn't an invalid exactly. But there were times when he was in pain from his injuries and she was wonderful with him. She would sit with him and put cool cloths on his head and they would talk for hours with the curtains closed about the days when they were children."

  "And your mother."

  "He didn't want her there at those times. That's what he told me. He said he didn't want her cooped up looking after him. But I began to think she couldn't be bothered to be with him during the bad times. Because she was too selfish. Too eager to be out enjoying herself as Aunt Mary said, with the likes of Mr. Connors. And those women friends of hers who weren't up to any good either. So much for the vicar's daughter, fooling the gullible into thinking she was all sweetness and light."

  Now that Eileen had started talking she had trouble stopping. But she did break off when Mrs. Gardener came in and crossed the room to close the heavy curtains before coming over to their table. The proprietress had told Nellie's husband Ed that she would get the young couple's dinner to them, if he'd be so kind as to start washing up some of the saucepans. She had wanted to see if Mrs. Shelby looked any less haunted than on her arrival. Looking at her now she didn't know whether to be reassured or not. There was a little more color in her cheeks but her eyes had a look to them that she couldn't read.

  "I was wondering whether you'd like a fruit salad or soup to start off with." Mrs. Gardener felt as though she was trying to jolly along a couple of kiddies who didn't want to eat their dinner.

  "Fruit salad, please." Andrew responded without looking at his wife. "But there's no hurry if it's all right with you. We're enjoying sitting here in all this solitude. Have the other guests eaten all ready?"

  "Only the Misses Phillips. The other two couples are dining out this evening. And that nice old clergyman I was telling you about earlier said he probably wouldn't be back till after eight.

  "Then," Andrew smiled up at her, "if we're not troubling you…"

  "Not a bit of it. You go on having a nice chat. The Lancashire hotpot will keep just fine in the oven. Even better for letting the gravy have a nice simmer."

  Mrs. Gardener returned to the kitchen to inform Nellie that she wished one or other of them was a mind reader.

  * * *

  "That's one of the happy memories I have of when Mummy and I stayed here," Eileen heard herself tell Andrew.

  "What is, darling?"

  "She said that she couldn't make jam like her mother did, or nurse Daddy half as well as Aunt Mary could when he had one of his bad times, but that being a vicar's daughter she could always tell a clergyman even when he wasn't wearing a clerical collar. I remember she made it sound like a talent for acrobatics or something else terribly clever and we both laughed."

  "And were there other good moments?"

  "Some. Going for walks and down onto the sand to paddle. It was much too cold to swim. And I liked hearing her talk about her parents and cousin Aggie and what fun it had been collecting eggs from the hen house when she spent holidays with her. But there were always the other thoughts that I couldn't push away. Especially when she spoke about Daddy and how I needed to understand that he got upset and went into rages sometimes because the injury to his head that had caused him to go blind in one eye had affected his mind. She said that he imagined all sorts of things that weren't true. And that he was even jealous of her friends, anyone she was fond of— even cousin Aggie, which was why she had never been able to take me to see her. But that his doctor wouldn't put him in hospital because he had known Daddy for years and Aunt Mary had persuaded him that she could take perfectly good care of her brother at home."

  "You didn't believe her?" Andrew asked gently.

  "No! I told her if Daddy got angry sometimes it was because of the disgusting way she was carrying on with Mr. Connors. And probably lots of other men besides."

  "You loved your father very much?"

  "How could I help it? He was so dear and kind to me. We would sit and do jigsaw puzzles together. We both loved them. And he liked me to play the piano for him. Chopin was his favorite composer. Daddy said the music helped soothe his headaches."

  "So he did have them?"

  "They were the price he paid for being a hero. I told Mummy she made them worse. And nothing she could say made me sympathize with her one bit. I lay awake at night in that bedroom upstairs with the red roses on the wallpaper. In the darkness everything became so clear. Aunt Mary was away the night before we left home. She had gone to stay with an old school friend for a couple of days. Something she did once a year. And our cook and the maid were away also; Mummy had said that they needed a break too and that it would be fun for her and me to take c
are of the house together. We could even have a try at making jam. But thinking it over, the pieces all began to fit together just like one of Daddy's and my jigsaw puzzles."

  Eileen fell silent, to sit as if she were indeed in a dark room in the middle of the night. But Andrew did not speak. He sat waiting until she took up the thread of memory again.

  "She planned it all. Taken advantage of Aunt Mary's absence, got the help out of the way so that she could have a clear field to pack up what she needed to take with her when she ran off with Mr. Connors. He was free. His wife had been conveniently killed in that car crash. But that still left Daddy, who had refused to give her a divorce. Maybe she tried to talk him into giving her one, hoping he would do so without Aunt Mary to back him up; that was somewhat more bearable to think than that my own mother had killed my father in cold blood. I'm not sure how many nights it took for me to face up to the certainty that he was dead. But there was no getting around those cuts on her wrists that she refused to explain. There was the fact that she hadn't let me say goodbye to Daddy and the rush about leaving the house, all the while telling me that we were just going off on a surprise holiday so she and I could get close again. To this sort of guesthouse! The four of us— my parents, Aunt Mary, and myself— had always stayed in hotels before, fashionable ones, where we would always meet people we knew. And then there was the man in the grey cardigan."

  "What man, Eileen?"

  "An elderly man, with thoughtful, knowing eyes. He was Scottish, with a name like McDougal— no, McGregor. I remember it made me think of Peter Rabbit. He was eating breakfast— kippers— the first morning we came down to this room. He was sitting over at that table in front of the window. I saw him looking at Mummy not just that time, but on other occasions when we happened to be eating at the same time. It grew upon me with a sort of creeping horror that he was a policeman, a detective on holiday, and because of what he was, he knew what she had done. I could see it, the look that revealed he saw right through to her soul. I was sure she sensed it, because I saw her talking to him one day by the staircase, with her head bent close to his. I wondered what lies she was telling him to charm away his suspicions. And it reached the point that I couldn't bear it anymore— the waiting, the awful waiting for it all to be brought out into the open. That my mother had murdered my father and perhaps even conspired in arranging the accident that killed Mr. Connors's wife. I pictured her being taken away to be tried and hanged. And there was nothing I could do to stop it. I didn't know that I wanted to— I just knew that I wanted it to be over, so I did the one thing she had begged me not to do. I slipped away while she was having a rest one afternoon and went down to the telephone box at the corner of the road. I meant to speak to Aunt Mary, but…"

  "It was your father who answered the phone." Andrew was suddenly aware of how cold the room had grown.

  "Yes," Eileen's voice did not wave. "He said he had been worried about Mummy and me because we hadn't been in touch and he had misplaced the address of where we were staying that she had written down for him. But that otherwise he was perfectly well. And he didn't want me to say anything to Mummy about my ringing up, because they'd had a small quarrel and he understood she needed time away to sort out her feelings. So it would be best not to put a spoke in the wheel, just let things take their course and we would soon be back together, just like we were meant to be. It was such a relief, Andrew."

  "Of course."

  "How could I know?" Eileen asked in the voice of a twelve-year-old girl. "How could I know what I had done? It never crossed my mind that I had become my father's accomplice in killing my mother. But he was there when she and I went for a walk on the downs the next afternoon. He had found out from one of the other people staying here that we always went out around that time. When I saw him, saw the look on his face— the terrible maniacal rage when Mummy walked toward him— I screamed at him to stay away, even before I saw him lift the knife and bring it slashing down on her. She screamed at me to run, but I couldn't move. I just stood there and listened to him shouting that she had got away from him once. But never again. And as I watched her die I kept repeating over and over again inside my head, 'He's ill, he's ill, he can't help it. You're the one who killed her.' "

  "He was ill," Andrew reached out and gripped her hands tight, "too ill to be found fit to be tried for murder. He went into hospital, where he should have been all along. And he died. It was the war that killed him, but you did not kill your mother. You were a child doing what you thought was right."

  "I was jealous of her. I was willing to believe everything bad that Aunt Mary had to say about her."

  "Eileen, you couldn't have stopped what happened."

  "He's right." The speaker was a silver-haired man wearing a grey cardigan over a clerical collar. Neither of them had seen or heard him come into the room. "My name's McGregor. Ian McGregor. You probably don't remember me, but I was staying in this house that week you spent here with your mother. And I have returned every year at the same time, hoping perhaps that you would feel called to return and that I would be granted the opportunity of a few words with you."

  "I do remember you." Eileen struggled to stand up but needed Andrew's help to guide her out of her chair. "I thought you were a policeman."

  "No, my dear, I am as you see." Mr. McGregor tapped at his collar. "A clergyman. Your mother recognized me as such even though I was out of uniform on that occasion. It was at a point in my life when I was feeling somewhat adrift from my life's work. I came here feeling a need that week to escape from the world, and myself."

  "And you sensed that Eileen's mother was also escaping," Andrew said.

  "Not that." Mr. McGregor shook his head. "I saw in her face a look I had witnessed on the faces of some of the men and women with whom I had talked and prayed in my work as a prison cleric. People on whom the sentence of death had been passed, and who had found within themselves the peace that passes all understanding. Your mother, Eileen— if I may call you such— had fully accepted the inevitability of what lay in store for her. She wasn't afraid to die. What she feared was that her young daughter wouldn't learn to live. I made several attempts to see you, but I found it impossible even with my connections to be apprised of your whereabouts.

  "I went to live with a cousin, Agatha, and she guarded me like a dragon until I married Andrew."

  "But somehow I was always certain that I would see you again. I believe that your mother intended I should." Mr. McGregor smiled, looked upward, and bade them goodnight. "Perhaps I will see both you young people at breakfast," he said before exiting the room.

  "I thought he was going to say in church. A nice man," said Andrew.

  "Yes." Eileen plucked the two roses from the vase on their table. "Would you mind if we took a walk? I know it's dark, but there's a sliver of moon and I'd like to go out to where it happened on the downs."

  Andrew took her hand. They were unpegging their coats from the hall tree when Mrs. Gardener came out of the kitchen.

  "Going out for a breath of fresh air?"

  "Yes," they replied.

  "Well, don't get wet. It looks like it might come on to rain again."

  "It doesn't matter," said Eileen.

  "No, I don't suppose it does." Mrs. Gardener stood in the doorway watching what she had come, in the space of a couple of hours, to think of as her young couple walk arm-in-arm down the road. Then she closed the door and went back to the kitchen to tell Nellie that things were going to be all right. She could feel it in her bones.

  "I still don't believe in them— miracles, I mean. But I wish," Eileen looked up at Andrew, "that I had that man's pure unclouded faith."

  "It would be a good thing to have," he agreed. The Sea View receded behind them into the mist, so that if they had looked back all they would have seen was a glimmer of light shining through a chink in the curtains of an upstairs window.

  "But I believe in you, Andrew. I believe in us. That's a beginning, isn't it?"

  "
Yes." He smiled down at her, tucking her arm more securely into his. "It most certainly is."

  Noreen Ayres

  Delta Double-Deal

  NOREEN AYRES'S Smokey Brandon is one of the more unique characters in modern crime fiction. You don't often meet— in real life or in fiction— a former cop who was also an exotic dancer. Noreen's fiction straddles the fences of good strong commercial fiction and literary fiction, a balancing act that's hard to ignore. Or put down, for that matter. She brings real depth to her work. And her sentences, my, do they shine. "Delta Double-Deal," first published in The Night Awakens, reveals her talents in a completely different kind of mystery story.

  Delta Double-Deal

  Noreen Ayres

  Minnie Chaundelle was a beautiful big woman with waved hair swept close to her head like raked copper. The color was by way of her stylist boyfriend, and a front tooth rimmed with gold came courtesy the neighborhood dentist. The dentist never charged Minnie and Minnie never charged him, so it was a nice arrangement that kept Minnie in a wholesome smile.