by Joyce Porter
‘They’ve been doing the same thing round the back,’ said a woman who’d just arrived. ‘They went away shaking their heads so I don’t reckon they found anything.’
Sergeant Fenner hitched up the knees of his trousers and examined the flowerbeds under the windows.
‘Ladder marks,’ said the know-all. ‘They’d leave unmistakable imprints in that soft soil. Ah’ – as Sergeant Fenner and his photographic assistant went back inside the house – ‘ looks as though they’ve drawn a blank.’
‘Of course they’ve drawn a blank!’ snorted the Hon. Con, determined not to be out-done by a thick-headed yokel in a plastic macintosh. ‘They’d have taken pictures if they hadn’t.’
Every now and again policemen came and went. Most of them were empty-handed but one or two were carrying packages, the possible contents of which occupied the Hon. Con and her macintoshed rival for some considerable time. The real highlight came when the ambulance drove up.
The macintoshed idiot got it in first. ‘ They’ll be removing the body.’
The Hon. Con capped him. ‘For the post mortem.’
‘Of course. They’ll want to establish the approximate time of the death and everything.’
‘And the cause!’ snapped the Hon. Con, moving forward with the rest of the crowd to get a better view of whatever was going to emerge from the house on that stretcher.
‘Probably turn out to be our old friend the blunt instrument!’ chuckled the macintoshed oaf, using his elbows to good effect. ‘Or a sharp, stiletto-like object!’
The Hon. Con had her riposte to this alreadly trembling on her lips but the front door opened and everybody’s attention became riveted on the burden which the two ambulance men were manoeuvring deftly down the steps. The policeman on guard held the garden gate open and the crowd, leaning forward, gasped as they caught sight of the blanket-covered bundle.
The Hon. Con, leaning forward and gasping with the best of them, was disappointed. There was nothing to see. Just a shapeless lump, really. She straightened up and glared with fierce disapproval at everybody else. Ghouls!
The ambulance doors slammed.
‘Well,’ said the man in the macintosh, ‘ that’s that. Time for my dinner anyhow, I reckon. It’s gone twelve, you know.’
The Hon. Con was made of sterner stuff. Fortified by her sausage rolls, she stuck it out for another twenty minutes, Then, brushing the crumbs off her sodden duffle coat, she called it quits and headed back home to the delicious reproaches of a horrified Miss Jones.
‘Why, Constance, dear, you’re absolutely soaking! And you look frozen!’
The Hon. Con put on a gallant smile. ‘It is a bit mucky out,’ she acknowledged, ‘but I’m all right.’
‘Well, you certainly don’t look it, dear! Now, get those wet things off right away! There’s a lovely fire in the sitting room so you just go and sit by it and get warm while I fetch your slippers.’
‘No need to fuss, Bones!’ objected the Hon. Con happily as she kicked her shoes off and padded into the sitting room. ‘Bit of an icy gale never hurt anyone.’
Miss Jones was already halfway up the stairs in search of the bedroom slippers. ‘And we’ll have lunch round the fire, too, today, dear!’ she called. ‘It’s rather chilly in the dinette. By the way did you have a successful morning?’
The Hon. Con had no intention of regaling old Bones with an account of her adventures unless and until she had old Bones’s undivided attention. She stretched out in her favourite armchair, held her feet out to the blazing fire and blissfully wiggled her toes. Her socks began to steam. This was the life, eh?
‘Oh, Constance, I do wish you’d stop doing that! It’s so unhygienic and it’ll give you chilblains.’
‘Oh, stuff!’ scoffed the Hon. Con good-naturedly letting Miss Jones put the slippers on for her.
Miss Jones got to her feet, automatically clapping one hand to the spot where her lumbago always got her. ‘Did you see poor Mrs. Hellon at all, dear? I was wondering if we oughtn’t to drop her a wee note of condolence. If it had been a member of the family, of course, there would have been no two ways about it but I’m not sure what the correct form is in the case of an au pair girl. They’re sort of betwixt and between, aren’t they. Not really domestics and not really relations. Maybe the tragic circumstances make a difference. In any case, I’m sure poor Mrs Hellon will be grateful for all the neighbourly sympathy she can get, don’t you, dear?’ Miss Jones sighed and perched herself on the arm of the settee. ‘I mean, one does assume such a heavy responsibility when one admits one of these young strangers into one’s home. I wonder if it’s really worth it. This is the third one poor Mrs Hellon’s had, you know, and the baby isn’t a year old yet. The first two were simply impossible, I hear. They found one smoking those drugged cigarettes and the other just never washed. Literally never washed! Not her hands or her face or anything. It must have been terrible, especially in the hot weather. And, of course, neither of them spoke English properly – or pretended they didn’t. I suppose that’s why poor Mrs Hellon got an Irish girl this time. Well, the Irish aren’t really foreigners – are they? – and I daresay all those stories about keeping pigs and chickens in the kitchens are very exaggerated. This girl certainly didn’t look as though she’d come from that kind of background. She was quite pretty and nicely dressed and always very clean and tidy and everything. Not at all the kind of girl who looked as though she would get herself murdered. Oh, dear,’ – Miss Jones’s hand flew to her mouth as yet another aspect of the tragedy struck her – ‘her poor parents! Poor Mrs Hellon will have to break the news to them, won’t she? Oh, what a dreadful thing to have to do! One would feel so responsible though how you’re supposed to stop a burglar breaking into your house in the middle of the night, I just don’t know. They’re so cunning, you see. Poor Mrs Hellon didn’t hear a thing. She’d no idea that anything was wrong until she took the girl up a cup of tea this morning and found her lying there – in a pool of blood. Just fancy what a shock it must have been! Really, these days none of us is safe in our own beds. I’m sure I shan’t sleep a wink until they’ve caught this man.’ Miss Jones shivered and turned with gratitude to the Hon. Con. If anybody could save one from a violent and messy death in the sanctuary of one’s own four walls, it was surely dear Constance. Miss Jones smiled affectionately at her friend. ‘Well dear, and what’s your news?’
The Hon. Con was not, however, smiling affectionately back. On the contrary, her face was as black as thunder and her jaw was hanging out like the week’s washing on a good drying day ‘Where?’ she demanded, going rigid with rage, ‘did you find all this out?’
Miss Jones was quite taken aback. The Hon. Con was notoriously touchy, of course, but she couldn’t imagine what she had done to upset her this time. ‘You mean about poor Teresa O’Coyne, dear?’
‘Hell’s bells!’ roared the Hon. Con. ‘You even know her blooming name!’
‘I’m sorry, dear.’ Miss Jones was getting flustered.
‘Ho,’ retorted the Hon. Con with sarcastic generosity, ‘there’s nothing to apologize for! It’s just that I’ve spent the whole blooming morning catching my death of pneumonia only to come back home and find you know more about it than I do.’
‘It was Mrs Monday, dear,’ murmured Miss Jones. ‘She was so full of the murder and everything that I really couldn’t stop her telling me all about it.’
‘Who the heck is Mrs Monday?’
‘She’s the lady who brings the eggs, dear. You know, they run that small-holding on the way to Windle. I know her eggs do cost a penny or two more but they are free range and, when you go past, I always think her hens look so contented and happy. I’m sure their eggs must …’
‘But where did she get all this gen from?’
‘I’ve no idea, I’m afraid. I didn’t think to ask her.’
The Hon. Con sighed and assumed the expression of one forced to make the best of a bad job. ‘What precisely did she tell you?’
‘She’s got one thing wrong, anyhow,’ grunted the Hon. Con, getting what little satisfaction she could from this. ‘The girl wasn’t killed by any intruder.’
‘Wasn’t she, dear?’
‘No, she certainly wasn’t! And I have that on the very best authority.’ Since it was more than likely that Miss Jones would die rather than speak to Sergeant Fenner again, the Hon. Con thought she was pretty safe in gilding the old lily a bit. ‘Remember that young detective fellow I worked with on my last case, Bones ? she asked casually and was gratified to see her chum turn pale.
‘Mr Fenner, dear?’
‘He’s working on this case, too. I had quite a chinwag with him round at the Hellons’ house. Gave me a pretty good idea of how the police are thinking at the moment. An intruder was one of the first things they thought of, of course, and they looked for evidence of somebody breaking in. Looked jolly carefully, too.’ The Hon. Con shook her head portentously. ‘Not a sign.’
‘Some burglars are very clever, dear,’ ventured Miss Jones.
‘Not clever enough to leave no traces at all,’ retorted the Hon. Con flatly. ‘Specially when the police were deliberately looking for them. Credit where credit’s due, Bones. Pig-headed and hide-bound and lacking in imagination the cops may be, but they’re not complete morons. If they assure me that nobody bust into that house, that’s more than good enough for me.’
Miss Jones glanced anxiously at the Hon. Con. The question was dynamite but it had to be asked. She got up and moved over towards the door so as to be poised for a quick get-away. ‘I expect you’ll be wanting your lunch, dear,’ she observed innocently as she went. When she reached the door to the kitchen she paused and turned. ‘By the way, dear, did Mr Fenner – er – say anything?’
‘Of course he said something!’ laughed the Hon. Con indulgently. ‘What do you thing we were conversing in? Flipping sign language?’
‘ I wondered if he’d said anything about – well – about you lending a hand.’
The Hon. Con knew that she had a somewhat transparent face so she concealed it by bending down and tugging her socks up. ‘Ah, yes – well – it isn’t quite as simple as that, old girl. Fenner isn’t in charge of the case, you see. They’ve sent some big shot along to take over and he, of course, doesn’t know me. However,’ – the Hon. Con strangled Miss Jones’s feelings of relief without mercy – ‘Fenner made his attitude on the subject pretty clear. Couldn’t actually come straight out and say it, of course, but a nod’s as good as a wink to an old war horse like me, eh? I shall be contributing my two-penny worth, don’t you fret!’
But Miss Jones did fret. ‘But what exactly is he expecting you to do, dear? I mean, it’s different from last time, isn’t it? The police didn’t think that was murder at all so they weren’t doing anything about it but, this time, they know it’s murder and they’re mounting a full scale investigation, aren’t they? Mrs Monday said there’d even been some talk about bringing Scotland Yard in.’
The Hon. Con scowled as the Oracle of Totter bridge was quoted at her yet again. ‘ I shall be a sort of unofficial advisor,’ she snapped.
‘Advisor on what?’ Miss Jones couldn’t leave it alone. ‘What can you advise on, dear, that would be of any use to the police? Surely they have hundreds of real experts that they can …’
‘Local background!’ snarled the Hon. Con. ‘I live here, don’t I? Have done for donkey’s years. Know the area like the back of my hand. People’ll talk to me where they’d fight shy of the cops. That’s why’ – she added shrewdly – ‘Sergeant Fenner wants me to keep my co-operation sub rosa. So don’t you go shooting your mouth off about it to all and sundry, ’specially not to that blessed hen woman.’
Miss Jones did not know what to think. It was not in her nature to accuse the Hon. Con of lying but, really, one did on occasion wonder if one dare believe a word she said. The Hon. Con an expert on local affairs? Could the police really be so silly as to employ her, however sub rosa, as that? Miss Jones strove to be fair but there was no ducking the facts: the Hon. Con knew as much about the lives of the people who had lived around her for years as a Hottentot would. Less, probably. Why she hardly knew the name of the couple who lived next door and as for being au fait with all the neighbourhood goings-on – well, the Hon. Con simply wouldn’t know where to begin. How could she? She never gossiped over the garden fence. She never dealt with the local tradespeople. She’d never so much as been to a coffee morning in her life and she didn’t play Bingo. Miss Jones, who indulged in all of these activities, could have run rings round the Hon. Con where the most intimate details of their neighbours’ lives were concerned. And then what about people talking to her when they wouldn’t talk to the police? Miss Jones couldn’t repress a sigh. The Hon. Con’s idea of small talk made an interrogation by the KGB look like a tea party. She scared most people clean out of their wits before she’d even opened her mouth. Miss Jones sighed again. At times she herself found the Hon. Con something of a formidable proposition – especially if you wanted to talk to her about money or the way she dressed or wiping her nose on the back of her hand because she had lost her hankie.
‘You going to stand there all day muttering to yourself, Bones?’ asked the Hon. Con irritably. ‘ Don’t know about you but I’ve got a busy afternoon ahead of me.’ She put on a martyred air. ‘Can do it on an empty stomach, of course, if I have to, but …’
‘No, no!’ Miss Jones was galvanized into life. ‘Everything’s all ready, dear. It won’t take me a moment to serve it up.’
A short while later, the Hon. Con, her table napkin tied firmly round her neck, was noisily spooning up great mouthfuls of steaming soup out of a large bowl. ‘Jolly good!’ she approved, tossing lumps of bread into the bowl to Miss Jones’s great distress. ‘You know, Bones,’ she continued, waving her spoon about to indicate that she was about to make a statement of some importance, ‘I’ve been thinking.’
Miss Jones wiped the drops of mulligatawny off the uncut moquette. ‘Have you, dear?’
‘The murder of this O’Coyne girl.’
‘Yes, dear?’
‘The house wasn’t broken into.’
‘No, dear.’
‘See the implication of that?’
Miss Jones, little finger delicately crooked, halted her spoon in mid-air. She was more than just the pretty face that the Hon. Con considered her. ‘Oh, I think so, dear. It means …’
‘It means,’ interrupted the Hon. Con loudly, giving a good example of her conversational style, ‘that the murder must have been committed by somebody inside the house.’
‘Oh, I don’t think that can be right, dear. According to Mrs Monday, the only other people in the house were poor Mrs Hellon and that sweet little baby.’
‘We can forget about the baby,’ said the Hon. Con, who was not the maternal type.
‘But that only leaves Mrs Hellon, dear! What on earth would she want to murder her own au pair girl for? They’re terribly difficult to get hold of, you know. They all want to be in London, you see, and …’
‘When,’ declared the Hon. Con in ringing tones which brooked no argument, ‘you have eliminated the impossible, what you are left with – however improbable – is it.’ She frowned. That didn’t sound quite right.
Miss Jones, who could be quite obstinate at times, wasn’t even listening. ‘ Not Mrs Hellon, dear! She’s just not the type. I’ve met her several times and she’s a
lways struck me as quite a nice sort of person.’ Miss Jones broke off to accept the Hon. Con’s soup bowl and,to hand her the plate of sardines on toast which had been keeping warm by the fire.’
And besides dear,’ she went on, watching with disapproval as the Hon. Con drowned everything in vinegar, ‘there could be several other explanations.’
The Hon. Con speared a sardine.’ Such as?’
‘Well, somebody could have called at the house, couldn’t they, and been let in?’
‘Or?’
Miss Jones thought for a minute. ‘ Well, somebody could have been in possesion of a key to the front door somehow. Or to the back.’
The Hon. Con removed a piece of toast crust from her mouth, examined it doubtfully and then – resigned – shoved it back in again. ‘I was wondering,’ she said, nodding her head sagely, ‘when you’d get around to the husband.’
Chapter Three
Miss Jones was the sort of person who, when she read detective stories, liked it to be the butler. She was, therefore, extremely distressed to find that she had somehow – according to the Hon. Con – accused that nice Mr Hellon of murdering Teresa O’Coyne. The idea, she protested, was preposterous. She had never had the pleasure, of course, of actually meeting Mr Hellon, but everybody knew he was a man of substance and impeccable respectability. People, she said firmly, who lived in big houses standing in their own ground and who ran two cars and who went abroad every year for their holidays just did not go around killing people.
The Hon. Con greeted this naive remark with a burst of hearty guffaws. Having herself, as she couldn’t help pointing out to Miss Jones, been born to the purple, she didn’t make the mistake of viewing the upper classes through rose-coloured spectacles. ‘You should have seen my great-great-great Uncle Dominic on my mother’s side!’ she chuckled. ‘Waited up at least two of his wives and was forever flogging his valets to death. Proper old devil, he was, but nobody thought any the worse of him for it. And when he died, you know, they do say that every single member of the choir at his funeral was one of his bastards.’
