by Joyce Porter
The Hon. Con sagged dejectedly on her stool. Waste of time, of course, expecting old Bones to face up to the sordid realities of suburban life. ‘I still think Mrs Hellon could bear further investigation,’ she said obstinately.
Miss Jones set the cups and saucers out on the tray with telling reverberation. ‘Yes, well, thank goodness you won’t be able to go making an exhibition of yourself in that direction, dear,’ she said tartly. I happen to know that they’re extremely strict at the Kursaal Convalescent Home and, if they say no visiting, they mean it.’
Miss Jones had meant to keep this item of information, which she had garnered in the super-market, to herself, but, by the time she had got around to wishing that she had bitten her tongue out, it was of course too late. The Hon. Con was already gulping her tea down and wondering whether it was worthwhile getting the car out again for such a short distance.
‘They’ll never let you across the threshold, dear! The Hon. Con kicked off her slippers. ‘Faint heart never won fair lady,’ she pointed out good-humouredly. ‘And you never know what a spot of the old Morrison-Burke charm may not accomplish. Any more of those daffodils of yours come up yet, old bean?’
Less than an hour later, the Hon. Con buffeted her way through the heavy glass doors which were at once the pride and the despair of the Kursaal Convalescent Home. No other comparable establishment in Totterbridge boasted such prestigious embellishments, but neither did they have the constant fear of the damned things getting smashed. A tiny, starched-overalled figure watched with agony as the Hon. Con blundered in, a skimpy bunch of daffodils – eked out by a few of those plastic flowers given away with detergents – wilting in her hand.
The receptionist waited with closed eyes until the doors slapped to rest and then raised heavily hooded lids before proceeding to demolish the Hon. Con and her outrageous demands with icy efficiency.
‘Mrs Hellon had just gone through a most distressing experience,’ she announced as though it was all the Hon. Con’s fault, ‘and it has adversely affected her nervous system. You may leave a message with your flowers if you wish.’
The Hon. Con glanced at her bunch of daffodils and hesitated. She didn’t mind sacrificing Miss Jones’s flowers in a good cause but, if she wasn’t going to be granted a personal interview …
‘They’ll be delivered quite safely,’ said the starchy female, snapping a professional smile on and off as though it was controlled by an elastic band.
‘Maybe Mrs Hellon’ll be feeling a bit more robust tomorrow?’
‘No visitors for at least a week,’ said the starchy female with visible relish as she stretched out a well-scrubbed hand and forcibly relieved the Hon. Con of her offering. ‘Those are not only the doctor’s orders, they’re from the police, too. Now, what name was it, madam?’
‘The police?’ The Hon. Con reacted to the word like one of Pavlov’s hungrier dogs.
The starchy female relaxed a little. ‘ We’ve had a policewoman sitting with her ever since she arrived here. Well, several policewomen, actually. They take it in turns.’
‘But, why?’
The starchy female shook her head. ‘I don’t really know. They say they didn’t get a coherent statement from her when she reported the murder and, of course, she’s been under heavy sedation pretty well ever since. I suppose they want to get her story as soon as she wakes up, before she’s had time to think about it and get muddled.’
The Hon. Con showed a rare percipience. ‘Do you really believe that?’
The starchy female looked at the Hon. Con out of the corner of her eyes. ‘Well …’
‘I am the Honourable Constance Morrison-Burke,’ said the Hon. Con, leaning over the desk and reducing her voice to as near a whisper as she was ever likely to get. ‘You may have heard of me. Nothing you say will go any further.’
For some reason or another, this rather peculiar pronouncement seemed to reassure the starchy female. After a careful glance round she, too, lowered her voice. ‘I think the police think that Mrs Hellon is in danger!’
‘In danger?’ The Hon. Con straightened up and scowled at the starchy woman on the grounds that she – the Hon. Con – needed additional crack-pot theories like she needed a sick headache.
‘From the murderer,’ explained the starchy female. ‘Maybe Mrs Hellon saw something vital or maybe that au pair girl was killed by mistake and Mrs Hellon is the one they’re really after.’
‘And maybe,’ said the Hon. Con with that bluntness which explained many of the vicissitudes of her career, ‘ pigs might fly!’
The starchy female expressed herself as being offended.
‘Well,’ snorted the Hon. Con, ‘it was a deuced irresponsible thing to say, wasn’t it?’
The starchy female, crumpling slightly, said she didn’t see why.
‘Because you’ve no evidence, that’s why!’ barked the Hon. Con.
The starchy female protested that she had got evidence.
The Hon. Con challenged her to produce it.
‘Well, I suppose it’s not exactly evidence,’ admitted the starchy female with an aggrieved air. ‘Not like fingerprints. But it is a reasonable deduction. I mean, Mrs Hellon is being kept under sedation more or less the whole time on her doctor’s orders. Well, as soon as he thinks the time’s ripe, he’s going to stop giving her the injections, isn’t he?’
‘So?’
‘Well, she’s not going to regain consciousness like a flash of lightning, is she? She’ll be muzzy and confused for an hour or more. Well, the police could get round here in ten minutes and don’t tell me that some young chit of a policewoman is going to take down Mrs Hellon’s statement anyhow. If it’s supposed to be as important as all that, they’ll fetch a proper detective, won’t they? Those policewomen are guards!’
‘Golly!’ said the Hon. Con, always astonished to find glimmerings of intelligence in the lower orders. ‘That’s good thinking, you know.’
The starchy woman folded her arms with a crackle of satisfaction.
‘Pity,’ said the Hon. Con, trying a touch of the old Machiavellian, ‘that we can’t find out if your brilliant suggestion is right.’ She cocked her head hopefully on one side.
The starchy woman took her revenge. ‘Isn’t it?’ she said, cool as you please.
Outside the Kursaal Convalescent Home the Hon. Con kicked a lamp post in a fruitless attempt to relieve her feelings but, apart from denting the lamp post, the gesture achieved little. She plodded off down the road, head bent, shoulders hunched, trousers bagging and socks sinking. The prospect of having to return to Miss Jones with the proverbial empty hands was enough to make you spit. Of course, she could always present the po-faced receptionist’s intriguing theory as her own, but at the moment, the Hon. Con felt so dispirited that she hadn’t the heart to cook up even the few white lies that would require. It was no good, she told herself dully, she’d just got to face it: thanks to the combined pig-headedness of the police and the public, she had reached total frustration. She sighed in an agony of self-pity. It had been ever thus. The story of my life, thought the Hon. Con as she slouched along, glaring angrily at everybody in sight.
It was a black moment.
But, it was not in the Hon. Con’s nature to let life get her down. It only needed a few hours in the peace and quiet of her own sitting-room before the old ‘Up Guards’ and at’em spirit reasserted itself. By the time she went to bed she saw the whole case as clear as crystal again. Mr Hellon was the murderer and a thirty-second review of the evidence confirmed that this was the only solution.
The Hon. Con switched the light out. All the facts pointed to Hellon. He had made advances to Teresa O’Coyne and been repulsed. That was motive enough for anybody, hell having no fury like a man … Or, maybe, the girl had threatened to tell the wife and …
The Hon. Con yawned and snuggled down further under the bedclothes. Of course, Josie Hellon was in it, too. All that business about taking a sleeping pill was just a pack of lies. She was f
ar too nervous about the baby ever to dope herself, especially on the au pair’s night out. No – Josie Hellon had not been wrapped in the arms of Morpheus when Teresa O’Coyne was being killed. And, if she hadn’t been asleep, she must have heard or seen something. So – why was she keeping quiet? Only because she knew that her husband was guilty and this was the only way to protect him.
Rather reluctantly, the Hon. Con rolled over onto her back in the darkness and wondered what her next step ought to be. A quiet word to Sergeant Fenner, outlining the solution of the case, should really be enough to set the wheels of officialdom in motion but the Hon. Con had few illusions where the constabulary were concerned. They were not likely to arrest Mr Hellon just on her say-so.
The Hon. Con dragged the eiderdown back on the bed. What does ‘A’ do now?’ she asked herself.
The answer made itself manifest almost immediately. ‘A’ was going to have to arise and make a quick trip to the bathroom.
The Hon. Con, railing down the most horrible curses on the head of Miss Jones and her blasted cups of late-night cocoa, tossed the bedclothes back and groped for her slippers.
By the time the cistern had noisily refilled itself and the shattered peace of the house had been restored, the Hon. Con was snugly cocooned between the sheets again. She resumed her cogitations. She would just have to provide the cops with more proof – the ‘more’ was a typical example of the Hon. Con looking on the bright side. The only problem now left was – how?
The bedsprings creaked in Miss Jones’s room and there was a click as the bedside light went on. The Hon. Con grinned maliciously as she heard doors being softly opened and closed. It was some consolation for her own chilly expedition to know that others were getting a taste of their own medicine. Poor old Bones, eh? The Hon. Con sank blissfully into her pillows. Ah, well – sufficient unto the day. Within thirty seconds her first snore cut like a chain saw through the still night.
As a method of solving sticky problems, it worked.
By the time the Hon. Con came thundering down to breakfast the following morning, her subconscious had found a solution. Luckily for the Hon. Con’s pocket, the idea of chasing off to Birmingham or wherever it was and busting Mr Hellon’s alibi wide open had been rejected. Better, the subconscious had advised, leave that sort of humdrum, routine work to the police. The Hon. Con had been delighted to agree.
‘Going to beard Mrs Hellon in her den this morning, Bones!’
The Hon. Con’s arrival at the breakfast table culminated in quite a large amount of milk slopping out of the milk jug.
Miss Jones suppressed a sigh and watched the spreading pool without interest. ‘Again, dear?’
‘No!’ The Hon. Con’s bellow was deafening. ‘Mrs Hellon
Senior!’
Miss Jones was being very obtuse that morning. ‘Mrs Hellon Senior?’ she repeated like an educationally sub-normal parrot.
‘Hellon’s mother, for crying out loud! She’s staying in the house to look after the kid, isn’t she?’
‘Is she, dear?’
‘Damn it all, Bones,’ exploded the Hon. Con, thumping on the table to show her displeasure, ‘It was you who told me!’
‘Was it, dear?’ Miss Jones passed a hand distractedly across her forehead ‘ Oh, yes. Didn’t Mrs Monday tell me?’
‘I don’t know who told you!’ snapped the Hon. Con. ‘I just hope it’s correct, that’s all.’ She stared accusingly at her friend. ‘You’re a bit on the dopey side this morning, aren’t you?’
‘Am I, dear?’ If Miss Jones was hoping for sympathy and understanding, she was destined to be disappointed
‘You certainly are! Where’s my All Bran?’
With Miss Jones in what the Hon. Con was pleased to call her Tired-Tim-and-Weary-Willie mood, there was no temptation to linger around Shangrilah after breakfast. By half-past nine the Hon. Con was already crashing through the garden gate and striding off into a bright and sunny day. There was quite a nip in the air. The Hon. Con reacted to it as to a challenge and decided to go round past the bungalows. She had been neglecting her campaign of attrition in the last few days and a quick showing of the flag would stop the natives from getting too big for their boots.
The Hon. Con swung smartly into Sneddon Avenue and marched past the bungalows, whistling bravery. Here and there the edge of a curtain was raised. The Hon. Con’s chin rose. That’d show ’em, by golly!
The buoyant mood lasted the Hon. Con past the Urquhart residence – where she blew a heartfelt raspberry – and past the Spennymoors’ house. Eve was at the window, a duster in her hand. The Hon. Con waved cheerily. Eve hesitated a moment and then waved back.
The police guard had been removed from outside the Hellons’ house and downstairs the curtains had been drawn back in an effort to restore things to normal.
As she tramped up the path to the front door, a little of the Hon. Con’s euphoria began to ebb away as she brooded over the ethics of what she was about to do. Whichever way you looked at it, it was hardly cricket to go worming your way into a woman’s confidence for the sole purpose of putting a noose round her son’s neck.
The Hon. Con glanced back from the house. Eve Spennymoor was still watching from across the road. The Hon. Con scowled. Any retreat now would have to be accomplished under the eye of a witness. Retreat? The Hon. Con shook herself, stepped forward and rang the bell.
The front door opened with a speed that almost caught the Hon. Con napping.
‘Yes?’
The Hon. Con cunningly composed her face into a smile which was at once sympathetic and ingratiating. ‘Ah, good morning! I am the Honourable Constance Morrison-Burke.’
The slender, fashionably dressed woman who stood in the doorway received the information calmly and continued to look questioningly at her caller.
The Hon. Con redoubled her efforts. ‘I’m one of your near neighbours,’ she went on, grinning away like a jackanapes. ‘Live just round the corner. In Upper Waxwing Drive. No. 14. Shangrilah.’
There was not a flicker of an answering smile. ‘Oh, yes?’
‘You Mrs Hellon?’ asked the Hon. Con, beginning to breathe heavily.
‘I’m not Josie Hellon, if that’s who you want. She’s away, at the moment, I’m afraid.’
The Hon. Con lurched forward before the door could be closed, politely but firmly, in her face. ‘No, no, it’s you I want!’
A pair of well-shaped eyebrows rose sceptically.
‘Yes,’ gabbled the Hon. Con, deciding that if she wasn’t hanged for a sheep, she wasn’t going to get hanged at all. ‘ I’m a very old friend of – er – Josie and – hum … ah – her husband. What’s-his-name? Ah – Gilbert! That’s it! Josie and Gilbert. They may have mentioned me.’
‘They haven’t,’ said Mrs Hellon senior.
‘Well, of course, as soon as I heard what had happened, I felt I just had to come round and offer a helping paw, don’t you know. As an old chum, of course.’
‘What happened,’ observed Mrs Hellon without rancour, ‘happened four days ago.’
The Hon. Con got the point. ‘Been away,’ she explained glibly. ‘Only just got back. Been up in Scotland as a matter of fact.’ As a liar the Hon. Con had the fatal tendency to over-elaborate. ‘Got a cousin up there in Galway.’
‘Galway,’ said Mrs Hellon, is in Ireland.’
‘Name of the house,’ countered the Hon. Con, beginning to find Mrs Hellon Senior somewhat of a trial. ‘Usually pop up there for a few days every year about this time.’
‘For the grouse stalking, no doubt,’ said Mrs Hellon dryly. ‘ I’m afraid I don’t quite see …’
‘Just explaining why I didn’t pop round sooner,’ said the Hon. Con, ‘to see if there was anything I could do to help. Must be jolly difficult for you, coping on your own.’
‘Well …’ Mrs Hellon showed signs of weakening. ‘Shopping!’ offered the Hon. Con grandly. ‘ Cooking! Cleaning! Washing! Baby-sitting! You name it, I’ll fix it!’
&
nbsp; Mrs Hellon capitulated ‘Would you really?’ She opened the door wider. ‘I don’t mind admitting I could do with some assistance.’
‘When?’
‘Well, right away, if you’re sure it isn’t too much …’
The Hon. Con surged forward.
Mrs Hellon closed the door. ‘Actually, I would be grateful if you could hold the fort for half an hour or so. I have to go out and I don’t want to take the baby with me. It’s so cold outside.’
‘Enough to freeze a brass monkey,’ agreed the Hon. Con cheerfully, noticing for the first time that Mrs Hellon was already wearing her hat and coat.
‘I’ll be back as soon as I can,’ promised Mrs Hellon as she gave a final tug at her hat and examined the result in the hall mirror. ‘There are some potatoes on the draining board, if you wouldn’t mind peeling them for lunch. And perhaps you could make up my bed in the spare room and tidy it up generally. I don’t seem to have had a minute to myself this morning.’ She opened the front door again. ‘Oh, and while you’re at it, the lounge could do with the usual dusting and vacuuming. All right?’
The scintillating smile tossed off by Mrs Hellon outshone anything the Hon. Con could manage.
‘Fine,’ said the Hon. Con.
Mrs Hellon turned back. ‘Oh, I almost forgot! The very first thing is to change the baby.’
‘What for?’ said the Hon. Con who had a literal mind.
There was a good two seconds’pause before Mrs Hellon’s tinkling laugh indicated that Mrs Hellon appreciated the Hon. Con’s little joke. ‘Bye-bye for now!’
The Hon. Con closed the front door and executed quite a passable dance of triumph in the hall. Mrs Hellon’s prompt departure couldn’t have been more fortuitous, couldn’t have been bettor if the Hon. Con had organized it herself. Now she had the run of the house! Now she was about to solve the mystery! First stop – the au pair’s bedroom!
The Hon. Con had got one stout brogue actually on the bottom stair when she became aware of a peculiar mewing sound coming from the rear of the house. Funny, nobody had ever mentioned that the Hellons had a cat. The Hon. Con was just about to file this information away in her card-index mind when the mewing changed into a full-blooded yowl.
