by Joyce Porter
Could still be a blasted cat, the Hon. Con told herself stubbornly, but in her heart of hearts she knew it wasn’t. It was that accursed kid! The yowls grew louder and with a sigh of intense exasperation the Hon. Con surrendered to the demands of mother love.
The baby, extremely red in the face, lay on its back on the kitchen floor surrounded by a sort of cage. Best place for it, too, thought the Hon. Con. They should all be behind bars.
She leaned over the rail. ‘Coochie-coo!’ she said.
The baby’s mouth stretched open even wider and it began to beat the floor with tiny, clenched fists.
The Hon. Con recalled Mrs Hellon’s parting words and directed a very jaundiced eye on the little horror. ‘Why don’t you belt up?’ she snapped.
The baby blinked, drew more air into its lungs and boosted the decibels.
The Hon. Con refused to panic. ‘You’ll rupture yourself if you don’t watch it,’ she warned the infant.
But the Hellon baby was conditioned to being clean, and to prompt attention on those occasions when she wasn’t. No amount of patient reasoning was going to make her stop howling. The Hon. Con began to think about NSPCC inspectors and prosecutions. Much as she desired to get on with her detecting up in the late lamented’s room, she acknowledged that she was going to have to do something about this miniature monster first.
She bent down over the playpen and, after some preliminary skirmishing, managed with her left hand to pin the child down by the throat, being careful not actually to throttle the mite in the process. From there on it was the work of a mere ten minutes to pull down a pair of plastic pants and remove a couple of safety pins.
‘Eeee-yiaach!’ heaved the Hon. Con and made a frantic dash for the pedal bin under the sink. Only when the lid had been safely slammed down and she dared to breathe again did she turn round to survey the scene. The baby had temporarily been stunned into silence but that couldn’t be expected to last long. Besides, even the Hon. Con recognized that the child couldn’t be left in its present state of déshabillé. It wasn’t decent nor – the Hon. Con grimaced – was it even clean.
Having rejected a roll of paper towels as being too scratchy, the Hon. Con picked up the dishcloth and wrung it out hygienically under the tap. The cold water tap, of course. The Hon. Con knew all about the elbow test and the in-advisability of bringing infants of tender years in contact with hot water.
If little Miss Hellon was surprised and indignant to find herself being scrubbed with a cold, damp dishcloth, she was no more surprised and indignant than the Hon. Con was to be doing the scrubbing. Never, the Hon. Con promised herself, ever would she forgive Mrs Hellon for this!
When the relevant area of the child looked sufficiently raw and pink, the Hon. Con turned her attention to a pile of clean nappies on the table. She began to regret that she hadn’t paid more attention to the way the soiled one had been fitted. She stared at the child and then back at the nappy. Good grief, it couldn’t be all that difficult! How else could all these dreary, domesticated women managed to do it day after day?
Aided by some atavistic instinct which she would have hotly denied if she’d thought about it, the Hon. Con clamped a couple of safety pins between her teeth and, twirling a clean nappy like a matador’s cloak, advanced on the playpen.
Half an hour later, when the baby had been lightly punctured once or twice and now looked as though it would throw a fit given the slightest encouragement, the Hon. Con was sweating like a pig, and the nappy had so far made no more than the most fleeting contact with its target.
The Hon. Con sat back on her heels to consider the situation. The trouble was that, grapple with it as she might, she couldn’t hold the baby still. She could overpower it with a hammer lock or a half-nelson easily enough, of course, but then she never seemed to have enough hands left to do anything else with.
She got to her feet and took a breather. Damn it all, no Morrison-Burke could admit defeat in such a situation! With the family pride at stake, the Hon. Con renewed her efforts to find a solution. Necessity is the mother of invention and the Hon. Con suddenly spotted her salvation.
Chapter Thirteen
‘What on earth are you doing?’
The Hon. Con looked up from the ironing board to which she had the top half of the baby strapped with three elastic bandages and grinned. ‘You might well ask, Mrs Hellon! Doesn’t this kid ever stop squirming around? Anyhow,’ – she dragged the plastic pants up and let the elastic snap into place – ‘it’s met its match in me, all right!’
Mrs Hellon was not impressed with the Hon. Con’s cleverness. She dropped her shopping bag and dashed over to the ironing board where she proceeded to unwind the baby from its elastic bandage cocoon with all possible haste and many expressions of comfort and concern. The Hon. Con was blowed it she could see what all the fuss was about. If anybody needed sympathy, it certainly wasn’t that bubble-blowing, cross-eyed little …
Mrs Hellon was upset. She was also extremely annoyed, but she didn’t lose her head. It was not in her nature either to cry over spilt milk or throw the baby out with the bath water or look a gift horse in the mouth. She had had a liftime’s experience in running a large house in the country with nothing but the assistance of a succession of moronic girls from the village and didn’t think she was in any real danger of being out-smarted by the Hon. Con.
The Hon. Con, herself, was anxious to maintain the good impression which she flattered herself she had already created. She began to put the ironing board away. It was a display of sheer ham-fistedness that would have driven most women mad, and indeed, had always worked perfectly with Miss Jones, but on this occasion it produced no response and the Hon. Con was left to struggle on unaided. She finally got the cupboard door closed. ‘’Bout time for a cup of coffee, isn’t it?’ she asked, retreating to a chair by the table so as to leave the working area proper free for Mrs Hellon.
Mrs Hellon smiled encouragingly. ‘We’ll have coffee when you’ve done upstairs,’ she promised. ‘The Hoover’s in that cupboard there, and so are the dusters.’
The Hon. Con ventured to object but, when it came to ruthlessness, she just wasn’t in Mrs Hellon Senior’s class and in no time at all found herself lugging the heavy vacuum cleaner up the stairs.
‘I’ll come,’ said Mrs Hellon when she was certain that victory was hers, ‘ and see how you’re getting on just as soon as I’ve got the baby’s lunch ready.’
‘Stymied again!’ cursed the Hon. Con as she plugged in on the landing. She had been planning on leaving the vacuum cleaner running while she nipped off and did a bit of detecting in Teresa O’Coyne’s bedroom but she didn’t fancy being caught red-handed by Mrs Hellon. ‘Maybe,’ she said as she kicked the cleaner into life, ‘ I’ll get the chance a bit later on.’
But flogging an unwilling horse was one of Mrs Hellon’s finer accomplishments and, when she joined the Hon. Con a few minutes later, she gave a virtuoso performance. The Hon. Con’s nose was glued firmly to the grindstone and no amount of squealing or wriggling would get it unstuck. There was no further talk about a coffee break and the Hon. Con was shepherded, patiently but inexorably, through a generous selection of household tasks.
Not that Mrs Hellon was sparing in her praise – after all, it wasn’t her furniture that the Hon. Con was bashing about We’ll make a housewife out of you yet!’ she laughed as she led the way to the bathroom. ‘ Now, here’s the Vim! We’ll have the washbasin and bath cleaned down before we start on the floor.’
‘I’m getting jolly peckish!’ whined the Hon. Con, sullenly sprinkling everything in sight with white powder.
Mrs Hellon knew the value of a timely carrot. ‘ We’ll have lunch the moment we’ve finished upstairs.’
Lunch, when the Hon. Con finally got it, consisted of a green salad and a glass of milk and did nothing to raise morale. She munched away disconsolately while Mrs Hellon outlined her programme for the afternoon. To the Hon. Con’s ears it sounded like the punishment sch
edule for a chain gang and her suspicions began to grow that her good nature was being exploited.
‘Sounds a heck of a lot!’ she grumbled.
‘Nonsense! said Mrs Hellon, unperturbed. ‘With two of us at it, we’ll soon get through everything. Then, this evening, we can do the silver while we’re watching television. I always think it’s such a waste just to sit there.’
‘This evening?’ The Hon. Con had not envisaged her ordeal lasting so long.
‘You did say you wanted to help.’
‘Yes,’ said the Hon. Con.
‘And I was counting on you staying the night.’
‘Well,’ said the Hon. Con.
Mrs Hellon was not prepared to brook any argument. ‘ Thank goodness for that!’ she said firmly. ‘I mean, it’s lovely of course, to have somebody to give me a hand with the housework but it’s at night that I really need a companion. You’ve no idea how creepy this place gets once darkness has fallen.’
‘You want me to sleep here?’ asked the Hon. Con whom the events of the day had rendered a shade punch drunk.
‘But, of course!’ Mrs Hellon looked anxiously at her maid of all work. ‘ Your friend won’t be expecting you back, will she?’
The Hon. Con was lost in reveries of an exciting midnight expedition to the au pair’s room.’ ‘What friend?’ The one who lives with you.
‘Oh, her!’ Now that the Hon. Con’s imagination had been fired, she wasn’t going to miss the chance of a lifetime just because of Old Bones. ‘I’ll pop round and tell her I won’t be home tonight.’
‘You could phone.’
‘Need my pyjamas,’ said the Hon. Con who’d already worked out that she’d need a lot more than that. Like an electric torch and maybe a set of house-breaking tools.
Mrs Hellon finished off her glass of milk and lit a cigarette. ‘I never thought I was what you might call a nervous woman but I really don’t care for being alone in this house at night. I did want to take the baby home with me and shut this place up, but Gilbert didn’t want Josie to be left alone. If s very difficult with him having to be away just at this moment.’
‘Must have been a terrible shock for your daughter-in-law,’ said the Hon. Con.
Mrs Hellon tossed her head. ‘ Oh, I daresay, but Josie’s never been one to do things by halves.’
‘Heard she was pretty highly strung,’ said the Hon. Con.
‘I’d call it neurotic myself,’ retorted Mrs Hellon bitterly, ‘but then, I’m afraid, I’m the classic mother-in-law. Frankly, I never wanted Gilbert to marry her in the first place. Oh, Josie’s all right, I suppose, but she’s not the wife for Gilbert and she never was.’
‘Oh?’ The Hon. Con was careful not to show too much interest.
‘All this cosy domesticity,’ – Mrs Hellon waved a deprecating hand round the kitchen where they were sitting over the remains of their Spartan lunch – ‘ it’s not Gilbert’s scene at all. He needs a wife who’ll entertain his business contacts and lead an active social life with him. And in London, too. And a girl who’s got something more to talk about than the colic and four-hour feeds.’
‘I suppose a baby is quite a tie,’ said the Hon. Con.
‘Other wives seem to manage without turning into cabbages. It’s not as though Gilbert is short of money. Josie could have as much help in the house as she wanted but it took all of Gilbert’s insistence to get her to have as much as these au pair girls.’
‘Oh, the au pair girls were Gilbert’s idea, were they?’
Mrs Hellon looked at the Hon. Con sharply. ‘He was only thinking of Josie! She was driving herself into a nervous breakdown, you know. I had to speak to her pretty sharply myself. Gilbert’s very fond of the baby, I told her, but he’s not going to make it the be-all and end-all of his existence and, if you don’t want to lose him, my girl, I said, you won’t either. Gilbert won’t stand for being bored, I told her. Of course, Josie’s several years older than he is and that doesn’t help.’
‘Had your daughter-in-law any enemies?’ asked the Hon. Con, finishing off a lettuce leaf she hadn’t fancied earlier. ‘What on earth do you mean?’
‘Was just wondering if the au pair girl could have been killed in mistake for Josie.’
‘What a perfectly ridiculous idea!’ said Mrs Hellon crushingly. ‘That O’Coyne girl got precisely what she deserved, if you ask me. I told Josie at the time that she’d have trouble with that young woman before she was done and events have proved me right. Not,’ she added sourly, ‘that I’ll get any credit for it. I wouldn’t mind betting she’s been smuggling men back in here for months without that fool Josie being one whit the wiser.’
‘You think that’s how she came to be killed?’
‘What other explanation can there be? I believe the police are thinking along the same lines.’
The Hon. Con crossed her fingers for luck. ‘Seems funny your daughter-in-law didn’t hear anything, though, don’t you think?’
‘Nothing Josie does surprises me,’ said Mrs Hellon shortly. ‘She never could see what was going on right under her nose. Her sole yardstick for judging people is whether or not they think the sun shines out of that one there.’ She jerked her head at the baby who was quietly sucking the ear of a plush rabbit in its play pen. ‘ Now, I’m as fond of the baby as anybody – she’s a dear little mite – but I’m not besotted about her. You’ve got to keep a sense of proportion, haven’t you?’
The Hon. Con, who’d got a first class sense of proportion where babies were concerned, nodded her head. ‘ So, Josie got on all right with Teresa O’Coyne, did she?’
‘Oh, I don’t know,’ said Mrs Hellon impatiently. ‘She used to grumble about her enough but, then, she did that about the others as well. Personally, I can’t stand people like that.’
‘People like what?’
‘Like Josie. As far as I could see she never said anything to these girls about their shortcomings. She just bored everybody else stiff with her complaints. I said to her the last time I saw her, look, Josie, I said – don’t tell me about Teresa drinking all the milk last thing at night and finishing off the remains of the Sunday joint, tell her! I don’t suppose she ever did, though.’ Mrs Hellon rose to her feet and began clearing the table. ‘You can wash these up later.’
The Hon. Con tried to put off the evil hour. ‘What do you think’s going to happen when all this is over?’
‘Happen?’
‘Between your son and his wife?’
Mrs Hellon was suddenly on her guard. ‘ Nothing’s going to happen. Why should it?’ She stared accusingly at the Hon. Con. ‘What exactly are you getting at?’
‘There’s been some talk,’ said the Hon. Con vaguely. ‘A pretty au pair girl and an attractive man like your son. Under the same roof. Has Josie ever mentioned divorce to you?’
‘Divorce? What absolute nonsense! Josie wouldn’t dream of divorcing Gilbert. She knows when she’s well off. If that’s the sort of malicious rumour that’s going round, I’d be obliged if you’d refute it. Josie would no more think of divorcing Gilbert than she would of flying to the moon. She’s an extremely loyal wife. And Gilbert wouldn’t dream of divorcing Josie, either.’ Mrs Hellon added somewhat less forcefully. ‘Now, come along, my dear, or we shall never get this house straight!’
The Hon. Con was dragged back to her Herculean labours. Under Mrs Hellon’s relentless supervision, she turned out the drawing-room, turned out the dining-room and did the hall. No skimping was allowed and the Hon. Con soon learnt the hard way that a job half done was a job done twice. By half past four they were both feeling the strain and the Hon. Con clutched at her one hope of respite. She reminded Mrs Hellon that she had to go back to Upper Waxwing Drive to collect her overnight things.
Mrs Hellon was not averse to calling a truce but she extracted her price. ‘But, of course,’ she cooed, ‘and you can take the baby with you! The poor darling. Hasn’t had a breath of fresh air all day. Now, if you’ll just put all the brushes and things a
way, I’ll get her ready for you.’
The Hon. Con’s thoughts were unprintable as she wheeled the pram round to Shangrilah. There was no question of swaggering past the bungalows this time and the Hon. Con kept her head well down as she crept along Old Arbour Road. The precaution didn’t save her from mockery. A car drew up beside her and Adam Spennymoor’s stupid face smirked out.
‘Congratulations, Con, old chap!’ he sniggered with a leer at the pram. ‘I always knew you had it in you! When are you going to be handing out the cigars, eh?’
It is to the Hon. Con’s eternal credit that she managed to smile, but when she reached Upper Waxwing Drive she took the precaution of parking the pram outside No. 12. Let the neighbours work that one out!
Back home in No. 14, Miss Jones was just making a cup of tea. The Hon. Con gratefully accepted a cup and, sinking down into her chair, told her friend how lucky she was to have spent the day in blessed idleness. Others, the Hon. Con pointed out, had not been so fortunate.
Miss Jones, who was rather sensitive about relative work loads, was stung to protest but the Hon. Con had no time for other people’s troubles. ‘You just tell me where my clean pyjamas are, Bones,’ she boomed, ‘and I’ll be on my way. Want to get this murder business settled once and for all. Now I know it’s Hellon I’m after, it shouldn’t take me long.’ Miss Jones closed her eyes but the Hon. Con was not to be denied. ‘ Oh, it stands out a mile it’s him,’ she said. ‘ He sneaked back here from Birmingham somehow, croaked her after a quarrel and left his wife to cover up for him while he got away. She’d do it, you know, to preserve her marriage and stop that kid being labelled as the child of a murderer.’
‘Yes, dear,’ said the long-suffering Miss Jones.
Back at the Hellons’ house, the Hon. Con installed herself in the master bedroom and, under Mrs Hellon’s directions, changed the sheets on one of the twin beds.
