More like a cop with a search warrant.
The blind was pulled aside and Georgina peered out. Those crystal-clear eyes widened in surprise and her jaw dropped just enough to let me see the pearly white teeth. She looked like a Parisian gamine who'd just flicked a teasing wink at a boulevardier outside the Moulin Rouge. If I'd had a camera, I'd have adjusted the focus and clicked the shutter. And to hell with the bustiers and the suspender belts and that wispy thing on page forty-one which might have been a tiny pair of knickers or a pair of shoelaces.
The blind fell back and I heard a chain rattle as it was released from its hook.
She opened the door and said: "We don't open until four o'clock when school’s out."
I said: "I've got a free period so I came earlier."
A tiny frown wrinkle appeared on Georgina's forehead. She said: "Then you'll have to come back later. I don't do anything when the shop is closed."
"That's not what I'd heard."
"What do you mean by that?" Georgina snapped.
"Can I come inside?"
"What for? If this is an attempt to make a pass at me, I can assure you I'm well practised in seeing them off."
"Off being the operative word."
"Now you're talking in riddles."
"I've got something to show you."
"Then show it to me here."
"This is not the kind of thing you flash around in the street."
"Why not?"
"It's a clothing catalogue."
"Mrs Emerson from Shooting Field comes round with the Littlewoods' catalogue but I've got everything I want to wear."
"Including underwear, I bet."
"Now you're being impertinent."
She tried to shut the door. But I was too quick for her. I shoved my shoe in the gap between the door and the jamb. Just like a rent collector avoiding the brush-off.
Ouch!
That hurt. Georgina may be gamine but she knew how to slam a door with force.
She said: "Take your foot out of the door or I'll break it with the next shove."
I said: "Before you do, take a look at this." I yanked the Night-time Whispers catalogue out and pushed it through the narrow gap left by the part-open door.
"Even though it's daytime, I thought we could have a whisper about it, Georgina. Or should that be Fifi Le Bonbon?" I added.
The door opened and Georgina glared at me. Those crystal-clear eyes had turned to ice.
She said: "Come in and close the door behind you."
I obeyed. It's the gracious thing to do when you've won a small advantage but want to press home your point.
Georgina flipped the door-chain back on the hook. She turned and marched through the shop. She pulled aside the curtain over the door behind the counter and stepped into a small parlour.
I followed her.
She turned and faced me with arms akimbo. Not so gamine now. More like a female wrestler (lightweight) ready for a rumble.
She said: "Are you some kind of pervert?"
I said: "No, I'm some kind of journalist."
"Where did you get that catalogue?"
"In the normal course of research for a story." I wasn't planning to bring Shirley's name into what was shaping up as a fraught encounter.
"What do you want?"
I said: "In an interview, I normally ask the questions. And, at the moment, I have only one. Were you being blackmailed by Spencer Hooke?"
For a brief second those confident eyes flared. Then the light died in them. The crystal clouded. The gamine crumbled. And Georgina slumped down in a chair. Her delicate fingers trembled. Her lips quivered.
I sat on a chair opposite and waited for her to regain her composure.
She looked up at me. No hatred in her eyes. Just resignation.
She said: "How did you know?"
I said: "Let's just say I've been looking into the affairs of the late Spencer Hooke. He was a young lad with a less than healthy eye on the main chance. When did the blackmailing start?"
"It was last year, just before Christmas."
"I suppose he'd got his sticky hands on a copy of the catalogue?"
"No. It was a magazine."
"A girlie magazine?"
Georgina nodded. "I'd been doing some… well, I think it's known as glamour modelling. I bought this shop with a mortgage. I thought it would be a lovely life dispensing sweets to children. But I soon realised that children aren't big spenders. When they've spent their pocket money it's gone - and so you have no more takings until they get more. I simply needed to make more money to pay my bills here."
"But why girlie magazines and sleazy catalogues?"
"For the money, of course. A couple of years ago, I'd visited London to see an old friend. After she'd left, I went to a café in Soho - a place called Le Macabre. The tables are all black and in the shape of coffins."
"Sounds like a bit of a dead-end place."
Georgina ignored that and said: "The café was full and a couple sat down at my table. We got talking and I discovered he was a photographer and she was a model. He asked me whether I'd ever done any modelling before, said I'd look great through his viewfinder. Gave me all the chat. Well, one thing led to another. As his girlfriend was modelling, it seemed like it was something to do. And when I heard the money I could make - well, I swallowed my pride."
"And your modesty?" I added.
Georgina's eyes flashed angrily. "Yes, my modesty," she said. "And then that loathsome Hooke found one of those magazines. He told me that unless I paid him ten pounds a week, he'd arrange for it to be left lying on the table outside the headmaster's study."
"No doubt, alongside his copy of the Times Educational Supplement."
"I had no choice. I had to pay the money. It's almost broken me."
Georgina's head drooped. She reached for a hankie and patted her eyes.
"You must have hated it when Hooke joined the bell-ringers," I said.
Georgina gave a thin smile. "I loathed his presence. But what could I do? I couldn't say he shouldn't join or the others would want to know why I felt that way. Instead, I had to pretend I supported having him. I hated going to meetings when he was there, but I wasn't going to give in."
"What did the other ringers think about Hooke?"
"I think most of them tolerated him. Owen Griffiths seemed keen he should join. But at first Clothilde - that's Miss Tench-Hardie - seemed to take to Spencer. I hated her for it. I believe she had him round to her cottage for tea sometimes. But she lives by herself and I think she's a bit lonely. She bores everyone with her local history research so most people try to avoid her. But Spencer didn't seem to mind."
I said: "Do you have a car?"
Georgina nodded.
"Did you drive over the Steyning Bostal two nights ago?"
Georgina shook her head. "I haven't driven my Ford Anglia for several days now. The price of petrol these days…"
"Where do you keep your car?"
"In the lane at the back of the cottages. It's quite safe. No-one ever goes there."
"Where were you two nights ago?"
"Here. I had an evening in. Most nights I have in."
"Alone?"
"With a friend."
"Who was that?"
Georgina gave me another sharp look. "That's none of your business."
"A gentleman friend?"
"I won't say."
I nodded. "It may not be important."
"I suppose you're going to write about all of this. I hope you'll be proud of yourself."
"No. As far as I'm concerned you're entitled to pose wearing what you like - as long as it's legal. That won't make copy in my paper - unless I discover you've lied to me."
Georgina let out a deep sigh. Some of the sparkle returned to her eyes. "Is that a promise?"
"One that I will keep," I said.
***
And when I left the tuck shop a few minutes later I fully intended to do so.
I w
alked round to the lane where Georgina had said she kept her Ford Anglia. I found the car parked against a stone flint wall. It had a grey-green paint job that made it fade into the background and the first signs of rust around the front door trim.
I took a close look at the car. The front licence plate was bent inwards at a sharp angle.
I leant on the wall and thought about it. The damage could've been caused by hitting Hooke. But there'd be no way to prove it. And if it had been, Georgina would already have a lie ready to explain it.
I trudged back to my MGB feeling that I'd not learnt a lot more.
And I'd left the Night-time Whispers catalogue in Georgina's parlour.
Chapter 12
I unlocked the MGB and opened the door.
But I didn't climb in. I stood there thinking about what Georgina had said about Clothilde Tench-Hardie.
Hooke was stinging Georgie for a tenner a week. So it was no shock to find she hated anyone who treated the lad like a buddy. The question running round my mind, like a bunny in a burrow, was why the extravagantly named Tench-Hardie lavished praise on the young scammer.
If she'd taken the boy under her wing, she can't have known about his extra-curricular blackmail. Perhaps she was a maiden lady with a thing about young men who had the oily charm of a lounge lizard. But wait a minute. Perhaps Hooke had a line on Clothilde as well. Perhaps the protective mothering stuff was her defence mechanism. Whatever the truth, it was time I found out.
And no trouble either. Tench-Hardie's cottage was just a couple of hundred yards from where I'd parked the MGB.
The cottage turned out to be a whistle and toot from the railway station. The place wasn't the kind of roses-round-the-door idyll you see on the front of chocolate boxes. It was more like the kind of workmen's cottages that were put up in Victorian times to house farm hands and their families. Not so much "the rich man in his castle", more "the poor man at his gate". Except that there wasn't a gate, just a short path up to the front door.
The path was fringed with red and yellow tulips. There were a few of those variegated ones which start off purple and develop white tips on the ends of the petals.
I'd paused to admire the display when a woman marched around the corner of the cottage. She stopped when she saw me. She stood with arms akimbo and her hands on her hips. She was in her early sixties. She had deep-set eyes and a broad nose. Her lined face had deep creases which plunged like ravines on either side of her mouth. Her dark hair was streaked with silver. But it curled luxuriantly around her face and fell to her shoulders. A deep fringe hung over her forehead, like a theatre curtain about to fall.
She was wearing a tweed hacking jacket, brown corduroy trousers and gardening gloves.
She had a pince-nez hanging from a lanyard around her neck.
She took off her gloves and said: "If you're the swine who raided my garden for a dozen tulips last night, you can hand over one shilling and sixpence. That's what you'd have paid at the florists."
I said: "For that money, I'd expect them to be wrapped in cellophane paper and come with a gift card."
Clothilde raised the pince-nez and perched it on her nose.
"Ah! I see you're not the blackguard I suspect of the dastardly crime," she said. "Sorry about that. What is it you've come about? If it's about second-hand clothes for the church jumble sale, I'm wearing them."
I reached in my pocket and pulled out a card. I handed it to her.
I said: "Colin Crampton, Evening Chronicle, at your service."
She took the card, looked at it, and wrinkled her nose.
She said: "You're here about that poor Spencer Hooke. I wondered how long it would be before the newshounds were on my trail. I suppose if I don't invite you in, give you a cup of tea and as much fruit cake as you can eat, you'll write horrid lies about me."
"I'm already making notes." I flashed her one of my most winning smiles.
She pulled an unimpressed face and tramped towards the door.
"Follow me and don't forget to wipe your feet on the mat," she said.
Clothilde led the way through a narrow passage into one of those comfortable kitchens you feel you could live in.
The warm aroma of fresh baking hung in the air.
I had a good look round. There was a fat Aga cooker, glowing warm, with a kettle simmering on one of the hobs. There was a Welsh dresser along one wall with a fine display of willow-pattern crocks - plates and bowls and cups all in neat rows. The centrepiece was a huge soup tureen as fat and round as Buddha's belly.
There was a large deal table in the middle of the room loaded with a jumble of stuff. There were jars of pickled onions, pots of fig jam, stained recipe books, packets of seeds, a bottle of prescription pills from a local pharmacy. There were dog-eared cookery magazines, a heap of soup ladles and serving spoons, a dish of custard, a biscuit tin.
Half-a-dozen odd chairs were arranged around the table. Clothilde waved me to one of them.
I sat on the chair and studied the stuff on the table while Clothilde spooned Darjeeling into a brown teapot. She poured on the boiling water. She set out cups and saucers, fetched milk from a pantry, and poured some into a jug. She returned to the pantry and brought out a rich fruit cake, its crown encrusted with glazed nuts.
I let her pour the tea before I asked: "When did you hear about Spencer Hooke's death?"
She paused cutting a monster slice of the cake and gave me a hard look.
"It was the morning after the accident," she said. "The Reverend Purslowe called on me. He was very upset by the news. He wanted to cancel the bell ringing for the Mother’s Day service. But I told him the congregation would be disappointed."
Clothilde handed me a plate with a huge wedge of the cake. "Will that ensure me good coverage?" she said.
"For at least the first couple of paragraphs," I said. "How did you come to know Spencer Hooke?"
Clothilde spooned sugar into her tea. She frowned while she thought about how to answer my question.
"It was when Owen Griffiths introduced him to the bell-ringing circle," she said finally. "On the second, no third, meeting I happened to mention to Spencer that my main hobby was local history. He said he was interested in that even though his main school subject was chemistry. I told him how my own interest had been kindled by the story of St Cuthman."
I'd once heard the name mentioned by Sidney Pinker, the Chronicle’s theatre critic. Apparently, Cuthman was one of those holy blokes in Anglo-Saxon times - way back in the eighth century. But, then, if you believe the Venerable Bede, they were all at it in those days, converting heathens and illuminating manuscripts. Cuthman's gimmick was pushing his sick mother around in a wheelbarrow. He got canonised for it. She got a bruised bum. Cuthman had built the first church in Steyning. Pinker was interested because Christopher Fry had once written a stage play about Cuthman called The Boy with a Cart. Fry had even got Richard Burton to star in it and John Gielgud to direct. According to Pinker, it wasn't a show with many laughs.
I said: "Seems a strange story to interest a teenage lad in the Swinging Sixties."
Clothilde said: "I think it was Cuthman's devotion to his mother that moved Spencer."
"I’d heard Spencer’s mother was dead.”
"Yes. But I think he revered her memory. He’d had a difficult upbringing in boarding schools with no normal home life."
I wondered whether Hooke's orphan boy act was genuine or a ploy to engage Clothilde's sympathy.
I asked: "Did Spencer ever speak about his family?"
"No. But he did say that when you don't have a family of your own, you become more intrigued by other people's. I think that's what sparked his enthusiasm for my local history research."
"So it was just a general interest?"
"Not entirely. He also asked me whether I was working on any project at the moment. I told him I was researching some of the early tradesmen's families in the village. As he seemed interested, I invited him round one day after school.
I showed him some of the family trees of local people I'd compiled over the years."
I took a bite of the cake and considered that. The young blackmailer must have thought he'd landed in easy street. Files which would no doubt include the by-blows of some villagers and it was being handed to him on a plate - no doubt alongside a slice of the monster cake.
I said: "Did you see much of Spencer?"
Clothilde frowned again. "He came almost every week. He asked some very searching questions about how the family trees were compiled. I told him about Somerset House, which keeps records of births, marriages and deaths. But I also mentioned that some of the most revealing files of family papers were held in the County Records Office in Chichester. He said he'd like to go there himself one day. I offered to take him on one of my own trips. I drive there about once a month in my old Morris Minor. But Spencer thanked me and said he suffered from car sickness."
Yes, I thought. The lad ended up car sick in a way he hadn't bargained for. But I didn't say that.
Instead I asked: "Did he ever say he'd made a visit to the Records Office?"
Clothilde took a sip of her tea. She put the cup back in the saucer with exaggerated care. As though she was deciding how to answer the question.
"A few weeks ago, he told me he'd made a couple of visits during the half-term holiday," she said.
"Did he say what he'd been researching there?"
"I think he was just fascinated in looking through personal papers in the archives of our great county families," Clothilde said brusquely.
I bet he was, I thought. No doubt looking for some indiscretion he could turn into a regular few quid each week.
I sipped my tea while I considered where all this was leading. Was Clothilde just helping the lad out, like an honorary aunt, or was there more behind it all?
I still wasn't convinced Hooke hadn't had the black on Clothilde. But I couldn't ask outright whether she'd made payoffs.
So I said: "When I was speaking to some other boys from the school, they told me it was often tough for them to get by on the amount of pocket money they're allowed each week. Did Spencer ever ask to borrow money from you?"
Crampton, the crafty questioner.
I caught a flash of suspicion in Clothilde's eyes. But it may have been the way the sun's rays through the window caught her face.
The Mother's Day Mystery Page 10
