Scandal at Six (Lois Meade Mystery)

by Purser, Ann

  “No, but listen. Josie and me were cleaning out the shed at the back of the shop, and found a couple of baby elephants in a cage on a shelf.”

  Cowgill groaned. “Lois, my dear, please!” Lois took pity on him, and told him the whole story, including her call to Justin and his sad family news. “So we’re looking after them,” she said finally. “But I don’t know. They’re not the sort of pet you usually have. If they’re going to stay on our premises, I need to know if they are kosher, bred in captivity and that, or trapped in the wild and smuggled into this country.”

  Cowgill was silent. He sighed, and said that Lois was right. There had been suspicions for a long time that Pettison was up to something of the sort. But they’d never managed to catch him at it, or found any endangered species in the zoo.

  “We think he has a network of contacts, including places where he can hide the illegal animals until he moves them on. He doesn’t keep them in the zoo, as they’d soon be identified. So, shall I pick you up around two this afternoon?” he said. “I’ll bring an expert, and we’ll have a chat, then go down to the shop and take a look at them. In the meantime, please keep this to yourself, if possible. It could be the very lead we have been looking for.”

  “Right,” said Lois. “Mum was in the shop when Josie found them, and I think she’s been snooping, so I reckon you’d better act quickly. Yes, of course I’ll be there at two this afternoon. Thanks, Cowgill. See you then.” She set off back down the drive, and something made her look round. Cowgill was standing at the top of the portico steps, watching her, so she blew him a kiss and carried on her way.

  Thirty-seven

  It was ten to two when Cowgill arrived, parking where Lois could see him from her office window. This time he had a passenger beside him, and it was female. They got out of the car and began to walk up the drive. To her surprise, she saw the woman link arms with Cowgill and look up at him fondly. Who was this then? She went to the door quickly, before Gran could get there, and waited until they knocked.

  “Good afternoon, Lois!” said Cowgill cheerily. “May I introduce our species expert, Miss Miranda Cowgill. And yes, we are related! Miranda is my niece, and has helped us out on several occasions where her skills are required. Miranda, this is Mrs Lois Meade, my very good friend and unofficial assistant.”

  “Please come in,” said Lois. “Oh yes, and this is my mother, Mrs Weedon. Could you manage a coffee for us, Mum?”

  After this good beginning, things began to deteriorate. Derek appeared, grunted a “How do” and said he hoped Lois wasn’t going to be long, as he needed her help out the back. Then Gran tipped up the entire tray-load of coffee in the hall and burst into a series of oaths, blaming it on the dog Jeems, who was crossing her path at the time.

  “Right, let’s make a start,” said Cowgill, when they were all seated. “Could you tell us exactly how the animals came to be here, right from the start?”

  Lois told them in as few words as possible how she had found them in the shed, covered with a paper carrier, or half one, up on a high shelf. She and Josie had got hold of Justin, who had been given permission to use the shed as part of his rent on the flat, and he had said they were his.

  “Asked us to look after them until he got back,” she said finally. “I’d never seen anything like them before, and told Derek, and he thought they were some sort of shrew.”

  “Did Mr Brookes say exactly what they were?” asked Miranda.

  Lois shook her head. “Sorry, no. He was very anxious about them, and told me not to say anything to anybody about them. That’s why I called you, Cowgill! I expect he’ll never forgive me.”

  “Very likely. But you may have to do without Justin Brookes for a time, anyway,” said Cowgill. “But thanks, Lois. It is a very important matter. Perhaps we could go down to the shop now?”

  “And please give our thanks to Mrs Weedon for the coffee, and sympathies about the accident. I do hope she wasn’t hurt.”

  They had reached the door by this time, and Gran appeared behind them. “I’m made of strong stuff, Miss Cowgill,” she said. “Takes more than dropping a few crocks to upset me.”

  *

  Josie saw them coming from the shop window, and put up a notice saying CLOSED FOR TEN MINUTES. Then she welcomed them in, and they all went out to the shed in the back garden.

  “I’ve got the key, Mum,” she said, and began to unlock the shed door.

  “We should be very quiet, so as not to alarm them,” Miranda said. “They are very sensitive little creatures.”

  “Not frightened of us, were they, Josie? Not after we’d give them something to eat.”

  They crept in, and Josie put on the light. Miranda immediately turned it off. “Sorry!” she whispered. “Best to approach them in the dark.”

  “Over here,” said Lois, leading the way. “Up there, look. On the top shelf.”

  “Where, exactly?” said Cowgill.

  Lois felt around on the shelf and then turned to Josie. “Put the light on, dear,” she said, and then, blinking in the light, they all stared.

  “They’ve gone,” said Lois. “Josie! They’ve gone! Where on earth—? Who could have got in here?”

  “Let’s look round,” said Cowgill. “Someone might have moved them.”

  They were nowhere to be found, and Miranda looked at her uncle. “You know what this means, don’t you?” she said. “They’ve been stolen, or retrieved. What a pity.”

  “Yes, a pity you couldn’t see them,” said Lois, “but it does mean Mum was right. They were clearly valuable enough for someone to want to steal them. As for retrieving them, I reckon either Justin came back during the night, or he asked someone to collect them for him. Someone who has another key? There’s only one key, isn’t there, Josie?”

  “Two,” said Josie. “I had another one cut for Justin, so he wouldn’t have to bother me every time he wanted to go in there. I suppose he could have got a spare cut from his, and given it to somebody.”

  They returned to the shop, and Josie took down the notice. “Sorry, Inspector. I didn’t even suspect anyone would do that. Sorry your journey has been wasted, Miss Cowgill.”

  “No bother,” said Miranda. “Always a pleasure to see Uncle Hunter! But I’ve just been thinking. Did you get a good look at them? Could you identify them, if I sent you a picture over the internet?”

  “Brilliant idea,” said Lois. “Send it to me on an email. Then me and Josie can look at it together. Derek’s guess was, as I said, a shrew of some sort, and I reckon that’s the nearest we’ve come.”

  Lois and the two Cowgills walked back up to Meade House, and waved them off, then returned to the house.

  “Well, what were they?” said Gran. “They weren’t white mice, that’s for sure. Are you going to tell me now?”

  “Don’t know, I’m afraid,” said Lois. “They’re gone. Lost, stolen or strayed. I felt a right fool, with Cowgill’s niece there, an’ that.”

  “What d’you mean, gone? The shed was locked, wasn’t it?”

  “Yes, it was. I watched Josie unlocking it. So someone got in with a key, or picked the lock, and made away with them. Anyway, all is not lost. Miranda Cowgill is going to send me a photograph of one of those little animals to check out. If it is that one, then Justin is going to be in trouble.”

  “Such a nice young man, too,” said Gran, but her face belied her.

  “You don’t like him, do you, Mum?” Lois said.

  “Too nice,” said Gran. “Not like that Miranda Cowgill. Now she’s really nice.”

  “Seems fond of her uncle. Nice for him, as he lives alone. Now, where’s Derek, or has he given up and gone out?”

  *

  In the Brierley house, Betsy was leafing through a magazine, waiting for Ted to come home. She had been late to bed last evening, and had stayed in bed this morning until after he went off to work. Now she had the high tea all ready, table laid and was wearing her sexiest dress, all designed to make a good impression.
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  She heard the door, and put down her magazine. “Is that you, Ted?” she called.

  He came into the room, took one look at her and at the table carefully laid, and said, “What have you been up to now?”

  “Nothing, of course! Just thought you might like to have an attractive girl to come home to.”

  “I see. Well, thanks, but no thanks. Now you can go and take off that ridiculous dress, and come down in something more comfortable. My name’s not Pettison.”

  “Pity it isn’t!” Betsy said crossly. “At least he appreciates me. Says I have the figure of a girl. What do you think, Ted?” She knew she was being irritating, but a woman scorned, and all that.

  “I think I have had a hard day’s work, and all I want is a nice tea and a bit of peace. Is that too much to ask? And while I’m about it, where the hell were you last night? You don’t usually work out of hours, except for Pettison, and he’s out of action in a hospital ward, with any luck.”

  “Visiting a sick aunt,” she said.

  “Rubbish! But forget it. What’s for tea?”

  *

  It so happened that last night around midnight, Dot had got out of bed to go for a pee, and had looked out at the street below. The streetlight was still on, and to her surprise, she saw a car draw up outside the Brierleys’, and Betsy get out and let herself into the house.

  “My God, that woman works hard,” she had muttered, and laughed to herself. “Give me a duster and scrubbing brush anytime. You can keep your job, Betsy,” she had added. Then she thought that Betsy was a real scrubber, in a different sense, and that had made her chuckle again. When she returned to bed, another thought had struck her. Where had Betsy been? Pettison was still in hospital, and surely Ted wouldn’t have let her out so late to anyone else?

  “Odd little sod, that Ted,” she had said, not for the first time, and went straight back to sleep.

  *

  Next morning, straight after breakfast, Lois went into her office to check her email. There it was, the one she had been expecting. It was from Miranda Cowgill, and had an attachment. She clicked on it, and up came a photograph, a close-up of a small animal, like a mouse but not like a mouse, she thought.

  “Derek! Come and look! I’m in the office.”

  Derek came in and peered at the screen. “Um, yes. And then again, no.”

  “Just what I thought,” said Lois. “That one has the long nose, okay? But it sort of droops, whereas ours curved upwards. It’s got spindly little legs, too, that one. Isn’t it a beautiful colour? All goldeny.”

  “No such word,” said Derek. “Well, if you ask me, they are some sort of exotic shrew creature. Not from this country, anyway, else I’d have seen them, excavating behind floorboards an’ that, as I do. What’re you going to do, then, gel?”

  “I’ll see if Josie has had the same email, and ask her what she thinks. She saw them same as me.”

  At that moment, the phone rang and it was Josie. “Mum? Have you seen it? Isn’t it sweet? But I’m not sure it’s the same as ours. Our baby elephants’ trunks curved up in a happy way, but this one points down. I’d say it was the same, but different.”

  “Exactly,” said Derek. “Clever girl, our Josie.”

  Thirty-eight

  Halfway down the long straight track, Justin slowed the Fiat down to twenty miles an hour, and looked around him. Nothing, no hedges, no trees. As his father used to say, “Miles and miles of bugger-all!” And now his father was gone, soon to be lowered into the cold, cold ground. No more jokes, no more hair-raising stories of his youth, or romantic, embarrassing accounts of when he courted Justin’s mother.

  “Poor Mother,” he said aloud, and thought to himself that she would miss her husband terribly. After the funeral was over and all the legal stuff sorted, she would be really miserable. He should stay for at least another week. But could he do that? He thought ahead, and realised that he actually could, for once. He had no more assignments to do for Uncle Robert nor was he needed at the local theatre at present. He had checked with the hospital, and they had said Mr Pettison would be at least three or four weeks in their care.

  He had been to see the vicar, and arrangements for the funeral were completed. Tomorrow morning, at eleven, his father would be . . . He stopped mid-thought. “My father,” he said aloud, “will be buried, and I shall never see him again.”

  With a sudden burst of anger directed at nobody in particular, he put his foot down on the accelerator, and arrived at the farm with a screech of brakes.

  “Justin? Why so fast? You should join me in this very strange mode of transport, slow and careful.”

  Justin stared. It was Pettison, in a wheelchair and snug in layers of rugs, being lowered from the back of an ambulance, and attended by anxious paramedics.

  *

  When they were settled in front of a fire in the farmhouse, Justin’s mother explained. “Robert rang soon after you left,” she said. “Insisted that he should be at your father’s funeral, and asked if we could put him up overnight. Well, as you know, we still have the hoist we got for Dad, and so I said yes, we could certainly manage. Wasn’t it wonderful of him? Goodness knows how you persuaded the hospital,” she added now, addressing a grinning Pettison.

  “Charm, my dear, charm,” he said. “Amazing what one can do with a silver tongue. The ambulance will be back for me tomorrow afternoon, after the wake. I shall meet some old friends, I expect, Justin. You see, I had to come and say farewell to a good old friend.”

  Of course, thought Justin. Brothers-in-law. He thought some more, and then was very sure that he hadn’t heard the whole story. With Pettison, there was always an ulterior motive.

  “Right,” he said. “Well, we’d better get the bedroom ready, Mother. It’ll have to be the ground floor quarters, I’m afraid, Robert. We’ll never get you upstairs in that wheelchair!”

  “Can you spare a moment, Justin, for a little private chat? A matter of business, my dear,” he added to Mrs Brookes, who smiled, added another log to the fire and tiptoed out.

  “Wonderful mother you have, Justin. I am sure in some ways the death of your father must have come as a relief.”

  “I don’t think we can know that,” said Justin coolly. “My parents had a form of silent communication, developed over fifty years of happy marriage. I hope I shall be able to say the same one day.”

  “Remarkable!” said Pettison. “So now, just reassure me that the little people are still safe and well.”

  “If you mean the latest consignment of endangered animals, then yes, they are perfectly well, and being looked after until you return. Do you have a customer for them?”

  “Oh yes, a very noble customer! Titled aristocracy, no less. He should know better than to keep such people as pets, but who am I to quibble? I run a business, and ask no questions.”

  “You’ll be answering some, one of these days,” said Justin gloomily. “I reckon your time is running out. The sooner you get back into harness, the better.”

  “Ah, now there’s the thing. They say I have to stay in hospital, with occasional forays back home, for another three weeks. Even then, I shall still be in a wheelchair, possibly for good. So I wonder, when you get back, whether you could take over for a short while. You know the ropes at the zoo, and with Margie—and, I understand, the dreaded Dottie Nimmo—and the new keeper, things should go on pretty well. What do you think? There’ll be suitable rewards, of course.”

  “What sort of rewards?” asked Justin, suspiciously. He imagined a cage full of rare parrots, or some such.

  “Money, my dear chap. What else?”

  Justin remembered his dream of running a proper, untarnished zoo, and said that in that case, he would do as his uncle suggested. “You’ll have to send a message to say I’m coming. Best send it to Margie. I must stay here for another week, and then I’ll return.”

  “Ah, that brings me to the second thing,” said Pettison. “Your mother and I were having a chat, and she confided
that she hoped to go away and stay with her old friend in Spalding for a week or two, more or less straight after the funeral. The old boy who works on the farm is quite willing to take over. Not much happening at the moment, he has said. So you can return to Farnden, and take over at the zoo without delay.”

  They talked for a few more minutes, settling how the latest creatures were to be delivered to the buyer, and then Justin left Pettison to have a snooze by the fire while he helped his mother in the kitchen.

  *

  “Watch the milk in that saucepan, will you, Justin. It mustn’t boil, so tell me when it is about to.”

  “How will I know when it is about to?”

  “When there’s tiny bubbles and a skin forming on the top. Something like that. Anyway, you’ll just know. Is Robert all right in the front room? There’s not been a fire in there all winter, so it felt a bit damp.”

  “It’s fine, Mother. You must have been surprised to hear from him.”

  “Yes indeed. And to come all that way in a wheelchair! The ambulance will come and fetch him and take him back to the hospital tomorrow. Don’t ask me how he organised it! All he would say was “Friends in high places,” and silly things like that.”

  “It’s boiling. Shall I take it off?”

  “Of course! Now, what are you going to do? Supper will be in an hour or so.”

  “If there’s nothing more I can do to help, I think I’ll go and make a few phone calls. Check up that all is well back at the flat. Give me a shout when supper’s ready.”

  “Thanks for all you’re doing, dear. Oh, and I have decided to go and see my friend Vera after we’ve settled Father safely . . .” She paused, and wiped her eyes with the corner of her apron. “So you go back, Justin, and get on with things again. I shall be all right, and we’ll keep in touch. I might get a computer and one of those things where we can talk face-to-face. Off you go now, dear.”