“Oh, no, no, Mr. Pierre, it’s those men again. Those detectives!”
“Oh.” He often wondered why he had ever employed the girl. The blank oval of her face was so stupid and that blonde hair of hers was a mistake. It didn’t suit her. “Well, tell them I’ll be with them in a moment.”
“But what shall I do with them, Mr. Pierre? I can’t just leave them there among all the ladies. Anyone can see what they are.”
“Take them to my office.”
As she scurried off, he finished setting his client’s hair. He drew her chair back for her, guided her to a dryer, settled her comfortably with a copy of Vogue, then gave a swift look round his salon. Everything was in order. Smoothing back his own thick dark hair, he passed bowing in front of the waiting ladies in the reception room and entered his private office.
Maureen was there with the same two, big, muscular men who had come the other time.
“They want Linda again!” she cried shrilly. “I told them, she’s not back from lunch yet. I said she doesn’t get back till two-thirty.”
“Shh, Maureen, go back to the desk,” said Mr. Pierre. He turned to the older of the two men. “So there’s trouble again, is there. Same sort of trouble?”
The foreign accent had quite disappeared from his voice.
“Worse, Mr. Jones,” said Inspector Fryer flatly. “It isn’t burglary this time, it’s murder.”
Mr. Pierre’s face became as muddy a mask as any face undergoing beauty treatment in his salon. He groped for a chair.
The detective went on. “It’s Mrs. Calloway, of Applecroft, Dene Road, Mr. Jones. One of Miss Linda Jarvis’s clients, wasn’t she?”
Mr. Pierre nodded dazedly “And she’d an appointment here at three o’clock yesterday with Miss Linda, but she didn’t come.” He spoke through trembling lips. “She rang up and cancelled. I took the message myself. I don’t know why you’ve come to us. I tell you. Mr. Fryer, she didn’t come.”
“Which is why she’s dead,” said the Inspector.
“I don’t understand.”
The other man spoke patiently “Look at it straight, Mr. Jones. If she’d come here, she’d merely have found her jewelry stolen when she got home again, like those other two women who’d been having their hair done by Linda Jarvis, the women we came to ask her about last month.”
“But Mrs. Calloway cancelled and stayed at home. So the burglar didn’t find the empty house he’d expected. He found Mrs. Calloway and he bashed her skull in with a hammer. Her cleaner found the body this morning.”
Mr. Pierre made a loud retching sound. The room spun round him.
When he recovered, he muttered: “I don’t see why you blame Miss Linda.”
“I haven’t said we do. All I’m saying is we’ve had two burglaries in a month and both times the house was empty and both times the lady was out, having her hair done at Mr. Pierre’s. And as it happens, both times she’s a client of Linda Jarvis’s, who’s been going round recently with an unemployed man called Fred Benson. Maybe she wasn’t passing information to him then again, maybe she was.”
The door burst open. “I heard what you said!” cried a slender, golden-haired and very angry girl, whose blue eyes blazed furiously at the three men in the room. “And I’d nothing to do with any of it and nor had Fred Benson!”
“Shh, Linda,” said Mr. Pierre, automatically recovering his faintly French intonation. At the same time he caught himself wondering, as he often had before, when the chemists would come up with something that made hair look like hers. “For God’s sake keep your voice down and shut the door.”
She came in, but she did not shut the door or lower her voice.
“I’m sorry Mrs. Calloway’s dead,” she said. “She was nice, she treated you like a human being. But don’t try dragging Fred into this. He’s unemployed because he was smashed up in a car accident six months ago and isn’t fit to work yet. Freddie a burglar – my God, he wouldn’t know where to start!”
“Not even if you told him, Miss Jarvis?” asked the Inspector.
“ME?” She caught her breath. “What am I supposed to have told him?”
“When Mrs. Calloway’s house would be empty, because she’d be here having her hair done by you.”
Mr. Pierre saw the fright in the girl’s eyes. He was a sensitive man and it hurt him.
“But Miss Linda knew she wasn’t going to be here,” he said.
“That’s right,” the girl said eagerly. “She’d cancelled. Mr. Pierre told me so before I went off to lunch. And I had lunch with Fred. If he was your burglar, wouldn’t I have told him that and stopped him going to the place?”
The detective said nothing for a moment, then he turned back to Mr. Pierre.
“What time did Mrs. Calloway cancel? You said you took the message yourself.”
“I did – it was about one o’clock,” said Mr. Pierre. “She told me she was getting a cold and was going to stay at home, so I crossed her name off the book and gave her appointment with Miss Linda to another lady who happened to ring up a few minutes later.”
“I think I’d like to see that book,” said Inspector Fryer. Picking up the telephone on his desk, Mr. Pierre spoke to Maureen, telling her to bring the appointments book. “When she appeared with it he turned the pages and showed the detectives a line drawn through Mrs. Calloway’s name and the other name that he had written in above it.
Inspector Fryer studied the entry thoughtfully. “Why was it you who took the message, Mr. Jones?” he asked. “Why not your receptionist?”
“Because she’d gone to lunch. She...” He paused. He looked at Maureen and saw her mouth sag stupidly open. Unfortunately, he thought, it was unlikely that the chemists would ever come up with anything that would give her face even a trace of the life and intelligence that there was in Linda’s.
“Miss Linda doesn’t go till one-thirty,” he went on. “That’s how I was able to tell her about Mrs. Calloway cancelling before she went off. But Maureen goes at twelve-thirty. So she didn’t know anything about the cancellation till she got back. And then she came straight to me and said she was unwell and could she go home, and off she went.”
“Thank you – that’s what I needed to know,” said Inspector Fryer.
He turned swiftly on Maureen. “You’ve quite a grudge against Miss Jarvis, haven’t you? Fred Benson used to go with you till he met her. That’s why you always picked a client of hers to tell your brother about, the brother who’s done time for robbery with violence.”
“I – I don’t know what you mean,” said Maureen.
But she did know. Mr. Pierre saw it in the terror which for a moment gave a little expression to her palely vacant face.
Perhaps because of that sensitiveness of his, it was just then that he remembered the lady whom he had left under the dryer. He hurried out to attend to her.
JUSTICE IN MY OWN HANDS
I have never committed a murder.
I once took justice into my own hands and if this had happened fifty years ago it might have led to something which perhaps could be described as murder, since capital punishment then was still normal. And to send a person to the gallows, even if this was deserved according to the law, might have been regarded in its way as homicidal. But a sentence for what is called life, but which is a mere ten years or so, with time off for good behaviour, is altogether a different thing. Only too different, I realise, as the years pass....
It is about eight years ago now that my Grandaunt Emma telephoned me one morning and begged me pressingly to come and see her.
“Dorothy, dear, I know you’re very busy, but couldn’t you spare a couple of days to come down here at the weekend?” she said. “You know I’ve not been well, don’t you, and there’s something I want to talk to you about before... Well, as soon as possible.”
Her old voice creaked and was a little shaky. She was eighty-six, and a few months before – as I had heard from my sister Marion, who lived with her – had suffered a
slight stroke. Considering her age, the old woman had made a very good recovery. She had apparently become a little more absent-minded than before, but had not been paralysed in any way and could still enjoy reading and watching television, and could even walk around the house a little without assistance.
She had had to give up cooking, which irked her because it had been one of the main interests in her life. At one time she had even written articles about it for one of the women’s magazines. And she had stubbornly gone on with it until her stroke, since when, unfortunately for Marion – who could produce a very presentable shepherd’s pie and even grill a chop with some success – Aunt Emma had become more critical than ever and not as grateful as she might have been for all that Marion did for her.
If the telephone call that morning had been a cry for help from Marion, badly wanting a few days off to meet some friends, go to a theatre and do some shopping in London, it would have puzzled me less than our aunt’s anxious invitation.
For anxious it certainly was. It sounded almost frightened. The stroke, I thought, must have affected her more than Marion had told me, more perhaps than Marion, spending as much time as she did with the old woman and being too used to her to notice a gradual change, had even realised. Aunt Emma had always been an intrepid character, always busy with half-a-dozen worthy causes, and had once stood for Parliament as an independent candidate. She had lost her deposit but had always referred to the experience as if it gave her some kind of special importance. Apart from that, she was rich, generous and affectionate.
“Yes, of course I could come if you really want me,” I said, “though it isn’t just the easiest thing at the moment.”
“Please, Dorothy, please!” she implored. “This weekend. Can’t you do it?”
I could if it was really that urgent, though I usually worked over the weekend. At that time I was employed by a literary agent and often took manuscripts home with me on Fridays to read in the quiet of my small flat in Hampstead. In the office there were always interruptions, telephone calls, committee meetings, visiting authors, discussions with publishers. And recently I had been letting the manuscripts pile up.... But if it was really that important to Aunt Emma, the manuscripts would just have to wait.
“Very well,” I said. “On Saturday morning, will that be all right?”
“Yes, yes, if you can’t come sooner. Couldn’t you come on Friday evening?”
“I suppose I could.”
“Then, do! Come in time for dinner. After all, it’s only an hour from London and you can take a taxi from the station.”
“Can’t Charles or Marion meet me with the car? I think there’s a train at six which gets to Oxford just after seven.”
“Perhaps they could. Yes. No. I don’t know. I’ll speak to them about it.” The anxiety in her voice was almost strident.
“You mean you haven’t said anything yet about this visit of mine to Marion?” I said.
“How could I, till I knew you’d come?”
That made sense, but I had a sudden uncomfortable feeling that with her new absent-mindedness Aunt Emma might forget to mention my visit to my sister, which might be inconvenient, if not actually upsetting for her. So I suggested that, if Marion was in at that moment, perhaps I might have a few words with her – but Aunt Emma replied in an odd, hurried way that she was not in and, anyway, there were always lots of taxis at the station. So I accepted it and left it at that. I could telephone Marion later, I thought.
I called her that evening, but it turned out to have been unnecessary. Aunt Emma had told her of my plans. I was not sure, though, that Marion sounded too pleased.
“But what’s she so worried about?” I asked. “Because she is worried, isn’t she?”
“I think it’s just that she’s got it into her head that she’s bound to have another stroke soon,” Marion answered, “and she wants to be sure of seeing you once more before it happens. You were always her favourite, you know.”
I did know it. Marion, living with her in Oxford, had always done far more for Aunt Emma than I had, yet we both knew that I occupied a place in her affections that Marion could never come close to.
“Well, I’ll see you on Friday,” I said, “and don’t bother about meeting me. I’ll take a taxi.”
“Oh, I’ll meet you,” she said, “or else Charles will.”
In the event it was Charles who came to the station.
I had never been able to make up my mind about Charles. There had been a time when I had thought that he was in love with me, but it was Marion whom he had married. However, this had not done much more than damage my amour propre, leaving my heart intact. He was an oddly nondescript kind of man, fairly tall, fairly thin, rather stooping, with grey eyes, and a long, pale face topped by shaggy fair hair which always looked as if he had forgotten to have it cut rather than deliberately let it grow long. He was a university lecturer in Social History and according to some people was brilliant, as would be generally recognised, they said, when he finished his book.
Unfortunately, the book showed no signs of ever nearing an end, and that, to someone in my profession, only too used to people who at some future date were going to produce a work of genius, was no recommendation. All the same, I had always found him a curiously exciting man, though I could not have said why. Perhaps it was his air of wary detachment, his cautious avoidance of becoming more than superficially involved with anyone. It was a kind of challenge.
“It’s good of you to come,” he said, as we drove away from the station. “The poor old thing seems to want you badly. She’s made up her mind she hasn’t long to live and God knows I hate to say it, but I suppose she’s right. When it happens it’s going to be what people call a merciful release. Don’t you find that a disgusting phrase?”
“I hadn’t realised, from what Marion told me, that she was as ill as that,” I said.
“I’m not sure that she is. But she thinks she is, which is what counts. I believe every night, when she goes to sleep, she says to herself that she probably won’t wake up in the morning. “If I should die before I wake, I beg the Lord my soul to take....” I believe death is on her mind all the time, frightening her out of her wits.”
But he was wrong. It was not death that was frightening Aunt Emma. It was something which I personally found more horrible. She was afraid of going mad.
I discovered this during the first talk I had alone with her in her bedroom after the dinner that she and Charles and Marion and I had together in the stately but somehow unwelcoming dining room. Charles and I had arrived at the house in North Oxford, in Elwell Street, which is a turning off the Banbury Road, at about a quarter past seven and we had found Aunt Emma sitting by the fire in the drawing room, dressed in a pretty flowered blouse and a long black skirt, from under the hem of which woolly bedroom slippers protruded. The slippers and the stick which was propped against her chair were the only indications that she was not as well as she had been when I saw her last. She had always been proud of her feet and ankles and would never have appeared in public in anything but the most elegant of shoes, probably Italian and very expensive.
The blouse looked new, however, as if she had been shopping not long before, and her white hair was cleverly cut, while her small, wrinkled face, with its pointed features and dazzlingly blue eyes, showed no signs of recent illness.
Marion joined us briefly, but said that she was busy in the kitchen and soon left us. We had drinks and chatted about my journey, about the recent cold spell, about the shocking cost of nearly everything and the state of the country, and pretended that there was nothing amiss.
Marion and I were rather alike to look at, though I was slightly the taller and two years the older. Actually, I am the same age as Charles, who at that time was forty. She and I were both brown-haired and brown-eyed, with oval faces which no one could call distinguished, long, thin necks, and narrow, sloping shoulders. We were slim and I suppose might have made something of this, but neither of us had
much dress sense; however, I had learnt to manage a little better than Marion, having found that there was some virtue in it if you worked in a London office, whereas in North Oxford it seemed not to be very important. I had also learnt to cook somewhat better than she did. What she gave us that evening was soup out of a tin, Irish stew, trifle made with custard powder, and instant coffee.
As soon as the meal was over Aunt Emma said that she was sorry but she was very tired and was going straight to bed, and hoped that perhaps I would come upstairs presently and talk to her for a little. I helped Marion clear the table and stack the dishwasher, waited for about half an hour, then went up to Aunt Emma’s bedroom.
She looked very small and shrunken in the big bed, propped up against several pillows. She wore a pale blue quilted bed-jacket and had a book open on her knee, but I noticed that she had not put on her spectacles, so she could not have been reading. They were on the table on the far side of the bed under a lamp which was the only light in the room. As I sat down beside her she closed the book and put it on the table, then reached out and took my hand. Her small, thin fingers dug almost painfully into my wrist.
“Dorothy, do you understand why I wanted to see you?” she asked with a disturbing note of excitement in her usually calm though creaky voice. “My dear, I think I’m going out of my mind.”
I gave a laugh, which I dare say sounded rather patronising, patted her hand and said, “Aunt Emma, you’re probably the sanest person I know.”
Then I realised that she was serious and wished I had chosen a different tone.
“It’s just from time to time,” she went on as if I had not spoken. “I don’t think the others have noticed it yet. I have these blackouts. Suddenly I can’t remember anything. I find myself in the middle of a room and I can’t remember how I got there or where I was going. And I begin a sentence and get lost halfway through it and I begin to wonder if it sounds as nonsensical to other people as it does to me. And sometimes it’s worse than that. I see things.... Only yesterday I saw poor Bertram standing at the end of the bed, pointing at me and laughing at me. As if he would ever do such a thing! But I knew it was an illusion, I knew it as well as I know you’re really sitting here beside me, but I couldn’t make him go away.” Her voice rose slightly. “Dorothy, I’m so frightened they’ll find out and then I’ll be helpless!”
The Casebook of Jonas P. Jonas and Other Mysteries Page 16
