Superfluous Women

by Carola Dunn

  “It’s a lot of work. If I had time and money, I’d have a big garden and help—and if wishes were horses, beggars would ride.” Impatiently, she added, “What is it you want to say to me?”

  He introduced himself.

  “Scotland Yard.” She raised plucked eyebrows. “Indeed. To what do I owe the honour of your call? Do get on with it. I have to go and supervise in the kitchen. The girl simply can’t do anything right.”

  Alec decided he had to crack her shell of indifference if he was to get anywhere. “I must inform you that your husband is presently helping my colleague with his enquiries, at the police station.”

  She paled beneath the rouge and she sat down at last, but her voice remained indifferent. “Sit down, Chief Inspector. I don’t like people towering over me. What has Roger done now? Set his heart on some underage enchantress? Not one of his pupils, I trust!”

  “You’re aware of his … straying.”

  “Obviously. Don’t tell me he’s gone beyond making overtures this time.” She took a cigarette from a silver-plated case, the silver worn to show the brass beneath, and tapped it on the lid before lighting it with a match.

  “We’re investigating.”

  “He makes us both ridiculous,” she snapped, driven at last to overt anger, viciously stabbing out the cigarette after one puff.

  “Please tell me how he came to be a church-school teacher.”

  “I can’t imagine what that has to do with anything, but if you want.… He was a promising young barrister when I married him. He was in first-rate chambers, a criminal practice—you’d recognise the name, I daresay—and he bore out the promise, until the war came along. When he was demobbed, he just couldn’t settle back into his work.”

  “Not uncommon.”

  “Which made it no easier to deal with.”

  “No. I beg your pardon.” Alec noted her self-satisfied look. Scoring a point off the questioner made people feel superior and, oddly enough, sometimes caused them to open up. “Please continue.”

  “In the end, he resigned from his chambers. Our savings ran out and we went to live with—and on—my parents. He found work occasionally, but never stayed long. If he didn’t quit, he was given the sack.”

  “Was there a pattern? I mean—”

  “I know what you mean. He usually quit because he considered the work meaningless or demeaning, or both. He was dismissed sometimes for drinking, usually for losing his temper once too often.”

  “He has a bad temper.”

  “He flies off the handle at the least little thing.”

  “And lashes out?”

  “Sometimes.” Mrs. Cartwright regained a measure of caution. “Not with me, not since I fended him off with a hot poker. This isn’t anything to do with his philandering, is it? You think he killed that woman, what’s her name … Gray?”

  “Did you know he was … interested in her?”

  “I’m not saying another word.”

  “Do you want to ring up your lawyer?”

  “My lawyer? On a schoolmaster’s salary, one doesn’t have a lawyer at one’s beck and call.”

  Alec didn’t press her. He was inclined to feel sorry for her, particularly as her husband was almost certain to lose yet another job. On the other hand, he wasn’t convinced that she hadn’t known about Judith Gray. Given that knowledge, she herself might have been tempted to push the woman downstairs, with or without the aid of a hot poker. Though, as far as Alec knew, she hadn’t attacked any of Cartwright’s previous amours, everyone had a breaking point.

  “The female of the species…” In less than two decades, Kipling’s line had become a cliché. Alec’s years of policing, not to mention the war, had taught him otherwise: the male human was far more deadly than the female. But one must not discount the female. What of Mrs. Vaughn? Walking back to the police station through the damp dusk, he called to mind what he knew of her.

  She was the one who had brought money to the marriage, according to Willie Chandler’s boss, Davis, who had it from his partner, Myra Vaughn’s brother. Her income was sufficient to run a car. The money was under her own control, and she wasn’t particularly generous with it, as evidenced by her “lending” the car to her husband.

  Her stinginess might be responsible for his holding a job, though possibly her income was insufficient to keep them both in comfort, or perhaps he just enjoyed the work. His employer said he was good at it.

  Yet, to all appearances, what he earned from commissions didn’t satisfy him. He was fiddling the books.

  Had Judith Gray found out? Was Vaughn himself aware of the audit?

  Back at the station, he rejoined the others. As he entered the room, Cartwright looked round apprehensively. He was seated facing the desk. Pennicuik stood behind him and Ernie, notebook and pencil in hand, sat against the wall.

  Underwood, behind the desk, stood up. “Might I have a word with you outside, sir?” To Ernie Piper and Pennicuik, he said, “Keep an eye on him.”

  In the corridor, the door closed, Alec said, “I take it that was a rhetorical warning. He hasn’t tried to leave or turned obstreperous, has he?”

  “No, he seems pretty cowed. He’s admitted to having kissed those three schoolmistresses against their will, but unless they decided to bring charges, we can’t do a thing.”

  “And they won’t.”

  “No. That sort of trick calls for a sock on the jaw … but Miss Leighton has no one entitled to administer it. ‘Superfluous women,’ my arse! If you’ll pardon the expression. Sniggers in the press and wanting to send them to the colonies! They’re victims like the boys who should have lived to marry them, aren’t they?”

  “Not quite as final,” Alec said mildly. “What else did Cartwright have to say?”

  “He repeated that they led him on, and all he wanted was a bit of affection. Pathetic, really. His wife sounds like a right—”

  “I wouldn’t be too quick to judge. A question of the chicken and the egg. Anything more?”

  “Not much. He still denies having anything to do with Judith Gray beyond a call of condolence. That would be more credible if he was a clergyman, or if he hadn’t referred to her as Judith.”

  “And if he hadn’t the history with the other women. Possible witnesses to his visiting her would be Mrs. Hedger or her niece, or Vaughn. Vaughn can’t deny having been in the house himself, whether his calls were all business or not.”

  “Or Miss Sutcliffe,” Underwood reminded Alec. “She was in and out of the place while deciding whether to buy it, and then going over the inventory with Mrs. Gray. Though I would have expected her to mention it to me if she’d seen Cartwright there.”

  “Not necessarily, given Miss Leighton’s emotional reactions to his name. Now that we’ve cleared that up, though, you can ask her.”

  The inspector looked a little self-conscious. “I will. I don’t know how much point there is in asking the charwoman, though. Might as well talk to a brick wall, from what you and Miss Sutcliffe say.”

  “If Sally Hedger hasn’t seen Cartwright there herself, she may be able to get an answer from her aunt.”

  “DI Piper can talk to Miss Hedger,” said Underwood, getting a little of his own back. “Now, what’s this about chickens and eggs?”

  Alec told him what Mrs. Cartwright had related of her husband’s sorry history. “So, impossible to tell who was reacting to whom, but I’m inclined to blame the wreck of their marriage on the war.”

  “Very likely. Not that we need worry about that, only about the effects. But it’s time we were off to see the Vaughns. They live out in Hazlemere. We’d better get moving. I’ll have to let Cartwright go.” Underwood sighed.

  Cartwright, warned that if he left Beaconsfield he must provide an address where he could be found, scuttled out. Pennicuik was left holding the fort. The other three detectives walked to Alec’s Austin Twelve, on the way seeing the schoolmaster dive into the Saracen’s Head, doubtless to find a meagre solace in alcohol.r />
  Alec drove, with Underwood beside him and Ernie Piper behind, leaning forward to offer directions. He had, as a matter of course, studied the appropriate map. Though the hedged lanes wound hither and thither and crossed each other at frequent intervals without benefit of fingerposts, Ernie was never at a loss.

  They reached Hazlemere; they found the correct street. It was less a street than another lane, winding downhill. Turning into it, Alec could see lights indicating several large houses at considerable intervals, set well back from the road.

  “And no numbers,” Ernie said apologetically. “It’s a dead end with a manor at the end.”

  “I imagine the lord of the manor sold off the land for building,” said Alec. “Sorry, Ernie, you’re going to have to hop out every time we come to a gate.”

  Ernie had to hop only twice; most of the gateways had signs readable from the car, set where headlights illuminated them as they crawled by. The Vaughns’, Manor Lodge, was the last on the left. Its position close to the lane with a minuscule front garden suggested it had in fact been the manor’s lodge.

  Alec turned into the drive, which led along the side of the house to a wooden garage at the rear. The old house was built of brick and flint, two stories with low ceilings. No lights showed in the front or side windows, only a dim lightbulb above the front door.

  “Dammit,” said Underwood, “I left a message with his boss and both message and a note with the secretary. Pennicuik rang here and left a message with a servant.” He checked the luminous dial of his watch. “It’s past six. Don’t tell me he’s done a flit!”

  “Ernie, go and check round the back.”

  Piper returned after just a minute. “Just one light on. I think it’s the kitchen. It has a window at the back and door on to the drive. There’s a new wing back there, but it’s completely dark. At the far end, it has French doors to the garden.”

  Underwood marched ahead to the front door and rang the electric bell. After what seemed a long wait, he rang again and knocked as well. This time, the fanlight above the door lit up.

  The door opened on the chain. A youthful face, half-excited, half-apprehensive, appeared in the gap. “You the p’lice?”

  “Yes, miss. Detective Inspector Underwood. I have an appointment with Mr. and Mrs. Vaughn.”

  “They ain’—aren’ here. Mrs. Walker, tha’s the housekeeper, said to tell you they’ve gone off to Lunnon. London.”

  With an obvious effort, Underwood said pleasantly, “Then we’ll just have to have a word with you and Mrs. Walker.”

  “An’ Mr. Grissom, too? Dilys ain’—isn’ here. She went to the picshers with her young man.”

  “And Mr. Grissom, too. Open the door, there’s a good girl.”

  “I’ll ’ave ter ask.”

  “Very proper. You go ahead and ask.”

  The next face to appear was male, elderly, and truculent. “Where’s yer ’elmets? That’s what I wanna know.”

  The inspector explained that they were detectives who seldom wore uniform. When Grissom closed the door to take off the chain, Underwood said quickly, “If we can separate them without making it too obvious, will you take the housekeeper, sir? Sergeant, the girl for you, and I’ll tackle this fellow.”

  He stopped the manservant in the tiny entrance hall to ask a question. Alec and Ernie followed the sound of female voices to the kitchen. Here they were in luck, as Mrs. Walker promptly sent the girl to the scullery to peel potatoes for their supper, whither Ernie unobtrusively slipped out to join her, leaving Alec with the stout housekeeper.

  The kitchen smelled of roasting mutton. A vivid flash of olfactory memory took Alec back to the smell of roasting beef in Isabel’s kitchen and the revolting sequel.

  Banishing it, he introduced himself.

  “You can’t blame me,” said Mrs. Walker.

  Alec raised his eyebrows. Elucidation followed.

  “I told the mistress, myself, I did. Dilys—she’s parlourmaid—she took the telephone call as is her duty, and she told me, and I told the mistress. The perlice are coming to see you and the master, I said. They rang up on the telephone, I said, and made an appointment for six o’clock this very evening. And you know what she said? ‘We’re going to the theatre in London,’ that’s what, and it’s no use arguing with the mistress.”

  “Difficult, is she?” Alec sympathised.

  Mrs. Walker considered this proposition. “Not difficult, I wouldn’t say. It’s just her growing up in the Manor, till her pa died, she knows times has changed but she don’t rightly feel it inside her, if you know what I mean.”

  “I know just what you mean, and that’s very neatly put, if I may say so.”

  Tom would be proud of him, he thought, as she preened. “I don’t mind. Would you like a cup of tea?”

  “That’s very kind of you, but not just now, thank you.”

  “I’ll put on the kettle in case you change your mind.” She lit the gas burner under the kettle. “Yes, off to the theatre they went, the both of ’em, though I did ought to tell you as the master thought they ought to stay home. Leastways, that’s what he said, but it don’t always do to take what he says for gospel.”

  “No? For instance?”

  “Like the Manor, f’rinstance. It’s let to an American, a millionaire. The master handles the rent and such, him being in the business. Now, maybe he’s counting on how the gentry don’t talk about money, what they’ve got and what they spend. But these here Americans, seems like they never stop talking about money. My friend Mrs. Golightly—which she don’t, being a large woman—she’s housekeeper over to the Manor, and she heard them arguing over could they get a better house for the same rent. One of ’em mentioned the amount, and Mrs. Golightly just happened to mention it to me. And I just happened to notice, doing the household accounts like I do, the mistress not being brought up to it—I just happened to notice that what she’s getting isn’t what they’re paying!” She ended with a sort of triumphant gasp, having run out of air.

  “Mr. Vaughn, as agent, is entitled to a commission, you know.”

  “I know that! It’s written down as is right and proper. But it don’t add up right, and that I’d swear to.”

  “Did you tell Mrs. Vaughn?”

  “I did not, not being one to come between husband and wife. I lost my own in the war. I’m not saying he didn’t have his faults, same as anyone, but—”

  Underwood’s entrance saved Alec from a recital of the late Mr. Walker’s desirable qualities. Though he had intended to broach the subject of marital infidelity, he judged that Mrs. Walker would not take such a question kindly, so the interruption was not unwelcome.

  Mrs. Walker went to the scullery door. “Not finished them ’taters yet, my girl? This rate, we’ll be eating at midnight.”

  “They’re all done, Mrs. Walker.” The maid appeared with empty hands, followed by Ernie, gallantly carrying the heavy cast-iron saucepan for her. Grissom had likewise followed Underwood into the kitchen.

  The inspector addressed Mrs. Walker: “You’ll excuse me, madam, if Mr. Fletcher has already asked, but can you tell me what time Mr. and Mrs. Vaughn are expected back?”

  The housekeeper shook her head regretfully. “The mistress said not to wait up. It’s a first night, seemingly; why she was so keen not to miss it. There’ll be a party afterwards. They won’t be home till well after midnight.”

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  When Daisy lay down for her nap, she didn’t fall asleep, but she grew so somnolent that a very soft tapping on the door startled her.

  “Who’s there?”

  “It’s me, Sally, Mrs. Fletcher.”

  “Come in. What time is it?”

  “Just after six, madam. I hope I didn’t wake you.”

  “I was just resting my feet. It’s been over an hour? Today seems to have lasted a very long time already. What is it?”

  “There’s two messages come, madam, that I thought might be urgent.” She came over to the bed and h
anded Daisy a pinky-buff telegram envelope and a double-folded note on lined paper. “The telegram’s for Mr. Fletcher, sent over from the post office. The boy said it’s from Scotland Yard. I told him to take it to the police station, but he said it’s addressed to the Saracen’s Head and that’s where he was told to take it.”

  Holding up the telegram to the light, Daisy wished she could see what Crane had to say. It must be from him, though she knew she had no hope of reading it. She could, however, deliver it to Alec herself. If she sent Edward the Boots to deliver it to the police station, the same difficulty applied as with the letter from France: If Alec was not there, both might get into the wrong hands.

  “I’ll see he gets it, Sally.” She laid down the telegram and picked up the note.

  “Constable Pennicuik brought that one, madam. The telegram came just after he went off, so I couldn’t give it to him.”

  “This is from Alec.” She recognised his handwriting. “Let me see what he says.” She untucked and unfolded the paper. “Oh, bother, he won’t be back for dinner. I don’t suppose DC Pennicuik mentioned whether they’re all at the station or buzzing about questioning people?”

  “No, but Mr. Piper wrote a note to me,” Sally said, blushing. “He asked if I—we would be so kind as to send over sandwiches for four at half past seven.”

  “So they should all be there at seven thirty. Good. I’d better get moving and go over to Cherry Trees right away.”

  “Mr. Whitford told me the ladies are going home tonight. Miss Leighton rang up Miss Chandler at work to tell her. Miss Leighton gave me ever such a good tip.”

  “You deserve it, Sally.”

  “Thank you, madam. I do my best.”

  “And a very good best it is.”

  Sally went off, beaming. Daisy hoped all would go well with her, whether the future held a job in London or marriage to Ernie. Or to someone else, she allowed.

  She got out of bed and washed her face and hands in the basin. Shedding the creased blouse she had worn to bed, she decided to put on a dress instead of the costume she had been wearing. As she brushed her curls into place, she wondered whether to go straight to Cherry Trees or drop in at the police station to see whether Alec, Underwood, or one of their minions was there. It was just a hundred yards or so. But in the wrong direction, possibly fruitless, and she hadn’t found out yet about the possible payment to Mrs. Hedger. She might as well wait until she had collected all her snippets of information. That way, she’d have to suffer through only one ragging for her interference.