“I gather the lady of the house isn’t at home. I wonder if you could help me?”
The embodiment of a type now becoming very rare—the old family servant, brought up from girlhood in the same house, faithful, but a bit bitter with the resentment of years of knuckling under and putting up with the same foibles day after day throughout a lifetime.
“… If your husband hadn’t told me, I’d have thought you were the mistress here …”
That did it! Mrs. Hinksman gave her husband an acid look for betraying her and then smiled kindly on Cromwell.
“In what way can I ’elp you?”
The attendant constable appeared, stood first on one foot and then on the other, rather piteously puzzling what was going on and where it was all going to lead.
“I’m from the police, as you’ll have guessed, madam, and I was rather anxious to see Mrs. Wilkins just to check the statement of a gentleman who was here on Monday, October 26th. A Mr. Edgell, of Enderby. I understand he was Mrs. Wilkins’ lawyer. He’s told us he was here in the evening and we always have to check up on statements to make sure. I’m certain you’ll do just as well as Mrs. Wilkins.”
“Better, if you ask me. She’s gettin’ old, you know, and a bit of a trouble, if you understand what I mean. In fact, too much trouble for the likes of us, even if I have been with her for forty years.”
The lips grew thin and the face peevish. The woman had a grievance and was eager to give vent to it in the right quarter.
“’It me, she did, with her owld stick on account o’ treadin’ on they geraniums. As if Oi could ’elp it, me with me rheumatics an’ not so limber as Oi used ter be …”
The old man gave tongue. He seemed bitter about everything, including his wife’s scornful treatment of him. The sort of man who, having grown to hate his better half, now disgraced her by knocking around in large dirty boots and corduroy trousers loosely held up by a leather belt and looking ready to slip down to his ankles any time.
“You leave me to talk to the gentleman. He isn’t h’interested in your grievances.”
The old man looked already out of his depth and stood trembling with fury at the affront and ready to go off in a temper.
“You don’t find things too comfortable here, madam?”
The gardener burst out before they could stop him.
“Comfortable? Dang ’er, no. We be givin’ notice as soon as ’er comes back. Folk next door a’ bin after us for long enough and now we be goin’ to ’em. That’ll be one in the eye for the ole cat. ’Er with no ’elp about the place, a-seein’ of us workin’ loike mad for the folk next door …”
The old woman cut him short.
“That will do, Reuben. Our own h’affairs are private and personal and the gentleman isn’t h’interested. You were sayin’, sir?”
She smiled at Cromwell to show that the matter rested between him and her.
“What time did Mr. Edgell leave here on the night I mentioned?”
The woman didn’t hesitate.
“Just before half-past nine …”
“You’re quite sure? Sure it wasn’t nearer ten?”
She looked put-out at being doubted.
“Of course not. I can tell the time, can’t I? I know the time the lawyer left perticularly …”
“Why? You’ll pardon my asking. I don’t want to seem to doubt you, but you know what policemen are …”
He said it with a winning grin and the accompanying bobby sniggered as though enjoying some private constabulary joke.
Mrs. Hinksman smiled a cruel smile.
“My husband can perhaps explain better …”
She placed her arms akimbo and indicated that the ball was passed to the old chap.
“Oi be allowed off the chain every noight for an hour whiles Oi go and gets me pint at the local. Half-past eight to half-past noine. Then Oi gotta be ’ome. Dead on half-past noine, else there’s ructions from the missus.”
Mrs. Hinksman nodded vigorously.
“Early to bed and early to rise is the motto here. My husband gets in at half-past nine prompt to be ready for mornin’ and then we go to bed just after ten, because as she’s got older, Mrs. Wilkins gets up earlier. Shoutin’ for her breakfast, she is, just after seven.”
It wasn’t hard to guess that the couple were completely fed-up with their mistress and took every opportunity of airing their complaints.
“And Mr. Edgell?”
“He left just before my husband got home. The kitchen was in darkness and I think he must have thought we were both out, because he opened the gates himself and drove quietly away. As a rule he h’asks my husband to do it for him.”
“So he sneaked quietly off …”
“Well, I wouldn’t quite say that. He just thought we were havin’ our night out, havin’ already seen my ’usband on his way to the public house.”
She mentioned the pub with venom. It was obviously a bone of contention. She looked the thrifty sort and every pint probably cut her to the quick.
“Thank you very much, Mrs.…”
“Mrs. Hinksman.”
“… Mrs. Hinksman. Did Mr. Edgell come often?”
“At one time he came two or three times a week, but now not half so often. A great friend of Mrs. Wilkins, but now the young lady’s gone elsewhere and doesn’t come any more, Mr. Edgell isn’t seen so much about.”
The old man cackled hideously at some private joke and bared his almost toothless gums and showed his tongue and uvula. His wife gave him a disgusted look.
“The young lady? Who was she?”
“I shouldn’t really be gossipin’ here. She’d be h’annoyed if she knew.”
The thought of annoying Mrs. Wilkins stimulated her.
“A young lady called Miss Deane … Valerie Deane … Used to come here for hospitality. Mrs. Wilkins was quite fond of her, she having once fancied the stage herself and, but for the family, they say, would like as not have been actress, though with her looks I doubt her success at it.”
“An actress?”
“Yes. There was a stock company came here about two years since. Played at the theatre for quite a while. The mistress went to the theatre every week; sometimes twice. And with the same people bein’ here and in all the plays week after week, the local people sort of had them to their ’omes and gave them hospitality. Miss Deane came here sometimes twice or three times a week for tea before the play, you see. And one time Mr. Edgell was ’ere. After that, he started to come reg’lar when the young woman was here to tea. Disgustin’, I called it, an old man like Mr. Edgell being gallant to a girl of Miss Deane’s age.”
“How did it end?”
The old woman looked bitter.
“Not as you might imagine, by the lawyer makin’ a fool of himself and December marryin’ April. Oh, no. The theatre company went bankrupt and the players was all out of work. Mr. Edgell found Miss Deane a job in Enderby, I’ve heard. Wanted ’er on his doorstep, I should say. But it ain’t none of my business old men makin’ fools of themselves.”
She gave her husband a cutting look and he passed his huge paw across his dry lips to signify in which directions his own foolishness lay.
“Valerie Deane, eh? What did she look like, Mrs. Hinksman?”
The old man’s mouth opened as he prepared to give a description and then he glanced at his wife and decided on prudence.
“A young ’ussy. Pretty as a picture on a chocolate-box lid, but an artful one. She soon had ole Edgell twisted round her little finger, believe you me.”
“Dark or fair?”
Mrs. Hinksman eyed Cromwell as though she suspected him of getting off the business in hand.
“Fair and blue-eyed, brazen in the showing of too much of herself. Not the sort I’d like a boy of mine to be takin’ up with. Why?”
“I wonder if I know her …”
Mrs. Hinksman drew herself in with a deep breath.
“Not the kind a decent young man like yourself would be w
antin’ to get tied up with. In any case, you wouldn’t have much chance. A policeman! She don’t want policemen. Millionaires is what the likes of her are h’after … or silly old men like Mr. Edgell, with more money to throw about on a pretty face than wits to bless theirselves with …”
Outside the gates of Throstles Nest a car-horn blew.
“We’ll just call round and pick Cromwell up on our way back to Enderby,” Littlejohn had said to Violet Mander and now they had drawn up before the house and were making their arrival known.
Cromwell hurried to the gate to meet his chief, took him aside, and told him what he had learned from the Hinksmans.
“You know this place, Miss Mander?” the Inspector asked when the sergeant had finished his tale.
“Yes. Mrs. Wilkins who lives here was very good to me when I was playing with the repertory company in Melton. She extended her hospitality sometimes several afternoons a week. It was very sweet of her, because when you’re in a town like this you get lonely, and it’s nice to have a place like home to call at.”
Her china-blue eyes opened wide like those of a child.
“You met Mr. Edgell here, didn’t you?”
“Many times. He was Miss Wilkins’ lawyer.”
“He was very fond of you?”
Again the look of clear innocence.
“He was a perfect gentleman to me. So nice and kind.”
“And then he asked you to marry him?”
“That was later, after I’d been working at Mimi’s quite a long time.”
She looked a bit out of her depth, too, in the face of enquiries. Littlejohn could picture her easily enough on the stage they had in the solitary theatre in places like Melton Mowbray. Not the subtle or tragic heroine of melodrama, but the girl who stood around, looked pretty and hadn’t much in the way of acting to do, in farces or pleasant comedies. Dressed in clothes lent by the fashionable small-town dress-shops and acknowledged on the programme: Miss Valerie Deane’s clothes by Maison Jules. Lovely ensembles, chic turnouts, attractive hats, or even a bathing costume now and then. And the bright sparks of the town would send her flowers and try to make appointments.
“Did Mr. Edgell ever ask you to marry him before you left the theatre?”
“Not exactly.”
“But he suggested …?”
“He was always a gentleman.”
The long lashes over the blue eyes flickered. Perhaps she hadn’t been such a bad actress after all!
“Did you ever have a young man of your own, Miss Mander? A good-looking girl like you …”
She actually looked coyly at Littlejohn, as though he, too, were going to join the company of Ned Bunn and Edgell!
“Yes … Yes, I went out with one or two, but never settled. As I said, I was with daddy so much when he was alive, that I grew to like older men better. They seem more mature and gentlemanly.”
“What did your father do?”
“He was a railway official. He died years ago.”
Gus Mander had been a bit of a character, a rolling-stone, who drifted from one job to another and was rarely at home. Actor in third-rate shows, potman in a London pub, a bookie who welshed, a traveller for educational courses of £1 down and ten monthly instalments of £1, and finally a shunter on the railway, where he had been killed by runaway waggons. A railway official sounded best of the motley list; it gave people the impression of Mr. Mander seated high above a busy terminus, directing Royal Scots and Golden Arrows amid a lot of maps and flashing lights.
“I missed daddy and after he’d gone, I seemed always to be seeking him again in fatherly men.”
Another touching line or two from some play she’d been in at one time or another!
The local constable and the Hinksman pair had come to the gate to see what was holding things up.
“Why, Miss Deane! Where ’ave you come from?”
The old woman looked feline at the sight of the young and pretty actress and her husband bared his spare teeth and touched his forelock out of respect for beauty.
“Good morning, Mrs. Hinksman … Hullo, Hinksman. I was just passing through. I hope you’re both well and happy.”
It went straight to Hinksman’s heart and he looked at her proudly. His wife, however, was untouched.
“We’re all right, thank you.”
You couldn’t quarrel with Violet Mander. She seemed to want to please everybody. A good soul, obviously, either by nature or training. It was a way of obtaining an easy passage through life. Hospitality, free flats, clothes, any number of admirers young and old to keep her entertained … And she preferred the older ones, who had money and who reminded her of daddy, the railway shunter … She had knocked about the world and knew what she wanted and when she found exactly what she was after, either in a Yewbert or an Edgell, she would be quick to put it on a permanent footing. Till then, she had her beauty, her innocent ways, her fascinating china-blue eyes and the sumptuous figure which, just at present, was almost causing Mrs. Hinksman physical pain.
Littlejohn thought a minute.
“Mrs. Hinksman, I’d be grateful if you’d get your things and come along to Enderby with us.”
The old lady looked surprised.
“Me? With you, in the car?”
She eyed Violet Mander’s evening outfit spitefully. They could see her wondering what sort of a gathering they were going to; two policeman in lounge suits—one smart tweeds and the other sombre navy-blue with a bit of shine on it—and a girl in a black evening gown which got every ounce of her charm and beauty from her, even at ten o’clock in the morning.
“Yes. I just want you to confirm officially what you’ve told us about Mr. Edgell’s visit here on October 26th.”
For the first time, Violet Mander looked alarmed.
“Mr. Edgell …? Why are you checking on him?”
As though Edgell didn’t need any checking at all … a paragon.
“Pure routine, but necessary in the case of everybody connected locally with the Bunn family.”
“Oh, I see …”
The eyes looked straight into Littlejohn’s, full of hope and trust, as though sudden illumination had dawned on their owner.
“I’ll come, but don’t think I can stay away long. There’s a lot to be done here and the milkman and the bread and such like …”
Mrs. Hinksman took the old man aside and gave him a lot of muttered and careful instructions which he accepted with nods and gruff affirmations. Then she went indoors, stayed there for five minutes, and emerged clad in a long black coat, a black felt hat without any trimmings and just a shade too large for her, and a white silk scarf which might have belonged to Aunt Sarah, so different was it from the rest of the get-up. She carried an umbrella and a pantechnicon of a black leather bag, with large clasps of imitation amber. She climbed heavily in the rear of the police-car and sat down primly beside Violet Mander, who looked at her as though Mrs. Hinksman’s company was the one thing in the world she needed to fill her cup of happiness to the brim.
They looked rather a motley crew, tweeds, sombre serge, a costly evening gown, and a portly thin-lipped woman in black like the poor relation at a funeral. Hinksman and the local constable waved them off and continued waving rhythmically until the car vanished down a turn in the road.
19
CONFERENCE AT “THE FREEMASONS”
THE car pulled up at The Freemasons’ Arms and Littlejohn and his party got out. Mr. Blowitt was waiting at the door, apparently unable to contain himself for the arrival of his new manageress. In honour of the occasion he had put on a light grey suit, wore brown shoes the colour of tangerines, and there was a rose in his buttonhole. He looked like a disciple of Jubal Medlicott, a toff.
“We’d like the private room for an hour or two.”
Blowitt turned his radiant face on Littlejohn.
“Of course. You’ve only to say the word, an’ it’s as good as done. Like any food or drinks servin’?”
“No, thanks.�
��
Mrs. Hinksman was dubious about entering licensed premises. In spite of her husband’s alcoholic tendencies, she was herself a member of the Particular Baptist sect, a staunch supporter of the Band of Hope, and strictly T.T. in all circumstances. Her nose was high as she crossed the threshold and she recoiled at the blast of beer which greeted her there. Violet Mander, wearing her fur coat over her evening dress, excited the men hanging about the market place to noisy admiration and the women to visible envy and disgust.
Blowitt put a match to the ready-laid fire in the snug—the room from which Ned Bunn had walked to his death—and bade them all be seated. Then he went back to the front door to keep his vigil for Effie.
Littlejohn led Cromwell back to the car.
“Just run along and bring back Aunt Sarah, old chap. She’ll doubtless be delighted to see you and relish a ride with you. Don’t tell her who’s here. Just say I’ll be obliged if she’ll call at The Freemasons’ and that there have been important developments.”
“What if she turns a bit awkward? She’s the sort who if she knows you particularly want her to come, might say she can’t or won’t.”
“Use your charm of manner. I’m relying on you.”
Cromwell looked sorry for himself. Even the car seemed to resent the mission and he had to make half-a-dozen efforts on the starter before she’d move.
The two women in the private room were sitting stiffly opposite one another when Littlejohn returned. Both wondered what was in store and the older woman kept eyeing the younger up and down, rudely appraising her clothes and strongly disapproving of her low-cut gown, bare flesh, sleek legs … In fact, everything about her. To make matters worse, Violet had been improving her make-up with lipstick and puff. There was a heavy scent of powder and a lighter one of Passion de Paris on the air. Mrs. Hinksman, between the smells of various kinds of alcohol and erotic perfumes, felt herself in a hotbed of sin and vice and her lips were a thin line as she wrestled inwardly against them.
Outside, a long-distance motor-coach drew up and a tall, buxom Juno got out. Her hair was peroxide-gold, she wore a shabby black costume and, as she drew near, she looked tired and bedraggled. She carried a large fibre suitcase and the weight of it made her go over on her high heels and totter from side to side as she crossed the street. Blowitt hurried to meet her, danced round her like a faithful dog, took the case from her hand and, grasping her arm, towed her rapidly across to the pub. She was a couple of inches taller than he was. They could hear him taking her into his private quarters, talking breathlessly.
Corpses in Enderby (An Inspector Littlejohn Mystery) Page 19
