The Package Included Murder (15 page)

‘Dear God!' breathed the Hon. Con, trying to brush off the little bodies which were all spotlessly clothed in white. The round, suntanned faces were set and hard as though their owners were intent on taking over the world. ‘Here,' exhorted the Hon. Con, panicking a little, ‘get away! Shoo! Buzz off!'

A small white boot landed unerringly on one of Miss Jones's most sensitive corns. The first boot was followed by another … Something jabbed the Hon. Con excruciatingly just behind the knees.

If you can't beat 'em, quit!

The Hon. Con and Miss Jones, unable in any case to read the prohibitory notices, took to the grass and left the path to the occupation of the future generation.

‘It makes you,' observed the Hon. Con when she'd recovered her aplomb, ‘ have a certain amount of sympathy for that Pied Piper chappie. What in heaven's name are they?'

‘Children, dear,' said Miss Jones, her mind fully occupied with wondering if she had a moral duty to intervene in the case of blatant bullying that was taking place right under her nose. Finally, telling herself that it was because the girl victim was so small that the two lads tormenting her looked so big, she plumped for the better part of valour.

‘I know they're children!' snarled The Hon. Con. ‘ But, what sort? Orphans? Test-tube babies? Sunday School outing?'

‘Hardly, dear.' Miss Jones managed a nervous smile. ‘I should think they belong to a nursery school or something, wouldn't you? Those two women' – Miss Jones indicated a couple of female warders in white scarves and overalls who were bringing up the rear – ‘are probably teachers or minders or whatever they have.'

‘Well,' said the Hon. Con, upon whom the experience had made a profound impression, ‘it's brought home the meaning of the Red Menace, all right.'

Miss Jones stepped back onto the path which now looked as though a couple of steamrollers had passed that way. ‘I believe the Russians are very keen on creches and kindergartens and things. I suppose it enables them to …

‘Crikey Moses!' The Hon. Con pointed a trembling finger. ‘Look!'

Miss Jones duly looked. ‘Oh, dear!'

‘Those bloody kids!' screamed the Hon. Con. ‘If they hadn't distracted our attention …'

Miss Jones liked to look on the bright side. ‘Well, Roger Frossell is still there all right, dear, and that's the main thing, isn't it? I mean, it's more than likely that the lady with the bun hadn't anything to do with things anyhow, isn't it? She was probably just an ordinary, perfectly innocent …'

‘Stop wittering, Bones!' begged the Hon. Con. ‘Another couple of minutes and you'll be telling me that young Frossell's behaviour has been perfectly normal.'

‘Well, now you mention it, dear, I do … Oh, look, Constance!' Miss Jones caught the Hon. Con by the arm and, in her excitement, shook her. ‘
He
's going, now! Of course,' – Miss Jones switched to a rather shame-faced laugh – ‘it
is
well past our lunch hour, isn't it?'

The Hon. Con sternly suppressed all protests from the inner man and concentrated all her attention on Roger Frossell. With narrowed eyes and furrowed brow, she carefully noted how he brushed the seat of his trousers, glanced at his watch and pushed his sun-glasses further up his nose. Well, you never knew when this sort of thing might turn out to be significant. Roger Frossell picked up his carrier bag. The casual look he threw round might have been indicative of a guilty conscience or it might not. The Hon. Con was having some difficulty making up her mind about that.

‘Are we going to follow him, dear?'

‘Suppose so,' said the Hon. Con reluctantly. She was beginning. to feel a mite sorry for herself. ‘I'll lay to ten to one he's only going back to the hotel, though.'

‘Maybe he really did come out just for a walk.'

The Hon. Con was too cheesed off to argue. ‘Maybe,' she agreed – and then stopped dead in her tracks. ‘Good grief!'

Miss Jones glanced back in justifiable alarm.

The Hon. Con struck herself a resounding and over-dramatic blow on the forehead. ‘I need my brains examined!' she chuckled. ‘Must be going potty in my old age, eh?'

‘I don't quite understand, dear.'

‘'Course you don't, Bones!' chorded the Hon. Con. ‘ That's why I'm the detective, and you're not!'

‘Yes, dear.'

‘Now,' – the Hon. Con was so bucked with herself that she became quite playful – ‘how about you giving your old grey cells a bit of a poke around? What makes young Frossell going out of the park different from young Frossell coming into the park? I'll give you thirty seconds!'

Miss Jones was hot, exhausted and hungry. The last thing she wanted was to start playing silly guessing games. ‘I'm sure I don't know, dear.'

‘Oh, come on, Bones! Have a shot!' The Hon. Con could be extraordinarily tiresome at times. ‘Use your eyes!'

Miss Jones prised thin lips apart with difficulty. ‘ I'm sorry, dear.'

‘Golly gosh, you're a right
packet
, Bones!' The Hon. Con accompanied this peculiar observation with a broad wink. ‘I can see that I'll have to take you in hand! You know, you mustn't rely on me to
carry
you the whole time!'

Miss Jones, driven beyond all reasonable endurance, began to look bored.

The Hon. Con was in imminent danger of losing her temper. She gave the wheel one last spin. ‘Don't want to have to start calling you an old
bag
!' she rumbled.

Miss Jones masked a tiny yawn with a neatly gloved hand.

Even the Hon. Con couldn't mistake this gesture for enthusiastic participation. ‘Bones, old fruit,' she sighed, ‘young Frossell is now carrying a plastic bag in his hand. See it?'

‘There is no need, Constance,' said Miss Jones coldly, ‘to speak to me in that tone. I may not be as clever as you, of course, but I am not mentally retarded. Yes, I can see the plastic carrier bag which Mr Frossell is carrying in his hand. What about it?'

‘Only that he wasn't carrying it when we followed him into the park,' responded the Hon. Con sulkily. ‘His hands were empty. And stuck in his pockets.'

They were out in the street again and, apparently, heading back towards their hotel. Miss Jones stared at the retreating figure of Roger Frossell. He was some way in front and walking quite quickly. ‘Where do you think he got it from, then, dear?'

The Hon. Con shrugged her shoulders. ‘In the park, I suppose.'

‘You mean he just found it lying around?'

The Hon. Con shook her head. ‘ I reckon that woman must have given it to him. She probably left it on the bench and he just picked it up. Who'd notice?'

‘Was the woman carrying the bag when she went into the park, dear?'

The Hon. Con frowned. Trust old Bones! ‘That's what I blooming well can't remember!' she growled. ‘Anyhow,' – she changed the subject before Miss Jones made the obvious comment – ‘what I want now is a peep into that bag.'

Miss Jones turned a pair of apprehensive eyes on the Hon. Con. ‘You're not proposing to burgle his room, are you, dear?'

From time to time, even the Hon. Con recognised her limitations. ‘'Course not!' she scoffed and, with an effort, quickened her pace. ‘Come on!' she exhorted her companion. ‘ Show a leg there!'

Miss Jones responded as best she could. ‘ Where,' she panted, ‘are we going?'

The Hon. Con was saving her breath to cool her porridge. The Intourist hotel came into sight and they could see the sea shimmering and sparkling behind it. Now that they were back in the centre of the town there were a lot more people about and, though nobody could call the Hon. Con unobtrusive, she managed to draw level with Roger Frossell without attracting his attention.

Miss Jones trotted gamely in her wake.

The Hon. Con prided herself on never using finesse when a sledge hammer would do. Sucking in a deep breath, she clapped one weighty fist on young Roger Frossell's shoulder. ‘ Got you!' she bellowed.

The results were quite spectacular.

Miss Jones watched in silent dismay as all the colour drained out of Roger Frossell's face and his eyes swivelled upwards in their sockets. The Hon. Con played a more active role and actually made an ineffectual grab at the boy as, knees buckling under him, he sank to the pavement.

The Hon. Con looked questioningly at Miss Jones over the limp and prostrate body.

Miss Jones smiled hesitantly. ‘I'm afraid he's fainted, dear.'

Inevitably and almost instaneously, a small crowd gathered, motivated partly by compassion and partly by curiosity. The Hon. Con left all the face slapping, the head-between-the-knees routine, and Miss Jones's smelling salts to those with a vocation for that kind of thing. She had other fish to fry. She extracted the carrier bag from Roger Frossell's nerveless fingers and, withdrawing quietly from the battle field, moved into the shade of a huge palm tree.

Miss Jones, on her knees in the dust, was uttering shrill and unheeded appeals for more air for her patient. The surrounding circle, intrigued by the foreign language, pressed closer. A youngish man with a red armband fought his way to the front and administered a particularly enthusiastic slap to Roger Frossell's pallid cheek. Roger Frossell opened his eyes.

‘Where am I?' he stammered. ‘ What's happened?'

Miss Jones understandably shrank from the task of explaining to him and let the babble of Russian, Abhazian and Georgian voices give what comfort they could. The approach of a traffic policeman probably played a major role in inspiring her to reach her decision and she joined the Hon. Con under the spreading palm tree. ‘He's coming round, dear.'

‘Good.' The Hon. Con wasn't really listening.

Miss Jones glanced at the carrier bag which was still in the Hon. Con's hands. ‘Did you – er – look inside, dear?'

The Hon. Con inclined her head affirmatively. ‘Dashed odd,' she said.

Miss Jones waited.

‘Do you know what's in this blooming bag, Bones?'

Miss Jones said that she didn't.

‘A dirty great wedge of paper covered with typewriting. Russian typewriting, I fancy. All neatly tied together with string. Do you know what I think, Bones?'

Miss Jones confessed that she didn't.

The Hon. Con wrinkled her nose. ‘I think it's a blooming
book
' she said disgustedly.

‘Of course it's a book!' Roger Frossell, almost in tears, clasped the carrier bag to his unmanly bosom. ‘ You interfering old cow, you've probably ruined everything! Poking your bloody nose in where it's not wanted!'

The Hon. Con, seated opposite Roger Frossell on the other twin bed, decided to make allowances. The boy was obviously rattled and didn't quite realise what he was saying – or to whom he was saying it. ‘But what,' she asked, the very personification of reasonableness, ‘do you want a book for?' The Hon. Con, had waded through several books in her time and thought they were, on the whole, somewhat over-rated.

‘None of your business!'

Miss Jones, relegated to the dressing-table stool, intervened.

‘The Honourable Constance is only trying to help.'

‘With help like that, who needs the KGB?' Roger Frossell examined the Hon. Con with all the contempt of modern youth for its elders and betters. ‘I thought you were supposed to be tied up investigating these attacks on the Clough-Cooper bird?'

‘For all I know,' snapped the Hon. Con, her good resolutions already beginning to fray, ‘this may be part and parcel of the same thing.'

‘It isn't!'

‘'Fraid I can't just take your word for that, laddie!' The Hon. Con chuckled heartily at such naivety. ‘There's that business of your pocket knife, too, don't forget. Look, why not be sensible and make a clean breast of the whole business?'

Over by the dressing-table, Miss Jones felt her cheeks burn. Really, dear Constance's language could be so
forceful
at times.

‘You've a bloody hope!'

‘I am not' – the Hon. Con boomed out the warning without malice – ‘known as the Bulldog of Upper Waxwing Drive for nothing, you know.'

Roger Frossell moodily mulled the problem over. At that particular moment, the last thing he wanted was the Hon. Con leading a hue and cry after him. The more he thought about it, the more he was driven to the conclusion that the only way to get her off his back was – probably – to tell her the truth. It seemed a pretty feeble solution but, as things stood, he couldn't think of any other. ‘Listen,' he said at last, yielding that first fatal inch, ‘if I do tell you, will you swear not to breathe a word to anybody until we're back home in England?'

The Hon. Con shook her head. ‘'Fraid I can't agree to have my. hands tied like that, old son, she said, ‘though I will, naturally, do my level best to respect your confidence. Here,' – the Hon. Con's eyes bulged as the penny dropped – ‘you've not got yourself mixed up in anything criminal, have you?'

Roger Frossell was blandly reassuring. ‘ It all depends how you define criminal,' he said. ‘I've done nothing that would cause anybody to bat an eyelid at home, but you know what they're like over here. Chuck you in the pokey as soon as look at you.'

The Hon. Con blenched and Miss Jones clutched her throat.

‘These Russians are little better than mindless savages,' said young Mr Frossell airily.

The Hon. Con licked her lips. ‘ You've no right to jolly well endanger the safety of the rest of us,' she pointed out. ‘If the Russkies catch you, we'll all get it in the neck, too.'

‘If only you'd mind your own business, nobody will be catching anybody! So,' – Roger Frossell flung his arms wide in a gesture of exasperation – ‘what do you want? You can either make like a hoop and roll silently away, or you can give me your word not to go grassing to all and sundry and I'll let you in on what's going on. Who knows,' – he grinned maliciously – ‘ you may even be able to help.'