The Spring Cleaning Murders (12 page)

“People like to have their little knickknacks and such put back just like they had them arranged. I can clear everything off for dusting, and when I’m done you wouldn’t know nothing was ever moved.” Trina was too self-assured to preen. “It helps that I know a lot about china and glass and stuff from being brought up by my granny that was housekeeper to an earl.”

“Could you start this coming Monday?” I hoped I didn’t sound too deferential.

“Don’t see why not. Will nine o’clock suit?”

I said that would be perfect.

It was no longer raining, but the wind was picking up by the minute. Leather Jack or Joe stuck a cigarette in his mouth, flicked a match, and cupped his hand around the flame. He eyed Trina through a smoke ring produced, I was sure, to impress the knickers off any woman watching. “Don’t you think that you need to talk to Mrs. Haskell about how you charge more than the others? Well, stands to reason, doesn’t it?” He fielded me a thin smile. “You’ll get twice the work out of someone Trina’s age in half an hour than you’ll see out of one of the old bats in a day.”

I was spared from replying because Sir Robert Pomeroy, who had moved up to talk to Ben, now turned to include me in the conversation. Trina said we could discuss wages when she came on Monday and off she went with Joe, leaving me glad to see the back of him, hoisting up his jacket collar and stubbing out his cigarette on a gravestone.

“I didn’t like the look of that chap,” Ben observed as we drove home. I agreed, without elaborating. I was thinking about Mrs. Malloy and feeling very cross with her for not showing up at the funeral. If she had been taken ill, surely she would have had George or Vanessa telephone with the news. We all have a selfish streak, I decided, and remembered Mrs. Malloy once telling me that she wasn’t keen on funerals. In fact she wasn’t sure that she’d bother turning up for her own. Even so, I thought as I followed Ben into the house, we all need to make sacrifices now and then for the sake of our loved ones.

“Back already?” Freddy stuck his head around the drawing-room door and favored us with a woeful smile. “I haven’t finished teaching the children their psalm for the day.”

“Mummy! Daddy!” Tam came bounding out into the hall as if he hadn’t seen either of his parents since birth.

“Did you have fun at the fun’ral?”

“We missed you,” Abbey leaped from the sofa onto a chair and began jumping up and down, the skirt of her pink-and-white-check frock swirling with every bounce.

I stood unbuttoning my coat. “Get down from there. That chair isn’t a trampoline.” I thought back to the days when we first came to live at Merlin’s Court. We’d had a marvelous time redecorating the old house. The drawing room had been the most fun of all. I had been lucky to find swatches of fabric and slips of wallpaper in the attic, along with discarded pieces of furniture and a wonderful Persian rug, all dating from the time when Abigail Grantham lived here. Her portrait, handsomely framed, now hung above the fireplace, and I liked to think she smiled because she was pleased to see the room looking much the way she had known it. But when picking out the ivory damask for the sofas and the Queen Anne chairs, I hadn’t foreseen children. And even if I had, it would have been through rose-colored glasses. Other people’s offspring might jump, pounce, and spill things. Not mine.

Now looking down at the turquoise-and-rose carpet, I noticed several spots that had steadfastly refused to respond to the no-fail stain remover I had bought at a shop specializing in products guaranteed to put the merriment back in housework. Maybe I would have more luck using one of the formulas from Abigail’s book of handy household hints. But not this minute. I settled on one of the ivory damask chairs, with Abbey and Tam on my lap.

My son burrowed his face into my neck. It was a sticky face because, as Freddy languidly confessed from the sofa, he had fed the twins chocolate and bananas for lunch. As for Abbey’s hands, they would have stuck like Velcro to anything she touched. But all I could think at that moment was how much more beautiful the room was with children in it. Looking up at Abigail’s portrait, I thought of the one at Tall Chimneys, of little dog Jessica in her lilac bows. I was, I decided, a very lucky woman.

“So,” Freddy said, drumming his fingers on his raised knees, fingers which looked every bit as sticky as my son’s, “how did old Roxie hold up at the funeral?”

“She wasn’t there.” Seeing that Abbey had fallen instantly asleep with that wonderful knack possessed by only the very young and the very old, I relinquished her to Ben, who whispered that he would take her up to the nursery.

“That’s rum!” Freddy observed. “I thought Roxie and Mrs. Large were great mates. I trust the deceased’s family at least showed up?”

“Her two daughters were there.” I resettled Tam on my lap and watched his silky dark lashes flicker before his lids drifted shut.

“Did they both take after Mum?” Freddy batted at a yawn with the palm of his hand. “I mean, could you see them living in the giant’s castle at the top of the beanstalk and saying ‘Fe fie fo fum’ every time they stubbed a toe?”

“I can imagine them saying a lot worse than that,” I conceded, “if they didn’t hear what they hoped to hear at the solicitor’s office. They were off to see Lionel Wiseman, my friend Bunty’s ex-husband, to talk to him about Mrs. Large’s will.”

Freddy sat up and scratched at his beard. “I wouldn’t have thought that a woman in Mrs. Large’s position would have a lot to leave.”

“You can never tell about that sort of thing.” I stroked Tam’s hair. “She might have won the pools or inherited money from a nice old uncle for all we know. But Trina McKinnley thinks her daughters are in for a nasty surprise.”

“Interesting!” Freddy was rapidly perking up. “Especially if one of them snuck into the study at Tall Chimneys and pushed dear old mum off that ladder in hope of getting hold of the loot sooner rather than later. And there I was”—shaking his head—”thinking the evil deed was most likely done by one of the Miller sisters, because it happened at their house. What had me stumped was the motive, but that’s water under the bridge now the ugly daughters have entered the picture.”

“I don’t know where you come up with these crazy ideas.” I didn’t even try to keep the exasperation out of my voice. “Accidents happen; people fall off stepladders all the time. Mrs. Large was unlucky, she hit her head too hard, and she died. It was tragic, but if the medical examiner didn’t find anything to puzzle his little grey cells, Freddy, I don’t know why you should.”

“You’re absolutely right,” he said, sounding meek. “It’s just that Mrs. Large struck me as the kind of woman someone might murder one day. I’m sure Jonas thought about it when she broke that mirror of his.” Freddy paused and dropped his jaw in mock horror. “Crikey, coz! What if there is an investigation into her death? The police would be bound to question Jonas because he was on the spot the day she died. They’ll wheedle that business of the mirror out of him in no time. Do you think"—glancing around as if afraid the walls had ears—“we should encourage him to flee the country?”

I stood up with Tam in my arms. “Freddy, you are the absolute limit.”

“Thanks.” He tried to look modest. “But be honest, coz, don’t tell me it’s never crossed your mind that Mrs. Large was given the heave-ho into the next world.”

“Not for a second,” I lied. “Now let’s get back to Jonas; is he taking his afternoon nap?”

“He went upstairs right after lunch, but don’t go skipping off, Ellie.” Freddy trailed after me as I crossed the room to the door. “You haven’t finished telling me about the funeral. Were there gobs of flowers?”

I didn’t get to fulfill his curiosity because Ben came down the stairs two at a time, saying he really did need to get back to Abigail’s. Freddy, muttering that he liked to keep in with the boss, took Tam from me and carried him upstairs. Leaving me free to accompany my husband outside, where the skies remained murky and rain dripped off the trees.

“Couldn’t you take the rest of the day off?” I urged as we neared the car. “Better yet, couldn’t you—"

“Close the restaurant door, put up a ‘For Let’ sign, and walk away?” He turned and placed his hands on my shoulders, his eyes intent, although his mouth was relaxed, almost smiling. “Ellie, you know I can’t do that.”

“Why not?” I’d had this conversation before, several times in my mind, and I’d always agreed with everything I said. “We could get by. We’ve got it better than most people, not having a mortgage on the house. We’ve savings and Uncle Merlin’s legacy, and I’ll earn a bit here and there with the decorating. Clarice Whitcombe seems very keen for me to do work for her. And one thing always leads to another. So why shouldn’t you take a break? Not to loaf,” I said, reading his face, “I’m thinking more of your trying something different.”

“Such as?” He still wore that half smile.

“Well, not exactly different, just not the restaurant. I’ve been thinking ever since I found that notebook of Abigail’s in the attic that you might want to do something with it. Try out the formulas to make sure they work and then get them into shape for publication, the way you did with her recipe collection. Remember how excited we both were when we found the one for the unsinkable cheese soufflé?” I tugged on his coat sleeve. “Darling, this could be fun and you might even make us a lot of money.”

“Ellie, I can’t.” He took hold of my hands, drew them to his lips, and kissed the tips of my fingers. “I won’t walk away from the restaurant. Not to please the picketers. Not even to please you, my love. And things will turn around, just you wait and see.”

“I’m sure they will, but...”

“But what?”

“I don’t think you’re really in love with the business anymore. The excitement’s gone, it’s become . . . just a job.”

“So?” He looked up at the sky. “People don’t get to chop and change careers every time they hit a rough patch or begin to find the routine a grind. I’m supposed to be a grown-up. A family man. What worries you most, sweetheart?” he wrapped an arm around my shoulders. “Is it my being fed up with Abigail’s, or that I’m turning into a bit of a bore as a husband?”

I was about to respond fiercely, but studying his somber profile, decided a lighter approach might work better. “Well, now that you bring it up, darling, and if you’re sure it won’t hurt your feelings, I have to admit that when I meet a man like Joe—Leather Jacket—at the funeral, I do get to thinking that life
could
be a lot more interesting.”

Ben was smiling as he got into the car. Before he closed the door I bent down to kiss him.

“You’d better get back into the house,” he urged, with that light in his eyes I loved. “It’s about to pour.”

“I’m sure,” I said wistfully, keeping hold of the car door and kissing him again, “that Joe has at least a couple of tattoos and all of his important body parts pierced.”

“Ellie, go in before you get soaked” was Ben’s husbandly response as he started up the engine.

“You could at least get my name tattooed—”

“It already is, on my heart.” With that he drove away and I nipped smartly back into the house because my hair was already wet and my skirt and blouse damp.

Jonas and Freddy were at the kitchen table. The former still looked sleepy and the latter announced that he was starving, not having eaten a square meal since lunch. It was now only a little after three, but as it was one of my missions in life to fatten Jonas up and because I really did appreciate Freddy’s willingness to babysit, I got busy grilling sausages and tomatoes, frying a panful of chips, and rounding out the meal with heaping helpings of baked beans.

“An egg or two wouldn’t have gone amiss,” observed Freddy kindly when I set down the plates and went back for toast, butter, and marmalade, “but I’m glad you didn’t go all out, Ellie, when you’re in a rush to be off.”

“Off where?” I asked, pouring cups of tea and handing the first to Jonas. “I haven’t said anything about going out.”

“Oh, but I can see it in your eyes.” Fred extended a patient hand for his cup. “Always could read you like a book, dear coz. Comes from reading your diaries when we were children. So there’s no point in telling me you aren’t dying to zip along to Tall Chimneys and see how the Miller sisters survived the funeral.”

“The thought never crossed my mind,” I replied, not quite truthfully. Actually, I
hadn’t
been thinking about Vienna or Madrid right then, but it
had
occurred to me during the service that I ought to pop in and see them.

Freddy sighed soulfully. “I wonder if they’ll take down the picture of the dog, the one you said was over the mantelpiece, and put up one of Mrs. Large instead.”

“There’s no way they could get all of that woman inside a frame,” growled Jonas, picking away at his food. “It would have to be one of them murals.”

Telling him that was no way to speak of the dead, I ignored his grunted reply that he’d never been a hypocrite and didn’t intend to start at his age. I collected an old raincoat from one of the hooks in the alcove and told Freddy that if he wanted me to go, he would have to stay and listen for the twins. Not that they were likely to wake up before I got back. They didn’t always take naps, but when they did, they were usually down for the count for a couple of hours.

It was gusty when I set out, but I didn’t see any point in driving the short distance to Tall Chimneys, especially in a convertible with a top that wouldn’t go up. I pulled a scarf from my raincoat pocket and tied it around my head. With the wind shoving me along, I broke into a trot and soon found myself at the Millers’ front door. It opened before I could ring the bell and Vienna ushered me inside, saying that she had just been on her way out to the shops.

“To get something tempting for Madrid’s tea,” she explained, tapping the woven raffia-type carrier bag strung over her arm. “The poor darling hasn’t been eating well since the day of the accident. And she is not what one could call robust at the best of times. Never has been—not since she lost Jessica.”

“It’s all very sad,” I said. Tall Chimneys was incapable of being a happy house. The staircase seemed to slink up the wall, squeezing itself into as narrow a space as possible, so that no one would notice that every one of its dark treads was eavesdropping on our conversation. The newly painted white walls should have helped, along with the strip of red carpet running down the hall, but they provided only a sense of false cheer. Luckily, Vienna did not appear to be a woman susceptible to atmosphere. She was wearing the same comfortable-looking suit she had worn at the funeral, but the hat now hung on the hall tree and I doubted that it would be worn again until somebody else died. Sensible haircut. Sensible shoes. All the dramatics must be left to her sister.