A Meddler and her Murder Read online

  ‘I thought Mrs Hellon was supposed to be quite a business woman,’ objected the Hon. Con.

  ‘I don’t know anything about that,’ said Fiona with a shrug. ‘All I know is that she was a mean old cat. Our Terry used to go on about her something chronic. She was forever locking up bits of food and left-overs so our Terry couldn’t help herself to a bit of a snack if she felt like it.’

  The Hon. Con recalled somebody else saying much the same thing. ‘Ah, the milk!’

  Fiona nodded and helped herself to another of Charlie’s cigarettes. ‘She liked a drop of milk, our Terry did. Specially last thing at night.’ She wiped the back of her hand across her nose and sniffed. ‘We had a couple of cows back on the farm.’

  The Hon. Con didn’t believe in letting people get morbid. ‘You saw your sister fairly frequently, I suppose?’ she asked briskly.

  ‘We never so much as set eyes on each other since she came to Totterbridge,’ said Fiona. ‘She used to phone me up sometimes when Mrs Hellon was out.’

  The implications of this statement were obvious and the Hon. Con was duly scandalized, ‘I expect she wrote to you sometimes as well?’

  ‘Not much of a one for writing, our Terry.’

  The Hon. Con’s hopes of getting her hands on a bundle of fact-filled letters crumbled. ‘But, she told you things about herself when she phoned – what she was doing and her friends and everything?’

  ‘In at one ear, darling, and out the other.’ Fiona yawned and, rather belatedly, flapped one hand in front of her mouth.

  ‘Oh, pardon me! I usually have a bit of a kip in the afternoon.’

  The Hon. Con scowled. Siestas were nasty foreign habits and, as such, were not to be encouraged, even in the Irish. ‘Did she mention the names of any of her boy friends?

  ‘Oh, dozens, dearie! Our Terry didn’t half fancy herself, you know. To hear her going on, you’d think every fellow she met fell in love with her at first sight.’

  ‘Can you remember any of the names?’

  ‘Glory be to God, I’ve more than enough trouble remembering the names of my own gentlemen friends.’

  ‘But she must have mentioned somebody in particular!’ insisted the Hon. Con, fighting the urge to grab hold of Fiona and shake some sense into her.

  ‘They was all particular at first. It was only when she’d known ’em for a bit that our Terry began finding out the snags.’

  ‘Torquil Pollock?’

  Fiona looked blank.

  ‘Adam Spennymoor?’

  Fiona looked, if anything, blanker.

  ‘Harold Wilson?’

  Fiona examined her left stocking for ladders. ‘You’re wasting your breath, darling! The only one whose name stuck is Bertie Hellon.’

  ‘Bertie Hellon?’ The Hon. Con went quite white with shock. ‘You mean Mrs Hellon’s husband?’

  ‘That’s right, love,’ said Fiona with some amusement. ‘Terry talked about him quite a bit.’

  ‘In what way?’ demanded the Hon. Con in a strangled voice.

  Fiona’s lips twitched: ‘Oh, the usual way. I told you our Terry thought they was all after her. Mind you, from what I’ve heard about Mrs Hellon, any husband’d be on the lookout for a change. Proper old bag of nerves, she is, and knows about as much about looking after a baby as our old tom cat. She has a book, our Terry said, telling you how to bring up kids and she used to pore over it like a priest reading his bloody missal. She can’t even bath the poor little bugger without looking at the pictures. Oh, me and our Terry had a good few laughs about it! I mean, imagine our mum carrying on like that! I can see her getting up every ten minutes in the night to see if we was still breathing!’

  The Hon. Con was frowning heavily. ‘Did Mrs Hellon do that?’

  ‘So our Terry said.’

  ‘But I was told she took sleeping tablets.’

  ‘Were you, dearie? Well, I don’t know anything about that. I can only tell you what our Terry told me and she said that Mrs Hellon hardly closed her eyes at night worrying about that kid.’

  The Hon. Con’s frown deepened. ‘Did you tell the police about the interest Mr Hellon was taking in your sister?’

  ‘I did not!’ Fiona looked indignant. ‘What do you take me for? I’ve had enough trouble with the rozzers without going out of my way to help ’em. Besides, it won’t bring our Terry back, will it? And, anyhow, I don’t reckon there was anything in it. I told you what a romancer our Terry was.’

  As a responsible, rate-paying citizen, the Hon. Con could not but condemn such an attitude. As a frustrated private detective, however, she could hardly conceal her delight at having stolen yet another march on the police. This was just the sort of thing that vindicated her participation in their efforts to track down the murderer of Teresa O’Coyne and she must remember to cite it as a relevant example to old Bones. She turned back to Fiona but Charlie forestalled her.

  ‘How about a nice cup of tea?’ Charlie beamed all round. ‘Dry work – talking.’

  ‘I’d sooner have a gin,’ said Fiona hopefully. ‘Its been a lousy day.’

  ‘Sorry, honey child, no gin! There’s another bottle of beer, though.’

  Fiona pouted disconsolately. ‘Oh, well, I suppose it’s better than nothing though it does blow you out something cruel.’

  ‘Did your sister drink?’ demanded the Hon. Con before the conversation could get away from her completely.

  Fiona was getting bored. ‘Search me, dearie! Does it matter?’

  ‘She used to frequent The Martyr’s Head,’ said the Hon. Con.

  ‘In that case, darling, I imagine she drank.’ Fiona broke off to give a short, sour laugh. ‘She’d be the first in our family if she didn’t.’

  Though the Hon. Con would have gone to the stake rather than admit it, she was rapidly running out of questions. She didn’t care at all for Fiona – or the way Charlie kept fussing over her – and she found this dislike inhibiting. Teresa O’Coyne’s sister ought to be a positive mine of information and the Hon. Con was furious with herself for not being able to quarry it.

  Fiona sank three-quarters of her glass of beer before coming up for air and stiffling a delicate belch. ‘I think I’ll just go and have myself a bit of a lie down.’

  ‘Me, too,’ said Charlie enthusiastically, standing up and stretching her arms. ‘I’ve got the late shift tonight.’

  ‘Here, hang on a sec!’ protested the Hon. Con. ‘I haven’t finished yet!’

  Fiona’s mouth drooped sulkily. ‘Look, darling, I don’t know what’s in this for you and I’m the last person in the world to object to how other people get their kicks but – enough’s enough! What’s with you, anyways? You morbid or something?’

  ‘I’m interested in bringing your sister’s murderer to justice,’ said the Hon. Con stiffly. ‘ Should have thought you’d have wanted to assist in any way you could.’

  ‘I told the cops all I know, didn’t I? Well, all except about Bertie Hellon sniffing round and, since he’s got himself an alibi that’s as solid as a rock, I can’t see as that matters. What more can I do? It’s as big a mystery to me as it is to everybody else. As far as I know, our Terry went to the pictures that night with Helga like she said and what …’

  The Hon. Con hoisted her jaw back on its hinges. ‘ You know where Teresa was that evening?’

  Fiona had started sorting out her charm bracelet but she broke off to cast a supplicatory glance at the ceiling. ‘Doesn’t everybody, dearie? The cops told me.’

  ‘Told you what?’

  Fiona sighed with every sign of diminishing patience. ‘Holy Mary Mother of God, you don’t half go on, don’t you? Look, the last time our Terry phoned me up she said she was going to the pictures with this other au pair girl, Helga. They was going to see something called ‘‘Drink a Cup of Blood’’ – see? Well, when I told the cops that this is what she said she was going to do, they told me that that’s what she did do. Got it? They came out of the cinema at about a quarter past ten and then
went and had a coke in a coffee bar. Then they walked home together. This Helga kid left our Terry at the gate of the Hellons’ house at about eleven and that, as far as the jacks know, is the last time anybody saw her alive except for the lousy swine who killed her.’

  Chapter Twelve

  Having had the ground kicked right from under her feet, the Hon. Con was doubly anxious to talk things over with Miss Jones. This was going to involve calling the feud off, which was tricky because it was really Miss Jones who was doing the feuding. However, the Hon. Con knew precisely where Miss Jones’s weaknesses lay.

  ‘What a lunch!’ she proclaimed dramatically as she joined Miss Jones in the kitchen, having first carefully removed her coat and boots in the hall. Miss Jones was always going on about mud all over her clean floors and the Hon. Con wasn’t daft enough to provoke another outburst at this particular moment. ‘Fish and chips wrapped up in newspaper! I could hardly believe my eyes!’

  Miss Jones forgot all her bad resolutions. ‘ Good heavens!’ she squeaked.

  ‘We had to eat it with our fingers!’ said the Hon. Con, piling on the agony. ‘ Dreadful it was! All swimming in fat and vinegar.’

  ‘How disgusting! And for someone of your breeding! Miss Jones gave a frisson of pure horror. ‘You should have refused to eat it, dear!’

  The Hon. Con saw that she had won. ‘Could hardly do that, Bones,’ she objected. ‘Was a guest, after all. Ugh’ – she hung her tongue out in a manner calculated to wring Miss Jones’s withers – ‘it’s made me feel as sick as a dog!’

  ‘Bicarbonate of soda!’ said Miss Jones, heading resolutely for the appropriate cupboard. ‘Or syrup of figs. It’ll take the teste away.’

  The Hon. Con wound her tongue back into her mouth. ‘No need to go to extremes,’ she said unhappily.

  But Miss Jones was already reaching for a spoon. ‘And what did Teresa O’Coyne’s sister think about her lunch? Now, open wide, Constance, and don’t spill any.’

  The Hon. Con took her medicine like a man, with a great deal of protesting, spluttering and grimacing. ‘Oh, it was right up her street,’ she resumed when the ordeal was over and she had received the usual reward of a boiled sweet. ‘I imagine she eats like that the whole time. She was a very coarse sort of girl.’

  ‘Was she?’ Miss Jones was not at all displeased that the Hon. Con’s outing had been so disastrous.

  The Hon. Con nodded. ‘Very plebeian. Artist’s model, don’t you know.’

  ‘Well, I suppose some of them are quite decent girls,’ murmured Miss Jones with more charity than conviction. ‘ Was she any help to you, dear?’

  ‘A bit,’ admitted the Hon. Con, wriggling her toes thoughtfully in her socks. ‘Helped me with the picture I’m building up of Teresa as a person, of course. And then,’ – she made the statement modestly – ‘I did manage to ferret out where Teresa spent her last evening.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘She went to the cinema with a girl friend.’

  ‘A girl friend?’

  ‘Hm. Rather mucks things up, that does. Specially as the girl friend only left Teresa when they parted right outside her front door at eleven o’clock. It doesn’t leave much time for her to pick up her murderer, does it?’

  Miss Jones was looking at the Hon. Con’s stockinged feet. ‘Maybe he was lurking in the bushes, dear. Don’t you think you ought to put your slippers on?

  ‘She’d never have taken a mere lurker up to her bedroom,’ objected the Hon. Con. ‘Of course,’ she added, creasing her face up as she considered yet another possibility, ‘he might have had a gun.’

  ‘In Totterbridge, dear?’ Miss Jones shook her head indulgently. ‘I don’t think that’s very likely, do you? I think I’ll just run upstairs and get your slippers for you. You’ll catch cold if you keep standing about like that.’

  The Hon. Con blew peevishly down her nose. ‘Dratted girl!’ she said. ‘I’d made sure she’d spent the evening with her killer and now she’s gone and ruined everything. We’re practically back at square one again. It’s dashed aggravating.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sure you’ll sort it all out, dear,’ was Miss Jones’s somewhat unhelpful rejoinder before she trotted off happily on her errand of mercy.

  The Hon. Con was not so sanguine. The trouble was that the more facts she found out about the case, the more muddled it seemed to get She got up and padded across the kitchen to where Miss Jones’s shopping list hung in an elaborate fretwork holder on the wall. Maybe, if she could get her ideas down on paper …

  Miss Jones was rather a long time coming back with the slippers, having decided that she might as well make the Hon. Con’s bed and tidy her room while she was upstairs. When she did get back to the kitchen she found that the greater part of her shopping pad now lay screwed up in little balls all over the floor.

  ‘Now, don’t fuss, Bones!’ warned the Hon. Con as she saw the light of battle ignite in her chum’s eye. I’ll pick it all up in a sec. Now,’ she went on as Miss Jones sank submissively at her feet, ‘I reckon one of two things happened. Either Teresa O’Coyne encountered her murderer outside the house, between the garden gate and the front door, or he was waiting for her inside the house. Oh,’ – she broke off impatiently as she spotted that Miss Jones was not affording her the courtesy of her undivided attention– ‘what is it now, Bones?’

  ‘Your socks, dear! They seem quite damp.’

  ‘Fiddlesticks!’ snarled the Hon. Con. ‘Now, if she met him outside, we’ve got two possibilities: it was either by accident or by previous arrangement. Right?’

  ‘Yes, dear,’ said Miss Jones, getting painfully to her feet

  ‘And, if she met him inside …’ There was a pause while the Hon. Con sorted through her scraps of paper. ‘Well, how did he get there?’

  Miss Jones began filling the kettle. ‘I’m sure I can’t imagine, dear.’

  ‘He either broke in,’ explained the Hon. Con, ‘ which we know he didn’t, or somebody let him in or’ – she presented her next hypothesis slowly and clearly – ‘he let himself in.’

  ‘Now, Constance!’ Miss Jones saw which way this particular wind was blowing. ‘Mr Hellon has an alibi. You’ve already established that.’

  ‘I haven’t established anything of the sort,’ said the Hon. Con grandly, scattering more bits of paper on the floor. ‘However, if you don’t fancy Mr Hellon, how about his wife?’

  ‘Mrs Hellon?’ Miss Jones restrained herself. ‘Constance, dear, why don’t you go upstairs and have a little rest? I really think you might have caught a chill because you do look quite feverish, you know.’

  But the Hon. Con was not going to be diverted so easily. ‘Suppose,’ she continued, ‘Mrs Hellon had a lover?’

  ‘I’ll suppose nothing of the kind!’ snapped Miss Jones. ‘Mrs Hellon is a highly respectable woman and there’s never been so much as a breath of gossip about her, well – not in that way. Really, Constance, I think you ought to give up all this detecting if it’s going to make you so vulgar minded.’

  ‘No good closing your eyes to the facts,’ said the Hon. Con sullenly.

  ‘Mrs Hellon having a lover is not a fact, dear! It’s a figment of your over-taxed imagination.’

  ‘It’d solve a lot of problems,’ grunted the Hon. Con.

  ‘Constance, dear,’ wailed Miss Jones, putting far too much tea in the pot in her agitation, ‘these are real people you’re talking about. Ordinary, everyday people. Our neighbours.’

  ‘Precisely my point, Bones! That’s just the way lots and lots of these ordinary folk carry on. Wives don’t have lovers just in books, you know. Now, suppose – just for the sake of argument – Mrs Hellon did have a boy friend on the quiet. When’s the most likely time he’d be calling round to see her?’

  Miss Jones clamped her lips firmly shut but the Hon. Con was far too carried away with the delights of her newly discovered theory to bother about the lack of support, ‘When the husband is away from home!’ she proclaimed, giving the dra
ining-board an almighty thwack to underline her words. ‘And when the au pair girl is having her night off. I can see the whole thing! Teresa O’Coyne must have got back home earlier than they expected. Before they know what’s happening, there’s the sound of her key in the door and she’s in the house. Probably,’ said the Hon. Con, her eyes protruding, ‘caught ’em right in the middle of flagrant whatever-it is. So Mrs Hellon and her paramour – and I’ll bet he’s married, too – haven’t any choice, have they? They’ve got to shut the O’Coyne girl’s mouth or risk the most gigantic scandal. Like you said yourself, Bones,’ the Hon. Con put in rather meanly, ‘this is a jolly respectable neighbourhood. And that’s why,’ she added with a gasp of triumph, ‘nobody knows any thing about the affair! They’ve taken the most stringent precautions to keep it a secret. Well, you said there’d been no gossip, didn’t you? Just shows how dashed scared they were of anything coming out and hence why they killed Teresa O’Coyne.’

  ‘Have you quite finished, Constance, dear?’ asked Miss Jones coldly. ‘Because, if you have, I should like to say two things. In the first place, people simply do not behave like that these days. If a married woman falls in love with somebody else’s husband, they both get divorces and remarry and nobody thinks one iota the worse of them for it, except for a few old-fashioned people like me. And, in the second place, may I remind you that Mrs Hellon has a tiny baby! I am quite sure that no woman would ever dream of committing adultery with an innocent child like that in the house. The idea is revolting.’