Lois Meade 01: Murder on Monday (EN, 2002) (7 page)

R
achel Barratt’s scream rilled the steamy kitchen and echoed back into the hall. She went on screaming and terror spread rapidly around the women. With a scraping of chairs and gasps of horror, the Open Minds group rushed towards the kitchen door. “Wait,” shouted Mary Rix, who had learned from her husband that hysteria could be catching. “Quiet, everybody,” she said. “It’s probably a dead mouse…you know our Rachel…”

But it wasn’t a dead mouse. It was a dead Gloria Hathaway, and her slim, neatly-dressed body lay propped up against the sink unit, her head lolling like a rag doll. Her skirt had been pulled down discreetly over her knees and her hands were lapped carefully one over the other.

“She’s holding something,” whispered Rachel Barratt, trying very hard to pull herself together after a brisk shake from Mary Rix. She looked more closely, stepping forward tentatively as though Gloria might suddenly awake and castigate them all. “It’s a teaspoon,” she said, beginning to sob again.

“It’s a village hall teaspoon,” added Evangeline, as if this made it far worse.

“Don’t touch it,” said Mary Rix. No one moved. “Now then, Rachel,” she continued, “perhaps you’d use that mobile phone of yours and dial 999. Best coming from you, as you found her.” She pushed the women back into the hall, and nodded to Evangeline. “Better wind up the meeting,” she said, “though everyone must stay here until the police arrive.”

It was then they realized that Joan Page, heroine of the wartime farmyard, had gone. “Huh!” said Evangeline. “Doesn’t surprise me. Anyway, I’ve got her particulars, so she needn’t have panicked. Now,” she added firmly, “if you could all sit down we have a wait on our hands, so perhaps someone would volunteer to make the tea?” The urn was still bubbling ferociously, but amidst fearful looks towards the kitchen, no one volunteered.

∗

“It was horrible,” said Mary Rix to Andrew, much later, as they sat in front of a dying fire in the sitting room. “And worst of all was having to be cool and take charge. Usual thing, doctor’s wife, she’ll know what to do. Well, I did my best, but felt very tempted to run off like that tedious Land Girl.” She looked at Andrew and wondered if he had heard a word she’d said. He could have been a bit more supportive, she thought, looking at him closely. After all, unlike many doctors’ wives, she was not a nurse, and was now feeling cold and shaky. But Andrew had slumped in his chair, eyes vacant and fixed on a spot somewhere around the middle of the hearthrug. He seemed deaf to all that Mary had to say.

She had tried calling him earlier from the village hall on Rachel’s mobile, but there had been no answer. Still, he’d said something about going to the pub to talk parish council business ahead of the meeting tomorrow. When he finally turned up, long after the police and ambulance, and after poor Gloria’s stiffening body had been taken away, he had the same absent look, as if he’d been in a land of ice and snow and hadn’t thawed out yet. It was a raw night, of course. Mary’s thoughts were not coherent and to her own amazement, she began to giggle. “It’ll be very cold for Gloria Hathaway in that mortuary,” she spluttered, and then laughed louder.

At last Andrew looked at her, properly looked, directly into her wild eyes. “Stop it!” he said sharply. “Stop it at once, Mary.” And in just the same way that she had curbed Rachel’s screams with a shake, Andrew slapped her across the cheek. She was sober at once, enough to register that the slap seemed unnecessarily hard. How dare he? “You’d better go to bed, try to get some sleep,” he said, without apology. “I expect there’ll be more questions tomorrow.” The police had concentrated on getting down the facts – names, addresses, times and so on. Tomorrow and the next day, and the next, and for many more days, they would be interviewing the entire village. In a place as small as Farnden, almost everyone would have some connection with Miss Gloria Hathaway.

Andrew was still sitting stiffly on the sofa, and Mary got up and walked towards the door. She hesitated, and turned to look at him. Hardly a rock to lean on. “How can I sleep, Andrew?” she said bitterly. “How can any of us sleep?”

His answer was shocking to her. “Oh, God forgive me…” he muttered. “Oh, poor little Gloria…” And he began to cry silently, his broad shoulders shaking as dreadful, racking sobs consumed him.

∗

In the Barratt house, Rachel lay silent and very wide awake next to Malcolm, listening to his steady breathing. “You awake?” she said softly.

“Yep,” said Malcolm. “And so is most of the village, I expect,” he added. He turned and took Rachel into his arms. “What on earth’s been going on?” he said. “Why should anyone wish to harm that woman?” Rachel moved closer to him, trying to gain comfort from his warm body.

She kept thinking of Gloria laid out, stiff and cold and…well, dead. “None of us knew her very well,” she said.

“Not much to know, I reckon,” he said. “Kept herself to herself, didn’t she?”

“I often wondered how she lived…I mean, what she did for money,” said Rachel, and felt Malcolm twitch. He always twitched when his mind was working overtime.

“Private means, probably,” he said. “Anyway, let’s try and get her out of our minds and sleep for a bit. Busy day tomorrow, no doubt, and it’s a Lois day. She’ll want to know all the details.”

“Maybe,” said Rachel, “though she’s not much of a gossip. Never wants to swap news with me, anyway.”

“Thank God for that,” said Malcolm, and Rachel heard him mutter something. “What did you say?” she asked.

“
Sic transit Gloria mundi
,” he repeated, and to her amazement, gave a snort of laughter. Then he disentangled himself, turned over and in minutes loud snores reverberated round the room.

I’d hardly call
her
the glory of this world! thought Rachel, but she’s certainly passed away. She nudged him, but he continued to snore. Irritation made her nudge him harder. She knew a real snore from a false one. Then a thought struck her; suppose the murder had something to do with sex. It would be right up Malcolm’s alley then. His speciality in the academic world. No doubt he’d be in there like a shot, assisting the police with their enquiries. As she drifted off into a troubled sleep, her last waking thought was of Gloria and sex. Gloria and sex? That tight, secretive face? Those net curtains and locked doors? Oh well, anything was possible.

∗

Peter White sat and shivered in his cheerless kitchen, vainly trying to warm his hands on a mug of lukewarm Bovril. He’d been sitting there for some time, trying to think rationally about the dreadful events of the evening. He’d been summoned to the village hall as an afterthought. Well, he was used to that. It had been Rachel Barratt who called, saying she thought some of the women were so upset they could do with as much help as could be mustered. He was last on the list, of course, and had gone along, pale and apprehensive, and done what he could. Which, he accused himself, was very little. The police seemed to find him a nuisance, an irrelevance, and the Detective Inspector actually suggested it might be better if he returned home.

“Just confuses things, you see, sir,” he’d said, quite respectfully, but firmly. And anyway, most of the women’s husbands had arrived and were holding their hands. The Farnden grapevine had wasted no time, and by morning there were few of its inhabitants who could not imagine Gloria Hathaway, dead as mutton, lying shockingly naked on a marble slab.

“Oh, dear God,” prayed Peter White, now doubled over with his head resting on the cold kitchen table. “Dear God, give her rest and peace and let me, your servant, come to your judgement in due humility.”

But not, he added to himself, as he fell into an uncomfortable doze, not yet.

∗

He awoke the next morning with a stiff neck and an appalling headache. A sharp knocking brought him to his feet and he stumbled towards the door. “Reverend White! Are you there?” It was Lois’s voice, anxious and loud.

He let her in, explaining that he’d bolted and barred the doors because of the dreadful murder. Then he filled her in with as much detail as he thought appropriate. He frowned and looked at her curiously, his thoughts coming back into order. “But it’s not my day for you,” he said. “Shouldn’t you be at the Barratts?”

Lois nodded. “Couldn’t get any reply. All the curtains still drawn, and they’re bolted up just like you. Nobody in the street and the shop blinds still down. It’s like a morgue,” she added, and then wished she hadn’t. Peter White’s face crumpled and with a sound like a chicken being strangled, he rushed upstairs.

∗

Lois finally got some sense from Nurse Surfleet, who was up and dressed, and very wide awake indeed. “Come in, my dear,” she said. “Come in and have a cup of tea. You’ll find no one astir in the village! Tongues exhausted as well as bodies.”

The bare bones of the previous evening’s events shocked Lois nearly as much as the villagers themselves. “Poor old thing!” she said. “She’d certainly got on the wrong side of somebody! Still, she was a bit of a mystery, wasn’t she…”

“She wasn’t that old, about the same age as you, Lois,” said Gillian Surfleet, as they sat at her kitchen table drinking hot tea. “I sometimes saw her first thing in the morning, in the bathroom with the windows wide open, as if she didn’t care who saw her. She was in good shape, you know, Lois. A good body for someone of thirty-eight.” The word ‘body’ seemed suddenly loud, and assumed gigantic importance in the little kitchen.

Both women were silent for a minute or so, and then Lois said, “Had she got any blokes?”

“Lovers, do you mean?” said Gillian, with a small hesitation. “Not to my knowledge. Mind you, only someone around here all day long would notice if men came and went. I’m out on my rounds such a lot. And then again, it’s only that bathroom window that’s overlooked, and only by me. And I’ve got better things to do…”

Lois had heard a hint or two that Nurse Surfleet leaned a little towards her own sex, but she’d always dismissed it as malicious nonsense. “I reckon I can tell,” she’d said to Derek. “You get to recognise a sort of glint in the eye.”

“Fancy you, then, does she?” Derek had teased her.

Lois had been defensive, said that she knew very well how to put off any advances of that sort. Now she looked at Nurse Surfleet sitting there in the kitchen, her solid body well controlled, her considerable bosom propped up on her folded arms, and could see no glint. No, it was more likely she’d been one of those whose career had come first and then, when she put her mind to men and marriage, thought it was too late. The most she got now was probably being grabbed by the lecherous old codgers in the senile ward at Tresham General.

“Didn’t she have any mates, you know, girls together and all that?”

“Didn’t seem to,” said Gillian Surfleet dismissively. “She’d go away occasionally and ask if I’d keep an eye on the house. She trusted me, of course. Very cosy inside that cottage, Lois.”

Lois nodded encouragingly. “Go on, then,” she said, her curiosity now thoroughly awake.

“Like a fill-up, dear?” said Nurse Surfleet irritatingly.

They had second cups, but Gillian Surfleet was saying no more on the subject. Soon she stood up, brisk as ever. “Now, we’d better get moving,” she said, making it quite clear that their chat was at an end. “Those Barratts must be up by now,” she added, “so I’ll see you tomorrow, my dear.” Lois put on her coat, said thanks for the tea, and walked off down the street towards the Barratts’ house, her thoughts churning. She passed Gloria Hathaway’s gate and looked up towards the cottage. The curtains were drawn and a policeman stood outside, not exactly on sentry-duty, but keeping a sharp look-out. Lois stared and saw that it was the constable who’d given her the heave-ho. She felt anger rising again. Smug prat! She quickened her step, not looking at him. Then she changed her mind. He was like an Aunt Sally, a sitting target. “Hiya!” she shouted, smiling broadly. “Caught any good crooks lately?”

He pretended not to hear her, and she walked on, feeling a great deal better. After all, if they
had
taken her on,
she
might have been stuck outside Miss Hathaway’s front door, whilst excitement was developing behind lace curtains and in private conversations. As it was, she had the perfect job for picking up information here and there, a word overheard, a quarrel with too much said in anger. These were the everyday occurrences of her work here in Farnden, and she suddenly realized that with the murder of poor old Gloria she had a unique opportunity for a bit of detective work of her own. No reason why I shouldn’t, she told herself. Seems a shame not to take the chance. In truth, she knew that it was a chance for getting one-up on Keith Simpson and that policewoman…and the entire police force. Her anger was surfacing again, and was still bubbling when Malcolm Barratt greeted her with a glance at his watch.

“No need to check on the time, Professor,” she said, stepping into the hall. “I was here on time, but you were all asleep…or something. Bolted and barred. Had to go all round the village before I could find out what was going on.”

Malcolm subsided like a pricked balloon, and stood aside. “You’ll have heard, then,” he said mildly.

“Yep,” said Lois shortly. “And no doubt I shall hear some more. Meanwhile, I’ll make a start, if you don’t mind.”

Now Rachel emerged, looking pale. “Morning Lois,” she said. “Would you mind doing the breakfast things? We’re a bit behind schedule…” She tailed off, looking at Malcolm for guidance. He took her arm and they wandered into the sitting room, looking lost. Lois began clearing the table, happy to be in the kitchen. It was as good a place as any to pick up scraps of conversation. Then she could follow the Professor when he went to his study. Chat him up a bit…but not too much! Don’t want to end up like old Gloria…victim of a sex maniac! Her mood improving rapidly, Lois tackled the kitchen with a will.

“Would you mind not whistling, Lois,” said Rachel, emerging from the sitting room. “My head’s splitting…and so is Malcolm’s. Thank you,” she added with an effort as Lois grudgingly stopped. “And if you could keep the vacuuming to a minimum today, we’d both be grateful.”