Read Morse's Greatest Mystery and Other Stories Online
Authors: Colin Dexter
* * *
I was gratified though surprised that my carefully worded application had been considered and I caught the bus in good time.
At 10:30
A.M.
to the minute I walked along the flagged path that bisected the weedless front lawn and knocked at the door of The Grange in Squitchey Lane.
A quarter of an hour later, after a last mouthful of some bitter-tasting coffee, I’d landed the job.
How?
I wasn’t sure, not then. But when she asked me if I’d enjoyed the coffee, I said I preferred a cup of instant, and she’d smiled thinly.
“That’s what my husband says.”
I hoped my voice showed an appropriate interest.
“Your husband?”
“He’s abroad. The Americans are picking his brains.”
She stood up.
“Do you know why I’ve offered you the job?”
It was a bit risky but I said it: “No one else applied?”
“I’m not surprised you have a degree. You’re quite bright really.”
“Thank you.”
“You need the money, I suppose?”
I lowered my eyes to the deep Wilton and nodded.
“Goodbye,” she said.
I left her standing momentarily there at
the front door—slim, elegantly dressed, and young—well, comparatively young.
And, yes, I ought to admit it, uncommonly attractive.
The tasks allotted to me could only just be squeezed into the nine hours a week I spent at The Grange.
But £36 was £36.
And that was a
bonus.
Can you guess what I’m saying? Not yet?
You will.
Two parts of the house I was forbidden to enter: the master bedroom (remember that bedroom!) and the master’s study—the latter by the look of it a large converted bedroom on the upstairs floor whose door was firmly closed.
Firmly locked, as I soon discovered.
There was no such embargo on the mistress’s study—a fairly recent addition at the rear of the house in the form of a semi-conservatory, its shelves, surfaces, and floor all crammed with books and littered with loose papers and typescripts. And dozens of house-plants fighting for a little Lebensraum.
I was invariably fascinated with the place as I carefully (too carefully) watered the plants, replaced the books in alphabetical order, shuffled untidy piles into tidy piles, and carefully (too carefully) hoovered the carpeted floor and dusted around.
I love charging around with a duster. It’s one of the only jobs I do where I can actually see a result.
And I like seeing a result …
There was only one thing wrong with that room.
The cat.
I hate all cats but especially
this
cat, which occasionally looked at me in a mysterious knowing aristocratic potentially ferocious manner.
Like his mistress.
A small two-way cat-flap had been cut into the door leading from the conservatory to the rear garden through which the frequently filthy-pawed “Boswell” (huh!) would make his exits and his entrances.
Ah, but bless you, Boswell!
I felt confident that Mrs. Spencer-Gilbey could not have taken up my single reference since from the beginning she called me “Virginia” without the slightest hint of suspicion.
For my part, I called her “ma’am,” to rhyme with “jam.” It was five syllables shorter than any more formal address, and I think the royal connotation was somewhat pleasing to her.
Early on the Wednesday morning of my third week the amateurish tack-tack-tack of the typewriter in the conservatory stopped and my employer came through into the downstairs lounge to inform me she had to go out for two hours.
It was at that point I made my first bold move.
I took a leather-bound volume from the bookshelf beside me and blew a miniature
dust-storm along the golden channel at the top of its pages.
“Would you like me to give the books a wipe with a duster?”
For a few seconds I thought I saw in those cold grey eyes of hers something very close to hatred.
“If you can put them all back exactly as you found them.”
“I’ll try, ma’am.”
“Don’t try.
Do
it!”
It was going to be a big job.
Bookshelves lined three whole sides of the room, and at mid-morning I had a coffee-break in the kitchen.
Outside by the garden shed I saw the steatopygous odd-job man who appeared intermittently—usually when I was leaving—to fix a few things as I supposed.
I held my coffee-cup up to the window and my eyes asked him if he’d care to join me.
His eyes replied yes and I saw he was younger than I had thought.
More handsome too.
I asked him how well he knew her ladyship but he merely shrugged.
“She’s writing a book, did you know?” I asked.
“Really?”
He took a swallow of his coffee and I saw that his hands though grubby enough were not those of a manual labourer.
“On Sir Thomas Wyatt,” I continued. “I had a look when I was hoovering.”
“Really?”
If his vocabulary seemed rather limited, his eyes ranged over me more widely, and he smiled in a curiously fascinating way.
“I don’t suppose you know much about Sir Thomas Wyatt?”
He shrugged again. “Not much. But if you’re going to tell me he died in 1542, you’ll be wasting your time, won’t you?”
Jesus!
He smiled again, this time at my discomfiture; then leaned forward and kissed me fully on the lips.
“Are you on the pill?”
“It’s all right. You see, I’m pregnant,” I replied.
Afterwards we dared to have a cigarette together. It was the first I’d smoked for six months and it tasted foul.
Stupid!
His lighter was out of fuel and I used one of the extra-long Bryant & May matches kept in the kitchen for various purposes.
For various purposes …
I’d almost finished the second wall of bookshelves when milady came back.
Just after I had turned round to acknowledge her presence a single sheet of paper fluttered to the floor.
Quickly I bent down to pick it up but she was immediately beside me, snatching it from my hand.
It was only a brief note and its contents could be read almost at a glance:
Darling J
Please do try to keep these few lines
somewhere as a memento of my love?
The message had been typed on cheap thin paper with the signatory’s name written in light-blue Biro—“Marie,” the “i” completed in girlish fashion with a largish ring instead of the usual dot.
But Mrs. S-G said nothing, and half an hour later I was on my way home—unobtrusively as ever.
I had advertised to no one the fact that I was working as a part-time charwoman and I took care to be seen by as few people as possible.
There were reasons for this. You will see.
The following Monday I asked Mrs. S-G if I could vary my time slightly and start half an hour earlier.
“Do you have to?” Her voice was contemptuous of the request.
“It’s just that if I caught the earlier bus—”
“Oh, don’t
explain
, for heaven’s sake! Do you
have
to?—that’s all I asked.”
I said I did, and it was agreed that I should henceforth begin at 8:30
A.M.
On Friday of that same week the postman called at 8:50
A.M.
, and three letters seemed to slither through the front door: a communication from British Telecom; a letter addressed to Mrs. S-G, marked “Strictly Private”; and a letter for Mr. S-G, the name and address written in light-blue Biro, the “i” of “Squitctley” completed in girlish fashion with a largish ring instead of the usual dot.
Even as I picked up the letters I knew that my employer was just behind me.
“Thank you. I’ll take them.”
Her manner was offensively brusque. But I made no demur and continued wiping the skirting boards around the entrance hall.
“I’m sorry,” I said (it was the following Wednesday), “but I shan’t be able to come on Friday.”
“Oh?”
“You see I’ve got to go to the ante-natal clinic …”
“Don’t
explain
, for heaven’s sake. I thought I’d told you that before.”
“You did, yes.”
She said no more.
Nor did I.
The phone was seldom used at The Grange but that morning I heard her ring up someone from the conservatory.
I stood close to the door and tried hard to listen but the only part of the proceedings I caught was “Saturday night …”
My appointment at the hospital was for 10:30
A.M.
but an emergency put the morning’s programme back by about an hour.
During the wait I read a few articles from various magazines, including an interview with an old gardener now aged one hundred who claimed that for getting rid of dandelions there was nothing quite so effective as arsenic, a small quantity of which he always kept in his garden shed.
Was it at this point I began to think of getting rid of Mrs. S-G? Along with the dandelions?
I suppose I’d already pondered the problems likely to face unmarried mums. Problems so often caused by married dads.
What really irks me more than anything, though, is all that sickening spiel they come up with. You know, about not wanting anyone to get hurt. Above all not wanting the little wife to get hurt.
Hypocrites!
It was my turn for receiving letters on the Thursday of the following week. Two of them.
The first was from the hospital. I was fine. The baby was fine. I felt almost happy.
The second was from the father of my child, with the postmark “Los Angeles.”
Here’s the bit I want you to read:
Haven’t you heard of women’s equal rights and responsibilities, you stupid girl? Yes, of course there’s such a thing as a condom. OK! And there’s also such a thing as the pill! What did you think you were playing at? But that’s all water under the bridge. Abortion’s the only answer. I’ll foot the bill on condition there’s a complete break between us. Things can’t go on like this. I land at Heathrow at lunchtime on Saturday 13th, so we can meet next Sunday. Let’s say the usual—twelve noon in the back room of the Bird and Baby. Please be there—for both our sakes.
How nice and cosy that would be!
And I would be there, perhaps.
Yes, there was a chance that I would be there.
The following day, Friday, was to be my last in employment as a cleaning lady, and that morning I put the finishing touches to my plan.
Originally I had intended to kill only Mrs. S-G. But my terms of reference had now widened.
That same afternoon I acted in an uncharacteristically careless way. I wrote a letter to my former employer:
Dear Mrs. S-G
I was grateful to you for employing me but I shall not be coming to work for you again.
My circumstances have changed significantly in the past few days.
I am sure you will not have any difficulty in finding a replacement.
Yours
Virginia
It
would
have been tit-for-tat in the resignation-dismissal stakes. But I didn’t post the letter that day.
Nor the next.
Mrs. S-G however had clearly been better stocked with first-class stamps and her letter lay on the hall-mat the following morning, Saturday 13th, with mine still propped up against the Kellogg’s packet on the kitchen table.
Dear Marie Lawson,
Oh yes I do know your real name and I made no attempt to take up your bogus reference. At first I thought you were quite bright and I told you so. But in truth you must be as stupid as you obviously consider me to be. I was curious about why you’d applied and it amused me to offer you the job. So I watched you. And all the time you thought you were watching me! You see my husband told me all about
your affair although I didn’t know you were pregnant. Nor, as it happens, do I believe you are. The charades with the note and the letter were prettily performed yet really quite unnecessary. I steamed open the letter as no doubt you wished me to in what (I have to assume) was your futile plan for bringing matters out into the open. I made a photocopy of the letter and forwarded your pathetic plea to America. I think the real reason for my writing—apart from giving you the sack—is to thank you for those two pieces of evidence you provided. I am informed by my lawyer that they will significantly expedite the divorce proceedings I shall be bringing against my husband. After that I expect my own life to turn into happier paths, and I trust that if I later re-marry I shall be more fortunate with my second husband than I was with the man who amused himself with a whole host of harlots besides yourself.
V. Speneer-Gilbey (Mrs.)
Stupid.
Both of them had called me stupid.
On that same Saturday night—or rather in the early hours of the Sunday morning—I waited with great patience for the light to be switched off in the master bedroom. (You remember it?)
If they were not in the same bed at least they were in the same bedroom, since I had seen the two figures silhouetted several times behind the curtains.
I further waited one whole hour, to the minute, before moving soundlessly along the side of the house and then into the rear garden where I stooped down beside the conservatory door.
Good old Boswell! (Remember him?) I almost hoped he’d decided to sleep out in the open that night.
I struck one of the extra-large Bryant & May matches. (Remember them?) And shielding the flame I pushed my hand slowly through the cat-flap.
Behind the glass-panelled door I could see the loose sheets of paper (so carefully stacked) catching light almost immediately.
No more than ten seconds later I felt rather than heard the sudden “whoosh” of some powerful updraught as a tongue of flame licked viciously at the items (so carefully stacked) beside the conservatory door.
The colour of the blaze reminded me so very much of Boswell’s eyes.
I departed swiftly via the front path before turning round fifty or so yards down the road.
The window of the master bedroom was still in darkness. But at the rear of the house I had the impression that although it was still only 2:15
A.M.
the rosy-fingered dawn was beginning to break already.