Sins Out of School (22 page)

“Ah! I think I have it. Miss Simmons. I don't know her Christian name. I doubt anyone has ever called her anything but Miss Simmons. She's an old maid, and quite a character. Not a spinster, or an unmarried lady. Quite definitely an old maid. Her father involved her in the chapel, and she went out of deference to him, though I gather she sometimes spoke her mind even then. She may be the only person in Sherebury who isn't afraid of the Rookwoods.”

“Except you.”

“My dear, they terrify me! That's why I've made friends with so many of their disgruntled parishioners, I expect. Anyway, old Mr. Simmons finally died, aged something like a hundred and ten, and as soon as Miss Simmons could do as she liked, she left and joined the Baptists. She told me she would have come to us, but she liked the Baptists' hymns better. After years of no music in church at all, she said, she wanted to lift up her voice. And my dear, she's ninety if she's a day, and her voice sounds like a cross between a creaky gate and a Siamese cat!”

“More power to the Baptists, then, if they can make her happy and put up with her singing. She sounds like exactly the person I need, if she didn't leave the chapel too long ago to know anything about current affairs there.”

“She keeps up with some of the people, I think. She'll know a lot, still, and she'll know who you can safely ask about anything she can't tell you. She's a remarkable woman, a true original. You'll enjoy her. Give her my love, and here—take the rest of these scones with you. They won't last another day, and she likes her little treat.”

Margaret gave me the address and precise instructions for how to get there (she knows me and my phobias well), and I sped off laden with scones, good wishes, and questions.

Miss Simmons's house, when I found it (without a hitch), was one of those anonymous semidetached Victorian things, neither beautiful enough nor ugly enough to distinguish itself from its fellows. I had hoped to get some idea of her personality from her front garden. Gardens tell a lot about people, I think.

Hers was gravel.

She was at the front door before I could ring the bell. She was less than five feet tall and certainly didn't weigh as much as ninety pounds. She wore gray slacks tucked into yellow Wellington boots, an Aran Isles cardigan three sizes too big over a soft rose sweater in what looked like cashmere, and a belligerent expression. Her gray hair, still abundant, looked as though it had been styled with an egg beater, and a cigarette was tucked into the corner of her mouth.

“Well?”

“Miss Simmons?”

“Nobody else living here.”

“My name is Dorothy Martin. Margaret Allenby sent me with her love and a plate of scones.”

The wrinkles of her weatherbeaten face crinkled into a grin. “Come in, then, why don't you? Too cold to stand here passing the time of day.”

She showed me into the front parlor. It was densely populated with old-fashioned furniture, lace antimacassars, and ornaments of the present-from-Brighton sort. In the grate a coal fire literally roared. I'd never heard a fire make so much noise, nor endured one that produced so much heat. I estimated the temperature of the room at close to ninety.

“You'll be too hot in that coat. Take it off. Take off that hat, which is the silliest thing I've seen in years. Take off anything you can, down to decency level. I'm old and I like it warm, but you youngsters can never take the heat.”

My seventieth birthday wasn't all that far away, and I hadn't been called a youngster in at least thirty years. I forgave her about the hat (which was a perfectly respectable black velvet with only one huge red rose) and obeyed her, stripping down to silk blouse and wool skirt and wishing I had a bathing suit on underneath.

“Now. I don't propose to offer you tea, because it isn't teatime, and if you've come from Margaret, you're bungful of tea or coffee anyway. The loo's through there, when you need it.” She gestured vaguely. “And I'm not going to offer you these scones, because she sent them for me. She'll have told you I'm a frightfully rude old woman, so it won't come as a surprise.”

“She said you were remarkable.”

“At my age, that means I'm breathing. Never mind. I'm young yet, by my family's standards. That doesn't mean I have time to waste, though. I might break the average and pop off any time. So speak your piece.”

“I—uh—”

“Margaret sent you here for some reason besides delivering scones. Don't be stupid, woman! Tell me what she wants, or what you want.”

I began to believe that Miss Simmons was not afraid of the Rookwoods. It might, indeed, be the other way around.

However, I was determined not to be intimidated. “First I'd like a glass of water. With ice, if there is any.”

Miss Simmons cackled. “American, aren't you? Ice water, pooh! How about some good English beer? I've chilled lager, if you must have it cold.”

The time was a little after nine-thirty in the morning. I accepted the lager. “I'll get it, if you—”

“I've still the use of my limbs, young woman. Sit. I think that chair can take your weight.” She pointed to a Morris chair sort of contraption that looked hideously uncomfortable, all wood and cracked leather arranged at odd angles. The seat was covered with perhaps a week's supply of newspapers, a knitted tea cozy in shades of magenta and bilious green, and a dented, blackened tea tray that looked as if it might once have been priceless Georgian silver. I scooped the collection off onto the floor and sat, wondering if I'd ever be able to get out of the chair's clutches.

M
ISS
Simmons brought in the beer, mine in a thick, dimpled glass mug like the kind they once used in pubs, hers in a lidded pewter one dating back much farther.

“Cheers,” she said, lifting her mug and draining off perhaps half its contents. “Aaah. Guinness is good for you. I know who you are.”

“You do?” I had swallowed my sip of beer, or I might have choked on it.

“You're that American woman who keeps poking into crimes, and who stole the most eligible widower in town right out from under our noses.”

“That's me. And he's a treasure, let me tell you.”

Again the cackle. “I do like a person who isn't touchy. Can't abide people who get their feelings hurt.”

“I should imagine you know quite a few people who do get their feelings hurt.” I put down a healthy swig of beer. The room was, if possible, getting even hotter.

“No guts, that's their trouble. Can't take the truth. You're here about the Doyles.”

If I kept on being surprised by what this woman said, I'd waste a lot of energy. “I am. Second sight, or did someone tell you?”

“Common sense. You fancy yourself some sort of sleuth. You've come to me. Only people I know who've got themselves mixed up in murder are the Doyles. Q.E.D.”

“You wouldn't make a bad detective yourself. So you knew the Doyles?”

She finished her beer and put the mug down on the floor, the only available flat surface. “Want another?”

“I'm still working on this one, thank you.”

“Hmph.” She lit a cigarette.

I couldn't tell if her disgust was directed at my wimpy speed of consumption, or my implied criticism of her more robust drinking habits. I smiled.

“The Doyles. She's a mouse, he was a bastard. The child's peculiar. What else do you want to know?”

“Ultimately I want to know who killed him, but—”

“Why?”

“Why what? You lost me.”

“Why d'you want to know whodunit? To put 'em in quod? Or give 'em a medal?”

“He wasn't a nice man,” I said. “But I don't approve of murder.” I sounded prim even to myself.

“Hmph! Milk and water, like all C of E people.”

“You prefer the militancy of the Chapel of the One True God?”

“All right, all right, no need to get nasty. I went to that place for years because my dear papa went, and dear Papa may have been the crotchetiest old fool in England, but he also had money. I didn't want him to go and do something stupid with it, did I? I know which side my bread is buttered on.” She looked around the crowded, stifling room with complacency. “I've this house now, and plenty of money to last me the rest of my life, even if I live to some damn-fool age like Papa. So it was worth all that ranting and raving and hellfire. Not that I didn't give them some of their own back every now and then.” She smiled reminiscently.

We seemed to have wandered rather far from the subject. “The Doyles?” I prompted.

“What about them?”

“What I really need to know is what John Doyle was doing two days before he died, and that evening. He—”

“Can't tell you that. Hadn't laid eyes on the man in better than a year. Glory be to God.”

“I agree with you about that. I'm grateful I never had to meet him. But what I was about to say was that he did a couple of odd things those last few days. He went to London, for one thing, on a working day, and told a colleague at the bank that it was on business. Would you have any idea what kind of business?”

“Other people's business, no doubt. That's what Doyle poked into. Liked to catch people out. Reveled in it. One thing for sure, it was chapel business. He did a lot for that chapel. Kept the books, for one thing, or audited them, or some such.”

“Was he paid for doing that?”

She snorted while drawing on her cigarette and set off a coughing fit that lasted so long I was alarmed. I tried to struggle out of the chair, but she waved me back.

“Don't fuss,” she said when she could speak again. “I don't need a nursemaid. But don't ask me again about old Rookwood paying anybody to do anything, or I might have a fit of apoplexy and die on the spot.”

“Doyle did the work as a volunteer, then?”

“He did it,” said the old woman, emphasizing her words with little jabs of her cigarette, “so he'd be in the know. There's a lot to learn from a set of ledgers if you know how to read between the lines, and Doyle knew, of that you can be certain. He might find out something discreditable about someone, you see? Something he could use to hound them. And if you want my opinion, which I gather you do or you wouldn't be here listening to an old woman natter on, that's what he was doing in London. Chasing something down, somehow, something he could use against someone. And if you're not going to strike a medal for the man who killed him, you just find out who it was, and I'll take care of the reward.” She sat back and lit another cigarette from the stub of the last one. The air was growing thick with smoke, and I was dizzy from the heat, but I was learning things.

I persevered. “Hmm. That's a new thought, and a useful one. I can figure out a way to follow up on that. Tell me something else. A man I know thought Doyle was meeting a woman in London. Is that likely?”

“Having an affair, you mean? Never knew an Anglican yet who could call a spade a spade. I'd say it was about as likely as a hurricane in the desert. John Doyle got off on power, not sex. He despised women even more than he did men, and if a tart had offered him a free session, I expect he'd have spent it preaching to her about her sinful ways.”

“All right, one more. The night he died, he was out very late. His wife went to bed at midnight and he wasn't home yet. He said he was going to a church meeting, but that doesn't sound very likely to me. I've never known any church meeting to go on that late, even among us Church of England types, and we're pretty sociable. Obviously, you don't think he was out indulging in an orgy.” (There, was that spadelike enough for her?) “What's your best guess?”

But she shook her head. “Don't know. Not got a clue. This wasn't the Wednesday prayer meeting?”

“After that, Amanda said he told her.”

“Well, then—unless he was spying on someone. That might have been it. He did that once, a boy who lived nearby, who—”

“Yes, I've heard that story, and it was painful enough the first time. Any more and you'll have me rethinking that medal. Just one more question and then I'll leave you to your own affairs.”

“Leave me and my smoke-filled house, you mean. I can see you sitting there thinking thoughts about lung cancer and trying not to cough.”

“Indeed. But at your age, you've made your choices and don't need me to preach at you. And I expect I won't die from an hour of secondhand smoke. But I do have some questions that I need answered by someone who's still a member of Rookwood's chapel. Can you give me the name of anyone who doesn't think he's the cat's pajamas, and who wouldn't mind talking to me?”

“Do you ever go to pubs, or are you too afraid of smoke?”

“I like pubs. I prefer them not to resemble one of Dante's inner circles, if possible. Why?”

“Do you know the Bell, down by the river?”

“I know where it is. I've never been in it.”