The Hangman's Row Enquiry (5 page)

Now she sat in her elegant drawing room, as she had learnt to call it, enjoying a large gin and tonic, and wondering if it would be a good idea to invite Ivy to tea to meet some of her club’s members. She weighed up the pros and cons and decided that on balance it was a bad idea. The old thing could be very tricky, and deliberately tactless, and it would probably be best to have Ivy for a cup of tea along with Deirdre’s next-door neighbour, who was ninety-three and deaf as a post.

 

GUS, MEANWHILE, HAD returned home a happy man. With Ivy on his side, he reckoned he could have a great deal of fun playing detective and sorting out Miriam Blake, who was rapidly becoming an object of considerable interest. No better than she should be, did Ivy say? Ah ha! Just the kind of thing he loved to investigate.

Then he remembered one thing Ivy had stipulated. Her cousin Deirdre must be involved. Deirdre had money, said Ivy, and they might need some. Gus could second that heartily. He always needed money, and if this was a way of making some, all to the good. So, an approach to Deirdre Bloxham was the next thing on his agenda, and Ivy had made it plain that it was up to him to persuade her to cooperate.

He looked out of his dusty window and saw a fine sunlit evening. Right, no time like the present. He washed his hands, combed his hair over the patch where a small niece had told him his head was showing through, and set off in his car to find Mrs. Deirdre Bloxham, MBE.

 

TAWNY WINGS WAS a strange house, built by a patriotic builder for his own family in Barrington. He had made his millions putting up cheap little dwellings miles away on the outskirts of Thornwell, but for Tawny Wings he had chosen a picture village and had designed and built the house in the shape of a V sign. Deirdre often wondered whether he had been inspired by Churchill’s famous gesture. Odd as the exterior appeared, it was a comfortable house. Even the bath in the master bathroom was extra large. The builder had meant to have nothing but the best, and Deirdre felt thoroughly at home.

As she gazed out of her drawing room window her eye was caught by a battered-looking car approaching slowly up her driveway. Who on earth could that be? She looked at her watch. Seven o’clock, and her supper browning nicely in the oven. Ah well, she would soon send him packing, whoever he was.

She answered the doorbell, and saw to her surprise that her visitor was Augustus Halfhide, friend of Ivy and something of an enigma.

“Good evening, Mrs. Bloxham!” Gus at his best could be very persuasive. “I apologise for calling at such an hour without making an appointment first, but I wondered whether you would have ten spare minutes to talk to me?”

“What are you selling?” said Deirdre bluntly. She had not spent years in her husband’s motor car business without knowing all the tricks of the salesman’s trade.

Gus lifted his eyebrows, and gave her a quizzical smile. “Goodness me, Mrs. Bloxham! I am not a commercial traveller, you know. No, I have been talking to Miss Beasley—a cousin of yours, I believe?—about a rather interesting project, and she encouraged me to think you might be willing to participate. She has been telling me about all your numerous good works, and the MBE, of course, and I cannot help but think you would be enormously helpful to our little scheme.”

“Cut the cackle,” said Deirdre, standing back and opening the door wider. “You’d better come in and explain in plain words what you’re on about. I can’t spare many minutes.”

This was not going to be easy. Gus was thinking rapidly. There could be no disguising the fact that he wanted financial backing for a very small detective agency with a decidedly unconvincing combination of partners. One elderly spinster, one retired investigator of dubious reputation, and, if Deirdre agreed, a rather less elderly widow with time on her hands and a good deal of common sense regarding money in the bank.

“You may not have heard,” he began, “that Barrington has witnessed a very unpleasant murder. Very unpleasant for me, since she was my next-door neighbour, an old lady looked after by her unmarried daughter. The old dear was found dead on the floor with a bread knife point down in her chest.”

Deirdre shrugged. “Of course I’ve heard. Very nasty. But I can’t see what that has to do with me?”

“Nor, in the beginning, could I see that I would be involved in any way. I suppose,” he added, as if he had just thought of it, “I could be a suspect! But I think not, and anyway, the general feeling is that the daughter had every reason for wanting her pest of an old mother out of her way.”

Deirdre looked once more at her watch. “Could you get to the point, Mr. Halfhide?” she said wearily.

Gus drew himself up to his full height and said firmly and rapidly, “Miss Beasley and myself intend to investigate privately this murder case. And since both of us have a taste for research, perhaps better described as a lively curiosity, we intend to set up a small, at first amateur, agency.
All Problems Solved
—that sort of thing.”

“I see. Or, more simply, you and Ivy are soul mate nosey parkers, have no money, and think I might be useful in setting up a business? Office space in my house, perhaps? Advertising in the local paper my dear old Bert bought many years ago? That sort of thing? Oh, and by the way,
All Problems Solved
is a terrible name. How about
Enquire Within
?”

Gus looked at her with a tentative smile. “Um, does that mean . . . ?”

“When do we start?” said Deirdre.

 

“IS MISS BEASLEY available?” Gus said. “It is rather late to visit her, I know. But if she is still up and about, I just need a few minutes’ chat.”

“Mrs. Spurling doesn’t like her ladies and gentlemen to be upset too close to bedtime,” said the stout little woman who acted as her deputy.

“Oh, I wouldn’t dream of upsetting her!” Gus said quickly.

“Upsetting who?” It was Ivy, coming into the hall clutching a hot water bottle. “If you mean upsetting me, I don’t upset easy. You can safely leave him to me, Miss Pinkney. In there, Gus,” she added, pointing to the sitting room. “We can find a corner away from the telly. None of them can hear, and one or two can’t understand what they do hear, so we’ll be fine.”

Miss Pinkney looked annoyed, but stamped her way back into the office. Gus and Ivy found a quiet corner, and he filled her in with what had happened at Tawny Wings. “So it looks as if we’re in business, Ivy!” he said excitedly.

“Calm down, young man,” she said. But her eyes were bright, her back straight, and the old Ivy was back. “Be here at ten o’clock tomorrow morning, with your car,” she said. “I’ll warn Deirdre we’re coming. Sooner we get down to it the better.”

TUESDAY MORNING, TEN o’clock sharp, Deirdre had said, and on the dot Gus and Ivy rang the bell on the heavy, mock-Tudor front door of Tawny Wings. The three investigators of the Enquire Within detective agency, feeling rather nervous but determined not to show it, climbed the broad stairway to a large room overlooking the back garden.

“Guest room,” explained Deirdre, “but since I don’t have many guests, except on the rare occasions when my daughters arrive from far-flung lands, we can set ourselves up permanently in here. Plenty of other rooms for whoever. Now, who is going to be chair?”

“What on earth are you talking about, Deirdre,” Ivy said, beginning to bristle at what was clearly Deirdre’s attempt to take over.

Gus smiled charmingly at the ladies, and said that as he probably had the most experience in the field of detection, perhaps he should take the helm?

“Hear, hear,” said Ivy quickly. “Anyway, it was all Augustus’s idea, so I vote for him as—ahem—chair.”

“Exactly what I was about to suggest,” lied Deirdre. “Then, as I have a computer and some secretarial skills, I should probably take on the work of admin, records and all that?”

Gus nodded.

“What’s left for me to do, then?” said Ivy crossly.

“Good heavens, Ivy!” Gus said. “Yours is the most important job of all. You will be the eyes and ears of Enquire Within, looking and listening and making mental notes. We shall meet regularly, and your input will be vital to our investigations. To put it shortly, Ivy, the agency couldn’t operate without you.”

Ivy knew perfectly well he was exaggerating, but was mollified nevertheless. “Right,” she said. “Then it’s just as well I’m still in possession of all my marbles.”

Deirdre began to think her own role was diminishing to typist and filing clerk, and said, “Still, Ivy, you’ll need transport, and I shall be very happy to take you wherever you want to go. We shall be a good team!”

Ivy gave her a look to quell the bravest upstart, and said wasn’t it time they got down to business and opened the investigation into the murder of Mrs. Winifred Blake.

“Just one snag,” Gus said apologetically. “Nobody’s asked us to, so no client. No client, no fee.”

“Ah,” said Deirdre, “I think I may have a solution to that one.”

“Excellent!” said Gus. “Solutions are our business!”

“Calm down, young man,” Ivy said, and added that she would like to hear Deirdre’s solution to this particular problem.

“The Hon. Theo, he’s going to be our first client, though he doesn’t know it yet,” said Deirdre triumphantly. “A murder in a property lowers its value immediately. And nobody’s going to pay a wicked rent to live in a glorified hovel haunted by an evil old woman.”

“Spot on, Deirdre!” Gus laughed. “My little cottage is not far from a hovel with a few bodged improvements. You are right about the wicked rent, too. And how are you going to approach the village squire?”

Deirdre tapped the side of her nose with a manicured forefinger in time-honoured fashion, indicating conspiracy. “Leave it to me,” she said. “Theo Roussel and I go back a long way. . . .”

“Steady on, Deirdre,” Ivy said caustically. She looked at Gus and said, “And what do you say to that, Chair?”

Gus sat back and folded his arms. “First, I would like to stress that it will be vital that we trust each other. If one of us has a hunch and does not wish to talk about it until some following up has been done, fine. So, second, I would say good luck to Deirdre. But I propose we have weekly meetings, when we bring each other up to date on progress. Now, how do you feel about working on more than one case at once?”

“One’s plenty,” Ivy said, “and three brains are better than one. I propose to start by talking to that awful Beattie woman. There’s nothing escapes her notice, and old Theo Whatsit lets her get on with it, so I hear. She’s a member of the Women’s Institute, and so, for my sins, am I. There’s a WI meeting on Thursday afternoon, and no, I don’t need a lift, Deirdre. I can manage to walk to the village hall, thanks.”

Gus was delighted. All this getting going so soon! Nothing like a couple of bossy women to go straight to it.

Ivy wiped the smile off his face with practised skill. “And you, Augustus? What are you going to do? As far as I can see, the chair don’t do much except make fancy speeches. Where are you going to start?”

Gus was used to quick thinking, and said at once that he had already made a start. “Miriam Blake is already a friend,” he said. “We have shared the cup that—”

“Yes, yes, we know all that,” interrupted Ivy, “but how do you mean to tackle her?”

“Friendship. The poor woman is bereft and lonely,” Gus said. “Now is the time to release all her past resentments and feelings of revenge,” he added. “She is obviously suspect number one, but in my experience it is seldom number one who turns out to be the guilty party.”

Deirdre gazed at him in disbelief. “Never mind the psychology,” she said. “She’s just a bitter old spinster, and from what I’ve heard hasn’t turned a hair at drowning kittens and strangling cockerels in the past. With a bread knife handy, I wouldn’t put it past her to . . . well, you know.”

“Coffee time, I think,” said Gus, feeling slightly queasy.

Ivy nodded. “I could do with a nice strong cup of tea, Deirdre,” she said. “And none of your scented muck with bits of flowers floating in it. PG Tips will do nicely.”

 

UNAWARE THAT SHE was being roundly insulted by Mrs. Deirdre Bloxham, MBE, Miriam Blake sat at her tiny kitchen table with her mother’s last will and testament spread out before her. It was a simple document, leaving all Winifred Blake’s goods and chattels to her beloved daughter, Miriam. The sting in the tail was that there was all of five hundred pounds in total to bequeath.

“Old devil!” Miriam said aloud. There had been a lot more money squirreled away somewhere, nothing surer. She knew perfectly well that her father had been a mean old bugger, scrimping and saving and hoarding all he could for some imagined emergency. She was sure there was cash somewhere. Her mother had been paranoid about locking doors, and always hung washing on the line to show it was not an empty house, when in fact they were away on their annual one week’s holiday in Southend-on-Sea. On the face of it, there was nothing worth stealing. But
somewhere
. . .