“But you can’t have. We haven’t found Ernestine yet.”
“Oh, I don’t mean the case.” Mrs. Malloy swung her high heels onto the pavement. “It’s even better than that. I know why Watkins’s face seemed so familiar. He’s the man I told you about, the one I talked to a few years back when I came to play bingo with the Biddlington-By-Water senior citizens.”
Sixteen
Trust Mrs. Malloy to have added Watkins to the list of men included in what she was fond of referring to with capital letters as Her Past. I told her I was happy for her, that I vaguely remembered her mentioning some old geezer from that night at bingo. But I didn’t recall her sounding all that smitten. Hadn’t there been something about his feeling guilty about gambling because his wife didn’t approve?
“No one’s perfect, Mrs. H., and seen in daylight he’s not a bad-looking chap.”
“And handy around the house. That’s not to be sneezed at.”
We were entering the café, typical of its sort, with closely grouped tables between which a waitress with a fierce look of concentration on her face was squeezing her way. One turned head, one shift of a customer’s foot, one poke of an elbow and there would go the loaded plates she was carrying. The wall, shelf-lined with copper kettles, provided another hazard, being at just the right height to ensure that anyone seated at a table beneath it would get a cracked head if failing to exercise extreme caution when getting up from a chair.
“It wasn’t his wife.” Mrs. Malloy narrowly missed being side-swiped by one of the plates. “It was his daughter or granddaughter or maybe a niece.”
“Not a nephew?” I was sidling toward the only empty table.
“Oh ho, aren’t we getting snippy, Mrs. H.?”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m hungry and worried that we’re only going to make matters worse by sticking our noses in this business. It will probably take ages for us to be served. And it has begun to dawn on me that we have too many nephews cluttering up this case.”
“Do we?” Mrs. Malloy looked genuinely nonplussed.
“Don’t get me wrong,” I said, moving the bottle of sauce as though it were a pawn on a chess board, “I’m not blaming you for insisting that there be a nasty nephew involved, but one per murder plot is usually considered adequate.”
“That’s all there is, Niles Edmonds.”
“Wrong.” I shifted the pepper pot. “I can count two more already. Mrs. Beetle mentioned the vicar had a nephew who was something of a disappointment because he’d gone on the stage. And Mrs. Hasty told us that Mrs. Snow, the horrible housekeeper, paid her nephew’s boarding school fees.”
“And I’ll bet he’s been made to pay through the nose ever since, the poor sod. He’s probably at her beck and call this minute, trotting up and downstairs with cups of tea and extra pillows for her poor old back. And then there’s someone like Milk”-she threw out a hand, knocking over the salt shaker that I had just set up in position-“off doing what real men do: getting mugged in alleyways and boozing it up in some back room. It just don’t seem fair.”
“You’re right. It isn’t the least bit fair to Lady Krumley that we’re playacting at handling her case because we’ve no means of getting in touch with Mr. Jugg, who must surely have enough credibility with the police to get them to take a closer look at Vincent Krumley’s death. He might also tell us how to set about finding Ernestine pronto.” In my agitation I shot back in my chair and pilloried the waitress.
“You all right, ducks?” Mrs. Malloy asked her. “There’s not room to swing a cat round in here. Now, what was it we was saying, Mrs. H.?” She began unbuttoning her raincoat as the woman sucked in her stomach and sidestepped away.
“That you and I are caught up in something we’re not equipped to handle.”
“Rubbish! Faint hearts never won diddle, let alone the five thousand pound her ladyship has promised us. I’d say we’ve made a lot of headway in one morning, what with Laureen Phillips falling all over herself to spill the beans. And we’d do a lot better if you’d stop fixing on piddly stuff like who’s got a nephew and who hasn’t. Now, don’t go telling me it’s always them little details that helps solve the case in detective stories. I know that and I’m not saying they aren’t important in real life, but the point is we need to keep our eyes on the big picture first and then see how and where the small things fit in to be important. If they do, which probably most of them don’t, being mainly red herrings as they say. Ooh, and that does make me think…”
“What?” I leaned forward hoping to hear that she’d just had a brilliant revelation as to who was the most likely person behind all the peculiar goings-on at Moultty Towers.
“That I could kill for a couple of kippers with poached eggs on top.”
“Is that all?”
“You rather I dropped dead of hunger before Laureen Phillips shows up?”
“If she ever does. Maybe she’s had second thoughts.” Not so, it would seem. I glimpsed a shadow, felt rather than heard someone approach our table, and a moment later Laureen Phillips, wearing a raincoat gaped open to reveal her gray blouse and cardigan, sat down.
“Sorry I’m late, ladies,” she said. “I ran into Mrs. Thatcher outside the corner shop. She was going in to pick up a comic for her son who’s home from school with an upset tummy.”
“Thatcher.” Mrs. Malloy sat looking wise beyond her years (which were always open to interpretation). “Now would she be the constable’s wife?”
“That’s right.” Laureen broke off when the waitress hobbled our way and asked what we would have. Mrs. M. and I settled on sausage, baked beans and chips, that being all that was left on the menu, and a pot of tea to be shared with Laureen who said she didn’t have time for anything else. “And anyway I had a slice of toast while getting Mrs. Hasty’s lunch. She was in a chatty mood after her nap, and I didn’t like to rush away after the shock she’s taken. It’s a wonder she isn’t having nightmares along with Ronald.”
“Ronald?” I wished I could look as intelligent as Mrs. Malloy, who now sat pouring our tea from an earthenware pot almost as big as the table.
“The Thatchers’ boy. He’s nine-years-old and has proved a bit of a handful, having been one of those change-of-life surprise packages and coming after three model brothers, all of them grown up now and living away from home. But if you ask me he’s not a bad kid. He comes over to see Mrs. Hasty quite often. Well, mostly he comes to see the cat.” Laureen smiled, and I decided that, unprofessional though it might be, I liked her, and surely a private detective had to sometimes rely on instinct. “Ronald’s desperate for a cat or a dog, but his father says he can’t have one until he demonstrates some responsibility and maturity. So I don’t give much for his chances at the moment.”
“Why’s that?” I asked.
“And what does it have to do with the case?” Mrs. Malloy frowned so severely that the waitress inquired in a trembling voice if the meals she had set down looked all right. It took my raptures over the burnt sausages to get her to hobble away. And then my heart went with her, so that it took me a moment to refocus.
“I’m not sure.” Laureen sat sipping her tea.
“You said that Ronald’s been having nightmares,” I said, “and now he’s home from school with an upset tummy. I used to get them as a child when I was worried about something.”
“The kid should be worried. He’s in big trouble with his dad for throwing a flower pot at Lady Krumley’s car the day before yesterday when she was driving past the green.” Laureen looked toward the café window. “There was another boy, a classmate of Ronald’s, who was in on it. They were on their school dinner hour, and Constable Thatcher saw what happened and chased them down.”