Mrs. Malloy avoided an outright lie. “Wonky tickers run in our family, Melody.”
“Mine’s all right.”
“Yes, but then you’re younger than me. Always have been and always will be.” The nobility of this admission almost brought me to tears. But then she lapsed. “ ’Course, people do say as I don’t look a day over forty. Still”-her halo, or it could have been her royal crown, reemerged-“I can’t claim to look a slip of a girl the way you do, Melody.”
“Really?” Another of those sideways glances, but this time not at the desk calendar. Did Melody hope to see a mirror magically appear on the wall?
“I like that new way you’re doing your hair.”
“You do?” Fingers poked at the shapeless frizz.
“And your figure! You’ve lost your puppy fat. Must be from keeping yourself so active at the typewriter. I’ve never seen the like of the way you go! How many words can you do a minute?”
“Only three hundred and twenty-two as of nine-thirty-seven this morning. I’ve fallen off a bit since a week last Tuesday. That would be-”
“Yes, so it would,” said Mrs. Malloy. “You’ll pick up your speed again, Melody, once you get that library card. By the way, did you ever get over Mr. R?”
“Thirty-six years ago today.”
“Well, happy anniversary.”
“I woke up at six-thirty-one and thought, Let Edward Fairfax Rochester have his Jane Eyre. And then it came to me. It was just a book! Quite a nice little story, not badly written, but that’s all there was to it. Fiction has its place; I can admit that now. I should have renewed my library card. But I have my living to earn.” Melody was now dusting between the keys with a cotton swab. “And in the evenings and on my days off I have other claims on my time. There’s my small flat to clean, and-”
“A gentleman friend?” Mrs. Malloy inquired coyly.
No response.
“Not”-Mrs. M’s smile vanished-“Mr. Scrimshank?”
“I did have a glimmer of hope twenty-two and a half years ago as of last Saturday that something might be developing between us, but it flickered out before he finished that morning’s dictation. And subsequent events, coupled with certain doubts”-she was now digging even more assiduously between the typewriter keys-“have led me to believe that Mother was right in saying very few men are what they appear to be. And the worst are the kind who look like they’d never do an underhanded thing in their lives, let alone something criminal.”
Mrs. Malloy and I exchanged startled looks.
“What doubts?” Mrs. M asked sharply.
“I can’t get into that now. I have a dozen letters to finish in seventeen and three-quarter minutes if I’m to get out of here by five-thirty.” Melody rammed a sheet of paper into the typewriter. “So if you and Mrs. Haskell will excuse me, we’ll have to talk about this another time.”
“This evening, then.”
“Thank you.” Melody’s fingers were poised above the keys. “But I have a prior engagement. I always spend Saturday evenings with a friend.”
“Male or female?” Mrs. Malloy was instantly sidetracked.
“A person who, like myself, is a keen knitter. It makes for quite an intense bond. The hours fly by. Sometimes we hardly talk. There’s no need. Our knitting pins do the communicating for us.”
“I never saw you so much as cast on a row of stitches!”
“My life has gone in new directions. We have a very active knitting circle in Milton Moor. Some noteworthy people belong.”
“Well, if that isn’t wonderful! It makes me feel a lot better knowing as how you’ve at least been reading patterns for jumpers and cardigans instead of giving yourself over body and soul to the telly. But you can’t go leaving Mrs. Haskell and me in suspense over what you was saying about Mr. Scrimshank.”
Melody merely compressed her lips. They weren’t purple but might just as well have been. It was an expression I knew well. Neither did Mrs. Malloy’s response differ from what might be expected.
“If I walk out of here not knowing, I’ll be up all night with palpitations and a doctor will have to be sent for, unless I’m rushed off to hospital with an oxygen mask stuck to me, which is something I’m sure wouldn’t suit the shape of me face. Is that something you really want to happen, when we’ve just had this nice reconciliation after forty years?”
Melody appeared to think this over. She got up, opened the door, looked outside, and returned to her seat. “I had to make sure he wasn’t listening.” She lowered her voice. “It all connects up to Mr. Gallagher’s disappearance. There’s nothing concrete, just these uneasy thoughts that might mean something and might not. My… knitting friend says they don’t amount to anything that Mr. Scrimshank couldn’t easily explain away. Suspicion isn’t evidence.”
“Start from when you first became concerned,” I suggested.
“I always thought it curious that he kept the Gallaghers’ records in the safe in his office, rather than giving them to me to file, and that he took to sending me off on some trumpery errand when her ladyship and her husband came in to talk to him.”
“Why do you think that was, Miss Tabby?”
“It started a couple of years ago. Mr. Gallagher came on his own one Monday morning at-”
“No need for the twiddly bits, Mel.”
“You’re right, I need to hurry this up.” She looked nervously toward the door. “He could come in for those letters. I’ve never been a second later than promised when putting them on his desk. On that occasion Mr. Gallagher did something most unusual. He came in here to talk to me about being surprised that what should have been sound investments had done so poorly over the last few years.”
“Did he sound suspicious that Mr. Scrimshank had mishandled the funds?”
“He talked about the country going downhill, blamed the economy on the present government, all that sort of thing. Then Mr. Scrimshank walked in, looking rattled. The door was ajar and he could have heard. My knitting friend says it’s understandable Mr. Scrimshank wouldn’t appreciate Mr. Gallagher discussing his financial affairs with me. And that it’s not strange about those records being in the safe when there was a friendship as well as a business relationship.”
“True.” Mrs. Malloy pursed her lips.
“There’s more.” Melody’s voice dropped lower and she spoke faster. “It has to do with the woman who came in to clean at night, after the office was closed.”
“What about her?” Mrs. Malloy and I asked as one.
“Mr. Scrimshank sacked her. He said she had been stealing. Small things: paperweights off his desk, a little box for holding paper clips. I’m sure she did it, because my coffee cup went missing, and of course I hadn’t moved it. Like everything else on my desk it had its precise spot, never a half inch to the right or left. Even so, I felt sorry for her.” Melody paused to glance again at the door. “She seemed a pleasant enough woman. Of course, I didn’t approve of the way she bleached her hair. Mother would have described her as blowzy. Her name’s Frances Edmonds and-”
“We’ve met her and the husband. Just as we was leaving to come here.” Mrs. Malloy turned to me. “Who’d have thought! Betty Hopkins with her nose for crime is all pally and free as a breeze with a kleptomaniac.”
“Ariel told me Frances stole things,” I said, “but it seemed best to take some of what she says with a grain of salt.”
Melody, her fingers scratching at the typewriter keys, continued hastily. “I came into work one Friday, which I don’t do as a rule because the office is closed. Naturally, I have a record of the time and date, but… anyway, there was some filing I wanted to get done. What surprised me was seeing Mr. Scrimshank’s hat and coat on the hall tree in the alcove by the side entrance. So I went down the hall to his office to let him know I was there. The door was open and I could hear his voice. Frances Edmonds was with him. Mr. Scrimshank wasn’t shouting or going off the deep end. He was speaking in a low calm voice, but I could hear every word. She was crying buckets and begging him not to turn her over to the authorities. I froze where I was, afraid to move because… well, whatever she’d done, I didn’t want her to know that I’d heard.”