6 Grounds for Murder (2 page)

“No. Up at Putney Downs. I just heard the news from Samuel, who got it from the milkman this morning. They found her in the woods at the back of the Downs.”

“Strewth.” Gertie clutched her right breast. “Makes me bleeding heart thump, it does. Do they think it’s the gypsies?”

“I wouldn’t be at all surprised, seeing as how the body
was a gypsy. At least they think so. She was wearing gypsy clothes, and they found a bag of clothes pegs lying close by.”

“Well, couldn’t they tell who she was? The gypsies would know her, if she was one of them, wouldn’t they?”

Mrs. Chubb’s face wore the look of a judge about to declare the death sentence. “They couldn’t recognize her,” she said and slowly licked her upper lip.

Gertie had the distinct impression that she didn’t want to hear the rest of this. Little bumps were raising all over her arms, in spite of the moist warmth of the kitchen. Her curiosity wouldn’t let her leave it alone, however.

“Go on,” she said, swallowing hard on the words. “Why couldn’t they recognize her?”

“Because she had no head, that’s why,” Mrs. Chubb said on a note of triumph. “It was chopped off with an axe, so I heard.”

A loud crash greeted her words, and both women jumped an inch off the ground. Mrs. Chubb gave a little yelp and stared at Doris, who stood just inside the doorway.

“Bloody ’ell,” Gertie said crossly when she saw the puddle of milk spreading across the tiled floor. “You almost gave me a bloody ’eart attack, you did, you little twerp.”

Doris dabbed at the drops of milk running down her skirt. “I’m sorry, Miss Brown, Mrs. Chubb. I’ll clean it up. I got scared, and the jug slipped out of me hands.”

“Every blooming thing you touch slips out of your hand.” Gertie lifted her skirt and stepped out of the way of the spreading puddle. “Hurry up and get this muck cleaned up before it runs all over the bleeding floor.”

“It was my fault,” Mrs. Chubb said as Doris flew to the sink. “I should have noticed she was there.”

“Well, she would hear about the murder sometime.” Gertie stomped over the stove and grabbed hold of the coal
scuttle. “Everybody will bloody know soon. I don’t know why it has to be such a blinking secret. It’s not as if she’s a blooming baby now, is it.”

“Have a little more patience, Gertie.” Mrs. Chubb crossed her arms across her heavy bosom. “You were her age once, and just as green. I remember you barging into doors, and what about the time you burned your bum on the stove when you backed into it?”

A smothered giggle from Doris brought hot color to Gertie’s face. “At least I didn’t drop things all the time and forget what I’d been told. Tell me once, that’s all you bleeding had to do, and I remembered.”

“Well, Doris will, too, in time, won’t you, ducks,” Mrs. Chubb said, sending Doris an encouraging smile. “Now be a good girl and get this mess cleaned up before Michel comes in here banging his saucepans around, the way he does.”

Put out by the housekeeper’s defense of the new housemaid, Gertie muttered, “I don’t know why Ethel had to bleeding go to London to live. She might have been slow but she knew what she was doing.”

Mrs. Chubb rolled up her sleeves and moved over to the sink to help Doris lift the heavy bucket of water to the floor. “Now, you know Joe went there to work after selling their farm. If your husband went to London to live, wouldn’t you want to go with him?”

“I s’pose.” Gertie sighed heavily. “But I don’t have no bleeding husband, do I. Nor do I want one.” She saw Doris’s eyes grow wide as her gaze traveled to Gertie’s swollen belly.

“And don’t bloody look at me like that,” Gertie snapped. “I was bleeding married when I got lumbered. At least I thought I was. It weren’t my fault he already had a blinking wife.”

Doris looked away hurriedly and dipped her hands in the hot water. Bringing up a dripping dishcloth from the soapsuds, she squeezed some of the water out of it then slapped it on the floor. “I’m sorry,” she said meekly. “It’s none of my business, I’m sure.”

“Too right, it ain’t.” Gertie strode over to the back door and flung it open. “I’m going to get the coal. I’ll be back in a minute, so I hope the floor is clean by then.”

She stepped out into the damp, dark night and lifted her face to the sky. It felt good not to be on the bottom rung of the work ladder anymore. Now it was her turn to order someone about, and she was going to enjoy it after all the years of taking it from everyone else.

Stomping across the yard to the coal shed, she dragged her thin shawl closer around her shoulders. A cool, crisp wind from the sea brushed her cheeks and brought the taste of salt to her lips. She shivered and wished she’d worn the heavier shawl, the one Mrs. Chubb had knitted for her.

The door of the shed was stuck again, and she tugged on it, lustily swearing when it wouldn’t budge. She’d complained no end of times that the door kept getting stuck. No one took any notice of her anymore. If Ian had been here, he would have mended it for her.

She took a firmer grip on the door and tugged harder. But Ian wasn’t here. He’d gone back to London with the wife he’d somehow forgotten to tell her about. And now she was left here all alone, to have his baby. The baby he’d never see, she’d make bloody sure of that.

One last final heave did the trick. Groaning and creaking, the door opened, sending a shaft of moonlight through the partially open door. It caught the blade of the axe hanging from a hook on the wall, and the sharp edge gleamed with a cold, cruel light.

Gertie stopped dead, unable to take her eyes from the
silvery blade.
She had no head. It was chopped off with an axe
.

“Don’t be bleeding daft, girl,” Gertie muttered out loud. There had to be thousands of axes around the village, she assured herself.

Even so, she shoveled coal into the scuttle as fast as her bulky frame would allow, and as she lugged her heavy load across the yard she made up her mind that from now on Doris could chop the sticks for the fire. She wasn’t going to touch that axe again if her bleeding life depended on it.

CHAPTER
2

Cecily was inclined to treat complaints about Doris with a certain measure of restraint. “The child has had a regrettable background,” she explained to Mrs. Chubb when the housekeeper paid a visit to Cecily’s suite to voice her concern. “Doris’s parents are dead. They died within a month of each other. Pneumonia, I believe.”

Mrs. Chubb clicked her tongue in distress. “Poor baby. No wonder she has a problem concentrating. Did she come from an orphanage, then?”

Cecily plumped up a green velvet cushion on the chaise lounge. “No, Doris was being looked after by an aunt. The woman was unbelievably cruel, metering out punishment
that would have been considered harsh even for the hardest criminal. Doris ran away to escape the abuse.”

“Oh, my.” Mrs. Chubb covered her mouth with her hand.

“I did contact the aunt,” Cecily went on, “although Doris begged me not to. I felt it my duty to inform her of her niece’s whereabouts, though of course I had no intention of sending her back there.”

“So what did she say, then?”

Cecily sighed, remembering the brief note she’d received in response to her letter. “She thanked me for letting her know, and expressed relief that the child was off her hands.”

“Well, then.” Mrs. Chubb dusted the front of her apron with her plump hands. “In that case, mum, I shall do my best to put up with the child’s bungling, and perhaps if we have patience with her she’ll get the hang of things before too long.”

She turned to go, and Cecily said gently, “I’d appreciate it, Altheda, if you would be patient with her. Perhaps my decision to hire Doris was based more on sympathy than on her abilities as a housemaid, but if you remember, James hired Gertie at that age for the same reasons, and look how well she has turned out.”

Mrs. Chubb made a face, then smiled. “Oh, Gertie’s not so bad, mum, I must say. She’ll always be rough around the edges, that girl, but she means well and she’s a good worker, Gertie is.”

“So she is,” Cecily agreed, returning the smile. “Perhaps she can help Doris learn the ropes.”

“Don’t you worry, mum. If anyone can lick that poor little mite into shape, it’ll be our Gertie. You mark my words.”

Cecily hoped profoundly that her housekeeper was right. The subject of Doris was still on her mind as she made her way down to the drawing room later. It had always been James’s contention that everyone deserved a chance, and
Doris was no exception. Cecily rather thought that James would be pleased by her decision.

It was just as well a large crowd was expected for the Guy Fawkes celebrations, Cecily thought, as she entered the drawing room. Otherwise the hotel’s financial situation would be even worse than it was at present. The hotel guest list was unusually short, this being so late in the year.

The considerable bills that James had run up while renovating the hotel had left formidable debts that would take years to pay back. The Pennyfoot needed a full house now and again during the off-season to survive.

Colonel Fortescue, seated on the rocking chair by the blazing fire, greeted Cecily with his usual hearty exuberance. A regular guest at the hotel, he considered himself a shade or two more privileged than the rest of the guests and often took advantage of the fact.

Cecily put up with his somewhat disturbing behavior for two reasons. In the first place, his custom was sorely needed. In the second place, the colonel suffered from a highly nervous condition brought upon by his close proximity to gunfire. Amongst other things, the experience had left him with a pronounced stutter, and what some people described as an addled brain.

Having been the wife of a military man, Cecily could sympathize with the man’s condition, though at times even she was sorely tried by the colonel’s strange antics.

“Spiffing!” Colonel Fortescue exclaimed, when Cecily announced that she was there to join the guests for afternoon tea. “Just what a chappie needs to brighten up this gray dismal day, what? What?”

The other guests in the room politely mumbled in agreement.

“It is indeed a horrible day out there,” Lady Belleville
chirped. “Why, the wind was so fierce my poor little birds could hardly balance on my shoulders.”

Colonel Fortescue looked startled. “Birds?”

The elderly widow nodded her head. “Yes, my canaries.” She lifted a finger to her lips. “Hush! They don’t like people talking about them. They think they are invisible, you see.”

“Oh, quite, quite,” the colonel murmured, obviously at a loss for a suitable answer.

Cecily could hardly blame him. Lady Belleville was well known for her eccentricities, including her conviction that her “birds” accompanied her everywhere, seated either on her shoulder or her wrist. The fact that, as yet, no one had ever seen or heard these particular birds appeared to faze her not at all.

“Yes,” Lady Belleville said, “that dreadful wind would have taken my hat into the ocean with it, had I not had it pinned securely to my head.”

“By George, that must be dashed painful,” the colonel said, furiously blinking his eyelids.

Lady Belleville lifted a pair of diamond-encrusted lorgnettes and looked down her nose through them. “You have something in your eye, my good man?”

“What?” The colonel looked confused for a moment, then shook his head. “Oh, no, madam. Can’t stop the blighters from flapping up and down. Damned nuisance. Can’t keep a dashed monocle in place for five seconds.”

He twirled one end of his white mustache with his fingers. “Got shot at during the Boer War, you know. Frightful scrimmage that was, what? What? I remember when—”

“Colonel,” Cecily said before the man could launch into one of his horrific tales of the fighting in Africa. “Tell me, what do you make of this dreadful murder on the Downs?”

Belatedly she wished she had introduced another subject.
The murder had been uppermost in her mind, and the first thing she had pounced on when searching for a diversion.

“Why, absolutely ghastly, of course, old bean,” the colonel said with relish. “Imagine, chopping off her head like that. Must have been a saber, of course. Sharp as the devil, those blades are. One slice and”—he made a squelching noise in his throat and thrust his hand sideways—“right through the neck as clean as a whistle.”

“I say, must you be quite so explicit?” The little man seated next to him looked thoroughly uncomfortable. Cyril Plunkett was a salesman from London and had informed Cecily that he had chosen the Pennyfoot instead of one of the bigger hotels in Wellercombe because he detested the noise and bustle of the town.

He had discovered the charm of the hotel, he’d told her, when he’d solicited a fairly large order for his cleaning supplies from Mrs. Chubb.

Now he sat on the edge of his seat, looking as if he were ready to spring in the air like a disturbed frog if someone upset him.

The colonel glanced down at him as if surprised to find him there. “Oh, sorry, old chap. Didn’t mean to offend, what? What?”

“Who’s offending whom?” a bored voice asked from the doorway.

Cecily turned to see a tall, bulky man enter the room. His dark bushy beard was neatly trimmed, his mustache carefully waxed, and his full lips nestled in the center like ripe berries in a furry paw.

Ellsworth Galloway always made an entrance, and he did so now, striking a majestic pose with one hand over his heart while he surveyed the rest of the occupants in the room.

Colonel Fortescue viewed the opera singer with distaste.
“Don’t think that should concern you, old chap,” he said pompously. “We happened to be talking about the murder of that gypsy girl.”

“Oh, is that all.” Ellsworth turned to Cecily and gave her a slight bow of his head. “For a moment I thought I might have interrupted something interesting.”

“You don’t find a murder interesting, Mr. Galloway?” Cecily asked, raising an eyebrow. “After all, it isn’t every day one hears of such a gruesome death. One does have to wonder why the murderer went to all that trouble to chop off the head and apparently hide it elsewhere, while leaving the rest of the body in full view for anyone to find.”

“Er … do we really have to discuss this subject?” Cyril Plunkett said, fidgeting with his glasses. Tiny beads of sweat stood out on the bald patch above his forehead. “I do find it all rather disgusting, you know.”

“Disgusting?” Ellsworth’s laugh rumbled through the room. “My dear chap, as far as I am concerned, that’s one less savage we have to worry about. Probably deserved to have her head chopped off, that’s what I say. I’d like to see every last one of them wiped off the face of this earth.”

“She was a human being, sir,” Cecily protested. “No human being deserves that kind of treatment.”

“Well, dashed if I could lose too much sleep over the little beggar,” the colonel said, patting his pockets as if looking for something. “Never did like those blasted heathens running around in the woods. Spoils the atmosphere, old bean. Can’t have a decent walk in the woods anymore without tripping over one of the bastards.”

“I say,” Cyril muttered, casting an anxious look at Cecily. “Ladies present and all that, you know.”

“Well, I should think so.” Lady Belleville placed her fingers on her shoulder. “Come, darlings, we shall go for a little walk. All this talk of heathens running around the
woods is quite upsetting. Not at all what we want to hear, is it, my lovelies?”

Cyril’s jaw dropped as he watched the dowager gently lift her empty fingers close to her face. The lace collar that bound her throat ended in a ruffle beneath her chin, and the soft fabric fluttered as she twittered chirping noises at an imaginary bird.

As if aware of his stare, Lady Belleville transferred her gaze to Cyril. “Thank you, so much, Mr. Plunkett, for coming to our rescue. Such a true gentleman, indeed.” She swept toward him, and Cyril jerked back in his chair as if he’d been stung by a nettle.

“Not that I like gypsies,” Lady Belleville said, leaning precariously over him to expose her bosom. “They kill the birds and eat them, you know. Perhaps that’s what happened to that gypsy girl’s head.”

Cecily winced as she watched Cyril visibly pale.

He swallowed several times, then said faintly, “I … er … don’t think so.”

“Well, whatever. As long as they don’t touch my birds, I don’t suppose it matters.” Lady Belleville crossed the room to stand in front of Cecily. “I don’t think I shall stay for afternoon tea,” she said, fixing her strange, intent stare on Cecily’s face. “I don’t care for the conversation.”

“I’m sorry, Lady Belleville. Perhaps I can have a tray sent to your room?”

“Thank you. That would be most pleasant.” The dowager wandered out of the door, still making twittering noises at her “birds.”

“Good Lord,” Ellsworth said, running his fingers through his thick, curly hair. “Is everyone batty around here? Am I the only sane one to inhabit this hotel?”

Cyril got up abruptly from his chair. “I don’t think I shall stay either,” he said, looking apologetically at Cecily.

“Frightened you off, did we?” Ellsworth said, with one of his hearty laughs. “Can’t take a juicy murder, heh? Or perhaps you are friends with the uncivilized devils, is that it? Make lots of good sales to them, do you?”

Cyril paused in front of the sneering opera singer. “I do not deal with the gypsies, no, sir,” he said quietly. “I agree that for the most part they are nothing but thieves and liars. I do believe, however, that a certain measure of decorum should be employed when conversing with ladies. I find your manner quite despicable.”

He left quickly, as if aghast at his own audacity, nevertheless earning Cecily’s respect. As proprietor of the hotel, she had often been forced to bite her tongue in order to avoid offending a guest, but with regards to Ellsworth Galloway, never had she been quite so tempted to tell someone exactly what she thought of him.

“Sniveling little plebeian,” Galloway said with a contemptuous toss of his head. “Who does that insignificant lowbrow think he’s talking to? Really, Mrs. Sinclair, you are lowering the class of this establishment by allowing such ill-bred riffraff to invade the Pennyfoot. This hotel always had such an impeccable reputation when your husband was alive.”

Cecily drew in a sharp breath. “Mr. Galloway, not that it’s any of your business, but I feel compelled to inform you that Mr. Plunkett works for a very prestigious firm in London. I happen to be acquainted with the chairman of the board, and he speaks very highly of Mr. Plunkett. A respected and valuable asset to their sales force, I believe were his very words.”

“But working class nevertheless. Not at all the type of person I should expect to find at the Pennyfoot Hotel.”

Throwing caution to the wind, Cecily said quietly, “As far as I am concerned, sir, if someone can afford to pay the
price, he has every right to the product. I will not turn anyone away from this establishment on the basis of class distinction.”

“Then, madam, I fear your hotel will soon lose its appeal to the more privileged among us. I for one will not associate with such ugly lowlife.”

“That, sir, is your privilege.”

“I say, old bean,” the colonel said, obviously upset by this somewhat heated exchange, “don’t take it to heart. I’m sure Galloway didn’t mean any offense.”

For a moment the singer looked as if he would argue the point, then he cleared his throat. “My apologies, madam. I believe I have lost my appetite.” He strode from the room, and Cecily let her shoulders sag. Really, the man was impossible.

“I imagine that leaves just you and me for tea, what? What?”

Cecily glanced at the colonel, who was looking at her as if afraid to catch the backlash of her wrath. She forced a smile, saying, “Colonel, I shall be happy to join you.”

“Splendid! Then I can tell you about the time I cut off the head of a chicken when I was in India. Blasted thing ran around headless for an hour squawking like a burned cat. I’m damn sure it was looking for its head….”

It was going to be a very long afternoon, Cecily thought dismally.

If there was one person who could calm her shattered nerves, Cecily told herself later, it was Baxter. Ever since James had died, leaving her to face the innumerable problems of running the hotel, she had relied on her manager for guidance, support, and sympathy.