A Dark and Stormy Night (24 page)

In the end he opted to guard Dave's body, I suppose on the principle that a recent murder, even if not proven, was of more interest than two very old ones, even though they were almost certainly the results of foul play. What forensic evidence there was should be protected. Besides that, Laurence was already being guarded, and there were far too many of the rest of us for one man to make any difference.

I suspected, too, that the poor constable had decided we were all a pack of lunatics, and the corpse in the garage was more congenial company.

So the pack of lunatics dispersed, each of us left to our own devices. Rose Bates returned to her kitchen, undoubtedly offended by the disturbance to her routine. Her husband went about whatever mysterious tasks he chose to undertake. Pat wandered off toward the library and Ed, camera in hand, to find some good shots while the sun still shone. Laurence went straight back to bed, this time with Jim to keep him company, while Mr Leatherbury took a well-deserved nap and Joyce tried hard to think of some way to keep her imprisoned guests amused and happy. Tom and Lynn went for a walk.

In short, we were back to where we were, almost, except that the presence of one young constable had, perhaps irrationally, eased our fears and our cabin fever. Soon, now, we were going to know what had happened. Soon we would be able to go home. Soon our lives would be back to normal.

Except for Dave Harrison's. And Julie's. And Mike's.

With a heartfelt, Scarlett-like vow not to think about them, I proposed to Alan that we revisit the mummy.

‘I thought you found her pretty grim, darling.'

‘I do. But I have a theory about her, and I'd like to know if there's anything to be seen that justifies my idea.'

Alan shook his head. ‘Unsound practice. You don't formulate a theory and then look for facts to justify it; you collect facts and then—'

I made a rude noise. ‘Don't be stuffy. You know perfectly well every policeman in the world forms theories ahead of the facts. You'd never get anywhere with tough cases if you didn't. Anyway, you're going to do the looking, not me. Nothing in the world would get me to look at that grinning skull again.'

John Bates was in the hall outside the drawing room door, hammer raised, preparing to board up one of the broken windows. ‘Oh, J— Mr Bates,' I said. ‘Is Mrs Bates feeling well? I thought she seemed a bit . . . distressed, earlier.'
Testy
was what I really meant, but it didn't seem politic to say so.

‘She is quite well, thank you, madam, but a bit upset, owing to her work having got so far behind.'

‘Well, you tell her for me that we all certainly understand, and she's not to worry.'

He gave a little bow. ‘Thank you, madam. I will give her your good wishes.'

‘He is so exactly like Jeeves, I sometimes thinks it's Wodehouse I've walked into, rather than Christie. I didn't think they came like that anymore.'

‘A
rara avis
, certainly,' Alan agreed.

We took the lift to the third floor. That fruitless little expedition this morning had been harder on my knees than I cared to admit; Alan could tell, though. He unlocked the door to the forsaken bedroom – I had begun thinking of it in those terms – and turned on the lights.

I avoided looking at the table where the mummy lay. ‘Alan, I was serious when I said I didn't want to look at her unless I absolutely have to. But you're trained to observe. I want you to describe for me, in detail, exactly what her hair looks like, and what she's wearing.'

‘She's rather nicely dressed, or would be if her clothes weren't covered in dust. Everything is black. Her jumper – sorry, sweater to you – is knit in some very fine-gauge yarn, not wool but a synthetic, I think. No moth holes, at any rate. It fits well and has a little lacy-looking collar, removable. It has yellowed over the years, though, and cracked a bit. Starched, I suppose.'

I cheered inwardly, but made no comment.

‘You understand I'm describing the way I imagine her clothes would have looked when she was put in here. Her body has shrunk, so the fit isn't good now – but I think it was. Her skirt is of a different fabric, rather thin, and is – I don't know the word – it flares out from the waist.'

I risked a look. ‘Unpressed pleats,' I said. ‘Quite full, and hemmed just about at the knee. They don't make clothes like that anymore. And black stockings. Alan, I can't make myself touch her. Could you check to see if they're pantyhose – tights?'

I couldn't watch, either. It seemed like such a violation, an invasion of her privacy. Which was foolish. She was dead, had been dead for a long time. Still – she'd taken the trouble to dress nicely. She wouldn't have wanted some strange man pulling up her skirt.

‘Tights,' Alan reported. ‘Black, fairly coarse – dancers' tights, I'd say, not regular street wear.'

‘Yes,' I said absently to myself. ‘That would fit. I wore those about then, I remember.' Aloud, I asked one more thing.

‘And her hair, Alan?'

‘It's gone brittle over the years, and lost its colour. Some of it has probably broken off – the forensics team will be able to tell us more. But it was long, and she wore it pulled back, with a black ribbon, Alice-style. If I had to guess, I'd say she was a blond. All that black would be attractive on a blond. Oh, and she's wearing earrings, small gold hoops – at least I think they're gold.'

‘Pierced ears?'

‘No. Clip-ons.'

I hated to ask the last question, but I thought I knew the answer, anyway. ‘Wedding ring?'

‘No. No rings at all. Her fingers are shrivelled, though. It's possible any rings might have fallen off. I'll check.'

He had brought a powerful flashlight. He shone it around every crevice of the poor girl's tomb.

‘I don't see anything, and I can't grub around in there without incurring the ire of the SOCOs. I shouldn't have removed her, by rights, but I had no way of knowing the cavalry was on its way, and I didn't like the idea of leaving her to the mercy of anyone who might think it a good idea to do a little cover-up. Now, what does all that tell you, my dear Miss Marple?'

‘It tells me when she died, and tends to confirm my theory about why.'

‘Ah.' Alan looked at me with that mixture of admiration and indulgence he uses when I'm being sleuthly. ‘And are you going to share your insights with a poor dogsbody of an ageing detective?'

‘Yes, let's – Alan, do cover her up. It's obscene, somehow, sitting here talking about her in front of her.'

To his credit, Alan did not smile, simply unfolded the sheet he'd used to cover her face and laid it gently over her. We went to a settee that gave off clouds of dust when we sat on it, and I explained my conclusions.

‘We know the mummy – Annie, poor girl – we know she was still alive in 1958, because her driver's licence was issued then. Now. The other death, the skeleton – Harry – almost certainly took place in 1960. I thought it would be really strange if they were not somehow connected, so I thought about how to tell when she died.'

‘The clothes,' said Alan, enlightened.

‘The clothes. They are the fashions of the late fifties into about 1961. After that Mary Quant reigned supreme among the young Englishwoman who cared at all about clothes, so Annie here would have been wearing a miniskirt.'

‘How do you know all this? I never thought of you as a fashionista.'

‘I'm not now, but I was young then, just a little younger than Annie, if I'm right. We were a bit behind England in catching up with Carnaby Street, but I read the magazines and wished those styles would come to southern Indiana. Anyway, this girl was plainly young, nineteen or twenty, I'd guess.'

‘Clothes again?'

‘Partly, but mostly her hair. No one wore an Alice band much after twenty, even in Indiana. I never did, in fact. My hair was always thick and wavy, and not even ironing it could give it that lovely straight, shiny fall. I remember – but that's beside the point, which is that Annie was young, and tried to look her best, even though she didn't have much money.'

Alan was stymied by that one.

‘The collar, Alan. That detachable collar. I'm betting it's plastic, yes?'

‘
Plastic?
' He went back to Annie, turned back the sheet, and gingerly touched the collar. ‘Well, I suppose it's possible.'

‘Aha! I do know more than you about some things, even English things. When Mary Quant was first starting out, she opened a little shop in London, and one of her special things was little white plastic collars. You could take a plain black sweater and turn it into something chic, just by fastening on the collar. Easy and cheap.'

‘And she started selling them – when?'

‘The mid-fifties, I think, but they died out around 1960 or '61, when the mini was about to become all the rage. You'll note that Annie's skirt is much shorter than the calf-length that prevailed during the fifties, but not yet above the knee. Also, she wore dancer's tights, because she wanted black, and what we Americans call pantyhose – street tights – didn't come into use until miniskirts made them a necessity.
Et voilà!
She was twenty or so and dressed conservatively, but definitely fashionably, on a tiny income. The sweater, by the way, is probably Dacron. It was really popular for a while, knitted up very fine-grained, and was very inexpensive.'

‘So she died at about the same time as Harry. Is that what you're saying?'

I had been a trifle elated by my discoveries, but I came back to earth with a thump. ‘Yes, poor thing.'

‘And – the wedding ring? Or the lack thereof?'

‘This is the hard part, Alan. She doesn't show any obvious injuries, does she? I mean, she wasn't shot, or hit over the head, or whatever?'

He already knew where I was going. ‘There are lots of ways to kill a person and leave few traces. Poison, for one.'

‘Yes, I know. And the forensics people will have to take everything into account. But I'm betting, Alan – I'm betting she was one of Harry's victims. I'm betting she either killed herself, or died in childbirth. Harry's child.'

TWENTY-SEVEN

‘
I
t's the wildest speculation,' said Alan after a long silence.

‘But based on a good many facts. Her age. I know that from the way she's dressed and the way she did her hair. Or, OK, Mr Policeman, I surmise that. One is allowed reasonable deductions from the evidence.'

Alan made one of those see-saw, yes-no-maybe gestures.

‘And given her age, we know when she died. And it was about the same time that Harry died. Isn't it really hard to believe that the two events were simply coincidental?'

‘It's a house of cards – but you know that. Go on building it.'

‘I think I'm done,' I said, deflated now. ‘But it isn't quite a house of cards. Is it?'

He was quiet for a long time, making little puffing motions with his mouth, as if he still had his pipe. Finally he said, ‘You're suggesting that Harry seduced this girl, she bore his child and died in her travail, or killed herself for shame, and Harry decided to flee the country – but someone killed him before he could get away.'

‘More or less, yes. I know it's awfully thin, but—'

‘Thin! It's tissue paper! We don't know for sure that the skeleton is Harry's. We know nothing about this girl but her name. We don't even know how she met her death. We can't—'

‘Alan.' I put out my hand. ‘Stop thinking like a policeman for a minute. What if my hypothesis – OK, my wild guess – is true? What if Harry did make this girl pregnant? And just suppose, just for one moment, that she had been your daughter. What if he'd done that to Elizabeth? And she'd died of it. What would you have done?'

Another silence. Then Alan said, softly, ‘I'd have beaten him within an inch of his life.'

I held up my hands in the universal ‘There you have it' gesture.

‘All right,' he conceded. ‘It's still thin as skim milk, but I'm beginning to believe it might be possible. We'll have to get—'

‘—the forensic evidence. I know. If Annie, here, turns out to be
virgo intacta
, we drop the theory. But she won't. Poor Annie. No baby, no lover, no life left.'

But there, as it happened, I was wildly, seriously, wrong.

It was nearly lunchtime. I didn't know if Rose was up to cooking us anything, but she produced a masterpiece of a meal, as usual. I couldn't imagine how she kept on feeding us with no fresh groceries, but she managed to come up with a salad of canned and frozen vegetables, a pasta dish fit for the gods, and a chocolate mousse that I would have sworn had a dozen eggs in it. I raised my eyebrows at Joyce, who simply shrugged in helpless wonder.

‘I don't know how she does it,' she said, shaking her head. ‘Like Peter Wimsey with respect to Bunter's coffee, I don't want to know. If it's witchcraft, I'd rather remain ignorant.'

‘If it's witchcraft, she's a white witch,' I replied. ‘And in any case, a treasure.'

‘And Mr Bates – he's just as wonderful. There is nothing he won't turn his hand to, and do it well. He doesn't even need to be told; he just sees what needs doing and does it. Jim and I couldn't possibly keep this place going without him.'

After lunch what I wanted more than anything else was a nap, but I resisted and went to the library to hunt down Pat. For once she wasn't there. A volume of Thackeray lay bookmarked on a table, which, given her taste in literature, told me she had probably been there, but she had fled. I noted with approval that she didn't leave books face down, and went to hunt for her.