Murder in Style (7 page)

‘She's worn out,' said Clemmie. ‘She needs a rest.'

‘And I need looking after, don't I? Well, I suppose, if she's back in the morning … Oh, yes! She'll be back. Or else! Now, who's going to help me out to the car? You know I can't manage the step without assistance.'

‘I'll do it,' said Clemmie. She reached for the wheelchair and he struck her hand away – not pettishly, but with some force.

Ellie blinked. Clemmie's eyes went blank but she made no sound. Ellie had seen children who'd been hit react like that before. The scene conveyed a certain message, but for the moment she couldn't think what it was. Clemmie made as if to rub her arm, but refrained. She said, ‘Celine, can you get home on your own?'

Celine rubbed her eyes. ‘Yes, of course.' She sounded exhausted. ‘I'll fetch my jacket. It's somewhere …' She looked around, vaguely.

Ellie got out her mobile and pressed buttons. ‘Celine, I'm ordering a cab to take me home. I'll drop you off first, if I may?'

Celine nodded. She didn't seem very aware of what was going on. She plucked a jacket from a pile in the hall, saying, ‘Juno gets ear infections when she's run down. Ever since I've known her, almost sixteen years. I manage the shop, you see.'

‘Yes,' said Ellie. ‘I do see. It's a mess, isn't it?' She walked with Celine to the front door. ‘Would it help to talk it over with me?' Immediately, she wondered how she'd dared to issue such an invitation. She must be mad.

‘No one can do anything,' said Celine. ‘It is what it is. I'm opening the shop tomorrow. It's been closed for a week. Juno may not be up to it, but I have to open.'

Ellie nodded. Yes, she could see that. Well, she'd put in a spot of prayer about the situation, and see what happened.

W
hen her taxi came, Ellie gave Celine a lift, and dropped her off at an upmarket block of flats. As she'd never learned to drive, Ellie kept a monthly account with a local cab firm, and had fallen into the habit of praying when she was being transported from A to B. Now was a good opportunity.

Ellie was worried. Her policewoman friend, Lesley, had been right. Something was deeply, seriously wrong in the Cordover family, and yes, if the situation were not dealt with, Ellie believed that there could indeed be more violence.

Ellie's mind buzzed with questions. Clemmie: she couldn't be Gordon's child, could she? The colour of her skin, the colour of her eyes …

Her cousin Trixie: overindulged brat, who might possibly have talent, but … How did anyone break into films, anyway?

Ray, her father. Deep in debt. Threatened with divorce by his wife, Poppy. An unpleasant character, but if he did have an alibi then he couldn't have killed his wife.

Juno: heartsick. Grief-stricken. Query, sickening for something?

Gordon, her husband. An invalid; poor man, Ellie had to feel sorry for him, even if he were somewhat self-centred and not exactly her idea of a caring husband. Perhaps he couldn't be loving and caring, confined to a wheelchair.

It was all very well acknowledging that something was wrong, but what could Ellie do about it, except worry?

To be fair, Ellie Quicke could worry for England. She worried about her husband Thomas; though, if challenged, she had to admit that he could perfectly well take care of himself. She worried about being found inadequate as the chair of her charitable trust fund, even though other people thought she made an excellent job of it. She worried about finding herself in all sorts of situations, some imaginary and some real, even though she usually managed to worry through them somehow or other.

But not this affair. Surely, this one was nothing to do with her. She would ask God to look after the Cordovers, and get back to worrying about her everyday problems.

She let herself back into her house, called out, ‘I'm back!' to whoever might be around, and found that her daughter Diana had left her an envelope marked ‘Urgent' on the hall table.

Ellie grinned. So she'd missed another meeting with her daughter? Tough! She didn't bother to open the envelope but went into the kitchen to make herself a cuppa, only to find that Susan, their lodger and part-time housekeeper, was cleaning out the larder.

Now Susan was not normally a worrier. She'd been wished on Ellie and Thomas by her aunt Lesley who, yes, was the policewoman who had got Ellie involved in the Cordover case. Susan was in her final year as a full-time student of cookery at West London University and needed somewhere to stay in term-time. She was doing well in her course, and would have no trouble getting a job when she finished. She had fitted into the household as if she'd been brought up in it.

Susan adored having her own space in the flat at the top of Ellie's big house, even if it didn't have its own entrance due to some officious person at the Town Hall declaring that Ellie wasn't allowed to make a separate front door because that might mean someone bringing another car into the road, even though there was plenty of off-road parking.

Susan had a light hand with pastry and a sunny disposition. She only tackled Ellie's larder when she was in distress about something, which would be about twice a year. On those occasions she would move the chutneys which she'd made to the shelf which usually held her homemade marmalade and mincemeat, and vice versa. She would bang and sweep and sniff and turn her little radio up high, sending up flags of distress.

Ellie dithered. She didn't want to barge in on someone who was having a private scream to themselves which would soon be over. On the other hand, Ellie could make a pretty good guess as to what was causing Susan such distress, and ignoring the matter was not going to make it go away. Susan had been asked to be a bridesmaid at Lesley's wedding, and was dreading the event. Ellie could understand why.

So, steeling herself to interfere, Ellie knocked on the door to the larder, which was ajar. ‘Susan, have you time for a cuppa?'

Ellie could only see Susan's behind from where she stood, as her head was under the bottom shelf.

‘Go away. I'm all right.' A muffled voice, full of tears?

‘Oh, Susan.' Ellie sighed. ‘Come on out. We'll have a cuppa, and you can tell me all about it.'

Mumble, mumble. Which, being translated, meant Susan didn't have anything to tell.

‘Come on,' said Ellie, surprising herself by being firm with the girl. ‘I'll put the kettle on.' Which she did.

Susan duly extricated herself from under the shelf, blew her nose, whispered something about being an idiot, and seated herself at the kitchen table in front of the large mug which she preferred to any other. Ellie poured tea, pushed the box of tissues towards Susan and investigated the contents of the biscuit tin.

The official arrangement was that Ellie cooked for herself and Thomas, and Susan got her own meals in the small kitchen at the top of the house. However, Susan also liked to try out recipes in the big kitchen downstairs where there was more room to work and a bigger oven. Some of the resultant dishes would be popped into the freezer, and some she would leave out for the household to devour for their evening meals.

Occasionally Susan felt moved to make a batch of gingerbread, shortbread or brownies and this was Hurray Time for the household. (Anything but coconut: Thomas didn't care for coconut for some reason.) Ellie didn't buy many biscuits nowadays. The Cordovers had pretty well cleaned out the tin yesterday, but apparently Susan had decided to bake some chocolate-chip cookies today. Hurray. Ellie took one and pushed the tin at Susan.

Investigating the biscuit tin had given Ellie time to consider how to approach the vexed question of the forthcoming wedding.

Lesley Milburn – Susan's aunt – was marrying a pleasant young man who taught at a local primary school. Bride and bridegroom had asked suitable members of the family on either side to act as bridesmaids. Susan had been invited, had tried to decline and been overruled. Susan was a solid-looking girl with capable hands and sandy, frizzy hair drawn up into a no-nonsense knot. She had a large bosom of which she was ashamed, and which she tried to disguise by wearing black T-shirts with silly slogans on them. Susan was not, and never had been, a size nought.

The bridegroom had a young sister, Angelica, who
was
a size nought, and who was glorying in the fact that, as bridesmaid, she would be in all the photographs and the centre of attention after the bride. Angelica had long blonde hair, long black eyelashes and a sylph-like figure.

The contrast between the two girls set one's teeth on edge and, to make matters worse, Angelica had been allowed to choose the bridesmaid's dresses, which were to be a floating chiffon overdress in peach, with the tightest of figure-hugging sheaths underneath. This revealing style could never in a thousand years look good on Susan.

Susan had refrained from murdering Angelica, but the iron had entered into her soul. Lesley, going straight from the Cordover affair into a sordid case of child abuse, and distracted by the last-minute hitches that can occur in the weeks before a wedding, was unapproachable.

Susan knew she had to put up and shut up, but the thought of being held up to view as a laughing stock was ever on her mind.

Susan munched a biscuit and said, indistinctly, ‘I've been off my food lately. Perhaps I'm going down with something catching. Salmonella. Something like that. Then nobody would mind if I wasn't a bridesmaid.'

‘Have you asked your mother for help?'

‘Humph. She's making the most of the menopause. She says nobody ever thinks of her problems, which are far worse than anyone else's because she's still suffering from her hip replacement, which hasn't worked, and how she's to walk down the aisle she doesn't know and the young never realize what she has to put up with. Which is true, but doesn't help solve it for me. I'm definitely going down with something catching.'

Ellie munched a biscuit, too. Yum. She'd never been very interested in what she wore, but she had conscientiously tried to understand what was in fashion so that she didn't look completely out of date. It wasn't that she cared what other people thought of her, but she was the public face of the charitable trust, and that meant she had to be appropriately – if not fashionably – dressed on occasion.

She said, ‘I know it's tradition, but I don't see why you and Angelica have to wear the same style. Why can't you choose a dress for yourself? In the same colour, perhaps? You wouldn't want to outshine the bride by wearing white, but something in blue? An Empire-line dress with a low cleavage would suit you to perfection.'

‘Angelica was told she could choose what she liked to wear.'

‘So the same must go for you, too?'

Susan slanted a look at Ellie, and managed a giggle. ‘You mean, I should rot her up by choosing something that doesn't make me look like an overweight Jelly Baby? Go on! Where would I get something that wouldn't make me look like a freak, especially as Lesley is paying for the dress and she's not exactly made of money?'

Ellie knew. Oh yes. She'd prayed that there might be some solution found to the Cordover problem, never thinking that He would bung her straight back into it. Bother. Oh well.

‘There's a really good boutique called The Magpie in the Avenue. It's run by a sympathetic woman. I'm just wondering if they might have something to suit you. Tomorrow's Saturday and you've no need to be in college, so shall we go shopping in the morning?'

Susan struggled with her better self, but shook her head. ‘No, it's tempting, isn't it? I can't make waves just before the wedding. It was nice of Lesley to ask me and I should just put up with being laughed at, for her sake. It's not the end of the world.'

Upon which, the doorbell rang. Once. Sharply.

‘Lesley?' said Ellie, round the last of the biscuit.

Susan shot off back to the larder. ‘Don't tell her what I said! I've got to finish cleaning the larder.'

It was Lesley. Ellie let her in, trying to assess her friend's mood. ‘I thought you were tied up with a particularly nasty case and wouldn't have time to visit.'

‘A witness went AWOL and we got a confession. Surprised all of us. What happened at the Cordovers?'

‘Would you like some tea, coffee?'

Lesley shook her head. ‘You went to the funeral? I'd have liked to go, if I'd been free.'

Ellie led the way to the sitting room. ‘Have a seat. The service at the crematorium was cheap, rushed, meaningless. The deceased's husband and daughter were anxious to get to the reading of the will, from which they expected great things … only to be disappointed. Poppy and Juno made their wills when they set up The Magpie partnership, leaving everything to one another, which means Juno cops the lot. Not that she's ecstatic about it. She's a pretty sick woman, and …' Ellie considered what else and added, somewhat to her own surprise, ‘And, I think she's frightened.'

Lesley pounced. ‘Of what?'

Ellie lifted her hands and let them fall. ‘I don't understand what's going on. There's cross-currents everywhere. Gerald and Marika seem, on the surface, to be straightforward. They set the girls up in business and kept an eye on their progress. Their solicitor did all the girls' work. So why didn't they ensure the girls updated their wills? Did they just forget? No. Gerald's a good businessman. I bet he updates his own will every year or so. What's more, the solicitor inserted the usual clause to the effect that if both sisters die prematurely, the lot goes back to … guess whom? To the father, who doesn't need it.'

‘Yes, they say he's worth a bit.'

‘Has that been checked? I know he seems to have doted on the girls, but he could well have had some reverses which might make him eye the girls' fortunes? No? No. That's not right. He's genuinely fond of the girls. But I did happen to notice that Marika wasn't wearing a wedding ring. Did he ever make an honest woman of her? Is their wedding something they've overlooked as time went on?'