The Package Included Murder (25 page)

It was no skin off the superintendent's nose. ‘All right, we'll save her till the last.'

By the time, therefore, that the Hon. Con got her innings, Superintendent Mellor was satisfied that he'd got a pretty fair picture of the case and was even beginning to wonder about his lunch. Having examined the cafeteria kitchen during his preliminary inspection of the premises, he was not exactly sold on the idea of eating at the airport. Maybe there was a decent little pub nearby where they could get a sandwich and a decent glass of beer.

The Hon. Con's mind wasn't cluttered up with such mundane considerations. Sitting out there in the lounge, watching everybody get called out for their turn, she'd had ample time to think. And, in her experience, a rumbling stomach sharpened your wits quite considerably. So, if this policeman Johnnie thought he'd taken the steam out of the Hon. Con by leaving her till last, he'd got – to coin a phrase – another think coming.

Superintendent Mellor watched impassively as the Hon. Con stumped in, took the chair that was offered her and crossed one stout, cavalry-twill clad leg over the other. For a second or two they eyed each other curiously and then, folding her arms, the Hon. Con took charge of the interview.

Superintendent Mellor listened with remarkable patience to the lengthy story of the Hon. Con's early life and easy times. ‘Very interesting,' he murmured after quarter of an hour of this rubbish. ‘Now, I wonder if we could perhaps get on with …'

The Hon. Con overdid her start of astonishment and, for a heart-stopping moment, the superintendent thought that Sergeant Mortimer had done something unforgivable. The Hon. Con cleared her throat. ‘Don't think you've quite got the message, old chap,' she rumbled.

The superintendent didn't want to be unkind. ‘On the contrary, Miss Morrison-Burke, I think I've got the picture quite clear and I'm sure the assistance you were able to give the Totterbridge police was invaluable.'

‘Saved their bacon for 'em on two separate and distinct occasions,' the Hon. Con pointed out modestly.

‘So you said. However,' – Superintendent Mellor opened a file and pretended to read it – ‘the situation we've got at the moment is somewhat different and …'

‘What's different about it?' demanded the Hon. Con truculently, forgetting all her good resolutions about being diplomatic. ‘ Look, the Totterbridge constabulary co-opted me as a sort of unofficial adviser because of my expert knowledge.'

‘Your expert knowledge?' echoed the superintendent, trying to recall if there had been any mention of any useful accomplishment in the lengthy story of the Hon. Con's life.

‘Because of my unrivalled knowledge of local affairs! I'm a storehouse of information where Totterbridge is concerned. I know the place and the people like the back of my hand and …'

‘But, we aren't in Totterbridge,' said Superintendent Mellor mildly.

The Hon. Con glared at him in exasperation. It was frightening to think how police standards were slipping. However, she took a deep breath and began to tell him all about the Albatrossers' ill-starred holiday in Russia. How no less than six attempts had been made on Penelope Clough-Cooper's life and how they had all jibbed at the idea of handing the problem over to the Russian police and how the Hon. Con, thoroughly experienced in dealing with serious crime, had been entrusted with the …

‘Yes, yes, we've heard all this already.' Sergeant Mortimer had got fed up with waiting for old Mellor to tell her to put a sock in it.

But the Hon. Con wasn't often blessed with a captive audience and she wasn't going to be put off her stride by some snotty-nosed underling. She grinned encouragingly at Superintendent Mellor and continued with her story. Omitting nothing and concealing nothing. She frankly admitted all her initial doubts and lovingly detailed how her growing acquaintance with Miss Clough-Cooper, coupled with the cumulative effect of the attacks, finally convinced her that the poor wee lassie's life really was in jeopardy. ‘From that moment on,' she informed the punch-drunk policemen, ‘I never left her side, day or night.'

Superintendent Mellor carefully avoided meeting his sergeant's eye. ‘We are bearing in mind, Miss Morrison-Burke, the strong possibility that Mrs Beamish was murdered in mistake for Miss Clough-Cooper.'

The Hon. Con slapped the desk in an ecstacy of delight. ‘Wondered if you'd spot that!' she boomed.

‘We could hardly miss it,' sighed Superintendent Mellor. ‘Every member of your package holiday pointed it out to us. They kept telling us that the two women were quite similar in build and colouring and that they were both wearing mackintoshes of pretty much the same colour and style. Then there was the lighting in that corridor. It was pretty dim. Yes,' – he eased himself in his chair – ‘ I think I'm prepared to admit that, from behind and in that light, our murderer may have mistaken one woman for the other.'

‘Oh, jolly dee!' said the Hon. Con, beaming her approval. ‘ You're not as unintelligent as you look, are you? Well, I'm glad to see that you're capable of making the obvious deductions, at any rate. That's precisely what you were meant to do, of course, and it merely confirms my solution of the mystery.'

Superintendent Mellor stared miserably at the Hon. Con. Women! ‘You're here to answer questions,' he reminded her rather sulkily. ‘Now, where were you when you heard Mrs Frossell scream?'

The Hon. Con took it all in very good part. ‘Come off it, fuzzy!' she advised. ‘You know where I was and that I've got a cast-iron alibi into the bargain. Penny Clough-Cooper can vouch for me– and I can vouch for her. Whoever murdered Mrs Beamish, it certainly wasn't us.' She hitched her chair nearer to the superintendent's desk. ‘Haven't you spotted yet what the cunning little minx was up to? She deliberately made use of me to beef up her own alibi. How's that for deviousness, eh?'

Superintendent Mellor had been pursuing his own train of thought and now, foolishly, revealed it. The Hon. Con did tend to reduce strong men to infantilism. ‘Maybe you and Miss Clough-Cooper are in this together?'

The Hon. Con roared with laughter, slapped her thigh and waggled a roguish finger. It was a blood chilling sight. ‘ Don't be potty, old fruit!' she bellowed. ‘And' – she took note of the superintendent's increasingly crestfallen mien – ‘ do cheer up! You've nothing to worry about! I've got the whole caboodle buttoned up for you. Why' – the Hon. Con was grinning away like a Cheshire Cat – ‘ I wouldn't be surprised if you don't earn yourself a spot of the old promotion out of this little lark.' She swung round and brought the full force of her personality to bear on a purple-cheeked Sergeant Mortimer. ‘Got your pencil sharpened, young fellow-me-lad? Good! Well,' – she chucked the sergeant one of her more democratic grins–‘sing out if I start too fast for you. Slow but sure – that's going to be our motto!'

Sergeant Mortimer managed to keep a straight face – and men have been honoured by their king and country for less – but Superintendent Mellor had got beyond the stage of thinking that old battle-axes like the Hon. Con were just jokes. He had learned to be something of a fatalist over the years and he also had a tendency to know when he was beaten. There were such things as irresistible forces and, unless he was much mistaken, he'd got one of 'em sitting right opposite him. He sighed. What was it Confucius had said about lying back and enjoying it?

Superintendent Mellor gave his sergeant a nod. Sergeant Mortimer picked up his pencil.

‘Good show!' chortled the Hon. Con, always magnanimous in victory. ‘Now, superintendent, let's start at the beginning of this pathetic little attempt to pull the wool over the peepers of yours truly.'

Superintendent Mellor felt that he owed it to himself and to his sergeant to make one last effort in the cause of sanity and for the honour of the police. ‘It's getting rather late, Miss Morrison-Burke.' He showed her his watch across the desk. ‘Don't you think it would be a good idea to postpone things until we've all looked after the inner man, eh?' The Hon. Con continued to look blank. ‘Until after lunch, that is.'

‘No,' said the Hon. Con. ‘Now, exactly fourteen days ago, more or less, my close companion, amanueunsis and dear chum, Miss Jones, and I departed from these shores for our holiday in the Soviet Union. Well,' – she bethought herself in time – ‘when I say holiday, I don't quite mean holiday.'

‘No?' Superintendent Mellor disinterred his head from his hands.

‘Actually, I was on a fact-finding tour,' said the Hon. Con in a suitably awed voice. ‘For my book on social conditions behind the Iron Curtain. Going on one of these package tour things was just a blind so that those Secret Police johnnies wouldn't get wind of what I was up to.'

‘We've got all this preliminary stuff from the other witnesses,' said Sergeant Mortimer. ‘They gave us very full and detailed accounts of the various attacks on Miss Clough-Cooper. I don't think we need waste your valuable time going through it all a …'

The Hon. Con stopped him. ‘Not as full and detailed account as I am about to give you, laddie!' she boomed triumphantly.

And she was so right!

It was one hour and thirteen minutes before the Hon. Con could be weaned away from her straight-from-the-shoulder regurgitation of her trip to the Soviet Union. She lost her audience on several occasions but got them back again by the sheer resonance and inevitability of her voice.

However, even the Hon. Con had her limitations and, when fact started getting a bit thin on the ground, she launched herself into the heady realms of speculation. Superintendent Mellor and Sergeant Mortimer exchanged glances of dismay.

‘It may sound like hindsight,' the Hon. Con rumbled on, ‘but, right from the start, I thought there was something deuced odd about those attacks on Penelope Clough-Cooper.' She answered the query on Superintendent Mellor's long-suffering face. ‘For one thing, I couldn't believe that any potential murderer could be so jolly inefficient. Six blooming shots at it and, apart from that last bash on the head, not so much as a scratch on her. Made you think he wasn't really trying, eh?'

‘Why didn't you say something, then?' asked Superintendent Mellor rather peevishly. ‘The rest of your party said you took the whole thing perfectly seriously. You appointed yourself investigator-in-chief, didn't you?'

‘Only in response to popular demand!' snarled the Hon. Con. ‘And naturally I didn't care to share my suspicions with every Tom, Dick and Harry. Besides, at that time, I hadn't worked out what was going on.'

‘But, now you have?' Superintendent Mellor's feeble attempt at sarcasm fell flat on its face.

‘Came to me in a flash!' the Hon. Con explained cheerfully. ‘As soon as I clapped eyes on Mrs Beamish lying there in her gore, something went click inside the old brain-box. All the little doubts and suspicions and tentative theories slotted neatly into place. It was,' she concluded demurely, ‘like a miracle.'

Sergeant Mortimer ran a limp hand over his face. He could do with a shave. ‘Who did murder Mrs Beamish, then?' he asked.

To everybody's astonishment, the Hon. Con came out with a straight, unequivocal answer. ‘Her husband, of course!'

There was a faint whiff of disappointment. The two policemen had expected something better than this from the Hon. Con. ‘Husbands are the automatic chief suspects in any cases of murder,' Superintendent Mellor pointed out.'

‘You don't have to tell me that!' retorted the Hon. Con. ‘And you don't have to tell Beamish, either. Why else do you think he went to all this trouble trying to confuse the issue? That's what all these silly-billy games in Russia were about.'

Superintendent Mellor frowned. ‘You mean that Mr Beamish was responsible for all these attacks on Miss Clough-Cooper?'

‘Not exactly. Because there weren't, properly speaking, any attack on Miss Clough-Cooper. That girl' – the Hon. Con sighed over the joys that might have been – ‘is in this up to her back teeth.'

The frown on Superintendent Mellor's face deepened. ‘But she was quite badly hurt in that last assault, wasn't she? She showed us quite a nasty looking bruise, at any rate.'

‘'Fraid she did that herself. She realised I was beginning to have my doubts and made one last desperate attempt to convince me.' The Hon. Con changed legs and her chair creaked in sympathy. ‘It was all so crystal clear, really. My preliminary investigations showed that.' The Hon. Con was rarely averse to gilding the lily of her own genius. ‘I worked it out like this – an analysis of two or three attempts, never mind six, should have enabled us to isolate the attacker. Follow me? After all, we only had ten suspects.' She saw the superintendent's head come up. ‘I exempted myself and Miss Jones from suspicion, of course. I mean, the more you looked into things, the more the whole bag of tricks just didn't add up.'

Sergeant Mortimer suddenly had one of his brighter. ‘Er – would you like a cup of tea, Miss Morrison-Burke?'

Miss Morrison-Burke would have given her eye teeth for a cup of tea but she could recognise a red herring when she was offered one.

She shook her head and sportingly refrained from making some cutting remarks about the lack of stamina in the present-day police force. There was no point in making enemies unnecessarily. She picked up the thread of her argument again. ‘So, under cover of professing friendship for the girl, I watched Penny Clough-Cooper pretty closely. As I said, I knew there was something screwy somewhere but I couldn't for the life of me fathom out what it was. It was only with the murder of Mrs Beamish that I found out for sure.'

Sergeant Mortimer scratched aimlessly in his notebook while his superintendent scowled unhappily at the Hon. Con. ‘Are you accusing Beamish and Miss Clough-Cooper of being accomplices, miss?'