The Package Included Murder (4 page)

Not everybody visited that GUM shop and not everybody travelled by underground. You following all this, Bones?'

Miss Jones wished that, just once in a while, the Hon. Con would refrain from treating her as though she was the village idiot. ‘Yes, dear, I'm following you.'

‘Whacko! Well, I suggest you make a start by writing everybody's name down in a list.'

Miss Jones's lips grew thin. ‘I've already done that, dear.'

‘Have you? Good show! Well, let's deal with this GUM incident first. Stick a G after everybody who went to the shop and an M after those who preferred that crummy old museum. Now, who went where?'

‘You and I, dear,' said Miss Jones, wielding her ball point pen with a flourish, ‘both went to GUM, so we're Gs.'

The Hon. Con let loose a guffaw of approval. ‘That's the stuff, Bones! No fear or favour, eh? Now, who else?'

‘The Withenshaws went to the museum,' said Miss Jones crisply.

‘And so did the Beamish couple.' The Hon. Con grinned. ‘Easier than falling off a chair! Who else?'

Miss Jones crimped her lips distastefully. ‘The Lewcock men?'

‘Museum, too.'

‘The Frossell boy and his mother came with us, didn't they? I remember thinking how sulky he looked. What about the Smiths?'

‘God knows!' said the Hon. Con who disapproved of the Smiths. ‘I don't remember seeing that soppy pair at all after lunch.'

‘Oh, they were definitely ahead of us in the queue when we went to see Lenin's tomb and I really did think that their behaviour was quite deplorable. I know it isn't exactly a church but …'

‘Stick 'em down as GUM!' ordered the Hon. Con. ‘I can't see 'em bothering with museum, myself. In fact, I'll lay odds they shot back to the hotel and into bed. Nauseating!'

‘They are married, dear.'

‘Says who? You can buy wedding rings in Woolworth's, you know. Anyhow,' – the Hon. Con dismissed the obnoxious subject from her mind – ‘ is that the lot?'

‘Yes, dear. The Smiths, the Frossells, you and me, and Miss Clough-Cooper to the GUM department store.'

‘OK!' The Hon. Con nodded with great satisfaction. ‘ Now let's do the underground. That's you and me again, of course, and Penny Clough-Cooper.'

Miss Jones forced her eyelids up. It really was very late and she really was very tired. ‘ The Smiths returned by taxi,' she said, stifling a yawn. ‘That I do remember. And so did the Beamish's because it was Mrs Beamish who broached the idea of going back by taxi in the first place.' There was a certain wistful note in Miss Jones's voice. She'd been pretty weary herself after their strenuous expedition to Zagorsk and would have been grateful to have been spared the rigours of the Moscow Underground in the rush hour.

‘The Withenshaws came with us,' said the Hon. Con. ‘And so did those ghastly Lewcock men. I remember them specially because that oldest one kept on talking about finding a gent's loo on the station. They are a foul-mouthed couple, aren't they? What about the Frossells?'

‘Oh, taxi,' said Miss Jones without hesitation. ‘The boy'd got a touch of traveller's tummy – or said he had. I overheard them talking about it on the train so I wasn't surprised when they decided to take the quickest possible means back to the hotel. I believe they shared a cab with the young Smith couple.'

‘And that's the whole bang shoot of 'em!' The Hon. Con beamed across the narrow strip of floor which separated the two beds. Silly old Bones, frowning away there over her bits of paper! Bless her old cotton socks but she did like to make a flipping meal out of everything! ‘Well, come on, old fruit! Spit it out! Who does the old computer say was trying to croak Penny Clough-Cooper?'

Miss Jones's frown deepened and she had the grace to look slightly embarrassed. ‘ You and me, I'm afraid, dear,' she said with a placatory smile. ‘Everybody else has got an alibi for one attempt or the other.'

This revelation knocked even the Hon. Con back on her heels and she stumped downstairs to breakfast the following morning looking anti-social and bleary-eyed. So much for your flipping old scientific methods!

She found the rest of her party huddled dejectedly round a table upon which a small Union Jack hung limply and upside-down on its little flagstaff. Polite ‘good mornings' were meticulously exchanged but nobody made any reference to the fracas of the night before. For the third time they set about ordering their breakfast, with great difficulty and little hope. Only Miss Clough-Cooper, pale but composed, ventured into the unknown. She ordered bliny and, when they arrived, ate them quietly with her eyes fixed modestly on her plate.

The Hon. Con struggled against a feeling of total anti-climax and was indeed so low that she was practically reconciled to going back to being a best-selling author again. Funnily enough, it was the elder Lewcock brother who put the starch back into her backbone. It was when, after breakfast, they were getting into the minibus which was to take them on a conducted tour of the town. The Hon. Con was immediately ahead of Jim Lewcock in the queue and the steps of the minibus were steep and awkward.

‘Whoops-a-daisy, Sherlock!' quipped Jim Lewcock, giving the Hon. Con a helpful shove.

In normal circumstances, of course, the Hon. Con would have felled any man who placed his hand where Lewcock Senior had had the temerity to place his, but the circumstances were not normal and, in return for the affectionate soubriquet that he had bestowed upon her, the Hon. Con was prepared to forgive and forget this harmless little liberty.

Her cheek was red but her heart was light as she squeezed into the seat by the window that Miss Jones had been guarding for her. ‘I say, everybody,' she called loudly, ‘do you think we could have a bit of a chat before that guide woman turns up?'

The rest of the group were busily settling themselves and their belongings, loading cameras and swallowing travel-sickness pills according to their wont, and for one dreadful moment it looked as though nobody was going to answer.

Then Mr Beamish spoke up. ‘A bit of a chat about what, Miss – er – Morrison-Burke?'

The Hon. Con squinted cautiously round. No sign of the guide yet and even the driver had disappeared. ‘About these dastardly attempts to murder Miss Clough-Cooper, of course!'

There were audible groans all round.

‘Dear God, we're not going through all that again, are we?' Mrs Beamish fanned herself with her Intourist brochure. ‘ Oh, do open that window, Norman! It's so stuffy in here.' She glared across at the Hon. Con. ‘If Miss Clough-Cooper's life really is in danger, we must inform the police. If it isn't – well, the least said about last night's little episode, the better, don't you think?'

Penelope Clough-Cooper beat the Hon. Con to it. ‘Are you calling me a liar?' she demanded furiously from her seat next to the driver.

Ella Beamish smiled the smile of one who knows she can keep her temper when all around are losing theirs. ‘We can all make mistakes, my dear.'

‘Too true!' agreed the Hon. Con quickly. ‘And, if it was only a matter of last night, I wouldn't be taking things as seriously as I am. However,' – the Hon. Con kept on talking as several other incorrigible exhibitionists gathered themselves prior to putting their two-pennyworth in – ‘Miss Clough-Cooper claims that there have been other attacks and she has accused one of us of being responsible.'

‘She wants suing for slander!' That was the Frossell boy, tossing his contribution lazily and insolently from the back seat.

‘Oh,
Roger
!' wailed his mother.

But the Hon. Con didn't believe in wasting good breath on pimply adolescents and paid him no attention. ‘Look,' she said, ‘we can't just ignore this problem and hope it'll go away. We ought to come to some decision here and now, before that blooming guide woman turns up.'

‘She should be here now by rights,' the Smith girl complained in an accent that would, in happier times, have set the Hon. Con's teeth on edge. ‘I don't know why everything's always so late here.'

The Hon. Con pretended that this lower-middle-class interruption had simply never happened. ‘I just want to know if I can count on your whole-hearted cooperation.'

Jim Lewcock tried to speed things up. ‘Here, have I got this straight, love? You want to investigate these attacks on Miss Clough-Cooper so that we don't have to get ourselves in a tangle with the Russian police?'

‘The Honourable Constance is not motivated by vulgar curiosity,' said Miss Jones, leaning forward in her seat so that she could get the message across to everybody. ‘As a matter of fact, the Honourable Constance is a highly experienced criminal investigator.' Under the cover of her folded mackintosh, Miss Jones carefully crossed her fingers. Not that it was exactly lying to call the Hon. Con a highly experienced criminal investigator but … ‘Surely you don't intend just to sit back and let Miss Clough-Cooper get killed?'

Desmond Withenshaw stirred uneasily. He had managed to appropriate the best seat in the minibus and the last thing he wanted was trouble. ‘I don't know that I feel entirely happy about letting an amateur detective loose in our midst. Er – couldn't we sort of work out a guard roster for Miss Clough-Cooper until the end of the holiday?'

The suggestion fell on noticeably stony ground. ‘Bugger that for a lark!' said Jim Lewcock, his memories of his time as a National Serviceman flooding painfully back.

Young Mr Smith tightened his grip on his wife. ‘ Well, you can count me out for a start, mate! I haven't paid all this money to turn into a blooming watch-dog. Look, if the Judy's life really is in danger, call the cops and let them deal with it. It's what they're paid for – see?'

‘Oh, no!' Penelope Clough-Cooper broke in, her eyes round with apprehension. ‘ Not the police! I couldn't bear having the Russian police questioning me and … Oh, no!' She buried her head in her hands.

Everybody, being English, looked highly embarrassed.

‘If we bring the Russian police into this, we'll be held here for ever.' Roger Frossell, very pink in the face, returned the stares and stuck resolutely to his somewhat surprising guns. ‘I vote we give Miss Morrison-Burke a free hand to make enquiries into this matter in any way she thinks fit.'

Mrs Frossell knew where her maternal duty lay. ‘I second that!' She raised her hand as though at the weekly meeting of her WI.

‘And so do I!' Miss Jones, over-eager perhaps to get the band-waggon rolling, raised her hand too and basked happily in the warmth of the Hon. Con's smile. ‘ What about the rest of you?'

Now that it had come to making a firm and public decision, the Lewcock brothers exchanged worried glances. ‘Well, we don't want no trouble, do we, Tone?' Jim Lewcock tried to keep a light, bantering note in his voice.

‘No, we bleeding well don't!' agreed his brother. He nodded at the Hon. Con. ‘We're on your side, love!'

Norman Beamish stuck his hand up and, after a moment's hesitation, his wife followed suit. ‘Oh, all right!' she said ungraciously. ‘But only because we simply can't afford to be detained out here after the fifteenth. We must be back for Daddy's birthday, mustn't we, Norman?' She smiled proudly. ‘He'll be seventy-five, you know.'

Norman Beamish looked less besotted. ‘I have got one or two fairly important engagements myself,' he pointed out.

His wife dismissed this contemptuously. ‘Oh, we can safely leave Daddy to deal with all that side of things!'

The Smiths had been whispering frantically together. Trevor Smith looked up and transferred his chewing gum to the other cheek. ‘You can count us in,' he said. ‘ We've got nothing to hide, one way or the other, but …' He shrugged his shoulders.

The Hon. Con swung round on the Withenshaws. ‘Looks as though the ball's in your court!' she informed them curtly. She glanced out of the window. ‘And you'd better hurry up and play it. Madam Bossy-boots is coming!'

Zoë Withenshaw opened her guide-book. ‘Frankly I find the whole situation quite farcical but I'm quite prepared to abide by the decision of the majority. OK, Desmond?'

‘No skin off my nose,' said her husband sulkily.

The Hon. Con snapped up this unanimous vote of confidence with gratitude but her thanks, promises and resounding resolutions were mercifully cut short as the redoubtable Ludmilla Stepanovna was piped abroad.

She greeted her flock brusquely and then counted them. Only when she was sure nobody was missing did she turn her mind to other matters. ‘Where,' she demanded in a voice of thunder, ‘is your chauffeur?'

Tony Lewcock had a ready, if crude, wit. ‘I reckon he's having a leak, love!' he chuckled and Miss Jones spent the next ten minutes wondering if their driver could, perhaps, be a vegetarian. But, even if he was – how did Mr Lewcock know? She would have referred the problem to dear Constance if it hadn't been only too obvious that dear Constance was deep in planning her forthcoming campaign. Miss Jones naturally knew better than to disturb her.

Before too long the minibus driver appeared and took his place. Ludmilla Stepanovna unhooked the microphone from the dashboard and blew into it to see if it was working. The Albatrossers perked up and began to pay attention. They were off!

Alma Ata is a pleasant enough town, though somewhat undistinguished. There is not a great deal to be said about it, but, whatever there was, Ludmilla Stepanovna duly said it. The microphone was somewhat de trop in the restricted confines of the minibus and it lisped rather badly. This, coupled with Ludmilla Stepanovna's thick Russian accent, made listening a little less than pleasurable but luckily most of the Albatrossers knew they weren't there to enjoy themselves.

The Hon. Con fought hard to keep Ludmilla Stepanovna's commentary out but her voice was hard and unrelenting. Snatches of useless information kept breaking through in spite of the Hon. Con's fierce determination not to know.