Murder Among Us (20 page)

Meredith, for all the nervous exhaustion which was creeping over her aided by the brandy, had to smile.

"Perhaps it knew who I was!" said Eric with unlooked for humour. He was turning out more surprising by the sentence. "But she is a remarkable young woman and her work must not be—well, wiped out. To run such a place on so little finance, Miss Foster is also a remarkable businesswoman." Real respect now echoed in his voice.

"Hullo, hullo, hullo ..." thought Meredith drowsily.

From somewhere in the distance she heard Eric's voice saying, "Yes, the Horses' Home really should be

saved somehow. The same is not so of the young man, Harding. I have met such a type before. He has to go. He really has to go. I do not trust that young man. I certainly would never give him a job here!"

Eric's words only half registered as Meredith unceremoniously fell asleep in front of him.

Fifteen

The committee of the Society for the Preservation of Historic Bamford had gathered in its usual meeting place. Hope Mapple's fiat. It was its first official meeting since the events at Springwood Hall and the awareness of all that had happened weighed heavily on the air. Earlier that day they had heard the coroner adjourn Ellen's inquest pending police inquiries, leaving it hanging above them like a Sword of Damocles.

The surviving members sat huddled in their seats, not looking at one another and especially not looking at the empty corner chair which was where Ellen Bryant had usually chosen to sit. No one referred to it. The vacant seat was covered in worn, royal-blue dralon and intended to be Queen Anne period in design. Vaguely throne-like with its wings and cabriole legs, its emptiness seemed to reproach them for some kind of lese-majeste, for daring to assemble in the absence of its former occupant. They were as uneasily aware of it as they had once been of her ironic gaze. From time to time one or other of them would cast it a furtive glance.

Hope, resplendent in a full-length jade green kaftan made of some shiny material embroidered at neck and bosom with sequins, appeared in the doorway. Bearing a tray, she plodded heavy-footed to the coffee table in the middle of the floor, green cloth billowing behind her. They all watched her as she stooped and her strung bead earrings swung like the decorations on the vast Christmas tree she resembled. Each of the observers was plainly hoping that the others wouldn't guess that the image in each and every mind was of Hope sprinting

across Schuhmacher's lawn in her birthday suit.

"Tea!" Hope assured them as she proceeded to pour out a beige liquid. "Help yourselves to biscuits."

Zoe didn't want a biscuit but took a custard cream, feeling obscurely it would be polite to do so. Robin Harding, aware of pekinese hairs floating on the surface of his tea, grunted, "No, thanks!" He folded his arms and glowered sulkily at the assembled company. Zoe guessed he was embarrassed and threw him a tentative smile. His expression lightened and he grimaced wryly with a barely perceptible nod towards Hope. Zoe blushed.

Charles Grimsby said loudly, "I have a motion to put before the committee!"

"You can't, Charles, not yet," said Hope. "I haven't declared the meeting open yet. And Zoe has first to read the minutes of the last one and then we discuss matters arising." She flopped down on a divan among the Pekinese and folded her hands in her lap. "Well now, I suppose we can begin. Secretary, please?"

Zoe opened the cheap exercise book in which she kept the records of their deliberations.' 'Present at the last meeting were Hope Mapple, Zoe Foster, Ellen Bryant—" She stopped.

"We know who was here," said Charles gruffly. "I think we can cut all that. I want to say something—and it comes under matters arising if you want to be finickety about it!"

"Oh, for goodness' sake, Charles. Go on, then!"

"Right!" He sat up straight and glared at the pekinese opposite him. ' 'I propose that Hope Mapple be removed from the chair of this committee."

There was a gasp from Zoe. Robin muttered, "Shut up, Grimsby, not now!"

Charles went on sternly, ' 'I consider her behaviour at Springwood Hall brought the name of the committee into disrepute."

Hope flushed an unattractive puce and tossed back her raven curls. The bead earrings swung so violently they

threatened to tie themselves into knots. "I at least tried to bring our society to the attention of the public!"

"You did that all right!" retorted Grimsby. "But some of us can do without that kind of publicity! The Chamber of Commerce—"

"Stuff the Chamber of Commerce!" said Hope rudely.

Grimsby's face darkened to a magenta hue which rivalled Hope's. "It's all very well for you. You're already associated in the public mind around here with the mentally disturbed!"

"And what does that mean?" demanded Hope, adding theatrically, "Pray?"

"You give art lessons to those poor souls in the psychiatric ward at the hospital, don't you? If you ask me, some of their behaviour is starting to rub off on you, Hope."

"That," snarled Hope, "is actionable!"

"Oh well, if we want to talk lawsuits, I'm not so sure I couldn't claim my business reputation has been damaged because of your antics!"

"Now just a minute," Robin interrupted. "You can't complain about anything now, Grimsby. It's too late. You should have said all this at the last meeting. Hope made it quite clear what she proposed to do."

"I did say it, or something like it. I objected anyway. It's in the minutes. It is in the minutes, isn't it, madam secretary? I particularly asked at the time for my objections to be noted in the minutes!" Grimsby fixed Zoe with a steely eye.

Zoe frantically hunted through her exercise book. "Yes, yes, here it is. 'Mr. Grimsby requested his objection to the plan to be noted.' "

"There you are, then!" said Grimsby.

"No, we're not!" Robin argued vigorously. "After you objected, Hope made it clear she was still going to do it. You should have resigned if you felt that strongly about it."

"It's not a question of me, of any of us, resigning!"

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Grimsby yelled. 'It's for Hope to abide by the decision of the committee! And we all said we thought it was a lousy idea, but she went and did it anyway! Hope should resign!"

"Shan't!" declared Ms. Mapple in ringing tones. She rose to her feet in a shimmering explosion of jade green and glittering glass beads.

"You haven't got a leg to stand on!" snarled Grimsby.

Zoe, disastrously, giggled.

"Oh, funny, is it?" Charles, stung, turned on her. "Well, some of us have regard for decency! We also have a regard for this society, as it was! You have only just joined it, but Hope and I were founder members. Hope sadly seems to have forgotten our original high aims. I have not. You, I suppose, accustomed to the standards of that ramshackle animal sanctuary, cannot be expected to appreciate that."

"Oy, you leave Zoe out of this!" Robin sprang to Zoe's defence. "Or you'll have me to answer to. Who worries about a bit of bare flesh these days, anyway?"

Grimsby, at bay, whirled to face him. "Before you go any further, perhaps you might reflect that if Hope hadn't made a spectacle of herself as she did, Ellen might be alive today and sitting in that chair!" He flung out his hand to point at the Queen Anne armchair now occupied by a slumbering pekinese.

There was a stunned silence and they all looked guiltily at Ellen's former seat. The peke, sensing a challenge, lifted its head and gave a gurgling growl.

Hope, breathing heavily, said, "That's rubbish!"

"Oh, is it? It's because she didn't want to be present when you made your lewd display that poor Ellen left the main company and went off alone—to her death!"

"You're out of order, Grimsby!" Robin said angrily. "We don't know why Ellen went down to those cellars."

"We don't," Grimsby said nastily. "But you might!"

This time the silence lasted so long that Zoe felt she

would scream if no one spoke and was compelled to break it herself. "What do you mean, Charles?"

44 Ask him!" Grimsby pointed at the pale-faced Robin. "He was friendly with the deceased lady, very friendly."

"That's a lie!" Robin said hoarsely. "Don't listen to him, Zoe!"

4 'Intimate lunches together. I saw you, more than once!" Grimsby's eyes glittered triumphantly.

4 'Good grief, I must have lunched with Ellen two or three times at the most!" Robin snapped. "And they weren't the sort of lunches you're trying to make them out to be. They weren't romantic! If I wanted to lunch romantically with anyone, would I take that person to the sort of quick service cafes you must have seen Ellen and me in?"

"So what were you doing there with her?" Grimsby persisted.

44 You're trying to make something out of it, I realise!" Robin thrust his face into that of Grimsby who recoiled as well he might at the ugly light which had entered the younger man's eyes. "But it was all completely innocent. More than that, it was trivial! I don't owe you any explanation but I will explain because if I don't, you'll sit there smirking and thinking you've scored some point! Well, you haven't!" He took a deep breath.

"Ellen used to go into town sometimes for her lunch, generally on a Friday after she'd been to the bank. At other times I believe she went upstairs to that flat of hers or so she told me. I don't know it from personal experience!" Robin's glare indicated he wouldn't allow his opponent to make this charge. "As it happened, I was lunching in town quite a lot at that time. I'd got fed up with sandwiches and an apple in the office. I started nipping out to the nearest cheap cafe. So that's how I happened to run into Ellen and since we were acquainted and both alone, we sat at the same table. After a while I found it was too expensive to eat out and I went back

to sandwiches and a thermos in the office. I don't know what Ellen did. She found eating out tricky because she was a vegetarian. She always had to have the cheese salad or egg on toast. She said to me she could get that for herself at a quarter of the price so I suppose she went back to eating at home, I don't know!" Robin shouted out the last words.

Grimsby gave him an evil grin. 'The two of you looked pretty friendly to me!"

"This," said Hope majestically, "has nothing to do with the society. It's personal abuse and now that you've subjected both myself and Robin to some of that, perhaps you'd let the meeting resume? No, I won't resign and as I gather no one is going to second your motion that I be replaced as chair, I take it I'm staying. Agreed?"

There was an awkward silence. Robin and Grimsby had retreated glowering to their respective corners. Zoe chewed the end of her pencil in embarrassment.

"Right, let it be noted in the minutes!" Hope commanded. As Zoe began to scribble industriously, she went on, "Now if we can get back to business ... Is there anything else we can do about Schuhmacher's use of the Hall? Perhaps, Charles, you could suggest something you'd consider suitable action? Be constructive for once instead of just rubbishing my efforts?"

"No," said Grimsby curtly. "We've lost that fight. The odious Schuhmacher has won it."

"Actually," said Zoe nervously, "he's quite a nice man."

There was stunned reaction and all three stared at her.

She blushed scarlet. "I don't mean to sound a traitor, but I've met him now, which I hadn't before. I know he's a bit inclined to order people about and he was awfully rude to Robin—but you shouldn't have threatened him with that fork, Rob, I was really scared! And of course he does still want to move the Horses' Home off our present site. But when I showed him round the

place the other day he really seemed interested in our

work and quite sympathetic."

"His sympathy/' said Robin, "won't stop him giving you and the animals the boot! You're too trusting, Zoe. Don't be taken in by him."

'Tm not suggesting he'll change his mind." She sighed. "He explained his point of view to me and I have to say I couldn't disagree. Our buildings are an eyesore. I suppose we smell, although I don't notice it. Our animals are very ugly and one tried to bite him. I am aware of all that. If we had the money, I'd do something about it." She paused. "As a matter of fact, ever since that national newspaper ran an article on us when Ellen—you know, when that happened—and especially since little Emma got us in the press again by running off with Maud. I've been inundated with cheques from complete strangers all over the country! It's lovely, of course, but it won't last and the money so far has mostly gone on settling outstanding bills for feed and so on. I owed the farrier a huge amount although he'd never asked for it. but I had to pay as soon as I could. I ought to pay Finlay Ross but he absolutely refuses to take a penny. People are very kind."

"Schuhmacher isn't kind," said Robin sourly. "You won't get a penny out of him!"

Zoe reddened. "I didn't suggest I would!"

"He's buttering you up because he's had a bad press over his persecution of the Horses' Home. Insensitivity towards animals is the one thing the British won't take. Schuhmacher is worried about his image and he wants you to put in a good word for him. And you're doing it. very nicely! You're playing his game, Zoe! Don't!"

"He's not getting kind words from me and I'm not closing our file on Springwood Hall!" said Hope robustly. "If necessary 7 I shall picket the gates. Like the women did at Greenham Common."

Grimsby groaned and put his hand to his head.

"Schuhmacher is pally with the local cops," said Robin. "He'd only get you moved on."

"Good! Let 'em try! I shall resist! I shall lie down in the road!"

"If Hope gets herself on the telly again," said Grimsby hoarsely, "being carried away to a police van—"

Hope's face had brightened and Robin said quickly, "Forget it, Hope! Schuhmacher would probably send you out a plate of leftovers with a photographer on hand and get himself good publicity! He's a devious beggar and we know how difficult he is to dislodge. Nevertheless, I'm inclined to agree with Hope. I'm not ready to concede defeat either."

"You're wasting your time," said Grimsby.