Superfluous Women (38 page)

“I doubt it. My impression is that she's not all that fond of Mrs. Hedger. She sticks by her because she's the only family she has in this district, and she helps her because it's her nature to be helpful.”

“She's wonderful, isn't she?”

“I like her very much,” Daisy assured him.

*   *   *

The church clock was striking six when Alec and Underwood, followed by Ernie and Pennicuik, turned off Wycombe End into the murky, muddy alley. The rain had stopped and the temperature had dropped, threatening a frost. The mud would be glazed with ice by morning.

The inspector took the search warrant from his pocket. “This is all very well, but if she won't open the door, we can't serve it.”

“Let's worry about that if it happens.” Alec had a contingency plan involving windows and Ernie's slight stature, but the less Underwood knew about it the better.

A dim light was visible through the curtain at the downstairs window of Mrs. Hedger's one-up, one-down cottage. Underwood stationed Ernie and Pennicuik on the opposite side of the alley, eight or ten feet away, less because the suspect might try to flee than because her tiny space had no room for them.

Underwood knocked.

An angry voice was heard from within. Then the door was opened, by Sally Hedger. She was in tears.

“Mr. Underwood,” she choked out, standing aside to let them pass. “She thinks now you arrested Mr. Vaughn it's all right to wear her things. She says it's not stealing because she was dead. I can't make her understand—”

“Sally,” said Alec, “go out to Sergeant Piper. He's just across the way. I'll call you if your aunt asks for you.”

She fled as Alec turned to see the inspector gaping at the old woman in the rocking chair. Mrs. Hedger's short, stout body was enveloped in a glossy fur coat. On a slimmer woman, it would have been a loose, comfortable travelling coat. On her, it barely met across the bosom and completely enveloped her feet.

“Wotcha staring at? I di'n' steal it.” She bristled with self-righteousness. “She was dead, she ha'n' got no more use for it. 'Sides, she weren't no better'n a doxy.”

“May Hedger, I must advise you…”

As Underwood proceeded with the Judges' Rules warning, Alec went up the stairs, ducking under a low beam. He didn't have to exercise the searching skills Tom Tring had taught him years ago. The beam of his torch picked out the expensive overnight suitcase in one corner of the tiny room. On top of it was a stylish leather handbag.

Careful to protect fingerprints with a handkerchief, he moved the bag to the bed, an iron bedstead with a thin mattress covered with a faded, patched counterpane. The clasp clicked open easily. Alec turned the torch beam on the contents.

A silver cigarette case with the monogram JJG—Judith Jane Gray. Had she wanted gold and given in to her elderly husband's notorious frugality? A bunch of keys—Alec hooked it out with his little finger. The pasteboard tag, “Cherry Trees,” removed any remaining doubt. He took them downstairs.

Mrs. Hedger was glaring at the inspector in malevolent silence.

Underwood looked at the bunch of keys and went straight to the salient fact. “You knew Mrs. Gray was dead.”

“I could tell right off. I've laid out many a corpse in my time.”

“You locked the cellar and didn't report her death to the police.”

“Who'd invite that busybody Abel Harris to come sticking his nose in! It were an accident, any road.”

“An accident, was it?”

“Tha's right, seeing she pushed me first. ‘Go away,' she said. ‘I haven't got time now for writing letters.' And she give me a shove so I shoved back. I weren't to know she'd lose her balance and go tumbling down. It wasn't like I murdered her. An accident it were.”

“That's for a jury to decide,” said Underwood. “You're under arrest, Mrs. Hedger, and must come with us to the station to be charged. Please take off that coat. It will be used in evidence.”

“It's cold out,” said Alec, struck by an unexpected wave of compassion for the stubborn, ignorant, cross-grained old woman. “Let her keep it on.”

*   *   *

On Friday evening, Alec came home to Hampstead. Daisy hurried down to greet him in the hall.

“Darling, I'm so glad you've made it in time for dinner. When I got your wire, I invited Tom and Mrs. Tring. It seemed only fair that they should hear all about the case.”

He handed his hat and coat to the parlourmaid, who bore them away for a good brushing. “Thank you, Elsie. I take it, Daisy, you expect to get more information out of me if Tom's helping?”

“Naturally. They're up in the nursery with the twins. Tom's on hands and knees with his godson on his back, being a rhinoceros as far as I could make out. Oliver has a penchant for exotic steeds since last time we went to the zoo. I do hope he won't become a big game hunter.”

“And Mirrie?”

“She's on Mrs. Tom's lap, reading a picture book while Mrs. Tom and Nurse Gilpin chat. Mrs. Tom gets on with Nurse much better than I do. Go and have a wash and brush up, darling. I'll tell Mrs. Dobson to dish up in fifteen minutes, unless you want a whisky first, or a beer with Tom.”

“Beer sounds good. Make it half an hour. I'll say good night to the twins and bring the Trings down. With luck, I'll get the story over with and eat my dinner in peace.”

When they were all settled in the sitting room with drinks to hand, Tom rumbled, “You had the inquest yesterday, Chief?”

“Yesterday afternoon. It was just as well the coroner couldn't sit sooner, gave us time to get it pretty much all wrapped up for him. His jury brought in homicide by May Hedger. Manslaughter or murder is up to a criminal jury, of course. Sally Hedger made an excellent witness, Daisy, clear and concise in spite of floods of tears throughout the proceedings.”

“Poor Sally! I wish I'd been there to support her.”

Alec grinned. “Ernie managed that, in his usual unobtrusive style. Not quite holding her hand, but being stalwart at her side with a supply of clean handkerchiefs, while behaving in a properly policemanlike manner.”

“He's a good lad,” Tom observed.

“I left him there for another day, to help Underwood with reports and tying up loose ends.”

“That's nice,” said Mrs. Tring placidly. “She sounds like a nice young woman. Didn't you say that she's wanting to move to London, Mrs. Fletcher? Me and Tom have been thinking of renting out a room, now he's retired, if we could find a nice, reliable lodger.”

“She's very reliable,” Daisy assured her. “I'd be glad to know she has a safe place to stay with good people when she comes to the big bad city.”

“And young Ernie knows he's always welcome to take potluck with us.” She exchanged a glance of complicity with Daisy.

Tom wanted to hear about Daisy and her friend being locked in the cellar where the body was found. She gave him a highly coloured account that made him chuckle, while his missus tut-tutted.

“It's funny now,” said Daisy, “but it was quite frightening at the time.”

Mrs. Tring was confused. “Well I never! And the man who shut you up turned out not to be the murderer after all?”

“He had other matters on his conscience. Apart from the cellar business, his crime was financial fraud.”

“Tell us the whole story, Chief,” Tom requested. “First of all, I assume you were able to present the coroner with a definitive identification of the body?”

“Oh yes, it was Judith Gray all right. The coroner would probably have accepted Sally Hedger's evidence, along with what we found in her aunt's attic: the luggage and handbag, contents intact. As it happened, Mrs. Gray's friend Mrs. Knox was able to give us the name of their mutual dentist. You know how people recommend their medical practitioners to their friends. He's a Harley Street man, as we supposed. When we explained our difficulty, he came right down to Beaconsfield, records in hand. Ghoulish curiosity, as DI Underwood said.”

“Ah,” said Tom, grinning behind his magnificent moustache.

“He found the reality a great deal more unpleasant than he anticipated. He managed to identify her faster than I'd have believed possible.”

“I don't blame him,” said Daisy.

“As for the rest, Tom, to tell the truth, the case was a barrel of red herrings. And we couldn't shoot them, we had to fish for them. The stepson—he had the best motive, two excellent motives in fact: money and revenge. The victim was his father's second wife and treated the old man abominably, by all accounts. Unfortunately, he has an unassailable alibi. It's no good looking at me like that, Tom. I know unassailable alibis are made to be assailed. But this is truly untouchable.”

“If you say so, Chief.”

“Then there were Donald Vaughn and Roger Cartwright. Either or both may have been the victim's lovers. Both their wives assumed they were.”

“Both of them!” Mrs. Tring was shocked.

“And a London friend now in France. She seems to have been rather free and easy with her favours, and Vaughn may have been her lover; Cartwright probably not. Anyway, each of their wives suspected a liaison and thus had a motive for hating her. Whether or not they were correct in their assumptions turns out to be irrelevant.”

“Vaughn's the one,” Tom rumbled, “the house agent, that shut up Mrs. Fletcher and t'other young lady in the cellar.”

“That's right. Financial fraud, as Daisy said. He'd been appropriating his employer's money, quite a bit of it, but no large sums at one time. As he was saving—stuffing cash under a loose floorboard—he didn't give himself away by excessive expenditure.”

“My friend Willie—Miss Chandler—was auditing the books but wasn't allowed to tell anyone. At the last minute, he found out. That's why he was running away, nothing to do with the murder. His trouble was, he was under the impression that Mrs. Gray expected him to join her in France to start a new life together with the help of his loot, but he didn't know where she was. He turned up at Cherry Trees in a final attempt to get her address out of Isabel. Hence our ordeal in the cellar.”

“Ah,” said Tom. “And Cartwright, Chief? That's the headmaster, ducks.”

“Cartwright behaved in a suspicious manner because he had … er … attempted to misbehave with the young women teachers at his school, the latest of whom was one of Daisy's friends.”

“Has he been sacked yet, darling?”

“I had a word with the rector before I left. Cartwright has been given notice for the end of term, and the board is considering making Vera Leighton headmistress. In the meantime, Mr. Turnbull will keep a close eye on things at the school.”

“Good.”

“Any more red herrings in that barrel, Chief?”

“Plenty. Miss Chandler, Miss Sutcliffe, and Miss Leighton for a start. Miss Sutcliffe spent the most time at the house during the buying and selling process. Miss Leighton jumped like a startled rabbit when Cartwright was mentioned and Miss Chandler displayed a pronounced aversion to Vaughn, and neither was willing to explain.”

“Those are Mrs. Fletcher's friends,” said Mrs. Tring indignantly. “You can't have suspected them.”

“Can't make exceptions, ducks, you know that.”

“I didn't suspect them much, nor for long. Naturally DI Underwood was slower to trust them, but none of them had any apparent motive. Miss Sutcliffe is a transparently forthright person, and she and Daisy together came up with the name of the hotel Mrs. Gray had intended to stay at in Paris, as well as the address of Mrs. Gray's friends in France—”

“That's noble of you, darling. I'll take credit for the hotel, but you would have got the address as soon as Isabel handed over the letter.”

“True. Once we'd found out why the other two were so secretive, all three were more or less out of the picture.”

“So the young ladies,” Mrs. Tring pondered aloud, “they never had anything to do with the case?”

“Nothing but the misfortune of moving into a house with a body in the cellar.”

“And inheriting a murderous cleaning woman!” Daisy exclaimed. It might be good fortune in the end, she thought, as it had brought Mr. Underwood into Isabel's life—but if they made a match of it, what about the other two? Life was so complicated!

“More likely,” Alec went on, “were Judith Gray's ex-servants, and her London friends and enemies. You two found the servants for us, and I'm sorry I couldn't give you credit.”

“Were they any use to you, Chief?”

“They were very helpful with regard to the friends and enemies, but in fact they were so many more red herrings. We never had to track down most of them because the real culprit came to light. I have to admit I never seriously considered the charwoman.”

“I don't believe I've ever heard of such a case,” Tom observed. “Might have saved you a lot of trouble if the missus and I had managed to scrape up an aquaintance with Mrs. Hedger.”

“Mrs. Hedger is not the sort with whom anyone could scrape up an acquaintance. She keeps herself to herself, even now she's in a cell. When we walked in on her at home, she was wearing Mrs. Gray's fur coat. Even to her it was obvious she couldn't get away with refusing to explain.”

“What was her excuse?”

“Nothing new. You've heard it before: It wasn't stealing, because the owner was dead. Of course, that required an explanation of how she knew Mrs. Gray was dead. The whole story came out then. I don't think she realised how much she was saying.”

“Ah.” Tom nodded. “That kind that don't talk much, once they get going you never know what'll spill out. So how did Mrs. Gray end up with a broken neck?”

“A silly squabble over a reference. She didn't have the common courtesy to spend a minute writing one for the old woman. She tried to push past her. Mrs. Hedger didn't care for being shoved out of the way and pushed back. Unfortunately Mrs. Gray happened to be standing on the cellar stairs at the time. The railing is not a sturdy one.”