The Package Included Murder (13 page)

The Hon. Con stared at her aghast. ‘Penny Clough-Cooper?'

‘Sex made!' exploded Miss Jones who'd got beyond caring what she said. ‘ Guaranteed to chase after anything in trousers!' Miss Jones chose her words with care. She glanced out of the window. Down below, in the sunshine, several familiar figures were strolling gently along the paved and tree-lined walk. It was all grist to Miss Jones's mill. ‘Look at her now!' she exclaimed triumphantly, indicating the small, dark-haired figure some sixty or seventy feet beneath them. ‘Crawling all over some poor man, as usual. It's disgusting! Much worse than the television. Good heavens,' – she leaned forward to take a closer look – ‘it's poor Mr Beamish bearing the brunt again, isn't it?'

‘Yes, it is!' snarled the Hon. Con, who had also been taking a lively interest in the passing scene. ‘And that's
Mrs
Beamish with him, you ninny! Penny Clough-Cooper isn't out there at all.' She regarded her chum with naked fury. ‘It's a pity, Bones, you don't take yourself off to a blooming optician and get yourself some flipping glasses! You're getting as blind as a bat!'

The sun beat down relentlessly and, although it was only ten o'clock in the morning, the temperature was already soaring into the eighties and the glare coming off the Black Sea was blinding.

The Albatrossers had been installed in one corner of the Intourist beach and within five minutes nobody would have taken it for anything other than a British enclave. It was untidy, uncomfortable and strictly out of bounds to foreigners. Mrs Frossell's Union Jack carrier bag struck a suitably patriotic note and even little Mrs Smith's bikini (top half stars and bottom half stripes) at least maintained the national colour scheme. The centre of the outpost was a large beach umbrella under which the tender-skinned speedily established themselves. Those who didn't turn bright pink in the sun or come out in spots took to the sands and spread themselves out on reclining chairs, purloined hotel towels and some splintery duck boarding that they'd found half buried in the sand.

‘This,' sighed Mr Withenshaw luxuriously, and ignoring whatever it was that was sticking in the small of his back, ‘is the life, eh?' He held his face up to the sun and anticipated the sour grapes of his colleagues at school when he got back home with a Black Sea tan. ‘In my considered judgement, this place has got your Cornish Riviera knocked into a cocked hat.'

His wife spat out a couple of ounces of sand which a sudden breeze had blown into her mouth. ‘It certainly has!' she agreed loyally.

The Smiths, lying rigidly side by side, were some little way off. Before stretching themselves out they had solemnly and carefully annointed each other with oil.

The Lewcock brothers had moved down nearer to the water's edge and loudly promised each other that they'd go in for a dip when the heat got unbearable. Meantime they concentrated on ogling such female forms as caught their eye.

Huddled together under the umbrella were Miss Jones, Mrs Frossell and Mrs Beamish. No bikinis for them, alas! Instead, looking comparatively cool and composed, they lay back in their chairs and sweated gently in long-sleeved frocks and stockings. Roger Frossell had retreated as far as he could from the main group, a retreat which was tactful in view of the brevity of his swimming trunks. The Hon. Con, to name but one, had been so horrified by his appearance that she'd hardly been able to drag her eyes away from the lad.

The Hon. Con had allied herself, of course, to the nature lovers and was even now turning lobster pink in the full glare of the sun. This was the price you had to pay, she told herself as she squatted gingerly on the burning sand, for acting as bodyguard to old Penny Clough-Cooper. And old Penny Clough-Cooper was probably going to need a bodyguard! Even to the Hon. Con's indulgent gaze, the young woman did appear to be somewhat over-exposed. Not that her bikini was any more outrageous than hundreds that they'd seen on the other beaches they'd walked past. It was simply that her figure made the whole ensemble so much more explosive. The Lewcock brothers had already given expression to their vulgar appreciation and Norman Beamish looked as though he'd been hypnotised. It was also a fair bet that not all the sweat on Desmond Withenshaw's noble brow was due to the warmth of the day. Roger Frossell, secure in the knowledge that the geriatrics began at twenty-six, had been less impressed, but even he had looked twice.

The Albatrossers were a little uneasy and finding it difficult to settle down. Maybe it was Miss Clough-Cooper's unexpectedly nubile figure that was upsetting them, men and women, or may be it was simply that, now they had some leisure time, they didn't know what to do with it. There they were, lounging in solitary splendour on a private beach specially reserved for foreign tourists and feeling guilty because they weren't using their time more profitably.

Mrs Beamish attempted a bit of vicarious culture. ‘Sukhumi is quite a pretty little town, isn't it?'

Miss Jones, having been nicely brought up, was constitutionally incapable of rejecting so blatant a conversational gambit. ‘Oh, very pretty,' she agreed eagerly. ‘Much the prettiest town we've seen so far, in my opinion.'

Mrs Beamish introduced a more astringent note. ‘Of course,' she pointed out sternly, ‘it is not a very historical town.'

Miss Jones, sycophantly and simperingly, agreed that it wasn't. That, she suggested, didn't make it any less pretty though, did it?

‘It's the trees,' said Mrs Beamish. ‘The magnolias, the palms, the oleanders. They give the town its special character.'

‘And the sea,' ventured Miss Jones.

‘And the sea,' allowed Mrs Beamish graciously.

Several people, unlucky enough to be within earshot, took a firm grip on themselves and tried to believe that tolerance really was a virtue.

‘I didn't,' Miss Jones went on, lowering her voice and glancing round in the furtive way Western tourists soon develop, ‘care much for these monkeys.'

Mrs Beamish puckered up her lips and shuddered. ‘That was disgraceful!' she agreed. ‘Quite disgraceful! I mean,' – she rearranged her handbag on her lap – ‘if they must keep all those hundreds and hundreds of monkeys for vivisection, there's absolutely no need to show the place as a tourist attraction. There is such a thing as decency – and I told that guide so, too!'

Miss Clough-Cooper was daubing herself with oil.

The Hon. Con scrambled eagerly across the intervening patch of sand. ‘Here, let me give you a helping paw!' She grinned widely. ‘I'll do the bits you can't reach, eh?'

Miss Clough-Cooper didn't panic. She screwed the top back quite calmly on the bottle. ‘It's all right, thanks.'

‘You go a lovely brown,' said the Hon. Con enviously. Miss Clough-Cooper lay back on her towel and closed her eyes. The Hon. Con recognised the signs and knew that if she didn't keep on talking she'd have the blessed girl going to sleep on her. She cleared her throat. ‘ Some people say,' she announced loudly, ‘that it's supposed to be jolly bad for the old skin.'

Sheer politeness forced Penny Clough-Cooper to open one eye. ‘What is?' she asked reluctantly.

‘Sun bathing.'

‘Oh.'

The Hon. Con shuffled even nearer. ‘ Er – what does your father think about it?'

‘My father?'

The Hon. Con puffed her cheeks out. Jumping Jehoshaphat, but this was uphill work! ‘He's a doctor, ain't he?'

‘Oh, I see what you mean.' Miss Clough-Cooper took time off to dispose her limbs more comfortably. ‘Well, he's an orthopaedic surgeon, actually. I think I told you that, didn't I? I don't suppose he knows much more about skin care than you do.'

The Hon. Con had reached the stage of grasping at any straw. ‘An orthopaedic surgeon, eh? How jolly interesting!'

Miss Clough-Cooper sighed and turned her face to the sea.

The Hon. Con tried again. ‘ Er – what exactly does an orthopaedic surgeon do when he's at home?'

This time Penelope Clough-Cooper's sigh was heavy and pronounced. ‘
Bad backs
!' she said, slowly, clearly and finally.

‘Bloody hell!' A few yards away across the golden sands Jim Lewcock sat bolt upright. ‘Oh, sod it!'

His brother grunted sleepily at his side. ‘What's up?'

Jim Lewcock was scrambling to his feet. ‘Need you bloody ask?' He stood up and looked around. ‘Where the hell is it?'

Tony Lewcock sat up, too. ‘ Back of the hut we changed in, I should think. Yes, sure to be.'

‘God damn it!' Jim Lewcock muttered crossly to himself as he set off back up the beach. ‘Excuse me, ladies!' There was no reason for him to go stepping all over the Hon. Con and Miss Clough-Cooper but, even in moments of dire emergency, Jim Lewcock would do anything for a giggle. ‘Make way there for a man in a hurry!'

The Hon. Con rolled clear of Jim Lewcock's enormous bare feet. ‘Where the heck do you think you're going?' she demanded angrily.

Jim Lewcock grinned and bent down. He reduced his voice to a whisper that carried from one end of the beach to the other. ‘I'm just going to point Percy at the porcelain!' he explained. ‘Back in a minute.'

Foul mouthed brute! The Hon. Con ignored the barely suppressed sniggers which arose on all sides and flopped down flat on her face. To hell with the lot of 'em! She was going to settle down and have a good old think about her detection problems. Now then – was somebody really trying to do away with Penny Clough-Cooper or was the poor lass suffering from a too vivid imagination? Or was somebody simply trying to give her a good scare? The Hon. Con, pleased with the progress she was making, wriggled around until she'd excavated a comfortable hollow in the sand. But, why should anyone want to frighten or – even worse – kill Penny Clough-Cooper? She seemed a harmless enough girl – pleasant and intelligent if, perhaps, not very forthcoming. The innocent daughter of an innocent orthopaedic surgeon and the impeccable employee of an impeccable firm of solicitors. Was there – the Hon. Con screwed up her face behind her sun-glasses – some emotional tangle somewhere in the background? Penny Clough-Cooper didn't look that kind of girl, but these days you never knew. But, even if she was, why should that make her a murder victim? The Hon. Con drove deeper furrows along her brow. Had she chastely rejected the lascivious advances of some swine of a man? Or – the Hon. Con's face paled – had she perhaps
not
rejected the lascivious advances of some swine of a man and it was his wife who was on the old war-path? Oh, blimey!

It was nearly an hour later when a hideous cacophony of raucous shrieks and cries woke the Hon. Con from her slumbers. She sat up, mouth like a parrot's cage and eyes all puffed up, to find that the Intourist beach had been taken over by the hooligan hordes of a latter-day Ghenghis Khan.

‘Good God!'

Miss Jones laid aside her darning. ‘They're East Germans, apparently, dear. Well,' – she dabbed her brow with a handkerchief drenched in eau-de-cologne – ‘and did you have a nice little nap?'

‘Where's Penny Clough-Cooper?'

Miss Jones picked up her darning. ‘She said she had a bit of a headache, dear, and thought she'd go back to the hotel.'

‘Oh, no!' roared the Hon. Con, beginning to scramble to her feet. ‘Not again!'

But Miss Jones didn't have to be told things twice. ‘Now, there's nothing to worry about, dear! I remembered what you said.'

‘So why didn't you wake me?' howled the Hon. Con. ‘You know that girl's in mortal danger and can't be allowed to wander about unprotected and all alone.'

‘Don't shout, dear!' Miss Jones rarely forgot the proprieties. ‘Miss Clough-Cooper is not wandering about unprotected and all alone. Mrs Frossell very kindly offered to go back with her. Mrs Frossell had developed a headache, too, it seems. I can't say I'm surprised. It really is terribly hot.'

‘Mrs Frossell?' gasped the Hon. Con.

‘Well, I'm sure you don't suspect her of being your murderer, do you, dear?' Miss Jones's silvery laugh tinkled out and was lost in the row the East Germans were making as they indulged themselves in some mass and elaborate callisthenics.

‘It always turns out to be the most unlikely person, you chump!' snarled the Hon. Con, making a full-scale production out of the simple action of gathering up her belongings.

‘But, even if it is Mrs Frossell, she'll hardly dare kill Miss Clough-Cooper this time, will she, dear?'

‘Why not?'

‘Becase that would make her the only suspect, wouldn't it, dear?' Miss Jones's sturdy common sense could be very irksome at times. ‘All the rest of us are here, aren't we? With cast-iron alibis. Whenever the murderer has struck in the past, you see, he's made very sure that there has been a number of suspects, hasn't he?'

‘Hm.' The Hon. Con wasn't prepared to surrender her grievances as easily as all that. She shut the screaming East Germans out of her mind and concentrated on her fellow Albatrossers. She couldn't help feeling that she'd done this sort of thing before and maybe it was this which distracted her. She began the count again.

‘Would you like a piece of chocolate, dear?'

The Hon. Con rounded on Miss Jones, clenching her fists and raising them to that blue, cloudless sky. ‘ Drat you, Bones!' she remonstrated. ‘You've made me get it wrong again! There should be nine here besides you and me and I only made it eight.'

‘Oh, it is only eight, dear,' said Miss Jones with a touch of embarrassment. ‘ Roger Frossell left some time ago. Long before Miss Clough-Cooper decided she'd had enough, though – so he couldn't be following her, could he?' She saw the look on the Hon. Con's face and interpreted it correctly. ‘Mrs Frossell definitely didn't lure Miss Clough-Cooper away, dear. I can give you my word about that. Miss Clough-Cooper made the first move and …'