Trouble in the Town Hall (8 page)

Alan just looked at me and I grimaced.

“Sorry—poor choice of words. But honestly, if looks could kill, I should think you'd have another corpse on your hands. I suppose Thorpe's been in Pettifer's camp and now Pettifer thinks he's a Judas.”

“Probably. Where's your car? I didn't ask my driver to wait.”

“Then we're out of luck. I walked. For the exercise,” I added defiantly.

“One of these days I'm going to make you a present of driving lessons,” said Alan cheerfully, looking around. “Ah, constable!”

The uniformed man just leaving the hall stopped in his tracks, trotted over, and saluted smartly, looking anxious. “Yes, sir!”

“It's all right, Wilkins,” Alan said, reading the name tag without missing a beat. “I simply need a favor, if you have your car.”

Wilkins nodded, mute in the presence of his Big Boss.

“The lady and I need a ride over to the Cathedral Close, if it's not too much trouble.”

“Yes, sir. That is, no, sir, no trouble at all, sir. This way, sir—madam.”

So we ended the evening peaceably at the Rose and Crown discussing leaky roofs and other domestic disasters, with not a word about murders or civic passions.

O
VER BREAKFAST THE
next day my mind reverted to the meeting of the night before. I wished I understood a little more about all the crosscurrents. Why, for example, had Thorpe done what looked like such an abrupt about-face? Why hadn't Farrell's proposal—which sounded so reasonable—gained approval, or even discussion, over the past year?

And most of all, what had gone on at that meeting the Lord Mayor had held Sunday night? The tensions at the public meeting had been only thinly veiled; I could well believe in those heated private exchanges Barbara Dean had hinted at.

I considered my sources of information. Jane, of course, but Jane wasn't available at the moment; she volunteered at the animal shelter on Wednesdays. Margaret Allenby, wife of the dean of the cathedral, could sometimes be persuaded to talk about personalities in ecclesiastical circles, and Jeremy Sayers, the organist, was always open to gossip, the bitchier the better—but this wasn't a church matter. It wasn't a university matter, either, which left out dear old Dr. Temple, who knew everything about everyone academic, but wasn't interested in general gossip.

That just about exhausted the possibilities in my limited group of friends, which meant I'd have to wait till Jane got home. Meanwhile, there were other worries to deal with, the foremost being Clarice. Archie couldn't have been feeling very pleasant when he got home last night after the meeting. In her present jellylike state, was Clarice in any condition to cope with him?

I groaned aloud and Samantha, in the corner of the kitchen by the Aga, interrupted her ablutions to stare at me through her huge blue eyes.

“It's all very well for you,” I said glumly. “You can sit there by a nice, warm stove. I've got to go out in the rain. Aren't you glad you're a cat?”

Sam yawned; of course she was glad. No cat would even consider the infinitely inferior status of human.

So I emptied the buckets in the upstairs hall—they were filling faster today, I noted with a mental curse for my landlord—and headed for the Pettifers' new, watertight, sterile house.

I drove. The long walk in the rain last night had caused arthritic twinges in several joints I'd never noticed before, and I was also smarting from Alan's crack about driving lessons. I got insignificantly lost twice and, in desperation, drove the wrong way down a deserted one-way street to get to where I needed to be, but on the whole I thought I did rather well, though my knees were shaking as I got out of the car.

They shook even more on the front step as I considered the awful possibility that Archie might be home, but I was in luck. The door opened promptly to my ring and there, sturdy and blessedly sane and normal, was Mrs. Finch.

“'Ere, now, 'ere's a treat for you, luv,” she called in to the hall. “'Ere's Mrs. Martin come to see you.”

She stage-whispered at me behind her hand. “Wobbly on 'er pins still, she is, but comin' along. Company'll do 'er no end o' good.”

“I'm glad you're still here, Mrs. Finch,” I whispered back as I followed her into the kitchen, marveling a little. Here was a woman who had found a body, ministering calmly to the vapors of one who had only heard about it. Truly the Cockney is a rare and precious breed.

Clarice was looking better. What color she ever had was back in her cheeks and her soft, fair hair was neatly combed, if a bit discouraged-looking. She was sitting at the breakfast table in a becoming pink-flowered housecoat, with a teacup in front of her.

“Oh, Dorothy, I'm so glad to see you.” Her voice was almost back to normal, too. “Won't you have some tea? Ada makes the most lovely tea, and frightfully good biscuits.”

She sounded like a little girl inviting me to a dolls' tea party. I sat, and Mrs. Finch happily assumed her role of nanny, seizing the tea tray and making for the stove.

“I can't imagine what you must be thinking of me, Dorothy,” Clarice went on shyly. “So silly of me to go to pieces like that.”

“Don't worry about it. You had a shock.”

“But I do wish I were more like you. You never turn a hair at frightful things, and nor does Ada.”

I thought of Mrs. Finch's hysterics, but I didn't want to mention the murder scene. “It's easier for me. I'm still an outlander here, so terrible things aren't so—immediate, I guess. Besides, I've gotten good at hiding my feelings. Don't forget, I've got more than twenty years on you. Anyway, I'm glad you're feeling more like yourself.”

“You're very kind, Dorothy.” There was a tear on her cheek; she brushed it away and pulled herself together. “But I mustn't be cosseted when I'm being foolish. I was afraid that Archie would be in trouble, you see, since it was the Town Hall. But the police have had the sense to realize he couldn't have had anything to do with it, so it's quite all right.”

What a fragile bubble of hope! From what Alan had told me, neither Archie nor anyone else was out of the running at the moment. But let Clarice play with her pretty bubble while she could.

Mrs. Finch set a tray in front of us and waited, hands on hips, for applause. She certainly deserved it. The tray was beautifully arranged with a lace cloth, flowered china, and a mouthwatering plateful of scones and homemade cookies. I took a bite of one and rolled my eyes skyward, grateful not only for the goodies but for a reason not to reply to Clarice.

“This is sublime, Mrs. Finch. Do you ever give people your recipes?”

“We-ell. That almond biscuit's me granny's own receipt, and I said I'd never part with it but to me own flesh and blood. But seein' as 'ow me son ain't got 'imself a wife no more, nor yet no children—”

I caught my breath. “No children” was a phrase to be avoided around Clarice. One of our bonds was our childlessness, but whereas I'd learned over the years to deal with the pain, for Clarice it was fresh and new every single month, as her hopes were dashed again. I've seen her cry helplessly during a baptism at the cathedral.

This morning, thank goodness, her thoughts were otherwise occupied. “Ada's been telling me about the meeting last night,” she said. “Do sit down and go on, Ada.”

I breathed again. “Oh, were you there, Mrs. Finch? I didn't see you.”

“I didn't like to leave 'ere, but me son went, an' come an' told me about it after. I was just sayin' as 'ow it don't look too good for Mr. Pettifer bein' allowed to build 'is mall.”

“Yes, but Ada,” Clarice said eagerly, “last night was only a public discussion. Archie will talk them round, the Council and the people who matter. He's such a powerful speaker. And the important thing is that no one said a word about him being accused—involved in the—accident. I'm sure it was an accident, it must have been. Don't you think so, Dorothy?”

I was very glad I had a mouthful of biscuit, even if I nearly choked. “Certainly the police haven't made up their minds yet about the circumstances,” I said after I'd taken as long as possible to chew and swallow. “At least according to the little I know. Could I have a little more tea? And Clarice, not to change the subject, but when do you think you might be able to get back to work? Mrs. Williamson really needs you.”

It was rude, but it worked; Clarice is easily led. We talked about the bookshop for a few minutes, and then Clarice excused herself. “I'm having my hair done,” she confided. “Ada thought it would brace me up.”

“Good for you. Make sure they really pamper you.”

I lingered in the hall after she had gone upstairs to dress. “What did your son really think of the meeting? I didn't want to talk about it in front of Clarice.”

Mrs. Finch snickered. “'Ee said it were a tea party compared to the one on Sunday.”

“You mean the Lord Mayor's meeting?” I was all ears. “How does he know about that?”

“'Ee didn't. I told 'im.”

She looked at me, a cheeky grin on her weather-beaten face.

“All right, all right! How did you know, then? You know perfectly well I'm dying to hear all about it.”

She sat down on the elegant Directoire chaise longue in the hall, an incongruous figure in a too tight nylon housedress, work boots, and white socks, and told me.

“See, the meetin', it was at the private room in the Feathers, seein' as 'ow the Mayor's Parlor is bein' done up. You know the Feathers?”

I nodded. It was the biggest pub in the High Street, a good place for food and drink.

“Well, Tom 'Arris, 'im as keeps the Feathers, is by way o' bein' a friend of mine.” She looked up coyly, and I nodded and obliged with the wink that seemed to be expected. “So when we was 'avin' a friendly drop o' gin, like, 'ee told me all about it. There was just the six of 'em: 'is Worship, an' Mr. Pettifer, 'an Mrs. Dean as runs everything, an' then them as spoke at the big meetin'. That John Thorpe—” She sniffed disdainfully. “An' Mr. Farrell and Mavis Underwood, 'oo 'as got entirely above 'erself. An' the mayor thought 'ee could keep it all civilized, like.” She affected a genteel accent. “‘See if we carn't all come to a meetin' of minds,' 'ee said. Wanted to see which way the cat would jump, if you arsk me, so's 'ee'd know which side to come down on 'imself.

“So for a bit it was all la-di-da and properlike. Then after dinner, when they'd all 'ad one or two, Mr. Pettifer started in. Talkin' big, like it was all settled, and lordin' it over Mr. Farrell.

“Well, Mr. Farrell, 'ee just blew up. The
language
, Tom said—such as you wouldn't 'ardly believe. A right down shindy, it were! An' Tom said Mr. Farrell just crashed out of there, like to took the door off the 'inges—an' 'ee said 'ee'd stop Archie if it was the last thing 'ee did, an' left lookin' fit to kill somebody!”

W
HEN I GOT
home, self and car amazingly still in one piece, I picked up the nearest cat and sat down on the couch to mull over Mrs. Finch's news.

Her sensational style made the most of the story, of course. When you got right down to it, all it amounted to was that the Lord Mayor's meeting had been less than cordial, and I'd already known that. Still, I now had the full personnel list and information about one specific run-in. What I didn't know was whether any of it was relevant.

I stretched to reach the end table (Emmy, who had purred herself almost to sleep on my lap, commented crossly) and got a pad and pen. Time to make some lists.

First I listed everyone who had been at the meeting Sunday night. Of course, there was no assurance that one of them was the murderer. But when six people get together and quarrel fiercely, and shortly thereafter a murder is committed that affects them all, in a site close to the meeting, my common sense refuses to dismiss the possibility of a connection. Very well:

Daniel Clarke, the Lord Mayor

Archibald Pettifer

Barbara Dean

John Thorpe

Mavis Underwood

William Farrell

Now, one of the first principles of criminal investigation, at least as practiced in my favorite form of fiction, is to establish who benefits. Or, as Hercule Poirot used to put it, to see what the real effect of the crime is and then determine who is better off because of it. And the most important result of this crime, to my mind, was that Pettifer's plans for the Town Hall were at least deferred, if not doomed. I studied my list of names. I'd lived in Sherebury long enough to know a little about most of them. Who was a likely murderer?

It was hard to imagine any personal benefit to the mayor. Aside from the sheer effrontery of suspecting such an important personage, I honestly didn't see that he had any ax to grind one way or the other. He had appeared, last night, to come down on the preservation side, but his motives seemed truly disinterested, with the welfare of the town foremost.

Pettifer was undoubtedly a loser at this point. True, he had access to the Town Hall, and he had acted peculiarly in the matter of tampering with the body. But I couldn't see any reason why he'd want to scuttle his own project.

Barbara Dean, I thought almost guiltily, looked like a frontrunner. She had said that Pettifer had been in the ascendant Sunday night—and now she had the upper hand. Preservation was more than a preference with her, it was a religion. And she was a determined woman. To the point of ruthlessness? To the point of murder? I didn't know, but somehow I couldn't quite dismiss the idea. Her Eminence didn't let obstacles stand in her way, and she was used to getting what she wanted—somehow.

John Thorpe. Wealthy, the leading real-estate dealer in Sherebury, with a reputation as a sharp dealer, a hustler. I could imagine that ethics might play very little part in his actions, so he was attractive as a murder suspect. Unfortunately, he seemed to have no motive. He had shown last night that he was ready to throw Pettifer to the wolves if it was expedient. What a pity I couldn't figure out a private motive, so to speak. Could he have some grudge, a quarrel with Pettifer, so that he wanted to see him fail?