Withering Heights

13

Mrs. Malloy, Betty, and I took turns exhausting ourselves, despite knowing it was absolutely the worst thing we could do, given that air was severely rationed. A national shortage, I supposed. I forgot about Mr. Gallagher. Indeed, it seemed to me that all the memories of my life till this moment were seeping from me. I struggled to think about Ben and our children, but they were fading. I sagged against Betty, but she wasn’t there. She had crumpled to the floor. I could feel her grasping my calves, her hands clutching… then letting go. How sad for her, how anguishing for Tom that he was to lose another wife in an accident, how terrible for dear Ariel. Would she ever recover from this further devastation of her childhood? Would it be any comfort for her to know that there were now three more faces looking down at her from heaven? I tried to come up with a prayer, but all I could manage were some starts and stops of Mrs. Malloy’s poems. There was life left in her. I could feel her gyrations. A funny time to be doing her daily exercise routine, I thought with woolly affection. It was now, as the windows of my life were fogging up, that it came to me in a sort of vision why the man who handed Betty the egg and spoon had seemed familiar. He was the walker I had seen with the black-and-white sheepdog. I had a further revelation about his voice and his mismatched ears. A mosaic of scattered pieces of information floated together. I could be wrong, but I didn’t think so. How to prove it, though; that was as ever the question. And the difficulties would increase monumentally when I was dead.

“You’re not going to die.” The clouds parted as Mrs. Malloy’s voice boomed down on me from the sky. “None of us is. Now, move aside, there’s a good girl. I had a bit of a tussle getting that underwire out of me bra. But it’ll do the trick, see if it don’t. Ed the locksmith’s got nothing on me when the situation’s desperate.”

“That priest couldn’t get out, the one Lady Fiona told me suffocated in here,” I croaked, by way of encouragement.

“That’s a man for you; they don’t have our stamina. He’d probably never got locked out of the house after sneaking off at night as a teenager. Virtue isn’t its own reward; it’s a bloody handicap. Make yourself useful, Mrs. H.” She was barely panting. “See what Betty’s up to.”

“I can’t see, but I think she’s passed out on the floor.”

“I’m hurrying. There! I’m pushing the wire down a crack. It’s hit something; it must be the catch. Careful, I mustn’t lose me concentration.”

“Please don’t.”

I waited, desperately hoping to hear a productive click, but I couldn’t. Suddenly there was noise outside. Voices raised in panic, footsteps stumbling around. We were going to be rescued… if anyone out there knew how to open the panel. The fog returned, I felt my legs buckle, and then that same unearthly voice, the one that had spoken through the clouds, echoed through my head.

“That’s it! The click! The bleeding pearly gates is opening.”

Oh, dear! I thought, while falling forward. How many hours would Mrs. Malloy get in the heavenly slammer for swearing in front of St. Peter?

Obviously, there was a mistaken notion that I had led a blameless life. I was adrift in sunlight. There were no scolding voices, only one that was as gentle as a lullaby. I knew who was talking; it was Ben. How lovely of him to come after me, I reflected drowsily. But really he shouldn’t have left the children! They needed him and I was quite safe here. I opened my eyes to find myself lying on a sofa in the drawing room at Cragstone.

“Are you back, sweetheart?” Ben asked, with a catch in his voice. He was seated in a chair beside me.

“Have I been laid out?”

“You fainted.”

“How are-?”

“Tom fetched the doctor for Betty. She’s going to be fine. At the moment she’s as badly shocked as you are.”

“No, I’m not.” I sat up and kissed him absently. “What about Mrs. Malloy?”

“Right here.” She came out of nowhere to stand over me. “A rare fright you’ve given us, Mrs. H! I thought you was gone and I’d never get to tell you I broke that pink vase you searched high and low after.”

“That hideous thing?”

“The one my mother gave you?” Ben was laughing at me. I could feel the relieved exhilaration through his touch.

“The reason I kept quiet,” said Mrs. M, “is that I did it on purpose.”

“Thank you for that.” I squeezed her hand. “As well as for saving my life and Betty’s.”

“Now don’t go getting all soppy! If I hadn’t managed, it wouldn’t be the end of the world. The troops were already there.”

“What troops?”

“Tom, Ariel, myself.” Ben kissed my forehead. “Along with Mavis and Eddie.”

“Her son?”

“I’ll explain,” said Mrs. Malloy, sitting down in a chair across from us. “That’ll speed things, since it’s me that had a proper talk with Mavis. Not that I’m blaming you for being out cold for over an hour. It’s like this, Mrs. H; she’s been bringing the boy to work on the q.t., seeing as how Betty had said she couldn’t. It’s been easy for her to slip him into the house unnoticed, because she comes in her car and parks close to the passageway outside the door that’s left unlocked, there being no key. What she does is take Eddie up the back stairs to the west wing. She’s drilled it into him to keep out of sight should anyone go up there. Today, when he heard us coming, he got in that big wardrobe.”

“Go on,” I urged.

“Seems he was peeking out and saw you, me, and Betty go into the priest hole.”

“He must have been startled.”

“ ’Course he was, being only seven. Scared him, it did, when he heard us pounding on that door to try and get it open. But he kept his head on straight. Quite the little hero, our Eddie. He raced downstairs to tell his mum. Being Mavis, she didn’t waste time asking a lot of questions. She found Tom, who was with Ariel and Mr. H, and they all came up on the double.”

“That little boy deserves a medal,” I said.

“Not quite the way Mavis sees it. She says he’s a real scamp. He’d get bored playing with Mr. Gallagher’s old toys in Nanny Pierce’s room and sneak downstairs. She caught him there a few times.”

“It must have been him who took your toffees.”

“And a snuffbox.” Ben smiled. “Children love small containers. The poor little chap, he was bored out of his mind most of the time. But it wasn’t Eddie who let the bathroom basin overflow. He and Mavis had left the house by that time.” He shifted sideways, as I put my feet to the floor.

“Ariel told me Nanny Pierce thought Tom and Betty had a wild lifestyle because she’d seen car lights going down the drive in the middle of the night. Would that have been Mavis?”

“Mrs. Cake got her to fess up. Seems she had a set-to with her husband, Ed, one night.” Mrs. Malloy displayed the air of importance that comes from being in the know. “They’ve been going through a difficult patch, what with him starting up his own business from home and not being quite as cooperative with Eddie as Mavis thinks he could be. One night, she told him she was walking out and taking the boy with her. Having said it, she had to follow through, and Cragstone was the only place she could think to come. Between us, I’d be surprised if it was just the one time. So easy to get in, with that door always unlocked.”

“I suppose everything would have gone off without a hitch if Mrs. Cake hadn’t heard them moving about on the night of her accident.”

“It was one of Mr. Gallagher’s old toys left on the stairs that caused her to fall when she come down to make her and Mavis a cup of tea. Put Mrs. Cake in a difficult position.” Here Mrs. Malloy resorted to royal magnanimity. “She’s fond of Mavis and didn’t think Betty was treating her fair, not letting her bring Eddie to work when it was a case of needs must. So the next morning, when she was thinking clearer, she said she’d only imagined hearing someone. It was Betty’s thinking it might have been Mr. Gallagher’s ghost roaming about that made her press for details.”

Ben put an arm around me, and I stood up to find the floor satisfactorily solid under my feet. “I expect Betty thinks it was her ladyship who crept after us into the house and closed the priest-hole door. It is possible, I suppose. She knew it was there and quite likely how to open it.”

“Then she’s barking up the wrong tree.” Mrs. Malloy made a noble attempt at not preening. “Milk Jugg phoned while you was out of it, Mrs. H, to report he’d found evidence that her ladyship was married before she became Mrs. Gallagher, but there was an annulment. As for Mr. G not knowing about it at the time and only finding out right before he disappeared, that’s a wash, seeing as the groom’s cousin was one of the witnesses that signed the registry at the first wedding. So there goes Betty’s theory that Lady Fiona murdered her husband because he found out she was a bigamist and then killed Mr. Tribble and Pierce because they might have exposed her secret.”

“Something came to me before I passed out,” I said.

“What was that?” Ben still had his arm around me.

“I think I know what’s really been going on here. We have several villains and overlapping crimes. First up is Mr. Scrimshank who embezzled the Gallagher’s money. Mr. Gallagher finally realized what was going on. We know from Melody and Mrs. Cake that on the day before his disappearance he repeatedly tried to reach Mr. Scrimshank on the phone.”

“That’s right,” said Mrs. Malloy. “It’s as clear as glass Mr. Scrimshank turned up at Cragstone that evening, after her ladyship had gone to bed. Probably the miserable bugger hoped to bluff his way out of the situation, but Mr. Gallagher didn’t buy it. An argument followed and Mr. Scrimshank attacked him.”

“Good so far.” Ben handed me a glass of brandy.

“There’s a quibble.” I took a reviving sip. “A Mrs. Johnson saw a man race out of this house. Let us assume that man was Mr. Scrimshank. If so, where was Mr. Gallagher when the police arrived? Which they did fairly speedily, according to Mrs. Cake. No sign of him dying or dead on the floor, with a bloody blunt instrument lying beside him. But if he did recover sufficiently to get out of the house and try to reach help, why hasn’t he been heard of since? He wouldn’t have left Lady Fiona to Mr. Scrimshank’s mercy.”

“He may have crawled into a ditch and died.” Ben gave Mrs. Malloy a glass of brandy.

“Go on! Keep talking this through, Mrs. H,” she prodded. She’d had her moment of glory and was prepared to let me try for mine.

“This is the overlapping part. Someone unconnected with Mr. Gallagher’s disappearance decided to use Betty’s belief that he had been murdered to facilitate her death.”

“Who’d want to kill her?” Ben asked sharply.

“I hate to say it,” said Mrs. Malloy, “but the name that pops up in my mind is Ariel. And there was me getting so fond of her.” Ducking her black-and-white head, she searched her dress pocket for a hanky.

“It was she who arranged the séance. And Ben”-I took a deeper sip of brandy-“there is something I haven’t told you about that. The Madam LaGrange we saw was an imposter.” I explained how Mrs. Malloy had failed to recognize the woman getting into the taxi.

“Ellie, I understand why you didn’t tell me.” He stood up, took a couple of paces, and sat back down. “We were at odds with each other. But why the switch?”

“To manipulate Betty into going into that priest hole when the time came. The garden party was the perfect opportunity. People milling about in the grounds, general confusion: what were the chances of her being missed until it was too late?”

Mrs. Malloy produced the hanky again.

“Not Ariel,” I reassured her. “We’re not dealing with the Bad Seed here.”

“Tom?” Ben’s expression was grim.

“His first wife died in a car accident,” said Mrs. Malloy, “and that can’t be that hard to arrange, especially for someone as handy with tools as Tom. Ariel said he had recently been working in the west wing.”

“Not him either.” I shook my head. “None of the Hopkinses has a good way of showing it, but deep down I believe they’re fond of one another. This could be just the wake-up call Tom has needed ever since Val showed up at Cragstone House. I’m wondering if he’s had his suspicions.”

“About her really being in love with Mr. H here all the time?” Mrs. Malloy was making matters worse for her face with the hanky.

“What?” Ben was shocked into shouting out the word.

“Don’t worry, darling,” I said, “I’m not going to let her get you. My supposition is that was a smoke screen. Val, as you’re aware, turned up here shortly after the Hopkinses moved into Cragstone. She must have read about their winning the lottery in the newspapers. And whatever it took, she was going to get her hands on that lovely money. I think she was speaking the truth when she told me she wasn’t devastated when Tom broke off their engagement. She probably has a knack for mixing fact with fiction. It makes what she says sound credible, although I could kick myself now for so gullibly accepting her misty-eyed performance. Her main problem in getting her hands on Tom and the lottery winnings is that he takes his Catholicism seriously. He’d never marry her while Betty lived.”

“Agreed. Divorce for him isn’t an option.” Ben again got up and paced around the furniture with his hands in his pockets, a clear sign that he was endeavoring forcibly to master his emotions.

“Val had to realize that when a wife is murdered the husband is the prime suspect, and Tom might not be keen to remarry if he was in prison. And there was the added complication of his first wife having died in an accident. This death had to appear to be Betty’s own fault, a classic case of curiosity killed the cat. I think what gave Val the idea was hearing about the lights that went on and off by themselves and the front door being found open in the morning. Faulty wiring and carelessness? Or could it be blamed on an uneasy spirit, especially given Betty’s belief that Lady Fiona had murdered her husband? You were another piece of luck, Ben. She saw your look of stunned surprise when she walked in. And right from the first, she played her scenes with you to great dramatic effect. Lady Fiona thought there was something between the two of you-and, yes, even I did for a while. And when she confessed her feelings for you to me so frankly in the garden, she raised her voice so the audience would be sure to hear.”

“Me, that was,” Mrs. Malloy explained to Ben. “The wicked vixen made sure I didn’t miss a syllable.”

“Insurance against its being said that there was something going on between her and Tom before Betty’s death. While all the time her aim was to do everything in her power to undermine the Hopkinses’ marriage. Causing Tom to realize what a mistake he had made in allowing his parents to part him from the woman he should have married in the first place.

“She already had set the action up for today,” I went on. “Who else but Val would have made that phone call canceling the caterers? Betty would look totally inadequate when Val took over the job, as she would have done had Ben not saved the day. That’s been her mode of operation ever since she arrived at the Dower House, eroding Betty’s self-esteem, taking over the redecorating, and talking her into buying badly fitting clothes. The stunts she pulled-the dead birds, the wreath, and the deluge in the conservatory were all geared to one end. Val trusted in Betty’s need to prove herself as a detective, if not an ideal wife or stepmother, to get her into the priest hole. But she was too clever to risk handing her that egg and spoon herself.”

“So who helped out with that?”

“Very likely the one whose recorded image, as Mr. Gallagher, with the lion’s head walking stick, appeared on Betty’s bedroom wall. And whose shivery voice begged her to rescue him from the dark place. This she took to mean the grave Lady Fiona had dug for him; but, hopefully, would later connect with the priest hole.”

“Any idea who this man would be?” Ben stood by the windows, which showed a darkening sky. In contrast the color and beauty of Val’s décor struck a sickening false note.

“The one I’ve seen walking a sheepdog. Val’s brother, Simon. When I was at the Dower House with Nanny Pierce she told me he was very good looking, although it was a pity about his ears. The man who came up to Betty today had a noticeably mismatched set. One being twice the size of the other. Maybe it explains why he’s gone astray.”

“Tough!” fired back Mrs. Malloy. “There’s a woman at Bingo whose nose looks like it’s on upside down and she don’t go luring people into priest holes.”

“I think Simon was one of the reasons Nanny had to die before today,” I continued. “Left to roam around at the garden party, she’d have recognized him if she saw him close up.”

“A less drastic approach would have been to drug her into a dead sleep so she wouldn’t stir from the Dower House all afternoon,” Ben responded contemptuously.

“I suspect Val wasn’t in a mood to take any unnecessary risks at this late stage of the game. Nanny may have told her she had seen a man out walking who looked like Simon. Besides, she had that second reason for pushing Nanny under the bus. She needed to convince Betty that Lady Fiona had murdered yet again, so that no one would be surprised when she went looking for Mr. Gallagher’s remains in the priest hole and accidentally got locked inside. Poor Betty! A sad case of a woman with a maniacal obsession! Winning the lottery had affected her mind! A tragedy, but why suspect foul play? And there would be Val on the spot to sweetly comfort Tom in his hour of need. She knew his persuadable nature. He wouldn’t have had a chance against her. All that lovely money would have been hers when she led him by the nose to the altar.”

“Apart from what she’d have to share with her brother, Simon,” Mrs. Malloy pointed out.

“In addition to his role today, Val may also have needed instructions from him on opening up the priest hole. Lady Fiona said he wouldn’t share the secret when they visited Cragstone as children. Maybe he kept it until Val promised to give him a share of the wealth when she married Tom.”

“What a pair!” Ben removed my empty brandy glass and set it down on a table. “That poor old lady.”

“Miss Pierce was lonely with Mr. Gallagher gone and she must have been glad of Val’s company at first, but she wasn’t a fool. She knew Val was up to something. She wanted to show me a photo of Simon and couldn’t find it. Any guesses on who got rid of it?” I was getting angrier the more I talked. “What a gift of fate that her ladyship met Miss Pierce for lunch on Wednesday! But even if that hadn’t happened, it’s a sure bet that Betty would have put her at the scene. Another piece of luck for Val was meeting me in the grounds and telling me that Miss Pierce had forgotten her bus pass. It was a confirmation, should she be asked, of why she was at the bus stop when she never accompanied Miss Pierce on her weekly outings.”

“But the thing is,” Mrs. Malloy said bitterly, “convincing as all this sounds to us, we don’t have a shred of evidence to take to the police. They’d laugh us out the door.”

“You’ve made a believer of me, sweetheart”-Ben kissed my cheek-“but it looks to me as though she’ll get away with it. Any thoughts on who she got to play Madam LaGrange?”

Before I could answer, the door opened and Melody Tabby came into the room. She was every bit as frumpy as I remembered from my one time of meeting her. Her hair didn’t look as though it had been combed in a week, and she was wearing a pasty beige dress and clodhopping shoes. I saw Mrs. Malloy sneak a smug look at her own footwear, which happened to be the black pair of high-heeled sandals with the narrow crisscross straps she had worn on our visit to Mr. Scrimshank’s office.

“So you’re wearing those shoes again, Roxanne.” Melody spoke in a great rush, with some concomitant huffing and puffing. “Remind me to say something about them in a minute.” She paused for a half second to look at Ben and me. “Excuse me for barging in like this. A woman named Mavis let me into the house. She had a little boy with her who tried to put his toffee hands on me.

“Pesky kid!” Ben eyed her with enjoyment.

“Here’s the news. Ed the locksmith arrived at the office at one twenty-seven. Three minutes early. But I didn’t make an issue of it. He had black hair and eyes and a swarthy complexion. Memories of Edward Rochester came flooding back. The same Christian name-but I wasn’t going down that road again. He got into the safe”-catching Mrs. Malloy’s baleful eye-“let’s say for speed, in a twiddle or two. I got out the Gallaghers’ financial records and, like I said I would do, made copies. Seeing as Mr. Scrimshank had said he wouldn’t be back at the office today, I took the copies home with me and started going through them page by page. It took me fifty-seven minutes and thirty-one seconds to find the relevant information. That evil man has swindled the Gallaghers out of-well, in the cause of haste I will say hundreds of thousands of pounds. I immediately phoned Police Sergeant Walters and got him on the case. He rang back to say he had spoken with some of the higher-ups at the station and would be round forthwith to collect the papers. And he was at my home in five and three-quarter minutes.”

“That was very good of him,” said Ben.

“I’d have blasted his ears off if he’d given me any flack!” Melody bristled assertively. “He’s my gentleman friend. Has been for six and three-quarter years, two weeks, and four days. The least he can do is jump to it when I toss evidence of a crime in his lap. And that leads me back to what I wanted to say about your shoes, Roxanne. I didn’t bring it up when we talked about Ed coming to open the safe because, as you know, I like to focus on one thing at a time.”

“Spit it out, Melody.”

“I was standing at the window in my office yesterday afternoon at precisely four-thirty. That’s always the time when I get up from my chair and do my stretching exercises. If you remember the window, it is fairly wide but there’s the blind cutting down the view. Meaning that when you stand in front of it you can’t see all of a person, only their shoes and part of their legs. This is what I saw. A foot shod in one of those exact shoes, Roxanne, kicked forward, and the next minute there was the horrific sound of brakes being jammed on, followed by a lot of shouting and screaming. An old lady had gone under the bus. The death of Miss Valerie Pierce has been passed off as an accident, or so it said in this morning’s newspaper, but I know that shoe kicked out on purpose, making it a case of murder. Though what good is that when I cannot provide a description of the person standing in them? Oh, I do hope it wasn’t poor Frances Edmonds, roped in again by Mr. Scrimshank to do his evil bidding.” Looking sad, Melody allowed Ben to help her into a chair.

“But we know who it was, don’t we, Mrs. H? We talked about Val’s having a pair exactly like these.” Mrs. Malloy looked solemnly down at her feet. “Thank you, Mel, for giving us what it takes to battle on for justice.” She was giving her sister a hug when Tom came in.

“How’s Betty?” Ben asked him.

“Much better. In fact, she’s gone for a drive with Val.”

“What?”

“Val stopped by to see if she could borrow a cup of sugar, and when she found out about Betty and the others”-Tom glanced at Mrs. Malloy and me-“she suggested they both get away for an hour. It seemed a good idea, considering the two of them have been through a good deal in the past twenty-four hours.”

“Unfortunately,” I said, as gently as possible, “Val may be about to murder your wife.”

“Good God!” Did some deep, unprobed awareness convince him? Tom would have swayed and fallen if Melody had not jumped up. Catching him under the arms, she continued to hold him up.

“The question is, where will they have gone?” Ben pounded a fist into his hand.

“To Lady Fiona’s hotel,” I said. “Val wouldn’t act this quickly unless she thought she could turn Betty’s escape from the priest hole to good account. Tom, do you or Betty own a gun?”

“Yes, I thought it might help her feel safer. It’s in my bedside table drawer.”

“Not anymore.” I looked at him sadly, thinking how much more sensible it would have been to replace the missing outdoor key.

“It was Val who suggested…”

“Her story will be that Betty asked to be driven to the hotel so she could confront Lady Fiona. That she was beside herself with rage and distress and on arrival pulled the gun to force a confession. A scuffle followed in which her ladyship and Betty were both shot. A revised ending but not bad. Poor Betty! Already unbalanced and cracking completely after her horrible experience in the priest hole.” I drew a ragged breath.

“How long ago did Val and Betty drive away?”

“I waved them off right before coming in here.” Tom struggled free of Melody’s sustaining hands.

“I’ve got to get to that hotel.”

“You don’t need to,” said Melody, with a glow that made her look positively ravishing. “That’s what my policeman gentleman is good for. It’ll be Police Sergeant Walters to the rescue. He’s at the jewelry shop around the corner from the Bronte Hotel, picking out my engagement ring.”