A Donation of Murder Read online

  ‘There’s ’alf a dozen men called John ’ere, ma’am,’ said the barman. ‘There’s John the carter, John the grocer, Old John Shoesmith—’

  ‘I’ll take you to Peggy’s, if you like,’ a gravelly voice cut in.

  The sisters turned in the direction of the voice, noticing for the first time a man lounging against the bar next to the clerk. ‘As it happens I have some business with Peggy myself.’

  The man smiled at them. He had a badly set broken nose and his eyeteeth had been filed into points — a practice common among prisoners, Dody had been told. She smiled back at the man, despite the sudden feeling of cold on the back of her neck.

  ‘Thank you, you are very kind,’ Florence said, not at all bothered by the bruiser’s appearance. Her sister never ceased to amaze her. She had been a nervous wreck while walking the relatively safe streets, yet in this den of thieves, butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth.

  ‘Are you coming, Dody, or are you planning on standing by the bar for the rest of the day?’ Florence said, turning from the pub’s swing door. Dody thanked the barman for the drinks and hurried after them.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Outside the pub door, the vagrant Dody and Florence had passed on their way in was still rummaging through the pile of discarded bottles. Florence reached into her purse and handed the lad a sixpence, but the Bruiser lunged, knocking the coin from his fist. With a shriek, the boy fell to his knees and began sieving through the dirty slush with his bare hands, looking for it. The Bruiser spotted the sixpence before the boy did and kicked it into a drain. Down it fell with a disappointing ‘plop’.

  ‘I’ve told you not to hang about here, you good for nothing wastrel. Now clear off before it’s you shoved down the drain and all,’ the man growled.

  His boot connected with the youth’s rump. He fell with an animal howl, then picked himself up and scampered off, limping and crying and cursing into the shadows.

  ‘Apologies, ladies. That’s the only way to treat vagabonds the likes of him. He’d only have followed us and made a right nuisance of himself. Never tip beggars, miss,’ he said to Florence, ‘if you don’t mind a bit of advice.’

  Dody and Florence exchanged worried glances. Despite their trepidation, they continued to follow the man. Dody had a scalpel hidden in her handbag and Florence was a recent graduate of Mrs Garrud’s Jujitsu school. If he tried anything untoward, Dody was confident they could defend themselves.

  And for the sake of her conscience and her curiosity (the latter she was loath to admit) she did need to find Margaret.

  The man led them to a yard behind the pub and an empty wooden cart to which a shaggy pony was tethered. When the pony saw its master, it stamped its feet and blew steamy breath from its nostrils.

  ‘My boss wants me to pick up some things from Peggy’s place,’ the man explained, pulling a cloth cap low over his face. ‘Stuff for a party he’s having. There’s plenty of room for you two, so go on, hop in.’

  He helped the women up onto the single bench seat at the front of the cart. Then he pulled a sheet of canvas from the back of the cart and spread it over their knees.

  ‘Peg’s place isn’t too far from here, but it’ll be a chilly ride,’ he said.

  Florence sat in the middle, as close to Dody as she could get. Her earlier bravado was staged, Dody realised, as her sister’s hand crept towards hers and clasped it tight. The pony plodded down narrow streets under sullen skies. Every now and then Florence gave a little jolt and pressed so close Dody thought she might end up on her lap.

  An early dusk was falling by the time the pony slowed to a halt outside a neat brick house with freshly painted gabled windows. It was the smartest house in the street, the rest of the residences rundown and shabby or converted to flats. The women climbed down from the cart, stiff and cold.

  ‘I’m going round the back to collect some chairs, so you two can help yourselves to the front door.’ The man lifted his peak cap, called ‘Cheerio ladies’ and flicked the pony onwards. The women murmured their wary thanks.

  They looked at each other. Florence let out a breath. ‘That was decidedly uncomfortable, in every meaning of the word. The man kept trying to put his hand on my knee under the canvas. I almost resorted to sticking him with my hatpin.’

  ‘And then we’d have been thrown off the cart. I’m glad you exercised some restraint.’

  ‘Thank you for your concern,’ Florence said, sniffing with indignation. ‘I just hope your friend Peggy is at home. We are never travelling like that again, Dody.’

  ‘I agree, we’ll telephone Fletcher to collect us or find the nearest underground station.’

  A plump maid met them at the door. After they had introduced themselves they were led down a warm passageway and into a parlour where an inviting coal fire burned. The coloured door handles were made of fashionable crystal. The gold painted mouldings on the ceiling were interspersed with winged cherubs, beckoning and pointing to one another with chubby gold fingers.

  It wasn’t long before the door opened and Margaret burst in, her arms outstretched to Dody. When Dody introduced Florence, Margaret greeted her with equal enthusiasm, gushing her thanks for the loan of her nightgown and her room.

  Dody had arrived determined to be distant and firm with Margaret, but the warmth of the greeting made her reserve impossible to sustain.

  Their hostess sat them down on gilt armchairs with red velvet upholstery. Instead of ordering tea (it was tea time) she asked the maid to bring them mulled wine.

  ‘I know what it’s like to be cold, don’t I, Dody? Did you tell your sister about our little adventure?’ Margaret asked, adjusting her fine wool skirt over her knees.

  ‘I certainly did.’ Dody leaned towards Margaret, who sat in a matching chair beside hers. ‘Your scar is healing nicely,’ she commented as she examined the woman’s neck. ‘You can have the stitches taken out in a few days.’

  ‘I just had to meet the woman who gave Dody such a shock — believe me, giving Dody a shock is a rare occurrence,’ Florence said with a smile.

  Margaret laughed merrily. ‘If I shock Dody again, I hope it will be a pleasant one!’

  The maid arrived with the mulled wine, followed by the deliveryman, who helped her to hand it around. Then, to Dody’s surprise, he took a glass for himself and stood with his back to the fireplace, facing the seated women.

  ‘Did you find the chairs, Mr James?’ Margaret asked, her voice cold.

  ‘I did. They’re a close match to the chairs the guvnor’s already got and should do nicely.’

  ‘My friend is having a large dinner party tomorrow night,’ Margaret explained to the sisters. ‘He realised he didn’t have enough chairs for the dining room table and sent Mr James here to fetch some of mine.’

  They both smiled and nodded. Talking was awkward with Mr James standing like a stuffed rhinoceros between them and the fire. He drained his mulled wine in two swallows and moved as if to extract a cigarette or a cigar from his pocket. All three women frowned. Margaret opened her mouth as if to protest, but closed it when the cigar or cigarette they expected turned out to be even worse — a stick of liquorice. He began to suck and chew in a most repulsive manner and soon his pointy eyeteeth had turned quite black.

  Florence caught Dody’s eye and turned her lip into a curl when James wasn’t looking.

  Margaret seemed as tired as they were of the man’s boorish manners. ‘Hadn’t you better be getting along?’ she asked him. ‘It will soon be dark and it’ll take a while to get to John’s.’

  Mr James popped the last of the liquorice stick into his blackened mouth and wiped grey drops of spittle from his lips with his sleeve. ‘I suppose I should — no rest for the wicked, eh, Pegs?’ he said with a wink. ‘It’s been a pleasure to make your acquaintance, ladies. I hope to be seeing you again sometime.’

  He left them with a low bow and closed the door behind him. No one spoke until they heard his hobnail boots in the hallway and the slam of
the front door.

  All three women let out a collective sigh of relief.

  ‘I do apologise for Mr James’s behaviour,’ Margaret said. ‘He’s an uncivilised oaf and I cannot abide him.’

  ‘Than why put up with him?’ Dody asked gently.

  ‘He’s my John’s major domo. I really have no choice.’

  Dody had had reservations about Margaret’s lover from the moment she’d first been told about him. And if this Mr James was the kind of employee John kept, she did not hold much hope for him. She wondered if it was only John’s money that was of interest to Margaret. It never ceased to amaze Dody what so many women put up with for the sake of security. She hoped Margaret had more substance to her than that. But how should she broach the object of their visit?

  Her mind was considering a variety of subtle approaches when Florence chipped in guilelessly. ‘The day before yesterday Dody received a very generous, but anonymous, donation to the clinic. She was wondering if it might have been from you.’

  Dody dared not look at Margaret, her cheeks burned so.

  Margaret threw back her head and laughed. ‘You’ve got style, Florence, I’ll give you that.’

  Now it was Florence’s turn to blush.

  Dody cleared her throat. ‘Well, now that it’s in the open—’

  ‘That’s the only way for a friendship to operate, don’t you agree, Dody?’ Margaret interrupted. ‘And you are worried that the donation was from me. You can’t understand how the likes of me might have acquired such a large sum.’

  ‘Put it like that and it sounds awful,’ Dody said, looking at her hands. ‘I do not mean to cause offence.’

  ‘And what would you say if I admitted to the donation, if I told you I recently lost a wealthy aunt who bequeathed me ten times that amount in her will?’

  ‘Then I would congratulate you for your good fortune. I, er, would thank you profusely for your generosity and then I would beg forgiveness for any rudeness. My excuse would be a suspicious nature formed by working too closely with the police. I have so many dealings with the baser forms of humanity that I am perhaps not as trusting as I should be.’

  The earrings, Dody thought, she could not possibly mention the earrings now. Earlier she had planned on giving them back saying they were too generous a gift. But Pike, by confiscating them, had put paid to that idea. Then she had planned on bringing them up casually in conversation in an attempt to find out their origins — but now, she realised, she couldn’t even do that without causing irreversible offence.

  She looked across at her sister, hoping to catch Florence’s eye to stop her from blurting out the next accusation. Busy blowing at her steaming glass of mulled wine, Florence did not look up, thank heavens, nor did she comment.

  ‘You do believe me, don’t you, Dody?’ Margaret pleaded. ‘I swear upon my mother’s grave that the money was acquired honestly. I knew how sick with worry you were about the clinic and wanted to help you. It is but a small way of paying my debt to you.’

  Not this again. ‘Margaret, I swear, you owe me nothing.’

  Margaret raised her eyes to an elaborate crucifix on the wall as if giving brief thanks. And then, out of the blue, she said, ‘I have some more good news. I am to be married.’

  Florence clapped her hands. ‘Congratulations!’

  ‘To John?’ Dody asked with a little less enthusiasm.

  ‘Yes, on the condition that he gets rid of that dreadful Mr James. You see it is James who brought about the change in John. I was not telling you the truth when I said the argument in the carriage was about another woman. It was, in fact, about that man and his uncouth ways. Another woman seemed the easiest explanation at the time.’

  Yes, Dody thought, her heart sinking. It was an easy, fluid lie and one that came quickly and naturally. It appeared that Margaret was not all she had hoped she would be. Perhaps it was just as well Pike had taken the earrings. She had been a fool. Her determination to believe this woman had led to her being not entirely honest with Pike, a matter for which she was now ashamed. The earrings were stolen goods, and odds were the money for the clinic, rather than from an inheritance, had been stolen too. What else was Margaret lying about, she wondered.

  *

  Dody telephoned Fletcher from Margaret’s house and soon they were chugging home in their motorcar. It irritated Dody that she had not found a way of mentioning the earrings to Margaret.

  ‘I mean, that was one of the reasons for tracking her down,’ she complained as they sat on the roomy back seat under a tartan travelling rug.

  ‘No harm done,’ said Florence. ‘It’s probably best to stagger the accusations, anyway. Let’s see what Pike has to say about the earrings first before we do any more investigating.’

  ‘And if they are proved to be stolen?’

  ‘Get them back to their original owners, but keep mum about Margaret.’

  ‘Too late. Pike knows her name and is sure to be able to trace her.’

  ‘Then what will be will be. Whatever Margaret has done she has brought it upon herself. You owe her nothing.’

  ‘Now it is you who are sounding like Pike,’ said Dody. It was easy to be objective when one regarded events from a distance. It wasn’t Pike or Florence who had almost flayed the woman alive

  ‘Like Pike? Heaven forbid,’ Florence laughed.

  They left Margaret’s deserted street and turned onto the usually busy Hackney Road. Darkness had fallen and the inclement weather kept all but the desperate from venturing outdoors. Soon their body heat was steaming up the windows. Fletcher was forced to work a rag against the windscreen to keep his view clear. Sleety rain had begun to fall, making visibility even worse.

  ‘I say, Fletcher,’ Florence opened the small sliding hatch and spoke through the glass screen to the chauffer. ‘Isn’t it about time we got one of those American windscreen-brush devices installed into the Benz?’

  ‘I’m not sure if you can get them in this country yet, miss.’

  ‘Oh, shame.’ To Dody, Florence added, ‘They were invented by a woman, you know.’

  ‘Blast it!’ Fletcher cursed.

  ‘Really, Fletcher,’ Florence admonished. ‘I thought you were more enlightened than that.’

  ‘I am, miss, it’s the jolly engine I’m talking about. She’s gone again.’ Fletcher eased the car to a halt outside a chemist’s shop.

  No one spoke for several seconds. The rain pounded down on the roof.

  ‘I’d better look under the bonnet,’ Fletcher said, not making a move.

  ‘Here, take this,’ Dody said, handing him her umbrella through the hatch.

  He sighed, took the brolly, and battled to close the door behind him in the whippy wind. Trudging to the front of the motorcar he prised the bonnet open and began fiddling about underneath it.

  ‘He fixed it last time,’ Dody remarked.

  Florence huffed and sighed. The flashing electric lights of the chemist’s shop illuminated the inside of the motorcar in alternating blues, reds and greens.

  After some minutes Fletcher tapped on the window. Dody rolled it down, letting in the metallic odour of the wet streets.

  ‘Can’t do it, miss. Oil’s leaking everywhere.’ Water gushed over the edge of the brolly and a fine mist sprayed Dody’s face. ‘That there’s one poorly motor. We’ll have to get it towed to the garage.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Fletcher,’ Dody said. ‘There’s nothing you can do but go and find a telephone.’ Typical that this should happen when she was so desperate to get home and talk to Pike. ‘Here, take the travelling blanket as well. It has a rubber backing and will help to keep some of the rain off.’ She handed Fletcher the blanket through the window.

  ‘Thank you, Miss Dody,’ Fletcher said.

  ‘And get a taxi too, please,’ Florence added.

  ‘Right you are, miss.’ Fletcher straightened and looked up and down the empty street. There were no motorcars about at all, let alone taxis. ‘I’ll walk towards Pentonville Road
, find a taxi there. Might take a while though.’

  ‘Do what you have to do. But please don’t be too long, it’s jolly cold already now the engine’s off.’ Florence said.

  ‘At least you’re dry,’ Fletcher muttered. His bow sent a small waterfall sliding off the brim of the umbrella. With the travelling blanket over his shoulders he trudged off into the darkness, his back hunched against the rain. Dody scrambled into the front seat and locked the doors while Florence locked the back. Then they huddled together, noses buried in their coat collars, and prepared themselves for a long wait.

  Dody half dozed with her head against Florence’s shoulder. It was the kind of doze that did more harm than good. Images flickered in her head like reels in a picture show. Daytime problems magnified. Her feelings of helplessness in the face of Pike’s desire to rejoin his regiment took the form of unreachable street urchins and the syphilitic, underfed women of the clinic. The prospect of abandoning her career for love left her trapped in a prison cell that seemed so real she could feel the rusty bars in her palms. Her niggling suspicions about Margaret led to the conjured image of Mr James. The fragmented dreams about him were the most realistic of all. She could almost see his pugilistic face pressing in at the window, rain dripping down his pale visage, flickering blue, red and green, blue, red and green . . .

  She jolted to her senses. ‘Florence,’ she hissed, shaking her sister awake. ‘That thug, Mr James — I just saw him. He was staring at us through the car window!’

  ‘You were having a bad dream, darling.’ Florence yawned and looked at her watch. ‘Goodness me, Fletcher’s only been gone half an hour, but it feels like a lifetime.’ Then she gasped and clutched at Dody’s arm. ‘My God, you’re right, there is someone there. I just saw him — a man skulking about the car!’

  Dody caught a shadow, a scuttling animal movement. And there he was again, pressing his dripping face against the window.

  It wasn’t James, however. She recognised the ferrety face and downy beard of the vagrant from outside the pub, the young man Mr James had treated with such contempt.