Sunday cont.
Cleo knew she would have to approach the Blakes carefully. A
phone call to Dorothy secured her support. They would meet at Cleo’s cottage
and take in a bagel and coffee for lunch, much to Robert’s disgust, since
Sunday lunch was traditionally roast day and his menu would be postponed until
the evening. Dorothy would tell the Blakes her tale about writing up the
history of the village and they would go on from there.
“I’ll be delighted to test them, Dorothy!”
“Come and try them, Robert,” said Dorothy. “You’ll be glad
to have something to put you on till your roast dinner.”
“Don’t bother, Dorothy. He’s sulking because I am not
devoting the day to him.”
“More fool him, Cleo,” said Dorothy in a low voice. “I’m
starting to understand your preference for that copper.”
“Let’s not talk like that, Dorothy. I’m married, pregnant
and respectable and it has to stay that way.”
“Don’t be silly. You can’t stay pregnant for ever.”
“I thought you were going to say…”
“I didn’t, Cleo, but that’s what you are thinking too, isn’t
it?”
“Give me time, Dorothy. I’m a mixed up kid.”
“I can’t argue with that.”
***
To Dorothy’s delight, the bagels were pronounced perfect, so
she would make a batch every week from now on. Three were left for Robert to
try when he eventually got round to putting in an appearance. He had gone back
to bed after eating a mammoth fried breakfast while Cleo went to the villa.
Cleo shouted to him to eat the bagels while they visited the Blakes.
***
On the way, Cleo explained to Dorothy that if the Blakes had
witnessed the second Kelly will, they might have been paid to do so, or were
even under some other kind of pressure and for that reason only scribbled their
names. But when she saw their house, she thought again. Why should they take
money for doing something dicey when they were obviously affluent? And why would they be
under pressure? Still, there was no accounting for the actions of some people,
and they might have accepted Paddy Kelly as the long lost son of their friends.
Dorothy was impressed with everything except Mrs Blake, whom
she thought she had seen before, but could not place. She decided that Paddy
Kelly could not be the type of person the Blakes would want to have any contact
with, so he might have informed himself about the older Kellys’ acquaintances
out of their private address book and then selected the Blakes at random, unless
he had seen the first will, of course.
Dorothy thought that was probable since Kelly had the run of
the house once the elders were dead. He was not mentioned in the first will,
which was an indication that he was not the long lost son, but had been
inspired to address that matter by inventing a second testament in his favour..
On the other hand, why would he settle for scribbles instead
of copying the Blake signatures carefully? Anyone could have written the
scribbles, so it was important to find out if the Blakes had witnessed that
second will. If they hadn’t, either they couldn’t have signed it, or, as
Dorothy pointed out, they were all in it together. Cleo pointed out that the
Blakes were not beneficiaries in either will, so that would not be a motive for
signing either of them and they could not have done that anyway, since a beneficiary of a will cannot also
witness to it, and why would evidently rich people want to sully their reputation by entering
into a shady deal?
***
The Blakes welcomed Dorothy with open arms. That’s what
being a musician does,” she told Cleo later. “I inspire confidence.”
“You haven’t come about the church choir, I hope, Miss
Price,” said Mrs Blake. “I feel guilty about letting the side down, but I’m so
busy that I don’t have time to sing.”
So that’s where Dorothy had seen Mrs Blake before.
“The church choir’s mostly on hold at the moment, Mrs Blake.
Summer break. Too many are on holiday to bother with rehearsals so Mr Jones
sings spirituals and anyone in choir who turns up sings along. I’m writing
about the history of the village. I was told that you had lived here a long
time and would be the right people to ask.”
“Is your friend the private detective, Miss Price?”
“Yes, I’m Cleo Hartley. How do you do, Mrs Blake, Mr Blake.”
“Nice to meet you,” said Mr Blake. “I wanted to ask you to
find my wife’s cat recently, but then she came home of her own accord.”
“Cats do that, Mr Blake,” said Cleo. Looking for cats was
usually futile, but their owners were eager to pay a fee for looking for them,
and in times when missions were scarce, every little helped.
The Blakes were lively seniors who probably thrived on
private health care, handfuls of vitamin pills and lack of anxiety.
The cat came into the lounge. It was a huge, long-haired tricolored
creature with a lot of carefully combed fur that looked as if it had been styled
with hair spray.
“Gorgeous,” exclaimed Dorothy. “If you ever need a new home
for it, contact me!”
“Oh, my wife would never give it away, Miss Price,” said Mr
Blake. ”She loves that cat more than anything in the world, including me.”
Mrs Blake did not argue.
“But you can cat-sit when we go to the theatre in Oxford, if
you like, Miss Price,” said Mrs Blake. “That’s just once a month and I’m sure
Queenie would enjoy your company.“
“Phone me,” said Dorothy.
“We’ll be glad to offer you a fee, Miss Price.”
“That won’t be necessary,” said Dorothy, resisting the
temptation to sound offended “Cuddling Queenie will be my reward.”
“You’d be the first one to get a cuddle from that animal,”
said Mr Blake, who had a secret aversion to cats.
Mrs Blake ran into the kitchen and presently they all heard
the fridge door being slammed.
Queenie looked around rather laboriously. Her reactions were
slow, as if she couldn’t be bothered. She was much too fat, Dorothy decided.
Had Queenie recognized the sound? She did not run towards it. She remained
sitting, as befits a cat, on the mat, only this mat was a valuable tigerskin
rug from a beautiful wild animal someone had shot illegally. Mrs Blake hurried
in and glanced briefly at Dorothy and Cleo before placing a gold-rimmed bowl of
double cream on the marble tiles around the grate. The cat arched itself and
went to get its reward.
“She has a very appropriate name, Mrs Blake,” said Dorothy, as
amused by the cat-owner’s antics as by the cat.
“No wonder that cat is so fat,” Mr Blake said.” Dora, you’ll
have to put it on a diet before it bursts.”
“Don’t talk like that in front of Queenie, Cliff. She’ll be
upset.”
“See what I mean?” said Mr Blake.
“I must admit, she’s four times the size of my little cat,
Mimi,” said Dorothy.
Mrs Blake turned her attention to Dorothy.
“Give her cream is my advice,” said Mrs Blake.
“Mimi’s allergic to cream, Mrs Blake.”
“Give her lactose-free.”
“I hadn’t thought of that.”
“I always give Queenie lactose-free,” she added. “Queenie
likes it better. She always gets the best of everything.”
Mrs Blake hurried out again.
“I’m glad one of us does, Dora,” Mr Blake called after her.
He was obviously not fond of Queenie.
Meanwhile the cat had licked the china bowl clean and
returned to the tiger-skin rug, where she lay down and busied herself cleaning
her face with a wet-licked paw.
“She is rather beautiful,” said Dorothy.
“So are camels,” said Mr Blake. “They are my favourite
animals and they are in the zoo.”
Dora Blake returned with between-feast-crunchies for
Queenie.
“So you are writing up the history of Grumpsfield, are you, Miss
Price?” she said, counting out 20 crunchies and putting them into the china
bowl, which had been washed out after the cream and dried with a special
tea-towel picturing an image of a cat. The crunchy bits were shaped like little
mice, but Mrs Blake assured the visitors that they were chicken crunchies.
“Yes, I am,” said Dorothy,, not taking her eyes off the
antics dedicated to Queenie.
“I was born in Lower Grumpsfield,” she told them. “But it
was all Grumpsfield in those days.”
“Then they split it up,” said Mr Blake.
“And now they want to join it all up again, I hear,” said
Dorothy.
“And a big tragedy that would be,” said Mr Blake, whose Irish
lilt revealed him to be from the Emerald Isle.
“Why are you against it, Mr Blake?”
“I like being against things,” he said.
***
And so the chitchat went on. Dorothy was a past master at
small talk, having had to placate ballet kids’ parents and other hysterical
persons at the ballet school. Sometimes she used to think playing the piano was
only a side-line. Parents of untalented offspring were especially hard to deal
with. Dorothy regaled the Blakes with tales of her years in London, including
lots of little anecdotes that not even Cleo had heard before.
***
It all got very jolly at the Blakes’ house until Cliff Blake
broke up the merriment by standing up suddenly and saying “This is not what you
are really here for, is it?”
“It takes an Irishman to be that canny, Mr Blake,” said Dorothy
after a pause. “No, we want to ask you about the Kellys you used to be friendly
with.”
The warmth in the room was suddenly dispersed.
The atmosphere became decidedly frigid.
Queenie went to sleep.
“Just remember this! We have nothing to do with Paddy Kelly,”
said Mr Blake.
“Our friends died in mysterious circumstances,” said Mrs
Blake.
“But it was all cleared up, wasn’t it?” said Cleo.
“The police were satisfied, so we had to be, too.”
“But you weren’t.”
“No. All of a sudden there was this young man claiming to be
their son.”
“You don’t think he is?”
“No,” said Mr Blake. “I don’t think he is even Irish.”
“He’s Liverpool Irish, Mr Blake,” said Cleo. “He came over to
work. I think that’s how he heard about his parents buying a farm. They had
been estranged.”
“A likely story,” said Mrs Blake.” How come that his parents
were here in Grumpsfield and he was in Ireland and then Liverpool, but he had
never visited them?”
“That is strange,” said Dorothy.
“It’s quite typical of children who leave home, except that
I think the parents left home in this case. The probably left their children in
Ireland to be cared for by the grandparents,” Cleo explained..
“That’s what he told us later, Miss Hartley” said Mrs Blake.
“The Kellys had never mentioned a son. We were their closest friends. If they
had had a son, we would have known about him.”
“But no one contested the second will,” said Cleo.
“What second will?”
“The one you signed as witnesses.”
“We did no such thing.”
(Mission accomplished)
Cleo produced a copy of the second will that she had printed
from the photo of it taken on that first visit to Dr Marble’s villa.
“We did not sign that will. We have never seen it before and
that is certainly not our handwriting, Miss Hartley,” said Mr Blake.
“You signed the first will that did not mention the son.”
“That’s true. But we became less friendly with the Kellys
because they were not quite honest about their so-called fresh eggs, so perhaps
they changed their will then. That’s what we thought when they must have done when
Paddy Kelly took over at the farm, but we were not involved.”
Cliff Blake went to his bureau and found a document bearing
their signatures. He handed it to Cleo. It was a very recent contract with a
power company and both had signed it. You could read their signatures quite
plainly. They were not scribbles and they were similar to the signatures on the
first will.
“Do you always sign like this?”
“Of course we do. Why would we want to disguise our names?”
Cleo took out her mobile phone.
“Do you mind if I take a photo of this contract?”
“Go ahead, if it will help,” said Mr Blake.
“But why all this fuss after all these years?” Dora Blake
wanted to know as she dropped 20 more crunchies into Queenie’s bowl. “They are
for when she wakes up,” Dora Blake explained.
“I need to know the true history of the farm for my book. I
can’t say the farm passed on to Patrick Kelly if it didn’t.”
“But if it isn’t his, whose is it?” Mr Blake wanted to know.
“Your guess is as good as mine, Mr Blake.”
Cleo and Dorothy thanked the Blakes for their hospitality
and left soon after.
“Wow!” said Cleo.
“More wow!” said Dorothy. “That poor cat…
“It’s getting the love and attention that Mr Blake is
missing in his life,” Cleo analysed.
“It’s a bit like what Mr Barker next door has to endure,”
said Dorothy. “And that’s the road your marriage will go down if you don‘t do
something about it.”
“That won’t happen, Dorothy. In my marriage I seem to have
taken on Queenie’s role including the fattening up bit.”
“All the more reason to call it a day,” said Dorothy.
“And be a single mother?”
“If that’s the only way out, do it,” said Dorothy. “I’ll
help you.”
To Cleo’s mortification, a tear rolled down her check.
“Well, someone has to be truthful,” said Dorothy, handing her
friend and colleague a tissue.
***
“Let’s process that photo of the Blake signatures. I’ll e-mail
Gary a copy now, but we’ll need a printout.”
“I’ll make us a coffee while you are busy,” said Dorothy.
“You could read your own contract, Dorothy! There’s a
printout on my desk. I hope it’s OK. We can discuss any changes or additions when
I’ve dealt with my Blake report.”
“Now it’s my turn to shed a tear,” said Dorothy, reading the
contract that made her a partner in the agency.
***
At home later that day, Cleo wondered if there was any
chance of tracing Kelly back to his roots. Tracing them back as far as
Liverpool might have more chance of success, but it would not reveal whether
the farm was legally his unless he was born there, which was unlikely.
“Did Dorothy sign her contract, Cleo?”
“She sure did, Robert.”
“I’m sure she’s as proud as punch.”
“She’s having a quiet afternoon with her cat, I should think.
You should have seen the monster at the Blakes’ house.”
“In the far east they eat cats.”
“I think the Chinese government has banned that.”
“How can they stop it?
“That’s a very good question. But people in Europe stroke
the rabbits they rear and then eat them. Is that any different?”
“I wouldn’t sell cat or dog meat,” said Robert.
“You sell rabbit, and we eat all sorts of lovely creatures,
so don’t be hypocritical, Robert!”
“Not thinking of becoming a vegetarian, are you?”
“That would be difficult in this house!”
“I think we should get off that topic, Cleo. I’m sure the
Blakes are not fattening their cat for the dinner table.”
“Mr Blake would like to be rid of the animal. But more to
the point, they did not sign that second will.”
I think they just
accepted that a second will must have been made without their knowing,” said
Robert.
“That’s perfectly possible, except that if Kelly was the old
Kellys’ son he was the first in line to inherit even without a will, wasn’t he?”
“He’d have to prove that first, wouldn’t he?”
“He probably couldn’t, Robert. You have a point there.”
“So he would have to forge a new will to make sure he got
everything.”
“Very astute, Robert. That makes me think he can’t have
known much about the family he was supposed to belong to.”
“Would that matter?” said Robert, chuffed that Cleo had been
impressed by his argument. “From Kelly’s point of view it must have been
convenient that the Blakes had had a tiff with the Kellys and let the
friendship cool off,” he added. “What did they quarrel about?”
“Eggs.”
“Not fresh, I suppose. A perfectly normal fraud,” said
Robert. “Latte or Cappuccino, Milady?”
“Latte will be fine, thanks.”
“I’ll get the potatoes on while I’m at it,” he shouted. “The
lamb’s roasted to a turn.”
***
While Robert was making the coffee, the phone rang.
“Don’t answer it,” Robert shouted from the kitchen.
“I have to. It may be important.”
It was Gary. Robert could hear everything she said, so
caution was the order of the day.
“Gary. It’s Sunday evening.”
“Capito.”
“I tried to phone you about the Blakes, but you were out,”
said Cleo.
“You could have phoned my mobile.”
“I thought you must be on some trail or other so I would
have sent you a report, but I haven’t finished it yet. Did you get the photo?”
“Yes. No doubt that those signatures on the second will were
fake, Cleo. I’m sending you the interim results of Chris’s team’s work. You
should look at them now, Cleo!”
“Now? I’m about to eat supper and it’s still Sunday!”
“More fool you choosing the wrong company,” said Gary.
“No comment.”
“I’ve traced Harry Marble, by the way.”
“How did you do that?”
“Mrs Riddle said he was abroad, but he isn’t.”
“Don’t tell me he’s round the corner,” said Cleo.
“Not quite. He lives in North London.”
“In other words, near enough to get to the Marble villa and
away again pretty fast,” said Cleo.
“There are unidentified prints at the villa - a lot on the
drawers and cupboards of that desk, for instance.”
“But would a nephew pay a visit and then just steal a few
pounds?”
“If no one saw him, he might have done just that.”
“We don’t know if anyone saw him, Gary. Mrs Riddle did, but
in her own words she would not have known him since she had not seen him since
he was a child. I suppose there is a chance that someone else in the
neighbourhood might have.”
”Could the nephew have also been that parcel delivery guy,
Cleo?”
“Now you’re talking! I thought the same thing. Do you always
look hard at the postman, Gary?”
“To be honest, no,” said Gary
“If Mrs Riddle did not look hard at the guy or looked hard
but did not recognize him, it could mean that Harry Marble had already been
there once and left Dr Marble dead in the study before the mailman call, Mrs
Riddle having been busy elsewhere and not hearing anything.”
“How could that work, Cleo?”
“Ask me another!”
“I think that idea’s carrying the thought experiment too
far,“ said Gary. “But isn’t it possible that Mrs Riddle kept out of the way if
she thought her boss was working?”
“Sort of see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil,” said
Cleo.
“Yes. Mrs Riddle might have heard voices raised, but would
not interrupt because that is not what she did.”
“Awesome!”
“Of course, we don’t know how a caller would have got into
the villa without Mrs Riddle noticing,” said Gary. “Let’s suppose Harry had
told Dr Marble he was going to visit and the solicitor had let him in. He could
have called out to Mrs Riddle that he would answer the door.”
“Maybe the agenda on Dr Marble’s desk would tell us whether the
nephew was expected,” said Cleo. “We should have taken time to look at it this
morning. In that case the uncle would
probably let the nephew into the house and not be afraid of him because you
weren’t usually afraid of your nephew. The second time Mrs Riddle went to the
door herself thinking it would be a delivery of something Dr Marble had ordered
online.”
“At that point Dr Marble must already have been dead,” said
Gary.
“Mrs Riddle would have been eager to get at the parcel and
not taken much notice of the guy who delivered it,” Cleo continued.
“That makes sense, but it does not explain why it was the
killer. Why would he return to the scene he had left behind?”
“It makes sense if the nephew decided to get the housekeeper
out of the way so that she could not interfere,” said Cleo. “Or the nephew only
went there once and waited until Mrs Riddle had gone into her kitchen with the
parcel before he went into Dr Marble’s office. He then killed his uncle, ransacked
the desk, went into the kitchen, ‘took care’ of Mrs Riddle and left via the
back door,” Cleo reconstructed.
“That’s a more likely scenario, Cleo, but not the only one. The
other version is that Dr Marble let his killer into the villa and was subsequently
killed.”
***
“Dr Marble turned his back on whoever killed him, so he
can’t have been scared,” said Cleo.
“Or he hadn’t seen him,” said Gary.
“So the killer went away and someone else came to the door
dressed as a parcel deliverer. I don’t think a murderer would risk coming back
again,” said Cleo.
“Enough material for three whodunits, Cleo.”
“Tell Dorothy that! Re we now saying that both Kelly and
Harry visited the villa, whereby one of them was acting as a postman and gave
Mrs Riddle a parcel, following it up by trying to kill her, after which he saw that
Dr Marble was dead and fled?” said Cleo.
”The other guy was responsible for Dr Marble’s murder and it
must have been before the parcel delivery. A further interview with Mrs Riddle might
get the chronology sorted out,” said Gary.
“I don’t think the two guys are linked, though they could
both have been there,” said Cleo.
“And I don’t think the murderer would have visited the villa
twice, so it makes sense that a second guy was involved,” said Gary. “Are we
agreed on that?”
“OK. So the first guy, probably Harry, was expected. There
was a row, probably about the inheritance. Marble was killed after turning his
back on Harry, who then stole the money he found in the desk and left,” said
Cleo.
“But we don’t need a second person to complete that theory,”
said Gary. “What if Mrs Marble saw him leaving and challenged him.. She was
rewarded with a bash on the head followed by being dragged to the kitchen and
left with her head in the gas oven. The gas was simply turned on. She survived
because too little gas was escaping for her death to be fast.”
“That leaves Kelly out but it does not explain the parcel, unless
Harry brought it with him as an excuse to get in the house,” said Cleo.
“He would not need an excuse to get in if his uncle was
waiting for him,” said Gary. “Anyway, we didn’t find a parcel. Mrs Riddle may
have been telling lies all along.”
“All this is only a thought experiment, Gary. I’m as baffled
as you seem to be. Kelly would have to gain something from working together
with Harry, and we don’t even know if they knew one another.”
“You always say Dorothy has a nose for this sort of thing,
Cleo.”
“Then I’ll do a Dorothy on you, Gary. Try this for size: Harry
wanted to deposit a will in which he was the sole beneficiary to his uncle’s
property. The only problem would then be his rotten timing. He entered the room
and found his uncle dead. He got scared so he went out by the patio door after
helping himself to the housekeeping money.”
“That sounds possible, like almost all the other versions.”
“Was there a witness? Did one guy see the other killing Dr Marble?”
“We don’t know where Kelly
was at the time Dr Marble was killed, Cleo, and he has no feasible motive for
killing Dr Marble. He would not inherit anything from him and his ownership of
the farm had never been contested.”
“You’d better ask him about his alibi. If he can prove he
was somewhere else at the time, his charge of breaking and entering will also
have to be dropped.”
***
“Something is not right about all this,” said Gary. “You
think Kelly and Harry could both have been involved, don’t you?”
“I’ve no idea, to be honest. That’s the problem with thought
experiments,” said Cleo. “They are pure imagination until they are verified.
You’ll have to find out if the guys have alibis for yesterday. Their separate
missions occurring at the same time could be coincidental. Do you want me to ask Dorothy what she thinks?”
“We could pop to Delphi and ask the Oracle,” said Gary.
“I’ll phone Dorothy now,” said Cleo.
“And I’ll get the Metropolitan cops onto Harry.”
“That’s a good idea. Robert is standing next to me with my
coffee. Can I drink it now?”
“OK. Talk early tomorrow.”
“Not before breakfast, Gary. Please, not before breakfast!”
Robert snatched the phone, shouted “I’ll second that,” and then
slammed the phone down onto its loading bay.
***
“That was not very nice, Robert.”
“Nice enough for a guy who only has ideas on Sundays or
after office hours, and preferably just before we eat or go to bed,” said
Robert, flaring up.
“You don’t own me, Robert,” said Cleo. “You don’t even sleep
with me.”
“You are pregnant. That is evidence enough,” said Robert.
“If you say so,” said Cleo. “You can put a plaque up to
celebrate the last time we had sex.”
“If you say so,” said Robert. “Marriage is not just about
sex and I object to my wife conducting business on Sundays.”
“I thought you approved of my agency,” said Cleo.
“To a certain extent I suppose I do,” said Robert. “Are your
cases solved now you have talked it through with your pet cop?”
“No. Kelly might not be guilty after all. Either Harry killed
his uncle by himself, or we have to find someone who helped him.”
“Mrs Riddle.”
“Would she bite the hand that feeds her, Robert?”
“She wouldn’t be the first,” said Robert.
“You do not feed me, Robert!” Cleo screamed.
“I didn’t mean it like that.”
“But you said it,” Cleo shouted.
“You’d better consult Dorothy early tomorrow. Your dinner is
on the table. I ate mine and am going to bed early because I have to be at the
wholesalers at five. Special delivery of Argentinian beef. We don’t always get it.
Good night!”
***
With those words, Robert went to bed. He was no match for Cleo
when it came to arguments. Bed was his escape route. He would be fast asleep
before she got under her duvet. He was not going to let her run riot, however.
She was his to have and hold, except that the having took precedence and the
holding had stopped completely. He did not even care if the baby was not his
genetically. It would be legally his. It made him more of a family butcher than
ever. He was envied for his marriage to a voluptuous woman. He felt no desire
for her and wondered if he had ever had. He was now sure that the feeling was
mutual, but he could not contemplate an intensity of love and longing that
would eventually win the day.
Cleo had wanted marriage because it gave her respectability.
She had it now, and was not likely to forego it, whatever she did on the side.
The baby would keep her occupied when it came, and she would forget that copper
and concentrate on making her marriage work. He might even sleep with her again
if the occasion arose.
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