Weeping on Wednesday
Lois Meade #3
2003, EN
? Weeping on Wednesday ?
One
“Hello? Is that Mrs Meade? Mrs Lois Meade?” The voice was hesitant, quiet.
“Yes, this is
“Hello, Mrs, er?…Are you there?”
A throat was cleared, and then the quiet voice said, “Um, yes. I saw your advertisement, and thought I might suit. I…er…haven’t done anything like this before…” The voice trailed off again.
“Well, d’you want to give me some details about yourself? Or I could call in and see you?”
The answer was quick this time. “Oh, no, that won’t be necessary. I’ll put something down on paper today and get it in the post, and then I could come and see you, if you think I might be suitable.”
Lois frowned. She liked to interview prospective cleaners in their own homes. It was always more revealing than pages of autobiography. She remembered only too well a previous applicant, smart on the streets but a slut at home. Fortunately Lois had not employed her, and just as well. That one had turned out to be enemy number one, and was now safely behind bars.
“Give me your name and address,” she said now, “and your phone number, and after I’ve read your details I’ll get in touch.” Probably no good anyway, she decided, putting down the phone. She read what she had written on her notepad:
Lois had been a cleaner herself. That was when they lived in a small house on an estate in Tresham, the local big town, and she’d chosen to take jobs in villages around. Every day a different house, a different family, and all intertwined in village affairs. She’d had a unique position, being at times a not unwilling eavesdropper, and often received confidences from wives or husbands who swore her to undying secrecy.
After a scandal which rocked the village, the doctor she’d worked for in Long Farnden had moved away, and the Meades bought his house cheaply. It had had murderous associations, and nobody wanted it. But Lois knew every inch of the house, and had been fond of the doctor and his wife. She had no qualms about making an offer, and now she and her family spread themselves in the unaccustomed space.
Lois Meade, the listening ear and receiver of secrets, had not passed unnoticed by Detective Inspector Hunter Cowgill, and he had enlisted her help on a couple of occasions. Both times had involved murder, and endangered both Lois and her family, her husband and three children. For this reason she had more or less, but not quite, promised her husband Derek not to succumb ever again to the wiles of Hunter Cowgill, and since the last murder case had been wound up, she’d heard nothing more from him. Until yesterday.
Now she forgot about the strange woman on the phone, and thought again about Cowgill’s call. She’d put him off with an ambiguous answer, but she knew he’d be back. Never give up, that was Cowgill’s motto. And he knew that she’d be tempted, that she was fascinated by the jigsaw business of detection, and the dark world of crime and punishment. She’d been on the fringes of it herself during a mildly misspent youth. Once she’d ended up in a police cell, and had been really frightened. Persistent truancy from school had led to her being taken in and given a real bollocking by the police. They’d asked for her parents’ name, and she’d given another girl’s details. She’d always hated that prissy cow, and the bust-up that followed had been worth it!
Lois laughed aloud, and her mother, coming in with a mug of coffee, looked at her in surprise. “Share the joke?” she said.
“Nothin’ really, Mum,” she said. “Just remembering what an ‘orrible daughter I must’ve been.”
“Yes, you were,” agreed Gran equably. “Still, you got better as you got older. How’re you doing? Was that a possible on the phone?”
Lois shook her head. “Doubt it,” she said. “Strange woman. Didn’t say much and sounded sort of scared, as if she’d had to pluck up courage to ring. Not the sort we want in New Brooms.”
The telephone rang again, and Gran turned to leave the room. “Better luck with this one,” she said.
“New Brooms,” said Lois into the receiver. “You read the advertisement? Good, yes, give me some details and we’ll take it from there.”
She picked up a pen, and began to write.
? Weeping on Wednesday ?
Two
“Looks like more hopeful cleaners,” said Derek. He had brought a handful of post in from the hall of the solid red-brick house where he and Lois lived with their three children: Josie, a typical fifteen-year-old with the useful stubborn feistiness of her mother; Douglas, a cool rising-fourteen; and Jamie, nearly twelve, and special to his mother and his gran, who also lived with them. And then there was Melvyn the cat, named after an unsuitable boyfriend who’d nearly spirited Josie away from them for ever.
Lois slit open one of the envelopes and pulled out a sheet of plain white paper, covered with neat handwriting in black ink. None of your computer-literate students here! “Ah,” she said, looking at the address, “it’s the one I told you about. Miss Abraham, from Cathanger Mill…”
“Blimey, Mum,” said Josie, “sounds like something out of a horror movie…”
“Yeah,
Jamie shoved his chair back with a rasp and followed his brother, and Lois noted his attempt at the sloping gait. Her baby…
She smiled, and Derek said, “What’s funny? You said she sounded deadly…a real no-no?”
“Haven’t read it yet,” she said, returning to the letter. It was very well written, with no mistakes in grammar or spelling as far as Lois could see, though she was the first to admit that she was none too clever herself in that department.
“Well?” said Derek. He knew Lois well enough to know that her interest was caught by something in the letter. “Don’t keep us in suspense…what does she say?”
Gran turned from the cooker with a frying pan full of sizzling bacon and added, “And for goodness sake sit down and have something to eat, Lois. You’re not going out on an empty stomach again, I hope!”
Lois sat down, spreading the letter out in front of her. “‘Dear Mrs Meade’,” she began, “‘Further to our telephone conversation, I am writing to give you some particulars of myself and my past experience’.”
“Very good,” said Josie, nodding wisely. “She’s been taught how to write a letter, that’s for sure. Go on, Mum.”
“Get yourself off upstairs!” said Derek. “If you miss that bus, I’m not taking you to Tresham in the van again. Go and get yourself together, gel, or else…” His stern words could not hide his fondness for his first-born. The boys frequently accused him of favouritism, just because Josie was a girl, and though he denied it hotly, both he and Lois
