‘In the meantime? I’ve got to see a woman about a dog.’
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
Old Charlie Darwin would probably have some naturally selective reason for the way we instinctively hate the ugly. Me, I always thought that ugliness tended to come in two types: the pitiable kind, where you sympathized with the person in much the same way you would a three-legged dog, and where you consoled yourself that they were most probably ‘lovely on the inside’; and then there was the loathsome ugly, where you sensed that the homeliness on the outside was merely the reflection of their inner obnoxiousness.
Maisie McCardle’s ugliness was definitely of the latter kind. Her too-long face was all points and angles. If she had painted it green, she could easily have had a career chasing Dorothy and Toto around Oz.
When she opened the door to scowl at me, the odious little pug who had taken a leak against my car appeared at her ankles, yapping shrilly. It screwed up its ugly little face too, and I wondered if they spent the long winter evenings together in front of the fire, scowling at each other.
This was going to be fun.
Her scowl soon evaporated and was replaced by an expression of alarm when she recognized me as the suspicious-looking character she had ratted on to the police. I had taken certain precautions before coming up: going back to the barge and changing out of the gear McBride had brought me and back into one of my more usual suits, hat and coat from my water-borne store-room. I had also, reluctantly, shaved off my incipient moustache. Maisie McCardle was clearly observant in a way that made the average eagle seem myopic and I didn’t want her to pass on to the police any changes in my appearance. I would start again on the moustache the next day. In fact, it would be good for the police to hear that I had made no attempt to change my look. I had also made sure that I parked Twinkle’s car out of sight. I was aided in my mission by the fact that, as far as I could see, there had still been no mention in the papers of the police looking for me.
‘Mrs McCardle?’ I said. ‘Please don’t be alarmed. My name is Lennox and I am an enquiry agent.’ I handed her my card. ‘I am working on the same case as the police. I’m afraid I was the person who found poor Mr and Mrs Dewar’s suicide.’ I knew that the police would not have offered an opinion on the nature of the deaths and chucking in the word ‘suicide’ probably took the gleam off my axe-murderer’s axe for her. She hadn’t slammed shut the door, so I kept talking. ‘I know you mentioned my being here before to Inspector Dunlop and Chief Inspector Ferguson, but I can assure you I am working with the police on this.’
Maisie eyed suspiciously first my card and then me. She was either weighing up my authenticity or checking to see if I was wearing ruby slippers.
‘Although I am helping the police in trying to get to the bottom of why Mr Dewar did what he did,’ I said, pressing on, ‘there really was no connection between the tragedy at the Dewars and the case I was investigating originally, which concerned your other neighbour, Mr Lang.’
I let it hang there. My experience had been that the naturally observant were usually the pathologically inquisitive, and I could see that her interest had been piqued.
‘Mr Lang?’
‘Yes. Mr Frank Lang. I was engaged by his employers to make sure nothing untoward has befallen him. You see, Mr Lang has been missing for some weeks now.’ I fidgeted theatrically on the doorstep, as if performing on too small a stage. ‘I’m sorry to disturb you, Mrs McCardle, but Chief Inspector Ferguson told me what a wonderful eye witness you were — that nothing gets by you — so I thought you would be able to help. I wonder if I may…?’ I nodded in the direction of the hall behind her. Her eyes narrowed for a moment, but the flattery and her curiosity got the better of her caution.
‘You’d better come in then.’
‘Nice place you’ve got here,’ I said appreciatively as she led me into the house, not adding that I was surprised it wasn’t made out of gingerbread and the window glass out of sugar.
The layout of the nearly-new house appeared to be identical to that of the Dewars’ place, but, where Sylvia Dewar had embraced the Atomic Age in all of its synthetic modernity, Maisie McCardle had sought to hide it, wherever possible behind lace doilies. The clock on the mantelpiece, the sofa and two-chair suite, the heavy, dull brown curtains all had that hard, uncompromising solidity of pre-war furniture. I guessed that anything in the house newer than that bore a Utility Mark. There was no television, but a pre-war Pye radio, the wooden box type with a suitcase handle on the top, sat in the corner.
The one thing that surprised me was the mirror above the mantelpiece; not that it was of a different style or vintage of any of the other pieces, just that it was there at all. Uncracked.
‘The police seemed awfully interested in you…’ she said, still eyeing me suspiciously.
‘Oh yes… I understand that. You see, I was able to give them exact times I was here and that helped them establish the sequence of events from your statements. Chief Inspector Ferguson really thought the information you gave was invaluable…’
Suddenly Maisie became uglier, her features contorting. Then I realized she was smiling.
‘Will you be wanting a cup of tea, then?’ she asked dully, as if I’d forced her into the offer.
‘I wouldn’t want to put you to any trouble…’ I said.
It was obvious that she wasn’t about to let me put her to any trouble; she didn’t push her offer of tea and instead sat down in the armchair by the radio.
‘What do you want to know?’ she asked.
‘May I sit down?’ I asked and she nodded sharply. ‘Like I said, I’m trying to locate Frank Lang. I spoke to poor Mrs Dewar before her death and she told me that she hardly ever saw him and had practically nothing to do with him.’
‘Did she now…?’ Maisie wriggled in her seat maliciously.
‘Are you saying that wasn’t the case?’
‘It’s true that he was hardly ever here. I hardly ever saw him and I see everything and everyone, especially when I’m walking Prince.’
‘Prince?’
‘My dog.’
I looked down at the little pug. It looked back at me, all bug eyes and a face wrinkled like a brain, its turned- up bottom lip almost wrapped over its snotty nose.
‘Of course,’ I said.
‘It isn’t right,’ she said scowling, which was beginning to lose its expressive effect. ‘I told the police that. There’s something fishy when someone pays rent for a Corporation flat and they’re never there. Very fishy.’
‘But you’re saying that Mrs Dewar’s statement wasn’t accurate?’
‘Aye… if she said she didn’t have anything to do with Lang, then it’s a lie. And I told the police that too. They wanted to know everything about Lang too.’
‘That doesn’t surprise me, Mrs McCardle. What did you tell them?’
‘That she was a slut and a whore.’ Another malicious wriggle. ‘Interested in anything in trousers.’
‘Including Lang?’
‘Like I said, he was hardly ever there, but she seemed to know when he was going to arrive. She thought she was being so clever, sneaking in through his back door, but I saw her. I heard them.’
‘So you believe that Frank Lang and Sylvia Dewar were carrying on an affair together? Have you told the police that?’
‘Yes.’
I sat and thought it through for a moment. Shuggie Dunlop was all bluff on the Dewar deaths. Good old Maisie, God bless the ugliness that reached from her face deep into her soul, would relish standing in a witness box, smearing Lang’s and Sylvia’s reputations. And, if it hadn’t been Dewar who killed his wife, then that placed Lang in the queue for the execution cell well before me. It was all beginning to form a picture.
‘The day she claimed to have seen him leave with two other men in a big car…?’ I looked through my notebook and gave her the day and date. ‘Did you see him leave?’
‘No. And I would have been in and normally I see everybody. I watch, you see. There are a lot of dodgy
