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 decor 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.”
“
“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
