‘Yes. Without the photograph, Gloria was in no position to put pressure on Anthony Wotton, although it seems she did try to call his bluff once or twice. When, in the end, she went to Beeches Lawn, it looks as though she managed to get a short private talk with him, doesn’t it?’
‘And that, I think, is where my naughty old Madame Eglantine comes in. I have no doubt she was intrigued by the visitor, speculated upon the purpose of the unheralded visit, listened behind the door and collected an earful of what may be termed ‘baby-talk’. She doesn’t like Anthony, so she told the tale to me and possibly to others.’
‘She really is a dreadful old thing. Why do you like her?’
‘She’s amusing and stimulating, if only you can keep her off the
‘And in case Anthony refused to sub up, all
‘Perhaps the rest of Dame Beatrice’s letter will supply the answer to that. All the same, London must be full of people who wouldn’t be missed — lonely spinsters, friendless widows, people who have been in gaol and are living under assumed names, immigrants who haven’t yet put down any roots. It would be easy enough to find somebody about whom there would be no hue and cry.’
‘Your picture, although touching, is not convincing,’ said Imogen. She handed Dame Beatrice’s letter back to me and I read the rest of it, but, before I did so, I said, ‘I wonder what happened to that roll of film with Anthony, Gloria and the baby on it?’
‘I expect the girl turned it over to Gloria when she received the promise of full payment.’
‘She probably received the payment but Gloria took it back after she had killed her.’ We read on:
My next visit was to Trends. I went armed with my full credentials and applied not to the department you and Mr McMaster visited, but to the office, where I asked to see the manager.
A suave individual took me into his own small sanctum and sent his secretary to bring us coffee. When she had gone for this, he asked me whether his firm was in any trouble, as he knew of no circumstances which could lead to a visit from a representative of the Home Office. I reassured him and added that I was interested in one matter only. I was anxious to know whether any elderly woman on his staff had retired during the past few weeks.
He mentioned the summary dismissal of Miss Mundy, to whom he referred under another name, but not her shop-floor title of Violetta, and admitted he had already been questioned by the police as to her whereabouts but he added that she was anything but elderly. I mentioned that the age I had in mind was round about sixty. He could not help me, but when the secretary came back with the coffee he sent her out again with instructions to ask Personnel to spare him a few moments.
A grey-haired, pleasant, but businesslike woman appeared and to her I put my question. She replied that one of the cleaners who had reached what she termed ‘senior citizen status’ had retired within the past few weeks and that Personnel had enquired about her future prospects and had asked whether she would be able to manage on the state pension.
The answer was satisfactory, she thought. One of the girls in the gowns department had promised to get her work as a cleaner in a block of flats where a trustworthy charwoman was required, as most of the tenants were out at work all day, so that the cleaner would be given keys and would be alone in the various apartments. The personnel officer could not supply the address of the flats, but she gave me the cleaner’s own address, which, of course, she had on her books.
I have given this address to the police, but first I visited the place myself. It turned out to be a council flat in a large block. The cleaner had occupied a bed-sitting room in the home of a middle-aged, respectable couple who lived in Wapping. She had told them that she had found part-time employment which necessitated her giving up her room in their flat, but had left no address ‘as she never got any letters, anyway,’ and they ‘could do with the extra room’, so I could not follow up my enquiries. No doubt the police will do better and I shall be very much surprised if this cleaner does not turn out to be the victim found in Mr Wotton’s old house. Gloria would have found out all about the poor, friendless thing.
‘Well, that seems to tie that up very neatly,’ said Imogen. ‘When am I going to meet your Dame Beatrice?’
‘Soon, I hope. I’m not sure which of my old ladies I love more, her or Madame Eglantine.’
18
Exit Gloria
« ^ »
It seemed to me that there was nothing more that I could do. My foolish impulse to attempt to whitewash a double murderess had vanished long before I received Dame Beatrice’s letter and there appeared only two minor points to be cleared up, neither of them my business. The ownership of the burnt-out car had not been established and nobody so far had suggested how the elderly cleaner’s charred and disfigured body had been conveyed to the old house.
I put these points to Dame Beatrice in another letter and she in her reply invited me to bring Imogen to stay for a weekend at the Stone House. Imogen, who was staying with her sister and finding the children charming but distracting, responded warmly to the invitation, so on a cold autumn Friday afternoon we drove to the New Forest.
I had met the children when I picked Imogen up at her sister’s house and, as we were leaving the Downs behind us and I was taking the road to Chichester and then to Romsey to avoid Southampton, she mentioned that she would have to move, in order to get enough peace in which to write her book; I suggested that her next move should be into my pad.
‘Then, as soon as the winter is over, we’ll go house-hunting in London and in the summer we’ll move into the Cotswold cottage,’ I said.
‘Marriage lines or no marriage lines?’
‘We might as well regularise the union, I suppose,’ I said, as I kissed her cheek.
