I SAT CAUTIOUSLY on the edge of the bed near Dolores’s feet, fairly confident that I could jump off before she could spring at me, should the fancy take her.
‘But first…’ Dolores primped her hair but it did not look any less of a mess. Long strands flopped over her left eye or rose in coils in odd tangles, reminding me of the snakes writhing on Medusa’s head. I had seen an illustration of the gorgon in Professor Wheatstone’s An Abbreviated History of Wicked Women, a much bulkier volume than its companion, The Complete History of Virtuous Women.
‘Shall I tell you what attracted me to Edward?’ she enquired, pulling her hand away gingerly.
His money? Ruby suggested.
‘His kindness,’ she answered her own question without waiting for me to say whether I wanted her to or not. ‘He is a very gentle gentleman.’
I doubt her rotting parrot would agree with that, Ruby argued.
‘But what about Colin?’ I said, and Dolores stretched her neck as if trying to see over the heads of a crowd.
‘My husband did not want to harm him,’ she sniffed, clearly peeved by my criticism, ‘but, as everybody knows, you have to be cruel to be kind.’
I never quite understood that phrase. It is something that adults say to justify their nastinesses, if that is the word.
It is not, Ruby informed me. And the quotation is from Hamlet. She snorted. So it must be true, she added bitterly, having hated the bard ever since being obliged to play the part of Desdemona with a theatre company touring Tasmania.
‘You should have seen how upset he was when that poor boy died.’ Dolores patted her serpents to pacify them, but one of them reared even higher.
‘Mungo Peers,’ I contributed, keeping a wary eye on her coiffure as it bobbed alarmingly towards me.
I knew, of course, that those untrained tresses could not bite, but then I had known, of course, that a dead grass snake I came across in the henhouse could not bite me either until I realised that it had been – as my grandmother’s gravestone proclaimed – not dead but sleeping.
‘And Sheba.’ Dolores sucked her lower lip. ‘Edward doted on that dog though I always preferred Chaos. He may be a scallywag but he does not bark at night.’ She clicked her tongue. ‘Or any other time,’ she mused in all seriousness.
I do not suppose that Sheba got stuck up monkey puzzle trees, Ruby rallied to the deceased canine’s defence. She had not been fond of cats since The Case of the Poisoned Claw.
‘You must have been very proud of him,’ I commented and she smiled sadly.
Smiled sadly, Ruby echoed incredulously. Did she also frown happily?
‘He was quite the hero,’ Dolores concurred.
There was a time I was quite the hero, Inspector Hefty reminisced reproachfully.
Yes, I agreed, but you never made me any money.
The root of all evil, he preached with a newfound piety.
Ruby said nothing but her smirk spoke paragraphs.
‘And he was so attentive when I fell ill,’ Dolores told me.
Attentive in what way? Ruby asked and I hoped that she was not being prurient, but she only urged, Ask her.
‘Was this after your trip abroad?’ I checked and Dolores wriggled her shoulders.
‘I was unwell before that,’ she said. ‘That was why I went with him, to consult a professor who had written a paper about my condition.’
‘May I ask what that condition is?’ I enquired tentatively.
‘Headaches,’ she replied simply, and part of me was not surprised with all those creatures emerging from her scalp. She winced. Surely one could not really have struck at her?
You are letting your imagination run away with you, Ruby scolded, ignoring the fact that my doing so was how she had come about.
‘Terrible headaches,’ Dolores said, putting her fingertips to her temples.
‘How awful,’ I sympathised for I could guess exactly how she felt.
Especially after a few absinthes, Ruby put in, never burdened by empathy.
‘Do you know what was really awful?’ Dolores challenged.
The way that Bolton Wanderers played in last year’s cup final, Ruby suggested, though neither of us had any interest in football and I only knew about it because Gerrund had lost five shillings on the match and was grumpy about it for days afterwards. Sutcliffe was half-asleep in the goal.
‘No,’ I said to be met with a blank look. ‘What?’
Dolores picked something off her bedspread and pinched it hard between her forefinger and the plate of her thumb as one might crush a flea. Now that I thought of it, I had an itch on my waist.
So do I. Ruby scratched herself vigorously, secure in the knowledge that only I could see her.
‘A crumb,’ Dolores explained, and I hoped that she was right because she popped that into her mouth as well. ‘Of toast,’ she diagnosed.
I am sure it jumped, Ruby asserted, then hesitated because there were other specks on the bedding, none of which was leaping about. Almost sure, she admitted.
‘What was really awful?’ I struggled to steer the conversation back on track.
It was bad enough dealing with Ruby’s constant interruptions without Dolores getting distracted too.
‘Edwina,’ she said with viperous venom. ‘It was all the fault of that vixxxxen.’
With that last word something hissed and I did not think – not for more than a moment at any rate – that it was Dolores’s hair, and I knew that it was not me, which only left Dolores herself.
Ruby jumped back. And I had thought she was fearless.
I have cramp in my leg, she explained unconvincingly.
‘What did Edwina do?’ I asked while Dolores inspected another crumb.
‘Edward dismissed her,’ she replied and failed to reply simultaneously.
Ruby and I looked at each other.
When did you get changed? She was in rather a nice silk dress, cornflowers on cream stripes alternating with hellebores on beige.
Oh ages ago, she replied airily.
Come to think of it, I had seen that material in Auberge’s of Bond Street but thought it rather expensive.
I put it on your account, she said.
‘Why?’ I asked.
Because I lost all my money at Bezique.
‘He told me,’ Dolores began for she, at least, realised that I had been asking her, ‘that he had caught Edwina stealing my jewellery but, when we came home from our trip, I came across a letter from a private detective who my husband was employing to discover her whereabouts.’ Dolores held the crumb towards the pale light as if assessing its clarity, cut, carat and colour. ‘When I questioned Edward he told me that he believed that she still had a necklace of mine and was much reassured when I told him that nothing was missing.’ She tossed the crumb aside as carelessly as one might a…
What is the word?
Crumb? Ruby suggested.
‘However,’ Dolores said, with that sudden loudness that governesses use when their charge is falling asleep during an especially exhilarating chapter of Professor Ottermouth’s Brief – though not brief enough – History of Harpsichord Making from Blanchet to Kirkman. ‘Three days later I overheard my husband saying on the telephone that it was imperative to find her.’
I would strongly recommend him not to embark on a criminal career, Ruby advised but Dolores was still talking.
‘When I challenged him he finally told me the truth.’
I doubt that very much, Ruby said disdainfully. She had a low opinion of husbands generally after her vows to Mr Dorchester had been interrupted by his indignant and heavily armed wife in the antithesis of a shotgun wedding.
‘Edwina had made improper advances to my husband,’ Dolores explained, ‘but, rather than distress my stretched nerves with details of her lasciviousness, he had told me that she was a thief.’
‘Then why…’ I began.
‘A doctor’s reputation is paramount,’ she insisted, though Rommy might have argued that a medical man’s skills were more important, ‘and that filthy hussy was threatening to make false allegations about him.’ She swept her hand over the bedspread, the specks springing into the air with an athleticism which any flea might envy, if it were of a competitive nature. ‘He was going to offer to purchase her a passage to America with enough money for her to set up a new life.’
Who said crime doesn’t pay? Hefty wondered though he had told many a villain as much himself.
He was selecting fibres from the curtains and sealing them in envelopes.
‘But,’ Dolores continued, ‘I have read enough of those awful Inspector Hefty stories to know better than that.’
Ruby’s laughter could not quite muffle the sound of grinding teeth – Hefty’s, I thought, until a complaint from my molars made me realise that it was mine. To be fair to Dolores I had written his tales under the pseudonym of Bernard Quartermaster.
Do not feel yourself to be under any obligation to be fair, Hefty fumed.
‘Blackmailers can never be silenced with money,’ Dolores propounded, though she was unlikely to have had a wide range of experiences with them. ‘They can only be silenced by death.’