AS IF SHE had shared my ruminations over the subject of dreams, Dolores closed her eyes. Had she nodded off? The medicines she took might make her do that, but I could not hear if her breathing was slumberous or not and I was not going to risk putting my ear close enough to check, especially since her teeth were still bared and not as clean as they might have been.
This might be an opportune moment to leave, Ruby suggested.
How? I demanded. I cannot politely excuse myself.
You are supposed to be the one who gets me out of life-threatening situations, she reminded me, not vice versa.
Life-threatening? I repeated in alarm and, while Ruby began to calculate how long it would take me to hack through the wall with the heels of my cranberry Wilber-Lowe shoes, I went to double-check the window. Needless to say it was still sealed tight. I poked a fingerplate into one of the screw slots and twisted. My nail broke and I broke into an ouch but the screw had not turned one minute of one degree.
Next time go anticlockwise, Ruby advised, but we both knew that it was a hopeless task.
I could try shouting and banging on the floor.
We are not supposed to be here, she reminded me, besides which do you think, perchance, it might awaken her? Ruby put her hands on her hips. And you know how cranky you can be when you are woken up.
I am never cranky, I objected crankily.
‘She was difficult from the start,’ Dolores announced without raising even one of her eyelids.
‘The laundress?’ I checked just in case she had overheard and meant me, and Dolores nodded lazily.
‘I had to knock and knock before she would admit me.’ She raised one lid a quarter way reminding me of Rodrigo, my kitten, trying to lure mice out of the wainscoting to play. ‘Even then she made harebrained excuses like lazy servants always do. Saying it was late and that she was closed and that the fire had gone out and she had emptied the copper.’ The lid lowered. ‘She demanded a great deal of money to wash and dry and press my clothes – almost as much as they were worth – and she took an age to do it. I told her that I had soiled them rescuing an orphan who had fallen in the sewers, but she did not seem to believe me.’ Dolores scowled. ‘She even asked what I had been doing down there in the first place.’
What a sauce! Ruby exclaimed in mock sympathy.
‘A lady does not care to have her word brought into question by a low, fat, common laundry woman and I had no intention of paying her all that money and so…’
Let me guess, Ruby sighed, though I had already formed my own suspicions.
Dolores unfolded her arms carefully as if checking the parts in case she wished to reassemble them.
‘In the end,’ she continued dreamily, ‘the slattern gave me no choice. I told her that she had left a pocket handkerchief in the copper and…’ She raised her head. ‘While she fished about for it with her wooden tongs in the dirty water, I crouched, pretending to be tying a bootlace, grasped her stout ankles, heaved with all my might and…’ The lids sprang open and Dolores stared at the recalled images. ‘Tipped her in.’ Her head dropped back and she snuggled a little deeper into her pillows. ‘That was most annoying and disappointing.’
She closed her eyes again.
‘Why?’
‘Annoying because the splash soaked my dress and hair.’ She stuck her thumb up like Nero feeling magnanimous at the Colosseum. ‘Disappointing because I had prepared myself for a fight but she just went limp straight away.’ She popped the thumb in her mouth and sucked. ‘Why do you suppose that was?’ she enquired indistinctly between slurps.
‘She probably gasped in surprise and inhaled the water,’ I suggested, and Dolores nodded amicably and extracted her thumb to examine it.
‘Then what happened?’ I asked and she flapped her bandaged hand as if my question were a persistent fly.
‘I took a bundle of clothes and my money – it was no use to her now – blew out the lamp – I am always telling Tilly off for wasting oil and it is important to lead by example – annnn…’ Dolores drew out that last syllable so much that even the word lost patience and cast aside its final d. ‘Shut-the-door-and-went-home,’ she finished in a rush.
I absorbed that information with less shock than I would have half an hour previously.
‘But did the servants or your husband not wonder why you had come home late and wet?’
Dolores, eyes still closed, turned her face towards me. ‘Edward was out healing the sick,’ she said in slightly mocking tones. Was she envious of his professional standing? If so, she should not have been for she owed her own status to it. ‘And my bedroom used to be at the back of the house. It is quieter there and there is a fire escape. I had told them I had a headache and was not to be disturbed and they never even knew that I had been out.’ Dolores smiled. ‘That was rather clever of me, don’t you think?’
‘Quite,’ I granted her, though Ruby had done much cleverer things without boasting about them.
‘I should have been a criminal,’ Dolores mused.
You ARE a criminal, I told her in my head but kept a tactful silence. You have just confessed to throttling a beggarman, stealing his clothes and drowning a laundress. How much more felonious can you get?
There is not a jury in the country that would convict her. Ruby came unexpectedly to Dolores’s defence. The woman is quite clearly and, probably incurably, insane.
‘Was it you who attacked that waitress in the Monastery Gardens?’ I asked as undisapprovingly as I could.
‘Is that what she was?’ Dolores shrugged. ‘It was her own fault you know.’
‘For wearing that hat,’ I recalled and Dolores beamed.
‘I knew you would understand,’ she giggled and nudged the air between us as if we were confederates in her deeds.
You appear to have a great deal of knowledge about these crimes, Hefty observed suspiciously. Perhaps you would care to explain how you knew about that cup of cocoa, Lady Violet.
He licked the lead of his pencil.
That was a different case, Ruby told him with glee. Ununiformed buffoon, she added, not quite under her breath.
Ah… yes… um, Inspector Hefty blustered, leafing through his notebook. Ah… so this is not Mars Manor then?
Old Queeny, I pondered, might not be the only one ready to be put out to grass.
Dolores yawned, covering her mouth with her fingers rather theatrically, I thought.
‘I was hunting for Edwina,’ she continued.
Edwina? Ruby and Hefty chorused in surprise, but I shushed them both.
Oh, I realised.
Bravissimo, Ruby applauded though I did not feel that she meant it.
‘Shall I show you what I used?’ Dolores asked, rooting under her bedclothes.
‘Only if you want to,’ I said nervously for, even through her counterpane, I began to make out the unmistakeable shape of the barrel of a rifle.