WHILE DOLORES LOOKED at me in expectation of my approval, I chewed upon her words and, though I did not care for their flavour, digested them.
Dolores cleared her throat to remind me politely.
‘Did you kill Edwina?’ I asked.
I realised, of course, that she had all but confessed, but it was difficult to see how she could have done it.
‘What choice did I have?’ she demanded and I could think of one other option, to wit not killing her.
‘But how?’ It would have taken a very skilled marksman indeed to have killed the woman with a shot to the head from that distance and angle, especially with so many other people milling about.
‘How do you think my hand was injured?’ Dolores waved the grubby, partly unwrapped bandaging towards me.
‘Climbing to the roof?’ I hazarded.
‘Climbing?’
To the roof, Ruby finished for her.
‘Or down from it,’ I suggested uncertainly and Dolores grasped her cane.
‘What roof? Are you mad?’ she demanded, though I would take my chances against her with any reputable psychiatrist.
Not Freud, Ruby cautioned and I remembered Rommy telling me about the Austrian doctor’s paper on hysteria. There is a serious danger that he might understand you.
There is only one thing worse than being understood, Hefty opined, and that is having halitosis. And not for the first time I regretted having taken him to see The Importance of Being Earnest.
‘But she was shot from the roof… was she not?’ I checked uncertainly and Dolores laughed, lightly, like a hostess putting a guest at ease after a slight mix-up over names.
‘Forgive me,’ she smiled graciously, ‘but you are labouring under a misapprehension,’ she rubbed the fingers and thumbs of her right hand together as one might when sprinkling a little seasoning on one’s food, ‘that it was I who shot her.’
She wiggled her hand and, in different circumstances at this point, would have wandered off to mingle with other guests.
‘So, when you said you killed Edwina you did not?’ I checked and she put a hand to her temple.
Was I giving her a headache? If so, I was awfully sorry. I had not even thought to bring a bottle of Bromo-Seltzer with me.
‘It is hard work murdering people,’ Dolores complained. ‘And messy and there is always a danger of being caught.’
Caught by the neck until you are dead, Hefty remarked.
‘But then I had a stroke of luck,’ Dolores related. ‘A certain gentleman who is in charge of a certain band of brigands…’
‘Anton Gervey,’ I guessed, if only to make her stop trying to be mysterious when there were more than enough true mysteries already.
Dolores scowled.
‘He came to see Edward,’ she continued. ‘Apparently he had cut his thumb while trying to do something to somebody’s smile. He did not tell me exactly what. I knew that he owed my husband a favour, and so I told him that Edward could not say so himself but he wanted to get rid of Edwina and Mr Gervey, though not quite a gentleman, was perfectly happy to oblige.’
Dolores took a breath.
You do surprise me, Ruby said.
‘I had a photograph of Edwina,’ she continued. ‘Edward had taken it but, unfortunately, her dress had come undone and slipped down her shoulders just as he opened the shutter-thing and so he put it away in his desk. I only came across the picture when I was hunting for poisons which I thought might come in handy for my quest. Unfortunately Mr Gervey’s man still had trouble finding her. It was then that I had a stroke of luck.’ Dolores scratched at an eyebrow. ‘I was passing through on my way to Mrs Pilkington’s, the floristry shop, when I spotted Edwina. She was in rags and much changed. I followed her and saw her standing in Seraphim Square. I could not do anything there and then but, after I saw her there the next day, I notified Mr Gervey. He said that, since she was altered, it might be best if I could point her out to his man. Stand well back and use a parasol, he suggested but, since I intended to wear my disguise again, I took an umbrella instead.’
Dolores inhaled deeply, probably exhausted by her recital.
‘But…’ A thought occurred to me.
And not before time, Ruby commented, her words almost lost beneath Dolores’s heavy exhalation.
‘At the appointed hour,’ Dolores continued, ‘I sneaked up to Edwina in my disguise.’
‘But,’ I returned to my rare but nonetheless welcome thought. ‘You cannot have been the blind beggar. He wore a hat with a shallow crown. You could not possibly have tucked all your hair into…’
‘It,’ Dolores broke in, putting up her hand to lift her hair six inches from her head.
I knew it was false, Ruby asserted.
You might have told me.
You told me to stop maundering about wigs, she reminded me.
That was ages ago.
It was on Martha’s second visit, as I recalled.
But you did not tell me I could start again.
Since when have you…
‘Some of my own hair dropped out after I fell ill.’ Dolores ran her fingers through the sparse strands with more equanimity than I could have mustered under the same circumstances. I did not need Ruby to remind me how much I had bleated over my singed eyelashes. ‘And Edward very kindly bought me this.’ She waved it about as if it were an especially shaggy badger in the jaws of a triumphant dachshund. ‘But it is so hot to wear when it is so hot already.’
Dolores let her trophy fall limply on her lap.
‘I still do not understand what happened to your hand.’
‘Oh for goodness sake!’ Dolores snapped. ‘Who is telling this story?’
‘You are,’ I confirmed meekly and she stroked her wig affectionately.
‘I pointed Edwina out, as arranged.’ She patted the wig. ‘But she must have sensed my presence and turned towards me. I think she was about to say something but I shall never know what, for at that very moment, Edward’s umbrella was smashed.’ Dolores flung out her arms. ‘In my face.’
The first shot, Inspector Hefty deduced, looking up from the dead moth that he was examining with his magnifying glass.
I saw now that her right cheek was not bruised but wrinkled into an angry scar probably too wide to cover with a playing card.
Why would you want to? Ruby enquired.
It was then that I realised why Dolores had allowed her false hair to hang over her face. Even a woman alone does not like to sport her imperfections.
No we do not, Ruby confirmed sourly, never having forgiven me for giving her a birthmark similar to Alfred Stanbury’s.
‘And injured your hand,’ I added and Dolores projected her lower lip.
‘My poor sweet little hand.’ She deserted the hairpiece to stroke her bandage.
Which also explains the broken umbrella we found in the square, Ruby jumped in to pilfer my thoughts, though I had not realised that she had helped in its discovery.
‘And it nearly deafened me,’ Dolores complained, putting her bandage to her ear.
‘Which is why you waited for the motor car to go by,’ I realised in begrudging admiration of her resourcefulness.
‘Motor car?’ she puzzled. ‘I did not notice.’
‘Oh.’ I retrieved my admiration only slightly tarnished, but left her with full rights and possession of my begrudgement.
Begrudge-what? Miss Kidd interrogated me.
Ment, I said defiantly, for I was not very afraid of her now.
‘But I heard the second shot almost immediately and Edwina’s face splattered and she staggered away.’
You told me that the second bang was an echo, I complained and Ruby softly whistled a bar of the Bragislanian national anthem.
Did I? she enquired innocently.
‘I scarpered,’ Dolores recounted, which sounded more like the sort of thing a street child would do. ‘Home.’
I took a breath and I must have got used to the air because it seemed less fetid than when it first assailed me.
I have laid down tools, my left nostril informed me, in solidarity with my comrade.
This was all a bit too redolent of the Paris Commune for my liking. What next? Would barricades be erected along the boulevard to my stomach, starving me into submission?
Let sleeping senses lie, Ruby advised. Oh, and you can let your breath out now.
‘Did you kill that bird?’ I enquired as casually as I could, though it was not the sort of question that I was used to posing when locked in an attic room with a homicidal maniac. The greatest risk I took as a rule was asking Agnust if she would mind dusting my study.
‘Colin?’
Was avicide such a frequent occurrence in that household that she needed to check to which victim I was referring?
‘Yes.’
Dolores crumpled her face in wounded outrage.
‘Never!’ she cried, her hand tightening so much that, if her wig were not a dead thing already, it would be presently. ‘I would have died for my darling… darling…’
Her voice fractured.
I knew, of course, that the bible enjoins us not to judge others but to my mind Dolores’s grief seemed a tad excessive, especially from somebody who held human life so cheaply. Fond as I had been of Rodrigo, I would not have sacrificed myself for him.
He knew that, Ruby told me, which is why he went off on that cruise.
My mother had told me that story, but I had another theory about what happened to my kitten and it involved…
Don’t say it! Little Myrtle cried in horror from the depths of my parietal lobe.
I had quite forgotten that she ran a home for orphaned kittens.
‘Edward did it,’ Dolores insisted fiercely, ‘to punish me for my misbehaviour.’
To my mind misbehaviour was talking with one’s mouth full or tying the Minister of War’s bootlaces together in revenge for him ruffling one’s hair when he visited Thetbury Hall.
‘I think,’ Dolores sampled her thumb again, ‘it was after I stabbed a little girl in the slums.’
‘Beryl Walker.’
The mummified body in the Lowers, I remembered.
‘Really?’ Dolores looked at me with interest. ‘I was unaware that she had a name.’
‘Everyone…’ I began but decided that the point was not worth pursuing. ‘Why did you kill her?’
‘Why not?’ She smiled as if I had offered her a cucumber sandwich.
Yes please, Hefty said.
‘But surely,’ I returned to the reason for my earlier puzzlement, ‘when you attacked that girl in the park, Edwina was already dead.’
We did try to tell you, Inspector Hefty remonstrated, but you shushed us.
I realised it too, I defended myself, but she did not give me a chance to say anything.
Dolores wiped her thumb on her nightdress.
‘Dead?’ she puzzled. ‘Was she? Oh…’ she laughed lightly, ‘you must forgive me, my dear. It is all tooo bewildering.’
‘But you cannot have forgotten,’ I protested, reminding myself of Miss Kidd when I had not done my arithmetic preparation and shuddering because I had remembered that I was still afraid of her.
‘I forget so many little things,’ Dolores assured me.
‘Hardly little,’ I said, aghast at her choice of word.
Before I could pursue the matter, however, I heard a floorboard creak and Dolores must have heard it too for she lifted her head expectantly.
‘Time for my snack,’ she announced happily.
Oh Lord, here we go again, I sighed.
We? In this? I think not, Ruby sniffed.
I glanced over my shoulder and saw than she was in a flowing emerald ballgown, trimmed in ivory lace and richly embroidered in rambling roses.
You choose some odd moments to become skittish, I scolded, envious of a waist that I could not have achieved even with a corset and Agnust at her most brutal.
Besides which, Ruby reminded me, he cannot get in without breaking the door down.
‘We must be quiet,’ I whispered to Dolores and she wrinkled her brow.
‘Are we playing that game again?’
‘Yes.’
‘But I do not want to,’ she protested while I signalled urgently. ‘How dare you attempt to extinguish me in my own house?’ she demanded, her voice crescendoing from forte to fortississimo.
The footsteps quickened.
‘Are you all right, madam?’ the creator of those steps enquired.
‘Help me!’ Dolores shrieked. ‘I am trapped with a madwoman who is threatening my life.’
I kept quiet, fairly confident that he would not try to force an entry. He must know from experience how his mistress imagined such things and that, at least, would give me a little time, though I had no idea how I intended to use it.
‘I cannot find the key, madam,’ he told her unsurprisingly – to me at any rate. ‘But don’t be afraid. There’s a spare.’
His fetching it might give me a chance, at least, to sneak out, I was telling myself when I heard him add, ‘In my pocket,’ and slide it into the lock.