Dorothy Cannell - The Importance of Being Ernestine

“Why not? You just ate my teacake.”

“Oh, go on! Have the crumbs.” Mrs. Malloy pushed the plate my way and eyed me kindly. “There’s no need to sit there feeling silly. What you’ve got to realize is you’re a newcomer to this business. I’ve a whole three weeks experience on you working for Milk. And let me say this, I’ve nothing against the upper classes so long as they knows their place and keeps to it, but I can’t fault you for being cautious where her ladyship is concerned. It wouldn’t be right for us to go looking for Ernestine if we thought we was handing her over to be murdered. I’m sure there’s a rule somewhere in the private detective’s code book about that sort of thing. Now how do you suggest we set about this job?” It was clear she was asking mainly to help give my morale a lift, and I almost forgave her for eating the teacake.

“We’d better start by going to Moultty Towers to see what we can sniff out. We might even find someone that was there at the same time as Flossie Jones who might give us a tip as to who handled Ernestine’s adoption.”

“Just what I was going to suggest meself. Like that woman as lives in the cottage by the well. Give me a minute, her name’s coming to me… Mrs. Hurry.”

“Hasty.”

“Right. But will she or anyone else be falling over their selves to talk to a pair of private detectives? Even them as have nothing to hide, Mrs. H., could shut up tight as the shops on early closing day the minute we open our mouths.”

“Also, Lady Krumley will undoubtedly wish us to be as discreet as possible, which means we need to go in undercover.”

“Now you’re talking.” Mrs. Malloy positively beamed at me. “Who should we pretend to be? How about electrical inspectors? I rather fancy meself in a pair of overalls with a cap on me head.”

“I thought, and it’s only a suggestion, that the simplest thing would be to say we were interior designers, hired by her ladyship to redecorate Moultty Towers.”

Mrs. M. stopped looking thrilled. “That’s all well and good, seeing as how that’s your line of work. A nice chance for you to show off. And boost your ego back up after that upset with Mr. H. over his study. But what am I supposed to do while you’re preening about? Stand around holding the tape measure?”

“We’ll be the firm of Malloy and Haskell. You’ll be the expert in wall and window treatments.”

“Treatments?”

“That’s one of the buzzwords in the business. You’ll also need to talk a lot about maintaining the integrity of the structure.”

“You did say Malloy and Haskell?”

“You think it might sound better the other way round?”

Mrs. Malloy picked up the bill the waitress had deposited on the table and made a pretense of opening her handbag. “Look, I’m not daft. I can tell when you’re trying to butter me up. My question is what if someone got suspicious and went and looked us up in the telephone directory, or checked with some independent business group?”

“That’s what’s so good about the idea. I am listed and all I have to say is that I’ve recently taken you on as a partner and that Lady Krumley consulted with us yesterday. As for Niles seeing us at the hospital today and our allowing him to think we were social workers, we can get around that by saying we didn’t feel free to discuss her ladyship’s plans for redecorating without her permission.”

“No rest is there in this business? Still, it’s hard to complain when there’s that five thousand pounds.”

“Think how grateful Mr. Jugg will be when he returns-if we’re successful, that is.”

“Fancy! I’d forgotten all about him.” Mrs. Malloy looked suitably shamefaced. “Course, I’m sure he’ll be all broken up with gratitude. And if he don’t make me his Girl Friday on the spot it’ll shock me back to me old hair color, sure as my name is Roxie Malloy.” She was so moved by this image that she left a twenty pence tip on the table, insisting I was doing my share by paying the bill.

Upon venturing out into the gray chill of the afternoon she looked up and down the street, saying that we needed to get to a telephone kiosk in order to give Lady Krumley a ring and explain the setup before we set out for Moultty Towers.

“We can’t go now,” I said. “I don’t have a notebook or my measuring equipment in the car. More importantly the best part of the day is gone, and we don’t want to be urged off the premises before we’ve got properly started wheedling information out of people. We’ll go early tomorrow morning.”

Mrs. Malloy continued to look miffed as we drove home under stormy skies. It was with the promise of picking her up at 8:30 the next morning that I dropped her off at her house in Herring Street and breathed a sigh of relief. I was eager to get home. By now Ben would have collected the children from school and would very likely have dinner started. Perhaps it would be possible for us to sit down with cups of tea and have a good talk that would banish the lingering atmosphere of constraint between us.

When I reached St. Anselm’s I spotted Kathleen Ambleforth crossing the gravel space between the church hall and the vicarage. Rolling down the car window, I waved at her and saw her start toward me with a beckoning gesture. A moment later I was parked alongside her and sticking my head out into a wind that blew my hair around my face.

“I won’t keep you.” She stood tugging the brim of her hat down over her brow, with her coat flapping about her legs. “Looks like we’re about to get another downpour and, unfortunately, I don’t have much to report about your furniture. I did find cousin Alice’s dispatch list, but as there were a number of duplicated items, it’s impossible to be sure which ones were yours, or if they all went to the same place. Let’s hope Alice will remember, but she’s not always easy to get hold of; she plays a lot of bridge. I never could understand why people get so worked up about card games. But to each his own.”

“You weren’t able to narrow it down”-the wind tore the words out of my mouth-“to a few charitable organizations where the stuff might have gone?”

“There are half-a-dozen possibilities.”

“Look,” I said, “I’ll pay-more than it’s worth-to buy it all back. Don’t you think that would soothe any ruffled feathers? If you give me a list of the places, I could start ringing them up?”

“I think that could make a great deal of unnecessary work for a lot of people. My dear,” Kathleen, who tended to throw those two words in when her patience was wearing thin, said, “try to be patient. I may have the information you want by tomorrow.” With that she waved me off in a resolute fashion, and I watched her battling her way through the wind to the vicarage before I reversed the car out onto the Cliff Road and drove the short distance home.

Ben wasn’t in the kitchen when I entered through the garden door. Neither were the children nor Freddy for that matter. They could, of course, have been anywhere in the house. It was foolish of me to take it as a bad sign that there was not a whiff of dinner in the air. Stripping off my raincoat and hanging it on a hook in the alcove by the door, I allowed myself the luxury of self-pity. In the course of the day I had gone from being a housewife and interior designer, pretending to be a private detective and social worker, to end up pretending to be my very own self. Was it too much to expect to be greeted at the door by a husband who had been counting the minutes until my return?

Ben came into the kitchen when I was in the middle of telling him just what I thought of his ability to harbor a grudge. He didn’t hear a word because the entire conversation had taken place inside my head, but it was heartening to see that he looked suitably shamefaced.