Read Online No Human Enemy (Suzie Mountford Mysteries) by John Gardner - Free Book Online
Authors: John Gardner
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convent, was she?’
‘She was, sir. A novice.’
He lifted a hand, his forefinger pointing out of the window. ‘Then who the hell’s that, out there cutting me roses?’ he asked.
CHAPTER SEVEN
She was tall and slender with short, unassisted, old gold hair in a pageboy bob, no fringe, Winifred Lees-Duncan. Suzie thought Tommy would certainly like her if only for the thighs which moved almost salaciously against the thin material of her long, predominantly blue dress. Maybe he’d like the accent as well. Very county: yah, yah.
‘You’d have adored her,’ she told him on the telephone. ‘Kind of subservient blonde fizzer with, I suspect, a delayed timer and a quick-release mechanism. You’d be over the moon for her. She’s a WAAF Flight Officer, or whatever they call them. You’d be shot down in flames as the Brylcreem boys have it.’
‘Nonsense,’ he said. ‘You do talk a lot of twaddle, heart,’ rather liking the idea of her thinking he was no end of a dog with women.
‘She has a pet name as well. Nobody calls her Winifred or Winnie…’
‘I bet they call her Wonky. Wonky Lees-Duncan…’ School thing. Old Wonky Lees-Duncan of the Upper Fourth. Good on the lax field, eh.’
‘As a child she couldn’t say Winnie. She called herself Wiltow – you know kids – in time it became Willow. That’s what everyone calls her – Willow.’
‘As in “a willow grows aslant a brook”?’ Tommy asked.
Suzie tried to think of something cheeky to top the Shakespeare. Perhaps, ‘On a tree by a river a little Tom-Tit sang Willow, tit-willow, tit-willow,’ – Gilbert and Sullivan. Decided against it: Tommy would only get vulgar.
She had been talking to Tommy on the telephone, a trunk call from Sheffield – murder of Mrs Doris Butler – because when she got back to Upper St Martin’s Lane there was a note:
Sorry, heart, the Sheffield case blew up again and they need the brains there, on the spot, so I’m taking Ron and Laura. It appears that the late Mrs Butler is lamented by three, possibly five, swains. A situation that poses a problem or four. So, you’re in charge of the Convent Mystery, as Fleet Street will undoubtedly call it – male nun who never was, kind of thing. Ring me. Love for ever and a day, Tommy. Then a little row of Xs indicating kisses: uncharacteristic for Tommy Livermore. Then a PS: Emma, like the poor, is of course still with me and Sheffield, so important to our war effort as the steel capital of Great Britain, is just as it was – dirty, smoky and dingy from the factory chimneys and the steel works.
* * *
So she rang Sheffield nick and was told that Detective Chief Superintendent Livermore was having dinner with Detective Chief Superintendent Berry, Sheffield CID. Emma Penticost was there, though, said the chief was staying at The Royal Victoria, where they’d all stayed at the start of the Doris Butler murder case a few weeks ago. ‘He’s OK, ma’am, and I’ll see that he stays OK,’ she told Suzie who grunted and put down the phone.
She remembered the Blitz humour of that stay at The Royal Victoria – ‘Glad you didn’t try Marples Hotel,’ the porter said. ‘They’ve got no rooms at all.’ Later they found that Marples – in the city centre – had received a direct hit in December 1940, killing over sixty people: Sheffield’s worst air raid incident so far.
She rang The Royal Victoria and left a message asking Tommy to telephone as soon as he got in. She suspected the receptionist she left the message with was the snooty one with the snub nose and superior manner: the one who had been unpleasant and condescending when Suzie and the rest of the Reserve Squad stayed there: the one Tommy seemed to like: all over her with, ‘Oh, Miss Hunter this, and Miss Hunter that.’ Her name was Christine Hunter and Tommy started calling her ‘Our Chrissie’ which hadn’t gone down well with Suzie.
While she waited for Tommy to phone she wandered
‘She was, sir. A novice.’
He lifted a hand, his forefinger pointing out of the window. ‘Then who the hell’s that, out there cutting me roses?’ he asked.
CHAPTER SEVEN
She was tall and slender with short, unassisted, old gold hair in a pageboy bob, no fringe, Winifred Lees-Duncan. Suzie thought Tommy would certainly like her if only for the thighs which moved almost salaciously against the thin material of her long, predominantly blue dress. Maybe he’d like the accent as well. Very county: yah, yah.
‘You’d have adored her,’ she told him on the telephone. ‘Kind of subservient blonde fizzer with, I suspect, a delayed timer and a quick-release mechanism. You’d be over the moon for her. She’s a WAAF Flight Officer, or whatever they call them. You’d be shot down in flames as the Brylcreem boys have it.’
‘Nonsense,’ he said. ‘You do talk a lot of twaddle, heart,’ rather liking the idea of her thinking he was no end of a dog with women.
‘She has a pet name as well. Nobody calls her Winifred or Winnie…’
‘I bet they call her Wonky. Wonky Lees-Duncan…’ School thing. Old Wonky Lees-Duncan of the Upper Fourth. Good on the lax field, eh.’
‘As a child she couldn’t say Winnie. She called herself Wiltow – you know kids – in time it became Willow. That’s what everyone calls her – Willow.’
‘As in “a willow grows aslant a brook”?’ Tommy asked.
Suzie tried to think of something cheeky to top the Shakespeare. Perhaps, ‘On a tree by a river a little Tom-Tit sang Willow, tit-willow, tit-willow,’ – Gilbert and Sullivan. Decided against it: Tommy would only get vulgar.
She had been talking to Tommy on the telephone, a trunk call from Sheffield – murder of Mrs Doris Butler – because when she got back to Upper St Martin’s Lane there was a note:
Sorry, heart, the Sheffield case blew up again and they need the brains there, on the spot, so I’m taking Ron and Laura. It appears that the late Mrs Butler is lamented by three, possibly five, swains. A situation that poses a problem or four. So, you’re in charge of the Convent Mystery, as Fleet Street will undoubtedly call it – male nun who never was, kind of thing. Ring me. Love for ever and a day, Tommy. Then a little row of Xs indicating kisses: uncharacteristic for Tommy Livermore. Then a PS: Emma, like the poor, is of course still with me and Sheffield, so important to our war effort as the steel capital of Great Britain, is just as it was – dirty, smoky and dingy from the factory chimneys and the steel works.
* * *
So she rang Sheffield nick and was told that Detective Chief Superintendent Livermore was having dinner with Detective Chief Superintendent Berry, Sheffield CID. Emma Penticost was there, though, said the chief was staying at The Royal Victoria, where they’d all stayed at the start of the Doris Butler murder case a few weeks ago. ‘He’s OK, ma’am, and I’ll see that he stays OK,’ she told Suzie who grunted and put down the phone.
She remembered the Blitz humour of that stay at The Royal Victoria – ‘Glad you didn’t try Marples Hotel,’ the porter said. ‘They’ve got no rooms at all.’ Later they found that Marples – in the city centre – had received a direct hit in December 1940, killing over sixty people: Sheffield’s worst air raid incident so far.
She rang The Royal Victoria and left a message asking Tommy to telephone as soon as he got in. She suspected the receptionist she left the message with was the snooty one with the snub nose and superior manner: the one who had been unpleasant and condescending when Suzie and the rest of the Reserve Squad stayed there: the one Tommy seemed to like: all over her with, ‘Oh, Miss Hunter this, and Miss Hunter that.’ Her name was Christine Hunter and Tommy started calling her ‘Our Chrissie’ which hadn’t gone down well with Suzie.
While she waited for Tommy to phone she wandered
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