A Clear Conscience by Frances Fyfield Read Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Frances Fyfield
Tags: Mystery
so late, helping me, because Iâve got people coming to supper. They donât include you and Bailey by any chance, do they?â
âNope.Soon, I hope.â
âChrist. I wish I could remember whoâs coming. Isnât that awful? They could be a posse of vegetarian judges. Oh, by the way, she smells of carbolic soap or disinfectant, or something. And she does tend to eat with her mouth open, but thatâs nothing. Really. Helen? Donât forget to go home, will you?â
Home. With the dusty windows and the wild garden and the floors in need of a clean and the bees at the window. The thought made her shiver with pleasure. Halfway down the corridor, she remembered the little snack pots of paint in her desk drawer. She would not have trudged back for anything less, but these had the innate value of contraband. She was the only person she knew who had left a chicken defrosting on the office floor for a weekend. She boasted about that one, but not about the fish left under the top deck seat of the number 59.
She avoided the bus in the interests of speed. Below the hot streets, the Underground was tolerable with the mad work exodus an hour old. The street where Helen lived seemed fresh, dignified, safe, adorned by large Victorian houses with white stucco frontages, elegant in whatever state of repair, built for affluent families, currently subdivided, the basement flats like hers, euphemistically known as garden apartments, were sunny at the back, darker at the front. Helen walked down her own road with familiar pleasure, noting the age of the trees, the clematis on the black railings, the emergence of blood-red geraniums and startling blue lobelia in window-boxes. Then she did as she did with shameful frequency: stopped, looked in windows to see what people did with their rooms.
O n the doorstep was a woman, waiting with preternatural patience, as if she never needed to move, would wait for ever, like a piece of garden sculpture.
âYes?âHelen queried abruptly. âAre you selling something?â
The sculpture stood up from the step and smiled. âIâm Cath,â she said. âIâve come to clean. If you want me.â
âCath?â Helen echoed. âCath? Oh, yes!â
She unlocked the door, turned back, smiling apologies for her own gross delay, muttering how she was usually early; forgive me, she was murmuring. She wanted to apologise for her own house, suddenly spotlit as they went into the kitchen, which caught the full blaze of the sinking sun from the south-facing garden; and it was then, catching in the absent smile of the other woman a signal of nothing, that the cat came in and Cath lifted her off the floor in a crow of delight. For one split second, hers were the same hurt, brown eyes which had stared from the photographs of Shirley Rix, defying the world to say that her own fate was her own fault. Helen shook herself.
No-one had identical eyes, any more than the same voices or fingerprints.
Aside from that, Cath had the face of a madonna.
C HAPTER T HREE
I fit ainât broke, donât fix it. Which raised in his mind the strict definition of âbrokeâ. For âbrokeâ read broken, not penniless. Bailey could hear some pedantic judge translating the phrase for the benefit of a jury. âLadies and gentlemen, this means, if an object is not broken, it should on no account be repaired.â
Somehow that did not sound quite the same. Lacked a certain
je ne sais quoi
. Bailey looked at the clock in his hands which had sent him off on this tangent. Not broken as such, Mâlud, but working overtime, with the hour hand racing round at the same speed as the one counting seconds. He set the clock down on the work surface. âJust let me know which hour of the day Iâm in,â he murmured, âand Iâll phone up the speaking clock to check the week.â
The repair of this old timepiece could wait until Helen had seen it.
âNope.Soon, I hope.â
âChrist. I wish I could remember whoâs coming. Isnât that awful? They could be a posse of vegetarian judges. Oh, by the way, she smells of carbolic soap or disinfectant, or something. And she does tend to eat with her mouth open, but thatâs nothing. Really. Helen? Donât forget to go home, will you?â
Home. With the dusty windows and the wild garden and the floors in need of a clean and the bees at the window. The thought made her shiver with pleasure. Halfway down the corridor, she remembered the little snack pots of paint in her desk drawer. She would not have trudged back for anything less, but these had the innate value of contraband. She was the only person she knew who had left a chicken defrosting on the office floor for a weekend. She boasted about that one, but not about the fish left under the top deck seat of the number 59.
She avoided the bus in the interests of speed. Below the hot streets, the Underground was tolerable with the mad work exodus an hour old. The street where Helen lived seemed fresh, dignified, safe, adorned by large Victorian houses with white stucco frontages, elegant in whatever state of repair, built for affluent families, currently subdivided, the basement flats like hers, euphemistically known as garden apartments, were sunny at the back, darker at the front. Helen walked down her own road with familiar pleasure, noting the age of the trees, the clematis on the black railings, the emergence of blood-red geraniums and startling blue lobelia in window-boxes. Then she did as she did with shameful frequency: stopped, looked in windows to see what people did with their rooms.
O n the doorstep was a woman, waiting with preternatural patience, as if she never needed to move, would wait for ever, like a piece of garden sculpture.
âYes?âHelen queried abruptly. âAre you selling something?â
The sculpture stood up from the step and smiled. âIâm Cath,â she said. âIâve come to clean. If you want me.â
âCath?â Helen echoed. âCath? Oh, yes!â
She unlocked the door, turned back, smiling apologies for her own gross delay, muttering how she was usually early; forgive me, she was murmuring. She wanted to apologise for her own house, suddenly spotlit as they went into the kitchen, which caught the full blaze of the sinking sun from the south-facing garden; and it was then, catching in the absent smile of the other woman a signal of nothing, that the cat came in and Cath lifted her off the floor in a crow of delight. For one split second, hers were the same hurt, brown eyes which had stared from the photographs of Shirley Rix, defying the world to say that her own fate was her own fault. Helen shook herself.
No-one had identical eyes, any more than the same voices or fingerprints.
Aside from that, Cath had the face of a madonna.
C HAPTER T HREE
I fit ainât broke, donât fix it. Which raised in his mind the strict definition of âbrokeâ. For âbrokeâ read broken, not penniless. Bailey could hear some pedantic judge translating the phrase for the benefit of a jury. âLadies and gentlemen, this means, if an object is not broken, it should on no account be repaired.â
Somehow that did not sound quite the same. Lacked a certain
je ne sais quoi
. Bailey looked at the clock in his hands which had sent him off on this tangent. Not broken as such, Mâlud, but working overtime, with the hour hand racing round at the same speed as the one counting seconds. He set the clock down on the work surface. âJust let me know which hour of the day Iâm in,â he murmured, âand Iâll phone up the speaking clock to check the week.â
The repair of this old timepiece could wait until Helen had seen it.