Episode 20 - Snow

Thursday cont.

While Cleo and Gary were driving to Frint-on-Sea, Dorothy was getting ready to sort out the case of Miss Snow’s dog. The email contained a phone number. She would call and make an appointment to see the anxious dog owner.

***

Miss Snow lived in Huddlecourt Minor. You could get there by bus via Middlethumpton market, but it was only half an hour’s walk in sturdy shoes through Monkton woods and up a steep hill. Dorothy decided the exercise would do her good.

Apart from that, she could make some observations and maybe even hear a dog barking. She thought that the dog might not have been stolen by someone local since it would be recognizable, unless the thief had dyed the pink patch of fur to match the rest. But if the animal still was in the locality, it must have been taken by someone with a grudge against Miss Snow, Dorothy decided. What a pity she didn’t know the dog’s name so that she could have called it. Before she went to Miss Snow, Dorothy would make inquiries at the neighbouring houses and ask if anyone had been seen acting suspiciously.

***

An oldish man was weeding his garden in front of one of the houses on the main road leading to Miss Snow’s address.

“Good afternoon,” Dorothy called over the hedge of one of a row of houses.

The man looked startled.

“Did you mean me?” he asked.

“Yes. It is Mr Rogers, isn’t it? “

“How do you know?”

“Don’t you recognize me, Mr Rogers?”

Mr Rogers came closer and peered at Dorothy.

“Ah yes. Now I do. You’re the music teacher and part-time organist at St Peter’s Church, aren’t you? I took my glasses off. The weeds seem even bigger when I have them on. How can I assist you, Mrs Price?”

“It is still Miss Price, Mr Rogers, and likely to remain so.”

“I stand corrected.”

“I’m wondering if you’ve seen Miss Snow’s dog recently,” said Dorothy.

“Miss Snow? I suppose you mean the gossipy woman who lives in a flat on the corner of Busby Road.”

“The address is Primrose house, Mr Rogers.”

“That’ll be it then. It’s one of those sheltered residences. Four flats and four old women living in them. A terrible place.”

“It sounds as if you don’t like old women, Mr Rogers.”

“No offence meant, but I don’t much, especially Flora Snow. She dyes bits of her dog to match her hair. Pink at the moment. Hideous. And she pretends to be one of us, but she isn’t. She’s a townie.”

“I don’t know Miss Snow, but your description of the dog fits. Do you know where it is?”

“Has she lost it again?”

“She seems to have. She contacted the Hartley Agency and asked us to find it.”

“I hope someone has strangled it,” said Mr Rogers. “Yapping and baring its teeth as if it was a real dog. I wouldn’t give it house-room.”

“I’m sure it is a real dog and it can’t help being owned by Miss Snow.”

“I used to be quite friendly with the woman. Always talked to her when she went past the garden, but she asked questions about my living situation, if I had a wife and so on. I’m sure she wanted to marry me, so I put an end to that friendship. She had designs on my house, Miss Price. More room here than in that grotty little flat of hers.”

Dorothy wondered if Mr Rogers was quite right in the head. He was so irate about Miss Snow that he went on and on about her. Eventually Dorothy got a word in.

“So you don’t know where the dog is, I gather.”

“No, Miss Price, and even if I did, I can’t see any reason to tell you.”

With those words, Mr Rogers turned his back on her and returned to his weeding.

“But I’m looking for it,” Dorothy shouted after him.

The man took no further notice of her.

***

At least Dorothy now knew where Primrose house was. She hoped the residents were more friendly than Mr Rogers, a crotchety character, if ever there was one. Admittedly, Dorothy could be quite crotchety herself at times, for instance, when she was disturbed while playing the piano. She had disturbed the weeding and scolded herself for making a snap judgement about Mr Rogers. He was probably the only eligible man around and knew it. In that case, age would not be a deciding factor. She would see what Miss Snow had to say about him.

However, since Mr Rogers did not like Miss Snow or her dog, he was a suspect. His hands were nervous and he had been shouting. What is more, he had not looked her in the eye once.

***

Miss Snow lived on the ground floor of Primrose House. That was rather a grand name for a small block of flats custom-built for older persons, in other words small, since older people were thought not to need many or big rooms. Primroses are yellow and so were the outside walls of the building. Dorothy thought it was the colour of scrambled eggs, but the name Primrose was more suitable if you had to choose.

The flats had their own front doors, also painted scrambled-egg yellow. The doors to each side downstairs  lead to each downstairs flat, but there were also staircases each side of the doors, leading up to the first floor flats. The setup formed a tiny porch where you could wait out of the rain. Dorothy had hardly rung the bell when Miss Snow’s front door swung open and Dorothy was astonished to be faced with someone who looked uncannily like Laura Finch, Dorothy’s deceased music colleague, except that Miss Snow’s hair was bright pink and she was wearing an almost matching pink blouse. Dorothy felt quite faint. She would have to ignore the pink; it was offensive on Miss Snow. The faintness, however, came largely from the shock of seeing a Laura look-alike.

Miss Snow led Dorothy into the parlour and handed her a large gin and tonic. She was invited to sit in one of the small plush armchairs. Dinky, thought Dorothy, thinking of the mess there had been in Laura Finch’s bungalow.

“I’d rather have some water, please. I’m Dorothy Price and I’m so sorry that I’m a bit shocked, but you remind me of someone and that someone is dead.”

“I suppose you mean Laura Finch, don’t you?”

“Yes, I do.”

“We had the same father,” said Miss Snow.

“Oh,” said Dorothy. She had not been so speechless for years.

“Our father was quite a lad, Miss Price.”

“He must have been.”

Miss Snow volunteered some more information.

“There are at least two other illegitimate offspring around, but I don’t know them personally so I don’t know what they look like. I met Laura a few times and decided that if the other two were like her in character, I would not make any attempt to find them.”

“How do you know about them?”

“We were all four in my father’s will, Miss Price: Laura, Cora, Nora and me, Flora. He didn’t have anything to leave to the world except his daughters and he didn’t leave us anything. Core, Nora and I were just mentioned in passing.”

Dorothy thought the rhyming names were extraordinary. She wished Cleo could hear this story. Laura was the daughter of a philanderer, was she? She had been so hot on respectability until her own lack of it had been exposed. She had never mentioned her father. No wonder, if she knew he had left offspring all over the place. She had inherented his genes.

“I came after Laura,” Miss Snow continued. “Laura was legitimate, I think. She inherited the house, unfortunately. Our father was having his first affair when I happened, I understand. Cora and Nora came quite a long time after me. I don’t think there were any in between that he knew about.”

“Laura never mentioned any of you,” said Dorothy, now recovered from her shock and wondering how many more secrets Laura had taken to the grave.

“That doesn’t surprise me,” said Flora Snow. “It was quite unfair that she was legitimate enough to inherit the family home in Lower Grumpsfield – the one I never knew. She came back from somewhere hot to live in it.”

Flora leant closer to Dorothy. Her breath smelt of the gin and tonic with which she had been fortifying herself.

“I understand that Laura worked as a prostitute before becoming respectable,” she whispered, as if there were eavesdroppers.

“Laura was never married, but marriage was her idea of respectability, so she invented a Mr Finch when she came back to Great Britain. She had an illegitimate son she kept hidden in the tropics until he came back as her nephew. He was murdered in her garden shed soon after she met her maker.”

“How do you know all that in such detail, Miss Snow?”

“Call me Flora. I was curious and went to great lengths to fill in my knowledge gaps. You were in London for decades, so you wouldn’t know how intimate it can get in small towns, Dorothy. Someone always knows the truth, you see.”

“I won’t ask how you know so much about me, Flora.”

“That’s public knowledge and nothing to be ashamed of. You are quite well known in this neighbourhood for all the good works you do.”

“But you didn’t know that I do freelance investigating for Miss Hartley, did you?”

“Of course I did, and I’m quite glad you came and not her. She’s quite overpowering, I hear, and not very white skinned.”

“Are you racist, Flora? If you are, I will not look for your dog.”

“No, no, don’t get me wrong. It’s just that people from other cultures are different.”

“I think you’d like Cleo and she’s not different at all. She is honest, compassionate and well-educated. She has a Doctorate in social sciences and was a social worker in Chicago before moving to Upper Grumpsfield to take up residence in the cottage her father left her.”

“I know all that, Dorothy. She is still married to Robert Jones, that excellent butcher down the hill, but he has left her, hasn’t he?”

Dorothy was shocked that Flora Snow could be so up to date and bang on with her information. She decided to tell her a bit more in her own words before Miss Snow could start speculating.

“The marriage was not going well, Flora, and now she has met a man she wants to spend her life with.”

“You mean Gary Hurley. A nice-looking man. Very sexy. A policeman. Suffers from burnout now and again. I hope Miss Hartley can deal with him. I’ve heard that he can be quite difficult,” said Flora, topping up her gin. “I understand that she married Mr Jones although she was having an affair with Mr Hurley. Now that’s what I call silly.”

“They’ll sort things out without our help, I’m sure,” Dorothy said drily.

“Of course they will. True love comes so seldom, it’s better to hang on to it. Mr Snow was my true love, but he died before his time,” Flora explained tearfully. “Mr Jones will find the right woman one day. For instance, that vicar’s wife. Now she would suit him better. Less exotic. More conservative and currently stuck with that awful evangelist fellow, though he has a past as well.”

“I don’t think we need talk ab out that, Flora.”

“Edith raped him to get those twins, I heard.”

Dorothy was genuinely shocked.

“Where would you get such a terrible idea from,” she said.

“Mrs Mitchell,” said Flora Snow. “She’s mattied to that doctor so she has access to all the documents. Frederick Parsnip did not always have such a stiff upper lip, Dorothy. I just hope Mr Jones goes on serving those American beef cuts, but that depends on whether Miss Hartley’s mother sticks it out there, doesn’t it, Dorothy?”

It dawned on Dorothy that at least some of the stream of gossip issuing from Flora’s lips could have come from Gloria. Flora knew not only the local gossip, but things Gloria would know that were not in the public domain. Gloria was indiscreet enough to pass on anything she knew in return for a smile and a thank you from her eager audience.

However she obtained her information, Miss Snow was someone to be reckoned with, not least because she liked performing and drank a lot. Her almost non-stop babble had convinced Dorothy of that.

“I used to be a part-time lecturer at Durham University,” Flora continued.  “My subject was applied maths and I assisted my husband, Professor Snow. He had the chair for mathematics there. He was twice my age, you know, and I helped the rear his children from two previous marriages. I don’t know where they are now.”

Dorothy thought the children were probably glad not to have Flora Snow hanging around. She was a social climber, had a malicious tongue and was probably a fortune-hunter. Old academics were often married for their generous pensions.

“I know so much about you,” Flora said. “It’s only fair that you should know a bit about me, isn’t it?”

Flora’s beedy eyes became glazed and the fiery flush on her face deepended as she drained her glass of gin.

Dorothy suspected that Flora Snow found she got on better in the neighbourhood if she appeared to be a slightly inebriated, sometimes dithery spinster. Dorothy had to admit to herself that she sometimes took on that role when it helped her to gather information, but she left the alcohol off.

Dorothy liked to be in control. In all probability Flora still had all her wool on despite her fondness for gin, Dorothy mused. If she put gin away in such quantities every day, she was probably an alcoholic and only functioned normally when she kept her blood-alcohol levels up.

“To get back to the reason I’m here, Flora…”

“Oh yes, poor Cheesy,” Flora moaned, exaggerating the dithery mode. “I’ve no idea where he could be.”

Flora pulles a pink lace-edged hanky out of her sleeve and dabbed at her eyes.

“We gathered that from your letter, Flora. Did I hear you say his name is Cheesy? That’s a very unusual name for a dog.”

“He’s a very unusual dog, but I understand that mongrels are sometimes a bit quaint. A mixture of poodle and Jack Russell is certainly unusual, if not unique.  Cheesy doesn’t like bones, for instance. He prefers cheese; Italian hard cheese, not gooey French Camembert. You should watch him sink his teeth into a corner of Parmesan. That’s how he got his name. Cheesy is easier to call out than Parmesan, I think you’ll agree.”

Dorothy nodded and told Flora a bit about her dog Minor that she had lost to an articulated lorry in Station Street. Flora sympathised.

“Was it a little dog?” she asked, and Dorothy suddenly had a hunch that it could actually have been Flora Snow’s dog that she had adopted after finding in the woods between Hundlecourt Minor and Upper Grumpsfield, so she replied falsely “No. Minor was a big dog.”

“Then it couldn’t have been my Cuddles. He ran away with an injured paw and I never saw him again. ”

Minor had had an injured paw when she found him. She wondered why he had never run back home, but he probably hadn’t been able to run, and Dorothy had not tried very hard to find the owner. Later, Minor had grown to double his size, the setter in him having come to the fore. He loved scrambled eggs and had made an enemy of Mr Barker next door by burying Robert Jones’s freebie bones in the vegetable patch for future gnawing. The otherwise kindly neighbour had not liked the way Minor buried bones among his vegetables, but Dorothy did not tell Flora that. She decided that Cheesy might have simply run away just like Minor had, and consoled Flora with that idea.

“Of course, Cuddles was never really a lovable dog despite his name,” Flora added. “I never quite took to him the same as to Cheesy. Cheesy is a real soul-mate, so you know how much it means to me to get him back.”

Dorothy thought Miss Snow might not have looked for Cuddles for very long. That made her feel better about keeping him and giving him a less embarrassing nme.

“ Do you suspect anyone, Flora?”

“That horrid Mr Rogers down the road, Dorothy. He thought I wanted to marry him. Just fancy that. I was married once and that was enough for one lifetime, though I really loved Mr Snow and he left me comfortable, bless him. I was always Miss Snow at the university, so I call myself that here.”

”I insist on the Miss. I have never been married. The one man I ever wanted to marry went abroad and apparently became a gangster, and all the while I was true to him, Miss Snow,” said Dorothy, relieved that the conversation had moved away from Minor, but Flora Snow had not finished with it.

“Your doggy tale is sad, Dorothy. We must meet when Cheesy is back. I’d like to hear more about it and see some photos of Minor.”

“But let’s get Cheesy back first, shall we?” said Dorothy, deciding that the last thing she wanted was a friendship with Flora Snow. Apart from the dog dilemma, she thought Flora was too much like Laura at her worst. Her bossy nature was already seeping through and there was a chance that she would recognize Minor from a photo, though he had doubled his size within a few months living with Dorothy.

“Do you think Mr Rogers could have taken Cheesy?” Dorothy asked.

“I’m sure he did. What if he killed him?”

“That would be a police matter, Flora, but if I’m not mistaken, he has already released Cheesy.”

“How do you know that?”

“I can see him, Flora. He’s standing on the patio.”

“Mr Rogers?”

“No, Cheesy.”

Flora rushed to the glass Patio door, opened it and shrieked with delight as she held the little dog close and almost smothered it with kisses.

“So our crime is solved,” said Dorothy, thinking how hideous the pink fur on the dog’s head was.

“Not until I find out who took him,” said Flora.

“Is that important? I’m sure it won’t happen again.”

“I hope you’re right, but I’d like to know who did it,” Flora insisted.

It was obvious that Flora Snow could not contemplate the idea that the dog had simply run away.

“Then we’ll pay Mr Rogers a visit,” said Dorothy. “You will look furious but remain silent and I will talk him into talking.”

Dorothy thought about her father’s army pistol, which she always carried in her bag for emergencies. She drew it out now.

“I can threaten him with this,” she said.

Flora shrieked again. Cheesy yapped and fell with a thud to the floor as Flora opened her arms in panic.

“Is it loaded?” she cried.

“Of course it is. What’s the use of a gun if it isn’t ready to use?”

“Promise me you won’t shoot, Dorothy. We’re not in Casablanca now.”

How Flora knew that Dorothy loved watching old monochrome American gangster movies was what Cleo would have described as awesome, but there was a job to be done, so Dorothy refrained from asking.

Cheesy was fed and was soon gnawing happily at a chunk of parmesan. He was a very small dog with tiny  pointed teeth. If, how and if so by whom he had been captured was still a mystery, but Dorothy had already thought of a way to trick Mr Rogers into confessing if he had anything to confess. Miss Snow drained another gin and tonic, popped a peppermint into her mouth and declare that it was time for the ‘Charge of the Light Brigade.’”

***

Mr Rogers was not pleased to see Flora Snow. He was never pleased to see her.

“Get out of my garden, Miss Snow!” he shouted.

“Now, now, Mr Rogers!” said Dorothy sternly. ”Miss Snow is not doing any harm.”

“She’s a mischief-maker. She’ll come to a sticky end one day.”

“Is that a threat, Mr Rogers?” said Dorothy. “You’d better be more careful about what you say.”

“So should she. Shame on her for spreading gossip about me.”

“I’m sure she didn’t do that,” said Dorothy, “but even if she did it was no reason to make off with her dog.”

Mr Rogers turned pale. Dorothy was now sure that he was guilty.

“But if you hand over the dog, we’ll say no more about the theft.”

Flora wanted to contradict Dorothy, but was signalled to be silent.

“I can’t hand over an animal I haven’t got,” Mr Rogers shouted.

“But we’ve got him back,” Flora whispered to Dorothy.

“He doesn’t need to know that,” Dorothy whispered back.

“Do you want it in writing? I haven’t got that cursed animal. I don’t steal dogs and I don’t eat roast cat for Sunday lunch, either.”

”Oh dear. Was that the rumour going round?” said Dorothy.

“It was and it’s not true.”

Mr Rogers looked angrily at Miss Snow.

“So get out of my garden and stay out, Miss Busybody,” Mr Rogers shouted.

“Are you referring to me?” said Dorothy.

“If the cap fits, wear it both of you,” shouted Mr Rogers over his shoulder as he went inside his house and slammed the door.

“He’s not going to confess,” said Dorothy. “But you’ve got your dog back, so if I were you, I’d just stay away from that unpleasant man in future and stop telling fairy stories about him.”

“How did you know that, Dorothy?” said Flora.

“Fairy stories have long legs,” replied Dorothy, “and noses that grow like Pinocchio’s,” she added for good measure.

Flora Snow’s hand went up to her nose.

“Would you like to come back for some tea?” she invited-

“No thank you. I have too much to do. Another time,” said Dorothy, deciding that there would not be another time. Chasing murderers was infinitely more agreeable than chasing stray animals, and she had more or less made up her mind to visit her sister Vera in North Wales.

***

Back in her cottage, Dorothy thought over what she had achieved in the Snow case, and what Cleo had hinted at the previous day. It would be a good idea for her to be in on those questionings after all. She phoned Vera and asked her if she could pop over for a few days.

“Pop over? A through train takes at least 3 hours. When do you plan to come?”

“Now,” said Dorothy.

“Well, I’m sure you have a good reason, so hop on a train and come, Dorothy. Send Bob a text so that he can meet you at the station.”

“I will. Thank you, Vera. I’ll tell you all about everything when I arrive.”

“I think I know why you are coming, Dorothy. It’s that corpse we found, isn’t it?”

“Partly, but I must get moving now. See you later, Vera.”