Chapter Sixteen
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Before we set out for Gordon Penny’s dance studio, Wyatt holds up a hand.
“Wait,” he says. “Check out that window.”
It’s an ordinary first-floor window in a narrow stone building. Lace curtains inside, a window box with bright red flowers outside.
“What are we looking at?” I ask.
“Give it a minute.”
The curtain lifts, and a woman’s face appears.
It’s hard to make out her features, but then she seems to press her entire face against the glass, so much so that her nose and lips are smushed by the pressure until she looks like a melting clown.
I don’t understand what I’m seeing until Wyatt says, “That, I believe, is the nosy neighbor.”
“Oh, yes,” Amity says. “There’s always a nosy neighbor.”
Mr. Groberg says we’re all nosy neighbors, unable to resist the allure of what goes on beyond closed doors, to expose what others are hiding.
I think he’s right. Why else would Germaine, Wyatt, and Amity be so interested in my mother’s alleged quest?
Why else would all these Americans have paid good money to pretend snoop in a village planted with fake secrets?
We cross the street, and Wyatt rings the bell. The door opens to reveal a plump, gray-haired woman with reading glasses hanging around her neck on a metal chain.
“Finally! I’ve been lifting and dropping that curtain all morning. I thought I’d never be noticed. Too subtle, that’s what I told Germaine, too subtle. But she insisted, promising me that this was a good and vital role.”
She introduces herself as Edwina Flasher and ushers us into her sitting room, which is decorated in early Jane Marple.
Shag carpet, couch and easy chair upholstered in beige corduroy, and lace doilies on dark wood furniture.
A black rotary phone that looks like a prop sits on a small round table.
I’m tempted to pick up the receiver to see if there’s a dial tone.
Edwina shakes Wyatt’s and Amity’s hands with brisk efficiency but stops when she turns to me.
“Nice to meet you,” I say. “I’m Cath.”
“You’re American?”
“We all are.”
“Yes, of course.” She still looks befuddled. “Forgive me. I’m an old woman, and I tend to get things mixed up. Please, have a seat.”
Amity, Wyatt, and I squeeze onto the couch.
Edwina perches herself on the edge of her recliner.
She takes a pair of opera glasses from the side table and holds them up.
“If you hadn’t noticed my curtain routine, I was going to resort to plan B, which was standing outside on the pavement with these.
Plan C was to set up a telescope. Thank you for sparing me that indignity. ”
Edwina smooths her skirt, thrusts out her ample bosom, sits up taller.
“You said you wanted to question me about a crime?”
We’d said no such thing, but as she seems to be in character now, I decide to go full method too.
“As you no doubt are aware,” I say in my most officious voice, “Tracy Penny was murdered last night in the hair salon across the street. We thought perhaps you saw something suspicious. Particularly between eight o’clock and ten o’clock?”
“Bravo,” Amity whispers to me.
“Let’s see.” Edwina Flasher furrows her brow and puts a finger to her pursed lips like an amateur actor demonstrating deep thought. “I went to bed as usual at nine o’clock, but I couldn’t sleep, so I got up to make myself a glass of warm milk.”
“What time was that?”
“I don’t know. I couldn’t see the clock clearly.
I left my glasses upstairs. But I know I took my milk and sat right there”—she points to a chair under the window, her lookout, presumably—“and tried to think dull, sleepy thoughts—about crochet patterns and cream of mushroom soup—when I saw the lights go on at the salon.”
“You hadn’t seen anyone enter?” Amity asks.
“I’m afraid not.”
“Could you see anything through the salon window?” I say.
“The blinds were drawn, but I could see two people moving about. And then only one person, until the light switched off; the front door opened, and I saw an umbrella.”
“How’s that?” Amity asks.
“Whoever was there opened a large black umbrella before stepping out. The umbrella completely shielded his face. He was tall and he walked that way, to his left, and out of my view entirely.”
“If you couldn’t see his face, how did you know it was a man?” Wyatt asks.
Edwina looks confused. “I don’t know. I suppose it was his height? I can’t say exactly why, but I’m sure it was a man.
“Any idea who?” Amity says.
Edwina shakes her head. “But, you know, it wasn’t unusual for Tracy Penny to have a late-night visitor, if you understand my meaning. Since the separation, that is. Sometimes I worried that poor Gordon, that’s Tracy’s ex, was going to encounter her paramour one day when he came for his allowance.”
“His allowance?” I ask.
“Her paramour?” Amity says.
“Affirmative and affirmative.” Edwina looks pleased with herself, as she should be.
Her line delivery is excellent. “Gordon came by weekly, always looking rather dejected on the way in and the way out. Must have been terribly humiliating for him. Fortunately, he rarely came on Mondays, when the salon was closed. That’s when Tracy dolled herself up to go out.
She’d sit there in one of the big chairs and do her own hair and makeup.
Then she’d leave, and when she returned, her hair was disheveled.
” She presses her lips together like she’s said something untoward.
“Sometimes she received a guest after hours. He was tall and broad-shouldered. Marvelous head of dark hair, which I suppose was important to her, being a hairdresser and all.”
“Did they go upstairs to her apartment?” Wyatt asks.
“Sometimes they did, and sometimes they did not .”
There’s the slightest bit of titillation in her tone, a little Peeping Tom to round out the Nosy Neighbor.
“Anything else unusual? Any thoughts on why someone might want Tracy Penny dead?” I say.
Edwina leans forward.
“She wasn’t well-liked. Poor Dinda Roost, I believe, was beginning to learn why.
She’d been so happy to get hired at the salon as assistant.
And good thing too; it had been her last resort.
She’d worked everywhere else in town—as a house cleaner for the King George and some others, at two of the local pubs, at the bakery, and at a tearoom.
She didn’t think she’d like the hair salon, but it turned out that coiffeurs were her calling.
Shortly after she started, she told my friend Velma—Dinda still cleans for her once a week—that she loved her job.
But I don’t think that lasted. Yesterday, I was taking my morning constitutional and passed in front of the salon.
It was a lovely day, and the front door was propped open.
I couldn’t help but hear Tracy and Dinda arguing. A snippet of it anyway.”
“Which was?” I ask.
“Dinda said she wanted to be paid fair and square. And Tracy, whose voice was at quite an angry pitch, said, ‘And what makes you think I don’t?’ And then Dinda told Tracy she was cruel and selfish and that she’d suffer for this.
And Tracy called Dinda an utterly irresponsible parent.
That’s all I heard anyway. I didn’t want to pry.
And it’s so strange because Velma never mentioned to me that Dinda had any children at all. ”
Edwina jumps up and goes back to her window, where she pulls back the curtains, peers outside, and then drops them again.
She counts to five under her breath and does the curtain routine again.
Across the street, the Pittsburgh sisters are looking at their notes, oblivious to Edwina Flasher’s smoke signals.
Wyatt asks where Dinda lives so that we can interview her again later. Edwina tells us that poor Dinda has been quite pressed for money and has been living in an apartment above a garage on the end of town.
“Beware her dog,” she warns us. “Her name’s Petunia, but don’t be fooled. She’s a holy terror.”