Scandal at Six(23)

“Your head seems to be securely in place, Mrs Meade. Is there anything more to discuss? Everything else seems acceptable, so when can your cleaning woman start?”

“At eight thirty on Tuesday morning. She will need to come every day for a week to clear the place ready for cleaning. Then once a week should be sufficient. Is that acceptable?”

He nodded, and said he would show her out, as he needed to go down to the gate to see Margie. “Lovely person, Margie Turner,” he said. “Guards the zoo like a policeman on duty!”



*



Lois drove slowly through the centre of town, looking for a place to park. The traffic was heavy, and she sat for several minutes at traffic lights outside the police station. A familiar figure walked towards her and tapped on the car window. It was Cowgill, of course.

“Morning, Lois dear. You’re looking very lovely, if I may be so bold?”

“Oh Cowgill, not you, too! I’m up to here with lustful old men. Been to see Pettison at the zoo.”

“Open up and let me in. I need to tell you things. Quick sharp! The lights are changing.”

He sat down swiftly in her passenger seat, and said she should park round the rear of the police station. “I assume that the business suit means you are taking Cameroon Hall on as a client for New Brooms?” His whole demeanour had changed, and he was every inch the policeman.

Lois nodded, and followed him up to his office. She said she had a great many things to do, so she couldn’t spare much time. Cowgill immediately got down to the subject at hand.

“I should warn you about the Cameroon Hall zoo; and though it’s perfectly fine as far as the animals are concerned, unofficial reports have come to our ears of staff difficulties, burglaries, that kind of thing. On each occasion, Pettison has managed to deal with everything without needing our help. But I strongly suspect that there is far more going on there than we have yet discovered. Can’t put my finger on it, but I would say this to you, Lois. Be very careful who you send to clean there. In fact, I would advise you not to take on the job at all. But I suppose you won’t agree to that?”

“You suppose right. I intend to send in Dot Nimmo, who is, as you know, a very tough cookie, having been married to a gangland boss in Tresham, and still in touch with useful people.”

The telephone rang, and Cowgill answered it with a brisk “I’m busy. Tell them to phone later. What? Where? Right, I’ll be there in half an hour. Tell Chris I shall require her to drive me.”

“Something urgent?” said Lois.

“Something very nasty,” replied Cowgill, getting to his feet. “There’s been an accident in Pettison’s zoo. His chief worry seems to be that his people are in a state of rigid terror. And for ‘people,’ read ‘monkeys.’”





Fourteen





For Lois, the rest of the weekend had been taken up with a trip with Josie to the nearby shopping centre, newly opened in Tresham, with a tempting number of clothes shops especially dealing in designer fashions. It was Josie’s birthday, and Lois had promised her a warm winter coat.

“You’ll freeze, gel, come the east winds,” Gran had said, critically looking her up and down, and saying that if anyone asked her, a good tweed skirt and lambs’ wool twinset would be just the ticket.

“Don’t forget the pearls, Gran,” Josie had said, laughing.

Although she loved shopping with her daughter, Lois had found her mind repeatedly returning to the woman in the monkey cage. It transpired that the victim was not dead, but badly wounded from a vicious attack. She had been taken to hospital, and the matter referred to the police. According to the news and the local paper, the woman had been a friend of a member of staff. She had—in the owner’s words—“trespassed into the monkey people’s territory, and paid the price.”

Everyone in the zoo, and of course visitors, was warned against trespass as a matter of course. This was apparently the first incident of its kind. One of the keepers had been working in the cage with the door closed when he was interrupted by a woman, who was leaving her cleaning job at the hall, and had come to say goodbye to the keeper. He had opened the door to the cage, and the woman had entered, only to be immediately attacked by a male chimpanzee defending his territory. She had collapsed, but was rescued almost immediately.

So it was probably that Richardson woman, Lois had thought, as Josie emerged from the changing room, in a singing red coat that reached a decent level nearly to her ankles.

On the way home, Josie had accused her mother of having her mind elsewhere. “I can see from your face that you’re thinking of something bad. Not another reptile, I hope!” she had said.