One
“Hello? Is that Mrs Meade? Mrs Lois Meade?” The voice was hesitant, quiet.
“Yes, this is New Brooms. ‘We sweep cleaner! ‘ Can I help you?” Lois was sitting in her office, feet up on her desk, reading the classified section of the Tresham Advertiser. She was looking for new staff, and had an advertisement in today’s issue. Her question was met with silence. She tried again.
“Hello, Mrs, er?…Are you there?”
A throat was cleared, and then the quiet voice said, “Um, yes. I saw your advertisement, and thought I might suit. I…er…haven’t done anything like this before…” The voice trailed off again.
“Well, d’you want to give me some details about yourself? Or I could call in and see you?”
The answer was quick this time. “Oh, no, that won’t be necessary. I’ll put something down on paper today and get it in the post, and then I could come and see you, if you think I might be suitable.”
Lois frowned. She liked to interview prospective cleaners in their own homes. It was always more revealing than pages of autobiography. She remembered only too well a previous applicant, smart on the streets but a slut at home. Fortunately Lois had not employed her, and just as well. That one had turned out to be enemy number one, and was now safely behind bars.
“Give me your name and address,” she said now, “and your phone number, and after I’ve read your details I’ll get in touch.” Probably no good anyway, she decided, putting down the phone. She read what she had written on her notepad: Miss Enid Abraham, Cathanger Mill, near Waltonby, and then a telephone number. Lois shook her head. Sounded more like a below-stairs housemaid than one of the New Brooms team.
Lois had been a cleaner herself. That was when they lived in a small house on an estate in Tresham, the local big town, and she’d chosen to take jobs in villages around. Every day a different house, a different family, and all intertwined in village affairs. She’d had a unique position, being at times a not unwilling eavesdropper, and often received confidences from wives or husbands who swore her to undying secrecy.
After a scandal which rocked the village, the doctor she’d worked for in Long Farnden had moved away, and the Meades bought his house cheaply. It had had murderous associations, and nobody wanted it. But Lois knew every inch of the house, and had been fond of the doctor and his wife. She had no qualms about making an offer, and now she and her family spread themselves in the unaccustomed space.
Lois Meade, the listening ear and receiver of secrets, had not passed unnoticed by Detective Inspector Hunter Cowgill, and he had enlisted her help on a couple of occasions. Both times had involved murder, and endangered both Lois and her family, her husband and three children. For this reason she had more or less, but not quite, promised her husband Derek not to succumb ever again to the wiles of Hunter Cowgill, and since the last murder case had been wound up, she’d heard nothing more from him. Until yesterday.
Now she forgot about the strange woman on the phone, and thought again about Cowgill’s call. She’d put him off with an ambiguous answer, but she knew he’d be back. Never give up, that was Cowgill’s motto. And he knew that she’d be tempted, that she was fascinated by the jigsaw business of detection, and the dark world of crime and punishment. She’d been on the fringes of it herself during a mildly misspent youth. Once she’d ended up in a police cell, and had been really frightened. Persistent truancy from school had led to her being taken in and given a real bollocking by the police. They’d asked for her parents’ name, and she’d given another girl’s details. She’d always hated that prissy cow, and the bust-up that followed had been worth it!
Lois laughed aloud, and her mother, coming in with a mug of coffee, looked at her in surprise. “Share the joke?” she said.
“Nothin’ really, Mum,” she said. “Just remembering what an ‘orrible daughter I must’ve been.”
“Yes, you were,” agreed Gran equably. “Still, you got better as you got older. How’re you doing? Was that a possible on the phone?”
Lois shook her head. “Doubt it,” she said. “Strange woman. Didn’t say much and sounded sort of scared, as if she’d had to pluck up courage to ring. Not the sort we want in New Brooms.”
The telephone rang again, and Gran turned to leave the room. “Better luck with this one,” she said.
“New Brooms,” said Lois into the receiver. “You read the advertisement? Good, yes, give me some details and we’ll take it from there.”