The Woman Who Took in Parcels

by Penny Kline

Genres: Female Sleuths

Synopsis

Miss Seymour is growing a little tired of taking in other people?s parcels. As one of the residents of Faraday Road remarks, ?What would we do without you, Jane?? What indeed! While signing for yet another of her neighbour?s online orders, she can?t help noticing how badly wrapped it is and how easy it would be to peel off the sticky tape, check the contents, then reseal it. Someone else?s parcel. The day the nightmare began.

Release date: April 4, 2019

Publisher: Accent Press

Print pages: 368

Sample

ONE

‘We call them “serial offenders”,’ the tall, and rather alluring, delivery man explained. ‘People who order goods when they know they’re going to be out all day. This one’s for number thirty-four.’

Neither of them smiled. It was not a joke. For her own part, Jane never ordered anything online, preferring to visit the shops and check goods face to face, so to speak. Presumably, her neighbours sat at their computers, clicking away, without a thought as to when the garden lights or digital pedometers or babies’ play centres would arrive.

‘What’s your name, love?’

Jane opened her mouth to say “Seymour”, but the word came out differently. ‘Marple.’

‘Initial?’

‘J.’

‘Sign here, please.’

Taking the stylus from his outstretched hand, she signed “Jane Marple” with a flourish, and took the package – it was lighter than she expected – speculating as to what something so large and bulky might contain.

‘I’ll leave a note at number thirty-four.’

‘If you must.’ The package was addressed to Willa Molloy. Last time it had been number twenty-one and the owner had rung Jane’s bell when she was in the bath and she had been obliged to dry herself hurriedly and open the front door in her dressing gown. Her hair had been wet, and would not have looked its best. Once auburn, it was now a steely grey, although the freckles on her face and hands were a reminder of the colouring she had inherited from her father. In her youth, she had been what people call “a fine-looking woman”, with her high cheekbones, and lacking the glasses she now wore, more as a defence against the world rather than because she was unable to see in the distance.

The parcel had been badly wrapped, either that or someone had tossed it across the sorting room and it had landed awkwardly. Ripped paper, and sticky tape that was coming away at one end. Why had she signed “Jane Marple”? So silly, but one made these gestures to keep up one’s spirits. One’s spirits? She sounded like the Queen but, as well as leaving you at a bit of a loose end, retirement meant losing your status, something she was finding a little hard to bear.

Miss Marple. The Miss Marple Day. She had enjoyed the books, preferring unassuming Jane Marple to pompous Hercule Poirot, but later she would look back on that day with a faint shudder. Of regret? Or was it guilt? How little control over events one had and it was easy to see how one thing led to another. Easy with hindsight.

Just now, Rousseau was writhing round her legs, demanding food. According to a website she had visited, cats’ purring lowered your blood pressure, and certainly Rousseau had one of the loudest purrs, jumping onto her knees and purring like a ... like a what? In the past, she had thought of herself as something of an expert in similes and metaphors, but recently her brain produced only clichés. Purring like a steam engine. Gorging like a pig. The thought that the tabby cat had no knowledge of his namesake, Jean-Jacques, made her smile.

‘I have never shared Rousseau’s belief that human beings are good by nature, but I did believe in my pupils developing a healthy sense of self-worth.’

Rousseau looked up, with traces of meat on his whiskers, and she felt obliged to explain. ‘Self-worth, Rousseau. All this depression and anxiety is the result of low self-esteem. People rarely suffer from it in times of severe stress. In wartime, for instance, when the wish to survive is stronger than the wish to compete.’

She had put it badly so it was not surprising Rousseau’s tail was disappearing through the cat flap. She picked up Willa Molloy’s parcel and gave it a squeeze.

If it had contained any small items they would have fallen out through the rip. What was it? Willa Molloy went in for ethnic clothes, brightly coloured and not very flattering, but she thought she could feel something hard. Shoes? No, normally they came in boxes. A close neighbour ordered numerous pairs and the parcels were marked with the name of an expensive store, one into which Jane had never ventured.

Taking a pair of scissors from a drawer, she cut through a short length of sticky tape – it would be simple enough to re-stick it – and dragged four polythene-wrapped objects through the outer packaging. The invoice that accompanied the items fell to the floor. Jane retrieved it and checked the contents, and how much each item had cost. A fair bit, but that was true of most things these days.

The description, “pink fluffy handcuffs” was self-explanatory. Of more interest were the teacher’s outfit, mortarboard and black patent leather underwear. Not real leather, of course, and consisting mainly of strips and buckles, together with a pair of knickers that would be extremely uncomfortable, but perhaps that was part of the fun.

The fact that fetishists liked teachers amused her. Freud had explained it as an association between an object and a first sexual experience. That thought was less appealing. Sit down, child, and do as you’re told. The boy’s hand on his groin – was that what Freud had meant?

Willa Molloy’s husband, Brian, was Jane’s doctor, a decent enough man, if on the dull side. Or so Jane had believed. Unwanted images sprang to mind. Willa cavorting in the teacher outfit, and Brian dressed as a schoolboy, in shorts and knee socks. Stuffing the mortarboard and patent leather back into their respective bags, she snipped off a small strip of fresh sticky tape, and returned the package more or less to its previous state.

Parcels were often damaged in transit. When she delivered it to number thirty-four, Willa would be none the wiser.

As it turned out, it was Brian who answered the door. Still dressed in the casual outfit he now wore at the health centre, in place of his grey suit, he gave her one of his benign smiles. ‘Jane – what can I do for you?’

‘Parcel for Willa.’

‘Ah. Thank you. She’s at her Zumba dancing.’ He gave a little laugh – because he knew what the parcel contained, or was it the dancing class he found amusing? ‘Birthday coming up. I was hoping for binoculars, but this is the wrong shape. What d’you think? I know, a kite. I mentioned how flying a kite might be good exercise.’ He fingered his thinning hair. ‘I expect you take in plenty of other people’s parcels.’

‘I do.’

‘What would we do without you?’

‘What indeed.’

He hesitated and she was afraid he had noticed the damaged state of the package, but he was only preparing to ask after Eddie.

‘She’s fine. Much the same.’

‘It’s a good place, The Spruces. You were fortunate they agreed to take her. But I expect you know that.’

‘I do.’ How crass he was. At one time, she had thought doctors the crème de la crème, but, according to Willa, Brian had only gained a place at medical school because his doctor father had been a rugby blue.

‘You look tired, Jane.’

‘Didn’t sleep terribly well.’

‘Of course.’ He had adopted his professional GP’s expression. ‘Missing your friend. Grieving. These things have a tendency to manifest as physical symptoms and the symptoms are telling us—’

‘Goodbye then, Brian. Enjoy the rest of your evening.’ He pushed up the cuff of his green sweatshirt. ‘Programme about breastfeeding and hypochondria in ten minutes’ time. Fascinating.’

‘I’m sure.’ Jane turned her back on number thirty-four and made for home. How did Willa stand the man? On the other hand, Willa would not be the easiest person to live with. With whom to live. In spite of the changing directives of whichever Education Minister was in office, Jane had insisted her pupils became familiar with at least the rudiments of good grammar.

Lost in thought, she reached her house, put her key in the lock, entered her sitting room, and was stopped short by a dull thud in the pit of her stomach. In the centre of the cat basket Rousseau normally scorned, lay the fluffy pink handcuffs.

TWO

While she was tipping the contents of a waste-paper basket into her black wheelie bin, a familiar voice spoke Jane’s name.

‘Oh, good morning, Noel.’

‘How are you?’ He was wearing a red T-shirt and those trousers people called jogging bottoms, although she had an idea it had changed to “trackies”.

‘I’m well, thank you. How’s Corinne?’

Noel jerked his head in the direction of his house at the top of the road. ’Still applying her warpaint. Says she feels naked without it. Lacks your confidence.’

‘I’m too old to be concerned about my looks.’

‘Nonsense. You’re a very attractive woman.’ He stared deep into her eyes and she experienced an involuntary twitch in her groin. At her age, she was supposed to be past such sensations. A myth.

No doubt, women had always fallen for his looks: hair like a raven’s breeding plumage; handsome features; bright blue eyes. She wanted to tell him about the teacher’s outfit. Ask his advice. But it would mean confessing she had opened someone else’s parcel. She had considered throwing the handcuffs in the bin but, in the meantime, had hidden them in a kitchen cupboard, behind the herbs and spices she rarely used in her cooking.

Noel gave a theatrical sigh. ‘Do you find, as soon as one problem’s solved, another rears its ugly head?’

‘I do.’ Could he read her mind? Much more likely he was thinking about Corinne, his new paramour? Well, newish, since it must be getting on for six months since her arrival in Faraday Road. Stories abounded how she had deserted several children to move in with Noel, although recently Jane had discovered it was one son, in his last year at school. Bad enough if you were inclined to pass judgement on people, but that was something Jane tried to avoid since rarely did you know the whole story.

‘Eddie getting on all right?’ Noel sat on the low wall, and began re-tying his laces. ‘You must miss her.’

‘I miss how she used to be.’

His smile had a hint of sadness. His own, or because of Eddie? ‘Rousseau was in our garden earlier, stalking a pigeon.’

‘I hope you shooed him away.’

‘Name suits him. Noble savage – that was Rousseau’s idea, wasn’t it?’

‘Rousseau himself never actually used the term “bon sauvage” but he did believe in man’s innate goodness.’

‘Jolly good. Rely on you, Jane, to keep me informed on such matters. Hope next door’s loft conversion’s not disturbing you too much.’ And he bounced down the road in the trainers he believed made him look like a young thing.

In less than a week he would be dead.

The Jane Marple day. Later, she would pinpoint it as the time it all began – the turning point that led up to the tragedy, and its alarming aftermath. But did anything have a genuine beginning and end? Life was a string of events, most of them random, like Eddie’s dementia, although one day they might discover a way of preventing it. Eating large amounts of beetroot or standing on your head for ten minutes, morning and evening.

Building materials cluttered up the pavement, and a large skip took up two valuable parking spaces. She ought to be used to it, but when she and Eddie arrived in Faraday Road there had been hardly a loft conversion in sight. Now the vans – Noel’s vans – were a familiar sight. Pale blue, with identical pictures of fluffy white clouds on either side, the company specialised, it said, in high-quality conversions. Not that high quality if some of the building materials she had observed were anything to go by, but Noel himself was high quality, and he had a high-quality partner now too. High quality and high maintenance, that was dear Corinne.

Next door – the home of Dave and his young daughter Simmy on the ground floor, and Gus on the first – was having a loft conversion and on weekdays the noise was more or less continuous. Hammering, shouting, electric drills and a local radio station. Dave was at his workshop during the day, but since his camera shop closed, Gus was at home, and Simmy too, now the school holidays had begun.

Rousseau had joined her and was inspecting a container with the remains of some chicken wings in a spicy sauce. It was not to his liking. Like all cats, he had an inquisitive nature, something, had she but known it, that was to provide her with a vital clue in her coming investigations.

What a racket. It only needed a truckload of scaffolders to come up the road for the cacophony to be complete. Above the noise of the drill, she could hear Simmy shouting at her father. Isolated remarks floated through next door’s kitchen window. Don’t believe. Why not? No, I won’t. Jane worried about the child who, now she was a teenager, must be suffering from the lack of a mother. Still, in spite of adverse publicity, single parents were frequently a good deal more conscientious than two. Something to do with having sole responsibility? Dave was clever with his hands, but hardly the creative type, so presumably Simmy had inherited her imagination from her dead mother. When she was a year or two younger, she had insisted she saw a ghost coming down Faraday Road; a nice one, she said, not frightening at all, and with a baby in her tummy. Jane was no psychologist, but she was familiar with the way children – and not just children – invented stories to try to communicate something that was too difficult to express openly.

Best not to think about it. One of the drawbacks of living alone was that it allowed you too much time to think. Best to keep busy, keep your head down. The unexamined life might not be worth living, but it was a good deal easier. A twinge of pain in her upper chest. Heart disease or indigestion? On television, it was Cancer Week. During breakfast she had stuck it out as long as she could bear it then switched to the other side where a female celebrity, with lips like Mick Jagger, was being interviewed about her divorce. Cancer or cosmetic surgery, or switch off the television and try the radio.

Gus had appeared, still wearing his pyjamas and with a tartan rug draped over his shoulders. ‘Morning, Jane.’

‘Good morning.’

‘How’s Eddie?’ He was standing in a patch of sunlight and she could see the small square of white paper on his neck where he must have cut himself shaving. ‘Settled in all right, has she? How long is it now? Must be getting on for a month.’

‘Six weeks.’ It was good that people still asked after Eddie, even if it was in much the same tone of voice as mentioning a death. Would a mercy killing have been preferable to The Spruces? Not her place to play God, but were the same fate to befall her, she would have no wish to be resuscitated from a heart attack or stroke.

‘I miss her too,’ Gus said. ‘She had a refreshing habit of speaking her mind.’

‘That was the dementia.’

‘No, long before she lost her marbles she told me if my shop wasn’t doing well I ought to retrain as a plumber. Called me an idle old bastard.’

‘I’m sorry.’ Jane was thinking that perhaps she should make a living will. But that would mean asking someone to witness her signature. Brian would do it, while telling her how sensible she was being. Or Noel, who would have a jollier approach. You’re not going to die, Jane. People like you live forever. ‘You and me, Gus, we’re both in the same boat, on the scrapheap, retired, at a loose end.’

‘I saw you talking to Noel. Runs five miles a day. Likes to keep fit so he can hang onto all his bits on the side.’

‘Surely now he’s got Corinne ...’

‘Oh, her.’ Gus’ eyebrows twitched with amused surprise. ‘You think Corinne will satisfy his need for admirers, do you?’

‘I’ve always found him very kind and empathic.’

‘Empathic eh? So you’re another of his fans. Right, why did I come down from my flat? Oh yes, I know. Thought I heard the postman but it was some flyers jammed in the letter box.’ He waved at a woman Jane had never seen before, who was unlocking the door to number twenty-two. It had a “Sold” board in the front garden.

‘You know the new owner?’

‘Just being neighbourly.’ His fingers fidgeted with the top button on his pyjama jacket. ‘Take no notice, just envious of Noel’s flashy good looks. And his relative youth.’

Poor Noel, destined to be cut short in his prime.

THREE

Mondays, Wednesdays and Saturdays, and sometimes in between. The visits were a duty, not enjoyed by either of them, although who could tell what Eddie enjoyed? Still, if it put the handcuffs out of Jane’s head for a while it would be a blessing. During the night, she had tried to decide what to do. Wrap them in a separate parcel and push it through Willa’s door. No, that would be a give – away. Post them. No, the rest of the stuff had arrived via a delivery company.

She could tell Eddie about it, in the knowledge the crime would go no further. On second thoughts, Eddie had a way of picking up on stray words. Handcuffs. Pink fluff. Someone else’s parcel. Matron was normally too busy to listen to the residents’ ramblings, but the word “handcuffs” might make her prick up her ears.

When was the precise time her friend and companion had disappeared and been replaced by a zombie? Horrible word, “zombie” – she would never have spoken it out loud – but things had a way of springing to mind long before you had time to censor them. Was it the night Eddie ran down the road in her nightdress? Or the day Jane hugged her and received a hard bite? Could she have kept her at home longer? Had she arranged to have her admitted to The Spruces because she was too lazy to get up for her in the night? No, she was being unduly harsh on herself. The confusion had been something she had adjusted to, along with finding various objects in unexpected places. Her precious tablet in the washing machine, only discovered when it crashed around among the jumpers and knickers. And by then it was too late.

The sun was shining on the neat little front gardens in Faraday Road. And on the scaffolding, of course, and the skip, overflowing with off-cuts of hardboard and empty paint cans, and quite a decent shrub that had been broken off at its roots. Apart from the building materials, the road was looking attractive, with its front doors painted tasteful shades of green and blue and grey, and its bay trees and window boxes. Recently, house prices had soared and were a constant subject of conversat. . .