A Great Deliverance - By Elizabeth George Page 0,54
cut it so I cut it myself and now look at me and Mummy's crying as well. I tried to straighten it all out with this stuff of Hannah's but it'll never come right!" She hiccupped pathetically on the last word.
Lynley nodded. "I see. It does look a bit awful, Bridie. Exactly what sort of effect were you going after?" He quailed inwardly at the thought of Hannah's black spikes.
"This!" She waved the photograph at him, wailing anew.
He took it from her and looked at the smiling, smooth coiffured semblance of the Princess of Wales, elegant in black evening gown and diamonds, not a hair out of place. "Of course," he muttered.
Bereft of her picture, Bridie took comfort in the presence of her duck, slinging an arm round him and pulling him to her side. "You don't care, Dougal, do you?" she demanded of the bird. In reply, Dougal blinked and investigated Bridie's hair for its edible propensities.
"Dougal the Duck?" Lynley enquired.
"Angus McDougal McDuck," Bridie responded. The formal introduction made, she wiped her nose on the sleeve of her tattered pullover and looked fearfully over her shoulder at the closed door behind her. A single tear rolled down her cheek as she went on. "An' he's hungry. But I can't go inside to get his food. All I got's these marshmallows. They're all right for a treat, but his real food's inside and I can't go in."
"Why not?"
"Cause Mummy said she didn't want to see me again till I'd done something about my hair and I don't know what to do!" The child began to cry again, real tears of anguish. Dougal would apparently starve - an unlikely prospect, considering his size - unless some quick thinking were applied to the situation.
It appeared, however, that a plan of attack would be unnecessary, for at that moment the back door was jerked open angrily. Olivia Odell took one look at her daughter - her second only that day - and burst into tears.
"I can't believe you would do it! I just can't believe it! Get in the house and wash your hair!" Her voice rose higher with each word, climbing the peak to hysteria.
"But Dougal - "
"Take Dougal with you," the woman said, weeping. "But do as I say!" The duck was scooped into nine-year-old arms and the two offenders disappeared. Olivia tugged a tissue from the pocket of her cardigan, blew her nose, and smiled shakily at the two adults. "What a dreadful scene," she said. But as she spoke she began to cry again and walked into the kitchen, leaving them standing at the open back door. She stumbled to the table and buried her face in her hands.
Lynley and Havers looked at each other and, decision made, entered the house.
Unlike Gembler Farm, there was not the slightest doubt that this house was lived in. The kitchen was in total disarray: the stove top cluttered with pots and pans, appliances gaping open to be cleaned, flowers waiting to be put into water, dishes piled in the sink. The floor was sticky under their feet, the walls badly needed paint, and the entire room reeked with the charcoal bouquet of burnt toast. The offending source of this odour was lying on a plate, a sodden black lump that looked as if it has been hastily extinguished by a cup of tea.
Beyond the kitchen, what little they could see of the sitting room indicated that its condition was much the same. Housekeeping was certainly not Olivia Odell's strong point.
Neither was child rearing, if the morning's confrontation were any indication.
"She's out of my control!" Olivia wept. "Nine years old and she's out of my control!"
She tore the tissue to shreds, looked dazedly about for another, and, seeing none, cried harder still.
Lynley removed a handkerchief from his pocket. "Take this," he offered.
"Ta," she responded. "Oh my God, what a morning!" She blew her nose, dried her eyes, ran her fingers through her brown hair, and looked at her reflection in the toaster. She moaned when she saw herself, and her bloodshot brown eyes filled again but didn't spill over. "I look fifty years old. Wouldn't Paul have laughed!" And then disjointedly, "She wants to look like the Princess of Wales."
"So she showed us," Lynley responded impassively. He drew a chair out from the table, picked the newspapers off of it, and sat down. After a pause, Havers did likewise.
"Why?" Olivia asked, directing the question more to the ceiling than to her companions.