The Package Included Murder by Joyce Porter

‘They’re always on strike.’
    Miss Jones returned to the harsh realities of the world as it really is. She opened the bedroom door. ‘I won’t be more than a couple of minutes, dear.’
    It may have been Miss Jones’s unsavoury interest in the Lewcock brothers that inspired the Hon. Con to interrogate them in depth on the flight from Tashkent to Bukhara. The brothers, sporting the little embroidered Uzbek skull caps which they had bought as souvenirs in Tashkent and a mite the worse for Armenian brandy, were surprised and a little alarmed to find the Hon. Con inserting her ample behind in the seat which they had carefully left vacant between them. They realised that the sobering sleep to which they had been looking forward was now out of the question.
    Whatever the advertisements say, you can’t really hold an intimate conversation in an aeroplane, especially not in the type of plane used on internal flights in the Soviet Union. Luckily the Hon. Con possessed a fog-siren voice and a pair of leather lungs.
    â€˜Tell me all about yourselves!’ she bellowed, accompanying her invitation with a leer that would have unnerved a man-eating crocodile.
    The Lewcock brothers, unable to communicate with or even see each other, suddenly felt naked and alone.
    Jim Lewcock, being the elder, took the initiative and tried to stall for time. What did Miss Morrison-Burke mean, exactly. He and his kid brother were just a couple of ordinary blokes about whom there was really nothing much of interest to be said.
    â€˜Got something to hide, have you?’ asked the Hon. Con in a would-be jokey voice. She licked the writing end of her pencil as though to ensure that anything taken down was going to be of the blackest.
    Jim Lewcock couldn’t wait to reassure the Hon. Con on this point. Neither he nor his brother knew a thing about these strange attacks on poor Miss Clough-Cooper. They had absolutely nothing to hide, never had had in the past and never would have in the future. See this wet, see this dry …
    â€˜Methinks,’ said the Hon. Con who was never at a loss for an apt misquotation, ‘methinks the fellow, doth protest too much!’
    Jim Lewcock wiped the sweat off the palm of his hands. ‘Where would you like us to begin, miss?’
    The Hon. Con was never at a loss for a cliché, either. ‘Begin at the beginning,’ she instructed grandly, ‘and go on until you come to the end!’
    Hesitantly at first and then with growing confidence, the Lewcock brothers compiled.
    Dad, it appeared, had been a cowman and Mum – a horny-handed, golden-hearted old trooper – had done a bit of charring when she could get the work. There were eight Lewcock children altogether (not counting the one who died) – six girls and two boys. They’d all done quite well at school but there was, of course, no question of going on to the grammar for the likes of them. The girls had taken up a variety of jobs. Lucy …
    â€˜Skip the girls!’ The Hon. Con let a huge yawn split her face. ‘In fact,’ – she blinked furiously in an effort to keep herself awake – ‘you can skip all this rubbish about your early life and hard times. We’ve all had to rough it, you know, and you’re not the only ones who’ve pulled themselves up by their boot-laces. Maybe if I ask you a few questions it’ll speed things up.’
    â€˜I think that would help,’ agreed Jim Lewcock humbly. He and his brother had had some rather unkind things to say about the Hon. Con in the privacy of their bedroom but now, face to face with the daunting reality, they were very subdued.
    â€˜All right,’ grunted the Hon. Con. She donned her thinking cap. ‘Did either of you know Miss Clough-Cooper before you came on this trip?’
    â€˜No.’
    The Hon. Con didn’t let a flat denial like that put her off. ‘You sure?’
    â€˜Of course