Murder Included Page 10

  ‘I can quite believe that,’ said Sidney Rose, looking up from his newspaper. ‘There’s a lot more in huntin’ than killin’ a fox, you know. One of its greatest joys is the sense of companionship. Hackin’ home after a good day, you’re a band of brothers.’ He thought of his dropped ‘gs’: at last they’re beginning to come quite naturally.

  Scampnell said, ‘Then you’d hardly consider it possible that Miss Hudson was poisoned by a member of the hunting fraternity?’

  Sybella didn’t give her husband time to answer. She said, ‘I don’t consider it possible that she was poisoned by a member of this household. I think it was a groom or someone like that, whom she’d dismissed, or had sent to prison, and he nursed a grudge against her, and when he came out of prison he found out where she lived and somehow managed to creep into the house and up to her bedroom. Perhaps he managed to get friendly with one of the maids and she let him into the house and now she daren’t own up to it.’

  ‘Sybella, what tripe have you been readin’?’ asked Sidney Rose.

  ‘I think it’s quite a feasible explanation,’ said Henry Scampnell, showing his well-kept false teeth as he smiled reassuringly at Sybella. ‘I’m sure we’d all prefer it to turn out that way, anyhow. What I think the Inspector has in mind, besides being very distressing, would mean the end of our pleasant life here — at least, I suppose so.’

  ‘I’m sure it would,’ said Sidney Rose. ‘She really runs the whole show — I believe it was her idea to start with. The rest of the family would simply have drifted. By the way, I suppose we’re talkin’ about the same person?’

  Scampnell said, ‘Well, in my case the questions the Inspector asked showed quite plainly whom he suspected. Then I believe that he was particularly interested in the upstairs pantry and the hot drinks that were made for us up there last winter.’

  ‘He asked me about them,’ said Sybella. ‘But I just told him that I knew it wasn’t Bunny. He …’

  Her husband interrupted her. ‘Now, Sybella — no names, no pack drill.’

  ‘I can’t see that it’s any worse to mention names than to hint, as you’ve been doing. Anyhow, I’m saying that it wasn’t Bunny. She’s outspoken, sometimes she’s even rude, but people who poison people are sly people — I’ve always been thought a good judge of character.’

  ‘By whom?’ asked her husband.

  ‘Lots of people.’

  ‘Give us the names of some of them.’

  ‘If you don’t mind my saying so, Mrs Rose,’ said Scampnell, ‘your championship of Lady d’Estray, admirable though it is, misses the point, because neither your husband nor I intimated in the least that we suspected her. We were referring to the Inspector’s suspicions.’

  Then Margot Rattray, who had been quietly knitting, intervened. ‘Scamp!’ This was her name for him. ‘Don’t you think it’s a wee bit silly to discuss poor Miss Hudson’s death? The detective’s working on it — time will show — we’re all such good friends now — it would be a tremendous pity …’

  Her stepfather said, ‘Upon my word, the wise little woman’s right. I suggest we make the subject taboo among us. One can’t help thinking, of course, and in the still watches of the night I find myself planning — for instance, should the case be shelved, will one feel like staying on here? I doubt if one would find better food anywhere in England; in that respect either Lady d’Estray or her cook is a genius, and my wife tells me that she’s perfectly satisfied with the way Miss d’Estray runs the hunting side of the business. By the way, Margot and I thought of going to the meet to-morrow, and we can squash three into the back seat if any of you would like to come along. But it means early rising …’

  And Cecily Scampnell, some twenty hours later, thought really it’s hard lines … one child and I nearly died of her, and she comes to a meet in a car, whines about the cold, and refuses cherry brandy because it might make her feel ‘funny’. Fair girls … who never went wide of a fence or a kiss — that’s the kind of daughter I should have had, and I got Margot — dumpy frumpy Margot, always indoors with her knitting. When I was her age I’d been married ten years … the finest horsewoman in British India, according to H.H., the biggest flirt, so Jack said, that night at Simla. If only I’d gone away with him — or even with ‘Copper’ Carruthers — instead of waiting till Basil died and there was no one but Henry — twirpy chirpy Henry, fussing over his ingrowing toenail and whether or not to change into his winter pants, namby-pamby Henry, who doesn’t know one end of a gee from the other … neither he nor dumpy, frumpy Margot are company for a dare-devil like me. Consciously now, she was missing Elizabeth Hudson: Patricia kept with young friends; Sidney Rose hung back; young Marvin, though he’d said he was coming and had let Patricia get his horse ready for him, had stayed in bed; all along he’d merely been bossed into riding. Elizabeth had been irritating; she had bored one stiff with her obstinate championship of such old-fashioned notions as the backward seat, nagging, the dumb jockey; but she had been company in a first flight, otherwise composed of indifferent young people. There was a group of them now, coffee-housing quietly enough at the corner of the beechwood; Cecily herself had turned fidgety Quiver into a broad ride, carpeted with fallen leaves of orange-brown, spanned by the pewter-grey branches of the beeches, through which fell pale shafts of sunshine from the October sky of mild Cerulean blue. If Elizabeth Hudson hadn’t been dead she would have been here on Brutus standing like a statue; Quiver would have stood instead of jigging about, throwing her head up, pawing the leaves, running backwards; and Elizabeth wouldn’t have been jabbering about dances and Swiss holidays and the New Look: she would have been listening …

  A hound spoke. Both Quiver and her rider stiffened, but it was nothing — a babbling young hound, perhaps, after a squirrel. With a horse’s inexplicable change of mood, Quiver now elected to stand still, and Cecily thought of her sandwiches — the wafer-thin ham sandwiches which Bunny somehow contrived to provide for the fox-hunters. This was no time to open a sandwich case, but it was Cecily’s habit, when she filled her case from the pile conveniently set on the sideboard at breakfast on hunting mornings, to place a couple in an envelope, which she then carried in her pocket. She ate these now, and before she moved on down the ride uncorked her flask and took a drink of the claret about which she had so often argued with the whisky-loving Elizabeth. She had barely replaced the stopper when another hound spoke. ‘Rambler,’ she said aloud, and no voice irritatingly but companionably argued that it wasn’t Rambler, but Ranger. That Rambler never lied was reaffirmed by a burst of hound music. Cecily gathered up her reins, and it scarcely needed the light pressure of her calves to send the eager mare off at a canter.

  The ride petered out among the rhododendrons where hounds had found their fox, and beyond the rhododendrons was a road, and across the road a wood of mixed trees and tangled undergrowth, through which hounds were hunting slowly. Cecily checked the mare, looked behind her and found that she was alone; she guessed that the rest of the Field, having preferred to the beechwood the tempting pasture which lay to windward of it, were now endeavouring to extract themselves from a birdcage of electric fencing, which she had met with before and had had the sense to memorize. Silly fools! she thought, but her pleasure in her superior wits was dimmed by a sudden and surprising nausea. They’re running, she thought, hearing Hugo blow them away, and I’m going to be sick … I shall miss it. Quiver had heard the horn too; she threw her head up, found it free and set off at a gallop. Cecily Scampnell, wheeling darkness before her eyes, swayed this way and that until she slipped from the saddle.

  *

  Hugo d’Estray heard a horse galloping behind him and looked round to curse the bloody fool who in a couple of seconds would be over-riding his hounds. He saw Quiver riderless, thought, the old girl’s taken a toss, and on the other side of a stake-and-bound fence was relieved to find that the mare hadn’t followed him.

  Three minutes later Patricia jumped Huntsman over a hurdle into the field
and shouted to a friend, ‘Oh hell, loose horse, and one of mine too.’ Quiver, stirrups flying, reins trailing, galloped towards the other horses and Patricia complaining, ‘That’s the end of my hunt — damn paying guests,’ pulled up, while the mare trotted to her stable companion. Sidney Rose, hanging on Sir Roger’s mouth in nervous anticipation of the stake-and-bound, shouted, ‘I hope Mrs Scampnell’s all right,’ as he went by, and then Patricia was alone in the field except for a young man on a magnificent thoroughbred, which was steadily refusing the jump. ‘Can’t get the brute over,’ he said with a forced laugh, and Patricia said, ‘You didn’t happen to see where the woman, who was riding this mare, came off, did you?’ The young man said, ‘I’m afraid not. What do you think is the matter with this brute?’ and Patricia said, ‘Nothing, I should think. I should think it’s the way you’re riding him. She’s an elderly woman in a coloured tie, yellow with red spots. I can’t for the life of me remember when I last saw her.’

  ‘I expect she’ll be along,’ said the young man disinterestedly. ‘Couldn’t you tie her horse up somewhere? I’m sure if you gave me a lead this brute would go over.’

  Patricia said, ‘No, I can’t. For all I know she may have broken her neck. I shall have to go back and look for her.’ Leading Quiver, she cantered back across the field and jumped both horses neatly over the hurdles.

  She retraced then the way the Field had taken and came to the road which Cecily Scampnell had crossed between the beechwood and the wood where she was lying. From the road Patricia could look across the ‘birdcage’; surely if Cecily had been with the Field there she would have had something to say which would have made one aware of her presence. And if she hadn’t been with the Field, Patricia reasoned, she would have been as near as she could get to Hugo and hounds: Hugo had often complained that while she and Elizabeth never overstepped the mark, it was irritating to see them always being clever. Cecily must have come through the beechwood, Patricia thought on, and she must have waited in the ride while Hugo drew the rhododendrons; and on the thought she turned her horses up the road and almost immediately came upon a set of hoof-prints smaller, she thought, than those of Hugo’s big Sportsman. The same prints continued into the farther wood, but for all one knew the mare might already have been riderless when she crossed the road, and it would save time, Patricia decided, if she searched the beechwood. Calling cheerfully, for she had seen dozens of tosses, of which no harm had come, she skirted the rhododendrons and cantered up the ride, where she found, as well as Quiver’s hoof-prints, larger ones, obviously Sportman’s. But there was no sign of the disgruntled figure ploughing along among the leaves which her mind’s eye gave her; no voice answered her calling; and presently she rode out of the wood into the sunny stubble where the Field had waited. Oh well, it was a fifty-fifty chance, she told herself, and turned back; the Scampnell will be livid if she’s hoping to see any more of hounds this morning, but I’ve had it too — silly old bitch, she’s spoilt my hunt … but I suppose she thinks that’s what I’m paid for. Patricia swung round the rhododendrons, clattered across the road and pulled up to follow the hoof-prints less easily here among the brambles and bracken. ‘Mrs Scampnell!’ she called now and then, and was almost through the wood when she saw the body stretched out motionless on the brown fern. ‘Hell!’ she said, and dismounted, and with the reins over her arm would have run forward, but the horses thought otherwise. They jibbed, threw up their heads and snorted, and there was nothing that Patricia could do but take off her gloves, unbuckle the reins and tie the horses to a tree, where you could be practically certain they would tangle their legs in the reins and break their bridles.

  Patricia was young, unimaginative, and optimistic. She spoke to the dead woman, lifted the lolling head, loosened the red and yellow hunting tie and took off her own coat and laid it across the knees, before the thought of death stopped her heart for a suffocating second and sent it racing on. Then she felt for the pulse and found none, but perhaps she was feeling the wrong place, so, lacking a mirror, she took out her silver cigarette case, held it to the purplish lips, withdrew it unclouded and knew that Cecily Scampnell was dead. Oh well, she was old, thought Patricia; in a few years she would have died of cancer or a stroke or something; and with her heart beating normally she walked to the edge of the wood and there was no one and no house in sight; but now she realized where she was, and knew that under the line of elms bordering the field beyond the stake-and-bound fence a lane led from the highroad to one of Lord Badgemoor’s farms. She went back into the wood for the horses and had barely freed their forelegs from the expected tangle of reins when she heard the short note of Hugo’s horn calling his hounds to him. Leading the horses, who had heard the horn too and danced behind her, she hurried out of the wood again and there was Hugo, the first whipper-in and hounds coming through a gate over on her left, and the chattering Field behind them.

  Patricia was discreet enough not to shout her news. She waited till her brother was near and then, ‘There’s been an accident,’ she told him. ‘It’s Mrs Scampnell, and she’s dead. Where’s Hope-Johnstone?’ Hugo turned in his saddle and scanned the Field. ‘There he is. Doctor! Here, a moment.’ The group of riders parted and Hope-Johnstone rode forward on his big grey heavyweight hunter. ‘Pat’s got a corpse for you,’ said Hugo and dismounted. ‘Here, somebody, hold these horses.’

  Patricia led the way into the wood. ‘There she is! The bracken’s so trampled it looks as though Quiver came down,’ she said to her brother as the doctor bent over the body. ‘Is she really dead?’ asked Hugo. ‘Yes, she’s dead all right — been dead for half an hour or so,’ said Hope-Johnstone. Hugo said, ‘This would happen when the Master’s in bed with lumbago. I suppose I’d better take hounds home — I was on my way back to the rhododendrons. I’ll go and tell the Field that we’re packing up — no use keeping the silly fools standing there.’ Like most huntsmen, Hugo loathed his Field, and seldom alluded to it save in terms of opprobrium.

  Hope-Johnstone said, ‘Yes, for God’s sake get rid of them. There’s no need to tell them about this — if you go home, they will; but if they ask, tell them there’s been a slight accident. But send me someone reliable — we must find a telephone and get the police here before we move her. I don’t like it. It’s dam’ queer, Hugo.’

  ‘You don’t mean to say that it’s poison again?’ asked Hugo, and Patricia gasped, ‘Oh, no.’

  ‘It looks to me like it,’ said the doctor. ‘Anyhow, don’t breathe a word of that. I may be wrong. Let’s see, who is there?’

  ‘Colonel Rivett-Bankes was about earlier,’ said Patricia, and the doctor said, ‘Of course, I saw him just now. Send him along, Hugo, but do it unobtrusively.’ Hugo set off and Patricia asked, ‘Is it the same poison?’ but only got, ‘My dear child, with all my talents I can’t see inside people,’ and then the doctor hummed and remarked on the beauty of the autumn colouring until Colonel Rivett-Bankes came crashing into the wood on his brown dock-tailed cob. He said, ‘Good God! Broken her neck, has she?’ and the doctor said, ‘Patricia, you’ll want to get your horses home, but mind, you’re not to say anything about this to anyone but Sir Charles or Lady d’Estray.’ Patricia, though she felt aggrieved — for it was she, wasn’t it? who had found the body — offered, ‘Shall I take Justice too?’ and the doctor said, ‘Thanks very much, Pat. If you’ll take him back to your place I’ll collect him later.’ Patricia walked out of the wood. Hugo, the hunt servants and hounds were gone, but some of the Field stayed chattering and wondering while they ate their sandwiches, and though Patricia walked briskly to the spot where somebody’s groom was holding Quiver and Huntsman and the doctor’s Justice, acquaintances hurried after her to ask, ‘Who is it?’ ‘Is it serious?’ and offer, ‘I was a V.A.D …’ and Patricia was obliged to answer sourly, ‘I don’t know how bad it is. The doctor’s there and everything’s under control.’ Patricia was not popular in the county: though she wasn’t disdainful, she looked it, and she had yet to disc
ard the snubbing manner of St Olaf’s; so the acquaintances fell back, disliking her more than ever, and she was able to mount in silence and ride away. And after an eight-miles hack home with a murder to think about and three quarrelling horses to manage, she felt not at all averse to snubbing Lisa, who, with the exception of the dull-witted stable-boy, Jimmy Funge, was by fortunate chance the only member of the household whom she encountered when at long last she rode into the stableyard. ‘Hullo, have you killed the Scampnell?’ asked Lisa gaily. ‘Instead of standing there and asking dam’ silly questions, why don’t you come and take one of these dam’ fools of horses?’ Patricia said.

  *

  Despite his raincoat, Ronald Price had shivered in the wood; he had sneezed twice in the police car on the way to the mortuary; his socks were torn by brambles; burrs clung to the legs of his trousers; his cuff was stained green where it had been slobbered on by the Chief Constable’s hunter; and, sitting now with damp feet, risking pneumonia, he was in no mood to consider the sensibilities of Sir Charles d’Estray’s drawling daughter. ‘Now, Miss d’Estray,’ he snapped, ‘the motive for this second murder sticks out a mile. What knowledge did Mrs Scampnell possess which made her dangerous to Miss Hudson’s murderer?’

  ‘I haven’t a clue,’ said Patricia.

  ‘You were expecting something to happen to her,’ said Price, ‘or why else did you go in search of the body?’

  ‘If you’re hunting,’ said Patricia as though to a half-wit, ‘and you find a riderless horse careering about, you catch it and naturally you return it to its rider. If he or she is not about, you wonder what’s happened to him or her, and you try to find out, because sometimes there are accidents. I wasn’t exactly responsible for Mrs Scampnell because she’s ridden all her life and she would have been furious if I had fussed after her — Mr Rose is a novice and I’m teaching him, so that’s different. All the same, Mrs Scampnell lives here and she was riding one of my horses, so if she had taken a toss I was the obvious person to look after her.’