Murder Included Read online

  And later in the evening he said to his wife, ‘I almost wish we hadn’t called in the Yard. That chap Price, with his long words and his third-hand opinions — he’ll get on the wrong side of everybody,’ but at the same moment, in the Residents’ Lounge at the Red Lion, Ronald Price was writing to Valerie:

  We in the towns have no conception how time has stood still in rural localities. These country bumpkins are living in the Middle Ages and liking it, and as for their complacent lords and masters I anticipate the necessity of reminding those with whom I may come into contact during the course of my investigations that a few years have passed since we did away with the feudal system! Fancy, the owner of the Guest House where the fatality occurred is a Bart!! I shall meet him tomorrow!!

  CHAPTER TWO

  SINCE she had come to the Park, Bunny had grown accustomed to waking with a load on her mind: after the first few weeks it had been plain to her that her step-children not only resented their father’s second marriage but unanimously disapproved of her. Hugo, whom she thought very handsome and charming, had been ready enough to talk to her on general subjects, but had answered off-handedly any questions she had asked him about himself or his brother and sisters; Patricia, whom she thought handsome but ‘faultily faultless, icily regular, splendidly null’ and still, at heart, the Senior Prefect at St Olaf’s, treated her with the disinterested courtesy which one member of a family accords to another member’s school friend; Simon and Iona had been sullen, hanging their heads and muttering monosyllables in reply to her painstaking enquiries about their pets. Lisa, banished for the first time in her life to a schoolroom, called them ‘those uncouth children’, and within a week the noise of an altercation between her and Patricia had penetrated to Sir Charles’s study. ‘I ticked her off,’ said Patricia in explanation. ‘Well, don’t tick her off. It’s not your job,’ said Sir Charles, glancing at Bunny. ‘I expect she needed ticking off,’ said Bunny with equal generosity. ‘Actually she did,’ said Patricia. ‘I happened to go into the schoolroom when they were having supper and she was mopping her plate up in the most disgusting way with a piece of bread — quite revolting.’ ‘Oh dear,’ said Bunny, ‘I’m afraid one does that in France.’ ‘So she said,’ said Patricia, ‘and she was jolly cheeky about it.’ ‘Well, you must be tactful,’ said Sir Charles. ‘You can’t treat Lisa quite as you treat Iona.’ ‘That’s obvious,’ said Patricia. ‘Iona’s a little beast, but she knows how to take a ticking off — she’s learned that at St Olaf’s.’ ‘Well, perhaps Lisa will, if she goes there next term,’ said Sir Charles. ‘But in the meantime you just be particularly tactful. I’m sure you can, old lady.’

  Bunny hadn’t been so sure and, reproached in the privacy of the large cold room where Sir Charles had tenderly furnished a Chippendale writing-table for his author-wife, accustomed to lie on her stomach under an olive-tree and doodle with chewed pencil-stubs on the backs of envelopes, Lisa had replied that she was always anxious to learn, but not from one whose mental and emotional age was twelve and who had never heard of Baudelaire. However, she had promised to be tactful and to remember how awkward it all was for Bunny.

  And there had been no more open trouble until Lisa and Bunny together had committed the indiscretion of buying an ill-used pony from Harborough cattle market, into which they had strayed while shopping. Simon and Iona each had a pony, and Patricia had her hunter, Huntsman; Sir Charles had several times spoken of a pony for Lisa, and Bunny and Lisa had been particularly pleased that, in addition to rescuing from further blows of fate an obviously unfortunate animal, they had secured it for the small sum of seven pounds, in contrast to the sixty and seventy guineas which had been given for Iona’s Champagne and Simon’s Brandy. Having named her pony Romance Conti, so that he would be sure not to develop an inferiority complex in his relations with the d’Estray ponies, Lisa had ridden him home, as she had ridden her donkey in Provence, bareback and in a halter, and the storm had burst when Patricia had greeted her with, ‘What an awful old thing. I wouldn’t be seen dead on him. He had better go straight to the kennels.’ Later, Sir Charles, while admitting that tact wasn’t Pat’s strong point, had explained that she was bitterly disappointed: she had been negotiating for a neighbour’s well-known gymkhana winner, which Iona could have ridden in shows until Lisa became proficient. ‘But Charles, that would have cost the earth,’ cried Bunny. ‘Lisa and I — at least we have made an economy.’ Charles had replied, ‘I may be hard up, but I like to see my family well mounted,’ and this had been his last word on the subject, but Patricia had continued to speak of Lisa’s screw and Lisa’s crock and, though now the pony was sleek and fat and Lisa had cub-hunted him with such success that Lord Badgemoor had been heard to say that that mad-looking girl, whom the d’Estrays had brought out, was the only member of the Field whose horse was under control, Patricia still at intervals affirmed that he was a disgrace to her stables. Lisa was naturally sweet-tempered, but until she had come to England she had lived almost entirely among adults; she had no armour against the jibes of her contemporaries, and an observer of a noisy scene in the d’Estrays’ stable yard was more apt to blame the screaming little fishwife than her cool, contemptuously smiling adversaries.

  It would be untrue to say that it was solely for Lisa’s sake that Bunny, in her forties, had accepted Charles d’Estray’s proposal. She had asked for forty-eight hours in which to think it over, and was still hesitating when Charles, immaculate and cold sober, had left her party at midnight; the others — Justin and Ferdinand, Oscar, Gabriel, and their women — had stayed on and on, endlessly talking, endlessly drinking. Towards dawn Ferdi had been missing, and Bunny had found him slumped on the bathroom floor and Lisa, in her nightgown, dosing him with black coffee. Ferdi was a genius, Justin was world-famous; they were all talented people and her dear friends, but, remembering her own decorous English childhood, Bunny had thereupon decided that this was no milieu in which to bring up a young girl. Charles had told her that he wasn’t rich, but she hadn’t wanted riches for Lisa: after the shock of seeing her daughter at the age of twelve expertly reviving a drunk, she had wanted for her a decent English background and nice little friends. Next morning, creeping downstairs in a dressing-gown towards noon, seeing herself tousled and tawdry in the mirror at the foot of the stairs, seeing the shambles of the salon, the dirty and the smashed glasses, the smeared plates, the scattered cigarette ends, the indecent, if lovely, drawing which Ferdi, before he had passed out, had executed in charcoal on the wall, she had wanted a decent English background and nice friends for herself, too, and when Charles had come for his answer she had promptly accepted him. Since then, on most mornings, I made a bargain and I must stick to it, or, I made my bed and I must lie on it were the thoughts that drifted across her mind as she wakened, for though she adored Vanbrugh’s great house dreaming among its cedars and deeply respected the handsome d’Estrays and the simplicity and severity of their design for living, she had quickly realized that she could never be one of them, that though you can learn you can’t un-learn, though you can sharpen your wits you can’t dull them, that among these honourable, dutiful, and witless people she would always feel a bit of a cad. After six months at the Park (she thought of it in those terms rather than as having been married to Charles), she had realized, too, that the d’Estrays were heading for bankruptcy. It had been a difficult job to persuade Charles, who was no business man, to look financial facts in the face, for his family had been established since the Conquest and a sense of unshakeable security seemed to be bred in him. Like most of his kind, he was no lover of money or high-living; it was the simple love of his house and fields that would break his heart if he had to leave them. Very humbly he had apologized for having dragged Bunny into the mess that she had opened his eyes to, but the helpless little woman, whom he had thought to protect, laughed, arranged mortgages, sold some pictures he had never liked much but which were apparently Corots, and some glass knick-knacks he had never noticed in the spare
bedrooms, and casually declared during dinner that only six wash-basins, two bathrooms and lavatories and a little rearrangement of the furniture were needed to transform the Park into a perfect guest house. Sir Charles had looked pained but resigned; Hugo, calling on his Maker, had left the room; Iona had uttered irritating schoolgirlish groans and Simon had sulked, but the worst opposition had come from Patricia: she had definitely refused to keep horses to be mucked up by mutton-fisted beginners. Bunny had bided her time, and behind Sir Charles’s back had mercilessly revealed to Patricia the full horror of his financial position, adding in excuse, as she thought, that as a business man the poor sweet was congenitally incapable. Patricia thought her disloyal to Daddy and compared her very unfavourably with Mother, who had never allowed the slightest criticism of her husband to pass her lips; but aloud she said, ‘Very well, Bunny. I will,’ and Bunny, aware that in spite of all their faults and foolishness the d’Estrays possessed the supreme virtue of keeping their word, had handed over to Patricia (after a sharp skirmish with Charles, who wanted it to buy an annuity for an idle old gamekeeper) the five hundred pounds for which two pieces of the Ravenscroft glass had sold at Christie’s. Hugo began to talk of farming, Iona of leaving St Olaf’s and helping Patricia; no one spoke any more of a good school for Lisa; Bunny arranged morning lessons with a retired schoolmistress in the village and Lisa gladly agreed to get the rest of her education in her stepfather’s library.

  The first person to reply to the announcement of the advantages and amenities of life at Aston Park Guest House and Hunting Stables had been Elizabeth Hudson, and Sir Charles had promptly declared that he couldn’t take money from Elizabeth, and, after some argument, that he couldn’t, at any rate, make a profit out of her. Patricia had felt the same, and Miss Hudson’s enormous Roman-nosed hunter, Brutus, occupied, for a price that barely fed him, the largest box in the stable and, entirely free of charge, was groomed and waited on by Patricia. Bunny was careful to send no more prospectuses even to the d’Estrays’ most distant relations; she sent them to total strangers, and when the Roses came to look over the Park and Sybella called the drawing-room ‘the lounge’ and her coat and skirt her ‘costume’ Sir Charles said that he considered seven guineas a week most reasonable.

  Bunny had had no difficulties with the servants. Before a rumour of her plans could reach them, she had explained the situation to them with perfect frankness: they adored Sir Charles; they loved and shared his great house — my silver, said Benson; my kitchen, said Mrs Capes; my nurseries, my babies, said Nanny — and they understood the plight of the squirearchy. Bunny was fully aware that to them she would never be Lady d’Estray: in absent-minded moments Mrs Capes called her ‘duck’ and Nanny, ‘my lamb’; but Bunny, who was five feet two inches in height and as thin as a rake, with curly yellow hair, amber eyes, and a face which seemed to be made of indiarubber, had known at first glance that it would be worse than useless to try to fill the place vacated by the queenly figure in black velvet and diamonds, whose classic beauty, painted by Sargent, hung a little oppressively, thought Bunny, trying to be gay on wet Sundays, above the fireplace in the dining-room.

  When the Roses and the Scampnells and a family on leave from the East had made definite bookings, Bunny had stored the great mahogany dining-table in the old laundry and had fetched a round table from the morning-room and set it in the south window; there the d’Estrays were to take their meals, while smaller tables, rather thinly disposed about the immense room, were provided for the paying guests; Sir Charles said that the place looked like a station hotel and exchanged a glance with the portrait of his first wife, and Bunny, fit to drop, said sharply that beggars can’t be choosers, whereat he apologized with a meekness that tore her heart, and thanked her for all her trouble. ‘The Roses, the Scampnells, the Malay people …’ he had calculated. ‘Then who’s to sit at the little round table over there?’ ‘Miss Hudson. Pat says she never feels the cold and I’m sure the Malay people will, so I put them near the fire, and the Roses, who must have come from the East originally, have the radiator.’ Charles had replied, ‘Oh, but Elizabeth’s a cousin — she must sit at our table,’ and what with fatigue and pity for him, Bunny had been in no mood for argument. For a twelve-month now Elizabeth Hudson, horse-faced, high-collared, hair-netted, had laid down the law at the d’Estrays’ table. ‘One day,’ Bunny had told Lisa, ‘I’ll poison that woman …’

  For there was something fundamentally and unalterably opposed in those two natures. Bunny couldn’t make headway with Patricia, but admired her beauty and her integrity and blamed the rest on St Olaf’s and the English climate: she disliked Sybella Rose for her pretentiousness, her complacent ignorance and meanness, but a slipshod kind of intimacy grew up between them: cosily they discussed dress and diseases, menstruation and men. But there wasn’t, it seemed, an inch of common ground where Barbara d’Estray and Elizabeth Hudson could walk together. Bunny had few principles and they were all open to revision: from time to time she was amazed and ashamed to realize that she was more than half-way through life and had not yet made up her mind. But Elizabeth Hudson had been born knowing all the answers, and with bosh! tripe! I happen to know, and the fact is could put you right on any subject under the sun. In her dealings with her sometimes difficult guests, Bunny strove to use tact and courtesy: Elizabeth accused her of ‘smarming’ … tell ’em to go to hell and have done with it! Having known and loved the house since childhood, she resented Bunny’s changes: if Cousin William — Sir Charles’s father — had been able to walk two hundred yards to his bath, why the hell couldn’t the Roses? … the dining-room looked like a desert studded with toadstools … poor dear Hermione would turn in her grave if she could see her drawing-room. On the subject of food she was particularly trying. She liked it good and plain: porridge, kedgeree, a cut off the joint, stiff rice puddings. Mrs Capes had been trained by a French chef, imported by Sir William, a bon viveur; her talents had lain dormant under the economical rule of Hermione, who had been brought up very plainly in a Scottish castle, and the young Patricia’s healthy disinterest, and, rather to Bunny’s surprise, she had responded enthusiastically to tentative suggestions of sole Mornay and soufflé surprise. ‘I can’t understand what’s come over Capes,’ said Elizabeth Hudson, loud enough for Benson to hear. ‘She used to be a dam’ good plain cook — now she’s doing her best to poison us with these filthy French messes …’

  Elizabeth was certainly no Francophile. At the age of eighteen she had passed a week in Paris and could assure you that it was dirty, disorderly, unmannerly, and immoral; yachting in the Mediterranean, she had spent an evening at Monte Carlo, and the fug in the Casino and the awful old vultures round the tables had turned her stomach: she couldn’t conceive how Bunny could have chosen to live on that coast like cardboard scenery from a senseless musical comedy, among croupiers and card-sharpers, tarts and gigolos, frauds, failures, and the filthy French. Bunny had left France owing to what she believed was a change of heart, but now feared was a mood: fits of nostalgia, not only for the country and for her villa, but for the people she had lived among, were becoming more frequent and more painful, and she was finding it more and more difficult to treat with the indifference it deserved Elizabeth’s opinion of France and the French. Ferdi and Oscar, Justin and Lili, little Margaret Lyall, old T. H. Teviot — how tiresome they’d been with their never-ending see-saw between despair and mad gaiety, humility and vanity, drink and devotion, industry and idleness, the mud and the stars … but they’d never been — and their very inconsistency made it impossible for them to be — dictators. … ‘One day,’ Bunny had told Mrs Capes, ‘I’ll murder that woman.’

  In the stables Patricia, long disciplined by St Olaf’s, allowed Miss Hudson to rule her. Elizabeth’s authority was only questioned by Mrs Scampnell, and between these two ladies, who had both, as they put it, been born on horses, there was constant bickering, especially in the evenings after hunting. ‘Where the deuce did you get to, Cecily? I h
ardly saw you all day. I suppose you were hopelessly lost with the rest of the dam’ silly Field?’ ‘Good gracious, no, Elizabeth. As a matter of fact I kept on wondering where you were. I felt sorry for you in that awful scrum — there’s more room in the front, I always find.’ … But Mrs Scampnell and Miss Hudson were in agreement on the day when Bunny went riding. She had been taught to ride in France by a Dutchman on a Hungarian Arab; she had ridden in the Nice Horse Show for a manufacturer of cosmetics, but with scornful laughter Miss Hudson corrected her for facing her horse’s head when she mounted, for unduly long stirrups, for descending into the wood without leaning back and sticking her legs out, for jumping a log with her bottom right out of the saddle. Bunny had heard and believed the traditional fiction of the superiority of English horsemanship and she did not protest when Elizabeth told Sir Charles, ‘I daresay your wife shone among comic French horsemen, but she’s not yet ready for the hunting field.’ Nevertheless, as Beatrice pulled off her boots, ‘I could wring that woman’s neck,’ said Bunny.

  And now she had no time for riding. There were accounts to do, bills to pay and render, and to relieve the busy Beatrice she had taken over the care of the linen cupboard. Lisa helped her with that and had obligingly volunteered to ‘do’ the flowers, but was soon involved in a series of scenes with Elizabeth, who was a keen gardener and criticized both Lisa’s spoliation of the borders and her unconventional arrangement of the blooms. ‘You pig, you cow, you Hitler! You ought to be painlessly destroyed,’ screamed Lisa, and was heard by everybody. There was unending friction, too, over the Sallusts’ dog, a Boxer bitch, which had been released from quarantine shortly before Elizabeth’s arrival. Though the d’Estrays disliked it, disapproving on principle of foreign breeds, of champion-bred dogs, of non-sporting dogs, of allowing dogs on your bed, of providing them with coats in cold weather, of giving them silly names like Babette and hanging up stockings for them at Christmas, they heroically forbore from criticism except in the absence of the owners, when even Sir Charles referred to Babette as that great ugly useless brute. Elizabeth Hudson, however, did not hesitate to speak her mind. Introduced by the doting Lisa, she exclaimed, ‘What a monstrosity! It’s a nightmare. Take it out of my sight, child, for goodness’ sake,’ and when, with considerable difficulty, it had been proved to her that Babette wasn’t, as she insisted, the offspring of a bull bitch which had gone astray, she lost no opportunity of pointing out the disadvantages of owning fashionable foreign freaks instead of decent English terriers and gundogs. When Babette ailed, it was no wonder, with that short nose and mis-shapen jaw: ‘If she pegs out,’ said Elizabeth to the distracted child, ‘I’ll get you a dog that is a dog and will be some use to you.’ ‘Babette is of use to me — she guards me,’ said Lisa. ‘What from?’ asked Elizabeth with scornful laugh. ‘You are a little sissy to need to be guarded. With a decent terrier you could go ratting and rabbiting.’ Lisa stamped. ‘I don’t want to rat and rabbit. I’m not like you — always wanting to kill things. It would be poetic justice if you were tossed by a bull. And I hope you will be,’ she added beneath her breath, but loud enough for Patricia to hear her. ‘You shouldn’t mutter things that you’re ashamed to speak aloud,’ said Patricia. ‘I’ll speak it aloud, then. I hope that Cousin Elizabeth gets tossed by a bull,’ Lisa shouted.