Murder Included Read online

  Sir Charles didn’t. He said, ‘That sounds like psychological stuff — what the police will go on will be plain facts and I’m damned if I know of any. Anyhow, it’s time we were in bed and asleep.’

  Bunny lay awake for some time repeating to herself that the police would go on plain facts, not on psychological stuff suggested by such remarks as ‘I could strangle that woman’ from an author (unbalanced lot, authors), half French by birth and French again by marriage (an immoral lot, the Frenchies), whom Sir Charles d’Estray had picked up in the South of France (a hot spot, the Riviera) and imprudently and probably unnecessarily married, and ‘you beast, you pig, you cow, I’d like to kill you’ from an adolescent (a queer time, adolescence), who, besides being three-quarters French and a Roman Catholic, was the child of a tubercular and notoriously difficult father. In the small hours, however, she fell asleep and slept dreamlessly until the grey thought, I made my bed and I must lie on it, formed itself on the translucent emptiness of her mind. Then she heard the chink of china, smelt coffee, remembered her manners and muttered ‘Good morning, Beatrice,’ realized it was Beatrice with her breakfast and not Nanny with dreadful news for her, realized that Elizabeth was dead and that a detective from Scotland Yard was coming, opened her eyes and sat up in a hurry. Beatrice was setting the tray on the bedside table and Bunny asked her usual question, ‘Is it raining?’

  ‘No, my lady. It’s a lovely autumn day — nice and crisp,’ answered Beatrice, drawing back the curtains.

  ‘Oh God,’ groaned Bunny, and reached for the pink cardigan which served her as a bed-jacket. ‘Do you think it would be extravagant if I had the stove on?’

  ‘If you want it on, I should have it on,’ said Beatrice, and bent to the switch.

  ‘Any policemen about yet?’ asked Bunny.

  ‘Not yet,’ said Beatrice. ‘I told young Les last night that it was no use ’im coming till ten o’clock at the earliest, but ’e said the case was out of ’is ’ands now, not because of ’is being unable to ’andle it, but on account of the Colonel being a friend of the Family and wanting no unpleasantness, and ’e ’imself ’aving been born and bred in the village. So we’re to ’ave a deteck from London and I reckon that’ll cause much more unpleasantness than the Colonel and Les and Sergeant Blow and that soft young Constable Smallbone all together. Now get on and eat your breakfast while it’s ’ot, if you want a bath, I should ’urry up before them p.gs. take all the water.’

  Obediently Bunny poured coffee and milk. ‘Beatrice — who do you think poisoned Miss Hudson?’

  ‘An outside job,’ said Beatrice unexpectedly. ‘I don’t trust any of them p.gs., but they’d no motive, unless young Marvin ’ad, which is Mr Benson’s theory. Of course, m’lady, we don’t mention anything to do with the case in the servants’ ’all, but we talk it over in the ’ousekeeper’s room, which is only natural. Mrs Capes is too upset to form a theory, on account of some remarks Miss ’Udson passed about ’er cooking.’

  ‘I remember them. They were dam’ silly remarks,’ said Bunny.

  ‘Miss ’Udson,’ said Beatrice, ‘was all right when you got to know ’er. She was as ’ard as nails, but you knew where you were with ’er. ’Owever, I reckon she was ’ard once too often and this is the vengeance of someone who ’ad a grouse against ’er. Well, I must get on — ’ere’s Miss Lisa without any slippers on ’er feet again in spite of what Nanny told ’er.’

  Beatrice went out and Lisa came in and Bunny said, ‘What did Nanny tell you, Lisa?’

  ‘Only that I’d catch my death,’ said Lisa. ‘Who do you think poisoned the Hudson, Bunny? I think the Scampnell did because of being rivals in the hunting-field, or isn’t that enough for grown-ups to murder each other over? Sylvia doesn’t think it was the Scampnell. She thinks it was Marvin …’

  Bunny interrupted her. ‘Lisa, you shouldn’t gossip with the servants.’ But she went on, ‘Why does Sylvia think it was Marvin?’

  ‘She thinks he was tired of being bossed about by the Hudson. Toast again. Oh, for a croissant!’

  ‘He could have gone away if he didn’t like it,’ said Bunny.

  ‘Perhaps she had a hold on him,’ said Lisa. ‘Perhaps he owed her money or was her illegitimate son or was in love with Patricia and the Hudson knew he had a wife in a lunatic asylum and threatened to split on him.’

  ‘All most unlikely,’ Bunny said. ‘How’s Romance Conti?’

  ‘Well, I haven’t seen him yet,’ said Lisa. ‘Nanny said I wasn’t to go to the stables in my pyjamas. She said I’d catch my death of cold and it was indecent. If we’re not all arrested by this afternoon I shall pull his mane. I’m going to plait him for the Opening Meet, Patricia or no Patricia.’

  Lisa was still chattering about her pony when Sir Charles came in. He was fond of Lisa and, to Bunny’s admiration, thought no worse of her because she agreed so badly with Patricia, his daughter and friend. But this morning he told her quite sharply to get out into the fresh air, instead of lolling in bedrooms. Lisa said how queer it was that the English all subconsciously disapproved of bedrooms, but, meeting Bunny’s eye, withdrew, and Sir Charles said he wished Bunny would come downstairs to breakfast; hardly a morning passed without trouble over someone’s marmalade and this morning it had been definitely uncomfortable. Bunny didn’t speak her thought — that if she had been in the habit of coming down to breakfast Elizabeth Hudson might have died sooner; she asked Sir Charles if he had slept well and he replied what a question! He had lain awake all night worrying, and no sooner had he fallen asleep than Beatrice had called him with a telephone message from Detective-Inspector Price of Scotland Yard to say that he would be at the Park at ten o’clock and expected to find the whole household available. ‘And Philip Jardine will be down in the course of the morning, and we’ll have to give him lunch — he was Elizabeth’s lawyer as well as mine, thank goodness. You’d better put on something dark,’ said Sir Charles, who wore a blue suit and a black tie, ‘not slacks, for goodness’ sake, or espadrilles or bedroom slippers. And look sharp, won’t you? It’s five-and-twenty to ten already …’

  But after he had gone Bunny poured out another cup of coffee and lit another cigarette and thought she must have been mad to exchange her life in the sun, her little pink villa between the pines and the water, France and the light that falls on her and the matchless fruits of her soil, liberty, so dear, so sacred, so necessary to the artist, for this climate, only fine when it was cold, this grand unmanageable mansion, these stiff, proper d’Estrays with their shibboleths, their financial problems, and now their murder …

  CHAPTER THREE

  DETECTIVE-INSPECTOR RONALD PRICE had slept badly on a sagging bed, of which he made haste to complain to the manageress next morning. He was perfectly polite. ‘The curved position of the spinal column necessitated by the undue resilience of the springs under the weight of the body has been condemned by the medical profession,’ he told fat Florence Dawes, but she stared at him from brown bovine eyes, scratched her bird’s nest of a head with the nib of her pen and instead of trying to learn something, stupidly protested, ‘We’ve never ’ad a complaint about the bed in number twelve before.’ ‘Well, you’ve got one now,’ said Price and went into the coffee-room to find a senile waiter, afflicted with bunions, swotting flies. The tea was weak. ‘Don’t blame me. Blame Strachey,’ the old man mumbled when Price complained, and, ‘Blame the paper controller,’ said the waitress when she told him that he couldn’t buy a newspaper in the hotel, and ‘Blame the Government,’ said the odd-man when, emerging from the lavatory, Price tripped over a hole in the linoleum and angrily exclaimed that it was a death-trap. Exasperated by this string of Tory lies he drove along deserted and dangerous lanes and, after losing himself twice, came to a high park wall and presently to a pair of iron gates between posts, surmounted by pelicans. A small stone lodge stood within the gates, so Price sounded his horn and waited, reflecting with annoyance that there were still Some who, with walls and gates, delight
ed to bar Others from their pleasant places, till his eye happened to light on a notice, which announced that Aston Park was open to Horsemen, Cyclists, and Pedestrians. Incensed by the loss of his grievance, he sounded his horn again and roughly informed the crone who hobbled slowly from the lodge that his business was urgent. ‘So’s my ironing,’ replied the widow Toomer, the nonagenarian mother of the d’Estrays’ Nanny: ‘but it don’t stop me from keeping a civil tongue in me ’ead.’ Past her work … should be in a home for the aged … thought Price and, in spite of notices saying 10 mph, please and Beware of Cattle and Very Slow, dashed through the deer park and into the main drive, where he narrowly missed Lisa, bicycling to her lessons in the village. ‘You silly bloody fool,’ shouted Lisa and then, as he rounded the last bend, there was a lawn, shaded with cedars, and, towering above him, the great house with its six Palladian pillars, its double flight of stone steps, its portico — the size of his kitchen, not counting the dining recess — surmounted by statuary. And there are whole families living in single rooms in tenements … thought Price, drawing up and switching off his engine, and: supposing I won a football pool … he thought, getting out, slamming his car door and noticing, for the first time, the tinny sound of it. The house would be all right; the snag would be the skivvies, he thought, walking briskly up the steps, recalling how, when he had got his promotion and suggested having a woman for the rough, Valerie had protested that it would fidget her. I’m different, of course; I’m used to giving orders; I’d keep them up to the mark, he thought, ringing the bell for the second time in thirty seconds and watching through the glass door the leisurely arrival of Benson. ‘Detective-Inspector Price of Scotland Yard,’ he snapped. ‘Sir Charles d’Estray is expecting me.’

  Benson, tall, white-haired, ecclesiastical, looked him over; then, ‘This way, please,’ he said in a hushed voice, and led him into the hall, which, with its coloured marble walls and fireplace and marble-topped tables, seemed to Price more like a mortuary than a home, though it only needed some of that wicker furniture in pastel shades and a few bright modern rugs to transform it into a tasteful and spacious lounge. From the back of the hall, a fine but, he thought, quite senselessly double staircase led in shallow, unhurried steps to the first floor, and at the foot of the flight, towards which the butler had turned, a large black dog, lying on a shabby Persian rug, raised its sinister head and fixed a pair of yellow eyes on him. ‘That dog — is it harmless?’ he asked, since the dog was rising and the butler made no effort to control it. ‘Definitely,’ pronounced the butler, ‘unless of course he happened to take a dislike to you.’ The brute was sniffing at Price’s trousers. ‘Go away, dog, go away,’ he sharply ordered. The yellow eyes blinked; the shining black body crouched to spring, he thought, and leaped away; but looking back saw that a yawn and a stretch was all that the Labrador had intended. Hurrying after the grossly indifferent butler, he found himself in a broad panelled corridor, which, after turning to the left, led past a green baize door and the foot of an unsupported stone staircase to a door on the opposite side, which the butler was holding open. ‘Sir Charles will be with you in a moment,’ he said, and Price passed into a larger and considerably less cosy edition of the Chief Constable’s ‘study’. From one of the two tall windows he looked out and discovered that the house had been built round three sides of a square. He looked across a neglected formal garden to the shrouded windows of the closed east wing: on his left stood the sunny façade of the main building and its imposing entrance with broad steps flanked by stone lions; there was also a garden door in the east wing and, since symmetry seemed a mania with whatever old Johnny had built the place (Price now decided that, having won the football pool, he’d prefer a more artistic rambling kind of house), he deduced that there would be a similar entrance into the west wing, in which he found himself. On the fourth side the garden was bounded by a stone balustrade, ornamented by urns, from which straggled the frost-bitten remains of ivy geraniums, and beyond the wall the ground fell, giving a view of ascending woodlands. Later from an upper window he saw that in this valley a little river lingered — Rushbrook on its way to the county town.

  When at last the door of the study opened he somehow expected to see a larger edition of the Chief Constable, but Sir Charles d’Estray was of quite a different type — taller, certainly, but more finely made, with a cameo profile and the bloodless look, Price thought, of the effete aristocracy. As he shook hands and asked if Price was quite comfortable at the Red Lion and had found his way to the Park quite easily and was warm enough in this terribly cold little room with only the log fire and was sure he wouldn’t like a whisky or a cup of coffee or tea or a cigar or a cigarette, his manner was gentle, but at the same time distant, and when he had finished what Price afterwards thought of as his kindness to animals Price felt a remarkable and inexplicable loss of his usual self-confidence. He began to doubt if, as he’d always affirmed, a ready-made suit looked as well as one made to measure: saying ‘I hope to inconvenience your household as little as possible,’ he dropped an aitch, replaced it, and wondered if he would have been wiser to ignore the slip or to have passed it off with a laugh as something that might happen to anybody.

  The interview was longer than Price had intended. Sir Charles took charge of it and before Price could frame the first of a series of questions, embarked on a narrative. On Monday evening Elizabeth Hudson had gone to bed at ten o’clock, having risen early that morning for cub-hunting, and for the same reason Mrs Scampnell had quickly followed her. About the same time Patricia had gone out to take a last look at the horses, and Mr Rose, the fourth of the cub-hunting party, had yawned his head off at the bridge-table until nearly eleven, when his wife had gone upstairs with him. Mr Scampnell and his step-daughter, Margot Rattray, had gone upstairs soon after eleven and then Sir Charles and his wife and son had adjourned, as they usually did, to the study, where drinks were set out for them earlier in the evening by Benson, or Eric, the footman, at least Benson called him the footman, but he was really a sort of odd-job boy. As far as Sir Charles remembered, his wife had been the first to leave the study: he and his son had gone up about a quarter of an hour later. ‘After locking up, I suppose?’ put in Price. ‘No, I don’t do any locking up,’ said Sir Charles. ‘Who does?’ asked Price. ‘Well, I really don’t know,’ said Sir Charles, ‘but I suppose it would be Benson.’ ‘And upstairs?’ asked Price. ‘You didn’t hear any sounds from the deceased’s bedroom?’ Sir Charles said, ‘Well, we didn’t pass her door or anywhere near it. There’s a staircase — perhaps you noticed it — a little farther back in this corridor, which serves the west wing, where our rooms are, and from this room it’s much shorter to go that way than round by the main staircase. From the drawing-room it would be different. Our lodgers, on the other hand, are all in the main building. The two married couples have rooms facing south over the garden here, my cousin’s room looks north over the drive, and young Rose and Flight-Lieutenant Marvin face the same way, but they’re on this side of the gallery. Margot Rattray is beyond my cousin’s room, at the corner of the house, but there’s a bathroom and an empty bedroom between. If my cousin had called out, the Scampnells are most likely to have heard her, but it would have had to be a pretty loud cry. The house is solidly built, you know, and the bedrooms have mahogany doors like this one, and they aren’t like modern doors — they fit superbly. I’ve never listened at one,’ said Sir Charles, smiling, ‘but even if you stood in the corridor, unless you actually put your ear to the keyhole, I doubt if you would hear low moaning.’

  Price said, ‘It appears to be impossible at this juncture to estimate with any accuracy the time at which such moaning or cries would have commenced. If the deceased called out it was probably after Mrs Scampnell was in bed and before her husband retired an hour later. A peculiar feature of the case is that the deceased could have rung the bell and summoned the assistance of the domestics. I assume there are bells in the bedrooms?’

  ‘I should think s
o,’ said Sir Charles. ‘There’s one in mine, anyway. And now I come to think of it, I’ve heard some chat going on between my wife and Beatrice, the head-housemaid, about Mrs Rose ringing every five minutes. But my cousin was rather a peculiar woman. She prided herself on what I believe your generation would call her toughness. Last winter most of us had a week in bed with gastric flu, but she never missed a day’s hunting, and has boasted ever since that owing to her healthy outdoor life et cetera she didn’t catch it: actually, during a check my daughter saw her being very ill indeed in a wood, but, knowing what she’d get if she interfered, left her to it. I daresay my cousin mistook the symptoms of poisoning for the same kind of thing and thought she’d keep it dark again.’

  ‘It appears,’ said Price, ‘as though the murderer were familiar with the lady’s character.’

  Sir Charles said with reluctance, ‘It does rather. But I can’t think of anyone in this house who would do such a thing.’

  Price smiled but made no comment. He said, ‘According to the Superintendent’s notes, the tumbler was taken up to the deceased’s bedroom when her bed was turned down and her electric stove switched on at approximately eight-thirty. The bottle of whisky was kept permanently in the room on an occasional table, so the poison could have been introduced into it at any time during the morning, afternoon, or evening. In fact, every member of the household, except perhaps the male staff, the cook, and the kitchenmaid, whose duties would not normally take them into that part of the house, would have had equal opportunity. His task was made even more easy by the fact that the bathroom communicating with the deceased’s bedroom also opens on the corridor, and — again according to the Superintendent’s notes — was only locked by the deceased during her ablutions.’