Murder Included Read online

  ‘As you say nowadays — I wouldn’t know,’ said Sir Charles, ‘but it would certainly have been easy enough to slip into the room — at times the corridors are deserted. I’m just trying to think of any time when someone was absent whom one would have expected to be present, if you know what I mean. Otherwise, it seems hopeless.’

  ‘It’s far from hopeless, Sir Charles,’ said Price, bridling. ‘Why, I’ve hardly commenced my investigations. There’s the whole question of motive. Am I correct in supposing that the deceased was a very wealthy woman?’

  ‘We’re none of us wealthy now,’ said Sir Charles, with an indifference which Price found vaguely irritating. ‘But my cousin was on her own; she hadn’t a place to keep up, and a moderate income goes a long way in those circumstances.’

  ‘And who will inherit her fortune?’

  ‘It’s not a fortune,’ protested Sir Charles. ‘It could never have been more than a comfortable income for a single woman and today it’s probably scarcely worth having. I haven’t the least idea who gets it. She may have made small bequests to all or any of us — I’ve heard her mention some family jewellery which was to come to my daughter — but she had several nearer relatives and one or two pet charities: Homes for Worn-out Horses and that kind of thing. However, you’ll be able to get that from her lawyer, Philip Jardine. He’ll be here this afternoon.’

  ‘Flight-Lieutenant Marvin now — according to the Superintendent she brought him here. Could he have had a grudge against her?’

  ‘Scarcely,’ said Sir Charles. ‘She’d been very good to him. She met him during the war and again afterwards, when he was a bit of a problem — like a good many of these Air Force men. The story goes that she rescued him from the clutches of a doting mother, who was destroying what nerves he had left, and got him keen on riding and hunting and a country life — she had an idea he might join my son in farming later on. But actually he’s out of your picture. He was in London visiting his mother and he went up with young Rose on Sunday night.’

  Price remembered that Marvin was the Superintendent’s fancy — wishful thinking, he’d thought contemptuously, so obvious had been the reluctance of that relic of feudalism to consider a suspect in the family under the thumb of which he had been reared. But this story of a young neurotic, ‘taken up’ by an elderly woman, certainly smelled a little: money was the commonest motive for murder, and if it turned out that the silly old fool had left him a packet and told him so, there was no more to do than to break a probably amateurishly constructed alibi. In the meantime there was little of value, he felt, to be got out of this old dodderer, who couldn’t say for certain who locked up his house at night or whether there were bells in the bedrooms. ‘Well thank you, Sir Charles,’ he said. ‘I think that is all for the moment. I would like to see Mr Hugo d’Estray next, please.’

  Sir Charles got up, glancing at his wrist-watch. ‘I very much doubt if he’ll be back yet, Inspector.’

  ‘Where’s he gone? When I telephoned this morning I particularly requested that all the members of the household should be available for questioning.’

  Sir Charles said, ‘He’d been gone long before you telephoned. He’s hunting Lord Badgemoor’s hounds this season. The others — my daughter, Mr Rose, and Mrs Scampnell — could have stayed behind if the message had come early enough.’

  ‘This,’ Price said, ‘is a case of murder. It seems extraordinary that these people should have gone off in this irresponsible way fox-hunting. Granted they had left the premises before you received my telephone communication, but they must have anticipated that police investigations would commence immediately.’

  ‘I suppose,’ said Sir Charles, ‘I should have stopped them. My son, of course, had to go. We’re carrying on under great difficulties. The first whipper-in is only a lad — he couldn’t possibly hunt hounds and Badgemoor’s much too old and doddery.’

  This was Greek to Price. Obviously foxhounds hunted foxes, but the hounds were apparently hunted in their turn by Hugo d’Estray, and what in heaven’s name was a whipper-in? He had been enjoying his show of authority, but to say more might reveal ignorance. … Best leave it. … Sir Charles was saying soothingly, ‘They should be back at two o’clock at the latest and meanwhile there are the others — Mrs Rose, Scampnell, Margot Rattray, and all the servants,’ so Price only said, ‘I’ll see Lady d’Estray next, please.’

  ‘Very well,’ said Sir Charles, and the telephone rang. The instrument stood on the writing-table and he picked up the receiver and said, ‘Yes. Oh, it’s you, Treadwell. Good morning to you. How are you? Wife all right? And Pam? That’s good. Yes, he’s here. For you,’ he said at last, and handed the receiver to Price and left the room, quietly shutting the door.

  Treadwell had had a further report from the analyst: the oenanthotoxin which had killed Elizabeth Hudson was believed to have been extracted in some rough-and-ready manner from the root of the Oenanthe crocata, or water drop-wort, a common plant growing in watery places. ‘So at least we’re spared a trek round the chemists’ shops,’ said Treadwell, ‘though I suppose some knowledge of chemistry is indicated.’

  ‘Or botany, or access to botanical volumes,’ said Price, ‘or I should imagine that such information might be obtained from some of these old countrywomen.’

  ‘What old countrywomen?’ asked Treadwell.

  ‘Well, there are plenty of old witches around,’ said Price. ‘I saw one at the lodge when I turned into the park this morning — just the kind of old crone who cooks up herbs and berries.’

  Treadwell said coldly, ‘That must have been Mrs Toomer, my great-aunt. She was lady’s maid to Sir Charles’s grandmother and she’s lived in most of the embassies in Europe. I don’t think she’d know much about herbs and berries.’

  ‘Perhaps not,’ said Price hastily. ‘But there’s a type,’ he insisted; ‘the sort of old woman whom the village maidens consult to procure abortion.’

  ‘That only happens in books,’ said the Superintendent. ‘When our girls get into trouble, their boys marry them. No, I can’t help you there, Inspector; but I can tell you that Sir Charles has a fine library and I’ve no doubt that the paying guests get the run of it.’

  ‘Thank you, Superintendent,’ said Price, and hung up as the door opened and Bunny came in. In response to Sir Charles’s request that she wear ‘something dark’, she had put on a little black frock, in which she looked small and chic and quite out of place in an English country house in the middle of the morning; and Price ‘placed her’ at once as an adventuress, who had ‘caught’ Sir Charles off his guard in the lax atmosphere of the Riviera. Bunny, for her part, saw a sharplooking young man, obviously cut out for snooping, smug in his private life, neat, law-abiding, close-fisted … A wave of hostility quivered in the air between them.

  ‘Good morning,’ said Bunny.

  ‘Good morning, madam,’ said Price. ‘You are Lady d’Estray, I presume. And before your marriage to Sir Charles your name was —?’

  ‘Barbara Teresa Desirée Sallust,’ said Bunny. When she was nervous she had to talk, and she went on, ‘My first husband was French, but my father was English — oddly enough, “a Mr Wilkinson, a clergyman”.’

  The quotation meant nothing to Price. It merely crossed his mind that the Reverend Mr Wilkinson must do a lot of turning in his grave. He said, ‘Incumbent of what parish?’

  ‘Audley Combe, Devon. It’s only a tiny parish, but he had other work. He was quite well known as a botanist.’

  ‘And is that a subject which interests you?’ asked Price sharply.

  ‘Good God, no!’ said Bunny.

  ‘Still you must have acquired some knowledge of it.’ He had opened his note-book and recorded her names, and now he made another jotting.

  ‘You look like the Recording Angel,’ she told him.

  He made no answer to a remark he considered frivolous, if not fresh. He said, ‘How long have you known Miss Hudson?’

  ‘Only since I’ve been her
e,’ said Bunny. ‘When I persuaded my husband to take paying guests she was one of the first to be suggested. Apparently she had always been fond of the place and they thought she might like to come and live here.’

  ‘Exactly from whom did the suggestion emanate?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t remember that. It was ages ago, and we were all suggesting people.’

  ‘And when Miss Hudson came, was she a satisfactory guest? Single ladies can be very trying.’

  ‘Do you think so?’ said Bunny. ‘I don’t. I think marriage brings out the worst in one. Are you married, Inspector?’

  ‘I am; but let us keep to the point, Lady d’Estray. Did you like Miss Hudson?’

  ‘I admired her in some ways. She was terrifically tough, and I’m a terrible sissy. We hadn’t very much in common — she didn’t care for books or pictures or music and she’d scarcely been out of England, which made her rather narrow-minded.’

  Price had never been out of England and he was tempted to enquire of Lady d’Estray why she imagined that visiting inferior countries and communities should have a beneficial effect on the mind. He restrained himself, however, and instead asserted, ‘So you didn’t care for the deceased?’

  ‘I certainly wouldn’t have chosen her for my companion on a desert island,’ said Bunny and wished once again she could remember to whom she had said, I should like to murder — or was it strangle? or was it poison? — that woman.

  ‘And have you any idea who can have wished to make away with her?’

  ‘I haven’t the slightest idea,’ said Bunny.

  Price said that was all for the moment and as Mr Hugo d’Estray and Miss Patricia d’Estray were not available, though he had particularly requested that they should be, he would like to see Mr Scampnell, Mrs Rose, and Miss Rattray. Bunny went away and he took the opportunity to add dislike of deceased to her name and knowledge of botany in his notebook. Then Mr Scampnell came in, and here, thought Price, noting the light tweed suit, the semi-stiff collar, the neat silk tie, the fountain pen and pencil in the waistcoat pocket, the well-shaven neither handsome nor ugly countenance, is an ordinary reasonable specimen of homo sapiens, who goes about the world with his eyes open and from whom I may get some sensible information. There was no hostility in the air now. George Henry Scampnell, Company Director, expressed himself willing to assist the police in any way within his power, as behoved a good citizen. Unfortunately, he’d no solid evidence to set before the Detective-Inspector: though the bedroom occupied by himself and his wife was directly across the corridor from that occupied by the deceased lady, neither he, who had gone to bed at eleven, nor his wife, who had preceded him by about an hour, had heard any unusual noises during the night of Monday, nor in the course of the day had they noticed anyone entering the room or loitering in the corridor. No, it was all very vague and the Detective-Inspector must not take what he was going to say too seriously, but in all communities, however peaceful they might appear to a stranger, there were undercurrents and emotions ranging from mild dislike to seething hatred. ‘You know what women are, Detective-Inspector. Even between Mrs Scampnell and the deceased there was petty jealousy, such as you’d never get between men, over their exploits out hunting; and poor little Mrs Rose was so constantly snubbed in her efforts to become a county lady that though she took it like a lamb and never answered back, she must have disliked Miss Hudson. Discounting Patricia d’Estray, who, I should say, was genuinely fond of her cousin, the only woman here who really hit it off with the deceased was my stepdaughter, Margot Rattray. She doesn’t ride — like myself, she prefers a good tramp or a round of golf — so there was no kind of rivalry, and … well … she comes of Army folk, so the good lady had no excuse for snubbing her.’

  ‘And Lady d’Estray?’

  ‘Quite frankly,’ said Scampnell, ‘I was hoping to avoid that question. But as you’ve asked it I can’t do less than answer it truthfully. Lady d’Estray hated Miss Hudson — you could feel it in the air even if you shut your ears to the catty remarks they flung at one another. With all her faults, Miss Hudson was a good old-fashioned type: went to church every Sunday morning — Early Service sometimes too, I believe — thoroughly disapproved of the powder and paint and stuff that Lady d’Estray smothers her face with, couldn’t abide her scarlet fingernails, and particularly disliked her habit of using cheap French perfumes. She was upset too by the way that “Bunny” as she calls herself — rather ridiculous at her age — turned the house upside down without respect to the memory of the first Lady d’Estray. I never met her, but I believe she was a real lady. “Bunny” of course resented the old girl’s advice and still more her very outspoken criticism, and I think she feared Miss Hudson’s influence over Sir Charles, which I have reason to believe was considerable. Now, don’t get me wrong, Detective-Inspector. I’ve no reason in the world to suspect Lady d’Estray of this dreadful crime. I’m simply telling you that she hated Miss Hudson.’

  Price said, ‘I quite understand, Mr Scampnell: no facts, but a situation one should bear in mind if and when facts emerge to strengthen it. Thank you very much.’ He rose. ‘If anything more occurs to you, I shall be glad to have another talk with you. It’s a treat to find someone who knows the difference between facts and impressions, and the value of both.’

  ‘I shall be delighted to help in any way I can,’ replied Scampnell. ‘You’ll be seeing my stepdaughter — she knows no more than I do, but she was really fond of the old woman. I suppose it would be indiscreet to ask if you’ve traced any purchase of the poison?’

  ‘It wasn’t purchased,’ said Price. ‘It was a home-made concoction. I’m hoping the servants may throw some light on that matter. You and Mrs Scampnell have a private bathroom, I understand, which is shared by Miss Rattray?’

  ‘That is correct,’ said Scampnell. ‘The Roses’ is private too. Miss Hudson would have shared hers with the occupant of the empty room and Marvin and young Rose share another. I’ve no idea what the family’s arrangements are. They “keep themselves to themselves” in the west wing.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Price, and ‘Right,’ said Scampnell and ‘I’ll tell my stepdaughter to come in next,’ and scarcely had Price written in his note-book, Motive, none. Means: seems more of a townsman, but possible slight knowledge of chemistry, and added: out to help, than Margot Rattray slipped into the room with a quiet ‘Good morning’.

  She was almost pretty. Eyes of smoky-blue were set under level eyebrows and a broad forehead, the dark hair, cut in a girlish ‘bob’, looked, he thought, delightfully natural, and the large well-shaped mouth was innocent of lipstick — a wholesome English girl, he would have said, but for her pasty complexion and the fact that when you’d looked twice you saw that she was a girl no longer. Scampnell’s wife must be a good deal older than himself, Price thought: this Margot was in her thirties — he noticed grey hair in the girlish ‘bob’ — and Scampnell didn’t look a day over fifty. Still, she was obviously a sensible sort of young woman, and Price, after jotting down Margaret Elizabeth Rattray, said, ‘Now Miss Rattray, I’m expecting a lot from you. Mr Scampnell tells me that you were friendly with the deceased — got along with her better than most people.’

  ‘I think I did,’ said Margot, in a low quiet voice — a contrast, he thought, to Lady d’Estray’s nervous gabble. ‘You see, though I’m fond of animals, I’m not “horsey”. I was at school when my mother and father were in India and she did so much riding, and I spent my holidays with an aunt in London, so I didn’t have a country childhood, like Mother did — in Ireland. Mother always pities me for that, but I don’t pity myself — I think country children are apt to be terrible tomboys. When my father died and Mother came back to England she tried to teach me to ride, but I hated it … oh dear, how I hated it! I expect you think this is all off the point, but what I’m trying to explain is that Miss Hudson didn’t look on me as a rival — it was that which spoilt her relationship with Mother; they were always vying with one another and it was qu
ite amusing to hear them after they had been hunting and, having tired themselves to death, poor old dears, were in a snappish mood. I’m fond of old people, and I used to listen to Miss Hudson’s stories about the huge fences she’d jumped and how much better she’d ridden than anyone else, and I used to humour her, which of course Mother wouldn’t do. And I fetched and carried for her — very unobtrusively, of course: old people don’t like to think you think they’re old. I know she liked me, because she gave me this wee brooch.’ Margot indicated a cameo on the lapel of her blue homespun suit. ‘I was quite afraid that Patricia would be cross about it, but she never said a word.’

  Price asked, ‘And did your old friend confide in you at all — any likes or dislikes for those she lived among?’

  ‘She did a bit,’ said Margot. ‘She loved all the d’Estrays, I’m convinced of that, except of course the present Lady d’Estray, whom she loathed — rather unreasonably, I thought, because Lady d’Estray can’t help being Frenchified and looking like mutton dressed as lamb — at least, she can’t help being mutton, though I suppose she needn’t dress as lamb. Miss Hudson didn’t like the Roses; she thought them Jewish and common, but she was very fond of Geoffrey Marvin and of course she was very good to him. She was paying for his riding and hunting here.’

  ‘And did he reciprocate?’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘Did he return her affection?’

  ‘Well, I always thought he was inclined to take her kindness for granted. After a day’s hunting, for which Patricia d’Estray charged three guineas, he made less fuss than I did over this wee brooch.’

  Price said, ‘To some natures patronage can be very irritating. Lady Bountiful sees to it that she gets paid and payments can be made in other ways than by coin of the realm. Would you say that the Flight-Lieutenant was bored by having to dance attendance on the deceased, or anything of that kind?’

  Margot said, ‘Certainly when he spoke of her behind her back he didn’t always speak very respectfully. I’ve heard him allude to her as “the old girl”, and even “the old bitch”. I think it’s a shame to speak like that of old people, don’t you?’