Murder Included Read online

  ‘I will look round,’ she said, ‘but I bet a hundred to one that I don’t find anything. Somehow, now we’ve talked about it I feel much less suspicious. But then … oh, dear, that’s how it goes, round and round in one’s head; the only time I’ve forgotten it was during the run we had this morning, and in the middle of that I thought of Cousin Elizabeth. It must be even worse for you, Daddy.’

  ‘It’s certainly not pleasant,’ said Sir Charles grimly. ‘But our talk has done me good too, Pat. I gather you don’t suspect me and I certainly don’t suspect you, so I suggest we form an alliance, agreeing to be perfectly open with each other and to pool all our thoughts and fears and discoveries.’

  ‘However awful?’

  ‘However awful,’ said Sir Charles, with a faint smile. ‘You know, Pat, in the end blood’s thicker than water …’

  Their talk was ended by the arrival of Benson to remove the tea-tray. ‘Is the Inspector still about?’ Sir Charles asked him, and Benson said, ‘No, Sir Charles. After spending a long time upstairs, especially in Miss Hudson’s bedroom, he’s motored back to Harborough to confer, I gather, with Colonel Rivett-Bankes and young Treadwell.’

  ‘And how did you gather that?’ asked Sir Charles. ‘Did he tell you?’

  ‘Oh no, Sir Charles. He’s not the kind with whom one can get into conversation. But one of the younger servants happened to be passing the study door when he was telephoning. He mentioned — to the Colonel I think — that he had made up his mind as to the guilty party but was stuck for evidence.’

  ‘It’s all very well for you to sound pleased, Ben,’ said Patricia, getting up with a sigh, ‘but nothing, however awful, could be worse than never knowing who was the murderer. It would poison all our relationships.’

  She left the room, and Benson, standing for a moment before he lifted the tray, said to Sir Charles, ‘Miss Pat’s young enough to want the truth out. When you get to my age you know that it’s best left in its grave.’

  ‘You amaze me, Benson,’ said Sir Charles, shocked. ‘Surely that’s a very unusual view.’

  ‘I’m ten years older than what you are, Sir Charles,’ said Benson, ‘and, one way and another, we see more of life than the gentry do.’ He lifted the tray and carried it out and for a moment or two Sir Charles wondered if the old chap were right — if man were so vile a thing that, in his interests, truth had best lie low. But he had been taught early and thoroughly the habit of loyalty: ‘the best school of all’ … ‘Well rowed, Oxford’ … ‘England, my England’ … and he was a man, and, of course, there were exceptions, but men were decent fellows on the whole …

  And Benson was one of the best of them, a splendid old chap, who thought things out for himself instead of getting his opinions, as most of the lower classes did, from The News of the World; but he was quite on the wrong lines when he pictured truth in its grave and best left there: probably owing to poor feeding in childhood, he lacked moral courage, thought Sir Charles …

  *

  When Lisa had brought hay and water to her pony and she and Bunny had stood for a long while leaning on the door of the loose box, which Patricia said was wasted on him, and ignorantly admiring him, they strolled on down the row of boxes and visited Iona’s hot little chestnut, Champagne; Simon’s stolid efficient Brandy; Patricia’s handsome grey Huntsman, whom no one but herself might ride; big dark bay Sir Roger, who alone would take his fences with Sidney Rose unsteadily anchored to his ever-hardening mouth; Quiver, the temperamental dark-brown thoroughbred mare, generally hunted by Cecily Scampnell; star-gazing chestnut Sonia, forever afidget under the heavy hands of Howard Rose; and the commoners, plain roan Redskin, chosen under the influence of Elizabeth Hudson for the beginner, Marvin, and Safety First, a heavy hairy black cob, deputy of the often unsound Sonia. Dusk in the stable yard, the smell of hay and. horse-flesh, the sounds of munching and the rustle of straw, the gentle welcome of the horses, were soothing to Bunny’s vexed spirit: listening to Lisa recounting their virtues and failings, she forgot that, too worldly-wise to believe that the innocent don’t suffer, she expected, as she had lightly put it, to be in gaol by nightfall, until Lisa said, ‘… And Brutus …’ and there was the big brown horse, that had been so dear to Elizabeth Hudson. ‘He always seemed fond of his missis, but he doesn’t seem to pine for her,’ said Lisa. ‘Horses don’t pine, like dogs, do they?’ Bunny said. ‘Did you know he’s been left to Geoffrey Marvin?’ ‘Gosh,’ said Lisa, ‘then he had got a motive.’ ‘Grown-up people don’t risk hanging for horses,’ said Bunny. ‘A very horsey person might,’ said Lisa. ‘After all, people risk it for husbands. All the same I believe he was only bossed into being horsey. I shan’t be a bit surprised if he gives up riding.’ Bunny said, ‘You don’t think he’s in love with Pat, do you?’ ‘Good lord, no,’ said Lisa. ‘He hates Pat. He thinks she puts on side, which actually she doesn’t do, and anyhow he’s in love with that awful Suzanne at the local.’ ‘What extraordinary things you know!’ said Bunny. ‘I don’t think that’s extraordinary,’ said Lisa. ‘He’s awfully brave and a pilot and all that, but really he’s of the people, and Suzanne must have been a rest to him after the strain of living up to Cousin Elizabeth. He’d be able to relax with Suzanne and use the words he learned at his mother’s knee — perspiration and serviette and excuse me and pardon.’ ‘I wonder if there’s a motive there,’ mused Bunny as, calling Babette, she turned towards the house. ‘He’s got an alibi, of course, but it might be a faked one. Supposing Elizabeth had found out about Suzanne … But I can’t see that it would have mattered … It’s not as though she had left him her money …’

  *

  Indoors, it seemed to Bunny that the great house was very quiet at a time when it was usually filled with voices. The drawing-room and the morning-room were empty, everyone preferring, she imagined, to be in the company of the one or two he could trust-husbands with wives … ‘I wonder where the Great White Chief is?’ she said to Lisa. ‘Still in the library, I expect,’ said Lisa. But he wasn’t, and Lisa, who, according to d’Estray custom, ate supper in the schoolroom at seven, sat down with a book while Bunny went upstairs to change for dinner. A long soak in a deep hot bath … she planned, and the pink corduroy housecoat … Charles will be as solemn as an owl and Pat like an iceberg. Lisa would have helped me … She opened the door of her room and there was Charles, starting away from the corner cupboard, where, since she shared the west-wing bathroom with her husband and Hugo and Patricia, she kept her toilet things and a few common remedies.

  Bunny thought, Poor thing! … so embarrassed … the embarrassed baronet met the harassed novelist. Sir Charles gave a feeble laugh and said, ‘You startled me, creeping in like that on those rope soles. I’ve a headache. I was looking for an aspirin.’

  Bunny knew what she should say. She should say, ‘I’ll find you them,’ or ‘I haven’t any but I’ll try Nanny.’ Thus Hermione, only no one would have suspected Hermione. But Bunny wasn’t made like that, so she said ‘Liar!’ and Sir Charles said, ‘Really, Barbara,’ and Bunny said, ‘“Really Barbara!” Well, of all the damned hypocrites! You were no more looking for aspirin than the man in the moon is. You were looking for traces of hemlock or dropwort or whatever it’s called. If you suspect me of poisoning Elizabeth, why the hell don’t you say so, instead of waiting till my back’s turned and then snooping about my bedroom, you sordid spy?’

  Sir Charles made a face and a sound which indicated teeth on edge, and said, ‘Spare me a vulgar scene, Barbara.’

  ‘Spare you a vulgar scene indeed!’ cried Bunny. ‘Spare me your squalid suspicions!’

  ‘You don’t understand,’ said Sir Charles. ‘You don’t begin to understand, Barbara. I’ve no reason to suspect anyone, but in the case of one’s nearest and dearest one’s naturally eager to make sure …’

  ‘Not “in the case of”, please, Charles,’ said Bunny, and with that anger left her and she said, ‘Poor Charles!’

  ‘What d’you mean?’ said Sir
Charles sharply.

  Bunny couldn’t say what she meant, how pathetic, how old, how denuded he’d looked, shorn of his dignity when, like a child found out, he had jumped away from her cupboard: she couldn’t say how pathetic he seemed now, trying to lie himself out of a situation impossible to his portrait of himself, though evidently not to him. It wasn’t his fault that he believed he could do no wrong … Poor wretch! he’d a code, a code he’d accepted practically in infancy: he knew it, but he didn’t know himself; he had thought and felt and spoken and acted according to his code too long. She could never again respect him, but, faintly amused, she could humour him, just as for pity’s sake she had humoured the invalid Raoul. Slipping off her coat, sitting down at her dressing-table, picking up a comb and passing it through her tangled curls, she said, ‘Poor Charles because of all this worry and because you’ve a wife you just picked up on the Riviera.’ ‘I didn’t pick you up,’ said Sir Charles, affronted. ‘We were properly introduced at the Howlands’ party. But, Bunny, don’t you see — as much for your sake as for mine I wanted to make sure.’ Bunny wanted to say: And are you sure now? and then she didn’t want to make the poor thing lie again, so she said, ‘Yes, I see, Charles. Now buzz off. I want a long, hot bath.’

  ‘I hope the water’s hot for you,’ said Sir Charles kindly. ‘I suppose the hunting party bathed earlier, so I daresay it will be. Don’t be too long; come down into the library and we’ll have a drink before dinner. I’ll tell Hugo and Pat to come too.’ And he left the room with the face of a schoolboy surprised and relieved to have escaped with a pi-jaw.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  THE Chief Constable said, ‘It’s not to-morrow that worries me — obviously we shall get an open verdict; but from then on I simply don’t see what line we can follow. Of course, the fact that the ticket-girl can swear that Marvin left with Rose on Sunday evening doesn’t let him out; he may well have come back, as Treadwell suggests, by car. However, we shall hear from your chaps to-morrow whether his alibi is as watertight in London as it seems to be here. Your suspect is another matter. I can’t see you getting more than you’ve got on Lady d’Estray unless someone’s actually holding out on you, someone who saw her rooting up the dropwort or stewing it or pouring it into the bottle …’

  Price took him up. ‘One of which actions I think it is more than probable someone did see. The mansion has a great many windows, which overlook the fields by the river where I imagine this water-loving plant would be located; they are also overlooked by the terrace. I anticipate questioning the outside staff to-morrow’ — ‘You won’t get much out of old Perry’ put in Treadwell — ‘and there are several junior members of the indoor staff, whom I have not yet interviewed. Young people, being more alert mentally than older ones, are more apt to look about them while they work. Furthermore, as a result of the superior education now provided, they are quicker to perceive the relevancy of what they observe.’

  ‘Oh, that’s what education does for them, is it? I always wondered,’ said the Chief Constable innocently. ‘Well, good luck to you, Price; but I don’t think it was Lady d’Estray. I don’t think the motive’s strong enough.’

  Price said, ‘The only individual with a stronger motive is Mr Hugo d’Estray, and the lawyer, Mr Jardine, assured me that he could have had no prior knowledge of the will. At the time it was drawn up the deceased expressed her opinion that the prospect of inheriting money is detrimental to a young man’s character and she was determined that Mr Hugo should remain in ignorance of her intentions.’

  ‘Well, Hugo was never my bet,’ said the Colonel. ‘My money’s on one of those dam’ paying guests. Old Hudson had a tongue like a knife and I think she snubbed one of them once too often. Not much of a motive, perhaps, but the chap — or the lady — may have had homicidal tendencies anyway. What do we know about any of them?’

  ‘They seem perfectly on the level,’ said Price defensively. ‘Mr Scampnell is connected with a well-known firm of manufacturers. Mr Rose, of course, is of the Jewish persuasion, but his firm — Rosenbaum and Steingletscher, the hatters — have been established for many years: they have spacious premises in the vicinity of Ludgate Hill. If his son were unreliable it is unlikely that he would be retained in the capacity of business manager, and in any case Mr Rose assures me that his conduct has never caused his parents a moment’s anxiety.’

  Treadwell said, ‘Then that only leaves us Marvin.’

  ‘And we shall hear about him to-morrow,’ said the Chief Constable, pushing back his chair, ‘so we might as well get home to our nosebags. Are you tolerably comfortable at.the Red Lion, Inspector? I’m told that the bath-water’s hot, which is the main thing.’

  ‘It was certainly unnecessarily hot this morning,’ Price told him. ‘I’ve no doubt that later in the year the management will be complaining that their allocation of fuel is insufficient for their requirements. I suppose these old-fashioned places are difficult to run, but surely some effort could be made to furnish them tastefully and introduce a few of the ordinary amenities of modern life. I slept badly. Sagging springs and a lumpy mattress are hardly conducive to restful slumber.’

  ‘I have the advantage of you there,’ said the Colonel cheerily. ‘I can sleep on anything — got used to that in the trenches during the Old War. Eat anything too — even what my wife cooks, ha-ha-ha …’

  And that’s a strange way for a man to speak of his wife, thought Price, who, to sustain his portrait of himself, must believe that Valerie was the best cook as well as the cleverest manager and the smartest little woman in Finchley. In point of fact Valerie, like most women in love with cleanliness, was an atrocious cook, and excess of starch and lack of grease in her husband’s diet were manifest in the mirror-fronted Bluebeard’s cupboard of aperients, which, with a cork-seated receptacle for soiled linen, furnished their tin-tiled bathroom.

  The Chief Constable and the Superintendent left the police station together and Price drove back to the Red Lion and ate tinned soup, a potato pie of sausage meat, and a stale slice of plain cake, over which had been poured strawberry jam made of marrows, and custard made of dehydrated milk and custard powder: he did not criticize the meal, for so, at a time and in a state that he intensely admired, are the fruits of earth represented, but he was exasperated by the slowness of the service: it was nearly bedtime when he settled down in the dismally deserted lounge to smoke one of his rare cigarettes and ponder his note-book. He wasn’t an obstinate man and he was able to bring a fresh mind to his problem, but at the end of an hour’s thought he summed up again: her ladyship, and as he turned and twisted through the night he found some comfort in the supposition that on the box mattress of the French marquetry bed in the frivolous pink room, which he had wasted half an hour in searching, Lady d’Estray was tossing in an anguish worse than that, or than pins and needles, or the cramp, which several times seized, alarmingly distorted, and transfixed his big toe.

  He erred. He forgot that Lady d’Estray was Barbara Sallust. Harassed, betrayed, and perhaps in danger of hanging, Bunny’s reaction was to express herself, and the toil and the joy of finding and stringing the words into lines good enough to send the authentic shiver down her back drove all personal anxiety from her mind. It’s the best thing I’ve ever written, she thought, laying down the chewed pencil and the crumpled envelope, punching her pillows, turning off the light; and she slept soundly and dreamlessly until Beatrice brought in her breakfast at eight o’clock.

  Then it was raining. Gusts of wind blew the rain against the windows and shabby leaves were flying from the oak trees in the park. Sir Charles came in and, apparently as unaware that his wife could no longer respect him as he was ignorant that immortal lines, inspired by his perfidy, lay on the bedside table, said that the inquest was at noon and that it would be best to wear something darkish. Bunny said that the black dress she had worn yesterday would do, wouldn’t it? and Sir Charles said she needn’t necessarily wear black — he really meant something longish. Bunny said
she couldn’t start letting hems down now and Sir Charles said he hadn’t asked her to let down hems: he simply meant that a Coroner’s Court wasn’t a place on the Riviera. ‘Worse luck,’ said Bunny, suddenly gripped by nostalgia for the pink villa, the great blue mountains, the idle little port, the shiny sea. Breakfast on the terrace … coffee and peaches … Jean-Paul Bartoli splashing saffron paint on the oars of his emerald green fishing boat … Justin, wet as a seal, coming back over the red rocks from bathing … Marie-Louise Arnotin singing as she mopped the terrace of the Poisson d’Or … what’s your secret, France, for all that is so very little and often the sun shines in England and there are peaches and there’s coffee, though, however you make it, it never tastes the same? It was the Reformation, thought Bunny, and she said, ‘Charles — the Reformation — that’s when England went wrong.’

  Sir Charles at one time had been amused by her flights of fancy, but now he said, ‘What on earth are you talking about? We can’t start discussing history at this time in the morning with an inquest coming off at twelve. You’ve been subpoenaed, so you’ll be questioned, Barbara. You don’t want to hesitate and contradict yourself. You’d better consider carefully what you mean to say.’

  Bunny said, ‘Do I usually hesitate and contradict myself? What’s eating you, Charles?’ She looked him in the eye, and he turned away. ‘Oh, well, if you won’t be advised …’ he said, and left the room.

  The Reformation … thought Bunny.