Death of a Lady (The Inspector Felix Mysteries Book 1)

by R. A. Bentley

  'What to do? His sister was dead and the Major was her killer. His first instinct was to go to the police, but almost as quickly he realised the implications. He had, of course, learned the secret of his paternity from Miss Brown, from whom Genny had no secrets, and knew that in any investigation this would probably come out. His mother would be broken, the Duke made a laughing stock, and the innocent George would lose his title. In short, the family would be ruined. The frightened couple expected Genny's place of concealment to be quickly revealed – she could scarcely be anywhere but the attic – but, to their confusion, it was not. Eventually, and after much discussion, they decided to say nothing. Nothing, after all, would bring her back. I'm not, of course, defending their decision,' here he glanced sidelong at Sir Neville, 'but can quite see why they made it.

  'Six weeks later, war was declared. Lord Andrew quickly volunteered, but not before marrying Miss Brown – he had just turned twenty-one – and settling what money he had on her. Fortunately he survived. For twelve years he's been a devoted and loving husband – they have, incidently, two children – but in all that time, no-one has known of it except Augustus Partridge, his natural father. Rattigan will recall that I felt from the moment I interviewed him that he was putting on an act, but it took a while to realise to what purpose.'

  'Why do you suppose they changed their minds about telling, sir?' asked Yardley.

  Felix shook his head. 'Only Lady Andrew changed her mind. The truth had been eating away at her and she saw a chance to end it. Lord Andrew was furious to start with but he clearly adores her and would probably forgive her anything. Having met her, I can see why. How did we know they were together? It was a reasonable guess. As you chaps rightly pointed out, probably only a private vehicle could have got her so completely and mysteriously away. It seemed likely to have been a car, and few people in those days owned one. Lord Andrew did. We also had the hint from Elsie Strong that Miss Brown was dallying above-stairs. With whom else could it be? Lord George had possibly cast an eye in her direction but was by then pursuing the lovely Róisín, and it was unlikely to be the Duke. It seemed worth looking for the marriage lines and we found them.

  'That didn't give us a current address, but Lord Andrew, while going to prodigious lengths to make his family think him an unattached playboy, had forgotten about his car numberplate. Using that, it took just four hours to find his wife, who fortunately was at home. She was nothing loath to tell the whole story, and we formulated a plan: to confront the Major while surrounded by those whom he would hurt most if he forced a trial. If we could appeal to his better nature and get him to plead guilty, there might be no need to bring the Duchess's secret into it. It was all, of course, a considerable gamble, and her Ladyship knew we could offer no guarantees. She's a courageous woman.'

  Once again he looked to see Sir Neville's reaction, but the Chief Constable simply nodded thoughtfully, giving no indication of his own views. 'Returning now to the Major,' continued Felix. 'We knew he'd been decorated, which didn't sit well with his apparently rather nervous temperament, but he was, of course, ten years older, and had a dicky heart. Age and infirmity can change a man, and, more importantly, we had no reason whatever to suspect him. In nineteen fourteen however, he was still a professional soldier who'd seen action in South Africa and could be bold and decisive when the situation demanded it. Within minutes of killing the woman he loved – and claims still to love – his instinct for self preservation had taken over.

  'The greatest threat to his safety lay, of course, in Miss Brown. For aught he knew, she might be informing against him at that very moment, and somehow he must discredit her story. He could simply have brazened it out, claiming he'd been searching for his niece, but instead he decided to hide the body — no body, no murder. He could scarcely hope for it to remain undiscovered, but it would buy him a little time. He knew the attic intimately, had played in it as a boy, and was even familiar with the cabin trunk. It was the work of minutes to place Genny in it and move the wardrobe. The lamp he borrowed from Miss Brown's room. Sorry, John.

  'To his surprise, no-one came immediately to investigate, and he might have got away from the attic floor unseen had he not encountered Yates and Pearson on the stairs. Offering no comment, he allowed them to confirm for themselves that Miss Brown's room was now untenanted, threatened them with dismissal if they breathed a word of his presence, and waited for them to leave. It appeared that Miss Brown hadn't yet reported him, and this gave him the courage to return downstairs, eventually to join in the search. The events of the night had, however, exhausted him, which is why he volunteered to search the piano nobile, stealing a nap in the blue sitting room, where he had, in fact, never been that night, nor spoken to the Duchess.

  'The next day, having determined by discrete enquiry that no-one had seen Miss Brown since her resignation, the Major bribed Ernie Crabb to say he'd taken her to Welmford that same afternoon. No doubt he hoped that, should she belatedly come forward, no jury would favour the testimony of an unreliable lady's maid over that of a respectable tradesman and a noble lord. Pearson and Yates' silence he probably felt he could rely on, and neither had, in any case, witnessed the murder. He didn't know about Lord Andrew, of course, but he'd unwittingly removed him as a threat.

  'In the following days, the Major succumbed to remorse and did no more to help himself, waiting passively for his crime to be discovered. Only concern for his now-helpless wife kept him from giving himself up. A few weeks later she died. Returning to his regiment, he did his best to get himself killed; a more dignified end, he no doubt felt, than the noose. But it was not to be, and instead he found himself a reluctant hero. Gradually the revulsion at what he had done faded, and by the time the body was discovered he wanted to live.

  'What was our evidence? During the course of the investigation, we'd discovered a great deal about the actors in the drama and their movements on the night of the wedding. That seemed to reduce the likely suspects to a handful; all of them members of the family or the household. A key piece of information, however, was still missing — that Carrington had fiddled the postmortem. Once we knew that, we could be fairly sure of the identity of the murderer. The doctor would hardly have been recruited until the body was discovered, so it had to be someone who was on hand to do the recruiting. Lord Andrew and the Marquis had yet to learn of it, Pearson – or any other servant – was unlikely to have approached someone as eminent as Carrington, and excluding the improbable George, that left only the Major. It turned out that a chum of his had procured from Carrington an abortion for his mistress, and he used that knowledge for blackmail. Afterwards, of course, we found Lady Andrew. Not only was our judgement vindicted but it could no longer be the Major's word against hers.'

  'But Why bother to fiddle the post-mortem at all?' asked Sir Nigel. 'Seems dangerous and unnecessary.'

  'To conceal the pregnancy, sir, and Genny's violent end. Without those two things the death would remain inexplicable; as likely to be misadventure as murder. The Major wanted nothing that might point to his possible involvement. Had he not been discovered in the attic by Pearson and Yates he might have left things as they were. As it was, he probably felt he had no choice. He'd certainly had a lot of time to think it over.

  'And the button, sir?' asked Nash.

  'Ah yes, the button. A step too far, and an ignoble afterthought on the Major's part that will earn him no credit with a judge. As evidence, it has its flaws, but it was useful to us, for by pretending to arrest Pearson we hoped to reassure the Major that he wasn't suspected and thereby get him to our meeting. Staying away would have cast suspicion on him, of course, but we didn't want him to cut and run for it.

  'Then there was Partridge. We'd got our man, but we wanted, if possible, the whole story, and I was pretty sure by then that I knew what it was. I didn't really expect him to come across, and was quite surprised when he did. The poor chap had kept his secret for half a lifetime, getting little out of it except pain, and, like
Lady Andrew, I think he'd had enough. We'd hit it off from the first – he's a nice old boy – and it probably came easier with a stranger.'

  'Lord Andrew told him what had happened?' asked Yardley.

  'Yes, quite early on. Lady Andrew wanted him to know, and Lord Andrew wanted anyway to get to know him. They've become very close.'

  'And the Duchess herself?'

  'A sad case,' averred Rattigan, who, hunched over his beer, had said very little.

  'Yes, she is. You don't have to like her to feel sorry for her. One assumes the Duke wouldn't countenance the idea of someone of his own class fathering his children, instead seeing Partridge – strong, healthy, and not unlike him in tastes and appearance – as a convenient and passive instrument of propagation. After that, she must always have been anxious, and when Genny disappeared she was desperately eager to suggest she had simply run away, fearing what a deeper investigation might reveal. No doubt she believed it anyway, for who would wish to kill her innocent daughter? Well, I can't blame her for that. When, twelve years later, the body was discovered, she turned to her brother-in-law for help, taking him into her confidence. The Major assured her that her secret was safe with him and suggested he approach Carrington; which, of course, he'd already done. Their goals were now the same: to convince us that Genny had been the victim of a simple accident; or at worst that it could not be proven otherwise. Whether she would have backed the Major's alibi regarding the blue sitting room, I don't know. No doubt he would have claimed he'd been searching for the unmentionable child and had promised to keep quiet about it. As for Pearson and Yates, as soon as the body was discovered, they guessed the truth. It's no wonder they were so frightened.

  'What we hadn't anticipated, not that we could have done much about it, was the Duchess's violent reaction towards her newly discovered daughter-in-law. It seems to have been the final straw. Her daughter had been murdered, and her sons, the offspring of a groom, had both married commoners, one of them a lady's maid. To the world her secret remains safe for the moment, but everything she lived for has come to nought. I saw Lord George before I came away, and he says she won't speak to anyone but Yates. One wonders if she'll ever recover.'

  'What about Lord George?'

  'They've told him. They could scarcely do anything else. He says he'd suspected as much for years and seems quite happy with the knowledge. He'll keep up the pretence while the Duke and Duchess are alive, but with the death of the Duke, the title will, of course, become extinct. Probably he'll let the house go. It's already a struggle to maintain it, and he seems to have no great love for the place.'

  'And was he searching for the missing child?'

  'Yes. I suspect with the help of Lord Hoddersham, which suggests it was a relative of his. He, or she, was much given to petty larceny by all accounts, and another guest reported the loss of a watch. To avoid embarrassment, it suited their purpose to blame it on poor Henry Fry, whom they would have sacked anyway. Later, the Duke offered him twenty pounds to keep quiet. You could buy a lot of pigs with twenty pounds, and it must have got him nicely started. We learned that from Merriman, who acted as the Duke's go-between, although he loyally refuses to say who the child was.'

  'And Lady George, sir?' Asked Yardley.

  'Ah, indeed,' said Felix, relieved to find that he could speak of her quite naturally. 'You know, this might sound fanciful, but we do rather wonder if she'd had her suspicions all along. She was uniquely placed in some ways to do so — a perceptive outsider with no preconceived notions about the family she'd married into. She'd observed her husband and Partridge together and got to know the old man pretty well, so might have guessed that part of it. For aught I know, Partridge may have told her. There's not an ounce of snobbery in her, and she doesn't care, I'm sure, how things have turned out, as long as her husband is happy. Probably she didn't want to be seen to interfere so she proceeded quietly to help us, leaving things to fall out as they would. As it transpired, we'd have got there without her; we had only to reach the point of calling in Howard Benyson, which I feel was inevitable. Without him, we'd have struggled I think.'

  'Just one little thing, sir,' said Nash. Why wasn't lady Genny wearing her wedding ring, when we found her?'

  Felix smiled. 'Well spotted, John! Why wasn't she? The reason came to us quite late.'

  'Came to you,' said Rattigan.

  'Well all right, came to me. You'd have got there soon enough. As it happens, it made no practical difference to our investigation, although it did clear up some minor confusion. There was clearly an urgent need that night for Genny to see Ginny Brown, or she wouldn't have gone up to her room. What might it have been? Our first thought, as you know, was that she'd encountered her murderer and was running away from him. Knowing Miss Brown was in her room, she hoped to find sanctuary there. That fitted well enough with our other evidence. But why, I wondered, did she not scurry down the backstairs to the safety of the second floor or entrance hall, which she could as easily have done? Why involve Miss Brown in a probably emotional confrontation with her uncle? It seemed a minor point, but later, piecing it all together, I suddenly tumbled to the answer.

  'Firstly, she hadn't, in fact, seen the Major lurking in the darkness, and had no idea she was being followed. Her look of fear, if such it was, was at the sight of Miss Shaddock spying on her. And why had she removed the ring? A bride doesn't lightly remove her ring just hours after having it slipped on her finger. Why had she? And why was she wearing it during the bothering but not when she was found? There was also the awkward fact that several people saw Genny crossing the second-floor landing at about ten-thirty, while Henry Fry claimed to have heard her voice at much the same time in the vicinity of her own rooms on the third floor. She couldn't have been in both places, so who was right? By his own admission, Fry was not a very reliable witness as to time, although his estimate was partly vindicated by Lord George's account of his pursuit of the missing child. However, setting that aside, there was also Fry's vivid description of Genny, clearly wearing her rings but with her bridal veil concealing her face. Why the veil? It can hardly have helped her see her way in the darkened corridors. Teddy will also remember Miss Shaddock's remark that when she found Genny in the bedroom she had appeared much prettier when seen close-to, but that she'd quickly covered her face.

  'Eventually I realised that neither Miss Shaddock, on that first occasion, nor the botherers on any occasion, had seen Lady Genny at all — they had seen Miss Brown. They were both about the same height and colouring and would have been almost indistinguishable when veiled. Lady Andrew later confirmed that this was so. The two of them had previously joked about swapping clothes to tease the botherers, and Genny, always the leader, now egged-on her friend to do it. Miss Brown, eager to cock a snook at Yates and the Duchess, agreed. What a jolly jape, they thought, if they could pull it off! So when Henry Fry heard Genny calling "Is that you, Ginny?" she wasn't calling into her rooms, as we initially assumed, but out of them. For the previous hour or so she'd been waiting in the darkness for Miss Brown to return and thought she'd heard her coming in. It was, of course, Henry, plunging into the broom cupboard. Eventually Miss Brown returned un-caught, and no doubt giggling together at her triumph they hastily swapped clothes again. As soon as the coast was clear, Miss Brown returned to the attic to collect her overnight things and finish packing, prior to decamping to Lord Andrew's room. Genny, meanwhile, set out to rejoin her husband, only to realise Miss Brown was still wearing her rings. She immediately hurried after her, unaware as she did so that the Major had seen her passing. The rest you know. Lord Andrew tells me his wife has never forgiven herself for that fatal oversight, and to this day she wears the wedding ring on a chain around her neck. This tragedy has cast a long shadow.'

  'Lady Genny fainted because she was pregnant, I suppose?' said Yardley.

  'Perhaps. Or maybe it really was wedding nerves. The foreign-looking stranger had nothing to do with it.' Felix gazed around him. 'I think that about
covers it, unless anyone's got more questions.'

  By instinct they now turned to Sir Neville, who appeared to be counting on his fingers. Finally he looked up. 'I make that three accessories after the fact, young man: Lord and lady Andrew and Partridge.'

  'Yes, that's true,' admitted Felix. 'What would you have me do, sir?'

  There was an uncomfortable silence until the Chief Constable pushed back his chair and stood up. 'We'll continue this later in my office, Felix. Anyone fancy another? My shout. Come on, Rattigan, you can help me carry the glasses.' He winked covertly at the others. 'I want to know what lures you use for trout.'

  THE END

  Dear reader, I hope you enjoyed the first Inspector Felix mystery. It was certainly fun to write, and fascinating to research — the impending general strike, the Dorset dialect, addressing the nobility, the cars. 1926 is starting to feel a lot less than 88 years ago. Can I ask you to leave a review? The easiest way is to put Death of a Lady. R. A. Bentley into the Amazon search, which will get you to the appropriate page, then scroll down to the 'write a customer review' box. Kind regards and many thanks in advance.