He let go of the coat rack and drew himself up, squaring his shoulders. ‘I don’t find that very amusing.’
‘It wasn’t meant to be.’ Marjorie was looking at him with one of her narrow-eyed expressions – the kind she wore when she’d smelled some sort of rat. ‘Did you already know she was living at the Hall – before I told you?’
‘Certainly not.’
‘Because it would be just like you to have gone round hot foot and pestered her. Got yourself involved in it all. Then we’d have the police coming round to question you.’
‘What an absurd idea!’
‘No, it isn’t. Remember what a fool you made of yourself over Ursula Swynford before she was murdered? How she played you along like a fish on a line and made fun of you behind your back? I even wondered for a while if you might have killed her in a rage, till I decided you weren’t capable of it. Not you, Roger.’
This was not a compliment, he realized. Far from it. He took off his scarf and coat and hung them carefully back on the rack.
‘Matter of fact, I don’t feel as good as I thought. The old pins are a bit wobbly. I think I’ll go and sit down and take it easy for a bit.’
‘Yes, I should do that, if I were you. We don’t want your flu coming back again.’
He went into the living room and made straight for the cocktail bar, not caring if Marjorie heard him or not. Drink To Me Only With Thine Eyes had reached the end of the first verse by the time his shaky hand had extracted the whisky bottle and poured an extra stiff one.
He sat down in the chair beside the electric fire, his mind still going round in circles. Good God, what a thing to happen! And to think he might have got mixed up in it! Just like he’d been when Ursula had been murdered. Marjorie didn’t know the half of that, of course. She’d no idea that he’d gone up to Ursula’s bedroom and found her dead on the bed – just like the colonel had found Lois Delaney. Well, not quite like that. Lois Delaney had been in the bath, not on the bed – which presumably meant she’d had no clothes on. In the buff! That was shocking, too. Call him old-fashioned but it seemed a damned undignified way to go, especially for a lady like her. The colonel would have felt exactly the same no doubt about that. They’d stand shoulder-to-shoulder on it. Dammit, they were both gentlemen. Men of the world. Appalling thing to happen. Such a beautiful woman! Such a shame!
The major took another large gulp of whisky and shook his head sadly.
Five
The obituary in the newspaper took up nearly the whole page and carried a large photograph of Lois Delaney, obviously taken some years ago. Her chin was resting lightly on one slender hand, her head tilted at a slight angle, her hair a soft dark cloud framing her heart-shaped face and her lips parted in a smile. The colonel found his eyes drawn to that mouth: the same mouth that he had seen in very different circumstances.
He started to read the obituary with interest. She had been born in exactly the same year as himself, which made her considerably older than he had thought. It was clear that she had come from a well-to-do family – father vaguely described as holding directorships, mother the younger daughter of a baronet. She had attended a select private boarding school in Hampshire then gone, not through the grinding mill of RADA or the Central, but straight on to the stage in a junior role in some now-forgotten drawing-room comedy. From there on, she had never looked back. At twenty-one, she had been married a naval officer, Lieutenant Charles Roper. Marriage dissolved less than two years later, so clearly a mistake.
Her steady rise to fame was charted through the many parts she had played. Not heavily dramatic roles with moral messages but ones that had appealed to the legions of theatregoers simply wanting to be entertained and which had showed off all her style and her glamour, as well as her husky voice, to perfection. She had married for the second time, ten years after the first: an actor, Ian Farrell, who had been her leading man on several occasions but who was barely remembered now. That marriage had lasted longer – almost eight years – before it, too, had been dissolved. There had been one son, Rex.
The starring parts had dwindled gradually as trends and times had changed. There had been a few cameo roles in various television series, a supporting part in a film, and then, finally, she had married Bruce King, a wealthy property developer. She had made a reappearance on the West End stage but the play in question had folded after only a few weeks and she had, apparently, retired from acting. She had recently separated from her third husband. The son from her second marriage to the actor survived her.
There was a short article on another inside page, together with another photograph. Actress electrocuted in bath, the headline announced baldly.
Lois Delaney, formerly the toast of the West End, was discovered dead at her country home on New Year’s Day. She had not been seen on the stage or on television or film for many years. Her third marriage to the property tycoon Bruce King had foundered recently and she had been living alone in seclusion while a several million pound divorce settlement was being hammered out by top London lawyers. Miss Delaney was said to have been suffering for some time from depression which had required treatment in a London clinic. An inquest is to be held.
There was a knock at the door and he knew from the crashing impact of the iron knocker that it was Naomi. She was wearing her matador’s cape, moon boots and a very large fur hat that made her look like a ferocious Cossack from the Steppes.
‘Found it in an old trunk up in the attic,’ she said, seeing his startled expression. ‘God knows where it came from. Like those coats you find hanging in the hall that must have belonged to somebody but you don’t know who, or how they got there. Real fur, too. Wolf, I think, so I don’t need to feel too guilty about it. Damn cold out and the snow’s like ice. It must have frozen hard last night.’
She stumped into the sitting room, dislodged Thursday and sat down, rubbing her hands. The purple track suit that had appeared from beneath the cloak was made of some kind of shiny velvet. She kept the fur hat on her head.
‘Now, Hugh, tell me all. I hear you were there when that actress woman was found dead at the Hall. It’s all round the village.’
‘Bad news certainly travels fast.’
‘Of course it does. It’s usually more interesting than good. I’d no idea Lois Delaney was living at the Hall. I remember seeing her in some play years ago and, of course, she was in that rather good television series about the rich family living in Belgrave Square. I gather she killed herself.’
‘Not necessarily.’
‘Well, the police will soon find out. She died in the bath, didn’t she? Electrocuted. That’s a horrible way to go. If I were doing it, I’d be in bed, in comfort. Lots of pills and lots of whisky and off to sleep for ever.’
‘I rather agree with you.’ There had been a time, at his lowest ebb after Laura had died, when he had toyed briefly with doing something exactly like that.
‘Well, come on, tell me what happened.’
He told her briefly, sparing unnecessary details. ‘Detective Inspector Squibb seems to be in charge of the case. You remember him from when Lady Swynford was murdered?’
‘Oh, him.’ There was deep scorn in Naomi’s voice. ‘He acts as though he’s one of those smart-aleck TV detectives who know all the answers. I suppose there’ll be an inquest.’
‘I’m afraid so.’
‘You’ll have to go, won’t you? What a bore! Did you know she was married to the very chap who bought the Hall from us – the one I was telling you about? I found that out in the newspaper.’
‘I believe they were separated.’
‘I don’t blame her. Apparently, he buys and sells property all over the place. He also owns a chain of motels, that swanky hotel near here, and the Lord knows what else. One of the tabloid rags called him a multi-millionaire. How much do you think that means?’
‘A lot of millions.’
‘Well, whatever he’s worth, he’s a twister.’
‘To be fair he hasn’t
made too bad a job of your old home – from what I saw of it.’
Naomi snorted. ‘Did you notice the new gates?’
The colonel smiled. ‘They’re rather unfortunate, I agree, but the house has been pretty decently done inside. He’s no cowboy. Tell me, did you ever actually meet him?’
‘Only once – when he came to see the Hall. Jess and I were still living there and I showed him round. He acted as though he was going to live in it himself and, of course, I fell for it. After that, his London lawyers handled everything – beat down the price and blinded us with legal gobbledegook. Jess was already pretty ill at the time, so we weren’t up to much. We must have been a walk-over.’
The colonel said, ‘Lois Delaney had a son by her second marriage. He spent Christmas with her at the Hall.’
‘Well, Inspector Squabb will be grilling him like a pork chop.’
‘It’s Squibb, Naomi. Not Squabb.’
‘Who cares? Was the son there when she died?’
‘No, he’d left around midday on New Year’s Eve.’
‘Perhaps she got depressed when he’d gone. Perhaps they’d had a row and it had upset her. If my son had stayed any longer at Christmas I expect we’d have been at each other’s throats. Much as I love Paul, I often think it’s quite a good thing that he and his family live twelve thousand miles away in Sydney.’
She stuck out her wrist and consulted the man’s watch that she always wore. ‘Golly, is that the time? I must go, Hugh. I promised Ruth I’d call to have a chinwag about plants.’
He saw her to the door and helped her on with the red cape. As she strode away through the snow in the direction of the Manor, the colonel was amused to observe a tell-tale glint from the front window of Miss Butler’s cottage across the village green.
Freda Butler lowered the binoculars. After a while they made her arms ache and she wondered sometimes how the U-boat captain had coped. But, of course, he would have been a strong young man and used to all the hardship and rigours of a life at sea. She had a sneaking admiration for the U-boat crews, though naturally she would never have admitted it to anybody, least of all her father, the late admiral. Of course, it was appalling how many good British seamen had been killed by the U-boats – not to mention women and evacuee children in the passenger liners – but she had read about the German losses and noted that hardly any of the U-boat crews had survived the war. There was no doubt in her mind that though they had been very wicked, they had also been very brave. Miss Butler had once suffered a panic attack on the Piccadilly Line of the London Tube and the thought of going to war sealed up in a metal tube deep under the sea was too terrifying to contemplate.
She had never been quite clear how the binoculars had come into her father’s possession. She was aware – though it had never actually been discussed between them – that he had spent most of the war sailing a desk, not depth-charging enemy U-boats. At any rate, the binoculars had lain forgotten for years in a drawer and had passed to her, by chance, after his death, along with a few small chattels and a formal studio photograph of the admiral in full dress uniform. The rest of his estate had been willed to a naval museum, together with a fine oil portrait of the admiral which now hung on the museum wall and his uniform and medals which were displayed close by in a glass case. The Zeiss binoculars had not been mentioned in the will and she had not offered to hand them over as well.
Miss Butler knew that she had been a disappointment to her father. She had not been the son he had wanted, nor had she achieved high rank in the Royal Navy or had anything but a very mediocre career. Whenever she looked at his photograph she was reminded painfully of this.
After a moment, arms rested, she raised the binoculars again and made another sweep of the green. The colonel had gone back into his cottage and Naomi Grimshaw had disappeared around the corner – doubtless on her way to the Manor. Miss Butler had heard that dear Ruth was planning to open some kind of plant shop and that Mrs Grimshaw was going to help her with it. It seemed a very good idea. She didn’t think they would charge the sort of high prices that the big garden centres asked and the plants would be home-grown, not raised in some foreign country and brought over in juggernaut lorries. She would like to buy a few herself for her little garden – the old-fashioned kind, not those garish modern things.
It was also rumoured that Mrs Grimshaw was going to give gardening lectures at the Manor, which would be another good thing. She had heard her speak at the Women’s Institute meetings and she was always most interesting and very knowledgeable.
Now, if young Dr Harvey could persuade Ruth to marry him, they could settle down at the Manor and it would never need to be sold to outsiders or suffer the same sad fate as the Hall.
Miss Butler swept the green from side to side a few times and then stiffened, like the binoculars’ original owner sighting a quarry. A car had appeared on the far side and was making its way slowly along the road, which must be exceedingly slippery after last night’s hard frost. It had turned so cold that long icicles were hanging from the eaves of her cottage roof. The car didn’t belong to anybody in the village – she knew them all: Dr Harvey’s grey Renault; the Cuthbertsons’ much-dented Escort; Mrs Grimshaw’s bright red Metro; Ruth Swynford’s old Land Rover; the new vicar’s maroon Vauxhall, its front bumper tied on with a piece of string, and so on. This car was black and, as it stopped outside the colonel’s cottage, two men got out – one young, one old. Not gentlemen – she could have told that even without the binoculars. They looked to her very much like policemen, in which case it would be to do with Miss Delaney’s tragic death.
The colonel had not said anything about it when he had delivered the Save the Donkey collection. Like herself, and unlike many in the village, he was not a gossip and was always very considerate of other people’s feelings. He had probably felt that the news might upset her. A most chivalrous man, as she had cause to know first-hand.
But if he had happened to mention Miss Delaney when he had brought the collection tin, Miss Butler might have let slip that she had known her many years ago. Not very well, it was true, but she had come across her once or twice in her Wren days when Miss Delaney had been married to one of the young naval officers – Lieutenant Roper. Miss Butler had admired the same handsome young officer herself, but of course, there had never been any question of him returning her regard.
Lois Delaney had already been a well-known name and whenever she had appeared at some cocktail party or dinner in the Mess, there had always been a great flurry of excitement, with people craning their necks and standing on tiptoe to catch a glimpse of her. Even her late father had fallen under the spell, Miss Butler recalled. He had been far nicer to Miss Delaney than he had ever been to herself and she remembered, too, how bitter she had felt about it at the time. She glanced now at the photograph of her father, prominently displayed on the top of the bureau. He stared back, his gaze tinged with impatience: the impatience that she had known so well.
She would not have told the colonel, however, that she had been aware that Miss Delaney had moved into the Hall. It had come about quite by chance. She had gone to the dentist in Dorchester some weeks ago – a tiresome toothache and had picked up one of the daily newspapers to read in the waiting room. Not at all the sort of paper she usually read. Indeed, she had been quite shocked by its contents. Whatever was the world coming to? There had been a photograph of Miss Delaney in the gossip column, seen with her third husband who was, apparently, a very rich property tycoon. Unfortunately, the marriage had broken down and they were getting divorced. It was expected that Miss Delaney would be awarded a substantial settlement. At least ten million pounds was the figure mentioned. To Miss Butler, who subsisted on a very modest pension from the Royal Navy, such a sum was unimaginable. She had read on and discovered that, meanwhile, Miss Delaney had gone to live in one of the properties that her husband had bought and converted into flats. A large Victorian country house in a village in Dorset, near Dorchester, as it happened. Mis
s Butler had torn out the piece – very quietly so nobody else in the waiting room had noticed – and stowed it away in her handbag. Later, she had read it again and decided that the house in question might be none other than the Hall at Frog End.
She had toyed with the idea of calling there. She would knock at the flat door and say, ‘I’m sure you don’t remember me, Miss Delaney, but I’m Admiral Butler’s daughter. We met many years ago.’
In her imagination, the actress replied with a warm smile, ‘Of course I remember you, Miss Butler. How lovely to see you again. Do come in and have a cup of tea.’
It was some time before she had found the nerve to put this to the test and, when she did, nothing had gone as she had hoped. First of all, the Hall front door had been firmly shut and locked and the flat bells were marked by numbers without names so that she had no idea which one to ring. After a moment, she had walked round to the back of the house where there was a terrace overlooking the lawn. She could remember the gardens when the Gurney family had still been in residence and the village fête had sometimes been held there, instead of at the Manor. When Naomi Grimshaw had divorced her husband and come back to live at her former home again, she had managed to keep the beautiful gardens going with the aid of one old gardener. But then, of course, Mr and Mrs Gurney had both died and so had the gardener, and the family fortunes were clearly running out. Mrs Grimshaw and her sister had battled on but Jessica Gurney had fallen ill and, in the end, there had been little choice but to sell the Hall.
Sadly, there had been sweeping changes, Miss Butler had noted: flower beds taken out; trees and shrubs cut down and cleared to make way for new lawn; a charming Victorian gazebo removed. The old rose garden of tall and scented standards had been replanted with rows of modern dwarfs, winter-pruned to within an inch of their lives. It had all reminded her of a public municipal park, planned entirely for easy maintenance.
THREE SILENT THINGS a cozy murder mystery (Village Mysteries Book 2) Page 7