by Anne Morice
‘It’s not the absence of plot which bothers me,’ I went on. ‘On the contrary, there seems to be almost too much of it. The real trouble is that none of it hangs together.’
‘I tend to agree with you. In fact, I begin to sense my audience losing the thread and becoming a little restive at this point.’
‘Well, I hope there are enough threads for some of them to cling on to at least one; and, if I were writing it, I should now start to put the emphasis on the missing photographs.’
‘And what is so significant about them?’
‘The fact that they stick out like two identical sore thumbs, one on each hand, and are therefore likely to be attached to the same pair of arms. That’s one thing that seems to set them apart. Another is that, however senseless and baffling the removal of those photographs may appear to us, to someone else it must have made very good sense indeed. Whereas everything else that’s happened either was or could have been inadvertent and, given the slapdash attitude to premises and property which exists in the Carrington household, could still be found to have an innocent explanation. In this category I include the temporary disappearance of the keys and the fact that someone borrowed the car. Not so the photographs; they must have been taken for a specific purpose. That’s why I feel so strongly that if we could only find out who did take them and why, we should have all the answers.’
‘Ah well, perhaps it’s a little early for that. We’re only just into Act Two, you know, and the dénouement is still some way off. In the meantime, how were all the other threads tangling themselves up when you left this evening?’
‘Marc telephoned just after lunch. Of course, the first thing he wanted to know was how Elsa had managed to dig him out, but she side-tracked that and went straight into the sad tale of Marigold. That rocked him completely, as she had known it would and he told her he’d get the five o’clock train, which stops at Dedley. She was going over to meet him because, of course, his car won’t be there. Actually, as I need hardly say, it’s been impounded by the police, who are going over it, inch by inch, with powerful microscopes, but she didn’t mention that. She simply said it had been towed away because of illegal parking.’
‘All of which rather suggests to me that she wouldn’t trust him to come back, if he knew the police were beating on his door, but, as you say, we probably have enough threads in our hands already, without adding to them. What about the suicide?’
‘Not a lot. Robin spoke to Inspector Bledlow before he left, but he didn’t get much out of him. Only that there appears to be not one shred of evidence to indicate that it was anything other than suicide.’
‘Oh, that’s a blow!’
‘Yes, but I’m afraid we’re stuck with it. She even left a note.’
‘Did she indeed? And what did that say?’
‘Robin couldn’t tell me the exact wording, but it was plain enough to leave no doubts. It was in a sealed envelope, addressed to Diane, and it seems that one of the younger children found it.’
‘Where?’
‘In a broken down outhouse which they use as a sort of games room. That was a strange place to leave it, wasn’t it? Perhaps it does indicate that she was really quite unbalanced. Or do you suppose she put it there in the hope of ensuring that it was read by Diane alone? Not by her father, for instance?’
‘Was there anything about him in it?’
‘Not as far as I know. It was simply to the effect that she couldn’t stand living under the terrible strain any longer and she knew Diane would understand and forgive her. Terribly pathetic, really. Millie thinks this strain she was living under was caused by her mother’s dottiness, but I have another idea about that. In any case, if her last wish was that only Diane should read it, she was thwarted in that too, because it appears that Diane immediately telephoned the Inspector, who immediately sent one of his minions to collect it. So it will doubtless be read aloud at the inquest and probably figure on the front page of The Dedley Mercury as well.’
‘Still, I hardly see that she could have suppressed it.’
‘Don’t you? There are such things as garden incinerators, you know, not to mention pottery kilns. Perhaps I’ve been infected by Millie’s prejudice, but it sounds to me as though Diane didn’t give a damn about respecting her sister’s last wishes, and all she minded about was getting it clearly established as suicide. The fact that it was marked Private and Confidential didn’t bother her for one minute.’
‘But you don’t suggest that it was a forgery?’
‘No, I don’t. It’s just that I got the impression, talking to her, that fundamentally Marigold was probably as sane as most people and therefore she may have had a much more rational motive for killing herself than she chose to reveal. And what depresses me most is that I doubt if we shall ever find out . . . oh, hallo!’ I said, switching to the jolly prefect voice, as Millie came plunging into the summer house and collapsed on to a cane chaise longue. ‘You look hot and a trifle bothered.’
As it happened, she looked several other things as well, including heavily stained round the mouth and chin, but I had been careful to choose two of the least offensive epithets which came to mind.
‘I am,’ she replied gloomily, ‘and I do think it was perfectly rotten of Robin to bring me those chocolates.’
‘I know,’ I admitted, ‘but it was partly my fault. I forgot to warn him that you were on a diet and I’m afraid he’s still apt to think of you as about eight years old. I did suggest that he should take them back and exchange them for something else, but unfortunately there were only about four left by then.’
‘And now there are none left and I feel like a Strasbourg goose.’
‘No, no, that’s nonsense! You’re not in the least like a Strasbourg goose. You look lovely; most of the time.’
‘Well, kindly shut up, because I know I don’t and, furthermore, I’m very badly adjusted, psychologically.’
‘Oh no, you’re not . . .’ I began but Toby interrupted:
‘For God’s sake, Tessa, do stop being so bossy and patronising. You’re the one who’s treating her as though she were eight years old. If she chooses to see herself as a psychologically maladjusted goose, that’s her business, so don’t interfere.’
Toby was now visibly preening himself on the grateful and admiring looks he was getting from Millie for his wisdom and tolerance, and I reminded myself to tell him later that she only valued his opinions because he already had one foot in the grave.
Aloud, I said, ‘Okay, I apologise. Just tell us why you think you are and I promise to give you my silent and steadfast attention.’
‘Because I can’t get it right, whichever way I play it. Sometimes I get so choked up by Ma’s passion for helping people and mixing herself up in their lives and quite often I have the sneaking feeling that they’d much sooner be allowed to work things out for themselves, which is how I feel when she tries to take my life over. So that makes me go to the opposite extreme and then something like this happens and I feel awful about it.’
‘Something like what happens?’ Toby asked.
‘It’s Marigold, really,’ she replied, starting to unwind a loose strip of binding on the arm of her chair, which he heroically refrained from protesting about, although I could see it was driving him to the edge of madness.
‘What about Marigold?’
‘It’s what I’m awfully afraid I may have done to her yesterday. It’s not only the chocolates and a few strawberries which are making me feel sick. Ever since I heard about Marigold hanging herself I feel sick practically the whole time.’
‘There’s nothing maladjusted about that,’ I assured her, breaking my vow. ‘I imagine we all do.’
‘Yes, but at least you lot haven’t got all this remorse looming over you. There was nothing you could have done about it.’
‘And what makes you believe you could have done anything about it?’
‘I don’t know whether I could or not. The point is that I didn’t bot
her to find out. I passed by on the other side, you might say.’
‘When was this, Millie?’
‘Yesterday evening, about five o’clock, I should think. You remember how we’d spent practically the whole afternoon ringing up everyone under the sun who might know where Marc was? In the end I got so fed up with it I could have screamed. It was one of those times when I longed to say, “He’s twenty-two, for God’s sake, and not exactly mentally handicapped. Why can’t he be left to work out his own problems and ask for your help when he needs it?” Anyway, when we’d run out of people to ring up, Ma went upstairs to rest and you and Robin skipped off somewhere, to the golf course or something, and I decided to work off some of the bad temper by going to see my friend Janie. She’s a student at Dedley Art School now, but her parents live in Sowerley and she spends weekends with them. She’s very cool and she doesn’t ask any questions, unless you’re in the mood for them, which I certainly was not. Anyway, the first person I saw when I went out of the gate was Marigold and it was funny, really. I’d never noticed it before, but she looked exactly like her mother. You never met Mrs Hearne, did you, but she has this peculiar way of walking, as though she knew it was important to get where she was going to, only she couldn’t remember where it was.’
‘And where was Marigold going?’
‘Well, that’s it, isn’t it? That’s the awful part about it, because, you see, she can really only have been going to our house, can’t she? I mean, after that there isn’t anything else except woods and she had plenty of those at home.’
‘So what happened?’
‘When she saw me she looked sort of scared, at first, then she started to look pleased and she dashed up and said, “Oh, Millie, I’m so glad to see you, I’ve been so worried . . .” Well, you know, I used to quite like Marigold, she was easily the best of that bunch, but I certainly wasn’t feeling in the mood for her just then. Besides, I wanted to get down and see Janie and hear a bit of sense, for a change. So I said, “Sorry, Marigold, can’t stop now, I’m in an awful rush”, and I walked straight on. So now can you see why I feel such a skunk?’
‘Did you look back after you’d left her?’
‘Yes, once I did because, you know, I could feel her watching me; like they say in books, her eyes boring into my back. So I turned round and there she was, just standing in the middle of the lane and staring at me. After that I didn’t look round again. End of sad story.’
It would have ended there anyway, because Mrs Parkes presented herself in our midst, looking irritatingly suntanned and with her hair bleached about four shades lighter than normal. Toby had prepared me for this. ‘All carefully created with make-up and hair dye, mark you,’ he had told me, ‘but it amuses her to rub salt in the wound by pretending that she has been basking in the sun for ten days.’
‘Are you ready for us, Mrs Parkes?’ he now asked in subservient tones.
‘Came to tell you that the soufflé will be on the table in exactly ten minutes. Just time for a nice wash and brush up,’ she added, giving Millie a rather straight look, followed by an oblique one at the long strip of cane which now hung in dejected coils from the arm of the chaise longue.
‘That’s not bad, wouldn’t you say?’ Toby asked me, as we sauntered back to the house.
‘Being in soufflé-land again, you mean?’
‘Oh, that too, of course, but I was really referring to the sad little encounter between Millie and Marigold.’
‘I didn’t notice anything particularly good about it.’
‘Not from their point of view, perhaps, and, in fact, it’s not quite right as it stands, but I do think it might be worked up into quite a good curtain line for Act Two, Scene One, don’t you?’
MONDAY
‘Did you ever discover what David Trelawney was so anxious to see you about?’ I asked the next morning.
Marc and Millie were still in bed, Marc having been safely tucked up in his since about an hour before our return from dining with Toby on Sunday evening, when it had been quite a relief to learn that he was spending the night in his own room and not a police cell.
Inspector Bledlow had apparently accepted the explanation for his sudden departure as being due to purely personal reasons, having doubtless turned up the fact, in some intervening investigations, that Marc had recently been jilted by his young lady; and doubtless also his so-called voluntary return had counted as another point in his favour. He had been requested not to leave Pettits Grange again, without notifying the police, but otherwise was still a free man.
‘Yes, I did,’ Elsa replied. ‘He rang up just after you and Millie left and asked if he could have my advice about a matter which was bothering him. I wanted to know why he couldn’t say whatever it was on the telephone, but he said he didn’t think it would be suitable. He sounded a bit pained, as a matter of fact.’
‘I expect it was really me he was pained with. Probably thought I’d forgotten to pass on the message.’
‘Well, we didn’t go into that, but I’d become quite curious to know what all the secrecy was about, by then, so I told him that I had to go into Dedley to meet someone off a train, but that I’d leave ten minutes early and call in on my way.’
‘Which you did?’
‘Which I did. It was quite one of the most absurd and yet worrying little problems I’ve ever been required to deal with,’ she replied, then drifted off into a kind of dream, so that for a minute or two I was quite afraid that I was now to regard the subject as closed.
However, she then appeared to wake up and, focussing on me again, she said, ‘But perhaps I’ve missed something terribly obvious. You must see what you can make of it.’
‘I’ll try my best.’
‘It’s a story about a handkerchief.’
‘Oh, really?’ I asked, somewhat taken aback by this unexpected opening. ‘How quaint!’
‘You remember Tim Macadam, Louise’s husband?’ she then asked, with what appeared to be irrelevance running riot.
‘Yes, vividly.’
‘Do you know why he’s called Tim?’
‘I suppose I just sort of took it for granted that it was short for Timothy,’ I said, doing my best to keep in step.
Elsa shook her head: ‘No, he is called Tim because his irresponsible parents saw fit to have him christened Theodore Ignatius and ever since he was a schoolboy he’s been known to his friends as Tim.’
‘I quite understand.’
‘Good! And perhaps you also remember hearing about Alice Hawkins, who works at Pettits Farm and also for Louise?’
‘Yes, Elsa, I do.’
‘One of the jobs she does for the Trelawneys, although not for Louise, is the washing and ironing. That is to say, she doesn’t take on big things, like sheets and so on, which are sent to the Storhampton laundry, but she does all the small household linen and also personal stuff, such as David’s shirts. She’s not supposed to do handkerchiefs either, they also go to the laundry, but just occasionally one gets left in a pyjama pocket, or something like that, and finds its way into the machine. So then naturally she irons it and puts it back in his room with the other clean things. Which is more or less what happened last Friday.’
‘More or less?’
‘Unfortunately, there’s a slight mystery surrounding this one. Alice doesn’t go to Pettits on Thursday, that’s her day for Louise, but she was there as usual last Friday. In fact, David told me he’d been down to see her on Thursday evening and had particularly asked her to go, which she consented to, after he’d explained that the police had finished their on-the-spot investigations and everything was back to normal again. In a manner of speaking,’ Elsa added, and then fell silent again.
‘So she went on Friday,’ I prompted, ‘and did the washing and ironing?’
‘Yes, she collected everything up from the linen baskets in both bathrooms and also from a bin in the kitchen and when David came in that evening he found the clean pile lying on his bed. On top of it was a man’s w
hite handkerchief, made of very fine lawn. He knew it wasn’t one of his and when he examined it he saw that on one corner there was a tiny embroidered monogram. The initials were M.I.T., or whichever order you care to put them in. He wanted me to advise him what to do about it.’
‘Why you?’
‘Because his first thought was that he ought to tell the police, but then he saw the significance of those three initials and, since I’m known to be an old and close friend of the Macadams, he decided to consult me first. I can’t say I’m grateful to him. It’s one of the most odious things I’ve ever been consulted about in my entire life.’
‘Because you also think that’s what he should do?’
‘I don’t know what I think. I suppose if I’m honest with myself, I know that, if it weren’t for those blasted initials, I shouldn’t hesitate. As it is, I keep beating my brains out to find some good reason why Tim could have left a handkerchief in that house some time between Wednesday morning, when Alice did the mid-week wash, and approximately eight hours later, when the police were called in.’
‘Then I should stop beating your brains out this very minute,’ I told her, ‘because, obviously, what actually happened is that Alice found the handkerchief lying around in the Macadams’ house when she was working there on Thursday, absent-mindedly stuffed it in the pocket of her apron or overall, and it was still there when the apron or overall went into the Trelawney washing machine on Friday. What’s wrong with that?’
‘Everything, I regret to say. I don’t consider myself to be as sharp as you, but the same explanation had occurred to me too. However, David explained that it couldn’t have happened like that. For one thing, his grandmother enforced a strict rule that the overalls she provided could only be worn on her premises and Alice was forbidden even to take them home with her. That would be quite in character, of course, and I had no difficulty in believing it. Another objection is that, when David didn’t hear from me on Saturday and was trying to make up his mind what to do, he took the handkerchief down to Alice’s cottage, to ask if it belonged to her, but she denied it absolutely. She had no recollection of seeing it until it turned up on the ironing board. He was very tactful about it, mind you, pretended this was only an afterthought and that he’d really come to bring her week’s wages, which he’d forgotten to leave out on Friday. That was the strict truth too, as it happens, all that side of life having been dealt with by his grandmother. I must say, Tessa, that he impressed me rather favourably yesterday. He’s certainly leaning over backwards to do the right thing, without getting any of the neighbours into trouble, in the process. He spoke very kindly about Marc too.’