by Clara Benson
Mr. Wray gave a deep sigh and shook his head.
‘I half-hoped you had forgotten that, Mr. Pilkington-Soames,’ he said. ‘I assure you I have been most distressed by the whole affair.’
‘Is this the thing you feared?’
‘I do not know what I feared, although I will confess that I felt it had something to do with Professor Coddington. But never did I imagine it would be anything so dreadful as this.’
‘How could you have? I must say, though, that if you’d asked me which of us was most likely to be murdered, I should have fastened upon him as the prime candidate.’
‘Yes, indeed,’ said Mr. Wray sorrowfully. ‘It is not for us to judge, but I am very much afraid he may have brought it upon himself.’
‘Well, I’m all for judging anyone who thinks he has the right to go about lifting other people’s valuable heirlooms on a whim, although personally I’d have thought that an ignominious ejection from the house was a more appropriate punishment than a heavy object to the cranium—speaking of which, has your headache gone now?’
‘Ah, yes, it has eased somewhat,’ said Mr. Wray cautiously.
‘Excellent. Then I suppose we needn’t expect any more murders for the present,’ said Freddy. ‘I do beg your pardon,’ he added, as he saw Mr. Wray’s expression. ‘I can’t help being facetious at times. It’s a habit of mine, and it’s got worse since I became a reporter, as that sort of thing is positively encouraged at the paper, but sometimes one forgets that it’s not welcome everywhere. Still, I’m glad to hear you’re on the mend.’
Mr. Wray made a gracious reply. They were then rejoined by Dr. Bachmann, who had overheard something of the conversation.
‘I am very sorry for the Duchess,’ he said. ‘It is most regrettable that she should have to suffer such a terrible event in her own house.’
‘Oh, yes,’ said Mr. Wray, returning to his customary warmth of manner. ‘She is a delightful woman—quite delightful! Indeed, I cannot praise the family highly enough. I know there are those who wish to see them discredited, but fortunately they are in the minority. You know the Duke and Duchess well, I believe?’
‘Yes,’ said Bachmann. ‘The Duke and I were friends at Oxford many years ago, when he was still plain Cedric Wareham, and we have continued to write to each other over the years. I also knew Mrs. Wareham, as she then was, and I have been pleased to find that she is still as kind and unaffected as ever.’
‘Most unaffected indeed. The Duchess in particular has shown me nothing but courtesy ever since I arrived. Nothing is too much trouble for her. Which reminds me—this morning I heard that the repairs on my house are almost complete. This is good news, of course, but I confess that I shall be sorry to leave Belsingham, for the Duke and Duchess have made me feel quite at home—quite at home.’
‘I wonder when the police will allow us to leave,’ said Dr. Bachmann.
‘Soon, I dare say,’ said Freddy. ‘Once they’ve finished asking everybody questions. Have they spoken to you yet?’
‘Yes,’ replied Bachmann. ‘I had nothing of use to tell them, alas. I heard Lady Rose scream, as did everybody else, and came out into the corridor, but then I returned immediately to bed. I saw nothing of the professor.’
‘You heard the scream from the East Wing, did you?’ said Freddy.
Bachmann hesitated.
‘No, I was already up. I could not sleep, so I decided to take a turn about the house. I often do the same at home—although naturally it does not take nearly so long to walk around my own little house.’
‘But you didn’t go downstairs?’
‘No. I only got as far as the head of the stairs. I do not know where I should have gone after that, but I happened to glance along the corridor of the West Wing and saw something that arrested me for several moments—a ghostly apparition, floating along the corridor. Once I had got over my shock I realized somebody was carrying it, and that there must be a game afoot, but for a moment I was quite frightened. I understand it was some of the young men of the house playing a joke.’ He regarded Freddy with a twinkle in his eye. ‘Then Lady Rose screamed and so I came to see what was the matter.’
Mr. Wray shivered.
‘It is getting a little cold,’ he said. ‘The clouds have come over. Perhaps we might go indoors.’
Dr. Bachmann agreed, and the two of them departed. Freddy was just about to go and look for Daphne, who had been mysteriously elusive for most of the afternoon, when he spied Lavinia Philpott by a raised flower bed, pulling at weeds in a ruffled sort of way. She moved to pick up a heavy plant pot and he hastened forward to help her, but she lifted it effortlessly in her strong arms and arranged it in a better position.
‘Hallo, Mrs. P,’ he said.
She straightened up and drew a breath, and he prepared for an outburst.
‘I’ve just had a most trying interview with the police,’ she said indignantly. ‘I told them I wasn’t accustomed to this sort of thing, and asked them how they could possibly think that I had anything to do with Professor Coddington’s death, but they were quite implacable, and insisted on asking me a lot of rude questions.’
‘Dear me,’ said Freddy. ‘What sort of questions?’
‘About our life in India, and what exactly we were doing there. Someone overheard the professor say he knew India very well, you see, so they kept asking me whether I’d known him when Mr. Philpott was alive, and whether there was anything he knew to my disadvantage. Well, naturally, the very idea is absurd! I’d never even heard of Professor Coddington before I came to Belsingham. He said he’d been to Mahjapara, but it’s a big place and I certainly never met him. And the suggestion that I might be hiding all sorts of secrets is pure impertinence, if you ask me.’
‘I shouldn’t worry about it,’ said Freddy. ‘They asked me a lot of silly questions too. They have to do it, just so they can eliminate people from the inquiry.’
‘That would be all very well if one didn’t have the feeling that they were trying to trip one up,’ said Lavinia. ‘I don’t know what they expected me to admit, but I felt as though they thought I was lying all the while.’
‘Yes, they do have a way of making one feel guilty, don’t they? Never mind—they can’t arrest you just on a suspicion.’
Lavinia let out a little shriek and put a hand to her ample bosom.
‘Arrest me? What a dreadful thought! I should die if they arrested me, I know I should! Goodness me! What would people think?’
She seemed unduly appalled at the idea, so much so that the thought darted involuntarily into Freddy’s head that perhaps this was not her first encounter with the police. But there was no reason to suppose she had had anything to do with the murder, since Freddy had seen her with his own eyes out in the corridor with the others, and so he said curiously:
‘What do you think happened to Professor Coddington?’
At that she sniffed.
‘I’m sure I don’t know,’ she said. ‘Why should I have an opinion on the matter? Naturally, I feel every sympathy for the Duchess, but one doesn’t expect this sort of unpleasantness in the house of a duke, does one?’
Freddy wanted to ask why a duke should be any more immune to murder in his house than a man of lesser stature, but she had not finished. She went on:
‘Why, Lady Turpin would never have allowed such a thing to happen in her home! She was quite the hostess, you know—a great beauty, of course, at the very head of our little society back in Mahjapara—and at her dinner-parties everything had to be just so—everything in exactly the right place on the table. She confided to me once that she even changed the colour of the napkins to match her dress. Quite the most painstaking attention to detail! And she served ten, twelve, even fourteen courses at some of her larger parties. Her evening entertainments were attended by all the most important English people in the area—although there was one odd
little Danish man who was occasionally invited—oh, and Mrs. O’Reilly too, but she was the cousin of an earl, so one let it slide and did one’s best to ignore the accent.’
‘Naturally,’ said Freddy.
‘But to be woken up in the middle of the night like that! I don’t sleep at all well, you understand. I should have suffered it without complaint, but my doctor insisted I take a preparation of his own devising—all perfectly innocuous, and only for a short while—I was very firm about that—and I must say it has been miraculous in its effects. Usually I take just two drops and sleep soundly until morning, but with all the commotion last night the mixture did not do its job, and I was roused from my bed along with everyone else. One doesn’t like to be seen in dishabille, but fortunately this is a respectable household, and so I knew there was nothing to fear—and all the other women were up, anyway. I must say, however, that Mrs. Fitzsimmons was quite unsuitably attired for the time of year—I was just about to step forward and warn her that she was likely to catch a cold in that flimsy silk nightgown of hers, when Mr. Wray came out of his room unexpectedly and made me jump, so it slipped my mind. Poor thing, I believe he took a bigger fright than I did—he clutched the door handle as though for dear life and looked as though he had half a mind to run back inside—but that’s nothing to the shock we all got the next morning when we heard the professor had been killed! I declare this is not the sort of thing I am used to, and I am accustomed to mix with some very exalted company—’
She stopped, as though she had forgotten what she had been about to say. Freddy waited, but she did not continue, and instead turned to look towards the house, a puzzled expression on her face.
‘What was I saying?’ she said at last.
‘Something about flimsy silk nightgowns,’ he hazarded.
‘Yes, well whatever it was, this has all been most unsettling. I don’t wonder I forget where I am and what I’m doing half the time—and I’m not the only one to be confused, I’m sure of it.’
She began pulling at the weeds again, and Freddy took the opportunity to make some suitable remark and effect his escape before he could be subjected to a list of all Lavinia’s titled friends. Daphne was nowhere to be seen in the garden, but as he looked back at the house he thought he saw someone wearing a pale frock standing just inside the French windows, and so decided to go in that way, but when he entered he found not Daphne but Iris, who was sitting coolly on a sofa, although she had certainly been watching him through the window only a moment before. He was about to pass through when she said:
‘Well? Aren’t you going to tell me what you’ve been finding out?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘You’ve been nosing around, haven’t you? I know you—you can’t resist a mystery. I’ll bet you’ve been asking people all sorts of questions.’
‘Perhaps one or two,’ he admitted.
‘Have you found out who did it?’
‘Who did what?’ he said without thinking.
‘Why, who killed Professor Coddington, of course! What else?’
‘Ah, yes. I haven’t the foggiest. Most of the house was up and yet no-one was anywhere near the professor, so I can only conclude that nobody killed him, and that something heavy fell on his head and then rolled away.’
‘Don’t be absurd,’ she said. ‘Somebody must have done it. It wasn’t me, in case you were wondering.’
‘I never thought for a second it was,’ he said.
‘I might have bashed you on the head, but not Professor Coddington,’ she said, with a gleam of mischief in her eye.
‘I expect Ralph would say the same.’
‘Oh, Ralph,’ she said dismissively. ‘There wasn’t the slightest use in your playing that trick on him, you know. He hasn’t a sense of humour and wouldn’t see the joke. He didn’t kill the professor either, by the way.’
‘No, I don’t suppose he did,’ said Freddy.
‘He wouldn’t have the imagination. And besides, he has no motive.’
‘And therein lies the difficulty,’ said Freddy. ‘Nobody seems to have a motive.’
‘Apart from everyone in your family.’
‘What do you mean?’ he said, surprised.
‘Why, didn’t you hear him? He was talking about all sorts of dire secrets that ought to be exposed to the world for the good of humanity.’
‘But that was all nonsense,’ said Freddy. ‘Nobody really believed him. And there are no secrets in this family that anybody cares about. Not really.’
‘Are you quite sure?’ she stood up and came across to where he was standing. ‘What about the pearls?’ she said quietly.
‘What do you know about that?’ he said quickly, and she laughed.
‘I’m not stupid. Mrs. Dragusha has been dropping hints all over the place since she got here, and then that little man came who looked like a pawnbroker. They’re not the real pearls, are they?’
‘No,’ he admitted after a moment. ‘They’re a clever forgery, it seems.’
‘Then what happened to the real ones? I thought they’d been locked up for months. How could anybody get at them?’
‘There are a number of possible explanations,’ he said non-committally.
‘Yes, and one of them is that I took them, isn’t it? Don’t look like that—you must have thought it.’
‘I promise you the idea never entered my head,’ he said.
‘Then you’re an awful fool,’ she replied. ‘You must know I tried them on the other day. As far as I know I’m the only person outside the family to have touched them since they came out of the safe. If someone has taken them then who more likely than Lady Rose’s poor, envious friend who has no valuable jewellery of her own?’
‘You’re not envious, are you?’
‘Horribly,’ she said. ‘I like pretty things as much as anybody, and I shall never own anything half so beautiful or fabulously expensive. How can you be sure I wasn’t seized by a sudden temptation and took the opportunity to pocket them the other day?’
‘What, and then replace them with a forgery?’
‘Perhaps I have a lot of shady friends,’ she said solemnly. ‘You haven’t seen much of me lately, have you? How do you know Ralph isn’t secretly running a gang of international thieves who rampage around the houses of the aristocracy, stealing anything they can get their hands on? Perhaps I only agreed to marry him because I knew he’d shower me with stolen jewellery and fur coats.’
She glared grimly at him. It was not in the least convincing.
‘Idiot,’ he said. ‘I might believe it of you, but not of Ralph.’
Her face relaxed and she let out a peal of laughter.
‘Can you imagine it?’ she said. ‘Poor Ralph, I oughtn’t to make fun of him, but he does invite it, rather.’ They smiled at one another, then her face turned suddenly serious. ‘Do you promise you don’t suspect me?’
‘Not at all.’
‘Good. I should be awfully upset if you did.’
She frowned, then stepped closer and brushed some cigarette-ash off his jacket.
‘That’s better,’ she said, then gave him another smile and went out.
When Freddy came out into the hall, he heard a voice say, ‘Psst!’ He looked about him and saw Valentina Sangiacomo standing in the shadow of a large bust of Plato, glancing around.
‘What is it?’ he asked.
‘I might have something for you,’ she replied in a low voice. ‘But I haven’t got time now—the dressing-bell’s about to go and she’ll want me. What about after dinner? Come round to the kitchen-yard.’
‘All right,’ he said.
Someone came through the hall just then and she whisked herself away, while Freddy went up to his own room to dress.
The men sat late that evening, and it was some time before Freddy could get away. As soon as he
could, he hurried around to the kitchen-yard, fearing that she might have given it up and gone back inside. It was chilly, with a light rain, and he found her standing in the shelter of a doorway.
‘Mightn’t it have been better to meet inside?’ he said.
‘Only if you want to get me into trouble,’ she replied. ‘They don’t like us fraternizing, or didn’t you know that?’
‘Of course I knew, but I didn’t think it was the sort of thing you cared about.’
‘Well, perhaps,’ she said. ‘Anyway, do you want to hear this or not?’
‘Yes. What did your young man get?’
She grimaced.
‘The big lump was no use at all, so I had to get him to keep a look-out and go in myself in the end. First things first—I didn’t find the sash weight.’
‘I didn’t really expect you to,’ he said. ‘The murderer was hardly going to leave that lying around.’
‘No, but there was no harm in looking. At any rate, while I was in there, I thought I’d better have a squint at his things to see if he was hiding anything else. There wasn’t much, but I did find something.’
‘Oh? What?’
‘I’m not exactly sure,’ she said. She put her hand in her pocket and brought out an envelope bearing an impressive official seal. Freddy took it, and saw it was from a well-known Swiss university.
‘I didn’t mean you to steal anything!’ he exclaimed.
‘How was I to know what it said if I didn’t take it?’ she said.
‘But if you don’t know what it is then why did you take it? It’s probably something quite ordinary.’
‘Ah,’ she said significantly, ‘but I don’t think it is. One of the maids was talking about it today. He was reading it yesterday evening and she said it upset him. She was seeing to his fire, when he came into his room reading it and muttering to himself in a foreign language. He looked all shaken up, she said.’
‘Now you come to mention it, I did see him looking upset about something myself last night,’ said Freddy, remembering. ‘I wonder whether it was the same thing.’