A Six-Letter Word for Death

by Patricia Moyes

  “Thank you, Doris.”

  “And, madam—”

  “Yes? Any messages for me?”

  “Not so much a message, madam. There’s Mr. and Mrs. Tibbett, who was here the other day. That’s their car in the drive. They’re waiting for you in the drawing room, madam.”

  “Oh, are they?” Myrtle sounded far from pleased. “I hoped the car belonged to the man who’s supposed to come look at the drains. Well, I suppose I shall have to see them.”

  A moment later the door opened and Myrtle came into the drawing room. “Well, fancy,” she said. “What a surprise.” Her tone of voice made it clear that the surprise was not a pleasant one, and that the drain expert would have been a much more welcome visitor. “Just passing through Great Middleford again, Mr. Tibbett?”

  “Not exactly,” said Henry. “I’m trying to trace the movements of Professor Harold Vandike last Tuesday—the day he died.”

  It was difficult for a woman as stolidly constructed as Myrtle to look disconcerted, but for a moment she managed it. Then she said tartly, “Well, I can’t imagine why you came here. I understand the poor man had a climbing accident and that they’re still looking for him. Somewhere in Wales, I believe.”

  “I think you know that’s not true, Mrs. Waterford,” said Henry. “Let me tell you what I know so far. Harold Vandike left the Mountainside Hotel in Aberpriddy early last Tuesday, in full climbing gear, having announced that he intended to do a dangerous climb alone. Actually he turned his back on the mountain and cycled to the nearest town, where he jettisoned his bicycle and picked up a self-drive car, which he had hired the previous day under an assumed name. He drove the car directly here, to this house, arriving about half past ten or eleven, I imagine. He changed his clothes—he had brought a city suit with him in his rucksack—and drove on in his hired car to London, where he lunched with me.”

  “That’s ridiculous,” said Myrtle, but she did not sound quite sure of herself.

  “It may be ridiculous,” said Henry, “but it’s what happened. In fact, your maid Doris confirmed it just now before you came home. She told us she even pressed his suit for him.”

  “The little fool,” said Myrtle, with real anger. “All right, Harry Vandike did come here. I expect you know he loves playing jokes—not always very kind ones. Apparently he intended to let his friends at the hotel think he had met with a climbing accident, and then turn up as right as rain. His idea of an amusing prank. He also mentioned that it would enable him to keep an important engagement in London without anybody knowing.”

  “Why didn’t you tell somebody this right away, Mrs. Waterford? Why didn’t you inform the Aberwithy police? After all, his disappearance was reported in the papers, and you must have known—”

  Myrtle had the grace to look uncomfortable. “I promised Harry,” she said. And, gaining a little confidence, she went on, “I have no idea where he is now, or whether he’s dead or alive.”

  “One of the men in the search parties might have been killed!” Emmy spoke angrily and spontaneously.

  “That’s really none of my affair,” remarked Myrtle, “and in any case, nobody was hurt.”

  Henry said, “He told you that he would return here by three o’clock, resume wearing his climbing clothes and drive back to Wales?”

  “Yes,” said Myrtle. “And that’s exactly what he did.”

  “Where do you think he is now?”

  “Well, I won’t disguise from you that I’m very worried, Mr. Tibbett. I thought he would turn up at his hotel that same evening. But I cannot be held responsible—”

  Henry checked her. He said, “So he drove back here in the same car, changed, collected his things, and drove off again?”

  There was a tiny hesitation. Then Myrtle said, “I presume it was the same car. I was busy at my typewriter—I like to work in the afternoons—and I didn’t even see him. Just heard the car drive in and then out again about ten minutes later.”

  Henry said, “He didn’t come back here by car, Mrs. Waterford. He turned the car back to the London office of the rental firm and came on by train.”

  “Well, then, I suppose he must have come by taxi from the station and left the same way. We are three miles from the railway, Mr. Tibbett. You would scarcely have expected him to walk.”

  “You think, then,” said Henry, “that he took a cab from the station, asked it to wait while he changed, and then took it back to the station?”

  Carefully, Myrtle said, “That is my guess, Mr. Tibbett. I told you, I didn’t even see him.”

  “So you don’t know for certain that he did come back?”

  “No, I suppose I don’t. But somebody came, and his things had gone when I came down to tea, so I naturally—”

  “Doris says,” Henry persisted, “that she heard voices.”

  “Like Joan of Arc, I presume?” Myrtle’s nervousness showed through her sarcasm.

  “You know what I mean,” said Henry patiently.

  “Well, if she did, I suppose it was Vandike and the cab driver.”

  Henry said, “I’m sorry, Mrs. Waterford. I think you have the last part of the day’s events all wrong, and I think you know it. Vandike may have taken a cab from the station back here, but from here, somebody volunteered to drive him back to Aberwithy. It would have been an impossible railway journey from here. Have you looked at the timetables?”

  “Why on earth should I have looked at the timetables?”

  “Well, I have, and he couldn’t have made it before the next day, after a nightmare journey. In fact, his best plan would have been to go back to London from here, cross London to Paddington, and start for Wales from there the following day.”

  “Well, perhaps that’s exactly what he did.” Myrtle stood up. “I think you are taking this prank too seriously, Mr. Tibbett. Harry will reappear in a few days, laughing his head off. He has a curious sense of humor, but there you are.”

  “And where do you think he is now?”

  “I haven’t the remotest idea,” said Myrtle stiffly. “I told you.”

  “Well…let’s hope you’re right to be so optimistic.” Henry stood up and held out his hand. “I’m sorry to have taken up your time, Mrs. Waterford. Good-bye.”

  Myrtle shook Henry’s hand reluctantly, as if it were a dead rat. She said good-bye a little more cordially to Emmy, saw them to the door, and watched the little black car drive away.

  Henry was silent during the drive back to London. He found a parking space for the car, and he and Emmy walked back to their apartment, where Emmy prepared a salad lunch while Henry drank a cold beer. When Emmy announced that the meal was ready, he seemed to come out of deep meditation.

  “Sorry, darling,” he said. “I’m not very good company, I’m afraid.”

  “You’ve been thinking,” said Emmy.

  “Yes,” said Henry. “This spinach salad is delicious.”

  “It’s the mushroom and garlic that make it—”

  “I shall go to the Assistant Commissioner this afternoon,” Henry went on, as if he had not heard her. “I must. He’ll have to fix it somehow with the local force. I can’t go on like this, alone and with no official resources. One murder was bad enough. Two is too much.”

  Emmy said tentatively, “Remember what Myrtle said. You don’t want Harry Vandike popping up alive and well, shouting ‘April fool!’ do you?”

  “He won’t pop up, I very much fear,” said Henry. “Then I think I should see young Roger Talbot. And I have to find some way of getting her there.”

  Emmy was too used to this sort of remark to make the elementary mistake of asking, “Getting who where?”

  Instead, she simply said, “There’s some cheddar and some quite decent Brie, if you’d like it.”

  “What? Oh, yes. Thanks, love.”

  “And some fresh bread,” Emmy added with a touch of pride. She had only recently taken to home baking, having been driven to the edge of despair by mass-produced, pre-sliced loaves.


  When lunch was over, Henry departed for Scotland Yard. Emmy, still tired after her late-night journey from Wales, went somewhat listlessly about the cleaning of the apartment, for which she had had no time in the morning. As she did so, she considered the characters in this case that was not a case.

  The Oppenshaw family, for a start. Sir Robert: bluff, good-natured, apparently easygoing but very shrewd, standing to lose a great deal if an illegitimate child of Jeannie Warfield’s did turn up. And yet—Sir Robert was now a very successful publisher. It was impossible to think of him as a murderer. Lady Oppenshaw would have the same motive as her husband, but all the objections were the same. A courageous woman. Emmy remembered how she had driven over to break the news of Peter’s death to Mrs. Turnberry. That took the sort of guts that never makes the headlines, but is nonetheless worthy. In any case, Emmy remembered that Sir Robert and Pamela had been at a highly respectable tea party when Peter Turnberry was galloping Melisande back along the clifftop.

  Barbara…Emmy paused in her washing up, rinsing her sudsy hands. Barbara was a curious girl. Was it possible that at the age of six, precocious child that she was, she might have contrived her stepsister’s death? Harry Vandike had certainly hinted at it strongly in the crossword puzzle. Barbara had become engaged to Peter Turnberry with, as it seemed to Emmy, little or no affection for him, although Henry seemed to think differently. Anyhow, the evening before his death, she had broken the engagement. Curious.

  What about the others? Dr. Cartwright had been there when Jeannie drowned, and also when Peter was killed. Funny, that. And he had taken his car out during the afternoon, ostensibly to buy pipe tobacco when he didn’t smoke a pipe. Fred Coe…no, nobody would be suspicious of Fred Coe. Brilliant, but in an academic way. Not a plotter, not a schemer.

  Myrtle, on the other hand, was a different matter altogether. Emmy could not see her as a murderer—but then, human nature can take odd twists and turns. Myrtle was frightened, for all her bluffing. Not only physically frightened, but frightened for the loss of her solid country-house life. Myrtle knew too much about something, and knew that she did. That was why she hadn’t told the police about Harry Vandike’s visit.

  And Vandike himself? He was too clever by half, if you asked Emmy. Like a slyly malevolent puppeteer, pulling the strings that manipulated the others. Now, if Henry was right, the tables had been turned on him.

  Phrases came floating back into her mind, from the weekend at Carnworth, from the Ventnor police, from the day of the inquest—even from that morning… Emmy suddenly realized that she had washed the same plate three times, and decided that she must be more tired than she thought. Stupid, filling her head with things that didn’t concern her. She dried the last plate briskly, and was just getting out the vacuum cleaner when the front doorbell rang.

  Surprised and not pleased, she went to answer it. Probably somebody collecting for charity, or trying to sell hairbrushes or religion. She wiped her hands on her apron and opened the door, to find herself face to face with Barbara Oppenshaw.

  Without preamble, Barbara said, “I want to see Henry.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Emmy, with a conscious effort at politeness, “you can’t. He’s at Scotland Yard.”

  “That’s a lie, for a start,” said Barbara.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “I said ‘That’s a lie,’ in case you didn’t hear me. I called the Yard just before lunch, and they told me he’d taken the day off. I’ll come in, if I may.”

  “Come in by all means,” said Emmy, standing back from the doorway. Barbara’s easy, expensive elegance made Emmy actually aware of her own slightly grubby apron, the untidy apartment, and the confusion visible through the open broom-cupboard door.

  Barbara looked around the lived-in un-chic room and out to the small, straggling garden. “I can’t think why people who can’t afford it persist in living in Chelsea,” she said. “It used to be such a pleasant place.”

  Ignoring this blatant insult, Emmy said, “I’ll tell you what happened, Miss Oppenshaw, if you’ll just listen. It’s perfectly true that Henry took the day off, and we drove down to the country this morning. But we were home for a late lunch, and he then decided to go back to the Yard. If you really want him, you’ll find him there, but he may well be busy.”

  Barbara hesitated a moment, then said, “You can give him a message for me, I suppose.”

  As if I were a servant, thought Emmy, but she choked down her resentment. “Very well. What is it?”

  “My parents and I,” said Barbara, “are extremely annoyed at the way your husband is interfering in our affairs.”

  Emmy raised her eyebrows. “Interfering?”

  “Yes, interfering. And when I say ‘our affairs,’ I also mean those of Oppenshaw and Trilby’s authors. He has thoroughly upset a number of people by his prying and his insinuations, and it has got to stop. Do you understand?”

  “I understand what you are saying,” said Emmy.

  Barbara went on. “The inquest on Peter was perfectly straightforward and the matter is closed. There was no need for Henry Tibbett to come down to Ryde for it. He wasn’t subpoenaed. Since then, he has badgered me, Peter’s parents, Fred Coe, Bill Cartwright, and even poor old Myrtle.”

  “And Harry Vandike?” Emmy suggested.

  “It’s tragic that Harry should have been killed,” said Barbara, not sounding as if she gave a damn one way or the other, “but mountain climbing is an extremely dangerous sport, and Harry knew it.”

  Emmy said, “You mentioned that your parents were upset. Why? Henry hasn’t seen or spoken to them since we were at Carnworth, except for a word or so at the inquest. And in fact, Sir Robert—”

  “My parents are upset at the effect your husband is having on valuable authors,” Barbara snapped. “And I’m worried about them—especially Mother.”

  “I didn’t think Lady Oppenshaw had anything to do with the publishing business,” said Emmy.

  “She doesn’t, but she’s very unhappy at what Father is going through. In fact, she—that is, both of them—asked me to tell Henry that if he has anything to say concerning Oppenshaw and Trilby, or any of its authors, he should come to Carnworth in person and say it.”

  “Is that an invitation?” asked Emmy. Despite herself, she could not suppress a grin. “If it is, it’s hardly the warmest I’ve ever received.”

  “It is an invitation,” said Barbara. “I shall be going to Carnworth next weekend, and we hope to see you both there, and get things settled once and for all.”

  “What things?” Emmy asked innocently.

  “If we knew that, they’d be settled already,” retorted Barbara. “Please tell Henry what I’ve said, and ask him to telephone my father as soon as possible.”

  “I’ll tell him,” said Emmy.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  HENRY WAS INTRIGUED to hear about the invitation to Carnworth when he got home that evening.

  “Certainly we’ll go,” he said. “In fact, if I can work fast enough, we might even turn this into a classic whodunnit.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, reassemble all the people who were at the literary weekend—”

  “And unmask the murderer? Oh, Henry, you can’t mean that.”

  “I mean exactly that,” said Henry. “But I haven’t much time. I hope Reynolds has located the fellow.”

  “What fellow?”

  “Roger Talbot.”

  In fact, Inspector Reynolds was, at that very moment, speaking to Roger Talbot on the telephone. It had not been very difficult to find him. He had obtained Talbot’s home address from the Mountainside Hotel, and had been informed by Mrs. Talbot that her son had cut short his climbing holiday after Professor Vandike’s accident and was staying with a group of undergraduate friends in London, where one of them had a flat. She gave him the telephone number and address without a murmur.

  Roger Talbot was very surprised to be telephoned by a detective inspector from
Scotland Yard, and was inclined to be suspicious. Reynolds invited him to allay his doubts by hanging up and calling back to the Yard, where he would discover that Inspector Reynolds was not a fraud. Roger, mollified, agreed. He also agreed to come to the Yard first thing in the morning for a talk with Chief Superintendent Tibbett.

  He turned out to be a personable young man with lank, fair hair. He sat opposite Henry, looking pale and upset, and demanded to know what this was all about.

  “Please don’t be alarmed, Mr. Talbot,” said Henry. “I’m just making a few routine inquiries about Professor Vandike’s death.”

  “You are? But there’s no mystery—”

  “We have to be sure,” said Henry smoothly. “Get the loose ends tied up, as it were. You were a close friend of the professor’s, weren’t you?”

  “I suppose you could say that, yes.” Roger Talbot flushed a little. His skin was smooth and fair, like a girl’s. “He was such a wonderful person,” he added with a burst of genuine enthusiasm. “I mean, he was so much more than a teacher of law.”

  “I believe he taught you italic calligraphy.”

  “Yes. I use it all the time now.”

  “You need a special pen, I believe?”

  “Not really,” said Roger. “They make a fountain pen with a broad flat nib, which works very well. Look.” He took a conventional-looking fountain pen out of his pocket, and wrote his name on a sheet of paper.

  “Very elegant,” said Henry.

  “Of course, if you’re a purist, like Harry, you keep a special stock of quill pens and inks. He liked to use sepia.”

  “I know.”

  “You know? How on earth—?”

  “Never mind. Go on and tell me more about Professor Vandike.”

  “Well, he was a tremendous athlete, you know. Climbing, sailing, swimming—not the sort of things you’d associate with an academic type. And then there was his writing, you know, as well as the crosswords he compiled. Talk about an all-rounder.”

  Not believing that Talbot could be referring to Elaine Summerfield, Henry said, “When you say ‘writing,’ you mean literary criticism?”