by Anne Morice
‘No,’ I said slowly. ‘Somehow, for once in my life, I don’t feel like crying. Perhaps that’ll come later, because I was devoted to Betsy, as you know, and she was very, very kind to me. Tears would be a relief, in a way, but they won’t come. What I feel now is more like a mixture of rage and hatred.’
‘Now, now!’ he said warningly.
‘Oh, don’t worry. I’m perfectly calm, I promise you. It’s a cold rage and I mean to keep it that way. I’d give anything I possess to have the foul beast who did this put behind bars, and I’m not going to let emotions get in my way.’
‘That’s all very fine talk, Tessa, and if it helps you to let off steam, so much the better. But take a tip from me and don’t go around breathing fire and vengeance and trying to get after the murderer yourself. Leave all that side of things to the police.’
I felt too sunk in despair, just then, to argue with him, so nodded and, after giving me another steady look, he went on:
‘On the other hand, if your nerves are in as good shape as you say, and you want to make yourself useful, there’s one quite practical job you could do right away.’
‘That’s good. What is it?’
‘Nothing heroic, I’m afraid. Just stick around here till Margot arrives. It shouldn’t be more than another half hour, but I don’t awfully care for the state Albert’s in. Jasper too, come to that, although he’s probably numbing his sorrow with a bottle of whisky by now. Albert’s different. I couldn’t get him to take a sedative and I wouldn’t put it past him to do something foolish.’
‘I’ll be glad to stay, for as long as you want me to, but I hope you’re not hinting that I’m to restrain him forcibly from committing suicide?’
‘No, I’m not, otherwise I wouldn’t leave you alone here. He’s suffering from shock, that’s all. It’ll wear off, but what he needs now is to get some of it out of his system. If you go up and chat with him, it’ll probably do the trick. I’d stay myself, but there’s not much I can do. Physically, there’s nothing wrong, and I’ve got patients waiting for me at this minute who are in a much worse pickle than he is.’
‘All right, I’ll do my best. What about Jasper, though? Are you prescribing any therapy for him?’
‘No, I should leave that job for Margot. Jasper’s not the kind to bottle things up. Quite the contrary, as you might say, ha, ha!’ he added, smiling sourly at his own joke.
Thus it was that I heard the full account from Albert and, by no means for the first time, I had to applaud Dr Macintosh’s diagnosis. The simple truth was that Albert had spent twenty years in a matriarchy and communication with women came naturally to him. To be deprived of their society, their sympathy, advice, exhortations and demands was an alien condition and only increased his obsessive remorse about Betsy’s death and his own failure to prevent it.
Not that it was all plain sailing to begin with, for I found him slumped in an armchair in his sitting-room, with a black crochet shawl round his shoulders, and he looked cold, as well as frightened and unhappy. Guessing that his dreadful experience had created a mental block where electrical appliances were concerned, I casually switched on the radiator, and when, rather to my own surprise and relief, I did not instantly drop dead, he began to respond to my overtures and was soon launched on a tide of incoherence, in which he repeated himself, told me things in the wrong order and occasionally lapsed into French. It was only when I had the notion to make him some coffee that the real breakthrough was achieved and he got firmly into his stride.
I was aware that the accepted remedy in this kind of emergency was strong, milky tea, with lashings of sugar, but I guessed that this did not apply in Belgium, and compromised by adding the sugar and a dollop of milk. It was while I was fetching the milk from the refrigerator that I was struck by a teasing memory and at the very end of our interview I asked him another question which, so far as I knew, had no direct connection with Betsy’s death. I was a shade apprehensive about the effect it might have on him, but we had become such buddies by this time that it was worth the risk.
‘Tell me, Albert,’ I said, stirring my own coffee, which was black and unsweetened. ‘Do you remember the day of the funeral, when you came into the kitchen carrying the bunch of flowers which you’d intended to put on Miss Stirling’s grave?’
He nodded but shifted his eyes away and I sensed a return of the former tensions.
‘You put them in the refrigerator, didn’t you?’
‘Yes. What has this to do . . . ?’
‘And that was because, after you came in, you saw me watching you from the pantry?’
‘No, I saw nothing,’ he said sullenly. ‘I put the flowers in the refrigerator so they would stay fresh. You remember I told you this.’
‘I know you did, but I’ve got what they call a photographic memory and there was something about the way you were carrying them. It’s fixed in my mind and it’s been puzzling me. You may think this is none of my business, but what else were you carrying, Albert, which was covered by the flowers and which also went into the refrigerator?’
The expression on his face when I put this question startled me so badly that my hand shook and some coffee spilt on to my dress. I stood up and began scrubbing at it with a tissue, not looking at him.
‘There is a cloth in the kitchen,’ he said dully, ‘I will fetch it for you.’
‘No, don’t bother. It will wash out and I’ve got to go now, anyway.’
Ignoring this, he got up and went into the kitchen. I followed a few minutes later and found him standing perfectly still and staring down at the table.
‘There was nothing,’ he said, without looking up. ‘Only some flowers. You imagined the rest.’
‘Okay,’ I said. ‘I only came to tell you I’m going now. Mrs Roche will be here very soon, so you won’t be alone. But listen, Albert, if you do know anything, or possess anything which might count as evidence, there’s no obligation to tell me about it, but I do beg you not to keep it from the police.’
He did look up then, staring blankly back at me, as though not understanding a word, but the baffled innocence act did not convince me in the least. I had seen his face when I first broached the subject and I could not get away fast enough.
XIV
‘So the burning question is,’ Toby announced, ‘who gets all that lovely money now?’
‘Is that really the burning question? I can think of several other fairly hot ones.’
‘Well, I’ve always understood that financial gain is the most popular incentive in affairs of this kind. I imagine Robin will bear me out?’
‘Not always, but quite frequently it is,’ Robin admitted.
‘And there is certainly quite a whack to be lost or gained here.’
‘That’s the whole trouble,’ I said.
‘I think what Tessa is trying to say is that the issue is not sufficiently clear-cut for us to ascribe that particular motive to any one person for all three murders.’
‘Thank you, Robin, it is exactly what I was trying to say; and that’s not all. Apart from not knowing the murderer or the motive, we don’t even know for certain who the intended victim was. There have been three altogether, but which one was he really after?’
‘Three deaths, but not necessarily three murders,’ Toby objected. ‘You could postulate one natural death, one murder and one accident, or any other permutation you care to name.’
‘I don’t care to name a single one. It makes our task far too complicated, and my kite flying with Chief Inspector Mackenzie demonstrated without any question that the balcony had been deliberately fixed. So there’s one murder for you, even if it wasn’t meant for Sophie. Also, from what Dr Macintosh said about those electric plugs, one can’t possibly write that off as an accident either. And there is a curious feature about that episode which I should like to draw your attention to. It, too, could have been aimed at Sophie. There’s no saying whether the bathroom had been fixed by the time she used it, or how likely she would have been to plunge
into the bath in the middle of the afternoon, but all the same it’s a coincidence one shouldn’t ignore.’
Robin said: ‘To go back to Toby’s argument, though, you still haven’t demonstrated conclusively that there were three murders, and I don’t see how you ever could. Not even an exhumation would prove it in Maud’s case because a dose which might have been lethal to her wouldn’t necessarily have killed a healthy woman like Betsy. The results might tell us that we were dealing with a rather inefficient murderer, but there would be no proof either way.’
‘Then I’ll manage without that kind of proof. I’ve suspected from the very beginning that there was something fishy about Maud’s death, and everyone I’ve spoke to since has expressed surprise that she died when she did. I’m certain that Betsy was uneasy about it too, however much she may have pretended otherwise. Jasper was slightly taken aback too, by the sound of it, although he might have reasons for denying that now.’
‘Come to think of it, I suppose if you wanted to kill someone a good way of covering your tracks might be to start by removing two other people for whose death you had no motive at all,’ Toby suggested. ‘But it does seem rather callous.’
‘Perhaps a process of elimination might clear some of the ground? To begin at the beginning, so unlike my dear wife, the first attempt could only have been directed at Maud or Betsy. Are we unanimous about that?’
‘No,’ I replied, ‘we’re not. The only circumstance in which it could have been intended for Maud was if Betsy was the murderer, which you were hinting at yesterday, in your oblique way. I couldn’t disprove it then, but Betsy’s death rules it right out.’
‘Very well. So it means that unless Toby’s theory is true and that two unnecessary murders were committed in order to mask one necessary one, Betsy was the intended victim all along?’
‘Which is exactly what I have always believed, so it’s comforting to know that intuition and logic can sometimes march hand in hand.’
Toby said: ‘And all that remains for us is to decide who had the strongest motive for disposing of Betsy. Since the general view seems to have been that she was an angel straight from heaven, it shouldn’t be too hard to find the exception; excluding myself, I need hardly add.’
‘Did you really dislike her as much as you always pretended?’
‘Well, no, perhaps not quite as much as that, but she was a little too goody-goody to be true. One felt that in its way it was just as much of an act as Margot’s ridiculous pretensions to noble birth. They both overdid it. However, I know you don’t agree with me, and really it’s beside the point. Even if your view of her was the exceptional one, people don’t get themselves murdered simply for being poseurs, so we’ll need to find a stronger motive than that.’
Robin said: ‘Such as Toby’s burning question: who has the most to gain financially?’
‘Yes, and in my view, that’s where we’re really up against it,’ I told them, ‘because the greed motive wouldn’t apply to the same person throughout the series, even supposing the murders were planned in the order they occurred in, which hasn’t yet been established.’
‘It’s a bit of a tease,’ Robin admitted, ‘because, if Betsy had died before her mother, Margot, Piers and Digby would probably have come off best. Whereas, the way things have turned out, Jasper becomes the principal beneficiary, assuming that Betsy has left everything to him. Once Maud was dead, the best hope for Margot and the boys was to keep Betsy alive, at least until she’d been prevailed upon to make some provision for them, which she undoubtedly would have done.’
‘Now that you mention it, I believe Piers and Margot made some effort to get her to go up to London with them after Sophie’s death, Piers especially. But she refused point blank and I suppose he could hardly drag her away by force. Also he might have thought that the risk wasn’t all that acute. She’d already moved back to the Stables and it was only on account of the storm that Jasper was working indoors and using their bathroom. And if it hadn’t been for the storm, you know, which no one except Mrs Parkes was expecting, Betsy wouldn’t have needed to switch the heating on. There’d have been plenty of opportunity for rewiring the plugs to make them safe again when they all came down for Sophie’s inquest. What’s happened about that, by the way? Will they postpone it now?’
‘No, they’re going ahead,’ Robin said. ‘But it will be adjourned to allow the police to continue their investigations, as the saying goes.’
‘I’m glad to hear it,’ I told him. ‘It will give me time to continue with a few investigations of my own.’
‘I don’t awfully like the sound of that. What had you in mind?’
‘Well, there’s Albert, for a start. I’m not sure what he’s up to, but obviously he’s dead scared about something, and I would never be surprised if his wife were involved as well. I think I’ll pay a call tomorrow. I’m sure people who live in these new little housing estates take a keen interest in their neighbours’ comings and goings, wouldn’t you agree?’
‘Yes, I would,’ he replied. ‘And nor do I overlook the possibility of Albert taking a fairly keen interest in your comings and goings. If he happens to be a triple murderer, I daresay he wouldn’t jib at one more. Personally I consider you’d do far better to come over to Dedley and spend a nice, uneventful day with me. With any luck, I’ll have cleared up most of my business by lunch time.’
‘I can’t do that, Robin. I’ve been commanded by the chief inspector to attend the inquest. Even though it will be just a formality, I imagine that still holds, specially as they now won’t have Betsy’s evidence. In any case, I don’t honestly believe that Albert is capable of murder. He hasn’t the nerve, for one thing. That imperturbable act was a very thin façade, you were right there. He’s more like a jellyfish than a Jeeves these days.’
‘Guilty conscience, perhaps?’
‘Could be. I feel he knows something which he dare not pass on to the police, for fear of it’s all coming out that he’s been up to something shady. I have an idea there’s someone who might be able to throw a little more light on it, but I promise I won’t set foot in the Rectory, or the Stables either.’
This undertaking partially reassured him and it happened to be a promise which I fully intended to keep. In one or two trivial respects, however, I may as well confess to a slight equivocation. If, as seemed likely, Albert’s was the hand behind the faked jewellery and if, as I also supposed from her vehement denials, Betsy had known this, then who had a stronger motive for wishing to dispose of her? The fact that she would have covered up for him for ever, rather than risk ‘unpleasantness’, counted not at all in his favour, for he was obviously a person of mean intelligence and fright had made him stupider still. Furthermore there was one feature which put Albert in a class by himself. If my understanding was correct, he alone possessed a motive which was in no way modified by the order of events. Whether Maud was alive or dead, and whether Betsy inherited a fortune or a pittance, made no difference at all. She was and would have remained a constant threat to him until the day of her death.
XV
‘Hallo! I’ve seen you before, methinks,’ she said brightly, and her words fell on my ears like the sound of a waterfall in the desert. Familiar now with the route, it had taken barely fifteen minutes to drive there from the Town Hall, even including a brief stop at a chemist’s shop; not nearly long enough to concoct a plausible reason for the stiffness in my left wrist, which was now wrapped in a crêpe bandage.
During the short time at my disposal I had churned over various opening remarks, only to fall back at last on the decision to leave it to the inspiration of the moment. It was a rather feeble conclusion, for I had a feeling that the success of my interview would depend largely on the opening stages, and her greeting had got me over the first and most formidable hurdle.
‘It’s quite likely,’ I replied. ‘I’ve been around these parts for some time. We used to live in the gardener’s cottage at the Rectory.’
‘Did y
ou now? Before my time that must have been. Ron and I have only been here the one year. No, it was last week I saw you; in Dedley of all places. Now what was it called? Safari? Some name like that?’
‘Sirocco?’ I suggested. ‘Was that the one?’
‘You’re right, you know. Sirocco it was. On at the Regal. We often go there Monday nights. It’s the one evening when Ron’s mother can baby-sit. Well, fancy meeting you in the flesh! And you lived at the Rectory? That’s how you came to know Miss Stirling, then? Dreadfully sad her dying, wasn’t it? I felt really cut up. She was such an old dear, always ready for a laugh; you’d never think she was so famous.’
Things were improving by the minute and Mrs Chalmers had only to continue in this strain for a little longer and there was a fair prospect of my finding what I sought without even the bother of removing the bandages. Hopes soared higher still when she said:
‘Look at me, though, keeping you standing out here gossiping! Come along into the lounge. Would you care for a coffee? It wouldn’t take a moment.’
‘Lovely!’ I said effusively. ‘If you’re sure it’s no bother?’ She was a moon-faced, wide-hipped woman of around thirty-five, with springy, dark hair, lively intelligent eyes, and an air of relentless cheerfulness which overflowed into the little room she led me into. It was slightly over-powering, as a matter of fact, because the bright chintzes on the chairs were flowery and old-fashioned, whereas the curtains derived from a later era and were printed all over with watering cans and vegetable marrows. The gardening motif also extended to the rest of the room which was crowded with potted plants in lattice design plastic containers.
However, it had been over-optimistic to expect that we should get through the session without some reference to my injured wrist, and when she returned with the coffee she cordially invited me to describe my symptoms. I had to confess, as she pressed and pummelled, that the pain was not excruciating, and she gave it as her professional opinion that I was suffering from a slight sprain, adding merrily that it was as well that it was my left wrist, as otherwise people might get some funny ideas. She also advised me to leave the bandage off since it had most likely served its purpose, with which I entirely agreed.