Slight Mourning

by Catherine Aird

  “Yes, sir, I—” The constable didn’t finish the sentence. There was a sudden commotion near the door of the greenhouse, and Crosby shot outside into the open air, hotly pursued by an exceedingly irate bee.

  “That,” observed Miss Paterson dryly, “seems to have done the trick. Thank you, Constable.”

  “Died? Mr. Exley?” exclaimed Ursula Renville. “Oh, I am sorry. His poor wife! He’d got two children, too, hadn’t he, Richard?”

  “That’s what I’d heard,” said Richard Renville, feeling for his pipe. “Bad luck.”

  “We’re just checking that nothing had happened to upset Mr. Fent at the dinner party.” Sloan said his party piece glibly. He and Crosby had moved down Constance Parva High Street from Miss Paterson’s cottage to King’s Tree House where the Renvilles lived. He wouldn’t be surprised if the bee hadn’t come too.

  “Oh, no, it was a lovely evening.” Ursula Renville ushered the two policemen into chairs. “The table looked charming and the food was so nice. I don’t know why a meal you haven’t cooked yourself tastes so much nicer but it does.”

  “What did you have?” asked Sloan encouragingly.

  She told him and it tallied.

  “An interesting pudding,” observed Sloan.

  “Wasn’t it?” she agreed happily. “French. A speciality of the Dauphinois district. That’s where Bill and Helen went for their holidays. They had crémets there and that’s why Helen wanted to try it herself. She was so taken with it that Bill bought her a set of the little dishes. She showed them to me once.”

  “Special ones with holes,” said Crosby.

  “Yes.” She smiled at him and nodded. “Heart-shaped.” Almost absent-mindedly she produced excellent coffee and set it before the policemen without asking. “You make a sort of milk curd, I think …”

  “And drain it through muslin,” supplemented Crosby.

  “How clever of you to know,” she beamed at the detective constable.

  “Did they turn out well?” growled Sloan. Anyone listening to Crosby would think he was a Cordon Bleu cook, while Sloan knew for a fact that he couldn’t even boil a kettle, let alone an egg.

  “Except one,” said Mrs. Renville. “They were standing on the sideboard when we went into the dining-room and I did happen to notice that one had collapsed just the tiniest bit at one edge.”

  “Who had that, I wonder?” murmured Sloan half-aloud. He couldn’t himself think of anything better for pudding than one of his wife’s apple pies—she hadn’t needed those cookery books for wedding presents—but there was no accounting for taste, and anything—but anything—consumed that night at Strontfield might matter.

  Richard Renville tapped his pipe against an ash-tray and said ruefully, “If it’s anything like this house, Inspector, I can tell you straightaway who got the failure put in front of him. The host.”

  “Nonsense, darling,” said his wife roundly. “The hostess always has the things that don’t turn out right.” She smiled at the two policemen. “Men make such a fuss if you give them anything that isn’t perfect, don’t they? I bet poor Helen ate it.”

  Renville shook his head. “Not that time. You can take it from me, Inspector, that it was Bill who had that collapsed crémet. I remember because I saw it on his tray and not on Helen’s.”

  “There were two trays, were there, sir?” prompted Sloan.

  “That’s right.” Renville nodded. “With six crémets on each. Bill served his end of the table and Helen hers. There was a bowl of raspberries at each end and cream if you wanted it. It was all nicely done, you know. No fuss.”

  It was Sloan’s turn to nod agreement. No, there had been no fuss.

  And it had all been nicely done.

  Someone had somehow seen to it that Bill Fent had had a potentially fatal dose of a soluble barbiturate in the presence of eleven other people, one of whom was presumably the murderer, though they couldn’t even be sure about that yet, not with Peter Miller Fent in the offing. Very much in the offing, especially last Saturday night.

  “The drink,” said Sloan, improving upon the shining hour.

  Renville frowned. “Bill hadn’t had too much or anything like that.”

  “I understand, sir, that the gentlemen took some port.”

  “We did indeed.” The man’s frown vanished and his face lit up. “You know, Inspector, when I heard about poor Bill I was glad for him that that port was the last thing he had to drink.”

  “Good, was it, sir?”

  “Superb,” said Renville reverently. “Bill’s father laid a pipe of it down the year Bill was born. A fine old English custom …”

  “Like wetting the baby’s head?” asked Crosby intelligently.

  Renville blinked at him. “In a way, I suppose. No good, of course, if the baby comes in a bad year.”

  “Naturally,” agreed Sloan gravely. “May we take it, then, that Mr. Fent was born in a good year?”

  “According to the professor it was the last of the good years”—Renville grinned—“but the professor’s like that, Getting on, you know, and a bit of a pessimist these days.”

  It was Sloan’s experience that the two often went together. “What year would it have been, sir?”

  “’Thirty-five. Actually,” Renville said, “’forty-five was a good year too, but the professor wouldn’t have it. Said ’thirty-one was better still. The good old days and all that.”

  “Really, sir?” The only year—the only day—that Kitty, Kitty bothered about down in The Dog and Partridge was the current one.

  “Bill said it was coming to the end of its drinkability but”—Richard Renville clenched his pipe between his teeth—“I must say it went down very well.”

  So it did, Sloan was sure, in The Dog and Partridge in Railway Street.

  Every night.

  The burly businessman sighed. “Quite an occasion, really.”

  “What did you talk about?”

  He laughed. “Believe it or not we talked about blood donors. Washby was trying to enrol us all—except Marchmont. He was one already. There’s some sort of team doing the county next month …”

  “There now!” exclaimed his wife. “We thought you’d be talking about us.”

  “Well,” challenged Renville, “what did you talk about?”

  “Jam.”

  “Well, then …”

  Sloan said, “The port—I take it that all the gentlemen had some?”

  “I should jolly well think so,” said Renville spiritedly. “Good Lord, Inspector, you wouldn’t pass up vintage port at Strontfield—you’d be mad.”

  “Sorry, sir,” said Sloan humbly. Kitty, Kitty would never have asked.

  He had just one more question for them. Had either of the Renvilles been up to the Park to see Helen Fent since Bill had been killed.

  Both shook their heads.

  “Wait a minute, though,” Ursula put out a hand. “I do know who was going to go. Marjorie Marchmont. Yesterday evening. She mentioned that she intended to walk up to Strontfield to see Helen later. I remember that because she said that she thought people felt just as flat after a funeral as they did after a wedding …”

  She paused. “I can’t have got that the right way round, can I?”

  “Yes, madam.” Some of the superintendent’s Winter Evening Class on Sociology had rubbed off on them all at the Police Station. “They’re both Rites of Passage.”

  “Really?” The vague look had come back to Ursula’s face.

  A few minutes later Crosby pulled the police car out of the King’s Tree House drive and turned back into Constance Parva High Street. As he did so a small green car slowed down, its indicator blinking its intention of turning off the village High Street and into the Renvilles’ driveway.

  “Well, what do you know?” drawled the constable phlegmatically. “Young Mr. Quentin Fent, the country landowner, coming to call upon Mr. Richard Renville, property company director.”

  “And,” said Sloan, “they’re growin
g beet-root in their cabbage patch.”

  THIRTEEN

  Detective Inspector Sloan’s approach at the doctor’s house was more business-like. There were no bees here and no coffee either. The action—as Crosby would have put it—was all at the side of the house: outside the garage. It was Saturday morning and the doctor, dressed in his oldest clothes, was cleaning his car. He straightened up as he saw the two policemen and tossed the wash-leather into a bucket of water.

  Sloan told him about Exley’s dying. “We may need you at the resumed inquest on Mr. Fent, Doctor.”

  Dr. Washby gave a quick jerk of his head. “Right.”

  “To give evidence as to his condition before he left the house and so forth,” went on Sloan easily. “You know the sort of thing.”

  “I do.” The doctor wrung the wash-leather out and applied it to the bonnet of the car. “Sorry I can’t stop doing this. I’ll have to hose it all down again if it dries off before I can leather it.”

  “Carry on,” said Sloan largely.

  “You’ll be letting me know about the inquest then, won’t you?”

  “We will, Doctor. We’ve always got the professor, of course, as the last person to see the deceased alive, but he’s not young and I think your observations would carry more weight.”

  “Naturally anything I can do …” Paul Washby drew the chamois leather carefully down the bonnet toward the radiator. “I wish there was something a bit more useful than just standing up at an inquest and saying that Bill seemed perfectly normal to me.”

  “Were you sitting near him?” inquired Sloan casually.

  “Me? No, I was up at the other end of the table. Between Helen Fent and Miss Paterson. Veronica was, though. Hang on and I’ll give her a call.”

  “Bill?” said Veronica Washby merging from the kitchen door in a very pretty apron, and greeting them. “Yes, I was sitting on his left. He seemed quite all right to me—not that I knew him really well or anything. Such a nice man. It’s all so sad, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, madam,” agreed the policeman. Sad, mad, bad … perhaps it didn’t matter which word you used.

  “He teased the professor a lot but ever so nicely and you could see he was enjoying it.”

  “The professor was near you too?”

  “Oh, yes, on my other side. He’s sweet, isn’t he?”

  “And you’d be opposite …?”

  “Mrs. Renville.”

  “Ah, yes.” Full marks, thought Sloan silently, to his wife, Margaret. She’d been right about the seating then. “You’d have Mr. Marchmont on your other side perhaps?” he ventured.

  “Yes, I did.” She hesitated. “He didn’t say a lot, though.”

  There was a guffaw from her husband. “Never worry, Marjorie talked enough for two at our end of the table. You should have heard her laugh when we got on to the development and I told her that hoary old chestnut about a smell in the village. Have you heard it, Inspector?”

  “No,” said Sloan firmly.

  “It went like this. Old lady to countryman: ‘Can it be the drains?’ Countryman to old lady: ‘Can’t be the drains, mum, ’cos there ain’t any.’”

  An immoderate laugh escaped Constable Crosby.

  “Glad you like it.” Washby grinned. “Our Miss Paterson didn’t. She went a bit Queen Victoria over it. Not amused and all that. You know she was dead against the drains, don’t you, because of the development?”

  “Progress does bring problems,” said Sloan with meticulous fairness. “How did you find Mr. Marchmont, Mrs. Washby?”

  “I think he’s a bit shy,” said Veronica Washby, “though he did tell Annabel Pollock—she was opposite him—how nicely she’d done the flowers.”

  Dr. Washby turned to Sloan and said sardonically, “Flower arrangements are a bit competitive in Constance Parva, Inspector. Now over in Constance Magna they go in for blood sports more.”

  “And cricket,” his wife reminded him.

  “And cricket,” agreed the doctor. “There’s a real needle match today, Inspector. The Constances’ annual battle. Constance Parva versus Constance Magna.” He drew the wash-leather over the nearside wing of his car and pointed up at the cloudless sky. “If the weather breaks they’ll say I’ve made it rain by cleaning my car. And if I go around in a dirty car they’ll say I’m a lousy doctor. Can’t win, can you?”

  “Not often, sir,” said Sloan, taking his leave.

  Peter Miller stood on the front doorstep of Strontfield Park, his hat dangling uncertainly between his fingers. Annabel Pollock answered the door.

  “Come to apologize,” he mumbled, introducing himself. “Say I’m sorry and all that.”

  “What for?” Annabel collected herself rapidly and said, “I mean—do come in, Mr. Miller, and tell me what you’re sorry about.”

  “My Jersey cows—the whole herd must have got into the Park again. Last night, I think. We had to get them out for the morning milking.”

  “Oh.” A look of relief passed over her face. “Is that all?”

  “But it’s not the first time it’s happened,” said the farmer. “Bill said he’d get some spiles from Greg Fitch and do something about the fence, but naturally …”

  “Naturally,” concurred Annabel.

  “I should have done something myself, really,” he said quickly, “seeing that … in the circumstances.”

  “I don’t suppose they’ve done any harm.” The nurse’s instinct to reassure was well to the fore.

  “That’s just it,” he said twisting his lips awkwardly. “They have.”

  “In the Park? I don’t see what they could …”

  He hesitated. “They got round by the Folly.”

  “They couldn’t very well knock that down, Mr. Miller.”

  “They haven’t. Not the Folly.” He cleared his throat and began again. “You know the statue at the end of the walk there?”

  “I do.” Annabel’s lips twitched ever so slightly. “We used to call it Naughty Nigel when we were small.”

  “It’s a faun, I think.” Miller’s face crumpled into a responding grin. “Or Eros, perhaps.”

  “The god of love?” She nodded. “Could be. Old Fitch didn’t approve of it, you know. Whenever he was working that way he would hang his jacket over its shoulders.” Annabel giggled. “That made it seem so much worse somehow. What have they done to it?”

  “I think one of them knocked it off its pedestal.”

  “Cloven hooves shouldn’t have upset it, I suppose.”

  “But they did,” said Miller solemnly.

  “Fitch will be pleased.”

  “Mrs. Fent might not be.”

  “Don’t worry,” said Annabel comfortingly. “Somehow I don’t think she’ll mind all that much now.”

  “Of course,” mumbled Miller suddenly contrite. “Got other troubles now, hasn’t she?”

  The nurse nodded.

  “Had I better see her and explain?”

  “No.” Annabel shok her head decisively. “She doesn’t want to see anyone. She’s still very upset.”

  “Quite understand,” said Miller immediately. “Not surprising, really.” He paused. “Will she stay on?”

  “I don’t think,” said the girl, “that she’s made any plans yet.”

  “It’s early days, of course,” agreed the farmer. “Difficult and all that …”

  They were interrupted by the crunch of car tyres on the drive outside and the sound of someone stepping up to the front door. Peter Miller began to move. “I’d better go. You’ve got more visitors. I always seem to call just as someone arrives …”

  Annabel murmured something politely deprecating as she showed him the door. But she looked thoughtful. “So you do, Mr. Miller,” she said to herself as she showed him out, “so you do.”

  The new arrival was Professor Berry, his transport an archaic taxi from Larking. He patted his chest and wheezed, “We’re both a bit long in the tooth but we’ve made it.” He stood in the doorway and called ba
ck to the driver, “Won’t be long, Wilson. Make yourself comfortable.” He turned to Annabel. “I’ve just come to pay my respects to Helen. How is she?”

  “Better than yesterday.”

  “Good.”

  “Come and sit down.” She shepherded him into a chair.

  “And how are you managing?” he inquired when he’d got his breath back.

  “All right so far, Professor, but I have to go back to the hospital on Monday. My holiday’s over.”

  “Not much of a holiday for you, Annabel, I’m afraid.”

  She shrugged her shoulders. “Can’t be helped. It’s worse for Helen. In a way, you know, I’m glad that I was here for Bill’s last week. I’ve always enjoyed my holidays at Strontfield and when I was small—when we were in India—it meant England to me. Now”—she sighed—“now I don’t suppose I’ll be invited any more—anyway it’ll all be different.”

  “But surely …”

  “Quentin’s no relation of mine,” she said stiffly. “It’s Bill who was my cousin and not on the Fent side at all. I’m no Fent.”

  “Of course.” He subsided. “I was forgetting.”

  “Not even a remote connection,” she said firmly.

  “I expect,” puffed the old man, “you’ll still keep in touch with Helen, though.”

  “I expect so,” she said perfunctorily. “At the moment, I must say, Helen doesn’t seem to want to see me or talk to me or to anyone else. She’s been shut up in her room since the funeral. With the door locked, too. And she won’t even answer the telephone. ‘Don’t put any calls through on the bedroom extension,’ she said yesterday. ‘No matter who rings.’ What am I to do?”

  “Whatever she asks,” said the professor placidly. “It’s usually the easiest thing.” He looked at her over the top of his glasses. “With women particularly.” He was a bachelor.

  “But what reason could she have …”

  “Probably none at all,” said the old gentleman. “There doesn’t have to be, you know.” He gave her a benevolent smile. “The human race isn’t rational and doesn’t do what it does do for what we are pleased to call reasons. Motives, perhaps, but not always those, either.”

  “Whatever it is,” she responded with some asperity, “I don’t feel that I can go off tomorrow night back to St. Ninian’s leaving Helen locked up in her room.”