by Anne Morice
2
“Just as well, of course,” I admitted later to Toby. “Either poor old Shed A Light never made it into the stalls, or if she did she was under the impression that that was the sole object of the outing because she was never mentioned again. Marge backed the winner, I need hardly tell you, and that was purely because its owner had the same surname as her old Nannie, which doesn’t strike me as being an any more logical reason than mine. But there you are! She won and I would have lost, which probably does prove that she’s the expert in her own peculiar field.”
“Perhaps because she’s consistent? However unsound her reasoning, at least it doesn’t hop about. Unlike you, she would not back a horse simply because it was patently unfitted to race at all and was bored to tears by the whole business. Presumably, the one whose owner was named after Nannie had as good a chance as any, but you were really loading the dice against yourself.”
“No, you don’t understand, Toby. It had nothing to do with the horse’s behaviour, although it may surprise you to learn that the temperamental kind often go like the wind when they start; it was simply because it reminded me of Camilla.”
“Oh yes, that explains everything.”
“Not only because of the stubborn way it was behaving, but also, you see, we’d been talking about her and her chameleon type personality and when the commentator started going on about this naughty little filly, Shed A Light, I had the strange sensation that he was speaking confidentially to me. I still had Camilla on my mind and it came to me in a flash.”
“What did, for heaven’s sake?”
“This mental picture of her on the night of Edna’s death. It was the horse’s name which tied the whole thing up for me, you see?”
“No, of course I don’t see.”
“In this picture of her which leapt into my mind, she was sitting in Edna’s room and the only shaft of light came from a table lamp on the little writing desk under the window which faces the bed. Now do you follow me?”
“Absolutely not one inch.”
“Right, then we’ll go back and start at the beginning. You remember how, when Camilla discovered that Edna was dead, she went into tearing hysterics?”
“Yes.”
“And the rather curious story she told of having fallen asleep and woken up to find the door shut, and when she went to investigate she heard the click of the front door? You remember that?”
“Vaguely.”
“And then, when she eventually went back to Edna, she found her dead and went ranting round the house, shrieking that it was all her fault?”
“That I do remember; it made quite an impression.”
“Then I wish you’d said so at the time, Toby. I discounted it, as an extra touch of the histrionics, but it would have saved endless delay if I’d taken her seriously.”
“Delay in what?”
“Arriving at the truth. Yes, really, that old thing! You see, I’m now very positive that she was directly responsible for Edna’s death, although not at all in the way she described it.”
“Do go on! I admit to being agog!”
Nothing loth, to borrow an expression which Edna had made frequent use of in her diary, I said:
“Then first picture the scene: there are two windows and under the smaller one which faces the bed, is this little old-fashioned writing table, with lots of drawers and pigeon holes. Now, we know Camilla to be of a somewhat volatile temperament and, although she was only to be on duty for three hours, she admitted that it stretched ahead like an eternity, so what more understandable if the sight of the little desk seemed like an invitation to relieve the tedium in the most practical of all ways?”
“With a bit of snooping?”
“Exactly! Having first closed the door, of course. My belief is that, having ascertained that the patient was still in a torpor, she set to work to make a thorough search, but unfortunately the room would then have been pitch dark and it would have been necessary to switch on the table lamp.”
“Yes, I suppose it would.”
“I say ‘unfortunately’ because, as Tilly had explained to me on an earlier occasion, the one thing which really disturbed and upset Edna was any form of direct light.”
“Wouldn’t Camilla have been warned about that too?”
“She might not have listened and, if she had, she could still have thought Tilly was fussing unnecessarily. She always thinks she knows better than anyone else, only this time she was wrong and Tilly was right.”
“And the old lady woke up in a fit and . . . ?”
“Probably died of fury and frustration, guessing in a flash what was going on. Presumably, Camilla realised almost at once what she had brought about, lost her head completely and went rushing out to the landing, screaming her head off. I’d say that at this point the hysterics were perfectly genuine. It was only later, when her brain began to function again, that she realised she was on to a good thing and kept the act going. For instance, that extraordinary scene she made about returning alone to Edna’s room, before the doctor arrived, to say her last goodbyes in private! Can you imagine anything more freakish or morbid? Or less in character, come to that! Camilla was the one who used to pass out cold at least once in every game of Sardines. So you can guess what I believe was the real purpose behind that touching little exercise?”
“To tidy up some loose ends, I suppose?”
“Right first time. Honestly, Toby, it’s quite a pleasure talking to you when you’re in this mood. Naturally, when that cunning little brain got back on the rails again, it relayed the message that five minutes alone in Edna’s room was absolutely essential to ensure that the desk was neat and tidy, the light off and not one shred of evidence to show that she had ever been near it.”
“Yes, and I agree that your picture of events is slightly more plausible than hers, but it is all based on the premise that she did sit down and go through the desk when she had the chance, and plausible is not enough. For a start, what possible interest could it have had for her?”
“The new will, of course, which she was hoping to find. Either Edna had taunted her with it, or she’d got wind of it some other way; through Tilly, maybe.”
“And if she’d found it?”
“Would have destroyed it, I’m willing to bet. Even if her grandmother had survived, she was unlikely to have regained her full mental faculties and if she’d started maundering on about a missing will nobody would have paid much attention. So there’d have been practically no risk in it for Camilla and, you see, Toby, she had no means of knowing that the will was still unsigned and therefore invalid.”
“Yes, I do admit that it all hangs together very tidily, but it seems to me that you could still be doing her an injustice. What evidence is there, really, that she knew of the will’s existence? If you can give me a convincing answer to that one, I promise not to argue any more.”
“It’s a deal then, and this time I can flout you because I have a witness.”
“Flout away! Who is it?”
“Ferdy.”
“Oh, him!”
“Needless to say, he doesn’t realise it. He has the type of mind that can only encompass one fact at a time. Cause and effect are beyond his scope, but the inference was perfectly plain to me.”
“I don’t feel very flouted yet.”
“You will, though, because he told me that, as joint executors, he and Camilla had the job of sorting out Edna’s papers and correspondence and Camilla not only took it on willingly, she refused to let anyone help her. Now, you know I’m not making it up or being spiteful when I say that in the ordinary way she would have thrown a chore of that kind straight over to Tilly, or indeed anyone else who would take it off her hands, but this time when Tilly offered to weigh in she was turned down flat. Moreover, Camilla reserved all the hardest and most tedious part for herself, sending Ferdy off to play about with his father’s papers in the library, in the entirely false belief that no harm could come from that. And another thing:
Ferdy told me that she attacked her end of the job like a bat out of hell. It amused him because it was so unlike her, but he never attributed all that frenzied activity to an ulterior motive and, so far as I know, he still hasn’t. He thought she might be hoping to turn up some cash, but I think it’s much more likely that it was the new will, which she’d tried and failed to find on the night of Edna’s death, don’t you?”
“Yes,” Toby agreed. “I promised you I was ready to be convinced and now you’ve succeeded. My only regret is that, however beautiful this new truth you’ve unearthed may be, it still brings you no nearer to solving what I might describe as your primary case.”
“Oh, never mind that! Everything which is not a step backwards must be counted as a forward one. There is no such thing as standing still in this game and, if you can only collect enough data on all the characters concerned, you are bound to come up with the solution in the end. Our best bet is to sit back and await developments, for I have a strange feeling that somewhere out there,” I announced grandly, waving a hand in the general direction of Farndale, “things are now beginning to hot up.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Annoyingly enough, it was not at all easy to reconcile the next development, when it did come and which happened to be only an hour or two later, with these airy predictions. On the face of it, it was neither a step forward, nor a step backwards. It was not even a marking time, but more of a step sideways and this inconclusive element extended to the development itself, an isolated context. As anonymous letters go, it was innocuous almost to the point of benevolence and yet, given the fact that I had undeniably been traveling around stirring up a little mud here and there, the implications were not entirely pleasant.
Taking this factor into account, I soon reached the decision that my best bet was to hand the letter over to the police with the least possible delay, a policy which was made all the easier to implement by the fact that Robin, back from his northern conference, had arranged to join us at Roakes Common for the last weekend of the Festival and was due at any moment.
It was a short letter, typewritten on a single page of lined paper, perforated at the top and obviously torn from a shorthand notebook. The text was as follows:
“You are strongly advised to leave this place at once. This message is sent to you for your own good. So long as you remain here your life and everything you value may be in danger.” There was no signature.
“You’d think they might have signed it ‘Well Wisher’,” I complained. “There would seem to be a case for it here.”
“I wouldn’t be too confident of that,” Robin replied. He was treating the matter more seriously than I had anticipated and next surprised me by asking whether there was a typewriter at Farndale.
“Certainly, there is. A clumsy old iron thing about the size of a tank, which Tilly has to make do with. It lives in the old dressing room, where she keeps all her needlework and it takes two strong men to push the carriage back. Camilla and I used to play about on it when we were children and it was antiquated even in those days.”
“Has she got one of her own now? A portable, for instance?”
“May have, I’ve really no idea. Why? You surely don’t imagine that Camilla would be considerate enough to send me a friendly warning if my life was in danger?”
“Maybe not, but to my inexpert eye this message doesn’t look as though it had been typed on such an old-fashioned machine and I was trying to eliminate the possibilities. Besides, as I mentioned before, we don’t know exactly how friendly the warning was intended to be. The kindly nudge of to-day can become the knife in the back tomorrow. Have you kept the envelope?”
It was an ordinary manilla one, postmarked Storhampton on the previous day and addressed to Miss T. Crichton.
“What does that suggest to you?” Robin asked, when he had remarked on the fact.
“Nothing at all. What does it suggest to you?”
“Several things. One that the sender might be some relatively harmless crackpot, dedicated to stamping out actresses and who only knows you by your stage name. Alternatively, someone who has known you all your life as Miss T. Crichton, still thinks of you in that guise and hasn’t caught up with the fact that you are now Mrs. R. Price.”
“Well, that’s not much help, is it? It strikes me that practically everyone for miles around either only knows me by my stage name or has known me all my life.”
“With one notable exception?”
“Yes,” I agreed, thinking it over, “with one notable exception. And her letter was certainly addressed to Miss T. Crichton. On the other hand, that one wasn’t typed, so it doesn’t get us any further.”
“How did she react when you asked her about Bella?”
“I didn’t need to ask her. Marian did it for me, and I couldn’t say for sure that Alice heard her. She was in a high state of panic about having to abandon the car in a vulnerable spot, where a thousand wardens waited to pounce. It could have been genuine; you know what a flap some people get into over that kind of thing? And poor old Marian being such a slow mover must have exacerbated the situation. However, I wasn’t hanging on her answer because Marian had already told me all I needed to know.”
“About Bella?”
“Well, not specifically, but she put me on the right track. Thinking about it afterwards, it came to me that she’d provided the key to the whole puzzle and the amazing thing was that she’d no idea she’d done it, or even that the puzzle existed.”
“So what next? I hope you don’t intend to go around using this key to unlock a lot more doors with awkward questions. I’ve already warned you about the pickle that could land you in.”
“No, nothing like that. There’s no more need for questions because the answers are all up here in my head, if only I could dig them out.”
“Well, at the risk of repeating myself, do take care not to dig them out in the wrong company.”
“Why are you so alarmist, Robin? We both know that if a crime has been committed it is not one for which the guilty person could ever be brought to trial.”
“That’s true, so far as it goes,” he admitted gloomily, “but thanks to your interference it may not stop there. It’s an occupational disease, I daresay, or perhaps I’m naturally pessimistic, but I always get jumpy when the anonymous letters start to roll in.”
“Cheer up!” I said. “Stop jumping and concentrate on the positive. You’re here now, to keep matters in check; Toby and Mrs. Parkes, between them, are concocting a splendid dinner for us and we’re to have fireworks on the river to-morrow night. So what have we got to worry about?”
“Nothing in the world, I suppose; unless it rains.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
There was one contingency, however, which neither of us could have foreseen, but which was destined to have far more widespread and catastrophic results than a little rain falling on the fireworks, and this was the strange and unprecedented behaviour of Bernard Plowman.
There had been one or two rumblings along the way, starting as far back as my lunch with Helena, in which she had confided her misgivings about the curious relationship between her son and Camilla, and the most recent of all having been perpetrated by Marge, when she attributed Bernard with hidden depths, which might augur badly for the future; but the first hint of serious trouble came from Tilly on Saturday morning.
She was standing outside a bank in Storhampton’s Market Place when I met her, looking harassed and aggrieved, which was a near miracle in itself, although she greeted me in her usual kindly fashion.
“You’re out early, Tessa dear!”
“I know, but Toby lumbered me with the weekend shopping and it’s a nightmare these days finding somewhere to park, unless you get here practically as dawn breaks.”
“Don’t speak of it! The whole town seems to have gone off its head with this Festival. I shall be thankful when it’s over and we can go back to normal. Do you know, I’ve been standing outside this place ever
since half past nine and they still haven’t opened. Disgraceful, I call it.”
“And the awful thing is,” I told her, “you’ve got another forty-seven hours and fifty minutes to go.”
She still didn’t get it, so I said: “The banks don’t open on Saturdays.”
Whereupon, she first looked defensive, as though suspecting me of insubordination, then flushed scarlet, as her eyes brimmed with tears of exasperation, finally bursting out in a poor imitation of her normal cheerful manner: “Oh, what a muggins! You’re quite right, my dear. Now, what on earth made me forget a thing like that? It must be years since we had these new opening times and you’d think I’d be used to it now. Ah well, anno domini, I suppose.”
“Nonsense, Tilly! We all have these occasional lapses. I frequently forget my own telephone number; and you’ve had a lot to cope with recently.”
“That’s true enough and now I’ve given myself another headache, haven’t I? How on earth am I going to lay my hands on some cash for the weekend?”
“No problem at all. I’ve got some I can lend you and if it’s not enough we can rustle up some more. Come across the road and have some coffee while we plan the strategy.”
“Well, that’s a nice thought, but what about your shopping dear? I don’t want to hold you up, you know. There’s been enough time wasted already without . . .”
I allowed her to prattle on in this way, while we skipped through the traffic to the coffee bar on the opposite corner and sat down at a table by the window, believing her to be more than capable of supplying all the arguments and counter arguments and chatting herself back into a good humour, without any assistance from me.
“How much do you need?” I asked, when the flow had subsided to a trickle.
“Oh, five will be plenty, thank you, dear.”
“Be honest, now, Tilly! I have a feeling you wouldn’t have staggered all the way to the bank just to draw out five pounds.”