by Clara Benson
So many questions. Angela turned them over in her mind for some time, then had to remind herself that she had withdrawn from the case and that it was no longer anything to do with her. But try as she might, she was unable to prevent her mind from drifting back repeatedly to the mystery. All other considerations aside, she hated to leave business unfinished, and this was the first time she had ever failed to see a case through to the end. She would have to find something else to occupy herself, she decided, or she would go mad.
Fortunately for Angela, she was expecting a visit from Barbara, who duly arrived, gave her usual noisy greeting, dropped all her things on the floor and threw herself into a chair, declaring that it was such a relief to be free of that dreadful prison for a few days. If anything was likely to take Angela’s mind off her troubles, it was the mess and disruption caused to an elegant and well-appointed existence by a fourteen-year-old girl, and so she welcomed her daughter with more than usual gladness. They were to go to the theatre and the shops and the zoo, and they would have a jolly time together, and Angela would be so distracted and amused by Barbara’s antics that she would have no opportunity to brood over the worries caused by her own unwise entanglements. And so it proved. They spent a long weekend in one another’s company, and Angela began to feel the cares lift from her shoulders as she listened to Barbara’s stories of school, commiserated over her scrapes (always accidental), and altogether felt herself being influenced for the better by her daughter’s uncomplicated approach to life.
After a day or two Angela decided to introduce a subject that she feared might prove tricky.
‘By the way, I’ve decided to sell the company, so I’ll have to go to New York for a little while,’ she said one morning over breakfast.
Barbara looked up from her porridge.
‘Oh?’ she said. ‘How long are you going for?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Angela, ‘but lately I’ve found myself rather missing the place. Of course I’m not going to leave you—don’t worry about that. As a matter of fact, I was wondering how you’d feel about coming with me.’
‘To America?’ said Barbara. She considered the suggestion. ‘But what about school? All my friends are here. I shouldn’t like to leave them.’
‘No, but it wouldn’t have to be forever. You can always come back to university in England in a few years if you still have your heart set on Cambridge, although of course many American colleges are very good too. Look here.’ She handed Barbara something which had just arrived in the post. ‘This school has an excellent reputation. I thought it might be just your sort of thing.’
‘A prospectus!’ said Barbara. ‘I say, you really have been thinking seriously about this, haven’t you? That must mean you want to return for good.’
‘I’m not sure yet, but I’m considering it,’ said Angela.
‘But what if I don’t want to go?’
‘Then we won’t,’ said Angela. ‘Although I’ll still have to make the visit if I want to sell the company. But that will only be for a few weeks.’
Barbara regarded her mother across the breakfast-table.
‘You poor dear,’ she said unexpectedly. ‘It’s been pretty hard on you, hasn’t it? I mean, the trial and all that. I expect I’d want to get away from everything too if I were in your position. It’s just lucky for you that you have somewhere to run away to if you can’t face things here any more.’
She meant nothing pointed by the remark, but Angela was disconcerted. Was she running away? Was that what it looked like? Angela had never considered herself a coward, but now she began to see things in a new light—not just her impending flight from England, but also her withdrawal from the murder investigation. Of course the trip to New York was unavoidable, and there was no reason why she should not stay for a while if she and Barbara were happier there, but the de Lisle case was another matter altogether. She forced herself to look at the question dispassionately, and could not escape the inevitable conclusion that here she really could be accused of cowardice. There was no getting around the fact that she had allowed her personal feelings to get in the way of the investigation. She had promised to find out the truth if it were at all possible, and yet here she was, declaring she would not go on, when there were many questions still to answer and at least one possible witness still to trace. She had herself admitted the possibility that Edgar Valencourt might be innocent, and yet she had seized upon the flimsiest of excuses to back out, purely because the thought of him brought back all her feelings of guilt at having betrayed him. Was that really how she wanted it to end? Did she want to spend the rest of her days haunted by the knowledge that she might have cleared his name had she only tried a little harder?
‘Are you all right, Angela?’ said Barbara. ‘I’ve asked you three times to pass the teapot. What’s the matter?’
Angela roused herself.
‘Nothing,’ she said, and helped Barbara to tea. ‘I just thought of something, that’s all. Thank you,’ she added.
‘I said thank you.’
‘No, I meant thank you for what you just said. You’ve made me realize I’m being an awful coward about something.’
‘That’s not like you,’ said Barbara. ‘What is it?’
‘Just something I was trying to avoid. But I’m afraid it’s unavoidable.’
‘Oh, one of those things. Like having a tooth out, you mean? Miss Bell always says it’s best to take a deep breath and get it over and done with as soon as possible.’
‘Miss Bell is very wise,’ said Angela.
‘Well, it’s easy for her to say if she’s not the one having the tooth out,’ said Barbara. ‘But I think she’s right all the same.’
And so Angela took a deep breath and returned to the case.
ANGELA’S FIRST STEP was to write a note to Mr. Gilverson in which she explained with as much dignity as she could muster that, having considered the matter, she believed she had acted too hastily in withdrawing from the case, and that she was willing to devote a little more time to it if he liked. She received by return a letter from the solicitor expressing his gratitude for her patience and his promise that if she did not discover anything new in the next week or two then she should hear from him no more. That done, Angela then summoned Freddy, who accepted the news that she had returned to the case with mixed resignation and enthusiasm, for if he was concerned for his friend he also hated to leave a job half finished, and after all, the case had not been solved yet.
‘Have you spoken to the police about the death of Henry Lacey?’ asked Angela.
‘Yes, but there’s nothing much doing,’ he replied. ‘They knew from Oliver Harrington that he had a visitor on the day of his death but never succeeded in finding out who it was. I don’t suppose they tried too hard, since Henry’s morphine habit was well known so his death was hardly suspicious. I wonder how Godfrey got him to take the drug. I imagine even someone as far gone as Henry Lacey would notice if somebody stuck a needle in him without permission.’
‘Then you’re working on the assumption that it was Godfrey who did it?’ said Angela.
‘Of course. Aren’t you?’
‘I suppose so,’ said Angela, thinking again of Victorine’s hands. If those hands were capable of strangling a slightly-built girl, might they also be capable of holding down a man who was under the influence of drink or drugs and forcibly administering an overdose of morphine?
‘You seem in some doubt,’ observed Freddy. ‘But surely his motive is enough to convince you?’
‘Oh, yes, that’s convincing enough,’ said Angela. ‘I’m just trying to picture him as a murderer, that’s all. He’s cold, and while I can quite see him knowing his brother was innocent and letting him hang all the same, I don’t know whether he’d be the sort to strangle a woman in a passion. He simply doesn’t seem angry enough.’
‘I see what you mean,’ said Freddy. ‘Still, he’s our most likely suspect, I should say.’
‘What about Oliver Harrington
?’ said Angela. ‘How did he strike you?’
‘He didn’t seem to have any motive that I could see,’ said Freddy. ‘And in any case, he says he spent the evening playing billiards with Henry Lacey.’
‘Who rather conveniently died and now can’t confirm Harrington’s alibi one way or the other,’ said Angela.
‘What, do you think Harrington put Henry out of the way because he knew Harrington was guilty?’ said Freddy.
‘It’s possible, don’t you think?’ said Angela.
They both considered the idea.
‘I can’t see it, myself,’ said Freddy at last.
‘Nor can I, really,’ said Angela. ‘It’s just that I think we oughtn’t to fasten upon one suspect at the expense of all the others, since then we might miss something important. If we discount the police’s theory that Selina was killed between seven and twenty-five past, then anybody who was in the house at the time might have done it.’
‘Any of the men, you mean. Oh, of course, you suspect Victorine too, don’t you?’
‘Perhaps it is a little far-fetched,’ admitted Angela. ‘At any rate, I certainly don’t suspect Evelyn de Lisle. But if we’re looking at likely suspects, then what do you think of Roger de Lisle? I should say that of all the people in the house, he was the one with the personality and temperament to have killed Selina and then put the blame on his son out of spite.’
‘Yes,’ said Freddy reflectively. ‘I hadn’t thought of it before, but of course you’re perfectly right. It certainly seems to fit everything we’ve heard about him so far.’
‘I hadn’t paid much attention to him up to now simply because it seemed unthinkable that he would kill his son’s wife and let his son hang for it,’ said Angela. ‘But of course I was thinking of him as an ordinary person, which he most certainly wasn’t. What might seem to you or me to be a ridiculous reason for doing such a thing might have been perfectly logical to his way of thinking. He appears to have been driven into a rage by the slightest thing.’
‘You mean Selina accidentally tripped him up in the hall one day and it threw him into such a fury he killed her?’ said Freddy.
‘Well, perhaps not quite such a slight motive as that,’ said Angela. ‘But there’s no saying that she mayn’t have offended him in some way, and we know he took offence terribly easily.’
‘Do you suppose he was in love with her?’ said Freddy.
Angela nodded.
‘That’s rather what I was wondering,’ she said. ‘Victorine said that she had the men of the house dancing to her tune. What if one of them was Roger? She said he found Selina charming, and allowed her to take liberties that were not permitted from anybody else. Remember, Oliver Harrington said that it was Roger who first met Selina and brought her to Greystone—and was perhaps even responsible for the engagement between her and Godfrey. I couldn’t understand why he was so keen to have her in the family since she had no money, but what if he had become infatuated with her? So infatuated, in fact, that he was willing to allow her to marry his son in order to keep her near him? It’s all speculation, of course, but it fits the story as we know it.’
‘You think Roger and Selina were having an affair, then?’
‘Perhaps,’ said Angela. ‘It looks pretty certain that Roger had at least one mistress, at any rate. And if one, then why not two?’
‘I say, though, it’s hardly the decent thing to do, is it? Seduce one’s son’s wife, I mean. Did Valencourt know about it, do you think?’
I don’t know,’ said Angela. She felt a pang of something, and to her surprise realized it was sympathy for Edgar Valencourt. Angry as she was at him, she would not wish an unfaithful wife upon him. It was obvious he had been very much in love with Selina, and such a double betrayal by both his wife and his father would have been punishment indeed. ‘We don’t know for sure how things were. Perhaps Roger was in love with her but it wasn’t reciprocated. From what we know of Roger, who evidently liked to have his own way, that might have been enough to make him angry enough to kill her.’
‘Still, it seems rather harsh that he should allow his son to take the blame purely because he didn’t want to go into the family business,’ observed Freddy.
‘It does, doesn’t it?’ said Angela. ‘I can’t help wondering whether there’s something we still don’t know. It’s just a pity the only people who can tell us the answers are all dead.’
Freddy suppressed a guilty cough and then was struck by a sudden idea.
‘I say,’ he said. ‘Didn’t Roger die unexpectedly? A gastric attack, the housekeeper said. What if he was murdered too? I must say that of all the people I should have thought were likely to have been given a helping hand to the next world by exasperated relations, he’s the one who springs most obviously to mind.’
‘That’s true enough,’ said Angela. ‘But in that case, the murder victims seem to be piling up at an alarming rate. First Selina, then Henry and now Roger. Not to mention Evelyn, who died shortly after the trial, although I can’t see why anybody should have had a reason to kill her. Do you really think someone has been doing away with the de Lisle family one by one? It seems a little unlikely.’
‘I expect you’re right,’ said Freddy. ‘Still, if it’s true it brings us back to Godfrey and Victorine, who are the only ones left. All right, then, let’s stick with what we know for certain—which is that Selina’s was not a natural death. It seems we have three or four extra suspects to consider now, any of whom might have done the deed after dinner. What do we do now?’
‘I told Mr. Gilverson it was useless to try and talk to all the servants who were in the house at the time,’ said Angela, ‘but as a matter of fact that’s not true. I’d really like to speak to the servant who spoke to Selina at a quarter past six. Who was she? Did Selina have a lady’s maid?’
Freddy took out his notebook and consulted it.
‘I don’t recall one being mentioned,’ he said. ‘In fact, if you remember, Evelyn de Lisle sent her own maid up earlier in the afternoon to see if Selina wanted anything, so I think we may assume she didn’t.’
‘Then who came to report that she was unwell and would not be coming down to dinner? Surely since whoever it was must have been the last person to see Selina alive, the police ought to have taken her name?’
‘One would think so,’ said Freddy, squinting at his own handwriting. ‘Perhaps it was the one who ran away.’
Angela glanced up, and an impatient look crossed her face.
‘What is it?’ said Freddy.
‘Oh, nothing. I thought I’d remembered something, that’s all, but it’s gone now. I have evidently reached the age at which one’s mental faculties begin to decline,’ said Angela.
‘Perhaps you ought to take a holiday after all this,’ said Freddy. ‘I’m sure it will do you good.’
‘So people keep telling me,’ said Angela. ‘But I seem to have spent most of this year gallivanting and it hasn’t helped so far, so I should rather say that a spell of hard work would be more to the purpose.’
‘What a ghastly thought,’ said Freddy. ‘If they required any real work of me at the Clarion I should hand in my notice on the spot.’ He looked at his watch. ‘And speaking of that organ of truth and righteousness, I promised the home editor I’d give him eight hundred words on the accident at the soap factory in Clapham by four o’clock, so I had better go and make a start. Such a pity so many people died, as it means I shall have to resist the urge to pun.’
He took his leave and went out, and Angela was left to think, although with little result, since all her ideas were mere speculation. At length she decided to abandon thoughts of the case for the present. There was an exhibition at an art gallery she wished to see, and she called William to bring the Bentley round to Mount Street. But whether the paintings were uninspiring or whether she was in the wrong frame of mind, somehow she could not concentrate on the matter at hand, and after less than an hour she left.
‘William,’ she said
idly as they returned home, ‘I don’t suppose you remember the name of the servant who ran away from Greystone Chase, do you?’
William thought.
‘Jemima, I think, ma’am,’ he said. ‘They said she jumped out of a window, but I expect that wasn’t true.’
‘These things do get exaggerated,’ agreed Angela. ‘But someone certainly did run away—I know it happened because the housekeeper told me, and she was there at the time. I shall have to ask Freddy to ask the Kent police for her surname. I don’t much fancy trying to find her after all this time, but apart from this Mme. Charbonnet—who I doubt will know anything—I have run out of people to question.’
‘Winkworth,’ said William suddenly.
‘What?’
‘Jemima Winkworth,’ he said. ‘That was her name. I’ve just remembered.’
‘Oh,’ said Angela. ‘Winkworth. Now where have I heard that name recently? Ah, yes. The Misses Winkworth. The woman in the wheel-chair and her sister. Oh!’ she said suddenly. ‘The elder one called her sister Jemmy, I’m sure of it. I wonder whether it’s the same woman.’
She thought back to the day on which she had met the Misses Winkworth on the cliff path. What had the elder one said? Something about them all being dead now, so there was no harm in bringing Jemmy back to Denborough. Who was dead? Was she referring to the de Lisles? Jemmy had been simple in the head, and had had a stroke, and wanted to return to Denborough to die in an expensive nursing-home—far too expensive, in fact, for a woman of her class. Angela stared out of the window and thought very hard.