“You are. If I’d realised just how perspicacious you’d prove, I’d not have allowed you here at all.” Derek smiled at the dowager. “But I know my mother too well. Would it be out of place to describe you as a dog with a bone?”
“Describe me how you like, dear, but for God’s sake tell me the truth.” Twin spots of colour stood out on Alexandra Temple’s pale cheeks.
“You shall have it, in good time.” Mrs. Stewart, who’d taken her place at her godmother’s side, nodded magisterially. “They’ll not be allowed to leave the room until they’ve dotted every ‘i.’”
Orlando leaned forward. “What persuaded you that this was no duping? That Tuffnell really was such a danger?”
“Hammond came to me, concerned. It was the second evening they were here—I still hoped that all this business would turn out to be a mistake, somehow, but I’d hoped in vain. Tuffnell had been talking to Hayes about suicide—more than once—and upset the lad. We were concerned he was lining up a repeat performance. He’d hinted as much.” Derek shuddered. “It hardened our resolve.”
“Was the business with the bells your idea, Derek?” The dowager eyed her son with a strange mixture of solicitude and anger.
“No. Hammond’s. I’d explained what was likely to happen that weekend, so that he could ensure the staff didn’t . . .”
“Didn’t interfere?”
“No, Mother. Didn’t see that which might upset them.” Beatrice suddenly cut in, making them all turn towards her. So she too had known.
Derek continued. “And Hammond understood the need to ensure Tuffnell wasn’t interrupted in the act, especially if he decided not to cooperate.”
“Quite an all-encompassing operation.” Mr. Stewart couldn’t hide the disapproval in his voice.
“It happens, Richard. The old ‘There’s a loaded pistol in my desk, Carruthers—we’ll just be in the billiard room for the next half hour’ routine. Believe me, if there’d been another way I’d have taken it, but no court would have found enough evidence to convict him, maybe not even to charge him, not if he didn’t confess. Well, would it?” Derek locked eyes with Mr. Stewart until the latter looked away. The point was well made.
“So you asked him to ‘take the honourable way out.’ What if he’d refused?” Jonty spoke softly, the question Orlando had been itching to ask, the “Lavinia” aspect. “Would you have strung him up yourselves?”
“Maybe not that, but we’d seriously considered it. Maybe a group of us going up onto the roof, looking at the view as we used to when we were lads. Talking about the old days of shooting pigeons with catapults and sending the staff mad when they had to clean the mess up.”
“And then there being a terrible ‘accident’? Tuffnell getting too close to the edge and losing his footing?”
“Something like that. Some of the stonework is in need of repair, and I’d have been contrite about not having dealt with it sooner.”
“Why get him to hang himself, though?” Orlando raised his finger to point accusingly at his host, then remembered his manners. “Wouldn’t the ‘loaded pistol in the desk,’ as you called it, have been easier?”
“It would, had we been able to persuade him to use it, but we couldn’t, not even as the last resort.”
“He hated guns, remember?” Jonty sighed. “Ronnie said so. We’ve been told a surprising amount of truth, one way or another. Let’s have some more. Did you provide Tuffnell with everything he needed? Bring him the rope on a silver platter?”
“Jonty!” his parents cried in unison.
“Sorry, uncalled for.” Jonty eyed his shoes.
Orlando watched him, recognising the deep anger his lover felt at the cruel deeds people perpetrated on one another.
“No, it was entirely called for,” the dowager said, out of the blue. “If Jonty hadn’t asked it, I would have had to.”
“We offered him a choice. Rope, poison, a gun. He made the decision.” Derek stared his mother out. “Do you think we liked taking the law into our hands? Or do you think we actually did the deed, hoisting him up on the rope?”
“Can you assure me that you didn’t?”
“God, no. We’d have been like him, then, wouldn’t we?” Derek and his mother locked eyes, two formidable wills engaging.
At last, the dowager broke the deadlock. “I believe you.”
“I’m not sure I do.” Mr. Stewart was probably burning the last of the social boats. “If he was losing his marbles, as you so eloquently put it, then why would he have seen any value in doing the right thing?”
Derek looked steadily at his guest, then smiled. “You know me—us—too well. We had to apply some coercion. Persuade him that if it felt so wonderful to talk other men into taking their lives, how wonderful might it feel to take his own?”
The dowager threw up her hands. “I struggle to believe that.”
“I can.” Jonty spoke in an unnaturally quiet voice. “Orlando and I have had the dubious pleasure of being in the same room as a lunatic, one who took his life spectacularly and with something approaching equanimity, if not pleasure.”
“Might I clarify something?” Orlando, uncomfortable, moved the conversation on. “We’ve imagined that Tuffnell persuaded Livingstone to take his life on that day because of the naval significance of the date. Did he tell you—or Ronnie—anything more about it?”
“Oh, yes. That part of it all came out. Tuffnell was in his cups and maudlin about his mistress. He talked about this young lad he knew who was being a chump over some actress and fretting because he had boils.”
“Ringworm.” Jonty frowned. “And I wish everyone wouldn’t keep calling him a chump.”
“It’s my turn to apologise.” Derek gave an inclination of his head. “I was only quoting Tuffnell. He’d laid it on thick with Livingstone about how women weren’t to be trusted and how he’d heard this particular actress had already got a string of men and how she’d never look at a solicitor’s clerk. You can imagine the rest. He persuaded him to make a glorious end of things, on a day with a double significance both for love and for family honour.”
“And the note?”
“Livingstone carried it around with him as a reminder—on his brighter days—of how low he’d been. Tuffnell had seen it and suggested the waxed package. To emphasise the St. Vincent connection. He told the man to make sure he left it in a prominent place. He didn’t.”
“Because he was forgetful. We were told that.” Jonty nodded.
“Tuffnell was furious about it.” Derek stared, unseeing, at his glass. “Said that nobody would have suspected a thing if Livingstone had left it propped up by the toast rack.”
“Did you ever find any motive?” Orlando got in before the avenging angel could. Jonty was clearly simmering with anger. “Apart from, I suppose, wanting to see if you can have the ultimate power and then exercise it?”
“That was his only motive, as we understand it. Enough incentive to kill a man, if you’re mad. We asked him to write a note, to say he’d killed himself because of his debts, but he refused, point-blank.” Derek rose. “Richard, come and help me charge everyone’s glasses. This is thirsty work.” They fetched the decanters and circulated with them. “I suppose you wondered why we didn’t just create one ourselves. A nice, neat forgery.”
“I couldn’t believe that idea would have eluded you.” Mr. Stewart hovered, with the port delicately poised over his wife’s glass.
“Ah, yes, even an Oxford man would have thought of it.” Derek smiled. “Rodgers suggested faking one on the typewriter in my study.”
Jonty and Orlando exchanged glances, before Jonty asked, “So why did you decide against that?”
“You’d laugh. Because we couldn’t decide on an appropriate form of words. Rodgers insisted on drafting something that was full of sackcloth and ashes whereas I’d have preferred, ‘Had enough, good-bye.’ Simplicity.” Derek topped up Orlando’s brandy. “We should have thought of simplicity throughout, instead of the busine
ss with ensuring Ronnie had an alibi and the nonsense with the bells. Too many people putting their oar in and trying to be clever.”
“The best murderers will always be the most modest ones. Thank you.” Orlando cradled his glass. “They’ll never be caught and possibly never be known about.”
The decanters were replaced and everyone took their seats again.
“Gray’s bell sounded.” Jonty restarted the conversation. “That night. Was it Hammond, sounding it from below stairs? Or was it Tuffnell himself?”
“Ah.” Derek knocked back most of his brandy, in one. “We’d intended the former, if the need arose, but Tuffnell needed . . . more coercion than we’d intended. He said he’d do it if he was left alone, then he must have had second thoughts—a moment of lucidity, perhaps—and rang the bell, thinking the presence of the servants would make us think twice.”
“And no servants came.”
“No.” Derek stared into his glass.
“I didn’t know you could be quite so cold-blooded.” The dowager clung to Mrs. Stewart’s hand, in obvious distress.
“He never gave Livingstone the chance to ring for help, Mother, don’t forget that.”
“I don’t forget it. I shall never forget it.” Jonty rose, leaving his drink unfinished. “Excuse me, I think I’d like to retire now. I’ve heard enough.”
“We’ve come across some miserable swine in our time, Jonty.” Orlando lingered by his bedroom door, both of them pleased to be out of the unpleasant atmosphere of the drawing room, but neither ready to go to their empty beds on such an evening. “Men you wouldn’t want to pass the time of day with. I suppose we have to add Tuffnell to that tally.”
“Seems like it.” Jonty lowered his voice. “And Derek and his cronies should creep onto the tail of your list. I understand what they did and why they did it, but I don’t like it. Taking the law into one’s own hands is the beginning of anarchy.”
Orlando knew how Jonty had resisted the same temptation and how he’d had better grounds than the Ambrosians to take action.
“Maybe my grandmother had such a list.” Orlando leaned against the doorframe. “Her father would have been on it, for having turfed her out. But I bet the man who caused her disgrace would have ranked highly, too. He must have been an absolute monster, that she refused to marry him even when he was dying and she was threatened with disgrace.”
“Monster, perhaps. Mad, maybe. Or just a weak, vacillating, gullible individual, and I can’t have seen her wanting to link her name to one of those, either. Better her child had no apparent father than one who was a wastrel or a cad or whatever he was.”
“My thoughts entirely. And had it not been for this case, I wouldn’t have been brave enough to voice them.”
Jonty smiled. “It’s a terrible cliché, but oft true. Out of bad things can come some good.” He ran his hand down the doorframe, just inches from his lover’s shoulder. “I’ve had some bitterly hard times, especially at school, and now I have you.”
“Daft beggar.” Orlando knew Jonty would understand he actually meant I love you.
“If your grandfather was mad”—Jonty seemed to be picking his way through his words—“then that gives us a possible clue to finding him. We have a rough date and maybe a location. My money would be on Kent, so we could try the mental hospitals and see what their records—”
“No.” Orlando stopped him. “I’ve decided to leave it be. My grandmother was the wisest woman I’ve known—don’t tell your mother that or she’ll kill me—and if she decided she didn’t want him, or his name, then I don’t want it, either.”
“As you wish.” Jonty briefly stroked Orlando’s arm.
“But you’re not convinced?”
“What I think doesn’t matter. It’s not my decision.” Jonty looked up and down the corridor, then risked a brief kiss. “Whatever you want to do, we’ll do. Good night. Sleep well.”
“And you.”
Orlando slipped into his room, thinking there might just be some light at the end of the family history tunnel, after all. Not the light of a puzzle solved, but of peace found. At last.
“Glad to be home, dear?” Mrs. Stewart asked her youngest son when they had at last shaken the soil of Berkshire from their feet and settled once more in the civilised environs of their London house. “Or should I say ‘Glad to be at this one of your homes?’”
“I’m glad to be anywhere but Fyfield at present.” Jonty sighed. “We don’t have to go back, do we?”
“I sincerely hope not.” Mr. Stewart slumped into a chair, motioning for Orlando to make himself comfortable. “If we want to see your godmother, she can come to us.”
“She’ll probably be relieved to get away. We’ve not left a happy household behind us.” Mrs. Stewart fanned herself with a letter in lieu of anything more appropriate. “Jonty, could you ring for some refreshments? That journey’s left your mama parched.”
“I’m not sure I can face ringing a bell ever again.” Jonty’s actions gave the immediate lie to his words. “And I can’t stop thinking about poor Hayes. I hate the thought of a lad like that being duped. And by his own bosses. Papa should steal him, or Dr. Peters. I think I’ll insist on it as the price of us keeping quiet about this case.”
“I’ve already done precisely that.” Mr. Stewart took evident pleasure at the surprise he’d created. “It’s a crying shame when someone of such obvious intelligence is left to moulder in such a menial position, irrespective of what else was done to him.”
“Isn’t that sort of thing tantamount to poaching?” Jonty smiled, gleefully. “Didn’t Derek set the gamekeeper on you?”
“I’d like to see him try.” Mr. Stewart swung his hand, like a sword. “He should have recognised the man’s potential himself, but I suppose the baize door might as well be the portal into another universe as far as he’s concerned.”
“So are you having him here?” Orlando felt more disconcerted by this news than he’d be willing to admit.
“Only to start with. Longer term, I’d like to see him down in Sussex. The place needs someone to manage the estate and poor old Roth’s not getting any younger. Nor are his views keeping up with this new century.” Mr. Stewart looked unusually serious. “The world’s changing, Jonty, and nothing we can say—no amount of wishful thinking or ‘in my day’-ing from old buffers in armchairs—will make it go back to where it was.”
“Some might say ‘Thank goodness for that,’ Richard. Ah, Hopkins.” Mrs. Stewart deftly changed the subject as the butler appeared. “Is there any chance of some lemonade or the like?”
“I want forward-thinking men down in Sussex if the estate’s to thrive, and I’m confident young Hayes can handle it.” Mr. Stewart waited until the door had closed. “Did you know he’d like to study estate management, or maybe even something to do with business? I thought Hammond was going to have apoplexy when he heard. We’ll see if we can accommodate him.”
“Splendid.” Jonty rubbed his hands together gleefully while Orlando, who didn’t think it was splendid at all, forced a smile. “What about sealing this business? Should we be talking to the police?”
“What for? Tuffnell is beyond earthly justice, and both he and Livingstone did technically take their own lives, so the inquests brought in the right verdicts.” Mr. Stewart eyed the door in case the refreshments arrived at the wrong part of a delicate conversation.
“Not him. Derek and his cronies.”
“You could consult your tame policemen Wilson and— What’s the other one?”
“Sergeant Cohen.” Orlando smiled in fond remembrance of his favourite policeman.
“Thank you. But I doubt they’ll think it worthwhile. And many a jury man might say they’d done the proper thing under the circumstances.”
The lemonade, tea, and a plate of something sweet appeared in the care of Hopkins, giving everyone concerned a chance to draw their mental breath.
“Will you tell Hayes about what happened at Fyfield? And his n
arrow escape?” Jonty took a long swig of his drink.
“Once he has his feet firmly under the table, maybe.” Mr. Stewart contemplated a small, sugary biscuit. “What about your gardener laddy on Monkey Island?”
“Covington? That’s a point.” Jonty laid his glass down. “Poach him too, Papa.”
There was no need to be coy about slipping along corridors at the Stewarts’ home, so long as it wasn’t in the presence of the staff, it not being the done thing to embarrass them. However, Orlando was always grateful when they were in rooms with interconnecting doors, thus taking the “slipping” bit away entirely. Jonty, in his shirt sleeves, suddenly appeared at said door, letting himself in without knocking.
“Covington. What shall we put in the letter we send him from Cambridge which he said will so impress his mother? Or should we see him face-to-face?”
Orlando, caught in the act of dropping his trousers, whipped them up again, flustered. “Discretion would be the better part of valour in this instance. You’ll find a way to craft the words. You’ve a knack with language.”
“Is that a nice way of saying, ‘Jonty, rescue me! I don’t want to do this!’?” Jonty flung himself on the bed.
“Of course it is.” Orlando didn’t even attempt a lie.
“I’ll take on the challenge, then. Find a form of words about how Livingstone was talked into taking his life by someone who is now themselves beyond having justice meted upon them, except by the highest authority. Avoid mentioning how Covington was nearly a victim too.”
“Very nice. I said you’d be the man for the job.” Orlando wondered whether to drop his pants again. Jonty looked more than alluring, lying with his arms behind his head, although he wasn’t sure the man’s visit had a purely romantic intention. Some other business was in the offing, not least in the form of the large envelope he bore.
Lessons for Suspicious Minds Page 21