“Have you ever consulted a doctor about this habit of his?” he inquired, and she shook her head.
“No. What was the use? It’s obvious enough that Martin has nervous fits which make him strange at times. He’s all right when we’re left in peace and nobody worries us.”
“Ah, then you connect his absences with periods of worry and disturbance?”
Veronica got to her feet and began to pace up and down the room, her hands in her pockets.
“If I told you my own explanation of his wandering fits, you would tell me that I was quite irrational,” she said, and Macdonald replied:
“Should I? I’m a Scot, you know. We have patches of irrationality in our make-up. I should be glad if you would tell me.”
She stared at him: “You are a very odd policeman,” she rejoined abruptly. “Old houses and old families have a tendency to be abnormal, but such abnormality isn’t of interest to the matter of fact. Martin has always gone away when something was going to happen here, when somebody was going to die, or a row was going to occur, or the ghost was going to be seen. He has a queer phrase about ‘remembering the future.’ He went away before our father died, and when our old nurse died. Now can you understand why I’m not surprised that he went away when Basil shot himself? – or are you going to tell me that I am talking nonsense?”
“I’m very much interested in what you say, though I don’t think it need of necessity involve an abnormal explanation,” he replied. “A man of your brother’s type, with a sensitive nervous mind, can be apprehensive of trouble subconsciously. The psychologists would understand that well enough. A subconscious fear may drive a person away from home, and may cause actual fits of forgetfulness. Most deaths are prefaced by illness, most quarrels by previous disagreement. There’s nothing irrational in that. Even in this case, though your brother’s suicide was presumably unpredictable, there may well have been some unrest and discord in the family meeting which preceded it.”
She laughed, again that short harsh laugh which was so lacking in mirth.
“A very good analysis, Chief Inspector. Family concord is not our long suit. My older brothers – with the exception of Richard – were both pretty loathsome to Martin. They despised him. On one occasion last Wednesday – when we were all at tea together – the word lunatic was mentioned. It’s a word which terrifies Martin. He’s always had a fear that his mind would go. I think if there is any rational explanation of his disappearance this time, it was the use of that one word. He was morbid over it.”
“When you last saw your brother Martin, on your walk that Wednesday morning, did he say anything to you which made you realise that he was upset?”
“No, but he never says anything to give one an idea that he’s going to have one of his wandering fits. He did say that he was going to stay out of doors until the others – Basil and Richard – went away. He said he’d had enough family to last him for a long time. I rather sympathised. We – Martin and I – prefer this place to ourselves.”
Macdonald nodded. “Yes. Family gatherings are not always occasions of joy,” he said. “There is one other point which I want to deal with now, Miss Mallowood, before I ask your permission to go upstairs and see the old playroom and your brothers’ bedrooms. When you left the top floor on Wednesday, immediately after the door had been broken in, exactly what did you do and where did you go?”
“I did exactly what I was told to do,” she replied. “I went to the telephone, which is in the cloakroom at the back of the hall, and put a call through to the police station at Sendover. Having done that, I went and told Ada and cook not to make fools of themselves. After that I came in here and Richard came down a moment later.”
“Did Inspector Long tell you that the officer on duty at the front door saw a man whom he took to be your brother Martin crossing the lawns and coming towards the house?”
Veronica’s brows lifted scornfully. “He told me so, yes. Since the officer in question had never seen Martin I didn’t take his evidence very seriously. We do get odd people wandering across the grounds occasionally. The average sightseer has very little idea of respecting private property. If what you want to know is ‘did I see Martin crossing the lawn?’ the answer is ‘I did not.’ ”
At that moment the door opened, and a tall man came in and looked at Macdonald inquiringly. The latter was immediately struck by the newcomer’s remarkable likeness to Veronica, even the manner of holding their heads and the position of their hands was similar. Veronica performed a curt introduction.
“Chief Inspector Macdonald. My brother, Richard Mallowood.”
Even as he gave his slight formal bow Richard Mallowood’s eyebrows shot up, and his lips pursed to a whistle:
“Poor old Basil!” he said softly. “Is that still the subject of inquiry, inquest ad infinitum? – after he tried so hard to make matters clear in his last letter, too.”
Veronica turned and picked up her gun, saying:
“The Inspector wants to see the playroom, and the rest of the house, Richard. You can take him round. I’ll go and see if there’s any food going.” She glanced back at Macdonald. “My brother will bring you to the dining-room if you would like lunch here, Inspector.”
Without waiting for an answer she walked out of the room, and Richard gave a quiet chuckle.
“I don’t suppose domestic problems enter your scheme of things,” he said, regarding Macdonald with his bright humorous stare. “The servants left yesterday – with the permission of the police, of course. No others have applied for the situation. Thank God for tin openers. Would you like to do an extensive tour of this historic mansion, Inspector, or give the once over to exhibits A and B, namely, the playroom and Basil’s bedroom? I am at your service.”
“I should like to see all over the house, and I should be grateful for your guidance,” said Macdonald, “but if this is an inconvenient time for you, I could wander round by myself, and ask questions afterwards.”
Richard turned to the door, saying, “If I were ill-disposed towards the law and its representatives, I should take you at your word; left to your own devices it’s probable that you would break your neck. If you tell me there is a house in England which has more dangerous stairs in more unexpected places, with more low beams to crack your skull on, or more treacherous floors to trip over, I don’t believe you. Shall we go to the top floor first and work our way downwards?”
“If you could give me a general idea of the lay-out first it would be helpful,” said Macdonald. “It is a complex building and not easy to grasp.”
“It certainly isn’t. The architects were more concerned with their outside elevations than interior convenience,” replied Richard. “I’ll do you a rough plan before we start, if you like.”
He sat down at the table, pulled a long envelope out of his pocket, and started sketching, quickly and neatly, while Macdonald watched him.
“Main block, ground floor,” he said. “Period James I and Charles I. South front, entrance hall in centre – you probably saw the front door as you came in. Entering by that, staircase in front of you, drawing-room door on left, dining-room door on right: entrance to gun-room at the back by left of stairs – so. The gun-room gives on to a lobby, with cloakroom, and from lobby is the entrance to the morning-room, where we are now – got that? Following the usual tricks of old houses, morning-room also opens into drawing-room on one side and blue boudoir – seldom used – on the other. You can do a circular tour, or play hide and seek, via drawing-room, morning-room, gun-room and entrance hall, all having more than one entrance. I used to find that useful in my errant youth. You can’t run a chap to earth when there’s a choice of exits.”
“Quite. Each room can be regarded as a passage as well as a room.”
“That’s the idea – the same throughout. As you were, in the entrance hall again. On the side opposite to the drawing-room is the dining-room – and a damned big cold impossible room it is too, forty-five by thirty feet and only one f
ireplace. At the back of the dining-room, on the north side are passages to the kitchens which are in the east wing. The latter is nearly all Elizabethan. Dining-room leads into library: from the library you turn right into the gallery, the beginning of the L shaped wing which juts out southward. The rest of that wing on the ground floor is disused now. The rooms are damp and miserable and the windows are too small. Picturesque, but damned uncomfortable. The kitchens jut out northwards, behind the library – pantries, dairy, wash-houses and God knows what else – a labyrinth of stone-floored abominations. There you are, that’s the ground plan roughly.”
“I see, that’s excellent,” said Macdonald. “You’re fairly expert at plans.”
Richard snorted. “Expert? Not I. I know the house: I ought to. I was brought up in it, and I can draw maps. Now for the first floor. The same general outline, but for your purpose you can disregard the rooms in the Elizabethan wing. They’re not used now. No electric light, no drainage, all rat-eaten and dry-rotted. Going up the main stairs you find a passage running the full length of the north side of the house. Turn to your left at the top of the stairs and the first room is my sister’s, a huge room. Next come a dressing-room and a bathroom, then the room my brother Paul had, at the corner of the wing. To the north of that is another bedroom called the oriel room – unused. Turning to your right at the top of the staircase you come first to a guest-room where Mrs. Lorne slept, then Martin’s bedroom, then a bathroom. At the east end of the wing come two other bedrooms, Basil’s and mine – his on the south, mine on the east side. Two more unused rooms over the kitchens, and servants quarters with their own staircase. I don’t know this bit accurately – it’s what you’d call an architect’s nightmare. I know there used to be another staircase connecting it with the top floor, but that’s been blocked up years since. As for the top floor, most of the rooms are empty. They used to be nurseries and so forth in the old days when big families were the vogue. Our old playroom has been left with most of its original furniture in it though – too much knocked about to be sellable, I expect.” He was drawing a plan of the top floor as he spoke, and pushed it towards Macdonald. “There you are. The staircase up to the top floor is in the angle of the west and south sides – outside Paul’s room, immediately above the lobby between the gun-room and here. There’s the same corridor on the north side which you find below, and half a dozen rooms facing south. The playroom is at the corner of the east wing and stretches above the bedrooms Basil and I occupied. It used to have a doorway to the Elizabethan parts but that has been blocked up. The stairway and floorboards were all rotten. Well, how much have you grasped from all these scribbles?”
“I’ve got the main idea, I fancy,” replied Macdonald. “In this side of the house, westwards from the entrance hall, are the drawing-room to the south, gun-room on the north, morning-room and boudoir on the west side, with a connecting lobby between gun-room and morning-room – whence go stairs, I take it, connecting with the small flight above leading to the top floor? In all there are three staircases: the main one which leads to the first floor only; a service staircase from the kitchens to the first floor, the upper flight to the top floor being now blocked, and the staircase between the gun-room and the morning-room at the west end of the building which goes from ground floor to top storey?”
“That’s right.”
“I take it there may be other stairways – in the Elizabethan wing, for example?”
“Several of them, but as that wing is shut off now, they’re not used.”
“Right – and now if you’ll take me round I shall be much indebted to you.”
“I’ll take you round with pleasure – but what all this has to do with the why and wherefore of Basil’s shooting himself beats me altogether,” replied Richard.
Macdonald considered a moment before he replied, and then said:
“The evidence shows that a man was seen in the garden outside this room a few minutes after your brother shot himself. His presence may have been germane to the case, and it’s just possible that some trace of him may still exist, if he entered the house. It’s a point which must be considered.”
Richard sighed. “All right. Let’s get on with it. You’ll soon see there wasn’t much chance for humour on the part of your mysterious stranger. My God! How I do hate mystery mongering! I told the other chap – Long, wasn’t it? that I had seen a tall fair-headed cove in the village who asked me if I were Basil. The police down here have traced the chap. He wasn’t a dun, as I imagined, but a bookie from Portsmouth who knew Basil years ago. It was probably he who was seen in the garden.”
“I think not. This man, Lynch by name, was in Petersfield at noon on Wednesday morning.”
“So he says,” retorted Richard. “Doesn’t want to be mixed up with our family to-do. Any way, I’ll bet it wasn’t Martin. If it had been, my sister would have seen him, and she’d have taken care not to let him out of her sight again that morning.” He turned and faced Macdonald impatiently: “For God’s sake don’t get it into your head that Martin was involved in Basil’s suicide. It just doesn’t make sense. Come along and see the room where it happened, and you’ll soon realise there wasn’t much chance of any funny business.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
“MY brothers and I all used this room as a place to riot in: it was a refuge from the rest of the house, where we could make a mess and kick up a row unrebuked,” said Richard Mallowood, as he and Macdonald entered the long battered-looking room where Basil had met his end. Macdonald stood and looked about him. The length of the room ran north and south. There were four casement windows facing east, of which only one was hinged to open. The walls were roughly plastered, but not papered, and there was no plaster ceiling, the great roof beams crossing the room from side to side and laths showing beneath the tiles of the pent roof. An old refectory table stood beneath the windows, and Richard went up to it, pointing with a sunburned finger:
“We’re all recorded there, Paul, Basil, Martin and I,” he said. “Paul was the best at carving as you can see. He did that when he was fifteen – it took him the whole of the summer holidays – persevering bloke he always was.”
Macdonald looked down at the admirably carved inscription on the ancient worm-eaten surface of the table. “Paul Bertrand de Lisle Mallowood,” it ran, and close against it was a rough rendering of the Mallowood crest and arms, a scutcheon of bewildering quaterings with a wolf’s head for crest. Further along the table Basil Philip de Lisle Mallowood had inscribed his name in less skilful fashion. Richard Blaise de Lisle Mallowood had contented himself with a mere scratching of his name and a heraldic achievement which resembled a skull and cross bones rather than his family arms. Martin had got no further than his Christian name, and even that was rather illegible, since he had attempted to inscribe it in the complexity of Gothic black letter.
“Enough to give any one the double-distilled hump,” said Richard Mallowood, looking down at the table, and running his finger along the carven capitals of Basil’s name. “He was rather a nice kid once. We used to sit up here and talk careers. Our youth was rather blighted because the family fortune contracted every year, under the curse of those damned scoundrelly Liberals – how our old pater used to curse them to high heaven.” He sat on the table and lighted a cigarette, looking reflectively round the old room. “A property like this is the devil, when you’ve got a contracting rent-roll, a slump in farming, and ill-chosen investments,” he went on. “The old man was as proud as Lucifer. He was always chronically broke, because he hadn’t the means for keeping this house up, and he squandered money in one direction and was a skinflint in others. It was because we had lack of money drummed into us all our boyhood that Basil and Paul chose city careers. They both swore they’d make money, and then more money. Paul and Basil were both at Reppingham: when they left school, being clever fellas; they managed to scrounge their way in with city wallahs – fathers of moneyed friends – and they kept their noses to that damned money-grindston
e all their lives. Paul always meant to restore this place in the grand manner – and then the old man went and left it to Martin and Veronica. Lord, I must be getting on into my dotage, blethering away like this,” he exclaimed, “but the sight of this table brings things back. We’ve sat up here and talked and talked and planned out what thundering fine things we’d do. My God! Look at us now… Basil Philip de Lisle Mallowood, intent on making money by fair means or foul, ending by shooting himself, and leaving a letter on this table with apologies to the rest of us. God! What a mess-up – and I tell you he was a nice kid once… Sorry. I oughtn’t to have came up here. This room’s haunted – not with ghosts, but with frustrated intentions.”
“I can understand your feeling about it well enough,” said Macdonald. He pulled a pipe out of his pocket and filled it as he spoke. “This record;” pointing to the names, “it must be alive to you, and the business about your brother a bitter epilogue. I’m sorry.” He paused, and then went on: “When the others were debating careers and money making, what were your own ideas about it all?”
“Mine? Oh, I always loathed money and talk about money and rows about money. Something revolting in it all. What I liked was to get one of those old travel books from the library downstairs – Hakluyt’s voyages, or the journeys of Marco Polo, or Doughty – even Darwin and Huxley fascinated me because they’d travelled. I did a bolt after my last term at Reppingham, footed it to Bristol and got taken on as cabin boy. The old man never forgave me – not that I cared. All I’ve ever wanted to do was to wander. Basil would have done better if he’d followed suit. He was a great hefty fellow, and a very fine athlete once. He and I had some good times together in the long ago.”
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