by Anne Morice
‘I’m improving,’ I protested. ‘All I need is a little more practice.’
‘What you need is some tracing-paper,’ he said, taking the pencil out of my hand and dashing off a few rapid strokes on one corner of the page.
‘That’s rather good,’ I admitted sadly, as he twisted it round for me to see. ‘Just as good as the original.’
‘No, it’s not; and the point is it’s not original. It’s just a flash trick. You might have acquired it, yourself, if you hadn’t floated through the art class, dreaming of your name in lights in Shaftesbury Avenue.’
‘But it’s not in lights, there or anywhere else, and not likely to be, at the rate I’m going. Altogether, this has been a mortifying morning; everything conspiring to show up my own inadequacies. I’ve had about enough.’
‘Don’t despair,’ he said consolingly. ‘We must never forget that no effort, however fatuous, is totally wasted. In my experience, it can sometimes lead to no end of trouble.’
‘I suppose that might be better than nothing,’ I agreed.
Nine
(i)
In due course we learnt that the jury, not quite on its toes in the opinion of some, had brought in an open verdict. Whereupon, Toby, ignoring my entreaties and having presumably received the green light from Mrs Parkes, slipped merrily away in a Mercedes spruced up as never before after two days of Harbart’s tender care.
The throng of journalists, who had spent the previous twenty-four hours clamped to the gates of The Maltings and Haverford Court, gradually drifted away. By twelve o’clock the next morning, they had drifted back again, the news having broken that the barn had been burnt to a cinder, an event subsequently referred to as ‘Murder Village Blaze’, and Christabel was in hospital on the danger list.
Mercifully, both reports proved to be slightly exaggerated, but Robin told me that Christabel’s injuries were serious enough to cause anxiety.
‘Don’t blame me,’ he said defensively. ‘I didn’t set fire to her blessed old barn.’
‘Well, who did?’
‘How should I know? I should think the cause will be fairly easy to establish, but it’s being investigated of course. In fact, they’re crowding in on us from all sides. For one thing, it was scheduled as an historic building, so the preservation people are rattling their sabres. Also Mott’s pictures were insured for a pretty hefty sum, so we’ve got the assessors round our necks, as well. They’ll be dead keen to sniff out a bit of arson, if they can. Unfortunately, the flames had got such a hold by the time anyone thought of sending for the fire brigade they they’re going to have their work cut out.’
‘Who’s anyone? Didn’t Christabel give the alarm, herself?’
‘No, it was someone from the Court, who happened to notice smoke; the gardener’s wife, in fact. Christabel had no telephone, as you know, and she’s more or less isolated. This gardener’s cottage is the nearest human habitation, and it’s seven or eight minutes’ walk. It doesn’t seem to have occurred to her to go there. Apparently, she was obsessed by saving as many pictures as she could and she simply pitched in and started dragging them out, by herself.’
‘Poor old thing! What a lion she is! Did she manage to rescue many?’
‘Quite a few. Then she must have been knocked out by the fumes. They found her lying across the threshold. She was lucky, because the whole doorway collapsed within minutes of their getting to her.’
‘Can I see her?’
‘Not for a day or two. She’s not even strong enough to talk to us at present.’
‘You said you knew how the fire was started. Was that true, or just a guess?’
‘I prefer to call it a conclusion based on observation. I believe she started it herself. Oh, not deliberately, I don’t mean that. But you know how careless she is, and always got a cigarette going? It’s my belief that she dropped a lighted match or fag-end somewhere in the barn. It wouldn’t have needed more than that. The old place was as dry as a tinder-box, and there was sawdust and bits of sacking to help things along. Some of the pictures were still packed in wooden crates.’
I shook my head: ‘Sorry to knock such a nice, convenient theory, Robin, but it won’t do. I know she’s careless and slops around like a tramp and all that, but it’s only because she’s sacrificed everything, vanity included, to those old pictures. Her entire life revolves round them. Honestly, I do know what I’m talking about, and I’ll bet you a million that she wouldn’t have lit a match, or even smoked a cigarette inside the barn, any more than I would whistle in my dressing-room. It was ingrained.’
He looked impressed by this argument, but muttered something about Christabel getting a bit past it, and of elderly people often having mental lapses.
‘Oh, come off it,’ I said. ‘You know jolly well that she isn’t senile in that sense, and she’s only three days more elderly than she was last Sunday.’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘When Christabel told us that somebody had broken into the barn last Saturday night, you went over there to look round, didn’t you? And did you find one single trace of a spent match, or cigarette ash scattered around, which would given you reason to think she might have been careless in that way?’
‘No,’ he admitted, frowning. ‘No, I can’t say I did.’
‘There you are, then!’
‘That’s only negative evidence; it doesn’t prove anything. Still, I’ll grant you this much. Now you mention it, I do recall that, apart from some of the pictures having been recently tumbled around, the place was remarkably neat and tidy. There was no dust, and I remember thinking that, in a lot of ways, it was a damn sight better cared for than the cottage.’
He made this admission very soberly, and remained staring down at the table when he had finished speaking.
I said: ‘All right! What else?’
‘What else what?’
‘You don’t fool me; I know that face. What else have you remembered?’
‘Well, if you must know, it’s I who am getting senile. Talk about mental lapses! Thank God it was you who caught me out, and not the Assistant Commissioner. Do you know, until you brought it up, I’d forgotten all about that incident of the burglary on Saturday? I suppose it’s because so many more pressing things have come up since then, but it’s inexcusable and I’m grateful to you for reminding me.’
‘It was not a thing I was likely to forget. I feel sure it has an important place in the scheme of things.’
He was not listening: ‘There has to be a connection, I suppose,’ he went on, pursuing his own train of thought, ‘though for the life of me I can’t see how it ties in. Could we be looking at it from the wrong angle? I mean, supposing it wasn’t a burglary at all, but an abortive attempt to set fire to the barn? That would account for nothing being stolen.’
‘I think something was stolen, but go on.’
‘Well, say that Christabel was alerted before this intruder was able to get to work with the paraffin or whatever, last Saturday? Why shouldn’t he have come back a day or two later and had a second shot?’
‘Yes, that makes sense.’
‘I honestly think it does, Tessa. Much more sense than the other way round. God knows who would want to do such a thing, or why; but at least it gives us one individual to deal with, instead of two separate ones.’
‘I think that’s a brilliant deduction,’ I said. ‘Good for you!’
I meant it, too. The only snag was that, if his version was correct, it drove a couple of bulldozers through my own personal theories concerning the purpose and identity of Christabel’s Saturday-night intruder.
So, as soon as he had left for his afternoon session with darling old Cole, I retired to my room to review the situation in this new light and to see how best to trim and rearrange two irreconcilable theories and fuse them into one coherent whole.
(ii)
The answer was not long in coming, though any tendency to complacency on that score was soon offset by th
e chastening reflection that a personal inspection of the barn must now be placed first on my agenda.
This, decidedly, was not an expedition to be undertaken impulsively, since Robin had warned me that assessors, investigators and preservers were thick on the ground. Nevertheless, I doubted if much assessing or preserving would be carried out after six o’clock in the evening and, in these late August days, there was still daylight until about nine. Dinner at The Towers was at eight sharp, but Robin had fallen into the habit of foregoing this, in favour of Superintendent Cole’s country custom of an early cold spread at the pub. Taking all these factors into account, I selected seven o’clock for my witching hour.
However, there were various preliminary stages to be gone through first, and no amount of straining at the leash could make their performance possible until the following day. I therefore resigned myself to another evening of Beggar My Neighbour, followed by the kind of television game, so dear to the heart of Aunt Moo, where the contestants get a big hand for saying that Paris is the capital of France, and bring the roof down if they admit to being old-age pensioners.
(iii)
My plan did not appear half so enticing in the cold light of Thursday morning, but the prospect of another languid day stretching interminably ahead, without even Toby to lighten it, was enough to gird the loins; and soon after ten I set forth on the first stage of my programme, which was a call at the local hospital.
As I had foreseen, Christabel was still unfit to receive visitors, so I handed over the fruit and flowers which I had gathered on the way, plus a cold grouse, thoughtfully provided by Aunt Moo. The white-haired, white-coated lady at the reception desk was not pleased. She told me that she could not say, she was sure, who would find the time to take them up to Miss Blake, and they were already just about snowed under. She drew my attention to a harvest-festival display, piled up on one end of her counter, saying bitterly:
‘Some people seem to think that’s what we’re here for. Running about after vases. I’ll do my best for you, of course, but we don’t get time to breathe in this place.’
‘You mean all that lot is for Miss Blake, too? I had no idea she was such a popular figure.’
‘Oh, they’ve been arriving all morning; Interflora, telephone calls, the lot. People must have seen it in the papers, I suppose, What would she be, then? Some kind of a celebrity?’
‘In her way,’ I replied absently, squinting inquisitively at some of the cards on these floral tributes. Most were discreetly concealed in their tiny envelopes, but an elegant gold hamper, containing hothouse grapes, boxes of sweets and jars of peaches in brandy, tastefully draped round a familiar-looking bottle of champagne, bore an ordinary visiting-card, well to the fore.
‘Here’s one that doesn’t need vases, at any rate,’ I said.
‘Oh yes, Mrs H.B. She’s got more sense. But then, she knows what we’re up against.’
I would have dearly liked to delve a little deeper into this cryptic statement, but people were pressing up behind me, breathing anxiously down my neck; and, besides, there was a danger of getting behind in my schedule.
A green double-decker bus with HAVERFORD across its forehead was standing in the village square, which was just as it should have been, if the timetable were anything to go by, and I hurtled aboard and clambered up on top just as it moved off.
From my seat over the driver’s head, I had a front-row, dress-circle view of the terrain and I could see the bridle track, leading to Mill Cottage, wiggling off at right-angles to the road minutes before we reached it. It was evidently not a popular stop, for the conductor clanged his bell and we sailed past, without even slowing down. I checked my watch and found that, so far, the journey had taken exactly twelve minutes.
The police station was only a few hundred yards from Haverford Market Place, which was the bus terminal, but when I entered it the sergeant in charge told me that Robin was not available. ‘Tied up’ was the expression he used, and in many ways I felt it to be a fitting one.
I announced my identity and explained that I had been hoping to get a lift back to Burleigh. Whereupon, he became all smiles, saying that Robin was out somewhere with the Super, and fractionally anticipating my request to take the weight off my feet in his office. There can be few human beings for whom a sergeant in that position feels more warmly than the lone female who wanders apologetically up to his desk, and then turns out not to have lost her dog, her purse or her memory.
The Superintendent’s office was an austere, cell-like kind of room, with one high window giving on to a dirty brick wall. There were no confidential files on the desk to take a peep at, not even a photograph of Mrs Cole or an engagement diary to provide diversion. I found some inter-office memo-sheets and scrawled a note, with a funny drawing on it, for Robin; then fooled around for a bit with some rubber stamps. But I had to tuck the results of this rather hastily into my bag, for there was a tap on the door and my sergeant friend stuck his head round to ask if I fancied a cup of tea. I told him I had changed my mind about waiting for Robin, because there was a bus leaving for Burleigh in a few minutes and, if I hurried, I could just catch it.
In the event, it left without me because, as I passed the Bank, Xenia came stamping out, carrying a battered and swollen green satchel, and offered me a lift in the station-wagon.
I would gladly have refused, having labelled her an eccentric type and most probably a foul driver, but as I had begun by announcing that I was hurrying for the bus there was no backing out.
True to my worst fears, she drove with the fury of one holding the reins of a droshky, rather than a steering-wheel, with the pursuing wolf-pack actually sniffing at the rear bumper. Furthermore, she had not yet acquired the native custom, at least when negotiating hairpin bends, of driving on the left.
The ordeal was made even more intolerable by the fact that she had plonked the bulging satchel on the passenger seat and had commanded me to sit in the back. I disliked this intensely, both because it put me out of reach of the controls and because there was a smelly old rug covering the back seat, impregnated with dust and orange hairs. To achieve the minimum contact with it, I perched on the extreme edge, leaning forward over the seat in front and mentally measuring the distance between myself and the handbrake.
‘You’ve got a pile of loot there,’ I said, prodding the satchel, as a surreptitious means of giving my arm a trial run, in preparation for emergencies.
‘No, no; just the paying-in books and some change for the till,’ she said, barely resisting, I could see, the impulse to slap my hand away.
‘Oh, do you have a till? How funny, I never noticed. I called at your shop the other day. Did Guy tell you?’
‘The till is in the back room. We have to keep accounts and this makes it not so complicated.’
‘Yes, it must do. Did Guy tell you I was there?’
‘Guy tells me everything,’ she said flatly.
‘I don’t see how you can be so positive. In my case, for instance, I know what Robin does tell me, though I often forget it again; but how could I know what he hadn’t told me? Anabel was there, too, when I called. Did Guy tell you that?’
‘You are a funny girl,’ Xenia said, not laughing.
‘Yes, I know, but did he tell you about Anabel and her dog being there when I called?’
‘Oh, that Anabel! She is a bit soft. She is unhappy with her mother sometimes.’
‘Well, there’s nothing specially soft about that. I am sure Nancy is a very nice, efficient woman, but it’s quite normal to hate your mother, at that age. At least, perhaps not in Russia, but in all the Western democracies it’s quite the accepted thing. Something to do with sexual jealousy, I believe; father fixations and all that jazz.’
‘Ah ça, alors! That jealousy is on another foot.’
‘Is it? Whose foot? I wonder why all these cars keep flashing their headlights at us?’
‘I do not know,’ she said simply, proving that she was occasionally capable of
giving a straight answer to a plain question.
‘Well, I wish they’d stop; it makes me nervous. Whose foot is the jealousy on?’
‘I am saying nothing. Anabel is no affair of mine.’
‘I suppose not, but perhaps she is rather fond of you; of you both, I mean. So that when she runs away from the hated mother she shacks up with you?’
‘Oh, she gives me some help in her holidays. Washing the china and this sort of thing. There is too much work in a place like that. These are your gates, I think,’ she added, standing on the foot brake with such violence that I began to see the wisdom of relegating passengers to the back seat. They looked like the pearly gates to me, and I had never before found such comfort in the sight of Aunt Moo’s four silly turrets.
I stumbled out and turned to thank Xenia for the lift, but before I could speak she made what was for her an unusually straightforward observation:
‘You ask too many questions,’ she said. ‘You have not been well brought up.’
This, on top of the nerve-racking drive, left me utterly bereft, and I tottered up the drive, composing at least three splendid but wasted retorts between the gate and the front door.
Robin returned only ten minutes afterwards, so I could have spared myself all the dicing with death; but, as Toby had reminded me, no effort is ever wholly wasted and I believed I had advanced one, or maybe even one and a half steps along the way to tracking down my quarry.
Ten
‘Who inherits?’ I asked.
‘A wife and two grown-up sons; both married and far away,’ Robin replied, an ability to mind-read having been thrown in, along with all the other qualities. ‘Two are abroad, and the third lives in Yorkshire.’
‘And all properly accounted for?’
‘Yes, no chance of Nancy or Xenia turning out to be the missing heiress. Isn’t that a shame?’
‘What about this wife, though? It’s the first I’ve heard of one.’