The Winter Garden Mystery

by Carola Dunn

  Lady Valeria sat in a Windsor chair by the window, a sombre figure in navy blue, frowning down at the book in her lap. She transferred the frown to Daisy and Alec as they entered. “Well, Miss Dalrymple?” she said coldly.

  “You remember Detective Chief Inspector Fletcher, Lady Valeria. He has a few questions to ask you.”

  “I’ve heard that before and my answer is the same. I shan’t dignify your iniquitous inquisition with a response, Fritter.”

  “That is, of course, your right, ma’am,” said Alec, ignoring her massacre of his name, “but in view of what I have learned since we last spoke, I shall have to ask you to accompany me to a police station.” It was sheer bluff. He had no more against her—motive and opportunity—than Dunnett had against Morgan.

  “What you have learned! And just what have you learned with your underhanded enquiries?”

  The bluff had worked, at least in part. She was no longer trying to dismiss him out of hand. “I ask questions, Lady Valeria,” he said. “I don’t answer them.”

  Weakening, she turned on Daisy. “You may be a prying police person masquerading as a guest, Miss Dalrymple, or vice versa, but I have nothing to say which is any conceivable business of yours.”

  “At present, Lady Valeria, I’m masquerading as a police stenographer.” Her voice was admirably calm. “Mr. Fletcher needs a record of the interview. His constable can easily be summoned, but we assumed you’d prefer someone who already knows all there is to know about Sebastian.”

  Her ladyship’s brick red complexion faded. “All?” she croaked.

  “All,” said Daisy inexorably.

  “I see no need to make anything public,” said Alec, doing his best to sound conciliatory. He couldn’t help feeling sorry for the woman and, more important, he hoped she’d stop regarding him as a demon. Caution made him add, “So far, that is. My officers are very discreet, but the fewer people who know … .”

  “Sit down, sit down, my good man,” she interrupted with forced impatience, neatly forestalling the words he hadn’t been going to pronounce. “I can’t be craning my neck at you. I don’t know what you think you’ve discovered. I admit my son had an affair with the scheming slut and made her pregnant, but young men will sow their wild oats.”

  Already scribbling in shorthand, Daisy slipped away and sat down at the long library table. Lady Valeria ignored her.

  Despite her denial, it was obvious she suspected her son’s inclination and had hoped the girl’s pregnancy disproved it. Alec decided nothing was to be gained by asking whether she had encouraged Grace to seduce Parslow. He’d try for essentials before she rebelled.

  “Mr. Parslow told you he had promised, under threat, to marry Grace. You promised him—in his words—to ‘deal with Grace.’ What did you have in mind?”

  “Naturally my first thought was to give her the sack. Unfortunately I was unable to force her to leave the district, besides which she made it clear her father would go to the Press if she was dismissed. I assume, since you spoke of threats, you are aware that Moss claimed he’d bring an action for breach of promise if Sebastian failed to marry his daughter.”

  “Claimed?”

  “He wanted money, of course. That’s all the lower classes care about.”

  “It has been suggested he was more interested in making trouble,” Alec said dryly.

  “Oh, I don’t doubt he’d have been glad to see the heir to Occles Hall married to a promiscuous parlourmaid, or to drag the matter through the courts. The man’s a spiteful savage. But I know these people. I knew I could buy him off.”

  Alec was fascinated by her apparently unconscious gift for alliterative invective. “You offered Grace money?” he asked.

  “I offered to pay her a substantial sum to go away. The treacherous trollop accepted my offer and then came back and told me her father wasn’t satisfied. That was when I decided to take Sebastian away without notice. Not only would a change of scene do him good; by the time we returned, Grace’s condition would be showing and they’d be willing to settle for considerably less.”

  Her logic seemed questionable, but he let it go. “Grace didn’t know you were leaving on December 14th?”

  “She must have been listening at the door when I instructed Mr. Goodman to telephone Cook’s to change the bookings. At least, so I imagined when I heard she had run away with a commercial traveller.”

  “When was that?”

  “I can’t give you a date. Roberta wrote to Sebastian when we were in Antibes. She wasn’t yet lost to all family feeling.”

  “Yet you told Mr. Goodman before you left to dismiss Grace if she showed up again.”

  “Certainly. She had proved herself unreliable. One cannot have servants failing to return on time after an evening out. It’s a bad example to the rest. Besides, I assumed news of our departure persuaded her she had wrecked her chances of getting anything out of me.” Lady Valeria’s tone of caustic satisfaction was convincing.

  “You weren’t surprised she hadn’t made a last effort to wring money from you once she learnt you were off?”

  “One can’t expect logic of domestic servants. I was glad to have the problem solved so easily.”

  “By death,” said Alec flatly.

  “My good man, I didn’t know she was dead,” she snapped.

  “Someone did.”

  “None of my family!”

  “That remains to be seen.” Perhaps the reminder would induce her to continue to cooperate. “Tell me what you were doing the evening of the 13th.”

  “How can I possibly remember at two months’ remove!”

  “Others have. It was the night before you left for France. You packed your bags?”

  “My maid did. I will say this for Gregg, she knows what to pack without my standing over her every minute. I was in the library after dinner, giving Mr. Goodman his orders. Then I went to the drawing room. I suppose it was about ten o‘clock as I was just in time to wish Sir Reginald good-night and that is the hour he generally retires. Yes, ten o’clock.”

  “Who else was in the drawing room?”

  “My daughter, Roberta. Yes, I recall asking her where her brother was and she ripped out at me in the most extraordinary way. Roberta has an unfortunate tendency to belligerence, to feeling she knows best, which I have done my best to eradicate.”

  A muffled snort came from Daisy’s direction. Alec pretended he hadn’t heard, but Lady Valeria turned her head to freeze the offender with an arctic stare. Daisy, her head bent over her notebook, didn’t even notice.

  “How long did your … er … discussion with Miss Parslow last, Lady Valeria?” Alec said hastily.

  “Discussion! I simply told her not to meddle as I had everything in hand. A minute or two, no more.”

  Whether she or Miss Parslow was more accurate as to timing, the quarrel gave neither an alibi. “And then?” he asked.

  “I stayed in the drawing room, reading I believe, until I went up to bed, at what time I haven’t the least idea.”

  “You saw no one?”

  “No one, as far as I recall. Modern servants consider themselves put upon if one expects them to work after dinner. It’s hard enough to find and keep them anyway. Oh, after I went up to my room, Sebastian came in to … to say good-night.”

  Alec saw no need to pursue the real reason for Parslow’s visit to his mother’s room. Both Lady Valeria and her daughter had had all the time in the world to lie in wait for Grace, to murder her with or without prior argument, and to bury her body in the soft earth of the flowerbed. Neither would be missed in this rabbit-warren of a house, with the servants in their quarters and the family going their own ways. Her ladyship might have had to go outside again to finish the job, after showing a presence in her bedroom at a suitable hour, but that was no hindrance to making a case.

  Both had better motives than Owen Morgan, who was indisputably grief-stricken by Grace’s death. However, a sizable hole Daisy had pointed out in the case against Morgan ap
plied equally to the two women: surely either must have realized the body would be found when the garden bloomed, if not before.

  “Well,” snapped Lady Valeria, “are you finished, Flincher? I must go and get ready for church.”

  “I have no more questions for the present, ma’am, but I must warn you that tomorrow, if the case remains unsolved, I shall be turning it back to the local police. I shall strongly advise Superintendent Higginbotham to put a man in charge who is less easily intimidated than Inspector Dunnett. Whoever he appoints will receive the reports of everything I have discovered.”

  Lady Valeria quivered, an impressive sight whether caused by rage or dismay. “Everything?”

  “Everything,” Alec confirmed. “If you have anything further to say, you may tell me now or contact my sergeant either at the Cheshire Cheese or in your servants’ quarters.”

  “Still pestering my servants!” she roared, face purpling as she surged to her feet. “Barbaric bully! I have nothing further to say.” She cast a seething glance at Daisy as she stormed out of the library.

  “She can’t very well wring my neck in church,” said Daisy hopefully. “Thank heaven Phillip’s coming to lunch. I shall make him stay all afternoon. And I’ll hide in my room this evening and type this up for you. Blast, I want to talk to you, but I must go and get ready for church too.”

  “It’s time I was leaving for Lancaster.” Alec briefly explained about George Brown’s circumambulations. “We may not be back till late, but Tom’s around if you need him. Be careful, Daisy. It’s all very well joking, but I made a mistake letting Lady Valeria know you know about her son.”

  “I shan’t accept an invitation to go for a nice walk in the country with her,” Daisy promised.

  With that he had to be satisfied. After a word with Tring, who had of course been invited to Sunday lunch in the kitchen, he and Piper set off in the Austin for Lancaster.

  It was a beautiful day for the open road in an open car, crisp but sunny. The unlovely industrial stretch between Warrington and Preston at least had tarmac-surfaced roads to compensate. They stopped at a roadside pub for lunch, and drove into Lancaster at a quarter to three.

  The Lancashire police had been notified by the Yard of their coming so no explanations were needed when they checked in at county headquarters. Alec asked the way to Caton, the village where George Brown had said he would spend the night.

  A few minutes later they pulled up before The Crook o’ Lune Inn. The traveller had not yet arrived. Leaving Piper to hold the fort, Alec strolled along to view the actual Crook o’ Lune, the bend in the river immoralized—according to the landlady—by Turner. No doubt it was lovely with leaves on the trees and the bluebells which, she informed him, carpeted the banks in May.

  Brown at last turned up as the last light faded from the sky. In his mid-thirties, about Alec’s age, he was good-looking in a rather smarmy way but with a pudginess which suggested coming corpulence. When the landlady pointed him out, Alec pulled in his stomach and vowed to get more exercise.

  Piper in tow, Alec approached him as he reached the foot of the stairs. “George Brown? Of the Clover … .”

  “Have a heart, old chap.” His voice was Cockney overlaid with refinement. “No need to broadcast it to the world. What can I do you for?”

  Alec flashed his identification. “Scotland Yard. We’d like a word with you, sir.”

  A hunted look entered Brown’s face and for a moment he appeared to see a parade of past sins crossing before his eyes. Yet he sounded more puzzled than alarmed when he said, “You’d better come up to my room, Chief Inspector.”

  His driving coat tossed on the bed, Brown perched beside it. Alec sat on the room’s only chair and Piper stood by the door, notebook and pencil at the ready.

  “You stayed at the Cheshire Cheese in Occleswich on December 13th last, sir?” Alec asked.

  “December? That’ll be in last year’s book. I don‘t—The Cheshire Cheese?” He paled. “Lumme Charlie, it’s that girl. Is that what it is, guv’nor? The one the gardener killed?”

  “Grace Moss. You were seen talking to her in the bar-parlour and she was thought to have run away with you.”

  “Grace, that’s it. I remembered it was some religious name, not the Bible, Prudence or Patience or that.” The Cockney underlay became more pronounced. “Read about it in the paper, didn’t I, and I said to meself, that’s the one that didn’t come back, that is.”

  “Didn’t come back?”

  “Thought she’d run off with me, did they? That’s a laugh. Not that I didn’t try, mind. I’ll be straight with you, guv‘nor. I gave her the usual stuff, you know, friend in the moving picture business, she was just the type they wanted. Then she told me she ’ad a bun in the oven and … .” His voice trailed away.

  “And you told her you knew a doctor who could help her.”

  “That’s what I said, guv, but I don’t, honest.” His incipient double chin wobbled in panic. “It was just a come-on, see. She wasn’t no spring chicken, twenty if she was a day, old enough to know the score. I thought we’d ‘ave a bit of fun for a couple of days, then I’d pay ’er train‘ome to Mum if that’s what she wanted. I’m not short a few bob. But she went off to get’er things and she never came back. So I scarpered, didn’t I. For all I knew, ‘er Dad or ’er bruvver was out after me blood.”

  “You scarpered? At what time?”

  “Closing time. She said she’d be gone ten minutes, so after ‘alf an hour there wasn’t much point sticking around. To tell the truth, I was ’aving second thoughts about ‘er being knocked up, too. Picked up me bags and I was going to drive straight through to London. That’s where I was ’eading, see. But I’d ’ad a couple, see, and I passed a place wiv lights still on so I stopped for the night.”

  “Where?”

  “Cor lumme, guv‘nor, I don’t ’ave last year’s book on me!”

  “Think, man!”

  Breathing heavily, Brown closed his eyes in thought, then opened them in inspiration. “I’ve got a map in the bus, guv.”

  Alec sent Piper down with him to find the map. His story rang true. Where women were concerned, the man was an unprincipled cad but not a murderer. He must have tried his “come-on” on countless discontented village maidens and weathered countless refusals. He’d have an alibi.

  Something he’d said … .

  Brown burst into the room waving his map. “I’ve remembered, Chief Inspector.” The acquired accent was back in place. “Newport, the Royal Victoria Hotel. Not the kind of place that takes my fancy, but any port in a storm, what? I was just in time. They had some sort of do on so they didn’t lock up till midnight. You’ll find my signature in the register.”

  Piper unfolded the map and checked the distance from Occleswich to Newport. “Around thirty miles, Chief.”

  Thirty miles. Brown had left Occleswich at, say, twenty to eleven, and arrived in Newport shortly before midnight. Starting out along narrow, unfamiliar country lanes, once on the high road he’d drive with caution after the whisky he’d imbibed.

  Even if he’d zipped along like the very devil, he’d not have had time to murder and bury Grace.

  Frustrated, Alec said, “We’ll check with the Royal Victoria, of course, Mr. Brown. What did Grace tell you that evening of her situation? What sort of spirits was she in?”

  But the traveller recalled nothing more about Grace, not even the colour of her hair. As Alec suspected, she was one of dozens of pretty girls in dozens of country inns, pursued with varying degrees of success. All Alec could do was issue a warning about enticing minors away from home with false promises.

  Brown was no more helpful in other directions. He hadn’t particularly noted the other men in the bar-parlour. By the time he’d fetched his bags, started his motor, and driven out to the street, no one was about. “That’s one of the things I like about putting up in small villages, Chief Inspector. Nothing to keep a chap up late, barring a willing chambermaid.” He wink
ed. “So I get an early start. That’s the way to get ahead in business.”

  Alec sighed, thanked him, and asked him to telephone his whereabouts daily to the Chester police. The two detectives took to the road again.

  “If his alibi’s good he’s in the clear, isn’t he, Chief?” Piper asked.

  “Yes,” Alec grunted, peering ahead through the blurry glass, “but now we know Grace actually did intend to leave … Dammit, I can’t see a thing. Our breath is freezing on the windscreen. I’ll have to open it.” He pulled to the side of the road.

  With nightfall the temperature had plummeted and driving conditions were atrocious. Alec had no attention to spare for considering the significance of Grace’s planned departure from Occleswich. Slowed by icy patches on the roads, and stopping for dinner half way, they arrived back late and tired at the Cheshire Cheese.

  Alec told Tom Tring about the interview with George Brown.

  “Looks like he’s out of it, then, Chief?” the sergeant rumbled. “Must admit I wondered where he’d’ve got aholt of that winding-sheet without the landlady kicking up a dust.”

  “The sheet! Great Scott, I’d forgotten it. The doctor’s report mentioned it and the photographs showed it, but Dunnett’s report ignored it, though that’s no excuse for me.”

  Tom tactfully refrained from agreeing. “Mrs. Twitchell, the housekeeper, swears none of her sheets is missing, and she’d know. The head gardener, Bligh, showed me Morgan’s, all patches and darns, and swears they’re all accounted for. ‘Course, it don’t knock anyone out for sure, and I don’t ’spect Dunnett kept the sheet but … .”

  “But I bloody well shouldn’t have missed it! So where … Stan Moss! No one checking his sheets, and there’s something else … . Hell, I’m too tired to think but I must see him in the morning even if we have to chase him all over the county.”

  “Off to beddy-byes, Chief, and you too, young ’un.” Tom herded them upstairs.

  “All right,” said Alec, “but wake us early.”

  Sinking into bed, he was asleep within seconds. He woke in the small hours with two facts ringing in his brain.