Murder Included

by Cannan, Joanna

  Price said, ‘Well, that’s as it may be, Miss d’Estray, but there can be no doubt now that these murders have been committed by a member of this household — no outsider can have had the opportunity to tamper with the contents of Mrs Scampnell’s flask. When she was going hunting, it was her habit to leave it overnight in the butler’s pantry: he filled it in the morning and placed it beside the sandwiches on the sideboard in the dining-room. No doubt you would all be immensely relieved if these crimes could be traced to a servant, but in the case of the butler the absence of motive is strengthened by the fact that no individual of average mental development would formulate a plan so likely to bring himself under suspicion.’

  Patricia said indignantly, ‘I can’t imagine why you think we want to pin it on the servants. They’ve all been here for years — Benny and Nanny and Beatrice and Mrs Capes — and they’re part of the family. If it must be someone inside the house, we’d rather it was the paying guests than the servants.’

  ‘That’s an unusual point of view,’ said Price sneeringly. ‘The lower classes, as you call them, are generally blamed for everything.’ Ignoring Patricia’s protests of ‘I don’t’ and ‘What rot!’ he continued, ‘I have ascertained that this morning the deceased and Mr Rose encountered one another in the gallery upstairs and came down into the dining-room together. Mr Scampnell and his step-daughter were going to the meet in their car, so they also partook of the early breakfast, but, as a car affords a more speedy mode of locomotion than a horse, they did not hurry down, and Mr Scampnell arrived as his wife left the table, taking her flask and sandwiches, and Miss Rattray a few moments later. The remainder of the guests breakfasted at nine as usual, with the exception of Flight-Lieutenant Marvin, who came down at ten. Now, Miss d’Estray, which members of your family came downstairs prior to the arrival of the deceased?’

  ‘I did, for one,’ said Patricia readily. ‘I have to get up early on hunting mornings. I asked the kitchenmaid, who’s up first, to bang on my door at half past six, and I came in to the house again at half past seven and I yelled for Benny and he brought me my breakfast on a tray into the dining-room.’

  ‘And were the sandwiches and the flasks already on the sideboard?’

  ‘No, they weren’t. I rushed in and got mine before we started for the meet. Only mine were left then.’

  ‘While you were having breakfast did anyone else enter the dining-room?’

  ‘Only Eric on his lawful occasions. He was laying places and bringing in sugar and salt and that kind of thing.’

  ‘When you “yelled for Benson”, Miss d’Estray, where were you? Did you make your way towards the pantry in search of him?’ While the police ambulance had taken Cecily Scampnell’s body to the mortuary in Harborough, Price had called on the public analyst with her flask, in which the same poison that had killed Elizabeth Hudson had been duly discovered, but the bottle from which Benson had poured out her claret had yet to be analysed. Benson, however, declared that he had filled Mr Rose’s flask from the same bottle, so that, if the man could be believed, it must have been the flask which had been tampered with. Price need have concerned himself only with those members of the household who had entered the dining-room after the flasks and sandwiches had been placed there and before the departure of the riders, had it not been for the fact that the flasks had spent the night in the pantry, having been placed there, as the custom was, by their owners at various times during the previous evening. Against that, Benson most firmly stated that he never filled a flask without first swilling it out and standing it upside down on the draining-board.

  Patricia said, ‘No. I stood at the dining-room door and yelled that I was ready.’

  .‘Would it not have been more usual to ring the bell in the dining-room?’

  ‘Oh well,’ said Patricia, ‘we’re not great bell-ringers. It means the servants have to come and ask what you want and then go back again, so it saves their legs if you yell. Of course the lodgers are always bell-ringing.’

  ‘To return to the point,’ said Price, surprised and not altogether pleased to find among the effete aristocracy such consideration for those misguided enough to serve them, ‘can you tell me in what order the riders proceeded to the stable?’

  ‘Mrs Scampnell came first — she’s … she was always punctual. She was mounted by the time that Mr Rose came, but of course that doesn’t mean that they left the dining-room in the same order — Mr Rose may not have come straight out; he may have gone to get his hat or to the bathroom.’

  ‘That possibility does not escape me. And Lady d’Estray — did she come to see the party off?’

  ‘Oh no. She has breakfast in her room, like the French, and generally Lisa has it with her. Is that all, Inspector, because I’m in an awful hurry? I’ve three sets of tack to clean before dinner.’

  When he had let her go and was alone, sitting at Sir Charles’s desk and staring in front of him, Price came as near as he ever was to swearing. He had interviewed Benson, Eric, Beatrice, Sidney Rose, the bereaved Henry Scampnell, and his tearful step-daughter: between them they had established beyond doubt that Mrs Scampnell and Mr Rose had gone into the dining-room to breakfast together; that Henry Scampnell had come in as his wife was leaving the table, taking her sandwiches and flask with her, and Miss Rattray had appeared a few moments later. Unless Benson was lying, the poison had been introduced into the flask while it stood ‘for a few moments’, he said, on the sideboard before Mrs Scampnell’s arrival. Patricia, by her own account and Benson’s, had come and gone before the flask was filled, and Beatrice, supported by Nanny, had an alibi for Hugo. He had had no breakfast beyond the cup of tea and a couple of gingerbreads, which Beatrice had taken to his room at seven: approximately ten minutes later he had shouted to Nanny to sew on a button and both women had heard him thunder downstairs and slam the door on his way to the garage and the kennels. The evidence, which Price felt was being withheld from him, was evidence that Lady d’Estray had been seen near the dining-room. He had cajoled young Eric: ‘Now, my boy, think carefully. There are people you see as you go about the house that you hardly notice — Lady d’Estray, for instance — didn’t you catch a glimpse of her as you went in and out with the dishes?’ ‘No, I didn’t,’ said Eric, ‘and I should have noticed ’er in particklar — couldn’t ’ave been off it on account of ’er never coming down for breakfast.’ Price said peevishly, ‘I should have expected her to come down to see that her guests had all their requirements.’ ‘Cor,’ said Eric, ‘what’s Mr Benson and me for? We shouldn’t be much good of if we couldn’t see to a few breakfasts …’

  The two long windows of Sir Charles’s study were growing dark now: true to his type, Price disliked to sit in uncurtained rooms at night; he rose and drew together the folds of frayed and faded damask — shabby things, he thought, comparing them with the orange-and-brown ‘home-weave’ at his own windows. Drawing the second pair, he peered out on the terrace; there was no light in the east wing; from a window above him a beam fell on the silent fountain; with dusk, melancholy gathered and clung about the walls of the great outmoded mansion — enough to give you the pip, Price put it. But it wasn’t, and he knew it wasn’t, the atmosphere of the place which was causing an unease, seldom experienced, at the pit of his stomach: it was the nagging consciousness that while, practically under his nose, a second murder had been committed, he, the astute and successful Ron Price, had advanced no farther and saw no prospect of advancing any farther in his investigation of either of the crimes. He had no doubt that Bunny d’Estray was the poisoner, that, hating Elizabeth Hudson for her domestic tyranny and for her influence over the d’Estrays — motives insufficient to a man, perhaps, but typical of the smaller-minded female — she had dug her roots, brewed them in some secret hour — and who knew better than she the employments of the household? — and poured her potion at a time convenient to her into the bottle of whisky standing so conveniently in her victim’s room. She had hoped, of course, that the poison wo
uld be undetected: Miss Hudson was elderly and, where doctors were concerned, had a bee in her bonnet, and murder was the last thing that a toady like that doctor would look for in the family he smarmed over; it was a miracle that he hadn’t certified a death from gastritis. To do away with Mrs Scampnell had been much more risky, but she knew or suspected too much and the risks had to be taken. To meet such a contingency some of the poison had been kept and — for he had searched Lady d’Estray’s rooms — very cunningly hidden. Knowing the routine of the hunting-flasks, she had crept down the west-wing staircase, from the foot of which she would obtain a clear view along the passage to the door of the dining-room. It was true that the boy Eric had been going to and from the dining-room with the breakfast dishes, but his eyes would have been fixed on his trays; he wouldn’t have turned his head to look down the passage, and the creak of the moth-eaten green baize door which led from the kitchens and pantries would have warned the murderess of his approach. That’s how it was, said Price to himself, and he rang the bell, and when Benson came at last, told him that he wished to see Lady d’Estray.

  Benson said that her ladyship would be dressing for dinner, and Price snapped, ‘I can’t help that, man. Look sharp and fetch her.’ With a pained expression Benson went out and presently Bunny came, looking pale and, he thought, anxious, in her pink corduroy housecoat. Before he could speak, she said, ‘Oh, Mr Price — I mean, Detective-Inspector — I do hope you’ve found out something. We really can’t go on like this — everyone’s getting jittery.’

  ‘Only one individual need get jittery, Lady d’Estray, and that’s the murderer.’

  ‘You mean you know who it is? Oh, good,’ said Bunny.

  She spoke so naturally that he had to reassure himself, a consummate actress … she thinks I’m on the wrong tack … I’ll play it that way. He said, ‘No doubt you’ve a theory of your own, Lady d’Estray. I’d be interested to know if you suspect the same party?’ but instead of the hints, that were the least he had expected, he got, ‘I haven’t a theory. I’m completely flummoxed. Elizabeth was a disagreeable old thing, but everyone liked Mrs Scampnell. The only explanation is that she knew too much, but if that was so why didn’t she tell someone?’

  ‘She may have underestimated the value of her information. It may have been quite a trivial thing, or something that to her untrained mind seemed to have no connexion. That often happens. You yourself, Lady d’Estray, haven’t told me whom you saw when you came downstairs this morning.’

  Bunny looked puzzled. ‘Well, but I saw everybody — except those who had gone out hunting. I met Nanny in the corridor, and she said there was a button off my blouse and I’d better take it off and let her have it, and then I went to the kitchen and saw Mrs Capes about the menu, and then to the drawing-room to see if there were any dead flowers, and Mrs Rose was there reading the paper …’

  Price checked her with a gesture. ‘My reference was not to the time when you finally came down, Lady d’Estray. I have reason to believe that you came out of your bedroom before the serving of the first breakfast.’

  ‘I don’t know what reason you can have for believing that because I didn’t,’ said Bunny. ‘I was tired last night and I never batted an eyelid until Beatrice brought in my breakfast. She’ll bear me out. And I know the hunting people had gone by then, because I asked her if they had got off all right, and she said yes.’

  ‘One can get up and retire again,’ Price said.

  ‘Well, I didn’t. Who says I did?’ asked Bunny.

  Price took refuge in ‘I’m not here to answer questions, but to ask them. Did you hear Mr Hugo d’Estray come down?’

  ‘No, I didn’t. He must have been before the others anyway.’

  ‘Yet it’s strange that you didn’t hear him, Lady d’Estray. He slammed the door after “thundering downstairs”.’

  ‘But in this kind of house one doesn’t hear that kind of thing,’ said Bunny. ‘It’s stone-built and the doors are solid. I don’t suppose my husband heard him either.’

  ‘Very well,’ said Price, ‘we’ll leave that for the moment. Perhaps you can help me on another point, Lady d’Estray. What were Mrs Scampnell’s views on the death of Miss Hudson?’

  ‘She was more upset than any of the other p.gs. There was a lot of rivalry between her and Miss Hudson, but also, I suppose, a kind of comradeship.’

  ‘A relationship which seldom exists between members of the female sex,’ said Price censoriously. ‘However, they were both elderly ladies, so it may have been possible. Whom did Mrs Scampnell suspect, Lady d’Estray?’

  ‘I don’t remember discussing the murder with her. Her husband might know, or Miss Rattray. When there’s an unidentified murderer about, one naturally opens one’s mouth to the people one’s sure of.’

  ‘And who are you sure of, Lady d’Estray?’

  ‘My husband … my stepson and my stepdaughter … my own daughter … the servants.’

  ‘I suppose it’s natural, though it can hardly be termed logical, to trust one’s own. The idea had not escaped me. I’ve already spoken to Mr Scampnell and Miss Rattray. They tell me that the matter was discussed at length between them, but that Mrs Scampnell suspected no one in particular; she did, however, mention the hostility which existed between yourself and Miss Hudson.’

  ‘Hostility’s too strong a word,’ said Bunny, growing paler. ‘We had nothing in common; we disagreed on many subjects, but …’

  ‘Exactly,’ Price interrupted her. ‘You had nothing in common; you disagreed on many subjects; Miss Hudson thought you unworthy of your position as mistress of her cousin’s house, and you feared her influence over your husband. You had row after row — I’ve proof of that, Lady d’Estray — and as time went on you decided that her presence in the house was intolerable, yet, owing to the affection felt for her by Sir Charles and his family, you could not legitimately terminate it.’

  Bunny stubbed out her cigarette — how I dislike, Price thought, nicotine-stained fingers in a woman — and got to her feet and looked down on him.

  ‘Are you accusing me of the murders?’

  ‘I have made no accusation,’ said Price coldly. ‘It is you who are fitting the cap, Lady d’Estray.’

  ‘What nonsense! You’ve just said that I couldn’t “legitimately terminate” — by which I suppose you mean “lawfully end” — Miss Hudson’s stay here, and what could that mean except that you think I poisoned her? Just because I disliked the woman — if I murdered everyone I disliked there’d be no end to it. Anyhow, what about Mrs Scampnell? I never quarrelled with her; I thought her about the nicest of our lodgers.’

  Price leant back at his ease in Sir Charles’s chair, and his cold grey eyes met Bunny’s warm brown ones. ‘Pursuing, as they did, a similar hobby, Miss Hudson and Mrs Scampnell often had a long ride home after hunting, and it is not unreasonable to suppose that a lonely unmarried lady like Miss Hudson would, under such circumstances, confide in her friend. Miss Rattray thinks it more probable that Mrs Scampnell was killed on account of information so obtained than because she saw or heard anything of the actual murder. In the latter event one would have expected her to confide in her husband or daughter; if not, as was of course her duty, in the police: in the former case, however, she may have felt bound by some promise of secrecy, or may not have realized the importance of what she knew. Now, Lady d’Estray, what was that information?’

  ‘Non-existent, I should imagine. You know, you’ve got quite a wrong picture of Elizabeth. She wasn’t the lonely pathetic figure that men like to visualize when they think of an unmarried woman: she was self-satisfied, self-reliant, completely at home in the world. If there had been a skeleton in her cupboard she would have dealt with it herself — she certainly wouldn’t have gone snivelling to Cecily Scampnell, whom she despised.’

  ‘I’m afraid your estimate of her character is at fault there, Lady d’Estray. Miss Hudson may have concealed her loneliness and frustration behind a mannish exterior and a do
mineering manner, but they were there. I have reason to believe that she confided considerably in little Miss Rattray and even presented her with a trinket as a mark of their friendship.’

  ‘That was last Christmas. And she presented us all with “trinkets”, even me. Actually I think she did get on quite well with Margot Rattray — they went for a walk together last Sunday — but that’s understandable: Margot’s a yes-woman, if there ever was one.’

  ‘If Miss Hudson confided in Miss Rattray, it’s logical to assume that she confided in Miss Rattray’s mother, a woman much nearer her own age. She must have done so, Lady d’Estray, unless after Miss Hudson’s death Mrs Scampnell came into possession of some clue to the murder. In either event Mrs Scampnell must have told someone of her discovery or suspicion — not necessarily the murderer, for her confidant may have repeated it. I can well imagine the tittle-tattle that goes on. As I previously indicated, the unfortunate woman’s knowledge may not have been very important or well-substantiated: fear sets the nerves on edge, Lady d’Estray,’ said Price, with a significant glance at Bunny’s restless hands. ‘Perhaps she only mentioned that there was something she wanted to tell me and, as murderers will, the murderer panicked and her death warrant was signed.’

  ‘Well, I daresay you’re right,’ said Bunny, too fatigued to argue further, and Price thought, she’s tiring ... I’m wearing her down. This neurotic type … he thought; with American police methods, it wouldn’t be long before she broke. Take her back over it all again? he asked himself, or surprise her? ‘Can I go now?’ said Bunny childishly into the silence, and her defeated look encouraged him. ‘Would it surprise you, Lady d’Estray, if I told you you had been seen in the vicinity of the plant concerned — water dropwort?’

  For an instant, as if collecting her wits, she hesitated. Then, ‘Not in the least,’ she said. ‘I don’t know where it grows, so for all I know I may often have been near it.’ But Bunny, though she lied often in this cause and that, was not a good liar, and the embarrassment in her voice did not escape him. He said harshly, ‘With your knowledge of herbs that seems unbelievable.’