Murder Included

  ‘But I’ve no knowledge of herbs. I just know the few that in France every housewife uses for cooking — the tisanes I made for the paying guests when they had colds were simply infusions of the dried leaves of the lime-tree.’

  ‘A little rash, wasn’t it, for such an ignoramus to embark on dosing sick people?’

  ‘Scarcely “dosing”. In France …’

  ‘We’re not in France now, Lady d’Estray. In England such outlandish remedies are unheard of, and it seems to me very curious that you should have messed about with them, especially as you’ve a houseful of servants at your beck and call.’

  Bunny protested, ‘But we haven’t. We’re miserably understaffed,’ but he went on, ‘I put it to you that you’ve made a study of herbal concoctions and that when your position here was threatened you used your knowledge to eliminate the threat.’

  ‘But my position here hasn’t been threatened …’

  ‘Not by Miss Hudson? Socially she looked down on you: rightly or wrongly she thought you had trapped her cousin into marriage, and she had, I believe, a tremendous influence over Sir Charles.’

  Bunny said, ‘What a squalid little story you’ve made up, haven’t you? If you believe it, why don’t you arrest me?’

  ‘Squalid or not, it’s possible. Come now, Lady d’Estray, you’re a writer. As a plot for a tale it’s not improbable?’

  ‘It is — because you’ve got the wrong characters,’ Bunny said thoughtfully. ‘Serious writers don’t trap people into marriage. Men of Sir Charles’s experience aren’t trapped. Women as well-born as Miss Hudson don’t “look down” on their social inferiors.’

  ‘I venture to differ. However, Lady d’Estray, as in your own case you admit nothing and yet are unable to make the smallest suggestion as to the author of these crimes, though you should — and I expect you do — know the ins and outs of this household better than anyone, I won’t waste my time in putting any further questions to you. Would you tell Sir Charles that I should like to speak to him?’

  Bunny said, ‘I will, but he may be a minute or two — I expect he’s dressing for dinner,’ and that’ll give me time, she thought, to warn him not to admit that Lisa knew about the dropwort. She glanced at her wrist watch, surmised that the ever-punctual Charles was already dressed and taking his sherry, hurried along the corridor to the hall and found him, as she had guessed, in the library. He had his glass in his hand: he looked up and down again.

  Bunny sank into the armchair opposite his and said, ‘Oh dear.’

  He shot her a brief cold glance. ‘Well, Barbara?’ and then it was impossible to ask him to support the lie she’d told: he was against her; only she and Lisa were together. With luck and by the mercy of Lisa’s saints, Price might omit the question of the dropwort. She said, ‘The ’tec wants you now, Charles. Shall I tell them to put back dinner?’

  And that was a bad sign, thought Sir Charles, saying, ‘No, no. Just tell them to keep something hot for me’; to bother about dinner when two murders had been committed in the house showed a lack of proportion — a warped mind: murderers didn’t realize the enormity of their crimes. That was the trouble — it wasn’t wickedness; it was amorality; and he had known from the first, but somehow down there in the South he hadn’t minded, that, though she herself was living a perfectly respectable life, her friends were a raffish lot, adulterers and fornicators, poor as church mice, spongers, drunkards, idlers, content, while others ran the world, to dream and daub and scribble. Down there he had admired her tolerance; he had taken it for granted that it sprang from kindliness and in one instance — those dreadful fellows from the Villa Mimosa — from comparative innocence. But he knew now that her tolerance was the result of a deep and, in his opinion, dangerous conviction that in comparison with the sins of the spirit, the sins of the flesh are unimportant, just a pity, like a raucous voice or a damp handclasp. As he dressed for dinner he had struggled briefly with an uneasy conscience; during his interview with the detective he had told the truth, nothing but the truth, but not all the truth; he hadn’t mentioned the hostility between his wife and his cousin, or that Lisa — a strange precocious passionate child — had not only screamed that Elizabeth should be painlessly destroyed, but had known how to come by the poison which had destroyed her. Now there had been another murder and in so desperate a situation even love and loyalty must be jettisoned: the moment had come when there was virtue in truth alone. Because you had loved a woman and married her, it didn’t prove that she wasn’t a murderess; because a child was your stepdaughter, it didn’t follow that she wasn’t a juvenile delinquent … One must get rid of one’s fixed idea that such things don’t happen to oneself, thought Sir Charles, as he opened the study door.

  Price rose as he entered, but sat down again when it became obvious that Sir Charles meant to stand on the hearthrug with his back to the fire: it was difficult to dominate a conversation when the other man towered above you, Price had always found. He began, ‘This is a terrible tragedy, Sir Charles — a second murder, and I feel that it might have been prevented if certain people had been more open with me. I don’t say they’ve lied to me, but in the case of Miss Hudson certain animosities have been glossed over, and now it’s ridiculous to pretend that Mrs Scampnell confided her suspicions to no one but the murderer: if she had been sure of his identity she would have spoken to myself or to her husband — vague suspicions would have been voiced during general conversation — the fair sex are given to indulgence in tittle-tattle over a cup of tea. As I was informing Lady d’Estray just now, a guilty conscience sets the nerves on edge, and the murderer may have jumped to the conclusion that the deceased knew more than she did.’

  ‘You haven’t spoken to Mrs Rose yet?’ Sir Charles asked him. ‘She’s a sharp little woman — if anything had been said over the teacups, she’d know.’

  Price complained, ‘She was not outstandingly helpful when I spoke to her about Miss Hudson. Her heart rules her head, I’m afraid. She would not even admit that Lady d’Estray disliked Miss Hudson.’

  ‘That was very silly of her,’ said Sir Charles evenly, but turning away as he spoke and fixing his gaze on the fire. ‘It must have been plain to everyone that my wife and Miss Hudson had very little in common. I am sure Lady d’Estray would have admitted it if you had questioned her.’

  ‘Oh, she admitted it,’ said Price, leaning back in his chair and thrusting a hand into his pocket, ‘but at the same time she contrived to give me the impression that their differences were on general subjects, as it might be politics or religion. It was from others I learned of the cat-and-dog life they lived together.’

  ‘Now that,’ said Sir Charles, able to look Price in the face, ‘is an exaggeration. There was never a scene, not even what I believe is called “words”, between them. It was sometimes apparent that my wife was irritated by Miss Hudson’s criticism of this and that, but she controlled herself admirably.’

  ‘Supposing,’ said Price, ‘that it had come to a show-down between them, a point where it was evident that they could no longer continue as members of the same household — would your wife have remained here, Sir Charles, or Miss Hudson?’

  ‘My wife — naturally.’

  ‘I wonder if she was aware of that,’ Price pondered.

  ‘I am sure of it. She knows my character.’ Then Sir Charles remembered Bunny saying, ‘Well, if I don’t fit in, you’ll be free to call it off at any time,’ and his shocked rejoinder, ‘I don’t regard marriage as a thing you can call off,’ and her ‘Wait until you see the mess I make of being a nob.’ Perhaps, after being married to a foreigner and then knocking about with Tom, Dick, and Harry on the Riviera, she had forgotten what she must have known once, Wilkinson having been Winchester and New College — that men like himself existed. Should he qualify his statement? … but already Price had gone on to ‘— a difficult question, but it’s my duty to put it to you: could there be anything in Lady d’Estray’s past, which Miss Hudson could have got hold
of and held against her?’

  This time Sir Charles took care to think before speaking. He said, ‘I am not aware of anything,’ and then, ‘Had it been so, it is quite impossible for me to believe that my cousin would have threatened my wife: she would have kept silent, or come straight to me if she had thought it necessary. She was the straightest of women.’

  Price lifted his eyebrows and lines showed on his waxy forehead.

  ‘You know, Sir Charles, it’s almost incredible. Two murders have been committed in this house, yet no one has observed the smallest cogent detail, and, according to your good self, every member of the household is an angel.’

  ‘Well, not quite,’ said Sir Charles, ‘though they seem to me to be all very nice people. But I see your point: I am — I must be — mistaken in someone.’ Now or never, he thought. ‘There was one small detail mentioned — I think it was yesterday. My step-daughter told us she had known — for some time, I gather — where the dropwort grows and that it was poisonous. She doesn’t remember having told anyone about it, but she’s only a child — goodness knows whom she may have chattered to.’

  Price clicked his tongue. ‘I wish I’d known of this before — it may be very important. Of course I should have questioned her, but unless circumstances necessitate such a procedure, I avoid obtaining information from kiddies — it seems un-English.’

  Thinking how decent was the average lower-middle-class Englishman, Sir Charles said, ‘Lisa is by no means an ordinary child.’

  ‘Oh dear,’ said Price in a sympathetic voice. ‘I’m sorry for that, Sir Charles, very sorry.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t mean there’s anything wrong with her,’ said Sir Charles hastily. ‘What I mean is that she’s an only child and she’s lived with grown-ups and on the Continent, so that she’s too forward for her age, if anything. And, of course, she’s a Catholic.’

  ‘But I suppose she’d know right from wrong?’ asked Price, who, while he merely despised the Church of England, loathed fanatically, and perhaps fearfully, the Church of Rome.

  ‘Of course, of course; she’s been well brought up,’ said Sir Charles indignantly.

  ‘Naturally,’ agreed Price, ‘but in a pathological case the best upbringing in the world is no deterrent.’ He hoped it wasn’t the child. He believed that he loved children, and longed for a couple of boys of his own, who would look up to him, yet to whom he’d be a real pal — he couldn’t understand why so few fathers seemed able to understand such a relationship with their sons …

  Sir Charles was thinking: if it’s Lisa there’d be no hanging … it would be an illness, perhaps curable … some hereditary taint in that French chap’s family … not even Bunny need be ashamed. Poor little Lisa’s charming … but loonies often are … He volunteered, ‘This would be a good time if you want to question her. Her mother’s at dinner — well, I mean, we know what mothers are, especially the mothers of “only” children.’

  ‘Quite,’ said Price;.‘but I would like you to be present. I don’t want it said afterwards that there was any bullying or intimidation.’

  ‘I’ll certainly stay if you think I’ll be of help to you.’ Sir Charles rang the bell. ‘I’m afraid we shall be unpopular, ringing bells in the middle of dinner …’

  The boy, Eric, certainly looked aggrieved when he came in, and he expressed the obviously obstructive opinion that Miss Lisa would be in the bath. When Lisa appeared, however, she was dressed in dungarees: there were straws in her hair and with her came a faint aroma of the stable. Price wouldn’t have liked, he thought, to see a kid of his in such a pickle, but Sir Charles made no comment. ‘The Detective-Inspector wants to ask you a few questions, Lisa,’ was all he said.

  Lisa turned her amber eyes on Price. Curious colour, he thought … foreign … untrustworthy. ‘They’re quite simple questions,’ he said in a reassuring tone of voice, ‘and I’m sure that a clever little girl like you will be able to answer them. You mustn’t be afraid; you’ve only got to tell the truth. I suppose you know what the truth is?’

  ‘No,’ said Lisa, ‘I don’t. Nobody does. “What is truth? asked jesting Pilate.” Keats said it was Beauty. Plato said we shan’t find it until we have lost our ears and eyes. Aristotle —’

  Sir Charles said, ‘Come down to earth, Lisa. The Inspector means — well, he means he wants facts, whatever you and Plato may think of them. Now, Inspector —’

  ‘Did you,’ asked Price hurriedly, ‘dislike Miss Hudson?’

  ‘Not exactly,’ said Lisa. ‘I did not find her simpatica or she me. I thought her a dictator and she thought me queer.’

  ‘And did you resent the way she treated your Mummy?’

  ‘Not particularly. My mother and I can answer back. It was much worse when she was rude to Mrs Rose.’

  ‘And did you dislike Mrs Scampneil?’

  ‘No. I rather liked her. She was old-fashioned, and her hunting anecdotes were rather boring, but she was always polite.’

  ‘Are you interested in botany?’

  ‘No,’ said Lisa. ‘I’m interested in art, literature, and horses. Actually now I’m getting interested in criminal psychology.’

  ‘That’s not a very nice study for a little girl,’ said Price disapprovingly. ‘But even though you’re not interested in botany, you know about plants — you knew, didn’t you, where the dropwort grows?’

  ‘Oh yes. Cousin Elizabeth showed it to me ages ago. It’s down by the river, in the corner of Low Meadow. She told me about a man who ate it in mistake for a parsnip and gave a bit to his horse — the silly idiot — and they both died. I suppose you’ve looked at the place and noted the heelmarks?’

  Price said, ‘It’s only to-night, from you, that I’ve ascertained the location of the dropwort. Surely you’re old enough to know that you should have informed some responsible person?’

  ‘I did tell the family.’ Lisa addressed Sir Charles. ‘Didn’t I?’ She turned back to Price. ‘But I really haven’t seen you to speak to — in fact, I’ve only seen you once, and that was when you came hurtling round the corner of the drive in your car and nearly killed me.’

  ‘You mustn’t exaggerate,’ said Price.

  ‘Well, it was a dam’ near thing,’ said Lisa.

  ‘These heelmarks’ said Price.

  ‘They’re not much use,’ Lisa told him. ‘The ground’s too squoggy to tell whether they’re male or female.’

  ‘Grown-up people can tell lots of things that little girls can’t,’ said Price snubbingly. ‘Now, Lisa, think carefully. Before Miss Hudson died did you tell anyone about the poisonous dropwort?’

  ‘I didn’t. I’m not interested in beastly botany. But I expect Cousin Elizabeth did, only you can eliminate my mother and Patricia, because I’ve already asked them and they say she didn’t. Actually I’ve been thinking that it was probably someone she went for walks with, because you don’t suddenly start off about plants, especially weeds, in the middle of dinner — you talk about them when you’re out for a walk and you see them. Cousin Elizabeth talked to Mrs Scampnell a lot, but they didn’t go out for walks — Mrs Scampnell hated walking. The people who went for walks with Cousin Elizabeth were Margot Rattray and Geoffrey Marvin — he had to.’

  Sir Charles said, ‘Lisa, my dear, it’s facts the Inspector wants, not your deductions,’ and Price said, ‘You’re only a little girl, you know. You don’t need to dwell on these sad things — just answer my questions. Have you ever helped your mother make beverages from herbs for sick people?’

  ‘No, I haven’t,’ said Lisa. ‘I hate sick people.’

  ‘You shouldn’t do that,’ said Price. ‘You should be sorry for them and try to help them. But I expect you’ve often boiled up leaves or roots in make-belief for tea for your dollies?’

  ‘No fear,’ said Lisa. ‘Cooking’s an art, and when I cook I cook something decent, like sole momay or soufflé surprise.’

  ‘That’s very clever of you,’ said Price ingratiatingly. ‘But then I’m sure you’r
e a very clever little girl. I’m sure if anyone — even a grown-up person — annoyed you, you’d get the better of them.’

  Lisa looked puzzled. ‘I’m not the least clever. I’ve never got the better of anyone. Actually if someone annoys me I answer back, but I generally get the worst of it.’

  ‘And then do you brood over it and think out your revenge?’

  ‘Good gracious no! I’m not a character out of Wuthering Heights’ said Lisa, laughing merrily.

  ‘Well,’ said Price, ‘I think that’s all I have to ask you at present. I hope you’ve told me the truth — it’s a very serious offence to tell fibs to the police, you know, Lisa. Think over what you’ve said, and if there’s anything you missed out or haven’t been quite truthful about you must be sure and tell me. Even though you’ve been brought up abroad, you’re half English, and English children are always truthful’

  ‘Mother of God!’ said Lisa.

  ‘Lisa!’ said Sir Charles.

  ‘Sorry, I meant gosh,’ said Lisa. ‘But really —’

  ‘We don’t want any argument,’ said Sir Charles hastily. ‘If the Detective-Inspector has finished with you, run along.’

  ‘Good night, Detective-Inspector Price,’ said Lisa, raising her amber eyes to his, looking far too demure to be straightforward, looking fragile and foreign, the antithesis of the jolly rosy schoolgirl that Price felt his daughter would be, if he had one. ‘Good night, Beaupère,’ she said to Sir Charles, and Sir Charles said, ‘Good night, dear. Get off to bed now and don’t bother your head about this miserable business,’ and when the door had shut behind her he said to Price, ‘I’m really rather sorry we worried her — she obviously knows nothing more than she’s told us. Don’t you think so?’

  Price mused. ‘Well, she is a strange type … unchildlike … some maladjustment … well, we’ll see. Now I mustn’t keep you from your dinner any longer.’ He didn’t care a pin about Sir Charles’s dinner, but there was no sense to be got from this old ditherer and he wanted his own …