Murder Included

  *

  As Lisa shut the study door behind her, the baize door farther along the passage opened and Eric’s freckled face peered out and breathed, ‘Oi! Miss Lisa!’

  Lisa beckoned, pointed to the west-wing staircase and led on. Eric followed on tiptoe. At the turn of the stair she waited for him. ‘Well, my dear Watson?’

  Eric jerked his thumb towards the study. ‘Third degree, was it?’

  ‘Oh no,’ said Lisa. ‘A slimy sort of cunning. He tries to put you off your guard with dear-little-kiddy tactics.’

  ‘He didn’t,’ said Eric, ‘try any kiddy stuff with me. ’Ere, Miss Lisa, I’ve gotta clue.’

  ‘Mother of God!’ said Lisa. ‘Spit it out, for mercy’s sake, boy.’

  ‘It come into my mind when I was getting their trays ready — the bereaved ’usband’s and young Margot’s. Them flasks, I ’as the cleaning of ’em. I knows ’em like the palm of me ’and — dints, ’inges and so on. Old Cecily ’ad two, both ’ad ’er initials on top, sometimes one come down and sometimes t’other: but one of the lids was dinted.’

  ‘So what?’

  ‘Use your loaf, gal. If the murderer ’ad a flask ready doped, that nobody couldn’t tell from the one Mr Benson ’ad filled up in the pantry, ’e didn’t need to be left alone in the diningroom while ’e poured out some of the booze and poured in the poison; ’e could ’ave changed the flasks easy as pie in a split second. The old girl, she didn’t used to come down to breakfast in ’er coat and bowler ’at; she used to go back upstairs to put ’em on before she went over to the stables. Them flasks could’ve been switched while she was picking ’er false teeth or fixing ’er ’air-net. ’Im in there,’e’s trying to puzzle out who was near the dining-room, but what ’e should be arsking is: who knew that she ’as two flasks? and that was me, so I’m not all that keen on telling ’im.’

  ‘Still, other people besides you must have known it. Margot, for one. I’d know how many flasks my mother had, if she had any. “Scamp” may not have known — men never notice anything, but I bet Cousin Elizabeth knew, only she’s dead so it doesn’t matter, and Patricia may have. Probably Marvin knew and Mr Rose — you’re apt to talk about things like that when you’re riding home for miles and you’re not very intelligent. Beastly though he is, I think we ought to tell Price, Eric. I don’t think it will put you in an invidious position.’

  ‘If by that you mean a spot, I’m not so sure, gal. Any’ow, ’e’s knocking off now … there ’e goes … thin on top, ain’t ’e?’ When Price had disappeared round the corner of the corridor, ‘Reckon I’ll sleep on it,’ he added.

  ‘If there’s another murder in the night you’ll be sorry,’ warned Lisa. ‘I think we’d better tell some grown-up. Shall I tell Bunny and swear her to secrecy?’

  ‘She’s all right, but she’ll split to ’er old man, won’t she?’

  ‘How Victorian you are, Eric. Modern wives have hundreds of secrets from their husbands.’

  ‘O.K., then. I must shift off to bed now or Mr Benson will be after me. Be seeing you, Miss Lisa.’

  Eric ran downstairs, and Lisa went up and along the corridor to her mother’s sitting-room. Bunny, huddled over a dying fire, said, ‘I’ve been looking for you. I must talk to someone, and your stepfather thinks I’m the murderer. Who is on my side, who?’

  ‘Well, I am,’ said Lisa, sitting down at her feet. ‘And so are Babette and Romance Conti. Anyhow I don’t think the ’tec believes you did it. He asked me some very searching questions.’

  ‘You? When did he see you?’ asked Bunny, startled.

  ‘Just now in the study. Beaupère sent for me and stayed there in case the kiddy should be frightened of the great big policeman, I suppose. I think the ’tec thought I might be a problem child.’

  ‘The idiot. If he wants an oddity, why doesn’t he try Patricia — still a school prefect at twenty-three? What did he ask you, Lisa?’

  ‘Oh, mostly about the dropwort and where to find it.’ Bunny groaned. ‘That wretched man must have told him you knew. Lisa, when this is over let’s go back to the villa.’

  ‘All right, let’s. But we shall have to take Romanee Conti, or Patricia will send him to the kennels.’

  ‘Oh, we’ll take him. He’ll look sweet under Père Bonnard’s olives. O to be lying under the olives …’

  ‘Eating peaches.’

  ‘Looking at the mountains.’

  ‘In the sunshine.’

  ‘In France.’

  ‘Away from Patricia.’

  ‘Away from all the d’Estrays … But in the meantime,’ said Bunny, ‘how to avoid being hanged?’

  ‘Oh, look, Eric’s got a new clue, so it’s a good thing,’ said Lisa, ‘that I did “associate with the boot-boy”. He wouldn’t tell Price tonight — he thinks it’s incriminating, but he said I could tell you if you promised not to tell anybody.’

  ‘All right, I promise.’

  Lisa got up, tiptoed across the room and flung the door open. ‘Excuse melodrama,’ she said, closing it softly, ‘but the Scampnell may have died for less. Look, according to Eric she had two flasks.’ Sitting down again at Bunny’s feet she told the boy’s story, adding, ‘Eric seems to think it’s frightfully important, but I can’t see that it helps us much.’

  Bunny thought aloud. ‘It widens the field and then narrows it. Now the possibles are not only the people who were down to the early breakfast, or those who could have crept down knowing that it wouldn’t cause much excitement if they were seen: it’s everybody again until you remember that it must have been someone who knew that Mrs Scampnell had two flasks. I didn’t: you didn’t. But we can’t prove it. The people who knew were Eric, Margot Rattray, Mr Scampnell, and probably Beatrice and Sylvia, who would have seen them when they did the room.’

  ‘I told Eric that I thought all the hunting people probably knew. I thought they might have talked about their sandwich cases and flasks when they used them, or on the way home. What a nice flask! Mrs Scampnell. It is, is it not? My dear first husband gave me a pair of them. I thought Mr Scampnell was doubtful — husbands don’t notice much, do they? But Margot must have known.’

  ‘The other flask …’ cried Bunny, sitting up suddenly — ‘the flask that Eric cleaned and Benson filled … no, that’s no use,’ she said dejectedly. ‘The murderer had all day in which to wash it and put it back where it — or rather the poisoned one — belonged.’

  ‘Where does it belong?’ asked Lisa. ‘There must have been a time when both flasks were missing. If they sit, or even one of them sits on a shelf and we found out when they, or it, were missing, we’d narrow down the time again.’

  ‘Beatrice would know. She’d know where they were kept, though if they were on a shelf or a chest-of-drawers I don’t suppose she’d notice if they were missing, except when she dusted at intervals of twenty-four hours, which isn’t very narrow. D’you think she’s in bed yet, Lisa?’

  ‘If she is, we couldn’t ask her. It’s Eric’s clue, and we promised.’

  ‘Oh damn, so we did.’ What, Bunny wondered, were the ethics? A promise made to a silly child, was it binding? You mustn’t do evil that good might come of it … but the boy was only fourteen and practically half-witted, and Lisa was an absurd little Quixote … impossible to let her know that you’d even considered it. She said, ‘Well, I suppose we must wait till the morning and hope that Eric will feel moved to confide in the detective — if not, we’ll have to try to persuade him. Go to bed, Lisa, and lock your door; there’s an angel. On second thoughts, I’ll come up and look under the bed before you get into it.’

  Lisa’s room was on the second floor of the west wing, near the nurseries. It had belonged to Patricia, and although she had long since moved into a more imposing room on the first floor, she had been quite put out when Bunny had had the walls stripped of a drab and faded paper and distempered yellow; even now she alluded to it as ‘my old bedroom’. While Lisa splashed in the nursery bathroom, Bunny inspected the
large built-in cupboard and, feeling a little foolish, peered beneath the bed, on which she had already installed the delighted Boxer; and she stayed in the room until Lisa was ready to lock the door, and heard the key turn before she went downstairs. And that’s all very well, she worried, but to-morrow will be another day, and Cecily Scampnell was killed because she knew too much, and now Lisa knows about these flasks, and though it doesn’t seem a very important piece of information, it may lead somewhere. If I talked to Margot and mentioned the original flask she might volunteer that there was a second, and that wouldn’t give Eric away in the least — few people realize what tiny details a child does notice. Passing her bedroom door, Bunny crossed the gallery, but stopped outside the little pantry, from which came the faint sound of bubbling water. Her heart stood still. Then she told herself, idiot … it’s far too early for anyone to be cooking up poison, and she opened the door.

  Beatrice was standing beside the electric ring, on which a kettle was steaming. She started and dropped the rubber hot-water bottle, which she had been holding against her chest. ‘Oh my lady,’ she said reproachfully. ‘How you did make me jump!’

  ‘I’m terribly sorry,’ said Bunny. ‘I’ve just got Lisa into bed and I was going along to ask if I could do anything for the Scampnells. It’s embarrassing, but I don’t want to seem callous.’

  ‘This bottle’s for Mr Scampnell,’ said Beatrice. ‘I moved his things into the little green room as you suggested, and I’ve ’ad a bottle in the bed all evening, but it still feels a bit damp to me: in fact I’m in two minds about moving ’im back again. When it first came up ’e didn’t seem to care either way.’

  ‘I expect he feels too miserable to care, but I’m sure he’ll be better in the green room. It would be awful for him to wake up in the morning and see all her things around him.’

  Pouring the hot water into the bottle and thrusting it into its case of green chintz, Beatrice said, ‘They wasn’t all that loving.’

  ‘I daresay not,’ agreed Bunny. ‘It was a second marriage, probably for companionship, and not very romantic, but I always thought they got on very well considering how their tastes differed.’

  ‘At times,’ said Beatrice, ‘with the best will in the world we can’t ’elp ’earing what we’re not meant to. I’ve ’eard ’im call ’er an ’orrible name — the Unspeakable.’

  ‘That’s a joke. The Unspeakable in pursuit of the Uneatable. Oscar Wilde. He meant hunting people chasing foxes.’

  ‘Well, I shouldn’t want it,’ said Beatrice. ‘Nor for my stepdaughter to call me Scamp, if I were a man. Miss ’Udson, she agreed with me about that, though she did take up with Miss Margot. Well, this won’t do. I wish you’d come and feel that mattress, my lady.’

  Bunny followed her into the small and charming green room between Margot Rattray’s room and the room that had been Elizabeth Hudson’s, and Beatrice, seeing her in the brighter light, exclaimed, ‘Oh, my lady, you do look tired! Why don’t you get off to bed now?’

  ‘That’s perfectly dry,’ pronounced Bunny, feeling the mattress. ‘I’ll go to bed as soon as I’ve seen the Scampnells, but it’s awful in bed when you can’t sleep, and really, after two murders …’

  ‘I thought I should never drop off the night after Miss ’Udson died,’ said Beatrice, ‘but I made myself a nice cup of Ovaltine and I took two Aspros and never knew no more till young Sylvia brought in my tea in the morning. That’s what I shall ’ave to-night, and while I’m making it I might just as well make a cup for you — it won’t be no trouble.’

  ‘Oh, don’t bother, Beatrice; you’re as tired as I am.’

  ‘It won’t be no bother. I’ll put it in your room, so don’t stop too long with them Scampnells. Good night, my lady.’

  ‘Sleep well, Beatrice,’ said Bunny, and knocked on the door of Margot’s room.

  Through the thick mahogany panels a faint ‘Come in’ reached her and she entered. Before a blazing log fire, which presumably the kind Beatrice had substituted for the less comforting electric stove, Henry Scampnell was sitting in a little chintz-covered early Victorian armchair; Margot sat on the hearthrug at his feet. Bereaved, by the Hon. John Collier, thought Bunny and chid herself. She noticed, however, with relief that they were both dry-eyed.

  She said, ‘Oh don’t move, please. I haven’t come to worry you; I just came to ask if you’ve got everything you want — if there’s anything …?’

  ‘Thank you very much, Lady d’Estray,’ said Margot, rising. ‘It’s good of you to come, but we’ve got everything. Beatrice has been most kind: she insisted on lighting the fire for us, and the dinner-tray was a kind thought — I expect we owe that to you, don’t we?’

  ‘Well, I thought perhaps you’d sooner be by yourselves,’ said Bunny. ‘Apart from everything else, it was all so sudden, and the shock must have been considerable. Have you anything to take to make you sleep — bromide or anything?’

  ‘I don’t think we like the idea of drugs, do we, Scamp?’ said Margot.

  Scampnell, compromising by jerking himself into a more upright position, said, ‘I certainly don’t. Even if I lie awake all night, my memories of her are not the sort one needs to run away from.’

  ‘I’m sure of that,’ said Bunny, abashed. ‘We all thought you were wonderful. Very few men have the generosity to allow their wives to enjoy a sport in which they’ve no interest — at the best they’re martyrs. Mrs Scampnell was a very lucky woman.’

  ‘That’s my one consolation — nothing to reproach myself with,’ said Scampnell. ‘And Margot was just saying, too, that her mother wouldn’t have liked to grow old. It would have been a terrible wrench for her to give up hunting.’

  ‘Yes, indeed,’ said Bunny absently, for she was wondering how on earth she could turn the conversation to the subject of flasks without mentioning Eric. Then, ‘By the way,’ she said, ‘I’ve been thinking, and I’m sure you can help me. We’ve assumed that because the flasks were supposed to be put in the pantry the night before hunting, there could be no deviation from the routine, but that’s ridiculous — people often forget a little job like that, and if one did I suppose one would dash downstairs with one’s flask in the morning. I just wondered if we were right in taking it for granted that Mrs Scampnell’s flask did spend the night in the pantry.’

  Margot looked at her stepfather. He said, ‘I can put you right about that, Lady d’Estray. As I told the detective, my wife took her flask with her when we went down to dinner. As a matter of fact, it’s a point of no importance: according to your butler, he swills the flasks out under the tap before filling them, so it’s only from that point that they become interesting. Price has merely to concentrate on the movement of everybody from that moment to the time my wife got up from the table and collected her flask and sandwiches — quite a short time, and though there are a good many people in the house, quite a number have very definite alibis.’

  ‘I see. It was just a silly little idea of mine,’ said Bunny with unwonted humility, but: ‘I suppose Mrs Scampnell had only the one flask?’ she added.

  ‘Naturally,’ said Scampnell. ‘There’s a leather case for it, which straps on the saddle. I suppose a “two-bottle man” might carry two flasks,’ he went on with a faint smile, ‘but I’ve never heard of it.’

  ‘Mummy’s flask dated from her Indian days,’ put in Margot. ‘I’ve always known it. It was sacrosanct — so was all her tack, for that matter.’

  Scampnell said, ‘Margot, go and get the photograph of your mother on the Rajah’s Arab. She’s riding side-saddle there and I believe the flask shows up clearly.’ Bunny said, ‘I’d love to see it, but you’re tired; don’t bother now. I must go to bed myself, or I shall get into trouble with Beatrice. She’s become quite a tyrant lately. If I don’t drink my Ovaltine while it’s hot I shall get a smack, I gather.’ Margot, already at the door, said, ‘I won’t take a minute. I know where it is,’ and when she had gone Scampnell explained, ‘It won’t do the poor kid any har
m to tire herself physically — she’ll sleep better. In her quiet way she was devoted to her mother: there was just the two of them together, you know, for several years — her impressionable years — before I came on the scene, and naturally they were very close to one another. Well, I needn’t enlarge on that, of course; you’ve had the same experience.’

  ‘Yes, of course,’ said Bunny, asking herself: are they lying, or has Eric done some wishful thinking and imagined his dint? Husbands have poisoned their wives before, apparently devoted husbands, but Elizabeth was the first victim, and what could Henry Scampnell have had against Elizabeth? there was absolutely no connexion between them. Margot and Elizabeth got on well together … again there was no relationship to breed a motive … no, my poor Lisa, it’s a mare’s nest that you’ve uncovered … the boy has kidded himself, or maybe you … no wonder he wasn’t keen on telling the detective. ‘Yes …’, she said, ‘yes …’ for Scampnell was talking on, telling the story of Cecily and the Rajah — the clinic he’d opposed, Cecily’s insistence, his ultimate gratitude and offers of jewels worth a king’s ransom and Cecily speaking out, asking instead for one of his Arab stallions. Bunny had heard the story before from Cecily: everyone had heard it; Elizabeth had always said that Cecily couldn’t have ridden a stallion, she hadn’t the hands for it; so that Bunny was able to say, ‘yes … yes …’ without listening and, at the end, ‘That was just like her,’ and, ‘I’m sure the horse gave her more pleasure than she would have got from the rubies.’ ‘And here’s Margot with the photograph,’ said Scampnell, and Margot came in and showed a large mounted photograph of Cecily, young and pretty, mounted on a decorative grey horse and attended by a bearded and turbanned syce — ‘absolutely,’ said Bunny, ‘Kipling.’

  ‘She loved Kipling,’ said Margot, but Scampnell pointed out the flask, laid the photograph down and sighed heavily, so Bunny only added, ‘It’s a beautiful photograph. Thank you for showing it to me,’ and took her leave and went out into the deserted corridor. I’m tired; I’m fit to drop, she realized. Damn that boy and his silly story! All this time I could have been soaking in my bath instead of worrying those poor people. As she crossed the gallery she heard footsteps in the hall … Charles … but I can’t cope with him now … Should I say good night, or cut him? … What rules are there for dealing with a husband who suspects one of murder? Between the bathroom and her bedroom she took pains to avoid him, scouting round the door before emerging, waiting, when she fancied she heard the door of her bedroom open and close, till the waste-pipe in his bedroom reassured her with a gurgle. If he had looked for her, she thought as, ready for bed, she locked the door and slipped the key under her pillow, what in heaven’s name had he intended to say to her? Again and again she and the impossible Sallust had patched and repatched their marriage, and, tattered and tarnished though it was, it had held to the end. But then, she thought, slipping out of her dressing-gown and kicking off her slippers, though they hadn’t respected or trusted or even liked one another, they had been young and in love when they had married, and all through the disillusionment there had persisted a thread of that remembered gold. Now Charles, she thought, getting into bed, stretching out a hand for kind Beatrice’s cup of Ovaltine, Charles and I were by no means blinded by passion. I liked and respected him; he admired my talents and found me amusing: I slept on his proposal and accepted it in the sober light of next morning, not as I accepted Raoul’s, on a balcony in the Dauphine, with a dam’ fortuitous peasant strumming a zither in the street beneath us, and across the valley the Meije, with his head among the stars. That was a stupid marriage, but it didn’t end till death parted us: this was a sensible one, but already it’s over, annulled. What has poor dear Charles done that that wretch Raoul didn’t? she asked herself, stirring the Ovaltine; Charles suspects me of breaking the sixth commandment, but time and again, when he was in the mood, Raoul accused me of breaking the seventh. Oh, well, she thought, le coeur a ses raisons … and she looked at the Ovaltine she was mechanically stirring and realized that it was cold and that skin was afloat on it and that she couldn’t drink it either to please Beatrice or to insure that she slept. She decided, I’ll empty it down the basin before Beatrice comes in with my breakfast, but after a few moments of uneasy self-deception had to admit to herself that she seldom, if ever, woke until Beatrice called her, and presently, muttering, ‘Damn all kind people,’ she forced herself to rise, scurried to the basin, emptied the cup and replaced it on the bedside table. Then it was bliss to be warm again … nothing else mattered … neither marriage nor murder … and Barbara d’Estray slept.