CHAPTER SEVEN
CHARLES D’ESTRAY was back at New College. In a few minutes’ time he was to speak at the Union, seconding a motion that in the opinion of this House the unsatisfactory state of this country is due to the Reformation. In a frantic endeavour to compose a speech, he had sported his oak, but rowing toughs were banging on it … ‘Clear off, you cads,’ muttered Sir Charles through toothless gums, and wakened and knew it was day … another day of miserable uncertainty. ‘Come in,’ he called, since Benson had apparently gone mad, and a muffled voice told him that the door was locked, and then he remembered that he had locked it. ‘Just a minute,’ he called, and hurried into his sober dark blue dressing-gown and slippers to match. ‘’Morning, Benson. I thought it wise to tell everyone to lock their doors,’ he said, and then he noticed that Benson was in shirt-sleeves and a green baize apron and had brought no tray of early morning tea. ‘What’s the matter, Benson — not another?’
Benson’s always pale face was grey. His hands shook.
‘It’s a note, Sir Charles. We dursn’t touch it. It’s in her ladyship’s typewriter in her sitting-room.’
‘I’ll come,’ said Sir Charles. ‘My specs … just a moment.’ Collecting his reading-glasses, he took the opportunity to slip his teeth in.
Benson led the way along the corridor. Realizing that the curtains were drawn and the lights burning, Sir Charles glanced at his wrist watch: the time was a quarter past seven. At the door of Bunny’s sitting-room, Sylvia, the under-house-maid, was standing; with her blue eyes bulging and her lower lip held between her teeth, she looked like a frightened hare. Sir Charles went straight to the battered little typewriter, uncovered, as Bunny always left it, on the writing-table. To catch the eye, a page had been wound almost from the rollers. Sir Charles put on his glasses and read:
To Everyone who it may concern
The game is up, the detective knows, so I am taking the easiest way out. 1 poisoned Elizabeth because I hated her and I knew Charles would never get rid of her. In the case of Mrs Scampnell I poisoned her because she knew too much. Now I have taken some of the poison to avoid being hung — forgive me if you can. Barbara.
Sir Charles straightened up and took off his glasses.
‘Have you read it, Benson?’
‘I glanced through it, Sir Charles, when Sylvia fetched me up and pointed it out to me. It caught her eye when she came to do the grate, and she read it, because her ladyship has left messages in the machine on previous occasions — not to light the fire, or to let the dog out. Can I get you anything, Sir Charles — a little brandy?’ Without waiting for an answer, he hurried away.
Sir Charles, who was, in fact, feeling a little faint, turned away from the table and sat down in the armchair by the dead fire. God! he’d made a fool of himself, falling for her, marrying her, bringing her back to Aston as his children’s stepmother … it was his fault, his foolish, senile fault, that Elizabeth and poor Scampnell’s wife had died. Well, it was over — at least she’d had the decency to spare him the anguish of a trial and a conviction … There would be a certain amount of publicity, of course; for some time it would be embarrassing to meet his friends; he would feel humbled before his children; for the rest of his life remorse would strike him when he remembered, or was reminded of Elizabeth. But he was conscious of a certain relief: he had to face things now, he hadn’t to fear them … with courage and dignity he’d get through …
‘Bunny didn’t write this,’ a voice at his elbow repeated.
Startled, he turned. Lisa, barefooted, in yellow pyjamas and a tweed riding-coat, stood frowning at the typewriter.
‘My poor child! you shouldn’t be here,’ said Sir Charles gently, and Benson, coming in with a glass of brandy on a silver salver, said, ‘Oh, Miss Lisa, I told Sylvia to keep you upstairs.’
‘What is this rot? Bunny didn’t write it,’ said Lisa.
‘Lisa, my dear, you must try to understand,’ said Sir Charles and swallowed his brandy. ‘People are not always responsible for what they do — I don’t mean they’re mad, but they’re ill mentally; a mind can be sick as well as a body, you know. My poor child! this is a terrible shock to you. I know how you loved your mother. You must try to be brave.’ He looked into the cold and scornful little face and said, ‘I’m no use, I’m afraid. Benson, take her to Nanny.’
Lisa said, ‘I don’t want to be taken to Nanny. How can you be so idiotic as to think that Bunny wrote who where it should be whom, or put a comma between two unrelated statements, or used in the case of or hung where it should be hanged?’
‘Come along, Miss Lisa,’ said Benson.
‘Where is she, anyhow?’ asked Lisa.
‘Don’t you understand?’ asked Sir Charles pitifully. ‘Your poor mother’s gone. That note says she’s taken poison. Later on, my dear, it will help us to remember that in the end she did the gallant thing. It was like her, wasn’t it, Lisa?’
‘But she didn’t write the note; somebody else wrote it. Oh,’ cried Lisa, ‘do you think they’ve poisoned her?’ She dashed to the door, but Benson caught her arm and held her. ‘Let me go, let me go,’ she shrieked. ‘If we’re quick we might save her.’
‘Lisa, be quiet! You’ll wake the whole house,’ said Sir Charles in a voice calculated to bring her to her senses. ‘I’m going to telephone to the police now, and I’ll send Miss Patricia along to help you, Benson.’ With Lisa wriggling like an eel, kicking his shins and butting him in the stomach, all that Benson could manage was an unintelligible monosyllable.
Sir Charles was barely at Patricia’s door when it opened and she emerged, fair, fresh, and unruffled, so like her mother that Sir Charles exclaimed, ‘Hermione!’ and corrected himself, ‘I mean Pat — a shocking thing’s happened. Barbara’s committed suicide and left a confession … Lisa’s being quite hysterical in the sitting-room and only Benson’s with her. I’ve got to telephone …’
‘Right. I’ll cope,’ said Patricia, bless her, and Sir Charles went on down the west-wing staircase to his study and picked up the telephone receiver, thinking how breeding showed in moments of emergency. He called the Harborough police station; the Sergeant on duty would start for Aston immediately, picking up Superintendent Treadwell and Inspector Price on the way.
Sir Charles replaced the receiver and with a lighter heart passed through the baize door into the service quarters. Benson, now in his coat, came from the pantry. ‘The police should be here in twenty minutes or so,’ Sir Charles told him. ‘Did you manage to calm Miss Lisa?’
Benson said, ‘Miss Pat and Nanny got her upstairs between them, and I took the precaution of locking the sitting-room door. Here’s the key, Sir Charles, and should Beatrice carry on as usual with the early morning teas?’
‘Yes, I think so,’ said Sir Charles. ‘We don’t want the p.gs. coming out into the passages and investigating. It’s Sunday, so she could be a few minutes behind time without arousing any comment. I’d like Mr Hugo to be called now, though. Perhaps you’d call him yourself, Benson, and break the news. I’ll dress and be ready when the police come. Get them in quietly, Benson — as quietly as you can.’
Sir Charles was unused to dressing hurriedly; it did not occur to him to depart from his custom of donning a suit on Sundays, and it was fully three-quarters of an hour before he came down the main staircase into the hall. The guests had been called, but the main corridor was quiet still; there was no slamming of doors or running of bath-water. Before Hugo had dressed, he had come into his father’s room and avoiding his eyes, had said, ‘Bad show, this. I’m sorry.’ ‘Thanks, old man,’ replied Sir Charles. ‘I’m sorry too, and particularly sorry I let you and Patricia in for all this through my own stupidity.’ ‘Oh, that’s rot,’ said Hugo. ‘You can’t see into the future any more than the rest of us. Better get dressed now …’ and away he’d gone. What was happening on the nursery floor, wasn’t, Sir Charles thought, his business: leave the child to the women … As he reached the hall, Benson appeared fr
om the dining-room and said, ‘I’ll bring a breakfast tray to the study while you’re waiting, Sir Charles,’ but as he spoke, both men saw, through the glass doors of the vestibule, the first of the two police cars. Benson hurried to the door. Price and Treadwell, followed by a sergeant and two constables, came up the steps side by side.
‘There’s been another death, then,’ said Price, brushing past Benson and hurrying up to Sir Charles. ‘I understand that you omitted to inform the sergeant as to the identity of the deceased?’
‘It’s my wife,’ said Sir Charles. ‘But it was suicide. She left a note which explains everything.’ His voice was expressionless.
Price said, ‘That’s what I have suspected from the commencement of the case. Where is the body?’
‘We all locked our bedroom doors last night; I advised it,’ Sir Charles told him. ‘The under-housemaid found the note in my wife’s typewriter in her sitting-room. When I had read it and pulled myself together, I telephoned to the police station. We haven’t attempted to enter her bedroom.’
Price said, ‘That’s very satisfactory to us. We’ll go up at once, Treadwell.’ He turned back to Sir Charles. ‘Have you a master key, or, if she happens to have taken the key out, would it be possible to unlock the door with a key from any of the other bedrooms?’
‘I’ve never heard of our having a master key. I don’t know about the others, do you, Benson?’
‘It’s possible, Sir Charles. The keys all look alike. There’s also a bunch of unidentified keys, which I keep with those of the east wing, in the pantry.’
‘Get them,’ snapped Price, and started up the stairs with Treadwell, who, as he passed Sir Charles, muttered something about his deepest sympathy.
Reluctant to enter that room, to look, even now that she was dead, on the woman who had made a fool of him, Sir Charles waited for Benson, and when the butler came with a bunch of old-fashioned keys in his hand, they went upstairs together. Benson said, ‘It’ll be a shock to you, Sir Charles. Wouldn’t it be better to let us carry on without you?’ but Sir Charles said, ‘No, no. It’s my responsibility,’ and added, ‘You’re a good old friend to us, Benson.’ They turned into the west wing and found that Treadwell and Price had opened the door; following Price into the room, Treadwell looked back to say in a low voice, ‘The key from the next door did the job all right.’
Bracing his shoulders, compressing his lips, Sir Charles went in behind Treadwell. The light of the wet autumn morning was seeping through the pink-and-white curtains; instinctively Treadwell moved towards the windows, but Price switched on the light and revealed the room which the second Lady d’Estray had herself described as en gout de cocotte. That, unlike her victims, she had died peacefully was immediately apparent to all four men. The grey silk eiderdown had slipped sideways, but the pink blankets were as smooth as though the bed had recently been made, and all that could be seen of Lady d’Estray, between the neat turnover of the sheet and a luxurious pile of pillows, was the back of a childish-looking mop of blonde curls. ‘A narcotic of some description,’ Price thought aloud, and walked round the bed, and turned down the coverings, and started back, crying, ‘Great Scott!’ as Bunny opened her eyes and blinked at him; and ‘Good God!’ said Sir Charles, and ‘Christ!’ said Benson, and ‘Strewth!’ said Treadwell, as she raised her head, sat up and looked about her.
‘What are you doing here? What’s happened? Not Lisa …’
Benson was the first to reassure her. ‘No, no, my lady. Miss Lisa’s safe and sound. It was your ladyship we feared for …’
Price cut in. ‘Leave it to me, please. I shall have some questions to ask you, Lady d’Estray. Would you dress as quickly as possible and come down to the study?’
‘But I haven’t had breakfast yet,’ objected Bunny.
Benson said, ‘I’ll have your breakfast sent up at once, my lady. And Miss Lisa should be told, Sir Charles — shall I see to it?’
‘Yes …’ said Sir Charles vaguely. ‘Yes, Benson, yes.’ He couldn’t concentrate. It was so horribly embarrassing … these men … the pink bed … those bare shoulders … that transparent black nightgown … Just when everything had seemed clear — grievously clear, but clear — back came the awful uncertainty. If she hadn’t poisoned herself, what was the meaning of the note? … What had happened? Bunny, too, was asking ‘What’s happened?’
‘That’s what we all want to know,’ said Treadwell. ‘If we knew that, we should be well away. There’s bin some monkeying somewhere.’ He looked hopefully at Price, who was at the bedside table.
‘This cup and saucer, Lady d’Estray — I presume it contained some beverage, which you drank on retiring? Had an attempt on your life been perpetrated — which I anticipate will be your explanation — how do you account for the failure of the same?’
Bunny looked puzzled.
‘I’m sorry. Say that again, will you?’
‘The Detective-Inspector means that if the drink was poisoned, why is your ladyship alive this morning?’ Treadwell explained.
‘But I’m sure it wasn’t poisoned — Beatrice made it,’ said Bunny. ‘Actually, I didn’t drink it. She told me not to let it get cold, and of course I did, while I was having my bath, and it got skin on it. I didn’t like the look of it, so I poured it down the wash-basin so as not to hurt her feelings.’
‘When your ladyship was in the bath, was the door locked?’ asked Treadwell.
‘No,’ said Bunny. ‘It was when I got into bed that I locked it.’
Treadwell sighed, ‘Ahh. I’m glad to hear that, my lady. It was beginning to look bad for my auntie.’
‘Your auntie?’
‘Beatrice Blythe, my lady.’
‘As if anyone would suspect Beatrice! Besides, we don’t know yet if there was poison in the cup. It’ll have to be analysed,’ said Bunny. ‘And, furthermore,’ she added, ‘when I’d finished my bath, as I didn’t want to meet … well, as I didn’t want to meet anyone, I opened the door a crack and listened in case there was anybody in the corridor, and I heard my bedroom door open and shut again — I thought it was you, Charles, come to say good night or something, but of course, if it had been and you were on your way to bed, you would have come on down the corridor.’
‘Looks as if whoever-it-was must have gone the other way — towards the east wing,’ said Treadwell.
‘Or down the main staircase,’ said Bunny.
Price had remained silent because he was thinking. Treadwell, he thought, was all too ready to assume from this new turn of events that Lady d’Estray was innocent. But the woman was clever … and clever was cunning … and it was possible that she had engineered the whole business in the hope of diverting suspicion. Had an attempted murder been staged, he would have felt sure of that; as things were, there was an obvious risk that the police might accept the attempted suicide as genuine … it was more than a risk … she had never given the impression that she rated his intelligence so highly. She’s in the clear, he thought, unless the note tells us something … and he turned to Sir Charles and said, ‘I’d like to see this note you spoke of. Perhaps, Super, you’d take care of the cup and saucer, and while Lady d’Estray has her breakfast it would be as well — for her protection — to post a constable in the passage …’
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