A Spider in the Cup

by Barbara Cleverly

  “Same ink, same nib.” He put the pen with the other objects.

  “Last but not least—last because it’s the heaviest and it’s sunk to the bottom.”

  He produced a blue-steel revolver.

  “Isn’t that the same as …?” Lydia began in surprise.

  “Third one I’ve seen today,” Joe confirmed with a groan. “Has someone opened a franchise for personal self-defence items in London? Is someone flooding the market with undetectable side-arms? Sleek and chic … this season’s armpit accessory?”

  “I gave her that gun two years ago,” said Kingstone from the doorway. “The company was about to tour in South America and I thought she could always do with a bit of protection. I think she used it twice.”

  “Well she hasn’t used it recently.” Joe’s fingers were busy with the gun. “Full clip.”

  Kingstone joined them, first announcing that the ambulance had arrived to pick up the body and the men were now awaiting Joe’s instructions. A local police officer, Constable Brightwell, was in the hall with similar expectations. P.C. Brightwell, he reported, had cycled in with information he was eager to pass on.

  Joe hurried out to see them all, grumbling. “I don’t want to think about what Rippon’s going to have to say to me. I send him three bodies in two days … at the weekend …”

  The senator watched him go and turned to Lydia with an indulgent smile. “Does your brother ever stop?”

  “I’d pull his plug out if I knew where he kept it. Drives you mad! But, you, Cornelius … I can imagine the hell you’re going through so I’ll ask you just once—are you going to be all right?”

  “A question I can’t possibly answer,” he told her with an air of calm. “But the asking is timely! I’m okay. Better than you might expect. I’ve been metaphorically feeling my own pulse. I’ve done some quiet thinking out there, asked some questions, got some answers. A bit of a one-sided conversation you’re going to say, but not so.” Finally a grin broke through. “I’ve reset my watch, Lydia.” He put his old army timepiece on the table. “You were right—it just needed to be wound up … and not over-wound. See—it’s giving the right time. My time. I’ve run up another very long hill, I’m still alive and kicking, and there’s just one more thing I need to know.”

  He waited for their looks of polite enquiry and then said ruefully: “Are you fellas ever going to offer me lunch?”

  CHAPTER 21

  “You’re very good at this, Cornelius,” Lydia commented as Kingstone swooped and removed the last of her counters. “I hardly ever play but I can usually beat the girls.” She began to clear the pieces off the board. “Joe’s not bad but our best player is Marcus. You’ll have to go up against him to call yourself house Morris champion. But with Joe doing his interrogation in Guildford and Marcus striding about the grounds with the inspector looking for tyre marks, you’re stuck with me, I’m afraid. Shall we play another round?”

  “You make all your guests play?”

  “Oh, yes. I usually choose the moment after a heavy lunch and a glass of wine or two—as now—when they’re not feeling too sharp! Or distracted and worried. All things considered, I thought I must stand a fighting chance with you! It’s said to be a good test of character.”

  “Well, I warn you—I like to win. No quarter given for sex or age and I’ve had practice at this game.”

  “So I see! But so has Marcus. He jolly well ought to be good at it! He grew up here and there’s a game board cut out right there on the village green. He’s been playing with the local lads since he was big enough to hop between the holes. Not many of the green games left these days, sadly. They’ve mostly been removed along with the stocks and the pillories, the bowling alleys and all the other fun things. No one needs them now there’s a picture palace in Guildford and a wireless in every cottage.”

  “On the green? You mean carved right out of the turf?”

  “Oh, yes. From time immemorial! You find them marked on any smooth surface from the backs of Roman roof tiles to the tops of Victorian pub tables. The first record of our village game is fourteen hundred and something. The greens were gathering places, centres for entertainment as well as public punishment and announcing the news. In A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Titania grumbles that ‘the Nine Men’s Morris is filled up with mud.’ They had terrible weather in those days as well.”

  “It’s been played in some strange places. Wherever men had time on their hands, strengths to try, schemes to make in discreet surroundings.”

  “Yes. Men. Women disguise their gossip and chicanery under layers of harmless sewing. Now, chess is totally absorbing but quilting and Nine Men’s Morris are not demanding enough to distract attention from the main business of the day. You can look innocent and occupied on the surface when your mind and your tongue may be busy with any kind of roguery. Marcus can play blindfold while reciting the Encyclopaedia Britannica,” she finished proudly.

  “You’re not tempting me to a showdown with the master, Lydia.” Kingstone laughed. “It’s not a game to be despised, though. It’s a game of strategy. If you’ll excuse my pointing it out, it was a mistake to start off by concentrating your pieces in one section of the board. It feels more secure to you, perhaps, but it’s much more effective to space them out strategically around the board.”

  Lydia nodded. “I’m always too eager to get my mill going! Three counters in a row. Three strong men. That’s you, Marcus and Joe! I go straight for it.”

  “Right.” Kingstone placed two white counters back on the board in a line pointing from the six o’clock position to the centre and then a third on the row above and offset by one place. “Look here—when you move this stray back in line, you’ve made a mill of three and you’re in a position to get rid of one of your opponent’s men. Next move, you just slide the same counter back out of line, then you replace it when you can and cull another black one. Just go on like that, dodging back and forth, until you’ve cleared the board. You establish your strong position, put your head down and keep going. It’s not thrilling but it’s effective.”

  “Who makes the most challenging opponents, Cornelius? Clearly not women—after two rounds of shuffling to and fro, we’re bored stiff and looking about for socks to darn. How about … New York bankers? Birmingham industrialists? German economists?”

  For a moment he was startled. “Did …? Who …?”

  “Joe put me up to it. He told me about your adventures yesterday at the Victoria. The lunch you attended given by those estimable people—the Pilgrims. I was telling him what good work they do for some of the women’s charities I’m involved with, and he mentioned what you did afterwards. You shouldn’t expect to hide these things from Joe, you know. I stopped trying when I was sixteen. He always finds out what you’re up to.”

  Kingstone greeted this casual, almost teasing, confidence with perceptible shock but his voice when he replied was measured. “Joe uses you, Lydia. He had no right to put you into danger. First by bringing me here. Then by telling you all this. Because danger’s what you’re in. Up to your neck. And I’ve brought it down on you.” He glared at the game on the table in front of him. “Forget all this nonsense! No more Morris! This is a distraction. A sideshow.” He folded up the board, scooped all the counters angrily into one large palm and replaced them in their bag.

  With the action, his voice lost its gritty directness, its swift allusive expression, and took on a senatorial authority. “It is a pseudo-cultural caprice indulged in by men with much to hide and much to lose. It’s a mask for the activities of a group of powerful men. Men who sip brandy and move their counters with a manicured forefinger in a cynical salute to what they fancy to be an endearing echo from their past. But the game they play has little to do with those sweaty, penniless adventurers who spent long hours confined aboard a little ship—men trying to preserve their sanity in a hostile and uncertain world. The players hide their purpose within the body of a charitable and hallowed institution as the para
sitic wasp buries its eggs, unresisted, in an unsuspecting fat caterpillar. A cover—quirky but apparently harmless—for meetings which are anything but innocent. These constitute an intensive exchange of views and formulation of plans by the members of a highly selected élite. Things are said face to face that may not be spoken over wires or even put in diplomatic bags. Decisions made at their meetings are carried unanimously, are final and binding. And always expedited.”

  His voice was chill, his face as expressionless as that of a hanging judge as he concluded, “As a result of these meetings, Lydia, fortunes are made. Governments fall. Ships are sunk. Wars are started. And, on the way to achieving these ends, men—and women—are assassinated, swept from the board like counters.”

  Lydia was pale and wide-eyed, absorbing every stark word. At last she spoke. “Well! I’ve heard some pretty inventive excuses for wriggling out of a game but that takes the biscuit! I won’t dare to suggest chess! I’ll leave you to make your own plans with Joe and Marcus. Here, Cornelius, have a look at the papers … do the crossword … you didn’t have time this morning. I’ll go and search out my needlepoint. Much less distressing. It’s a bit early but I think I could do with a cup of tea. I’ll go and make us one.”

  She got to her feet, once again the brisk hostess.

  Rising with her, he caught her hand. “I’ve startled you and I meant to. I’m a straightforward operator, Lydia. It was always my way to keep my troops informed. Tell them the worst. How can you keep your head on your shoulders if you don’t know where the fire’s coming from and when it’s coming?”

  “Don’t worry, Cornelius. I know now. From every direction. All the time. Tin hats on, I think. Earl Grey or Darjeeling?”

  PEARSON GREETED JOE on his return with a calm account of domestic activities since his departure. “We had not looked for you so soon, sir. All’s well,” he thought to add. “Mister Marcus is on patrol in the grounds and Miss Lydia has withdrawn to the morning room with her embroidery. You’ll find the senator in the drawing room, asleep. Shall I have more tea sent in?”

  “We’ll let him snooze on for a bit,” Joe said, “and I’ll have a word with my sister.”

  “No, Joe, she’s going to have a word with you!” Lydia had heard him arrive and came out to greet him, size three crewel needle held at the tilt. “In fact she’s planning to puncture your composure.” She ushered him into the morning room. “You set me up to play a perfectly ordinary Sunday afternoon game with Cornelius, never bothering to tell me I risked blowing the lid off the jam jar. Now he thinks I’m some sort of Mata Hari and he’s clammed up. Did you have any idea you were bringing down death and destruction, not just on the innocent Surrey stockbroker belt but apparently—the world? The Nine Men of Mystery you told me to pump him about turn out to be a sinister blend of Knights Templar and the Mafia and all run, we’ll no doubt find, by Professor Moriarty, drawing on the technical expertise of Alphonse Capone.”

  “Yes, yes,” Joe interrupted her. “I know all that. And your indignant squeaking speaks volumes. Not something to be taken too seriously perhaps? You didn’t manage to discover what Cornelius’s role is in this coven? Moving force? Recent recruit? Sacrificial victim? That’s the sort of thing I’d really like to know.”

  “Well, you’ll have to ask him yourself. He didn’t confide that much. His warnings were more all-enveloping, open-to-interpretation, Cassandra-like utterances than personal confession. All I can say is that he didn’t strike me at all as a willing conspirator; in fact the whole thing seems to scare him rigid. He got very hot under the collar when I spoke out and revealed that you knew what he was up to.”

  “I must go and talk to him.”

  “Can’t you leave it for a bit? He’s been asleep for the last hour. Badly needed sleep, I think. Catching up on days, perhaps weeks, of deprivation. Speaking as his self-appointed medical nurse, I’d say—leave him for as long as you can. He’s in the drawing room, curled up all of a heap in the armchair with the cat. One’s snoring, the other’s purring.”

  “Oh, no! You didn’t let that slobbering old brute get at him? He’s got bad breath and a worse temper.”

  “No, no! The old thing knew just what was required. Cats are very healing creatures, you know. He marched in, jumped up onto his knee without a by-your-leave, licked the senatorial ear and settled down in his lap, purring.”

  “Hardly a course of therapy his hostess could administer.” Joe smiled. “I can see that. Well—if it’s working …”

  “He’s on the mend, I’d say. Just don’t offer to play him at Nine Men’s Morris or you’ll undo everything,” she called after him.

  JOE STOOD IN the doorway for a moment, amused by the scene. The drawing room, the heart of the house, reflected the comforts of an earlier, more upholstered age. William Morris fabrics strained around well-stuffed sofas, velvets gleamed on rounded cushions. The walnut surfaces of tables and dressers glowed with beeswax, their amber highlights echoed by soft Persian rugs. The more rigorous glint of hand-crafted pewter-framed mirrors, the cooler notes of modern French glassware and the restrained arrangements of white flowers rescued the room from any suggestion that Victoria still reigned. Everything in this room had earned its place because it was loved and in some cases had given years of good service.

  Tall windows were standing open to green lawns rolling away down into the valley and somewhere in that dense foliage a late cuckoo who should have been winging his way to Africa by now called a mocking farewell. And, in the middle of all this, another discordant note.

  Cornelius had changed for lunch, digging deeper into Marcus’s wardrobe. No shirt was up to the task of encircling his muscled neck and the collar was standing open, the tie discarded. The tick of a stately grandfather clock beat out in syncopation with a harmonious strand of snoring and purring coming from the armchair. Straight out of a Punch cartoon, Joe thought. Gentleman at his unbuttoned ease in his douce English drawing room. An ease he was going to have to shatter.

  “I say—I do apologise, Cornelius, for the uninvited guest! Bugger off, Brutus!”

  At the sound of Joe’s voice, the black cat leapt up and fled under a sideboard.

  “Don’t scare him! I was flattered!” Kingstone said, struggling awake and suppressing a yawn. “We’re getting along just fine. He’s a beast I’m proud to know. In fact he’s rather like me. He sees us as brothers, I think. Moth-eaten, battle-scarred but still feisty. Though my teeth are in better condition.”

  Joe grimaced. “That’ll be the ale. He drinks it out of a Wedgwood saucer. Rots his teeth and gives him the temperament of a street brawler.”

  “Like I said—brothers in arms. Pass me my saucer.”

  “It’s Wedgwood, but the best Darjeeling, if that’s all right? I brought in a tray. Thought you’d be ready for a bracer after going a round or two with Brutus,” Joe said genially, busying himself with the tea things.

  “Brutus, eh? Named for the upright Roman senator?”

  “The very same, though honouring that senator’s more dubious skills. Famous assassins, both!” Joe was amused. “My sister left you snoozing the afternoon away with your soft parts exposed to the claws and fangs—such as they are—of a champion ratter. Deadliest in the county!”

  Joe talked on easily, realising he was putting off the moment he dreaded. His interview with the wretched Cummings had confirmed his worst fears and he had nothing but a further dollop of heartache to offer his guest. Kingstone also seemed happy to be clinging to the ritual of tea cups and casual chatter and ready to prolong it. Or perhaps he was simply a cat lover. Some of the most unlikely people were.

  “He looks kind of … venerable?”

  Joe was touched that, even with the cat out of earshot, Kingstone had searched for the kindliest word.

  “He’s ancient. Mangy old flea-pasture! They had an infestation of rats on the estate some years ago. With children about the place, instead of doing the obvious thing—putting down poison or getting in a frisky pa
ck of Jack Russells—Marcus equipped himself with a pair of kitchen cats. Gift from a neighbour. You know Marcus now—what else would he call a couple of lethal backstabbers but Brutus and Cassius? They hunted as a pair. And very effective they were, I have to admit. The corpses piled up by the back door. The deep silence of the Surrey night was rent by eldritch screeches whose awfulness the Bard himself would have had a hard time attempting to convey. Brutus’s brother and partner-in-arms died last year. In a state of utter bliss—on the field of battle.”

  “He’s still lying low under there.” Joe turned to see Kingstone on his knees, peering under the furniture. “Do you think I could tempt him out with …?”

  “Oh, go ahead!” Joe sighed. “He’ll happily drink milk at this time of day. It’s a bit early for his beer.”

  He settled down opposite Kingstone, stern-faced, unable to put off the moment any longer. “Now, Senator. Guildford jail. I’ve charged the men with an impressive list of offences. But the one that really got them going was the threat of a charge of murder. I implied I was ready to add Miss Kirilovna’s death to their account.”

  “Good thought! How did that go down?”

  “It was received with granite-jawed indifference by Onslow but Cummings showed some emotion. He was startled and dismayed, I’d say. Last thing he’d expected to hear. I left Onslow to stew in his cell. With much banging of cell doors and merry calls down the corridor for pale ale and sandwiches for two to be brought in, I gave Onslow reason to suspect his mate was having a cosy chat with his new police confessor. In fact, I didn’t get much although he was ready enough to oblige in his eagerness to avoid the noose. He claimed that Natalia was alive and well when they left her. He held his hands up for everything else.”

  “Did he say what she was doing there with them in the first place? It’s all right, Joe. I’ve figured it out. I just want to be sure there are no more surprises.”