Mrs. Malory and a Necessary End (Mrs. Malory Mystery)

by Hazel Holt

  Rory Bartlett is the auctioneer, a jolly man who kindly gives his services to Brunswick Lodge when we have a fund-raising auction there. He is also very knowledgeable and a sharp businessman.

  We found him peering into a large brass-bound trunk.

  “Hello, Sheila, Rosemary. Amazing what the military carted about all over Europe in Victorian times.”

  “It’s very handsome,” I said, “and very evocative. I always make a beeline for Wellington’s traveling medicine chest whenever I visit Apsley House.” I looked at the brass letters let into the lid of the trunk. “‘J.S.C.’ Anyone famous, do you think?”

  “We haven’t any sort of documentation, unfortunately—that would up the price.”

  “Just another officer taking the necessities of life to India or the Crimea,” I said. “I wish we knew.”

  “We were wondering,” Rosemary said briskly, “if there’s a catalog of the sale that we could have a look at?”

  “Were you looking for something special?”

  “A small table for my mother.”

  “Ah.” Rory had had many a brush with Mrs. Dudley over the years. “In that case you will need to take your time and consider most carefully.” He winked at me. “I’ll just go and get you one from the office.”

  He came back with the catalog and seated us on two Victorian chairs at a handsome Pembroke table in front of an enormous, heavily carved bookcase. “Here you are, then. I hope you find something in there.”

  We leafed through the catalog in mounting despair. Everything was either unsuitable or too expensive. We were preparing to give up when we heard Rory in conversation with someone on the other side of the bookcase.

  “Yes, I see,” he was saying. “It’s a very fine piece—rather large, of course; that might be against it. But it’s a superb example and we would be delighted to handle it for you. Although you might feel you could get a better price at one of the London auction houses?”

  “No, we would rather deal with you.” It was Marcus’s voice. Rosemary and I exchanged glances.

  “That’s splendid,” Rory went on. “Our catalog goes online, of course, and that means we get a fair number of overseas buyers making bids. I do believe a piece like this would have great appeal to the right collector.”

  “That’s fine, then.” We could hear the relief in Marcus’s voice. “I’ll just check with my wife.”

  “Excellent.” Rory was obviously delighted to get such a desirable piece. “When we hear from you we’ll go ahead with the arrangements. If you’d just like to come into the office, I’ll take the details.” Their voices died away.

  “Well!” Rosemary said. “First the jewelry, now the furniture. What next? Shall we pop round the corner and see what it is they’re selling?”

  “Better wait a bit until we’re sure Marcus has gone. We don’t want him to see us looking at it.”

  It was a beautiful lacquer cabinet, exquisitely inlaid. “Eighteenth century, do you think?” Rosemary asked.

  “I don’t know. I remember seeing one like that in a museum dated back to Charles II.”

  “Norma must be absolutely desperate if they have to sell something like this. Think how she must have enjoyed showing it off.”

  We moved away reluctantly and returned to the catalog for one last look.

  “It’s no good—there’s nothing here. I’ll have to see if there’s anything at the auction place at Crewkerne, but it’s a long way to go….”

  Rory came back. “Did you find anything suitable?”

  Rosemary shook her head. “Most of it’s out of our league.”

  Rory smiled. “I think there’s something over here that might just suit.” He led the way to a sort of annex. “These things aren’t in the sale, but I thought this might be what you’re looking for.”

  He pointed to a small (but not too small) Late Victorian table in mahogany with a piecrust edge and cabriole legs.

  It was charming. We both nodded vigorously.

  “It’s lovely,” Rosemary said. “But it looks expensive. What do you think it will fetch?”

  He named a sum that was surprisingly low. “It’s reproduction,” he said, “but very good reproduction. And the vendor’s going abroad and wants to get rid of it quickly so it needn’t go into a sale. I think it’s a bargain.”

  “It certainly is!” Rosemary said warmly. “Can I write you a check now? I think even Mother will be pleased with that.”

  “I think she will,” Rory agreed, “as long as you don’t tell her that I recommended it!”

  Norma continued to behave oddly at the shop. She was out quite a bit again.

  “A relief, really,” Jean said. “We’re better off without her, the way she is now. But it’s getting beyond a joke being so short staffed. I don’t know what’s been done about getting someone to replace Wendy—we may have to put a notice in the window asking for volunteers.”

  “Norma wouldn’t like that,” I said.

  “Well, she’d have to lump it,” Jean replied shortly. “We can’t go on like this.”

  “We’re managing.”

  “Not really—lunchtimes especially, with just the two of us. I have to go out and get a proper lunch because Ted and I have our main meal at midday, but you don’t. It isn’t fair your having to bring sandwiches all the time and never having a proper break.”

  “I don’t mind.”

  “It’s the principle of the thing. If Norma’s too busy to run this place,” she said, echoing Anthea, “she ought to give it up and let someone else do it.”

  “Do you fancy doing it?” I asked.

  “No fear. Too much like hard work—when it’s done properly. No, I just like the company really, and a bit of a laugh. Not that it’s been a lot of laughs lately. Not, of course,” she added, catching herself up, “the way things are—poor Desmond and so forth.”

  “It has rather changed things,” I said.

  “How about you?” Jean asked. “Would you like to do it?”

  “Goodness, no. Anyway, I’m only temporary, filling in until Monica comes back.”

  “That’s a pity; we’ll miss you. When is she coming back?”

  “I don’t know. She hasn’t been in touch lately.”

  I had to admit to myself, though, that I’d be reluctant to leave until the mystery of Desmond’s death had been cleared up. But I hardly felt able to say so to Jean. Instead I offered to go and make the coffee.

  On my way to the kitchen I saw that Norma had left a file on one of the tables in the storeroom. Something sticking out caught my eye. It was a letter on very expensive paper and I was just able to see the heading, which was that of a national firm of house agents—the sort of grand ones who advertise in Country Life. The temptation to open the file and have a look was very strong, but just then Jean came through, saying, “There’s a lady in the shop who wants a copy of Lorna Doone. I’m sure I saw one the other day in that box out the back. Could you just have a look?”

  I found the book. When the customer had gone, Jean said, “You see how awkward it is, just the two of us. I shouldn’t have had to leave someone alone in the shop like that. As it was, she was all right, but if it’d been someone a bit doubtful I’d have to have said we hadn’t got it and lost the sale. That’s the sort of thing I mean!”

  I agreed with Jean absently, my mind on what I’d seen. Then Norma came back and Jean ostentatiously went out to make the coffee, remarking as she went that it was possible to do so now that there were three people in the shop.

  “First the jewelry, then the furniture, and now the house!” I said to Rosemary. “Things must be pretty bad. Any news from your mother’s informants?”

  “Nothing yet. Mother’s getting very impatient—she says Harold Porter is a broken reed.”

  “I don’t see how he’s going to find out anyway,” I said. “Client confidentiality, and all that.”

  “I know, but apparently Vera says there are Ways.”

  “Well,” I said grud
gingly, “I suppose if your mother’s on the track….”

  “She approved of the table, by the way. She did a complete volte-face; said how marvelous Rory is and how clever it was of him to find it.”

  “One thing I will say about your mother: she’s never been inhibited by consistency!”

  “What about Norma, though. Do you think they’re staying in Taviscombe or moving right away?”

  “Oh, moving away surely,” I said with conviction. “She could never bear to live here in a smaller house with a diminished lifestyle. I’m sure she’ll find some very grand reason for leaving. It’s poor Marcus I feel sorry for, having to leave the family home, even if he didn’t have a very happy time there. It was the one stable thing about his childhood.”

  “Still, he won’t have Norma pushing him on the council. That’s if she stays with him now he’s poor.”

  “Not that poor with the money from the house and everything.”

  “Perhaps there are debts as well,” Rosemary said. “If they lose everything and are really poor, then we’ll see if she sticks by him.”

  “Except that we’d never know because they’ll have been long gone.”

  When I went into the shop next morning, I found Margaret there as well as Jean.

  “Margaret’s very kindly giving us an extra day,” Jean said.

  “That’s nice,” I said.

  “Because,” Jean went on bitterly, “Madam is not here and won’t be here for the next two days.”

  “Really?”

  “She telephoned me last night, at home, to say she had to be out of town for a few days and would I look after things!”

  “I suppose it might be urgent family business,” Margaret suggested tentatively.

  “I wouldn’t know,” Jean said. “She put the phone down before I could ask anything.”

  The next day was a Saturday, when I normally didn’t go in, but I didn’t feel I could let them down. When, at the end of the day, Jean said, “If she isn’t here on Monday I’m going to close the shop—I don’t care what anyone says,” I felt she really had a point.

  I was clearing out the fluff from the tumble drier and pondering, as I always do, the strange fact that the fluff caught in the filter is always gray, no matter what color the garment was that shed it, when the phone rang. It was Rosemary.

  “The most extraordinary thing,” she said. “Mother went to tea with Vera and Harold yesterday and he says that there’s no question of the Stanleys’ investments failing. On the contrary—and this annoyed Harold very much—they’re better than they’ve ever been. It seems Norma’s a financial wizard!”

  “No!”

  “As I said, Harold’s very put out, having prophesied dire disaster. Mother’s not too pleased either.”

  “But… but if they’re not in financial difficulties, why all this—what do they call it?—all this downsizing?”

  “Exactly.”

  “Well,” I said, “it’s beyond me—I can only suggest you get your mother onto it right away!”

  Chapter Nineteen

  “What’s really interesting,” Rosemary said, “is if they haven’t lost all their money, then why are they selling up?”

  “I hadn’t thought of that.”

  “You’d think Norma would want to branch out, especially now she’s got Marcus onto the council. Lots more dinner parties, much grander plans for the house—she could be the queen of Taviscombe with all that lovely money.”

  We worried away at the problem for a while but reluctantly decided to await events.

  “And that,” Rosemary said, “is admitting defeat.”

  “I promise not to tell your mother.”

  Strangely enough, the next day Norma came into the shop wearing what looked like the diamond-and-ruby ring I’d seen Marcus apparently selling in the jewelers’. I made a point of admiring it, though normally I refrained from doing anything that would increase her self-esteem.

  She smiled complacently and said, “It is rather lovely, isn’t it? Marcus bought it for me—it was our wedding anniversary yesterday.”

  I murmured something that might be taken for congratulations.

  “He’s very good about things like that,” she went on. “Anniversaries, birthdays, special occasions.”

  I was surprised; I don’t think I’d ever remembered her praising him before.

  “Still,” I said to Rosemary when I reported back, “it was a particularly handsome ring. I suppose even she might be grateful for that.”

  Norma continued to be absent from the shop, without any explanation, and didn’t even reprimand Jean for putting a notice about volunteers in the window.

  “I can’t understand it,” Jean said. “Not a word—well, she even said it was a good idea. Honestly, it seems to me that she’s completely lost interest in this place.”

  “Not just here,” I said. “She’s almost completely given up going to Brunswick Lodge, and with all the committees she’s on and the things she’s supposed to be organizing—well, you can imagine the chaos. And bad feeling!”

  “What do you think she’s up to?”

  “I’ve no idea, and really, I don’t think I’m brave enough to ask her.”

  “Well,” Jean said resolutely, “if no one else will, I shall; we can’t go on like this. Anyway,” she continued briskly, “while she’s out I’m going to have a go at some of those boxes in the storeroom.”

  When I went through later she was examining the contents of a large cardboard box.

  “Have you any idea of where these came from?”

  “Good heavens,” I said, holding up one of the books. “I do believe this is a first edition.” I took some more books out of the box. “Yes, this one, too, I’m almost sure, though I need to look it up.”

  “What are they then?” Jean asked.

  “A whole collection of Rudyard Kipling. Terrific.”

  “Kipling? The one who wrote that poem?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Oh. And you think they’re valuable?”

  “Some of them look quite rare.”

  “I didn’t think anyone read this sort of stuff these days—too old-fashioned.” Jean picked one of the volumes out of the box and looked at it suspiciously. “I mean they haven’t been made into telly plays or anything.”

  “He’s having quite a revival,” I said. “So no doubt there may very well be a TV play before long.”

  “Oh.”

  “I wonder who they belonged to.” I examined a couple more of the books. “Oh yes, there’s a bookplate in this one. Let me see—oh, Alfred Lyle. He died a little while ago, didn’t he?”

  “Back in March, I think it was,” Jean said. “I remember seeing it in the Gazette. He used to be a headmaster; there was quite a lot about him. I expect his wife’s having a bit of a clear-out.”

  “I remember her,” I said. “I met her a couple of times at Brunswick Lodge. They were friends of Denis Painton; he brought them to some of the concerts.” I looked through the books again. “I wonder if she realizes how valuable these might be? I mean, if she doesn’t then we ought to tell her—she might want to sell them.”

  “I don’t know,” Jean said doubtfully. “They were given to us. Desmond would have kept them, no questions asked, and I expect Norma would do the same.”

  “Yes, but I really think….” I put the books back into the box and pushed it out of sight under the table. “I’m going to ask her; it’s only fair. For all we know she might need the money. I don’t know how well off they were.”

  “Can you think,” I asked Rosemary, “of any reason why the Stanleys should be selling the house?”

  “Perhaps they’re moving into something grander?”

  “The present one’s pretty grand, especially if Norma puts in that swimming pool and landscapes everywhere. No,” I said, “I’m beginning to wonder if they’re planning to leave Taviscombe altogether.”

  “Why on earth would they do that?”

  “I don�
��t know. But all this business of Norma losing interest in the shop and not bothering about all the stuff at Brunswick Lodge—it would make sense.”

  “But surely Marcus wouldn’t want to sell his aunt’s house; it means so much to him.”

  “Oh, come on! When has anything that Marcus wants mattered to Norma?”

  “Where would they go?”

  “London, I suppose.”

  “Oh no,” Rosemary said decidedly. “Norma knows that her best bet is to be a big fish in a small pond. In London she’d be nobody.”

  “True. But where then?”

  “Goodness knows. I’ll just have to have a word with Mother and see what Harold can turn up.”

  * * *

  “Sheila, you see Norma at that shop of yours. Do you have any idea what she’s playing at?” Anthea buttonholed me in the kitchen at Brunswick Lodge when I was washing up after the Monday coffee morning.

  “What do you mean?” I asked innocently.

  “You know very well what I mean. She’s missed nearly every committee meeting in the last few weeks.”

  “She sent apologies for her absence. Pressure of work, she said.”

  “What work? Has she taken over the shop now that Desmond’s gone? Is that it?”

  “She is in charge now,” I said hesitantly.

  “But?”

  “Well, actually she hasn’t been coming in much lately.”

  “You must admit it’s very odd. Not like her at all. If she can’t be bothered to turn up for things, there are plenty of other people who’d be only too glad to. I told Denis we should have a meeting about it and make our feelings known to her.”

  “What did Denis say?”

  “Oh, you know what he’s like, never takes the initiative in anything.”

  “Perhaps it’s just a temporary thing,” I suggested.

  “Oh, it’s not just Norma. Alan says that Marcus hasn’t been at some of the council meetings.” She looked at me suspiciously. “What do you make of that?”

  I emptied the washing-up bowl and hung the dishcloth over it. “I haven’t the faintest idea,” I said. “We’ll just have to wait and see.”

  “You’re as bad as Denis,” Anthea said irritably and went out of the kitchen, closing the door behind her with unnecessary violence.