Murder a la Mode

by Patricia Moyes

  “Uncle Henry! You said…”

  “I don’t want to frighten you,” said Henry, “but what you seem to regard as a game, is in fact very serious and could be dangerous. We’re dealing with a murderer, and I want you to keep out of it.”

  “You don’t mean that somebody might try to kill me?” Veronica laughed. “Oh, don’t be silly.”

  “I’m not being silly,” said Henry. “Can’t you steer clear of the place until all this is cleared up?”

  “Steer clear of Style? Of course I can’t. It’s the most important thing in my career. And besides…”

  “And besides, there’s Donald MacKay,” said Henry. He did not smile.

  Veronica blushed. “That has nothing to do with it.”

  “Oh, yes, it has,” said Henry. “Possibly more than you think.” There was a silence. Veronica speared a piece of beef in a markedly stubborn manner.

  “Oh, well,” said Henry, “I can’t dictate to you, I suppose. Your career is your own. But please, Ronnie—no more detecting. I’m very serious. You do your job and let me do mine.”

  “We’ll see about that,” said Veronica.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  RED FIELD FARM, Downley, near Virginia Water, had not been a working farm for many years. This was immediately clear to Henry as he turned the car into the wrought-iron gateway, flanked by dripping chestnut trees. The pretty, timbered Tudor farmhouse was all that remained of the agricultural past. Now, it stood in an acre of carefully landscaped garden, and its surrounding fields and pastures had been sold off, one by one, as sites for the country residences of prosperous businessmen. These residences, by the look of them, all dated from the present century, and Henry decided that he much preferred those which were unashamedly modern to those which tried, self-consciously, to ape Tudor or Georgian architecture. Among them, like a live lion in a toyshop full of Teddy Bears, Red Field Farm brooded in authentic, if caged, splendour.

  The drive widened into a semicircular sweep outside the dark oak hall door. Henry parked the car neatly, walked over to the door, and tugged at the old-fashioned bell-pull. From somewhere inside, a melodious tinkling indicated that his efforts had been successful. He looked up, and caught a glimpse of a face at an upstairs window, watching him with furtive, worried intensity. The face of Lorna Goring.

  There was no sign of strain or anxiety, however, when—a moment or so later—the door was flung open with a richly theatrical gesture, and Lorna cried, “Inspector Tibbett! Please, please come in. And excuse my disarray—I had no idea you were coming. Is this an official visit or a friendly one?”

  “Both, I hope,” said Henry, getting a word in with difficulty.

  “Mind your head on that beam—it catches nearly everybody the first time,” said Lorna, leading the way into a comfortable, chintzy lounge hall, where two spaniels were sleeping noisily on a sofa in front of a smouldering log fire. “Sit down and have a drink. What would you like? Just chuck the dogs off—they’re used to it. Tea, coffee, whisky, champagne…”

  “I’d love a cup of tea, if it’s not too much trouble,” said Henry, giving one spaniel a tentative shove. The dog responded by rolling over onto its back and snoring.

  “No trouble at all,” said Lorna. “Get off, Poopsie, you lazy bitch.” She grasped the spaniel’s legs firmly and hauled her onto the floor. Poopsie certainly seemed quite accustomed to this treatment, for she immediately went to sleep again.

  “Sit down,” said Lorna.

  Without much enthusiasm, Henry did so. The loose cover of the sofa was filthy and covered with Poopsie’s long golden hairs—most of which, Henry reflected gloomily, would certainly transfer themselves to his trousers.

  “I’ll go and get the tea,” said Lorna. “Put another log on the fire, there’s an angel.” She turned, and as she did so, caught sight of herself in the mirror above the fireplace. “Heavens, I look a fright. I do apologize.”

  As a matter of fact, Lorna Goring looked very beautiful. She could hardly fail to do so, since Nature had so arranged matters as to give her one of the most classically perfect faces of her generation, and had thrown in a lithe, long-legged figure and magnificent red hair as additional bonuses. Today, however, it was even more obvious than it had been at The Orangery that Lorna considered Nature’s bounty to be ample, and in no need of any outside assistance. Her tawny hair was tangled, her only make-up was a splash of carelessly applied lipstick. She wore dark green silk trousers and a pale blue silk shirt. Both were immaculately cut, but the trousers were secured at the waist by a large and eye-catching safety pin, and the shirt was grubby. As she raised her slender hands in a vain effort to tidy her hair, Henry saw that the vivid red varnish on her nails was chipped and peeling. He thought of Godfrey Goring’s smooth impeccability, and of the exquisite, uncrackable façade of Style and its employees, and found it hard to reconcile either with this gorgeous, disheveled creature. He could only suppose that Lorna’s happy-go-lucky flaunting of all Style’s precepts made a welcome change for Goring when his work was done. Welcome or not, he reflected, it must certainly be a change.

  Lorna disappeared into the kitchen, calling to Henry to help himself to a cigarette. In a few minutes she was back with a tray, on which stood a teapot shrouded in a pink knitted cosy. This was so constructed that the woollen hemisphere represented the skirt of an eighteenth-century beauty, while the lady’s upper portions, made of china, surmounted the pot. The cosy was stained with tea, and the lady had lost one arm. Two assorted cups, both chipped, a very beautiful Georgian silver sugar bowl and a half-pint bottle of milk completed the load.

  Lorna evicted the second spaniel, sat down and poured out the tea. Then she said, “Of course, I’m tremendously pleased and flattered that you’ve come to see me, but I don’t see how I can possibly help you. I haven’t been to London for months—until yesterday, when we met in The Orangery.”

  “I envy you,” said Henry. “It must be pleasant for your husband, too, to be able to get down here, away from town.”

  For a moment, Lorna’s face clouded. Then she laughed, rather too loudly, and said, “Oh, Godfrey hates the country. He lives in the London house, and only comes down for week ends. Sometimes. Of course,” she added, “he has to be in London because of his work.” Henry had the impression that she wished she had thought of saying this in the first place.

  He said, “A lot of people do commute every day from here to London, don’t they?”

  “Godfrey doesn’t,” said Lorna shortly.

  Henry did not press the point, but went on, “How well did you know Helen Pankhurst, Mrs. Goring?”

  “I don’t know any of them, except to look at,” said Lorna. “Godfrey won’t—I mean, he doesn’t—approve of wives who meddle in their husbands’ business, and neither do I.” There was an unnecessary defiance in her last three words. “I have to appear occasionally, at the annual office party and so on, but otherwise I keep my nose out. Between you and me, I think the Style girls are absolutely grim. The only one of them worth anything is little Olwen, who shared Helen’s flat. Of course, the others all despise her. I manage to avoid being intimidated by them by laughing at them, and that makes Godfrey furious.” She looked at Henry directly out of her big green eyes, and he found himself thinking that the laughter lines around them did nothing to diminish the loveliness of her face, but merely served to give it character.

  “I’m sorry about Helen, of course,” Lorna went on, “but there’s no use pretending I get on well with any of them, because I don’t. I thought I’d better tell you that straightaway, otherwise you’d find out from other people, and maybe get suspicious. I suppose, if I’m to be strictly honest, I’m jealous—not of any particular person, but of the hold that the magazine has on my husband. I can assure you, though, that I didn’t murder Helen. I didn’t know her nearly well enough for that.”

  “I never for a moment meant to suggest…” Henry began.

  She cut him short. “Of course you didn’t,” she sa
id. “It would be too silly.”

  Changing the subject, Henry said, “Isn’t it lonely for you here during the week?”

  “Oh.” Lorna shrugged. “I have my dear Mrs. Adams, who comes every morning to help in the house. And I have the dogs.”

  “And plenty of neighbours, I suppose.”

  Lorna made a face. “Terrible people,” she said. “Rich and respectable. Style readers, every one of them. Simple little black dresses and one string of pearls.” Suddenly she grinned. “However,” she added, “they have their uses, I suppose. It just so happens that on Tuesday evening I had to give a ghastly bridge party here—every so often I have to make a gesture and return hospitality. It dragged on until nearly three in the morning. So there’s my alibi, Inspector. I can tell you who was here. There was Mrs. Dankworth and her son, and Lady Wright, and the Petersons…”

  Conscientiously, Henry wrote down the names in his notebook. Then he said, “Do you know Hindhurst at all, Mrs. Goring?”

  Lorna looked bewildered. “Hindhurst?” she said. “No. I’ve never been there. It’s at the other end of the county. Why do you ask me that?”

  “I just thought,” said Henry, “that you might be able to help me. It seems that Miss Pankhurst consulted a doctor there, and since it’s in Surrey, it struck me on the off-chance that it might have been somebody that you or your husband recommended to her. I’m on my way there now, and if I knew which doctor it was, it would save me endless trouble.”

  “No. I’m afraid I can’t help you at all. Our doctor is in Harley Street, and there’s a local man here whom I go to occasionally for small things. Was Helen ill then?”

  “Apparently not,” said Henry. “That’s what makes it interesting. Oh, well, it was only a vague hope. I’d better get going now. Thanks for the tea.”

  “But don’t you want to…I mean, you haven’t asked me many questions.”

  “I’ve asked all I want to,” said Henry. “You’ve been very helpful.”

  “I have? Goodness, I’ve told you nothing.”

  “Exactly,” said Henry. “You’ve told me that you hardly knew the dead girl or her associates, and that you haven’t been to London for months. So there’s really nothing more to be said, is there?”

  Lorna laughed. “You’re right,” she said.

  It was when Henry was already on the doorstep that Lorna Goring made a surprising remark. She had been hesitating for some minutes, detaining Henry by small conversational devices, as though debating whether or not to say something. At the last moment, apparently, she made up her mind.

  “Well, Inspector,” she said, in a very fair imitation of an offhand manner, “I wish you luck in your search.” She paused. “By the way, if you do locate that doctor…I have a friend who’s just moved to Hindhurst, and she rang me only last week, funnily enough, to ask me if I knew a good family doctor in that part of the world. So if it’s not a bother, you might let me know the name of Helen’s man. If she went to him, he should be reliable.”

  Henry was careful not to show any surprise. “Certainly,” he said, politely. “I’ll tell your husband—I’m sure to be seeing him.”

  “Oh, no, don’t do that…he’s hopeless. He’ll never remember to tell me. Ring me here. I’m in the book.”

  “Very well,” said Henry. “I’ll do that. Goodbye now, and thank you.”

  He got into the car and drove away, well pleased with himself. Lorna Goring had told him more than she knew.

  It was drizzling steadily when Henry reached Hindhurst. The pretty little town looked sad and drab under the relentless rain, and Henry was glad to reach the comparative cheerfulness and warmth of the police station. Here he was greeted by a beaming sergeant and another cup of tea, but no good news. Helen’s name had produced no response at all among the local doctors.

  “Of course, sir,” the sergeant added, “she may have used a false name, and we hadn’t a photograph.”

  Henry rubbed the back of his neck—a gesture which always indicated that he was abstracted and worried by pieces of a pattern which did not fit.

  “She may have been…em…in the family way,” said the sergeant. “That’s what occurred to me. Otherwise, why would she go to a doctor so far from home? And if she was, she’d be likely not to give her real name.”

  “I know,” said Henry, “that’s the convenient, obvious explanation. But it so happens that she wasn’t.”

  “Oh,” said the sergeant bleakly. He was crestfallen that his penetrating analysis should have been dismissed first as obvious and secondly as mistaken.

  Henry, feeling sorry for him, said quickly, “We came to the same conclusion ourselves, but the medical evidence proved us wrong.”

  “Ah,” said the sergeant, cheering up.

  Henry smiled. “Tell me about the local doctors,” he said. “How many are there?”

  “Well, now.” The sergeant settled back more comfortably in his chair. It was pleasant to display his local knowledge to so distinguished a visitor. “There’s old Dr. Herbertson up the hill, with a very well-to-do practice, and Dr. Roberts here in the High Street—most of the tradespeople go to him. Then Dr. Bland and Dr. Tanner share a surgery out along the Guildford road—it’s mostly farmers and the like round there. And of course there’s young Dr. Vance. I was almost forgetting him. New chap. Came and took over when old Dr. Pearce died. They say he’s not doing too well. Most of Dr. Pearce’s patients transferred to Dr. Herbertson. People round here are funny like that. Don’t like new faces.” The sergeant paused. “That’s the lot,” he said. “And not one of them knew Miss Pankhurst, so they say.”

  “Her photograph has been in most of the papers,” said Henry. “None of them recognized it?’

  “Not a hope,” said the sergeant. “Mind, those newspaper pictures weren’t much good for identification.”

  “The ones I have aren’t much better,” Henry said ruefully. “Apparently the girl just never had her picture taken.” He pulled an envelope out of his pocket, and gazed at the two small pictures which it contained. One was a snapshot, taken by Olwen Piper on the balcony of the Kensington flat the previous summer, and it showed a slightly out-of-focus Helen watering a begonia in a pot. The other was a passport photograph dating back some seven years. Henry sighed. “Oh, well,” he said. “No time like the present. I’ll go and call on the doctors now.”

  It was nine o’clock that night when Henry got back to London. He had been subjected to Dr. Herbertson’s interminable and rambling stories of his aristocratic patients (“I said to Lord Wessex, ‘All right,’ I said, ‘go to Sir James for a second opinion if you like.’ He was back next day, very subdued. I knew what was coming, of course. ‘What did Sir James say?’ I asked him. ‘He said, “My dear Wessex, I wouldn’t like to make a diagnosis without my old friend Herbertson in consultation. He knows twice as much about it as I do!” ’ What d’you think of that, eh? I’ve laughed over that with his Lordship many times since. A remarkable man…a great gentleman, and, I think I may say, a friend of mine…” And so on). Escaping with difficulty, Henry had next had a brief interview with a busy, worried-looking Dr. Roberts (“Sorry, Inspector. Can’t help you. Never seen the girl in my life. Must go. Excuse me”), followed by a sortie into the surgery crowded with ailing rustics where Doctors Bland and Tanner plied their trade cheerfully. Finally, Henry had somehow managed to refuse a pressing invitation to take a drink with young Dr. Vance, who exhibited all the melancholy and persistence of the Ancient Mariner, in spite of his youth. (“God, you could live in this place ten years and still be treated as a stranger—and never forgiven for it, either—that’s the thing. Do have some whisky, Inspector. That old fool Herbertson should have retired years ago. Bumbling, incompetent…but they all stick to him. Why? Just because he’s an old familiar face. How anyone can be expected…”) Henry extricated himself firmly, and got into the car. One depressing fact had emerged from the interviews. None of the doctors recognized Helen.

  Driving back to town,
in steadily increasing rain, Henry turned the problem over in his mind. On that Saturday a month ago, Helen had had an appointment with a doctor. Why? She was apparently perfectly well. She had also traveled to Hindhurst on the same day. That, of course, proved nothing—she might well have consulted a doctor in London before she left. On the other hand, it did indicate that she had friends or acquaintances in the country. More interesting still was the fact that she had not returned by train, for the unused half of the return ticket was still in her bag. That could mean either that she had been driven back by car, or that she had stayed overnight unexpectedly, and thus been obliged to buy a single ticket home the next day, since her day-return was no longer valid. Both possibilities suggested something more personal than an ordinary visit to a doctor.

  Henry went on to consider Helen’s colleagues. One of them could surely shed light on this matter, if he or she wished to. But which one? Then there was the second appointment with a doctor, the day before she died. She could certainly have traveled to Hindhurst and back between lunchtime and six o’clock, but even so, Henry was fast coming to the conclusion that Hindhurst and the doctor were unconnected. The doctor, he decided, must be in London, and he would start a search for him the next day.

  Meanwhile, the Hindhurst visit remained a mystery, which might well have a banal explanation. More intriguing was the phone call which Olwen had overheard. On an impulse, Henry stopped at a telephone booth in Putney, consulted the directory, found Patrick Walsh’s name, and dialed his Canonbury number.

  The phone rang for some time, unanswered. Then a gruff voice said, “What do you want? I was in me bath.”

  “This is Inspector Tibbett, Mr. Walsh.”

  “Well, and it’s a hell of a time to telephone, if I may say so. I thought you’d seen enough of me yesterday.”

  “I’ve hardly started on you yet,” said Henry cheerfully. “May I come and see you?”

  “When?”

  “Now.”

  There was a silence, and then Patrick said, “Holy God, what are you at? Why should I have you in my house at this hour?”