All of this went through Alex’s mind as he finally said hello to her and as she sat down on the bench and pulled him down beside her. Though it didn’t feel as if he were being pulled. It was more like a magnetic force. He looked away from her, his glance straight ahead, because he felt, in her presence, some new gravity, as if he would fall not down but sideways, toward her.
He almost, right then, told her about Kingsley. But that was news only for police.
“You don’t agree your mother killed herself, do you?”
She was so direct. Looking him right in the eye that way, naming the unnameable.
“I wonder, too. No matter what troubles she was having, no matter the depression, the pressure from the family, it’s too hard to believe she’d have done that. She loved you too much.”
What he had said to himself, what he had known all along still sounded sweet to his ears coming from someone else.
“The police said it was an overdose. They asked me how anyone could be given a fatal dose of Seconal without the victim’s knowing it.” The contemptuous expression wasn’t meant for Alex, when she looked at him. “As if their own pathologist couldn’t answer that question. I told them obviously all anyone had to do was empty the capsules into liquid, and whiskey would hide the taste. Especially several whiskeys. They thanked me and went away. That is, after they’d talked to Maurice Kingsley. He’s in—” She sighed. “—a bit of a spot.”
Alex looked at her quickly.
“Maurice went to London that night. But you only just met Dr. Kingsley, didn’t you? He knew your mother. I’m honestly not sure what this inspector from London believes. He gave very little away. I was probably her best friend; Maurice less so, but a man. Jealousy, there, perhaps. I don’t think they’d worked out a motive for me—”
“You?” Alex stared. “You’re the last person—”
She smiled. “One has to be careful about the last person. The thing is that any doctor would have access to prescription drugs.” She shook her head, lowered it. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, Alex.” She put her face in her hands. “My Lord, I’m the doctor and I’m crying on your shoulder.”
It made him feel somehow better that she was, the way he’d often felt with his mum. He felt he could return the confidence. He told her about the dream. The pack of cards wrapped in tape, the blighted landscape, the Queen, Millie’s notion. He didn’t tell her about the gun, though.
“Let’s walk,” she said. “I think better.”
“Will we get lost?” He tried on a smile.
“We’re already lost.” She stuck her hands in the wide pockets of her white coat.
• • •
“A desolate landscape contrasted with a beautiful horizon: Heaven and Hell, perhaps,” was her comment on the dreamscape.
“It’s the pack of cards I don’t understand.”
“You’re quite a cardsharp, Alex.” She smiled. “I’ve heard.”
“Don’t compare me with the Vicar and Mrs. Bradshaw. I could beat them blind.”
She turned to look at him. “Apparently, you did.”
“They couldn’t count. But the cards in the dream—”
“Mean more than that, I know.” Dr. Viner was silent for a while, walking slowly. “What’re your associations?”
“Nothing. None.”
“Oh, but that’s impossible. Your mind can’t be a blank. Look at it from another point of view. For instance, the word card could refer to a person. A pack of cards, then, might be a group of your friends, tricksters, something like that. I’m only giving you that as an example.”
“House of cards?”
She said nothing, letting him think it through.
“My family. Take away Mum, and the whole thing comes tumbling down. As if she was the foundation.”
“Well? Does it seem to fit? It’s your dream.”
“No.”
Abruptly, she stopped. They were near another white bench, or perhaps it was the same one. How could he tell?
“You think it’s important?” she asked.
“I know it’s important.”
“Why?”
Now they had come to another opening, which presented them with a blind wall of boxwood hedge.
“It’s the something missing.”
“What do you mean?”
“From Mum’s room. There was something missing. Whatever it is, it registered and got turned into the cards. Someone reminded me of that film called Spellbound. Where a wheel in the dream is really a gun in reality.”
She smiled. “I saw it. Ingrid Bergman solves the puzzle. I only wish I were Ingrid Bergman.”
Alex broke off a bit of twig from the hedge. “Oh, you’re all right as Dr. Viner.”
“Thanks for that. Who else did you tell the dream to?”
“Who?”
“You said someone reminded you of the film.”
“Oh. Millie. She loves films.” She might find it odd he’d tell the new cataloguer of books, a perfect stranger. “I have this dream every night. I’ll remember at some point.” They had come to another hedgewall. “Right or left?”
“Left. I’ve memorized this maze. I had to; the Dunster sisters like to play hide and seek here.” As they neared the opening that would at last allow them to exit, she said, “It’s like sleight of hand, isn’t it? Or a good card trick?”
“Except this pack was Sellotaped together. And my mother had something to do with it.” They were standing now on the stone path where the line of primroses began, and daffodils. “Then the bits blew away in the wind.”
She frowned, buttoning her coat against a chill in the air. For a moment she looked off toward the manor house. “I’ve got to go. I’ll see you at dinner tonight. Your great-grandfather asked me and Lady Cray. Will they escape in the delivery van or simply leave through the front door?” She laughed and walked off.
He watched her go, thinking still of the confetti-like bits of the pack of cards carried away in a swirling wind.
The expression came unbidden to his mind. Pack of lies.
28
Lady Cray gave a bright, birdlike look at the pill in Dr. Kingsley’s outstretched hand. “If you feel you really need it, take it.”
“That’s very funny.”
“I’m expected to swallow it?”
He nodded.
“For what?”
“It’ll calm your nerves.”
“I’m so calm I’m nearly comatose.” She took out her gold cigarette case. “A cigarette will do far better. Please remove your hand from my face.”
“Tell you what. Take the pill, you may smoke.”
“What is it? Truth serum? Insulin shock therapy?”
Kingsley sighed. “For God’s sake, Lady Cray, it’s a mild tranquilizer.” He reached to the shelf behind him, along which sat a row of vials, and picked one up to show her.
“Oh, very well.” In the corner of his book-lined office—very psychiatristy, she’d thought, when she’d seen it (they all want you to think they can read)—was a water cooler. “Well, get me some water.”
“Oh, sorry. I take them dry.”
She took them no way; the pill went under her tongue. When he brought back the little paper cup, she gulped down the water and pushed the cup toward him in the manner of a shipwreck victim. “More.”
As he returned to the water cooler, she plucked out the pill and tossed it in his wastebasket. “I just love to see the bubbles pop, don’t you?” She nodded toward the glass tank, in which the water sucked down, came up and bubbled. She crumpled the cup and tossed it away too. Probably a behaviorist, she thought. Handsome, but doesn’t look smart enough for Freud or Jung. She smiled widely enough to show her dimple. She loathed dimples, but for some reason men thought one on a lady of a certain age to be absolutely disarming. Thus, she smiled charmingly when he handed her the second cup.
“So. What do you do to keep busy?” Lady Cray looked round the office. Big picture-window behind, so that one could tu
rn in the leather chair and view the artifacts of the Stonehenge days making their way about with canes, walkers, Nurse Rhubarb, Lisping Lisgrove and the younger helpers. There was the Vicar (with what church he had once been connected, she had no idea, but it must have had wealthy patronage) slowly moving along the side of the beechwood hedge, thrashing at it with his cane. And far in the distance, Wast Water. Very far. So far, indeed, no one could see it except with binoculars up on the ramparts. The brochure was really stretching things to have its greensward rolling right to the lake’s shores. It was, she thought, a cold, unforgiving-looking body of water. Not like the other lakes. It was the deepest in all of England.
“What are you thinking about?” he asked.
“Wast Water.”
“Why?”
“You tell me.”
“Why do I think you’re not going to cooperate?” He smiled, taking Adam’s cigar from his pocket. “I knew he kept them under the bed.”
“I’ve never been under it, so I wouldn’t know.” She took her slim gold cigarette case from her creamy leather purse and extracted a Black Russian. Beneath some papers, Dr. Kingsley found his lighter—equally slim, an elegant black Porsche. He lit his cigar after her cigarette.
“You doctors must make a packet at this place. That’s a handsome lighter. I have one just like it.” She rooted a bit in her purse. “You psychiatrists, you’re truly clever at seeing things. You could see a cigar from the top of Nelson’s Column.”
Actually, it was she herself who could do that. Her vision had always been superb, a point she prided herself on. It was marvelous watching youngsters have to take out their glasses to see the Tower of London, when she could pick out one of its ravens from a half-mile away. Well, a bit of an exaggeration. Oh, dear, now he was talking about the silverware. Perhaps he wasn’t a behavioral psychologist after all. It was sounding much like the Freudian primer.
“. . . the need to supplant some loss in your childhood.”
She winced. The very word “childhood” made her want to rip apart every book in the cases—of which there were plenty. Three walls of them. So psychiatristy and he probably hadn’t read one. Beside one of the filing cabinets was a dainty table with a hot plate and things for tea-making. “It was the tea set,” she said, looking up at the ceiling. “You see, Mummy gave me this wonderful dolly tea set. Little spoons and all. My brother smashed it. I still think about it.” Mummy was usually entertaining on-the-dole “artists” or actors “resting between roles” at one of her “salons.” Mummy drank her gin neat.
Maurice Kingsley was puffing and smiling. “Got to do better than that, Lady Cray.”
“I do?” One enameled-looking eyebrow shot up. “Why?”
“You don’t have a brother.”
“I could have sworn . . .” She shrugged. “Perhaps I’m mistaken. It must have been one of Mummy’s lovers’ kiddies. She had simply dozens. I was always left out. . . .” His head was moving from side to side. No good, that, either. “Do you read?”
Poker-faced, he said, “No. They’re all hollow. Just rows of fake spines.”
She tried not to smile, but couldn’t help it. “At least you’ve a sense of humor.” Her gaze netted the rows of books. “More or less.”
“Look, Lady Cray, we know perfectly well that you’re not a compulsive thief, although your family appears to think so.”
“ ‘Family.’ Have they the gall to call themselves that? My lank, greedy son-in-law and my wimpish daughter?”
He sat back. “Perhaps we’ve arrived at some sort of truth.”
What was he saying? And why taking notes? “You’ve obviously not talked to my grandson. Andrew.” She could feel herself beam; blood suffusing her narrow frame. “He’s the only one worth tuppence. You know, he might be twice that boy’s age, but Andrew and Alex Holdsworth would truly hit it off.” He’d stopped taking notes. Or doodling.
He looked up at her under his thickish eyebrows. “You’ve got to know Adam well, haven’t you?”
“It’s where I stash the swag. His room.” Doodle, doodle.
Silence. Had she struck a nerve?
“The reason you want to be here is because you loathe living with your daughter. But why do you? You’re obviously independent. You’re rich. Gold silk and pure cashmere.” He nodded at her suit.
“I’ve never heard of impure cashmere, but I’m glad you like my outfit.” She looked down at her blouse, her lightweight suit. It was stunning. “My daughter and her husband do give people the false impression that I live with them. It is, in fact, the other way round. It is my house, although I occupy my own quarters, separate entrance, separate everything.” She sighed. “It was quite nice whilst Andrew was living with them. But he left and took the best of the fun with him. A friend showed me a brochure, several brochures, of retirement homes, nursing homes, mental homes.” She smoked and smiled. “I’d say you’ve all three here.”
He put down the cigar and flipped to another page of her file. “You’ve been arrested, let’s see—”
“Three times. I can tell you that. What other interesting tidbits did your Dr. Viner include after she vetted me?”
Again, he ignored her comment. “Mrs. Barrister claimed you took the candlestick from her table in the dining room.” He chewed his lip.
“Oh, my God. Now I’m to be accused of everything that goes missing. Why would I bother to take a candlestick?”
“Why would you bother to take a silver place-setting?” His eyes were round, innocent, feigning wonder.
“Mrs. Barrister shouldn’t even have a candle on her table. According to Adam, she set her hair on fire. Looked like the burning bush, he said.”
“Lady Cray, we can’t have our guests complaining all the time about their things being taken.”
“ ‘Guests’? Most of them are totally bonkers. Just have a look out the window. The Vicar is thrashing the life out of the rosebushes again.”
Kingsley shook his head, rose and went to the window where he observed the old gentleman hacking away. Lady Cray’s hand flashed out and deposited the lighter in her bag. Kingsley turned. “Admittedly, some of them are very elderly and not quite in full command of their faculties.”
“Loopy, scatty, round the twist. Don’t talk nonsense.”
“Not the majority.”
“Oh, all right, I will agree with that. Most of them are perfectly civilized and relatively sane. Why do you have books with fake spines?” She flexed her neck, indicating the bookcase to the left.
“You don’t miss a thing, do you?” Kingsley walked over, pulled down a “book” and, as she watched, he drew from its hollow core a bottle of a rare Lindisfarne mead.
“Your private stock! How wonderful! I could use a cordial.”
“No.”
“How dreary. You’re worse than police. Don’t drink on the job.” His head, she thought, came up rather quickly when she mentioned police. That was interesting. But he said nothing, merely bent over his appointment book.
“Ten o’clock all right with you?”
“That depends. For what?”
“It might be tough, since cooperation will be minimal, but I’m good, you know. I could help you. Unfortunately, I think you enjoy your little illness all too much.” He was observing her over tented fingers, smiling.
Outwardly, she smiled. Inwardly, she shivered. He was wrong. Wrong, at least, about the things she did feel compelled to take. The chocolates and the ribbons. Red ribbons, especially. To avoid meeting his eye, she let her own trail again over the rows and rows of books.
That one, there, behind him. By itself and three shelves above the one on which he’d just replaced the liqueur-filled book. Dr. Kingsley’s eyes were quite bad; she knew also that he must be a trifle vain, for his glasses—bifocals—rested on his desk. This particular “book” also had a fake leather spine, and in it was a marker, one of those one sees in especially nice old volumes, a ribbon. She could see it clearly. The color of blood.
&
nbsp; “You know, dear Dr. Kingsley, I think it might be even better if I could see you again today.”
He looked up, totally surprised.
“If you have a free hour. Threeish, fourish? I feel that we get on rather well.” She hoped her dimple was showing.
“I’m amazed, but, yes. Three?”
“Wonderful.”
She watched as he stuck the cigar back in his mouth and searched for the black lighter.
“Oh, do allow me. I found mine.”
She reached over and lit his cigar and he thanked her.
29
Alex put on his best call-to-bookmaker voice and, when Hawkes answered, he asked to speak to Mr. Melrose Plant.
“It’s your solicitor, Mr. Plant,” said Hawkes, refusing to look directly at Mr. Plant, whom the butler had found in the library.
Melrose, sitting round-shouldered and nearsightedly over his index cards, looked up over his gold-rimmed glasses. “Solicitor? There must be some mistake.” Did nearsighted, droop-shouldered librarians on the brink of poverty have solicitors?
Hawkes, investing the repetition of the message with as much boredom as possible, added, meanly: “You may take the call in the kitchen.”
Why, wondered Melrose, would Simon Ledbetter be calling him here? Walking through the dining room to the kitchen, he suddenly thought: Agatha. She’s managed to get to the firm about his will.
But the voice at the other end wasn’t Ledbetter’s.
“Listen,” said Alex, “and don’t say anything.”
Both Mrs. Callow and Hawkes, although feigning indifference, were all ears. “Mr. Ledbetter? It’s been years since we’ve talked. Well, hardly anything to talk about, was there, considering the money’s gone.” Melrose laughed weakly.
“Is someone listening?”
“Obviously. That’s why I find myself in a rather difficult position.”
“Then stop talking. It was Dr. Kingsley. Maurice Kingsley. You don’t know him. He was the man on the bench. You know, outside Mum’s—”
The Old Contemptibles Page 19