This time it was more like a gang rape.
First came a small advance contingent of the law; then came a gang of specialists; then arrived a whole army of supernumeraries. Why so many had been thought necessary by the Chief Constable was not clear: perhaps he thought that Chetton was still swarming with servants and hangers-on, as in the palmy days; perhaps he merely remembered its size. When Chief Superintendent Hickory stomped heavily into the house he quickly sized up the position, and told Sergeant Medway to place this Gilbert and Sullivan chorus of policemen at vital positions around the house and grounds, until the nature and size of the problem could be established.
So Chetton swarmed with policemen. The technical men, of course, centred themselves on and around the Great Entrance Hall: they photographed, observed, took tests. They were men who could reduce the whole complex series of data they noted down about the body and its environs to a neat computer entry—and no doubt before long they would do so. Their voices penetrated distressingly to the Green Drawing-Room, where the family members who had found the body were congregated. Two of the great army of policemen were also there, one at the door to the Hall, one at the door to the Dining-Room. One by one, orchestrated by Sergeant Medway, the rest took up positions: one at the head of Sir Philip’s Staircase—a dark, looming man whose eyes went down the magnificent dark carved stairwell, but also along the expanses of the Long Gallery; there was one covering the Main Entrance and courtyard, another in the Dutch Garden; and along the corridors, past the bedrooms, and dotted strategically around the Blenheim Wing there were more and more. It was as if the sheikhs (whom the Earl had not so long ago foreseen as the eventual owners of Chetton) had descended on the place for an OPEC meeting: one would not have been surprised, looking out of the windows, to have seen among the trees and bushes bulky men in dark suits with bulges under their armpits. It was, no doubt, an example of overkill, springing from the fame of the place. But who knew, after all, what a palace of that size might not contain?
Sergeant Medway, for example, was just positioning an extra constable at the junction where the old house joined the Blenheim Wing when a bedroom door opened, and revealed in the doorway was a naked, and very beautiful, Michele.
‘Who the bleeding hell are you?’ she demanded.
Sergeant Medway was a young man of considerable presence of mind, and he revealed nothing of the warm pleasure that the sight of Michele gave him in the midst of those miles of dreary corridors.
‘I’m afraid there’s been an accident, Miss. If you’d just put some clothes on I’ll escort you d—’
The door banged shut. The Sergeant, raising his eyebrows at his companion, applied his ear to it, but the structural solidity of Chetton defeated him. He, and the constable, waited impatiently.
Downstairs the situation had changed little in the two hours since the body had been found. The Countess was still erupting in watery torrents, dumped ingloriously on the sofa with her daughter perched beside her holding her hand.
‘Haven’t even got a comfy chair to sit on!’ she wailed, as if this were the last straw. ‘I never thought I’d lack for that when Perce went. And for him to die just when we was going home!’
Joan, as she seemed to have been doing for hours, said some words of soothing import. She did not have much success. Perhaps the Countess registered their tone, and resented being put on a par with a little boy who has trodden on his favourite Dinky Toy.
The only one to have left the room since the police arrived was Dixie. She had gone over—followed by several pairs of suspicious eyes—to talk to the constable on the door, who had beckoned to another of his ilk, who had escorted her out. Now she and he were in a large, distinguished room overlooking the courtyard, a room that had served as the old Earl’s study. It was a brown, leathery room of heterogeneous magnificence. There were fish in cases, photographs of college eights, estate books and files, and on the shelves novels by Surtees and Trollope, Desmond Bagley and Dick Francis. On the square, heavy desk was an array of nib and fountain pens, and a line of pipes. There was also a telephone.
‘I wouldn’t want to disturb Mum,’ Dixie had explained to the constable as he led her there. Dixie had long ago located all the more obvious telephones in the house, and she was certainly not going to use the one in the Drawing-Room, with family ears flapping left, right, and centre. When she realized that the constable escorting her intended to wait in the open doorway she allowed herself—for she had her broad back to him, and had not registered the mirror over the fireplace—a fearsome expression of displeasure. His presence, conceivably, changed the tone of her conversation. Certainly it accounted for the fact that, as she spoke, she dotted convulsively at her eyes.
‘But it’s true, Mr Lillywaite. Found this morning under the stairs, cold as a—stone cold. I was there myself when they found him, my own kids it was. It was a terrible shock. We’re all shaken to the core, knocked over. ’Specially Mum . . . Yes, she’s taken it real hard. Naturally. They were very close . . . devoted, as you might say.’
Dixie stopped dabbing at her eyes and put the handkerchief down on the desk.
‘So naturally I feel you ought to be here, Mr Lillywaite. To deal with the police, and that . . . Oh yes, they are. Very much so . . . I couldn’t say . . . Oh, and Mr Lillywaite, I was wondering about Phil.’
Dixie paused, and listened hard.
‘But I’ve heard, from people who know, that they can be a bit flexible about release dates. And you do see my point, that he’s needed here . . . Well, he is the heir, isn’t he? Everything’s his now.’
Dixie was disconcerted by something that sounded like a dry laugh from the other end of the line. Involuntarily she took up her handkerchief, blotched black with mascara. Her mouth slightly open, she listened intently, dabbing furiously at her eyes.
‘But I don’t get you. It was you who told me about the will. What are you trying to say?’
Even the policeman by the door heard Mr Lillywaite’s donnish voice as he precisely enunciated:
‘What I am trying to convey is that you are ruined.’
• • •
Dixie finished her phone call as best she could, and banged down the receiver. She pursed her lips, glared stonily at the policeman by the door, then marched out of the room, along the passage, through the Great Hall (still dominated by the small, sad, crumpled body, and filled with police technicians), and then into the Drawing-Room. She was observed by them all, but she ignored them, even her mother-in-law, still sobbing on the green sofa. Sam, sitting in a corner, his head in his hands but his eyes open and observant, was not vouchsafed a look. Nor was the only person present standing up, Chokey, who was wandering between the Drawing- and Dining-Rooms, his hands nervously clasping and unclasping. In his shiny, ill-fitting brown suit he looked, as he gazed at the furniture and at the ornaments and trinkets on them, like a down-at-heel dealer at an auction sale, wondering whether to make an offer for a job lot. Gradually the Countess’s sobs subsided to a snuffle, then to nothing. The room was blanketed in silence.
‘Oh my God! It’s true, then!’
Trevor’s voice came from the Hall. A moment later, accompanied by Sergeant Medway, he and Michele appeared in the doorway. Trevor, unwittingly, had put on a black shirt of fine silk, and it highlighted the pallor on his weak, boyish face. He looked appalled. Michele, too, in a sheath dress the colour of corn, looked as if something had smashed through the carapace of her complacency. But then, both of them had just seen the body for the first time.
‘I didn’t believe him,’ said Trevor, his voice close to tears, and nodding in the direction of Sergeant Medway. ‘I thought it was a kind of have . . . But there he is . . .’
‘I’m sorry, Trevor. We forgot about you,’ said Joan.
Trevor sank down on to a chair by the fireplace, and sat looking straight into the empty grate as if he were about to throw up. Unnoticed by any of them, Sergeant Medway dismissed the constable by the door with a nod, and came an
d sat down in a dark corner of the room.
‘Poor old bugger,’ said Trevor. His mother erupted once more into racking sobs.
‘Please be a bit more considerate, Trevor,’ said Lady Joan sharply. ‘Just when Mum was quietening down.’
‘Well, what am I supposed to do? Say “How unfortunate” and get on with my tatting? . . . I just couldn’t take it in when they told me . . . and there he was . . . Poor old Dad . . . He was the only one of us that was any good.’
‘Trevor!’ protested Joan, more sharply still.
‘Be quiet, Joan,’ said the Countess. ‘He’s right.’
‘He wouldn’t have hurt a fly, Dad wouldn’t,’ went on Trevor, as if for once he was seeing things straight. ‘Never had a mean thought in his life. And we all sit around thinking what’s in it for us.’
‘Speak for yourself, Trevor,’ said Digby.
‘Who did it, then?’ said Trevor, looking up, his light, clear voice cleaving through the wide space. ‘Who did that to him?’
There was shocked silence. Joan said in prim tones:
‘Nobody has said anything yet about . . . about anything being done to him.’
‘Haven’t they? Is that the policeman’s annual outing out there, then? You’re not going to tell me he just fell. Over banisters that high?’
‘He’d had a skinful,’ said Dixie brutally.
‘He’d had no more than the rest of us. Less. Drank beer all evening until the end. Dad wasn’t a drinker, but he could hold as much as any of us. One stiff whisky wouldn’t make him rolling drunk.’
The Countess sobbed away, but the rest of them looked at Trevor as if he had uttered an obscenity during High Mass. He, for his part, seemed to have been shocked out of his habitual light cynicism. He looked back at them, aggressively, inquiringly.
The atmosphere was broken by Sergeant Medway. Suddenly when he got up they all realized he was among them: a fair young man with a fair little bush of a moustache and piercing blue eyes, someone who very easily faded into the background (as the Chief Superintendent had told him to fade, while he was with the family) but who, once noticed, could be seen to be a young man of force. Notebook in hand, he spoke to them gently but briskly.
‘I’m sorry to interrupt. The Superintendent will want a list of names—of all of you who were in the house last night.’
His briskness was well-calculated. Even the Countess gulped down a sob and looked at him. He went from person to person, bending his thin height over them, and jotting down details in his notebook. All of them had perceptibly stiffened, and kept very quiet. It was as if this routine request provided final confirmation of a fact they had mentally been resisting. Now their quietness was that of people assessing their position. Even Chokey, not unused to police procedures, put an end to his ambulatory inventory of the room and sat quiet. Sam straightened, but kept his cloudy brown eyes alert to the silent drama before him.
When Sergeant Medway had been from one to another, asking his questions in a low, respectful voice, he looked around the room to see that there was no one he had missed, then cleared his throat.
‘Thank you very much. I don’t need to say how sorry I am to have to break in on you at a time like this. I take it this is all the family and guests? Yes? And were there any servants in the house last night?’
‘No, there wasn’t,’ said the Countess, speaking out for the first time. ‘We got rid of . . . Oh my Gawd!’
‘By Jove!’ said Digby. And they all looked round at each other in a fashion almost friendly.
‘That butler!’ said Trevor. ‘That fat-gutted butler!’
‘Butler?’ said Sergeant Medway quietly. ‘Could you give me his name?’
‘Can’t remember,’ said the Countess. He looked at her in surprise, but she was oblivious. ‘I heard it once, but it’s gone.’
‘We were having a bit of a party,’ put in Dixie from the window.
‘For Dad’s sixtieth,’ explained Digby.
‘And it developed into a knees-up that spread all over the house. And when we got to—’ Dixie waved her hand in the direction of the Blenheim Wing—‘that bit over there, we were dancing, you see, around all the rooms and corridors, and we got to the top floor, and we were just going to turn around when someone opened a door.’
‘I did,’ said Trevor, and added, to Medway’s mystification: ‘Looking for a place to film.’
‘And we found this smarmy type and his bint established there. He’d been butler here, so Dad said, and she’d been maid or cook or something, and they’d parked themselves in one of the far-off bits while they waited for another job. The hide of some people! Anyway, Dad really gave them the rounds of the kitchen.’
‘He threw them out, did he?’
‘He gave them till morning,’ said Digby, standing up self-importantly. ‘They sneaked away, but I don’t know at what time. Dad said the old Escort in the stables must be theirs, but when I went to look for it this morning, it was gone.’
‘You could get their names from the village,’ said Joan, to contribute to the general helpfulness. ‘Dad said he’d seen the man in the public house there. He thought that all the village knew they’d stayed on at Chetton. Wouldn’t you think someone would have said something?’
‘They’re not the only ones,’ said Trevor. ‘Dad thought that lawyer chap—Lillyvick or whatever he’s called—must have known too.’
‘I’m sure he didn’t,’ said Dixie, her tones becoming more refined at the thought of the lawyer. ‘He’s just not the type.’
‘We don’t all have your personal acquaintance with him,’ said Trevor. ‘As far as I can make out, he’s one of these old family retainer types. Like a butler. They all stick together, thick as thieves. From what Dad said, we were just intruders to him . . . not family, just dirt. I wouldn’t mind betting old Lillyvick knew they were here.’
‘I beg your pardon.’
A dark, spare shape like a minatory shadow stood in the doorway. Mr Lillywaite’s cavernous face, like carved rock, stared around at the assembled family, startled out of its conventional, well-practised expression of sympathy into revealing something of the distaste he really felt for them.
‘Oh, you’re the lawyer chappie, are you?’ said Trevor, quite unintimidated. ‘I was just saying you probably knew they were here.’
‘Knew who were here?’
‘That butler and his tart. Camping out in the wing over there.’
‘Parsloe?’
‘That’s it,’ said the Countess. ‘Knew I’d heard it.’
‘You astound me. Parsloe still in the house? Most extraordinary. And reprehensible. I most certainly did not know.’
‘Pull the other one,’ said Trevor, irrepressible in his new energy. ‘Seems everyone in the village knew. How come you didn’t?’
Mr Lillywaite looked at him fiercely, like some old-style headmaster in a Giles cartoon.
‘I have my office in the village; I do not live there. I live near Meresham. I have not seen Parsloe since I gave him notice and paid him off.’
‘Dad thought he only came out at night,’ said Dixie.
‘Like some bloody owl,’ said Michele. ‘Creepy.’
‘This,’ said Mr Lillywaite calculatingly, ‘puts an entirely new aspect on things. Though I can hardly believe . . . What could be the motive?’
The word sank into their consciousnesses.
‘Then Dad was definitely done in, was he?’ asked Trevor.
‘Murder. How appalling,’ said Digby.
‘That’s what I mean by “done in”,’ said Trevor. ‘Could we all now stop beating about the proverbial?’
‘We must not jump our fences,’ said Mr Lillywaite, regarding Trevor with almost open dislike. ‘Still, as I understand the matter, the police believe—’
‘Perhaps it would be better to wait a while, sir, until the medical evidence is clearer,’ came the voice of Sergeant Medway. Mr Lillywaite jumped. In his absorption he had forgotten the presence of a polic
eman in the room. He pulled himself up hurriedly.
‘Of course. Quite. Quite right, Sergeant.’ He tried to relieve the situation. ‘I presume you will report to the Superintendent this extraordinary news about Parsloe?’
‘Naturally I’ll be doing that, sir,’ said Medway quietly. ‘And perhaps you could give me the name of the lady who was with him.’
‘Well, I imagine . . . I know nothing of the personal lives of the staff, but . . . there were few female servants. The cleaning was done by women from the village. There were no personal maids since there had been no Countess of Ellesmere for many years . . . er, before the present one.’ He bowed to the bulky form on the sofa. ‘So I rather think the lady with Parsloe must have been the cook. Nazeby. Elizabeth Nazeby.’
‘I’m much obliged to you, sir,’ said Sergeant Medway, and he handed his list of names to a constable in the hall, then came back and lingered unobtrusively by the door. Mr Lillywaite had been reminded of the proprieties by his recent words, and had approached the Countess on the sofa in the approved consolatory manner.
‘Lady Ellesmere, I can’t tell you how shocked I was when I heard what had happened. So sudden. Such a terrible shock for you, to find him there.’
‘It was that all right.’
‘And to think he enjoyed his title, his estate, for such a short time.’
‘He didn’t enjoy them at all, no more did I. They’ve been a nightmare and a millstone round our necks. All we ever wanted was to get out and get back home.’
She looked at him in silent accusation.
‘I assure you, Lady Ellesmere, that I have acted with the best intentions. Remember that there were enormous responsibilities involved.’
‘Still are,’ said Digby.
‘Yes—er—quite. In a sense.’
‘I think,’ said Trevor, ‘you’d better come clean about the position. All this lot’s interested in is the will.’
‘You have an interest too,’ said Michele. ‘Don’t do yourself down.’
‘Ah—I really think this is hardly the time,’ fumed Mr Lillywaite. ‘I would wish the new Earl to be present.’
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