Corpse in a Gilded Cage

by Robert Barnard

  ‘What did you talk about?’

  ‘Guv’nor’s little card party, what else? Phil—His Lordship, I should say—he thinks the Guv’nor’s a right berk, like we all do. Phil said if he could get him to the poker school he runs at the Queensbury Arms in Stepney, they’d clean him out in thirty minutes flat and have him out on the streets in nothing but his Y-fronts.’

  That, at any rate, had the ring of truth—reluctantly Peter Medway had to concede it. He was just beginning to conclude that Everybody’s Pal might indeed have a respectable alibi when the embezzler said:

  ‘Look, mate: if it’s a question of Phil bumping off his old man, you might just as well forget it. It’s not in character.’

  ‘Right,’ said the bigamist. ‘If you’d met him you’d know he just wasn’t the type. Everyone’ll say the same about Phil. He’s—’

  ‘I know,’ said Medway. ‘He’s one of the best.’

  • • •

  Slowly, ponderously, Superintendent Hickory heaved his rural bulk along to the suburbs of Chetton Hall. On the borders of the old and the newer parts of the house was the bedroom once occupied by the young Earl that Trevor and Michele had commandeered on their first day. Still on guard there was the young policeman to whom Michele had so memorably revealed herself. When Hickory did his search he took the young man in with him.

  It was a difficult room to search, since it was not clear what was the property of the young Earl, and what Trevor had brought with him. Once quality would have told them, but not any longer. The records were doubtless the Earl’s, but whose were the silk shirts, the brief male underwear (or was it female?), the sex-shop products, the pornography, the joints? The tastes of the two sets of occupants were obvious, and so similar that neither had put a personal stamp on the room. They went through it with a fine-tooth comb, and the young constable’s eyes popped out as he examined some of the contents, but they came away with nothing of interest. (The search, however, did yield results some days later, when the constable met his girlfriend on his first day off, but those results are not of interest here.)

  Over the border into the Blenheim Wing was the neat, square bedroom where Digby and Joan had made themselves at home. Joan had even gone out and picked herself a pink rose, and placed it in a toothmug on the dressing-table. So sweet! All their clothes—they had brought stacks—were hung neatly in the wardrobe, and their nightclothes were folded away under the pillow. By their beds were paperbacks. Digby was reading Jeffrey Archer; Joan, Mary Stewart. On the cupboard lay the Wandsworth Public Library copy of the magnificent coffee-table book on Chetton that Mr Lillywaite had used as a bait in his talk with Phil. The room was neat, neutral and decorous. All the searchers found of individuality was a notebook: it contained nothing but figures.

  There was a larger notebook in Sam’s room further down the corridor. Sam’s haversack, labelled Sam Barton, had been dropped near the door, and not fully unpacked. Near it was a little pile of dirty clothes. By his bed was a turned-down copy of Brideshead Revisited, as well as the notebook and several pencils. There were figures in this book too, but they appeared to be not money but measurements. The bulk of the book consisted of diagrams and sketches: the West Front of Chetton, with approximate lengths and heights, and placement of windows; the Green Drawing-Room, with estimated proportions; a sketch of the Gibbons carvings in the Dining-Room. The sketches were atmospheric, accomplished. Hickory looked at the constable, raised his eyebrows, and popped the book into a plastic bag.

  Chokey’s bedroom was hard to find. He had told Sergeant Medway where it was, but his description had been far from clear. It turned out to be a small, musty room at the end of the first floor of the Blenheim Wing. Was he wanting to be some way away from the rest? Or was it his way of proclaiming humility? Or perhaps the big rooms gave him agoraphobia. There were no books, few clothes, no notebooks, no signs of personality. The only written material was a letter from Phil, written from Daintree six months before. It seemed of little interest, but Hickory popped it into a plastic bag.

  The room occupied by Parsloe and Nazeby was easy to find, but it contained nothing—no signs whatever of their occupancy. At the end, if only then, they proved themselves the perfect self-effacing servants.

  Hickory trailed back along the neat, regular corridors of the Blenheim Wing, at long last arriving back at the Jacobean House. I should get mileage on this case, he thought. But though he walked heavily, his eyes were active, going everywhere. Somewhere in this magnificent warren the vital clue must lie. In the dreary inner corridor between two rows of bedrooms, not far from Trevor and Michele’s, he paused. Something wrong. Around one of the pictures the wall covering was darker, greener. No, that wasn’t it. That happened elsewhere in the house, even in the Long Gallery. Pictures were from time to time rearranged and rehung. He scratched his head. It was something else. The pictures along the corridor were varied: portraits, landscapes, religious motifs. But they were all, surely, of the time of the house’s heyday: or, as he put it in his mind, they were all ‘class’ pictures, the real McCoy. This little landscape was pretty clearly of this century: it had a water-tower in the background. And it was a daub, even he could see that. By one of the family’s amateur artists, perhaps. Hickory made a mental note, and passed heavily on.

  ‘I wonder if you’d take a look at this, sir.’

  WPC Hillier was still at the top of the stairs, but obviously she had been tempted to prowl around in so far as she could without deserting her post. From the landing stretched to the left the Long Gallery, but to the right there was only a little runt of a corridor leading to the north side of the house, a matter of a few yards. Two little rooms of no obvious purpose opened off from it. What Constable Hillier pointed to in the corridor was a clump of earth. No particular significance in that, but—

  ‘What I noticed,’ she began, ‘was—’

  ‘I can see, lovey. The floor around’s dusty, but the earth doesn’t seem to be . . . Recent, then . . . There’s been someone here, and not so long ago. Look, those are your prints, but here . . . and here . . . there are prints of other feet, which have got a film of dust over them already. Get a measurement of them, so far as you can, will you?’

  Hickory straightened up. The short, aborted corridor took on a new interest for him. Was there anything else which seemed to have been disturbed? Yes: under a small portrait of Lord Portsea, later the eighth Earl, aide-de-camp to the Earl of Lytton, Viceroy of India, stood a small oak table, and on it was a heavy brass jug, Benares ware. On this, unlike the rest of the objects in the corridor, the dust sat very lightly indeed.

  Hickory wrinkled his forehead, stood for a moment in thought, and then made his stately way down Sir Philip’s Staircase.

  • • •

  Sergeant Medway met Phil briefly that evening, after he had decided to accept the Governor’s offer of a bed for the night. Phil had just come through the pre-release programme, and he had been friendly but subdued. He had remarked, though, that he’d asked how to get his daily whack for attending the House of Lords, and they hadn’t been able to tell him. Peter Medway fixed nine as a starting time next morning, and he had spent the rest of the evening listening to the fatuities which were the wisdom the Governor had culled during his recent years in charge of Daintree.

  The next day, Monday, it was shaping up to be another warm July day when they all pitched up round the police car. Phil, though, was wearing a collar and tie and dark trousers. He still seemed preoccupied. He and Medway got into the back seat, and the constable drove off, ears a-twitch: what he wouldn’t give to be able to sell this conversation to the Sunday papers! Why was it only Chief Constables that seemed able to do that? As the car drove through the gates of Daintree, two on-the-ball reporters, standing by their cars and clearly waiting for them, took photographs of the pair in the back seat. In the evening papers of London and Manchester that day was to be seen on the front page a photograph of Peter Medway staring meditatively ahead, with the caption u
nderneath ‘Gaolbird Earl Released.’

  Phil sat for some time, silent and thoughtful. His big hands were lifeless in his lap, his face without expression. Eventually he said:

  ‘Can you tell me what happened?’

  Peter Medway gave him a short, simplified account. Phil winced, and his face looked troubled and unhappy.

  ‘Poor old Dad. That it should happen to him . . . I didn’t do it, you know.’

  ‘No one’s accused you.’

  ‘What those two in the hut said about when I got back was right. All right—if I’d had a car—’

  ‘Quite,’ said Medway.

  ‘ “Home, James, and don’t spare the horses: I have a date to murder my old Dad.” . . . Oh, skip it. I know you’ve got to look into every possibility. I’m not complaining.’

  ‘I’ve registered that it’s a pretty tight schedule,’ said Medway. ‘We can’t rule out the unlikely until we’ve nabbed someone for it, or at least got hold of a more likely prospect.’

  ‘Any sign of a break-in at Chetton?’

  ‘Not that we’ve discovered. When you’ve seen the place you’ll realize it’s not so easy to check for that kind of evidence. And then there’s another factor you probably haven’t heard about.’

  So Peter Medway told Phil about Parsloe and Nazeby, and their hideout in the Blenheim Wing. It was calculated to appeal to Phil’s sense of humour, and he showed for the first time that day the perky self that seemed to endear him to so many.

  ‘What a caper!’ he said, smiling broadly. ‘ “If you’re going to squat, squat in style” must be their motto.’ His face became serious again. ‘Still, murder’s something different, isn’t it? Knocking off a few choice items I could imagine them doing, but why would they murder?’ Medway noticed how different Phil’s reaction was from the rest of the family’s. Phil seemed almost at once to put them on one side as possible culprits. ‘Who else was in the house? All the family, I suppose?’

  ‘I think so. Your sister and her husband—’

  ‘Digby Ferguson, rising star of the insurance world, the genius of the small print and the excuse for not paying out. Nice that the family has some respectable members in it.’

  ‘Your brother Trevor and a girl called Michele Bargate.’

  ‘Willowy, silent, hard as nails and not a stitch of underclothing? No, I don’t know her. He always goes for the same type. Conservative as they come is our Trevor.’

  ‘Apart from the family there’s someone called Sam Barton.’

  ‘Never heard of him. Who’s that?’

  ‘He’s a West Indian, I think. Arrived with your wife and—’

  Phil laughed out loud.

  ‘Boyfriend of Dixie’s, eh? Then he’ll probably fade out of the picture as soon as I arrive.’

  ‘Not this one, he won’t. Everyone’s to stay put at Chetton.’

  Sergeant Medway looked sidelong at the new Lord Ellesmere. His hands were quite still in his lap, and his face was wreathed in a relishing, ironic smile. Was Phil that paragon of feminist theology, the unpossessive male? Peter Medway reserved judgement.

  ‘And then there’s Len Cartwright,’ he said, ‘who I think you know.’

  ‘I’ll say. Good old Chokey. Taught me all I know.’

  ‘Really? What sort of knowledge would that be?’

  ‘Oh, this and that,’ said Phil, slanting a genial glance in Medway’s direction. ‘You won’t get me to shop old Chokey.’

  ‘I gather he has a record.’

  ‘Short as your little finger. And years ago. That’s when he got the nickname. He’s as fly as they come, is Chokey. And a heart of gold. Visited me in Maidstone, and in Daintree. There’s not many have done that, I can tell you. He’s the best pal I’ve got.’

  ‘I get a bit fed up with hearing about crooks with hearts of gold,’ said Sergeant Medway.

  ‘Someone been singing my praises, have they?’ asked Phil chirpily. ‘That fool of a governor, I suppose. That boy should never have been let loose from the East Cheam Polytechnic. His type gives prison a bad name.’

  Phil let out a great laugh at his own wit, and would probably have continued with his views on the Governor, but at that moment they were passing through Meresham, and Phil’s eye caught a large hoarding outside a newsagent:

  MURDERED EARL: Local Tragedy.

  ‘Mind if I get a paper?’

  He popped out of the car, and came back with three papers—one class and two populars. He had also bought a chocolate bar and a packet of cigarettes, and for the rest of the journey he chewed, smoked and read the papers avidly. He expressed indignation at the scant and tight-lipped coverage the story received in The Times (‘Twenty p, and all it gets is five lines!’) but the tabloids absorbed him, and beyond a sudden query as to how his mother was taking it all, he kept silent for the rest of the journey.

  It was nearly half past ten when they drove towards the gates of Chetton. The road around was now thick with reporters’ cars, and as the police car slowed to get through them, cameras were pushed up against the open windows, and ravenous faces with brown-stained teeth and stale breath shouted questions. Phil gazed ahead, in dignified fashion. Then the gates closed behind them, and they began the last lap to Chetton.

  ‘Bloody leeches!’ said Phil. ‘I’m not sure how I’m going to deal with them . . . Blimey!’ The park stretched out before his astonished eyes. ‘I knew the place was big, but . . . What’s that? That’s not Chetton Hall.’

  ‘I think they call it the Dower House.’

  ‘Just suit us.’

  And as, finally, the East Front of Chetton came into view and the car neared the courtyard, Phil let out one of the favourite expressions of his late father:

  ‘By Jove!’

  The car pulled to a halt.

  ‘Your new home,’ said Peter Medway.

  ‘Be it never so humble,’ said Phil. ‘Cripes! You’d need Stanley to come looking for you if you went missing in there.’

  They opened the car doors and got out. Medway turned to look at Phil, curious to see what the real reaction was, underneath all the jokiness. But from the entrance there came tumbling four shapes of various sizes, shouting and laughing and making a great crowing of triumph.

  ‘Daddy! Daddy!’

  Phil waved his hand and ran towards them. He pulled Karen up in his arms and kissed her. He ruffled Gareth’s hair and began sparring with Cliff. Then he swung the smallest on to his shoulders and began running towards the house. Shouting and laughing, the five of them romped up the steps towards the door, and then passed through it into the shadows. Where, waiting in the gloom, Peter Medway could perceive the cadaverous shape of Mr Lillywaite.

  Thus Philip, thirteenth Earl of Ellesmere, entered the home of his ancestors.

  CHAPTER 10

  THE CLOCK ROOM

  The family had gathered in the Green Drawing-Room to greet the new Earl. There was nothing particularly feudal about this, no intention of curtseying, kissing hands or swearing fealty. It was just that, though they were now allowed back into their bedrooms, there was nothing so comforting or inviting about them as to make them desirable for an extended squat. If you went for a walk in the park you encountered cows, or policemen, or both; the conservatory was so little tended that to walk around it was like a trek through the South American jungle; there was apparently a billiard room somewhere, but nobody had been able to find it. All in all, it was better to stick together, however lugubrious the tone of the resulting gathering.

  In any case, they all knew that Phil would soon be arriving, and around Phil, in one way or another, their futures revolved. Some of them were almost apprehensive. Even those who had seen him since his trial had done so too briefly to get more than a fleeting impression of how he had taken to incarceration. So, though none of them had forgotten what he was like, none of them were quite sure he was like that now.

  When they heard Phil and the children, first from a distance, and then marching through the hall, shouting and
laughing together, they all of them, unthinking, held their breaths. They heard Phil say ‘Shhh’ to the children, heard him put the baby down, and then there he was, walking as cool as a cucumber into their green satin arcadia, followed by the lean, dark shape of Mr Lillywaite.

  ‘Hello, all,’ said Phil. ‘Bit of a bugger this, eh?’

  It wasn’t at all what he said. It was just the sound of his voice, the warm, friendly tone of it. They all breathed out, in what was a sort of collective sigh of relief.

  ‘Oh, Phil!’ said the Countess, and she heaved her dolorous bulk up from the sofa to give him a hug. When he generously responded she burst into tears on his shoulder, and stood there, clasped to him, sobbing luxurious tears of relief at the comfort of his return.

  This particular moment in the drama of the heir’s return played to a mixed reception from its audience. Dixie clearly felt rather piqued at the Countess’s commandeering of Phil, and had to repress the urge to say something cutting. Mr Lillywaite, on the other hand, looked on with something like approval: this was what the situation called for; this was how the scene should be played. His measured approval was not lessened when Phil, having settled his mother, sniffing quietly, back on her sofa, had a reunion with his wife that similarly accorded with precedent.

  ‘Hello, Dixie, old girl,’ he said, giving her a peck on the cheek.

  Mr Lillywaite nodded. He could hear—granted the difference in name and accent—the echo of innumerable upper-class and stiff-upper-lipped marital reunions.

  Then Phil went around the family. He embraced Joan briefly, and shook hands with Digby. He clapped Trevor on the shoulder and embraced Michele (perhaps for the pleasure of it, perhaps because he did not quite know what else to do with her).

  There were only two left, standing a little uncertainly outside the family group.

  ‘Hello, Chokey, old mate,’ said Phil, with a wide grin at his partner in crime. Chokey forgot his uneasy shiftings from foot to foot and returned Phil’s salutation with a watery grin and a poke in the ribs.