Corpse in a Gilded Cage

by Robert Barnard

  ‘That’s a dangerous game, Lord Ellesmere,’ said Hickory, in his gravelly voice. ‘What about the boy himself?’

  ‘Oh, I’m keeping an eye on Raicho. No harm’s going to come to him.’

  ‘That wasn’t what I meant.’

  ‘If you mean that Raicho may have done it, you’re barking up the wrong Canadian pine, mate,’ said Phil with spirit.

  ‘Meaning you know which tree I should be barking up?’

  ‘No, no. I wouldn’t say that.’ Phil had got up, and had strolled to the door. ‘Mind you, what you say is right in a way. I shouldn’t feel too safe. When you think of it, there have been an awful lot of Earls of Ellesmere dying in the last few months, haven’t there? Ever thought of getting a statistician on to the chances against? Ever thought it might be worth looking into some of the other deaths?’

  CHAPTER 14

  THE DUTCH GARDEN

  ‘Phil,’ said Elsie, Dowager Countess of Ellesmere, ‘I want to go home.’

  It was the Thursday morning, and the sun, though shining, appeared through a thin haze that made things altogether cooler and pleasanter outside. Breakfast had been the usual uneasy affair, the more so as Dixie had put in an appearance. Raicho also came down, looking very scrubbed and fresh, and smelling of after-shave. When he saw Dixie he blenched somewhat, but he was with Phil and he kept close to him, and in the course of the meal he seemed to gain confidence, addressing several remarks to his father, whom he always called Dad—perhaps because children brought up by their mothers do feel the need to emphasize their relationship with their father, perhaps as a sort of declaration for Dixie’s benefit. Dixie responded no further than to make a demonstrative show of affection for her own children, but even this she gave up when Cliff said: ‘What are you doing that for?’ from the depths of one of her mountainous embraces.

  Afterwards they all drifted out into the Dutch Garden and fetched chairs of one sort or another, perhaps to make it clear to Phil that they had no stomach for another day of strenuous physical activity. Joan sat decorously in a deckchair while Digby leaned over the back, talking quietly and seriously. Trevor sprawled on his chair, while Michele wafted herself down to the fountain, removed her dress while those on the terrace ostentatiously bated their breaths, and then sunbathed, topless and bottomless, on the chill flagstones. ‘Christ, Trev, you do pick ’em,’ said Phil, but he sat on the balustrade and surveyed her appreciatively. Dixie prowled, Sam sat astride the balustrade, writing assiduously, and Chokey kept coming up to Phil with little reminiscences of the old days—perhaps to reassure himself of their intimacy, perhaps for the view afforded of Michele beneath them, wriggling luxuriously at the sensual contrast of warm sun and cold stone.

  It was while they were whiling away the morning thus that the Countess came out to them, her bulk covered by the grubby blue dressing-gown she always wore at this time of day, the hair around each ear caught up in the two obligatory curlers.

  ‘Phil,’ she said, ‘I want to go home. I don’t like this place. I never have, and Perce dying here—look at that hussey! The nerve!—Perce dying here makes me hate the very feel of it. Horrible, shivery old dump! I don’t think them coppers would object, do you?’

  ‘I don’t think so, Ma. I talked to them yesterday.’

  ‘I don’t like leaving Perce down here, but he’d have understood. He knew how I felt—I made sure of that! We’ll have him back home when the police say we can.’

  ‘You’d like him buried in Clapham, would you?’

  The Countess stared at him, outraged.

  ‘Are you out of your mind, Phil? O’ course I’m going to have him buried in Clapham. You wouldn’t want me to leave him down here in some old family vault, would you? Shoved on a bleeding shelf, next to that old buzzard who never once acknowledged his existence in all the sixty years he was alive. Not on your life. Perce didn’t owe nothing to his family, and he wouldn’t want to lie with them. I’m going to see about a nice little plot by the Duffield Street Methodist Chapel.’

  ‘Dad was a Methodist, was he?’

  ‘ ’Course he was, when he thought about it.’

  ‘Well, that’s OK by me, Ma. I thought that’d be what you’d prefer.’

  ‘And what he’d prefer too. Will you speak to the policeman, Phil?’

  ‘I spoke to him yesterday. I’m pretty sure it will be all right. Digby could drive you up, if you went tomorrow, or Trevor could hire a car. I think the Super will agree to everyone going.’

  There were stirrings from deckchairs and pathways. Digby, who had moved over to talk to Sam and was trying to get a look at what he was writing, straightened and walked over. Joan and Trevor turned in their deckchairs to look in Phil’s direction, and Dixie stopped in her tracks and stared at him. Raicho, perched on the balustrade with his chin in his knees, watched Phil intently with his veiled eyes.

  ‘Yes,’ said Phil, ‘I think he’ll be agreeable to you all pushing off.’

  They all seemed to be torn both ways. To be gone would be a relief in one way, but to go while still unsure of Phil’s intentions would be deeply unsatisfactory.

  ‘Does that mean he realizes it was none of us?’ asked Joan.

  ‘Couldn’t say, love.’

  ‘I’d give him what-for if he suspected me,’ said the Countess.

  ‘Nobody’s ever suspected you, Ma,’ said Phil, putting his arm around her. ‘All I know is, they’ve got hold of this butler and cook, and they’re turning off the heat.’

  That news, at least, went down well.

  ‘I always said it was funny about them,’ said Chokey.

  ‘Stands to reason they’re the most likely,’ said Joan.

  ‘And will you be staying down here, Phil?’ asked Trevor.

  ‘Natch. There’s all these newspaper interviews and television spots I’m lining up for myself. Got a whole wad of offers in the post today. There wouldn’t be much point if they weren’t done at Chetton.’

  ‘Michele and me could use a bit of publicity. You could cut us in on the action.’

  ‘If I know you two, Trevor, you’ll cut yourselves in on the action, one way or another.’

  ‘Before he cuts you in,’ came Dixie’s aggressive voice, ‘it might be nice if he cut his wife in. Apparently he goes visiting among classy neighbours and I don’t get to go along.’

  ‘They didn’t invite you, Dixie, so I suppose they never heard of you. Your fame hasn’t penetrated to this neck of the woods.’

  ‘It’d be nice to know whether I figure in any of the future action. Seems to me I’m to be kept under wraps.’

  ‘Dixie, he’d be a brave man who tried to keep you under wraps. Look, we’ll make a bargain: if I get any requests to compère fashion shows, I’ll hand them straight over to you.’ He paused. From the distance there came the wheeze and phut of an elderly vehicle. ‘Listen. Some old banger’s driving into the courtyard. What’s the betting it’s Jeeves and his floozie? Who knows—they may have the key to the whole business.’

  • • •

  Superintendent Hickory, massively settled into his spindly desk chair, surveyed the newly-arrived suspects at unnerving and silent length. They shifted uneasily in the Sheraton chairs of the Pink Damask Room. Both of them had spruced themselves up, Nazeby decidedly so, but they still gave off an aura of acute unease, like two dogs sitting beside a chewed rug.

  ‘Well, now,’ said Hickory at length, ‘perhaps we can take as read all the stuff about how you regret staying on, how you’re thoroughly ashamed of what you did—or, in your case, Miss Nazeby, not particularly ashamed. You’ve been over this with Sergeant Medway, and it’s not what I’m interested in. Now, before we get down to the serious bit, let’s try and fill in the background a little. How did you live in the weeks you camped here?’

  ‘How did we live?’ said Parsloe, his voice unnaturally high. ‘Well, we’d got in a stock of food, and what else we needed we bought in the evenings from the shop in Chetton. It’s open all hours.’

/>   ‘I see. You went out at nights.’

  ‘That’s right. Nipped out from one of the doors in the wing, took the car—it’s mine—and then went into Chetton Lacey or further afield. Had a drink somewhere or other, and bought what we needed. We had a Post Office box number, and Jack at the Chetton Arms collected our mail. So we got in job particulars, sent in our applications, and waited till we got one we felt like accepting. We weren’t going to jump at the first one, just because we happened to be out of work.’

  ‘The locals kept mum about you?’

  ‘Of course they did,’ said Parsloe, relaxing a little. ‘I’ve been here five years, Betty three. We’re almost locals ourselves. They looked on the Earl as a sort of day tripper.’

  ‘Mind you,’ said Betty Nazeby, who got restive when Parsloe did most of the talking, ‘he nearly caught us once. Came in when Bill was drinking in the Chetton Arms. The locals had a good laugh about that, next evening. The Earl kept going on about how he wasn’t used to servants in the house, and they kept mum and had a good giggle when he and the Countess were gone.’

  ‘I begin to get the picture,’ said Hickory heavily. ‘What did you do otherwise?’

  ‘What was there to do? We had the telly up there, but in the daytime there’s nothing but bloody nature programmes and keep fit classes. We became night birds—read and slept a lot during the day, perked up at night.’

  ‘Where did you get the books from?’

  ‘From here, mostly. We had the run of the house at night. The books in the library are mostly musty old garbage, but there’s a lot of reasonable stuff in the old Earl’s study. He didn’t belong to a library, naturally, but he ordered anything that took his fancy from Hatchard’s. Travel, biography, thrillers—we must have read the complete Desmond Bagley.’

  ‘You say you fetched the books at night?’

  ‘That’s it. Once the Earl and Countess—Perce and Elsie we called them to ourselves—had gone to bed, we had the freedom of the whole house, just as we’d always had in the past. We had to remember to be very quiet when we went past the State Bedroom, because Perce was a light sleeper. Came out once and switched on lights when he heard the stairs creak. Luckily we know the house like the backs of our hands, so we could always find somewhere to hide.’

  ‘Mind you,’ said Nazeby, who was also thawing and relaxing visibly, ‘there was once we got a nasty shock. It was just before we got found out. We knew Perce and Elsie had visitors, because we’d seen the cars—’

  ‘One of them down by the fountain,’ said Parsloe sententiously. ‘Can you imagine?’

  ‘—but we didn’t realize how many people there were around. We were just making our way through the wing when we heard a door open. We slipped into the clock room, and waited till whoever it was went past.’

  ‘The clock room?’

  ‘But we didn’t—’ began Parsloe.

  ‘No, no. Well, let’s come to the business of your leaving. You were caught—when?—Saturday night.’

  ‘I wouldn’t say we were caught,’ said Nazeby. ‘By then we just didn’t care. We had a job to go to anyway. When we heard this frightful din, with them dancing all round the place and singing some incredible song . . . one doesn’t want to be snobbish, but really. . . Bill wanted to turn off the lights, but I said, “No, what the hell?” because it would have been worse if we’d been caught crouching in the dark.’

  ‘I think I’d have chanced the crouching,’ said Hickory. ‘What did you do on the Saturday night, after you’d been caught?’

  ‘Well,’ said Nazeby, swallowing, ‘after the Earl ordered us out—Christ, he was in a bate! The old Earl would never have dared to speak to us like that—after that, we had a drink, a stiff one, and had a bit of a laugh about it all. Bill’s way of dealing with them had been a treat!’

  ‘It was a trifle ludicrous,’ said Parsloe, with a touch of his butlerian manner, ‘being discovered by a hokey-kokey party.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘Well, over the drink we decided to go to Ireland earlier than we’d planned. Bill thought it would be cheap there, and I didn’t know any better. Have we found out since! Anyway, we’d have liked to ring to see if the ferry from Fishguard was full, but we thought there wouldn’t be any booking-place open at that time, and anyway the nearest telephone extension was in the library, and we knew by then that there were people sleeping in the Blenheim Wing. So we just packed up, cleaned up the room, and then we thought we’d make sure of our route. But our map of Wales and the West was in the car.’

  ‘Ah! You went out!’

  ‘Yes. Nobody could object to that, that we could see.’ Nazeby’s chin went up, as if she were permanently on the scent for opposition. ‘There’s a door out at the end of the Wing. We were very quiet and went out that way.’

  ‘Was it locked?’

  ‘Yes, of course. We had keys.’

  ‘Did you lock it while you were gone?’

  ‘Well—no, we didn’t actually,’ said Parsloe, whose job the locking up had always been. ‘I mean, it’s only three or four minutes to the stables.’

  ‘In the dark?’ queried Hickory. ‘Quite a bit more, I’d have thought.’

  ‘There was a moon. We knew the grounds as well as we knew the house. We’d often come back that way on our nights out.’

  ‘It was creepy, though,’ admitted Betty Nazeby. ‘Shadows. I thought I saw someone.’

  ‘Oh, did you? And was it anyone?’

  Nazeby creased her forehead.

  ‘I just don’t know. I’ve thought about it, but I can’t decide. With all those long shadows . . . At the time I thought it might be one of the guests, but Bill said I was drunk.’

  ‘Where was this shadow?’

  ‘Not far from the stables. I felt it went in the direction of the big oak—Dick Mont’s oak, they call it—which is about ten yards away. But it could have been a squirrel or something, I must admit.’

  ‘You didn’t see anything else, or hear anything?’

  ‘No, there wasn’t anything else. Oh, except—’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘When we opened the car, Bill thought . . . he said he smelt perfume. Quite strongly. But it could have been me.’

  ‘All you were smelling of was whisky,’ said Parsloe. ‘No, I did think I smelt it. But it might have been something Betty left in the car. We’d been out in it the night before. Powder compact. Scent, perhaps.’

  ‘I don’t think I left anything there. I’m pretty careful like that.’

  Hickory surveyed them thoughtfully. Was this a tale they’d dreamed up together in Dungarvan, to give substance to their story that the loot had been planted on them? Or was it truth? If it was a piece of collusion, surely they’d have made it a bit more substantial? If it was truth, it was very interesting indeed. Because, surely, if the stuff was planted on them, it would have to have been planted between the discovery of them during the party and their departure in the early morning.

  ‘Anything else you remember from that night?’ he asked.

  ‘No, I don’t think so,’ said Parsloe. ‘We locked the car, went back in, got back to our room without being seen, and went over our route over another glass of whisky. Then we turned in for a few hours’ sleep. Got up about six or so, had a snack, then I drove the car round to the door at the rear end of the Wing, we piled the luggage in, and I drove off.’

  ‘And the first you knew of the loot was when the Irish police discovered it under the seat?’

  ‘Of course it was. Why would we take up the back seat?’

  ‘Why, indeed? Why would anyone—unless they were looking for IRA arms, or pigs with the swine fever. I must say I think you’re an unappetizing pair, but your story has this to commend it: if I was making off with stolen property, the last route on earth I’d take would be the sea route to Ireland.’

  Hickory sent them back in custody to Meresham, and then sat in his unsuitable little chair, sunk in agricultural meditation.

  • •
•

  Mr Lillywaite made his reappearance in the afternoon. He had not been idle. He had been consulting here, dropping a word there, sounding out the lie of the land elsewhere. Burrowing, constructing unobtrusive earthworks—these were activities that came naturally to Mr Lillywaite. All, it goes without saying, in the interests of his clients. Now he talked to Phil in the late afternoon sun of the Dutch Garden. Some of the party were now inside, packing or prospecting around for the last time. Trevor, though, had taken his deckchair down to the fountain, and Michele lay more spectacularly beside him, as if auditioning for the part of the corpse. Mr Lillywaite took off his spectacles, cast a glance of Presbyterian outrage at her, said ‘Tchah’, and then looked determinedly the other way.

  ‘Lord Ellesmere,’ he said, keeping his voice low, ‘I’ve been talking to your neighbours, the Dowleys.’

  ‘I thought you might,’ said Phil.

  ‘And I’ve been reading the papers. As I said to you on the telephone yesterday, I cannot think you have been wise. However, I begin to perceive some plan, some method . . . Am I right?’

  ‘Could be,’ said Phil.

  ‘I wish you had consulted me first.’

  ‘I’ve been developing the plan as I go. Anyway, it was a fair bet you wouldn’t approve.’

  ‘I can’t pretend that I do. Nevertheless, it has certain points in its favour. I cannot imagine, though, that the financial dividends you might reap would be such that you could hold on to the house.’

  ‘For the moment, all I’m aiming at is staving off the evil hour. The possibilities are endless: me and the kids can do cocoa ads if the money’s right. Then the next line of retreat might involve following up that obliging suggestion from the MP the other day.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Mr Lillywaite, drawing in breath. ‘I read about that.’

  ‘Isn’t it marvellous? Makes me glad I’ve always voted Labour—when I’ve been at liberty to. You and me’d better talk this over when the family’s gone. I may as well tell you now that I’m going to open this house to the public.’

  ‘Yes. I gathered that from Sir Gerald. I see nothing wrong with the plan. It is what I would have advised myself.’