Corpse in a Gilded Cage

by Robert Barnard

  ‘If Mr Cartwright will just come along and answer a few questions,’ came the rich, falling, cider-imbued tones of Superintendent Hickory, advancing massively from the doorway, while Peter Medway came capably up on Chokey’s other side.

  It was a moment for some magnificent gesture—the moment for Chokey to hurl defiance, to call for the downfall of the ruling classes, to make a run for it and hurl himself over the balustrade, even if he only landed up in the fountain. But Chokey was not up to grand gestures. He looked shiftily from face to face, and for one moment Sam thought he might enunciate the ultimate in petty crooks’ clichés: ‘ ’Ere, you’re not going to pin this one on me.’ But even that was beyond him. He started one sentence, started another: ‘I never—’, ‘You can’t—’, and then the sentences petered out into whimpers, and Chokey let himself be led along out of the Dining-Room, and along the passage to the Pink Damask Room. Chokey had never been shaped in the heroic mould.

  CHAPTER 16

  THE COURTYARD

  The party was over, that was clear. Phil sat, exhausted from his effort, gazing ahead blankly. The rest of them were pushing back their seats, whispering among themselves, reassuring each other that it was all over.

  ‘Oh, Phil,’ said the Countess. ‘You were clever. I knew it was never one of the family did that to Perce. Now I can go home happy. You won’t mind if I go home now, will you, Phil? All I want is to wipe the dust of this place off my shoes. Come on, Trevor.’

  The Countess’s instinct seemed to be shared by most of the rest of them. When Mr Lillywaite said, ‘Most impressive,’ they all echoed it, and some of them shook Phil by the hand, but they all began to make going-away noises, and soon they were all collecting up their luggage from the Hall. The little piles of cases and bags around Sir Philip’s Staircase vanished one by one, as they all went out into the sun of the courtyard. Phil dragged himself out of his chair to follow them, to do the decent thing in the way of goodbyes, but he had somehow impressed them in such a way that none of them had much they cared to say to him.

  Digby, it is true, did make one more attempt to get from him a statement on the subject closest to his heart.

  ‘Er—you didn’t say anything about your intentions, Phil,’ he began, as Phil stood supervising the departures and making preliminary waves from the top of the stairs leading down to the courtyard.

  ‘Didn’t I, Digby? Well, on thinking it over I didn’t think it necessary. That says it all.’ Phil took Digby by the shoulders and swivelled him round, pointing up above the door. There, carved in stone relief, were the shield and motto of the Spenders. ‘Ever heard the family motto, Digby? “Je maintiens”. Which I interpret to mean “What I have I hold”. And haven’t we ever, over the years! Dad would never have made a true Spender, but I think I’ll be following in their footsteps, at least in that respect. Goodbye, Digby. I expect you and Joan will do all right out of things, one way or another. You always have done. Give my regards to Wandsworth.’

  And Phil smiled and waved and did his imitation of the general family favourite as one by one the cars pulled out of the courtyard and aimed themselves along the long road to the gates, and to the hordes of reporters still avid for photographs of any of the main actors in the Chetton drama.

  Now there were few of them left. The children were playing with Sam on the newly cut lawn, and Raicho, who had been watching the departures in his contained way, soon went over to join them. Mr Lillywaite was lurking in the shadows of the Great Hall, waiting for his new master to be free. And there was Dixie.

  Dixie had been standing, a little apart, in the sun of the courtyard. No one said affectionate farewells to her. She stood there, baring her teeth, in the puce blouse she had arrived in, waving her fleshy arms at the departing cars like overweight royalty farewelling loyal troops off to foreign fields. Now she turned to Phil, her fearsome, inviting smile seeming to mask some inner uncertainty.

  ‘You were marvellous, Phil. You really were. I never seen you like that. You really were thrilling. You sent me.’

  ‘Don’t be obscene, Dixie. And don’t try to have me on. You’ve always preferred your men weak.’

  ‘Don’t be rotten, Phil,’ said his wife, with a nervous laugh. ‘I’m willing to give the other sort a try for a change.’

  ‘Oh no, Dixie. You won’t get a chance. You just go and pack your bags and get off quietly, eh? ‘We needn’t go into the whys and wherefores. You just take the road, along with the rest.’

  ‘Phil! What do you mean? I’m staying here with you!’

  ‘No, you’re not, Dixie. And it wouldn’t be wise, would it, even if I let you. Because I left some bits out of my little reconstruction in there, didn’t I?’

  Dixie’s face crimsoned with anger. She narrowed her eyes.

  ‘What do you mean, left out?’

  ‘Like how Chokey knew about the will that gave me the bulk of the boodle. Because he was right: the risk wouldn’t have been worth taking if, after the Chancellor got his seventy per cent, the rest was cut into three. He knew that, for the moment, and if he acted fast, I was due to get it all. How did he know? Because you found out from Mr Lillywaite and passed it on.’

  ‘Good heavens, Phil, I wasn’t to know—’

  ‘No? You weren’t to know? Second point: Parsloe and Nazeby smelt perfume in their car when they went for the map that night. No, it wasn’t bloody aftershave either—aftershave in the middle of the night? It was perfume. Here’s one possibility: it had clung on to Chokey while he was in bed with you. You always did sling it on with a heavy hand.’

  ‘Me and Chokey? It was me and Sam last. What do people think I am?’

  ‘Most people have got a pretty good idea what you are, Dixie. I certainly have. These last three nights, while you’ve been freezing me out of the marital bed, I’ve been kipping down in Raicho’s room. But since I came out of jug I haven’t needed too much sleep. Got more than enough while I was inside, I suppose. So I’ve been alert to the toings and froings along the corridor. Chokey’s been coming along to take my place, hasn’t he, ever since the police guard was stepped down? Or was it just to talk things over?’

  ‘Why shouldn’t we talk things over? He’s the oldest friend we’ve—I mean, he was the oldest friend we had.’

  ‘Matter of fact, I’ve known about you and Chokey for months. Bloke who came to Daintree three months or more ago, he’d seen you out at the Bluebell Club—on our wedding anniversary. In fact, he’d seen you together all over the place.’

  ‘Christ Almighty, Phil: I’m not a bleeding nun. I didn’t know what Chokey was planning. You’ve never been jealous before.’

  ‘No, I haven’t. And I kept telling myself that you weren’t to know what I was planning to do in the way of getting even with Chokey after I got out. But that perfume in the car—there’s another possibility. Matter of fact, I don’t think you and Chokey went to bed together that night. It would have been a bit odd, wouldn’t it, if Chokey was planning to hop out and do Dad in. I think you hopped out of the house and stashed those things in the car. It was you that Parsloe and Nazeby thought they saw. And while you were out there coping with that side of the operation, Chokey was on the landing doing the indoor work.’

  ‘Phil! You’re joking! I never would!’

  ‘I think you were in it, almost from the start, Dixie. Oh, Chokey got the idea, when he was down here on the Brycenorton job. But Chokey hasn’t got the drive and the guts for a thing like this. You and he were in it together. And both of you had cast poor old Phil in the role of fall guy: he’d come into a fortune, and get robbed of it bit by bit by his wife and his wife’s lover.’

  ‘You got sick in gaol, Phil. You just sat there imagining things.’

  ‘Of course, once you got down here, you changed your tack a bit, started fancying yourself as lady of the manor. But the basic idea was still the same: Phil is to come into his kingdom, and you and Chokey are to start raking in the shekels. Well, it just hasn’t worked out, Dixie. Of c
ourse, as you’ve always known, I’m a generous soul at heart.’

  ‘Generous? That’s a bloody laugh.’

  ‘Oh, but I am. I’m giving you a chance, Dixie. I could have said all this out over the table, couldn’t I, but I didn’t. Look, old Chokey’s in there with the police now. There’s a chance he won’t split on you. Not, knowing Chokey, a very big one, but there you are. He was your choice. If he does split, there’s a chance the cops won’t believe him. They might well think he’s just trying to pass the buck, which would be very much in character. And then there’s the possibility that even if they do believe him, they won’t do anything about it because they won’t be able to get enough evidence to nail you in court. There: three chances. I’d say, as a betting man, that you’ve got a better than even chance of getting away with this.’

  ‘Oh yes? And what’s supposed to happen then? Me and the kids rot away for years on social security while you live in clover?’

  ‘Oh no, Dixie, that isn’t what I planned at all. As to you, you’ll manage, as you always have. Prosper, I dare say. As to the kids, they stay here with me. And get this straight: you try to get them, and I’ll dob you in first chance I get, and I’ll go along with the cops till you’re behind bars, as you ought to be. They may not be all my kids—’

  ‘They’re not.’

  ‘—but they feel like mine. I doubt if they’ve ever felt like yours, to you. They’ve never been anything but a bloody encumbrance. So the kids stay here as long as I do. And you go—you can have the house in Stepney for as long as you need it. But you oppose the divorce; you oppose my custody of the kids, and you’re in for the biggest trouble of your life. Got that, Dixie? Has the message come through loud and clear? Right—we understand each other. Now hop it.’

  Dixie stared at him in pink and puffy outrage. Hovering on the brink of utterance was the bitterest obscenity she could think of. She stared at him in silence for half a minute, as if she was engaged in a final test of wills. Then she straightened her shoulders, threw back her head, and strutted into the house. Phil let out a great sigh of relief, and strolled down to the courtyard. He was still there ten minutes later, smoking a cigar, when Dixie marched down the Great Staircase, through the Hall, and out to her estate car. She threw the cases in, banged the doors, and careered off down the road to the gates, spraying gravel over the lawns where her children were playing. Nobody waved her goodbye, and her own eyes were set firmly ahead.

  It was as he was watching the cloud of dust Dixie had raised rising heavenwards that Phil heard from beside his left elbow an apologetic cough.

  ‘Oh dear, Lord Ellesmere, I’m afraid I heard all that. I feel some deep misgivings about my part in this.’

  ‘You, old cock?’ said the Earl, turning to his man of business. ‘I don’t know as you have anything to blame yourself for.’

  ‘But if what you say is true I was clearly at fault in revealing (however cautiously and indirectly I may have put it) the contents of the late Earl’s will to your wife.’

  ‘You weren’t to know the type she was, were you? It’s taken me long enough to find out. I don’t know what the ethics involved are, but I won’t be making any move to get you crossed off the solicitors’ roll, or whatever it is.’

  ‘Do you think the police will get together a case against this . . . er . . . Chokey?’

  ‘There’s a pretty good chance. Chokey’s not got much backbone. I’m betting on him breaking down.’

  ‘And of course there’s the woman who saw his attempt to kill your father earlier.’

  ‘Yes, well—I’m hoping there won’t be any need to call her. Because she doesn’t exist. What you might call a figment of my imagination.’

  ‘You made her up?’

  ‘Don’t look so bleeding shocked. The cops do it all the time.’

  ‘Oh dear. At any rate, they can start with the robbery at Brycenorton Towers, and proceed from there. I hope, Lord Ellesmere, that we can have a long talk as soon as possible.’

  ‘Natch. I’ve put aside the whole of tomorrow morning.’

  ‘If you are going ahead with your plans to open this house as soon as possible—to the ghouls, as you call them—’

  ‘Which I am. As soon as humanly possible. Sam there’s writing a little guide. We’ll have it duplicated in Meresham and sell it to them at some exorbitant whack. I’ll be on hand all the first few weeks, with Raicho as relief. The kids will be around as long as the school holidays last. Noble family in residence—extra thrill if you can manage to shake one of the noble paws. We’ll make a bomb, I can tell you. Then we’ll start putting it on a proper footing.’

  ‘It can’t be too soon,’ said Mr Lillywaite, with something of his old disapproval. He did not see Phil’s look as he went on: ‘You’ll pardon me, Lord Ellesmere. I have the greatest sympathy for what you are trying to do, as you know. But is all this . . . blatancy necessary?’

  ‘Of course it’s necessary. If you don’t pull in the crowds you don’t pull in the money. It’s only a superior sort of circus, this stately homes lark. If we tried to do it in the genteel tea-shop style you’d approve of, we’d be down the drain in five minutes.’

  ‘I don’t wish to sound . . . old-fashioned, Lord Ellesmere, but I see nothing wrong with a genteel manner of going about things. I have to confess that these last few weeks have been a great shock to my system. All that I held most dear has been assaulted—as if I’d been through a mental shock course. I am not squeamish, but I seem to have heard of nothing but (forgive me) petty criminals, illegitimate children, unknown heirs, pornographic films . . .’

  He had gone too far. Phil planted his large hands on his hips and swung round to face him.

  ‘Oh no. Just don’t give me that. If we’re going to work together in the future, you’re going to have to snap out of that. I’m not going to have everything I do and say scrutinized and sniffed at with that kind of middle-class sneer. You can’t tell me we’re any different from the rest of the shower who’ve owned this pile. Oh, the old Earl sounded a decent enough old bugger, in a stiff-necked way. But our Trevor’s never got up to much that the young Earl didn’t get up to as well, I bet you. And what about the crew that went before? I read all about them in that book you left at Daintree. The founder screwed the county rigid, and so did the first Earl. There was the Countess who had it off with the groom, and the one who had it off with the interior decorator. There was the second Earl, who was a member of the Hell Fire Club—Trevor’s a choirboy compared to him. And the fourth Earl who went to jug—am I supposed to feel inferior to him?’

  ‘Every great family has it’s skeletons.’

  ‘Too bloody right. As I walk the corridors I can hear dem dry bones rattling. That charming Victorian Earl who trailed Gladstone through the streets of London, hoping to catch him going into brothels. The one who shot his son—or was that the same one? The one whose wife arranged phoney séances for people who’d lost their sons in the First World War. The one who cleared half a million during the Marconi scandals. Don’t tell me we’re any different from them, mate, because I won’t take it. We do the same sort of things. We just do them in a different accent, that’s all.’

  And the thirteenth Earl of Ellesmere nodded a curt farewell to his man of business and stomped across the lawns to join his children.

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  Copyright © 1984 Robert Barnard

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  Robert Barnard, Corpse in a Gilded Cage