by R. W. Heber
“Is something troubling you?” Jim asked. It was fairly obvious something was. Priscilla’s hand trembled as she held her gin and tonic.
“You know how I took the drugged cocoa up to Mr. Welch?” she began.
Jim nodded, remembering the histrionics of this morning, when she claimed Welch had tried to grab her.
“Well, he never drank it.”
“How do you know?”
“He offered me twenty pounds if I’d fetch him some more whisky. So I went down to the kitchen and couldn’t find the cupboard and then the butler appeared and asked what I was doing. So I told him there was something in it for him if he helped and in the end I took it up. But it all took an age.”
“I thought Welch made a pass at you and you only just escaped?”
“That was when I took him the whisky, not the cocoa. He wanted me to join him for a drink, but whisky does horrible things to me on top of gin, so I refused.”
Jim tried to recall what she had said this morning. Surely she had put the cocoa on a table by Welch’s bed? “And the second time the cocoa wasn’t there?”
“That’s right! I told him. ‘If you’d had that cocoa you’d have calmed down by now,’ I said. ‘Drink that muck!’ he said. ‘Who d’you think I am? I gave it to Dulcie. Now, come on girl, ’ow about a little bit of nooky?’ What a nerve!” Priscilla sat up straighter, looking suitably indignant. “That was when he tried to pull me onto the bed.”
“And you had to run for it?”
“I never got the twenty pounds either.”
“What time d’you think that was?”
“It must have been nearly half past eleven.”
“Did you tell the police?”
“No.” Priscilla fidgeted with her glass. “I was afraid that would make me the last person to have seen him alive. But it means something more important too.” She leaned forward across the table. “It couldn’t have been the cocoa, because look at Dulcie! She drank it and she’s as right as rain.”
“You didn’t take the whisky glass?”
“I felt like it! That would have served him right. But I just had to run.” Having got all this off her chest, Priscilla relaxed. “So you see, I’m not guilty.” She smiled warmly. “I feel so much better for telling you.”
“You really ought to tell the police.” Jim marvelled that it had not occurred to her that someone could have put poison in the whisky decanter. Such innocence in an actress of fifty was rather touching. Or was it suspicious?
“Perhaps I will,” Priscilla said. “If they ask me. After they’ve found the murderer.”
They were interrupted by Dodgson entering and standing by the door, hovering as if he were waiting for them to leave. Priscilla was embarrassed, sure she’d been overheard, then decided she’d said enough anyway, thanked Savage, gave Dodgson a filthy look and departed.
But Dodgson still stood there, until Savage asked if he wanted something.
“I’d like a word, sir. If it’s not inconvenient.”
“Come and sit down then.” Savage was surprised, but tried not to show it. Something seemed to have suddenly made him the popular choice as Father Confessor, though what he didn’t know.
Dodgson perched himself where Priscilla had been, cleared his throat with a dry, rasping noise, and unburdened his soul.
“Did that woman tell you about the whisky, sir?” Evidently Priscilla didn’t merit the description “lady.” Dodgson was very much the old-style retainer, whose social sensibilities were more acute than his employer’s.
“She mentioned Mr. Welch asking her to fetch some,” Savage agreed cautiously. “I suppose she should have refused.”
“She was offered inducements,” Dodgson said, in the acid tone of one who had failed to receive his cut. “But that isn’t what’s worrying me, sir.”
“Oh?”
“No, sir. It was his lordship’s instructions to give them whatever drinks they asked for. Not,” he added, “that her ladyship approved.”
“I see,” Savage said, completely failing to, unless the purpose of this interview was to bad-mouth the Gilroys.
“It’s that I need the decanters, sir.”
It took Savage a moment to appreciate that Dodgson had said “decanters,” in the plural. Then he realized that the second supply of whisky would never have been sent up in a bottle, and so there must have been two.
“Well,” he said, clearly remembering the small cut-glass decanter that had been on top of the chest of drawers in Welch’s room, “I only saw one, which presumably the police will by now have sent for tests.”
“For poison, you mean, sir?” The butler’s thin voice was apprehensive. “I can’t deny I took him up the first decanter. Filled it with Bells.”
“Was the second one identical?”
“Not exactly, sir. We did have a set of half-size ones for guests, but some got broken and others was bought. I’d know which was which myself.”
“But I might not?”
“Most likely not, sir.”
“Was it the same whisky?”
“Yes, sir. I gave him the rest of the Bells. The question is, where’s the decanter, because I could need it.”
“The maid couldn’t have taken it?”
“Tracy, sir? No, sir. She brought down the early-morning tea-trays. Mr. Welch’s was outside his room. But when she went later to clear up, the doctor wouldn’t let her in.”
Savage pondered this. The second decanter could have been out of sight in the room, on the floor, for instance, except that he himself had looked under the bed. Someone would have to tell Inspector Morton, since the whisky was a substance Welch had been witnessed taking shortly before his death. And the glass was still unaccounted for. Whether he had drunk the early-morning tea was presumably known to the pathologist and possibly to the maid. He asked Dodgson about the tea-things.
“They’ve all been washed up, sir. Them and the breakfast dishes. That police sergeant was quite annoyed.”
“What about the whisky glass?”
“Must still be in the room, sir. I keep a check on the glasses. His lordship’s very particular about guests’ having proper tumblers for their drinks.”
“Even these guests?”
“I have my orders, sir,” Dodgson said with disapproval in his slightly quavering voice, as if changing the rules for this weekend ought not to have slipped his master’s mind.
So that was that, though the glass was still missing. “Tell me something, Dodgson,” Savage asked. “If Mr. Welch had bought part of the estate, would you have lost your job?”
It was a question designed to put the butler on the defensive, which it did.
“Can’t think of a reason for that, sir.”
“But if Lord Gilroy had sold up completely, you would have done?”
“He wouldn’t ever do that, sir!” The butler sounded horrified. “He’s keeping it for his son.”
“Well.” Savage realized that he was being a little too much of an interrogator. “Was there anything else?”
“No, sir. I mean, nothing was put in the whisky I took up to him or in the lot I gave Mrs. Worthington.” He sounded distressed again as the immediate worry came back to him. “His lordship’ll give me hell if there’s a decanter gone.”
“I’ll ask the inspector about it.” Savage suddenly felt sorry for the old man. He must be past retirement age and probably had nowhere else to go.
“Thank you, sir.” Dodgson walked stiffly back towards the kitchens, leaving Savage barely time to think over what he had said before Jemma came in.
“What have you been doing, Daddy?” she exclaimed. “Everybody’s asking.”
“Listening to people proclaim their innocence, my dear.”
“Priscilla, you mean? I’m sure she drinks too much.”
“She’s got the shakes. Or something very like it. Anyway, she let out one interesting piece of intelligence. She went to Welch’s room twice last night, the second time much later.” Savag
e retailed the conversation about the whisky.
“Which means that she could have poisoned him?”
“She had the opportunity. But why should an out-of-work actress want to kill a man she’d never met before?”
Jemma thought about this. “Hardly because he tried to assault her. Anyway, that was on her second visit,” she agreed. “So why did she pretend she’d only been to his room once?”
“There you have me.” There was no sense in it. “Except for her not wanting to be the last person to have seen him alive.”
“I’ve been thinking about that. This morning there was plenty of time after we’d all been woken up for someone to go into Welch’s room. It was almost an hour and a half before we went down to breakfast and nearer nine-thirty before Mrs. Welch went up to look for him.”
“And Lord and Lady Gilroy weren’t at breakfast,” Savage mused. “On the other hand, I overheard someone say that death occurred between seven-fifteen and eight.”
“I didn’t know that!” Jemma exclaimed in annoyance. “Why didn’t you tell me!”
“Sorry, darling.”
“Well, you should tell me things.” She was still petulant. “Anyway, there’s something all the others want you to do for them, Lady Gilroy included.”
“There is?” Now it was Savage’s turn to be alarmed. Anything that united the Gilroys and their guests must have a catch in it.
“They want you to talk the inspector into letting us use the library again. It is pretty miserable in that games room and, as Dulcie says, he’s no right to keep us here at all.”
Savage frowned. He had a feeling his daughter might have “volunteered” him, as they used to say in the army. Like most daughters, she had very little hesitation about letting her parent in for things, from mending a fuse onwards. Which was not a bad comparison, given Inspector Morton’s high-voltage rating.
“You’ve been elected. You’re the only person they all trust.”
“Because I didn’t get on with Morton, I suppose?”
“Go on. You can’t refuse.”
Jemma took him by the arm and led him firmly through to the Great Hall, then pointed him towards the nearest of several policemen and set him going, as if he were automated.
The policeman escorted him through to the makeshift interview-room off the kitchen, which Savage realized was very close to the room he had just left, and asked him to wait outside in the passage. Standing there, he reflected that the domestic geography, apart from the main rooms, did not matter much. But the whole scenario had a feeling of clinging unreality, as if Welch’s death were an event he had read about and which was never meant to involve him at all, yet was increasingly doing so.
However, Morton was real enough, sitting at the scrubbed table and motioning him to an upright kitchen chair.
“Well, sir. What can I do for you?” the inspector inquired somewhat brusquely, as if he didn’t relish his time being wasted.
“There’s something you ought perhaps to know,” Savage said firmly and explained about Priscilla and the whisky.
Morton listened attentively, then asked, “Why did she tell you this?”
“She seemed anxious to get it off her chest. I encouraged her to tell you herself.”
“Which she didn’t want to do?”
“Quite right.” Savage almost laughed, really because the inspector had got it right the first time. Then, feeling this made him seem like an informer, he added, “Normally I don’t break confidences.”
“Nor do I.” Morton grunted. “Never reveal sources either.”
“But the second decanter could be important.”
“We’ll decide on that.” Morton’s instinctive dislike of amateurs resurfaced. He instantly regretted it and added more emolliently, “Thank you for telling me. Has anyone else confided in you?”
This gave Savage the opening he needed. “Yes,” he said with a decisiveness to match the inspector’s. “They have. They would all like the use of the library again.”
“Why? There may be evidence there.”
“The present room is very cramped. They’re willing to stay and help with your investigation…”—this was a definite smoothing over of their actual attitudes—“… rather than insist on their right to leave. But they also paid a lot of money for this weekend.”
Morton tapped meditatively on the table with the Biro he was holding. It was a cliché of a movement, intended to imply that he was taking the idea seriously. Which he was, because he had to. Murder cases went cold very fast. If he didn’t get a lead in the first three or four days, he might wait months for one, and it would be a lot easier to get that lead with his group of suspects readily available.
“When your searches are complete,” Savage prompted.
“All right then.” Morton gave way. In fact, they’d been over the library very thoroughly already and found only the “clues” that Welch and McMountdown had thrown away. “You can go back in there tonight, after you’ve eaten.” That would allow time to set up a listening device, which he had not done in the games room. There might be a useful percentage in the change.
Savage thanked him and returned to something of a hero’s welcome from the others.
“How clever of you!” Loredana cooed. “This horrid place was really getting on my nerves.”
“Wish I could get my study back,” Gilroy remarked. He was finding the whole performance extremely irksome, though, as Dee Dee had observed, there was no hope for the study because of the rows that been overheard going on there.
“I wish we could bloody well leave,” McMountdown said irritably.
“Well, we hardly can do now,” Jim remarked, annoyed at Hamish’s persistently negative attitude. “Not when he’s just given ground.”
The realization that by asking for the library back they had all committed themselves to remaining did nothing to help the conversation. When Dulcie joked that the situation was getting more and more like something out of Agatha Christie, nobody laughed.
They were all longing for Dodgson to announce dinner when Inspector Morton entered, said “Good evening, all,” and walked across to Gilroy. In fact, he had several things to talk to the peer about, one of which was that a bottle of morphine had been discovered in the medicine cupboard, and morphine, as even the most dim-witted lord ought to know, was a deadly opiate. But at this moment there was a more urgent problem.
“May I have a word, sir,” he said quietly, drawing Gilroy aside. “There’s been an accident down at the Lion Park.”
Gilroy blanched. Today had been just one piece of bad news after another. He told Dee Dee to start the meal without him and left hurriedly with Morton, while their guests crowded round to ask her what was going on.
9
IT WAS A perfect summer evening to go for a stroll before dinner. The grass was not yet wet with dew. The sky was a blue that was not yet darkening, and the late sun bathed the stone façade of Wittenham Park in gold, making it look almost distinguished. If Gilroy had been selling the place, this would have been the moment to snap the estate agent’s photos. Only a single detail was wrong.
In one place the grass was wet. Not with dew, but blood. Ted Matthews’s body lay on its back in the Lion Park’s enclosure. His right forearm was attached to the elbow only by skeins of tissue and tendon, the other torn to the bone, his old safari jacket was ripped and soaked in blood, and his head lacked a recognizable face.
“Jesus!” Morton muttered. “Poor bastard.”
Gilroy gazed down at the corpse, temporarily too shocked to speak, while the ranger who had found it explained and two others stood by, holding rifles and keeping an eye open for the lions. The ranger was a young Oxfordshire man dressed in the big-game-hunter-style gear that Mathews himself had refused to wear, and he spoke with a strong local farming accent. His name was Gary.
“Ted meant to go off around five, sir, before Caesar woke up proper. The lions all snooze in the afternoons. But then a detective comes down to ask wh
at ’e knows about the deceased up at the house and one way and t’other ’twas six before he had the dart and all that ready and we could get on with it.”
“What dart?” Morton asked.
“It’s a tranquillizer, sir. Ted makes up what he calls his ‘cocktail,’ he loads the dart in the gun and off we all go. He takes his vehicle and we need two others at least.”
Morton was looking puzzled and Gilroy found his voice sufficiently to explain. “The problem is, Inspector, when you tranquillize one of these brutes you have to protect it from the rest of the pride. Otherwise while it’s wandering around groggy, the others attack it.”
“Friendly lot,” Morton commented, then looked down again at Matthews’s mutilated body. “Jesus,” he murmured again. “I’ve never seen anything like that. Have you called a doctor?”
“He’s on his way, sir,” Gary said. “Not that he’ll be much good. Can we take Ted’s body away now, sir?”
“Why didn’t you before?”
“We didn’t like to until you was here, sir. Even though we’ve had to chase the other lions off a couple of times.”
The rest of the pride were some distance away, moving around in a restless and disturbed way, watched by yet another ranger in a third vehicle. Morton realized that this was not exactly the safest place to be with a fresh corpse. Gary’s extreme caution must have been a reaction to the investigation going on up at the house.
All the estate workers would have heard how nothing there was allowed to be moved, not even the body, though this was different. No human could have inflicted these wounds. It was a killing all right, and a savage one, but not a homicide.
“You’d better take him back to the workshop,” Morton said.
“Best use the lion stretcher, then.” Gary and another ranger fetched an unusually large canvas-and-wood stretcher out of the Land Rover’s trailer and carefully lifted the body into it, folding the tattered arms across the abdomen. Morton noticed the blood was only just beginning to congeal. It left a wide stain on the grass. For the first time in many years, he felt sick.