Murder At Wittenham Park

by R. W. Heber

  “Then I’ll tell the servants,” Dee Dee said, making the decision for all of them. “When d’you want to start, Mr. Morton?”

  “Does half an hour give you all enough time?” There was grudging assent. “Good. Then can we all be upstairs on the main landing at three forty-five, which will represent six forty-five on Saturday. And please dress exactly as you did then.”

  Before they assembled, Morton positioned a constable in what had been Welch’s room to note down everything he heard. Then the charade was ready to begin.

  Jim Savage supposed, as he pulled on his pyjamas over his underwear, that Morton knew it would be a charade, given the temperaments of those involved. At the same time he was sure it would help prove or disprove his own theory about the murder. It was a theory that he was deliberately not discussing with Jemma. If she came to the same conclusion he would be delighted. But he did not want to propel her into it, and anyway she was developing her own ideas. Eventually they would combine them, though whether the police would be interested was another question. Morton had made his attitude abundantly clear several times. It was the Savages’ duty to pass any relevant facts to him. He was under no obligation to tell them anything.

  After he had put on his dressing-gown, Jim slipped his new red notebook into a pocket—it was as well he’d brought several—and the two of them went from the servants’ wing to the main house again. Jemma was wearing a yellow kimono with deep sleeves.

  “Surely that’s not what you had on yesterday?” Jim asked.

  “Dead right, Daddy. I want to see if anyone notices.”

  As they reached the corridor Gilroy appeared, looking surprisingly suave in a blue-and-white-spotted dressing-gown and royal-blue velvet slippers embroidered with a coronet. Dee had on the same red satin housecoat that Jemma recalled. And the same white ruffle of lace showed beneath its hem.

  “Now, Lady Gilroy,” Morton asked, beginning a routine that he intended to follow with everyone, “what was your first action on Saturday morning?”

  “At about seven I came through from our suite in the west wing to the State Room”—Dee Dee indicated its door—“to play the part of Mrs. Sketchley. The maid arrived with the morning tea as I got there. So I took the tray in and waited.”

  “And Lord Gilroy?”

  “He was asleep when I left him. His tea was taken separately.”

  “Actually,” Gilroy said, “I never saw any of the action. This was what I was wearing, of course.” He surveyed his apparel with satisfaction. The monogrammed and crested slippers were a particular joy to him, specially made by a shop on Jermyn Street, London’s top location for gents’ outfitters.

  “You took no part?” Morton asked, kicking himself for having invited someone irrelevant to participate and feeling sick at the sight of the slippers.

  “’Fraid not.”

  “You’d better go back to your suite then. Both of you. And Lady Gilroy, we’ll say the notional time now is six forty-five.” He made a show of setting his watch, which the others followed. “Just before seven the maid will start taking round trays and at seven you come through.”

  “And what d’you want me to do?” Gilroy was not giving up.

  “Whatever you actually did.”

  “Oh. Right. Well, I didn’t hear my wife go out, woke up when I heard the screams, thought, thank God that’s underway, and went back to sleep.”

  “Then do just that, sir.”

  The Gilroys departed regally. Morton turned to Savage and was about to go through the same procedure when Jim asked if he could hang around. “If you don’t mind, we’d like to watch the others. That’s what we were doing yesterday.”

  “Have a theory, have you?”

  “Hardly as much as that, Inspector.”

  Before Morton could challenge this, Hamish and Dulcie came up the stairs. Dulcie had a short fawn coat on over her lace-frilled night-dress, while the striped legs of Hamish’s pyjamas protruded from beneath a lightweight woollen gown held in with a tasselled cord. It struck Jemma that he looked remarkably unglamorous. She would have been far from thrilled if a lover had visited her in that gear. However, both he and Dulcie were unquestionably wearing what they’d worn yesterday. They were dispatched to the Pink Room, on the other side of the State Bedroom from Welch.

  “This is a pantomime,” Dulcie muttered as they departed, and Jemma had to agree with her. For a group of adults to be wandering around in mid-afternoon in their nightwear, stone-cold sober, was surreal.

  “Maybe,” Morton said angrily. “But give it a chance.”

  Next came Priscilla, again in a lace-edged night-gown, though with a blue ribbon threaded through the lace. Probably not the one I saw outside Welch’s door, Jemma decided, although she might not have spotted the strand of blue from a distance. She was still puzzling over that glimpse of a woman at about seven-ten on Saturday morning, and still keeping it to herself. Priscilla had slept in a small bedroom beyond the Chinese Room, so off she went, after a few gushing remarks.

  Finally Loredana herself appeared in a slinky cream silk gown which hid her night-dress, and which Jemma thought she remembered. She took a quick look at Jemma and said at once, “But you weren’t wearing that, were you?”

  “Is that right?” Morton intervened.

  Jemma nodded. “I wanted to see how observant people are. I’ll go and change.”

  “How silly!” Loredana commented nastily. “As if we haven’t all got eyes in our heads. It’s time your daughter grew up, Mr. Savage.” She walked off vexedly to the Chinese Room.

  “I think she was trying out an idea,” Jim apologized.

  Morton was tempted to add, “and wasting police time,” but refrained. He and Jim were now alone at the head of the great staircase and an incongruous pair they made, with Morton in his blazer and dark trousers and Jim in a frayed brown woollen dressing-gown that ought to have been replaced several Christmases ago. Jemma sometimes commented that if he dressed like that it was no wonder Pauline had left him, but he refused to throw it away. None the less he felt pretty stupid standing there in it now. In fact, he wondered if it wasn’t part of Morton’s plan to make them all feel embarrassed and likely to say things they did not intend.

  “So what did you do first thing yesterday morning?” Morton demanded.

  Jim had no problem recollecting this. “I woke up, heard footsteps in the passage, which was probably the maid. Then I went to the bathroom across the passage and saw her delivering tea-trays.”

  “What time was that?”

  “Perhaps seven-oh-five or seven-oh-six. You must remember, Inspector, that none of us knew when the action would start.”

  This was a point that had not been emphasized before. Of course the Gilroys had known when the screaming would begin. So had the maid. But not anyone else. Yet, as Morton now appreciated, it had somehow become accepted as a fixed point in the morning’s action, around which Welch’s murder might have been planned.

  “But you knew when the tea would be brought?” Morton argued.

  “Yes. But not when the ‘murder’ would be discovered.”

  Morton grunted acknowledgement of this, asked Jim to go his room, and went downstairs to make sure the maid was ready to start.

  He found Tracy in fierce argument with Dodgson.

  “They’re not going to drink the tea, so what’s the point in making it?”

  “It’s a re-enactment,” Dodgson was insisting in his high-pitched voice. “If the police want it like it was, then we do like it was. Anyway, I made the tea, didn’t I?”

  “You did?” Morton said, catching the words as he came into the kitchen.

  “Who’s that?” Dodgson started as though addressed by a ghost. “Oh, it’s you, sir. Yes. I’m just reminding Tracy here that I made each teapot myself and she took them up in turn.”

  “And who had which tray?”

  Tracy gazed along the row of nine trays. “Well”—she pointed to the most elegant, flower-patterned teaset—“
that’s always Lord and Lady Gilroy’s. Then there was a separate one for Lady Gilroy as Mrs. Sketchley. The Wedgwood ones always go to the Chinese Room. Welch had the ugly blue.” She pointed to the most ordinary of the tea-sets, a small chunky blue pot and a far from elegant cup and saucer. “Wouldn’t give him anything better.”

  “Common as dirt, that man,” Dodgson added, quivering slightly, so that Morton wondered if he had some ailment.

  “And had it been used when you brought it down again?”

  “Yes.” Tracy was positive about this. “The cup was dirty, though he hadn’t drunk much tea. Like I told that Mr. Savage.”

  “Told him what?” Morton reacted with annoyance.

  “I was telling him about the teacups and how I thought they’d all been used, but one hadn’t.”

  “You realize that evidence ought to be given to the police?”

  “Well, it isn’t evidence, is it?” Tracy didn’t like being criticized.

  “All material facts are evidence. Who did not drink their tea?”

  This puzzled her. She had to look carefully along the line of trays. “I can’t honestly remember,” she confessed at last. “But one cup was clean.”

  “Not Welch’s?”

  “Nope. Not his.”

  “And what else happened?”

  “That schmuck McMountdown came wanting coffee, ’cos he doesn’t drink tea.” Tracy made a face. “He and that woman he’s having it off with make a right pair; as selfish as you like, the both of them.”

  Morton picked up on this fast and began finding out just how much the two servants knew about Hamish’s affair with Loredana. But Tracy could not say for sure whether Hamish had spent the night in Loredana’s room or not. When she’d left the tray outside the Chinese Room, it had been Loredana’s voice that called out “Thank you,” though she did recall that Hamish had come down the back stairs, which were closer to the Chinese Room than the main staircase. And also, Morton thought to himself, less observed by other people than the ones leading to the Great Hall.

  Shortly after this interrogation Tracy began delivering tea-trays to the rooms. She took Dee Dee’s first and repeated the action of giving a tray to her. Next she took trays to Adrienne’s room and to Welch, calling out, “Your tea’s outside,” as she put the tray down on the little table in the alcove outside Welch’s door. Finally she served those nearest to the east wing. Jim and Jemma heard her and replayed their own actions of Saturday morning, coming out to the passage.

  “No other footsteps going past,” Jim commented.

  “And no woman in a night-dress,” Jemma added, looking along towards Welch’s door. The re-enactment time was seven-ten.

  Then, to their astonishment, they did see movement at the far end. It was Hamish and he was coming in their direction, right past Morton, who was standing at the head of the stairs. The Savages both hesitated. Jemma picked up her tray and dodged into her room. But Jim was deliberately slower, so that Hamish had to walk past him.

  “On my way to the kitchen to find some coffee,” Hamish explained. “I never drink tea.” Then he continued towards the back stairs.

  Jim went into his daughter’s room and they both roared with laughter.

  “No way did he go past yesterday,” Jemma said.

  “The poor devil has to pretend he was with his wife.”

  “Do we point that out to the inspector?”

  “Why should we?” A distant streak of wickedness, or perhaps only wilfulness, took possession of Jim. The re-enactment was filling him with the excitement of the chase. “All it actually tells us is that Hamish was either with Loredana or in the kitchen at the time Welch died.”

  The noise of someone coming along the corridor made them both fall silent. After the footsteps Jemma opened her door and saw the maid, this time not carrying any tray. Tracy must have come up the back stairs and was now going along towards the State Room. She stopped by the main staircase, close to Morton, and looked impatiently at her watch, just as she had done before.

  “Did Mr. McMountdown come down to the kitchen yesterday?” Morton asked her softly.

  “Sure he did.” Tracy echoed Dee Dee’s Americanisms yet again. “He wanted coffee. I was just taking tea up to Mr. Welch.”

  “You started at the east wing of the house?”

  “Yes. After I brought the tray to Lady Gilroy I took tea to the actress first, then to Mrs. Chancemain, then to the father and daughter, then to that Mr. Welch. Then the others.” The tone in which Tracy referred to Welch was caustic enough to alert any detective.

  “You didn’t like him?”

  “He … he tried what her ladyship calls ‘goosing’ me. That’s why I wouldn’t take a tray into his room. Forget it. No way. Her ladyship said if he tried it again I could sue him.”

  “So when you’d delivered all the trays, what did you do?”

  It seemed to Morton that Tracy had been in an exceptionally good position to poison Welch. She could have slipped whatever substance it was into his teapot and no one would have been any the wiser, and she’d washed all the cups within an hour. But what possible motive could she have?

  “I was hanging around up here and that girl, the nice one who’s a reporter, she come out into the passage. Just like she done now. Well, I felt stupid just standing here. So I went downstairs, had a quick cuppa tea and then came up again at seven-thirty.”

  Morton checked his watch. So far the timing was roughly what they had all claimed. She would have gone down again at about seven-seventeen. It was now nearly at the half hour.

  “So at seven-thirty you started screaming?”

  “That’s right.” Tracy gathered herself together, walked along the passage and knocked on the State Bedroom door. When there was no answer she entered and emerged again seconds later, screaming lustily.

  “She’s dead! Help!”

  Jim emerged from his room, so did Jemma, and they hurried down the passage, deliberately taking no notice of Morton standing there. Dulcie appeared from the other side of the State Room and after a minute or so Loredana came along, closely followed by Priscilla.

  “Oh my God!” Priscilla yelled, not one to forget a part she had already rehearsed, and making a run for the State Room door. “Mrs. Sketchley’s been murdered!”

  Morton winced. All his instincts and training were revolted by this play-acting, when there had been a genuine corpse in a next-door room. But had Welch been dead then? He did not know precisely when the victim had died and he was not at all sure that the constable inside Welch’s room would hear anything worthwhile.

  Next Adrienne appeared, not as bleary-eyed as she actually had been, but conscientiously wearing the same night-dress trimmed with lace. She was not much use at acting. She stood outside her late husband’s room as if confused.

  “So there I was, Inspector,” she said, feeling incredibly foolish in her night-gown and resentful at being forced into this rigmarole. “I came out after all the fuss was over and George wasn’t awake.”

  “How did you know?” Morton demanded.

  “Well, he hadn’t taken in his tea, had he?”

  They both looked at the undisturbed tea-tray deposited by Tracy. The constable had not known whether to take it in or not. And this, Morton realized with a sense of futility, was where the reenactment failed. It was a hundred to one that Welch had been poisoned via his early-morning tea, that most British of institutions, a ritual that had once ruled the world from Australia to the Indies, and found its dying expression in country houses like this. But whoever had poisoned it was hardly likely to come forward now. At least, not unless he or she had exceptional cool.

  “Did you go into his room?” Morton asked.

  “There was no sense disturbing him, was there?” Adrienne said. “Not with his temper. All I’d have got was an earful.”

  “So you did not go in?” He was convinced that she must have done.

  What wife would not? No matter what any columnist wrote, women were the dom
inant sex. And likely to remain so, he thought a trifle bitterly. His own wife was an example. He should never have married a policewoman, who knew far too much about what his job entailed. On the other hand, she did understand the tensions. He was lucky there. He was not at all certain that George Welch had been similarly fortunate.

  This train of thought was interrupted by Hamish’s coming up the main staircase. He too was word-perfect. “What’s the matter?” he asked.

  Dulcie was waiting for him, but Jim noticed that she answered differently.

  “So you found some coffee,” she said, as if she had known he had been in the kitchen.

  “Can’t stand tea, darling. As you know.”

  She could not resist giving him a filthy look, as if she would like to have rammed the cup down his throat, but made no comment. It was humiliating enough to have this bogus scene played out.

  Now Dee Dee emerged from the State Room, resplendent in her scarlet housecoat, announced that breakfast would be at nine and was about to depart when Morton stopped her.

  “If you don’t mind, Lady Gilroy, I’d like to ask what you did over the next hour or so.”

  Dee Dee answered with a display of graciousness, as befitted a “grande dame” of English society. “I showered, glanced through the morning paper, then my husband and I had breakfast together.”

  “Not with the others?”

  “Certainly not.” The disdain in Dee Dee’s voice was perceptible. “We joined them for the main meals, never for breakfast. Lunch is bad enough.”

  Morton thought about his usual snatched breakfasts of cereal and coffee, before hastening back to the office for whatever emergency had erupted. There always was an emergency. This stately home constituted another world. He recalled a society woman who had poisoned her husband, telling the jury, “For better or worse, but never for lunch,” as though that explained everything. She had been sent down for twenty years. Rightly. She had been a killer. Women, Morton believed, were much more sophisticated killers than men.

  While Morton was talking to Dee Dee, Jim moved across to the area by Welch’s door. For some architectural reason the doorway was in a small recess, like a tiny lobby. A small table had been placed there for the tea-tray, but there was no tray. Presumably the detective inside the room had retrieved it after Tracy knocked on the door.