by R. W. Heber
“Not when she went upstairs. She was upset about things and she’s quite a highly strung person. Mrs. Welch had been very rude to her.”
“Well, it’s very difficult to know what to do. We can’t ask her to leave.” Dee gave an exasperated sigh. “But what if she tries some other crazy stunt?”
“I’m certain she won’t. She’s made her statement, her protest.”
“And nearly burnt the house down. I’d call it arson.”
At this moment a complete hush descended on the gathering. Jim looked round. Priscilla was coming in from the Great Hall, fully dressed in a skirt and blouse, but moving with caution, as if someone were about to leap on her. She looked at the main group, hesitated, saw Jim and came his way.
“How dare she show her bloody face!” Adrienne said loudly and challengingly. “She ought to be ashamed.”
Priscilla stopped dead, looked imploringly at Jim, then turned towards Adrienne and said in a very quiet, understated voice, “And who killed George Welch?”
14
“ARE YOU accusing me of killing my own husband?” Adrienne glowered at Priscilla, as everyone else fell silent. She was not tall or impressive, but she hadn’t lived with George Welch for twenty years without learning how to give as good as she got, and she was convinced Priscilla had been one of George’s many girls in the past. “You filthy bitch. How dare you!”
The others, who had been grouped around the long table at the side of the library with the coffee on it, instinctively distanced themselves from the confrontation, leaving an open space for the two women to fight it out. Hamish tugged Dulcie back protectively a few feet towards the fireplace. Loredana followed. Jim and Jemma had already taken their coffee to one of the groups of chairs in a corner. Only Dee Dee remained by the table. Now Jim stood up, prepared to intervene if Lady Gilroy did not. He mentally kicked himself for being a fool. Adrienne was the most obvious suspect for Welch’s murder. Why had he not anticipated that Priscilla would retaliate by suggesting it?
Trembling, Priscilla stood firm. “Why did you go for me?” she asked. “I can’t have been the last person to see him. Someone else must have done.” She would have liked to explain the whole tangled background of why she had set her her night-dress on fire, but she couldn’t find the words, and anyway, no one would have believed her. “Didn’t you see him in the morning? You must have done!”
“No, I did not.” Adrienne refused to be put on the defensive. “I’ve told everyone. George didn’t like to be disturbed.” She looked round for support, as though appealing to a jury. “It’s the truth.”
“I don’t doubt that for a second,” Hamish offered, moving very slightly away from Dulcie. “Your husband could be a very difficult man.”
Loredana glanced at her lover in surprise, accidentally caught Dulcie’s eye, and looked away again. What was going on now? Why was he suddenly Adrienne’s defender?
“Thank you,” Adrienne said warmly. “It’s nice to know who one’s friends are. Not that I’ve many here.” She sniffed loudly. “This is the most unfriendly place I’ve ever been in. The way you’re behaving, you’d think I never loved my husband at all.”
Hamish turned to Priscilla. “You owe Mrs. Welch an apology, you know,” he said in his rather languid tone.
“I do?” she shrilled. “How about her?”
Realizing that Priscilla was about to break down again, Jim Savage intervened, walking towards the two women, who were facing each other like boxers in a ring.
“There’s no point in accusations,” he said firmly. “Everyone’s overwrought at the moment. Why don’t we all sit down again?” He took Priscilla’s arm and led her to Jemma, where she immediately burst into tears on the sofa.
“Thank God for someone with common sense,” Dulcie said quietly. “This is becoming a madhouse.”
“That’s one hundred percent right,” Dee Dee agreed, putting down her coffee. “I’m going to find my husband. This can’t go on.”
After she had left, Dulcie pointedly turned turned her back on Loredana and told Hamish, who was now consoling Adrienne, that she would see him at lunch-time. Then she crossed the room to join the Savages.
“Jim,” she said forthrightly, “you seem to be the unofficial lightning-conductor in this place. Where do we all go from here, apart from a lunatic asylum?”
“We might try intellectual processes, instead of emotion,” Jim suggested, getting to his feet again.
This was the opportunity he had hoped for. The contract must have been directly connected with Welch’s death, though he could not for the life of him reason out how. It did not seem a sufficient cause for murder. Jemma had agreed with him. Drug dealers got themselves gunned down over contracts. Mobsters were killed for territory. But Welch, though a rough diamond, did not appear to have been in that category, and much less had anyone else here. Possibly Dulcie would help illuminate the problem. Not, as Jim kept reminding himself, that it was really his business. It was Inspector Morton’s. At the same time he was increasingly caught up with it.
“Where do we go to talk?” Dulcie asked.
“Outside, where we can’t be overheard. It’s becoming a tradition,” Jim remarked wryly. “Thank God it’s not raining.”
The policeman at the front door nodded them through and this time Jim did lead the way to the little stone pavilion by the lake. It had no doors, simply a columned frontage, giving onto a three-sided stuccoed room, with niches for statues.
“This was where George wanted his housing estate,” Dulcie remarked, after they had sat down on a bench inside. “Right by the lake. Boating, fishing. He had it all worked out. But Gilroy wouldn’t sell.”
“Do you blame him?”
“Not at all. He’d have been a fool to. He was only prepared to let go five hundred acres on the other side of the estate. But George thought he could pile on the pressure.”
“Was that what the row on Friday evening was about?”
“Partly.” The directness of the question reminded Dulcie that they were supposed to be discussing what they could do next. “But what we have to decide is when to leave.”
“You’re the lawyer.”
“And you seem to be our channel of communication with Morton.”
“Believe me, it’s a one-way street. He’s delighted to have information. He doesn’t give much away.” Jim nudged the conversation back to where he wanted it. “Incidentally, Jemma and I overheard your quarrel. We were passing through the hall.”
Dulcie frowned in aggravation. “I never thought eavesdropping would be your style.”
Jim flushed. “The ‘murder’ scenario told us all to listen out for a row. ‘Two characters are in fierce argument,’ it read, if I remember right. ‘Who are they and why are they in dispute?’ Of course we were listening.”
“I’m so sorry.” Now it was Dulcie’s turn to be embarrassed. “I’d completely forgotten. We were only here for the sake of the contract.” It struck her that if they had been merely passing through, they would not have heard much and she might as well tackle this head-on. “So what did you hear?”
“You said, ‘Go ahead then!’ That was all we heard. Gilroy materialized and naturally we got out of the way.”
“Hardly an incriminating sentence,” Dulcie suggested. She knew exactly when she’d said that, a moment before Gilroy had returned from fetching some documents. And it had been a crucial moment, too. One she did not wish to discuss.
Jim read most of these thoughts in her face. “Morton knows,” he said, “because he confiscated my notes. Why don’t you tell me?”
“So that you can tell him?”
“No.” Jim shook his head vigorously. “So that I can fit another little piece into my jigsaw and just possibly speed this business up.” He made an appeal. “Unless you killed Welch yourself, what harm can it do now?”
This was the sort of plea Dulcie herself was in the habit of making to clients. Come clean, it can only help your case. Be frank and I can
clear your name.
“I assume you were talking to Welch about the contract,” Jim said.
Dulcie shifted on the bench to face him more directly, though not in the coquettish way that Loredana and Priscilla had done. Jim knew there would be no rewarding kiss on the cheek, no cry of “You are a darling.” Dulcie had a good brain and no need to rely on being flirtatious, even if she sometimes took advantage of her sex.
“Are you going to solve this murder?” she asked. “Because if you’re not, then I shall not betray confidences.”
“I think I may, if Morton doesn’t get there first. We are travelling by different routes. He’s the professional. He has all the technical resources. I have better access to the suspects.”
“Of which I’m one?”
“As am I.” Jim smiled. “We’re all in the same boat.”
“Let me tell you what happened, then. But don’t forget that this is my version. You might hear others.”
* * *
THERE HAD been four of them in Gilroy’s study: Gilroy himself, Dulcie, Welch and his wife. Adrienne had insisted on being present, despite Dulcie’s subdued protests.
“I’m a director of his company. He’s brought me along. I don’t want him making commitments I don’t know about.” What she had left unsaid was her resentment at Dulcie’s influence over her husband. She suspected they were having an affair. Why had Dulcie sat in the front of the Roller with him on the way here, while she was consigned to the back with that gormless Hamish? “You lawyers,” she had limited herself to commenting, “are only interested in your fees.”
Dulcie had been forced to swallow that insult and get the meeting going. It had not started well. Gilroy had categorically refused to sell any land by the lake.
“The other bloody farmland’s no use to me,” Welch had protested, knowing that he must come away from this weekend with a development site in order to raise more loans. “How do I get planning permission?”
“What about the golf-course site?” Dulcie suggested a compromise. “Could we see those plans?”
This was when Gilroy had left the room to fetch them and Adrienne had turned on Dulcie.
“I thought your husband was supposed to work on him. Make him so scared of Lloyds losses that he’d sign?”
“Didn’t you hear Hamish at dinner? He was doing all he could.”
“I told you,” Welch said aggressively. “I told you on the way ’ere. If I don’t get this land, I’ll sue that useless man of yours for fraud. He got me into the Lloyds mess. He can bloody help me now.”
“Gilroy will agree to sell some land,” Dulcie insisted, keeping her temper.
“Not the part I want.”
“If my George gets second best, my girl,” Adrienne cut in, “we’ll sue you, and that’s a promise. And you’ll get no fees.”
“Wait a minute, love.” Welch backed off, suddenly worried at having gone too far with the lawyer he depended on. “She’s doing what she can.”
“For who, I’d like to know?” Adrienne dismissed George’s plea and turned on Dulcie again. “I tell you, we’ll sue your hubby till he don’t know if he’s on his ass or his elbow.”
Adrienne had taken it too far. “Go ahead then!” Dulcie said in her steeliest voice, and would have said more if she had not been interrupted by Gilroy’s return.
* * *
“I DIDN’T like my husband being threatened,” Dulcie said.
“But you still tried to negotiate?” Jim asked.
“Of course. It was what I was here for. I persuaded Gilroy to give away quite a lot that evening. Possibly George hoped for more. We’ll never know.”
“Either way, your husband was saved a court case.”
“True,” Dulcie conceded. “But it was one he wouldn’t have deserved and George might never have brought, because George knew he was on risky Lloyds syndicates.” She gave Jim a half-sad, half-quizzical look, as if to ask what else could anyone expect. “It’s not unfair to say that Adrienne likes money. George got a genuine buzz out of what he did. He was almost creative. That was the likeable side of his character, though no one here saw it. Adrienne was always more interested in the bank balance.”
“And Hamish?”
“I wouldn’t have wanted him to be sued, but I wouldn’t have minded his getting a shock. This weekend has really been the end.” She sighed. “I don’t know what he sees in Loredana. I’m not sure I even want to. Come on, you don’t need to hear all that. Let’s go back.”
When they were nearing the house Dulcie asked him if their discussion had solved anything.
“It gave me some ideas. Especially about who took the contract and left it in my room.”
“Who?”
“Ah. That would be telling.”
“You old devil! And after all I’ve told you!” Dulcie pretended outrage, yet actually she was relieved to have revealed, if not everything, at least more than she had confided to the police. There was something about Savage’s unassuming approach that generated confidence. “And when are you going to get us out of here?”
“I ought to leave that to you, if the Gilroys fail, and I’m sure they’re trying. Thank God it’ll soon be lunch-time.”
* * *
JIM’S GUESS was accurate. In Dee Dee’s temporary office she and Buck were discussing how best to tackle Morton, and indulging in some understandable marital recriminations.
“Darling,” Dee Dee was saying in a voice that now seemed permanently strained, “only four days ago I was asking you if this weekend would make money and you promised it would.”
“Not exactly promised,” Gilroy protested, recalling last Thursday vividly because it had been at that memorable tea-time that the guest list had arrived with Welch’s name on it. He should have known that the proverbial bad luck of the Gilroys was about to reach new heights, or plumb new depths, whichever it was that bad luck did.
“You said, ‘The weekend must show a profit.’ I can hear you now. And it’s a disaster. I’ve just had to phone through another huge order to the supermarket. We have to get rid of these people, quite apart from the strain. They’re all at each other’s throats. Any minute now there’ll be another murder.”
“Do we tell Morton that?”
“Oh my God!” Dee Dee clenched her fists in exasperation. “No, we do not. If necessary, we’ll get that lawyer woman to talk to him on behalf of all of us.”
“You don’t suppose she did it, do you? Killed Welch, I mean?”
“What does it matter?” Buck’s inability to see the wood for the trees was maddening. “The point is she knows all about powers of arrest and what the police can do. Morton said himself that he couldn’t keep anyone here against their will. We’ve co-operated long enough.”
“I doubt if he’d listen to me. He thinks we’re the murderers.”
“How totally stupid.” Dee looked at her husband with alarm. Buck had disliked Welch intensely. He had unburdened himself about it at length on Friday night, and he had felt himself cornered. He hadn’t signed the contract, but he knew he was going to have to. “You didn’t put morphine in his tea or anything like that, did you?”
“Dodgson or Tracy might have done. Someone’s been at the stuff.”
“They’ve been worried that we might sell the whole place and they’d have to go. Dodgson told me as much yesterday. He’s been even gloomier than usual since this happened.” Dee considered the possibility. “The poor guy would never get another job.”
“Except at an undertaker’s.”
“No.” Dee Dee shook her head, her American upbringing asserting itself. “He’s too gloomy. And that voice! Funeral parlours need re-assuring people. Dodgson looks as if he’s just escaped from a grave himself. Why do we keep him on?”
“Because he worked for my father and he has nowhere to go.” Gilroy had heard this argument before and always provided the same answer. “Noblesse oblige and all that. Anyway, if we did sell up I’d give him a pension.”
; “Have you ever told him that?”
“Not exactly,” Gilroy hedged. “I mean, he must know we’d do the decent thing.”
Dee Dee gazed at her husband with a mix of affection and despair, the despair predominating. There he sat, wearing his habitual Guards tie and boating jacket, along with a hangdog expression that would make even a pawnbroker wonder if he was trying to hock stolen goods, and he expected the servants to trust him with their futures at a time of crisis.
“You’re crazy,” she said. “I also think Dodgson could have done it. He’d have overheard conversations, he had the morphine, and he could have laced anything that tasted strong enough. Coffee, tea, whisky. Welch had them all. Tracy would have helped too. She already had it in for Welch in a small way. Not to mention that madwoman Mrs. Worthington. I bet they were all in it.”
“I suppose they could have been,” Gilroy said, then went on with remarkable lack of tact, “of course, you were in the room next to Welch. You could have—”
“Buck,” Dee Dee snapped, “snap out of it. Nothing would have pleased me more than to see that odious man off the premises, but not as a corpse. Go and tell Morton that we’ve had enough.”
“Anything you say, darling,” Gilroy obeyed, “but you do realize we’re both suspects?”
“Get out of here before I scream!”
* * *
DOWN IN the library Jemma had been reading a magazine and covertly watching Hamish and Loredana. They had evidently taken advantage of Dulcie’s absence to get together. But it didn’t appear that their conversation was going smoothly. Loredana was making emotional gestures and Hamish was defending himself.
“Why are you making such a fuss about that woman?” Jemma heard Loredana say. “She can more than look after herself.”
Hamish’s reply was inaudible.
“Well, maybe, but she’s recovered amazingly quickly,” Loredana said and Jemma realized they must be talking about Adrienne.
Then Dulcie came striding in, faltered momentarily when she saw the two together, but continued and told Hamish that she needed to talk to him. She took no notice whatever of Loredana. Shortly after they had gone, Loredana came across and sat down next to Jemma.