Hushed in Death

by Hushed in Death (retail) (epub)

  She began to cry, though softly, and wiped a tear away from her right cheek.

  “Would it help if I told you that what you’re feeling is perfectly natural?” Lamb said.

  Vera shook her head. “I don’t know. I don’t think so.”

  “I hope you know that you haven’t displeased me, or your mother,” he said. “And that takes in whatever you’ve done—or haven’t done—with David. Your mother and I could not be more pleased with the woman you’ve become.”

  Vera looked at her father. “Yes, but I’m not quite there yet, am I?” she said. “I feel as if I’ll only be there when I can make my own decisions about my life. I used to be frightened of that. But I don’t think I am anymore.”

  She wiped another renegade tear from her cheek. “Even this stupid bloody war doesn’t frighten me anymore. It only makes me wonder sometimes if I’m losing my mind.”

  “You’re not losing your mind. Nothing is the way it should be at a time like this.”

  “Not even love?”

  “No—not even that.”

  Vera turned away. “It makes you wonder what good any of it is, then,” she said.

  She pushed the Wolseley’s starter and its motor sputtered to life—then, almost as quickly, sputtered out. She pushed the starter again, but the result was the same.

  “Once more, please,” Lamb said patiently.

  But the car only coughed a second time then died.

  “Wonderful,” Vera said.

  “It would be easy enough to walk to Elton House from here; in fact, I’d like to have a look at the trail that leads from here to the estate,” Lamb said, already thinking ahead. “But we’ll have to see if someone here can fix the car in the meantime.”

  “I don’t remember seeing a garage,” Vera said.

  “Nor do I.”

  They exited the car and Lamb lifted the bonnet. In truth, he had only the most rudimentary idea of how cars worked. As he scanned the oily engine he could see nothing that appeared to him to be obviously amiss. He closed the bonnet then looked round; none of his men were in sight and he did not want to interrupt their work in any case.

  “Why don’t we ask Mr. Brandt if someone in the village knows how to fix a car?” Vera suggested.

  Although Lamb was reluctant to involve Brandt in their problem, neither did he want to waste time poking round Marbury in the hope of finding a mechanic who might not even exist.

  The pair headed past the church and up the hill where on the previous day Brandt had said his house was located. Sure enough, they came to a house with a front garden shielded by a line of poplars and a waist-high cut-stone fence that paralleled the High Street and appeared to be less-than-adequately maintained.

  “I wonder if this might be it,” Lamb said.

  He and Vera went to the door; if the house wasn’t Brandt’s then whoever came to the door would be able to point them in the right direction.

  But Lamb’s guess had been correct; Brandt answered Lamb’s knock, smiling. He wore the same green corduroy trousers as he had the previous day and a rust-colored woolen tie that was slightly askew. His brown hair was slightly mussed, as if he’d been running his fingers through it in deep concentration, and his glasses sat near the bridge of his nose at an awkward angle.

  “Chief Inspector,” he said, clearly surprised to see Lamb standing at the threshold. “And Constable Lamb; this is a pleasant surprise indeed.”

  He pushed open the oaken door and bade them to enter. A cat with extravagant orange fur appeared in the foyer and, purring loudly, began to move through Brandt’s legs.

  “Hello, Walter,” Brandt said to it, touching his glasses to set them aright. He plucked the cat from the floor and cradled it. “We have visitors, as you can see, so I haven’t time for you at the moment.”

  The cat squinted at Lamb, its eyes like small black slits in a profuse, feathery ball of burnt orange yarn.

  Brandt put the cat on the floor, massaged its sides briefly with his fingertips, then touched the top of its tail, which was sticking straight up, like a ship’s mast. “Off with you now,” he said. “We’ve work to do.” But the cat merely sat in the middle of the foyer and began to lick its paws.

  Brandt shrugged. “He rarely listens, I’m afraid. I sometimes wonder if he even understands English.”

  “We’re sorry to bother you, Mr. Brandt,” Lamb said. “But we’re wondering if you can point us toward someone who repairs motorcars. Mine has broken down.”

  “Oh my,” Brandt said. “We did have someone at one time. Old Mr. Donatelli—Italian chap; came here before the turn of the last century as a laborer. Taught himself all about cars and opened a shop and made himself indispensable. My father used him, whenever his car went on the fritz. But I’m afraid he died a couple of years back and no one else has taken up the mantle. It really hasn’t been worth it since the war began, given that no one has any petrol anymore.”

  A look of disappointment crossed Lamb’s face, which Brandt noticed.

  “I say, you’ve a Wolseley, am I right?” he said. “I saw it yesterday.”

  “That’s right. A Wasp 6.”

  “Well, I’ve a 1935 Wasp 6 mothballed in the garage. I haven’t even tried to start the thing since the war began. But I know a bit about how they work. Perhaps I could have a look at your car.”

  “That would be very kind of you,” Vera said.

  Brandt smiled warmly at Vera. “All right, then,” he said to her. “If you’ll allow me just a minute, though, please. I really should feed my snake before we go. He’s been acting rather famished all morning.”

  “You’ve a snake?” Vera asked. “An actual snake, I mean?”

  “Indeed I do. A python; a West African breed. If you’d like, you’re welcome to watch me feed him. It will only take a minute.”

  Lamb had not counted on being delayed by Brandt feeding a snake; but beggars could not be choosers.

  “Right this way, then,” Brandt said and he led them into a room that looked as if a gang of thieves had just finished rifling it. Nearly every surface, whether table or chair, was piled with books, newspapers, typescripts, magazines, and photographs, not to mention cups, saucers, plates, and potted plants. Two of the four walls were lined with shelves also brimming with books and papers. A third contained a large window, beneath which various boxes and other odds and ends were stacked, and the fourth a hearth.

  “This is my study,” Brandt said. “I apologize for the mess. I realize it seems chaotic to most people, but I find it comfortable.”

  Vera noticed a helmet hanging on a nail just to the right of the door. She recognized it as that issued to some of the Home Guard. Nearly every village in Hampshire had some form of civil defense committee, a vestige of the bad summer of 1940, two years earlier, when the Germans had bombed southern England. Vera had served for a time that summer as an air raid warden in a village called Quimby.

  “You’re in the Home Guard, then, Mr. Brandt,” Vera remarked.

  “Yes. I’ve been the air raid warden here since the beginning. The army passed me over, I’m afraid. The RAF, as well. They claim I’ve an irregular heartbeat, though I’ve never felt it. So the Home Guard it is.”

  He took them to the wall just inside the door, where a large glass terrarium sat upon a side table. Within the terrarium sat a small bowl of water surrounded by twigs and fresh leaves. To one side sat a large wooden cigar box turned upside down. Brandt removed the top from the glass enclosure and put it aside. Then he lifted the wooden cigar box, revealing beneath it a rather large and fat bronze-colored python with a mustard-yellow stripe, curled into a tight ball.

  “Hence, their name—ball python,” Brandt said. “They rather like to curl up in a ball and hide beneath something. Now, if you’ll just excuse me for a minute, I’ll fetch his dinner.”

  Brandt disappeared from the room for about thirty seconds, during which Lamb and Vera at first were silent.

  “Well, it’s different, at any rate,�
� Vera said finally.

  “Yes, it is.”

  “And interesting, too, don’t you think?”

  “Of course.”

  Brandt returned with a large gray mouse hanging limp from a pair of long bamboo tweezers.

  “Freshly caught,” Brandt said. “I trap them in the rear garden with spring traps. It breaks their necks you see and kills them instantly. He’s quite dead now, so you needn’t worry. He won’t suffer.”

  The snake now uncurled from its ball and began to move across the terrarium floor, flicking its elastic tongue and raising its head into the air.

  “Hello, there, my good man,” Brandt said to it. “Ready for a bit of lunch, I hope?”

  “Is it dangerous?” Vera said.

  “He’s quite harmless, actually. His name is Terry, after pterodactyl.” He smiled. “I’ve always enjoyed that word—pterodactyl; something about that silent p. Ball pythons are among the most sweet- natured animals on the face of the earth, actually. Unless, of course, you’re a rodent. Then they’re rather deadly.”

  “Wherever did you find him?” Vera asked.

  “A dealer in London.” Brandt glanced at Lamb and smiled. “All quite legal, Chief Inspector, I promise.”

  Brandt now dangled the mouse, head first, into the terrarium. Terry moved very quickly toward it then stopped, almost as if confused. It flicked its tongue another time. Then it struck the mouse in a blur and wrapped its body round it. The killing movement was so sudden and quick that Vera found herself taking a step back from the terrarium and uttering, “Oh!”

  Lamb was growing impatient to return to the Wolseley. Even so, he found himself impressed by the display. “He’s quite fast,” he said. “Blindingly so.”

  “Oh, indeed,” Brandt said.

  He put the tweezers aside and replaced the top on the terrarium. He turned to Lamb and said. “Terry will take it from here. I’m ready to go and have a look at your car whenever you are, Chief Inspector.”

  SEVENTEEN

  AS THE TRIO DESCENDED THE HILL TO LAMB’S MOTORCAR, THE chief inspector took the opportunity to ask Brandt a few questions he hoped would tap into Brandt’s knowledge of Marbury, and perhaps some of its secrets.

  “How well do you know Janet Lockhart?” Lamb asked.

  “Rather well. She and her late husband were friends of my parents. I’ve known Janet all of my life in one way or another.”

  “Are you aware of the work she does at the sanatorium?”

  “Yes—though are you speaking of the spiritualism aspect as well?”

  “Yes. She has spoken to you about that, then.”

  “Oh, yes. She has several times offered to help me commune with my parents. But I’m afraid I don’t believe in that sort of thing.”

  “Do you think that her belief is genuine?”

  “Janet is a lovely woman who wouldn’t dream of hurting anyone or anything,” Brandt said. “But she has never quite gotten over the loss of her husband. You know how it is, Chief Inspector—we men tend to die off sooner than the women do, leaving many more widows than widowers. And when you throw in two major wars in a quarter century . . . well, you see what I mean. I know that what Janet does would strike many people as fraudulent but I have no doubt that she believes that she is doing the people who seek her out some good.”

  Lamb mentioned that he’d read the account of Lord Elton’s murder that Brandt had written for the Times. “You portrayed Lady Elton as not quite the victim that she seemed to convince everyone at the time she was,” he said.

  “Yes, well, some of the people whom I interviewed, particularly a few who had been on the staff of Elton House, painted a picture of her as someone who could be cruel and vindictive. The problem was, none of those people were called on to testify at her trial, though my guess is that if they had been they would have been reluctant to speak ill of her, for fear that it would ruin their chances of being hired elsewhere. Lord Elton also apparently possessed a hair-trigger temper. But the people to whom I spoke said they preferred him to Lady Elton. And they contradicted the story Lady Elton told at trial of her suffering abuse at the hands of her husband.”

  “The Ondine defense?”

  “Precisely. One of the women I spoke to, who had been a maid at Elton House, claimed that it was not Lord Elton but Lady Elton who seemed unusually fond of the story of Ondine. Indeed, she said Lady Elton kept a small statue depicting Ondine rising from the depths in their bedroom and that she rather treasured the thing, even though it was a cheap knockoff of a statue done by some nineteenth-century French sculptor or another.”

  “Did you attempt to track down Lady Elton for your story?”

  “Of course, but I had no luck. The general consensus since her release is that she went abroad and either changed her name or remarried and took her husband’s name. I did manage to track down the solicitors who acted on her behalf when she sold Elton House just after the war. But they refused to speak with me. The same maid who claimed that Lady Elton had an interest in the story of Ondine also claimed that she had been orphaned as a child and that she had a younger sister. Indeed, Lord Elton at some point had apparently been interested in the sister first, but once he got a gander at the future Lady Elton he changed his mind.”

  “You did not include that fact in your story.”

  “I was not able to entirely confirm the truth of it nor was I able to find out the younger sister’s name.”

  “Do you believe that she exists?”

  “I’m not really sure. But had I been writing a novel rather than a piece of journalism I certainly would have included her.”

  He smiled at Lamb. “I daresay you have access to sources that I did not as a mere hack writer looking to make a pound or two digging up the story of a salacious murder.”

  They were crossing the stone bridge and nearly to the car.

  “I also noticed that you made reference to a rumor at the time that Lady Elton had a lover who might have acted as her accomplice in the murder, but that no evidence of such a person ever came out,” Lamb said.

  “Yes.”

  “Have you a guess about who this mystery lover might have been?”

  Brandt sighed.

  “One hates to be a gossip—unless, of course, one is a gossip,” he said. “However, a lot of people speculated at the time that Lady Elton was having an affair with Alan Fox, though it’s possible, of course, that his name came up merely because he’s always had a reputation as an outsider in Marbury and a Lothario besides. I think people also are jealous of his wealth and the advantages it has given him. Alan has never had to work in the proper sense, you see. He’s always been an artist kept afloat by a private income that he himself did not earn, and most people don’t find that at all fair, I’m afraid.”

  “So he had a reputation as a ladies’ man, then?”

  “He did, yes.”

  “Does he still?”

  “I think that would depend upon who you ask.”

  “What’s your opinion?”

  “I don’t know, really. Alan has retreated from life in the village over the years, and it’s common knowledge that he drinks a bit too much; the only place anyone might find him with any regularity in Marbury is the Watchman. He’s become rather craggy and ill-kempt besides. Then again, some women—and particularly the younger ones—seem to find that sort of thing romantic. The struggling artist and the rest of it. Except that he’s not actually struggling and I suppose the jury is still out on whether he’s an artist. Alan tends to paint his life; if something happens to him, affects him in some way deeply, he tends to paint it. Not an exact reproduction of the event, of course. He is very allegorical and all the rest of it. But in the end, it’s Alan’s life as he has experienced it.”

  Vera had been listening with interest to her father’s interview of Brandt, and had not interrupted it. Now she spoke. “But wouldn’t you also describe yourself as kind of a struggling artist, Mr. Brandt?”

  “Oh indeed so,” Brandt said
. “Though I’m not so sure about the artist part in my case, either.” He looked at Vera and smiled. “My main problem, you see, is that I’m not nearly as handsome or as rich as Alan Fox.”

  EIGHTEEN

  WHEN THEY REACHED THE CAR, BRANDT OPENED THE WOLSELEY’S bonnet and began to poke round the motor, lifting this and that fitting or cap and tugging at the odd wire. When he was finished with this brief initial examination, he pulled a red handkerchief from his pants pocket, and began to wipe motor oil from his hands.

  “I think I see the problem,” he said. “It appears your distributor has bit the dust.”

  “Is that bad?” Vera asked.

  “It’s hardly ideal. But I can replace it with the one from my Wasp. I think it should work.”

  “I certainly wouldn’t expect you to cannibalize your own motorcar on my account,” Lamb said. “Though I appreciate the offer, certainly.”

  “Oh, please don’t worry about that, Chief Inspector,” Brandt said. “As I said, I haven’t driven the bloody thing in years anyhow and won’t be able to any time soon. Better that we get this one running.”

  Lamb decided that he had little choice but to take Brandt up on his offer. “I shall see that we get you a new distributor from our motor pool in Winchester as soon as possible,” he promised Brandt.

  “Not to worry, Chief Inspector, really. I’m glad to help.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Brandt,” Vera added. “You’re very kind.”

  “Oh, it’s nothing, really, Constable. It’s actually nice to have an excuse to leave my desk. I’m afraid I sometimes forget how interesting the outside world can be.”

  Lamb left Vera with the car along with instructions to drive it to Elton House once Brandt had repaired it—if indeed he repaired it. If not, she was to wait for him to return. In the meantime, she should seek out Harry Rivers, Cashen, or Wallace to inform them of the problem and that it was being addressed.

  Lamb decided he would ascend the trail to Elton House in the meantime, giving him an opportunity to explore the route Janet Lockhart had taken the previous morning. He believed he still had much to learn but a narrowing window of time in which to learn it. Soon someone might begin to feel pinched and try to make a decisive move, either to clear evidence they’d neglected to hide, silence a witness, or make a run for it.