Crooked Wreath

by Christianna Brand

  “You called me in yourselves,” said Cockrill, calmly. “You do want to get to the bottom of this affair, don’t you?”

  They all glared at Stephen. This was what came of Cockie “not fussing if there was nothing to fuss about.” Cockrill, however, gave his attention to his cigarette, standing on one foot to squash the stub out against the sole of the other shoe. He went on, as though there had been no interruption: “Well, so the woman handed you the tray, Lady March?”

  “Yes, she did, she came out on the terrace with it, and I took it straight from Bella and we went down to the lodge,” said Peta. She added triumphantly that the whole thing had been weighted down with vast great covered silver dishes, let alone china and glass and stuff, and that if Cockrill thought a person could balance a tray like that in one hand while they put poison on the food with the other, that was where he was wrong.

  Cockrill seized upon the only point that interested him. “Covered silver dishes?”

  “Yes, covered. So there, Bella darling, we couldn’t have squirted poison onto Grandfather’s food even if we’d wanted to.” She looked compassionately at Bella’s round face, all stained and quivering with tears, trying desperately to throw a little spirit into this horrible game of question and answer, to try to make it seem a game in truth, and not the deadly quicksand that it was.

  “What did you do, Peta, while your grandfather ate his supper?”

  “Well I–what did I do, Bella? You sat on the sill of the un-French window delivering your oration about his coming back to sleep at the house and not staying there alone, and I …” Her eyes grew wary, Cockrill knew that she was counting her words. “I rang up the house about his fountain pen. I told you about that, Cockie.”

  “Yes, and then?”

  “Well, actually the Turtle hadn’t dusted the telephone properly and my hands were quite dirty–nobody’d been in the lodge for a year, you see. I went into the kitchen and put my fingers under the tap; there wasn’t a cloth or anything in there, so I wished I hadn’t, and I had to dry them on the seat of my bathing-dress, which was horrid because it was still damp and nasty little bits of woolly fluff came off. Then I sat on the window sill with Bella and finally Grandfather was so cross and obviously hating us so much, that we rather tamely came away.”

  “Why was he so particularly inimical?”

  “Well, dash it, we were interrupting him in the middle of disinheriting us; or me, at any rate. And Bella was going on and on and on about his not sleeping at the lodge, in an uninterrupted monologue.”

  “Uninterrupted?” said Cockrill.

  Peta stared. “Yes, why not? You haven’t heard Bella when she’s really under way!” She smiled affectionately at Bella.

  “While you were in the kitchen for that minute or two, rinsing your hands, Lady March didn’t stop talking to Sir Richard?”

  “If you mean did she say, ‘Oh, just a minute, Richard, while I put a lot of poison on your food so that you won’t leave Swanswater and all Peta’s money to me,’ no, she didn’t. She just rambled on and on monotonously about his sleeping there alone, because I remember registering that if there was one way to make Grandfather do a thing, it was to keep badgering him not to.”

  Cockrill stood looking at her with his bright little eyes, but not seeing her. Deep in thought, he wandered over to the window and stood there, turned away from them, his hands loosely clasped behind his stooping back, his fine head with its fluff of white hair outlined against the sunshine on the terrace outside. He turned back at last into the cool room with its grey and blue chintzes and tall white Adam mantelpiece, the portrait of Serafita in a white dress with pink gloves, dominating the whole from her vantage point over the fireplace. Edward thought in terror: “He’s going to ask me! He’s going to set on me!”

  But Cockrill attacked Ellen next, and knew again that they were resisting him, that they were all sitting taut and wary, watching him, waiting for any discrepancy in the evidence that afterwards they must support or evade. “I thought I would have a few words with Sir Richard,” said Ellen, coolly, “and try and make him change his mind. I thought it was all exaggerated and stupid; I thought if only one of us would admit to him that we’d behaved badly and we were really sorry, he’d drop the whole show. I thought he was just–just dramatizing himself. I thought I’d just go down and tell him it was simply silly.”

  “That would have been a great help!” said Claire.

  “You should know,” said Ellen, sweetly.

  Would Ellen stand by him, by Edward, like the rest of the family? After all, she wasn’t really one of them. Why should she lie, why should she risk trouble by sticking up for him, by saving him from the consequences of what, however unknowingly, he had done. He knew that Ellen was fond of him, that though she had laughed at his proud pretensions to psychosis, she had always had a soft spot for him in her generous heart; but to lie and cheat and try to trick the police–and perhaps be found out … But Ellen was saying steadily: “I watched from the balcony window of my room till I saw Bella and Peta come away from the lodge, and I crossed with them, on the lawn. I didn’t want to make a family party of it; the quarrel had all originally been about my affairs and I thought I’d better talk to Sir Richard alone. But he wouldn’t respond. The truth is that he didn’t want to respond; he was thoroughly enjoying his Disappointed Grandfather act.”

  Bella opened her mouth to protest. Just because things were true was no reason for putting them so crudely into words. But she did not know what reason Ellen might have for doing so, what subtle building up of “atmosphere” for Edward’s sake. She remained silent. Ellen, who was simply remarking upon what she believed to be the fact, continued with her story. “Sir Richard was thoroughly cross and I saw it was all no use, so I came away. I met Edward on the–on the lawn, and walked back to the house with him.”

  “Edward was going to see his grandfather, was he?” asked Cockrill, looking round at the boy as he sat huddled in his chair. (Why should they all give a little gasp, and glance at him, and turn away?) Ellen said, a little bit too quickly, that Edward had been coming down for no other reason than to walk back with her. It had been nearly dinner time. “Wasn’t it, Edward?”

  “I suppose it was, as far as I remember,” said Edward, ungraciously.

  “So we just walked back, talking, and then he went and joined the family,” said Ellen rather underlining the words, “and I ran upstairs to dress. I still had on only my bathing-dress.” She sketched its outline, a brassiere and tiny trunks.

  The family relaxed. “Why don’t they tell him right out that they’re protecting me?” thought Edward, bitterly, watching their naïve reaction to every hurdle successfully negotiated. “Do they think they’re deceiving him for a moment? They’re making things worse, much worse!”

  “Edward–had you gone into the house before you went down to the lodge?”

  “Towards the lodge,” corrected Bella, quickly. “He never went to the lodge.”

  The Inspector lifted an ironical eyebrow. “Very well, Edward, when you went towards the lodge.”

  “I’d been in to change,” said Edward. He added, an edge of hysteria to his voice: “I suppose you mean had I had an opportunity of taking the poison from Philip’s bag?”

  “I think any of us had that much opportunity,” said Claire, smoothly, drawing Cockie’s attention away from Edward, and onto herself and all of them. “The French windows of the drawing-room were open all day, and most of us were in and out of the house during the afternoon; we spent about half the time in the hall, to our great fury, ringing up Stephen Garde, disinheriting ourselves.”

  “I see. And you, Claire,” said Cockrill, “you didn’t go down to the lodge at all at this time?”

  “Well, no I didn’t,” said Claire, quite apologetically, for it narrowed down the circle of possible suspects to appear to exculpate herself. She added hurriedly that she had come into the house, away from the rest of them, that was–at about nine o’clock.

>   “But the paths had been sanded by then? We could have seen if you’d been up to the French window?” Cockrill had glanced at the other two paths and found them innocent of footprints or of any marks whatsoever.

  “Yes, I suppose they had. Actually, I saw Brough coming away, presumably having just finished them.”

  Edward had seen him go across to the lodge to begin them. “He started at about twenty past eight.”

  The silence was terrible. Outside the hot sun glared down upon the white terrace, making a translucency of the thick linen of the blue and white summer curtains; but inside the drawing-room a. darkness seemed to have fallen; it was as though no light had touched there for untold years; a dankness enfolded them, sick and cold upon their vitals, laying upon their spines little horrible, shuddery hands. Cockrill said quietly: “How do you know? What were you doing at twenty past eight?” and Claire rose and went to the fireplace and stood there with her back to it, her hands clasped loosely before her, assuming, all unconsciously, the attitude of a child about to recite its party piece; and they knew that the moment had come, that she was going to tell The Lie.

  They had agreed among themselves that Claire should tell it; that Claire should be the one. She raised her beautiful blond head and looked Cockrill in the eye. “Brough always took about half an hour to do those paths, Inspector; Teddy only means that it would be about twenty or twenty-five past eight. Don’t you, Edward?” She did not wait for his mumbled acknowledgement but added, coolly: “Of course, we were all out on the back terrace, then, overlooking the river. Edward and all of us.”

  “She’s afraid,” thought Edward. “When you know a person’s voice so well as we know Claire’s, you can tell when she’s afraid. Will Cockie recognize it, too?” She stood very straight and lovely beneath the portrait, facing Cockrill; above her, Serafita posed on pink toe-points, and seemed by contrast with the desperate sincerity of the group below her, more artificial than ever, with her gloves and her garlands and her painted, simpering smile. Edward bit his lips, picking with his fingernails at the arm of the chair, his leg muscles taut with the strain of keeping still, of not jumping up and ending it all by shouting out the truth; that they thought he had done it, that he was mad, that he had killed poor Grandfather, not knowing what he did. That they were banded together to protect him, that Claire was telling nothing but a monstrous lie. Shaking, he watched her warily, telling the story they had agreed upon. “We all sat together on the back terrace between the time we finished dinner and the time we went to bed. Except for the ten or fifteen minutes I was in the house, tending the baby we were all together, sitting out there …”

  Cockrill gave her a long, level look. “You’re certain of this, Claire? The vital time is between twenty to eight when Ellen left your grandfather alive at the lodge, and twenty to nine when Brough began the sanding. You were definitely all together during that hour?”

  “Yes, Cockie,” said Claire. She gave him no time for consideration but went rapidly on with her story. “I came in at just about twenty to. As I passed the drawing-room I–I thought I would close the French windows for the night, because as we haven’t got any proper servants now they always get forgotten; so I went in and did it. Of course, the–the black-out hadn’t been done in there, and though it was sort of getting a bit dark by then, I didn’t like to switch on the lights …” They had not rehearsed this part carefully enough; she knew she was floundering in a morass of improbabilities. “Of course, I know it wasn’t black-out time, yet, Cockie, but you know how inhibited one gets these days, you hardly dare to switch on a light in broad daylight, do you? What with Major Lloyd George and the A.R.P. and things …”

  “Besides a little matter of there being no need,” said Cockrill, watching her face and hands, quietly registering the nervously increasing volubility, the unreadiness to come to a definite point.

  “Yes, that’s just what I’m saying … Well, and so … I’ve forgotten where I was,” said Claire, miserably.

  “You were in this room, my dear, where in spite of all these French windows and a bright, sunny evening at seven o’clock, God’s time, it was so dark that–so you are going to tell me, I think–you fell over a vase of flowers.”

  Claire gulped wretchedly, passing her tongue over her dry lips. “Well, I don’t say it was dark, of course not; only it was a bit dim when I had drawn the curtains, and I–yes, I tripped over the little table with the bowl on it, that’s all.”

  Cockrill was silent, flipping back the pages of his note-book. “I see. But half an hour ago you told me that you dropped the bowl.”

  “I can’t bear it,” thought Edward. “I can’t bear it, I can’t stand any more of this, it must end, it must come to an end, it mustn’t go on …” His hands tore at the linen covers of his chair, his feet drummed on the carpet, his face was deathly white and the roots of his hair were damp with sweat. “I’m mad, I’m mad and I can’t judge for myself, and I killed poor Grandfather and now Cockie has found out, now Claire has given it all away and Cockie has found out … And they’re all staring at me, they’re all sitting staring with their mouths half-opened like silly fishes, not saying anything, not doing anything … Why don’t they speak, why don’t they move, why are they all looking and looking and looking and looking at me …” He dragged himself to his feet and stood swaying, staring back at them with burning eyes and horribly shaking hands; and opened his mouth to cry out, to scream out that he was mad, that it was he, he who had killed Grandfather …

  Philip got up quietly from his chair, walked over to him, hit him across the face, and caught him as he fell.

  7

  BROUGH, THE GARDENER, was an exceedingly disagreeable old man. He had for many years been paid handsomely to live much about the same life as Sir Richard, the one in the big house at one end of Swanswater drive, the other in the little lodge at its gates; both ruling about equally over a large staff of under-gardeners, and only occasionally themselves pottering about the grounds doing a little spraying or pruning as the spirit moved them; both quarrelling heatedly over the credit for the roses, marrows, and apples which, with monotonous regularity were awarded the prizes for beauty, size, and profusion at all the local shows; and each heartily disliking and despising the other. The only difference between them was that Sir Richard was apparently content to continue to pay his gardener to insult and bully him, and Brough was not content with anything. He had never been beyond Heronsford, their nearest town, but, ignorant and illiterate, he yet gave his opinions on all subjects, unasked and at interminable length, and was the club bore of the Swan, the village hostelry. He had one joy in life, his small granddaughter, Rosy-Posy; and (since the time that Philip, by a perfectly routine treatment, had seen the child through a slight attack of tonsilitis) one pride and admiration–Philip. He boasted incessantly of the complexities of the case and of the extraordinary lengths to which “the Doctor” had gone to save Rosy-Posy’s life.

  Dark days, however, had fallen upon Brough. With the increasing rigour of the call-up, all his staff had been taken from him, and he found himself obliged to turn to and do some work at Swanswater. Sir Richard had proved unexpectedly stonyhearted, saying, when approached, that if Brough felt too old for the job, he had better retire and make room for a man strong enough to cope with such work as had to be kept going. Mrs. Brough, a gaunt woman, speechless, as must be anyone who lived with Brough, was now “helping out” at the house, and Brough dug and delved and grumbled as never before. He was only too ready to rest, leaning upon his spade and giving of his voluble best when, on the afternoon of Sir Richard’s death, the Inspector came down from the house to talk to him.

  Cockie, who loved a country pub, had before now been driven from The Swan, by the loquacity of Brough; but in his official capacity he stood it for just one minute. “Well, Brough, I haven’t got time to worry about your troubles with Sir Richard; they’re over now anyway, and,” he could not help adding maliciously, “I daresay you may not be at Swansw
ater much longer.” He pushed the new panama hat on to the back of his head, motioning with one nicotined finger at the lodge, and said abruptly: “Is it true that you sanded those paths last night?”

  “Nine o’clock I was working till,” said Brough, immediately, in a whining voice. “Had my bit of supper at eight o’clock all by myself, the wife being up at the ’ouse working her fingers to the bone for them as was born equal with us, I says, and by rights ought to be waiting on us, not us on them …”

  Cockrill, not unfamiliar with Brough’s ideas of an equal world, restrained himself from asking under what compulsion save that of cupidity Mrs. Brough was now working her fingers to the bone, and merely inquired as to the time she had gone up to the house the night before, and the time Brough had commenced the sanding of the paths.

  “Eight o’clock, she went up,” said Brough, grudgingly. “Quarter to eight the fambly ’as their meal and she goes and helps the old woman to wash up. Eight o’clock I got in from the–the garden, and she says, ‘I’ll put you out a bit of cheese and an onion to your bread,’ she says, ‘and you’d better ’ave a glass of beer, for I haven’t got the time now to make you a cuppa tea,’ and off she goes to the house. I ’as me supper and a read of the paper and I’m due to go down to The Swan at nine, for me fire watch; and suddenly I thinks to meself, ‘Dang it, I’ve still got them paths to finish, and the old beggar’ll carry on if they ain’t done tonight like ’e said’; and I see that it isn’t too late, I can just manage it; and that would be the end of the sand. Just went round, it did, and not a grain more have I got left. How the Council thinks I’m going to keep my paths nice if they don’t allow me no transport, they’d better explain to Sir Richard …”

  “Well never mind the Council now. You started this sanding at about twenty to nine, and ended it at nine. Mr. Garde tells me that you seemed to be just finishing when he came through the gates; and a minute or two later, Miss Claire saw you from a bedroom window. Now how do you do it? Do you rake the paths over first?”