Crooked Wreath

by Christianna Brand

  “Rake ’em over? Of course not,” said Brough with the ineffable contempt of the ignoble mind for those not familiar with its own little specialty. “I rolls ’em, Mr. Cockrill, rolls ’em! Matter of fact, I rolled these paths earlier in the evening; then last thing, I only had to smooth ’em out with the back of me rake and scatter a fresh lot of sand over the top of the lot.”

  “So in point of fact you do rake them,” said Cockrill with a touch of triumph.

  Brough raised his eyes to heaven in mute appeal that he be preserved from those who persisted that to use a rake was necessarily to rake. “Do you rake them (whether with the teeth or the back of the rake) after you’ve sanded the paths?”

  Brough cast up his eyes again. “I’ll thank you for a civil answer, Brough,” said Cockrill, irritated. “Do you or do you not rake or roll or smooth the paths, after the new top-coat of sand has been scattered?”

  “No,” said Brough.

  “If anything, any roller or garden tool had passed over them since you scattered the sand, could you tell?”

  “Yes,” said Brough. “And nothing has.” He added, acutely: “You mean could anyone have covered up their footsteps by tidying the path after theirselves? Well, the answer is, no, they couldn’t. These paths are just as I left them last night, except for Miss Claire’s footsteps here, and the mark of the tray; and her footsteps and the doctor’s, running up the side of the path, there. The path to the front door and the path to the back door hasn’t been touched. Those doors is kept locked and nobody uses them, even when the old man is at the lodge. And what’s more,” said Brough, anticipating Cockrill’s next question, “if you think the paths may have been walked on and then sanded over again, I can tell you that that won’t work neither, because when I’d finished last night, that was the last grain of sand in the place. If the Council thinks …”

  “All right, all right, we’ve had all that before.” He stood looking at the rose beds, closely encircling the little house. “Nobody could push a way through these–avoiding the paths, that is–without tearing their clothes to bits, could they?”

  “They couldn’t do it without tearing the rose trees to bits, that’s the thing,” said Brough. He took a rake and thrust it, horizontally between a couple of bushes; a shower of petals fluttered to the ground. “They’re all ready to fall; only that it was such a still, close night, they’d be all over the bed. But as it is …” The soil beneath the trees was free of more than half a dozen petals, here and there. “Nobody pushed no way between them trees last night,” said Brough.

  “No,” said Cockrill. He dismissed the man and sent a constable up to the house for a pair of shoes belonging to each of the family. “Try and get the ones Miss Claire March was wearing last night …”

  Stephen Garde, turning in at the lodge gates, found Cockrill squatting unselfconsciously in the centre of the sanded path, poking at one of the prints with a stick. “Hallo, Inspector? Playing at Robinson Crusoe?”

  Cockrill got to his feet, bending down to rub his aching knees. He ignored Stephen’s little jokes. “Mr. Garde, exactly what time did your man hand Sir Richard the draft of the will?”

  “He says it was about quarter to seven. He spoke to Brough, who told him that Sir Richard was sitting at his desk at the French window, and he went round and handed the envelope to Sir Richard; he says Sir Richard put it in a drawer of the desk.”

  “This man o.k.? Has he been long with your firm?”

  “Thirty or forty years,” said Stephen. “That’s all. If you’re suggesting, Inspector, that Briggs murdered Sir Richard because he just couldn’t bear to draft out any more wills, I must remind you that several of the family saw Sir Richard alive afterwards …”

  “Thank you,” said Cockrill. “You’re most helpful. However, I don’t think we need trouble much about Briggs, I must say.”

  Stephen asked the question that was uppermost in his mind. “Anything turned up about this missing poison?”

  “No, nothing. My men are searching the place from top to bottom, the house and the grounds; but there’re acres of it, indoors and out! Of course, nobody admits seeing the stuff after it was shown to them all and put back into the bag.” He looked Stephen straight in the eye. “Between you and me, Garde–there’s very little doubt that this is a case of murder, and by one of the family.” He dropped his eyes, fumbling with the inevitable cigarette. “I’m sorry about it; I hate it–but there it is.”

  “Somebody could have come in from outside,” suggested Stephen uncertainly. “The old boy was a bit peppery; he must have had some ill-wishers.”

  Cockrill tossed away the match. “Don’t fool yourself, my dear boy. The family and the gardener were on the front terrace practically the whole of the afternoon or in the garden on this side of the house; who do you suppose took the risk of walking in, in broad sunny daylight, going straight to a bag he couldn’t have known was in the drawing-room, and selecting from the bag two drugs which he couldn’t have known were there?”

  “The family didn’t know that the strychnine was there.”

  “The family had time to look for it. The family could have gone to the bag for the other stuff, and noticed the strychnine and taken that also. I must say,” admitted Cockrill, “the disappearance of that strychnine makes me feel sick.” He stopped and then said, abruptly: “What’s your opinion of Edward Treviss? All this psychological twaddle, I mean.”

  Stephen was horrified by the obvious train of thought. “You’re not trying to pin anything on that poor kid?”

  “I’m not trying to pin anything onto anybody. But I’m frightened.” He drew deeply on his cigarette and flung the stub on the ground and stamped on it. “Leaving aside all question of Sir Richard’s death, somebody in this house has a lethal dose of strychnine in his possession; and somebody in this house is supposed to be not responsible for his actions. Supposing that boy is really mad! Supposing there has already been one murder!” He turned away towards the lodge and seemed about to resume his work on the footsteps in the sand. “I can’t do anything about it,” he said. “I can’t just shove the boy somewhere to keep him from doing some mischief. I must just work and work to find out what really did happen, and be able to present a case for having him put away …”

  “If he’s unhinged; but, of course, he may not be …”

  “Just as you like,” said Cockrill, impatiently. “If he isn’t, then Lady March or Peta or Claire or Philip or Philip’s wife–one of those five–is a cruel and calculating murderer. You pays your money and you takes your choice.” And he put his small brown hand suddenly on Stephen’s shoulder. “This is no time for sentimentality; there’s hideous, horrible danger in the air …”

  Up at the house, Claire and Peta came across Edward, poking about among the plants in the conservatory. “What on earth are you doing, Teddy?”

  “Looking for the poison,” said Edward. After a moment, he added: “I thought perhaps I–if I took it, I might have hidden it somewhere here. It seems a good place.”

  “If you … Oh, Edward darling,” said Claire, almost running to him, putting her arm about his shoulders, “of course you didn’t take it, of course you haven’t got the beastly stuff. Don’t get such dreadful ideas into your head …”

  He looked at her rather pathetically. “I may have taken it; and if I have and then I suddenly go and have another fugue or something–I might do something terrible with it. I might go and poison one of you . . .”

  Tears filled Peta’s eyes. “Oh, sweetie, don’t! And don’t be frightened and worried, darling. I’ll tell you what, just in case you have got it, we’ll all be most frightfully careful, we’ll all take special care that you don’t go and poison us …” She tried to make light of it, to make a little joke of it, while yet reassuring his mind; but the truth was horrible and his awareness of the truth. “Cockie’s men have looked in here, anyway; if the stuff’s hidden anywhere, they’ll find it, don’t you worry!” She glanced through the glassed wal
l to where Stephen was talking to Cockrill, down by the lodge. “There’s Stephen; let’s all go down and talk to him and get in Cockie’s way!”

  Cockrill was fitting shoes into the footprints and laying them aside. Philip’s and Claire’s tallied with the marks leading up to the window on the left-hand side of the path. “Anyway, those two alibi each other,” said Stephen, standing by, watching him.

  “There’s such a thing as collusion. However, I don’t really suspect it in this case. Ellen March,” said Cockrill, abruptly, “was the last to see Sir Richard alive.”

  “Except Brough, of course,” said Stephen.

  Cockrill had had very little time on the case as yet, and all of it amply occupied. He had not really got as far as that, but he said quickly: “Except Brough, of course,” and called the gardener over again. “When you were doing these paths just before nine, last night–could you see Sir Richard at his desk?”

  “No, I couldn’t,” said Brough, glancing at Stephen and pushing his cap slightly further back on his head, presumably by way of salute.

  “He wasn’t at his desk?”

  “I don’t know whether he was or not,” said Brough, for some reason rather aggressive. “The curtain was drawn across the winder.”

  “The curtain? The curtain of the French window was drawn?”

  “Yes, it was. It was drawn across when I come out to do the paths at twenty to nine.”

  “I see. Very well.” Peta and Claire, with Edward, came down from the house, and he called them over. “Claire? Good, just the person I was wanting …” He dismissed Brough. “Now, Claire, I want you to put on these slippers–these things you were wearing last night, I understand? Now, try walking up the path here in your own footsteps, will you?”

  Claire walked delicately up the path, balancing with some difficulty, placing her feet in the first four or five prints in the sand. At each step, however, the marks of her shoes failed to coincide exactly with those made before. “Try tiptoeing,” said Cockrill.

  Claire’s slippers were wedge-heeled, solid between toe and heel. It was virtually impossible to tip-toe in them, and certainly to do so steadily, keeping the toe marks within the marks made previously. “So that’s that, Cockie, isn’t it?” said Peta, standing looking on.

  “Yes,” said Cockrill. “And since Claire’s feet seem to be by far the smallest in the family, her footprints can’t cover anybody else’s, even in the event of her having wanted them to.”

  “I don’t see what Cockie’s trying to prove,” said Edward, who appeared to have developed the notion that Cockrill could not suspect him of lunacy or murder, if in the detective’s presence he invariably spoke sulkily, in a low mumble, and without much intelligence.

  “He thinks I could have made the prints last night,” said Claire, “when I left you all to go and tend the baby, and then walked in them again this morning when I went up to the window. But even if I could,” she said to Cockrill, “even if I could have covered the prints this morning, by walking very slowly and carefully up the path, which I admit I did because I was carrying the tray, and looking where I was going–I could hardly have covered the same ones coming back, because I actually ran back down the path after I saw Grandfather, as you could tell if you were a Red Indian and used to tracking.”

  “I can tell without being a Red Indian and used to tracking, thank you, Miss,” said Cockrill.

  It was very inconsiderate of Claire to have such little feet, that was all, because it meant that she and only she had been up that path, and not till this morning when her prints had been made. And the other paths were innocent of footmarks, and in any event, the doors to the lodge were closed. And nobody could possibly have pushed a way through the roses–that was more than obvious. Just by brushing her hand against them, Peta herself had brought down a shower of petals, the day before. So what it all boiled down to was this: that at a quarter to seven Grandfather had been seen alive by Stephen’s clerk; that after the sanding of the paths at a quarter to nine, nobody could have gone near him; that if indeed he had been murdered, he had been murdered within those two hours. At about ten past seven, she, Peta, and Bella had been with him, and after that Ellen had seen him; and then–then Edward had had that evil twenty minutes alone away from them all … And Cockie was looking at Edward with that beady, bright eye of his, and Stephen was hateful and stern and thought only of what one ought to do to comply with his stupid old law, and nothing of protecting people whom he was supposed to love, or doing anything for a–a person who had thought she loved him. And everything was beastly and horrible, and what was most horrible of all was that Grandfather was dead; was lying all crooked up in a sitting position, intolerably grotesque, in some cold, friendless mortuary, there to be forcibly straightened out that he might the more conveniently be slit down the middle to find out whether one of his nearest and dearest had murdered him … Grandfather was dead, who had been so splendid in his benevolent autocracy; and all his family could think about was who had killed him and why and by what means. The world had gone mad around them, there was no longer any room for ordinary grief and tenderness, remorse and regret … Grandfather dead, was forgotten in Sir Richard March, murdered. It was an arid and terrible thing to have no room left for sorrow.

  Bella was up at the house wretchedly struggling with all the pitiful aftermath of death: the letters, the telegrams, the phone calls, the notice in The Times–how did one announce the death of a man whom the police suspected of having been murdered?–the polite insistence of the authorities in the matter of the post-mortem, the inquest, the possible postponement of tentative funeral arrangements. Tearful and helpless, Bella found, unexpectedly, a rock of strength in Ellen, whose brusque intolerance of sentimental muddle and delay cut like a scythe through her fluttering indecisions.

  “Well, just put ‘died at his residence,’ Bella. After all, it’s true, it’s what happened, he has died, and this is his residence; at least houses are always called residences when people die in them. Date? No, you can’t possibly give a date because the police say that the funeral may be held up; well, but what’s the use, Bella? You’ll only have to cancel it later. Dinner? Yes, of course the old hag must get us some dinner; we hardly had any lunch, and people must eat, my dear; it’s just one of those things. Well, all right, darling, you may not feel like food but … No, they’re not heartless, it’s simply that … Oh, Lord! that telephone again!”

  Philip hung about moodily, trying to help but mostly getting in the way. Claire, returning from the lodge with the others, suggested to him as though carelessly: “Why not come out into the garden for a bit, and give it a rest? We’ll walk down by the river.”

  Philip looked doubtful. “What about you, Nell? Would you like to come out and get some sunshine and air?”

  Ellen, however, was busily addressing envelopes in her great dashing hand, and hardly looked up. “No, thank you! To play gooseberry to my own husband would really be a bit too much.” And she thought with deep bitterness that it was just like Claire to come in, cool and beautiful, from the garden, looking all soulful, and sweep Philip away from the horridness and drudgery which she, Ellen, had rightly kept him to, thus deliberately drawing attention to her own crumpled, hot yellow linen, and the hardness of her heart. In this she did an injustice to Claire, who looked only inwards and reflected very little upon the effect of her dealings on other people. She pretended now to not to have heard Ellen, but Philip, following her down the back terraces and across the grass to the little copse by the river’s edge, said nervously: “I don’t know why you wanted to go and suggest this. You’ve upset Ellen now.”

  Claire stopped, looking stricken. “Oh, no!–do you think I have? I–I’ll go back, shall I? I’ll go back and say she must come; I’ll tell her that we really do want her … Which is perfectly true; I mean, Philip, because, of course, I’d like her to come just for the walk …”

  Philip caught at her arm and pulled her on. “For heaven’s sake, no, don’t star
t another scene.”

  If Claire could not have a scene with Ellen, she would have one here and now with Philip; she was in the state of nervous anxiety that cried for an outlet. “You seem very tender of Ellen’s feelings, all of a sudden.”

  “Just because she laughs and doesn’t make fusses, it needn’t necessarily mean that she doesn’t feel things.”

  Claire looked reproachfully, drooping her exquisite lower lip. “That’s not what you said when you–when we started all this … And it’s a bit late now …”

  “Yes,” said Philip, “it’s too late now.”

  They had passed into the wood, out of sight of the house. She stopped and faced him, looking up at him. “What do you mean by that, Philip–‘too late now?’ Are you regretting things already? Are you sorry that we fell in love?” Her beautiful mouth worked and twisted, and for the first time he knew, for a fleeting second, what Ellen meant when she said that Claire “made faces”: but the moment passed. “Claire, don’t be unkind, darling, don’t let’s be unkind to each other, for God’s sake, when everything else is so awful and horrible.”

  The corn-coloured head came just up to his heart. “Oh, Philip, my love!” At her voice, at the weight of her clinging and the suppliance of her hands, a flame ran through him; a flame of something worthier than mere physical longing, a passion of tenderness and protectiveness because she was so deeply vulnerable with her craving for love and compassion, because she was tender and satisfying in the love and compassion she gave. “Oh, Claire–we’re two wretched people not knowing what on God’s earth to do about it all …”

  “When all this is over, darling, all this nightmare about Grandfather’s death, we shall be able to go away and be together …”

  He was troubled, he put her a little away from him. “We ought not really to be–like this–in the middle of all this tragedy and mystery and muddle … And suppose the will never turns up …”