Crooked Wreath

by Christianna Brand

  “Swanswater became my home. I wasn’t young any more, but I came to it eagerly and tremblingly as a young girl, anxious to live up to it, to make it all that he would wish; and found that what he wished was that I should make it a memorial to Serafita. I left my little house with all its bits and bobs of nonsense and its lovely, yellow-painted front door, where I’d been happy living my own life in my own way, and came to this great mansion as a servant to the memory of Serafita. There was no dusting to be done any more, no shopping, no little chores; here I was to sit back like a lady and my only task was to ‘do the flowers,’ to keep the vases filled–under Serafita’s portraits! To study Serafita’s recipes! To keep Serafita’s feast days and festivals; to see that nothing was moved from the place where Serafita had–probably quite carelessly–arranged it.” She pointed suddenly down to the long beds of roses, hanging their heavy heads, a-swoon with their own scent after the heat of the day. “Shall I tell you something? I hate roses! My mother died about this time of year, and all the flowers at her funeral were roses; I was a little girl then, and I’ve hated them ever since. But Serafita liked roses, and so there were roses, roses, in every inch of the garden, under and over and round every picture of her in the house … For fifteen years now, it’s been part of my–my stewardship–to fill with flowers I detested a home I was supposed to call mine!”

  There was another silence. Philip said, smiling at her, “Now that Grandfather’s gone, darling, we’ll have an orgy digging them up.”

  “No, that’s just it, Philip–we can’t have any orgies where Swanswater’s concerned. I owe everything I’ve ever had in my life to your grandfather; he brought me here to keep Swanswater a mausoleum to Serafita, and so it must be. I couldn’t not do it now, just because he isn’t here any longer to keep me to it. He was leaving it to Peta and Peta could have kept it as he wanted it, of course, and done no harm to her feelings; but I can’t. And yet, if it’s mine, I shall have to.” She said, suddenly, viciously, tearing at her foolish little lace-edged handkerchief: “I kill for possession of this place! I hate every stone of it! And if I inherit it, I’m chained to it forever.”

  Inspector Cockrill stood in the doorway of the house behind them, listening spellbound while the passionate voice went on and on, and he thought that if Bella had rehearsed this speech over–was it only four days?–she could hardly have done it better.

  Bella became immediately the considerate hostess; it was extraordinary to see the intensity die from her face leaving it merely round and pretty again, a face without fire or character, without more than a rather gentle, foolish charm. “Oh, Cockie–come and sit down. Would you like some coffee? I’m afraid this is rather cold, but one of the children will run in and get you some fresh.”

  Cockrill was very weary. “Do you know, Lady March, it would be rather nice. Is it a lot of trouble?”

  “No, indeed, Inspector. Peta, darling, you’ll go?”

  “I’ll come in with you,” said Claire, “and we can go and tend the baby at the same time.”

  Peta was offended by Claire’s determined preoccupation with Ellen’s baby, but mercifully forebore to start a wrangle. Edward, sitting on the balustrade, idly teasing Bobbin, the dog, said: “Poor Nell–will she hear the nine o’clock news? Life will be insupportable to her if she doesn’t.”

  To Philip the idea was intolerable that Ellen should be locked up; even in comfort, even with the nine o’clock news, even with instalments of the surgical case-history of the police sergeant’s wife. He said, turning away from it: “How are you getting on with the case, Inspector? We saw you fussing about down at the lodge.”

  “I was trying to see if one could get into the lodge from the front door, without leaving footprints,” said Cockrill, briefly, “and one couldn’t.”

  “Not by jumping?”

  “Well, it’s seven feet wide and no take-off.”

  “Bella, could you jump seven feet?” said Philip.

  “Well, I could try, I suppose,” said Bella. “And, of course, I’m suspect number thingummy. But the thing is this–I can just manage to picture myself doing it out of the lodge, after I’d killed Brough; but how surprised he’d have been to see me come leaping in, like a middle-aged kangaroo!”

  “Let’s all go down and try,” said Edward. “It would be fun. I bet I could jump in from the front door, to the sitting-room, Cockie! I bet I could!” His voice trailed off as he reflected that it might be better not to claim this particular accomplishment.

  Cockrill was quite pleased with the suggestion. He liked to get his suspects talking; if they all discussed the case, the murderer was obliged to join in or remain conspicuously silent–and sooner or later, among the innumerable intricacies of time and place, of lies told, of reservations made, of apparently careless suggestions deliberately put forward, was liable somewhere to take a false step. Despite his weariness, therefore, he agreed that it would be a good idea if, in the cool of the evening, they all went down to the lodge. “I’ve just had the p.m. report on Brough,” he said, as they trailed down the drive. “He definitely died of strychnine; nothing to show whether or not self-administered; the syringe was near his right hand. He’d been dead not more than two hours when I found him.”

  He had that day taken their evidence as to their movements during early hours of the morning, but none of them could pretend to any alibi but that of their own beds, which must, of necessity, be unsupported. Philip had been up suspiciously early but declared that the All Clear had woken him–though he had slept through the Alerts. “You all sleep like the dead,” said Claire. “The wretched things went on and off all night.” Like many other light sleepers, she could not prevent a slight suggestion of hoggishness in those more fortunate than herself.

  There had been coming and going and fingerprinting and photographing and measuring down at the lodge, but now the police had left it and only a solitary constable stood sentry inside the big iron Swanswater gates. Cockrill led the way up the path to the French window, only a day or two before so jealously guarded, but now giving pride of place to the dusty hall. It was horrible to see the smooth expanse of the tiles, with only the printed message; written there by a murderer–by one of themselves! But they did not, in their hearts, believe that–not really! The subconscious revolted against propositions put forward by the reasoning mind. There must be some other answer and that was all there was to it.

  As soon as you looked again at the hall, you saw that by no possible means could anyone have jumped across it, into or out of the sitting-room. The hall was seven feet across, the steps up to the front door prevented any take-off, and the inner door was set at an angle; and as for leaping out! “Among other things,” said Cockrill, indicating the floor just within the sitting-room door, with his toe. “A body, heaving in convulsions probably, was lying here. There’s no mat in the hall, and you’d have had to land on that narrow step outside; there was nothing in the path to suggest that anyone had scuffed it up, running up it and taking off, or tumbling onto it out of the door. We’ve tried it; my men reproduced the conditions, more or less, inside the French window, marking off a square to represent the hall. You can have a shot if you like, but you’ll only prove the same thing.”

  Philip and Edward had several shots; Peta also leaped, long legs flying, landing two feet short of the objective. “Quite right, Cockie, pet. It couldn’t be done.”

  “Yes, here are Brough’s footsteps walking inwards across the hall, and that’s all. How did the murderer get in, and how did he get out?”

  “I suppose somebody could have stepped in his footprints,” suggested Claire, tentatively.

  “Not Edward or me,” said Philip. “Our feet are just as big.”

  “Claire’s only showing off because her own feet are smaller than ours,” said Peta.

  “You ought to be jolly thankful they are,” said Claire, crossly. “Otherwise Cockie might suggest that you’d walked in my footprints up to the French window and killed Grandfather.”


  “How could I, you fool, considering that they were made just before you found him dead, when he’d already been killed hours before?”

  “Children, children!” said Bella.

  “Well, Claire’s such a show-box!”

  “You’re just jealous, that’s all,” said Claire, trying to laugh it off; but, honestly, Peta behaved like a spoilt child sometimes, and just because she wanted to look after Antonia all the time. “After all, if Philip hadn’t met Ellen soon after he came home, and before he really had time to get to know me,” thought Claire, “Antonia might have been mine.” The bitter grievance flowed like poison through her veins, bursting out in a hundred ugly little sores.

  The rest of the party ignored a mere feminine outburst of cattery. “I’ll tell you what, Cockie,” said Edward. “Suppose the murderer never did come in! Suppose he just gave Brough a jab with the hypodermic and pushed him in, and these are Brough’s footsteps staggering through the hall?”

  “Then how did the murderer write the ‘confession’ in the dust?” said Philip.

  “Oh. Well, that’s a bit of a stinker, isn’t it? Perhaps he–perhaps he had a long stick,” cried Edward, triumphantly, “and wrote it terribly carefully, upside-down! Leaning in from the front door, I mean!”

  “Hardly,” said Cockrill. “The letters were small and thin and neat; just as though they’d been made with a matchstick, which, in fact, I think they were. There was no juggling about, no little marks that the stick would have made–it would have had to be at least eight feet long! Think how much control you’d have over a thin stick of that length. And don’t forget that all this took place in the dark, or at least the semi-dark. Oh, I know it was bright moonlight, and anyway round about dawn; but there wouldn’t be much light in the hall. And they wouldn’t dare to use a torch, not with police about on the watch.”

  “A lot of good your police did us, Cockie! What a rotten outfit!”

  “I had a man on, patrolling,” said Cockrill, mildly. “But this is a big place, and we’re very short of chaps, with everyone away at the war. I’ll pass on your comments to the constable concerned, Peta; but I’m afraid they’ll be rather lost in the rush. I bet he hopes he’ll never be on a murder case again; and he needn’t worry–he won’t!” he added grimly.

  Peta’s kind heart melted. “Oh, Cockie, the poor pet; don’t be so fierce! Is it that nice one with the funny nose? Poor lamb, he couldn’t really help it, I don’t expect–not having a funny nose I don’t mean, but not seeing Brough being murdered; I mean, if he was at the back of the house, it would take him ages to go round and he could easily miss what was going on at the lodge. Do let him off, Cockie! Tell him I pled with you for him, and that for my sake you’ll forgive him!”

  Claire was worn out. The drama of the morning’s discovery had been hideous to her, her grandfather’s funeral a terrible strain, and she knew all too well that in his anxiety over Ellen’s imprisonment, Philip’s love for his wife was returning; that her own hopes of keeping him, were slipping away. She felt she could not endure another minute of Peta being sentimental and silly about the police constable, flapping her hands and treating Cockie (and the attendant Stephen) to a display of pretty blandishment, the sweet, the tender-hearted, the considerate, the all-forgiving one … She said irritably: “Oh, Peta, don’t put on the pot, not at this stage, for heaven’s sake; we’ve got enough to bear! The man was here to guard us and he failed in his duty. If Cockie thinks he should be punished, surely that’s good enough for us.”

  Inspector Cockrill was a past master at the art of prodding into flame the damped-down fires of nervous irritability, of fanning to a blaze the embers of shock and restraint and strain. He said, shrugging: “You talk as though I were a sort of nursery governess to the constabulary of Heronsford. What do you want me to do, Peta–give him back his toffee apple?”

  “Well, but the poor sweet …”

  “Don’t take any notice of her, Cockie! Who’s showing off now, I should like to know?”

  “What on earth’s the matter with you, Claire? Can’t I just say I’m sorry for the poor man?”

  “For God’s sake,” thought Claire, “why should I suddenly crack on this idiotic little point?” But she was beyond control, and she leapt to her feet with a gesture of final exasperation. “Oh, Peta, don’t be so sickeningly affected!”

  “Claire, Claire!” cried Bella, flapping her hands.

  The fire began to burn; everywhere the dry, frayed sticks caught and kindled, as chafed nerves sought comfort in speech, as muscles too long tautened, relaxed into gesture, as hands deliberately steadied, trembled unregarded. “Honestly, Claire …” “Well, damn it all, Peta …!” “Anyone would think …” “Why don’t you say straight out …?” Cockrill darted to and fro like an evil spirit, throwing fresh fuel to the flames.

  “You don’t suggest, Claire, that Peta isn’t distressed about these murders …? But do you mean, Peta, that you think Claire was concerned in your grandfather’s death? But, Doctor, Claire has just said … But, Lady March, Peta insists … But, Edward, my dear boy, your cousins are accusing each other …”

  “Just because of this idiotic business about my fingerprints, Claire, you think you can say these terrible things to me? I tell you, I don’t know why my fingerprints weren’t on the telephone. I picked it up with my bare hands, just in the ordinary way. Didn’t I, Bella? You were there, Bella, you can say what I did. Could I possibly have worn gloves or any nonsense like that?”

  “Peta dear, Claire hasn’t suggested …”

  “Yes, she has. Just because she couldn’t have done it herself, she thinks she can lightly accuse other people of it. Well, if you ask me, Claire, you’re the one and only person in this family who might have done it! I wouldn’t believe it of Bella or Edward or Philip, not if I’d seen them doing it with my own eyes; but as for you …”

  “For heaven’s sake, you fool, do you think I would kill Grandfather for the sake of three or four thousand miserable pounds?”

  “Yes, I do, if you wanted it badly enough. You never think of anyone but yourself.”

  “Well, will you explain why I should want it at all? I’ve got a job and I don’t owe a penny in the world, and strange though it may seem to your evil mind, I’m not even being blackmailed!”

  “You’ve got a job for the moment, but only because all the decent journalists are in the forces. Good Lord, after all these years in Fleet Street, you hadn’t even enough pull to get us a little peace and quiet in all this filthy publicity! As soon as the men get home from the war, you’ll be out on your ear–and then what?”

  This was too shrewd a blow for Claire to essay to contradict it, but the very truth stung her to further fury. “Just because I don’t choose to lower my standards, to write vile grammar and hateful snappy paragraphs. And, anyway, the same goes for you … Being a V.A.D. now, doesn’t mean you’ll be able to earn a living after the war, it counts for nothing, absolutely nothing, in proper nursing; so what will you do if you find you’re cut out of Grandfather’s will? God knows you never earned a penny until you had to join the Red Cross, to dodge the services or munitions …”

  “Of course, there’s the likelihood of your both marrying,” suggested Cockie, sweetly, scattering powdered dynamite.

  Peta just lifted one eyebrow.

  It was not prettily done, but both of them were far beyond consideration of good manners or good feeling. In both, the deeply running blood of their grandmother welled up to the surface; that little hot-blooded hybrid, whose much advertised poise and control had risen always and only from indifference.

  In vain Bella wept and interceded; Edward, ruefully grinning, tried to inject placatory facetiæ; Philip and Stephen sat white and ashamed, each on the arm of a chair in the little sitting-room.

  “… and at least I’m not frittering my youth away hanging round the neck of a man who doesn’t want me,” finished Claire, passionately, at the end of a two-minute tirade.

>   “You–you insufferable little beast!”

  “You sneering little show-off!”

  “You murderess!”

  “If either of us is a murderess, Peta, it’s you, for the simple reason that it can’t be me!”

  “Oh, can’t it?”

  “No, it can’t.”

  The family burst into deprecatory beseeching. Cockrill said: “How do you suggest, my dear Peta, that Claire could have killed your grandfather?”

  “I couldn’t have; she can’t!”

  Peta stood looking about her wildly. “You could have! You were the one who’d have liked to, and you did–you could have! I don’t know how but–my God, Cockie, I do see now; I can see now how she could have done it! Claire, you did, you did kill him, poor Grandfather! You little beast, you little murderess, you did, you killed him!” She burst into tears.

  Claire faced her, white and shaking dreadfully. “How could I? You know perfectly well I never went near the lodge that night; you saw for yourself my one line of footsteps up to the window and my one line of footsteps running back, as I made them that morning.”

  “As you made them the night before,” said Peta.

  There was an utter silence. Claire spoke at last, and now her voice was much quieter, and only her little hands hung twitching at her sides. “What do you mean, Peta?”

  “I mean that you made the footprints the night before,” said Peta, stifling her tears, speaking almost in a whisper. “Just after nine o’clock; after you’d seen to the baby. There’d have been time then; you were away for twenty minutes or more while we were all listening to the news out on the back terrace; the Turtle and Mrs. Brough would be safely in the kitchen, and Brough had gone off to his fire watching. The paths had been sanded. You–you took the poisons out of Philip’s bag–Stephen interrupted you when you were in the drawing-room doing it, and you were startled and knocked over the vase. It all fits together like a piece of machinery. You ran across the lawn and then walked carefully up the path to the window; of course, Grandfather let you in, and you told him some story and he let you give him an injection; you probably said that Philip thought he ought to have something to do his heart a little good, as he was staying alone down there; then you–yes, you got the glass from the kitchen, or if Grandfather had already got it, you only noticed it, but anyway, you put a drop of coramine in there to muddle things up; just like you to be so cool and uncaring, Claire–you never really loved poor old Grandfather! Perhaps you knocked against the telephone–anyway, you had to wipe it. And then, finally, you drew back the curtain. That’s always been a mystery; who drew back that curtain, and why it was done. It was done for a jolly good reason; you wanted to see in, the next morning … Then you ran away down the path, leaving your footsteps going up the path and coming down again; it was you who carefully drew Philip’s attention to them the next morning! You said they were the footprints you’d just made; but they weren’t–you’d made them the night before. You stood on the drive, twenty feet away and looked in at the window, to where Grandfather was sitting, dead … You never went near the lodge that morning at all!”