“And your idea is that instead of putting in two pills, Miss Smith shoved in a round dozen or so, is it? She always made the Bovril, did she?”
“Not exactly. The cook made it downstairs, and then Andrews, the parlour maid, brought it up when she served the after-dinner coffee and left it ready on a gas ring in Mrs Ffeathers’ bathroom. But I think we can assume the stuff was all right when it was put in Mrs Ffeathers’ bathroom. I’ve checked and rechecked on that, and it seems clear enough that no one was alone with it till then. It was a busy night in the kitchen, the cook was making coffee, the kitchen maid brewed up the Bovril on the stove right beside her. I suppose she might have slipped some pills in under the cook’s nose, but she’d have been lucky if she’d got away with it; and I’m damned if I can think up a motive for her. Then she gave the saucepan to Andrews, who put it on the coffee tray and took it upstairs, accompanied by the butler who held the door of Mrs Ffeathers’ bathroom open for her and watched her put the saucepan on the gas. If you ask me, they then paused for a spot of flirtation, but that doesn’t invalidate their evidence.”
“Not necessarily. But the Bovril was then left in an empty room?”
“No. That was our first real stroke of luck. Someone had spilt a great patch of ink in Mrs Ffeathers’ room and after she served the coffee Andrews went back there – still accompanied by the faithful butler – and worked at getting it out until the party came upstairs. Again, I think you could prove that they took rather longer over it than was necessary, but you can’t for a minute convince me they spent the time putting pills into the Bovril.”
“No; I admit it’s an unlikely occupation for a courting couple. And when the party came up?”
“They all came together” – Harris was warming to his climax – “and no one – I tell you no one – went into that bathroom till Miss Smith went to get the Bovril.”
“Could she be seen from the room?”
“No, she was behind the open door. I’ve tried, of course, with them all where they sat that night, and no one could possibly have seen her, except, perhaps, Miss Priscilla Ffeathers, but she was busy pouring tea and says she didn’t notice a thing.”
“Tea? I thought you said coffee.”
“That was earlier. The tea was by way of a night cap; and to judge by some of their expressions, not too popular a one.”
“They indulged in tea while the old lady swigged away at her brandy and Bovril. Did she drink it at once, by the way?”
“No, it was on the table beside her for quite a bit – in fact, when she did drink it, she complained it was cold. But you’re not going to tell me anyone dropped in a handful of pills in the middle of that crowded room are you? The only person who had a ghost of a chance was Miss Priscilla Ffeathers who sat by the old lady pouring tea, but she had nowhere she could have carried them; the ladies were all in evening dress.”
“Hadn’t she a bag?”
“No, she hadn’t. I got the impression she was a bit hard up – Mrs Ffeathers kept some of them pretty short of cash – and just hadn’t got an evening one. The girl who searched her room said she hadn’t a thing she could have carried with the dress she wore.”
“Nobody else went near the cup?”
“I wouldn’t put it quite so strongly as that. Various people went over to talk to the old lady in the course of the evening: Joseph Ffeathers, Mrs Brigance, her son Mark Brigance and Seward Ffeathers, but so far as I can work it out somebody was watching each of them all the time. It stands to reason the old lady would be the centre of attention and anyone who went over to talk to her would be watched – casually, you know, but they wouldn’t have had a chance of doctoring her drink. Besides, what about her? Everyone agrees she was sharp as they come – don’t you think she’d have noticed?”
“Yes.” Crankshaw’s heart sank within him. Not, he hastened to reassure himself, that there was the slightest chance Patience could have done it, but she had certainly managed to get herself into an extraordinarily uncomfortable position.
“You could see at once they all thought she’d done it,” Harris was summing up triumphantly. “They didn’t want to say anything, but I got it out of them gradually. You know how it comes, a bit here and a bit there. I was pretty sure, really, before there was anything you could call evidence at all. There was the motive, large as life. Money, poor girl, and lots of it. Oh, they tried to keep it quiet about her being broke; Mrs Brigance, who’d hired her, kept going on about what a favour she’d done them by coming, but – well, I won’t pretend I was surprised when I heard about the forged prescription and cheque. Pleased, yes – I’ve seldom had a case so tidy – but not surprised.” He slowed the car to turn off the main road. “But here we are. I hope I’ve given you a bit of an idea of what it’s all about.”
“You certainly have. I hardly feel I need to come here at all, I’ve got it all so clearly in my head.”
“That’s fine, but mind you feel free to run around and ask all the questions you please, to fill in the background. It’s not often we get help from the Yard like this, and I want to do right by you.”
Crankshaw thanked him with an inward quirk of conscience at the thought of how far from right by Harris his own intentions were.
The car had passed through wrought iron gates hung from high pillars, each with its ornamental granite ball, and turned up a well-kept drive. Soon Featherstone Hall stood before them in all its Victorian surfeit of ornamentation, its red brick front excrescent with domes, turrets, cupolas and here and there an unnecessary pillar holding yet another granite ball. Crankshaw cast one shocked glance upwards, then followed Harris into the equally alarming modernity of the white and chromium front hall. A parlour maid, presumably Andrews, took their coats, sniffed slightly at Harris and flashed a quick, interested glance at Crankshaw.
Reflecting gloomily on the snobbery of the working classes, he reminded himself that her obvious respect for his decently ancient tweeds would doubtless smooth his path when he interviewed her. If he got the chance to do so, which seemed unlikely, with Harris so very much in command. He fought down a moment’s desperate vision of Patience in her cell and followed Harris into a large and bookless library. A bluff, bewhiskered semi-military man rose to greet them from the large desk where he was sorting papers. “Ah, Harris, back again so soon?”
The remark was hardly welcoming, but Harris chose to ignore this. He introduced Crankshaw to Joseph Ffeathers, explaining that he was to compile the official report on the case. “I’m afraid I’ll have to ask you to put up with a few more questions, just till Mr Crankshaw gets things clear. He’s just joined us, you see, from Scotland Yard.”
“Is that so?” Joseph Ffeathers looked at once sceptical at Crankshaw’s youth and impressed at his origin. “Does this mean you are not … I believe the phrase would be ‘satisfied’? I should be glad to hear that poor young Patience was well out of it.”
The remark rang curiously false to Crankshaw’s sensitive ear, but Harris seemed to notice nothing. “Oh, no, not that.” He was bland, almost soothing. “I don’t think there’s much doubt we’ve got the guilty party – speaking quite off the record, you understand. But of course we have to have it all shipshape for the inquest, and Crankshaw here is going to take care of the routine for us. To tell you the truth” – he obviously found Ffeathers sympathetic – “we’re a bit short-handed right now and if this young fellow hadn’t come along I don’t know how we’d have got our case together for Friday.”
Crankshaw felt himself patronised, resented it, and at the same time reminded himself that the more innocuous he seemed, the better were his chances of getting under somebody’s guard. If he only knew whose …
“So the inquest’s Friday, is it? That’s quick work. Well, of course we’d hoped the questioning and so forth was all over with, but naturally we’ll do all we can to cooperate with Mr – er – Crimshaw. I just hope he’ll go easy with the womenfolk; they’re all pretty well on edge, as you can imagine.”
/> Ffeathers had cast himself, Crankshaw thought, as one of Kipling’s Indian colonels, though surely underneath the façade there lurked something a good deal more intelligent, and very likely less trustworthy … But it was too early to be more than generally suspicious.
Harris was looking at his watch. “I must be on my way. You may think yours is the only crime in Sussex, but it’s not by a long way. Let me have a report when you get back tonight, Crankshaw.”
On that, with perhaps the faintest of malicious twinkles, he was gone. Sink or swim, thought Crankshaw; but it suited him well enough.
The pseudo-colonel was looking at him from under bushy brows. “First job, eh? We’ll do all we can to help. Now, where do you want to begin?”
“Perhaps at the beginning,” suggested Crankshaw mildly. He pulled a solid, straight-backed chair up to the wrong side of the desk, cleared a space for himself and opened his notebook.
“Oh, the beginning. Well, I suppose you’d say that was the week before Christmas, when we heard poor Patience Smith was broke – she’s a kind of cousin of ours, you know.”
“Yes, so I understand. But that is not just what I meant by the beginning.” Crankshaw looked at the older man, very much at his ease against the chimney-piece, and waited.
“Oh, I see. You want it ab ovum, as the curate said.” Was the laugh a shade too hearty? “Would my mother’s birth be far enough back for you?”
“I think that would do nicely.” So far Crankshaw had written nothing, but now, deliberately, he took up his pen, wrote ‘Mrs Ffeathers’ in very beautiful script, underlined it and looked up at Ffeathers.
“Right. Here goes then. Born 1859 of poor and not too honest parents. She rather boasted about her father’s goings-on, but then she boasted about so much, poor Mother.” It was the first genuine note he had achieved. “Early life very much what you’d expect,” he went on. “One semi-slum after another, Grandfather drinking when he had the money, beating his wife when he hadn’t. Am I being detailed enough for you?”
“Quite, thank you.” Crankshaw welcomed the note of mockery. “I understand that your mother had very considerable success on the stage.”
“Music halls, you mean. She was a riot. She’s got a great trunkful upstairs: programmes, ads – billets doux generally. You can go through it if you like; it gives you a pretty good idea of the times she had. I’ve always admired Mother, she was a great girl.” Again, it rang true.
“Yes, I see. And how long was she on the stage?”
“Fifteen years. The fifteen best years of her life, she always said. Then she retired – it was a pretty hot pace she had to keep up and I don’t think she really regretted giving it up as much as she used to let on.”
“Retired to be married, I suppose?”
“Oh, good Lord no. She’d been married for years. Father was her – well, I suppose you’d call him her agent these days; her fixer generally. He discovered her, way back, in a pub in Seven Dials singing sea shanties with her father. He got her her first part and when she clicked, well, he married her. I expect it was the safest way for an agent to get his cut in those days. But he’d died before she retired. There were—” he coughed, hesitated “—various relationships. She used to tell the most amazing tales, did Mother. Some of them may even have been true. But she did like to shock people.”
“Yes, I see. So what year did she retire?”
Ffeathers hesitated. “Damned if I can remember. I expect Josephine will, or my brother Seward. He was born in 1890. I do know that because he made a bit of a song and dance about his sixtieth birthday. So I expect they were married in 1889, if I know Mother. She was never one to let the grass grow under her feet.”
Crankshaw did his best to look shocked. “Your brother Seward is the oldest of you then?”
“Yes. There was a gap after him. I expect he interfered with her career more than she’d expected. I wasn’t born till 1900.”
“And your sister?”
“In 1902. She’s a mere chicken, Josephine. Good idea to get it straight from me, come to think of it. She’d tell you 1910.”
Crankshaw made another note, amused at the effort Ffeathers was making to get back into the role of bluff colonel out of which he had slipped a bit in the course of the interview. “I see,” he said. “I understand that Mr Brigance is dead, and that your and your brother’s wives live here. So that takes care of your generation. Now for the next one.”
“Five deplorable grandchildren, Mother would have told you. Two of Seward’s: Ludwig and Leonora, poor creatures. He intended them for musicians, but they’re chemistry-mad instead. They’ve got a room at the back of the house I’d advise you to keep out of if you don’t want to suffocate. Two of Josephine’s: Mark and Mary, decent enough youngsters, good-looking, bright enough. Mark did well at Cambridge, Mary’s got a job, interior decorating or something, and a flat in town. Her fiance’s staying here, you know; Tony Wetherall – if he has the nerve to go through with it. They only announced it on Christmas Eve.”
“Bad luck, that,” said Crankshaw, and then, as the pause prolonged itself, “And your family?”
“One girl, Priscilla. That’s the lot.”
“The entire Christmas house party?”
“Yes – no, there was a young fool called Duguid, Brian Duguid, my wife asked down for Priss. I could have told her that was no good.”
Not for the first time in the interview Crankshaw registered surprise at how much he was being told. But no doubt far more of the iceberg, truth, was still submerged. “Good,” he said. “So much for the house party. Now, if you wouldn’t mind just taking me through what happened on Christmas Eve, I don’t think I’ll need to trouble you any further.”
“But you’ve forgotten Miss Smith. I mean, I don’t like to drag her in, but of course she was here too.”
“Yes, of course; stupid of me. She is a cousin, I understand?”
“More or less; Mother’s sister’s granddaughter. Her parents died when she was a child and she lived with us for a bit. Seward and another cousin, Paul Protheroe – you’ll meet him, he’s Mother’s lawyer – are her trustees. Not that there’s anything left in the trust, poor kid. It’s no wonder she went haywire. D’you think they’ll be able to make it unsound mind?”
“That,” said Crankshaw, “is hardly my affair.” He hurried on to conceal the anger that charged him. “She had only been here ten days, is that right?”
“Yes. When we heard about her money being gone, Josephine suggested we get her down for Mother – two birds with one stone, you know. Just between you and me, Mother was a bit of a tartar, and companions never stayed.”
“But she liked Miss Smith well enough to leave her all her money?”
“Oh, Lord bless you, that didn’t mean anything. Everyone she met had it left to them at one time or other. She’d run through all of us, and been playing the same game on charities. Less entertaining though, because they weren’t around to suffer over it. She was threatening to cut Patience off already. I heard her. I suppose that’s what drove the poor kid dotty – she was really broke, you know; stony. It’s a bad business Crankshaw, a bad sad business.”
“Murder is.” Crankshaw’s hand shook as he wrote the note that might help to hang Patience. But keep calm, keep calm. “Now for the events of Christmas Eve.” The formal language steadied him.
“Well, let me see. Nothing out of the way till dinner. Nothing much then, for the matter of that, but I expect you want everything.”
“Of course.” Crankshaw took extensive notes while Joseph described the formal dinner, the charades and then the moving of the party up to his mother’s room. “She liked us to fill the stockings up there, y’know. They hung from her mantelshelf.” The account was accurate enough except that it omitted all mention of the stolen five pounds and Mrs Ffeathers’ threat of a momentous announcement in the course of the evening.
“Thank you,” said Crankshaw when he had finished. “And in your opinion no one could
have drugged the Bovril once it was in Mrs Ffeathers’ room?”
“That’s right.” Joseph was positive. “The only one with a ghost of a chance was my poor Priss and you can bet your last penny she didn’t. Besides, where’d she have carried the stuff? She’d no bag to go with her dress; I know because my wife was after me to give her one for Christmas. Lot of female nonsense.”
That seemed to be all that was to be got from Joseph Ffeathers, and Crankshaw thanked him again and asked if he might interview the rest of the party. “In any order that’s convenient. I don’t want it to be any more trouble than it has to be.” He forestalled Joseph’s complaint.
Josephine came first. Voluble and exclamatory, she added little to what Crankshaw already knew. Only, probing behind her words, he felt that where Joseph would gladly have Patience hanged and the whole thing over with as quickly as possible, Josephine had some curious, semi-conscious uncertainty about Patience’s guilt. She insisted again and again that the legacy to Patience was not necessarily a passing fancy: “She adored Patience, you know, simply adored her at sight. We were all quite green with envy. Patience needn’t have worried, she’d have been all right …” And much more on the same theme, which became more comprehensible to Crankshaw when he interviewed her son and daughter.
Mary came first, accompanied, at her request, by Tony Wetherall. She wore a black dress and a brave little air of ‘no secrets’ that obviously pleased Tony. Plunging at once into the middle of things, she begged Crankshaw to be gentle with her brother. “Poor Mark is in a frightful stew,” she explained. And with a conspiratorial glance at Crankshaw, youth appealing to youth: “That man Harris absolutely chewed him up.”
“He minds very much, your brother?” To an extent, Crankshaw met the appeal.
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