Death of a Literary Widow

by Robert Barnard

  It was Hilda Machin, and there was no sign of life.

  CHAPTER IX

  POST MORTEM

  GREG’S ONLY REAL contact at Police Headquarters in Oswaldston was Superintendent Warleigh–met in connection with a case involving one of Greg’s students at the College of Further Education, a boy who had been viciously treated throughout his childhood, and was now intent on passing on that treatment to all comers at football grounds up and down the country. Since then they had come into contact over one or two smaller matters, and it was to him that Greg naturally went in the aftermath of Hilda Machin’s death.

  Superintendent Warleigh was not far off retirement age. He was a kindly man, slow, and far from lively by disposition. He had seen the whole pattern of crime change in the Oswaldston area in the course of his career: crimes that grew out of hunger and desperation had given way to crimes that grew out of affluence, greed, imitation and boredom. None of the changes had given him any added zest for life–or, for that matter, any desire to look for trouble where no trouble was self-evidently present. His remedy for uncertainty was to stroke his moustache, with hard, strong fingers, as if trying to push it back into his upper lip.

  ‘Oh, it’s clear enough what happened,’ he said to Greg, the day after the fire, standing in the outer office of the Oswaldston station. ‘She smelt something, went out of her room, there was smoke on the landing, she went back and got her handbag, ran to the stairs–and then she must have slipped and hit her head. Poor old thing–but she’d had a good life by all accounts.’

  ‘What sort of wound was it on her head?’ asked Greg. He was tired and upset, and troubled by a feeling that things did not add up–though without being able to pin down his dissatisfaction.

  ‘A long one, not very deep. May have hit the stair-rail.’

  ‘Could she have hurt herself that bad, just by falling?’

  ‘Oh yes, so the doctor says. She came a cropper, no doubt about that, but she was in a hurry, naturally. Oh no–the doctor doesn’t have any doubts.’

  ‘I suppose you’ll be examining the upstairs–to find out what she fell on to?’

  ‘Have you see the upstairs, lad? Most of the woodwork on the landing and the top of the stairs is charred–some of it burnt to nothing. Of course, we can have a look, but I doubt we’ll find anything. In any case, it’s not vital. I don’t suppose the coroner will make any problems about what happened.’

  ‘And the lungs?’

  ‘Well, according to the doctor she probably died before the fire really got a hold up there. But that figures. She would have smelt it first–long before the old girl downstairs: she didn’t smell it till we went in to get her.’

  ‘Somehow,’ said Greg, going cautiously because he hated to look as if he wanted to teach the police their business, ‘it doesn’t sound like Hilda Machin. She was very nimble on her pins.’

  Superintendent Warleigh spread out his arms in a gesture of hopelessness. ‘Old people. You know how it is. Things go wrong, suddenly. I feel it myself, frankly. Suddenly a part of you you’ve taken for granted all your life gives out, or plays you up. And she panicked, you know. Must have done.’

  Greg tried to picture Hilda in her last moments: somehow he failed. He could not associate her with panic. She was too confident, too ironic, too (in an odd way) devil-may-care. She wouldn’t have been afraid of death. Though she wouldn’t have helped it on its way either. He said: ‘What was in the handbag?’

  ‘Nothing much. Personal things. Make-up, a bit of money, an old letter. I expect she grabbed it automatically. Women usually do, you know–specially women of that age.’

  ‘Where do you think the fire started.’

  ‘Oh, they say the attic, without a doubt. I gather it was full of old papers and stuff.’

  ‘That must have been the manuscripts. Walter Machin’s papers. He was a writer.’

  ‘Aye, I know, lad. I read my papers.’

  ‘Sorry. It’s a good job they’d got the second book off to the publishers. It would have been terrible if that had been destroyed. Kronweiser would have gone up the wall.’

  ‘Is that the little Yank? Looks like an Easter egg, and talks like an Act of Parliament?’

  ‘That’s him. Has he been around?’

  ‘Yes, this morning. Tut-tutting all round the house. Kept saying: “Thank God I took copies.” Boring little creep. He got in everybody’s way. I had to send him away.’

  ‘Had he been up in the attic? The papers are his business–not that he’d have wanted to start a fire.’

  ‘The fire was an accident, for Christ’s sake. Anyway, he says he went home hours before. I expect one of the old ladies was up there and dropped a fag end or something, and just forgot it. Old people do,’ he added gloomily.

  ‘I shouldn’t think Viola could have got up there,’ said Greg. ‘Anyway, I’ve never seen her smoke.’

  ‘Well, your old girl, then,’ said Warleigh. ‘Or it was just the wiring. It often is in these old houses. And of course, being full of paper–dry old stuff, too, the worst thing there is–the whole thing must have caught in no time. Everything up there’s a complete write-off, and most of the first floor’s in pretty bad shape. I doubt the other old thing will be moving back there for many a long month.’

  • • •

  ‘Desmond,’ said Margaret Seymour-Strachey, ‘you’ve got to get her back into that house as soon as possible. She’ll drive me mad if she’s not out of here soon.’

  They were in their living-room, furnished with superbly anonymous taste, and looking out on the double garage and the green lawn and the spring flowers, tastefully clustered. Her husband looked at her with annoyance in his cold blue eyes, his thin lips pursed in an expression she knew very well.

  ‘That’s nonsense, Margaret. She’s only been here a day. You know what we agreed.’

  ‘We agreed to keep an eye on her and stop Hilary jumping the gun on us. I certainly never agreed to be treated like an under-housemaid of the eighteen nineties.’

  ‘But after all, she’s naturally upset.’

  ‘Perhaps she is, but she’s trading on it. And if I know her she’ll go on trading on it. Last time I went up she asked for a little bell, so she could ring for me. It’s no joke, Des. And I don’t like her being near the children.’

  ‘You’re talking of her as if she were an infectious disease.’

  ‘I speak as I find. She’s a bad influence. She sets them against us, and she puts strange ideas in their heads. Just the way she cuddles them the whole time–it’s disgusting.’

  ‘You’re upset, Margaret. Overwrought. Things will settle down after a while.’

  ‘I wouldn’t mind so much if they were girls . . . ’

  ‘You’ve got to remember there’s money involved.’

  Margaret Seymour-Strachey looked up into her husband’s hungry, hawkish face, with its open calculation. Money, and a pleasure in using it ostentatiously, was one of the bonds that held the marriage together. Drab herself, Margaret loved having people in and letting them notice their new possessions. But there were limits.

  ‘The downstairs was hardly damaged at all,’ she said, obstinately. ‘The house is insured with the Northern. What’s the point of working for them if you haven’t got the pull to get that done? I want work started on that house by the end of next week.’

  Desmond was one of those dominant husbands who knew that on one or two issues he faced adamantine resistance, and understood when to give in. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘I’ll do my best. But it’ll look very odd if we rush it too much.’

  ‘Odd?’

  ‘Suspicious. I mean, she’ll think that –’

  ‘Desmond!’ His wife’s voice, high and urgent, stopped him in mid-sentence. She was looking down to the garden gate, which at that moment Greg Hocking was closing carefully behind him.

  ‘It’s your mother’s fancy man,’ said Margaret Seymour-Strachey, in tones of intense revulsion.

  • • •

/>   ‘Yes?’ said Margaret at the front door, with an attempt at a friendly smile, which somehow turned out cold, like an arctic summer.

  ‘I’m sorry to bother you, Mrs Seymour-Strachey,’ said Greg, in his best dealing-with-difficult-parents voice. ‘I realize this is a pretty terrible time for you, and I don’t want to butt in. I just wanted to ask after Mrs Machin.’

  Margaret Seymour-Strachey thawed slightly. She had heard about Greg from her mother-in-law, and had conceived various lively suspicions. Disgusting, she had thought to herself. But still–one had to keep an open mind, didn’t one? He looked a pleasant enough young man, and genuinely concerned. ‘Ah, you must be–’

  ‘Hocking,’ said Greg, ‘Greg Hocking.’

  ‘That’s right. I’ve heard so much about you, from Mother. And you were a very good friend to poor Hilda, too, weren’t you? We’re all so distressed about her. It seems impossible, doesn’t it? She was so full of life. Just like Mother, really.’

  ‘Is Mrs Machin recovered today? I wondered–’

  ‘Yes, of course–you’d like to see her. I’m sure she’ll love that. Won’t you come in?’

  Chatting brightly, Margaret led the way upstairs. While Greg waited on the landing she knocked on one of the bedroom doors. Without waiting for a reply, she put her head into the room and said in that all-things-bright-and-beautiful voice she reserved for her mother-in-law, which Greg found grating even on first acquaintance: ‘I’ve got a lovely surprise for you, Mother dear. Just guess who’s come to pay you a little visit!’

  ‘I saw him come up the path,’ said an angry voice. ‘Have you asked him to take off his coat?’

  ‘No–I didn’t know how long you ought–’

  ‘Then please take it down and hang in it the hall. Ah, Gregory–’ She received him grandly, seated in an armchair specially moved into the bedroom. ‘Bring us tea–a pot of tea, and was that a sponge I smelt cooking earlier? That will do. And biscuits, but not those packaged chocolate ones, please. The Dalton service.’ Greg, who had retreated to the window in embarrassment, heard her hiss in conclusion: ‘And next time, ask first before you bring anyone up.’

  Viola Machin, clearly, had recovered from the shocks of last night. Pimpernel, it was true, was looking less than his usual yappy self–a smoky smell hung around him, and he lay gloomily on the bed, a chastened dog. But Viola had reassumed all her wonted, iron-clad voluptuousness, and only her reddened eyes–had they, Greg wondered, been rubbed since she saw him coming up the path?–suggested that she might have gone through a frightening or saddening time. Her mood as she made Greg at home veered between hostessy (and frankly womanly) pleasure at seeing him, and a desire to convey a sense of fragility and grief, which pretty clearly she did not feel.

  ‘I know you didn’t come to be thanked, Gregory,’ she said, motioning him into the other chair, ‘but thanked you must be. You were most kind, most helpful last night. Just when I needed it most, too.’ She leaned forward and put her hand on Greg’s thigh. ‘And I want to thank you on Hilda’s behalf. I’ve heard all about it. I know you did everything you could. Poor, poor Hilda.’

  It was the second time in their acquaintanceship that she had put her hand on his thigh. It was becoming a habit, and might in time become a tradition. It was not easy, either, to withdraw one’s leg when sitting down. The hand had the warmth of personal feeling, whereas the theatrical sigh with which she said her last words was nothing but an actressy trick from a bad radio play. Greg was panicked into opening too baldly the subject closest to his heart.

  ‘I’ve been wondering about how she died,’ he said.

  ‘An accident. She fell and hit her head,’ said Viola abruptly, withdrawing her hand. Then, turning on the tap marked ‘emotion’, she went on: ‘Such a terrible end, but quite sudden, I think. She must have panicked when she first smelt the fire. And I was there still–downstairs–asleep. I knew nothing about it. The thought will haunt me as long as I live.’

  Irritated by Viola’s habit of slipping into clichés from the West End plays of her youth every time feeling was called for, Greg said: ‘You’d seen her earlier in the evening, hadn’t you?’

  There was a pause.

  ‘Yes. Yes, I had,’ said Viola. She now looked ahead with graceful pensiveness. ‘I’ll tell you something I’ve told no one else, Gregory. We had words.’ She knows they must have been overheard, thought Greg. ‘That’s what makes my memory of last night so–so terribly hard to bear. It torments me. You know we did, now and then. Have words. It was natural, really, and it meant nothing–nothing at all. But that that should be my last memory of her! And who knows?–perhaps she was still upset when she smelt the fire. Perhaps that’s why she panicked.’

  This aspect was being over-insisted upon, Greg thought, and he said: ‘I don’t associate Hilda with panic.’

  ‘Oh–we women,’ said Viola vaguely. ‘Ah, tea.’

  She allowed Margaret Seymour-Strachey to bring in the tea things and set them out on the bedside table without speaking further. Her daughter-in-law was forced to chat on brightly to Greg about whether the sponge had turned out well, and whether Greg liked ginger nuts. She was, Greg thought, suppressing considerable irritation with difficulty. ‘I’ll leave you two alone to chat,’ she said at the door.

  Before she had time to close it, Viola said loudly: ‘Much too strong. She knows that’s not how I like it.’

  She had not, in fact, begun to pour. Seeing Greg’s eyes on the untouched teapot, she said, almost roguishly: ‘Ah, you’ve caught me out. What a detective you’d make. And now you’re saying to yourself: “What a disagreeable woman.”’

  ‘Not at all,’ murmured Greg, like a schoolboy detected eating sweets under the desk. ‘None of my business.’

  ‘But there are reasons, you see. I’m not doing it just to be difficult. My daughter-in-law has never liked me. She’s so conventional, you know. Young people often are these days, I find. She thinks I’m a wicked woman. Really! She’s such a cold person, and I’m so warm. Those poor children. I have only to kiss them, my own grandchildren, and she calls them away. My heart bleeds for them, literally bleeds! They’re growing up emotionally deprived!’

  In the pause she poured Greg’s tea, which was not at all strong, and handed it to him. Then she said: ‘So you see, I’m making myself as unpleasant as I can–and I assure you I can!–to make them want to get rid of me as soon as possible.’

  ‘What do you mean–get you into a home or–’

  ‘A home! A home!’ Viola nearly shrieked. ‘Can you imagine ME in a HOME?’ Greg blenched before the tempest he had stupidly unleashed, but Viola quietened down as he murmured apologies. ‘Did she say anything about a home on the way up?’

  ‘No, no, really, it was my silly fault, I–’

  ‘They’d better not try it! No, you see, my son Desmond is in insurance. The house was covered by his firm. He can get things done, if he shifts his–shifts himself. I want workmen into that house as soon as possible, and I want to be back in it the moment it’s habitable. I refuse to sit on in this house and be treated like Christopher Robin by her.’

  In the pause that followed Viola said with deceptive sweetness: ‘Do have a piece of that dreadful sponge, Gregory. I shall take a bite and leave the rest on my plate.’

  ‘May I ask you what you had words about?’ said Greg, biting into the excellent sponge.

  ‘Oh, you know–’ said Viola, with her theatrical sigh. She clearly had hoped the subject had lapsed. ‘The old things. Old battles, and old soldiers fighting them over again. She suggested in that shoddy little newspaper interview that I’d broken up her marriage. . . . But let’s not talk of it, Gregory, please. I shall only speak ill of the dead, and regret it afterwards.’

  Greg Hocking was tempted to say: At least she’ll never get her side of the story across now. Instead, more tentatively, he said: ‘I suppose Hilda had given anything she had of interest to Mr Kronweiser before she died.’

  ‘No doubt,�
� said Viola sourly. ‘She was going to him with letters right to the end.’ She caught the drift of his thinking, switched on an open smile as if to compliment him on his loyalty, and said: ‘I think you’ll find Hilda’s part in my husband’s life put perfectly fairly when Mr Kronweiser’s book comes out.’

  ‘I’m sure, I’m sure,’ said Greg hastily. Why did he always feel so intimidated by Viola Machin? She did something to a man: made him feel about six, and caught with a warm jam puff from the kitchen table. His eye, coasting with embarrassment round the room, fell on a letter from Jackson’s, the publishers. Out of the blue he said: ‘I only wish she could still be alive to enjoy it. The fuss, I mean, and the money. She would have enjoyed having a bit of extra money.’

  ‘She would,’ agreed Viola. ‘And of course we had our little agreement about the second book. She looked after her interests, you know. There was no putting anything over our Hilda, oh no. Not of course that I’d want to.’

  ‘That will go to–who, do you think?’

  ‘That chit of a daughter, I imagine. A rather sharp creature I always thought, but there. Of course I shall honour our agreement to the letter. Not that the money will amount to much. You mustn’t imagine anyone gets rich from books these days, Gregory. But if it lasts it will be a nice little bit of pocket-money for her.’

  But how much? Greg Hocking wondered.

  ‘I won’t ask you to have another piece of sponge, Gregory,’ said Viola. ‘It would only encourage her.’

  Taking this to be a form of dismissal, Greg stood up and prepared to take his leave.

  ‘How considerate of you,’ said Viola, clearly not loath to see him go. ‘You understand I shouldn’t be tired.’ She struggled to her feet to see him to the door. As she did so, Greg’s eye went back to the letter on the dressing-table. He caught the words ‘American rights’ and ‘four thousand pounds’. Then he allowed Viola to show him out to the landing.

  ‘I hope you’ll be at the funeral,’ said Viola in her grand way, as if it were her show and there’d be cocktails afterwards. ‘I hope to be there myself. I will be if I have the strength. But I don’t know what the doctor will say.’