Something Wicked

by David Roberts

  It contained a revolver. She snapped it shut as Amery came out of the front door with Harry. ‘Don’t say I told you!’ she whispered urgently.

  After the car had sped off showering gravel behind it, Harry said, ‘Well, what did you think? Una’s a nice little thing, isn’t she? Wears too much make-up of course, but she’s terribly loyal.’

  ‘Where do they live?’

  ‘A place called Ditton Lodge in Maidenhead. They don’t own it. Jack has no money. They rent it off some damned insurance broker who’s always giving them grief.’

  Edward’s immediate reaction was one of sympathy for the landlord.

  ‘What does he do? Is he a film producer?’

  ‘Nothing, really. I mean, he’s tried his hand at practically everything you can think of but it never lasts. He’s opened an off-licence – a wine shop – in Maidenhead but I think he must be its best customer.’

  ‘It must be hard for his father.’

  ‘Not easy,’ Harry agreed. ‘He’s really taken with the Fascists. His great friend is Jacques Doriot. Have you heard of him?’

  ‘I don’t think so. Unless you mean the French politician . . .?’

  ‘That’s the one. He was a Communist. Then, a couple of years back he saw the light and founded the Fascist Parti Populaire Français. They’re a bit too violent for me – like most converts they go to the other extreme but they have the measure of the Communists. Oh, I forgot, sorry. Isn’t your girl a Communist?’

  ‘Yes,’ Edward said shortly, ‘and I remember she told me once that Jack Amery had been gun-running for the rebels in Spain.’

  ‘Yes, he’s one of Franco’s most fervent followers. He joined the Spanish Foreign Legion and I think he became a Spanish citizen – to avoid his creditors mainly. But you can ask him tonight.’

  ‘Tonight?’

  ‘Jack wants us to join him at this new place in Maidenhead – what was it called? I remember, the Hungaria. I bet it’s awful but at least he’s never dull.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know. I was thinking of having an early night.’

  ‘Not a bit of it. You must come. You can ask him about Herold.’

  ‘Herold? Why? Were they friends?’

  ‘Great chums in the old days. The one thing Jack can do is climb mountains. It satisfies his restless streak and it’s dangerous. He and Herold climbed in the Alps several years running.’

  4

  Verity knew she must be getting better because she felt so cross. Here she was stuck in some kind of prison while outside everything that was important to her continued as if she didn’t exist. Lord Weaver had sent flowers with a note in his own hand wishing her a speedy recovery but she was ungrateful enough to think it might as well have been a wreath. As far as the New Gazette was concerned, she was history. Someone else was reporting from Prague – quite competently, she was forced to admit. There had been nothing from the editor. That was no surprise as he disliked her and resented her influence with his proprietor. But – more hurtfully – none of her colleagues on the paper had thought to visit her. She was enough of a realist to know that out of sight meant out of mind, but still . . .

  It was therefore with delight that she welcomed Adrian and Charlotte Hassel. Adrian was a painter whose work she did not particularly like but who was her oldest male friend. Charlotte was a novelist ‘on the fringes of the Bloomsbury set’, as she had once put it. She went to parties at which Virginia Woolf appeared although she would only talk to her own little coterie. Charlotte – a kind person – put this reserve down to shyness rather than intellectual snobbery. Mrs Woolf hated being lionized or asked to sign books. Public speaking was torture to her but, since the huge success of Orlando which had been published ten years earlier, she had been famous whether she liked it or not.

  ‘So, Verity, imagine my surprise when she came over at the opening of Duncan Grant’s exhibition’ – Grant was a painter friend of Adrian’s – ‘and told me how much she had liked my new book. I was completely bowled over.’

  ‘What else did she say?’

  ‘Nothing really. Well, actually I mentioned you. I hope you don’t mind. It appears she reads your stuff and seemed genuinely upset to hear you were ill. She said she’d send you some books.’

  ‘That was kind of her.’

  ‘She said she and Leonard wanted to invite us to stay with them in Sussex. I’m sure she didn’t really mean it but it was so exciting. I almost burst, didn’t I, Adrian?’

  ‘You did, my darling, but you shouldn’t have been so surprised. Secret Relations has had some wonderful reviews and the publisher says it’s going to be selected by the Book of the Month people as one of their top choices.’

  ‘That’s wonderful! I’m so thrilled, Charlotte. As Adrian says, it’s no surprise but it is good to see you getting the recognition you deserve.’

  ‘And the money!’ Adrian added enthusiastically. ‘I’ve told her, Verity, that I’m going to live the life of the gigolo and enjoy it.’

  ‘Come on! Your last exhibition was a success.’

  ‘It was all right,’ Adrian agreed, modestly. ‘Anyway, enough about us – what about you? You look frightfully pale. When are they going to let you out of here?’

  ‘You’re supposed to say I’m looking so much better,’ Verity reprimanded him with mock severity. ‘The stupid thing is that I feel perfectly all right most of the time but as soon as I try and do anything – I mean anything – like walk more than a hundred yards, I go all weak at the knees. It’s as though someone has filleted out my spine. Too maddening.’ She coughed and added, ‘And I cough too much. Not very nice, I’m afraid!’ She tried to sound cheerful and failed miserably.

  ‘And Edward?’ Charlotte inquired.

  ‘He’s been wonderful. You know he’s staying down here with an “old school friend”?’ She said ‘old school friend’ with irony because it was her contention that England was run by people who had gone to school together – Eton mainly but also two or three lesser establishments – and then Oxford or Cambridge, and that ‘democracy’ was a meaningless word to them.

  ‘So what’s he doing when he’s not sitting by your bed holding your hand?’

  ‘Shut up, Adrian,’ Verity said, a little colour seeping into her cheeks. ‘He’s sleuthing again, if you must know. You haven’t heard about his dentist?’

  ‘His dentist? No,’ Charlotte echoed. ‘Tell all.’

  Verity relayed everything Edward had told her, knowing he would have no objection to her confiding in their friends.

  ‘That’s terrible, isn’t it, Adrian?’ Charlotte said when she had finished. ‘I knew Hermione Totteridge. She was a great friend of one of my aunts.’

  ‘You never mentioned her name to me,’ Adrian said.

  ‘Oh, I must have. At one time, I thought of her as an honorary aunt but somehow – I don’t know why – we rather lost touch. I haven’t seen her for years and I had no idea she had died. I suppose there must have been obituaries but I never saw any. I feel very bad. I stayed with her once or twice when I was a child.’ She put her hand over her eyes as she thought back. ‘And Edward thinks she might have been murdered? Why, that’s awful! Is there any way I could help, I wonder? I remember her sister lived in Norfolk. I must write to her. Aunt Hermie, as I used to call her, was an absolute dear and she got me really interested in gardening. In fact,’ she looked shyly at Adrian, ‘it’s one of the things I thought I might do with the money from the book. I get so fed up only having a pocket-handkerchief-sized piece of grass in London, I thought we might buy a little cottage in the country where I could write and you could have a studio – and with a garden – a big garden . . .’

  ‘Golly!’ Adrian exclaimed. ‘She’s never said anything about having a garden to me before, Verity, but of course I don’t mind. It’s your money, darling, and you must spend it how you like.’

  ‘I expect she wanted to wait until there was a witness before springing it on you so you couldn’t be really angry,’ Verity sai
d astutely. ‘I’m so sorry, Charlotte, to have given you such a shock. Of course, I had no idea . . .’

  ‘How could you have known? It’s just rather beastly.’

  ‘And you can come and recuperate at the cottage.’

  ‘Oh, Adrian, I do hope I’m better long before then,’ Verity said, her face falling.

  Adrian realized he had made a mistake and quickly corrected himself. ‘Of course you’ll be better before we’ve done anything about the cottage, but we could all take a place somewhere in the country quite soon. You could watch the grass grow and I could bustle around with trowels and trugs.’

  ‘So, have you decided when the wedding’s going to be?’ Charlotte asked brightly, trying to change the conversation to a safer topic but managing to stumble on an even more sensitive area.

  ‘Oh that,’ Verity replied dismissively. ‘We haven’t even discussed it. I’ve got to get better first. I can’t marry anyone when I’m like this. You know he’s not even allowed to kiss me? I’m pure poison.’

  ‘Don’t talk such nonsense!’ Charlotte said sharply. ‘You’re not marrying just anyone. It’s Edward we’re talking about and he’s not going to be fussed by having to push you up the aisle in a wheelchair.’

  ‘There’s not going to be an aisle.’

  ‘Well, whatever they have in Chelsea Town Hall. Verity, I’ve known you long enough to speak my mind. You’ve messed that poor man around long enough. It’s time you stopped finding excuses not to . . . not to go through with it.’

  Verity looked mutinous. ‘I’m not making excuses. I’m ill. I wish I wasn’t. As soon as I’m better, I’ll get on with my life.’

  Charlotte felt she had gone as far as she dared so she merely said, ‘That’s all right then.’

  After an uneasy pause, she found that she was still thinking about Hermione Totteridge.

  ‘I kept meaning to get in touch with her – Hermione, I mean. I didn’t see much of her after I left school. We exchanged cards at Christmas, though she wasn’t really a Christmas sort of person. I remember being rather shocked when she said it was sentimental gobblede-gook. I went to a lecture she gave on orchids at the RHS in Vincent Square once . . . but that was years ago.’

  ‘You said you knew her sister . . .? Edward might find it helpful to have an entrée.’

  ‘I suppose I must have met her a couple of times – three at the most. I can’t believe it! Who would want to murder Aunt Hermie? Everyone loved her.’

  ‘Well, maybe not everyone,’ Verity suggested.

  ‘You mean she might have been killed by a rival orchid grower? That’s ridiculous.’

  ‘It’s not ridiculous. Her sister found that note about feeding on death in the pocket of her boiler suit, and is it likely – if she was experimenting with a dangerous new chemical – that she would drop it in her tea?’

  ‘What do you know about the sister, Charlotte?’ Adrian asked.

  ‘Hermione had two sisters. Daphne, who I never met, married a soldier – cavalry, I think – and went to India. She was killed in a car crash, I seem to remember.’

  ‘In India?’

  ‘No, in England. She was the youngest. The other one, Violet, married a country doctor and lived in Norfolk – Burnham Market. Or at least she used to. I haven’t thought of her for ages, I’m afraid. Oh God! Poor Aunt Hermie. I just can’t get over it. I feel so sad and so guilty.’

  Edward rubbed his head. A night at the Hungaria in Maidenhead with Harry and the Amerys had given him nothing but a headache. Jack had got drunk – first melancholy drunk and then violent drunk – which had embarrassed him but not Harry or Una. He rather thought she might have slept with Harry. They were certainly intimate enough but then, he thought uncharitably, she probably slept with anyone in trousers. She was like a stray dog desperate for affection.

  He tried to concentrate on the exercise book – one of a small pile beside him on the desk. He found Inspector Treacher’s case notes on his investigation into the three deaths notable only for being sketchy and unilluminating. Treacher might well be a good policeman when it came to investigating the activities of local villains but he seemed singularly ill equipped to decide whether a murder had been committed. It was just understandable that he should have concluded that Hermione Totteridge’s death was accidental. Who, as he had said, would kill a harmless old lady held in respect and some affection locally? She was a character, an eccentric, and her reputation as a gardener was something of which the whole town could be proud.

  General Lowther’s death was surely much less easy to dismiss as an act of God. There had been a post-mortem by the local doctor who had been happy to conclude that he had died of heart failure. Edward was shocked to find that the remains of the wine in the glass and in the bottle had not been analysed. Assumptions had been made and the coroner had failed to ask the right questions. The only thing that might still make it possible to discover if he had been poisoned was that the body had been buried rather than cremated. Even so, every day that passed would make it more difficult to find traces of poison in the body should Edward ever turn up enough evidence of foul play to justify an exhumation.

  As for Herold, the Inspector had obviously concluded that his wife had helped him commit suicide but had decided – presumably for her sake – to call it an accident.

  The one thing he did not want to do was alarm Treacher. No one likes to be shown up as incompetent and Edward decided he must do what he could to guide the Inspector towards discovering his failings, which would allow him to correct them without being made to eat humble pie. Once Treacher began to think of him as an enemy, there would be no more cooperation and his own investigation would be made much more difficult. So, when he called in at the police station to return the case notes, he made no criticism but merely asked if the Inspector would have any objection to him talking to the General’s housekeeper and Miss Totteridge’s sister.

  Treacher hesitated but was unable to think of any reason why Edward could not interview whomever he wanted. There was a niggling doubt at the back of his mind that perhaps he had been a little too ready to accept the result of the post-mortem on General Lowther. Old Dr Compton was getting lazy – he was shortly to retire – but at the time there had seemed no justification for bringing in someone else to examine the body. Why should it not have been a heart attack? However, if Lord Edward Corinth turned up something that threw doubt on it . . . but then how could he? He had interviewed the General’s housekeeper, Mrs Venables, at length and had been satisfied that no one had tampered with the wine. There was no reason to think that she would change her story. She had been with the General since the end of the war and was beyond suspicion. There was a parlour maid, he recalled, a silly girl who was so timid he could hardly get her to tell him her name. It was inconceivable that she could have been up to anything.

  Treacher scratched his head. Something told him that he had to get a grip on the new investigation and take what credit he could for anything this nosy trouble-maker turned up. Lord Edward seemed friendly enough but there was something faintly arrogant in the way his cool grey eyes surveyed him. Assessing the risks in a matter of seconds, he concluded that, on balance, it would wiser to accommodate the interfering young aristocrat, who knew too many powerful people for comfort, than stand in his way. In any event, if Lord Edward wished to speak to the General’s housekeeper, he had no legal way of stopping the man. Much better that he should be seen to have nothing to hide – which was, of course, the case.

  ‘She lives with her sister in a little village called Frieth between here and Marlow,’ he informed Edward. ‘I seem to remember she doesn’t have a telephone but I don’t suppose she goes anywhere. The bus service isn’t good.’

  ‘Where would she do her shopping?’

  ‘The village shop, I suppose. But if I were you, I would just turn up. I’ll give you a letter of authority but I doubt you’ll need one.’

  In truth, he could hardly see Mrs Venables being brave enough to a
sk Lord Edward Corinth what right he had to question her about her late employer with or without a letter from him.

  ‘That would be very good of you, Inspector,’ Edward said smoothly. ‘You seem to have interviewed her very thoroughly so I doubt I shall get anything else from her. But, you never know, something may have occurred to her since the inquest. Is she married, by the way?’

  ‘She and her sister are both spinsters but, as you know, a housekeeper takes authority from being addressed as Mrs.’

  ‘Indeed. Ah well! I’d like to see a bit of the countryside and the Lagonda needs a run so I might trot along this afternoon. No point in putting it off if I’m going to try my hand, eh, Inspector?’

  Edward very often found that if he made himself out to be a bit of an ass he was able to put ‘authority’ at ease, but the Inspector was not deceived. Lord Edward Corinth was nobody’s fool and Treacher knew it.

  Before he set out, Edward visited Verity and told her what he was doing. He was pleased to see she was genuinely interested in his ‘digging around’, as she called it. Charlotte Hassel turning out to be almost a relation of Hermione Totteridge had made it all much more personal and Verity enjoyed having something to contribute to the investigation.

  ‘So that’s where you should go next,’ she said when she had finished telling him. ‘Get Charlotte to come with you to see the sister. That way you’ll be welcomed as a friend, not a nosy parker.’

  He looked at her with affection. ‘I wish it were you who could be with me.’

  ‘It will be soon. I’m feeling so much better. Now, don’t worry about me. My new friend, Kay Stammers, is coming to take me to watch her play tennis at Phyllis Court.’

  ‘That’s good but promise me you won’t get too tired. You are looking better but . . .’

  ‘I can see I’m going to get fed up with people saying that to me! I know it’ll take time before I get my strength back. I’ll be careful, I promise you. Go now!’

  ‘I wish I could kiss you.’

  ‘Me too! You’ll just have to make do with a peck on the cheek. I don’t expect you’ll catch anything from that.’