Enter Pale Death

by Barbara Cleverly

  “Well, it’s a blessing that it’s a wide table and they weren’t in hair-tugging reach, the butler says. A right ding-dong going on. Sir James was embarrassed, her ladyship was ‘a trifle over-excited,’ in butler terms. In other words even worse than her usual overbearing self. But that’s just my interpretation of what was said. You can’t fault the servants. They know how to keep quiet. They only opened up as far as they did because it was me asking.”

  “Did you manage to find out what they were quarrelling about?”

  Hunnyton drained his glass and looked back uneasily to the bright lights of the hotel behind him as though wishing to evade the question. “Well, of course … social occasion and all that … there was no way even Lavinia was going to shrill, ‘Keep your thieving little hands off my husband.’ If that was the compulsion behind the rivalry. What they were ostensibly arguing about was horses,” he finished and looked down at his feet.

  “Horses? What horses?”

  “Any old nags. Lady Truelove may have been a ninny but what she was good at—the only thing she was good at—was riding. She was raised in a midlands hunting county so you’d expect it. Hunting, point-to-pointing … she could go faster, jump higher, stay on longer than any man, they say. I think your lady-friend saw straight through to what I’ve always suspected—that Lavinia had absolutely no feelings for the horseflesh itself. She’d arrive in the stables booted and spurred, climb aboard and ride. Ask her the name of the horse whose mouth she was wrecking and she wouldn’t have a clue. Never tended them, never even took them a carrot. She wasn’t tuned in to them in any way. Really she’d have been happier at the wheel of a sports car if she’d ever been bothered to learn to drive.”

  “Ah. That wouldn’t have impressed Dorcas. She’s a damned good rider, too, but she tends to go about the place on shaggy ponies without a saddle. They follow her around like dogs. Trot at her heel in an obsequious way. I’ve seen beasts cross fields to come and nuzzle her neck. I think she prefers animals to people. I’d make faster headway with Dorcas if I were a deer-hound or a hairy-heeled Shire horse. She spent too many of her days with her father yarning around gypsy campfires when she was a little thing and she picked up some unusual skills. Her father’s a painter. A very good one, too, but he went through a stage of imagining he was Augustus John. You know—caravans, corduroy britches and clay-baked hedgehogs.” Joe shuddered gently.

  “I see. Not a meeting of minds planned, then, in this invitation of Lavinia’s.”

  “Not if she knew anything about Dorcas, no. I’m sure you’ve guessed correctly, Hunnyton, that this was really a rivalry over an imagined interest in or influence over Sir James. Imagined by the man’s wife, I mean. But how the hell are we to guess at the contents of that lady’s head on this occasion? She may have exaggerated the dangers of the situation.” Then, in a rush of confidence and a copper’s seeking after the full truth he added: “No, let me be clear. I have to say in Lavinia’s defence that her fears may well not have been entirely the product of hysteria and jealousy. Dorcas has confided to me that, though Sir James’s attentions to her have never been less decorous than would befit his position of mentor and sponsor, nevertheless, he has made it known that …” Joe hesitated, aware that he had plunged into a whirlpool of circumlocution to disguise his awkwardness.

  “He wouldn’t mind at all getting into her knickers, like. Men! Buggers! I don’t know why women go on putting up with us. Got it. What we’re saying then is, as I suspected, all this horse stuff was a bluff, a diversionary tactic, an exchange of snowballs when bullets are not appropriate.”

  “That’s exactly what I’d guess, knowing Dorcas as I do …” Joe fell silent.

  “And knowing Lavinia as I did … I’d agree with you that the two women under one roof was an explosive situation. But, Sandilands, what are we on about? There was no explosion. Let’s hang on to this—Miss Dorcas had only just put in an appearance and was nowhere near the stables that night.”

  Joe was soothed to hear the quiet good sense.

  “It really was the horse that did it! He was caught red-toothed, you might say. The whole nasty business was witnessed by the most credible witnesses in the land. Two Suffolk boys. No one got pushed off a roof, bashed on the head with a candlestick or stuck with an assegai. It’s all right, sir. I’m sure you’ve no cause to fret.”

  “I’ve always fretted!” Joe spoke through gritted teeth, trying to smile. “Cause or no cause, Dorcas is the hostage I handed over to Dame Fortune eight years ago and neither lady lets me forget it.”

  “I can see why you’d want to get to the bottom of it.”

  “Hang on, Hunnyton. Before we go inside and pick up the rest of the bottle to help us get through the notes again, explain that comment, will you. Tell me: Is there a bottom to get to?”

  “Yes. I believe there is. And there’s a lot of murk to sink through before we touch it. It sounds quite mad but I’ll say what I’m thinking: Lavinia Truelove was murdered.”

  “Murdered, Hunnyton? You’ve read the pathologist’s report. She died of sudden copious blood loss from a severed neck and shock producing cardiac arrest, probably only a second or two before her head was smashed to a pulp by the hooves of a very heavy horse. There was no one else about but the two young stable lads hiding behind the corn-hutch. They raised the alarm and made contact with one of the house footmen who happened to be in the environs and he it was who organised medical attention.” Joe noted but did not comment on the way Hunnyton kept reversing his position to test him out. He’d done the same thing himself in interviews. “Hmm … it might be interesting to ask this footman what he was doing in the vicinity of the stables before dawn.”

  “Agreed. But think, Sandilands. Imagine, let’s say, Captain Hook makes a sailor walk the plank. The poor soul shuffles to the end, drops in and is chewed up by a passing shark. Who’s to blame? The shark? What I’m saying is that I believe Lady Truelove’s death was engineered. Someone wanted her to die and the horse was just the instrument. About as culpable as the candlestick or the dagger that comes conveniently to a murdering hand in a twopenny whodunit.”

  “We’re left with the eternal problem of: why, how and who? Any suggestions?”

  “Plenty. Too many. I thought we’d sort them out together. Two heads are better than one even if they’re sheep heads, my ma used to say. We’ll go off into darkest Suffolk at crack of dawn tomorrow and poke about a bit. Tweak a few ears. I’ve hired you a motorcar from Simpson’s car hire firm down Mill Road. Nothing too showy but smart enough to impress those who like to be impressed. I thought, in the circumstances, we’d avoid using police vehicles and back-up. We’ll interview the medical expert, who was never asked to hand in a report—no, I wasn’t directly involved in the case when it first came up. Close member of the family and all that, the Chief Constable thought it better if I kept out of it. And he was right. Though it didn’t stop me from making subsequent off-the-record enquiries, of course.”

  “Medic? I read Frobisher’s excellent autopsy account.”

  “Well, that’s not without its puzzles but I’m talking about the report on the body by the animal doctor. The veterinary surgeon, I hear, was on the spot faster even than the local doc. He shot the beast dead but he took the trouble to stay around until daylight and then carried out a careful examination of the horse’s body before it was carted off to the knacker’s yard. I have this information from the lads. ‘Doc weren’t easy about it,’ they told me. ‘Muttered an’ cussed. Found something he didn’t like the look of.’ I’ve not had a chance to speak to the vet myself yet. We’ll see him together. He can see us in his office at eleven o’clock.”

  Joe smiled to hear again the undisguised evidence of preplanning. Should he have felt resentment or pressure at being so manoeuvred? Undoubtedly. But professional efficiency to a good end never irritated him and his dignity was not so fragile he had to strengthen it with bluster. “Sounds good to me,” he said agreeably. “What about the staff? Ar
e we booked in to see them? And the Dowager Lady Truelove—is she putting the kettle on?”

  “It’s all taken care of. You don’t ask, so I’ll tell you—James will not be present. He always spends four weeks after term’s end in London. He has a flat in London and that’s where he’s going to be until he goes north to a cousin’s estate in Scotland for the shooting. I checked with the valet he keeps down there. But then, I expect you checked, too.”

  “Same result. Sir James has a full appointment book. Sir James is hardly the grieving widower it would appear. His life continues as busy as it ever was. Which means he’s conveniently out of our hair. What else have you set up?”

  “I asked the management here to put you in a room with a big desk.”

  “They did. Let’s go up and cover it with documents, shall we. Leaving a corner for the Glenmorangie.”

  “FROM A COUNTRY doctor, this death certificate and autopsy report are impressive,” Joe said.

  “It was a double-handed effort,” Hunnyton explained. “If you look at the signatures you’ll see that of the local doctor, Thoroughgood, who attended at the scene, and also the name of the pathologist, Mr. Frobisher, here in the hospital in Cambridge where the body was brought for further inspection—at the insistence of Thoroughgood himself. He stayed to witness the procedure and helped draw up the statement, which they both signed.”

  “Unusual? The doc could, in a clear case of misadventure which this was, have just dealt with it and got a colleague to provide the second signature on the certificate. No fuss. No one would have questioned it.”

  “Obviously the good doctor had a question in his own mind to make him go to this trouble. It is a trouble. Transporting bodies about the place, hospital involvement and all that, it’s time-consuming and appears fussy. Truelove himself might well have been a bit miffed.”

  “He was. At the first suggestion. He quickly changed his attitude to one of resigned acceptance, I hear. Look, Sandilands, you can make your own enquiries, get your own answers. I just pass on to you as impartially as I can what was said to me.”

  “Understood. In that case,” Joe said, riffling through the sheets, “have you an explanation for this? Which page was it now? Ah, here we are … I’m wondering why, when the victim has succumbed to the most appalling and evident wounds, the doctor advised the surgeon—‘at the request of Dr. Thoroughgood’ —to investigate the lady’s internal organs. Heart, liver, blood tests done—just as you’d expect in a case of suspicious death. He further states that the victim was not pregnant. I’d say this is a matter the local doctor wished to have clarified.”

  “The old feller had a suspicion that she was pregnant?” Hunnyton suggested.

  Joe’s voice conveyed a grim satisfaction. “Nothing like a suspicion of pregnancy to stir up trouble with the various males in a woman’s entourage, we find in the Smoke, and I expect it’s much the same in deepest Suffolk.”

  “Worse,” was the unadorned admission, and Joe could have kicked himself for his ineptitude. Hunnyton’s shake of the head and his knowing grin forgave him and dismissed the idea that Joe should be ever on the alert for potentially offensive remarks.

  Joe grinned back, reassured, and poured out more whisky. He was beginning to think Hunnyton was a good bloke to be in harness with. He just hoped together they could plough a straight furrow and avoid careering off into the ditch. “Right. Let’s read through the whole lot again and share insights, shall we?”

  HE WOKE AT three in the morning to the sound of a cracked college bell sounding the hour and stayed awake long enough to allow into the conscious front of his mind the thought that he’d shoved to the back when he’d gone to bed well after midnight. How much information of a personal nature had he divulged to this stranger with the receptive gaze and the disarming country growl? In a moment of clarity he remembered he’d bared his soul regarding his feelings for Dorcas, he’d even revealed that Sir James had admitted only days before his wife had died to having intentions below and beyond intellectual support for the wretched girl.

  Joe remembered her words to him one April afternoon: “He wants to take things further and I’m considering it.” Delivered with a cool insouciance. Joe had been too devastated to demand to know what precisely was implied by “things” and “further.” Any attempt to spell out to her the habits of men like Truelove would have been greeted with a sophisticated sneer. Dorcas was no ingénue.

  But the next week Lavinia Truelove had died and Joe had been left with those tormenting words creeping into his mind, where they’d lodged and festered. He recalled them at the most inopportune moments. Lord! Surely he hadn’t been so indiscreet as to confide that? No. Even faced with a professional hypnotist in a Harley Street consulting room, he’d have managed to censor that much. Certainly. But he’d hinted at—no, it was stronger than a hint—Dorcas’s special powers with animals. And the superintendent had listened, nodding his understanding, quietly making connections while Joe had blundered on forging handcuffs for the girl he loved.

  Too late some baleful words of—was it John Dryden? Or was it his mother?—sneaked into his mind to trouble him. He who trusts secrets to a servant makes him his master. Perhaps he should get it made up in poker work and offer the sentiment to the landlord of the Fleeing Footman?

  CHAPTER 8

  FRIDAY 23RD JUNE.

  Christ! He was right behind her!

  This was awkward. Your target was supposed to be in your sights at all times, not breathing down your neck. Lily managed to disguise her start of surprise and fixed a smile on her face. She finished the sentence she’d been addressing to the reception manager at the moment Mr. Fitzwilliam had bounded into the hotel and come to a halt, an impatient presence waiting his turn just behind her right shoulder.

  The manager took in the situation at once and made an evaluation. “Mr. Fitzwilliam!” he called out. “Good morning, sir! I’ll be with you directly.” Turning to Lily: “Miss … er … Richmond, I wonder if I might pass you to my assistant, who will be very pleased to handle your registration?”

  “Not at all.” Lily shuffled over meekly, leaving space at the counter for the more illustrious client, and Fitzwilliam stepped forward, all bonhomie and effusive thanks. A solitary, middle-aged lady in flowered hat and laced shoes was never going to command the best attention of London hotel staff or the notice of guests and Lily had counted on this when she’d put together her identity for the next two days. It seemed to be working. She greeted the smart young woman who came to attend to her and began to fill in her details for the card from the beginning.

  “My name is: Richmond … Vanessa. That’s Miss … and my home address is in Yorkshire.” She dictated it. “Two nights? Yes, that’s right. Single room. I did book in advance. Reason for visit? Pleasure? You’re asking me what am I doing in London?” Lily found an affected deafness always put people off their guard and discouraged them from listening to conversations. A shouting person had nothing to hide and nothing worth hearing, apparently. “I’m not a tourist, my dear! No, no! If you really must make such a personal enquiry you may write down: business. I’m here to work.” She enjoyed the fleeting look of surprise before adding in quiet triumph, “Yes, I’m a working woman! If you can call writing work. Many do not!… Historical novels, dear,” she confided, looking about her to ensure no one was listening in to such a confession. “Romances. I’m here at the Castlemaine,” Lily stressed the name, “because of its connections with the flame-haired, turquoise-eyed beauty of that name … Barbara Castlemaine, one of the mistresses of Charles the Second, the one who became Duchess of Cleveland as a reward for services rendered … You hadn’t connected the name?… Oh, the dashing duchess was strong on the wing in this part of London and I’m spending a couple of days following her traces around the Palace of St. James’s … Yes, dear, you certainly could—they keep all my works at Hatchard’s round the corner in Piccadilly … Now, I asked for a single room that is larger than a dog-kennel and for it to be su
pplied with a desk and plenty of ink. Stephens blue-black … You have? Jolly good.”

  While Lily twittered on, she was listening intently to Mr. Fitzwilliam who, like her, had chosen to check in earlier than expected. As they both turned from the desk at the same moment, he smiled and held out a hand. “How do you do, Miss Richmond. Rowley Fitzwilliam, also here on business. Pardon me, I couldn’t help overhearing. I’ve never met a writer of romantic novels before. How delightful! We must—”

  “And you’ve never read one either, young man,” Lily said sharply, looking him up and down. “Though you could well be the subject of such a work. Yes—tall, dark, handsome and doubtless disreputable.”

  For a moment Fitzwilliam was taken aback but he rallied to slap his fedora back on his head at a louche angle and narrow his eyes. “That’s just the effect of the gangster hat. All the go at the moment—the slouch—but don’t be deceived! This is not a stickup, madam.”

  “I see. I’m pleased to note that St. James’s is still stocked with its share of fashionable—and law-abiding—young gallants. Ah, there goes my luggage … Excuse me—I must away to my broom-cupboard.”

  That should have been enough to put him off any further approach, Lily thought. Mad old bat. Harmless but better avoided. Not what she’d been expecting, though, her target. What had she expected? Joe had gritted out a warning that he was an exemplary Englishman while hinting darkly that he might well, under this cover, be planning to steal the crown jewels or overturn the government. The smart, jokey chap she’d encountered in the lobby had given out no such dire signals. Lily decided that if she should ever be trapped in the Castlemaine lift she would not be displeased to find Fitzwilliam trapped in there with her. Strangely, he seemed like a man who might well have a handy screwdriver in his back pocket and he’d have the athleticism to climb up and free a cable perhaps. If all else failed he’d keep her entertained. Lily hoped she wouldn’t be called on to shoot him.