‘Had the poor lady’s accident anything to do with yours, sir, if I may ask?’
‘No, absolutely nothing. I’m afraid I don’t feel at liberty to speak about it for the present.’
‘Sorry, sir. I don’t wish to be inquisitive, but the door of your room being locked, and Dr Green telephoning for Dr McKenzie almost as soon as I’d asked him to come to see you—’
‘What did Dr Green tell you?’ I asked in as masterful a tone as I was able to assume.
‘He said that Mrs Harley had met with a serious accident, and that he must get hold of the family physician as soon as he could.’
‘Yes,’ I said vaguely, ‘that is all perfectly correct. And how about breakfast? I suppose nobody else is up yet?’
‘Nor likely to be, sir, I think. The mistress has her breakfast in bed, and Miss Sheila’s always a late riser. Both Miss Amabel and Mr Dixon have got the cards on their doors.’
‘The cards?’
‘You know, sir, like they have in hotels: “Don’t disturb me till noon” – “Ne derangy par” it used to be at Deauville. I was in service there for a season, and there were cards almost permanent on all the bedroom doors.’
‘Miss Amabel and Mr Dixon,’ I murmured.
‘The master and Mr Harley are breakfasting in town, sir.’
‘Oh, of course they are.’ I had quite forgotten the deal in Harrington Cobalts. ‘So that accounts for everybody.’
‘Oh, there’s Mr Clarence. I don’t quite know what he’s doing.’
The man spoke as if Mr Clarence were of very small consequence. ‘But if you would like breakfast, sir, it should be ready now, if you care to go down. I can then fix you up with a sling from the master’s silk scarves in the hall cupboard.’
He paused in the act of trying to brush my hair.
‘Oh, I’ll brush it myself somehow afterwards. Let me have breakfast first. I hope the doctors aren’t still in the dining-room.’
My fears on that score were soon relieved, for I heard the sound of their voices coming from my bedroom, as we passed it on our way downstairs. In the hall Edwins equipped me with a creditable sling, and then conducted me to a chair by the dining-room fire, where I sat while he went to fetch my breakfast.
IV. Breakfast (First Series)
Christmas Day – 9 a.m.
After eating my breakfast – a magnificent breakfast of scrambled eggs with mushrooms and stuffed tomatoes – I sat once more by the fire in meditation. Christmas Day. Harrington Cobalts. My wrist. The death of Mrs Harley. These four strands of thought twisted round one another lazily in my mind, and kept it fully occupied. Christmas Day. The present I had brought for my hostess, still in my bedroom by the body of Mrs Harley. Christmas Day. Another year over. (At least I have done something in the City.) Harrington Cobalts. Was the big deal through? Would Mr Quisberg shortly return in triumph? ‘My boy, we have made a fortune! You have made a fortune too!’ Mr Quisberg and Harley. ‘Harley, your poor mother . . .’ Surely it could not be a very festive Christmas Day? We should sit reading in isolated chairs, I with a book in my left hand. How long should I be maimed? At least I could excuse myself from another outburst of musical chairs. But there could be none. No dancing, no music. Sheila would read, Amabel and her Dixon would suppress their titters, Mrs Quisberg would go about the house wringing her hands, and ordering poor Harley an extra large helping of plum-pudding which he couldn’t eat. And Clarence? What on earth was he doing in the house – neither gay himself, nor adding to the gaiety of others?
Then the door opened and the two doctors confronted me.
‘This is Mr Warren, Doctor,’ said Dr Green. ‘Malcolm, Dr McKenzie would like a short conversation with you. I suggest the terrace room or the drawing-room; for I am inordinately hungry.’
He touched the bell and sat down at the table. Dr McKenzie, lean, tall, grey and pale, nodded at me with his chin and held the door open.
‘The terrace room?’ I asked.
‘By all means.’
*
A fire had been lit in one of the two grates, and we sat down facing it in two chairs.
Dr McKenzie coughed and began.
‘I dare say you realise, Mr Warren, that there will be certain formalities in connection with Mrs Harley’s death. I have telephoned to the police, and they are good enough to say that they would appreciate my evidence and dispense for the time being with the services of the police-surgeon. I have, as a matter of fact, acted in that capacity on occasion. Naturally, if I should find anything untoward in the case, I shall at once put it into other hands. But I do not anticipate anything of the kind. Now will you be so good as to tell me in detail all your actions from the time when you first awoke this morning?’
I told my story.
‘You did not, I take it, see the face of the corpse?’
‘No, Dr Green told me it was not a pretty sight.’
‘As a matter of fact, one of the spikes of the balcony railings had entered the cheek. Not that there will be any difficulty as to identification, evidence of which will be provided by Mrs Harley’s son.’
I shuddered for him.
‘I am told,’ Dr McKenzie went on, ‘that the lady was in a condition of neurotic instability. As to that, of course, you can have no knowledge, but it will assist me to form my ideas, if you will give me your impressions.’
‘I saw her at dinner,’ I said, ‘and after dinner, while she watched us playing bridge. I thought her not quite normal. She twitched her fingers, and bit her lips, and seemed terribly timid. Mind you, I had been told by Mrs Quisberg that she was to see a nerve specialist . . .’
‘Quite so. I shall, of course, have a talk with Mrs Quisberg. In fact, I think it falls to me to break the sad news to her. Now as to the bedroom of the deceased. Did anything strike you about it? Did you notice the bed?’
‘The bed looked to me just as if someone had spent the night in it, and got up in the usual way.’
‘A very restless night?’
‘No, I don’t think so.’
‘Did anything else suggest itself to you while you were in the bedroom?’
‘No.’
He looked at me interrogatively for a few seconds.
‘Dr Green told me,’ he said, ‘that you detected a faint odour, which you described as chloroform or ether. Is that so?’
I blushed for my forgetfulness.
‘Oh, yes. Dr Green suggested that it must be Ant – Ant—’
‘Antaronyl. Very possibly. Dr Green apparently smelt nothing. Nor did I, and I have a keen sense of smell.’
He sniffed as if to indicate that I must have been romancing, and got up from his chair.
‘Let me see. To-day is Friday. The inquest should be on Monday. You will have to attend, and – er – testify. It will not be in any way an ordeal for you. I trust your arm is giving you no trouble?’
He looked with suspicious curiosity at my sling.
‘Oh, it’s going on splendidly, thank you.’
‘Dr Green is apparently an able manipulator?’
The words were uttered as a question, but I preferred to accept them as a statement.
‘Most able.’
‘Well, I will join him in the dining-room, if I may. I have had only the most slender meal so far. By the way, the – er – body of Mrs Harley is in your room, I think. No doubt the ambulance, for which I have telephoned, will soon be here to remove it, but if, in the meanwhile, you need any of your effects, perhaps you will come and collect them with me now. I prefer that the door should remain locked for the present, and Dr Green has very properly given me the key.’
We went into the hall and upstairs together, and Dr McKenzie unlocked the door of my room. The body was lying on my bed, covered with a sheet. I collected my possessions as quickly as I could with my left hand, and the doctor stacked them together in a little heap on the landing.
‘I should ask one of the servants to find you temporary quarters,’ he said, nodded a distant far
ewell, and went downstairs.
*
Not a very pleasant man, I thought. Still, he hadn’t had breakfast. For a while, I paused indecisively. Then I went into the drawing-room and rang the bell. A housemaid answered it, and I had to ask her to find Edwins for me. He came up ten minutes later, and on hearing my needs, suggested that I should make a temporary home in the bathroom on the half-landing, where there was a dressing-table, in addition to the usual appliances.
‘I take it, sir,’ he said, while putting out my things, ‘that the poor lady’s dead!’
‘Really!’ I exclaimed. ‘What on earth makes you think that?’
‘Oh, these things get about, sir. We’re not all fools.’
The remark was not all it should have been, but it was probably very true as far as he was concerned. He was a tall slender man, rather like Clarence James in appearance, though not so young. His alert bearing might have seemed rather formidable in a house with guilty secrets. To be sure, I suspected nothing of the kind at Beresford Lodge, but I felt that Edwins’ views on the household might not be unamusing, and resolved to give him a chance of gossiping.
‘I don’t remember meeting Mrs Harley here before,’ I said, after a short pause.
‘No, sir, this is her first visit – and her last.’
I ignored the dramatic ending to his sentence.
‘How long have you been here, Edwins?’
‘Five years, sir.’
‘Oh, have you?’ That’s longer than Mr Harley, isn’t it?’
‘Mr Harley took up residence three years ago, sir, in April.’
‘Dr Green’s a new visitor, as far as I’m concerned.’
‘Yes, sir. He hasn’t been here for fully a year, and then only for one night. I believe he travels a good deal on the continent. But he’s a very old friend of Mr Quisberg’s. Writes to him regular once a week if not more.’
‘How do you know?’
‘Oh, I know his writing.’ He’s given me letters to post for him.’
‘He is certainly a very able doctor – at least, if I can judge from my wrist.’
‘A very able gentleman in every way, I should say, sir. And strong – my word! It isn’t a thing I ought to repeat, sir, and I shouldn’t do, to any gentleman except yourself, but one evening, two years ago about, Miss Amabel was giving a kind of party – quite in the modern style, sir, if you understand me – and one of the guests had brought a prize-fighter to the house. At least, that’s what I took him to be. Well, this prize-fighter got absolutely drunk – stinkin’ drunk, sir, if you will excuse the phrase – and cut up very nasty down in the terrace room, where they were playing some game or other. He gave poor old Mr George – that’s the butler, sir – a punch on the shoulder, and, I am told, forgot himself with one of the lady guests. Dr Green was there and told him to stop, but he whipped his coat off and turned on the doctor like a whirlwind. Well, what do you suppose happened, sir? The doctor gave him one blow, fair and square on the jaw, and completely laid him out. One of the gentlemen and me carried him to a car, and he was got home somehow or other. My word, but there was a row afterwards! No more parties for Miss Amabel here!’
‘But now,’ I said, rather naughtily, ‘there’s Mr Dixon.’
‘Yes, sir. I shouldn’t like to get the wrong side of Mr Dixon either. But I don’t think he’d be a match for the doctor. And now, if you’ll excuse me, sir, I’d better go downstairs. Mr George doesn’t hold with taking in breakfasts, and it’s quite possible Miss Sheila or Mr Clarence will be down.’
‘Breakfast seems to be served in instalments here.’
‘Yes, sir. Quite on the cards it’ll go on till eleven.’
‘Well, Edwins, I’m much obliged to you.’
‘Not at all, sir. Only too glad.’
*
I sat down – on a white-enamelled cane chair. What should I do next? There were no papers to read, no Telegraph or Mirror, no comforting pinkness of the Financial Times. I didn’t want to see Dr McKenzie again, and I dreaded the series of festive greetings that sooner or later I must endure. Christmas Day. Harrington Cobalts. My wrist. The death of Mrs Harley. Sooner or later, Mr Quisberg and Harley would return from London. It would be just my luck to be the first to meet them. What should I do? Smirk nervously and wish them the season’s compliments? Or blurt out wretchedly the tragic news? It was really better to meet no one, till the air was clearer, till the first shocks had been given and received. If I had had a sitting-room of my own, or even a proper bedroom, I could have resumed my sluggish reading of La Chartreuse de Parme, but Stendhal in a bathroom seemed altogether too cold a prospect. Why not a little walk? On the Heath, or in the garden?
I went down to the hall again, where George, the butler, helped me on with my overcoat. I do not think I have mentioned that there was a small telephone room leading off the lobby. There were lines to the terrace room, Mr Quisberg’s study and Mrs Quisberg’s bedroom, but the telephone room, though not guaranteed to be sound-proof (as Amabel once said), was the most suitable place for a private conversation. As I walked through the lobby, the door of the telephone room opened and Dr Green came out. I thought he looked a little displeased.
‘So you’ve got rid of Dr McKenzie,’ I said.
‘For a time, yes. I find the man an insufferable boor.’
‘Has the ambulance come?’
‘Not yet. I have been telephoning to the Carlton, in the hopes of catching Axel and warning him to break the news to Harley on the way back. But, it seems, they’ve just left the hotel. So we shall have another nasty scene when they arrive.’
‘I’m going out for a walk in the garden. Are you coming?’
‘No, I am not.’
He turned his back on me abruptly and went into the hall.
*
Outside, at last, I took a path that bent round from the drive to the left, past the length of the aviary and thence by a steep little zigzag to the foot of the north-east end of the Louis Quinze staircase by which one went up to the terrace. At this point, having no mind to remain within hail of the house, I took another path which ran behind a shrubbery and along the far, or north-east, side of the two tennis courts. Beyond them was my first objective, the rock-garden and pond.
It was one of those mild indefinite days, which we now associate with Christmas in England, a day which had in its clouded sunlight nothing of autumn and nothing of winter, but seemed rather to suggest the spring – a feeble spring seen in a looking-glass. The night (at least, at dinner-time) had been clear and star-lit, though a mist had developed before dawn. These meteorological reflections of mine were prompted entirely by the feeling that I was perhaps wearing too thick an overcoat. I did not for one moment realise how important it might be to seek knowledge as to the exact time when the clearness of the night gave way to mist.
The rock-garden was most excellently made, and I spent about ten minutes admiring it. As always, I was fascinated by the labels indicating the plants – either above or below ground – Primula Denticulata, Japonica, Sikkimensis, and Florindae, Gentiana Sino-ornata, Iris Pumila, Iris Kaempferi, Veronica Rupestris, Helianthemum and many more. The Iris Kaempferi were planted most correctly on the artificially boggy bank of an irregular pond, about eighteen feet long and eight feet wide. This, as I knew, was the home of a score of goldfish, and I was bending down to see if I could detect a glint of red and gold amongst the water-weed, when my eye caught sight of a pink and blue cardboard object floating on the water in a clump of Scirpus Zebrinus, or variegated reed. Shocked by such untidiness, I picked it up, and found it to be part of an empty firework. A pink label running round the conical top bore the following legend: ‘The Jubilee Flash. Novelty. Price 2s. 6d. Place blue end in muzzle of detonating pistol. Hold pistol almost vertically above the head and pull trigger. Bright silver flash and stars.’ No doubt, I thought, a relic of the fifth of November. But what careless gardeners to leave it lying there. Absentmindedly I put it in the pocket of my coat.
&
nbsp; Behind the rock-garden, there was a shrubbery of low but choice shrubs, azaleas, heaths and so on, and further back, some uncommon specimens of berberis, philadelphus and viburnum. Beyond this shrubbery there was a patch of bare but well-cultivated ground, which I supposed was used in summer as a reserve garden for sweet peas and other flowers suitable for cutting. At the back of it was an old brick wall, about six feet high and covered with ivy, which marked the limit of Mr Quisberg’s property.
Behind the wall rose Paragon House, indignantly referred to by Amabel at dinner on the previous evening as the only obstacle between the windows of Beresford Lodge and the Harrow Ridge, which lay miles beyond the valley of the Finchley Road to the north-west. It was a big unpleasant building, I thought, as I surveyed it between the bare plane trees which in winter were quite unable to screen it from view. The windows were all shut and very dirty. The ivy wall prevented me from seeing into the garden, but I had no doubt it was as derelict as the house. It would indeed be a triumph, I thought, if Mr Quisberg could buy it and pull it down. As long as it stood where it was, one had the sense (except perhaps when the trees were in full leaf), of being overlooked. In central London, where gardens cannot be taken seriously, and windows are protected by net curtains, this would not have mattered. But it was too bad to own three acres or so in costly Hampstead, and suffer from lack of privacy. However, with Harrington Cobalts all things were possible. Surely Mr Quisberg should have returned by now?
It was now about half past ten, and I left the rock-garden to walk along a broad herbaceous border, which ran parallel to the terrace but on the far side of the huge central lawn. But hardly had I emerged from the shelter of the shrubberies when I saw Sheila on the terrace, beckoning me to come in. She saw that I saw her, and there was no escape.
V. Breakfast (Second Series)
Christmas Day – 10.30 a.m.
Sheila came running down the Louis Quinze stairs of the terrace to meet me.
Crime at Christmas Page 4