My dear Agnes,
Doubtless Charles has apprised you of the current situation here – his ongoing fight with the town planners and the Podmore proposals – all rather technical and not entirely understood by yours truly (though I am sure you will have grasped it quickly enough). However, what you may not have grasped is Primrose’s insatiable fascination with dear Mr Topping which seems to be growing more intense day by day. She and Charles had a little drinkie the other night with Hubert Topping, and all I can say is that she has been most peculiar ever since. For example, on that same evening I happened to be wending my way home having been attending a lecture by Claude Bracegirdle (couldn’t understand a word, of course – but you know what he’s like) when a large car passed me carrying Hubert T. with someone else at the wheel and going in the direction of Newhaven. When I mentioned this to Primrose she went very quiet and then accused me of having been mistaken. Naturally, I told her that this was certainly not the case, whereupon she became not so much peculiar as positively apoplectic. She seemed to think that something deeply sinister was going on and kept muttering, ‘I knew it! I knew it!’
Frankly I rather suspect that this ghastly business of the maths master’s decapitation has gone to her head (if you will excuse the pun!) and that she is seeing skulduggery wherever she looks. Actually, I have to admit that while this is tiresome I cannot entirely blame her. I mean to say, the whole affair is extremely grisly and not at all what one expects in Lewes or indeed the vicinity. Fortunately, as mentioned in my last letter, we have a good man here now in the form of Chief Superintendent MacManus who has everything under control – something which, needless to say, Primrose will not admit – and thus one likes to think that peace and justice will be restored … But alas NOT JUST YET. You blink? I am not surprised, and so do I!
You see there has been another body found – at the foot of Mount Caburn, if you please. One can only be grateful that this time the head is firmly in place, but it is very nasty all the same. Stabbed through the heart from behind, or at least that is what the national news says. It was on one of those police messages that they tag on after the nine o’clock news. From what I could gather the man’s name is Respighi and he is foreign (well, dear, with a name like that he’s bound to be, isn’t he?) but is generally unknown. I don’t quite know what they mean by ‘generally’ – I mean either he is known or he isn’t, but you know what these press people are like. They say anything to disturb or intrigue.
Anyway, known or not, his discovery has quite unsettled poor Mr Winchbrooke who does nothing but wring his hands and cry, ‘We are ruined, ruined!’ I have told him most firmly that this second fatality has nothing whatever to do with the school and that if anything is to ruin Erasmus House it will not be a dead body but the obstruction of the auditors. I think that sobered him somewhat but he is clearly very worried, being convinced there will be a spate of withdrawals – a view fully endorsed by Mrs Winchbrooke – not, I think, the best of influences.
However, Mr Topping has been most reassuring. He told the headmaster to take heart from the law of compensation. This was not a law we were familiar with but Mr Topping smiled patiently and explained that in layman’s language it simply meant ‘lose one, win one.’ I don’t think Mr Winchbrooke was any the wiser (nor I for that matter) as he just gave one of those glassy stares and asked Topping what was it exactly, given the dire circumstances, that he could expect to win. The latter observed that there is a fine line between fame and notoriety and that our little town now rested on the cusp. Thus withdrawals by sensitive parents would doubtless be offset by applications from the tougher type eager to boast a connection via their offspring. As a matter of fact, knowing some of the parents we have to deal with, I thought that was quite shrewd but I don’t think Mr Winchbrooke did. He continued to stare glassily and muttered what sounded like, ‘Some fat chance, I don’t think!’
Actually Topping wasn’t far out, for only this morning there was a phone call from a father wanting to place his boy in our care as the child was obsessed with becoming a crime writer and wouldn’t give him a moment’s peace until he had been sent to board in Lewes at Erasmus. Naturally, I explained that crime writing was not our particular forte and that the school’s reputation rested on its scholastic endeavour and cricketing prowess. The father said he was sure it did, but that it was the murders that mattered and he wanted the little sod to start immediately as he couldn’t stand the constant carping, and would a term’s fee upfront plus a donation to the cricket fund do the trick? I agreed that on the whole it would and that Erasmus House was always happy to welcome pupils with special interests. When I told Mr Winchbrooke of my modest ‘coup’ he looked less morose but said I should have held out for two terms’ advance. Really, there is no satisfying some people!
Well, Agnes, I’ll sign off for the present but be assured will write again post-haste should anything fresh come to light.
Your good friend,
Emily
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
The Primrose Version
After the Podmore activities, I came down rather blearily to breakfast and was so intent on brewing much needed coffee that I did not at first notice the cushion on the floor. It certainly hadn’t been there when I went to bed as I remembered placing it over the packet as a temporary concealment. Thus to see the thing now exposed and the cushion flung to the ground was startling. Surely not the work of some wayward poltergeist!
There was a sudden miaow, and I saw Maurice peering out from behind the stove. ‘Oh really,’ I exclaimed, ‘what’s this now? Cushion capers for a cat’s insomnia, I suppose.’ He gazed inquisitively as I retrieved the cushion and put the packet on the table.
Sipping my coffee and wondering what should be done with it, I noticed a mark missed earlier: a green dot stamped on the left corner. Significant? Who could tell? The essential question was my next move. Charles would not be back for three days and he had left no London telephone number. Besides, if he was enmeshed in business affairs would he welcome a call blithely telling him his stable was being used as storage for a local drug ring? Unlikely. As to the police: that meant MacManus, and after his rather cryptic remarks about wretched Sidney Samson and the Molehill case I had no immediate desire to renew conversation with him – in or out of his bear suit. In any case were I to report what I had found then that would immediately involve Charles and thus make him central to the investigation. So acting on the principle that discretion was the better part of friendship I concluded it would be only courteous to keep quiet until we had discussed matters.
Following my escapade it seemed sensible to ‘keep a low profile’, as the saying goes, and to remain quietly indoors at my easel. However, as it turned out there was no choice in the matter: for unaccountably I was felled by a dose of flu – or some such beastly ague – and for three days stayed at home turgid and disconsolate. Being of a robust nature I am unused to such feebleness … but perhaps it was my pursuit of the toad Topping that was taking its toll. Anyway, whatever the cause, there I remained. But on the fourth day I mustered my energies, and throwing off the invalid’s rug prepared to greet the world again.
And a very interesting world it proved to be: Emily rang with startling news; indeed so startling that any vestiges of malaise vanished instantly. There had been, she reported, another fatality on the downs: a murderous attack which in her opinion was ‘simply disgraceful and shouldn’t have been allowed’, a view one could hardly dispute.
I wondered if it had been in the same place as Carstairs’ misfortune – after all one does hear of such things as ‘copycat killings’ which is a favourite phrase of the press these days. However, it transpired that the crime spot was some distance from the area, at the foot of Mount Caburn, that ancient hill marking Lewes’s approach from the south.
This too held happy childhood memories, for occasionally our parents would visit an ailing relative in the town while leaving the pair of us to lark about in its foothills or clim
b to the ancient earthworks. To now learn that a man had been stabbed there – neatly in the back apparently – was shocking. It was also perplexing because Emily kept rattling on about a rabbit hole. I mean what on earth would a rabbit hole have to do with murder? When I told her to be more succinct she explained that either before or during the attack the victim’s foot had got rammed down the hole and it was rumoured that it had taken the forensics people at least ten minutes to pull it out. For some reason it was this aspect of the crime that seemed to occupy her most, for when I asked her the identity of the man she said vaguely that she thought his name was Respighi, so he must have been foreign, and that he had been wearing size eleven brogues – a fact which had obviously accounted for the difficulty in disengaging the foot.
Other than the declaration that foreigners rarely wore brogues and that she had always assumed they had small feet anyway, I could get nothing further from Emily. Thus I telephoned Melinda in the hope of a more rational account.
It was Freddie who answered. ‘Oh yes,’ he said cheerfully, ‘poor chap was found late last Tuesday night by a courting couple. It was so dark that they tripped over him. The girl had hysterics on the spot. Bad luck really – not what you would call an auspicious start to a bit of rumpy-pumpy. I gather she was taken home in a police car and her beau has been grumbling ever since.’
I have to say that the news was most disquieting. After all, one had not moved to this part of the county to be plagued by corpses. One was quite enough. However, the more I considered, the more I began to wonder if there wasn’t a link between the two killings. It did seem ironic that the last known murder in Lewes had been nearly a century ago whereas now, like London buses, we had two in quick succession. Who was this foreigner, I asked myself, and what had he been doing here anyway?
As it happens, the answer, or part of it, came quickly. That morning I had to go to the chemist to collect my neuralgia rub and en route bumped into Sergeant Wilding. He was strolling up the High Street looking blithe and friendly (something MacManus has never achieved) so as I drew level I wished him good day and tut-tutted about the recent event.
‘Respighi, what a curious name,’ I twittered, ‘sounds almost operatic.’
‘Yes,’ he murmured, ‘you could say that. Luigi Respighi: used to be a small-time Italian actor before he took to crime. Years ago the Met had trouble with him up in Hackney; he was involved in a spate of gangland fights. But after a stretch in jug he disappeared and fell off the map. And then all of a sudden here he is resurrected – well partially that is, because now he’s found knifed and with his foot stuck in a rabbit hole. Running away, I suppose. Funny old world, isn’t it?’
I agreed that it most certainly was, adding that I was sure the chief superintendent had it all in hand.
‘Nice to have faith,’ he observed wryly, and bidding me good morning, continued on his way.
I continued on mine puzzled and intrigued. An erstwhile Italian actor turned denizen of London’s gangland? Why on earth should such a one be down here in docile Lewes getting murdered? My mind was blank. And then suddenly a voice came back to me, a voice I had heard only recently. Quick, quick, it had said, I need a drink. Don’t mess around, just close the boot. It’s bloody cold!
The words rang in my ear. But it wasn’t so much the words that I heard as the accent. It had not been English, definitely continental. I concentrated hard, trying to place the exact provenance and recalled the voices of some POWs once billeted near us at home; a charming bunch of Eyeties who had remained for some months after the war and whom mother had befriended. She had given them Francis’s sweet points after he had gone off to the seminary – a charitable act exciting his rueful ire.
Yes, the more I brooded, the more I was convinced that the taller of the two men had been Italian … Oh my God, had Topping killed him as well as Carstairs? And if so, it must have happened shortly after I had seen them drive off from Podmore! I froze in mid-stride.
‘Hello, hello!’ said Freddie Balfour jovially, patting me on the shoulder, ‘nice to see you vertical and not flat on your back. You made a jolly good corpse the other night. Most convincing. To the coffin born one might say. Ho! Ho!’ He lumbered off in the direction of the White Hart. Idiot.
Mind gripped with thoughts of Respighi, I continued on down the hill in pursuit of fish heads for Maurice’s supper. And it was then that I made the most monstrous gaffe – a gaffe that precipitated a train of dire events and from which even now, sitting in the south of France, I have barely recovered. It was all to do with that wretched packet of cocaine (or whatever the beastly substance was). Unsure as to what should be done and anxious to get to the chemist before it closed for lunch, I had gathered my things hurriedly from the kitchen table, and not trusting the cat had thrust the packet into my shopping bag.
It was an unfortunate move, for as I emerged from the fishmonger I was startled to see Fräulein Hochheimer and Hubert Topping coming towards me. The former looked elated, the latter did not. In fact he was looking distinctly dazed … a state not uncommon with those spending any time with that good lady.
‘Ach, Madame Hooterayde,’ the Fräulein cried. ‘Ve too hev been shopping! Cufflinks for Hoobat and hankies for me. Zo, vell-met by moonlight, to coin an English phrase!’
‘What?’ I said.
‘Shakespeare, I think,’ she gushed; ‘but, of course, also that goot film with your naice Dirk Bogarde. He is most charmink … isn’t he, Hoobat? Ve saw ze film yesterday at the Odeon. Wunderbar!’ She clapped her hands.
‘Oh,’ I said vaguely, ‘glad you liked it. Shouldn’t have thought it was quite up your street – I mean what with Crete and all that …’
‘Do not vorry, Madame Hooterayde, all that ist long time ago. Ze war ist over and Jarmenee ist rising steadily again. Ve shall all be such friends und united against ze common enemy. Mark mein vords!’
‘How nice,’ I replied, failing to enquire the name of the common enemy; and instead turned hastily to ‘Hoobat’ who wore an expression of benevolent boredom.
Frankly, for one who had probably just put paid to one of his accomplices he struck me as remarkably composed. He smiled politely and it was then that I made my dreadful blunder: I dropped my shopping bag, and the whole contents spilt on to the pavement – purse, fish heads, compact, lipstick, crumpled handkerchiefs, a packet of Craven A, a bag of peanuts … and, of course, the damned cocaine.
There was a general flurry as the three of us stooped to scoop the things up; but, needless to say, it was Topping who retrieved the precious package. He looked at it thoughtfully, turning it over a couple of times, and then said quietly, ‘And where did you get this from, Miss Oughterard?’
‘From the grocer, of course,’ trilled Fräulein Hockheimer, ‘I expect it is that zo goot icing sugar Mr Boris sells. It is very special and he packs his own, is that not zo, Madame Hooterayde?’
‘Oh indeed it is,’ I replied, wresting it from Topping’s grasp. But both he and I knew it was not.
They continued on their way, Hockheimer prattling volubly, Topping fumbling for a cigarette. I rather felt like joining Freddie Balfour for a brandy in the White Hart but thought better of it. They say desperation drives; but not to that extent. Instead I returned home to the oddly reassuring company of my cat and dog.
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
The Primrose Version
After lunch, I went up to the studio and continued my assault on the latest commission. I worked steadily for a good hour, grimly refusing to dwell on the morning’s upset.
However, eventually I paused and assessed my handiwork: not bad on the whole, not bad at all. A touch more light over the trees wouldn’t have come amiss, and had that sheep needed to look quite so moronic? I leant forward to make an adjustment but instead put the brush aside. Concentration had lapsed, for despite my resolve I couldn’t stop my mind from returning to that meeting on the High Street … There was no doubt about it: he had known damn well what was in the packet! I rec
alled that silent scrutiny, the slight frown of surprise and its replacement by a flush of anger and the grim stare as I took it from his hands. Oh he had known all right. But what the hell was he going to do with that knowledge? Carstairs’ head loomed before me … I flinched and, hastily banishing the image, grasped the brush again. But as I did so a voice sounded from the hall:
‘I say, anyone at home? Are you there, Miss Oughterard?’
I jumped, nearly upsetting the easel, and then remembered I had left the side door open when letting the dog out. So who was this arriving in the middle of the afternoon? There was certainly no tradesman scheduled and the vicar had called only the day before. Yet even as the question flashed upon me I knew the answer.
‘Just a minute,’ I called back to Hubert Topping, ‘I’ll be straight down.’ I marched on to the landing half-fearful, half-fascinated. He certainly didn’t hang about!
Descent was forestalled for he was already mounting the stairs – bearing a large bunch of crimson flowers – peonies to be precise.
‘Please do excuse my intrusion,’ he said a trifle breathlessly, ‘one hesitates to disturb the artist but I have been deputed to take the headmaster’s car to the garage in Eastbourne for its annual service, and as I was passing it seemed an excellent opportunity to drop these in.’ He thrust the flowers into my surprised arms. ‘Miss Dunhill’s garden is not discernibly aesthetic but it does boast the most lavish display of peonies – roses among the thorns you could say. Such a shame to waste them and with luck they are to your taste. I know that some find them rather vulgar, but I thought that you being an artist would appreciate their delicious ebullience.’
‘Er, yes,’ I said, utterly wrong-footed, ‘yes, yes, of course. How kind.’ And then standing irresolute, cradling the peonies, I added, ‘You had better come up into the studio and I’ll find a vase.’
The Primrose Pursuit Page 21