Murder of the Bride

by C. S. Challinor

  “In the case I prosecuted where a young man was accused of poisoning his grandmother, he got it from rat poison. He told the court his grandmother had rats in her attic, which turned out to be true. Unlike Grandmother, however, they were still alive and kicking.”

  Carter sank into a capacious armchair and stared into space.

  “Can I get you anything, Mr. Carter? More coffee?”

  “I’ll be all right, thank you. I just need to be on my own for awhile. It’s a lot to absorb.”

  “Right you are.” After giving the solicitor a comforting squeeze on the shoulder, Rex slipped into the great hall, quietly closing the living room door behind him.

  The guests appeared much the same as before, grouped around the fireplaces, chatting and whispering, but clearly growing impatient with the constable’s progress. Rex deduced that news of the vicar must not have spread. Best keep it that way, if possible.

  Helen met him in the center of the room. “I saw the constable take Bobby Carter aside. Is there any news?”

  “The vicar never recovered consciousness, Helen. And Mrs. Newcombe is still in danger. The reports on Polly and the baby seem more promising.” This was the best interpretation he could give of the information he had received secondhand from Carter. He did not want to upset his fiancée, but even so, tears sprang to her eyes, which she swiped away.

  “An innocent woman and child,” she whispered fiercely.

  “Helen, did you see the wedding cake before it was brought into the reception room?”

  “It was in the caterers’ kitchen. Polly showed it to me. Stella Pembleton was just putting the finishing touches on it—decorative hearts and rosebuds, and whatnot.” Helen glanced about her and said in a low voice, “I don’t think PC Dimley is up to the job. He looks so young and inexperienced. Shouldn’t there be a detective on the case?”

  “There will be. The important thing is that Dimley is maintaining order and doing a methodical job of talking to everyone in turn.”

  The constable was now addressing the younger guests—Meredith, Reggie, Jeremy, and his girlfriend in the dowdy floral dress.

  “Can I drive you to the hospital?” Rex went to ask Timmy, who would have been notified of developments at the hospital by now.

  The groom shook his head timorously, the angular planes of his face chalky and strained in the firelight. “My mother says Polly will be out of it and won’t know I’m there, and the shock of seeing her might bring on my asthma.”

  “Might be an idea to get yourself checked out, all the same. You had similar symptoms yourself, didn’t you, even if they were milder?”

  “Mum says I’m okay. She gave me charcoal tablets. I’ve been having a funny tummy, that’s all.”

  Rex wondered if Timmy always did what Mabel told him, which might not bode well for happy married life. Though natural enough she might be over-protective of a son who had been sickly as a child, that son had obligations to a wife and child of his own now.

  He crouched beside the young man’s chair. “When Polly comes round, it will be a comfort for her to know you’re there.”

  Mabel appeared out of nowhere and glared down at him.

  “Please don’t upset Timmy. He’s very susceptible to emotion.” The whiskers growing out of the mole on her chin trembled distractingly. Rex focused instead on her beaky nose and accusing eyes, the same pallid blue as Timmy’s and reminiscent of a dreary spring sky.

  “I was offering to drive him to the hospital to see his wife and child.”

  “I would take him myself if I felt it was necessary. And the policeman wants us to stay until his superiors arrive.”

  Rex rose to his feet, towering over the woman. He doubted PC Dimley would be so callous as to disallow her son a visit to the hospital. However, it was clear from Mabel’s rigid expression that her mind was made up. “Well, let me know if I can be of any assistance,” he replied stiffly and, with a courteous nod at Timmy, returned to Helen.

  “I just got a dressing down from Mabel Thorpe for interfering in family business,” he reported.

  “She’s just concerned about Timmy. She used to write notes excusing him from school when he had a sniffle. Fortunately, he was a studious boy and always managed to catch up with his class work.”

  “Mrs. Thorpe mollycoddled him. Just look at him pitying himself when his wife and child are in danger, and Polly’s mother is too sick to comfort her daughter.”

  Helen sighed heavily. “I know, but when Mabel lost her husband, her two sons became her whole life.”

  “My mother is a widow too, and I was her only son. She never let me miss a day of school. And she wouldn’t tolerate any sniveling.”

  “I think Mabel was lonely and liked having Timmy stay home. Dudley was the exact opposite. He felt smothered. He was always the more independent of the two.”

  “I can’t believe they’re twins,” Rex remarked, looking across the great hall to where Dudley draped an elbow over the carved stone lintel, chatting up Jasmina. Rex found himself wishing Clive would give him a bop on the nose, but he didn’t credit Helen’s ex with more spunk than timid little Timmy.

  “Different eggs,” Helen explained. “Timmy and Dudley don’t share exactly the same DNA. That’s why they aren’t identical.”

  Jasmina’s squealy giggle rang out incongruously, piercing the subdued conversations. That laugh could seriously grate on one’s nerves, thought Rex, whose own nerves stood on edge, especially when Jocelyn Willington approached. She wore a funereal expression beneath her sun-bed tan and, when she placed a hand on his arm, he saw she was trembling. Her mouth worked strangely before she was finally able to speak.

  “You had better come and see this before I alert the constable,” she croaked through dry lips. “I doubt he’s been on the force long enough to have witnessed anything like this.”

  “Mrs. Willington, I’m sure PC Dimley didn’t join the police force so he could be protected from the world by the public he’s supposed to serve. Suppose you tell me what it is you saw.”

  Mrs. Willington took a raspy breath and visibly steeled herself. “I just found Polly’s Aunt Gwen. I still think you’d better come and see for yourself first.”

  “Very well. Lead the way,” he said with a deep sense of foreboding.

  The Winding Stair

  Rex had not been prepared for Mrs. Willington’s answer, much less the scene that awaited him. They had exited through the exterior door in the kitchen where the caterers had set up their operations, and then skirted the patio extending around the back of the fort. The bulge from the stone stairwell blocked the view on the other side, and it was not until Rex rounded the brick wall that he came upon the body. He gave a start, much as Mrs. Willington must have done before him.

  The aunt from Wales lay twisted on the ground, her mauve dress hiked above her knees revealing a beige satin slip. A pool of drying blood formed a halo around her dark hair, and out of her pale face stared a pair of lifeless brown eyes.

  “She’s dead,” Mrs. Willington confirmed. “I put the mirror of my compact in front of her mouth to check for a breath, although I don’t see how even a cat could have survived a fall from that height.”

  Rex’s gaze skimmed up the fort, which rose sixty feet to the parapet. On this south side the brick had mellowed over the years to a lovely russet and was strung with ivy. No one mounting or descending the steps in the tower would have seen the body unless they were peering out at a downward and sideways angle from one of the arrow slits. Presumably, no one had thought to look through a window in the wing overlooking the patio. Rex’s focus returned to the pattern-imprinted concrete where Aunt Gwen must have died upon impact.

  “Did you touch anything?” he asked Mrs. Willington, who stood back a short distance, arms crossed and hugging her sides as if she were cold, which she might very well be in her lightweight green suit.

  “Of course I didn’t touch anything. I watch enough TV to know better than to contaminate a possible crim
e scene.”

  “You don’t think it was an accident?”

  “I shouldn’t think so. Have you been up to the battlements?”

  Rex shook his head.

  “If you had, you’d know it’s not that easy to fall off. I wonder what the silly woman was doing up there.” Mrs. Willington fumbled with a half-smoked cigarette and lighter, turning aside to shield the flame from the wind. “I snuck out for a ciggie. I was pacing up and down the patio and happened to stroll around the wall of the fort. This was the last thing I expected to find.” She inhaled long and hard on the filter and blew out the smoke in an abrupt puff. “Victoria had hoped to hold the reception on the lawn, which would have been lovely. But the weather has been so unpredictable.”

  That’s not the only thing, Rex thought.

  “Penny Thompson at the tennis club held her daughter’s reception under a marquee in the garden,” Mrs. Willington went on, jerking her cigarette about in the air. “I wasn’t able to attend, as Tom and I were abroad, but I saw the photos. It was a beautiful May day, unlike today. Only, while the celebrations were going on, someone absconded with Penny’s jewels, same as with the snuff boxes. You don’t expect people you know to go rummaging around in your bedroom while you’re busy hosting a party, do you? Luckily, Penny’s jewels were insured, but it’s the sentimental value that counts.”

  Jocelyn Willington did not strike Rex as being the most sentimental of people, but he nodded receptively.

  “And now this!” she exclaimed in outrage, turning on the body, then turning away again sharply.

  “Did you tell anyone else?” he asked, scanning the scene. “Your husband maybe?”

  “No. I came to you first.”

  “It must have been a tremendous shock to find the body, but you must inform the constable. He’ll want to know why you didn’t immediately.”

  “I told you. He’s a baby, and somehow you inspire more confidence.”

  “Thank you, but he might not see things quite that way.” Rex guided Mrs. Willington back the route they had come and in through the kitchen.

  “I can’t believe this has happened, today of all days,” she lamented. “Victoria put so much effort into the wedding preparations before she came down with the poisoning. That’s what I was mulling over just before I almost tripped over the body.”

  They reached the interior door to the great hall.

  “Did you know the aunt at all?” Rex asked, pausing to open it.

  “I’d heard about her, but today was the first time I met her. Did you see how she was trying to get her claws into my husband?” Mrs. Willington suddenly remembered her cigarette and found an ashtray in which to stub it out.

  “You make her sound like a femme fatale,” Rex said with a modicum of amusement, recalling the jolly woman who had put him in mind of a bouncing Indian rubber ball.

  “She was swooning all over Tom. It was embarrassing for everybody.”

  Tom Willington was a handsome man, but Aunt Gwen had flirted with him and Roger Litton as well. “Och, I don’t think she meant any harm. She was just having a good time.” Until someone decided to end her enjoyment once and for all.

  “I take your point. One mustn’t speak ill of the dead.” Bracing herself, Mrs. Willington went off to seek the constable.

  Rex wanted to explore the top of the fort while he still had the chance. The police might arrive in force at any moment and cordon it off. A quick foray could possibly shed some light on the mysterious circumstances of the widow’s death.

  Mrs. Willington facilitated his plan when she loudly announced to the constable and thereby everyone in the hall that she had witnessed a dead body. While all eyes were riveted on her, Rex ducked into the shadowy mouth of the stairwell and climbed the narrow winding steps. Worn in the center from over a century and a half of use, they were squared off on the outer sides at the fort’s west wall.

  The stair, Rex saw, was constructed as a left-handed helix. In olden days, this would put an assailant coming up the steps at a disadvantage, by forcing him to fight with his sword hand close to the central pillar, while the defender above him had space by the outer wall in which to maneuver. Rex parried and thrust with his right arm, lumbering about like a dancing bear, and found the design theory to be sound.

  Unable to see beyond the next turn, he continued his steep ascent. Dim lamps in wrought iron cages cast eerie shapes upon the stepped ceiling twirling above his head. From the crumbling stone seeped the musty chill odor of an old church. The “Folly” had never been inhabited prior to the wing extensions and had served no useful purpose that Rex could see other than to impress old Cornelius’ friends and neighbors and provide a venue for jousting events, and perhaps a good view over the surrounding countryside.

  By the time he reached the fourth arrow slit window, he was panting and perspiring. He paused to loosen his tie. As he approached the top, he felt a draught coursing down the stairwell. Daylight illuminated the final sweep of steps, which culminated in an uneven stone landing curving around the central pillar, where he came to a solid oak door standing ajar in the wall.

  He pushed the door all the way open and, stooping beneath the low lintel, stepped onto a cobblestone roof. Walled in by a parapet bristling with turrets and abutting the stairwell tower, it offered nowhere to hide. Nor was there much to see: a pair of weathered deck chairs whose striped canvas flapped in the wind, and an abandoned dovecote where a handful of moist crumbs had been scattered within the white wood confines. On the roof’s west corner squatted the small stairwell tower he had exited, topped by a flagpole streaming a faded fork-tongue banner. Rex faced the moisture-laden breeze and filled his lungs with fresh air as he took in the panorama, quelling his acrophobia.

  Dotted with copses and farms, a patchwork of fields in vibrant yellow and sludgy green melted into misty hills rolling into the distance. Beyond the iron gates of Newcombe Court, the narrow road that had brought the wedding procession to the manor-fort receded into the countryside. The rooftop proved a good look-out post, and Uncle Bobby would have spotted the ambulance while it was still miles away, just as Rex could see, fast approaching from the direction of Derby, the flashing emergency lights of two tiny squad cars.

  The scalable stone wall, extending around the property to the gates, hemmed in a perimeter of oak, sycamore and horse chestnut, affording cover for anyone intent on concealing themselves. Walking back to the far corner of the parapet, he peered over a turret. Directly below stretched the back terrace onto which Aunt Gwen had fallen and cracked her skull, and where she sprawled like a dropped rag doll. From this height the scene lacked a sense of reality in spite of the splash of scarlet on concrete. Rex closed his eyes and reopened them to make sure his mind was not playing tricks.

  Assailed by sudden vertigo, Rex straightened and pulled back from the wall, resisting the perverse impulse to throw himself into the air. It was a few minutes before he recovered his equilibrium and was able to make some clear-headed observations.

  Aunt Gwen, just shy of five foot in heels, would barely have been able to see over the parapet, far less fall off it, unless she had climbed up for some obscure reason and slipped. Furthermore, her portly proportions would not have fit between the closely spaced turrets.

  It therefore became apparent to Rex that, unless she had decided to commit suicide at her niece’s wedding, Gwendolyn Jones had been forced over the battlements with malice aforethought.

  Doubts and Suspicions

  Police sirens blurted in the distance, the two squad cars making slow progress in the mud. Rex, having completed his search of the roof, retreated to the tower steps and began his descent. By the time he returned to the hall, the atmosphere had changed dramatically. A sense of survivors of a shipwreck rallying together and making the best of the situation no longer prevailed. Aunt Gwen’s death had changed all that. People now viewed each other with increased suspicion, watchful and tight-lipped, their postures rigid and guarded. Quite possibly, news of the vica
r’s demise had spread too.

  Rex took a seat beside the DJ at his music station. One hand propped under his chin, elbow on the armrest of his chair, he gazed in mute inquiry at Rex, waiting for the latter to speak.

  “You’ve been here pretty much since the end of the banquet, haven’t you?” Rex asked.

  “Yeah, but I didn’t see nothing, if that’s what you’re asking. I was busy making sure everything was ready for when the dancing began.”

  “Did you see a short, dark-haired woman go up these steps?”

  “Well, yeah. Why’d you want to know?”

  “Was she alone?”

  “The fat one in the floaty mauve dress?”

  “Aye, Gwendolyn Jones.”

  “She was with that bald bloke with a polka-dot bowtie.”

  “They went up together?”

  “Yeah, but that’s all I know. Like I said, I was busy.”

  “Did you see this man come down?”

  The DJ thought for a second. “Can’t remember. A few people went up and down, but I couldn’t tell you who or when. To be honest, I don’t pay much attention. I just do my routine and try to make sure everyone has a blast and remembers DJ Smoothie. Most of my business comes from referrals.”

  “Is this your main job?”

  “Yeah, I get more bookings than I know what to do with in summer and around Christmas time. Any idea when I can split? I’m dead bored waiting around for the fuzz.”

  “They’re on their way.”

  “Think anyone would mind if I spun some songs?”

  “Probably not appropriate under the circumstances.”

  “I know what you mean, but I still expect to be paid when Mrs. Newcombe gets out of hospital.”

  Rex left the DJ lolling morosely in his armchair. Jocelyn Willington’s husband accosted him as he made his way to the center of the great hall.

  “Mr. Graves, did you find anything up top?”