Mrs. Malory and the Festival Murder

by Hazel Holt

  We paused for a moment to stare up at the soft black sky above us decorated with an uncountable number of glittering points of light. ‘Goodness,’ I said, ‘aren’t we lucky to live in the country.’

  Will drew my arm through his.

  ‘Come along, let me lead you to your car before you fall into a ditch looking at the stars.’

  We walked companionably together and Will said, ‘Was Robin all right?’

  ‘Rosemary calmed him down, I think. But he’s resigned.’

  ‘Adrian really ought to be boiled very slowly in oil.’

  ‘Do you think he has any sort of human feelings?’ I asked.

  ‘It would seem unlikely. His nature is irredeemably cold.’

  ‘Not even for Enid?’

  ‘Can you imagine anyone having any human feelings for Enid? Apart from profound dislike. Nor do I imagine that she

  has any human feelings either, so they are perfectly matched. What was it that someone said about how fortunate it was that the Carlyles married each other so that two people were made miserable instead of four.’

  ‘So unreasonable,’ I protested, ‘I’m devoted to Jane Carlyle – think of those heavenly letters! Do you remember her saying that when she got out of the train after a journey she looked and felt as if she had just returned from the Thirty Years War? How well one knows the feeling!’

  He laughed.

  ‘Travel by train has, if anything, deteriorated since the 1840s. Come, let me shine the torch while you look for your car keys. Why do women always fill their handbags with all that impedimenta? Yours is quite as large as Miss Prism’s and could easily accommodate the manuscript of a three-volume novel.’

  I opened the door of my car.

  ‘Will you be at the next meeting?’ I asked.

  ‘I suppose so. Having put my hand to the plough and all that.’

  ‘Well, I’ll see you then.’

  ‘Oh, before that.’ He leaned on the bonnet of the car and lit his pipe. ‘I’ve just finished the first draft of a new television play and will need a certain amount of comfort and reassurance. So do, please, say that you’ll have dinner with me next week. Friday?’

  ‘Yes please, I’d love to. And by then Rosemary, Eleanor, and I may have thought how to find another Festival job for Robin.’

  He made sucking, gurgling noises with his pipe and said, ‘I shall await events with the utmost eagerness. I’ll ring you.’

  He shut the car door for me and was gone.

  As I drove home my headlights picked out a small rabbit at the side of the road, its eyes fixed and mesmerized by the light. I slowed down, just in case it felt like dashing out and committing suicide under my wheels, and I thought of poor Robin, and hoped that Adrian’s brutal behaviour hadn’t made him withdraw completely into his neurotic shell. And then I thought about what Will had said about Adrian’s lack of feelings and wondered, as I often did, whether, behind the facade of polite joviality, Will had allowed himself to indulge in the luxury of feelings once again. He was friendly and caring and compassionate to those in trouble, but there seemed no way of telling what if anything lay beneath, and what his thoughts were as he sat alone in the dark, low-ceilinged study in his cottage, so far from any other human habitation. But, as always, search as I might for some clue in his conversation, I was no nearer a conclusion than I had been on the day before my husband’s funeral, when Will had gently taken my hand and I had sobbed away a part of my grief while he remained white-faced and silent.

  Chapter Three

  The scent of Brompton stocks in the flowerbed round the statue of Queen Anne in the Square made me suddenly decide to go to the garden centre to get the bedding plants. Mr Chapman, who comes once a week to see to my garden and who, over the years, has established the sort of tyrannical power that such essential people wield, had been recently making noises about the need to get on with the planting out. He is a splendid man and wonderful with vegetables but his idea of a nicely planted bed is a rigid row of orange tagetes, backed by a parallel row of cerise petunias, the whole thing finished off in fine military fashion by a guardsman-straight row of scarlet salvias. Consequently I always tried to get the annuals bought and planted when he was safely out of the way. I had loaded my trolley with the usual lobelia and alyssum and had gone mad among the new varieties of asters, nicotiana and some very exciting curly-edged petunias, had splurged dreadfully among the pelargoniums and impatiens and had decided that I simply couldn’t live through the summer without a dozen new fuchsias, and was, as a result, feeling a little dazed by my own extravagance. I came to rest in the section of the garden centre devoted to garden ornaments. I had admired and coveted a couple of massive urns, rioting with vine and acanthus leaves, and was just wondering what sort of person it might be who would buy a representation of an old boot lovingly moulded in concrete, when a voice behind me said, ‘Now don’t tell me, Sheila darling, that you are proposing to buy that excessively coy-looking rabbit.’

  It was Oliver Stevens. He is a large man, over six feet tall, and what, if you wished to be polite, you might call well-built. He looked even bulkier than usual in a heavy Aran sweater and corduroys and, with his round face and his beard, looked very like the popular conception of Henry VIII. He is an amiable man, liked by all. We locals were a little wary of him at first – a television producer – we didn’t know quite what to expect – but his friendly manner and good-natured willingness to join in everything without any side or affectation made him universally popular. The only fly in the ointment (‘And wouldn’t you know that there’d have to be one?’ as Rosemary said) was his wife. Sally Stevens, although now in her forties, is still a wide-eyed fluffy blonde with a girlish laugh and a tiresome ‘little-me’ manner. She’s also very county – actually I think her parents did have some sort of quite grand country house somewhere in Norfolk (Sally gave the impression that it was rather larger than Chatsworth or Blenheim) but I don’t think there was a lot of money. She’s very into hunting and horses and the Stevens’ Range Rover always has a couple of hysterical Jack Russells barking their heads off.

  I imagine it was for Sally that Oliver had bought the rather beautiful Georgian rectory with its stables and paddocks since he himself remains incurably urban. He loves the theatre, opera, expensive London restaurants, and generally being at the heart of things, as he says. As well as being a successful television producer he also writes film scripts and the occasional novel. He’s very successful in all these fields – which is just as well for the Stevens’ life style must be very expensive – but he has a huge talent which matches his great gusto for life and for all the good things it offers. Since his work mostly keeps him in London throughout the week he has a small flat (‘In dear old Knightsbridge, darling, among the jolly old Arabs’) which must be a convenient bolt-hole when he wants to escape from Sally. It’s obvious to the most casual observer that although for Oliver the marriage is only a polite convention, Sally is a fiercely possessive wife. Even now, as I turned to speak to Oliver, she appeared as if from nowhere and thrust her arm through his, giving him what I suppose she imagined was a winsome smile.

  ‘There you are, darling,’ she said. ‘I couldn’t see where you’d got to! I want you to come and look at those stone slabs for the terrace.’

  She turned to me and said condescendingly, ‘How nice to see you, Sheila. Are you getting a few plants for your little garden? They really have quite a good selection here, though we always order ours when we go to Chelsea. It’s such fun to have the newest varieties, don’t you think?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said colourlessly, ‘great fun.’

  Oliver gave me a quizzical look.

  ‘By the way,’ he said, ‘what do think about Adrian’s luck in getting hold of the Meredith papers? Jammy bastard! There should be a couple of books and a telly programme in it for him at the very least!’

  ‘I know,’ I replied. ‘He’s very full of it. I believe he’ll do the collected letters first and then the Life �
�� that’s the easy way round, isn’t it? And I’m sure he’ll do a radio programme as well. Perhaps you would do the television one.’

  ‘I don’t think I could bear to work with Adrian on a programme again – not after that thing We did on Lytton Strachey. He argued over every single comma in the script. I really couldn’t be doing with that sort of thing again. I wouldn’t mind doing something about Meredith myself, but I bet he won’t release any of the material to anyone else, seeing that he has the copyright. He’s a miserable sod!’

  ‘I’m afraid you’re right,’ I replied. ‘Goodness knows one is used to practically everyone in the literary world clutching their little bits of material jealously to their bosoms, but there’s a sort of mean-mindedness about him that I find extremely rebarbative.’

  Sally, who had been showing signs of restiveness throughout a conversation in which she had played no part, said in a whiny voice, ‘Ollie, I’m getting cold and we really ought to be getting on. Remember we’re having lunch with the Howards,’ She glanced sharply at me as she said this to see how I would react to the name of the Lord Lieutenant of the county.

  ‘Oh, don’t fuss, Sally,’ he replied comfortably, ‘there’s masses of time and I never seem to see Sheila nowadays to have a good chat.’

  I gave Sally what I hoped was a gracious smile and, grasping the handle of my loaded trolley, said, ‘Actually, I should be getting on myself. I must get all these things planted out before my gardener comes tomorrow and the forecast said it’s going to rain this afternoon. Anyway, I’ll probably be seeing you around during the Festival, one always runs into everyone there.’

  ‘oh God, yes! Madrigals and morris dancing and local art.’

  ‘Worse than that – readings of Adrian’s poetry and a talk by Antonia Basset about the social relevance of the novel in the post-Thatcher era.’

  Oliver groaned. Antonia Basset, the well-known Hampstead intellectual, had recently bought a second home just outside Taviscombe and was now a part of the Adrian Palgrave circle and thus liable to be trotted out as a speaker on every cultural occasion. I used to like her novels when they were full of undergraduate energy, but now that she’s gone in for soggy sociology to the tune of five hundred pages a book I really do find her unreadable. She is probably rather nice underneath, I suspect, but can’t help taking herself dreadfully seriously as a Novelist or – even worse – a Writer. When, in her first Little Talk, she spoke in Wordsworthian tones about how she gathered Inspiration for her novels by Wandering about the Country Lanes, Rosemary disgraced herself badly by giving a great snort of laughter and I must say I didn’t dare to meet her eye.

  ‘Let me know when that will be, dear heart,’ Oliver said, ‘and I will arrange to be in London.’

  I laughed and, waving goodbye, trundled my trolley out into the car park.

  Time passed quickly, as it always does in the summer months – it’s extraordinary how slowly time passes in the winter – and my son Michael finished his last term at the College of Law in London and came home to bite his nails, waiting for the result of his Finals.

  ‘It’s not that it isn’t marvellous to have you here, darling,’ I said one morning when he had told me for the fourth time that he knew he had screwed up his Tax and Inheritance paper, ‘but why don’t you go down and stay with Ron and Eva? Tom and Felicity will be home from Cambridge now and I’m sure it would be more amusing for you to get out and about a bit with them, rather than sit mooching around the house here.’

  ‘No, I don’t think so.’ He was sitting at the breakfast table, with his chair precariously tilted back, making patterns in the butter with a crumby knife. ‘I wouldn’t enjoy myself, not knowing, and that would be depressing for them.’

  I bit back the obvious remark and said tentatively, ‘Well, you know that Edward did say that if you would like to go into the office for a bit, just to get some work experience before you start, he’d be very glad to have you.’

  Edward Drayton had been Peter’s partner and Michael was due to start with him in the autumn as an articled clerk.

  ‘You might just as well have something positive to do to take your mind off things. Then when you get your results, you can have a good holiday before you start in September.’

  Michael, who appeared to be concentrating on engraving a fleur-de-lis in the butter, said dejectedly, ‘If I pass. Otherwise I’ll be doing retakes all summer.’

  ‘Well,’ I said brightly, ‘why don’t you give Edward a ring and see if he can take you for a few weeks.’

  ‘OK, Ma. It’s really quite a good idea. I’ll ring him now.’

  He gave me a sudden cheerful smile and got up briskly from the table, letting the knife, which was now covered with butter as well as crumbs, fall on to the clean table-cloth. He came back into the kitchen while I was cutting up some liver for the animals and said, ‘Brilliant. He’s asked me to go in on Monday. I think I’ll take the dogs for a walk.’

  There was a scuffle of paws on parquet, a cheerful shout, a slammed door, and he was gone. Foss, who had ignored all the commotion, concentrating his very being on the business in hand, gave a loud and scornful wail and continued to weave around the chopping board on the work-top.

  As the time for the Festival approached I realized that I must take my velvet skirt to be cleaned. It was a convention (Adrian’s idea, of course, and no one had the strength to oppose him) that the committee should wear evening dress for the more formal occasions and the opening concert at Kinsford – this year it was to be a very famous early English consort playing madrigals and lute music – was the most formal of all. I scrabbled through my wardrobe in the vain hope that I might find some wonderfully suitable garment that I had forgotten, but, as I knew I would, I came back to my black velvet skirt, which was the only long one I possessed. It was pretty old and had done valiant service over the years, being long and voluminous enough to hide the woollen underwear and heavy stockings that are essential wear in some of the more under-heated houses of the neighbourhood.

  I held it up to the light and sighed. It was obvious that at some time it had fallen off its hanger and had then been slept on by Foss, since it was crumpled and covered in cat hairs. I shook it vigorously and bundled it up in a plastic bag, hoping that dry cleaning would perform some sort of miracle upon it.

  I was just coming out of the cleaner’s when I was nearly run down by Rosemary, who was inexpertly propelling her granddaughter in a push-chair.

  ‘Isn’t it awful,’ she said, ‘how you forget how to do these things. I still haven’t got the knack, especially getting up and down the kerbs,’ I made friendly overtures to the small person bundled up in an anorak in the pushchair and she responded with an enchanting smile and the offer of a half-chewed biscuit.

  ‘Hasn’t she grown’ I said inanely, but it really is amazing how small children do double in size when you haven’t seen them for a few weeks. ‘Are both Jilly and Roger with you?’

  ‘Well, Jilly’s here now and Roger will be coming next week. He’s got a few days’ leave and says he’s got a thing about madrigals and would like to come to the opening Festival do.’

  ‘How lovely! I’ll look forward to seeing them.’

  Jilly is my god-daughter and I’m also very fond of her husband, Roger, who is a police inspector in the CID and, surprisingly (though I don’t know why I should think so), a passionate devotee of Victorian literature. I indicated Rosemary’s granddaughter who was now leaning perilously out of her push-chair attempting to unscrew one of the wheels.

  ‘And what about Delia?’

  ‘Oh, Jack will baby-sit. His musical tastes don’t go much beyond Frank Sinatra and Nat King Cole. Anyway, he can’t bear most of the Festival people. Oh well, I’d better get on. Mother’s got the hairdresser coming this morning and she needs some special sort of biscuit that she likes to give her with her coffee!’

  Rosemary has a difficult mother who keeps her running round in circles and is the reason for her permanently harasse
d expression.

  ‘Poor you,’ I said sympathetically. ‘Tell Jilly I’d love to see her if she can find a moment. I’ll give you a ring some time before next week. I saw Eleanor yesterday; I thought she looked a bit peaky. I hope she isn’t sickening for something. She says she thinks everything’s going smoothly, but there’s always some sort of last-minute hitch. Remember last year, when that Lieder singer fell asleep on the train and got carried on to Plymouth!’

  I decided that the only way to retrieve the black velvet skirt was to buy a new, eye-catching blouse and made my way to Taviscombe’s one and only dress shop, Estelle’s. Estelle herself, a small woman of uncertain age, heavily made-up and with a kind of ruthless chic, was selling a short pillar-box red jacket to a bemused farmer’s wife who had wandered in to have a look round and had been trapped by Estelle’s mesmerizing sales-talk. I slunk round to the rails at the back and was just about to go into the fitting room with a pretty flowery blue blouse, rather low-cut and with a frill down the front, when a hand snatched it away from me and Estelle’s sharp voice said, ‘Oh no, Mrs Malory! That isn’t you at all:

  ‘I really wanted something a bit dressy to perk up an old black skirt,’ I said feebly.

  ‘Dressy!’ There was a world of scorn in her voice. ‘A black skirt?’ She pawed briskly through the garments on the rail and thrust into my arms a severely cut black and white blouse with a high neck and long sleeves. And of course she was right – when I looked in the mirror I felt almost elegant. And of course, it was hideously expensive, nearly twice as much as the one I’d first chosen. Estelle had won again, but I didn’t begrudge her the victory. I reckoned lowed it to my morale to look just a little dashing on this particular occasion.

  Secure in the glory of my new finery I sat in the Great Hall at Kinsford looking about me. The panelled walls are hung with portraits and I was sitting beside one of Sir Ernest. It had been done in the fifties by James Gunn and showed Sir Ernest, I suppose, in his prime. He had chosen to be painted in evening dress with some exotic-looking order hung round his neck, a relic, presumably of one of his diplomatic tours of duty. He was leaning, a tall, elegant figure, on the balustrade that ran around the terrace at Kinsford, with the lake in the background – a classical pose. I had always felt, on the occasions when I met Sir Ernest, that he was almost too good to be true. Children usually sense these things. So that although he had been the perfect father and guardian at Phyllis and Eleanor’s parties (he had always made a point of being there for them if he possibly could), organizing the games and superintending the lavish teas with genial good humour, it seemed to me that he was standing outside himself, observing the effect he was having on other people, even on small children. Now, as the light set over the portrait picked out the cold grey stare, I decided I had not been mistaken. The Hall was looking really beautiful. The lights gleamed on the dark panels and reflected the shine of the silvery-grey brocade curtains hanging at the shuttered windows. Great bowls of flowers stood on tables and in alcoves – Eleanor has a real talent for such things and always does the most wonderful arrangements for the St Decumen’s Flower Festival. As well as portraits, the walls are hung with ancient weapons and banners which draw the eye up to the glorious plaster-work of the ceiling.