Mrs. Malory and the Festival Murder

by Hazel Holt

  Mrs Darby looked gratified.

  ‘It’s beautiful brass,’ she said, ‘and I like to keep it nice. I do all the brasses myself, it’s my special responsibility. We have rotas, of course, for the cleaning and the flowers. But the brasses are mine.’

  She gave a little nod of satisfaction and pride.

  ‘Well, they certainly do you credit, Mrs Darby,’ I said. ‘They really gleam! Look at the way those candlesticks catch the light.’

  An expression of aggravation crossed her face and she leaned towards me confidentially.

  ‘That’s always been my job, Mrs Malory. It’s quite understood, everyone in the parish knows that. Everyone, it seems, except a certain off-comer!’

  ‘Oh?’ I said, bracing myself to hear the usual complaints current in church-cleaning circles, where the rigidity of demarcation lines could teach the unions a thing or two.

  ‘Mrs Forester,’ she hissed, looking over her shoulder to make sure that she wasn’t being overheard. ‘I know that’s who it was. The other week. They were just due for a clean. I rub them up every week, but they get a proper going-over, if you know what I mean, every three weeks. And she did it! I came into the church all ready to give them a really good clean, and she’d been there before me!’

  ‘Goodness! Are you sure?’

  ‘Oh yes, there were smears of the brass polish, not properly rubbed off. Well, I’d never leave them like that! She denied it, of course, but there’s no doubt in my mind! Just because she did the brasses when she was in Kidderminster’ – the amount of scorn and loathing that Mrs Darby put into the name was formidable – ‘doesn’t give her the right to do the same here!’

  ‘No, indeed.’

  Mrs Darby seemed prepared to expatiate on her grievance, but fortunately a young couple, visitors, both wearing shorts, caught her eye.

  ‘Look at that, Mrs Malory! In the house of the Lord! I’d better just go and keep an eye on them.’

  She moved away and I made my escape.

  As I came out of the cool church into the warmth of the sun I felt thoroughly dazed, partly by the profusion of flowers, partly by the flow of conversation from Father Freddy and Mrs Darby. As I drove home, I slotted a tape of piano music into the cassette-player, letting the limpid notes of a Chopin Etude, each one separate and crystalline, clear my head and refresh my spirit.

  Chapter Twelve

  Early next morning I had a phone call from Jack.

  ‘Look, Sheila, would you mind dropping in on Rosemary this morning? She’s feeling pretty awful. We had a call from Roger last night, about Robin. It really upset her.’

  ‘Yes, of course I will. Poor Rosemary! What about Robin?’

  ‘It’s a bit complicated; I’ll leave it to Rosemary to explain. Sorry, I’ve got an appointment so I’ve got to dash. Thanks very much, Sheila.’

  As soon as I decently could after breakfast I went round to Rosemary’s. Her eyes were red and she looked as if she hadn’t had much sleep.

  ‘Hello, Sheila,’ she said as she led me into the sitting room. ‘I’m afraid everything’s in a mess – I haven’t even cleared away the coffee cups from last night. Hang on, let me switch the fire on; it’s really chilly this morning, or is it just me?’

  ‘No,’ I said, looking out of the window at the grey, overcast sky. ‘It’s a miserable day and it’s just started to spit with rain.’

  ‘Did Jack ask you to come?’ Rosemary demanded.

  I hesitated. ‘Well, yes, he did phone...’

  ‘Silly old fool,’ Rosemary said affectionately. ‘I’m all right, really, but I’m glad you came. You’ll want to know about Robin.’

  ‘I gather you heard from Roger?’

  ‘Yes, they’ve had the result of the autopsy.’ Her voice wavered slightly on the word. ‘It seems that Robin had been drinking quite a lot of whisky.’

  ‘But he hardly drinks at all!’ I exclaimed.

  ‘No, well, that’s it. Roger thinks that perhaps he had too much to drink and simply fell into the water. Apparently it happened late at night, so probably no one saw him, and he just ... drowned.’

  ‘Oh, my dear!’

  ‘I suppose, not being used to drink, it had an especially powerful effect.’

  ‘Do they know why he was in Bristol?’

  ‘Yes. They found an address in his pocket, of the small, rather grotty hotel he was staying at, down by Coronation Road. Roger went there and had a look at his things. Robin had been keeping a sort of diary, very disjointed, all about how he was sure the police were going to accuse him of Adrian’s murder and how he couldn’t face the thought of being locked away. There was a lot about how he felt he had murdered Adrian because he hated him so much – rambling stuff, Roger said. Not ... not well balanced.’

  ‘Roger doesn’t think he did murder Adrian, does he?’ I asked, Rosemary shook her head.

  ‘Oh no, not if Roger’s right and Enid was killed deliberately. You see, the night of the fire, Robin was in the hotel all evening. The manager saw him at about eight o’clock. He’d just come in and was, well, very drunk. He went straight up to his room. There’s no way he could have driven to Taviscombe in that condition.’

  ‘The poor boy! I suppose, if he had all these mixed-up feelings about guilt and so on, he might have...’

  ‘Committed suicide, you mean?’ Rosemary said. ‘Yes, I suppose he might. But,’ her eyes filled with tears, ‘what does it matter? Suicide or accident, it was such an unnecessary death! If only he’d talked to me! I’m sure I could have made him see that no one who knew him would suspect him of such a thing!’

  I thought of Eleanor and what she had said yesterday. I told Rosemary how upset she had been.

  ‘She looked absolutely terrible,’ I said, ‘with that flu thing as well. Who’s going to tell her about this?’

  Rosemary looked stricken.

  ‘It’ll be even worse for Eleanor. Robin really meant so much to her.’

  ‘She’s been very lonely,’ I replied. ‘I don’t think I ever realized quite how much until yesterday when I saw her and Jessie, rattling about in that great house! She’s filled her life since Sir Ernest died, all those good works, but nobody special, no one of her own.’

  ‘I know,’ Rosemary said. ‘It must be dreadful to have no family, no one really close.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ I said, ‘I’ll phone Father Freddy. Ask him to tell her.’

  Rosemary looked doubtful.

  ‘Do you think so? I never think of him as having any real feelings, if you know what I mean.’

  ‘Yes, that rather frivolous manner can be a little off-putting and perhaps, when you get to his age, human feelings don’t seem so important. But underneath I believe he’s very kind. And a priest, after all, is used to doing things like that.’

  A few days later, when I was on my way to tea with my friend Muriel who lives at the other end of the town, I happened to be passing the police station just as Roger was coming down the steps. I went over to greet him.

  ‘Hello, Roger,’ I said. ‘How’s it going?’

  ‘Slowly, I’m afraid. Look, Sheila, I’m desperately sorry about what happened to Robin. It was the most terrible thing.’

  ‘I know, we’re all very upset.’

  He hesitated for a moment, and then said, ‘What is so awful is the feeling that he felt he was being persecuted. I hope I don’t have to tell you that there never was any sort of harassment on our part...’

  ‘No,’ I said, ‘we none of us felt that there was. Mind you, it’s a horrid sign of the times, though, isn’t it, that you felt you had to say so? No,’ I continued, ‘I’m afraid Robin’s feeling that he was being hounded was all part of his being irrational and unbalanced. I’m sure there’s a clinical term for whatever was wrong with him. But as Rosemary says, it’s such a wasteful death, so tragically unnecessary. If only he could have brought himself to talk to someone. Still there it is. Is there any way you can tell if it was suicide or an accident?’

  ‘Not r
eally,’ Roger said. ‘He may have been drinking to give himself courage to drown himself, or he may simply have had too much to drink and fallen in by accident. He’d been hiding away for a little while by then and was in a very confused state.’

  We both stood in silence for a moment and then I said, ‘Have you made any progress on the murder – or murders?’

  Roger gave a little helpless shrug.

  ‘Not really. We’ve all done quite a lot of leg-work, checking things out and so forth. We did think we’d found the murder weapon the other day. A hammer turned up in one of the litter bins on the sea-front. But it turned out to be no such thing.’

  ‘How frustrating for you,’ I said. ‘So you still don’t know what was used to kill poor Adrian?’

  ‘I’m afraid not. And our chances of finding the weapon grow slimmer as time goes on. Oh yes, there is one bit of good news for you.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Your friend Oliver Stevens. He does have an alibi for the time Palgrave was killed.’

  ‘Really,’ I exclaimed. ‘How come?’

  ‘Well, you know you said he came in quite a while after his wife, just before the concert started, and that he looked flustered and upset?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I asked him about his movements and he said he’d had to send his wife on ahead because he had to wait behind for a phone call. Apparently it was from someone at the BBC about a programme, so I checked with this man and it’s perfectly true, he did phone then, so there wouldn’t have been time for Stevens to go to Kinsford, murder Palgrave, and still arrive when you saw him.’

  ‘I’m so glad,’ I said, ‘I really did feel like an informer when I told you about our conversation on the train. Somehow it seemed worse telling you what he’d said when he was drunk!’

  Roger smiled. ‘Oh, yes, and the reason Stevens was looking so upset, was that this man had told him that the project they’d discussed – spent quite a lot of time on, in fact – wasn’t being taken up. So no wonder he was put out!’

  ‘I couldn’t really see Oliver as the murdering type,’ I said. ‘But then, who is?’

  A police car drew up in the forecourt and a couple of men in uniform got out and came towards us.

  ‘Duty calls,’ Roger said. ‘I must go. I’m glad I was able to set your mind at rest about Stevens.’

  I turned to go and then remembered something.

  ‘Oh, Roger, I don’t know if you can tell me, but who does inherit all Enid’s money?’

  ‘I don’t suppose it matters, my telling you. It’s no one anyone here would know. The money would have gone to Palgrave, of course, but the second person named in the will was a cousin of Palgrave’s in New Zealand. So no joy there. A pity – money is such a solid motive for murder, but this time I’m afraid it’s a non-starter.’

  As I went on my way, I speculated idly on the possibility of Adrian’s mysterious cousin having come to England, down to Taviscombe, and to the concert, where he had somehow managed to find Adrian, strike him down, and escape by mingling with the crowd of concert-goers. I toyed with this theory for a while. It would be so much more comfortable if Adrian had been killed by someone we didn’t know. But somehow the long-lost cousin idea was too far-fetched and I reluctantly abandoned it. Nevertheless, if you came to think of it, Adrian’s murderer didn’t have to be someone we all knew. He was killed in a place that was swarming with people, anyone of whom might have had a reason to want him out of the way. He might have had all sorts of enemies we none of us had any idea about. I thought suddenly of the dark-haired woman that Dorothy Browning had seen him with in the car. I was quite sure that Adrian had a secret life. There may well have been other people who might want him dead.

  Michael came home in the evening with a large parcel tied up with pink tape.

  ‘Here are those Meredith papers. Edward says there’s no hurry. Where do you want them?’

  ‘Oh, put them down anywhere.’

  I undid the tape and opened the parcel. There were a number of files full of papers, all giving off a slightly acrid, smoky smell. I shuddered as I looked at the scorch marks on some of them.

  ‘I’ll look at them tomorrow,’ I said brusquely, bundling them back into the brown paper. ‘Go and put them on my desk, will you?’

  ‘What’s the matter, Ma?’ he asked as he came back into the room. ‘You look a bit peculiar.’

  ‘It was just the smell of those papers, and suddenly realizing that they’d been in the fire that killed Enid.’

  ‘If they’re going to upset you, perhaps you oughtn’t to go through them. Old Thompson can find someone else to do it.’

  ‘No,’ I said, ‘I was just being silly. Of course I’ll look at them, I expect they’ll be fascinating. Supper’s nearly ready, if you want to get changed first.’

  The following day I braced myself to undo the package again, wondering what I might find. Adrian had obviously done quite a lot of work on the papers. Those spread out on the desk in front of me were all letters, except for one file which contained scribbled notes for short stories. I opened this one first and became so engrossed in it that I quite forgot my initial repugnance. It certainly was extraordinary to see just how selective the writer’s observations had been, how he had noted down incidents and remarks which practically formed themselves into archetypal Meredith stories. Some I recognized as the originals for stories that had actually been published, some were quite unfamiliar. I thought of what Meredith scholars would make of the notes, what theories would emerge, how many theses would be written, and I felt a slight pang of disappointment that this was not my field and that I couldn’t join in the fun.

  As well as the noted observations there were several outlines for stories. One was about an elderly woman who had been a great beauty and how one of her former rivals took a final revenge upon her. Another was about a priest who fell hopelessly in love with a beautiful young acolyte, was disgraced, and went off to die in the mission field. Once could see, even from the sketchy notes, how Meredith would treat the themes in his own inimitable way, quite unsentimentally, the pathos subtly counterbalanced by the irony, with moments, even, of high comedy – the qualities that had made his short stories so greatly admired, finer, perhaps, than his friend and contemporary Somerset Maugham. The other files contained copies of letters that he had sent to his friends, many now famous names. Meredith had obviously conducted his correspondence with publication in mind and Adrian, as any biographer would, must have blessed the egotism of the man. The letters were all from Antibes, where Meredith spent the greater part of his life. He hardly ever came back to England after he became famous.

  I read on throughout the morning, absorbed and entertained (Meredith’s letters, though lacking the taut and polished style that characterized his published work, were vastly entertaining on the level of pure gossip), and only the entrance of Foss, who leapt up on to my desk with his usual demand for food, made me realize that it was lunchtime. I picked up the protesting furry body and put it down.

  ‘No, Foss, you know you’re not allowed up here! You’ll just have to wait for a moment.’

  As I was about to get up, my eye was caught by a letter that Foss had dislodged with his paw. Or, rather, a name, which suddenly stood out on the page. I picked up the letter and began to read:

  Dearest Sybil,

  You, with your passion for such social minutiae (and why not, indeed), will, of course, wish to know who is gracing the Chateau d’Horizon at this time. Surprisingly, Maxine has a very small party and all, to my certain knowledge, tiresome bores – interior decorators, minor royalty and a strange American who drones on and on about aeroplanes.

  Westminster’s yacht (needless to say) is at Golfe Juan, Mrs Greville’s at Cannes, both depressingly full of the usual crowd, and if one ventures into the Casino one is brought up short by the sight of Mr Selfridge scattering largesse before those two tedious girls like Jupiter and twin Danae.

  Philip and I took Beverley to the C
olombe d’Or the other evening (yet another hideous Picasso daub on the walls) to cheer him up after Cyril had gone, and there we saw Freddy Drummond a deux with my gardener’s son – a delightful boy, I have no doubt, and of a quite astonishing beauty, but sadly out of place in such a setting. You will be as shocked as I was, since I know you had formed a most favourable impression of Freddy’s good taste. Alas, when a grande passion is raging, I fear the reason is often diminished. Freddy has been staying at Mougins for a couple of months and, although the villa is quite secluded, there has been a certain amount of scandale. My gardener’s son is of an age, to be sure, but there have been others who were not and such things are not liked here. To make things worse, he is being blackmailed, most politely but quite persistently by the father of one of his inamoratos, which is really rather sordid, don’t you agree? Freddy is a dear soul and I’m very fond of him. After all, I’ve known him since he first came down from Oxford – so bright and charming, the most comely theological student one could wish to meet – but he must be more discreet if we are to avoid yet another unfortunate episode. The one last year brought the English colony here under very close scrutiny which was quite uncomfortable for us all while it lasted.

  I had a letter from H. G., to say that he is coming to Paris next month. Perhaps he will venture this far south to enliven what has been, so far, a most insipid summer.

  It is always something of a shock suddenly to come upon a name one knows in unexpected circumstances and for a moment I couldn’t make the connection between the Father Freddy I knew and the almost fictional figure, something out of one of Meredith’s writings, of the letter. Indeed (I remembered the notes for one of the stories) he was obviously looked upon by Meredith as material for fiction.

  I scrabbled among the letters looking specifically now for other references:

  A thoroughly disagreeable day. We drove to Grasse – at least that was our intention – but when we had got as far as Cagnes sur Mer, a place which, as you know, I detest, the wretched motor developed some fault (do not ask me of what nature, since the internal combustion engine is as rare and strange to me as hieroglyphics in the Grand Pyramid), and so we were obliged to sit for an age in some dreary cafe while Chivers dealt with the problem. The situation was not improved by Freddy, who from ignorance, or a monumental lapse of tact, went on and on to Willie about the brilliance of Syrie’s new designs. Gerald, who cannot resist making mischief, was egging him on. Willie was absolutely furious. He immediately assumed his most Chinese face and refused to speak to anyone for the rest of the afternoon. When we returned from what turned out to be a thoroughly disastrous drive, I was obliged to take a cachet fevre and lie down for several hours before dinner. However, Freddy seems to have taken to heart the little lecture I gave him last week about discretion and he proposes to return to England soon, so I trust that we will be spared another scandal.