by Anne Morice
‘Because I had been thinking about you, do you see, and deciding that it might be a practical plan to fall in love with you. You wouldn’t object to that, I trust? It would only be in a very remote way, you know. I should be content to adore you from afar.’
‘Oh, very well, in that case, I have no particular objection.’
‘You wouldn’t be called upon to reciprocate or anything like that. Just throw me an occasional bone, or perhaps have dinner with me once in a while when your husband is busy putting the finishing touches to a sensational murder case. I am rather a Jamesian character, in some ways.’
‘Yes, I guessed you might be.’
‘Largely cultivated, of course, so it is all the more gratifying to find that it has not passed unobserved. To tell you the truth, I had toyed with the idea of falling in love with Ellen. It wouldn’t have been at all difficult, and rather convenient in many ways, but then I thought there might be something a little incestuous about it, almost claustrophobic, if you know what I mean?’
‘Yes, I do know.’
‘Being remote and claustrophobic at the same time might have been rather taxing.’
‘I agree.’
‘There was another slight snag too,’ he admitted after a brief pause.
‘Oh, really?’
‘I had a nasty feeling that she might not even notice that I was in love with her, and I don’t think that would be entirely satisfactory, do you? I am all in favour of adoring from afar, but I think I should want it to be noticed and Ellen is so loopy about that brother of mine that I sometimes wonder if she is aware of the existence of another male.’
‘You really believe that?’
‘With my hand on my heart.’
‘I see.’
‘Well, it’s nice to have had this little chat and got everything fixed up,’ Simon said. ‘We appear to be mentally attuned, which is always a good start. I dare say our relationship will blossom into something so subtle and delicate that we shall hardly need to communicate at all. Or would that be rather dull? I shall have to work on it and see if I can find an acceptable compromise. In any case you seem to be rather pensive so perhaps it would show the right sort of sensibility on my part if I were to continue my walk now and leave you to your dreams.’
‘I think that might be best, only they are not dreams, they are nightmares.’
‘How obtuse of me not to have realised. Well, I am forever at your side, remember. Spiritually, if nothing else.’
‘Thank you,’ I said, and he strolled away and was soon out of sight.
Nevertheless, it was Robin who saved the day and I was glad of that too. Bone scattering and being adored from afar are all very well in their place, but when you get right down to it it’s the one who saves your skull from being battered to a pulp who really earns your love and gratitude and it is always a pleasure to bestow these on the nearest and dearest.
Nonetheless, it is only fair to concede that Simon had probably contributed his share, for undeniably his presence had forced my assailant to delay matters and to remain hidden until the coast was clear, thus enabling Robin to catch up with him, jump on him from behind, remove the spanner from his hand and knock him unconscious.
In fact, I had been alone on my tree trunk for only a couple of minutes after Simon disappeared from view and was beginning to wonder if I was wasting my time and would do better to gird my loins and face the family reunion, when I heard a sharp cry behind me and instinctively stood up and faced the other way. The cry was repeated, but from the same distance, and was followed by grunts and gurgles and scuffling noises, all suggesting that the latest arrival was not alone. So I took a few cautious steps in the direction the noises were coming from. Only a few were needed because the next minute Robin came bursting through into Arthur’s throne room, with twigs in his hair and carrying a spanner, which he waved at me in a marked manner.
‘You thumped him, did you?’ I asked.
‘Yes. Get up to the house as quick as you can and telephone, will you? I must get back and keep an eye on him. He’s out cold at the moment, but we don’t want him coming to and starting any more mayhem.’
He disappeared into the bushes again and I sprinted out on to the common. It might have been quicker to take the car, but one’s instinct in these crises is to trust to one’s own legs rather than internal combustion and there was a short cut by a footpath which took me diagonally across the common. It led to the manor house, over on my left and used now as offices for a firm of farm machinery manufacturers. They had three or four telephone lines and I knew that I should be allowed to conduct my business in the privacy which would be so signally lacking in Toby’s hall.
When it was concluded I remained motionless, staring out of the window of the tiny office that had been allocated to me, not seeing anything, but urging myself on to perform the most disagreeable and difficult task I had ever been faced with. Finally, I took a couple of deep breaths and when I had let out the second one I rang up Alison.
CHAPTER TEN
‘So tell me how you guessed,’ I said.
Two hours had passed and Robin and I were in the summer house, Toby having exerted himself to go indoors and sound out the chances of Mrs Parkes bringing us some tea, when she could tear herself away from the various friends and relatives who had just happened to be passing, or had run over to borrow a crochet pattern. They had been painful and distressing hours and at the end of them the young couple had been prevailed upon only with difficulty to be driven to the airport and to embark at last on their honeymoon. Ellen had been in tears again at the moment of departure, but at least there could be no doubt as to whose broad shoulder she was weeping on, as Simon was quick to point out, with a heavy wink and most un-Jamesian jerk of the thumb.
‘I take no credit for it,’ Robin replied. ‘It was Jez who put me on your track.’
‘How did she get into it?’
‘I can’t quite understand it myself, but perhaps she really does possess second sight, or at any rate a more highly developed first one than the rest of us. She rang up and told me about a strange feeling she had that you were heading for some kind of trouble. I remember her mentioning the vibrations being wrong and the yang dominating the yin in some way, which apparently bodes no good in her philosophy.’
‘And you took that seriously and acted on it? You stagger me!’
‘Well, only because this yang business was partially founded on some factual evidence which was within my comprehension. Apparently she had been alerted by an undercurrent of excitement in your voice.’
‘I don’t call that very factual.’
‘Moreover,’ Robin continued, as though I had not spoken, ‘you asked her for a character analysis about people with birthdays between the last week of April and the first week of May.’
‘Yes, that’s true.’
‘That surprised her very much. In the past, your attitude to the subject has been somewhat sceptical. She had scarcely expected to find a convert in you.’
‘I was not out to be converted. It was simply a device to get her talking. It is always good strategy to begin in that way. By the time you get to the nub the reserves are down and you actually get a spontaneous answer. Of course, if she had told me that people born under that sign are invariably mild, sweet-tempered and incapable of violence, it might have set me back a bit. I couldn’t swear to that, but in fact she told me nothing of the kind, so it hardly mattered, one way or the other.’
‘It might have occurred to you, though, that all Ellen’s friends had been well and truly put under the horoscope. It was Jez’s first thought when Jeremy was taken to the flat to be introduced, and she is very business-like in her work, you know. She operates on a card index system, so it was a simple matter to check through the records and identify the person you had in mind.’
‘Nevertheless, she could hardly deduce anything sinister from that. I said nothing about his being a murderer.’
‘No, but you did go on to as
k her about her movements on the wedding day, with specific reference to Ellen’s address book. Furthermore it transpired that you were not interested in its career before it left London, only in what became of it when it reached this house. Jez is no fool, I might tell you, and it didn’t take her any longer than it did us to realise that whoever had removed Desmond’s letter and sent it to the police was very likely Irene’s murderer. The fact that you evidently believed that it had been stolen after it arrived here, combined with your interest in Phil’s horoscope, rather narrowed the field, which was why she became apprehensive. I knew you were spending the day here so I thought it might be a bright idea to join the party.’
‘Well, I suppose I should be grateful to her and I am, but I wouldn’t have been taken off guard, you know. I was expecting Phil to follow me on to the common. I was even prepared for him to get rough, but he always crumbled when faced by a bossy female and I didn’t anticipate any serious trouble.’
‘What made you so sure he would come after you?’
‘Oh, it was Alison telling me she had to cook the lunch. I know she never bothers when she’s alone. Therefore, Phil was at home and therefore he would have seen me talking to his mother. I was certain he would put her through a stiff cross-examination about everything I’d said.’
‘And what, may one ask, did you say which so put the wind up him, that he followed you on to the common, armed with a spanner?’
‘Well,’ I replied thoughtfully. ‘It may have been principally my question about the sheets.’
‘Sheets?’ Robin repeated incredulously. ‘What sheets?’
‘The pair that had been mislaid by the laundry. The very first time that Alison mentioned them something clicked and from that moment Phil began to figure as a suspect. Immediately afterwards I had another stroke of luck because when I had my talk with Osgood he presented me with a motive at last. That meant that Irene had been the intended victim all along and I began to see things more clearly. After that, everything fell into place and it was simply a question of finding the proof.’
‘Which came to you by courtesy of a pair of missing sheets?’
‘They were part of it. It occurred to me at the time that there was something odd there. To lose one sheet is a thing that might happen to any laundry, but a pair of them, with no explanation at all, not even an apology, was surely stretching it, specially as they have a virtual monopoly in these parts and Alison must have been a regular customer ever since she’s lived here. Anyway, it set me thinking and eventually I traced the connection.’
‘I am delighted to hear that,’ Robin said in a heart felt voice. ‘And I hope to trace it myself in due course, though it does elude me at present.’
‘That’s only because you didn’t arrive here until just before the wedding,’ I told him. ‘And by then, although none of us had any idea of it, the story was already half way through. You see, those sheets belong to the period when Phil was going all out to set Jeremy up as the scapegoat. Actually, that plan didn’t work very well and later, when he got his hands on the letter, he dropped Jeremy and switched to Desmond, but on the day before the wedding Jeremy was his man and he did everything he could to incriminate him. It must have seemed like the perfect answer too because, if it had succeeded, Phil would not only have got away with his own crime but Ellen would have been free to be comforted and wooed and perhaps this time won. So when he woke up on the wedding day and found that Jeremy had already gone out and that his car had gone too, he decided to make capital out of it. He whipped the sheets off Jeremy’s bed, replaced them with a clean pair and told his mother that the naughty bridegroom had been out all night. The used sheets had been bundled away somewhere and were probably later taken to the launderette, before being returned to the linen cupboard. At least, I imagine that’s how it was, although it will be old Powell’s job to tie up all the routine stuff.’
‘I still don’t get the point, you know,’ Robin complained. ‘I mean, granted that it was very reprehensible of him, was there really anything incriminating in Jeremy’s having spent the night elsewhere?’
‘Not in itself, no, but it was all part of the build-up to discredit him; what the politicians call a smear campaign. You see, if it had come to the crunch and questions had been asked, it would have been Phil’s word against Jeremy’s, with those unused sheets to show which one was speaking the truth, for why should Phil lie over a thing like that? I can tell you why: so as to create a climate in which Jeremy is seen to be not only a liar, but incapable of giving any account of how he spent the whole of one night, and the night before his wedding at that. How easy would be the next step; to believe that he was also a hit-and-run driver, who could dine with his family and appear perfectly at ease, having just left a child to die by the roadside.’
‘Ah!’
‘Though, mind you, that wasn’t the only thing Phil did to blacken his character. In fact, if anyone was away from his bed for most of that night it was he. It must have taken him quite a while, working quietly away in his own garage, with the doors shut, duplicating the dents and damage to his own car on to Jeremy’s. Though he must have botched it, poor stupid Phil, because the police undoubtedly made enquiries at local garages about any emergency repairs they’d carried out and if Fairman’s had come up with anything suspicious about Jeremy’s little job we’d certainly have heard about it.’
‘And when did Phil manage to tidy up the Mini?’
‘Earlier in the evening, I should imagine, when the others came over here to meet the Roxburghs, Phil having made the excuse that he had to work. Alison secretly believed he had stayed away because he couldn’t bear to be in the same room with Ellen and her new love, and I dare say that he was quite pleased to foster that illusion, but it’s more likely that he needed the time to straighten out his own bumper and headlamp.’
‘Even that was leaving it rather late, though. Surely there was a risk of someone having noticed the damage already?’
‘Not if he’d put it straight into the garage when he brought Irene home. She was presumed to be in far too hysterical a state to have noticed a thing like that and when Owen flagged him down on the hill, he was careful to drive on for quite a distance before stopping, to ensure that Owen would only get a very dim, rear view of the Mini. Besides, who in the world would have noticed a few extra bumps and scratches on that old rattletrap? There were too many there already for any fresh ones to stand out and Phil was forever patching it up, bit by bit. In fact, I should guess that it was being such an old crock that drew Irene’s attention to it in the first place. By which I mean that, when it came down the hill and Owen hailed it, she remembered that only a few minutes earlier she had watched it travelling up the hill.’
‘So you think that’s what happened?’
‘Don’t you? You’ll remember that Irene was sitting in Owen’s taxi, ostensibly having a nervous breakdown, but, knowing her, more likely inspired by the determination to avoid unpleasantness, and I dare say she wasn’t missing much. Her ex-husband told me that she was very observant and just loved nosing out nasty little home truths, and when Phil said nothing whatever, either then or later, about having driven up the hill just before he came down it, she probably realised she was on to something and eventually to guess that when he came down he was doing so for the second time. She may even have teased him with hints to that effect and she certainly made it plain to everyone she met that she had some interesting information for the police.’
‘So your theory is that, having run over the boy on the first time down, he continued on to the bottom and then presumably turned into a lane and removed any stains or fragments of clothing from his car. But why on earth should he have then gone back up again, to revisit the scene of the crime, so to speak?’
‘Well, he must have had a frightful shock and presumably he wasn’t then the hardened criminal he later became, so it would have been a natural impulse. Probably he was praying like mad that he’d find the boy sitting by the road wi
th nothing more serious than a bruised knee, or at the very least that some other motorist was taking care of him, which in fact was exactly what he did find.’
‘All right, I can accept that, but, having reached the top once more, why come down the hill yet again? Surely the impulse by then would have been to turn tail and take another route home?’
‘Oh, I have the answer to that one too.’
‘Have you really?’ Robin asked without much enthusiasm.
‘You see, in that brief glimpse, the only face he could see at all clearly was Irene’s, a complete stranger to him. He could have no idea that the man with his back to him bending over the boy, was Owen and that the next time he went past he’d be compelled to stop, or get himself into even deeper trouble. Also he’d really left himself no choice about which route to take. He had to cross the river somewhere and if he didn’t do so at Stadhampton it would have taken him miles out of his way. He’d already caused himself quite a lot of delay and there was still his mother’s weekend shopping to do. If he didn’t get to Stadhampton before everything closed down, he’d have had one hell of a job accounting for how he’d spent the time.’
There was a rattle of china and Toby entered, down centre, carrying the tea tray.
‘Mrs Parkes is beside herself with excitement,’ he explained. ‘There is simply no holding her and nothing for it but to see to all this myself. However, I hope I’m in time for the dénouement. Tessa is inclined to spare us no detail when she is describing her own triumphs, but I am bound to say that the dénouement is the only part which really grips me.’
‘There is no dénouement to speak of,’ I said stiffly, ‘beyond what Robin achieved when he knocked Phil cold on the common; and very few triumphs either. I had all the breaks and all the best opportunities to see what was afoot.’
‘Perhaps you can still scrape up a few surprises for us, though?’ Robin suggested in a consoling voice. ‘Such as how Phil got the poison to Irene and how and why he killed Desmond.’