by Anne Morice
‘With five hundred other people?’
‘Wrong! They avoid it like the plague and there are reasons. There’s no sand for the children to play on and no one can swim there either because it’s a carpet of rocks. Even at high tide they’re only about two feet below the surface and most of them are covered with black, slimy seaweed. Also the cliff is rapidly eroding and there’s a sign up to warn people about falling rocks, but the best bit of all is that if we time it right we shall be cut off.’
‘Cut off from what?’
‘Intruders. That’s another deterrent. When the tide’s up, the only way out of the cove is through knee-high water; the same, as you will be quick to see, applying to the only way in.’
‘And what happens to us? Do we sit on a crumbling ledge, watching the water lapping round our ankles?’
‘No, we shall be quite safe and comfortable. I’ve checked it out very thoroughly with Jamie. The only time the beach gets covered right over is once a year, on 22nd March, I think he said, or it may have been the 23rd. What we have to do is to arrive when the tide is coming in and stay until it has started to go out again. On Saturday, our E.T.A. should be between midday and one o’clock, so what could be more convenient?’
‘It sounds quite practical,’ Toby admitted, ‘but I do wish your informant had been anyone but Jamie. Can we trust him?’
‘Yes, we can. I know he’s capable of contemplating your death by drowning with a detachment bordering on indifference, but that doesn’t apply to mine. We’re now in the second week of rehearsals and he has enough problems on his hands without having to replace me in the cast.’ This appeared to satisfy him and it was arranged that he would come by taxi to Viola’s cottage, where I should be standing by at twelve hundred hours with the rugs and picnic basket. However, before all this came to pass, there had been a minor, though, in its way, momentous development at the Rotunda.
Naturally everyone who knew her, either personally or by reputation, had been bursting with curiosity about the disposal of Elfrieda’s property, most particularly the Rotunda Theatre, of which she had been sole owner. The only information to have come our way by the time Toby and I were laying our plans for the picnic was that there were two executors to the will, of whom Roger Padmore was one and a cousin named Douglas Henshaw, whom none of us had ever set eyes on, the other.
Obviously, the day-to-day running of the theatre could not have been left to take care of itself, so a small ad hoc committee had been formed for this purpose, with Mr Padmore in the chair. The other members were the two resident directors, the Company and Front of House managers and James Crowther. The co-executor was unable to take any part, having recently broken his ankle during a game of golf.
The first meeting had been convened on Friday morning, when the Chairman had taken the opportunity to inform the rest of them about the terms of the will. By lunch time the news, or some part of it, was known to everyone in the building and on the same evening Viola and I got the full details when Jamie arrived for his six o’clock session with the champagne and tapestry.
He began by explaining that the will had not been substantially altered since the death of Elfrieda’s father, when she had inherited the bulk of his vast fortune. One or two of the beneficiaries had died in the interval and various codicils had been added over the years, one of them very recently, but in essence it remained the same.
‘And what it boils down to is this,’ he said. ‘After bequests to the domestic staff, plus minor sums to one or two relatives and godchildren, the residue all goes to Cousin Douglas with the broken ankle.’
‘And what did Douglas do to deserve such bounty?’ Viola asked. ‘She never mentioned him to me; I didn’t even know of his existence until the other day.’
‘Nor I, but Padmore gave me the story in dry tones over a dry sherry at the Royal Metropolitan. I saw Toby in the bar, by the way, Tessa. Looking rather wan, I thought. Is he all right?’
‘Hard work takes its toll,’ I reminded him.
‘Could we leave Toby out of this for a moment,’ Viola asked, ‘and get back to Douglas?’
‘Yes, and there is a moral, you’ll be pleased to hear.’
‘The moral being?’
‘That you cannot cast your bread too widely or prematurely upon the waters.’
Viola did indeed look rather pleased to hear this, as well she might, and proceeded at once to put precept into practice by refilling his glass.
‘How kind of you, darling! Well now, it appears that Douglas was very attentive to Elfrieda at one point. Not in her youth because she was years older than him, but during her lonely, arid middle age, when it obviously made a memorable impression. He was what they used to describe as a young blade, just down from university and starting in the family firm; one of them, at any rate. Handsome, according to Padmore, and very much in demand by all the young blade-esses. But either because he saw it as a solid investment or because he genuinely found her companionable, he devoted a lot of time to Elfrieda. They used to go for long tramps together and he took her to plays and concerts as far away as Bristol, would you believe? It must have been an intoxicating thrill in that bleak existence. It all came to an end after the war, when Douglas married and built himself a love nest in the country, but it was obviously an idyllic period for Elfrieda and, as we now see, she never ceased to be grateful.’
‘And his attachment could have been genuine,’ I remarked. ‘Quite a lot of young men enjoy the company of older women with brains and taste and, if he had simply been grinding an axe, surely he would have kept it up to some extent after his marriage and made sure that his wife did too?’
‘I expect you’re right,’ Viola said, concealing her impatience with some difficulty, ‘but I’d like to point out that just now his motives are somewhat immaterial.’
‘Except that, since he is now presumably the sole owner of those boards we tread upon, it might be useful to know whether he is honest Joe, or a greedy grabber. And it might tell us something interesting about Elfrieda.’
‘What would that be?’ Jamie asked, apparently more ready than Viola was to be diverted by irrelevancies, but once again she interrupted.
‘How could that possibly matter, now she’s dead? I do wish you’d allow Jamie to get on with it. Is it true, Jamie? Does this Douglas now own the Rotunda?’
‘He does at this precise moment, but I doubt if he will do so for long. In fact, in the cautious view of Roger Padmore, he won’t have much choice. By the time the death duties and legacies have been paid, the Rotunda may be about the only thing left, apart from a few cottages on long lease to exceptionally healthy tenants.’
There was a moment or two of shocked silence and then Viola, speaking for us both on this occasion, said:
‘My dear, I don’t understand what you mean. I was under the impression that Elfrieda was absolutely loaded, that she owned about half of Dearehaven, for a start?’
‘So she did, dearest, once upon a time in the long, long ago. She’s been selling it off, bit by bit, for years and using the money to shore up her precious old theatre. Right against Padmore’s advice, needless to say, but we all know what a big difference that would have made.’
‘But doesn’t the theatre make a profit?’
‘I’ve always heard that it did,’ I admitted.
‘So have we all, I daresay, but we’ve been rather blind, you know. We might have known that, with those stylish productions and expensive casts in a theatre seating three hundred, you’d need to charge at least five pounds a head to have any chance of breaking even, and if you did that in Dearehaven you’d play to empty houses.’
‘Yes, I know, but wasn’t the difference made up by grants and so on? What about all those brewers and people, who were sponsoring her?’
‘The answer is that they bought their prestige rather cheaply. It might have covered most of the expenses fifteen years ago, but not any more, and if there was one quality Elfrieda lacked it was the ability to beg. The Rot
unda has been losing money consistently for years and instead of taking the hat round or cutting down on expenses, she simply sold off another row of houses to make up the deficit. There was a certain mad grandeur about it, which one cannot but admire.’
‘That’s all very fine,’ Viola protested, ‘but she must have known that it couldn’t go on for ever.’
‘It didn’t have to, did it, darling? She was over seventy, in great pain most of the time and her heart was rapidly giving out. The big surprise must have been to wake up in the morning and find she was still alive.’
‘And she didn’t give a damn what happened when she ceased to be?’
‘My dear girl, aren’t you being unfair? Why should she have given a damn? The only happiness and satisfaction she got from her life didn’t begin until she was almost sixty. During her last decade she gave a great deal of pleasure to a great many people and provided work for a great many more. Some of them made their reputations here, myself included. In my opinion, Elfrieda has paid her debt to posterity with compound interest.’
He did not add, as he might have, that Viola also had cause for gratitude, and I asked him what sort of future there would be for the Rotunda now.
‘Rather a bleak one, I’m sorry to say. Presumably, we shall stagger on until October. It would really be a false economy to close down earlier, with so many people under contract for the full season. After that, who can say? Padmore thinks it’s likely that Douglas will cut his losses and get what he can for it. It won’t be much because Elfrieda managed to get a preservation order slapped on it, so it can’t be pulled down to make way for office blocks. Disappointing for him because half an acre on that site is the kind of thing property developers dream about.’
Viola said: ‘So poor old Douglas only got rather a shabby reward, after all.’
‘Yes, and the most sickening part of all must be to know that if only Elfrieda had had the courtesy to postpone her death for another day or two, the reward would have been just that much more worthwhile.’
I had a flash of inspiration concerning the meaning behind this remark, though was glad Viola was there to get it in straight terms:
‘Why, Jamie? What difference would that have made?’
‘One can’t be certain, of course,’ he replied, ‘and Padmore told me this in strictest confidence, so keep it under your hats; but you remember he had an appointment with her on the evening of her death?’
‘Which wasn’t kept,’ I reminded them. ‘There was some mix-up.’
‘Exactly! I suppose the poor old thing had been feeling groggy all day and became confused. Anyway, the point is that in Padmore’s opinion the purpose of the meeting was to instruct him to revoke her most recent codicil. He had urged her to do so and she’d told him that she would think it over and let him have her answer in a day or two. It concerned a little matter of ten thousand pounds.’
‘Who’d she left that to?’
‘You mean you can’t guess?’
‘Oh, no! Not Melanie?’
‘Who else? It was to pay her expenses for a drama school course, plus board and lodging.’
‘And the clause still stands? She’ll get the money?’
‘Every last penny,’ he replied with great conviction.
‘Which makes it still more frustrating that this is not a murder case,’ I told Toby, as we spread our rug and tablecloth over the flattest expanse of rock we had been able to find, ‘for now we have the classic motive. Not many people would sneeze at ten thousand pounds and it must have beat beyond the wildest dreams of someone like Melanie.’
‘Provided she knew she was to get it.’
‘Oh, I expect she did. I am sure Elfrieda would have used it as a veiled bribe, to encourage her to be a good girl and stay with poor old adopted Auntie. The car and driving lessons indicate that she wasn’t above such devices.’
‘You can’t say they proved very successful, however.’
‘Probably because she had no conception of the breed of viper she was nursing in her bosom. If this really had been murder, I should start from the premise that Melanie couldn’t wait to get her hands on all that money, couldn’t tolerate the prospect of being a good girl, possibly for years and always with the threat that Elfrieda might change her mind and all the goodness be wasted. So she decided it would be safer if poor old Auntie dropped off the hook right away, but first of all she had to stage a disappearing act, so that whatever happened no blame could be attached to her. It’s such a nice theory, because it explains why, with everything to lose, as it then seemed, she should have walked out. With ten thousand pounds in the bank, she could have afforded a brand new car and driving lessons for half the female population of Dearehaven.’
‘I do feel for you,’ Toby said, ‘but it is not such a great catastrophe. You may have lighted on the perfect culprit with the perfect motive, but don’t forget that you were the first to point out that it would have been impossible for Melanie to have got in and out of the building unobserved.’
‘Unfortunately, I may have been a little hasty there. I have since thought of a method whereby she could have overcome even that obstacle.’
‘Oh, that is bad news! Do tell me, though, how could she have done it? Black wig, sunglasses, all that caper?’
‘No, none of that would have got her past the main entrance, if she’d rolled up between six and seven in the evening, which was the original assumption. Wandering about the theatre in that sort of amateurish disguise would only have succeeded in drawing attention to herself and would also have indicated that she was up to no good. So long as she retained her own identity, in the last resort she could always claim that her purpose was entirely innocent; in other words, that the lamb had repented and was attempting to reenter the flock. But, thinking it over, and with a little help from the waiter and his trolley at the Green Man, I hit on the splendidly ingenious method she could have used.’
‘How very clever of you! And clever of her too, I suppose, seeing that she must have thought of it first? We must at least give her equal credit.’
‘Not quite equal, because up to a point it was a well rehearsed routine. She had used and succeeded with it before. It was simply a matter of adapting it to the new circumstances.’
‘Do explain!’
‘You remember my telling you that the only time she could have slipped in unnoticed was about ten minutes before the last bell, when three quarters of the audience was still jostling around in the foyer and things were at their most hectic for the staff?’
‘I do, indeed. A good point, in my opinion.’
‘So what was to prevent her doing exactly that? Oh, not on Tuesday, when Elfrieda died, of course not, but on Monday, approximately twenty-two hours in advance of the event?’
Toby looked disappointed: ‘Oh, surely not? Twenty-two hours would have meant such a tedious wait. And where could she have hidden herself all the time? I do remember the story of her spending the night in a laundry basket, but that only lasted until the following morning.’
‘But this time she’d have known her way around and also what everyone in the building would have been doing at a given moment. She could have holed up indefinitely, mainly by using two separate bases which were connected with each other in such a way that she would have been able to pass from one to the other without the faintest risk of being seen.’
‘My dear Tessa, you fascinate me! This is so much more riveting than I was prepared for and I begin to feel as sorry as you that, since there has not been a murder, we are only skipping through the realms of fantasy.’
‘Nevertheless, you’d be interested to hear how she could have brought it off, if it had been murder?’
‘Intensely,’ he admitted, spreading a lump of pâté on to his wheaty crisp.
‘Then listen carefully. When Melanie enters the theatre on Monday evening at approximately ten minutes to eight, she threads her way discreetly through the thick crowd to the far side of the foyer and the door leading to t
he ramp. She knows that Elfrieda will have already left, so there will be no human traffic on the ramp and also that the office will be empty, and so this is her destination.’
At this point I felt compelled to break off the reconstruction because the pâté was disappearing rather rapidly and I had some catching up to do.
Resuming a minute or so later, I said: ‘I don’t know whether it was locked, but in any case Melanie would have armed herself with a key and, once inside, she was not only safe for the night, but had a comfortable bed to spend it on.’
‘Quite so. And come the dawn?’
‘In my version, she allows herself a clear margin of half an hour or so before Elfrieda’s regular arrival time and then, around nine-thirty, descends to her second hiding place and camps out in the bar.’
‘You don’t say! Would she have had a key to the bar as well?’
‘Why not? A resourceful girl like that! And no risk of running into one of the cleaners on the way. She travels by service lift.’
‘Oh, of course she does. How stupid of me not to have guessed it! Tell me, though: she’s quite sturdy, I understand? Would there have been room for her?’
‘Masses. I took a good look at it at lunch yesterday and it’s a great solid and spacious Victorian contraption, specially built, I daresay, to carry all those heavy tomes and museum exhibits. No problem there.’
‘How very satisfactory! And could she have spent the whole day in the bar?’
‘Why not, since there’s no matinée on Tuesday? She’d have been perfectly safe until the ladies came on duty at seven, which in any case was long past zero hour.’
‘The moment when, having sailed skywards again, she comes bursting out of the dumb waiter, causing the old lady to suffer a heart attack, which I must say I regard as highly plausible. My own reaction would have been almost identical.’
‘Although I admit to being a bit in the dark on details. For instance, did Melanie, assuming Elfrieda to be already dead, push the wheelchair down the ramp, so as to give verisimilitude to a straightforward heart attack? Or did Elfrieda, confronted by that terrifying apparition, guess what was in store and make a frantic attempt to escape? One thing I can tell you, though; if this were fact instead of fantasy, it would have tidied up one other loose end, which still hangs by an uncounted thread.’