Death in the Round
Page 9
‘If you wish, but I should warn you there’s a catch. I don’t always respond because I’m mostly called Tessa. Do some people call you Dougie?’
‘No, never. At least, not twice.’
‘You’re lucky not to be in plaster. I was encased in it for three weeks when I broke my ankle and I nearly went out of my mind.’
‘Which is precisely why I put my foot down if you’ll forgive the pun. My doctor was all for meting out the same punishment, but it’s not a serious fracture and in the end we compromised. I’m allowed to keep it strapped up like this, on condition that I don’t use it until he comes again next week.’
‘All the same, it must be a bore for you?’
‘Not at all, it suits me perfectly. In fact, I’m rather hoping that when he comes he will recommend that the treatment should continue indefinitely. I’m bone idle, do you see, and it lets me off all the things I prefer not to do. What is even better is that lovely people like you feel sorry for me and come and sit here and chat me up. I do hope you like confidence tricksters?’
Doing my best to match this somewhat archly flirtatious act, I assumed the Edwardian comedy voice to say:
‘Now that you’ve made me a party to your deceit, I feel I should pay you out by joining the others and leaving you to repent.’
‘Then I should pick up my crutches and come hobbling after you. I’m not a slave to my doctor, only to my own indulgences, so I can’t lose.’
‘No, you don’t strike me as a loser,’ I admitted.
He beamed delightedly at this, but was prevented from prolonging this rather trying conversation by the fact that two women had now entered the room and my turn had come to be introduced to them. The elder of the pair was Lady Henshaw and the younger Charlie’s fiancée, and neither of them looked like losers either. Another interesting resemblance was that they were both noticeably overweight and, as though to announce that this was only a temporary misfortune, both wore clothes a size too small for them.
Lady Henshaw. whose name was Kitty, was a blonde, hard-faced woman, immaculately turned out in a cherry coloured shirt and black patent leather shoes, who looked as though she would have been more at home managing a boutique in Guildford. Whereas Charlie’s betrothed had gone to the opposite sartorial extreme and was bursting out of very tight and scruffy looking jeans and a skimpy, sleeveless T-shirt with a heavily scooped out neckline. Her name was Marcia Atterbury and she was an overblown girl in more ways than one, having huge, staring, saucer like eyes, which hardly seemed to blink, a noisy laugh and large teeth, which she frequently bared in a somewhat vulpine smile. However, she may have signalled some special message for the gentlemen, because I noticed that within two minutes Jamie and Len were both at her side, gazing at her like a pair of mesmerised rabbits confronted by a goggle-eyed stoat. However, in Jamie’s case, this may have been just part of the policy of being nice to Douglas, which was now extended to take in dependants and future dependants as well.
Their interest naturally caused Charlie to lose his in whatever it was that Viola had been telling him and, considerate as ever, she immediately let him off the hook by saying that she could not wait to ask his mother where she had found those marvellous tulips. Since the marvellous tulips were about as hideous as it was possible for flowers to be, dirty mauve petals and huge menacing furry black stamens, Viola had no doubt guessed in a trice that they were home grown, thereby cleverly endearing herself to two of her hosts with a single throw. Indeed, it turned out that Kitty was an expert gardener, though not, naturally, the kind who grubbed about on her knees, but very knowledgeable on Latin names, soil content and such-like esoteric matters, and she offered to take Viola and myself on a brief, pre-lunch tour of the rose garden, among other highlights. Douglas was all for leaping on to his crutches and accompanying us, but she instructed him in sharp, peremptory tones to remain where he was and obey doctor’s orders.
It struck me as I stared moodily at a Vampirea dolorosa, or some such plant which, we were informed, had been on the point of dying only a few weeks ago, but had miraculously, if misguidedly come to life again, that Viola might even have contrived to bestow still another favour by setting up this boring expedition. It had not sounded to me as though Kitty’s refusal to allow her husband to take part in it had stemmed from a deep concern for his injured ankle. Her automatic and shrewish response had suggested that she was accustomed to prising him away from presentable females in whom he was showing an interest. Viola had certainly proved herself to be a valuable ally in round one, but, since we had at least another two hours to get through at Dene Cottage and Douglas was probably not the kind to be intimidated by wifely disapproval, I could see storm clouds ahead unless I too could disarm her before we rejoined the party. So I began by saying what a shame it was that Toby was not here to enjoy all these wonders, even though they would have made him so envious. It was not a fortunate gambit, however, because I could see from her blank look that she had not the faintest idea who I was referring to.
‘Oh yes, of course,’ she said, pulling herself together. ‘Your husband! Yes, what a pity! But never mind, perhaps you’ll be able to bring him another time.’
Her tone was so patronising that I longed to tell her that I would not inflict such an ordeal on my worst enemy, but most of my resentment was reserved for Viola. How tiresome of her, I told myself, not to have warned me that Toby’s invitation had been pure fiction, invented by herself in one of her frenzies of tact, in the full knowledge that she had little to fear, since he was almost bound to refuse. Kind and considerate she might be, but she was so intent on smoothing her own path through life that she did not care how many rocks and boulders she strewed over other people’s. At that moment I almost believed her capable of murdering Melanie and leaving her to rot under a pile of chalk, simply to restore peace and harmony to the Rotunda.
However, when we had completed this tedious tour and Kitty had gone ahead of us into the house, on the pretext of rounding up what she called the people in the kitchen, Viola took my arm and told me how stylish I was looking and how grateful she was to me for tagging along, instead of leaving her stuck with that odious woman. So I cast my unworthy thoughts aside and made up my silent quarrel with her on the spot.
When we returned to the drawing room Charlie had vanished and the rest of the party was split into two pairs Jamie and Len were in earnest conversation by the window and Marcia was seated on the floor beside Douglas’s footstool, her knees drawn up to her chin and yearning up at him with her round, inviting eyes. She more or less ignored the reappearance of Viola and myself, but got up, not too hurriedly, when Kitty came to summon us to the dining room, pulling her T-shirt down over the gap of bare flesh which separated it from her jeans. Kitty cast a sweeping glance of dislike in her direction and then moved on to break up the dialogue of the couple by the window.
Lunch was notable more for its trimmings and garnishes than its actual content. The table napkins had been tortured into damask water lilies and there were rose leaves in the finger bowls, but rather more rice than chicken in the main dish and only one of the three glasses at each place setting was in fact needed.
Douglas, inevitably, was given Viola on his right and me on his left; she had Charlie on her other side, while I got Marcia. Kitty, making a great song and dance about eight being such an awkward number, divided herself between Jamie and Len. Douglas received Viola’s effusive praise of his house and grounds with becoming modesty and then resumed his flirtation with me, as though there had been no interruption.
‘Shocking tales I’ve been hearing about you, Tessa!’
‘Oh, no! So soon?’
‘Crowther tells me your husband is a policeman.’
‘Oh, I see! Well, that’s no dark secret.’
‘Is he really?’ Marcia asked, joining in with a loud squawk of amusement. ‘How frightfully funny! Does he stand in the middle of the road, waving his arms about?’
‘Sometimes,’ I admitted. ‘When he needs a taxi.’
‘And you’d better mind your manners, Marcia,’ Douglas told her. ‘I hear he’s something very special and high up in the C.I.D. Is that right, Tessa?’
‘Not very high yet. About half way up, I should say.’
‘And was he with you when you discovered that poor girl my cousin had befriended?’
‘Oh, Jamie told you about that too, did he? Well, no that was someone else, as it happens,’ I replied, sparing Viola’s feelings.
‘Must have been a most unpleasant experience?’
‘Yes, it was, but I didn’t hang around, you know. Just one look and off.’
Viola had been keeping an anxious eye on me during this exchange and I felt sure that, like me, she had been wondering whether the subject of Melanie’s murder would crop up. As I met her look, she gave me a barely perceptible shake of the head and once again I found myself becoming irritated by her pussyfooting tactics. In any case, I could hardly pretend not to have heard when Douglas said:
‘Did you ever meet the girl?’
‘Once. How about you?’
‘Not even once. I kept well out of it. Padmore was always on at me to warn Elfrieda, but I couldn’t see what right I had to interfere. He was worried stiff about it, poor old fellow. All most unsuitable and bound to lead to trouble, he said, and how right he was!’
‘I think that’s a bit sweeping,’ I said, earning myself a flash of disapproval from Viola. ‘If all the delinquents and undesirables had to pay for their misdemeanours with their lives, the population of these islands would be pretty thin on the ground.’
‘Good thing too, if you ask me,’ Marcia said. ‘As you’d agree if you’d ever taken a look at all those plebs swarming over the beach every summer weekend.’
On hearing this remark, Len put his spoon down with a clatter, turning scarlet in the face, as though apoplexy were about to set in, and Charlie drawled:
‘Poor lookout for me, though. I’d be an orphan in no time, what with Dad sailing so near the wind in his business deals and Mum buying sweet peas from the local florist and passing them off as all her own work at the flower show.’
It must have been the last straw for Viola that Kitty now joined in the fray. In a voice of suppressed fury, she said:
‘How dare you say such a thing? That was most uncalled for, Charlie!’
‘Sorry, Mum. Just my little joke, you know.’
‘Then it was extremely poor taste and you ought to be ashamed of yourself. In my opinion, you owe both me and your father an apology; and our guests too. Do you hear me?’
Personally, I considered her foolish to keep banging away at it like this, because anyone could see that Charlie was already slightly ashamed of himself and she was only adding to the general embarrassment by making such a big production of it.
‘Very well,’ he said, striving to sound light-hearted. ‘Here we go, then! Mother and Father, ladies and gentlemen, I apologise. I promise not to make a joke ever again; and while I’m about it, I’ll apologise to Marcia, for casting these aspersions on her future parents-in-law. How’s that?’
The brief silence which followed was broken by a screech of laughter on my left and then Viola, ever ready with her little carafe of oil for the turbulent waters, nipped in with some questions to her host concerning the presence or otherwise of fish in the stream which ran through his property.
‘Plenty,’ he replied, apparently quite unmoved by the recent fracas. ‘We keep it stocked and we’ve even put up a little hut in the wood down there, so that our ladies could join us for picnics. Never gets used, though. I don’t seem to find much time for fishing, even when both legs are functioning, and it bores Charlie to death, doesn’t it, Marcia?’
‘Yes, thank God,’ she replied, with another trumpeting laugh, which trailed off into a giggle when Charlie, after flinging his napkin down on the table, got up and walked out of the room.
‘Plenty of undercurrents swimming around in that little corner of rural England,’ I remarked to Jamie on the drive back to Dearehaven. ‘I hope your professional eyes and ears were on the alert?’
‘Oh no, all far too commonplace and predictable,’ he replied in his most superior tone. ‘There are thousands of families like that and they’ve been done to death. Self-made man; vulgar, climbing wife; weakling of a son, we’ve had it all before. What one looks for is some unexpected twist to shake the whole thing up and turn the situation on its head.’
Leaving aside the fact that whoever had made Douglas, it was certainly not himself, I personally considered that Jamie had overlooked something this time and that, despite his contemptuous dismissal of the Henshaws as theatrical fodder, the very element he mentioned had actually been present.
I did not point this out, however, lest I be overheard by Viola, who was in front with Len, and who had probably suffered enough unpleasantness for one day.
THIRTEEN
By the following morning Toby was still rattling around in the Royal Metropolitan, having been called on by Inspector Watson, when on the brink of departure, and served with a subpoena for Melanie’s inquest at the Town Hall on Tuesday morning.
‘Don’t they want me as well?’ I asked him.
‘Funnily enough, no. I explained that you were far better at that sort of thing than I am, but he was not interested. So here I am, getting terribly behind with my work and now this horror hanging over me.’
‘Oh well, only a couple more days,’ I reminded him, ‘and it will be a pure formality, you know. Just a couple of questions, then the medical evidence and they’ll probably wind up with an adjournment.’
‘And adjourned is where it is likely to remain, I imagine.’
‘Shouldn’t wonder. Did the Inspector give you any hints about what headway they were making?’
‘Certainly not. Why should he take me into his confidence?’
‘Not deliberately,’ I explained. ‘Inadvertently is the word I had in mind.’
‘Well, it wasn’t in my mind, I assure you. I don’t possess your gift for drawing the inadvertent out of people, specially policemen. However, it would be logical to assume that they are concentrating their efforts on the young man she was seen on the cliff with, and the still, small voice of reason tells me that they have a fat chance of catching up with him.’
‘I agree. The trouble is that, so far as I know, the only one who did see him was Jamie and the best description he could give was that he had fair hair and was wearing jeans. That’s a big help, isn’t it? He could be absolutely anywhere by now, wearing dark hair and a pink suit, for all we know. And he may not have been a local boy either; more likely someone she’d picked up with on an earlier adventure and kept in touch with. She’d been on the move quite a bit during her short lifetime, so there’s no telling when and where they might have met.’
‘Which makes me feel even more inflamed at being kept here forcibly for such a pointless exercise. In fact, I wonder they bother to have an inquest at all.’
‘Don’t be so pessimistic. Something interesting may emerge. In fact, I don’t see how it can fail to and it’s the medical evidence which I’m depending on you to listen to most carefully.’
‘How ghoulish of you!’
‘Not the gory details, I’m not concerned with them, but I would very much like to know whether she died before Elfrieda or after.’
‘Yes, I can see that, but isn’t it a foregone conclusion? If this young man was the one who did it, there must have been a gap of nearly twenty-four hours between the two, with Melanie first past the post.’
‘But the fact that no one appears to have seen her after Jamie got that glimpse on the cliff path doesn’t necessarily mean she was killed the same evening. The carrier bag, for instance, indicates that they were planning to spend at least some time on the beach and if one or both of them had wanted to go into hiding they could have spent the night, even two nights, in one of the caves. The chances of anyone seeing and recognising her in Rocky Cove were pretty remote.’
‘I don’t know, Toby, and it’s one of the fascinating aspects.’
‘I don’t know why. If the young man did kill her, it can hardly have been for the money.’
‘If he did, and if the girl Jamie saw really was Melanie, not just someone who resembled her from a distance, and several other “ifs”, along with those; so do please keep your ears pinned back and drink up every word.’
‘You do think of some charming pastimes to while away my summer hols,’ he commented gloomily.
Nevertheless, he did not fail me and by Wednesday evening the plot, so far as I was concerned, had thickened to a stew.
Melanie had not been sexually assaulted, but this was about the only obscenity which had not been inflicted on her. Her neck, along with numerous other bones, had been broken, these injuries being commensurate with falling from a great height, but they had not caused her death. This had been due to a blow on the back of the skull, which had been sustained before she went over the cliff.
The medical evidence also produced a couple more surprises. One was that immediately before her death she had consumed a massive amount of alcohol, the equivalent, when translated into layman’s terms for the benefit of the jury, of four double whiskies. The other was that, by the Saturday morning when she was found, she had been dead for not less than five days, not longer than a week. In other words, she had been alive and well and probably living in Dearehaven for not less than four days after Elfrieda died.
‘So what becomes of all the money she had inherited?’ I asked, when the three of us gathered on Viola’s terrace that evening. The question was addressed to Jamie, who had just returned from an emergency meeting at the Rotunda, with Roger Padmore once again in the chair, and was therefore well primed on recent developments.