Death in the Round

by Anne Morice

  ‘Nearly half an hour, twenty minutes of which she spent in the bathroom, for which I could cheerfully have killed her. When she came out she’d got a brand new hair style and about half a pound of make-up on her face. Elfrieda would have had a fit, but I have to admit that she looked quite attractive, in a tarty sort of way.’

  ‘And what happened during the rest of the time? The ten minutes when she wasn’t in the bathroom?’

  ‘She asked if she could use the telephone. She said she’d only just realised how late it was and she wanted to ring her friend where she was staying and make sure there’d be somebody there to let her in. I told her to go ahead.’

  ‘Ah! So perhaps we’re getting somewhere at last. Did her friend answer?’

  ‘Apparently.’

  ‘And could you glean anything about him or her from the conversation?’

  ‘Nothing whatever, as you’d have heard me telling the Inspector, if you’d really been able to listen in. I was in quite a hurry to get to the bathroom myself by that time and I left her to it. All I can tell you is that she must have known the number by heart. She didn’t look it up or check in her diary, just plonked herself down on the floor and started to dial.’

  ‘Which suggests that she expected it to be a longish call. Was she still at it when you came out of the bathroom?’

  ‘No, the telephone was still on the floor, needless to say, but the bird had flown: carrier bag and all.’

  ‘What, just like that? With no word of farewell?’

  ‘Just one word, as it happens: “Thanks”, scrawled in lipstick on my most cherished mirror. Silly little fool! It took me ages to get all the smudges off.’

  ‘And that was the last you saw of her?’

  ‘The very last and you can probably see why I kept quiet about the whole episode? I was hoping she’d gone for good this time and then, of course, when we heard she’d been murdered I didn’t dare speak up. I just kept my fingers crossed and hoped it would never come out. Unfortunately, though, this flair of hers for causing trouble seems to be just as active now she’s dead as when she was alive. Somebody must have seen her leaving my flat and eventually reported it to the police. They wouldn’t tell me who it was though.’

  ‘Probably because no such person exists. I don’t believe in that explanation for one minute.’

  ‘What other could there be?’

  ‘Well, look, Viola, it’s now nearly three weeks since she was killed. People have stopped talking about it and they don’t even show her face on television any more. So why should anyone have waited all this time before going to the police? Either they’d have acted straight away, or not at all.’

  ‘Not necessarily; not, for instance, if they were the timid sort, who dreaded getting mixed up with the police. They might have hung back until the last possible moment, trusting to luck that the case would be solved without their intervention and only feeling compelled to come forward when it became evident that this wasn’t going to happen. I repeat: how else could the police have got to hear about it?’

  ‘I don’t suppose they did get to hear about it. You accused me of laying a trap for you, but the fact is that you’d already fallen into a much bigger one.’

  ‘How did I? What are you talking about?’

  ‘It’s one of the oldest tricks in the trade and in the present case it would have worked something like this: someone here in Dearehaven, who knows you and also knew Melanie, saw you stop at the roundabout and take her on board. Not a distant acquaintance either, but somebody who knew enough to be aware that you were on your way to London. So when the long conflict between conscience and loyalty had at last been resolved, this someone passes on the information to the police, who naturally assume there’s a fair chance you drove Melanie the whole way. Better than fair, in fact, since you have not seen fit to mention the incident yourself. However, they also realise that if they were to say to you: “And what happened after you picked her up at the roundabout?”, quick as a flash the answer would come that you’d dropped her off at the nearest bus stop, waved goodbye and never saw her again. Isn’t that so?’

  ‘Possibly.’

  ‘And they, of course, would have no way of proving that it wasn’t true. Whereas, by bluffing you into the belief that they knew it all, you would doubtless say to yourself that it would be pointless, possibly dangerous to deny it.’

  ‘Yes, yes, but listen, Tessa, this makes no sense whatever. When you speak of someone who knew me by sight, I suppose that could apply to any number of people, including a lot of theatre-goers, but to have recognised Melanie as well and to have guessed I was on my way to London, well, that narrows the field considerably.’

  ‘Yes, it does.’

  ‘In other words, what you’re implying is that it was someone from the Rotunda?’

  ‘Yes, I am.’

  Then you’re barking up completely the wrong tree. That is the most ridiculous suggestion.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I doubt if I could explain it in a way you’d understand. You arrived too late on the scene to feel its influence, but there was a tradition of loyalty and comradeship which was quite unique. It was one of the things which made it so lovely to work there. No jealousies or backbiting, just everyone pulling together for the general good. It was something we all recognised and shared and I don’t believe it could ever be entirely lost. Certainly, there’s enough of it left to make your suggestion completely and utterly out of the question.’

  It would have been useless to argue with her. People mainly believe what they need to believe and it is destructive, as well as time-wasting, to try and shake them out of it. Moreover, the only witness I could have called in my defence was Jill and I had no wish to betray her, or the fact that her car had been parked outside the police station the previous evening. So, pretending to be won over, I said:

  ‘Then I am to take it that it is quite beyond the bounds of possibility that someone from the Rotunda saw Melanie get into your car and later reported the fact? That it was some snooper in London who did the damage?’

  ‘It must have been. It was a chance in a million, in a big anonymous block like mine, where half the tenants wouldn’t recognise their next door neighbours if they passed them in the street, but all the same it has to be the answer.’

  She sounded so positive about it that for a couple of seconds I was almost tempted to believe her.

  TWENTY-TWO

  My task, like Jamie’s, was now almost finished and, to continue with the simile, only one or two more stitches were needed to fill in the background. For one of them I needed the observant eye of Simon.

  It took me the best part of a day to track him down because my telephone call to his parents’ home in London by a great mischance was answered by his mother, who was most unwilling to part with any information concerning his whereabouts until I had disclosed my identity. I was equally reluctant to comply with this condition, because I knew this jealous, possessive mother of old and if by any chance Simon had burbled on to her in his merry fashion about loving me from afar, I knew that afar was where she would wish it to remain and would go to any lengths to put me off his track.

  Having drawn a blank there, I next appealed to my cousin Ellen. She was no help either, but promised to ask Jeremy as soon as he came in and, faithful and true as ever, reported back at six-thirty that evening with an address and telephone number in Sussex.

  Luckily, I was alone at the cottage at the time, Viola being still at the theatre and, as yet, no Jamie plying his needle on the terrace. So I immediately seized the telephone again and, with only a little more delay, was at last connected with my quarry.

  ‘Sweet of you to say so, Simon,’ I told him, interrupting the compliments with a rush of sibilants, ‘but I only have a few minutes and there’s something important I want to ask you.’

  ‘Ask away, dear heart! Answering your questions is one of life’s least onerous tasks.’

  ‘Do you remember telling me, when we met
at the party, how you’d seen your friend, Charlie, lunching in a restaurant in London?’

  ‘Yes, clearly. Is that the question?’

  ‘No, it’s this: can you describe the girl who was with him?’

  ‘Oh well, now, let me see! Very dishy, as I think I mentioned, if you happen to approve of that sort of thing.’

  ‘What sort of thing?’

  ‘Give me a moment to do some total recall and I’ll paint you the full picture.’

  ‘No, that won’t be necessary and there isn’t time; just one feature which struck you particularly will do. Like the colour of her hair, for instance?’

  ‘Oh yes, indeed, that’s very easy,’ he said and proceeded to describe it to perfection.

  Jamie turned up a few minutes after I put the telephone down and when the first of the champagne had done its job in mellowing his mood and bolstering my courage, I told him that I now understood why, when asked if he recognised the young man who had been walking on the cliff with Melanie, his denial the first time had appeared to be true, and the second time untrue.

  ‘Oh, you do, do you?’ he enquired, snipping off a few knots.

  ‘All part of the policy of being nice to Douglas, I take it? His then having become the hand which fed us?’

  ‘Dearehaven is having a bad effect on you,’ he said. ‘You are becoming much too cynical.’

  However, he had not denied the charge and it did not appear to have put him out of humour, so I whiled away the rest of the interval until Viola’s return by laying a bet with him. This can often be a useful gambit for obtaining information which would otherwise be inaccessible, because when there is money at stake many people, specially those who don’t need it, will exert themselves to find the correct answer. In fact, he acted most promptly and was able to give it to me the next morning.

  Before all this came about, I had found time to call at the main Dearehaven post office and, after the usual waiting in line and wishing I had joined any other queue except the one I was in, received my reward in the form of an envelope addressed to Mrs R. Price, c/o Poste Restante.

  The letter inside was very stilted and genteel and, in any case, it was only one more step in the process of elimination, but it told me everything I needed to know, and I was so glad that I had followed Mrs Bracegirdle’s advice.

  TWENTY-THREE

  The opening night of Au Pair was to have been on the following Tuesday, but several days before that the Rotunda had become a forlorn and silent building. The glass cases outside, which had formerly contained photographs of the cast, were now empty, with black and yellow stickers pasted across them, saying CLOSED, and Robin and I were at Roakes Common, spending the weekend with Toby.

  ‘Jill’s the one I feel worst about,’ I told them. ‘I feel bad about all of them, of course, although I suppose it will only be a temporary set-back for Jamie. His play is sure to come into London the minute there’s a theatre available, and there are hints that I may come with it; but it’s rough on the others being left high and dry in the middle of the season, even if Douglas does do the decent thing by way of compensation.’

  ‘Why is it any worse for Jill?’

  ‘Because I deceived her. Quite inadvertently, I might add, but she’s never going to believe that. When I tried to say goodbye yesterday she wouldn’t utter a word. Just looked at me as though I was Judas Iscariot, which I am sure is how she feels. The Rotunda wasn’t simply a job to her; more like a religion.’

  ‘How do you deceive someone inadvertently?’ Toby asked. ‘It might be a trick worth knowing.’

  ‘I told her, with my hand on my heart, that no one connected with the theatre could have killed Melanie. She trusted me and that’s why she felt safe in going to the police. The ironic part is that I meant it, at the time, although if we’d had our talk only a day or two earlier, I wouldn’t have said it because that was before I finally crossed Len off my list of suspects and narrowed it down to two.’

  ‘Which two were they?’ Toby asked.

  ‘Henshaw, père et fils.’

  ‘And what had poor Len done to get himself on the list?’ Robin asked. ‘The only time I met him he struck me as a particularly non-violent type.’

  ‘I agree, and it was after my painful scene with him in the car that he was definitely eliminated. Anyone who broke into floods of tears at the mention of a dead girl must have liked her a little too much to have murdered her. In a funny way, I believe he may have loved her for years, though perhaps more as a baby sister than in the conventional sense. The problem was that he’d come out with one or two fair old whoppers and there seemed to be no point or purpose in them, unless he was concealing something so monumentally damaging that he hardly dared to speak the truth about anything, for fear of betraying himself.’

  ‘Though he can’t have whoppered very convincingly, by the sound of it?’

  ‘No, and although he was indeed concealing something, the mistake was in assuming that it was connected with Melanie’s murder.’

  ‘And what was it connected with? ’

  ‘His past.’

  ‘Oh, really? What was so disgraceful about that?’

  ‘Nothing. It was a sight too graceful, in fact. He was bitterly ashamed of his bourgeois background and he’d put it around that he came from the slums of Bermondsey or somewhere. So he lived in constant fear of being unmasked as a nicely brought up fake from a prosperous middle class family. You can’t altogether blame him. Judging by her letter, his mother must be one of the most prissy and pretentious women alive and even at the age of ten Melanie openly despised her.’

  ‘Whatever are you talking about, Tessa?’ Robin asked. ‘Since when have you been in correspondence with Len’s mother and how does the ten-year-old Melanie come into it?’

  ‘She was pushed into it by the orphanage matron, but I’m getting out of sequence. To revert to Len and his false pretences, the very first time I met him we were driving through the town and he told me that it used to have great charm and character until the vandals got their hands on it, so naturally I asked him if he’d known it in the old days, thinking he might have been taken their for holidays as a child or something. He denied it hotly, as though I’d accused him of something insulting. Then later on I found that he was very knowledgeable about all the local cab firms, although he had his own car and couldn’t have had much occasion to use them. The most curious thing of all was that he was able to tell me exactly how to get to the crematorium. That, in my opinion, is in the category which separates the native from the visitor in one stroke. So it was obvious that he had strong associations with Dearehaven, only I still couldn’t understand why it was something to be ashamed of. Then I remembered Kyril once telling me that Len’s father had been a pharmacist and that made everything perfectly clear.’

  ‘It would, of course,’ Toby said. ‘I do see that.’

  ‘The word pharmacist,’ I explained, ‘conjured up rather impressive visions of a man in a white coat peering at bugs through a microscope and inventing wonder drugs to kill them off; but then I realised that this was just one of Kyril’s Gallic affectations and that what he actually meant was a man in a white coat peering at prescriptions in a chemist’s shop in the High Street.’

  ‘It gets clearer by the minute.’

  ‘Not to you or Robin, of course, but that’s because neither of you overheard my conversation with the Matron of the Brackley Place Children’s Home. She told me that one of the families Melanie was sent to for a trial visit were people who owned a chemist’s shop in the town. She also threw in the fact that they had a child of their own, who was old enough to go to college. So, if the boy in question was our Len, that would explain a lot of things.’

  ‘One thing it doesn’t explain, though,’ Robin objected, ‘is that if Len remembered her well enough to feel like Big Brother, why didn’t Melanie remember him?’

  ‘I feel sure she did, and that when she turned up in his life again, so inopportunely, he begged her not to le
t on about his shameful origins. She, being a good sport in many ways, cheerfully entered into the spirit of things and in fact never gave him away. No wonder he felt affection and gratitude. Having established this glamorous reputation for grinding his way up from the lowest depths of the working classes, he’d have looked a proper ass if the truth bad come out about his college education.’

  ‘Would she really have been so co-operative? I thought she was supposed to be such an unprincipled tramp, who would only have kept quiet about a thing like that in return for money in the bank?’

  ‘No, she wasn’t greedy or spiteful, whatever some people have tried to pretend; but the trouble was that she brought out very strong reactions in everyone who met her. Some people hated and feared her almost instinctively, but Elfrieda, who had shown once before that she had a particular weakness for irreverent young people, really loved her. And I don’t care what they say, I still believe it was mutual. Another very important thing is that she had enormous sex appeal. Women either didn’t recognise it, or detested her even more because of it, but it affected every man to some extent. I daresay that Len’s feelings weren’t purely platonic and even Jamie admitted that there was something attractive in her coltishness. As for Simon, whom I like to think of as the number one expert in these matters, he described her as a very sexy number indeed.’

  ‘Who is Simon?’ Toby asked.

  ‘The brother of your son-in-law. He saw Melanie lunching with Charlie Henshaw in London. But I’ll come back to Simon in a moment, because he supplied another piece of information, equally valuable in its way. First, though, there is one more thing you should know about Melanie. She was no paragon and I don’t doubt that she nicked a bit here and there, but I question if she was a confirmed thief, still less that she would have stolen from someone who had been good to her. Mrs Bracegirdle had certainly never seen her in that light, and I had a bet with Jamie, who checked it out with Mr Padmore. It was quite true what Elfrieda said about the petty cash cheque, it was never presented.’