Getting Away with Murder?

by Anne Morice

  ‘And it’s not as though either of you was housebound. So far as I understand the position, you are both condemned to spending the greater part of your lives in uncomfortable or uncongenial surroundings, so why you should torture yourselves in this way is something of a mystery.’

  ‘It’s all bound up with Robin’s recherche du temps perdu. Some case he worked on down here a year or two ago, which was never solved and which he’s been having nightmares about ever since. This is supposed to get it out of his system, but it doesn’t seem to be succeeding.’

  ‘I can see how it would worry him, although personally I have a sneaking admiration, or fellow feeling, for the criminals who get away with it.’

  ‘Then you had better get him to tell you about it. I was hoping you would. The sooner we get him sorted out, the sooner we can pack our bags and go home. I’ll just give you the broad outline.’

  ‘All’s well,’ Robin said, ‘Kenneth has laid on everything we’re likely to need to keep us going for an hour or so. And guess who the birthday boy is? Two lumps of ice if you get it right.’

  ‘It wouldn’t be fair, because I know already. Unless there are two of them, it’s Jimmie Featherstone’s father.’

  ‘Perhaps there are two, then. Mine is called Godstow.’

  ‘Oh, really? Well, that would explain why he’s always been so cagey about his family. I bet he’s as relieved as we are that we’re not in the dining room, watching every move and taking notes. Anyway, why don’t we while away the time by telling Toby about Pauline? He thinks it might give him ideas for a play.’

  ‘Yes, indeed!’ my cousin said, coming up to scratch for once. ‘And I have to say I’m agog. Tessa tells me that ten days went by before anyone noticed that she wasn’t around and that it can all be explained by the fact that she didn’t care for racing. I’m not demented about it myself, but I hadn’t realised what it could lead to.’

  ‘Then you wouldn’t know anything about the February National Hunt meeting at Chissingfield?’

  ‘No, I wouldn’t.’

  ‘In these parts it’s the most important event in the racing calendar. The big race, which is called the Mortimer Handicap, after the brewers who sponsor it, carries a prize of twenty thousand and it’s also a sort of run-up to the Grand National. So it attracts all sorts of people who don’t normally bother to come here, and all sorts of interest on and off the course. For those two days Chissingfield is on the map and the whole town benefits. However, the Mortimer Handicap happens to be the race in which Pauline’s father had the accident which led to his death. As a result, she always took that week off from work, as part of her annual holiday.’

  ‘But surely the point of that would have been to get as far from the scene as possible?’ Toby said. ‘Not, one would have thought, to go for moonlight walks beside the race course? Or are we to believe that it had a morbid fascination for her?’

  ‘On the contrary, she always did go away. Abroad, if she could manage it, and for the whole week, not returning until Sunday, after the crowds had left and things were back to normal. Only that year there was a break in the pattern. Her aunt had been ill and Pauline had offered to give up part of her holiday to go and stay with her. She wasn’t prepared to sacrifice all of it, however, and was to spend the first three or four days redecorating her bedsitter and go to Worthing from Thursday to Sunday. According to her landlady and other witnesses who saw her at the time, the first three days went exactly according to plan but she never got to Worthing.’

  ‘But didn’t the aunt make a few enquiries when she failed to turn up?’

  ‘No. On Thursday afternoon, when tea was on the table, she received a telegram. It had been sent from Chissingfield at twelve forty-eight and was read out to her over the telephone, those being the days when such things were possible. The operator asked her if she wanted a copy through the post and she replied that she did not. The message was quite unambiguous. Due to an unavoidable change of plans, Pauline was unable to come. She sent her love and would be writing. To have had it confirmed would only have rubbed salt in the wound.’

  ‘And there was quite a wound to rub it in, presumably?’

  ‘She told us she was bitterly disappointed, but according to one of the few neighbours with whom she was on speaking terms, her principal reaction was anger and self-pity. She became more enraged than ever when no letter arrived, but it never occurred to her to doubt that Pauline had sent the telegram herself, or that there was any cause for worry. She simply assumed that the ungrateful hussy had found a more amusing way to spend her holiday.’

  ‘But, Robin, when you first started on this story, which seems such ages ago now, you told me that she had been killed at around midnight on Thursday, so how did she spend the hours between not going to Worthing and getting herself killed?’

  ‘If anyone could have given us the answer to that one, there’s a good chance I should never have been called in at all, and we shouldn’t be here now, but those ten or eleven hours have never been accounted for. She walked out, carrying a suitcase, just after one o’clock on Thursday, having said goodbye to her landlady and reminding her that she would be back on Sunday. That was the last anyone saw of her. It was ten minutes’ walk to the station and there’s a fast train to Paddington at one twenty-five, so presumably that’s the one she caught, or set out to catch, always providing, of course, that the telegram had been sent to her aunt without her knowledge.’

  ‘Weren’t you able to trace it?’

  ‘It had been handed in over the counter at her sub-post office. It was the lunch hour, which is always a busy time, and the clerk couldn’t remember much about the sender, except that it was a young woman, so it could well have been Pauline. She didn’t possess a private telephone and, although her landlady had one, she didn’t encourage her lodgers to use it, except for emergencies. There is also the possibility that Pauline didn’t want anyone to know about her change of plans and wasn’t going to risk being overheard.’

  ‘I can understand how tiresome and frustrating it must have been for you,’ Toby said, ‘but whether she meant to go to Worthing or not, she seems to have gone out of her way to emphasise that she would return on Sunday, and what I cannot understand is why no one noticed it when she failed to turn up, either then or at her place of work on Monday.’

  ‘Then you must blame Tessa. She obviously hasn’t explained what we were up against with Mother Nature.’

  ‘He means the weather,’ I said, doing so now.

  ‘Yes, you did tell me how it gummed things up for Robin, but since no one knew that she was dead, I still can’t understand why her absence caused no comment.’

  ‘Because such absences became the rule during the whole of that week and part of the following one. It was no ordinary cold snap, I should explain. Conditions were worse than at any time since the records began and no one, particularly in this part of England, where they are used to comparatively mild winters, was prepared for it, or had the resources to cope. Hundreds of trains had to be cancelled and hundreds of roads became impassable again within hours of being cleared. Every day about half the people employed in Chissingfield either couldn’t get to work at all, or straggled in hours late; and you may be sure that a few others made it the excuse to do just that. In fact, Young Mr Winthrop may have been one of them, although one assumes that his was a genuine case, since, as head of the firm by then, he had most to lose by allowing the office to run itself without him.’

  ‘Meaning that he didn’t turn up for work either?’

  ‘Not during the first week. His wasn’t a transport problem because he lived right in the town, but he’d had bronchitis not so long before and his doctor had advised him to stop indoors. People took the attitude that Pauline would have got there, if it had been humanly possible, but there was no special surprise, certainly no anxiety, when she didn’t. It was a situation for any murderer to dream about and to say that the trail was cold by the time we got to it would be to repeat a pun which
came dangerously near to causing several other murders around that time.’

  ‘So it is hard to see why you ever expected to catch him, or should be torturing yourself years later because you didn’t.’

  ‘Vanity, I suppose, combined with an ingrained dislike of unfinished business. Still, between you, you’ve shaken me out of it and we needn’t let it spoil things any more. On the whole, I’d prefer you not to try and base a play on it either. As Tessa knows so well, I’m old-fashioned and I like them to have a beginning, a middle and an end.’

  ‘Then I must try to invent an ending for you and, if I succeed, it may come true. As Tessa also knows, life may he stranger than fiction, but it also has a way of imitating it.’

  (5)

  The birthday party was still in semi, if not full, swing in the dining room, although presenting a rather more sombre face to the world than is generally associated with such occasions. There were a dozen people seated round the centre table, seven of whom were known to us. These were Mr Godstow and his son and daughter, whose resemblance to each other accounted for my impression of having seen her before, Diana’s giggly friend Stephanie, Jock Symington and Mr and Mrs Fellowes.

  Outstanding among the unknowns was a raven-haired, hawk-faced woman, with wine-red nails, sea-green eye shadow and tinted spectacles, seated on the right of her host. However, there was no time to play the game of inventing her history and background because Robin forestalled me by providing us with the real one.

  ‘You remember my telling you that the Furies were gathering?’ he asked in a low voice, as we all pretended to study the menu. ‘The witch in the place of honour is Irene Gayford. All we need now to make it a full house is Young Mr Winthrop.’

  ‘Stop mumbling and speak up, please!’ Toby said. ‘The author is entitled to some rights, you know.’

  This was not the moment to observe them, however, for our arrival had not passed unnoticed and a hum of semi-audible mutterings could be heard from the big table, with Jimmie’s tenor voice taking the solo part. So I picked up a card headed Cuisine Minceur which had been thoughtfully provided and on the back of it wrote down the names of six of the supporting cast.

  ‘You have introduced two new characters,’ he complained. ‘I am not sure I need them at this stage.’

  ‘They are not new to us, but we hadn’t realised they were Furies.’

  ‘And I must try to keep my paranoia within bounds,’ Robin said. ‘After all, it is only to be expected that the Fellowes should know these people and there is no reason to suppose that the party has been arranged specially to torment me.’

  He was able to make these comments in a relatively normal tone, because the members of the birthday party were now standing up, preparatory to withdrawing. Jimmie detached himself and came over to join us.

  ‘I bring bad news,’ he said, seating himself between Robin and Toby.

  ‘I hope you haven’t come to tell us that the electric stove has broken down?’

  ‘Not so far as I know, darling. This is a message from my father. I am ashamed to say that he didn’t recognise you, Tessa, but now that he knows who you are . . .’

  ‘And he would need to be deaf, if he didn’t, since I heard you repeating my name no less than three times.’

  ‘Now that I’ve got it through to him who you are, he is suitably impressed and I am to convey his compliments and inform you that he would be honoured if you and your companions would take a liqueur with him in the bar when you have finished your dinner. Do not be deceived by the old world courtesy. It is merely an affectation to conceal the thug within.’

  ‘Very kind, nonetheless, and I am sorry that we must decline,’ Robin said firmly. ‘As no one has taken our order yet, there appears to be small prospect of finishing our dinner before midnight.’

  ‘No matter. The party is unlikely to break up until the small hours, however much the guests may suffer. Like so many successful criminals, he requires very little sleep and likes to be entertained during the waking hours. In any case, I’m afraid your lovely excuse is about to be torn from you,’ Jimmie added, looking across the room at Louisa, who was now pushing her way through the tables towards us, in the preoccupied manner of one rehearsing her lines:

  ‘Sorry about this, chaps!’ she announced, forcing them out with a jollity born of desperation. ‘Slight crisis in the kitchen. Chef wants to know if you’d mind putting up with some cold consommé and some ham and salad, just this once? It’s home-made consommé, let me assure you, and we lay on a special salad dressing without oil.’ She added, casting a look at Toby, ‘There’ll be an adjustment on the bill, naturally.’

  We accepted our fate and when she had gone Toby said:

  ‘To think I might be sitting at my own table at this moment, being looked after and looked up to by Mrs Parkes, who, with all her faults, does not realise that cold ham is fit for human consumption and neither knows nor cares how to make a salad dressing without oil. If this is what they call Home from Home, I can only say that the average home leaves a lot to be desired.’

  ‘I entirely agree with you,’ Jimmie said. ‘I have always considered the place to be dreadfully over-rated, but be careful not to say so in the presence of my father. Something tells me he has sunk what he would call a tidy sum in it and, since sunk is likely to be the mot juste, it is a sensitive area. Although, when I say a tidy sum, I should explain that it is one which would mean absolutely nothing to him, unless he was in danger of losing it, at which point it becomes more precious than his life’s blood.’

  He was obliged to pause and draw breath here because the waitress had arrived with our cold collation and some confusion then arose because Robin had omitted to order the wine and the list did not appear to be immediately available. Jimmie finally solved the problem by pointing out that there were still two unopened bottles of birthday champagne languishing in the ice bucket and by commanding our servitor in a Crown Princely fashion to bring them over. This done, he took the floor again:

  ‘Yes, it really is the only way I can account for his spending so much time here and using it for ghastly occasions like tonight. He probably deludes himself that it is a good advertisement and also that his mere presence keeps them all on their toes, whereas, of course, it has precisely the opposite effect, throwing them into transports of panic-stricken inefficiency. What intrigues me, though, if I may make so bold, is what brings you three here? It is definitely not the kind of place, even on its good days, which I associate with sophisticates like yourselves.’

  ‘Which is one reason for choosing it,’ I explained. ‘We are here to get away from all that. Also, and mainly, of course, for the racing.’

  ‘Oh, is that all? How tame! Somehow, I got the idea there was something more sinister behind it. Anyway, my father will be relieved.’

  ‘What possible difference could it make to him?’ Robin asked.

  ‘Oh well, you see, once I’d got it through to him who Tessa was, his next question, naturally, was to know what you did for a living and when I told him he was shaken to the core. I was quite afraid he would stand up and croak “It’s a fair cop, Guv.”’

  ‘Why? What’s he done?’

  ‘Plenty in his time, you may be sure. For all I know, there isn’t a widow or orphan in the country who doesn’t start the day by cursing him, but that’s not the point. So many rich people are martyrs to the guilt complex, don’t you find? Making money comes so dead easy to them that they’re always expecting to be found out. It makes them more vulnerable than the rest of us, who soldier on, trusting to luck that we shan’t be found out, which is one reason why I refused to follow in his footsteps. I thought I’d be on a safer wicket learning to talk posh and earn my living the hard way.’

  ‘And you’re not afraid of being found out in that?’

  ‘No, Price, dear, I don’t make enough money out of it for anyone to bother. Just look at me now, plodding through this crummy season at the Old and horrible Mill. However, being related to the old
gangster does occasionally have its uses and here is a little something for your darling wife. Don’t forget, Tessa, that if he should happen to mention some shares which might be worth investing a bob or two, you should telephone your stockbroker first thing in the morning. He only ever gives advice to pretty women, or people he wants to curry favour with, and he’s always right, so you’ll be playing on an easy wicket this evening.’

  ‘Thank you, Jimmie, I’ll do my best to keep a straight bat.’

  ‘And here’s some more advice, while I’m in this expansive mood, although this is by way of being a warning from the captain. If Jock Symington sends you down a ball called hot tip for the big race, don’t be tempted. He’s always wrong.’

  (6)

  ‘Oh yes, indeed!’ I said, doing my best to look like a pretty woman. ‘We’re old friends. Many’s the time he’s saved my sanity when we’ve been kept hanging around on the set for hours. And of course we share a keen interest in cricket.’

  ‘ That so? Well, you live and learn in this world, don’t you?’

  ‘It’s like the Church, you know. Very much part of the theatrical tradition.’

  ‘Is it now? Still, I can’t quite picture a young lady like yourself bowling overarm.’

  ‘No, I’m only a spectator, I never got beyond batting with the wrong end of a tennis racquet, but Jimmie’s a demon with the slow, left arm spin, you know.’

  ‘Yes, I’ve heard he takes part in these charity matches and so forth. Nothing wrong with that, I daresay . . . good publicity too, but I’ve never taken much interest in cricket myself. Soccer now, that’s different. That’s always been my game.’

  ‘Oh, how nice!’ I said, wishing that Jimmie had remembered to prime me about this too. ‘Do you do the pools?’