Mortmain Hall
Page 30
“You befriended lonely, lovelorn Nurse Cope, and spun her a yarn to persuade her to give nothing away about you. She mentioned Leonora’s habit of taking walks before sunset, and you worked out your plan. Leonora’s reason for holding a house party didn’t matter. The arrangements suited you perfectly. You took the annexe room at the Dobell Arms, so you could slip out quietly, even if the inn itself was locked up. The supposed sprained ankle gave you an alibi. There was never anything wrong with you.”
“You cheat!” Lucy shrieked at Siddons. “You lied about your ankle. When you told me about your shell shock and amnesia, I thought you trusted me, like I trusted you. But you lied to me, and that poor woman too!”
She flew at Siddons, scratching at his face with her fingernails. He didn’t put up even a token struggle. Oakes moved to intervene.
“Valentine Dobell, you are under…”
Whealing burst into the room. His uniform was wet through and he was panting hard.
“We need to get out!” he bellowed. “The whole house is in danger!”
*
“Follow me!” Oakes shouted.
The roar of the storm was louder than ever. Everyone dashed into the front hall. The Truemans and the Dobells’ servants were there, laden down with mackintoshes and surrounded by suitcases.
“Grab your things and run for it!” Trueman threw open the main door. A blast of rain and falling slates greeted them. The noise was deafening. “Mind your heads, keep your eyes on the roof!”
They all ran out into the lashing rain. Jacob’s temples pounded. The downpour almost made him blind. A slate crashed to the ground and shattered into pieces. Five yards closer and it would have smashed his head to a pulp.
“My father!” Valentine Dobell screamed. He’d halted just outside the porch. “Where is he?”
Major Whitlow jerked his head towards Mortmain Hall.
“Upstairs,” he bellowed. “You’ll have to leave him!”
Valentine Dobell turned and headed back into the house.
“Stop!” Oakes yelled.
He and Whealing were about to rush back after Dobell when a menacing rumble came from the back of the building. An ugly crack in the ground spread towards them from the side of the Hall. The land was splitting apart in front of their eyes.
“It’s going!” Oakes shouted. “Get down the drive, everyone!”
As Jacob rushed down the drive, he saw Rachel’s Phantom parked on the grass. It was out in the open, far enough from the trees to be safe even if they fell. Trueman, like Rachel, thought of everything.
“Oakes!” the major called. “Move, man! It’s not safe!”
Trueman yelled at the top of his voice, “Felix Dobell went to hospital. He was taken ill and one of the servants drove him.”
Oakes ran towards the major. “Why did you lie?” he cried.
Major Whitlow shrugged. Jacob could barely hear his cool reply.
“I must have panicked.”
Another crash made everyone look up. A fissure had appeared in the front wall of the house, just below a gable, and a large chunk of stone fell to the ground.
The major smiled. Jacob could read his mind.
With any luck, the whole place will disintegrate with Valentine Dobell inside, and we’ll be spared the fuss and embarrassment of a trial.
Another crash, even louder this time.
Jacob watched, mesmerised by the horror of it all, as the major’s wish came true.
Mortmain Hall was falling down.
30
“We’re lucky to be alive,” Jacob said.
“In this life,” Rachel said, “we make our own luck.”
They were among the crowd of sightseers assembled on the drive up to Mortmain Hall. It was a bright and blustery morning. The violence of the thunderstorm was a memory. Jacob saw men clutching notebooks and pencils approaching people for comments about what had happened. A phrase recurred in the headlines. The Mortmain Tragedy.
“You even got your scoop,” she said.
“An eyewitness account of a natural disaster.” His smile was rueful. “Unusual for a crime correspondent, but better than nothing. If I must keep my mouth shut about everything else.”
“Yes, you must.”
“The courtroom artist of the Witness, guilty of a double murder,” he mused. “I’d give my right arm to see that story in print. You don’t realise what a sacrifice you’ve demanded.”
“There are animals at Tunnicliffe,” Rachel said, “capable of taking off much more than your right arm. Put it down to experience.”
The front wall of Mortmain Hall formed a bizarre, broken folly on the brink of a precipice. Mortmain Head had crumbled into the sea. Just a sliver of land poked out beyond the end of the drive. The wounds in the landscape were savage and deep.
The crowd was subdued. Eventually, vendors would arrive, selling ice cream cornets and souvenirs to tourists with a taste for calamity. For the moment, people hadn’t quite forgotten that a man had perished in the landslide.
Jacob spotted the Heptons in the throng. Oakes had ordered them to hold their tongues when questioned by the press. The major had also had a quiet word with them, emphasising one or two points with his claw.
Hoping for silence on the part of Lucy and her mother was futile, but they’d never admit that they’d harboured a killer in their midst, providing a safe haven for him to plot the murder of two women. The shame would be too great. It was so much easier to propagate a fantasy, a story nicer than the truth.
The received wisdom in Mortmain was that Leonora had killed the nurse in a fit of jealous insanity and then committed suicide. Some folk who liked to be contrary reckoned that it was the other way round. Everyone agreed that the precise truth would never be known. So much the better. The uncertainty made fertile territory for guesswork and gossip.
Jacob edged towards the Heptons. Lucy was giving an interview to a stringer from the Witness. The man who had died in the landslide had fallen victim to a tragic chance, she said. He was a passionate birdwatcher who yearned to be close to nature. What had happened was awful, but there was some solace for the romantic. Siddons had loved Mortmain; there was nowhere else in the world that he’d rather be. For the record, the reporter asked her uncle if he agreed.
“Happen,” the old man said.
The servants and guests from the Hall had been put up overnight in the Dobell Arms and in villagers’ houses. The Truemans were at the inn, preparing for the long drive home. Major Whitlow, Sylvia, Rolland, and Danskin had already departed. Oakes and Sergeant Whealing were closeted with Inspector Tucker and his colleagues at the local police headquarters. There was a lot of work to be done. Loose ends needed to be tied up, paperwork must be put in order before the three inquests reached their preordained conclusions, and everyone was left to get on with their lives.
Jacob rejoined Rachel. The rotunda had survived the catastrophe. They could see it through the trees, a monument to the mistress of Mortmain Hall who had been lured there to her death.
“It’s wrong,” he said. “It’s unjust.”
“Life is one injustice after another.”
“The major… the Masqueraders… I mean, they can’t be allowed to go on like this.”
“Like what?” She yawned. “I told everyone a story. I wasn’t making out a legal case. It was a moral fable, that’s all.”
“There was nothing moral about it.”
“Think again,” she said. “On reflection, don’t. It will only make you unhappy. Tell yourself to rejoice that people are working covertly on our behalf, intent on keeping us safe and sound.”
“It’s disgraceful.”
“You’ve had one brush with death, Jacob. That’s enough to be going on with, don’t you think?”
“But it isn’t right.”
“Right and wrong?” She shrugged. “These are dangerous times, Jacob, don’t forget that.”
He kicked a stray pebble to vent his frustration. “I’m not even sur
e why Leonora wanted you to come here.”
“She fancied herself as a detective, skilled at exploring dark recesses of criminal psychology. Knowing a little of my history, she deduced I’d committed the perfect crime.”
He stared at her.
“She was sure I’d murdered my own father.”
He said huskily, “And did you?”
She gave him a look. “No, I did not murder my own father.”
“But all four guests at Mortmain Hall were people she believed were guilty of murder?”
She clapped her hands.
“Why bring you all together?”
“My theory is that she wanted to find someone to confide in.”
“What do you mean?”
“She’d searched for love, but never found it. You must have seen that in her eyes at the Clandestine Club. Perhaps she wasn’t quite sane. But then, who is?”
He folded his arms. “I’m not doolally.”
“Look where your sanity led you,” Rachel said. “To sharing a bed with a naked corpse.”
He scowled but said nothing.
“Leonora detected a connection between Sylvia and me, and Rolland, and Danskin. More than that, she regarded herself as one of us. Part of an exclusive band. Men and women capable of committing the perfect crime.”
“It makes no sense.”
Rachel sighed. “Dear Jacob. You see life in black and white. Really, it’s a mess and a muddle of many colours. As if an artist dropped his palette, and the paints splashed everywhere.”
Muttering under his breath, Jacob gazed out at Mortmain Hall, its ruined facade outlined against the sky.
“You don’t believe me, but you should. Twelve years on, we’re still bleeding from a war in which millions died. The lives of men like Felix Dobell were ruined forever. And what provoked the war? Railway timetables for moving troops.”
“That’s absurd.”
“So is life itself. You know why I like those crazy examples of surrealist art? Because there is truth in madness, Jacob. Remember that.”
He said mulishly, “Are you telling me you’re mad, like Leonora?”
“She reckoned the two of us were peas in a pod. As for her perfect crime, let’s hear about it from the man who knows.”
He stared. “Who do you mean?”
“Felix Dobell.”
Epilogue (continued)
Felix Dobell tried to sit up in his hospital bed, but the effort was beyond him.
“Elspeth was a wretched woman,” he whispered. “I should never have married her.”
Rachel gave Jacob a nod. They were in a tiny room with whitewashed walls; the nurse had left her patient to his visitors. The air was pungent with the reek of disinfectant.
“Too respectable for you?”
He gave a feeble nod. “She’d set her cap at my brother, but he was too canny to fall for her. I was the stupid one. Impulsive. Of course I regretted it. When the war came, I was glad to get away. I met Leo when I came back on leave. I liked her. She had… a twinkle in her eye.”
Falling back on his pillow, he closed his eyes. Talking so much exhausted him. Jacob shot Rachel a glance of warning but she paid no heed.
“So Leo didn’t know until then that Elspeth was the chief constable’s daughter?”
Felix shook his head.
“She blamed Elspeth’s father for persecuting hers,” Rachel said. “He’d demanded Gee’s arrest on flimsy evidence. Leonora never forgave, did she?”
“No,” Felix mumbled.
“While you were back on the western front, the news came that your brother had died. I suppose Elspeth was triumphant. A snob whose husband would inherit Mortmain Hall.”
Felix opened his eyes. “Yes,” he breathed.
“Leonora poisoned Elspeth, didn’t she? My guess is that she used arsenic, and persuaded the old doctor that the cause of death was gastritis. Risky, but nobody suspected. There was a war on, and people were dying all the time. Am I right in supposing that she did it when news came through that you’d been badly injured, that you’d be coming back to Mortmain?”
Felix lifted his head and nodded.
“She’d never had money. Killing Elspeth was an act of revenge which also gave her the security she craved. The fact there couldn’t be a physical side to your marriage didn’t trouble her. She could do as she pleased; it was a marriage of mutual convenience. You were glad to be rid of Elspeth, and quite content as long as you had company. Especially when a young nurse took a shine to you.”
“I thought Bernice…”
“Yes,” Rachel said. “She wasn’t a beauty, and there was less chance that she’d run off with a suitor. But even she found a lover…”
“All good things…” Felix said faintly.
“They come to an end.” Rachel inclined her head.
“I had a son,” Felix’s tone was wondering. “But he died.”
He slumped back on his pillow, and made an odd, guttural sound. His eyes shut. Rachel lifted his thin arms, and folded them across his chest.
“Yes,” she said, “he died.”
Cluefinder
Cluefinders appeared from the late 1920s onward in detective novels by British and American authors such as J. J. Connington, Freeman Wills Crofts, Elspeth Huxley, Rupert Penny, John Dickson Carr, C. Daly King, and Edmund Crispin. In a novel which pays homage to the Golden Age of murder, I thought I would revive the tradition. Here are thirty-four of the clues in the narrative to the principal strands of the plot.
Dobell family resemblances
Page 23: a pale, handsome fellow with straw-coloured hair and a beaky nose
Page 23: chewing at his fingernails
Page 267: a portrait of a tall, beaky-nosed man
Page 268: a middle-aged man with fair hair and the family eyes and nose
Page 270: his fingernails were bitten to the quick
Page 270: He blew his beaky nose
The murderer’s interest in Leonora
Page 23: His gaze wandered from Minnie Brown, and came to rest on a woman at the front of the public gallery.
The murderer’s name
Page 53: It’s true. The first time we met, you said I’d always be your Valentine…
Page 179: Felix said he’d pay for Valentine’s upbringing
The murderer’s past connection with Louis Morgans
Page 53: There’s no going back. Not to you or your posh friend Lulu.
How the murderer learned from Reggie Vickers
Page 100: If only he’d never uttered a word. To Doodle… With Doodle, he’d been trying to impress, and failing.
The potential unreliability of mention of the murderer’s demise in his father’s entry in Who’s Who
Page 181: The boy might as well have died on the front.
Page 135: Who’s Who relied on the good faith of the great and the good; it wasn’t seemly to double-check every piece of information it was given.
The murderer’s history of instability
Page 181: Felix’s poor little bastard son suffered shell shock and amnesia.
Page 330: “Amnesia?… it can go on for years, just like shell shock, poor Mr Siddons was telling me only yesterday.”
Oswyn’s liberal attitude
Page 230: Oswyn was far more liberal than most testators
Page 268: for a Victorian, he was remarkably broad-minded.
The murderer’s psychological make-up
Page 267: There’s a family history of instability.
The murderer’s motive
Page 189: The family settlement gives an heir’s widow a life interest in the estate… there’s enough in the pot to see her out to a ripe old age. Even though she’s probably good for another thirty or forty years.
Page 230: The estate goes to Oswyn Dobell’s son or grandson, natural or otherwise.
Why the murderer needed to act
Page 230: The surviving widow of an incumbent heir is entitled to a life interest, so that the next gener
ation has to wait its turn.
Page 322: The heir’s widow doesn’t own the property. She can’t pass on the estate under her own will. For as long as she lives, however, for practical purposes she is able to do as she pleases.
Timing the murder to coincide with the house party
Page 323: this death coincided with the presence of three individuals who have been suspected of murder. To say nothing of myself. If the crime was premeditated… trying to sow confusion.
Creating the opportunity to commit murder undetected
Page 332–3: the annexe room will be empty… You can come and go as you please, and you won’t be disturbed there.
Leonora’s double motive
Page 180: The only difference was that Felix married the daughter of the chief constable
Page 286: Her father was one of the great and the good in the North Riding.
Page 230: even if Felix Dobell had died the very next day after marrying Leonora, she’d have remained as the tenant of Mortmain for the rest of her life
Leonora’s knowledge of poisons
Page 274: I worked in a pharmacy for a few months before I was sent to Mortmain. I know a thing or two about lethal medicines.