Murder at Maddingley Grange, page 10
Laurie was just wondering if she should close the curtains against the silver rods of rain now hammering against the windows, when Gilly got up, crossed to the nearest bookcase against which he had rested his music case and picked up the case.
“What about a spot of after-dinner fun? I’d be happy to give you a song.” Before anyone could reply he turned to Derek. “Couldn’t help noticing a fellow musician on the bus. Shall we make it a duet?”
“My violin,” said Derek coldly, “is not for show in a concert party. It is the means by which I clarify my mind during periods of the most rigorous intellectual speculation.”
“Sorry. No offense, I’m sure.” Gilly had grasped his instrument and was smiling with rather touching nervousness around the room.
“You have a go, lad,” said Fred. “I like a good tune.”
So Gilly, encouraged, launched into his opening number. Alas—he could not sing. He couldn’t play either. The plonks, twangs, pings and yelps were excruciating.
“I wonder,” interrupted Simon, “if we’d better not all look at the plan of the house and grounds before it gets too late. Maybe you could continue your song another time?”
Gilly, looking rather crushed, smiled over-brightly and joined the others around the coffee table between the chesterfields, on which Simon had placed a long scroll weighted down with The Rose and the Ring at one end and Morte d’Arthur at the other.
“Our lad was keen on music,” Fred kindly attempted to console the Formby manqué. “Just like you. He tried for a pop star.”
“Poor Den. He didn’t get very far,” added Violet. “Though heaven knows we spent enough on his band and all the gear.”
Gilly nodded understandingly. “You have to have the talent.”
“Oh, he had the talent—didn’t he, Fred?”
“Oh, yes. Bags of talent. You couldn’t fault him there. He just didn’t have the voice.”
Laurie watched them all as she sat uncomfortably on the edge of her chair, her thoughts a tangle of nervous apprehensions. Strand number one related to Mr. Gillette (she could not bring herself to think of him as Gilly), who was now standing in front of the fire, trousers steaming, with a glass of crème de menthe. Compelled to admire the professionalism of his goofy, silly-ass disguise and alarmed at dinner to overhear his queries concerning Mrs. Saville’s strongbox, she had tried to question him about his job and background. He had cunningly circumvented this interrogation by dropping his monocle into the gravy.
It seemed to Laurie, here sneaking a further look, that even now he was casting a very covetous eye over the assembled bijouterie. She could just see him creeping about in the small hours, gun in hand, stuffing his pockets with all things precious, his face horribly distorted under a nylon stocking. (Why he should suddenly attempt this camouflage when they were all completely familiar with his features was a question far too rational to be posed in her present state of mind.)
Strand number two concerned Mr. Gregory, now sitting in a red leather chair, its back pointedly to the assembled gathering. Laurie felt that Derek had a very real grievance. He had, after all, coughed up a lot of money and come eagerly along to Madingley Grange with his deerstalker, his violin and his little magnifying glass, only to come a cropper at the first fence. This must be put right, and Laurie planned to do so by taking his place. She was not nervous about becoming the victim—after all, it was only a game—simply about speaking up in front of everyone. She felt a suitable opportunity had not yet presented itself and was bracing herself for the moment when it did.
Then, aside from these paramount concerns, smaller matters darted about, nibbling at the few remaining shreds of her tranquillity. Puzzles more than real worries, but persistent nonetheless. For instance, why, at dinner, had Rosemary Saville constantly been giving Martin dirty looks? Why was Mother now resting her coffee cup on her cheekbone as if it were an eye bath? And why did Gaunt, bowing ever more deeply each time he presented the petits fours, seem to find it harder and harder to raise himself up again? Laurie, quite feverish with the strain of it all, picked up once more on Simon’s dissertation.
“You will see that apart from the double main doors, there is one off the kitchen, one off the Gainsborough sitting room and one off the second lavatory here…” He pointed at the map.
My God, thought Laurie, as Mr. Gillette said: “Spiffing” and took his steaming legs over for a closer look. A plan of the house. The successful burglar’s first essential. Why not just pack all the stuff up and hand it to him in a bag marked swag?
“Have you marked the secret passages and hidey-holes?” Violet asked. “And trap doors?”
“I’m afraid there aren’t any. At least my aunt’s never been able to find one. The place isn’t as old as it looks.”
“Like my old woman,” said Fred, and Violet roared with laughter and shouted she’d see him out any old day of the week, including Bank Holiday Monday.
“You can’t help wondering, can you” whispered Sheila, round-eyed, “which one of us it is. I mean”—her voice had become quite sepulchral—“the murderer.”
Fred humped his shoulders and extended his arms into a threatening curve, throwing a sinister shadow on the wall. Then he made his horror noise. “Mmwaaagghh…”
Rosemary screamed. Gaunt buckled a bit and lost control of his tray. Petits fours flew everywhere. Laurie rushed forward to help pick them up and asked if he was all right.
“Quite, madam, thank you. It was just the shock, that’s all. Directly behind may back as it were. Perhaps you would be so kind as to open the door?”
After the butler had trembled off, Rosemary, now looking more inclined to giggle than to scream, said: “When are we going to start playing our parts?”
“I suggest,” answered Simon, “from tomorrow morning. It’s getting a bit late now. I’ve left a large card on the hall table with a brief synopsis of the characters’ past relationships and you can all plot and plan from that to your hearts’ content.”
“Derek…” Sheila aimed her voice at the unyielding back of the wing chair. “Come and have a look at the plan.” Silence. “Derek?”
“There’s not a lot of point in my coming to ‘have a look,’ is there?” came the acid response. “As I’m the person who’s going to be murdered I’m not going to be able to play.”
“Course you can play, dear.” Violet addressed the chair as if speaking to a fractious child.
“I’d have a dekko at the map anyroad,” said Fred. “You might want to dodge about a bit. I know I would if somebody were after me wi’ a chopper.”
“Actually”—Rosemary leaned across to Sheila—“if he gets…you know…done quite soon and we catch the person, there’ll be time for another before we leave and he can solve that.”
Everyone turned and stared encouragingly at the scarlet wings but they did not respond.
“If there’s one thing I cannot abide,” said Mrs. Saville, “it’s sulking.”
“I am not sulking.” Stung into action, Derek bounded to his feet. “But I must say”—he faced them all and glared, especially at his host— “I think it’s absolutely disgraceful that a murder weekend should be set up in such a way that one of the guests misses all the action.”
“I do think Derek has—” Laurie began but was interrupted by Mrs. Saville.
“You’re only saying that because the choice has fallen on you. If it had been one of us you’d have been delighted to just carry on. And after all,” she continued, “once the body’s been discovered you can join in and hunt the murderer with the rest of us.”
“Oh brilliant!” Derek’s scorn was boundless. “There’s real verisimilitude. The corpse springing up and cross-questioning the suspects. Of course, the fact that I’d know who the killer was might blunt the edge of the suspense a bit. What a farce!”
“Perhaps whoever it is could wear a mask?” said Mr. Gillette, and Laurie paled at this revelatory snippet of criminal know-how. Before he could expound further, or perhaps offer a choice from his selection, she crossed to Derek’s side and laid a hand upon his arm. His face, darkened and hard done by, turned, but the words “I’d be very happy” had no sooner passed her lips than an alarming distraction occurred.
Sheila sprang to her feet, stretched out a rigid arm toward the window, now black with streaming rain, and let out a loud and terrified shriek.
Chapter Ten
“A face…” Her shriek became a moan. “Out there pressed up against the glass. It was…horrible…”
She staggered and appeared to be on the point of collapse. Derek leaped to her side, motivated, it appeared to several of those present, more by investigative lust than husbandly concern.
Simon rushed over to the window and opened it. The curtains billowed into the room like great sails and the wind and rain beat at his skin. He leaned out, gazed intently into the dark for a long moment, then slammed the sash down. “Nothing there.”
“My wife, Hannaford,” said Derek, crisp as a nut, “is not a fanciful woman. If she says she saw a face at the window, then a face at the window is what she saw.”
Pausing only to hand his trembling spouse over to the nearest comfort station (Rosemary Saville), Derek ran across the library and flung open the window. The curtains billowed into the room like great sails and the wind and rain beat at his skin. He leaned out, gazing intently into the dark. “I think I saw him…” he shouted to the others over his shoulder. Then he slammed the window down. “Running…a dark shape. Around the side of the house.”
“Ohhh…” cried Sheila, quivering anew.
“That’s nonsense,” Simon argued. “Why didn’t I see him? I looked out first.”
“Elementary, my dear Hannaford. He was on his knees beneath the window waiting till the coast was clear.” Derek, only a moment ago moodily disenchanted, was now transformed. His eyes sparkled, his skin, buffeted by the elements and flushed by the thrilling knowledge that at last things were really on the move, glowed.
“All this talk of murder, I’m afraid,” soothed Simon. “Isn’t this the moment in all those old B movies—guests relaxing after dinner—when someone sees a white staring face pressed up against the glass?”
“I didn’t imagine it!” Sheila was almost shouting. “There was someone there. Oh, Derek…I’m frightened.”
“There, there.” Derek, torn between standing masterfully by his spouse and striding busily about, compromised by surging on the spot. “We have an intruder. No doubt about it.”
“How can we have an intruder,” said Mrs. Saville, who had remained phlegmatically unimpressed throughout the entire episode, “when he’s outside? Surely intruders intrude. That is their function.”
“We are all present,” said Derek with solemn lack of necessity, “which leaves…the servants?” He crossed to a tapestry bell rope and raised his eyebrows at Simon. “May I?”
“By all means,” replied Simon. “But I’m afraid there’s no bell on the other end.”
“Would you like me to call them?” Having received a reply in the affirmative, Laurie was just about to leave when the door opened, showing Gaunt, a silver tray under one arm, hanging on to the handle.
“Is it convenient to clear now, madam?” Laurie nodded and the butler started uncertainly stacking the cups and saucers.
Derek, in ostentatious preparation for the coming interview, filled his pipe. Fred intervened when a match was produced.
“I shouldn’t strike that while he’s about, Sherlock”— nodding at the tottering figure—“or we’ll all go up in smoke.”
As Gaunt picked up Sheila’s cup, Mother called to him, a harsh croaking imperative, and beckoned him to her side. She seized the cup, rejected the saucer and waved Gaunt away. The butler, getting over by the merest inclination of his head that while he realized it took all sorts to make a world, he had never expected to find himself actually waiting on any of them, proceeded hesitantly on his way only to find it blocked by Derek Gregory.
“Just a moment if you please.”
“Sir?” Gaunt put down his tray in readiness and drew himself up to his full height. This put rather a strain on his dickey, which snapped its moorings and rolled up with a clatter like a tiny blind. When it had been safely reanchored, Derek began to speak.
“Now I’m going to ask you a question.” He thrust his face forward. “If you answer me truthfully no harm will come to you. There is no need to be afraid.” Gaunt looked as if he wasn’t at all sure about that and backed away a bit. “Were you or were you not looking into this room through that window,”—pointing histrionically—”approximately two minutes ago?”
“Out there?”
“Precisely.”
“Two minutes ago?”
“That is what I wish to know.” Derek unbent a little. “Take your time before answering. There is no hurry.”
Gaunt mulled it over for a brief spell, then said: “But it’s pouring with rain.”
“What about your colleague?”
“She’s washing up, sir. In the kitchen.”
“Very well, Gaunt. You may go—for now. But I may wish to interrogate you further. Hold yourself in readiness, please.”
The butler, having picked up his tray and balanced the last piece of crockery on top of an already teetering pile, made his way toward the door. He did not take the most direct route and at first seemed to be traveling in the opposite direction. He progressed by crossing his left foot directly over his right, then bringing the right alongside rather in the manner of the sidewinding snake. Coming up against the bookcase he frowned, turned and made the reverse journey in the same oblique manner, this time picking up a fair lick of speed.
Simon, nearest to the door, leaped to open it. The butler shot through and disappeared into the hall. Everyone crowded around in the doorway to watch his progress. He zoomed across the black and white tiles, listing more and more to the horizontal until he reached the heavy rose-velvet curtain which concealed the passage to the kitchen. Then, just as it seemed impossible that he would not hit the ground entangled in its folds, the curtain was whisked aside and he was gone. The observers waited a moment for the crash which never came, then returned to their seats with a definite sense of anticlimax.
“He’s a lad.” Fred wagged his head in admiration. “Talk about on the sauce.”
“Does that white lapel,” asked Violet, “mean he’s had specialized training?”
“He must be telling the truth though,” said Sheila, “about not being outside. His clothes and shoes were dry. He wouldn’t have had time to change.” Although she had been one of the first excitedly in the doorway, Sheila now reverted to her previous expression of fearful dismay. “So that means we’ve definitely got a prowler.”
“I know what it is!” Rosemary clapped her hands in a coy, patty-cake gesture. “Simon’s hired someone.”
“What?”
“To lurk. In the shrubbery and…and places. To add to the atmosphere. I bet even now the servants are giving him a cup of tea and a plate of scraps in the kitchen.”
She beamed across at Simon, and Laurie watched in growing disbelief as her brother, far from denying his complete lack of involvement in any such domestic arrangement, allowed an expression of small-boy naughtiness to steal across his features. He shrugged disarmingly and held his hands palms upward, in a show of surrender.
There was a collective and audible release of tensions. Several “aahs” and “theres.” Fred said he’d guessed as much and Sheila was almost laughing in relief, although the sound had a slightly ragged edge. Only Derek, his detecting thwarted almost before it had begun, remained frustratedly aloof.
They had all forgotten Mother. Now, alerted by the fierce creak of her chair, Laurie stared at the old lady. She was rocking backward and forward, more and more energetically, her little buckled slippers flying higher and higher until the impetus was enough to push her onto her feet. She was still holding the coffee cup she had demanded from Gaunt and now, wheezing slightly from the force of her corybantics, shuffled over to the fire and emptied the dregs into the flames. Then she returned to her seat, cradling the cup in her palms for a moment before squinting into it with what appeared to be malign anticipation.
“What’s she doing?” Laurie asked Violet.
“Reading the grounds, dear. We’re honored—it’s very rare. She only does it when she thinks there’s something in the wind.”
“Really?” Laurie felt more alarmed than honored. Earlier on the terrace she had listened to the revelations of Mrs. Gibbs’s Tzigane ancestry with considerable trepidation. The word Romany seemed to Laurie to smack of Ruritanian excess and one of Aunt Maude’s glasses had gone already. “She doesn’t…hurl the cup about, does she?”
“Oh, no,” Violet reassured her comfortably. “Only if it’s bad news.”
Laurie watched the old lady withdraw her attention from the blue and yellow cup and wondered how there could be any news, good or bad, when most of the grounds were securely trapped in three large coffee pots back in the kitchen. Mother sucked her breath in with a bubbling hiss. Her haggish features showed no satisfaction, just a stern, almost sinister prognosis. Violet said, in a hushed voice: “She’s got something.”
Mrs. Gibbs lifted her arm and pointed, straightening with difficulty an arthritic finger. Everyone followed the line, which ended at Sheila Gregory. She gave a gasp, clinging to her husband’s arm. Mrs. Gibbs drew her lips back, revealing the tusky teeth, and spoke. One word on a long, implacable breath. “Beware…”
“What do you mean?” Trembling, Sheila gazed into her husband’s face. “Darling…what does she mean?”
