30 - A Grave Mistake, page 11
Prunella ran up a lovely flight of stairs and across a first floor landing to her bedroom: a muslin and primrose affair with long windows opening over terraces, rose-gardens and uncluttered lawns that declined to a ha-ha, meadows, hay-fields, spinnies and the tower of St. Crispin's-in-Quintern. A blue haze veiled the more distant valleys and hills and turned the chimneys of a paper-making town into minarets. Prunella was glad that after she had married she would still live in this house.
She bathed her eyes, repacked her suitcase and prepared to leave. On the landing she ran into Claude.
There was no reason why he should not be on the landing or that she should have been aware that he had arrived there but there was something intrinsically furtive about Claude that gave her a sensation of stealth.
He said: "Oh, hullo, Prue, I saw your car."
"Hullo, Claude. Yes. I just looked in to pick up some things."
"Not staying, then?"
"No."
"I hope I'm not keeping you away," he said and looked at his feet and smiled.
"Of course not. I'm mostly in London, these days."
He stole a glance at her left hand.
"Congratulations are in order, I see."
"Yes. Thank you."
"When's it to be?"
She said it hadn't been decided and began to move toward the stairs.
"Er--" said Claude, "I was wondering--"
"Whether I'm to be handed the push."
Prunella made a panic decision to treat this as a joke.
"Oh," she said jauntily, "you'll be given plenty of notice."
"Too kind. Are you going to live here?"
"As a matter of fact, yes. After we've made some changes. You'll get fair warning, I promise."
"Syb said I could be here, you know."
"I know what she said, Claude. You're welcome to stay until the workmen come in."
"Too kind," he repeated, this time with an open sneer. "By the way you don't mind my asking, do you? I would like to know when the funeral is to be."
Prunella felt as if winter had come into the house and closed about her heart. She managed to say: "I don't--we won't know until after the inquest. Mr. Rattisbon is going to arrange everything. You'll be let know, Claude. I promise."
"Are you going to this new inquest?"
"I expect so. I mean: yes. Yes, I am."
"So am I. Not that it affects me, of course."
"I really must go. I'm running late."
"I never wrote to you. About Syb."
"There was no need. Goodbye."
"Shall I carry your case down?"
"No thanks. Really. It's quite light Thank you very much, though."
"I see you've got the old plans out. Of Quintern."
"Goodbye," Prunella said desperately and made a business of getting herself downstairs.
She had reached the ground floor when his voice floated down to her. "Hi!"
She wanted to bolt but made herself stop and look up to the first landing. His face and hands hung over the balustrade.
"I suppose you realize we've had a visit from the police," said Claude. He kept his voice down and articulated pedantically.
"Yes, of course."
One of the dangling hands moved to up the mouth.
"They seem to be mightily interested in your mother's horticultural favourite," Claude mouthed. "I wonder why."
The teeth glinted in the moon-face.
Prunella bolted. She got herself, the immense portfolio and her baggage through the front door and into her car and drove, much too fast, to Mardling.
"Honestly," she said ten minutes later to Gideon and his father. "I almost feel we should get in an exorciser when Claude goes. I wonder, if the Vicar's any good on the bell, book and candle lay."
"You enchanting child," said Mr. Markos in his florid way and raised his glass to her. "Is this unseemly person really upsetting you? Should Gideon and I advance upon him with threatening gestures? Can't he be dispensed with?"
"I must say," Gideon chimed in, "I really do think it's a bit much he should set himself up at Quintern. After all, darling, he's got no business there, has he? I mean no real family ties or anything. Face it."
"I suppose not," she agreed. "But my mama did feel she ought not to wash her hands of him completely, awful though he undoubtedly is. You see, she was very much in love with his father."
"Which doesn't, if one looks at it quite cold-bloodedly, give his son the right to impose upon her daughter," said Mr. Markos.
Prunella had noticed that this was a favourite phrase--"quite cold-bloodedly"--and was rather glad that Gideon had not inherited it. But she liked her father-in-law-to-be and became relaxed and expansive in the atmosphere (anything, she reflected, but "cold-blooded") that he created around himself and Gideon. She felt that she could say what she chose to him without being conscious of the difference in their ages and that she amused and pleased him.
They sat out of doors on swinging seats under canopies. Mr. Markos had decided that it was a day for preprandial champagne: "a sparkling, venturesome morning," he called it. Prunella, who had skipped breakfast and was unused to such extravagance, rapidly expanded. She downed her drink and accepted another. The horrors, and lately there really had been moments of horror, slipped into the background. She became perfectly audible and began to feel that this was the life for her and was meant for her and she for it, that she blossomed in the company of the exotic Markoses, the one so delightfully mondain, the other so enchantingly in love with her. Eddies of relief, floating on champagne, lapped over her and if they were vaguely disturbed by little undertows of guilt (for after all, she had a social conscience, that, however reprehensively, seemed merely to add to her exhilaration. She took a vigorous pull at her champagne and Mr. Markos refilled her glass.
"Darling," said Gideon, "what have you got in that monstrous compendium or whatever it is, in your car?"
"A surprise," cried Prunella, waving her hand. "Not for you, love. For Pil." She raised her glass to Mr. Markos and drank to him.
"For whom?" asked the Markoses in unison.
"For my papa-in-law-to-be. I've been too shy to know what to- call you," said Prunella. "Not for a moment, that you are a Pill. Far from it. Pillicock sat on Pillicock-hill," she sang before she could stop herself. She realized she had shaken her curls at Nikolas, like one of Dickens's more awful little heroines, and was momentarily ashamed of herself.
"You shall call me whatever you like," said Mr. Markos and kissed her hand. Another Dickens reference swam incontinently into Prunella's dizzy ken: "Todgers were going it." For a second or two she slid aside from herself and saw herself "going it" like mad in a swinging chair under a canopy and having her hand kissed. She was extravagantly pleased with life.
"Shall I fetch it?" Gideon asked.
"Fetch what?" Prunella shouted recklessly.
"Whatever you've brought for your papa-in-law-to-be."
"Oh, that. Yes, darling, do and I think perhaps no more champagne."
Gideon burst out laughing. "And I think perhaps you may be right," he said and kissed the top of her head. He went to her car and took out the portfolio.
Prunella said to Mr. Markos, "I'm tightish. How awful."
"Are you? Eat some olives. Stuff down lots of those cheese things. You're not really very tight."
"Promise? All right, I will," said Prunella and was as good as her word. A car came up the avenue.
"Here is Miss Verity Preston," said Mr. Markos. "Did we tell you she was lunching?"
"No!" she exclaimed and blew out a little shower of cheese straw. "How too frightful, she's my godmother."
"Don't you like her?"
"I adore her. But she won't like to see me flown with fizz so early in the day. Or ever. And as a matter of fact it's not my form at all, by and large," said Prunella, swallowing most of an enormous mouthful of cheese straw and helping herself to more. "I'm a sober girl."
"You're a divine girl. I doubt if Gideon deserves you."
"You're absolutely right. The cheese straws and olives are doing the trick. I shan't go on about being drunk. People who do that are such a bore, always, don't you feel? And anyway I'm rapidly becoming sober." As if to prove it she had begun to whisper again.
The Markoses went to meet Verity. Prunella thought of following them but compromised by getting up from her swinging seat, which she did in a quickly controlled flounder.
"Godma V," she said. And when they were close enough to each other she hung herself about Verity's neck and was glad to do so.
"Hullo, young party," said Verity, surprised by this effusion and not knowing what to do about it. Prunella sat down abruptly and inaccurately on the swinging chair.
The Markoses, father and son, stood one on each side of her smiling at Verity, who thought that her godchild looked like a briar rose between a couple of succulent exotics. "They will absorb her," Verity thought, "into their own world and one doesn't know what that may be. Was Syb by any chance right? And ought I to take a hand? What about her Aunt Boo?" Boo was Syb's flighty sister. "I'd better talk to Prue and I suppose write to Boo, who ought to have come back and taken some responsibility instead of sending vague cables from Acapulco." She realized that Nikolas Markos was talking to her.
"--hope you approve of champagne at this hour."
"Lovely," Verity said hastily, "but demoralizing."
"That's what I found, Godma V," whispered Prunella, lurching about in her swinging chair.
"For Heaven's sake," thought Verity, "the child's tipsy."
But when Mr. Markos had opened the portfolio, tenderly drawn out its contents and laid them on the garden table, which he dusted with his handkerchief, Prunella had so far recovered as to give a fairly informed comment on them.
"They're the original plans, I think. The house was built for my I don't know how many times great-grandfather. You can see the date is 1780. He was called Lord Rupert Passcoigne. My mama was the last Passcoigne of that family and inherited Quintern from her father. I hope I've got it right. The plans are rather pretty, aren't they, with the coat-of-arms and all the trimmings and nonsense?"
"My dear child," said Mr. Markos, pouring over them, "they're exquisite. It's--I really can't tell you how excited I am to see them."
"There are some more underneath."
"We mustn't keep them too long in this strong light. Gideon, put this one back in the portfolio. Carefully. Gently. No, let me do it"
He looked up at Verity. "Have you seen them?" he asked. "Come and look. Share my gloat, do."
Verity had seen them, as it happened, many years ago when Sybil had first married her second husband, but she joined the party round the table. Mr. Markos had arrived at a plan for the gardens at Quintern and dwelt on it with greedy curiosity.
"But this has never been carried out," he said. "Has it? I mean, nicest possible daughter-in-law-to-be, the gardens today bear little resemblance in concept to this exquisite schema. Why?"
"Don't ask me," said Prunella. "Perhaps they ran out of cash or something. I rather think Mummy and Bruce were cooking up a grand idea about carrying out some of the scheme but decided we couldn't afford it. If only they hadn't lost the Black Alexander they could have done it."
"Yes indeed," said Verity.
Mr. Markos looked up quickly. "The Black Alexander!" he said. "What can you mean? You can't mean--"
"Oh, yes, of course. You're a collector."
"I am indeed. Tell me."
She told him and when she had done so he was unusually quiet for several seconds.
"But how immensely rewarding it would be--" he began at last and then pulled himself up. "Let us put the plans away," he said. "They arouse insatiable desires. I'm sure you understand, don't you Miss Preston? I've allowed myself to build--not castles in Spain but gardens in Kent, which is much more reprehensible. Haven't I?"
How very intelligent, Verity thought, finding his black eyes focused on hers, this Mr. Markos is. He seems to be making all sorts of assumptions and I seem to be liking it.
"I don't remember that I saw the garden plan before," she said. "It would have been a perfect marriage, wouldn't it?"
"Ah. And you have used the perfect phrase for it."
"Would you like to keep the plans here," asked Prunella, "to have another gloat?"
He thanked her exuberantly and luncheon having been announced, they went indoors.
Since that first dinner-party, which now seemed quite a long time ago, and the visit to Greengages on the day of Sybil's death, Verity had not seen much of the Markoses. She had been twice asked to Mardling for cocktail parties and on each occasion had been unable to go and one evening Markos Senior had paid an unheralded visit to Keys House, having spotted her, as he explained, in her garden and acted on that spur of the moment. They had got on well, having tastes in common and he showing a pretty acute appreciation of the contemporary theatre. Verity had been quite surprised to see the time when he finally took his stylish leave of her. The next thing that she had heard of him was that he had "gone abroad," a piece of information conveyed by village telegraph through Mrs. Jim. And "abroad," as far as Verity knew, he had remained until this present reappearance.
They had their coffee in the library, now completely finished. Verity wondered what would happen to all the books if, as Mrs. Jim had reported, Mr. Markos really intended to sell Mardling. This was by no means the sterile, unhandled assembly made by a monied person more interested in interior decoration than the written word.
As soon as she came in she saw above the fireplace the painting called Several Pleasures by Troy.
"So you did hang it there," she said. "How well it looks."
"Doesn't it?" Mr. Markos agreed. "I dote on it. Who would think it was painted by a policeman's Missus."
Verity said: "Well, I can't see why not. Although I suppose you'd say a rather exceptional policeman."
"So you know him?"
"I've met him, yes."
"I see. So have I. I met him when I bought the picture. I should have thought him an exotic in the Force but perhaps the higher you go at the Yard the rarer the atmosphere."
"He visited me this morning."
Prunella said: "You don't tell me!"
"But I do," said Verity.
"And me. According to Mrs. Jim," said Prue.
Gideon said: "Would it be about the egregious Claude?"
"No," said Verity. "It wouldn't. Not so far as I was concerned. Not specifically, anyway. It seemed to be--" she hesitated, "--as much about this new Will as anything."
And in the silence that followed the little party in the library quietly collapsed. Prunella began to look scared and Gideon put his arm around her.
Mr. Markos had moved in front of his fireplace. Verity thought she saw a change in him: the subtle change that comes over men when something has led a conversation into their professional field: a guarded attentiveness.
Prunella said: "I've been pushing things off. I've been pretending to myself nothing is really very much the matter. It's not true. Is it?" she insisted, appealing to Verity.
"Perhaps not quite, darling." Verity said and for a moment it seemed to her that she and Prunella were, in some inexplicable way, united against the two men.
It was half past two when Alleyn and Fox arrived at Greengages. The afternoon being clement some of the guests were taking their postprandial ease in the garden. Others, presumably, had retired to their rooms. Alleyn gave his professional card in at the desk and asked if they might have a word with Dr. Schramm.
The receptionist stared briefly at Alleyn and hard at Mr. Fox. She tightened her mouth, said she would see, appeared to relax slightly and left them.
"Know us when she sees us again," said Fox placidly. He put on his spectacles and, tilting back his head, contemplated an emaciated water-colour of Canterbury Cathedral. "Airy-fairy," he said. "Not my notion of the place at all," and moved to a view of the Grand Canal.
The receptionist returned with an impeccably dressed man who had Alleyn's card in his hand and said he was the manager of the hotel. "I hope," he added, "that we're not in for any further disruption." Alleyn cheerfully assured him that he hoped so too and repeated that he would like to have a word or two with Dr. Schramm. The manager retired to an inner office.
Alleyn said to the receptionist: "May I bother you for a moment? Of course you're fussed we're here to ask tedious questions and generally make nuisances of ourselves about the death of Mrs. Foster."
"You said it," she returned, "not me." But she touched her hair and she didn't sound altogether antagonistic.
"It's only a sort of tidying-up job. But I wonder if you remember anything about flowers that her gardener left at the desk for her."
"I wasn't at the desk at the time."
"Alas!"
"Pardon? Oh, yes. Well, as a matter of fact I do happen to remember. The girl on duty mentioned that the electrical repairs man had taken them up when I was off for a minute or two."
"When would that be?"
"I really couldn't say."
"Is the repairs man a regular visitor?"
"Not that I know. He wasn't called in from the desk, that I can tell you."
"Could you by any merciful chance find out when, where and why he was here?"
"Well, I must say!"
"It would be very kind indeed. Really."
She said she would see what she could do and retired into her office. Alleyn heard the whirr of a telephone dial. After a considerable interlude a highly starched nurse of opulent proportions appeared.
Dr. Schramm will see you now," she said in a clinical voice. Only the copies of Punch, Alleyn felt, were missing.
The nurse rustled them down a passage to a door bearing the legend: "Dr. Basil Schramm, M.B. Hours 3-5 p.m. and by appointment."
She ushered them into a little waiting-room and there, sure enough, were the copies of Punch and The Tatler. She knocked at an inner door, opened it and motioned them to go in.
Dr. Schramm swivelled round in his desk chair and rose to greet them.
A police officer of experience and sensibility may come to recognize mannerisms common to certain persons with whom he has to deal. If he is wise he will never place too much reliance on this simplification. When, for instance, he is asked by the curious layman if the police can identify certain criminal types by looking at them, he will probably say no. Perhaps he will qualify this denial by adding that he does find that certain characteristics tend to crop up--shabby stigmata--in sexual offenders. He is not referring to raincoats or to sidelong lurking but to a look in the eyes and about the mouth, a look he is unable to define.
