30 - A Grave Mistake, page 16
Prunella for the first time looked directly at him. "That's kind," she said. "I'd like that, I think. Please."
"Good. I'll check with our chaps in Maidstone and have a word with your Vicar. I expect he'll let you know."
"Thank you."
"All right, then?"
"Super," said Prunella with shaking lips. Tears trickled down her cheeks. "I'm sorry," she said. "I thought I'd got over all this. I thought I was O.K." She knuckled her eyes and fished a handkerchief out of her pocket. Mr. Fox rose and walked away to the farthest windows through which he contemplated the prospect.
"Never mind," Alleyn said. "That's the way delayed shock works. Catches you on the hop when you least expect it"
"Sickening of it," Prunella mumbled into her handkerchief. "You'd better say what you wanted to ask."
"It can wait a bit."
"No!" said Prunella and stamped like an angry child. "Now."
"All right. I'd better say first what we always say. Don't jump to conclusions and read all sorts of sinister interpretations into routine questions. You must realize that in a case of this sort everyone who saw anything at all of your mother or had contact, however trivial, with her during the time she was at Greengages, and especially on the last day, has to be crossed off."
"All except one."
"Perhaps not excepting even one and then we do look silly."
Prunella sniffed. "Go ahead," she said.
"Do you know a great deal about your mother's first husband?"
Prunella stared at him.
"Know? Me? Only what everyone knows. Do you mean about how he was killed and about the Black Alexander stamp?"
"Yes. We've heard about the stamp. And about the unfinished letter to your mother."
"Well then--. There's nothing else that I can think of."
"Do you know if she kept that letter? And any other of his letters?"
Prunella began: "If I did I wouldn't--" and pulled herself up. "Sorry," she said, "yes, she did. I found them at the back of a drawer in her dressing-table. It's a converted sofa-table and it's got a not terribly secret, secret drawer."
"And you have them still?"
She waited for a second or two and then nodded. "I've read them," she said. "They're fantastic, lovely letters. They can't possibly have anything at all to do with any of this. Not possibly."
"I've seen the regimental group photograph."
"Mrs. Jim told me."
"He was very good-looking, wasn't he?"
"Yes. They used to call him Beau Carter. It's hard to believe when you see Claude, isn't it? He was only twenty-one when his first wife died. Producing Claude. Such an awful waste, I've always thought. Much better if it'd been the other way round though of course in that case I would have been--just not. Or would I? How muddling."
She glanced down the long room to where Mr. Fox, at its furthest extreme, having put on his spectacles, was bent over a glass-topped curio table. "What's he doing?" she whispered.
"Being tactful."
"Oh. I see."
"About your mother--did she often speak of her first husband?"
"Not often. I think she got out of the way of it when my papa was alive. I think he must have been jealous, poor love. He wasn't exactly a heart-throb to look at, himself. You know--pink and portly. So I think she kept things like pre-papa photographs and letters discreetly out of circulation. Sort of. But she did tell me about Maurice--that was his name."
"About his soldiering days? During the war when I suppose that photograph was taken?"
"Yes. A bit about him. Why?"
"About his brother officers, for instance? Or the men under him?"
"Why?" Prunella insisted. "Don't be like those awful pressmen who keep bawling out rude questions that haven't got anything to do with the case. Not," she added hastily, "that you'd really do that because you're not at all that kind. But, I mean what on earth can my mum's first husband's brother officers and men have to do with his wife's murder when most of them are dead, I daresay, themselves?"
"His soldier-servant, for instance? Was there anything in the letters about him? The officer-batman relationship can be, in its way, quite a close one."
"Now you mention it," said Prunella on a note of impatience, "there were jokey bits about somebody he called The Corp, who I suppose might have been his servant but they weren't anything out of the way. In the last letter, for instance. It was written here. He'd got an unexpected leave and come home but Mummy was with her WRENS in Scotland. It says he's trying to get a call through to her but will leave the letter in case he doesn't. It breaks off abruptly saying he's been recalled, urgently to London and has just time to get to the station. I expect you know about the train being bombed."
"Yes. I know."
"Well," said Prunella shortly, "it was a direct hit. On his carriage. So that's all."
"And what about The Corp? In the letter?"
"What? Oh. There's a very effing bit about--sorry," said Prunella. " 'Effing' is family slang for 'affecting' or kind of 'terribly touching.' This bit is about what she's to do if he's killed and how much--how he feels about her and she's not to worry and anyway The Corp looks after him like a nanny. He must have been rather a super chap, Maurice, I always think."
"Anything about the Black Alexander?"
"Oh, that! Well--actually, yes, there is something. He says he supposes she'll think him a fuss-pot but, after all, his London bank's in the hottest blitz area and he's taken the stamp out and will store it elsewhere. There's something about it being in a waterproof case or something. It was at that point he got the urgent recall to London. So he breaks off--and--says goodbye. Sort of."
"And the stamp was never found."
"That's right. Not for want of looking. But obviously he had it on him."
"Miss Foster, I wouldn't ask you this if it wasn't important and I hope you won't mind very much that I do ask. Will you let me see those letters?"
Prunella looked at her own hands. They were clenched tightly on her handkerchief and she hurriedly relaxed them. The handkerchief lay in a small damply crumpled heap in her lap. Alleyn saw where a fingernail had bitten into it.
"I simply can't imagine why," she said. "I mean, it's fantastic. Love letters, pure and simple, written almost forty years ago and concerning nothing and nobody but the writer. And Mummy, of course."
"I know. It seems preposterous, doesn't it? But I can't tell you how 'professional' and detached I shall be about it. Rather like a doctor. Please let me see them."
She glanced at the distant Fox, still absorbed in the contents of the curio table. "I don't want to make a fuss about nothing," she said. "I'll get them."
"Are they still in the not-so-secret, secret drawer of the converted sofa-table?"
"Yes."
"I should like to see it."
They had both risen.
"Secret drawers," said Alleyn lightly, "are my specialty. At the Yard they call me Peeping Tom Alleyn." Prunella compressed her lips. "Fox," Alleyn said loudly, "may I tear you away?"
"I beg your pardon, Mr. Alleyn," Fox said, removing his spectacles but staying where he was. "I beg your pardon, Miss Foster. My attention was caught by this--should I call it specimen table? My aunt, Miss Elsie Smith, has just such another in her shop in Brighton."
"Really?" said Prunella and stared at him.
Alleyn strolled down to the other end of the room and bent over the table. It contained a heterogeneous collection of medals, a vinaigrette, two miniatures, several little boxes in silver or cloisonné and one musical box, all set out on a blue velvet base.
"I'm always drawn to these assemblies," Alleyn said. "They are family history in hieroglyphics. I see you've rearranged them lately."
"No, I haven't. Why?" asked Prunella, suddenly alerted. She joined them. It was indeed clear from indentations in the velvet that a rearrangement had taken place. "Damn!" she said. "At it again! No, it's too much."
"At it?" Alleyn ventured. "Again? Who?"
"Claude Carter. I suppose you know he's staying here. He--does so fiddle and pry."
"What does he pry into?"
"All over the place. He's always like that. The old plans of this house and garden. Drawers in tables. He turns over other people's letters when they come. I wouldn't put him past reading them. I'm not living here at the moment so I daresay he's having field days. I don't know why I'm talking about it."
"Is he in the house at this moment?"
"I don't know. I've only just come in, myself. Never mind. Forget it. Do you want to see the letters?"
She walked out of the room, Alleyn opening the door for her. He followed her into the hall and up the staircase.
"How happy Mr. Markos will be," he remarked, "climbing up the golden stairs. They are almost golden, aren't they? Where the sun catches them?"
"I haven't noticed."
"Oh, but you should. You mustn't allow ownership to dull the edge of appetite. One should always know how lucky one is."
Prunella turned on the upper landing and stared at him.
"Is it your habit," she asked, "to go on like this? When you're on duty?"
"Only if I dare hope for a sympathetic reception. What happens now? Turn right, proceed in a westerly direction and effect an entrance?"
Since this was in fact what had to be done, Prunella said nothing and led the way into her mother's bedroom.
A sumptuous room. There was a canopied bed and a silken counterpane with a lacy nightgown case topped up by an enormous artificial rose. A largesse of white bearskin rugs. But for all its luxury the room had a depleted air as if the heart had gone out of it. One of the wardrobe doors was open and disclosed complete emptiness.
Prunella said rapidly: "I sent everything, all the clothes, away to the nearest professional theatre. They can sell the things they don't use: fur hats and coats and things."
There were no photographs or feminine toys of any kind on the tables and chimney-piece, and Sybil's sofa-cum-dressing-table, with its cupid-encircled looking-glass, had been bereft of all the pots, bottles and jars that Alleyn supposed had adorned it.
Prunella said, following his look. "I got rid of everything. Everything." She was defiant.
"I expect it was the best thing to do."
"We're going to change the room. Completely. My father-in-law-to-be's fantastic about houses--an expert. He'll advise us."
"Ah, yes," said Alleyn politely.
She almost shouted at him: "I suppose you think I'm hard and modern and over-reacting to everything. Well, so I may be. But I'll thank you to remember that Will. How she tried to bribe me, because that's what it was, into marrying a monster, because that's what he is, and punish me if I didn't. I never thought she had it in her to be so mean and despicable and I'm not going to bloody cry again and I don't in the least know why I'm talking to you like this. The letters are in the dressing-table and I bet you can't find the hidden bit."
She turned her back on Alleyn and blew her nose.
He went to the table, opened the central drawer, slid his finger round inside the frame and found a neat little knob that released a false wall at the back. It opened and there in the "secret" recess was the classic bundle of letters tied with the inevitable faded ribbon.
There was also an open envelope with some half-dozen sepia snapshots inside.
"I think," he said, "the best way will be for me to look at once through the letters and if they are irrelevant return them to you. Perhaps there's somewhere downstairs where Fox and I could make ourselves scarce and get it settled."
Without saying anything further Prunella led the way downstairs to the "boudoir" he had visited on his earlier call. They paused at the drawing-room to collect Mr. Fox, who was discovered in contemplation of a portrait in pastel of Sybil as a young girl.
"If," said Prunella, "you don't take the letters away perhaps you'd be kind enough to leave them in the desk."
"Yes, of course," Alleyn rejoined with equal formality. "We mustn't use up any more of your time. Thank you so much for being helpful."
He made her a little bow and was about to turn away when she suddenly thrust out her hand.
"Sorry I was idiotic. No bones broken?" Prunella asked.
"Not even a green fracture."
"Goodbye, then."
They shook hands.
"That child," said Alleyn when they were alone, "turned on four entirely separate moods, if that's what they should be called, in scarcely more than as many minutes. Not counting the drawing-room comedy which was not a comedy. You and your Aunt Elsie!"
"Perhaps the young lady's put about by recent experience," Fox hazarded.
"It's the obvious conclusion, I suppose."
In the boudoir Alleyn divided the letters--there were eight--between them. Fox put on his spectacles and read with the catarrhal breathing that always afflicted him when engaged in that exercise.
Prunella had been right They were indeed love letters, "pure and simple" within the literal meaning of the phrase, and most touching. The young husband had been deeply in love and able to say so.
As his regiment moved from the Western Desert to Italy, the reader became accustomed to the nicknames of fellow officers and regimental jokes. The Corp, who was indeed Captain Carter's servant, featured more often as time went on. Some of the letters were illustrated with lively little drawings. There was one of the enormous Corp being harassed by bees in Tuscany. They were represented as swarming inside his kilt and he was depicted with a violent squint and his mouth wide open. A balloon issued from it with a legend that said: "It's no sae much the ticklin', it's the imperrtinence, ye ken."
The last letter was as Prunella had described it. The final sentences read: "So my darling love, I shan't see you this time. If I don't stop I'll miss the bloody train. About the stamp--sorry, no time left Your totally besotted husband, Maurice."
Alleyn assembled the letters, tied the ribbon and put the little packet in the desk. He emptied out the snapshots: a desolate, faded company well on its slow way to oblivion. Maurice Carter appeared in all of them and in all of them looked like a near relation of Rupert Brooke. In one, he held by the hand a very small nondescript child: Claude, no doubt. In another, he and a ravishingly pretty young Sybil appeared together. A third was yet another replica of the regimental group still in her desk drawer. The fourth and last showed Maurice kilted and a captain now, with his enormous "Corp" stood-to-attention in the background.
Alleyn took it to the window, brought out his pocket lens and examined it. Fox folded his arms and watched him,
Presently he looked up and nodded.
"We'll borrow these four," he said. "I'll leave a receipt."
He wrote it out, left it in the desk and put the snap-shots in his pocket. "Come on," he said.
They met nobody on their way out. Prunella's car was gone. Fox followed Alleyn past the long windows of a library and the lower west flank of the house. They turned right and came at last to the stables.
"As likely as not, he'll still be growing mushrooms," Alleyn said.
And so he was. Stripped to the waist, bronzed, golden-bearded and looking like a much younger man. Bruce was hard at work in the converted lean-to. When he saw Alleyn he grounded his shovel and arched his earthy hand over his eyes to shield them from the sun.
"Ou aye," he said, "so it's you again, Chief Superintendent. What can I do for you, the noo?"
"You can tell us, if you will, Corporal Gardener, the name of your regiment, and of its captain," said Alleyn.
"I canna credit it," Bruce muttered and gazed out of his nonaligned blue eyes at Alleyn. "It doesna seem within the bounds of possibility. It's dealt me a wee shock. I'll say that for it."
"You hadn't an inkling?"
"Don't be sae daft, man," Bruce said crossly. "Sir, I should say. How would I have an inkling, will you tell me that? I doubt if her first husband was ever mentioned in my hearing and why would he be?"
"There was this stepson," Fox said to nobody in particular. "Name of Carter."
"Be damned to that," Bruce shouted. "Carrrter! Carrrter! Why would he not be Carrrter? Would I be sae daft as to say: my Captain, dead nigh on forty years, was a man o' the name of Carrrter so you must be his son and he the bonniest lad you'd ever set eyes on and you, not' to dra' it mild, a puir, sickly, ill-put-taegither apology for a man? Here, sir, can I have another keek at them photies?"
Alleyn gave them to him.
"Ah," he said, "I mind it fine, the day that group was taken. I'd forgotten all about it but I mind it fine the noo."
"But didn't you notice the replica of this one in her bedroom at the hotel?"
Bruce stared at him. His expression became prudish. He half-closed his eyes and pursed his enormous mouth. He said, in a scandalized voice: "Sir, I never set fut in her bedroom. It would have not been the thing at a'. Not at a'."
"Indeed?"
"She received me in her wee private parlour upstairs or in the garden."
"I see. I beg your pardon."
"As for these ither ones: I never saw them before."
He gazed at them in silence for some moments. "My God," he said quietly, "look at the bairn, just. That'll be the bairn by the first wife. My God, it'll be this Claude! Who'd've thought it. And here's anither wi' me in the background. It's a strange coincidence, this, it is indeed."
"You never came to Quintern or heard him speak of it?"
"If I did, the name didna stick in my mind. I never came here. What for would I? When we had leave and we only had but one before he was kilt, he let me gang awa' home. Aye, he was a considerate officer. Christ!"
"What's the matter?" Alleyn asked. Bruce had dealt his knees a devastating smack with his ginger-haired earthy hands.
"When I think of it," he said. "When I mind how me and her would have our bit crack of an evening when I came in for my dram. Making plans for the planting season and a' that. When I remember how she'd talk sae free and friendly and there, all unbeknownst, was my captain's wife that he'd let on to me was the sonsiest lass in the land. He had her picture in his wallet and liked fine to look at it. I took a wee keek mysel' one morning when I was brushing his tunic. She was bonny, aye she was that. Fair as a flooer. She seems to have changed and why wouldn't she over the passage of the years? Ou aye," he said heavily. "She changed."
