At Death's Door (15 page)

There was no great quantity of jewelry. Why should there be for a few days in the country? Beside the bed was a necklace—presumably one that Myra had been wearing earlier in the evening, taken off when she had put on her nightdress and carelessly left there rather than put in the little leather-covered box that held the rest of her things. These consisted of five other pieces: a necklace of pearls, two brooches, and two rings. Few but good seemed to be the motto here, as with the clothes. One brooch in particular, a Victorian setting of a diamond—large, sparkling, decidedly ostentatious—surrounded by sapphires, seemed a very valuable piece indeed, unless Meredith's eyes were playing him false. Dame Myra, he remembered, had had many admirers—many
lovers
, he corrected himself, scorning euphemism—and her jewelry was probably in the main gifts from them. No doubt she had earned plenty of money herself over the years, but he guessed that for a woman like her jewelry would be something she would expect to have bestowed on her.

The main sign of lavishness, of conspicuous consumption, was on the dressing table. Here there were jars and bottles, sprays and compacts, drops and syringes in great abundance. That the products were expensive was evidenced by the containers, which all looked as if they had been dreamed up by Italian designers and executed in
exclusive glass-blowing establishments in Venice. He wondered what she had done with them when they were empty; they were hardly the sort of object one merely threw into the garbage bin. Studying the bottles, Meredith found a preponderance of skin foods and moisturizers, with only a modest supply of lipstick or mascara. The important thing was the well-being of the product rather than the painting of it. It occurred to Meredith that Myra
ought
to have been a woman of great good sense. Her care of herself, her presentation of herself, were based on admirable criteria. No doubt it was when other people intruded into her world that her judgment deserted her.

And then there was her notepad. This Meredith had observed on his first visit to the room, in the first minutes of the police operation. It was a memo pad such as one could obtain in any stationer's—square white paper with a design of flowers printed on the sides. He guessed all the old sheets had been torn off before it had been packed, for all the notes on the top three sheets that had been used seemed to relate to things that had come up since she came to the Red Lion.

On the top sheet was “Call from Harley re Mrs. Wilcox. Ring from Pelstock.” On the second sheet was “New tie for G.” and “Cordelia 6:15.” Meredith went over to the wardrobe and looked at Granville's ties. Some were perhaps a shade flamboyant, a bit airy. One, a stripe in blue and deep purple, looked decidedly more expensive than the rest. Granville, then, rated a new tie. Would he have had to stay married longer to have rated a new suit?

The Cordelia reference was surely simple. It was the time she and Pat were to come to the Red Lion on the murder night. But the third sheet was puzzling. It read: “Woman for Ayckbourn. TV. Oaken Heart? The Blush?”

It was the last note on the pad. Had it been written shortly before she was killed?

• • •

When he got back to the police station at Cottingham, Meredith rang the Cotterels. He told them he was going to have a brief chat with Cordelia but that after that he would hold her no longer. Would they come and get her, or should he send her back to the Rectory in a police car? They would come and get her. Oh, and would they and Miss Mason's boyfriend hold themselves in readiness for questioning tomorrow? He had a myriad things to do for the rest of the day, including questioning the husband, but earlyish tomorrow? . . . That was kind of them.

When Cordelia was brought into the interview room by Sergeant Flood, she assured him she'd slept well and late, had been brought an excellent breakfast, and had generally been well looked after. She had also been brought the papers, she said, but there had naturally been little that was substantial about the death of her mother, so she was still in the dark about many aspects of her killing.

“So are we,” said Meredith. “But the important thing I should tell you at once is that you were seen on the beach around the time the murder apparently took place. By a family that was down there, one that was staying at the hotel, and had seen you earlier. It seems a watertight alibi. We would like you to stay in this area for the next few days, if you would, but beyond that you're free to go.”

Cordelia nodded. There was no expression of joy or relief. Meredith permitted himself to say: “You take it very coolly.”

“There was always too much emotion in our house,” Cordelia said with a sad smile. “I've tried to cultivate coolness—not always successfully.”

“You've certainly not pretended to grief over your mother.”

“No. There is none. A sort of sadness, maybe. But when you've said to yourself so often, ‘I'd like to kill her,' it's almost comforting to find that you haven't.”

Meredith found her gaucheness rather appealing.

“I've been looking round your mother's room. There seems to be some rather good jewelry there.”

“Oh, yes. Mother had some wonderful pieces. She always chose her gifts herself. She had a great deal at home, but she wouldn't carry much around with her.”

“There was a splendid diamond-and-sapphire brooch.”

“That was given her by my father, by Ben Cotterel, shortly before I was born. Yes, it's beautiful. How typical of Myra to bring it when she came here.”

“The fact that it's still in her room seems to prove that robbery was not the motive for the murder.”

“I suppose so. I never thought it was.”

“You thought it must be something in her relationships or in her earlier life?”

“That seemed the most obvious possibility, if you knew Myra and her genius for making enemies.”

“I was thinking about the men in her life. You're the obvious one to know most about that. Do you think you could make a list of them for me?”

Cordelia laughed, a frank, almost happy laugh. “You know not what you ask. The ones I know about would fill two foolscap pages, and there were many I didn't.”

“Could you try, anyway? Perhaps you could indicate whether they were short-term relationships or longer ones, whether they lived together, and so on. And perhaps you could indicate whether the men were married at the time of the affair.”

“I can try. I wouldn't always know if they were married or not, though often Myra told me; it gave the affair added spice, added
éclat.
She knew I'd feel sorry for the wives—though really I felt sorriest for the men.”

“So you'll give it a try for me?”

“Yes, I will. But remember, I really only know about the ones from the time I got to the age of noticing. About the earlier ones I know nothing at all.”

“Except your father,” said Inspector Meredith.

“Right. Except my father. And the soldier from the Cameron Highlands,” said Cordelia with a nervous laugh.

• • •

“I expect your relatives will be waiting to take you back to the Rectory,” said Meredith as he shepherded her from the interview room. “You are of course entirely free now, but I do have your word you will stay in this area for the moment, don't I?”

“Certainly.”

“By the way, there was a note on your mother's pad: ‘Call from Harley re Mrs. Wilcox.' Does that mean anything to you?”

“Harley is—was—Myra's agent,” said Cordelia promptly. “Harley Clarkson. An address in Soho—Dean Street, I think. I don't know a Mrs. Wilcox. But could it be a part? There's a Mrs. Wilcox in
Howards End.
There's a bit of an E. M. Forster boom on at the moment. It could be a television adaptation or a film. It's a terrible book, but Mrs. Wilcox would be a good part. Moneyed but saintly.
Not
one of the parts that Myra would look inward for!”

“I see. There was another note. Just two names, or phrases, ‘Oaken Heart' and ‘The Blush.' Do they mean anything to you?”

Cordelia frowned.

“I don't think so. Though ‘Oaken Heart' rings a very vague bell. Could they be other possible parts, offered by Harley Clarkson? Myra was probably looking round for what to do after
John Gabriel Borkman
.”

“Possibly. The two things were separated on the name pad. There could have been another call from the agent, I
suppose. I'd better contact him and find out. . . . Ah, here are your relatives, and your boyfriend.”

Oddly enough, Cordelia—who had been open to the point of ingenuousness with him and quite relaxed—became awkward when faced with Roderick and Caroline. However, she thanked them for coming to fetch her, then embraced Pat and started into a good old confab with him. Meredith noted these things, remembered his feeling of a slight tension the night before, then passed on to other work on the case. There was enough of that, in all conscience.

The Cotterels said they had the car out the back, in the station yard. They'd been allowed in there to avoid reporters and photographers. The story had broken on Fleet Street (or the various unappetizing locations replacing it) and was predictably about to become the week's sensation, replacing sexually abused children and a hot-air balloon trip across the Atlantic. Fleet Street liked variety. They got themselves into the car without incident, but they had to drive past the front of the station, and here the massed newshounds recognized Cordelia. The clicks of their cameras sounded like a demented abacus.

In the car on the way home Cordelia chatted away, mostly to Pat. Caroline asked whether she had been well treated, and Cordelia waxed quite enthusiastic about Meredith.

“Really very sweet and gentle. The nice kind of Welshman, not the rugby-football hearty type. I should think he's a dogged soul who will worry away at the case until it's eventually solved. . . . If you care about that.” She turned back to Pat. “Do you know, I realized in that police station that I don't really care who killed Mother. I don't hope he gets away with it, I don't hope he gets caught, I just don't care. I wonder if there's something wrong with me.”

Roderick and Caroline left them to it. It was their liberation, after all, their relief. But Caroline did say to Cordelia: “I must say I admire you. You took it all so coolly. Almost nonchalantly. I should have been terrified, however innocent.”

“Somehow I never thought I was going to be accused of it,” said Cordelia reflectively. “Silly, really, when you think how many people have been wrongly convicted of murder. Evans, and probably the Carl Bridgewater people, and the pub bombers. And I suppose I took it coolly because I knew that one phase of my life was over. Such a relief. No more need to struggle against her or gain petty revenges on her for the way she treated me years and years ago. I can be me instead of Myra's child.”

Outside the Rectory gates there was another little knot of reporters aiming their lethal weapons at Cordelia in the backseat.

“I shall never get used to it,” said Caroline.

“I've had it all my life,” said Cordelia. “In a mild sort of way.”

Roderick pulled the car up just outside the front door, and they got out onto the gravel driveway. Pat had bought a chilled bottle of champagne at the Maudsley off-license, and he marched off down to the tent to open it. Cordelia, though, lingered, suddenly awkward again.

“I wanted to say I'm sorry,” she said, her hands working feverishly. “For what I said last night. You've got to remember I'm Myra's child: I've never learned to behave.”

“That's quite—”

“And I see why you did it. It was for Becky, wasn't it? So the royalties would continue for her lifetime, to assure her future after you're both dead. I should have thought of that.” As Roderick opened his mouth to comment, Cordelia
brushed him aside with a gesture. “Sorry. I really am sorry. I won't mention it again. Nobody knows. Even Pat doesn't know.”

And she turned from them and ran down to the tent.

“W
HY DID YOU MARRY HER
?”

Chief Inspector Meredith had not intended to ask the question, at least not bluntly in that way. He had intended to touch on it obliquely, hope to capture straws in the wind. For there was no guarantee that the answer would be the truth or that the man would even be self-aware enough to formulate an answer. Why people marry whom they do is often enough a mystery to themselves as well as to their friends.

Yet Granville Ashe sat there in the interview room, open, appealing, frank in a fairly lightweight kind of way, and somehow the question had popped out. It was a case of the human factor intervening, as, in Meredith's experience, it so often did in the course of an interview.

Granville was wearing his only suit, or the only one he had brought with him; it was darkish, but far from mourning, and he also had on the blue-and-purple-striped tie. He was a little sad in mien—bewildered, shocked still, but making no claims to overwhelming grief. At Meredith's question he scratched his ear.

“It wasn't a whirlwind affair, you know. I'd known her a while back—twelve years ago, when I was a
very
young actor. I'd got on well with her then.”

“That hardly seems to have been the general experience. What were the qualities needed to get on with her?”

Granville grinned. “You had to be self-effacing, not really competitive—which I'm
not
, as you can see from the progress of my career. You had to be basically a peacemaker, a douser of fires. . . .”

“This doesn't seem to have been the type that Dame Myra went for in the past.”

“Not as
lovers.
I thought we were talking about getting on with her. No, in her lovers she wanted excitement, constant electricity, and the sort of sexual charge and inventiveness I lay no claims to. But her emotional life had been a series of disasters, and even someone as little self-critical as Myra had to realize that eventually. A small degree of self-knowledge may have come to her at last. I think in a way I represented the peace of the double bed after the hurly-burly of the chaise longue.”