Cavalier Case (14 page)

For the non-speaking roles, it was hardly surprising that the Meredith family had been heavily pressed into service, given that their services could be had for free, leaving all available money raised to go to the new country club. Charlotte for example was to play Olivia Lackland, which was appropriate enough in a way even if, judging from the portraits, Zena, so much darker and taller, would have been a better match. But Charlotte would play the "Victorian" Olivia of the
Petitioner
pictures — modest and feminine, softly courageous—very well. Then Nell was going to play Decimus' only child, Antony ecimus, even if she was both the wrong sex and the wrong age—by a good many years.

Charlotte had the ludicrous idea that Dessie should play the boy! Dessie, I ask you. No quicker way to turn the Celebration into a wake—or at least chaos. No, we're going to give Little Nell a treat. Zena tells me in her bossy way that we've all got to pay her a lot more attention. At least all that unkempt hair will come into its own. Why Babs lets her go around like that, but then Babs herself these days—she used to be so pretty, so well turned out..." But Dan evidently decided not to elaborate on that painful subject yet again. He turned back to the Celebration itself, as a result of which Jemima learnt that Marcus Meredith was being cast as Sir Bartleby Potter, the Puritan M.P. from Taynford Grange. That was another appropriate choice in a way; especially since Jane Manfred, exercising a droit de seigneur over the role of "her" ghost or at least the previous owner of her house, had graciously endorsed it.

Jemima did not recognise most of the other names—mainly young neighbours, she was assured. They did include several members of the Smith family (but not the egregious Dave). Through all the listings, however, she took it for granted that Dan himself would enact the famous "poet and Cavalier." She got a shock therefore when Dan announced quite casually: "And then Zena will play Decimus. She's got the looks. As she never fails to point out. Once again it's not a speaking part—all that poetry will be spouted where necessary by the narrator—so the female voice doesn't matter."

"And you? What will you play? Will you play the ghost?" She hesitated. It had been intended as a joke. "You are having a ghost I take it." She remembered Dan's ambivalent reactions in the early stages of their acquaintance in which he had half pressed forward on the subject of the ghost programme for the sake of the publicity for Lackland Court, half hung back as if finding the subject of the ghost more unsettling than he cared to admit.

"Yes we are having the ghost, and no, I shan't be playing him. I'm leaving that to Zena too. You see, I had to make it up to her for not writing the narration. She did have a go but we wanted something a little more popular, downmarket."

"And you've got—" But from Dan's slightly embarrassed look, Jemima knew the answer already.

"Dave—D. J. Smith. Zena had so many theories of her own—no Lady Isabella for her for example—but she'll just have to keep them for her book, and what's more she's so bloody argumentative, Jesus, no wonder Cousin Tommy called her the Schoolmistress—and then we tried that chap at Cambridge—your friend—and he was totally involved with that television programme of his all the girls watch. So then there was Dave, who's, let's face it, always available and Gawain, who's acting as our director—Jane Manfred arranged that for us—he positively loved Dave Smith's script. I have a feeling he may have loved the odious Dave himself. Be that as it may, we went with Dave—well, we live in the real world."

Or not, thought Jemima, considering Dave Smith's way with history. But at least she understood the enormous number of Smiths represented among the lesser members of the cast.

So far, so good. Or at least so interesting. But she was still left with the problem—if problem it was—of explaining to herself that strange process by which a practical lunch at the Kingfisher on the subject of the Cavalier Celebration had somehow led on to the offer of a glass of something further on her own delightful balcony, so conveniently near. And on arrival at the flat, one thing had inexorably if pleasingly led to yet another, the sunshine on the balcony, a brandy for Dan, the shaded bedroom, the music . . .

What are all these excuses? Jemima admonished herself sternly amid the wreckage of her bed. It happened. It was great. Admit it. You'd probably do the same thing again—that is, if you had today over again. But you won't do the same tomorrow. This is it. This
has
been it.  Enough is enough, et cetera and so on. You may be going to enact Lady Isabella Clare at the Cavalier Celebration—in aid of the Lackland Court Country Club! Really, Jemima. Oh well, I suppose it's also to do with
him
. She looked in the general direction of the portrait. But you are definitely not going to be Lady Isabella Clare to his Decirnus. What was it he said? I've always wanted to fall in love with a clever woman! Really, in 1988 . . . He'll be telling you that his wife doesn't understand him next; in fact I have an awful feeling he did say something of the sort, or perhaps it was his first wife, or
women
who didn't understand him. Plenty of those about, that's for sure. Quite a few Lady Isabellas already, including, I suspect, that red- haired number at the Planty. To say nothing of his two Olivias, difficult Olivia the first, devoted Olivia the second. In the meantime, how the hell do I get him out of here? Postponing the problem, which seemed the only course temporarily open to her, Jemima went back to sleep yet again; from which she was awakened sometime later by Dan himself.

"Christ, I'm supposed to be playing tennis at the Planty at six o'clock," was what she heard him say. After that there was an astonishing rush, the demingling of garments previously rather eroti cally mingled on the floor and elsewhere round the room at high speed, last swift kisses, last swift words from Dan which to Jemima's horror rang in her memory afterwards something like this: "I'll come back. I've got to make love to you again . . . and again . . . and again . . . On my honour, I'll return. Love and Honour, don't forget, the family motto."

The door of the flat slammed. Jemima wandered thoughtfully back into her large white open-plan sitting room in the direction of the CD player. She removed Don Giovanni and put on Arabella, for the sake of
Aber der richtige
. . . This was to remind her. Not only was Handsome Dan Meredith not Mr. Right, but he must never be allowed to come here again, at least not alone, since she had proved herself to be such a tower of weakness.

"I have just made a major mistake," Jemima said aloud; Midnight, directing one of his heavy leaps onto her lap, began to make himselt comfortable there; his purr was loud and even raucous under her chin- Love and Honour! The family motto indeed, she ruminated, in a mixture of amusement and crossness. Where there is no love, where can there be honour? I loved Cass, that was different. And for another thing, where does this leave my investigation? She addressed the top of the head of the now somnolent black cat.

"For God's sake, I may have been in bed with a murderer. If there's any question of the butler having been killed—and I shall know more, I trust, from Pompey's contact in the local police tomorrow—then I suppose Dan has to be a suspect. No, wait, he was up in London, said he was going back up to London. I've got to think this thing through, that was my promise to Zena."

It was a result of thinking the thing through, if sometime later, that Jemima took another decision. "Since this will definitely not happen again and since he is definitely not coming back this evening I had better get on with making that clear." 

Determined not to let more time pass before she put her positive decision into practice, Jemima rang up the Plantaganet Club. She would leave a message at the desk, crisp and to the point, since Dan, she knew, would be playing somewhere on court. First of all both Plantaganet numbers were engaged—the Club was clearly very busy this evening but then Dan had told her that six o'clock was the most popular time—and then the second number rang for an extraordinarily long time before anyone answered. A woman's voice answered: Jemima had a feeling that it was not the voice of the usual receptionist.

"A message for Lord Lackland," said Jemima briskly. "Miss Shore has to leave London this evening for meetings over a new programme series and will be in touch further about the Cavalier Celebration on her return." The voice, according to Planty custom, duly repeated the message back to her. To her dismay, Jemima recognised the voice: it was Alix Carstairs. There did not seem to be anything she could usefully add to her message to defuse it still further: she just wished that it had not been Alix who received it.

What The Butler Knew

Jemima Shore went to her off-the-record meeting with the Taynford shire constabulary the next day in a chastened mood. The constabulary was actually personified by one Detective Inspector Mike Spain, and the contact had been provided by Jemima's good friend Pompey of the Yard, a.k.a. Assistant Commissioner John Portsmouth, with whom she had shared a good many investigations—and a good many jars—in the past. The agreeable exterior of Mike Spain, who revealed himself as having played tennis "for the Met" in bygone days, was however not quite lost on her. Among other things, Mike Spain's tennis-playing abilities meant that he would surely have a special interest in the Cavalier Case, in view of Handsome Dan's participation. Besides, he was not only nice looking but also on first impression a nice fellow: it remained to be seen whether he believed in keeping his mouth shut, in which case Jemima might have to rethink his niceness.

They met in fact at the Lackland Arms just outside Taynford, a pub ; with a lawn sloping down to the River Tayn, where a couple of swans had the air of having been hired to advertise rural tranquillity as they, sketched their endless silent circles on the surface of the water. Fortunately for Jemima, Mike Spain, if anything, seemed to be yearning for the metropolis—and the Metropolitan Police—given his transfer to the country following his marriage to a Taynfordshire girl (photographs of "our two little Spaniards" duly produced). He certainly applied himself with generous enthusiasm to a problem pertaining to the Cavalier Case as set him by Jemima: whether under the circumstances of the butler's death, with the consequent Press attention, Megalith Television could legitimately proceed with a programme based on the forthcoming Cavalier Celebration.

Jemima wasn't quite sure, as a matter of fact, whether Mike Spain believed her cover, or whether he wasn't aware all along that she was intending to conduct her own investigation. He certainly gave Jemima a very favourable reception as, unlike Pompey, he quaffed his alcohol-free lager (Jemima drank Perrier). Mike Spain told her tor example about the funeral of the late Albert Edward Haygarth. And his will.

"We kept a discreet eye on all that. Wanted to see if any relations turned up out of the woodwork. In view of the will, that is."

"And did they.' What about the will, anyway?'"

"Left it all to her, didn't he, in trust for the girl." Mike Spain disclosed with an air of triumph. "Not to his family at all—if they existed. Wife dead. No children. No sign of a relative at the funeral. No sign of anyone very much except his Lordship of course, correctly dressed in a very dark suit, tennis racket left at home, and her little Ladyship. Plus her. Not the girl, of course, they wouldn't let her come, you can understand that."

Jemima felt completely baffled. "Her?" she repeated. "The girl?" 

Mrs. Babs Meredith. Her Ladyship number one, as you might say, except of course since he didn't inherit the title till long after the divorce, she isn't a Ladyship and never has been. Merely Mrs. Babs. I got the impression that's yet another grudge and she's a lady who would appear to have quite a few. In trust for Little Nell Meredith, the hesterical girl who says she saw some nasty ghosties all over the place. And what he left wasn't rubbish either. Would you believe it? What the butler saved. A substantial sum in a building society, plus a seaside boarding house somewhere in a southcoast town. That's worth plenty these days."

"Does she know? Little Nell Meredith, I mean, not the mother. Ohviously the mother knows. Nell was very friendly with Haygarth: she told me the other day that she used to spend a lot of time at Lackland virtually alone with the old Lord and the butler. He might have told her what he was going to do. And why."

"Her father says not only does Nell not know but she's not going to be told till she's eighteen. He's explicitly forbidden Mrs. Babs to tell her." Mike Spain paused. "Now how do I know that? Because our man at the funeral, nothing in uniform mind you, just another nice dark suit, we detectives know how to dress, our man witnessed the scene. He could hardly help it, he said, there they were coming away from the churchyard, lovely old place, yew trees, tombstones, the lot, and this Mrs. Babs rushes up to Handsome Dan, ignores the little wife, and starts screaming out things like: 'Haygarth knew!
He
knew!' Then the cousin, the local M.P., pompous fellow, dead boring speaker, but good in this kind of crisis, dragged her off."

Jemima thought she recognised the style. "What did he say in reply? Handsome Dan himself?"

"Very calm, apparently. Well, he must have match temperament, mustn't he, and I don't suppose a first wife yelling at you at a funeral is much worse than facing Roscoe Tanner's service." Mike Spain, the tennis buff, chuckled.

"All he said was: 'You are not to tell our daughter, Babs. I forbid you to do that. Is that understood? I forbid you. Until she's older and better able to handle these things.' Later we questioned him, part of our routine inquiries apart from the butler's death, safety precautions on the roof and all that sort of thing, and he was quite open about it. Didn't think Nell, already upset and hysterical about finding Hay-garth's body, a nervous teenager at the best of times, would be able to handle the information. So: no breaking the happy news till the age of eighteen."

This was a new twist. Jemima decided she ought now to probe Mike Spain further concerning Mrs. Babs Meredith—especially since she was due to meet the grudge-ridden lady herself the next day. She wondered whether Mike Spain had yet heard about the incident at the Plantaganet Club or at least read about it in the
Daily Exclusive
.