Crooked Wreath (7 page)

Claire could hardly bear it, but she helped him carry the poor, grotesque, stiff figure, set into a sitting position, infinitely pathetic, and to arrange it with some semblance of decency on the divan bed. “If only he didn't look so–well, rather
funny
, Philip.”

Philip opened his medical bag and taking out cotton wool and a bottle of ether, began to wipe away the dried froth and spittle from the set blue lips. Claire shuddered away from it, and he said, as though to distract her thoughts from his distressing task: “I wonder if he'd signed his blessed new will?”

She glanced at the desk. There was nothing on it now but a glass, empty except for a few drops of what looked like water; and a half-full bottle of ink. She pulled open the three drawers and closed them again. “It isn't anywhere here.”

The lodge consisted of two rooms and a tiny kitchen and bathroom. The smaller of the rooms was locked and bare. The little tiled hall, empty of furniture, led from the sitting-room to the front door, facing across the gateway to the opposite lodge where dwelt Brough and his wife. The kitchen was empty also, uncurtained and without crockery or utensils, and in the bathroom there was none of the usual clutter of bottles and pots, though a cake of soap and clean towels lay beside the basin. The place was used only for the one night in the year when Sir Richard slept there and, except for the sitting-room, was entirely bare. In there the windows were curtained, and there was an exquisite carpet to set off the portrait; a corner cupboard with a few pieces of china Serafita had loved; and the beautiful Sheraton desk, and chairs, and the divan bed. Claire opened doors and glanced into each of the rooms and into the little hall, its tiled floor thick with dust. “There's no will here.”

“How odd!” Philip looked up from the body for a moment, glancing vaguely about the room. “What on earth can he have done with it?” As though impelled by curiosity, he left the body for a moment, and went over and opened the drawers of the desk again. “No, it isn't there!” He crossed to the corner cupboard and felt foolishly in the china bowls and jugs, thrusting two fingers into the vases and feeling about. “There's nowhere it could be. How extraordinary, Claire!”

“He's not …? It's not …?”

Philip moved the body a little, on the bed. “No, it's nowhere here. Where on earth can it be?”

“Perhaps he saw Stephen coming down the drive last night away from the house, and gave it to him then.”

“No, because I walked to the gates with Stephen and saw him off.” He turned his attention back to the corpse; but evidently his mind was still upon the problem, for he burst out after a minute: “Perhaps he tore it up!”

“Then where are the bits?”

There was no fireplace in the little house, and no fire. “He put it down the huh-ha.”

“But why? Why not just tear it across and leave the bits? We all knew all about it–there was nothing to hide.” She stood beside the bed looking down at the huddled corpse, the eyes now mercifully closed by Philip's hand. “Oh,
God
, this is awful! Poor Grandfather dead, and already mystery and fuss about the will!”

“Well, there's not actually a mystery, yet, is there?” said Philip. “I mean, there's probably some perfectly simple explanation, which we haven't thought of, that's all. What's really dreadful, is the old boy dying all alone by himself like this; and I can't help a feeling that it's rather my fault.”

Claire moved away and stood at the French window, looking out. Against the sunshine, her hair gleamed in great golden waves, coiled close and smooth at the nape of her neck. The dead man had loved her least of his grandchildren; she was intelligent, much cleverer than Peta, and quite as pretty, though her beauty was more controlled than her cousin's wild rose grace; but Sir Richard had had no use for “braininess” in women, he had pooh-poohed her aspirations to intellectuality, and had ridden roughshod over many tender spots in her sensitive heart. She knew now that she had always resented it; that in her breast there was no real sorrow for his death or for the manner of it. Since this was so, she would not pretend to a grief she did not feel; and she said, ignoring Philip's last remark: “It's so terribly important that the will should not have been signed: to all of us, Philip, but especially to you and me.”

For if she and Philip had money, Philip could provide for Ellen and the baby; and she knew that he would never consent to leave his wife without support, without very adequate, comfortable support; he would feel that he must do everything in the world to make up to her for his own defection. “If we get ten or twelve thousand between us, Philip, we can let Ellen have most of that; after all, you can start up in practice again somewhere else.”

Philip looked uneasy. “Yes, well … Darling, we can't talk about that now. Never mind about the will; in any event it was only a draft. He wouldn't have signed it, and he'd have to have witnesses and things.”

“Well, then, where is it?”

“I daresay he gave it to Stephen, after all; perhaps Stephen turned back.”

Claire looked out of the window again. “He can't have; you can see that nobody's been up to the lodge since Brough did the paths last night.”

Philip, his work completed, pulled the quilt up over his grandfather's face. He stood for a moment looking down at the bed, and then, giving himself a little shake, came over to his cousin at the window. “No, so they haven't. How observant of you!”

Between the rose bushes, the path ran narrow and golden up to the window. “Brough sanded it just before nine o'clock last night,” said Claire. “I saw him when I went up to tend the baby. You can see my footsteps quite clearly, the ones I made this morning coming up the path with the tray and then turning round and running back again; and then, look, there are yours and mine running up the path, you after me, sort of swishing round the corner from the drive and keeping to that side of the path, dodging the tray.”

Philip shrugged. “Well, it's very odd. However, we must go up to the house and break the news.” He went slowly back to put his things into his bag–anything to postpone for a little while the task ahead … As “Dr. March” he had “broken the news” so often; to so many sorrowing families he had stood as a rock in the midst of a storm of his own creating, and each time he dreaded it anew. Reactions of people bereaved were painfully similar; the words of consolation and support came so glibly to one after a while, that each time he was ashamed to find what comfort they gave, each time he could not believe that the mourners would not catch him out, would not say to him: “That's what you said to Mrs. So-and-so and to Mrs. So-and-so before
her
, and to a hundred weeping women before them both. He could imagine Ellen standing mockingly by while Bella sobbed on his shoulder (“
Sheer
Doctor Kildare!”) and knew that she would have penetrated the defence of his conventional sorrow, would know just how real was his grief and how unreal; would know the depth of his sincerity more clearly than he knew it himself. He screwed up the soiled cotton wool in a twist of paper and opened his bag to replace the bottle of ether and stood, suddenly thunderstruck, staring down.

Ellen sat uneasily at the breakfast table, wondering what was happening down at the lodge, knowing that Bella would upbraid her for not saying that Philip had been called down there; but he had barked out a, “Don't say anything to Bella!” as he ran off out of their room, and she loyally obeyed. Bella sipped fretfully at her coffee. “Where on earth are Philip and Claire? It's too bad of them to be late. And imagine, Peta, im
ag
ine, Ellen, that Turtle not turning up till eight o'clock this morning! She's done nothing yet but just dust in here and lay the breakfast things …”

And suddenly Claire and Philip were there, standing in the doorway with white faces and shaking hands. Bella, gaping at them, cried, terrified: “Philip–what's the matter? Claire, what is it? What's happened?” And then: “It's your grandfather!”

The Turtle appeared at the door leading from the kitchen. Philip took Bella's arm. “Come into the drawing-room; we can talk there. I'll tell you there.” As he led her across the hall, he said: “Bella, did you take the box of coramine out of my bag? The one I showed you, the six ampoules, you know?”

Bella was bewildered and frightened. “The coramine? No, I didn't take it. Richard had some already, in his pocket.”

Philip looked back over her head at Peta and Ellen and Edward, following. “Did anyone take it? Did anyone go to my bag?” As they all disclaimed, Bella caught at his sleeve. “For God's sake, Philip, what's happened? Is it Richard? Is he ill? Has he had another attack?” At sight of his face she went, if possible, more white than she had been before, and cried, with a sort of desperate comprehension: “He's dead! You're trying to tell me that Richard's dead!”

“Yes,” said Philip, “he's dead. And all that coramine has disappeared from my bag; and a hypodermic and a phial of strychnine …” He stood, also ashy white, looking back at them in doubt and terror as though astounded by the implications of what was before them all, and suddenly blurted out: “I believe somebody's killed him,” and so pushed open the door and led the way abruptly into the drawing-room.

In the centre of the floor, where Claire had left it last night, was a pool of spilt water, a mass of broken glass, and a heap of dead flowers; and above Serafita's portrait, the wreath of roses was hanging askew again.

6

I
NSPECTOR
C
OCKRILL
was at the house before midday. Small, brown, and bright-eyed, a dusty little old sparrow arrayed in a startlingly clean white panama hat, he was soon, sparrowlike, at the centre of all interest and activity, hopping and darting this way and that, in search of crumbs of information. Stephen Garde, summoned by a tearful Peta craving sympathy and support, had insisted upon his being sent for. “Since you know Cockie personally, Lady March, why not get him over and ask his advice? If there's nothing wrong, you can be sure he won't make any fuss; on the other hand, if there is–well, you'll all be in a very bad position if you've made things more difficult for the police.” He had stood there, cold and quiet all of a sudden; such a little man with his childish, fair curly hair, to be steadily opposing the united will of people whom he knew and loved, who should surely, thought Peta resentfully, have been his first, his only, thought.… “I
am
thinking of you, it's absolutely for your sakes that I suggest it. You'll be putting yourselves hopelessly in the wrong if you just go ahead as though there was no question of Sir Richard's having–having died a normal death. Well, yes, Philip, we all hope it was normal, and I quite agree that the disappearance of this coramine and strychnine or whatever it was, doesn't necessarily mean that–that there was anything
wrong.
But with the draft of the will missing–because Briggs definitely handed it in to Sir Richard last night–well, the whole thing looks jolly unsatisfactory to say the least of it, and I simply can't advise you just to let things go.”

Peta gazed at his stern face, white and trembling. “Can't you forget for a moment that you're our lawyer, Stephen? Don't be so–so beastly
pomp
ous!”

“It's for your own sakes,” repeated Stephen, doggedly. “Anyway, I very much doubt that the doctor will give a certificate, so it's all bound to come out.” He had gone straight down to the lodge and there waited quietly for Cockrill to arrive, allowing nobody to come nearer than the rose beds and the sanded paths. “All right, if I'm fussing, I'm fussing: Cockrill will decide all that.” Apologetic but indomitable, he had fought them all off till the Inspector arrived. When Cockrill, having glanced over the lodge and alloted tasks to his various henchmen, summoned the family to the drawing-room at the house, Stephen asked, diffidently: “Can I come along and watch your third-degree methods, on behalf of Lady March?” and without reference to anyone else, perched himself, swinging his short legs, on a table outside the circle and tried to convince himself that Peta would ever speak to him again, and doubted it.

Edward sat in a big armchair, very still and frightened. Unconsciousness, fugues, automatism … “You mean I could sort of walk about and
do
things, Doctor, and not know what I was doing?” The doctor had said that that was possible and had added that he must be careful about not glancing upwards too quickly and so bringing on an attack. And only yesterday … He had tried these little experiments for many years, now. Unconsciousness was easy; from childhood he had been able to faint almost at will, until at last the thing had become outside his own control and he fainted when it was expected of him, whether he consciously wanted to or not. But had the experiments gone further than that? For after all–would he know? Wasn't that the whole point of a fugue, that you passed into and out of this condition and had no idea that anything had been wrong? Yesterday morning, for example, just before lunch–the wreath over the picture had been hanging crooked; it had caught his eye and he had glanced up at it, and it had reminded him of what the doctor had said. He had, accordingly, dropped the tray with the glasses and waited for unconsciousness to follow. Had it in fact followed? He thought definitely not. He had stood staring up at the chandelier, waiting for the family to come in and find him there and make a fuss over him; and a jolly long time they had been about it, too–he had got quite tired and no wonder he had fainted so easily afterwards. But last night? He had not gone into the drawing-room last night. He had come in from the terrace and gone to the ground-floor cloakroom and tried to make himself sick, because Peta had upset him dreadfully about the horse meat in the biscuits and he had felt he owed it to himself to be sick; but he hadn't been able to, and rather than go back and confess that he was less injured, that his nerves and stomach were less delicate than he had supposed, he had wandered out on to the front terrace and had sat there on the edge of the balustrade, fiddling with his camera, until someone should come and express anxiety about him. He remembered towards the end seeing Brough with a barrow and some tools passing across the drive towards the lodge, though because of a hedge in the way, he could not see exactly where he went with them. After about a quarter of an hour, during which the family remained most heartlessly undisturbed, he had gone into the drawing-room and fetched the portable radio and had taken it out to them, without reproach.