Death of a Mystery Writer (11 page)

“Yes, it's odd, isn't it?” said Eleanor brightly. “Witchcraft and royalty, they're always popular. Whereas some of the ones that Oliver really liked himself never caught on in the same way. I'm sure he thought a great deal before he chose those two for you and Bella, Terence. He was very fond of you both.”

Terence's mouth curled unpleasantly. “That's all very moving,” he said. “There's a lump in my throat. But the fact is, we get one each. Mark gets—what will it be?—about twenty-eight.”

“Thirty-two,” said Mark quietly.

“Thirty-two. Always in print, sold at every damn bookstall you go to.” He looked at his brother with a look of sheer malevolence: “I shall choke every time I see them.”

“Terence!” said his mother.

Terence brooded further through the sweet, and then, over coffee, said: “Did you know he'd left you everything?”

“No,” said Mark. “He never discussed the will with me.” Then, after a pause, and apparently impelled by a desire to be completely honest, he said: “I suspected it.”

“Why?” asked Terence. And then again, louder: “Why? He hated your guts.”

“Apparently,” said Mark, with some dignity. He sat for some moments in thought, as if trying to decide whether to say something. He seemed to decide not to, but then he turned to Terence with a brotherly smile, as if he was anxious to put relations
between them on a casually friendly footing, though the expression on his brother's face did not suggest he would succeed easily. “He may have hated my guts, but I think in some ways I understood him better than you or Bella. Of course, if he'd wanted to show how much he loathed me, he could very easily have cut me out of the will. Or he needn't have gone that far: he could have left you and Bella a lot more of the copyrights to his books.”

“Well, why didn't he?”

“Because he wanted to keep this place going, keep it intact from father to son—he wanted to establish us as the squires of the place. You know he had this image of himself as squire of Wycherley. He'd been playing the part for so long, off and on, that it had become part of him. He knew whoever inherited would need as much money as he could lay hands on to keep the place going, and since I would inherit the title, it had to be me. I had to have the rest as well. That's what I think you and Bella never realized.”

“Such a ridiculous title,” murmured Eleanor. “So ludicrous of Oliver to pay so much attention to it.” She looked dismayed at her youngest son, still sitting slouched over his coffee cup with the expression of a petulant gigolo. “I'm sure Mark is right, though. Your father wanted to keep everything together. It wasn't that he loved you and Bella any the less.”

“I don't care a fuck whether he loved me or not,” said Terence. “I expected more.”

“I don't think Father would ever have cut me off, however he felt about me,” said Mark, still admirably cool and collected. “Unless I had been involved in something really disgraceful, something criminal.” He gave his brother a long, meaningful look. “Perhaps in your heart of hearts you did realize that, Terence.”

For a second, Terence's mouth dropped open, like a schoolboy caught out in a lie. He squirmed in his chair, and seemed about to run from the room. To fill in the awkwardness, his mother said: “And, of course, now Mark is head of the family, he'll naturally feel an obligation toward you and Bella, if you should get into
difficulties or want to branch out in any way. I'm sure he'll always be only too glad to help you.”

“Of course,” said Mark. “Within reason.”

Later, walking in the garden, and watching Wiggens weeding the herbaceous border with a highly unsteady hand (he had been selling the inside story of the Wycherley Court murder to a succession of customers at the local, who were skeptical of his information but willing to pay for the privilege of being the first to hear it), Lady Fairleigh-Stubbs meditated on the new Mark; there was an almost frightening sudden maturity about him, a sense of responsibility, a calm capability that was both astonishing and welcome. There was also, it seemed to her, a cool calculation that lay quite outside her previous experience of Mark. She found it, she decided, disconcerting—almost frightening. By what quirk of genetics, she wondered, had the children of Oliver Fairleigh all turned out to be such cool customers?

 • • • 

Surtees was far from unwilling to talk. He was so willing, in fact, that he was reluctant to share Meredith with Mrs. Moxon, and took him into the room off the kitchen which had once served as the butler's pantry, and was now apparently his own private nook. It was an untidy, unprepossessing room, with odd heaps of newspapers and weekly grub-sheets scattered around, a portable television in the corner, and photographs sellotaped to the wall—some of relatives and old girlfriends, Meredith conjectured, and some soft-porn pinups, glossy, explicit, and anonymous.

“We'll be more cozy-like in here,” said Surtees ingratiatingly, ushering him in, and throwing a threatening look behind him to Mrs. Moxon, as a warning against listening in.

Meredith had not found his first impressions of Surtees very favorable. Certainly he was good-looking, in a fleshy, heavy sort of a way. His profile was classical without being in the least refined, his body capable, even powerful. The man, Meredith thought, for a grievous bodily harm charge, rather than a poisoner. There was too about him an air of self-satisfaction and self-seeking, as if he would do almost anything in the moral calendar
if the price was right—and shop his customer to the authorities afterward, if it suited his book. If he had been a policeman, he would probably have been in the vice squad.

“I suppose you want to hear about last night?” asked Surtees. “All the details, and what everybody did, eh?”

“That first of all,” said Meredith.

“Well, of course, I didn't see it all, because I was in and out the whole time. But I'll tell you what I did see.”

Meredith found Surtees's narration absorbing. As far as reporting what he saw went, Surtees seemed an excellent witness. There were, Meredith thought, three salient points in his description of the previous night's birthday dinner. The first was that Oliver Fairleigh had been in an extremely, in fact an incredibly, genial mood all evening, that he had paid particular attention to Mrs. Woodstock—“Normally she was the sort he kicked as he passed, and then went back to do it again,” said Surtees—and that he had not allowed his mood to be upset by any of the things that as a rule could unfailingly have been relied on to produce thunder from the deep.

“Why do you think that was?” asked Meredith.

“Search me. According to Mrs. Moxon, he'd promised Bella to be nice as pie to everyone the whole day. She may be right, but she gets things arse-up fifty percent of the time, silly old moo.” He brought out the shopworn phrase as if it were a new coining of his own, smiled a greasy smile, and then drew his hand across his mouth in a man-among-men gesture.

The second salient point was the behavior of Bella Fairleigh. Surtees was in no doubt whatsoever that she had been making a dead set at Ben Woodstock from the moment he arrived.

“Can you be quite sure of that? After all, beyond talking, they can't have
done
very much at the dinner table.”

“I know the signs, believe you me, Inspector. There are ways of talking, and ways of listening too. That dreary little bundle his wife saw it too, and has probably made the house too hot to hold him today. I tell you, there's no mistaking things with our Bella: if she has her eyes on someone, they show the scorch marks pretty
fast. Not that I can see what she sees in him. Straggly bit of nothing, I'd have said.” And John Surtees looked down at the fleshy biceps straining against his rolled-up shirt and made no attempt to hide his complacency.

“When you say you know the signs,” said Meredith, himself now putting on his most deceptive air of man-to-man confidentiality, like two Welshmen Sunday-drinking, “do you mean she's tried out her techniques on you, eh?”

Surtees smiled his oily smile. “Come off it, Inspector,” he said. “I'm not the sort to kiss and tell.”

Though that, Inspector Meredith thought, is precisely the sort that you are.

The third point of interest was the condition and behavior of Mark Fairleigh. Meredith had already learned that he had been drunk; now he heard that he had abused his father at table. It was, Surtees asserted, very much Mark's normal way of behaving whenever he came home, though on this occasion his father had restrained himself from replying in kind.

“Restrained himself,” said Surtees, “with difficulty. No doubt saving himself up for later.”

“Are you quite sure,” asked Meredith, “that Mark Fairleigh was drunk? And not just pretending?”

“Sure as I'm sitting here, I know the signs,” said Surtees, once again using the phrase that seemed to sum up his pride in his worldly knowledge.

“He seems a sober enough type today.”

“Shock,” said Surtees. “It takes some people that way. It won't last, I'll tell you that.” A smirk of anticipation spread over his face: “Got another shock coming to him, I shouldn't wonder, that'll knock him straight back off the wagon, you see if it doesn't!”

“What's that?”

“The will. He won't be getting much out of his old dad, that's for sure. No one would blame him either, the things that boy has done over the years.”

“What sort of things?”

“Oh, debts, scrapes with the police, drunk and disorderly in every pub in the area practically. Only last weekend he was broadcasting to all and sundry out at the Prince Albert, Hadley way, that his father ought to be shot.”

“Do you think his father heard about it?”

“He heard.”

“But of course they've probably learned what's in the will already.”

“Course they haven't. They have to have the reading after the funeral, don't they? All sit around the table and pretend they don't care one way or the other, then the lawyer reads it out and an almighty row blows up. That's what'll happen. Seen it lots of times on the telly. We do things right in this house.”

Meredith was rather pleased to find that he was right to limit Surtees's reliability to what he had seen with his own eyes. Outside it he seemed to conform to the usual mixture of credulity and salacious speculation. Meredith merely said: “If he hasn't left it to Mark, who do you think he will have left it to?”

“Oh, stands to reason, the lot to Bella. Something nice to little Mr. Snake-in-the-Grass Terence, a tiepin or a pair of old socks to Mr. Mark, and the rest to Bella. I bet little Terry has a shrewd idea that's how it will go too. He's been like a bear with a sore head all through lunch.”

“Well,” said Meredith, once more with his secret-beer-drinkers air, “I suppose you'd know. He confided in you, didn't he?”

“Old Lord Almighty? Confide in me? Not him. All get and no give, as far as information was concerned. No, as I say, it stands to reason: she was the apple of his eye. Made sure she was too. ‘Daddy this' and ‘Daddy that' the whole time.”

“She sucked up to him, did she?”

“Not exactly that. Not in any obvious way, anyway. She just kept him interested, kept him watching her: it was more like a boyfriend she wanted to keep on the boil if you ask me. But she had him in the palm of her hand, where the others bored him stiff.”

“You said he liked getting information. What did you mean? Information about Mark, for instance?”

“Oh, yes, him and anyone else. He liked to know things. He was a conner-sewer of human nature, you might say. But particularly Mr. Mark—yes, he liked to know what he was up to.”

“Did you give him information yourself?”

“If I got any. Why not? I don't owe that little sot any loyalty that I know of. I'd be out on my ear if he had anything to do with it—not that he will.” Surtees's expression was unpleasantly anticipatory, as if he foresaw for himself a special position in a Wycherley Court owned and run by Bella Fairleigh.

“What did you do last night after you served dinner? Was it you or Sir Oliver opened the cupboard with the liqueurs in?”

“Me. Why? Was it the liqueurs did for him?”

“Possibly.”

“Thought so, when I saw his glass on the floor. So someone got at the lakka, did they? Yes, it was me. After I'd served the sweets, I came down to the kitchen and hurried up old mother Moxon with the coffee. Then I took it up to the study, and opened the drinks cupboard at the same time.”

“Did you have a key to it as well?”

“Not on your life. See Sir Oliver trusting anyone else with one. No, he gave me his just before dinner, as per usual.”

“How long was the cupboard open before they came into the study from dinner?”

Surtees shrugged his heavy shoulders. “Matter of two or three minutes, no more than that. I went into the dining room after I'd put the coffee in the study. Mr. Mark was having his little outburst about how he would rather die than be an author. Silly little shit, what does he know? Anyway, that put the damper on things, so pretty soon they went over to the study—Miss Bella and Terence dragging Mark.”

“So none of the family could have got at the lakka between your opening the cupboard and the whole party going across to the study for coffee?”

“Not a chance, mate. They were all at the table the whole time.”

“Who got to the study first—was anyone ahead of the others?”

“Sir Oliver went in first, with Mrs. Woodstock, but he wasn't far ahead of the others.”

“Do you think any of the family could have had a duplicate key to the cupboard?”

Surtees thought hard. “No, I don't. The locks on the drinks cupboards both in the study and the lounge were changed a couple of years ago, when little Lord Fauntleroy was going through a bad period—correction, when little Lord Fauntleroy was going through a
particularly
bad period, because he hasn't had a good one since he was nineteen or twenty, so far as I've heard. Anyway, Sir Oliver had the locks changed, making it a good excuse for not even giving me one of my own, and he never let those keys out of his sight, except now and again to give them to me on nights when there were guests.”