Design for Murder (6 page)

“But the success of the vineyard would still have been to
his advantage,” Neil persisted, “I mean, when he eventually
took over the estate himself.”

“Yes, but that might not have been for ages. Sir Robert is only about sixty. I know he’s got a bad heart, but he’s not the
sort of man to give in to ill-health.”

“One would rather expect,” said Neil, slowly and thought
fully, “that in a landed family like this, the son would be in
volved in the estate’s management. Wasn’t Oliver Medway in
terested?”

“Oliver
was
brought in for a time after he finished at uni
versity some years ago, but I gather that he and his father
were constantly at loggerheads.”

“So what happened?”

“Sir Robert arranged for him to join his stockbroker’s firm in London. But that didn’t work out either, and Oliver drifted
from one job to another, coming home in between times.
Meanwhile, Sir Robert’s second wife died, and he married for
the third tune.”

“That’s the present Lady Medway?”

“Yes. She wanted changes made at the Hall, and Oliver
came up with some brilliant ideas. Everyone realised suddenly
that he’d got a real flair for interior design. So that was how the studio got started.”

Neil got up from the desk and strolled to the window,
standing there with his fingertips resting on the sill, staring
out.

“There’s another son, isn’t there?”

“A stepson, actually,” I said, “but Sebastian has also been legally adopted. You see, he was only about three years old when his mother became Sir Robert’s second wife. Sebastian is much younger than Oliver, of course. He’s still up at Oxford.”

“I presume that he will inherit now, when the time comes?”

“I imagine so.”

“What’s he like? I’ve not met him yet.”

I shrugged. “I’ve only met Sebastian a couple of times, so I
don’t really know him. But he struck me as being very
different from Oliver.”

Neil turned round to face me. “In what way?”

I pondered. I hadn’t liked Sebastian Medway one bit. He
was reported to be very clever, and good at just about everything he tried. A shade too good to be true, it seemed to me, and I thought of him as a sanctimonious young prig. Or was I just accepting Oliver’s assessment of his stepbrother?

“He’s
...
a more serious type,” I said warily.

“More dependable?”

I shrugged. “If you like.”

“Do you think,” said Neil, “that all along it might have
been Sir Robert’s intention to leave control of the estate to this adopted son, in view of the fact that he thought Oliver
was incapable of running it properly?”

I shook my head. “I can’t believe that.”

“Why not? There’s no entail involved, is there?”

“No, but the Haslop Hall estate has passed from father to son for at least five generations, so it would be unthinkable
for him to will it away from Oliver. That was always Oliver’s
trump card. He knew that he would triumph in the end.” I sighed. “Only of course he hasn’t now. Oliver and his father
were quite fond of each other in a curious sort of way.”

Neil glanced at his wristwatch. “I seem to remember that they do a good lunch at the Trout Inn. Care to join me?”

I groped for an excuse. “I haven’t finished this list you
asked me for.”

“That can wait till this afternoon. You’ve got to eat.” When I still hesitated, he said, “Come on, Tracy, I don’t bite.”

Me lunching with the detective inspector from Gilchester gave a surprise to the regulars at the Trout. It was obvious that they were all busy speculating about us. Neil grinned,
understanding my discomfort.

“You get used to it, Tracy, in this job of mine.” “I suppose you do.”

“Tell me about
your
job. How do you come to be in that
line? You always were artistic, I know.”

“I have my aunt to thank for giving me a push in the right direction,” I said. “She was a sculptor, you remember.”

Neil grinned. “She was a formidable lady. Once a crowd of us called round for you to go swimming, and while you were getting ready she showed us her workshop. I was terribly
impressed, but scared to open my mouth in case I revealed
my abysmal ignorance of things artistic. I had a feeling that
she didn’t suffer fools gladly.”

“Aunt Verity was an absolute darling, really,” I said. “It
must have been a dreadful bind for her, when my parents
were killed and she found herself landed with her little niece.
But there was no one else to do it—my mother was an only child. Aunt Verity responded nobly, if somewhat eccen
trically. Conventions meant nothing to her, she just went her own way and other people had to like it or lump it.”

The waitress brought the menu. But the choice at the Trout
Inn was obvious ... trout from the river that bordered its
garden. Gently fried in butter,
a la meuniere.

“So,” prompted Neil when she’d gone off with our order,
“your aunt encouraged you.”

“She packed me off to art school in London. And then she urged me to find a job there—even though, as I realised later,
her health was failing and she needed me at home. Aunt
Verity was a self-sacrificing person, though never in an osten
tatious way. She didn’t like being thanked.”

“What brought you back eventually?”

“She was dying,” I said simply. “We both knew there was
no hope, even though it wasn’t diagnosed as leukaemia imme
diately. She was furious with me, actually. She called it
recklessly squandering my career. But I felt I owed it to her.”

Neil stroked one eyebrow in what seemed to be a charac
teristic gesture.

“So you stayed and cared for your aunt. But after her death, you didn’t want to return to London?”

“I planned to, as a matter of fact. The studio I’d worked for was willing to have me back. But then Sir Robert ap
proached me with the suggestion that I join Oliver in a
design business right here in Steeple Haslop.”

Neil looked surprised. “It was
Sir Robert
who approached
you?”

“Yes. The idea was first put into his head by Ralph Ebborn
—you know, his agent. Having seen Oliver’s flare for interior design, Sir Robert thought that at last this was something he
might make a go of. But it was obvious that Oliver would
need an assistant with the necessary training.”

“And Ralph Ebborn, how does he tie in with you?”

“His wife had been a friend of my aunt’s for years. Grace
Ebborn was one of the Murchisons—do you know them?”

“Murchison?” Neil creased his forehead. “The name’s fa
miliar, but...”

“They’re an old local family with a pedigree as long as your arm. Not much money these days, but highly respected. After
Grace’s parents died she was left with just about enough to
live on without getting a job, and she involved herself in all
kinds of volunteer work ... you know, raising money for
charity, and being on committees. She must have been nearly forty, and seemed all set for spinsterhood, when to everyone’s
surprise she married Ralph Ebborn, who’d come to Steeple
Haslop just a few months before to be Sir Robert’s agent. Ac
tually,” I corrected, “Ralph came as the
assistant
agent, but his predecessor died of a coronary and Ralph was asked to
take over.”

“So Ebborn is not a local man? I’d somehow imagined that
he was.”

“Ralph has been here for fifteen years now,” I explained. “I
happen to know that precisely because I was a bridesmaid at
their wedding, and I was eleven at the time. Goodness
knows why I was asked, except that I was available. Grace wanted a proper wedding, with lots of confetti and four little bridesmaids in pink, and Murchison relatives were a bit thin on the ground.”

“A very pretty little bridesmaid you must have made, too,”
grinned Neil, and let his eyes linger on me.

Our trout arrived, smelling delicious, garnished with tiny
buttered new potatoes. My one thin slice of toast for break
fast seemed like a forgotten memory. The waitress asked if we’d like a window open, and from outside, where the lawn
had just been cut, drifted the warm scent of new-mown grass.
Murder seemed a thousand miles away.

Dissecting his trout, Neil reminded me, “You were explain
ing how Ebborn suggested you should be offered a job with
Oliver Medway.”

“Oh yes. Well, it was just at the time that Aunt Verity died.
She’d left me Honeysuckle Cottage, but I simply didn’t see how I could keep it because I had to get back to London to
pick up my career again. Then the idea struck the Ebborns
that I might be just the person Sir Robert was looking for as
Oliver’s assistant. I’ll always be grateful to them. It meant
that I was able to stay on at Honeysuckle Cottage after all.
And besides, I welcomed the challenge the job presented.”

“But now,” Neil went on, picking a small bone from his
fork, “everything has collapsed for you. What will you do, Tracy?”

“I don’t know,” I said gloomily. “I shall have to stay on for
a while to clear things up, and then ... heaven only knows.
I haven’t been able to think much about the future yet.”

Neil speared a potato. “Will you go back to London?”

“I expect so.”

“And sell the cottage?”

“I hate the thought of it,” I said with a sigh.

Neil gave me an ego-boosting smile. “Perhaps you’ll find
some way of staying on, Tracy. I certainly hope so.”

At least, I told myself, there was something to weigh
against the awfulness of the past twenty-four hours. All of a
sudden two very personable men both seemed anxious for me
to stick around.

So why wasn’t I feeling more cheerful?

We had driven to the Trout Inn in Neil’s car, and he took it
for granted that he’d deliver me back to the Coach House.
But I refused, making the glorious afternoon my excuse.

“I need a breath of air, and I shall enjoy the walk.”

“Sure?”

“Quite sure.” I’d had enough of him, suddenly—he and his probing policeman’s questions. “Thanks for the lunch.”

He drove off in the Gilchester direction, while I turned
back across the ancient stone bridge that spanned the river,
pausing a moment to gaze down at the water glinting in the
sunlight, at the pebbles and trailing fronds of greenery, the dark shapes of lurking trout.

As I walked on along the village street, I was conscious of the sleepy hush of a summer afternoon. Bees droned in a lav
ender hedge, a marmalade cat sat dozing on a mossy wall,
and old Mr. Pembury, nearly ninety, was nodding content
edly in a basket chair on the porch of his cottage.

Going past the What-Not Shop, I glanced in through the
bottle-glass bow window and caught sight of the owner,
Ursula Kemp. She spotted me, too, and beckoned.

“Hallo, Tracy,” she greeted me above the jangle of the doorbell. The look on her face was ambiguous, uncertain, as
if she felt a smile would be out of place in the circumstances.
“Isn’t it dreadful about Oliver? Is there any further news—I mean, about who did it?”

“Not that I know of.”

“I just thought... since you had lunch with that detective
inspector
...”

The speed of light was as nothing compared with the Stee
ple Haslop telegraph.

“He’d hardly tell
me
anything, Ursula. I’m still high on his list of suspects,”

“Oh, surely not? What possible reason could the police have for suspecting you?”

She seemed genuinely shocked and upset on my behalf.
Ursula was a comparative newcomer to Steeple Haslop. Two
years ago, recently widowed, she had chanced upon the vil
lage during a holiday in the Cotswolds. She had fallen in love
with the place and decided to settle. Opinions were mixed
about the likelihood of her making a success of the little shop she had opened, but she seemed to manage. Probably she had some kind of widow’s pension, too. Her stock was a shrewd mixture of junk souvenirs for the tourists who passed through
the village during the summer months, and some really rather
nice pieces. On occasion Oliver and I had made the odd
purchase from her.

Well into her forties, Ursula was still an attractive woman. She had good skin and clear brown eyes, and she wore her
silver-streaked hair scooped into a loose coil. Invariably she
gave the impression of twin-set neatness, which was possibly intended to reassure customers only too used to being ripped-
off in such shops. I would have thought that Ursula had
enough going for her to find another husband, but she showed
no sign of wanting to. The village speculated about her. Had
her first marriage been so good she wanted to preserve the
memory intact? Or was it a case of once bitten?

“I think the police suspect every person who might conceivably have done it until they are proved innocent,” I told her. “I suppose that’s routine procedure.”

“So that’s why they were in here this morning asking questions.”