Design for Murder (8 page)

Walking back to the studio I tried to feel elated, but
couldn’t. Was it because I was gaining from Oliver’s death?
Or because I lacked sufficient confidence in my own ability? I had a strong feeling that Sir Robert had made his proposition
purely from a sense of obligation. And Sebastian clearly op
posed the whole idea.

Grace must have been watching for me. Before I had opened
the front gate of The Larches she was out of the house and
hastening to greet me down the flower-flanked path. After a
hug, she held me back at arms’ length to study my face.

“Tracy, you poor girl. How dreadful it must have been for
you. I was wondering whether to ring you last evening, but decided that you’d probably had quite enough talking for one
day. Come along in, Ralph’s seeing to drinks. I expect you
could do with one.”

She ushered me up the single step and beneath the pretty
fanlight into the long, narrow hall which had been made to
appear spacious by the use of gleaming white paintwork and
a couple of large mirrors. Ralph appeared in the doorway of
the sitting room, a bottle in his hand.

“Hallo, Tracy. Dry sherry okay for you?”

“Thanks.”

He had changed into a dark suit, which in Grace’s book
would be required evening wear at home, even for just the
two of them. The comments people often passed about Grace
Ebborn behind her back were of the sort that were outwardly kind but carried a mild sting in the tail.
She means well. She
likes things to be just so. Her heart’s in the right place.
For
myself, I found Grace’s little faults very forgivable. She was
just a shade too house-proud, a bit over-fastidious, and rather
strait-laced. If she’d had children, this doubtless would all have been knocked out of her, but she had married Ralph a
bit too late in the day for that.

Self- discipline was an important ingredient in Grace’s character. Now fifty, she had taken care to keep herself in good shape. Without any pretensions to beauty she always man
aged to look nice (a word that was frequently on her lips).
This evening she had on a moire silk dress in a soft shade of
dark green, with her pearls. Her hair, which she wore in a
slightly old-fashioned style, was newly set.

We sat together on the velvet sofa and Ralph handed us
our drinks, remaining standing himself before the white-mar
ble fireplace which was filled now with one of Grace’s elabo
rate arrangements of flowers and ferns.

“Well girls, cheers.”

“I had a surprise today,” I said, and told them about Sir
Robert’s offer.

Grace beamed. “Oh, that is nice. I’m so glad for you,
Tracy. I don’t mind admitting that I feel somewhat relieved, too, because it’s been rather on our minds — hasn’t it, Ralph
dear? — that we pushed you into taking that job with Oliver.”

“And it’s good to know,” he added, “that Tracy won’t be
packing her bags and leaving us.”

He took out his cigar case, and received a quick frown
from his wife. “Really, Ralph, not just before dinner. Now, Tracy dear, we haven’t asked you here this evening out of
morbid curiosity. So if you want to give your mind a rest
from the dreadful business of Oliver’s death, we’ll try to talk
about other things.”

I smiled faintly. Yes, Grace always meant well. Yet she
herself seemed to accept the impossibility of what she
suggested, for her next remark was, “Ralph tells me that Sir Robert is taking it very badly.”

“Yes,” I agreed. “It can’t have done anything to help his heart condition.”

Grace reached for her glass and took a tiny sip. “The poor
man, he needs all the support he can get at such a time, but
I’m sure that he’s getting precious little from that wife of his.”

“It must have been a shock for her, too,” I murmured.

“No doubt it was. But it’s not the same thing at all, is it? I
mean, Oliver wasn’t
her
son. Anyway, I doubt if the present
Lady Medway possesses much in the way of nice feelings. She
has always struck me as being very cold. She makes us feel
that it’s a real condescension on her part when we’re invited
to dine at the Hall—which really is the limit when one
remembers that she was only an actress, and not a very good one at that, when Sir Robert met her.”

“At least,” I said lightly, “you
get
invited to dine at the
Hall. That’s more than I’ve ever been.”

“Oh, but she
has
to ask us, Tracy. It’s a matter of custom
for the agent and his wife to be on dining terms with the fam
ily. Quite apart from formal dinner parties, Ralph and I are
invited alone three times a year. In the previous Lady Med
way’s day, those evenings used to be a real pleasure for us.
But now the atmosphere is far from agreeable.”

I caught Ralph’s fond smile of amusement. “It’s all in your
imagination, my dear. I’ve never sensed any particular atmosphere.”

“But then you’re a man,” she said impatiently, “so you
wouldn’t be aware of nuances. Men are so unobservant.”

“Thank the Lord for that,” he chuckled. “It makes life a lot
less complicated.”

Grace plucked an invisible hair from the skirt of her dress.

“At all events, it was most fortunate that Sebastian was
right there on the spot for Sir Robert to turn to when ...
when it happened. What a blessing that he’d come from Oxford by then.”

“Oh, but Sebastian wasn’t already at home,” I said. “From
what Sir Robert said this morning, they must have sent for him.”

Grace drew her eyebrows together in surprise. “Are you
sure, Tracy? I thought
...”

“I,” said Ralph, “am quite sure. Because I was the one who
phoned for him to come home. I had quite a job contacting
him, too. I tried his college rooms at Oxford, and they gave
me another number to try, where there was some kind of
legal conference going on. But Sebastian hadn’t turned up for
it, and no one knew where he was. So I had to leave a mes
sage for him to phone me, and I was kept hanging about in the estate office till nearly four o’clock before he finally came
through.”

“How strange,” said Grace.

“Why strange?” demanded Ralph. “I hardly felt that I
could go out of the office and leave the job of informing
Sebastian that his stepbrother had been murdered to one of the clerks.”

“No, that wasn’t what I meant.” Grace gave her husband
an uncertain glance. “Sebastian was here in this district yes
terday morning. That’s why I thought he must be back
home.”

Ralph sank down in an armchair facing us and leaned for
ward. His face was tense.

“What makes you say that Sebastian was in this district?”

“Because I saw him.”

“You saw him!” we exclaimed together, and Ralph added,
“Impossible.”

“But I did. You remember that yesterday morning I drove
over to Chipping Nash to make arrangements about having
the art exhibition in the library there?”

“What’s that got to do with it?”

“I’m telling you, Ralph. When I was returning home I took the back lanes through Nashwick Woods to be quicker, be
cause I was a bit late for preparing our lunch, and even
though it was only going to be ham and tongue and a tossed
salad ...”

“Get on with it,” said Ralph, showing a rare impatience with Grace’s love for minutiae.

“Well, I pulled up at the crossroads near Friar’s Hollow for another car to go by, and I noticed that the driver was Sebas
tian Medway. There was someone with him, but I didn’t
recognise her. He was driving rather fast, considering the nar
rowness of the lane.”

“What time was this, Grace?” Ralph asked, frowning.

“Just before twelve-thirty. About twenty-five past.”

“What kind of car was it?”

Grace wrinkled her brow. “You know I’m hopeless when it
comes to cars,” she protested. “It was black ... quite big.
One of those that have their sidelights on all the time.”

“A Volvo!” he exclaimed. “Well, there you are then. Sebas
tian’s car at the moment is a Renault. Light blue. So it can’t
have been him.”

“It was,” she insisted unhappily.

Ralph put down his sherry glass very slowly, as if he was
afraid he might spill the wine. He stared between his knees at the dove-grey carpet.

“Which way was the Volvo travelling, Grace?”

“Towards the bridge.”

Ralph took in a ragged breath. I knew what he was think
ing, and Grace must have done by now, too. From the
Volvo’s direction it could have travelled by way of a little
used track that skirted the rear of the Coach House and
emerged from the park by a farm-style gate not far from the
Friar’s Hollow crossroads.
Could
have done. There were
other possibilities, of course, in such a tangle of small lanes.
But anyway, what was Sebastian Medway doing at that spot at that time, when he was supposed to have been in Oxford?
If it really was Sebastian ...

But I could see from Grace’s expression that her conviction
was unshaken. And Ralph believed her.

“My God,” he said, after a long moment.

“What are we going to do?” I asked.

“Do?” He gave me a blank stare, and I went on, “Well, we can’t keep this to ourselves, can we? I mean, it may be vital
information. The police ought to know.”

Ralph passed a hand slowly across his face. “Let me think,
Tracy. Hang on a bit.”

After the French clock on the mantel had ticked almost a
full minute, Ralph said slowly, “Suppose I have a word with Sebastian about this?”

“What good would that do?” I objected.

“He ought to be given a chance to explain. And if he had a perfectly good reason for being in these parts, instead of at
Oxford ... well, that’ll be that. We’ll have avoided dragging
the police in and causing a lot of unnecessary unpleasantness for the family.”

“But suppose Sebastian denies being here?” I asked.

“In that case, we’ll have to think again.”

I hesitated, then said against my better judgment, “Well, all
right.”

“So you’ll leave things in my hands?”

I nodded, consoling myself with the thought that after all,
it was much more the Ebborns’ concern than mine since
Grace was the one who had claimed to have seen Sebastian in
the district. All the same, I wondered uneasily what Neil
would have to say, if he knew that I had agreed to suppress
an important piece of information like this.

Grace and Ralph both made an effort to get back to an
easy atmosphere, and I tried my best to respond. Dinner was
one of Grace’s superb Boeuf Bourguignonnes. But none of us did justice to the excellent food, and too often I found myself
turning to the beaujolais with which Ralph kept my glass
topped up.

The meal was punctuated by sudden awkward little si
lences, and I knew that they both shared my own sombre
thoughts. Sebastian had been seen in the vicinity of Haslop
Hall within minutes of his stepbrother’s murder. Sebastian
Medway, adopted son of Sir Robert and now his
only
son.
The new heir to the Medway fortune.

* * * *

The church clock was stirring into creaky life for nine
o’clock as I slammed the door of Honeysuckle Cottage. I was
walking to my garage at the side when I heard the front gate
click, and glanced round to see that it was Neil.

“Glad I caught you,” he called.

“Only just. I’m on my way to work.”

He grinned ruefully. “To tell you the truth, I was hoping to
cadge a cup of coffee. I’ve been on the go since seven this
morning, but I didn’t much fancy my chance of being served
anything drinkable at that scruffy cafe on the Gilchester
road.”

I wasn’t feeling friendly after his treachery in questioning
Ursula about my movements. But I shrugged and turned
back.

“Oh, all right. There’s nothing so urgent it can’t wait for
half an hour. What brings you over this way so early?”

“I have an appointment,” he said, and left it at that.

He followed me inside to the kitchen. I filled the electric
kettle and switched on, set out two mugs, and reached for the
instant coffee jar. On second thoughts I put it back on the
shelf and took down the tin of ground coffee and a filter
paper. If Neil rated my coffee, it might as well be good.

He perched himself on the edge of the table and glanced
round appreciatively. With the sun streaming in between the
orange-check curtains, giving life to the natural pine fitments
and rush-matted floor, I wasn’t ashamed of my kitchen.

“This is really nice,” he commented. “But then, considering
your profession, I suppose it would be.”