Grave Mistake (12 page)

“And he was a
policeman
, Mrs. Jim.?”

“That’s what he said.”

“Do you mean there was any doubt about it?”

“Not to say doubt. It’s on his card.”

“Well — what?”

Cornered, Mrs. Jim said Alleyn had seemed a bit on the posh side for it. “More after the style of one of your friends, like,” she offered and added that he had a nice way with him.

Prunella got her once more to rehearse the items of the visit, which she did with accuracy.

“So he asked about—?” Prunella cast her eyes and jerked her head in the direction, vaguely, of that part of the house generally frequented by Claude Carter.

“That’s right,” Mrs. Jim conceded. She and Prunella understood each other pretty well on the subject of Claude.

“But it was only to remark he’d noticed him dodging up and down in the rose-garden. He went out, after, to the stables. The gentleman did.”

“To find Bruce?”

“That’s right. Mr. Claude too, I reckon.”

“Oh?”

“Mr. Claude come in after the gentleman had gone and went into the dining-room.”

This, Prunella recognized, was an euphemism for “helped himself to a drink.”

“Where is he now?” she asked.

Mrs. Jim said she’d no idea. They’d come to an arrangement about his meals, it emerged. She prepared a hot luncheon for one o’clock and laid the table in the small morning-room. She then beat an enormous gong and left for home. When she returned to Quintern in two days’ time she would find the
disjecta membra
of this meal, together with those of any subsequent snacks, unpleasantly congealed upon the table.

“How difficult everything is,” Prunella muttered. “Thank you, Mrs. Jim. I’m going to Mardling for lunch. We’re making plans about Quintern: you know, arranging for Mr. Gideon’s father to have his own quarters with us. He’s selling Mardling, I think. After all that he’d done to it! Imagine! And keeping the house in London for his headquarters.”

“Is that right, Miss?” said Mrs. Jim and Prunella knew by the wooden tone she employed that she was deeply stimulated. “We’ll be hearing wedding-bells one of these days, then?” she speculated.

“Well — not yet, of course.”

“No,” Mrs. Jim agreed. “That wouldn’t be the thing. Not just yet.”

“I’d really rather not having a ‘
wedding
,’ Mrs. Jim. I’d rather be just married early in the morning in Upper Quintern with hardly anyone there. But he — Gideon — wants it the other way so I suppose my aunt — Auntie Boo—” she whispered her way into inaudibility and her eyes filled with tears. She looked helplessly at Mrs. Jim and thought how much she liked her. For the first time since her mother died it occurred to Prunella that, apart, of course, from Gideon, she was very much alone in the world. She had never been deeply involved with her mother and had indeed found her deviousness and vanities irritating when not positively comical and even that degree of tolerance had been shaken by the preposterous terms of this wretched Will. And yet now, abruptly, when she realized that Sybil was not and never would be there to be laughed at or argued with: that where she had been there was — nothing, a flood of desolation poured over Prunella and she broke down and cried with her face in Mrs. Jim’s cardigan, which smelt of floor polish.

Mrs. Jim said: “Never mind, then. It’s been a right shock and all. We know that.”

“I’m so sorry,” Prunella sobbed. I’m awfully sorry.”

“You have your cry out, then.”

This invitation had the opposite result to what had been intended. Prunella blew her nose and pulled herself together. She returned shakily to her wedding arrangements. “Somebody will have to give me away,” she said.

“As long as it’s not that Mr. Claude,” said Mrs. Jim loudly.

“God forbid. I wondered — I don’t know — can one be given away by a woman? I could ask the Vicar.”

“Was you thinking of Miss Verity?”

“She
is
my godmother. Yes, I was.”

“Couldn’t do better,” said Mrs. Jim.

“I must be off,” said Prunella, who did not want to run into Claude. “You don’t happen to know where those old plans of Quintern are? Mr. Markos wants to have a look at them. They’re in a sort of portfolio thing.”

“Library. Cupboard near the door. Bottom shelf.”

“How clever of you, Mrs. Jim.”

“Your mother had them out to show Bruce. Before she went to that place. She left them out and
he
”—the movement of the head they both used to indicate Claude—“was handling them and leaving them all over the place so I put them away.”

“Good for you. Mrs. Jim — tell me. Does he — well — does he sort of peer and prowl? Do you know what I mean? Sort of?”

“Not my place to comment,” said Mrs. Jim, “but as you’ve brought it up: yes, he do. I can tell by the way things have been interfered with — shifted like.”

“Oh dear.”

“Yes. Specially them plans. He seemed to fancy them, particular. I seen him looking at that one of the grounds through the magnifying glass in the study. He’s a proper nosey parker if you ask me and don’t mind my mentioning it,” said Mrs. Jim rapidly. She brought herself up with a jerk. “Will I fetch them then? Put out your washing,” said Mrs. Jim as an afterthought.

“Bless you. I’ll just collect some things from my room.”

Prunella ran up a lovely flight of stairs and across a first floor landing to her bedroom: a muslin and primrose affair with long windows opening over terraces, rose-gardens and uncluttered lawns that declined to a ha-ha, meadows, hay-fields, spinnies and the tower of St. Crispin’s-in-Quintern. A blue haze veiled the more distant valleys and hills and turned the chimneys of a paper-making town into minarets. Prunella was glad that after she had married she would still live in this house.

She bathed her eyes, repacked her suitcase and prepared to leave. On the landing she ran into Claude.

There was no reason why he should not be on the landing or that she should have been aware that he had arrived there but there was something intrinsically furtive about Claude that gave her a sensation of stealth.

He said: “Oh, hullo, Prue, I saw your car.”

“Hullo, Claude. Yes. I just looked in to pick up some things.”

“Not staying, then?”

“No.”

“I hope I’m not keeping you away,” he said and looked at his feet and smiled.

“Of course not. I’m mostly in London, these days.”

He stole a glance at her left hand.

“Congratulations are in order, I see.”

“Yes. Thank you.”

“When’s it to be?”

She said it hadn’t been decided and began to move toward the stairs.

“Er—” said Claude, “I was wondering—”

“Whether I’m to be handed the push.”

Prunella made a panic decision to treat this as a joke.

“Oh,” she said jauntily, “you’ll be given plenty of notice.”

“Too kind. Are you going to live here?”

“As a matter of fact, yes. After we’ve made some changes. You’ll get fair warning, I promise.”

“Syb said I could be here, you know.”

“I know what she said, Claude. You’re welcome to stay until the workmen come in.”

“Too kind,” he repeated, this time with an open sneer. “By the way you don’t mind my asking, do you? I would like to know when the funeral is to be.”

Prunella felt as if winter had come into the house and closed about her heart. She managed to say: “I don’t — we won’t know until after the inquest. Mr. Rattisbon is going to arrange everything. You’ll be let know, Claude. I promise.”

“Are you going to this new inquest?”

“I expect so. I mean: yes. Yes, I am.”

“So am I. Not that it affects me, of course.”

“I really must go. I’m running late.”

“I never wrote to you. About Syb.”

“There was no need. Goodbye.”

“Shall I carry your case down?”

“No thanks. Really. It’s quite light Thank you very much, though.”

“I see you’ve got the old plans out. Of Quintern.”

“Goodbye,” Prunella said desperately and made a business of getting herself downstairs.

She had reached the ground floor when his voice floated down to her. “Hi!”

She wanted to bolt but made herself stop and look up to the first landing. His face and hands hung over the balustrade.

“I suppose you realize we’ve had a visit from the police,” said Claude. He kept his voice down and articulated pedantically.

“Yes, of course.”

One of the dangling hands moved to up the mouth.

“They seem to be mightily interested in your mother’s horticultural favourite,” Claude mouthed. “I wonder why.”

The teeth glinted in the moon-face.

Prunella bolted. She got herself, the immense portfolio and her baggage through the front door and into her car and drove, much too fast, to Mardling.

“Honestly,” she said ten minutes later to Gideon and his father. “I almost feel we should get in an exorciser when Claude goes. I wonder, if the Vicar’s any good on the bell, book and candle lay.”

“You enchanting child,” said Mr. Markos in his florid way and raised his glass to her. “Is this unseemly person really upsetting you? Should Gideon and I advance upon him with threatening gestures? Can’t he be dispensed with?”

“I must say,” Gideon chimed in, “I really do think it’s a bit much he should set himself up at Quintern. After all, darling, he’s got no business there, has he? I mean no real family ties or anything. Face it.”

“I suppose not,” she agreed. “But my mama did feel she ought not to wash her hands of him completely, awful though he undoubtedly is. You see, she was very much in love with his father.”

“Which doesn’t, if one looks at it quite cold-bloodedly, give his son the right to impose upon her daughter,” said Mr. Markos.

Prunella had noticed that this was a favourite phrase—“quite cold-bloodedly”—and was rather glad that Gideon had not inherited it. But she liked her father-in-law-to-be and became relaxed and expansive in the atmosphere (anything, she reflected, but “cold-blooded”) that he created around himself and Gideon. She felt that she could say what she chose to him without being conscious of the difference in their ages and that she amused and pleased him.

They sat out of doors on swinging seats under canopies. Mr. Markos had decided that it was a day for preprandial champagne: “a sparkling, venturesome morning,” he called it. Prunella, who had skipped breakfast and was unused to such extravagance, rapidly expanded. She downed her drink and accepted another. The horrors, and lately there really had been moments of horror, slipped into the background. She became perfectly audible and began to feel that this was the life for her and was meant for her and she for it, that she blossomed in the company of the exotic Markoses, the one so delightfully
mondain
, the other so enchantingly in love with her. Eddies of relief, floating on champagne, lapped over her and if they were vaguely disturbed by little undertows of guilt (for after all, she had a social conscience, that, however reprehensively, seemed merely to add to her exhilaration. She took a vigorous pull at her champagne and Mr. Markos refilled her glass.

“Darling,” said Gideon, “what
have
you got in that monstrous compendium or whatever it is, in your car?”

“A surprise,” cried Prunella, waving her hand. “Not for you, love. For Pil.” She raised her glass to Mr. Markos and drank to him.

“For
whom
?” asked the Markoses in unison.

“For my papa-in-law-to-be. I’ve been too shy to know what to- call you,” said Prunella. “Not for a moment, that you
are
a Pill. Far from it.
Pillicock sat on Pillicock-hill
,” she sang before she could stop herself. She realized she had shaken her curls at Nikolas, like one of Dickens’s more awful little heroines, and was momentarily ashamed of herself.

“You shall call me whatever you like,” said Mr. Markos and kissed her hand. Another Dickens reference swam incontinently into Prunella’s dizzy ken: “
Todgers were going it
.” For a second or two she slid aside from herself and saw herself “going it” like mad in a swinging chair under a canopy and having her hand kissed. She was extravagantly pleased with life.

“Shall I fetch it?” Gideon asked.

“Fetch what?” Prunella shouted recklessly.

“Whatever you’ve brought for your papa-in-law-to-be.”

“Oh,
that
. Yes, darling, do and I think perhaps no more champagne.”

Gideon burst out laughing. “And I think perhaps you may be right,” he said and kissed the top of her head. He went to her car and took out the portfolio.

Prunella said to Mr. Markos, “I’m tightish. How awful.”

“Are you? Eat some olives. Stuff down lots of those cheese things. You’re not really very tight.”

“Promise? All right, I will,” said Prunella and was as good as her word. A car came up the avenue.

“Here is Miss Verity Preston,” said Mr. Markos. “Did we tell you she was lunching?”

“No!” she exclaimed and blew out a little shower of cheese straw. “How too frightful, she’s my godmother.”

“Don’t you like her?”

“I adore her. But
she
won’t like to see
me
flown with fizz so early in the day. Or ever. And as a matter of fact it’s not my form at all, by and large,” said Prunella, swallowing most of an enormous mouthful of cheese straw and helping herself to more. “I’m a sober girl.”

“You’re a divine girl. I doubt if Gideon deserves you.”

“You’re absolutely right. The cheese straws and olives are doing the trick. I shan’t go on about being drunk. People who do that are such a bore, always, don’t you feel? And anyway I’m rapidly becoming sober.” As if to prove it she had begun to whisper again.

The Markoses went to meet Verity. Prunella thought of following them but compromised by getting up from her swinging seat, which she did in a quickly controlled flounder.

“Godma V,” she said. And when they were close enough to each other she hung herself about Verity’s neck and was glad to do so.

“Hullo, young party,” said Verity, surprised by this effusion and not knowing what to do about it. Prunella sat down abruptly and inaccurately on the swinging chair.