Grave Mistake (16 page)

St. Crispin’s-in-Quintern was one of the great company of parish churches that stand as milestones in rural history: obstinate registers to the ravages of time. It had a magnificent peal of bells, now unsafe to ring, one or two brasses, a fine east window and a surprising north window in which — strange conceit — a walrus-mustachioed Passcoigne, looking startlingly like Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, was depicted in full plate armour, an Edwardian St. Michael without a halo. The legend indicated that he had met his end on the African veld. The familiar ecclesiastical odour of damp held at bay by paraffin heaters greeted Verity and the two men.

Verity explained that she would like to do anything that would help about the flowers. The Vivar said that custody of all brass vases was inexorably parcelled out among the Ladies Guild, five in number. She gathered that any attempt to disrupt this procedure would trigger off a latent pecking order.

“But they would be grateful for flowers,” he added.

Bruce said that there were late roses up at Quintern Place and he’d thought it would be nice to have her ain favourites to see her off. He muttered in an uneven voice that the name was appropriate: Peace. “They endure better than most oot o’ water,” he added and blew his nose. Verity and the Vicar warmly supported this suggestion and Verity left the two men to complete, she understood, the arrangements for digging Sybil’s grave.

When she returned to the top of the steps she found that Jim Jobbin had reached the bottom on his hands and knees and was being manipulated through the lych-gate by his wife. Verity joined them. Mrs. Jim explained that she was on her way to get dinner and had found Jim crawling backward down the last four steps. It was no distance, they both reminded Verity, along the lane to their cottage. Jim got to his feet by swarming up his wife as if she was a tree.

“It’ll ease off once he straightens himself,” she said. “It does him good to walk.”

“That’s what you think,” her husband groaned but he straightened up and let out an oath as he did so. They made off in slow motion.

Verity returned to her car and to Claude, lounging in the passenger’s seat. He made a token shuffle with his feet and leant over to open the door.

“That was as good as a play,” he said. “Poor old Jobbin. Did you see him beetling down the steps? Fantastic!” He gave a neighing laugh.

“Lumbago’s no joke to the person who’s got it,” Verity snapped.

“It’s hysterical for the person who hasn’t, though.”

She drove as far as the corner where the lane up to Quintern Place branched off to the left.

“Will this suit you?” she asked, “or would you like me to run you up?”

He said he wouldn’t take her out of her way but when she pulled up he didn’t get out

“What did you make of the inquest?” he asked. “I must say I thought it pretty off.”

“Off?”

“Well — you know. I mean what does that extraordinary detective person think he’s on about? And a further postponement. Obviously they suspect something.”

Verity was silent.

“Which isn’t exactly welcome news,” he said. “Is it? Not for this medico, Schramm. Or for Mr. Folksy Gardener if it comes to that.”

“I don’t think you should make suggestions, Claude.”

“Suggestions! I’m not suggesting anything, but people are sure to look sideways. I know I wouldn’t feel comfortable if I were in those gentlemen’s boots, that’s all. Still, they’re getting their lovely legacies, aren’t they, which’ll be a great consolation. I could put up with plenty of funny looks for twenty-five thousand of the best. Still more for Schramm’s little lot.”

“I must get home, Claude.”

“Nothing can touch my bit, anyway. God, can I use it! Only thing: that old relic Rattisbon says it won’t be available until probate is allowed or passed or whatever. Still, I suppose I can borrow on my prospects, wouldn’t you think?”

“I’m running late.”

“Nobody seems to think it’s a bit oft-colour her leaving twenty-five thousand of the best to a jobbing gardener she’d only hired a matter of months ago. It’s pretty obvious he’d got round her in a big way: I could tell you one or two things about Mr. gardener-Gardener.”

“I must go, Claude.”

“Yes. O.K.”

He climbed out of the car and slammed the door. “Thanks for the lift, anyway,” he said. “See you at the funeral. Ain’t we got fun?”

Glad to be rid of him but possessed by a languor she could not understand, Verity watched him turn up the lane. Even seen from behind there was a kind of furtive jauntiness in his walk, an air of complacency that was out of character. He turned a corner and was gone.

“I wonder,” she thought, “what he’ll do with himself.”

She drove on up her own lane into her own little avenue and got her own modest luncheon. She found she hadn’t much appetite for it.

The day was gently sunny but Verity found it oppressive. The sky was clear but she felt as if it would almost be a relief if bastions of cloud shouldered each other up from beyond the horizon. It occurred to her that writers like Ibsen and Dickens — unallied in any other respect — were right to make storms, snow, fog and fire the companions of human disorders. Shakespeare too, she thought. We deprive ourselves aesthetically when we forgo the advantages of symbolism.

She had finished the overhaul of her play and had posted it off to her agent. It was not unusual, when work-in-hand had been dealt with and she was cleaned out, for her to experience a nervous impulse to start off at once on something new. As now, when she found herself wondering, if she could give a fresh look to an old, old theme: that of an intelligent woman enthralled by a second-rate charmer, a “bad lot,” in Verity’s dated jargon, for whom she had no respect but was drawn to by an obstinate attraction. If she could get such a play successfully off her chest, would she scotch the bogey that had returned to plague her?

When at that first Markos dinner-party, she found that Basil Schramm’s pinchbeck magnetism had evaported, the discovery had been a satisfaction to Verity. Now, when a shadow crept toward him, how did she feel? And why, oh why, had she bleated out her confession to Alleyn? He won’t let it rest, she thought, her imagination bolting with her. He’ll want to know more about Basil. He may ask if Basil ever got into trouble and what’ll I say to that?

And Alleyn, returning with Fox to Greengages via Maidstone, said: “This case is getting nasty. She let it out without any pushing or probing and I think she amazed herself by doing so. I wouldn’t mind betting there was more to it than the predatory male jilt and the humiliated woman, though there was all of that, too, I daresay.”

“If it throws any light on his past?”

“We may have to follow it up, of course. Do you know what I think she’ll do about it?”

“Refuse to talk?”

“That’s it. There’s not much of the hell-knows-no-fury in Verity Preston’s makeup.”

“Well,” said Fox reasonably, “seeing how pretty he stands we have to make it thorough. What comes first?”

“Get the background. Check up on the medical side. Qualified at Lausanne, or whatever it was. Find out the year and the degree. See if there was any regular practice in this country. Or in the U.S.A. So much waste of time, it may be, but it’ll have to be done, Br’er Fox. And, on a different lay: here comes Maidstone again. Call at stationers and bookshops and see if anyone’s bought any Will forms lately. If not, do the same in villages and towns and in the neighbourhood of Greengages.”

“Hoping we don’t have to extend to London?”

“Fervently. And, by the by, Fox, we’d better ask Mr. Rattisbon to let us fingerprint the Will. They should find the lady herself, Mr. R. and Johnson and Briggs. And Lord knows how many shop-assistants. But courage, comrade, we may find that in addition to witnessing the Will, G. M. Johnson or Marleena Briggs or even that casket of carnal delights, Sister Jackson, was detailed to pop into a stationer’s shop on her day off.”

When they reached Greengages, this turned out to be the answer. Johnson and Briggs had their days off together and a week before Mrs. Foster died they had made the purchase at a stationer’s in Greendale. Mrs. Foster had given them a present and told them to treat themselves to the cinema and tea.

“That’s fine,” said Alleyn. “We just wanted to know. Was it a good film?”

They fell into an ecstasy of giggles.

“I see. One of those?”

“Aw!”

“Anybody else know about the shopping?”

“Aw, no,” said G. M. Johnson.

“Yes they did, you’re mad,” said Marleena Briggs.

“They never.”

“They did, too. The Doctor did. He come in while she told us.”

“Dr. Schramm came in and heard all about it?” said Alleyn casually.

They agreed and were suddenly uninterested.

He then asked each of them in turn if she recognized the writing on an envelope he had addressed to himself and their prints having been thus obtained he gave them a tip.

“There you are, both of you. Treat yourselves to another shocker and a blow-out of cream buns.”

This interview concluded, Alleyn was approached by the manager of the hotel, who evidently viewed their visit with minimal enthusiasm. He hustled them into his office, offered drinks and looked apprehensive when these were declined.

“It’s just about the room,” he said. “How much longer do you people want it? We’re expecting a full house by next week and it’s extremely inconvenient, you know.”

“I hope this will be positively our last appearance,” said Alleyn cheerfully.

“Without being uncivil, so do I. Do you want someone to take you up?”

“We’ll take ourselves, thank you all the same. Come along, Br’er Fox,” said Alleyn. “
En avant
. You’re having one of your dreamy spells.”

He led the way quickly to the lifts.

The second floor seemed to be deserted. They walked soundlessly down the carpeted passage to Number 20. The fingerprint and photography men had called and gone and their seal was still on the door. Fox was about to break it when Alleyn said: “Half a jiffy. Look at this.”

Opposite the bedroom door was a curtained alcove. He had lifted the curtain and disclosed a vacuum cleaner. “Handy little hidey-hole, isn’t it?” he said. “Got your torch on you?”

“As it happens,” Fox said and gave it to him. He went into the alcove and closed the curtain.

The lift at the far end of the long passage whined to a stop. Sister Jackson and another lady emerged. Fox, with a movement surprisingly nippy for one of his bulk, joined his superior in the alcove.

“Herself,” he whispered. Alleyn switched off his torch.

“See you?”

“Not to recognize.”

“Impossible. Once seen.”

“She had somebody with her.”

“No need for you to hide, you fathead. Why should you?”

“She flusters me.”

“You’re bulging the curtain.”

But it was too late. The curtain was suddenly withdrawn and Sister Jackson discovered. She screamed.

“Good morning, Sister,” Alleyn said and flashed his torchlight full in her face. “Do forgive us for startling you.”

“What,” she panted, her hand on her spectacular bosom, “are you doing in the broom cupboard?”

“Routine procedure. Don’t give it another thought.”

“And you, don’t shine that thing in my face. Come out”

They emerged.

In a more conciliatory tone and with a sort of huffy come-to-ishness she said: “You gave me a shock.”

“So did you us,” said Mr. Fox. “A nice one,” he roguishly added.

“I daresay.”

She was between them. She flashed upward glances first at one, then the other. Her bosom slightly heaved.

“We really do apologize,” he said.

“I should hope so.” She laid her hand, which was plump, on his closed one. He was surprised to feel a marked tremor and to see that the colour had ebbed out of her face. She kept up the flirtatious note, however, though her voice was unsteady. “I suppose I’ll have to forgive you,” she said. “But only if you tell me why you were there.”

“I caught sight of something.”

He turned his hand over, opened it and exposed the crumpled head of a pink lily. It was very dead and its brown pollen had stained his palm.

“I think,” he said, “it will team up with the ones in Mrs. Foster’s last bouquet. I wondered what the electrician was doing in the broom cupboard.”

She gaped at him. “Electrician?” she said. “What electrician?”

“Don’t let it worry you. Excuse us, please. Come on, Fox. Goodbye, Sister.”

When she had starched and bosomed herself away he said: “I’m going to take another look at that broom-hide. Don’t spring any more confrontations this time. Stay here.”

He went into the alcove, drew the curtains on himself and was away for some minutes. When he rejoined Fox he said: “They’re not so fussy about housework in there. Quite a lot of dust on the floor. Plenty of prints — housemaid’s, no doubt, but on the far end, in the corner away from the vacuum cleaner where nobody would go normally, there are prints, left and right, side by side, with the heels almost touching the wall. Men’s crepe-soled shoes, and beside them — guess.”

He opened his hand and disclosed another dead lily head. “Near the curtain I could just find the prints again but overlaid by the housemaid’s and some regulation type extras. Whose, do you think?”

“All right, all right,” said Fox. “Mine.”

“When we go down we’ll look like sleuths and ask the desk lady if she noticed the electrician’s feet.”

“That’s a flight of fancy, if you like,” said Fox. “And she won’t have.”

“In any case Bailey and Thompson will have to do their stuff. Come on.”

When they were inside Number 20 he went to the bathroom where the fetid bouquet still mouldered in the basin. It was possible to see that the finds matched exactly and actually to distinguish the truss from which they had been lost.

“So I make a note: ‘Find the electrician’?” asked Fox.

“You anticipate my every need.”

“How do you fancy this gardener? Gardener?”

“Not much!” said Alleyn. “Do you?”

“You wouldn’t fancy him sneaking back with the flowers when Miss Foster and party had gone?”

“Not unless he’s had himself stretched: the reception girl said slight, short and bespectacled. Bruce Gardener’s six foot three and big with it. He doesn’t wear spectacles.”