Murder at Maddingley Grange (17 page)

“You can't shar—”

“Shut up!”

Gordon became silent. He knew his brother in this mood. Best to say nothing. He wrung out his bow tie and drew the edges of his sodden tailcoat together in a pathetic attempt to restore the status quo. Then, squaring his shoulders, he let go of his support. Quickly he grabbed it again, waited, let go much more carefully, made his way with slow deliberation to the armchair and fell in it.

“You needn't think you're dossing there.” As he spoke Ben was replacing a pair of wire clippers in a canvas work strip. He rolled it up and tied the tape in a bow. “I've cut the wires— are you listening, plank brain?” Groan. “I've cut the wires where they run behind that big sideboard—”

“Thought you couldn't see.”

“You sarky—” Ben launched himself ferociously across the room. Gordon cowered in his chair, hands raised protectively as Ben grabbed his bow tie. “I followed them all the way round from the phone with my fingers, didn't I? Because where were you? Swilling your way through bottle number three…” Gaunt gestured. “Two? My mistake. Excuse me.” Ben laughed a bitter laugh. “I'd be better off with a guide dog. At least they don't drink.”

“Ben…” Gordon choked out the words. “I'm…sorry…”

“You're always sorry. Sorry's your middle name.”

“Pl…please…” Gordon made feeble passes at his throat with ice-stiff fingers. His brother let go. “Make it up to you, Ben.”

“You will! No mistake.”

“Next time—”

“It's this time I'm talking about. This time! You saw the stuff that old bag was wearing. There's a pile more upstairs. We're never going to get another chance like this. I knocked her jewel box off the dressing table when I was looking for the bed.” His voice was hushed in reverent recall. “You never saw sparklers like it. And they're
real
. All you've got to do is walk in, pick up the box and walk away. We take the bus and vanish. Simple.”

Gordon let out a deep juddering breath that shook his whole frame and said: “Hugo.”

“How can I go, you cretinous troglodyte? I can't
see
.”

“…going to bed…”

“You are not going to bed, big brother. You are going to sit there and pull as much of yourself together as you can lay your hands on while I”—Ben put on slippers, wig and dressing gown—“go to the kitchen and make a large pot of black coffee which I shall then get into you by whatever means proves necessary. No holds barred.”

Gordon whimpered, then craned his head around, staring over Ben's shoulder in a hunted manner.

“Now what?”

“It's that owl again.”

“It's got more life in it than you, you idle sod.”

“Not idle…tired…”

“I'm
tired, Gordon. I am very tired. I have to find enough energy for two. Enough drive and commitment and willpower for two, like I've had to all my life. I've been carrying you since the day I was born. When you took me out in my pram, you used to get so pissed I had to get out and find my own way home. You've always held me down, sweating away at your crummy little fiddles. Without you I could really have been somebody.” Gordon started to cry. “Where's your vision, man?” Ben's voice softened. “Where are your dreams?”

“How can I have any dreams? You won't let me go to bed.” Gordon wiped his nose with his sleeve. “You've always been shellfish.”

“It's you who's selfish.” Ben dropped to his knees beside the morose, waterlogged heap. “If you won't do it for me, how about doing it for Mum? Ay? Imagine getting back to Whipps Cross and tipping that lot out on the kitchen table. Picture her face.”

Gordon's violet countenance broke up only to reassemble into shifting planes of unutterable sorrow. “…careworn…”

“Yes, she is careworn. Worn out with years of looking after us. And now we've got a chance to pay her back. Don't you think it's time she put her feet up? Took it a bit more easy?”

“She could come off the game.”

“If that is her wish, certainly. And think how proud Dad would be.”

Gordon frowned in deep recall, then said: “Dad's inside.”

“He's inside now but he won't always be. Twelve years'll fly by. And he'll come out to a sweet little nest egg.” Ben seized his brother's hand. “It's all within our grasp here. Just the one job and we'll have the lot. The Mercs, the Rolex Oysters, the real gold chains and handmade boots, rump steak till it comes out of your ears, Vat 29 on your cornflakes, beautiful girls, sunshine—”

“Sunshine?”

“We could be talking Marbella here, Gordon. We could be talking wall-to-wall fitted currency. You can do anything with money. You can reinvent your life.” Ben gazed urgently at his brother and gripped his hand more tightly, willing the sluggish blood to quicken and the heart to hope. “You can even reinvent yourself.”

This was too much. Gordon, who had been looking quite chipper at the mention of Vat 29, now looked definitely alarmed. He said in a voice thick with lethargy: “Dunno what to do…”

“I'll tell you what you're going to do, dozy guts. You are going to have a cold shower and then you are going to swallow several gallons of strong coffee. After which you will climb those stairs and come back down with that box. You are going to do all these things because if you don't I shall drag you into the shrubbery where no one will hear your screams and beat the living shit out of you.”

Martin got undressed again. He had already undressed once, then had a long, slow bath to pass the time and got into his pajamas. Half an hour later it struck him that to arrive in Rosemary's bedroom, even under the most pressing invitation, wearing only the light cotton garments in question looked a bit brash, not to say cocksure. And if (God forbid!) his future mother-in-law woke while he was creeping through, Martin felt he would be in grave need of, if not protective clothing, at least something a bit more substantial than a flimsy two-piece. That was when he had donned his light tweed suit.

Half an hour later he had taken it off. For the thought struck him while sitting by the radiator, an unread copy of
Home and Country
on his lap, that the most suspicious getup imaginable to be discovered wearing while roaming the corridors of a manor house in the middle of the night (apart perhaps from a striped jersey and balaclava) was a light tweed suit. They would simply think he was scarpering with the family silver. So he climbed back into the jimjams.

Now he got out of his chair for the umpteenth time, opened his door a crack and peered out. Rosemary's remained firmly closed. His eye measured the distance. It wasn't very far. He could cover it in about ten seconds although, recalling his fiancée's bouncy and promissory energy, Martin felt it might well take him more like ten minutes to make it back. He slipped on his old, shaggy camel's hair dressing gown, more for the sake of something to do than because the temperature demanded it, and looked at his watch. Five to two. Very late.

Surely this meant that Rosemary, having not put their signal into effect, was by now fast asleep rather than lying with wildly beating heart longing for amorous dalliance. On the other hand, what if she was lying there so entranced by dreams of said dalliance that she had simply forgotten to open the door? How would she feel then as the hours dragged by and she waited, having offered not only her heart but all the accompanying bits and pieces, to someone who did not even have the moxie to cover the few feet of Axminster between himself and paradise?

Martin, for he was a kindhearted soul, would not wish this chastening experience on anyone, least of all the girl he expected to marry. Also, and here an element of self-preservation crept in, Rosemary when thwarted was inclined to be erratic in her reactions. There might be copious tears and a quivering lower lip. On the other hand, a swiftly traveling missile had been known to leave that delicate hand on the rare occasion when she failed to get her own way.

Martin took a brave deep breath, tied the cord of his dressing gown very securely around his middle and came to a decision. He would go. If she was asleep he could truthfully say on the morrow that he had at least complied with his side of the arrangements. If awake…

Martin was not sure what he would do in that case, for he did not feel even the slightest tweaking of desire. Cross that bridge, he thought, when we come to it. A moment later he was on his way. Below him in the hall the grandfather clock struck two.

M
artin eased open the door of the Greuze room to be greeted by an indelicate trumpeting. He hoped it emanated from Mrs. Saville, and not only because this would mean that lady was drowned in slumber deep. After all, no man wanted to spend the rest of his life lying next to a girl, however pretty, who sounded in her dreams like the brass section of a symphony orchestra.

The room was almost blacked out. Martin waited a moment, getting accustomed to the gloom and trying to assess the various obstacles humped in his path. What he should have done, he now realized, was to excuse himself after dinner, pop upstairs and give the place the once-over. Too late now. But there was some brightness. The curtains were not quite closed and the moon threw a shaft of cold hard light over part of the dressing table, the bedhead and Rosemary's door. This was open.

Of course! That's what she had said. “I'll leave
my
door ajar.” Although a moment's pause for reflection might have shown Martin that this optimistic insight was based on a rather dodgy premise, i.e., that he could see through a brick wall, that pause was never made. Instead he started to move on pinched, careful tiptoe, both hands stretched out before him, clutching at the air. He groped around the outline of the dressing table, then felt the foot of the bed against his knee. He took a few steps more and fell over a footstool. Flinging himself upright in an attempt to break the fall, he overdid it, staggered back and stumbled, one hand resting briefly on the mattress.

He froze. The sudden unexpected obstruction had given him quite a shock. But it was as nothing to the terrible, seismic, earth-rending shock he received a moment later. For Mrs. Saville, the slippery satined leviathan, broke cover, hove to on the starboard side and opened her eyes. Appalled, sweat icing his brow and his heart bucking like a maddened bronco, Martin stood rigidly still, knowing it was his only chance. Unmoving he was partly in the dark. Mrs. Saville, her head bathed in moonshine, blinked. He thought: She will be irritated by the light. She will get up to close the curtains. He dared not move and dared not look away. His eyes seemed to be locked into hers. She
must
see him standing there. Martin felt his skin crawl and his muscles ache with the effort of enforced stillness while his brain was screaming:
“Run! Run!”

He thought of all the stories he had read where people died of fear after spending the night in ghost-infested rooms or emerged the morning after with their hair snow-white and their mind in tatters. Oh God…if you send her back to sleep I'll never…Never what? His life was so orderly and law-abiding. Where were his peccadilloes? Sometimes he exceeded the speed limit. That would have to do. But hardly had this votive thought been offered than, with a final trumpeting arpeggio, Mrs. Saville closed her eyes, turned over, subsided into the pillows and was still.

Martin forced himself to wait one whole never-ending minute before he turned and crept back to the door. It was pointless to enter Rosemary's room. Perfect fear, Martin was chastened to discover, casteth out love. No chance now of kick-starting the libido. He would be thankful just to get back to his own room in one piece.

Down below, the great hall was silent but for the sluggish tock-tocking of the grandfather clock. Moonshine struck the tall leaded windows with cold impartiality and streamed over the checkered floor. Banners hung limply, drained of their daytime rallying colors and imperatives, bleached and gray as cerements. At the foot of the staircase stood a heavy suit of armor, the two halves of its visor clamped together in an aggressive swoop like the jaws of a huge, predatory fish.