Murder at Maddingley Grange (18 page)

There was a soft rattle of curtain rings and two figures entered this black and white enclosure. The first rather quickly as if bowled by an impetuous long arm, the second with a threatening lunge. Hissing dialogue ensued…

“Get up those bloody stairs.” Snuffle, snivel. “And stop hanging around my neck. You can stand up if you want to.” A soft little cry, like a timid bird. “When you're up there…
listen to me…”
A firm shake. “When you're up there, turn left and it's the first door on your right. The box is on her dressing table. And if you come down without it, I shall have your tripes. Got that?”

Ben pushed his brother so firmly onto the first step that he all but flew up the next half dozen before coming to a tentative halt. He half turned and cast over his shoulder a look of such piteous uncertainty that the flintiest observer must have been moved to compassion. Ben made as if to climb after him. Immediately Gaunt sped up to the landing, where he rested, arms stretched wide, studying first one hand, then the other, and attempting to work out which was which. Finally he took a couple of steps to the left, hesitated, then, obviously having confidence in neither memory nor judgment, changed his mind and veered right.

Ben, peering as closely into the unknown as his short sight would allow, crossed his fingers, then uncrossed them in some alarm. For his ears were as sharp as his eyes were faulty and, somewhere above his head and to the left, he picked up a most peculiar noise.

A soft wobbly coo rather like that of a wood pigeon. It ran up and down the scale, little rills of trembling sound. Then it climbed high to top C and stopped. Gaunt, way off course by now and outside the Gregorys' bedroom, heard it and started to quake. Martin, closing Mrs. Saville's door with exquisite care, heard it too. It seemed very close, and in normal circumstances might have caused him some perturbation. Now, so relieved was he to be going back to his room unscathed, he merely noted in passing that some people certainly chose a funny time to practice their scales and turned his attention back to the doorknob. Careful though he was, it jumped through his sweaty fingers at the last, giving a loud click.

Gaunt started, then slowly turned, frightened and guilty. Slowly Martin started to creep back to the Watteau room. And slowly, very slowly, Mother's door opened. Gaunt, alarmed by the warblings and alerted by the click, scanned the seemingly empty stretch of carpet (Martin, having hit a patch of shadow, was virtually invisible), and let his tautly held breath out in a sigh of relief. But the relief was vanquished upon the instant. For suddenly, in the insubstantial darkness at the far end of the landing, he saw a figure robed all in white. It had appeared with miraculous suddenness and seemed to float in the air, glowing with a spectral incandescence.

Gaunt, hair stirring on his neck, eyes bulging with terror, teeth chattering like castanets, watched as the thing raised long white arms in the air. He saw hooked claws, then heard a soft sibilance, like dry leaves in the wind, and realized that the monstrous apparition was drifting toward him.

Desperately he looked for an escape route. He tried the Gregorys' door. It was locked. And Simon's—ditto. Behind him a stained-glass window and a fifty-foot drop. Between him and the slowly approaching phantom the stairs. Gaunt did not hesitate. But then, as he took flight, something even more appalling happened. Fleeing from one nightmare he encountered another doubly harrowing, more mind-bendingly dreadful. For, as he reached the top of the stairs, he collided (oh! horror upon horror!) with something soft and swollen and hairy, which cried out “Yip!” and seized him round the middle.

Crying out in his turn, perilously balanced on the edge of both stair number one and his sanity, Gaunt, still in the clutch of his ghastly succubus, fell sideways and rolled down the stairs. Bumping and banging he went, each half turn cushioned by the bestower of the unlooked-for furry embrace, until at last they reached the checkered floor with Martin on the buttered side. Gaunt, struggling to rise and run away, made a grab at what he thought was the newel-post and brought the suit of armor crashing down around his head.

Bennett slipped off, and only just in time. Seconds later the landing light came on and Rosemary, tying the girdle of her dressing gown, appeared. She ran down the stairs and fell on her knees beside the recumbent form in its snug camel wraparound.

“Martin…
” She supported him, slipping an arm around his shoulders and glaring at the butler. “You!” she cried, jumping to her feet, thus allowing Martin's head to reconnect with the tiles which it did with a smart crack, “What have you been doing to him?”

Gaunt, attempting to extricate himself from vambrace, hauberk and greave, did not reply. Just lumbered resonating to his feet. No sooner had he done so than Rosemary pushed him hard in the pauldron and he clanked down again.

“What the hell's going on?” Simon appeared on the landing, closely followed by his guests, all asking more or less the same question. Bennet arrived ostentatiously fastening her dressing gown and dragged the butler roughly into the vertical.

“Blimey O'Riley,” said Fred, watching the raising of the panoplied figure. “Anybody got a tin opener? Joust a minute—I'll go and look.” He gave Gilly a nudge. “D'you geddit? Joust a minute?”

“Please stay exactly where you are.” Derek was calm and authoritative. “I'm in charge here.”

Mother appeared wide-awake, draped in a tinsely shawl and wearing the hat with the mixed fruit salad. She let out a hungry cry—“Is that the body?”-—as she hobbled down the stairs.

“No, it isn't,” snapped Martin's ministering angel.

“First of all I would like—”

“Rosemary—get up!”

“I won't,” retorted the spoilt child. Then, not wishing to activate suspicion in the parental bosom, “My nursing experience may be useful.”

“You haven't got any nursing experience.”

“There's my Campfire Disasters Guide Badge.”

“How am I supposed to investigate,” persisted Derek, “with all this chatter? Now”—he wheeled on the hapless butler—“perhaps you would be good enough to explain why you are roaming around the house at”—he flicked back the cuff of his dressing gown (dogtooth, floor-length, frog fastening)—“at two-fifteen in the morning wearing a suit of armor.”

Gaunt removed a final greave. He looked hunted and gazed around at the ring of faces as if seeking inspiration. His already excitable coloring deepened to the point where his head looked like an inflated eggplant. Bennet stepped forward.

“We thought we heard a burglar, sir.”

Gaunt, stunned by the breathtaking effrontery of this reply, hung about the newel-post openmouthed.

“So you slipped on the armor for protection.” Derek nodded sagely. “Very wise.”

“Surely,” said Simon, “he just fell down the stairs and crashed into it.”

“I am making the deductions here.”

“Bumpus,” said Mother.

“Please,” interrupted Laurie, “can't all this wait? We must do something for poor Mr. Lewis.”

“That's right.” Rosemary once more sprang to her feet, Laurie's cry of “Mind his head” quite lost in the general hum of suggestion.

“We must get him back to his room. I'll take one arm,” offered Gilly.

“Be a lot easier if we brought him round first.”

“Yes,” Laurie agreed with Violet. “Some water might help. Bennet—if you would, please?”

The maid went to the refectory table by the main doors, removed a bunch of peonies, larkspur and lupins from a large copper jug and returned to the circle.

“Thank you—” Laurie stretched out her hand but Bennet, stepping past her, went up to Martin and poured the contents of the jug over his head.

“Bennet…
” cried Laurie. “I meant water from the kitchen. For him to drink. In little sips. To bring him round.”

Martin sat up and shook himself. Droplets flew everywhere. “It's brought him round 'm.”

Laurie glared crossly at Simon, who had started to laugh, then transferred her glare to the maid. Crossness became tinged with puzzlement. There seemed to be something odd about Bennet's appearance. What was it? Surely not just the fact that she was out of uniform and wearing a rather nasty peach robe plus hearty “leather” slippers. (What big feet you have, Bennet.) Or that her hair looked impossibly immaculate for someone who had presumably just got out of bed.

But then all musings along these lines vanished, sent hurrying on their way by something as simple as a sound. But what a sound! The softest, most endearing little tremolo imaginable. Full of pathos, frailly uncomforted yet sweetly musical withal. Martin moaning. Laurie, her heart bursting with concern, fell to her knees, beating Rosemary to it by a whisker. They asked him how he was and Rosemary, very officiously Laurie thought, reintroduced the cradling routine. Derek interrupted them.

“Would you move aside, please? There's an interrogation going on here.”

“Leave him alone,” cried the vestal pair.

“I seen more blood in a plate o' winkles,” grumbled Mother.

“Simon,” said Gilly. “Look—are you absolutely poz this isn't part of the scenario?” He waved at the supine figure on the floor. “The murder game, I mean.”

Before Simon could reply Mrs. Saville snapped at him: “If that is the case, then all I can say, young man, is that you have a very warped sense of humor. Rosemary! Stop rolling about down there and go back to bed.” She stomped off, flinging huffily over her shoulder: “And perhaps next time I suggest a weekend at the Royal Georgian you'll remember this fiasco and do as you're told.”

Rosemary, who had been tentatively patting Martin's jowls, now, seeing time running out, gave them a fairly hefty slap.

“I shouldn't think that will do him much good,” said Laurie tersely.

“You always slap jowls,” replied Rosemary, equally terse. “It's a known medical fact.”

Martin gazed at his attendants. “Where am I?”

“There you are, you see. You've given him amnesia.”

“Nonsense.” Derek was brisk and authoritative. “The loss of memory ploy is a very old trick.” He poked his face close to Martin. “You'll have to do better than that, Mr. Lewis.”

“Who's Mr. Lewis?”

“He's well away,” said Fred.

“Is that your character, dear?” asked Violet. “Someone with amnesia?”

“You'll not get much out of him,” opined Fred. “Try Wilberforce here.” He approached the stately wreckage still grasping its support. “What were you doing,” he shouted into the butler's stupefied features, “wrestling on the floor in the middle of the night?”

“That is precisely what I am attempting to discern,” said Derek, “if you will allow me to continue…Where do you think you're going?”

Mother, descending hand over hand on the banister, had reached the hall. She moved to the exact center, turned round and beamed at them all. Then she stretched out her arms and started to move in circles, rhythmically and very slowly: one, two, three. One, two, three. Her white linen skirts spun palely out and the glass berries on her hat shivered. Her head was cocked in an attitude of surprised happiness as if suddenly alerted to the music of the spheres. Fred, aware of the necromantic rationale behind this dervishlike display, groaned.

Derek was furious and disconcerted at a disruption so early in what should have been a controlled and orderly interrogation. He did not know what to do. Holmes's suspects might have drawn a revolver or thrown a punch when his probing became too incisive. They
never
went into their dance. He descended to the bottom stair the better to corral his recalcitrant witness.

“Come along now, Mrs. Gibbs,” he cried. ‘This won't do. We must consider protocol.”

“Protocol?” Mother halted briefly, held up her hand in a gesture both beatific and benign, said: “Stick it where the sun don't shine,” and waltzed on.

Red in the face, Derek returned to his group. “Well…I'm sure the rest of us understand the gravity of the situation. Now—I shall be interviewing in the library and will require you to come in one at a time.”

“Well, I'm not going anywhere one at a time,” said Simon. “I'm going back to sleep. And I suggest everyone else does the same. And the mystery—if mystery there proves to be—can be sorted out in the morning. Come along, Martin…” He bent down and heaved the barely sensible figure to its feet.

“No doubt the precise location of the Watteau room has escaped your memory, so I'll give you a hand.”

Laurie stood torn between the longing to help Simon with his burden and the fear that should Martin's arm fall, even without his conscious volition, across her shoulders she would faint dead away. However, the need to make a decision was taken quite rudely out of her hands by Rosemary Saville, who pushed her aside and took Martin's arm in a manner that appeared to Laurie to be both insinuating and proprietorial.