Murder at Maddingley Grange (29 page)

“I'll sit on yours if you'll sit on mine.”

“That's all I need. Kinky sex.”

“Get on with it. We'll have the coppers here any minute.”

“Who's to tell them? The phone's kaput and we've got the rotor arm from the bus.”

“For all you know one of those toffee-nosed sods has got a mobile with him.”

“Christ!” said Gordon. “I never thought of that.” He threw himself with renewed vigor onto Ben's case. There was a splintering sound.

“You've broken the hinge.”

“But did it fasten?”

“No. Can you bounce a bit?”

“Not with one of your coat hangers up my arse.”

“We'll have to find some string.”

They blundered around the overstuffed sitting room opening and closing drawers and peering into boxes, watched by dozens of lifeless beady eyes. Both men were wearing the clothes in which they had arrived, speedy dressing having lent the outfits a certain goofy charm. Ben's wig was definitely slipping and his German-helmet hat tilted over one ear. Gordon's coat was buttoned skew-whiff all the way up, the leftover wodge of material pushing his chin into fat purple folds. A shoelace was undone and he kept tripping over it, once cracking his head against the case holding the stately, reproving owl.

They threw yellowing tray cloths, ancient seed packets, old knitting patterns, assorted balls of wool and unraveling raffia place mats all over the floor. Finally, in a cupboard full of damaged china, they found a length of orange nylon twine. Ben secured the cases. Gordon opened the window, saying: “Good job we're on the ground floor.”

“Too right. I wouldn't fancy creeping down that staircase and through the hall surrounded by a load of frigging Pooroes.”

“Fancy that one getting knocked off.”

“No wonder. I'd've knocked him off just to stop him playing his bloody violin. Go on then—get your leg over.”

“As the camel said to the Arab.”

Ben stared at his brother. “You can't get anything right, can you?”

“I thought that was pretty good.”

“Go and see if the coast's clear.”

Gordon climbed out of the window, climbing back five minutes later. “The young laird went belting down to the garage. Laurel must've been there already. She came running out into the garden. He went back to the house.”

“Let's go now, then.” Ben dropped the cases out of the window and perched on the sill, looking back into the room. “Seems criminal, don't it? Taking off from a gaff like this empty-handed.”

“Specially since we've been bowing and scraping without a penny piece to show for it since five o'clock yesterday.”

Gordon's tone was nicely judged. Part resentment, part resignation and a little thread of hope. He was very proud of that cunning little thread. Ben would have been most suspicious had his brother not at least attempted to make him change his mind. He might start asking questions and discover that the butler's jacket and trouser pockets were well and truly lined already.

For Gordon had taken the remarks made by his younger brother the previous evening deeply and woundingly to heart. Perhaps it was true, he worried, while mournfully coddling his damaged leg, that if it were not for him the whole family (except Dad, of course) would even now be tucking in to enchiladas on the sun-soaked Spanish equivalent of Easy Street. With Gordon, to think was to vacillate. But after the discovery of the body, when it became plain that a quick scarper was on the cards, he acted.

While Ben was in the garage disabling the bus, Gordon had dragged himself up to the Greuze room only to find his quarry, the jewel-stuffed casket, had disappeared, presumably into the drawer of the bedside table, which he discovered to be locked. Reflecting bitterly that the higher up the social scale you went the harder it was to find anyone practicing the virtue of simple trust, he was hobbling back along the landing when the jade intaglios and gold-framed miniatures on the half-moon tables caught his eye.

Now he said: “We're due something,” thinking, even at this late stage, to get clearance for his illicit haul.

“You lift as much as a teaspoon and I'll chop your fingers off. This place is going to be swarming with rozzers before too long. If our luck turns bad and we get picked up, all they can get us on is borrowing the bus. We can say we were shit scared after the murder and desperate to get away.”

“But…we got the future to think of, Ben.”

“If I sit on this sill much longer I shan't have a future. Got your keys?” Gordon produced a huge bunch from his overcoat pocket. “We'll dump the bus in Oxford and pick up a family job. Be careful how you drive with that leg.”

“I'll be OK.” Gordon forced confidence into his voice. Actually his mind could get but small purchase on his calf muscles, which seemed to be made of cotton wool.

Ben dropped to the ground. Gordon prepared to follow, then paused, looked around, his gaze halting at the prie-dieu where the owl sat, unblinking, under its dome. Carefully he lifted the glass and placed it on the carpet. Then he poked the owl forcefully in the stomach. The bird wobbled, fell off its rock and collapsed into a heap of sawdust and feathers. Gordon turned to his brother and smirked.

“For God's sake,” said Ben. “Don't be so bloody childish.”

On leaving Simon, Laurie had run blindly away across the lawn and into the trees before her feet, being turned by memory back onto the comfort circuit, blundered once more into the vegetable garden.

But such was her distress and apprehension that for the second time the high walls seemed to offer neither solace nor protection. She still felt intensely vulnerable standing there alone under the brazen sky. She must retreat farther. Find peace and quiet; become immune from the raucous and fearful pantomime unfolding back at the Grange. She made her way to the large Dutch greenhouse and closed the door.

Sanctuary. The humid warmth enveloped her like a cloak. Half the panes were whitewashed against the heat. Behind them she felt sheltered and secure. She sat down on an old kitchen chair with no back and closed her eyes. She became aware that her hands were balled tight and that she was gritting her teeth. Slowly she unclenched her fingers, parted her lips and opened her mouth slightly, feeling the muscles of her jaw become pliant and relaxed. She became aware of a mixture of exotic and homely fragrances. Heady Chinese jasmine and
Lilium longiflorum
and the unmistakable earthy warmth of tomatoes. In this case Saint Pierre.

A bee, punch-drunk on pollen, was stumbling from one exquisite arabesque of lily petals to the next, its buzz vibrant and ecstatic. Laurie envied it. How marvelous to enjoy such a simple and ordered existence. No problems for him when he finally staggered back, dusty legged, to the hive. Nobody jumping on him wanting to know where he was at fourteen hundred hours when a drone on the eighth cornice got his.

Laurie groaned, recognizing how foolish she had been to believe that she could shed terrible things simply by retreating into a childhood haven. Instead, riven with disquiet, she had brought all the chaos with her, staining the wholesome serenity that lay around.

She wandered up and down the strip of narrow flagstones that made the greenhouse path, worrying about the unpicked tomatoes, stroking the silvery-green fleece of alpines packed closely in their trays. But the plants had lost the power to heal. Sick and shuddery, she sat down again.

She thought, as she had already done over and over again, of the people back at the house, one of whom must be a killer. Yet how could that be? What earthly reason would anyone have for getting rid of Derek? The only obvious suspect, Sheila, had been out of the house all morning and cleared of last-minute murder by the maid's statement. And why should Bennet lie? Unless both she and Gaunt were Sheila's accomplices. This all seemed so frankly incredible that Laurie, even at the moment of being strongly tempted at the comforting neatness of such a solution, felt compelled to abandon it.

Part of the trouble was that the intense theatricality of the weekend helped to muddy up all the sightlines. A houseful of strangers is introduced. Next morning they all don false personas and prepare to take up the threads of false relationships purely in the interests of producing a false death by a false murderer.

Except that it hadn't worked out like that. Which made it all so…extraordinary. Yes—that was the word.
Extraordinary
. The more Laurie thought of it the more grotesque and unreal the whole affair appeared. In her mind she watched the cast of characters passing back and forth through the penumbra dividing truth from fiction. They all wore different faces. Or perhaps different masks. But what were they truly like?

Was Rosemary just a pretty little flirt? And Sheila her svelte, high-cheekboned counterpoint? Surely there must be more to Gilly than the braying monocled twittishness he chose to display? And were not the emphases given by Mother and Mrs. Saville to the antique nuances of class, tribe and status so resourcefully—even picturesquely—dreadful as to beggar belief and turn both ladies into parodies?

And what of Fred? Laurie had regarded his crass and ebullient chauvinism as at the worst charmless and mildly offensive. Now she wondered if it could not be indicative of a much darker macho aggression seeking a handy outlet. Finally there was Violet. Laurie had watched more than one film where a foolish-faced middle-aged woman had, in the last reel, been revealed as a superspy and, casting aside glossy wig and simper, savagely delivered the
coup de grace
. Only Martin (there it was! That dear remembered face) was plainly completely innocent.

Then it struck Laurie that every single one of these people had an alibi. No wonder the idea of an outsider had taken such a firm and popular hold. It was the only thing that made the whole terrible business explicable, for Laurie agreed with Sheila that Derek seemed to be the last person to take his own life.

Then, her thoughts having completed their wretchedly fruitless spiral, she was recalled to the present by the angry
zzz
of the heavy-laden bee who had mistaken the flight path to freedom and was hurling itself against one of the clear glass panes. With a pang of fellow feeling Laurie opened the door, got a flower pot and Mackintosh's
Practical Gardening
, trapped the bee and let it go. It flew off into a clump of ragged robin.

She was just turning back into her refuge when she heard a rustle. Strange, she thought, on such a hot, windless day. It was not the shy whisper of disturbed grasses that a small creature might make but much louder, as if a large animal was blundering about. She was not sure from which direction it emanated, only that it was coming from somewhere behind the garden wall. She strained her ears and was sure she heard whatever it was moving away. It was only then that she realized from her held breath and parched throat and the tocsin beat of her heart that she had been afraid.

For the first time it struck Laurie that she might be very foolish to thus isolate herself so completely from the rest of the group. The sanctuary of the greenhouse, secret and enclosed inside a high brick wall, could, by a terrible turn of the wheel, just as easily become a trap. There had never been any need for a lock on the rusty garden gate. Anyone could walk in. The murderer could walk in.

When the gate creaked Laurie told herself she had imagined the sound. Then it creaked again and the latch clicked as it was closed. Footsteps—soft, secretive on the beaten earth—approached, stopped, came on. Surely,
surely
, prayed Laurie, whoever it is will see that the garden is empty and go away. Standing stockstill behind the whitewashed panes, she knew herself to be invisible unless the intruder actually came up to the open greenhouse door. And why should he do this? No reason.
Unless he was looking for her
.

Motionless she waited, her heart pounding in such a frenzy it seemed to be trying to escape from her breast and force its way into her throat. There was a thundering, such a thundering in her ears that he would surely hear it. Drenched in sweat, choking on perfumed air, she stared at the opaque glass until her eyes burned, longing for supernatural energy that she might penetrate the milky film.

Dare she look out? Risk letting her head appear for a split second plainly visible through an unpainted pane? Why not? If she was very, very quick. Just a glance. Then she would know.

And she
must
know. Reminding herself that the odds against his (Laurie did not for a moment think that it could be a her) actually facing the greenhouse when she peered out were three to one against, she gripped the edge of the slatted shelving and, her nerves stretched into quivering tensile wires, moved. Inch by inch by inch. And dodged back. Nothing. He must be in the right-hand section of the garden. That meant creeping along to the other end of the block of whitened glass and going through the whole agonizing process again. This time Laurie decided she wouldn't accentuate the misery by extending the process. Just a quick bob out and back. Less chance of being noticed.