Murder at Maddingley Grange (37 page)

“You will stand by me, won't you, Mr. Peasmarsh? When I present the bill?”

“Can it be true?” Echoing the second chambermaid, the light of hope transforming his wretched countenance, Mr. Peasmarsh tottered to his feet.

“Gospel. I've been instructed to ring the chauffeur's lodgings. He's to bring the car round in fifteen minutes.”

“I can't believe it. I daren't.”

The manager made his way to the door, stumbling several times in the process, having already had recourse to a little something leading to a much larger something round about eleven o'clock. He thought Carole's question about standing by a bit unjust. It was leading from the front and thus taking all the flak from the enemy's redoubt that had reduced him to his present state of spineless sycophancy.

“Oh, God—” A thought struck him, dreadfully. “It's not April the first, is it?”

“No, no, Mr. Peasmarsh,” soothed Carole. “June the sixteenth.”

“I wouldn't put it past her to jinx the calendar. If ever a woman was in league with the devil, she is. And I bet he's scared stiff to open his mouth.”

Positioning himself squarely behind Carole, nerves resolutely uncalmed either by the tapping of her computer or the saccharine strings of the Palm Court Trio, Mr. Peasmarsh was yet cheered to see several members of staff he was convinced had either deserted or been eaten alive creeping out of the woodwork and going timidly about their business.

Only the groundsmen had remained relatively unscathed by the wrathful outpourings of hyperbolic invective that had emanated from the third floor front. Even so, young Gary, apprentice bedder-out, had, while working beneath an open window, been caught in the slipstream and had to go home and lie down.

Angelo, the head chef, also remained unbrutified. He greeted with a sneer the trembly waiters bearing rejected dishes from his renowned kitchen, taking his revenge in various subtle ways, none of which seemed to make the slightest dent in his complainant's digestive system.

Carole had just totaled the bill when the lift doors opened. Two tiers of luggage emerged and approached the desk. She redirected them outside. As the sweating bell-boys staggered off, a Phantom Continental drew up at the steps and a second lift descended. Carole gripped Mr. Peasmarsh's hand. The string trio, happily afloat on “The Blue Danube,” quietly sank. Miss Curd—lead cello—dropped her bow.

The sole occupant of the lift stalked, glowering, across the carpet, alternately banging her stick on the floor and thrusting it fiercely before her. Carole presented the bill. The departing guest unscrewed a fountain pen and held it poised, like a dagger over the printout.

“Have made no telephone calls.” Slash.

“Drunk no afternoon tea.” Slash.

“Dinner on the fourth was inedible. As it was on the fifth, the seventh and the thirteenth.” Slash, slash, slash. “Last night in sheer self-preservation I ate out.”

“My laundry was ironed in such a manner I would not have dressed a mangy monkey in it. I would die rather than enter Prinny's Astrological Jacuzzi. And the same applies to the Fitzherbert Carvery, sidesaddles in a basket.” More savage lunges and swipes.

“Room service, Mr. Peasmarsh? I have had better room service clinging to the north face of the Eiger in a raging avalanche.” One final deletion, a crisp retotaling and the result was handed back. “Quite honestly, if I couldn't run a hotel better than this I'd join the Foreign Legion. Or shoot myself.” The jaws of her alligator handbag opened wide. “You will take a check.”

It was not a question. Mr. Peasmarsh nodded. He would have taken supermarket coupons or Green Stamps. He would have paid the bill himself. The check was passed over; then, pausing merely to point out that tears were never meant to be a man's weapon, she banged and lunged with her stick again and was gone.

The chauffeur, green-liveried in polished high boots, removed his cap and opened the back door of the Rolls Royce. His employer climbed in. As she did so, an extraordinary explosion of sound and movement took place in the foyer of the Royal Georgian. Ragged cheers and applause; hoots and cries. All underscored by an Offenbach polka. (One, two, three
, four.)

As the two people in the car watched through the plate-glass doors, a grand chain formed. Waiters and kitchen staff, chambermaids and page boys, even the arthritic lift attendant, all dynamically linked in joyous celebration. They frolicked to and fro. In and out of the furniture, up and down the stairs, circling Carole and Mr. Peasmarsh who danced (one, two, three,
hop)
and whirled in a transport of delight.

“I see the lunatics have taken over the asylum.”

“Yes, Mrs. Maberley.”

“Well—they can't do any worse than the previous incumbents. Drive on.”

Aunt Maude (for it is she who is speaking as our story closes) leaned back against soft cream leather and wondered if, after the unspeakable fortnight she had just endured, she could really bring herself to start all over again in a few days time in Torquay. After all, simply shifting a few degrees farther south did not automatically guarantee one the holiday of a lifetime. Aunt Maude tightened her lips with irritation. No doubt about it, she infinitely preferred to take her vacations aboard ship, where menials who deserved to be castigated had to either stand their ground and take it on the chin or jump over the side. None of this shuffling off or giving notice. Reluctantly she came to the conclusion that she might have to abandon her Devonian trip and thus her master plan.

This had been formed one weekend in April when Laurel and Simon had been visiting. A few days earlier Mrs. Maberley had sat, foot tapping with irritation, while her solicitor delivered the last of what, in a less softly spoken man, might have been called a series of lectures. Even while smartly shutting him up, Aunt Maude appreciated that what he had to say made sense. Although believing (quite rightly) that she was good for another thirty years, it was only prudent that her affairs should be put in some sort of order and a will made. Once this single intimation of mortality was dealt with, it could be swept firmly back into the future where it belonged.

She was fully aware of the reasons behind her reluctance to name an heir, or heirs. Her strongest inclination emotionally (to be resisted for that very reason) was to leave the whole estate to her great niece and nephew. To Laurel because she was the daughter of Minette, Mrs. Maberley's favorite sister's child, had always seemed genuinely happy to be at Madingley Grange and was the only dependent ever to do a hand's turn about the place. And to Simon because Aunt Maude admired, if reservedly, his brazenly manipulative technique. Also he made her laugh and loved money and things with an uncomplicated guilt-free relish not unlike her own. A final plus—it was Simon's father who had made the last ten years of Minette's tragically short life so happy.

On the other hand (Aunt Maude was very old-fashioned when it came to matters of duty) it could not be denied that Alan Handsom-Norty had some sort of claim. He was her only brother's only child and had visited the Grange four times a year for the past two decades, frequently being sent off with a flea in his ear the minute his foot touched the gravel but still gamely returning next quarter day. Of course, on the debit side, there had been that scrap of trouble in the City but none of it had made the Top Papers (Aunt Maude's litmus test of authenticity) and seemed now to have quite blown over.

Then there was Hazel's Mervyn. Now nearly eighteen, still looking like a squirrel with nut-packed cheeks and unarguably one of the less attractive globules in the Maberley blood line. Add a second cousin in Lanarkshire, and Jocelyn, George's pet nephew, and the options really started to open up. At least, Aunt Maude reflected, she would not have to consider Hetty, who used to croon herself to sleep on an inflatable raft in a fish tank, wearing a homemade latex mermaid's tail. She had migrated to the Antipodes. And the best place for her, too.

It was when toiling and moiling over this clutch of assorted claimants for the umpteenth time that Mrs. Maberley hit on her brilliant idea. It came to her that the best way to discover who really deserved to inherit the house and gardens at Madingley was to leave them in charge of the place when she departed, ostensibly on her three-month cruise, then to return after a fortnight to see exactly what sort of dog's dinner they were making of it. They could all take it in turn. She saw no problem regarding secrecy as naturally those who had already been tested would not, in their own interests, reveal the sting to those who had not.

When this stratagem occurred, Laurel was carefully tending the pots along the terrace and her aunt silently admitted that, effective though the winnowing device might prove to be, she would not have entertained it for a moment had it not been strongly biased in the child's favor.

Now, her spirits lifting at the thought of seeing them both again so soon and recalling the extremely unpleasant fourteen days she had just, in the name of duty, endured, Aunt Maude wondered if she could not perhaps come to a decision then and there. For what was duty, after all? A dry old thing at the best of times. No one ever warmed their hands in the eventide of their life on duty's cold display. Better surely to trust her natural inclinations. (After all, when was she ever wrong?)

And so, her mind made up, Mrs. Maberley unhooked her speaking tube and blew down it with some force. A shrill whistle assailed the chauffeur's ears.

“Put your foot down, Fitterbee,” instructed Aunt Maude. “And we'll be home in time for tea.”

All the characters and events portrayed in this work are fictitious.

MURDER AT MADINGLEY GRANGE

A Felony & Mayhem mystery

PRINTING HISTORY
First UK edition (Mysterious Press/Century): 1990
First U.S. edition (Morrow): 1991
Felony & Mayhem print edition: 2006
Felony & Mayhem digital edition: 2014

Copyright © 1990 by Caroline Graham
All rights reserved

Ebook ISBN: 978-1-63194-014-9

To Mary, Mark, and Luke
Fond memories of Sheepcote

The author would like to thank Andrew Caslin of Lay and Wheeler, Colchester, for his kind assistance.

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