Our Jubilee is Death (3 page)

Back in his little house at Newminster, Carolus smoked thoughtfully over a whisky-and-soda, then began to act. He dictated a telegram to his cousin. One of his few extravagances was the sending of unnecessarily long and verbose telegrams, and he seemed to enjoy dictating this one.

Decided to come down and try to save you from probably imminent arrest due to your habits of vagueness and prevarication. Stop. Please obtain authority from heirs for me to investigate. Stop. Book me accommodation but shall look for furnished house for possible further stay. What were you doing at Blessington, anyway? Carolus.

Then Carolus rang for his housekeeper. She was a small, severe, efficient woman who was apt to regard Carolus as a small boy who had to be kept out of temptation's way. She had a particular horror of crime and claimed that her husband shared it.

“Oh, Mrs Stick,” began Carolus ingratiatingly, “I was thinking of going down to the seaside for a month or two.”

“I'm sure a real holiday would do you good, sir,” said Mrs Stick guardedly.

“I thought perhaps I might find a furnished flat or something down there because I hear that seaside places are far from full this year. If I can find one, would you and Stick like to close up here and come down for a time?”

“I'm sure we should be very pleased to, sir. I was only saying to Stick, it's a long time since we've been down to the sea.”

“Good. Then I'll do my best to find something.”

Suddenly Mrs Stick looked at Carolus more narrowly.

“Where did you say it was, sir?”

“I didn't, Mrs Stick. I haven't quite decided. I thought perhaps …” Carolus knew that he was overdoing his casualness … “I thought possibly somewhere like Blessington-on-Sea.”

Mrs Stick turned red.

“I knew as much,” she said. “I don't read the daily
paper for nothing. I told Stick this morning, ten to one you'd start poking about in what didn't concern you with this lady novelist buried alive and that. It'll mean all sorts of people coming to the house, I said, and us not knowing from day to day whether you wouldn't be poisoned. No, sir, neither me nor Stick couldn't possibly see our way to coming down to a place where we might be murdered in our beds any night.”

“Come now, Mrs Stick, the murder took place well out of the town, you know. It's a nice little place, and with this lovely summer weather …”

“I'm not saying we shouldn't have liked a sniff of sea air, sir, and Stick dearly loves a bit of shrimping, but we can't have ourselves mixed up in murders and that, as well you know. I only wish you would find something nicer to interest yourself in, sir. It seems wrong, all those horrible goings-on, and you risking life and limb to find out who's done it.”

“I feel sure you wouldn't be involved, Mrs Stick.”

A great indecision seemed to be going on in the small woman's mind.

“Of course, if I could feel sure of that … but then there are the people coming to call on you and I not knowing whether they're what you call suspects or not…. I'm not denying the sea-water isn't a wonderful thing for Stick's rheumatism, but I should never have a moment's peace wondering whether we weren't going to be knocked up in the middle of the night.”

“I think you might chance that, Mrs Stick. You would enjoy the change.”

“Well … I suppose what is to be is to be. When were you thinking of going, sir?”

“Tomorrow. As soon as I find a place for us all I will wire you.”

“Then Stick better start packing at once. Oh, one of the young gentlemen was round this afternoon, sir.”

‘One of the young gentlemen' meant, from Mrs Stick, one
of Carolus's pupils from the Queen's School, Newminster. She regarded most of them with scarcely less hostility and suspicion than she felt for suspects in her employer's cases.

“Which one?” asked Carolus sharply.

“You might guess which one, sir. That one with the airs and graces as if he was a grown-up man.”

“Not Priggley?” asked Carolus desperately.

“That's his name, sir.”

“What did he want?”

“Asking this, that and the other question about your movements. I gave him questions. ‘What's it to do with you what Mr Deene may choose to do?' I said. ‘You go off and mind your lessons.' But he only grinned. ‘Don't be stuffy, Mrs Stick,' he said, and before I knew where I was I found myself smiling. He's a cheeky young thing, but he
has
got a sort of way with him. I said to Stick afterwards …”

“But what questions was he asking?” demanded Carolus anxiously.

“Oh, whether you were thinking of going to Blessington, and that.”

“I hope you didn't tell him?”

“I wasn't to know, was I, sir? It was only Stick reading in the paper that made me think of it.”

“But did you tell Priggley that you had thought of it, Mrs Stick?” insisted Carolus severely.

Mrs Stick in turn became more her usual disapproving self.

“You've only yourself to blame, sir, if those who know your ways and what you get up to can guess which way the cat will jump.”

“You mean, the abominable Priggley may follow me down to Blessington?”

“No, sir. By what he said he will be there before you. He was leaving this afternoon. In anticipation, he said.”

Carolus actually and noisily groaned.

F
AY
D
EENE
, the cousin who had written to Carolus, was a woman of thirty-five, a competent actress who had never been a publicized star, but was rarely out of work. Hers was a face which made people exclaim, “Oh yes, I've seen her quite often. What
was
it she was in?” She had been in so many West End productions and so many English films that it was difficult not to recognize her but hard to recall her in any one part.

She had played a secretary, a favourite sister, a friend's wife, a devoted nurse, a good sort, a beloved niece, a dress-designer, a lady doctor, a famous hostess and a confidential barmaid, all with grace and confidence, and her more
outre
parts had been those of a games mistress, a poison-pen specialist and a prostitute.

She had a private income, but its proportions had been greatly exaggerated in stage circles, where most sums of money are spoken of as enormous or infinitesmal. She could afford to refuse the work she did not want, but she could not afford to be temperamental once she had accepted it. She was a good-looking woman who dressed a little too simply to be smart. She had a jolly laugh and, as already indicated, a vague but voluble way of talking.

“Oh, Carolus,” she said when he had found her at her hotel, “this is splendid. My dear, I'm so tired of practically being called a murderess, and the Stayer girls are desperate. Of course you'll clear it up in a moment. Can you imagine, though, just the head with that look of inane grandeur? Was she meant to be buried deeper, do you think?”

“Where am I staying?”

“Oh, at the Hydro. It's supposed to be the best, but
they're
all
hell. I came down to stay with Bomberger, believe it or not. I was in her last play, and she wanted me in her next one. I spent two nights in the house, then fled. It was like Napoleon at St Helena. A sort of sham Court. Revolting. I came here, and used to go out to Trumbles (that's the name of her house) when she wanted to discuss
The Broken Rosary,
her next play.”

“You had no open quarrel with her?”

“Heaps. But who hadn't? You should have
seen
her. She really did bestride her narrow world like a Colossus, and those unhappy people round her peeped about under her huge legs or whatever it was. Only, of course, she was a Colossus of mediocrity.”

“Why did they stay with her? Those round her, I mean.”

“Partly because they had nowhere else to go, I think, and partly because she mesmerized them like a cobra or whatever you call it. They resented everything, but they never seemed to think of rebellion. It made me rather sick. Even Babs …”

“That's the younger niece?”

“Yes, and the brighter one of the two. Even she seemed to have thrown in the sponge. When she first went to live with Lillianne she was a nice cheerful girl from South East London—just what you would think from her name. But the Bomberger had broken her. She'd become sullen and unintelligent, though not quite as much a nervous wreck as her sister Gracie.”

“What about the nephew?”

“Ron Cribb. His was the worst case of all, in a way. He's married to a woman called Gloria, a handsome blonde who gave him hell if he ever threatened to escape the Bomberger. Lillianne had bought him his farm, you see, and kept the ownership of it while letting him farm it. She had it all tied up so that she could turn him off at a minute's notice, and of course she took full advantage of that. Rather than keep a car herself she had bought one ostensibly
for him, but actually to use him as a chauffeur. I once heard him plead that he simply couldn't take her out next day because he had to attend a farm sale a few miles away. It was at lunch and Lillianne blinked twice, very slowly, keeping her lids down for about two seconds each time, then said, ‘Of course, Ron, I know the farm needs attention sometimes, indeed I often wonder that you have so much time to go up to London and so on. What I find difficult to understand is that it should need attention at the
one
time when I feel I might be a little better for a drive. As you are perfectly aware, I no longer look for any pleasure in life but a temporary easement of pain…. Nor do I expect the smallest consideration or gratitude from any of you. I have learnt better. But when,
for once,
I give you an opportunity at least to behave with common humanity …'

“ ‘All right, Aunt Lillianne. I'll miss the sale.'

“ ‘Isn't that rather a grudging and ungracious way to talk? It is not as though I often look for some benefit from the car I purchased. No one could be less exigent than I am. It seems to me that on one of the very rare occasions that I ask you to drive me, you might at least affect some willingness, for the sake of good manners if nothing else.' And so on. In the end the wretched young man had to plead with her to go with him. You see what I mean about a cobra? Or is it a boa-constrictor?”

“I do indeed.”

“His wife didn't have to suffer all that, and as a matter of fact Gloria seemed almost to enjoy playing up to the Bomberger. She was not one of the household, and I think Lillianne treated her a little better than the rest, even holding her up as a model to Gracie and Babs. ‘It sometimes seems to me that Gloria is the
only
one of you who understands what it is to be in perpetual pain. Perhaps she has a less selfish disposition than my own relatives, or perhaps more imagination. At least she does not exhibit the heartless obsession with her own affairs which my nieces have.' But then she was beastly, they once told me, when
Gloria was going to have her baby. ‘I do not expect your generation to realize their responsibilities,' she said, ‘but I would have thought you might have
considered
before starting a family at my expense. You must
know
that Ron has nothing whatever of his own and may lose the farm if I am not satisfied with him.' Gloria swallowed that at the time, and little Geoff is two years old now, so she may have forgotten it. She never stood up to Lillianne, but seemed able to live with less friction than the rest, perhaps because she was not so much at Trumbles. She let her husband suffer it all, and if he threatened to kick she gave him worse than he got from Lillianne. My dear, do you know what she was
wearing?
The
lot. A
Hartnell gown with a pile of the awful jewellery she went in for. Incredible, isn't it?”

“No. That's not incredible. Tell me about the Secretary.”

“Alice Pink. She's a bit of a mystery. I'm not good at that sort of woman. Secretive and sour and servile. She is supposed to have had the worst time of them all. I've even heard that Lillianne used to hit her. She's a yellowish, scraggy woman with apparently no relative or friend in the world, and she has been with Lillianne for more than ten years. She scarcely spoke when I was there, but rushed about doing housework in a harassed way as though every second she was expecting to hear Lillianne's bell. You could understand that because the blasted thing sounded often enough and Pink would leap like a gazelle for the stairs. Can't think why she stayed. No money or promise of money could have made it worth while. Perhaps she was a little mad.”

“How did Lillianne Bomberger treat her in public?”

“Oh, with that awful sort of condescending pseudo-graciousness that she had for everyone except her family. ‘Miss Pink, I know you won't mind my mentioning it', sort of thing.”

“Mentioning what?”

“Something horribly personal, usually. ‘But I fear that
my headache will get worse unless you can control that sniffing.' Or, ‘Miss Pink, I hate to have to point out that my writing-table—on which, after all, everyone of us has to depend for our existence—is in chaos this morning. Nothing less than chaos. If you could manage to give less time and attention to your own concerns and spare a
little
thought for me it would make things less impossible. Thank you.' And poor Alice Pink would fly about like an agitated ant.”

“Who else was there?”

“Graveston, the odd man who wheeled her chair. He, apparently, had no sense of humour at all. A lugubrious character who walked about like someone in a funeral procession. It was hard to know what he thought of her.”

“What made him stay?”

“Either she overpaid him or she was blackmailing him. I suppose he, like all of them, had what they call Hopes. She was supposed to be a sick woman, though I believe she would have lived to a hundred if she had not been done in. She had presumably promised them all something. The gardener I can understand because he loved his work, had a cottage of his own and did not get much interference. Then there was Mrs Plum, who came in daily. She was all right because the Bomberger never spoke to her, but said everything through Miss Pink or one of the nieces, and they could tone it down. ‘Tell that woman that my head is bursting this morning and the noise she is making is torture to me. I quite realize that you all wish to keep her services while they save you from doing the least little thing about the house, but the point is coming at which I shall be able to endure no more. Listen to that! It's as though you needed a herd of elephant to save you trouble.' Then one of them would appeal to Mrs Plum, who was a good sort and did what she was asked for their sake.”