Our Jubilee is Death (6 page)

“Thank you very much.”

When Carolus stood in the entrance to the garage he could see no one, but sounds were coming from under the car. Lying beside it was a new brake-cable.

“Mr Cribb,” he said.

The sounds stopped. There was a long pause. Then Ron Cribb emerged looking, Carolus decided, nothing short of terrified. No ordinary summons to a man in a normal condition of mind could have produced those staring eyes in a drawn face, that look of amazement and horror.

“Who … who are you?” he asked, never taking his eyes from Carolus.

“My name's Deene. Your wife said I should find you here. Putting in a new brake-cable?”

Carolus was trying to be calming and chatty.

At first he thought that Ron Cribb was going to seize the brake-cable from where it lay. He looked at it then back to Carolus.

“What… what…” he mouthed.

“I understood from my cousin Fay that you didn't mind my coming down and asking a few questions about Mrs Bomberger's death. I'm sorry if I startled you.”

“Startled? No, no. I didn't hear you coming, that's all. I was working.”

“Hand-brakes are a bore. Cable broken?”

“No. Worn. Let's go over to the house.”

“I hear you're like me—you loathe having other people to do your repairs. I've never put in a new brake-cable, though. Tricky?”

“No. Easy enough. I've had enough of it now, though. Been working for more than an hour.”

“I hear your battery's down.”

“Who told you that?” flashed Ron Cribb angrily. “What business? … I'm taking it in today.”

“Where do you go for repairs when you're forced to? I shall probably need something while I'm here.”

“Lindon's. They're the best. Let's go over to the house.”

Carolus seemed to turn away unwillingly. When they reached the house Gloria had evidently been upstairs to ‘tidy herself' and looked rather splendid with her brilliant fair hair and good full figure. She at once offered them drinks. Carolus noticed when Ron was pouring himself a stiff whisky that his hand was trembling.

They chatted in a desultory way about Lillianne Bomberger and her last evening, but Carolus was careful to ask no leading questions and show no great curiosity. Presently the conversation turned to his own Bentley Continental, and Ron showed an intelligent interest.

“Would you both care to see how you like it?” asked Carolus. “Why not come for a little run and have lunch with me in Norwich? I'm told that there's one decent restaurant.”

Gloria was pleased, but Ron, who was a little surly-looking at the best of times, said slowly, “I want to finish the job I'm doing.”

“You can do that when we come back,” said Gloria peremptorily, and her husband could not very well refuse to go.

Carolus drove them northward, skirted Yarmouth, and was able to open up on the main Yarmouth-to-Norwich road. They spoke little, luxuriating in the big car's smooth performance at speed.

In Norwich he pulled up at a restaurant called the Brass Owl, and they went into a large, comfortable room. Settling his guests at a table, he excused himself and made for the telephone.

Luckily Rupert Priggley was in the dining-room of the Royal Hydro.

“You didn't tell me you were leaving this fearful hotel,” reproached Rupert.

“No. I hoped to shake you off. But I don't know whether you most resemble a burr or a leech.”

“A lure or a bitch? Hard words, aren't they, sir? And now I suppose you want me to be useful.”

“Yes. Got a pen? Go out at once to Beddoes Farm, about five miles inland from Trumbles Bay. I've got the farmer and his wife here to lunch in Norwich, so you won't see them. In the yard behind the house is a garage, and in that a Morvin four-seater. Beside it on the floor is a new brake-cable. Got all that?”

“Yes. Exactly.”

“I want you to make a careful examination of the old brake-cable. Is it worn out? Was it ordinary wear and tear? And so on. If anyone sees you there you've come by Mr Cribb's orders to take the battery to be recharged. Get away as soon as you can, but not until you've made a thorough examination.”

“Shall be done. Where shall I see you?”

“At the house I've taken furnished.”

“Address?”

“Wee Hoosie …”

“I beg your pardon?”

“You heard perfectly well. Wee Hoosie, Sandringham Terrace. You can wait about there till I get back. That will be in a couple of hours.”

Carolus returned to his guests to find Ron more sullen than before. A good meal failed to cheer him, and he expressed anxiety to return to his farm.

“So much to do,” he muttered fretfully.

Carolus did not think it necessary to delay their return much longer, for it was past three before he eventually dropped the couple at their front door and drove into Blessington.

Priggley was astride his motor-cycle at the gate of Carolus's temporary home.

“The Sticks arrived, took one look at Wee Hoosie and fled,” said Rupert.

“You don't mean they've gone back to Newminster?”

“It would be no more than you deserved if they had. ‘Wee Hoosie'! It makes me sick to my stomach. But they've only gone for a walk. Their luggage is in the coal-shed.”

“Come in,” said Carolus, opening the front door and revealing the hat-stand and umbrella-pot.

“I think I would rather not, if you don't mind, sir. I'm no archaeologist, and I've always had rather a thing about tombs.”

“Inside!” snapped Carolus, and Priggley opened the door of the front room. He quickly closed it again.

“I feel one owes some respect to the dead,” he said unctuously.

“What dead?”

“All dead. Everywhere. It smells of them.”

“Bit musty, perhaps. Open a window.”

“Did you say musty, sir? Yes, I thought you did. I don't argue over words. But don't talk in that frivolous way of opening windows. Even if there was room for me to reach them, they're obviously not made to be opened till all the other tombs give up their dead.”

When Carolus had squeezed his way across and pulled aside the lace curtains he found that Priggley was right.

“And what do you suppose these are?” asked the odious boy, indicating the wedding groups.

“Family photographs,” suggested Carolus.

“You relieve me. I thought they were illustrations for the case-histories of one of our bolder psychiatrists.”

“Suppose you tell me what you have to report?”

“You'll find it disappointing. The old cable had been eaten away by acid from the battery which was just above it. Perfectly natural.”

“Think so?”

“Why not?”

“You may be right. It's rather a coincidence that the battery was flat and Cribb wouldn't take it in to be recharged.”

“Anyway, the Bomberger was poisoned and died of an overdose of sleeping-pills and was found buried in the sand, so what's a brake-cable to do with it?”

“I like collecting scraps of information. Did anyone see you out there?”

“Not that I know of. I left everything as I found it. So you're not disppointed in my information?”

“Dear me, no.”

At that moment there was knocking at the back door and Rupert admitted the Sticks. Mrs Stick hastily and fearfully glanced round the kitchen, which held among other miscellaneous effects a walnut Victorian couch, a wicker arm-chair, a grandfather clock and a quantity of fire-irons which appeared from their size and variety to be intended to stoke the furnace of an iron-smelting works. A kitchen range, a vast coal-scuttle and stacks of china which overflowed an enormous dresser left her just room to pass sideways across the room. In awful silence she viewed the entrance passage and mounted the stairs. The three males below heard her open each door in turn and descend again.

“Well, Mrs Stick?” said Carolus heartily.

“I beg your pardon, sir, but did you see over the rooms before taking the house?” she asked.

“Not all of them, Mrs. Stick. Why?”

“It's not for me to say, sir. Only I never thought that Stick and me would have to get into bed by hopping over a hip-bath and vaulting a clothes-horse. And I wouldn't have supposed you want three commodes and a what-not in your room.”

“It's through her having come into her sister's things just after their mum … mother died,” explained Carolus. “She won't part with anything.”

Mrs Stick sniffed.

“It's clean, isn't it?” asked Carolus.

“It's clean, yes, sir. But how's it going to be kept clean, that's what I want to know? If I can't get into the rooms, how am I going to dust them? As for cooking anything— well, there's nowhere to put any food if you was to buy it, and whoever did the beds must have been a contortionist made of india-rubber, which Stick and me are not. Where your clothes are going goodness only knows, but I shouldn't be able to unpack them even if we found room for a shirt or two. I've already nearly tripped over a hassock and a slop-pail, and upstairs there's texts on all the walls and wash-stands and corner-brackets and dressing-tables wherever you turn.”

A relief was provided by the arrival of his next-door neighbour with Carolus's receipt.

“I've got an empty bedroom,” she volunteered, “where you could put some of it if you can't manage. I'm sure she wouldn't mind that. It would give you room to turn round, wouldn't it?”

They set to work.

C
AROLUS
felt that he could no longer postpone a visit to the dead woman's home, and that evening decided to go with his cousin to Trumbles. He felt that, introduced by Fay, he would be less formidable and less annoying to the three women, who, he gathered, appeared to be near distraction after the horror of the murder itself, the inquest and the searching enquiries of the police.

He started on the road he had taken that morning when on his way to Beddoes Farm, but on Fay's instructions turned left by a narrow lane which led only to the house. It looked much as Agincourt had said, modern Gothic and ugly.

As they drew near they met an individual walking towards them, and Carolus slowed down.

“Who's this?” he asked Fay.

“Never seen him before.”

“Not the odd man or the gardener?”

“No.”

The question was scarcely necessary, for the man looked raffish and seedy, not in the least like someone who worked for steady wages. Carolus thought there was something suggesting the gypsy about him, yet that was not quite what he appeared. Fairground? Just possibly. He was a tallish man with a squint and a mirthless grin with which he replied to Carolus's stare, showing a number of gold teeth.

The front door was opened by Alice Pink, to whom Fay introduced Carolus. They went into a large panelled room full of ill-arranged flowers and met Gracie and Babs Stayer. But before taking note of his surroundings Carolus asked about the man in the lane.

“Just
now?”
said Gracie Stayer. “There has been no one here this afternoon.”

“No one,” repeated Alice Pink solemnly.

“But he must have been coming from the house,” said Fay, and described the man they had seen.

“What an extraordinary thing!” exclaimed Babs, who, like the other two, seemed very disturbed by these questions. “Not a soul has been here, I assure you.”

“Could he have been to see someone else in the house?”

“There is no one else. Graveston has gone to Laymouth and the gardener left two hours or more ago. Besides, we should have heard.” Gracie Stayer sounded genuinely perplexed and nervous. “It is yet another mystery connected with this ghastly affair.”

Carolus at once confirmed in his mind an anomalous aspect of the whole case. Everyone agreed that Lillianne Bomberger was an odious woman, everyone thought she should have been murdered years ago, everyone knew that those round her had been relieved by her death of an intolerable strain, yet neither in these three women nor in the couple he had seen this morning was there any suggestion of relief; on the contrary, they looked ill with worry and anxiety.

Gracie Stayer was tall and dark and gave the impression of being prematurely old. Sad, anxious eyes looked out from a face which, though not actually lined, was drawn and tired. She was the kind of young woman who is called intense.

Suddenly she said in a voice which suggested hardly repressed hysteria, “I should like to speak to you, Mr Deene. Alone.” Then, turning to the others as though to explain, she said, “Well, I
must
have advice from someone who understands these things.”

Fay tactfully rose, and Babs Stayer and Alice Pink accompanied her from the room.

“I don't know what to do,” said Gracie. “I don't know
what
to do. The police keep questioning me.”

“Perhaps they think you haven't told them the truth, Miss Stayer.”

“But I have. It's about the poison, chiefly. You see, I bought some arsenic weed-killer.”

“What was that for?”

Gracie Stayer had no sense of fatuity when she replied, “For killing weeds.”

“Yes. But I meant what particular weeds?”

“Oh, in the drive,” said Gracie eagerly. “There were so many weeds in the drive. Aunt Lillianne hated to see it.”

“Did she tell you to get the weed-killer?”

“No. She didn't actually tell me.”

“You have a gardener, haven't you?”

“Primmley, yes.”

“Why didn't you tell him to deal with the weeds, Miss Stayer?”

This question seemed particularly to upset Gracie Stayer. She pulled at her handkerchief, and Carolus wondered if she was going to start crying.

“You're as bad as the police,” she said resentfully.

“I only want to arrive at the truth. I can't be of much use to anyone till I know the truth.”

“But on this I can't answer you. I don't
know
why I didn't tell Primmley. It was an impulse, I suppose. I thought of the weeds when I was in Cupperly's—the chemists—and asked them if they had a good weed-killer. They showed me this and I bought it. That was all.”