Murder at Maddingley Grange, page 12
“Settle down then.”
Mother settled, pulling in an errant fold of her voluminous nightdress and, in no time at all, was snoring fit to wake the dead.
Mrs. Saville stood, high, wide and handsome, in duchesse satin, setting the alarm on her traveling clock. In spite of the superb dinner and apparently smooth running of the household, she did not trust either of the domestics to appear on the dot of eight-thirty with the Earl Grey and ginger nuts to dislodge her from slumber. She replaced the clock on the dressing table and regarded herself complacently in the long glass.
“Did I ever tell you, dear, that your grandfather once remarked on what a splendid figurehead I would make?”
“Several times, Mummy.” He was right too, thought Rosemary, casting her eye over the massive shoulders and victorious profile. The sight of these thrusting toward him through the swell must have caused the stoutest-hearted pirate to leap over the side. If her mother had been around at the time of the Marie Celeste, there would have been no mystery worth mentioning. She further noticed about her parent a quite unpleasant liveliness. Rosemary stretched her lips wide in a simulated yawn. Usually when you did this the people yawned at yawned back. Mrs. Saville’s jaw remained stubbornly unoccluded. Just to underline her drift, Rosemary said: “Gosh—I’m tired.”
“Well, I’m not. I doubt if I shall sleep a wink.”
“But…” In the doorway of her adjoining room Rosemary gaped in dismay. “You always sleep like a log.”
“The thought of that appalling family next door will be more than enough to keep me awake, thank you. As for that disgusting old woman, you heard what she said on the terrace…nothing more than a gypsy.”
“I asked her when we were coming upstairs if she really had got Romany blood and she looked very mysterious and tapped her nose and said, ‘I got all sorts, dear—in a little cupboard under the stairs.’” Rosemary giggled.
“You won’t be laughing when you wake up tomorrow to find your inheritance has been stolen in the night.” Mrs. Saville took her jewel box from the dressing table, locked it, put it away in a drawer and locked that.
“I’m sure they’re not dishonest, Mummy. Just…colorful.”
“Nonsense. People of that ilk have no respect for the property of others. And did you see that disgusting thing he had around his neck?” she went on, leaping as nimbly from the theoretical to the concrete as might the Spanish ibex. “A man who wears a tie that lights up in the dark is a man whose depravity knows no bounds.”
“It didn’t actually light—”
“Don’t argue, Rosemary.”
Rosemary went to bed and lay listening to her mother holding forth on the iniquitous fluidity of the present English class structure when the maid expected a day off every week as a matter of course and Jack sat down with his master. Soothed by the familiar drone, and quite against her best intentions, Rosemary drifted off to sleep.
Laurie was tired and had looked forward to going to bed, yet now the evening was finally over she found herself strangely unable to go through even the simplest preretirement rituals. Still consumed with anxiety she drifted in a directionless manner in and out of the bathroom and round and round the bedroom furniture, watched by Auguste’s ultramarine Parisian. Eventually Laurie settled by the window seat. She slipped off her high heels, knelt on the padded tapestry cushions, opened the casement and leaned out.
The rain had stopped and the moon was radiantly bright, the sky calm and spangled with stars. She took slow, deep breaths, hoping to bring her heart, still cavorting around in her breast, under some sort of control. From the terrace rose the sweet living fragrance of pinks and madonna lilies mingling with the dense smell of warm earth. Laurie, who had never seen herself as a sentimental person, stared up at the great limitless arc of the heavens and found she was on the verge of tears.
She sat on. Gradually her heart became still and images of Mr. Gillette acting out his murderous caprice faded, leaving her, more or less, tranquil. She felt very strange. The evening that had just passed was gradually assuming the quality of a dream. Everything vivid and real, but in an unreal way without anchor or true focus. Had there really been a white staring face pressed up against the glass? Had Mrs. Gibbs truly spoken with a savage and terrible clairvoyance while Sheila Gregory screamed back at her in fear? Had a presence been conjured up from beyond the grave?
Picturing the scene now, the participants all standing around in fancy dress, Laurie found herself regarding them as so many waxworks. So unlike the silent trees and shrubs and inky waters of the moat, all of which, though unmoving, seemed to be possessed of a vibrant, guarded energy. She heard a sound. Two doves, silver in the moonlight and croodling tenderly to each other, waddled across the rain-washed flagstones.
Laurie, overcome by an intense wave of emotion, closed the window and made her way to the bathroom. She washed her face and was disconcerted to find when she had finished that it still showed traces of rouge and lipstick. Owning no cleansing cream or lotion, she lathered up more soap and, after two further scrubs and rinses, all the hateful stuff seemed to have gone. She determined not to put it on again, thirties or no thirties, Simon or no Simon.
She cleaned her teeth and was just turning away from the glass when she was struck by the extraordinary vivacity of her complexion. She peered closer. Her cheeks were blooming and her eyes, seeming very wide apart, sparkled and shone with an almost unnatural brilliance. Regarding this transformation with some surprise, Laurie became aware that although, as far as she could recall, it was for her a unique phenomenon, somewhere in the not too distant past she had observed another in precisely this rather remarkable condition. She stood and thought a bit, then suddenly excessively tired, removed her slinky dress, put on her baggy striped pajamas, climbed into bed and fell fast asleep.
The little white square of paper from Simon’s bowler hat, which, having no pocket, she had tucked into her neck halter, fell unnoticed to the floor. Had Laurie troubled to read it she might have slept less well. For the paper made it plain that it was she who had been cast as Mad Betty stroke Black Tom, village gossip and soothsayer. And that Simon’s comforting explanation of Mrs. Gibbs’s clairvoyance could not have been further from the mark.
All was not well behind the green baize door. Whimperings, thumpings, groans and muffled cries could be heard. Ben, stripped for action, was sluicing his brother’s head under a gushing stream of icy water.
“Aaarrgghh…” A clogged, choking gasp as Gordon struggled to come up for air. Ben tightened the muscles of his sinewy arms and forced the older man’s shoulders farther into the water.
“You bastard!” he shouted. “What did you tell me? Ay? What did you promise?”
“Orrguhhaamoo…”
“No. Booze. This. Time.” Ben punctuated the four words by rhythmically clunking the butler’s forehead against the basin’s edge. Gordon’s legs skidded and skated under him. “You gin-sodden fart-arsed crapulous louse-ridden bug-eared dick-head!”
“Guggle…uggle…”
Suddenly Ben let his brother go. He watched as the dripping head and shoulders slowly rose from the basin. Ben crossed to the bed and slumped down, seemingly in despair. Gordon’s nose and mouth were full of water. He spouted, then snorted, then spouted again. There was a bright hard clanging in his head like the merry chatter of a tenor bell, and his eyes stung. He tested his legs and found them wanting.
“Look at you. You’re so drunk you can’t stand up.”
Gordon pondered this harsh conclusion. It seemed to him, accurate though it might be in some respects (he certainly could not imagine letting go of the basin’s edge in anything like the near future), there was buried somewhere in its severe judgmental structure a misapprehension as to the precise disposition of cause and effect. Motivated by a gathering sense of injustice, he peered through a fog of alcoholic fumes at the nearly naked figure across the room. And in a flash the truth of the matter came to him.
“I could stanup perfly ’fore you knock me out.”
“Bullshit! If I hadn’t caught the tray when you came zipping past that curtain, you’d have been through the kitchen, out the door and sharpening your teeth on the gravel.”
“You can’t shar—”
“Shut up!”
Gordon became silent. He knew his brother in this mood. Best to say nothing. He wrung out his bow tie and drew the edges of his sodden tailcoat together in a pathetic attempt to restore the status quo. Then, squaring his shoulders, he let go of his support. Quickly he grabbed it again, waited, let go much more carefully, made his way with slow deliberation to the armchair and fell in it.
“You needn’t think you’re dossing there.” As he spoke Ben was replacing a pair of wire clippers in a canvas work strip. He rolled it up and tied the tape in a bow. “I’ve cut the wires— are you listening, plank brain?” Groan. “I’ve cut the wires where they run behind that big sideboard—”
“Thought you couldn’t see.”
“You sarky—” Ben launched himself ferociously across the room. Gordon cowered in his chair, hands raised protectively as Ben grabbed his bow tie. “I followed them all the way round from the phone with my fingers, didn’t I? Because where were you? Swilling your way through bottle number three…” Gaunt gestured. “Two? My mistake. Excuse me.” Ben laughed a bitter laugh. “I’d be better off with a guide dog. At least they don’t drink.”
“Ben…” Gordon choked out the words. “I’m…sorry…”
“You’re always sorry. Sorry’s your middle name.”
“Pl…please…” Gordon made feeble passes at his throat with ice-stiff fingers. His brother let go. “Make it up to you, Ben.”
“You will! No mistake.”
“Next time—”
“It’s this time I’m talking about. This time! You saw the stuff that old bag was wearing. There’s a pile more upstairs. We’re never going to get another chance like this. I knocked her jewel box off the dressing table when I was looking for the bed.” His voice was hushed in reverent recall. “You never saw sparklers like it. And they’re real. All you’ve got to do is walk in, pick up the box and walk away. We take the bus and vanish. Simple.”
Gordon let out a deep juddering breath that shook his whole frame and said: “Hugo.”
“How can I go, you cretinous troglodyte? I can’t see.”
“…going to bed…”
“You are not going to bed, big brother. You are going to sit there and pull as much of yourself together as you can lay your hands on while I”—Ben put on slippers, wig and dressing gown—“go to the kitchen and make a large pot of black coffee which I shall then get into you by whatever means proves necessary. No holds barred.”
Gordon whimpered, then craned his head around, staring over Ben’s shoulder in a hunted manner.
“Now what?”
“It’s that owl again.”
“It’s got more life in it than you, you idle sod.”
“Not idle…tired…”
“I’m tired, Gordon. I am very tired. I have to find enough energy for two. Enough drive and commitment and willpower for two, like I’ve had to all my life. I’ve been carrying you since the day I was born. When you took me out in my pram, you used to get so pissed I had to get out and find my own way home. You’ve always held me down, sweating away at your crummy little fiddles. Without you I could really have been somebody.” Gordon started to cry. “Where’s your vision, man?” Ben’s voice softened. “Where are your dreams?”
“How can I have any dreams? You won’t let me go to bed.” Gordon wiped his nose with his sleeve. “You’ve always been shellfish.”
“It’s you who’s selfish.” Ben dropped to his knees beside the morose, waterlogged heap. “If you won’t do it for me, how about doing it for Mum? Ay? Imagine getting back to Whipps Cross and tipping that lot out on the kitchen table. Picture her face.”
Gordon’s violet countenance broke up only to reassemble into shifting planes of unutterable sorrow. “…careworn…”
“Yes, she is careworn. Worn out with years of looking after us. And now we’ve got a chance to pay her back. Don’t you think it’s time she put her feet up? Took it a bit more easy?”
“She could come off the game.”
“If that is her wish, certainly. And think how proud Dad would be.”
Gordon frowned in deep recall, then said: “Dad’s inside.”
“He’s inside now but he won’t always be. Twelve years’ll fly by. And he’ll come out to a sweet little nest egg.” Ben seized his brother’s hand. “It’s all within our grasp here. Just the one job and we’ll have the lot. The Mercs, the Rolex Oysters, the real gold chains and handmade boots, rump steak till it comes out of your ears, Vat 29 on your cornflakes, beautiful girls, sunshine—”
“Sunshine?”
“We could be talking Marbella here, Gordon. We could be talking wall-to-wall fitted currency. You can do anything with money. You can reinvent your life.” Ben gazed urgently at his brother and gripped his hand more tightly, willing the sluggish blood to quicken and the heart to hope. “You can even reinvent yourself.”
This was too much. Gordon, who had been looking quite chipper at the mention of Vat 29, now looked definitely alarmed. He said in a voice thick with lethargy: “Dunno what to do…”
“I’ll tell you what you’re going to do, dozy guts. You are going to have a cold shower and then you are going to swallow several gallons of strong coffee. After which you will climb those stairs and come back down with that box. You are going to do all these things because if you don’t I shall drag you into the shrubbery where no one will hear your screams and beat the living shit out of you.”
Martin got undressed again. He had already undressed once, then had a long, slow bath to pass the time and got into his pajamas. Half an hour later it struck him that to arrive in Rosemary’s bedroom, even under the most pressing invitation, wearing only the light cotton garments in question looked a bit brash, not to say cocksure. And if (God forbid!) his future mother-in-law woke while he was creeping through, Martin felt he would be in grave need of, if not protective clothing, at least something a bit more substantial than a flimsy two-piece. That was when he had donned his light tweed suit.
Half an hour later he had taken it off. For the thought struck him while sitting by the radiator, an unread copy of Home and Country on his lap, that the most suspicious getup imaginable to be discovered wearing while roaming the corridors of a manor house in the middle of the night (apart perhaps from a striped jersey and balaclava) was a light tweed suit. They would simply think he was scarpering with the family silver. So he climbed back into the jimjams.
Now he got out of his chair for the umpteenth time, opened his door a crack and peered out. Rosemary’s remained firmly closed. His eye measured the distance. It wasn’t very far. He could cover it in about ten seconds although, recalling his fiancée’s bouncy and promissory energy, Martin felt it might well take him more like ten minutes to make it back. He slipped on his old, shaggy camel’s hair dressing gown, more for the sake of something to do than because the temperature demanded it, and looked at his watch. Five to two. Very late.
Surely this meant that Rosemary, having not put their signal into effect, was by now fast asleep rather than lying with wildly beating heart longing for amorous dalliance. On the other hand, what if she was lying there so entranced by dreams of said dalliance that she had simply forgotten to open the door? How would she feel then as the hours dragged by and she waited, having offered not only her heart but all the accompanying bits and pieces, to someone who did not even have the moxie to cover the few feet of Axminster between himself and paradise?
Martin, for he was a kindhearted soul, would not wish this chastening experience on anyone, least of all the girl he expected to marry. Also, and here an element of self-preservation crept in, Rosemary when thwarted was inclined to be erratic in her reactions. There might be copious tears and a quivering lower lip. On the other hand, a swiftly traveling missile had been known to leave that delicate hand on the rare occasion when she failed to get her own way.
Martin took a brave deep breath, tied the cord of his dressing gown very securely around his middle and came to a decision. He would go. If she was asleep he could truthfully say on the morrow that he had at least complied with his side of the arrangements. If awake…
Martin was not sure what he would do in that case, for he did not feel even the slightest tweaking of desire. Cross that bridge, he thought, when we come to it. A moment later he was on his way. Below him in the hall the grandfather clock struck two.
Chapter Twelve
Martin eased open the door of the Greuze room to be greeted by an indelicate trumpeting. He hoped it emanated from Mrs. Saville, and not only because this would mean that lady was drowned in slumber deep. After all, no man wanted to spend the rest of his life lying next to a girl, however pretty, who sounded in her dreams like the brass section of a symphony orchestra.
The room was almost blacked out. Martin waited a moment, getting accustomed to the gloom and trying to assess the various obstacles humped in his path. What he should have done, he now realized, was to excuse himself after dinner, pop upstairs and give the place the once-over. Too late now. But there was some brightness. The curtains were not quite closed and the moon threw a shaft of cold hard light over part of the dressing table, the bedhead and Rosemary’s door. This was open.
Of course! That’s what she had said. “I’ll leave my door ajar.” Although a moment’s pause for reflection might have shown Martin that this optimistic insight was based on a rather dodgy premise, i.e., that he could see through a brick wall, that pause was never made. Instead he started to move on pinched, careful tiptoe, both hands stretched out before him, clutching at the air. He groped around the outline of the dressing table, then felt the foot of the bed against his knee. He took a few steps more and fell over a footstool. Flinging himself upright in an attempt to break the fall, he overdid it, staggered back and stumbled, one hand resting briefly on the mattress.
