Nursery Tea and Poison

by Anne Morice

  ‘I will, but not tonight. You look tired and it’ll do very nicely to while away our journey tomorrow.’

  ‘Oh no, it won’t. Sergeant Brook will be with us.’

  ‘What does that matter? I should think he would find it quite entertaining.’

  ‘Maybe he would, on some different occasion. Tomorrow he’ll be expecting me to concentrate on the here and now.’

  ‘Well, as to that,’ I said, ‘there are two ways of looking at it. The first part of the Hargrave story may be over and done with, but it sounds to me as though the next chapter had already begun and I daresay it will turn out to be quite as fascinating, in its minor key way, as your old murder on the M.6.’

  ‘No takers,’ Robin said. ‘You could well be right. Specially now that you’re about to take a hand in it. We’ll have to compare notes on Monday.’

  CHAPTER TWO

  Pelham Hargrave, as I was unable to remind Robin on our journey north, had been born the younger of twin brothers and thus, with a lack of opportunism which was to characterise him in later life, had forfeited by half an hour his claim to a large estate, including manor house and park and a vast private income. All these benefits had accrued instead to his brother, Rupert, who for a brief period had been Serena’s husband and who hardly needed them at all, having also been endowed with sufficient brains, energy and application to have earned him all the material assets he could want.

  Their parents had been killed in a car crash in Spain when they were six years old and Rupert’s inheritance had come to him directly from his grandfather, the founder of a shipping firm, thereby presenting him with another unearned bonus, for it seems there is great financial advantage in skipping over a whole generation and acquiring property while still a minor.

  After their grandfather’s death only a year or two later, the estate had been administered. jointly by an agent and a firm of solicitors, but the management of the house and the boys’ upbringing had stayed almost exclusively in the hands of the nurse who had looked after them as babies. Various female relatives, inspired by altruistic or predatory motives, had attempted to wrest some of this power from her, but none had succeeded. The weaker among them had capitulated with barely a struggle and such braver members who had stood up to her rudeness and hostility had swiftly found Rupert and Pelham ranged solidly against them and themselves operating in a kind of cold war, having all their proposals met with dumb insolence and eating solitary meals in the dining room as they listened to the shouts of laughter coming from the nursery.

  In relating all this to me, Serena had added that to Nannie, Rupert, in particular, had been above criticism and that she had spoilt him unmercifully. Had it not been for his accident, his character must have been permanently ruined by her ignorant and misguided indulgence.

  The accident in question had not appeared to contain mitigating features at the time, except insofar as it had not been fatal. It had occurred during a pheasant shoot soon after the boys’ last term at school and a few weeks before they were both due to go up to Oxford, and as a result of it Rupert had lost his right eye.

  This would have been a deep misfortune for any eighteen-year-old boy, but the effect on Rupert, who had never known misfortune in his life, was catastrophic. Although enduring the physical pain with courage and stoicism, mentally he fell to pieces under the ordeal, becoming moody and bitter and in an almost constant state of irritability, and curiously enough Pelham was almost as bad. As though literally sharing his twin’s suffering, his response to it had followed the identical pattern. Since Rupert was unable to take up his place at Oxford, Pelham refused to go either, but loped about the house and grounds, snarling at anyone who dared to approach him and flatly declining either to study or to take any part in running the estate.

  It was not known who had fired the shot which caused all this agony, or possibly known only to Rupert, which amounted to the same thing, for he refused to be interrogated on the subject, or even to allow a mention of it in his presence.

  This state of affairs lasted for several years and even Nannie wilted under the strain, her splendid domination gradually becoming eroded by her beloved charges’ withdrawal from herself and from everyone around them. Although they did not cease to cosset and protect her, the old cosy intimacy had gone and by the time Rupert became engaged to be married her rule had so far declined as to make her attempts to upset this apple cart so querulous and ineffectual that even the faint hearted Serena was not seriously troubled by them.

  Rupert was twenty-four by then and his outlook had improved even before he re-met and fell in love with Serena, his childhood friend and daughter of the village doctor, herself an orphan by then. He had refused to try again for the university, but two or three years after his accident had entered the family business, succeeding remarkably well in it, by all accounts. No one was particularly surprised by this because he was ambitious by nature, as well as clever, but the real surprise was provided by Pelham.

  For once, he declined to follow in his brother’s footsteps and during this period remained at home and mooned about as before. Then, on the day after Rupert became engaged, Pelham, with no previous warning and with only a pittance to call his own, had declared his intention of emigrating to Canada. A fortnight later he was gone and for several years, apart from an occasional postcard, nothing more was heard of him. Eventually the news filtered through that he had transferred himself from British Columbia to California, but he had never returned to his native land, nor evinced the slightest desire to do so.

  Rupert’s marriage lasted for three years and was an ideally happy one. Although with rehabilitation he had regained much of his former arrogance and could on occasions be rude and overbearing, Serena remained unwavering in her devotion and I have been told that, so long as he was getting his own way, no one could have been more agreeable and attractive.

  Just before their third anniversary Serena discovered that she was pregnant, which was a great joy and relief to them both, but on the following Sunday evening it was Rupert who was stricken by severe abdominal pains. He was taken to the local cottage hospital for an emergency operation for what appeared to be an acute appendicitis and within three days had died from peritonitis. It transpired that a minute fragment of the shot which had entered his eye had become lodged in his intestines and after staying dormant for nearly ten years had finally killed him.

  I was too young at the time for these events to make any deep impression on me, but Serena has told me since that she drifted through the subsequent months in a state of semi-oblivion and total rootlessness. Not only had she lost her beloved husband, but with his death her entire future, position in life, security and well-being depended solely on the sex of the unborn child, since everything was entailed on the eldest surviving son. At the end of six months Primrose was born and Pelham became the owner of Chargrove Manor, with fourteen thousand acres and an income to match them. By the same stroke, Serena was rendered homeless, with only her tiny marriage settlement on which to live and bring up her daughter.

  Cables had been despatched to Pelham both before and after his brother’s death, but he had ignored them, signifying in a letter to Serena a few months later that nothing that had happened made him more inclined to return to England, and at this point Nannie had come into her own again, rising like a phoenix from the ashes and swooping down on her new prey. With incredible prescience, she insisted on taking over full charge of Primrose, whom she thereafter referred to as ‘my baby’s baby’, of making all her clothes and knitting all her shawls and blankets, for no remuneration whatever, and furthermore declared her intention of remaining with the family and working her fingers to the bone for them, even if it meant living in two rooms and paying the rent out of her own savings.

  Too desolate and confused to see where all this would lead, Serena had been swept along in the whirlwind, allowing Nannie full rein and the gradual usurpation of all her former power, although in the event the drastic sacrifices proved to b
e unnecessary. When eventually submitting to the demands of trustees and others to make some settlement of his affairs, Pelham behaved quite generously. He offered Serena a small house on the estate, plus an income for life of two thousand pounds a year, all of which she gratefully accepted, along with the conditions that went with it. These included finding and installing suitable tenants in the big house, to be accountable solely to her, and of undertaking to do whatever became necessary in the way of insurance, renovations and repairs for its proper maintenance. In short, she was to be agent, caretaker and glorified housekeeper rolled into one.

  Pelham probably knew what he was doing too, for she was fanatically conscientious and probably earned her two thousand pounds and free house about four times over, for during all the years of her reign only the last two had brought her any peace of mind. Faced with a house which was too big for a single family and too eccentrically designed for a school or institution, the few remaining alternatives, which in this case had included a dubious health farm and a cranky religious order, had all turned out disastrously. It was only when James Kingley Farrer, known to his hundreds of intimates as Jake, arrived on the scene that things began to look up.

  Jake, was well known to me by reputation as an elderly and celebrated Hollywood director, of Anglo-Irish origins, and his reason for coming to live in Herefordshire was not that it provided a peaceful seclusion for his retirement, but in order to embark on a whole new career. This was nothing less than to turn himself into an English country gentleman, with all the paraphernalia of guns and dogs, grooms and hunters, wine cellars and dinner parties, which in his romantic view the role required of him.

  Chargrove Manor made an ideal launching pad for this enterprise, for Serena provided him with the few remaining assets which money could not buy and, in addition to her other duties, soon found herself arranging his parties, interviewing butlers, advising him where to buy his horses and introducing him to all her friends in the neighbourhood, none of which she resented in the slightest, and for three very good reasons.

  The first was that she soon became sincerely attached to Jake, the second that he put her on the payroll under the heading of Hostess-Secretary, and the third and easily most compelling, that he appointed Primrose to manage and oversee the stables.

  Primrose had just turned twenty when this change came about and was a heavy featured, sulky girl, too tall and powerfully built for her own comfort and depressingly devoid of charm. Aware, or fearful of her inability to compete with most of her contemporaries on their own terms, she had gone, in defiance, to the opposite extreme, dressing in the most hideous clothes she could find, gorging herself on starchy foods and truculently inviting everyone to give her animals, rather than people, any day of the week. To have the tiresome Primrose engaged in an occupation not only remunerative but so perfectly tailored to her temperament was the greatest blessing that anyone could have bestowed on Serena and the only tiny pill inside all this jam was the feeling of not playing quite fair to Pelham in accepting bounty from him and from his tenant simultaneously. She assured me that she had kept him informed, step by step, of these developments, but that she hardly knew whether he read her letters or not, since he never bothered to answer them.

  The interesting prospect ahead was to discover what Pelham’s reactions were, now that he had arrived and seen the situation at first hand.

  CHAPTER THREE

  1

  Robin deposited me at West Lodge, which was the name of Serena’s house, just after three o’clock, having turned down my suggestion that he and Sergeant Brook should step inside and revive themselves with a cup of tea. Unfortunately, Chargrove had proved to be even further out of his way than he had reckoned and still more time and temper had been lost by my inability to remember whether to turn left or right inside the main gates of the park and of having, as was inevitable in this tense situation, made the wrong guess.

  The front door was ajar and I gave it a push with my suitcase and walked into the hall, making yoo-hooing noises to announce my arrival. No one answered, but I did not assume from this that it had passed unnoticed, for Nannie’s room overlooked the drive and she kept an eye trained on everyone’s comings and goings.

  Dropping my case at the foot of the stairs, I walked on to the sitting room, which, having always been known as the parlour, was still known as the parlour. The name suited it too, for it was a snug and pretty place in its cluttered way, with several high, button-backed Victorian chairs, a spinet in one corner of the room and glass-fronted cupboards filled with Rockingham china in two of the others.

  Serena was seated by the fireplace, with her nose stuck into the current piece of tapestry. It was a familiar sight, for this kind of fine needlework was both her favourite hobby and greatest accomplishment. In fact, considering the time she devoted to it, it was surprising that the end products did not adorn practically every piece of furniture in the house, but I suspected that she had cupboards full of finished canvases, hidden away and never used, having a fastidious prejudice against appearing to show off and suchlike vulgarity.

  ‘Come along in, Tessa darling,’ she said, sounding as delighted as the most demanding guest could wish. ‘How lovely and punctual you are! And this is Lindy. Pelham’s wife, you know. I’ve been telling her all about you.’

  Lindy had been sitting on the hearthrug, with her knees drawn up to her chin, when I entered the room, but during Serena’s introduction had sprung up and now offered me a tiny, childlike claw.

  ‘Hi, Tessa!’ she said, eyes ashine and in a voice redolent with warmth and insincerity.

  I might have been less taken aback if they had told me I was to meet Pelham’s new American grand-daughter, for by my reckoning he was now over fifty, whereas only the fact that Lindy was so busily acting the part of a seventeen-year-old prompted me to place her age as a year or two above that. She was a frail, doll-like creature, wearing an ankle length frilly cotton dress and no make-up. Her hair, which was long, blonde and straight, was pulled off her face and fastened in a tortoiseshell clip on the crown of her head and she had wide, innocent blue eyes. Once or thrice, as I got to know her better, I noticed a pensive look in the eyes and a slight hardening of the jaw, which did not quite fit the impulsive little bundle of friendliness she normally projected, but at first meeting the image was impressively adolescent.

  ‘Sit down, both of you,’ Serena said, folding away her work, ‘and get to know each other while I make some tea. Or would you rather go upstairs, Tessa, after your long drive? I’ve put you in what we now call the apricot room. I do hope you won’t mind?’

  ‘No, I’m sure I won’t,’ I agreed, for it was a matter of profound indifference to me what they called it. ‘But don’t make tea specially for me. Shouldn’t we wait for the others?’

  ‘There’s no need for that. Primrose isn’t here. Jake has taken her over to Newmarket to look at a horse. They spent last night there and she won’t be home until this evening; and Pelham’s upstairs with Nannie. I expect she’s giving him a real old nursery tea.’

  ‘Listen!’ Lindy said, bounding up from the floor again, ‘why don’t I make the tea? I know you two have lots to say to each other, and your kitchen’s so darling, I’d just love to play around in it. Oh, do let me, Serena!’

  I don’t think she actually clapped her hands when permission was granted, but it was obviously a close thing.

  ‘Sweet little creature,’ Serena murmured absently when she had gone. ‘So kind and helpful, I can’t tell you!’

  ‘The name suits her, I think.’

  ‘Yes, doesn’t it? You know, I asked her if it was short for Linda or Belinda or something like that, but she said no, her parents had christened her Lindy. They’d heard it in a song and thought it was a real name. Apparently, her family are farmers in Michigan or somewhere like that. Very good, high principled sort of people, but not much education, so she tells me. She made no secret of it. I rather admire that, don’t you? I mean, not pretending to be s
omething other than you are?’

  ‘Yes, very much,’ I replied. ‘She’s rather young for Pelham, isn’t she?’

  ‘In years perhaps, but Pelham’s never really grown up. You’ll see what I mean when you meet him. Still the same overgrown baby he always was. At least, that is . . . I suppose he has changed a bit in some ways.’

  ‘Strange if he hadn’t, surely? After all, it must be going on for twenty-five years since you saw him and he’s spent the interval bumming round Canada and the States. How could he not have changed?’

  ‘I don’t think you could call it bumming around exactly. I gather he’s recently been doing very well in what they call real estate.’

  ‘Enough to change anyone! What’s his purpose in coming here? Have you discovered yet?’

  Serena had been jabbing her needle into the arm of her chair, pricking out little patterns with it, but now looked up at me and smiled:

  ‘I’m so pleased you could come, Tessa. You have such a refreshingly down-to-earth attitude to things. It always acts like a tonic. And of course you’re right. The truth is that I’ve carried a picture in my mind of Pelham all these years as a sort of older, slightly coarser version of Rupert as he used to be, but as you say, why should it be so, after the totally different sort of life he’s led? And, if I were honest, I would have to admit that even Rupert might not have settled into exactly the mould I’ve invented for him. People have an awkward habit of developing along their own lines, don’t they?’

  This reflection evoked another memory and I asked:

  ‘By the way, what in particular is Primrose sulking about just now?’

  ‘Well, it’s absurd really, but you know how childish she can be sometimes and the truth is she’s madly jealous.’

  ‘Of Pelham?’

  ‘Yes. She resents his taking up so much of Nannie’s time, for one thing, but the main trouble is this fixation about Pelham having stolen her birthright. It’s all a lot of twaddle because, if the property hadn’t passed to him, there’s an uncle who would have inherited anyway. He’s a clergyman and pretty doddery now, so they tell me, but there’s never been any question of breaking the entail, so long as a male heir exists. Besides, it’s not Pelham’s fault that things were arranged in that way, is it? You and I understand that perfectly well, but no one can get it through to Primrose and it does make the atmosphere rather tense.’