Nursery Tea and Poison

by Anne Morice

  Robin said: ‘We shan’t try to, Serena. I can understand your feelings and why you felt justified in acting as you did, but surely even you would not pretend that you can keep it up, now that two more people have died?’

  ‘I suppose I must have thought so,’ she replied helplessly. ‘It just shows how crazy I’ve become. Secretly, you know, I’ve always believed that if there was a streak of insanity or cruelty in Primrose, it must have come from Rupert’s family. Pelham used to behave so strangely at times. But perhaps, after all, she got it from me.’

  ‘Apart from moral scruples, did you seriously hope to get away with it?’

  Serena glanced at me briefly before answering: ‘The ironic thing is, Robin, that I might have succeeded, if it hadn’t been for . . .’

  ‘Tessa?’

  She nodded: ‘I set out to use her, and then to deceive her, and it resulted in arousing her curiosity to the point where it rebounded on myself. At first, I wasn’t worried because it never occurred to me that she could conceive of a motive for Primrose killing Nannie, whom she so loved and adored, and when it came to Lindy’s turn I was terribly afraid, but you were both so confident that it would be called suicide that I began to feel almost secure. I still don’t understand how it all went wrong.’

  ‘The final proof has yet to come,’ I told her, ‘and, strangely enough, if and when it does, it will only be in a negative form.’

  ‘That makes it even more mystifying.’

  ‘There was a letter, you see, or rather two to be precise, and they were left in the box on the night before Lindy died. One was from me to Robin and it never reached him. The second was an airmail letter to a doctor in California, but it will be weeks before we can say positively that it wasn’t posted, because it was under-stamped and would have been sent by surface mail. The chances are, though, that they were both removed by Primrose hours before the postman called here. My own letter contained evidence which might have been damaging, or at any rate indicated that I was on her trail. When Robin and I grasped what had become of it we thought she might possibly have marked me down as the next to go, which is why he happened to be so conveniently parked in the drive this evening. He was waiting for some flashing lights.’

  ‘How dreadful! I do wish you’d told me. You must have known that I wouldn’t have kept quiet if you were in danger?’

  ‘No, I’m sure you wouldn’t, but no doubt your first instinct would have been to warn Primrose that the trap was baited and that wouldn’t have done any good at all.’

  ‘I suppose there’s no use denying it. To be honest, I can’t tell you what I might have done. How about the other letter, though? Why would she have wanted that?’

  ‘Perhaps simply on the principle of leaving no stone unturned; perhaps, like me, she noticed the stamp and was afraid the postman would notice too. That could have led to awkward questions about the other letter, so on the whole it was safer to take them both and, in fact, Lindy’s turned out to be a far greater windfall.’

  ‘Yes, I begin to follow you.’

  ‘It was written, you see, when the poor girl was in a fearful panic, before Dr Soames got at her and changed it all to lollipops and roses. In the meantime, she’d most likely taken a lot of sedative pills, which always made her muzzy and forgetful, so she didn’t even remember having written the letter and left it in the box. It was a real bonus for Primrose though, because the handwriting was all wild and uneven and the words not only threatened suicide, but gave the reason. It only needed to remove a page from the middle, place it on Lindy’s dressing table and destroy the rest. The single tricky part was in the timing, where she showed real nerve. As far as we can see, she must have planted it when the hunt was already on; in other words, after she had joined Lindy on her afternoon walk, taken her up to High Copse and put a bullet into her and then returned here. She was taking one hell of a chance because the room might already have been searched, for all she knew, but in fact she got away with it.’

  Serena nodded: ‘And of course there wasn’t such a tremendous risk, was there? When someone vanishes, you don’t normally waste time combing through their bedroom. You assume they have wandered off out of doors, which is exactly what we all did. What I find more puzzling is how Primrose managed to entice her to that place. What pretext can she have used?’

  ‘No pretext,’ I said, ‘and no enticement. Lindy was dead keen to go there and undoubtedly was the one to propose it. She had a morbid desire to see for herself where the boy had been tied up. She was quite proud of it, believe it or not, and she once tried to get me to go there with her. That didn’t come off though, and my guess is that her next move was to get round Primrose to take her. Poor girl, she practically asked to be murdered.’

  ‘Yes, and doesn’t it make one suspect that she really was insane? Either that or the death wish was stronger than anyone realised? How could she have been so idiotic as to go off alone with Primrose, knowing what she did?’

  ‘And precisely what did she know, Serena?’ Robin asked.

  ‘That Primrose was responsible for Nannie’s death, presumably.’

  ‘Oh, dear me, no, nothing of the kind.’

  ‘We think Lindy had stumbled on part of the story,’ I explained, ‘but she’d got it mixed up. She actually tried to give me a hint on one occasion and I could have acted on it sooner, if only I’d known what she was driving at.’

  ‘I don’t understand. A hint of what?’

  ‘That Jake might have murdered Nannie.’

  ‘But how absurd! What could have given her such an extraordinary idea?’

  ‘Something she’d overheard; hence tonight’s experiment. Do you remember how ill Lindy was on the night Nannie died?’

  ‘As though one could ever forget!’

  ‘It’s probable that she’d swallowed some rat poison herself, on top of all her other troubles, because Primrose had doctored the sugar, to ensure that other people would have a few of the symptoms. When I ran into Lindy, on my way to break the news, she was creeping out of the bathroom and she told me it was the third time she’d been sick. I saw the significance of it this evening, when Pelham pointed out the shortage of plumbing amenities. Everyone knows that when a person feels violently ill they don’t hang around politely waiting for the nearest bathroom to become vacant, they make a dash for another one, in this case the only other one. I’ll bet you anything that during at least one of her earlier attacks she had gone up to the top bathroom and was there while Primrose and Nannie were talking in the nursery.’

  ‘I still don’t see how Jake comes into it.’

  ‘Well, the point is, Serena, when the attics were converted they put up these thin partition walls, with the result that I could hear every word of my driving lesson tonight, without even straining. You wouldn’t expect non-pros to come through quite so clearly, but although Nannie had become faint and querulous in her old age, we are all aware that Primrose booms out like a foghorn. According to my theory, Jake and Primrose had made the final plans for wedding bells during their Newmarket trip. She was looking as jolly as a sandboy when she came back and she took more trouble over her appearance that evening, when Jake dined with us, than anyone had ever seen before. The rather sad thing is that if all had gone along smoothly from that point she might gradually have developed into quite a good natured, civilised human being.’

  ‘I agree and it does seem so cruel that she should have to suffer for something which happened so long ago.’

  ‘Lindy and Nannie suffered a bit too, Serena,’ Robin reminded her.

  ‘There’s no point in going over all that,’ I said, ‘because, nothing ever did go smoothly and never could have, so long as Nannie lived. Knowing Primrose as we do, it practically goes without saying that she would have told Nannie, before anyone else, what she and Jake were planning, and of course the reception was far from rapturous. Nannie would have been dead against it and I believe that Primrose had discovered this and had already taken steps, before the Newma
rket trip, to put the old woman out of the way; not to mention hiding her glasses to make the incidence of rat poison more plausible in the event of a medical enquiry. I don’t know whether she put them in the spare room with some vague idea of incriminating Pelham, bur I daresay it was while she was looking round for a hiding place that she came across his gun. What she didn’t know was that Nannie had already been taking a regular supply of Warfarin and that a much larger dose would be needed to do the trick than she had bargained for. Anyway, it must have been a nasty jolt when she returned from Newmarket to find the old girl just as bobbish as ever and just as adamant. I think that’s what put her into such a sulk at dinner and why she flounced upstairs and refused to come down again.

  ‘Nannie really loved Primrose,’ I went on, looking squarely at Serena, ‘so, unlike you, she never had to pretend that her faults sprang from shyness or immaturity, or any of those other comforting little euphemisms. Nannie recognised her faults and loved her in spite of them, but she was a puritan minded old party and she knew all about the family heritage. She knew or guessed, as you did no doubt, that Pelham had shot his brother in a fit of rage or jealousy, that as a young man Rupert had felt no qualms about frightening a small child out of its wits by dressing up as a wild animal, and she also knew what Primrose had done to Alan. Above all, she knew that it would be wrong for her to marry and have children of her own. Am I right?’

  ‘What can I say? As you know, I never believed that tale about Rupert and if it’s true I’m sure it was only a joke that misfired, but Nan was certainly a great bible thumper and always on about the sins of the father and so forth, I can’t dispute that.’

  ‘Although one couldn’t expect Primrose to see it in the same light. She would have disputed at the top of her lungs.’

  ‘And you’re suggesting that Lindy heard them arguing about it?’

  ‘No, I think what she heard was one side of an argument, that is every syllable from Primrose, just indistinct murmurs from Nannie. Something like this, for example,’ I said, switching to an imitation of Primrose at her most stentorian. ‘“But that wasn’t murder, you old fool, that was an accident and anyway it was all over and done with ages ago. I’m not going to let a silly thing like that spoil my life, so don’t you dare interfere. If you do, I’m warning you, I’ll tell Jake and he’ll bloody well kill you.”

  ‘Well, something to that effect,’ I amended, reverting to normal speech. ‘Naturally, I can’t give you the exact words, but you can picture the scene and Lindy, who hadn’t the faintest interest in Chargrove history, would have concluded that Nannie had heard about the rather shady story of Jake’s former wife and was warning Primrose off him, instead of the other way round.’

  ‘How could she have heard about it, my dear? Even Lindy could have guessed that Hollywood was as remote to her as the moon and that kind of gossip quite out of her sphere.’

  ‘On the other hand, there were two known facts for her to work from. One was that Pelham could have told Nannie about it because he was in Santa Barbara himself at the time. Lindy also knew, because he said so in her presence, that Jake was in the habit of going up to the nursery for a chat and therefore Nannie could have formed her own opinions of his rackety past and low moral standards. She wouldn’t have been so far off the mark in assessing this as the last set up Nannie would have wished for her darling girl.’

  ‘So you’ve assumed that Primrose realised she’d been overheard and made up her mind to kill Lindy as soon as she got the chance?’

  ‘No, you go too fast. What probably happened is that when she came out of the nursery, having administered that massive lethal dose, the natural inclination would have been to wash any traces of it off her hands and she got a bad shock when she found the bathroom was occupied. Without doubt, she concluded that I was the occupant, which was why she searched my room, for she knows all about my trick of writing down the things I specially need to remember. She didn’t find any record of that conversation among my possessions, although there was another message there, which she thought it better to remove. There was no reference to it in my letter to Robin either, which was when I was doubtless relegated to the rank of public enemy number two. I don’t know how she eventually arrived at Lindy as the main risk, but it could have been simply by putting two and two together, or maybe poor ingenuous Lindy gave it away herself. Anyway, when she asked Primrose to show her where that poor little boy had been tied to a tree in a blizzard, and to make it a big secret between them, her number was really up. She’d handed in her life on a plate.’

  There followed a prolonged silence, in which Serena leaned forward over the table and fiddled with the handle of the carving knife. I wasn’t seriously alarmed, however, and in fact she dropped it back on the table before looking up at us with a slight grimace, as she said:

  ‘Yes, you have made it all very clear; one might say devastatingly clear, and I suppose there is nothing on earth I can say to persuade you to stop the wheels turning? I would so much rather, you know, if only it could be arranged, I would so much rather be the one to be tried and sent to prison. I mean that sincerely.’

  Robin shook his head: ‘You must know you are talking nonsense, Serena, and even if it sounds like sense to you now, you surely know that I couldn’t be part of such a conspiracy?’

  ‘So what comes next?’

  ‘I’m afraid I must telephone the Superintendent. I expect he will decide to come out here tonight, but if so there is no need for you to be present. I suggest that you go to your room now and stay there with Tessa until you are needed.’

  She bowed her head and rose at once, without further protest. The fight had gone out of her and she looked passive and resigned. She had cause to be too, for in a sense the last laugh was on us. Primrose was not in her room; nor did she return to West Lodge on that or any other night. She had taken her passport and enough clothes to fill a small suitcase, and so perhaps after all Serena’s motive in choosing the kitchen as a conference room had differed from ours. It was out of sight of the hall and Primrose could have walked out practically under our noses. There was no warrant out for her arrest, so no one could have prevented her leaving the country, and she vanished just as effectively as Pelham had twenty-five years before. Perhaps she is leading a harmless and useful life somewhere, looking after dogs or horses and, if so, I daresay they will be quite safe in her hands, for she always preferred animals to people.

  I have never quite been able to make up my mind whether Robin was a jump or two ahead of me during that memorable discussion round the kitchen table and whether, despite his stern, self-righteous claim at the end of it, he half sensed that the guilty one was getting clean away. Unfortunately, he is a very poor liar, so it would be unfair to ask him.

  T H E E N D

  Felicity Shaw

  The detective novels of Anne Morice seem rather to reflect the actual life and background of the author, whose full married name was Felicity Anne Morice Worthington Shaw. Felicity was born in the county of Kent on February 18, 1916, one of four daughters of Harry Edward Worthington, a well-loved village doctor, and his pretty young wife, Muriel Rose Morice. Seemingly this is an unexceptional provenance for an English mystery writer—yet in fact Felicity’s complicated ancestry was like something out of a classic English mystery, with several cases of children born on the wrong side of the blanket to prominent sires and their humbly born paramours. Her mother Muriel Rose was the natural daughter of dressmaker Rebecca Garnett Gould and Charles John Morice, a Harrow graduate and footballer who played in the 1872 England/Scotland match. Doffing his football kit after this triumph, Charles became a stockbroker like his father, his brothers and his nephew Percy John de Paravicini, son of Baron James Prior de Paravicini and Charles’ only surviving sister, Valentina Antoinette Sampayo Morice. (Of Scottish mercantile origin, the Morices had extensive Portuguese business connections.) Charles also found time, when not playing the fields of sport or commerce, to father a pair of out-of-wedlock chil
dren with a coachman’s daughter, Clementina Frances Turvey, whom he would later marry.

  Her mother having passed away when she was only four years old, Muriel Rose was raised by her half-sister Kitty, who had wed a commercial traveler, at the village of Birchington-on-Sea, Kent, near the city of Margate. There she met kindly local doctor Harry Worthington when he treated her during a local measles outbreak. The case of measles led to marriage between the physician and his patient, with the couple wedding in 1904, when Harry was thirty-six and Muriel Rose but twenty-two. Together Harry and Muriel Rose had a daughter, Elizabeth, in 1906. However Muriel Rose’s three later daughters—Angela, Felicity and Yvonne—were fathered by another man, London playwright Frederick Leonard Lonsdale, the author of such popular stage works (many of them adapted as films) as On Approval and The Last of Mrs. Cheyney as well as being the most steady of Muriel Rose’s many lovers.

  Unfortunately for Muriel Rose, Lonsdale’s interest in her evaporated as his stage success mounted. The playwright proposed pensioning off his discarded mistress with an annual stipend of one hundred pounds apiece for each of his natural daughters, provided that he and Muriel Rose never met again. The offer was accepted, although Muriel Rose, a woman of golden flights and fancies who romantically went by the name Lucy Glitters (she told her daughters that her father had christened her with this appellation on account of his having won a bet on a horse by that name on the day she was born), never got over the rejection. Meanwhile, “poor Dr. Worthington” as he was now known, had come down with Parkinson’s Disease and he was packed off with a nurse to a cottage while “Lucy Glitters,” now in straitened financial circumstances by her standards, moved with her daughters to a maisonette above a cake shop in Belgravia, London, in a bid to get the girls established. Felicity’s older sister Angela went into acting for a profession, and her mother’s theatrical ambition for her daughter is said to have been the inspiration for Noel Coward’s amusingly imploring 1935 hit song “Don’t Put Your Daughter on the Stage, Mrs. Worthington.” Angela’s greatest contribution to the cause of thespianism by far came when she married actor and theatrical agent Robin Fox, with whom she produced England’s Fox acting dynasty, including her sons Edward and James and grandchildren Laurence, Jack, Emilia and Freddie.