by J F Straker
A Will to Murder
J.F. Straker
© J.F. Straker 1958
J.F. Straker has asserted his rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.
First published as ‘Goodbye, Aunt Charlotte!’ in 1958 by Linford
This edition published in 2018 by Endeavour Media Ltd.
Table of Contents
Chapter One
What’s Wrong with Murder?
Chapter Two
An Accumulation of Straw
Chapter Three
Goodbye, Aunt Charlotte!
Chapter Four
Not just a Rumour
Chapter Five
A Bloody Mess
Chapter Six
An Exaggerated Expression of Dislike
Chapter Seven
Fear on the Common
Chapter Eight
Who else is there?
Chapter Nine
Fun for Aunt Charlotte
Chapter Ten
A Domestic Issue
Chapter Eleven
A Nice Choice in Lies
Chapter Twelve
An Evening full of Surprises
Chapter Thirteen
Noises in the Night
Chapter Fourteen
A Homily on Pillows
Chapter Fifteen
Angel on a Ladder
Chapter One
What’s Wrong with Murder?
Michael Lane stood with his back to the room, the lean fingers of both hands drumming rhythmically on the window sill. Below him the forecourt of the Tower Hotel provided an oasis of light in the dark countryside, but the cars parked on it were few. Milford Cross was a quiet village on a quiet road, with little through traffic.
‘Be your age, Michael,’ said Elizabeth. ‘Stop sulking.’
The drumming fingers stilled abruptly.
‘I’m not sulking,’ he said petulantly, turning to face them. A lock of dark hair flopped over his forehead, and he flicked it back with a quick, mechanical movement of his head. His dark eyes, set beneath long, curling lashes in an olive-skinned face, brooded on his audience of four. ‘I’m just fed to the teeth with the way you crab everything I suggest. What’s wrong with murder, I’d like to know?’
‘It’s agin the law,’ Alan Torreck informed him kindly.
‘Very funny. Your trouble is that you lack imagination. You say you want something on the grand scale, something original, but you go all lily-livered when I suggest it.’ He shook his head sorrowfully. ‘I don’t know what’s come over you fellows. You used not to be this way.’
He had spoken to the men, but his eyes were on the girl — Elizabeth Messager, his cousin. A girl with red hair and a trim figure, but with little claim to facial beauty. A girl with large grey eyes and a wide gash of a mouth, and a pointed elfin face that could switch from gloom to gaiety and back as swiftly as an English summer. She was what had come over them. He had been a fool to introduce her into their hitherto masculine circle. Before she had cast her subtle feminine net over the others they had been a carefree, happy bunch, with no inhibitions and with an aptitude for practical joking which it had pleased them to indulge. Now — well, they took their cue from her, approving where she approved, frowning where she frowned. Or Bruce and Alan did. He wasn’t sure about Desmond.
He was suddenly aware of her steady gaze, and he smiled at her, exerting all his charm. If he could win her support . . .
‘Murder isn’t original,’ Alan said. ‘It’s as old as the hills.’
‘And one’s got to observe the decencies,’ Bruce Poulton said. He was a fair, heavily built young man, lacking a sense of humour. The others had never ceased to be surprised that Bruce should be one of their number; a taste for practical joking was not what one would have expected in so stolid a being. ‘Personally, I don’t see murder as a proper subject for joking.’
You wouldn’t, thought Michael. You’re in love with that blasted red-head, and you see it the way you think she sees it. Yet only a few months back . . .
‘Neither do I,’ Alan Torreck said, slightly surprised at finding himself in agreement with Bruce. ‘It’s a cheap suggestion, Michael. What’s more, it’s impracticable. Murder demands a corpse, and that’s something we don’t happen to possess right now.’
‘What, no corpse?’ Desmond Farrel, who had been lying on the bed blowing smoke rings at the ceiling, raised himself on one elbow and stared gravely at his friend. ‘Ought we not to do something about that, Alan? It would be rather embarrassing, don’t you think, to have to admit that we lacked a corpse? If some one asked, I mean. So — well, so inefficient.’
Alan threw a cushion at him, and he flopped back on the bed. It was his bed, and his room. In a sense it was also his hotel; his father, the Hon. George Victor Farrel, owned and managed it.
Elizabeth, perched at the foot of the bed, caught the cushion. She placed it on her lap, smoothing it with a slim hand.
‘Lots of people haven’t got corpses, Desmond,’ she said. Her voice was deep, almost masculine; it had a vibrant warmth that fascinated. ‘You mustn’t let it upset you.’
‘It’s just that I’m sensitive about these things,’ he murmured.
‘We’ll give you one for Christmas.’ Alan picked up his tankard, found it empty, and replaced it reluctantly. ‘Well, now. Having disposed of murder — what next?’
Bruce Poulton, his brow furrowed, shook his head. His strength lay not in ideas but in a husky body and a thoroughness of execution; his almost fanatical attention to detail was as Teutonic as his blondness. Elizabeth continued to smile — a withdrawn and secret smile, as though her thoughts and not her companions formed the substance of her amusement. Michael Lane shrugged his slim shoulders and turned again to the window, piqued at their refusal to consider his suggestion.
‘Inspiration appears to be lacking,’ Desmond said lazily, still at full stretch. ‘We need lubrication. Whose round is it?’
‘Mine,’ Bruce said.
He stood up and flexed his knees. It was Desmond’s round really; he knew that. He suspected that Desmond knew it too. But he had sat for too long, and it was stuffy in the bedroom, and he welcomed the opportunity to leave it for a while. It also flattered his vanity to usurp a responsibility, however paltry, that should have been shouldered by the man on the bed. He had no particular regard for Desmond Farrel; he disliked him as a person, hated his unconscious air of superiority, and was deeply suspicious of his interest in Elizabeth. But he could not forget that Desmond was the grandson of an earl — and that he, Bruce Poulton, was the son of the local butcher. It was snobbishness, not regard, that prompted him now.
When he had gone Elizabeth left her perch on the bed for the armchair he had vacated. She stretched delicately, wriggling her body into a comfortable niche among the cushions. ‘Have you always suffered from a paucity of ideas?’ she asked. ‘Or are you losing interest? Speaking as a newly elected associate member, I wouldn’t say that you strike me as being a vigorous, go-ahead society. What’s wrong?’
You, Michael wanted to say, whirling to face her. Instead he said, failing to keep the resentment from his voice, ‘They’ve got cold feet. They’re fine at impersonating Eastern potentates or fiddling with the hall piano, but anything more grandiose or imaginative unnerves them. They’re as dull as this blasted village.’
‘Don’t malign the village. It’s no duller than most,’ Elizabeth told him. ‘And you and Bruce are out of it all day. Desmond and Alan might reasonably yearn for more excitement, but I don’t see why you should.’
‘Too true.’ Desmond sat up and swung his long legs, encased in stove-pipe trousers, to the floor. ‘And who says my tiny feet are frozen? That most
definitely is not true. It’s just that right now I lack imagination.’
Through half-closed eyes Elizabeth regarded his slightly dishevelled appearance. She did not want him to know that she was watching him — yet watching him was one of her delights. How attractive he was! It was an attractiveness that did not depend on facial beauty (as did Michael’s) or on the magnificent physique that was Bruce’s. It had something of both of these, yet so much more. Desmond looked well in any company, in any guise. He had the poise and assurance that go with fine breeding.
And what fun he was. Michael and Alan could be fun too; but Michael had the Latin temperament of his looks, he was volatile and moody, and Alan’s brand of humour verged on the schoolboy’s. An evening with Michael depended for its success on his present humour; with Alan, on hers; with Bruce, on the excellence of the entertainment provided. But with Desmond it never failed. His charm was effortless, his timing perfect.
‘We must be circumspect,’ Desmond was saying. ‘That above all. Our somewhat unusual tuning of the hall piano has raised suspicion in the paternal bosom, and I would hate for him to rumble me right now. I am, as it were, delicately poised.’
‘How come?’ asked Alan.
‘Between ruin and solvency. I look to the old man to declare for solvency, bless him.’
He was always broke, thought Elizabeth. That was why she had refused to marry him. That — and Aunt Charlotte. There was always Aunt Charlotte. Yet even so she had hesitated over her refusal. She wasn’t in love with him — but still . . .
‘Maybe we ought to lie low for a while, then,’ Alan said. ‘I prefer you solvent. You have a habit of borrowing when broke.’
‘Good Lord, no!’ Abruptly he shed the languid pose he delighted in assuming. ‘But nothing crude, nothing obvious. Anything that shrieks of practical joking is out. It has to look genuine.’
‘Such as murder,’ Michael said, seizing his opportunity. ‘Nobody ever faked a murder, did they? Your father wouldn’t connect you with that. Or would he?’
‘Ah! You have a point there,’ Desmond conceded.
Bruce returned with a tray of drinks. He looked hot and flushed, and Desmond eyed him curiously.
‘Dulcie; he diagnosed. ‘That’s what delayed you. Either Dulcie or a new barrel.’
‘She wanted to know about the film at the Regal.’ Bruce’s cheeks turned even pinker, and he glanced anxiously at Elizabeth. ‘She’s thinking of going to see it.’
‘With you?’
‘No.’
He spoke curtly. Had Elizabeth not been present he would have been smugly complacent at the suggestion that the blonde hotel receptionist was trying to date him, but in Elizabeth’s hearing it was most unwelcome. To divert attention from himself he said, ‘How’s it coming? Any bright ideas?’
‘Only a repeat of Michael on murder. It’s becoming an obsession with him. Maybe his ancestral background should be investigated.’
Michael laughed. It was no use letting himself be rattled, he would not gain his point that way. And he wanted to gain it. He had thrown murder at them at random, with no plan behind it and no thought that it would be accepted. But he had expected that it would at least be discussed before being discarded. Its immediate and somewhat contemptuous rejection had nettled him. It had also made him ponder the idea more seriously himself, so that now the nucleus of a plan had begun to form in his mind.
‘I can take it,’ he said. ‘But we don’t have to have a corpse, if that is what is holding you back. All that’s needed is for one of us to disappear. Drop a few not too subtle clues around, and the village will lap it up.’
Alan’s pale eyes narrowed. They were a watery blue, and gave an impression of weakness; yet for all his easy good nature, his willingness to go with the crowd, he could be stubborn. It needed tact to shift him; Michael’s direct methods had little or no chance of doing so. And he could have been shifted then. He had not been so set against the suggestion as his words implied; it had a crudeness about it that appealed to the schoolboy in him.
But he would not be bludgeoned into agreement. ‘Cut it out, Michael,’ he said.
‘You’ve had your murder. Don’t keep harping on it.’
‘He’s got a one-track mind. He doesn’t appreciate that ‘no’ means ‘no,’’ Bruce said. Michael glared at him; he would take criticism from the others that he would not take from Bruce. Aware of this, and that he might be considered to have spoken out of turn, Bruce added quickly, ‘It wouldn’t work, Michael. For one thing, which of us could take time off from work to disappear for a few days? I know I couldn’t. Could you?’
Michael did not answer.
‘I couldn’t,’ Alan said curtly. ‘And I wouldn’t if I could.’
‘That would leave me, then,’ Desmond said. ‘Yes, I suppose I could manage it; the old man is used to my itinerant habits. But naturally I should expect to disappear in style. No mouldering in a morgue for this corpse.’ He grinned at Michael. ‘Did I mention that I’m broke? If you insist on murder, Michael, it could be expensive.’
‘Then I’m even more against it,’ Alan told him. ‘I’m not subscribing to a plan which lets you loose with any of my money. I know your tastes in living, and I can’t afford them.’
‘My tastes in dying are even more expensive.’
‘I suppose it doesn’t have to be one of us,’ Michael said. ‘Anyone in the village would do, provided he or she went off without too much fuss.’
Elizabeth had taken no part in this discussion. She had been shocked at Michael’s proposal, and would have vehemently declared against it had the others not done so. But she was relieved that their veto absolved her from interfering. She disliked quarrelling with her cousin, and to have inveighed against an otherwise unanimous decision would have made them regret her presence.
Aware that the discussion was now a hypothetical one, from which no decision would emerge, she allowed her thoughts to wander from Desmond, on which they had been centred, to Aunt Charlotte. Would Aunt Charlotte, despite her objection to any talk of her niece’s marriage, object quite as strongly if Desmond were the prospective husband? Was there enough of the snob in her? And if there was did she, Elizabeth, really want to marry him?
Elizabeth feared she knew the answer to the first query; she was less sure of the second. But thought of Aunt Charlotte had reminded her of an event to which she was looking forward with some pleasure, and she said, without motive, not realizing the implication of her words, ‘Aunt Charlotte is going to spend a few days in London next week with a friend.’
They stared at her. She was looking at Desmond as she spoke; his easy smile became a broad grin, and he winked. Even Alan Torreck showed interest.
‘What’s the matter?’ she asked, surprised.
‘Aunt Charlotte!’ Michael spoke the name softly, savouring it. ‘Thank you, Elizabeth. If that isn’t manna from heaven then I don’t know what is.’
‘The perfect murderee,’ Desmond agreed. ‘It could be fate, you know, Elizabeth. I hate to speak ill of any relative of yours, but you must admit that, if some one in Milford Cross has to come to a sticky end, no one deserves it more richly than does your dear Aunt Charlotte.’
‘Good Lord!’ Memory of their conversation returned to her, and she caught the drift of their thoughts. ‘So that’s what you’re getting at, is it? Well, you can drop that idea right now. As for what you said about a sticky end, Desmond — well, I know she isn’t popular, but I’m quite sure no one in the village dislikes her sufficiently to murder her.’
‘Don’t they?’ Desmond looked hard in turn at each of the other three men in the room, and then back at the girl. He was about to expand that remark, but changed his mind. ‘Well, maybe they don’t. But I guarantee none of them would shed a tear if they heard that some one had done it for them. Would you, after the way she’s treated you?’
Elizabeth flushed. Her dislike of her aunt — though not the full reason for it, thank goodness — was too well known for he
r to deny it now, but it troubled her conscience to hear it so bluntly expressed.
Nor had she failed to interpret the significance of the look Desmond had given the other three. They all had good cause to hate Aunt Charlotte. Aunt Charlotte had done her best to ruin Alan and his father, she had ensured that Michael and his parents did not benefit from her husband’s will and had cut them out of her own, she had insulted Bruce almost beyond belief. Elizabeth thought she would never forget the one and only occasion on which Bruce had called at The Elms to see her. ‘The butcher’s boy is here, Elizabeth,’ Aunt Charlotte, who had opened the door to him, had called out, in that soft, purring voice of hers that could so quickly turn as raucous as a fishwife’s. ‘Get rid of him, will you? And tell him to use the back door in future. I won’t have the tradesmen calling at the front.’
Bruce — ‘the butcher’s boy’! Poor, snobbish Bruce, who was so proud of his job at the bank, who hated any reference to his father’s business.
He had never called at the house again. ‘Yes, I would,’ she said curtly. ‘Disliking a person doesn’t necessarily mean you wish them ill. And if you’re suggesting that Michael’s stupid plan should operate with Aunt Charlotte as the victim you can think again. I won’t have it.’
‘Don’t agitate yourself,’ Desmond told her, smiling. ‘Nothing will come of it. It was only a beautiful dream.’
‘But something must come of it!’ Michael’s eyes were gleaming. ‘It’s too good an opportunity to waste, damn it! Cut out murder if you must, but let’s make use of it somehow.’
‘How?’ asked Alan.
‘Well — make out she has disappeared, and that we don’t know what has happened to her. We could hint at abduction, robbery, loss of memory; anything you like. Even an elopement.’
That got a laugh. It also did more to sway them to his way of thinking than all his previous pleading. Even Elizabeth, cross with her cousin as she was, could not repress a smile at that last suggestion.
