Death at the Wychbourne Follies

by Amy Myers

  ‘Of course. Such fun,’ Lynette agreed. ‘Shall we wake up those that do, darling?’

  ‘Sophy?’ Rex put his head round the door of the Blue Drawing Room.

  ‘Oh, Rex, come in do. Save me from having to work out what the Follies cost to put on. I promised Father I’d do it. Fine performance that ends up in someone being killed.’

  In spite of herself Sophy felt herself trembling, but she wasn’t going to do so in front of Rex. She prided herself on not betraying such emotions, and after all they’d been through in the past, this awful murder was the last straw.

  ‘I’ll help you on the figures, but more urgently, Sophy, Helen needs you,’ Rex said. ‘She won’t listen to me. She seems to have taken this death to heart. Hardly surprising. Even though she didn’t know Tobias, it just shows that she’s not fully recovered from that business last year.’

  That was understandable, Sophy thought. The nightmare they’d been through with Charlie Parkyn-Wright last year had taken its toll and now they had another murder investigation to cope with.

  ‘Can’t you take her on a jolly?’ she asked. ‘Or take her photograph. Make use of that nice darkroom Richard set up.’

  ‘Mr Trotter might not approve of that.’ Rex frowned. ‘Nor might the police.’

  ‘The police? What on earth for?’

  ‘Richard told me he saw Tobias Rocke emerging from it yesterday morning, just as Mr Trotter came along. Cross words were exchanged, to say the least. Anyway, Helen has enough photographs of herself to fill the National Portrait Gallery single-handedly,’ he ended on a lighter note.

  ‘Then just hold her hand and tell her she’s wonderful.’

  He just looked at her. ‘No,’ he replied simply, ‘it doesn’t work. It never has. I’m part of the scenery. That’s all.’

  ‘Not to me,’ Sophy replied stoutly.

  He planted a kiss on her cheek. ‘Bless you, Sophy. If you weren’t here, I’d give up my role of suitor-in-chief. It’s a pantomime all by itself.’

  ‘And woo another princess, Mr Beastly Rotter?’

  ‘No princess would look twice at me,’ he laughed.

  Sophy considered this. Rex was – well, Rex. Reasonably tall, reasonably good-looking, reasonably good dancer – and very clever. Funny too. Besides, he was Rex, who took her impassioned outbursts on the benefits of communism seriously and pointed out the flaws in her arguments. Rex, who made her laugh and cheered her up when she was gloomy. That made Sophy wonder what on earth would she do if he stopped visiting Wychbourne. ‘Do keep on coming, Rex,’ she pleaded. ‘If Helen’s mucking you about, I’m always here – and you might find another princess or two at our parties,’ she added, somewhat reluctantly, she realized to her surprise.

  ‘No more parties like this one, I hope,’ he said sombrely.

  ‘No,’ she said contritely. ‘That poor little man, so funny, so kind. Why would he be killed? And by whom?’ she managed to add, as all the terrible possibilities rushed through her mind.

  ‘It was too cold for tramps to be passing through and too late for them to be out tramping anyway,’ Rex said. ‘That still leaves someone from the village, probably someone who was in the pub or in the audience last night.’

  Sophy forced herself to put her fear into words. ‘Or one of us here at Wychbourne Court.’

  ‘I couldn’t face attending church this morning, Nell,’ Lady Ansley said. ‘I’m sorry to have called you away from your work.’

  ‘All in hand,’ Nell cheerfully lied. In fact, it was nearly luncheon time and there was still much to do.

  ‘You were with my husband and the police last night,’ Lady Ansley said abruptly. ‘He won’t tell me much on the grounds that I would be upset. Nonsense. I’m already upset and that’s hardly surprising. Who would want to kill Tobias? He was the peacemaker among us. He can’t have been killed by anyone who knew him.’

  Which Nell translated as Lady Ansley’s fear that that might indeed have happened.

  ‘Did he have a family?’ she asked.

  Lady Ansley thought for a moment. ‘He told me he married early and his wife died at a young age, but I don’t know whether he remarried or whether there are other relatives. The Sevenoaks police arrived early this morning asking the same question. My husband did his best, but I had to talk to them too. They already knew that his home was in a house in Earl’s Court and that a housekeeper and her husband lived in. The police can find out things so marvellously quickly and the Metropolitan police are going to the house today. There’s a funeral to arrange of course,’ she added despairingly, ‘so they need to know about relatives. Oh, Nell, I cannot believe it. Tobias of all people. He was so kind to me.’

  ‘To all your friends as well?’ It dawned on Nell that the reason she wanted to find out more was not mere curiosity. It was fear that it might affect Wychbourne.

  Lady Ansley glanced at her. ‘Perhaps not all of us. Is that what you are thinking, Nell?’

  ‘The police will have to check that,’ she said gently.

  Lady Ansley’s next words came out in a rush. ‘Nell, I did not dare suggest this to my husband, but could all the secrets that Tobias kept have resurrected themselves here?’

  ‘You mean about Mary Ann Darling?’ Nell answered bluntly.

  Lady Ansley blenched. ‘Yes. What have I done, Nell?’

  What she, Nell, had not done, she realized belatedly on her way back to the kitchens, was find that brooch for Lady Ansley. It was her treasured possession, her good luck charm. If she lost it, Nell knew Lady Ansley would see it as a dark omen of even more misfortune coming her way.

  She would just have time if she went to look for it at the pub now, Nell thought, even if it did mean missing her own lunch. She knew from Lady Sophy that all the props and costumes were still at the Coach and Horses in view of what had happened, and no one was likely to collect them today.

  How, Nell wondered as she hurried through the Great Hall, could everything look just the same when something so dreadful had taken place? And yet was it normal? There was no one to be seen here, although the Great Hall was the commanding centre of Wychbourne Court. Not even Mr Peters to be seen, although he usually worked from a room just off the hall, which was conveniently near Lord Ansley’s office. Not today, though.

  The Gaiety Girls postcards and posters looked almost forlorn as if they too felt the loss of one of their number. For Pete’s sake, Nell, she muttered to herself, don’t be so mushy. Nevertheless, she stopped for a few moments to look at them. There was a grinning Mr Rocke in The Flower Shop Girl, cast as Algernon Bly and wearing a baker’s hat and apron. Here was Alice Maxwell playing a maid in a musical called Kitty of Kensington and another of her as Medea; and here was Neville Heydock as an obviously comic servant in Lord Henry’s Bride. And there was another postcard from The Flower Shop Girl with a young Katie Barnes (now Kencroft) playing a fashionable young lady with the flower shop girl herself, Mary Ann Darling, leaning behind the chair on which Katie sat.

  Nell picked up the photograph to study it closer. It struck her that there was something faintly familiar about this picture of Mary Ann Darling, perhaps just because of the way she was looking down towards that chair. She must have seen the postcard before, she presumed as she replaced it, but as she went on her way to the east wing she wasn’t entirely convinced of that. Passing the darkroom on her way, she remembered where she’d seen a face at that angle before.

  Yes! It was the spirit image on Mr Trotter’s photograph of the former Gaiety Girls.

  Triumph rapidly evaporated. So what? she thought dismissively. Perhaps his spirits always appeared in poses from their former lives. Or could it have happened because they had all been concentrating so hard on Mary Ann when the photographs were taken on Friday, and that their joint subconscious image of her was the one they had recently seen in the Great Hall photographs of Mary Ann? That was one explanation of spirit images, even if Mr Trotter wouldn’t agree.

  As she left for the village, once m
ore elegantly shod in her wellington boots, she could see there had been even more snow since she’d returned to Wychbourne Court in the small hours. It wasn’t snowing now, thankfully. Indeed, it felt a shade warmer. Nevertheless, as she ploughed her way along the drive, she realized that the footprints she had seen last night which had already become partially covered by the time the police arrived would now be completely obliterated.

  She opened the rear door to the Coach and Horses, relieved to see there was no sign either of the police vans or of the police themselves or, thankfully, of the body. The door to the downstairs room they’d used for costumes and props was open, but there was no sign that the costumes had yet been brought down, so she ran upstairs to the stage. It was a desolate sight. Before her was a great yawning space filled only with empty chairs. The Pierrot costumes were still in the piles as she had left them last night, so she took up the search once more.

  The empty hall was eerie and its silence was in stark contrast with the songs, dances and general uproar last night. Images of a living Tobias Rocke performing for the last time seemed to echo across the stage. Nell gritted her teeth and persevered with the job in hand, anxious to be done with it and back at Wychbourne Court.

  There it was! She’d found it. The brooch was caught up on a snagged thread of a Pierrot sleeve and she rescued it with a sigh of relief. Time to go. Now.

  ‘What are you doing please?’ A commanding voice came from the hall behind her, and with a stab of shock she realized it was one she knew.

  She scrambled to her feet – which of them had the greater shock? she wondered. She or the man now staring at her, his murder bag in his hand.

  ‘Good morning, Inspector Melbray,’ she said trying to sound perfectly normal. Alexander Melbray. When she had met him last year, he’d said she should call him Alex, but how could she with those impersonal steely eyes looking at her? Scotland Yard had arrived.

  FIVE

  ‘Blithering bloaters, what are you doing here?’ Nell blurted out after a moment of shock.

  Something that might have been a smile appeared on the inspector’s face, but if so, it was quickly suppressed while he carefully placed the murder bag on one of the chairs. In there would be rubber gloves, tweezers, test tubes, a magnifying lens – all the paraphernalia he might need. All Nell could see now, however, was that impassive gaze with which she was all too familiar.

  ‘My job, Miss Drury. I’ve checked the props and costumes downstairs and was about to check these. I had specifically requested this room should be left as it was last evening and closed.’

  ‘You forgot to tell me,’ Nell retorted, aware she sounded like a thwarted three-year-old. Even though she had guessed that the local police would have called in Scotland Yard, given that Mr Rocke had been a guest at Wychbourne Court, she had feared but not expected it to be Inspector Melbray. They must have more than one detective at the Yard. But here he was, and it was clear that he was at work. The human side of him – if that still existed – was firmly closed.

  ‘I’m here because I came to find a brooch,’ she added awkwardly.

  He stared at her. ‘There’s been a murder. One of the Wychbourne Court guests, I understand. And you’re looking for your brooch?’

  Nell flushed. ‘Here it is.’ She opened her hand to show him. ‘It’s Lady Ansley’s. A special one. I remembered it this morning. Lord Ansley and I were in the middle of our search last night when we heard Jethro James shouting outside.’

  It seemed to her that the inspector relaxed a little. ‘I had wondered why you were both here so late. I shall be coming to Wychbourne Court shortly. Perhaps you can save your version of events until then? You may take the brooch now, though.’

  ‘There’s something I want to show you—’

  ‘Thank you. No,’ he said dismissively. ‘I prefer to look for myself.’

  To her annoyance, he was already walking towards the main stairs down to the bar and she knew what she had to say shouldn’t wait. ‘The footprints,’ she shouted at his retreating back. ‘They might already have gone, but—’

  He stopped instantly, albeit still stony-faced. ‘Footprints?’

  ‘You know where the body was lying?’ she began carefully.

  ‘I do.’ The reply was almost curt.

  ‘When Lord Ansley and I reached it there were clear footprints leading to and from the church, as well as the disturbed ones across the green in both directions as Jethro James had been there. There were two tracks coming from the direction of the church porch and one returning, which must mean—’

  He cut her off, although not so abruptly. ‘Thank you, Miss Drury. The meaning I can work out for myself. However, I would be grateful if you could show me where they are or were more precisely.’

  He didn’t seem inclined to talk further as she led the way down the back stairs and out into the cold morning air. Nell longed to know if anything did seem to be missing from Mr Rocke’s possessions, despite Lord Ansley’s searches last night, but even if the inspector knew he wouldn’t tell her at this early stage. Even more importantly, she wanted to know how Mr Rocke had died and if he had been stabbed as well as hit with that stone – and if so had a weapon been found? She didn’t want to think about that stone, though. It conjured up too many memories of what she had seen last night.

  They walked in silence along the roadway, the chill of the icy snow reaching her feet and legs even through the wellington boots, socks and stockings. A service was still in progress. A brutal murder had taken place just outside, and yet inside St Edith’s the lamps were lit, the organ was playing and voices were raised in harmony, Nell reflected. Everyday life, Sunday or weekday, had to continue, side by side with its horrors, but she struggled with the contrast.

  Two policemen were guarding the spot where Tobias Rocke’s body had lain; there were still a few signs of blood despite the further snowfall. Two more policemen were guarding the churchyard gate and the porch and by the side of the green groups of villagers were watching in silence. Another policeman, well-built and in plain clothes like the inspector, was walking towards the inspector. He might look a bluff, no-nonsense sort of man, Nell thought, but his eyes were as shrewd as his superior’s.

  ‘Miss Nell Drury is a witness, Sergeant Caring,’ Inspector Melbray introduced her. ‘She was early on the scene last night.’

  The sergeant gave her a friendly nod. He was a tall man, in contrast with Inspector Melbray’s medium height, and yet one’s attention would always rest on the inspector, regardless of rank, Nell thought, then wondered why that was.

  ‘It will look different now. There have been motor cars and horses passing along the road this morning,’ Inspector Melbray told her briskly.

  She could see that for herself. The snow was packed solid and discoloured with mud. That meant the footprints she had seen in the roadway wouldn’t be visible even if the further snowfall hadn’t obliterated them already. She stomped over to the church gate, which was still open, in the hope of seeing whether they were still visible on the path up to the church porch.

  ‘Even though there’s been more snow, there still seem to be some signs of indentations on the path,’ she reported back to the inspector, trying her best to sound professional. Though why the walloping walnuts did she want to do that? she thought crossly. She was a professional chef, nothing more. She had on one occasion been a very amateur sleuth, but a fine mess she had made of that.

  ‘Too far gone,’ Inspector Melbray said. ‘We have only your description of what you recall seeing.’

  Only? She didn’t like his use of that word. ‘The two sets I told you about,’ she continued, determined to make him regret it, ‘coming in this direction towards the green weren’t uniformly side by side. They were uneven and sometimes mixed together, perhaps one person following the other. And,’ Nell continued steadily, despite the lack of reaction from either man, ‘the set going back must have been returning to where the two sets came from.’

  ‘Which was �
� in your opinion?’

  ‘The church porch.’ So much police work seemed to be stating the obvious.

  ‘What do you deduce from that, Miss Drury?’

  Was he being sarcastic? Laughing at her? Apparently not. Both men seemed to be waiting for her answer.

  ‘As the door isn’t locked at night, I thought Mr Rocke might have been talking to someone inside the church or in the porch,’ she said bravely, ‘and he or they might have come along the other path from the lychgate from Mill Lane.’ She pointed to the west of the churchyard. ‘That path then goes on to the gate on the east side of the churchyard which is at the end of the drive up to Wychbourne Court.’

  Belatedly she remembered the splodges of blood. ‘He might have been attacked in the porch,’ she added impulsively. ‘There were splashes of what I thought looked like blood from here to the road, and there might have been others in the porch itself if he was attacked there. There didn’t seem to be any just inside the church gate, though.’

  She saw Inspector Melbray glance at his sergeant, who shook his head. ‘Nothing left now, Guv. Too much snow since and too many folk trampling it down.’

  ‘Check again for bloodstains,’ the inspector told him.

  ‘If he was attacked in the porch,’ Nell added unwisely, ‘he could have tried to run to the green in an effort to escape.’

  ‘Why would his attacker then return to the porch? If and could are words to consider, Miss Drury, but not to work with.’

  That did it. She could take no more, but she wasn’t going to lose face before either the inspector or his sergeant. ‘Then I’ll leave you to consider, Inspector. If you come to Wychbourne Court and if you wish to interview me, then I could tell you more.’

  She marched away, feeling like a prize idiot. Was it the cold wind or something else that seemed to be making her eyes water? Of all the detectives in London, why did he have to come? They’d parted on friendly terms last summer, or so she had believed. ‘Call me Alex,’ he’d said, and there had even been a plan to meet again, for a picnic lunch.