Death at the Wychbourne Follies

by Amy Myers

  Mrs Jarrett looked at her audience as though not quite certain what she was doing there. ‘As it seems, many of us did, where Tobias Rocke was concerned. I too suffered his beastly advances,’ she added, sitting down.

  The third black cross, Nell remembered.

  Lady Ansley took Mrs Jarrett a cup of coffee and sat down beside her. ‘It was I who made the mistake, Constance, not you. I thought we could recreate the past, but we’ve brought back the worst of it and not the best.’

  ‘You did us a favour, Gertrude,’ Miss Maxwell said warmly. ‘We’re here, the truth is out, masks are off and we can feel truly together again. Look at the success of the Follies. Time slipped away then and it can again.’

  Nell felt stunned. Her theories were confirmed, but at the cost of her realizing how much pain these people had suffered from Tobias Rocke. Were they indeed all glad the curtain had been lifted or had it just brought back the misery? Either way the murders, whether crimes of fear or of passion, as Lady Clarice had put it, still remained to be solved. No ghosts or spirits could help there, only Chief Inspector Melbray, possibly with an ounce of help from herself.

  Tomorrow Alex Melbray would be coming to Wychbourne. This couldn’t be just for another information-gathering exercise; he must know, Nell realized, who the murderer or murderers were and Alex was coming for just one purpose: confirmation. That meant she should talk to him first as tonight’s revelations would surely be relevant. Lord Ansley must have been of the same opinion for he caught up with her on her way back to the east wing.

  ‘Much has been said tonight, Nell, that Chief Inspector Melbray needs to know before he arrives in Wychbourne later tomorrow. It’s hard for me to speak to him as these people are friends and guests under our roof. But we need to rid ourselves of the dark god of suspicion peering over our shoulders. Could I suggest therefore that you telephone the chief inspector tomorrow morning – a Sunday of course, but I have the telephone number of his home? You should use the telephone in my study, our private line, as the general Wychbourne number is too public for such a call. You will be alone while you make the telephone call, needless to say, so that you may speak freely. Come just before we leave for the morning service.’

  This is a long way from being a Spitalfields barrow girl, Nell Drury, she thought as she thanked him, but it came with responsibilities. She would cope with those tomorrow – a wonderful word that took the stress out of everything, even the tiredness that now consumed her.

  Secure in her cocoon in Lord Ansley’s study, she put through the trunk call next morning and was rewarded by Alex’s startled voice at hearing her. Even over the telephone she could sense he was turning over what she was saying, although neither accepting nor rejecting it. That was a relief. As she finished telling him about the tribunal, though, she had an afterthought. ‘Incidentally, Lady Clarice divides her ghosts’ murders into crimes of fear or crimes of passion.’

  A silence and then at last he spoke. ‘Thank you, Nell. I’m coming down to the Coach and Horses this evening. I’ll be arranging for all those involved in these cases to gather there tomorrow.’

  Gather there, and not at Wychbourne Court? That sobered her. It implied he was going to make an arrest and wanted to do that on neutral ground.

  ‘In one of the downstairs rooms or where they held the Wychbourne Follies?’ she asked tentatively.

  ‘The latter. It’s time for curtain up on the last act, Nell. Where the Wychbourne Follies began and where they should end.’

  SIXTEEN

  Curtain up? So Chief Inspector Melbray had a very definite plan and ‘curtain up’ suggested he had a play of his own to stage. Nell was torn between relief that the end must be near and panic as to what that might be. Yesterday had been difficult both for the family and by extension for the servants too. After the heated exchanges on Saturday night, the guests had been subdued yesterday, either hurrying off to church or lurking in the billiard room or hiding behind newspapers in the morning room. Even in the kitchens there had been a sense of marking time because everyone knew Chief Inspector Melbray would be coming.

  Mrs Jarrett had seemed the only exception to this, seemingly still intent on her role of hunting down her husband’s murderer. Was she overplaying the tragedy queen? No, because she had every reason to do so, Nell reminded herself. Mrs Reynolds – as she was still being addressed – was noticeably quiet. Lady Ansley had seemed abstracted when Nell arrived for their meeting in the Velvet Room. The household still had to be run however, and the menus had been agreed in record time both yesterday and today.

  The first thing Nell noticed when she arrived at the Coach and Horses shortly before eleven o’clock was two police motor cars discreetly parked in the yard and even more ominously a police van. Male voices from one of the ground-floor rooms suggested that policemen were tucked out of sight – for the moment. As she reached the upper room, she recognized Sergeant Caring, in plain clothes and carefully situated near the door. He wasn’t exactly guarding it, but he wasn’t far away.

  Nell took a deep breath. The audience for today’s drama – if that is what it was going to be – were already in their places, but the murmur of their voices was low; everyone was waiting for the curtain to rise. The chairs had been placed not in front of the stage, as they had been for the Wychbourne Follies, but in a large semicircle facing the internal wall on her right. They were surrounding the focal point – one solitary empty chair. No doubt about who would be sitting there. She seemed to be one of the last to arrive, as the whole Ansley family, save for the dowager, was already seated and so were the guests and their servants, Mr Trotter and Arthur Fontenoy. Everyone involved, Alex Melbray had said. Even the Palmers were present and Jethro, for once looking ill at ease and not his usual cocky self.

  As Nell took a place near the door, Chief Inspector Melbray slipped in almost unnoticed to take his seat. She saw Sergeant Caring edging much closer to the door and nerved herself up for what was to happen. Nothing she could do now would change the script of this drama.

  ‘The Wychbourne Follies, happy occasion though I’m told it was,’ the Chief Inspector began formally, ‘was, as we all know, immediately followed by a tragic drama in which you all played a part, some small, some leading roles. And because this is a drama, I’m sure you’re aware that there’ll be no walking offstage and back into your private lives until it ends.’

  Clever, Nell thought, after her first shock at the way he was approaching this task. He was managing to put the audience at one remove from Tobias Rocke and Hubert Jarrett’s murders and yet underline the enormity of what had happened.

  ‘We’ll take it act by act,’ Chief Inspector Melbray continued dispassionately. ‘Lady Ansley has kindly agreed to begin with what could be called a curtain raiser.’

  Lady Ansley? She had been part of this? Surely it was unfair to have involved her in this? No, she was wrong, Nell realized. It was clear that she was fully prepared and she rose to her feet with complete composure.

  ‘I’m afraid I did indeed begin this terrible train of events. I had no intentions beyond wanting to see my old friends again. You still are our friends and I hope will remain so. But I was concerned over whether the Follies would please everyone and in worrying too much about that, I was foolish enough to mention Mary Ann Darling.’

  ‘Act I,’ the inspector said, as Lady Ansley resumed her seat. ‘Enter Lord Ansley.’

  Crackling crepes, where did the inspector think this stylized opening would lead? Nell held her breath. From insisting Mary Ann was little or no part of the investigation, he now seemed to be implying that she was an integral part.

  Lord Ansley too was obviously prepared. ‘At Miss Darling’s request, Mr Heydock and I helped in what we thought was merely Mary Ann’s disappearance from the Gaiety in order to have a quieter and happier life. As far as we knew, our plan had worked, although later we were told that her body had been identified. Isn’t that so, Neville?’

  Mr Heydock nodded. ‘Yes,’
he replied. ‘I couldn’t see who the lover waiting in the cab was, but it was highly unlikely to have been Tobias Rocke. It could, however – forgive me, Constance – have been Hubert Jarrett who replaced him in the cab.’

  Mrs Jarrett must have disciplined herself for this ordeal because Nell could see no sign of distress as she spoke. ‘It could indeed have been him, Neville. Hubert wasn’t married at the time and had been one of Mary Ann’s persistent admirers. Nevertheless, I am certain he did not murder Mary Ann. He was not a violent man. Alibi or not, I still believe Tobias killed her.’

  Is this what the chief inspector wants? Nell wondered. Participation by his cast? Does he already know where it’s leading?

  ‘We can check Mr Rocke’s alibi more closely,’ the inspector said. ‘He had a motive for killing her as we believe that she had rejected his sexual attentions. He had nothing to gain from her death though, except for revenge.’

  ‘He most certainly did,’ Miss Maxwell said indignantly. ‘He was making her life a misery by threatening to reveal her whereabouts to her father, but Mary Ann was going to ask the Guv’nor to deal with him.’

  ‘I agree with you, Alice,’ Mrs Jarrett said quietly. ‘Tobias was a cunning man. He would have arranged an alibi for her death, and later he identified the body, no doubt at his own suggestion. He wanted the police investigation closed.’

  ‘That is possible,’ the inspector agreed. ‘But I suggest we move on to Act Two, the recent murder of Tobias Rocke. Does the motive stem back to Miss Darling or to newer causes: his blackmailing habits, both in the past and the present? Indeed, very much the present: Mr Trotter is included in our cast because he was being blackmailed by Mr Rocke.’

  ‘Me?’ squeaked Mr Trotter.

  ‘Why should you be excluded, Mr Trotter?’ Mrs Reynolds asked. ‘The rest of us are undergoing scrutiny by the inspector’s magnifying glass, so why not you?’

  ‘But I was staying at Wychbourne Court. I came back with Lady Clarice,’ Mr Trotter stuttered. ‘I have an alibi.’

  ‘Tobias wasn’t murdered until well after eleven o’clock. An agile gentleman like you could have slipped out of a door or window again,’ Mrs Reynolds mocked him.

  ‘I’d prefer it if we kept to my script, Mrs Reynolds,’ the inspector said.

  ‘Oh, come now. I’m sure you know by now that I have no such claim to that name. Mrs Heydock will do, won’t it, darling?’ She turned to Neville Heydock.

  ‘It will, my dove,’ he rejoined. To her surprise, Nell thought he looked almost pleased at the idea for all his sarcasm.

  ‘Nonetheless, as scriptwriter I must intervene,’ the inspector said mildly. ‘Call this Act Three. From your statements, you were all back at Wychbourne Court by about twenty to eleven, save for you, Miss Drury, who arrived shortly before the hour. All of you were seen in the supper room at least briefly, and then dispersed to either the billiard room or drawing room or retired to bed. One unidentifiable figure was seen by Jethro James to be leaving by a side door.’

  ‘Mr Trotter,’ Mrs Reynolds (as Nell had become accustomed to thinking of her) shot back.

  ‘One of the servants perhaps?’ Mr Heydock suggested.

  ‘Possible,’ the inspector conceded. ‘Tobias Rocke and John Palmer were seen together by Mr Jethro James at the church lychgate at eleven fifteen or so, about the same time as he also heard odd sounds in the churchyard bushes, which were probably linked to the murder in the porch very shortly after.’

  There was something that didn’t add up here, Nell thought uneasily. This rustling in the bushes. Alex was right in that this was probably linked to the murder shortly after, but what about the noise she had heard when she left the Coach and Horses over half an hour earlier? Was that just the wind, or had that too been connected with the murder?

  ‘James’s testimony can’t be relied on,’ Mr Heydock objected.

  ‘Why not? He wouldn’t have had reason to murder poor old Tobias,’ Mrs Reynolds pointed out tartly.

  Neville shrugged. ‘Perhaps he caught him poaching.’

  ‘Why would he bother to kill him in the church porch?’ she asked scornfully. To this she received no answer either from Neville or anyone else. Indeed, Nell thought, their audience seemed relieved that the limelight was off them – excepting Chief Inspector Melbray, who was gently pushing the dialogue onwards.

  ‘Why indeed?’ he asked. ‘Shall we proceed with those whom Tobias Rocke was blackmailing, or attempting to?’

  ‘Oh, excellent!’ Mrs Reynolds drawled. ‘Here I come again, gripping a knife and a stone to commit my murders. I always manage to overdo things.’

  ‘Be quiet, Lynette,’ Mr Heydock snapped.

  ‘Anything to hide, my pet? I haven’t.’

  Chief Inspector Melbray again took over. ‘We should consider whether these were crimes of passion or fear.’

  He’d remembered Lady Clarice’s words, Nell thought with a rush of excitement. Where was this leading?

  ‘Would you classify Tobias Rocke’s murder as one of passion?’ he continued.

  ‘Fear. He was threatening several of us,’ Mr Heydock said.

  ‘There are other motivations for murder,’ Miss Maxwell pointed out. ‘Hatred or greed – although both might be said to come under passion.’

  ‘We really must be talking of two different Tobiases,’ Lady Kencroft broke in angrily. ‘This is not the Tobias I knew.’

  ‘Then he was a Jekyll and Hyde,’ Mrs Jarrett said matter-of-factly. ‘He most certainly made my husband’s life a misery, and I am of the opinion that he could well have murdered Mary Ann, if not the night of her disappearance, then later.’

  ‘He had a motive to kill her, given that he did not seem a man who would take rejection lightly,’ the inspector replied. ‘Or was he blackmailing her murderer?’ A pause. ‘Or does the motive lie much nearer to us in time?’

  No one answered. ‘Consider these things,’ he continued softly. ‘The inter-act curtain is falling on Tobias Rocke.’

  ‘And when it rises?’ Lord Ansley asked stiffly.

  ‘Someone will, I hope, remember my poor Hubert who was also murdered,’ Mrs Jarrett intervened tartly.

  ‘We all shall,’ the inspector said soberly. ‘Act Four, the death of Hubert Jarrett. The evidence points to his being poisoned here in Wychbourne, and the probability is that the poison was in a sandwich eaten here at the Coach and Horses.’

  ‘Risky,’ Mr Heydock commented.

  ‘Indeed, yet Mr Jarrett was almost certainly the intended target,’ the inspector replied. ‘Different though the two methods of murder were, it also seems certain that his death was linked to that of Tobias Rocke. Both crimes had a degree of planning, given the need to have knife and poison at hand, but also an element of improvisation: the church porch would hardly be a first choice for a murder, nor would the risk attached to the sandwich option at a funeral gathering. Why, however, was Mr Jarrett killed?’

  ‘The answer is simple,’ Lord Kencroft said. ‘Hubert knew who had killed Tobias.’

  ‘Your curtain raiser implied Mary Ann was the reason for both murders,’ Alice Maxwell said.

  ‘But that excludes dear Mr Trotter,’ Mrs Reynolds complained.

  ‘And that, short though that act was, brings us to the final one,’ Chief Inspector Melbray said. ‘I am convinced that both Mr Rocke’s and Mr Jarrett’s deaths were crimes of passion, not fear.’

  Both? Nell was startled. Who would kill Mr Jarrett for reasons of passion. Unless … A memory came back to her at last. Something he had said, something that didn’t fit. Even now she couldn’t pin it down.

  ‘Passion?’ Mrs Jarrett rose to her feet, trembling. ‘Are you implying that I poisoned my husband, Chief Inspector? I adored Hubert. Why would I want to kill him and even if I did, would I do it here, among friends?’

  ‘No, Mrs Jarrett. I am quite sure that you did not kill your husband. And, Mr Trotter, I am equally sure that you did not kill Tobias Rocke.’

  ‘Thank you
.’ Mr Trotter looked on the verge of tears. ‘I began to think I must have murdered him in a trance and that he would return to haunt me.’

  ‘Has he done so?’ Lady Clarice enquired eagerly.

  ‘I doubt it very much, Lady Clarice,’ the inspector said firmly. ‘His spirit would have another mission. To seek revenge on his true murderer.’

  Arthur Fontenoy broke the tense silence. ‘And who is that, inspector? You said this was the final act of your drama.’

  ‘I did. Mr Rocke’s murder was a crime of passion and revenge by the only person who, I believe, had reason to kill both men for passion, not fear. Who hated Tobias Rocke so much and then turned on Hubert Jarrett. The reason was the murder of Mary Ann Darling, whom she believed had been killed by Tobias Rocke.’

  Doris Paget’s shriek rang out. ‘I was with her, I was with her all the time. I swear to it. It’s just not true.’

  ‘Some of the time, Miss Paget,’ Chief Inspector Melbray said gravely. ‘You were with her in the church porch when you both took part in Tobias Rocke’s murder. You were with her when you returned to the house that night, after which you parted, you to the servants’ east wing, she to the west wing. You had not been with her when she hurried briefly back to Wychbourne Court to make her presence known at the buffet supper before slipping out again to join you. But you were most certainly with her when Mr Jarrett was poisoned.’

  All this time Miss Maxwell had said nothing, her face impassive. Nell expected Chief Inspector Melbray to move forward, conscious that Sergeant Caring was on the alert, ready to move at any moment. But nothing happened. Stunned faces stared at each other, at the inspector and at Miss Maxwell herself.

  At last Alice Maxwell rose to her feet. ‘I would like to say a few words, Chief Inspector.’ Her rich, deep voice rang out as though she were indeed on stage.

  ‘I …’ She hesitated for a moment, then continued, ‘… I did indeed murder Tobias Rocke. I did so alone, however. Miss Paget was not involved. As to regrets, I have none. I did poison Hubert Jarrett and for that my apologies to you, Constance, however inadequate they may appear. As regards Tobias Rocke, I killed him with pleasure and may he rot in hell.’