Death in the Stocks: Merely Murder

by Georgette Heyer

  ‘Unmarried?’

  Giles sat down on the edge of the table. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Can you tell me of what his immediate family consists?’

  ‘His half-brother and half-sister, that’s all.’ Giles took out a cigarette and tapped it on his case. ‘Arnold Vereker was the eldest son of Geoffrey Vereker by his first wife, my father’s sister, Maud. He was forty last December. There was one other son by that marriage, Roger, who would be thirty-eight if he were alive now – which, thank heaven, he’s not. He was not precisely an ornament to the family. There was a certain amount of relief felt when he cleared out years ago. He went to South America, and I believe got himself mixed up in some revolution or other. Anyway, he’s been dead about seven years now. Kenneth Vereker and his sister Antonia are the offspring of a second marriage. Their mother died shortly after Antonia’s birth. My uncle died a month or two before Roger, leaving both Kenneth and Antonia under Arnold’s guardianship.’

  ‘Thank you, Mr Carrington: I hoped you would be able to help me. Can you tell me what sort of man Arnold Vereker was?’

  ‘A man with a genius for making enemies,’ replied Giles promptly. ‘He was one of those natural bullies who can yet make themselves very pleasant when they choose. Queer chap, with a streak of appalling vulgarity. Yet at the bottom there was something quite likeable about him. Chief hobbies, women and social climbing.’

  ‘I think I know the type. From what I can make out he had a bit of a bad reputation down here.’

  ‘I shouldn’t be surprised. Arnold would never go weekending to an hotel for fear of being seen. He always wanted to stand well in the eyes of the world. Hence Riverside Cottage. Is it known, by the way, whether he had one of his fancies with him last night?’

  ‘Very little is known, Mr Carrington. We have not yet traced his car. That may conceivably tell a tale. Whoever it was murdered your cousin presumably drove away in the car.’

  ‘Neat,’ approved Giles.

  The Superintendent smiled faintly. ‘You share Miss Vereker’s dislike of the man?’

  ‘More or less. And I have one of those cast-iron alibis which I understand render one instantly suspect. I was playing bridge in my father’s house on Wimbledon Common.’

  The Superintendent nodded. ‘One more question, Mr Carrington. Can you tell me anything about this man’ – he consulted his notebook – ‘Mesurier?’

  ‘Beyond the fact that he is the Chief Accountant in my cousin’s firm, nothing, I’m afraid. I am barely acquainted with him.’

  ‘I see. I don’t think I need keep you any longer now. You’ll be wanting to take Miss Vereker away. Shall we say ten o’clock in Eaton Place to-morrow?’

  ‘Yes, certainly. You’d better have my card, by the way. I should be very grateful if you would let me know what happens.’

  He held out his hand, the Superintendent grasped it for a moment, and opened the door for him to pass out.

  Antonia was engaged in powdering her face when Giles rejoined her.

  ‘Hullo,’ she said. ‘I thought you’d deserted me. What did he want?’

  ‘One or two particulars. I’m Arnold’s executor, you know. Come along and I’ll give you some lunch.’

  Miss Vereker was hungry, and not even the intelligence that she might have to be present at the inquest interfered with her appetite. She ate a hearty meal, and by three o’clock was once more at Riverside Cottage, backing her car out of the garage. ‘Are you coming back to Town, too?’ she inquired.

  ‘Yes, as soon as I’ve found out the date of the inquest. I’ll look in to-night to have a word with Kenneth. Mind the rose-bush!’

  ‘I’ve been driving this car for over a year,’ said Antonia, affronted.

  ‘It looks like it,’ he agreed, his eyes on a battered mudguard.

  Antonia slammed the gear-lever into first, and started with a jerk. Her cousin watched her drive off, narrowly escaping a collision with the gate-post, and then got into his own car again, and drove back to Hanborough.

  Rather more than an hour later Antonia let herself into the studio that she shared with her brother, and found him in an overall, a cup of tea in one hand and a novel in the other. He was a handsome young man, with untidy dark hair and his sister’s brilliant eyes. He raised them from his book as she came in, said, ‘Hullo!’ in a disinterested voice and went on reading.

  Antonia pulled off her hat and threw it vaguely in the direction of a chair. It fell on the floor, but beyond saying damn she did no more about it. ‘Stop reading: I’ve got some news,’ she announced.

  ‘Shut up,’ replied her brother. ‘I’m all thrilled with this murder story. Shan’t be long. Have some tea or something.’

  Antonia, respecting this mood of absorption, sat down and poured herself out some tea in the slop-basin. Kenneth Vereker finished reading the last chapter of his novel, and threw it aside. ‘Lousy,’ he remarked. ‘By the way, Murgatroyd has been yapping at me all day to know where you’ve been. Did you happen to tell me? Damned if I could remember. Where have you been?’

  ‘Down at Ashleigh Green. Arnold’s been murdered.’

  ‘Arnold’s been what?’

  ‘Murdered.’

  Kenneth looked at her with lifted brows. ‘Joke?’

  ‘No, actually murdered. Popped off.’

  ‘Great jumping Jehoshaphat!’ he exclaimed. ‘Who did it?’

  ‘They don’t know. I believe they rather think I did. Someone shoved a knife into him, and stuck him in the stocks at Ashleigh Green. I went down to see him, and spent the night there.’

  ‘What the devil for?’

  ‘Oh, he wrote me a stinker about Rudolph, so I thought I might as well go and have it out with him. But that’s not the point. The point is, he’s dead.’

  Kenneth looked at her in silence for a moment. Then he carefully set down his cup, and poured himself out some more tea. ‘Too breath-taking. Don’t know that I altogether believe it. Oh, Murgatroyd, Tony says Arnold’s been done-in.’

  A stout woman in a black frock and a voluminous apron had come into the studio with a clean cup and saucer. She said severely: ‘That’s as maybe, and if it’s true you couldn’t say but what it’s a judgement. But there’s no call for anyone to drink their tea out of the slop-bowl that I know of. For shame, Miss Tony! And where was you last night, I should like to know? Answer me that!’

  ‘Down at Arnold’s cottage. I forgot to tell you. What a mind you’ve got, Murgatroyd! Where did you think I was?’

  ‘That’s neither here nor there. What’s all this nonsense about Mr Arnold?’

  ‘Murdered,’ said Antonia, selecting a sandwich from the dish. ‘What’s in this?’

  ‘Stinking fish,’ replied her brother. ‘Go on about Arnold. Was he murdered in the cottage?’

  ‘There’s anchovy in them sandwiches, and I’ll thank you, Master Kenneth, not to use such language!’

  ‘Shut up, we want to hear about Arnold. Do get on, Tony!’

  ‘I’ve told you already he was in the village stocks. I don’t know any more.’

  ‘And quite enough, too!’ said Murgatroyd austerely. ‘I never heard of such a thing, putting corpses into stocks! Whatever next!’

  ‘Not in the best of good taste,’ conceded Kenneth. ‘Did you discover him, Tony?’

  ‘No, the police did. And they came to the cottage and took me off to the Police Station to make a statement. So I sent for Giles, because I thought it safest.’

  ‘And I hope,’ said Murgatroyd, picking up Antonia’s hat, ‘that Mr Giles gave you a piece of his mind, which I’ll be bound he did. Getting yourself mixed up in nasty murder cases! Fancy anyone up and murdering Mr Arnold! I don’t know what the world’s coming to, I’m sure. Not but what there’s many as could be spared less. If you’ve finished with that tray I’ll take it into the kitchen, Miss Tony.’

  Antonia finished what was left in the slop-bowl and put it down.

  ‘All right. There’ll be an inquest, Ken. Giles says I shal
l probably have to show up. He’s coming here tonight to see you.’

  Her brother stared at her, ‘See me? What for?’

  ‘I didn’t ask.’

  ‘Well, I don’t mind him coming if he wants to, but why on earth –’

  He broke off, and suddenly swung his legs down from the arm of the chair in which he was lounging. ‘Ha! I have it.’

  ‘Have what?’

  ‘I’m the heir.’

  ‘So you are,’ said Antonia slowly. ‘I never thought of that.’

  ‘No, nor did I, but under Father’s Will I must be. Two hundred and fifty thousand pounds! I must get on to Violet and tell her!’

  He jumped up, but was checked by his sister. ‘Rot! How do you know?’

  ‘Because I made it my business to find out when Arnold wouldn’t advance me a mere five hundred. Murgatroyd, Murgatroyd! I’m rich! Do you hear? I’m rich!’

  Murgatroyd, who had come back into the room to fold up the tea-cloth, replied: ‘Yes, I hear, and if you take my advice, Master Kenneth, you’ll keep a still tongue in your head. The idea of shouting out “I’m rich!” when your half-brother met his end like he has!’

  ‘Who cares how he met his end as long as he did meet it? What’s Violet’s number?’

  ‘Don’t you talk like that, Master Kenneth! How would you like to have a knife stuck in you? Nasty, underhand way of killing anyone, that’s what I call it.’

  ‘I don’t see it at all,’ objected Kenneth. ‘It’s no worse than shooting a person, and far more sensible. Shooting’s noisy, for one thing, and, for another, you leave a bullet in your man, and it gets traced to you. Whereas a knife doesn’t leave anything behind, and is easy to get rid of.’

  ‘I don’t know how you can stand there and say such things!’ exclaimed Murgatroyd indignantly. ‘Downright indecent, that’s what it is! Nor no amount of fine talking will make me say other than what I do say, and stand by! It’s a dirty, mean trick to knife people!’

  Kenneth waved his hands at her in one of his excitable gestures. ‘It isn’t any dirtier or meaner than any other way! You make me sick with that kind of mawkish twaddle! What is Violet’s number?’

  ‘You needn’t get so cross about it,’ said Antonia. ‘Personally I rather agree with Murgatroyd.’

  ‘People who start a sentence with personally (and they’re always women) ought to be thrown to the lions. It’s a repulsive habit.’

  ‘I probably must have caught it from Violet,’ said Antonia musingly.

  ‘Shut up about Violet! Does she really say it?’

  ‘Often.’

  ‘I’ll tell her about it. What – for the fiftieth time – is her number?’

  ‘Nothing four nine six, or something. You’d better look it up. Did either of you take the dogs for a walk this morning?’

  ‘Take the dogs for a walk? No, of course I didn’t,’ said Kenneth, flicking over the leaves of the telephone directory. ‘Hell, someone’ll have to do this for me! There are pages of Williams! Blast the wench, why must she have a surname like that?’

  ‘There’s no call for you to swear,’ said Murgatroyd. ‘You want to look for the initial. No, Miss Tony, you know very well that one thing I won’t do is take those murdering dogs of yours out. You get rid of them and have a nice little fox-terrier, and we’ll see.’

  ‘Oh, well, I’d better take them now, I suppose,’ replied Antonia, and put on her hat again and strolled out.

  The flat, which was over a garage, had a small yard attached to it, reached by an iron stair leading out of the kitchen. The garage, which Antonia rented, had a door giving on to the yard, and had been converted into a roomy kennel. Three bull-terrier bitches occupied it, and greeted their mistress in the boisterous manner of their kind. She put them all on leashes, called Bill to heel, and started out for a walk, sped on her way by Murgatroyd, who came to the top of the iron stairs to say that if she happened to be passing a dairy she might bring in another half-dozen eggs. ‘Ten to one we’ll have that Miss Williams here to supper,’ Murgatroyd said gloomily. ‘Enough to make your poor Mother turn in her grave! Her and her poster-sketches! And what’s to stop her and Master Kenneth getting married now Mr Arnold’s no more?’

  ‘Nothing,’ replied Antonia, resisting the efforts of one of the bitches to entangle her legs with the lead.

  ‘That’s what I say,’ agreed Murgatroyd. ‘There’s always something to take the gilt off the ginger-bread.’

  Antonia left her to her cogitations, and set off in the direction of the Embankment. When she returned it was an hour later, and she had forgotten the eggs. Having given her dogs their evening meal, she ran up the steps to the kitchen, where she found Murgatroyd making pastry. A fair girl, with shrewd grey eyes and a rather square chin, was sitting with her elbows on the table, watching Murgatroyd. She smiled when she saw Antonia. ‘Hullo!’ she said. ‘Just looked in for a minute.’

  ‘I haven’t got the eggs,’ announced Antonia.

  ‘It’s all right: I got them,’ the other girl said. ‘I hear your half-brother’s been murdered. I don’t condole, do I?’

  ‘No. Is the blushing Violet here?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Leslie Rivers in a very steady voice. ‘So I thought I wouldn’t stay.’

  ‘You can’t anyway: there isn’t enough to eat. Seen Kenneth?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Leslie Rivers again. ‘He’s with Violet. I suppose it’s useless for me to say anything, but if Kenneth isn’t careful he’ll land himself in jug. I should think the police are bound to think he murdered your half-brother.’

  ‘No, they won’t. They think I did. Kenneth wasn’t there.’

  ‘He hasn’t got an alibi,’ stated Leslie in her matter-of-fact way. ‘He doesn’t seem to see how with him inheriting all that money, and being in debt, and loathing Arnold, things are bound to point his way.’

  ‘I bet he didn’t do it, all the same,’ replied Antonia.

  ‘The point is you may find it hard to prove he didn’t.’

  ‘I wonder if he could have?’ Antonia said thoughtfully.

  Murgatroyd let the rolling-pin fall with a clatter. ‘I never did in all my born days! Whatever will you say next, Miss Tony? Your own brother too, as wouldn’t hurt a fly.’

  ‘If you had a fly-swotting competition, he’d win it,’ Antonia replied sensibly. ‘I’m not saying he did kill Arnold; I only wondered. I wouldn’t put it above him, would you, Leslie?’

  ‘I don’t know. He’s a weird creature. Yes, of course I would. What rot you are talking, Tony! I’m going.’

  Five minutes later Antonia wandered into the studio and nodded curtly to the girl in the big arm-chair. ‘Hullo! Come to celebrate?’

  Miss Williams raised a pair of velvety brown eyes to Antonia’s face, and put up a well-manicured hand to smooth her sleek black hair. ‘Tony darling, I don’t think you ought to talk like that,’ she said. ‘Personally, I feel –’

  ‘Good God, you were right!’ exclaimed Kenneth. ‘My adored one, where did you pick up that bestial habit? Don’t say personally, I implore you!’

  A faint tinge of colour stole into the creamy cheeks. ‘Well, really, Kenneth!’ said Miss Williams.

  ‘For God’s sake, don’t hurt her feelings,’ begged Antonia. ‘I’m damned if I’ll have any nauseating reconciliations over supper. And while we happen to be on this subject, who the devil asked you how you think I should talk, Violet?’

  The brown eyes narrowed a little. ‘I suppose I can have my opinions, can’t I?’ said Miss Williams silkily.

  ‘You look lovely when you’re angry,’ said Kenneth suddenly. ‘Go on, Tony: say something more.’

  Miss Williams’ beautiful lips parted and showed small very white teeth. ‘I think you’re perfectly horrid, both of you, and I utterly refuse to quarrel with you. Poor little me! What chance have I got with two people at me at once? How awful for you to have actually been at Mr Vereker’s house when it happened, Tony! It must have been ghastly for you. I simply can’t
bear to think of it. Let’s talk of something else!’

  ‘Why can’t you bear to think of it?’ asked Kenneth, not so much captious as interested. ‘Do you object to blood?’

  She gave a shudder. ‘Don’t Kenneth, please! Really, I can’t stand it.’

  ‘Just as you like, my treasure, though why you should turn queasy at the thought of Arnold’s being stabbed I can’t imagine. You never even knew him.’

  ‘Oh, no, I shouldn’t know him if I saw him,’ said Violet. ‘It isn’t that. I just don’t like talking about gruesome things.’

  ‘She’s being womanly,’ explained Antonia. Her eye alighted on a couple of gold-necked bottles. ‘Where the hell did they spring from?’

  ‘I boned ’em off Frank Crewe,’ replied Kenneth. ‘We’ve got to celebrate this.’

  ‘Kenneth!’

  ‘That’s all right,’ soothed Antonia. ‘He meant his accession to wealth.’

  ‘But you can’t drink champagne when Mr Vereker’s been murdered! It isn’t decent!’

  ‘I can drink champagne at any time,’ replied Antonia. ‘What have you done to your nails?’

  Violet extended her hands. ‘Silver lacquer. Do you like it?’

  ‘No,’ said Antonia. ‘Kenneth, if you’re the heir you’ll have to make me an allowance, because I want a new car.’

  ‘All right, anything you say,’ agreed Kenneth.

  ‘There are sure to be Death Duties,’ Violet said practically. ‘It’s absolutely wicked the amount one has to pay. Still, there’s the house as well. That’ll be yours, won’t it, Kenneth?’

  ‘Do you mean that barrack in Eaton Place?’ demanded Kenneth. ‘You don’t imagine I’m going to live in a barn like that, do you?’

  ‘Why ever not?’ Violet sat up, staring at him. ‘It’s an awfully good address.’

  ‘Who cares about an awfully good address? If you’d ever been inside it you wouldn’t expect me to live there. It’s got Turkey carpets, and a lot of Empire furniture, and pink silk panels in the drawing-room, and a glass lustre, and marble-topped tables with gilt legs.’

  ‘We could always get rid of anything we didn’t like, but I must say I like nice things, I mean things that are good.’