A Case of Duplicity in Dorset

by Clara Benson

  ‘You’re a good boy, Freddy,’ she said. ‘You always cheer me up.’

  ‘I’m glad to hear it. Now, let’s go and have a drink.’

  They went into the small salon, where several people were already gathered. Near the door, Kitty Fitzsimmons was being charming to Dr. Bachmann, who was looking much less agitated than before and was even managing to laugh. They both looked up as Freddy and Bea entered. Dr. Bachmann directed an admiring look at Bea, who flushed slightly, while Kitty gave her one assessing glance and judged it best to retreat. She cast her eyes about for Cedric, but for once he was not paying attention to her; he, too, had just spied Bea, and was staring at her as though he had never seen her before. He came across to stand before his wife, who regarded him uncertainly, waiting to hear his opinion.

  ‘Well—I mean to say—er—you look rather well, what?’ he said at last. It was not perhaps the most elegant of compliments, but Bea understood him perfectly. Her face broke into a smile, and she took his proffered arm. Kitty looked briefly taken aback, then recovered herself immediately and fell into conversation with Mrs. Dragusha, who seemed very pleased with the effect her creation had caused upon the room. Conversation, which had stopped, resumed, and Freddy somehow found himself in an awkward tête-à-tête with Ralph, who began to talk determinedly of his and Iris’s plans for their wedding tour. Freddy listened until the subject was exhausted and he could politely withdraw, then found himself standing by Ro, who looked across at Ralph and murmured:

  ‘Is the wedding still going ahead?’

  ‘As far as I know,’ he replied.

  ‘But has nobody told him—’

  ‘Told him what? There’s nothing to tell,’ he said. ‘And if there were, I’m sure you’d keep it to yourself, wouldn’t you?’

  She regarded him in some impatience.

  ‘You’re an idiot,’ she said.

  ‘So I understand,’ he said dryly.

  Just then, Daphne slipped into the salon alone. She was looking very pretty in pale green, and Freddy could not help but feel a twinge of regret at the sight of her. She did not come all the way into the room, but glanced around until she saw him, then indicated by a gesture that she wished to speak to him outside. He followed her out and into the morning-room. It was clear from her face, which wore an expression of displeasure, that she had not yet forgiven him, but still her first words surprised him.

  ‘What have you been saying to Goose?’ she snapped. ‘He’s been hovering around me all afternoon, and he seems to think he has your permission for it.’

  ‘Oh—er—does he?’ said Freddy.

  ‘Yes, he does. What do you think you’re playing at? Who are you to give anyone permission? I’m not yours to give away.’

  ‘Goose is a fathead, if that’s what he said,’ said Freddy. ‘But it wasn’t like that at all. He likes you an awful lot—has gone positively gooey about you, as a matter of fact—and all I said was that I shouldn’t stand in his way if he wanted to try and win you over. Nobody’s trying to give anybody away, I promise you. Of course, if you don’t like him, then there’s nothing more to be said, but if you don’t mind him then why not give him a chance? He’s a decent chap—far more so than I am, and a much better prospect, too.’

  ‘Do you really think that’s all I’m interested in?’ said Daphne heatedly. ‘I’m not Lavinia, and I’ve told you I don’t care two straws about marrying a title. And even if I did, you don’t really think the Duke would allow it, do you?’

  ‘I don’t see why not,’ said Freddy. ‘He’s a crusty old soul, but kind-hearted with it. No doubt he’d prefer something in the aristocratic line, but he won’t say no to any young woman his son falls in love with, as long as she’s from a respectable family.’

  ‘Well, then, I’m afraid I don’t qualify,’ said Daphne. She saw his face and gave a humourless laugh. ‘What do you think the Duke would say to an embezzler’s niece?’

  ‘What do you mean? Who’s an embezzler?’

  All at once her anger left her and she seemed to sag.

  ‘Morris Philpott,’ she said. ‘Lavinia’s husband. My father was rather high up in the Mahjapara Tea Company, and before he died he got Morris a job there as a favour to my mother. A couple of years ago Morris was killed in an accident, and then it was discovered that he had been defrauding the company for ages. I don’t know how he was doing it exactly—something to do with fake shipping bills, they told me—but it turned out he’d made a lot of money out of the scheme. I expect he’d have continued, too, but the accident put a stop to it. It caused a big scandal and was in all the local papers, and we had the police bothering us for months, since they wanted to know whether my father had been in on it too before he died. Of course he hadn’t, but I know there was talk, and suspicion followed us around for a good while.’

  ‘Good Lord,’ said Freddy. ‘Had Lavinia known anything of all this?’

  ‘She says not,’ said Daphne. ‘She didn’t collude in it—that I’m certain of—but you know what she’s like. She’s the sort who’s quite capable of ignoring anything unpleasant and pretending it didn’t happen. At any rate, my mother died not long after the story came out, and I was left with Lavinia, and she decided we’d be better off coming back to England.’ Her defiance returned and she drew herself up again. ‘So now you know everything—and you also know why there’s not the slightest use in your trying to pass me off onto Goose, because it will never be allowed.’

  ‘Don’t think like that,’ said Freddy. ‘Every family has its embarrassing relations. Lord knows the Warehams have enough of them.’

  ‘But you know perfectly well you’ll never have to apologize for it,’ said Daphne bitterly. ‘The rules don’t apply to your sort, only to mine.’

  ‘I say, I’m sorry,’ said Freddy.

  She shrugged awkwardly.

  ‘It can’t be helped,’ she said.

  ‘Professor Coddington knew the story, didn’t he?’

  She sighed.

  ‘Yes, he did,’ she said. ‘He was out in India at the time, I gather, and read about it in all the newspapers. He was absolutely beastly about it. He started by dropping a couple of hints, then followed Lavinia around and pinned her into a corner after dinner that first night, and said in that horrid, supercilious way of his that she was lucky to have been invited to Belsingham given that she had a disgraced husband in her past.’

  ‘Did he threaten to tell Cedric?’

  ‘Not as such. He told her not to worry, and that her secret was safe with him, but the way he said it made it obvious that he intended to use it to make her as uncomfortable as possible while she was here. At least, that was the impression she got.’

  Freddy said nothing as he tried to digest everything Daphne had told him. Perhaps she misinterpreted his silence, for she said, almost as though she were trying to convince herself:

  ‘Lavinia’s a good person, you know. Even if she is clumsy and obvious, she means well, and she’s been very kind to me. It was difficult for her to come back to England after so many years, but I believe she felt awful about the damage Morris had done to our reputation, and she wanted to make up for it somehow by taking me to nice places and getting me into good company. I expect I ought to have said no, but—well, I won’t deny it was fun, and then I met you, and Goose, and all your smart friends, and I suppose I was enjoying myself too much to put a stop to it. But Lavinia has the kindest heart, she really does. She’ll do anything for anyone. Why, she even went to offer Mr. Wray some of her sleeping drops just now because she overheard him saying he had a headache.’

  ‘What?’ said Freddy suddenly. ‘When was this?’

  ‘A few minutes ago,’ said Daphne, surprised at his sudden change of manner. ‘She said not to wait for her, as she was going to see whether he was in his room—what are you doing?’ she said, as Freddy opened the door.

  ‘Sorry,
but I’ve just remembered I left something upstairs,’ said Freddy, and headed out of the room. She followed him into the hall.

  ‘What is it?’ she said. ‘There’s something wrong, isn’t there?’

  Goose was just coming out of the small salon as they hurried towards the stairs.

  ‘Hi, where are you going?’ he said. ‘It’s nearly time for dinner.’

  ‘Is Mrs. Philpott down yet?’ said Freddy.

  ‘No,’ replied Goose.

  ‘Then you’d better come with us,’ said Freddy, and took the stairs two at a time. They hurried after him as he headed along to the end of the West Wing corridor and around the corner. He did not bother to knock, but opened Mr. Wray’s door without ceremony. They all paused for a second on the threshold, and Daphne cried out in astonishment at the unexpected sight of Lavinia Philpott in deadly struggle with Mr. Wray, whose usually pale face was suffused with blood as he tried desperately to unclench her strong hands from around his neck.

  ‘Lavinia!’ cried Daphne.

  They all rushed forward, and Lavinia started and let go of the unfortunate clergyman, who fell back, panting.

  ‘Oh!’ she said, but got no further before Goose took her arms firmly and dragged her away.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Mr. Wray faintly.

  ‘Are you all right?’ said Goose. ‘Perhaps we ought to fetch a doctor.’

  ‘And the police, too,’ said Freddy. ‘Tell them we’ve found the murderer of Professor Coddington.’

  ‘What?’ exclaimed Goose.

  ‘But Lavinia didn’t kill him!’ said Daphne, horrified.

  ‘Not Lavinia,’ said Freddy. ‘Mr. Wray.’

  ‘It couldn’t really have been anyone else,’ said Freddy, as they all sat in the small salon after dinner. Lavinia was making the most of her invalid status, and was sitting in a comfortable armchair, sipping sherry delicately and allowing Daphne to attend to her. Mr. Wray had at last agreed to take some of Lavinia’s sleeping drops, and had been persuaded by Bea to go to bed. He would be safe there until the police arrived, although they had taken the precaution of locking his door and removing all heavy objects from his room. ‘However I looked at it, I couldn’t see any possible way in which the professor could have died at the time we thought he did. There were simply too many people wandering around the house between ten past three and twenty to four, when we found his body. The murderer would have to have been extraordinarily lucky not to have been spotted by somebody. Nugs and I were both up just after two, but I didn’t think the professor could have died before that, for various reasons—first, one would have expected the police doctor to have spotted that he’d been dead much longer than we thought, and second, there was all this business with the man in Ro’s room. Our biggest mistake, you see, was to assume the intruder was Coddington, come to steal the pearls, whereas in fact it was Mr. Wray, who had merely got lost in the passage as he tried to escape. He was trying to get to the linen cupboard, but he went in without a torch, missed his way and ended up at the entrance to Ro’s room. It’s easily done—I did it myself twice today, in fact.’

  ‘I don’t think I follow,’ said Cedric. ‘If Coddington didn’t take the pearls, then why was he found with them in his hand?’

  ‘He did take them,’ said Freddy. ‘He went into Ro’s room through the door quite openly at twenty-five past two and took them from her dressing-table. She heard him, but decided later that it must have been Goose, Nugs and I banging about in the corridor. But at twenty-five past two we were all still in the study, drinking, so it couldn’t have been us. It must have been Coddington. I’d always wondered why he didn’t have a torch with him when he was found, but of course he never went into the secret passage at all, and so had no need of one. I can’t be sure, but what I think happened is that Mr. Wray was up, saw the professor coming out of Ro’s room and followed him down into the library, where he found him preparing to examine the pearls. There was an altercation of some kind, and Professor Coddington came off worst. It’s easy enough to see how it might have happened—Lord knows, any one of us might have done it if we’d happened to have a sash weight handy just as the professor made one of his pointed remarks. At any rate, Mr. Wray found himself suddenly and distressingly responsible for the existence of a fresh corpse, and I expect was hoping to sneak back to his room and pretend it had never happened, when unfortunately for him Goose came downstairs looking for a torch. I think Mr. Wray was just coming out of the library when he spotted Goose coming down the stairs, went into a panic and decided to escape through the secret passage instead. He ran back in and opened the door, then at the last minute remembered to run back and switch off the light. He was just in time to disappear into the passage when Goose came in. You, of course, didn’t spot the professor or the open passage door,’ he went on to Goose. ‘And why should you have? He was lying behind that big desk and you went to quite a different part of the room.’

  ‘I say,’ said Goose, disconcerted. ‘I had no idea. Do you mean to say I nearly tripped over a dead body and didn’t notice?’

  ‘It seems so,’ said Freddy. ‘So, then, at ten to three or thereabouts Mr. Wray, still holding the sash weight, went into the passage without a torch, got lost, as we know, and accidentally stumbled into Ro’s room. She yelled, and he immediately realized his mistake and made his escape. A few minutes later he came through the door into the linen cupboard, hid the weight and came out—only to find, much to his horror, that Ro’s scream had woken the rest of the household, and they were all holding merry session out there in the corridor. He was about to withdraw hurriedly when he saw that Mrs. Philpott had spotted him, and decided to brazen it out, since she seemed unsuspicious—which she was, as she’d taken her sleeping-draught that night and was only half-awake, so didn’t understand at the time what she’d seen. She assumed the door he’d come out of was the one to his room, and it wasn’t until the next day that she realized it wasn’t his room at all.’

  ‘Yes, indeed,’ said Lavinia, nodding. ‘I remembered the next day that poor Mr. Wray’s bedroom was around the corner from mine, so I went and peeped in through the door I’d seen him come out of, and found out sure enough that it was a cupboard. I was most puzzled, but in the end I thought Mr. Wray must have been searching for the—er—small room, and had taken a wrong turning. I didn’t draw attention to it, because one doesn’t like to embarrass people by pointing out their mistakes, does one? But today I overheard him talking to Freddy and he sounded terribly unwell, and it struck me that perhaps I might be of assistance, so I knocked on his door and offered him some of my drops. I take them to help me sleep, but they are also very efficacious in soothing a sore head—and safe, too, quite safe. He seemed puzzled, so I confided my fears about his health, and said I was sure he couldn’t have slept much recently—not with such bad headaches—and I expected that was why he was confused and had made the mistake about the cupboard. When I said that he went positively white in the face, and attacked me quite without provocation, to my great surprise. Fortunately, I’m not the sort of woman to take that kind of thing lying down, and I fought back as hard as I could, but I’m very glad that Freddy and Lord Holme turned up when they did, or I don’t know that my strength would have held out.’

  ‘Yes, we arrived just in time,’ said Goose. ‘But how did you know what he was going to do, Freddy?’

  ‘I didn’t—not for certain. It was just a suspicion, since I knew he was feeling ill again, and it occurred to me that he was probably a little unbalanced when he was having these attacks. Mrs. Philpott meant to be kind by trying to help him with his headache, but I knew she’d seen him coming out of the cupboard, and was worried she’d mention it to him and unwittingly put herself in danger. And so she did.’

  ‘I’m afraid I got hold of the wrong end of the stick, and thought you were attacking him,’ said Goose. ‘I do beg your pardon, Mrs. Philpott.’

  She accepted th
e apology graciously, and took another sip of sherry. Freddy went on:

  ‘Once I’d realized that Mr. Wray had come out of the cupboard and not his bedroom it was easy enough to work out the rest. Everyone thought the passage door into the linen cupboard had seized up years ago, but it opened quite easily when I accidentally stumbled upon it, so it was obvious that somebody had been through it recently, and Mr. Wray was the only guest who had been here long enough to have explored all the secret passages and got the door working again. He showed me a plan of the house himself, and was obviously very familiar with the place, so I knew he was almost certainly the culprit, but I hesitated to speak at first because he didn’t seem to have a motive. He told me that first evening that he felt the house was threatened by a great evil, and he later said he sensed it had something to do with the professor. I assumed he believed he’d foreseen the professor’s death, but now I rather think what he actually meant was that he felt the professor himself to be evil. I don’t suppose he said anything when you put him to bed, Bea?’

  ‘Yes, he did,’ replied Bea. ‘And you’re quite right. The poor thing saw the professor with the pearls and thought he’d come to ruin the family. The professor actually confessed as much—said he believed the pearls were fake, and the fact ought to be exposed.’

  ‘But that’s not reason enough to kill, surely?’ said Freddy. ‘Why should he care about what happened to you?’

  ‘Family pride, I expect,’ said Bea. ‘Mr. Wray is a Wareham, you know. As a matter of fact, he’s the grandson of John Wareham, who brought the Belsingham pearls to England.’

  ‘Really?’ said Freddy. ‘But wasn’t that about a hundred and twenty years ago? Mr. Wray can’t be that old, can he?’

  ‘John married twice, the second time very late in life to a woman much younger than he. She bore him a daughter, Maria, who was Mr. Wray’s mother. Mr. Wray became a little heated on the subject upstairs just now, but I gather Professor Coddington taunted him about it. You know, of course, that John Wareham spent some years trying to prove that his elder brother had forfeited all right to the dukedom, and that he himself was the rightful heir. It’s all nonsense, but Professor Coddington told Mr. Wray he’d found some evidence that the story was true, and that it was a pity Mr. Wray was descended from John through the female rather than the male line, because then he might conceivably have had a claim to the dukedom himself. Apparently Mr. Wray became very dignified and said that, unlike his grandfather, he would never dream of behaving so badly as to try and claim something to which he was not entitled, upon which the professor said something that goaded him past all endurance, and in his fury he picked up the weight and—well, you know, of course. I don’t know what that final taunt was, though, as Mr. Wray refused to say.’