STING OF DEATH
Shelley Smith
© Shelley Smith 1951
Shelley Smith has asserted her rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.
First published in 1951 by Wm. Collins
This edition published in 2018 by Endeavour Media Ltd.
Table of Contents
PART ONE
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
PART TWO
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
PART THREE
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
PART ONE
CHAPTER 1
She lay doubled over on the marble floor in the limp extravagant attitude of a ballerina’s final curtsy, with her skirts spread about her, her flung-out arms very white and slender against the blue stuff and her hair like a sprawling blot of ink. One foot pointed elegantly from beneath the skirt.
Coming into the hall from the sunlight, Ivor did not see her till he was almost on her. It was shadowy in the well of the staircase, but he did not need to touch her; her attitude was unmistakable. Besides, he felt an understandable reluctance to contact that cold flesh.
The hall seemed very airless and dark to him. He thought desperately, I must get out of here, and turned away with his uneven step. His face in the spotted Venetian mirror was a greenish khaki. “Christ, boy, you look sick!” he muttered dryly, and glanced nervously behind him, as if Linda were listening. Linda! He must not think about Linda.
There was a moment when it seemed he could walk out again as unobserved as he had entered and leave somebody else to discover the body, but the reluctant habit of responsibility was stronger than his momentary neurotic self-pity and he unhooked the old-fashioned wall telephone that hung in the hall.
“Dr. Wellesley?” he said. “Will you come round to Hawkswood at once—before your surgery...? No, it’s not for me. It’s urgent. There’s been an accident. Mrs. Campion has been killed. Thank you,” he said, listening to the intent silence and then slowly replacing the earpiece on its hook. He was trembling.
The letters! Jesus God! I’ll have to get them before they fall into anyone else’s hands. But to get upstairs he would have to pass that still thing in the hall. The staircase spiralled dizzily before him with its elegant wrought-iron rails. Somewhere to the left he heard a door open and close. He turned to meet the steps as they were coming toward him.
The tall handsome old man broke into a genial smile as false as his teeth and squeezed the palm of his hands together: “Ah – er – Campion, my boy! Back already, eh?”
“Sir, I must speak to you. Can we go into the library?”
“Well, well, well,” said the old man patronizingly, “what’s up? You’re looking a bit green about the gills. Had one of your bad turns, eh? Care for a drink?”
“Mr. Marriot, there’s no time to lose. It’s about your daughter I wanted to see you. There’s been an accident... I wish I wasn’t the one who had to break it to you... She must have fallen over the banisters. I’ve sent for the doctor, though there’s nothing he can do.”
“Where is she? I must go to her.”
“No,” said Ivor, gently pressing him back.
The old man stared at him, and comprehension washed a ghastly shadow over his handsome ruddy face. “Dead?” he said. “My little girl? My little Linda?” His eyes looked frightened. He pressed his hands together: “I can’t believe my little girl’s left me... What will become of her old father now?” he muttered, staring into the future with shaking lips.
Ivor turned his back and gazed out of the window to give the old boy time to pull himself together.
He recalled with a kind of anguish his last words to Linda, only a few hours ago; but his mind shrank from their implications.
There was the distant sound of a car drawing up, and Ivor hurriedly left the room.
“Bad business,” said Dr. Wellesley, greeting him tersely. “Where is she?”
“There. Where she fell.”
“Ah!” said Dr. Wellesley, kneeling by the body and touching it with practiced hands. “What happened?”
Ivor shrugged. “Fell over the banisters, I suppose.”
“Did you see her fall?”
“Good God, no!” said Ivor violently. “I just came in and saw her there.”
“Move the body at all?”
“I didn’t even touch her, believe me.”
“It’s the police who must believe you, not me.”
“The police?” said Ivor stupidly. “Why the police?”
“Because there will have to be an inquest, to determine the cause of death.”
“Isn’t that your job?” said Ivor sulkily.
Dr. Wellesley grunted and stood up.
“Well, I can’t do any more until they come. They’ll be here soon.”
“Did you tell them to come?” said Ivor in a high-pitched voice.
“Yes. That’s my job,” said Dr. Wellesley coolly. “I daresay that’s them now.”
A tremor of indecision shook Ivor’s frame, and then he said, “All right,” and jerked himself quickly up the stairs and out of sight.
There were two policemen: a big sergeant with blank blue eyes that looked at nothing and saw everything, in a wooden face; and a slender dark inspector with dangerously sympathetic eyes and the long mobile mouth of an actor. As they worked they grunted a few questions from time to time at the little doctor.
“Fell over the banisters, eh?”
“It would appear so.”
“How long she been dead?”
“Speaking very roughly, about two hours.”
“You’d almost think, lying in the hall like this, she’d have been found before now, wouldn’t you?”
“In the middle of the afternoon? You know what these country houses are: they’ll have been busy, or out, or sleeping on their beds, or something. You’ll see.”
“I daresay I shall,” said Inspector Trevor gloomily. “Not a nice welcome to the district, I must say. I suppose she was the lady of the manor, so to speak. Can’t see what she looked like in that position, but she seems to have been quite young. D’you know how old she was?”
“Twenty-eight, poor kid. Nice little thing she was, too. If you’ve finished, we’ll remove the body.”
As they moved her, the sunlight gleamed on a fine silver chain that dangled from her clenched hand.
Campion came walking down the passage toward him with an anxious expression on his saturnine face.
“How are you feeling?” the doctor said.
“All right.”
“Good! The police want to have a few words with you. You’ll find them in the billiard room.”
The police saw a tall young man with a narrow disdainful face. His limp was more noticeable than usual as he crossed the room.
Inspector Trevor smiled encouragingly at him.
“I understand that you discovered the deceased lady, so I have just a few questions to ask you, and I think we’ll start with your name.”
“Ivor Campion,” said Ivor in his high haughty voice.
“A relative?”
“Yes,” he agreed, stubbornly refusing to give more information than he was asked for.
“Do you live here?”
“I’ve been staying down here off and on for the last three months.”
“I see. Now would you describe to me your movements this afternoon? Say from about two o’clock.”
“Caught the two-thirty bus to
Howcester. Had my hair cut and did a little shopping. Popped into a cinema for the big picture and caught the five-forty home. It was about five past six when I got in. The front door was open, as it always is in the summer. I walked toward the stairs, and then of course I saw her – poor dear!”
“How was she lying?”
“Just as she was when you saw her. I didn’t touch her. I didn’t need to.”
“You knew she was dead?”
“Yes.”
“I see. So you weren’t surprised.”
“Surprised? I hardly understand you, I think,” he said haughtily. “I was deeply shocked of course. It is a terrible thing to have happened. A most tragic accident.”
“And you knew at once she was dead.”
“I’ve seen death too often these last years not to recognize it.”
“Let us go back to the description of your movements, if you please, after you found her.”
“I telephoned the doctor.”
“And then?”
“Why, nothing! I was just – I just stayed where I was. And presently Mr. Marriot, Mrs. Campion’s father, happened along, so I took him into the library and broke the bad news to him. He was very upset of course, and I stayed with him until I heard the doctor arrive.”
“I see. Now, if you’ll just tell me how many people there are in the house and who they are, I won’t need to trouble you anymore, at present.”
“Well, you already know of Linda and Mr. Marriot and myself. Then there are her children. Four of them, I believe, all about the same age and excruciatingly wild: Lionel, Oliver, Jane, and Charles; I think that’s how they go. And old Nanny Potter, who keeps an eye on them, like a sleepy old tortoise; though it’s Priss who does all the chivvying: Nanny Potter the shepherd and Priss the sheepdog. She’s about twelve years old, I suppose: Linda’s brother’s child, Priscilla Marriot. Then there’s Miss Sharpe, Linda’s great-aunt; and the Hausers—or I should say, Ilse Hauser; her husband is dead.”
Here Ivor broke off and glanced quickly at the sergeant making notes in the corner: “He’ll remember all about that,” he said. But the sergeant’s glance was unresponsive, as if he had never seen him before, as if they had never played darts together at The Soldier’s Return. “They were a couple of Austrian refugees. Werner owned a Catholic newspaper and suffered the usual Nazi persecution. Finally they managed to get over here, and Linda took them in,” Ivor resumed.
“Anyone else?”
“Not living here. Two village women come in the morning to do the rough work, but I’m afraid I don’t know their names.”
“No husband?”
“Oh, yes! Edmund!” said Ivor with a queer expression. “I’d actually forgotten about him for the moment. He’ll have to be told, won’t he? I suppose I’d better see to all that, as I’m his cousin. I’ll telegraph to his London club.”
“Is he not expected home this evening?”
“No. He isn’t living here just now.”
“Oh? Why not?”
“I should ask Campion about that, if I were you.”
The inspector raised his eyebrows politely, but otherwise ignored the snub.
“We’ll just take a look at her room,” he said, “if you wouldn’t mind showing us where it is.”
Ivor went ahead of them quickly with a hasty compulsive glance at the vacant circle under the stairs. Ivor was explaining that Linda slept on the top floor to be near the children at night, when a lady came toward them in a floating negligee. She pulled the edges modestly together as they approached, and then impulsively drew close and put a hand confidently on Ivor’s arm. With every movement emanated gusts of eau de cologne. Her hair was in loose waves to her shoulders. Her cheeks were flushed, her bright eyes moist, as if swimming with tears.
“My dear!” she said, with a charming foreign accent. “I have heard! Wie schrecklich! A shocking tragedy! That poor child! Our little saint!”
Ivor said: “This is Frau Hauser.”
“But of course,” she said quickly, smiling at Sergeant Drake, “this good policeman and I are already knowing each other from when my poor Werner die. And now so soon, another tragedy. It is terrible!”
“Why are you up here, Ilse?” Ivor said curiously.
Frau Hauser permitted herself to express gracious surprise.
“What a question, Ivor, my dear! I come to take a bath.” She held up a large floral satin sponge-bag, bulging squarely. She turned for the first time the full lustre of her eyes on to the inspector, and explained sweetly to the stranger: “Here we are so many that who wishes to be clean must take his bath sharply at what time he may.”
“Since you are here, Mrs. – er – Hauser, perhaps you wouldn’t mind telling us what else you did.”
She opened her chestnut-brown eyes very wide.
“But nothing, Herr Kommissar. I don’t know what you mean.”
Ivor said: “I think the inspector means that you won’t have been all the afternoon taking a bath.”
“Oh, no! I am not so dirty!” She gave a little cooing laugh. “All afternoon, since lunch, I am writing letters. I have much business letters to write since my poor Werner is no more; I have no one to help me, and it is hard for me alone.” She sighed.
“I’m sure it is. One thing more, Mrs. Hauser. How did you know that Mrs. Campion was dead?”
“Oh, that poor Mr. Marriot, he tell me. He is terribly grieving. And I am always very sympatisch to him. So we cry a little together and then he go away to, what he call, walk it off.”
They separated, and the two policemen followed Ivor into Mrs. Campion’s bedroom. Then they politely dismissed him and got down to work.
The room was untidy and smelled faintly of rich tobacco smoke. The pink chintz coverlet on the bed was creased. On the dressing table was a large framed photograph of a soldier with blunt pugnacious features. The photographer by luck or real ability had contrived to give him a rather subtle look of a scowling faun, which made him, if not handsome, at least distinctive. Edmund, with love, was written in the corner.
“Wonder what they were looking for, and whether they found it.”
“Sir?”
“Somebody’s had a good but interrupted rummage in here. Don’t you see? Something fairly small is my guess that could be hidden in a handkerchief drawer or under a pile of jumpers or behind a row of books. But not between the books evidently, for none appear to have been taken out, so it must have a certain bulk.”
“How can you tell that none were taken out, sir?” asked Sergeant Drake.
“I can’t. But it looks as if someone just ran a hand along the spines and pushed them to the back of the shelf.”
“Maybe the lady kept them at the back like that.”
At this suggestion the inspector’s dark eyes smiled and he ran a finger along the irregular line of dust at the edge of the shelf which marked the place where they habitually rested. “See?” he said. “Whoever it was didn’t notice that, or hadn’t the time to work them back.”
Inspector Trevor tidily removed a twisted bronze hairpin from the window sill and bent to sniff at a little bowl of stock.
There was also on the window sill a pottery ashtray with half a dozen pins and one cigarette stub in it, a plasticine donkey very gingerly poised, a Sévres potpourri bowl, a rosewood box in laid with mother of pearl, and sitting in the corner, a shabby old doll that had fallen over on its face in a posture horribly reminiscent of the dead woman. The rosewood box contained some tinselly trinkets. There was a crack down one side of the bottom. Trevor pushed and the false bottom sprang back to reveal the cavity beneath. But within were only a lot of receipted bills and cancelled checks and cut-out cooking recipes and a few old letters. When the inspector tried to close it up again he found the catch had been broken, so that it did not completely close.
As they made their way downstairs, a voice said sharply: “What are you doing here?” and they turned to see a fragile ol
d lady, with a face of wind-carved hone, regarding them severely from eyes like coals.
“Good evening, ma’am,” said Inspector Trevor ingratiatingly.
She rapped her stick on the marble.
“What are you doing here? Clattering up and downstairs as if the place belonged to you! Is there to be no privacy any longer! Since this war people seem to have taken leave of their senses! Go away!” Her stick pointed to the door. “Go along! Be off with you, I say!”
Inspector Trevor came up to her slowly like an animal trainer. His face was kind, his brown eyes gentle.
“Miss Sharpe?” he said. “When did you last see Mrs. Campion?”
“What’s that girl been up to now?”
“There’s been an accident,” he began.
“I’ve warned her, I’ve warned her!” said the old lady with a mixture of triumph and contempt in her manner. “Girl drives like a fool, but it’s not a bit of use your coming to me for help.” She began to turn away with the careful footsteps of the aged, and then turned back to ask: “Anybody hurt?”
“It was a fatal accident,” Trevor said gently. “But it was not motoring. Your niece fell to her death.”
The old woman stood with her back to them in silence for a long minute. Trevor took her arm and gently pushed her into a chair. She looked bewildered.
“It’s the loss,” she said in a shaky old voice. “The children... At my age one has got so used to the idea of death that it ceases to shock one, but when it’s someone young, someone needed – ” Her voice broke. “Of course, that man killed her,” she said.
“What man?”
She looked up at Trevor with something of her former expression.
“None of your business. I was thinking aloud. A privilege of the old.”
“Could you now answer my question? When did you last see Mrs. Campion?”
“At luncheon. Afterwards I went to my room. And I believe my niece went to hers. I know she asked Priscilla to look after the children because it was Nanny Potter’s day out – as a rule she looks after them herself on those days. The German woman did the washing-up.”
Sting of Death Page 1
