by Clara Benson
She took her departure and came out of the building. Her first thought was that she had better call Marthe at the Regent Hotel and instruct her to return to London. She was looking about her for a telephone box when she spotted Freddy on the other side of the street, leaning against some railings. She shook her head at him in amused exasperation.
‘I knew that story of yours about meeting a friend was nonsense,’ she said as he joined her.
‘Somebody needs to keep an eye on you,’ was his reply.
‘You don’t need to keep an eye on me,’ she said, ‘but I thank you all the same.’ They turned and walked up the street together. ‘As a matter of fact, you might as well have come in,’ she went on. ‘I’ve told Mr. Gilverson all about you. He’s going to try and get us an invitation to dinner at Greystone Chase.’
‘Is he? How splendid. I can’t think of anything I’d like more than an evening of stilted conversation with that cold fish Godfrey de Lisle.’
‘It might be our only opportunity to get some information directly from the horse’s mouth,’ said Angela. ‘You must exert all that charm of yours and see what you can get out of him. I’ll work on Victorine. We’ll find something out by hook or by crook, you’ll see.’
‘I only hope it’s nothing upsetting.’
‘Nothing could be more upsetting than uncertainty,’ said Angela. ‘Now, I have another job for you. It appears that Henry Lacey died not long after his sister, but as far as we know his friend Oliver Harrington is still alive. He was last heard of in Canterbury. I want you to find him and talk to him.’
‘So Henry Lacey is dead, eh?’ said Freddy. ‘Don’t tell me he was murdered too.’
‘Not as far as I know. I gather alcohol and morphine did for him. It’s a pity; I should have liked to hear what he had to say about the whole thing.’
They had now reached Chancery Lane. Freddy wanted to go to the Clarion’s offices, and so hailed a taxi for Angela, who was going back to her flat. He saw her off with a wave and was just about to set off himself for Fleet Street when he spotted a tobacconist’s and remembered that he wanted to buy some cigarettes. Having concluded that business, he emerged from the shop and was about to continue on his way, when he happened to look in the direction of the side-street on which the offices of Gilverson and Gilverson were situated just in time to see a man emerge from it into Chancery Lane and set off in the direction of Holborn. He was too far away for Freddy to see him clearly, but there was something oddly familiar about him. Freddy frowned for a moment, then his mouth dropped open.
‘Well, I’ll be damned!’ he exclaimed. He stared as though he could not believe his eyes, then set off in pursuit of the retreating figure who, despite a slight limp, walked briskly, his head hunched into the collar of his coat, not looking about him. Freddy followed, hurrying to catch up. To his annoyance, however, a group of barristers just then emerged all at once from a building in front of him. In their wigs they looked rather like a flock of sheep, and they had a similar effect on Freddy’s progress, for they milled about on the pavement, forcing him to take a detour around them. By the time he had navigated the obstacle his quarry was a good fifty yards ahead of him. Freddy broke into a run, but at that moment the man reached the turning with Holborn and flagged a taxi, which pulled over to let him in.
‘Hi!’ cried Freddy, but it was no use. The taxi drove off with the man inside it, and Freddy was left standing on the pavement, a hundred questions running through his mind all at once. Had he perhaps been imagining things? Who was the man he had just seen? Had this Gilverson fellow been engaging in some sort of deliberate deception? And if so, why? Freddy remained there, deep in thought. After a few moments he turned round and set off back down Chancery Lane towards Fleet Street. He did not know what it all meant, but he was determined to keep an even closer eye on Angela from now on.
‘I DO HOPE THIS isn’t going to be a waste of time,’ said Angela, regarding herself in the glass as she put in her earrings. ‘I don’t know what we’ll find to talk about.’
‘You will think of something,’ said Marthe. ‘And I am sure they will not be as dull as you expect. They must surely be used to having people to dinner. I expect they know as well as anyone how to conduct a conversation.’
‘I expect so,’ said Angela. ‘What I really want to talk about is the murder, of course, but it will look odd if I do it all evening. I don’t want it to seem as though I have some sort of ghoulish idée fixe and have merely come to gawp. It’s bad enough manners to bring the subject up at all, but I can’t help that. I shall have to try and disarm them by talking enthusiastically about the proportions of the house and suchlike in between times.’
‘Should you like to live in such a place yourself, madame?’
‘Oh, no, I don’t think so,’ said Angela. ‘It’s much too formal for my taste. One would be forever worrying about breaking something. There’s no comfort in it at all. I wonder Edgar put up with it.’
Here she stopped, disconcerted, as she realized what she had said. It was not like her to be so careless as to mention him familiarly in passing like that, since she usually avoided talking about him at all, if possible. She continued hastily:
‘I’d much prefer to come back to London afterwards, but Freddy would insist on keeping his promise to Mrs. Hudd and Miss Atkinson to take a walk with them tomorrow, and so obviously I have to join them. Back to the Regent we go, therefore, at least for one night.’
‘Denborough is a very strange place,’ observed Marthe. ‘Everybody there is old. And it is also full of French people. I do not know what they are thinking.’
‘Is it full of French people?’ said Angela absently. ‘I thought the de Lisles were the only ones.’
‘No. There is at least one other lady. She has a housekeeper who is also French and used to be her maid. I met her in the post-office. Her name is Florence.’
‘The maid or the housekeeper?’ said Angela, trying to decide between two bracelets.
‘They are one and the same,’ said Marthe patiently.
‘Oh, I see,’ said Angela after a moment. ‘Who is this French lady, then?’
‘I do not know. I thought Florence was referring to Mrs. Victorine de Lisle, but then she said something which made it clear that her mistress was someone else entirely. She had to leave then and so I did not find out her name.’
‘Perhaps all these French people come to Kent because there is something about the area that reminds them of home,’ said Angela.
‘Perhaps,’ said Marthe. ‘It is not the food, however.’
Just then Freddy arrived and announced that they had better hurry up or they would be late. Angela decided not to wear a bracelet after all, and they went down to where William was waiting with the Bentley. Soon enough they were on the Kent road and approaching Denborough. Freddy looked across at Angela.
‘All right?’ he said.
‘Yes, thank you.’
‘Are you quite sure you want to do this?’
‘Yes,’ said Angela. ‘And I do wish you’d stop asking me that as though I were your ninety-year-old great-aunt who needed protecting.’
‘I don’t mean to,’ said Freddy, who had been feeling deeply worried and uncertain as to what to do ever since the visit to Chancery Lane the other day, and could think only of persuading Angela to withdraw from the case.
‘One might almost take it as an insult,’ said Angela. ‘First you call me Mother, and then you start fussing about me as though you think my heart will give out if somebody speaks to me. I wasn’t aware I’d aged quite so much recently. Perhaps I ought to insist on candle-light at dinner, so my ancient and wrinkled features don’t startle the servants and cause them to drop the plates. Ought I to have brought my knitting, do you think?’
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ said Freddy. ‘I didn’t mean that at all. I’m sorry about the mother thing. It was just a spur of the moment idea—a joke, you know. I didn’t really think anyone would believe me. You look quite
splendid this evening, as a matter of fact—just as you always do—and not a day over twenty-five.’
‘Nonsense,’ said Angela, slightly mollified.
The Bentley turned in through the gates of Greystone Chase.
‘Now, remember you’re still supposed to be considering buying the place, so try and think of some intelligent questions,’ she said.
‘Hmm, yes—preferably ones that will lead smoothly onto the subject of Selina de Lisle’s murder,’ said Freddy. ‘Any ideas?’
‘Not a one,’ said Angela, ‘but I’m sure we’ll think of something.’
They were greeted at Greystone with great politeness by Godfrey de Lisle, who hastened to introduce his wife. Victorine de Lisle was not a woman whom one could meet and forget. She was tall and strongly built—almost mannish in size, in fact—and, as Mr. Gilverson had hinted, was not favoured with any great beauty, for she had a heavy brow that gave her dark brown eyes a brooding, watchful look, and a nose that was rather too large for her face. Her mouth turned down habitually at the corners and she kept it folded tightly shut, as though forcing herself to hold in her thoughts. She was dressed in the style of ten or fifteen years earlier, in a long, voluminous dress; her thick, wavy hair, too, seemed to make no concession to fashion, for she wore it long and styled in a knot at the back of her head.
As soon as Angela met her she had the feeling she had seen her before, and it took only a moment or two’s reflection to recall the mysterious face she had seen at the window on her previous visit to Greystone Chase. So this was Victorine de Lisle, then. Mr. Gilverson had called her shy, and her taciturn manner might certainly be interpreted in that way. Fortunately, it soon became evident that Godfrey de Lisle had decided to exert himself in the matter of entertaining his guests, and so the conversation was carried on well enough with little contribution from his wife. He was impeccably polite to her, and continually deferred to her opinion (rarely given), while she was more often than not to be found regarding him with what Angela might almost have called a fierce stare, and hanging on his every word. She clearly harboured some strong feeling towards him, although what it was Angela could hardly tell, since there seemed nothing of conventional love in her expression.
Thanks to the efforts of three of them, at least, dinner passed off less awkwardly than might have been expected, although there was no opportunity to talk about the events of eleven years ago, for Godfrey stuck determinedly to subjects of general interest or discussion about the house. Freddy did a good job of keeping up the appearance of the idle youth of great means he purported to be, and regaled the table with a series of humorous and entirely fictitious anecdotes about the exploits of his aristocratic friends, while Angela threw him the occasional warning glance and did her best to check him when she felt he was departing too far into flights of fancy. Fortunately, this was entirely consistent with her rôle as his mother, and so nobody thought it at all odd.
It was not until the company had separated after dinner, when the ladies rose and retired, that there was any opportunity to broach the real subject of the visit. While the gentlemen remained at the table to drink port, wave cigars around and resolve the problems of the world, Angela and Victorine engaged in their own tête-à-tête in the drawing-room. Angela was nervous, for she still had no idea how to bring the subject around to the murder—and Victorine herself was little help, for conversation with her was difficult enough as it was. Coffee was served and drunk, and some mileage was gained from a particularly ridiculous anecdote of Freddy’s which merited further discussion, then for a minute or two the talk seemed in danger of dying out altogether, until Angela suddenly remembered that she was supposed to be there in the guise of a purchaser. She stood up and went across to the window. It had been a clear day and the sun had not long set, and so it was still possible to get a clear view of the wood at the end of the meadow.
‘You have a pretty outlook,’ she said. ‘Very picturesque. I’m glad to see you haven’t cut those trees down. So many people’s first thought on seeing a tree is to get rid of it as an inconvenient obstacle.’
Mrs. de Lisle acknowledged the compliment but did not take the hint to talk about the terrible history of the wood in question. Angela grimaced to herself. It had been a feeble attempt, true, but she had hoped that something might have come of it. She turned away and set herself to wandering around the room, observing its proportions with enthusiasm. Victorine watched her and replied when called upon to do so. At length Angela’s ideas were exhausted and she was beginning to wonder whether she perhaps ought not to come out with it and explain frankly what she wanted to know, when her eye happened to fall on a particularly attractive antique escritoire, on which stood several photographs in frames. Angela bent forward to take a closer look at them, and saw that they were of the de Lisle family. To her surprise, one of them was of Edgar Valencourt. She straightened up, blinking. Presumably somebody must have forgotten to remove this particular picture of the black sheep of the family. She glanced along the row of photographs and saw another of Selina. She picked it up. Here was her chance. She turned to speak, then started as she found Victorine standing at her shoulder. She had approached so silently that Angela had not heard her, and was staring fixedly at the picture in Angela’s hand.
‘These frames are pretty,’ said Angela. ‘I was just wondering about the people in the photographs. I seem to recognize some of them. That one is your husband, of course, and that one must be his father. But who is this one?’
Victorine was silent for so long that Angela began to think she had not heard the question.
‘She was my sister-in-law,’ she said at last. ‘Her name was Selina. She was murdered.’ She said it flatly, as though she had no strong opinion on the subject.
‘Goodness me, I do beg your pardon,’ said Angela. ‘I didn’t recognize her. Of course I saw her portrait in the gallery the other day.’
All the laws of etiquette said she ought to drop the subject now, but of course she could not. She took a deep breath.
‘I understand she was killed by her husband,’ she went on. ‘It must have been very upsetting for you all.’
‘It was not pleasant, certainly,’ said Victorine. She seemed to have no objection to talking of it. ‘This is the man who was convicted of the crime,’ she said, taking up the photograph of Valencourt. ‘My brother-in-law.’
‘I expect it was a terrible shock to find out that someone in the family was capable of such a thing,’ said Angela. ‘Did you expect it of him?’
Victorine shrugged.
‘No,’ she said. ‘But people are strange. One never knows. Besides, she was the kind of girl who would have been murdered sooner or later—whether by her husband or someone else.’
Angela regarded her in surprise as she made this extraordinary pronouncement.
‘Why do you say that?’ she said.
‘Because she liked to play with people,’ said Victorine. She saw Angela’s questioning look and went on, ‘Even though she was not the mistress of the house she wanted everybody to know that she was the queen, and that we must all dance to her tune.’
‘Oh?’
‘Naturally, I saw through her immediately,’ went on Victorine, ‘but the men did not—although perhaps I am wrong—perhaps Edgar did, just a little. He was not the sort of man to be a slave to a woman, and I think it made her a little unsure and all the more determined to win over everyone else. Besides, he was not here much of the time and so did not see the whole picture of what his wife was really like.’
‘Goodness!’ said Angela.
‘It is easy if one is unscrupulous,’ said Victorine. ‘My father-in-law was a tyrant and ruled over this house, but somehow she was allowed to do things that we could not. He thought her charming, and she had no hesitation in profiting by it. Of course, she did not think it worth her while to charm the women of the house—only the men. My mother-and-law and me she treated carelessly. But it is a dangerous game, that. It is best not to try pe
ople too far, because one day they may rise up and voilà—’ here she snapped her fingers, ‘—you suddenly find out that you are not as powerful as you thought you were.’
This was the most she had said all evening, and Angela in her surprise wondered what had prompted this awkward, taciturn woman suddenly to become so indiscreet. Perhaps she had never had the opportunity to express her feelings on the matter until now. Whatever the reason, this was Angela’s chance to take advantage of the situation.
‘Is that what happened, do you think?’ she said. ‘Did she try your brother-in-law’s patience a little too hard? Is that why he killed her?’
‘I do not know why he killed her,’ said Victorine. ‘But she ought never to have come to Greystone at all. She and that brother of hers. Him I did not like. He was always sneaking about the house and hiding in corners. One could not open a door without finding him standing behind it. Both of them the same—always wanting something, always taking something. Take, take, take, and never do they give. That was not the way of things here. We all gave everything—our freedom, our happiness, our devotion—to my father-in-law. Everything was for him, and there was nothing left for anyone else. But the Laceys tried to get more out of us when we had no more to give, and this is what happened.’
‘Was there no doubt that your brother-in-law did it?’ said Angela hesitantly.
‘I do not think so,’ said Victorine. ‘They quarrelled on the day she died, you see. It was thought that she drove him to fury then, and that he killed her when he went to see her before dinner.’
‘There was no question of his having done it later that evening?’
‘No,’ said Victorine. ‘He was in sight of us all during dinner, and then remained in the company of his parents for the rest of the evening.’
‘Didn’t you see him?’
‘No. I went to bed shortly after dinner, as I was coming down with a cold,’ said Victorine. ‘Godfrey was working in the study. But in any case, the police were quite sure that Selina was killed before dinner.’
