Stately Homicide

by S. T. Haymon

  ‘Did Mr Chalgrove never remarry, then?’

  ‘Richard? Oh no, never!’ The idea appeared to amuse Miss Appleyard. Her youthful laughter tinkled dismayingly. ‘After Carla died his old nanny came back to look after him. He’s always been her Master Dickie who can do no wrong. It’s only because she’s grown too frail to cope that he’s finally brought Jessica back to live at the Manor, to carry on where Nanny left off. So, Inspector –’ Elena Appleyard crossed her lovely legs with that hint of effort Jurnet found so poignant, and looked at the detective with calm anticipation – ‘now I’ve reassured you that Mr Chalgrove’s childish tantrums are nothing to do with the death of Mr Shelden, perhaps we can get on to those “one or two things” which still appear to be troubling you.’

  ‘Right!’ Jurnet marshalled his thoughts with some difficulty, wondering if Elena Appleyard had the same effect on other people she had on him. ‘About Mr Shelden – could you tell me this? If he had lived to write his biography of your brother, and, when you read the manuscript through, you found out it said some very nasty things about Appleyard of Hungary, would you have made him take them out?’

  Miss Appleyard responded frostily: ‘That would be a very vulgar thing to do. Believe me, Inspector, I’m as well aware of my late brother’s weaknesses as of his virtues; and I know which outweighs the other. My arrangement with Mr Shelden was for a biography which would portray Laz Appleyard as he was. As to what that was, I’m quite content to let history decide.’

  A little overawed by her majestic certainty, Jurnet nevertheless persisted.

  ‘But suppose you came upon something for the first time, something you’d never even dreamed of? Something which might alter the whole picture you yourself have formed of the man? What then?’

  Miss Appleyard thought for a moment, her gaze intent on her elegant sandals, bands of navy and white leather that complemented her simple dress of navy linen with a touch of white braid at the neckline. Her face, when she looked up, was young and mischievous, divested of the years.

  Jurnet thought, the woman’s a witch!

  Elena Appleyard decided: ‘It has to be something that happened in Hungary – something written in Hungarian, and never translated. I’ve been through all the papers in English. I know the best – and the worst – about my brother. Or so I’ve thought. Ferenc has been talking to you,’ she said again. ‘Whatever could Laz have been up to?’

  ‘You could always ask Mr Szanto.’

  ‘So I could!’ The window between herself and the world came down again, a little of the mischief trapped on Jurnet’s side of the glass. ‘I’ve often suspected the Hungarian material might well contain what the newspapers’ – a delicate curl of the lip – ‘like to call revelations. But it must surely have occurred to you, Inspector, that if I had been concerned to doctor the record, it would have been far less trouble to remove and destroy the tell-tale evidence than to remove and destroy Mr Shelden.’

  ‘I couldn’t agree more,’ Jurnet said. ‘Here’s another of those little things. As I recall, you told me you took your little walk in the grounds at about 3.30 a.m.’

  ‘I did.’

  ‘Are you quite sure of the time? Could it possibly have been half an hour earlier – say three o’clock?’

  ‘It could not. The clock in the hall chimed for 3.30 as I unbolted the door, and it is an exceptionally reliable timepiece.’

  ‘Right. Next question. Were you still wearing the dress you wore at the party?’

  ‘No.’ The woman expressed no surprise at being asked. ‘I had undressed and put on a housecoat.’

  ‘Could you please describe it?’

  At that, she rose with the stiff grace which was her unique characteristic, crossed the room to the marble fireplace and pulled a bell-pull at the side. When the maid appeared, pointedly ignoring the presence of the two police officers, her mistress ordered: ‘Maudie, my housecoat – the Liberty’s one. These gentlemen wish to look at it.’

  From the time it took to fetch, Jurnet reflected, it might have been stored in some closet three courtyards away instead of, presumably, in Miss Appleyard’s wardrobe, somewhere close at hand. When it finally arrived, it was worth waiting for. Even Maudie, the iron maiden, handled the cloth with something approaching tenderness, spreading the garment out on a chair where it lay in lovely folds of peacock and plum touched with light. The billowing sleeves and the square, low-cut neck could have come straight out of one of the Tudor portraits on Bullen Hall walls.

  ‘Was your hair up or down?’

  This time Elena Appleyard commented lightly: ‘What a very odd thing to ask! My hair was down.’ She raised her arms to the back of her neck, plucked out a pin or two, and her hair, heavy and lustrous, fell about her shoulders. ‘Like this.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Jurnet said, shaken. The woman’s beauty was almost beyond bearing. ‘The reason I ask is that we’ve had some reports of a woman with long hair seen crossing in front of the Hall at about 3 a. m.’

  ‘Oh,’ she returned comfortably, ‘is that what all this is in aid of? That would have been Anne Boleyn.’

  ‘You don’t really believe that.’

  ‘Don’t I?’ Elena Appleyard considered. ‘She does it most nights when there’s a moon, so why should she leave out that particular one?’

  ‘I meant, a person of your intelligence. You can’t possibly believe in ghosts.’

  ‘Of course I don’t!’ she agreed, with more animation than was usual with her. ‘Anne Boleyn, I said. In the flesh: not some ridiculous apparition.’

  Jurnet exclaimed: ‘Anne Boleyn’s been dead for four hundred years!’

  ‘Time –’ Elena Appleyard enunciated the word with a certain weariness, as though the detective had dropped a clanger to be expected of the lower orders. ‘Do you really believe the past arranges itself for our convenience into those paltry little squares they print on calendars?’

  At risk of confirming her poor opinion of him, Jurnet maintained robustly: ‘All I know is, if Anne Boleyn’s still around, she’s getting on a bit.’

  The other shook her head pityingly.

  ‘Neither older nor younger than the words you’ve just spoken about her. Can you bring them back again, any more than you can her? Of course you can’t. They’re gone, Inspector, like everything else, into that great, timeless catch-all we call the past, and which is the only reality. The future, after all, is only a dream, the present no more than a punctuation point. Which is why –’ the woman tilted her head to one side, pulling a lock of her hair over her shoulder and stroking it in long, sensuous strokes as if it were a cat, a Persian or Siamese, expensive, of ancient pedigree. ‘I think it could quite likely have been Anne Boleyn herself who was seen crossing the grass.’

  Jurnet said acidly: ‘We’re going to have our work cut out getting her to make a statement!’

  ‘Quite likely, I said. But on the whole, on that particular night, at that particular time, probably not.’ Miss Appleyard went to the escritoire which was the only sizeable piece of furniture in the room, opened a drawer, and took something out. ‘I can hardly think Anne Boleyn would have been wearing this.’

  She came back and opened her hand. On her palm lay an earring, chastely beautiful, vaguely Egyptian, wholly Anna March. Twin to the one Jurnet already carried in his pocket.

  ‘Where did you find this?’

  ‘Chad Shelden was holding it in his hand.’

  ‘Why are you only just telling me?’

  ‘You could call it womanly solidarity.’ Miss Appleyard’s tone was lightly mocking.

  ‘Then why are you telling me now?’

  The mockery deepened.

  ‘You have me worried, Inspector.’

  Chapter Twenty One

  The grass outside the west wing door was white with index cards in place of the usual daisies. PC Bly, down on his knees with a half-filled metal box at his side, sat back on his heels and wiped his hot face. Down by the moat, PC Hinchley was using a spring rake t
o manoeuvre to shore a number of cards which had landed in the water beyond arm’s reach. As the two detectives drew near, as yet unperceived by the card gatherers, the flat door opened and Sergeant Bowles appeared, a portly figure bearing a handsome silver tray which he set down on the ground.

  ‘Spread the wet ones out on this,’ he said to PC Hinchley. ‘I’ve put a good pad of blotting paper under.’

  ‘What’s this, Jeeves?’ Jurnet demanded, as he crossed the little footbridge, Sergeant Ellers close behind. ‘No gin and tonic?’ Looking about him: ‘I take it you’ve had a visit from Daddy.’

  ‘Know about him, do you, sir? Her own father! Can you credit it? Bellowing like a bull and telling her to stop what she’s doing, they’re going home. Calls her a few choice names along of it, I can tell you! And when she tells him – upset, but cool as a cucumber, you couldn’t help admiring her – that she won’t go with him, then or ever, what does he do but grab all those cards she’s been writing out so careful, and chuck the lot out of the window.’

  ‘Wonder you let him in, in the first place.’

  Sergeant Bowles looked hurt.

  ‘Said he was her father – what else could I do? Spoke quite civil; and when I took him through into the study, Miss Jessica looked up and said “Oh, hello, Father,” quite normal. So I went back to the other room, not wanting to intrude. I only came back when I heard the shouting, and by then the damage was done. He pushed past me and down the stairs like a blind man, couldn’t see where he was going. Blinded by rage.’ The good man looked at Jurnet in some distress. ‘Hit her too, the bastard. Jessica says he never, but she’s got a whopping red mark on her cheek, weren’t there five minutes before. Why she’d want to protect him after some of the things he called her is more ’n I can make out. But there! I always say there’s nothing so peculiar as families.’

  The study was very quiet when Jurnet came through the door in his quiet shoes: filled with the ripeness of the westering sun. Jessica Chalgrove sat at her desk, her head bent over a card which she was filling in with a childlike care for the formation of every letter. Her ponytail hung down over one shoulder, leaving the long nape of her neck exposed.

  The detective repressed an impulse to bend over and kiss the knobs of vertebrae poking up the thin skin. Not a sexual act: more a loving acknowledgement of the girl’s youth and vulnerability.

  And not all that vulnerable either. Suddenly aware that she was no longer alone, Jessica swung round in her chair; and the detective saw that, along with the evident signs of distress, the girl still managed to look triumphant. She wore the bruise on her cheek as if it were a military decoration.

  ‘I did try to love him,’ she began at once, with a directness that delighted Jurnet, who was only too wearisomely accustomed, as part of his job, to having to ask questions to which he already knew the answers. ‘I kept on telling myself how awful it must have been, losing his wife when I was born. I thought that perhaps he blamed me for her death – I’ve read that does happen – but then I thought, if that’s the case, he really ought to blame himself even more, shouldn’t he, for getting her pregnant in the first place.’ She paused, inviting some confirmation of her thesis. When none was forthcoming, she added, with a touch of defiance: ‘I just don’t think it’s possible, that’s all, to love someone who doesn’t love you.’

  Jurnet said: ‘It’s possible.’

  She was quick. She said: ‘Oh, I don’t mean that kind of loving. I mean fathers and mothers and children. Sometimes I tell myself that my mother would have loved me very much if she’d lived. But I don’t know, really.’

  Jurnet said: ‘She’d have loved you.’

  Jessica Chalgrove burst out laughing.

  ‘How nice you are! And Sergeant Bowles, and those constables outside picking up all those wretched cards. Nobody ever told me how nice policemen were! But you don’t have to say things like that to make me feel better, because I feel absolutely fine, I really do. In a funny sort of way –’ the vivid young face went rosy with satisfaction – ‘I’m even glad. No more pretending – not to other people, not to myself. My father’s a hateful man. There! I’ve said it, and it’s such a relief, you’ve no idea! All that fuss about my working! You’d think we were still living in the Dark Ages. And even there, it was one thing one day, something else the next. Only this spring he was all for my taking a secretarial course in London; and when I said I’d never be clever enough to be a secretary, he sent away for some bumph about cordon bleu cookery in Eastbourne. Yet here he is, creating over what’s only a temporary job anyway. Sometimes –’ her mood quieting – ‘I wonder how my mother could ever have loved him. But perhaps he was different when he was young. And anyway, people do sometimes fall in love with people who aren’t worth it, don’t they?’

  ‘Yes.’

  After a moment Jurnet added, disingenuously: ‘If you meant what you said about not going back to your father’s place, you’ll have to find somewhere to live.’

  ‘I have somewhere to live. I shall move in with Steve over the stable.’ The girl looked a little anxiously to see how the detective would take this. ‘Are you shocked?’

  ‘Take a bit more than that to shock a copper. Will you be getting married?’

  ‘One day, I expect.’ Jessica Chalgrove dismissed the subject as of small importance. ‘Oh, I suppose if I got pregnant –’

  ‘You realise that you’ll be making your father even angrier than he is already? Or is that the idea?’

  ‘A little, perhaps.’ The girl dimpled. ‘No, not really. I couldn’t care less what he thinks.’ She jumped up from her chair and moved about the room in an impromptu dance, her skirt of flowered cotton swirling about her long legs, her arms hugging her ribs in a way that seemed special to her, at once a homage and a gesture of loving protectiveness to her splendid young body. It was the first time Jurnet had seen her in something other than jeans and a T-shirt. She looked like a child pretending to be a woman. A passionate child.

  She came to a stop, and exclaimed: ‘I’m so happy. Isn’t it awful? – I mean, after what’s just happened, and Mr Shelden getting murdered, and all the bad things there are, going on in the world. But really, it just takes over. It could just as well be mumps or chicken pox for all the say you have about it.’ She whirled away across the room, singing out in a voice of excruciating refinement: ‘So sorry I can’t come to tea today, Mrs Fortescue-Fortescue. I have happiness. It may be catching.’ She danced a little jig and desisted once more to inquire: ‘Do you like dancing?’ Kindly: ‘You’re still young enough. Steve dances like a herd of elephants trampling down the jungle. Last summer, when we had the pageant, I was one of Anne Boleyn’s ladies in a gown of crimson velvet, and Steve was a courtier in doublet and hose and a cap with some of the peacock’s feathers stuck in it. We danced a stately pavane – like this –’ the young body swayed in a grave and noble curve – ‘that is, until Steve tripped over my dress and fell flat on his face.’ The girl whirled away again, her eyes shining. ‘We brought the house down.’

  Jurnet said: ‘I can imagine. I didn’t know about the pageant. Who –’ he asked offhandedly – ‘took the part of Anne Boleyn?’

  ‘Mrs Coryton. She’s a marvellous actress. Didn’t you know?’

  Chapter Twenty Two

  ‘Eels,’ announced the Superintendent, leaning back in his chair and elongating the vowel sound so that the word became fish. ‘The Chief’s not at all pleased about the eels.’

  On the other side of the wide desk, the three detectives looked at each other; Jurnet and Ellers with incomprehension, Dave Batterby – newly returned from London in a suit that must have set him back a bit – with an air of weary sophistication.

  After a little, the Welshman, the court jester, ventured: ‘We only found them in the moat, sir. We didn’t actually put them there.’

  ‘The Chief is well aware of that, Sergeant.’ The use of the title was ominous, the Superintendent’s crisp elegance at the end of a hot, wilting day som
ehow even more of a threat. ‘Where you did put them, in the Chief’s book, was all over the front page.’ The Superintendent stretched out a hand and with a well-manicured fingernail tapped first one, then the other, of the two files which lay on the desk in front of him. One, the thicker of the two, contained Dr Colton’s report: the second, a number of photographs of as much of Chad Shelden Deceased as the eels had left to pose for the police photographer. ‘Unnecessary sensationalism, the Chief says. Pandering to the morbid interests of a public that ought to know better. Shelden died from the combined effects of a fall and drowning. The eels, the Chief says, are a complete irrelevance. To let them out to the media was unpardonable.’

  ‘Only postponing the day, sir!’ Jack Ellers protested. ‘Bound to come out in court.’

  ‘Where it couldn’t be laid at your door, could it?’ The Superintendent shook his head. ‘You and Ben won’t be supplying the medical evidence. That’s Colton’s business, and you know what he’s like in the box. Dry as dust. By the time he gets through with a corpse it’s a job to convince the court it wasn’t a dummy out of a shop window to start with. No unhealthy titillation. No emotive reaction that’s going to make it all the more difficult for the accused – assuming you lot eventually succeed in capturing one of that vanishing species – to get a fair trial.’ The Superintendent looked directly at Jurnet. ‘Has Detective-Inspector Jurnet nothing to contribute to the conversation?’

  Jurnet answered mildly: ‘Only, firstly, that the Chief Constable’s got it wrong. It wasn’t us, it was Mrs Barwell, the cleaning lady, who let the eels out of the bag. And that’s to say nothing of Benby, the estate surveyor, and Bert Archer, the handyman, the two who dragged Shelden out of the water. Secondly –’ and into the detective’s voice had come an inflection which only the Superintendent – and perhaps Jack Ellers – would recognise: an acknowledgement that the two of them were at it again, one more skirmish in that war which was also, in a way Jurnet did not profess to understand, a declaration of love – ‘I can’t help noticing, sir, that you keep quoting the Chief Constable. May I ask if you hold the same views yourself?’