Closed Casket

by Sophie Hannah

  “Shall we find somewhere a little more private to sit and talk?” I suggested.

  “No.” Phyllis recoiled as if I had laid a trap for her. “I’ve work to do. Haven’t I always? Ask what you want to know and I’ll answer. I’d as soon have it over with.”

  “Do you know anybody by the name of Iris?”

  “Iris?” Phyllis looked around wildly. “Iris? I’ve never known an Iris. I knew an Eileen—from Tipperary, she was—and a Mavis, as used to work here at Lillieoak. Who are you talking about? What Iris?”

  “Never mind,” I said.

  “There is no need to fret, miss,” said O’Dwyer. “We only need to know what were your movements on the night that poor Mr. Scotcher met his untimely end.”

  Phyllis’s face twisted. She started to sob, and sank to the floor in a heap. O’Dwyer crouched down beside her. “There, there, miss. You were fond of Mr. Scotcher, were you?”

  “He was the only one I cared about! I wish I had died instead—I truly wish it, I do! They can bury me alongside him!”

  “Now, now, miss. You’re a grand young lady. I should think that plenty of fellows will—”

  “Don’t say it! Don’t!” Phyllis wailed. “Don’t speak to me of anybody else. As if Cook in me ear all the time isn’t bad enough! I was a silly fool, like she always said I was. Joseph was so nice to me—just being kind, as he was, no one kinder—and I got it all wrong. I should’ve known. Me a servant and him a book-learned sort. I wanted to believe he could love me the way I loved him. And then I heard him ask Sophie to marry him, and . . . and . . .” She dissolved into weeping.

  O’Dwyer made comforting noises and patted her on the back. I guessed he was a married man. My father was forever patting my mother in the same way.

  “Did you say that you heard Scotcher ask Sophie to marry him?” I asked Phyllis.

  She was too much beside herself to answer with words, but her ardent nodding was unambiguous.

  “You were not in the dining room when Scotcher made his proposal of marriage, Phyllis. I was. I was at the table. You had left the room some time before it happened. So if you don’t mind my asking, how did you hear what you claim to have heard?”

  “I listened outside the door, and no more than that! Doesn’t mean I murdered anyone! Nice girl like Sophie—course he’d sooner marry her than the likes of me, a drudge without a penny to my name.”

  “If I might inquire, miss . . . ,” O’Dwyer began. “When you were listening outside the door, did you happen to hear of Lady Playford’s alterations to her will?”

  Phyllis shook her head. “I heard all the talk afterwards, but I didn’t hear her say it. I only went listening at the door after I heard it slam and saw Lady Athie rushing upstairs. Trying not to cry, she was—and her the steadiest of folk, normally.”

  “So you wondered what had happened to make her abandon her dinner and her guests?” I said.

  “That’s right. And when I heard them all talking, well, I could scarcely believe it! Joseph was to inherit the lot, everything Lady Athie had to leave! Nobody was happy about it—him least of all. And what sense did it make, leaving it all to a dying man?”

  “No sense whatsoever,” I agreed.

  “And then I heard Joseph ask the question that broke my heart. I knew he was fond of Sophie, but I never thought he saw her that way. I thought I was his special one. He’d see me coming along the hall and he’d say, ‘Here she is—Phyllis, light of my life.’” She had taken off her apron and was dabbing at her eyes with it.

  “Not all men are as responsible as they ought to be in their dealings with the ladies,” O’Dwyer said soberly.

  “Phyllis, may I ask you something?” I said. “After you heard what you heard, did you run off?”

  “I did! Didn’t want to be caught in floods of tears, and Mr. Kimpton was making nasty jibes about someone listening at the door, so I ran.”

  That explained the stifled sobs we heard, and the running footsteps.

  “Where did you go?”

  “I started off to the kitchen, but Cook would have had plenty to say and I didn’t feel strong enough to hear it. She’d have taunted me for being foolish and tried to persuade me to step out with her nephew, Dennis. That’s her plan for me, but I don’t like Dennis! His breath smells foul as anything. So I ran past the kitchen, out the back door and down to the river. I was minded to toss myself in, I might as well tell you. If I’d had more courage, that’s what I’d have done. Wish I had!”

  “What did you do instead?” I asked.

  “Walked up and down a bit, then came back up to the garden. Sat on the grass by the big pond, hoping I’d get wet and catch a chill and die of it.”

  “While you were in the garden, did you hear two men talking?”

  “Do you mean you and Mr. Poirot?” said Phyllis. “Oh, yes, I heard you right enough.”

  “Good. That’s one mystery solved,” I said with relief. “And . . . you were crying at the time?”

  “Thought I’d never stop,” Phyllis confirmed.

  “Were you alone? It’s only that, in the same way that you heard us, we heard you, and then we heard a sort of whispering or hissing sound.”

  “That was me talking to meself. ‘Quiet, Phyllis, you stupid girl,’ I said, but it did no good. Nothing could stop me crying. I heard you saying that you might come looking for me, so I made off back to the house. Straight to my room, I went. I locked the door, lay down on the bed and cried and cried. And the worst thing was . . .” Phyllis’s mouth wobbled and more tears poured forth. “Joseph wasn’t even dead then! He was still alive, and I was that upset about him marrying someone else, and now . . . well, now I’d do anything to have him back and to have things as they were before, even if that meant him marrying her and not me.”

  I believed that her regret was real, and I said as much once she had taken her leave of us. O’Dwyer lost no time in agreeing. “So you’d be after crossing her name off the list, would you?”

  “Not a bit of it,” I said.

  “No? I could have sworn that you said only a moment ago—”

  “One regrets nothing so much as the unfortunate things one has done oneself that cannot be undone—don’t you find?”

  Immediately, I felt as if I had accused Phyllis of murder, when I had intended merely to refrain from eliminating her from my mental list of suspects.

  I then felt duty-bound to say, “I am sure Phyllis is not the killer,” when the truth was that I was not sure at all.

  19

  Two Irises

  An hour later, unable to find Claudia Playford in the house or the gardens immediately around it, I walked to the highest point I could find on Lillieoak’s grounds, which was also the most exposed. Up here, the wind hit the skin like something solid and hard. For some reason, I found myself thinking again about Phyllis’s claim that Randall Kimpton had copied Scotcher. I was torn between concluding that this imitation must have been obvious enough to be noticeable to Phyllis, since she had noticed it, and thinking that if Kimpton had set out to copy anybody, he would surely have done it more successfully.

  Really, he and Scotcher were not at all alike. Fundamentally, they were opposites. Scotcher’s defining characteristic, it seemed to me, was that he tried hard, always, to make others feel better about themselves and about life in general, whereas Kimpton sought only to make himself feel better and appear superior.

  I don’t know how long I stood there pondering, but in due course I heard a voice behind me: Claudia’s. “Have you been looking for me?” she asked.

  “Oh!” I exclaimed, startled. How the devil had she got up here without my seeing her? Had she been up here already? “Sergeant O’Dwyer and I wanted to speak to you, yes.”

  “Then why hide away here where the wind might blow you away? I assume you wish to know if Sophie Bourlet is telling the truth about what she says she saw me do? You will have heard what I have told others, but you wish to put the question yourself, and watch my expressi
on as I answer.”

  “Yes.”

  Claudia smiled. She seemed to enjoy making me wait for her answer. “Sophie is not telling the truth,” she said eventually. “It’s a lie—unless someone else dressed in my clothes and wore a wig, and kept their face turned away, and Sophie saw that person attacking Joseph and assumed it must be me. Have you thought of that?”

  “No. Did you like Joseph Scotcher, Miss Playford?”

  She laughed. “Like him? Not at all. I did, however, enjoy him. I found his presence at Lillieoak wonderfully entertaining. It’s going to be awfully colorless without him here.”

  “You mean that he was a talented raconteur?”

  “He had a singular way with words—but no, I meant that everybody was in love with him and it was quite funny to watch. Phyllis slobbered over him like a helpless creature, and Sophie fainted with desire every time he looked in her direction. And then there was Mother, of course. I found it fascinating to observe how Joseph did it, how he reeled them in and kept them all adoring him while he felt nothing for any of them, really. He loved the idea of everybody falling in love with Joseph Scotcher more than he loved any real people.”

  “You counted your mother among Scotcher’s admirers,” I said. “Surely you mean she loved him in a motherly way?”

  “Oh, heavens, not you as well! You must pay no attention to Dorro and her ridiculous substitute-for-dead-child theory. Everything is about babies for Dorro, ever since she failed to have any herself. If you listen to her, a boiled egg looks like a baby! Mother might be an old bird but there is plenty of pep left in her. She loved Joseph in the same way that Phyllis and Sophie loved him. Oh, she would die rather than admit it. She knew the feelings she ought to have had for him were those of a mother figure, so she pretended they were. Not for the sake of convention, you understand—Mother loves to be unconventional—but to avoid being spurned and laughed at. She is a very proud woman.” Claudia’s eyes narrowed. “I see you are not convinced.”

  “Well . . .”

  “You are aware that I am not as fond of her as a daughter ought to be of her mother, and so you wonder if I am simply being cruel. I would too, in your position. I assure you, this is my clear-eyed assessment of the facts. I shall be cruel about Mother a little later, perhaps—I do so enjoy it, and she amply deserves it—but at the moment I am trying to help you understand. Mother was desperately in love with Joseph. Why else do you think she changed her will to leave him every last penny? He was due to die of Bright’s disease in the very near future.”

  “Scotcher did not respond well to the news of the new will,” I said. “He became severely agitated.”

  Claudia made an impatient noise. “He pretended to be aghast, but that’s all it was: a charade. What would you expect him to do: leap up and shout, ‘Hip hip hooray, I’m going to be divinely rich!’?”

  “He was not going to be rich unless Lady Playford predeceased him and, even if she had, he would then only have been rich for a few weeks or months.”

  Claudia laughed. “Which was it—weeks or months? I take it you are an expert on Bright’s disease?”

  “Far from it.”

  “Well, then.”

  “Scotcher’s distress that you call a pretense was as convincing as any true distress I have witnessed,” I said.

  “Well, of course it was,” said Claudia. “That’s why I’m sorry he is no longer around. Joseph was a magician!”

  “Do you mean that he lied habitually?”

  “Oh, no—nothing as ordinary as that. Everybody lies habitually. Oh, look—Monsieur Poirot is here.”

  I looked down through the branches of a cluster of hawthorn trees to the sweep of Lillieoak’s driveway. Claudia was right: Poirot, Inspector Conree and Sophie Bourlet had returned from Ballygurteen.

  “Joseph really was a marvel,” Claudia went on. “He cast powerful spells with nothing more than words. If he were here now, he could convince you in less than five minutes that you are not a Scotland Yard policeman but a lion tamer escaped from a traveling circus. Oh, Mother lost no time in falling in love with him. She too is a words person, you see. Until she met Joseph, she had not encountered anybody who was as adept with words as she herself was.”

  “Do you know of a woman named Iris?” I asked.

  “Iris Gillow?” said Claudia at once. “Iris Morphet?”

  I blinked several times. “You know of two Irises! Nobody else has been able to suggest any.”

  “You have not asked Randall, then?” said Claudia.

  “Not yet, no.”

  “I see. Iris Morphet and Iris Gillow are the same person. Were. She died. Randall will be able to tell you all about her. I could tell you myself, but it’s his story. You ought to hear it from him. Look, here he comes now!” The burst of joy in her voice suggested that a savior had arrived from on high. Kimpton was still some way off too. The mere sight of him in the distance was apparently enough to send Claudia into raptures.

  “What are you thinking about me?” She eyed me with suspicion. “Perhaps you have trouble believing that I love Randall as much as I seem to, when I do nothing but denounce and deride everybody else.”

  “I have no trouble believing that you are as fond of him as you purport to be. It is obvious that you love him very much. I suppose . . .”

  Claudia tilted her head and almost smiled. “There is something you would like to ask me?”

  “The first time we met, you mentioned that Dr. Kimpton had won your affection twice.”

  “Yes. And my affection is not easily won.”

  “I can imagine.”

  “It took him years the first time. I knew I would accept him eventually—I adored him from our first conversation—but if I succumbed too readily, I feared he might stop trying. And Randall trying—a man of his intelligence and single-minded determination—well, there is nothing more satisfying than watching him put every effort into his campaign to win me over.” Her smiled faded, and was replaced by a more mundane expression. “But of course I had to let him succeed in due course, and I did. And then five—no, nearly six years ago—his manner towards me suddenly changed. He seemed to have lost his confidence—it was repulsive! Confidence is the nature of a man like Randall. It is his essence. I did not want him without it—he was no longer himself, I thought—and so I called for its return.”

  “What happened?”

  “He confessed to uncertainty about whether he wanted to marry me. Doubts!” Claudia waved her diamond ring in front of my face. “I took this off and threw it at him. Naturally, I told him I never wanted to see him again as long as I lived. But the very next day, there he was, outside my window. Oh, not at Lillieoak. I lived in Oxford then. I was one of the first women to matriculate at the university there—I don’t suppose anyone bothered to tell you that, did they? My achievements are recognized by nobody but me. I moved back here to get away from Randall—who was desperately sorry and regretting his moment of doubt. ‘Well,’ I thought to myself. ‘I intend to make you regret it a hundred times more than you could ever manage on your own.’ That was when I moved back to Lillieoak. It didn’t deter Randall. He was always cluttering up the drawing room, weeping and begging to be forgiven, brandishing his diamond in the hope that it might prove to be a lucky charm.”

  Claudia glanced at her ring. “It was pathetic. He was pathetic and I told him so. I was so foul to him, it made him angry and almost tyrannical in his insistence that I would wither and perish without his love. He said that I must choose him or nobody, because he would surely throttle any other man I chose. I liked him a little bit more once he stopped crying and drooling over me and started trying to lay down the law. He insisted that I would end up marrying him whether I wanted to or not. It struck me that I probably did want to, in fact. Randall is adorable when he’s fierce, and he had never been more so.”

  The sort of mutual unpleasantness she was describing sounded nothing like love to me, but I was wise enough not to say so. “So you forgave him
and became engaged to him a second time?”

  “After years of making him suffer the torments of the damned, yes. And he is still suffering, every day. I have not yet agreed to set a wedding date. Perhaps I never will. One doesn’t absolutely need to, you know.” Claudia laughed at my shock, which I must have done a poor job of concealing.

  Not caring if I approved of her or not, she went on, “One can still have fun and be just as deeply in love, without any danger of it wearing thin. Besides, Randall and I can’t marry until we’ve decided where we would live. I mean, live for the most part—we would have more than one house, of course. Randall can’t wait to get out of Oxford. He insists he will find a new job in County Cork and join me at Lillieoak, but I rather like Oxford. In Oxford, there are things to do besides stare at trees and sheep. Or we might try London—that would be thrilling! Do you enjoy living in London? Darling! You’re here at last!”

  “Hello, divine creature.” Kimpton strode towards us. “I wish I could linger, and spend the rest of the day covering your beautiful face with kisses. But I can’t. Catchpool, make haste—you are needed.”

  “By whom?” I asked. Something about his tone told me it was important.

  “By me, though I suppose I ought to say: by Joseph Scotcher most of all. Poirot, Conree and O’Dwyer await us in the parlor—or they will, by the time we get there.”

  “The parlor?” I echoed.

  “Yes.” Kimpton turned on his heel. I hurried after him towards the house.

  “Count yourself lucky to be invited,” he said over his shoulder. “That puffed-up pest Conree did all he could to persuade me I should leave you and Poirot out of it and speak only to him and his half-wit toady. I told him: if he wants to hear what I’ve got to say, he had better not stand in the way of you and Poirot hearing it too. If I’m to perform, I would like to have at least a couple of decent brains in the audience.”

  “Perform? Kimpton, what is all this about?”

  “About? Why, Joseph Scotcher’s murder, of course,” he said. “You’re all quite wrong about it—all you crime-solving chaps. Very, very wrong—and I shall prove it to you.”