Sleep of Death

by Anne Morice

  “No, I’m a bit bothered, that’s all. I wondered if you’d seen Dolly?”

  “Not this evening. Why?”

  “I can’t think where she’s got to.”

  “What time did she leave?” I asked, my mind still stuck in the same groove.

  “Leave the flat, you mean? How should I know? Mind if I sit down a minute?”

  “No, of course not, go ahead! How about a drink?”

  “Thanks. A scotch would do, if you have any.”

  “Let me see to it,” Pete offered, causing Robin to bounce up like an infuriated rubber ball.

  “I think I can manage, thank you, Pete.”

  Returning my attention to Philip, I said: “What I meant was, do you know what time she left here?”

  “Haven’t the faintest idea what you’re talking about, my dear girl,” he said, looking slightly more alert, as he held out his hand for the glass which Robin was bringing over to him. “Far as I’m aware, she hasn’t been here since she dropped me off just before six o’clock.”

  “Oh, really? Why not?”

  “Because that’s the routine. I like to spend an hour or two on my own before a preview or first night and I’ve got Fred to look after me, if I need anything. Dolly understands all about that and we arranged that she’d come back here about nine-thirty, to drive me home. Naturally, I’m worried and put out when she doesn’t turn up. Who wouldn’t be?”

  “Probably got stuck in a traffic jam,” Robin remarked gloomily.

  “Yes, as a matter of fact, that is the most likely explanation, Philip. Pete has just been telling us that it’s fairly chaotic out there tonight. I daresay she’s arrived by now and is waiting for you, in your room, even as we speak.”

  “No, she’s not, or I’d have heard about it. Fred knows where to find me.”

  “Have you tried telephoning?”

  “Naturally! I’m not an imbecile. There was no reply.”

  “There you are, then! Sitting in traffic, for sure.”

  “Most unlike her, if she is. She always leaves plenty of extra time for that sort of emergency. Oh well, I suppose I’ll have to give it a few more minutes and then start walking. Not much chance of finding a taxi, if it’s as bad as you say. Thanks for the drink. It went rather well tonight, wouldn’t you say?”

  “No need to walk,” I said, as he started to clamber to his feet. “We can give you a lift. We were on the point of leaving anyway and Robin’s car is only two minutes away, so he can bring it round to the front for us. Meet you downstairs in five minutes, but there’s no rush. He’s always so lucky in that way,” I explained, “doesn’t seem to have as much trouble as the rest of us with parking restrictions.”

  The Mickletons’ flat was on the second floor of an Edwardian building in a seedy little street between Russell Square and the Tottenham Court Road. It was only a short distance from the theatre, but in the diametrically opposite direction from our own dear home and Philip’s allowance of five minutes had been stretched to nearer fifteen by the time we set off. However, the journey was the least of our troubles because it was only on arrival that he discovered that he had left home without his keys.

  “Can’t understand it,” he kept muttering, while patting himself and going through each pocket twice over. “Must be here somewhere.”

  They were not, though, and I suggested he should try ringing his own bell on the row of buttons by the outer door, on the off-chance that Dolly was at home and not sitting in a traffic jam; but no disembodied voice came through the loud speaker to enquire who was without. It was deadlock, in the truest sense, until Robin noticed that there was also a bell to summon the caretaker and, after keeping his thumb pressed down on it for a full minute, we were rewarded by signs of activity in the basement. Then a window was raised and a man’s voice shouted: “What’s going on up there? Do you know what time it is?”

  “Eleven twenty-five,” Robin replied, “and please come along up, will you? We need your keys.”

  Perhaps this caretaker was an old lag and recognised the voice of authority, because his manner changed with the speed of lightning and a few minutes later we were able to hand Philip over to him and to be on our way home at last.

  I was thankful for this at the time, but my relief then was nothing to what I was to feel when I discovered how lightly, in fact, we had been let off. Had we gone the whole way and seen Philip into his flat, we must have been confronted, as he was, by the sight of his wife sagging full length on the sitting room sofa, where she had been since approximately half past six in the evening, when she was strangled to death with one of her own silk scarves.

  Chapter Six

  I

  From the moment of this painful discovery Elders and Betters no longer had any real chance of survival, although for a time we forced ourselves to go on, believing that something could still be salvaged from the wreck and not all the signs were discouraging. A rehearsal was called for ten o’clock on Thursday morning, which Anthony managed to stumble through without disgracing himself and, after an interval of exactly twelve minutes, the curtain went up again on the afternoon preview, which also passed off without major disaster. Best of all, by six o’clock the advance bookings had taken a heady upward turn. If not to be described as a stampede, it was a situation which any management, let alone a tyro, would have regarded as satisfactory.

  No doubt aware of this, and perhaps also aware that the greater part of these bookings had come from ghoulish readers of the obituary columns, Philip bravely insisted on going on for the official opening, for neither he nor anyone else could doubt that the cancellations would have streamed in just as rapidly once the word got around that he had been replaced by a practically unknown actor, whose wife had not been strangled the night before.

  It was misplaced courage, however, as became plain from his first entrance. He managed to struggle on through the first half, his performance deteriorating by the minute, but, back in his dressing room in the interval, he finally collapsed and had to be driven home by ambulance.

  Home, by that time, had become the first-floor spare bedroom and bath at our house in Beacon Square. Robin was not ecstatic about this arrangement and I cannot pretend that it pleased me either. Normally, these apartments are kept at the permanent disposal of my cousin Toby, who in return allows us to spend frequent weekends at his house in the country, but the situation had been more or less forced on us. Philip could hardly have been expected to remain at the flat on his own and, apart from a step-daughter, married, divorced and with two sons, left over from Dolly’s first marriage and living in South Africa, neither of the Mickletons appeared to have any close relatives. Of the few remaining friends and colleagues whom she had not entirely succeeded in alienating by her jealousy and possessiveness, it seemed that we were the only pair in possession of a first-floor bedroom and bath within a taxi ride of the theatre.

  The decision whereby he would occupy them until such time as things got sorted out was arrived at during the early hours of Thursday morning, Philip and the caretaker, between them, having managed to rouse one of the neighbours, who had summoned the police. It was on their advice, at the conclusion of their preliminary investigations and Dolly’s removal to the mortuary, that he had applied to us and, by eight o’clock that morning, had been collected by Robin and put to bed in his temporary lodgings.

  I was still less pleased when his second journey there, some twelve hours later, was made by ambulance, since this was far from being my concept of getting things off to a good start in the sorting-out process, but he was most unwilling to be sent to a hospital or nursing home, literally reduced to tears by the suggestion, and the doctor assured us that, in any case, his condition was not serious enough to warrant it. His heart, pulse and blood pressure were all in good shape, considering his age and the devastating shock he had sustained and all he needed now was a few days of complete rest and quiet.

  “With you waiting on him hand and foot, I shouldn’t wonder,” Robin co
mmented gloomily.

  “Yes, I have a feeling that he is going to be rather a demanding patient and, unfortunately, I’ll very soon no longer have the excuse that I’m working.”

  “As bad as that?”

  “Well, we still have the reviews to come, of course, but Oliver told me at the wake tonight that, if they’re as bad as he expects them to be, the notices will have to go up tonight. He has to concentrate now on cutting his losses. Poor Oliver! I do feel sorry for him.”

  “Well, our own papers arrived while you were taking the invalid his breakfast in bed, so we had better draw a deep breath and start on them. I think I’ve just time before I go and get on with some bread-winning for three.”

  It proved not to be such an icy plunge, after all; more of a tepid splash, which continued to douse us throughout the day and early evening, for none of the critics had set out to annihilate the play. There were mutterings about its being under-rehearsed and partially inaudible, as well as the usual complaints about the director not having made up his mind whether he was producing a farce or a comedy or neither, but on the other hand there were several kind words for the author and in almost every review one or two members of the cast had been picked out for honourable mention. Even Anthony had been awarded one of those nosegays, for being such a gallant trouper. In view of his performance, I concluded that he and the reviewer had been at Harrow together.

  However, as everyone knows, this kind of damning with faint praise can be more damaging than outright abuse and so it proved for us. When we arrived at the theatre for the second performance it was to play to less than half capacity. This was saddening, but by no means unexpected. The real shock had come earlier than that, during the late afternoon, when I learnt that Pete had then spent four hours in what is technically known as helping the police with their enquiries.

  II

  I had come downstairs, after taking Philip a cup of tea, when Clarrie rang up and, never being one to bite back the tears, went straight into the high tragedy act, though with so much inartistic caterwaul thrown in that it was difficult to make out what she was saying.

  “Just try and calm down, will you, Clarrie, and tell me what’s happened?”

  “I just have told you, for God’s sake! Are you deaf or something? Pete’s been arrested.”

  “What for?”

  “How would I know what for? Murdering her ladyship, I suppose. They didn’t say.”

  “Don’t be silly, they must have said. They don’t just go around arresting people without telling them what they’re being charged with.”

  “All I know is that they said they wanted to ask him some questions, for which purpose it would be necessary for him to accompany them to the station. Not to catch a train, presumably.”

  “Okay, but he hasn’t been arrested. Not yet, at any rate. When and where did this happen?”

  “Here, at the flat, at lunch time. He always tries to come home for lunch during the run. I’m usually still asleep when he leaves in the morning and at the theatre when he comes back, so it’s about the only chance we get to meet.”

  “Yes, all right, but what I really want to know is, did they just barge in and announce this out of the blue, or had there been a lot of leading up to it?”

  “Not them. They’d already been through what I suppose you’d call the lead up when they came the first time. That was at about nine o’clock this morning. Listen, I’d find all this much easier to explain if you were here and I’ll go raving mad if I have to stick it out on my own much longer. Can’t you come round?”

  “You know very well I can’t. I have to be at the theatre in an hour’s time and so do you. I suppose the show must go on, even if it kills us.”

  “All right, then be a friend and get there early, will you? Leave now, this minute, and I’ll do the same.”

  I was unable to obey these instructions to the letter because the first necessity was to get hold of Robin. One of the few mitigating circumstances surrounding Dolly’s death was that, whatever else, her attacker had at least had the decency to perform the deed in the Metropolitan area. If she had been murdered at her home in the country, it would doubtless have been a different story and I should have been just as much in the dark as everyone else about the line the investigation was taking and the progress, if any, it had led to. As it was, I could at least rely on Robin to keep me abreast of developments, to some extent and, by another stroke of fortune, he was alone in his office when I telephoned and able to lend at least one ear for about ninety seconds. He promised to do what he could and to let me know what success he had met with when he called for me after the show.

  So then I went back up to the first-floor spare room again and told Philip that I was obliged to leave early, but that Robin would be back soon after seven. He told me not to worry, as he would be able to manage on his own for an hour or two. As there was a decanter of whisky and a telephone on the table beside him and a television set at the foot of the bed, to which his eyes were constantly straying as we spoke, I had no difficulty in believing him.

  It struck me as I toiled downstairs again that he certainly possessed the most remarkable resilience in adversity, although, for the fifteenth time, was unable to decide whether or not this unnatural composure indicated that he really was entering his second childhood and was incapable of taking in what had happened and what it must inevitably mean for his future.

  III

  Half an hour later Clarrie was saying: “Like I told you, the first time they came was about nine o’clock. At least, one of them did. I wasn’t up, but Pete let him in and when they’d talked for a bit he asked to see me.”

  I noticed that she was experiencing something less than her usual difficulty in remembering her loved one’s name and wondered whether the enormity of the trouble he was in had somehow conferred a distinction on him, setting him apart from the other men in her life.

  I said: “What did he want to know?”

  “Oh, things like when I’d last seen her ladyship, whether she’d seemed worried or nervous and so on and so forth. He gabbled on about how it was just a routine check and they were trying to get in touch with everyone who’d been in recent contact with her. Didn’t they put you through the same treatment?”

  “No.”

  “Caesar’s wife being above suspicion, I presume?”

  “Not at all. What you forget is that they were swarming round our house in their hordes yesterday morning, as soon as Philip was declared to be strong enough to talk to them. They know how to get hold of me any minute they want to. Another thing you have to remember, Clarrie, is that they’ll have checked up on all Dolly’s movements during the few days before she was killed and they’re bound to have discovered by now that you invited her and Philip to lunch at the cottage last Sunday. That would naturally give them the idea that you were on a special footing with her.”

  “It would be the wrong idea. I loathed the sight of her.”

  “I trust you didn’t mention that?”

  “No, of course not, and the point is it wasn’t me who invited the Mickletons to lunch, it was that silly . . .”

  “Exactly! And they’ll probably want to know why. Still, we haven’t got all night to argue about it. Get on with your story! How long did this personage spend at the flat?”

  “About half an hour, I suppose. It was a nuisance because it made Pete late for work yet again, but at least he had a good excuse, for once. I’d practically forgotten all about it and then, just as we were tucking into our bread and cheese, in he marches again and this time he had a friend with him. That one said something about some new evidence having come to light which they thought Pete could give them some more information about and that it would simplify things if he would go along to the station with them. Don’t you find that highly peculiar?”

  “Not if they wanted him to look at some photographs, or something of that nature. And there were no charges or cautions?”

  “No . . . no, not as far as I recal
l, but listen, Tessa, what can it mean? What could he possibly be able to tell them that would take all this time? Are they trying to bully him into confessing that he murdered the dreary woman, or something? But why pick on him? When he still hadn’t come back after two hours I started falling apart. I rang the shop, of course, in case it had slipped his mind that I was still alive, but he wasn’t there. Then I tried to get hold of my solicitor, but his secretary told me he was in court all day. Not that he’d probably have been the slightest use. Divorce is about the only thing he’s had any experience of. Then I thought of you. I thought if anyone could help it bloody well ought to be you.”

  “Well, I’ve alerted Robin and he’s promised to do what he can. He’ll be round later on and you can talk to him yourself, but in the meantime there’s something I want to ask you. Was there, on either occasion when they called at your flat, any mention of the anonymous letters?”

  “No, there wasn’t. What do you want to know that for?”

  “Because, as far as we can make out, no one has mentioned them, not even Philip, which seems rather strange.”

  “I don’t see why. They were sent to him, not to her, and he’s still alive, as far as anyone can tell, so what’s the connection?”

  “Oh, come on, you’re losing your grip, aren’t you? We all assumed they were meant for him, but we must have got it wrong, surely? No one was addressed by name and they weren’t in envelopes, simply messages propped up on his shelf, where Dolly was just as sure to see them as he was. Isn’t it more likely that she was the one who was being threatened? And supposing, for some reason which they kept to themselves, they both realised this at the time, wouldn’t that account for her being in such a panic when he remained so calm? It’s much easier to dismiss these things as a joke when you’ve not directly concerned, rather more difficult to laugh it off if you happen to be the one who’s under attack.”