Sleep of Death

by Anne Morice

  “Where’s Benjie?” I asked. “Hasn’t he come?”

  “No, some family trouble, it appears. I was too bothered to find out the details, but his mother has been on the verge of a nervous breakdown for weeks, which is why he’s had to spend so much time there recently. It’s a damn nuisance, but not desperate. I can manage on my own, so long as I’m left in peace. It’ll just take a little longer, that’s all.”

  “And time is not so important at present, is it? At least, while you are here, you feel safe from your persecutor?”

  “Oh yes, there is that to be said for it and I must confess that my motives weren’t entirely altruistic. It gave me the chance of a few days to simmer down and collect myself. Apart from you and Benjie, the only one who knows where I am is Anthony and, as you said, he hardly strikes one as a blackmailing type.”

  “And you’ve heard no more from the real one?”

  “Not a word. Of course, there may be something unpleasant waiting for me when I get back to London, but I am not so bothered now. If I were to be asked about the keys, I should simply say that they’d been left behind at the theatre after Philip collapsed and I thought it safer to take charge of them until he had recovered. It could never be proved that I’d had them in my possession before the murder was committed, or that I’d used them. I can see things more objectively now.”

  I considered it a curious way of putting it and was also struck by the transformation which only twenty-four hours of simmering down had brought about. Over-complacency now seemed to be the danger, but as it was not for me to dampen these soaring spirits, I said that I would leave him to get on with his work and go and pay some attention to Philip.

  “Yes, all right, Tessa, and would you mind taking these letters up to him? He wasn’t in a fit state to read them when the post arrived, but I see this one is marked urgent, so perhaps he ought to have it right away.”

  “Hallo, Philip, how are you feeling?”

  He was seated in an armchair by the window, wearing pyjamas and a dressing gown, but he did not look so feeble as I had expected, quite brisk, in fact. Two days of enforced sobriety had sharpened him up wonderfully, although it had not done anything for his temper.

  “Ah, Tessa! So you’ve got here at last?”

  “Yes, I’ve got here at last and I’ve brought you some letters.”

  “Put them down on the bed. I’ll deal with them later.”

  “This one’s from South Africa and it’s marked urgent. Don’t you think you ought to glance at it?”

  “No, later, I said. First of all, there’s something I want you to do for me. And sit down, for goodness sake! How can I talk to you when you keep hovering like that?” I sat on the end of the bed and put the letters down beside me.

  “That’s better! Now, as I say, there’s something I want you to do for me, but before I get to that, do you remember my telling you why I believed Dolly had made up those brown paper concoctions herself and with what object?”

  “Certainly, I do. You also told me that she never gave you any hint that someone might want to kill her. Have you had second thoughts about that?”

  “In a sense, I have, yes. Not because of anything she said. I wouldn’t be likely to forget a thing like that, but naturally I’ve been giving it a good deal of thought since then; when I’ve felt well enough to think, that is.”

  “And what has now struck you?”

  “What has now struck me is that, if her object had been to ensure that the police were called in, wouldn’t she have tried to provide some clue in the letters to make their job easier for them?”

  “Such as?”

  “Well, the wording, for instance?”

  I pondered on this for a while, before saying; “You refer to a well-known trick of Clarrie’s, no doubt. But listen, Philip, various people have remarked on that already and . . .”

  “Oh, use your wits, my dear child! Can’t you see the difference between then and now? When those various people you mention were discussing it, they were under the impression that the letters had come from outside. Naturally, they agreed that, if Clarrie had sent them, she would have been much too sharp to have given herself away like that. The situation has altered now, because Dolly would have gone all out to introduce some hint about the identity of this enemy of hers and, for all her many wonderful qualities, it would be stupid to pretend that she was very perceptive about people. It’s precisely the sort of trick she’d have used to draw attention to Clarrie and it was only when she found it wasn’t working that she changed her tactics.”

  “Yes, I’ve understood all that and it isn’t what I was arguing about, because in effect what you’re now saying is that Dolly believed Clarrie to be a murderess. I was about to remark that the aforementioned various people, who included myself, were all convinced that it was quite out of the question.”

  “I don’t happen to agree with you, but we can leave that aside because I’m not necessarily suggesting that she performed the deed herself. I consider it more likely that she put her young man up to it. You may find that equally inconceivable, but I don’t. She happens to be one of the most sexually alluring young females that God ever put breath into, with quite extraordinary power over men. I can see him cheerfully killing off half the population of London, if that’s what she wanted and I daresay, in my younger days, I’d have done the same.”

  “Well, you’re the authority on that subject, so I must take your word for it, but you still haven’t explained what motive she could have had for wishing Dolly dead.”

  “Ah, there, I must admit, you have me. Otherwise I shouldn’t be wasting my time discussing it with you. I should already have passed it on to the Superintendent, make no mistake about that.”

  “So I suppose you want me to pass it on to Robin instead, and ask him to see that it gets to the right quarter, without bringing your name into it?”

  “No, nothing of the kind. How could I possibly expect my name not to be brought into it? And then what? I should have no evidence to bear me out, only my word that the letters existed and were phrased in that way, and I’d be back where I started. No, what I want you to ask Robin to do for me is to get this analysed.”

  He had been groping in his dressing gown pocket while he spoke and now brought out a medicine bottle half filled with milky liquid. It was labelled with the name and address of a local chemist and underneath the handwritten words: Lady Mickleton. 1-2 Tablespoons as required.

  “Is it poison?” I asked.

  “That’s what I want you to find out.”

  “Seriously, Philip?”

  “You remember my telling you about Dolly’s imaginary illnesses?”

  I nodded and he went on.

  “Like everyone who suffers in that way, she used to tear off to the doctor every time she sneezed and she was also fanatical about following his prescriptions to the letter. It hardly seemed to matter whether it was doing her any good or not, so long as she took the right dose at the right time. You get the picture?”

  “Yes. I always thought all those pills and potions you had lying around were for your benefit, but I gather she was taking them herself?”

  “Most of them, and the one you have there was the most recent addition to the collection. A few weeks before she died she had a bilious attack. I don’t know what caused it and it didn’t seem to be serious, but, as usual, she had Macintosh round here in a flash and this was what he prescribed. It was on a Saturday, I remember, and by Sunday evening she seemed to have got over it, but that wasn’t enough for her. She insisted on taking what was left of the stuff up to London the next morning, so as to go on taking it until the bottle was empty.”

  “But, obviously, she didn’t?”

  “No. A couple of days later she became really ill, sick as a dog for a whole night and that was when she picked up the idea that the medicine was causing it. She got some notion into her head that if she took it in combination with a certain kind of food, it would start up a chemical reaction
, or some such tale, and she was furious with Macintosh for not having warned her. He wasn’t too pleased about it, I may say. Good as told her she was talking rubbish, but he said that, so long as the stuff wasn’t doing her any good, she might as well stop taking it and he’d give her something else.”

  “And after that she was all right?”

  “Far as I know. At any rate, she didn’t refer to it again and, to tell you the truth, I’d forgotten all about it.”

  “So why the sudden urge to get this analysed? No, on second thoughts, don’t tell me because I’ve guessed. You’ve been taking it yourself?”

  “That’s it. I had this queasy turn soon after the funeral. Nervous indigestion I put it down to, or perhaps the pie was a bit off. Anyway, Anthony was here and Macintosh wrote out a prescription for him to take down to the chemist as soon as they opened, but it sounded like the same mixture as he’d ordered for Dolly, so I told him to tear it up. I was glad I had too, because I felt better as the day went on and I was able to swallow a cup of soup at dinner time. But I wanted to be sure it wouldn’t churn things up again, so I got this bottle out of the medicine chest and gave myself a couple of spoonfuls. Next thing was I had this fiendish attack and it was while that was going on that I remembered what Dolly had told me about the medicine. That’s why I want you to find out whether there’s anything wrong with it.”

  “Okay, I’ll do my best, but I should warn you that it may take three or four days. Robin’s had to go to Manchester and I shan’t see him until tomorrow evening.”

  “Doesn’t matter. No special hurry.”

  “And now that we’ve settled that, are you going to read your letter?”

  “Only if you open it for me. I can never get the hang of those fiddly aerogramme things. Can’t think why people bother with them, just to save themselves a ha’penny or two, when they’ve got as much money as she has. I assume it is from Paula?”

  “Yes. Paula Van Kliefen, Johannesburg.”

  “Go on, then, open it up!”

  I invariably have difficulty with the fiddly things myself, but managed to make a job of this one and handed him the unblemished page. He then informed me that he was unable to read it without his glasses and couldn’t remember where he had put them.

  “No, no, don’t bother,” he snapped, as I stood up with a martyred look on my face. “Read it aloud to me! I suppose you can manage that?”

  “Willingly,” I replied and began to do so.

  However, I had got no further than Dear Uncle Philip and had it explained to me that Paula, who had been nine years old when her father re-married, had been encouraged to address her stepmother as “Auntie Dolly,” hence his status as honorary uncle, when the telephone rang. Before I could reach it the call had been taken by someone on another extension and I heard a man’s voice say: “. . . you’ll get a highly coloured version in the evening papers, so you may as well hear . . .”

  I shook my head at Philip and was on the point of replacing the receiver, but be flapped one hand and cocked the other to his ear, indicating that I was to remain at my post and I then heard Oliver say: “. . . did this happen?” to which the first voice, which I now recognised as Benjie’s, replied: “We don’t know exactly. He was found by one of the gardeners about an hour ago, down by the lake. The actual time doesn’t seem to have much importance.”

  “No, of course not. How utterly appalling, Ben! What can one say? Have you any idea at all why . . .”

  “Yes, I regret to say I have. It’s been boiling up for some weeks. We’d been hoping it wouldn’t come out, but of course there’s no chance of that now. It’s very bad news, but you’d better hear the whole of it.”

  So I clung on and heard it too. It lasted for another three or four minutes and towards the end, despite having covered the mouthpiece, I found myself holding my breath, lest gasps or squeals of astonishment should give my presence away.

  “Very bad news is the only way to describe it,” I told Philip when it was over. “I think you had better leave it to Oliver to tell you himself, because I have a feeling that he’ll be pounding upstairs and tapping on the door at any moment.”

  It was the wrong feeling, however, because a full ten minutes went by, in which nothing happened at all. There was still no sound from below, Oliver’s car remained stationary and deserted in the drive and Philip, growing tetchy under this neglect, was complaining that, if somebody didn’t soon do something about bringing him some lunch, he would want to know the reason why. So I went downstairs to investigate.

  II

  Oliver was still in the morning room and appeared to have fainted or fallen asleep. He was seated with his back to me, stretched forward over the desk, with his head almost touching Dolly’s ornate brass pen tray. However, he raised it an inch or two when I knocked on the open door and, pressing both hands down on the desk, slowly raised himself upright, picked up a crumpled handkerchief from the blotter and swivelled round to face me.

  His eyes were red and blotchy, his whole demeanour quite a shock in fact, for I had not been prepared for his grief for his friend and partner to be so intense. His words, uttered in a hoarse voice, were more unexpected still: “Ah, Tessa! Just in time for the last obsequies! It’s all up with me, I’m sorry to tell you.”

  “Why, Oliver? What’s happened?”

  “Benjie’s father has committed suicide.”

  “Yes, but . . . No, what am I saying? . . . But how ghastly! When?”

  “Early hours of this morning, it seems. Ben has just been on the line. They found him by the lake in the grounds, shot through the head. The gun was beside him.”

  “What a dreadful shock! Poor old Benjie! And a shock for you, as well, I can see. Have you any idea why he would have done such a thing? Was he ill?”

  “Ill? Not as far as I know. Deranged, perhaps, but nothing physical.”

  “You sound very sure of that,” I said, feeling that for all my diligence, there must have been something I had missed in my eavesdropping exercise.

  “Unfortunately, I am. Benjie didn’t actually say so on the telephone, but putting two and two together and adding various bits and pieces I’ve picked up over the past week or two, I have the distinct impression that, if he hadn’t killed himself, he’d have been arrested by this time tomorrow.”

  “What for?”

  “Oh, fraud . . . misappropriation of funds . . . I don’t know all the technical terms.”

  “As bad as that? Can it really be so, Oliver? He’s always been regarded as one of our more respectable tycoons.”

  “So many of them are, aren’t they, until they get found out? I can’t tell you any details, but it won’t be long now before they’re public property. Things started to go wrong a few months ago on the stock market, I gather. A take-over bid which fell through, or something of that kind. I’m very ignorant about such matters and he may have been covering up for years, for all I know. I realise now that his wife must have been living in terror of something like this. That’s why her nerves had gone to pieces and why Ben felt it necessary to spend so much time with her. They are, were, such a close family, you know.”

  “Yes, it must be appalling for them both and I’m deeply sorry, but listen, Oliver, you began by saying that it was all up with you and I can’t understand why that should be? Did you mean that you had invested money in one of his companies?”

  “God no, nothing so simple. I invested every penny I could lay my hands on in the play and you know how that turned out!”

  “You lost the lot, of course, but that’s been known before, countless times, in our business and there’s nothing disgraceful in it, or final either. You’ll soon get on your feet again and find ways to raise some more.”

  “I’m not sure I want to. One could hardly call it a happy venture. Besides, you haven’t begun to grasp what kind of a mess I’m in. It may be no disgrace, but the fact remains that we’re badly in the red. Not due to mismanagement, whatever people may say, but to quite excepti
onal bad luck. Having to bring in two cast replacements during rehearsals didn’t help.”

  “And nothing left in the kitty at all?”

  “Less than nothing, as it turns out. Our cover against further losses seemed solid enough until half an hour ago. It was in the form of personal guarantees from Sir Joseph, Ben’s father, and you can imagine how much they’ll be worth now? We’d planned to spend a couple of days sorting everything out and seeing what was the least we needed to get by with, but it would be a waste of time. I’ll either have to skip the country before the message gets through to the creditors, or sit back and wait for the blows to start falling. The first alternative seems the most attractive at the moment.”

  “I’m sorry, Oliver, I really am. It’s rotten for you, but do try not to despair. If I can think of anything constructive which might help, I’ll let you know at once, but just now I’ve got to get a move on. Mrs. Gale doesn’t come until the afternoon on Thursdays and Philip is bleating about his lunch. I said I’d fix him some scrambled eggs and he’ll be banging on the ceiling if he doesn’t get them soon. Shall I do some for you, while I’m at it?”

  “What? Oh, no thanks, Tessa. You’re very kind, but I couldn’t face food just now. I’ll get something later.”

  “Mind you do! And I apologise for pestering you with domestic problems at a time like this, but I have to know. Will you be skipping the country this afternoon, or can you stick around until Philip’s on his feet again?”

  “I don’t know. I seem to be incapable of making decisions at the moment. This news has blotted out everything. Even that tiresome business with the keys seems so trivial by comparison. But yes, now I think of it, I told Benjie he would find me here, if he wanted to get in touch for any reason. I’ll stay until tomorrow at any rate.”

  “Good! And when you’ve got yourself together a bit and made some plans, give me a buzz, will you? I’ll be staying at Roakes Common tonight, which is not far away, so I could be over here in half an hour, in case of emergency. The number’s on the pad by Philip’s bed.”