by John Burke
‘Where would Mrs Warrington have picked up a thing like this, d’you suppose?’ He turned back to me. ‘Am I correct in thinking you’ve been abroad recently, miss?’
‘In the company of her father and myself,’ said my mother majestically, ‘and in our care all the time.’
Serpell was not to be deflected from me. ‘You could have picked this up and brought it back – and for some reason passed it on to Mrs Warrington?’
Mother said: ‘My niece, Mrs Warrington, also spent time abroad. Considerably more time than my daughter did. She held a post as governess to a family in the Austrian lands, and in all likelihood came into possession of the leaflet then. Perhaps it got stuck in a corner of one of her trunks, or she kept it as a souvenir without knowing its meaning.’
‘Funny sort of souvenir, ma’am.’
Kept it, I thought, out of sentiment, in spite of her denial to me that she knew anything of Count Anton Florian. For the leaflet, surely, was one of his rebellious publications.
Caroline was dead. Both her marriages were conclusively wiped out. Could I, should I, speak out now and tell the whole story in case it had some bearing on her death? I could at least dispose of misleading speculation over the origin of the leaflet.
But the reasons for silence were stronger than ever. It was not to Caroline that I owed the strict observance of my promise, but to Anton Florian: to reveal his existence now would be as dangerous as before – perhaps even more dangerous.
Inspector Serpell said: ‘Miss Talbot, you haven’t answered my question.’
‘I thought my mother had done that for me. The leaflet must have been brought home by Caroline when –’
‘I meant my earlier question about a motive for killing Mrs Warrington. Since we’ve ruled out the idea of thieves who just happened to be passing by.’
‘I cannot imagine.’
The inspector edged his tall hat from one knee to the other, its glossiness broken by a few dull stains and patches where the nap had completely rubbed away. He took his time, executing the manœuvre to some secret standards of his own. Then he tapped its crown and, with one of his little sighs, resumed:
‘This is a most delicate matter. I do appreciate that. But would I be right in thinking that you had once expected to marry Mr Warrington yourself, miss?’
Mother fluffed up like an indignant pigeon. ‘I will not permit such accusations to be made against my little girl.’
‘It’s not an accusation, ma’am. Just a matter of getting things straight.’
‘I shall ask my husband, the Canon, to speak to the Bishop and to the Lord Lieutenant.’
‘Mother,’ I said, ‘I’m perfectly prepared to answer. It’s a simple enough answer, after all. No, Inspector Serpell, there was never at any time any understanding between Mr Warrington and myself.’
‘Not between you, miss, no. But for your own part, you might have had an expectation . . .?’
‘I can’t see where all this is leading.’ I felt myself flushing with anger, but kept my voice level.
‘You wouldn’t have been – you’ll have to pardon me asking this sort of thing, miss, very painful I know, but it’s my duty – you didn’t get just a mite jealous of the new Mrs Warrington?’
‘It is no wonder,’ my mother burst out, ‘they have had to call in a stranger to carry on this obnoxious enquiry. The Ely police would not dare to behave in such a manner.’
I said: ‘My cousin and I were on perfectly normal terms. On the very day of her death she had sent for me, wishing me to visit her.’
‘For what purpose, miss?’
‘I can’t be sure. She was . . . she was dead when I got there.’
‘D’you fancy she might have sent for you to remonstrate with you?’
‘About what?’
‘About your continuing relationship with her husband.’
This time I could not restrain myself. ‘That’s a monstrous slander. Who has said a word of any such relationship? Who’s ever seen us together, or pretended to do so?’
He was stolid and insistent. ‘Did Mr Warrington know you would be meeting his wife at the Tempest Fen establishment?’
‘Why not ask him?’ I blazed.
‘I’ve already done so.’
‘Then you know the answer.’
‘I know hardly any answers yet. Not the right ones, anyway.’
Mother rose to her feet. ‘Inspector, I shall be obliged if you will now consider this interrogation at an end.’
Inspector Serpell remained seated, shifting his hat back to its original position and peering into it as though to coax from its remaining shiny surface one reflection of his own face.
‘Had you any reason to suppose, Miss Talbot, that Mr Warrington’s marriage was not a success?’
‘It was none of my concern.’
‘Did you have any inkling of possible violence – a violent outcome? When you and Mr Warrington met, did he ever give any indication that –’
‘We met only in other people’s company.’
‘Ah, yes. Yes, of course. And you detected nothing untoward, nothing potentially violent, in his manner?’
‘In this family it is not the custom,’ said my mother, ‘to indulge in malicious fancies about our friends and relations.’
The inspector said to me: ‘When you and Mr Warrington met at Tempest Fen, after the discovery of his wife’s body . . . how did he strike you then?’
‘He appeared as horrified as I was. He came in just after I had . . . after I’d . . . come across Caroline . . .’
‘Could he have been on the premises all the time?’
‘I’ve no way of knowing.’
‘Could your arrival have disturbed him?’
‘I refuse to be drawn into saying things which you will deliberately misinterpret –’
‘No, Miss Talbot. Please, I assure you. I am anxious only for the correct interpretation.’ He sighed. His head came forward over his hat. ‘How long did you talk together about the tragedy? What did you decide to do?’
I went over events again, as stoically as possible. Serpell asked a couple of questions about exact times, which I could answer with reasonable certainty since they all tied in with our departure from Ely, the length of the journey, and my parents’ time of arrival in Wisbech. In a mood of apparent frankness, which might or might not have been genuine, Serpell assured me that these details accorded with those he had been able to establish about Caroline’s movements. Dominic had not been at home when Caroline left and so could not verify her time of departure; but her maid and Aunt Aurelia had been able to confirm this.
There was a gap of more than an hour between her probable arrival at the Tempest Fen house and my own arrival there. How had that gap been filled?
I wondered whether the podgy little detective had heard the rumours of other assignations. If so, did he consider them on the same level as the same hurtful slanders about Dominic and myself?
‘Is there anything you remember,’ he was asking, ‘about that evening – any little thing, any trifle which struck you as odd? Any apparently trivial matter which worries you when you look back?’
‘Caroline was dead. Then Dominic came, and stayed while I went to Wisbech and informed my father and the police. That’s all I know.’
‘Think, Miss Talbot. Please think. If you recall nothing now, please keep thinking and let me know if something strikes you later.’ At last he was on his feet, preparing to take his leave. ‘Mr Warrington was not at home when Mrs Warrington went out that evening. Have you any knowledge, or any theory, of his whereabouts?’
‘How should I? At that time I must already have been on my way from Ely, with my mother and father.’
‘So you were. So you were.’ But he was tenacious. At the door he said: ‘We know the time that Mr Warrington left his office that afternoon. And we know that he did not go home. You may well not have known this in advance, Miss Talbot; but did he say anything, when you met after the tragedy, to indi
cate how he had passed the time?’
‘Nothing.’
It would be untrue to imply that Serpell threatened me. But there was a sceptical appraisal in his gaze which somehow indicated that I must eventually come round to his way of thinking: that there was something to be told which I had not yet told.
Was he trying to trap me? But into what? Even to myself I could honestly say that I had no idea.
‘Thank you for your patience, Mrs Talbot,’ he said. ‘And yours, Miss Talbot. And, Miss Talbot . . . if you should remember something, anything which you realize to be significant, I know you will feel it your duty to get in touch with me.’
He spoke so unctuously of duty. Out of all that distress and confusion, I was conscious of only one duty: a solemn commitment to the distant, trusting Count Florian.
*
Aunt Aurelia came, uninvited, from Wisbech to Ely to stay with us. ‘Until I know how I shall face life from now on,’ she announced. ‘I need time to build up my strength.’ And every square inch of new black cashmere whispered in agony. ‘I cannot stay one more moment in the same house as that . . . that murderer.’
‘Aurelia,’ said my father sternly, ‘you have no right to make such allegations.’
‘Who has a better right? Robbed of my husband by that wicked family. And now my daughter. Killed as surely as they killed my Henry!’
Mother led her away and administered a draught to calm her.
Scarcely was Aunt Aurelia soothed before we had another visitor, in no way susceptible to any calming influence whatsoever.
Mr John Warrington, appalled by the news which had dragged him back from London, wanted to dig out the truth. He stated bluntly that he would have liked to have his son present while we talked, but knowing local gossip he knew full well that any such gathering would give rise to talk of a conspiracy being hatched – a conspiracy to produce the least-damaging story.
Nevertheless some of us must talk. ‘If we’re to know the truth, we must find it amongst ourselves. It will emerge here rather than in a court of law.’
Such a pronouncement seemed to indicate the Sheriff’s early disillusionment with the processes he was learning to administer.
Mother said: ‘I think there have been far too many questions already.’
‘Nora was actually there, and –’
‘Nora has been subjected to more than enough persecution.’
Mr Warrington settled himself in a posture not unlike that of Inspector Serpell. But his expression was quite different. He was still a close, dear friend. Whatever hurt the rest of us might suffer, his was deeper.
He said: ‘Nora, tell me how Dominic looked that evening. Tell me anything which you feel must be told. And it will go no further. But I must know.’
‘Caroline was dead,’ I murmured. ‘I had just taken that in when he appeared on the scene. We were both stunned. How can I tell you how he looked? All I remember is . . . is how Caroline looked.’
‘You didn’t see or hear anything which would lead you to believe that Dominic had been there for some time before your arrival? That there had been a quarrel? That he had lost his head?’
‘I’ve been through all this with the policeman from Cambridge.’
‘I know you have. It’s degrading. If you could have been spared that –’
‘Then spare her this, John,’ said my father.
‘I am not a paid police inquisitor. They have a job to do, and most of them do it well. Insensitively, it may be, but well. But here We are talking as old friends caught up in a terrible situation. My daughter-in-law is dead. I will not pretend I liked her; but I did not wish her killed. Who did wish it? If it was my son –’
‘You expect me to incriminate him?’ I said.
He subjected me to the longest, most fierce scrutiny I have ever had to endure. I met his gaze and fought it down.
He said hoarsely: ‘My dear girl, he has a staunch ally. Finer than he deserves.’
It was borne in upon me that none of them believed I was telling the strict truth. They tried not to think, yet did think, that I was shielding Dominic. Shielding him, perhaps, because I still wanted him for myself. Mr Warrington’s admiration was real enough, yet reluctant. I felt that puritanically he would almost sooner his son were condemned than that he should get away unscathed from a savage murder, no matter what the provocation.
‘Dominic knew Caroline would be at the Tempest Fen house that evening,’ my father contributed; ‘but did not know Nora would be meeting her there?’
‘As far as I can make out, no, he wasn’t expecting Nora to be there. It’s difficult to make anything out. The boy has – dammit, turned in on himself, that’s the only way I can describe it. He won’t speak, won’t discuss it, takes every word as an insult. But . . .’ He hesitated, his face dark with struggle, then went on roughly: ‘Since it is between ourselves, I will tell you one thing which I believe to be true. He indicated to me – and then was sorry and would say no more about it – that he went to the house that night because of suspicions of Caroline. There was talk – already I’ve heard it, and challenged him with it – about Caroline and some other man. For myself I think it’s damned nonsense. Even Caroline . . . no, I don’t see why she should heap such humiliation on him. Not so soon.’
‘But even if such suspicions were groundless,’ said my father sadly, ‘he may have had them. And in a jealous rage, who knows what he might have been capable of?’
‘You put it all too plainly,’ said Mr Warrington.
I said: ‘But he had no grounds for suspicion that evening. Nothing to bring him to such a murderous pitch. Caroline would hardly have made an assignation with a man the same evening as she invited me there, would she?’
‘Dominic knew nothing about the invitation to you. And,’ said Mr Warrington, ‘why did she invite you?’
We seemed to be plodding along the same track as the one paced out by the detective from Cambridge. ‘She wasn’t alive to tell me,’ I said wearily.
‘Had you been quarrelling over my son? Were you meeting to thrash the matter out?’
‘Certainly not.’
‘Hm.’ Mr Warrington pondered. ‘When this wretched business is over,’ he said, ‘if all goes well I fancy I’ll move Dominic from the Wisbech office. Start him afresh in London. Maybe after a decent interval, if you think things can be put back on the old footing and you want to join him there –’
‘Really, John! I beg you . . .!’
My father was shocked. So was I. But Mr Warrington’s harshly matter-of-fact proposal for making the best of a bad job made it plain what doubts he had of me. And he was not the only one. Disapproving eyes watched my every move at the inquest. I could sense the disappointment of those packed into the little courtroom when the coroner limited proceedings to purely formal evidence of identification and a medical report on the cause of death – attempted strangulation, followed by a broken neck caused by falling against a heavy table. I told of my time of arrival at Tempest Fen, what I had found, and my recognition of the dead woman. Dominic did the same, identifying the corpse as that of his wife. The coroner then declared the inquest adjourned, since the police were pursuing enquiries which he was assured would be speedily completed. Permission to bury the late Mrs Warrington was granted.
There were ugly murmurs as Dominic left the courtroom. People had hoped to see the finger of the coroner pointed at him. He ought to have been arrested on the spot.
Old friends turned away from me. Few might believe me capable of murdering Caroline with my own hands, but many were prepared to believe that my influence on Dominic might have been responsible. Aunt Aurelia had carried on in front of the servants about seeing Dominic passionately embracing me so soon after his marriage – about my luring him on, under my parents’ roof. The story spread like wildfire. Even if I had not destroyed Caroline myself, my jealous influence made me a guilty party.
There were so many stories within such a short couple of days. One that reache
d us told of the police questioning Burridge, the tenant of the Temple Fen house whom Caroline had had ejected. A witness reported seeing him on the road earlier that fatal evening, recognizing him from a distance by his shape and his walk. But then came a denial: the police already had evidence that Burridge and his wife had been staying in King’s Lynn with his wife’s sister.
Was the sister prepared to perjure herself for him?
His animosity towards Caroline was well known. ‘If ever a man had reason . . .’ It was disturbing how many so-called sympathizers were eager to swear they had heard him curse Caroline and vow she’d get what was due to her one fine day.
And my own friends: oh, they were busily doing the same on–my behalf. Ely was no longer a happy place for me. Nor, on the day of the funeral, was Wisbech.
Caroline was laid to rest within the Warrington plot in St Peter’s churchyard. The rector was, so far as I could observe, the only person present who commiserated with the widower. Although scores of local people had chosen to attend the service, they did not choose to approach Dominic afterwards: indeed, it appeared that one of their main reasons for coming was to make a point of shunning him, and publicly at that.
As we walked sombrely down the path to the gate, Dominic came close beside me. Before he could speak, his father thrust himself between us. In a deep, urgent tone audible only to the two of us, he said:
‘You will not be seen speaking to each other.’
‘There are things I must tell Nora. We must decide what we are to say when –’
‘That is what you must not do. One passer-by, one servant, one gossip – and there will be accusations of conspiracy. For Nora’s sake, Dominic – you have done her enough damage – stay apart.’
Was he now laying all the blame on his son and acquitting me? Did he now think, after all . . . but no, poor Mr Warrington, he did not know what to think. I wanted to put a hand on his arm; but his grim expression forbade it. We continued on our way.
A man stood waiting just within the gate. There was something familiar in his stance, in the slight lean to one side and the way his right leg took all the weight.
