He squared his shoulders, grinned at Sergeant Flood, and started down the garden to talk to Pat.
Chapter 15
THE COTTERELS heard from Pat next morning what had been said in his talk with the chief inspector. He and Cordelia were loading up the Volksie to set out for a day-long picnic on the Downs. When Caroline, with Becky, went out to them, they said they were going to take advantage of the fine weather. One might have guessed they were still in the middle of a perfectly ordinary holiday.
“How did it go with the police yesterday?” Caroline asked Pat.
He shrugged, his blue eyes, as so often, rather distant, as if this were some affair not really his.
“All right. Not much I could tell him, really. Granville and I went into the bar after dinner and drank beer. I didn’t find him all that interesting, but a little knot of people began gathering round us, because of the Myra Mason connection, I suppose. He seemed rather to like having an audience, so I just slipped out. That was long before the shooting.”
“And you came back here?”
“That’s right.”
“Drove?”
“Of course. Cordelia doesn’t drive. I knew she’d be quite happy walking home.”
Caroline realized she had begun to sound rather like a police inquisitor herself, but she said: “Was the inspector happy with that?”
Pat shrugged again. “He had to be. It was the truth. In the nature of things you can’t expect everyone to have an alibi.”
“True,” said Caroline. “We don’t have watertight alibis ourselves. They say it’s the ones with perfect alibis who are the most suspicious.” She looked toward the Rectory gates, now largely unpicketed by reporters. “At least the press rabble seems to have moved on elsewhere.”
“They’ve quartered themselves at the Red Lion,” said Pat, getting into the car. “They’ve decided that’s where the action is. We were down there last night, but they kept pestering us, so we came away.”
There had been first a large, then a middle-sized, press contingent outside the Rectory gates since the news of the murder broke. Now there was just one man to snap Pat and Cordelia as they drove out through the gates and down the road toward Maudsley. The police had leaked the news that Dame Myra’s daughter had been coming up from the beach at the time of the murder, and the press had concluded that they would have to get their leads elsewhere. The obvious place was the Red Lion, especially to a race of men and women for whom alcohol was a way of life.
Press coverage of the Myra Mason murder had been sensational—front-page stuff every day since it broke. That was inevitable, given Myra’s eminence and her private life. The press had a wad of material on her loves, her rivalries, her tantrums, including quite a lot of juicy items they had hitherto been chary of publishing. Death is a great unlocker of tongues, the libel laws being what they are. Every day, it seemed, was a field day. Former lovers were queuing up in Fleet Street to tell, or rather to sell, “their stories” to the various tabloid muckrakers. The titled lovers were offering themselves to the Sunday Times.
Coverage of the murder itself was, by comparison, vague. The papers knew the time of the shot and that it had been heard by “a woman” (Mrs. Goodison, doubtless conscious of the ludicrous aspects of her situation, had declined to talk to the press and had in fact moved on as soon as her usefulness to the police had ended), who had come to Dame Myra’s husband and insisted that it be investigated. The place where she had been when she heard the shot was variously referred to as the toilet, the lavatory, the loo, the smallest room, and the little girls’ room, depending on the class of the reporter or the nature of the newspaper he wrote for.
The latest new item of information in the papers that Roderick and Caroline flicked through at breakfast time had been the make of the gun—a Webley and Scott .38. This piece of information had been released by the police the day before. It was really the only piece of hard news. Otherwise, the papers filled in with contributions from the locals or from the tourists staying or drinking in the Red Lion: descriptions of how they had heard the shot in the bar, how shivers had gone down their spines, dread premonitions weighed them down, and so on, followed up by detailed accounts of how Granville Ashe had gone up to find the body. Isobel had yesterday given one reporter a detailed account of the row in Myra’s bedroom that she had heard when she “happened” to go up twice to her own bedroom. Her shivers and her dread premonitions had apparently been even more pronounced than anyone else’s. She was, she had told the reporter, psychic, or at any rate fey.
Isobel, in fact, was a surprise visitor that morning. More surprising still, she had walked from the Red Lion. She was, the Cotterels decided, “hyped up.” When she walked into the sitting room, she forgot to do her usual performance of looking around appraisingly to see what outrages or acts of neglect they had perpetrated on “her” property. They decided she must have been unhealthily excited by all the sensation and publicity of the last few days, and in fact, as soon as she had lit up a cigarette, she drew from her bag a copy of the previous day’s Daily Star, which had the interview with her in it.
“I knew you wouldn’t have seen this, so I brought it along,” she announced. “You intellectuals always pretend to despise the popular press.”
“I do despise the popular press,” said Roderick. “But actually we have seen it. I drove into Maudsley yesterday to get all the papers.”
“Feeling a bit guilty about it,” Caroline’s honesty forced her to admit.
“Still, an interest is natural,” said Roderick. “And the popular papers sometimes get on to things the others have missed, particularly in cases like this. Of course, they’ve all raked up the business with Father again.”
“Of course, an interest is natural,” said Isobel, dismissing the business with Father with a wave of her hands—hands that in fact were today never still. She gazed at them greedily. “Wasn’t it a fabulous interview?”
“Very . . . effective,” said Roderick.
“Of course, all the reporters have been in and out of the Red Lion all the time, buzzing like bees round a honey pot,” continued his sister with a kind of hectic complacency. “But I kept quiet and didn’t say anything. Until this awfully nice young man approached me—terribly sweet, an awful flatterer”—her hands fluttered to her face, and the Cotterels had no difficulty imagining the extremes of flattery to which the young man had resorted—“so anyway, we had this long conversation in my room, and he said he’d never known a better interviewee than I was. Which bit did you like best? Did you like the bit where I said I thought it was a judgment on Myra for what she did to Father?”
Roderick had long ago decided that with his sister dishonesty was the best policy.
“Striking,” he said. “A case of the mills of God grinding quite exceptionally slowly. I was surprised at your being so indignant on Father’s behalf, though.”
Isobel gave a gesture of contempt for the father angle. “Well, of course that was a sort of code for what I really meant. We had to talk a bit about Father to make quite clear who I am. What I really meant was the awful pain to us—to Mother—that the affair caused.”
“Mother was upset by the publicity,” Roderick admitted. “She was beyond being upset by Father’s affairs by that stage.”
“We were all terribly bruised by the publicity,” asserted Isobel. Caroline could barely suppress a smile. Isobel had been married by the time the affair became public knowledge and (if her present conduct was anything to go by) had probably dined out on the publicity for weeks. “Anyway, you’ve no idea of the excitement the interview has caused. Telephone calls from all sorts of people—friends, business associates of Cyril’s, even my chiropodist. And Darrell has called to say he’s coming to fetch me—which frankly he would never have done if he hadn’t wanted to get in on all the excitement.”
Darrell was Isobel’s only son, whom Roderick had always found a particularly loathsome young man. Isobel’s assessment of his character, he f
elt, was unusually accurate.
“Jolly good,” he said.
“Of course, I can’t go till I’ve talked to the chief inspector,” said Isobel, her eyes sparkling unnaturally with anticipation. “That’s this afternoon at half past three. I’m frightfully looking forward to it. I think he’s an awfully attractive man, don’t you?”
“And acute,” said Caroline warningly.
“Oh, naturally. They’d put their best man on to the murder of Myra Mason, wouldn’t they? I expect he’ll be very interested in what I have to say.”
In the event, Darrell Allick was already at the Red Lion when Roderick drove his sister back there. He recognized his back in the window of the Saloon Bar and turned the car straight round. Chief Inspector Meredith, that afternoon, was less lucky. Darrell drove his mother to the police station at Cottingham and insisted on escorting her in. His attentiveness to her was ostentatious but uncertain, as if he were unsure of how it was done. He was a fleshy, androgynous young man who seemed intent on bridging the gap between the sexes. Meredith, who happened to be talking to the duty sergeant, could hardly forbear a sharp intake of breath to indicate his distaste. When his mother was taken through to the interview room, Darrell sat in the outer office, double chinned and pop-eyed, reading stock market prices in the Financial Times and eating chocolate.
In the interview room Isobel Allick’s performance was as nervous and gauche as it had been that morning at the Rectory. Perhaps she was unaware of the impression she made, perhaps she could do no other. It was difficult to imagine a manner less calculated to impress a policeman. One thing came forth very clearly: She was enjoying herself.
To calm her and to give himself time to assess her, Meredith took her through a recital of bare facts. Name: Isobel Allick. Date of birth: August 15, 1939. Place of residence: Dalberry House, Mitton, near Stroud. Husband’s profession: Company director. Before long, however, Isobel had launched herself into a colorful account of The Quarrel.
“What struck me, you see, hearing the voices the first time I went up—I’m terribly sensitive to atmosphere, preternaturally, so my friends tell me—”
“Yes—I read your interview.”
“Oh, did you? Well, as I said to the woman who sat next to me in the bar (she’s been here when I’ve been here before, I think, though she wasn’t very forthcoming)—as I said, what struck me was the violence in the voices. The sense of a coming storm. You could hear that Cordelia—poor Cordelia!—hated her mother, and in Dame Myra’s voice there was sheer contempt.” Isobel shuddered. “Contempt! Can you imagine it? For her own daughter! I can hardly bear to think about it. So, as I say, it was this premonition of violence that made me so afraid, forced me to go up a second time and make sure I was wrong. And then, of course, they were actually fighting! If only that husband of hers had taken my warnings seriously.”
This had been one of the keynotes of Isobel’s newspaper interview. Clearly she was ignoring any suggestions that Cordelia was in the clear, if only because that diminished her own role earlier in the evening. Meredith, for his part, was not greatly interested in the row any longer. He was more concerned with what happened later. He said:
“You didn’t go upstairs again later on? After that second time?”
“Oh, no.” Her hand fluttered to her breast. “I felt . . . well, snubbed, if you want the truth. By her husband. Though now I feel rather proud that I did what I did, however useless it turned out to be.”
“I believe you introduced yourself to Dame Myra earlier in the evening, is that right?”
“Yes. There is a connection, you see.”
“You’d never met her before?”
“No—of course, never. In the circumstances.” Isobel seemed to be trying to give the impression that, with her wide acquaintanceship with the great and famous, a meeting with Myra would otherwise have been inevitable.
“The circumstances being the fact that your father had had an affair with her!”
“Well, obviously. No secret about that—Myra saw to it that there never could be. Spread it over the sort of paper the servants read. I would hardly have wanted to meet her.”
“Yet on Monday night you went up and introduced yourself.”
“Oh, well—now. After so many years. And with Father practically a vegetable.” She screwed up her face into an unattractive moue. “Really, it’s a pity in his case there’s no life-support system to be switched off!”
“You were not close to your father?”
Isobel bridled. “Oh, I don’t know about that. But Father was never what I’d call a family man. Being an only child himself, I don’t think he really appreciated what a close family could be. I was as close to him as any daughter was likely to be, granted that we saw so little of him.”
“You never tried to be closer—never lived with him for any length of time?”
“Oh, no. I wouldn’t have wanted to. I’m not very fond of arty people, you know. And Mumsy and I were very close.”
“So you never resented Myra?”
“Oh, no! Why should I?”
“Or Cordelia—his other daughter?”
“Heavens no! I was grown up by then.” She leaned forward, the greedy, excited look in her eyes. “If she is his daughter, of course.”
“You question whether she is?”
“Well, nobody can know who their father is, can they? Unless their parents were alone on a desert island at the time. And the things you read about Dame Myra’s morals . . .”
She overheard the bit about the Cameron Highlander, thought Meredith. But he was suspicious of Isobel’s constant insistence on matters connected with Cordelia.
“You mentioned your mother. Tell me about your family.”
“Oh—Mumsy came from solid business people. Her family had a pottery factory in the Midlands—solid, respectable, quite well known. And of course the Cotterels are very distinguished. You can trace the family back to the Second Zulu War.”
Meredith looked at her incredulously. Could she be as stupid as she sounded? She gazed back, satisfied she had impressed, quite unconscious of having said anything ridiculous. Suddenly he guessed how it could have happened. Her father, in her childhood, had heard somebody boasting that they could trace their family back to the Crusades or the Wars of the Roses. And he had claimed in jest to be able to trace his back to the Second Zulu War. And Isobel had gone on claiming it, on and off, ever since. She must indeed be a stupid woman—and a decidedly ill educated one, a fact that reflected little credit on her father.
“I meant really your family life at home.”
“Oh—well, as I said, there wasn’t a great deal of it, not as far as my father was concerned. I believe Mumsy and Father were very happy at first. Father had been married before, for about five minutes, so I think the second time round he did try to make a go of it. But Roderick always says he wasn’t naturally mon—mon—”
“Monogamous?”
“Yes. So that by the time I was growing up, there wasn’t much family life involving Father at all.”
“There were just you two children?”
“That’s all. Mumsy brought us up. She was very brave, and she made a beautiful job of it. She’d become a Catholic, so there was no question of divorce.”
“And I suppose you both benefit when your father should die?”
“That’s right. I get the house, and Roderick and Caroline get all the rights to the books. I must say I don’t think that is a fair distribution! I think they played on him, using Becky. It would almost serve them right if people lost interest in the books, wouldn’t it?”
Meredith left a pause, wondering whether by gesture or word Mrs. Allick would show that she was ashamed of what she had just said. There was no such sign. Meredith sighed, very quietly.
“You mentioned just now that your father had been married twice. Could you tell me about the first marriage?”
“Goodness, no. It was before I was born.”
“Yes, I realize that.
Did you never hear talk of it?”
“Not much. Roderick would know. They have all the papers up there at the Rectory—and are no doubt planning to get a great sum for them when he dies.” She wrinkled her forehead. “I believe it was about 1925 or ’26—some chorus girl or flapper, or something of that kind. Boy-and-girl romance, or not much more. She went on to marry some lord or duke or other, and they were both killed in the war.”
“Ah, she’s dead.”
“Oh, yes, long ago.”
“And no children by your father?”
“Oh, no, certainly not.” She looked at him, trying to puzzle something out. “I really don’t understand these questions about Father’s wives and possible children. It’s Myra who was killed, isn’t it? And I don’t see why you need try to find more children, Chief Inspector.”
“I’m sorry, I don’t get— Oh, I see. You mean there’s Cordelia.”
“Well, but naturally.”
“But I’m afraid that at the time the murder shot was fired, Cordelia Mason was on her way up from the beach.”
“Oh, but it’s obvious that was some kind of trick, isn’t it? I mean, surely . . . She must have shot her with a silencer earlier on. Perhaps that later shot was a car backfiring. I’m sure a clever man like you will work out how it was done. It’s so obvious that it must be her. Everyone knew they were working up to an almighty row, they had the almighty row, because I heard it, and heard Cordelia attack her mother. Obviously the row ended with Cordelia shooting her.”
“Dame Myra by this time having got into bed and lain there calmly waiting to be shot? No, I don’t think so, Mrs. Allick.”
But when she had gone, exuding an air of dudgeon and apparently believing that she had handed him the solution to the case on a plate and had it rejected, he did reflect on one thing she had said.
“Everyone knew they were working up to an almighty row . . .”
At Death's Door Page 14
