Dead In The Morning

by Margaret Yorke

  He crossed the room to the door, and Phyllis began to tidy the papers and oddments her mother had somehow managed to strew all over her bed.

  “You’ll get me up,” said Mrs Ludlow firmly, brandishing her stick. “And Cathy can take me around the garden when I’m ready. It will give her something to do.”

  Gerald exchanged a glance with his sister as he left the room; really, the old girl was incredible. She always made a daily inspection of the garden as soon as she came downstairs. On weekdays it was Bludgen’s duty to report at the house and wheel her round each morning; she knew every plant she owned and followed its fortunes like a mother her nurslings. On Sundays Phyllis or Gerald propelled her on this progress. Nothing was ever allowed to upset her routine, except an indisposition of her own, and clearly sudden death was to be no exception. He supposed that her strict ritual gave a framework to her existence.

  Frowning, Gerald went along to Mrs Mackenzie’s room. Phyllis had drawn the curtains halfway, in a compromise, so that the intrusive sun was dimmed but the room was not dark. Odd how impersonal it seemed, even though Mrs Mackenzie had lived in it for so many years. She had very few possessions on display, not even any photographs. The furnishings were those considered appropriate by Mrs Ludlow for her housekeeper: a high, old-fashioned bed, a bright oak wardrobe and a matching dressing-table. Phyllis had added an easy chair, some cushions and a radio, and there was an elderly television set, one that had been replaced downstairs by a more modern model. There were no books or papers to be seen, no knitting under way left out; Mrs Mackenzie kept everything concealed from view.

  Gerald hunted about. He found Mrs Mackenzie’s secret hoard of whisky in the wardrobe; and in a drawer he discovered a zipped writing case which contained some letters. Amongst them was her son’s address. There was nothing for it now but to ring up the young man and break the news. Gerald went out of the room, closed the door quietly, and walked slowly downstairs wondering how best to word it.

  Dr Wilkins met him at the foot of the stairs.

  “The police will be here very soon to take her away,” he said.

  “The police?” Gerald looked startled.

  “They deal with these things,” said the doctor. “Meanwhile, I wonder if you can tell me something. I made out a new prescription for your mother’s sleeping pills when I was here last week. Do you know if they’ve been collected yet? Could Mrs Mackenzie have fetched them? If so, it would account for her possession of sedatives.”

  Gerald stared at him.

  “But had she got some sleeping pills? Is that what she died of?” he asked.

  “I don’t know. Unfortunately, as I explained to Mrs Medhurst, until we know the post-mortem results there is no way of telling the cause of death. It may have been due to a stroke, or a heart attack, but it may have been something else. Your sister tells me that Mrs Mackenzie seemed perfectly well last night. I just wondered about the sleeping tablets, because these accidents can happen very easily.”

  “Mrs Mackenzie wasn’t the sort of person to make mistakes with drugs,” said Gerald. “She knew the dose. She gave my mother her medicines if Phyllis was out.”

  “She’d had some whisky,” said the doctor. “She might have got confused. Still, maybe this is barking completely up the wrong tree. We’ll simply have to wait. Meanwhile, I’ll go up and see your mother.”

  “She seems to be quite all right,” Gerald said.

  “A remarkably resilient woman,” said the doctor, as he went upstairs.

  Gerald watched him go. He should ring up young Mackenzie, but that could wait for ten minutes until things that mattered near at hand had been dealt with.

  “Helen?” he called. “Cathy? Where have you got to?”

  “We’re in the kitchen, Daddy,” Cathy’s voice replied.

  Gerald crossed the hall and went into the kitchen, where he found Cathy and Helen seated at the table. In front of each of them was an untasted cup of coffee.

  “Ah, coffee, just what I want,” said Gerald with bogus heartiness.

  “Neither of us can drink a drop,” said Cathy miserably. “I feel sick.”

  “I know what you need,” said Gerald. He left the room, and came back with a bottle of brandy from the dining- room; into each of their cups he poured a stiff tot. “Phyl could do with some too, I’m sure. Still, we’d better leave her to finish with Wilkins.”

  “Poor Aunt Phyl. She hasn’t had a bite,” said Cathy. “At least I had some cornflakes first.” She got up and poured her father a cup of coffee from the pot that was keeping hot on the stove. “Here you are, Daddy.”

  “Thanks.” Gerald added some brandy to it. “Drink up, you two,” he urged, and frowned at Helen, who picked up her cup and forced some of the coffee down. Cathy obediently followed this example, grimacing as she swallowed, but it did do her good; she felt better almost at once.

  “What’s going to happen, Daddy?” she asked. “Helen says that poor Mrs Mack will have to be cut up.”

  “Cathy dear, I didn’t put it quite like that,” protested Helen.

  “Well, that’s what a post-mortem means,” said Cathy. “Didn’t she have a heart attack?”

  “The doctor isn’t sure. He can’t tell without an examination,” said Gerald. “In every case of sudden death there has to be an inquiry, unless the person has been seen recently by a doctor and the death can be explained.”

  “It’s awful.” Cathy shivered. “There she was last night, as cheerful as could be. Why, she spent hours yesterday making a Charlotte Russe for today’s lunch. She made a special little one for herself, too, in case we didn’t leave her any, and she loves it. Used to, I mean.” At this, she suddenly burst into tears and Gerald put his arm round her.

  “There, there, little one,” he said, trying to think of words to comfort her. “She can’t have suffered. She was lying very peacefully, just as if she was asleep.”

  “I know,” wailed Cathy. “I thought she was asleep. But she was icy, icy cold!”

  III

  Hardly to his surprise, for his patient’s tough constitution had long been known to him, Dr Wilkins found Mrs Ludlow in good order. However, he advised a quiet day and an early night.

  “I had dinner in bed last night,” she told him. “I never keep late hours, as you are aware, but we had such an excitement on Friday. My son Gerald brought home his bride. You’ll meet her when you go downstairs.”

  “Indeed?” said the doctor, shutting up his bag. “I didn’t know Mr Ludlow was planning to re-marry.”

  “It was quite a surprise to us all,” said Mrs Ludlow. “She’s an American, quite charming. The family is delighted.” This was uttered in regal tones.

  “Splendid, splendid,” said the doctor, his mind already on what else must now be done. It would be as well if the old lady were to be diverted while the body was removed; this could not be managed without some disturbance in the house, so someone must distract her during the operation.

  “I’ll come down with you, Dr Wilkins,” said Phyllis, who was in the room with them. “I won’t be long, Mother.”

  “Send Helen up,” ordered Mrs Ludlow. “She can help me with my hair. She may as well learn what I need done.”

  It was true. Until a replacement for Mrs Mackenzie could be found, Helen might be very useful, if she were willing. Betty’s help was of doubtful value, for she was so clumsy that she was bound to pull Mrs Ludlow’s hair or bang into the furniture and bump the bed, however anxious she was to lend assistance.

  Phyllis felt gloomy about the future as she led the way out of her mother’s room.

  “Come and have some coffee, Phyl. You must need it,” Gerald said, appearing in the kitchen doorway when he heard her and the doctor coming downstairs. “You too, Dr Wilkins. I’ve got some brandy here as well.”

  “Just the medicine,” said the doctor.

  “Helen, Mother wants you to go and help her with her hair,” said Phyllis. “Could you bear it?”

  “I’ll go,�
�� said Gerald.

  “She wants Helen,” Phyllis said.

  “Of course I’ll go,” said Helen, standing up, a neat figure in her dark linen dress.

  “I’ll come too, shall I?” offered Cathy.

  “No, you stay where you are, my dear, and let your coffee settle,” said Helen. “Your grandmother won’t eat me. You forget that I’m used to elderly ladies.”

  “Phew, well, this will be a baptism of fire,” said Cathy, with a wry look.

  “Grandmother wants you to take her round the garden, Cathy,” said Phyllis. “I should hang on till then, if I were you, as long as Helen doesn’t mind.”

  Thumping sounds and the pealing of a bell could now be heard as Mrs Ludlow declared her impatience. Helen laid her hand lightly on Gerald’s arm for an instant, and then she left the room.

  The others sat down round the table again, and Cathy poured out the coffee for her aunt and the doctor. Gerald added generous amounts of brandy, and after they had sipped meditatively for a minute or two, Dr Wilkins spoke.

  “Mrs Medhurst, I gave you a new prescription for your mother’s sodium amytal capsules last week. Have they been collected yet?”

  Phyllis looked surprised. She exchanged a glance with her brother.

  “I got them from Fennersham on Friday,” she said. “But Mrs Mackenzie couldn’t have taken any of them, if that’s what you’re thinking. They’re still in the chemist’s parcel in the hall, where I left them. I was rather rushed on Friday and forgot to put them away, as I normally do at once. Mother still had a few left from the previous lot, in her room.”

  “You’re sure the new ones are still in the hall?”

  “Quite sure. I noticed them this morning. The car keys are kept on the chest in the hall, and the pills were there when I went to church. I remember thinking that I should have put them away.”

  Dr Wilkins got up and went out into the hall. He came back carrying a small paper bag printed with the name of the Fennersham chemist.

  “It’s a pity chemists don’t still seal their packets up with wax, as they used to do,” he said, opening the bag.

  He took the bottle out.

  There was no need to say anything. The three who watched could see for themselves that the bottle was half-empty.

  IV

  “And what happened after that?” demanded Patrick.

  It was the same afternoon. Cathy was sitting with him and Jane in the living-room at Reynard’s relating the events of the morning. At intervals in her tale Patrick had stopped her, making her clarify what she had said and ensuring that she left out no detail. “Oh, Patrick, stop it. Leave her alone, for heaven’s sake,” said Jane. “Poor girl, it’s been an awful experience for her.”

  “It’s much better for her to get it all off her chest rather than bottle it up,” Patrick said.

  “I hate you, Patrick Grant,” said his sister. “Your ordinary curiosity is bad enough, but this is too much. Forget it, Cathy.”

  “I can’t, Jane. Don’t you see, I keep going over and over it all in my mind as it is,” Cathy said. “I’m only telling you what I’ve already told the police. How can any of us think of anything else for a single minute? Even when we know why she did it, it will haunt us for ever. She must have been so unhappy, to do something so terrible, yet she always seemed cheerful.” She shook her head in bewilderment. “I just don’t understand it. She’d got a nice son and daughter, and grandchildren, and we were all fond of her. Besides, there was the Charlotte Russe.”

  “What about it?”

  “Mrs Mack had made a little one for herself, for lunch today, as well as a big one for us. She would never have done that if she hadn’t intended to eat it,” she said.

  There was a silence.

  “I’m inclined to believe you,” Patrick said.

  “Then there was all that about the lemon meringue,” Cathy went on. “Oh, I don’t see what it means.”

  “What about the lemon meringue?”

  “We had it for supper last night. The police asked about it. We had cold cucumber soup, and chicken fricassee, and then lemon meringue pie. Gran had hers in bed, she often does, but last night she didn’t eat her pudding. She said she was full. It’s unusual, because she has a very good appetite. Maybe that was why she was so starving this morning, at breakfast-time.”

  “Let me get this straight,” Patrick said. “Your grandmother didn’t eat her pudding last night, right?”

  “Right. She’d had rather a lot of excitement the night before, with Father and Helen arriving, so I suppose it wasn’t all that surprising, but it’s one of her favourite puddings.”

  “Well? And so?” Patrick prompted her.

  “We couldn’t find the piece. I mean, Aunt Phyl cut the pie into four, a piece each for her, Gran, Mrs Mack and me. As Gran didn’t eat hers, it should have been somewhere about, in the fridge or in the larder.”

  “Could it have been thrown away?”

  “We looked in the bin.”

  “Is there a waste disposer ? It might have been thrown away like that.”

  “Not in Winterswick,” said Jane. “There’s no main drainage here.”

  “Well, where do you think it went?” asked Patrick.

  “Into Mrs Mack, of course,” said Cathy. “She’d have gobbled it up. She loved sweet things, they were her weakness. She couldn’t resist eating up any left-over bits and pieces. Everyone knew that.”

  “Everyone?”

  “Well, all the family. Everyone at Pantons. Why, Daddy mentioned it the moment he got home. He said she’d put on weight and she must have been eating too many sweets.”

  “Did you tell the Inspector this?”

  Cathy thought for a minute.

  “No. I don’t think I did,” she said. “In fact, I know I didn’t. But it didn’t arise in our conversation. Should I have?”

  “It was for him to discover,” said Patrick in dulce tones, and his sister gave him a look. “He will, if it matters. It was the inspector who was looking for the pudding, was it?”

  “Yes. There was a sergeant, too, in the kitchen. I’d got the dishwasher full of things, Gran’s breakfast, and our cups - we’d all been drinking coffee full of brandy. They wouldn’t let me switch it on. There were one or two other things in it, too, that Mrs Mack had left.”

  “Such as the plate that had held the missing pie, for instance?”

  “One that could have been it, yes. And a glass. Nothing else. Mrs Mack always did the dinner things straight away,” said Cathy.

  “And she posted a letter yesterday morning in time to catch the midday clearance,” Patrick said. “An extra letter to her daughter.”

  “That’s guessing,” said Jane.

  “It’s an informed guess,” said Patrick. “It’s a break from routine. If anything had upset her, the letter might say what it was.”

  “But she wasn’t upset, Dr Grant,” Cathy insisted. “Oh, what do you think went wrong?”

  “I don’t know, Cathy. I just don’t know,” said Patrick, but he looked extremely thoughtful.

  “Why don’t you try and think about something more cheerful, Cathy?” said Jane. “Your university entrance, for instance.”

  “I can’t really think about it now,” Cathy sighed. She made an effort, and added, “I suppose I should aim high and start with a bash at Oxford.”

  “Indeed you should. How about writing to the principal of St Joan’s and putting out feelers? I’ll write too, and say you seem a promising wench,” said Patrick.

  “Oh, would you? Do you know her?”

  “Intimately,” said Patrick with a grin. “She’s my aunt.”

  After Cathy had gone, which she did in a sudden rush, saying she must go and help with the chores, Jane gave Patrick another severe scolding.

  “Say what you like, it did the girl good to spill it out,” he repeated. “And she has a well-ordered mind, too. She told it well.”

  “Who cares about how she told it? Poor child, she comes dow
n here to escape for half-an-hour, and you pin her down like a butterfly on a board with your beastly questions.”

  “How colourfully you express yourself, Jane,” he said admiringly. “A fine turn of phrase, that, about the butterfly.”

  “Oh, you’re a brute, an insensitive brute,” said Jane.

  “And pretty, too, when roused,” Patrick went on.

  “Swine,” said Jane, turning on her heel. “I’m going to talk to Andrew. He at least is civilised.”

  “A matter of opinion, I should say,” observed the baby’s uncle to her departing back.

  She returned some time later in a calmer mood and picked up The Sunday Times. Patrick had already finished the crossword, so she flung it down again with an angry mutter.

  “Why are you so interested, anyway?” she demanded. “Mrs Mackenzie’s death must have been an accident.”

  “Yes. But what sort of accident, that’s the question. Mrs Ludlow didn’t eat her lemon pie, but Mrs Mackenzie did. Mrs Mackenzie was loved by all, and needed; Mrs Ludlow wasn’t.”

  “No, Patrick. You’re being sensational. You know too many thriller-writing dons,” said Jane. “This is a very serious affair.”

  “I quite agree,” said Patrick. “And justice must be done. Work it out for yourself. Mrs Ludlow leads them all a dance, we know that. She has Phyllis Medhurst on a string, without a life of her own, and they all have to jump to it when the old girl wishes.”

  “Yes, but to murder her! That’s what you’re getting at, isn’t it? The sleeping pills were in the pie and the wrong person ate it?”

  “That’s how it looks,” said Patrick.

  “But why? Lots of people have tiresome relations, but they don’t bump them off.”

  “There must have been powerful reasons,” Patrick said. “Things we don’t yet know about. People are seldom only what they seem, as you should know, Jane. Behind the facades of these prim villas and gentrified cottages here in Winterswick many a drama must go on.”

  “No, Patrick. People are basically decent.”