Nice Class of Corpse

by Simon Brett

  Miss Wardstone munched disapprovingly on her dry toast and marmalade. Butter, being something she might enjoy, was rigorously excluded from her diet, and, from the expression on her face, she had selected the tartest of marmalades. Miss Wardstone exuded such unadulterated bitterness that it was tempting to think some might have been channelled into murder. She had made no secret of her delight at Mrs. Selsby’s death and her impatience to claim the old lady’s sea-front room.

  But, reluctantly, Mrs Pargeter had to rule this candidate out too.

  It was the cyanide attack that put Miss Wardstone out of the running. Mrs Pargeter felt convinced that the attempt on her life had been prompted by what she had said in the Schooner Bar the night before. Though she hadn’t intended it quite that way, she now realised that her words could have been interpreted by the murderer as a warning that she was on his or her track. And, of course, because of Miss Wardstone’s avoidance of anything that might dilute her natural sourness, she had not been in the bar the previous night.

  That left three – the two gentlemen, already deep in their customary conversation of gnomic non sequiturs, and Eulalie Vance.

  Mrs Pargeter thought about the former actress. There was certainly a lot of emotion there on the surface, but that might hide more complex emotions surging underneath. The heart that is worn on the sleeve is not always the true heart. And an actress is trained to deception. Mrs Pargeter wondered what possible motive Eulalie could have had against Mrs Selsby.

  ‘Mrs Pargeter.’

  The voice was so close that she started. Absorbed in her thoughts, she had not noticed anyone else come into the room.

  ‘Good morning, Miss Naismith.’

  ‘I wonder,’ said the proprietress silkily, ‘whether it would be possible for you to step into the Office for a quiet word in a moment . . . ?’

  ‘Yes. Of course. Time for me just to have another cup of tea?’

  ‘Certainly, Mrs Pargeter.’

  As Miss Naismith glided out of the Admiral’s Dining Room, it occurred to Mrs Pargeter that there was another person who had witnessed what she had said the previous night in the Schooner Bar.

  ‘Come in,’ called the voice from inside the Office door.

  Mrs Pargeter entered. Miss Naismith sat behind her desk, looking atypically ill at ease. Her fingers fiddled nervously with what appeared to be a paper-knife.

  ‘Mrs Pargeter. Thank you for coming. Please sit down.’

  Mrs Pargeter obeyed. Miss Naismith’s fingers still fiddled, twitchily feeling along the blade of the knife. This was out of character, a lapse of breeding that denoted considerable inward perturbation.

  ‘What’s the problem, then?’ asked Mrs Pargeter comfortably.

  ‘The fact is . . .’ Miss Naismith rose from her desk and moved across to check that the door was closed. ‘The fact is that something rather distressing has occurred.’

  ‘Oh yes?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Miss Naismith’s voice was now behind her, but Mrs Pargeter did not turn round as she asked, ‘What’s that, then?’

  There was a long silence, as though the proprietress were steeling herself to some distasteful duty.

  At last the words came out, expelled by a ferocious effort of will. ‘The fact is, Mrs Pargeter, that I owe you an apology.’

  After this painful sentence had been spoken, Miss Naismith seemed to relax. She moved back to her desk, sat down and placed the paper-knife on its surface, neatly aligned with her blotter.

  ‘You may remember, Mrs Pargeter, that we had an unfortunate misunderstanding a few days ago.’

  ‘Oh?’ Mrs Pargeter wasn’t going to make it easy; she was determined that Miss Naismith should finish up every scrap of her humble pie and then wipe the plate.

  ‘With regard to Mrs Selsby’s jewels . . .’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘And I made an accusation that was, in retrospect, extremely ill-considered.’

  Mrs Pargeter smiled pleasantly.

  ‘The fact is, I have now discovered who the real perpetrator of the crime was.’

  Mrs Pargeter didn’t volunteer that she also knew. Apart from anything else, she wanted to know how Miss Naismith had found out the truth.

  ‘The identity of the criminal is not, I’m afraid, something that reflects favourably on the Devereux.’

  Mrs Pargeter bit back the temptation to say, ‘You amaze me.’

  ‘Mrs Selsby’s jewels were stolen by a member of my staff.’ Oh, how it hurt her to say the words!

  Mrs Pargeter allowed herself the indulgence of a raised eyebrow.

  ‘Newth, Mrs Pargeter. It was Newth. I am terribly disappointed to have to say this, and I feel utterly betrayed, but I’m afraid it is the truth.’

  Mrs Pargeter still kept silence, confident that all the details would come out if she bided her time.

  ‘Perhaps because of a guilty conscience or perhaps because he thought that his crimes were about to be discovered, it seems that Newth ran away from the hotel last night. Unfortunately, however, he is not a fit man – he has been suffering for some years from a heart condition – and the effort of running . . . or the strains of his guilt . . . led him to have a heart attack. He collapsed, it seems, on the outskirts of Littlehampton, where he was discovered in the small hours of this morning and taken to hospital.

  ‘There he was examined and found to be in need of major surgery – open-heart surgery, I believe they call it. When he heard this, it seems that, aware of the risks of such an operation, he wanted to make a clean breast of his crimes. The police were summoned to the hospital, where Newth confessed that not only did he steal Mrs Selsby’s jewellery the night after she died, but also that he had stolen it before!’

  Mrs Pargeter nodded, and Miss Naismith looked rather disappointed. She had expected more reaction to this bombshell.

  ‘Apparently – and you can imagine how distressed I was to hear this – over a period of months Newth had been stealing individual items of Mrs Selsby’s jewellery and replacing them with imitations!’

  This revelation was rewarded by no more than another nod.

  Miss Naismith looked disgruntled, but had to continue. ‘I need not tell you how shocked I was by this revelation. The police telephoned me about half an hour ago and I could hardly believe what they told me. However, I am reluctantly forced to the conclusion that it is the truth.’

  There was another silence. Miss Naismith was being made to work every inch of the way.

  ‘So, Mrs Pargeter, once again I apologise. I cannot tell you how appalled I am by what has happened. I have spent a good part of my life building up the reputation of the Devereux, and to have that reputation sullied by a crime on the premises is a severe blow to everything that I have ever believed in.’

  Yes, Mrs Pargeter thought, you really mean that. The gentility, the ‘niceness’, the ‘class’ of the Devereux matters to you more than anything in the world. Which is why you would never threaten its image by committing a crime here yourself. Which is why I must strike you too off my list of murder suspects.

  ‘So, Mrs Pargeter . . . Please. Please may I ask you to accept my apology . . . ?’

  Mrs Pargeter was not vindictive. She had had her triumph, she had won the battle, and was not the sort to gloat over her victory.

  ‘Of course, love,’ she said, and held out her hand.

  Miss Naismith reached hers daintily across the table and they shook hands.

  Not soul-mates, perhaps, but at least no longer in a state of open war.

  40

  Eulalie Vance was sitting alone in the Seaview Lounge when Mrs Pargeter entered after her interview with Miss Naismith. The former actress was ensconced in one of the armchairs that were usually occupied by Colonel Wicksteed and Mr Dawlish. She was looking out over the mournful sea.

  In her hands she held a hard-covered dark blue diary.

  ‘Good morning,’ said Mrs Pargeter companionably, settling into the other armchair.

  ‘Good m
orning,’ Eulalie contrived to make the words a long sigh as well as a greeting.

  ‘You don’t look too perky.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Problems?’

  This was met by a little laugh that seemed to suggest that a new word was needed to describe the sort of problems Eulalie had.

  ‘Anything that talking would help?’ asked Mrs Pargeter. ‘I mean, I don’t want to pry, but . . . you know, a trouble shared and all that . . .’

  ‘Yes.’ Very quickly the actress made the decision that talking would help. ‘Are you a creature of passion, Melita?’

  ‘I have been,’ Mrs Pargeter replied cautiously.

  ‘Then you know what it is like to have done things in a moment of passion, things that you subsequently come to regret?’

  ‘Ye-es.’

  ‘I have always been a slave to my passions,’ Eulalie Vance announced with a kind of helpless pride. ‘As a result, there are many things in my life that I have come to regret.’

  ‘And some, presumably, that you remember fondly?’

  ‘Of course. God, at my age what have I got left but memories? No, there have been moments . . . moments again of passion, but of a different kind, that I will treasure till my dying day. Which,’ she added gloomily, ‘may, I fear, not be far away.’

  ‘Oh, come on. You’re good for a few years yet.’

  This idea raised a desperate little laugh of cynicism. Then Eulalie’s eyes narrowed and she looked hard at her companion. ‘Do you believe that all is fair in love and war?’

  Mrs Pargeter maintained her cautious approach. ‘I’ve certainly heard it said.’

  ‘Amor vincit omnia,’ Eulalie announced despairingly.

  ‘I’ve heard that said, too.’

  ‘Yes. What I mean is that love is so powerful, love so upturns the soul, that anything can be done in the cause of love.’

  ‘You mean that someone in love is above the restrictions of conventional morality?’

  ‘Exactly!’ To emphasise her point, Eulalie banged the diary down on her knee. Then she became quiet and abstracted, as if the director had told her that the next scene was to show a marked change of mood. ‘I believe . . . firmly believe . . . that love can justify anything. But when someone is dead, it is hard not to feel the prickings of conscience. . . .’

  ‘When a lover’s dead . . . ?’ Mrs Pargeter prompted gently.

  ‘Huh.’ Another wild little cry of despair. ‘Nearly all my lovers, I fear, are dead. That is perhaps the ultimate cruelty of age, for those of us who believe in reality.’

  ‘What do you mean exactly?’

  ‘I mean there are two sorts of people. There are those who separate love and life, who compromise, settle down with one person, marry perhaps, and keep love as a cherished fantasy. And then there are those who live the fantasy, those who do not dream of one perfect lover, but take the lover of the moment – and take all the heartbreak that involves. . . .’

  ‘Ye-es.’ Mrs Pargeter thought she should qualify this generalisation. After all, it didn’t match her own experience. ‘There are of course some who combine both, who find their fantasies are matched by reality.’

  Eulalie dismissed the existence of such earthbound souls with a toss of her coiled hair. ‘The disadvantage is, for those who have lived the reality, as their lovers die, they too are left to feed on fantasy.’

  ‘Yes, I suppose they are.’ Mrs Pargeter wasn’t sure where all this was leading. ‘What exactly do you mean? Has one of your lovers died recently?’

  ‘Not one of my lovers, no.’

  ‘Who, then?’

  ‘The wife of one of my lovers,’ Eulalie Vance said on one sustained, soft breath.

  ‘So does that mean your lover is now free for you?’

  ‘Oh no.’ She elongated the ‘no’ to almost impossible dimensions. ‘He, I fear, is long dead. No, that is the irony. While we were together, how we longed for his wife’s death. “If it weren’t for my wife . . .” he would always say. If it hadn’t been for his wife, we could have been together years ago. But no. She lived on, and he felt a duty to her. In spite of the passion he and I shared, he still felt a duty to his wife. And, in time, he went back to her.’

  ‘Ah. Well . . . That happens quite often, I believe.’

  ‘Oh yes. It’s a cliché. To think that the love between me and Norton Selsby should have been reduced to a cliché!’

  ‘Selsby?’ said Mrs Pargeter.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Like . . . Mrs Selsby?’

  ‘Yes.’ There was now a wildness in Eulalie Vance’s eyes. ‘Mrs Selsby. That’s the final bitter irony, isn’t it? I end up by chance living in the same hotel with the faded, pale nonentity to whom duty made my lover return.’

  ‘It must have been difficult for you,’ Mrs Pargeter said judiciously. ‘Was anything said?’

  ‘What could be said? She never knew.’

  ‘Never knew her husband had had an affair with you?’

  ‘No. Never suspected a thing. For six months Norton and I lived the heady perfection of love, drained the cup of passion to its dregs . . . and his bloodless wife continued her tedious domestic round and didn’t notice a thing.’

  ‘In some ways that was rather fortunate, wasn’t it? I mean, if she had known, it could have made your both living here rather awkward, couldn’t it?’

  ‘Huh. Oh no, it wasn’t difficult for her. Nothing had ever been difficult for her. In spite of her coldness, Norton gave her everything, bowed to her every whim. But . . .’ Some director had once taught Eulalie the effectiveness of a mid-sentence pause. ‘. . . how do you think it must have been for me?’

  ‘It can’t have been easy. I can see that,’ Mrs Pargeter conceded.

  ‘Not easy? You have a gift for understatement. To be constantly reminded of the past, to have constantly before me the pale, insipid thing for which he gave me up . . . you cannot conceive the torment.’

  ‘So what did you do about it?’

  ‘I was very good. Dear God, how good I was! I did nothing. I said nothing. I suppressed all the emotions boiling within my breast.’ She clasped the diary to the Indian print of her substantial bosom. ‘I tortured myself, but I could stand it. I could stand it . . . until a couple of weeks ago. . . .’

  ‘What happened a couple of weeks ago?’ asked Mrs Pargeter quietly.

  ‘For some reason the conversation got around to letters . . . old letters, rereading old letters. Lady Ridgleigh, I think, started it. She said how she had kept every word that Froggie – that was her husband – had ever sent her. And then Mrs Selsby said she had kept all Norton’s letters.’

  ‘And you were worried that there were some from you?’

  ‘Good heavens, no! There were no letters between us. I wanted to write, but Norton said no. He was always worried about the risk of being found out, so he never wrote to me, and he wouldn’t let me write to him.’

  ‘So what was your problem when Mrs Selsby mentioned the letters?’

  Eulalie Vance looked amazed at this lack of comprehension. ‘Well, the fact that they existed! There was I, having experienced the greatest love there ever was, and I had nothing to cherish but my memories. And there was she, with a whole set of mementoes of her own anaemic, loveless relationship with the same man.’

  ‘Did she imply that what she had were love letters?’

  ‘Yes.’ Eulalie Vance laughed harshly. ‘Which only goes to make it more ridiculous.’

  Mrs Pargeter thought she was beginning to see the picture. Norton Selsby had probably had a perfectly satisfactory physical relationship with his wife. Eulalie had been his ‘bit on the side’. After six months, suffering partly from boredom and partly from risk-fatigue, he had, like so many men before him, decided to quit while he was ahead. So he had ‘gone back to his wife’, who had welcomed him without elaborate ceremony, never having realised he’d been away.

  But, though she could easily sketch in the likely scenario of the affair, it was harder to gue
ss at its more recent consequences.

  ‘What happened?’ she asked.

  ‘Happened?’

  ‘When you found out about the letters?’

  ‘Well, I . . . As I said, I am a slave to passion, a creature of impulse. I did something impulsive. It was also . . . cruel.’

  ‘And that was the thing you were saying you regretted?’

  Eulalie Vance nodded, her face set in a tragic mask. ‘It was just vindictive. At the time I thought it would make me feel better, I thought the shock of what I did would clear the emotions inside me. But now that she’s dead . . .’

  ‘You feel sorry you did it?’

  Eulalie nodded again.

  ‘Tell me exactly what happened.’

  It was as if the director had told her that this narration would be most effective delivered numbly, quietly, without overt emotion.

  ‘It was about three days before she died . . . just before you came to the hotel. I went into her room when I knew everyone would be downstairs waiting for tea. She didn’t keep anything locked up. It was easy to find what I was looking for.’

  ‘The letters . . . ?’

  ‘Yes. They were in one of the drawers of her bureau, a thick bunch, tied with a pink ribbon – or perhaps it had been a red ribbon and faded, I don’t know. I knew they were the right ones. Even though Norton never wrote me letters, I knew his handwriting. I took them.’

  ‘And what did you find out when you read them?’

  ‘I didn’t read them. I couldn’t bring myself to read them. No, I’m afraid I did something wicked.’

  ‘Yes . . . ?’

  ‘I took them down to the basement and I threw them on the boiler. I destroyed them.’

  Mrs Pargeter left a pause, of which Eulalie’s director would surely have approved, before asking, ‘And did Mrs Selsby say anything to you about the loss of her letters?’

  ‘No. Not to me. Not to anyone, as far as I know. And two days later she had fallen down the stairs and was dead.’

  ‘Fallen down the stairs? Are you sure she did fall?’