02 - Down the Garden Path

by Dorothy Cannell

  “No. But I see what you mean. It is interesting that the watch was taken and his wallet left, and besides ... the entire staging of the murder seems too elaborate for simple theft, doesn’t it?”

  Was the watch a bonus? The icing on the cake? Or a deliberate ploy to implicate someone who was known to be light-fingered?

  * * * *

  The policeman standing at the foot of the stairs strongly resembled the wax one I had seen at Madame Tussaud’s. Not a flicker of an eyelash as I passed. The sitting room was as I had left it—Constable Watt still planted in the middle of the room—but otherwise highly reminiscent of a doctor’s surgery. The only homey touch was provided by Minnie, lying on her patchwork blanket. If her grunts and groans were any indication, she was in the throes of a nightmare. But at least she had the benefit of being asleep. I wished I could wake and find I had brought all this terror and grief upon myself by eating cheese late at night. When I passed Maude she smiled at me but I couldn’t meet her eyes. Sometime I had to talk to her alone about her relationship with the Tramwells, and especially her friendship with Violet, but now I was cloaked with fear—even of her. That missing watch bothered me terribly.

  Tonelessly, I told Harry he was next, and went over to sit by Primrose on the sofa facing the windows. She looked so frail and old that I picked up one of her hands and held it.

  “You’re not cross with us, are you dear—about Harry?” she whispered. “I’ve had a talk with Maude, and you have nothing to fear from her or Bertie when it comes to blabbing. It seems the boy had said several times that the incident was like a play, and he has made quite a heroine of you. Before he went in to see the inspector, Maude warned him not to mention anything about the amnesia or its cause. A very intuitive woman, Maude, she had guessed that some charade was afoot.”

  “How very nice and convenient for Harry and me.”

  “Now, you mustn’t blame him,” begged Primrose. “Men tend to bungle things—that’s their way. But think how sweet it was of the dear boy to want to help in your search. I remember how concerned he was on first broaching the subject to us, and how intrigued Hyacinth and I were! We thought you such a sport but, perhaps ... attacking the matter from the wrong end.”

  “How?”

  “Instead of focussing on which Flaxby Meade female might have been pregnant twenty-odd years ago, we felt it might have been more advantageous to look where the trouble always begins—with a man. The type of man who fathers a child and does not or cannot marry the mother. Ah! There a host of possibilities spring to mind.”

  “I have never felt any interest in my biological father. He may not even have known that my mother was pregnant, so why should I care about him?”

  “But as an avenue to your mother ...”

  “Yes—you’re right.” I looked over to where Godfrey was nattering away to Maude. Surely he wasn’t capable of a normal man-woman relationship! And yet the way he had looked at me sometimes ... I began to feel rather queasy.

  “Two of my favourite ladies engaged in a tête-á-tête, I see.” Mr. Deasley loomed over us. The tone was as hearty as ever. But did I detect an undercurrent? Reaching into his breast pocket for his handkerchief, he patted his reddened nose. It’s colour was reflected in Primrose’s cheeks. Everyone, in fact, was fidgetting, pacing, or fussing, except Chantal. She sat as still as the Mona Lisa in her straight-backed chair.

  Mr. Deasley pushed the hanky back into his breast pocket, but its dispirited droop indicated a lessening of his usual persnickety attention to detail. And when he spoke, he had lost some of his Lothario suavity. He sat down in the space I had vacated, fumbling for Primrose’s hand.

  “You will be seeing the inspector any moment, my dear,” he said, “and I cannot let ...”

  “Please, Clyde, I must ...”

  Constable Watt, whose glum face had borne tell-tale signs of a man wanting his midday meal, came smartly to attention. The pencil assumed ominous proportions.

  “Knew one of you would crack. When the wife hears—”

  “George! Tell your wife anything and we will have her drummed out of the Mothers’ Union.” Hyacinth’s voice was hailstones dropping on a tin roof.

  “Miss Primrose Tramwell and I are not discussing the murder.” Mr. Deasley sounded as though he would much prefer that they had been. “Miss Tramwell is completely in the clear, because at the time of the murder she and I were together. We were, in fact, together all night. Oh, my dear lady”—he flushed out the handkerchief again, his voice disintegrating—”if I could spare you the conjectures, the corrupting of something noble and beautiful into the sordid—but I care for you too deeply to let the foul suspicion of murder cling to you.”

  The pin that dropped was Constable Watt’s pencil.

  “Hyacinth,” came Primrose’s broken voice, “don’t look at me like that.”

  So! Those voices coming from her room late last night had not been the wireless. I pictured myself passing the door on my way to the attics, and a dreadful thought came. Had Primrose drugged and hidden Minnie? A ploy that had two plusses: no wild barks to announce Mr. Deasley’s arrival and she had been able to get him secretly into the house while Hyacinth and I were out searching the grounds.

  Dreadful silence, wrenched open by Godfrey’s giggling voice. “My, oh my! I feel another murder coming on.”

  Chantal rose as smoothly as a sea wave from her chair. Fingers pressed against her temples. Eyes closed.

  “Evil. It is in the room with us. Shall I look into the crystal and tell what I see?”

  * * *

  Chapter 16

  Constable Watt made a token protest. But he had long since lost all control of the group. His cohort on the stairs was summoned to escort Chantal to fetch the crystal. Butler stole across the room, drawing the curtains across the harsh morning sunlight. Harry was still absent. Maude came up to me, Bertie clinging to her hand, his round eyes aglow with excitement.

  “Poor Miss Tramwell,” she said, and I wondered which one she meant. “An awful thing. I’m glad the girl spoke up when she did. Anything to take our minds off all this waiting.”

  “Do you believe Chantal may see something?”

  “I’m not sure.” Maude was looking over to where Hyacinth and Primrose stood like two statues in a park and I wondered if her mind was on our conversation—any more than mine was, really. “A while back Chantal told me something that gave me rather a jolt at the time, and—”

  “An’ did it come true?” cawed Bertie.

  “I think it may have done,” said Maude.

  Chantal returned, and as Maude, Bertie, and I moved to join the group surging around the card table, which Butler had set up, the boy tugged at my arm, whispering, “Miss, I ‘ave somefink to tell you about. Somefink bad.”

  “Could we make it later, Bertie?”

  The sisters gravitated to opposite ends of the table, Constable Watt directing traffic. “No shoving. No crowding. Give way, if you please.” But it was Chantal’s lifting of the red velvet cloth that made the crowd fall back.

  Mrs. Grundy whispered in my ear, “We really must have her put on a little show like this at the summer fete.” Mr. Deasley, self-consciousness apparent in his gait, pushed forward a chair for Chantal. The rest of us remained standing. I wondered if she would ever speak. And then I was thinking of nothing but her graceful hands moving in a swirling motion over the glass. Those hands were birds—seagulls—fluttering in ever narrowing circles.

  “Cards,” she murmured throatily. “Cards falling upon the table, and the dealer is death.” The words were trite, yet they frightened me. Chantal was too clever to use such patter without good reason. Or was it the truth she saw in the crystal? Constable Watt was breathing hard in excitement. Chantal drew the palms of her hands outward over the globe as though brushing away cobwebs. “The game isn’t poker or whist. It is patience.”

  “The stakes?” When Primrose spoke I jumped and had to steady myself by clutching at Maude’s arm. She put
it round me.

  “Very high. I keep seeing two aces.” Chantal’s voice picked up breathless speed. “I see the boy, Bertie; he must be placed in safety, watched, but he is not the danger—it is the other one, the one who saw ... the one who knows ...”

  Shuddering, but with thinly veiled pleasure, Mrs. Grundy cried, “But that is awful. I was near the walk close to the time of the murder. She or he may think ... and Goddy! My darling boy, you must promise never to leave my side. I will not rest for an instant.”

  Chantal was replacing the velvet cloth over the globe. “Once anyone speaks, the core of flame which sparks the light is extinguished.” Again terribly trite; but Chantal’s voice was so empty, so lacking in drama. She had frightened herself, I was sure of it.

  Edging towards her, Constable Watt said, “While you’re at it, girl, how about a quick peek to see if a horse, name of Skallawag, is going to place this Saturday at Foxhill?”

  Chantal shook her head. She was moving away from the table as Harry came in. Hyacinth left us. Then, half an hour later, she returned and Primrose went out.

  The morning wore away into afternoon. A drab silence settled upon the room like a bad cold, broken only by the occasional opening and closing of the door and the musical tralahs of the clocks throughout the house. Angus’s missing watch, somehow it was the key. My eyes roved across the room, lighting on one face and then another. But it was really Angus I was seeing and hearing.

  Godfrey got up and left the room. Harry was reading a book. From where I sat the title appeared to be in Russian. Then I smiled sourly. He was holding it upside down.

  Another literary enthusiast. Godfrey returned from the library with a tombstone-sized volume on Art Through the Ages.

  “Always so artistic.” His mother patted my knees. “Such an exemplary trait in a man, I have always thought. A sure sign of sensitivity. And sensitivity is what makes a man a good husband, don’t you agree, dear?” I nodded, watching the hostile contours of Hyacinth’s face. Minnie’s head rested in her lap and she stroked it protectively, eyes on Primrose, who was bent over a strip of lacy lavender knitting. That knave of hearts, Mr. Deasley, sat in a chair next to Harry, pondering his feet. Bertie was lying on Minnie’s rug. What bad thing had he wanted to tell me?

  The mantel clock stopped, and the absence of ticking was as explosive as a bomb detonating in Piccadilly Circus. Primrose wound it and we all sank back, the pendulum moving once more. Chantal was summoned and I fell asleep. Someone tucked a rug around me. A someone smelling of after-shave and outdoors. Dreaming. I was outdoors and Angus was coming towards me through the mottled shadows of Abbots Walk. He wasn’t quite close enough for me to see his face, but I could see his hands. They were filled with torn pieces of paper. A wind crept between us and all those fragments, each containing one letter of a name, fluttered up into the elms, but I didn’t want to look up into the elms because in one of them someone was hanging.

  When I woke I was clutching the rug, and the person absent was Butler. The last to go, and the longest kept. Hyacinth and Primrose made no move to speak or even look at each other, but the expression in their eyes was the same: concern bordering on alarm. Another half-hour. When I looked, the clock said two-fifteen. At last the door opened, but no Butler. The Madame Tussaud policeman entered. Would we all do the inspector a small favour and agree to be searched? A policewoman who had arrived from Warwick would see to the ladies. No one protested. Who could do so without looking guilty? Mrs. Grundy sounded rather pleased when she said, “I shall write to The Times.”

  I had not forgiven Harry. I would never forgive him, but I had difficulty restraining an anguished glance in his direction. Those grisly women with the bobbed hair and arms like tree trunks—I had seen them do the strip-and-search routine on the telly. Yet the reality was bearable. I trooped into the room next to the sitting room, a blond girl constable patted me over, had me empty my pockets, and said, “Ta, love.”

  Search over, we were now all set at liberty. Orders of the inspector. At first we displayed a tendency to continue huddling together, but when Hyacinth offered everyone a late lunch the atmosphere returned almost to normal. Chantal walked towards the kitchen and I followed her—I wasn’t sure why.

  “Have you come to help fix lunch?” she asked. “Or to see I don’t make a break for it? Sorry.” She laughed without merriment. “I was the one who called for a truce, and now I’m starting up the hostilities.” She opened the bread bin and reached for a knife.

  “You frightened yourself, didn’t you, looking into the crystal?” I unwrapped a packet of butter.

  “I’m not sure if I really saw anything, or if I was reacting to feelings of guilt.”

  “What do you mean? You can’t be saying that ...”

  She sliced away at the bread. “That I murdered your friend Angus Hunt as a revival of an ancient rite?”

  “I didn’t mean anything of the sort. But when you mentioned guilt, I wondered if you somehow blamed yourself for what happened. I know I do. If I hadn’t come here, maybe Angus wouldn’t have got involved, although knowing him ...” My lips were trembling and I had to bite down hard on them.

  “Yes, I do wonder about my part in this.” Chantal put down the knife and looked at me. “If I hadn’t come here, would he be alive?”

  “Are you suggesting that the murderer may have decided that you would make a great scapegoat because of Tessail and the old curse?”

  “I’ve thought of that, but, no ... the reason I feel guilty is that the Tramwells have been marvellous to me, and I haven’t repaid them well.”

  “That’s nonsense. You work extremely hard.”

  “I get a lot of fringe benefits. I think I told you I am interested in monasticism, but what I didn’t tell you is that I am doing a thesis on the subject for my degree. What better place to do research than at Cloisters—being as suggestible to atmosphere as I am? And also, I suppose I have grown soft.” Her eyelashes cast a shadow across her cheekbones. “I began to find that studying at a bonfire bothered my eyes, and I had lost the taste for poached rabbit. This job was a godsend. The Tramwells have offered to eat spaghetti on toast every night, so I could study, but I could never quite shake the feeling that they were on the enemy team.”

  “So now what do you do? What do we both do? Stand wringing our hands?” I wasn’t sure that I liked her any better, but I felt a closeness to her, a trust. I scraped a knife over the butter and started spreading. “My dad says guilt is nothing but an excuse for doing nothing to change things. If you and I want to make some return to the Tramwells for imposing on them, then we must find the murderer so their lives can return to normal. Unless you think one of them did it?”

  “I don’t. Do you?”

  “No.” And I meant it.

  She pushed the butter dish closer and her lips curved slightly upwards. “And perhaps I am wrong in what I fear.”

  I was afraid to ask her what she meant in case she said Harry’s name. She continued: “I have always thought the police labour under a decided disadvantage, coming in as they do at the last scene while we have been here for the entire performance.”

  “Only if we believe that the source of the murder is here—in Flaxby Meade,” I said.

  “You knew Angus Hunt; is there any other possibility?”

  “I don’t think so.” Placing sliced corned beef on top of bread, I told her about the reason behind Angus’s visit to Cloisters. Perhaps that was foolish of me, and I faltered when I saw a glimmer of relief in her eyes. “I told you,” I said, “that I don’t believe the Tramwells are guilty. But I am convinced that the card games are in some way the reason for Angus’s death.”

  “Godfrey, that squelchy creep.” She was slicing cucumber. “He would be capable of almost anything if someone threatened to take away his toys.”

  “And his mother would kill without a qualm to keep him happy.”

  “Who else was at that game?”

  “A Mr. Whitby-Brown, a man named F
ritz Wortter, and a clergyman.”

  The knife had slipped and blood beaded up from the tip of one of her fingers. As she ran her hand under cold water, I asked, “When you spoke about seeing a game of patience in the crystal, was that just gibberish to turn everyone’s mind from what Primrose and Mr. Deasley had just revealed?”

  “No.” She turned off the tap. “I felt it—an overpowering sense of watchful waiting.”

  I had felt it in the garden. Someone hidden behind the bushes, biding his time. And that was before Angus had come to Cloisters.

  “Patience is also the gypsy’s stock in trade. We get a lot of doors slammed in our faces.”

  “When did you ever peddle wax flowers door to door?” My voice was irritated.

  “I didn’t mean that kind of door. I wonder if that shrewd Inspector Lewjack will recognize the type of mind he is up against? Or if Mr. Hunt’s having only recently appeared on the scene will lead him to suppose this is a crime of mad impulse?”

  Our hands touched as we placed sandwiches on a plate. “Gamblers,” I said, “are creatures of impulse.”

  Chantal looked up at the clock on the wall. “At this moment, I am more worried about Butler than the Tramwells. If his interview with the inspector had concluded he would be out here. I warned him that he should be straightforward about his activities last night and about his shoes, but he was so unsettled by his feeling that anything he might say about his life at Cloisters would shed unpleasant light upon—”

  “His past?”

  “Upon the Tramwells, revealing them as a pair of eccentric old ninnies. He is absolutely devoted to them. You know he came here to burgle, and their only complaint was that he smoked on the job and didn’t wash up after making himself a cuppa. I truly believe Butler would die for them.”

  “At least Primrose has an alibi.” I arranged sliced cucumber and tomato on a glass dish. My voice petered out; I was recalling the murderous look in Hyacinth’s eyes when she looked at Mr. Deasley. Under normal circumstances I would have been horribly shocked myself. I picked up the dish, Chantal reached for it, and between us we nearly dropped it.