02 - Down the Garden Path

by Dorothy Cannell

  “How are you, Tess? Anything much been happening?” Harry dug the fingers of his right hand through his chestnut hair and looked at me intently. How long until I could fully appreciate the peaceful emptiness of not loving him?

  “No more murders, if that is what you mean.”

  “I had just got back into the car after posting the letter to your father when I spotted Butler walking from the village and brought him up. The poor bloke’s had a muckraking time of it, but the police couldn’t hold him. When he left, they had just brought a chap named Whitby-Brown in for questioning. But he doesn’t sound too promising. Claimed he was in a minor motor accident and at the time of the murder was sitting in outpatients’. Butler’s gone in to the sitting room to announce his return. Was that the police on the phone?”

  Chantal stood watching us.

  “No, it was—” I hesitated and saw Hyacinth coming towards us with Minnie bounding at her heels.

  “My dears, Primrose has returned. Dinner will be served immediately, and then we will get down to business.”

  Harry was graciously offered a share in the now anorexic roast, but he just as graciously refused, saying he had already eaten. The meal was self-serve owing to protocol having been abolished. Chantal and Butler joined us. Conversation, mainly a matter of “pass the gravy,” “more peas, please,” and between Harry and me, silence was absolute. But Hyacinth and Primrose were reconciled. They were once more a team. Butler, despite his extended visit at the police station, was his old self—almost. Behind the immobile, featureless face I sensed excitement. The ticking of his wits.

  “Time’s a-wasting,” said Primrose with the slightest quiver in her voice. We all looked at the clock on the mantel. Nine-thirty. Rolling up her serviette, she replaced it in the silver ring by her plate. “And I have already wasted enough precious time today by behaving very childishly. Disappearing like that, causing Hyacinth so much anxiety, I am horribly ashamed. But if you can all understand, I felt I had to be alone to think. About repentance, primarily. My mind kept flitting back to poor dear Father and what he ... might say to me now. And suddenly I felt extremely vexed. Was the murderer suffering even one shred of guilt while I agonized over my sins? Not a scrap, I’m sure. Dressing up poor Mr. Hunt like a joke indicates to me a smugness incapable of remorse. But I am wasting more time. Shall we have coffee in the sitting room? If instant will suit, I’m willing to make it myself as part of my penance.”

  “But I am not doing penance, and you never boil the water, Prim,” retorted Hyacinth. Chairs scraped and we all rose. Butler moved soundlessly out to make the coffee.

  A memory nudged the back of my mind when Primrose spoke of Mr. Hunt being dressed up like a joke ... but it was gone before I could snag hold of it. Another intrusion was the wind. Heard as a faint hum while we dined, it now gathered momentum until its force shook the house, rattling windows and shuddering down the sitting-room chimney. Entering that room, Hyacinth drew the curtains more tightly closed. But a draught kept them billowing out. The lights flickered and dimmed. As Primrose reached into a drawer for candles, I thought of those old black-and-white films: Dracula’s latest victim lying in her coffin, a spray of lilies covering her breast. The only living inhabitant of the House of Menace an ancient housekeeper with a pet rat tucked in her apron pocket. Outside, the Visitor approaching, his black cloak battling the wind, rain streaming off his low-brimmed hat.

  The lights went out completely and I let out a silly screech, drowned by the harsh rattle of rain against the windows. What was that? Someone at the door? The living or the dead? Angus coming back to warn us ... ? Harry’s hand found mine, sending a warm comfort up my arm and through my body until the blaze of Primrose’s candles brought the room back to wavering light.

  “A pole must be down,” she said. “Who would believe such weather after so mild and balmy a day?”

  “You okay, Tessa?” Harry’s voice was pleasant, concerned; he might have been addressing Minerva after treading on her tail. He released my hand and I felt completely alone. Trust Minnie to rise from her blanket and release a curdling yowl.

  “I am sure I heard someone at the front door a moment ago,” I said.

  “Really?” Primrose looked at Minnie. “Usually our friend here would be halfway down the hall at the first sound of footsteps on the garden path. Oh, I do hope she is not going to suffer serious psychological damage as a result of witnessing the m-u-r-d-e-r.”

  Butler arrived with the coffee, followed by Maude and Bertie, each carrying a small overnight bag.

  “What a way to greet guests.” Primrose pattered forward. “All the lights out! Inexcusable of us, Butler, not to have sent a candle out to you.”

  “Not at h’all, madame. My father would have disowned any of his children that could not see in the dark.”

  “Ooh, an’ it were fun coming down the ‘all, like playing blind man’s bluff.” Bertie was grinning at Primrose.

  Maude looked apologetic, strained, and plain tired out. “Please excuse us taking up your kind offer at such a belated hour, but Florence Smith may go into labour any time now and I was afraid that should I ask anyone in the village to have Bertie, they might get to worrying about their own children.”

  Where would Maude and Bertie sleep? Had Hyacinth and Primrose been too preoccupied to think that one out?

  “I think,” said Maude, “I will take Bertie up at once if you don’t mind. Get him settled and turn in myself If you will tell me which room ...”

  “Could they share the nursery with me? I would like company tonight, and the extra beds are all made up.” I waited rather breathlessly for the answer. This was my chance to talk to Maude.

  The sisters beamed approval. Maude said, “Splendid,” refused the offer of a hot drink, and thanked Chantal for offering to act as escort upstairs.

  When Chantal returned she set her candle down and joined the rest of us huddled around the card table. Butler poured coffee as Hyacinth called the meeting to order. She explained her theory that the crime could best be solved from within, and suggested that we go around the table, each presenting our ideas and disclosing anything that had struck us as odd or inconsistent.

  So much had struck me as odd since coming to Cloisters. I had listened and watched, but did I have the ability to recognize what might be important concerning the murder? I let my mind float. And as when I had written down what I knew of Violet it was frightening how fast those flashes of memory came. Angus’s missing watch, Primrose’s alibi, Minnie drugged in the attic, Godfrey holding that enormous art book, Godfrey—I couldn’t, wouldn’t think about him now. Hyacinth suggested that Chantal begin the proceedings. She was sitting beside me, and in the candlelight her skin had a wonderful translucence. But I felt if I touched it I would find it ice cold. Did she too sense an unseen presence among us—a visitant from the long dead past who wanted the Tramwell family curse ended at last.

  “Looking into the human mind is rather like looking into the crystal,” Chantal said. “You face the possibility of seeing what you don’t wish to see.” Her hands moved in front of her, forming an invisible globe. She turned to me. “When I told you I saw death and an ‘H’ in your hand, the presentiment may have sprung from some psychic gift I possess. The ‘H’ would fit Mr. Hunt, but isn’t it as likely that I was reading a different kind of sign? The sign of mounting tension and danger, governing the lives of those connected with this house? Those card games worried me; and as the apparently more forceful of the two sisters”—she looked at Hyacinth—”perhaps I did feel subliminally that you might be the one to move into danger. But the one I consciously feared for was Harry. I was afraid of the ‘highwayman’ story leaking out, and I was concerned about the game he was playing with Tessa.”

  Yesterday I would have stormed at her, but now ... now I was caught up in wondering what it was she feared, but had not revealed. How on earth did she know so much?

  “I don’t have any answers.” Chantal’s hands moved up her a
rms as if she were trying to keep warm. “Only questions.”

  Harry was looking across at her with something deeper than admiration. He was fond of her. More than fond. And hadn’t he said liking was the most important aspect of any relationship? “What questions, Chantal?”

  She sat with that curious stillness that intensified her dark beauty. “Will there be another victim? And if so, who will it be?”

  Her words were the more chilling for being spoken so calmly.

  “A dreadful possibility, but are you sure that when you looked into the crystal this morning you saw no glimpse of the murderer’s face?” Hyacinth’s voice was matter-of-fact but the earrings were going round and round.

  “I saw my own face,” said Chantal.

  Rain hurled against the windows, but silence blanketed the room. “My dear, you don’t mean that,” exclaimed Primrose.

  Harry shifted in his chair. “Of course she doesn’t; the idea of Chantal harming anyone is utterly preposterous.”

  “You have no need to assure me of that,” replied Primrose with quiet dignity. “What I wondered was whether Chantal might be afraid for her own safety.”

  As Harry subsided back in his chair Hyacinth turned to me. “Your turn, Tessa.” Her brief smile, pale lips outlined in orange, offered encouragement, but I could not see her eyes. Her head was slightly bent, her lids more hooded than ever in the shifting pale light.

  “Okay.” I clenched my fists between my knees. “My questions may all sound rather trivial, but here goes. Why was Mr. Hunt not found wearing a hat? Who locked me in the priest hole? Why is Butler wearing Chantal’s shoes? Why—” Stupid as it might be I could not bring myself to ask who had taken my watch and returned it, then taken my charm bracelet and kept it. Fergy would have considered such a question wickedly rude, whatever the circumstances.

  “Why what?” asked Harry. “Do go on, Tess.” His tone was so different from the one he had used to Chantal that I couldn’t help myself—the words just fell out of my mouth.

  “Why did you say that Angus talked about his aunts in Dundee, when he didn’t?” I had asked that question before. So why was I raising it again, bringing it out into the open? Because I needed an answer, or because I needed to hurt him?

  “You have decided to place me at the top of your suspects list, have you?” He leaned back in his chair, lips curving in a slight smile. Was the pain in his eyes a reflection of my own?

  “If you two are going to be at each other’s throat we’ll get nowhere.” Hyacinth’s earrings knocked vigorously against her long sallow neck. “Tessa, when were you incarcerated in the priest hole?”

  “Tuesday morning.” My mouth quivered childishly and I kept my eyes on the table.

  “Then I cannot see any connection to Mr. Hunt. Most unpleasant for you, but that wretched door does stick, and we have been afraid of such accidents, haven’t we, Prim?” said Hyacinth.

  “Indeed we have!” responded Primrose.

  I waited. Wasn’t anyone going to ask why I had been snooping inside the priest hole? The omission should have been comforting, but wasn’t. I felt more guilty than ever. Not up to asking how that door could have been closed on me accidentally when I had left it open.

  “As for Butler’s shoes, I am sure he can explain them— when we get to him.” Hyacinth sounded as though she were chairing a board meeting where the rules of protocol had to be rigidly followed. “What else did you mention, Tessa? Oh yes ... the absence of a watch on Mr. Hunt’s person. Does anyone have any ideas on that?”

  A flicker of something—fear, interest—passed behind Butler’s eyes and was gone. The other faces were blank. I was about to tell them about Angus’s passion for pocket watches when Hyacinth turned to Harry.

  “I think you should go next as I am acting as a sort of monitor, unless you feel you are not in a position to contribute.”

  Harry leaned forward, elbow on the table, chin resting on his thumb. “I’m hung up on motive,” he said. “If we disallow the contingency that Chantal is mad as all Bedlam, wreaking vengeance upon a house which long ago oppressed her people.” His smile reached out to her like a comforting hand. My pain mingled with surprise when she flinched. “Or,” he continued, “or that Hunt was a threatening figure rising up out of Butler’s past—a long-ago robbery at The Heritage perhaps, a scenario into which, at a pinch, Clyde Deasley or Godfrey Grundy might also fit. One sells antiques and the other ...”

  “We know. Cheynwind looks more like a museum than The Heritage, but if you are going that route you also have to include me. I worked there. Angus could have discovered me here and accused me of ripping off masterpieces.” I lifted my chin and waited for him to disclaim.

  “Disallowing all those contingencies,” Harry continued, “we are left looking at the obvious motive—Mr. Hunt’s desire to see the card games stopped. But that doesn’t make sense.”

  Butler sat so still he might have been dead. The rest of us leaned closer to the warmth of the candlelight.

  Harry’s eyes narrowed into slits. “Anyone murdering Mr. Hunt to ensure the continuation of those lucrative card games would hardly have performed the deed on his own doorstep. As matters now stand, the police are bound to check into the set-up at Cheynwind. Word will leak out, and”—he turned from one sister to the other—”dear relatives, your fiendish poker days will be as effectively axed as if Mr. Hunt had lived to blab to prospective victims about your methods. And, as for anyone wishing the games stopped, they had no need to murder Hunt; so I have to conclude that the games are only incidental.”

  “Dear boy, you are absolutely right.” An excited pink flush warmed her cheeks and Primrose clenched her hands. “So much more sensible for Hyacinth or myself, if we could be so wicked, to have followed Mr. Hunt to London and arranged a tidy little accident.” The flush faded. “But will the police credit us with such good sense, or will they think that one or both of us went berserk and wanted to get the job done willy-nilly?”

  “H’excuse me, madame.” Butler coughed with acute deference. “But what the police think and what they can prove are two different kind of vege—or I wouldn’t be here right now. What they don’t have—yet—is the murder weapon.”

  But they would if I didn’t play my cards according to Godfrey’s rules. Feeling Harry’s eyes on me I stopped biting a nail and forced my hands down into my lap.

  Pursing her crayoned lips, Hyacinth said, “If that Inspector Lewjack is as bright as he looks, he will realize there is nothing willy-nilly about this crime. Impetuous, but certainly not staged in a bustle. Too many frills.”

  That word staged. If the murderer knew of Harry’s and my performance, could he—or she—be trying to throw suspicion on one of us? Inspector Lewjack had warned me to be careful that I not end up another victim, but I had never thought I might have to tread carefully lest I find myself a scapegoat. And Harry, his position as the heir was even more volatile....

  Hyacinth’s eyes travelled around the table. “Don’t all look so glum. The murderer emerges as a creature of somewhat vulgar imagination who wanted Mr. Hunt’s life terminated as well as the termination of the Tramwell family. The only good thing we know is that he is an early riser, which leads to another question. How did X lure Mr. Hunt into the walk at the crack of dawn?”

  I opened my mouth but Primrose rushed in with, “Excuse my interrupting, dear.” Her eyes sparkled like jewelled raindrops in the candlelight. “But isn’t that question an offshoot of another? Where and with whom did Mr. Hunt spend last night?” A brief flare of lightning pierced the room, and in the harsh brilliance I saw Butler’s face. A face that was real for the first time, blazing with malevolent joy. I thought he would speak, but Primrose still had the floor; the light in the room receded to its pale golden haze, and Butler’s face was expressionless once more.

  “To know where Mr. Hunt spent last night would, I think, be to know all.” Primrose fussed with her cuffs. “Because we do know that he must have spent last night in
Flaxby Meade or somewhere close by. This morning I discreetly asked that Inspector Coatrack if he knew what form of transportation Mr. Hunt had used; and he told me that a return railway ticket had been found on the body. Now we are all aware, aren’t we, that the first morning train from London does not arrive until 10:42? Yes, Hyacinth dear, I see you are bursting to suggest he may have stayed at the pub. But only last week Mrs. Burrows informed me they were in the midst of redecorating and positively would not be taking any overnight guests until the middle of October. Yes, dear, there is no gainsaying she may have made an exception, but ...”

  “Why don’t I go and telephone the pub?” Harry suggested.

  “H’excuse me, sir.” Butler rose to his feet. “Before you leave, H’ I think H’ I must state that I believe myself apprised of Mr. Hunt’s whereabouts last night. But for my being somewhat distressed by my concern for the Misses Tramwell, I would have realized sooner who it was I saw.” His voice and various excited exclamations were temporarily drowned by a shuddering boom of thunder which set the overhead light rocking crazily back and forth. The French windows rattled wildly, and an icy gust set the candle flames flickering like devils’ tongues. Instinctively I gripped hold of Chantal’s hand. The earthquake noises and vibrations receded to a dull throb, but I still shivered violently. Butler knew, or believed he knew, the identity of the murderer. Was I ready to hear the name? Butler was about to speak when he was interrupted again, this time by the doorbell. It was Chantal’s turn to reach for my hand. Something more ominous than thunder sounded in that urgent pealing.

  “What a time for anyone to come calling; why, it’s gone eleven.” Hyacinth was looking at the mantel clock illuminated by two candles. Harry brushed past me on his way to the door.

  “Dear heaven, I hope he looks out the hall window before letting anyone in,” Primrose cried, as though Harry were a child who might be snatched out into the night never to be seen again. But the phantom of the doorbell proved to be only Constable Watt. Only? Something about his measured stride told me that there had been a new development in the case. Even more alarming, he was holding his helmet like a flag at half-mast over his stomach, one finger again tapping out his rendition of “Rock of Ages.”