‘I don’t know how she does it,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘Like Peter Wimsey with respect to Bunter’s coffee, I don’t want to know. If it’s witchcraft, I’d rather remain ignorant.’
‘If it’s witchcraft, she’s a white witch,’ I replied. ‘And in any case, a treasure.’
‘And Mr Bates – he’s just as wonderful. There is nothing he won’t turn his hand to, and do it well. He doesn’t even need to be told; he just sees what needs doing and does it. Jim and I couldn’t possibly keep this place going without him.’
After lunch what I wanted more than anything else was a nap, but I resisted and went to the library to hunt down Pat. For once she wasn’t there. A volume of Thackeray lay bookmarked on a table, which, given her taste in literature, told me she had probably been there, but she had fled. I noted with approval that she didn’t leave books face down, and went to hunt for her.
It took me a while, and the siren song of that nap was sounding ever more clear and appealing, when I finally tracked her down, of all places, in Laurence’s room.
Ed had taken Jim’s place, and for a moment I wondered if I was interrupting something. Pat and Ed were definitely hitting it off well together; perhaps they had found a cozy place to . . . but Laurence was up, sitting in a chair and wide awake, and Ed was on the other side of the room. Pat sat by Laurence’s chair with a small notebook in her hand.
‘I’m sorry, all,’ I said, hesitating at the doorway. ‘I was actually looking for you, Pat, but you’re obviously busy.’
‘Yes, but come in, Dorothy. I have a feeling you’ll want to hear this. Laurence’s memory’s come back.’
She was right. I did definitely want to hear, and I thought Alan should, too. For once I remembered that there were servants in the house, and rang for Mrs Bates. John answered, though, and fetched Alan with his usual efficiency.
‘Now, then, ducks, where were we?’ said Pat.
Laurence smiled a little. He was plainly still in pain, and still in need of the long-delayed medical attention – good grief, we should have sent him back with the helicopter! – but he was ready and eager to talk.
‘I’ve told you the first part of it,’ he said. ‘I talked to Mr Leatherbury, and was still very perturbed in my mind as to what I should do. You know about that part, sir,’ he said to Alan, ‘and Miss Heseltine has suggested that perhaps I shouldn’t talk about it freely.’
‘Quite right,’ said Alan, nodding approvingly at Pat. ‘Go on, please.’
‘I told you, I think, that I walked toward the river, to the south, and was appalled at the destruction everywhere. I was never very fond of this house, but the gardens and meadows were lovely, lovely. They will never be the same.’ His voice broke, and I was glad neither Jim nor Joyce was there.
‘Well. The next part is very clear in my mind now, very. I became aware, gradually, that someone was walking behind me. I don’t think I consciously thought “following” me, simply that someone was walking the same way I was. I turned around, and to my surprise it was Mr Harrison. I had not put him down as a nature lover, and I wondered what he was up to.’
He cleared his throat. ‘I don’t know why that attitude occurred to me – that he was “up to” something, except that he was walking in what I could only think was a furtive manner. I had turned around rather suddenly, I suppose, and he darted behind a tree, only just too late. He saw that I had seen him, or he must have done, because he came out and walked toward me, quite fast. His gait was unsteady, and I thought he had been drinking.’
‘He usually was,’ Pat put in, sotto voce.
‘He came up to me and – really, accosted is the only word. He took hold of the front of my jacket and nearly spat in my face. He reeked of whisky. He was so drunk, and speaking so fast, that I could barely understand him, but he seemed to be threatening me. “You’d better not,” he said, again and again, but I couldn’t make out what it was that he didn’t want me to do. All this time – well, I suppose it was only a minute or two, but it seemed a long time – he was holding me close to him and breathing whisky fumes into my face.
‘I had finally had enough. I was not in a happy frame of mind to begin with, and it was just all a bit too much. I pushed him away, or tried to, but he had a strong grip, and though he stumbled – we both did, I think – he didn’t loose his hold. And if he was angry before, now he was in a fury. He unleashed a stream of profanity and struck me, hard, on the jaw.’ Laurence put a hand up to explore the bruise, now brilliantly coloured and swollen. ‘Not broken, luckily, but it was a narrow escape. I saw the blow coming, but couldn’t twist free to avoid it. And that’s the last I remember until I woke here, in this room.’
‘And where were you when this confrontation took place?’ Alan asked.
‘Fairly near the river, we must have been, because I remember seeing that the water meadows were flooded, and the water was running fast.’
‘Were you able to strike back, at all, or defend yourself?’
‘I made a pretty poor show, didn’t I? Tussling with a drunken man, and laid out with one fist, like a baby in her cradle. No, I wasn’t prepared for what he did, and after that one blow – well, as I say, I remember nothing more. I believe the Americans have an expression about a glass jaw?’ He looked at me with the ghost of a grin.
‘So, Laurence.’ Pat leaned forward, her chin on her knuckles, her eyes intent. ‘This is really important. Did you get any hint – noise, movement, anything – that anyone else was present at the time Harrison confronted you?’
He thought hard. ‘It’s possible, I suppose. There was a lot of noise from the wind in the trees. There were sounds, but I was a trifle too preoccupied to analyse them.’
‘The wind in the trees?’ asked Pat.
‘Well – the rustle of leaves and so on.’
I looked at Alan. Pat looked at both of us and then back at Laurence. ‘I believe,’ she said gently, ‘that the wind had died down that afternoon. You went out after tea, right?’
‘Yes, I— by Jove, I think you’re right! I do remember thinking that the floods would recede when they were no longer driven by the wind. So the rustle I heard . . .’
‘Could have been an animal, a twig falling, almost anything,’ said Alan. ‘But it could also have been a third person.’
‘Who didn’t come to Laurence’s rescue,’ I pointed out.
‘Well,’ said Laurence, ‘but there’s no need to rely on my memory. If Harrison wasn’t too drunk to remember anything, you can ask him.’
Oh. Oh, dear. Nobody’d told him.
Alan took a deep breath. ‘I’m so sorry. There hasn’t seemed to be a good time to tell you. Harrison is dead. He drowned that afternoon, near where you . . . were.’
I knew he’d started to say ‘fought’. But fought wasn’t exactly the word, when the fight had consisted of one blow from one of the men.
If Laurence was telling the truth. But I thought he was.
He frowned. ‘He fell in the river? He could have lost his footing, I suppose, but we weren’t very near the edge. Unless perhaps the bank gave way – waterlogged – the water was running fast—’
‘We don’t know exactly how he died,’ said Alan, ‘only that he was found in the river. We won’t even know for certain that he drowned, actually, until the medical examiner can have a look at him.’
‘You don’t know how he died,’ Laurence repeated in a flat voice. ‘And I’ve just told you that he struck me. I claim to remember nothing after that, but . . .’ He looked hard at Alan. ‘You have had someone in this room with me ever since I woke up. And before that?’
‘You were never alone, from the time we found you and brought you in. The vicar kept watch most of the time, but he’s taking a break, poor fellow.’ He returned Laurence’s gaze. ‘And yes, your companion was there as much for our sakes as for yours. You were very badly hurt. We weren’t sure, at first, that you would live. Your skull wasn’t fractured, so far as I could tell, but there could have
been a subdural haemorrhage. I wanted you watched very closely for any change.’
‘But you also thought I might be involved in Harrison’s death.’ Still those flat tones. ‘But— just a moment!’ He sounded suddenly livelier. ‘A fractured skull? Subdural bleeding? Harrison struck me on the jaw, not the head, and as flabby as he is – was – surely a blow from a fist couldn’t cause any serious skull injury.’
‘You were found, you see, very nearly at the edge of the swollen river, with your head on a large rock. Which was quite sufficient to cause serious head injuries.’ Alan sat back to watch his reaction to that.
‘Good Lord! No wonder I’ve been having God-awful headaches. Concussion, almost certainly, and you’re very lucky I didn’t have that bleeding, or you’d have yourself another dead villain.’
TWENTY-EIGHT
‘But I don’t think he did anything,’ I said to Alan as we went back downstairs – using the elevator; my knees were getting very tired of all those stairs.
‘Except, of course, to lie to us all about recognizing the skeleton.’
‘Well – yes. There is that. But I can see why he did that. He knew that Harry had left the country in 1960. Had died in a plane crash. He’d known those things all his life. To be confronted, suddenly, with evidence to the contrary – it was too much to assimilate all at once. He told you, told us all, the story he’d been told as a boy.’
‘Dorothy, that’s what I’d like to think, too.’ He ran his hand down the back of his neck. ‘Damn it, I like the man as much as you do. But he could also have been telling the story because he’d already worked out the implications and didn’t want anyone to know.’
‘In that case – thank you, that elevator door is hard to manage – in that case, why did he go tell the vicar the whole thing later? No, I’m sorry, Alan. Laurence lied to us, yes, but I find it absolutely impossible that he had any reason to kill Dave Harrison. I believe he tried to push Dave off because he was getting impossibly belligerent, and got himself pasted, but I don’t think he ever struck Dave again. I think all that with Dave going into the river, and the rock, and so on, happened later, after Laurence was knocked out, and I think it was that other person who did it.’
‘The rustle that might have been a squirrel? House of cards again, Dorothy?’
I stuck my tongue out at him, and would have said more, but we had reached the drawing room, and Mr Bates materialized at our side in his disconcertingly silent way. ‘The authorities have arrived, sir, madam. They await you in the library.’
‘They want facts, don’t forget, Dorothy,’ said my loving husband in an undertone as we went through to the library. ‘No castles in the air.’
‘But where else is one to build card houses?’ I whispered.
The police had sent a large detail, in two large helicopters. Evidently the ‘old pal of the CC’ routine had accomplished exactly what Alan had intended, and got us the cream of the crop. I forget who all showed up, but beside the forensics people (complaining about working away from their lovely labs, but getting right down to it, anyway), there were at least two Detective Inspectors, several Detective Constables, and other lesser lights: sufficient force, one would have thought, to patrol the City of London after a terrorist threat. They were sufficient, at least, to make me feel more secure than I had since the moment I found the skeleton.
It would be tedious to relate the questioning and cross-questioning that went on for the next few hours. Everyone was interviewed separately, one at a time, while constables kept an eye on the rest of the group to make sure nothing of any consequence was discussed. We went into our activities, and our reports of everyone else’s activities, for the past five days. Much of it seemed, to me at least, to have happened in another life. I’m sure I contradicted myself over and over; my memory was never terrific, and it hasn’t become any sharper with advancing years. And how, for heaven’s sake, was one supposed to remember, or even know, what had gone on in a rambling old house with probably thirty bedrooms and innumerable nooks and crannies? The entire cast of an axe-murder film could have been hiding in Branston Abbey going about their ghoulish work all weekend, and no one would have known. ‘We wouldn’t even have heard the screams,’ I said to myself, and didn’t realize I’d spoken aloud until the rather bored detective who was questioning me jumped to the alert, and I had to explain I was just wool-gathering. I’m not altogether sure he believed me. He looked very relieved when he sent me back with the rest.
‘Headache, darling?’ Alan asked me presently. We had been talking about Shaw’s Pygmalion versus My Fair Lady, Pat joining in with spirited opinions, and I was a little startled, but Alan’s pressure on my hand warned me.
‘Oh, love, I didn’t want to bother you, but yes, it’s been getting worse and worse.’ I put a histrionic hand to my temple and hoped that was what he wanted. He sighed, stood up, and went to speak in a low murmur to the PC in the corner.
If he’d been anyone other than a distinguished retired chief constable, I doubt he’d have got by with it, but the constable, a young woman who looked to be barely out of training, was awed by the whole situation – multiple deaths in a listed building, an epic storm, and then an eminent policeman among the personnel. She licked her lips and looked around for someone to ask, but all her bosses were in other rooms.
‘You’re quite welcome to come along,’ Alan said a little louder, ‘if you feel it’s necessary, but I really do need to get her to bed. She’s apt to experience some nausea with these wretched things, you see, and no one would want . . .’ He artistically left the sentence unfinished, and the constable gave in.
‘I mustn’t leave here, sir,’ she said nervously, ‘but I’ll ask DI Collins to send someone. I hope she feels better soon, sir.’
‘We both do, Constable. Thank you for being so kind.’
That almost ruined it. The PC looked as if ‘kind’ wasn’t in her job description, and she wasn’t sure she’d made the right decision. But by that time Alan had solicitously helped me out of my chair and I’d assumed, I hope, the suffering-but-brave-about-it expression of someone with an almost unbearable migraine.
We kept it up all the way to our room. One never knew when someone was watching, or listening. Once inside, Alan gestured me to the bed, wrung a washcloth out in cold water, and handed it to me. ‘In case someone comes,’ he said in that low tone that is so much less carrying than a whisper.
I lay down, cloth at the ready, and said, ‘All right, what’s this little charade all about?’
‘Mostly, I wanted to get out of there. It’s the first time I’ve ever been on the receiving end of a group interrogation, and I had no idea how wearing it is on the nerves.’
‘Most unfair of you to pull rank that way. Unfair to the others, I mean.’
‘Indeed. But the other thing was, I wanted you to know that they’re taking Laurence away—’
‘Alan!’
‘Keep your voice down! You’re ill, remember? Not to arrest him. I knew you’d think that, and I wanted you to know before you learned it from someone else. The police doctor is worried about that head injury and wants him in hospital, at least until they’re sure there are no permanent brain injuries. He’ll have a constable with him, if only because he might possibly remember something else.’
I wanted to ask if Laurence was still under any suspicion, but there was no point. We would just repeat everything we’d said before. So I just smiled and said, ‘That’s good. I’ve been worried all along about the poor man going without medical attention.’
Alan patted my hand. ‘And the other news is, Dave Harrison died of drowning – there’s water in his lungs – and was almost certainly pushed into the river, probably with a tree branch or something of the sort. There’s a small but nasty bruise in the middle of his back, slightly abraded.’
‘So that settles that, at least. He was murdered.’
‘That seems to be the inescapable conclusion.’
‘But what a clever way
to do it! His murderer never got close enough to leave fibres or let Dave scratch him – no DNA to match up.’
‘And every single one of us was manhandling tree branches that day, so evidence of bark or wood fibres on the hands is worth sweet Fanny Adams. As for the weapon, it’s probably part of a fine dam somewhere downstream by now. Yes, it looks like the perfect crime. And that, my dear, is why I wish I could get you away from here. We know for certain, now, that there’s a murderer on the loose in this house, and you could so easily annoy him into . . . something unpleasant.’
‘Or her,’ I said in an odd bit of feminism. Insist that the murderer could just as well be a woman? Maybe not quite in the spirit of the thing. And besides – ‘So you find me annoying, do you?’
‘Terribly.’ He moved over to nuzzle my ear. ‘And extremely distracting. It’s a pity—’
The knock on the door sounded peremptory. We sprang apart as guiltily as if we were a couple of teenagers caught necking on the front porch. ‘Come in,’ he said, reaching for a tie to straighten – except he was wearing a turtleneck and sweater.
‘PC Bryan, sir, just checking on Mrs Nesbitt.’
‘Mrs Martin, Constable,’ said Alan with a straight face.
‘Oh, yes, sir?’ The young woman’s face reddened slightly as she looked around the room so obviously occupied by two.
I was pleased to see that the young could still blush, but it was a shame to tease her. ‘I kept my own name when we married, Constable. It confuses many people.’
‘Yes, ma’am. I hope you’re feeling better, Mrs Martin.’
Now it was my turn to be embarrassed. I had completely forgotten our little ruse. I picked up the cloth, which had left a wet spot on the bedspread, and dabbed at my temples with it. ‘Thank you. My medication is usually quite effective, if we catch the headache in time.’ Which was the absolute truth.
A Dark and Stormy Night Page 19
