Hobby of Murder

by E. X. Ferrars

  Andrew said that some tea was just what he was wanting and Mollie went off to the kitchen to make it.

  ‘Perhaps you’d sooner go up to your room first,’ Ian said. ‘It’s small, but it’s got a bathroom of its own and we’re rather proud of it. In fact, as you may have gathered, we’re rather proud of the whole place. It’s a great improvement on the flat in Holland Park. And it’s funny that Mollie should have been afraid of my being bored, because, as she told you, I’ve never been so occupied, while my fear was that Mollie might be bored and not make many friends. After all, she’d lived in London most of her life. But she’s joined in a number of village activities, including an embroidery circle run by a woman who’s really a professional, and its turned out Mollie has an aptitude for it.’

  ‘Are those her works up there?’ Andrew asked, nodding at the framed embroideries that he had noticed on the walls.

  ‘That’s right,’ Ian began, but broke off, looking out of the window that faced the road to call out, ‘Mollie, we’ve got a visitor.’

  Mollie came into the room carrying the tray, put it down on a table and went to the front door, just as the bell rang. The woman she brought into the room was about fifty, tall, slim, in a somewhat bony way, with strong, bony features in a long, tanned face. She had small, dark, deep-set eyes and dark brown hair which was cut in a heavy fringe across her forehead and bobbed round the rest of her head, so that it looked rather like a cap. She was wearing black jeans, like Mollie, and a black and green tartan shirt. Long green plastic earrings dangled from under her thick cap of hair and she was carrying a jam jar filled with something dark, which she held out before her.

  ‘Chutney,’ she announced. ‘Peach chutney. I hope you like it.’

  ‘For us? Oh, how sweet of you!’ Mollie exclaimed. ‘Eleanor, this is an old friend, Professor Basnett. Andrew, this is Eleanor Clancy, our tenant.’

  Giving the jam jar to Mollie, Eleanor Clancy held out a hand to Andrew.

  ‘Of course I’ve heard about you, Professor, from Mollie and Ian,’ she said. ‘They told me you were coming.’ She had a gruff voice and a singularly penetrating gaze, which she fastened on Andrew as if she were trying to fix an image of him lastingly in her memory. ‘I must say they told me the truth, you’ve a splendid head. Splendid. Don’t look so surprised. It’s the first thing I notice about people. But perhaps they haven’t warned you about me.’

  Andrew, who had just sat down before the visitor’s arrival, had risen to his feet to shake hands with her and said rather nervously, ‘No, I don’t think they have.’

  ‘You see, I’ve gone crazy about photography, specially portraits, ever since I retired down here,’ she explained. ‘And the moment I saw you I thought: I’ve got to get him to come and sit for me. You will, won’t you? Tomorrow or the day after or any time, but you will come?’

  ‘Well, I … I don’t think … I don’t really feel …’

  ‘This chutney,’ Mollie said, doing her best to rescue Andrew from his embarrassment, ‘you made it yourself, of course.’

  ‘Oh yes, and it’s to a very reliable recipe,’ Eleanor Clancy said. ‘And I’ve made some raspberry jam. Pounds of it from my garden. Great fun. I’ll bring you some of it too.’

  Mollie, from what Andrew remembered of her, probably already had pounds of jam in her store cupboard, but she only said that that would be lovely and that Eleanor would like a cup of tea, wouldn’t she? Eleanor said that indeed she would, and Mollie disappeared to the kitchen to fetch another cup. Eleanor dropped into an easy chair, crossing her long legs. Andrew and Ian also sat down and she at once returned to the attack.

  ‘I can see you’re one of the people who’re afraid of being photographed, Professor,’ she said. ‘Some people enjoy it, but some feel sure they’ll only show the worst side of themselves to the camera. It’s just self-consciousness, of course, but you really needn’t feel like that with me. I won’t sit you down in some carefully planned position and tell you to smile or say “cheese”. We’ll just have a comfortable chat and from time to time I’ll point my little camera at you and click, it’s done, almost before you know it’s going to happen. It’ll probably be when we’re talking about something that really interests you. What are your interests? Music? The theatre?’

  ‘As it happens,’ Ian said with a chuckle, ‘one of Andrew’s interests is cheese. He believes that it’s important to start the day with some protein, and that it’s much easier to get himself a lump of cheese to eat than to boil himself an egg.’

  ‘How wise,’ Eleanor said. ‘I’m sure that’s very sensible.’

  ‘My own opinion about it is that it’s almost certainly a superstition,’ Andrew said, ‘and the truly sensible thing would be to break myself of the habit. That’s all it is now—a habit. I don’t actually believe in it at all. I hope Mollie hasn’t gone to any trouble about it.’

  ‘I happen to know she’s got in half a pound of the best Cheshire,’ Ian said, ‘so you’d better eat it when she brings you your breakfast. Breakfast in bed is one of our rules for visitors, incidentally, because I may be out early after my birds and have my coffee and my toast when it happens to fit in with that, and Mollie likes to have some quiet time to herself, doing The Times crossword.’

  Mollie came in as he spoke with the fourth cup and poured out tea for them all. There was a sponge cake that looked homemade on the tray, and some chocolate biscuits. Andrew was not accustomed to eating in the middle of the afternoon, a cup of tea being as much as he really wanted, but the cake looked tempting.

  ‘Of course you’re coming to our party tomorrow evening, aren’t you, Eleanor?’ Mollie said. ‘Andrew, that’s something else we haven’t warned you about, besides Eleanor’s photography. We’ve a few people coming in for drinks tomorrow evening. I do hope you don’t mind.’

  ‘I’m sure I shall enjoy it,’ Andrew said, hoping that he did not sound too dubious. Once he could have said those words with sincerity, but as age had crept up on him, he had found himself more and more reluctant to face numbers of people whom he had never met before, particularly if he knew that he was never likely to see them again.

  ‘Sam and Anna Waldron are coming,’ Mollie went on. ‘They’re just back from Scotland. You haven’t met them yet, have you, Eleanor?’

  ‘No, but I used to know a girl called Waldron when I was teaching,’ Eleanor replied, ‘though I don’t think her name was Anna. Perhaps a relation, though come to think of it, she’d have been a relation of Mr Waldron’s, wouldn’t she, not his wife’s? My mind’s wandering. Well, I’m glad they’re back home. That great house of theirs has seemed so empty-looking while they’ve been away, though I suppose the servants were there. Imagine having servants living in these days! They must be awfully rich.’

  ‘We’re going to a dinner-party there on Saturday evening,’ Mollie said. ‘And Andrew, of course you’re invited. And when they meet you here, Eleanor, they’ll probably invite you too, because when they give that kind of party they like to get as many people to it as possible. It’ll be a rather peculiar kind of party.’

  ‘Peculiar?’ Eleanor asked, while Andrew began to wonder if coming to Lower Milfrey had been a grave mistake.

  ‘You’ll probably find it very interesting,’ Ian said. ‘You see, Sam has made a kind of hobby of a certain eighteenth-century parson, Parson Woodforde, who wrote a voluminous diary, and one of his characteristics was that almost every day he wrote down what he had to eat, and Sam wants to lay on a dinner as close as possible to one the old boy described in his diary. He’ll cook it himself, he and Anna together. He’s a splendid cook.’

  ‘A hobby, you said?’ Andrew asked. ‘You say your friend’s made a hobby of this parson?’

  ‘Well, more or less,’ Ian said. ‘It’s something quite difficult to get him to talk of anything else.’

  ‘I’m beginning to feel I shall have to find a hobby for myself,’ Andrew said. ‘I’m beginning to feel it’s eccentric not to have one.’
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br />   But that brought them back to Eleanor Clancy’s hobby, photography. She was still gazing at Andrew as if she were taking him in inch by inch, so that she could draw a diagram of him.

  ‘Of course you are going to let me photograph you, aren’t you?’ she said.

  ‘If you really want to …’ he began.

  ‘Oh, grand,’ she broke in, ‘and I’ve got some photographs to show you that I’m sure will interest you. You see, my great-grandfather was one of the early photographers and I’ve not only got some volumes of his work, but some of his negatives too. All glass, of course, quarter-plates, but they’re as good as new. He spent most of his life in Burma, where he was a forest officer, and most of his pictures are of local scenes. They’re history now, of course, and I’ve been thinking of making up a volume of them, with some commentary taken from some of his letters that I’ve got. Do you think that’s a good idea?’

  ‘Yes, indeed,’ Andrew said, thinking that the old photographs might really be interesting, and that if he could keep her occupied with showing them to him he might escape the ordeal of being photographed himself.

  ‘I’m so glad you think so,’ she said, then turned to Ian. ‘And about Mr and Mrs Waldron, Ian, do you think they’d make good subjects? And would they let me arrange to photograph them, especially Mr Waldron, because on the whole I’m more successful with men than with women, I don’t know why. I can manage a woman if she’s got a very intelligent face and doesn’t want to smile too much, but the kind whom I’m told are perfectly beautiful and would make splendid subjects never seem to come out successfully.’

  ‘I expect Sam will leap at the chance of being photographed,’ Ian replied. ‘And he’s a handsome chap in his way, the aquiline type, very distinguished-looking. But I tell you whom you ought to try to get hold of while he’s staying here—Luke Singleton. His brother, Brian, told me yesterday he’s coming to him on a visit in a day or two.’

  ‘Luke Singleton!’ Eleanor exclaimed in a tone of excitement. ‘And he’s Brian Singleton’s brother! I never knew that. Oh, I must get hold of him somehow. I’ll telephone Brian this evening. I must fix something up.’

  ‘Luke Singleton?’ Andrew said on a questioning note. ‘Is that the writer? There is a writer called Luke Singleton, isn’t there?’

  ‘Of course there is!’ Eleanor cried. ‘Don’t tell me you haven’t read anything of his. Why, he’s simply marvellous. He’s managed to turn the thriller into literature. Real literature, I do assure you. And he’s enormously successful. Oh, he’s absolutely my favourite novelist. Haven’t you seen any of his films? Not that they do justice to the books, but that’s because they aren’t really written by him. They just state beforehand that they’re based on a book by him with a main character he’s created. I do think that’s a shame and I wonder he allows it.’

  ‘As long as it keeps the money rolling in, I don’t suppose it worries him,’ Ian said.

  ‘But he must be an enormously rich man already,’ Eleanor said. ‘You wouldn’t think he’d have to stoop to agreeing to it. The funny thing is, I used to know him a little before he became so successful. We both belonged to the same tennis club and I never dreamt he had a literary talent. But he was very good-looking in a rather fierce, intimidating sort of way. I wonder if he’ll remember me. We used to go out together occasionally, but of course it’s years ago. And to think he’s Brian Singleton’s brother. I wonder why Brian’s never mentioned him. Could it be jealousy, d’you think?’

  ‘I suppose it isn’t impossible,’ Ian said, ‘though it might be a kind of modesty. I think that’s more likely. Brian isn’t the kind who goes in for name-dropping.’

  ‘This Brian Singleton,’ Andrew said, ‘he’s a friend of yours, is he?’

  ‘Yes, and quite a near neighbour,’ Ian replied. ‘He lives in a bungalow a little way down the road. But he works in Rockford. He’s a biochemist with a post of some sort in the Rockford Agricultural Institute. You’ll meet him at our party tomorrow. You’ll probably find him interesting.’

  ‘Will Luke Singleton be coming too?’ Eleanor asked eagerly.

  ‘No, he won’t have come down to Lower Milfrey by tomorrow. But I’m sure he’ll be at the Parson Woodforde dinner. In fact, I think Brian told me he would be.’

  ‘Oh, I do hope the Waldrons invite me to it,’ Eleanor said. ‘If they don’t think of it themselves, perhaps you or Mollie could drop them a gentle hint that they should. Of course it’s very ill-bred of me to suggest it, but I should so love to meet Luke again, and perhaps get him to let me do a portrait of him. Which reminds me, Professor, we haven’t actually fixed the time you’re coming along to me. How about tomorrow morning, say about eleven o’clock?’

  ‘If you really think it’s worth your while,’ Andrew said reluctantly. He had not really been aware that he had committed himself so definitely.

  ‘Thank you, thank you! Now I must be going.’ She sprang up from her chair. ‘I hope you enjoy the chutney, Mollie, and I’ll bring you some of my raspberry jam.’

  She strode from the room.

  As Ian went after her to see her out, Mollie said, ‘That was very nice of you, Andrew, to agree to go; I know you’ll hate it, though some of those old photographs she’s got are really very interesting. The truth about her is, of course, that she’s really pretty lonely, so she makes a rather heavy-handed grab at anyone she meets. And the real reason why Brian hasn’t mentioned his famous brother to her is simply that he himself can’t stand her and doesn’t want her trying to use him to renew the acquaintance—if there ever was an acquaintance. You can’t be absolutely sure with Eleanor that everything she tells you is true.’

  ‘Yet you seem to be good friends with her,’ Andrew said.

  ‘Well, when you live in a place like this you’ve got to put up with what you find,’ Mollie said. ‘Of course, Lower Milfrey isn’t a village any more, with a real life of its own. It’s a suburb of Rockford. Nearly everyone we know either lives in Rockford, or works there, like Brian. There’s a very nice doctor we know. Felicity Mace—you’ll meet her tomorrow evening—who lives here, but who belongs to a group practice in Rockford and only runs a surgery twice a week in the village. And we’ve another friend, Ernest Audley, who’s a solicitor in Rockford. And so on. The Waldrons, of course, really belong here, and I think he’d like to think of himself as the squire, but they bought the old manor house only about six years ago and they spend a good deal of their time travelling about. As I said, they’re just back from Scotland. All the same, I love it here. I feel it’s the first real home I’ve had. That flat in Holland Park always had a temporary sort of feeling about it, but I can almost persuade myself sometimes that I’ve lived here all my life.’

  Ian had come back into the room and wanted more tea. Mollie refilled their three cups and Andrew asked whether the Waldrons’ dinner-party would involve dressing, because it had not occurred to him to bring a dinner-jacket.

  ‘No, though perhaps a wig and an embroidered waistcoat might have helped,’ Ian said. ‘Sam would love to achieve a true eighteenth-century atmosphere, though actually it’ll be quite informal—rather amusing, probably, and you can be sure the food will be excellent.

  ‘Now, would you like to see your room, Andrew?’ Mollie asked. ‘Come along. Ian will bring your suitcase.’

  The room, as Mollie had said, was small, but pleasantly simple, with pale grey walls, a divan bed under an Indian bedspread, a modern dressing-table and wardrobe, and another framed embroidery, similar to those in the sitting-room downstairs, hanging beside the sash window which overlooked the road and the common beyond it. A small bathroom opened out of the room.

  Ian and Mollie left Andrew to settle in, telling him to come down when he felt like having some sherry, and went downstairs themselves. A few minutes later, going to one of the windows to take a look at the common and a reedy lake that he could see at the further side of it, Andrew saw Ian leave the house and set off across the common towards the lake. He w
as carrying a pair of binoculars. It meant, Andrew supposed, that he was going to have a last look before dusk at the birds that would be feeding and that now meant so much to him.

  But what interested, and in a way curiously puzzled Andrew, was the embroidery on the bedroom wall.

  Embroidery must have become Mollie’s hobby, he guessed, and plainly she was very skilled at it. The design was abstract, the colours mainly various soft shades of orange and cream. But where, he wondered, had the design come from? Was it her own, or if not, what was its origin? For a curious thing was that, as he had had with those like it in the sitting-room, Andrew had a feeling that he had seen it before. Had it been in the Holland Park flat? He could not remember it there, and he thought that if it or any of the others had hung on a wall there, he would certainly have noticed it. It was also a little strange that the longer he looked at it, the more the sense of familiarity faded. It seemed to have been only a matter of a first impression. By the time that he had looked at it thoughtfully for only a moment or two, he was sure that he had been mistaken.

  He unpacked his suitcase, had a wash, then went back to the window, leant his elbows on the sill and gazed out at the common. The dusk was deepening now and the lake in the distance was almost invisible. But he could see Eleanor Clancy’s cottage and thought with some irritation of what he had committed himself to doing next day. Mollie might have saved him from it, he thought. He had not taken a liking to Eleanor, and being photographed he thought a bore. However, he could hardly get out of it now.