‘I know you!’ Phil said, when he got to Sam. ‘They said Sam Somebody was here, but I didn’t connect. You used to live down the end of the road at Clapham.’
‘Still do,’ said Sam, smiling widely. ‘Sam Barton.’
‘Well!’ said Phil, finishing his royal round of greetings and landing up in the centre of the room. ‘I should think we could all do with a cuppa. Who’ll put the kettle on?’
Sam volunteered, but he was back in a couple of minutes. The police, unexpectedly considerate, had apparently foreseen the need for elevenses: along with Sam there came what the Countess was already calling to herself ‘that nice fair-haired Sergeant’. Both of them bore trays, and soon they began handing round cups of tea and a tin of biscuits. Phil said it was just like the first time he was pulled in for questioning, but before long it began to seem like any other jolly family gathering, and somehow it was not at all unnatural that Sergeant Medway should join the group.
‘It’s lovely having you home again, Phil,’ said Joan, putting it with much delicacy, she thought, and making it sound as if he had just returned from a tour of duty in the colonies.
‘Great to be here. In spite of—well, you know,’ said Phil, very much your average Englishman in his unwillingness to talk about death. ‘Hey, Chokey, this’ll kill you. Know what the Guv’nor said to me when he said goodbye?’
Joan, her efforts at genteel evasion wasted, gave a little moue of dissatisfaction, while Mr Lillywaite grimaced as if his tea were laced with senna.
‘He said, “Well, m’boy, it’s been a pleasure having you here. You’ve been a real credit to the place.” Like it was my last day at the old school.’ Phil, his mother, and Chokey burst into derisive laughter. ‘Then he said, “This is the opening of a new chapter for you, and I know it’s going to be a happy one.” As if I’d won the pools, not had me poor old dad done in. Stupid git. I don’t know how they pick ’em, I really don’t.’
Mr Lillywaite was distressed by the turn the conversation was taking. The conventional modes of reunion past, he found himself listening to the tales of gaolbirds. It was not something to which he was accustomed, and in his distaste he overlooked the fact that Phil’s opinion of the Governor of Daintree was identical with his own.
He said: ‘Perhaps you’d like to see round the Hall and its grounds?’
‘All in good time, matey,’ said Phil. Mr Lillywaite flinched. ‘Haven’t got used to all the old faces yet. Hardly recognize me own kids, they’ve grown so much—haven’t you, Karen, my little wonder? Hey—this’ll kill you.’ He turned back to his family. ‘I went through passing out drill last night—you know, Chokey: where to go, what to do, how to keep my hands clean, and what have you. And true as I’m standing here they handed me the address of the Salvation Army hostel in Whitechapel, “in case of need”, they said. Cheek of working-classes, eh? I said, “Come off it, mate: I could invite the whole Sally Army down to my place and still have room for half the bleeding Church of England as well.” ’
They all laughed, even Digby and Joan. Things were really loosening up now Phil was back. He did bring the family together. How had they done without him for so long?
• • •
‘What a collection!’ said Superintendent Hickory, as he shoved across the table to Sergeant Medway the assortment of this and that he had picked up in the various bedrooms. ‘And I’m not referring to the noble personages in this house, though I might well be.’
Hickory lay slumped in his chair like some depressive ruminant while Medway went through the various items. When he had finished Medway began to return them to his superior, then had second thoughts about one of the items. He took back and read again the letter Phil had written to his friend Chokey from Daintree, a communication as genially slapdash as his own personality.
Well me old cock Im keeping my pekker up and not letting things get me down not that I ever do you know me. They give you a lot of freedom and I have a bit of a hand of cards now and then with the guvornor whose as nice a chap as youd meet outside of Parkhurst and very libberal with it. You said last time you come you hoped I didnt blame you, what a load of tripe Chokey. More like you should blame me whose plan was it? Of course things are going to be just the same when I get out what do you think. Meanwhile take care, see the kids is alright and remember what I told you. Wo’nt be long now so dont get into any trouble, you need me beside you old mate.
Cheerio,
Phil.
‘Well?’ said Hickory, when Medway had re-read it.
‘It seems to tie in . . .’ said Medway dubiously.
‘It seems to be the letter of a born muggins—a dupe, a scapegoat. Is that how he struck you?’
‘Not precisely. No . . . Still, he certainly stuck up for his “pal” Chokey. No grassing, and all that kind of thing, pretty much as in the letter. But somehow it doesn’t quite . . .’
‘What about his wife and her boyfriend?’
‘Didn’t seem to turn a hair.’
‘Born dupe, like I said.’
‘Not exactly. He’d have been a dupe if he’d been fooled, but he wasn’t. He was—what’s the word?—’
‘Complaisant. Oh well, I don’t suppose it makes a great deal of difference. The letter to Mum and Dad was even less revealing, I thought: starts telling them about the daily routine at Daintree, then gets fed up and signs off mid-afternoon.’
Superintendent Hickory sighed noisily and stood up. He looked dusty and a bit sweaty, and he walked heavily round the Pink Damask Room like a bum bailiff camped in the splendours of Becky Sharp’s Mayfair mansion.
‘What’s going on in there?’ he asked, jerking a thumb vaguely in the direction of the Drawing-Room.
‘Nothing much. They’re beginning to accept my being around, which is something. But all they’re interested in at the moment is Phil’s tales of what it’s like in jug. Bit of a comic, our Phil.’
‘What’s your impression of him, taken as a whole?’
‘On the surface, perfectly nice bloke: funny, sharp, life and soul of the party. Underneath—I just don’t know. I wonder whether he isn’t much tougher than he seems. On the other hand, he may be chief muggins, like you say: one of these blokes who stick to their mates through thick and thin—the Sir Galahad of the East End. He’s a mystery. I’d like to watch him a bit more before I make up my mind.’
‘You’ll get time to watch him. I don’t see this case being sewn up before the end of the week. By the way, there were a couple of things I found on my tour of this stately pile.’
And he told Sergeant Medway about the oddly-placed picture in the bedroom corridor, and the oddities he and Hillier had discovered in the little corridor off the landing.
‘Interesting, sir,’ said Peter Medway. ‘But only if they came about during the night. There’d been people going round the house for a couple of days before the actual murder.’
‘Right. Though why should they go up a runt of a corridor that leads nowhere? One reason was given me by Miss Michele (a hard little bitch, by the way). She said Chokey had been going round ever since he came examining all the portable property, as if seeing whether it was worth nicking. And Sam’s been showing a pretty close interest too. So they may have taken in that little corridor on their travels, though God knows you’d think there were several acres of more interesting territory.’
‘Does it tie in with anything, sir? With their accounts of what they were doing during the night?’
‘Oh my God, what they were doing during the night,’ said Hickory, recalling the tedium of his interviews with the individual members of the party. ‘It was a case of “Please, Nanny, I was asleep like all good boys and girls.” Except in one case. This Sam Barton says he was awoken by something about one o’clock. Now that ought to be of interest, oughtn’t it?’
‘Of course. Where’s his bedroom?’
‘That’s it. Miles away, towards the far end of the Blenheim Wing. If the Earl was clocked with the Benares ware jug at the top
of the stairs—though actually the docs say it was a manual blow—there wouldn’t be a chance in hell of his hearing it from there.’
‘Whereas if he were sleeping in Milady’s chamber—?’
‘He could have heard. Mind you, Dixie’s room isn’t that near: you’ve got to remember the scale of this place. But he could have heard a body falling from the landing to the hall. He swears he was in his own room, though.’
‘Any news of the butler and cook?’ said Medway, pursuing a thought of his own.
‘None: everybody alerted, both to them and the car. Ports and airports especially alerted, but of course by now we’re probably shutting the stable door. I suppose you’re thinking that if Sam Barton was in his room—’
‘That he wasn’t so far from where this pair were hiding.’
‘Well, actually he was half the length of Whitehall. But that doesn’t alter the fact that that precious pair could have been up to something around that part of the house . . .’
Suddenly Hickory jerked himself out of his contemplative lethargy and seized the phone with the speed and accuracy of a lively bird seizing on a worm.
‘I’ve had an idea . . . Headquarters? Hickory here. Look, I want you to get on the phone to the Yard, and ask them for a list of all the reputable domestic agencies—the class ones, the ones that fill positions in the residences of the nobs. Nobs English and nobs foreign. Just get the list, and we’ll do the rest.’
He put the phone down.
‘I should have remembered. That dry stick of a lawyer mentioned these places. Said they came from one, so the chances are they’d go back there to get themselves another place. If another place is what they want, that is. Right, I think we’d better go and have another look at Sam Barton’s bedroom.’
• • •
It was not until the afternoon that Phil and Mr Lillywaite went on their tour of the house and estate. Dixie had cooked dinner, and Phil had helped her. They had been left alone in the kitchens by common consent, dearly though the others would have liked to hear what was said. Dixie had planned this as her first opportunity to get Phil alone, and had driven into Chetton Lacey earlier in the day to buy up mountains of steak (causing the butcher to speculate whether the good times might not, after all, be returning at the Big House). Phil peeled masses of potatoes, and they had a cosy chat about the future, during which Phil was rather more noncommittal than Dixie would have liked. They found an enormous old saucepan which could cope with chips, and several frying-pans for the steak. Mr Lillywaite was invited to what he insisted on calling luncheon, but he urbanely declined to (as he expressed it) put them to so much trouble. He went to the little hotel in Chetton Lacey, where they were serving fillet steak and French fries.
When he returned, around two o’clock, the new Earl was having a bit of a zizz—but he jumped up when he heard the lawyer’s voice, and they began a tour as wide-ranging and unrestricted as it could be with a whole battalion of policemen cluttering up the route. Phil’s eye, as they went slowly from room to room, was appreciative. Mr Lillywaite hoped it was appreciative of artistic worth, but he feared it was of cash value. Not that it mattered—now, he said to himself. When they had mounted the Great Staircase and were beginning the tour of the upstairs rooms, Phil turned to his guide and said:
‘You know this house and I don’t. Would you notice if anything was missing—you know, swiped?’
Mr Lillywaite turned a troubled face in his direction.
‘I’m afraid not, Lord Ellesmere. I know this floor only very superficially. I was always seen by the Earl in the study, exceptionally in the Drawing-Room. I have not been up here for several years, except for one visit to the Earl in his last illness—a distressful occasion when I was far from observant.’
(Mr Lillywaite, in fact, had been worrying about his position under the new Earl, a young man of casually impertinent manners and tearaway disposition.)
‘Oh well,’ said Phil, ‘I suppose the fuzz is on to it.’
‘You are thinking of Parsloe?’
‘Is that the butler berk? Yeah. I was thinking that even if the police do nab them, they could have stashed things away pretty effectively by now.’
Mr Lillywaite was silent. He felt, not quite logically, that he bore some share of responsibility for the Parsloe episode. Throughout the rest of the tour of the house he contented himself with pointing out the most remarkable architectural features, the most magnificent of the family possessions. Phil nodded, and seemed to be taking it all in.
When, finally, they proceeded downstairs again, they passed through the little-used Morning Room and out into the Dutch Garden. Here the Earls of Ellesmere could obtain the most magnificent view of their domain, and Mr Lillywaite paused, that Phil might do so. He had prepared a quote from Sacheverell Sitwell’s essay on the house, but Phil got in first:
‘Phew!’ he said.
It did as well, Mr Lillywaite thought. Phil stood there among the dusty flowers and shrubs, clearly impressed, his feet planted firmly on the paving stones: confident, substantial, watchful. He registered (one could hardly fail to) the hefty, middle-aged police constable at the top of the steps leading down to the fountain. Then his eyes strafed the horizon. He seemed to have remarkably efficient long sight.
‘I suppose it’s mine to the end of that field,’ he said, pointing into the distance. Mr Lillywaite squinted painfully.
‘I expect you mean Parson’s Field,’ he said. ‘Yes. The estates stretch considerably further in all other directions, but to the west of Parson’s Field there is a strip of land that the Spenders have always failed to acquire. It was the subject of acrimonious litigation in the eighteen-forties with a farmer called Boythorn.’ He turned to Phil with an expression on his face that was close to suspicion. ‘How did you know?’
‘There’s a bloke who just must be a reporter in the field beyond,’ explained Phil. ‘And a rozzer keeping an eye on him from our side of the hedge.’
They walked down the steps and past the fountain where Charles James Fox had tried to wash away the effects of seventy-two hours’ continuous drinking. Then they began along the Countess’s Walk. Mr Lillywaite had again fallen silent. He was trying to digest the foregoing conversation. Really the Spenders—these Spenders—sometimes surprised him. They had a sharpness, a quickness—on some subjects—that disconcerted him. Of course, he told himself, it was not intelligence. But nevertheless . . . Even that creature the new Earl’s wife had it . . . When they came to the end of the walk, Phil once again gazed around him. They were now at one side of Parson’s Field, and Phil seemed fascinated by the figure of the reporter, who was taking photographs from beyond the opposite hedge. Surely, thought Mr Lillywaite, he could not be thinking of talking to him? He hurriedly turned the conversation to the topic he had all along been intending to bring up.
‘This,’ he said, in his thin, acid voice, ‘was a favourite spot of your late father . . . in his all too brief residence here. I wonder if we might have a brief preliminary discussion of what your situation is, after his sad and sudden death.’
Phil frowned.
‘Stow it,’ he said. ‘The old boy’s not buried yet. Let’s do the decent and wait till he’s cold, eh?’
Mr Lillywaite felt he had been reproved. No other heir, in his experience, had refused to discuss his financial position at the earliest possible opportunity. Gloomily he wheeled round, and they began to walk back towards the great house.
• • •
‘Not much to be got out of this,’ said Superintendent Hickory, surveying Sam Barton’s bedroom with the gloom of a farmer for whom all types of weather apparently portend crop disasters.
‘Presumably it’s a sort of pied-à-terre,’ agreed Medway, with a rather magnificent French accent. ‘The permanent residence is along the way.’
‘Though young people do just dump things down where they land up, and live out of haversacks. These days they do.’
‘He’s been at Chetton four days,’ poi
nted out Medway.
‘Granted. And perhaps he’s just come along and taken what he needed and gone back to Her Ladyship. What I don’t see is why he should lie. To save Her Ladyship’s delicate feelings? She seems as brassy as a country pub. Fear of the jealous husband? By your account Phil is the complaisant husband par excellence (if you’ll pardon the pronunciation). And you notice there’s a book by the bed. So let’s assume for argument that on the night of the murder he was here—either for part or the whole of the night.’
‘Right. And since it’s miles from the staircase, he simply could not have heard the Earl fall. So forget the murder—’
‘And start thinking about what else he could have heard. There are these two jokers camped in the wing. I rather agree with the late Earl that they had a bloody nerve. That being so, they could have decided to play games with the Earl’s property. Presumably with some of the less famous items. That displaced picture is much too far away, so let’s go walkabout and see what rooms there are in the vicinity here.’
They went out into the corridor and scouted around, pushing open doors until Hickory gave a grunt of satisfaction.
‘What about this?’ he called.
The room he had come upon had been remodelled in William IV’s reign by the same architect who had built the Dower House—a local man who still looked back on the Bath of the Woods as the epitome of elegance. The room was high, airy and well-proportioned, and its purpose was to display the fifth Earl’s magnificent collection of clocks. Around the walls were the more imposing specimens, while the body of the room held the smaller items in a series of display cases and on tables. Here were the lifetime’s acquisitions of a chronomaniac: the Nuremberg watch from the 1530s; the cumbersome English church clock, dismantled and reassembled, from around the same date; the gilt clock with porcelain figures from Caffieri’s; the enamel watch by Fazy. On the brightness of it all the dust lay thick. The old Earl (who had no intellectual interests to speak of) had regarded his ancestor’s hobby as an incomprehensible eccentricity, and had not even been particularly willing to show the collection to the enthusiastic amateurs who on occasion applied. The room had been forgotten, or at any rate neglected, until the dust had temporarily been disturbed by the hokey-kokey party two nights earlier. Here there were clocks, but no ticking. Time dominated but it stood still.
Corpse in a Gilded Cage Page 12
