‘I’m going to open it the moment the police get their big boots out of the door, and I’m going to keep it open all summer at ten quid a head.’
‘What?’
‘Ten quid. I’ll drop it when we open properly next spring. What we’re going to get now will be the ghoul trade: they’ll want to gape at the scene of the crime, catch a glimpse of the gaolbird Earl all the papers have been going on about. OK—then they’ll have to pay for it. Through the nose. I’m getting a series of interviews lined up to fan the interest, and as many personal appearances as I can cram in. There’ll be queues from the Great Entrance to the Main Gate.’
‘But, Lord Ellesmere,’ said Mr Lillywaite, with an expression of acute disgust on his cavernous face, ‘surely it would be distasteful to you to capitalize on a family tragedy in that way?’
‘Stick me to the heart. Still, Dad wasn’t squeamish. I’ll beg his pardon when we’re both on the same side of the pearly gates. He’ll understand when I tell him what the takings were.’
‘Oh dear, oh dear,’ murmured Mr Lillywaite. ‘I see, I begin to see, what you have in mind. But I don’t like it. I don’t like it at all.’
‘In that case, you’ll just have to lump it, old cock,’ said Phil.
• • •
‘It was a perfectly good story, so far as it went,’ said Hickory to Peter Medway when, in the evening, they found themselves together in the Pink Damask Room. They stood looking at the attractive Cotman that had been found in the car, at the rather florid clock, and at the collection of toilet jars and jewellery, some of it superb, some very ordinary.
‘It’s a very random collection of stuff,’ said Hickory. ‘But then it would be if they just grabbed what was conveniently to hand on their last night here.’
‘But on the whole you believe their story, don’t you, sir?’
‘Yes. Because though I can see them as capable of robbing the house—Nazeby especially, out of spite—I just can’t see them trolling off to Ireland afterwards. If she’d decided to rob the place, Nazeby would have got a much bigger haul, and she’d have been off to the Continent. The difficulties in the way of a murder charge are even greater: no jury is going to believe that after robbing the house and murdering the Earl this pair would calmly proceed to their next job, with the loot very superficially concealed, still in the car. They wouldn’t believe it, and I don’t.’
‘No. It seems incredibly stupid, and I don’t get the impression that Nazeby is stupid in the least. Anything come up while I was in Ireland?’
‘We’ve got a fair bit on this Raicho character. Tallies with what he told us. He had spent the last few months in Europe, then he had ten days in Canada before flying to England. He said he returned to Canada because he was on a special cheap ticket that included the fare back, and that’s true. What he didn’t tell us was that he only booked for his Monday flight to England on Sunday night. Make what you like of that. He went straight from Heathrow to Phil’s home in Stepney. Talked to the neighbours, was shown Monday’s evening papers with the picture of you and Phil leaving gaol, expressed great surprise and interest. Came down here on Tuesday—rail to Meresham, bus to the gates of Chetton, the rest we know.’
‘It is odd that he should go back to Canada, then hotfoot it back to Europe. No point in taking up your cheap seat if you then have to fork out for a seat back.’
‘Unless . . . oh well, just a thought. Gleaned anything from the constables about what the family’s been up to while you’ve been in Ireland?’
‘Trying to pin Phil down on what he’s going to do for them. Want to get something definite before they push off.’
‘You know, I do sometimes wonder about the Spenders.’
‘Wonder, sir?’
‘Wonder whether all the Spenders, and all their friends, and all their connections could have been quite so stupendously ignorant as they pretend of their position next in line to a whacking great fortune like this . . . And there’s another thing.’
‘What’s that, sir?’
‘There’s one member of this cast list who doesn’t add up.’
At that moment there was a knock on the door, and the burly head and shoulders of Phil poked themselves round.
‘Him!’ said Hickory. ‘Come in, Lord Ellesmere, I was just talking about you. You’re on my mind. I was just wondering whether crooks’ ethics prevented your working with the police, and if that’s why you’ve been playing the cat that walked on his own.’
‘Watch your language, matey. Now I’ve served my time I’m pure as the driven snow. It’s like going to confession. And I’ve been walking on my own because I’ve been out of things for three years, and I wanted to make sure my guesses were right.’
‘Well, you’ve had four days to play your little games. Isn’t it time now that we sat down and went at things together? Isn’t it time you came completely clean?’
‘Just what I’d decided myself,’ said Phil.
CHAPTER 15
THE DINING-ROOM
On the day of her departure, the Countess found that her eager anticipation of going home was slightly dampened by her fear of ridicule, or worse.
‘There’s some as’ll take the mickey,’ she announced, in her doomsday-tomorrow voice, ‘and more as would like to if they dared. My not using the title won’t stop ’em. Mrs Parsons three doors down will be thinking up sarky remarks already, but I’ll soon put her down. There’ll be some as want to make Remarks, too. About Perce’s death. Mrs Carter would be common enough, for one. I shall just say nothing. Maintain a dignified silence. Freeze her. All the same, I do wish it was all cleared up.’
The Countess, unusually for her so early in the day, was dressed. Indeed, she probably would have put on her coat and hat and sat with her case in the Hall if Phil had not dissuaded her. Phil had been in consultation again with the Superintendent during the morning, and had gathered that the final interviews would be finished by lunch-time. He had decided, with the Superintendent’s approval, to give them all a slap-up meal before they departed. The Countess had declined the offer of a lift from Joan and Digby, and Trevor had gone off to Meresham to fetch a hire car in which to drive her home. Trevor was financially buoyed up by yesterday’s offer of a film part in a homosexual skin-flick with a Japanese slant, to be called Sayonara, Cheeky.
‘No offence, Joanie, but I’ll let Trevor drive me, even if the trollop does come along,’ the Countess explained to her daughter. ‘After all, he does live at home, when he is at home.’
Phil asked for volunteers to help with the lunch. Dixie stared stonily ahead of her. Joan said she’d come down later, but she had an awful lot of packing to do first. Michele just said ‘Are you out of your mind? I can’t boil a bleeding egg.’ In the end it was Raicho, coming from his second interview with the Superintendent, who found himself commandeered.
Once the two of them had settled down in the kitchen, they found they had plenty to talk about. While they chatted Phil put on the two large pork roasts he had got from the butcher in Chetton. Phil had driven in himself (such was now his standing with the investigating policemen that they had made no objections), pursued by yelping newsmen who photographed through the plate glass the homely spectacle of the new Earl being handed two substantial roasts over the counter, and of his not paying for them. Word had got around that the Earl, barring accidents such as his arrest for murder, was probably going to be around at Chetton for some time, and this had done wonders for the service. The butcher was positively oleaginous, and almost over-ready to put everything on account.
When the roast was sizzling Phil and Raicho set to on a positive mountain of potatoes. Raicho proved inexpert but willing. When Sergeant Medway poked his nose around the door he was conscripted to help. And when a thought occurred to Phil that he wanted to chew over with the Superintendent, he gave Medway strict instructions not to leave Raicho. ‘Just to be on the safe side,’ he said. When he returned he was thoughtful, and remained so during the rest of the prepa
rations.
At one o’clock the interviews had all been completed. The luggage was standing in little piles near the Great Entrance, containing all the personal things the guests had brought to Chetton, and the little souvenirs they had decided to take away from it. Phil despatched Peter Medway with an armful of knives and forks to the Dining-Room, where the cloth was still on from the evening of the guests’ arrival, together with much of the magnificent silver impedimenta of that meal. For this final lunch, though, Phil had resolved to make one change: the children could have a table to themselves down in the kitchen, so he told Medway to set places only for the adult members of the family, and for himself.
‘The family won’t want me eating with them,’ said Peter Medway. ‘Blight on the occasion. I’ll stand near the door.’
‘Not a bit of it,’ said Phil. ‘You’re practically one of us by now. Just take your tie off, open the top button of your shirt, and nobody will notice you’re not a slob like the rest of us.’
It was when they were about to serve out that Mr Lillywaite arrived. He had come in high expectation, having been summoned by Phil for the business discussion he had been waiting for. But in the event he found himself sat down at table between Lady Joan and the Countess, protesting bleakly that he had already eaten. When the family had all gathered in the Dining-Room, Phil and Raicho did a high-speed serving job in the kitchen, with Raicho serving the vegetables while Phil (who had often helped Mario, the Italian chef at Daintree) whipped through the carving with an almost professional air. Gravy came from a packet, but as Phil said: if no one was willing to chip in and help, they couldn’t bleeding well complain. Finally Peter Medway did an expert waiting job with the plates, and the children were left tucking in in the kitchen, while upstairs everyone was wielding a moderately enthusiastic knife and fork. There was Lady Joan, making genteel conversation with the family man of law; there was Dixie, heaving food muscularly into her substantial frame; there was Michele, toying wispily with her food, and there was Sam going at it with infectious enjoyment. There were, in fact, all the Spenders and their guests, with Phil bonhomous and hostly at the head of the table.
‘Well,’ he said, echoing his father six days before, ‘this is nice.’
‘Brings things back,’ said the Countess, sniffing.
‘Now then, Ma, have a bit of crackling and forget your troubles. You’re going home now, aren’t you? Just what you wanted, no place like it, and all that.’
‘I wish I wasn’t leaving you here. You won’t like it, Phil, whatever you may think now.’
‘Don’t you worry, Ma. I’m used to big places with hundreds of rooms. We’re going to have a whale of a time here, I can tell you: a monster-sized giggle, as Trev would say.’
‘If this ’ere business is ever seen the end of,’ said the Countess gloomily.
‘Oh, it will be, don’t you worry, Ma. The Super has it well in hand, hasn’t he, Peter?’ Phil looked at Sergeant Medway. ‘The Sergeant says that things are beginning to sort themselves out. And, anyway, we’ve done our bit. Everyone’s been along to see the Super for the second time, haven’t they? Mr Lillywaite excepted, naturally.’
‘I thought it a waste of time,’ said Joan, looking around the table from over her pretty apple-green blouse. ‘And so did Digby. We could only tell him what we told him before. It doesn’t seem to us as if he’s getting anywhere.’
‘It’s like doing the same scene over and over again,’ agreed Trevor, who was fitting in with the decor in a frilly white silken shirt and dark trousers. ‘ “Where were you on the night of Saturday the twenty-first?” “I was in bed, mostly asleep.” Do it twenty times and get it perfect. I suppose you could say the old haystack was thorough, but he wasn’t asking anything he hadn’t asked before, so I don’t suppose he’s got any new information. I agree with Joan: unless he’s just marking time till he claps the handcuffs on that butler and his girl, it seems as if he’s getting nowhere fast.’
‘Oh, you don’t want to underrate him,’ said Phil. ‘Us cockneys think we’re the only smart ones on God’s earth, but we’re not. They just do things a bit slower down this neck of the woods, eh, Peter? The Super had to make doubly sure of your statements before he let you all go. We’re all suspects, after all. Except, naturally, Mr Lillywaite. And Raicho.’
There was a moment’s silence at this. They all looked at their plates and none of them looked at Raicho, who, sallow and handsome, was following his father’s words closely. The fact was that nobody quite dared query the exemption of Mr Lillywaite from suspicion, but every one of them had a strong urge to query Raicho’s. Finally it was Digby who did so.
‘I don’t really see that your son is out of it,’ he said. ‘After all, we’ve only his word for it that he came over when he did. In fact, he could very easily have been here that night.’
‘Except that he wasn’t,’ said Phil. ‘Because he came over when I telegraphed him the money.’
There was another silence as they thought this over.
‘You telegraphed him?’ said Dixie harshly. ‘Why in hell did you do that?’
‘When, precisely, was this?’ asked Mr Lillywaite.
‘As soon as I heard that Dad had been done in, and when the Governor told me I might be able to leave clink early. Sunday. I’d been thinking of Raicho, naturally, since our little conversation of the day before, Mr L.’
‘But how—?’
‘Borrowed the money from the Guv’nor,’ said Phil cheerily. ‘Silly old berk, as you’d probably agree, but useful at times. I think this is one loan I’m going to pay back. Raicho got it on Sunday evening, travelled on Monday, went to our old address, where he thought we’d be, then came on here.’
‘I don’t get it, Phil,’ said Dixie.
‘Don’t you, Dixie? Let’s just say, like I told the Super, it was a sort of insurance policy. For me, for Cliff—’
‘Cliff?’ said the Countess.
‘What are you going on about, Phil?’
‘Cliff, or Gareth, or whoever. Cliff, mother mine, is the oldest of the kids of Dixie’s and my marriage that’s actually legit. Technically. Mr Lillywaite and me established that when we went over things in jug. And I thought it might be as well if I advertised to all and sundry just who the next Earl of Ellesmere would be if I got my packet. I’d look after Raicho, I thought, and he’d look after me. And that’s how it’s turned out. That’s why I’ve been parading him, telling the press he’s the new Lord Portsea, and so on. Because even then, in Daintree, when I heard of Dad’s death, it did seem to me that there’d been too many deaths of Spenders in the last few months.’
‘You can say that again,’ said the Countess.
‘There was the old Earl—well, he was old, so that may very well have been above board. This young bloke, he sounds as if he was a bit of a tearaway, so perhaps no one was all that surprised when he tore away once too often and got his number on the M1 or wherever. Wasn’t surprising at the time. But it did become a bit fishy-like when poor old Dad’s number also came up a few weeks later. Who’s got it in for the Spenders, you felt like asking?’
‘I know nobody had it in for your dad as your dad,’ said the Countess. ‘He was one of the best.’
‘I said he was the only one of us that was any good,’ said Trevor, looking around.
‘And you never said a truer, Trev,’ agreed Phil. ‘No, I just couldn’t see Dad as having some deadly enemy he’d made over the counter at Blackwood’s the ironmonger’s. Nor any mortal foe in the saloon bar of the Prince Leopold in Clapham. The worst Dad ever behaved to anyone, by all accounts, was when he bawled out this ’ere butler and cook. And no one can say they didn’t ask for it.’
‘Personally my money’s still on them,’ said Digby.
‘I might put a quid each way if they hadn’t practically asked to be hauled in by going off to the new job with the loot still stashed away under the back seat of the car. If they did it, they were either mentally deficient, or they were playing
a pretty funny game. Anyone for more veg?’
No one, it seemed, wanted more veg.
‘Phil,’ said the Countess, ‘I think you know.’
‘Me, Ma? I don’t know much more than the rest of you. But I think there’s one thing we’ve all been forgetting, as I told the Super yesterday. He’s been following it up, since he heard.’
‘What’s that?’ demanded Trevor.
‘Three or four months ago—first time he’d done it—Dad made a will.’
‘Well, we know that,’ said Trevor. ‘Don’t rub it in. But it’s irrelevant. It was cancelled out by the later one, so old—so Mr Lillywaite said. I’d have been rolling if the earlier one held.’
‘So you would. Just one of life’s little disappointments, Trevor, old mate. But what I wanted to know was, why all of a sudden did he make a will?’
They looked back at him, puzzled.
‘Nearly fell under a number fifty-nine bus,’ said the Countess. ‘Even as it was he hit his head on the radiator. Got concussion. He was in the East London General Hospital for three days. Right as rain afterwards, though.’
‘That’s it. I didn’t hear about it at the time, because I was in stir, and we’re not really a writing family, are we? But it does seem to me that one or other of you might have thought of it. Because it was only five or six weeks later that he came into all this.’
They all sat over their pork, and only Trevor was munching away. Trevor had the sort of metabolism that impelled him to eat ravenously, yet always left him pencil slim.
‘Worth thinking about, eh? That’s what the Super thought, when we discussed it. Because what if whoever did it this time had in fact had a go before? And when that attempt failed, they were a bit unsure of things, and before they knew where they were, he’d come into the big money.’
‘You’ve lost me, Phil,’ said his mother bluntly. ‘When he had that accident your dad didn’t have no money. Only just in the black at the bank, and the tail end of the mortgage to pay off. What would be the point of pushing him under a bus?’
Corpse in a Gilded Cage Page 18
