The Missing Diamond Murder

by Diane Janes

  ‘Gosh! Are you saying that there was skulduggery afoot under our very noses and we just didn’t see it?’ Eddie sounded both excited and amused, but then his voice changed as he said, ‘But you know, I can’t really believe it. I mean, we’re just not that sort of family.’

  ‘Why look,’ Fran interrupted. ‘Isn’t that Croydon clock tower? We must be almost there already.’

  When they reached Shenstone Hill they found that it was a typical suburban street, lined with tall, thin terraced houses; respectable but slightly faded, where the arrival of a taxi was an unusual event. Dolly must have either seen or heard the car, for she swung the front door open before Eddie had time to apply the knocker. Recognizing one of her two visitors, she made no attempt to disguise her surprise.

  ‘Hello, Dolly,’ Eddie said. ‘May I introduce my friend, Mrs Black? We would very much appreciate a few minutes of your time if it’s not too much bother. Perhaps if we might come inside?’

  Dolly looked momentarily doubtful, but then invited them into the front parlour. ‘Please sit down,’ she said. ‘It isn’t what you’re used to, I don’t suppose. My brother Albert works on the railways,’ she added, as if this provided elucidation to an unasked question. ‘He’s on duty at the present time and his wife, Ellen, has taken the baby to the park. What was it you were wanting exactly?’

  Eddie glanced at Fran, who said, ‘We called at your flat, hoping to speak with yourself and your husband today, Mrs Edgerton, and your husband told us that you had left him. He was very anxious to get a message to you. He wants you to forgive him and says he will turn over a new leaf, if you will only return.’

  ‘Dear me.’ Dolly’s face relaxed into a half smile. ‘Poor old Charlie. I suppose I will go back then.’

  ‘You will?’ Fran was positively flabbergasted at the ease with which Dolly had capitulated.

  ‘Well, I can’t stay here, can I?’ Dolly lifted her shoulders into an expressive shrug. ‘He’s a kind man really, and he’s got a good heart, my Charlie, but he will keep panting after other girls. When he took up with that Edna from the bakery, well, that was just about the giddy limit and out I walked. It seems that it has taught him a lesson. I might manage to keep him on the leash a bit longer this time.’

  Fran could not help noticing the way Dolly mangled her words, ‘Hai can’t stay he-ah, can hai?’

  ‘So,’ said Eddie. ‘Happy ending all round, eh? Jolly good show.’

  ‘What are you then?’ Dolly turned to Fran. ‘One of those new-fangled marriage counsellors, are you?’

  ‘Nothing like that,’ said Fran. ‘The thing is that now we have passed on your husband’s message, it would be splendid if you could do something for us in return.’

  ‘And what would that be?’ A hint of wariness appeared in Dolly’s eyes. She was very pretty in a superficial sort of way, Fran thought, but behind the pretty face there was something much harder and more calculating.

  ‘All I want is for you to think back to a couple of occasions when you and your husband were staying at Sunnyside House. First of all there was the day when – and I’m sorry to raise something so painful – when you saw your husband meeting a housemaid called Connie, in the garden. I think you’d followed him up from the beach, when he said he was going for a walk.’

  ‘What of it?’

  ‘I want you to tell me if you saw anyone else at all between leaving the beach and seeing your husband with the maid.’

  Dolly looked puzzled. ‘There was no one else there.’

  ‘What about after you saw them?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Can you tell me what you did after you’d seen them and who was the next person you saw after that?’

  ‘I didn’t do anything. I suppose I should have wanted to tear her eyes out, the little cat, but to tell you the truth I just felt humiliated. I wondered if all his la-di-da family knew what he was getting up to and whether they were all laughing at me.’ She shot a swift look at Eddie. ‘If you must know, I just stayed where I was. There was a little rustic bench, just to the side of the path and I sat down on it and had a bit of a cry. Then I thought I’d better go and show my face at the tennis court, otherwise someone might ask what I’d been doing and I wouldn’t have known what to say.’

  ‘And you didn’t see anyone else at all in the garden?’

  ‘No. Not until I got to the tennis court. Why? Is it important?’

  ‘Probably not. You see, there was some slight suggestion of an intruder in the grounds, but you know nothing about that?’ Fran tried to ignore Eddie’s quizzical expression. He didn’t know about the footsteps heard in the wood, or the car seen by Max.

  Dolly shook her head.

  ‘Now the other occasion was almost a year ago, when you were again staying at Sunnyside House and there was a fire, in old Mr Edgerton’s room. Can you remember that?’

  ‘I’m hardly likely to forget it,’ said Dolly. ‘Being woken up like that, people shouting and screaming and rushing along the corridor. And in the end it was only a bit of wood smouldering on the hearthrug, or so I believe.’

  ‘You didn’t think your father-in-law was ever in any great danger then?’

  Dolly shrugged again. ‘I didn’t really think about it. I just supposed it to be an accident. But I think that you’re hinting at something else, aren’t you? Is it that you think someone tried to set fire to the house and when that didn’t work, they pushed the old man over the edge of the cliffs?’

  ‘It’s only a remote possibility,’ said Fran.

  ‘That’s how it would have happened in the flickers, isn’t it?’ Dolly nodded as much to herself as to her visitors. ‘The villains would have crept into the house while the old fellow was asleep, tied him up and gagged him, so’s he couldn’t raise the alarm, then wheeled him out into the garden and shoved him over the cliff.’

  ‘I suppose so,’ said Fran. ‘Anyway, thank you for your time.’ She rose to her feet and appeared to stumble slightly. In reaching for the mantleshelf to steady herself, she contrived to knock an envelope, which had been propped there, on to the hearthrug. ‘Oh dear, I’m so sorry. It’s these wretched shoes. No please, let me …’ She bent to retrieve the envelope as she spoke. It was evidently an item of unopened post, awaiting the return of the intended recipient. ‘It was most generous of you to see us,’ Fran went on, as she replaced the envelope in its former position. ‘And I do hope things can be worked out between you and Mr Edgerton.’

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  Eddie picked Fran up from her hotel at 7.45. She had already protested about having ‘nothing fancy’ to wear, but he’d waved this aside. ‘We won’t go anywhere public or grand,’ he assured her. ‘I know just the place.’

  He had made a reservation at a small French restaurant, which stood, at the end of a shadowy side street, just off the Strand. Here a waiter wearing a long white apron, escorted them into a booth which had candles on the table to supplement the very subdued electric lighting. ‘No one will see us here,’ Eddie said. ‘So you can rest assured that your divorce proceedings will not be compromised.’

  ‘I imagine you are right,’ said Fran. ‘Given that it’s so dim in here, we can barely see each other.’

  ‘Next time I take you to dinner in London, it will be sparkling chandeliers at the Savoy, I promise.’

  Fran was prevented from making an answer by the arrival of the waiter, with menus and a wine list, over which Eddie ran a swift glance, before stating that they would have a bottle of the Chateau Margaux.

  ‘You know,’ he said, when the waiter had gone off to fetch the wine, leaving them to choose their food. ‘This sleuthing business is fascinating, isn’t it? The way you find out clues, just by talking to someone.’

  ‘And what clues did you feel we got from Dolly?’

  ‘Well, she made a jolly good point about Grandfather being tied up. I expect it had occurred to you ages ago, but I had never thought of it that way.’

  ‘What do you mean?
’

  ‘Well, it’s obvious, when you think about it, that Grandfather wouldn’t have gone willingly. Or at least he would have done if he’d wanted to be taken out for a walk but suppose he didn’t. If there was “a villain”, as Dolly puts it, that person couldn’t have risked Grandfather protesting when he was taken out of the house. I mean, we mightn’t have heard him if he’d cried out at the very last minute, when he realized that he was going over the edge, but if he’d shouted out when he was inside the house, or very close to it, there’s every chance that one of the servants would have heard him and come to see what was going on.’

  ‘So you think the only sure way of pulling this off would have been to tie him up in order to prevent him from throwing himself out of the chair? And gagging him to prevent any noise?’

  Eddie nodded enthusiastically. ‘That’s the ticket.’

  ‘And when your grandfather’s body was found,’ Fran said gently, ‘was his body tied to the wheelchair or a gag found around his mouth?’

  Eddie sighed theatrically. ‘I’m not cut out for this lark at all, am I? So what the circumstances really tell us is that Grandfather either went willing – perhaps even propelling himself – or else …’

  ‘He either knew and trusted the person, or else when he was taken from the house, he was dead already,’ Fran finished for him.

  ‘Nothing had been disturbed in the library,’ Eddie mused. ‘There weren’t any bloodstains. Of course, if you strangled someone, then I suppose …’

  ‘Look out,’ said Fran, ‘the waiter is on his way back. He’ll be expecting us to order and I haven’t even looked at the menu yet.’

  Once decisions had been made and the waiter had left them alone again, Eddie resumed his speculation. ‘Dolly suggested a villain coming in from outside, but it would be quite difficult – and certainly pretty risky – to attempt to approach the house without being seen.’

  ‘She probably thought it was an outsider, because I suggested to her that there might have been an intruder. I thought that was better than letting her think other members of the party were being investigated.’

  ‘There isn’t really any evidence of an intruder, is there?’ Eddie sounded sober. ‘If someone did murder Grandfather, then it must have been what the police would call “an inside job”.’

  ‘I’m afraid it does look that way.’

  ‘You know, nothing much is ever said, but I reckon Uncle Charles is pretty short of the readies.’ He allowed the comment to hang in the air before asking: ‘Is that maid able to vouch for him the whole afternoon?’

  ‘I’m afraid not. She left him in the bedroom and went back to her duties.’

  ‘Oh dear,’ said Eddie. ‘That’s not good. And I suppose there must be a few other members of the household with periods of the afternoon unaccounted for.’

  ‘No one saw your mother all afternoon. Imogen went missing for a substantial period, and Miss Billington too, though it is hard to see Miss Billington’s motive, unless she had intended to steal the diamond.’ Fran decided it was better not to mention that the governess might have had her reasons for stealing the diamond. If Miss Roche was right, then Miss Billington could have grown to resent her employers. What was it Miss Roche had said? Only a complete change of personal circumstances would facilitate her escape.

  ‘But why would she hide it in the grotto? That doesn’t make any sense.’

  ‘None of it seems to make any sense,’ Fran said. ‘That’s the problem. There are also the other suspicious incidents. There was an occasion when your grandfather thought that his food tasted strange and then there was the fire in his room. I find it odd that no one mentioned that incident to me until Miss Roche did.’

  ‘The poison episode was just Grandfather’s fancy. There couldn’t have been any problem with his food, because after he’d complained Monica tasted it and found nothing wrong at all. As for the fire, when you put it like this, well, of course, it sounds suspicious, but at the time everyone assumed it was a pure accident.’

  ‘What do you remember about that night?’

  ‘Let’s see … We’d had some people to dinner, but they were all long gone. Everyone had gone up to bed and the house was completely quiet. I had put my light out, but I wasn’t quite asleep, when I heard Grandfather suddenly yelling fit to bust. Naturally I jumped out of bed and ran out on to the landing at pretty much the same moment as Hen. Then everyone else started to appear and we all went dashing downstairs.

  ‘I was one of the first down and of course we could smell the smoke even before anyone opened the library door. I seem to remember that there was a blazing fire in the grate and a part burned lump of wood had fallen from the fire and set alight the hearthrug. We were in the nick of time, I think. The armchair nearest the fire was starting to smoulder and in another minute or so it would have caught properly and the whole room – maybe the whole house – would have gone up. I grabbed Grandfather’s wheelchair and helped him into it, while Roly yelled for people to fetch water and began to tackle the fire. When I got Grandfather out into the hall – which wasn’t easy, as people were all scooting about, getting in one another’s way – I remember Monica came to help and once she took over, I dashed along the passage and grabbed a bucket of water from Jamieson, who’d just brought it from the scullery.’

  ‘Was there much damage?’

  ‘We were jolly lucky. The library had to be repainted and the carpet replaced. The rug was a goner, but I think Mother managed to get the armchair reupholstered.’

  ‘And did your grandfather explain what had happened?’

  ‘According to him, he just woke up and found the place was burning.’

  ‘And was there any investigation as to what had caused the fire?’

  ‘Well, only among ourselves. One of the maids had lit the fire and she claimed that she hadn’t banked it up overmuch and said that she’d left the guard in place, but there of course, she would say that, wouldn’t she? Monica was a bit more honest. She said that she thought the guard was in front of the fire when she’d left the room, but she couldn’t absolutely swear to it. I think she rather blamed herself for what had happened.’

  ‘I suppose it would have been quite easy for someone to sneak downstairs and slip into the library after your grandfather had fallen asleep, in order to interfere with the fire?’

  ‘I suppose so. It would have been easy enough to remove the fireguard, then use the poker or the fire tongs to drag the burning wood out on to the rug. Pretty risky strategy though. I mean, one could have gone back upstairs and ended up trapped in the fire.’

  ‘I doubt it,’ said Fran. ‘If I were plotting something like that, I’d just give it a little while to allow time for my victim to be overcome by the smoke and then if no one else raised the alarm, I would go out on to the landing and do it myself, claiming that I’d smelled smoke or heard something.’

  ‘Of course. It’s obvious when you put it like that.’

  ‘And I believe your uncle Charles was staying in the house on the night of the fire.’

  Eddie nodded.

  ‘Tell me, do you happen to know what Dolly’s name was, before she and Charles were married?’

  ‘No. The wedding took place abroad. They only wrote and told us about it once the deed had been done, so to speak.’

  ‘And the occasion when your grandfather thought someone had tried to poison him – were your uncle Charles and his wife staying then too?’

  ‘Oh no, it was just the usual household.’

  Their own food, when it came, was excellent. By unspoken mutual consent, speculations about violent death were suspended in favour of more cheerful topics. Eddie was disappointed to discover that Fran was returning home the following day and remained deaf to his pleading that she stay on.

  ‘We could have gone to the theatre. There’s a fearfully jolly show on at the Criterion. And I know a very nice place for a late supper afterwards.’

  ‘I have to go home,’ Fran said firmly, tho
ugh a voice in her head asked her why. There was nothing pressing which could not be put off.

  Eddie refrained from any further imprecations or remotely romantic utterances until they had been served with tiny cups of strong coffee accompanied by little tots of brandy. After Fran had taken an initial sip of coffee, she rested her hand momentarily on the starched white tablecloth and Eddie reached across and took it in his.

  ‘Darling Fran, I promise not to put you under any pressure. I know you must have had a terrible time and that your heart has probably been broken. But you see, I keep imagining us standing under the stars together. In the garden at Innominate House, or perhaps on the deck of that ocean liner, which is taking us all around the world. It would make me the happiest man alive if you would say “yes” – and I would do my best to make you very happy in return. Only tell me that you are still thinking it over … at least tell me that.’

  ‘I am … still thinking it over.’

  He continued to hold her hand as they sat for a moment or two in silence, only relinquishing it when the waiter approached to see whether they required anything more.

  On the short walk back to her hotel, Fran steered the conversation to more general topics, telling him about the time last year when she and Mo had come down to London and seen the Astaires in Funny Face at the Winter Garden. Apart from commenting that rumours of Miss Astaire’s engagement to one famous person after another seemed to be ever present in the newspapers, Eddie made no further attempt to raise the subject of matrimony and he bid her goodnight in the hotel foyer in such an entirely platonic fashion that even her mother could have found nothing to disapprove of.

  It had been very tempting to tell him about the name on the envelope she had contrived to knock off the shelf at Dolly’s brother’s house – an envelope addressed to Mr Albert de la Tour, a surname which Mrs Headingham might easily have confused with a fellow seventeenth-century French artist – but she decided that she needed to think things through herself first.