Crooked Wreath

by Christianna Brand

  Bella stood, stricken, staring down at her. “You don’t really think …? You can’t believe … Inspector!” she cried, turning round upon Cockrill, holding out her hand to him, “you don’t believe this, you don’t think it’s true, you don’t, you can’t …”

  “No,” said Cockrill. “Nobody killed Brough but himself. He was lying in the sitting-room near the door leading into the hall; everything was locked and sealed from the inside and there was no possible way of getting there except across the hall. It’s the old story of the sand again; the dust in the hall has not been crossed by anybody but Brough. Nobody could have followed him and killed him–they couldn’t have got in and they couldn’t have got away. He killed himself and he wrote a confession in the dust of the hall to say why he had done so. Nobody else could have written those words. Brough wrote them himself.”

  Mrs. Brough knelt by her husband’s body, with uplifted head, staying her tears to listen. When he had done, she got to her feet again, brushing away her tears with her big, bony knuckles, straightening her ugly black dress, pushing back her disordered hair; and facing them, upright and calm, she returned to her former hostility, cold and sneering, and blackly menacing.

  “He wrote it himself,” said Cockrill steadily, unwaveringly meeting her eyes.

  “But he couldn’t write!” said Mrs. Brough, and broke once more into her dreadful laughter.

  The funeral was a terrible experience to them all. It seemed so incredible to be walking there behind Sir Richard’s great, handsome coffin, in a tiny group of which, almost certainly now, one was a murderer; to be walking there slowly and solemnly, black-clad on this sunny day, beneath the avid stares of large crowds of unknown people sprung suddenly from nowhere to see a murdered man laid at last to rest; to be looked at askance by a huddle of relatives and “friends of the family,” anxious, curious, angry at all this publicity, and afraid; to be importuned by, and photographed by the press, impudent young men and brazen young women–and yet, young men and women who only had their job to do; to be crowded and jostled and pushed past, to have the lovely flowers all broken and bruised, the sheaves torn apart by the ugly hands of souvenir hunters, the cards made dirty by numberless fingers, turning them over to read the brief sad messages of sorrow and farewell … They stood at the graveside, eyeing each other tearfully, grimly, distrustfully, trying to believe that one among them was wicked and cruel, a murderer for greed–trying to believe that after all it must have been Edward who was mad, poor child, and not responsible for what he did; trying to think only of the dear departed and not all the time so selfishly of the effects of his death upon themselves. But now there was Brough. Brough had been killed, too. Murder and all its terrors were among them, and God knew where it was all going to end and when. You could not be truly sorry for an old man who was dead; you could only think of him resting and at peace from all this.

  They went down to the churchyard again in the evening, when the sensation seekers were dispersed; and at the trampled graveside, tidied and regrouped the scattered flowers and placed at their head a new wreath which Bella had brought. “I’ve made so many,” she said. “Richard had me taught when I first came to Swanswater.” It was a narrow circlet of Ophelias from the rose beds round the lodge, such as she had hung many a time at his command above the portrait there, and in the great rooms up at the house. On a card she had written: From Serafita. “I didn’t bring it before,” she said. “I knew there might be people, and they wouldn’t understand.”

  Peta took her trembling hand. She voiced the thought in all their minds when she said: “Darling Bella–with all her charms and all her marvels, Serafita would never have thought of a thing like that!”

  Stephen had gone with them, to ward off possible intervention from the police–who, however, had no right to prevent them from going anywhere they would. They all walked slowly back to the house. “Well, thank God, the aunts and uncles and cousins and things have gone. Stephen, dear, you’ll come in and have some supper?”

  “Thank you, Lady March, if it isn’t a strain on the rationing?”

  “It’s only cauliflower and cheese, anyway, and hardly any cheese at that,” said Bella, the sorrowing widow swallowed up for a moment in the distracted housewife. “The relations have eaten up everything I had in the house. I don’t know if they imagine special ration cards are issued for what I believe one should call funeral baked meats, though there was no meat, baked or otherwise, except my one precious tin of American sausage.”

  “You managed jolly well, darling,” said Peta. “The relations were terribly impressed, actually, I expect, and went away muttering among themselves what a wonderful woman you must be.”

  “They went away muttering that I was not a lady and never would be,” said Bella, with shrewd irony. “That Aunt Ethel of yours with her lah-di-dah ways! And, after all, it was very embarrassing not even being able to have the will read!”

  “Well, honestly, Bella, it isn’t your place to provide a will for your deceased husband’s relatives, like the bridegroom doing the bouquets!”

  “If I killed Grandfather,” said Edward, walking along at Bella’s side, peering round her at the others, straggled out to her left, “I suppose I know what’s happened to the will; only I don’t. Isn’t it peculiar?”

  “What do you think happens about the will now, Stephen?” said Peta.

  “Well, I don’t know. It’s really frightfully difficult. We know a will was signed, but we’ve only got Mrs. Brough’s word for it and she says she doesn’t know what was in it. Of course, I know what was in it, because I made out the draft, but that’s not to say he didn’t make any alterations. Unless the new will turns up, the whole thing will have to be decided in court; if they take Mrs. Brough’s evidence to be true, then I should think the first will would be cancelled and Sir Richard would be deemed to have died intestate.”

  Claire looked alarmed. “Good Lord–does that mean the Government would get all the money?”

  “Well, hardly,” said Stephen, laughing. “If he was declared to have died intestate, there would be a life interest for the widow–i.e. you, Lady March–and after her death, an equal division among the direct heirs; that’s to say, Peta, Claire, Philip and Edward.”

  “What about our mothers and fathers and things?”

  “Well, actually you haven’t got a father among you, have you?” said Stephen, with a slight air of apology. “I mean, Peta’s parents are both–both dead …”

  “You needn’t put on a Voice, darling,” said Peta. “They have been dead for twenty-four years, so I really am getting over it!”

  “And mine, in that accident,” said Edward, kindly refraining from throwing a fugue at the bare memory of what he had not seen happen.

  “And my mother abandoned me at the age of two to the tender mercies of Grandfather,” said Claire, trying to keep up Peta’s genuinely serene acceptance of affairs, but failing dismally, for this was a bitter thorn in her memory. She added: “I wonder if she’ll turn up, all smiles, when I become a part-heiress!”

  “She isn’t entitled to anything by the will, of course,” said Stephen, hurriedly. “Nor is Philip’s mother. It goes entirely by blood relationship, so the children of Sir Richard’s children are the only interested parties, in this case.”

  “Well, I think that’s the best thing that can happen,” said Peta, cheerfully. “I don’t want to be a beastly old heiress, but I would like us all to have some money eventually and not have to be buried in paupers’ graves; and, meanwhile, Bella would have Swanswater and the income from the capital, I suppose, so she would be frightfully rich and could be very kind to us and always giving us enormous cheques.”

  “Grandfather said that he would put it in his new will that she wasn’t to,” said Philip.

  “Yes, but the new will has disappeared and the law will assume that he may have altered some of its terms, so I don’t see why Bella shouldn’t do some assuming, too, and say that that was one of them; you wil
l, Bella, won’t you, pet?”

  Bella was warm with assurances of assistance, though protesting that she should hate to have Swanswater and all that horrid money to manage; and on this more cheerful note they sat down to the cauliflower and cheese. Philip had visited Ellen during the day at the police station and she had sent buoyant messages to them all. It was quite fun, declared Ellen; much more to eat than at home and a heavenly sergeant sat with her throughout every meal and told her about his wife’s operations which were sure to interest her, she being a doctor’s wife! As long as Antonia was all right, they were not to worry about her, Ellen, at all.

  Cockrill was moving heaven and earth to set her free. Of course, now that the second murder had been committed while she was tucked away in prison–this surely freeing her of suspicion of having committed the first, some sort of arrangement must be arrived at, even if it was only bail. Stephen struggled manfully to explain the intricacies of English law. “Once people are charged, they’re charged; you can’t just set them free because the local detective makes up his mind that they weren’t guilty after all. Yes, but it’s nothing to do with Cockrill … But the Coroner hasn’t the power … Well, I know, but after all the fact of Brough’s death doesn’t necessarily mean, not necessarily, that he was killed by the same person as killed Sir Richard; not to remote people at King’s Bench, anyway, and that’s where application will have to be made.”

  But that brought them back to Brough’s death. “Fancy all our fine conclusions going bonk like that! And Cockie’s, too; because, though he now says he suspected murder from the minute he saw how carefully the seal on the door had been pried off, as though Brough meant to stick it back afterwards, I’m sure he thought all along that it was suicide. And, Bella,” said Peta, “have you told Stephen about this fantastic accusation of Mrs. Brough’s?”

  “I’m not worrying about it any more,” said Bella, firmly. “Cockie’s been trying experiments and he says it couldn’t have been done.”

  “Of course, it could be done,” said Philip. “I did it myself on the terrace that day, only I didn’t happen to be aiming at anything.”

  “Oh, Philip, no!” said Claire. “It dripped water everywhere.”

  “But the main lot did go in one little pool.”

  And so once again ill-feeling and distrust were at work. “Of course, Philip, if you think I did kill your poor Grandfather, if you think. I killed my own husband, well, you’d better say so and be done with it! As long as Ellen comes out of jail, I suppose you don’t care who’s accused!”

  “Now, now, Mrs. Brough!” said Peta, teasing. Philip said, half-laughing, half-apologetic: “I’m not accusing you, Bella, old girl; only if Ellen’s out of it because she couldn’t have killed Brough, and Claire and I are out of it because neither of us went near the lodge, and you’re out of it because I’m not allowed to say you’re not, well, that only leaves Peta and Edward.” He skated hastily over the question of Edward. “I must say, Peta, most peculiar about your fingerprints, my dear!” Out on the terrace, over the coffee cups, he produced a syringe which he had fetched from his room. “We’ll try it here and see whether Cockie’s right or not!”

  Peta was fed up and cross. “I wish you’d stop going on and on, Philip, and let us think of something else for a change.”

  “How can we possibly think of anything else, anyway? Look, there you are! At least half the contents of the syringe concentrated in one spot.”

  “Yes, but a whole trail of drips,” said Edward. “It’s only when it’s at full squirt that it hits the same spot. While it’s revving up and while it’s petering down, it drips across all the intervening space.”

  “But a lot could still have gone on the plate of food; the drips wouldn’t have shown on the carpet, and they’d have dried up overnight, especially with all that sun on the window.”

  “Surely,” said Stephen, “the post-mortem would have told them whether he’d taken the coramine with food or not?”

  “No, it wouldn’t. I’m sick of explaining that with coramine you couldn’t tell whether it was injected or taken orally, and how much more could you not tell if it was taken with water or food or by itself.”

  Claire saw that Bella was hurt and upset. She said: “If this is tending to show that Bella could have killed Grandfather, I must point out that she was the very last person to want to do so. After all, the new will gave her possession of Swanswater and all its wealth: why should she do anything to prevent him from signing it?”

  Philip ignored Bella’s protestations that she didn’t want Swanswater, she didn’t want all that money; if she could just have a nice little house and garden like she’d had in–well, yes, in Yarmouth in those old days … He said: “She might have killed Grandfather to prevent him from unsigning the will!”

  Stephen thought it over carefully. “If Lady March killed Sir Richard as soon as the new will was signed, which was so much in her favour–then why did she conceal the will? It’s to her advantage that it should be found.”

  “I daresay it will,” said Philip, calmly. “When the hue and cry has died down and everybody has got it firmly into their heads that Bella is the one person who wouldn’t have wanted to kill the old boy.”

  Peta, sitting on a footstool on the dry terrace, shifted her position so as to lean against Bella’s knee. “Don’t take any notice of him, angel; he’s only doing it to annoy because he knows it teases. Look, Philip, my dear idiot–Grandfather signed the thing some time after a quarter to eight. If Bella put poison on his food at all–well, it would have had to be at a little before half past seven; surely he’d have been dead before he could call Brough and Mrs. Brough in.”

  Philip was slightly taken aback. He said, however, “Well, not necessarily. He could only have had about half the dose, if it was put on his food from the syringe, because of losing the drips; and besides, coramine is a stimulant–he might even have benefitted a bit at first; then after the Broughs left him, he fell into a coma and died. And as for Bella hiding the will,” said Philip, triumphantly, having only just thought of it, “who says she did? That interfering old bustard Brough took a fancy to protect me from an injustice and made away with it. So poor Bella’s work was all in vain.” He got up lazily and went over to Bella, and said, taking her hand and giving it a little peck with that sort of careless grace which all the Marches could so readily assume: “Darling Bella–I don’t believe a word of it, not for a moment! I’m only being difficult.”

  Bella, innately generous, responded as always to generosity. She gave his hand a little affectionate shake. “I know you wouldn’t really think I would do such a thing, Philip–and for money! Edward and I will have all we need anyhow; and as for Swanswater …” She looked across the lovely lawns and to the river; and over her shoulder at the house, its essential beauty spoilt by its sprawling over-building, but touched to charm by the soft light of the evening. “As for Swanswater–well, it’s never been home to me, you know. I–I don’t like it very much. It may have seemed a great thing to others that I should come and be mistress here, that I should own a part in all this; but it hasn’t been all honey, by any means. You children make a joke of my past, and I don’t mind that, not from you–I know you only do it in affection. But other people haven’t always been so friendly; and–well, then there was always Serafita!”

  Peta sat stiffened into immobility at Bella’s feet. All that was deep and delicate in her soul went out in compassion to this soul, seeking, perhaps for the only time, ever, to put into words a host of feelings too deep and fragile for adequate expression. As Bella was silent, she protested gently: “Serafita’s been dead for ten years, darling–fifteen years!”

  “No,” said Bella, “she hasn’t been dead. As long as Swanswater stands, Serafita won’t die. That’s what your grandfather intended and as it was in his life, so it will go on being, now that he’s gone. To you she’s a sort of charming shadow–she smiles down at you from oils and water colours all over the house; her littl
e shoes and her coloured gloves and her roses and her fans and her programmes … She’s a legend, a ghost, a–a fragrance to all of you and nothing more. But she’s a reality to me. I was your grandfather’s mistress, so you think of me as having been just a laughing creature, sweet and cosy in my little bijou house with the frilly curtains and the geraniums in pots at the windows; and that’s how Richard thought of me, too. But even mistresses have hearts, poor dears; I don’t think I ever was one to sell myself or my affection for money and possessions any more than I would have killed your grandfather for them. I was in love with him, even if I was only the Yarmouth Belle, as Serafita used to call me. Oh, she wasn’t just an adorable ghost to me! There she was, always in his background, cool and secure and mocking, the wife; giving him his fine sons to be proud of, while I must hide my little girl away in shame, a child conceived and unwanted, and always an irritation to him. Poor Bella, with her pathetic little aspirations to gentility, and her pathetic little aspirations to ‘intellectuality’–buying long books and reading them up, trying to educate myself to be good enough for Richard–Serafita’s jokes, proudly repeated to me, soon cured me of all that! Once, you know, I was with him in London, and Serafita passed us in the street. She didn’t make a scene, or cut me dead, or anything like that–not she! I shall never forget the sweet, condescending smile she gave me and her little ironical bow. He was in ecstasies at her handling of the situation; and the worst of it was,” acknowledged Bella, ruefully smiling, “that I couldn’t help admiring it myself. When she died, then I married him, and I thought I should be happy beyond anything I had ever known; and so I was–but she was still in his background, more securely than ever. When she was alive, she used to weary him often, and annoy him, and he turned to me for tenderness and well, he used to say for generosity; he said she was mean of emotion–I don’t quite know what he meant, but that’s what he used to say. But when she was dead, he forgot that; more and more the memory of her came to dominate his life–and my life.” She paused as though afraid of saying too much; but as they remained silent and sympathetic, she went on, bursting out now with old wounds and grievances.