by M C Beaton
“This is distressing,” said Giles. “I’ll take you into my confidence, Inspector. My uncle married a very young girl and has left her his entire fortune. There were no bequests at all to the servants. He did not even leave his mother a penny. So my great-aunt and the servants feel his wife coerced him into making such a will, but I know my uncle was lazy and careless and would find it easier to leave the lot to one individual rather than splitting it. He was not the type of man to care what happened after his death. On the other hand, it would ease our minds if you went forward with your investigation. If Lady Blackhall is innocent, then she will be free from these hints and rumors.” He did not say what might happen if she were proved guilty.
“I must insist,” added Giles, “that no word of this gets into the newspapers. We have enough trouble without being besieged by reporters. We sent no announcement of my uncle’s death to the press. The relatives were all informed by letter. Now, would you like to begin with me?”
“Very good, my lord,” said Inspector Disher, stifling a little sigh of relief. This had been his first case in upper circles, so to speak, and he had been frightened of angry and irate aristocrats reporting him to the lord lieutenant of the county.
“At the time of the…er…accident, where were you, my lord?”
“I was in bed,” said Giles slowly. “The castle walls are very thick, and I heard nothing until a maid knocked on my door and screamed that the mistress was crying and shouting and pounding on her bedroom door. I put on my dressing gown and found the door to my lady’s bedroom locked. I entered her bedroom through a door leading from my uncle’s suite of rooms. In her distress she must have forgotten that she could escape that way.
“She was crying and in a terrible state. She said my uncle had jumped on the bed, and the next thing she knew, he had vanished out of the window.
“My great-aunt, Felicity, then entered and said some unfortunate things, whereupon young Lady Blackhall was sick.”
“Can you tell me what your aunt said?”
“I would rather not,” replied Giles grimly. “Aunt Felicity prides herself on having nerves of steel and does not realize that in tragic circumstances she becomes as unhinged as the next woman.”
“I shall ask her myself if you would prefer,” said the inspector, and Giles nodded.
“Now, then, did the young bride say or do anything at all, my lord, that would lead you to suspect she had murder in mind?”
Giles vividly remembered the scene at the embrasure but found he could not bring himself to say anything.
But Inspector Disher noticed the slight hesitation and tucked it away in the back of his mind, which was already working furiously. Giles said, “No, nothing,” and the inspector thought, He’s a handsome lad, this new lord, and the old one was a brute by all accounts. Maybe the bride and this lad put their heads together.
Aloud, he said, “That will be all for the present, my lord. Before I see her ladyship I would like to question the butler. I will need to question the servants, you know.”
“I’ll send him to you,” said Giles. “His name is Thomson.”
After Giles had departed, Mr. Thomson made a slow and stately entrance. If he weren’t wearing butler’s uniform, thought the inspector, I would take him for one of the lords.
Mr. Thomson was a portly gentleman with a bland, superior face, silver hair, and a haughty manner.
His lordship’s death was most unfortunate, he said, but he believed in getting to the bottom of things.
He had not been present immediately after the mur—er—accident. Two of his footmen and a housemaid called Betsy had been immediately on the scene. He confirmed most of what Giles had said but managed to convey from his manner that he did not approve of her ladyship and suspected the worst.
Lady Felicity was next. Yes, she had said some harsh things to Susie, but the girl simply had to pull herself together. Girls of that class had such vulgar emotions.
“What class?” asked the inspector, wondering how he had the courage to ask this formidable lady one question.
Felicity always listened to servants’ gossip, and so she related the tale of the blackmail and the stage door of The Follies.
With a sinking heart, Inspector Blackhall asked Felicity to send Lady Blackhall to him and, after the door had closed behind her, he turned to Mr. Jones, the village constable.
“Things are beginning to look black, Mr. Jones,” he said gloomily. “I thought these letters would turn out to be just a lot of spite. But now all this about blackmail and forcing the earl to wed! I suppose this Lady Blackhall’s one of them hard, painted floozies. You could tell from that butler that the servants don’t think much of her.”
“She sounds like a Scarlet Woman,” said Mr. Jones with satisfaction. This was the most exciting moment of his life, and he was relishing it to the full. In his years as a village policeman he had hardly arrested anyone, except for an occasional tramp caught stealing or a drunk on Saturday night. He gazed around the library with great calflike eyes, storing up every detail to tell his wife.
There was a timid little knock on the door and Susie entered. Both men rose to their feet and stared at her in amazement. She had found a woman in the village to make her a black dress in time for the funeral. Its simple lines hugged her slight, immature figure. Her eyes were enormous in her white face, and her brown hair was pulled up into a demure little coronet on top of her head.
She’s a child! thought the dazed inspector. Only a child.
“Sit down, my lady,” he said, “and don’t be afraid of me. No one suspects you of anything now. We simply want to get this matter straight. Now, first of all, give me your maiden name and the names of your mother and father.”
“My name is Susie Burke,” said Susie in an emotionless voice. “My parents are Dr. and Mrs. Burke of Ten Jubilee Crescent, Camberwell, London. My father is a general practitioner.”
The inspector blinked. “No connection with the stage, my lady?”
Susie looked at him in surprise, and then the faint ghost of a smile crossed her mouth. “Oh, no, Inspector. My parents do not approve of the theater.”
“How did you meet your late husband?”
“He had an accident; his carriage overturned. His servants brought him to our house, and my mother and father looked after him. He only had a sprained ankle, but they were very impressed with his title.” Again that faint smile.
“And he fell in love with you?”
“Yes, if that is love.”
The inspector raised his bushy eyebrows. “You did wish to marry the earl?”
“Yes—that is, my parents told me I had to.”
“I see. Now, my lady, perhaps you could take us to your room and show us exactly what happened. I am sorry to distress you, but I am afraid it is necessary.”
“Very well,” said Susie in a flat voice.
She’s a cool one, thought Constable Jones.
She’s on the edge of a breakdown, thought his inspector.
Susie led the way up the stone staircase, which became narrower after the first landing, and they were walking in single file by the time they reached the top.
The inspector mopped his forehead. He had often wondered what it would be like to live in a castle, and now he thought he knew and, as he confided to his wife afterward, it “fair gave me the creeps.”
The all-pervading chill of the old keep seemed to penetrate to his very marrow. Dimly he could hear the pounding of the sea on the cliffs, and the chill air blowing along the passage smelled of salt. A particularly nasty-looking ancestor glared at him with contempt from a painting hung on the wall at the top of the stairs.
“I haven’t slept in this bedroom since my husband’s accident,” said Susie in that deadly flat voice. “I sleep in my husband’s bedroom.” She pushed open a low, heavy oak door and led them through a cheerful sitting room and then pushed open the door of her bedroom.
A frigid blast of air from the open window struck the p
arty. “I tried to get the servants to close it,” explained Susie, “but for some reason, they would not.”
Probably bloody-mindedness, thought the inspector. He said, “Why was it you were locked in, my lady?”
Susie’s pale face flushed. “Must I tell you?”
“Yes, my lady, everything is important.”
Susie heaved a little sigh. “I was frightened, you see, and I was trying to get away from him, and he locked the bedroom door and threw the key out of the window. I forgot that I could have escaped through his rooms. I just ran round and round the bedroom, trying to escape.”
“Why were you frightened of your husband?”
There was a long silence.
A sea gull screamed outside, raucous and mocking in the deadly stillness of the castle.
“He was naked,” said Susie with the wild, timid look of a trapped animal.
“I quite understand, my lady,” said the inspector gently, and indeed he felt he did. The late earl had not been a particularly lovely specimen, and this young girl struck him more and more as being painfully young and innocent. But that in itself might have unhinged her and driven her to murder.
“And then what happened?” he asked softly, motioning behind his back for Constable Jones to put away his notebook.
“Well, I jumped on the bed,” said Susie, “and fell off—here at the end, on the floor. My husband then jumped hard on the bed—it was a game to him, you see—and the next thing I knew, he had flown out of the window.”
“Would you say he was about my build?”
Susie looked at the portly figure of the inspector and closed her eyes. She was trying not to imagine the inspector naked. “Yes,” she said faintly.
“Very well, then, my lady. Now, if you will just lie down on the floor where you say you fell, and I will be the earl. Did he say anything?”
“He shouted, ‘Tally-ho!’ just before he jumped on the bed,” said Susie.
The inspector fought down an insane desire to giggle.
“Please,” begged Susie, “before we go on with this, please shut the window.”
“Right you are, my lady,” said the inspector cheerfully. He crawled across the bed, which was still up against the open window, and stretched up. It took all his strength, for the window had not been shut for some time, but at last the rotted sash cords gave way, and it came crashing down.
“Whew!” said Inspector Disher. “Afraid you’ll need to get that repaired, my lady. Now, just stay where you are. Where did your husband run from before he jumped on the bed?”
“Over there,” said Susie, waving toward the far corner of the room.
“Right. With your permission, I’ll just take off my jacket.” The inspector suited the action to the word and revealed a dandyish side of his character in a pair of scarlet braces embroidered with Scottie dogs.
Susie closed her eyes.
“Here we go,” said Inspector Disher. “Now, you watch closely, Mr. Jones. Tally-ho!”
He ran across the room and leaped full on the center of the bed, which dealt with him as it had dealt with the earl—but with one exception. He rebounded and crashed full into the closed window, which gave a protesting crack but otherwise held firm.
The inspector got down from the bed, feeling shaken. “It’s a mercy you thought to ask me to close that window, my lady. This here bed’s a death trap. What’s the matter with good old-fashioned ticking? Well, Mr. Jones, that’s that. An accidental death if ever there was one.”
Bertram Jones closed his notebook and an almost sulky look crept over his moonlike face. He had had visions of standing in the dock at the Old Bailey, giving evidence in one of the most sensational murder trials of this century or the last.
Susie rose to her feet, looking white and ill.
“You’ve had a rough time, my lady,” said Inspector Disher sympathetically, middle-class speaking to middle-class. “Don’t let these here servants push you around. It’s a pity the roads are so bad. You need your ma and pa.”
Susie suddenly thought of the safe girlhood world of Camberwell and gulped.
“We’d best be going,” the inspector went on. “I’ll just have a word with his lordship, and then we’ll be off.”
The two policemen found Giles pacing the hall at the foot of the stairs. “Well?” he demanded.
“Innocent as a newborn babe,” said the inspector. “And very much in need of a bit of loving kindness. I went through a reconstruction of the accident and, believe me, my lord, that’s all it was—an accident.”
“Thank you very much, Inspector,” said Giles, noting, however, the gloomy look on the village constable’s face. Had Susie’s mock innocent appeal tricked the fatherly inspector?
Giles still believed Susie to be an ex-actress, and unfortunately the inspector said nothing to enlighten him.
And so it was when Giles entered the rose chamber a half an hour later and found Susie sitting meekly by the fire, he found himself becoming angry and suspicious.
Nonetheless he said politely, “It must be a great relief to you that the matter of my uncle’s death has been cleared up.”
“Indeed, yes,” said Susie in a flat, dull voice, as if she did not care much one way or another. Enclosed by the heavy walls of the keep, she felt as if she were living in some medieval nightmare from which she would shortly wake to find herself safely back in her bed in Camberwell.
“And do you feel sorrow over your husband’s death?” pursued Giles with an edge to his voice.
“Oh, y-yes,” lied Susie, “I miss him very much,” her voice sounding thin and false in her ears.
The nervous strain of the past few days mounted to breaking point in Giles’s brain. Her false innocence combined with that immature sensuous body maddened him.
“If there’s one thing I cannot bear, it’s people who say one thing and think another. But with your training, you must be used to it.”
“My training?” Susie looked at him all wide-eyed bewilderment.
He walked impatiently across the room to where she sat by the fire and looked down at her. “You may fool a lot of people, Lady Blackhall, but you do not fool me. I’m wise to you. So let us drop this farce.”
Susie got to her feet. “I do not know what you are talking about, my lord,” she said, still in that expressionless voice. “But I have stood enough this day. I am going to my room.”
He caught hold of her arms in a painful grip, moved by some impulse he couldn’t begin to fathom. She looked up at him with those enormous eyes, and her childish mouth trembled.
He pulled her close and bent his head, and his mouth closed savagely over hers. A wave of passion broke over the pair of them, and they kissed and kissed and kissed as if they could never stop, while the winter wind moaned around the old castle and the three wives of the late earl stared down with their painted eyes.
He suddenly shoved her roughly away from him.
“You tart!” he said, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “I must be mad!”
It was the final straw for poor Susie. She collapsed into the armchair by the fire and, covering her face with her hands, she wept bitterly for a youth and innocence that had seemed to have been snatched from her, from fear at the ever-encompassing walls of this gothic nightmare.
“Dr. and Mrs. Burke,” announced Thomson, the butler, from the doorway.
Giles stared at the middle-aged couple, who stared back. They looked the epitome of suburban respectability. There was a long silence. A log crackled in the grate, and the tapestries moved gently on the walls, making the embroidered green and gold figures of the huntsmen seem to come to life.
Then Thomson gave a discreet cough. “My lady’s parents, my lord.”
Then the tableau sprang to life.
“Mama!” cried Susie pathetically, rushing into that lady’s arms.
“My lord?” Dr. Burke strutted pompously forward. “This is a sad blow to our little girl. We were unable to get here sooner. The roa
ds, you know.”
In one blinding, awful moment Giles realized that all that his uncle had told him about Susie was a complete fabrication. The girl was as innocent as she looked.
He numbly rang for the housekeeper and told Mrs. Wight to prepare rooms for the unexpected guests. He watched the still-weeping Susie being led off by her mother and turned his suddenly weary attention to Dr. Burke.
“Allow me to offer you a brandy, Doctor,” he said. “You must be cold after your journey.”
“Very kind of you, my lord,” said Dr. Burke, beaming. “Very kind, my lord. Such thoughtfulness, my lord.”
Snob, thought Giles, but no blackmailer. Oh, dear!
Upstairs, Mrs. Burke was in her element, sending servants flying hither and thither to fetch every comfort for her daughter, from stone hot water bottles to put at her feet to ice packs to put on her head.
The servants were inclined to be condescending, but got short shrift from Mrs. Burke. It was not for nothing that she had broken in several gauche parlormaids and a recalcitrant Camberwell cook-housekeeper. Bursting with energy despite her fatiguing journey, she lectured the sullen servants on the Christian duties of obedience and threatened them with the everlasting torments of hellfire should they disobey.
Felicity’s acid lady’s maid, who had nosed into Susie’s bedroom out of curiosity, was roundly told to take her insolent face away and to take some powders for her liver, which was obviously disordered. Mrs. Burke was vulgar in the extreme, but she was magnificent, and Susie lay gratefully back against the cool, fresh linen of the pillows and let it all wash over her.
Eventually, after boring Giles with a long list of platitudes, Dr. Burke dropped in to say good night.
Downstairs, Giles paced nervously up and down with a replenished glass of brandy in his hand. Giles was no saint. He was a normal, healthy British aristocrat. Therefore he reacted normally to the discovery that he had behaved like a cad and that Susie’s parents were respectable after all.
It was all the spineless girl’s fault, he decided. Couldn’t she have opened her silly mouth and told him something? How could she, mocked his conscience, when her mouth was so efficiently covered by your own?
