“Gave it away — to whom?”
“It doesn’t matter, does it, Inspector?”
Jury didn’t like badgering him; it had been painful for Bicester-Strachan to admit even this much. “I don’t know, Mr. Bicester-Strachan.” Secrets from the past had certainly supplied more than one murderer with a motive. Jury rose. “I’ll be leaving now. Thank you. I may have some more questions later on.”
Bicester-Strachan stood and shook hands with Jury. “It’s really a rotten business. I simply can’t imagine this quiet village — well, good-bye.”
“Good-bye.”
“I’ll just see you out,” said Lorraine.
• • •
At the door she asked, “Where are you off to?”
“Ardry End.”
“Well, good luck with him. Where are you staying?”
“At the Man with a Load of Mischief.” He wanted to see the effect of his next words. “I understand Miss Rivington — Vivian — is engaged to the proprietor.”
She stiffened, as if struck by a whip. “Simon Matchett? And Vivian? That’s rot.” She relaxed a little. “You’ve been talking to Agatha, haven’t you? Her chief aim in life is to keep Vivian away from Melrose Plant. Protecting her so-called inheritance, I imagine. Vivian’s one of those terribly shy creatures. I find it tiresome, that sort of awkwardness.”
“Well, thank you again, Mrs. Bicester-Strachan.”
“Lorraine.”
Jury only smiled and turned with relief toward the freshly fallen snow.
CHAPTER 8
As Inspector Jury was questioning the Bicester-Strachans, Lady Ardry was blowing on a cup of tea, grudgingly brought in by Ruthven. The kitchen of Ardry End had even supplied some of the little cakes she was so fond of.
“I only hope he knows his business,” she said, speaking of Inspector Jury. She was watching Melrose pour himself a glass of Cockburn’s Very Dark Brown port. “Isn’t it a bit early for spirits, Melrose?”
“It’s a bit early for anything,” said Melrose, yawning, and corking up the bottle.
“Anyway, I gave Jury all of the interesting details on everyone who was at Matchett’s Thursday night.”
“That must have taken all of half a minute.” He glared at his aunt, who had come up his drive this morning at 8:30. He could barely keep his eyes propped open, having been up half the night reading. But if he had been lending only half an ear, she had been supplying only half a conversation, so it evened out. He watched the fairy cakes disappearing from the silver tray: ghastly little things with currants in their tops like dead flies. But he had Ruthven keep them on hand for Agatha, who doted on them. Already she had devoured three and was just tucking number four into her mouth, which she then wiped daintily with a napkin.
“Whom did you accuse, Agatha? I mean besides me?” Melrose stared absently into the fire, and hoped this policeman would clear things up, and quickly.
“Accuse you? Good heavens, Melrose, I should think I’ve more honor than to go about naming my own flesh and blood —”
“Oliver Darrington, then? Get rid of the competition? It must be hard having another mystery writer around. Though I must say his books certainly don’t make for much of a read.” He watched her get up and go to the mantel, where she inspected an early Derby plate, looking for the patches on the bottom.
Agatha replaced the plate. “You were always jealous of him, weren’t you, my dear Plant?”
“Jealous of Darrington?” What little mental compost pile was she rooting around in now?
“Because of Sheila Hogg. Don’t think I don’t know all about that.” Now she was handling a vase of latticino Nailsea glass. Was her purse big enough to hold it? And where had she got the idea he had the least interest in Sheila?
When he didn’t answer, she turned quickly, as if to catch him out. “Vivian Rivington, then?” Agatha didn’t care whether the arrow fell wide or not. To her, a miss was as good as a mile. She would run down the list of women until she hit on the right one.
Melrose yawned again. “You’ve been studying my dance programme, dear Aunt.”
When she had reseated herself, making small adjustments to the various silver and gilt ornaments on the table in front of her, Melrose said, “And had the inspector any theories? I mean other than which of these charmers I was planning on marrying?”
“Don’t be conceited, my dear Plant. Not everyone is interested in your personal affairs.” She passed a Murano ashtray from hand to hand, as if estimating its weight for customs. “For some reason, Inspector Jury is asking all kinds of questions about the people who were there — us, I mean. Why, I can’t imagine. Not when what he should be doing is looking for some maniac, before we’re all dead in our beds.”
“So our maniac nipped into the cellar, strangled the Small person, shoved his head in a keg of beer, and nipped out again?”
“Naturally.” She regarded him with wonder. “You don’t honestly think it was someone who was already there?”
“Certainly.”
“Good Lord! That’s absurd. I assumed you were jesting the other evening.” With her astonishment upon her, she went for another fairy cake, one with coconut waving all over its top like cilia.
Revolting things, thought Melrose, sliding down in his wing chair. He heard the long-case clock in the hall drone the half hour. Lord, it was nearly lunchtime and she was still here. He was drawing the line at inviting her to lunch.
“Well?”
Through his half-closed eyes he could see she was waiting for him to retract his assertion that one of her dear neighbors might be responsible for the present horrors. He would not be drawn into theorizing, so he said evasively, “I expect the police will clear it up.” They’d better, or she’d be over here every morning at first light, issuing bulletins.
“There is another possibility, of course.” She smiled her cat-and-canary smile.
“And what’s that?” he asked without interest.
“That this Small person was not killed in the inn. The murderer killed him outside and brought him in by that back door. He must have been looking for a place to dispose of the body. Small could have been killed anywhere!”
“Why?”
She looked at him suspiciously. “What do you mean, ‘why’?”
“Why would someone have brought him to the Man with a Load of Mischief? Why not just leave the Small person outside in the wild, draped over a tree or something?”
Agatha studied a fruit scone. “Because he knew that the police would think just what you and the police do think! That one of us is guilty.” Her eyes glittered with triumph, and she munched the scone.
Melrose poured himself another tot of port, and said, “Which makes the murderer, once again, someone from Long Piddleton, doesn’t it? I don’t imagine every murderer in the British Isles knew that our happy little band was going to be dining at the inn and that he could just bring along his old, dead body to our cellar and let one of us take — as they say — the ‘rap’ for it.” He sipped the port; round his glass he saw her eyes narrow meanly. He had shot another of her clay ducks out of the reeds and she meant to have it back.
“What about the second murder, then? This Ainsley person? My dear Plant, someone must be deranged to go stuffing a body up there on the Jack —”
Melrose slid down in his brown leather wing chair and closed his eyes, hoping his aunt would take the hint. But no, she would go on spinning her sticky little theories like some old, senile spider . . .
“Melrose!”
His eyes snapped open.
“Gone to sleep on me again, haven’t you? And here’s Ruthven wants you for something.”
The butler closed his eyes in pain. For years Agatha had been mispronouncing his name. On purpose? — no, thought Melrose, she just couldn’t get the hang of English names.
“Your lordship,” said Ruthven, “I was just wondering about the Christmas goose. Martha’s in need of chestnuts for the stuffing, sir, and it seems we ha
ven’t any.”
Hell, thought Melrose, wishing Ruthven hadn’t brought up the goose in front of Agatha. “Perhaps you could send down to Miss Ball’s. She’s always got things like that when no one else does.”
Ruthven nodded and slipped out of the room.
“Goose? We’re having goose? How jolly!” And Agatha rubbed her hands together in anticipation of the Christmas feast.
Of course, he had always had her to Christmas dinner. But he had thought to trot out some old turkey for her and save the goose for himself for a midnight snack with a bottle of Château Haut-Brion. “Would you know the difference between a goose and a turkey? I mean if it were all plucked and lying on a plate?”
“Whatever are you babbling about Melrose? Of course I’d know the difference.” She was inspecting a Limoges ashtray.
“Even if it were a very thin turkey?”
“I think you’re having a nervous breakdown, Melrose. Your eyes have a feverish cast. Now, if Ruthven —”
“Will you please learn to say his name properly. Rivv’n, not Ruth-ven. Rivv’n.”
“Then why does he spell it Ruth-ven? Rivv’n hasn’t a th.”
“And while we’re on it, you pronounce Bicester-Strachan as if it had twenty syllables. It’s Bister Strawn.”
Before she could answer this charge, Ruthven was back in the room. “There’s the gentleman from Scotland Yard to see you, sir, in the hall. Chief Inspector Richard Jury, his name is.” Ruthven’s normally impeccable syntax got a bit tangled, a normal reaction, Melrose supposed, to Scotland Yard waiting in the wings.
Reprieve. “For heaven’s sake, don’t keep him standing out there, as Lady Ardry is just going—” Melrose could manage quite a viselike grip when he wanted to. He got his aunt up and out of her chair, holding her purse in his other hand, and had escorted her nearly to the door when she bellowed, “My watch! My watch! I’ve lost my watch!” And she pulled her arm free to go and search among the cushions.
Melrose sighed, having lost another round.
• • •
As Agatha was tossing the cushions in the drawing room, Jury was standing in the hall, which seemed too pedestrian a designation for the magnificent room and its hypnotic arrangement of every kind of medieval weaponry. Swords, rifles, pikes, lances — all were used as decorative displays in the semicircular arches above the doorways, brilliantly polished, the swords and pikes, like shafts of sun. The butler returned and ushered Jury through carved wooden doors.
Jury was surprised to see Lady Ardry rummaging through the furniture, but the moment he appeared she shot forward, her hand out. “Inspector Jury! We meet again!” As she pumped his hand, Jury observed the man standing in the middle of the room. He was tall and pleasant-looking, dressed rather informally in a Liberty silk robe, and tousled, as if he had been pulled out of bed. What Jury noticed most, though, was the expression in the astonishing, emerald eyes over which Plant was now settling gold-rimmed spectacles. Sharp, very sharp.
“My aunt was just leaving, Inspector. I’m Melrose Plant.”
Jury grasped his hand, and noticed that Lady Ardry hadn’t the look of a person just leaving. Her legs seemed rooted, treelike, to the floor.
“The inspector might want some corroboration of your testimony,” she said.
“First, Agatha, he has to get the testimony. And for that, he probably wants to speak to me privately.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Privately? Why? What have you to say that I mayn’t hear?”
Melrose gripped her arm firmly, planted her handbag under it, and steered her to the door. “I’ll see you tomorrow. But not, please, at dawn. Unless there’s a duel on my front lawn.”
Agatha was still barking out instructions as the door was firmly closed in her face.
Then Plant turned to Jury and said, “Excuse me, Inspector, but my aunt’s been here for three hours and I haven’t yet had breakfast. If you’d care to join me, we could talk while we ate.”
“I’ve had mine, sir, but I’d be happy to sit with you.”
Ruthven appeared, took the order, and padded off to fill it.
Melrose Plant indicated a chair, the one his aunt had just vacated. “You’re staying at the Man with a Load of Mischief?”
Jury nodded, accepting a cigarette from the lacquered box which Plant extended.
“You want to ask me about Thursday and Friday evenings, yes? Would you like straight facts? Or my impressions?”
Jury smiled. “Let’s get the facts out of the way first, if you don’t mind, sir.”
“Inspector, I don’t think I’m any older, certainly no wiser than you, that you should call me ‘sir.’ ”
Jury reddened. He just couldn’t get around all of that Marquess of Ayreshire, Earl of Caverness stuff. “Yes, ah — Mr. Plant. Now, if you’d just make any corrections in the facts I’ve already gathered.” Jury reviewed the people present, the situation of the diners at dinner, the appearance and disappearance of Small.
“Yes, that’s all as I remember it. It must have been near eight or eight-thirty when Small was in the bar with Trueblood.”
“And you didn’t see him after that?”
Melrose shook his head firmly. “No. Not until my aunt came yelling —”
“Your aunt? Yelling?” Jury tried not to smile.
“Lord, yes. You could have heard her all the way to Sidbury.” Plant was regarding Jury intently through half-shut eyes. “Did she tell you she was in total command of herself, then? Don’t bother to answer. I can see she did. The whole world in tatters, and Agatha like a rock.”
“She did indicate the servant girl — Miss Murch — was rather beside herself.”
“Oh, Murch was, I suppose. The reactions of everyone were pretty standard — throat grabbings, eye-ball poppings, upstartings from chairs —”
“You make it sound a bit of play-acting, Mr. Plant.”
Plant smiled. “Well, I admit I was wondering which one of them did it.”
Jury’s cigarette stopped halfway to his mouth. “Then you did assume it was someone in the inn?”
Melrose Plant looked surprised. “I thought it was obvious. Unless you share my aunt’s Ripper theory, or someone wandering about Long Piddleton who has a grudge against inn guests? Everyone at the Load of Mischief seemed to think he’d come in by that cellar door.”
“And you don’t?”
Melrose looked as if he’d expected more than this of Scotland Yard but was too polite to say so. “Everyone refers to the Small person as a ‘perfect stranger’ just happening into Long Piddleton, which is in itself unlikely.”
“How so, Mr. Plant?”
“Because he came by train and bus. How could he have been just ‘passing through’?” At the butler’s entrance, Plant said, “Ah, breakfast.”
“I’ve laid it for you in the dining room, sir.”
Melrose rubbed his hands. “Thank you, Ruthven. Come along, Inspector Jury.”
• • •
Beneath the fan-vaulted ceiling of the dining room hung enormous, rich portraits of the Ardry-Plant line. One, the smallest of them, against the end wall, was of Melrose Plant himself, seated at a table, a book open before him.
“Conceited, isn’t it? To have a portrait of oneself hanging about? But my mother, before she died, insisted. That’s she. The one in black.”
The portrait was of a lovely woman in black velvet, posed in a simple, dignified way. Hanging beside that was one of a squat, friendly faced man, surrounded by hunting dogs. Plant looked like his mother.
As Plant filled his plate he said, “I see Martha assumed my aunt would be staying, since she prepared enough for twelve. Please have some, Inspector Jury.” He lifted the silver domes from the dishes: deviled kidneys, buttered eggs like satin, Dover sole, hot scones.
Jury could hardly fault these villagers on their offers of food and drink, but he turned down this elegant second breakfast. “No thanks, Mr. Plant. Just coffee would be fine.”
“Mr. Plant, y
ou were saying that you didn’t agree with the idea that Small’s murderer forced his way in through the cellar door.”
“Inspector — I’m quite sure you don’t think so either, but I’ll give you my reasons if you like. Had the murderer been someone from outside, is it within the realm of reason that he would have chosen that public place for a meeting with his victim? But let’s suppose, even, that he had made this curious arrangement. Having fixed to meet Small in the cellar, he then has to break the door to get into it? Wouldn’t Small have just let him in? One can hardly take the view that the killer just happened by chance to walk round to the rear of the inn, spied Small through the dusty cellar window, said to himself, ‘Good lord! If it isn’t Small, my arch enemy!’ then battered down the door.” Melrose Plant shook his head and poured the coffee.
Jury smiled, since Plant had just outlined his own thoughts regarding the murder. He pulled out his packet of Players and offered one to Plant, who accepted. They lit up.
“What do you think, Mr. Plant?”
Plant studied the pictures on the wall for a moment, and then said: “Given the meeting place, I’d say it was a spur-of-the-moment thing. Someone there was surprised by the appearance of Small, and during the course of the evening arranged to meet him in the wine cellar. The improvisational method of murder would testify to that, wouldn’t it? The murderer choking him with a piece of wire from a wine bottle and then shoving his head into that keg of beer. You know how I see it?”
“How?”
“Our murderer is having some sort of conversation with Small, and all the while untwisting the wire and then —” Plant raised his hands and pulled an imaginary length of wire around his own neck. “Pulls on the larynx long enough to knock him out and then holds his head in the butt. That makes it look rather spontaneous. Or . . .”
“What?”
“Well, there is the possibility it was premeditated and made to look as if it weren’t. And the grotesque detail of shoving Small’s head in a keg of beer, and stuffing Ainsley up there on the beam—” Plant’s green eyes glittered. “Why? The weird touches are, well, too weird.”
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