Death Lives Next Door

by Gwendoline Butler

  “You haven’t got very far with your business,” she said.

  “Only far enough to make myself miserable and Marion, too.”

  “You told Marion? No wonder she hates the sight of us both.” Hadn’t Ezra realised that Marion’s interest in him was not entirely that of a mother or a teacher? Obviously he hadn’t. Not that, poor Marion, there would ever be any significant development in such a relationship, but all the same she would not relish the sight of her young supplanter.

  What with this, and the murder as well, no wonder Marion looked odd. She was such a dear person, too. Rachel thought of that short, stocky figure with a sudden rush of affection.

  The sight of Ezra loping hungrily along by her side drove fondness away.

  “You must get out,” she said sharply. “It’s not doing you any good. You’re declining. Oh, it’s not the place … for the right people it’s the best in the world. Heaven knows it’s done well enough by my family (all my families you might say). Someone like my Uncle Tim is exactly right here, it brings out his best and he does the best work that’s in him. He’s a scholar. But you are not a scholar. You can’t think”

  “Thanks,” said Ezra.

  “Oh, you have force all right. But it’s emotional force.”

  “I’m glad you recognise it,” said Ezra, trying to look dangerous.

  “And don’t try to continue on that line either. It won’t work for either of us. Hopeless situation for you to be dominated by your wife.”

  “You might find marriage changed that, Rachel.”

  “You’re not really trying,” said Rachel persisting in her main object. “We must go at it in a different way. Each morning you must say to yourself, ‘Every day, in every way, I am trying to get away.’”

  “All right,” said Ezra to humour her. But the truth was that, despite Rachel, he was not trying. He was quite satisfied as he was, he could go on like it for years.

  Thus rationalising away their fears, pushing the half-world of pain and fear behind them, because after all they were young and in love, they walked on. But they had only pushed it behind them, and it was close enough to some people, the lost and the lonely.

  Ezra met his old friend, the Producer, within a few yards of parting from Rachel.

  Ezra could see at once that he had news value; no one mentioned the murder and Marion, but the thought was there pricking away at the back of the conversation. Unluckily, Ezra did not enjoy it; what was happening was real to him and Marion, almost real, although not quite, to Rachel, who was protected to a certain extent by her native background, and not real at all to the Producer and his friends who saw it as an interesting play in which they happened to know the principal characters. Indeed the only characters as far as Ezra could see, for no one had yet succeeded in dragging in from the wings any other character who could share the increasingly ominous doom which Ezra was beginning to feel now attached to him and the others. There was a murderer somewhere and Ezra very much hoped that in the eyes of the police he was a character they had not yet met and not one of those already assembled on the stage.

  The Producer was in the company of a charming, well-dressed and not young lady; she seemed familiar and beamed upon Ezra, not perhaps as if she knew him but as if she expected to be known.

  “Have lunch with us?” suggested the Producer amiably.

  Ezra studied the lady, she was wearing a thin fine wool black suit with a large real spray of lily-of-the-valley, and her hat was entirely composed as far as he could see of those charming flowers. There was a lovely smell, too, of lily-of-the-valley, lovely and larger than life. Larger than life. Of course.

  The lady waved away two girls with books.

  “No autographs, dears, not just now, try tomorrow night.”

  “This is Venetia Stuart,” said the Producer hurriedly.

  “Opening in Vanishing Point in its pre-London tour,” said the lady, waving a hand at the theatre behind her. “I’m rather afraid its name does not belie it.”

  “I knew you at once,” declared Ezra.

  Another girl with an autograph-book hovered near.

  “No, dear,” said Venetia, “No. I’m not Edith Evans nor Sybil Thorndike. They’ll be thinking I’m Mrs. Patrick Campbell next.”

  “Do you think they’ve ever heard of her.”

  “I suppose not,” and she sighed. “A lovely actress, dears, and she didn’t do half the things they say she did, but she did do some of them. I remember once when I was in the same play with her, and you have to remember I was very young, my first pro’ part really, and she made such jokes under her breath all the time that we could hardly keep a straight face, and it was such a solemn play, too, almost as bad as the one I’m in now. My dears, if this play staggers to London I for one shall be surprised, such jokes: they wouldn’t make a cat laugh.”

  But the Producer knew that Venetia was famous for being gloomy about the plays she was in and was confident that her play would run for months and years.

  They lunched at a table in the George, a table near a window box full of geraniums, with the punka going overhead because it had unexpectedly turned warm.

  “I always have the same lunch whenever I come here,” announced Venetia, in full rich ringing tones. “Fried sole and trifle.”

  “You don’t look like a trifle eater,” observed Ezra, “more like a smoked salmon and savoury eater.”

  “What nice things you say,” responded Venetia, and she leaned across and beamed at him. There was a warm scented wave of lily-of-the-valley mixed with Arpège. At the back of this, deep down and far away, Ezra was aware of another smell, something faintly medicinal and disinfectant, as if the lady had been having a bath in dettol. With Venetia this seemed unlikely.

  “Venetia is going to help me audition this afternoon for the play I’m doing in the autumn,” said the Producer quickly, feeling that his lunch party was ignoring him.

  “I’m looking forward to it. I adore that lovely dark panelled room of yours with the window overlooking that gloomy old quad, I always feel it looks like the executioners’ quad in the Tower of London. And then you will give me tea afterwards. Perhaps we shall have luck, perhaps discover some genius. I’m sure all the young things look at one as if one ought to think so.”

  The Producer sighed. “Oh dear, they all think they are Richard Burtons now and, of course, always one thinks that one is perhaps going to discover another one. I never have yet, I must say.”

  Venetia leaned forward. “By the way, dears, which of us can that very pleasant young man in the tweed suit sitting over there eating soup be following?”

  Three heads turned to regard the man, who swallowed his soup uncomfortably.

  “Oh, but is he?” asked the Producer.

  “I’ve been followed before.” Venetia smiled wickedly. And indeed she had been. “But at the moment I am behaving with great rectitude. Oh well, there was a small thing, but that was months ago, three anyway, who would be bothering about that?” She leaned forward and more lily-of-the-valley and Arpège breathed over Ezra. “I know what you’re thinking, young man, ‘she’s sixty if she’s a day’, but let me tell you that has nothing whatever to do with it.”

  “Oh, I wasn’t,” protested Ezra. At this moment Ezra identified the medicinal smell as being a rheumatic rub much used by his father. So lumbago was the reason for Venetia’s rectitude. Venetia could make lumbago fascinating, but even she could find it impeding.

  “Yes, you were, you have a very expressive face, but never mind, it’s a nice face. But this is no help in deciding who is being followed. Is it you, John dear? No, it’s not you, and it’s not me, so it must be you,” and she turned to Ezra. Then an idea came to her. “Let’s call him over. I like his face, I really do.” She waved an imperious white hand. He didn’t move though.

  “I don’t believe he is a detective,” murmured the Producer uneasily; Ezra kept quiet.

  “Nonsense, of course he is.” Venetia walked towards him. “Hand
some boy, isn’t he, in a tough sort of way?” Whatever she said when she got there the watchers saw a thick wave of red sweep over the man’s face. All the same he looked pleased, and when Venetia returned she had her victim behind her.

  Coffin was as surprised as anyone to find himself suddenly lunching with Venetia Stuart.

  “You know, there’s something familiar about your face,” said Venetia as she led him along. “We’ve never met, have we? No, I could never have forgotten you and those shoulders, dear. I have it, of course, I knew your mother when we were both kicking up our heels at the Old Lyric. I knew those shoulders.”

  “I never heard Mother was on the stage,” said Coffin weakly.

  “Certainly, dear, isn’t that odd, I haven’t thought about your mother for thirty-five years and now I can see her as clear as I can see you? She couldn’t dance, dear, but she had glorious legs. They were her ruin really.”

  “Eh?”

  “Yes, just as I was saying, you see, no-one minded if she could dance or not, she just had to stand there and everyone admired those legs. Mine were so awful, dear, like barrels, that I was more or less obliged to learn to act, and you see in the long run it paid better. Still, I haven’t got a nice son like you, have I?” and she smiled up at him. “Here is Mr. Coffin, boys,” and she pushed forward Inspector Coffin, now for ever identified as the son of an old friend. “I was in the chorus at the Lyric with his mother.”

  They were now a table of four, Venetia sat back, satisfied, and Ezra thought she had probably forgotten why she had set off after Coffin in the first place. But this was not so.

  “And now we are absolutely longing for you to tell us why you are watching Mr. Barton,” she said. So she knew all the time, thought Ezra.

  “He’s come about the murder,” Ezra heard himself say in unexpectedly loud tones.

  Coffin closed his eyes in horror. In his part of the world people didn’t come out and shout that sort of thing, but Venetia only looked gratified. There was no doubt about it, she liked a good line. She turned almost in congratulation to Ezra. “Go on, sweet,” she said. “Have it out with him.”

  “It’s true enough I was wanting to see you to have a word,” said Coffin politely. “And I have been following you waiting for my opportunity. I came after you just after you and the young lady set off on your walk to visit that house with all the children, but it’s not true I’ve come about the murder. Not my case you know, I’m not local.”

  “London,” observed Venetia, spooning up her trifle. “I seem to remember that your mother married a Londoner.”

  “What have you come about?” asked Ezra.

  “I suppose you could say I’ve come to satisfy my curiosity,” said Coffin. “I’ve got about six hours to do it in because I’ve got to get back to London today.”

  “And what are you curious about?” asked Ezra. Venetia nodded, not a bad line at all, no doubt they were building up to a climax of some sort.

  “I’m curious about a woman,” said Coffin slowly. “A woman who loved and married and went away. I want to see if I can find her. It’s incidental to me really if she turns out to be a murderer.”

  “I don’t think that’s at all a proper attitude,” said Venetia who had finished her trifle. “Not at all what I should expect from a son of your mother. You ought to mind.”

  “I’ve told you: it’s not my case.”

  “Oh pooh, who cares about that.”

  The Producer stirred uneasily. He could see his audition with Venetia (and frankly he had been looking forward to it: surely he could not have misinterpreted those looks Venetia had been giving him?) vanishing into thin air.

  “Just for once,” said Coffin, conscious that he had a telling line, “I have an academic interest in murder.”

  Venetia gave a hoot of laughter. Even so she managed to retain her elegance.

  “I could fancy some cheese,” she said.

  “You have the appetite of a cobra,” said the Producer without rancour.

  “I’m not omnivorous though,” she said. “I have my tastes,” and she fluttered her long, false, but undeservingly attractive eyelashes at Coffin. He grinned. Ten years in a noisy and vividly alive district just south of the Thames had introduced him to many women similar to Venetia; they may not have had her polish but they had her impulses. While Ezra and the Producer were enchanted by the glamour and gaiety and beauty of the stage star, Coffin saw beneath the Paris hat and the skilful cosmetics to the face of the ageing and lovable woman underneath, but all of them perhaps missed the third and deepest Venetia, the shrewd, relentless, intelligent, slightly vulgar woman who had given success and life and vitality to all the other Venetias who flourished on the surface.

  “If there’s a woman in this,” said Venetia, suddenly serious, “then take some advice from me.”

  “Yes, there is a woman,” said Coffin sombrely. “You might say this case is all woman. A woman came to tell me a man was missing; another woman was there when he died; and a third probably killed him.”

  Marion must know more than she’s said, thought Ezra suddenly, I’m a fool not to have forced it out of her.

  Coffin told them all he knew of the case. He was not telling them anything that was not public knowledge although probably Venetia was not aware of this.

  “You say you are looking for a woman,” she said. “You describe her, only as she was described to you, mark you. Let me tell you you might as well forget that description. You don’t really have any idea what she looks like. Women have not one appearance but many.”

  “I’ve had one good look at her,” said Coffin obstinately. “I’d know her again.”

  Venetia leaned forward. Her great eyes were fixed hypnotically on Coffin, he was all her audience, and so he got the full powers of a personality that could fill Drury Lane. “You’re mistaken,” she said. “I don’t believe you’ve ever really seen her, not as she really is.”

  “We don’t seem to know anything then, do we?” asked Coffin spreading his hands. “When is Mrs. Beaufort not Mrs. Beaufort? Quite like a nursery riddle, isn’t it?”

  Venetia pounced. “Beaufort? Improbable name, isn’t it?”

  “She’s a remarkable woman,” said Coffin, when the party separated. “I wonder what she is underneath all that?”

  “Pretty tough I should think,” said Ezra. “Did you see what she ate? Would you mind if we stopped at this chemist’s for a moment. I seem to have indigestion.”

  Coffin laughed.

  “All very well for you to laugh. You know exactly who is under suspicion by the local police.”

  “To hear them talk,” said Coffin, “you wouldn’t think they suspected anybody.”

  “They came and took a photograph from Professor Farmiloe’s house,” said Ezra wretchedly. He told Coffin all about it, he found it easy, alarmingly easy to talk.

  Coffin raised his eyebrows. Nothing had been said about this to him by his cautious colleagues; he was interested, it told him a good deal of what was going on in their minds. It was the way his own mind was working.

  “Would you take me to see the Professor?”

  “I will if I can, of course. If we can find him. Fortunately he is a man of regular ways.” Ezra looked at his watch. “If this is a normal day, and heaven knows if it is, then we ought to find him in his college, St. Mat’s.” This was the day-to-day name of the famous college of St. Matthew and St. Mark, founded, or so its Fellows liked to believe, by Adam Zouche, a famous money-lender and warlock of the twelfth century. If their claim had been a true one then it would have made them the oldest college in Oxford and humbled the pride of Balliol and Merton. Unluckily it was difficult to prove and it seemed more likely that the college had slid into the world, unobtrusively, in the sixteenth century.

  ‘‘Now which spot is actually the University?” said Coffin looking around him.

  “People always find Oxford difficult to understand. You know during the war the Germans drew up a map of Oxford and put
an X just by the Bodleian Library to mark what they thought was the University. There are a few administrative offices there, but it’s no more. The colleges are the University. It has no real existence outside.”

  They walked under a gateway, out of light into darkness, out of noise of traffic and voices into quiet.

  “Nice place,” said Coffin appreciatively.

  “Oh it is,” answered Ezra, “one of my very favourites.” He thought of all the happy times he had had there. Had he stayed too long? Did they think of him as a little dog they had around the place? A dog they had to pat a little and be nice to?

  A small, plump little man came round the corner talking loudly to his companion who was tall, lugubrious, thin. He was complaining in no uncertain terms about the High Servitor, that official college servant who superintends the college wine.

  “How can we have Lady Pinckney to lunch with Love pouring the claret all over the place?” he worried. “He drinks, you know, that’s his trouble, and what’s more he doesn’t like us to. Do you know what he said to me last night? That’s your third glass of Madeira, Mr. Bristow, and that’s quite enough. Cheek, you know. I ought to get him sacked.”

  Ezra remembered the number of times Love’s kindly but trembling hand had dribbled port or claret or hock over his head and into his lap and smiled: how many times had he seen Love angrily scolded and angrily replying (for he allowed himself much latitude in dealing with his employers, rather like an elderly nanny). But however many times he gave or was given notice, Love was always there in the morning again, tottering around.

  “Dons always complain about their servants,” he explained to Coffin. “They like it that way, but they keep them as long as they can, always complaining, of course, but when they retire they complain even more about the new one and say they don’t get the service from him they got from his predecessor. It’ll be the same with Love.”

  As well as the wine, he remembered the very real kindness he himself had experienced once from Love when he had been unhappy and it was clear that he was unhappy.