by Joyce Porter
Dover smacked his lips.
MacGregor went on trying to avert disaster. ‘I was just explaining to Mr Pinkham, sir, that you can’t possibly be Lord Crouch’s guest because.…’
Dover dragged his greedy little eyes away from the glories of Beltour and directed them on his sergeant. ‘Why don’t you belt up?’ he demanded furiously. ‘I reckon it’s very kind of Lord Who’s-your-father and it’ll be nice and handy being right on the spot. Me,’ – he jerked a greasy thumb – ‘I’m staying there!’
Chapter Two
If Lord Crouch got considerably more than he bargained for, Detective Chief Inspector Dover soon found that he had got considerably less.
At first everything in the garden was lovely and Dover tackled the huge flight of granite steps up to Beltour’s massive front doors with hardly a complaint and no more than his usual shortness of breath. MacGregor, boot-faced and still sulking, tugged at the wrought-iron bell pull and prepared to greet Lord Crouch when that nobleman came to open the door. MacGregor, the product of a very minor public school, was not to be fooled by this outward display of opulence. He knew all about the plight of the aristocracy in these egalitarian days and he was deeply sympathetic. His heart bled for any man who was forced to have the hoipolloi trampling through his home at 25p a nob. And those old family retainers! All gone now and replaced by a couple of shifty-eyes foreigners who only served you for the money. MacGregor made up his mind to be very nice indeed to poor Lord Crouch.
‘Well?’
MacGregor came out of a delightful reverie in which he and Lord Crouch were getting on together like a house on fire to find himself being scrutinized in a most patronizing manner not by a belted earl but by a butler. And a very imposing butler, too. MacGregor had never actually encountered a real-life butler before and it quite put him off his stride. He stammered out a very forlorn little account of who they were as Mr Pinkham, his good resolutions already fading, had somewhat discourteously remained in the car.
The butler, from the top of his bald head to the soles of his flat feet, was clearly not pleased. ‘Policemen? You’re supposed to use the back door, you are. Anyhow,’ – he relented against his better judgement – ‘you’d better come in now you’re here. His Lordship is expecting you.’
It was Dover who rose to the dignity of the occasion. ‘Lead on, my man!’ he trumpeted with great panache and surged forward to take possession of what he had already come to think of as his own. MacGregor slunk after him.
It has been opined that you could drill a regiment (guards’, of course) in the entrance hall at Beltour. This is no doubt an exaggeration but it was certainly a very large place and quite dwarfed the souvenir stall and picture-postcard stand which were, apart from a suit of rusty armour and a couple of showcases, its only furnishings. Through an archway on the right the next convoy of paying customers could be seen, forming up in an untidy crocodile as they waited for their guide. They were admitted to the house only by a side entrance and were temporarily forbidden access to the hall by a rope barrier. Nobody could stop them looking, though, and they pressed forward eagerly as the little procession made its way across the wide open spaces. ‘That’ll be the cops!’ they told each other knowledgeably and fathers hoisted their sons on high so as not to miss the only free show that was likely to fall to their lot on that particular outing.
It was a long trek and both Dover and the butler were showing signs of strain long before they were within sight of the door of the Malplaquet Library. Their laborious progress gave MacGregor plenty of time to display an intelligent interest in his surroundings. He bestowed a knowing nod on the suit of armour before turning a shrewd, connoisseur’s eye on the family coronation robes in the first showcase. The second showcase rated a faintly amused smile. It contained, according to the carefully printed notice, the actual garments worn by the present Lord Crouch when performing his National Service with the Royal South Shires Fusiliers (Princess Mabel’s Own). The khaki battle dress with its single modest pip on each shoulder and the crumpled beret with the hairy, pale pink hackle may have been short on glamour but they were very strong on human appeal. Even the nobility, they hinted, had done their bit.
The butler opened the library door and Dover all but blotted his copy-book as he realized that his marathon march was still not over. However, he strangled the oaths in time and, gritting his National Health teeth, limped off towards the distant prospect of Lord Crouch.
The social preliminaries were soon dispensed with and MacGregor, to his chagrin, found himself being dismissed to get on with his own mundane affairs. The butler withdrew at the same time, creaking gingerly back down the length of the library.
Lord Crouch moved reluctantly out from behind the sanctuary of his desk. ‘Well, we’ll move upstairs now, shall we, Mr Dover? Lunch should be just about ready.’
Dover appreciated a man who got his priorities right.
‘I’ll go first, if you don’t mind.’
‘Age before beauty!’ responded Dover, so much on his best behaviour that it was almost beginning to hurt. He was about to follow Lord Crouch when an antique silver inkstand on the desk caught his eye. ’ Strewth, he’d wager that was worth a pretty penny! You could tell by the size of the thing. Not that it wasn’t still highly portable. You could slip it under your coat as easy as.…
Dover was saved from further temptation as he realized that Lord Crouch’s loping stride had already carried him three quarters of the way down the room. Another minute and he’d be over the flipping horizon.
It was a lead which Dover never managed to pin back as they progressed from room to room, through endless corridors and galleries, across spacious halls and, once, right round three sides of an enormous music room. From time to time they encountered flagging groups of visitors and easily distracted their attention from the Adam fireplaces and those inevitable Italian ceilings. When they finally reached a precipitous flight of stairs, the chief inspector gave up even trying to catch his host up.
‘My sister and I have our private apartments at the top of the Acquitaine Tower,’ explained Lord Crouch, pausing to peer down over the banisters in an effort to see where this peculiar policeman had got to. ‘ It’s rather a climb but the view makes it well worth while.’
A couple of flights below and with the blood pounding in his ears, Dover most sincerely doubted it but he was in no condition to argue. He barely had the strength to wonder if he wasn’t going to pay too high a price for the goodies to come.
As Lord Crouch reached the top landing his sister, Lady Priscilla, came out to join him. Together they listened to the distressing gulping and panting coming up the well of the staircase.
‘Nearly there now,’ said Lord Crouch, gently encouraging.
‘We really ought to install a lift,’ murmured Lady Priscilla and nervously asked herself if the man’s face was usually such a peculiar colour.
Dover made it and sagged to his knees only when he was sure that blue-blooded hands were outstretched to sustain him. Lord Crouch and Lady Priscilla hoisted him up the last step or two and between them manhandled him into the drawing-room. Dover collapsed into a chair, flopped back with his eyes closed and got down to brass tacks.
‘Brandy!’ he gasped. ‘Or whisky!’
But Lady Priscilla, twenty years a Girl Guide captain, president of the local Red Cross and founder-patron of the Friends of the Edwina, Dowager Lady Crouch Cottage Hospital knew better than to administer alcohol as a restorative. She fancied she knew a more efficacious stimulant and, in due course, she administered it.
The shock of undiluted cold water would have brought Dover back from the dead.
‘You see!’ beamed Lady Priscilla triumphantly, catching the glass just before it hit the floor. ‘I thought that would perk you up all right! Now, do you want to go to your room first and wash your hands or have lunch?’
‘Have lunch!’ said Dover who was a noted trencherman and thought too much washing weakened you.
&n
bsp; Lady Priscilla led the way into the dining-room.
‘It’s not,’ she explained a little later as she ladled out a generous teaspoonful of spinach soup, ‘that we are at all fanatical about vegetarianism. We just happen to prefer it. Now, come along, Boys, dear,’ – she addressed her brother across a fine Victorian mahogany dining table which had surely seen better days – ‘ pour the chief inspector out a glass of turnip juice!’
Dover cleared a dry throat. ‘Bread?’ he asked.
Lady Priscilla’s off-hand regrets augured ill for the future. ‘ It’s almost as bad for you as potatoes,’ she said and returned to sipping her soup with a thoughtful air. ‘Hm, I really think this new recipe I found in the Church Magazine has turned out quite well, don’t you, Boys?’
And Dover, who in spite of much evidence to the contrary really was a trained detective, felt his heart and stomach sink even further. Lady Priscilla must do her own cooking! The blows were falling thick and fast.
With the sort of rations that were being served (a goat’s cheese salad followed the soup), there was ample time for conversation. It was Lady Priscilla who willingly shouldered the burden of amusing their distinguished guest and she naturally selected the topic which might be supposed to be uppermost in his mind. It is hardly her fault if she was wrong.
‘Mind you,’ she began, swallowing down a mouthful of boiled nettles, ‘it’s poor Miss Marsh that I feel sorry for. She’s Gary Marsh’s aunt, you know, Mr Dover. She’s brought him up ever since he was a tiny baby.’
Dover was staring sadly at his empty plate. ‘Gary Marsh?’ he echoed dully.
Lady Priscilla blinked. ‘The young man who was battered to death near the Donkey Bridge on Sunday night.’
Dover could think of worse ways to go.
‘We knew him quite well, didn’t we, Boys? Of course one knows everybody in a small community like ours but Miss Marsh has worked for us here at Beltour for over a quarter of a century so we’ve naturally always taken a keen interest in her affairs. Oh, poor Gary! I remember him coming here as though it was yesterday.
Such a sweet little mite, he was! But, then,’ – she sighed deeply – ‘people always say that about them, don’t they?’
It is improbable that Lady Priscilla had ever had anybody belch out loud at her luncheon table before and she innocently interpreted Dover’s effort as a question.
‘Love children, chief inspector! Didn’t you know that Gary Marsh was an illegitimate child? Oh, his aunt’s never made any bones about it. Well, country people don’t bother much about that sort of thing. They never did. No, it wasn’t the fact that he was born out of wedlock that caused the talk. It was who his mother was that had all the tongues wagging.’
Lord Crouch paused with a dried prune halfway to his mouth and glanced across at his sister with a slight frown. ‘Now, Prissy, I’m sure Mr Dover doesn’t want to hear all this old village gossip.’
‘Of course he does, Boys!’ retorted Lady Priscilla cheerfully. ‘It’s background material. And I don’t know what you’re getting into such a tizzy about because, if I don’t tell him, somebody else will.’ She gave Dover a conspiratorial grin. ‘You do want me to go on, don’t you?’
All Dover’s interest was currently centred on the pangs of hunger that were gnawing at his vitals but Lady Priscilla had already classified him as one of those horny-handed sons of the soil from whom a certain amount of taciturnity was only to be expected.
‘Yes,’ she went on, ‘well, I’m afraid nobody really believed this story about Miss Marsh’s sister and it’s quite true that her name had never so much as been mentioned in Beltour until little Gary appeared on the scene. Mind you, Miss Marsh has always been one for keeping herself very much to herself, and being a “foreigner” didn’t help. The locals used to be very suspicious of “foreigners”.’
‘Still are,’ said Lord Crouch, placing his knife and fork tidily together on his plate.
‘Everybody finished?’ Lady Priscilla began collecting up the empty dishes. ‘Did I tell you that Miss Marsh first came here as my personal maid when I was just a slip of a girl, Mr Dover? My goodness, that dates me, doesn’t it? Well, I’m afraid I can’t help that. She was my maid and a very good one, too. I used to call her Milly then, of course. Oh, I remember how terribly upset I was when I had to let her go after dear Papa died! Still, it all worked out very well in the end.’
Lord Crouch had been watching Dover from beneath lowered lids. ‘You’re rambling again, Prissy!’ he warned.
‘Am I, dear?’ Lady Priscilla loped off quite unperturbed to the kitchen and returned with a small bowl of jelly and an even smaller bowl of cream. ‘Well, I’m sure Mr Dover will stop me if there’s anything he doesn’t understand.’ She disappeared into the kitchen again, having forgotten the plates.
Dover, who after all at some stage in the proceedings had certainly been urged to make himself at home, now did so. He dragged the bowl of jelly in front of him and morosely tipped the entire contents of the cream dish over it. By the time Lady Priscilla came back with the pudding plates he had wolfed the lot and was already wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.
This is where breeding tells. Lady Priscilla didn’t so much as glance at her brother but set the plates down quietly on the table and resumed her seat. ‘yes,’ she said, ‘everything seemed to happen at once, the year dear Papa died. He’d been very – well – difficult towards the end and I was really quite worn out with nursing him. He wouldn’t allow anybody else near him, you see. Boys was away in the army in those days and that meant there wasn’t much he could do to help. Well, when Papa finally died, everybody said I simply must get away for a long holiday. I wanted to, of course, but there was the problem of Beltour. The house wasn’t open to the public at that time but that didn’t mean you could just walk away and leave it. Boys tried to resign his commission but the authorities wouldn’t let him. It was quite ridiculous. I mean, to hear them talk, you’d have thought the safety of the country depended on him. Well, I’d more or less resigned myself to holding the fort and struggling on as best I could until Boys finished his National Service when I got this letter from Cousin Eleanora in America, inviting me to go on this cruise round the world with her. All expenses paid. Eleanora is a cousin on my mother’s side, you know, and she married very well. Her husband …’
Lord Crouch was now staring at Dover quite openly. He was an odd sort of fish, and no mistake. Not a bit like Lord Crouch had expected. Look at the fellow now, for goodness sake! Slumped down in his chair, eyes closed, mouth open and his chins falling down on his chest like a concertina. Taking it all in, of course. Lord Crouch had no doubts about that. There’d be a razor sharp brain ticking away like mad behind that fat and pasty face. Still, – Lord Crouch slowly uncoiled a yard or two of leg which had got twisted round his chair – maybe the poor chap was getting the smallest touch bored. Once she’d got the bit between her teeth, Prissy did tend to run on.
Lord Crouch tried to speed things up. ‘We decided to close Beltour completely for a year,’ he said, interrupting his sister just when she was getting to the Texan oil wells. ‘That meant dismissing most of the staff, of course. Some of them we lost for good but a few of them took unpaid leave of absence for a year and came back to us when we re-opened the house. Miss Marsh belonged to the latter category.’
The change of voice certainly roused Dover and he glowered resentfully for a few moments at Lord Crouch. Then his grasshopper brain latched on to a new distraction and he fell to sucking his teeth in the desperate hope that some particle of food might have got trapped behind his dentures.
It took more than a fraternal intervention to shut Lady Priscilla up. ‘Yes, that’s right,’ she agreed. ‘Miss Marsh went up north somewhere to stay with her parents and she took a temporary job while I was away on my wonderful cruise with Cousin Eleanora. Then we were all united again when Boys came out of the army. My goodness, that was the beginning of some hard work, wasn’t it, Boys? You see, Mr
Dover, my brother decided that the only way to make ends meet was to turn Beltour into one of these stately homes and open it to the public. Dear Papa had really rather let things run down a bit and the death duties were, of course, absolutely crippling. Once Boys had explained the situation to me I soon realized that the days of having a maid of my own to look after me were dead and gone. Still, we soon found a new job for Miss Marsh and she settled down extraordinarily well selling tickets at the entrance for us. I don’t know how she manages so beautifully because, when I have to do it, I always get terribly muddled with the change. Isn’t it funny how ordinary people never seem to have anything less than a pound note in their pockets?’ She turned abruptly to her brother. ‘ Shall I make the cocoa now, Boys, or would you sooner wait a bit?’
‘I should make it now, Prissy. I’ve got a busy afternoon ahead of me – Baker says some of the shells in the grotto are going mouldy – and I’m sure Chief Inspector Dover will want to be getting on, too.’
‘Rightie-ho!’ Lady Priscilla set off on one of her handcanters for the kitchen.
Lord Crouch recognized with a sigh that it was now up to him to do the honours. He raised his voice slightly so as to drown the alarming rumbles that had started coming from Dover’s stomach. ‘Yes, it was indeed a strenuous time but we managed to get things ship-shape in the end. I suppose it was about six months after her return to Beltour that Miss Marsh brought the child, Gary, here. She couldn’t continue to live in, of course, but we found her a cottage on the estate. As my sister told you, Miss Marsh said that the child was her sister’s illegitimate son but the villagers were soon putting two and two together and performing some simple arithmetical calculations. I’m sorry to say that they came to the conclusion that it was Miss Marsh herself who was Gary’s mother and that the boy had been conceived and born during the year that she had been away. Where the real truth lies, I have no idea.’
