Dance to Your Daddy (Mrs Bradley)

by Mitchell, Gladys

  ‘You’ll get us all arrested one of these days,’ said Laura.

  ‘You did rightly, Celestine,’ said Dame Beatrice. ‘The jeune fille I brought with me is in a highly nervous state and in no condition to stand up to police questioning when I am not here.’

  ‘There has been, as usual, an assassination, then,’ said Celestine, in a resigned tone, ‘and madame will once more be toiling to assist the police to arrest a monster.’

  Laura followed Dame Beatrice into the library where they had left Rosamund on their departure for Galliard Hall. The girl was reading, but put down the book as they entered and rose to her feet. Her anxious eyes questioned them. Dame Beatrice said:

  ‘Tancred is quite well, so far as we know. Have you ever met Hubert Lestrange, a clergyman? He was to have joined the house-party, but did not turn up. We now know why.’

  ‘He is dead?’ asked Rosamund.

  ‘Yes. By what means we do not know yet, but the police have had to be told.’

  ‘He was killed, then.’

  ‘The police seem to think so. They want to talk to those persons who were at Galliard Hall last week.’

  ‘And I am one of them.’

  ‘So am I. So are a number of other people.’

  ‘Will the police come here, or shall you and I need to go back there?’

  ‘They will come here.’

  ‘I shall have nothing to tell them.’

  ‘That, most likely, will be my case, too, so there is nothing for us to worry about, thank goodness.’

  ‘I should never worry if you were with me.’

  ‘Good. By the way, it is essential to be quite frank with them.’

  Rosamund looked scared.

  ‘But I can be nothing else,’ she insisted. ‘I don’t know anything about Hubert Lestrange at all. I had no idea he was dead.’

  ‘They will ask you to account for your movements, and so forth.’

  ‘Suppose I can’t remember?’

  ‘Tell them so.’

  ‘But they’ll bully me into trying to remember, won’t they? Romilly was always bullying me and shouting at me and losing his temper.’

  ‘The police will not behave like that, I promise you. But don’t attempt to conceal anything from them, even if it is embarrassing or painful for you to admit some things which you may wish to keep to yourself. We all have our weak points and it is useless to attempt to disguise or hide them.’

  Rosamund looked at the keen, black eyes and the quirky, beaky little mouth and then dropped her own eyes and said quietly:

  ‘You are thinking of something in particular.’

  ‘Yes,’ agreed Dame Beatrice, ‘I am. As I suppose you know, Hubert’s body was found on Dancing Ledge.’ She saw the girl flinch. ‘Yes,’ she went on, ‘Romilly will have told the police that he saw you drown the cat and the monkey somewhere along that stretch of coast, and throw the large doll into the sea.’

  ‘But you don’t believe him, do you?’

  ‘No, I do not, but I am anxious that you shall not deny having run away to those cliffs or that Romilly found you and brought you back – that is, if these things really happened.’

  ‘But the police may believe I drowned things – living creatures – and they may think I’m mad, and that I pushed Hubert over the cliff.’

  ‘Tell the truth, simply and openly. Then I can help you. And now I will tell you the truth about myself. My name is not Beatrice Adler. I did not correct you at the time, because it was unnecessary and, for you, perhaps, alarming. I am Beatrice Adela Lestrange Bradley, and I am attached to the Home Office in the capacity of psychiatric adviser.’

  ‘But then – but then –’ she raised her eyes and gazed first at Dame Beatrice, who had seated herself composedly in an armchair, and then at the tall and magnificent Laura, who, like Rosamund herself, was still standing.

  ‘Yes,’ said Dame Beatrice quietly, ‘failing yourself and Romilly, who is quite as infamous a man as you have always suspected, I am the heiress named in your grandfather’s Will. Nevertheless, I have every intention of seeing that you get your rights. I cannot prove this to you at present. I can only ask you to believe me and to tell the police the whole truth.’

  ‘But I – but I –”

  ‘There’s nothing else you can do,’ interpolated Laura bluntly, ‘so there’s no point in raising objections. Besides, you’re being cagey. You read this morning about the body on Dancing Ledge.”

  (2)

  The police, called up by Laura and told that Dame Beatrice was at home and would be pleased to see them, turned up in the person of a friend of hers, Detective-Inspector Nicholas Kirkby, recently promoted, youngish, keen, efficient and fair-minded. He was shown into the library, where she greeted him warmly. Laura had already made his acquaintance through Dame Beatrice and her own husband, so Rosamund was introduced and the two young women went out of the room.

  ‘So that’s the young girl I’ve been hearing about,’ said Kirkby. ‘The lady who chucks things, animate and inanimate, into the sea. The theory at Galliard Hall seems to be that this dead man was one of them. What can you tell me about her, Dame Beatrice? I was told you’ve been staying at the house, but left before the body was discovered.’

  ‘That is so. I was invited to go to Galliard Hall to examine and treat this girl with a view to curing her of what I was told was an obsession. In my opinion, she is perfectly normal, and the stories which have been put about are lies. I hasten to add that this is only an opinion. After all, I have only known her for about a week. In her own view, she is the centre of a conspiracy to rob her of her fortune. When she dies, after she attains the age of twenty-five, the money goes to the man who claims to be her husband.’

  ‘Mr Romilly Lestrange? Yes, he told me she was his wife. Why, do you doubt it, Dame Beatrice?’

  ‘Yes, I do. I believe the girl, who asserts that she is merely his ward. I think the housekeeper, Mrs Judith, may be married to him.’

  ‘It sounds an odd sort of set-up. Reminds you of a mid-Victorian novel, doesn’t it? However, all I have to find out at the moment is who killed the Reverend Hubert Lestrange, so I am trying to discover where everybody was, and what each of the household was doing, at the probable time of his death.’

  ‘And when was that?’

  ‘That’s my chief difficulty at present. It’s hard to pin the doctors down about it. The furthest they will go is to say that when they examined him he had probably been dead for five or six days, but that, as the body had been in water, it could be as long as seven or eight days. Now, just for the record, could I have an account of your own movements for the past eight days?’

  ‘Certainly. That takes us back to yesterday (Sunday) week, does it not?’ She opened a table drawer and took out her engagement book. ‘Last Sunday week I was at home here and, apart from a stroll in the garden to look at the early daffodils, I did not leave the house.

  ‘Last Monday I went to London on a routine visit to my clinic. I caught the early train – the slow one, because the fast, which comes through from Weymouth, does not stop at Brockenhurst – and reached my clinic at twelve. I lunched at half-past one at the Dorchester, where they will remember me, took a short stroll in the Park and returned to my clinic at three. I remained there until half-past four, took tea there with the resident staff, had about an hour’s conversation with the doctor-in-charge, and caught the six-thirty fast train from Waterloo to Bournemouth, where my chauffeur met me with the car. I arrived home at approximately nine o’clock, dined, talked to Laura, sent her to bed and then I stayed up and read until about midnight.’

  ‘That seems to account very nicely for Sunday and Monday.’

  ‘On Tuesday I attended the baptism of Laura’s baby daughter. We lunched at home and the ceremony was at three in the village church. After the ceremony, which was also attended by the Assistant Commissioner and his son, I told Laura that I had received an invitation to stay at Galliard Hall.’

  ‘Oh, yes. When did yo
u receive this invitation?’

  ‘On the previous Thursday. Laura usually attends to my correspondence, but this envelope was marked Personal, so, of course, she did not open it and, as I did not make up my mind immediately whether to accept or not, I did not mention it until I had come to a decision.’

  ‘But you did accept the invitation?’

  ‘Oh, yes, after some thought, I wrote to Romilly Lestrange on the Monday, while I was at my clinic, and posted the letter at Waterloo.’

  ‘May I ask why it took you from the Thursday until the Monday to make up your mind?’

  ‘Certainly you may. I had never heard of Romilly Lestrange, and his claim to be my cousin by my first marriage I mentally queried. This being so, I decided that Romilly might be a scoundrel, and I thought I would add him to my collection of smooth villains. I have done so with the greatest delight.’

  ‘That, then, brings us to Wednesday and the time you actually spent at Galliard Hall.’

  Dame Beatrice gave him a detailed account of her stay, including her talks with Rosamund and the others. He did not ask any questions until she had finished. Then he said:

  ‘So you disbelieve Mr Romilly Lestrange’s description of the strange conduct of the young lady, and she, in spite of what he told you, insists she is not his wife.’

  ‘At present I am inclined to believe the girl. I think she has been worried, thwarted and unhappy, but that is not all. I believe she has gone in fear of her life. I do not know who Romilly is, but I doubt whether he is a member of my first husband’s family. There is much that I intend to find out, but, so long as the girl is safe, I am in no hurry to continue my investigations on her behalf. They can wait until you have cleared up your case. May I ask what makes you regard the Reverend Hubert’s death as murder?’

  ‘That he was murdered is only our theory. It may have been suicide, but, considering his vocation, we are doubtful about that. However, if he hadn’t been a clergyman we should have been more open-minded about suicide than we are. Our object, when we’ve heard what our witnesses have to tell us, is to try to find out what on earth he was doing on the cliff at all.’

  ‘I wonder whether he had paid any previous visits to Galliard Hall? I understand that he had not.’

  ‘That’s something I hope to find out. You mean he may have been decoyed on to the cliff-top. If he didn’t know the countryside, he wouldn’t have realised that Dancing Ledge is not on the way to Galliard Hall. I asked Mr Romilly for a list of his guests and his household. I wonder whether you would be good enough to check it with me?’

  ‘I can only be sure of the people who were in the house while I myself was there, of course.’ She checked the list he handed over. ‘That is correct, so far as I know.’

  ‘Good. Perhaps I could talk to – I shall have to call her Mrs Lestrange, I suppose – in your presence?’

  Rosamund appeared nervous. She was still wearing the clothes lent by Binnie, since there had been no time to get her fitted out, and Kirkby was confronted by a slim, fair-haired, innocent-eyed creature in an unfashionably long skirt – for she was shorter than Binnie – and a cardigan which was almost all-enveloping, since she did not possess Binnie’s beautifully-moulded figure.

  Dame Beatrice presented the detective-inspector, who said at once:

  ‘I only want to ask you one or two questions which I think you will find easy enough to answer, Mrs Lestrange.’

  ‘No, please,’ she said, ‘that is not my name. I am Miss, not Mrs Lestrange. Romilly is my guardian, not my husband. I know what he told Dame Beatrice, but it simply isn’t true. I’m not married, I’m not mad, I don’t drown things and I haven’t had a miscarriage. I’ve never been pregnant. I shall inherit a fortune on May 29th and I don’t ever, ever want to go back to Galliard Hall.’

  ‘Well, that seems a pretty comprehensive summing-up, Miss Lestrange, but it isn’t what I’ve come here to find out. When did you last go to Dancing Ledge?’

  ‘I can’t remember the date. It would have been quite a long time ago. I was running away from Romilly, but he chased after me and brought me back. It was after that, that he and Judith wouldn’t let me have proper clothes to wear. They took all my things away and left me only fancy dress – stage armour and a Georgian costume and that sort of thing – so that I couldn’t go out.’

  ‘A Georgian costume, eh? With all the accessories, no doubt. Can you remember what you did last Sunday week?’

  ‘Yes. I read The Woman in White’

  ‘All day long?’

  ‘Except for meal-times, yes.’

  ‘Then Mr Romilly was mistaken when he told us that you might have slipped out of the house. What about the next day?’

  ‘I went on reading my book.’

  ‘And on the Tuesday, a week ago today?’

  ‘Romilly told me he had sent for Dame Beatrice – only he called her Professor Beatrice Adler – and he said that she was a psychiatrist and would be examining me.’

  ‘Did that cause you alarm?’

  ‘Yes, of course. You see, if Romilly can prove, before I am twenty-five, that I’m not fit to manage my own affairs, my fortune will go to him, provided that he gives me a home and treats me kindly.’

  ‘I see. Well, we can go into that later, perhaps. What did you do for the remainder of the day?’

  ‘I wrote a long letter to Dame Beatrice, telling her all about myself.’

  ‘Did you give it to her?’

  ‘No. I thought I would find out first what she was like and whether she would be prepared to help me. I went to her room on the Wednesday evening, when I knew the others would be downstairs, and I found – I decided – that it wouldn’t be necessary to show her the letter. She would be my friend, I felt sure of that. I have the utmost trust in her.’

  ‘And, apart from going to Swanage with Dame Beatrice, during that week you did not leave Galliard Hall until you had an outing to Shaftesbury and then came here?’

  ‘Only to go into an enclosed bit of garden they let me use when I needed fresh air and exercise, otherwise I never went out.’

  ‘Which of the invited guests had you known before they arrived at Galliard Hall?’

  ‘All of them, but only very slightly.’

  ‘I take it you also knew Hubert and Willoughby Lestrange, as they were related to you. Had you known them long?’

  ‘I knew Willoughby, because he was my grandfather’s secretary. Hubert conducted my grandfather’s funeral service. I did not know him before that.’

  ‘I thought you said you did not know him at all,’ Dame Beatrice mildly interpolated.

  ‘Well, you couldn’t call that knowing him!’ protested the girl. Dame Beatrice let it pass.

  ‘And Willoughby?’ went on Kirkby. ‘What about him?’

  ‘I don’t know what’s happened to him. He lived in our hotel, so I knew him quite well, but, of course, he had nothing but his salary, so he had to get another post when grandfather died, and until I heard he was invited to Galliard Hall, I had never heard of him again.’

  ‘How did you know he had been invited?’

  ‘I didn’t, at first. I wasn’t told who had been invited until they came. It was Tancred who told me that Hubert and Willoughby had been invited and hadn’t turned up. He told me so in bed on the second night of his stay. I asked him more about it when we were both in Dame Beatrice’s car on our way to Shaftesbury. He recited a lot of his poetry to me on the journey, because, of course, we couldn’t do anything but talk. I don’t think I love Tancred, but he was sweet and kind, and such fun.’

  ‘How were you treated at Galliard Hall? You say Mrs Binnie Provost and Mr Tancred were kind. How did Mr Romilly treat you?’

  ‘Quite well, in lots of ways. I mean, I had plenty to eat, and the two maids were nice, and I had lots and lots of books. I love reading. I had a radio set, too, but they took that away just before Dame Beatrice came.’

  ‘You had freedom to move about the house?’

  ‘I suppose so.
There wasn’t much point. I had my meals by myself, but I liked it better that way. When I was with them they always treated me like a child who wasn’t right in the head. It was dreadful to fight against that!’

  ‘It must have been. Let me get one thing clear. You knew Mr Hubert and Mr Willoughby when you were with your grandfather?’

  ‘Yes – if you call it knowing Hubert. I only saw him once.’

  ‘Have you ever met them at Galliard Hall?’

  ‘No, never, and I had only met the others once before.’

  ‘At Galliard Hall?’

  ‘Yes. Romilly gave a house-warming and they all turned up to it.’

  ‘Thank you, Miss Lestrange. I think that is all for the present.’

  He was turning to go when a thought seemed to strike him.

  ‘Just half a minute,’ he said. He went into the hall and returned carrying an unsheathed sword. ‘I suppose neither of you has seen this thing before?’ he asked.

  ‘It’s a rapier, isn’t it?’ asked Rosamund.

  ‘Could it have come from Galliard Hall?’ asked Kirkby.

  ‘It could have done, I suppose. Romilly has a small collection of weapons, I believe, but I’ve never taken any interest in the things.’

  ‘You did not wear a sword as part of your Georgian costume, then, Miss Lestrange?’

  ‘There was nothing short enough for me, I imagine. Romilly and Judith provided the costumes, but I certainly was never given a sword.’

  ‘Only a horse-pistol,’ said Dame Beatrice.

  Kirkby stood the weapon upright on its pommel, thoughtfully sparing Dame Beatrice’s carpet, for the point of the sword was very sharp.