Knock, Murderer, Knock!

by Harriet Rutland

  “Is this the way to dinner, Ma?” one of the party asked Lady Warme, who replied with a frosty, “Luncheon will be served in there, if that is what you mean. Really,” she said, turning to Mrs. Marston, “they can’t expect us to eat in the same room as these low people. I shall go up to my bedroom and ring for a luncheon tray. I advise you to do the same. This is intolerable.”

  She went, but after half an hour she returned to the dining-room, tired of ringing a bell which no one attempted to answer. All the chambermaids had been pressed into service as waitresses, and no one was in attendance in the corridors. She found things considerably calmer. Only occasionally could a remark be heard.

  “Now eat your meat, Albert, or you won’t have no pudding.”

  “Gosh, ain’t it tough?”

  “Here, miss, me and this lady’s been waiting hours for that fruit.”

  “Plums or apples. Is that what I came out of the Army for?”

  “Don’t ’ave any rice, Gert, it’s sticky.”

  “Did you hear that? Sixpence for a cup of coffee. No, you can’t have any. We’ll get a few oranges instead.”

  Most of which were, after all, the usual remarks heard during Hydro luncheons, if expressed somewhat differently.

  Lady Warme walked slowly towards her table.

  “Not so bad now that they’re having food,” she remarked to Mrs. Dawson, as if she was speaking about a new consignment of animals for a zoo.

  “No, but you should have heard those American girls ordering sidecars – cocktails, you know.”

  “Sidecars? I thought they were Irish.” Lady Warme’s knowledge of things Irish was limited. “Where’s my table?”

  A waitress passed by with a loaded tray.

  “I’m sorry, Lady Warme, but we thought you were out, so we used your table. Could you sit with Miss Astill? We’re very busy.”

  She passed on. Lady Warme subsided at the table indicated, her face red with anger.

  “Really, this is beyond an insult,” she exclaimed loudly. “I shall complain to the doctor. Cluttering the hotel up with common people who drive about in charabancs! Huddling the regular guests into a corner like this! Do you know that someone actually asked me to show him where the murder was committed? As if it’s not bad enough to be pitchforked into a murder without people coming to gloat over it. It’s disgraceful. I shall give notice at the end of the week without fail.”

  But she did not do so, for before the week ended Inspector Palk and his attendant band of constables were again in the Hydro, and the questioning had begun again.

  Chapter 20

  Mr. Marston stood on the terrace throwing gravel at his wife’s bedroom window to attract her attention. She kept him waiting until she judged that he was in danger of throwing a full-sized stone, then threw up the window and leaned out.

  “Hallo, dear,” she said. “It’s going to be a lovely day.”

  “It won’t be day much longer if you don’t hurry up. What the devil are you and the girls doing? Have you seen about a luncheon basket yet? Does anyone know we’ve arranged to go out?”

  “Just a minute, dear.” Mrs. Marston withdrew into the bedroom. “Your father’s in one of his usual morning tempers,” she remarked to her two daughters. “Spoiling things as usual.”

  “I don’t think he slept well last night, Mother,” said Winnie.

  Mrs. Marston snorted.

  “Rubbish, child! That’s an old tale of his. I used to be worried to death every time he complained of a sleepless night until I realized that it was just a habit of his to say so. Angling for sympathy, that’s all it is. I’ve no patience with a man who can’t make the best of things. Your father’s never so ill as he pretends to be.”

  “He’s getting jolly mad now,” said Millie, who was looking through the window. “He’s stamping about like a wild bull. You’d better say something to him or he’ll go and insult the first person he sets eyes on, and everyone is annoyed enough already about his language. They’ll be complaining about him to the doctor again, and we shall be asked to leave this place just as we had to leave all the others. There soon won’t be a hydro in the country that we can stay at.”

  Mrs. Marston stabbed a brooch into her blouse.

  “Well, why are you both standing there doing nothing? My life’s a perfect misery what with you and your father. Millie, go and ask them to pack a luncheon basket for four and the chauffeur. You’d better tell Matthews that we want the car brought round to the front at once, Winnie.”

  Millie giggled.

  “If you want Matthews as quickly as all that, you’d better fetch him yourself,” she said.

  Mrs. Marston swung herself round.

  “What do you mean by that?” she asked.

  Millie drew back. She was afraid of her mother and had already regretted her words.

  “Nothing – only – well, if you want to know, it’s all over the Hydro that Winnie and Matthews –”

  Mrs. Marston advanced on her unfortunate daughter and boxed her smartly on the ear.

  “Don’t ever let me hear you say anything like that again,” she said. “Isn’t this place full enough of scandal without your repeating lies about your own sister? I’m ashamed of you, Millie. You know that Winnie can’t help being seen about with Matthews. He’s teaching her to drive the car.”

  The two girls hurried out of the room and Mrs. Marston composed her face at the mirror and once again leaned out of the window, apparently quite oblivious to the fact that she had kept her husband waiting so long.

  “It’s all right,” she called down. “The girls are seeing about lunch, and the car will be round at once. You’ll just have time to take your exercise while we are getting ready.” She waved her hand and closed the window.

  “Oh, blast!” roared Mr. Marston, stepping backwards into Miss Astill, who was reading her morning prayers as she slowly paced along the terrace.

  “Really, Mr. Marston,” she began indignantly, as the black leather book turned turtle on the path, scattering little printed texts from its gilded leaves.

  “Sorry.” He stooped down to collect them and thrust them ungently into her hand, then leaned for a second on his walking-stick, his breathing heavy with annoyance.

  Miss Astill sorted out her texts, selected one, and pressed it into his hand.

  “If only you could believe...” she murmured, and turned from him with a coy smile.

  Mr. Marston stared after her, speechless with rage, then looked down at the little card with its serrated edges and its printed forget-me-nots and roses wreathed round the text.

  “Oh, blast!” he roared more loudly than before, and, tearing the card into minute pieces, scattered them on the gravel and stumped off to Bachelors’ Walk, where he usually took his morning exercise.

  Bachelors’ Walk was a level strip of gravel eighty yards long. At one end stood a wooden garden seat painted green, and at the other a stone urn painted red. From the seat to the urn and back again was thus a hundred and sixty yards, and to cover this distance eleven times meant that you had walked a mile under the most advantageous conditions, since there were no hills to negotiate. A scale plan of the path was pinned up on the notice-board in the hall, with a kind of ready-reckoner for the quarter, the half, and three-quarter mile.

  Mr. Marston selected eleven small smooth pebbles from the gravel, and placed them in his outer left-hand jacket pocket. Then he stood squarely in front of the seat, and set off at a brisk pace. He turned sharply when the urn was reached, and when he arrived back at the seat, he placed one of the pebbles on the green wood and repeated the whole process again.

  Urn. Seat. Urn. Seat.

  He knew nearly every stone on the path, for he always paced it with downcast eyes, and no one but himself knew the tricks it played on him.

  Seat. Urn. Seat. Urn.

  Sometimes he took an imaginary run to bowl one of the fast spinners which had done so much to put his name in the lists of cricket. His mind went back twenty yea
rs. In imagination he saw himself picked for the Test Match, saw the smooth pitch, the waiting field, the Australian wickets falling to his bowling. The Ashes...

  Urn. Seat. Urn. Seat.

  He stopped for a moment, leaning against the seat and breathing heavily.

  Here he was, an old man at forty-eight, he thought bitterly. His life for the last fourteen years had been spent in voyages in the winter and in hydros for the rest of the year. All forms of sport were denied to him; he had to spend his recreation hours playing croquet or clock-golf, and then people wondered that he couldn’t keep his temper. He, who had been so essentially masculine, was now deprived of everything which makes a masculine atmosphere. He must not drink, he must not smoke; his life was as full of “don’ts” as that of Robert Louis Stevenson had been. He hadn’t even a son in whose exploits he could live again the hazards of his own youth, but only two daughters, Winnie and Millie. The Marston sisters. It sounded just like one of those hateful crooning turns on the wireless, which Millie loved so much.

  He resumed his walk.

  Seat. Urn.

  How he hated all this necessity for taking care of himself. He could never get away from his wife’s constant questions: “Have you taken your exercise, Charles?”

  “Have you had your medicine yet, Charles?” or “You know I’m only telling you for your own good, Charles.” She never let him out of her sight for two minutes, and raised hell if he so much as looked at another woman.

  Urn. Seat.

  There they were now, standing on the terrace round the car. He hated driving. He hated closed cars. It was damned unhealthy to sit in a glass-sided box for an hour or more with four other people, but he couldn’t stand the windows open. Ever since that bout of rheumatic fever he had caught cold so easily.

  He sighed. He was an old man now, an old man.

  He reached the seat again and put down another pebble, then counted the number in the little row he had made along the seat.

  Eight. Oh, well, call it eleven. No one would know.

  He swept the pebbles on to the path and went to join his wife.

  “There you are, dear,” she greeted him brightly. “I’m afraid you didn’t finish your mile this morning. Never mind, you can take a little walk after lunch.”

  He glared at her.

  “Where are we going?” he snapped.

  “Through Newton St. Mary and straight on to Excester. The girls want to do some shopping. We can come back along the coast road.”

  “You never ask me where I want to go. You decide everything and expect me to follow like a dog on a lead,” grumbled her husband.

  Mrs. Marston smiled because the chauffeur, Matthews, was within hearing, and replied with forced cheerfulness:

  “My dear Charles, if we waited for you to decide we should never arrive anywhere.”

  She settled herself in the far corner at the back of the car, and Winnie and Millie followed her. Mr. Marston lowered himself carefully into the front seat beside the chauffeur.

  Mrs. Napier approached, taking a walking lesson from Nurse Hawkins. She smiled at them icily.

  No one ever gives me any consideration, she thought. They go off on a pleasant trip and never offer me a seat. That chauffeur always draws the car right up in my path on purpose, just to make me walk round it. They all know I can’t walk properly. There ought to be a rule against such cruelty. I shall complain to the doctor.

  She stumbled in self-pity.

  “Now, Mrs. Napier,” reprimanded Nurse Hawkins, “you have not got your mind on what you’re doing. You must think about it all the time. Now keep pace with me: left, right, left, right.”

  “Poor soul,” remarked Mrs. Marston. “I am so sorry for her. I wish we could take her for a drive, but there’s no room.”

  “I suppose you’d like me to give up my seat to her and stay at home. Is that what you’re hinting?” demanded her husband.

  “Certainly not, Charles. You know that I meant nothing of the kind. But she looks so lonely, and that husband of hers comes to see her so rarely. Of course, I know that he lives over two hundred miles away, but still... I hope that if I ever get like that you will have more consideration for me.

  Mr. Marston made no reply, but his expression seemed to indicate that if such a calamity should ever befall her, he would cheerfully murder her.

  Matthews pressed the self-starter and the car hummed into life.

  “Have you filled up with petrol, Matthews?”

  “Yes, madam.”

  “Is the luncheon basket in?”

  “Yes, miss.”

  “I suppose you know the way?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The big saloon car moved off. Its five occupants were silent.

  Mrs. Marston was thinking how disheartening it was to try and arrange an outing which would please them all. Charles always contrived to be more than usually irritable on such days. He tried to make out that it was because she nagged him about taking medicine and exercise. But if she didn’t take the trouble to remind him he simply made no attempt to take either, and she had to sit up with him all night if he had one of his attacks. Of course, it was dreadful for Charles to be tied down by ill-health after he had been used to such an active life, but he ought to have become sufficiently used to it by now to endure it more cheerfully, instead of that, he spent his time fretting about the games he could no longer play, forgetting that in any case he was now too old to be included in any cricket team. He exaggerated his own prowess in the game too. “A spin bowler and a forcing bat,” was his usual description of himself to any stranger, so that most people went away with the idea that he was a combination of Verity and Hammond, and felt regret that England had never had the chance to play him in the Tests. But, of course, Charles had not even played in county cricket, and who cared for the game in a little village like Marston Magna? Why, he hadn’t even been chosen for the first team there, so what chance had he ever had of being selected to play for England?

  She was growing tired of his temper. The real reason for it this morning was that she had asked him whether he had remembered to wear his thermogene. Perhaps it had been rather tactless of her, in front of other people, but still, standing about in the draughty front porch was enough to give him a severe chill, and he should have had the sense to know it. If it were not for the girls, she might...

  Millie was thinking what a nice day it was, and how much she would have enjoyed a picnic with a handsome, attentive young man like Ronald Colman, and what a pity it was that all the men in the Hydro were so old and uninteresting. She wished she was like that exotic-looking Miss Blake who had somehow contrived to look like the Dietrich in Desire at nine o’clock in the morning. She wished she had the technique of other women. Technique was important in love-making, she thought.

  She was thinking, too, of her ear, which still tingled from her mother’s blow. Hard blows didn’t stop you thinking about things, so why pretend they did? She couldn’t help wondering if there really could be anything in the Hydro rumour about Winnie and Matthews. It was no good asking Winnie, anyway; she kept her affairs too much to herself. Well, perhaps she would marry him, and perhaps he would turn out to be a duke’s son who had been forced to earn his own living before he could succeed to an old and honoured title. It would be just like that film she had seen last week...

  Winnie was thinking that there was something very attractive about Matthews when you considered him as a man and not as a chauffeur, as she had always done up to now. She wondered who had started the scandal about her, for she believed that Millie was telling the truth when she said she had heard of it, and she thought how unkind everyone was in this place. She had not taken much notice of Matthews before, although she had been having driving lessons from him for some time. She suddenly realized that his brown uniform matched his eyes, which she could see reflected in the windscreen, and that he had a rather tender mouth and firm chin. Yes, there certainly was something attractive about him – he had a nic
e smile, too, though it wasn’t much in evidence when Father was there.

  She glanced down at her well-worn tweed suit and comfortable brogues, and wished she had worn her new green two-piece and the green suede shoes. She wondered what Matthews was thinking about...

  Matthews changed down to second gear grudgingly.

  She ought to have taken that hill easily on top, he thought. Surely she couldn’t need decarbonizing again. He’d said it would be no good to fill her up with Commercial Spirit. It never did pay with a car in the long run; but the boss was a stingy old devil. Well, arguing never did a chauffeur good, whether he was right or wrong. There she was, knocking again. Damn all Devonshire hills, anyway!

  He changed down to bottom gear.

  What a row! Now he’d hear a bit of language from the boss, and what would Miss Winnie think?

  He glanced surreptitiously sideways. But Mr. Marston was fast asleep.

  Chapter 21

  A few days later, Miss Astill, swathed in a shapeless knitted garment, was sitting at a rickety table in her cheerless back room writing letters, when a loud double knock on the door disturbed her. A chambermaid entered at her reply.

  “What is it?” she asked irritably, for it annoyed her to know that if she could have afforded a front bedroom the maids would have taken pains to convey a more apologetic note to the panel of the door.

  “Miss Brendon’s compliments, miss, and will you take tea with her this afternoon at four o’clock?”

  “Say that I shall be delighted, and don’t bang the door.” Almost as soon as she had finished her letters it was time to dress for tea. She put on a blue serge frock, fixed a large lace collar to it with barely concealed safety-pins, and hung a row of cheap imitation pearls round her neck. She chose a hat of dusty velours, and fixed it with a knobbed pin to the little sausage of hair on top of her head. Then she took up a pair of white cotton gloves and her needlework bag, and set out for “Spinsters’ Corridor.”