Mrs. Malory and the Festival Murder

by Hazel Holt

  ‘Yes, I’ll have a word.’

  There was another pause.

  ‘Sheila, I don’t like to ask you this – they’re all friends of yours – but you would tell me, wouldn’t you, if you remembered anything, or if anyone said anything?’

  I thought of my train journey from Paddington.

  ‘Oh dear,’ I said reluctantly. ‘Yes, well, there is something. It might not be anything at all, but I suppose you’d better know.’

  And I told him what Oliver had said about Adrian’s threat to tell Sally about his affair.

  ‘And I think Sally might divorce him, if she thought she could really get her hands on most of the money and property.’

  ‘Leaving him practically nothing?’

  ‘And it wouldn’t surprise me if they had put a lot of stuff in Sally’s name to save tax. Oliver’s the sort of man who would have a good accountant.’

  ‘Well, that’s very interesting.’

  ‘Roger,’ I said, ‘if you do delve into all that – well, I don’t think Oliver remembers much of that conversation we had, but still ... I do feel rather awful telling you about it.’

  ‘Yes, I know.’ His voice softened. ‘I’m sorry, Sheila. I don’t want you to feel like some sort of informer, but we really do need all the help we can get to catch Palgrave’s killer. It was a thoroughly brutal crime – well, I don’t need to tell you that – and there’s no guarantee that the murderer won’t strike again. But of course I won’t give any sort of hint about where I heard anything. Your friend Oliver knew that I was going to make a few enquiries around the BBC about Palgrave, so he’ll assume I got it from there.’

  But I did feel badly about it. I put down the phone and went to make a cup of tea. In the kitchen both dogs were asleep in their baskets and Foss was sitting on the worktop staring morosely out at the fine rain that was falling. As I plugged in the kettle he jumped down and went to the back door demanding to be let out. We both stood in the doorway watching the low cloud rolling down from the hills above the house. Then he gave me a reproachful look and stalked back into the house, and I heard his resentful wails as he marched upstairs to his wet-weather lair in the airing cupboard. I poured myself a cup of tea and reached for the biscuit tin. It was, I told myself, a perfectly reasonable occasion for comfort eating.

  A few days later I had to go to my doctor. I have tiresome ears that go deaf on me every few months and have to be syringed. The receptionist said (as she always did), ‘He’s running a bit late today,’ and I went into the waiting-room not sorry to have a quiet sit-down, flicking through the rather elderly magazines. There was one other person before me, Jessie Thomas. She was sitting with a magazine open on her lap, but obviously not reading it.

  ‘Hello’ Jessie,’ I said in some surprise. Jessie was never ill. ‘What’s the matter?’

  She looked up, startled at being addressed.

  ‘Oh, Mrs Malory, you did give me a turn. I was miles away.’

  ‘Are you not well?’ I asked.

  ‘Oh, it’s nothing, just a bit of indigestion. But Miss Eleanor she does fuss so. She made me come and see Dr Macdonald. A lot of nonsense, and so I told her. A spoonful of bicarb and I’d be fine.’

  ‘It’s not a good idea to neglect things,’ I said reprovingly, ‘you never know how they might develop. How long have you had it?’

  ‘Oh, not long, it’s really nothing to bother about! No need to go wasting the doctor’s time.’ She spoke irritably and I thought that perhaps she resented Eleanor’s bossiness in packing her off to see the doctor for something that she, Jessie, considered unimportant.

  To change the subject I said, ‘How is Eleanor? I’ve been meaning to telephone to see how she is after that awful evening.’

  ‘We had the police round the place for ages,’ Jessie said, ‘searching the grounds. I don’t know what for, I’m sure.’

  ‘I suppose they still haven’t found the weapon. Did they say anything?’

  She compressed her lips.

  ‘I don’t have anything to do with them, Mrs Malory. Young policemen, hardly more than boys, coming into my kitchen without asking. Did you ever hear the like?’

  I pitied any young constable who had had the rough edge of Jessie’s tongue.

  ‘That inspector, your friend,’ Jessie said accusingly. ‘He was round to see Miss Eleanor yesterday. Wanting to know about poor Mr Robin.’

  So he was now Mr Robin to Jessie – very much ‘son of the house’.

  ‘It was very strange,’ I said, ‘the way he went off like that.’

  Jessie looked at me reprovingly. ‘He had his own reasons, no doubt. It could have been any number of things. No need to go casting aspersions on the poor young man.’

  ‘What did they want to know?’ I asked.

  ‘Oh, if he was with Miss Eleanor before the concert,’ Jessie said, ‘things like that.’

  ‘Was he?’

  ‘With Miss Eleanor? Yes, he was. He came nice and early in the afternoon to give her a hand, took the day off work specially. He’s very thoughtful like that.’

  ‘Was Robin there when Mr Palgrave came at four o’clock?’

  ‘Indeed he was. Naturally he didn’t want to see Mr Palgrave, not after that nasty upset they had, so he came into my kitchen and had a cup of tea and one of my cheese scones and helped me open the bottles of wine until Miss Eleanor came and fetched him again.’

  ‘And they were together all the rest of the time?’ I persisted.

  ‘Oh, yes. Right up until nearly half an hour before the concert started and Miss Eleanor came to see me about the refreshments. We were a bit worried that the quiches hadn’t arrived. That Mrs Wansford, she would insist on making four or five and she was dreadfully late bringing them. I said to Miss Eleanor, “You should’ve let me do the whole thing like I wanted to, then we’d have known where we are.” But you know Miss Eleanor, she does hate upsetting anyone and Mrs Wansford went on so about these quiches. Did you have any of them, Mrs Malory? They didn’t look up to much to me. That wholemeal pastry, you can never get it really nice and short.’

  The receptionist came in and bore Jessie away before I could ask anything else. But as I sat in Dr Macdonald’s surgery, holding the little enamel dish on my shoulder while the water fizzed uncomfortably round in my ear, I thought about Robin, unaccounted for in that last half-hour before the concert began. There would have been time – just – for him to have led Adrian away from the crowd, ostensibly to have a word about something, quietly, in the old dairy. Perhaps that’s why Adrian was sitting down. He would have never imagined he could be in any sort of danger from Robin. I imagined him, leaning back confidently in the chair, being his patronizing and arrogant self, so that it would have been easy for Robin to approach from behind and bring the weapon (whatever it was) down with full force upon Adrian’s head. I shuddered and some of the water in the enamel dish spilt over my hand.

  ‘There you are.’ Dr Macdonald handed me a tissue to dry my ear. ‘Now you’ll be able to hear the least little whisper.’

  I mopped dutifully away. But there are some things, I thought, that one would rather not hear.

  Chapter Eight

  I decided to propose myself for coffee with Mrs Dudley rather than tea; she had her lunch early so I wouldn’t have to stay too long. Besides, if I went to tea, most likely poor Rosemary would find herself scouring Taviscombe for some particular delicacy that her mother would declare essential for any properly constituted tea-table.

  Elsie, Mrs Dudley’s faithful slave, let me in.

  ‘Mrs Malory, it’s so nice to see you, you’re quite a stranger.’

  ‘I know, Elsie, but the days seem to fly by. How’s that little dog of yours?’

  She beamed at me with delight.

  ‘Oh, Benjy, he’s much better now. He had this nasty patch on his fur. Mr Hawkins said it was a sort of eczema, but he gave Benjy this injection. Ever so good he was, and now you can hardly see where it’s been...’

  A
querulous voice from the sitting room demanded, ‘Is that you, Sheila? Come in and sit down. Elsie! Stop chattering and bring in the coffee.’

  Elsie and I exchanged glances and I went in to greet Mrs Dudley.

  Even in the month since I had seen her last she had become more frail and mysteriously smaller as old people do. Her eyes, however, were as sharp as ever and her manner no less imperious. I had brought her some sweet-peas from my garden, since I knew she was fond of them. Her face softened at the sight of the delicate mauve, pink, and purple flowers and she touched them gently with the tip of her finger.

  ‘Thank you, Sheila, that was very thoughtful of you. That fool Greaves sowed them too late this year and they came to nothing. I cannot imagine why I continue to employ him, he is getting very forgetful and his work is by no means what it was. The broad beans this summer have been very poor.’

  Like all of Mrs Dudley’s household, Greaves must be well over seventy, and it is always a source of wonder to me that he still manages to cope with her large garden.

  ‘The garden always looks very nice,’ I said placatingly as Elsie came into the room with the tray of coffee things.

  ‘That will do, Elsie, Mrs Malory will pour,’ Mrs Dudley said dismissively.

  Rather nervously I lifted the heavy silver pot. It was Victorian and very ornate. I managed to pour the coffee without spilling any in the saucers and said, ‘I do believe you are the only person I know who still uses their silver. Most people have either sold it or put it away in the bank for safety.’

  Mrs Dudley dilated her nostrils contemptuously.

  ‘I would consider it a really wicked state of affairs if I couldn’t use my dear mother’s silver in my own home. What is the world coming to! I was saying to that young man of Jilly’s only the other day, what is the world coming to when the police cannot protect us, even in our own homes. Before the war and quite a bit after it, for that matter, I could leave my front door open all day, but now – all these bolts and bars and chains! Nowhere and nothing is safe! Look at the murder the other day. At Kinsford of all places. Sir Ernest must be turning in his grave!’

  ‘I know,’ I said, helping myself to a piece of Elsie’s shortbread, ‘it was really dreadfully upsetting.’

  ‘There never used to be crimes of that sort in Taviscombe. At least, not among people of one’s own class. Of course,’ she continued, ‘that man Palgrave was from London and goodness knows what sort of people he knew there.’

  ‘He and Enid have lived here for quite a while,’ I said. ‘Ten years at least.’

  Mrs Dudley smiled at me pityingly.

  ‘Yes, Sheila dear, but he wasn’t born here. We know nothing at all about his background. He could have been anybody! And I never cared for that wife of his – very opinionated!’

  I remembered an occasion when Enid and Mrs Dudley had come up against one another at the Taviscombe Women’s Institute some years ago, when Mrs Dudley was President and a newly arrived Enid Palgrave had dared to criticize some of the arrangements for the annual outing to the Bath and West Show.

  ‘I believe he was something to do with television,’ Mrs Dudley said. ‘Of course I very rarely watch it myself. The news, perhaps, though that is so depressing nowadays, and the occasional church service – I can’t get to St James now, all those steps! – though they do seem to have a great many services from Nonconformist or even Catholic churches.’

  Rosemary had told me that her mother had taken to watching the racing on television in the afternoons, something that we both found quite extraordinary until Rosemary decided that Mrs Dudley had so identified with the Queen Mother that she probably felt it her duty to follow the sport of kings.

  ‘Pour yourself some more coffee,’ Mrs Dudley ordered, and although I didn’t really want another cup I found myself lifting the heavy silver pot again. Mrs Dudley looked at me critically.

  ‘You are looking very washed out,’ she said. ‘It’s all this gadding about in London.’

  I protested that I enjoyed going to London and that I found it very stimulating.

  ‘I hear you went with Will Maxwell,’ she said, giving me a piercing stare. I wondered how she knew that. Rosemary, I was sure, wouldn’t have told her. But then Mrs Dudley’s sources of information were many and various. She would have made an excellent spy-master.

  ‘I didn’t go to London with Will,’ I said defensively, feeling that I was once again at school and up before my headmistress for some unspeakable transgression. ‘I was up there to do some work in the British Library, but I did go to the theatre with him.’

  ‘You know,’ she continued, as if I had not spoken, ‘and I know that dear Will is a perfect gentleman – his mother’s brother was Sir James Hale – and he would never behave other than honourably. But it is always unwise, Sheila, to give people occasion for gossip.’

  The effrontery of this (on several counts) rendered me speechless and I took a gulp of my now lukewarm coffee.

  ‘Will is a dear man, but men do not always think of these things.’

  It is a truly remarkable tribute to Will’s sweet and generous nature that even Mrs Dudley can find nothing to criticize in him. Indeed he is one of her favourites and, as such, can do no wrong.

  ‘Will is very kind,’ I said colourlessly, hoping to change the subject.

  ‘Too kind, sometimes,’ Mrs Dudley leaned forward confidentially. ‘Look at that wife of his.’

  ‘Lucy?’

  ‘Yes, you remember her?’

  I did indeed remember Lucy Maxwell, it would be impossible to forget beauty like hers. Peter always said that she looked like everyone’s idea of a fairy princess, with delicate features and a fall of straight silver blonde hair. She was a shy girl and very serious. I wondered, sometimes, if she had any sort of sense of humour and what she made of Will’s plays. He met her when he was down here filming – her father, Dr Bryan, was one of our local GPs – and it was certainly love at first sight, for him at least. Will was in his forties, then, and still unmarried. She was twenty years younger and swept away by what must have seemed a very glamorous lifestyle. They were married almost immediately and lived in London and we only heard snippets of news about them from Lucy’s parents, but it seemed that they were very happy. Then, after they had been married about seven years. Lucy was killed in a car accident. I never knew the details, Will never referred to it and neither did I. After Lucy’s death he came down to Taviscombe to see her parents and, while he was here he bought (on an impulse, it seems) the cottage he now lives in, deep in the heart of the moor.

  We have known him from those early days because Peter did some legal work for him and they liked each other and became friends. Gradually, as the years went by, Will has been drawn more and more into Taviscombe life and now he devotes quite a bit of his time to local causes and is generally considered to be a helpful and genial presence in our local society. But one is always aware of the deep melancholy that lies just below the surface cheerfulness, an emptiness that now probably never will be filled.

  ‘Poor Will,’ Mrs Dudley said, ‘he was always a fool about that girl.’

  ‘They were very much in love,’ I replied.

  ‘He was, certainly, absolutely besotted by her. Forgave her everything.’

  ‘Forgave her?’ I was startled and uneasy, I didn’t think I wanted to hear what I knew Mrs Dudley was determined to tell me.

  ‘Oh yes. Perfectly terrible it was. Poor Mrs Bryan was dreadfully upset when she heard about it.’ Mrs Dudley’s eyes were bright with malice.

  ‘But when was this?’ I asked.

  ‘When she had the accident, of course, it all came out then,’ She paused to consider the effect the story was having on me. Then she continued.

  ‘It just so happened that I was having tea with Mrs Bryan that very day (she was quite a friend of mine, you know) when Will telephoned to tell her what had happened. He was quite distraught, she said, and she, poor soul, could hardly take in what had happened.’

/>   I felt a pang of horror and a deep pity for what Will must have suffered – so much more than we had realized.

  ‘It seems that Lucy had fallen in love with this other man, younger than Will, of course. I always said that age difference was too great. She was quite open about it, told Will all about it. He begged her to stay but she said she was going away with this man, couldn’t live without him and all that sort of rubbish.’

  Mrs Dudley paused as if for some interjection, but I couldn’t say anything so after a moment she went on.

  ‘But life caught up with that young lady. The mills of God grind slowly, Sheila, I’ve always said so. This man took fright, had no intention of leaving his wife (she had all the money, you see), told Lucy he didn’t want to see her again. Well, she was in a dreadful state, Mrs Bryan said – Will told her all this later, you understand – quite hysterical. She said she was going to see him and rushed out and got into her car and drove off like a mad thing.’

  ‘And that,’ I said slowly, ‘was when she had the accident.’

  ‘Drove straight into that lorry,’ Mrs Dudley said with grim satisfaction. ‘Killed outright.’

  There was a moment of silence and I suddenly caught the evocative and poignant scent of the sweet-peas.

  ‘Who was this man?’ I asked.

  ‘We never knew.’ Mrs Dudley spoke with some dissatisfaction, unwilling to admit that even her intelligence network had been unable to uncover this important fact. ‘But we do know that it was someone in Taviscombe. Apparently she used to meet him when she was down here seeing her parents. Naturally he had to lie low when she was killed like that – he must have known it was his fault.’

  ‘And Lucy never told Will who it was?’

  ‘No. And do you know, Sheila, after she died, I don’t think he wanted to find out. It would have been too much for him, poor man.’

  I was surprised at this unexpectedly sensitive remark. It was true, I am sure, that Will had closed away that part of his life for ever, or had tried to.