by Hazel Holt
Elsie came into the room to take away the coffee things and I seized the opportunity to gather up my handbag and make a move to go. Unusually for her, Mrs Dudley did not try to make me stay longer and I saw that the effort of a sustained conversation tired her now. Moved, I bent down and embraced her, something I didn’t normally do when I left. She looked surprised, but caught my hand and held it for a moment.
‘Goodbye, Sheila. Come and see me again soon. There aren’t many left, now, who remember...’
As I drove home my mind was full of the tragedy I had just heard. I hardly knew how I could face Will again, knowing what I did. His kindness and gentle humour seemed almost unbearably sad.
That night I couldn’t sleep. Something was stirring just below the surface of my mind and, as I lay tossing restlessly, I suddenly realized what it was.
Suppose Adrian had been the man that Lucy had fallen so disastrously in love with. The facts fitted. Adrian was rumoured to have had several affairs, but, as everyone knew, he wouldn’t leave Enid because he needed her money. Perhaps Will had found out quite recently. All those years of grieving might have built up a great wave of hatred, when nothing would suffice but the death of Lucy’s betrayer. The cause of her death. Another thing struck me – Will had come in late to the concert. I pushed the thought away. It was too unbearable even to contemplate. Will couldn’t kill a fly. And yet I remembered his passionate devotion to Lucy and the quiet intensity of his grief when she died. The words of the madrigal echoed through my head:
‘My thoughts hold mortal strife,
I do detest my life…’
I remembered Will sitting beside me weeping. My mind was in a whirl of misery and confusion. After a while I got up and took one of the sleeping tablets I hadn’t used since the days just after Peter died, and after a while I fell into a troubled sleep.
Chapter Nine
I felt awful the next morning. I was still half dopey with the effect of the sleeping tablet. As I dragged myself around the kitchen getting Michael’s breakfast and opening tins for the animals, I resolutely tried to put out of my mind the disturbing thoughts that had spoiled my rest. After all, it was pure conjecture. Indeed, it would surely have been too much of a coincidence if Adrian had been Lucy’s lover.
‘What’s up, Ma?’ Michael asked. ‘You look like death!’
‘Oh, nothing. I had a bad night, that’s all.’
He looked at me quizzically but said nothing, swirling honey onto his toast in patterns in such a way that trails of it fell on to the tablecloth.
‘Oh Michael, really!’ I snapped. ‘How can you be so childish and clumsy. Now that cloth will have to be washed and it was clean on yesterday!’
‘Sorry, Ma. Stupid of me.’
He finished his toast and coffee and got up to go. As he passed my chair he put his arm around my shoulders and gave me a hug.
‘Cheer up! Whatever it is, it’s not the end of the world.’
I felt rather ashamed of my bad temper, but when the post arrived I found that I had cause for more irritation. There, lying on the table before me, its red lettering somehow a personal insult, was a final demand for the electricity bill.
I always pay my bills by standing order, so obviously the bank had made a stupid muddle. It suddenly seemed the last straw and I snatched up my bag, thrust my arms into my coat and drove straight into Taviscombe to give them a piece of my mind.
It didn’t improve my temper when I discovered that, since the bank had only just opened, there were long queues. I tried to choose the shortest one but found myself (as I always do) first behind a shopkeeper paying in large sums in endless coins, and then someone who was engaged in a complicated foreign exchange transaction which involved much plying of calculators. Eventually the counter clerk went away entirely and showed no signs of coming back.
‘Has she disappeared completely?’ A voice that sounded as irritable as I felt revealed itself as Enid Palgrave.
‘So you’re back, then,’ she continued. ‘I have been trying to get in touch with you about the Meredith papers.’
‘Well,’ I said, trapped in the queue and unable to wriggle out of the situation. ‘I am rather busy at the moment.’
She ignored my feeble reply and went on.’
‘There is a great deal to be done in the way of sorting and classifying. From what I have managed to read through already, the papers seem to fall into two periods. One, when he was in Paris in the nineteen-twenties and the other, Antibes in the thirties. Adrian had classified some of them...’
She went droning on and I listened with half an ear. The clerk had now reappeared but she had produced a sheaf of papers for the customer to sign. By now I was practically quivering with frustration and impatience. Enid’s voice went relentlessly on as I half turned towards her.
‘Fascinating insights ... literary importance ... strange coincidences ... some very deplorable happenings ... people of such eminence...’
The man in front of me was now slowly gathering up all his papers and I turned back towards the counter. Of course the clerk was apologetic, and of course it was all the fault of the computer. There was nothing that I could say I turned away, feeling cheated of a really good outburst.
‘I will come and see you tomorrow,’ Enid said to me as she took her place at the counter. ‘In the afternoon – I’m not quite sure what time.’
It was with bad grace that I waited for Enid’s visit the next day. I certainly didn’t want to get involved in helping her edit the Meredith papers, but she seemed to have backed me into a corner so that, apart from a downright refusal, there wasn’t much that I could do. If it had been anyone else but Enid I might have found the task enjoyable. Laurence Meredith was a brilliant and witty writer and had known many famous people. His papers would be fascinating to read. But the thought of plodding stolidly through them with Enid robbed them of much of their appeal. And, as I have already said, I really can’t be doing with her as a person.
As the afternoon wore on so my resentment increased. I hate waiting for people, especially when I don’t know exactly when to expect them. It’s bad enough when you’re waiting for the television repairman or someone you actually want to come! I was restless and couldn’t settle to anything. At half-past four I got the dogs’ leads and took them out for a walk, slamming the front door defiantly behind me. If Enid came now she could jolly well go away again.
When I returned and there was still no sign of her having called, I decided to ring up Geraldine. She answered the phone almost at the first ring and spoke in a fast agitated voice.
‘Hello – is that the police.’
‘Geraldine, whatever’s happened? It’s Sheila, Sheila Malory.’
There was a slight pause while Geraldine appeared to collect herself. Then she said, ‘Oh, Sheila, it’s you. What do you want?’
‘I wondered if I could have a word with Enid.’
There was another pause, then Geraldine spoke very fast.
‘There’s been a dreadful accident. Enid went back to the Old Schoolhouse yesterday. She was working on those papers, you know the ones I mean, and she got quite involved with them and decided not to come back here but stay the night there...’
Her voice tailed away and I prompted her.
‘So what happened.’
‘Oh, Sheila, it was awful. There was a fire – I don’t think they know what caused it yet – and she’s dead.’
‘Oh no!’
Geraldine spoke more composedly.
‘You know that she takes sleeping pills, she always has, she is a martyr to insomnia. So she didn’t smell the smoke or hear the fire. The people down the lane saw the flames and called the fire brigade, but it was too late.’
‘Did the house burn down entirely?’ I asked.
‘No, it was mostly downstairs, in Adrian’s study. No, poor Enid, it was the smoke that killed her.’
Somehow it made it just a little less awful. I couldn’t bear to think of Enid perishing in
a flaming inferno.
‘Oh, Geraldine, I’m so sorry. It’s a ghastly thing to have happened.’
‘If only she hadn’t stayed there. I keep thinking that. If she’d been here, she’d still be alive. I ought to have persuaded her to come back.’
‘You mustn’t blame yourself,’ I said soothingly. ‘When Enid made up her mind to do something she was very difficult to persuade.’
‘Yes, I suppose so,’ Geraldine said doubtfully.
‘She was supposed to have been coming to see me this afternoon,’ I said. ‘When she didn’t turn up I wondered what had happened.’
‘Oh, she was wonderful like that,’ Geraldine said. ‘She was never late for an appointment.’
‘What was that about the police?’ I asked.
‘Oh, you know. There’ll have to be a post-mortem, all that sort of thing. There aren’t any relations – well, I think Adrian had a cousin in New Zealand – so I feel I must do what I can. The funeral and everything.’
‘That’s very splendid of you, Geraldine,’ I said. ‘It’s a thankless task.’
‘It’s the least I can do for Enid. Well, for Adrian, too. It will have to be a joint funeral. The police haven’t released his body yet. It will make all the arrangements very difficult.’
Already, I noticed, the pangs of grief were being slightly mitigated by a sense of importance, of running the show as Enid herself had done. ‘Well,’ I said, ‘if there’s anything at all I can do to help, please let me know.’
‘Oh, I think everything’s under control.’ The voice was Geraldine’s but I could hear an echo of Enid.
I said once again how marvellous I thought she was being and rang off.
I was still standing beside the phone when Michael came in a few moments later. I told him briefly what had happened.
‘Goodness, how gruesome, poor old Enid. Will they be buried in the same grave?’
‘I don’t know, I suppose so. It really is awful that both of them should have gone and both so violently.’
‘Do they know what caused the fire?’
‘Geraldine didn’t say. Faulty wiring, I suppose, it usually is in old houses like that.’
‘I’d have thought that Adrian Palgrave would have had the place gutted and thoroughly modernized. Didn’t he rather fancy himself as an interior designer?’
‘Well, yes,’ I said, remembering the Old Schoolhouse, a nineteenth-century Gothic gem that Adrian had furnished with a veritable riot of Victoriana. ‘Oh, well. No doubt we’ll hear soon enough how it all happened.’
I heard the next morning. I was just boning out a smoked haddock to make some kedgeree for supper when the telephone rang and it was Roger.
‘Sheila? Have you heard about Enid Palgrave?’
‘Yes, isn’t it dreadful! And how awful that there should have been this terrible accident so soon after Adrian’s murder.’
‘I’m afraid it’s worse than that. The fire wasn’t an accident, it was started deliberately. Enid Palgrave was murdered, too.’
For a moment I didn’t really take in what Roger had said, then it suddenly hit me.
‘But why? Who on earth would want to murder Enid?’
‘I can only imagine that the two murders are connected. Perhaps she saw something or knew something that would have identified the killer.’
‘But she never said anything to the police?’
‘She may not have realized what she knew,’ Roger said.
‘No, I suppose not.’
‘The reason I’m ringing,’ Roger said, ‘apart from putting you in the picture, is because Geraldine Marwick said that you were expecting Enid to call on you yesterday.’
I explained what had happened and why Enid wanted to see me.
‘But she didn’t tell you that she was going to stay overnight at the Old Schoolhouse?’
‘No, I had no idea. From what Geraldine said, it sounds as if it was a sort of spur of the moment thing.’
‘That’s what I gathered, too. So who knew that she would be there when they started that fire?’
‘Well, Geraldine ... but that’s impossible, she’s devoted to Enid. But I suppose she might have told other people.’
‘I did ask her and she’s a bit vague. She says she mentioned it to various people she met when she went to a meeting of the Archaeological Society – apparently Enid should have gone with her – so that opens things up a bit. I must get a list of the people who were there.’
‘Sally’s a member,’ I said, ‘and Oliver goes when he’s down here,’ I hesitated. ‘So does Will. Oh, and Eleanor, of course, and Father Freddy, everyone, really.’
‘You didn’t go yourself?’
‘No, I felt a bit headachy and it wasn’t anything I was particularly interested in.’
‘Pity, I’ll ring Jack and Rosemary, perhaps they went and can remember who was there.’
‘Roger, how do you know that the fire was deliberate.’
‘It was started by some rags soaked in petrol pushed through the letter-box. If you remember it’s a large opening, some sort of Victorian ironwork thing. It’s quite easy to get your whole hand through it, so whoever it was could reach through and set the rags alight.’
‘Do you know when all this happened.’
‘Well, the farmer down the road saw the flames at about four thirty in the morning. He’d just got up for early milking. So the fire chief reckons the fire must have been set at about three to three thirty.’
‘And nobody heard a car or saw anything?’
‘It’s a bit tucked away down that lane. Just the Old Schoolhouse, the Methodist chapel and the farm. And that lay-by just before you get to the turning is screened from the road by bushes’ so you could easily park a car there without being seen.’
‘But must it have been a murder attempt? Couldn’t it just have been a particularly nasty piece of vandalism? If someone thought the house was empty
‘That’s obviously a possibility. But it does seem the most extraordinary coincidence, you must admit.’
‘I suppose so.
‘You don’t sound convinced.’
‘Well it does seem to be the most peculiar way to kill someone, especially if it was obvious that the fire was started deliberately ‘
‘The murderer might not have expected that. After all, the fire didn’t spread as fiercely as it could have done. He might have thought that the rags would have been consumed in the flames. It was quite by accident that some scraps of the rag got blown to one side by the draught of the fire and preserved for us to find.’
‘Yes,’ I said uncertainly. ‘You could be right. So I suppose that means another inquest. Poor Geraldine is going to find it very difficult to get the funerals sorted out. Did you know, she’s taken on all the arrangements.’
‘Yes, I did gather that she’d taken charge – somewhat to the annoyance, I believe, of Enid’s other friend Evelyn Page.’
I laughed. ‘That’s Taviscombe for you. Umbrage taken, even at a time like this!’ As I went back to my haddock I tried to imagine why on earth anyone should have wanted to murder Enid. What could she have seen or known that made her so dangerous to someone? Perhaps, I thought suddenly, she had known about her husband’s extra-marital affairs. I was sure that she would never have challenged Adrian about them because she would have been afraid of losing him. But now she might have realized that they could somehow have been a motive for his murder. If she knew that Adrian had been the man Lucy Maxwell had been so tragically in love with, then she might have thought that Will ... I resolutely made my mind a blank and went on chopping up hard-boiled eggs.
When Michael came home I told him about Roger’s phone call.
‘Another murder! A bit far-fetched, isn’t it?’ he said.
‘That’s what I thought at first, but it does make a kind of sense.’
‘Oh well, it lets you off the hook about those papers she wanted you to help her with.’
‘Yes,’ I agreed, ‘but it’s hardly t
he way I would have wanted it to happen. I suppose they were all burned in the fire so now nobody will be editing them. It’s a great pity, they were really very important.’
Michael leaned forward to scrape out the remains of the kedgeree from the dish.
‘How come Adrian Palgrave had them in the house, anyway?’ he asked. ‘Surely, if they were that important, they should have been in some library or a bank vault or something?’
‘There were no relatives,’ I replied, ‘and, as Meredith’s literary executor, Adrian had the right to dispose of the papers as he thought best. I believe he was going to sell them to an American university when he’d finished all the books and articles he proposed to get out of them.’
‘Were they valuable, then? In money terms, I mean?’
‘Well,’ I said, cutting a slice of cheesecake and pushing it towards him, ‘I didn’t have the chance to examine them, but there was a lot of stuff from Hemingway and Scott Fitzgerald and all those other twenties American literary expats, and American libraries still pay a lot for that sort of thing. And if there was anything new (and there might have been) then, yes, they would be quite valuable. I suppose they’re insured, but that’s not the point.’
‘How did Adrian Palgrave get to be made Meredith’s literary executor, anyway?’
‘He’d done a book on Scott Fitzgerald and went out there to see Meredith. It seems that he made himself agreeable, very agreeable, and simply talked the old man into it. He could be a great charmer, you know, when he set his mind to it, and with someone who liked a lot of flattery he went down very well indeed.’
‘Well, it didn’t do him much good in the end.’
‘No, poor Adrian. It really would have made his name, his big chance you might say, to be recognized as a first-class biographer. I’ve never cared for his poetry, but his biographies were excellent. He would have done a good job on Meredith. Which is more than poor Enid would have done. From a purely literary point of view it’s just as well she never got her hands on that material. She’d have made a dreadful dog’s breakfast of it!’
