Mrs. Malory and the Festival Murder

by Hazel Holt

  This slightly more cheerful aspect of the affair did alleviate the depression that had descended upon us, and by the time we had each had a couple of swigs from Will’s hip flask (‘essential Dunster Show equipment’) we were well on the way to considering Jessie’s baby as something in the nature of a blessing.

  The next day was a Saturday and I returned from my morning’s shopping to find that Michael had covered the kitchen table and all the available work-top space with saucers and small bowls full of water, with what appeared to be pieces of paper floating about in them.

  ‘Michael! Whatever are you doing!’

  ‘Oh, hello Ma. The most extraordinary thing. I’ve found my old stamp collection.’

  ‘Oh no!’

  ‘I was tidying up my room, as you asked me to,’ he said virtuously, ‘and I was shoving some things onto the top shelf of my cupboard and the album fell out. And all these stamps I never got around to sticking in.’

  He picked up one of the saucers and tilted it from side to side, spilling water on to the floor.

  These are all those African ones Uncle John sent me years ago from Zaire and Mozambique – but of course I’ve got to float them off the bits of envelope first.’

  I sighed.

  ‘How long is it going to take? I mean, I can’t really get lunch if there’s nowhere to put anything down!’

  ‘Oh, I won’t be in to lunch, didn’t I tell you? I’m seeing Mark in the Ship at twelve thirty.’

  He looked at his watch and exclaimed: ‘It’s quarter-past now, I must dash.’

  ‘But what about all this?’ I asked. But he was gone.

  I looked around the cluttered kitchen and decided that I too would have lunch out.

  Since the season was still in full swing I knew better than to try any of the Taviscombe cafes, so I drove out to a small pub I know, off the beaten track and relatively free of summer visitors. It was a fine day and so I took my lunch (a rather good homemade pasty and a salad) to one of the tables outside, opened my book, and prepared to enjoy a peaceful half-hour. I was, therefore, irritated when I heard a voice at my elbow enquire, ‘May I join you?’

  My irritation turned to embarrassment when I saw that my companion was Freddy Drummond. True, I had seen him briefly at Dunster Show, the day before, but I was unprepared for what seemed likely to be a longish tête-à-tête.

  ‘Of course,’ I said, rather flustered, moving my book off the table and making room for him. ‘How lovely to see you.’

  He put down a plate piled high with cold meats and salad and another with what appeared to be the larger part of a French loaf and butter.

  ‘The food here,’ he said, ‘is simple but plentiful. I usually come on the good Mrs Darby’s day off.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘I believe it’s been featured in one of the good food guides, so it’s sometimes quite crowded.’

  He settled himself comfortably and began to work his way through the mountain of food before him. I picked at my pasty, my appetite gone. After a few minutes he paused and regarded me quizzically.

  ‘Poor Sheila,’ he said, ‘it must be embarrassing for you. I feel I owe you an apology.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ I asked.

  ‘I have had a visit from your young friend in the CID,’ he said.

  ‘Oh dear,’ I found myself saying apologetically, ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘My dear child, it is not you who should apologize – it was an intolerable position in which to find yourself.’

  ‘I had to tell Roger what was in the Meredith papers,’ I said defensively.

  ‘Of course. I am only distressed to think that you should have been upset at having to do so.’

  He picked up a leaf of lettuce in his fingers and ate it meditatively.

  ‘It was inevitable that Meredith should have kept copies of his correspondence,’ he said. ‘He had a considerable sense of his own importance and was quite sure that every last laundry list would be of intense interest to his devoted readers. As a biographer of some distinction yourself, my dear, you will appreciate the motives behind this vanity.’

  ‘I know,’ I replied, ‘that Adrian was delighted at the amount of unpublished material there was.’

  ‘Ah, Adrian,’ he said. ‘An excellent man of letters – to use a term now out of favour – but a thoroughly disagreeable human being.’

  ‘Was he blackmailing you?’ I asked bluntly.

  ‘Blackmailing?’ Freddy Drummond considered the word. ‘No, I don’t think one could call it that. He simply told me – and in a rather distasteful way – that he was going to use what he called “some rather compromising material” that concerned my younger days.’

  ‘What did you say?’ I asked.

  ‘I quoted the great Duke, of course. “Publish and be damned.”‘

  ‘I see,’ I said doubtfully.

  He regarded me benevolently.

  ‘My dear child, do you imagine that this is the first time that such a situation has arisen? I have known many of the great and good – and, indeed, not so good – whose lives have been picked over by the literary vultures (present company excepted, of course). The more regrettable moments of my misspent youth (and I do, indeed, regret them) have been the subject for more than Meredith’s correspondence.’

  ‘But never published?’ I asked.

  He gave a little half-smile. ‘I have a very good lawyer,’ he said, ‘and the libel laws of this country are, thank goodness, still quite effective. When I am dead, of course, there will be nothing I can do. As the wife of a lawyer you will doubtless remember that one cannot libel the dead. However, until that day, I have found that a strong warning has usually been sufficient.’

  ‘I’m very glad,’ I said.

  ‘So you see, my dear, I had no motive – I believe that is the phrase used in such cases – for murdering Adrian. No personal motive, that is. As a priest and a Christian I must naturally believe that there is good in all men, but in the case of Adrian Palgrave I begin to wonder if the Almighty might have made an exception.’

  He spoke these words gravely, quite unlike his usual flippant manner of speech, and I had the feeling that something more than personal distaste for the man lay behind it.

  The young waitress came out to collect our plates.

  ‘Would you like a sweet?’ she asked me.

  ‘No thanks, just coffee, please.’

  Even if I had been hungry to begin with, the sight of Father Freddy demolishing that great plateful of food would have been enough to destroy my appetite.

  The girl turned and smiled at my companion.

  ‘The usual for you, Father?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes, please, my dear. And another drink for the lady. Sheila, what shall it be? This’ – he indicated his glass – ‘is a very respectable Niersteiner, quite light and refreshing for a summer’s day.’

  ‘No, thank you,’ I said. ‘I’m driving. Oh well, perhaps an orange juice, then.’

  ‘The manners and morals of each age,’ Freddy Drummond said, ‘influence and mould the thought and actions of the youth of that age. That is a truism, I know, but none the less accurate. When I was young there was a particular kind of hedonism, the result, they tell us, of the horrors of the First World War. I choose to think that it was just something in the air, the Spirit of the times, the Zeitgeist, that seemed to cast a spell on some of us. There is, goodness knows, an equal permissiveness today, but it is a relatively joyless thing, simply making a point, I sometimes feel, earnest and almost,’ he laughed, ‘political.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘that does come through, somehow, in the letters and memoirs of the twenties. There was a feeling of something. Goodness knows it wasn’t innocence, since some of the behaviour was perfectly appalling.’ I recollected to whom I was talking and stammered, ‘Well, you know what I mean.’

  ‘Indeed,’ he said. ‘And you are quite right to condemn it.’

  ‘But it was different,’ I said. ‘I know that evil is evil, wherever and
whenever it occurs, but...’

  ‘I think that the word you are looking for is “style”. Which, my dear Sheila, is simply self-deception, and it was, of course, our excuse for everything. The so-called Bohemian world of the twenties was quite small and, mercifully, had very little influence on the lives of ordinary human beings, so I always try to persuade myself that we were merely self-destructive. I thank God that I came to see His purpose, even if it was only at the end of my life.’

  I looked at him curiously. This was a Freddy Drummond I had never seen before and I found I liked him better without the flourishings and the histrionic manner. I felt I could tell this man how worried I was about Jessie.

  ‘Is Jessie all right?’ I asked tentatively. ‘I had such a shock when I saw her at Dunster Show. I – we, none of us, had any idea...’

  ‘Ah, yes, Jessie, the poor soul. She has spoken to me about her trouble.’

  ‘Do you know who the father is?’

  ‘Yes, yes I do.’

  ‘Will he marry her?’

  ‘No, that is not possible. Nor would she have wanted to marry him, if it had been.’

  ‘Oh dear.’

  We sat in silence for a moment and then he suddenly said, ‘We must pray that the sins of the fathers will not be visited upon this small, new life.’

  I was about to question him about this gnomic utterance when the girl reappeared with my orange juice and a plate laden with apple pie smothered with clotted cream.

  Freddy Drummond smiled.

  ‘Gluttony, the last, best sin,’ he said, with a return to his old manner.

  I leaned forward.

  ‘I got the impression,’ I said, ‘that Jessie is deeply unhappy about this baby. Is that because it will be illegitimate or because of who the father is?’

  ‘Both.’

  I heard Dorothy Browning’s voice in my head.

  ‘Dark, a high complexion, rather gypsyish.’

  ‘Adrian Palgrave was the father, wasn’t he?’ I asked.

  Freddy Drummond scraped up the last of the apple pie and pushed his plate to one side.

  ‘Do you have any reason for saying that?’ he asked.

  ‘It’s just come back to me,’ I replied. ‘What somebody said about seeing them together once. It is true, though, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, it is true. I’m sure you will not make this generally known. It is not a pleasant situation for her.’

  ‘No, I can see that. But Eleanor knows too, of course?’

  ‘Indeed. She has been a great support to Jessie all through this dreadful business.’

  ‘Did she know that Jessie and Adrian were having an affair?’ I asked curiously.

  ‘I think it was a great shock to her when Jessie told her about the baby,’ he replied. ‘Palgrave wanted her to get rid of it, of course.’

  ‘I imagine he might have done. But Jessie wouldn’t?’ I asked.

  ‘She is an old-fashioned woman and such a course was abhorrent to her. She knew that he would never leave his wife and marry her, but that was not what seems to have worried her.’

  ‘Then what was it?’ I persisted. ‘I mean, if she wasn’t worried about keeping the baby and if Eleanor was being kind and supportive, why is she obviously so unhappy about it all?’

  He was silent for a moment and then he said, ‘I honestly don’t know. Like you, I have sensed something there that neither Jessie nor Eleanor will talk to me about. I don’t know what it is, but it is eating away at them like a cancer. They are both deeply unhappy.’

  ‘Of course,’ I said, ‘Eleanor is still very upset about poor Robin. And perhaps Jessie really did love Adrian and is grieving for him.’

  But as I spoke I remembered Jessie’s calmness and the matter-of-face way she had behaved on the evening that he had died.

  ‘Oh God!’ I exclaimed. ‘She found Adrian’s body!’

  ‘Yes,’ he replied quietly, ‘I have thought a great deal about that. I have, indeed, tried to talk to her about it, but she always turns the subject.’

  ‘And Eleanor?’ I asked.

  ‘Eleanor confines herself to practicalities,’ he replied. ‘As is her way. Doctors and midwives and such. She will support Jessie and the baby financially, I believe. I imagine she wishes things to go on as before.’

  I finished the last of my orange juice and said, ‘I wish there was something I could do. It’s awful to see two good, kind people so unhappy and not be able to help in anyway.’

  Freddy Drummond looked at me steadily.

  ‘There is another truism, and one that I, myself, cling to: that suffering purges the soul of sin and that through suffering we can come to the blessing of peace and love.’

  As I got up to go he raised his hand, not in the gesture of mock benediction that he usually affected, but in a movement of genuine compassion.

  Chapter Sixteen

  I was in the pet shop getting some peanuts for the birds. I know you’re not supposed to feed them in the summer, but my birds (finches, sparrows and robins as well as blue tits) have found that if they tap on the window often enough I am fool enough to go out and replenish their feeder, no matter what the season of the year. While I was in the shop I stocked up on this and that and eventually found that I had a great cardboard box, so full I could hardly lift it.

  ‘Here, let me,’ said a voice behind me and I turned to find Will.

  ‘Oh, marvellous,’ I said. ‘I would be grateful. My car’s miles away.’

  ‘Just let me get some tins for Mac and I’ll be with you.’

  Mac, short for Macavity, is the inscrutable black cat who occasionally graces Will’s cottage, when, that is, he isn’t off hunting for rabbits on the moor, an arrangement that suits both of them perfectly.

  We walked slowly up the hill to my car, chatting idly of nothing in particular, but when he had put the box in the boot Will said, ‘Do you mind if I sit down for a few minutes? There’s something I want to talk to you about.’

  ‘Of course,’ I said, as we both got into the car. ‘What is it?’

  ‘It’s Jessie. I’m very worried about her.’

  ‘I’m sure there’s something very wrong there,’ I agreed. ‘I mean, more than just the obvious things. I saw Father Freddy the other day and he’s worried, too.’

  ‘I saw her last week,’ Will said. ‘Right out on the moor, over towards Weir Water. I can’t imagine how she got there; she doesn’t drive, does she? And it’s miles from Kinsford. Anyway, I was out walking – trying out a new first act in my head – and I saw this figure sitting on a low stone wall. As I got nearer, I saw that it was Jessie. You can imagine my surprise! She looked dreadful. Not ill, but, well, what I can only call haunted – as if the Eumenides were after her.’

  ‘Good Heavens!’ I exclaimed. ‘So what did she say?’

  ‘That’s the strange thing. Jessie and I have always got on rather well together, quite chatty and all that. But as I got closer and she could see who I was, she got up and quite deliberately turned away and went into a little wood. She so obviously didn’t want to speak to me that I somehow couldn’t follow her, although I was really very worried about her and how she was going to get home and everything.’

  ‘What an extraordinary thing,’ I said.

  ‘I wondered if perhaps it was some sort of depression, something that expectant mothers get.’

  ‘A sort of prenatal depression? No, I’m sure there’s something else, something very fundamentally wrong. Jessie has always been such a practical, sensible person. I would have thought she would be the last person to go all broody.’

  ‘Do we know what Eleanor thinks about it all?’

  ‘Father Freddy says she’s being very supportive, financially and in every other way.’

  ‘Won’t the father contribute?’ Will asked.

  I hesitated and then said, ‘I don’t think he can.’

  Will looked at me narrowly.

  ‘You know who it is, don’t you?’

  I shifted in my se
at and placed my hands on the steering wheel. ‘I sort of put two and two together and Father Freddy confirmed my guess.’

  There was a short silence and then Will said, ‘Palgrave was the father, wasn’t he?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Do you think she’s grieving for him, is that it?’

  ‘No. No, I’m sure it’s not. In fact, the extraordinary thing is that when she found his body she was so, well, composed is the only word for it. Quite calm, detached almost. The more I think about it – and I’ve been thinking about it a lot since I found out that he was the father, as you can imagine – the more unnatural it seems.’

  ‘I suppose she might have been in a state of shock,’ Will suggested.

  ‘No,’ I replied slowly,’ it wasn’t like that. The way she looked at the body’ – I shuddered as I remembered what we had both seen – ‘it was quite impersonal.’

  ‘Do you think,’ Will asked, ‘that she knows who killed Adrian?’

  ‘I think she must,’ I replied. ‘There’s no other explanation for her behaviour.’

  ‘Unless...’

  ‘Unless,’ I repeated, ‘unless she killed him herself.’

  We were both silent again.

  ‘It really was the most Hardyesque scene,’ Will said eventually. ‘Out there on the moor. Pure Tess.’

  ‘She killed her betrayer?’

  Will shook his head. ‘We mustn’t get carried away,’ he said. ‘It would be ridiculous to let our judgment be influenced by literary fantasies.’

  ‘Even so,’ I said. ‘Even if she didn’t kill Adrian herself, I’m pretty sure she knows something about it.’

  ‘What can we do?’ he asked.

  ‘I honestly don’t know. The thing is, whatever Jessie mayor may not have done, I can’t help feeling desperately sorry for her.’

  Early next morning something else happened that gave me cause for concern. The telephone rang while we were having breakfast.

  ‘Michael, answer the phone, will you,’ I said. ‘If I leave this wretched toaster it’ll fling the bread out on to the floor. Anyway, it’s probably one of your little friends.’