It was now Margery’s turn to emit shrieks. The policemen were kept busy dosing the women from the bottle. They both seemed to recover together, their colour flooded back at the touch of the old brandy, and they comforted one another in turn.
Margery was indignant.
“Well...? What are you waiting for, you two? Haven’t you done enough? Better leave her to me.”
“No, Margery. They’ve both been very kind and want to ask me some questions. Go and make us all some tea. We need it.”
The maid eyed the two detectives reproachfully, as though they might have killed her master between them, and then left slowly. On the way she dialled the dairy, told the milkman in an enigmatic voice that she couldn’t see him that night, and then hung up and went to make the tea. The milkman, suspecting a rival, spent the night contemplating throwing himself in the river, but thinking better of it, proposed and was accepted by Margery the following day. When all was settled, they went to keep a milk-bar at Leamington Spa...But that doesn’t concern us here...
“You say you left your husband at the gates of Beyle, Mrs. Kent?”
“Yes. Then I drove on at once.”
“Whilst you were at Beyle, did you see anyone else about the place? In the grounds or on the road...?”
“No. There wasn’t a soul about.”
“You say you picked up your husband at his office. Did you call for him?”
“No. He had the car with him. After the inquest, I stayed for lunch in town. He said I could call for the car when I was ready to go home. I did some shopping and went for it. It’s usually parked in a side-street near the office. Arthur, my husband, was sitting in it waiting for me. He said he was going to Beyle House and would like me to drop him there on my way home. He would catch the bus at the gate later. I drove him there, left him, and came on here.”
“Why did he suddenly decide to go to Beyle?”
“I didn’t say he suddenly decided to do anything, Inspector. It must have just cropped up...something which made it necessary...”
“This is all very difficult. Whoever killed him must have seen you drop him, followed him in, and struck him down. Miss Nita saw you both from the window...saw you leave...”
“Did she?”
It was said unpleasantly. Mrs. Kent resented being watched, it was clear.
Littlejohn could have sworn that in some way, Beatrice Kent was relieved by her husband’s death. It was hard to believe that she had just been bereaved swiftly and violently. Once the initial shock of the murder had passed, she had recovered full possession of herself.
“Had your husband any enemies, madam?”
She was suddenly on her guard, watchful, suspicious.
“What do you mean?”
“Just what I said...”
“That someone hated Arthur enough to kill him?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t know. He never told me of any enemies. He never told me much.”
This was inviting inquiry, but Littlejohn let it go. All in good time.
Margery arrived with the tea and poured out three cups. Cromwell put on his best smile.
“Mind if I take a cup with you in the kitchen, miss? There are one or two things I’d like to ask you...”
Littlejohn, with difficulty, kept a straight face. Margery had flushed the colour of a geranium. Instinctively it flashed in her simple mind that he had designs on her! She tossed her head.
“I can look after myself. I should have been going out with my young man, but...”
She thought she’d better let him know from the start that her heart was given to somebody else. But she was flattered, and stayed, waiting for the next move.
“What do you wish to ask her?”
There was a rasp in Mrs. Kent’s voice.
“Perhaps she can tell us something useful about one or another of the recent deaths, madam. We’ll have to question her sooner or later.”
“You will, will you? I like your imperence. As if I knew anything about it.”
“Go along the pair of you and get your cups of tea...” Littlejohn always supported his sergeant and Cromwell cast him a grateful nod.
The coloured portrait of Queen Victoria, cut from a 1901Christmas almanac by Margery’s late mother and carried about like a sacred relic wherever her daughter went, stared at Cromwell in stony disapproval. The sergeant gave the Old Queen an apologetic look.
“Take sugar?”
“Yes, please.”
Cromwell smiled, carefully laid his bowler on the kitchen sideboard, and drew up a rocking-chair to the fire.
“That’s right. Make yourself at home. Would you like the wireless on, as well?”
Margery was thawing. Impudent banter was her way of showing a return of her good humour.
“No...I want to talk to you, Margery. You said this has stopped you going to see your young man?”
“Yes; but he can wait. The master doesn’t die every day.”
She suddenly seemed to realize for the first time what had happened.
“Isn’t it funny talkin’ like this. The master mightn’t be dead at all the way we’re carryin’ on. When my pa died, the ’ouse was like bedlam. Everybody cryin’ all over the place, ma with ’ysterics, me struck all of a heap, and couldn’t do a hand’s turn to help myself, and that’s the way it was till after he was laid away. Then ma got married agen...”
“You’re right. Doesn’t seem like a house of mourning, does it?”
“But he was never at home. Thought of nothing but work...or so you’d have thought. Neglected poor Mrs. Kent shameful. I don’t know how she stood it. I know what my ma would have done...and did. Pa once got sweet on one of the flighty young things in the shop he worked in. ‘Ought to be ashamed of yourself and you with daughters older than her,’ said ma, when told. And she emptied a pan of cabbage-water over his head. ‘And that’s what you’ll get every time you come ’ome with face-powder on yer, or lipstick on yer hanky,’ she says. It cured pa good and proper. But, of course, Mrs. Kent’s too much of a lady. She just bore it...”
“He was a one for the ladies, then?”
“I shouldn’t be talkin’ like this, and him not yet in his grave. But, as you said, I’ll only be asked it all later, didn’t you? So, I might as well speak first as last.”
“That’s right.”
Margery was enjoying it. She poured out another cup of tea for Cromwell and gave him a piece of her own-made slab cake.
“He wasn’t here, there and everywhere. It was just Mrs. Crake he was sweet on. Eyes for nobody else when she was about. Disgraceful, I call it!”
“What kind of man was he?”
“Cold as ice to most people, includin’ the missus an’ me. Ordered me about just like he talked to the dog.”
She indicated the spaniel sleeping in the corner. He hadn’t shown a sign of interest in the company and was busy dreaming in his basket, whimpering and thrashing about convulsively as if in the throes of a hard afternoon’s rabbiting.
“I wouldn’t have stayed but for the missus. One of the best, she is. I’ll be sorry to leave her.”
“Thinking of leaving soon?”
She looked coy, stretched out her sturdy legs to the fire, and started to rock voluptuously in her rocking-chair.
“There’s four of them want me...”
She said it with a show of indifference; it didn’t matter how many of them wanted her or how hard, she was the one who was going to say “when”.
“He’ll be a lucky chap, whoever he is. You’ll not only make him proud of you, you’ll give him a good cake, too.”
“Go on with you.”
Cromwell looked at Queen Victoria apologetically again and she gave him back a frosty, regal stare.
“Mr. Crake died here, I believe.”
“Yes. Pewmonia, they said. He was that poorly when they brought him here. Must have had it on him for days before he fell sick. You oughtn’t to speak ill of the dead, but Mrs. Crake was a devil.
Look at her with the master. Shocking. She couldn’t leave the men alone. And on with the new and off with the old, as they say...Or should it be the other way about?”
“It’s all the same. Do you think one of his rivals for Mrs. Crake might have harmed Mr. Kent?”
“Why should they? Mrs. Crake was dead by that time...”
“Yes, that’s true. But suppose somebody knew something about Mr. Kent and Mrs. Crake and tried to...”
“Blackmail! You talk like a tuppeny book! Blackmail in Tilsey! Why; they only do that in London and big cities...”
Margery had evidently been educated in the true penny novelette tradition, where the innocents of the provinces need to go to the evil cities to be victimized.
“Besides, Mrs. Kent knew all about it. She hated Mrs. Crake. Not only because of her and Mr. Kent, but more because of the way Mrs. Crake treated Mrs. Kent’s brother. Doted on Mr. Nicholas, did the mistress. I don’t blame her. If I’d a brother like him, I’d dote on him. Poor Mr. Crake.”
Margery shed a tear or two. It was evident the dead judge had not been without his supporters.
“Is there any truth in the rumour about Mrs. Crake opening the windows when her husband was ill and, so to speak, starving him to death?”
Margery agitated herself to and fro enthusiastically in her rocking-chair.
“I don’t know. If you ask me, it was all UP with him when he got here. So ill, he was. I’d believe anything of that Mrs. Crake, but why should she want to kill her husband? She was having a good time. He let her have all her own way. She did just as she liked. Why kill the goose that laid the golden eggs?”
“Let’s see; wasn’t it the Christmas carol-singers who said they saw him at the window?”
“Yes...That Tom Trumper. Him and his carol-singers! He says it’s for charity. But if you saw the condition they’re in after one of their rounds of the town, you’d know whose health they were looking after. A lot of proper old topers. They was, as like as not, as tight as drums when they got here. I slept through it all myself, but I’ve seen ’em in years past. They imagined things...Have a piece of my Christmas cake...?”
She’d taken to Cromwell, that was obvious. Nobody but her special friends, like the milkman, ever got helpings of Margery’s special cake. She emerged with a rich, dark slab, lost in concrete-like icing and rocky marzipan.
“There! Try that...”
The Old Queen looked icily on whilst Cromwell mastered his helping.
He congratulated Margery unctuously on her cooking and then got back to business.
“So you think the affair of exposing Mr. Crake to the east wind was all a tale, Margery?”
“Or else he was delirious and when they struck up their carols, he got up and thought he was throwing them some coppers or somethin’. Naturally, Mrs. Crake would try to get him back to his bed. If that’s what Old Trumper saw, there’s no harm in it. It would do Mr. Crake a lot of harm, but you can’t hold Mrs. Crake responsible for it. Now, can you?”
“No. That’s quite a theory. You defend her as if you liked her.”
“I never. But right’s right, isn’t it? Besides, I don’t hold with killing people. Wrong as she might have done in life, nobody’s any right to hasten her end.”
“Were the Crakes and the Kents very friendly?”
“No. Mrs. Crake and the mistress were daggers drawn. Mrs. Kent couldn’t stand her on account of what she did to Mr. Nicholas. Then, when Mrs. Crake and the master got sweet on one another...well...They didn’t visit one another much. Until Mr. Nicholas was ill, Mrs. Crake hadn’t been here for a year or more.”
Strangely enough, whilst Cromwell was pursuing his inquiries below stairs. Littlejohn was following similar lines above. Mrs. Kent thought exactly the same as Margery about Tom Trumper and carolling party.
“A lot of old topers. Trumper might have imagined it. Or my brother might have heard them singing and got up to the window. His wife would naturally try to pull him back. They had been singing quite a time when I awoke and sent them away.”
“The rumour started with Trumper?”
“It seems so...”
“I must have a word with him about exactly what happened...”
“I have thought a lot about it. My sister-in-law treated my brother shamefully. But I cannot believe that even she would do such a thing to him. Had I believed it, I would gladly have killed her myself.”
“Where were you at five in the afternoon after the funeral of your brother? You mustn’t mind my asking. It is a matter of routine.”
“I haven’t an alibi, if that’s what you’re after, Inspector. I was very upset about the whole affair. In our family, the women don’t attend funerals. But my sister-in-law insisted on going to Nick’s and making quite a show of herself in widow’s weeds. My brother would have hated it. I had to go, in the circumstances. When it was over, I came home and stayed indoors until dinner, at seven. Margery was out, so nobody could testify...”
“Not even your husband, were he still alive?”
“No. He went back to the office.”
“And now about your brother’s Will, Mrs. Kent. I believe he left the bulk of what he had to his wife...”
“Who told you that?”
She raised her head sharply and snapped out the question.
“Dr. Doane...”
“Doctor...? Oh, I beg your pardon. It seems strange to hear Uncle Bernard called that. How did he know?”
“I didn’t ask the source of his information. He said there was a considerable sum for insurance and little else but Beyle, which was to go to Nita.”
“My brother was a strange man. Singularly impersonal when it came to doing his duty. He covered his life for ten thousand pounds, which was to go to his widow on his death. He told me that when he died, Dulcie wouldn’t be able to do a thing if she weren’t left provided for. In his own words, she’d die in the gutter. So he took out a large insurance. It was a terrible drain on his resources. He had to undertake other things besides court duties. He was rather eminent in company law and did a lot of private work. He also wrote a book or two which brought in royalties. They are standard authorities, I gather, on company matters. Then, of course, Beyle went to Nita. He knew very well that Alec would help his mother to dispose of the insurances, and regarded him as well dealt with, especially as Alec was supposed to be studying to become an architect. He’ll never make much of it.”
“And now, Alec inherits the ten thousand?”
“Did Uncle Bernard tell you that, as well?”
“Yes.”
“I didn’t know, but I’m not surprised. He was the apple of his mother’s eye and, of course, Nita has her own profession and, unless I’m very mistaken, her looks will serve her well in the marriage market.”
Littlejohn looked hard at Mrs. Kent. The way she spoke, there was no love lost between her and Nita, either.
“How did your brother expect Nita to be able to keep up Beyle without money to do it? It’s rather a ruin now; it will be worse in a few years.”
“He left her Beyle and the residue after Dulcie got the insurance. I recollect his telling me about his Will and how he would try to amass some ready cash to leave her...”
“Is there likely to be much?”
“I don’t know. There ought to be quite a sum. He once said that he forced himself to make ends meet on his salary. That’s why Beyle is so tumbledown. When we were children there, it was beautiful...”
“So he tried to save his fees and income from his books...?”
“Yes. They ought to be considerable.”
“Do you know who were the executors?”
“My late husband and his partner, Mr. Trotman. So far, I haven’t heard a thing about their duties. I guess, Mr. Trotman, being a lawyer, will now handle everything.”
“And now about Alec, Mrs. Kent. So far, he hasn’t returned home since the inquest on his mother...”
“He is probably drinking somewhere. He’s thoroughl
y dissolute. He was badly brought up when a child. Nita was neglected, but Dulcie seemed to try to make Alec a part of herself, sharing in her escapades, even when he was quite small.”
“I’m surprised your brother allowed it.”
“Had you known Dulcie, you wouldn’t have been. After the birth of Nita, she seemed to go morally all to pieces. Nothing Nick did was of any use. She was a disgrace to him. He had ample grounds for divorcing her, but would never agree. I pleaded with him to get rid of her. All he said was, ‘I married her and I’m responsible for her. If I let her go, she will soon go to the dogs. My presence is the only curb she has.’ And that was true, although it wasn’t much use.”
“I don’t understand it at all, Mrs. Kent. Here is a man, well thought of, with possibly a great future, marries a woman quite unsuited to him, allows her a free hand in her disreputable conduct, and lets her drag his good name...”
“Stop! I won’t hear of such a thing! Nick’s name has always been good. It was better for the saintly way in which he treated that wicked woman!”
“But, as a rule, when such a marriage goes on the rocks, there is good reason for it. A psychological reason, I mean. One of the parties, or both, simply drives the other to desperation. But from what I hear of Mr. Crake, he was the last person to drive a wife on such a course.”
“That is true. He didn’t do it. They were happy together for many years. Then, she just went mad. It was madness. They were a queer family. Look at Uncle Bernard...And I once met their father. He was a dipsomaniac! They had to put him in a home now and then. Finally, he died from it.”
“Were you aware that Mrs. Crake suffered from a kind of dancing malady caused by the bite of a tarantula spider in her youth?”
Beatrice Kent’s eyes opened wide.
“Whoever has been telling you that tale?”
“Uncle Bernard.”
“He seems to have told you quite a lot. No. I never heard such fantastic nonsense before. Nick...Was he supposed to know?”
“Uncle Bernard said so. He said that was why he, Dr. Doane, was allowed to live there; because he knew how to deal with Mrs. Crake during the attacks.”
“I never heard such nonsense! Bernard Doane came to Beyle for a so-called holiday. He was penniless, except for a very large collection of gold coins, said to have been collected by his father. He provided pocket-money for himself by selling his silly medals, or whatever they were, and sponged on Nick for the rest. His holiday became protracted to a regular residence. Nick tolerated it, as he did many other things, because Dulcie wished it. It is sad that, in spite of all she did, he loved her to the end.”
Crime In Leper's Hollow Page 9
