by Carola Dunn
‘Oh!’
‘It is the same man?’
‘It must be. Daisy, how awful!’ Melanie’s face, turned back towards them, was pale with distress.
‘Oh dear, was he a good friend?’
‘No, thank heaven. Robert’s parents live in Guildford, you know. We met Mr Devine when we were visiting them. At a tennis party, I think, and a sherry morning. Bridge, perhaps. That sort of occasion.’
‘What was he like?’ Sakari asked.
‘I don’t remember him particularly. Quite ordinary, I suppose. Agreeable.’
‘Agreeable?’ said Daisy. ‘Not someone you’d expect to get involved in a quarrel?’
‘Not at all. He was friendly but quite diffident. The kind of person who always falls in with other people’s proposals even if he’s just made a contrary suggestion.’
‘You see how much you can remember if you try?’ Daisy was terribly tempted to ask whether Mel knew what Devine had done in the war. She resisted. Mel might not draw any inference, but it would most certainly dawn on Sakari that the question was relevant to Alec’s case.
‘Mr Devine sounds like a most improbable person to be murdered,’ Sakari observed. ‘Was he married?’
‘N-no, I don’t think so. I didn’t meet a wife. And that’s really all I know, and I’m getting a crick in my neck, so can we please stop talking about it?’
‘Of course. Shall I tell you about our researches, Daisy’s and mine, into the interesting places to take the children in Saffron Walden? You need not turn your head to listen. I shall not take offence at speaking to the back of your neck.’
Melanie agreed. Whether she listened or not, Daisy was not aware. Her own thoughts were puzzling over what motive anyone could possibly have for murdering an agreeable, diffident solicitor. Perhaps he knew about a will someone wanted kept secret?
Suppose Colonel Pelham had for some reason left all his worldly wealth to Vincent Halliday, instead of to his own offspring. In such a case, he might very well have decided to keep the will secret. And he might very well have let the information slip, including the name of his lawyer – in a fit of temper, perhaps.
His widow had seemed to Alec to be relieved that he was gone for good, which might be explained by a filthy temper.
Could Sakari’s acquaintance at the India Office be his son and have killed him? It would be too neat a dénouement for words, guaranteed to infuriate Mr Crane if he found out the connection with two of Daisy’s friends!
But having decided, for whatever reason, to disinherit his son, why should Pelham make Halliday his heir? The only answer Daisy could think of was that Halliday had saved the colonel’s life in the war. And an excellent answer it was, bringing everything back to her suggestion that the victims’ war service might usefully be investigated.
She considered her structure with satisfaction, then suddenly realised its fatal flaw. Pelham had died first. Devine would have produced his will …
No, he wouldn’t! No one but the murderer knew the colonel was dead. When someone disappeared, didn’t one have to wait several years for a legal presumption of death? She rather thought so.
It was awfully risky for young Pelham to have waited several months to kill Devine. And even when he was safely out of the way, someone at his firm would take over his clients. Sooner or later, the will would come to light.
Blast! said Daisy to herself, as her house of cards came tumbling down. All the same, she’d mention her construction to Alec next time she saw him, if he hadn’t solved the case by then. Perhaps it might put him on the right track.
CHAPTER 7
Mrs Devine lived in a small Georgian house on the outskirts of Guildford, down a lane with high hedges concealing the houses of her neighbours. Behind a beech hedge, her front garden was a mass of bearded irises. Their sweet, rather heavy scent, brought out by the already warm sun, overwhelmed Alec as he stepped out of the car.
‘Monomaniacal gardener?’ said Tom, joining him on the pavement in front of the gate.
‘She may do the garden herself. It doesn’t look as if there’ll be much in the way of servants for you to talk to. When you’re finished with them, hie thee down to the pub.’
‘The Cricketers,’ put in Ernie. ‘That’s the one he used to frequent.’
‘Been at the dictionary again, have you, laddie?’
Alec opened the white-painted gate with its black-painted legend: Larches. Looking up, he saw that there was indeed a pair of larch trees in the back garden, their pale-green spires towering above the red tile roof.
The three men trod single-file up the brick-paved path. Before Alec reached the dark-green front door, it was opened by a short, plump, grey-haired woman in a black dress.
‘Mrs Devine?’
‘No, I’m her sister, Mrs Webb. You’re the police?’
Presenting his warrant card, Alec admitted, ‘Yes, I’m—’
‘Oh, good. Come in, do. Iris was afraid you might be more reporters, but I said, no, look at the way they walk, they’re policemen. She doesn’t really want to talk to anyone, but I told her she really must answer your questions if she wants justice for poor Martin. It’s a sin and a shame that anyone would harm my poor nephew, who never harmed a fly. In a manner of speaking; if nasty flies get into the house, well, of course one gets the swatter, doesn’t one?’ Mrs Webb nattered on as she led them to an open door on one side of the hall, at the front of the house. ‘I won’t have flypapers in my house. They’re deadly poison, you know, and what if one dropped in the soup, I ask you?’
It was obviously a rhetorical question, and Alec didn’t attempt to answer. He nodded Tom towards a door at the back, at the end of a passage, beside the stairs going up to the first floor. At a guess, the door gave access to the kitchen area. He didn’t want to interrupt Mrs Webb by asking. She might yet say something relevant.
Following her, still chatting, into a sitting room overpoweringly decorated in iris-print chintzes, he thanked his lucky star that Daisy didn’t insist on dressing up their house in an excess of daisies. Someone must once have told Mrs Devine that she was as beautiful, or elegant, or sweet perhaps, as her namesake and she had taken it to heart. However, he had often noticed that an abundance of chintz tended to indicate an abundant volubility. He hoped, in spite of Mrs Webb’s statement, the two sisters might be alike in this.
They were alike in appearance, at least, the chief difference being that Mrs Devine’s eyes were red and swollen with weeping in a pale face. She sat in a low armchair, twisting a handkerchief (embroidered – wonder of wonders – with lilies) between restless fingers.
Before Mrs Webb had finished introducing him, Mrs Devine jumped up, clasped his hand in both hers, and burst into speech.
‘I’m so glad you’ve come at last, Inspector! When they told me last night – such a pleasant policeman – they say it’s better to know, not to wonder, but there’s always hope, isn’t there? Until they tell you – You’re quite, quite certain it’s my Martin?’ She looked up at him with a pitiful remnant of hope.
‘Quite certain, I’m afraid, Mrs Devine. May I offer my sincere condolences?’
She burst into fresh sobs. He led her back to her chair and pressed one of his usual supply of fresh handkerchiefs into her hand.
‘Now, now, Iris, calm yourself! You know you’ll give yourself another headache. See what you’ve done, Inspector? I don’t know what the world’s coming to.’
‘Tea, perhaps, Mrs Webb? Good and strong and sweet?’
‘I’ll ring for—’
‘I don’t want any more tea – I don’t like sugar in it, anyway – I’m swimming in tea, already. I want a brandy.’
‘It’ll only make your headache worse, Iris. Strong drink—’
‘Mrs Webb,’ Alec intervened forcefully, ‘I think this is the moment for a little brandy if ever there was one. I take it you know where your sister keeps it.’
‘Naturally,’ she said huffily. ‘It’s in the buffet in the dining roo
m. But—’
‘Be so good as to show DC Piper if you please.’ He gave Piper a shadow of a wink, and Piper returned a shadow of a nod.
He would keep the woman talking in the dining room – about the evils of strong drink, if necessary – as long as he could. He herded her out, chattering as she went.
Alec sat down uninvited in the matching chair next to Mrs Devine’s. It was too low, so that his knees rose at a sharp angle. He wondered whether Martin Devine, of somewhat above average height according to the autopsy, had constantly struggled with his mother’s taste in furniture.
‘Thank you, Inspector,’ she said, her sobs stilling. ‘Lily is an Abstainer – I’ve been longing for a brandy – just a drop – it helps my head – she wouldn’t let me – Martin and I used to have a – he called it a tot – my late husband, too – after dinner on Sundays.’
‘There’s no harm in a drop of brandy. I hope it will make you feel better. Do you feel able to talk to me now?’
‘Whatever Lily may say, I’m sure I have always been ready to talk to the police about – the first policeman – he was a Guildford man – Lily did say you’re from Scotland Yard, didn’t she?’
‘I am. Detective Chief Inspector Fletcher.’
‘I thought so, but she – chief inspector? I’m so glad someone is taking his disappearance seriously at – But it isn’t just a disappearance now. He’s dead, isn’t he? They came last night and told – I just can’t accustom my mind to – The first policeman said young men, even the steadiest – Martin was very steady. He always told me where he was going and when he’d come – so it was nonsense to say he’d probably gone off to have a fling!’
‘Martin was very steady, was he? You must miss him terribly. Tell me about him, Mrs Devine.’
‘He wanted to be a clergyman, you see. Then the war started, just as he finished school. He volunteered at once, of course – the Territorials – they didn’t take volunteers into the regular army yet, not till – I’m not quite – sometime in 1915, I think, or was it ’16? As soon as they did, he – and then he was sent to France. Or he volunteered to go. Must you know exactly?’
‘That’s all right, it doesn’t matter.’ And, if necessary, could be looked up in the records. ‘Don’t worry about the date. Do you know which regiment, or battalion, of the Territorials he was in?’
‘Regiment – no. Did they have regiments, like the proper army? Does it matter? I thought they were all – But they didn’t all go to France. Mesopotamia and India – but he transferred to the army in France. I wish he hadn’t! When he came back, he said he couldn’t be a clergyman because the Bible says, “Thou shalt not kill,” and he had killed two men. Or three – he wasn’t sure. It was the third – For some reason, that one worried him most but he never really – ’
Alec decided not to press her about which unit her son had joined in France. Not unless they couldn’t work it out from the records. ‘Never really … ?’
‘Explained. So he articled as a solicitor in my brother-in-law’s firm – Lily’s husband – very good to him.’
‘He lived with you all this time, Mrs Devine? Since he was demobbed, I mean.’
‘Yes. He never seemed interested in – We lead – led a quiet life – bridge, tennis – I don’t play tennis but he was quite keen, though he didn’t care for golf, though I encouraged – and cricket. I know what they say about widowed mothers but I wasn’t clinging! I wasn’t! I just wanted him to be happy.’ She broke down again, and Alec fished for another hankie.
Mrs Webb bustled in, her face a study in outrage. ‘Have you been bullying my sister, Inspector? I shall—’
‘No, no, Lily. The chief inspector has been all that is kind, only – if I could just have—’
Piper, having followed the sister, pressed a glass tumbler with half an inch of amber liquid into Mrs Devine’s shaking hand, then guided her hand as she attempted to raise it to her lips.
‘There you go, madam,’ he said soothingly.
She sipped, and a little colour came into her cheeks. She bestowed a grateful glance on Piper. ‘Thank you.’
‘Just a few more questions, Mrs Devine,’ said Alec, ‘if you’re feeling better.’
‘Of course. I want to give you all the help I can.’ A telephone bell rang somewhere, but she ignored it, as did her sister. It stopped after a couple of rings, presumably answered by a domestic. ‘What else do you want to know?’
‘Did Mr Devine play tennis at a club, or with friends?’
‘With friends, at private – I can give you their names,’ she said doubtfully, ‘but they’re very nice people. Perfectly respectable. Not at all the sort who—’
Nice and respectable or not, Alec wanted names. Piper took them down, and those of the Devines’ bridge partners. Concentrating on these details further calmed the bereaved mother.
‘Any others he associated with regularly?’ Alec asked, ‘besides at the office.’ Mackinnon was at the solicitors’ now. The senior partner, telephoned at home, had promised to go in, though he usually spent his Saturday mornings at the golf course, leaving any urgent business to underlings.
Mrs Devine frowned in thought. ‘I don’t – I can’t think of—’
‘The public house!’ Mrs Webb’s mouth managed to remain a thin line even as she pronounced these condemnatory words. ‘My nephew frequented a public house. Goodness only knows what sort of low company he kept there.’
‘Frequented! Martin went for an hour or two, once or twice a – at most three times – and it’s a perfectly – he went to the private bar, not – Sometimes he’d tell me he had met Dr. Darlington there, and even the Rector of St. Nicholas’s occasionally—’
‘I do not consider that a recommendation for either the place or the rector. Or the doctor come to that.’
The doctor must be talked to, Alec thought, and the rector, too, especially in view of the victim’s abandoned ambition to be ordained.
‘Perfectly respectable,’ Mrs Devine responded to her sister. ‘And he never came home inebriated! But that’s where he had gone when he—’ Once more, tears threatened.
Piper had had the forethought to bring the brandy bottle. He added a quarter-inch to her glass and she took an automatic sip.
Mrs Webb glared at him. ‘These policemen seem intent on making you inebriated, Iris. Have a care!’
‘Nonsense. I’m not at all inebriated.’ Judging by the way she uttered the word, without stumbling or over-preciseness, she spoke the truth. ‘It just gives me a little courage. In any case, I have nothing to hide. If you’re going to be so – so negative, Lily, I wish you would go away.’
‘I shall leave when Delphine arrives.’
‘Delphine?’ Alec asked.
‘Iris’s daughter, Delphine Arbuthnot.’
Alec met Piper’s eyes and knew exactly what he was thinking: at least the poor woman wasn’t christened Delphinium!
‘Delphine lives up north, in – She’s on her way, but she had to take the children to her in-laws’ before – Such little dears! I wish Martin would – had—’
‘Have you any other children, Mrs Devine?’
‘Just my younger daughter, Christine. She and her husband went to Australia as soon as he was demobbed after the – I can never remember the name of the place – not Billabong, that’s from the song, but something like – I have the address in my book—’
‘Never mind, I doubt if we’ll need to get in touch with her.’ Christine wasn’t likely to know anything useful about her brother, and unless the case dragged on endlessly, communication would take too long to help. One couldn’t ask intimate questions by wireless telegraph. ‘I’d be glad, though, if you’d ring up the local police station when Mrs Arbuthnot arrives, just in case we should want a word with her.’
‘I will. I promise.’
‘Then I believe that’s all for now.’ There wasn’t enough left of Devine to require a relative to make a formal identification. ‘I’m afraid we may have to get bac
k to you later.’
Mrs Webb promptly rang the bell to summon a maid to show them out. It didn’t seem to have crossed her mind that there might be questions for her, also. Alec gave her a considering look and decided she probably knew little and understood less of her nephew. And what she knew, she’d put the worst possible construction on, though she had said he wouldn’t harm a fly … Still, that was the sort of thing many people automatically said of murder victims. He wouldn’t attempt to question her unless and until he was desperate.
‘Thank you very much for your cooperation, Mrs Devine. Once again, I apologise for the intrusion.’
As Alec and Piper left the room, Mrs Webb had already begun to pour a stream of words into her defenceless sister’s ears.
The parlourmaid closed the sitting-room door firmly behind them. ‘Enough to try the patience of a saint!’ she exclaimed. ‘As if the mistress hadn’t got enough to bear! Sergeant Tring said to tell you, sir, as he’s already left and he’ll be waiting for further instructions. Ooh, he’s a one! Begging your pardon, sir.’
Piper waited till the front door was shut and they were halfway down the garden path before he remarked, half-admiring, half-disapproving, ‘I dunno how the sarge does it!’
‘Does what?’
‘Loosens their tongues. That girl, I bet she doesn’t usually talk like that about Mrs Devine and her sister, not to anyone but her fellow servants.’
‘Perhaps she considers you and me on a level with her fellow servants. What I’d like to know, is how you got Mrs Webb to shut up for long enough for me to ask Mrs Devine a few questions!’
Piper grinned. ‘I just told her, when we went for the brandy, that she didn’t have to say anything, but it was my duty to write down everything she chose to say and it might be produced in evidence in a court of law.’
‘Ernie, you didn’t! Talk about a stroke of genius. All right, we’ll go and pick up Mackinnon – he’s surely had long enough at Devine’s office. You and he can see the doctor. I’ll tackle the Rev.’
The rector, a tall, thin man in a High Church soutane, was a disappointment. When Alec asked whether Martin Devine had confided in him, he shook his head gravely.
