The Cruellest Month

by Hazel Holt

  ‘Yes, I see. Well now. Isn’t this exciting, we have a murder on our hands.’ He passed me a plate of small, intricately wrought cakes. ‘Do have one of these, they look so good. I love mysteries. I always promised myself that when I retired I would spend my time cooking and reading mystery stories. It hasn’t happened yet, but this is even better. What can I do to help?’

  ‘I don’t think you can actually do anything at the moment. Mind you, there may come a time when I may ask you to put on a false beard and lurk somewhere. Seriously, though, until Tony’s made some enquiries for me and checked a few times – it’s so handy that he’s in the Bodleian and can ask people things – so that we can see who was where on “the Day”, well, there’s not much to be done.’

  ‘You must keep me posted, though, and give me progress reports. And I absolutely insist on being there for the final dénouement, when you gather everyone together in the panelled library and tell us how it was done!’

  ‘That’s a promise.’

  I glanced at my watch. ‘Goodness, I must be going. I’ve enjoyed myself so much the time has simply gone. I promised Michael I’d drop in on him on my way back to Woodstock. Thank you so much for the tea – and the sympathy.’

  ‘It was great seeing you. Look – why don’t you and your son have dinner with me one evening this week. I’d so much like to meet him. I’ll give you my phone number, then you can call and let me know which day is best for you.’

  He fished in his jacket pocket for a pen and pulled out a whole collection of objects on to the table – bits of paper, a crumpled programme, a couple of chocolate wrappers, a nail-file, a comb, an assortment of small coins, two ballpoint pens, several pencils and a leaflet about a carpet sale in a church hall in the Cowley Road.

  He smiled ruefully. ‘Now you know my guilty secret – I’m incapable of throwing anything away.’

  ‘Compared with my dear son that is as nothing.’

  He straightened out the programme, which was a National Theatre cast list for The Seagull, and, selecting one of the pens, wrote a phone number in the margin.

  ‘There you are – everything comes in useful sometime! Here’s my number. I’m staying in a house in Jericho that belongs to a friend who’s in Germany for a while – it’s really cute, like a doll house. You must come and see it.’

  He began gathering up the scattered objects on the table.

  ‘Now you don’t need these,’ I said firmly, picking out the chocolate wrappers, ‘or, I imagine this?’ I held up the leaflet.

  ‘People are always pushing things into your hands in Oxford. Either that or confronting you with cupboards and asking damfool questions about your TV viewing habits. You are right. As a great concession you may throw those away.’

  ‘I will take them away and put them tidily in some waste bin,’ I said. ‘It will be a great treat for me because Michael won’t let me throwaway as much as a bent paper clip or a piece of wrapping paper.’

  We smiled at each other and I felt how cosy and nice he was to be with. As we went out into the lobby of the Randolph a notice on a stand caught my eye.

  ‘Oh, do look,’ I said.

  The notice read:

  Dorothy Sayers Society

  27th May. Luncheon (£13 excluding wine)

  Peter Wimsey Centenary

  Speaker: The Dean of Balliol:

  ‘Oxford and the Balliol of Wimsey’s time’

  ‘Oh wouldn’t you like to go to that!’ I exclaimed. ‘But I suppose you have to be a member.’

  ‘We could gate-crash. I’m glad you’re a Sayers fan too. To my mind she’s the greatest.’

  We walked along the Broad animatedly arguing the merits of our favourite novels.

  ‘The Harriet ones best of course, but then of the others, if you could only have one which would it be?’

  ‘Oh, Nine Tailors – no question about it.’

  ‘Ye-es, I don’t know, though. I think Murder Must Advertise for me – although…’

  We stood on the corner of Catte Street.

  ‘I must go back into the Bodleian.’ Bill said.

  ‘And I must go and find Michael.’

  ‘Do you realise that it was almost exactly fifty-five years ago, and almost on this very spot, that Peter and Harriet got engaged.’

  ‘There should be a plaque.’ I said. ‘In Latin.’

  ‘Absolutely. Let me see – “Hic Peter Wimsey et Harriet Vane sese despondierunt 27 May 1935”.’

  ‘Aren’t you brilliant! How do you know the date so exactly?’

  ‘The letters at the beginning of Busman’s Honeymoon.’

  ‘Of course – stupid of me. I’ll ring you.’

  ‘Make it soon! Goodbye.’

  I crossed the road and went towards Michael’s college feeling almost light-hearted, something that would have seemed impossible just over an hour ago.

  Michael was in his room deep in the throes of an essay, which to judge by the opened books scattered about was on some aspect of the English Civil War.

  ‘Causes of or events arising from?’ I asked. ‘Or aren’t questions at your level as simple as that?’

  ‘Constitutional junk,’ he said. ‘It doesn’t matter much what the question is as long as you get the word dysfunction into your answer somehow. Any luck with the Hoard?’

  ‘Oh, love, I’m so sorry, but I’m afraid it’s bad news. They’re forgeries.’

  I told him what Dr Lassiter had said and took the coins out of my bag.

  He picked up one of them and weighed it in his hand. ‘Oh well,’ he said, ‘there goes my inheritance.’

  ‘What are you going to do with them,’ I asked.

  ‘Keep them of course. Pa gave them to me, after all – I wouldn’t want to get rid of them. I’m glad he didn’t know.’

  ‘Yes. Bless you – you’re I am.’

  ‘Yes, Ma. I keep telling you so. So – what about the Lassiter as murderer?’

  For the second time that day I described my talk with Freda Lassiter.

  ‘I’m positive she didn’t do it.’

  ‘Woman’s intuition, eh?’

  ‘Something like that.’

  ‘Oh well, back to the drawing board.’

  ‘Yes. I mustn’t keep you from your work, but I wondered if you felt you could spare the time to take an evening off – Bill Howard’s asked us to have dinner with him. Though I’m sure he would understand if you’re too busy with revision.’

  ‘The prospect of a decent meal is very appealing. I need building up at this time, as I’m sure you’ll agree.’

  ‘OK. Any day this week. When?’

  ‘Wednesday or Thursday. I shall be delighted to inspect your new beau.’

  ‘No beau of mine. Of Fitz, I think.’

  ‘Ah, I see. Pity. I thought I might have got you off my hands. Can I, then, inspect him as a suspect? If he’s working in Room 45 I’m sure we could find some sort of motive for him.’

  ‘Sorry, you can’t even have him as a suspect. Not only does he have no conceivable motive but he wasn’t even there at the time – he was in London. He went up for the day with a friend.’

  ‘Oh well, I shall concentrate on the free-meal aspect. I hope he takes us somewhere expensive, though try to warn him off nouvelle cuisine. Remember the time when Uncle Jack took us to that chi-chi place in Covent Garden and I was so starving I had to get a Big Mac on the way home.’

  ‘I’ll phone him then and give him a choice of dates.’

  I checked in my bag to make sure that I had the telephone number and glancing at the programme that he had written it on I exclaimed, ‘Oh well, he’s even got a proper alibi. This performance was on the day that Gwen Richmond was murdered.’

  ‘Quel disappointment.’

  I picked up my bag and prepared to go.

  ‘Have you got something respectable to wear?’

  ‘I shall wear my best biking jacket with the Yamaha badge – of course I’ve got something respectable.’

  �
�Well, make sure you wear a tie.’

  ‘Yes, Ma.’

  ‘All right, I’m off. Work hard. God bless.’

  When Tony came home in the evening I followed him into the kitchen when he went to feed Cleopatra and told him about Freda Lassiter.

  ‘A dead end, I’m afraid.’

  ‘And your friend Fitz is another, I fear. He was certainly in Duke Humfrey that afternoon. Dick Fisher knows him well. Apparently he’s something of a thorn in the flesh of the people there – always complaining about something. That Friday he made quite a fuss because a certain edition of Browning wasn’t available – it was with Conservation – he was quite unreasonable, Dick said.’

  ‘Oh dear, another dead end. And no sign of Elaine, I suppose?’

  ‘None whatsoever.’

  ‘Door after door shut in our faces.’

  Cleopatra, who had been daintily picking at her plate of cooked rabbit (best boned Chinese from Sainsbury’s), stopped eating and began to scrape with her paw around her plate in a pointed way. Then she looked up at Tony, gave a loud wail and went to the kitchen door where she demanded peremptorily to be let out. Betty came bustling in.

  ‘Robert’s actually in for supper this evening – go and chat to him while I finish off here.’

  ‘Can’t I do anything to help?’

  ‘No, you go and talk to Robert else he’ll go wandering off to the greenhouse and I’ll never get him in again.’

  Most unusually, Robert was actually sitting on the sofa reading the Oxford Mail. He looked up as I came in and said, ‘Managed to get Mrs Drury’s weight down to eleven stone, so she can have that hernia op. at last. They couldn’t have done it before, it would’ve been like cutting into a hot-air balloon!’

  I expressed pleasure at Mrs Drury’s forthcoming surgery and asked – more to stem a flood of similar information, than because I particularly cared – if there was anything interesting in the paper.

  ‘Not much – oh yes, the Council are giving that new development the go-ahead.’

  ‘Where’s that?’

  ‘Near Folly Bridge – absolute scandal, shouldn’t be allowed.’

  He read aloud ‘“Councillor Dino Torcello said that the new development would bring prosperity to a previously run-down area.’” He snorted. ‘Prosperity to Councillor Torcello, he means. I suppose he wants to put yet another restaurant in there, as well as the two he’s got in the centre of town and the original one in Woodstock.’

  Betty came into the room with the sherry and some glasses.

  ‘Did you see this, Betty? That Torcello man’s going to Utter up the whole of the Folly Bridge area with his confounded trattorias.’

  She handed me a glass and said, ‘It really is too bad! I thought we’d reached rock bottom with the St Aldate’s Centre, but now there’s the Clarendon one – that hideous blue! – and if they’re going to ruin Folly Bridge as well...’

  ‘I never trusted that Torcello man.’ He turned to me. ‘His first wife was a patient of mine – pleasant woman. She was a war widow when she married Torcello – had a nice little restaurant in Woodstock. He was an Italian prisoner of war.’

  ‘What!’

  I sat bolt upright, all attention now.

  ‘Yes. You wouldn’t think she’d have married an Italian when her husband had just been killed in the war. I wasn’t there then, of course, but I believe there was a lot of talk about it in Woodstock at the time.’

  ‘I can imagine.’

  ‘To be fair,’ Betty said, ‘her husband died at Dunkirk – nothing to do with the Italians.’

  ‘Did he work at one of the farms near by,’ I asked, hardly able to believe my luck.

  ‘Somewhere near Kidlington, I believe. What was the name of that old chap who used to own it – Smith, Brown, something like that. Jack Proctor bought it when the old man gave up – paid a ridiculous price, it was badly run-down ... Anyway,’ he took a breath and continued with relish, ‘it was obvious that Torcello only married the poor woman to get his hands on the restaurant.’

  ‘Mind you,’ Betty said, ‘he did build it up into a splendid place.’

  ‘They say that was all done on black-market stuff,’ Robert said vigorously, ‘things other people couldn’t get.’

  ‘Well, it’s very nice now. We might go there one evening while Sheila is here.’

  ‘That would be lovely. Did you say his first wife died?’

  ‘Yes. Cancer of the oesophagus, poor soul. Then he married the girl who did the book-keeping, quite a young girl. His sons didn’t like it but, of course, they were making a good thing out of running the Oxford restaurants so they couldn’t say much.’

  ‘Which are the Oxford ones,’ I asked.

  ‘There’s the Murano in the High and the Scala in St Michael’s Street. He’s got this enormous house out beyond Finstock – one of Murray’s patients I believe – must be worth a packet now. Got himself on the Council, you see, got it made – never looked back!’ Robert’s views on local government were forthright to say the least.

  ‘Oxford was destroyed by the Victorians, really,’ he said, harking back to an earlier theme, ‘when they pulled down the mediaeval bits and put up all those dreary little houses that people are paying a fortune for now. All the atmosphere went then. Look at Cambridge and how different that is.’ Robert had been born in Cambridge and he and I batted the old Oxford/Cambridge argument back and forth for a bit while Betty went out to see to the supper.

  ‘Yes, well, I’ll give you the Backs, but our university is older than your technical college in East Anglia!’ I ended up defiantly, as I usually did.

  Tony, who had come in during our discussion, if such it could be called, laughed. ‘I seem to remember hearing this conversation before.’

  He was interrupted by an extremely loud wailing noise from upstairs. Robert who had gone back to the Oxford Mail said absently, ‘That cat will have to go!’

  Tony smiled affectionately at his father and went up to investigate. He called to me, ‘Do come and look Sheila!’

  I went upstairs to find Cleopatra perched on top of a door, her eyes enormous with excitement, looking just like Tenniel’s Cheshire Cat.

  ‘Oh, clever girl!’ I said fondly.

  Cleopatra gave another cry.

  ‘Yes, we can see you,’ Tony said and she blinked at him

  lovingly. ‘How does she get up there?’

  ‘Well, actually, she climbs up my dressing gown on the back of the door, but we don’t admit that because she likes us to think that she’s leapt up there in one bound! She bellows like this partly for attention, but partly because she can’t get down!’

  He lifted her carefully off the top of the door and settled her on his shoulder.

  ‘Come along you wicked girl and we’ll find something nice for you.’

  ‘Tony, just a minute before we go down. I’ve just found out something extraordinary. You remember Gwen Richmond’s diary?’

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  ‘Well do you remember – one of the people on that farm she was planning to blackmail was that Italian prisoner of war?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well – you’ll never guess! He’s still in Oxford. He stayed on after the war – your father’s just been telling me – and now he’s a highly respectable man and a local councillor into the bargain!’

  ‘Good heavens!’

  ‘If Gwen Richmond came across him when she finally got back to Oxford – and, being a councillor his name would be constantly plastered all over the Oxford Mail and Times – then, knowing what we do about the sort of person she was, it seems a safe bet that she looked him up – went to one of the restaurants perhaps, that would be easy – and started blackmailing him all over again.’

  ‘Torcello.’ Tony said slowly, ‘the name does sound familiar.’

  ‘Well he is a local councillor. You would have come across his name a lot of times – especially if your mother came up against him in one of her protests!’


  ‘No, it’s not that –’

  ‘Anyway,’ I broke in impatiently, ‘he has a lot more to lose now than in the war, especially if his fortune was founded on shady dealings. He’d be particularly sensitive to criticism – as a councillor, that is. So he would need to keep her quiet.’

  ‘Yes, but –’

  ‘I know what you’re going to say and that’s the infuriating thing! He could have found out that she was working in the Bodleian, I suppose, but there’s no way he could have got in to kill her without a reader’s ticket. Oh well! It was a nice theory.’

  Feeling very deflated I followed Tony down the stairs, Cleopatra smirking at me from his shoulder.

  After supper when Robert disappeared to the garden and Tony went off to play badminton, Betty said, ‘Shall we watch the box? There’s not much on. Oh, I know – I recorded Love Story the other week in case we felt like a good weepy. It’s not as good as the old ones, I know, but better than those depressing comedy programmes this evening.’

  ‘There’s nothing like a good piece of sentimentality for making one cry,’ I remarked as we dabbed at our eyes at the end of the film. ‘Proper tragedy doesn’t do it, of course, because of catharsis, or whatever it is, but something really sentimental always has me in floods.’

  ‘Mm,’ Betty agreed. ‘You’re absolutely right. There is definitely a place for the second-rate in our lives. What about Ray Milland, then?’

  ‘Wasn’t it extraordinary how different he looked – not just being older, but having lost his hair like that. If it hadn’t been for the cast-list I really don’t think I’d have believed it was him!’

  ‘Sad. He used to be so gorgeous – do you remember Lost Weekend? ’

  ‘Oh well, we’re all a bit battered by Time now.’

  ‘Yes. Thank God we don’t lose our hair like men do. Robert’s lucky, he’s kept his very well, but Peter was getting a bit thin on top.’

  ‘Yes, and Robert’s kept his figure too – I wish I could say the same,’ Betty sighed.

  ‘Well – he’s on the go all the time, think of all the calories he burns up!’

  ‘This summer,’ Betty said, ‘I’m really going to do a proper diet – nothing but lettuce leaves and fruit juice, and lots of exercise. Perhaps I’ll take up badminton with Tony and I could get an exercise bicycle ‘You said just the same thing last year,’ I reminded her unkindly.