by Anne Morice
“Oh, these coroners are very experienced and know how to shut people up when they get carried away. No doubt he would pin her down to a couple of questions and send her packing, before she could get into her stride.”
“Which couple of questions, Toby?”
“Oh, I don’t know. What time she got home and whether she happened to notice that the house was on fire, are two which spring to mind. And I would be interested to know why you are staring at me like that?”
“I am staring at you like this because you have just put into words a thought which has been hovering in the background for the past ten minutes. I was wrong when I said there were two curious features about this incident. There are three and the third and most puzzling hinges on Andrea. It is a question of time sequence, you see. I am prepared to believe that when Gregory arrived home his wife had only just fallen asleep and therefore the burning cigarette had barely started its devilish work. In other words, no conflagration, just a faint smell of scorching, too faint to be detected by anyone outside the room. You agree?”
“I see what you mean.”
“Of course you do; the story goes that Andrea didn’t come home until two hours later and it is hard to believe that things would have stayed dormant during all this time. Surely, the fire would have got a hold by then and she would have noticed it as soon as she opened the front door?”
“I see what you mean, but it doesn’t follow that I agree with you. There could be several reasons why she didn’t.”
“Name a few!”
“One is that Mrs. Laycock woke up again at some point after the other two had gone to bed and decided to treat herself to another cigarette.”
“I don’t think much of that. In fact, I regard it as highly unlikely.”
“Well, try this one. The fact that Andrea didn’t start crashing about in the bathroom until her father had been asleep for a couple of hours doesn’t necessarily mean that she’d only just come in. She could have spent the time quietly in her bedroom, doing her nails or her yoga, or writing up her diary, for all we know.”
“Well, yes, I suppose I have to admit that’s conceivable, but I still consider that a hell of a long time went by without either of them noticing anything wrong.”
“Implying that one or both of them did notice that the room was on fire, but decided there was nothing to be done about it until the morning?”
“Quite so.”
“Then you must be slipping.”
“Why is that?”
“On a good day you’d have had one or both of them planting the bottle of gin beside her bed, waiting for it to take effect and then tossing some lighted cigarettes around.”
“Well, now that you mention it . . .”
“So it had crossed your mind?”
“No, but it’s crossing it now and it wouldn’t surprise me at all if you’d hit on the answer. Andrea is definitely loony and her daddy strikes me as completely ruthless. As far as I can see, it’s just a toss-up as to which one of them did it.”
“It will be interesting to see whether the Coroner and jury agree with you.”
“Even money they won’t, but one can never be sure of anything these days. I think I’ll go and find something to eat, after all. Solving mysteries always works up an appetite.”
TWELVE
Elsa had had a letter, which she handed to me when I called on her the following afternoon, shooting having been abandoned for the day, owing to bad weather and a worse forecast.
“Who’s Isobel Ferguson?” I asked, looking at the signature first.
“Read it and you’ll see. Read it aloud, in fact,” she said and I did so:
Dear Mrs. Carrington,
Please forgive me for writing to you out of the blue like this, but I have been growing increasingly worried about my cousin Rosamund ever since my chance meeting with Louise Macadam in London a few weeks ago. She was under the impression that Rosamund was staying with me, but in fact I had not seen or heard from her for some time, and nor have I seen her since.
There was something particularly disturbing about the account Mrs. Macadam gave me of Rosamund’s reason for having come to London and that evening I made the first of several attempts to ring her myself. Throughout the first forty-eight hours I could get no reply at all, so concluded that Mrs. Macadam had got hold of the wrong end of the stick and that my cousin and her husband were away somewhere together. But I still couldn’t quite get it out of my mind, so a day or two later I tried again and this time James answered. When I asked if I could speak to Rosamund he at first tried to fob me off, saying that she had gone to stay with some friends in Sussex. I wasn’t satisfied and I asked him to let me have their telephone number, as I had something urgent to discuss with her. He finally admitted that she had left him for another man and that he had no idea where she had gone or how to get in touch with her.
He then asked me to keep this to myself, as he was positive that she would come back and he thought they stood a better chance of patching things up and starting afresh, if the gossips and scandal-mongers could be kept at bay.
It was a shock, of course, but not a shattering one, because I have to confess that I have never liked James and often wondered how she had managed to put up with him for so long. What did upset me was that she had not given me so much as a hint of what she planned to do. It was like a slap in the face, but I still felt certain that I should be hearing from her as soon as she felt secure that the break had truly been made and she could begin to settle down in her new life.
It was only when the weeks continued to drag by, with still no word from her, that it began to occur to me that James might have been lying, that there was some other explanation for her silence and that it was up to me to find out what it was.
You will be wondering, I am sure, that I should presume on our very brief acquaintance to burden you with my family problems. But I have heard Rosamund speak of you with affection and it seemed to me that you were one of the few congenial people she had found in her new surroundings. I felt I owed it to you to let you know that I have now taken the very grave step of applying to the police for help in tracing her. They did not, as I had feared, ridicule my suggestion that there could be some sinister reason for her disappearance and the only thing I regret is that it must inevitably involve you and others of her friends in a certain amount of unpleasantness. I hope you can forgive me for this and understand my feeling that the time had come for some action to be taken.
I want you to know that I have not done so without the approval of Alan, my husband, who fully supports me in this.
Yours sincerely,
Isobel Ferguson.
“Well, well!” I said, putting the letter down, “There’s a coincidence for you!”
“You mean that she should also have reported it to the police?”
“No, not that. In fact, I wonder why she waited so long.”
“What I found surprising,” Elsa said, “and disappointing, I must confess, is how much less straightforward Rosamund was than the woman we took her for. All that pretence about she and Isobel being so devoted that they hardly let a week go by without seeing each other! Louise and I were completely taken in and all the time it wasn’t her cousin she had gone to see at all, but this lover of hers.”
“By the way, has Louise seen this letter?”
“No, and I haven’t decided yet whether to show it to her or not. On the whole I feel inclined not to.”
“Why’s that? I thought you and she were acting as a team in this affair?”
“Well, you see, Tessa, the letter doesn’t actually tell us any more than we knew already, does it? And when I told you I was disappointed to discover how she had fooled us, it is nothing to what Louise’s reaction would be. She prides herself on being perceptive about people and she’d feel humiliated, as well as angry. Also . . . well, of course, I wouldn’t say this to anyone but you, but the fact is, you know, that Louise can be a little touchy sometimes.”
“I do know, Elsa, none better.”
“And what inclines me most of all not to show her the letter is knowing how cross she would be that it was written to me and not her. And there, I consider, she would be justified. After all, she was the first to befriend Rosamund and she saw much more of her than I ever did. If it’s true that Rosamund spoke of me to her cousin, then she must have spoken far more often of Louise and I find it inexplicable that I should have been singled out in this way.”
“I don’t, but I won’t tell you why because compliments embarrass you. I accept your other arguments, though, and I think they make sense, but do let me tell you about that coincidence. It came right at the end, when she mentioned her husband. Isobel Ferguson meant nothing to me, but Alan Ferguson is a different cup of tea.”
“Don’t tell me you know him?”
“Not well, but Robin does. He’s had a lot of dealings with one Alan Ferguson over the years.”
“Why? Is he a criminal?”
“Quite the reverse, they’re on the same side. He works for an insurance group, what they call an assessor.”
“One of those people who sniff out the fraudulent claims?”
“Arson, in particular. In which field our Alan Ferguson happens to be one of the world’s experts. That’s why so many of his investigations end up in the lap of Scotland Yard. I wonder if it could be the same one? Can you remember what he looked like?”
“I only met them once and that was some time ago, but I should say he was about forty-five. Not good-looking, but not unattractive either, as far as I remember.”
“Yes, that description fits.”
“It would fit a thousand men and it’s not such an uncommon name.”
“No, but our Alan also lives in London and has a wife.”
“All the same, Tessa, if he should turn out to be Robin’s friend, I still can’t see how it would help us to discover what has become of Rosamund.”
“Ah well, in this case, you can’t afford to overlook anything, however trivial. I think I’ll get Robin to bring him home for a drink one evening. He’s done it once or twice before, so there wouldn’t be anything unnatural about it. I’ll make a point of being there when he comes and then perhaps we’ll at least find out something about Rosamund from the point of view of a not unattractive, middle-aged, exceptionally observant cousin-by-marriage.”
THIRTEEN
No investigation of the kind in which Alan Ferguson specialised was called for in the case of the Laycocks’ fire. The damage was considered to be too negligible to be worth claiming for and at the inquest the jury brought in a verdict of Death by Misadventure.
The Coroner, evidently a non-smoker, had some strictures to make about the reckless folly of smoking in bed, but no reference was made to the empty gin bottle, so he either did not know of its existence, or else regarded drinking in bed as acceptable.
The report on these proceedings came from Millie Carrington, who had taken the day off from her secretarial college in order to observe them from the public gallery. This was no idle truancy, but had been undertaken for the laudable purpose of gaining experience for her career in journalism. It was a bit of luck for me, too, because it had inspired her to take down every word in shorthand, most of which, with the aid of memory, she was later able to transcribe. Although the spelling was on the eccentric side, the Coroner, for instance, being sometimes referred to as the Corner and sometimes as the Coronorer, it was possible to follow the gist.
Evidently, Millie was also unaware of the gin bottle’s existence, for she did not comment on its omission from the evidence and I did not consider it my job to enlighten her.
“Well, come on!” she said the moment I had finished reading. “Tell me what you think. You can give me your honest opinion. I shan’t mind a bit if you say it’s terrible.”
Taking “honest opinion” to be a euphemism for “steady stream of unqualified praise,” I said:
“Not terrible at all. It’s first-rate and I’m most impressed. Only one tiny comment.”
“What’s that?”
“Well, you see, Millie, if you’d been writing it for The Times or one of those, I’d say you’d hit exactly the right note, but some of the popular papers might find it a little too dry and factual. Their readers look for a human touch here and there. It might be an idea to start off with something about tragedy hitting the bustling little market town of Storhampton. All deaths are tragic, you know, and all little market towns are expected to bustle. And how about Andrea? Surely, she was able to introduce a dash of the histrionics? What was she wearing, for instance?”
“Black, wouldn’t you know?”
“It might be worth mentioning that when you do the rewrite. You could even have her with bowed head, brushing away a tear.”
“There weren’t any tears to brush.”
“That’s beside the point. Still, you’re the pro and you must do as you think best. What was she like when she gave her evidence?”
“Pretty hopeless, really. She started off at a gallop, all that rot about how she’d risked her life by going into the room after her father came out, to try and rescue her stepmother, but the Coroner squashed her completely by asking her to speak up, please, because he couldn’t hear a word she was saying.”
“Not choked with emotion, by any chance?”
“No, but I think she was nervous. Or perhaps just afraid of getting another snub, because after that she more or less stuck to yes and no, without the frills.”
“And I see from your report that what it amounted to was that she left the house at six o’clock, having taken a supper tray into the morning-room, where Mrs. Laycock was already in bed, watching television. Right?”
“Yes, and that she didn’t get home until some time between one and two in the morning.”
“When she went straight to bed and the first thing she knew about the fire was when she was woken up an hour or two later by her father?”
“Which we’d already heard about from him. Pretty unrewarding, wouldn’t you say? You’d have to be a genius to wring any drama out of that.”
“To get back to her father, though; any human touches there?”
“No, none. Very solemn and dignified most of the time and the Coroner didn’t have any trouble hearing what he said.”
“Only most of the time?”
“Well, there was just one point where he seemed to flounder a bit. You remember how he was asked about whether he had thought it advisable to leave his wife alone in the house for all that time when, until recently, she’d been ill enough to need a trained nurse to look after her?”
“To which he replied that it was at her own wish that the nurse had left and, although they did their best to ensure that she was never completely alone, it was bound to happen occasionally. In this case, he’d been delayed in London on official business and he had found his wife asleep when he got home. Furthermore, the fire couldn’t have started until after that, so he didn’t see what the hell it had to do with her being left alone earlier in the evening. Or words to that effect. Doesn’t sound very floundery to me. Rather self-confident, in fact.”
“I know, but it didn’t all come flowing out like that. There were some hesitations mixed up in it. It was like he’d prepared in advance what he was going to say and then got annoyed with himself for not being word-perfect.”
“Well, I suppose it was because of having to cover up for naughty little Andrea, who’d deserted her post and gone swishing up to London. Anyway, you’re very observant, Millie, and that’s half the battle. Anything else you noticed?”
“No. Very dull, isn’t it? I’d been hoping for a few sinister contradictions and complications to liven it up. That’s usually your line, isn’t it?”
“I’m taking the opposite one this time. I consider that we have enough sinister complications with the disappearance of Rosamund McGrath to keep us busy for the time being.”
“That’s true,” Millie agreed, brightening at the t
hought. “That ought to make a good story when it all comes out. And you never know, do you? Perhaps it’ll turn out that there’s some connection there with the Laycocks. That wouldn’t be bad, would it?”
“Not bad at all, and if you do find it, let me be the first to know.”
“There could be another explanation, you know,” Robin said, “which obviously didn’t occur to either you or the newshound, although I find it equally plausible.”
“Another explanation for what?”
“All of it. The fire and Mrs. Laycock’s death, as well.”
“But, Robin, since the death certificate states that it was due to smoke inhalation . . .”
“I’m not arguing about that, simply about what caused the fire and why she was the only one to be harmed by it. The jury wrote if off as misadventure and they may well have been right, but you don’t like that because of the time lag. So, being you, you plump for murder as the only alternative. Suggesting, in other words, that someone waited until she had passed out and then set fire to the bedclothes.”
“What’s your alternative?”
“Why not suicide? If you must have a lurid solution, this one fills all the requirements and it would account for the awkward interval which bothers you so badly.”
“How does it do that?”
“Well, you always assumed that she had only just gone to sleep when Laycock came in at half past ten, but why couldn’t she have started swigging from the bottle the moment she was alone in the house? In that case, she might well have passed out by eight, or even earlier. That would have given her five or six hours to sleep it off and then to wake up and realise that, after all the months of struggle, she’d succumbed to the old demon once again and had decided to put an end to the misery once and for all?”
“Funny way to do it, wasn’t it?”
“Give her situation and the resources available, what method would you have used?”
