A Night of Errors (12 page)

A fleeting gleam as of sharp calculation passed over Sebastian Dromio’s face. Then he looked impressed. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘thanks for the tip. And I won’t take more than two fingers.’ He tilted the bottle. ‘Not that they have anything on me.’

‘Of course not. But they’ll ask some nasty questions. By the way, what were you doing when this thing happened?’

‘Doing? Mucking about the grounds with a cigar, I’d say. Warm night. A deuced disagreeable old woman came to dinner. Name of Gollifer. But I looked in on the drawing-room in a civil way round about half past eleven and found her gone. We took a stroll in the garden and got the news as we came back. Nasty thing. Hard on the women.’

Appleby nodded. ‘But then,’ he asked, ‘young Oliver never was the thoughtful sort, was he?’

Sebastian Dromio frowned, as if finding this observation dimly familiar. ‘Thoughtful?’ he said. ‘Selfish, trivial chap. Vain as an eighteen-year-old lad buying his first ties in the Burlington Arcade. Not that I don’t go there myself. Little shop half-way up.’

‘What was Sir Oliver doing in America?’

‘Trying to marry money, as far as I could find out. Project had my blessing, I must admit. Girl with pots of it and lost her head to him entirely. Family was the difficulty. Merchants in Amsterdam long before the Dromios came to England. And a bit particular, as Americans of that sort are apt to be. Made enquiries, no doubt, and found that Oliver was a bit of a blackguard, poor chap. You know, he treated Lucy–’ Sebastian, who had suddenly flushed darkly, checked himself. ‘Mustn’t speak ill of the dead. Have a spot, doctor?’

‘Thank you, no. Inspector Hyland tells me that when you rang him up you said something about a fire – some fire that occurred here long ago.’

‘Did I do that?’ Sebastian was startled and crafty. ‘Well, there was a fire, and a mystery of sorts, when Oliver was a baby. But I must have been a bit upset to talk rot like that. More the sort of thing the women would say.’

‘No doubt. And of course this crime is likely to be the consequence of troubles much more recent than that.’ Appleby paused. ‘Money, I should say.’

‘Money?’ Sebastian’s voice was sharp. ‘What d’you mean by that? Only effect of Oliver’s death, I tell you, will be to see what money there is fly out at the window.’

‘He was the head of the firm, I suppose?’

‘Of course he was.’

‘But you had more or less to manage it for him?’

‘I’ve done it for years. Deuced intricate, I can tell you.’

‘The money is intricate? You mean you are about the only person who has been seeing his way through it?’

‘Well, yes, I suppose that’s so.’ Sebastian smiled uneasily. ‘I say, colonel, what about a spot?’

‘No, thank you.’ Appleby was unimpressed by this sudden dignity conferred upon him. ‘Had Sir Oliver been showing any curiosity to see his way through it as well? If he was thinking of getting married, and the lady’s family was of consequence, they might want to know–’

‘Dash it all!’ Sebastian Dromio lurched to his feet, and Appleby saw that he was older than he had supposed. ‘Do you know, I don’t believe Kate and young Lucy have gone to bed? Ought to go in, I think, and do what I can.’ And Sebastian moved towards the door.

Appleby picked up the whisky bottle. ‘I think,’ he said gravely, ‘you’d better have another spot first. And, if you like, I’ll go in instead.’

Sebastian sat down again. ‘Deuced kind of you. No, I can pour it out for myself, my dear chap. Straight along the corridor and the drawing-room’s on the right.’ And as Appleby reached the door he raised his glass and stared at him with a glassy eye. ‘Chin-chin!’ he called.

Two ladies sat in the drawing-room. They appeared to be listening to the tick of the clock, which stood at twenty minutes to two. And when Appleby entered they looked at him in some surprise.

This was natural enough. The intrusion, he thought, was not decent, and would scarcely have been so in a fully accredited officer. He had better tell the simple truth.

‘My name is Appleby and I have been brought here by Inspector Hyland because I used to be at Scotland Yard and responsible for such inquiries as must unfortunately be made here. May I come in?’

The elder lady bowed and with a hand which trembled slightly pointed to a chair. The younger lady looked at him fixedly and suddenly her eyes widened. ‘Did you marry Judith Raven?’ she asked.

‘Yes – nearly twelve months ago.’

‘Mama’ – and the younger lady turned to the elder – ’this is very odd. Here, for the first time, is somebody who may well discover the truth. And you have asked him to sit down.’

‘Lucy, dear, I don’t know what you mean.’ Lady Dromio’s voice was plaintive, vague – but her eye upon Appleby was appraising nevertheless. ‘Would you prefer me to stand up?’

‘The gentleman has a great reputation. He is clever at finding out about all sorts of abominable things. Do you really want him around the place?’

Lady Dromio flushed. ‘You are unkind,’ she said.

‘We go in for foul secrets.’ Lucy Dromio turned an expressionless face to Appleby, and he suddenly saw that quite recently this young woman’s whole being had been overthrown. ‘I was speaking of it only this afternoon, when I went for a walk with a clergyman.’

There was a silence, Lucy Dromio apparently judging this an effective speech by itself. And she looked at Appleby out of a sort of mocking misery which he found himself disliking very much. ‘Would that be Mr Greengrave?’ he asked gently.

‘Yes, it was he. Mama, I told him that we camped outside the cupboard with the family skeleton, and that you took your pleasure in leaning forward and making the door creak. But how was I to know that it would fly open tonight?’

The young lady, Appleby thought, should write mediocre novels. She would then probably not be a nuisance again. As it was, she had to give this sort of little quirk to grave matters. ‘You had no idea,’ he asked her, ‘that Sir Oliver Dromio might be killed?’

‘I threatened to kill him.’

‘When in conversation with a clergyman?’

‘No. Later this evening. Not long before it really did happen.’

‘I see. Would that, Miss Dromio, have been as the result of the painful emotional scene that took place after dinner in this room?’

Lucy Dromio caught her breath sharply. Lady Dromio reached out for a crumpled object which might have been a fragment of embroidery. The clock ticked. Then the elder lady spoke. ‘Was some calamity expected?’ she asked. ‘Was there a spy?’

‘I cannot say. But certainly there was no police spy. The police knew nothing until Mr Dromio telephoned.’

Lucy Dromio had gone very pale and she was looking at Appleby as if he must indeed have prescience in abominable things. ‘Then how do you know that in this room–’

‘Because of that rose.’ And Appleby pointed to a little heap of twisted and shredded petals on a table. ‘It is what a woman does when her unhappiness – her despair – is very great. And, had it been done before dinner, the debris would probably have been cleared away when servants went through the room.’

Rather unsteadily, Lucy Dromio laughed. ‘Mama,’ she said, ‘did I not tell you? Everything is crumbling about us. Oliver is dead. And the secret of Sherris is on its last legs – or perhaps I should say bones.’

Lady Dromio drew herself up and turned to Appleby. ‘Our misfortune has been heavy, sir, and my daughter is overwrought. Perhaps–’

And Appleby stood up. Suddenly Lucy Dromio sprang across the room, picked up the torn petals in her cupped hand and sent them over him in a little shower. ‘Rose leaves, when the rose is dead,’ she cried, ‘are heaped for the beloved’s bed.’ She ran to the door and paused by it for a moment. ‘A rose is a rose,’ she called. ‘A rose is a rose is a rose.’ She was gone.

Appleby brushed rose leaves from his hair. ‘You say, Lady Dromio, that your daughter is overwrought. She appears to seize upon the remark as a cue, and goes off like mad Ophelia with snatches of song. Casually, one would say she is acting a part. And yet she is, obviously, greatly upset. Can you tell me if there is anything that she is trying to conceal?’

‘I don’t think I can.’

‘But this evening, and in this room, there
was
some distressing scene? And Miss Dromio’s talk of a family skeleton in the cupboard and of the door creaking as it stirred, has some meaning?’

‘There are things that I must tell you.’ Lady Dromio took up her fragment of embroidery and turned to a basket beside her. For a moment her hand hovered irresolutely between two contrasting shades of silk, and she was silent. ‘What I must tell you is this.’ And Lady Dromio’s hand went decisively down on one skein. ‘Three sons were born to me when Oliver came. Now Oliver is dead, and it will be thought that I am childless – that I have only Lucy. It will be thought that the property should go to Sebastian. But now I must tell you something which I have told nobody. There is no reason to suppose that my other sons are not alive.’

‘The children who were thought to have perished in a fire?’

‘Yes, Mr Appleby.’ And Lady Dromio inclined her head. ‘My own boys. And they are still alive and may come back to me.’

‘And it is your knowledge of this that Miss Lucy has referred to as a skeleton in the cupboard?’

‘Lucy knows nothing of it.
Nobody
does. But she feels that I have always been…waiting.’

‘I see.’ But Appleby looked at Lady Dromio doubtfully, not at all sure of what light had in fact come to him. So far, extreme reticence had marked the Dromios. And now this story – which
nobody
knew – was pitched at him. Was there something odd in that? The story itself was certainly odd. Its simplest explanation was merely that this old lady was mad. The world is full of crazy old souls who believe that dead sons are alive and coming back to them. And yet, if Hyland was to be believed, there really had been some mystery attaching to that fatal fire forty years ago. Was it possible that Lady Dromio’s persuasion had at least some basis in fact?

‘My
eldest
boy may come back.’

‘I beg your pardon?’ Appleby was startled out of his speculations.

‘My husband was mad, Mr Appleby. Until just before he died it was a thing not commonly known. But he was mad and violent. When the three boys were born he was like a man demented. It is said that he tossed them about the room until it was not known which was which. And hard upon that there was the fire. We cannot tell that it was really Oliver who was rescued. My husband was indifferent to the matter. He was only concerned that he should have one son and not three.’

‘Lady Dromio, do I understand you to mean that under cover of this fire he had two of the infants smuggled away?’

‘Yes – just that. It was very rash and unkind. But then, as I have said, he was mad.’

‘I do not at all see how he could have contrived such a thing.’ Appleby hesitated. ‘Are you quite, quite sure that the shock of losing the two children did not–’

‘Send me mad myself?’ Lady Dromio was now working composedly at her embroidery. ‘That, of course, is the natural thing to think. I might have comforted myself with the – the fantasy that my children were really alive, after all. Is that not it?’

‘Some such possibility does occur to me. You see, I find it hard to understand how, even under cover of a big fire, two infants could be spirited away. There would have to be remains – what were definitely the remains of two human children – before the coroner who must have investigated the accident would be satisfied.’

‘But there were. That was what puzzled me.’

‘Puzzled you?’

‘Yes. You see, I knew that none of my babies had died. I knew it because I knew that my husband had caused the fire.’

‘Did it follow?’

‘Somehow it did – quite certainly. He was mad, and he had done something very wicked. But he had not killed his own children.’

‘Or any children?’

Lady Dromio was silent. ‘It was my great fear. For years there was this fear as well as my uncertainty and sorrow. And then at last my mind was relieved – thanks to Grubb.’ Lady Dromio paused. ‘Grubb was the garden boy and they had arrested him for starting the fire. Since I knew that my husband had done it I had of course to insist that they let Grubb go. When my husband died I reinstated him, although by now he hated the family. It seemed the honest thing to do. Honesty is sometimes the best policy – just as it says in the book.’

‘No doubt. But you haven’t yet told me how you knew it was your husband who started the fire.’

‘I just knew.’

Appleby, who had felt his interest in Lady Dromio’s statement growing, was suddenly exasperated. ‘But you must see–’ he began.

‘Yes, I do see. And what you want comes later. But I only came by it through just
knowing
; otherwise I shouldn’t have been looking for it, and I shouldn’t have noticed Grubb. There was a cottage where my husband used to lodge a gamekeeper; it is on the edge of the park. And I came to notice that young Grubb kept wandering that way and staring at it. He still does. He is head gardener now, you know – and, I fear, a very lazy and dishonest man; I have had to dissuade Oliver more than once from dismissing him. Well, it was like this. Grubb would stand in front of this cottage and behave in a very odd way. It was a sort of play-acting. And one day I understood it – quite in a flash. He was imitating my dead husband. He was imitating his manner of acting when a sudden idea would come to him. I couldn’t think why. But now I believe I know. He was trying to puzzle out something that had come to my husband, once, standing just there. So I began to inquire.’

Lady Dromio, prompted perhaps by some instinct for drama, paused to match her silks. Appleby waited silently. He had no doubt now that from this straggling narrative something of substance was going to emerge.

‘I remembered that the cottage had been empty from just about the time of the fire; when I was up and about again the gamekeeper and his family were gone. And what I eventually found out was this. The man’s wife had given birth to twins a few days before my own children came. The doctor who had delivered them was certain that they would not live. And then the whole family disappeared. My husband told the doctor a little later that he had sent them all off to the woman’s mother, where they would be better cared for. And nobody, of course, was the least curious when they never came back. Don’t you think, Mr Appleby, that what really happened is clear? My husband had this sudden wicked inspiration. He simply waited until these infants were dead and substituted their bodies for two of his own children whom he persuaded the gamekeeper and his wife to take away. I had no difficulty in understanding that this was what had happened. But I found it very difficult to decide what to do. My husband had been mad and that frightened me. I was afraid that it might all be supposed as – as you think, and that I might be taken for mad too. I couldn’t bring myself to have the horrible thing opened up and a search made. I put it off from day to day and week to week, hoping that I might find real evidence, something that I could take with confidence to lawyers and people like that. But I didn’t find any real evidence.’