Cavalier Case (16 page)

"Everything in the flat's for sale," Babs went on. "I run this shop called Goldentimes, as you probably know, and I use the flat as a kind of overflow. "

Since the cats in question were only fairly charming and that in a kitsch kind of way, Jemima did not feel it necessary to go so far as to buy them. In any case she suspected that Babs was not so much trying to make a sale as challenging Jemima to understand her straitened circumstances. So she sipped her tea and ignored the question. The taste in which Babs' flat was decorated was assuredly nothing like that of Lackland Court, which veered between the shabby elegance bequeathed by time and Charlotte Lackland's few pleasant if Sloaney "improvements." Jemima reminded herself that Babs had never actually lived at Lackland Court, only visited it with Nell in the lifetime of Cousin Tommy.

"You know I've seen you a lot on television." Mercifully, it was Babs herself who decided to switch the subject away from the cats. "It's odd you should ring me up now like this because I've sometimes thought , of ringing you up. On what subject? Oh, why do you ask?" Babs gave that disconcerting fixed look. "Grief, tragedy,
abandonment
, the whole damn thing, why women can't get over it, being left. That programme you did a while back: very good. I wanted to ring you up and say, 'Well done, for speaking up tor us, the ones who get pushed aside.' What was it called? It's some time since I saw it but I can't get it out of my mind. 'Her Story, His Story.

The programme in question had been shown so long ago—in her pre-Megalith days—that Jemima, contemplating that new programme on socially unequal first wives only the other day, had forgotten all about it. Dreading the reappearance of the Maenad as she did, Jemima could not believe that Babs' retentive memory concerning this particular programme constituted a good omen.

"It was actually slightly different: 'Her Story, His History.'"

"History!" The steady gaze was gone. "That's a good word." Babs began to tremble as she stubbed her cigarette fiercely into an ashtray: it was in the same kitsch style as the cats, made in the shape of a pig, surrounded by a litter of china piglets with blue bows round their necks. Instantly Babs lit another: from the packet, she was smoking High-Tar Rothmans. "I've got a good mind to come to their wretched Cavalier Celebration and haunt it, I'll give them ghosts, I'll give them history. When I think about the
history
of the wonderfully ancient and famous Meredith family, and all that fuss about Lackland Court and that boring eighteenth-century poet of Zena's ..."

"Actually seventeenth century." Jemima made her second correction in a markedly cool tone, but Babs, now in full flow, with little beads of sweat on her pale forehead, paid no attention.

"What does all that stuff matter compared to me? I'm part of their fucking history too, aren't I? And a good deal more recent. I was married to him. I'm the mother of his first child, oh I know she's not a boy, a beloved Little Lord Fauntleroy of an heir, just a girl, that was 'eft to Apple Charlotte to produce—that's what I call her, Apple Charlotte with her ridiculous rosy cheeks—and even then it was her third shot, was I glad she had two girls? I laughed! Then I
cried
when the boy was born, all the same Nell
is
his child and I
am
his wife, That's history, too."

Ex-wife. You're his ex-wife." This third time Jemima corrected her Very firmly indeed. Babs had begun to bang her chest with her clenched fist in a way which suggested that yet further hysterical outpourings were on the way.

jemima now understood why she had felt disconcerted by Babs' original composure: she had sensed the abyss of suffering lying just beneath the calm surface and found it painful. 

"Listen, Babs," she continued, "I'll grant you the whole thing. The desolation of abandonment. I've just been left myself as a matter of fact . . ." Making the confession gave her first .a pang, then an odd sense of relief. "But you've got to help me. Why did you call Dan a murderer at the tennis club? Why on earth should he kill the old butler? Yet it wasn't just some kind of random insult, was it? Let's face it, if every unfaithful husband was a murderer ..."

Babs gave a convulsive shudder like a dog shaking itself on coming out of the water; she put up a hand to her face as if to wipe away the beads of sweat. Jemima noticed that her hands were strong and even muscular, at odds with the frailty of her appearance; the fingers, unsurprisingly, were heavily stained with nicotine.

"I know that Haygarth was very fond of you and Nell too." Jemima looked around for ways to encourage her. "I even know about the will. Some unpleasant remarks in it from Dan's point of view, but that's not a reason. I doubt whether he even knew about the will in advance. Did he?" 

Babs shook her head. Then she stared at Jemima for a moment in silence. When she next spoke, her voice was once more calm; the frenzy—at least temporarily—had abated; the demon of loss which drove her had—if only for the time being—absented itself. 

"Haygarth thought there was something odd about Cousin Tommys ,. death. Someone was there that night who shouldn't have been there. ^ When I went there to pick up Nell directly following the death, he j| never suggested such a thing; he must have worked it out later; he mentioned it to me another time when I was dropping her, and Dan—typically ignoring our specific arrangement—was away in Loti' don. Haygarth had realised then that it wasn't 'a natural death,' those were his words. Someone hastened on the death. And who could that be but Dan? Handsome Dan?" she ended bitterly, but not hysterically. "Always so expert at his silent mysterious comings and goings. The thing I remember best about our marriage, oddly enough. His ability just to disappear. One moment there, smiling, charming. Then you'd turn round for another smile, another kiss—and he'd be gone. Maybe all great athletes have that talent? I wouldn't know."

Sexual athletes maybe, was Jemima's (unspoken) thought. Her other equally unvoiced sensation was one of sheer relief that she had ended her brief personal involvement with Handsome Dan Meredith so rapidly. She had managed to avoid his telephone calls since that steamy afternoon, deputing Cherry to leave an obviously artificial message about her absence "in Manchester" instead.

"Hastened on the death. A good phrase." Babs lit yet another cigarette and tracked her way through the ornament-ridden room; its fussiness seemed increasingly cloying. Babs stood with her back to the room looking out over her own urban vista, or perhaps at her own Colditz-type security precautions. "That's probably the truth of it too. He wouldn't have thought of it as murder the first time, just a game that he was in danger of losing and that he had to win fast. The second time, well, that was different. But by that time ..." Babs shrugged her thin shoulders. "You know what they say about the first step. Like the first time I caught Dan out with another girl, after we got married, he was so terribly penitent, at least I thought he was, but the second time . . . And then Charlotte, Apple Charlotte, letting her get pregnant, and telling me it was going to be a boy, so I must divorce him. I'll never forgive him . . . although I suppose Charlotte might have invented the bit about the boy, she's capable of it."

But whyl" burst out Jemima, terrified that Babs would pursue the topic of her marriage yet again while at the same time noting that Dan had married both his wives due to pregnancy—which did not seem to soften the bitterness of wife No. 1 one bit. At that moment the handle of the florid roseate cup came off in her hand, leaving the cup itself to shatter on the ground, with a little debris of Earl Grey tea-leaves.

Babs turned round. She ignored the fate of the cup. "He was desperate. That's why. Not so much Handsome Dan as Desperate Dan by then," she said flatly. "Desperate to get his hands on the inheritance before it was too late. My God, he needed money—he wasn't even paying my alimony regularly, let alone Nell's school fees, which was rotten of him—and Dan never had any money. He was a tennis star at a time when nobody made big money out of it, you see. Expensive new family." Babs raised her eyebrows. "Expensive things like nannies. I never had a nanny for Nell. But
she
has a nanny. Then he was desperate to get proper backing for the Plantaganet Club. There was some question of having to buy a new lease, and that ghastly old bag, Jane Manfred, was just playing with him, wouldn't say yes, wouldn't say no; above all the bank was restive, threatening to grab the Club if he didn't reduce his enormous overdraft. How do I know? He told me himself, appealing to me to be patient about my own payments; came round here, all charm once more because he wanted something. He even, I let him . . ." Babs stopped. With some embarrassment, Jemima could guess at what was being hinted.

"Yes, he really needed Lackland Court and the estate all right to keep the bank quiet," Babs continued. "Not only that, but he was frightened that the vital inheritance was secretly being whittled away. He suspected that piece by piece, things, valuable things like books, were being sold. Yet Cousin Tommy, whisky bottle and all, frail as he might be, continued to survive. 'I believe that damn whisky is keeping him alive, I've got a good mind to poison it.' Dan actually said that once, in front of Nell, which was foolish of him, wasn't it?"

When Jemima did not comment, Babs rushed on: "You see it was an odd situation. The house and estate were entailed and had to go to Dan as the male heir, but for some odd reason, you know what lawyers are, the position about the contents wasn't nearly so clear. Of course no Lord Lackland had ever tried to sell things before, so it had never been tested. That was because the title had always gone down directly from father to son, ever since it began. But Cousin Tommy didn't have a son, and he didn't particularly love Dan ..." Babs sounded now more triumphant than hysterical. "Especially following his treatment of of me."

Jemima remembered that she first heard about such possible sales from Dan himself on her original visit to Lackland Court, although it had been put rather differently. That was before Zena mentioned the subject.

"Was it true about the old Lord selling things.'"

"Of course it was. He was already doing it. And he was going to do it on an even greater scale in the future. Good luck to him says I!"

"Babs, you sound very sure ..."

"Of course I'm sure. You see I'm the one who helped Cousin Tommy do it." lier satisfaction was now quite open; given that vengeance is never particularly attractive to contemplate from the outside, Jemima found herself almost preferring Babs' previous mood of frenzy. At least that had its own pathos. Now there was an air of menace about her, reminding Jemima all too vividly of that old adage about a woman scorned. If not exactly a fury, Babs could certainly be a dangerous enemy.

"I had contacts," Babs was saying. "Contacts through my own trade. Upmarket contacts. You could say that it was a pleasure to help out. And do you know, Jemima, that Dan, for all his boasted love of the family history, the family place, never even noticed ? It was Zena who spotted what was going on, Zena who told Dan. And that decided him. The need to pacify the bank was the real reason, but the selling off of his precious belongings—as he saw it—that was what really drove him mad."

Babs advanced towards Jemima, her foot crunching the pieces of the fallen cup.

Now, Jemima, don't be shy, wouldn't you like to buy the china cats? Not to make up for breaking the cup of course—that doesn't matter a bit, it's a silly old cup, far too big—but because I know you really liked them." 

Jemima bought the cats.

Smelling Of History

The words hardly made any impact just because they were being transmitted through a loudspeaker. It took time for the blur of inordinate noise to distribute itself into proper sense. Finally Jemima Shore, standing next to Charlotte Lackland at the Taynford Grange fete, understood what was being said to be: "Lady Manfred has found a body." 

Charlotte Lackland had evidently understood to the same effect and at roughly the same moment. She gave a little scream, swayed, clutched Jemima's arm as though for support, and then repeated: "A
body
! Here!" in obvious shock. Her next words were: "Where's Dessie?"

How ironic to recall that Charlotte had actually apologised in advance to Jemima for "dragging" her to the Taynford Grange fete on the grounds that she would find it "so terribly dull"! Whatever else could be said about the Taynford Grange fete, it certainly did not turn out to be dull.

In any case Jemima was not quite so reluctant to be dragged to Taynford Grange as Charlotte imagined. At the time, it provided quite a welcome distraction. Her visit to Lackland Court had been ostensibly arranged via Zena Meredith to discuss the forthcoming Cavalier Celebration and her own role in it, but Jemima intended at. the same time to take her investigation further; it would be useful to inspect that roof again in the light of Haygarth's death. Her arrival, however, was liable to he tinged with slight embarrassment, given that she had not actually seen or spoken to Dan since the notorious day of the Kingfisher lunch.

Jemima did not flatter herself that Dan would take his polite dismissal—via Cherry's message—all that much to heart. It was just that she herself was left with a faint honourable sense of uneasiness at having to firmly discourage what she had once—let's face it—rather passionately encouraged. Given her own training in public poise, whatever the circumstances, and given Dan's excellent manners, she had only to get over the first moment of the encounter and all, she was convinced, would be well. As she drove across the forecourt and looked up at the magnificent facade of the house, the date "1600" proudly carved over the high front door, and the words
Amor et Honor
, it was Haygarth's ghost, the old but still active man who had come down the steps to greet her on that first visit, which haunted her, not that of Dan—or Decimus.

In view of her admirably rational approach to the whole matter, Jemima was annoyed to find that she experienced a small but distinct pang on hearing from Charlotte Lackland that Dan was not actually there. Nor planning to be there.