Dead In The Morning (22 page)

“I suppose I must,” said Gerald. He looked at Patrick with a desolate expression; all his anger had vanished. “This lets Helen out. But where is she? It may be too late.”

Patrick put Mrs Ludlow’s stick carefully down on her wheelchair. He laid a hand on Gerald’s arm.

“She’s safe,” he said. “Brace up, man. She’s with my sister. I’m sorry I couldn’t let you know earlier, but you’d never have played up if you’d known she was all right.”

Gerald was astounded. His immediate reaction was of immense relief, but soon it was replaced by incredulity.

“You mean you planned all this?” he asked, making a gesture that embraced the whole room, including the helpless figure of his mother.

“Not in quite this fashion, and certainly without such an ending,” Patrick said. He glanced at the inert form. Perhaps it was for the best. “I knew your mother had killed Mrs Mackenzie. I came up to see if I could find some proof.”

In fact he had slipped into Pantons by the back door while Mrs Ludlow, Phyllis and Cathy were at lunch. He had travelled up in the lift and poked about in Mrs Ludlow’s room, but without finding what he sought. “I heard your mother insist on coming down here, and I thought she might trap herself.”

“I can’t take it in,” Gerald said, shaking his head. “How did you know?”

“She tried to prevent Cathy from waking Mrs Mackenzie. That wasn’t a natural reaction. She wanted to save her from shock, because her affection for you included your daughter. Cathy told me in detail what happened on Sunday morning; she said her aunt told her to go to Mrs Mackenzie’s room, and Mrs Ludlow said: ‘Don’t send the child, you go, Phyllis.’ Cathy was quite definite about it, because it made her indignant on her aunt’s behalf.”

“Will the police believe it?”

“I think so,” Patrick said. “Unless I’m much mistaken, we shall find our proof. Will you ring them, or shall I?”

“I will,” said Gerald. He straightened himself, cast one more look at his mother, and then went to the telephone.

When he had made the two calls he lit a cigarette, and Patrick took out his pipe. They sat together, smoking silently.

“I suppose there’s nothing we can do for Mother?” Gerald said at last. “The doctor won’t be long.”

“She’s past our help, I’m afraid,” said Patrick. “The shock must have been too much for her.”

“She never gave a sign, these past days. Her appetite, even! It never faltered.”

“Iron self-control,” said Patrick. “Our generation hasn’t got it to the same extent. She was sure that she could win.”

“But how did Helen get to your sister’s? Did she go straight to you this morning? I’ve been nearly frantic,” Gerald said. “I was afraid she might do something desperate,” he confessed. “Silly, I suppose.”

“Not at all. She was in a bad way this morning, and I’m not surprised,” said Patrick. “She’s been under a dreadful strain, and so have you. I happened to see her riding by on her bicycle. Or rather, Cathy’s bicycle. I hope it didn’t get pinched, by the way. I left it by the bus stop as a decoy.”

“It’s all right I rescued it,” said Gerald.

“Good. Well, as I say, I happened to see your wife pedalling along when I was cleaning my car.” He paused. “She’s not a very skilful cyclist, I’m afraid. She did a nasty swerve and skidded off.” No wonder, at his ambush. He had almost given her up, when she appeared. “She didn’t hurt herself,” he said. He thought of Helen, sobbing in Jane’s kitchen, hysterical at last. But she had calmed down in the end, and listened to him. Then she consented to be hidden for the day, and to trust him.

“I seem to be rather heavily in your debt,” said Gerald gruffly. “And your sister’s, too.”

Patrick waved a deprecating hand.

“We’re not quite out of the wood yet,” he said. “There’s a car now. Doctor, or police?”

It was Inspector Foster. He came striding in, with Sergeant Smithers in his wake, and halted at the sight of Mrs Ludlow lying on the sofa, still breathing stertorously.

“We need an ambulance,” he said. “Sergeant!”

“Dr Wilkins is on his way,” said Gerald. “Please don’t take my mother from her home.”

“Well, now, what is all this?” demanded the Inspector. “I’m sorry Mrs Ludlow’s ill, of course. But you said on the telephone that fresh evidence had come to light.”

Patrick stepped forward, and the Inspector looked at him in a weary way as if to say: “What, you again?”

“Before she was taken ill, Mrs Ludlow admitted putting barbiturate powder in the helping of lemon meringue pie on her tray,” he said. “She dropped her stick when she fell. I picked it up, but otherwise I have not touched it. If you unscrew the silver top you may find something interesting inside.”

The Inspector looked at him, then at the stick, lying so innocently across the arms of the empty wheelchair. He lifted it, holding it gingerly with a handkerchief around his own fingers, and gave the top a twist. It unscrewed and he tipped it up. Into the palm of his hand fell several empty blue gelatine containers, and five whole sodium amytal capsules.

At Reynard’s the curtains were drawn, and Jane had lit a fire of apple logs in the open hearth. Round it sat a subdued little group: Phyllis, Gerald, with Helen at his side, and Cathy, and beyond them, Patrick and Jane.

“How’s Mrs Ludlow now?” asked Jane. She bent to poke the fire, and a splutter of flames crackled. A rich fragrance came from the old wood as it burned.

“Not too good,” said Phyllis.

No one else spoke. All knew it was for the best, but they could not say so. Mrs Ludlow had been taken back to her own bed, and a nurse had arrived. Outside the door of her room sat the same policewoman who had come to the Stable House only that morning to arrest Helen.

“I just can’t believe it,” Cathy said at last. “For Gran to think up such a thing – it was mad!”

“She was power-mad, Cathy,” said Patrick. To him, one of the strangest features of the case was the way in which Mrs Ludlow had cold-bloodedly accepted that some of her family might wish for her death. “For years she had controlled you all - or she thought so. She could cut off funds at source, or deprive you of your expectations. When the happiness of her favourite child was threatened by a fantastic coincidence, she would not let things rest. She took upon herself the mantle of fate.”

“I wanted to talk to Joyce,” Helen said, in her soft voice. “After all, it was her secret too. But Mrs Ludlow said Sunday would be soon enough.”

“Poor Gran. She must have been all mixed up,” said Cathy. “I suppose, when you’ve been ill for years—” Her voice trailed off. Invalids did not always develop megalomania. “She could be nice. We had our laughs,” she said. But they were very few; Gran had been cruel, especially to Aunt Phyl. She realised that already she was speaking of her grandmother in the past tense, and shivered.

“I don’t understand how you discovered what happened, Dr Grant,” said Phyllis.

“Something in Cathy’s description of what happened on Sunday morning kept nagging at me,” Patrick said. “I didn’t at first realise its significance. You asked Cathy to wake Mrs Mackenzie, and Mrs Ludlow tried to prevent her from going. She wanted to spare her from a terrible experience. And on Saturday afternoon, your grandmother sent you to the vicarage with a letter, didn’t she, Cathy?

“I think there were two reasons for this errand. The first was to get you, Cathy, out of the house because she wanted time to fetch the capsules from the hall without fear of interruption.”

“If only I’d put them away,” said Phyllis.

“She would have got them even more easily, for they would have been in her room. It wouldn’t have made any difference,” Patrick said. It would have made Phyllis prime suspect of the supposed attempt to kill Mrs Ludlow; otherwise Mrs Ludlow’s plans would not have been affected.

“But mother couldn’t have fetched the pills from the hall,” said Gerald. “She couldn’t move.”

“She could. I wasn’t sure about this,” said Patrick. “But this afternoon, don’t you remember, she dropped her stick and she moved her chair forward to reach it. If she had plenty of time, she could have done it.”

“I’ve seen her move,” Phyllis said. “She used to get about quite well on her own, but her arms have got very weak now.”

“And also she wanted you to push her about,” said Patrick. “Remember that. She wanted you at her beck and call. She probably propelled herself about quite often, if no one was there to see. Anyway, with Cathy out at the vicarage, would she have known when you or Mrs Mackenzie were likely to interrupt her?”

“Yes. I always go out for half an hour’s walk after I’ve brought her down from her rest, and Mrs Mackenzie usually spent the afternoon in her room. She used to take mother round the garden just before tea if I was out, otherwise I did that.”

“Like clockwork?”

“Yes.”

“I see. So there was half an hour in which Mrs Ludlow could go to the hall, fetch the pills, hide them in her stick, and be found calmly playing patience as expected by whoever came home first?”

“I suppose so. It could have been like that,” Phyllis said.

“When Mrs Ludlow moved so instinctively to collect her stick it answered another question,” Patrick said. “I never saw her without it; she must have been greatly attached to it.”

“It was my father’s,” Gerald said. “She used it as a reinforcement to her bell.”

“The gelatine capsules must have been emptied before the powder was administered,” said Patrick. “To an able-bodied person, disposing of them would have been no problem, but Mrs Ludlow would have found this difficult, dependent as she was on help throughout the day. If she swallowed them, she probably managed only one or two at a time. I reasoned that some might still be left. As it turned out, she had kept some whole capsules too, for herself, I imagine, if things went wrong. And she also took out another form of insurance. Do you know what was in the letter to the vicar, Mrs Medhurst?”

“No. But he spoke to me after the service on Sunday. He seemed overcome with gratitude about something and said he’d be coming to see Mother. She made me ring up and tell him not to. She wouldn’t even let him come to talk about Mrs Mackenzie, or arrange about the funeral.”

“I think you’ll find she sent him a substantial cheque,” said Patrick. “Doubtless your church needs funds.”

There was a silence.

“She was neat with her hands, in spite of being so crippled,” Patrick said. “I noticed that she could use a knife and fork, and so on, without any difficulty. Undoing the capsules and collecting up the powder, in an envelope, perhaps, would not have been a problem.”

“If only I hadn’t come,” Helen cried. “None of this need have happened.” “Life can’t be lived like that, Mrs Ludlow,” said Patrick gently.

“It’s happened,” Phyllis said. “Nothing can be undone. You mustn’t look back, Helen. You and Gerald can have a happy life. After all, that’s what poor Mother was trying to make sure of.”

“What will happen now?” Cathy asked.

As she said this, the telephone rang.

“That may be your answer,” Patrick said. He stood up as Jane went out of the room to see who it was. They heard her voice, murmuring, in the hall, and then she came back. She looked at Phyllis.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “Mrs Ludlow’s dead. She never woke at all.”

After the Ludlows had all gone away, Jane and Patrick sat on by the dying embers of the fire. They were silent for a long time.

“I feel as if I’d swum the channel,” Jane said at last. “Limp, and wrung out.”

“Poor old thing. You had to bear the brunt, today,” said Patrick.

“That wasn’t so bad. I like Helen, and golly, am I sorry for her! What a life she’s had. She adores Gerald, too. Funny, isn’t it? He seems rather dull to me. Andrew liked her. Maybe she’ll have another infant herself, when this blows over.”

“Maybe she will,” said Patrick. “I wonder how they’ll all make out. We shan’t lose touch, if Tim stays up and Cathy comes up later.”

“Will Tim stay? What if his father goes to gaol?”

“I don’t suppose it will come to that in the end. And it will do Tim good to get illicit jobs in term, like driving grocery vans, and spend his vacation working on building sites. Cathy may change her mind, though. Something else may crop up for her before the summer.”

“I think she’ll persevere,” said Jane. “She’d be a plus influence, too, among the dollies.”

Patrick wondered to himself if Oxford would make Cathy, or if it would break her heart.

“What about the bank manager?” Jane added. “Will he come up to scratch? What’s he like?”

“Solid and reliable, as you might expect. Just what Phyllis needs. He’s got a grown-up family and several grandchildren.”

“You’ve been to see him, I suppose? That’s how you know all this?”

“Naturally. What do you expect?” said Patrick. In fact Maurice had boldly telephoned Pantons, demanding to speak to Phyllis, just as she was busy with the nurse getting her unconscious mother into bed. Patrick had thought it wiser not to say too much over the telephone; he had instead visited Maurice Richards and told him just a few of the facts, so that he might appreciate how serious things were, and understand that Phyllis’s own distress might inhibit her from getting in touch. What she chose to tell him in the end was up to her.

“Dr Cupid Grant, eh?” said Jane. “A man of parts.”

“Do you still think I interfered too much?” he asked.

Jane pondered, wrinkling up her nose.

“I don’t know,” she said at last. “As it happens, things seem to have worked out for the best in a case of terrible alternatives. But the police would have got there in the end, wouldn’t they? Or the old girl would have confessed after Helen was arrested?”

“Who’s to know?” said Patrick.

“What will happen now? Will the story all come out?”

“I doubt it,” said Patrick. “The police are satisfied. I expect the verdict on Mrs Mackenzie will be death by misadventure,”

“There won’t be an inquest on Mrs Ludlow?”

“No. At her age, anything could happen, and the doctor saw her regularly.”

“It’s so sad,” said Jane. “Poor old woman, she kept them all on the hop, all her life, and yet she died alone, with only a strange nurse and a policewoman there.”