Death of a Mystery Writer (17 page)

“Oh, that sort of thing is rather out-of-date now, wouldn't you say, Inspector?” Lady Fairleigh looked at him quizzically. “Like
Punch
cartoons of the twenties? Nowadays the people with money stick together, whatever their background. That's your way, Inspector, through that opening in the hedge. When you get to the lane, keep to your left and it's about a mile.”

“But the Woodstocks, Lady Fairleigh,” said Meredith, putting a hand on her arm to detain her, “have family but
no
money.”

“In that sort of case, Inspector, the people with money are . . . kind.”

“I see. Would you say it was to maintain the family position in the area that your husband left the whole of his estate, virtually intact, to his elder son?”

An expression passed over her face which he interpreted as distaste for talking about family affairs with a stranger. But her sturdy common sense soon showed her the absurdity of the feeling. She said: “Yes, I would, on thinking about it. I genuinely never knew what Oliver had put in the will, you know—never asked. But in retrospect it seems the obvious thing, the thing he
would
do. Oliver knew that even if the first generation was a bit of an interloper, the second would be ‘old-established.' And he would want the title and the money to go together. He never valued one without the other.”

“Hard on the younger children, perhaps?”

“Perhaps. Or perhaps better for them in the long run. A
little
money, extra pocket money, so to speak, can be nice. But a little
more,
nearly enough but not quite enough to live on without working—that can be ruinous, don't you think? They'll have to get over the disappointment. And I
do
think Mark is behaving well... ?” She looked at him, almost appealingly, as if hoping he would agree with her. Against his better judgment he responded.

“He's being very responsible indeed.”

She breathed a sigh of thanks. “There was never any hope of our being a
happy
family, Inspector. I've never had any ambitions beyond keeping the peace. I still hope to be able to do that.”

This time he could not keep her, and he watched her potter off across the gardens, looking here and there at shrubs and flowers for signs that they were doing well. Gardens were so much more hopeful than families.

The Woodstock cottage affected Meredith much as it had done Oliver Fairleigh. The bright colors it had been painted, the arrangement of the newly dug flower beds, the looped-up curtains, all somehow seemed intolerably twee. It looked like the sort of place where one would be offered dandelion tea. Here he did Celia Woodstock an injustice. She offered him perfectly ordinary tea, with the alternative of parsnip wine.

The Woodstocks were very friendly, and terribly relaxed.

“You know, it's a bit of a thrill, this, Inspector,” said Ben, curving his etiolated length around the fireplace and stuffing his bony fingers into his pipe. “You probably know I write detective stories too. It's an incredibly lucky thing to have experience of a real police investigation, and I feel I'm testing my powers of observation too.”

Inspector Meredith, sinking into the armchair and into the overwhelmingly cozy atmosphere, brought down the shutters across his dancing eyes, but kept them surreptitiously on Ben. A gaunt face, seemingly almost concave, with deep dark sockets for eyes and hair brought deliberately down slantwise across his forehead. A Hamlet face, but totally without magnetism. Sitting there, Meredith felt himself bursting with life in comparison with both the Woodstocks, for somehow there hung about both of them this odd, enervated air, this feeling of predestined mediocrity and failure. And yet, Ben had had the nerve to strike out on his own, to forgo the delusive securities of regular wage packet and pension scheme and write full-time. As sometimes happened, what the man did, and the impression the man gave, simply did not come together to make a whole. He didn't gel.

“The trouble is,” said Meredith, conversationally taking up Woodstock's last point, “that of course nobody
knows
this sort of thing is going to happen, and often they notice very little.”

“But I feel, you know, that as a writer I
should
be observant, be on the watch the whole time.”

“Ben has almost total recall,” said his wife proudly, coming in with a tray of china and a teapot, and settling herself down as the completing item in the picture of domesticity around the hearth. “Of course, it's a terribly unnerving gift to have at times, but in a case like this it couldn't be more useful!”

“Very true!” said Meredith, unhooding his eyelids and casting in her direction a glance of dutiful gallantry. She gave a nervous little giggle as she fussed over the tea things. She was a dumpy little body, without any style but with limitless surface goodwill. He had known girls who seemed to be nature's wives and mothers yet turned out on closer acquaintance to be monsters of ambition and greed, Catherine the Greats of hearth and home. He accepted his cup, and sank back in his chair, letting them dictate the atmosphere.

“I hope this will meet with your approval, Inspector,” said Ben, producing a rough manuscript. “I've written out an account of last Saturday evening. I did it, really, as a sort of test for myself, to try to bring back absolutely everything I noticed and could remember. I hope it might be useful to you. I haven't tried to select at all, just put in everything.”

“That sounds like a policeman's ideal sort of testimony.”

“I thought that as outsiders we were in a particularly good position to see things that other people may have missed.”

“Coming quite fresh to it,” said Celia, “and not really knowing the people concerned.”

“Exactly,” said Meredith, in his friendly way. “A completely unbiased account is just what I need.”

“Now, I've been assuming, Inspector,” said Ben, uncurling himself from the mantelpiece and draping himself across the chair opposite, “that his drink—the Finnish stuff, whatever it was called—was poisoned. Of course, I'm not pumping you—I just
wanted to explain why I've gone into a lot of detail just at that point in the narrative, detail about positions around the desk in the study, and so on.”

“That will be particularly useful,” said Meredith, which was true, if the accuracy of the account could be confirmed.

“Of course, dinner was difficult, with lots of conversations going on at the same time. But I've written out what I remembered, and Celia has done the same.”

“It's a very
plain
account,” said Celia Woodstock, as if apologizing for her lack of the literary graces. “I just put down what I could remember, and tried to get it in the right order. Anyway, if it's any help, there it is.” She smiled brightly. The helpfulness of the Woodstocks was overwhelming.

“You've gone to a lot of trouble,” said Meredith.

“Not at all, Inspector,” said Ben. “As I say, I regarded it as a most interesting exercise. Also—”

“Yes?”

“Well, I have to admit, there has been an offer from one of the Sunday newspapers. I don't know, it's terrible to capitalize on the Fairleighs' troubles like this, but of course it
is
a chance to get my name known, and if I could manage to do something tasteful and inoffensive . . .”

You'll find they have ways to turn it into something tasteless and offensive, thought Meredith to himself. But he said: “Of course, I can see you wouldn't want to offend the Fairleighs. You are old friends, aren't you?”

“Hardly that, Inspector,” said Celia briskly. “I hadn't met any of them apart from Lady Fairleigh until eight days ago.”

“It was really one of those casual acquaintanceships on my part,” said Ben, stretching his long, runner-bean legs out from the chair with an invincibly casual air. “I used to go and play tennis now and then during the summer. I think I once went to a birthday party, I forget whose. I had completely lost touch with them, until Sir Oliver and Lady Fairleigh came here to lunch last Sunday.”

“Did you find them changed?”

“Changed? Oh, no. They never changed. I remember Sir Oliver on my visits as a boy. Terrifying. He'd join in our games, when he was in a good mood, and cheat outrageously: he'd be daring us to challenge him, staring at us with those great bulging eyes. Or he'd come and watch the tennis and start shouting things like a Liverpool hooligan at a football match—screaming crazy abuse and accusing us of fouls, and so on. Then at mealtimes he'd boom unanswerable questions at you, or conduct ridiculous inquisitions: ‘Who's your favorite author?' ‘George Eliot, sir.' ‘Who's he? Never heard of him. Explain who he is.' ‘It's a woman, sir—' And so on, until eventually he would be maintaining that she was a disguised criminal in hiding from the police, or a music hall artist specializing in drag. It's quite funny in retrospect, but it was awful at the time.”

“There are ways of doing things like that,” agreed Meredith.

“Exactly,” said Ben. “And of course he wasn't trying to amuse us, but to amuse himself.”

“As I said on the way there, Inspector,” said Celia primly, “it's not a family I'd want to have
much
to do with.”

“Of course, basically the poor old chap was bored,” said Ben tolerantly. “Anything to inject a spark of life into the proceedings. I tell you, I thought he was having us on for a moment last Saturday when he collapsed. I thought he'd suddenly get up, all red and outraged, and go on with the party.”

It occurred to Meredith that Woodstock was coming to life, and that the reason was not so much that he was enjoying being a vital witness in a police investigation, but that he was rehearsing a lucrative article for the
Sunday Grub.
The picture was vivid enough for him not to want to complain, but it did make him suspect that Ben's relationship with the Fairleighs must have gone a lot deeper than he tried to pretend.

“So you and the family haven't really kept up the acquaintanceship in the years since then?” he asked.

“No,” said Ben, switching back to his casual depreciative pose. “Of course, I've been at Cambridge, and then I did some British Council work abroad. And the three over there have been—well,
all over the place. I imagine Saturday night's get-together was a pretty rare thing for the Fairleighs. No, I'm afraid we'd all drifted apart. You know how it is. My mother and Lady Fairleigh visit, and telephone now and again. Nothing more than that.”

“Isn't Bella Fairleigh a writer too, in a way—?”

“A journalist, Inspector. Quite a different kettle of fish, if that doesn't sound too snobbish.” Ben Woodstock's face creased into a smile, which wasn't much of a smile. “Except of course that that's what I intend to be for the next few days, if I can establish a really tight contract.”

Meredith felt that Ben Woodstock had ignored the implication of his question, and slithered rather neatly toward another subject. He rather thought that Celia Woodstock (who he suspected was not quite the cabbage she looked) had also noticed, and had tensed up. She was, though, in her prim, conventional way, a rather resourceful girl, and as Meredith began to make getting-up movements, it was she who spoke.

“I
do
hope things are not too terrible over at Wycherley Court. They must be
dreadfully
worried and unhappy. Are they facing up to it well?”

“Very well,” said Meredith, all blandness. “Sir Mark has taken over, and he's proving a tower of strength.”

He caught their reactions as he eased himself up from the chair. Ben's eyebrows shot up, and he asked involuntarily: “Mark? Then it's Mark who—? But of course we mustn't ask.”

The implications of his remark had not been lost on Celia Woodstock either. Her face, for one moment, was a picture of triumphant spite. Then they both cozily showed him to the door.

 • • • 

Reading at leisure, in the cool of the early evening, the accounts by Ben and Celia Woodstock of their evening at Wycherley Court, Meredith was struck by two contrary impressions.

On the one hand Ben had, as he said, been enormously detailed. His account resembled nothing so much as one of those semi-documentary novels which piles trivial fact upon
trivial fact in an effort to demonstrate that fiction can (with a bit of effort) be twice as boring as life. Just as the authors of these will spare one nothing, from the position of the fillings in the hero's teeth to the name of the second housemaid's brother-in-law, so Ben threw in the kitchen sink and left him to do the selecting. His account of positions around the desk during the opening of the presents was admirable. The drinks cabinet was slightly to the left of the desk, on the wall; Ben made it clear that positions changed during the unwrapping of the various gifts, so that he, Celia, Terry, and Bella had all been close to the decanter of lakka at one time or another. Lady Fairleigh had, on the other hand, remained close to the coffee table on the right. All this was excellent and (subject to checking) useful. Ben was also quite specific on the subject of Mark: he was, he felt sure, quite drunk. He did not get up, and could not have got up, from his chair at the far end of the study, the whole time the Wood-stocks were there, which was until a few minutes after Oliver Fairleigh had been taken off in the ambulance.

On the other hand, the suspicious mind might well wonder if there had not been omissions in the Woodstocks' accounts. Celia mentioned Oliver Fairleigh's affability and volubility, yet apparently they had talked about nothing but some people she knew slightly from Birmingham who were also acquaintances of Sir Oliver's, and of the prospect of his inviting Ben to lunch with Sir Edwin Macpherson. It seemed a meager haul for a conversation that spanned sherry and four whole courses.