Ellis Peters - George Felse 02 - Death and the Joyful Woman (4 page)

There were three people with Armiger. The man was everything that Armiger was not, and valuable to him for that very reason; George was familiar with the contrast and all its implications. Into houses where Armiger’s bouncing aggression would not have been welcomed Raymond Shelley’s tall grey elegance and gentle manners entered without comment; where negotiations required a delicacy of touch which Armiger would have disdained to possess, he employed Shelley’s graces to do his work for him. Nominally Shelley was his legal adviser, permanently retained by the firm; actually he was his other face, displayed or concealed according to circumstances. Middle-aged, quiet, kind, not particularly energetic or particularly effective in himself, but he supplied what Armiger needed, and in return Armiger supplied him with what he most needed, which was money. He was also Kitty Norris’s trustee, having been for years a close friend of her father. And there was Kitty by his side now, in a full-skirted black dress that made her look even younger than her twenty-two years, with an iridescent scarf round her shoulders and a half of bitter in her hand. So that, thought George, admiring the clear profile pale against the subdued rosy lights, is the girl who gave our Dom a lift home the other night. And all Dom could talk about was the car! How simple life is when you’re as young as that!

The third person was a handsome, resigned-looking, quiet, capable woman of forty-five, in a black suit, who was just fitting a cigarette into a short black holder. The movements of her long hands were graceful and strong, so was her body under the severely-tailored cloth. She let the men talk. Intelligent, illusionless eyes swept from face to face without noticeable emotion; only when she looked at Kitty she smiled briefly and meaningly, owning a contact with her which set the men at a slight distance. Women as efficient as Ruth Hamilton and as deeply in the business secrets of their employers frequently entertain a faint contempt for the temples they sustain on their shoulders and the gods they serve.

“His secretary,” said a man’s voice in an audible whisper somewhere behind them. “Has been for twenty years. They say she does more than type his letters.”

That was no new rumour, either, George had heard it bandied about for at least ten of the twenty years. The only surprising thing about it was to hear it mentioned at all; it had been taken for granted, whether believed or discounted, for so long that there was no point in trying to squeeze a drop of sensation out of it now. Nor was anyone ever likely to know for certain whether it was true or not. The legend had been more or less inevitable, in any case, for Miss Hamilton had virtually run Armiger’s household as well as his office ever since his wife’s long, dragging illness began, and that was a good many years ago.

Wilson emptied his pint and pushed the tankard away from him. “Jean is quite a girl. But sometimes I wonder how Leslie ever managed to see her in the first place, with Miss Norris around. Not that I think he made any mistake, mind you. Still—look at her!”

George had been thinking much the same thing, though he did not know Jean Armiger. Young men frequently reject even the most dazzling of girls, he reflected, when thrust at them too aggressively by their fathers, and if Armiger’s mind was once made up he would certainly tackle this enterprise as he did every other, head-down and bellowing. Still—look at her!

She was the last person at whom he did turn and look when he left the saloon bar at about ten o’clock. She hadn’t moved, she’d hardly spoken; she sat nursing the other half, but only playing with it, and though Armiger had vanished on one of his skirmishes and Miss Hamilton seemed to be gathering up her bag and gloves and preparing to leave, Kitty sat still; so still that the sparkles in the glittering scarf were motionless, crumbs of light arrested in mid-air. Then the swing-door closed gently on the grave oval of her face, and George settled the collar of his coat and strolled across the hall towards the chill of the September night.

Old Bennie Blocksidge, a lean, tough little gnome, was crossing the hall with an empty tray, all the copper witchballs repeating his bald pink dome as he passed beneath them. He stopped to exchange a word with George, jerking his head in the direction of the side door which led out to the courtyard.

“He’s in high feather to-night, Mr. Felse. No holding him.”

“He” could be no one but Armiger. “I noticed he’s vanished,” said George. “Why, what’s he got up his sleeve now? I should think he’d had triumph enough for one night.”

“He’s just gone off with a bottle of champagne under his arm, any road up, off to show off his new ballroom to some bloke or other. That’s the old barn what was, off across the yard there. Wanted to open it this week, he did, but they’ve only just finished the decorations. Sets great store by it, and so he ought, it’s cost him a packet.”

So that was what was to become of young Leslie’s studio. George stepped aside to allow free passage to two people who had just followed him out of the saloon bar, and watched Miss Hamilton and Raymond Shelley cross the hall together and go out through the swing-doors and the nail-studded outer portals which stood open on the night; and in a few moments he heard a car start up in the car-park, and roll out gently on to the road, and caught a glimpse of Shelley’s Austin as it swept round and headed for Comberbourne.

“Told us not to disturb him, neither,” said Bennie, sniffing. “Says he’ll be back when he’s good and ready. Ordered his car for ten, and here it is turned ten, and he says,‘tell him he can damn’ well wait till I’m ready, if it’s midnight.’ Clayton’s sitting out there in the Bentley cursing like a trooper, but what’s the good? There’s never no doing anything with him. If you like your job you just go with him, nothing else you can do.”

“And you do like your job, Bennie?”

“Me?” said Bennie with a grin and a shrug. “I’m used to it, I go with the stream. There’s worse bosses than him, if you just go along with him and don’t worry. These youngsters, they fret too much.”

“Well, let’s hope he soon drinks his champagne and lets Clayton take him home.”

“It was a big ’un, a magnum. He thinks in magnums.”

“He does indeed!” said George. The Jolly Barmaid was a classic example of Armiger’s inflated habits of mind. “Good night, Bennie.”

“Good night, Mr. Felse.”

George walked home into Comerford, and gave his wife and son a brief account of his evening’s entertainment.

“Your girl-friend was there, Dom,” he said, glancing mischievously at Dominic, who was in his homework corner still bent over a book, though it was a late start rather than an exaggerated sense of duty that had kept him at it until this hour. He slapped the Anglepoise lamp away from him and quickly switched it off, to hide the fierce blush that surged up into his cheeks, and assuming his protective colouring with the dexterity of a cornered animal, said eagerly: “No, was she? Did you see the car? Isn’t it a beauty?”

“I wasn’t looking at the car.”

“Gosh, can you beat it! No soul!” said Dominic disgustedly, for once removing himself to bed without having to be driven. He had told his parents about coming home in the Karmann-Ghia because he was experienced enough to know that even if they had not witnessed his arrival themselves, someone among the neighbours was sure to have done so, and to retail the information over pegging out the washing or giving the lawn its last autumn mowing. Better and safer to give them an edited version himself, and the car made wonderful cover, but if his father was going to spring nasty little surprises like that sudden dig to-night, Dominic was going to have to stay in dark corners, or keep his back turned on his family.

Bunty Felse awoke just after midnight from her first light doze with a curious question on her mind, and stroked George into wakefulness with the gentle ruthlessness wives employ instead of open brutality.

“George,” she said as he grunted a sleepy protest into her red hair, “do you remember that singer girl at Weston-super-Mare last summer. The one who dragged Dom into her act, the way they do?”

“Mmm!” said George, dazed by this seeming irrelevance. “What about her, for goodness’ sake?”

“He noticed
her
all right, didn’t he?”

“Couldn’t very well miss her,” admitted George, “she was round his neck. How on earth did she get him up there? Some trick—I don’t remember. I know I blushed for him.”

“Yes,
you
did,” said Bunty significantly. “
He
didn’t. He bragged about it for days, the little ass. He said she was a dish.”

“That’s all those paperbacks he reads.”

“No, I think it’s pop records. The point is, apparently this Norris girl really is a dish. But he never said so. Why?”

“No accounting for tastes,” mumbled George. “Maybe he doesn’t think she is a dish.”

“Why shouldn’t he? Everybody else does.
You
do,” said Bunty, and was drifting off to sleep again, still worrying over the discrepancy, when the telephone beside their bed rang.

“Damn and blast!” said George, sitting up in bed wide awake and reaching for the instrument. “
Now
what’s up?”

The telephone bleated in a quavering voice which at first he hardly recognised for Bennie Blocksidge’s. “Mr. Felse?” it wailed. “Oh, Mr. Felse, I dunno if I’m doing right, but I’d sooner it was you, and you’re the nearest, and being as you were here to-night it’s you I called. We got bad trouble here, Mr. Felse. It’s the guv’nor, Mr. Armiger. He never come back. Past closing-time, and he never come, and eleven, and half past eleven, and the lights still on in there. And Mr. Calverley got worried, and one thing and another, even if he did say not to disturb him, they went to see was he all right—”

“Make it short,” said George, groping for his slippers. “What’s happened? I’m on my way, but what’s happened? Make it three words, not three hundred.”

“He’s dead,” said Bennie, making it two. “there in the barn, all by himself, stone dead and blood all over.”

THE MOMENT OF truth had overtaken Armiger in the middle of an expanse of new flooring almost big enough for a bull-ring, and of a colour not so far from that of fine sand. He lay in the full glare of his brand-new lights, sprawled on his face with arms and legs tossed loosely about him, his right cheek flattened against the glossy parquet. If you stooped to look carefully the thick profile in its bold, bright colouring still showed clear and undamaged; but the exposed back of his head was crumpled and indented, welling dark blood that oozed up out of the splintered cavities and spilled sluggishly over into the puddle gathering on the floor, where the crimson of blood and the thin clarity of wine met and intermingled in long, feathery fronds of pink.

All round his head and shoulders blood and champagne had spattered to a distance of two or three feet, but not so lavishly as old Bennie had made out, you could easily approach him between the splashes, at least from the back, from which position, George thought, squatting over the body, this ferocious damage had been done. Any enemy of Alfred Armiger’s might well prefer not to face him when he hit out at him at last. The neck of the magnum lay in the pink ferns of the pool, close to the shattered head, and slivers of glass glittered on the bull shoulders; two yards away the rest of the bottle lay on its side, a thin dotted line of blood marking where it had rolled when it broke at last.

Well at least, thought George grimly, we’re spared the classic hesitation between accident, suicide and murder; the one most easily associated with Armiger was the one that overtook him, and nobody’s ever going to argue about it.

He had called his headquarters in Comerbourne before he left home, called them again after his first check-up on the scene, and turned everyone else out of the ballroom until the van should arrive. He had the place to himself for a quarter of an hour at the most. For Armiger he felt as yet nothing but a sense of shock and incredulity that so much demoniac energy could be so abruptly wiped out of existence. The blob of black in the acres of pallor looked like a squashed fly on a window-pane.

He stood back carefully, avoiding the splashes of blood, and looked round the room. No sense of reality informed this scene, it was a stage set, lavish and vulgar, the curtain rising on a run-of-the-mill thriller. The barn, pretty clearly, had once been the hall of the older house. Its proportions were noble, and its hammer-beam roof had been beautiful until Armiger got at it. His impact had been devastating; the hammer-beams and posts, the principals and curved braces and purlins had all been gilded, and the squares of common rafters between the gold had been painted a glaring glossy white, while from the centre beam depended four spidery modern electric chandeliers. The concentration of reflected light was merciless. All round the upper part of the walls he had built a gallery, with a dais for the band at one end, and a glass and chromium bar at the other, a double staircase curving up to it from the dancing floor with an incongruous Baroque swirl. Beneath the gallery the walls were lined with semi-circular alcoves fitted with seats, in every alcove an arched niche with a white plaster dancer; Empire, this part of it, if it could be said to have a style at all. Small tables nestled in the curves of the balustrade all the way round the gallery. The walls were white and gold and a glitter of mirrors. The palais crowd, thought George, dazed, will love it. Poor Leslie Armiger, he’d never see his beautiful bare, spacious studio home again. He’d never have been able to afford to heat it properly, in any case, it would have been Arctic in winter.

So much for the setting in general. Of notable disarrangements in this vacant and immaculate order there were only two, apart from the body itself. One of the plaster statuettes, from the alcove on the right of the door, lay smashed at the foot of the wall. There was no apparent reason for it, it was a good fifty feet from where Armiger lay, and apart from the broken shards there was no sign of any struggle, no trace even of a passing foot. The other detail struck a curiously ironical note. Someone, almost certainly Armiger himself, had fetched two champagne glasses from the bar and set them out on the small table nearest to the gilded dais at the top of the staircase. Evidently he had had no forewarning, he had still been in high feather, still bent on celebrating; but he had never got as far as opening the magnum.

George paced out thoughtfully the few yards between the sprawling feet in their hand-made shoes, and the foot of the staircase. No marks on the high gloss of the floor. He eyed the broken magnum; there was not much doubt it was the instrument which had killed Armiger. It was slimed with his blood right to the gold foil on the cork, and no artificial aids were necessary to see clearly the traces of his hair and skin round the rim of the base.

George cast one last look round the glaring white ballroom, and went out to the three men who waited nervously for him in the courtyard.

“Which of you actually found him?”

“Clayton and I went in together,” said Calverley.

There was a sort of generic resemblance in all the men Armiger chose as managers for his houses, and it struck George for the first time why; they were all like Armiger. He singled out people of his own physical and mental type, and what could be more logical? This Calverley was youngish, thick-set but athletic, like an ex-rugby-player run very slightly to flesh; moustached, self-confident, tough as fibre-glass. Not at his debonair best just now, understandably; the face made for beaming good-fellowship was strained and greyly pale, and the quick eyes alert for profit and trouble alike were trained on trouble now, and saw it as something more personal than he cared for. He’d even gone to meet trouble halfway, it seemed, by arming himself with a companion. People whose daily lives were spent in Armiger’s vicinity soon learned to be careful.

“What time would that be?” They’d know, to the minute; they’d been watching the clock for him over an hour, waiting to get him off the premises and call it a day.

“About four or five minutes after midnight,” said Calverley, licking his lips. It was not yet one o’clock. “We gave him until midnight, that’s how I know. We’d been waiting for him ever since closing-time, but he’d said he didn’t want to be disturbed, so—well, we waited. But from half past eleven we began to wonder if everything was all right, and we said we’d give him until twelve, and then go in. And we did. When it struck we left the snug at once, and came straight over here.”

“All the lights were on like that? You touched nothing? Was the door open or closed?”

“Closed.” Clayton fumbled a cigarette out of the pocket of his tight uniform jacket, and struck a match to light it. A lean, wiry, undatable man, probably about thirty-five, would look much the same at sixty; flat sandy hair brushed straight back from a narrow forehead, intelligent, hard eyes that fixed George unblinkingly and didn’t mind the light. And his hands were as steady as stone. “I was first in, I handled the door. Yes, the lights were on. We never touched a thing once we’d seen him. We only went near enough to see he was a goner. Then I run back to the house to tell Bennie to call the police, and Mr. Calverley waited by the door.”

“Had anyone seen Mr. Armiger since he came over here?” George looked at old Bennie, who was shivering in the background.

“Not that I know of, Mr. Felse. Nobody from the house has been across here. He never showed up after he took the champagne off the ice and walked off with it. I saw him go out of the side door. You know, Mr. Felse, you just come into the hall then yourself.”

“I know,” said George. “Any idea who this fellow was, the one to whom he wanted to show the ballroom? You didn’t see him?”

“No, he wasn’t with him when I saw him go out.”

“He made quite a point of not wanting to be disturbed?”

“Well—” Bennie hesitated. “Mr. Armiger was in the habit of laying off very exact, if you know what I mean. It wa’n’t nothing out of the way this time.”

“Can you remember his exact words? Try. I’m interested in this appointment he had.”

“Well, I says to him, ‘Mr. Clayton’s ’ere with the car.’ And he says: ”Then he can damn’ well wait until I’m ready, if it’s midnight. I’m just going over to show a young pal of mine my ballroom, he’ll be right interested, he says, to see what you can do with a place like that, given the money and the enterprise—and I don’t want anybody butting in on us,’ he says, ‘I’ll be back when I’m good and ready, not before.’ And then he goes.”

“But he didn’t sound upset or angry about it?” The words might have indicated otherwise in another man, but this was how Armiger habitually dealt with his troops.

“Oh, no, Mr. Felse, he was on top of the world. Well, like he was all evening, sir, you saw him yourself.”

“Odd he didn’t mention a name.”

“With that much money,” said Clayton in his flat, cool voice, “he could afford to be odd.”

“He was laughing like a drain,” said Bennie. “When he said that about showing off the ballroom he was fair hugging himself.”

“Somebody must have seen this other fellow,” said George. “We shall want to talk to all the rest of the staff, but I take it all those who don’t live on the premises have gone home long ago.” That would be the first job, once the body was handed over to the surgeon. “Any of the waiters living in, besides Ben?”

“Two,” said Calverley, “and two girls. They’re all up, I thought they might be needed, though I don’t suppose they know anything. My wife’s waiting up, too.”

“Good, we’ll let her get to bed as soon as we can.” He pricked his eras, catching the expected note of the cars turning in from the road. “That’s them. Go and switch the corner light on for them, Bennie, will you? And then I think you three might join the rest of the household inside.”

They withdrew thankfully; he felt the release of a quivering tension that made their first steps almost as nervous as leaps. Then the ambulance wagon came ponderously round into the yard, and Detective-Superintendent Duckett’s car impatiently shepherding it, and the machinery of the County C.I.D. flowed into the case of Alfred Armiger and took possession of it. It was a mark of the compulsive power of the deceased that the head of the C.I.D. had climbed out of his bed and come down in person at one o’clock in the morning. Only the murder of his own Chief Constable could have caused him greater consternation. He stood over the body, hunched in his greatcoat against the chill of the small hours and the hint of frost in the air, and scowled down at the deformed head which would never plan mergers or mischief again.

“This is a hell of a business, George. I tell you, my boy, when you came on the line and told me, I thought you’d gone daft or I had.”

“I felt much the same,” said George. “But there’s not much mistake about it, is there?”

Death, like its victim, had never been more positive. Superintendent Duckett viewed the setting, the body and the instrument, and said nothing until the doctor was kneeling over his subject, delicately handling the misshapen skull. Then he asked briefly, growling out of his collar: “How many blows?”

“Several. Can’t be sure yet, but six or seven at least. The last few possibly after he was already dead. Somebody meant business.” The doctor was youngish, ex-army, tough as teak, and loved his job. He handled Alfred Armiger with fascinated affection; nobody had cherished him like that while he was still alive.

“And I always thought it would be apoplexy,” said Duckett, “if it ever happened to him at all. How long’s he been dead?”

“Say half past eleven at the latest, might be earlier. Tell you better later on, but you won’t be far out if you consider, say, ten-fifteen to eleven-thirty as the operative period. And most of these blows were struck while he was lying right here, and I’d say lying still.”

“The first one put him out, in fact, and then whoever it was battered away at him like a lunatic to make sure he never came round again.”

“Not like a lunatic, no. Too concentrated and accurate. He was on target every time. But you could call them frenzied blows—they went on long after there was any need.”

“So it seems. Didn’t stop till the bottle broke. Marvel it didn’t break sooner, but glass plays queer tricks. George, on the details of this we sit, but firmly,” said Duckett heavily. “Dead, yes, of head injuries if we have to go that far, but keep the rest under wraps for the time being. I’ll issue a statement myself, refer the boys to me. And warn off those fellows who found him. We don’t want this released until I see my way ahead.”

“Very good,” said George. “I don’t think they’ll be wanting to talk about it, they’re too close to it for comfort. Can you make anything of that broken statuette?”

Duckett approached and stared at it, glumly frowning, then picked up its nearest neighbour, a couple locked in a tango death-grip. He grunted with surprise at its lightness, and turned it upside down to stare with disgust into its thin shell. “Sham as the rest of the set-up.” He put it back in its place and thumped the wall beneath it experimentally, but light as it was it sat sturdily on its broad base, and never even rocked. “Wouldn’t fall even if you crashed into the wall beside it, you’d have to knock the thing off bodily. No trace of anything else in the wreckage, nothing was thrown. No scratched paint. And anyhow, if it fell it would fall slightly outwards from the foot of the wall, this is right in the angle of the wall. May be dead irrelevant, may not. Get a record of it, Loder, while you’re about it. Not a hope of getting any prints off it, surface is too rough, but I suppose Johnson may as well try.” The photographer, circling Armiger’s body, murmured absorbed acquiescence, and went on shooting.

“And the champagne glasses,” said George.

“I saw them. You know whose prints will be on those, don’t you? Be a miracle if there are any others, unless it’s the maid’s who dried them and stacked them away here when they were unpacked. Still, we’ll see. Door, of course, Johnson, all the possible surfaces, baluster of that staircase. And that disgusting mess.” He indicated the magnum with a flick of his foot. “His own liquor turned traitor in the end.”

“Whoever was holding the neck of that,” said George, “must have been pretty well smeared. Blood all over it, right to the cork. His shoes and trousers may be spattered, too, though maybe not so obviously as to attract attention. I figure he was standing this side. He took care not to step in it. Not a trace between these marginal splashes and the door.”