Enter Pale Death (21 page)

To his dismay, her ladyship had bustled into the hall to bother her butler and enquire as to her guest’s whereabouts. Instead of drawing back discreetly and allowing him to recover, Cecily stalked forward, an expression of barely contained amusement on her face.

“Take the gentleman’s hat and coat, Styles, and give them a good brushing. Hunnyton warned us you were taking the scenic route through the woods.” She looked wonderingly at the stains of foliage and smears of body paint the King of the Woods had impressed on the pale fabric of his coat where Joe had clamped his head against his side. “He didn’t tell us you were going to take time off for a roll in the hay en route. Styles, have a word with that new dairy-maid will you?” Her eyes came to rest on Joe’s bloodstained cheek. “I see she defended her honour. Styles, we’d better have a wet flannel and a sticking plaster for our guest. And I expect he’d welcome a nice dry sherry after his adventures.”

Joe grinned. Perhaps lunch was not going to be the painful episode he’d envisaged. “She told me her name was Diana, madam. She’s five feet tall and irresistibly lovely. When she recovers from
the surprise of the kiss I planted on her cool virginal mouth, she’ll probably come after me with vengeance in mind. You may well see me turn into a stag before lunch is over.”

“Indeed? I’ve never witnessed a transmogrification before. One of your party tricks, Commissioner? I shall look forward to it—one can always find a use for a healthy young stag,” she finished with an inscrutable smile.

The butler led him to a nearby washroom, where Joe removed the traces of the forest floor and accepted a rather over-sized plaster to put across his wound before rejoining her ladyship.

Styles gave them a strange look as, arm in arm and chuckling, they went into the dining room.

CHAPTER 13

The soup, as predicted, was green in colour, though made not from nettles but from peas picked in the garden that morning and introduced to a few herbs, some excellent chicken stock and a pint or two of cream from the home herd. The “dog biscuits” that accompanied the cheese were Bath Olivers from Fortnum’s in Piccadilly. A taste not yet acquired by Hunnyton, evidently. “A light luncheon,” the dowager had announced. “You will want to save yourself for dinner. We have an excellent cook.” He managed a bowl of pea soup, a token slice of game pie with a plentiful salad and nibbled at a biscuit, cursing the superintendent for his skittish humour. Her ladyship took his refusal of dessert as an admirable masculine trait and for that he was grateful.

They ate companionably together, attended by one footman who withdrew the moment he had finished serving and clearing away. “My son Alexander is about the place somewhere, probably still in his room. He won’t be joining us,” she had explained. “He is one of those creatures who prefers to flee the daylight. The Romans had a word for that I think. London life proved too much for him, I’m afraid, and he’s come home to recuperate and gather his strength before he relaunches himself on society. Energetic and useful chap that I see you are, Sandilands, you will not find much to admire in Alex.”

Apart from this bitter remark, conversation flowed easily. His hostess was very knowledgeable about the state of the nation, and she could talk about London affairs—political and scandalous—with understanding as well as an ironic asperity which Joe found entertaining. She listened to Joe’s stories of his days in India and on the North West Frontier, some of them flattering to Sir George Jardine, his friend and mentor, some sharp and comic. Cecily seemed to prefer the latter.

When the footman brought in a tray of coffee things, Cecily dismissed him. “That’ll be all for now, Benjamin.” Joe had noted the familiar use of the Christian name for the attentive young man. Perhaps Cecily was not the old-fashioned stickler for correctness he had assumed. “The Commissioner will preside at the coffee pot.”

Joe obliged and, uninterrupted and unobserved, they settled to their coffee, free to speak their minds. She said abruptly, “So you got my message then?”

“Message, madam?” Joe said, smiling. “Would that be the anonymous letter penned by your maid and dictated by you? The letter sent to the Yard with the object of luring me down here to take issue with the man who could perhaps have had a hand in the alleged murder of your daughter-in-law?”

She sighed. “Well, I don’t expect you to arrest a dead horse, silly man!” In the days when ladies carried fans, she’d have tapped him on the cheek in flirtatious reprimand. “Lavinia’s death was planned. In my view, that’s murder. I’m sure of that. I’m pretty sure also that I know who is responsible but I have no proof. I hear good things of you from my son James. He agreed with me that you would be the best possible man to investigate and uncover the guilty party. However—James was reluctant to be seen exercising any political authority in the matter.”

Joe hoped he’d adequately concealed his incredulity.

“Astute, independent, unconnected with the family, a
gentleman, and—having the ear of the Commissioner—I thought you’d do well. I decided to lure you down here.”

“You should have included hard-headed in that list of attributes. I’m afraid I can only offer discouragement. Even if I were persuaded of someone’s guilt, I doubt I could interest the Crown Prosecutor in supporting a legal case which has been satisfactorily closed for several weeks. But why now, madam? Why wait so long to launch an investigation? The whole affair had sunk quietly into the sand.”

“No, Sandilands. You’re wrong there.” At last, a note of vehemence. “It was James who first became aware of the furtive looks, the chill atmosphere … aware that friends and colleagues were crossing the clubroom or the road to avoid speaking to him. One day, he cornered one of his closest friends and forced the truth from him. You know what Parliament is for rumours! More reputations are shredded in the tearooms at Westminster than in the House. His fellows were remarking on the fortuitous timing of his wife’s death. His own demeanour may have worked against him—James did not love his wife and failed to show much in the way of regret. What a fool! He should have moped and mowed about the place for a bit. Instead, he threw himself into his usual routine of work, appearing relieved and reinvigorated.”

Joe picked up a word from this. “ ‘Fortuitous,’ madam? In what way fortuitous?”

She hesitated. “I must keep nothing from you, even the embarrassing aspects, I suppose. You may have heard it spoken of—James has ambitions of the highest order …”

“Next Prime Minister but one, is what they say,” Joe said bluntly.

She seemed pleased that he was keeping up. “Lavinia was aware of this. She decided she would enjoy the role of the PM’s wife.” Cecily closed her eyes in silent pain at the thought. “She decided to help prepare his way. She made faux pas after faux pas!
She said the wrong things to the right people and right things to the wrong.” And, with emphasis: “She was wrecking his career. No overriding intelligence, you see. It would not have been the first time a great man had been brought down by a silly wife.”

“A great man?” he questioned lightly.

“Not yet, obviously. You’re right to remind me of the dangers of maternal pride. James could be great. The stage is setting itself. He has the mind and heart for the part and he’s learned his lines. The country is weary of its inconsequential political leaders. Left? Right? Who cares? The electorate is undecided because it is offered no compelling choice. Yet—rightly—people sense that stirring times are approaching and no man of character steps forward. The ship of state sails into a storm with two weak pairs of hands scrabbling to take the wheel. Churchill has a strong pair of hands and a steady vision but has been sent off duty. He’s been stood down.”

“But rumbling in the distance? I’m sure I catch the odd rumbling still.”

“He’s not a man James would choose to be seen supporting. My son wishes to present himself as a fresh political mind, unallied and without the baggage of past failures.”

Joe decided to accept all this for the moment. He knew of at least two other reasons why Lavinia’s death benefited James Truelove but he wished to avoid alarming the woman by showing too deep a knowledge of her son’s affairs.

“So, you see, we need a solution to this unpleasantness for the sake of James’s reputation but also because there is a killer—unscrupulous and effective—at large. It could be someone I speak to every day, regard as a friend … someone in my household or even family. I—we—need to know. The knowing is more important than the arresting.”

“A large number involved. I have the police notes listing all the people in the house that weekend.”

“That fateful weekend—as we say now—there were present some influential politicians. Lavinia, I remember, was making an exhibition of herself over dinner … rather worse than usually crass. I was seated at the other end of the table and unable to stop her launching into a shameful ragging of one of the guests—a woman. A woman moreover whom she had herself invited down for the weekend. I was mortified to catch the glances exchanged between a minister and a press baron. James’s friends and supporters. Supporters until that moment when his wife revealed herself unqualified to hold a tea party for teddy bears without inspiring a killing rage among the furry guests. Imagine Lavinia playing hostess on a diplomatic occasion, Commissioner!”

“Faced with the Japanese Ambassador, flanked by a Prussian envoy and a Russian chargé d’affaires …” Joe made a mischievous speculation.

Cecily’s eyes crinkled with waspish humour. “Lavinia could, single-handedly, have provoked a second world war, right there at the table, and presided over it if the knives were sharp enough.”

“Ouch! But James is now free to remake his reputation?”

“He would have been had he not been besmirched with a much more serious accusation than making a bad choice of wife. Murder. We have to prove that he is innocent by possibly arresting, certainly making known, the identity of the person responsible. James’s career depends upon it.”

She turned the dark eyes of a Roman empress on Joe. Unblinking, forceful, hypnotic. “More than that. You know the state of the country. Financially ruined. Emotionally exhausted. The reins of power being tugged in all directions by the inexperienced hands of a crew of squabbling nonentities who call themselves a ‘coalition.’ We’re hurtling towards a cliff edge, Sandilands. James sees that. He is a strong-minded man and no appeaser of bullies. He knows what needs to be done and understands that he is the man to do it. He has built up support in
preparation for the moment. We cannot afford to stand by and watch that support be cut out from under him. Undeservedly.”

“Are you telling me you have proof that he had nothing to do with his wife’s death?”

“I know with certainty and—yes—I can prove that my son had no involvement whatsoever. But I’m his mother. Of course I would say that. We need an independent authority, trusted by all, to discover this for himself. I hand you no names, Sandilands. But I will facilitate your enquiries. You have my permission to go anywhere, question anyone in the house. Do what you have to do.”

“You carefully say ‘person,’ your ladyship. Man? Woman? Are you hinting that perhaps I should be hunting about in the boudoir rather than the gun room?”

“I’m sure you are equally at home in both,” Cecily said crisply. “But, do agree, it could well have been a woman who arranged her death. It has all the hallmarks, wouldn’t you say, of a
female
mind? We are supposed to be the sex that prefers a clandestine approach to an outright assault. Women do not have the strength of mind and hand to sink knives into flesh; we tend to be ignorant of the workings of firearms, even if one should be to hand. A push in the back at the top of a staircase is perhaps the nearest we come to the physical assault. Killing at arm’s length, carried out by one of God’s innocent creatures—a perfect solution, wouldn’t you say? A female solution?”

Joe could have demolished her argument with countless examples from real life and real death but he was enjoying hearing her nonsense, wondering where she was heading with her theories.

“Yet it has a certain sporting element about it that to me speaks of a masculine mind set,” he said. “Tell me about her maid. Is she—was she—close to her mistress? Close enough to have vital information for us?”

“Oh, Grace Aldred is the girl’s name. I have interviewed
Grace, of course, but she denies all responsibility. She’s very loyal to her mistress—alive or dead. I’ve kept her on here working as a laundry maid, even left her in possession of her old room, until such time as she can be made to confess to something.”

“Excellent!” Joe forced out the word. The old nuisance had probably ruined any chance of an unrehearsed testimony from the maid. “She is the first I should like to interview.”

“You’ll have to wait, I’m afraid. The housekeeper was so bold as to grant her leave to visit her sick mother in Bury.” Cecily heard her own tone of asperity and hurried to correct it. “I’m not criticising Mrs. Bolton. Our excellent housekeeper finds herself in an awkward position—between two mistresses, you might say. Lavinia’s reign is over and Mrs. Bolton will have shed no tears over that, and I am here, as you see, a power from the past, grabbing at the reins. Always with the prospect, of course, of a third mistress waiting in the wings. James will marry again. His career demands it. Meanwhile, Mrs. Bolton is a steady pair of hands and we all trust her judgement. Grace has been given a week’s leave. Of course,” she added casually, “there were other ladies in the house that weekend in April and I’ve prepared a list for you.”

Joe decided to take the bull by the horns. “We always look to the motive in killings, madam. Who stands to gain? In this case, you are right to suppose that your own son, James, fits the frame very well. He loses a wife you tell me was becoming a liability. Being her heir he must retain what is left of her fortune?”

“Of course. I’m glad to hear you speak so bluntly. It saves time and allows me to be equally blunt.” She gave him a sharp sideways look. “As no holds are barred I’ll tell you that my own suspicions fell originally on a certain female guest. A young lady my son has formed a regrettable attachment to. The girl is his student and a pampered one at that. I know that he spoke of her frequently to Lavinia and to me in glowing terms. Lavinia became suspicious—and who shall blame her?—of his relationship with this baggage
and took the bold step of inviting the girl to spend a weekend here in April. To look her over, assess the danger and warn her off. She gave James no warning of her arrangement and the whole business was a disaster. The girl was pretty and intelligent and capable of winning any verbal skirmish Lavinia cared to engage her in. But, more importantly, it was clear to all that she trumped Lavinia on a subject dear to her own heart.”