Grave Matters (19 page)

‘Yes, I do. But what’s all this about a fire, Inspector?’ Carol asked him in surprise.

‘Didn’t you hear the noise in the night, Mrs. Bruce? The fire engine bells? Of course, you are rather tucked away down here and the wind was blowing the other way.’

‘I heard nothing, but my room’s at the far side of the house,’ Carol said. ‘I went to bed early last night – soon after the police left. I was upset about Madge, and I haven’t been sleeping well since my dog died. I took some nembutal.’

‘Mulberry Cottage has been almost burnt out,’ said Patrick.

‘You said you had Miss Brinton’s address. May we come in while you write it down for us?’ Colin said, stepping over the threshold as he spoke.

‘Of course,’ said Carol. ‘How terrible about the cottage. What a good thing it was empty. It’s destroyed, then?’

‘Very seriously damaged,’ Colin said. ‘It must have been burning for some time before it was discovered.’

‘Did your husband hear nothing either?’ Patrick asked.

‘He didn’t come home last night,’ Carol said. ‘He sometimes spends the night in London.’

She led the way through the hall into the large, beautifully furnished drawing-room. Colin’s gaze went swiftly to the bookshelf in the corner by the fireplace; then to the Sheraton writing-desk between the two long windows overlooking the garden. Carol was walking towards it. She picked up a narrow-necked vase that stood on its top, tipped it up, and a key fell into her hand. Then she opened the desk and took out a leather-bound book, turning the pages until she came to Valerie’s address. She wrote this down on a piece of paper, followed by the telephone number, and gave it to Colin, replacing the address-book in a pigeon-hole inside the desk. Both men saw that everything was very neatly arranged there, with no loose papers about. Each compartment held its allotted contents.

‘Use my telephone, if you wish,’ Carol said. ‘Is the fire still burning?’

‘Smouldering,’ Colin said.

‘Poor Valerie. What a shock for her. And I don’t suppose she’s heard about Madge yet, either. Two tragedies in a day.”

‘Let’s hope there’ll be no third,’ said Patrick, watching her.

‘Of course, one always fears fire, with thatch,’ Carol was continuing.

‘Oh, I don’t know,’ said Colin. ‘Many a thatched cottage has stood for centuries. But once it catches, it’s hard to stop it.’

‘The telephone’s over here,’ Carol said, leading him towards a table in the corner of the room. Colin consulted the paper in his hand, dialled, and waited. There was no reply.

‘She must be out. Was she planning to come down here?’ he asked.

‘I’ve no idea,’ said Carol. Her expression hardened. ‘You could have got her number from Directory Enquiries,’ she said.

Her manner had subtly altered, and Colin’s did too.

‘Mrs. Bruce, where did you and your husband spend your summer holiday?’ he asked, and there was a steely note in his voice.

‘I don’t see what business it is of yours, Inspector, but we had no holiday this year,’ Carol said. ‘We were involved with buying this house in September, and we had no time nor any money to spare.’

‘I mentioned no particular month, Mrs. Bruce,’ said Colin. ‘Yet I believe you were in Greece this September, weren’t you?’ He had moved so that he stood between her and the open desk, and Patrick was now in front of the bookshelves. ‘I noticed a passport in your desk when you got your address book out just now. Do you mind if I look at it?’ Colin asked, and before she could stop him he took it out of a pigeon-hole and turned the pages. It was stamped clearly by the Greek authorities and showed she had arrived at Athens airport a week before Miss Amelia Brinton died, and left on the day following her death.

‘I—I
had to go to Mykonos for a few days, to write an article about a painter who lives there,’ Carol said. ‘My husband was away on business then, himself.’

Was he, indeed? thought Patrick grimly. Ellen had been away too, when her great-aunt died.

But Colin was continuing smoothly.

‘You spent some time in Athens,’ he stated.

‘I flew in there, yes. Then I went on by boat, from Piraeus.’

‘You visited the archaeological sites in Athens, I think,’ said Patrick. ‘And you took your Benn’s
Blue Guide of Athens and Environs
with you.’ He reached up and took the volume he had named from the shelf beside him. ‘I think you’ll find page 29 is missing.’ He handed the book to Colin who opened it and confirmed this fact. Patrick then took out his wallet, and from it removed the page he had found, weeks before, on the hill of the Acropolis of Athens.

‘What a coincidence,’ he said. ‘I found this page near the spot where Miss Amelia Brinton was standing before she fell to her death down the steps of the Acropolis. She was pushed,’ he added, looking up and surveying Carol in the manner in which he habitually addressed his students, ‘by what looked like a youth, hurrying by.’ He handed Colin the piece of paper, and the policeman placed it in the book. It had been unevenly torn, and the paper matched.

‘It fits,’ cried Colin, like Dandini with the glass slipper.

‘My discovery of this piece of paper was witnessed by the Greek police,’ Patrick went on. ‘And a photostat copy was made. There were prints on it.’

Carol was staring at them. She seemed stunned and her expression was dazed. She had spoken the truth when she said she had taken nembutal, Patrick realised; she wanted to be found genuinely asleep, if anyone had come to arouse her. Besides, all along she had acted out her fantasies, even to the extent of making herself sick with laburnum seeds which could have killed her, since it was difficult to say how many would be fatal. A grisly form of Russian roulette. He pressed on.

‘You were dressed in jeans, and you wore a wig that made you look like a long-haired youth,’ he said. ‘I expect we’ll find it somewhere in this house. You’ve used it again, haven’t you? You followed Miss Brinton for days, knowing that she would go up to the Acropolis, or to one of the other sites, looking for a chance to jostle her and make her fall. You may have tried before, or failed because she didn’t stand in a suitable place, or there were too many people about. You knew that at her age she might not need to fall far; shock and a few broken bones would probably prove fatal. But she broke her neck, and she could never say that someone had pushed her.’

Carol still seemed transfixed. Soon she would start to recover, protest, defend herself. Patrick’s voice went remorselessly on.

‘You wore your disguise again when you killed Miss Forrest,’ he said. ‘You knew she had recognised you when you found a bunch of flowers outside your house and realised, as you soon did after you met Valerie Brinton, that they had come from the garden of Mulberry Cottage. You heard in the village that Miss Forrest had been staying there. And then you remembered signing a copy of Cicero’s
Orations,
volume five, when you were a pupil at Slade House. So you looked for the book. You didn’t want anyone to remember Clarissa Daniels.’

At this, Carol did start slightly. Colin nodded to Patrick to go on.

‘The girls of Slade House School gave Miss Brinton an Oxford edition of Cicero, unaware that she already owned the Teubner. All the volumes were signed by the donors. You couldn’t find the incriminating volume because, after she recognised you, Miss Forrest took it away. You followed her, as you’d followed Miss Brinton, looking for a chance to push her in front of a bus or a train, perhaps. In fact, you chose stairs again. You knew her heart was weak. No one noticed you in the British Museum in your disguise. They’re used to long-haired youths.’

At last Carol spoke.

‘You must be mad!’ she cried. ‘Inspector, I don’t have to listen to this! Why should I kill two harmless old ladies?’

‘They weren’t harmless where Clarissa Daniels was concerned. They knew about her career at Slade House, and that she’d been in prison later,’ Patrick said.

‘We’ve traced your record, Mrs. Bruce,’ Colin said.

‘So you’ve been in prison, have you, Carol?’ said a voice from the doorway. ‘What else have I to learn about you?’

All three of them turned at this interruption. David, very pale, with a bandage round his head, stood looking at them.

‘David! But you’re—’ Carol’s voice trailed off.

‘Dead, you thought. Well, I’m not, despite your efforts, and nor is Ellen,’ David said. He advanced into the room, his eyes fixed on his wife’s face. ‘I worked that part out in the night. You killed Madge, God knows why, and you meant to kill Ellen and me. I’ve come to see that you don’t get away with it.’

He looked at Colin, and a dim memory of the night before came to him.

‘You’re a policeman, aren’t you?’ he said. ‘Well, then, you’d better know that my wife’s car was parked in the lane beyond the village, near the church, yesterday afternoon. I came back that way with Ellen. Most people come to the village by the other road. I suppose she was up in the belfry then, waiting for Madge. Why Madge?’

Carol took a step towards him.

‘I’m not afraid of you now, Carol,’ he said. ‘I suppose you came back by the main road later. By then I’d put the car away and locked it up, and I was at Mulberry Cottage with Ellen. I didn’t care anymore. I’d decided to leave you.’ He looked at her with loathing. ‘You didn’t have to kill us. I’d have given you plenty of money, just to be rid of you.’

He stopped and looked at Colin.

‘I’ve been in the hall, listening. Did she really kill Miss Brinton and Miss Forrest?’ he asked.

‘We have reason to believe she may have been concerned, yes,’ said Colin, the cautious policeman. ‘Please go on about last night, Mr. Bruce. What happened at the cottage?’

‘We – Ellen and I – didn’t know about Madge – not till this morning. The cottage must have seemed empty to the police – we heard knocking, but we didn’t pay any attention.’

The implications of this were not lost on Patrick, but after all, he had known it already. He concentrated on what the other man was saying. Clearly, David Bruce did not yet know the full story of all Carol had done.

‘Ellen and I decided to have it out with Carol last night,’ he told the other two men. ‘We asked her to come down for coffee and said we wanted to talk to her. She must have doped our coffee. She did it very cleverly, and she must have given us a lot of the stuff, we went off very quickly. We’d scarcely begun our discussion.’

Carol spoke at last, and her voice was high.

‘You’re mad, David. I can see you’ve had some sort of accident, and it’s affected your mind.’

‘It’s brought me to my senses, you mean,’ said David. ‘I was mad when I married you.’ He swayed slightly and reached out his hand for support. Colin went to him, and Patrick’s attention wavered from Carol. It gave her her chance. She rushed past them all through the door, and banged it behind her.

‘She won’t get far,’ said Colin. ‘Are you all right?’

‘Yes – sorry – I just felt a bit dizzy. I’ve been clonked on the head rather hard. Carol, I suppose.’ He said it without surprise.

‘How did you get out of hospital?’ Colin asked disapprovingly. There had been no police guard on him or Ellen; it hadn’t seemed necessary.

‘Slipped out when no one was looking,’ said David, with a sheepish air. ‘I came in a taxi.’ Then he looked grave. ‘I had to come and attend to this business. You realise that after Ellen and I passed out she carried Ellen upstairs and undressed her? I suppose I was too heavy for her, she must have meant to roast us side by side.’

They all heard, then, the sound of Carol’s car outside, and Patrick made a move for the door.

‘No – don’t stop her,’ David said. A most extraordinary look came over his face. ‘One other thing she and Valerie had in common, they both drive bloody fast,’ he added.

They heard the sound of the Lancia roaring into the lane; they heard the screaming brakes. Alone of them all, Carol did not know that a fire-engine blocked the way outside Mulberry Cottage. Going much too fast to stop, she pulled over to squeeze past it, not caring if she ripped the wing of her car against the hedge. Almost in the ditch, scraping by, she saw a red mini coming towards her.

Because there was one person in her life whom she genuinely loved, Carol pulled over still more to the side. She missed the mini, but her own car left the road and burst into the field beyond, bounced over once, and struck a tree.

She was still conscious when they took her out of the wreckage of the car, but she died before the ambulance arrived, without uttering a word. All that she did was to look at David with an expression of contempt on her face, and then turn her head to where Valerie was standing. The other woman, quite unhurt, dropped on to her knees beside Carol and took her hand; Carol smiled at her, then she closed her eyes and it was over.

It was Colin who took off his coat and covered the body. Patrick’s mind flew back to Athens and that other body on the steps of the Acropolis, with which it had all begun, and he felt a sort of pity until he thought of Ellen and how nearly she had been another victim.

‘What has been going on?’ asked Valerie. She seemed perfectly composed, just very pale. ‘I heard that Madge Bradshaw is dead – and David, you’ve hurt your head.’ She frowned at him. ‘Why was Carol dashing off like that? And the cottage . . .’

She knew nothing. Someone would have to tell her the whole story, beginning in Athens. Or need they? Patrick, suddenly feeling a great weariness, looked at Colin.

‘If you’d just tell me where I can find you during the day, Miss Brinton,’ the policeman was saying. ‘You’ve friends in the village, I expect, where you could go? Your niece is quite all right, just a bit shocked by the fire.’

‘Ellen was here? In the co’Yes, but she’s all right,’ Colin repeated.

In the end, Patrick took Valerie to the Kents’ house, where she agreed to remain until the police said she might leave the village. As he left, she was springing into action, demanding to telephone first the hospital about Ellen and then her insurance company.

Would-be sightseers, coming to gaze at the scene of the fire, found the end of the lane cordoned off by the police, and news of Carol’s fatal accident soon travelled round the village. This would sound the final knell for the reputation of Abbot’s Lodge, thought Patrick grimly, and wished that it, too, might burn down.