Murder At Wittenham Park (10 page)

“Do you know if he drank it?” Savage asked quietly, wondering why Hamish had spoken so unctuously about “poor old George.”

“Of course I don't know, darling,” Priscilla said cheerfully, glad to have got the secret off her chest. “It was just a joke. Jay-oh-kay-eee. I was lucky to get out of his room unraped, though, I can tell you that.” She paused. “Oh, my head!”

“Where did you leave the cocoa?” Jim asked.

“On the table by his bed. That was where I went wrong. One should never go near a bed with a man like that around, should one?” She addressed the question to them all. “He put down his whisky and grabbed me; at least he tried to.”

“Frankly,” Hamish cut in, “I find this unnecessary and distasteful. Please excuse me.” He got up and was leaving the room when Dulcie and the doctor came back, forcing him to stay.

“We have a problem,” Dulcie told him curtly, then marched accusingly up to Gilroy. “The contract isn't there. Someone's taken it.”

“Can't help you, I'm afraid. I certainly haven't.”

Jim watched the peer's face carefully as this exchange took place and decided that Gilroy was a lot less relaxed than he was trying to sound. But it was none of his business to ask what the contract was connected with, though he could now suppose that it was what Welch had been reading in bed.

“Well, someone must have it,” Dulcie insisted. “And if George did sign, then it's binding even though he's dead.”

Gilroy shrugged his shoulders, but his face had paled. He could not let all these people guess what turmoil his mind was in. He should have listened to Dee Dee. He'd been a fool to agree to anything last night, when this lawyer woman had run rings around him. Furthermore, he was beginning to think that Hamish's interventions at dinner about Lloyds had been a put-up job. He scowled distractedly at Hamish, in much the same way as Adam must have given the eye to the serpent, and to his surprise the serpent reacted.

“As I said before, I find the tone of this discussion most offensive, and since the purpose of the weekend has clearly been destroyed, I propose to pack and leave.”

“Not very sensible to do that until the police are here,” Thompson remarked, tempted to exercise authority he did not have by ordering this curiously unpleasant man to remain where he was.

“That is only your opinion,” Hamish replied coldly. He turned to Dulcie. “Are you coming, darling?”

Dulcie hesitated. She was not a criminal lawyer, but it was obvious that Thompson was right. The police would want to question everyone, even before the cause of Welch's death was known. “I'll come in a moment,” she said. This time Hamish did leave the room.

“Well, I think Hamish is right,” Loredana said. “The weekend's over, isn't it, Lord Gilroy?”

“Not if you don't want it to be.” Gilroy's fears about refunds surfaced again. “Everything's geared up until Sunday evening.” He took a chance and added, “Perhaps out of respect for the dead we ought to abandon the play-acting.”

A murmur of horror came from Priscilla. The next thing she knew Gilroy would kick her out and her miserable fee would shrivel into nothing.

“But darlings, it's perfectly lovely here. Why on earth leave just because…” She cut herself short in the nick of time, having been about to say, “… because a dirty old man's kicked the bucket.”

“Well, I don't want to stay if everyone else is going,” Loredana said, making it rather too clear that for her only Hamish counted.

“Aren't you going to wait for Trevor?” Dulcie asked.

“Why should I, when he's so late?”

As Loredana stalked out of the library they all heard the scrunch of tyres on the gravel outside. The police had arrived. Dodgson excused himself and hurried through to the hall to let them in.

The police consisted of a young uniformed constable in a small car emblazoned with chequered flashes and the insignia of the Thames Valley Police. Twenty minutes later, having been shown the corpse and having talked briefly with Dr. Thompson, he demanded that everyone should remain in the house until the cause of George Welch's death had been established.

“I'm sure there's nothing untoward, sir,” he said to Gilroy, “but we have our procedures.”

Jim Savage nudged his daughter. “Lucky I haven't got a job to get back to!”

“You may not, Daddy, but I do.” A note of resentment came into her voice, which her father knew only too well. As a tiny girl she had gone into fits of the sulks and she had never completely grown out of it.

Jim leaned over and whispered in her ear and Jemma's face brightened. “I hadn't thought of that,” she said. “D'you really think so?”

“I'd bet on it. There's hardly a person here who didn't have something against Welch.”

6

P
OLICE
Constable Rutherford was puzzled. The police were required to “attend” any sudden death, unless a doctor had been expecting it for three days. The officer then had to compile a detailed report for the coroner, from the date of birth to the time of death. Rutherford had only done this twice before and was being doggedly methodical. But every police officer is at heart a detective, so he was puzzled because Dr. Thompson himself seemed to be.

They were in Welch's room, looking at Welch's inert body, still propped up on the pillows.

“What do you estimate the time of death was, sir?” Rutherford asked, scanning the check-list the sergeant had given him before he came.

“Between seven-fifteen and eight
A.M
. The body was still slightly warm when I first got here.”

“What about the cause of death?”

“That'll need a post-mortem.” Thompson frowned. “Since there's no visible cause, it's most likely to be one of two things. A cardiac arrest, due either to a heart attack or a brain haemorrhage, or a cerebral thrombosis.”

“A stroke, sir?”

“Exactly.”

“If he was conscious for long enough he'd have tried to shout for help.” Thompson looked again at the relaxed expression on Welch's rubicund face. The pupils of his eyes were narrowed, which could be the effect of a drug, but they usually did become smaller at death. Whatever had overtaken the man must have done so in seconds. A heart attack was the most common reason for sudden death among middle-aged men. But …

“Except, sir?” A query had been implicit in Thompson's tone.

“Except that heart attacks are not usually instantaneously fatal and his wife says she never knew he had heart problems. There are nearly always early warning signs, like chest pains. Most wives would have known. They're well aware of health risks these days. And,” he added breezily, “most wives of rich middle-aged men make damn sure their husbands go for medical check-ups. If they're interested in keeping them alive, that is.”

“Yes, sir,” Rutherford said dutifully, but sharing the doctor's puzzlement, because he had thought of something else. “They usually share a room with their husbands, too.”

“She told me that the way this weekend was organized made that impossible.”

“Sounds odd, sir.”

“Apparently this was a murder weekend.”

At this point Rutherford began to feel confused as well as puzzled. He was twenty-three years old and anxious to do everything by the book. But his training to date had not encompassed murder weekends.

“What exactly is that, sir?” he asked.

“A gimmick to promote the stately home, I imagine. You'd better ask Lord Gilroy. Now, have you a camera?”

“No, sir.”

“Damn.” Thompson couldn't really blame the constable for not having one. But he wanted a photographic record of exactly how the body was positioned, which meant he would have to move it as little as possible while doing a further examination to satisfy himself that he had missed nothing external. “Well,” he said, “I'm going to take the rectal temperature and a blood sample.” He began ferreting in his black bag, while the constable went downstairs in search of Lord Gilroy.

In the study Gilroy and Dee Dee were discussing what to do next. Adrienne had recovered sufficiently to join the Savages in the library. The rest were all in their rooms packing.

“How the hell do we entertain them if they insist on staying for the rest of the weekend?” Gilroy moaned.

“We certainly can't keep a ‘murder' hunt going,” Dee Dee agreed. “Not with a real corpse upstairs.”

“And they can't just eat and drink all day.”

“That they cannot,” Dee Dee said with emphasis. “Not on our budget.”

“I could show them round the estate this afternoon.”

“And bore the pants off them about being paid by Europe not to farm? Much better take them down to Blenheim Palace for the afternoon. But I don't think they will stay. That lawyer isn't one to waste her time, and as for the fish-faced Hamish, he's almost as much of a pain as Welch was. I've a feeling his wife found him out last night.”

“Why?”

“She wasn't fooled by his pretending he'd been in the kitchen getting coffee. Nor was I. He's the sort who phones for room service if the bedcover's crooked.”

“Our rooms don't have phones, darling.”

“Then ring the bell till someone comes,” Dee said irritably. “You know perfectly well what I mean.”

There was a knock on the door and Rutherford entered. He didn't hold aristocrats in much esteem, not when they kept selling their private lives to magazines, and he wasn't going to address Gilroy as “my lord.” He stood very upright in his summer uniform of white short-sleeved shirt and dark-blue trousers, handcuffs hanging from his belt, and declined to sit down.

“There's a question I'd like to ask,” he said, compromising his integrity slightly by adding, “sir.”

“Fire away.” Gilroy said amiably, glad to be off the subject of entertaining the guests.

“What was your murder weekend all about?”

Gilroy explained somewhat inadequately, leading Dee Dee to cut in. “Notionally Mr. Welch was involved in poisoning his sister. We gave out clues the night before and at seven-thirty this morning. Mrs. Sketchley—whom I played—was found dead by the maid. Her screams woke the whole household.”

Rutherford thought about this. He might be young and inexperienced, but he was not stupid.

“So there were a lot of people around at that time.”

“Everyone, except for my husband and, of course, Mr. Welch.”

“If the deceased had shouted out, would someone have heard him?”

Dee Dee considered this. “I think so. Yes. We were all in the passage close to his door. Of course, there was a lot of chattering. But I think someone would have heard.”

“No one thought of waking him?”

“The seven-thirty scene was strictly make-believe. Mr. Welch wasn't much interested in play-acting.”

“Then why was he here?”

“Wanted to buy some land off me,” Gilroy said shortly. “Signing on for the weekend gave him a good chance to haggle.”

“I see,” Rutherford said, deciding there was definitely more to all this than he knew. “And where would I find Mrs. Welch?”

“In the library, most likely. I'll show you.” Gilroy led him out into the hall and indicated the library door.

Inside the library Jim and Jemma Savage were patiently listening to Adrienne Welch unburdening her soul on the subject of her husband.

“People didn't like George,” she was saying, “I know that. Property isn't a very nice business. He had his enemies. But he was a good husband to me.”

“Private faces are often very different to public ones,” Jim said soothingly, remembering fraud rumours about Welch of a few years ago. “Some men can be angels to their families and devils to everyone else.”

“That's right. You understand. You reely do understand.” Adrienne's gratitude for this sympathy began to overflow into tears, and Jemma, who was sitting next to her on a sofa, put an arm round her shoulders. Adrienne pulled some tissues out of her bag and dabbed at her eyes. “Well, he's out of all that now.” She indulged in another brief session with the tissues. “You should have heard how rude Lord Gilroy was to George. She was bad enough at dinner, but him! You'd have thought we was something the cat brought in.”

“Was he doing business with the Gilroys?” Jemma prompted.

“It was supposed to be a secret. Well, it never could have been, reely. They needed cash and George needed land. The trouble was they didn't want to sell the bit we wanted.”

“It's often the way.” Jim nodded. “Did they agree in the end?”

“I don't know,” Adrienne said helplessly. “Not when I was with them. But I think that lawyer of his persuaded them. It'll be terrible if they did, because where'd I find the money? Like that woman said, it'd be legal even though he is dead. But I don't know where the contract even is.”

“Wouldn't his company buy the land?” Jim asked innocently, knowing that Welch had probably been a one-man band.

“He was the company!” Adrienne confirmed. “He could go to the bank with a deal and they'd give him loans. None of the other directors counted for a row of beans.”

“So it could affect you personally?”

“It oughtn't to. I'm just worried that it might.” A note of pride came into her voice. “George left me provided for, praise the Lord. Very nicely provided for. Life insurance.” She smiled weakly, cheered up by this golden lining to the cloud of death. “Oh no, I'll be all right, just so long as no one lands any debts on my doorstep.”

Jim was re-assuring her that her own assets could not be touched by her husband's creditors when Rutherford swung open the double doors and marched in.

Even to a cynic about the aristocracy, the Gothic library was impressive. Gloomily impressive, it was true, as if the architect had been dreaming of the ultimate in funeral parlours. But the high ranges of mahogany bookshelves lining the walls, the heavy tables and the high-backed sofas made it inconceivable to think of this as a mere information-retrieval system. Rutherford was momentarily stopped in his tracks. Then he spotted the three people sitting at the far end of the room and advanced on them.