Stiff News (5 page)

For instance, to her certain knowledge Miss Henrietta Bentley, who was still toying with the last of her salad, had already put away two glasses of champagne and one and a half of a good white wine carefully chosen by the Cellar Committee.

Miss Bentley, quite unaware that it was she who was delaying the proceedings, was bending an ear towards little Mrs McBeath.

‘I just don't think it's quite nice, that's all,' said Mrs McBeath, greatly daring.

‘It's a very fine wine,' said Miss Bentley, draining her glass appreciatively – but not alas attending to her plate. ‘An Australian Chardonnay, unless I'm very much mistaken.' The Manor's Cellar Committee had recently ventured out of France and into another hemisphere.

‘Not the wine. I meant,' twittered Mrs McBeath, ‘our having this luncheon with poor Mrs Powell not yet in her grave.'

‘Thrift, thrift, Horatio,' boomed Miss Bentley, daughter of a First World War general and in her day the headmistress of a famous girls' school run on strictly military lines.

Little Mrs McBeath, who didn't recognize the quotation, shied nervously away. Fearful that the formidable Miss Bentley might be expecting a suitable response, she scuttled across the dining room and happened to fetch up alongside Mrs Maisie Carruthers, who was being closely questioned by Clarissa Powell.

‘What was Granny really like?' asked that young woman with every appearance of genuine earnestness. ‘That's what we want to know.'

Mrs Carruthers considered this carefully, searching for an epithet that was both truthful and suitable for a member of the deceased's family who was of tender years. ‘Fun,' she said at last, suppressing all mention of a certain occasion in wartime Cairo. That had been the evening when Gertie had set out to respond to a bet and prove that Egyptians weren't the only girls who could belly dance. ‘Your grandmother was always fun.'

Maisie's son, Ned, would scarcely have recognized her as the shrivelled little old lady he'd last seen languishing in the hospital. Clutching an elegant ebony-handled cane, and dressed in her best, Maisie Carruthers' whole appearance now projected a lively interest in the world.

‘In what way exactly?' persisted Clarissa, misguidedly imagining that fun then was so very different from fun now. ‘Do tell me.'

‘Cheerful,' hedged Maisie Carruthers. ‘She never let things get her down did Gertie.' She herself was feeling remarkably bobbish just now especially as, wise in her generation, Matron had sent in the hairdresser that very morning.

‘What things?'

Here Maisie Carruthers became vague. ‘Oh, husbands and that sort of thing.'

‘Tell me more,' commanded Clarissa as the diminutive Mrs McBeath decided to leave them both in favour of a less hectic conversation with the Rector.

Across the room Clarissa's sister, Amanda, was chatting up Brigadier MacIver. He was giving her a man's view of the deceased. ‘Your dear grandmother was a great character, my dear. And a sad loss to us all at the Manor…'

‘Do tell me all about her,' pleaded Amanda. ‘Please.'

‘Just as the Regiment was diminished all those years ago by the death of her husband in action,' said the Brigadier sonorously.

‘Which husband?' asked Amanda, every bit as forthright as her sister.

‘Her first.'

‘Did they have any children? I mean, has Daddy got stepbrothers and sisters that we don't know about?' She pulled her face down in a grimace. ‘The parents won't ever talk about granny's past.'

‘Quite, quite,' coughed the Brigadier. ‘No, she and Donald Tulloch didn't have any children. No time. Not then. There was a war on, you see.'

‘And her second husband?'

The Brigadier plunged his face into his wine glass and mumbled, ‘Never mentioned.'

‘How romantic.'

‘Probably not,' said the old soldier.

‘Any children that time round?'

‘She never said. Not one to talk, Gertie,' said Hamish MacIver. In fact, Gertie had always been famously discreet in some matters as well as at one and the same time being famously indiscreet about others, but he saw no reason to tell her granddaughter this.

Amanda sighed. ‘Then there was Tertius, I suppose.'

‘Who?'

‘Her third husband. Tertius means third,' she explained kindly. ‘Latin and all that. My grandfather.'

‘Ah, yes, of course,' he said. ‘Hubert Powell.'

‘And they had poor old dull Daddy…'

The Brigadier assented to this with a little bow but without comment.

‘How unromantic,' said Amanda.

Privately the Brigadier agreed with her. There was precious little of Gertie in her son Lionel. ‘We don't choose our parents, m'dear. Just have to make the best of those we get.'

‘It's not easy,' said Amanda frankly, looking towards the window, where her own father and mother were standing as much apart from the residents as they decently could. The Reverend Adrian Brailsford, noting their isolation and at the same time seeing an opportunity of shaking off Mrs Morag McBeath, had set off in their direction.

‘No,' agreed the Brigadier.

‘And what happens now?' asked Amanda with all the impatience of youth.

The Brigadier said he was blessed if he really knew. ‘I expect,' he murmured without thinking, ‘they'll just keep everything on ice for a bit.'

‘I bet Daddy loses his cool, though,' forecast Amanda, not sounding at all daunted at the prospect.

*   *   *

‘Taking their time, aren't they?' complained Hazel Finch in the kitchen. She'd finished her ham and was sitting back in her chair, looking round expectantly.

‘You wait until you're the Judge's age, my girl,' said Lisa Haines warmly, ‘and you won't be bolting your food either.' She turned to Detective Inspector Sloan. ‘Ninety, he is and all his own teeth still.'

Detective Inspector Sloan, who had long since ceased to marvel at anything – anything at all – in the human condition save man's inhumanity to man, duly expressed wonderment.

‘He's always slow,' said the cook, ‘and that Miss Bentley will talk and not eat.'

‘How come a judge gets to come here?' asked Sloan. ‘Was he in the Fearnshires, too?' Privately he resolved to have a quiet word with Judge whoever he was and find out if he had kept all his marbles as well as his teeth.

‘He was an army judge,' said the cook, disappearing into the larder and emerging with two large bowls of chocolate mousse. She set them down on the sideboard and went back for two decorated trifles. ‘There, I'm ready when they are.'

Hazel Finch followed the progress of the desserts across the room with her eyes like a hungry child. ‘Look lovely, don't they?'

‘The first bite is with the eye,' said the cook knowledgeably. ‘There's a
tarte aux pommes
as well but if I know anything they won't touch it.'

Detective Inspector Sloan, always ready to enlarge his store of esoteric information, crime having no boundaries – no boundaries at all – enquired with genuine interest, ‘Why a tart at all if they won't eat it?'

‘So they know there's more. That way they'll finish the mousse and the trifle without worrying.' She jerked a shoulder in the direction of the dining room. ‘Brought up to leave something for Mr Manners, most of 'em.'

Sloan, who had been brought up by an economical mother to eat everything that was put in front of him and by a police training to take every opportunity of assessing a situation from all angles, offered to give the cook a hand with taking the puddings through to the dining room when the time came.

Hazel Finch was worrying about something quite different. ‘I don't like that French apple tart.'

‘I've kept a trifle back,' remarked the cook to no one in particular, adding enigmatically, ‘Better safe than sorry.'

‘Makes a lot of extra, doesn't it?' said Sloan, anxious to get the conversation back to the late Mrs Powell. ‘An occasion like this coming out of the blue…'

Lisa Haines shook her head. ‘We're used to it. There was the funeral luncheon for Mrs Chalmers-Hyde last month.'

‘I don't miss her,' said Hazel. ‘Not like I shall miss Mrs Powell.'

‘And then we had a big party the other week, Inspector,' said the cook. ‘For the Judge's ninetieth.'

‘Ever so excited everyone was, about that,' contributed Hazel, the supply of her next course now safely assured.

‘And his birthday surprise really knocked him sideways, I can tell you,' chimed in the cook. ‘I saw his face and he was shaken rigid.'

At which moment the bell marked ‘dining room' jangled on the board.

*   *   *

Muriel Peden was still keeping her eye on the serving of food. She noted with relief that, at long last, without anyone on hand to talk to, Miss Bentley had swallowed the remainder of her salad. The old lady then sat back and surveyed the splendid oak-panelled dining room with a beady eye. Looking round she saw only Matron within earshot, which was perhaps just as well.

‘What's she doing here?' Miss Bentley demanded, pointing her stick in the direction of Walter Bryant, round whose wheelchair a visitor – Miss Margot Ritchie – was now fluttering like an anxious butterfly. ‘Mark my words, Matron, before you can say “knife” it'll be another case of “the funeral baked meats coldly furnishing the marriage feast”.' She sniffed loudly. ‘And we all know what became of Hamlet's mother, don't we?'

Since Muriel Peden had no satisfactory response to this she simply opened her hands in a gesture of agreement with the validity of the quotation.

‘No better than she ought to be,' declared Miss Bentley uncompromisingly.

‘Mr Bryant may invite anyone whom he wishes to the Manor,' murmured the Matron.

‘It isn't his funeral,' said Miss Bentley ineluctably.

‘Miss Ritchie was at the service, too,' she pointed out weakly.

Miss Bentley exploded. ‘She didn't even know Mrs Powell like we did.'

‘As a friend of Mr Bryant's…'

‘That's one way of describing her,' said the old headmistress darkly. ‘Wait until his daughters get to know she's been here again.'

Muriel Peden sighed. She knew exactly what it was that Walter Bryant's two daughters were afraid of … their father's getting married again.

‘If you ask me,' said Miss Bentley, ‘that woman's well and truly got her claws into him.'

‘She did send some flowers to the Manor for after the funeral.' The Matron pointed to a display of red and white roses, quite eye-catching against the dark linenfold panelling of the ancient dining room.

‘You shouldn't have let them put them in here,' said Miss Bentley, scarcely turning her head. ‘Most unsuitable.'

‘Why not?' protested Muriel Peden.

‘Red and white,' she said sternly.

‘But…'

‘Blood and bandages.' Miss Bentley sniffed. ‘Those flowers are in even worse taste than one of Morag McBeath's stitchings.'

‘Embroidery,' Muriel Peden corrected her. ‘And very nice it is, too. Mrs McBeath is very skilled with her needle.'

Miss Bentley uttered something perilously close to a snort and then waved her stick in another direction. ‘Are those two young girls Gertie's granddaughters? Because if so, you'd better divert the Judge's attention. He hasn't taken his eyes off them yet and he looks to me as if he's getting thoroughly overexcited.' She brought her walking stick back to the carpet with a bang. ‘Which is more than can be said for Captain Markyate. Ever.'

‘You'll have to excuse me, Miss Bentley.' Matron took a deep breath and reminded herself for the hundredth time of the generation gap between herself and her charges. ‘I must ring for the next course. Everyone's ready now.'

‘Goody, goody,' said Amanda Powell when it came. ‘I simply adore chocolate mousse.' She looked solemnly up at the Brigadier. ‘They say chocolate gives you spots but it doesn't.'

‘Of course not,' said that old soldier gallantly.

‘They only say that,' said Amanda matter-of-factly, ‘because actually chocolate helps love along.'

‘Really?' he said. There was clearly more of Gertie in the girl than he'd given her credit for.

‘And so naturally they don't want you to have any.' There was no doubt about who ‘they' were in this context. Involuntarily Amanda's glance had swung in the direction of the window embrasure where, still slightly apart from the throng of residents, Lionel and Julia Powell were engaged in stilted conversation with the Rector.

‘Shame,' twinkled the Brigadier to Amanda, beginning to enjoy himself at long last.

‘Do you know,' she asked ingenuously, ‘what the name Amanda stands for?'

He bent forward. ‘Tell me.'

‘Love.'

‘You don't say…'

‘They said Granny was very pleased when she was told that was what I was to be called.'

‘She knew all about love,' said Hamish MacIver gruffly. ‘Almost too much, you might say.'

‘I didn't think anyone could know too much about love,' said a wide-eyed Amanda.

‘Didn't you, m'dear? Well, take it from an old soldier that you can.'

‘Oh, do tell me!' Amanda advanced a little nearer to the Brigadier and lowered her voice into an mellifluous gurgle. ‘You sound like One Who Knows…'

It had been no part of Detective Inspector Sloan's plans to intrude upon the Manor's dining-room party at this stage but an old-fashioned courtesy as well as downright police curiosity demanded that he open the door for Lisa Haines, burdened as she was with a tray of bowls of dessert reinforcements. First he saw nothing but a sociable gathering but then he noticed an abrupt change in the room's atmosphere.

He sensed rather than saw a sudden stillness descend upon the room's occupants. At the same time a silence fell, broken only by a woman fussing round the rugs of a man in a wheelchair. Sloan was aware, though, that the only other movement came from those who fell back slightly to clear the way for a woman clutching an elegant ebony-handled cane as she advanced upon a distinguished-looking elderly man apparently deep in conversation with a pretty young girl. It was, he felt, as if everyone else there was holding their collective breath while a confrontation took place.