Chapter Four
Inspector Benjamin Ross
MORRIS AND I had no difficulty in obtaining directions to The Cedars, as the Benedict house was named. The stationmaster at Egham knew the name and the owners and was only too pleased to direct us; but explained the house was not in the town.
‘It’s right up the top of the hill, just before the village of Englefield Green. A steep climb that will take you the better part of half an hour, gentlemen. You had best find some conveyance.’
‘Where from?’ growled Morris.
‘Billy Cooper will be outside with his trap,’ said the stationmaster, ‘if you move quickly, that is. He’s always in demand.’
We were in luck. Waiting outside the station we found a pony and trap awaiting business in the yard. We hailed its driver seconds ahead of a stout gentleman with a large portmanteau. The stout gentleman made his displeasure clear, but I assured him that we were on official business, and Mr Cooper promised he would be back within twenty minutes.
If the stationmaster were right and the climb a steep one, I thought that an optimistic forecast, even given a pony and trap. It didn’t console the stout gentleman, who was still shouting after us as we rolled out of the station yard.
‘Outrageous! I shall write to my member of parliament, sir! The police are supposed to be the servants of the public. They are not supposed to use their authority to commandeer all available hackney carriages!’
I didn’t doubt he would write to his MP, but I was happy enough that a murder inquiry took precedence over a portmanteau.
We clattered briskly through the small neat town and out into countryside where a signpost indicated we were on the road to Englefield Green. The surroundings were green and leafy and Morris observed that it must be a very nice place to live. The stationmaster was certainly correct in the steepness of the climb and it was lucky The Cedars was only about halfway up. I doubted the pony could have hauled us the entire way and we should have been obliged to get out and walk. But as it was, the driver set us down at the gates. We stood there, Morris and I, as the trap rolled away back down the hill to collect the stout gentleman (if he were still waiting). We surveyed the scene before us.
The house was a large one built, I guessed, around 1800. Its exterior was rendered in white stucco, giving it a slightly Italianate look. Manicured lawns surrounded it and there were indeed a pair of beautiful cedar trees, one on either side of the building.
‘Very nice,’ said Morris, even more convinced that we found ourselves in a most desirable part of the country.
We crunched across the gravel and saw, as we approached the front door, that this was a household in deepest mourning. All the curtains were drawn and a large bow of black silk ribbon adorned the doorknocker. Visiting the bereaved is always the worst part of the job. It is bad enough to lose a loved one, but to know that person has died as a result of a violent crime for which there is no apparent explanation, that seems almost random in its horror, must be the worst of all. Benedict would be in shock and grappling with his grief and here was I, come to quiz him about his wife and his marriage. I had to set aside my qualms, however. I was, as I had told the stout gentleman, on official business.
‘Off you go to find Cook, Morris!’
‘Yessir!’ said Morris, making for the back of the building.
I raised my hand to the black silk bow and tapped briskly.
After a few moments I heard a rattle from the other side of the door and it was opened by a red-eyed parlourmaid.
‘The master is not receiving, sir,’ she said, before I could speak.
I nodded sympathetically but said, ‘I’m sorry, but I must speak to him. You see I am Inspector Ross from Scotland Yard and it is my sad duty to discover the truth of what happened to your mistress.’
I could hardly say, ‘who killed her’, but that was what I meant and the girl knew it.
She burst into tears and dabbed them away with the corner of her starched pinafore. ‘Oh, sir, it’s such a dreadful thing! I’m sure none of us will ever get over it! Mrs Benedict was a lovely lady. All the staff loved her, me and Cook and Milly -’
‘Milly?’ I asked.
‘The housemaid, sir.’
‘That is all the staff? A cook and two maids?’
‘Oh no, sir, there is Mr Benedict’s valet and madam’s personal maid, Henderson. Then there’s the boot boy, of course, and the skivvy.’
‘What about outdoor staff?’ The gardens had appeared well tended.
‘There’s the gardener and his boy, and the groom . . . Oh, sir, you may ask
any
of them, they will all tell you they can’t believe what’s happened.’
‘Who is this, Parker?’ a woman’s voice asked sharply from within the hall. ‘What are you doing, standing there and gossiping?’
Parker turned bright red. ‘Beg pardon, Miss Marchwood, but it’s a police inspector, all the way from London, Scotland Yard, wanting to speak to the master.’
‘Mr Benedict is not receiving visitors,’ said the woman, whose form was still indistinct behind the girl, in the recesses of the dimly lit hall.
‘I told the gentleman—’ Parker began.
It was time for me to take control.
‘I am sorry to intrude at this very difficult time for the whole household, Miss Marchwood, but I am afraid I must insist. This is a murder inquiry.’
‘Ow – ow – ow . . .’ wailed Parker and abandoned us, fleeing into the house.
I was left face to face with Miss Marchwood and looked at her with some interest. This was the companion, then, who had travelled up to London with Allegra Benedict on a shopping expedition, and returned alone.
She was a woman in her early forties, plain to the point of ugliness, wearing a black silk dress in mourning for her late employer and a black lace veil, like a Spanish mantilla, over her mousy brown hair. She wore no jewellery but a string of jet mourning beads. The only touch of colour in her whole appearance was the gold-rimmed pince-nez clipped to the bridge of her large nose. Behind the lenses of the pince-nez, muddy brown eyes peered at me. So we studied one another and eventually Miss Marchwood spoke in the same clipped voice.
‘Then you had better come in. Mr Benedict is in his study. I will tell him you are here. But I should advise you that he is in a very bad state. If you could make your visit brief, it would be appreciated. Or perhaps you could come back another day?’
If Miss Marchwood thought Scotland Yard’s policy on an inspector’s daily expenses would allow me repeatedly to ride up and down the railway to Egham, in order to visit The Cedars, she was mistaken.
‘I understand and will be tactful,’ I said (not that the circumstances allowed for much tact), ‘but it’s important to get our investigation underway as speedily as possible. I should also like to speak to you, Miss Marchwood. I know you were companion to Mrs Benedict and were with her last Saturday.’
Behind the pince-nez her eyes blinked rapidly. But Miss Marchwood was not the sort to burst into tears. That kind of unseemly behaviour was left to the parlourmaid, Parker. Miss Marchwood, like all companions, had had plenty of opportunity to learn to control her feelings. My wife, Lizzie, although she had been companion to her Aunt Parry before our marriage, would never have turned into a Miss Marchwood. Lizzie has great difficulty in concealing her feelings and opinions.
As for Isabella Marchwood, with the death of Allegra Benedict she must now be out of a job. She would have to seek a new post and I wondered if Benedict would be willing to allow her to remain in the house until she found one. It must be painful for him even to see her and know that if only she had stayed with her employer, and not been parted from her by the fog . . . Did he blame Miss Marchwood for what had happened?
‘I was,’ the companion said briefly, in reply to my question. ‘Will you speak to me first or to Mr Benedict?’
‘I should perhaps see the owner of the house – and the bereaved husband – first.’
‘Then please wait here one moment.’
With a swish of silk skirts she turned and began to climb the staircase. Mr Benedict’s study was on the first floor, then, well away from disturbance from callers and household coming and goings.
I waited below, taking the opportunity to have a good look round. Everywhere I saw more signs of mourning. All pictures on the walls were veiled, as was a large mirror. I made bold to open a door and peer into what was obviously a drawing room. Again, windows curtained, pictures and mirrors veiled . . . even the legs of a grand piano had been decorously girded about with black silk skirts. No wonder the place was so dark.
But then I spotted a picture that wasn’t covered and went to investigate. It stood on the piano and was a photographic study of the deceased woman. In it she was dressed in white and appeared to be very young. She was posed against a classical pillar and some draperies and I was struck again by how beautiful she must have been in life. Before this photograph had been placed a single rose in a ruby-red glass vase. I picked up the heavy silver frame to look more closely and saw, stamped in gold across one corner of the picture, the words ‘Studio Podestà’ and beneath them ‘Venezia’.
‘Inspector?’
Miss Marchwood was back and stood by the door, watching me with undisguised disapproval. Well, policemen snooped. It’s what we’re good at. Nobody in the house would like it but they would have to get used to it.
‘Mr Benedict will see you. I’ll take you up to him.’
Benedict rose from a leather wing chair to greet me as I entered. The room, like the rest of the house, had been plunged into mourning but the window drapes had been pulled back sufficiently to admit a thin beam of light, bisecting it. As elsewhere, mirrors and windows had been veiled. But there was a single exception and it echoed that below. Above the mantelpiece hung a large oil portrait of Allegra, seated in some sort of garden. In it, as in the photograph on the grand piano downstairs, she looked very young. The background was of blue skies, bright sunshine and what appeared to be a trailing vine across a pergola. In this picture too she wore a white dress and nestling in her lap, higgledy-piggledy, were assorted flowers. The intention, I supposed, was to suggest the sitter had been gathering them.
‘My wife was a great beauty,’ Benedict said quietly.
I was embarrassed enough to show it. ‘I’m very sorry. I didn’t mean to ignore you or to stare so openly at the portrait. Mrs Benedict was, as you say, a very fine-looking lady . . . and all the other paintings in the house are covered.’
‘I could not order that one veiled,’ said Benedict in the same quiet voice, ‘it would be like burying her. I shall be doing that soon enough. Won’t you sit down, Inspector?’
He gestured towards a chair and sat down again himself in the winged chair from which he’d risen when I’d entered. His back was to the window and the shaft of light so that I couldn’t see him clearly. What little light there was fell on me, so that he had the advantage. I wondered if that had been intended. He seemed a slightly built figure, certainly some years older than his wife. As my eyes adjusted to the dim light, I saw that his hair was thinning. When he had stood up, I had noticed that he was of only medium height. I thought of the woman I had seen, still a beauty though disfigured by a dreadful death.
I opened my side of the conversation by extending my condolences. He received these in a lacklustre way. He did not care whether I sympathised with him or not. His own grief was sufficient.
‘Mrs Benedict was an Italian lady?’ I ventured next.
He inclined his head. ‘Yes. If you find there are a large number of paintings in this house, it is because I specialise in fine arts, Inspector, as you may already know. I have a gallery in Piccadilly, on the south side, near . . .’ He broke off, paused, and recommenced, ‘Near to the Piccadilly limits of the Green Park.’
‘Were you at your gallery on Saturday last?’
He shook his head. ‘No, I never go up to town at weekends. Most of my clients, you see, go down into the country on Friday night.’
‘To their country houses and estates?’
‘Yes,’ he said simply.
‘But the gallery is open on Saturdays?’
‘Yes, I have an excellent manager, George Angelis. He is there on a Saturday until six o’clock. The gallery is then closed until the following Tuesday.’
It did no business on a Monday, then. But, of course, the clients were returning to town from the country on Mondays. I took my notebook from my coat pocket and wrote in it that the gallery closed at six on Saturdays.
‘May I ask how you met your late wife, sir?’
He raised his eyebrows at what he obviously found an unexpected question. But he replied easily enough, ‘Of course. We met in Italy. I visit the Continent every year, looking for items of interest for the gallery. I also have a great love of the country. I first went there as a very young man, not much more than a boy. I was making the usual European tour, you know.’
