A New Lease of Death (15 page)

‘You see? Now if I’d been in your shoes that’s the first thing I’d have found out. He lives at Forby Hall. I suppose he fancies himself as the lord of the manor.’ He glanced at his father and said quickly, ‘Be all right if I have the car?’

‘I suppose so. What are you going to tell him, Charles? He might have you thrown out.’

‘I don’t think he will,’ Charles said thoughtfully. ‘I’ve found out a bit about him and it seems he’s mad keen on publicity. Always trying to create an image.’ He hesitated, then added boldly, ‘I told him I was the top features man on the
Sunday Planet
and we were doing a series on tycoons. Rather good, don’t you think?’

‘It doesn’t happen to be true,’ said Archery.

Charles said rapidly, ‘The end justifies the means. I thought I could put across a line about his early life being dogged by misfortune, father dying, grandmother murdered, no prospects – that sort of thing. And look at him now. You never know what will come out. He’s supposed to be very forthcoming to the Press.’

‘We’d better go and get the car out.’

It was as hot as ever, but more sultry. A thin mist covered the sun. Charles wore an open necked white shirt and rather tapering trousers. Archery thought he looked like a Regency duellist.

‘You won’t want to start yet,’ he said. ‘Forby’s only about four miles away. Would you like to look round the place?’

They walked up the High Street and over the Kingsbrook bridge. Archery was proud to have his son beside him. He knew they were very much alike but he didn’t for a moment deceive himself they might be taken for brothers. The heavy muggy weather had brought on a twinge of lumbago and today he had utterly forgotten what it felt like to be twenty-one.

‘You’re reading English,’ he said to Charles. ‘Tell me where this comes from.’ His memory hadn’t begun to fail, at any rate. He was word perfect in the little verse.

‘“Go, Shepherd, to your rest;

Your tale is told.

The lamb of God takes

Shepherds to his fold.”’

Charles shrugged. ‘Sounds vaguely familiar, but I can’t place it. Where did you see it?’

‘On a gravestone in Formby churchyard.’

‘You really are the end, Father. I thought you wanted to help me and Tess and all you’ve been doing is messing about in cemeteries.’

Archery controlled himself with difficulty. If Charles was going to take everything into his own hands there seemed no reason why he shouldn’t just go back to Thringford. There was nothing to keep him in Kingsmarkham. He wondered why the prospect of returning to the vicarage seemed ineffably dull. Suddenly he stopped and nudged his son’s arm.

‘What’s the matter?’

‘That woman outside the butcher’s, the one in the cape – it’s that Mrs Crilling I told you about. I’d rather not come face to face with her.’

But it was too late. She had evidently seen them already, for with her cape flying, she came bearing down upon them like a galleon.

‘Mr Archery! My dear friend!’ She took both his hands in hers and swung them as if she were about to partner him in an eightsome reel. ‘What a lovely surprise! I was only saying to my daughter this morning, I do hope I shall see that dear man again so that I can thank him for ministering to me in my wretched affliction.’

This was a new mood. She was like a dowager at a successful garden party. The cape was familiar but the dress she wore under it was an ordinary cotton frock, simple and dowdy, somewhat splashed with gravy stains on its front. She gave a broad, calm and gracious smile.

‘This is my son, Charles,’ Archery muttered. ‘Charles, this is Mrs Crilling.’

To his surprise Charles took the outstretched, none-too-clean hand and half-bowed over it.

‘How do you do?’ Over her head he gave his father an angry glance. ‘I’ve heard so much about you.’

‘Nice things, I hope.’ If it occurred to her that Archery had seen nothing nice about her to relate she gave no sign of it. She was quite sane, gay, even frivolous. ‘Now, don’t refuse to gratify my little whim. I want you both to come into the Carousel
and
take a wee cup of coffee with me. My treat, of course,’ she added archly.

‘Our time,’ said Charles grandiloquently – absurdly, Archery thought, ‘is quite at your disposal. Until eleven fifteen, that is. Don’t let us discuss anything so absurd as treats in the company of a lady.’

Evidently it was the right line to take with her. ‘Isn’t he
sweet
?’ she gurgled. They went into the café. ‘Children are such a blessing, don’t you think? The crown of the tree of life. You must be proud of him, even though he quite puts you in the shade.’

Charles pulled out a chair for her. They were the only customers and for a while no one came to take their order. Mrs Crilling leant confidingly towards Archery.

‘My baby has got herself a situation and she starts tomorrow. An operative in a ladies’ wear establishment. I understand the prospects are excellent. With her intelligence there’s no knowing how far she can go. The trouble is she’s never had a real chance.’ She had been speaking in a low genteel voice. Suddenly she turned her back on him, banged the sugar basin on the table and screamed loudly in the direction of the kitchen:

‘Service!’

Charles jumped. Archery shot him a glance of triumph.

‘Always having her hopes raised and then it comes to nothing,’ she went on just as if the scream had never happened. ‘Her father was just the same – struck down with T.B. in the flower of his age and dead within six months.’ Archery flinched as she
jerked
away from him once more. ‘Where the flaming hell are those bloody girls?’ she shouted.

A woman in a green uniform with Manageress embroidered on the bodice came out from the kitchen. The look she gave Mrs Crilling was bored and withering.

‘I asked you not to come in here again, Mrs Crilling, if you can’t behave yourself.’ She smiled frostily at Archery, ‘What can I get you, sir?’

‘Three coffees, please.’

‘I’ll have mine black,’ said Charles.

‘What was I talking about?’

‘Your daughter,’ said Archery hopefully.

‘Oh, yes, my baby. It’s funny really she should have had such a bad break because when she was a little tot it looked as if everything in the garden was lovely. I had a dear old friend, you see, who simply doted on my baby. And she was rolling in money, kept servants and all that kind of thing …’

The coffee came. It was the espresso kind with foam on the top.

‘You can bring me some white sugar,’ said Mrs Crilling sulkily. ‘I can’t stomach that demerara muck.’ The waitress flounced away, returned with another sugar bowl and banged it down on the table. Mrs Crilling gave a shrill little shriek as soon as she was out of earshot. ‘Silly bitch!’

Then she returned to her theme. ‘Very old my friend was and beyond being responsible for her actions. Senile, they call it. Over and over again she told me she wanted to do something for my baby. I passed it off, of course, having an absolute revulsion
about
stepping into dead men’s shoes.’ She stopped suddenly and dropped four heaped teaspoonfuls of sugar into her coffee.

‘Natural,’ said Charles. ‘The last thing anyone would call you is mercenary, Mrs Crilling.’

She smiled complacently and to Archery’s intense amusement, leant across the table and patted Charles’s cheek.

‘You dear,’ she said. ‘You lovely, understanding dear.’ After a deep breath she went on more practically, ‘Still, you have to look after your own. I didn’t press it, not till the doctor told me Mr Crilling had only got six months to live. No insurance, I thought in my despair, no pension. I pictured myself reduced to leaving my baby on the steps of an orphanage.’

For his part, Archery was unable to picture it. Elizabeth had been a sturdy youngster of five at the time.

‘Do go on,’ said Charles. ‘It’s most interesting.’

‘You ought to make a will, I said to my friend. I’ll pop down the road and get you a will form. A thousand or two would make all the difference to my baby. You know how she’s gladdened your last years, and what have those grandchildren of yours ever done for you? Damn all, I thought.’

‘But she didn’t make a will?’ Archery said.

‘What do you know about it? You let me tell it in my own way. It was about a week before she died. I’d had the will form for weeks and weeks and all the time poor Mr Crilling was wasting away to a shadow. But would she fill it in? Not her, the old
cow
. I had to use all my most winning powers of persuasion. Every time I said a word that crazy old maid of hers would put her spoke in. Then that old maid – Flower, her name was – she got a bad cold and had to keep to her bed. “Have you thought any more about disposing of your temporal estates?” I said to my friend in a light-hearted, casual manner. “Maybe I should do something for Lizzie,” she said and I knew my opportunity was at hand.

‘Back across the road I flew. I didn’t like to witness it myself, you know, on account of my baby being a beneficiary. Mrs White, my neighbour, came over and the lady who helped with her housework. They were only too delighted. You might say it brought a ray of sunshine into their humdrum lives.’

Archery wanted to say, ‘But Mrs Primero died intestate.’ He didn’t dare. Any hint that he knew whom she was talking about and the whole narrative might be brought to a halt.

‘Well, we got it all written out. I’m a great reader, Mr Archery, so I was able to put it in the right language. “Blood is thicker than water,” said my old friend – she was wandering in her mind – but she only put the grandchildren down for five hundred a-piece. There was eight thousand for my baby and I was to have charge of it till she was twenty-one, and a bit left over for the Flower woman. My friend was crying bitterly. I reckon she realized how wicked she’d been in not doing it before.

‘And that was that. I saw Mrs White and the other lady safely off the premises – more fool I, though I didn’t know it at the time. I said I’d keep the will
safe
and I did. She wasn’t to mention it to anybody. And – would you believe it? – a week later she met with her death.’

Charles said innocently, ‘That was a good start for your daughter, Mrs Crilling, whatever misfortunes came afterwards.’

He started as she got up abruptly. Her face had blanched to the whiteness it had worn in court and her eyes blazed.

‘Any benefits she got,’ she said in a choking voice, ‘came from her dead father’s people. Charity it was, cold charity. “Send me the school bills, Josie,” her uncle’d say to me. “I’ll pay them direct, and her auntie can go with her to get her uniform. If you think she needs treatment for her nerves her auntie can go with her to Harley Street, too.”’

‘But what about the will?’

‘That bloody will!’ Mrs Crilling shouted. ‘It wasn’t legal. I only found out after she was dead. I took it straight round to Quadrants, the solicitors that were in the High Street. Old Mr Quadrant was alive then. “What about these alterations?” he said. Well, I looked and, lo and behold, the old cow had scribbled in a lot of extra bits while I was at the front door with Mrs White. Scribbled in bits and scratched out bits too. “These invalidate the whole thing,” said Mr Quadrant. “You have to get the witnesses to sign them, or have a codicil. You could fight it,” he said, looking me up and down in a nasty way, knowing I hadn’t got a bean, “But I wouldn’t say much for your chances.”’

To Archery’s horror she broke into a stream of
obscenities
, many of which he had never heard before. The manageress came out and took her by the arm.

‘Out you go. We can’t have this in here.’

‘My God,’ said Charles, after she had been hustled away. ‘I see what you mean.’

‘I must confess her language shook me a bit.’

Charles chuckled. ‘Not fit for your ears at all.’

‘It was most enlightening, though. Are you going to bother with Primero now?’

‘It can’t do any harm.’

Archery had to wait a long time in the corridor outside Wexford’s office. Just as he was beginning to think he would have to give up and try again later, the main entrance doors opened and a little bright-eyed man in working clothes came in between two uniformed policemen. He was plainly some sort of criminal, but everyone seemed to know him and find him a source of ironic amusement.

‘I can’t stand these contemporary-type nicks,’ he said impudently to the station sergeant. Wexford came out of his office, ignoring Archery, and crossed to the desk. ‘Give me the old-fashioned kind every time. I’ve got a slummy mind, that’s my trouble.’

‘I’m not interested in your views on interior decoration, Monkey,’ said Wexford.

The little man turned to him and grinned.

‘You’ve got a nasty tongue, you have. Your sense of humour’s sunk as you’ve gone up. Pity, really.’

‘Shut up!’

Archery listened in admiration. He wished that he
had
the power and the authority to talk like that to Mrs Crilling, or that such authority could be vested in Charles, enabling him to question Primero without the inhibitions of subterfuge. Wexford, talking silkily about bombs and attempted murder, ushered the little man into his office and the door closed on them. Such things did go on, Archery thought. Perhaps his own new-forming theories were not so far-fetched after all.

‘If I could just see Inspector Burden for a moment,’ he said more confidently to the station sergeant.

‘I’ll see if he’s free, sir.’

Eventually Burden came out to him himself.

‘Good morning, sir. Doesn’t get any cooler, does it?’

‘I’ve got something rather important to tell you. Can you spare me five minutes?’

‘Surely.’

But he made no move to take him into a more private place. The station sergeant occupied himself with perusing a large book. Sitting on a ridiculous spoon-shaped chair outside Wexford’s office, Archery felt like a school boy, who having waited a long time to see the headmaster, is compelled to confide in and perhaps take his punishment from an underling. Rather chastened, he told Burden briefly about Mrs Crilling.

‘Most interesting. You mean that when Mrs Primero was murdered the Crilling woman thought the will was valid?’