A Nice Class of Corpse (7 page)

She moved to the door, but stopped before she opened it.

'Oh, one thing, Miss Naismith . . . I wonder, would it be possible for me to hand my jewellery to you to be kept in the hotel safe . . . ? It would be most regrettable if there were another lapse of security at the Devereux, wouldn't it?'

'Yes. Yes, of course that would be possible,' Miss Naismith replied, tight-lipped.

'Might I have a look at the safe?' asked Mrs Pargeter charmingly. 'Unless it's of a reputable manufacture, I might decide I'd be better advised to put my valuables in the bank.'

Wordlessly, Miss Naismith moved an embroidered fire-screen to reveal a square grey metal box, on which a silver plate bore the legend, 'Clissold & Fry – Excalibur Two'.

'Oh, yes, that will be quite adequate. If I may, I'll bring my jewellery down as soon as possible. If that's convenient . . . ?

'Of course. Any time,' said Miss Naismith with a ghastly smile, as Mrs Pargeter moved gracefully out of the Office.

CHAPTER 15

In the Entrance Hall Mrs Pargeter paused for a moment of grim satisfaction. She had no doubt that she had seen off Miss Naismith, but she was still angry that the accusation had ever been made. None of the other residents would have been attacked frontally in that manner, and, though usually Mrs Pargeter was the most tolerant of individuals, another legacy of her life with the late Mr Pargeter was a certain sensitivity to imputations of criminal behaviour.

Still, she thought with a wicked little surge of glee, she had effectively diverted them from questions about what she
was
doing in Mrs Selsby's room in the middle of the night.

She looked out through the glass of the closed front doors to the greyness beyond, and saw a small figure wound up in a plum-coloured coat walking briskly away from the hotel on the other side of the road. In spite of the black fur hat pulled down over the ears, she had no difficulty in recognising Mrs Mendlingham.

Mrs Pargeter decided she might put her own coat on and go for a walk.

The coat in question was a mink, which the late Mr Pargeter, always the soul of generosity, had presented to her after a particularly successful business venture, and that morning she was glad of its warmth. The weather, which had not been good for some time, seemed now to have lapsed into icy melancholy, as if it had lost faith in the idea of there ever being a summer. The wind carried a stinging spray – or maybe it was rain – and the sea was lost about fifty yards out in sticky fog.

It was not a morning for recreational walking, and Mrs Pargeter wondered where Mrs Mendlingham was headed with such apparent determination. As she emerged from the Devereux and felt the first breath-snatching blast of the weather, Mrs Pargeter could still see the small plum-coloured figure striding along the front and, without hurrying, she had no difficulty in keeping her quarry in sight.

Mrs Mendlingham was walking along towards the Arun estuary, past the closed Smart's Amusements, on whose wall even the perky figure of Mickey Mouse looked forlorn. The exposed metalwork of the mini-roller-coaster known as the Mouse Run gave the edifice the unfinished look of a building site. Mrs Mendlingham continued straight ahead, past the sad fairy-tale turrets of the Giant Slide.

Mrs Pargeter was intrigued. Her reconnaissance of Littlehampton two days before had been thorough and, as far as she could remember, Mrs Mendlingham appeared to be walking into a dead end, a little corner between the beach and the river.

Suddenly the plum-coloured figure was no longer visible.

Mrs Pargeter did not increase her pace. There was nowhere Mrs Mendlingham could have gone, except into one of the sea-front shelters.

These concrete structures were designed to keep the wind off the bench seats inside them, and on days when the wind was less blustery and erratic, perhaps they did. That morning they seemed only to attract little eddies of cold air, providing a home for the small hurricanes of the sea front. In one or two of them Mrs Pargeter saw old people propped in the corners, faces purple with cold between their scarves and hats, but showing rigid determination to get away for a little while from the four walls of their homes (or their Homes).

Mrs Mendlingham was not sitting in the first group of shelters, but there were some others further on, with glass partitions, which faced over the river rather than the sea. As she rounded the corner of one of these, Mrs Pargeter saw the plum-coloured figure she was seeking. Mrs Mendlingham was hunched against the end wall of the shelter. One hand in a fingerless woollen glove held a hard-covered black notebook, while the other wrote in it at great speed.

'Good morning.'

The old wild eyes darted up sharply at Mrs Pargeter's words, and in one movement, almost too quick to be seen, the notebook and pen were concealed under the folds of the plum-coloured coat.

'Good morning,' said Mrs Mendlingham. There was a slyness in her voice, the tone of someone congratulating herself on a successful deception.

'Do you mind if I join you?'

Mrs Mendlingham's expression was not welcoming, but she voiced no objection as Mrs Pargeter sat on to the bench and swaddled herself in the mink coat.

In front of them the Arun flowed murkily. The tide was going out. A small fishing dinghy with an outboard motor swept past, tide-assisted, as if it were a power boat. The cold wind swirled and eddied around them.

'You come out here to write?' asked Mrs Pargeter.

Again the old face filled with suspicion and cunning. 'What if I do?'

'Difficult to get privacy at the Devereux, I find. Even after my brief stay.'

'What do you mean?'

'It's the sort of place where everything you do seems to be observed.'

This didn't prompt any reaction, so Mrs Pargeter made her point even clearer. 'Last night I was seen going into Mrs Selsby's room.'

There was a sly smile from Mrs Mendlingham. 'Yes.'

'An unlikely time to be awake . . .'

'I don't sleep well these days.'

'No. No, it does seem more difficult as one gets older, doesn't it? Do you have anything to help you sleep?'

Mrs Mendlingham snorted dismissively. 'The doctor gives me pills. They work for a little while. But after two or three hours I wake again.'

Mrs Pargeter nodded. 'Every night?'

'Most nights.'

'How did you come to see me last night? I didn't see you.'

'I heard footsteps and just opened my door a little.'

'Yes, of course, you're on the first floor, aren't you?' Mrs Pargeter paused before continuing, gently, 'And I suppose you'd do that any night . . . If you happened to be awake, and hear footsteps, you'd open your door a little to see who it was . . . ?'

'I expect I would, yes,' replied Mrs Mendlingham, unguarded.

Mrs Pargeter suddenly made her enquiry less languid. 'Two nights ago, the night Mrs Selsby died, I heard a commotion and a little cry on the first-floor landing. What did you see that night?'

The old lady looked shocked. She opened and closed her mouth a few times before replying. 'I saw nothing that night. I didn't hear anything. I slept through that night.'

'Ah,' Mrs Pargeter murmured peaceably. 'Rather a pity, that, wasn't it?'

'Why?'

'Well, if you'd heard something, you might have been able to save Mrs Selsby.'

'I hardly think so. She died immediately.' Fearing that this had given away too much, Mrs Mendlingham lamely added, 'I gather.'

'Yes. Yes. That's what I gather, too,' Mrs Pargeter reassured her. 'Did you know Mrs Selsby well?' she asked diffidently.

'No. No. Well, you get to know people when you're living in the same building, of course you do. But I didn't know her well, no.'

'Did you like her?'

The shoulders shrugged in the plum-coloured coat. 'We were hardly soul-mates. She was a bit of a busybody.'

'Always nosing her way into other people's business, you mean?'

'Yes.'

'A bit of a tell-tale, too . . . ?' Mrs Pargeter floated this idea with care. She had no basis but instinct for the suggestion. 'Tended to sneak to Miss Naismith, did she . . . ?'

Her instinct had been right.

'Yes,' Mrs Mendlingham replied. 'Always. If she found out a secret about someone, she was incapable of keeping it to herself.'

'Did she find out anything about you . . . ?'

Mrs Mendlingham opened her mouth to reply, then thought better of it and took refuge in her old-lady vagueness. 'I don't know what you're talking about.'

Not for the first time, Mrs Pargeter found herself wondering how much of an act Mrs Mendlingham's senility was. Frequently the old lady appeared almost completely gaga, but she was also capable of sustained concentration, and at times the sharp intelligence in her faded eyes was positively disturbing.

Mrs Pargeter tried another tack. 'Miss Naismith asked to see you this morning.'

The old eyes stared unfocused towards the dunes on the other side of the river. Mrs Pargeter repeated her sentence.

'What? Oh yes.' But Mrs Mendlingham still seemed to be giving only part of her attention.

'Apart from your telling her about seeing me last night, may I ask what else you talked about?'

Mrs Mendlingham was too disturbed by the thought of Miss Naismith to notice the directness of Mrs Pargeter's inquisition. 'Miss Naismith,' she mumbled, 'is a cruel woman.'

'Cruel because she wants you to move out of the Devereux?' hazarded Mrs Pargeter.

This was greeted by a little cracked laugh. 'She won't succeed, you know. You can get anything you want in this life with money. That's all she cares about. For all her airs, Miss Naismith will do anything for the right amount of money.'

In the strange atmosphere between them Mrs Pargeter felt she could risk another impertinent question. 'Are you a wealthy woman, Mrs Mendlingham?'

She got no reply except another laugh, but it was a laugh full of confidence, cunning and even triumph, a laugh that said, 'Yes, now I'm a very wealthy woman.'

'And you're still sure you saw nothing on the first-floor landing two nights ago?'

The eyes came into sudden sharp focus. 'Nothing.' The word was almost spat out. 'Nothing. Nothing happened on the landing that night. You'll never find out about anything happening on the landing that night. And I wouldn't advise you to be nosey, Mrs . . . Mrs Whatever-your-name-is. Nosey people can get hurt, you know.'

Abruptly, with another manic giggle, Mrs Mendlingham rose to her feet, shook her coat around her, pulled her fur hat down over her ears, and set off walking briskly along the front towards the Devereux.

CHAPTER 16

Mrs Pargeter did not follow. She did not think that she would elicit much more from Mrs Mendlingham that morning. Besides, the information she had got was plenty to set her thinking, to start all kinds of hares racing across her mind. So she sat, pensively cocooned in her mink, until her feet began to grow numb with cold. Then she rose and briskly followed Mrs Mendlingham's route back to the Devereux.

When she had taken off her coat and boots, she went down to the Seaview Lounge. It was about half an hour till lunchtime, and the room was empty, except for the solicitor, Mr Holland.

He rose a little awkwardly as she entered, and when she was settled into an armchair, said, 'I must apologise for this morning.'

Mrs Pargeter smiled equably. 'Think nothing of it.'

'I'm afraid, not knowing the residents of the hotel as individuals, I was perhaps too easily swayed by Miss Naismith's views as to what might have happened to Mrs Selsby's jewels.'

'Of course. Perfectly understandable. By the way, has Miss Naismith organised a search of the hotel?'

'Tentative steps have been taken. She accompanied the chambermaid . . . is her name Loxton? . . . on her morning bed-making round and examined the obvious hiding places.'

'A waste of time looking in the obvious places. Whoever took those jewels would have hidden them very thoroughly. Hmm. I wonder if Miss Naismith has investigated the hotel's rubbish . . . ?'

'Rubbish? But surely no one would risk putting valuable jewels in with the rubbish?'

'I don't think you know a lot about the criminal mind, Mr Holland.'

'I am a solicitor,' he said, affronted.

'Yes, but you have to get
inside
the criminal mind to find out what they're likely to do. Anyway, in this case . . .' But Mrs Pargeter decided she was perhaps giving away too much about herself and stopped short. 'Presumably, nothing was found – none of the boxes, nothing?'

Mr Holland shook his head ruefully.

'Oh well, the police will no doubt be more thorough.'

'Er, yes . . .'

The note of hesitation in his voice made Mrs Pargeter look up sharply. 'Do you mean she hasn't called the police yet?'

'I'm afraid not. Against my advice, I may say. Miss Naismith felt it might be more discreet if she were to wait for twenty-four hours and see if the jewels should reappear.'

'Why on earth should they suddenly reappear? What does she think they've done – gone on a day trip to Boulogne?'

'No, no. Miss Naismith's view is that, if she lets it be known amongst the residents that certain articles have been noted as missing from Mrs Selsby's room, someone's memory might be jogged and the jewels might indeed suddenly . . . er, reappear,' he finished lamely.

'I see.' A light of anger burned in Mrs Pargeter's eye. 'She was quite happy to have
me
drummed out of the place, but if anyone else is the culprit, she'll just gloss it over.'

Mr Holland looked intensely uncomfortable. 'As I say, Miss Naismith is acting against my advice.'

Mrs Pargeter nodded grimly. 'Oh yes. Hmm. I wonder if perhaps I should get in touch with Arnold Justiman after all . . .'

The name once again had its predictable effect on Mr Holland. Considerably flustered, he assured Mrs Pargeter that such a course of action would not be at all necessary. 'As I say, Miss Naismith has just twenty-four hours to conduct her internal enquiry. If that reveals nothing, then there is no question of the police not being brought in.'

'Hmm,' Mrs Pargeter decided to take advantage of the solicitor's abjectly apologetic state to pump him for information. 'Were Mrs Selsby's jewels worth a lot?'

'A very considerable amount,' he replied smugly.

'How much?' Mrs Pargeter had long since learned the surprise value of direct questioning.

'Oh, erm, well . . .' Mr Holland succumbed. 'At their last valuation for insurance – which was two years ago – the total sum was eleven and a half thousand pounds.'

Mrs Pargeter nodded, pleased to have had her own estimate confirmed. 'And, presumably, the jewels were not the full extent of her possessions?'

The solicitor almost chuckled at the naefvete of the idea. 'Oh, my goodness me, no. Mrs Selsby was a very wealthy woman.'

'And with no living relatives . . .'

Mr Holland did not volunteer the information she had hoped for, so Mrs Pargeter resorted to another direct question. 'Who inherits?'

The solicitor blushed at the unprofessional nature of this enquiry. 'I don't think it is yet appropriate for me to divulge details of, er—'

'Never mind,' said Mrs Pargeter. 'I'll get on to Arnold. His information-gathering service is remarkable. I'm sure he could find out for me very quickly.'

'Oh, er, well, in that case . . .' Mr Holland wavered. 'I suppose the details are to be public soon enough. . . . I doubt if much harm could be done by . . . And since you aren't a beneficiary . . .'

Mrs Pargeter laughed. 'Of course I'm not. I only met her once. Why should I be a beneficiary?'

'That, Mrs Pargeter, is one of the strange features of the will. Mrs Selsby, as you just said, had no living relatives, no one in fact very close to her – except for the people living in this hotel.'

'Oh?'

'She was happy here. She found the Devereux a dignified and genteel place in which to spend the, er, evening of her life. And so, two years ago, she summoned me and asked me to draw up a will, which divided her estate equally between all of the people living in the Devereux.'

'Staff as well?'

'Yes. Miss Naismith and Newth were to be included. Loxton, too, although she does not actually live on the premises. Mrs Selsby's only stipulation was that the beneficiaries should have been here for at least six months. Which is why,' he explained, apologetically, 'as I said, I'm afraid you fail to qualify.'

The late Mr Pargeter had left his widow sufficiently well cushioned to accept this news with equanimity. 'But that's a very unusual will, isn't it?'

'Yes,' Mr Holland replied with some asperity. 'And a very ill-advised one. I spelled out to Mrs Selsby all of the arguments against such a course, its potential dangers and disadvantages, but she was adamant. That was how she wanted it to be.'

Mrs Pargeter was struck that Mr Holland must be a very weak man. He was employed as a professional adviser and yet no one seemed to take his advice. Mrs Selsby had ignored him, and he had allowed Miss Naismith to ride roughshod over him that morning. Weak and stupid, she decided.

'So . . .' she said slowly, 'everyone in the Devereux stood to benefit from Mrs Selsby's death. . . .'

'Well, I think that's a rather cynical way of putting it, but, under the terms of her will, everyone would inherit an equal share, yes.'

'How much money are we talking about?' Mr Holland winced at the indelicacy of this question. 'Come on. How much? Five thousand? Ten thousand? Twenty thousand? Fifty thousand? A hundred thousand?'

Pained at the necessity of replying, he said quietly, 'Nearer your final figure than the others.'

Mrs Pargeter nodded. 'And do you know if any of the people living here were aware of the unusual provisions of this will?'

'Of that I have no idea.' And, feeling perhaps that he had let down his professional image, Mr Holland added huffily, 'But I can't see that it's important.'

No, thought Mrs Pargeter, you wouldn't be able to see that, would you?

But it is important. Very.