Corpse in a Gilded Cage (25 page)

‘We knew that,' said Trevor, ‘but who else did? Are you saying it was one of his own family?'

‘Just doing a bit of narrowing down again, that's all. Who else could have known? Not you, Mr Lillywaite, I don't imagine. Nor you, Michele. Or have you been sleeping with Trevor at home recently? Chokey, now: he's slept at ours often enough to know. Then there's Sam: could he have known?'

‘It wasn't a matter of general comment in Haig Street,' said Sam, at his suavest, ‘but I could have known.'

‘ 'Course you could. You could have picked it up in the Prince Leopold, for example. So all that was necessary was a light noise—repeated if necessary—to get him up. Now, the Super found something, didn't he, Sarge, that might have a bearing there?'

‘Could be,' said Sergeant Medway. ‘He found some earth in the little blind passage that leads off from the landing. Dust had been disturbed on the floor there, and on a big old brass jug that sat on one of the small tables.'

‘Yes, that's what the Super told me. Now—'

‘How come you're so friendly with the Super?' demanded Trevor.

‘He's decided my alibi is just about unbreakable,' said Phil, unperturbed. ‘Quite apart from the fact that the fuzz always likes to keep in with the local gentry. Now, what I think happened was this: that brass thing was banged against the wall a couple of times. Then the murderer—let's call him that—kept in the dark of that little passage until it actually worked, as it was bound to. Out comes Dad to investigate. And there it is (sorry, Mum): karate chop to the neck as he stands peering down into the hall, and over the banisters with the body. Nasty, Ma, but quick as a flash. He would hardly have felt a thing.'

‘It makes sense,' said Peter Medway. ‘It definitely makes sense. But does it get things much further? Lots of people do a bit of amateur karate these days.'

‘So they do. I took it up in jug. It's marvellous what you can pick up in there—real little further education centre the choker is, these days. Who else could have managed the blow? Trevor did a bit of karate before he took up with sex. Dixie did one of those courses—didn't you, love?—to show women how to deal with rapists.'

‘As if anyone would dare,' muttered the Countess.

‘Chokey used to be a whizz at PT and stuff, though you wouldn't think it to see him now. Sam—I bet he's got a black belt or something. You nigs are always hot on those things, aren't you?'

‘That's right. We nigs are,' said Sam, still very suave.

‘So the karate chop doesn't narrow things down much. Who knows whether Digby didn't take a course in his lunch-break, in the intervals of whittling down insurance claims.'

‘In point of fact I never did,' said Digby.

‘We'll take your word for it, Dig. For the moment. Now the only question left is, who was it, and what was the motive? Was it someone who knew about the new will, leaving the lion's share to me? Or was it someone who thought the old will was still in operation, splitting the loot up three ways? Or wasn't it anything to do with the wills at all?'

Phil beamed round at everybody.

‘That's what the cops are going to have to decide, isn't it? Right: second helpings, anyone? Raicho, Sarge, go and get the rest of the pork and veg from the kitchen.'

The bustle of fetching fresh supplies did not lessen the tension around the table. Some of the guests busied themselves with finishing up their last scraps, or helping themselves (with no great relish) to more. But all of them kept their eyes on Phil, and all of them seemed convinced he had a lot more to say. Mr Lillywaite dissimulated most convincingly, as befitted a lawyer. He said ‘A most interesting demonstration,' in a highly judicious manner to Digby, and nodded around the table.

‘You know who it was, don't you, Phil?' said Joan, when they were all back at table.

‘Me, Joanie? Like I said to Ma, I don't know any more than the rest of you. And I'm not a bleeding detective. We can leave the magnifying-glass stuff to the Sergeant here, and his boss. Of course, I have a few ideas . . .'

‘Like what?' demanded Trevor.

‘I don't know if he's said this to any of you, but one of the things the Super finds it hard to believe is that we didn't know we were next in line for all this boodle. But we didn't, did we? It wasn't something that ever
occurred to us. We didn't even speculate about it. We sometimes said, for a laugh, that Dad was nephew to a belted Earl, but we never looked into it any closer. Did we?'

‘ 'Course we didn't,' said the Countess. ‘We had better things to do with our time.'

‘On the other hand, we could have. Joanie's the scholar: she might have looked it up. Digby's sharp—aren't you, Dig? Got to be sharp in the insurance business. Might be interesting to go round the various libraries and see who's been consulting the Peerage. But I must say I never thought about it. You didn't either, did you, Dixie? Trevor never pulled rank at the Labour Exchange—about the only thing he didn't pull, in fact. The rest of you—well, it's not even worth investigating Sam, I don't suppose, or Michele: you weren't even going with Trev till a few weeks ago, were you, love?'

‘She could have started going with him
because
she found out,' said Joan, in her prim little voice.

‘Kick my ego as you pass,' said Trevor.

‘And then there's Mr Lillywaite. Of course, he knew. That was something he had to know, in the course of his duties. I bet he wished he'd taken it a bit more seriously when the young Earl died. And for all we know Parsloe could have known. You might think ahead a bit if you had a hard-drinking, hard-driving young master of twenty-three.'

‘I bet it was often mentioned in the house,' said Digby.

‘You could be right. As a remote, disastrous possibility. And there's another thing: I bet people talked about it in the village and round about. I've been in some of these country pubs around Daintree—sort of unofficial pass, you know—and the doings of the local nobs was very much chatted over there, over a glass of piss-poor local ale. Nothing much escaped the elders of the villages around Daintree, I can tell you. Got on my wick, rather, when they could have been talking about football.'

‘I don't see what that's got to do with it,' said Trevor. ‘Unless it was an outsider. And why would an outsider break in and do poor old Dad in?'

‘That wasn't really what I was thinking of,' said Phil. He became pensive, and began to toy with the food in front of him, and to look around the walls. ‘Funny how you change in gaol. People say it never does anyone any good, and that may be true, but it certainly changes people. I expect you've noticed.'

‘Yes, I have,' said the Countess. ‘I thought at first you were the same, but you're not.'

‘No. Oh no. It's sort of . . . stiffened me. Given me a purpose. Not like missionaries and that, but in another way. 'Course, it taught me a lot of new lurks, as well. If I hadn't come into this, I could have proved a right villain when I got out. The tricks they teach you! We was right amateurs, Chokey, old boy!'

Chokey grinned uneasily, and rolled his eyes sideways at Peter Medway.

‘I suppose we were, Phil.'

‘Left our fingerprints on every job, speaking metaphorical. I laughed, in Daintree, when I read the local papers about that job at Brycenorton Towers. Creased myself up, no kidding.'

‘Brycenorton Towers?' asked Trevor, puzzled.

‘Them classy neighbours I went a-visiting yesterday. They was robbed last March. I read about it in jug, and that's why I went over there—to hear about it. It had all your fingermarks, Chokey, old pal.'

‘Here, Phil—shut up: there's a cop here.'

‘He's off duty, Chokey. Just here as a pal.'

‘Anyway, I never had anything to do with that job.'

‘Come off it, Chokey: I spotted you a mile off,' said Phil, and his smile at his erstwhile partner was one that Dixie herself might have envied for its ferocity. ‘You was in the local, right? Chatting up the servants from the Manor on their night out. And your new partner was in the house itself, doing the job. You do the research, and the safe bits on the night, while the other bloke gets landed if things go wrong. I'd have recognized you a mile off, even if the description in the papers hadn't tallied. Typical of you that you fucked the whole thing up.'

‘I never did, Phil. I wasn't on that job.'

‘Showed so much interest in the local gentry and their houses that one of the locals got suspicious. Rang the police. Shouldn't be too difficult, Chokey, to find out just which of the local nob families you found so interesting.'

‘Not difficult at all,' came the fruity country voice of Superintendent Hickory. Appearing in the doorway, he seemed to take over the whole space, like some sort of road block. He gazed at Chokey like an agricultural show judge who knows when the fine fruit and vegetables will prove to be rotten inside. ‘I've been talking to the inspector who was on that case, and Mr Cartwright—'

‘Chokey to his pals,' said Phil.

‘Chokey Cartwright got them talking about the local toffs, and they got round to the subject of the Spenders. Mr Cartwright was so fascinated they
never got off it, so that when the police got the warning phone call, the first place they came to was here. It was only when they'd made sure that nothing was going on at Chetton that they began to spread their net. They surprised a chap at Brycenorton, but he got away through a back window. By then, of course, Mr Cartwright had long ago evaporated from the local.'

‘See what I mean, Chokey? All your trademarks. Especially the evaporation. A real little artist at getting out from the under, that's you, Chokey. All these three years rotting away in jug I swore you and me would do a job where I was the one who got out from under, and you was the one who got landed in it.'

‘You can't mean it, Phil,' protested Chokey, his bleary eyes taking on a pleading expression. ‘You said you didn't bear no grudge.'

‘I did, didn't I? I practised that letter I wrote you five times before I got it right. Right muggins I made myself sound. I could hear you rubbing your hands, I really could. It wasn't so very difficult, really, to get the right tone, because a muggins is what I'd been all my life. But what I didn't know then was that your little chat with the local yokels in the snug bar of the Dowley Arms had given you a bright idea, grand visions like you'd never had in all your years of petty crime.'

‘Phil, I know what you're going to say, but I never—'

‘And that idea was based on the information you got there that your pal Phil, best friend a man ever had, greatest mug and fall guy in the business, was only three steps away from a whacking great fortune. And if he came into it, you'd be on the gravy train for life: openhanded Phil would see you never wanted all your days. What he didn't give could be filched out of him. So you decided to help things forward a bit. Nice of you, Chokey. Thoughtful. I appreciate it.'

‘I never knew nothing about the fortune. I was surprised when your dad came into it. Ask Dixie.'

‘So you went to the library and checked the facts, I bet. Did you ask the nice lady at the desk to help you, Chokey? I bet you did: we're neither of us much of a hand with books, are we? Not wise, though. The nice lady might remember you. Sharp-eyed little librarian type, I wouldn't wonder. Then you decided to eliminate the two links in between. That's why Dad was worth pushing under a bus, Mum, even before he came into the fortune. So you came down here, didn't you, Chokey, and you fiddled with the young Earl's car. Crafty mechanic you've always been—dab hand with
burglar alarms and suchlike. Then you went back up to London, got behind Dad on his way home from work, and gave him that hefty shove.'

‘I never would've, Phil. We were mates, your dad and I.'

‘And
I
know just what being a mate of yours means, Chokey. Anyway, you buggered it up, as per usual. Dad didn't die. What's more—nobody here knows this—a lady in the crowd went along to the Clapham police immediately afterwards and said she'd seen Dad pushed. They didn't take it seriously at the time. They did go along and talk to Dad when he came round, but he pooh-poohed it, and said they mustn't say a word to Mum. You know what police are like: male chauvinists to a man. They just said, “some hysterical woman”, and laughed it off. But they've got her name and address, and she said she'd know the man again.'

‘Poor old Perce,' said the Countess, dabbing her eyes. ‘If only he'd said.'

‘That's it, you see: that was the trouble. Dad was an innocent. So, first the old Earl pegs out—naturally, completely naturally, I imagine—and then the young Earl goes off the road. And Chokey finds Dad in charge, and death duties hanging over the place, with more to pay—if I was to come into the fortune in the future. There ought to be a vote of thanks in the Commons to you, Chokey, for the sums you personally have managed to siphon off into the Chancellor's pocket. So you came down here to see how the land lay, whether it was still worth it, whether Dad had made a will since he inherited, how much I would be getting.'

‘Everyone thought he was going to divide it up,' protested Chokey. ‘It wouldn't have been worth it.'

‘It would still have been worth it,' returned Phil. ‘You realized that when you began to price the mountains of stuff here. Anyway, we can leave all that to the police, can't we? I don't think you'll be leaving here this afternoon, Chokey. Not under your own steam, anyway. Right, everybody? Here endeth the first lesson. No pud, I'm afraid. I'm not much of a hand with apple turnovers.'

‘If Mr Cartwright will just come along and answer a few questions,' came the rich, falling, cider-imbued tones of Superintendent Hickory, advancing massively from the doorway, while Peter Medway came capably up on Chokey's other side.