Dead In The Morning (8 page)

“She wants Helen,” Phyllis said.

“Of course I’ll go,” said Helen, standing up, a neat figure in her dark linen dress.

“I’ll come too, shall I?” offered Cathy.

“No, you stay where you are, my dear, and let your coffee settle,” said Helen. “Your grandmother won’t eat me. You forget that I’m used to elderly ladies.”

“Phew, well, this will be a baptism of fire,” said Cathy, with a wry look.

“Grandmother wants you to take her round the garden, Cathy,” said Phyllis. “I should hang on till then, if I were you, as long as Helen doesn’t mind.”

Thumping sounds and the pealing of a bell could now be heard as Mrs Ludlow declared her impatience. Helen laid her hand lightly on Gerald’s arm for an instant, and then she left the room.

The others sat down round the table again, and Cathy poured out the coffee for her aunt and the doctor. Gerald added generous amounts of brandy, and after they had sipped meditatively for a minute or two, Dr Wilkins spoke.

“Mrs Medhurst, I gave you a new prescription for your mother’s sodium amytal capsules last week. Have they been collected yet?”

Phyllis looked surprised. She exchanged a glance with her brother.

“I got them from Fennersham on Friday,” she said. “But Mrs Mackenzie couldn’t have taken any of them, if that’s what you’re thinking. They’re still in the chemist’s parcel in the hall, where I left them. I was rather rushed on Friday and forgot to put them away, as I normally do at once. Mother still had a few left from the previous lot, in her room.”

“You’re sure the new ones are still in the hall?”

“Quite sure. I noticed them this morning. The car keys are kept on the chest in the hall, and the pills were there when I went to church. I remember thinking that I should have put them away.”

Dr Wilkins got up and went out into the hall. He came back carrying a small paper bag printed with the name of the Fennersham chemist.

“It’s a pity chemists don’t still seal their packets up with wax, as they used to do,” he said, opening the bag.

He took the bottle out.

There was no need to say anything. The three who watched could see for themselves that the bottle was half-empty.

“And what happened after that?” demanded Patrick.

It was the same afternoon. Cathy was sitting with him and Jane in the living-room at Reynard’s relating the events of the morning. At intervals in her tale Patrick had stopped her, making her clarify what she had said and ensuring that she left out no detail. “Oh, Patrick, stop it. Leave her alone, for heaven’s sake,” said Jane. “Poor girl, it’s been an awful experience for her.”

“It’s much better for her to get it all off her chest rather than bottle it up,” Patrick said.

“I hate you, Patrick Grant,” said his sister. “Your ordinary curiosity is bad enough, but this is too much. Forget it, Cathy.”

“I can’t, Jane. Don’t you see, I keep going over and over it all in my mind as it is,” Cathy said. “I’m only telling you what I’ve already told the police. How can any of us think of anything else for a single minute? Even when we know why she did it, it will haunt us for ever. She must have been so unhappy, to do something so terrible, yet she always seemed cheerful.” She shook her head in bewilderment. “I just don’t understand it. She’d got a nice son and daughter, and grandchildren, and we were all fond of her. Besides, there was the Charlotte Russe.”

“What about it?”

“Mrs Mack had made a little one for herself, for lunch today, as well as a big one for us. She would never have done that if she hadn’t intended to eat it,” she said.

There was a silence.

“I’m inclined to believe you,” Patrick said.

“Then there was all that about the lemon meringue,” Cathy went on. “Oh, I don’t see what it means.”

“What about the lemon meringue?”

“We had it for supper last night. The police asked about it. We had cold cucumber soup, and chicken fricassee, and then lemon meringue pie. Gran had hers in bed, she often does, but last night she didn’t eat her pudding. She said she was full. It’s unusual, because she has a very good appetite. Maybe that was why she was so starving this morning, at breakfast-time.”

“Let me get this straight,” Patrick said. “Your grandmother didn’t eat her pudding last night, right?”

“Right. She’d had rather a lot of excitement the night before, with Father and Helen arriving, so I suppose it wasn’t all that surprising, but it’s one of her favourite puddings.”

“Well? And so?” Patrick prompted her.

“We couldn’t find the piece. I mean, Aunt Phyl cut the pie into four, a piece each for her, Gran, Mrs Mack and me. As Gran didn’t eat hers, it should have been somewhere about, in the fridge or in the larder.”

“Could it have been thrown away?”

“We looked in the bin.”

“Is there a waste disposer ? It might have been thrown away like that.”

“Not in Winterswick,” said Jane. “There’s no main drainage here.”

“Well, where do you think it went?” asked Patrick.

“Into Mrs Mack, of course,” said Cathy. “She’d have gobbled it up. She loved sweet things, they were her weakness. She couldn’t resist eating up any left-over bits and pieces. Everyone knew that.”

“Everyone?”

“Well, all the family. Everyone at Pantons. Why, Daddy mentioned it the moment he got home. He said she’d put on weight and she must have been eating too many sweets.”

“Did you tell the Inspector this?”

Cathy thought for a minute.

“No. I don’t think I did,” she said. “In fact, I know I didn’t. But it didn’t arise in our conversation. Should I have?”

“It was for him to discover,” said Patrick in dulce tones, and his sister gave him a look. “He will, if it matters. It was the inspector who was looking for the pudding, was it?”

“Yes. There was a sergeant, too, in the kitchen. I’d got the dishwasher full of things, Gran’s breakfast, and our cups - we’d all been drinking coffee full of brandy. They wouldn’t let me switch it on. There were one or two other things in it, too, that Mrs Mack had left.”

“Such as the plate that had held the missing pie, for instance?”

“One that could have been it, yes. And a glass. Nothing else. Mrs Mack always did the dinner things straight away,” said Cathy.

“And she posted a letter yesterday morning in time to catch the midday clearance,” Patrick said. “An extra letter to her daughter.”

“That’s guessing,” said Jane.

“It’s an informed guess,” said Patrick. “It’s a break from routine. If anything had upset her, the letter might say what it was.”

“But she wasn’t upset, Dr Grant,” Cathy insisted. “Oh, what do you think went wrong?”

“I don’t know, Cathy. I just don’t know,” said Patrick, but he looked extremely thoughtful.

“Why don’t you try and think about something more cheerful, Cathy?” said Jane. “Your university entrance, for instance.”

“I can’t really think about it now,” Cathy sighed. She made an effort, and added, “I suppose I should aim high and start with a bash at Oxford.”

“Indeed you should. How about writing to the principal of St Joan’s and putting out feelers? I’ll write too, and say you seem a promising wench,” said Patrick.

“Oh, would you? Do you know her?”

“Intimately,” said Patrick with a grin. “She’s my aunt.”

After Cathy had gone, which she did in a sudden rush, saying she must go and help with the chores, Jane gave Patrick another severe scolding.

“Say what you like, it did the girl good to spill it out,” he repeated. “And she has a well-ordered mind, too. She told it well.”

“Who cares about how she told it? Poor child, she comes down here to escape for half-an-hour, and you pin her down like a butterfly on a board with your beastly questions.”

“How colourfully you express yourself, Jane,” he said admiringly. “A fine turn of phrase, that, about the butterfly.”

“Oh, you’re a brute, an insensitive brute,” said Jane.

“And pretty, too, when roused,” Patrick went on.

“Swine,” said Jane, turning on her heel. “I’m going to talk to Andrew. He at least is civilised.”

“A matter of opinion, I should say,” observed the baby’s uncle to her departing back.

She returned some time later in a calmer mood and picked up
The Sunday Times.
Patrick had already finished the crossword, so she flung it down again with an angry mutter.

“Why are you so interested, anyway?” she demanded. “Mrs Mackenzie’s death must have been an accident.”

“Yes. But what sort of accident, that’s the question. Mrs Ludlow didn’t eat her lemon pie, but Mrs Mackenzie did. Mrs Mackenzie was loved by all, and needed; Mrs Ludlow wasn’t.”

“No, Patrick. You’re being sensational. You know too many thriller-writing dons,” said Jane. “This is a very serious affair.”

“I quite agree,” said Patrick. “And justice must be done. Work it out for yourself. Mrs Ludlow leads them all a dance, we know that. She has Phyllis Medhurst on a string, without a life of her own, and they all have to jump to it when the old girl wishes.”

“Yes, but to murder her! That’s what you’re getting at, isn’t it? The sleeping pills were in the pie and the wrong person ate it?”

“That’s how it looks,” said Patrick.

“But why? Lots of people have tiresome relations, but they don’t bump them off.”

“There must have been powerful reasons,” Patrick said. “Things we don’t yet know about. People are seldom only what they seem, as you should know, Jane. Behind the facades of these prim villas and gentrified cottages here in Winterswick many a drama must go on.”

“No, Patrick. People are basically decent.”

“Except when being decent interferes with what they want. Then they become ruthless.”

“No. Only some of them.”

“And murder only happens sometimes,” Patrick said. “Most people cope in some fashion or other with the various strains under which they live, or they simply come out in spots, or leave home, or get drunk. But occasionally you get pressures that cause a person to snap. Then the unpredictable happens.”

“But even if Mrs Ludlow is an infuriating old woman, you’re suggesting that a member of her family hated her enough to murder her?”

“Hated her enough, or would profit by her death enough to want to hasten it.”

“But which of them?”

“You tell me.”

“Well, Phyllis could have got at the pie. No one else. Only she was at the house, last night, apart from Cathy. I presume you exempt her?”

Patrick nodded. “A decision of the emotions, not the intellect,” he said.

“Emotions! You have none,” said his sister. “No, I won’t subscribe to this idea, Patrick. The post-mortem will show that Mrs Mackenzie had a stroke, or her daughter will say she had some secret worry which unbalanced her. Or the chemist may have made a mistake and put up too few pills. You’ll see, there will be a rational explanation. And meanwhile you’ve frightened Cathy off. Didn’t you notice how suddenly she fled?”

“I didn’t scare her away,” Patrick said. “Her cousin Tim enticed her.”

“What do you mean?”

“He walked past while we were talking. Cathy happened to look out of the window and she saw him. I did too. He never looked towards the house - you don’t know him, do you, Jane?”

“No.”

“I recognised him all right, shaggy hair and all,” said Patrick.

“How nice of him to come over to see Cathy,” said Jane.

“Darling Jane, how you do believe the best of people,” Patrick said. “He didn’t come to cheer up Cathy, if that what’s you thinking. He came to look for this,” and he took an envelope out of his pocket.

“What is it?”

“A letter addressed to Mr Timothy Ludlow, St Mark’s College, Oxford,” Patrick said. “I found it on the gravel outside Pantons last night, where our young friend must have dropped it earlier in the evening.”

He tapped the envelope and gave her a sardonic look. “Well? Aren’t you going to ask me if I’ve read it?”

“I’m bloody sure you have,” said Jane sourly.

“You’re right,” Patrick admitted. “And rather a tiresome letter it is too, in the nature of an ultimatum. It’s just as well I found it, not the police. The young idiot’s got to find a lot of money rather quickly.”

“So he went to ask his rich old granny for some. Bully for him. Very wise,” said Jane.

“But what if granny said no?”

“But you can’t mean that Tim - a boy of twenty . . .?” Jane’s voice trailed away.

“I trust sincerely not,” said Patrick. “But this shows you what I mean, Jane. The Ludlows, like everybody else, have their secrets. By chance I’ve found out Tim’s. What about the rest of them? Phyllis has one, we know that too, by another chance. But there are the brothers. Derek may have something he wants to hide; so may his wife. Then there’s Gerald, the happy bridegroom; what about him? Past mistresses, perhaps? And Timothy’s brother, who seems to have left the family fold? We don’t know anything much about him. And who visited Pantons last night in a Vauxhall Viva whose number I managed to make out as it passed me in the drive?”

Jane stared at her brother. She looked frightened.

“I don’t like this, Patrick,” she said. “I don’t like this theorising.”

“It isn’t all theory. Some of this is fact,” Patrick said. “And only facts will do.”

“Are you going to give that letter to the police?”

“Not yet. Officially, we only know that Mrs Mackenzie has unfortunately died.” He paused. “We’ll see what happens at the inquest. By that time I may have found out some other secrets, enough to show me who has one important enough to yield a motive for murder.”

Betty Ludlow had moved from the shrubbery to the herbaceous border. There were still vivid patches of colour in it, where Michaelmas daisies and coreopsis bloomed, and huge-faced daisies like giant sunflowers; but there were other, withered shoots to be cut down, and it was not too soon to start forking over the earth in readiness for winter. Across an area where only peonies and lupins were supposed to be, a rapid-spreading artemesia straggled, strangling weaker plants, and she attacked it fiercely; it would soon reappear as strongly as before.