Dead In The Morning (9 page)

For a time, while she toiled, she thought of nothing but the work in hand. Her square figure bent and straightened, bent and straightened, as she turned the soil, creating order where there had been confusion. Presently, however, her mind harked back to the day before. What a dreadful Sunday it had been.

She had been busy in the kitchen when Gerald telephoned with the news from Pantons. Derek was already in his study, poring over some papers he had brought back from the office, and not pleased at being interrupted, but when he heard the reason he drove over to his mother’s house at once. He soon returned, though, saying that nothing could be done. Alec Mackenzie had been told and was coming down by train. Gerald and the police between them would deal with him.

Betty could not understand why the police were concerned. Something about sleeping pills and whisky, it seemed, but there must be some mistake. Mrs Mackenzie was in no way morbid; she would never have killed herself. Her son had said so too, evidently.

It was the first time they had ever missed Sunday lunch at Pantons, except when they were away from home, and that was rarely. Betty had broached her freezer for a stew, and she, Derek and Tim had sat round the dining table in glum silence, trying to assume an appetite none had. Soon Tim had risen, and flounced out of the house with a toss of his long, shaggy hair, saying he was going away. She and Derek, left alone, had decided that Mrs Mackenzie had had a seizure and the chemist must have put up only half the prescription ordered; this was the only possible explanation.

In the evening they had telephoned Martin to let him know what had happened. At first, there was no reply from the Chelsea house; it was after eleven o’clock when Martin and Sandra returned from wherever they had been and heard the news.

Betty dug doggedly on, remembering all this. Derek had scarcely slept all night. For weeks now he had been wakeful; it was most unlike him, for normally he slumbered like a basking seal, occasionally snoring, for seven hours at least, while she lay restless, her mind darting about worrying over Tim and his long, greasy hair and failed exams. Sometimes, for a change, she agonised about Martin instead, puzzling over his relationship with his wife, who seemed so implacably cool and detached; impossible to imagine Sandra pregnant, or even, in the act of love, dishevelled. With such nocturnal reflections Betty shocked and alarmed herself, forgetting that few parents understood their children. She lay wooing sleep by various means, like going through the alphabet reciting to herself the names of plants, beginning with Anchusa and so on down, by way of Mignonette, at last to Zinnia. Then she would try shrubs, starting with Azalea, and cheating sometimes, for they were harder, and finally on to fruit and vegetables, often enough, before sleep came at last. All this time, as a rule, Derek would be solidly beside her, a large, gently pulsating hump, comforting merely by his presence.

But recently, as she lay staring at the ceiling, or at the patch of paler darkness where the window was, or at coloured patterns shooting across the blackness of her tightly shut eyes, she had known that he was not sleeping either. He would lie unnaturally still, feigning the even breath of slumber, unwilling to acknowledge that he was disturbed, and for the first time in their long marriage inhibiting her. Was it a business worry, or was it worse: some other woman?

Last night, they both had a clear-cut reason for their sleeplessness, and the invisible barrier that had grown up between them in the past few weeks had been dissolved. They lay awake, talking about Mrs Mackenzie and about their boys for quite a time. This was a consolation.

Betty gently eased a clump of iris up, so that the rhizomes showed above the ground. As she bent to her work again, a large black police car turned in at the gate and drove slowly up to the front door.

“I hate leaving you to all this on your own, darling,” Gerald said. He stood in the hall of the Stable House with his arms round Helen. “I wish I could stay with you.”

“So do I, but there it is,” said Helen. She gave him a quick kiss. “Don’t worry. There’s plenty to do. All our unpacking, for a start, and Phyllis may like some help during the day. Then there’s Cathy. Maybe she could show me the village this afternoon, if she’s not too busy.”

“That’s a good idea,” said Gerald. It would do both of them good to get away from the atmosphere up at Pantons for a time. Gerald let her go and picked up his briefcase. “I’ll be back as early as I can make it, sweetheart, but I’ve been away from the office for so long that there are things I must attend to. And I’m sure to have to take more time off before this business is finally cleared up. I must be here for the inquest, at least.”

“I know, dear,” Helen said.

“After everything that’s happened, to think there should be this to face now,” said Gerald bitterly.

“I keep telling you not to worry,” Helen said. She kissed him again. “Soon we shall forget it all.”

“Yes. Oh, damn it all to hell,” Gerald said. He put his briefcase down again and caught her to him once more.

“I wanted to make up to you for everything,” he told her.

“You do, darling. You have, and you will,” she insisted.

He started to kiss her again, until at last she broke away from him.

“Darling, you must go,” she said gently.

But when he had gone, she felt alone and afraid. She occupied herself for a time by clearing away the breakfast dishes and making a list of stores that she must get. Perhaps there was a grocery in Winterswick where she could buy them. She had just found the vacuum sweeper, stowed away in a closet under the stairs, when there was a contrived cough in the background and she looked up to see a small woman with bright red hair standing in the hall.

Helen’s heart thumped. Ridiculous to be so terrified.

“Beg pardon, Mrs Ludlow, if I startled you. I’m Mrs Bludgen, come to clean,” said the stranger.

The pounding in Helen’s temples slowed. Mrs Bludgen from the lodge. Phyllis had said something about a woman to help with the housework, but that had been on Friday night: so long ago, it seemed.

“Oh, good morning, Mrs Bludgen. I hadn’t realised you’d be here today,” said Helen, speaking calmly.

“Mondays and Thursdays are my days,” Mrs Bludgen said. “I oblige Mrs Medhurst on the other mornings. I’ll just take that sweeper, madam, if you please.” She reached out for the cleaner.

Helen surrendered it.

“All right, Mrs Bludgen. You’d better carry on,” she said faintly. This was an example of that formidable person she had read about in novels and seen portrayed in British movies, the daily help. Phyllis would have to explain how she should be managed, if indeed she must be kept at all.

“What a terrible thing about poor Mrs Mackenzie,” Mrs Bludgen eagerly remarked, whilst at the same time in one movement somehow plugging in the sweeper and removing her own mock suede jacket. “I said to Bludgen, you could have knocked me down with a feather when I heard. I was talking to her on Saturday, as large as life; stopped by, she did, to pass the time of day on her way back from the village. And now she’s dead. It makes you think.”

“It’s very sad,” said Helen.

“Of course, you didn’t know her, Mrs Ludlow,” said Mrs Bludgen, disappearing into the cupboard and coming out again with tins of polish and a pile of dusters. “But she was quite a nice person. What her boy will do I don’t know.”

“Her boy?”

“Her son in London. Young Alec. Devoted, he was. Ah, dear,” Mrs Bludgen sighed. She began to rub polish into the hall table. Helen ironically wondered if she put as much effort into her work when there was no witness.

“And the police are up at the house just now,” Mrs Bludgen added. In fact, she had thought Phyllis might require her assistance more than the new Mrs Ludlow today, in view of what had happened; and curious though she was to get a sight of the American lady, events at the big house were much more compelling. So she had felt snubbed when turned away at the door first by a policeman, and then by Phyllis herself.

Helen stiffened. It was unlikely that anyone outside the family knew many details yet; better keep it so for as long as possible.

“It’s usual, when there’s been a sudden death,” she said firmly.

“Oh, I know,” said Mrs Bludgen, who saw such things all the time on television. “I expect she had a heart attack, poor soul.”

“I expect she did,” Helen agreed.

The longer everyone in Winterswick thought the same, the better. The moment a hint of anything else escaped, down would come the Press, like vultures on the scene, and who knew what might happen then, what past embarrassments for everyone might be resurrected? Helen knew the power of newspapers.

She murmured something and went upstairs, leaving Mrs Bludgen to her speculations.

Mrs Bludgen polished on, more lingeringly now, musing. There was much to think about, for once. Usually there was only old Mrs Ludlow’s latest tantrum to dominate the scene, but now there were alternatives, Mr Gerald’s new wife, for instance. She seemed a frail little thing. Still, it was time he got married; he should have done it years ago, for Cathy’s sake, if not his own. Mrs Medhurst did her best, but it wasn’t right for the girl to be cooped up in that big house with a bad-tempered old witch and a frustrated aunt. Oh, Mrs Medhurst might have been married once, but it was only in name, Mrs Bludgen was convinced. She too read lurid novels. Mrs Medhurst was often touchy and awkward, though, to be fair, she was just. Still, she was a disappointed woman, that was certain.

And now, on top of Mr Gerald’s wedding, there had come a sudden death. It went to show, thought Mrs Bludgen, who had seen something sinister in her tea-cup only last Wednesday, drinking her elevenses in the kitchen up at Pantons, and had said as much to Joyce Mackenzie. She plugged in the sweeper. Joyce had not reacted. She was always one to keep her distance; thought herself superior, Mrs Bludgen had often said to Bludgen, and much good it had done her now. But sad and shocking as it was, you couldn’t deny that things like this took you out of yourself. Two, there’d been: the wedding, and the death. There was bound to be a third.

She pushed the cleaner back and forth across the carpet. Helen, upstairs in her bedroom, heard the sound it made as she sat before the mirror at her dressing-table, staring at her own white and frightened face.

Inspector Foster was well accustomed to hostility, and recognised it at once as personified by Phyllis Medhurst, who had not looked pleased at finding him and Sergeant Smithers upon the doorstep of Pantons that Monday morning.

“Just one or two queries, Mrs Medhurst, about your movements on Saturday evening,” the Inspector said, when with obvious reluctance she had let him in.

“I’ve already told you what we all did,” Phyllis said.

“I want to check it with you,” said the Inspector. He still hoped the business might be sorted out before the inquest, which had been arranged for the following morning. By that time the forensic boys should have produced the expected confirmation that death was due to excess of barbiturate; it would be gratifying if he could by then present the coroner with an account of how it came to be administered, but at the moment it seemed unlikely under the complicated circumstances.

“You’d better come in here,” said Phyllis, leading the way into the study, a room that was seldom used, and where her father’s guns and books on country lore were still kept. Sometimes her mother demanded to be wheeled in here, and would sit alone, brooding, for an hour or more. Here, too, at her father’s desk, Phyllis prepared the household accounts, verified the bills, and wrote the cheques out ready for her mother’s signature.

She sat down in the swivel chair before that desk; she was not going to let the Inspector use it. Perforce, he lowered himself into a sagging leather chair and motioned to the red-haired Sergeant to find another seat.

“Now then,” Inspector Foster said. He took out a notebook and consulted it. “You last saw Mrs Mackenzie alive on Saturday evening. At what time?”

“At about eight-fifteen. My niece and I left the house then to spend the evening with my brother. I’ve told you,” Phyllis said. “What was Mrs Mackenzie doing when you saw her?” asked the Inspector, ignoring this bad temper. “She was finishing her meal. I put my head round the kitchen door and told her we were off.”

“I see. And when did you return?”

“It was getting on for half-past ten.”

“Mrs Mackenzie had gone to bed?”

“Yes. At least, she was in her room. I don’t know if she was in bed. She’d settled my mother down earlier.”

“She had a television set in her room. It was not on?”

“I’ve no idea. I didn’t stand outside her door, listening,” said Phyllis caustically. “Her room is at the far end of the corridor from mine.”

“You saw no light?”

“I didn’t look. Her window is at the back of the house and I wouldn’t have noticed,” Phyllis said. Really, what a waste of time this was. He had heard it all before, the previous day, when he had taken statements from them all. Her mother was still not dressed and ready for the day; it would have been better to have accepted Mrs Bludgen’s well-meant offer of help with all the extra work, but she had a prying eye and Phyllis did not want her in the house until the puzzle was resolved, a view the Inspector seemed to share, though he had left the final decision to her.

“And yesterday you went to church? At what time?”

“I left the house at twenty minutes to eight,” Phyllis said.

“And the sodium amytal capsules were on the hall chest then? You did not open the bottle?”

“No. There were still three left in the previous one. I had meant to take the new ones upstairs, but what with my brother’s arrival and one thing and another, I forgot,” Phyllis said. “It was careless, I admit. But we are used to having drugs about; my mother has pills for her heart, and for other purposes. There aren’t any children here who might take them by mistake.”

“Tell me what happened when you got back from church,” said the Inspector. “The time first.”