Death of a Mystery Writer (5 page)

Terence Fairleigh was not wearing spangles today. Even his mother would have drawn the line at that. He was wearing old jeans and a check shirt, and he was barefoot. His mother did rather dislike the bare feet, but she said nothing about them: today was Oliver's birthday, and she was again trying to look on the bright side and believe that for once, just once, the thing would go off without a hitch. What was more to the point than hazy optimism, she was doing all she could of a practical nature to ensure that Oliver's promise of good behavior was not put to the test by any of the more predictable family phenomena that were the usual cause of thunderclouds.

“You will dress properly for dinner, won't you, dear?” she said, looking at her son anxiously.

“Of course, Mum. The whole hog, if necessary.”

“Well, it
is
the birthday dinner. I think your father would rather like it.”

“Then the whole hog it shall be,” said Terence, carelessly flipping through a magazine. “And polite conversation through
out dinner—not a word of slang more recent than nineteen twenty-five, not an obscenity, not a mention of music, and not a political opinion one centimeter to the left of Genghis Khan.”

Terence looked at his mother, fair and open, his bright blue eyes utterly guileless.

“I know it will be a strain, dear. But it would mean such a lot to me to have a
happy
birthday for a change.”

“I doubt whether it will suit Dad. Why else have we kept up the custom but to have a satisfying occasion for fireworks in the middle of the year, to balance Christmas at the end? And of course it is
his
birthday. Still, I'll do what I can.”

“And then there's Mark—”

Terence held up his hand. “Mum, I can exercise self-control, but I'm not a miracle worker. Mark will have to take care of himself.”

“But that's what he never can do! If you could keep him away from the drink . . .”

“Mum, there's no way in the world of doing it. He's got a nose for it sharper than a beagle's, and ways of getting at it you and I couldn't begin to fathom. If you lock it away in this house, then he'll get it outside. Is he here yet?”

“No.”

“Then it's a near certainty he'll arrive sloshed. The best thing you could do would be to put him to bed.”

“Oh, but I wouldn't want to do that. Your father promised to be nice to him—all day.”

“Christ! What's gotten into the old man?” As he looked at his mother inquiringly, his frank blue eyes took on an expression that was almost crudely speculative.

“He promised—he promised me”—a disinterested observer might almost have fancied that Lady Fairleigh-Stubbs was jealous of her daughter, so deliberate was her concealment here—“that he wouldn't let anything provoke him today.”

“Okay,” said Terence. “Problem solved. So what are you worrying about?”

“Well, you can't always rely on your father's promises, you
know. I think we should do our part too—not do things that we know annoy him. And if we
could
get the idea through to Mark—well, it might be a new beginning.”

Her voice had a vague wistfulness, as if even she could not believe such a thing possible. Terence smiled at her encouragingly. But as she left the room he lay back on the bed, stared at the ceiling, and furrowed his brow. Fancy his father promising good behavior for one day. What was he up to? Or had the situation changed? Was this the result of some rapprochement between him and Mark? If so, what was Mark up to?

This needed watching, he said to himself, still gazing at the ceiling with his innocent blue eyes.

 • • • 

“Ben, do we have to go tonight?” asked his little wife in the kitchen of the little cottage without hollyhocks. “It
is
really a family affair. We'll only be in the way.”

“We'll have to, Celia. He asked us specially, and there are not many people get asked there these days.”

“Not many who'd go, I shouldn't think,” said his wife.

“Of course he's a terrible old monster, I don't deny that. But he could be useful to me in a hundred ways.”

“Oh, Ben, I realize that,” said Celia Woodstock. “But the point is,
will
he? He hasn't exactly shown evidence of goodwill, has he? And I know I shall be so nervous, and frumpish, and clumsy—I'll annoy him every minute of the evening. I did last time, and I'm so nervous now it will be much worse tonight.”

“We don't have to stay long after dinner,” said Ben, wiping up a brown-veined plate that looked as if it might have been part of a large family service, but had seen better days. “Then we can fade away. It's a long time since we saw the whole family together.”

“We?”

“Oh, no, you don't really know them, do you? But it will be nice to see Bella and the boys again. Our families used to be quite close.”

“It's not a family I would want to be close to,” said his wife quite waspishly.

 • • • 

“Wycherley double-two-five-one,” said Lady Fairleigh-Stubbs cautiously, in case it was someone to whom her husband had been rude. It was. “Oh, Mark, lovely to hear your voice. Where are you? I wondered if you'd be here by now.”

Lady Fairleigh-Stubbs smoothed her hair as she listened for signs of slurring in her son's speech. At least he couldn't see her: he got so irate if he saw her listening for it, or thought she was trying to smell his breath.

“I see,” she said, when he got to the end of a story about having to meet a man about a deal, and their having missed each other, and having had to leave messages here and phone there. By now she was almost sure there was a slur, but she smiled brightly into the receiver. “But you're on your way now, dear, aren't you? We'll expect you in an hour or so—” And she put the receiver down on his plausible evasions.

“Still hoping for the best from Mark, Mother dear?” said a cool female voice, breaking into Eleanor Fairleigh's rather sad reverie like a March wind.

“Bella!” said her mother, and folded her in her arms. Bella was in traveling gear, but managed to show no signs of travel: how could anyone contrive to look like an ice lettuce on a hot summer's day? her mother wondered. Her makeup was bright and unsmudged, her blouse looked as if it were straight from the shop hanger, there was not a bulge in her slacks. It was almost inhuman. “You look so lovely, my dear. I don't know how you manage it.”

“All for Papa's sake, of course,” said her daughter with a slightly supercilious smile. “Where is he, by the way? I'd better wish him happy birthday.”

“He's not down yet. He's been getting rather tired lately—what with finishing the new book, and the trip to London, and so on. I thought it would be best if he stayed in bed for a bit, and kept his strength up for the dinner.”

“All the better to give us hell with?” said Bella, resting her elegant case on the bottom stair.

“My dear, he's promised to be good the whole day—but of course, you know that: I gather it was your doing.”

Oh, so it was Bella's doing, thought Terence, who had been passing above on the landing on his way to that bathroom, but had stopped to listen in. Bella glanced carelessly at her mother, not quite sure of the meaning of the expression on her face.

“He's still going along with that, is he?” she asked. “I'm flattered. Still, knowing Daddy's resolutions, he's not likely to keep it beyond the second sherry.”

“At least he's promised to make the effort,” said her mother, looking nervously upstairs in case he should descend in thunder, but seeing only the glint of light on her younger son's fair hair. “It was really nice of you to persuade him.”

“I thought it would make a change,” said Bella, indifferently. “And I felt sorry for Ben.”

“Ben Woodstock? Yes, poor boy. Your father was just a
tiny
bit difficult when we went round there. It will be pleasant having him tonight. It must be years and years since you saw him.”

“Oh, quite a time anyway,” said Bella, and not looking at her mother, she swung herself and her suitcase upstairs to her bedroom.

 • • • 

“Everything seems to have blown over,” said Mrs. Moxon somewhat regretfully in the kitchen, to Surtees, the chauffeur-cum-valet, who was tucking into a great meal at the kitchen table.

“Blown over?”

“That business of Master Mark—that scene he made at the Prince Albert.”

“Oh, that,” said Surtees, not letting such a triviality put him off his food. He was in his mid-thirties, stocky, and what Oliver Fairleigh would call vulgarly handsome—which meant that the observer had a suspicion he might use his looks to his own advantage. “I reckon it's a bit late in the day to start taking notice of the things Master Mark says.”

“Sir Oliver likes a stick to beat him with,” said Mrs. Moxon. “But it seems to have been forgotten. Her Ladyship says she spoke to him on the phone, and he'll be here soon.”

“Let's hope he's sobered up, then,” said Surtees.

“How do you know he's been drinking?”

“I saw him at the Rose and Thistle, out Barclay way. And he'd had more than enough, I can tell you.”

“Oh dear,” said Mrs. Moxon with relish. “Poor Lady Fairleigh.”

 • • • 

Wycherley Court was an early-eighteenth-century manor house, built by a gentleman who had done well out of the French wars. Like the great Marlborough (who had done even better) his instinct was to plant himself heavily on his native soil, as if daring God or the Supreme Being to uproot him. The manor he built was rectangular and solid, a matter of straight lines and angles at ninety degrees. When Oliver Fairleigh's rotund figure stood in the doorway, he looked like the circle in the square. Architecturally, the Brighton Pavilion would have suited him better.

It was five o'clock when Mark Fairleigh's Fiat drove through the gates and up the splendid circular drive to the front entrance. He was driving too fast, and his steering was too uncertain for comfort. The car skidded to a stop in front of the house, and there was an ominous pause before the driver got out. It seemed as though Mark was collecting his wits.

He got out of the car, and removed a small suitcase from the boot with a little too much care. His mother, watching nervously from the hall, was glad to see that his walk was steady enough: certainly he was not yet at the staggering stage. But he tripped slightly on the top step, and swore. By then his mother had opened the door to him, and he looked hazily embarrassed.

“Mark!” said his mother, not embracing him because he would suspect her of smelling his breath, but nevertheless distinguishing on the breeze a mixture of gin and menthol chewing gum which she found unpleasant and ominous. “You are looking well,” she said.

Mark certainly had a kind of bloom, though it was not the bloom of health. His cheeks and temples were flushed, and his eyes did not seem to focus properly: at the moment they were straying around the large oak-paneled hall of Wycherley Court, apparently looking for signs of his father.

But Oliver Fairleigh was never just
there
—he always appeared, always had to make an entrance. Today when he strode in attended by Cuff, snuffling, there was a new sort of effect. Today he was not Oliver Fairleigh, but Sir Oliver Fairleigh-Stubbs: local landowner, adored squire, a hunter and a fisher, a supporter of sound men and sound measures, one of a class that has been the backbone of the country from time immemorial. Odd that this impersonation should have faint overtones that reminded one of mine host at the local on Saturday night.

“Mark, my boy, good to see you!” he said, emerging from his study in a lather of geniality, and baring his teeth in a fearsome smile of welcome. “Staying the night I see! Keeping busy, eh? I'm glad you're here: I'd like your opinion on a new consignment of port from Witherspoon's. Can't make up my mind about it—I'd like a second view.”

If his father had put in his appearance in a scaly green costume, breathing flames from his nostrils and dripping blood from his claws, Mark could not have been more disconcerted. He backed up two paces, swallowed, murmured a vague assent, and then seemed inclined to turn to his mother and ask what was up.

“Take your suitcase up, my boy, and have a bath if you want one. I'll have a sherry waiting for you in the lounge—or is it gin and tonic, eh? Haven't been keeping up with your tipples recently.”

Mark murmured that a gin and tonic would be fine, took up his suitcase again, and mounted the stairs—once more tripping on the top step, and swearing. He seemed to have a genius for not quite making it to the top.

“Well, well,” said Sir Oliver, not relaxing his mask even when alone with his wife, perhaps for fear it would crumble to nothing.
“Now we're all together! Nothing like it, eh, my dear? I have just a few more letters to sign—Miss Cozzens is really keeping me at it today—and then we'll all meet for a drink before dinner. Eh?”

And he pottered off—even his walk was different from his normal one—to his study, leaving his wife to gaze after him in bemusement. Oliver not flying into rages was one thing, Oliver positively genial was quite another. She had known it but once before: when he went to the palace to collect his MBE, an honor which had pleased him out of all proportion to its worth. She did not know whether to find Oliver's behavior today a pleasant change, or an alarming one. If only it had been she who had been able to persuade him into it, rather than her daughter . . .

Making up for the evening in her bedroom some half an hour later, and listening to the grunts from next door as her husband changed into his dinner jacket, Eleanor Fairleigh-Stubbs looked at herself and wondered in her vague way why she bothered: why she bothered worrying, why she bothered trying to coax Oliver into good behavior, why she bothered trying to build a normal family life. Oliver was Oliver; nothing would change him; he did not want a peaceful life, and those who were closest to him were too used to the scarifying changes of mood to value the brief cease-fires that were part of the household routine. It had never been a happy house, even when the children were young, even before the children had been born. She wondered why Terence and Mark continued to come home. Bella, of course, had a real affection for her father, or seemed to have, but the boys . . . Why return to the battlefield if one didn't have to? Apart from to see her, of course. And because of the will.