Down the Garden Path (27 page)

Putting his cup on the coffee table the inspector rubbed hairy hands together. “For such a quiet little village you certainly seem to have a bustling social life, and so early in the day, too.”

Constable Watt looked affronted. “Only among a certain set. My wife will have been at the washtub for three hours.”

“Don’t be such a snob, George. Your wife told me that watching her Bendix was better than television. A clearer picture and she got to read at the same time.” Hyacinth stared him down.

“Such a particularly spiteful crime, murder!” sighed Primrose, “but I don’t think it can permanently tarnish Flaxby Meade’s reputation.”

“Tarnish! It will do it the world of good” came Mrs. Grundy’s comfortable voice. “Excuse us, Inspector. You were about to say?”

The puckered eyelid drooped. “As this is the only house close to the avenue where the murdered man was found, and as all of you appear to have either been here or en route, I will speak with each of you in turn.”

“And don’t miss the point that we all knew him to some degree or other.” Mrs. Grundy’s hands were folded complacently over her stomach,

“I suppose there can be no doubt that the man is Hunt,” enquired Mr. Deasley. “His being here at such an hour has us all rather puzzled. He took the train back to London yesterday, or I assume he did....” His voice petered out.

“We are basing our belief that he is one Angus Hunt from the contents of a wallet found on the body and from the identification of Miss Tessa Fields.” Inspector Lewjack nodded at me. “Now, young man”—he levelled a finger at Bertie—“would you like to come with me first?”

“I didn’t see nuffink. I didn’t hear nuffink. Fred was the only one what saw ...” Bertie’s eyes threatened to pop out and roll across the floor.

“If we could use a room on this floor? The library, last door on the left towards the front door? That will be ideal.” The inspector was speaking to Hyacinth. Maude had her arm round Bertie’s shoulders.

“If you want your mother along, that’s fine. This has been a shock for her, too, and if I know beans about mums she’ll be carrying you around in a backpack until you’re twenty-one.” The inspector ruffled the ginger head.

“No, I won’t.” Maude’s voice came at a clip, but I noticed her blue eyes were extra bright as she prodded Bertie forward. “Don’t need an echo, do you, dear?”

It could have been Mum speaking. Bertie’s eyes ceased popping and his stance grew soldierly.

“Thank you, ma’am,” the inspector said. “They do talk more easily when the parents aren’t around.”

The sitting room door closed and Constable Watt was once more The Law in Flaxby Meade. He swelled importantly, the helmet strap threatening to lacerate his chin.

“Ladies and gents, there will be no discussing of the murder.”

“Oh, stop huffing and puffing!” whined Godfrey. “If you are so highly dedicated to caution, why aren’t the servants in here with us? We wouldn’t have to talk to
them.”
He gestured vaguely from his chair with a limp hand. “They could be kept busy dusting some of these fussy little ornaments, or by lighting the fire. I tell you, I’ve come over all shivery.”

“He’s absolutely right.” Mr. Deasley tugged at his handkerchief. “Please don’t think I am implying that they are in the kitchen cribbing up on their stories, but ...”

“My darling Goddy! Shivering! You must be coming down with one of your colds. Let me give you something to make you feel better.” Mrs. Grundy was digging into her bag. “And, Tessa, you are trembling, too.”

She was right. I was besieged by a dense chill, but it had nothing to do with the temperature in the room or anything physically wrong with me. I looked from face to face, thought about Butler and Chantal somewhere outside this room, and struggled with the truth. Whatever I tried to tell myself about vengeful artists pursuing Angus to Flaxby Meade, I still grappled with the strong possibility of the murderer being someone in this house. (Is it quite as much fun playing detective now, Tessa?)

“Forget it, Mumsie. Should I drink one of your poisonous potions when we already have one body too many?” Godfrey shifted irritably on the sofa, snatching his hand away from his parent.

Planting enormous feet apart, the constable blew out his chest. “Let’s have some hush, if you please. I will decide whether the other suspects will be brought in for surveillance.” His face grew a little less assertive as he spoke. If he went to fetch Butler and Chantal he would have to leave us untended.

Mrs. Grundy inclined her beautiful white head. “Murder, like parenting, is something certain people find they should never have attempted until it is too late. Now, my dear husband and I took the matter very seriously. We viewed raising Goddy as our ultimate work of science.”

I was close enough to Mr. Deasley to hear him mutter, “And botched the experiment, by God.” I could feel the tension mounting in him and the others. Harry was pacing up and down, Primrose was fussing with oddments on the bureau, Mr. Deasley was fiddling again with the ivory elephant, Hyacinth and Maude were sitting on one sofa and the Grundys on the other. No one was making eye contact.

I got up from my chair and brushed against Harry. His fingers touched mine, and weakly I wanted to hold on to him, keep us both safe. If the murderer were here he or she perhaps knew that Harry and I had been with Angus at the end. And perhaps crouched behind the trees, listening.... I stepped away from Harry. We should have been together in this, united as I had believed us to be in the search for my origins. Anger was a powerful shield; it would guard me against fear as well as grief. I didn’t need Harry. Detective Tessa would go it alone.

I’d had such dreams when I entered this house; of romantic lineage and of seeing, for the first time, a reflection of my face in someone else’s. Now what did I have? The possibility that my mother was linked to a house of old secrets and present-day murder. Fergy always said that wishes are gilded carriages that turn into overripe pumpkins. I had told Harry that the fantasies were dead, and they were. Even if I found my mother she would not be the magical figure I had searched for all these years. That woman was as much a ghost as Mum. But I had wished this family upon myself and now I was stuck with it. The detection business wasn’t fun anymore, but I had to discover the identity of the murderer. I had to discover the identity of my mother because, bad seed or not, I had to know who I was. Horribly egocentric, and yet I felt Angus would understand.

I looked from Hyacinth to Primrose. How terrible for one if the other ... but how much worse to live with suspicion. The sisters couldn’t live out their lives, each wondering, fearing, perhaps growing to hate the other. Unless ... unless they had collaborated. I sat down and found myself praying, “If it is them, remember they are old and have been kind to me.”

I studied Mr. Deasley. On the drive to the station, might Angus have confided in him? Asked for support in persuading the sisters to give up the card games? Discretion was never Angus’s middle name. But I couldn’t see Mr. Deasley committing murder purely on chivalrous grounds, not unless he was truly in love with Hyacinth or Primrose. As for the card games—their being halted would surely be beneficial financially to Mr. Deasley. With the sisters’ nefarious source of income removed, they would have to sell off the silver teapots even faster.

What was Bertie saying to the inspector? Hyacinth had almost convinced me that the word of a highly strung, imaginative child would be taken with a large pinch of salt, but now I wasn’t so sure.

I focussed on Maude. If this were a thriller, it would be discovered that she harboured an insane hatred for all men—because the ones of her acquaintance sat in the pub quaffing Guinness while the wife was in labour. But what did I know that might place her on the suspect list? She had telephoned last night. Suppose Primrose, distracted by the loss of Minnie, had phoned her back at Cheynwind and confided in her about Angus’s morning visit? Had Maude plotted to incriminate the sisters as vengeance for an old family feud?

My heart beat quicker ... old family feud. I leaned forward watching her. I wasn’t sure I wanted to believe, or suspect that ... but something about the way she sat, so solid, so steady, in her rumpled uniform with the white frilled collar, made me realize that I had never really seen Maude before—not as a woman. Until now I only thought of her as a nurse, Bertie’s parent, and a source of information. A woman alone, taking into her life a troubled child, she must be an extremely strong and indomitable woman.

My heart slowed and I made myself look at Mrs. Grundy. Now here was a woman capable of murder, especially if anyone threatened her darling Goddy. The notion that she might have done away with Angus because she hated porridge would never occur to the police, but I ...

Godfrey was speaking, and in my mind the words “false friend” fitted him better than anyone else in this room. Far better than Angus thinking himself a false friend to me, or the sisters. Godfrey was the corrupting force behind the Tramwells’ folly. He said, “Nurse Krumpet, knowing my weak stomach as you do, you should be able to persuade the police that I could never commit murder. Thinking about that knife sliding into flesh is enough to make me turn the colour of those putrid dragons.” He pressed a soft white hand against his angora jumper and grimaced at those beasts on the hearth. “Really, Hyacinth and Prim, why don’t you let Deasley cart those off to his junk shop? And I’ll have my decorator scurry around here with something tasteful in brass. My treat. No? Then at least get them plated.”

“Enough, Goddy,” admonished his mother. “We don’t want to upset the Tramwells.”

“Plated!” huffed Hyacinth, eyes on the beloved son. “I’ll have you know those two—Marco and Polo as our father named them—are solid bronze. Admittedly not particularly fashionable, with chrome being in, but if they were composed of cow manure they would still stay. Primrose and I are excessively fond of them.”

“Would we get rid of our beloved Min because she is” —Primrose, rigid in her chair, spelled out the word—“p-l-a-i-n?”

Up leapt the object of this praise, wooffing enthusiastically, and reaping an automatic chorus of “Enough of that” from Constable Watt.

“You know”—Harry bent and patted Minnie as she whirled in a tailspin—“your abbreviating her name like that makes me think of Mr. Hunt. Those last words of his—I hadn’t thought before, but it is interesting ...”

“What is?” asked Maude.

“Enough of that ...” But the door grated open, admitting Butler and Chantal, claiming Constable Watt’s complete attention.

“That Hunt remembered her name,” said Harry. “‘The dog, Min. He had trouble getting the words out, but whether he was rambling or trying to tell us that the dog had given chase, or ...”

“Oh, this is dreadful!” Primrose heaved Minnie onto her lap, where she lay dangling like a lumpy travelling rug. “If the murderer should be afraid that somehow a certain dog could give him away—Hyacinth, we must not let her out of our sight for a moment!”

Godfrey, still staring in an ecstasy of revulsion at Marco, froze. His hands stroked his turquoise wool trousers. His breath, when it came, formed a slow hiss. “What else did Hunt say?” Uncanny to hear the Squire speak without his babiefied flummery.

“Nothing that made any sense.” Harry avoided my menacing glare, and stroked the tip of one of Minnie’s ears as he sat down next to Primrose.

“A little more hush, if you please.” Constable Watt was finally ready to operate his pencil. “It seems the inspector had those two show our reinforcements from Warwick the Ruins and the gardens.” He directed an official stare towards Chantal and Butler sitting in chairs against the wall facing the fireplace; she exotically lovely, he innocuous apart from the female shoes. “Very important those areas in relation to the scene of the crime. I now require all names and addresses for the record. Starting, if we please, with you, young lady.” He bounced importantly on the sides of his feet as I rose.

“Tessa Fields. The Vicarage, Kings Ransome. Oh no, that’s wrong. I
did
live there, but my father is now at Doxbury in Devon.” I tugged at a straggle of hair. “Goodness, I can’t remember the exact address. You see, what should have been my father’s new vicarage was recently purchased by the local historical society, and ...”

“Tessa Fields, of no fixed abode.” Heavily underscored. “Next, if you please.”

“Harry Harkness, of. . ,” He was giving me a half-amused, half-sympathetic, thumbs-down sign, which I ignored.

“Such nonsense,” burst out Hyacinth. “Here, George”— striding towards him, she flicked a flat leather volume into his hands. The pencil went into a flying spin, caught deftly by Harry. “Take that into a corner and scribble to your heart’s content.” Hyacinth pursued her brow-beating tactics. “Tessa’s address as of now is Cloisters. And if you can’t spell it, not C-l-o-y, George—at least you know where to find her. Unlike my car, the time you confiscated it for illegal parking on the zebra crossing.”

“Just doing my job, ma’am.”

“Lent it to his wife for her Christmas shopping in London was the story I heard,” said Mrs. Grundy.

“Now, now. One does appreciate your dedication, my good man.” Mr. Deasley’s voice was soothing. “But wouldn’t you be better occupied fetching in this other child—the one the boy indicated was with him in the walk?”

“Other child?” exclaimed Mrs. Grundy. “Would that be young Ricky?”

Maude bent forward and said something I could not catch, causing Mrs. Grundy to shake her white head in dissatisfaction. “Fred! I might have known. Maude, you really should put a stop to this unfortunate association. Couldn’t you tell your boy that Fred has been murdered, too? Goddy’s father always said ...”

But I was never to learn what the late great Mr. Grundy had to say for himself. With a lollipop stick extending from his lips, Bertie burst back into the room to announce indistinctly that the inspector was now ready to see me in the library. Following me to the door, Harry tried to catch hold of my hand, but I evaded him. All the remorse of which he was capable could not make things right between us.