Murder at Maddingley Grange (21 page)

“But…it glowed, sir…”

“Phosphorescent paint, Gaunt. The oldest trick in the book. Ask Henry Baskerville. I've no doubt a thorough search will turn up this sheet or whatever it was hidden in some old trunk or chest.”

“It was a miracle how it vanished.”

“No such thing as miracles, Gaunt. The man was familiar with some secret passage. I know your employer denies the existence of such a thing, but I presume there's never been a really intelligent search. An omission I intend to rectify after concluding my examination of the terrace. Now…let us get on to Martin Lewis—”

“Bennet!” Laurie's voice sounded cracked and shrill. Bennet left the washing-up room and hurried next door. Here Laurie asked if she would slice the cucumber. Hastily deflecting the maid's movement toward a rack of lethally sharp knives, Laurie gave her a mandoline. And, once the cucumber was done, a plateful of walnuts and a mortar and pestle.

As Bennet started to pound away, Laurie noticed the bosom was gracefully back in position. How silly of her to have seen any portentous significance in its absence. Quite obviously the woman was flat-chested and herself supplied the curvaceous outlines that Nature had, in some unkind humor, withheld. Nothing so strange about that. In fact—Laurie noted the huge flat feet and spinily sprouting chin—the only surprise was that Bennet felt it worthwhile rectifying the omission.

Reproving herself for being uncharitable, Laurie got out a large wooden tray with iron handles and started to lay it with breakfast for one. She put out brioche and curls of nearly white butter and wild strawberry preserve in a dish like a scallop shell.

Laurie had been watching and listening for Martin for the past hour and a half. His early-morning tea was still untouched although Bennet said she had knocked very loudly when leaving it on the landing. Now, making a fresh pot, Laurie found herself feeling resentful on Martin's behalf. You would have thought, simply on the grounds of common humanity, that someone would have commented on his absence. Or asked how he was. Or offered to go and see. But as far as Laurie knew, not a smidgen of interest. Even Rosemary, attentive to such a determined degree at the time of the debacle, seemed to have been quite distracted by Simon's glowing and empathetic patronage.

Not that Laurie minded that. She had not at all enjoyed the gnawing ache in her stomach when she had been forced to watch the other girl holding Martin's head in her lap. Or to experience the sharp stab of sympathetic pain each time this same poor head clunked against the hall floor. She listened now to the shrieks of gaiety from the gardens and glared mutinously out at the croquet first eleven. A fat lot they cared. Martin could be dying up there.

The tray was complete. Time to pass it to Bennet, thought Laurie. That would be best. After all, if she took it up herself Martin might think it a bit odd. She being the hostess so to speak. On the other hand…He was bound to wake feeling pretty fragile. That was only to be expected. And Bennet could be slightly…well…brusque. Laurie asked herself if, after a hard night, literally on the tiles, she would like the following morning to open her eyes on to a thin, unsmiling mouth and stern bewhiskered chin. Frankly she would not. She would much prefer a younger, jollier, more friendly sort of face. But, going from the ridiculous to the sublime, what if Martin had been dreaming of an exquisite lovely blonde, perhaps drifting in a cloud of flowery chiffon in that strange ethereal slow-motion way blondes have in dreams and shampoo commercials. What a come-down then to open his eyes and see a small chunky person hovering uneasily between sour Scylla and chic Charybdis and about as ethereal as a baby Charolais. No, far better for Bennet to take the breakfast.

As if to underline the seemliness of this decision the maid turned and said: “Is that Mr. Lewis's tray, 'm? I've finished the walnuts if you'd like me to take it up.”

“No—that's all right, Bennet.” Laurie was amazed as the words sprang out. “Perhaps you could get on with scrubbing the potatoes. We usually use the sinks next door for vegetables.”

“Very good 'm.”

Crossing the hall, her calf muscles dissolving as she went, Laurie noticed a sun-bright marigold, part of the new flower arrangement in the copper jug. Feeling that the sight of it was bound to give a positive and cheerful start to anyone's day, she pulled it out and laid it tenderly across the rolls.

Martin woke slowly to the most appalling racket. After a fuddled moment or two he turned on the pillow, attempting to trace the source, then wished he hadn't. The movement made him acutely conscious of the matter and construction of his head. It felt very large, quite spherical and full of extremely heavy stones. As he turned one way they followed, first rumbling and banging, then piling up in a clattering roar just above his ear. If he was unwise enough to reverse this procedure, they all charged in the opposite direction. When he sat up they settled, a boulder dam behind the eyebrows.

The noise was coming from a gang of birds. A combo on the windowsill. A bit shaggy when it came to unity but bags— bags and bags—of volume. A male blackbird was especially shrill. Who would have thought, observed Martin to himself, that a tiny creature could produce such a screaming din?

He shouted: “Go away.” They stopped for a second and peered brightly in. He waved and shouted again and they flew off, all but the blackbird who sneered and started to peck at the glass with a sound like a pneumatic drill.

Martin cowered beneath the quilt, then, ashamed of being bested by such a minute adversary, swung his legs over the side of the bed, very wobblingly stood up and promptly sat down again. He felt absolutely dreadful. Every single bone, from the fragile matchsticks in his toes to his great hulking fibulas and femurs, ached. His skin was bruised and sore and angrily red in some places as if scorched. His neck and shoulders might have been clamped overnight in a vise. His whole body felt as if it had been efficiently dismembered, then inefficiently reassembled. Even his teeth throbbed. Slumped on the side of his bed, Martin lowered his head very, very gradually until it rested in the palms of his hands.

Memory, piecemeal, reasserted itself. He recalled creeping along to the Greuze room. The next thing he remembered was being seized by some immensely powerful adversary that had reared up out of the gloom like a yeti and thrown him down the stairs. After that a vague recollection of being helped back up again. And that was that.

What Martin could not conjure up was any remembrance of Rosemary in the role of devoted nurse. The cool hand on a battered brow, the tender smile, the glass of water lovingly held to a parched lip. Although water had obviously figured in the drama at some point. His hair and pajama jacket were soaking wet.

A couple of terminals unscrambled. He saw himself standing at Mrs. Saville's bedside. She had wakened—or appeared to wake—and he had fled. Martin relived that moment and, in spite of the warm sun pouring in through his window, started to shiver. Perhaps this was why there had been no hint of the Florence Nightingales while he lay semi-sensible on the hall floor. Had he not (the floodgates opened) agreed with Rosemary that once her mother was completely dormant he would make his way to the Greuze room so that they could “be together”? There was little doubt, Martin recognized sadly, that in the Don Juan stakes he was an absolute nonstarter.

The reel of memory wound on, projecting now the dinner party complete with sound track of sparkling repartee. Another bodge-up with a purplish mark, like an extravagant splodge of blackberry juice, on his instep to prove it. In fact, taken all round, his attempts to convince the matriarchal head of the Saville clan that he was just the fellow to sire the next generation had been an absolute bust. This time yesterday he and Mrs. Saville had never met. Now she knew him to be a young man with a sketchy knowledge of the Sealyham and early Chinese mores, who wrestled with well-built men far into the night and had fits. Not what you'd call progress.

Naturally (Martin brightened a smidgen) he would not dream of marrying Rosemary without her mother's blessing. A decision that might mean shattered dreams all around—you couldn't make an omelet and so on… On the other hand new dreams could arise and he was sure they would both recover. Given time. And there was certainly plenty to be said against acquiring a mother-in-law built like a hippopotamus.

There was a knock at the door. Martin groaned. Then a rattle of crockery and a little girl came in. She was carrying a huge tray in the center of which something hideously brassily frenetically orange flared, blasting its violent image onto Martin's retina. He closed his eyes. When he opened them again she had put the tray on the writing desk and was standing, blushing and looking at her sandals. She gave him a quick look, said:

“I hope you're feeling better now,” and stared at her shoes again.

“Yes, thank you,” said Martin automatically, as one does. Then, “No, actually.”

“Some tea might help. Shall I pour it out?”

“Please.” He watched her manipulating the heavy round-bellied pot and declined the offer of sugar. When she brought the cup over to him he realized that although only about a sniff away from five feet, she was not a little girl at all but quite a big girl. Fourteen going on fifteen. She had beautiful deep-blue eyes and looked vaguely familiar.

“I've brought some aspirin too. I thought you're bound to have a terrible headache. At the very least.”

“I have,” agreed Martin, touching his head and feeling an ominous gathering of the stones, prior to their migration south. “Ohhh I have…”

“And there's some fresh rolls. Could I butter one for you? And homemade jam.”

“Just the aspirin. Thank you.”

“How many?” She unscrewed the bottle and he noticed that her arms were wonderfully brown, glowing and burnished by the sun.

“How many have you got?”

“I think you shouldn't have any more than three.” She shook the tablets out and placed them carefully in his hand. He noticed her own was trembling and, when their fingers accidentally touched, she jumped to her feet and retreated to the door. Obviously extremely shy. She was mumbling something about having to go and look at the salmon. So she helped in the kitchen. Perhaps the daughter of that sour-faced maid.

Martin staggered over and locked the door against further interruption, then staggered back to bed. He took the aspirin, throwing back his head to get them down. A grave mistake. By the time he had recovered his equilibrium the lads were back, an albatross at the glockenspiel. They launched into “When The Saints Go Marching In.” Martin slid under the bedclothes and let them get on with it.

D
erek, fingerprinting outfit to hand, was examining the terrace. He peered through his magnifying glass at the earth border between the flagstones and the wall of the house, pushing aside little clusters of heart's-ease the better to search for footprints. What he found, or rather did not find, puzzled him greatly. Was he perhaps searching beneath the wrong window?

He returned to the house and the library. Although the furniture had been rearranged he remembered quite clearly where Sheila had been sitting when she had leaped to her feet crying out in such alarm. Derek followed the direction of her pointing finger. Yes—it was the center window all right. He crossed over and had a closer look. To clinch matters the carpet was still damp where the rain had poured in.

Back on the terrace he gave the ground a final laserlike scrutiny, breaking off several pinks in the process, before turning his attention to the windowsill. This was protected by an overhanging lintel and consequently bone-dry if a bit on the crumbly side. Derek shook out his sand-fine aluminum granules and blew at them delicately. A certain amount went up his nose; the rest disappeared into the moss and assorted crevices. Undaunted he gave his glass plenty of play, zooming in, then drawing dramatically back. It wasn't easy to discern the impression of a human hand, but impression there must be for the lack of footprint in the border meant that to press his face to the window the intruder
must
have had his hands upon the sill. More powder was shaken out. Ideally, of course, one dusted for evidence on a highly polished surface innocent of exposure to the elements but no detective worth his salt expects to have it easy all the time.

Derek naturally did not entertain for a second the idea that the face that had so distressed his wife belonged to an actor. He believed that Simon had simply fallen in with Rosemary's suggestion to reassure the other guests, and also to accept credit for what would have been, had he really had the wit to think of it, an excellently inventive piece of stage management.

Now, having hunkered down to give the border a final scrutiny, just in case, tucked in among the crumpled heart's-ease and newly truncated Mrs. Sinkins, there should be a button or wisp of hair or Bolivian cigar stub, Derek had to admit defeat. Flowers and earth. That was it.