Murder at Maddingley Grange (32 page)

After a moment's stunned surprise at the corpse's reappearance, they all stampeded off over the terrace and onto the green, Rosemary uttering a little trill of relief as they passed a peacock, lying on its back with its legs in the air.

Laurie and Martin, hand in hand, gawped at the riotous assembly. Apart from the gun blasts, they could have been watching the frantic final reel of a silent movie. Simon, zigzagging madly across the grass; Derek, zigging where Simon zagged and vice versa, unable to get a bead on his quarry but firing anyway. Once he turned and fired in the opposite direction and the rear column fell on its collective face.

Simon, having covered the distance, disappeared into the shrubbery. Derek stopped then, holding the gun with both hands and bending slightly at the knees in true professional manner. He pointed it directly at Simon's vanishing point and pulled the trigger. Nothing happened. He stood upright, shook the weapon, lifted it and peered down the barrel.

Fred, yelling: “Don't do that, you silly sod!” ran up and wrenched the revolver out of Derek's hand. By the time Laurie and Martin reached the pair they had been joined by all the others. Derek, Gilly gripping him firmly by the arm, stood in the group's center, white-faced and shaking with rage, and muttering: “I'll kill him…I'll kill him…” Then: “And I'll kill
you…
” He glared savagely at his wife.

“Derek,” she cried. “What's the matter? What's come over you? Are you mad?”

“Yes, mad. Mad to trust you…You fiend in human form. Evil blackhearted trollop!”

Simon stepped out hesitantly from behind a rhododendron. “It's all right,” Gilly called. “We've got a firm hold.”

He spoke too soon. Derek wrenched himself free with an enraged yell and Simon disappeared again. Fred and Gilly, furiously in pursuit, tackled Derek and brought him crashing down on a group of daphne seedlings. Laurie ran after her brother.

“Simon! What on earth is going on? Heavens, you look dreadful.”

“Wouldn't you?” Simon's shirt was wet through. His fair hair dark with sweat. His mouth worked with terror and relief. “You lunatic!” he screamed, in the general direction of the mangled
Thymelaeaceae
. “You homicidal maniac. You want bloody locking up. Oh, my God—” Simon's legs buckled and he collapsed. Laurie crouched beside him. Martin joined her and between them they got the quaking figure to its feet.

“Help me get him inside, Martin. Come on, Simon,” she coaxed her brother gently. “You look as if you could do with a drink.”

“Yes…get him a drink. Get him some hemlock. That's the stuff for traitors, isn't it? That's the coward's weapon— poison!” More yells and general vilification followed the trio as they stumbled across the lawn, Laurie murmuring distressedly as they passed the dead bird.

The two matriarchs on the terrace watched their approach with interest, tinged in the case of Mrs. Gibbs with cynical amusement. When they had passed, Mrs. Saville raised her brows inquiringly, but her companion merely lowered one lizardlike eyelid and shook her head.

In the library they eased Simon into an armchair. Laurie poured a large brandy and, finding her brother's fingers apparently boneless, held the glass to his lips. He downed it in three gulps; then his body gave one final violent shake and was still. He breathed more quietly, his mouth stopped trembling.

“Better?”

“A bit.”

“Right.” Laurie put the glass down, looked across at Derek and back to her brother. “Now, Simon. Will you please explain what the hell is going on?”

F
ive minutes later, several other people having also opted for what Gilly called “a snorter,” the smell of spirits pervaded the room. This added to the headiness already generated by a maelstrom of excited voices, most prominent of which by far was Derek's. He strode up and down, fulminating. “Let's get the buttons off the foils” was one of his fulminates, interlarded with “Deep waters, deep waters.”

During one of his brief breathing spaces Violet cried: “But you
still
haven't told us why you're not dead.”

“Ask Jezebel,” shouted Derek, pointing dramatically at his wife. “Or better still her fancy man.” The finger swung in the direction of his host.

Simon, who had been sitting in an attitude of alarm and dejection, his elegantly barbered cranium resting in his hands, lifted it at these words and gazed around in absolute bewilderment.

“You can look,” cried Derek, whose brush with death had obviously done little to dim his eye for detail. “I expect there's been a lot of looks behind my back one way or another. And not stopping at looks either.”

Simon opened his mouth and seemed about to speak. Then, apparently overwhelmed at being the target of such a flood of irrationality, closed it again. He frowned. “I could do with a drink.”

Laurie said: “You've already had three.”

“I don't care if I've had thirty-three.” His voice sounded raw. “Desperate measures call for desperate times…or something…”

“I'll get it.” Fred, ostentatiously holding his hand over his breast pocket, wherein reposed the Major Fontaine, poured another large snorter and gave it to Simon. “Hair of the dog, lad.”

“You shouldn't come out with accusations, Derek,” said Violet. “Especially without any proof. Folks get upset.”

“Proof! If it's proof you want, take a look at this!” And Derek whipped a paperback from the inside of his jacket and waved it at them all. “This book has saved my life as surely as if it had stopped an assassin's bullet.”

“I shouldn't think you're in much of a position to talk about assassin's bullets,” said Simon who, now that the
eau de vie
was taking effect, sounded a fraction on the resentful side.

“Pot calling the kettle—what?” put in Gilly. “Cut up rather rough yourself.”

“You've got something to do with what's been going on though, haven't you, Simon?” put in Fred. “Cause it were you that told us he were dead. Fooled me good and proper.”

“Oh—he's great at fooling people, Simon.” Derek's tone was richly sarcastic. “Well—go on, then. Tell them all about it.”

“It's hardly anything to do with me.” Simon sounded defensive now as well as aggrieved. “I was approached—”

“By your mistress!”

“I was approached,” continued Simon, giving the impression of gritted teeth and syllables strained through a fine-meshed sieve, “by Sheila—Mrs. Gregory—who suggested that to placate her husband, who was so upset at being cast in the role of victim he was quite capable of spoiling the entire weekend for all the others, we enact a little play…a murder game if you like…of our own. It seemed to me a not unreasonable plan. I saw it could inject a note of real drama into our proceedings, which, as host, it seemed my duty to do. After all, what could be more exciting than to go away on a mystery break only to find yourself in the throes of a real murder? The plan was that Derek should dispose himself in the conservatory, covered with tomato sauce, to be discovered by his wife and pronounced dead, which verdict to be confirmed by me. Then, after an interval, fairly brief—we knew it wouldn't be long before someone insisted the police be called—I would go and tip him the wink and he would appear like Banquo's Ghost to astonish and thrill you all—”

“Simon, how could you agree to such a thing?” Laurie sounded appalled. “Frightening people like that.”

“And if it were not for the fact,” continued Simon, “that the wires had been cut—”

“You
cut the wires!” cried Derek. “After disabling the bus. No one had brought a car, of course. You made sure of that by including rail fares in the price of the weekend.”

“I included rail fares,” said Simon with enforced patience, “because the cost was rather high and I thought that in one or two cases it might tip the balance. I didn't expect”—a cold glance at Gilly—“that people would be traveling from the North Pole.”

“Rubbish. All of these things were done to isolate us and make sure the police could not be called. Thus giving you plenty of time.”

“Time? Time for what?”

“To do the real murder. Do you think when you came back and picked up that knife and bent over me I didn't know what you were going to do?”

“I was going to tell you it was time to come out—”

“Hang on a sec,” said Fred. “There's one or two things don't hang together here.”

“Only one or two? My God.” Simon's laugh sounded a bit on the manic side.

“For a start—how could you be sure,”—Fred was addressing Derek—“that the wife would find you? If it'd been one of us, your plan would never have got off the ground.”

“We arranged that the discovery should be made at lunchtime,” said Sheila, who had stopped crying and now spoke with an almost feverish conviction, looking from her husband to the rest of the gathering and back again as if trying to spread assurances between the two. “Everyone else would be at the table eating. I would naturally be the person to go and see where Derek was.”

“It took you long enough to think about it.”

“And we agreed”—Sheila ignored Rosemary's interjection—“that Derek would spend most of the morning in hiding. He was worried that whoever had drawn the murderer's card might spring a mock attack and spoil the whole plan.”

“But you told us”—Violet to Sheila—“that he was hiding to test the murderer's ingenuity.”

“Well, I could hardly tell you the truth, could I? It would have ruined everything.”

“No…” Violet still sounded puzzled. “I suppose not.”

“An unnecessary concern in any case”—Derek snatched back the conversational reins—“because the murderer's card was held only metaphorically. And then by”—he turned, pointed at Simon and fixed him with his glittering eye—
“the murderer!”

“What bally nonsense,” chimed in Gilly. “We don't know who's got the card.”

“There was no actual card,” cried Derek. “My wife's lover saw to that.”

“Will you please get this into your thick head?” Simon rose shakily to his feet, glaring at Derek. “Now watch my lips carefully. I met both you and your wife for the first time yesterday afternoon. I had never clapped eyes on either of you before. And at the risk of appearing rude I would like to say that if I never clap eyes on either of you again it'll be light-years too soon.”

“Might I say something?” Laurie spoke urgently, addressing Derek as he opened his mouth to reply. “I intended to take your place as victim. Just before I went to bed I told Simon this. He made no attempt to argue or dissuade me. Which he surely would have done if your suspicions are correct.”

“Oh, no.” Smugly Derek shook his head. “He knew, you see, that by the morning I would be so intrigued by my wife's vile and cunning plot that I would not wish to change.”

“I don't know, love,” Violet demurred. “It all seems a bit elaborate to me. All this journeying about. Coming away for a—”

“But don't you see?” exclaimed Derek. “If I was killed at home she would be immediately suspect. Here, surrounded by witnesses, she arranges a cast-iron alibi. Simple.”

‘Simple?”
groaned Simon, and leaned back in his chair.

“You're still not making yourself all that clear, Derek,” said Fred. “Are you trying to say that all this was set up before we even got here?”

“From the day my wife drew
The Times
advertisement to my attention.”

“But…it was a joke, Derek. A laugh. I never thought you'd take it seriously.”

“Nonsense. Whodunits are my overriding passion. You knew I wouldn't be able to resist.”

“But that's precisely why I thought you
would
resist. Because you're so…well…puritanical about them. I never dreamed a group of people playing about…making fun… would appeal to you at all.”

“Liar.”

“Here, I say.” Gilly sprang up. “There's no need for that sort of language.”

“Are you sure, Derek,” said Fred, gently as if soothing a fractious child, “that you haven't got it all wrong? I mean…it's a bit…farfetched.”

“I think it's the reading,” suggested Violet. “You read too much of one sort of book, it's like eating too much of one sort of food. You get indigestion. Only in your mind. Fantasies like.”

“If we're back on books,” said Gilly, “perhaps you could explain what that one is you've been waving at us and how it's supposed to have saved your life.”

“Ahhh yes.” Once more Derek held up the book so that the title was clearly visible. “A grave mistake of yours, Sheila— making such a lengthy lunch. It gave me an extra half hour, you see. By one o'clock I'd shaken the sauce—”

“By the way,” interrupted Laurie, “when did you take that? And the knife? I was in the kitchen all morning and I didn't see you.”

“Not quite all morning,” replied Derek. “After I had interviewed Gaunt, Bennet went into the washing-up room to scrub the potatoes and you left to take a tray upstairs.”

“So I did,” said Laurie and, reminded, locked glances with Martin. Rosemary, who had not failed to notice the haze of mutual content in which the couple sat, sniffed loudly.

“But to return,” said Derek, knee-bending his nutcracker legs and lurching into the summing up, “having distributed the sauce and with nothing to do but wait, I noticed half a dozen paperbacks on the little iron table by the door. Imagine my delight when I realized they were all written by the great dame herself, Agatha Christie. An ominous discovery, to say the least.”

“Nothing ominous about it,” said Simon. “I needed some sort of scenario for the weekend so I drove into Oxford and picked up half a dozen paperbacks. I chose ‘the great dame' as you are pleased to call her simply because she was the only writer on the whodunit shelf whose name rang a bell. I'd never heard of any of the others. After all, it's hardly a genre on which any intelligent person is going to waste their time.”