Murder at Maddingley Grange (34 page)

“I think not.” Derek sounded terse. “Come, Sheila.” He moved toward the door. “We must go and pack.”

“What…what do you mean?”

“I'd have thought it obvious. We are leaving.”

“Leaving?
But Derek…we've got a whole day yet…And I do so love it here…Oh—please…”

Derek's response to this intemperate pleading was to hold the door even more pointedly ajar. Sheila drooped and dragged across the carpet, made a little moue of resigned disappointment back at the others and preceded her husband from the room. Derek followed and the door was firmly closed.

“That's that then,” said Fred. “Exit the great detective.”

M
eanwhile, on the terrace Mrs. Gibbs and Mrs. Saville, apparently indifferent to the drama being enacted behind the library windows a bare five yards away, were locked into a highly combustible drama of their own.

Not that the casual observer would have noticed many signs of lively combat. Mrs. Saville still sat elegantly upright; Mrs. Gibbs appeared to have dozed off under the green hat. But there looped between the two ladies a strong, contractual energy. They waited quietly, aware of their obligations. Then (it was the moment that Derek and Sheila left the library) Mrs. Gibbs suddenly sat up. She shoved the wad of notes to the center of the table, tapped it and said: “Whaddya bet, then, cheeky?”

A variety of expressions flitted across Mrs. Saville's gorgon-like features. Annoyance at this familiar mode of address. Alarm and incredulity at the munificence of the gesture. Disgust at such posturing aggrandizement. And finally, irritation with herself for appearing even momentarily impressed.

For plainly Mrs. Gibbs did not intend, could not possibly intend, to wager the entire bankroll. And if she did, Mrs. Saville would not dream of reciprocating on such a vulgar scale. For she could safely bet every penny she had, knowing her hand to be the highest. At the very thought, her ethical sense, dormant for many a long year, twitched sluggishly and shook itself.

Quickly she scanned the figure opposite, registering the spotted, knobby hands in their ridiculous mittens so tightly clutching the useless fan of cards. Wasn't it a fact, mused Mrs. Saville, that gypsies hated and distrusted banks? And that their worldly wealth was usually tied up in caravans and bloodstock or hidden in some secret niche to bewilder and diddle the tax man? This being the case, that solid wodge might well be Mrs. Gibbs's entire life's savings. How shamefully dishonorable, then, for Mrs. Saville, from her impregnable position, to even think of betting heavily.

On the other hand (the pendulum needed the barest touch), it had been Mrs. Gibbs's suggestion that poker should be played, so she had only herself to blame if it proved to be a game at which she found herself unable to excel. So reasoned Mrs. Saville, closing her ears against her conscience, that gauzy moral whisper that is the voice of the angels. She leaned forward and her eyes glowed with greed as she said: “We can bet as much as you like. My dear.”

“This”—Mrs. Gibbs poked at the notes—“against your shiners.”

“My…?”

The old lady pinched her withered-walnut lobes and Mrs. Saville slowly mirrored the movement, touching the star sapphires that winked and twinkled in her own. They had been a gift from Theophilus on the twenty-fifth anniversary of their nuptials, silver being considered far too base a metal to strike the appropriately festive note. They had set him back a hundred and fifty thousand pounds.

Naturally Mrs. Saville hesitated. Fatally she caught Mrs. Gibbs's black-pupiled eye, sparking with malign intensity, and saw there a return of that earlier contempt. She felt angry until the actuality of the situation reasserted itself. There was no need to be angry. Or to fear. She was not a weak creature cliffhanging from a bluff but an empress rising, holding in her hand the keys of the kingdom. She removed her earrings and placed them on the table.

“Sunny side up then,” said Mrs. Gibbs.

Smiling an ineffably condescending smile Mrs. Saville spread out her cards. The nine and ten of hearts. Jack, queen, king. Mrs. Gibbs's face was a picture. Her yellow snaggletooth worried at her lower lip, a frown puzzled her brows. She seemed to shrink in her chair with disbelief, taking on a patient, doomstruck air. Mrs. Saville, with a sorrowful lift of the shoulders, reached out her hand.

“Hang on, hang on.”

Mrs. Saville stopped in mid-reach. Hang on for what? The old lady placed her cards with slow deliberation on the table. The ten of spades. The jack, the queen, the king. Mrs. Saville stared, confounded and amazed. Of all the extraordinary coincidences. Here was a hand only a heart-stopping beat behind her own. Mrs. Gibbs's final card was no doubt a second king. Mrs. Saville tried, as she waited, to make her breathing quietly even but the air was flannelly and seemed to choke her.

Mrs. Gibbs reached out and put her final card down, covering it with her hand. She looked across at her companion. A tranquil look. Easy, searching and pitiless; like that of an eagle riding the wind. And then she smiled.

It was on receipt of this smile that Mrs. Saville became aware that she had made an awesome mistake. This comprehension came upon her not gradually but instantly, with a sudden terrible assurance. She did not understand how it could be so. Her hand had been magnificent. The cards were from her own pack. She had shuffled them herself and they had been dealt in a straightforward manner barely an inch from her nose. Once dealt they had been kept safe by two disinterested parties and the deck had not been touched again. Yet somehow, between the first opening gambit and the turning upward of the last card a
volte-face
had occurred.

Mrs. Saville, her fate accomplished, reflected bitterly on her previous solid, overweening confidence now revealed for the hubristic posturing that it was. Perhaps the very brightness and aggression of this belief had instigated her downfall, activating in the gaudy figure opposite some unnatural goblin spirit of revenge.

For surely she had been bested by no ordinary adversary. As she waited, head bowed (the regulars of the Hawthorndon Bridge Club would not have recognized their proud dominatrix), it seemed to Mrs. Saville that this final game was being played out not, as she had presupposed, on the sunny terrace of a country house with a commonplace old gypsy woman but on a dark cold primeval plain with a figure alien to humankind. A casual dealer in chaos and revenge.

And yet, when Mrs. Gibbs (having removed her black pearl studs) turned over the fifth card, how artless and unmagical was the winning stroke. A question of simple forgetfulness on Mrs. Saville's part. She looked down at the grinning red and yellow figure in cap and bells.

“Joker's wild, we reckoned?” said Mrs. Gibbs. “I claim ace high. My dear.”

Back in the library things had rather ground to a halt. There was an air of indecision about the gathering, as if no one was quite sure what came next. Although Derek had been regarded mainly as a figure of fun, the withdrawal of his melodramatic vigor and enthusiasm left quite a gap.

Lunch, perhaps because of the post-repast theatricals, seemed to have taken place ages ago, yet it was still nowhere near time for what Gilly called drinky-poos. Or even teaeypoos. He tried to jolly things along by giving them a ukelele medley but it was indifferently received. Even “My Little Girl from Idaho” had but small effect, except on Simon, who groaned and put his head back in his hands. Rosemary rushed to his side.

“How are you feeling now?” she asked with an abundance of tender concern, laying cool fingers on what little of his fevered brow was visible.

“I'll be all right.” Simon looked wanly up. He was being very brave as well as very wan but Rosemary could see at what a cost. “You're so sweet,” he continued, “to be concerned.”

“I thought you coped quite wonderfully.”

“I don't know about that.” Simon lifted his shoulders. The shrug was all insouciance. It implied that being accused of murder and dodging bullets were, if not actually all in a day's work, nothing to get all steamed up about. “I'm only sorry other people were frightened.”

“I wasn't frightened,” cried Rosemary stoutly.

“I'm sure you weren't.”

Simon, like Martin, had noted that Rosemary was a chip off the old block. Unlike Martin he did not see this as any cause for alarm, being sure the woman was not born (and that included Mrs. Saville) whom he could not wrap around his empty bank account. “If ever I were in real danger,” he went on, implying that Derek's homicidal pursuit had been no more than a frivol, “you are precisely the sort of girl I would hope to have by my side.”

“Ohhh, Simon,” breathed his companion, “and I would think it just too divine to be there.”

Rosemary responded one hundred percent (or, as she would have put it, with every fiber of her being) when Simon squeezed her hand. Her smile reflected his own. Both purest tungsten. And although nothing so vulgar as the maxim “It takes one to know one” would ever pass her lips, this comprehension, smothered by clouds of high romanticism, nestled, a nugget of comfortable reassurance, in her breast. Rosemary acknowledged that at long last she had met her match. And found her man.

She looked across to where Martin was sitting, trying pathetically to make her jealous by holding the hand of Simon's sister. Earlier Rosemary had determined to take Laurie aside and put her firmly in the picture. Discovering that her new admirer had been engaged to another only twenty-four hours ago should make a dent in that tomboyish bounce and shine. Then Rosemary changed her mind. Let them have their little fling. She could afford to be generous. And it was hardly sensible to alienate someone who looked fair to becoming her future sister-in-law.

And so the time lag stretched with the two couples billing and cooing and Gilly wondering what kind of cake there would be for tea and if, to make things absolutely perfect, there might also be cucumber sandwiches with the crusts cut off. Fred was pondering on how soon he might decently raise the question of a noggin and Violet, realizing it must be either five to or five past, opened her mouth to enlighten the others. But this inaccurate little cliché was never uttered. For just then from the direction of the terrace came the most appalling sounds. Great rhythmical moos of pain and grief and loss. The call of the female hippo unexpectedly finding itself a calf short. Or a pair of sapphire earrings.

“Mummy!” Rosemary ran from the room followed by Simon and Gilly. The Gibbses looked at each other, nodding sagely.

“She wouldn't be told. The daft gabby.”

“You did your best, Fred. No good blaming yourself.”

Outside Mrs. Saville, now surrounded by curious and sympathetic faces, rocked back and forth on her white iron chair, covering her naked ears with her hands. Her eyes were tightly shut and two tears of shame and fury glistened on the enraged scarlet cushions of her cheeks. The tears looked angry too; clear and hard like tiny glass chippings.

Rosemary knelt and tugged at her mother's arm, asking what the matter was. Mrs. Saville shook her head. She rocked for a few moments more, gave a deep judder that set her chair vibrating against the stone flags, blew her nose on a large silk handkerchief and rose slowly to her feet. She took her daughter's arm, saying: “Come, Rosemary,” and walked with a rigid and dignified slowness into the house. The others watched her go. There was about her progress something extra heedful. She picked her way gingerly and appeared to be holding herself together by a great act of will. Five minutes later Rosemary came rushing back.

“Simon—oh Simon!”

“What is it?” She took his arm and led him a little way from the interested group. “Don't tell me,” continued Simon. “Mummy's packing.”

“I came to give you this.” She handed him a card. MISS ROSEMARY SAVILLE. THE PADDOCKS. NORTON BELLINGS. SURREY. And a telephone number. “You will keep in touch?”

“Do you doubt it?” murmured Simon, placing a kiss in the palm of her hand and trapping it by folding over her fingers.

“Ring me next week.” A faint boom came from an upstairs window. “Must dash. She's lost her smelling salts.”

Simon rejoined the others. He regarded Mother with some sourness. She beamed back radiantly, prodigiously adorned. The sapphires did not look at all incongruous in spite of being set off by the emerald felt. Rather did the hat and Mrs. Gibbs's dark batrachian features obtain a bloom of reflected grandeur.

Her son came and stood behind his mother, his expression a mixture of rueful pride and disapproval. He shook his head at his host.

“She wouldn't be told—Mrs. S. I tried to warn her.”

“Yes, yes. I'm sure,” Simon replied testily. He could see Rosemary's mother forever linking him in memory with her tragic loss, thus making his entry into the banking fraternity a tad more difficult. In this he did the lady an injustice. Mrs. Saville was prepared to forgive anyone almost anything who had firm connections to a moated mansion and a hundred and fifty acres of rolling real estate.