Murder At Wittenham Park (13 page)

“Got into Heathrow this morning. Went home and then came straight here.”

“Where all you're being is a thorough-going nuisance,” Loredana cut in.

Trevor looked at her in surprise, as though he had never seen her like this before. “Listen, darling,” he said, as firmly as he could, “I've just come off an overnight flight. I haven't had any sleep. And I've come straight here to be with you. How can you accuse me of being a nuisance?”

“Because you're late as usual and everything's over.” She was clearly used to treating him like dirt. “Why don't you go back home?”

“Without you?”

“What do you think? Didn't you hear what the inspector said?”

“Well, at that rate I bloody well will.” Trevor spoke vehemently, but with the emphasis of a weak man trying to assert himself. “She can't come with me?” he asked Morton.

“Not for the time being, sir.”

Watching this confrontation from across the hall, Jim remembered an old photo of the Duchess of Windsor evidently giving the Duke absolute hell. Loredana was similarly a tigress when roused. Behind that classically high cheek-boned face there lurked a real harridan. And why was she being so foul to her husband? Presumably she didn't want him around at the moment. Why? Then he remembered the way she had been watching Hamish McMountdown at dinner last night and was astonished at the brazenness of this public performance.

“You see,” she carried on, in the sharp tones of someone who has been right all along, “I can't leave and it's pointless your waiting.”

At this moment Gilroy and Dee Dee appeared from the study, alerted by the sound of the altercation. Dee Dee realized who the stranger must be, having heard Loredana's last remark, and made a point of welcoming Trevor.

“Whatever else you do,” she insisted, “you must stay to lunch. After that we can make decisions. I'll have the butler take your case upstairs.”

“For heaven's sake—” Loredana started to argue, then realized that everyone was looking at her and changed her tune. “Please, Lady Gilroy, I'm in the middle of packing. I'd much rather my things were left undisturbed.”

“Your poor husband must need to freshen up,” Dee Dee said imperiously. “I will tell Dodgson to be extremely careful. Which he would be anyway.”

At this Loredana herself departed upstairs, making no secret of her anger, her skirt swirling around her long legs as she turned the first corner on the stairs and disappeared.

“What a bitch!” Jemma whispered. “What can that ass Hamish see in her?”

“Lucky he's not here now,” Jim commented. “She's probably as sweet as pie with him. Did you notice that she had a quite different tone of voice for her husband? About an octave higher, I'd say.”

Near the front door Morton spoke briefly with Trevor, then the two policemen left. Dodgson announced that drinks were available in the library and half an hour later they all filed back through the hall to the dining-room.

Not surprisingly, lunch was a subdued occasion, with the conversation centering on what the police were doing.

“What did they ask you, darlings?” Priscilla demanded of the Savages. “I want to know what to expect.” She made a show of shuddering gruesomely. “Was it the third degree?”

“They were foul to my father,” Jemma said with spirit. “Tried to needle him about playing the detective.”

“How very unnecessary,” Hamish said. “I hope you stood up to them.”

“We did.”

Adrienne chimed in with sympathy, as did the Gilroys, and it became clear that on principle no one much liked the police and that Jim and Jemma earned extra credibility from their minor confrontation.

“That inspector should stick to his brief,” Dulcie remarked. “He kept getting onto things that were none of his business. At least, not if George died of natural causes.”

“He was questioning me about the land deal,” Gilroy said, forgetting that he himself had mentioned it first himself. “Talking of which, have you found the contract yet?”

“No.”

“Then where is it?”

Jim Savage listened to this exchange alertly. The land deal had been the real focal point of this weekend.

“You took it from me last night,” Gilroy insisted.

“And I left it with George. But it wasn't in his room.” Dulcie became aware of Jim's interest in this conversation and changed the subject, turning to Trevor. “Too bad you missed the real-life drama.”

“He always does,” Loredana said. “If you want to miss something, stick with Trevor.”

Trevor's face reddened. If his wife continued like this he damn well would go home without her. But Dulcie came to his defence.

“He certainly missed plenty last night,” she remarked to Loredana, then switched her eyes to Hamish, who was sitting next to Loredana across the table. “Didn't he, darling?”

“I don't know what you're talking about,” Hamish stonewalled.

“You see,” Dulcie said cattily, “one of them misses everything and the other knows nothing. What else do they have in common?”

This time it was Loredana who flushed, which her husband noticed. “I'm not feeling very well,” she said. “If you'll all excuse me I'll go and lie down.”

Hamish hastily got up to help with her chair and Trevor also stood up.

“I can manage, for goodness' sake,” Loredana said.

Quite suddenly Trevor knew. At a later time, talking to his lawyer about the divorce, he would be unable to explain why. It was as much Dulcie's tone and her looks as what she had said. He simply knew what everyone else in the village could have told him, namely that Loredana and Hamish were having an affair.

“I'll see her upstairs,” he told Hamish abruptly. “We need to have a talk.”

“That's completely unnecessary,” Loredana appealed to Hamish.

“For a change,” Trevor said, “I'll be the judge of that.” He took Loredana's arm and led her out.

“She must have had a bad night,” Priscilla suggested charitably, making Dulcie wrinkle her nose as if at a bad smell. Then Dodgson brought the dessert and their conversation lapsed.

By the time Trevor came down again, they had all gone through to the library for coffee. His face was flushed and he was trembling slightly. He had told Loredana that if she wanted a divorce he would give her one. He had done it all in exactly the rushed and confused way that was least sensible in the circumstances, when he had no evidence. Inevitably she had slapped his face and told him he would pay for this.

“I'll be leaving now,” he told Lady Gilroy, as the others unashamedly stared at his distraught appearance. “Thank you very much for lunch.”

“My dear man, you don't have to go so soon. And what about your wife?”

“Damn my wife,” he said with explosive candour. “She can come when the police have finished their questions.”

“Well, that's entirely up to you,” Dee Dee said, maintaining neutality. “Dodgson will bring your case down again.”

“I brought it myself. Loredana doesn't want to be disturbed.”

“Then I can only wish you a safe journey.”

Trevor shook hands awkwardly and departed.

“What on earth's got into him?” Hamish asked. “He doesn't normally behave like that.”

“I think,” Dulcie suggested, “that he's woken up at last.”

Hamish caught her eye and thought better of asking how, which Jim noticed. Then they all dispersed to kill time while waiting to be interviewed. There never had been much of a party atmosphere about the “murder weekend,” and it was now lost completely.

During the afternoon Morton interviewed everyone else and then summarized his conclusions with Timmins. The last people to see Welch alive had apparently been Gilroy, then Priscilla when she brought him the unwanted cocoa, and finally Dulcie. The maid, Tracy, had knocked on his door at around 7:05
A.M
. and called out, “Early-morning tea,” but scurried off again so quickly that she didn't know if he had answered or not. Assuming that the doctor was correct, he had died in the ensuing hour or less.

Then, shortly after four, there came a phone call from the pathologist.

“Inspector Morton? Welch did not die naturally. There's a lot of congestion of the lungs and liver. I should say he died of respiratory failure.”

“Caused by?”

“We don't know yet. We're sending samples to the forensic lab. Blood, urine, stomach contents. The usual.”

“Some kind of poison, you mean?”

“An opiate would be my guess. But at this stage it is only a guess.”

Morton put the phone down. “Let's get the circus running, Fred,” he said to the sergeant. “One of the people in this house is a murderer. We don't want the scent to get cold.”

8

“D
ARLINGS
, I can't believe this is happening,” Priscilla shrilled. “What are they doing to us?” They were all having pre-dinner drinks in a sparsely furnished games room in the east wing and feeling the effects of the way the police had swung into action. Whatever they might think individually of Inspector Morton, they had to recognize that he was no slouch. He had politely but firmly organized searches of their rooms and then, again politely, asked them to transfer their belongings to the former servants' quarters in the east wing dating from the days when Wittenham Park employed twenty household staff. Now Priscilla was voicing the outrage most of them felt, fuelled by a stiff gin and tonic.

“Darlings,” she appealed to everyone, her arms outstretched theatrically, as though drawing the audience to her, “what have we done to deserve this?”

“It's completely unnecessary,” Hamish agreed censoriously. “Surely searching our rooms…”

“Anyone would think we were criminals!”

“… was enough.” Hamish disliked being interrupted. “But why force us all to move?”

“It's absurd,” Loredana echoed. “And the poky little attic they've put me in has the hardest-possible bed.”

Dulcie smiled. She couldn't help it. The thought of Loredana being evicted from the four-postered silken glories of the Chinese Room and consigned to a disused maid's room was most appealing. In fact, she and the Savages were the only ones who had not reacted violently to Inspector Morton's request. Dulcie understood that Morton wanted every potential suspect's room made sterile, as well as searched. If he could have transferred them to a different building he would have done so. But the gamekeeper's cottage was too small and there was nowhere else, except for the maze of rooms on the servants' side of the green baize doors. Nor had he made an exception for the owners. Lord and Lady Gilroy were suffering like everyone else.

“Just like Agatha Christie,” Jim Savage remarked, “except that there won't be a climax with everyone sitting around and the finger being pointed at one of them.”

“Isn't that how they do things?” Gilroy inquired. He'd read so much Agatha Christie in preparation for this weekend that he regarded her words as Holy Writ.

“No way,” Jemma said. “Don't you watch telly, Lord Gilroy? They'll have inquiry teams ferreting out our backgrounds and talking to our neighbours. They'll be running our names through their computers. And they'll never ever interview us together.”

“Well, I'll be damned,” Gilroy said, looking as confused as if he'd just sold a car and had it returned five minutes later. “I had no idea.”

“She knows,” Jim said with a touch of pride, wondering how Gilroy could possibly be so ignorant. “She's a crime reporter.”

“You think we're all suspects?” Dee Dee asked anxiously.

The irony of organizing a murder weekend and then being suspected of murder oneself was not lost on her. This was absolutely the last time she was going to have anything to do with one of Buck's little schemes. Could this one misfiring be grounds for divorce? In California she was sure it could. Anything could in California, and this weekend must constitute mental cruelty of the worst kind.

“I'm sure we're all suspects,” Dulcie assured her cheerfully. “Unless there was an intruder, one of us must have done for George.”

“Well, I object,” Loredana complained. “I won't be slandered! And I don't believe the police can keep us here either.”

“What do you think, darling?” Hamish asked Dulcie. “Surely Loredana's right?”

“Completely,” Dulcie said coldly, as though acknowledging that the village idiot had made a clever remark. “And the inspector will assume that anyone who does leave is frightened of being questioned.”

“He should have said he couldn't force us to stay,” said Loredana in her spoilt-child voice. “Why didn't he?”

“He did,” Dulcie said contemptuously. “If you were listening. He said that he would be grateful for our assistance and it would help his inquiries if we stayed.” She had noticed that, possibly because he was facing both a reporter and lawyer, Morton had been both correct and tactful.

“Well, it's most unfair. Do we look like murderers?”

This time no one reacted. She was beginning to get on everyone's nerves. But Jim looked around the assembled company and was forced to agree, though he did not say so. How could you identify a murderer—or a murderess—among this lot?

Lord and Lady Gilroy had abandoned wearing formal evening clothes for a dinner that would be held in the servants' hall, with its scrubbed table and benches. However, Buck still wore a dark suit and Dee Dee a long blue dress, since their position as hosts was unchanged, though it had occurred to them that if the police investigation lasted beyond tomorrow, Sunday, they ought to be putting on biblical sackcloth, and ashes in their hair. This damn murder was going to cost them a packet, unless they could start charging for the drinks and food. And if they did, would any of their enforced guests pay? Probably not, was Dee Dee's guess.