Murder At Wittenham Park (20 page)

Then, to their astonishment, they did see movement at the far end. It was Hamish and he was coming in their direction, right past Morton, who was standing at the head of the stairs. The Savages both hesitated. Jemma picked up her tray and dodged into her room. But Jim was deliberately slower, so that Hamish had to walk past him.

“On my way to the kitchen to find some coffee,” Hamish explained. “I never drink tea.” Then he continued towards the back stairs.

Jim went into his daughter's room and they both roared with laughter.

“No way did he go past yesterday,” Jemma said.

“The poor devil has to pretend he was with his wife.”

“Do we point that out to the inspector?”

“Why should we?” A distant streak of wickedness, or perhaps only wilfulness, took possession of Jim. The re-enactment was filling him with the excitement of the chase. “All it actually tells us is that Hamish was either with Loredana or in the kitchen at the time Welch died.”

The noise of someone coming along the corridor made them both fall silent. After the footsteps Jemma opened her door and saw the maid, this time not carrying any tray. Tracy must have come up the back stairs and was now going along towards the State Room. She stopped by the main staircase, close to Morton, and looked impatiently at her watch, just as she had done before.

“Did Mr. McMountdown come down to the kitchen yesterday?” Morton asked her softly.

“Sure he did.” Tracy echoed Dee Dee's Americanisms yet again. “He wanted coffee. I was just taking tea up to Mr. Welch.”

“You started at the east wing of the house?”

“Yes. After I brought the tray to Lady Gilroy I took tea to the actress first, then to Mrs. Chancemain, then to the father and daughter, then to that Mr. Welch. Then the others.” The tone in which Tracy referred to Welch was caustic enough to alert any detective.

“You didn't like him?”

“He … he tried what her ladyship calls ‘goosing' me. That's why I wouldn't take a tray into his room. Forget it. No way. Her ladyship said if he tried it again I could sue him.”

“So when you'd delivered all the trays, what did you do?”

It seemed to Morton that Tracy had been in an exceptionally good position to poison Welch. She could have slipped whatever substance it was into his teapot and no one would have been any the wiser, and she'd washed all the cups within an hour. But what possible motive could she have?

“I was hanging around up here and that girl, the nice one who's a reporter, she come out into the passage. Just like she done now. Well, I felt stupid just standing here. So I went downstairs, had a quick cuppa tea and then came up again at seven-thirty.”

Morton checked his watch. So far the timing was roughly what they had all claimed. She would have gone down again at about seven-seventeen. It was now nearly at the half hour.

“So at seven-thirty you started screaming?”

“That's right.” Tracy gathered herself together, walked along the passage and knocked on the State Bedroom door. When there was no answer she entered and emerged again seconds later, screaming lustily.

“She's dead! Help!”

Jim emerged from his room, so did Jemma, and they hurried down the passage, deliberately taking no notice of Morton standing there. Dulcie appeared from the other side of the State Room and after a minute or so Loredana came along, closely followed by Priscilla.

“Oh my God!” Priscilla yelled, not one to forget a part she had already rehearsed, and making a run for the State Room door. “Mrs. Sketchley's been murdered!”

Morton winced. All his instincts and training were revolted by this play-acting, when there had been a genuine corpse in a next-door room. But had Welch been dead then? He did not know precisely when the victim had died and he was not at all sure that the constable inside Welch's room would hear anything worthwhile.

Next Adrienne appeared, not as bleary-eyed as she actually had been, but conscientiously wearing the same night-dress trimmed with lace. She was not much use at acting. She stood outside her late husband's room as if confused.

“So there I was, Inspector,” she said, feeling incredibly foolish in her night-gown and resentful at being forced into this rigmarole. “I came out after all the fuss was over and George wasn't awake.”

“How did you know?” Morton demanded.

“Well, he hadn't taken in his tea, had he?”

They both looked at the undisturbed tea-tray deposited by Tracy. The constable had not known whether to take it in or not. And this, Morton realized with a sense of futility, was where the reenactment failed. It was a hundred to one that Welch had been poisoned via his early-morning tea, that most British of institutions, a ritual that had once ruled the world from Australia to the Indies, and found its dying expression in country houses like this. But whoever had poisoned it was hardly likely to come forward now. At least, not unless he or she had exceptional cool.

“Did you go into his room?” Morton asked.

“There was no sense disturbing him, was there?” Adrienne said. “Not with his temper. All I'd have got was an earful.”

“So you did not go in?” He was convinced that she must have done.

What wife would not? No matter what any columnist wrote, women were the dominant sex. And likely to remain so, he thought a trifle bitterly. His own wife was an example. He should never have married a policewoman, who knew far too much about what his job entailed. On the other hand, she did understand the tensions. He was lucky there. He was not at all certain that George Welch had been similarly fortunate.

This train of thought was interrupted by Hamish's coming up the main staircase. He too was word-perfect. “What's the matter?” he asked.

Dulcie was waiting for him, but Jim noticed that she answered differently.

“So you found some coffee,” she said, as if she had known he had been in the kitchen.

“Can't stand tea, darling. As you know.”

She could not resist giving him a filthy look, as if she would like to have rammed the cup down his throat, but made no comment. It was humiliating enough to have this bogus scene played out.

Now Dee Dee emerged from the State Room, resplendent in her scarlet housecoat, announced that breakfast would be at nine and was about to depart when Morton stopped her.

“If you don't mind, Lady Gilroy, I'd like to ask what you did over the next hour or so.”

Dee Dee answered with a display of graciousness, as befitted a “grande dame” of English society. “I showered, glanced through the morning paper, then my husband and I had breakfast together.”

“Not with the others?”

“Certainly not.” The disdain in Dee Dee's voice was perceptible. “We joined them for the main meals, never for breakfast. Lunch is bad enough.”

Morton thought about his usual snatched breakfasts of cereal and coffee, before hastening back to the office for whatever emergency had erupted. There always was an emergency. This stately home constituted another world. He recalled a society woman who had poisoned her husband, telling the jury, “For better or worse, but never for lunch,” as though that explained everything. She had been sent down for twenty years. Rightly. She had been a killer. Women, Morton believed, were much more sophisticated killers than men.

While Morton was talking to Dee Dee, Jim moved across to the area by Welch's door. For some architectural reason the doorway was in a small recess, like a tiny lobby. A small table had been placed there for the tea-tray, but there was no tray. Presumably the detective inside the room had retrieved it after Tracy knocked on the door.

At this moment, Jim recalled, with certainty, that at the equivalent time on Saturday the tray had been there on the low table, and he felt equally sure that it had not been used. Furthermore, it had been there when he and Jemma had gone down to breakfast later. Tracy had said his cup had been used, so at some point Welch must have taken it in. But he emphatically was not the kind of man who would have helped servants by taking it out again. It hardly needed the sixth sense that had made Jim a successful loss adjuster to tell him that this smelt all wrong.

“And what did I do?” Loredana was now being interviewed by Morton a few yards away. “After the ‘murder' I went back to my room. I couldn't understand why it had to be so dreadfully early. Oh yes, when I went down to breakfast I took my tea-tray with me. The staff really are rather overworked here.”

Overhearing these remarks, Jim reflected that Loredana was hardly the caring kind either, at least not in her other actions. But she had indisputedly taken her tray down, since Tracy had mentioned it. This thought was interrupted by the arrival of Adrienne, apologizing.

“As I didn't go along for the screaming,” she explained, I thought you wouldn't want me now. But then I thought, well, probably he does.”

“Did you stay in your room until breakfast time?” Morton asked. “You didn't go along to see your husband?”

“Well, yes,” she admitted, “I did at about ten to eight. But he hadn't had his tea, I mean, the tray was still outside his room. So I didn't disturb him. He could be very tetchy, George could. And then”—her voice began to tremble—“when I did go to wake him up later, he was…”

Morton reached out to steady her as she collapsed into tears, and guided her to one of the high-backed chairs that were ranged at intervals along the passage.

Then he opened Welch's door, went in and asked the constable what he had heard. The answer was, “Just about everything, I should say, sir.”

So the re-enactment was concluded, except that Morton gathered everyone together and asked, with apparent naïvety, if there was anything they had failed to mention.

There was a general shaking of heads and Jim noticed that Morton had his eye on Hamish, who had so obviously lied about his movements. But the inspector said nothing. Nor did Hamish or Dulcie.

“And when did you all leave your rooms again?”

One by one they explained when they had gone down to breakfast. These movements were all after the estimated time span of Welch's death, between seven-fifteen and eight. Accordingly Morton told them they could go, and with considerable relief they all trooped off to their inferior rooms in the servants' wing.

“Damn,” Jim said as they passed through the green baize door, “I've left something behind.” He doubled back briefly to his former room, not unnoticed by Morton, before rejoining Jemma.

“So,” Jemma asked him, when he caught up with her again, “who was cheating?”

“More a question of who wasn't! I'd say just about everyone, except Lady Gilroy. How McMountdown can think no one knows he went along the passage to Loredana at about midnight beats me. I suppose it's only loss of face that prevented his wife from ratting on him.”

“It doesn't make sense that Adrienne went to see her husband and then didn't go in either, does it?” Jemma observed. “And she burst into tears at a very convenient moment.”

“And what about your mystery woman?”

“She didn't do her thing, for sure.”

“Even I cheated, I'm afraid.” Jim sighed. “Can't really trust myself. While you were in your room I took the chance of having a quick word with Priscilla.”

“You sneaky old thing!”

“I hoped she might have left one of Friday's clues in her original room. But she hadn't.” He grinned, rather like a naughty boy. “She was quite surprised. And I don't know if Morton saw me either.”

“He would have said so.”

“He still might. He was playing that re-enactment very astutely, not challenging what anyone pretended to have done. But I'm going to tackle that man McMountdown.”

When they had dressed and gone down to the library again Jim did exactly that, much to Jemma's embarrassment, asking Hamish very quietly why he had changed his movements.

Hamish looked at him in surprise and anger. “That is nothing to do with George's death,” he said under his breath. “And none of your bloody business.”

“You'll tell Morton privately?”

“He can find out for himself if he wants to. And I'll thank you to keep your nose out of my affairs.”

12

T
HE REACTION
to Jim Savage's brief quarrel with Hamish came unexpectedly quickly. When they had all gathered in the library for drinks before dinner, Loredana came up to him, drew him aside and asked to talk to him in private. Privacy was not so easily obtainable, due to the police being around and the restrictions on the rooms the guests could use. As with Dulcie, Jim suggested they take a stroll in the park. Their departure did not go unnoticed.

“Your father seems to be playing the confessor again,” Dee Dee remarked to Jemma. “What's he up to now?”

“Search me,” Jemma said candidly. “She was quite patronizing to me last night.”

“She's too attractive for her own good,” Dee Dee said sagely, after they had gone.

“D'you think she could have murdered Welch?”

“What on earth for? From what she says, she never met the man before.” Dee Dee reached to take a gin and tonic from the silver salver Dodgson was taking round. “But then why should any of us have?” She caught sight of Adrienne entering the room and corrected her statement. “Well, most of us. Nobody liked him, but to suggest that my husband might have killed him in order to get out of the contract is crazy. Buck hadn't signed it. He'd agreed to it, but he hadn't signed.”

“Is that what Morton thinks?” Jemma asked.

Dee Dee laughed savagely. “He'd have Buck in the cooler right now, if he had any proof. But of course he hasn't, because he didn't do it.” She was becoming quite defensive of her husband, now that things were turning serious. “My husband is a bit of an idiot sometimes, but he's not vindictive.”

“Unlike Welch?”