Murder At Wittenham Park (22 page)

In the library Jim guided the actress to a sofa, where she collapsed. He put one arm round her shoulders, trying to comfort her, as she sobbed unrestrainedly. She felt terribly thin under the gauzy top of her dress and it struck him that she probably didn't eat much at home, probably had next to no money. For all her usual bravado, she was rather a pathetic creature, and as her shoulders heaved he felt increasingly sorry for her.

After a few minutes she began to calm down a little, repeating to herself, “How could that woman say such a thing!” in a dazed way. “He was a horrible man.”

“What really happened?” Jim asked, remembering how previously Priscilla had joked about the encounter and said she had only just escaped being raped. But it was quite possible that Welch had said more than she appreciated. What had been his state of mind? As Jim probed, a more complicated picture emerged.

*   *   *

W
ELCH
had been dressed when she entered and sitting in one of the bedroom armchairs, a near-empty glass of whisky on a table beside him, together with an empty decanter. He did not get up.

“That took a bloody long time,” he said belligerently. “What kept you?”

“The butler wasn't very pleased.” Priscilla was nervous. It looked as though Welch was at least half drunk. “I had to talk him into it.”

“Ten quid not enough, eh?”

“Money isn't everything.”

“Try that on the wife!” Welch hoisted himself more upright. “Why not have a quick one now you're here, eh?” He pushed his own tumbler across the table towards her. “Haven't got another glass.”

“I really won't. I've been drinking gin. I'd be ill.”

“Well, sit down, girl. Don't just stand there. And give me that bottle.”

She approached closer, put the second decanter on the chest of drawers, then sat down cautiously on the other bedroom chair, well away from him. If it hadn't been for the money she would have left, but she lacked the nerve to demand it outright.

“Money ain't everything, you said?” He took a swig from his glass, finishing it. “I'll tell you one thing: my wife wouldn't give a damn if I died. She'd be in clover.”

Priscilla murmured something placatory.

“Doesn't understand me. Has to have separate beds. What kind of a marriage is that, for Christ's sake?”

It was so obvious where this was leading that she headed him off by asking how he was enjoying the weekend.

“Bloody waste of time.” He picked up a formal-looking document from the table. “Look at this bloody contract! That bugger McMountdown was going to talk Gilroy into signing. What's Gilroy done? Changed the f———ing conditions and wants me to sign first.”

Priscilla had no idea what this was about, so she simply nodded.

“And Dulcie says I ought to sign! Me! She's my lawyer, but whose side is she on? Says it's as far as he'll go.” Welch leaned forward to emphasize the point. “If I don't get the right bit of land it's not worth so much. Stands to reason. But she'd like to get her husband off the hook.”

Again this meant nothing, and Priscilla did not know how she was going to extract the twenty pounds from him either. She'd promised the butler half.

“I really ought to be going,” she said. “How about the twenty quid?”

“Twenty smackers for that? You gotta be joking. Here, better take this with you.” Welch got to his feet and picked up the empty decanter. “Don't want the wife finding two bottles in here.”

Priscilla accepted the decanter and then said, as firmly as she dared, “I have to give the money to the butler.”

“Give us a kiss first then.” Welch lurched towards her, collided with the table and the tumbler slid off. It fell on the carpet, rolled against the table leg and cracked. Welch swore and seemed momentarily to sober up. “Oh Christ, there goes his lordship's fancy glass.” He looked round. “Where's the bloody waste-bin?”

“Why don't you throw it out of the window?” Priscilla suggested, seeing an escape route.

“Now there's a thought.” Welch wobbled across to the window, pulled back the curtains and swung one of the windows open. As he did so, Priscilla reached the door and made her escape.

*   *   *

“A
ND THAT
was all that happened?” Jim asked.

“I swear it was.” Priscilla had recovered a little in telling the story. “He was just a dirty old man.”

“Would you like to go back into dinner?”

She hesitated, then shook her head. She was still trembling. “I don't think I could face them.”

“But you must have something to eat.” There was hardly anything of her and he firmly believed in women's eating enough, which some of them never did.

“I couldn't swallow a thing. I'll just go to bed.”

“Let me take you up.” He escorted her back through the Great Hall to the servants' staircase and up to her room.

“Bless you,” she said, in quite an affectionate way, when they reached her door. “You're the only one who understands.” She gave him a quick kiss on the cheek, making him think that he was being kissed rather more than usual today. And if he “understood,” it was basically because he had said nothing, simply listened. Then he returned to dinner.

“Is she all right?” Dee Dee asked. She had obligations as a hostess, whatever her guests might feel. “Dodgson will bring back your plate in a moment.”

“She will be in the morning.” This assurance earned a scowl from Adrienne, and silence from Hamish.

“We were talking about cricket,” Dee Dee said as brightly as she could.

“Hampshire are doing fantastically this season,” Gilroy backed her up.

This determined attempt to keep off the subject of murder continued until the meal was finished, though Jim wished the discussion had been less forced. He was a fan of the game himself.

At last, over coffee in the library, he was able to talk to Jemma.

“Why were they ganging up on Priscilla?” he asked.

“I couldn't work that out, Daddy.” Jemma was as perplexed as he was. “She hadn't really done anything, had she?”

“Not so far as I can tell. But she'll find it hard to live down being the last person to see Welch alive. If she was.”

“You mean someone else wants to emphasize that?”

“It's not impossible. But she solved two small mysteries for me. I now know where the missing whisky glass and the decanter are. And they have nothing to do with the crime.”

He had hardly said this before the loud clanging of a bell interrupted all their conversations.

Gilroy leaped up. “The fire alarm,” he said “Probably a false alarm, but we'd better all get out on the lawn.”

He began shepherding everybody out of the library as a policeman ran in and asked where the fire extinguishers were kept. “There's a fire upstairs,” he shouted. “Someone call nine-nine-nine.”

Gilroy sprinted to pick up a large red canister from near the hall door, the policeman took another, and the men all pounded up the great staircase.

The smell of smoke was coming from the servants' wing. As they reached the landing, the automatic sprinklers came on, squirting water down on their heads.

“Try our rooms,” Jim shouted, seized by a premonition. Gilroy led the way down the corridor and through the green baize door separating the house from the servants' wing. They were met by a distraught Priscilla running down the passage from her room.

“I didn't mean to,” she gasped.

They raced past her and found smoke pouring out of her open bedroom door.

“Can't wait for the fire brigade,” Gilroy said. “We must put it out.” Without tying a wet cloth over his mouth he dashed inside, saw the curtains were on fire and turned the extinguisher foam onto them.

The curtains could not have been alight more than a minute or two. He doused them successfully, stamped out a small fire on the carpet and saw, to his astonishment, that the cause had been a piece of clothing set alight on a tin-tray on the floor.

Twenty minutes later the fire brigade arrived, its appliances churning up the gravel of the drive, and the entire household was assembled in the hall, while the chief fire officer made an inspection.

Priscilla stood clinging to Jim's arm, weeping and saying repeatedly, “I didn't mean to do it. I swear I didn't.”

For the first time since the weekend began, Dee Dee hugged her husband, praising his bravery. And for the first time George Welch was forgotten.

“What on earth are we going to do with Mrs. Worthington?” Gilroy asked.

13

“D
O YOU
want her charged with arson, sir?” Morton was asking Gilroy.

It was Monday morning and the two men had just concluded a visit to the smoke-grimed bedroom where Gilroy's unquestioned courage had prevented a blaze. Luck had played a part too. The curtains were made of an old, thin cotton print material and were unlined. Although they had burnt, they had not flared with the intensity that more modern materials would have and Gilroy had doused them before either the carpet or the window could catch fire. The ceiling was partially blackened. Powdered ash covered the furniture. And on the floor were the scorched remains of Priscilla's lace-trimmed night-gown on an equally scorched tin-tray which she had borrowed from the kitchen.

“I wanted to get rid of it,” she had explained to Morton, her voice only just under control. “But the curtains caught fire.” Then she had added, as if it were a complete explanation, “You see, the room hasn't got a fireplace.”

“Either she's crazy or she was drunk,” Gilroy said. In spite of his own decisiveness at the time, he was still dazed by the realization that the entire house could have been burnt down. This was one hell of a weekend. “Of course, she was extremely upset after Mrs. Welch was so foul at dinner.”

“I'd like to know about that,” said Morton.

“Ask Savage. He's the chap. Comforted the wretched woman afterwards.” Gilroy pondered for a minute. Mrs. Worthington had been employed to help dramatize the original weekend, but not to this extent. Trust an actress to carry things too far. “What's the point in prosecuting her,” he asked, “if she's as loopy as they come?”

“Not a lot, sir,” Morton said sympathetically. Although Gilroy remained a prime suspect, this episode had slightly redeemed his character. The army must have taught him something, even if heredity had not. “Why do you think she did it?”

“Search me, Inspector. Why didn't she give the night-gown to the maid, or just throw it away?” Suddenly he remembered a remark of hers, a throw-away line about having been called a pyromaniac. “She was accused of trying to burn down a theatre once. She told us it was all libel. If you want to know how her mind works, you'd better ask Savage. Last night she kept saying he was the only person who understood her.”

After Gilroy had gone, Morton went through the most recent reports that his interviewing teams had sent in. Whereas Mrs. Worthington was known locally as being eccentric and theatrical, Savage emerged as unshakeably respectable. His daughter was thought a bit wild, but so what? None of the three had any known connection with Welch. Nor, for that matter, did Loredana Chance-main, even though her affair with Hamish was the talk of her village. This didn't rule them out. You could never rule anyone out until you had the truth. Even so, Morton came to a decision that he did not entirely relish. He was going to ask Savage's advice. But he would start with a tough question.

“I'd like to ask you something, Mr. Savage,” he began his interview, “and I'd appreciate a straight answer. Why did you go off down the passage after the re-enactment yesterday?”

“I wanted to test a theory.”

“What exactly?”

“That what you find depends on what you imagine you are looking for, not what is actually there.”

“Fairly obvious, I'd have said.” Morton bridled at being told his business.

“To take a case in point, have you found the missing whisky decanter?”

“In fact, we haven't.”

“That was what I went down the passage to look for. Unfortunately, Mrs. Worthington was still in her former room, so I failed, and came straight back.” Jim didn't mind if he irritated Morton mildly, and in any case he had pursued another objective at the same time. “As you will recall.”

“The decanter can't be in that room. It's been searched twice.”

“Shall we go and see?”

Somewhat reluctantly Morton allowed himself to be led up the narrow servants' stairs, through the green baize door into the main part of the house and to the small bedroom that Dee Dee had originally allocated the actress. It did not have an en suite bathroom, but it did have a wash-basin. And, as was customary in country houses, there was a carafe of water with a tumbler placed upside-down over its neck. His more affluent friends would have provided their guests with a bottle of mineral water, possibly bottled on their own estates. But economy in small things was the order of the day at Wittenham. Priscilla Worthington was allocated plain drinking water.

“So?” Morton asked, looking around.

“So here is your decanter,” Jim said, pointing to the carafe and removing the tumbler. “Not the best cut-glass and missing its stopper. But I'm sure the butler will identify it.” He sniffed the neck. “Mrs. Worthington didn't wash it out very thoroughly.”

Morton took a tissue from his pocket, picked up the decanter carefully, smelt the faint odour of whisky and was obliged to agree.

“How did you know?” he demanded.

“It was not in Welch's room. She was the last person to see him. She could not have carried it with her when your men moved her to another room. So it had to be here. Quite cunning of her, though.”

“She's a very foxy lady, that one,” Morton remarked. “Why should she burn her night-dress?”