Police at the Funeral (8 page)

‘Working on the theory that it's habit that counts, I suppose,' said Mr Campion, shaking hands suddenly with Foon, who appeared to experience an urgent desire to do so. ‘Well, it may be so.'

But in the back of his mind there remained three definite and unanswerable questions: Why, if George Faraday had murdered his second cousin for reasons best known to himself, had he taken the trouble to follow Inspector Oates to the Lillyput tomb, and what could he have possibly been going to say to him there? More extraordinary still, why had he fled at the sight of Joyce Blount? And why, most extraordinary of all, should she have denied all knowledge of him? Marcus's vivid description of the possible horrors of repression and depression in Socrates Close returned to his mind. He wondered, too, why any assassin should tie a man up before shooting him at such very close quarters. He moved uneasily in his chair. Mr Campion was not a man who enjoyed horrors.

And then, of course, the next morning came the appalling news of the second of the Socrates Close murders.

MR CAMPION WAS
not a naturally early riser, and when he descended the stairs the next morning he found that not only had Marcus preceded him, but that he was already entertaining a caller in the breakfast-room. Campion, who was fully aware that this was a most unusual proceeding at Soul's Court, was somewhat startled to see a bright-eyed, red-haired little squirrel of a young woman regarding him quizzically over a cup of coffee. Marcus, less formal than he had ever known him, was comparatively vivacious. He looked up as Campion came in and introduced the stranger.

‘This is Miss Ann Held, Campion,' he said. ‘Ann, this is the man we're relying on to get us out of all our troubles.'

‘For Heaven's sake!' said Miss Ann Held politely. ‘How d'you do?'

She was little more than twenty-five, and pretty in animation, if her features were more unusual than conventionally beautiful. She was so completely at ease and so startlingly American that Mr Campion understood the total absence of any stiffness which might have been occasioned by the unconventional calling hour. As he sat down Miss Held explained her appearance with ingenuous friendliness.

‘I saw the papers this morning,' she said, ‘so I came right round to ask Marcus if there was anything I could do for Joyce. She's one of my best friends here. You see, there's no phone at that house, and I can't very well call. They won't want strangers about the place with this terrible business upon them.'

Marcus chimed in. ‘I've been explaining to Ann that I'd be awfully grateful if she'd ask Joyce to stay with her until this thing is over,' he said. ‘It wasn't a bad idea of William Faraday's.'

Mr Campion made no comment. Uncle William's solicitude for Joyce's comfort had struck him as remarkable in such a blatantly selfish man.

‘I've been telling Marcus,' Miss Held continued, her bright brown eyes flickering at Campion, ‘I'll certainly ask her, but I don't think for a minute that she'll come. Unless maybe Marcus put his foot down.' She glanced at the other man and smiled mischievously. ‘And I doubt if even such a product of England's finest educational system would dare do a thing like that nowadays, with us women getting so wild.'

‘Oh, I don't know,' said Mr Campion mildly. ‘Marcus has had his moments. Who supplied the statue of Henry the Eighth in Ignatius Square with one of the most useful products of a new domestic civilization? A feat, moreover, which had not been attempted since the time when my venerable uncle, the Bishop of Devizes, did it in a fog, disguised as Mrs Bloomer, then visiting the country. The lad has stamina.'

Marcus looked at Campion in scandalized reproach. ‘If we're going into reminiscences,' he said warningly, ‘as I sincerely hope we're not, I could unfold a tale or so.'

Mr Campion looked blandly innocent and Miss Held laughed.

‘I just take that as another evidence of Marcus's mania for doing the right thing,' she said. ‘It's more than an instinct with you, Marcus – it's a passion. Well, we'll leave it that you're to tell Joyce that I'm dying to see her, which is perfectly true. Of course, I don't want to butt in, but you know if there's ever anything I can do, the line's just got to be indicated and I'll be off down it like a rabbit.'

She spoke with perfect sincerity, and Mr Campion beamed upon her approvingly. As far as he could see, really attractive characters in this affair were going to be scarce, and it was delightful to find one at the breakfast-table so unexpectedly on the first morning of his arrival.

It was at this point that the door of the room was opened with scant ceremony, and instead of the gaunt and rheumatic Harriet it was Joyce herself who appeared on the threshold.

At the first sight of her the three young people rose to meet her. She was incredibly pale and seemed to be on the verge of collapse.

‘Why, child, whatever is the matter?' Ann Held put her arm round the girl's waist and drew her into a chair.

Joyce took a deep breath. ‘I'm all right,' she said. ‘It's – it's Aunt Julia.'

Marcus paused in the act of pouring out a cup of coffee for her. ‘Julia?' he demanded. ‘What's the matter with her?'

‘She's dead,' said Joyce explosively, and began to cry.

There was silence in the room for a moment while the other three assimilated the shock. The practical-minded Ann Held came to the most natural conclusion.

‘Poor dear,' she said. ‘I suppose all this business affected her heart.'

Joyce blew her nose violently. ‘No,' she said, shaking her head. ‘She's been poisoned, I think. Great-aunt Caroline sent me down to tell you.'

Her voice died away in the room, which seemed suddenly to have become very cold. The horror of this bald announcement, coming in the very midst of the drama of Andrew Seeley's death, had, temporarily at any rate, a numbing effect. This was a development that neither Campion nor Marcus had considered.

Campion, who had never seen Julia, and was therefore only impersonally moved by Joyce's announcement, took command of the situation.

‘I say,' he said soothingly, ‘do you think you could tell us about it?'

Joyce pulled herself together before his quiet matter-of-fact tone and wiped her eyes.

‘I don't know when it happened,' she said. ‘Last night, I suppose, or early this morning. When Alice went to call her at seven o'clock this morning she was sleeping so soundly that she couldn't wake her. Thinking she was probably overtired, she let her sleep on. She didn't come down to breakfast at eight, and afterwards – about half-past – I took her some food on a tray. As soon as I entered the room I saw she was ill. She was breathing horribly, making the most dreadful noise, and the whites of her eyes were showing. I took the food away and sent young Christmas – that's old Christmas's son, the one who drives the car – down to fetch Doctor Lavrock. He was rather late coming. They got the message muddled or something, and the doctor stayed to see another patient on the way. When he
did arrive it was about half-past nine, I suppose. She must have died practically the moment he came into the room. Aunt Kitty and I were with her.'

She paused breathlessly and they waited patiently for her to continue.

Joyce went on, eager to get the story out. ‘She never spoke and never seemed to wake up. The breathing just stopped, that was all. The dreadful part was that great-aunt didn't even know she was ill. You see, she never gets up until eleven o'clock, and we hadn't thought it was serious enough to disturb her before.'

‘What makes you say it was poisoning?' demanded Marcus suddenly.

‘Dr Lavrock,' said Joyce. ‘He didn't say so in so many words, but it was quite obvious what he thought from the first moment he came in. You know him, don't you, Marcus? This isn't old Lavrock, the “veteran doctor of Cambridge”. This is his second son, the one with the beard. He's known the family ever since he was a child; nowadays old Lavrock only comes to see great-aunt, and this one – Henry – looks after the rest of the family. He took one look at Julia this morning, examined her eyes, and promptly turned Aunt Kitty, who was practically in hysterics anyhow and in floods of tears, out of the room.

‘Then he turned on me and said quite angrily: “When did you find this out?” I told him – exactly what I told you. Then he asked me if she'd been depressed at all lately, and if Uncle Andrew's death had upset her and – well, I had to tell him that it had simply made no difference to her at all, and that if anything she was rather acidly glad about it.' She shuddered. ‘It was horrible, with her lying there dead. He asked me a lot of other questions. If she'd had any breakfast. I told him no. I'd carried some up to her, and it was then that I'd found her so ill, and therefore I'd taken it down with me again.

‘Then he started asking the most obvious things. Had anyone received a note from her? And we looked round the room together to see if there was a note. While we were doing this Alice came in with a message from Great-aunt Caroline, asking us both to go to her room immediately. The doctor posted Alice outside Aunt Julia's door with instructions to let no one go in, and when we got there we found that she'd been talking
to Kitty, and knew practically as much about it as we did. The doctor was very straightforward, although, of course, he couldn't be snappy with great-aunt. She took it amazingly calmly, sitting up in her great canopy bed, in a big lace cap. It was when the doctor said he'd have to report the matter at once to the coroner's officer that she sent me down here for your father, Marcus, and if he wasn't back I was to fetch you. She also said that if Mr Campion was here she'd be very pleased to see him. I suppose Uncle William must have talked about you to her when he came in last night.'

She glanced at the other girl.

‘You'd better keep away from us, Ann. This is going to be a terrible scandal. I'm as sure as I'm here that Aunt Julia never committed suicide. She wasn't that sort. Besides, the last thing she said to me last night was that I was to see that Ellen – that's the cook – “didn't let her hysteria over affairs that didn't concern her interfere with the culinary arrangements, and would I see that the bread sauce was better made tomorrow than it was this evening.” Whatever you do, you mustn't get mixed up in this.'

Ann snorted. ‘Don't talk any more nonsense like that,' she said. ‘If you expect anyone to go high-hat over a misfortune like this, you're on the wrong track where I'm concerned. I know it's no good asking you to come and stay with me now, but if at any time of the night or day you want to get away from it, come right round. I'll never forgive you if there's anything I can do and you don't ask me.'

While the girls were talking Campion and Marcus prepared for departure. In the hall the young lawyer caught his friend's eye.

‘Joyce thinks it's murder,' he said dryly.

Mr Campion made no comment. In a few moments the girls joined them and they all piled into the huge old-fashioned car. They dropped Ann in King's Parade and hurried on. The shock seemed to have silenced Joyce after her first outburst, for she sat huddled up beside Marcus, who was driving, and said nothing until they were safely in the drive leading up to Socrates Close.

In the morning sun the old house looked much less forbidding
than it had done the night before. The virginia creeper and ivy had softened the severity of the actual building and it was spruce and well-kept in the Victorian manner, a rarity in these days of expensive labour.

The doctor's runabout stood before the door, and they pulled up short to avoid it. A plump middle-aged woman in a cap and apron admitted them. She was a little dishevelled and had evidently been crying. She greeted Joyce with a watery smile.

‘Mrs Faraday isn't down yet, miss,' she said in a whisper. ‘She said would the gentlemen wait for her in the morning-room. But Mr William and his sister are there.'

‘That'll be all right, Alice,' Joyce spoke wearily.

The hall they had entered was large and gloomy. Nevertheless, the house exuded a solid Victorian welcome, a welcome of Turkey carpets and mediocre oil-paintings in ample gilt frames, of red damask wallpapers and the sober magnificence of heavy brass ornaments. But to two of the young people at least all this was subdued into a feeling of oppression: they knew the history of its inmates, and for them this great comfortable dwelling was a place of unknown horrors, of strange lumber from the lives of the family which had lived there ever since it had been built. To them it was a hot-bed, a breeding ground of those dark offshoots of the civilized mind which the scientists tell us are the natural outcome of repressions and inhibitions. To them the old house was undergoing an upheaval, a volcano of long fermented trouble, and they were afraid of what they were about to find.

They were taking off their things when the door opposite them opened and Uncle William's puffy red face appeared in the opening. He came forward with slightly exaggerated affability.

‘I'm glad to see you – both of you,' he said. ‘I suppose you've heard our terrible news? Julia now. Come in, will you? I believe my mother'll be down in a moment or two. She's upstairs just now talking to Doctor Lavrock. I suppose the man knows his business.'

He escorted them into a room that would have been sunlit had it not been for the light Holland blinds drawn down over the two windows which faced the drive. This, it was evident,
was the main family sitting-room. Originally intended for a breakfast-room, it naturally retained a great deal of its original furniture. The mahogany breakfast table and sideboard shone as only well-cared-for mahogany can shine. The glazed chintz was slightly faded with much washing, and there were dents in the green leather arm-chairs by the immense marble fireplace which suggested long use, each by its own particular owner. Here were water-colours, old-fashioned too, whose naïve charm was bringing them rapidly back into fashion.