The Wrong Rite (29 page)

“Yes, I would often be working in her garden. That’s true, Dafydd, what I heard you shouting. It is a very carrying voice you have. Mrs. Daniel was indeed a very proper lady, she would not have been countenancing any laxity in the behavior of the young whoever. She would often be lecturing us in the Sunday School, though we would not always be listening. Furthermore, Dafydd, you were seldom in this house except sometimes for tea. It was at Sir Caradoc’s you would always be staying, with him being your own father’s uncle and you being related to the Daniels almost hardly not at all, even.”

“That’s right, Lisa and I are practically strangers.” Dafydd was looking a good deal less grim at the moment. “I don’t think I’ve slept in this house more than four times, and then it’s been only when there was an overflow at Uncle Caradoc’s, like now. And never before in this room; it’s always been a cot in the boxroom behind the cistern. You and I slept up there together once, Madoc. Remember?”

“Oh yes, very well, The cistern gurgled all night long, and you kept singing
‘Bella Figlia dell’ Amore’
in your sleep. At least I supposed you were singing. I couldn’t recognize the tune, of course, but I managed to catch the words about the fourteenth time around. To repeat my brother’s question, Tom, what are you getting at?”

Lisa took it upon herself to answer. “He’s getting at Dafydd, or trying to.”

“Thank you, sister dear.” Tom was having a hard time not to yell. “What I’m trying to get at are the facts of the matter so that we can all quit sniping at each other and get on with the party. It’s obvious enough what happened. Bob Rhys couldn’t stand not getting control of the money Mary was screwing out of her blackmail victims, so he blew her up and tried to make Dafydd the villain. Can’t you simply arrest Bob, Cyril, and put an end to all this tiptoeing around?”

“It will not be that simple, Tom Feste. We are still needing the final proof of perfidy. You say blackmail victims in the plural form?”

“How much perfidy do you need, for God’s sake? What about the green box with the gunpowder in it that you found in Bob’s wastebasket?”

“What about it, indeed? I think we will be needing to explore further ramifications of this extremely complicated affair. Do you not agree, Inspector Madoc?”

“By all means. Did you bring any ramifications with you?”

“Indeed, it was exactly as you had hypothesized and no trouble at all. I was acting upon information received from my cousin Johnny the Tickets, Sir Caradoc was lending me in his great kindness the Vauxhall for more speedy execution of your instructions, and Lady Rhys was deputizing herself to assist me, sending Sir Caradoc to help Sir Emlyn mind the baby in her stead and he acquiescing with every indication of pleasure. She has shown the ramification into Mrs. Ellis’s parlor, and they are admiring the tortoises together. Will you be wanting me to escort them to this room?”

“No, we’ll go down. It’s already too crowded up here. We’ve found Mary’s handbag, by the way. We’d better take it with us.”

“I’ll get it.” Tom’s hand moved fast.

Madoc’s was faster. “Let it alone, Tom, this is police business. Lisa, would you happen to have a pair of tongs in the house? Not fire tongs, small ones that we could pull this out with?”

“Would sugar tongs do? Arthur and I got six pairs for wedding presents, one from each of my mother’s aunts. None of the six was speaking to any of the others at the time so they couldn’t compare notes beforehand. All six dropped me like a hot potato, thank goodness, once Arthur had the bad taste to get himself murdered. I’ll get them.”

“Just bring the strongest,” said Madoc patiently.

“Why all the bother? Can’t we just pull it out?” Tom made another snatch.

This time it was the constable who forestalled him. “If you are trying that one more time, Tom Feste, I will have to be pinching you for trying to tamper with the evidence. This is not fun and games we are having here. You had better come downstairs with me and quit playing the Merry Andrew.”

“If Lady Rhys is here, I’d better go first,” said Lisa.

Dafydd was right with her, the rest close behind. Tom Feste wanted to slide down the banister, but Cyril Rhys wasn’t standing for any more nonsense. With a stern constabulary eye on him, Tom was fairly subdued, until he walked into Lisa’s front parlor.

“Patricia! What the bloody hell are you doing here?”

“Oh hi, Tom. Looking at tortoises. Don’t you love this pink one with the eyelashes? Hi, Dafydd. Having fun with your girlfriend?”

“Er—I thought you were going to Swansea.”

“I did. Then I came back. There’s the cutest pub at Llwerfylldydd, and the rooms are fab.”

“You did not come back from Swansea,” Cyril Rhys contradicted. “You have never been going. You were buying from my cousin John Thomas Thomas a ticket to Llwerfylldydd only. You were going directly to the Slate-Cutters’ Arms, whence you departed at ten o’clock pip emma on the nose, having won four and six at darts to the chagrin of all others present. You were walking one and three-tenths of a mile precisely to Gallows Crossing, where you were picked up in a gray Daimler registered to Thomas Feste.”

“Who says?”

“We are having our methods, Miss Patricia Jones of 222B Shaker Street, London. When accosted by the innkeeper’s wife who was observing you crawling in your window at twenty-eight minutes after two o’clock in a state of dishevelment, you were telling her a tale of having been watching badgers by moonlight, there being no moon to speak of, and no badgers whateffer in the vicinity.”

“Well, how was I to know? There could have been badgers.”

“There could have been hippogriffs also, I am not doubting. You, Miss Jones, are what is known in the cinema as a stuntwoman, your talent being to perform deeds of derring-do whilst pretending to be the actress who is afraid to do them herself. Your father is a knacker in Dwyferlli. Before you were getting taken on at the films, you were wont to assist in slaughtering old farm animals and cutting them up for cats’ meat, look you. It was not for your charms, I am thinking, but for your expertise that Mr. Tom Feste was bringing you here.”

Patricia shrugged. “Well, you know Tom. Anything for a laugh.”

“Very funny, Pat,” drawled Tom. “Now tell them the truth. She put one of her dart-playing boyfriends up to pinching my car. Slaughtering that ram was her own little joke. I had nothing to do with it.”

“Really?” Lady Rhys elevated her eyebrows as high as decorum allowed. “What ram was this, Tom?”

“Why, the one that was found in the chapel the morning before—” Tom noticed the bewilderment on faces around him, and faltered. “People were talking about it. Didn’t you hear?”

“Nobody was talking about it,” said Madoc. “Nobody knew, except myself, Uncle Huw, and Padarn, the old chap one of you two tried to kill when he interrupted your jolly prank. Unfortunately for you, he’s doing nicely.”

“But he couldn’t have seen,” Patricia argued. “I was inside, in my birthday suit.” She giggled. “Tom was outside, casting his cookies. He couldn’t take it when the head came off and the blood gushed out. When the old boy ambled along, Tom whacked him with a stone before—oh gosh, Tom, I shouldn’t have said that. Sorry.”

“She’s lying, of course.” Tom was still trying. “I’m sure you’ll find the chap who helped her back at the Slate-Cutters’ Arms, Cyril. As to how I knew about the ram, I happened to take an early morning stroll and saw it there dead. The body was on the floor and the head was stuck up on the altar with a cap on its head and a pipe in its mouth. Patricia’s notion of a jolly jape, but that didn’t occur to me at the time. I naturally assumed Bob and Mary Rhys had been having a game of witches and goblins, and came away.”

“What time was this, Tom?”

“I couldn’t say, exactly. Half-past six, maybe.”

“That does it, I’m afraid. I was there myself at quarter to five. Uncle Huw came along right after me, he’d been awakened by the crows, as I was. They were making a great racket, flying in and out, scavenging the ram. We cleaned up and got rid of the carcass, by half-past six there’d have been nothing to see. If you’d come earlier we’d have seen you.”

“At half-past six, Tom was snoring like a pig,” said Lisa. “And had been for some while, I was afraid he’d wake Dafydd. Half-past six isn’t early in the country, Tom, I should have thought you’d know that by now.”

Tom wasn’t even listening any more, he was concentrating on Mary’s handbag, which Madoc had placed on a small table that happened to be relatively free of tortoises. They were all gathered around it, Iseult in particular was eyeing it as a crow might eye a dead ram. “Never mind all that, Madoc,” she urged. “What about the emerald?”

“Yes, let’s have a look.” Tom’s hand snaked out; Madoc grabbed it back.

“I should think not,” said Lady Rhys. “Bag-snatching on top of sheep-killing is a bit much. Don’t you agree, Jenny?”

“Tom wasn’t snatching the bag, Mother, he just wanted us to see him touching it. He’s afraid he may have left a stray fingerprint while he was hiding it in Dafydd’s room. That’s Mary’s bag, you see.”

Tom was scared now. “She’s cracked! Why shouldn’t my fingerprints be on it? Mary dropped her bag yesterday and I picked it up.”

“What time did you perform your act of courtesy, Tom?”

“Sometime yesterday afternoon, while Mary was flitting about making a pest of herself. I’m afraid I can’t pinpoint the precise moment.”

“It doesn’t matter,” said Janet. “Nobody would believe you anyway. Mary was wearing her handbag as part of her costume, fastened by its handles around her waist on a heavy leather belt with a good, sturdy brass buckle. She couldn’t have dropped the bag without either unbuckling the belt or cutting the handles. Bob said day before yesterday that the men who were supposed to gather the wood for the Beltane fire mustn’t have any metal about them. I expect he’d have made Mary take off her belt and handbag before they performed their rite in the chapel.”

“How was I to know about any rite in the chapel?”

“Easily enough, I should think, if you were following Mary around. Dai says Mary used to make odd phone calls, I expect some of them were to you. You may have twigged on this weekend that she was your blackmailer and been planning how best to get rid of her. Or you hoped she’d be carrying precious stones in her bag, the way Arthur Ellis used to. Or maybe you went yourself to pinch the emerald out of the crosier and caught her beating you to it. Anyway, as you doubtless know, Madoc and I watched her and Bob for a while at the chapel. They were so taken up with what they were doing that you could have marched in there, picked up the bag, and walked out with it again, and they’d never have noticed. I don’t suppose you’d have run the risk, though. Why should you? It would have been a cinch to poke a long pole in through one of those unglazed windows and hook the bag from outside.”

Tom tried a supercilious smile. “It would have been even simpler for Bob to pick up the bag as they left and offer to take care of it while Mary was leaping the fire.”

“According to Dai, she’d never have trusted him. Anyway, that can’t be what happened. Bob went into hysterics the second that explosion went off. The doctor gave him a shot to quiet him down, and he was put to bed in the farmhouse. He was still so groggy this morning that Owain had to trundle him down to the manor in a wheelbarrow. Since then, he’s been right under Uncle Caradoc’s eye. Furthermore, both Lisa and Dafydd have been here all morning, so Bob would have had a fat chance of sneaking upstairs unbeknownst even if he’d been in any shape to try.”

“You don’t know what sort of shot the doctor gave him,” Tom insisted. “Bob might have been only lightly sedated. Mightn’t he have slept it off in a few hours, slipped down here and done the doings, then gone back to Huw’s and taken a sleeping pill?”

“Assuming he had one to take.” Bob’s own luggage was at Uncle Caradoc’s and I don’t suppose Aunt Elen leaves things like that sitting around where her grandchildren might get at them. First, he’d have had to get out of Huw’s house without waking the dogs or any of the people who are staying there. He’d have had to get past the manor, he’d have had to know about Lisa’s secret hidey-hole. He’d have had to sneak into this house, find his way to the right bedroom, open the cache in the dark, and hide the bag practically under Dafydd’s nose without waking him or anyone else. Has Bob visited you often, Lisa?”

“Never, that I can remember. He’s no connection of mine, you know. I don’t see how Bob could possibly have known about my cache, much less got into it.”

“There you are, Tom. You, on the other hand, have been coming here for a good many years. I’m sure you found out Lisa’s hiding place ages ago because that’s the kind of snoop you are, and you had free rein to sneak back here with Mary’s handbag while Lisa, Tib, and Dafydd were all up at the fire. And furthermore, that green box with the gunpowder in it hasn’t been generally mentioned. The only way you could have known about it is if you planted it yourself.”

The fact that the box had turned up in Mary’s room, not Bob’s, was a detail Janet didn’t bother to mention. Tom had probably pulled that trick during the concert, while Bob was singing his solo and Mary was listening. Bob would have spied the shiny bright green box when he went up to his room for the toe of frog and wool of bat or whatever other necromantic ingredient he’d needed for his rite in the chapel. Since his natural impulse had always been to stick his sister with the dirty work, he’d have transferred it to Mary’s fireplace on general principles. Janet was almost sorry Tom hadn’t got away with that one.

“So there it is, Tom. Over to you, Madoc.”

“For God’s sake,” shrieked Iseult, “quit nattering and open that handbag!”

“Since you insist.”

Using Lisa’s sugar tongs, Madoc released the catch and flipped open the bag. There it was, a green chunk the size of a dropcake, wrapped in a pink tissue. He plucked it out and held it up. “Here you are, Iseult.”

“Oh God! Let me hold it, just for a second. Please.”

“Certainly, for as long as you like. Chuck it in the wastebin when you’re through.”

“What? Are you mad?”

“No, just unconvinced. Dafydd, how are you at debagging?”