Walking Into Murder (24 page)

“I’ve called that number you gave me already,” Mrs. Paulson went on calmly. “The line’s a bit crackly but I told the police to come right away.”

She turned to Laura. “Wasn’t hard to see that something was wrong around here,” she said, shaking her head. “Once I saw that van and had a peek inside, I knew, anyway. The doctor’s been acting ever so strange these last weeks, always staring at those paintings, and his poor wife, dead so sudden you know, and I couldn’t help but wonder. That’s why I spoke to Mr. Thomas here. Heard he was a detective and all that.

“I called Dr. MacDonald, too,” she added complacently to Thomas. “He’s the doctor. I’ll have a look at Dr. Banbury now, poor soul, if that’s all right with you.”

“Thanks, Mrs. Paulson. You’re a gem.” Thomas punched in some numbers.

Laura shivered and moved closer to his warmth. “I’m glad that’s over,” she said fervently.

Thomas sent her a quizzical look. “Not all over, I fear,” he said, and began to issue crisp instructions into the phone.

Laura straightened. He was right. There were still missing pieces to this puzzle. The answers, she knew, could only be found at Torrington Manor.

CHAPTER TWENTY TWO

Laura crept quietly up the three flights of stairs to the attic. The box room, she was sure, would provide answers to some of her remaining questions. The others, she hoped, would come from Antonia and Roger. They had emerged almost unscathed from the crash, and the police had been there to greet them. Thomas insisted, however, that everyone at the manor be told that they had been killed.

“Do not divulge the fact that they are alive unless there are no other options,” he had warned her. Laura wasn’t sure why he was so insistent, but she had no intention of giving the secret away. So far Antonia had sat stony-faced, saying nothing, but being in police custody had shifted Roger’s loquacity into high gear. He was spouting like a faucet. Interestingly, he swore that the van had crashed because someone had tampered with the brakes, not because of flat tires or lack of skill on his part.

The crowded box room almost defeated Laura before she began to look. Old trunks, cardboard boxes, packing cases of all sizes were piled in every available space. Laura decided to start at the back and move forward on the theory that what she was looking for would be well hidden. She was right. At the very back of the room at the bottom of a pile of heavy boxes she finally discovered what she sought. A glossy photograph of the young woman in the painting above the sideboard stared up at her when she pried the box open. Below it were more photos and best of all, London theater programs, and the reviews that had followed the performances.

Laura sat down and dug into the piles of papers. Slowly, bits of the story began to emerge – Charlotte Gramercy's successes, her marriage at the height of her career to a young European Baron who had been the catch of the season, the trips to Monte Carlo and other glamorous places, but there was nothing, at least so far, to tell Laura why it had all ended. It seemed a fairy story, one that must have gone bad, but why?

Another photograph fell from the box, instantly recognizable as a much younger Lord Torrington playing Julius Caesar. According to the reviews, he had been a fine actor. He certainly had the voice, Laura thought, and found she could easily imagine him in that commanding role.

A clipping about two English actors making a living in France was attached. One was called Charles Morrison, the other Barkeley Smythington. That must be Lord Torrington! No wonder he was so good at playing his present role. She peered at the accompanying photographs. Oddly, the one called Charles Morrison looked more like Lord Torrington than the other, though it was hard to be certain since both men were in costume and stage make-up. Perhaps the writer of the article had mixed the two men up.

A slight noise behind her made her look up sharply. She rose to her feet and saw Mrs. Murphy, the new cook, standing in the doorway.

“Hello,” Laura said, unable to think of anything else to say. Mrs. Murphy didn’t answer. She only looked at Laura coldly, and then sighed.

“It takes all types, doesn’t it?” she asked rhetorically. “Well, she warned me - the Baroness that is - but she said it was all right. I’m not just going to take her word for it, though. I’m here to make sure.” Planting her hands on her hips, she sent Laura a threatening glare that made her blood run cold.

“Perhaps you had better explain what you mean,” Laura said faintly.

“What I mean is that if you give her away, I’ll…I’ll…” Mrs. Murphy’s voice failed her and to Laura’s astonishment, tears came into her eyes.

“Mrs. Murphy,” Laura said gently, “I have no intention of doing anything that would hurt the Baroness, if that is what you mean. I think she is one of the finest people I have ever met.”

Mrs. Murphy wiped her eyes with her apron. “That she is, and it is good of you to say so, Miss. Not everyone understands. But I still can’t just…”

“Can’t just take it on faith that I can be trusted?” Laura ventured, and Mrs. Murphy nodded.

“You know her well, then,” Laura went on, wondering how that was possible even as she realized it must be so.

Mrs. Murphy’s face changed, and a dreamy look came into her fierce eyes. “I was her dresser, you see, all those years. Every piece of clothing she wore I fixed for her, got her into them and out of them and my, sometimes we had to move so fast I hardly got her buttoned. Been with her ever since, but for the last few years, when I had to go tend my sister. Dying of cancer, but now I wish I hadn’t gone. Still, I came back as soon as I could. I pretended to answer that ad in the paper, but the Baroness and I had it all fixed up ahead.
Just don’t tell Antonia who you really are,
she told me.”

Mrs. Murphy paused, smiling at the memory. “You should have seen the look on Lord Torrington’s face when he saw me. He didn’t give me away, though. Great actor, he was, still is, if you ask me. Antonia never guessed. I shouldn’t have left, though, in the first place. Look what happened! That dreadful woman, and all her terrible schemes, and I wasn’t here to help my poor lady -”

“But why didn’t the Baroness just stop her?” Laura interrupted. “Why did she let Antonia come here in the first place?”

Mrs. Murphy sent her another threatening look. “I’m not telling you that but if you find out - and you probably will because you’ll snoop around until you do - I want a promise, a promise on your mother’s grave that you won’t talk,” she said fiercely.

An unexpected voice came from the door. “Murphy Darling, don’t take on so. It’s all right.” The Baroness entered the room and put her arms around Mrs. Murphy’s tense shoulders. “I’m sure we can trust Laura not to say anything. After all, she’s been a great help already, hasn’t she?”

Mrs. Murphy glowered at Laura. “She better not talk,” she muttered, and sat down on a packing case in front of the Baroness. She reminded Laura of one of those fierce little terriers who plant themselves in front of a beloved mistress, ready to leap at the throat of anyone foolish enough to come too close.

The Baroness sat down beside her and gestured for Laura to find a seat too. “As you have already discovered,” she began without preamble, “I was once an actress. I was aware from the beginning that you were puzzled by my familiarity and that you would try to ascertain its source. You are a woman who seeks answers.”

The ghost of a smile touched her lips before she went on. “I decided, therefore, to let you discover the facts for yourself and then to tell you my story in the hope that you will keep my secrets - our secrets, I should say, for they involve others as well. Under the circumstances, it seemed the only sensible course of action.”

Laura nodded dumbly, too mesmerized by her presence to speak. Even sitting on a cardboard box, the Baroness was commanding, awe-inspiring. It seemed impossible to Laura that she hadn’t recognized her sooner – until she recalled that Charlotte Gramercy was one of the finest actresses the London stage had ever known and could probably fool anyone at any time, if she chose.

“I only saw you once,” she said softly, “as Ophelia. It was a performance I have never forgotten.”

The Baroness nodded graciously, accepting the compliment. She looked down at the floor of the cluttered box room, thinking, remembering, and when she resumed her story, she spoke not as herself but as an observer, as if distancing herself from memories that were still too raw to confront directly. Her voice changed too; it was still grave and memorable, but now it was beautiful as well, deep and warm, vibrant with passion and intensity. Laura sat motionless, enthralled.

“Many years ago,” the Baroness began softly, “a young woman called Charlotte came to London, looking for work as an actress. The classics were her goal, especially Shakespeare, the great bard whose understanding of human nature has never been surpassed and from whom she learned all she needed to know of people and their ways.

“Unlike so many others she succeeded in the theatre. What they saw in her she has never fully understood, but simply accepted as a gift. The praise flowed, the flowers and the champagne, the offers of marriage, of more and better roles, of movie contracts and plays written just for her, but she was seldom tempted. She wanted Shakespeare still, and later Ibsen, a few other classicists. She seemed to know even then that if she diverged from the path she had set herself, disaster would follow. And so it did.”

Laura’s stomach clenched. She was about to hear, finally, the rest of the story she had sought, but now she wasn’t sure she wanted it. She knew already that the telling, and the listening, would be painful.

The Baroness made no effort to spare herself, or Laura. On and on her voice went, mesmerizing in its intensity, describing Charlotte, the roles she had played, the cities that had welcomed her, the people who had lavished gifts and attention and praise upon her. At first her story was inspiring, a tale of hard-earned praise and success, but gradually Charlotte’s faults, the arrogance she began to develop, the expectation of adulation, were laid out too, as if for renewed examination.

Murphy remained always at her side, barring the door with fierce protectiveness to unwanted admirers, reluctantly admitting others when Charlotte insisted. “A redheaded terror from Yorkshire,” the Baroness said, her voice taking on a Yorkshire lilt, and Laura saw Murphy’s thin lips curve in a proud smile that was quickly tucked away.

Above the words, seeming to float in her own clear atmosphere, as objective as she was painful or amused or joyous in turn, was the Baroness of today, a woman so schooled by life that she had no need anymore to act. She had only to understand, to assess, and then to watch as others played the roles she assigned them, never suspecting they were being manipulated by her unseen hands, hands that knew, as her mentor Shakespeare had known, all there was to know of human folly and greatness.

Laura sighed without knowing that the small burst of air had been expelled. She understood now what had mystified her most of all: that the Baroness was the unseen puppeteer she had sensed when she sat captive in the kitchen of the cottage. Power dwelt in those skillful hands – too much power perhaps?

A niggling doubt crept into Laura’s mind. Was Antonia really the brains behind the art forgeries? Maybe the Baroness was the actual leader but had manipulated them into suspecting Antonia. And now the Baroness believed that Antonia was dead.

“Charlotte’s most persistent admirer was Baron Zorolaskowitz,” the Baroness went on. “We called him Zorro to tease him, but he was not amused. That should have warned Charlotte, and perhaps it did, but she did not want the knowledge.”

For a moment her voice faltered. Then it went on steadily to tell how Charlotte was finally won over by the handsome young Baron, by his charm and sophistication, his desire for her, his fervent promises of eternal adoration.
Why not some personal happiness?
Charlotte had asked herself.
Others have it, why should I not
?

So she had yielded to his entreaties, had married him and then been forced to watch as his attention flagged and his adoration faded into petulance. Weary of her fame, her constant absences, the very absences he had assured her would only enhance the passion of their reunions, and jealous of the demands made by her career and the attention paid to her by others, he drifted slowly into dissipation and drink, gambling away first his money and then hers.

Laura felt tears prick her eyes for the young woman who had known all along in some deep part of herself that this would happen but for whom the enactment must still have been so intensely painful. It wasn’t an unusual story, she supposed, but in the grande dame’s exquisite telling it had all the elements of tragedy. But then, Shakespeare’s plays told ordinary tales, too – a jealous husband who killed his wife, lovers separated, men and women of overreaching ambition or fatal attraction to the wrong person. The words, the manner of delivery gave them epic proportions, and a profound understanding of the human mind and heart, with all their tragic flaws.

Did the Baroness, too, have a tragic flaw – the flaw of overweening pride – hubris, the Greeks had called it – so that she believed she was justified in deciding other peoples’ fates? Who should live and who should die…

Unexpectedly, the Baroness smiled, and Laura felt suddenly comforted. Her persistent feeling of unease began to dissipate as the next part of the story unfolded. How could a woman like the grande dame be a criminal?

“But there was Lucy,” the Baroness was saying, “my darling Lucy. She was my younger sister, far more beautiful than I and as kind and playful as I was hard and watchful, as irreverent as I was over-serious. For Charlotte had become those things, though at the time she did not know it. She went to France to rest and to think what to do, and Lucy came there to console her. In doing so she helped Charlotte to recover, so she could act again, and that truly was a joy, for now she knew better how to keep the arrogance at bay. No one could be arrogant with Lucy watching.

“Lucy met her husband there, a Frenchman as kind as she was herself and even more gentle. Too gentle perhaps,” she added with a touch of asperity that might have made Laura laugh had she not been so enthralled.

“We were happy together, Murphy and Charlotte and Lucy and her husband, and then Nigel came along…” The Baroness’s voice faltered, and a look of inexpressible sorrow crept slowly across her face. Laura waited, tense with horror for the disaster she knew must come. It was in the form of a car accident. Lucy’s husband was driving; Lucy was beside him, Charlotte and Nigel were in the back. When they were finally extricated from the wreckage, only the baby, Nigel, was unscathed. Lucy and her husband were dead, and Charlotte had multiple fractures and burns across much of her body. Her young husband did not come to her nor did anyone else, only the faithful Murphy. Nigel went into her care, and so did Charlotte, once she came out of the hospital.

“There was one other,” the Baroness continued softly, speaking as herself again now that the tragedy was over. “His name was Charles then, although you know him as Lord Torrington.”

Laura stiffened. Charles, not Barkeley. How could that be? A frisson of fear crept up her spine. Maybe the article she had found on the moor wasn’t wrong, if the man named Charles Morrison was now Lord Torrington. What had happened to Barkeley Smythington? With that name, surely he was the rightful heir. Where was he now?