Corpse in a Gilded Cage (12 page)

‘A very high proportion,' said Mr Lillywaite austerely. ‘I believe that even in the Scandinavian countries, hotbeds of egalitarianism though they are, the proportion is not nearly so high.'

‘But even if you take eighty per cent of what Dad inherited here, and then eighty per cent of that, even then—'

‘What Joan means,' said Digby officiously, ‘is that, suppose the house, grounds, pictures and so on were sold, there would be an amount left to inherit, even after paying the duties.'

‘Oh yes, certainly. When I talk of the ruin of the family I refer to their inability to maintain themselves at Chetton after three and a half centuries.'

Dixie, by the window, pricked up an ear.

‘How substantial,' asked Digby, ‘would the amount left be?'

‘A . . . small . . . fortune,' said Mr Lillywaite cautiously.

‘And all, now, going to Phil,' said Trevor.

‘You see what I meant about the old will,' said Joan, very tight-lipped. ‘Didn't Dixie play her cards well?'

Dixie stood up, hands on hips, much of her old good-humour restored. She looked, in fact, like some old bruiser of a tabby, sated on fish.

‘Don't be bleeding daft, Joanie. You heard Mr Lillywaite. That will was made weeks before we came down here.'

‘Nevertheless,' said Digby, ‘that means essentially that Phil gets the lot.'

‘That's the way the cookie crumbles,' said Dixie, a favourite expression of hers when the cookie crumbled to her advantage. ‘And when you think of it, it's quite fair. Remember Phil and I have all those kids to bring up, educate—'

She gazed out to the Dutch Garden, where the children were playing very disconsolately. Perhaps she was about to enlarge on the future she planned for them at Eton and Benenden, but she was forestalled by the telephone. The others looked at each other uncertainly, but Dixie—for the moment at least Mistress of Chetton—marched over and lifted the receiver.'

‘Yes, this is Chetton . . . Who am I? Lady Portsea—well, Lady Ellesmere, I suppose I should say . . . Yes, it is quite terrible. Shocking . . . Who is it speaking, please? . . . Oh, the
Daily Grub.
Well—'

But she was cut off in mid-sentence. Mr Lillywaite had strode over, and in the most commanding manner consistent with politeness had seized the phone. He spoke into it rapidly, with finality.

‘Yes, it is true that the Earl of Ellesmere has met with a fatal accident. There is nothing the family wishes to add to this. Should it be necessary to issue a statement at a later date, I, as legal adviser to the family, will communicate it to the press . . . No comment . . . No comment . . .'

He banged down the receiver and looked around the room.

‘If I may advise you,' he said, in a voice that was far from advisory, ‘I would suggest no member of the family answer this telephone. I'm afraid the newspapers are on to the story. We must expect, and shortly, a state of siege.'

•   •   •

The Countess was crying again, but she was no longer wailing with grief. Her sobs were resigned, almost comfortable.

It must have been her interviewer who had done it. It certainly wasn't her surroundings. The Pink Damask Room was a beautiful creation (another of those designed for the lady of the third Earl by her seducer, James Wyatt, who had his fell way with her while the Earl was away with his regiment, attempting to frustrate the Americans of their foolish whim of independence—though to be fair to James Wyatt, he would certainly have had his way with her even had the Earl been at home). But its delicate pink wall-coverings, its two high pier glasses, were not such as to appeal to the Countess—nor, indeed, to Superintendent Hickory, who had been bewildered by the multiplicity of choice, and settled here only because it was suitable in size and conveniently placed.

All of Superintendent Hickory that the Countess was aware of at this moment was a monumental paunch. This rotund, tweed-clad stomach—clearly part of an immense, weighty man—protruded over the delicate little table that was between them, and it seemed to the Countess comforting: something solid and stable in a shifting world. The stretch of the elderly tweed suggested that this was something that would expand rather than collapse. She did not look at the Chief Superintendent's face, but his voice was reassuring: a rich, slow, warm voice, like drinking stout. It reminded her of days back in the 'fifties when the family had clustered round the radio listening to
The Archers.
It was like having a sympathetic chat with Tom Forrest.

‘No, I didn't wake during the night,' she said, her grief now no more than an occasional strangulated sob. ‘I did wake in the morning, though—I remember it was light—and I thought he was getting me my morning cuppa, and I went back off.'

‘Always got you an early cup, did he?'

‘Always!' the Countess wailed. ‘Nobody's ever going to get me a morning cup of tea again!'

‘He sounds like a good man.'

‘He was. One of the best. Trevor just said he was the only one of us that was any good, and for once he hit the nail on the head. Apart from Phil, of course. . . . Neither of them's got a selfish thought in their head.'

‘And before all this—' a fat, heavy hand waved round at the work of James Wyatt—‘you'd always lived in Clapham?'

‘Hackney, and then Clapham. We'd been very happy there . . . nice neighbours . . . brought up the kids there . . . Kids didn't always turn out as we hoped, but there you are.'

‘Kids seldom do in my experience. Best not to expect anything.'

‘Phil's a nice boy,' said the Countess forcefully, raising her eyes from the tweedy paunch to look into his face, as if he had suggested the contrary. But the face, weather-beaten and kindly, merely looked at her encouragingly. ‘One of the best,' she concluded. ‘I only wish he were here.'

‘Tell me: over the years, did you ever expect to come into the title, these estates. Ever talk about it?'

‘Never!' said the Countess emphatically. ‘Never crossed our minds. 'Course, we knew we were related.'

‘You knew that? Closely related?'

‘Yes, we knew that, but we didn't hardly know anything about the old
Earl—what kids he had, how many grandchildren. Didn't have no contact with him—
nor
want any, either.'

‘You never read about him in the papers?'

‘Not to my recollection. He wasn't one of those personalities, was he? Like Lord Longford, or Lady Olga Whatsit who has the column. From what we've heard down here he kept himself very much
to
himself. Like us, really. We're very private people, Trevor excepted.'

‘So it all came as a rather splendid surprise, did it?'

‘Nasty shock, more like. Bolt from the blue, that's what it was. Rung up by old Lillywaite, then forced to come down to this horrible place . . . draughty old barn . . . to be driven from pillar to post by that death's-head skull of a man . . .'

‘Business matters, I suppose? Decisions to be taken?'

‘Oh, he was probably only doing his duty. But there's ways
and
ways, and I didn't like his, no more did Perce. Really got Perce's goat at times. Badgered him.'

‘Oh, what about?'

‘The will. What we were going to do with this hole. I hold it against him, and always will, that Perce didn't have no peaceful death. He should have done—gone gradual: he was the type. Instead of which, day after day, it was nothing but that dryasdust old stick going on about making provisions, securing the property, transferring the estate.'

‘I'll have to have a talk to Mr Lillywaite,' said Superintendent Hickory.

•   •   •

Mr Lillywaite walked authoritatively around the Pink Damask Room—or at least with an air of authority. He felt perfectly at home there, as he did in any home with pretensions to stateliness, appreciating them not aesthetically, but with a nose for money and tradition. But today he felt less than his usual totally confident self—perhaps because he had recently been checked, by implication rebuked, by a being as lowly as a police sergeant. So he did not look the Superintendent in the eye (as he always did look straight at people when he wanted to impress or bully them). Like the Countess he focused attention on the paunch, and lectured that. The Superintendent, meanwhile, lay back in his chair, as inert as a sack of potatoes, and not much more elegantly covered. When Mr Lillywaite had finished, he asked:

‘There had been a previous will, had there?'

‘Yes, indeed. Made two months or so previously. It was lodged with
some firm in Clapham, and I have no reason to doubt its validity. But of course it was superseded by the present document.'

‘I wonder, now, how far the family—'

‘Were aware of the document? Quite. Lady Portsea was, as I say. As to the rest: they certainly behave as if they were not. They
did
know about the earlier document, that left the property he had then (such as it was) more or less equally divided. Had the subject come up since they came here? If it hadn't, I doubt if they knew. The Earl and Countess were hardly
writing
people, you know. And it is not the sort of thing most people would want to discuss on the phone.'

‘No . . .
Cui bono,'
said the gravelly voice, somewhat surprisingly, from behind the paunch. ‘Most of the usual motives hardly seem to enter the picture here. Hatred, sex, revenge—hardly conceivable, so far as I can gather. Would you agree he was a likeable old boy?'

‘Oh—er—' Mr Lillywaite was disconcerted, as always when personal judgements were called for. He was not accustomed to thinking of noble or influential personages in those terms. ‘Well, yes . . . I imagine that in his own circles . . . he would be accounted likeable.'

‘So that leaves money. Property. Titles. Who profits, and who thought they would profit? Obvious candidates: the new Earl, the new Countess, and their heirs. Call them Phil and Dixie for convenience. Now, I gather the heirs are still children.'

‘Ah—hmm. There is perhaps something you should know.'

Mr Lillywaite, whose face had become pained when the Superintendent had so cavalierly put himself on Christian name terms with the new title-holders, once more began to lecture the paunch. His face twisted still further with distaste when he explained the new Earl's family affairs. He was still less happy when, at the end of his disquisition, the Superintendent emitted a fruity, country chuckle.

‘Well! This really is turning out to be a beauty of a case! Don't look so dyspeptic, man: this isn't the first titled family with legits and illegits jumbled under one roof. So I take it that the new Lord Portsea was brought up in Canada, and probably knows nothing of his present glory?'

‘So far as I know. I don't even
know
that he's alive, though his father seems to assume that he is. If he is, he could be anywhere.'

‘Including here. He'll have to be traced. So we can now add a phantom heir to our phantom butler.'

‘Ah—so the sergeant has told you.' Mr Lillywaite shook his head.
‘Most
regrettable. Scandalous. I would never have thought it of Parsloe.'

‘He was an old family servant?'

‘Not quite. The breed hardly exists any longer. You know how it is: these days they come from agencies, with references that
look
perfectly satisfactory. Anyone skilled can demand the earth. Then at the drop of a hat they go off to anyone or anywhere that will pay more—Germany, Saudi Arabia, America. The old Earl's previous butler is, I'm told, now engaged in a similar capacity in the White House. I would have thought he would have had more pride . . . But Parsloe stayed at Chetton for five years, and Nazeby for three. I would have expected better of them.'

‘And they were paid off by the late Earl?'

‘Yes. A regrettably shoddy business that I warned him against at the time. Not that
that
excuses them . . .'

‘You haven't heard that they've got other jobs?'

‘No, indeed. My dealings with them were over when I paid them off. They both expressed confidence that they would soon get jobs, and I imagined they had.'

‘Hmmm. I suppose there's no way you could know if there was anything missing from the house? . . . No, silly of me. They would hardly take anything obvious.'

Superintendent Hickory rumbled off into a mental byway, and remained sunk in thought, like some rural sage asked to pronounce on the turnip crop. Mr Lillywaite left him for some time in meditation, then cleared his throat.

‘Pardon me. You mentioned motive. Then there is no doubt . . . ?'

‘Precious little.'

‘Might one ask
how?'

‘Karate blow to the neck, then toppled over the banisters, as far as we can see. Medics haven't pronounced finally yet, but that's the gist.'

‘A man's crime, it would seem.'

‘Not a bit of it. Women take these anti-rapist courses these days. They learn things there that would make your hair curl. Didn't you read in the papers about this poor bloke who fell foul of that pacifist lesbian commune in Leeds? Never be the same again.'

‘Dear me.'

The Superintendent relapsed into his brown study.

‘They'll all have to stay here,' he said finally. ‘Family
and
guests. The thought of interviewing them gives me the willies, but it's got to be done.'

‘Come, Superintendent, they may not be quite the thing, but—'

‘I'm not talking about their lack of the Emily Post seal of approval. All I
mean is that every one of them is going to say he was asleep at the time, and doesn't remember a thing till he woke next morning. And in most cases it'll be true.'