Corpse in a Gilded Cage (24 page)

‘The family won't want me eating with them,' said Peter Medway. ‘Blight on the occasion. I'll stand near the door.'

‘Not a bit of it,' said Phil. ‘You're practically one of us by now. Just take your tie off, open the top button of your shirt, and nobody will notice you're not a slob like the rest of us.'

It was when they were about to serve out that Mr Lillywaite arrived. He had come in high expectation, having been summoned by Phil for the business discussion he had been waiting for. But in the event he found himself sat down at table between Lady Joan and the Countess, protesting bleakly that he had already eaten. When the family had all gathered in the Dining-Room, Phil and Raicho did a high-speed serving job in the kitchen, with Raicho serving the vegetables while Phil (who had often helped Mario,
the Italian chef at Daintree) whipped through the carving with an almost professional air. Gravy came from a packet, but as Phil said: if no one was willing to chip in and help, they couldn't bleeding well complain. Finally Peter Medway did an expert waiting job with the plates, and the children were left tucking in in the kitchen, while upstairs everyone was wielding a moderately enthusiastic knife and fork. There was Lady Joan, making genteel conversation with the family man of law; there was Dixie, heaving food muscularly into her substantial frame; there was Michele, toying wispily with her food, and there was Sam going at it with infectious enjoyment. There were, in fact, all the Spenders and their guests, with Phil bonhomous and hostly at the head of the table.

‘Well,' he said, echoing his father six days before, ‘this is nice.'

‘Brings things back,' said the Countess, sniffing.

‘Now then, Ma, have a bit of crackling and forget your troubles. You're going home now, aren't you? Just what you wanted, no place like it, and all that.'

‘I wish I wasn't leaving you here. You won't like it, Phil, whatever you may think now.'

‘Don't you worry, Ma. I'm used to big places with hundreds of rooms. We're going to have a whale of a time here, I can tell you: a monster-sized giggle, as Trev would say.'

‘
If
this 'ere business is ever seen the end of,' said the Countess gloomily.

‘Oh, it will be, don't you worry, Ma. The Super has it well in hand, hasn't he, Peter?' Phil looked at Sergeant Medway. ‘The Sergeant says that things are beginning to sort themselves out. And, anyway, we've done our bit. Everyone's been along to see the Super for the second time, haven't they? Mr Lillywaite excepted, naturally.'

‘I thought it a waste of time,' said Joan, looking around the table from over her pretty apple-green blouse. ‘And so did Digby. We could only tell him what we told him before. It doesn't seem to us as if he's getting
anywhere.'

‘It's like doing the same scene over and over again,' agreed Trevor, who was fitting in with the decor in a frilly white silken shirt and dark trousers. ‘ “Where were you on the night of Saturday the twenty-first?” “I was in bed, mostly asleep.” Do it twenty times and get it perfect. I suppose you could say the old haystack was thorough, but he wasn't asking anything he hadn't asked before, so I don't suppose he's got any new information. I agree with Joan: unless he's just marking time till he claps the handcuffs on that butler and his girl, it seems as if he's getting nowhere fast.'

‘Oh, you don't want to underrate him,' said Phil. ‘Us cockneys think we're the only smart ones on God's earth, but we're not. They just do things a bit slower down this neck of the woods, eh, Peter? The Super had to make doubly sure of your statements before he let you all go. We're all suspects, after all. Except, naturally, Mr Lillywaite. And Raicho.'

There was a moment's silence at this. They all looked at their plates and none of them looked at Raicho, who, sallow and handsome, was following his father's words closely. The fact was that nobody quite dared query the exemption of Mr Lillywaite from suspicion, but every one of them had a strong urge to query Raicho's. Finally it was Digby who did so.

‘I don't really see that your son is out of it,' he said. ‘After all, we've only his word for it that he came over when he did. In fact, he could very easily have been here that night.'

‘Except that he wasn't,' said Phil. ‘Because he came over when I telegraphed him the money.'

There was another silence as they thought this over.

‘You telegraphed him?' said Dixie harshly. ‘Why in hell did you do that?'

‘When,
precisely, was this?' asked Mr Lillywaite.

‘As soon as I heard that Dad had been done in, and when the Governor told me I might be able to leave clink early. Sunday. I'd been thinking of Raicho, naturally, since our little conversation of the day before, Mr L.'

‘But how—?'

‘Borrowed the money from the Guv'nor,' said Phil cheerily. ‘Silly old berk, as you'd probably agree, but useful at times. I think this is one loan I'm going to pay back. Raicho got it on Sunday evening, travelled on Monday, went to our old address, where he thought we'd be, then came on here.'

‘I don't get it, Phil,' said Dixie.

‘Don't you, Dixie? Let's just say, like I told the Super, it was a sort of insurance policy. For me, for Cliff—'

‘Cliff?' said the Countess.

‘What are you going on about, Phil?'

‘Cliff, or Gareth, or whoever. Cliff, mother mine, is the oldest of the kids of Dixie's and my marriage that's actually legit. Technically. Mr Lillywaite and me established that when we went over things in jug. And I thought it might be as well if I advertised to all and sundry just who the next Earl of Ellesmere would be if I got my packet. I'd look after Raicho, I thought, and he'd look after me. And that's how it's turned out. That's why I've been parading him, telling the press he's the new Lord Portsea, and so on.
Because even then, in Daintree, when I heard of Dad's death, it did seem to me that there'd been too many deaths of Spenders in the last few months.'

‘You can say that again,' said the Countess.

‘There was the old Earl—well, he
was
old, so that may very well have been above board. This young bloke, he sounds as if he was a bit of a tearaway, so perhaps no one was all that surprised when he tore away once too often and got his number on the M1 or wherever. Wasn't surprising
at the time.
But it did become a bit fishy-like when poor old Dad's number also came up a few weeks later. Who's got it in for the Spenders, you felt like asking?'

‘I know nobody had it in for your dad
as
your dad,' said the Countess. ‘He was one of the best.'

‘I said he was the only one of us that was any good,' said Trevor, looking around.

‘And you never said a truer, Trev,' agreed Phil. ‘No, I just couldn't see Dad as having some deadly enemy he'd made over the counter at Blackwood's the ironmonger's. Nor any mortal foe in the saloon bar of the Prince Leopold in Clapham. The worst Dad ever behaved to anyone, by all accounts, was when he bawled out this 'ere butler and cook. And no one can say they didn't ask for it.'

‘Personally my money's still on them,' said Digby.

‘I might put a quid each way if they hadn't practically asked to be hauled in by going off to the new job with the loot still stashed away under the back seat of the car. If they did it, they were either mentally deficient, or they were playing a pretty funny game. Anyone for more veg?'

No one, it seemed, wanted more veg.

‘Phil,' said the Countess, ‘I think you know.'

‘Me, Ma? I don't know much more than the rest of you. But I think there's one thing we've all been forgetting, as I told the Super yesterday. He's been following it up, since he heard.'

‘What's that?' demanded Trevor.

‘Three or four months ago—first time he'd done it—Dad made a will.'

‘Well, we know that,' said Trevor. ‘Don't rub it in. But it's irrelevant. It was cancelled out by the later one, so old—so Mr Lillywaite said. I'd have been rolling if the earlier one held.'

‘So you would. Just one of life's little disappointments, Trevor, old mate. But what I wanted to know was, why all of a sudden did he make a will?'

They looked back at him, puzzled.

‘Nearly fell under a number fifty-nine bus,' said the Countess. ‘Even as it was he hit his head on the radiator. Got concussion. He was in the East London General Hospital for three days. Right as rain afterwards, though.'

‘That's it. I didn't hear about it at the time, because I was in stir, and we're not really a writing family, are we? But it does seem to me that one or other of you might have thought of it. Because it was only five or six weeks later that he came into all this.'

They all sat over their pork, and only Trevor was munching away. Trevor had the sort of metabolism that impelled him to eat ravenously, yet always left him pencil slim.

‘Worth thinking about, eh? That's what the Super thought, when we discussed it. Because what if whoever did it this time had in fact had a go before? And when that attempt failed, they were a bit unsure of things, and before they knew where they were, he'd come into the big money.'

‘You've lost me, Phil,' said his mother bluntly. ‘When he had that accident your dad didn't have no money. Only just in the black at the bank, and the tail end of the mortgage to pay off. What would be the point of pushing him under a bus?'

‘Well, forget that for the moment, Ma, and let's think about Saturday night.' Phil looked around the table with the concern of the good host for his guests' welfare. ‘Eat up, everyone. Nothing worse than cold Bisto gravy. Well, now: one of the things the Super and I are in total agreement about, is that someone took advantage of that pair who'd camped out in the attic (and serve 'em bloody right too). He planted stuff on them, some time during Saturday night. That lets out me, and Raicho, of course, and Mr Lillywaite. Oh, but wait a sec: Mr Lillywaite wasn't at the party, so you wouldn't think he could take advantage of this priceless pair, any more than I could. But what if this Parsloe phoned him after they'd been found out? What if Lillywaite had known they were there the whole time? What if Lillywaite had put them there as spies? Just possibilities, no more. So let's put Mr Lillywaite back in, very tentatively. No offence, old man.'

‘I have no doubt the police will have considered me as a possible suspect, along with everybody else,' said Mr Lillywaite in a decidedly tight-lipped way.

‘And I'm sure they rejected the idea as unthinkable,' said Phil. ‘As we all do. Now, go back to Saturday night: the point of it is that it created two perfect scapegoats. If anyone—anyone in this house, anyone who knew of the discovery—had been thinking of murder, here were two sitting ducks
to pin it on. The idea being that they were helping themselves to a modest share of the house's valuables prior to departure, were surprised in the act by Dad, panicked, and killed poor old Dad in the scuffle. That's what we were meant to think.'

‘I still do,' said Lady Joan. ‘They could have got overconfident.'

‘Well, you just hug that thought to you, Joanie, which I must say shows great loyalty to the family, even if it is bloody feeble-minded. Now, if you wanted to give that impression, what would you do? First, load up their car with a few bits and pieces from the house. How does he (or she) know which car? Well, the estate hasn't got many cars, and this was far and away the oldest and shabbiest. It also had a London numberplate, while all the other numberplates were local. The only other car belonging here was the young Earl's sporty Jag, or whatever it was, and it's still in a garage being done over by the insurance people.
And,
now, by the police.'

‘You know, I'm sure Dad said something about that car when he got back to the Drawing-Room that night,' said Trevor. ‘Said the old Escort must have been what they were using.'

‘Did he, now? Right, that's interesting. So, when everyone's gone to bed, and are snoring happily, our man—or woman—picks up a few things from here, pretty much at random, and takes them out to load up their car with. Probably nearly got caught doing it, too, because Parsloe and whatever-her-name-is came out to get a map from the car, so the Super tells me, and our person had to skip into the shadow of the old oak near the stables. All that precious pair notice, or think they notice, is perfume. And that doesn't tell us much, does it? Grown men slap it on these days.'

‘Your son wears a hell of a lot of aftershave,' said Dixie.

‘Quite. I slap a bit on myself, and so did Dad. And you can pick up make-up just from being with a woman, can't you? Provided you're close enough long enough. Anyway, this Parsloe and Nazeby (that's the name) go back in, and our chappie—lady, or whatever—gets back in the way he came out. No special housebreaking techniques needed. I expect he just hopped out of one of the windows, left it unlatched, then hopped back in.'

‘What happened then?' asked the Countess, foreboding throbbing through her fruity contralto.

‘Well—this is the nasty bit, Mum: Parsloe and Nazeby—what a combination of names, eh? Sounds like a solicitor's firm. You should have taken them into partnership, Mr L.: Lillywaite, Parsloe and Nazeby.'

‘Lord Ellesmere, I really must protest—'

‘Just a joke, old sport. The well-known and much-loved cockney brand
of humour. Well, this pair goes off to bed, and they're as far away as they well could be from where the action is going to be. Because the next thing for our man was to get Dad up. And he was in the State Bedroom, just a short way down the Long Gallery from the landing. Now Dad was a very light sleeper. Parsloe and Nazeby found that out. We all knew it. Cat walks along the guttering and Dad's out after it, heaving his slippers at it. Because when he was disturbed—poor old Dad—he did tend to go out and investigate.'