Death by Sheer Torture (14 page)

Anyway, driving back to the village I was quite irrationally proud of the evening’s performance, especially since it was put on without benefit of rehearsal. It was Daniel who had enjoyed it most: no sooner were we out of the house than he started jumping up and down with delight at the spectacle he had just witnessed.

‘Daddy, Daddy—they behaved very badly, didn’t they, Daddy?’

I thought this was no time to beat about the bush with specious excuses.

‘Yes, they did, Dan.’

‘Can we go and watch them do it again tomorrow?’

‘No.’

‘Poor old dears,’ said Jan, ‘they —’

‘Cut that out, Jan. Don’t give me the “poor old dears” line. They’ve been like this as long as I can remember. They’re a thoroughly repulsive collection of crazed egotists, and always have been.’

‘Well, at least they’re individuals,’ she retorted.

‘Oh my God, individuals. If there ever was a ghastly warning against cultivating your ego, aiming at total self-fulfilment, doing your own thing regardless—the Trethowan family is it. If they’d given them their own television show twenty years ago, the ’sixties would never have happened.’

‘Well, it’s better than my parents. Stuck in front of the telly the whole time, and if you drop round to see them they complain they missed one of Annie Walker’s lines because they had to open the door.’

‘Your parents scarcely exist. There must be something between being like them and being like the Trethowans.’

‘Aren’t we going to see them again?’ asked Daniel, downcast.

‘No,’ I said.

‘Yes, darling,’ said Jan. ‘I told Aunt Sybilla I’d go and see the gardens tomorrow.’

‘Oh, God!’ I said. ‘Well, keep in the open where you can be seen. I don’t trust any of that lot an inch. I’d put your old jeans on. She’ll get you doing the weeding. The grounds are obviously too much for two men. Just to look at it has me itching to get at a spade.’

‘You see? You’re feeling at home there already. I can just see the way you’ve been settling in.’

Well, we started a good old slanging match over that, but as a matter of fact we had a very nice rest-of-evening: we played with Daniel and I heard all his news; we put him to bed and went and had a pint in the bar, where the landlady deferred to me in a way that tickled Jan pink; and then—well, there isn’t any more of the day’s doings that you need to know of for this story.

Except that in the middle of the night I woke up, and sensed that Jan was awake too. And as I put my arm around her, she said:

‘Perry, are you awake? There’s something I’ve been meaning to say to you all evening since we got away.’

‘What’s that, love?’

‘You do realize that Cristobel is pregnant, don’t you?’

CHAPTER 11

BROTHER AND SISTER

Breakfast was served next morning in a poky little dining-room in the new extension to the Marquis. (I disapproved of the extension, of course, as all returned travellers disapprove of things that have happened since their time, however much they disliked what was there before.) Mrs Killigrew, the new landlady, waited on us with a quite killing deference, which she no doubt thought was our due as part of the family at the Big House. Coming from Birmingham, she was living in the past, I suppose. Jan, I am ashamed to say, lapped it up.

‘Any moment now she’ll be calling you the Young Master,’ she whispered.

‘Is Daddy the Young Master?’ demanded Daniel.

‘No, dear. He’s not.’

‘Who is, then?’

We thought. ‘Well, Peter, I suppose,’ I said, and Jan and I collapsed choking with laughter over our poached eggs. Mrs Killigrew, returning, seemed to be noting down that seemly grief in times of mourning was no longer
de rigueur
in the best families.

‘Are you sure?’ I asked Jan, when she had gone out. ‘About what you said last night?’

‘Of course I’m sure.’ She put on her wise-family-friend look. ‘A woman always knows.’

‘What does a woman always know?’ asked Daniel.

‘Everything, darling. Are you going to have a big-brotherly thing with her, Perry? Demand she go into seclusion at Ostend and conceal the family shame?’

‘Oh, don’t be crass, Jan. Of course, I feel a bit responsible for her, but she’s all of thirty, and in fact I think it would be a really good thing for her, if not for the kid, and I’d be quite pleased, only—’

‘Only?’

‘Well, I’d be quite pleased if I thought it was one of the gardeners, or the vicar, or somebody.’

‘She sings in the choir. Perhaps it is the vicar. They’re awfully liberated these days.’

‘Only the homosexuals. The rest keep it all in, same as ever. But I know who it is. I’ve been remembering our first chat, and it was “poor Morrie’s got so much to do” and “Daddy kept picking on poor Morrie” and all that kind of thing. I know what’s been happening. He’s been working on her pity. The neglected spaniel approach.’

‘Mordred? Are you sure? Anyway, she may like him.’

‘Hmm. But she would keep it in the family, wouldn’t she? All those healthy, normal people out there in the big world, and she goes bedding down with Cousin Morrie. It would be so much better if she got right away from Harpenden. But I bet she won’t. Not just when she’s come in to what she’s been waiting for.’

‘She doesn’t inherit the wing, does she?’

‘Sounds like shares in a chicken. No, of course she doesn’t. You heard Uncle Lawrence doing his “Mine—all Mine!” stuff last night. But she’ll stay on—she’s part of the family circus by now, even if she doesn’t do much more than show people to their seats. Besides, she obviously has a strong sense of her rights. It’ll take her longer than a pregnancy to establish her claim on what’s in the wing. I wouldn’t give much for her chances of keeping the Dali, I’m afraid.’

‘You’re assuming that Mordred won’t marry her?’

‘I suppose they’d have gone and done it already if they were going to. What would they marry on?’

‘There’s Morrie’s book.’

‘I don’t know much about publishing, but I should guess that anyone who married in the expectation of royalties these days would really take a prize in the foolish virgin stakes.’

‘Is our family royalties, Daddy?’ asked Daniel, and brought this conversation to an end.

After breakfast Jan said she’d wander round the village and see if she could pick up any gossip. I gave my blessing to this project with an inward chuckle. The village of Harpenden had done nothing but gossip about the Trethowans for the last ninety-five years, ever since the first workmen had arrived to dig foundations that would have been more appropriate for a Crusader castle. The villagers had got more hand-outs and free drinks out of British newspapermen than anybody in the world, except perhaps the islanders of Mustique. That should keep Jan
happy for the morning.

When I got myself to the Gothic wing I was met by an interesting sight. Tim Hamnet and Constable Smith were having a right old one-twoer with two men whom I took to be the gardeners. They had been caught trying to remove the Dali from my father’s study. They were under orders, apparently, to take it to the main block. Uncle Lawrence, it seemed, was having another of his good days today, and was acting firmly on the principles enunciated so brutally last night. However in this case, at least, he was frustrated: nothing was to be touched in the murder wing (as—if he’d had a grain of sense left—the silly old bugger should have realized for himself). In the end the gardeners saw they were on to a bad wicket and sloped off. No doubt they had several calls of a similar nature to make in the other wings.

Anyway, Tim and I went up to the library, as being more comfortable than the big room on the ground floor which I was increasingly coming to think of as the Torture Chamber, and we sat around and had a good old natter about the case. I won’t go into it in detail, because I’ve given you most of the stuff already, one way and another, and I want to get this story over within a reasonable time, but there were a couple of interesting things emerged from Tim’s side of the conversation. The first of these was the will. No great surprises there. I half suspected I was going to be left some derisory object to underline his contempt for me: a pair of old socks, or his musical manuscripts or something. But no. I was not so much as mentioned. I was pleased: it seemed to keep our mutual antipathy pure and abstract, as it had been since the day I left. Everything went to ‘my daughter Cristobel’ (he didn’t even bother with a ‘dear’): money, investments, possessions—many of the last being specified, including the Dali. In fact, I had a feeling that one look at that list would have given Uncle Lawrence apoplexy. The scientific
apparatus in the Torture Chamber was not mentioned. Presumably it went to Cristobel. Suitably adapted, it might form the basis of a good little gymnasium for her.

The other thing of interest was the money. My father’s financial state. Here I admit my earlier guesses were proved wrong. I was surprised—and no end pleased, for Cristobel’s sake—to learn that he was worth all of thirty thousand pounds, quite apart from shares, pictures, furniture, and rare editions of nasty books. Not at all bad, for my papa.

‘Anything shady about it?’ I asked Tim.

‘Hmm, well, I’m not entirely happy, let’s put it that way. I’ll tell you why. You see, I’ve got his bank accounts for the last ten years or so. Now, on the face of it, it’s a perfectly dull little record, with nothing in the least suspicious there —’

‘I saw his last book of stubs upstairs,’ I said.

‘Precisely. Booksellers, this Percival character —’

‘The wondrous artificer.’

‘—whatever you like to call him. And cheques to your sister for the housekeeping. Pretty generous ones, too, so they obviously included pocket-money-cum-wage for herself. Nothing wrong with that. Now, the trouble is, they keep being interrupted for long periods. No housekeeping cheques. Then they start up again. Then there’s another long break.’

‘I see. Meaning, you think, that my papa somehow or other came by largish sums of cash, which he stashed away (it being difficult to account for them otherwise) and used for the housekeeping and personal expenses for a bit, till they ran out. Later on he got access to more. Is that how you see it?’

‘Pretty much like that.’

‘Meaning, conceivably, pictures—is that what you think? What does Chris say to that?’

‘That’s the trouble. She denies it absolutely. She stands
me out that she was paid every week by cheque for the housekeeping expenses. Perhaps once or twice in cash, she concedes, but otherwise always by cheque. I keep telling her this can’t be so, she keeps telling me it is. I don’t like to say this, but she’s not too bright, your sister, Perry.’

‘She’s all right,’ I said defensively. ‘She’s got more sense than most of this lot.’

‘That’s another of your faint compliments, I suppose. Well, if you talk to her again, would you try to convince her that if she’d been paid by cheque regularly, I’d have a record of it?’

‘Oh, I’ll be talking to her,’ I said. ‘I’ll try. But you know my family by now. As the lady says in Thurber: “Mere proof won’t convince me.”’

Chris was apparently up and about, as she called it, and I finally came upon her on the far side of the lake, sitting in a little ornamental summerhouse that no doubt seemed to Great-Grandfather Josiah to add a Marie-Antoinette touch to his grounds, but now merely augmented the general sense of neglect and decay. Chris was deep in thought, but now and then she leant out and pulled at the branches and creeping tentacles of shrubs that threatened to take over the summerhouse.

‘Chris,’ I said.

‘Oh, hello, Perry.’

‘Why didn’t you tell me, Chris?’

‘Tell you?’ The words jumped out of her mouth, and she tensed up in a terribly defensive posture.

‘That you were pregnant.’

‘Oh, that . . . I didn’t want to worry you, on top of all this. It’ll have to come out soon. But not yet. Wait till all this has . . . died down. Did Janet notice?’

‘Yes. I suppose Sybilla has, too.’

‘Oh, no, I don’t think so. She never notices people.’

‘You don’t think you ought to tell her?’

‘Oh, no, Perry! I couldn’t! If I told anybody, it would be Kate.’

‘Yes, I suppose she might be better. You really ought to get away from Harpenden, Chris. You’ve got money of your own now. You could manage it, and it would be much less . . . unpleasant.’

‘Oh, no, I wouldn’t want that, Perry! Harpenden’s my home. It’s where . . . everyone is. They’ll all understand when they get used to the idea. We’re a very unconventional family.’

‘Hmmm. So the theory goes. The point is, it’s the most unrestful place in the world to have a baby in, particularly in these circumstances. Oh, why did you have to keep it in the family, Chris?’

‘The family’s all I’ve got,’ she said. ‘You hate them. I wouldn’t expect you to understand.’

‘It’s nothing to do with whether I hate them or not. In any case, I don’t hate Mordred. But it doesn’t seem right for the kid, growing up in a house full of elderly maniacs, with his father around, doing nothing, and not married to his mother . . .’

Chris had shot me a glance, but her mouth still was pursed into an obstinate line. ‘Family patterns are changing these days,’ she said, as if it were something she’d learned by rote. Suddenly her voice broke: ‘Oh, Perry, you don’t think it will matter, about being cousins, do you? I’ve been so worried about that . . .’

‘No, no, Chris. It’s an old superstition,’ I said (without having much idea whether it was or not, but Chris is so helpless and pathetic at times that she makes you want to soothe her down at any price).

‘Then I don’t see why things shouldn’t turn out all right,’ said Chris, setting her chin high in the air. ‘And you never know . . .’

Marriage, I thought. One could be quite sure that what Chris would really want, in these circumstances, was marriage.
Well, I’d better keep off that subject till I’d investigated the ground a bit further. For all I knew it could eventually be possible. Golly, I thought, I bet Aunt Syb’s been stashing it away over the years. To change the subject, I said: ‘Chris, why did you lie to the Inspector?’

‘I did not, Perry!’ All her defensiveness came back, and she reacted with irrational pugnaciousness.