A Murder is Announced

Chapter 12
Morning Activities in Chipping Cleghorn

I

Edmund Swettenham sat down rather precariously on a garden roller.

'Good morning, Phillipa,' he said.

'Hallo.'

'Are you very busy?'

'Moderately.'

'What are you doing?'

'Can't you see?'

'No. I'm not a gardener. You seem to be playing with earth in some fashion.'

'I'm pricking out winter lettuce.'

'Pricking out? What a curious term! Like pinking. Do you know what pinking is? I only learnt the other day. I always thought it was a term for professional duelling.'

'Do you want anything particular?' asked Phillipa coldly.

'Yes. I want to see you.'

Phillipa gave him a quick glance.

'I wish you wouldn't come here like this. Mrs Lucas won't like it.'

'Doesn't she allow you to have followers?'

'Don't be absurd.'

'Followers. That's another nice word. It describes my attitude perfectly. Respectful - at a distance - but firmly pursuing.'

'Please go away, Edmund. You've no business to come here.'

'You're wrong,' said Edmund triumphantly. 'I have business here. Mrs Lucas rang up my mamma this morning and said she had a good many vegetable marrows.'

'Masses of them.'

'And would we like to exchange a pot of honey for a vegetable marrow or so.'

'That's not a fair exchange at all! Vegetable marrows are quite unsaleable at the moment - everybody has such a lot.'

'Naturally. That's why Mrs Lucas rang up. Last time, if I remember rightly, the exchange suggested was some skim milk - skim milk, mark you - in exchange for some lettuces. It was then very early in the season for lettuces. They were about a shilling each.'

Phillipa did not speak.

Edmund tugged at his pocket and extracted a pot of honey.

'So here,' he said, 'is my alibi. Used in a loose and quite indefensible meaning of the term. If Mrs Lucas pops her bust round the door of the potting shed, I'm here in quest of vegetable marrows. There is absolutely no question of dalliance.'

'I see.'

'Do you ever read Tennyson?' inquired Edmund conversationally.

'Not very often.'

'You should. Tennyson is shortly to make a comeback in a big way. When you turn on your wireless in the evening it will be the Idylls of the King you will hear and not interminable Trollope. I always thought the Trollope pose was the most unbearable affectation. Perhaps a little of Trollope, but not to drown in him. But speaking of Tennyson, have you read Maud?'

'Once, long ago.'

'It's got some points about it.' He quoted softly:

'"Faultily faultless, icily regular, splendidly null." That's you, Phillipa.'

'Hardly a compliment!'

'No, it wasn't meant to be. I gather Maud got under the poor fellow's skin just like you've got under mine.'

'Don't be absurd, Edmund.'

'Oh, hell, Phillipa, why are you like you are? What goes on behind your splendidly regular features? What do you think? What do you feel? Are you happy, or miserable, or frightened, or what? There must be something.'

Phillipa said quietly:

'What I feel is my own business.'

'It's mine, too. I want to make you talk. I want to know what goes on in that quiet head of yours. I've a right to know. I have really. I didn't want to fall in love with you. I wanted to sit quietly and write my book. Such a nice book, all about how miserable the world is. It's frightfully easy to be clever about how miserable everybody is. And it's all a habit, really. Yes, I've suddenly become convinced of that. After reading a life of Burne Jones.'

Phillipa had stopped pricking out. She was staring at him with a puzzled frown.

'What has Burne Jones got to do with it?'

'Everything. When you've read all about the Pre-Raphaelites you realize just what fashion is. They were all terrifically hearty and slangy and jolly, and laughed and joked, and everything was fine and wonderful. That was fashion, too. They weren't any happier or heartier than we are. And we're not any more miserable than they were. It's all fashion, I tell you. After the last war, we went in for sex. Now it's all frustration. None of it matters. Why are we talking about all this? I started out to talk about us. Only I got cold feet and shied off. Because you won't help me.'

'What do you want me to do?'

'Talk! Tell me things. Is it your husband? Do you adore him and he's dead and so you've shut up like a clam? Is that it? All right, you adored him, and he's dead. Well, other girls' husbands are dead - lots of them - and some of the girls loved their husbands. They tell you so in bars, and cry a bit when they're drunk enough, and then want to go to bed with you so that they'll feel better. It's one way of getting over it, I suppose. You've got to get over it, Phillipa. You're young - and you're extremely lovely - and I love you like hell. Talk about your damned husband, tell me about him.'

'There's nothing to tell. We met and got married.'

'You must have been very young.'

'Too young.'

'Then you weren't happy with him? Go on, Phillipa.'

'There's nothing to go on about. We were married. We were as happy as most people are, I suppose. Harry was born. Ronald went overseas. He - he was killed in Italy.'

'And now there's Harry?'

'And now there's Harry.'

'I like Harry. He's a really nice kid. He likes me. We get on. What about it, Phillipa? Shall we get married? You can go on gardening and I can go on writing my book and in the holidays we'll leave off working and enjoy ourselves. We can manage, with tact, not to have to live with Mother. She can fork out a bit to support her devoted son. I sponge, I write tripey books, I have defective eyesight and I talk too much. That's the worst. Will you try it?'

Phillipa looked at him. She saw a tall rather solemn young man with an anxious face and large spectacles. His sandy head was rumpled and he was regarding her with a reassuring friendliness.

'No,' said Phillipa.

'Definitely - no?'

'Definitely no.'

'Why?'

'You don't know anything about me.'

'Is that all?'

'No, you don't know anything about anything.'

Edmund considered.

'Perhaps not,' he admitted. 'But who does? Phillipa, my adored one - ' He broke off.

A shrill and prolonged yapping was rapidly approaching.

'Pekes in the high hall garden, (said Edmund)

When twilight was falling (only it's eleven a.m.)

Phil, Phil, Phil, Phil,

They were crying and calling

'Your name doesn't lend itself to the rhythm, does it? Sounds like an Ode to a Fountain Pen. Have you got another name?'

'Joan. Please go away. That's Mrs Lucas.'

'Joan, Joan, Joan, Joan. Better, but still not good. When greasy Joan the pot doth keel - that's not a nice picture of married life, either.'

'Mrs Lucas is - '

'Oh, hell!' said Edmund. 'Get me a blasted vegetable marrow.'

II

Sergeant Fletcher had the house at Little Paddocks to himself.

It was Mitzi's day off. She always went by the eleven o'clock bus into Medenham Wells. By arrangement with Miss Blacklock, Sergeant Fletcher had the run of the house. She and Dora Bunner had gone down to the village.

Fletcher worked fast. Someone in the house had oiled and prepared that door, and whoever had done it, had done it in order to be able to leave the drawing-room unnoticed as soon as the lights went out. That ruled out Mitzi who wouldn't have needed to use the door.

Who was left? The neighbours, Fletcher thought, might also be ruled out. He didn't see how they could have found an opportunity to oil and prepare the door. That left Patrick and Julia Simmons, Phillipa Haymes, and possibly Dora Bunner. The young Simmonses were in Milchester. Phillipa Haymes was at work. Sergeant Fletcher was free to search out any secrets he could. But the house was disappointingly innocent. Fletcher, who was an expert on electricity, could find nothing suggestive in the wiring or appurtenances of the electric fixtures to show how the lights had been fused. Making a rapid survey of the household bedrooms he found an irritating normality. In Phillipa Haymes' room were photographs of a small boy with serious eyes, an earlier photo of the same child, a pile of schoolboy letters, a theatre programme or two. In Julia's room there was a drawer full of snapshots of the South of France. Bathing photos, a villa set amidst mimosa. Patrick's held some souvenirs of Naval days. Dora Bunner's held few personal possessions and they seemed innocent enough.

And yet, thought Fletcher, someone in the house must have oiled that door.

His thoughts broke off at a sound below stairs. He went quickly to the top of the staircase and looked down.

Mrs Swettenham was crossing the hall. She had a basket on her arm. She looked into the drawing-room, crossed the hall and went into the dining-room. She came out again without the basket.

Some faint sound that Fletcher made, a board that creaked unexpectedly under his feet, made her turn her head. She called up:

'Is that you, Miss Blacklock?'

'No, Mrs Swettenham, it's me,' said Fletcher.

Mrs Swettenham gave a faint scream.

'Oh! how you startled me. I thought it might be another burglar.'

Fletcher came down the stairs.

'This house doesn't seem very well protected against burglars,' he said. 'Can anybody always walk in and out just as they like?'

'I just brought up some of my quinces,' explained Mrs Swettenham. 'Miss Blacklock wants to make quince jelly and she hasn't got a quince tree here. I left them in the dining-room.'

Then she smiled.

'Oh, I see, you mean how did I get in? Well, I just came in through the side door. We all walk in and out of each other's houses, Sergeant. Nobody dreams of locking a door until it's dark. I mean it would be so awkward, wouldn't it, if you brought things and couldn't get in to leave them? It's not like the old days when you rang a bell and a servant always came to answer it.' Mrs Swettenham sighed. 'In India, I remember,' she said mournfully, 'we had eighteen servants - eighteen. Not counting the ayah. Just as a matter of course. And at home, when I was a girl, we always had three - though Mother always felt it was terribly poverty-stricken not to be able to afford a kitchen-maid. I must say that I find life very odd nowadays, Sergeant, though I know one mustn't complain. So much worse for the miners always getting psitticosis (or is that parrot disease?) and having to come out of the mines and try to be gardeners though they don't know weeds from spinach.'

She added, as she tripped towards the door, 'I mustn't keep you. I expect you're very busy. Nothing else is going to happen, is it?'

'Why should it, Mrs Swettenham?'

'I just wondered, seeing you here. I thought it might be a gang. You'll tell Miss Blacklock about the quinces, won't you?'

Mrs Swettenham departed. Fletcher felt like a man who has received an unexpected jolt. He had been assuming - erroneously, he now perceived - that it must have been someone in the house who had done the oiling of the door. He saw now that he was wrong. An outsider had only to wait until Mitzi had departed by bus and Letitia Blacklock and Dora Bunner were both out of the house. Such an opportunity must have been simplicity itself. That meant that he couldn't rule out anybody who had been in the drawing-room that night.

III

'Murgatroyd!'

'Yes, Hinch?'

'I've been doing a bit of thinking.'

'Have you, Hinch?'

'Yes, the great brain has been working. You know, Murgatroyd, the whole set-up the other evening was decidedly fishy.'

'Fishy?'

'Yes. Tuck your hair up, Murgatroyd, and take this trowel. Pretend it's a revolver.'

'Oh,' said Miss Murgatroyd, nervously.

'All right. It won't bite you. Now come along to the kitchen door. You're going to be the burglar. You stand here. Now you're going into the kitchen to hold up a lot of nit-wits. Take the torch. Switch it on.'

'But it's broad daylight!'

'Use your imagination, Murgatroyd. Switch it on.'

Miss Murgatroyd did so, rather clumsily, shifting the trowel under one arm while she did so.

'Now then,' said Miss Hinchcliffe, 'off you go. Remember the time you played Hermia in A Midsummer Night's Dream at the Women's Institute? Act. Give it all you've got. "Stick 'em up!" Those are your lines - and don't ruin them by saying "Please."'

Obediently Miss Murgatroyd raised her torch, flourished the trowel and advanced on the kitchen door.

Transferring the torch to her right hand she swiftly turned the handle and stepped forward, resuming the torch in her left hand.

'Stick 'em up!' she fluted, adding vexedly: 'Dear me, this is very difficult, Hinch.'

'Why?'

'The door. It's a swing door, it keeps coming back and I've got both hands full.'

'Exactly,' boomed Miss Hinchcliffe. 'And the drawing-room door at Little Paddocks always swings to. It isn't a swing door like this, but it won't stay open. That's why Letty Blacklock bought that absolutely delectable heavy glass doorstop from Elliot's in the High Street. I don't mind saying I've never forgiven her for getting in ahead of me there. I was beating the old brute down most successfully. He'd come down from eight guineas to six pound ten, and then Blacklock comes along and buys the damned thing. I'd never seen as attractive a doorstop, you don't often get those glass bubbles in that big size.'

'Perhaps the burglar put the doorstop against the door to keep it open,' suggested Miss Murgatroyd.

'Use your common sense, Murgatroyd. What does he do? Throw the door open, say "Excuse me a moment," stoop and put the stop into position and then resume business by saying "Hands up"? Try holding the door with your shoulder.'

'It's still very awkward,' complained Miss Murgatroyd.

'Exactly,' said Miss Hinchcliffe. 'A revolver, a torch and a door to hold open - a bit too much, isn't it? So what's the answer?'

Miss Murgatroyd did not attempt to supply an answer. She looked inquiringly and admiringly at her masterful friend and waited to be enlightened.

'We know he'd got a revolver, because he fired it,' said Miss Hinchcliffe. 'And we know he had a torch because we all saw it - that is unless we're all victims of mass hypnotism like explanations of the Indian Rope Trick (what a bore that old Easterbrook is with his Indian stories) so the question is, did someone hold that door open for him?'

'But who could have done that?'

'Well, you could have for one, Murgatroyd. As far as I remember, you were standing directly behind it when the lights went out.' Miss Hinchcliffe laughed heartily. 'Highly suspicious character, aren't you, Murgatroyd? But who'd think it to look at you? Here, give me that trowel - thank heavens it isn't really a revolver. You'd have shot yourself by now!'

IV

'It's a most extraordinary thing,' muttered Colonel Easterbrook. 'Most extraordinary. Laura.'

'Yes, darling?'

'Come into my dressing-room a moment.'

'What is it, darling?'

Mrs Easterbrook appeared through the open door.

'Remember my showing you that revolver of mine?'

'Oh, yes, Archie, a nasty horried black thing.'

'Yes. Hun souvenir. Was in this drawer, wasn't it?'

'Yes, it was.'

'Well, it's not there now.'

'Archie, how extraordinary!'

'You haven't moved it or anything?'

'Oh, no, I'd never dare to touch the horrid thing.'

'Think old mother whatsername did?'

'Oh, I shouldn't think so for a minute. Mrs Butt would never do a thing like that. Shall I ask her?'

'No - no, better not. Don't want to start a lot of talk. Tell me, do you remember when it was I showed it to you?'

'Oh, about a week ago. You were grumbling about your collars and the laundry and you opened this drawer wide and there it was at the back and I asked you what it was.'

'Yes, that's right. About a week ago. You don't remember the date?'

Mrs Easterbrook considered, eyelids down over her eyes, a shrewd brain working.

'Of course,' she said. 'It was Saturday. The day we were to have gone in to the pictures, but we didn't.'

'H'm - sure it wasn't before that? Wednesday? Thursday or even the week before that again?'

'No, dear,' said Mrs Easterbrook. 'I remember quite distinctly. It was Saturday the 30th. It just seems a long time because of all the trouble there's been. And I can tell you how I remember. It's because it was the day after the hold-up at Miss Blacklock's. Because when I saw your revolver it reminded me of the shooting the night before.'

'Ah,' said Colonel Easterbrook, 'then that's a great load off my mind.'

'Oh, Archie, why?'

'Just because if that revolver had disappeared before the shooting - well, it might possibly have been my revolver that was pinched by that Swiss fellow.'

'But how would he have known you had one?'

'These gangs have a most extraordinary communication service. They get to know everything about a place and who lives there.'

'What a lot you do know, Archie.'

'Ha. Yes. Seen a thing or two in my time. Still as you definitely remember seeing my revolver after the hold-up - well, that settles it. The revolver that Swiss fellow used can't have been mine, can it?'

'Of course it can't.'

'A great relief. I should have had to go to the police about it. And they ask a lot of awkward questions. Bound to. As a matter of fact I never took out a licence for it. Somehow, after a war, one forgets these peacetime regulations. I looked on it as a war souvenir, not as a firearm.'

'Yes, I see. Of course.'

'But all the same - where on earth can the damned thing be?'

'Perhaps Mrs Butt took it. She's always seemed quite honest, but perhaps she felt nervous after the hold-up and thought she'd like to - to have a revolver in the house. Of course, she'll never admit doing that. I shan't even ask her. She might get offended. And what should we do then? This is such a big house - I simply couldn't - '

'Quite so,' said Colonel Easterbrook. 'Better not say anything.'