Джорджетт Хейер - Detection Unlimited

Again Mrs. Haswell demurred, this time on the ground that Mr. Drybeck was Miss Patterdale's solicitor.

“Yes, and if I'm right he won't be able to have me up for anything,” Abby pointed out. “He's the one person who fits in.”

“No, he isn't,” Charles contradicted. “He doesn't fit in half as well as Mavis.”

“Oh, do shut up about Mavis!” begged Abby. “She couldn't possibly have done it! She's far too dim!”

“If you ask me, she's a dark horse. It's a pity you shirked coming to church this morning. I don't like Gavin, but he was dead right about her! Talk of overacting! She was doing the heartbroken heroine all over the shop, accepting condolences, and drivelling about her dear uncle's kindness, and being alone in the world, until even Mummy felt sick!”

“Well, no darling, not sick exactly,” said Mrs. Haswell. “It was all a little insincere, but I expect she feels that's the way she ought to behave. There's something about death that turns people into the most dreadful hypocrites. I can't think why. I was just as bad when your grandfather died, until your father pointed out how disagreeable and exacting he'd been for years, wearing poor Granny out, and never being in the least pleased to see any of us.”

“You weren't the same as Mavis at all!” said Charles. “You didn't pretend he'd been a saint, and tell everyone you wished he hadn't left his money to you!”

“No, darling, but I always knew he must have done that, and in any case it didn't come to me till Granny died. Not that I should have said anything so silly.”

“Yes, but that's just the kind of thing one would expect Mavis to say!” Abby pointed out. “There was a girl at school awfully like her, always saying "Oh, I don't think we ought to!" and being kind and forgiving to everyone, and saying improving things. She was the most ghastly type! And the worst thing about people like that is that they actually believe in their own acts. I wouldn't mind half as much if they were doing it deliberately, and stayed honest inside, but they don't. Geoffrey Silloth says hypocrisy is a deadly drug which finally permeates the whole system. And, in any case,” she added, struck by a powerful thought, “can you see Mavis firing a gun!”

“I didn't see it,” said Charles, with emphasis. “All I know about her is that she chose to come down here and act as a sort of unpaid drudge for an out-and-out swine, who wasn't able to call decently polite to her, rather than get a job and be able to call her soul her own. And I never knew why till yesterday!”

“Well, dear, until yesterday you never really thought about it at all, did you?” interpolated his mother mildly.

“She said she felt it was her duty to look after Dear Uncle,” said Abby.

“Boloney!” said Charles scornfully. “I may not have thought much about it, but I do recall that in one of her expansive moments she disclosed that it was such a surprise to her when Dear Uncle wrote to offer her a home, because she had never even met him. So if you're nourishing a vision of Warrenby being the prop of his sister-in-law's declining years, can it! He offered Mavis a home because, for one thing he needed a hostess in his big social climb, and, for another, he thought it would be grand to have a housekeeper and general dog's-body he wouldn't have to pay, and could bully!”

“Yes, that's perfectly true,” conceded Abby. “But I still say she didn't do it. Do you know what I did when you were all at Church this morning? I walked down to Mr. Drybeck's house, and then cut back to Fox House, across the common, timing myself, and I found he could have done it easily! It took me exactly six minutes to reach the gorse bushes. What's more, there's plenty of cover, because there are lots of bushes and things on that part of the common.”

“I don't say Drybeck couldn't have done it in the time, but I don't suppose he'd walk as fast as you did. He's too old.”

“What rot!” said Abby scornfully. “He's as thin as a herring, and look at him on the tennis-court!”

At this moment, Mr. Haswell walked into the room, saying, as he shut the door, that if Charles must borrow his clothes he did wish he would sometimes put them back where they belonged, instead of leaving them all over the house. He said this without ill-will, and certainly without any hope that his words would bear fruit; and his son replied, as he invariably did: “Sorry, Dad!” and then dismissed the matter from his mind.

Mr. Haswell, having by this time observed that a guest was present, shook hands with Abby, favouring her with an appraising look, which rather surprised her, since she was well acquainted with him and quite unaccustomed to exciting more interest in him than he felt for any of his son's young friends, all of whom he received in an uncritical and incurious spirit. Fortunately for her self-possession she did not know that this keen scrutiny was due to certain mysterious words uttered by Mrs. Haswell into his private ear on the previous evening. He was a well-built man, with a square, rather impassive countenance, and a taciturn disposition; and although he was a pleasant host, and accepted with perfect equanimity all the young people who invaded his house, and danced to the radio, or argued loudly and interminably on such subjects as Surrealist art, Anglo-Soviet Relations, and The Ballet, most of Charles's friends stood in considerable awe of him. Appealed to now by Sampson Warrenby, he replied calmly: “Certainly not,” and poured himself out a glass of sherry.

“Well, that's Abby's theory. I think it's possible, but my own bet is that it was Mavis. What's your view, Dad?”

“That you'd both of you do better to leave it to the police, and not talk quite so much about it,” replied his father.

Abby, who had been very well brought-up, would have abandoned the entrancing topic at once, but Charles, though extremely fond of his parents, naturally held them in no exaggerated respect. He said: “You know perfectly well we're bound to talk about it. It's quite the most interesting thing that's ever befallen Thornden.”

“Oh, Mr. Haswell!” said Abby, feeling that Charles had broken the ice, “there's a Chief Inspector from Scotland Yard, and we actually talked to him, at the Red Lion!”

“Did you indeed?” he said, smiling faintly. “That must have been a thrill for you! I hope you didn't tell him what your theories are?”

“No, we were madly discreet,” she assured him.

“I didn't have to tell him my theory,” said Charles. “Gavin did that for me. Oh, I say, Mummy, do you know what became of my old .22, by any chance? The one Daddy got for me when I was at school?”

“Do you mean the one you used to shoot rabbits with, darling? Yes, I lent it to old Newbiggin's grandson: the one with the extraordinary ears, who was so helpful that time Woodhorn was ill, and I couldn't get the car to start.”

“Good lord! Did he bring it back?”

“Oh, yes, I'm sure he must have!” said Mrs. Haswell, folding up her tapestry-work, and removing the thimble from her finger. “Why? You don't want it, do you, Charles?”

“No, but it looks as if the Chief Inspector will. Gavin had the bright idea that it would have been just the rifle for Mavis to handle, and I should think they're bound to follow that up. And if it's sculling about the village—”

“No, it isn't. I remember now!” said Mrs. Haswell. “Jim Newbiggin returned it one day when I was in London, and Molly put it in the cloakroom. I meant to put it with the rest of your stuff, in the attic, and then I forgot, and I don't know what became of it.”

“Lord-love-a-duck!” said Charles inelegantly, and immediately left the room.

He returned in a very few minutes, carrying in one gloved hand a light rifle. “Shoved at the back of the coat-cupboard,” he said briefly. “Now, where would be a safe place to put it? I haven't touched it, and no one must, because of finger-prints. Look, Mummy, I'll put it on the top of the cabinet for the time being.”