Ngaio Marsh - Grave Mistake

“I’ve never heard a guide doing sob-stuff in Edinburgh Castle.

“They drool. When they’re not having a go at William and Mary, they get closer and closer to you and the tears seem to come into their eyes and they drool about Mary Queen of Scots. I may have been unlucky, of course. Bruce is positively taciturn in comparison. He overdoes the nature-lover bit but only perhaps because his employers encourage it. He is , in fact, a dedicated gardener.”

“And he visited Mrs. Foster at Greengages?”

“He was there that afternoon.”

“While you were there?”

Verity explained how Bruce and she had encountered in the grounds; and how she’d told him Sybil wouldn’t be able to see him then and how Prunella had suggested later on that he left his lilies at the desk.

“So he did just that?”

“I think so. I suppose they both went back by the next bus.”

“ Both ?”

“I’d forgotten Charmless Claude.”

“Did you say ‘Charmless’?”

“He’s Syb’s ghastly stepson.”

Verity explained Claude but avoided any reference to his more dubious activities, merely presenting him as a spineless drifter. She kept telling herself she ought to be on her guard with this atypical policeman in whose company she felt so inappropriately conversational. At the drop of a hat, she thought, she’d find herself actually talking about that episode of the past that she had never confided to anyone and which still persisted so rawly in her memory.

She pulled herself together. He had asked her if Claude was the son of Sybil’s second husband.

“No, of her first husband, Maurice Carter. She married him when she was seventeen. He was a very young widower. His first wife died in childbirth — leaving Claude, who was brought up by his grandparents. They didn’t like him very much, I’m afraid. Perhaps he might have turned out better if they had, but there it is. And then Maurice married Syb, who was in the WRENS. She was on duty somewhere in Scotland when he got an unexpected leave. He came down here to Quintern — Quintern Place is her house, you know — and tried to ring her up but couldn’t get through so he wrote a note. While he was doing this he was recalled urgently to London. The troop-train he caught was bombed and he was killed. She found the note afterwards. That’s a sad story, isn’t it?”

“Yes. Was this stepson, Claude, provided for?”

“Very well provided for, really. His father wasn’t an enormously rich man but he left a trust fund that paid for Claude’s upbringing. It still would be a reasonable standby if he didn’t contrive to lose it, as fast as it comes in. Of course,” Verity said more to herself than to Alleyn, “it’d have been different if the stamp had turned up.”

“Did you say ‘stamp’?”

“The Black Alexander. Maurice Carter inherited it. It was a pre-revolution Russian stamp that was withdrawn on the day it was issued because of a rather horrid little black flaw that looked like a bullet-hole in the Czar’s forehead. Apparently there was only the one specimen known to be in existence and so this one was worth some absolutely fabulous amount of money. Maurice’s own collection was medium-valuable and it went to Claude, who sold it, but the Black Alexander couldn’t be found. He was known to have taken it out of his bank the day before he died. They searched and searched but with no luck and it’s generally thought he must have had it on him when he was killed. It was a direct hit. It was bad luck for Claude about the stamp.”

“Where is Claude now?”

Verity said uncomfortably that he had been staying at Quintern but she didn’t know if he was still there.

“I see. Tell me: when did Mrs. Foster remarry?”

“In — when was it? In 1955. A large expensive stockbroker who adored her. He had a heart condition and died of it in 1964. You know,” Verity said suddenly, “when one tells the whole story, bit by bit, it turns almost into a classic tragedy, and yet, somehow one can’t see poor old Syb as a tragic figure. Except when one remembers the look .”

“The look that was spoken of at the inquest?”

“Yes. It would have been quite frightful if she, of all people, had suffered that disease.”

After a longish pause Verity said: “When will the inquest be reopened?”

“Quite soon. Probably early next week. I don’t think you will be called again. You’ve very helpful.”

“In what way? No, don’t tell me,” said Verity. “I–I don’t think I want to know. I don’t think I want to be helpful.”

“Nobody loves a policeman,” he said cheerfully and stood up. So did Verity. She was a tall woman but he towered over her.

He said: “I think this business has upset you more than you realize. Will you mind if I give you what must sound like a professionally motivated word of advice? If it turns out that you’re acquainted with some episode or some piece of behaviour, perhaps quite a long way back in time, that might throw a little light on — say on the character of one or the other of the people we have discussed — don’t withhold it. You never know. By doing so you might be doing a disservice to a friend.”

“We’re back to the Will again. Aren’t we?”

“Oh, that? Yes. In a sense we are.”

“You think she may have been influenced? Or that in some way it might be a cheat? Is that it?”

“The possibility must be looked at when the terms of a Will are extravagant and totally unexpected and the Will itself is made so short a time before the death of the testator.”

“But that’s not all? Is it? You’re not here just because Syb made a silly Will. You’re here because she died. You think it wasn’t suicide. Don’t you?”

He waited so long and looked so kindly at her that she was answered before he spoke.

“I’m afraid that’s it,” he said at last. “I’m sorry.”

Again he waited, expecting, perhaps, that she might ask more questions or break down but she contrived, as she put it to herself, to keep up appearances. She supposed she must have gone white because she found he had put her back in her chair. He went away and returned with a glass of water.

“I found your kitchen,” he said. “Would you like brandy with this?”

“No — why? There’s nothing the matter with me,” said Verity and tried to steady her hand. She took a hurried gulp of water.

“Dizzy spell,” she improvised. “ ‘Age with stealing steps’ and all that.”

“I don’t think he can be said to have ‘clawed you with his clutch’.”

“Thank you.”

“Anyway, I shan’t bother you any longer. Unless there’s something I can do?”

“I’m perfectly all right. Thank you very much, though.”

“Sure? I’ll be off then. Goodbye.”

Through the drawing-room window she watched him go striding down the drive and heard a car start up in the lane.

“Time, of course, does heal, as people say in letters of condolence,” she thought. “But they don’t mention the scars and twinges that crop up when the old wound gets an unexpected jolt. And this is a bad jolt,” thought Verity. “This is a snorter.”

And Alleyn, being driven by Inspector Fox to Quintern Place, said: “That’s a nice intelligent creature, Br’er Fox. She’s got character and guts but she couldn’t help herself going white when I talked about Schramm. She was much concerned to establish that they hadn’t met for many years and then only once. Why? An old affair? On the whole, I can’t wait to meet Dr. Schramm.”

iii

But first they must visit Quintern Place. It came into view unmistakably as soon as they had passed through the village: a Georgian house halfway up a hill, set in front of a stand of oaks and overlooking a rose-garden, lawns, a ha-ha and a sloping field and woodlands. Facing this restrained and lovely house and separated from it by a shallow declivity, was a monstrous Victorian pile, a plethora of towers and pepper pots approached by a long avenue that opened, by way of grandiloquent gates, off the lane leading to Quintern. “That’s Mardling Manor, that is,” said Alleyn, “the residence of Mr. Nikolas Markos, who had the good sense and taste to buy Troy’s Several Pleasures .”