A Dark and Stormy Night (28 page)

‘Now tell me everything,' I demanded, and Alan did his best to comply, meanwhile turning on the kettle and setting out the teapot and appurtenances and the large box of biscuits he had raided from the kitchen – was it only last night?

‘There isn't a lot more to tell, unfortunately. Almost as soon as Julie appeared and made her amazing statement, the vultures were on her, and nobody else could get a word in edgeways. The moment he could, Bradley exercised his authority, spoke a word or two in her ear, handcuffed her – and then you came on the scene and know as much as I do.'

That was profoundly unsatisfactory. ‘Well, but . . . where had she been hiding all that time?'

‘No idea.' He put two of those big, squishy tea bags in the pot and poured in the boiling water.

‘Did she say how or why she had killed Dave?'

‘Not a word.' He picked up the pot and swirled the water around.

‘I admit I thought she might have done it. I tried to tell you—'

‘I understood, but I had to stop you because we weren't supposed to talk about the deaths with anyone else around.'

‘Well, but . . . oh, hand me a biscuit, will you? Maybe it's sugar my brain cells need. They don't seem to be functioning at all.'

Alan finished making tea in silence, poured it out, and handed me a cup prepared almost to my satisfaction, save for the unavailable milk. I drank it eagerly, drained the cup, poured myself another, and said irrelevantly, ‘We should have asked them to bring us some groceries.'

‘Which “them”? The police or the press?'

‘Either. Both. I don't suppose they run errands for people, though.'

‘Probably not. I wouldn't be surprised if Bates finds someone to send a message to some good friend in the village. If one of those mosquitoes downstairs belongs to a local rag, he'll want to keep in with the gentry, even if they are Americans. You may have your milk sooner than you think, my dear.'

‘How long do you think it might be before the roads are clear and we can all leave?'

‘Another day or two, I should imagine. The police can't use those helicopters forever; there are never enough to go 'round. They'll want the drive cleared and some sort of bridge rigged, and Bradley will get what he wants, sooner rather than later. He's a mover, that lad.' I nodded, and Alan finished his last cup of tea. ‘I sincerely hope that by the time the road is clear, our problems will be, as well, and we can all go home.'

‘But,' I said, my head swimming again, ‘but I thought they
were
cleared. Julie has confessed—'

‘My dear woman!' Alan turned on me a look of sheer astonishment. ‘You don't mean to say you believe her?'

I opened my mouth, closed it, and glanced at the little clock on the mantel. An anachronism in the room, being of French and almost certainly eighteenth-century provenance, it was nevertheless beautiful. It showed the time to be five thirty, or nearly. ‘Alan,' I said calmly, ‘I think I am in need of something a little more sustaining than tea. Did you happen to bring any bourbon up with you last night?'

I sipped at it, slowly. I had no intention of repeating my folly of Sunday night. I'd barely recovered, nearly two days later. But I was feeling as though I'd been spun around rapidly, then blanket-tossed and walked through a darkened maze and left abandoned there. ‘A riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma,' I remarked. ‘Didn't somebody say that about something?'

‘Winston Churchill, referring, I believe, to Russia. Come now, Dorothy! This isn't that bad.'

‘All right, tell me again, slowly. Julie Harrison has confessed to the murder of her husband. The police have taken her off, in handcuffs. But you – and presumably they – don't believe her. Explain, please.'

‘I don't speak for the official police, my love, but I would be very surprised if DI Bradley believes a word of what she said. There are no flies at all on that young man.'

‘I had that impression, too. He'll go far. But if he doesn't believe her, why did he arrest her?'

‘Oh, you should be able to work that out, at least until you've had another few wee drams of that stuff. Think I'll have some myself.'

‘Well, let's see.' I scrounged around and found some nuts to go with my bourbon. Maybe hunger was part of what was wrong with me. ‘Julie hides all night, the night after Dave is killed. You find her and bring her back to the house, where she's scared to death of everybody except Mr Leatherbury. Eventually she opens up some to Pat and me. Then when we go to ask her more, she has disappeared. We look everywhere, can't find her. Then lo and behold, she comes prancing right out from wherever she's been and turns herself into the police.'

‘You're doing fine so far,' said my maddening husband. ‘Go on.'

‘She turns herself in,' I said more slowly, ‘and the police take her away . . . oh!'

‘Exactly. They take her away.'

‘Away from whatever has scared her so. Away from . . . from the person who really killed Dave?'

‘I think the conclusion is warranted, don't you? And that's why DI Bradley let her, apparently, pull the wool over his eyes. She confesses, he takes her away, she's safe, the murderer thinks he's safe. Very neat.'

‘I wouldn't have thought she was that smart,' I reflected.

‘She may not be well-educated, but I think where self-preservation is concerned, our Julie is very smart indeed.'

‘Except when it came to choosing a spouse. Her instincts let her down badly there,' I argued. ‘And that's why I think she may be pulling a double bluff. She could have decided that Dave was such a bad bargain, she'd be better off without him. And then when his death wasn't accepted as accident, she hid out until she could work out what to do. Alan, that could explain why she was so scared of you, in particular. You represented the Law!'

‘Yes, we talked about that once before, as I recall. It doesn't explain why she would be so eager to walk into the arms of the real authorities the minute they arrived on the scene.'

‘Well . . . she'd had time to work out what to do. She might know that, as an American, she stood very little chance of getting into real trouble. I'll bet she's on the phone to the Embassy right this minute, especially after that very clear directive the good inspector was so careful to give her.'

‘It could be you're right. It's all speculation at this point, in any case. It's been a trying day, love, and it's not over yet. What would you say to a nap till we can decently go down for dinner?'

THIRTY-ONE

A
s it worked out, Alan was in a moustache-twirling mood and we slept only a little, but were greatly refreshed, and much more cheerful, when we went down to dinner. Alan had told me what to expect, but it was still pleasant to find that our police presence had disappeared. ‘There'll still be some officers in the house, Dorothy, but they don't intend to make themselves conspicuous. The idea is to let the real murderer think he's got away with it. He may get careless.'

The media had also departed, thanks be to God. I knew we would find ourselves all over the evening news, if we turned on a television. No one did.

Dinner was therefore an enjoyable meal, even though we still had no fresh food. I hoped, for Rose's sake, that supplies would be forthcoming soon. An artist grows despondent when deprived of her best colours. Mr Bates was at any rate in good spirits again, serving with his usual deftness and style. Everyone was full of excited talk about going home, speculation about how soon that might be, plans for when they arrived.

Even knowing what I knew, my thoughts also turned to Sherebury. Alan had been trying at intervals to get through to our neighbour and cat-sitter, and finally achieved a static-filled connection. He handed me the phone.

‘Jane? I can barely hear you. This is Dorothy. What? How are the cats?'

‘Cats are fine. House is . . . but they think . . . sounds like . . . disaster . . .'

And silence. ‘Hello? Hello? Are you still there?' Nothing.

‘Well,' I said, handing the phone back to Alan, ‘that was some use, I guess, but not much. The cats are OK, but I got the impression something disastrous had happened to the house. I wish we could get back.'

‘Jane will cope,' said Alan calmly.

‘She will,' I agreed. ‘Jane's specialty is coping. I still want to see the worst and figure out what we're going to do.'

‘Meanwhile, you can exercise your talent for – I won't say snooping—'

‘You'd better not!' And I went off to snoop.

Pat was back in the library, back to Dorothy Sayers. ‘I abandoned crime while we were immersed in it,' she said. ‘Too topical. Now that we've light and heat and the other essentials of civilization, I can enjoy murder and mayhem again.'

‘There's no murder in
Gaudy Night
,' I pointed out.

‘Oh, don't you think so?' She smiled enigmatically.

‘Anyway, I came to ask you something, but I'm interrupting your reading.'

‘Never mind. I know the book by heart. What can I tell you?'

‘Well.' I settled down in a squashy leather chair. I'd need help getting free of its embraces later, but meanwhile it was supremely comfortable. ‘It's about the house – the estate, I suppose I mean. Someone, I think it was the vicar, said Laurence went to New Zealand in 1982. The Moynihans didn't buy the place until a couple of years ago. What was happening to Branston Abbey in the meantime? Surely it wasn't just sitting empty? And if Laurence was paying wages and taxes and maintenance all that time . . .'

‘I wondered,' said Pat, ‘when that was going to occur to you.'

I refrained from throwing a cushion at her, though I thought about it.

‘My firm, in fact, handled the sale of the estate. Both times.'

‘Both?' I tried to lean forward, but the chair defeated me. ‘The house was sold twice?'

Pat touched the bell push. ‘This story is going to require some lubrication. Yes, the house – the estate – was sold twice. Laurence never did care much for living here. Oh, thank you, Mr Bates, I'd like some brandy, please. Dorothy?'

I shook my head. I'd learned my lesson the other night. ‘Just some orange juice, please. Go on, Pat.'

‘Laurence,' she continued, ‘had qualified as a doctor by that time, but the practice here was occupied by the same man who'd delivered most of the babies for miles around. He didn't need an assistant. Laurence was champing at the bit. As there were no opportunities for him around here, he began to look around for other practices, and someone told him they were in great need of doctors in the Antipodes. So he went out there to see for himself, and never came back. He found a city, Christchurch, that suited him beautifully, with a good hospital – he's a surgeon, you know – and took up his new life then and there.'

‘He never married, then?'

‘No. There was a girl here he would have quite liked to marry, while he was still in medical school, but she was a flighty little thing then, not willing to wait for years until he started earning decent money, not willing to leave Branston, sure she'd have plenty of better chances. She turned him down.'

Pat sipped thoughtfully at her brandy, and I started putting two and two together. Pat was about ten years younger than Laurence, and very beautiful, still, in middle age. When she was young . . . ah, well, she didn't seem inclined to tell me any more, and it was none of my business.

‘When Laurence was settled in Christchurch he wrote to my firm, asking us to sell the estate as soon as possible. I hadn't passed the Bar yet, so I wasn't formally associated with the firm, but I knew what was happening. Laurence wanted to sell. He was less concerned with the money than with ridding himself of the responsibility. Almost all the servants had been pensioned off by then, or found better jobs, and there were no tenants on the farms or in the cottages any more, so there were few complications.

‘But.' She took another sip. ‘There were also few buyers for a large estate with a very old house that would require thousands of pounds spent, regularly, for maintenance. The months went by, the years. The only people living on the estate then were John Bates's father, who was the caretaker, and John. He was a small boy then, but he helped his father as much as he could. We hired cleaners and gardeners and so on, to keep the place from deteriorating, but it was all extremely frustrating.'

‘So John has actually lived here all his life?'

Pat nodded.

‘But aside from his family, the house was essentially empty until the Moynihans . . . but no, you said the house was sold twice.'

‘Yes. A few years after Laurence left, we were beginning to consider the National Trust. They don't pay much, but they do assure that the property will remain intact and well-preserved, and the Home Secretary's office was getting a bit impatient. You know they oversee the preservation of listed buildings?'

‘I do know, as it happens. My house is listed, and I had a go-round with them some years ago when it needed a new roof.'

‘Then you'll understand why they were rather breathing down our necks. At that point, however, a holding company stepped up with an offer. Not a fantastic offer, but a way of getting it off our hands, and enough money to pay for some needed repairs and leave a bit for poor Laurence, who by that time had, I think, despaired of ever realizing anything from it.'

‘A holding company? What did they plan to do with it?'

‘They had in mind an institution of some kind, a school or retirement home or something. But apparently the plans fell through, because nothing was ever done.