A Death in Two Parts (10 page)

Joseph opened the door. “Sorry to leave you like that; I didn't want the whole family in here. Dr Findlayson and the police will be here right away.”

“The police?” Patience asked.

“Findlayson said I'd better call them as it was so sudden. Of course there's nothing in it – but you know it's odd just the same. She was a tough old girl.” They were the most affectionate words Patience had ever heard him speak of his mother. “You were the last to leave her last night, weren't you?” Was there a new note of calculation in his voice?

“Yes, I thought she might need help. She seemed so dreadfully tired.”

“Yes, of course.” He was thinking of something else. “No need for you two to stay now. Patience, you look all in. Why don't you go and lie down for a bit before the police get here?”

He wanted to be rid of her, and why not? Besides, she was still in her dressing gown. “Thank you; I believe I will.”

She heard him relock the communicating door behind her as she climbed into bed and pulled cold sheets up around her chin. But it was impossible to get warm. She lay there shivering under the pile of blankets for half an hour, then gave it up and got out of bed. Best to get dressed anyway; it was nine o'clock. She had no daytime black to wear, but what did it matter? Mrs Ffeathers had always ridiculed the idea of mourning. ‘Of course if it happens to suit you that's something else again,' Patience remembered her saying. Choking back sudden
tears, she pulled a wine-coloured dress off its hanger and put it on.

When she opened her door, the house struck her overwrought senses as strangely silent. There were none of the usual morning noises, no splashings from the bathroom down the hall, no bursts of unmelodious song from Mark's room. Where was everyone? Could no one else have heard Andrews' screams? But Joseph and Josephine must be about somewhere, and besides, even today breakfast must presumably get itself eaten. She hurried downstairs, suddenly sick with loneliness, wanting Mark.

In the dining room, the long table stood laid for fourteen, its decoration of holly and red ribbon still more incongruous in the cold morning light. The small flame hissed under the coffee urn and the hatch to the kitchen stood invitingly open, letting a hint of bacon into the air, but there was nobody there. Patience hesitated in the doorway for a moment, then the sound of excited voices from the kitchen made her turn, almost in flight. On an impulse, she ran upstairs and knocked on Mark's door, but there was no answer. She knocked again, more loudly, then gave it up. She knew, without reasoning, that all the bedrooms were empty. She knocked at Mary's. Silence. At Josephine's. Nothing.

A door at the far end of the hall opened and Brian Duguid's pink face peered short-sightedly out. “I say, have I overslept frightfully?” He looked defenceless in his dressing gown.

“No, no. It's quite early.” She could not bring herself to tell him. “No one's started breakfast.” She retreated down the stairs, half heard him say, “I thought I heard someone calling,” but was too far away to answer.

The big drawing room stood empty and unwelcoming in the grey light. Beyond it, the library still had its heavy curtains drawn. No doubt this was one of the hysterical Andrews' duties. Automatically, Patience pulled back the curtains and started at the sudden rattle of their heavy rings in the too silent house. Pausing, as she always did, to look at the rising sweep of the downs outside, she saw two cars speeding along the narrow road from the village. The police already? She hurried to pull the curtains at the next window, where she would get a better view, but as she did so the door at the far end of the room opened and Josephine appeared.

“Good, there you are, Patience. I was just coming to look for you.”

Looking past her, Patience saw the family gathered in the little, disused study: Joseph, dominant at the mantelpiece, Seward drooping beside him, their wives huddled on an old sofa, Leonora and Ludwig in a corner as usual, Priss close to them, pleating and unpleating the hem of her dress, Mark and Mary side by side on the window seat. All the Ffeatherses were there and as they turned and slowly, silently gazed at her, she had an overwhelming feeling, worse than any she had suffered as a child, that they were strangers, aliens, the enemy. It was absurd, of course, and half-consciously she turned to Mark for reassurance, but it seemed, strangely, that he did not see her. His back was to the light, so that she could only make out the outline of that handsome face, and he seemed to be looking straight through her.

Pure nerves. She must pull herself together and listen to Joseph. “A sort of family council,” he was saying. “Didn't like to disturb you as you were resting, but I'm glad you turned up when you did. You see, there's bound to be a bit
of unpleasantness about this – poor old Mother going off so suddenly, you know – and of course we want to draw it as mild as we can. No sense going into anything that'd make the poor old dear look ridiculous – like that idea of hers that someone had stolen five pounds from her. We all know what she was like, but tell a thing like that to the police and there's no knowing what ideas they may not get into their heads. You know what I'm getting at, Patience; least said, soonest mended and all that kind of thing. No reason to expect there'll be any trouble, but the less we all talk, the less trouble there'll be. You see my point?”

“Yes, of course. I won't say anything.” If he was protesting too much, she found it impossible to sound convincing at all. And yet it was all perfectly reasonable. So why this feeling of nightmare? Again her eyes sought Mark's, but he had turned to look out of the window behind him.

“Here are the police,” he announced flatly. And still he did not meet her eyes.

High up under the roofs of New Scotland Yard, Detective Sergeant Geoffrey Crankshaw and his office mate were reading reports of action taken in country districts. They were supposed to be filing and cross-indexing these for further reference, but in fact they were drinking cups of tea and grumbling.

“I wish I was back on my beat in Bermondsey,” said the office mate, demolishing an overblown doughnut. “At least things happened there, even if it was only drunks. Here it's just read, read, read till your eyes fall out of your head. I don't know about you, Crankshaw, but much more of this red tape and sealing wax and I'm packing it in.”

“I couldn't agree with you more,” said Crankshaw. “I didn't join the force to be turned into a paper pusher. Some of my university friends are earning real money by now, and just look at us! Can't even afford to take a girl out decently.”

“Rotten,” agreed his office mate. “Still, at least that was a short one.” A careful young man, he wiped the sugar off his fingers before dropping a report into the basket marked ‘File'.

“Anything interesting?”

“Not particularly. Bit of snappy work by the boys in Sussex. Old lady found dead Christmas morning. First view, natural causes. Poor old lady; excitement of Christmas, sorrowing relatives, the old story. Then the doctor takes a look at her, and she's chock full of sleeping pills.”

“Her own?”

“Lord, yes, her own all right, but too damn many of them. The poor old girl went off in her chair and never woke up no more.”

“And what did our Sussex friends do about that?”

“Asked twenty-five pages of questions –” he flipped through them rapidly – “and discovered one good reason why the family were sorrowing so. The old thing had cut them off without a bean.”

“Too bad. And too bad for us, too.” Crankshaw always thought professionally. “Not much motive in that.”

“Not much for the family; no. But a whopping great one for the girl she left it all to.”

“Not a cat and dog home?”

“No; she'd got beyond that. Apparently she'd left it to just about everything in her time, but last week she sat down and willed it all to a long-lost great-niece – and that was the end of her, poor old thing.”

“The great-niece did it? It seems almost too simple.”

“I know. To judge by the questions, they could hardly believe their luck. But there it was: motive as big as a barn door; the girl in financial straits; a forged prescription for the sleeping pills; a whole bottle of them among her nylons; the best opportunity of the lot; her fingerprints over everything – the defence'll plead insanity of course, but I doubt if they'll get away with it – and goodbye Patience Smith.”

“What?” Crankshaw knocked over the table between the two desks and snatched the report. Five minutes later, white in the face and quite unaware of the black ink smudge across his left cheek, he was stuttering slightly at his superior officer who, knowing him for a calm young man, listened with unusual patience.

“You see, sir,” said Crankshaw for the fourth time, “I know her. I swear she didn't do it. Couldn't have.”

The tall, grey-haired man behind the executive's desk looked worried. “I understand how you feel, Crankshaw, but it's a strong case – a very strong case. I don't quite see how we could interfere. There's been no question of their asking our help. And it isn't even as if we had any facts to contribute. Of course,” he went on kindly, “I know you well enough to take this feeling of yours seriously – you're not usually wrong about people – but you can hardly expect them to do so at Leyning.”

He was being almost impossibly kind, Crankshaw knew. He flogged an unresponsive brain; there must be some fact to prove his point if he could only come far enough out of his shock to think coherently. His thoughts dived down improbable corridors – Patience saying goodbye in Suffolk, her help on his case there – all ancient history, all useless. Then he almost ground his teeth at his own stupidity. “I've got it, sir.”

“Yes?”

“You remember you sent me along to look out for that shoplifter at Gogarty's? Well, an odd thing happened there the first day I was on duty. I ran into this Patience Smith, or rather, to be precise, I saw her in the glove department, and, to tell you the truth, I followed her.” He was still
liable to uncontrollable blushes. “We'd met in Suffolk, you see.”

“Yes, I see.” Clearly, he did.

“I caught up with her in the fur department.” Once started Crankshaw wasted no time. “She was collecting a mink cape and I waited about while she talked to the salesgirl and put it on. I felt a bit of a fool, you know, but once she was leaving I went up and spoke to her. We talked a bit, and walked through to the glove department again; she left me there and I saw her go through to the main entrance – and five minutes later I found her in the manager's office accused of shoplifting.”

“Did you so?”

“Yes, a frame-up if ever there was one. It was a good thing for her she had her wits about her and remembered me – I'd told her I was on duty there – or she'd have been on the spot all right. Someone – a dark-haired girl – had pointed her out to a salesgirl; said she'd seen her lift a string of pearls from the counter and put them in the pocket of her fur cape. As a matter of fact Patience – Miss Smith – didn't even know there was a pocket in the cape. She was just picking it up for a cousin of hers.”

“There's no doubt it was a frame-up?”

“Not the slightest. She was actually with me when she was supposed to be being pointed out to the salesgirl and I'd been with her ever since she put on the cape. The shop detective followed her to the door and then took her straight back to the manager's office. Unless she pinched it when she was with me or when he was following her … well, there you are. Besides, the salesgirl in the fur department remembered a dark-haired girl trying on the cape by mistake. It's easy
enough to see how it was done. But why? I just thought it was a practical joke at the time, though Miss Smith couldn't think who'd have done it to her, but now – well, it makes you think, doesn't it?”

“Yes,” said the grey-haired man, looking at the worried, hopeful face across the desk. “It does make you think.”

A few days later the Chief Constable of Sussex received a personal note from an old friend of his at Scotland Yard. It was brought by a pleasant-looking, fair-haired young man, who introduced himself as Detective Sergeant Geoffrey Crankshaw, CID, and sat very still while the Chief Constable read his friend's letter.

‘… To introduce Geoffrey Crankshaw …' he read, ‘… very promising young man … needs some work on the preparation of a case for trial… that affair at Featherstone Hall that your people handled so quickly … very useful experience for him … a favour to me …'

The double-edged flattery went home and the Chief Constable's eye on Crankshaw was friendly. “So you want to do some work on that affair at Featherstone Hall,” he said. “A bit unusual, of course, but I expect it can be arranged. Just between you and me, we're rather short-handed just now and I think they'll be glad to have you. You want to do the full report on the case, is that right?”

“Yes, sir. If it's at all possible.” Crankshaw tried not to sound too desperately in earnest.

“I'll see what I can do.”

Two hours later Crankshaw found himself on his way to Featherstone Hall. Inspector Harris, who was in charge of the case, had been unfeignedly glad to see him. “Time they did realise how short-handed we are,” was his comment. “To
tell you the truth, there's hardly been a bit of paperwork done yet on this case; we've been too busy making our arrest.” A simple man, he did not try to conceal his pride in the announcement. “I'll be delighted to have you take over the desk side. Record-keeping has always bored me to death; action is my line.” A large hand clenched on the wheel of his car.

“You've actually arrested Miss Smith then?” Crankshaw managed to sound merely interested.

“Well, no; to be precise, she's held for questioning. It's easier that way, you know –” Harris enjoyed instructing the young – “the coroner feels he's been given a clear field, for one thing. But after the inquest – click.” He sketched the closing of handcuffs and the car swerved slightly.