A Death in Two Parts (13 page)

“Had she a bag?”

“Yes, but she couldn't have … Oh, how horrible it all is!” She dripped into tears and he let her go.

Leonora confirmed the loan of the handkerchief. She
had asked to be interviewed with her brother and turned to him for confirmation. “You remember, Ludwig, she never returned it – just like her – and I had to borrow yours later on.”

“Yes,” said Ludwig, “that's right. But anyway, we've got to face it; it's obvious poor Patience did it.” To the best of his ability, he was the man of the world. “I really think, Leo, you ought to tell Mr Crankshaw what you heard that night.”

“Oh dear.” Leonora hesitated. “It seems so mean. After all, it was an accident. I oughtn't to have heard really.” She looked forlornly from her brother to Crankshaw.

“Better tell me,” said Crankshaw kindly. “It will get it off your mind, for one thing.”

“It seems so kind of sneaky.” Not long out of school, so might she have discussed reporting an erring classmate to the headmistress. “You see, I was waiting for Ludwig at the top of the stairs, just outside Granny's door, on Christmas Eve, and I couldn't help hearing her talking to Patience – she was absolutely shrieking at her. ‘I'll have the police on you,' she said.” Leonora stopped and gazed at Crankshaw, half frightened, half triumphant.

“Just a minute.” He fought down cold panic. “How do you know it was Miss Smith Mrs Ffeathers was talking to?”

“She called her Patience.” An unmistakable note of satisfaction.

“Yes, that does seem to settle it.” It did indeed. Crankshaw dismissed them, wondering what further damning evidence against Patience his last interview, with Paul Protheroe, would produce.

Protheroe sat himself down opposite Crankshaw, took his watch out of his pocket, looked at it gloomily and put it down
on the table in front of him. Having thus made his position clear he was helpfulness itself. “The details of the will. Yes, of course. Simple enough as a matter of fact. They were all the same, you know, except for the major legatee. Mrs Ffeathers had her faults, but … It's odd, come to think of it; she was too much of a lady to play around with her bequests to the servants and so on. It was her family she tormented.”

“She put them through it?”

“She certainly did. Though, mark you, it was getting a bit stale with them. There'd been so many dramatic deletions and epic restorations that I think they'd all got pretty well used to it. I've noticed the last few times I've been down that the scenes weren't half so tense as they used to be.”

“That's interesting. You came down every time she changed her will?”

“Yes. A great nuisance it was too. But I'm a kind of cousin of theirs, so it seemed only decent. And, besides” – an admirable display of manly frankness – “it was good business for the firm.”

“I suppose so. You say the family were less worried about the will lately. Does that mean that they were not entirely dependent on Mrs Ffeathers?”

“Not at all. Oh, her children all have small incomes of their own, but nothing they could possibly manage on without her help.”

“Then isn't it rather odd they took it all so calmly?”

“I don't think so. I think that between them they must have decided it really was just a game and that when it came to the point she'd do the decent thing. Or else that whoever got the lot would divide it with the others.”

“And was there such a will?”

“What do you mean?”

“A reasonably fair one, tucked away somewhere. To be dusted off and ratified when she felt like it.”

“Oh, I see what you mean. There have been so many. And I did always try and see to it that she destroyed her copies of the old ones. But that wasn't my point. I think what they were counting on was some kind of a deathbed change of heart. Of course they weren't to know she would go off in her sleep like that, poor old dear.”

“Just so,” said Crankshaw. “So what you are saying is that her dying like that was very much against their interest.”

“My point exactly.” Protheroe glanced discreetly at his watch. “Is there anything else I can tell you?”

“I hope so. Your firm also handled Miss Smith's affairs, I believe?”

“We did all the family business. Miss Smith's grandmother was Mrs Ffeathers' younger sister, you know. She had just the one daughter – Angelina, I believe she was called – who married a very up-and-coming young man called Smith. He made a packet in the City, though I'd rather not think too closely about how he did it. They both died when Miss Smith, their only daughter, was eleven. Seward Ffeathers and I were left as trustees and guardians, for our sins. That was a foolish will if ever there was one. Some sharp city friend of Smith's must have drawn it up for him, too clever by half. Well, Smith, being the self-made man he was, never would trust anyone's judgment but his own. He left the money so tied up that Ffeathers and I could do practically nothing but pay out the income he had stipulated for his daughter. And of course, poor fellow, he hadn't
allowed for dying so young – people never do, I find – and what with that and the double death duties, and then the total collapse of some mining stock he had gone in for pretty heavily …” He paused for a moment, staring unhappily into the fire, then went on. “Of course we kept hoping they would recover; you never can tell with these mining ventures and I for one had a good deal of respect for Smith's judgement so far as the stock market was concerned. Anyway, I'm afraid we went on paying Miss Smith's income cheques rather longer than we should have. Of course the firm will back it, especially in the case of this family, but it's an awkward business all round. I had the unpleasant task of breaking it to poor Miss Smith just ten days before Christmas. Lord, what a long time ago it seems now. Poor girl, if I'd only had any idea of what would come of it. I know it's ridiculous, but I can't help blaming myself.”

“For what, exactly?”

“Why, for suggesting she come down here as Mrs Ffeathers' companion. Mrs Brigance came in just when I'd realised we'd come to the end so far as poor Miss Smith was concerned. Josephine was in despair because the latest companion had just left in a tantrum, so I suggested she give Miss Smith a trial. And, my God, look what's come of it. I can't get it out of my mind.” He took another glance at his watch. “By the way, I forgot to tell you that Brian Duguid is very anxious to be interviewed as soon as you can manage. He's got a telephone call coming through or something.”

“Duguid? Good Lord, I'd forgotten all about him.” If not exactly true, it was near enough. “Perhaps you'd be so good as to ask him to come in next.” Protheroe had risen, but
Crankshaw held him for a moment. “By the way, what was the name of the mining company?”

“Miss Smith's?” Protheroe looked surprised but tolerant. “I'd always heard the Yard was thorough. Let me think, what were they called? Consolidated Elephants or something. I'll check up for you when I get back to the office if you like.”

“Thank you.”

Protheroe got as far as the door, then turned. “Look,” he said, “one other thing. I don't know if you'll be seeing Miss Smith, but if you do, I would be grateful if you'd persuade her to let me get her a lawyer. She wouldn't hear of it the other day; I expect she hadn't taken things in yet; but the right man from the start might make all the difference—” He stopped there. More clearly than words his tone conveyed that the difference would be between hanging and a life sentence.

“I'll see what I can do.” Crankshaw was glad to see the last of this too confident young man, without, he hoped, having betrayed just how angry he had made him.

Brian Duguid, diffident and agitated, came as something of a relief. He had nothing to add except an impression, strongly conveyed, that the whole family were crazy. ‘And I might have spent Christmas at the Cholmondelys' was his refrain, and Crankshaw dismissed him with a sardonic, “Why didn't you?”

It was time to be going. A wild December wind had banked clouds around the house and darkened the sky even before mid-winter's nightfall. Crankshaw's head ached and so, though he refused to admit it, did his heart. Of course Patience was innocent. There had been a conspiracy against
her, or some equally diabolical chain of unlucky chance. When he saw her, she would resolve it all. But he was afraid to see her. Patience, guilty? Faced, the thought was intolerable. He snapped his notebook shut and went out into the twilit hall. Josephine Brigance hovered there, waiting for him. “Your car is here for you, but perhaps a cup of tea? You've had a long day.”

“No, thanks very much. I must be getting back.” He hated this house.

But it was hard to get away: Joseph appeared for a minute at the drawing room door to ask if he had finished, and looked glum at the news that he had not and would return next day, “For a few odd points.”

Mary came in at the front door as he was about to open it, windblown and rain-sprinkled. She said something explanatory about dogs, then caught his arm. “When you see Patience, you'll remember to give her my love?”

Unwillingly, he let the door shut again between him and the free night outside, and paused to answer her, aware as he did so of Josephine still hovering disapprovingly. “Of course I will.” His heart warmed to her, the first person who seemed to believe Patience innocent.

Outside, the air struck cold after the overheated house. He stood for a minute, his eyes adjusting to the darkness and his mind focusing on the little group he had left behind in the hall. Joseph had looked cross, Mary had looked anxious, but what had the look been on Josephine's face? Anxiety was making him imagine things. High time he got back to Leyning to start his report and clear his mind by doing so. He took a gloomy look at the weather, buttoned up his coat and stepped out of the porch towards the waiting car.

The moment's hesitation saved his life. As he stepped forward he heard a grinding roar from above, paused instinctively, and saw an enormous mass fall on the drive in front of him. Inside the house, someone screamed.

Turning the key in the still unfamiliar lock, Patience felt the sense of liberation that she always experienced on coming to this house: her house, as Featherstone Hall had never quite been. Too many ghosts there, she thought, closing the door behind her. Ghosts of the resentful living, too; much more threatening than the unknown dead.

She hung her coat on one of the old-fashioned brass hooks she had rescued from the cellar and took her shopping through to the combined kitchen and dining room at the back of the house. It was the first fresh food she had brought into her new home, and tonight she would sleep in the new bed upstairs for the first time. No hostility here; surely that was all left behind at Featherstone Hall. Not that one could blame Mrs Ffeathers' family for being outraged at seeing the fortune they had counted on snatched away. As next of kin, they would have shared the old lady's estate if she had been found guilty of her murder and so unable to inherit. Thinking of that time could still make her shiver.

A patch of autumn sun slanted across the bench she had put on the small patch of grass at the back of the house. She poured a glass of sherry and took it out there, raised the glass to the cobbled back of her new home and
drank a silent toast. To freedom. She had escaped again. Though, looking back, she hardly blamed Inspector Harris for believing her guilty that first time. The evidence was so strong against her that, sitting in the cold cell where she was being ‘held for questioning', she had seen the gallows looming. And then Geoffrey had arrived, St George to the rescue. His belief in her innocence had shone like sunshine in that bleak little room, a warm relief after the shock of Mark's turning against her. Something had frozen in her when she saw that he was part of that hostile little family group. She had so very nearly accepted him, the night before. She would never trust instinct again.

She had started to thaw under Geoffrey's sympathetic questioning, and felt her mind begin to work again. Together, they had set about untying the knots of evidence that bound her. It was she herself, in fact, who had first suggested the possibility that it might be one last gigantic, sick joke on old Mrs Ffeathers' part.

Geoffrey had seized on the idea and set to work to unravel the damning evidence, stitch by stitch. A handwriting expert had agreed that the signature on the £50 cheque was most probably Mrs Ffeathers' own. She had forged her own signature so as to get a hold on Patience. And a search of her room had produced some more stolen prescription blanks, carefully concealed in the bible she boasted she never read. Most important of all, Dr Findlayson had admitted, under Geoffrey's friendly, casual questioning, that the old lady had, in fact, been worried about what she was convinced were the first signs of senile dementia.

“But what an unbelievably wicked thing to do,” Geoffrey had said, reporting this to Patience, still in her cell, but very
much more cheerful. “To kill herself and let the evidence point to you.”

“I think she was wicked,” Patience had told him. “Look what she had done to her children: ruined their lives; kept them as prisoners, to torment. And I resisted her. I was going to get away, at whatever cost. I hadn't told her yet, but I know she felt it.” It was all true. Was it the whole truth? At least it had worked. She had been released by a red-faced, apologetic Inspector Harris before the inquest, but had refused to go back to Featherstone Hall.

“They ganged up on me,” she had explained, when Geoffrey thought this unwise. “It was horrible. All of them. I'm sorry. I don't want to see any of them until this is all over. If then. I don't even want to talk about it.” She would not let herself think about Mark.

Infinitely supportive, Geoffrey had found her a room, not at the Black Stag, and a Leyning solicitor, Mr Jones, when she had said she did not want Paul Protheroe. “You're a rich woman,” Geoffrey had reminded her. “You can take your pick.”