Crooked Wreath (21 page)

“Vacuum cleaners don't like tiles,” said Bella, the housewife. “They're for carpets.”

“Well, it would pick the dust up sufficiently; here,” said Cockrill, taking the curtain cleaning attachment, “this would have sucked up most of it, if you just put the nozzle down near the floor. Then–but heaven knows how he did
that
–he covered it with an even layer of dust again, and in it he wrote the ‘confession' with the matchstick and threw the matchstick down. And then he took off Brough's slippers, which, if you remember, weren't on his feet when he was found, and walked backwards in them to the front door, and standing on the step, threw them across to lie by the body. All that was always obvious enough if you tumbled to the fact that it wasn't the original film of dust.”

Bella in her turn was not listening. A dusty floor, a vacuum cleaner with its bag half full after the annual cleaning of the lodge … She moved forward suddenly and, unhitching the bag from its hook, shook out some of its contents onto the floor, uncoiled and connected the long tube used for sucking or blowing the dust from crevices, and adjusted the switch. The little pile of dust stirred and was gently blown about the floor; the letters and the footprints on the tiles were delicately filmed over, then more thickly coated, and finally completely covered with a thick coat of the dust. She straightened her back and stood looking down at it. A shadow came between her and the sunshine pouring in at the French window behind her; a voice said: “I
thought
your ladyship would know how the trick was done.”

Stephen Garde was sitting on the steps leading down to the river, when Peta and Edward got back. “Hey–don't shake yourself all over master, there's a good dog!”

“Edward, rush in and change, darling; Bella will have fifty thousand
fits
if she sees you so wet!”

“No, but we must tell Stephen, Peta! Well, all right, but look, if I go in and change you're not to say a word to him about what we've found out, till I come back.”

“All right, cross my heart, only hurry up!”

Edward loped off, shivering, into the house. “What's all the mystery?” said Stephen, tying up the punt and sitting down beside Peta on the grassy bank.

“Well, it's awful, Stephen, actually. I mean, Edward and I have found out that Philip–well, we think we know who killed Grandfather, only I can't tell you till Edward comes back, so if you've guessed, don't say so. And, of course, I'm glad, really, at least I am if what we think about him is true and he isn't really Philip; but if he
is
Philip, then it's awful. Though, of course, if he is Philip, there's no need for him to have done it, is there?” said Peta, bewildered.

“No, my love,” said Stephen, helplessly.

“Do you mean my love or my
love
, Stephen?”

“Just my love,” said Stephen.

“Oh,” said Peta. “Well, anyway, I mustn't tell you, having promised Edward, but honestly, Stephen, you'll be absolutely staggered when you know what the answer is.”

“Oh, Peta, you are a little funny,” said Stephen, and picked up her hand and kissed the palm of it very lightly and folded her pretty fingers over the kiss.

Edward's head appeared at the bedroom window as he struggled, flapping like a scarecrow, into his shirt. “Hoi, Peta, you're not telling him anything?”

“No, only do hurry up!” shouted Peta, her hand still curled on the kiss.

He vanished and reappeared jiggling himself into his trousers. “I say, Peta, I've just thought–I suppose the same thing couldn't have been done to the other one? The real one, I mean.”

“Good Lord,” said Peta to Stephen, clapping her fist to her mouth and regarding him over it with startled eyes. “How
frightful!
Do you think it could?”

“Not the slightest chance, I shouldn't think.”

Edward dashed out of the house, vigorously towelling his head as he ran in great lolloping hops over the lawn. “She hasn't told you, Stephen, has she?”

“Not a word,” said Stephen, gravely.

They poured out the story, one on each side of him, half appalled, half excited, only partly believing in it themselves.

“You mean that Philip killed your grandfather then and there under Claire's very eyes? But the police surgeon confirmed afterwards that Sir Richard had been dead for several hours.”

“Well, so he had by the time Dr. Newsome saw him; he didn't come till about one o'clock, and those things about how long people have been dead are frightfully vague really; it's only in detective stories that you can tell to the minute.”

“Yes, but there's a slight difference between eleven or twelve hours and two or three hours.”

“On the other hand, it was old Dr. Newsome, young Dr. New-some's father, and he's frightfully ancient and probably quite past his job, and, Philip being a doctor, the old boy will have accepted all his evidence about the finding of Grandfather's body and everything and gone by what Philip told him; he's sure to.”

Stephen looked unconvinced. “Anyway, Philip had really awfully little to gain by killing Sir Richard, you know. After all, he only stood to get ten thousand pounds or so, and though, of course, that ain't hay,” said Stephen, who would never have ten thousand pounds in the world. “Philip has a flourishing practice; he didn't
need
the money.”

“He might have if he was going to hop off with Claire, which we've rather forgotten about in all this drama, but after all, he
was!
And anyway, we don't think it was for the money; we think Grandfather had found out that he wasn't really Philip.”

“Of course he's really Philip,” said Stephen, laughing.

“Well,
we
don't think he is.”

“Then I'd better be looking out for another job. Do you seriously think that as your grandfather's solicitor, I'd let any odd stranger walk in and claim to be his long-lost grandson, without suggesting a few discreet inquiries–especially when Sir Richard was so keen on making him the heir! And anyway, look at the fellow–he's exactly
like
Sir Richard, only all on a less magnificent scale.”

“That's probably what first gave him the idea. So he murdered the real Philip …”

“Why are you so keen for it to be Philip anyway?”

“Well, if it wasn't, then it has to be Teddy or me or Bella or Claire, and Teddy says he'd rather it was him just doing it when he was dotty, than one of us being so awful when we were sane. But he wouldn't rather it was him than Philip; especially as it would mean that Philip wasn't Philip, if you see what I mean.”

“To listen to the way you gaggle on, Peta, anyone would think it was you who was the dotty one,” said Stephen.

“She can be jolly glad she's not. After all, it's jolly grim not only thinking that maybe you've killed your own grandfather, even though not exactly meaning to; but if I did, it means that I am slightly barmy, after all, and I shan't be able to go into the Air Force or the Army or anything and–and kill other people,” finished Edward, with a gleam of irony.

“Though you'd imagine that Edward would be just the person they'd choose, when you come to think of it,” said Peta, interested.

Stephen considered, his hands linked under his knees, watching the river water gently swirling by. “Edward–I've known you for ages now, ever since you were a small boy. I'm fifteen years older than you, enough to have been able to judge you fairly sensibly all along. I've never thought for a single moment that there was anything wrong with you that hadn't been put into your head by all this cackle of phony psychiatrists and other people; and I don't now.”

“Well, Stephen, that's all very well, but we don't know what sort of a state I can have got myself into, without there having been anything wrong to begin with. I mean, I can faint and make scenes and things, and I really don't know I'm doing it; and, after all, the fact remains that after I had staged that thing about the glasses and the crooked wreath, the same thing did happen again next night. I don't remember doing it; but then I wouldn't anyway. If I did it and I've forgotten it, then perhaps I did the murder, too, and I've forgotten about that. If I didn't drop the vase–who did? You can say that the murderer did; but why? How could it help
him
, to do such a thing?”

“By throwing suspicion on you, Edward; just as it has done.”

Edward said nothing for a moment; he picked up a stone and threw it aimlessly into the river. “Well, I–I don't like to think that. I mean, if–if one of the family killed poor old Grandfather, that's pretty ghastly; you don't honestly think that on top of that, any of them would deliberately try and put the blame on
me?
”

Bella, Claire, Peta, Philip, Ellen–you could not imagine any of them stooping so low. “Though I suppose it's irrational to think of it as being worse than actual murder,” acknowledged Peta.

Philip strolled towards them across the lawn; he looked very charming in his white flannels, tied carelessly round his waist with a twisted coloured tie. “Bella's clamouring about tea. It's on the front terrace.”

Peta put out her hand to be hauled up. “Hallo, Philip, we've just been having the most terrific discussion about how you could have been the murderer.”

“Shut up, you fool,” said Edward.

“Well, of course, you might
not
have been; but anyway, Philip, if you're really not Philip March but an impostor from America, you may as well say so straight out, because we've realized it now and we shall soon go into it and make certain. Not that I really think you are, for a minute,” added Peta, bewildered by her own inconsistency.

Philip went off into roars of laughter. “Well, what a mouldy lot! Sitting and tearing your poor cousin to shreds!”

“But you were rather peculiar when you first came, Philip, and then all that early business about Grandfather changing his will in your favour …”

Philip stopped laughing. “Are you suggesting that I tried to influence him to change it?”

“Well, no, of course not, Philip, not exactly.”

“When I think of all the trouble I had to talk the old boy out of it! Damn it all, this
is
a bit much! Of course, I was awkward, crashing in on an unknown family and having Grandfather immediately wanting to make me his heir; what do you think I felt like, doing Peta out of her estate? Naturally I didn't know him as well then as I did afterwards, and that he'd only change it back, or change it another way in about five minutes … I do think this is a bit thick, Peta,” grumbled Philip, working up a grievance. “It's you who's talked Edward into all this. I'm sick of being harried and heckled about who did this bloody murder; first it's Ellen and then it's Claire and now it seems it's to be me! The truth of the matter is that
you're
the only one who stood to lose anything substantial, and just because you're all gaga and girlish, nobody thinks of its being you. You could easily have left coramine in that glass in the kitchen and if it weren't that your fingerprints weren't on it, that would be the obvious explanation; yet we know you touched the telephone and your prints aren't on that either.”

“Well, what do you suggest I did?” said Peta, taunting him. “Wore a large pair of gloves, I suppose.”

“There
are
some gloves of Serafita's in the casket down at the lodge.”

“My dear, good Philip–a pair of long black gloves! What was Bella supposed to think when she saw them?”

“Bella isn't a chicken; her eyesight probably isn't marvellous; she may not have noticed.”

“Considering that Bella can throw sugar lumps into Bobbin's mouth at a distance of several feet, I think she might notice at the same distance if I suddenly went black to the elbows!”

“Oh, Lord, come on you two and don't argue,” said Edward. As they started across the lawn he asked, leaning across Stephen to look at her: “Have you hurt your hand, Peta? Why are you holding it all scrunched up?”

Peta went scarlet and immediately unclenched the hand. “She's practising a bit of Yoga,” said Stephen, easily, ambling along beside her, his heart in song because she was still so foolishly nursing his little kiss. “She's trying to see if she can keep her fist closed till the nails grow right through to the other side.” He added regretfully: “I see that you have returned to the ox's blood!”

“Yes, I kept on the colourless varnish till after the funeral in deference to Grandfather's known wishes; but he can't be caring now, poor pet, so I may as well do as I like, and it keeps up my morale.”

“Colourless varnish!” said Philip.

“Philip, what a peculiar face, darling. You look quite dotty.”

“Colourless
varnish!
” cried Philip.

“Well, Edward, you'll have company in not being able to go into the army or the R.A.F. Philip's gone completely off his head.”

“Oh, have I!” said Philip. He seized her wrist, bending her hand back to look at her nails. “Look at them!
Look
at them! Hard, shiny enamel. Look at them, Edward, and you, too, Stephen; if that was what she calls colourless varnish, you couldn't see it, could you? Just a pale, hard shininess it would be, just a film of pale, hard shininess over her nails … But that wasn't where it was on the evening that Grandfather died, Peta, was it? Why, good God, only five minutes before you went down to the lodge you were sitting there on the terrace doing your nails, in front of all our eyes–doing your nails with colourless varnish! Putting a thin, hard coat of colourless varnish over your fingertips!”

Claire sat on a fallen tree in the little wood down by the river, waiting for Philip. Through a gap in the branches the sun gleamed in a circular patch, very gay and comforting in the cool green shade of the evening. A squirrel scuttered down the bole of a tall tree and paused to look at her with his sideways glance, sitting up alert and bright-eyed, clasping his little paws, and somewhere above the meadow across the river, a lark was singing out its heart with joy of life. Philip came through the trees to meet her, still in his white flannels tied round with the shabby tie. “You look very woodlandy and romantic, Claire, all bosky undergrowth and the wee wild creatures grouped about your little feet!”