Death by Sheer Torture (6 page)

‘I cooked last night,’ burbled Kate, full of herself. ‘I go in for interesting combinations. Most cooks are so unadventurous. I gave them meat-loaf with caramel sauce. Everyone said it was scrumptious!’

For the first time I felt a twinge of pity for my father. To go to Hell with a belly full of meat-loaf and caramel sauce was a fate worse than even I would wish on him.

‘It was
quite
delicious, Kate dear,’ said Sybilla, winking at me. ‘So your father had his day as well —’

‘It was always tinned ham and salad,’ said Kate, pressing her superiority. ‘That was almost cheating. And
Chrissy had to wash the salad things.’

‘Well, he did his best. As we all do. Except poor Lawrence, who since his stroke really
can’t
manage his arms and legs well enough, even on his good days.’

‘My poor old Pop, he ain’t what he used to be,’ said Pete, with a wholly synthetic sympathy. ‘My poor old Pop has been through it.’

‘Been through it?’ suddenly boomed Lawrence from his wheelchair, where he had apparently been dozing happily. ‘By God, yes. By God we went through it. Nobody who wasn’t in the trenches can have an idea of what it was like. That’s what I tried to convey: “The mud, the mud, the blend of earth and gore!”; “The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells”. That’s what it was like! A living hell! You young people know nothing! Nothing!’

It was my uncle’s habit, as the observant of you may have noted, to mingle a line or two of his own turgid sonnets with lines by more talented poets of the First World War. It was only years after I left home, when I started dipping into histories and memoirs of the time, that I discovered the true authors of lines I’d known from boyhood, and had been convinced were the work of Lawrence Trethowan.

Lawrence’s reawakening did not go unnoticed by the Squealies, who had been fighting happily among themselves in the far corner, but now regathered to clamber all over him and pick his pockets of ‘sweeties’. Luckily, in the midst of this nauseating performance McWatters came in to announce dinner, and their mother collected them up in her brawny arms and removed them to their own wing, squeaking and bawling until the door was finally shut on them and it felt like Armistice Day, 1918.

As we all trooped in to dinner, Sybilla took my arm in her bony claw and whispered: ‘You needn’t worry. None of us is “on” tonight. Mrs McWatters is a jewel.’

And certainly the food, though traditional, was first
rate. But we were an ill-assorted gathering to eat it. Maria-Luisa talked only to her husband, keeping up a constant stream of comment, complaint and imprecation in what sounded like gutter Italian, probably with bits of something else thrown in (at any rate, it certainly didn’t sound to my ears like the Tuscan language spoken by a Roman tongue). Pete just said
‘si’
and
‘no’
and
‘basta’,
and looked bored and contemptuous, though he forked his food in with enthusiasm. I had relieved Aunt Kate of the job of wheeling Lawrence in, and when I had placed him at the head of the table he had looked round and said: ‘Capable young chap. Who is he?’ Then he had relapsed into concentrated eating. McWatters had left two tureens of soup on the table, and we served ourselves.

‘Not what you were used to in other days, Perry dear,’ said Sybilla, leaning over almost intimately. ‘We thought it was difficult with servants then, but now it’s simply impossible!’

‘It wouldn’t be like this if we had won the war!’ suddenly barked Aunt Kate.

There was an immediate silence round the table, even from Maria-Luisa, who evidently understood more than might have been expected. They all looked at me, to see how I would take it. Me, I was used to my Aunt Kate, and her unorthodox arrangement of loyalties. I went on eating my soup. The atmosphere relaxed.

‘Dear
Kate!’ sighed Sybilla. ‘There’s a touch of her old self back tonight!’

I smiled briefly. ‘You’re all very much as I remember you, you know. And it sounds as if my father hadn’t changed greatly. You don’t think he had any special worries when he died, do you?’

‘Dear me, no,’ said Sybilla, vaguely, the drape around her wrist trailing in the soup. Then she perked up. ‘But he might easily have had some that we didn’t know about. Do you think he took his own life?’

‘No,’ I said firmly. Then I went on in my plodding policemanlike fashion: ‘Had there been any tensions, dissensions, disagreements over the last few days?’

‘He’s inquisiting us!’ chortled Kate. ‘Just like in a book.’

‘Not that I know of,’ said Mordred, who was turning out to be easily the most sensible of the lot. ‘But then I’m a bit out of it. If it wasn’t brought to table here, I wouldn’t have noticed.’

I turned to Aunt Sybilla. ‘You probably saw more of him. Was there anything that you noticed?’

‘Well, no, Perry dear. Otherwise I’d have said. Of course, you know us. We’re very much creatures of instinct.’ (Oh yes—pure children of nature: with resident butler and cook, a dozen cleaners, two gardeners, and several acres of house to be natural in.) ‘If we
feel
anything, we say it out. So much better to be
open.
So if there had been any
major
row, I’d certainly have heard of it . . . Certainly.’

The fact is, the way this bear-garden is arranged, with each group going its own way in its own wing, and each wing miles from the other wings, it was perfectly possible for major rows, wide-ranging conspiracies or out-and-out cold war to take place and yet be kept secret, provided a moderately good face was put on on ‘public’ occasions. Which meant, I took it, at sherry time and over dinner. I chewed over this as I enjoyed Mrs McWatters’s excellent steak and kidney pudding.

I chewed over something else as well, and that was the feeling I was beginning to get that the family, and Sybilla in particular, was welcoming me back into the happy group, reinstating me in the family Bible and all, because they thought that I could protect them in some way from the consequences of having a murder in the family. Nobody loves a policeman these days except when a crime might occur or has occurred, and the Trethowans were less ‘law and order’ people than most. But now I was a
friend in high places, to make sure their cosy little world was not shattered. As you can understand, I imagine, this sort of protection was one thing I had no intention of giving them. So as we gracefully spooned our syllabub into our (not noticeably impaired by the tragedy) digestive systems, I made a frightfully official-sounding clearing-of-the-throat noise, and started actually to address them all:

‘If you don’t mind, Aunt Syb . . . and, er, Uncle Lawrence . . . there’s just one thing I’d like to say, now we’re all together. I’m very grateful to you for welcoming me back home as you have. And of course for your sympathy. And I shall certainly do all I can to advise you in the present difficult situation. And if possible to help you. But what I can’t do —’

But I was interrupted. From the distance there came once more the hair-raising sound of infant strife, a yowling, rolling, thumping sound that seemed to be approaching us irresistibly like the armies of Genghis Khan, spreading havoc and destruction in their wake. Peter and Maria-Luisa compounded matters by screaming at each other in their own queer linguistic modes of communication, and it ended by Peter going disgruntledly out just as the Squealies were at the door. Aunt Sybilla raised her eyebrows.

‘You were saying, Perry dear?’

But at that moment there was yet another interruption. The door to the hall opened, and in came PC Smith. Looking more than a little overwhelmed (for this was not just gentry, remember, but his own particular gentry), he crossed the great open space of the dining-room and, standing by Aunt Sybilla’s chair, said in a low voice:

‘Superintendent Hamnet would be glad to see you as soon as possible after dinner, Miss Trethowan.’

It was as if he’d made an indecent suggestion.

‘Perry!’ squawked Aunt Sybilla, her eyes bulging with
outrage. ‘I do think I might have been spared this!’

I banged my fist on the table with a force that raised the glassware and crockery an inch.

‘What I was just about to say was that the one thing I cannot and will not do is protect you from the normal processes of the law in a case of murder. Nothing can protect anyone from that—except diplomatic immunity.’

‘Then I must set about getting it with all despatch,’ said Sybilla, throwing down her napkin and stalking from the room.

The meal, not surprisingly, more or less broke up after this. Maria-Luisa poured herself another large glass of wine and stomped out after her maniacal brood. Aunt Kate wheeled a mumbling, dribbling Lawrence off to bed with a reproachful ‘He’s
not
to be upset, you know.’ Only Mordred seemed inclined to linger. He poured us both a glass of port, and I was about to settle down to a little chat before going up to my sister when McWatters came in with a little servant’s cough (so different from a policeman’s magisterial clearing of the throat) and said: ‘Oh, Mr Peregrine, sir, there’s a phone call for you.’

‘Probably the Yard,’ I said, getting up. ‘You’re sure it’s not really for Hamnet?’

‘Oh yes, sir. It’s for you. Actually sir, the leddy said she was your wife.’

‘My God!’ I said. I hurried out to the extension I’d seen in the hall, then changed my mind and asked McWatters if there wasn’t anywhere more private.

‘There’s Sir Lawrence’s study,’ he said doubtfully. ‘But mebbe it’d be best if you were to use the one in the old butler’s pantry.’ He led me down a corridor, through the great baize door, down a staircase, and into the well-remembered, high-ceilinged domestic palace which my great-grandfather Josiah had deemed suitable to minister to his needs. You could have cooked the Coronation dinner in here. But McWatters went to a side door and showed
me into a considerable and well-equipped apartment, suitable to the dignity of an Edwardian butler.

‘If you’ll take up the receiver, sir, I’ll put you through in a moment.’

Within thirty seconds I heard a click and said: ‘Jan?’

‘Perry! Home is the sailor, home from the —’

‘Cut that out! How did you know I was here?’

‘I read about the death in the papers. It sounded fishy. I knew it was your day off, so I kept ringing home. Then suddenly I put two and two together. The sentimental little lad has gone back for the funeral baked meats.’

‘Nothing of the sort. I am here under orders and under protest.’

‘That’s exactly what I guessed, actually. Knowing Joe. So my deduction from the newspaper report that all is not quite quite, so to speak, was right?’

‘Nothing is ever quite quite with my family. You’ve no idea how dire it all is.’

‘Never fear. Help is on the way. Daniel and I are coming for the weekend. You know how I’ve always wanted to meet your f —’

‘No,’
I said. ‘No, you are
not.’

‘Don’t tell me they’d refuse to meet me?’

‘I
refuse to let
you
meet
them.’

‘There’s obviously room for us. I bet we could both fit into your bedroom.’

‘There’s room for the Eighth Army in my bedroom. That is not the point.’

‘Perry, I know you can’t be officially on the case, so why are you being so appallingly stuffy?’

‘Because,’ I said, ‘I do not choose to bring my wife and son to a house where a murder has just been committed and in which a murderer is still at large.’

This stumped her a bit. There was a long silence.

‘So long as it’s not that you’re ashamed of me in front of your family,’ Jan said, rather feebly.

‘You know perfectly well I’m ashamed of my family in front of you.’

‘Well, that’s all right, then. That’s as it should be. Perhaps it is best if we actually stay in the village.’

‘You’ll have a job. “The Village” is about ten houses.’

‘And a pub. The Marquis of Danby.’

‘That fleabitten hostelry. I had my first pint there.’

‘Probably it’ll be some kind of anniversary, then.’

‘Don’t be deceived by the grand name: it’s a tiny country inn with two cramped bars. They certainly won’t take guests.’

‘They certainly do. The AA book says so.’

‘My God. It’s probably been tarted up.’

‘Better that than fleas, anyway. Well, so I’ll collect Daniel after lectures are over, give him something to eat to keep him happy, and then drive over in the early evening. Wasn’t it lucky I got a place at Newcastle?’

‘Jan, I still —’

‘See you tomorrow. Love to the aunties and uncles!’

And she rang off. I sometimes win arguments with my wife, but never those conducted over the telephone. I shrugged my shoulders in irritation, and decided to go and have a good talk to Cristobel.

CHAPTER 5

CRISTOBEL

Cristobel—that’s a bloody silly name to start with. Or silly spelling. Because it’s pronounced perfectly normally, as in Pankhurst. That sort of silly-buggery runs in our family. Would you believe that my cousin Pete was supposed to be called Pyotr? Only the clergyman making a deliberate mistake at the font and standing Uncle Lawrence out that
it couldn’t be rectified saved him from that fate. And look at Kate. I sometimes wonder whether she wasn’t conceived in a private box at Covent Garden, during one of the more missable sections of
Die Walküre.

You mustn’t think I’m not fond of Cristobel. I am in my own way. And she’s worth all the rest put together. So bear this in mind if I am occasionally a little negative about her. She could irritate me—and she certainly irritated me in the course of this case. For a start she is a Girl Guide. I suppose she got this from Aunt Kate. Did I tell you that when Kate attended the Nuremberg Rally of 1938 she did so in Girl Guide’s uniform? There was a great flurry of Brown Owls about that, and they were just getting down to a delicious Discussion of Principle on the subject in the highest Guiding circles when Hitler invaded Poland and out she had to go. They all thought it very unsporting of Hitler. Well, Cristobel is by now a Brown Owl or a Grey Squirrel or something of the sort, and she is rather a lumpy, earnest, well-meaning sort of girl, one of those people who can probably light a fire with twigs but might well destroy acres of national parkland by doing so.