The Shadow at Greystone Chase (An Angela Marchmont Mystery Book 10) (16 page)

‘You mean they didn’t care that Selina was dead?’

‘I shouldn’t say that, exactly. I should rather say they knew they ought to care and were doing their best to pretend they did. I can’t think of any better way of putting it.’

‘What about your pal, Henry Lacey?’ said Freddy. ‘How did he take it?’

‘That was rather queer too. He was certainly horrified, but he seemed almost to blame her for it.’

‘Blame her? What do you mean?’

‘Oh, it was just something he said. He said she was an idiot and ought to have been more careful. At the time I thought it was just because he was upset. People talk wildly when they’ve had a shock, and it doesn’t mean anything. But afterwards, I thought he must have seen it coming. Perhaps he’d heard the two of them having a row, or something.’

‘I understand he’s dead now,’ said Freddy.

‘Yes,’ said Harrington. ‘He is. He died not long after Selina, as a matter of fact. I was the one who found him.’ He saw Freddy’s questioning gaze and explained, ‘We shared lodgings here in London for a while. I didn’t particularly want to, but Henry had found a place and needed someone to move into the other room, so I agreed to it.’

‘Why didn’t you want to?’ said Freddy. He was curious to find out more about Henry Lacey, about whom he had heard little so far.

Harrington hesitated.

‘Because he wasn’t the same chap I’d grown up with,’ he said. ‘People change all the time, of course, but in this case he turned into something I didn’t particularly like.’

‘In what way?’

‘He’d always been the type who enjoyed secrets. Even when we were kids he liked to find out what people wanted to hide. Then he’d boast that he knew things and could tell if he liked. Half the time it was pure invention, but now and again he’d find out a secret of mine and tease me with it. I didn’t like it, but he was a decent enough fellow otherwise, and so we got along and were by way of being good friends. We saw one another less and less as we grew older, and then we both went off to fight—he to France and I to Belgium. Then in early nineteen eighteen I got a nasty shrapnel wound to the leg and was sent home to recover. I was waiting for my orders to go out again when I bumped into Henry in Canterbury, and we had a fine old morning reminiscing about old times. I noticed then that he seemed to have changed. He said a couple of things I didn’t quite like, but I put it down to the war. He’d been shot badly in the arm and never fully recovered the use of it, so I could hardly blame him for being sardonic. They’d given him morphine in hospital and he was still taking it, as I found out later.

‘We were still talking when Selina turned up. I hadn’t seen her since her engagement and I knew nothing of what had happened, so I made rather an idiot of myself by asking about Godfrey. Henry seemed to think my mistake was terribly funny, but Selina told him off and invited me to Greystone Chase to meet the family. That’s how I came to be there when she died.’

‘What do you mean, you made an idiot of yourself by asking about Godfrey?’ said Freddy.

‘Why, I knew she’d been engaged to him, but nobody had told me that she’d ended up marrying his brother,’ said Harrington.

‘What?’ said Freddy. ‘Do you mean she was originally going to marry Godfrey de Lisle?’

‘Oh yes,’ said Harrington. ‘I assumed you knew. The wedding was all arranged when Edgar came home and stole her from under Godfrey’s nose.’

F
REDDY STARED IN astonishment. Now he understood what Valencourt had meant when he said he had done his brother a bad turn. And what a bad turn it was! To steal his brother’s intended, marry her and bring her to live with them under the same roof—why, it was little wonder there had been bad feeling between the brothers. This was a motive for murder indeed! Everything Freddy had heard about the de Lisles up to now convinced him that Godfrey was not the sort of man to let a slight of this kind pass unavenged, and here, for the first time, was confirmation that there was every reason for Godfrey to have done it. How better to revenge himself than by killing the girl who had thrown him over and then pinning the blame on the man who had been responsible for it all? It made perfect sense.

‘How did Godfrey take it?’ he said. ‘I mean to say, it’s hardly the done thing, is it, to run off with one’s brother’s fiancée just before the wedding.’

‘No,’ agreed Harrington. ‘But they were a queer lot and as far as I know it was never mentioned. Anyway, from something Henry said I got the impression that it was the old man who had arranged the thing with Godfrey in the first place.’

‘The old man? Do you mean Roger de Lisle?’

‘Yes. He was the one who first met the Laceys, at their uncle’s house, and for some reason best known to himself he became fearfully keen to have Selina marry Godfrey.’

‘Weren’t Godfrey and Selina to have any say in the matter?’

‘Who knows? At any rate, he didn’t say no, and neither did Selina.’

‘She can’t have been in love with him, though, if she threw him over so easily,’ observed Freddy.

‘I dare say she wasn’t,’ said Harrington. ‘But one couldn’t blame her for accepting him. They hadn’t a penny between them, she and Henry, and the de Lisles were rich. She’d have to have had a pretty good reason to turn him down.’

‘Do you know what happened, exactly? I mean, how one brother ended up being substituted for another?’

‘I couldn’t say for certain, but it’s easy enough to understand if you ever met the two of them. Edgar must have been like a breath of fresh air after Godfrey, who was a dull old stick. I don’t know how Edgar squared it with his family—or whether he squared it with Godfrey at all, but still, the fact is that Selina ended up marrying him instead of his brother.’

‘Goodness,’ said Freddy. He considered for a second, trying to imagine Godfrey’s reaction when he found out that he had been supplanted. Had he gone to the wedding? Or had he stayed away indignantly? He had certainly not forgiven the affront—Valencourt himself had admitted that—but how far had he taken his resentment? That was the question.

‘I gather Henry lived with them all at Greystone Chase afterwards,’ he said.

‘Not exactly,’ said Harrington. ‘That’s the impression he tried to give me, but from one or two things that were said while I was there I think he rather invited himself to stay—and more often than he was wanted. He’d never been the type to care about things like that, though. He was a thick-skinned sort of fellow and I’m sure he would have quite happily stayed there until they threw him out.’

‘Once Selina died he had to leave, I imagine,’ said Freddy.

‘As a matter of fact, I think he stayed even after that,’ said Harrington. ‘A week or two later I was sent back to the Front, but I did have a few letters from him with the Greystone address on. I suppose they didn’t feel up to getting rid of him, since he’d just lost his sister.’

‘Tell me about the night Selina died.’

‘Why, I can’t tell you much at all. I was in the house, of course, but I wasn’t paying too much attention to anything, since to be perfectly honest I was feeling out of place and wishing that I hadn’t accepted the invitation to visit. They weren’t the friendliest lot, and I couldn’t help feeling that they’d rather Selina hadn’t invited me at all.’

‘Selina and Henry were welcoming enough, presumably?’

‘Henry was, yes, but Selina was on her high horse. She seemed pleased with herself for some reason, and was flouncing about a bit and giving herself airs. At first I thought it was because Edgar had come home, but it wasn’t that, as they were cross with one another most of the weekend.’

‘That’s interesting,’ said Freddy. ‘I wonder what she was so pleased about.’

‘I don’t know,’ said Harrington. ‘I expect someone had said something to her that made her feel important. She liked that, you see. She craved attention, and made sure she got it. I knew her of old, so I didn’t take it too seriously, but I could see it made the others uncomfortable—the women, especially.’

That was hardly surprising, thought Freddy. Selina did not sound as though she had been the sort of girl to be popular with other women, given her apparent need to draw male attention to herself at all times. He asked Oliver Harrington a few more questions about his movements that weekend, but Harrington had nothing to say that he had not already told the police at the time.

‘I’m sorry I can’t be more help,’ he said. ‘But I thought it was all cut and dried. It never occurred to me that they might have got the wrong man. I say, I hope you don’t suspect me.’

‘Oh, the idea hadn’t even occurred to me,’ lied Freddy. ‘Why, you didn’t have a motive, did you? After all, it’s not as though you were in love with her or anything.’

‘No, I wasn’t,’ said Harrington a little sadly. ‘I might have been when we were younger—just a little, you know—but she wasn’t the sort of girl I’d have wanted to marry. Nothing would ever have been good enough for her, and as you can see, I’m hardly in a position to provide even for a wife of more modest tastes than Selina. She was poor and wanted money, and the de Lisles had plenty of that. Much good it did her. Or Henry,’ he added.

‘Why do you say that?’ said Freddy.

‘Why, because the money killed him in the end, too.’

‘What money?’

‘Their money, of course. After Selina died, Henry began working for the de Lisles. I don’t know what he did, exactly—something on the import side, he said, although he never seemed to do any work. That’s when we started sharing lodgings here in London. I think whatever he was doing they must have paid him well for it, because I’m almost certain he saw to the lion’s share of the rent. I have no idea how much the flat cost, because he found it and took care of all that, but the place was just off Sloane Street and it was nicely done up, so I’m sure my share was more than I could have afforded at full rate.’

Freddy’s ears pricked up at this.

‘I wonder what the job was,’ he said. ‘Perhaps it was the one Edgar de Lisle was supposed to take. I gather he’d had a dispute with his father and had refused to work for the family business.’

‘I expect so,’ agreed Harrington. ‘I shouldn’t have said no to it myself, having seen how little work Henry seemed to do for the money.’

‘Shirking his duties?’

‘I don’t think so. He did seem to spend half his time at home, but every so often he’d go down to Kent—presumably to get his orders. Then he’d come back and drink himself silly and take the other stuff. I saw the way things were going—the morphine had obviously got a hold on him by that point, but whenever I tried to give him a talking-to he’d wave me away.’

‘Did he ever say anything to you about what had happened to Selina?’

Harrington frowned.

‘Not that I recall,’ he said. ‘He used to drop dark hints about the de Lisles sometimes, when he came back from Kent.’

‘Dark hints?’ said Freddy. ‘What about?’

‘Oh, nothing that made much sense,’ said Harrington. ‘He said that if he wanted to, he could reveal something that would bring down the whole family and cause all sorts of trouble. I didn’t take much notice since it was just like him to say things like that, and in any case he only said it when he was under the influence.’

‘Then you have no idea what he might have been referring to?’

‘Not really. I assumed if anything it was that the de Lisles were involved in some shady business or other. I wasn’t interested in that sort of thing so I didn’t inquire further.’

‘How long did he work for the de Lisles?’ said Freddy. ‘You said he died shortly after his sister.’

‘Yes—I think it was about a year later. It was a shock, but I can’t say I was exactly surprised. The drinking had been getting worse and a few times I had to wake him up when he’d taken too much morphine. I told him to get a grip on himself, but the habit had got him, and he was getting plenty of money from the de Lisles, so he had no reason to stop. In his last few weeks he started talking wildly about how they wanted him dead, but I took that to be the sort of thing someone in his state would come out with. I remember I tried to persuade him to give up the job, purely because I didn’t think the money was doing him any good, but he wouldn’t. I was right, though.’

He fell silent, remembering.

‘What happened?’ said Freddy.

‘The day he died I’d been out all night—I used to mix with a fast crowd in those days—and didn’t wake up until about one. Henry seemed to have a visitor so I stayed in my room and left them to it for a while—I think I drifted off again, as a matter of fact. When I eventually got up I found that whoever it was had left and the place was deserted—or at least, that’s what I thought. I went out for a little while and when I came back Henry still wasn’t at home, which struck me as odd, so I went into his room and found him there, lying on the bed. The doctor said he’d been dead a good few hours, and there was nothing I could have done, because a dose of morphine even half the size of the one he’d taken would have been enough to kill him, especially since his system had been weakened by drink. Still, though, I’ve often wished I’d got up earlier that day. Perhaps I might have stopped him. I wasn’t especially fond of the fellow, but I shouldn’t have wished that on him.’