Enter Pale Death (41 page)

He looked anxiously at his wristwatch.

With the meal drawing to its close, Cecily began to glance around the table, catching the eye of the lady guests and preparing to announce that they would withdraw, leaving the gentlemen to enjoy their port. After that would come tedious rounds of snooker or cards and the evening would run into the sand though, for the moment, the company seemed still sprightly, the buzz of conversation animated. Joe judged his moment had come. With a swift gesture of the hand to Cecily, he held her in her seat and himself rose to his feet.

One of the male guests, more tipsy than the rest, interpreted this as a familiar movement. Joe was about to make a speech. Wilfred knew what to do; he tinkled merrily on the side of his claret glass with a spoon. “Pray silence for the commissioner!” he announced. “Speech! Make it funny, Sandilands!”

“Not a speech, you’ll all be relieved to hear—the Plod are not known for their light-footed levity. Indeed, there was once a policeman so achingly dull, all the others thought he was Noël Coward. But I have to announce—for your further entertainment—and with the gracious collusion and dramatic flair of Lady Cecily …”
Cecily chased the expression of astonishment from her features and replaced it with one of knowing amusement as all eyes turned on her.

“… an after-dinner game. No—don’t run for the door, Ripley! I have in mind something a little more sophisticated than Sardines. I’m calling it ‘Deceive the Detective.’ All the rage in London Town. At least half of the people gathered around this table are old hands, in the know, so to speak, and have been playing the current round of the game for some time. The others will be surprised—but I hope not alarmed—by the sudden appearance out of the shrubbery of policemen in uniform, clanking handcuffs, possibly a judge and hangman.”

Glances were exchanged, eyebrows raised. Well, at least this promised to be livelier than a round of piquet, more entertaining than the Music Hall Medley they knew Maggie Somerton had in store for them. They listened on.

“The aim of the game is to solve a murder puzzle before the detective does. You must come up with the answer to two questions: Who has been murdered? Who is the murderer? Evidence will be presented, witnesses called on. You may make notes and confer but there must be a decision arrived at by the stroke of midnight. We’ll need to withdraw from this table, of course, and take a breather. I’ve arranged for coffee and brandy to be served to you in the Great Hall in—shall we say—half an hour?”

Joe caught Ben’s eye and he smiled and nodded.

Murmuring and giggles broke out around the table. Florence Ripley reached into her bag and drew out pencil and notebook and looked up with the alertness of a prize pupil, ready to start. Dorcas stared at him with foreboding. Dorothy and her father exchanged looks of indulgent incredulity. The English and their parlour games! Mungo McIver showed some agitation. He seemed to have heard a whistle blow in the enemy trench and
patted his pockets. Seeking what? Gun? Camera? He caught Truelove’s eye and his query was returned by an amused shrug of the shoulders. Adelaide put out a hand below table level and patted Joe’s thigh.

They rose with varying degrees of enthusiasm to his smiling invitation and went off to powder noses, find a flowerbed to pee into, take a breath of fresh air and hiss whispered speculation to each other. Under cover of the disruption, Adelaide leaned close to Joe and whispered, “You’re nuts! You’ll get a unanimous decision: it was the horse that did it, in the stable, with his teeth.”

Joe went straight to the Great Hall to check his arrangements. The ancestors, he thought fancifully, were not pleased to see him. A chorus of harrumphs would have run around the walls if they’d known the real purpose of his unscheduled invasion of their family territory.

Nervously, the thirteen entered on time and gathered together in the centre of the room, too strung up to commit themselves to taking a seat at the table he’d had laid with a carafe of water, glasses, notepaper and pencils. Coffee on trays followed them instantly, supervised, surprisingly, by Mrs. Bolton. A cross Mrs. Bolton who whispered words of protest in Cecily’s ear. “Short handed—sorry, ma’am.”

“Glad you could join us. Do stay, Mrs. Bolton. We’re sorry to inconvenience you,” Joe said. Cecily set about playing hostess alongside Enid Bolton, dispensing coffee as she remembered her guests liked it. Truelove and McIver had instantly stationed themselves, an alert and menacing presence, on either side of the doorway. For their easy retreat or to block Joe’s exit? Cecily was having none of it.

“James! Mungo! Stop louting about over there and come and help me with the cups. Then settle down, will you? I know Joe has something important up his sleeve for us and I insist you play
nicely.”

Adelaide carried coffee over to Dorcas, who refused it with shake of the head.

No one would sit. Cups were put away on side tables, behind potted plants, all, in their agitation, chose to keep their hands unencumbered, their feet ready to move off fast. Ben entered with a refill jug of coffee and Joe asked him to wait by the door.

“Joe, will you get on with it?” Cecily demanded. “We’re all ready.”

“Well, I have before me a mixed bunch. I have something approaching a very informal and entirely illegal Court of Justice. You are thirteen in number. Unlucky for one. Twelve good men and true—and women!—will make up the jury who will assess the guilt and decide the fate of the thirteenth member. The one among you who will be here accused of the murder of an innocent woman.”

“Ooh! The game’s afoot,” trilled Alice McIver. “Bags I not be the thirteenth—I couldn’t keep a straight face. You’d all guess it was me.”

Joe smiled and forged on. “Last April, Lavinia Truelove was tricked into confronting a dangerous horse—you all know most of the circumstances. What you may not know is that the maid, Grace, who assisted her in the scheme, in a good-hearted attempt to mitigate the effect of her mistress’s folly, consulted someone she considered an authority on horses, a person of understanding and wisdom whom she trusted. This person chose, for personal motives, to give exactly the wrong advice and also supplied the means to provoke the attack.”

A frisson ran round the company as they realised they were involved with not a game but a real and recent death. A tricky moment. If one of them called his bluff and shouted, “Blow this for a game of soldiers! I’m off!” the rest would follow. Joe relied on the strength of a very human quality to keep them listening:
ghoulish curiosity.

“We are looking, ladies and gentlemen, for a person who sought to destroy Lavinia. I put it to you that her death was not an accident. It was willed, engineered and carried out at a distance. The tool was an innocent animal.” Joe filled in as briefly as he could for the benefit of those not in the know how this had been managed. He explained how the horse bate substance had, by trickery, been secreted in the pocket of Lavinia’s cape, triggering the attack on her. “But why? Always the first question for a detective. Several motives were explored and rejected. One—and one only—stayed with us. With his wife disposed of, Sir James was once again a free man. Did someone wish perhaps to supplant Lavinia in Truelove’s affections?”

Joe waited for a spluttering objection from Truelove—“I say! What utter nonsense!”—to roll away and carried on.

“I have in mind a person who was smarting from the insults Lavinia dished out over dinner that evening with such malice. Someone who had formed a secret and hopeless affection for her hostess’s husband. Someone who had the knowledge of country horse-witchery …”

He waited for this information to be absorbed and watched as the audience looked from Dorcas to James and back again with round eyes and an audible intake of breath. He waited for an explosive response from Truelove. But James Truelove made no further protest. He failed to see the disbelief in the eyes of Dorothy Despond standing at his side because he could not bring himself to look at her. Dorothy’s father, Joe noted, moved closer to his daughter and put a protective arm around her shoulders. Dorcas Joliffe had no such comfort, standing by herself, as aloof and friendless as Joan of Arc at her trial.

It was Dorcas who made the first response. Faintly, she pleaded: “James … Won’t you tell them the truth …? Why don’t you speak up for me? Please, James!”

Truelove looked down at the floor and said nothing.

Everyone turned to stare at her. Dorcas had eyes for no one now but Joe. Judging the force powering those dark flamethrowers, he thought he probably had only seconds before he was struck down with paralysis or the plague. Even Adelaide was watching him with incomprehension and disgust. Cecily, on the other hand—always on his wavelength—had shown herself ready to respond to his promptings. She moved straight away to obey him when he requested that she open the door to the vestibule.

Three men who’d been waiting behind the door now strode in and closed it behind them.

“Who the hell is this?” Joe heard Guy Despond protest. “Where’d he get these fellers? Back stage at the Adelphi?”

Superintendent Hunnyton stood, a tall and satisfyingly dramatic presence, flanked by two uniformed constables. He introduced himself in measured police tones and paused for a moment, surveying the company.

“Miss Dorcas Joliffe? Is she here? Good evening, Miss. I’m taking you into police custody so that you can help us with our enquiries concerning the unlawful killing on these premises of Lady Truelove in April of this year. My apologies, Sir James, Lady Cecily … It seemed better to remove the accused quietly. Not good form to drag anyone away from the dinner table.”

He nodded at Joe and walked out, Dorcas following uncertainly with a constable on each side. Her backward glance was for Joe. It told him that, if she was taking her first steps to the Tower of London, that bleak place would be a more agreeable situation than the one she was leaving.

In the Great Hall trembling hands distractedly picked up coffee cups. “Helping with enquiries, eh?” Everyone knew what that meant! The herd began to relax, each member thankful that his or her innocence had been recognised. McIver asked Ben to fetch a tray of brandy. Lady Cecily called for lemonade. James exchanged long looks with his mother. Alex turned for comfort
to Adelaide who gave him a hug and a handkerchief and patted his back.

After a moment, Alex freed himself from the doctor’s embrace and jumped to his feet, overthrowing his chair. The crash turned everyone’s attention on him. Red spots of anger glowing on his cheeks intensified the blue blaze of his eyes. He looked desperately from Joe to his mother and Joe’s heart sank as he realised that he had failed to factor into his plans a reaction from Alex.

“She was with me all night!” he yelled. “Dorcas couldn’t have done it! She let me into her room and I stayed. In all honour, I’ll have you know. Oh, it’s not what you think! She took me in and tucked me up in my old bed and read me a story. She was still asleep in her own bed when I crept out at dawn.”

Joe was aware of the masculine reaction of revulsion as eyes flicked in acute embarrassment to the ceiling, the floor, the nearest candlestick. The women, apart from his mother, looked at Alex with pity.

“I’d have gone to my grave before I endangered that poor girl’s reputation but I cannot stand by and see this disgusting calumny heaped on her by a policeman. You’re a cad, Sandilands! And a useless detective!”

“Calm down, Alex,” said Cecily. “I’m surprised but reassured to hear you have some human instincts after all. But you’re not showing much acumen. Weren’t you listening to Joe? The damage was done by the time you were wandering the corridors. Now, thanks to Grace, we know the gingerbread was already loaded earlier in the evening. It was charged with a substance supplied by Dorcas Joliffe. The girl could have spent the night in the footmen’s dormitory and it would have had no more significance!”

The crowd absorbed Cecily’s comments in silence. One or two nodded regretfully. They silently approved the boy’s showing of loyalty while reckoning that it in no way cancelled out Joe’s accusation. Playing the detection game, they had calculated that
the villainous Dorcas must have seized on the alibi unconsciously offered by the blundering young Alex and tucked it away to be used as a last resort. She was probably at this very moment, with a delicate flush of embarrassment on her cheeks, regaling the superintendent with this lesser confession. Dishonour was, after all, to be preferred to death on the scaffold.

“All the same—good man, Alex!” murmured Basil Ripley. “That was well spoken. We understand.”

Joe puffed his cheeks and blew out a sigh of relief. “I say, Ben, can you squeeze another cup out of that pot?” he asked, sinking onto a chair, and Ben obliged.

“But what …? Why did she …? Why didn’t she …? What the hell’s stoats’s liver …?” The chorus of questions poured out and by unspoken consent, the company followed Joe’s example and settled down at the table to compare notes and thrash out the meaning of the extraordinary scene. Mrs. Bolton and Ben remained aloof and dutiful at the door.

Truelove listened to the encouraging burbles of support that came his way with pained gratitude. At last he felt strong enough to voice his dismay and disbelief. “Look, Sandilands, old man,” he remonstrated, “I know what you’re up to but did you have to stage this … this … pantomime so publicly in front of my friends? Have you any idea what excruciating embarrassment you have subjected us all to? To say nothing of the distress you have caused that poor girl!”

Then it began. Sorrow followed swiftly on the heels of anger. “You’ve all seen her—she’s nothing more than an impressionable child. Emotionally quite immature and inexperienced in the ways of the world. But look, it doesn’t have to end like this. That poor little person was carried away by a moment’s madness. You must blame me, I’m afraid. She was an outstanding student. I made something of a pet of her, made promises regarding her future that perhaps she over-interpreted. If, as you say, Joe, you’ve set us
up as judge and jury …” He looked around the table, gathering support. “I’ll speak for all by saying that Lavinia was killed—as any good man and true would say—as a result of her own folly.” He appeared to be satisfied with the number of nods this raised and carried on: “That she was the author of her own misfortune, as the lawyers say. Not the brightest, my Lavinia.” The loving, indulgent smile that accompanied this thought triggered a clenching fist in Joe. “Surely you don’t have to put Dorcas through a court hearing?” Truelove shuddered. “The Old Bailey, black caps and a thrill-seeking public? Huh! Blokes like you, McIver, with cameras flashing! I won’t have it! Much though I admire your professionalism and punctilious attention to the finer points of Law and Order, Sandilands, I must tell you to call off the hounds.”