Give a Corpse a Bad Name (11 page)

After a moment Toby prompted: ‘And he went to South Africa?'

She nodded. There was a tense, flushed look on her delicately shaped features, as if telling the story had produced an excitement within her that she had no means to express.

‘But you hear from him?'

‘From friends,' she said quickly, ‘who've told me how well he's got on, how well he's turned out. After all, he was quite young when it happened—not much over thirty.'

‘But you write to him, don't you?' asked Toby gently.

‘My friends …' she began, but then she stopped. She peered into Toby's face with a dazed yet urgent questioning. ‘If I tell you, you won't—you won't—?'

‘No,' said Toby, ‘I won't tell your husband.'

She got up and doddered across to a bureau in the corner of the room. Crouching in front of it, she pulled out the bottom drawer. From it she took a bundle of letters.

As she was pushing the drawer in again Toby said: ‘You don't lock it?'

Her glance was cold and astonished. ‘My husband would
never
look amongst my private papers. Now—' she came back to her seat by the fire—‘here are all the letters that Shelley's written to me during these ten years. Not very many; he isn't what I was brought up to think a good correspondent. But they're such interesting letters. He gets so much into them in quite a few lines; that's the real art of writing, isn't it? Now you take a look at them and tell me—could the man who wrote them have arrived here drunk and penniless?'

Toby took the bundle and untied the coloured tape that held it together. He began to read the letters. After the first two or three he began to skip, glancing at the beginning, which was generally thanks for money his mother had sent him, and at the end, which was generally a request for more. They contained frequent assurances of his steadily improving character, now and then there were highly adjectival descriptions of scenery, occasionally there was a quite amusingly told anecdote. But in their way they were certainly skilful letters, letters his mother would probably find brilliant, affectionate and satisfying. For instance, there were many reminders of whimsical little jokes they had had between them, jokes that would have lingered with an ever-increasing sweetness in the memory of a very lonely woman.

Suddenly Toby looked up. ‘This one's in a different writing.'

She was watching every movement of his face as he sat reading. She nodded brightly. ‘It's written with his left hand.'

He was reading the letter. ‘Ah, I see, he'd cut himself.'

‘Poor boy,' she said, ‘he must have had a dreadful time with it. A poisoned arm in a sling for weeks—I sent him rather more money than usual because of it, because I didn't want to have him trying to get on without a doctor or anything like that.'

‘And that was why you looked at his—the man's hand?'

She nodded again with a vivid smile. ‘And there was no scar,' she said triumphantly, ‘not a trace of one!'

Toby went on reading. The next letter was still in the wobbly, left-hand writing, but after that the normal writing resumed. Shelley Maxwell worked, it appeared, in a canning firm. He never said much about what he did there, but reiterated that he was on excellent social terms with his employers.

The last letter but one in the bundle was in the wobbly, unskilled writing.

‘Hullo, he's cut himself again,' said Toby.

‘No,' she said, ‘he broke his wrist.'

‘Poor boy,' murmured Toby.

‘Did he get more money for that too?' asked George.

She turned to him startled, as if, until he spoke, she had forgotten his presence. ‘Why yes,' she said. ‘I was very anxious about him.'

Toby nodded. The careful expressionlessness of his face gave it grimness. He held the bundle of letters out to Lady Maxwell.

Before she could take it, George took it from him. He retied the tape round it, making a neat bow, then handed it on to her. She started toward the bureau with the bundle held tenderly in her two hands.

‘And now you must tell me,' she said, ‘how you mean to set about—' But the sentence was broken off and she made a dive for the bureau like a rabbit scurrying to its hole at the sound of a gun.

On the path outside the french window, looking in at them, stood Major Maxwell.

She closed the drawer of the bureau, stood up shakily and undid the catch of the window.

Easy in his movements like a young man, Major Maxwell stepped inside. The gaze from his singularly bright brown eyes went straight past his sister-in-law to Toby and George, standing on the hearth-rug.

In her nervousness Lady Maxwell's slow and over-articulated speech became even slower, even more precious in its enunciation. Her introductions took an amazingly long time. Only after several false starts, repetitions and embarrassing little jokes, she at length came round to saying: ‘Mr Dyke and Mr Pollinger are friends of Adrian's, Stuart.'

In a lazy, sceptical voice he answered: ‘Really?'

Her sunken lips were working together. ‘I ordered tea … It ought to be here … Oh, and did you sleep any better last night, Stuart? If you didn't I really think you ought to see someone. But don't let him make you take drugs, whatever you do. You won't, will you? They do you no good, you know, they don't
cure
the trouble. But I can let you have some stuff that sensible herbal man in Bognor gave me. It isn't a drug at all, it just has a gentle, soothing—'

‘I'm perfectly well, thanks, Emmie,' said the major. He said it, however, with an emphasis that suggested he was conscious of smudges under his eyes and the sagging look of his face, where usually the skin seemed to be drawn so cleanly over the bones. He went on quickly: ‘Don't mind my coming in in gum-boots, do you? The ground's as hard as iron; I haven't picked up any mud. Find our neighbourhood interesting, Mr Dyke?' The slurred, lazy voice was curiously at variance with the wearily expressive face.

His eyes holding the other man's in an interchange which on both sides was faintly hostile and faintly amused, Toby answered: ‘Unexpectedly.'

‘Good,' said Stuart Maxwell.

He turned back to his sister-in-law who had returned to her corner of the settee and was folding her fur wrap around her.

‘I just came in to tell you, Emmie, that I'd met Miss Willis. She said she was sure you weren't expecting her and her father to lunch today, and that when you wrote to her you must have made a mistake. But she asked me just to clear the matter up for her. I said of course there was a mistake of some kind.'

‘A mistake?' said Lady Maxwell. There was gentle wonder in her tone. ‘Today's Saturday, isn't it? I wrote on Thursday evening and asked them to lunch on Saturday. I can't think of any mistake I can have made in that.'

His breath came in a sigh between clenched teeth. ‘My dear Emmie, don't put it on. Whatever attitude you've decided to take up, don't pretend you've forgotten we've got a funeral this afternoon.'

She looked away from him with a little smile, which, as her eyes met Toby's, became conspiratorial. ‘Oh, I'm so glad you're going to the funeral of that poor, unknown man, Stuart. Whoever he is, why should he go to his grave as if no one anywhere had ever cared for him? Indeed I'm glad you're going, my dear. There's something so sordid, so indescribably mean about a lonely burial.'

‘For God's sake—' he began.

‘But I'm afraid I can't go myself,' she ran on. ‘It's the standing about in the cold, you know; it'd be foolish of me to risk it, and not really considerate, because getting ill only means trouble for other people. Oh, Stuart—' her voice went suddenly reproachful—‘not in here …' For the major had taken a pipe out of his pocket and was starting to fill it.

He went on filling it with fierce, prodding fingers. ‘D'you mean to say,' he said, ‘that you came home after the inquest on Thursday and sat straight down and wrote asking the Willises to lunch today—the day that had just been arranged for the funeral? You did that deliberately?'

Her eyes were on his pipe. His disregard of her remonstrance seemed to have filled her with trembling anger. ‘Naturally I didn't do it in my sleep,' she said. ‘I have never, to my knowledge, sent anyone an invitation which I had not written deliberately, consciously, or, as you might put it, when I was in full possession of my faculties.'

‘Such as they are,' he muttered under his breath. He struck a match. ‘The Willises,' he said aloud, sucking at his pipe, ‘had better go on thinking it was a mistake.'

She raised a small, brown hand and hammered with it on the arm of the settee. ‘I can think of no reason,' she said, ‘I can think of no reason at all, why you should have interfered with the arrangements for my little luncheon party.'

Another exasperated sigh drove sudden wreaths of smoke in front of his face. He threw the used match at the fireplace. ‘They wouldn't like it, you know. They wouldn't like being used as a scoreboard in a family quarrel. It'd make them feel foolish. I imagine they'd be inclined not to forgive you.'

On the hearth-rug George shifted from foot to foot in embarrassment, Toby stood squarely, looking on.

Lady Maxwell said: ‘I'm hoping to discover that the neighbourhood isn't as much under Joseph's thumb as you seem to think it is. And truly, I don't understand why you should take for granted that his word should be accepted rather than mine. No, Stuart, I don't understand that. You're usually so fair-minded. I'm afraid I feel disappointed.'

‘The coroner accepted Joe's word, Emmie. Besides—' he was trying to control his impatience, to make his voice sound quiet and reasonable—‘what motive could Joe have in saying his son was dead if he wasn't? Mr Dyke, can you suggest a motive? Don't mind how discreditable it sounds, but make it rational. Why should a father pretend a corpse was his son if it wasn't? Now if it were the son who was doing the pretending—'

‘Stuart!' She had started to her feet. The anger on her face was immediately succeeded by a look of intense pain. The major looked away from her.

‘Sorry, Emmie,' he said. ‘Dyke, are you doing anything special at the moment? Come down to the cottage and have a drink.'

The sitting-room in the major's cottage was a small room, comfortably and pleasantly furnished, though perhaps with a slightly too conscious masculinity; pipe-racks and tobacco-jars caught the eye, the chairs were very leathery. But the whisky was all right, and the fire of split logs gave out satisfying warmth.

The major's Aberdeen got to its feet in the armchair where it had been sleeping, to bark at the visitors. Turned out of the chair, it nosed about the room for a while, then jumped on to its master's knees and went to sleep again. Stuart Maxwell ruffled the hair behind its ears with a sensitively caressing hand. Toby looked at the two, the man and the dog.

‘Trustful animals, dogs,' he remarked. He was sunk low in the deep chair, his eyes were narrowed to sleepy slits. ‘And if you come to think of it, so are humans.'

‘Well, you can't get very far without trusting people to some extent,' said Maxwell, ‘can you?'

‘Can't you?' said Toby.

Maxwell gave a quiet laugh. ‘Personally, I don't find suspicion worth while. Exhausting business.'

‘Quite,' said Toby. ‘Keeps one awake at night.'

Again the major laughed. He was looking down at the dog on his knees. ‘I've an indolent nature,' he said. ‘Simple trust is doubtless the laziest way of dealing with the uncertain. With you, I suppose, suspicion's a professional asset. I'd be no good at your job.'

‘My job?' said Toby.

‘This left hand of the police business.'

‘Well, never mind about that. Go ahead and ask me what you're wanting to.' A sudden grin lit up his face.

Stuart Maxwell gazed at him for a moment. Then he reached for the decanter and refilled his own glass. He drank it quickly. ‘You've a certain reputation hereabouts, you know,' he said. ‘That's Eggbear's fault. But the result of it is, unbelievable as it may seem to you, that one might be interested in making your acquaintance—for its own sake, so to speak.'

‘So you brought me here without wanting to ask me anything in particular?'

Maxwell nodded.

‘All right,' said Toby, ‘go ahead and ask.'

Pushing the dog off his knees, the major stood up. Suddenly his face was the same face that had glared at Sergeant Eggbear in the bar of the Ring of Bells, a face that was tense with a cold and vicious anger. But today there was tiredness and nervousness there as well. It was a ravaged face, as if there were a strain upon the man that was almost past bearing.

‘There's nothing I want to ask you, but here's something I'm going to tell you. Keep your damned interfering nose out of the affairs of my family!'

‘I'm not at all sure,' said Toby slowly, ‘that they
are
the affairs of your family.'

Maxwell sneered. But already there was something more relaxed about his posture, the moment of uncontrolled fury was past. He turned away, looking down at the fire.

George's hand shot out for the decanter. He filled Maxwell's glass, setting the decanter noiselessly down again. Maxwell stirred one of the logs with the toe of his slipper.

‘You don't mean to tell me,' he said, ‘that you're giving any credence to my sister-in-law's delusions?'

‘Why not?' said Toby. ‘Is she given to delusions?'

Maxwell laughed. He sat down again, his hand going out for his glass. ‘She isn't certifiable. As a matter of fact, she's nothing but a rather silly, lonely old woman. Very lonely.'

‘Look here,' said Toby, suddenly sitting forward in his chair, ‘will you explain to me why it is that everyone takes for granted that your brother's word is better than his wife's?'