Dance to Your Daddy (Mrs Bradley) Page 8

  ‘My statistics?’ prompted Binnie. ‘I’m classical.’

  ‘By that you infer?’

  ‘I don’t infer. I know, Thirty-five, twenty-three, thirty-five-but Humphrey wouldn’t like me to give you our address. He’s ashamed of our little semi-detached.’

  Dame Beatrice made a note.

  ‘I will keep those figures in mind,’ she said, ‘but, of course, I make no promises. Goodbye, Mrs Provost.’

  ‘Goodbye. I do like you,’ said Binnie.

  ‘Your kind words are reciprocated,’ Dame Beatrice replied.

  (5)

  Once clear of Galliard Hall, Dame Beatrice stopped at a public telephone kiosk and rang up the Stone House in her own village of Wandles Parva. Laura answered, and was warned to expect her employer and a companion at some time during the afternoon, probably later rather than earlier.

  The Wareham road took them past Sleeping Green and Winter-borne Zelston to Blandford Forum, bland indeed in its eighteenth century elegance. This was the result of a fire which, in 1731, had destroyed most of the old town and caused it to be rebuilt in a fortunate style of architecture and with a unity of design unsurpassed except, perhaps, in parts of Dublin and Bath.

  From Blandford the road ran due north, and a string of villages with their delightful Dorset names – Steepleton Iwerne, Iwerne Courtney, Iwerne Minster, Fontmell Magna, Melbury Abbas – came and went, along a road almost free of traffic.

  The journey had begun with Tancred seated in front beside George, and Dame Beatrice beside Rosamund at the back, but after Dame Beatrice had made her telephone call she suggested that Rosamund might care to have Tancred beside her.

  ‘Would he,’ asked Rosamund, ‘recite to me some more of his poetry?’ So the change-over was effected and from time to time the poet’s voice broke in on Dame Beatrice’s thoughts. His work, she thought, was largely derivative. It was not difficult to pick out what he had been reading at the time of each short composition, and this, in so young a man, and one who fell short of posessing any very striking talent, did not surprise her. What she did find interesting was his obvious lack of interest in anything much later than the 1930’s.

  ‘Oh, were my love the sleeping fields,

  And I the all-embracing snow,’ intoned Tancred in the snuffing voice of a man reciting his own poetry,

  ‘I would enfold her dreaming peace

  And veil her lovely brow.’

  There was rhyme, rhythm and a certain artlessness about the stuff which had its own attraction, Dame Beatrice decided. She listened to the rest of the short lyric. Later on – with Rosamund saying never a word of praise or criticism – one of the poems showed an even clearer derivation.

  ‘Greatest Lover, ere my youth be gone,

  Give me lovely things to muse upon—

  Poets’ griefs and songs, and lovers’ joys,

  Girls and sleeping babes and laughing boys;

  Pools where the lazy fish serenely lie,

  And ploughland furrows mounting to the sky;

  Rounded hills where dream the older gods;

  Goatfoot prints of Pan on country roads.’

  The sestet which followed, to complete the sonnet, was less derivative and therefore less successful, Dame Beatrice thought. Tancred was seated directly behind her, so that it was easy enough – although she did it only once – to turn her head and glance at Rosamund, leaning back in her corner behind George with closed eyes and a slight smile. Rosamund, there could be no doubt of it, was thoroughly happy. There was a pause – dramatic effect, no doubt – and then Tancred began again. This was meant to be the words of a song, he explained.

  ‘Twine your lovely head with flowers,

  For their beauty is your own …’

  Poets, even the least gifted of them, have extraordinary advantages, thought Dame Beatrice, when it comes to expressing their love – often, she reflected, insincerely.

  Laura voiced these thoughts that same evening after Rosamund had been put to bed in the Stone House.

  ‘The patient,’ she stated, ‘is rapt and starry-eyed. What have you been a-doin’ of?’

  ‘Allowing her to make the journey to Shaftesbury in company with a young poet, so-called,’ Dame Beatrice replied. ‘I fear she may have interpreted some of his words as personal compliments with erotic overtones, but, then, I believe they slept together last night.’

  ‘Glad it’s your responsibility, not mine. Incidentally, I don’t notice any signs of nervous instability of the kind that I had envisaged.’

  ‘There are none. The child needs a change of environment, that is all.’

  ‘What was Cousin Romilly’s object, then, in representing her as a candidate for the bin?’

  ‘Oh, that was made clear. Go to bed. In the morning I will tell you all. How is Eiladh?’

  ‘Flourishing, and no trouble to anybody. Liable to be ruined by spoiling, I’m afraid. I’m hardly allowed to do anything for her myself. Celestine and Zena have taken her over completely, and Hamish writes his weekly letter from school with extraordinary zest. He keeps begging me to put in for special week-end leave for him, so that he can come home and see her again, but, of course, I shall do nothing of the kind. The holidays come quite soon enough as it is, and he gets five weeks at Easter. I’ve tried to hound him into going with the school party to Brussels, but he’s adamant. He’s absolutely hooked on the baby.’

  ‘I told you how it would be.’

  ‘Yes, I know you did. I don’t understand Hamish, and I never shall.’

  CHAPTER SIX

  Sarabande—Dancing Ledge

  ‘… when you dance, I wish you A wave o’ the sea …’

  The Winter’s Tale.

  * * *

  (1)

  Dame Beatrice had anticipated that repercussions would follow the abortive family gathering to which, for reasons which still seemed obscure, Romilly Lestrange had elected to invite his relatives. The repercussions which did follow, however, were not what she would have expected. They began in the morning succeeding the day on which she had introduced Rosamund into the Stone House, a move of which Laura did not altogether approve.

  ‘She may be in fear of her life, and an escaped prisoner and all those things,’ she said to Dame Beatrice when Rosamund, who seemed to favour plenty of sleep, was not up by a quarter to ten, ‘but there’s something all wrong about her.’

  ‘Yes,’ Dame Beatrice agreed, ‘mixed up with all my sympathy for her orphan state, and the really great danger I believe her to be in, I have the feeling to which you allude. I will now tell you something interesting, trusting to your native sense of fair play to read nothing into the information which is not contained in the very slight evidence which is all I am able to give you.’

  ‘All right,’ said Laura. ‘As a former student of history, I will try to keep an open mind. Does this (whatever it is) concern Rosamund?’

  ‘That is where we have to keep an open mind. I simply do not know. However, this is the story, for what it is worth. I think I told you in my letter about the hole in the wall. This was a kind of squint intended not, as in a church, to give a view of the altar, but (as, thinking of you, I soon realised) to give a fair chance to a marksman in the adjoining room of putting a bullet into the head of anybody lying in the bed.’

  ‘I don’t understand why thinking of me should give you such an idea.’

  ‘Do you not? I think our dear Robert would. Anyhow, when I also discovered that the bed was clamped to the floor so that it could not be moved, I thought that there was really no point in taking chances. I moved my pillows around so that my head was where whoever had arranged the bed had intended my feet to be, and prepared to sleep soundly.’

  ‘Neat and practical. Don’t tell me that, after these precautions, nothing happened?’

  ‘Nothing of any consequence. However, I continued to exercise vigilance during the rest of my stay.’

  ‘You stayed there another night, after finding out a thing like that?’
/>
  ‘For more than one reason. I was not quite ready to leave; also it did not seem likely that any bullet would be intended for me. The master of the house has not only designs (I believe) upon Rosamund’s life, but he also fears for his own. As the room used to be his (if what he told me was true), he may have been the intended victim. To conclude, he now has had the hole screened off, not with the canvas-backed picture which had covered it when I was first shown into the room, but with a stout screen which proved to be a fixture.’

  ‘You do see life when I’m not with you! Did you have a quiet night after all that?’

  ‘Certainly, once the household had settled down.’

  ‘Settled down? Then something did happen?’

  ‘There was a certain amount of disturbance. Somebody thought he had heard the sound of a shot, but somebody else – Judith, I think it was – suggested that it might have been a car backfiring, and that the noise might have heralded the appearance of the two brothers Hubert and Willoughby Lestrange. Romilly went to investigate, but with no result.’

  ‘Nobody had been hurt, then, if it was a shot?’

  ‘Nobody.’

  ‘You talked about my native sense of fair play before you told me this Wild West story, but, at the thought of it, beneath a flippant line of talk I am concealing a sensation of horror at the danger you may have been in. By “fair play” I take you to mean that there is the possibility that Rosamund could have taken a pop at you had she wished to do so. After all, she knew Romilly had moved out of that room and that it had been given over to you, didn’t she?’

  ‘She did, of course, and I do not lose sight of the fact that she may believe she has a motive for wishing me out of the way.’

  ‘You mean because of the way the will of her grandfather is worded. But does she know who you are? Anyway, it’s a bit of an outside chance that you’d ever inherit, the way I read the provisions.’

  ‘She may have reached the stage when anybody named in the will seems a potential threat to her inheritance. I do not imagine that she is particularly well-versed in these matters.’

  ‘And the next, or equal, subject is Romilly himself, I suppose?’

  ‘Well, not necessarily. It is true that he, Rosamund and Judith – not forgetting Romilly’s sinister and dour manservant Luke, who may also have known that Romilly’s room had been changed and that I had been given it – all knew where I was sleeping, but there are other considerations. I did not feel it would be fitting to tell you, in front of Rosamund, of Romilly’s extraordinary treatment of his guests, but it turned out that he had brought them to his house under false pretences by promising them benefits which he was unable to bestow. The details do not matter at the moment – although I have some plans which I may be able to carry out later on – but the point is that, as some of them had visited Galliard Hall at some previous time, they might have thought that Romilly was still in occupation of the same room …’

  ‘And could have taken a pop at showing that they were displeased with him,’ said Laura. ‘That sounds much the likeliest theory, I should say. Well, thank goodness they didn’t do it – at least, not through the hole in your wall.’

  ‘Of course, it was not until the day after this disturbance that Romilly told his relatives of his April Fool jesting.’

  ‘That does rather knock my theory on the head, then.’

  ‘Therefore we may shelve it, and read our letters,’ said Dame Beatrice, reflecting upon how relatively simple it is to use truthful words to give an entirely wrong impression of the truth.

  (2)

  It was one of Laura’s tasks, as secretary, to deal with the morning’s correspondence. She collected it from the table in the hall and left there any letters which were addressed to the servants. The rest she sorted at the breakfast table, for most of Dame Beatrice’s official correspondence was sent direct to her London clinic and dealt with there. For the rest, Laura sorted out her own letters and passed on, unopened, anything of a personal nature sent to Dame Beatrice. A telegram came addressed to her employer that morning so she handed it over without comment. Dame Beatrice read it and handed it back.

  ‘Hubert and Willoughby were not at the gathering,’ she said. ‘The inference to be drawn from this telegram is that Hubert has been murdered, but who would want to murder an inoffensive clergyman?’

  ‘Do you intend to go along.’

  ‘I was not particularly attracted to Judith, but she may be in need of help.’

  ‘May I come with you? I mean, Eiladh doesn’t really need me and I need a little diversion. Babies are all very well, but, having pleased my husband and my son by giving up nine plus eight months of my rapidly-vanishing life to the procreation and maintenance of one that I didn’t particularly want, I do now want some fun. Please let me come.’

  ‘Of course you must come. I will telegraph Judith to expect us this afternoon.’

  ‘What about the girl Rosamund?’

  ‘Celestine can take charge of her for a few hours, I think. I will warn her not to allow her to wander away.’

  They arrived at Galliard Hall at half-past three. This time there was nobody on the terrace. Luke, in his butler’s garb, answered the door, his customary hang-dog glumness replaced by an equally hang-dog expression of fear and anxiety.

  ‘The master’s in the small drawing-room, madam, if you’d come this way,’ he said.

  ‘Is he alone? Dame Beatrice asked.

  ‘Except for Mrs Judith, yes, madam. The police have gone.’

  Judith was lying on a settee with the drop-end down. Romilly rose from an armchair when the visitors were announced and managed to smile, although he looked haggard and appeared not to have shaved. The high colour had gone from Judith’s cheeks, her eyes were lustreless and she looked extremely ill. She raised herself on one elbow and then lowered her feet to the ground, sat up and held out both hands to Dame Beatrice.

  ‘How good of you to come,’ she said simply. ‘We’re in the most dreadful mess.’

  Dame Beatrice introduced Laura, to whom she then gave a small notebook.

  ‘Now,’ she said, when they were seated and Laura had produced a ball-point pen, ‘to business. What’s it all about?’

  (3)

  ‘Uncle Romilly and I found the body,’ said Judith. ‘After you had taken Trilby away yesterday he was very restless and …’

  ‘I was worried about her,’ put in Romilly. ‘I wondered whether, after all, I’d done the right thing in letting her go. In her condition I thought she might be better in an environment she knew, than among comparative strangers and in unfamiliar surroundings. By the way, did Tancred get to Shaftesbury all right?’

  ‘Oh, yes, and on the way he entertained Rosamund by reciting his poems to her. Are Corin and Corinna still here?’

  ‘They will be returning this evening. They know nothing, so far, about Hubert’s death. They went off to rehearsal as soon as they had breakfasted. Luke and I had returned from depositing Humphrey and Binnie at the railway station. The twins, as you are aware, are not early risers, so we were back in time for Luke to take them to Wareham to catch the Bournemouth train. They were to lunch there, and their act – whatever it is – is timed for three o’clock in the afternoon and eight o’clock each evening. They will have to find their own way back. I cannot keep on providing transport. As it is, I am saving them a good deal of money by entertaining them here for the week.’

  ‘The police will want to question them,’ said Judith. ‘We were asked whether anyone else was staying in the house.’

  ‘Where is Giles?’

  ‘He hasn’t come back from the New Forest yet. I expect his friends who were members of the Hunt have asked him to stay. We had to mention him, too, of course, and we had to tell the police that you, Tancred and Trilby, and also Humphrey and Binnie, had been staying here.’

  ‘How did Giles get to the meet?’

  ‘Oh, a friend with a horse-box picked him up and will bring him back – a young man who liv
es at Lyndhurst and is a follower of the Hunt. I suppose we shall have to ask Giles to stay for dinner, but I do hope he won’t expect to be put up for the night again. Perhaps he could stay with the people he stayed with last night, instead of with us. It’s no time to have casual visitors in the house,’ said Judith. She had regained something of her usual colour and animation.

  ‘Suppose we begin at the beginning,’ suggested Dame Beatrice. ‘Having disposed of the rest of us, you two were left here alone, except for the servants. Please go on from there.’

  ‘We had lunch at half-past one,’ said Judith, ‘and then, as it was a fine day and Uncle Romilly seemed restless, as I said, I thought it might be a good idea to go out for a short drive, leave the car at a convenient spot and take a stroll. I drove, and it was left to me to choose the route, so we went to Lulworth Cove and parked the car on the grassy common there, where everybody parks in the summer, but, of course, at this time of year, it’s too early for visitors, so we had the parking space pretty much to ourselves.’

  ‘Judith wanted to walk over Dungy Head to Durdle Door,’ said Romilly, ‘but it is a steep climb and I thought the path might be slippery, so I suggested going down to the Cove and then returning to the car and continuing our drive. We did this, and from Lulworth we took the road to Steeple and then it occurred to me to show Judith where I had found Trilby when she drowned the cat and the monkey …’

  ‘And the life-sized baby doll,’ put in Dame Beatrice, who, after her sessions with the girl, no longer believed a word of this story.

  ‘Exactly,’ agreed Romilly, with suspicious alacrity. ‘And the life-sized baby doll. Well, as you probably know, there is no very direct route from Steeple to Dancing Ledge. We had to go through Church Knowle to Corfe Castle and then branch off for Kingston and go a good part of the way towards Langton Matravers. We left the car at the nearest possible point and took a path to make the rest of the way on foot. Dancing Ledge is not entirely a natural formation. The cliffs have been ridded (as it is called in these parts) by blasting, in order to quarry the stone, and then galleries have been driven into the rocks. Long platforms of stone have been left, and on these, at this particular spot, the waves do appear to dance, and on the Ledge itself a bathing place was blasted out for the use of schoolboys at the end of last century.’