Here Lies Gloria Mundy mb-61 Read online

  ‘Fear nothing,’ I said. ‘You are walking beside the man who lied himself black in the face to the magistrates in Pontyprydd after that rugger match. Remember?’

  ‘Vaguely.’

  ‘Oh, come on now! Don’t you realise that I sacrificed my immortal soul on your behalf on that auspicious occasion?’

  ‘Oh, well, thanks,’ he said, and we were both cheerful when Celia herself opened the door to us.

  ‘So Aunt Eglantine didn’t treat you to a dissertation on the Malleus, or you wouldn’t be so happy,’ she said. ‘Marigold Coberley’s here, but she won’t stay for dinner.’

  Marigold was sitting in an armchair by the fire and looked lost in that huge drawing-room. I was relieved to note that there was no trace of her tumble down the butterslide steps. Her face was quite unmarked and she was as beautiful as ever. Evidently, there had been no need for plastic surgery. All the same, there was something very wrong somewhere, for I could see that she had been crying. I took her hand, not to shake it but because I wanted, suddenly and urgently, to have some physical contact with her. Her fingers gripped mine and I knew that she understood the sympathy I did not express in words. She said, ‘The police have arrested my husband, Corin. What am I going to do?’

  ‘What? Why on earth arrest Cranford?’ demanded Anthony, as Marigold released my hand and huddled into the armchair with her fists pressed against her eyes.

  It was Celia who answered. ‘Rouse or somebody else at the police station has had a letter,’ she explained. ‘It was anonymous and in the ordinary way they might not have taken it so seriously as they have done, although, of course, they do get anonymous tip-offs which have to be investigated. Unfortunately what was in the letter only confirmed Rouse’s own suspicions. The police think they have found the murder weapon, and it points straight at Cranford. That, and Marigold’s accident, have convinced them.’

  ‘So what was in the letter?’ I asked.

  ‘The writer claimed to have seen a young woman with red and black hair kneeling on the schoolhouse steps. The inference that she was responsible for Marigold’s accident was too obvious to be ignored.’

  ‘So what was that about the murder weapon?’ asked Anthony.

  ‘That’s the devastating part of it. When the police sifted through all the ashes and rubble of the burnt-out old house they found the remains of a long dagger. Of course, at the time they could not connect it with anybody and the fact that they had found it they kept a closely guarded secret until they could trace the owner. When they received this anonymous letter they showed the dagger to Cranford and Marigold.’

  ‘And Cranford recognised it and said so,’ said Marigold, looking up and speaking with intensity and with no hint of further tears. ‘He told them that he had impounded it from one of the boys and had put it with other bits and pieces that the boys had collected. The various things were in a wooden crate in the old house. He would never have admitted that he recognised the dagger if he had used it to kill that girl, would he? I should have thought that would establish his innocence, if anything could.’

  ‘Did they know he had the key to the old house?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes, they did,’ said Anthony, ‘but that couldn’t really have told against him because there was the broken window at the back.’

  ‘So all they have to go on is his own admission that he recognised the dagger.’

  ‘Well, not quite,’ said Marigold. I waited, but she added nothing further. Celia renewed an offer which she had made before our return from the hospital, but Marigold refused to stay for dinner and left. Anthony saw her home. When he came back he said that here was a pretty kettle offish.

  ‘It will absolutely ruin the school,’ he went on. ‘Even if Cranford is acquitted, nobody is going to leave a boy at a school where the headmaster has been had up on a charge of murder and arson.’

  ‘What do you suppose Mrs Coberley meant when she said that the dagger was not quite the only thing the police had to go on?’ I asked.

  ‘I think I know what she meant,’ said Anthony. ‘Do you remember my telling you what a tiger Coberley can be when anything happens to upset him in connection with Marigold? Well, this won’t be the first time he has seen the inside of a gaol. When she herself was acquitted of murder, an acquaintance of his wrote an insulting and vitriolic letter, and Coberley went round and half killed the chap. Coberley had a good lawyer and received a light sentence on a plea of diminished responsibility owing to unreasonable provocation and insupportable emotional stress. The letter was produced in court, but the journalists were told that it was not to appear in their reports of the trial because of the damage it would do to Marigold, who, after all, had been acquitted of the murder she had been charged with.’

  ‘I wonder how he managed to start a school with a charge of grievous bodily harm against him,’ I said.

  ‘Oh, he changed his name, of course.’

  ‘How do you know that?’

  ‘Oh, it’s wonderful what you hear when an ordinarily abstemious man gets enough of the right stuff sloshing about inside him. One thing — I’m sure he has no idea that he told me the tale.’

  ‘Do you think he killed Gloria Mundy?’

  ‘I don’t know. I wonder who it was who tipped him off that it was she who buttered the steps and then called out to Marigold?’

  ‘One of the servants at the school, I guess.’

  I stayed the night. The next day I went to my Dorset hotel to begin work on the last of the brochures. Exactly a week later I sent the rest of my notes and alterations to Hara-kiri and went to see Aunt Eglantine again. At Anthony’s house I had told him and Celia, over dinner, of the old lady’s boast that she was a wealthy woman and of her statement that I was to benefit under her will.

  ‘Of course she isn’t wealthy,’ Celia had said, ‘but it would be quite likely that she had taken a fancy to you and decided to put you in her will.’

  ‘Great expectations!’ I said, laughing. So it was with no avaricious intentions that I went to see Aunt Eglantine again.

  ‘It’s been a long time,’ she said.

  ‘Only a week, and I have been very busy.’

  ‘I see they’ve arrested that sour man who has the beautiful wife. The police must be fools if they think he did it. Will you do something for me?’

  ‘With pleasure, if it is in my power.’

  ‘Get that Bradley woman on to it. She’ll sort it out in no time.’

  ‘Dame Beatrice?’

  ‘Who else? Nothing will come of nothing and Gloria Mundy murdered Gloria Mundy. You tell her that. What are you to tell her?’

  ‘That nothing will come of nothing and that Gloria Mundy murdered Gloria Mundy.’

  ‘Swear that you will repeat those words to her. Even she cannot make bricks without straw. And don’t forget that burnt-out car. Celia told me about it when she came to visit me. Swear?’

  ‘I swear. And now stop exciting yourself. Think of your namesake.’

  ‘What about her?’

  ‘ “And sikerly she was of greet disport

  And fui plesáunt and amyable of port,

  And peyned hire to countrefete chere

  Of court” ’

  I quoted solemnly.

  ‘Don’t understand a word of it,’ she said.

  ‘Sikerly, surely, or certainly; disport, cheerfulness; port, bearing or manner; chere, another word for manner. So now what don’t you understand?’

  ‘Why you’ve come to see me again.’

  ‘If you are thinking of leaving me a million pounds, or whatever it is, I thought I had better keep in with you.’

  ‘Have you remembered what you are to say to Bradley?’

  ‘To Dame Beatrice, yes, but I’ll write it down, if you like.’

  ‘Yes, do that,’ she said. ‘She’ll know what I mean. We are twin souls, like Kramer and Sprenger.’

  The Malleus lasted us for the rest of my visit.

  10

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  I rang to ask Anthony for Dame Beatrice’s address and telephone number and then I rang up her secretary and asked for an appointment. I said that I had met Dame Beatrice at Beeches Lawn and had been at the house when murder and arson were committed. Two days later I was at the Stone House on the edge of the New Forest and in conference with the eminent lady.

  ‘So the police have arrested the headmaster,’ she said. ‘I wonder why?’

  I gave her the reasons, so far as I knew them and she nodded as I put to her the various points. When I had finished she sent me out to walk in the forest while she mulled them over. In the hall I encountered a tall, well-proportioned woman who asked why I was leaving so soon. I explained that I had been sent off while Dame Beatrice meditated and asked whether I might borrow one of the walking-sticks which I saw in the umbrella stand, as it helped my thinking to whack at heaps of fallen leaves and stinging-nettles and suchlike extravagances of nature when I was out in the country and in a quandary.

  ‘Help yourself,’ she said. ‘You might take the dogs out as well. George wants to clean the car and I’ve got a raft of correspondence to go through, so it would save us both a job if you would do it.’

  ‘So you are the voice on the telephone,’ I said.

  ‘And you are the scribe, but not, I hope, the Pharisee, as my esteemed boss would say. You’re staying for lunch, then, as we had hoped. There will be another guest, and Dame B. says you are already acquainted with him.’

  ‘Not McMaster?’

  ‘No. This is a man — youngish, I gather — named William Underedge. He represented her at the inquest.’

  ‘So that was it! I wondered why he was there. I thought it must have been because his fiancée, Mrs Wotton’s niece, sent him along.,’

  ‘No. When Dame B. read about your Beeches Lawn murder and the fire and all the rest of it, she thought it was very interesting. She said she had met a very capable and reliable young man at Mr Wotton’s house and bade me page him. I tracked him down, beginning with the London telephone directory and, needing to go no further, got in touch and issued him his marching orders. Apparently, like all people of taste and discernment, he had taken a great fancy to Dame B., short though their acquaintance had been, and he agreed to drop everything and go straight down to Hilcombury, which he knows well because his father used to own a woollen mill down there, and attend the inquest.’

  ‘I shall look forward to meeting him again,’ I said politely.

  ‘That will be Underedge now. What a bit of luck! You can take him out with you and give him the story. Dame B. won’t want to be bothered with him if she’s mulling over whatever news you’ve brought with you.’

  She was not the type to ask what this news was, but, when William Underedge had been admitted, I told both of them that Coberley had been arrested. William Underedge said, ‘What absolute nonsense!’

  Laura Gavin said that she supposed the police had something to go on, so I told her about the long dagger which had been found among the ashes of the fire.

  ‘But headmasters of prep schools don’t go about sticking daggers into people,’ she said. ‘It’s out of character.’

  ‘He wasn’t always a headmaster,’ said William. ‘He was a wealthy businessman before his marriage. My father had some dealings with him when we owned the mill. He was shrewd and perhaps a bit hard, but as straight as they come.’

  ‘Did you ever come up against his bad temper?’ I asked.

  ‘Certainly not. I’ll tell you another thing.’

  ‘Tell it to Mr Stratford while you’re out for your walk,’ said Laura. ‘I’ve got a lot to do before lunch. See you later.’

  So William and I collected the dogs and took the forest walk to a little bridge over the stream and, as we leant on the rail and looked down at the clear brown water, he said, ‘I don’t see how they can hold Coberley on the evidence they’ve got. It isn’t really evidence at all.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know. His previous record? The injury to his beautiful wife? His admission that the dagger belonged to him — well, to one of his boys from whom he had impounded it? The fact that he had a key to the old house?’

  ‘Yes, granted, but there is the man himself. Cranford Coberley, so-called, although not the name my father and I knew him by, might conceivably kill a man in a fit of passion — it was easy to see that he idolised his wife — but I cannot believe that he would kill a woman, certainly not by stabbing her in the back. I thought the medical evidence given at the inquest was very interesting. That stab in the back was probably a woman’s crime.’

  ‘Well, it couldn’t have been done by Marigold Coberley. She was in the nursing home,’ I said. William straightened up and we finished crossing the bridge and whistled up the dogs who had gone chasing off after rabbits. ‘She would have been suffering from concussion and severe bruising.’

  ‘I don’t know so much,’ he argued. ‘I gathered that the time of death was very uncertain owing to the extensive burning of the body. The girl could have been killed before Mrs Coberley had her accident and, if she was, the whole case against Coberley goes down the drain. As soon as he is brought before the magistrates he will be released. I’m sure of it.’

  ‘Well, for his sake I hope you’re right,’ I said, ‘but that dagger will take some explaining. Nobody but Coberley would have known of its existence in that wooden box in the old house.’

  ‘I bet every boy in the school knew about it. I bet lots of them had handled it before it was impounded. The staff would have known of it, and I daresay the servants too. The person who sold or gave it to the boy would have known of it. The police need to cast their net a lot wider than poor Coberley. I expect they are being pressurised and think that any arrest is better than none. Incidentally, how do you come into the affair? In other words, why are you here?’

  ‘I am Miss Eglantine Brockworth’s emissary to Dame Beatrice.’

  ‘Miss Brockworth isn’t as crazy as people think.’

  ‘I don’t know about that. I am to make a cryptic statement to Dame Beatrice.’

  ‘A quotation from that ancient tract she’s so fond of?’

  ‘I don’t think so. I am to tell Dame Beatrice that nothing will come of nothing.’

  ‘I wouldn’t call that a cryptic statement. I would call it a self-evident axiom.’

  ‘Ah, but that’s only half of it. The other half is to the effect that Gloria killed Gloria.’

  ‘I don’t see anything mysterious about that, either. People who get themselves murdered are often responsible for what happens to them. Think of the silly girls who thumb lifts. Think of impossible wives murdered by husbands who’ve come to the end of their tether and battered wives who can’t see any way out of their miseries except the death of the person responsible for them.’

  ‘Those are not the only reasons for murder.’

  ‘Granted. As for Miss Mundy, I did not see enough of her to judge whether she could be a possible murderee, but she struck me as being an unpleasant type of girl. What did you make of her?’

  ‘Like you, not much, but I don’t think I would have cared about cultivating her acquaintance.’

  We turned back at the end of half an hour. During our return stroll we dropped the subject of Gloria Mundy and talked about the forest itself, its ponies, the gypsies, the rights and duties of the Verderers, the privileges granted to the commoners, the deer, the care of the trees, and on all these topics I found William Underedge far better informed than I was.

  He stayed for lunch and when he had gone, Dame Beatrice, Mrs Gavin and I settled down, so to speak, and I passed on Miss Brockworth’s message. Dame Beatrice took it more seriously than I had anticipated.

  ‘She said that, did she? Interesting,’ was her comment.

  ‘I suppose what the Delphic oracle said was interesting to those who could make head or tail of it,’ said Laura Gavin.

  ‘Oh, I think Miss Brockworth’s statements had a very plain and straightforward meaning. I won
der whether it was guesswork on her part, or whether she has anything definite to go on? You would not know, of course, any more than I do, Mr Stratford. So the police have arrested Mr Coberley? How very precipitate of them. Well, now, is there anything you can add to what you have already told me?’

  ‘I don’t think so, Dame Beatrice. You mentioned guesswork. Don’t you think that’s all it was, and some of it rather malicious?’

  ‘Her niece may have told her about Mr Wotton’s premarital acquaintanceship with Miss Mundy. Incidentally, but for your information, when I had my talks with her, I asked her to write down some sentences which I dictated. They contained a disproportionate number of a’s, o’s, d’s, g’s, p’s and q’s.’

  ‘I think I see what you were getting at. My guess is that she carefully joined up the rounded tops of those letters, instead of leaving them partly open, as many people do when they are writing fairly fast.’

  ‘Exactly. Miss Brockworth dislikes leaving unnecessary gaps.’

  ‘So what she doesn’t know, she invents.’

  ‘Her deductions are logical, and, despite what may appear to be evidence to the contrary, she is shrewd, precise and well-informed.’

  ‘Her information is acquired by listening behind doors,’ I said. ‘She may have heard Gloria trying to blackmail Anthony.’

  I told the story of Gloria and the young mother from America, and the baby dumped into the arms of the unsuspecting Anthony. I told of the photograph of him and Gloria in the guise of fond parents. When I had finished she cackled and made a comment I did not want to hear, but of which I could hardly deny the significance.

  ‘She had forged a powerful weapon,’ she said, ‘if Mr Wotton has a jealous wife.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘If the whole truth came out, there could be as strong a case against Wotton as against Coberley. Then there is McMaster, who also had an affair with the girl. There may be others. What if the wretched Gloria got money by blackmail and one of her other victims, not Wotton or McMaster, tracked her down and killed her?’