Here Lies Gloria Mundy mb-61 Page 13

  ‘Oh, wait a moment. No, I think it brings us to Tuesday. Roland spent Monday morning in bed and, if I remember correctly, the picture was mentioned on Monday, but the old lady did not go to the old house until Tuesday after breakfast. I think it must have been on the Monday that Celia had her first row with Anthony. They had more than one before they decided to call it a day.’

  ‘About Gloria?’ asked Laura. ‘The rows, I mean.’

  ‘Yes, about Gloria. Anthony, the ass, had told Celia all about his little affair and Celia, I suppose, had stored up her ammunition, and it only needed Gloria to turn up the way she did for the spark to ignite the gunpowder.’

  ‘And after Tuesday you would have been the only guest left in the house, I suppose,’ said Dame Beatrice.

  ‘I was due to stay until Thursday in any case. After the bonfire and then the discovery of the body, Anthony and Celia welcomed the idea of having somebody else in the place, I think. I’ve left out the accident to Marigold Coberley, but it has to be mentioned because the police believe it was Coberley’s motive for the murder.’

  ‘I don’t think we’ve cleared the air,’ said Laura. ‘If the murder was committed before Mrs Coberley had her fall, bang goes that motive, as I think we’ve all agreed.’

  At this point I had to confront the dilemma in which I found myself. I gave it due consideration, conscious that Dame Beatrice’s sharp black eyes were on me. She came to my assistance.

  ‘There is something troubling you,’ she said. ‘A matter of conscience?’

  I decided to trust her.

  ‘Well,’ I said, ‘it seems to me that, if it comes to a question of motive, Anthony Wotton had at least as strong a one as Coberley. Some people might think it stronger.’

  ‘I wonder why Miss Brockworth told you the story about the baby?’ said Laura. ‘Was it just a shot at Wotton, do you think? I’ll tell you one thing, ’ she went on, before I could answer. ‘She sounds to me about as dotty as they come. Suppose she was the one who stabbed Gloria and then broke her leg after the deed was done? Isn’t that a possibility?’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ I said. ‘She could have committed the murder, as you say, but she couldn’t have started the fire. She was most certainly in hospital when that happened.’

  ‘Can you remember the details of the soup incident?’ asked Dame Beatrice. ‘I can envisage the scene when the bread was thrown, but what happened immediately after that? Did Miss Mundy leap from her chair and rush precipitately from the room?’

  ‘It amounted to that. She was sitting between William Underedge and Roland Thornbury. They both jumped out of the way and then Underedge began to mop down Gloria’s sweater with his table napkin, but she pushed him away, and Celia got up and went to her and said, “Oh, dear! Come along to the bathroom and sponge down.” Gloria wouldn’t have any of that, either, but flung her own table napkin on to the table where most of the soup had gone, rushed out and we heard the bang as the front door slammed. Then there was a general upset while Underedge and Thornbury attended to the one or two splashes they had received and the tablecloth was changed and fresh table napkins supplied to the two young men and after that the rest of the lunch was served.’

  ‘The windows of the dining-room, I recall,’ said Dame Beatrice, ‘look out upon the lawn and a broad path divides the lawn from the frontage of the house. Did anybody notice whether Miss Mundy went past the window?’

  ‘I have never heard that anybody did. I think we were all too flummoxed by what had happened to give an eye to anything but the mess and the mopping-up operations. I shouldn’t think she went past the windows, though, as she landed up in the old house. I saw her arrive and she came from the direction of the schoolboys’ playing-field, but the old house lies in the opposite direction,’ I said.

  ‘I wonder why she chose that way in? One would suppose that the road from the town was shorter by way of the old house rather than by the way of the playing-field.’

  ‘I imagine she came from the railway station, asked for directions to Beeches Lawn and was shown the lane which passes what used to be the convent. I don’t think she had ever been to Beeches Lawn before, you see.’

  ‘I noticed gardeners at work when I arrived,’ said Dame Beatrice. ‘No doubt the police have questioned them.’

  ‘They have questioned all the servants, I believe, but I expect the gardener and his boy were having their midday meal at the same time as we were having lunch. I doubt whether they would have seen anything of Gloria.’

  ‘If she had not been to Beeches Lawn before, how did she know about the picture?’

  ‘My impression is that, at some time while he was having his affair with her, Wotton had told Gloria about the picture and its resemblance to herself, and she went to the old house either to look at it or to steal it. It may well have been the latter since, according to Miss Eglantine, there was no picture to be seen when she herself went over there to take a look at it. My view is that Gloria had already stolen it. I don’t see any reason why she should have taken it upstairs, as she told Aunt Eglantine she had done. I doubt whether she would have risked climbing that staircase, lightweight though she was. She probably hoped, after the soup incident, that Aunt Eg would break her neck on it instead of her leg.’

  ‘Reverting to the blackmailing photograph, did you obtain any description of the party who had brought the baby along?’

  ‘Wotton referred to her as a waif, I think, that’s all.’

  ‘Could the description, so far as it goes, fit Miss Mundy herself?’

  ‘Well, she was a meagre, skinny little thing, so perhaps it could. I see what you mean. You think the other girl is a myth and that it really was Gloria’s baby. But, if it was, and there was no accomplice present, who took the photograph?’

  ‘Some obliging and innocent passer-by was pressed into service, perhaps. People are wonderfully kind.’

  ‘Well, I believe Anthony’s story,’ I said stoutly.

  ‘Dame Beatrice thinks,’ said Laura Gavin, ‘that Mr Wotton is anything but in the clear and I think the police might do worse than take a look at Celia, who obviously hated Gloria’s guts. One also has to allow for person or persons unknown. Suppose the police are right and there were squatters in the old house? Might they not have objected in a forceful manner to Gloria’s invasion of the premises? They could have been responsible for the bonfire, you know. It wasn’t their own property they were burning down.’

  ‘You knew of the existence of Miss Mundy before you went to Beeches Lawn, did you not?’ said Dame Beatrice to me.

  ‘Yes, as I’ve told you, from old Hara-kiri. As soon as she pulled off the cap she was wearing when I first caught sight of her from my bedroom window, I concluded who she must be. That hair was unmistakable.’

  ‘Brings us back to the wig,’ said Laura, ‘and all the weary work to do again.’

  ‘Between the time when Anthony and McMaster first fell into her toils and the time of her visit to Beeches Lawn,’ I said, ‘she might have taken to wearing a wig. I mean, some people go grey very early in life and some illnesses lead to premature baldness, don’t they? Wouldn’t either of those explanations account for the wig?’

  I was surprised, when I got back to my flat, to find Hara-kiri waiting for me in the caretaker’s little den. I took him up to my rooms and poured drinks.

  ‘Something wrong with the brochures?’ I asked, handing him his glass.

  ‘Lord, no! We’re very pleased with them and we particularly like the photographs and the very clear road-maps. You’ve done an excellent job for us.’ He took a deep draught of whisky, stared into his glass, tossed off the rest of the drink and then said, ‘Corin, old lad, would you regard me as a man who was likely to see ghosts?’

  I gave him the time-honoured one about that depending upon what other spirits he had been acquainting himself with at the time. Then I recharged his glass. He set it down and said, ‘I’m perfectly serious. I’ve seen the ghost of Gloria Mundy.’

&n
bsp; ‘You can’t have done.’

  ‘She’s dead, isn’t she?’

  ‘One assumes so.’

  ‘I mean, there’s been an inquest and the body has been identified as hers.’

  ‘Wotton and I identified it; not an experience I would want too often.’

  ‘And the medical evidence was given that she had been stabbed?’

  ‘You seem to have read your newspapers.’

  ‘And that the murderer had attempted to cover up the crime by burning the body?’

  ‘Quite correct, old man.’

  ‘Well, then, I’ve seen her ghost.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘In Trends, that dress shop. I was in there the other day.’

  ‘Oh, come, come, come!’ I said. ‘What would Gloria’s ghost be doing in Trends?’

  ‘Selling evening gowns. She used to work there, you know.’

  I looked at him with the deepest concern and asked him whether he had ever had a really bad knock on the head.

  ‘I expect I got a kick or two on it. You do sometimes when you go down in front of a forward rush, but that was donkey’s years ago. It’s never affected me except in the most temporary way. This wasn’t hallucination, Corin,’ he said earnestly.

  ‘Ghosts are hallucination. Tell me more,’ I said. ‘Were you under the influence at the time?’

  13

  The Revenant

  « ^ »

  He shook his head and said, ‘There isn’t any more to tell.’

  ‘Of course there is. Chapter and verse, man, chapter and verse!’

  ‘I’m no good at that sort of thing. It’s your department to fill in the padding, not mine.’

  ‘All right, I’ll help you out. What were you doing in Trends? I thought they catered exclusively — and I can say that again when I think of their prices — exclusively for the sex which we prize above rubies.’

  ‘That’s right. Kate had dragged me there so that I could buy her a couple of evening dresses.’

  ‘Ah, now we’re off. Begin at the beginning. This sounds like good stuff and I may be able to get some copy out of it.’

  ‘No naming any names, then. Yes, well, Kate and I go out quite a bit and she came to the conclusion, as women are all too apt to do, that she had nothing fit to wear. I suggested that I should supply her with funds and that she should take a woman friend with her and chase round the shops, but, as usual, she insisted on taking me along and we went to Trends. There I saw Gloria’s ghost.’

  ‘Trends wouldn’t allow ghosts in their exclusive emporium. I suppose you thought you recognised the hair.’

  ‘As a matter of fact, no. This girl was entirely black-haired and was wearing a black frock and she had a dead-white face.’

  ‘Well, there you are, then. She was a real girl, not a ghost and certainly not Gloria.’

  McMaster took up his drink, looked at it and put it down again. ‘It was Gloria and she was a ghost. Look, Corin, in the old days I wined and dined Gloria, I took her to ballet and the theatre, I went to Paris with her — God knows what it did to my money, but I told you about that, I expect — and I slept with her. I couldn’t possibly be mistaken. Besides, although people can change their hair and their complexion and a man can grow a beard or shave one off, there is one thing neither man nor woman can alter, and that is the colour of their eyes and the way those eyes are set in the head. I know you can do a lot with eyeshadow and theatrical make-up, but you can’t really disguise the basics. Gloria had cats’ eyes, green as green glass and utterly without humour, kindness or pity. This ghost had those eyes.’

  ‘A chance likeness, that’s all. But even if you’re right’ — I remembered the story of the dead girl’s hair which got scorched but not burnt, whereas her face was so scorched and blackened as to be not only a thing of horror but unrecognisable as a human countenance, and I began to feel a thrill of excitement — ‘even if you’re right,’ I repeated, ‘it was no ghost that you saw. It must have been Gloria in the flesh.’

  ‘No,’ he said obstinately, ‘it was her ghost. I can prove it. It disappeared.’

  ‘Disappeared? You mean it recognised you and melted into thin air?’

  ‘It amounted to that. We went to the part of the shop which Kate wanted to look in and this black-haired, black-clad, white-faced thing appeared from nowhere — ’

  ‘No, from a fitting-room or from behind a rack of clothes. I know these dress shops.’

  McMaster ignored this.

  ‘I couldn’t believe my eyes. I really thought at first it was Gloria in the flesh,’ he said. ‘Well, I didn’t want any Auld Lang Syne stuff with Kate there, so I turned my back and began to look at some dresses, and I heard Gloria’s ghost say the usual ‘Can I help you, madam?’ or something of that sort, and I knew it was a disembodied voice, not a human one.’

  ‘But, my dear chap, they tell me ghosts can’t speak unless you address them first, and even then they don’t always bother to answer. Seriously, though, this girl didn’t look like Gloria and didn’t sound like Gloria, so what?’

  ‘All right, have it your way. All I know is that, when I half turned to have another peep, a tall, buxom blonde was with Kate and there was no sign of Gloria at all. What do you make of that?’

  ‘Easy,’ I said. ‘These days you give an impression of opulence beyond that of the Great Cham himself. The blonde was the senior assistant in that department and wasn’t going to let a lucrative sale, with its nice fat commission, get away from her. Kissing goes by seniority in these establishments and the top girls pull their rank, same like everywhere else. The blonde must have gone through the secret motions which meant “Hop it; this is my pigeon for the plucking”, and the girl you mistook for Gloria sank without trace. Probably just slipped behind a rack of long dresses.’

  ‘It sounds all right when you put it like that, but it isn’t all right. If it wasn’t Gloria’s ghost, it was Gloria herself, as I thought at first, and that, as we know, is unthinkable.’

  I told him that I was beginning to consider it not so unthinkable after all. What had Wotton and I had to go on, when, separately, we had identified that very dead creature? Nothing but hair of two colours and the declaration from two unrelated and, one would suppose, disinterested sources that Gloria had been seen inside the old house after she was supposed to have left Beeches Lawn many hours previously. I reminded him that, upon his arrival there, Gloria had not been in the house, certainly, but that he himself had seen her in the grounds.

  ‘Quite likely she had been hanging around hoping that one of you would come out and offer her a lift to the station, so there was nothing much in that,’ he said. ‘It only proves that she was still alive at that time.’

  ‘Well, if you saw her in Trends, she was still alive then, too,’ I said, ‘but don’t you think it was some other girl who had eyes and a figure similar to those of Gloria? You had read of Gloria’s death, you had reminded yourself of your previous association with her and, in other words, she was very much in the forefront of your mind. Add to that the fact that you had Kate with you and you were going to buy clothes for her. Did you ever buy clothes for Gloria?’

  ‘Yes, of course, and was nearly beggared by Trends’ prices, although, as an employee, she got a discount and I was never present.’ He looked hopefully at me. ‘So it wasn’t a ghost. All the same — ’

  ‘All the same, it wasn’t Gloria either. Besides, from what little I saw of her at Beeches Lawn, her two-coloured hair was her only claim to distinction and I don’t believe she would have sacrificed it. Snap out of it, old man.’

  ‘You make out a good case,’ he said, ‘but — well, I dunno.’

  We had another drink before he left. I could tell that I had not convinced him, but I remembered him from the old days as an obstinate fellow who, once he got an idea into his head, retained it against all opposition or argument. All the same, his ‘I wined and dined Gloria, I took her to ballet and the theatre, I went to Paris with her… I slept wi
th her’ showed me that his association with her had lasted longer and had been much closer than I had suspected.

  I was sufficiently intrigued to carry the matter further. I was at a loose end for a little while. The brochures were finished, I had been extremely well-paid and I was not quite ready to get back to my writing, so, having both time and money on my hands, I thought it might be a graceful act to buy Celia and Anthony a little present and send it with a note of my gratitude for their hospitality. It would also give me a chance to check McMaster’s story.

  On the ground floor at Trends I found a very nice set of apostle spoons and decided that this would be appropriate. The packaging of them was elegant and distinctive, so, armed with the box, I took the lift to the floor where the female fashions were displayed, dangled the package as a guarantee of my bona fides and was taken in charge by a young creature with almost silver hair. The package, however, had been spotted by McMaster’s magnificent blonde, who came swanning up and immediately superseded the youngster.

  ‘I wonder,’ I said, ‘whether I could have the young lady who served me the last time I was in here? She proved very helpful.’

  ‘Oh, yes?’

  ‘She was a thin girl with black hair and a very white make-up. Green-eyed, I think, and full of helpful suggestions.’

  ‘Oh, yes?’

  ‘Could I have her again? I’m pretty hopeless at choosing things for my wife and this is to be a surprise.’

  ‘Oh, yes? Well, I am afraid the assistant you require is no longer with us.’

  ‘Oh, dear! I was relying on her as to size.’

  ‘Size?’

  ‘Well, you see, yes. She was just about the same height and size as my wife, so I thought I would get her to try on a few things, as it were, to give me some idea.’

  ‘I am sorry. That assistant left us the day before yesterday. Perhaps — ’ She made an imperious gesture and the silver-haired siren came up again. I smiled and shook my head.

  ‘Nothing for it but to bring my wife along,’ I said. ‘Rather does in the surprise aspect, but there it is.’