From the Life of the Detectives
It was later that afternoon.
Major Payne turned off the TV set. ‘Nothing on the news. We are still facing what could be best described as the menace of the unknown. Oh well, I don’t know.’
‘Did you try phoning Mayholme Manor again?’ Antonia asked absently. She sat on the sofa with a sheaf of papers on her lap, a pen in her hand.
‘Yes. I’ve tried four times now. No signal. Dead silence with a hollow ring to it. There seems to be some major fault. I may be imagining the hollow ring, actually. Unless it is all part of the conspiracy. I could go to Mayholme Manor and check in person, I suppose. Or would that be overdoing things a bit? You don’t fancy a drive to Dulwich?’ Payne glanced at the open window. ‘It’s a jolly lovely day. The longest day in the year.’
‘Is it?’
‘Summer solstice. The twenty-second of June.’
‘Of course. Sorry, Hugh, but I can’t go anywhere. I must finish these proofs.’
‘Are they teeming with silly mistakes and annoying misprints?’
‘Not at all. It’s me. I keep changing my mind about things I have written. I hate a great deal of what I have written and want to make changes. I know my copy editor will detest me.’
‘Nobody can detest you.’
‘She will.’
‘You are being neurotic.’
‘Maybe.’
‘I have read your latest book twice, at your request. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with it. Not a thing. Quite the reverse.’
‘You are too kind. You are always too kind when it comes to my writing.’
‘I am not too kind. As you know perfectly well, I am exceedingly critical of the detective stories I read.’
‘Of other people’s detective stories, yes. You have a blind spot when it comes to mine.’
‘Not true. Literary taste is literary taste. Not the kind of thing one compromises with. Anyhow, your copy editor didn’t think there was anything wrong with your novel either, so that proves it’s all in your head.’
‘She is just being professional. I suspect she despises it secretly.’
‘Rubbish. Or, as Major-General Knatchbull likes to say, fearful piffle.’
‘She is quite formidable. She has very high literary standards. You’d like her.’
‘Would I?’
‘You like clever women. We really should have her over to dinner sometime. The only chink in her armour seems to be a contained passion for horoscopes.’
‘Perhaps she tells fortunes as a sideline. To supplement her income.’ Payne picked up the pot. ‘Would you like some more coffee?’
‘No, thank you.’
‘Is it true what they say, that if you put enough effort into making sure the story’s beginning and ending are right, the characters can be relied on to take care of the middle?’
‘It doesn’t quite work that way for me.’ Antonia ran her fingers through her hair. ‘The middle of the kind of detective story I write is always the trickiest part.’
‘How to continue causing the reader to turn the pages, eh?’
‘That indeed is the question. I begin to panic at around Chapter 10. As you know, I try to delay the murder for as long as I possibly can. My principle is, if one gets the suspense right, then the middle of the story will be right too.’
‘There are readers, apparently, who read Chapter 1 and then they read the denouement, then they go back to Chapter 2 and carry on from there. This is the result of a survey,’ Payne explained. He put down his coffee cup. ‘I’ve never been able to understand it. Strikes me as rather an idiotic thing to do.’
‘They want to see how everything fits in. They want to catch the author out.’ Antonia spoke angrily. ‘That is their sole intention.’
‘Then they write tedious letters and complain?’
‘Gloat, rather.’
‘My poor darling.’ Payne gave her a kiss, then glanced at the clock and back at the window. Their garden was bathed in brilliant sunshine. He liked the look of the lilies and fuchsias in the new pots. Their gardener had done a first-class job. Shame the chap hated Antonia’s cat. Payne had observed him mouth an unprintable word at Dupin once. Why did there always have to be a fly in the ointment? Where was Dupin? Payne hadn’t seen the beast since last night.
He rose. It would take him less than an hour to get to Dulwich, forty-five minutes perhaps, depending on the traffic. ‘I suppose I could go by myself. What do you say?’
‘I don’t see why not. You don’t really need me. You are a big boy now. You will tell me all about it when you come back. Actually, we might have been looking at the case the wrong way up.’
‘You think we are doing Lady Tradescant an injustice?’
‘Penelope Tradescant may not really be evil wickedness personified,’ said Antonia. ‘Rather, she might have acted as her husband’s guardian angel.’
‘She might have lived up to her name, eh? Penelope—the epitome of conjugal loyalty? Odysseus, don’t you know. What exactly do you mean by the “wrong way up”? No—don’t tell me.’ Payne stroked his jaw with his fore-finger. ‘Penelope knows the capsule in the snuff-box contains poison, so she takes it out and replaces it with a harmless one. Say, one of those vitamin supplements my aunt raves about. Is that it? Why did she look guilty then?’
‘Did she really look guilty?’
‘I thought so. That was when she realized we had been watching her … It might have been mere dismay, I suppose. She might have been worried about us misinterpreting her action?’
‘Which you did! Yes. Lady Tradescant doesn’t want her husband to die, but nor does she want him to know about the attempt on his life, so she tells him nothing about it … She knows the person who performed the first switching around of the capsules … It’s someone she is averse to getting into trouble … Who is he? We assume it’s a “he”, don’t we?’
‘We assume no such thing. Just because she is an attractive girl, it doesn’t follow that she’s got a lethal lover. What kind of man would have access to Sir Seymour’s medicine cabinet anyway? Sir Seymour’s valet?’
‘Do baronets still have valets?’
‘They most certainly do.’
‘You sound positive.’
‘You seem to be forgetting some of my best friends are baronets.’
‘What if you found that Sir Seymour was dead, but the doctor insisted that he had died of natural causes? What if no positive proof of foul play ever came to light? Oh well.’ Antonia picked up her book proofs once more. ‘In the end it is the mystery that counts and not the explanation.’
‘Is the pretty lady a poisoner, or isn’t she? Will we ever know? It’s a bit like My Cousin Rachel …’
‘Oh, don’t let’s be bookish and clever, Hugh. Life is not a bit like mystery fiction.’
‘With us it always is somehow. Haven’t you noticed? Happens all the time. Sometimes I think we should be in a book ourselves … Where did I leave the damned car keys?’
‘Is Lady Tradescant really attractive?’
‘Her charms deserve to be dithyrambically extolled. Just to look at her mouth makes one think of great poetry and wide seas … Hope you aren’t jealous.’
‘Not a bit.’ Antonia tapped her teeth with her pen. ‘Sir Seymour might have forgotten to take the capsule. If you do get to speak to him and he’s still in possession of it, will you ask him to hand it over for inspection?’
‘I most certainly will. Otherwise my journey would have been a waste of time. My mission would have been fruitless or bootless. He’s bound to think me mad. On the other hand he may be perfectly friendly and cooperative. I glanced at my family tree earlier on and discovered that a Payne had married a Tradescant girl back in 1750.’
‘That should break the ice. Aren’t you going to change?’
‘You think I should?’
‘Why don’t you put on your uniform?’
‘That would make me appear wildly eccentric. I shall wear a dark double-breasted suit with a discreet stripe and a bowler, perhaps?’
‘A bowler would be equally eccentric,’ said Antonia. ‘Though perhaps they wouldn’t think so at the place where you are going.’