It was nearly six months since I’d last visited my elderly aunts, Marigold and Lydia, at Melford St Bede, and I was rather ashamed of the fact that it had been so long. I’d been so preoccupied with practising and studying for my final exams—not to mention returning my engagement ring to Freddie—that it only belatedly occurred to me I hadn’t seen my family since Christmas, when I’d gone home to stay with them at Melford House and we’d spent the holiday as cheerfully as one could in post-war Britain, with shortages of everything still apparent, and food still rationed, despite the war having ended three years ago.
Lydia met me at Leverstead station with the car which she had, as usual, parked outside the station entrance, blocking the narrow High Street with lofty disregard for all traffic regulations. She seemed to feel she had a special dispensation to park wherever she wished, confident that the police would recognize the car and not make a fuss. And of course they could hardly fail to recognize it—a pre-war Baby Austin which Jimmy Cole at The Garage had resprayed a cheerful bright yellow to her instructions—and, naturally, they wouldn’t make a fuss, knowing the car belonged to Miss Crowe from Melford St Bede. Since the war, people no longer doffed their caps to the gentry, Jack was as good as his neighbour, but here in the small town of Leverstead, just as in Melford village itself, people had long memories, and the Crowe family were still kindly regarded for their benevolence and their participation in local affairs. Even my grandfather, Nathaniel Crowe, irascible and autocratic as he was, had been respected during his lifetime, if not loved. It was only behind his back that Melford House had been referred to as ‘Old Crowe’s Nest’.
By the time Lydia had wedged her stout, tweed-costumed body behind the wheel and we had stowed my cello and my bags alongside a great deal of shopping and a large, ungainly parcel from Postleford’s, the butcher’s, there wasn’t much room left in the tiny car.
‘Shove that parcel to one side,’ Lydia ordered, in her abrupt way ‘Only sausages, and bones for Hector.’ The statement was accompanied by a large wink, from which I understood the parcel also to contain something from under the counter to supplement the human rations, dragooned from Bert Postleford, or obtained in exchange for a hot tip for the 2.30: Lydia was mad about horses, hunting and racing, and her little flutters were a byword in the family. ‘Wonderful to see you, Vicky!’ she added gruffly, attacking the engine and setting us off with a kangaroo jump.
I glanced at her in surprise. My Aunt Lydia was not one to voice her emotions so openly. Her straight, iron-grey hair was cut short and brushed back from her face in the same old-fashioned, uncompromising style she’d worn for years, but I fancied the set of her chin was a little less determined than normal, and as we climbed the hill towards Melford I realized she was driving her car even more erratically than was her wont—which was to say I thanked the Lord above that we encountered no other vehicle.
Melford St Bede is a lovely village, standing on a hill overlooking a deep valley, and the road from Leverstead winds up through the woods that clothe the hill. We were nearly at the top, where the road takes a sharp right turn, when Lydia stopped the car and switched off the engine. I was happy that she pulled in to the side first and didn’t simply stop in the middle of the road, as she was quite likely to do.
‘Vicky’ she began, ‘something you should know. I’ve moved back to the Grange.’
‘Goodness!’ The Grange belonged to Lydia, a largish house in the centre of the village, with stables attached where she kept several hunters, but she’d returned to Melford House to live with Aunt Marigold since Marigold’s stroke the previous year, and had seemed since then to accept the arrangement as more or less permanent. The Grange, though not the stables, had, in fact, been on the market for months. ‘But why? What about Aunt Marigold? Why didn’t you let me know? And what—?’
‘Whoa, there, old thing—’ she said, much as she would have addressed Winston, her favourite horse. ‘One question at a time.’
‘Well,’ I said, more calmly. ‘Which one would you like to answer for a start?’
‘First one, I suppose,’ she answered after a moment’s pause. ‘You asked me why. Why I went back to the Grange after Christmas. That was when he came.’
‘When who came, Aunt Lydia?’ I asked the question gently, and took her capable hand in mine, because it was, incredibly, trembling. A tear, even, rolled down her weatherbeaten cheek.
‘Why, Malcolm Deering. Nurse Wilcox’s stepbrother.’ Her voice hardened, and she brushed the tear away angrily. ‘But, of course, you haven’t met him yet. Suppose you’ll be like everyone else—especially Marigold—and think he’s charming! Butters her up shamefully and she just laps it up, thinks he can do no wrong. Then I had an offer for the Grange, but when it came to the point, I couldn’t face the thought of actually selling it, and then Marigold became impossible and so I went back home to live. Realized my mistake too late! Only thing to do now, I suppose, is go back to Melford House and stay with Marigold until all this is cleared up. Oh, Vicky, if only your mother had still been alive! Always the one who knew the right thing to do, you know. But you’re so like her, I’m sure you’ll be able to help.’
My mind reeled, trying to sort all this out. My mother, Grace, I should explain, was the youngest of the three Crowe sisters by many years, the only one who had married, though Marigold, I had always suspected, had had her moments when she was younger, even accounting for the exaggerated stories of what she liked to think of as her colourful past. My mother had fallen in love with my father, a penniless young academic, when the war came, he was chagrined not to be able to serve in the forces because of his poor eyesight, and had to be content with a job in the Air Ministry. We lived in a flat nearby, but soon the Blitz started and despite my protests, I was sent away from the dangers of London to live with my mother’s family at Melford St Bede. Two months later, both my parents were killed when a bomb dropped on our flat and demolished it, and Melford House became my permanent home. I was fourteen years old, and I would never forget the love and kindness shown to me by my aunts during this terrible time—and even, in a less demonstrative way, by my grandfather.
Not that it was all sweetness and light, living with my relatives. My grandfather, as I have said, was an old curmudgeon, and tight-fisted at that. He enjoyed tyrannizing over his little empire and, as far as his two elder daughters were concerned, had seen off one suitor after another as not being good enough, or rich enough, though perhaps he also realized that neither of them was really cut out to make a good wife. Lydia was too devoted to her horses and dogs, and Marigold to herself. My mother, his youngest and his favourite, had been allowed to go her own way with only token objections.
As for the aunts . . . they had a great deal of affection for each other, but they could scarcely have been more different, and, needless to say, their temperaments often clashed. Their squabbles were usually short-lived, due no doubt to their very wise decision after Grandfather died to keep separate establishments, but there was always some ongoing drama between them which I believed they enjoyed as adding a little spice to life.
Marigold was the elder, though only by about eighteen months. She was devoted to the arts, especially to music, and I had her to thank for encouraging me to work for a scholarship to the Royal College of Music, as a first step towards making music my career. She was no mean pianist herself, and she also painted. Before the war, as she never let anyone forget, she had been in with the Bloomsbury set, numbering Virginia Woolf among her friends; she had even, at one time, until stopped by my grandfather, attempted to surround herself at Melford St Bede with arty types, rather fancying herself as another Lady Ottoline Morell, I suppose. She had always been delicate, and was still very pretty, rather vain, and perhaps a trifle shallow.
Whereas Lydia . . . plain, blunt old Lydia, she was the one who’d worked tirelessly during the war with the Women’s Voluntary Services, taken charge of the billeting arrangements for evacuees and done her stint as a firewatcher. When the war ended, she went back to occupying her time with her horses, her dogs and riding to hounds. Lydia in hunting pink was a sight to make strong men quail. She’d always been formidable, and to tell the truth there were times, as a child, when I’d been more than a little afraid of her. At the same time, she was eminently sensible, so that her attitude now was all the more disturbing.
‘Oh, that woman!’ she declared now, cutting into my thoughts. ‘What a snake in the grass she’s turned out to be!’
I presumed she was referring to Nurse Wilcox, which didn’t altogether surprise me, since she was not a woman I naturally warmed to. She had been taken on following Aunt Marigold’s stroke about a year ago, a voluble, irritating woman of about thirty-five, bossy as nurses are, with an enormous appetite, and always demanding endless pots of strong tea She had sandy hair, and a mole on her chin, from which sprouted a single, black hair.
Perhaps it was the thought of tea which made me say now, ‘Let’s go on to the Grange, and you can tell me all about it. I’ll even have a cup of bonfire tea with you.’ (My childhood name for her favourite smoky lapsang souchong.) ‘You shouldn’t be living there all on your own . I can stay with you just as well as at Melford House—’
‘Lord, no! Wouldn’t do at all. I’m quite all right, and Marigold’s expecting you, and besides . . .’ Her voice faltered to a close. She really was quite unlike her usual, confident self.
Besides, what?’
‘I want you there to keep a watching brief.’
‘A watching brief!’ I tried not to laugh. ‘You’ve been reading too many of those thrillers.’ Gory pulp fiction with lurid covers constituted Lydia’s bedtime reading, but they’d never before affected her clear thinking.
‘Maybe I have,’ she said quietly, ‘but you can’t put everything that’s been happening down to my imagination. Nor to accidents, as Marigold insists. Something’s going on, Vicky.’
‘Good heavens! What sort of things?’
‘They’re trying to kill Marigold.’
There was a long pause. Had it been anyone else but Lydia, I might have thought this a leg-pull. But a sense of humour was never her strong point. I reminded myself of her age, and her addiction to crime fiction. ‘Aunt Lydia! Isn’t that going a bit far?’
‘Ha! Maybe you won’t think so when you hear what I’ve got to say. For a start, there was Benjie, and that finnan haddock Wilcox sent up for Marigold’s supper. Shows what a fool the woman is, not to have listened when I told her how Marigold hates smoked fish. She fed it to Benjie, and an hour later the poor cat was stone dead.’
‘He was very old, and he was ailing,’ I reminded her gently. When Marigold had written to me, mourning his death, she’d said he was seventeen, which she reckoned was 119, in human terms. Be that as it may, he’d certainly been around for almost as long as I could remember.
‘That’s what everyone said. All the same, I wish I’d obeyed my natural instincts, had him down to the vet to see just what he did die of. She knows about poisons, that woman. She’s supposed to be a nurse, after all. And it all began after Malcolm appeared on the scene, just after Christmas. Marigold should never have allowed him to stay, lounging about, doing nothing. Think they’re on Easy Street, both of them.’
‘If that’s so, wouldn’t killing Aunt Marigold defeat the object?’
She gave me a baleful look. ‘Not now that she’s changed her will in his favour!’
‘What!’
‘Thought that’d make you sit up! As you know, through your grandfather’s will Melford House goes to me after she dies, and there’s nothing she can do about that. It’s falling to pieces, going to rack and ruin because Father was too mean to spend anything on its upkeep, and Marigold really has no interest—but I don’t mind about that.’ Her face reddened. ‘Fact is, I should mind frightfully if it were to go out of the family.’
I knew how much she loved the old house, though it wasn’t a sentiment I could share. It was the dreariest old place imaginable, a hideous Victorian brick edifice, all high chimneys and unnecessary gables and turrets on the outside, and inside full of dark corners, gloomy, allegorical stained glass and heavy old oil paintings of dubious artistic worth. It had been built and furnished by my great-grandfather, who had been too busy making money from the manufacture of boots and shoes to acquire any taste, and had remained largely unchanged ever since.
‘She can’t touch the house, but she can leave her money where she wants—and she’s left it all to Malcolm Deering! ’Fraid she’s cut you right out, left you without a penny, old girl!’
This was a shock, but not the disaster Lydia seemed to think it would be. Money for its own sake had never appealed to me. ‘I’ve quite enough as it is, Aunt Lydia . . . Certainly more than most of my friends. After all, Grandfather did leave me something—’
‘A pittance!’ she interrupted. ‘Mere pittance! Because he meant me and Marigold to leave you something as well, don’t you see?’
I vaguely recalled that Marigold, as the elder daughter, had come into the bulk of the Crowe fortune, such as was now left, but I’d never given it much thought. If asked, I would have supposed Marigold would leave her money to some artistic foundation or other, and Lydia to some charity for retired horses. But I was astonished that Marigold, who was quite sharp underneath all the fluff and frivolity, could have been so utterly foolish and uncaring of her sister, so taken in as to make a will in favour of a stranger, a young man virtually unknown to her, however much he flattered her. When I met Malcolm Deering half an hour later, I found it even more unbelievable.
But for the moment, Lydia was continuing with her story: ‘There’s more, Vicky. Only two days ago Marigold was nearly killed by one of those finial thingummies falling off the roof, though there was only the lightest breeze. Remember what happened when one blew down that time before? Shattered a York stone paving slab, no less! The rest should have been removed or made safe there and then. She was lying out on the terrace in a deck chair—only missed her by the purest chance.’
‘Aunt Lydia. Just supposing anyone would try to climb out there on to the roof to push the thing over, the chances of getting it to fall in exactly the right position must be remote.’
‘Ah, but it is possible to get out there. You know that, don’t you?’
And, of course, I did. In a famous escapade, when I was about eight, I suppose, I had scrambled out of an attic window on to the roof with my cousin William, where we crouched behind one of the false gables and dropped tiny pebbles on to the grown-ups, who were drinking cocktails on the terrace below. We nearly fell off the roof with helpless laughter, which was how we were found out, and poor William took the brunt of the punishment because he was seven years older than I was and should have known better, they told him. Each of these false gables, of which there were many, was crowned by a heavy stone finial in the shape of a foliated fleur-de-lis. Lethal, if it fell on anyone’s head. But even if the one above the terrace had become loose enough to push over . . . ‘It’s too much of a coincidence, Aunt Lydia.’
‘Not when you remember the fish—and the rabbits.’
‘Rabbits? Was there some poisoned rabbit stew as well?’
‘You’re not taking this seriously, Vicky!’ she admonished, poking me with a sharp finger. ‘Well, maybe this’ll convince you: yesterday, when Marigold was taking a stroll in the old rose garden, dear Malcolm was out potting rabbits in the copse, or so he said.’ She plunged her hand into her capacious pocket and showed me what she explained was a spent bullet. ‘First time I’ve ever known anybody go after rabbits with a revolver!’
I confess that one did rather take me aback. ‘Does Malcolm own a revolver?’
‘There’s Father’s. Never got rid of it,’ she added unnecessarily, because at Melford House no one ever threw anything at all away, even unto the third and fourth generation.
‘Well, he obviously missed,’ I said lamely.
‘Only just. She imagined it was a wasp zinging past her head, thought there must be a nest in the gazebo. A wasp! Went out and looked when she told me, and guess what? Found the bullet, of course.’ She went on rather hurriedly, ‘Bad business all round—and unnecessary, too. They’ve only to wait, after all, but they won’t want to do that, in case she changes her mind again.’
‘Aunt Lydia—what do you mean, they’ve only to wait?’
‘Prepare yourself for a shock, Vicky. Marigold . . . her heart, you know. Doc Crampton’s an old fool in some ways, but I suppose he knows his job. Says it can’t be long before she cashes in her chips. Any day, in fact. Mind you, the best doctors have been wrong before now. She may go on for years.’
I was as saddened to hear this as Lydia evidently was, despite her gruff words, although it wasn’t unexpected: Marigold had never fully recovered from that stroke. I really couldn’t imagine what Melford House would be like without her—or even how Lydia was going to manage without their constant sparring. ‘Know she can’t help it,’ Lydia added, starting up the car, ‘best sister in the world, matter of fact, but one can’t help thinking it’s made the poor old thing a bit gaga.’ I could think of nothing sensible or comforting to say to say to this, and so we drove the last couple of miles in silence.
‘Anyway, it’s not just me, Vicky,’ she said, as we at last turned through the gates at Melford House and bucked up the potholed gravel drive. ‘Your Cousin William thinks there’s something fishy about that pair, too, yet he keeps telling me not to worry, everything will turn out right. Can’t understand him. You should talk to him—he’s joining us all here for dinner tonight.’
‘Oh, then if William agrees with you, it must be so,’ I answered tartly. ‘But you’re wrong if you think he’ll talk sensibly to me. He still treats me as though I’m twelve years old, with a brain to match.’
William, (he of the pebbles thrown from the roof) was actually my second cousin, twice removed. We’d always been the best of friends, but since he’d been demobbed from the Navy, and had gone back into his father’s solicitors’ firm, he’d changed for the worse. He wasn’t fun any longer, though I suppose he could be excused, in a way. His father suffered from gout, an acutely painful and disabling condition which seems to provoke amusement in everyone but the sufferer, and consequently William had had many of the decisions and worries of the firm thrust on to his shoulders. He’d become pompous, at least when it came to advising me what I should or should not do, especially regarding my engagement to Freddie Fergus. He’d been right about Freddie as it so happened; he’d turned out to be just as ghastly as William had predicted, and I’d given him the old heave-ho several weeks ago, but I’d seen no reason to inform William of this fact and give him the satisfaction of saying ‘I told you so.’
Why Lydia thought I’d be charmed by the man who came to the door to greet us as we drew up before the house, I cannot imagine: I loathed Malcolm Deering on sight. There was something just too good about his wavy hair and his moustache and the silk cravat tucked into his shirt neck, and his Errol Flynn smile. He was older than I’d imagined he would be. According to his sister, Nurse Wilcox, he’d flown Spitfires in the war, and been decorated for bravery, all of which I felt was an unlikely story, despite his handlebar moustache and his tedious use of RAF slang. ‘Oh, jolly d!’ he said, when we were introduced. Apparently, he’d had a nervous breakdown due to the traumatic effects of the war, and needed a long rest to recuperate. I didn’t believe a word of it. I was more than inclined to agree with Lydia that he and his sister had found a cushy number at Melford House, and were trading on the fact.
But . . . just supposing it were true? That he had been brave and audacious? Not all heroes look like heroes. Did that mean he would also have the audacity to carry out these attempts on Aunt Marigold’s life?
‘You’ll see a big change in her,’ Lydia had warned, but as it happened I did not, for I was never to see my Aunt Marigold before she died.
She was resting in her room when we arrived, and slept on and on. It was only when Nurse Wilcox went in to rouse her to get ready for dinner that we realized why she hadn’t put in an appearance. Yet another accident. And this time, it had been a fatal one.
‘I’m not one to give in to hysterics, I’m sure,’ the nurse said, after a third cup of fiercely strong tea had revived her somewhat, ‘but it fair gave me a turn when I went in and saw what had happened. Not that I didn’t warn her—I told her that great heavy portrait was downright dangerous, right over the bedhead—nasty old thing, begging your pardon, glaring out of that ugly frame!—what would happen if the cord gave way? “Good heavens, Nurse, that’s my grandfather. He’s been there as long as ever I can remember and he’s never fallen!” she said, which didn’t seem very logical to me, but then, that’s what she was like! Not that you’ll get me to say anything against her, she was one of the best patients I’ve ever nursed. Fussy about her food, but then, there’s many a nurse would be glad if that was the only thing to complain of in their patients, I can tell you! Caught her right on the head, that frame did—but Doctor says even if it hadn’t, the shock of it falling like that would have killed her, and I’m sure he’s right.’
‘Damn poor show, all the same,’ Malcolm Deering said, walking across to the window and looking out over the lawn with what I couldn’t help thinking was a sickeningly proprietorial air. Perhaps he didn’t know that the house, if not Marigold’s money, was now Lydia’s.
It was at that moment that William arrived from Leverstead, having been informed by telephone of what had happened. He came into the room and I forgot that my relations with him had been on the cool side lately. Those nice, steady brown eyes sought mine immediately. ‘Vicky.’
‘Oh, William!’
He put his arm around my shoulder, and its clasp was oddly comforting. He included Lydia with an outstretched hand. At the moment, he wasn’t being at all pompous.
Nor was he later, when he gave his father’s apologies for not being there in person, and said to us all, ‘He’s given me permission to inform you of the contents of Aunt Marigold’s will. I think you, Nurse Wilcox, and your brother, should hear it, too. It’s soon told. She leaves one or two small bequests to various people. A pension for life and the tenancy of his cottage to Gornal, her old gardener. A legacy of a thousand pounds to you, Vicky. The rest of her entire fortune goes to you, Lydia, to pay off the mortgage on the Grange and to help with running Melford House as you wish it to be run. The house now, of course, belongs to you.’ He paused. ‘Oh, and in a codicil, she leaves fifty pounds each to Nurse Wilcox and Malcolm Deering for their kind attention to her over the last few months.’
The faces of Malcolm and his stepsister were a study. Lydia went brick-red. It was news to me that the Grange was mortgaged—but, after all, those stables of hers didn’t run on fresh air, and it was well known in the family that her regular racing wagers more often than not demonstrated the triumph of hope over experience. But her embarrassment at her finances being made public was coupled with another expression I couldn’t put a name to.
‘I think that’s a very fair and straightforward will,’ concluded William, shuffling papers briskly together.
‘Fair! A miserable fifty! That’s a calculated insult, considering—’ began Malcolm, only to be stopped by a vicious look from his sister. He subsided, but his languishing blue eyes were now smouldering with anger and resentment.
‘Fifty pounds more than you deserve!’ muttered Lydia.
‘Oh, so that’s what you think?’ said Nurse Wilcox. ‘Well, Miss Crowe had every right to leave her fortune as she wished, I’m sure. I’ve known patients to have stranger fancies than she had before she died, but all the same . . .’ She glared at Lydia, then me.
‘All the same what, Nurse Wilcox?’ asked William.
‘She gave us to understand she’d changed her will, entirely in favour of my brother . . . She said she was very fond of him, she said—’ She paused in a curiously knowing sort of way, trying to stare us down. The black hair on her chin trembled visibly. She seemed about to say much more, but only added, ‘She said he was like her own son.’
‘Fine thing for a chap to find out he’s been left nothing at all,’ Malcolm put in. ‘After all a chap’s done for her.’ His vacuous face brightened. ‘That’s it! There must be a will that supersedes this!’
‘Be quiet, Malcolm!’ Nurse Wilcox said sharply. He opened his mouth, looked at her, then decided to shut it.
‘I assure you,’ said William stiffly, ‘this was Miss Crowe’s last will and testament, to which the codicil was added only last week, when you, Mr Deering, drove her down to my father’s office.’
‘She told me herself, in person, that she was leaving every penny to me!’
‘There’s a world of difference between saying what you’re going to do and doing it,’ William answered drily. I had no difficulty in going along with this, knowing Marigold quite capable of such dissimulation—deceit, if you like—in order to keep Malcolm and his sister dancing attendance upon her. But, if they had thought they were to benefit when she died—and Nurse Wilcox must have been aware of Marigold’s critical state of health—why make those murder attempts at all? Lydia would be bound to contest a will made in Malcolm’s favour, and allegations like that would not have improved their chances of success. They were an unpleasant pair, but I didn’t think the sister, at least, was stupid.
Wilcox said threateningly, ‘You haven’t heard the last of this!’ Just at that moment a nasty, horrid thought insinuated itself into my mind, and, as I looked at Lydia and finally identified the expression I had failed to recognize before, strengthened and grew. I felt rather sick.
An hour later, on the terrace, I found the opportunity to give my somewhat gabbled explanations to William, who listened with gratifying attentiveness until I’d finished.
‘What you’re trying to say, Vicky, is that Lydia staged those “accidents”?’
‘Well, she could have done.’ It was the last thing I wanted to believe, but it seemed horribly clear to me: Marigold had thought it wiser to let Lydia, as well as the nurse and her brother, believe that she’d made Deering her heir, for the simple reason that she knew Lydia well enough to realize she’d have been quite unable to keep up the sort of pretence she herself had done. And Lydia had believed what she’d been told—the result being those ‘accidents’—a blundering attempt to make Marigold see the precious pair for what they were and presumably to persuade her to revoke that unfair will.
It occurred to me William was not exactly looking as bowled over by my theories as I thought he would be, and I saw that, as usual, he’d got there before me. ‘I’ll admit the same thing did occur to me,’ he said, ‘but—that finial just happening to become conveniently loose enough for Lydia to push over? No, that won’t wash! it had probably been balanced there for ages, and some freak movement of the breeze finally toppled it. Mind you, I’m not saying it might not have given her the idea for a series of so-called accidents . . . poor old Benjie snuffing it, Grandpa’s revolver being fired and the spent bullet being found—’
‘It did,’ interrupted a sturdy voice behind us. We turned to see Lydia stomping out of the drawing-room, via the french windows. ‘Damn fool thing to have done—though it seemed a good idea at the time to try and make Marigold come to her senses where that pair was concerned. Did nobody any harm. Except old Benjie, of course—but that was a kindness. Should’ve been put out of his misery months ago, according to the vet, only Marigold wouldn’t hear of it.’
‘But the picture?’
‘Nothing to do with me, not that! You don’t believe I would’ve done anything that might hurt old Marigold? She wasn’t even in the garden when I fired that bullet—and I knew nothing on earth would make her touch that finny haddock.’
I was convinced she was telling the truth. Lydia might have been foolish, but she would never have done anything that could actually have killed her sister. ‘No, I’m sorry I even thought it. Of course I don’t believe that.’ But I couldn’t help thinking her schemes had planted a more sinister intention in someone’s head.
‘I’ve had a look at that picture,’ William said. ‘From what I could see without touching it, I’d say it’s impossible to tell whether, the cord had simply rotted over the years and finally given up the ghost, or been helped on its way by being teased and pulled apart to the last strand. If it had been doctored, it had been cleverly done. What’s more, there’s not so much as a speck of dust on the picture.’
Even in the best-regulated households, of which Melford House was certainly not one, and never had been, even in the days of a sufficiency of servants, this was unusual. As everyone knows, when a picture has been hanging in the same place for years, dust inevitably accumulates behind it, so this one had obviously been taken down and cleaned before it fell, which had to be suspicious in itself. ‘No fingerprints, then, not a shadow of proof,’ I said.
And just supposing the cord had been tampered with, wasn’t that an incredibly haphazard way to try to murder someone? The picture could have fallen at any time, when Marigold had not been in bed—or even in the room—though perhaps that was just the point. If it hadn’t succeeded in killing her, it would just have been put down to another narrow escape. If it had succeeded, all well and good. Sooner or later, if these ‘mishaps’ continued, one of them had to be fatal.
‘There’ll have to be an inquest, won’t there, and I suppose there’s no doubt the verdict will be accidental death? That pair are going to get off scot-free.’
‘Well,’ said William. ‘I’m not so sure about that.’
And, with the air of having saved the best until the last, he pulled a long envelope from his pocket. ‘When Marigold made the codicil to the will last week, she left this letter with my father, not to be opened until after her death. It follows on from certain enquiries she’d asked us to make.’
If he expected to surprise us, he succeeded. ‘What enquiries?’ Lydia asked.
‘About Malcom Deering and his sister. You couldn’t understand, Lydia, why Marigold should be so taken in by Deering—but the truth was that she wasn’t. Right from the first, she suspected him—with good reason, as she explains in this letter. She asked us to instigate enquiries, though neither my father nor I knew just why, until we read this.’ He tapped the envelope and asked abruptly, ‘How much do you know, Aunt Lydia, about Marigold’s life when she lived in London?’
It was some time before she answered, and when she did, I thought she had already guessed where his questions were leading. ‘More than enough. Rackety sort of company she kept, called themselves arty to justify acting as they pleased, without thought for anyone else.’
‘She had a particular friend called Gayton Bulmer?’
‘Friend! She actually told you about him?’
‘In this letter, yes.’
‘So you also know about—’ Lydia broke off, studied the carpet, then looked up. ‘Oh, well, water under the bridge now, but a terrible thing at the time. To have a baby and not be married . . . the shame, the disgrace.’ She sighed deeply. ‘Poor Marigold. You’re telling me they were blackmailing her over that?’
‘More than that. Deering was claiming he was that child.’
‘What!’ She gave a snort of derision. ‘Ridiculous!’
‘Well, as you know, the baby was given up for adoption . . . Nurse Wilcox, who, incidentally, is no more Deering’s stepsister than I am, but someone who nursed him just after the war in a hospital for nervous disorders, came across a photo of this Gayton Bulmer, and spotted what she thought was a quite extraordinary likeness to Malcolm Deering. She also found out that Marigold’s friendship with Bulmer had been rather more than that—’
‘Found out! By listening to village gossip, no doubt, and snooping around among Marigold’s private affairs, for I’ll tell you one thing—my sister never kept any photo of that rotter on display! Not when he’d damn near ruined her life—died just before the war, and good riddance!’
‘Be that as it may, Wilcox brought Deering here as her stepbrother, on the pretext of his nervous exhaustion due to the war. Marigold let them stay here at Melford House, dancing to her tune, giving them promises of more to come in her will, while she took steps to discover their backgrounds. She let them think she believed Deering’s claim to be her son, but, as she makes clear in this letter, she knew from the first that it was quite impossible.’
‘Of course she did!’ Lydia declared sturdily. ‘She had the baby adopted, but that didn’t mean she’d forgotten him. Always kept track of him. He joined the army when war broke out, and was killed in the western desert. Broke her heart.’
There was a silence.
‘So why set up that business with the picture?’ I asked.
‘Yesterday morning, my father sent up details to Marigold of what our enquiry agent had established regarding Deering’s real identity. I believe she confronted them with what she now knew to be the truth, and they realized time had run out. They could have faced charges for attempting to get money by false pretences—but remember, they still believed they were to benefit from her will—so they had to get rid of her before she could revoke it.’
‘The portrait didn’t fall by accident, then,’ I said, hating to think of it.
‘If it had been prepared, it would take only a sharp tug when Marigold was sleeping to bring it down. Or—’
‘Or it could have been lifted down and Marigold clobbered with it,’ Lydia finished. ‘Especially, if she’d been given something to make her sleep like she did. Well, a post-mortem will soon find that out.’
We fell silent, each of us unwilling to face the prospect ahead, though thankful that, one way or another, the two miscreants were not going to get away scot-free. Presently, Lydia left us to go and see to her horses, and William and I were alone. When he took my hand and pulled me to him, I didn’t object. In the circumstances, it was very good to feel the warmth and comfort of his arms around me.
‘And now,’ he announced masterfully, ‘about that ass Fergus. You’re not going to marry him, Vicky. I won’t let you.’
‘Oh, you won’t? And why not?’
‘Because you’re going to marry me. You’ve owed me that ever since you let me take all the blame for throwing those pebbles from the roof.’
‘In that case, it’s about time I paid my debt, isn’t it?’