Till Death Do Us Part dgf-15 Read online

  ‘I know.'

  'Come to think of it,' muttered Lord Ashe, 'I did fancy I heard a shot in the middle of the night. Or was it later? Was it -?' He stared at memory.

  'Sir Harvey didn't shoot himself. He took a hypodermic, " apparently containing prussic acid, and injected it into his arm. Cynthia Drew and I found him not half an hour ago.'

  'Prussic acid,' repeated Lord Ashe. 'We used to use a derivative of that for fruit-tree spray. I dare say Sir Harvey would have access to some. But why, my dear boy? Why?'

  'We don't know.'

  'He seemed in the best of health and spirits, except for that unfortunate acci -' Lord Ashe rubbed his forehead with the hand that held the shears, endangering pince-nez and eyes. 'Could he have been depressed, or anything of that sort? I've seldom seen a man with more - what shall I say? - zest for life. He reminded me of a chap who was once here selling Bibles. And ... er ... may I ask why you come here?'

  ' I've got to see Dr Middlesworth. His wife said he was at the Hall.'

  'Oh. Yes. Middlesworth was here. Cicely, that's one of the maids, had a bad turn in the night. Appendicitis. Middlesworth found it wasn't necessary to operate. He thinks he can do what they call "freeze it". But he's not here now. He left some time ago. Said he had to run over to Hastings.'

  It was Dick's turn to stare.

  'To Hastings? At half-past five in the morning? Why?' Lord Ashe looked puzzled.

  ' I can't say, my dear fellow. Middlesworth was rather mysterious about it.'

  The sweet-scented grass, the glare of green lawns in broadening sunlight, caused a feeling of light-hcadedness. Dick was badly prepared for the next bombshell. Suddenly, with an odd sensation of imminent danger, he found Lord Ashe studying him with an intent expression, a close long look, which had in it a knife-edge of shrewdness before the other's face smoothed itself out

  'What's this I hear,' Lord Ashe asked .in his soft voice, 'about Lesley Grant being a murderess?'

  CHAPTER g

  Miss LESLEY GRANT - to give her that name - awoke at a quarter past eight in the morning.

  Her house, the old Farnham house towards the southern end of the High Street at Six Ashes, faced east towards the front grounds of Ashe Hall. It was pleasant and tree-shaded, with a deep front garden. From the upstairs bedroom windows you could look diagonally left across the High Street towards the heraldic griffin and ash-tree carved on the stone pillars of the entrance-gates. And, brilliant sunshine was pouring through these windows when Lesley awoke.

  For a moment she lay as still as death, staring at the ceiling with wide-open eyes. A clock ticked on the bedside table, the only noise there.

  Lesley's eyes moved sideways, apparently noting the time, before quickly resinning their stare at the ceiling.

  She did not look as though she had slept well; or, in fact, slept very long. There were faint shadows under the naive-looking brown eyes, the brown hair seemed tumbled on the pillow, and there was a curious expression round her mouth. Her bare arms, outside the coverlet, were stretched out straight on either side. For minutes she lay motionless, listening to the tick of the clock, while her eyes now roved.

  It was a comfortable room she saw, furnished with the same shrinking fastidiousness of good taste. It contained only one picture: a framed black-and-white drawing, of somewhat grotesque design, hanging between the two front windows. When her gaze encountered this, Lesley's teeth fastened in her lower lip.

  ' It's silly!' she said aloud.

  Anybody who saw her then - fortunately or unfortunately, nobody did see her - would have been a little disquieted by the stealth of her movements. Slipping out of bed, in-a white silk nightgown trimmed with lace, she ran across to the picture and lifted it down from the wall.

  Underneath showed the front of a small circular wall-safe, dull steel, of a pattern imported from the United States. It had no key: it opened with a letter-lock whose combination was known only to its manufacturers and to the so-called Lesley Grant.

  Lesley's breathing grew shallower; her breast hardly seemed to rise and fall under the silk nightgown. She touched the dial of the safe, and had given its knob two partial turns when a heavy tread on the staircase outside in the passage, with the rattle of crockery on a tray, warned her that Mrs Rackley was on the way with morning tea.

  She replaced the picture and flew back to bed. She was sitting up in bed, the pillows propped behind her - shaking back her hair, with scarcely a heightened colour or quicker breathing - when Mrs Rackley opened the bedroom door.

  'Awake, miss?' inquired Mrs Rackley, with her usual formula. 'Lovely morning! Here's a nice cup of tea.'

  Mrs Rackley, as a sort of maid-cook-housekeeper, was invaluable to any woman who did not mind her smothering protectiveness. After glancing round the room, noting with approval its tidiness and its open window, she creaked across to asthmatic accompaniments and set the tea-tray in Lesley's lap. Afterwards she stood back, her hands on her hips, and surveyed her charge.

  'You don't,' stated Mrs Rackley, 'look well.'

  'I'm perfecdy all right, Mrs Rackley!'

  'You don't,' Mrs Rackley repeated more firmly, 'look well.' Her voice grew coaxing. 'Why not have a nice lie-up and let me bring you breakfast in bed?'

  'No, no! I'm getting up in a minute!'

  'It's no trouble,' insinuated the tempter.

  'But I don't want breakfast in bed, Mrs Rackley.'

  Mrs Rackley pursed her lips and apparently took the darkest possible view of this. Shaking her head, she glanced round the room again. Her eye halted at a chair over whose back lay, neady folded, a black skirt and white knitted jumper, with slip, stockings, and a suspender-belt on the seat of the chair.

  'Now, then!' said Mrs Rackley, in a voice rather suggestive of a Metropolitan police-constable. She added in a more casual tone: 'Was you out last night, miss?'

  Lesley, who had poured out the tea and was raising the cup to her lips, looked up quickly.

  'Out?'she echoed.

  'Was you out,' explained Mrs Rackley, 'after 'is Lordship drove you home from Mr Markham's last night?' ' Good heavens, no I'

  'When you come home from Mr Markham's,' stated Mrs Rackley, 'you was-wearing the dark green frock. I distinctly remember thinking how well you looked in it. And now -'

  She pointed to the back of the chair, indicating the black skirt and the white jumper. Her voice grew reproachful.

  'You're delicate, miss. As delicate as my youngest ever was. You hadn't ought to do them sorts of thing.'

  'What sort of thing?'

  'Going out,' said Mrs Rackley, vaguely but stubbornly.

  'But I didn't go out!' protested Lesley. Her elbow jerked so that she almost upset the tea-cup. An odd expression flashed through her eyes and was gone, but it sent the colour up in her cheeks. 'I didn't go out, do you hear? If anybody says I did, it's a wicked lie!'

  Mrs Rackley was taken aback. That she did not reply, however, was due to the fact that she noticed something even more compelling. Mrs Rackley was now peering out of the window with such curiosity that Lesley crawled out of bed, setting down the tea-tray with a thump, and ran to join her.

  Out by the front gate, some distance away, Major Horace Price was standing in the strong sunshine and talking to Mr William Earnshaw the bank-manager.

  Major Price's bulky thick-set form contrasted with the erect trimness of the bank-manager. Earnshaw had removed his hat, showing a head of jet-black hair, very carefully brushed and parted, which gleamed under the sun. Though they were too far away for the watchers to hear anything, bad feeling certainly existed between these two. Both had drawn themselves up; you imagined that the . major's colour was a little higher. But this was not what attracted the attention of the watchers.

  Along the High Street, from the southerly direction where Gallows Lane turned at right angles, came the local / police-constable on his bicycle.

  But Bert Miller was pedalling at a speed he had seldom in his life achieved before. Both the major and
Earnshaw whirled round to look. When Major Price hailed him, he pulled up so abruptly as almost to land in the ditch.

  Then ensued an evil little pantomime, with the constable speaking very fast. It seemed to impress his listeners a good deal. Once Major Price turned round to look at Lesley's house. You could see his speckled face, the round large face with its jowls under the soft hat he wore during legal-business days, and his mouth partly open.

  The conference broke up. And Major Price, as though coming to a decision, opened the front gate and came up the path towards the house.

  ‘In your nightgown, tool’ Mrs Rackley was insisting. 'He'll see you! Go back to bed, miss. And - and I'll draw your bath.'

  'Never mind my bath now,' said Lesley, as Mrs Rackley evidendy expected. Lesley's voice was not altogether steady. 'Go down and find out what's happened. Tell Major Price I'll be downstairs in half a minute.'

  It was, as a matter of fact, less than ten minutes before she ran downstairs: fully dressed in a costume which was neither of the disputed ones of last night. There was no sign of Mrs Rackley, who had evidendy been dismissed with some sharp words from the major. She found Major Price standing in the lower hall, turning his hat round in his hands. He cleared his throat.

  ' My dear girl,' the major began,' I've just been talking to Bert Miller.'

  'Yes, I know. Well?'

  ' I'm afraid, my dear girl, I've got some rather serious news. Sir Harvey Gilman is dead.'

  It was a big cool hall, dusky despite its fanlight. At the back of it a grandfather clock dcked with- a noise like a metronome.

  ' I didn't do it deliberately,' cried Lesley. ' I didn't shoot him deliberately! It was an accident yesterday! I swear it was!'

  ‘S—h! My dear girl! Please!' 'I'm s-sorry! But -'

  'And it isn't a question of his being shot,' continued Major Price, moving a thick neck inside his soft collar. ' It seems the poor old chap poisoned himself last night. But... can we go somewhere and talk ?'

  Wordlessly Lesley indicated a door, which led them into a long cool sitting-room with green-painted walls and a fireplace of rough cobble-stones. Lesley, who seemed too stunned to speak, allowed Major Price to lead her to a chair. He sat down opposite her, putting his hat carefully on the floor and spreading out his fingers on one thick knee before bending forward with a sort of confidential heartiness. Major Price lowered his voice.

  'Now you're not to be alarmed,' he assured her sooth’ ingly. 'But, as your legal adviser - and I hope you still do consider me as your legal adviser -'

  'Naturally!'

  'Good girl!' He leaned across to pat her arm. 'As your legal adviser, there are one or two small points, nothing important,' his gesture dismissed them, ' I think we ought to clear up. Eh?'

  'Poisoned himself, you said?' repeated Lesley. Shaking her head violently, she seemed to be fighting a cloud in her mind; and tears rose in a thin film to her eyes. 'I simply don't understand! Why ever should the poor man have done that?'

  'Well,' admitted the major, 'it's one of the small but rather sticky points connected with this whole affair. His body was found very early this morning by Dick Markham.'

  Lesley sat up straight.

  'By Dick?'

  ' 'Yes. So Miller says. It appears somebody rang Dick up on the telephone...' 'Who rang him up?'

  'He can't tell. Just a kind of "whispering voice", apparently. It intimated, as far as I can gather from Miller' - Major Price frowned - 'that something pretty rough might happen unless he cut along to Pope's old cottage straight away.'

  'Yes?'

  'Down he went in a hurry,' continued the major. 'Just after he'd come in sight of the cottage, somebody turned on the light in the sitting-room.'

  Major Price paused for a moment, obviously envisaging this. His sandy eyebrows drew together, and the breath whistled thinly in his nostrils.

  ·Very shortly after that, somebody stuck a rifle over the park boundary-wall and fired through the sitting-room window. No, wait! It's not what you're thinking! Dick ran to the place in a hurry, and Cynthia Drew with him ...'

  'Cynthia Drew? What was she doing there with him?'

  Major Price dismissed this.

  ' Out for an early walk, or something of that sort. Anyway, they rushed up to the cottage, only to find that the bullet hadn't hit Sir Harvey after all. They discovered the chap in a chair in front of the writing-table. He'd locked himself in, it seems, and taken prussic acid with a hypodermic injection.

  'Damned queer show,' added the major, shaking his head dubiously. 'Damned queer show altogether. Because, d'ye see, somebody fired that bullet at him at just about the same time - more or less the same time, certainly -when he was injecting the poison into his own arm!'

  There was a long silence.

  Lesley did not comment. She started to say something, but merely made instead a gesture of hopelessness and nerve-strung bewilderment.

  As for Major Price, he was clearly ill at ease. He cleared his throat. He eyed the bowl of red roses on the centre-table, the roses which added a splash of colour to this sombre, tasteful room with its grand piano and its old silver. He looked up and down. Finally he plunged into it.

  'Now look here, my dear. I don't want you to misunderstand me. But -'

  'But what?'

  'As a matter of fact,' said the major, 'I'd intended having a little talk with you to-day, anyway. You've been good enough to let me handle your financial affairs since you came here. You don't understand such things. That's very proper; not fitting you should.' He nodded approvingly. 'But, now you're going to get married -'

  Lesley looked even more hopelessly confused.

  'What on earth are you talking about?'

  'Well!' said the old-fashioned Major Price. 'Your husband will expect an accounting, won't he? Expect me to turn things over to him? Natural! Only business!'

  'Good heavens, not' exclaimed Lesley. 'Dick's almost as bad as I am about business. He lets his literary agent handle all that; he never knows how much money he is making.'

  The major was fidgeting.

  'But in any case,' he said, still evading the real point, 'in any case, I want you to look at all these things as an outsider might look at them. For instance ... have you got any living relatives?'

  Lesley sat up.

  'Why do you ask that?' she demanded.

  ' I know so little about you, you see. And, since I want to help you in any way I can -'

  'Please, Major Price! I'd much rather you stopped beating about the bush! Won't you explain just what you're getting at?'

  'Well!' said the major, dropping his hands on his knees. ' I want you to tell me just exactly what the " fortune-teller" did say to you yesterday afternoon.'

  And now the room was so quiet that you could distinctly hear the metronome-ticking of the grandfather clock outside in the hall.

  'Now look here,' urged the major, forestalling her. 'Don't. say it was the usual thing you get from fortune-tellers. It wasn't. Hang it, my dear, I was there. I saw you.

  ' I want you to look at these things as an outsider might look at them. My wife, for instance. Or - or anyone. The fortune-teller says something that badly upsets you. Dick Markham dashes in to find out what it is. A rifle goes off - by accident, of course! - and the old chap's knocked over. Fortunately, he isn't badly hurt....'

  ' Isn't badly hurt ?' cried Lesley.

  'Well... no.' The major looked discomfited.

  Again Lesley's eyes roved round the room in that curiously stealthy way. She appeared to be sorting thoughts as swiftly as a conjurer handling cards. Her Hps were half

  parted; there was a fixed, wondering expression on her lace.

  'Dick knew that?' she cried. 'Dick knew that? And didn't tell me?' The major shook his head. 'Oh, no. The boy didn't know.' 'Are you sure of that?'

  'Middlesworth and I, if you remember, carried Sir Harvey home. The old chap swore us to secrecy about his only getting a flesh-wound. He said it would be in the interests of justice
. And the Home Office pathologist ... hang it, my dear girl, what could I do? I can't say what they may have told Dick Markham afterwards, but he certainly didn't know about Sir Harvey being all right at the time J left.

  'But just look at what happens. The old chap has a great secret which seems to concern you. Right! Somebody pinches a rifle, the very same rifle, and shoots at him through the window. At the same time he's apparently poisoned himself. Tut, tut, now! Come!'

  Lesley moistened her lips.

  'You said "apparently". Is there any doubt?'

  ' In my own mind, absolutely none!' The Major chuckled a little, raising sandy eyebrows over guileless light-blue eyes. 'And you couldn't very well have got in and out of a lockcd-up room, now could you?' Then he lowered his voice. 'But if you have got anything to tell me, don't you think you'd better tell me now?'

  Lesley's fingers fastened on the arms of the chair, as though she would raise herself towards him from sheer fervour of earnestness.

  'I haven't got any tiling to tell you. Please believe that!'

  'Not even what the fortune-teller said? Eh?'

  ' Major Price, I never saw the man before in all my life!'

  'And that's all you have to tell me?'

  'It's all I con tell you!'

  'Well...' muttered her visitor.

  Drawing a deep breath, he blinked round him. He

  picked up his hat He seemed to meditate, as he got up, making some remark about the weather. In the midst of a strained uncomfortable silence Lesley followed him out into the hall.

  'I shall be at my office,' said Major Price, 'if you want me.'

  When he had gone Lesley stood for a time in the middle of the hall, her arms crossed on her breast and the fingers of each hand tightly pressing the opposite shoulder. It was a dumb-show of perplexity and even agony.

  'Not' she said aloud. 'No, no, no!'

  The ticking of the big clock seemed to creep into her mind. She noticed the time, which was a few minutes to nine o'clock. The smell of frying bacon, heartening enough at most times, drifted through faintly from the kitchen. Mrs Rackley, crammed with questions, could not be far off.

  Lesley hurried upstairs. She went blindly into her own bedroom, closed the door behind her, twisted the key in the lock, and rested her hot face against the door panel until - with a back-flash of something half seen but not registering - she whirled round.