Cavalier Case (15 page)

But Mike Spain had yet more to offer on the subject of Albert Edward Haygarth's will. "And he made it quite clear, very clear indeed, why it was all done. In theory it was all a tribute to the old Lord's memory. Something about 'in token of the particular affection the late Lord bore for Mrs. Barbara Anne Meredith and her daughter Olivia Nell Meredith': but there was something more about 'their present difficult and restricted circumstances.' Pretty, wasn't it? A kick in the pants for Handsome Dan, administered by his own butler, for treating his first wife
and
daughter badly, and from the grave where nothing more could be done about it."

"But Haygarth wasn't Handsome Dan's butler," Jemima could not help pointing out. "It was a purely temporary arrangement. His retirement was all set out in the old Lord's will."

"All the same, no chance to kick back where wills are concerned," concluded Mike Spain merrily. He seemed thoroughly (and democratically) delighted at the thought of the butler's revenge.

"Honestly, I don't think people go around kicking their butlers these days ..." Then Jemima recognised the danger; she was somehow being partial to Dan and she must stop now. "But how would I know/" one gave Mike Spain in return her own most delightful smile, the one that experienced politicians had learned to dread when she was interviewing them.

Mike Spain repaired to the bar indoors for further alcohol-free lager for himself and Perrier for Jemima. "What a wonderfully puritanical pair we are!" she thought, "Here in a country pub on a summer's day with a river and swans . . . this is the late eighties for you, I suppose." Then her mind went back to the Cavalier Case.

No, Dan didn't exactly kick his butler, but there wasn't much love lost there, was there? she reflected, this time with greater honesty. What about the way he tried to stop me talking to Haygarth in the first place,
then
he gives me permission because Haygarth is retiring, and 
then
what happens . . . Bingo, Haygarth goes over the parapet . .She simply had to stop batting for Dan Lackland—a ridiculous idea when she was supposed to be conducting an investigation—and find out from this cheerful chatty tennis-playing detective what their private suspicions were concerning Haygarth's death: accidental, suicide, or what Zena had euphemistically called "the other"? That was after all what she was here to discover, give or take the swans, the designer drinks and the unexpected bonus of the revelation about Haygarth's will.

"I'll be frank with you," Mike Spain confided, by now consuming a smoked salmon sandwich with relish: his taste in food was not quite so puritanical. "There is a lot to suggest suicide. And yet we don't feel inclined—those higher up don't feel inclined to press for a verdict of suicide in view of all the rumpus it would cause, criticism of Handsome Dan and all that, unless we can really make a good case for it. The coroner might get the bit between his teeth, go for us for jumping to unwarranted conclusions and all that. The chief hates that kind of thing and what the chief hates," Mike Spain rolled his eyes, "we
all
hate, don't we?"

"At least one member of the family thinks it's very surprising that Haygarth committed suicide." Jemima, thinking of Zena, knew that she had to tread carefully if she was to air her suspicions without seeming to be unnecessarily sensationalist—or for that matter critical of the police, which, like a coroner's hostile remarks, "we all hate, don't we?"

"Ah, that poor girl again! Who thinks he was actually frightened to death—"

"No, not her. An altogether more reliable source." Jemima took a deep breath. "Mike, look, was there any possibility that it was neither suicide nor accidental death. But that
somebody
, not a ghost, a real live somebody, pushed him off those parapets?"

"Murder." To her surprise, Mike Spain, in pronouncing the word, sounded neither irritable nor dismissive. "Why do you ask that?"

"It just seems rather odd—this is what Zena Meredith, the sister, the writer, put to me—that an old man looking forward to retirement, in a perfectly happy frame of mind, no history of mental unbalance, I take it, should ..."

"He
wasn'
t in a perfectly happy frame of mind. That's one thing I can tell you. He was a worried man. His own words. Two independent witnesses. "

Jemima maintained what she hoped was an encouraging silence.

"Number one, there was Cathy Smith, the girl gardener who found him. The first thing she said when we questioned her was 'poor old boy,' or words to that effect, 'I knew he was in a state but I never thought he'd go and do something like this.' He told her the day before when he was polishing the silver that he was a worried man. She told him something about the lawns and the grass and being worried, and he came back with being a worried man himself."

"And number two?"

"Her brother. We're less happy with his statement because you could say we're less happy with Dave Smith altogether; him and his stories to the Press. And he doesn't exactly love the police either. That type never does. At any rate Dave Smith, the historian or whatever he now calls himself—unemployed might be a better word for it—was up at Lackland Court a few days previously to see if he could do some oddjobbing. Since he was unemployed and thus broke. Despite his sister telling him they needed another pair of hands, Dave was given the brush off by the butler sharpish. As an observer of human nature—his own words—he, Dave Smith, thus concluded old Haygarth must be in a pretty panicky state." Mike Spain laughed. Although you
could
say, that just shows how sane he was! That is, if you know Dave Smith."

Jemima thought privately that not only Dave Smith's statement but also Cathy's constituted fairly thin evidence of suicidal tendencies. No wonder the police were holding back on the subject. On the other hand, it was true that both accounts did fit with her own impression of Haygarth as a
concerned
man: she remembered his words to her about "something going on here."

"But murder?" she persisted. "It he was going to do himself in, why choose such a messy horrible death? And if it was accidental death, well, what was he doing up there in the middle of the night? Haygarth knew, if anyone knew, how dangerous it was."

"A noise, a banging door perhaps. He was a big worrier about the state of the house, always nosing about after intruders, everyone agrees to that, used to wander about like some bloody human burglar alarm, Lord Lackland's choice phrase." For the first time Mike Spain sounded just slightly impatient—or harassed. Then his manner changed.

"Look, I'll tell you," he blurted out. "There are, were, some odd features. The pathologist's report. Dreadful injuries of course, well you'd expect that. That's no bungalow up there, more of a skyscraper, not many old houses are as tall as that one. But some of the injuries just could have been caused before death, not on impact, or bumping his way down. We did find marks on the parapets indicating that he had bruised himself or grazed himself there, fibres from the dressing gown, that sort of thing. He didn't take the trouble to jump cleanly. And that is, was, odd. Suicides generally do. To get it over with, you might say."

"So then what did you do?"

"Examined it all very carefully all over again; took fingerprints—

"And?"

"Nothing. That is to say, nothing you wouldn't expect. Lord Lackland. But he'd been up there quite recently to do with plans for his country club. Strange prints turned out to belong to the architect. The M.P. cousin went along on that expedition tot), for some reason, he always seems to be hanging round the family place, and then there was the architect's assistant. But this is not an Agatha Christie murder. They can't have all been in it together. That's worse than the idea of the ghost doing it."

Jemima tried to recall who exactly had been in Lackland Court that night; information she needed to ascertain in any case. Mike Spain was happy to oblige.

"Quite a few, but then the house has quite a few bedrooms, doesn't it.' You have the M.P. yet again for example, Marcus Meredith, but since this is his constituency, and he lives properly speaking in the next county, I suppose it's not so odd. And you have the writer sister, Zena, who according to you has her own views on the subject. Then there's the Lackland family, not only mother, kiddies and the nanny, but also of course, Little Nell, she of the rambling disposition. The one person you don't have is his Lordship. He turns out to have a different kind of rambling disposition. He went up to London quite late for some reason, but the butler was definitely still alive when he went. The Irish nanny, who luckily for us is not only Irish but extremely nosy, looked out of her window and saw them talking to each other in the forecourt. "

"Could he—Handsome Dan—have come back? He must have his own keys." Jemima wished her voice did not sound quite so strangled. "I'm talking about the theory of the thing."

"In theory, yes. Anyone with keys could have come in. The front door is not barred, and what is more, anyone sufficiently determined could probably have got in without keys. It's a house where security is a total wash-out in our terms. The old Lord never bothered while he was alive and it's not yet been tuned up. You could have forced any of the ground-floor windows and even the side doors. Any outsider could have got in with ease. But as to Handsome Dan—" Mike Spain gave yent to another merry smile. "Perhaps I shouldn't be telling you this but he does have an alibi. Not that we put it quite like that, but he volunteered it. Said it would be highly embarrassing if it was known where he was, but it could be known. And the lady—naturally it was a lady—would back him up."

A lady. Jemima's thoughts went back immediately to the Planty: first, Alix Carstairs on that fateful morning following Haygarth's death, white-faced and distressed at the desk when Jemima arrived late. Then Babs Meredith on another equally distressing if not so fateful occasion, shouting not only "murderer" but then: "You red haired bitch, I bet you're having it off with him." Alix as an alibi? Dan going up to London to spend the night with Alix, leaving Charlotte safely in the country? Only too likely . . . But there was a third possibility: Dan coming back stealthily to Lackland Court, still having the convenient Alix as an alibi. All this needed further consideration, to say nothing of investigation. She returned to the subject of Haygarth's corpse.

"No tell-tale fragments of material? Nothing clutched between his fingers?" suggested Jemima hopefully.

"Nothing like that at all." Mike Spain sounded quite sad. "Just an awful mess in the garden, and the very faintest suggestion—no more than that—that there could have been a struggle up there. It still could have been Haygarth's own struggle with himself. But if it was murder, you have to ask yourself about the motive. Butlers are an endangered species. Most people don't have them, but if they do have them, they don't kill them. Who on earth would want to kill poor old Albert Edward? And why?"

That is exactly the question I'm going to ask Mrs. Babs Meredith, thought Jemima, as she drove herself back to London. Not so much who, since rightly or wrongly, she's already publicly accused her ex-husband, but why. I wonder what she's like in private, away from the Planty, that is, and not in the throes of a hysterical screaming fit. She sounded perfectly calm on the telephone, thank God.

As a matter of fact, the woman who greeted Jemima at the door of her top-floor flat in North Kensington did at first sight appear perfectly calm. It was Jemima who was panting slightly from the steep and quite lengthy ascent.

"No lift, I fear," said Babs Meredith. "But I do have a very good view to compensate." It was true. You could hardly compare the view over the roofs of Arundel Gardens towards the Portobello Road with that fabulous view from the roof of Lackland Court towards the winding willowed River Tayn; nevertheless in its urban chimney-potted way, taking in the odd church spire, this was certainly an interesting vista. Jemima did not particularly want to make the comparison but the second point which struck her was the extent of Babs Meredith's safety precautions compared to those at Lackland Court. Some considerable care had been taken to see that no one could fall from the roof terrace. There was a good deal of netting as well as quite high iron railings curving inwards and a parapet.

Paradoxically, the very extent of these precautions made Jemima feel rather uncomfortable; under the circumstances it seemed impossible to ignore even for a moment the danger implicit in a roof—any roof. Yet she herself lived perfectly happily with a roof terrace, without any of these morbid imaginings. 

Babs Meredith followed the direction of her gaze.

"It does look a bit like Colditz, doesn't it?" she admitted. "But after poor old Haygarth's death, Nell began to sleepwalk and generally wander about at night—well, she's always done that since a child but it got worse—so we didn't want to run any chances of a second tragedy, did we?"

In one way this flat statement on the very subject she had come to discuss made it easy for Jemima to plunge in. On the other hand her inquisitive eye was still busy roaming round Babs' sitting room and trying to form some estimate of its occupant's character other than the various
apercus
she had had from Marcus Meredith and Dan Lackland himself—to say nothing of the Planty incident.

How pretty!" she remarked politely, given that the flat was remarkably full of objects, mostly china. "Aren't those cats charming? Im a mad cat-lover myself."

They're for sale if you like them." In her denim shirt and long black cotton skirt, with some kind of ethnic belt tied several times round her arrow waist, Babs no longer resembled a Maenad, and her long hair as neatly spiked on top of her head with tortoise shell combs. She was composed and perfectly friendly; yet it was still as impossible to feel altogether at ease with her.

Was it her unnaturally steady gaze? Or perhaps it was Babs' physical emaciation which was the truly disconcerting element about her. Did women of her age suffer from anorexia? Then there was the excessive drinking at which Dan had hinted (which could lead to excessive thinness in women, unlike men). But there was certainly no sign of any drinking. Arriving at five o'clock, Jemima was offered Earl Grey tea, served in a large rose-patterned cup. Babs herself took nothing, merely saying: "I prefer a cigarette." Maybe cigarettes were to blame, given that Babs had started one cigarette when Jemima arrived, and had already lit up again.