Murder in The Smokehouse: (Auguste Didier Mystery 7) (29 page)

‘Priscilla!’ There was a warning note in George’s voice.

She ignored it. ‘My late father-in-law—’ she began.

‘One moment, Priscilla.’ The Dowager tried to interrupt, but Priscilla overrode her.

‘George told me my father-in-law paid for the woman’s funeral and tombstone. Do you think if he had known then that his earlier marriage was valid he would not have taken steps to rectify the situation by legitimising his marriage to my mother-in-law? Would it not have been somewhat
careless
of him to overlook that detail?’

If Rose was thrown he showed no sign of it. ‘He might not have realised it was necessary, or might not have wanted to cause you pain, ma’am.’ A compassionate look at the Dowager, acknowledged by a slight incline of her head.

‘Both highly unlikely, Chief Inspector. To me it is obvious that he regarded the marriage as invalid. That was what he later told you, was it not, George?’

‘Yes,’ George said unemotionally. ‘He had had the devil of a row with his father, of course.’

‘Charles Tabor just accepted that his marriage was invalid without checking?’ said Rose incredulously.

‘It may seem strange to you, Chief Inspector, in this modern age. My grandfather, however, was a hot-tempered man. It was hard to contradict him. You have to remember this was a small country district. People weren’t as aware then of the minutiae of the legal system as they are today.’

‘I do find it hard to believe that the heir to the Tabor estates was quite such a simpleton, Lord Tabor. Moreover, even if you are correct, there was plenty of time for
you
to check into the legalities after Griffin’s
first visit to you, or indeed at any time since you were told the story.’

George looked steadily at him. ‘I had no reason to check my father’s story. Why should I? It was all over long ago. And as for checking Griffin’s story when he came to us, again why should I? He made no claim to legitimacy. We paid him off, and had no reason to summon him here again.’

‘Are you now convinced you have no proof against my husband, Chief Inspector?’ There was triumph in Priscilla’s voice.

‘Far from it, Lady Tabor. I have proof against all of you and, if it comes to it, I’ll arrest you all on the charge of being accessories to murder.
Now
, Lord Tabor, will you speak?’

George rose to his feet again. He did not look at Priscilla or the rest of his family. ‘Very well, Chief Inspector, I am ready to come with you.’

‘No, Lord Tabor. You know that’s not what I want.’

‘But—’ His appalled look slid to Priscilla, who sat stiffly, her face betraying nothing save exhaustion.

‘I think it is I you wish to question, is it not, Inspector? George is very good in coming forward to protect me, but I cannot of course permit him to do so.’ His sister stood up, her face made even paler by the dull grey dress she wore.

‘Laura!’ Oliver cried in anguish. ‘What are you saying?’

A slight smile. ‘You see how right I was to insist you would wish to have nothing to do with me, Oliver. You would not have liked to have been married to a murderess, would you?’

As Egbert Rose got to his feet, Priscilla’s guard slipped. Her face crumpled and for a moment Auguste saw the woman Tatiana had told him existed beneath the mask. A woman in despair.

Laura turned to Oliver as Rose led her from the room. ‘It was Robert,’ she told him calmly. ‘It always was.’

‘You may think of me as a passionless woman, Chief Inspector,’ Laura Tabor said, in the small airless room at the police station. ‘I assure you I am not. Or, rather, I am, save in one respect – and that was, and is, Robert Mariot. I was no mere girl when we parted; I was mature, the pain was the greater. We parted through his wish, not through mine. I did not care about my social position, but unfortunately he cared about it on my behalf. His pride was offended by my late father’s rebuff – ironic, is it not, in view of his own involvement with a village girl? Robert was too proud to ask my own views. He left and naturally I believed that he did not love me.

‘A year or two ago I discovered the truth, and that, wonderfully, he still cared for me and was unmarried. Yet
still
his stubborn pride kept us apart. He told me he would come to me when the current expedition was over. By then, he judged – how foolish men are – that he would have made a sufficient name for himself to appease my family. He meant it, and I was overjoyed.’

‘Are you telling me, miss, that you thought the man in the smokehouse was Robert Mariot?’ Rose demanded. Surely they couldn’t be back at the beginning again, after all this?

‘Not when I
saw
him,’ Laura said impatiently. ‘But Robert was an impetuous romantic – and twenty years ago we used to meet at midnight in the smokehouse, Chief Inspector,’ she told him, a faint flush animating her usually pale cheeks.

‘I understand.’

‘I heard from Robert on the Friday that the King was due to arrive. He told me he was in England and I
could expect to see him very soon. I was so excited, and when I saw the light in the smokehouse at the hour at which we used to meet I thought . . . I hoped . . .’ Her voice faltered. ‘But it wasn’t him. I had no idea who it was. He lunged at me, when I told him my name, and put his arms round me. I was his sister, he shouted, his odious breath on me. He’d found out he was legitimate, and had come back to claim his inheritance, or he would shout the truth out under the King’s window. I thought he was a madman, a lunatic – Priscilla and George had not told me of his earlier visit. He was repellent, not just because he was dirty, but because he was aggressive, sly, violent. I told him he was no brother of mine, nor ever would be. He took it badly.’

‘So you killed him?’

‘No.’ Laura was shocked. ‘Not for that, Chief Inspector. He attacked me.’ Her voice dropped. ‘He said if I wasn’t his sister, he’d have me in another way.’

Auguste, listening quickly in the corner with Cobbold, shivered. The truth at last, and how different to everything he had imagined.

‘He lunged at me, tore my dress . . . I broke away . . . He came after me, pulling at my skirts – it was shaming, terrifying. He tried to push me on to the floor, but I caught a chair and wriggled free and—’

‘And then?’

‘I saw the gun lying on the mantelpiece.’

‘Ah.’

‘George had left it there by mistake earlier that day after finishing off an animal in distress. I seized it, and the man came at me again to take it from me. We struggled, then suddenly he pushed me away to take me by surprise and make me trip. I did, but as I staggered backwards and fell, the gun went off. I
didn’t mean to kill him . . .’ She covered her face. ‘It was terrible.’

‘Did you get blood on your clothes?’

‘One or two splashes, but most missed me as I fell. I got to my feet, and saw he was quite dead. It was an accident,’ she pleaded, ‘so I went back to the house to tell George to call the police. But then he and Priscilla told me who the man was . . . It was a terrible shock. They took charge – with my full agreement,’ she emphasised. ‘The man was a villain. No harm would be done in obscuring his identity. How I managed to get through I don’t know.’ Her voice trembled, and her hands were twisting and turning on her lap, Auguste noticed.

‘She’ll get off, of course,’ Egbert said as they left after charging her. ‘No jury would convict after that.’ He sighed. ‘That’s something to tell the Tabors.’

‘And Tatiana,’ Auguste thought to himself, in this, at least, relieved.

She listened in appalled silence in the quiet of their room. Then, as he finished, she said quietly, ‘How unhappy Rose would have been to learn that Tom descended to such behaviour, Auguste. She must have hoped for a better life for him, although her own life had turned out so tragic. Charles Tabor called her Rosa Mundi, the rose of the world, but she had little cause to bloom in her life. I tell you, Auguste, women are chained in marriage, victims of the men they are chosen by.’

‘Or whom they choose.’

‘Yes, but what choice did Rose really have? And Laura Tabor – did she have any choice? Her sweetheart put his own honour and stubborn pride before her, although he claimed to love
her
. Things must change, Auguste.’

‘Are you my victim?’ Auguste asked, somewhat alarmed.

She looked at him seriously. ‘No, and I shall not be Society’s either. Do you mind?’

‘No.’

‘Good. I have decided to be a motor engineer.’

‘
What
?’ He goggled at her.

Tatiana’s eyes twinkled. ‘You said the other day we could buy a motorcar.’

‘I did
what
?’

‘I asked if we could buy one, and you said nothing. That means you agreed.’

‘Buying is one thing and working as an engineer is another,’ her husband said logically.

‘Would you buy an oven and not cook in it?’

‘
Non
,’ he conceded.

‘So you may cook and detect, and I shall mend motorcars.’

‘Where?’ Were they to live in Yorkshire for ever?

‘In London.’

Auguste’s imagination ran riot: Queen Anne’s Gate? Mayfair? Buckingham Palace? He put in a last plea. ‘But you began life as a princess. What of your position in Society?’

‘It is the same under a car as at the opera.’

‘Perhaps.’

‘So that’s settled. I will obey the rules of Society, then push them aside.’

‘And me? You promised to obey me. You will push me to one side also?’

‘
Non
. For you would never order me to do what I do not wish.’

‘
Ma mie
, you are as tactful a woman as you are perfect.’

‘Like poor Rose. Like poor Laura. Neither had the chance to show their love. But I am lucky. I have been
granted it. So let me show you . . .’

Ideas, faces, emotions . . . All began to come together, fighting for recognition, but Auguste would not let them in. The night was before him, and so was Tatiana.

Auguste woke up with a start. In fragmented dreams, a cottage track led to the churchyard, to Rose Griffin’s epitaph. Breckles’ hen crawed loudly throughout. Edith’s sister’s middle child danced up and down with a piece of string. Twitch stealthily pursued a green elf. Behind him marched two Tom Griffins: one to Clapham churchyard, the other to admire a nude lady bouncing on a bed. Now the jigsaw came together. There
were
two Tom Griffins. One was the Tom that Blackboots had known, the other the aggressive blackmailer described by the Tabors. Did they tally? No. There was only one Tom, but which was it?

At last he felt he understood Rose Griffin. He had to see Egbert immediately. Then he remembered Egbert had stayed overnight in Settle. Quickly he dressed, and descended to the breakfast room where he found George, who stared at him as if he had forgotten who he was. He shrugged when Auguste asked to be driven to Settle, as if events were out of his control.

As the carriage jolted over the fells, Auguste remembered what the Dowager had said: ‘
All Tabor women are good shots
.’ Had the shot in the eye that killed Tom Griffin been such an accident on Laura’s part after all?

The Dowager Lady Tabor sat in her straight-backed chair looking out towards the fell called Willy’s Brow, bright in the late afternoon sun. She did not move as they came in, her fragile hand still rested on the arm of her chair, and Savage still sat at her side. Miriam greeted them, as if she had been expecting their visit.

‘You’ve released poor Laura?’

‘No, ma’am.’

‘I am so glad you have come too, Mr Didier.’ Miriam smiled at him. ‘It is pleasant to have friends to support one at such times.’

Auguste stumbled out a reply, but she did not wait to hear it.

‘I really did have no idea that Charles had married that girl, Chief Inspector.’

‘Then why did you murder her, ma’am?’

For a moment the impression of fragility vanished, jolted from her by the unexpectedness of the attack. The real emotions of Miriam Tabor flashed forth like venom. Auguste shuddered, even as they were speedily reinterred.

‘Did I?’ she asked vaguely. ‘It was all so long ago.’

‘Not
so
very long ago, ma’am. You were interested enough in the old times to go to check the parish register at Dent. If it hadn’t been for that, I wouldn’t have believed you didn’t know about the marriage. As it is, I can’t see why you needed to kill Rose Griffin.’

‘Can’t you?’ Hardness entered her voice. ‘
Can’t
you?’

Savage half rose to her feet, but Miriam waved her impatiently aside.

‘I am an old woman in body, Savage, but still young in my heart. I
can
remember why. I killed Rose Griffin because I hated her, Chief Inspector, and I hate her still. It was clever of you to realise she was murdered. Or is it Mr Didier I have to thank?’ Her gaze rested almost in amusement on Auguste.

‘Why did you hate her, Lady Tabor?’ he asked gently. ‘Where did you meet her?’

‘The day I went to her cottage, believing her merely my husband’s mistress. In fact, it seems,
I
was the mistress. What a quaint thought.’ She laughed, the sound tinkling out over the still room. ‘I had come to make friends, I said, and the foolish girl believed me. I said I wanted to meet her little son, and she called him in from the patch of garden outside. She must come to the Hall and bring him along, I said, to meet his new little brother George.
The boy looked like Charlie
. And you ask why I hated her!’

‘But he had married
you
, or so you believed. You had nothing to fear, just because he once loved this girl,’ said Auguste, puzzled.

‘
Once
loved? I hated her because he went on loving her. I thought she was just a peasant girl he was amusing himself with, while I was waiting for my baby to arrive. I followed Charlie one day. He was very careful; he didn’t go through the village but along the track leading to Ingleton, then up a footpath through the woods. But when I saw the boy, I realised that he’d known the slut for years.’

‘Many men have had mistresses, ma’am, without their wives turning to murder,’ Egbert said steadily.

‘He still loved her, although he had
me
. I could not forgive that,’ Miriam answered, as if in surprise that
they could not understand. ‘I went home and that night I told him I knew. He broke down, the fool, and told me he’d make me a good husband, but he’d always loved this Rose person, and would have married her if he could. Even then he was betraying me. He
had
married her. Oh, he loved me in a fashion, no doubt, after the girl was dead. But even then she came between us. There was always the memory of that boy. I had meant to kill him too.’

Auguste shivered. The face that he had thought fragile, now displayed only the iron will of ruthlessness, any sensitivity merely for herself.

‘I went to see her several times. Took her bonbons and sweetmeats – all quite innocent. And then I took some that weren’t. They were full of hemlock. She’d share them with the child and they’d both die – that’s what I wanted. But the child wasn’t there. She said he’d gone to visit someone, and she looked so triumphant, I feared she guessed what I’d intended. But she died all the same. Charlie was mad with grief. He found out that she’d died when he slipped off to visit her one day. He came back sobbing. All he could discover about the boy was that someone had come to take him away before Rose died. He was never found.’ Satisfaction oozed from the voice that had once seemed charming.

‘Until the boy found
you
,’ Egbert pointed out, ‘over fifty years later. He came here asking for “her Ladyship”, meaning you, though we took it to be your daughter-in-law.’

‘He was as big a fool as his mother. Yes, he told me he was Charlie’s bastard, but that he didn’t want anything except to meet his family. He showed me a letter, though there was nothing about a marriage in it. Then George came bursting in with Priscilla, wanting to know what it was all about. He told them,
beaming all over his ugly face. They made this agreement to buy him off. But they didn’t know I’d already planned to kill him. “Come along when the family party is on,” I’d already told him. “His Majesty will be here. We’ll give the family a big surprise and introduce you at midnight.” The stupid fool wanted to know if he’d have to dress up and I told him not to worry about clothes as he’d have to climb over a wall because the gates would be guarded, so I would lend him some of Charlie’s. I showed him from the window where the smokehouse was and told him to come there just before midnight and I’d escort him to the house and introduce him to the King. The idiot thought it a wonderful idea.’

‘So you admit it was also you who killed Tom Tabor and not your daughter?’

There was a pause. Auguste felt sickened at the calculations clearly running through her mind, indecision shown on her face.

‘Let me make it simple for you, ma’am,’ Egbert continued. ‘
You
killed him. Your daughter was merely trying to protect you. Like your whole family has been doing ever since you returned to the house and no doubt told Savage what you’d done.’

Savage stared at him unblinking, unmoved.

Miriam said nothing, merely smiled.

‘We know now your daughter is lying about what happened that night. Mr Didier was looking at a certain piece of art in the smokehouse earlier in the evening and is ready to swear there was no gun on the mantelpiece beneath.’

The Dowager gazed first in undisguised contempt, then with something like amusement. She shrugged those delicate shoulders.

‘I had to kill him,’ she said at last. ‘He was
hers
, and after all he’d only escaped by chance all those years
ago. I left the dance, and instead of going upstairs to where dear Savage would be waiting, I went to the gun room, took the Webley and hid it in the smokehouse until that terrible man arrived. I shot him at precisely twelve o’clock, dropped the gun and came back.’

‘How did you get in again, ma’am? The doors were locked.’

‘I was once the chatelaine of this house, Chief Inspector; I have a key. I told dear Savage what I had done of course,’ she did not even glance at her, ‘and she insisted on going straight to Priscilla. I was extremely annoyed. I daresay you meant it for the best,’ she added kindly to Savage. ‘I went to bed, and I understand Priscilla and Savage between them concocted some plan to obscure the truth. I believe Savage then woke poor Laura, and rooted out poor Victoria and Alfred. Didn’t you, Savage?’

‘If you say so, my lady.’

‘So that’s all. I couldn’t let him live, could I?’ Miriam was confident of their understanding. ‘I think – if I might sleep here tonight, I shall be ready for you in the morning, Chief Inspector.’

Egbert looked at her steadily. ‘Very well, ma’am. If that’s the way you wish it.’ As they left, the quiet was broken by a terrible sound. Not from Miriam. The harsh raucous sobs were Savage’s.

Yet again Auguste was chilly and unable to sleep. He drew back the curtains, feeling the rush of cold air on his body, and hurriedly shut the window. Outside a cat howled, the trees were dark against the sky, bushes appeared as black indiscernible shapes. The cat yowled again. Auguste firmly drew the curtains, shutting out the menace of the outside world, and climbed back into bed, putting his arm round his sleeping wife. He dozed fitfully, dreaming of fleeing figures, one of which
was himself, bounding across the limestone crags of the top of Malham Cave. Before him was Tatiana, arms outstretched, behind him . . .

He woke up with a jump. The curtains were drawn back, daylight streaming in, and Tatiana, dressed in a wrap, was standing over him.

‘Wake up, Auguste. She’s dead. Egbert wants to see you.’

No need to ask who. He had told Tatiana everything last night. No need to ask if Egbert had suspected this might happen. Some things were better unspoken. Once the ingredients had been added in their correct order, he had seen the truth. Not Tom, but Rose herself came first. And once that had been established, Miriam obviously became the catalyst of the whole tragic story. Moffat had given him the clue and he had not seen its significance: there had been no trace of the boy when Rose’s body was found. He could not have run away on his own; he must have been sent away because Rose had feared for his life. Amos had mentioned an outcomer asking for her shortly before her death. Surely it must have been Scarface, come to take the boy? And as for poor Tom, who else would have invited him here and killed him the very night the King was dining? Only Miriam, with her casual disregard for detail in her overwhelming hate. Savage would cope with the detail. The servants would always cope with unpleasant details.

‘How?’ he asked Egbert, as soon as he had scrambled into his clothes, and burst into Rose’s rooms.

Egbert shrugged. ‘Sleeping powders. Suffocation,’ and as Auguste looked puzzled, added impatiently, ‘Do you think Savage would let her stand trial? Or maybe she just died of heart failure. It must have been a shock, after all, to be exposed as a double murderess. The doctor’s with her now.
Her
doctor,’ he emphasised.
‘No need to have police doctors in unless we’re forced to.’

The last unpleasant detail poor Savage had had to perform.

‘Are you quite satisfied with your work, Chief Inspector?’ Priscilla, grey-faced and subdued, came into the room.

‘Yes, ma’am. We’ve found out the truth at last.’

‘Truth,’ retorted Priscilla bitterly. ‘What is truth?’

‘Facts. You all knew your mother-in-law murdered Thomas Tabor; you were all prepared to protect her even to the point of confessing to the crime yourselves.’ Seeing her hesitate, ‘This is between us. I haven’t the evidence – now – to bring charges. Tom Griffin’s death is officially recorded as that of an unknown man, and might stay that way. There’s only one outside person who’d know otherwise, apart from Mr Didier and the police.’

‘Who?’

‘No one who need concern you, ma’am. A travelling showman by the name of Blackboots. And no doubt if he were told he could have Tom’s galloper back, he wouldn’t be too curious.’

Auguste, watching with interest, saw Blackboots instantly dismissed by Priscilla as a person not worthy of note.

‘It’ll not occur to him that folks like you could be capable of murder.’

The irony in his voice escaped Priscilla. ‘Thank you, Chief Inspector.’

‘And now maybe you’ll tell me something; if you can, that is. Why didn’t your father-in-law marry Rose again after he found out the marriage wasn’t valid in ’44?’

‘He did not know where Rose was,’ Priscilla said at last. ‘Either she disappeared at her own wish, or his
father intervened and set Rose up in that cottage. By the time he tracked her down to Clapham he was married, or so he thought, to Miriam. He upbraided his father for his part in separating him from Rose, and there were terrible quarrels. His father told him nothing further about the validity of the marriage, but when his mother was dying in 1849, it was on her conscience and she told Charles the marriage had been valid, something he had never thought to check in the pain of losing Rose. It is, I suppose,’ she sounded surprised, as if considering this for the first time, ‘a sad story.’

‘It is indeed, ma’am.’

‘But that raises another point, Lady Tabor,’ Auguste said, puzzled. ‘If he knew his marriage to your mother-in-law was invalid, why didn’t he marry her once Rose was dead?’

‘George was born in March 1847 and the girl did not die until June of that year,’ Priscilla told him unemotionally. ‘So George would still have been illegitimate. It was not at all certain legally that a subsequent marriage could legitimise him. If my mother-in-law had failed to have another son, there would have been no heir.’

‘Except poor Tom Griffin, if he could be found.’

‘Charles Tabor made every effort to find him, and failed.’

‘Even though he
knew
he was his legal heir?’

‘There is more than banquets and balls to an estate and house such as this,’ Priscilla replied stiffly after a moment. ‘There are obligations which at times sit heavily on the heart. The boy could not be found, and beneath my father-in-law’s roof was a child whom the world believed to be his legitimate heir. My father-in-law’s will carefully bequeathed such goods as he could leave independently of the entail to George; as regards
what passed under the entail he had to take the risk that one day a claimant might turn up.’

‘And now the legitimate heir
has
turned up, Lady Tabor?’