The Shadow at Greystone Chase (An Angela Marchmont Mystery Book 10) (9 page)

‘That is Roger de Lisle,’ said Mrs. Smith. ‘He died about three years ago.’

‘Are you sure?’ said Freddy. ‘Did they make quite certain of it before they buried him? He doesn’t look the sort to be felled by anything short of a passing meteor.’

‘He was a very hearty man for the most part,’ agreed Mrs. Smith. ‘It was a gastric attack from a bad oyster that carried him off in the end.’

‘And this must be his son, the present Mr. de Lisle,’ said Freddy, indicating another portrait. ‘The resemblance is striking, although he doesn’t look as though he’s built on quite the same scale as his father.’

‘Yes, that is Mr. Godfrey de Lisle,’ said Mrs. Smith.

‘Wasn’t there another son?’ said Freddy. The housekeeper hesitated, and he went on confidentially, ‘We know all about the family scandal from old Gilverson, of course. He wanted to be certain that we didn’t care about that sort of thing before we came to look at the place. It’s all the same to me, but I thought Mother might be a little worried.’

‘What’s past is past,’ said Angela, who here felt called upon to say something. ‘I don’t believe in ghosts myself, but if one’s buying a place one likes to know everything beforehand, just so there are no unpleasant surprises afterwards.’

‘It must have been a terrible time for the family,’ said Freddy, adopting his most sympathetic manner—the one with which he had induced many a wronged wife to tell far more than she had intended to about her husband’s mysterious disappearance in company with a painted young woman and the week’s takings. ‘And for the servants, too. We never hear much about
them
in cases such as this, do we? No-one ever considers
their
feelings, or asks how they can be expected to get on with their work, what with people weeping in corners and the police tramping muddy footprints all over the place.’

‘No indeed,’ said Mrs. Smith, sensing a kindred spirit. ‘There are not many people who think about such things, sir. I had not long started here as a housekeeper when it all happened, and I’m sure I needn’t tell you that the household was in an uproar for many weeks afterwards. Many of the men had gone to the Front, of course, and so we were rather short-handed, and for some time it seemed impossible to get anything done without one of the girls having to be comforted. One of the maids was so upset that she left without notice.’

‘I don’t blame her,’ said Freddy. ‘I’m only surprised more of them didn’t do the same. You are obviously made of sterner stuff, though, Mrs. Smith. Are you the only one left now?’

‘Of those who were here at the time? Yes, I believe I am,’ said the housekeeper.

‘I understand there was some doubt as to whether the younger Mr. de Lisle was guilty,’ said Freddy.

‘None of the servants could believe it,’ said Mrs. Smith. ‘He was very well liked, you see. We none of us believed he could have done it. We all thought some passing tramp must have got in somehow and killed her. I saw Mr. Edgar shortly after he found her, and nobody to look at him could have thought he was anything but truly shocked and grief-stricken. He seemed in a daze, the poor thing. The servants were quite moved to pity. Not like—’

Here she seemed to recollect herself, and Angela wondered whether she had been going to say, ‘Not like his family.’

‘Which of these pictures is of him?’ said Freddy.

‘None of them, sir,’ said Mrs. Smith. ‘After the trial his portrait was taken down on the instructions of the late Mr. de Lisle. I don’t know where it is now.’

Angela had turned to look at a picture of an elegant, dark-haired woman.

‘That is the late Mrs. de Lisle,’ said Mrs. Smith. ‘The present Mr. de Lisle’s mother. Sadly, she went into a decline and died not long after the trial.’

‘And this must be the young Mrs. de Lisle,’ said Freddy.

Angela turned her head sharply and went to stand beside him. She could not help but be curious about the woman Edgar Valencourt had loved, married and supposedly murdered. Her first thought was that Selina de Lisle had been nothing like herself. The girl in the picture was slight and fair-haired, and undoubtedly a beauty. She was dressed in the height of the fashions of ten years ago, and was shown in an informal pose in a garden, standing and leaning with her elbow on a crumbling wall. She was painted in full face, but there was a tilt to the head and a knowing look in her green eyes which spoke of—what? Repressed mischief, perhaps? Angela could not tell.

‘Such a lively young lady, she was,’ said Mrs. Smith. ‘All the gentleman admired her. Mr Edgar was lucky to get her for himself, as she was very young at the time, and you know how fickle the young can be.’

There seemed an under-current to her speech, and Angela longed to ask exactly what she meant by that, but Freddy was already asking another question about one of the de Lisle great-aunts, a forbidding-looking woman in widow’s weeds, and so the moment passed and could not be retrieved.

They were conducted upstairs and shown around the bedrooms—none of which was thirty feet square—and then they returned to the entrance-hall, where Mrs. Smith handed them over to a gardener, who was to show them the grounds. They thanked her profusely and went out, and Mrs. Smith was left to wonder whether she had been too indiscreet. The young man had been so charming, however, while the pale-faced lady with the sad eyes had seemed so sympathetic, that she had not been able to stop herself from telling them the story.

They took a short tour of the grounds in company with the gardener, and then returned by way of the side of the house to the front door. As they did so, Angela’s attention was caught by a little copse of trees at the bottom of the meadow perhaps two hundred yards away, and she wondered whether that was the wood in which Selina de Lisle had been found. She had half a mind to ask to go and see it, but decided against it, since it would look odd and perhaps even a little ghoulish—for there was no possible reason for anyone to be interested in the place unless they knew of the murder. Besides, after all this time there would be nothing to see.

Angela looked towards the building. Eleven years ago, someone had choked the life out of Selina de Lisle in that house. Whoever it was had shoved her body in a cupboard and then, perhaps in the dead of night, had brought her out here and hidden her in the woods at the bottom of the meadow. What had motivated such an attack?

‘Your brain is revolving, I can tell,’ said Freddy. ‘What is it?’

‘Oh, nothing useful,’ said Angela. ‘It’s just that strangling is such an awfully violent way to kill a person. I can’t help thinking that whoever did it must have truly hated her at that moment.’

‘I dare say he did,’ said Freddy. He gave her a glance of what might have been pity, although she did not see it, and then turned to ask the gardener a question.

As Angela continued to gaze absently at the house, she suddenly realized that someone was standing at one of the downstairs windows, looking out. From that distance she could not tell whether it were a man or a woman, but she had the impression of a lowering, brooding face and a kind of stillness. After a moment the face disappeared and did not reappear again.

They returned to the front of the house and were just about to take leave of the gardener when they saw another motor-car approaching up the drive. It stopped next to the Bentley and a man got out, whom Angela immediately recognized from his portrait to be Godfrey de Lisle. He looked completely unlike his brother, having the same tawny hair and light brown eyes as Roger de Lisle, although he lacked the imposing build. He came over to them and introduced himself, then begged their pardon for his having been unable to show them around the place in person.

‘Business took me to London yesterday,’ he said, ‘and I didn’t expect to be back until this evening. As it happened, it did not take as long as I thought it would, and so I came back as soon as I could. I see I am too late, however. I hope you have seen everything you wished to see.’

He had an unsmiling, almost haughty manner, although his words were perfectly polite.

‘Oh yes, thank you,’ said Freddy. ‘It’s a splendid house you have here. It seems just the sort of thing I’m looking for, and in the right part of the world too. Close to the sea, you know, but at the same time not too far from London.’

‘Yes, it is very convenient,’ said Godfrey de Lisle. There was a slight frown on his face as he looked at Freddy, and Angela wondered if he was entirely convinced of the truth of their story. She now spoke up.

‘Are you leaving Kent?’ she said.

‘We intend to,’ said de Lisle. ‘We live here only occasionally. Our home is in France, where we have a wine-making business. Our estates were severely damaged during the war, but we have been rebuilding them and would like to expand further, and so it is convenient to us now to sell Greystone Chase. My wife is French, you see, and is happier at home.’

‘Quite understandable,’ said Freddy.

They took their leave of Mr. de Lisle, promising that he should hear from them soon, and returned to the Bentley. As they expected, William had not much to report since, as Mrs. Smith had said, none of the present household had been at Greystone when the murder took place. They had all heard about it at second-hand, however, and had seen fit to embellish as they wished. The story of the servant who left without notice had been worked up into a fine tale. It was said that Jemima had always been a little simple, but after the murder she had gone quite out of her mind and jumped out of a window in the dead of night, never to be seen again. No-one had any real information to give, however.

‘You didn’t say much,’ observed Freddy to Angela as they returned to the hotel. ‘Are you all right?’

‘Yes, thank you,’ she said. ‘You were doing such a good job of things I didn’t feel the need to interrupt.’

In reality, she was feeling somewhat drained and had been only too pleased to leave all the talking to Freddy. Still, the visit was over with now. She had done it as she said she would, and it had not been as bad as she had expected, although they did not seem to have learnt very much up to now. It was still a mystery why the de Lisles had appeared to abandon their younger son to his fate. There was no indication that they had felt a particular animosity towards him for any reason, and so it appeared to her that their failure to speak up for him pointed in only one direction: they must have had some additional knowledge or proof of his guilt, and had withheld it in the hope that the case against him would look weaker in court. It seemed the only possible explanation. But if that were the case, then her continued investigation could not unearth anything to his advantage. On the contrary, it would most likely do nothing except to confirm his guilt once and for all, and would certainly do little to help Angela shake off her gloom. The logical thing to do now would be to step back from the case, but oddly enough the thought of there being some hidden proof of Valencourt’s guilt made her even more determined to pursue the investigation, for the events of the past few days had caused a little doubt to creep into the back of her mind. What she wanted was certainty, and to find that she would have to keep going.

A
FTER THEIR VISIT to Greystone Chase, Angela and Freddy agreed that if they were to investigate the matter properly they needed more information about the exact circumstances surrounding the death of Selina de Lisle, and so the next morning Freddy took himself off, intending to go and speak to his tame sergeant in the Kent police, to see if he could furnish them with more details of the events of that day. While he was gone Angela intended to try and catch Colonel Dempster alone, to see what he could tell her about the family. Fortunately for her, Mrs. Hudd and Miss Atkinson had spent a tiring day in Ramsgate the day before, and were just beginning a late breakfast as Angela was preparing to go out. Once outside, she took the path along the cliff top instead of descending the steps to the beach, hoping that the colonel would be a man of regular habits and that she would find him on the same stretch of sand as the other day. She was in luck, for as she walked briskly down the path to the promenade she spied the familiar figure, his dog by his side, strolling close to the water’s edge, and she bent her steps in that direction herself, in order to meet him apparently by chance.

As it happened, however, the colonel wanted to speak to her just as much as she did to him. He brightened when he saw her and greeted her heartily.

‘Mrs. Hudd was telling me your son has come to visit,’ he said. ‘Isn’t he out with you today?’

‘Not today. He has gone to visit a friend,’ said Angela. ‘He said he would be back in time for luncheon.’

The colonel harrumphed.

‘Must say, I was most surprised to discover you had a son of that age,’ he said. ‘Shouldn’t have thought you nearly old enough.’

Angela acknowledged the compliment graciously. He tapped his nose.

‘And I’ve found out what you’re up to,’ he said.

‘What do you mean?’ she said in sudden fear.

‘Saw you both leaving Greystone Chase yesterday in your car. Was curious, so I spoke to the gardener. He says you’re thinking of buying the place.’