Shadows & Lies Page 15

  Propping his buttocks on a desk, he reached for the wall-mounted instrument and asked for the number of the police station at Bridgnorth. After some time, he was connected to a faraway voice on the other end of the line which informed him that the inspector was at that very moment driving out to Belmonde.

  Meredith’s methods might be slower than Crockett’s, but he had not been idle since the departure of his colleague. He had, early on, been forced to let his prime suspect, Tom Jordan, go, through lack of any evidence, or indeed any motive. But far from consigning the mystery of the murdered woman to the unsolved annals of police history, he had kept it in his mind ever since the London man had been called back to the Yard. Meredith’s was a slow and patient nature; he believed in giving time for the initial excitement and perhaps panic to subside, when, lulled into a sense of false security, the culprit might give himself away. After Crockett’s initial questioning, and the apparent abandonment of the case, whoever had done the murder must by now believe himself in the clear. It was perhaps time for Meredith to do a little questioning on his own account, even if it meant disturbing once more the apparently smooth relationships and comfortable lives of those fortunate beings living at the Abbey.

  The pony-trap’s wheels grated on the stony road surface in the eerie silence engendered by the fog – not the obnoxious yellow reek that it was in the capital – but all the same, progress was slow as it swirled around, thick as curdled cream. Trees loomed spectrally along the sides of the road, familiar landmarks were non-existent. The pony trotted on, blinkered and unaware of anything but the small section of road ahead visible to him. Meredith reflected that he was rather glad he had not elected to arrive at Belmonde by one of the new-fangled motors (though it might have been more appropriate perhaps, given the status of this enquiry). As the hollow clop of a big horse’s hooves and the rumble of heavy wheels signalled a cart approaching in the other direction, which then loomed up through the fog with alarming suddenness, he was glad that he had, after all, elected to drive himself in the pony trap. As far as he knew, it had never yet killed anyone.

  It seemed his first interview would have to be postponed, since the man he wanted to see, Joseph Blythe, the butler, was busy elsewhere at the moment. “Tell him I’d be obliged if he would spare me a few minutes later, then,” Meredith said to the young footman who’d opened the door, and asked for Lady Chetwynd’s maid meanwhile.

  Lily Chater received him in a small room that was strewn with bits of sewing and feminine garments of all kinds, evidently devoted to the mending, pressing and repairing of her mistress’s clothes. A flat iron stood on its end on an ironing table and a smell of warm linen pervaded the room. An elegant tweed walking costume on a hanger depended from the picture rail. The maid had been busy treadling a sewing machine when he was shown in, and rattled along to the end of a long seam in some grey, silky material, then took her time to snip off the thread with scissors and fasten it off before looking up. “What is it?” she asked coolly, raising her eyebrows.

  Meredith gave his name and sat himself on a chair inside the door. He hadn’t been invited to take a seat but he was not going to stand in front of this young madam. She had a pursy little mouth and it hadn’t taken him a minute to see that he couldn’t expect much from her, certainly nothing in the way of tittle-tattle or gossip which might turn out to be useful. However, his first question, as to how long she had been with Lady Chetwynd and whether she was happy in her position as lady’s maid, elicited a sharp response.

  “Happy? Of course I am. Nobody could wish for a better mistress.” Lily was quick and alert, slim and personable, dressed in a tailored serge skirt and a modestly patterned blouse tucked into a neat waist, but she had knowing eyes and had cultivated a painfully genteel accent that grated on him. “When she heard that my previous lady had dismissed me – without a character, I might say, and only because she found I was walking out with my young man and hadn’t seen fit to tell her about him – Lady Chetwynd took me on and I’ve been with her ever since – that’s five years.” Unlike most of the other servants, he recalled, nearly all of whom had been with the family all their working lives. Which was, of course, part of the trouble. So far they could not be induced, through loyalty – or maybe fear of losing their positions – to say anything remotely damaging to their employers. “She’s that kind and considerate,” went on Lily Chater, in her affected voice, “I’d do anything for her Ladyship …I won’t have a word said against her, nor would I leave her for all the tea in China.”

  “Not even for your young man?”

  “Oh, him,” Lily said, tossing her head. “He’s long gone. Wanted me to marry him straight away and give up being in service, but he wasn’t worth losing the opportunity of being with her Ladyship.”

  When it came to the day in question, Lily said in a rather bored voice that she didn’t remember much about it, and implied, picking a stray thread off her dark blue skirt, and beginning to thread a needle, that it was unreasonable to expect her to remember details after two months. “Oh come,” said Meredith, “a bright young woman like you must have a better memory than that.”

  Oh. Well, not really, but she did remember that her mistress hadn’t been so well that day. She sometimes had trouble with her chest, and her breathing had been quite bad. She’d retired to her room after lunch and stayed there until she called Lily to redo her hair and help her dress before going down for tea. “Wet weather frizzes one’s hair up no end, you know,” added Lily, who evidently remembered the essentials, if little else, patting her own. “The dampness gets everywhere when it’s as wet as it was those last few weeks.”

  “I see.” Meredith absorbed this hitherto unsuspected piece of information on the feminine toilette while thinking of what the young woman had just said. Her mistress could evidently do no wrong in Lily Chater’s eyes. I’d do anything for her. Did that include lying for her mistress? Meredith decided the question was, for the moment at any rate, irrelevant, since he couldn’t see what Lady Chetwynd could have to conceal. He could hardly envisage her white, be-ringed hands round anyone’s throat, throttling the life out of them.

  “Sorry to keep you waiting,” apologised Blythe. “We can use Mrs Fosset’s room, where we can be undisturbed. No doubt she will send us some refreshment presently.”

  The housekeeper’s room was a cosy, old-fashioned sanctuary, with a bright fire blazing, dark green and red crotcheted woollen antimaccassars smoothed over the back of each of the horsehair chairs drawn up to the hearth, a small polished table already laid with cups and saucers and a lace-trimmed cloth. The walls were covered with a fruit-patterned wallpaper from the last century, in colours predominantly plum, grey and brown; framed photographs of the family stood on every available surface, and on the sideboard, a pair of glass domes covered arrangements of wax fruit and flowers. It was a comfortable Victorian haven in which Blythe was evidently accustomed to making himself at home.

  Coffee was brought in by a maid who remained to pour it before departing with a bob. Despite his affability, Meredith saw from the first that old Blythe would be a hard nut to crack. He was very old indeed, but spry and by no means slow-witted. He had ruled below-stairs for more years than Meredith had been alive, and loyalty to the family above stairs was the paramount thing in his life. Service with the Chetwynds must have something to recommend it, the inspector mused, to be able to inspire devotion in two such different personalities as Lily Chater and Joseph Blythe.

  “What’s all this about, Inspector? I thought it was all over. I’ve been here fifty-eight years, man and boy, and we have never had such a thing happen before at Belmonde.”

  It seemed to Meredith that the old butler was affronted at the indignity of what had occurred rather than the tragedy. “Oh dear me, no, Mr Blythe. We police are like the British bulldog, you know. Never let go,” he said portentously, swallowing the last mouthful of an excellent slice of Madeira cake, “But now and then we do miss the odd little thing that might jus
t turn out to be important. So let’s go over your original statement again, if you don’t mind. Let’s see, what time did you say Mr Sebastian got here?”

  “Three-thirty. In the middle of a thunderstorm.”

  “Three-thirty. So he said, too. Precisely?”

  “Perhaps a few minutes before.”

  “I believe in your original statement you said no one else had called at the house that day. That would be at the front door, of course?” Blythe inclined his head. “Good. Before I go, I’ll confirm with those in the kitchen that no one came to the back, either.”

  “That won’t be necessary. I can speak for the rest of the staff,” Blythe said stiffly. “I questioned them myself, and there was no one except for the usual delivery people and so on — all of them known to us.”

  “And Sir Henry? He was out that afternoon until – what time?”

  “I couldn’t say – you must ask one of the maids – or Mr Seton, who was there with him. He’d have rung for his tea as he always does, at whatever time he wants it, and one of them would have taken it in, seeing that it was the day for the large silver, and I was in the dining room supervising most of the afternoon. Some ornate items there, too big to move and must be polished in situ. Can’t always trust these young footmen to do that sort of job properly nowadays, I’m sorry to say.”

  “He wasn’t expecting anyone, then?”

  “If you mean the woman who was murdered, certainly not.” The old butler’s voice took on a noticeable edge. “As I said, he went out as usual after lunch, to walk the dogs. Mornings are for estate business, sometimes with Mr Seton, sometimes alone, but if he had been expecting anyone in the afternoon, he wouldn’t have gone out at all, not Sir Henry. In any case, a woman of that sort would hardly be the type to call on him.”

  “Remarkably well informed as to what sort of woman she was, eh, Mr Blythe?”

  Blythe looked down his nose. “It was soon a matter of common knowledge, Mr Meredith.”

  “Hmm, I suppose that’s so.” Meredith fumbled with his notebook. “And her Ladyship? Miss Chater says her mistress was resting in her room all afternoon.”

  “Don’t believe anything that girl says. She gives herself airs and she’s a flighty piece, what’s more – set her sights on Albert, the footman, she has, though much good may that do her, for he’s turning out to be a trouble-maker. I have my eye on the pair of them.” Blythe would have no jurisdiction over Lily Chater, but a footman was another matter. It was evident Albert’s days were numbered. “Not that I have any reason to believe her Ladyship wasn’t in her room that afternoon,” the butler went on. “Indeed, she looked most unwell at lunch, so I dare say Miss Chater is right.”

  The strapping young footman who had let him in knocked on the door, saying, when he entered, “If you please, Mr Blythe, Lady Emily sends her compliments and asks the inspector if he’d be so good as to see her before he leaves.”

  “Lady Emily, Albert?” Blythe regarded the young man over his spectacles. Clearly this was not a request he was prepared to accede to without question.

  “Yes, Mr Blythe. She said to take your time, sir,” the footman told Meredith. “She’ll be in her sitting room until eleven o’clock, which is the time she goes out for her drive.”

  Meredith looked a his watch. If he went now, that would give him twenty minutes in which to speak to Lady Emily. “I’ll come along now.”

  He thanked Blythe for his time and the footman led him through a series of rooms filled with mirrors and scented, flowering, hothouse plants, up staircases where generations of Chetwynds regarded each other gloomily from one wall to another, along a confusion of corridors, until even Meredith, who had a good sense of direction, doubted whether he would ever find his way back through the maze.

  The journey led to the west wing, and the house as it had presumably been before the advent of the present Lady Chetwynd – possibly, judging by the age of some of the pieces – before the advent of the dowager.

  They turned the corner of a staircase, and there the footman came to a halt.

  “Lady Emily’s sitting room is just along there,” he said, indicating a wide oak door further along the corridor. “But first, can I have a word, sir?”

  “You’ve something to tell me?”

  Albert shuffled his feet. “Well, sir, it’s like this. I feel I have a duty.” Oh yes, thought Meredith sceptically. Duty. Telling tales out of school, more like, rather than anything which might be useful. “This murder you’re looking into, see …well, there’s something I think you ought rightly to know.”

  “Go on.” Meredith didn’t like the sound of this. If it came to that, he didn’t much like the look of Albert himself. Eyes too close together, and a look of self-righteousness.

  “Well, see, it’s my job to sort the post when it comes of a morning, and it strikes me there’s been something funny going on. Some letters for Sir Henry. The first one I noticed came second post one day, on its own like, which was how I noticed it particular, I reckon. When I took it into him in the business room, he changed colour. I thought nothing of it, except that maybe it was likely to be a nasty bill, but they went on coming. Regular as clockwork, they were. London postmark. Always the same envelopes, same sort of funny writing, see …”

  “Funny, how?”

  “Spiky looking, like.”

  “Hmm,” said Meredith. “I’m wondering why you think it’s necessary for me to know about the personal correspondence Sir Henry had from his friends.”

  “It might have been personal, but I don’t reckon it was any friend sent them letters. Not the way they upset Sir Henry. And they was addressed to ‘Sir Chetwynd’.” Albert sniggered, his lip curling at the idea that any friend would have the ignorance to address him so mistakenly. “Nor have there been any more since that woman was found dead,” he added.

  He was a handsome, sulky fellow with a high colour and deep-set eyes, very smart, his broad shoulders straining his frogged and braided jacket, the brass buttons on his waistcoat winking. Meredith could recognise an attitude that spelled trouble, a face that wanted revenge. What had Sir Henry done to this fellow?

  The door along the corridor which the footman said led to Lady Emily’s apartments opened, and there she stood in the doorway, leaning a little on her silver-knobbed cane. “Come in, Inspector Meredith, out of this draughty corridor. Thank you, Albert, that will do.”

  She indicated a chair he should take and sat herself in an upright one on the opposite side of the fireplace, where a bright coal fire burned, and raised her feet on to a velvet footstool. Immediately, she took up a tapestry that lay on a table by her side and began stabbing her needle into it.

  After the preliminaries were over, she wasted no time in coming to the point. “I see you are wondering why I have sent for you. The nub of it is, Inspector Meredith, that I am not of the opinion that lies should be told in an enquiry of this nature.”

  He could not forbear a smile. “A lady after my own heart.”

  “That’s as may be, but it has never been my opinion that any good comes from hiding the truth. I shall be greatly relieved if you can get to the bottom of what has been happening, for Henry’s sake, as well as for everyone else’s, and if he won’t help you, then I will.” She paused and put aside her sewing. “What was Albert saying to you?”

  “I don’t know that I should —”

  “You will not, I assure you, tell me anything I don’t already suspect about that young man. May I speak to you in the strictest confidence?”

  “Well, of course, I —”

  “Good.” She lifted the tapestry, but then let it drop into her lap. “There is a great deal of unrest about these days, as I’m sure you’re aware. Dangerous people about, inciting the lower classes to all sorts of unruly behaviour. Here at Belmonde we pride ourselves on our good relations with the servants. That young man, Albert, for instance …his family has served the Chetwynds for generations, with unswerving loyalty. His father was coachman her
e for thirty years – and now there is a rumour that he has been upsetting the other servants, inciting them to demand higher wages, better conditions. I am happy to say that they are every one of them well aware they would get no better treatment anywhere in the land than at Belmonde, and are quite content with conditions as they are. Albert’s trouble-making has come to Sir Henry’s ears, however, and he has been put under notice to leave. My son is being most lenient with him in letting him stay until he has found another situation.” She paused to let that sink in. “I see you understand me.”

  Indeed, thought Meredith, that was a leniency so unprecedented he immediately suspected pressure from Albert on Sir Henry about those letters, and he suspected this was what Lady Emily wished to convey, without saying it in so many words. Immediate dismissal for stirring up dissension would have been more usual. “So if he has said anything to you – and if he has not already done so, I am sure he will – I would advise you to take very little notice of anything he says.”

  “About what, my lady?”

  “About the letters my son has been receiving,” she answered without prevarication, meeting his glance fair and square. “Never mind how I know about them – or what I suspect he has said to you. I may be old, but I know human nature, and there is not much goes on at Belmonde that I don’t make it my business to be acquainted with. It would avail you nothing to pursue that matter – they were letters of a delicate nature. From – a lady. Need I say more?”