Final Curtain (28 page)

‘I see,' said Desdemona, nodding owlishly. ‘Yes, I see. Go on.'

‘To put it baldly, do you yourself think there is any truth in the suggestion made by the anonymous letter-writer?'

Desdemona pressed the palms of her hands carefully against her eyes. ‘If I
could
dismiss it,' she cried. ‘If I could!'

‘You have no idea, I suppose, who could have written the letters?' She shook her head. Alleyn wondered if she had glanced at him through her fingers.

‘Have any of you been up to London since your father's funeral?'

‘How frightful!' she said, dropping her hands and gazing at him. ‘I was afraid of this. How frightful!'

‘What?'

‘You think one of us wrote the letter? Someone at Ancreton?'

‘Well, really,' said Alleyn, stifling his exasperation, ‘it's not a preposterous conjecture, is it?'

‘No, no. I suppose not. But what a disturbing thought.'

‘Well, did any of you go to London—'

‘Let me think, let me think,' Desdemona muttered, again covering her eyes. ‘In the evening. After we had—had—after Papa's funeral, and after Mr Rattisbon had—' She made another little helpless gesture.

‘—had read the Will?' Alleyn suggested.

‘Yes. That evening, by the seven-thirty. Thomas and Jenetta (my sister-in-law) and Fenella (her daughter) and Paul (my nephew, Paul Kentish) all went up to London.'

‘And returned? When?'

‘Not at all. Jenetta doesn't live here and Fenella and Paul, because of—However, Fenella has joined her mother in a flat and I think Paul's staying with them. My brother Thomas, as you know, lives in London.'

‘And nobody else has left Ancreton?'

Yes, it seemed that the following day Millamant and Cedric and Desdemona herself had gone up to London by the early morning train. There was a certain amount of business to be done. They returned in the evening. It was by that evening's post, the Wednesday's, Alleyn reflected, that the anonymous letter reached the Yard. He found by dint of cautious questioning that they had all separated in London and gone their several ways to meet in the evening train.

‘And Miss Orrincourt?' Alleyn asked.

‘I'm afraid,' said Desdemona grandly, ‘that I've really no knowledge at all of Miss Orrincourt's movements. She was away all day yesterday; I imagine in London.'

‘She's staying on here?'

‘You may well look astonished,' said Desdemona, though Alleyn, to his belief, had looked nothing of the sort. ‘After everything, Mr Alleyn. After working against us with Papa! After humiliating and wounding us in every possible way. In the teeth, you might say, of the Family's feelings, she stays on. T'uh!'

‘Does Sir Cedric—?'

‘Cedric,' said Desdemona, ‘is now the head of the Family, but I have no hesitation in saying that I think his attitude to a good many things inexplicable and revolting. Particularly where Sonia Orrincourt (you'll never get me to believe she was born Orrincourt) is concerned. What he's up to, what both of them—However!'

Alleyn did not press for an exposition of Cedric's behaviour. At the moment he was fascinated by Desdemona's. On the wall opposite her hung a looking-glass in a Georgian frame. He saw that Desdemona was keeping an eye on herself. Even as she moved her palms from before her eyes, her fingers touched her hair and she slightly turned her head while her abstracted yet watchful gaze noted, he thought, the effect. And as often as she directed her melting glance upon him, so often did it return to the mirror to affirm with a satisfaction barely veiled its own limpid quality. He felt as if he interviewed a mannequin.

‘I understand,' he said, ‘that it was you who found the tin of rat-bane in Miss Orrincourt's suitcase?'

‘Wasn't it awful? Well, it was three of us, actually. My sister Pauline (Mrs Kentish), my sister-in-law, and Cedric and I. In her box-room, you know. A very common-looking suitcase smothered in Number Three Company touring labels. As I've pointed out to Thomas a thousand times, the woman is simply a squalid little ham actress. Well,
not
an actress. All eyes and teeth in the third row of the chorus when she's lucky.'

‘Did you yourself handle it?'

‘Oh, we all handled it. Naturally. Cedric tried to prise up the lid, but it wouldn't come. So he tapped the tin, and said he could tell from the sound that it wasn't full.' She lowered her voice. ‘ “Only half-full,” he said. And Milly (my sister-in-law, Mrs Henry Ancred) said—' She paused.

‘Yes?' Alleyn prompted, tired of these genealogical parentheses. ‘Mrs Henry Ancred said?'

‘She said that to the best of her knowledge it had never been used.' She changed her position a little and added: ‘I don't understand Milly. She's so off-hand. Of course I know she's frightfully capable but—well, she's not an Ancred and doesn't feel as we do. She's—well, let's face it, she's a bit MC, do you know?'

Alleyn did not respond to this appeal from blue blood to blue blood. He said: ‘Was the suitcase locked?'

‘We wouldn't have broken anything open, Mr Alleyn.'

‘Wouldn't you?' he said vaguely. Desdemona glanced in the mirror. ‘Well—Pauline might,' she admitted after a pause.

Alleyn waited for a moment, caught Fox's eye and stood up. He said: ‘Now, Miss Ancred, I wonder if we may see your father's room?'

‘Papa's
room
?'

‘If we may.'

‘I couldn't—you won't mind if I—? I'll ask Barker—'

‘If he'd just show us in the general direction we could find our own way.'

Desdemona stretched out her hands impulsively. ‘You
do
understand,' she said. ‘You do understand how one feels. Thank you.'

Alleyn smiled vaguely, dodged the outstretched hands and made for the door. ‘Perhaps Barker,' he suggested, ‘could show us the room.'

Desdemona swept to the bell-push and in a moment or two Barker came in. With enormous aplomb she explained what he was to do. She contrived to turn Barker into the very quintessence of family retainers. The atmosphere in the little sitting-room grew more and more feudal. ‘These gentlemen,' she ended, ‘have come to help us, Barker. We, in our turn, must help them, mustn't we? You will help them, won't you?'

‘Certainly, miss,' said Barker. ‘If you would come this way, sir?'

How well Troy had described the great stairs and the gallery and the yards and yards of dead canvas in heavy frames. And the smell. The Victorian smell of varnish, carpet, wax, and mysteriously, paste. A yellow smell, she had said. Here was the first long corridor, and there, branching from it, the passage to Troy's tower. This was where she had lost herself that first night and these were the rooms with their ridiculous names. On his right,
Bancroft
and
Bernhardt
; on his left,
Terry
and
Bracegirdle
; then an open linen closet and bathrooms. Barker's coattails jigged steadily ahead of them. His head was stooped, and one saw only a thin fringe of grey hair and a little dandruff on his back collar. Here was the cross-corridor, corresponding with the picture gallery, and facing them a closed door, with the legend, in gothic lettering, ‘
Irving
.'

‘This is the room, sir,' said Barker's faded and breathless voice. ‘We'll go in, if you please.'

The door opened on darkness and the smell of disinfectant. A momentary fumbling, and then a bedside lamp threw a pool of light upon a table and a crimson counterpane. With a clatter of rings Barker pulled aside the window curtains and then let up the blinds.

The aspect of the room that struck Alleyn most forcibly was the extraordinary number of prints and photographs upon the walls. They were so lavishly distributed that almost all the paper, a red flock powdered with stars, was concealed by them. Next he noticed the heavy richness of the appointments; the enormous looking-glass, the brocades and velvets, the massive and forbidding furniture.

Suspended above the bed was a long cord. He saw that it ended, not in a bell-push, but in raw strands of wire.

‘Will that be all, sir?' said Barker, behind them.

‘Stop for a minute, will you?' Alleyn said. ‘I want you to help us, Barker.'

He was indeed very old. His eyes were filmy and expressed nothing but a remote sadness. His hands seemed to have shrunk away from their own empurpled veins, and were tremulous. But all these witnesses of age were in part disguised by a lifetime's habit of attentiveness to other people's wants. There was the shadow of alacrity still about Barker.

‘I don't think,' Alleyn said, ‘that Miss Ancred quite explained why we are here. It's at Mr Thomas Ancred's suggestion. He wants us to make fuller inquiries into the cause of Sir Henry's death.'

‘Indeed, sir?'

‘Some of his family believe that the diagnosis was too hastily given.'

‘Quite so, sir.'

‘Had you any such misgivings yourself?'

Barker closed and unclosed his hands. ‘I can't say I had, sir. Not at first.'

‘Not at first?'

‘Knowing what he took to eat and drink at dinner, sir, and the way he was worked up, and had been over and over again. Dr Withers had warned him of it, sir.'

‘But later? After the funeral? And now?'

‘I really can't say, sir. What with Mrs Kentish and Mrs Henry and Miss Desdemona asking me over and over again about a certain missing article and what with us all being very put about in the servants' hall, I can't really say.'

‘A tin of rat-bane was the missing article?'

‘Yes, sir. I understand they've found it now.'

‘And the question they want settled is whether it was an opened or unopened tin before it was lost. Is that it?'

‘I understand that's it, sir. But we've had that stuff on the premises these last ten years and more. Two tins there were, sir, in one of the outside store-rooms and there was one opened and used up and thrown out. That I do know. About this one that's turned up, I can't say. Mrs Henry Ancred recollects, sir, that it was there about a year ago, unopened, and Mrs Bullivant, the cook, says it's been partly used since then, and Mrs Henry doesn't fancy so, and that's all I can say, sir.'

‘Do you know if rat poison has ever been used in Miss Orrincourt's room?'

Barker's manner became glazed with displeasure.

‘Never to my knowledge, sir,' he said.

‘Are there no rats there?'

‘The lady in question complained of them, I understand, to one of the housemaids, who set traps and caught several. I believe the lady said she didn't fancy the idea of poison, and for that reason it was not employed.'

‘I see. Now, Barker, if you will, I should like you to tell me exactly what this room looked like when you entered it on the morning after Sir Henry's death.'

Barker's sunken hand moved to his lips and covered their trembling. A film of tears spread over his eyes.

‘I know it's distressing for you,' Alleyn said, ‘and I'm sorry. Sit down. No, please sit down.'

Barker stooped his head a little and sat on the only high chair in the room.

‘I'm sure,' Alleyn said, ‘that if there was anything gravely amiss you'd want to see it remedied.'

Barker seemed to struggle between his professional reticence and his personal distress. Finally, in a sudden flood of garrulity, he produced the classical reaction: ‘I wouldn't want to see this house mixed up in anything scandalous, sir. My father was butler here to the former baronet, Sir Henry's second cousin—Sir William Ancred, that was—I was knife-boy and then footman under him. He was not,' said Barker, ‘anything to do with theatricals, sir, the old gentleman wasn't. This would have been a great blow to him.'

‘You mean the manner of Sir Henry's death?'