Jemima Shore at the Sunny Grave Read online

  “Why do you ask me?” Dr. Kirkus looked steadily at her.

  “You have a first-class mind.” Jemima’s smile was not without irony. She added, “And besides, you know them.”

  “Yes,” said Dr. Kirkus after a long silence. “It could have happened like that. It would have been in both their characters. Certainly what seemed outwardly to take place was not in either of them. So the evidence suggests—” She paused to assume her spectacles. “I was very surprised by Alec even at the time, and even more surprised by Marie.” It was a judgment, the first judgment but not the last, on Professor Redding and his mistress, Marie Mayall, for the murder of her husband Paddy.

  When you looked at the events of the previous night from another angle, thought Jemima afterwards, how simple they seemed: planned with the same determination as her own speech, but with none of the same reluctance. A clever man, sexually active with a taste for high living, determined to marry his less intelligent colleague’s wealthy wife; the fact that the aforesaid colleague had not the sense to be faithful but actively philandered with a member of the same college was simply an added bonus. With Marie—reserved but passionate—in his thrall, it was easy for Alec Redding to devise his own very public insult: then Marie’s carefully coached response followed, which got her away from the dinner and home to safety in her own car.

  The inevitable offer of another car—Claire’s car—came next: inevitable because Claire famously lent out her car, and since she was due to spend the night talking to her old friend she would scarcely need it herself. Redding’s stained shirt was then the perfect excuse for him to leave the hall and fix the brakes … Redding, who was “snobbish” but also “knowledgeable” about cars … As for the brakes, supposing suspicion fell afterwards: where was it likely to fall but on Claire herself? Claire who was jealous of her lover’s refusal to leave his rich wife.

  “I wish he were dead,” Claire had told Jemima in a fit of drunken despair. Might not she have told others the same story?

  Even if that accident had failed, the blood—the blood red as wine—of Paddy Mayall would have flowed sooner or later. The new woman was to have the old man in her arms. Paddy Mayall’s tragedy had been ordained as surely as that of Sir Patrick Spens, even if it was less noble.

  I can date the beginning of the whole melancholy business quite clearly. It was that bet, I said. That’s what I told the detective, Tomlinson. I saw it all. I was in a privileged position, wasn’t I?

  “We both were,” says Bella, adding in that reproving little voice of hers, “We both looked after the Colonel and Lady Sissy.” Then she clicks her tongue, a thoroughly maddening habit.

  To return to the beginning: the bet. Let’s face it, Bella was in the kitchen and I was getting them their drinks, their PPs, as the Colonel always called them. PP for pre-prandial. He had nicknames for everything, everything to do with drink that is. Posties were post-prandial drinks (not many of those allowed) and MMs, mid-morning drinks, were even rarer: heavy colds or birthdays were about the only things which justified an MM in my experience.

  As I told that fellow Tomlinson, the Colonel was never a heavy drinker in all the years I was at the Manor, and believe me I know what I’m talking about. But he was an opinionated drinker. I had to explain this several times to Tomlinson before he got the point and then he said something typical like, “He could afford to have opinions, I suppose,” looking around at the Manor in that offensive way of his.

  “Manor or no Manor, he was an opinionated man in every way,” I countered, and, hoping to tease, “Opinionated gentleman, I should say.” But Tomlinson just sighed, so I ended, “Naturally he had opinions about drinks.”

  And that was really how it all began. Drink. The papers called it “POISON AT THE MANOR HOUSE” and all that kind of rubbish, but it wasn’t anything to do with the Manor, leastways not how they meant it, it was to do with whisky, whisky versus cocktails. The Colonel’s “medicinal whisky” in his own phrase versus Lady Sissy’s “House Poison” as she used to call her famous cocktail.

  “House Poison for me, Henry,” she would say in that high, fluting voice of hers. I can hear it in my ears now; odd how it carried without being half as strong as the Colonel’s voice, carried right through the Manor.

  “Henry!” rising on the last syllable. “Henry!” Sometimes in the kitchen Bella would put her hands over her ears.

  “She’s not calling me,” she would say, as if the tone of voice was somehow my fault.

  At this point I would mix Lady Sissy’s special cocktail, at least on the good days I mixed it, because I’m sure I never put in half the vodka she did when she mixed it, vodka and whatever else; whereas I, I laid on the grapefruit juice pretty strong (that’s what made it the House Poison—the grapefruit juice—as Lady Sissy explained to me when I first arrived).

  “Whenever I say ‘House Poison,’ Henry, that’s what I want.”

  “Why don’t you just ask for poison straight up?” the Colonel grunted. As he did, in almost exactly the same words, on so many other occasions. That was the point: the Colonel and Lady Sissy swore by their own particular tipple—no harm in that since they were rich enough to afford it, as someone like Tomlinson would be sure to point out. The trouble was that they could never leave it at that: always on at each other on the subject. All a struggle for domination, says I, having studied psychology by post a year or two back: Bella didn’t approve, but I pointed out that it would help me deal with the old couple (and save me going mad with the monotony, I might have added, but didn’t, Bella being obviously part of the monotony).

  The only wonder was that the Colonel and Lady Sissy had been living together all these years. But then:

  “No choice, have they?” says Bella; for I have to admit that it’s Bella, sharp-eyes Bella, who has discovered about the contents of the will. At which point I should explain that the Colonel—Colonel the Honourable Lionel Blake, to give him his full name—and Lady Sissy—the Lady Agnes Cecilia Mary Blake, to give her hers—were brother and sister. And the will in question was their father’s, the old Earl of Blakesmoor. The family estate went to the eldest son of course, and had passed in turn to his son, the twelfth Earl, a dreadful young man who asked us to call him Blakey. We didn’t enjoy his visits, I can tell you.

  “Bohemian is the word for him,” says Bella on one occasion, finding him with a garlic crusher in her kitchen. (I thought I spotted an Oedipus complex there.)

  To return to our couple: in his will, the old Earl had been able to separate the Manor from the family estate because it had been part of his wife’s dowry. Neither the Colonel nor Lady Sissy had ever married, so the old Earl left them the Manor property jointly: on condition they lived in it together. And looked after each other. He used those very words in his will, Bella told me. If either of them left the house, the other one inherited the whole property.

  So there they were, stuck with it. Although many might say that we did the looking after. But then, they were both well over 70 at the time we answered the advertisement. Did I mention that by the old Earl’s will, the Manor finally got left to the survivor? Provided the Colonel and Lady Sissy had remained together, that is. Because that was the situation. And that’s what lay underneath it all, in my opinion, that was the power struggle beneath the quarrelling about the drinks. Who was going to be the survivor? With the Colonel swearing that whisky made you live for ever because it was so healthy and Lady Sissy declaring in her high-pitched voice, “Live for ever, Lionel? How can you be so absurd? Whisky or no whisky, I shall outlive you, see if I don’t.” At which she would call for another “House Poison” and drink it with the kind of dainty relish you could see was intended to drive the Colonel mad.

  All the same, for all the rows, they did manage to stick together. And they lived to a ripe old age, what’s more. Which says something for both the Colonel’s medicinal whisky and Lady Sissy’s House Poison. I made Lady Sissy 80 at least when the tragedy happened and the Colonel was only a coup
le of years younger. Drink had certainly not cut short their lives. Because the Colonel was as hale and hearty an old gentleman as you could hope to find and even Lady Sissy kept on gardening right to the end. Well, they both gardened as a matter of fact, that was another thing they kept arguing about. Lady Sissy only got a bit tottery at that time of day when the cocktails had got to her, or, to put it another way, she to the cocktails. The Colonel never tottered.

  If only they hadn’t been quite so vigorous! So determined, both of them, to survive the other. A bit more tottering or doddering about the place and they might have been content to let nature take its course, lean on each other a bit, be glad not to be living alone like so many old people must. As it was, there was so much vigour about that the arguments if anything got worse. Especially at PP time. Which brings me to the evening of the bet.

  “Lionel!” I heard her fluting away, as I stood at the drinks tray, shaking away at the silver cocktail mixer. “You’ve been wrong about everything for over seventy-five years! Why not admit you’re wrong now?”

  “Prove it, Sissy,” the Colonel grunted. “Just prove it.” Up till then, to be honest, I hadn’t been listening very carefully; thought it was the mixture as before, as in my silver shaker.

  “I will prove it,” exclaimed Lady Sissy in a voice which was suddenly a good deal stronger, a good deal less fluttery than the voice she generally used; something of the old Earl’s military bearing (there’s a big portrait of him over the fireplace) had evidently got into her. Then, “Henry! Take away the Colonel’s glass. No, no, you silly man. Don’t fill it up.”

  I suppose I just stood there, staring at her. Nothing in my psychological studies had prepared me for this one, I can tell you.

  And, “Give me the bottle, Henry,” she went on. “We’ll have it locked up. No, on second thoughts, you lock it up, Henry, and give me the key. There’s going to be no cheating, Lionel, you’ve been cheating as well for over seventy-five years. The whisky will be locked up for a month. You’re perfectly healthy now: we just had Dr. Salmon over and he said so. We’ll have him over again at the end of the month and he’ll tell us honestly whether there’s any difference. I assure you, Lionel, there won’t be any difference, none at all. Then we’ll know what sort of value to put on your famous medicinal whisky.

  “It’s a bet,” she ended. “We’ll write it in the betting book.” This was a heavy red leather number, quite antique, with the Blakesmoor arms on it. It had once belonged to the old Earl; some of the ancient bets in it had to be read to be believed, what those officers got up to! As Bella remarked, when she was dusting it, “They didn’t deserve to have horses, did they?”

  But the Colonel and Lady Sissy had been using it for years, writing down their own bets. When I had to show it to Tomlinson, I couldn’t help hoping he wouldn’t go to the front of the book, the old bets being such grist to his mill, to put it mildly. But of course he did. Speechless for a while and then coming out with something predictable like, “So this is our aristocracy. Roll on the revolution.”

  The Colonel’s bets were really quite tame stuff compared to what had gone before, Lady Sissy’s too: although there were an awful lot of them. It was typical of Tomlinson that he was out to sneer at the feebleness of the old couple’s bets, just after being so fearfully shocked by their father’s scandalous ones.

  “What a lot of fuss about—” He stopped. Well, he couldn’t quite say it was a fuss about nothing, could he? In view of what had occurred. Myself, I had always looked at that red leather book as an important symbol in the power struggle, even if I was a little slow to appreciate the serious nature of this particular bet, out of all the others.

  “What exactly is the bet, m’lady?” I asked politely as I carried the big book over to her. I sometimes wrote the bets down for them, and they signed them; although on this occasion it was Lady Sissy herself who wrote it down—frankly, I don’t think I would have dared write it, not with the Colonel there glowering at me.

  “The bet is that the Colonel will drink no whisky for a month, at the end of which he will be passed fit as a fiddle by Dr. Salmon. That’s the bet. Agreed, Lionel?”

  I looked at the Colonel. His face had gone quite red and for a moment I thought—but no, he recovered himself He continued to sit there staring at Lady Sissy as if he couldn’t quite believe his own ears.

  “You’re trying to kill me,” he said at length. He spoke quite slowly as if he had just discovered something of major importance about his sister after all these years. “You’re trying to kill me by robbing me of my whisky. Prove it, indeed. That’ll prove nothing. Because I shall be dead, shan’t I? I’ll be proved right that the whisky was keeping me alive; but then it’ll be too late. I’ll be in my grave and you’ll be alive and here at the Manor—”

  “Stuff and nonsense, Lionel,” replied Lady Sissy airily, as she sipped away at her own cocktail. “Since I don’t believe in all this medicinal business anyway, it’s my opinion that far from being in your grave you’ll be in even better health at the end of the month than before! And that’s what Dr. Salmon will tell us.”

  The Colonel continued to gaze at her.

  “So what about PPs?” he asked after a while in a gruff voice. “What do I drink then? Cocoa?” By Jove, I thought, he’s going to do it. He’s going to take the bet. And sure enough he pulled the big red leather book towards him and signed the bet which Lady Sissy had written, with a flourish. No question about the signature there, as even Tomlinson had to agree, he entered into it of his own free will.

  “You could drink some of my House—” began Lady Sissy and then thought better of it at the sight of the Colonel’s beetling brows; also his face had begun to go red again.

  “Some sherry, sir?” I suggested brightly.

  “I shall drink nothing,” pronounced the Colonel in a sonorous tone, ignoring me. “If I can’t drink whisky, I shan’t drink anything. I shall sit here for a month at PPs and watch you, Sissy, drink yourself to death with that disgusting mixture of yours. At the end of the month, when my constitution will have become greatly weakened and I shall therefore have won the bet, you will pay me by giving up drinking that rubbish.”

  “What?” Lady Sissy almost choked on her glass. “No more House Poison if you win? You’re being ridiculous.”

  “That’s the bet,” said the Colonel implacably. He wrote it in the book. “Sign it, Sissy.”

  “What does it matter since I’m going to win?” Lady Sissy sounded quite petulant as she spoke; nevertheless she signed the book in her turn.

  “You’ll be grateful to me, Sissy. That rubbish is going to be the death of you one day—”

  “Stuff and nonsense, Lionel,” cried Lady Sissy, good humour restored as she lifted the glass which I had refilled. “Stuff and nonsense.” It was her favourite expression where the Colonel was concerned. Whatever he suggested, Lady Sissy was inclined to come back at him with that phrase: “Stuff and nonsense, you’re talking nonsense as usual, Lionel,” she would exclaim, fluting away.

  Unfortunately for once the Colonel wasn’t talking stuff and nonsense. Three weeks later, it was the House Poison which killed her. Or rather, to be precise, it was the poison—weed-killer, paraquat—which was contained in the House Poison which killed her. Ironically enough weed-killers generally were one of the topics the Colonel and Lady Sissy were always arguing about. Always on at each other about the state of the garden shed, too, and who had the key last, that sort of thing. As I told Tomlinson, who was scarcely surprised, they used to argue about anything. And everything.

  Weed-killer: a horrible death. I’m glad I wasn’t present when it actually took place. The Colonel mixed that last cocktail for her himself, waiting till I was out of the room. That’s what the police think must have happened. Thank God I didn’t see it: it was bad enough seeing her body afterwards. Poor old girl.

  But I was present when he died too, very shortly afterwards. Poor old boy. That was enough horror for me, I can tell you.
He asked me for the key, looking absolutely crazy, a mad glint in his eye, his face quite red, he was breathing so heavily that I thought he was going to have a stroke. That was before I knew what he had done, of course. It seemed more natural afterwards, as I told Tomlinson, that he should be in such a state.

  At the time he just asked me for the key of the whisky cupboard. “Time for my PP, Henry,” was what he said, not mentioning Lady Sissy at all. It wasn’t my place to question him, not my place to ask where she was, let alone my place to point out that the month wasn’t quite up … I just gave it to him and saw him lope off in the direction of the cellar, with that curious strong stride he had, right till the very last moment a healthy vigorous man. Till he drank the whisky that is. I can still hear his cry now, ringing in my ears. I came running. Bella came running (it takes a lot to move Bella out of her kitchen but the noise of the Colonel’s death throes got even Bella moving).

  It was too late. You can try of course, and as I told Tomlinson we tried, all the well-known remedies, milk, bicarb., we tried everything. But it was much too late. She had absolutely laced that bottle with the stuff, knowing how he’d fall upon it once the month of the bet was over. The police told me afterwards—not Tomlinson, another man, more practical, not so full of social theories—that she’d given him a far, far bigger dose than he gave her. But then they say that, don’t they? About the female of the species being deadlier than the male.

  She must have planned it well in advance: they found her fingerprints all over the bottle. She must have sat there waiting for the time to be up, and knowing that the famous medicinal whisky was going to kill him. As for him, it seems that his was more of a spontaneous gesture, the weed-killer put into the cocktail shaker at the last moment, finding the sight of her drinking away at their regular PPs quite intolerable. And spiking it with the weed-killer. Mad really. Never knowing that by that time she’d done for him too. Mad really, the pair of them. Poor old boy, poor old girl; there was something childish about the pair of them, to tell you the truth, childish as well as crazy. Perhaps that’s what comes of living with your brother and sister all your life. Psychologically retarded.