“As your Lordship will see,” said Basil Ptarmigan, “we have thought it right to provide in the Arrangement some douceur for the unborn and minor issue of Lalage Robinson and of Mrs. Demetriou. It is a hundred thousand pounds in each case.”
“That seems very generous, Mr. Ptarmigan,” said Mr. Justice Lorimer with approval, “most generous.”
Julia turned her head to smile at Leonidas, as if it had been for his sake, rather than Deirdre’s, that she had negotiated so liberal a provision.
I had found it a morning not without interest; so that when, some three months later, I stood in my room at St. George’s with the telephone in my hand and was asked by Timothy if I remembered the Remington-Fiske application, I was able to answer that indeed I did.
“But who,” I said, “has been murdered?”
“I’m not at all sure that anyone has,” said Timothy. “But the poor girl’s certainly dead, and Julia thinks it’s murder. If you get the next train to London, you can be in the Corkscrew by six-thirty or so, can’t you? We’ll tell you about it then and take you out to dinner.”
He rang off without telling me which poor girl was dead.
CHAPTER 3
The urgency of Timothy’s invitation might have justified a taxi; but I was content, on a gentle May evening, to travel by Underground from Paddington to Charing Cross and from there walk at leisure to my destination, observing the streams of office-workers bound eagerly homewards from Kingsway and High Holborn. It was that season of the year when London is at her most hopeful and adventurous: her citizens go lightly clad, without raincoats or umbrellas; they plant geraniums on the window-sills of gray commercial buildings; they buy strawberries from men at street corners; they talk optimistically of British chances at Wimbledon.
Only the deepening blue of the sky suggested the approach of evening, and the sun still shone brightly on High Holborn. Little of it, however, was allowed to penetrate the interior of the Corkscrew, whose habitues are more at ease in a conspiratorial dimness. Timothy was waiting for me at one of the round oak tables, a bottle of Niersteiner already open.
“Timothy,” I said, “will you please now abandon these childish devices to excite my curiosity, and tell me, simply and straightforwardly, which poor girl is dead and why Julia thinks it’s murder?”
“Have you really heard nothing about it? I thought you’d have seen it in the newspapers — it was quite widely reported.”
“Recently?” I asked, puzzled, for I thought that a mention in the press of the Remington-Fiske family would have attracted my attention.
“About two months ago. On the day, to be precise, of the Oxford and Cambridge Boat Race.”
My ignorance was explained: I had spent the Easter vacation in the United States of America, dependent for English news on the
Timothy took from his briefcase a thin cardboard folder, from which he drew a newspaper cutting.
“This is the report of the inquest which was in the
HEIRESS’S COUSIN IN DEATH FALL AT CHAMPAGNE “PICNIC”
A champagne and caviar lunch at the Mortlake home of Rupert Galloway, company director father of property heiress Camilla Fiske-Galloway, ended in tragedy when the heiress’s eighteen-year-old cousin Deirdre Robinson fell to her death from the rooftop patio, a South London Coroner was told today.
Miss Robinson was alone on the patio and no one saw her fall. The other guests, watching the race from the windows of the room below, were unaware of the tragedy until alerted by screams from passers-by.
Raven-haired Miss Galloway, twenty-two, heiress to the multi-million estates in Wiltshire of the Remington- Fiske family, told the Coroner that her cousin had no reason to be depressed and had seemed to be enjoying herself. “She was looking forward to watching the race,” said Miss Galloway. “I suppose she must have leant over to get a better view and lost her balance. It’s a terrible thing to have happened.” Mrs. Dorothea Demetriou, an aunt of the dead girl, who was with her on the roof only a few minutes before she fell, confirmed that she seemed in good spirits.
Mrs. Elizabeth Brown, thirty-two, a housewife, who was among the crowds gathered on the towpath, became the first person to be aware of the tragedy. “I didn’t see her fall,” Mrs. Brown told the Coroner. “I was watching the race. The boats were just going under Barnes Bridge and still quite close together, so it was rather an exciting moment. I heard a sort of thudding sound behind me, and looked round and saw her lying there on the pavement in front of the flats. I could see at once she was dead. I began screaming and a policeman came.”
The Coroner said there was nothing to suggest that Miss Robinson had taken her life deliberately. It would have been natural for her to lean over the balcony for a better view of the race and the evidence all pointed to her having accidentally overbalanced. Her balance might have been affected by the wine she had drunk at lunch: it was not excessive, but perhaps more than she was used to.
The jury returned a verdict of misadventure.
“I see,” I said. “Poor Deirdre.”
“And Julia thinks it’s murder,” said Timothy. “She’s really very worried. She seems to feel, you see — there are Cantrip and Ragwort. I’d better get another bottle.”
Resigned to the obligations consequent on three years’ seniority, Timothy rose and moved towards the bar. Cantrip and Ragwort joined me in the circle of candlelight: I admired, as always when I see them together, the pleasing contrast between Cantrip’s black hair and black eyes and the demure autumnal coloring of Ragwort.
“Hello, Hilary,” said Cantrip, “we thought we’d find you here. Offer free grub and free booze, we said, and we’d have you here in two shakes of a mortarboard.”
“What Cantrip means is,” said Ragwort, “that we were confident that an appeal from Timothy for your assistance would not go unheeded.”
“I don’t yet know,” I said, “why my assistance should be required. All I have heard so far is that Deirdre Robinson fell from a roof on the afternoon of the Boat Race, and Julia thinks it’s murder.”
“Precisely so,” said Ragwort. “And is greatly troubled by it.”
“Flapping like a moonstruck moorhen,” said Cantrip, “and going on about Sir Thomas More and making everyone’s life a misery.”
That Julia in a state of agitation would resemble such a bird as Cantrip had mentioned I could readily believe; the relevance of Sir Thomas More I would, I suppose, in due course discover; but why, some two months after the event, there should suddenly be this anxiety as to the cause of Deirdre’s death—
“Because of the letter,” said Cantrip. “Hasn’t Timothy told you?”
There are days on which Julia does not open letters. She is overcome, as I understand it, by a sort of superstitious dread, in which she is persuaded that letters bode her no good: they will be from the Gas Board, and demand money; or from the Inland Revenue, and demand accounts; or from some much valued friend, and demand an answer. If a letter arrives on such a day as this, she does not open it but puts it carefully away, to be dealt with when she feels stronger. After that, I had always supposed, it is never seen again.
“That, certainly,” said Timothy, returning with the wine, “is the normal course of events. You will remember, however, that there are also periods of reform, during which we are promised a new, improved and more organized Julia. They generally don’t last long enough to matter much. But they always begin, of course, with a tidying of papers: that’s how she came across this.” He again opened his briefcase.
The letter was amateurishly typed, though on paper of excellent quality; the postmark on the envelope which had contained it was four days earlier than the date of the Boat Race.
