Here Lies Gloria Mundy

‘Would you read what the detective-sergeant has written down, sir, and sign it as a true report of what you have told me?’

That was all. I was thanked — the deadly courtesy of the English police is far more terrifying than the bullying methods adopted by some other Forces — and Anthony and I were driven back to Beeches Lawn. Celia was anxious to know what had happened.

‘I don’t like it,’ she said, when she heard what Anthony had to say. ‘As for that awful Gloria, if she had been camping out there, somebody would have seen her and told us. What about Platt and the boy who helps him in the garden?’

‘They can’t have seen anybody, or they would have mentioned it. All the same, the police found empty tins in the cellar to back up their story about squatters. Now we know it was Gloria, she must have been living there.’

‘Those things could have been down there for years. There’s no water or lighting or sanitation in the old house. People couldn’t live there. The dreadful thing is that, if there were no squatters, somebody else killed Gloria. You and Corin had to say you knew her. They’ll probe — the police, I mean — and goodness knows what they’ll come up with. How well did you know her?’

‘I told you ages ago. I had a lighthearted flirtation with her. It was nothing more. I met her on a Mediterranean cruise. She only wanted to get free drinks on board and her shore outings paid for. I was the unattached member of my party, so I went along with her.’

‘Old Hara-kiri seems to have had the same sort of experience,’ I said, backing him up. ‘Gloria seems to have been adept at picking out the suckers,’ I added, less graciously.

‘And what about you?’ asked Celia, resenting, as I had guessed she would, my slighting reference to her husband.

‘Me?’ I said. ‘I don’t like skinny wenches. When I take a girl I want an armful. To get back to the point at issue, what happens next? If squatters are out of it, perhaps Anthony was unwise to stick to the story that there was nobody camping out in the old house.’

‘Oh, they’ll question the gardeners and the tradesmen, I suppose,’ said Celia. ‘I hope they won’t bother poor old Aunt Eglantine while she’s in hospital.’

‘If she had been minding her own business instead of breaking into empty houses and climbing rickety staircases, the meddling old so-and-so wouldn’t be in hospital. And of course they’ll question her,’ said Anthony. ‘What’s more, they’ll round up everybody else who has been staying in the house and was here when Gloria turned up to lunch. Our name will be a hissing and a by-word among our friends. “Don’t, whatever you do, go and stay with the Wottons unless you want to be had up for murder”. That’s what will go around.’

‘Don’t be silly,’ said Celia. ‘This business is bad enough without your getting hysterical over it. Why on earth, when Gloria knew the place was on fire, didn’t she run off? Could she have been drunk or drugged?’

‘She had been stabbed. That much the police did let us know. She was dead, they think, before the fire started.’

‘Then it was started to try to cover up the murder — or could it have been suicide?’

‘According to what the chap told me in the interview room, the doctor thinks she was stabbed in the back.’

‘That being so,’ I said, ‘a thought occurs to me. Most probably she wasn’t killed in the old house at all. She could have been murdered elsewhere, the body brought to the old house and the fire started to cover up the crime, as Celia says.’

‘But who would have known that the old house was available and that there was a pile of chopped wood waiting to be made into a bonfire?’ Anthony demanded. ‘If you ask me, I’m in the devil of a spot. I gave the order for the wood of the staircase to be chopped up; it was my house, and I knew Gloria from the old days and had ditched her and, like the bad penny she was, she bobbed up again. I might have had a very good reason to get rid of her — or so the police will think.’

‘She was in your house for less than a couple of hours,’ I said. ‘I saw her arrive, you know.’

‘And how long is it going to take the police to find out that she was the cause of a first-class row between Celia and me?’

‘How can they find out? Neither of you will tell them, and I certainly shan’t,’ I said. ‘Besides, it wasn’t a first-class row; just a border skirmish such as all married couples indulge in from time to time. You’re fretting unnecessarily, old man.’

‘One never knows what the servants may have overheard,’ said Celia, ‘and we did go it rather hammer and tongs after you had left the room, Corin, and again in bed. They say the walls have ears, so I think there is some cause for worry, although not as much as Anthony believes.’

‘The detective-superintendent at the police station asked me for the names of everybody who had been staying in the house during the past week,’ said Anthony. ‘That’s why I said they are certain to question Aunt Eglantine. She claims to have seen Gloria in the old house and so do those two youngsters. McMaster saw her in the grounds, too, so we know she couldn’t have left when we thought she did.’

‘Proves that Gloria was alive at those times,’ I said.

‘A fat lot of use that’s going to be,’ Anthony retorted. ‘Oh, well, nothing for us to do but wait for the inquest, I suppose. You’ll have to stay on for a bit longer, Corin, as the police seem to have involved you in the beastly business.’

‘We shall be thankful to have you,’ said Celia.

‘But I’ve got a job to finish for old Hara-kiri,’ I protested. ‘I can’t stay here much longer.’

‘You may have no option, old man, until this business is cleared up,’ said Anthony.

‘You wouldn’t desert us at a time like this, would you?’ said Celia. Anthony kicked the leg of a chair.

‘What a hell of a nuisance that girl is!’ he said. ‘She was a hell of a nuisance when she was alive and she’s the