Johnny Under Ground Page 13

  Henry took a gulp of tea. “A charming day for a visit to the country,” he said.

  “We were lucky last time,” said Emmy philosophically. She added, “I wish I had some rubber boots.”

  “Don’t worry. Whitchurch Manor is lousy with them. You needn’t think you’ll be able to avoid a tramp around the park by pleading the inadequacy of your shoes.” Henry finished his tea and shook himself. “I feel awful. I didn’t sleep a wink.”

  “Liar. You were snoring like a pig when I got up.”

  “Yes, I know. But I was awake from three until about half an hour ago.”

  “Oh, dear.” Emmy paused in the doorway. “Was it something you ate?”

  “I expect so,” said Henry, rather too quickly.

  Emmy looked at him accusingly. “Henry, you’re worrying.”

  “No. Not really.”

  “You are. Is it about me?”

  “Of course not. Don’t flatter yourself, woman. My insomnia was due to an equal mixture of Camembert cheese and the Reverend Sidney Guest, both taken too late at night.”

  “I hope that’s true,” said Emmy, doubtfully.

  “Of course it is,” said Henry. After all, it nearly was.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  THE DRIVE TO THE COUNTRY was every bit as dismal as Henry had foreseen. The glowing countryside of the previous week had been reduced by the dead hand of the rain to a uniform drab dampness, and the chrysanthemums in the cottage gardens sagged limply, bedraggled by the wind.

  “Today’s weather is more in keeping, anyhow,” said Emmy suddenly.

  “More in keeping than what, with what?”

  “Than the sunshine, with—with everything. Poor Barbara and poor Vere. I feel terribly depressed every time I think of them.”

  “I don’t see why you should,” said Henry. “They are an attractive couple in early middle age with a great deal of money and a beautiful house.”

  “It’s strange, isn’t it?” said Emmy. “All that is perfectly true, and yet—you agree with me, don’t you? Why is it?”

  “You tell me,” said Henry. “I’m interested. Of all the people from Dymfield that you’ve met recently, why is it only the Prendergasts whom you find depressing?”

  “Oh, I don’t know.” Emmy mused a little. “Well, take Jimmy Baggot. He’s obviously not depressing. He’s blossomed.”

  “He’s made a successful career for himself quite away from the Air Force.”

  “Yes. Of course, it was the R.A.F. that gave him his start in television, but that was years ago. Then there’s Sammy. He’s not a success exactly, but he’s back leading the outrageous sort of life he’s always led. The war was just an interlude to him, just another chance for a bit of fun and a bit of a fiddle…” Emmy looked at Henry. “I see what you mean.”

  “You see what you mean,” he corrected her.

  “It’s because Barbara and Vere have—stopped. Physically they’re living now, but emotionally they’re still back in the nineteen-forties. That’s what you were leading up to, isn’t it?”

  “Yes,” said Henry. “And it brings us to the second question. Why?”

  “Well—they haven’t done much since those days. Vere’s just got his estate, and Barbara…”

  “Vere is a farmer in quite a big way,” said Henry. “Barbara is rich and social, and my spies tell me she does quite a bit of sitting on committees of charity balls and so on. Why should they be less able to adjust to living in the present than Annie Meadowes or Sammy?”

  “They’re married to each other, remember,” said Emmy. “I mean, they have a mutual past, whereas Annie and Sammy have both…”

  “We’re getting closer now, I think,” said Henry. “Has it occurred to you that they may have married each other precisely because they were both—haunted?”

  “Haunted?”

  “By Beau Guest.” Henry paused. “I don’t want to be unkind, Emmy darling. I know you were very fond of the man. But suicide can be used as a very cruel weapon, you know. It can be the ultimate revenge, leaving a scar that a living person may carry to the grave.”

  Henry knew by the quality of her silence that his words had hurt and upset Emmy. She seemed to retreat into herself, slamming the door behind her. It was five minutes before she spoke again, and then she said, “But Lofty didn’t commit suicide, did he?”

  Barbara Prendergast was alone on the steps to greet them. Emmy’s hunch about Vere’s absence had been correct. Barbara apologized for him—“Gone to Snettle—long-standing date for some rough shooting.”

  A big log fire was blazing in the drawing room, and for a moment it seemed to Henry that the conversation in the car had been ridiculous. This house could not be called depressing. Then he caught sight of something which had not been there on his last visit. It was a large, silver-framed photograph of a dark-haired young man in R.A.F. uniform. He wore the thin stripe of a Pilot Officer on his sleeve, and very new-looking pilot’s wings. His face, with its almost too-perfect, regular features, was vaguely and disturbingly familiar. A ghost had moved into the cheerful, chintzy drawing room.

  Barbara dispensed drinks and small talk. “Lunch will be ready soon,” she said, “and we can’t get down to serious talk until it’s over. So not a word about poor Lofty or the book until afterward.” She glanced quickly at the photograph, and it seemed to Henry as though she exchanged a conspiratorial wink with it.

  “I presume that’s your first husband,” said Henry. The photograph was so placed as to demand rather than invite comment.

  “Yes.” Barbara smiled fondly. “Taken when he first got his wings. Before I even met him. I’ve always loved it. But would you believe it, when I offered it to the hospital, after the crash, they wouldn’t have it. Said he looked too young. I had to give them a more recent one which wasn’t nearly as good. This one was exactly like him.”

  An awkward silence followed, which was mercifully terminated by the entry of an elderly parlor maid announcing lunch. They went into the dining room.

  Afterward, over coffee, Barbara started the ball rolling. She took a deep breath and said, “Now, what is all this I hear about Henry Tibbett refusing to allow his wife to carry on with her work?” She eyed Henry accusingly. “This is the twentieth century, you know. If Emmy wants to go on with the book, as I gather she does, I really don’t think you’ve got any right to stop her.”

  Henry was interested that Barbara had decided to open the proceedings with a frontal attack upon himself. Clearly her idea—and a good one—was to drive a wedge between Henry and Emmy. The more she could manage to take it for granted that Emmy wished to continue the work, the harder it became for Emmy to deny it. Barbara was looking full at Henry now with all the power of her huge hazel eyes. “I warn you, Henry Tibbett, I shall fight you all the way.” For all the banter in her tone, she sounded dangerous.

  Henry said, “I think you’ve got it wrong, Mrs. Prendergast. I’m not playing the heavy husband. But I agree wholeheartedly with Emmy in her decision not to continue with the book.”

  Barbara now turned her accusing gaze on Emmy. “That’s hardly what you told me on the telephone, Emmy darling.”

  “I—well—actually, Barbara…” Emmy was floundering. She was, in her own phrase, filleted.

  “I can explain very simply,” Henry began, coming to the rescue.

  Barbara turned on him. “The least you can do is to let your wife speak for herself without putting words into her mouth,” she said.

  Emmy flashed Henry a despairing distress signal with her eyes.

  He said, “Go on, then, darling. Speak for yourself. You must.”

  Emmy swallowed. Then she said in a rush, “I don’t want to go on with it.”

  “What Emmy means…”

  “Let her say what she means.”

  Fortunately, Emmy seemed to recover. She said, more calmly, “There are several reasons why I’ve decided to give up. First, Lofty left no notes of any sort, as I told you in my letter, Barbara. Second, I�
��m not a writer. I couldn’t do it. Thirdly I—I don’t think it’s healthy.” Involuntarily Emmy glanced at the photograph. It smiled blandly back at her. “For heaven’s sake, Barbara, leave it alone! What are you frightened of?”

  As soon as she had said the last words Emmy felt a cold shock, as if she had fallen through thin ice. She had no idea why she had said them. She hadn’t thought of Barbara as being frightened. The words had come, of their own volition, and now they lingered in the air, spreading their poison.

  Barbara had gone very pale. “It would have been simpler,” she said, “if you had been more honest with me on the telephone.”

  “I know. I’m sorry. I…”

  “In fact,” Barbara went on relentlessly, “it is you that are frightened. We all knew, of course…”

  Henry felt it was time to intervene. “Mrs. Prendergast,” he said, “if anybody is frightened, it is me.”

  “You?”

  Barbara was sufficiently surprised to allow herself to be diverted, momentarily, from her attack on Emmy.

  “What Emmy has not told you,” he went on, “because she would never betray my confidence, is that personally I am not convinced that Parker killed himself.”

  Barbara sat quite still, looking at Henry. “Go on,” she said.

  “I must ask you to keep this strictly to yourself, Mrs. Prendergast,” Henry went on. “Officially, the case is being treated as suicide. I am acting quite on my own when I say that I have a strong feeling that Lofty was murdered. If he was, then it seems likely that the motive was to prevent further work being done on your book. Now do you understand why I am not anxious that my wife should step into his shoes?”

  “You seriously believe that Emmy would be in danger if she took over the job?” Barbara’s delicately outlined eyebrows rose mockingly. “How very melodramatic. And what about me?”

  “You?”

  “I think you will agree, Mr. Tibbett, that I am the driving force behind this project. If Emmy refuses, it doesn’t necessarily mean that I shall give up. Am I then in danger of being murdered, too?”

  “I have no idea.” Henry spoke so simply that Barbara laughed again, with more sincerity. “You see,” Henry went on, “I don’t think that it was the actual undertaking of the book that sealed Parker’s fate. It was something to do with the way he was tackling the job—and I have no idea what that something was. I’m not prepared to risk Emmy making the same mistake.”

  “I see,” said Barbara. “So I’m wasting my breath, am I? And playing a dangerous game into the bargain?”

  “Yes,” said Henry. “That about sums it up.”

  “Too bad.”

  Henry leaned forward. “Mrs. Prendergast,” he said, “just why are you so keen on this idea? It’s over twenty years since the death of your first husband. If you’d wanted to do something of this sort, surely the time to have done it would have been years ago.”

  Barbara looked down at her knees where her bird-talon hands were twisting and tearing a fragile handkerchief. “I couldn’t—it was all so terrible at the time. I didn’t even think about it. Then I suddenly got this idea, and—I want to do it. For his sake.” She looked up and her voice was harsh as she said, “I hope you’re not implying that you think I was responsible for Lofty’s death, even indirectly.”

  “Of course not,” said Henry. “But I would like to ask you a few questions. When did you see him last, for instance?”

  Barbara seemed eager to help. “Let me see—what’s today—Wednesday… Yes, it must have been just a week ago today. I didn’t actually see him, of course, but I spoke to him on the telephone.”

  “What about?”

  “Oh, I just rang to ask how things were going. He seemed in very good spirits. He was reading me…” She stopped. “Wait a minute. I thought you said he left no notes.”

  “That’s right.”

  “But he read them to me. ‘Wait while I get my notebook,’ he said, and then he read me what he’d started on. You must have found that book.”

  “We didn’t,” said Henry. “That’s one of the interesting aspects of the case. Can you remember what he read to you?”

  Barbara frowned. “Not word for word, of course,” she said. “It was mostly about Beau in the Battle of Britain, his sixteen enemy planes and all that. Really heroic stuff, although being Lofty, he’d managed to keep his tongue pretty firmly in his cheek all the time. Oh, and there was an earlier bit about Beau’s childhood. The country rectory, the stern but kindly father, the beautiful but ailing mother, the closely knit English family circle—you know the sort of thing.”

  Emmy opened her mouth, and then shut it again.

  Henry said, “Do you know where Lofty got that information, Mrs. Prendergast?”

  “Of course,” said Barbara blandly. “From me.”

  Emmy became articulate at last. “But it’s untrue—his family wasn’t…”

  “Isn’t it appalling,” said Barbara, with a gently pained smile, “how false rumors stick, even after years? Of course, people believe what they want to believe, which is always the worst. And that talk about Beau not getting on with his father was nonsense. And as for the really scurrilous things people said about his mother—just because she had to go abroad for her health. Well, the only thing to do with slander like that is to ignore it. Of course, I haven’t seen either of his parents for some years, because when I remarried I thought it was better to make a clean break. But I can assure you that the Guests were a really happy family.”

  In the face of Barbara’s sad but firm smile, Emmy said nothing. She was extremely glad that she had not mentioned to Barbara her visit to the Reverend Sidney. As it was, she was now in a position to gauge the thickness of the whitewash that was being prepared. She became aware that Henry was speaking again.

  “I believe that your husband’s solicitor wrote Parker a letter shortly before he died.”

  Barbara was well in control now. “So I understand,” she said.

  “Do you know what it was about?”

  “Not really. Vere never told me about it, the forgetful creature, so the first I knew of it was when Emmy told me yesterday. I asked Vere about it last night, and he said it was something to do with libel laws. All rather above my head, I’m afraid.”

  “I see,” said Henry. “And now, would you mind telling me what you were doing between seven and eleven last Saturday night?”

  Barbara’s eyebrows went up. “I don’t think,” she said, “that you can compel me to answer that.”

  “No, I can’t. Not here and now. But it would save a great deal of trouble if you did, and I can’t imagine that you have anything to hide.”

  “Certainly I haven’t. I was here all the time. As a matter of fact, I was”—her eyes strayed briefly to the photograph—“I was sorting through some old things in the attic. It took me the whole evening.”

  “Well, that’s straightforward enough,” said Henry. “I suppose your husband will be able to confirm it.”

  “Oh, no. Vere was out. At one of these reunions he adores so much. An Old School affair—I think it was at the Dorchester. He left here before six and came home at half-past two in the morning. I remember that, because he woke me up.”

  Henry received this information with some depression. Of course, it would have been too much to expect all his suspects to have neat alibis, but he had seldom come across a less satisfactory bunch than this. He felt certain that nobody would have noticed if Vere Prendergast had slipped out early from the Old Boys’ Dinner; and, in any case, he would have had plenty of time to visit Earl’s Court after the dinner and still be home by half-past two. After all, Henry reminded himself, there was no proof that Lofty’s mysterious visitor had been his murderer. The doorbell might well have been rung by a political canvasser or a charity collector or some other anonymous but harmless caller.

  Barbara seemed to sense what was going through Henry’s mind. She smiled with rather more satisfaction than sympathy, and said, “Not very
helpful, I’m afraid. I was alone here, and Vere was actually in London, and therefore highly suspect—along with the other six million people who might have chosen to while away Saturday evening by murdering Lofty.”

  Henry decided to change the subject. “I’m a little puzzled, Mrs. Prendergast,” he said. “Last time we were here, I somehow got the impression that the project was rather running away from you, out of control, and that you’d have been quite glad to pull out…”

  “Lofty was so impulsive.” Barbara was demure again now. “He was full of this ridiculous idea of making a mystery out of Beau’s death. As you know very well, that was not my intention at all. Now, I shall go ahead on my original lines—when and if I find somebody to help me,” she added, with a nasty look at Emmy.

  “So in fact,” said Henry, “it’s very convenient for you that he’s out of the way.”

  Barbara looked amused. “You surely can’t mean that you think it would be an adequate motive for murder.”

  Henry looked steadily at her. “No,” he said with regret, “I can’t imagine that it would. But in my job one is continually being surprised by people and their motives.”

  “Not only in your job,” said Barbara. And Henry realized that she had transferred her gaze from him to the photograph. Then she turned back to Henry. “Inspector Tibbett,” she said, “have you any idea why Lofty was so keen to visit Dymfield airfield?”

  “No,” said Henry.

  Barbara smiled. “That’s a straight answer anyway,” she said. “Everyone else I’ve asked just shies away from the question, as though it were something indecent.”

  “Well,” said Henry, “I hope I may be in a better position to tell you by next weekend. Emmy and I are visiting Dymfield ourselves on Friday, and I intend…”

  He got no further, for at that moment the door opened and Vere Prendergast came in, followed by a pack of leaping, enthusiastic dogs.