Here Lies Gloria Mundy

12

Recapitulation with Surprise Ending

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I enjoyed my two days at the Stone House. The three of us discussed the salient facts of what had taken place at Beeches Lawn so far as our knowledge of them went, and I charged my memory with making out a timetable in the hope that it would reveal to us the day on which the murder had taken place.

‘But it won’t tell us where it took place,’ I said. ‘It could have happened in the old house or somewhere quite other and the body brought back to be burnt. That has been obvious from the beginning. If only they knew where the stabbing happened, the police might not have seen fit to arrest Coberley.’

‘Let us have your timetable,’ said Dame Beatrice. ‘You were at Beeches Lawn before the rest of us arrived and you stayed longer than anybody else.’

‘Well,’ I said, ‘I got down to Beeches Lawn on the Thursday. I had taken some work with me and I was all set for a quiet, pleasant week. Anthony seemed glad to see me and Celia was charming, so that was fine.

‘Friday was an equally peaceful day. Anthony showed me round the estate, but then (to my regret at the time) I heard that an influx of weekend visitors was expected and on the Saturday they began to arrive.

‘On Sunday I was shown the interior of the old house. Coberley, who had the key, took me inside, warned me about the rickety staircase and showed me the nude portrait. I thought at once — at least, I believe I did — of Gloria Mundy, whose remarkable hair McMaster, the man I was working for, had described to me shortly before. Anyway, the picture was not a portrait of Gloria, but it must have been that of an ancestress of hers, and I’m sure it lends credence to her claim to be a distant relative of Anthony Wotton. It seems to me that his great-grandfather had an illegitimate child by the girl in the portrait and that the peculiar hair had been passed down to Gloria.’

‘Miss Brockworth, you told me, thought that Miss Mundy wore a wig in imitation of the hair in the portrait,’ said Dame Beatrice.

‘Then the wig was a fairly recent acquisition,’ I said. ‘She certainly didn’t wear a wig when her lover or lovers used to wash her hair for her.’

‘As the hair seems to have been the only means of establishing the identity of the corpse, I must still regard it with some suspicion,’ said Dame Beatrice.

‘But, if the body wasn’t Gloria’s, whose could it have been?’

‘I am not saying that it was not Gloria’s. All the same, I think the police would be well advised to check their lists of missing persons. If it should transpire that the body is not that of Gloria Mundy, some part of the case against Mr Coberley must collapse.’

‘It’s weak enough already, in my opinion,’ I said. ‘Shall I go on? On the Sunday two other things happened, neither of which seems particularly significant. You, Dame Beatrice, had a session with Aunt Eglantine in private and then were called away, and McMaster telephoned to ask me to meet him as there were one or two points to discuss concerning the hotel brochures I was working on. Anthony and Celia preferred that he be asked to come to Beeches Lawn, as he, Anthony and I had been in college together. He was invited to bring his wife with him, but he came without her.

‘Meanwhile a more important thing happened on the Sunday. Gloria Mundy turned up, was invited to stay to lunch and did not get further than the apportioning of the plates of soup because the outrageous behaviour of Miss Eglantine drove her from the table.’

‘I am sorry I missed such a dramatic episode, but I was called away even sooner than I expected,’ said Dame Beatrice.

‘McMaster also missed it, since he did not appear until lunch was over and Gloria Mundy (so far as anybody knew) was well and truly off the premises. Well, two of the younger guests, Roland Thornbury and Kay Shortwood, had planned to go home that evening and McMaster was not intending to stay the night, but the storm settled all that. Roland and Kay had to abandon their car and come back and the Wottons persuaded McMaster not to attempt a journey because of flooded roads.

‘When they got back to Beeches Lawn, Roland and Kay told this strange story of having seen Gloria at one of the windows of the old house, and the story was borne out by Miss Eglantine next day when she went there in the morning to look at the picture and ran into Gloria, who told her the picture was upstairs. Most rashly, with her weight, she tried the stairs, brought part of them down and broke her leg.’

‘So that brings us to Monday morning,’ said Laura.

‘Oh, wait a moment. No, I think it brings us to Tuesday. Roland spent Monday morning in bed and, if I remember correctly, the picture was mentioned on Monday, but the old lady did not go to the old house until Tuesday after breakfast. I think it must have been on the Monday that Celia had her first row with Anthony. They had more than one before they decided to call it a day.’

‘About Gloria?’ asked Laura. ‘The rows, I mean.’

‘Yes, about Gloria. Anthony, the ass, had told Celia all about his little affair and Celia, I suppose, had stored up her ammunition, and it only needed Gloria to turn up the way she did for the spark to ignite the gunpowder.’

‘And after Tuesday you would have been the only guest left in the house, I suppose,’ said Dame Beatrice.

‘I was due to stay until Thursday in any case. After the bonfire and then the discovery of the body, Anthony and Celia welcomed the idea of having somebody else in the place, I think. I’ve left out the accident to Marigold Coberley, but it has to be mentioned because the police believe it was Coberley’s motive for the murder.’

‘I don’t think we’ve cleared the air,’ said Laura. ‘If the murder was committed before Mrs Coberley had her fall, bang goes that motive, as I think we’ve all agreed.’

At this point I had to confront the dilemma in which I found myself. I gave it due consideration, conscious that Dame Beatrice’s sharp black eyes were on me. She came to my assistance.

‘There is something troubling you,’ she said. ‘A matter of conscience?’

I decided to trust her.

‘Well,’ I said, ‘it seems to me that, if it comes to a question of motive, Anthony Wotton had at least as strong a one as Coberley. Some people might think it stronger.’

‘I wonder why Miss Brockworth told you the story about the baby?’ said Laura. ‘Was it just a shot at Wotton, do you think? I’ll tell you one thing, ’ she went on, before I could answer. ‘She sounds to me about as dotty as they come. Suppose she was the one who stabbed Gloria and then broke her leg after the deed was done? Isn’t that a possibility?’

‘I don’t think so,’ I said. ‘She could have committed the murder, as you say, but she couldn’t have started the fire. She was most certainly in hospital when that happened.’

‘Can you remember the details of the soup incident?’ asked Dame Beatrice. ‘I can envisage the scene when the bread was thrown, but what happened immediately after that? Did Miss Mundy leap from her chair and rush precipitately from the room?’

‘It amounted to that. She was sitting between William Underedge and Roland Thornbury. They both jumped out of the way and then Underedge began to mop down Gloria’s sweater with his table napkin, but she pushed him away, and Celia got up and went to her and said, “Oh, dear! Come along to the bathroom and sponge down.” Gloria wouldn’t have any of that, either, but flung her own table napkin on to the table where most of the soup had gone, rushed out and we heard the bang as the front door slammed. Then there was a general upset while Underedge and Thornbury attended to the one or two splashes they had received and the tablecloth was changed and fresh table napkins supplied to the two young men and after that the rest of the lunch was served.’

‘The windows of the dining-room, I recall,’ said Dame Beatrice, ‘look out upon the lawn and a broad path divides the lawn from the frontage of the house. Did anybody notice whether Miss Mundy went past the window?’

‘I have never heard that anybody did. I think we were all too flummoxed by what had happened to give an eye to anything but the mess and the mopping-up operations. I shouldn’t think she went past the windows, though, as she landed up in the old house. I saw her arrive and she came from the direction of the schoolboys’ playing-field, but the old house lies in the opposite direction,’ I said.

‘I wonder why she chose that way in? One would suppose that the road from the town was shorter by way of the old house rather than by the way of the playing-field.’

‘I imagine she came from the railway station, asked for directions to Beeches Lawn and was shown the lane which passes what used to be the convent. I don’t think she had ever been to Beeches Lawn before, you see.’

‘I noticed gardeners at work when I arrived,’ said Dame Beatrice. ‘No doubt the police have questioned them.’

‘They have questioned all the servants, I believe, but I expect the gardener and his boy were having their midday meal at the same time as we were having lunch. I doubt whether they would have seen anything of Gloria.’

‘If she had not been to Beeches Lawn before, how did she know about the picture?’

‘My impression is that, at some time while he was having his affair with her, Wotton had told Gloria about the picture and its resemblance to herself, and she went to the old house either to look at it or to steal it. It may well have been the latter since, according to Miss Eglantine, there was no picture to be seen when she herself went over there to take a look at it. My view is that Gloria had already stolen it. I don’t see any reason why she should have taken it upstairs, as she told Aunt Eglantine she had done. I doubt whether she would have risked climbing that staircase, lightweight though she was. She probably hoped, after the soup incident, that Aunt Eg would break her neck on it instead of her leg.’

‘Reverting to the blackmailing photograph, did you obtain any description of the party who had brought the baby along?’

‘Wotton referred to her as a waif, I think, that’s all.’

‘Could the description, so far as it goes, fit Miss Mundy herself?’

‘Well, she was a meagre, skinny little thing, so perhaps it could. I see what you mean. You think the other girl is a myth and that it really was Gloria’s baby. But, if it was, and there was no accomplice present, who took the photograph?’

‘Some obliging and innocent passer-by was pressed into service, perhaps. People are wonderfully kind.’

‘Well, I believe Anthony’s story,’ I said stoutly.

‘Dame Beatrice thinks,’ said Laura Gavin, ‘that Mr Wotton is anything but in the clear and I think the police might do worse than take a look at Celia, who obviously hated Gloria’s guts. One also has to allow for person or persons unknown. Suppose the police are right and there were squatters in the old house? Might they not have objected in a forceful manner to Gloria’s invasion of the premises? They could have been responsible for the bonfire, you know. It wasn’t their own property they were burning down.’

‘You knew of the existence of Miss Mundy before you went to Beeches Lawn, did you not?’ said Dame Beatrice to me.

‘Yes, as I’ve told you, from old Hara-kiri. As soon as she pulled off the cap she was wearing when I first caught sight of her from my bedroom window, I concluded who she must be. That hair was unmistakable.’

‘Brings us back to the wig,’ said Laura, ‘and all the weary work to do again.’

‘Between the time when Anthony and McMaster first fell into her toils and the time of her visit to Beeches Lawn,’ I said, ‘she might have taken to wearing a wig. I mean, some people go grey very early in life and some illnesses lead to premature baldness, don’t they? Wouldn’t either of those explanations account for the wig?’

I was surprised, when I got back to my flat, to find Hara-kiri waiting for me in the caretaker’s little den. I took him up to my rooms and poured drinks.

‘Something wrong with the brochures?’ I asked, handing him his glass.

‘Lord, no! We’re very pleased with them and we particularly like the photographs and the very clear road-maps. You’ve done an excellent job for us.’ He took a deep draught of whisky, stared into his glass, tossed off the rest of the drink and then said, ‘Corin, old lad, would you regard me as a man who was likely to see ghosts?’

I gave him the time-honoured one about that depending upon what other spirits he had been acquainting himself with at the time. Then I recharged his glass. He set it down and said, ‘I’m perfectly serious. I’ve seen the ghost of Gloria Mundy.’

‘You can’t have done.’

‘She’s dead, isn’t she?’

‘One assumes so.’

‘I mean, there’s been an inquest and the body has been identified as hers.’

‘Wotton and I identified it; not an experience I would want too often.’

‘And the medical evidence was given that she had been stabbed?’

‘You seem to have read your newspapers.’

‘And that the murderer had attempted to cover up the crime by burning the body?’

‘Quite correct, old man.’

‘Well, then, I’ve seen her ghost.’

‘Where?’

‘In Trends, that dress shop. I was in there the other day.’

‘Oh, come, come, come!’ I said. ‘What would Gloria’s ghost be doing in Trends?’

‘Selling evening gowns. She used to work there, you know.’

I looked at him with the deepest concern and asked him whether he had ever had a really bad knock on the head.

‘I expect I got a kick or two on it. You do sometimes when you go down in front of a forward rush, but that was donkey’s years ago. It’s never affected me except in the most temporary way. This wasn’t hallucination, Corin,’ he said earnestly.

‘Ghosts are hallucination. Tell me more,’ I said. ‘Were you under the influence at the time?’