The Murder of Busy Lizzie

« ^ »

So what was all that about?’ asked Sebastian, when he and his sister were alone. ‘Why is poor Boobie all stewed up? What’s the idea of her outfacing The Tutor and repudiating Aunt Eliza’s little island?’

‘Do you think she means it?’

‘About not going? Yes, I’m sure she does. No wonder The Tutor looked so flummoxed. I should think it’s the first time she’s ever flouted him.’

‘Well, you can’t really blame her, I suppose. She has pretty good reasons.’

‘Because Aunt Eliza had a little fly-by-night all those years ago?’

‘No—well, not only that.’

‘What do you know, then, that I don’t?’

‘Nothing—well, not really anything, I suppose.’

Sebastian picked up a gramophone record and glanced at the label.

‘Don’t thwart me, you miserable child,’ he said. ‘Do you want me to smash up Clifford Curzon and the London Philharmonic?’

‘You wouldn’t, anyway. Put it down, and I’ll tell you what I think. Mind, it is only what I think, not what I know.’

‘How do you come to think anything?’

‘It’s only because of something I heard at the Singletons’ last November. I’d forgotten all about it until now.’

‘The Singletons? Not at that famous sherry party where I broke their crystal goblet to try to cover up for Boobie’s fearful gaffe?’

‘Well, how was she to know there was going to be that sudden ghastly silence just as she was talking to Vivian Spofforth about Tony Singleton’s goings-on in the village?’

‘She shouldn’t have been talking about any such thing in the Singletons’ own house. It was perfectly frightful of her. No wonder we’ve never been invited there again. However, never mind that now. What did you hear and how did you come to hear it?’

‘Put this cushion across your bony knees, and let me sit on you. It’s a nuisance we’ve only one armchair in here.’

‘Put the cushion on the floor and sit on it there. Your place is at my feet, not in my lap. You’re getting a big girl now.’

‘But it’s cold in here. I thought you could keep me warm.’

‘Such thoughts are most unbecoming, my child. Besides, I want to stretch my legs and I can’t do that if you’re sitting on them. What did you learn at the Singleton home about Aunt Eliza and her island?’

‘Nothing, really, that you could call anything much, but I did get a hint or two which might explain Boobie’s reactions.’

‘The only hint I got at the Singletons’ was that we were expected to leave before eight so that they could get the supper (dignified by the name of dinner) on the table.’

‘Well, we call it dinner, so why shouldn’t they? And what’s the difference, when you come right down to it?’

‘I never answer rhetorical questions. But come along! Your story. We haven’t got all the evening.’

‘Well…’ Margaret flung the cushion on the floor, plumped herself down on it and rested her arms across her brother’s long legs ‘… you know that downstair cloakroom of theirs where we parked our things? I was in the little wash-place, sponging strawberry mousse off my frock, when Cousin Marie and that ghastly friend of hers came out with Barbara Singleton to get their coats because they were all going to the church concert. I don’t think anybody had noticed me slip out except Barry Singleton, who’d spilt the mousse on me, the clumsy idiot, so I don’t imagine they realised they could be overheard, especially by one of our family. Barbara said she didn’t suppose it would affect the Lovelaines, even if they knew, and Cousin Marie said that of course Marius and Clothilde didn’t know, and even if they came to hear of it later on she didn’t think they would take in what it might mean, because they were so unworldly.’

‘The Tutor didn’t sound so very unworldly when he was plotting for us to ingratiate ourselves with Aunt Eliza in order to cut ourselves in for her worldly goods,’ commented Sebastian. ‘Never mind. Go on. This is rather interesting.’

‘Cousin Marie said it seemed very peculiar to her, considering Eliza’s previous lapse from respectability, and that she was glad to be on Clothilde’s side of the family and so did not need to be mixed up in anything strange and rather (she was afraid) unsavoury. Then the ghastly friend said, all the same, wasn’t it rather romantic, in its way, that after all these years Eliza had taken a partner? To that Cousin Marie said there were partners and partners, and that nothing had been said about Eliza getting married and that she felt pretty certain that nothing of the sort was contemplated.’

‘How did Marie come to know anything about it?’ asked Sebastian.

‘I’m coming to that. Well, Barbara Singleton, who isn’t a bad sort in spite of being a district visitor, said that business reasons could make any alliance respectable, she supposed, so long as there was no jiggery-pokery, and that probably all Eliza had been after was a bit more capital. To this Cousin Marie said there were other ways of obtaining a bit more capital and that, for her part, she would sooner do without it than get it by some people’s methods.’

‘Cousin Marie,’ said Sebastian, ‘is a prize bitch, and always has been. I don’t know why The Tutor ever has her to stay with us.’

‘Well, she’s Boobie’s only living relative, that’s why. Still, I do think she might come without that other creep.’

‘Oh, The Tutor’s too gullible for his own good. Cousin Marie told him that the blighted Potter woman is too nervous to be left alone in their cottage, so she has to tag along wherever Cousin Marie goes. That’s why we have to put up with her as well as Cousin Marie.’

‘Mary and the lamb. It’s quite a common relationship, of course,’ said Margaret.

‘What on earth do you know about it?’ asked Sebastian, amused. ‘And take your pointed elbows off my legs. You’re making dents in me. Go on about your eavesdropping.’

‘It wasn’t eavesdropping! There’s a sort of grille at the top of that door, so I couldn’t help hearing what was said, and I didn’t like to emerge in the middle of their conversation, because it was obvious they hadn’t a clue that anybody was near them.’

‘Stop making excuses. I bet you stayed put with your ears flapping and forgot about the stain on your frock.’

‘Well, of course, it was rather interesting in a way,’ confessed Margaret, ‘and you needn’t put on airs. You’re keen enough to hear what I’ve got to tell you.’

‘Touché, mademoiselle! So now get on with it. One thing, though. This partnership is going to play havoc with The Tutor’s little game. I can’t think we stand any chance of coming in for Aunt Eliza’s property later on. It seems to me more than a fifty-fifty chance that, even if she leaves nothing to this son of hers, the partner will take most of the pickings. He’ll be no end of a fool if he doesn’t. After all, he’s the man on the spot. Anyway, was there more?’

‘Yes, there was, and this, I think, is most peculiar.’

‘Peculiar-strange or peculiar-nasty?’

‘I don’t know. Nothing was said straight out, but, unless I’m mistaken, Aunt Eliza’s previous boy-friend and their son Ransome are also living on the island, and I’m absolutely certain that’s a thing which The Tutor and Boobie don’t know.’

‘Living on the island? Are you sure?’

‘Well, not absolutely sure, but Cousin Marie seemed pretty confident about it.’

‘How did she get hold of the dirt?’

‘Well, that’s just it. She and the Potter woman have been to the island and stayed at Aunt Eliza’s hotel. It seems they went there last summer, after the Potter saw Aunt Eliza’s advertisement in a newspaper and thought the island sounded “rather fun”. She would, wouldn’t she? So they talked it over and sent for the brochure and they went, not knowing until they got there that it was Aunt Eliza’s hotel.

‘ “Of course, it was expensive for what we got,” Cousin Marie told Barbara Singleton, “but, although the meals were monotonous, the vegetables were fresh, and I must say Eliza, considering what a busy woman she is, made us very welcome.” Well, it turned out that the vegetables came from a smallholding and the dairy produce and eggs from a farm on the island and, according to what Cousin Marie was saying, the owner of the smallholding was the farmer’s son and Aunt Eliza had known the farmer for more than thirty years and the son since she was a girl of twenty. And’, concluded Margaret, ‘if that doesn’t ring a bell, nothing will ever make sense again.’

‘You go too fast,’ said Sebastian.

‘No, I don’t. It sticks out a mile. The farmer is Aunt Eliza’s old boy-friend and the smallholder is their son Ransome. I suppose the son couldn’t also be this partner she’s taken? If he is, a fat chance of The Tutor’s rather muddy little plans coming to anything, wouldn’t you say?’

‘It would delight me to think that you are right and that the farmer is Aunt Eliza’s boy-friend and that she’s taken Ransome into partnership, but I rather doubt it, you know. Did Marie and Potter meet the partner?’

‘Oh, no, he hadn’t taken over at that time. It was only in the air, so to speak.’

‘So how did Marie know it had come off?’

‘I expect she’s received this year’s brochure, the same as we have.’

‘I don’t remember reading anything in it about a partner. It said, Eliza Chayleigh, Resident Proprietor.’

‘No, there wasn’t anything, I’m sure. I expect, as they’d been there before, Aunt Eliza sent Cousin Marie and the Potter a covering letter. She must have mentioned the possibility of the partnership, though, while they were there.’

‘You began your story in the middle, as I suppose you realise. What brought up this matter of the partnership and our parents’ unworldliness?’

‘Well, you know, Seb, it didn’t occur to me at first to take in what Cousin Marie was saying. She’s a frightful gossip, anyway, so it was quite a long time before I really began to cotton on.’

‘Oh, yes? Well, and when you did?’

‘She said, “I don’t know what difference Eliza thought it might make to me whether she took a partner or not, but I must say she gave me a very straight look, almost like a challenge, when she mentioned the parents’ legacy. I’d always thought that the Lovelaines’ chances disappeared when Clothilde’s straight-laced mamma boycotted Eliza at Clothilde’s wedding and Clothilde followed suit and looked straight through the poor woman, but, after what Clothilde let out to me the last time Pottie and I were there, it almost sounds as though, if this partnership should turn out to be a marriage, the parents’ legacy goes up the spout.” ’

‘What on earth did she mean by that?’

‘I’ve no idea, Seb, but it sounded to me as though Boobie, as usual, had let some cat out of the bag.’

‘The parents’ legacy? Whose parents?’

‘The Tutor’s and Aunt Eliza’s, I suppose. It sounded as though they might have left her some money.’

‘Cousin Marie could have made that up.’

‘And the statement that Aunt Eliza had known the boy since she was twenty?’

‘People like Cousin Marie can stretch dramatic licence a pretty long way, you know. I think we’ll wait and see, but, after what you’ve said, nothing on earth will keep me from spending a holiday on Aunt Eliza’s island.’

‘You don’t think I ought to tell The Tutor what I overheard and deduced?’

‘He’ll only wonder why you haven’t told him before.’

‘No, he won’t. Until today there has never been any thought of our going over to the island, so there would have been no point in telling him. He would just have thought I was tattling, wouldn’t he?’

‘True, my child, and for pity’s sake don’t worry about it now. I like a bit of clean fun, and this summer holiday begins to take on a charm which I never expected.’

‘I wonder whether The Tutor and Boobie know that Cousin Marie and the creep went over to the island last summer? It seems so strange they should hit on that particular spot,’ said Margaret. ‘It would be just like Cousin Marie not to tell anybody, of course. She loves her little secrets. I can’t help feeling there’s more than that behind it though.’

‘Oh, I don’t know about that,’ said Sebastian. ‘Knowing what Boobie thinks of Aunt Eliza—we didn’t until today, but apparently Cousin Marie did—I expect she thought she wouldn’t be invited here again if it were known that she’d been hobnobbing with the busy hôtelière on the mystical island of Great Skua. Perhaps she’s got her fishy eye on the main chance, too.’

‘I wonder?’ said Margaret. ‘Well, we’d better get changed for dinner.’

‘Supper,’ said her brother, with a grin.

Far to the south, on the edge of the New Forest in a small square mansion just on the outskirts of the village of Wandles Parva, a tall, well-built, comely woman was talking to her husband.

‘But it’s not Dame B’s cup of tea,’ she was protesting. ‘You can’t ask her to do your police work for you.’

‘I tell you, Laura,’ countered Robert Ian Gavin, ‘if we could think of anyone better we’d contact him or her, but we can’t. Dame Beatrice is much our best bet. You see, we have nothing to go on but rumour, so a policeman going about and asking questions on a tiny island with a population of only two or three dozen people, would be suspected and rumbled in no time, everybody would shut up tight and we wouldn’t get a solitary bleep out of any of them. Most of them are probably doing something illegal, anyway, and would shy like mustangs if they thought the law was involved.’

‘That’s a nice thing to say about a lot of innocent villagers!’

‘They’re not villagers and I’d take my oath they’re not innocent. There’s no such thing as a village on the island, nothing but a couple of lighthouses, a disused airfield, a farm, a hotel, a deserted quarry, a few farm-workers’ cottages and a small pub. Another thing: the inhabitants are the descendants of wreckers and smugglers, don’t you forget, and I don’t suppose the Ethiopian has changed his skin all that much down the years. All we want is to put an observer there. Dame Beatrice won’t have to do anything. We don’t want to make a move until we can be sure we’re on the right tack. We don’t want anything put down in writing. As soon as she’s got any worthwhile information, we want her to come back with it and give us a hint. Just a tip-off, that’s all we need, but one from an absolutely reliable source. Then we shall know where we are.’

‘I suppose you’re in touch with the Home Office about all this?’

‘Certainly we are. They are perfectly willing to loan Dame Beatrice to us, subject, of course, to her own approval. They can’t exactly order her about.’

‘I should hope not, indeed! She’s not their servant, and she’s a consultant psychiatrist, not a coppers’ nark.’

‘Look here, Laura, if there is anything fishy going on, don’t you think that, at a time like this, we ought to go all out to stop it? Lives are being sacrificed and property reduced to rubble. Surely you realise that?’

‘Dame B. is too old to go chasing about on perilous seas to faery lands forlorn to do your dirty work for you.’

‘She’s not so old that she’s lost the use of her brains and her powers of observation. There won’t be any chasing about. All we want her to do—’

‘Besides, she’s busy writing her memoirs.’

‘And in what better place than on an island where nobody knows her, where there are no interruptions from lion-hunters, where she’ll live four hundred feet above sea-level in one of the healthiest spots on earth… ?’

‘And where the only food, I suppose, will be mutton and potatoes, and where the Atlantic winds blow at gale force all day and all night.’

‘Well, if you’re going with her, and I hope you are, you’ll think you’re in your beloved Hebrides, so what’s wrong with that?’

‘Well, you can ask her, I suppose,’ said Laura reluctantly, ‘but, mind, no argument if she turns you down.’

‘Fair enough. No argument. We’ve found a decent house for you to live in, by the way. Taken it for three months from the beginning of July.’

‘The devil you have! You think of everything, don’t you?’

‘We do our best,’ said Gavin modestly.

One evening, when June was in its second week, Marius Lovelaine, with a deprecating cough, said, in a tentative tone, ‘I cannot think you mean it, Clothilde.’

‘Mean what?’

‘Well, we have always gone on holiday together.’

‘Nonsense. The children went away on their own last year and the year before.’

‘I meant you and I, my dear.’

‘Then it is more than time we made a change. Oh, Marius, why on earth do you want to see Eliza? It would be much better to ignore her letter completely. You can never revive the past. Besides, if she really wanted to make friends with you again, she would have extended an open invitation, not expected you to pay your way at top rates. It’s simply a try-on because her rat-infested little lodging-house is half-empty.’

‘I have given you my reasons, my dear. My salary is sufficient for our needs, but not for anything more. The children are a great expense, as you know, in spite of grants and so forth, and I shall have nothing whatever to leave them—or you, either, if I should chance to pre-decease you.’

‘Your life is insured in my favour.’

‘Most inadequately, my dear, with money at its present value and with the way things are tending. But let us not talk about that. What I want to discuss—’

‘Is this proposed holiday on Eliza’s island, I suppose, but I do not want to discuss it. My mind is firmly made up. I shall take a little holiday on my own, I expect. I will not even wait to see the rest of you on your way. I shall leave about ten days before you do, I think, Marius. I cannot bear the idea of your going cap in hand to your sister because you think (and against all reason, at that! ) she may have something to leave you.’

‘It is not against all reason, Clothilde, as you would know perfectly well if you stopped to think. When Lizzie quarrelled with my parents, they turned her out of the house as soon as she was fit again after Ransome’s birth, but my father settled a sum of money on her to be held in trust until she married. He and my mother were horrified at what she had done and, as there was no possibility of the child’s father being in a position to marry her unless his wife died, they thought the prospect of a dowry might attract a suitor.’

‘But apparently it has not done so. Does Eliza benefit in any way from the money?’

‘You know she does not. She gets nothing while she remains single, and at her present age there seems little likelihood of her marriage.’

‘So what are you trying to tell me?’

‘That, at her death, the money—and it must have amounted to something substantial by this time—comes to me. You know all this already.’

‘Then why attempt to curry favour with Eliza if you are to benefit, in any case, from her death?’

‘It is because I am to benefit, Clothilde. You may be sure that Lizzie knows of this provision and it goes against the grain with me that we should have been at odds with one another, and, I think, because of it. If only we could link up again as brother and sister, I would feel that I was entitled to what she had to leave. As it is—’

‘Oh, you are too pure-minded to live! What utter nonsense! No, really, these are scruples gone mad! It is not as though you haven’t done all you could and, in my opinion, more than you ought, for Eliza, since you inherited your father’s estate. Surely you are entitled to anything you can get from her when she goes?’

‘I shall feel happier when we are friends again, Clothilde. That’s why I’m so thankful that she herself has made the first move towards a reconciliation.’

‘Tchah!’ said Clothilde. ‘Well, I do not intend to be here when you go. I should be too angry. I think I shall go to my cousin for a bit. I imagine you will have no objection to that?’

‘To Marie? Good heavens above!’

‘I have no other cousin, and it will not hurt her to put me up—free of charge, incidentally!—in return for her visits here with her hanger-on. I do not propose to remain here for a month on my own while you and the children go off on this scavenging expedition to Great Skua. And, talking of that, I may have fish of my own to fry.’

‘Is that a threat, my dear?’

‘No, neither is it a warning.’ Her wintry expression softened. ‘I only hope we shall both obtain what we want, that’s all, so no hard feelings, Marius.’