Death in the Stocks: Merely Murder Read online

  ‘Turkey stair carpeting and gilt mirrors?’ said Kenneth incredulously.

  ‘I don’t see why not.’

  ‘Darling, your taste is quite damnable.’

  ‘I can’t see that there’s any need for you to be rude because I like things you don’t like. I think Turkey carpets are sort of warm and – and expensive looking.’

  Antonia was measuring out the ingredients for cocktails, but she lowered the bottle of gin she was holding, and directed one of her clear looks at Violet. ‘You don’t care whether a thing’s good to look at or not as long as it reeks of money,’ she remarked.

  Violet got up, quickly yet gracefully. ‘Well, what if I do like luxury?’ she said, her low voice sharpening a little. ‘If you’d been born with a taste for nice things, and never had a penny to spend which you hadn’t worked and slaved for, you’d feel the same!’ One of her long, capable hands disdainfully brushed the skirt of her frock. ‘Even my clothes I make myself ! And I want – I want Paris models, and nice furs, and my hair done every week at Eugene’s, and – oh, all the nice things that make life worth living!’

  ‘Well, don’t make a song about it,’ recommended Antonia, quite unmoved. ‘You’ll be able to have all that if Kenneth really does inherit.’

  ‘Of course I inherit,’ said Kenneth impatiently. ‘Hustle along with the drinks, Tony!’

  Antonia suddenly put down the gin bottle. ‘Can’t. You do it. I’ve suddenly remembered I was supposed to meet Rudolph for lunch this morning. I must ring him up.’ She took the telephone receiver off the rest, and began to dial. ‘Did he ring me up, do you know?’

  ‘Dunno. Don’t think so. How much gin have you put in?’

  ‘Lashings… Hullo, is that Mr Mesurier’s flat? Oh, is it you, Rudolph? I say, I’m frightfully sorry about lunch. Did you wait for ages? But it wasn’t my fault. It truly wasn’t.’

  At the other end of the telephone there was a tiny pause. Then a man’s voice, light in texture, rather nasal, rather metallic, in the manner of modern voices, replied hesitatingly: ‘Is it you, Tony? I didn’t quite catch – the line’s not very clear. What did you say?’

  ‘Lunch!’ enunciated Antonia distinctly.

  ‘Lunch? Oh, my God! I clean forgot! I’m devastatingly sorry! Can’t think how I could –’

  ‘Weren’t you there?’ demanded Antonia.

  There was another pause. ‘Tony dear, this line’s really awful. Can’t make out a word you say.’

  ‘Put a sock in it, Rudolph. Did you forget about lunch?’

  ‘My dear, will you ever forgive me?’ besought the voice.

  ‘Oh yes,’ replied Antonia. ‘I forgot too. That’s what I rang up about. I was down at Arnold’s place at Ashleigh Green and –’

  ‘Ashleigh Green?’

  ‘Yes, why the horror?’

  ‘I’m not horrified, but what on earth made you go down there?’

  ‘I can’t tell you over the telephone. You’d better come round. And bring something to eat; there’s practically nothing here.’

  ‘But, Tony, wait! I can’t make out what took you to Ashleigh Green. Has anything happened? I mean –’

  ‘Yes. Arnold’s been killed.’

  Again the pause. ‘Killed?’ repeated the voice. ‘Good God! You don’t mean murdered, do you?’

  ‘Of course I do. Bring some cold meat, or something, and come to supper. There’ll be champagne.’

  ‘Cham – Oh, all right! I mean, thanks very much: I’ll be round,’ said Rudolph Mesurier.

  ‘By all of which,’ remarked Kenneth, shaking the cocktails professionally, ‘I gather that the boy-friend is on his way. Will he be bonhomous, Tony?’

  ‘Oh, rather!’ promised Antonia blithely. ‘He can’t stand Arnold at any price.’

  Five

  There was no sitting-room in the Verekers’ flat other than the big studio. Supper was laid on a black oak table at one end, after one dog-whip, two tubes of paint, The Observer (folded open at Torquemada’s crossword), Chambers’s Dictionary, The Times Atlas, a volume of Shakespeare, and the Oxford Book of Verse had all been removed from it. While Murgatroyd stumped in and out of the studio with glasses and plates, Kenneth took a last look at the half-completed crossword, and announced, as was his invariable custom, that he was damned if he would ever try to do another. Rudolph Mesurier, who had arrived with a veal and ham pie, and half a loaf of bread, said he knew a man who filled the whole thing in in about twenty minutes; and Violet, carefully powdering her face before a Venetian mirror, said that she expected one had to have the Torquemada-mind to be able to do his crosswords.

  ‘Where did them bottles come from?’ demanded Murgatroyd, transfixed by the sight of their opulent gold necks.

  ‘Left over from Frank Crewe’s party last week,’ explained Kenneth.

  Murgatroyd sniffed loudly, and set down a dish with unnecessary violence. ‘The idea!’ she said. ‘Anyone’d think it was the funeral party already.’

  Constraint descended on the two visitors. Violet folded her lovely mouth primly, and cleared her throat; Rudolph Mesurier fingered his tie and said awkwardly: ‘Frightful thing about Mr Vereker. I mean – it doesn’t seem possible, somehow.’

  Violet turned gratefully and favoured him with her slow, enchanting smile. ‘No, it doesn’t, does it? I didn’t know him, but it makes me feel quite sick to think of it. Of course I don’t think Ken and Tony realise it yet – not absolutely.’

  ‘Oh, don’t they, my sweet?’ said Kenneth derisively.

  ‘Kenneth, whatever you felt about poor Mr Vereker when he was alive, I do think you might at least pretend to be sorry now he’s dead.’

  ‘It’s no use,’ said Antonia, spearing olives out of a tall bottle. ‘You’d better take us as you find us, Violet. You’ll never teach Kenneth not to say exactly what he happens to think.’

  ‘Well, I don’t think it’s a good plan,’ replied Violet rather coldly.

  ‘That’s only because he said that green hat of yours looked like a hen in a fit. Besides, it isn’t a plan: it’s a disease. Olive, Rudolph?’

  ‘Thanks.’ He moved over to the far end of the studio, where she was seated, perched on a corner of the dining-table. As he took the olive off the end of the meat-skewer she had elected to use for her task, he raised his eyes to her face, and said in a low voice: ‘How did it happen? Why were you there? That’s what I can’t make out.’

  She gave him back look for look. ‘On account of us. I wrote and told him we were going to get married, thinking he’d be pleased, and probably send us a handsome gift.’

  ‘Yes, I know. I wish you’d consulted me first. I’d no idea –’

  ‘Why?’ interrupted Antonia. ‘Gone off the scheme?’

  ‘No, no! Good God, no! I’m utterly mad about you, darling, but it wasn’t the moment, I mean, you know I’m hard up just now, and a fellow like Vereker would be bound to leap to the conclusion that I was after your money.’

  ‘I haven’t got any money. You can’t call five hundred a year money. Moreover, several things aren’t paying any dividend this year, so I’m practically a pauper.’

  ‘Yes, but he had money. Anyway, I wish you hadn’t, because as a matter of fact it’s landed me into a bit of a mess. Well, not actually, I suppose, but it’s bound to come out that we had a slight quarrel on the very day he was murdered.’

  Antonia looked up, and then across the room towards the other two. They seemed to be absorbed in argument. She said bluntly: ‘How do you know which day he was murdered?’

  His eyes, deep blue, and fringed with black lashes, held all at once a startled look. ‘I – you told me, didn’t you?’

  ‘No,’ said Antonia.

  He gave an uncertain laugh. ‘Yes, you did. Over the telephone. You’ve forgotten. But you see the position, don’t you? Of course, it doesn’t really matter, but the police are bound to think it a bit fishy, and one doesn’t want to be mixed up in anything – I mean, in my position one has to be somewhat ci