A Pocket Full of Rye (6 page)

I

M
r. Dubois was annoyed. He tore Adele Fortescue's letter angrily across and threw it into the wastepaper basket. Then, with a sudden caution, he fished out the various pieces, struck a match and watched them burn to ashes. He muttered under his breath:

“Why have women got to be such damned fools? Surely common prudence . . .” But then, Mr. Dubois reflected gloomily, women never had any prudence. Though he had profited by this lack many a time, it annoyed him now. He himself had taken every precaution. If Mrs. Fortescue rang up they had instructions to say that he was out. Already Adele Fortescue had rung him up three times, and now she had written. On the whole, writing was far worse. He reflected for a moment or two, then he went to the telephone.

“Can I speak to Mrs. Fortescue, please? Yes, Mr. Dubois.” A minute or two later he heard her voice.

“Vivian, at last!”

“Yes, yes, Adele, but be careful. Where are you speaking from?”

“From the library.”

“Sure nobody's listening in, in the hall?”

“Why should they?”

“Well, you never know. Are the police still about the house?”

“No, they've gone for the moment, anyhow. Oh, Vivian dear, it's been
awful.
”

“Yes, yes, it must have I'm sure. But look here, Adele, we've got to be careful.”

“Oh, of course, darling.”

“Don't call me darling through the phone. It isn't safe.”

“Aren't you being a little bit panicky, Vivian? After all, everybody says darling nowadays.”

“Yes, yes, that's true enough. But listen.
Don't telephone to me and don't write.
”

“But Vivian—”

“It's just for the present, you understand.
We must be careful.
”

“Oh. All right.” Her voice sounded offended.

“Adele, listen. My letters to you. You did burn them, didn't you?”

There was a momentary hesitation before Adele Fortescue said:

“Of course. I told you I was going to do so.”

“That's all right then. Well I'll ring off now. Don't phone and don't write. You'll hear from me in good time.”

He put the receiver back in its hook. He stroked his cheek thoughtfully. He didn't like that moment's hesitation. Had Adele burnt his letters? Women were all the same. They promised to burn things and then didn't.

Letters, Mr. Dubois thought to himself. Women always wanted you to write them letters. He himself tried to be careful but sometimes one could not get out of it. What had he said exactly in the few letters he had written to Adele Fortescue? “It was the usual sort of gup,” he thought, gloomily. But were there any special words—special phrases that the police could twist to make them say what they wanted them to say. He remembered the Edith Thompson case. His letters were innocent enough, he thought, but he could not be sure. His uneasiness grew. Even if Adele had not already burnt his letters, would she have the sense to burn them now? Or had the police already got hold of them? Where did she keep them, he wondered. Probably in that sitting room of hers upstairs. That gimcrack little desk, probably sham antique Louis XIV. She had said something to him once about there being a secret drawer in it. Secret drawer! That would not fool the police long. But there were no police about the house now. She had said so. They had been there that morning, and now they had all gone away.

Up to now they had probably been busy looking for possible sources of poison in the food. They would not, he hoped, have got round to a room by room search of the house. Perhaps they would have to ask permission or get a search warrant to do that. It was possible that if he acted now, at once—

He visualized the house clearly in his mind's eye. It would be getting towards dusk. Tea would be brought in, either into the library or into the drawing room. Everyone would be assembled downstairs and the servants would be having tea in the servants' hall. There would be no one upstairs on the first floor. Easy to walk up through the garden, skirting the yew hedges that provided such admirable cover. Then there was the little door at the side onto the terrace. That was never locked until just before bedtime. One could slip through there and, choosing one's moment, slip upstairs.

Vivian Dubois considered very carefully what it behove him to do next. If Fortescue's death had been put down to a seizure or to a stroke as surely it ought to have been, the position would be very different. As it was—Dubois murmured under his breath: “Better be safe than sorry.”

II

Mary Dove came slowly down the big staircase. She paused a moment at the window on the half landing, from which she had seen Inspector Neele arrive on the preceding day. Now, as she looked out in the fading light, she noticed a man's figure just disappearing round the yew hedge. She wondered if it was Lancelot Fortescue, the prodigal son. He had, perhaps, dismissed his car at the gate and was wandering round the garden recollecting old times there before tackling a possibly hostile family. Mary Dove felt rather sympathetic towards Lance. A faint smile on her lips, she went on downstairs. In the hall she encountered Gladys, who jumped nervously at the sight of her.

“Was that the telephone I heard just now?” Mary asked. “Who was it?”

“Oh, that was a wrong number. Thought we were the laundry.” Gladys sounded breathless and rather hurried. “And before that, it was Mr. Dubois. He wanted to speak to the mistress.”

“I see.”

Mary went on across the hall. Turning her head, she said: “It's teatime, I think. Haven't you brought it in yet?”

Gladys said: “I don't think it's half past four yet, is it, miss?”

“It's twenty minutes to five. Bring it in now, will you?”

Mary Dove went on into the library where Adele Fortescue, sitting on the sofa, was staring at the fire, picking with her fingers at a small lace handkerchief. Adele said fretfully:

“Where's tea?”

Mary Dove said: “It's just coming in.”

A log had fallen out of the fireplace and Mary Dove knelt down at the grate and replaced it with the tongs, adding another piece of wood and a little coal.

Gladys went out into the kitchen, where Mrs. Crump raised a red and wrathful face from the kitchen table where she was mixing pastry in a large bowl.

“The library bell's been ringing and ringing. Time you took in the tea, my girl.”

“All right, all right, Mrs. Crump.”

“What I'll say to Crump tonight,” muttered Mrs. Crump. “I'll tell him off.”

Gladys went on into the pantry. She had not cut any sandwiches. Well, she jolly well wasn't going to cut sandwiches. They'd got plenty to eat without that, hadn't they? Two cakes, biscuits and scones and honey. Fresh black-market farm butter. Plenty without her bothering to cut tomato or fois gras sandwiches. She'd got other things to think about. Fair temper Mrs. Crump was in, all because Mr. Crump had gone out this afternoon. Well, it was his day out, wasn't it? Quite right of him, Gladys thought. Mrs. Crump called out from the kitchen:

“The kettle's boiling its head off. Aren't you ever going to make that tea?”

“Coming.”

She jerked some tea without measuring it into the big silver pot, carried it into the kitchen and poured the boiling water on it. She added the teapot and the kettle to the big silver tray and carried the whole thing through to the library where she set it on the small table near the sofa. She went back hurriedly for the other tray with the eatables on it. She carried the latter as far as the hall when the sudden jarring noise of the grandfather clock preparing itself to strike made her jump.

In the library, Adele Fortescue said querulously, to Mary Dove:

“Where
is
everybody this afternoon?”

“I really don't know, Mrs. Fortescue. Miss Fortescue came in sometime ago. I think Mrs. Percival's writing letters in her room.”

Adele said pettishly: “Writing letters, writing letters. That woman never stops writing letters. She's like all people of her class. She takes an absolute delight in death and misfortune. Ghoulish, that's what I call it. Absolutely ghoulish.”

Mary murmured tactfully: “I'll tell her that tea is ready.”

Going towards the door she drew back a little in the doorway as Elaine Fortescue came into the room. Elaine said:

“It's cold,” and dropped down by the fireplace, rubbing her hands before the blaze.

Mary stood for a moment in the hall. A large tray with cakes on it was standing on one of the hall chests. Since it was getting dark in the hall, Mary switched on the light. As she did so she thought she heard Jennifer Fortescue walking along the passage upstairs. Nobody, however, came down the stairs and Mary went up the staircase and along the corridor.

Percival Fortescue and his wife occupied a self-contained suite in one wing of the house. Mary tapped on the sitting room door. Mrs. Percival liked you to tap on doors, a fact which always roused Crump's scorn of her. Her voice said briskly:

“Come in.”

Mary opened the door and murmured:

“Tea is just coming in, Mrs. Percival.”

She was rather surprised to see Jennifer Fortescue with her outdoor clothes on. She was just divesting herself of a long camel-hair coat.

“I didn't know you'd been out,” said Mary.

Mrs. Percival sounded slightly out of breath.

“Oh, I was just in the garden, that's all. Just getting a little air. Really, though, it was too cold. I shall be glad to get down to the fire. The central heating here isn't as good as it might be. Somebody must speak to the gardeners about it, Miss Dove.”

“I'll do so,” Mary promised.

Jennifer Fortescue dropped her coat on a chair and followed Mary out of the room. She went down the stairs ahead of Mary, who drew back a little to give her precedence. In the hall, rather to Mary's surprise, she noticed the tray of eatables was still there. She was about to go out to the pantry and call to Gladys when Adele Fortescue appeared in the door of the library, saying in an irritable voice:

“Aren't we ever going to have anything to eat for tea?”

Quickly Mary picked up the tray and took it into the library, disposing the various things on low tables near the fireplace. She was carrying the empty tray out to the hall again when the front-door bell rang. Setting down the tray, Mary went to the door herself. If this was the prodigal son at last she was rather curious to see him. “How unlike the rest of the Fortescues,” Mary thought, as she opened the door and looked up into the dark lean face and the faint quizzical twist of the mouth. She said quietly:

“Mr. Lancelot Fortescue?”

“Himself.”

Mary peered beyond him.

“Your luggage?”

“I've paid off the taxi. This is all I've got.”

He picked up a medium-sized zip bag. Some faint feeling of surprise in her mind, Mary said:

“Oh, you did come in a taxi. I thought perhaps you'd walked up. And your wife?”

His face set in a rather grim line, Lance said:

“My wife won't be coming. At least, not just yet.”

“I see. Come this way, will you, Mr. Fortescue. Everyone is in the library, having tea.”

She took him to the library door and left him there. She thought to herself that Lancelot Fortescue was a very attractive person. A second thought followed the first. Probably a great many other women thought so, too.

III

“Lance!”

Elaine came hurrying forward towards him. She flung her arms round his neck and hugged him with a schoolgirl abandon that Lance found quite surprising.

“Hallo. Here I am.”

He disengaged himself gently.

“This is Jennifer?”

Jennifer Fortescue looked at him with eager curiosity.

“I'm afraid Val's been detained in town,” she said. “There's so much to see to, you know. All the arrangements to make and everything. Of course it all comes on Val. He has to see to
everything.
You can really have no idea what we're all going through.”

“It must be terrible for you,” said Lance gravely.

He turned to the woman on the sofa, who was sitting with a piece of scone and honey in her hand, quietly appraising him.

“Of course,” cried Jennifer, “you don't know Adele, do you?”

Lance murmured, “Oh yes, I do,” as he took Adele Fortescue's hand in his. As he looked down at her, her eyelids fluttered. She set down the scone she was eating with her left hand and just touched the arrangement of her hair. It was a feminine gesture. It marked her recognition of the entry to the room of a personable man. She said in her thick, soft voice:

“Sit down here on the sofa beside me, Lance.” She poured out a cup of tea for him. “I'm so glad you've come,” she went on. “We badly need another man in the house.”

Lance said:

“You must let me do everything I can to help.”

“You know—but perhaps you don't know—we've had the police here. They think—they think—” she broke off and cried out passionately: “Oh, it's awful! Awful!”

“I know.” Lance was grave and sympathetic. “As a matter of fact they met me at London Airport.”

“The police met you?”

“Yes.”

“What did they say?”

“Well,” Lance was deprecating. “They told me what had happened.”

“He was poisoned,” said Adele, “that's what they think, what they say. Not food poisoning. Real poisoning, by someone. I believe, I really do believe they think it's one of
us.
”

Lance gave her a sudden quick smile.

“That's their pigeon,” he said consolingly. “It's no good our worrying. What a scrumptious tea! It's a long time since I've seen a good English tea.”

The others fell in with his mood soon enough. Adele said suddenly: