“Oh, my poor Fen!” Jenetta Ancred murmured.
“It’s the way she took it that’s important,” Fenella continued, still gazing at Alleyn. “I must admit she took it pretty well. She said, quite calmly, that it was all very fine for me to talk, but I didn’t know what it was like to be on my beam-ends with no chance of getting anywhere in my job. She said she knew she wasn’t any good for the stage except as a showgirl, and that didn’t last long. I can remember the actual words she used. Fifth-rate theatrical slang. She said: ‘I know what you all think. You think I’m playing Noddy up for what I can get out of him. You think that when we’re married I’ll begin to work in some of the funny business. Look, I’ve had all that, and I reckon I’ll be as good a judge as anybody of what’s due to my position.’ And then she said she’d always thought she was the Cinderella type. She said she didn’t expect me to understand what a kick she’d get out of being Lady Ancred. She was extraordinarily frank and completely childish about it. She told me she used to lie in bed imagining how she’d give her name and address to people in shops, and what it would sound like when they called her m’lady. ‘Gee,’ she said, ‘will that sound good! Boy, oh boy!’ I really think she’d almost forgotten I was there, and the queer thing is that I didn’t feel angry with her any longer. She asked me all sorts of questions about precedence; about whether at a dinner-party she’d go in before Lady Baumstein. Benny Baumstein is the frightful little man who owns the Sunshine Circuit shows. She was in one of his No. 3 companies. When I said she would, she said ‘Yip-ee’ like a cow-girl. It was frightful, of course, but it was so completely real that in a way I respected it. She actually said she knew what she called her ‘ac-cent’ wasn’t so hot, but she was going to ask ‘Noddy’ to teach her to speak more refined.”
Fenella looked from her mother to Paul and shook her head helplessly. “It was no good,” she said, “I just succumbed. It was awful, and it was funny, and most of all it was somehow genuinely pathetic.” She turned back to Alleyn: “I don’t know if you can believe that,” she said.
“Very easily,” Alleyn returned. “She was on the defensive and angry when I saw her, but I noticed something of the same quality myself. Toughness, naïvety, and candour all rolled into one. Always very disarming. One meets it occasionally in pickpockets.”
“But in a funny sort of way,” Fenella said, “I felt that she was honest and had got standards. And much as I loathed the thought of her marriage to Grandfather, I felt sure that according to her lights she’d play fair. And most important of all, I felt that the title meant much more to her than the money. She was grateful and affectionate because he was going to give her the title, and never would she have done anything to prevent him doing so. While I was still gaping at her she took my arm, and believe it or not, we went upstairs together like a couple of schoolgirls. She asked me into her frightful rooms, and I actually sat on the bed while she drenched herself in pre-war scent, repainted her face and dressed for dinner. Then she came along to my room and sat on my bed while I changed. She never left off talking, and I suffered it all in a trance. It really was most peculiar. Down we went, together still, and there was Aunt Milly, howling for the kids’ and Grandfather’s medicine. We’d left it, of course, in the flower-room, and the queerest thing of all,” Fenella slowly wound up, “was that, although I still took the gloomiest possible view of her relationship with Grandfather, I simply could not continue to loathe her guts. And, Mr. Alleyn, I swear she never did anything to harm him. Do you believe me? Is all this as important as Paul and I think it is?”
Alleyn, who had been watching Jenetta Ancred’s hands relax and the colour return to her face, roused himself and said: “It may be of enormous importance. I think you may have tidied up a very messy corner.”
“A messy corner,” she repeated. “Do you mean—?”
“Is there anything else?”
“The next part really belongs to Paul. Go on, Paul.”
“Darling,” said Jenetta Ancred, and the two syllables, in her deepish voice, sounded like a reiterated warning. “Don’t you think you’ve made your point? Must we?”
“Yes, Mummy, we must. Now then, Paul.”
Paul began rather stiffly and with a deprecatory air: “I’m afraid, sir, that all this is going to sound extremely obvious and perhaps a bit high-falutin, but Fen and I have talked it over pretty thoroughly and we’ve come to a definite conclusion. Of course it was obvious from the beginning that the letters meant Sonia Orrincourt. She was the only person who didn’t get one, and she’s the one who benefited most by Grandfather’s death. But those letters were written before they found the rat-bane in her suitcase, and, in fact, before there was a shred of evidence against her. So that if she’s innocent, and I agree with Fenella that she is, it means one of two things. Either the letter-writer knew something that he or she genuinely thought suspicious, and none of us did know anything of the sort; or, the letter was written out of pure spite, and not to mince matters, with the intention of getting her hanged. If that’s so, it seems to me that the tin of rat-bane was deliberately planted. And it seems to me — to Fen and me — that the same person put that book on embalming in the cheese-dish because he was afraid nobody would ever remember it, and was shoving it under our noses in the most startling form he could think of.”
He paused and glanced nervously at Alleyn, who said: “That sounds like perfectly sound reasoning to me.”
“Well, then, sir,” said Paul quickly, “I think you’ll agree that the next point is important. It’s about this same damn’ silly business with the book in the cheese-dish, and I may as well say at the outset it casts a pretty murky light on my cousin Cedric. In fact, if we’re right, we’ve got to face the responsibility of practically accusing Cedric of attempted murder.”
“Paul!”
“I’m sorry, Aunt Jen, but we’ve decided.”
“If you’re right, and I’m sure you’re wrong, have you thought of the sequel? The newspapers. The beastliness. Have you thought of poor Milly, who dotes on the little wretch?”
“We’re sorry,” Paul repeated stubbornly.
“You’re inhuman,” cried his aunt and threw up her hands.
“Well,” said Alleyn peaceably, “let’s tackle this luncheon-party while we’re at it. What was everybody doing before the book on embalming made its appearance?”
This seemed to nonplus them. Fenella said impatiently: “Just sitting. Waiting for someone to break it up. Aunt Milly does hostess at Ancreton, but Aunt Pauline (Paul’s mother) rather feels she ought to when in residence. She — you don’t mind me mentioning it, Paul, darling? — she huffs and puffs about it a bit, and makes a point of waiting for Aunt Milly to give the imperceptible signal to rise. I rather fancied Aunt Milly kept us sitting for pure devilment. Anyway, there we stuck.”
“Sonia fidgeted,” said Paul, “and sort of groaned.”
“Aunt Dessy said she thought it would be nice if we could escape having luncheon dishes that looked like the village pond when the floods had subsided. That was maddening for Aunt Milly. She said with a short laugh that Dessy wasn’t obliged to stay on at Ancreton.”