Here Lies Gloria Mundy

‘They could, but I don’t think they would. Men will lie themselves black in the face in support of the old school tie. Women have no such mistaken loyalties. A woman will tell little fibs on behalf of a girl friend, such as claiming that the friend was staying the weekend with her when actually the damsel was sharing an illicit bed quite elsewhere, or telling the friend’s husband that she was with his wife when she bought a new dress “in the sales for a knockdown price” and then tell the wife to keep her fingers crossed and hope that he won’t notice the big hole in their joint account when he goes over the books at the end of the quarter or whenever it is; but, when it comes to the real crunch, women get cold feet and tell the truth willy-nilly.’

‘Not all women,’ I said.

‘There are exceptions to every rule, Stratford.’

‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘Just the chivalrous knight speaking up for a maligned and unjustly treated sex.’

‘I gather, Mr Coberley, that you do not share a bank account with your wife,’ said Dame Beatrice.

‘I might, if most of the money was hers and not mine. As it is, I’m not such a fool. You asked me to pick out the woman who murdered Gloria Mundy. I can’t do it. All I know is that, in a serious matter of this kind, women wouldn’t connive to give each other alibis.’

‘May we have chapter and verse?’

‘I imagine, even from the little I saw of her, that Gloria was a red rag to a bull to other women. She had no beauty, either of face or figure, yet, from what I have gathered, men were her cornfield and her vineyard.’

‘There was her remarkable hair,’ said Dame Beatrice. ‘Perhaps that was the attraction. What say you, Mr Stratford?’

‘When I buy a horse it will be a strawberry roan,’ I said. ‘I don’t go for piebalds and skewbalds.’

‘I gather that both of you were immune to Gloria’s charms,’ said Dame Beatrice. ‘Now, Mr Coberley, line up your suspects.’

‘I repeat,’ said this new and astonishing man, ‘it could have been any one of them. I am perfectly certain that any normal, sex-orientated woman would have declared war on Gloria Mundy at sight. Let us (as you seem to wish this) take the ladies in question one by one, leaving out my wife, who had no fear of female rivalry.’

‘I should think not,’ I said warmly.

Dame Beatrice cackled and Coberley said in his best headmaster’s voice, ‘Attend to your work, boy.’

Instead of doing so immediately, I asked a direct and, to my mind, a pertinent question. ‘Aren’t you taking this being brought to trial seriously?’

‘I might, if I were guilty, but I’m not, you see,’ he said. ‘Sir Ferdinand got me a very light sentence when last I appeared before a jury, and this time I expect to escape without a stain on my character.’

‘Sir Ferdinand?’ I said blankly.

‘My son,’ said Dame Beatrice, ‘a clever and unscrupulous boy, but it is more fitting that the guilty should escape man’s vengeance rather than that the innocent should suffer. I must place it on record, however, that I had no hand in Mr Coberley’s choice of a lawyer. Now, client, back to business, if you please. Name your dames and let us have your opinion of each in turn and, if you can manage it, your reason for bringing her under suspicion.’

I could not see how this catalogue was going to help the enquiry, but I trusted that Dame Beatrice had something constructive in mind and that she anticipated that Coberley’s opinions would shed some ray of light upon what still seemed to be the impenetrable darkness and mystery which surrounded Gloria Mundy’s death.

‘Well, my first choice would be Mrs Wotton,’ said Coberley. ‘It was easy to see that she detested the girl. Wotton and I had a couple of drinks too many when I was at his place one night. This was some time ago, before any of this murder and arson business. I have no doubt I unburdened myself in a way I would not do normally, but so did he, by Jove! I heard the full story of Gloria Mundy’s conquest of him and he finished up by begging me to forgive him for bandying a woman’s name and saying that he had made a clean breast of the whole affair to his wife before they married.’

‘It was Celia Wotton who asked the wretched girl to stay to lunch that day,’ I pointed out.

‘Yes, because she knew it was the last thing Wotton wanted. It was a mean little way of getting a bit of her own back,’ said Coberley.

‘Oh, come, now!’ I protested. ‘Any hostess would have felt bound to do the same.’

‘To an uninvited and obviously unwelcome guest? Still, you may be right.’

‘After the soup-splashing incident, everybody took it for granted that Miss Mundy had slung her hook. Nobody expected her to be seen at the old house,’ I said.

‘Nevertheless, that’s where she was,’ said Dame Beatrice. ‘Can you produce any evidence, apart from a somewhat weak motive, for your suspicions of Mrs Wotton?’