Here Lies Gloria Mundy

‘Well,’ I said, ‘it seems to me that, if it comes to a question of motive, Anthony Wotton had at least as strong a one as Coberley. Some people might think it stronger.’

‘I wonder why Miss Brockworth told you the story about the baby?’ said Laura. ‘Was it just a shot at Wotton, do you think? I’ll tell you one thing, ’ she went on, before I could answer. ‘She sounds to me about as dotty as they come. Suppose she was the one who stabbed Gloria and then broke her leg after the deed was done? Isn’t that a possibility?’

‘I don’t think so,’ I said. ‘She could have committed the murder, as you say, but she couldn’t have started the fire. She was most certainly in hospital when that happened.’

‘Can you remember the details of the soup incident?’ asked Dame Beatrice. ‘I can envisage the scene when the bread was thrown, but what happened immediately after that? Did Miss Mundy leap from her chair and rush precipitately from the room?’

‘It amounted to that. She was sitting between William Underedge and Roland Thornbury. They both jumped out of the way and then Underedge began to mop down Gloria’s sweater with his table napkin, but she pushed him away, and Celia got up and went to her and said, “Oh, dear! Come along to the bathroom and sponge down.” Gloria wouldn’t have any of that, either, but flung her own table napkin on to the table where most of the soup had gone, rushed out and we heard the bang as the front door slammed. Then there was a general upset while Underedge and Thornbury attended to the one or two splashes they had received and the tablecloth was changed and fresh table napkins supplied to the two young men and after that the rest of the lunch was served.’

‘The windows of the dining-room, I recall,’ said Dame Beatrice, ‘look out upon the lawn and a broad path divides the lawn from the frontage of the house. Did anybody notice whether Miss Mundy went past the window?’

‘I have never heard that anybody did. I think we were all too flummoxed by what had happened to give an eye to anything but the mess and the mopping-up operations. I shouldn’t think she went past the windows, though, as she landed up in the old house. I saw her arrive and she came from the direction of the schoolboys’ playing-field, but the old house lies in the opposite direction,’ I said.

‘I wonder why she chose that way in? One would suppose that the road from the town was shorter by way of the old house rather than by the way of the playing-field.’

‘I imagine she came from the railway station, asked for directions to Beeches Lawn and was shown the lane which passes what used to be the convent. I don’t think she had ever been to Beeches Lawn before, you see.’

‘I noticed gardeners at work when I arrived,’ said Dame Beatrice. ‘No doubt the police have questioned them.’

‘They have questioned all the servants, I believe, but I expect the gardener and his boy were having their midday meal at the same time as we were having lunch. I doubt whether they would have seen anything of Gloria.’

‘If she had not been to Beeches Lawn before, how did she know about the picture?’

‘My impression is that, at some time while he was having his affair with her, Wotton had told Gloria about the picture and its resemblance to herself, and she went to the old house either to look at it or to steal it. It may well have been the latter since, according to Miss Eglantine, there was no picture to be seen when she herself went over there to take a look at it. My view is that Gloria had already stolen it. I don’t see any reason why she should have taken it upstairs, as she told Aunt Eglantine she had done. I doubt whether she would have risked climbing that staircase, lightweight though she was. She probably hoped, after the soup incident, that Aunt Eg would break her neck on it instead of her leg.’

‘Reverting to the blackmailing photograph, did you obtain any description of the party who had brought the baby along?’

‘Wotton referred to her as a waif, I think, that’s all.’

‘Could the description, so far as it goes, fit Miss Mundy herself?’

‘Well, she was a meagre, skinny little thing, so perhaps it could. I see what you mean. You think the other girl is a myth and that it really was Gloria’s baby. But, if it was, and there was no accomplice present, who took the photograph?’

‘Some obliging and innocent passer-by was pressed into service, perhaps. People are wonderfully kind.’

‘Well, I believe Anthony’s story,’ I said stoutly.

‘Dame Beatrice thinks,’ said Laura Gavin, ‘that Mr Wotton is anything but in the clear and I think the police might do worse than take a look at Celia, who obviously hated Gloria’s guts. One also has to allow for person or persons unknown. Suppose the police are right and there were squatters in the old house? Might they not have objected in a forceful manner to Gloria’s invasion of the premises? They could have been responsible for the bonfire, you know. It wasn’t their own property they were burning down.’