Here Lies Gloria Mundy

I returned to my flat and tried to settle down to work, but it was impossible to concentrate on the new book. What with the conversation with Aunt Eglantine and my approaching marriage, I found myself incapable of serious application to creative writing. I soon gave up the attempt and wrote to Imogen instead. That is to say I was halfway through the letter when Anthony’s call distracted me. He sounded incoherent.

‘Stop!’ I said. ‘Take a deep breath and begin again. Are you tight?’

Apparently he relinquished the phone to Celia, for it was her voice which came through.

‘It’s that girl again,’ she said. ‘Do come.’

‘Has she been arrested?’

‘No, and Cranford Coberley is free. Drop everything and come, please. We need you badly.’

I did as she asked. I left my letter unfinished, got my car and drove straight to Beeches Lawn, stopping only to pick up a sandwich and some coffee on the M4. When I had pulled up in the forecourt of Anthony’s garage, I locked the car, a precaution I had never taken before at his place, and as I walked by the kitchen garden I met Platt, the gardener.

‘Beg pardon, sir,’ he said, ‘but, in case you didn’t know, there’s trouble up at the house.’

‘Yes, I had a telephone call,’ I said.

‘That’s all right then, sir. You won’t be getting a shock.’

I did not ask him to explain what the nature of the shock would have been. I knew that Anthony and Celia were alive and that was all that concerned me at the moment. I hurried along to the house. Celia opened the front door.

‘The servants are having hysterics and Anthony isn’t much better,’ she said. ‘Come in and have a drink. We can all do with one.’

She took me into the enormous drawing room. Anthony was at the window staring out at the almost leafless trees. He turned round as we came in.

‘Hullo, Corin,’ he said. ‘Good of you to come. We’re in trouble again.’

Celia went out and returned from the dining-room next door with bottles and glasses.

‘I met your gardener,’ I said. ‘What’s happened now? Not Aunt Eglantine, I hope?’

‘Oh, no, it’s Gloria Mundy. She’s dead,’ said Celia. ‘The servants found her lying outside the back door. The police have been here again and so I suppose all hell will be let loose once more. Will that wretched girl never stop causing trouble? Help yourself, Corin, and don’t stint.’

I poured drinks for all of us. Anthony was almost too shaken up to hold his glass. I wondered whether he had gone on caring for Gloria after all, or even whether he had killed her.

‘So what happened?’ I asked.

‘We don’t know. The servants came in just as we were finishing breakfast and blurted out the news, so Anthony went out there. She was quite dead. Of course the police had to be told and Detective-Inspector Rouse came again. He is becoming quite an old friend,’ said Celia bitterly. ‘He badgered us and the servants with questions and then had the body taken away. We could tell him nothing, of course, and we don’t know where we stand. It really is unutterably awful.’ Her calm demeanour suddenly crumpled. She burst into tears. This pulled Anthony together. He took the glass from her hand, laid it very precisely on the side table and collected her on to his lap. At the same moment the doorbell pealed.

‘I’ll go,’ I said; but the maid also had pulled herself together sufficiently to answer the door. She let in Rouse. I met him in the little vestibule and took him along to the drawing-room. I gave a loud knock on the door to suggest to the others that they had better unscramble themselves.

They were in separate chairs when we went in and, although Celia’s cheeks were flushed, her eyes were dry.

‘You are just in time for a drink, Detective-Inspector,’ she said.

‘No, thank you, madam. I shan’t keep you a moment. There will have to be an inquest, of course, but we found a letter on the body. It will be handed to the coroner in due course, but it is addressed to Mr Wotton, so I think he had better read it.’

Anthony took the envelope and unfolded the letter which was inside it. He perused it and then handed it to me. There was no doubt about its being a suicide note. In it Gloria said that she knew the game was up, that she had no intention of spending years in prison, that she regretted the death of the elderly cleaner, but not the murder of the American cousin — ‘she only came over here to sponge on me because she thought I was still Hardie McMaster’s mistress and he is a very rich man’ — and the letter went on to mention the photograph ‘with which I never intended any harm, but only something to hold, Tony, over your rather stupid head, but she went off with it and I did my best to buy it back so that she could do you no harm with it. Tony, my weak-kneed old darling, if your gardener must keep all that lethal stuff in his shed, he should keep it locked up. There is enough poison in there to lay out a regiment.’