Spider Light(91)
He thought it not improbable that the BBC would want to know if the recipes were still viable, so he was going to spend the evening in a modest culinary experiment. He took a quick survey of his pantry, and chose something called Friggise of Chicken. Friggise sounded a bit aggressive and slightly Anglo-Saxon–the kind of word you might hear pugnacious twelve year olds shouting at one another–but of course it was a derivative of fricassee.
He had most of the ingredients in his larder, and with it he was going to have something called a Drunken Loaf: a concoction involving butter, cream and cheese, all of which might admittedly be a touch high on calories and cholesterol. Still, there was red wine in the chicken, which was supposed to be good for the arteries. There was actually also a drop or two of red wine in the loaf as well, in fact not to put too fine a point on it, there was half a bottle. Godfrey thought he might be a bit potted when he had eaten all this. Just a bit.
He was in the process of slicing mushrooms when somewhere downstairs in one of Quire’s rooms, somebody screamed.
Godfrey dropped the mushrooms, and in a dither of panic, took up the poker and went scurrying down the stairs. The scream had come from the back of the house, and most likely there was a perfectly mundane explanation for it, but you could never tell.
On the half-landing he collided with Oliver, coming down from the second floor.
‘What in God’s name…?’
‘No idea,’ said Godfrey. ‘But it’s inside the house.’
‘It’s inside the music room,’ said Oliver.
They crossed the hall, rather erratically switching on lights as they went. The door of the music room was flung open, and Antonia Weston, her face sheet white, the pupils of her eyes shrunk to pinpoints with terror, came running out to meet them.
She half fell into Oliver’s arms, and she was shaking so badly that for a moment she could not speak.
Then she managed to say, ‘Could you get the police at once–and an ambulance. Oh God, yes, you’d better get an ambulance as well, because he’s certainly dead, but we’d better be absolutely sure.’
‘Who’s dead? Antonia, tell me who’s dead?’ said Oliver. And then, ‘Godfrey get some brandy.’
With a superhuman effort, Antonia managed to stop shaking, and discovered she was clutching Oliver as if he was a liferaft. She stepped back, and said, ‘It’s Greg Foster. Somebody’s stabbed him–he’s in the music room–I’m perfectly all right, but I will have that brandy, if you don’t mind.’
Detective Inspector Curran was a tall thin gentleman with alert eyes and close-cropped, grey hair. The stolid Sergeant Blackburn was in attendance. Antonia, who had hoped not to have to deal with the sergeant again, retreated into a deep armchair in the corner of Oliver Remus’s sitting room.
Even two floors up, it was possible to hear sounds of activity downstairs, and it was impossible not to be jolted back to the sick confusion of Richard’s and Don Robards’ death. Scene-of-crime officers, thought Antonia. People in disposable paper suits scraping at the carpet and the skirting boards, and sealing the grisly harvestings in minuscule sterile phials. The flashing of police cameras on the body. Richard’s and Don’s bodies had not been moved for what had felt like hours, while the forensic experts assessed how and when they had fallen, at what angle the knife had gone in, the trajectory of the blood…
Greg Foster had been moved, though. They had heard a heavy engined police ambulance drive up a little while ago. There had been the sounds of shuffling feet and solemn voices, then the slamming of car doors. Antonia had known they were taking the body away. (And the Caprice music? Had they taken that?)
Godfrey Toy was perched worriedly on the edge of a chair. After he had called the police and an ambulance, he had been given a large brandy by Oliver, but he had been shaking so badly he had spilled half of it. Antonia was not shaking, but it was only by dint of extreme concentration that she was not.
By contrast, the professor, standing by the mantelpiece, appeared to be as cool as a cat and about as uncaring. As if to emphasize this, Raffles wandered into the room in the wake of the two police officers, and sat by the fire, looking like a bored Egyptian cat-god.
D. I. Curran courteously asked Antonia to explain precisely what had happened tonight, from around six o’clock up to the time she had found Greg Foster’s body. In her own words, if she would be so good. Sergeant Blackburn would make notes, and they would prepare a statement for her to sign.
Antonia had to grip her hands very tightly together in case they began to shake again. Even to her own ears the account of tonight’s incident sounded like the wildest flight of fantasy. When she reached the part about following the prowler through the park and finding the body, she broke off to say defensively, ‘I do know how ridiculous this must seem, but truly inspector, I’ve been the victim of several macabre tricks since I came to Amberwood.’
‘We meet stranger things in our working day, Miss Weston. Is it Miss, by the way?’
‘I believe it’s Doctor if you want to be precise,’ said a voice from the fireplace. Antonia felt as if someone had picked her up and dropped her into a pit filled with ice-cold water. ‘I don’t see why Doctor Weston shouldn’t be given that courtesy, at least, do you?’ said Oliver, looking at the inspector. ‘I expect she worked extremely hard to acquire it.’