Free Dead In The Morning by Margaret Yorke Page B

Ludlow leads them all a dance, we know that. She has Phyllis Medhurst on a string, without a life of her own, and they all have to jump to it when the old girl wishes.”
    “Yes, but to murder her! That’s what you’re getting at, isn’t it? The sleeping pills were in the pie and the wrong person ate it?”
    “That’s how it looks,” said Patrick.
    “But why? Lots of people have tiresome relations, but they don’t bump them off.”
    “There must have been powerful reasons,” Patrick said. “Things we don’t yet know about. People are seldom only what they seem, as you should know, Jane. Behind the facades of these prim villas and gentrified cottages here in Winterswick many a drama must go on.”
    “No, Patrick. People are basically decent.”
    “Except when being decent interferes with what they want. Then they become ruthless.”
    “No. Only some of them.”
    “And murder only happens sometimes,” Patrick said. “Most people cope in some fashion or other with the various strains under which they live, or they simply come out in spots, or leave home, or get drunk. But occasionally you get pressures that cause a person to snap. Then the unpredictable happens.”
    “But even if Mrs Ludlow is an infuriating old woman, you’re suggesting that a member of her family hated her enough to murder her?”
    “Hated her enough, or would profit by her death enough to want to hasten it.”
    “But which of them?”
    “You tell me.”
    “Well, Phyllis could have got at the pie. No one else. Only she was at the house, last night, apart from Cathy. I presume you exempt her?”
    Patrick nodded. “A decision of the emotions, not the intellect,” he said.
    “Emotions! You have none,” said his sister. “No, I won’t subscribe to this idea, Patrick. The post-mortem will show that Mrs Mackenzie had a stroke, or her daughter will say she had some secret worry which unbalanced her. Or the chemist may have made a mistake and put up too few pills. You’ll see, there will be a rational explanation. And meanwhile you’ve frightened Cathy off. Didn’t you notice how suddenly she fled?”
    “I didn’t scare her away,” Patrick said. “Her cousin Tim enticed her.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “He walked past while we were talking. Cathy happened to look out of the window and she saw him. I did too. He never looked towards the house - you don’t know him, do you, Jane?”
    “No.”
    “I recognised him all right, shaggy hair and all,” said Patrick.
    “How nice of him to come over to see Cathy,” said Jane.
    “Darling Jane, how you do believe the best of people,” Patrick said. “He didn’t come to cheer up Cathy, if that what’s you thinking. He came to look for this,” and he took an envelope out of his pocket.
    “What is it?”
    “A letter addressed to Mr Timothy Ludlow, St Mark’s College, Oxford,” Patrick said. “I found it on the gravel outside Pantons last night, where our young friend must have dropped it earlier in the evening.”
    He tapped the envelope and gave her a sardonic look. “Well? Aren’t you going to ask me if I’ve read it?”
    “I’m bloody sure you have,” said Jane sourly.
    “You’re right,” Patrick admitted. “And rather a tiresome letter it is too, in the nature of an ultimatum. It’s just as well I found it, not the police. The young idiot’s got to find a lot of money rather quickly.”
    “So he went to ask his rich old granny for some. Bully for him. Very wise,” said Jane.
    “But what if granny said no?”
    “But you can’t mean that Tim - a boy of twenty . . .?” Jane’s voice trailed away.
    “I trust sincerely not,” said Patrick. “But this shows you what I mean, Jane. The Ludlows, like everybody else, have their secrets. By chance I’ve found out Tim’s. What about the rest of them? Phyllis has one, we know that too, by another chance. But there are the brothers. Derek may have something he wants to hide; so may his wife. Then there’s Gerald,