“Oh, I did, while she was alive. We never met after my grandfather’s death, you know. I didn’t wish to force myself on her. After all, she was a wealthy woman. My grandfather made a new will on his marriage and left her all he possessed. Our ways of life were very different. But I usually wrote briefly at Christmas and she sent a card in reply. I wanted to keep some contact in case, one day, she might want someone to turn to, and would remember that I am a priest.”
And why should she want that, thought Dalgliesh. To clear her conscience? Was that what the dear old boy had in mind? So he must have had some doubts from the beginning. But of course he had; Dalgliesh knew something of the story, and the general feeling of the family and friends was that Great Aunt Allie had been extremely lucky to escape the gallows.
His own father’s view, expressed with reticence, reluctance and compassion, had not in essentials differed from that given by a local reporter at the time: “How on earth did she expect to get away with it? Damned lucky to escape topping if you ask me.”
“The news of the legacy came as a complete surprise?” Dalgliesh asked the Canon.
“Indeed, yes. I saw her just once at that first and only Christmas, six weeks after her marriage when my grandfather died. We always talk of her as Great Aunt Allie but in fact, as you know, she married my grandfather. But it seemed impossible to think of her as a step-grandmother.
“There was the usual family gathering at Colebrook Croft at the time I was there with my parents and my twin sisters. I was barely four and the twins were just eight months old. I can remember nothing of my grandfather or of his wife. After the murder—if one has to use that dreadful word—my mother returned home with us children, leaving my father to cope with the police, the solicitors and the newsmen. It was a terrible time for him. I don’t think I was even told that my grandfather was dead until about a year later. My old nurse, Nellie, who had been given Christmas as a holiday to visit her own family, told me that, soon after my return home. I asked her if grandfather was now young and beautiful for always. She, poor woman, took it as a sign of infant prognostication and piety. Poor Nellie was sadly superstitious and sentimental, I’m afraid. But I knew nothing of Grandfather’s death at the time and certainly can recall nothing of that Christmas visit or of my new step-grandmother. Mercifully, I was little more than a baby when the murder was done.”
“She was a music-hall artist, wasn’t she?” asked Dalgliesh.
“Yes, and a very talented one. My grandfather met her when she was working with a partner in a hall in Cannes. He had gone to the South of France, with his man-servant, for his health. I understood that she extracted a gold watch from his chain and, when he claimed it, told him that he was English, had recently suffered from a stomach ailment, had two sons and a daughter, and was about to have a wonderful surprise. It was all correct except that his only daughter had died in childbirth leaving him a granddaughter, Marguerite Goddard.”
“That was all easily guessable from Boxdale’s voice and appearance,” said Dalgliesh. “I can only suppose the surprise was the marriage?”
“It was certainly a surprise, and a most unpleasant one for the family. It is easy to deplore the snobbishness and the conventions of another age and, indeed, there was much in Edwardian England to deplore, but it was not a propitious marriage. I think of the difference in background, education and way of life, the lack of common interests. And there was the disparity of age. Grandfather had married a girl just three months younger than his own granddaughter. I cannot wonder that the family were concerned, that they felt that the union could not, in the end, contribute to the contentment or happiness of either party.”
And that was putting it charitably, thought Dalgliesh. The marriage certainly hadn’t contributed to their happiness. From the point of view of the family, it had been a disaster. He recalled hearing of an incident when the local vicar and his wife, a couple who had actually dined at Colebrook Croft on the night of the murder, first called on the bride. Apparently old Augustus Boxdale had introduced her, saying: “Meet the prettiest little variety artiste in the business. Took a gold watch and notecase off me without any trouble. Would have had the elastic out of my pants if I hadn’t watched out. Anyway, she stole my heart, didn’t you, sweetheart?”
All this was accompanied by a hearty slap on the rump and a squeal of delight from the lady who had promptly demonstrated her skill by extracting the Reverend Arthur Venable’s bunch of keys from his left ear.
Dalgliesh thought it tactful not to remind the Canon of this story.
“What do you wish me to do, Sir?” he enquired.
“It’s asking a great deal, I know, when you’re so busy. But if I had your assurance that you believed in Aunt Allie’s innocence, I should feel happy about accepting the bequest. I wondered if it would be possible for you to see the records of the trial. Perhaps it would give you a clue. You’re so clever at this sort of thing.”
He spoke without flattery but with an innocent wonder at the strange vocations of men. Dalgliesh was, indeed, very clever at this sort of thing. A dozen or so men at present occupying security wings in HM prisons could testify to Chief Superintendent Dalgliesh’s cleverness, as, indeed, could a handful of others walking free whose defending counsel had been in their own way as clever as Chief Superintendent Dalgliesh. But to re-examine a case over sixty years old seemed to require clairvoyance rather than cleverness. The trial judge and both learned counsels had been dead for over fifty years. Two world wars had taken their toll. Four reigns had passed. It was highly probable that, of those who had slept under the roof of Colebrook Croft on that fateful Boxing Day night of 1901, only the Canon still survived. But the old man was troubled and had sought his help, and Dalgliesh, with a day or two’s leave due to him, had the time to give it.
“I’ll do what I can,” he promised.
The transcript of a trial which had taken place sixty-seven years ago took time and trouble to obtain even for a Chief Superintendent of the Metropolitan Police. It provided little comfort for the Canon. Mr. Justice Bellows had summed up with that avuncular simplicity with which he was wont to address juries, regarding them as a panel of well-intentioned but cretinous children. And the facts could have been comprehended by any child. Part of the summing up set them out with lucidity:
“And so, gentlemen of the jury, we come to the night of December twenty-sixth. Mr. Augustus Boxdale, who had perhaps indulged a little unwisely on Christmas Day, had retired to bed in his dressing room after luncheon, suffering from a recurrence of the slight indigestive trouble which had afflicted him for most of his life. You will have heard that he had taken luncheon with the members of his family and ate nothing which they, too, did not eat. You may feel you can acquit luncheon of anything worse than over-richness.
“Dinner was served at eight p.m. promptly, as was the custom at Colebrook Croft. There were present at that meal Mrs. Augustus Boxdale, the deceased’s bride; his elder son, Captain Maurice Boxdale, with his wife; his younger son, the Reverend Henry Boxdale, with his wife; his granddaughter Miss Marguerite Goddard; and two neighbours, the Reverend and Mrs. Arthur Venables.
“You have heard how the accused took only the first course at dinner, which was ragout of beef, and then, at about eight-twenty, left the dining room to sit with her husband. Shortly after nine o’clock she rang for the parlour maid, Mary Huddy, and ordered a basin of gruel to be brought up to Mr. Boxdale. You have heard that the deceased was fond of gruel, and indeed as prepared by Mrs. Muncie, the cook, it sounds a most nourishing dish for an elderly gentleman of weak digestion.