Page 24 of Marble Hall Murders

‘It would not be hanging but the guillotine,’ Voltaire remarked coldly. ‘We are fortunate to have the contents of the teapot from which Lady Chalfont took her tea. They have been sent for analysis in Marseille and we will have the results very soon.’

Harry Lyttleton had gone pale at the mention of the guillotine. Jeffrey Chalfont was unmoved.

‘Can you describe for me what occurred?’ Pünd asked. ‘Was it always your practice to take tea with your mother?’

‘Not always,’ Jeffrey replied. He took a breath. ‘She spent a lot of time in her room, but she liked to come out to the garden for afternoon tea and given how ill she was, we always made sure there was someone to sit with her.’

‘So you and Mr Lyttleton were in the garden. Who else was in the house?’

‘My stepfather was in his study. He spends all day there sometimes, writing one damn catalogue after another. He’d had lunch in Nice and he got back at three o’clock. I knowbecause I was on the terrace and heard the clock strike in thepetit salonjust as his car pulled in. Béatrice was in the kitchen, I imagine. I’m not entirely sure where Cedric was. He’s my son. He’s only eight years old. He was mucking around somewhere in the garden. He does that a lot.’

‘And his mother?’

‘Lola was in her bedroom, learning her lines.’

‘She is an actress?’

‘She used to be. That’s how I met her. She was playing Mata Hari at the Theatre Royal in Norwich. She was a gorgeous young woman, I have to say. And she got the voice and the look absolutely right – but this is something rather different: a comedy musical. It’s calledWhere’s My Gondola?A complete waste of time. It’ll probably sink.’

Harry Lyttleton smirked, but it seemed to Pünd that Jeffrey hadn’t intended to make a joke. ‘Was there anyone else?’ he asked.

‘My wife was in Peru,’ Harry said. ‘Which is to say, that’s where she always is in her own mind. She’d have been at her desk, writing about the Nazca desert.’

Jeffrey thought for a moment. ‘That just leaves Robert,’ he said. ‘Robert Waysmith is Elmer’s son by his first marriage. I only saw him when the police were here and I didn’t ask him where he’d been. I imagine he was working at the gallery, in Nice. That’s his business. He sells art.’

‘Are the two of you close?’

‘Robert and me? We don’t have many shared interests, but we get along. I like him. I’d say we all do.’

‘So you had tea with Lady Chalfont in the gazebo. How did she seem to you?’

The two men glanced at each other as if wondering who should speak. It was Harry Lyttleton who answered. ‘She seemed to be in jolly good spirits,’ he said. ‘She hadn’t been at all herself recently, not since she got back from that trip to London. But Jeffers and I both thought she was on top form.’

‘Maybe that’s because she knew Mr Pünd was coming,’ Fraser remarked.

‘You were aware that Lady Chalfont had approached me?’ Pünd asked.

Jeffrey shook his head. ‘Judith didn’t tell us that you’d met. As a matter of fact, I’m quite annoyed with her. If we’d known there was something preying on Mama’s mind and that she felt she needed a detective, we might have been able to talk to her.’

‘That’s how she was,’ Harry added. ‘We didn’t even know the old girl was ill until a month after she’d been diagnosed. She kept everything close to her chest.’

‘But she was not anxious at the time of the tea,’ Pünd reminded them. ‘You said just now that she was in good spirits.’

‘That’s right. She was.’ Jeffrey picked up the story. ‘We talked about the garden and some of the new houses being built in the area, local gossip, that sort of stuff. Mama seemed on good form. Then Béatrice brought out the tea.’

‘Did all of you drink from the teapot?’

‘Margaret had a pot of her own,’ Harry said. ‘It was a lemon and ginger concoction, supposedly good for her health. Jeffrey and I shared the other one.’

‘The two pots were similar?’

‘Not at all. Hers was pink. Ours was blue. And hers was much smaller.’

‘We already told Mr Voltaire all this,’ Jeffrey said. ‘She complained that her tea had an odd taste. We were about to call Béatrice, but before we could do anything, she started coughing and pawing at her throat. She said the tea was burning her. Then she sat back in her chair and let out a gasp and – we had no idea what was happening – she jerked back. And then …’ his face fell ‘… she died.’

‘It was hideous!’ Harry’s eyes were filled with horror as he recalled the last moments in the garden. ‘I mean, she’d been so alive one minute and now she wasn’t breathing. Her eyes were staring and I somehow knew … I could tell at once that she was dead. But how could it have happened just like that, sitting in the sunshine, drinking tea?’

‘Did you think she might have been poisoned?’