Design for Dying

A Tubby Wiseman Mystery

Anne Morice

• Publisher: Dean Street Press
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781914150388
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Crime & Mystery Literature
• Index: Literature

'I've got the details written down here for you. It's a little matter of a murderous assault, which took place in or near the Marshes' tea estate.'

When Christine Marsh returns to live in the Sussex town where she grew up, the only person to greet the news with enthusiasm is her nearly senile mother Dolly. Christine's put-upon cousin Martha Kershaw knows how selfish Christine is: Martha takes care of Dolly with little recompense and has now been asked to find a large, elegant house at an impossibly low price for the Marshes.

When Christine arrives, attended by both her current and former husbands, the temperature rises. Billy Jones, the architect supervising the conversion of her house, is a former flame she callously discarded. She accuses the workmen of stealing and cruelly tells the hopeful Dolly she won't be sharing the grand new house. Then Christine's husband, wealthy Derek Marsh, is found murdered. Detective Chief Superintendent Wiseman ('Old Tubby') suspects both Christine and her first husband, but they and the other suspects all have good alibis. Morice is her usual savagely witty self, and this solid mystery is social comedy as well.

Design for Dying was originally published in 1988. This new edition features an introduction and afterword by crime fiction historian Curtis Evans.

'A light hand, an engaging ease, and an inventive mind: all welcome qualities in the writing of crime novels.' Financial Times

'What makes her such good company... is not her deductive skill but her shrewd eye and quick tongue for people and situations.' Daily Telegraph

TUESDAY, 17th APRIL

(1)

‘This one is from Christine,’ Aunt Dolly said, planting a pudgy finger on the airmail envelope with the African stamp.

‘So it is,’ Martha agreed, looking up with a simulated start of surprise from the seed catalogue which had also arrived with the morning post.

‘I can’t make it out. Why is it addressed to you and not me?’

‘Perhaps because the letter inside it is for me?’

‘Oh, stuff and nonsense! What would she be writing to you about that she can’t say to her own mother? No, don’t tell me, I can guess. You’ve been making mischief again, that’s what it is! Going behind my back and whining to Christine that I’m a useless old woman who ought to be put away in an asylum, I shouldn’t wonder.’

‘Of course not, dear, don’t be so silly,’ Martha replied, trying to sound amused, although the accusation was close enough to the truth to cause a slight flush to appear on her angular, horsy face and, inevitably, spread from there to the tip of her long nose.

‘Then why don’t you open it, if you’ve nothing to hide? Goodness knows, we don’t either of us hear from her so often that I’d expect you to shilly-shally about when you do get a letter. Go on, open it, for goodness sake, and let’s hear what she has to say.’

‘I thought I’d take it upstairs and read it after breakfast.

I haven’t brought my glasses down and you know what Christine’s writing is like.’

‘Then pass it over and I’ll read it out to you. I don’t need my glasses for that.’

This was true for, although over seventy, Dolly had excellent eyesight, this being one of the few faculties she had retained intact.

‘Look out, you’re spilling the tea down your dress, Aunt Dolly! Oh dear, what a shame. And I only fetched it back from the cleaners yesterday! Can’t you mop it up with your handkerchief?’

‘Oh, what’s it matter? Gracious, what a bore you are! Sitting there, with that moony expression on your face, nagging on about cleaners’ bills when all I want is to hear what Christine has to say. Now then, are you going to allow me to read my own daughter’s letter, or aren’t you?’

‘Oh, look! Here they are all the time!’ Martha said, unearthing her spectacles from under the seed catalogue, for if her feeble manoeuvre had failed to divert her aunt’s attention from the letter, it had at least provided breathing space in which to weigh up the two evils and to make it plain that the lesser was to keep the letter in her own hands at all costs. She stretched her thin, bony hand across the table for a clean knife and then, with the utmost care and deliberation, slit the envelope. After this, she removed the stamp, in a neat surrounding square of paper, and laid it on one side, explaining that it was for Mrs Bailey’s grandson, and all the while visualising the phrases in Christine’s scrawly handwriting and imagining how she would skip some of them, paraphrase some and, in the last resort, pretend to find others illegible. She was poor at dissembling and unlikely, she knew, to carry it off with much flair, but it was the best she could think of.

The truth was that several months previously, in a mood of near desperation, she had written to her cousin Christine in very similar terms to those which Dolly had taunted her with, though certainly not hinting that the old woman should be put in a home, for she knew she was incapable of consigning anyone to such a fate. In fact, it was precisely to avoid such a thing that she had appealed to Christine, asking if it might not be possible to provide the money for a nurse, or daily companion, since Dolly’s mental state had now deteriorated to a point which made looking after her almost a full-time job. She had also contemplated pointing out that the monthly sum which Dolly contributed to the housekeeping, however fair it might have seemed twenty years before when Christine had sailed to Africa with her first husband, Tim Whitfield, was now totally inadequate. On reflection, though, she had realised that this might merely cloud the issue, for she could envisage Christine seizing on that one point and considering her responsibility ended by upping the allowance with an additional five or ten pounds a month.

That letter had been despatched in January and it was now mid-April. On the assumption that even if Christine were to reply by return, which was unlikely but not to be absolutely ruled out, Martha had reckoned that at least ten days must elapse before she could expect a reply. So as soon as this period was up she began to exercise the utmost vigilance over the incoming mail, going downstairs in her dressing-gown to collect the letters before her aunt was up and ensuring whenever possible that the afternoon’s gardening schedule brought her within sight of the front gate at the time of the second delivery.

However, as the weeks went by and no answer came, she had relaxed these precautions and now, some three months later, had been caught off her guard and plunged into the very situation she had most dreaded. She was not in fear of her aunt’s displeasure, which she cheerfully endured forty times a day; only of hurting her feelings.

Christine’s reply was handwritten on three sheets of airmail paper and even before unfolding it Martha realised with a certain wry amusement that at least it contained no cheque to be explained away.

Adjusting her spectacles and clearing her throat like a nervous lecturer, she skimmed rapidly over the first two paragraphs and almost exclaimed aloud, in a mixture of relief and disappointment, as she realised that no expurgating would be needed either. Her cousin had written as follows:

Dear Martha,

Sorry about the long silence but, as you may have seen in the papers, things have been pretty hectic here, owing to the military coup and curfews and all the rest of it and we’ve had ghastly staff problems in the house as well as on the plantation. So you needn’t think I’ve been too busy with the social whirl to send any news. As a matter of fact, all that side of life has practically ground to a halt because there are some pretty villainous characters around and most of our friends don’t fancy being out after sunset these days. Things are beginning to settle down a bit now, but there have been some really nasty incidents, one of them involving poor old Tim, which gave us all a bad scare, but I’ll save the details till I see you. And hold on to your seat because this will probably be some time in August, which brings me to the point of this letter. We’ve been talking about it for months and Derek has finally decided that the only sensible course is to sell up the estate and leave here before there’s another change of government and they bring in those iniquitous laws against taking money out of the country, like we’ve seen happening in other parts of Africa.

I’m sure you’ll understand that we’re absolutely heartbroken by the prospect, and it’s particularly rough on Derek, being third generation out here and having no family or friends in the UK, unless you count poor old Jim McBean, who retired last year and is now living in some ghastly place like Woking. And I can’t say I particularly relish the idea of washing up and scrubbing floors in grey little England. Added to which, it has come at a very awkward moment for Adrian, who is in his third year at the Nairobi school and was hoping to go on to a university in SA. But obviously there’s no point in doing that if he can’t come here for the holidays, so we’ll have to try and squeeze him into a crammers, or something. Or perhaps you know of some local clergyman who could tutor him, if they still do that kind of thing?

Well, it’s all very sad and we’ll be desperately sorry to leave in so many ways, but it’s no good beefing about it because lots of our friends will soon be leaving too and, having made the great decision, I can hardly wait to get away. I’ll be able to tell you a lot more about it when we meet, but first and foremost what I’d like you to do is to look around for a suitable house for us. We’d prefer to be somewhere near you, if possible, as I gather your part of Sussex is still reasonably unspoilt, as well as being so convenient for town. Keep in mind that we don’t want anything poky, or overlooked by neighbours, but at the same time it mustn’t be too vast and rambling, as I’m not eager to spend my whole time doing housework.

Ideally, what we have in mind is a farmhouse sort of place, with lots of character but completely modernised, with ten or twelve acres, including some rough shooting for Derek. We’ll need at least five bedrooms because we’re not used to living on top of each other and even though Adrian won’t be at home all the time he’ll need a place of his own to stack his belongings. I’m a bit out of date with UK prices, but judging by the advertisements in Country Life they’ve shot up like everything else. However, we’d go up to a hundred thousand for something really attractive, so please do your best for us.

Love to Mother and tell her I’ll keep all the other news till we meet. We’ll have to start off in an hotel in London, unless we have the luck to find someone who can lend us a flat until our stuff arrives, so I’ll either cable you our date of arrival, or else ring up when we get there, but don’t forget to keep me posted about any possible houses in the mean time.

I must say I’m looking forward to seeing some shows again. Make a note of any you can recommend, as we’re probably going to need some guidance.

Yours,

Christine

There was a postscript below the signature, but after one glance Martha kept its contents to herself. Even without it, the letter was not read through with no break, the last paragraph in particular bringing some caustic comments from Martha, who rarely set foot in a theatre and who also had some queries to express concerning the accuracy of the Country Life advertisements; but these were mere drops in the ocean compared to the stream of interruptions which flowed from Dolly. Her reactions progressed from excitement to approval and from there to the realms of purest ecstasy. The principal source of delight lay in Christine’s specifications regarding the number of bedrooms this unpoky, modernised gem must contain, for she could conceive of no other reason for their requiring so many, except the expectation of being invited to occupy one of them herself.

Although privately agreeing that nothing could be more desirable, Martha nevertheless felt it her duty to dampen these wild hopes, suspecting that they must ultimately be doomed to the most crushing disappointment, but Dolly ignored the warning and continued to rhapsodise on the subject, asking again and again why else, in stating the exact number, Christine had emphasised that it would provide one for each of them.

‘I wouldn’t set too much store by that, Aunt Dolly. She was probably only trying to give us an idea of the scale of house they have in mind. They may want two spare bedrooms, or she may be planning to get an au pair girl, for all we know.’

‘Oh, go on, pour cold water over everything, I should! You’re jealous, that’s what it is!’

‘It sounds as though Tim is staying on, despite the nasty incident, whatever it was,’ Martha said, having learnt that a change of subject was often the surest way to dislodge one of Dolly’s fixations, even at the cost of putting another one in its place.

‘Good thing, too. Best place for him,’ Dolly said, rising to the bait.

She had been proud of Tim Whitfield, her first son-in-law, when the young and exceptionally pretty Christine had married him twenty years previously. Even the desolation of knowing that he was to remove her beloved only child half-way across the world had been largely mitigated by the pleasure of boasting about how well he had done for himself to become assistant manager of a vast tea estate, with literally hundreds of workers under him, as well as by the happy anticipation of the many holidays she would be flying out to spend with the young couple.

In the end she had had to wait more than three years before embarking on the first of such trips, which had also proved to be the last, and even this had been cut down from three months to one. She had scarcely arrived in her daughter’s house before Christine had discovered herself to be pregnant and, since for some mysterious reason the birth was expected to involve complications, her doctor had advised her to spend the six months preceding it within reach of the finest obstetricians of Nairobi. They had travelled down there together and Dolly had been granted one glorious week before being despatched on the plane back to England and, although there had been talk of future visits and also of Tim and Christine bringing the baby to spend a summer in England, nothing had come of it. Then, when Adrian was two years old, came the news that Christine was divorcing her husband. Six months later she had married Derek Marsh, only surviving member of a family of old established settlers and sole owner of the tea estate where Tim Whitfield was employed.

Evidently, there had been no rancour on either side, for it was clear, even from Christine’s scrappy and infrequent letters, that Tim had kept his job and still figured to some extent in her new life. Martha imagined that such close proximity between the old and the new husband must have created a degree of embarrassment, but concluded that the grand colonial house where Christine now lived with Derek Marsh was miles removed, both socially and geographically, from Tim’s humbler residence and that in the normal way the two sides were not often obliged to meet.

Dolly, whose loyalties swung about as freely as a sapling in a high wind, had instantly switched allegiance to her new son-in-law, whose wealth and grandeur were on a level to make Christine’s former station in life appear quite beggarly by comparison. From that time on, she had never missed an opportunity to scorn and denigrate the lowly Tim, which was rather unfair of her because, as a son-in-law, Christine’s second husband turned out to be even more remiss than her first. England was not home for him and when he and Christine went on leave it was always to South Africa or the Seychelles and Dolly had not once been invited to visit them.

On this occasion Martha was content to allow the criticisms of Tim to flow on unchecked, while she cleared away and washed up the breakfast dishes and, as soon as she felt confident that the subject of the impending invasion and the five wonderful bedrooms was temporarily forgotten, she went upstairs to re-read Christine’s postscript in the privacy of her own bedroom.

(2)

‘Come on, now! Don’t look so worried. Tell me exactly what the odious creature said and I’ll give you the benefit of my opinion,’ Avril announced, striking a manly attitude, with her back to the baronial fireplace.

Despite her bossy manner, it was impossible to know Avril well and to dislike her and, although they had little in common, Martha valued her friendship highly, finding something endearing even in her arrogance.

Acquaintances were apt to remark on the many disparities between them, finding it odd that the rich and powerful Avril Meyer should choose to spend so much of her time in the company of a dowdy and impecunious spinster, but Avril viewed the situation differently. She liked Martha and admired what she called her braininess, which made her, second only to herself, the most superior person in the neighbourhood.

‘I’d better read it to you,’ Martha said, bringing out the letter once more. ‘She makes no reference to her mother until right at the end. It begins with another moan about how tough life has become, now that her lot are no longer running things. I needn’t bore you with it. Then she goes on to describe the kind of house I’m supposed to conjure up for her. I’ll have to answer that part at once and try to get it through to her that she’s living in a dream world. She’ll think I’m being obstructive, of course, but that can’t be helped. She hasn’t been to England for over twenty years and obviously the poor girl is completely out of touch with the housing situation. You wouldn’t find the sort of place she has in mind for a penny under two hundred and fifty thousand in a neighbourhood like this. If they can only afford to pay less than half of that, they’d better set their sights on Lincolnshire, or somewhere like that.’

‘But they definitely want it to be round here?’

‘Yes. Near London, you see, but not a whiff of suburbia. She’s a fearful snob.’

‘Aren’t we all? No, not you, I suppose. Could they afford more?’

‘Without a doubt, if she’s right about their being able to take their money out of the country, and I think she must be, otherwise nothing would have induced her to leave. Anyway, here comes the postscript,’ Martha ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page/About the Book
• Contents
• Introduction by Curtis Evans
• TUESDAY, 17th APRIL
• FRIDAY, 3rd AUGUST
• TUESDAY, 7th AUGUST
• FRIDAY, 10th AUGUST
• SATURDAY, 11th AUGUST [DAYTIME]
• SATURDAY, 11th AUGUST [EVENING]
• SUNDAY, 12th AUGUST
• MONDAY, 13th AUGUST
• TUESDAY, 14th AUGUST
• WEDNESDAY, 15th AUGUST
• THURSDAY, 16th AUGUST
• FRIDAY, 17th AUGUST
• MONDAY, 20th AUGUST
• FRIDAY, 24th AUGUST
• SUNDAY, 26th AUGUST
• MONDAY, 27th AUGUST
• TUESDAY, 28th AUGUST
• FRIDAY, 31st AUGUST
• Afterword
• About The Author
• Titles by Anne Morice
• Copyright