Page 32 of Marble Hall Murders

‘But your father has cared for you.’

‘Yes. He brought me up.’

‘My son and I are in business together,’ Elmer Waysmith explained. ‘We run an art gallery here in Nice and there’s a second gallery in London. We divide the year between the two.’

‘You enjoy the work?’ Pünd was still examining Robert as if there was something about him he didn’t understand.

‘To be honest, it wasn’t my first choice, but I like it well enough.’

‘Robert wanted to be a painter,’ Elmer explained. ‘That didn’t work out, so he trained to be a lawyer.’

‘I wasn’t any good at that either,’ Robert said. ‘I’m glad I’ve found something I can actually do.’

‘And what of Lady Margaret Chalfont? Again, it may not be something you wish to answer, but when your father announced that he intended to remarry, it cannot have been easy for you.’

Robert Waysmith shrugged. ‘He was happy and that was all that mattered.’

‘But what of your happiness, Robert?’

‘Lady Chalfont was extremely kind to me from the day we met. She did everything she could to make me feel wanted. Jeffrey and Judith were the same.’

‘How did you meet Lady Chalfont?’ Voltaire asked Elmer Waysmith.

‘I was introduced to her by a mutual friend who was arranging her insurance. She had a number of paintings at her home in Norfolk and she had absolutely no idea of their value. This was long after her husband had died. We became friends and shortly afterwards we married.’

‘How did her children feel about that?’ Voltaire asked.

‘It wasn’t easy for them.’ Elmer lit a cigarette. ‘Of course, we had our run-ins to begin with. They were both suspicious of me. Why wouldn’t they be? I had to persuade them that I wasn’t after their mother’s fortune, that I had a successful business that would bring in all the money I needed. But I didn’t care about them. Let me tell you something about me and Margaret.’

He paused, and when he spoke again, his voice caught.

‘I would have married her if she hadn’t had a penny in the world. She was a brilliant woman. Witty, clever, beautiful. We were both of us in our later years and we were going to make each day count – until this foul illness struck.’ He lifted a hand and covered his eyes. ‘Robert, do you mind leaving me alone with these gentlemen for a moment?’

‘Of course, Pa. Are you OK?’

‘I’ll be fine.’

Robert glanced at Voltaire, asking his permission. Voltaire nodded. Robert got up and left.

Elmer waited until he had gone, then drew a breath. ‘I hate my son to see me like this,’ he said.

Voltaire and Pünd waited for him to compose himself. Fraser crossed the room and sat on the divan.

‘I need to explain something about the Chalfont family,’ Elmer continued. He had become less aggressive now that his son was no longer in the room. ‘I didn’t want Robert to hear it because it’s not something we’ve discussed and I don’t think it’s appropriate that he should!

‘You asked me about my relationship with Jeffrey and Judith just now and I didn’t tell you the truth. The fact is, they resented me when I married their mother and they still do. The same goes for Lola and Harry. And it’s a two-way street. All four of them were a cause of endless concern to Margaret. In fact, she was worried sick about them.

‘First of all, there’s Jeffrey. He’s inherited the title and the land and – boy – he likes to let you know it! He has an estate manager, tenant farmers, groundsmen, servants, and he treats them all like dirt. I’m American. I can’t pretend to understand how the British aristocracy works, but he’s the seventh Earl and that seems to give him a licence to behave as badly as he likes. And there’s another side to him that you need to know. He gambles. You ask at the casinos around here. He’s well known to every one of them. He doesn’t win, of course, and the sums he’s losing are beginning to mount up. His father left him plenty of cash, but Margaret had no idea how much of it is left and he had no intention of telling her.

‘Judith is extremely intelligent, but don’t be fooled by that quiet ethnologist act of hers. She’s a tough cookie and she’ll do anything to protect her husband, which includes taking his side against me. And she’s got her eye on the main prize, just like him. She wants money to fight the Peruvian government over some sort of South American Stonehenge in the desert. And speaking of Harry Lyttleton – he was at school withJeffrey. The two of them were in the first eleven cricket team. Harry has no money. Maybe that’s why he keeps so close to Jeffrey. He calls himself a businessman and right now he’s trying to develop a hotel, but so far it’s brought him nothing but a truckload of trouble.

‘He’s a year behind schedule, way over budget and he hasn’t even laid the first brick. Worse still, I understand he’s managed to get himself involved with some pretty unsavoury characters. You might as well know that Harry has been demanding financial support from his mother-in-law – and from me.’ Elmer shook his head. ‘I looked into his accounts and it’s just good money after bad, which is exactly what I told Margaret. She agreed. But that hasn’t stopped him badgering us.

‘Lola completes the pack. I like her. She’s feisty and she doesn’t want to sit around on her backside, which does her credit. But she’s got this idea of going back onto the stage – she was an actress when she met Jeffrey, although she gave it all up to become a fully licensed countess. Well, she wants money too. She had this idea that Margaret would pay for her big comeback. Two thousand pounds – that’s what she asked for to finance some musical set in Venice. She pays for the production, she gets the part and if things go wrong, they go down together.’

Voltaire considered. ‘You might say that everyone in the household had a motive to kill your wife, Monsieur Waysmith. They all wanted money. Does that include you?’

‘She was going to die anyway, Monsieur Voltaire. Or had you forgotten that little fact!’

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