01 - Murder at Ashgrove House (31 page)

‘Right,’ said Inspector Deacon, walking over to the fireplace in the
drawing room and turning to face the expectant faces of Sir William, Edith and
Rose. ‘I’ve brought you all here together in this room because, between us all,
I think we can put together the pieces to explain why Lord Belvedere felt
driven to murder his wife.’

It had been two hours since Lord Belvedere had taken the drastic step of
locking himself in his room and taking his own life, thus avoiding the shame
and humiliation of a trial and execution. His body had been removed from the
house and Lady Withers was, at that very moment, comforting her niece and
nephew in her morning room on the first floor. Lavinia and Cedric could little
have anticipated that in the space of just two days they would lose both
parents and under such horrendous circumstances. Rose’s heart went out to them
both, but she did not attempt to go to them, assuming that her presence would
not be welcome, and that they might hold her partly to blame for the tragedy
that had occurred.

Coffee had been poured out and distributed by the footman, and a plate of
sandwiches lay largely ignored on a tray, despite luncheon having, for the
first time ever in Ashgrove’s history, been missed or perhaps more accurately,
overlooked. It appeared that only Lady Withers had any appetite. Rose had
overheard her discussing with Stafford whether it would appear very callous and
uncaring of her to eat a few sandwiches in front of her nephew and niece.
Stafford had informed her in no uncertain terms that it would, and suggested
that she instead find an opportunity to slip into her bedroom where a plate of
food would be left for her on her dressing table. Lord Sneddon, to everyone’s
delight, had taken the first opportunity to leave Ashgrove, departing some half
hour ago.

‘Sergeant Lane and I managed to put together a few pieces of the puzzle
ourselves, but I believe if we pool together what we all know, then hopefully
we can understand why this crime took place.’ Deacon looked at them earnestly.
‘I can assure you that what you tell me now will stay within these four walls.
The newspapers thankfully have not got wind of this story yet, and the powers
that be will want some elements of this crime to be kept out of the public
domain. They will be relieved that a peer of the realm will not be going on
trial for his life, accused of murdering his wife.’

‘You knew, didn’t you, that Cedric hadn’t killed his mother?’ Rose said,
looking at the inspector accusingly. ‘And yet you let me think he might have
done. Have you any idea how wretched I felt?’

‘I’m sorry, Miss Simpson,’ replied Deacon, looking apologetic, ‘but I’m
afraid it was necessary. We had great good fortune in that Sir William’s
servants are so diligent in their cleaning, so that the discovery that someone
had broken into the gun cabinet was made so quickly. We were able to eliminate
you, Miss Simpson, from our list of suspects because you had no opportunity to
return the gun unobserved. But the gun cabinet was bothering me. I had assumed
that whoever had taken the gun must have done so either after everyone had gone
to bed on the Saturday night or very early Sunday morning. When Lord Sneddon
told us yesterday that he had practically goaded Lord Sedgwick into going after
his mother, I wondered whether my theory about the gun cabinet was wrong after
all.’

‘And was it?’ enquired Rose.

‘No. The sergeant and I checked it this morning. It would have taken
quite a bit of work to break the lock and probably resulted in some noise as
well, come to that. Also, because of the positioning of the lock on the
cabinet, it would have taken time to force it because the murderer would have
had to be very careful to ensure that he did not break the pane of glass in the
door.’       

‘So you knew it couldn’t be Cedric, because if he had done the murder he
would have had to break into the gun cabinet just before setting off for the
woods and that couldn’t have happened? According to your theory, it would have
taken him too much time and have been a very noisy exercise; he would have been
bound to be disturbed.’

‘Exactly, but it did give me an idea. I soon realised that this was going
to be a difficult case to solve, not just because almost everyone had a motive
for wishing Lady Belvedere harm and  had no alibi for the time in
question, but because no-one was particularly concerned that the murderer be
caught. I hoped that by arresting Lord Sedgwick, I might encourage the real
murderer to step forward, which of course happened.’ The inspector looked
around the room. ‘But I still don’t know why Lord Belvedere killed his wife,
and I want to, for my own peace of mind. You two,’ he said looking at Edith and
Sir William, ‘I think, can tell me why. And you, Miss Simpson, worked out the
truth and I’d like to know how you did it.’

‘Very well, Inspector, I’ll tell you,’ said Edith sounding almost weary.
‘Goodness knows it will be a relief to have it all out in the open, if only
just between these walls, as you say. I suppose you would like me to start at
the beginning and the beginning is a very long time ago, some thirty years.’

‘We were all friends then, Inspector,’ Sir William joined in. ‘Edith,
Constance, Marjorie, Henry and I. The girls had all gone to school together, as
had Henry and I, and we spent all our holidays together at the insistence of
our parents who were keen that we should marry. Constance and Marjorie’s
parents were keen that they should marry men of title or social standing, and
both mine and Henry’s parents were keen that we should marry the Bellingham
sisters due to the money that they would bring with them into such an alliance;
their family really was obscenely wealthy, you know.’ 

‘I was just the poor relation, there on sufferance,’ continued Edith.
‘But what they never expected, particularly as I was shy and plain in
comparison with the beautiful and accomplished sisters, was that I and Henry,
Lord Belvedere, should fall in love. We kept our relationship a secret because
we knew it would be frowned upon. But then I found that I was with child.

‘I was frantic, as you can imagine. I knew that Henry’s family would be
furious and my own mother disappointed, but I assumed they would let us marry.
After all, I came from a good family, if a poor one. But I made the fatal
mistake of confiding in Marjorie before I had even told Henry. Even after all
this time, I’ve often wondered what made me do it. I was always far closer to
Constance, you see, but Marjorie was a little older than us and always seemed
sensible and worldly wise. She promised to help me, but instead she took the
opportunity to use my misfortune for her own ends so that I never saw Henry again
until this weekend. She went at once to Henry’s mother and told her. Between
them they arranged that Henry never received any of my letters, which were
growing more desperate by the hour, and I in turn never received his. Marjorie
told Henry I no longer had any feelings for him and she told me that he didn’t
want to have anything to do with me and the baby. I was distraught. I informed
my mother, who took me to the continent so that I might have my baby secretly
and give it up for adoption. While there, I had the great good fortune to meet
Harold who, despite being informed by my mother of my condition, proposed
marriage and said that he was happy to bring up the child as his own. As you
can imagine, I jumped at the chance to keep both my child and my reputation. We
were married soon after and then returned to England, at which point I
discovered, on reading my first English newspaper for months, that Marjorie had
married Henry.’

‘Do I take it then that Lord Belvedere never knew about the child? How
did you learn of Lady Belvedere’s deception?’ The inspector looked at Edith,
keenly.

‘Her old lady’s maid wrote to me about it a couple of years ago. She felt
guilty for the part she herself had been made to play in the deception. She was
on her deathbed and wanted me to know the truth so that she could make peace
with her maker.’

‘Until this weekend, when was the last time that you saw the earl and
countess?’

‘I never saw either of them again, inspector, until this weekend. Our
paths never crossed. I never seemed to be invited down to stay at Ashgrove at
the same time as the Belvederes; I suppose that was your doing, William?’ Sir
William nodded.

‘I guessed, you see,’ said Sir William in reply to the inspector’s
quizzical look. ‘Cedric looked far too like Robert for it to be just
coincidence. When Cedric came to stay one time when he was six or seven, I
looked out a photograph of Robert at a similar age. They looked identical; they
could have been the same child. Henry had confided in me years before about his
relationship with Edith, so I asked her outright next time she came to stay.’

‘It was a relief to tell someone,’ admitted Edith. ‘I have never even
told my husband who Robert’s father was. From the very start we pretended even
to ourselves that Harold was his natural father. But I knew that I could trust
William to keep my secret, I knew he would never betray me.’

‘When I discovered that Marjorie and Henry had invited themselves down
this weekend, I tried to get Constance to put off your visit,’ admitted Sir William.
‘I was afraid what would happen if you all met again. But Constance wouldn’t
listen to me. She assumed I was concerned about your meeting Cedric, not her
sister and her husband.’

‘So I wasn’t imagining the likeness between Cedric and the photograph of
your son,’ Rose said. ‘And it explains some other things too. When you fainted
it was because you were shocked to see Lord Belvedere there, not Cedric, wasn’t
it?’ Edith nodded. ‘And the earl was shocked to see you here too,’ continued
Rose. ‘Lavinia said he was shaken, as if he’d seen a ghost, which I suppose he
had.’ 

‘Even so,’ interjected Sir William, ‘I feel sure that he somehow knew you
were going to be here and that’s why he accompanied his wife down this weekend.
He hardly ever visits us, he prefers to shut himself away in his library at
Sedgwick.’

‘Yes, he confessed as much to me on the one occasion that we spoke,’
confirmed Edith. ‘He wanted to know what had really happened, you see, all
those years ago when I had to all intents and purposes just disappeared.’

‘Lady Belvedere was afraid of you when she first saw you,’ Rose said,
remembering. ‘She must have been afraid that you were going to tell Lord
Belvedere the truth.’

‘Yes, I felt quite powerful to begin with,’ said Edith, ‘but then I became
nervous about telling Henry about Robert, and Marjorie always had a knack of
intimidating people she considered weaker than herself. She began to make me
feel timid and afraid, and I think she started enjoying my discomfort in the
end because she began to feel safe. She didn’t think I’d have the nerve to tell
Henry, you see.’

‘And I was worried about Edith,’ said Sir William. ‘I thought it was all
making her quite ill. I was afraid you would get sick again, my dear. I fear,
however, that my wife thought I was being over solicitous to you and misread my
intentions. I will have to make amends to her.’

‘It explains why there was always a tension in the air at dinner,’ said
Rose. ‘Everyone was tense, reading things into things which weren’t there, or
just waiting for something to happen. On Saturday at dinner you said, Edith,
that you weren’t well and stood up to leave; what happened then? Something did
happen then, didn’t it, something that shocked the countess?’

‘Henry came to my rescue and put an arm around me so that I wouldn’t
fall. He whispered that he was sorry about everything.’

‘So Lady Belvedere knew then that you had spoken to him? I think she
sensed that she was in danger. Oh, I got it all so completely wrong, you know,
in the beginning,’ admitted Rose. ‘I overheard your conversation with Sir
William on the croquet lawn and assumed you were threatening to tell Lady
Withers about your relationship with her husband. I thought he was urging you
not to, when all the time what he was trying to do was to persuade you not to
tell Lord Belvedere of the role played by his wife in having you disappear from
his life and in keeping him in ignorance about his son.’

‘That explains our rather strange conversation over lunch that day on the
croquet lawn,’ said Edith, looking relieved. ‘I thought you knew the truth
having seen the photograph and overheard my conversation with William. I spoke
far too freely then; I think I was rather delirious from the stress of it all.
It was only when you mentioned my hating Constance that I realised you were
still in the dark about it all.’

‘You spoke of the hurt that it would cause Harry, and I assumed at the
time that you were talking about your husband, Harold,’ said Rose. ‘But then I
happened to overhear Lady Withers talking to Stafford about Henry, meaning the
earl. I’d only ever thought of him as Lord Belvedere before, but then I
realised that everything made sense if, when you’d been talking about Harry,
you’d been talking about Lord Belvedere.’   

Deacon had been avidly following the dialogue between the three. Now he
interjected.

‘I’d like to know, though, what made you, Mrs Torrington and you, Sir
William confess to Lady Belvedere’s murder.’

‘I couldn’t let you arrest Cedric, Inspector, and I knew if I didn’t do
anything Henry would confess. I didn’t want him to do that because, you see, I
felt it was all my fault. I realised, right from the very start, that he must
have done it. I felt responsible. If I had only kept quiet, Lady Belvedere
would still be alive today.’ Edith turned her head away. ‘And Henry, of
course.’

‘I myself thought Edith had done it, Inspector, and I didn’t want to see
a lady hang for the crime. And I’d promised to protect her, you see, no matter what,’
explained Sir William. The inspector looked at him impressed. There was more to
this man than he had at first thought, although whether his nerve would have
held all the way to the gallows, he’d never know.