Murder At Wittenham Park (19 page)

“Who's going to cheat?” Jemma whispered. “Want any bets?”

“Shush.” Jim put his finger to his lips, as Morton eyed them with annoyance.

Morton was having a hard time. In spite of his request being politely phrased, it provoked vociferous feelings, especially when he suggested that since the idea was to jog people's memories, everyone should wear what they had worn early on Saturday; which meant their night-clothes.

“But that's absurd in the middle of the afternoon!” Loredana protested. “D'you want us all to look complete idiots?”

For once Dee Dee agreed with her. “Are you serious, Inspector?” she asked. “Surely it's enough to know where people were at specific times?”

“In the interests of authenticity it would be better.” This closed circle of guests was a far cry from the re-enactment of a countryside murder, where police dressed like the victims walked a lane, or crossed a street, and the time of day was crucial if the memories of passers-by were to be stimulated. But he stuck to his decision. “Somebody may remember something.”

“Which identifies the murderer, darlings!” Priscilla chimed in. “How thrilling!”

“As one of us, you mean?” Hamish said coldly.

“Oh, I quite forgot about that.” Priscilla looked abashed, which was rare for her. “Silly me!”

“Surely, Inspector,” Hamish persisted, “it could have been an outsider? Are you sure there was no one else in the house?”

This was a point that had exercised Morton considerably. But there had been no known break-in during the night, and once the staff were up it would have been hard for an intruder to reach Welch's room unobserved.

Gilroy decided to defend Morton. “We have quite an alarm system,” he said, “both for burglars and fires.”

“Thank you, sir,” Morton said. “Nothing can be ruled out, but there is no evidence. Now as to the timing. We could always wait until seven tomorrow morning.”

“Which would mean hanging around another day,” Hamish commented in his flat, expressionless way. “Which raises the question of when on earth you're going to let us leave.”

“I'm hoping for your collaboration until I have all the information I can reasonably hope for.”

Morton knew that he would have to let them go after another day. This was Sunday and up until this evening they would have been here anyway. Mentally he was giving himself until Monday night or, at worst, Tuesday morning, either to make an arrest or accept that the case had gone cold. Tomorrow he ought to have the blood-test results and the poison would be identified. So he was feeling under pressure, though his expression never showed it.

“We ought to do as the inspector suggests,” Jim said. “After all, what else have we got to occupy ourselves with?”

“Hear, hear,” Dulcie echoed him in her commonsensical voice. “All we're achieving”—here she looked pointedly at Hamish—“is to get more and more irritable.”

This was unquestionably true as far as her husband and Loredana were concerned, Jemma thought, and probably true of the Gilroys. Being confined had a very demoralizing effect on people, even in these relatively luxurious circumstances, although Lord Gilroy was displaying unexpected sang-froid under pressure. Perhaps he wasn't quite the buffoon he made himself out to be.

“Then I'll tell the servants,” Dee Dee said, making the decision for all of them. “When d'you want to start, Mr. Morton?”

“Does half an hour give you all enough time?” There was grudging assent. “Good. Then can we all be upstairs on the main landing at three forty-five, which will represent six forty-five on Saturday. And please dress exactly as you did then.”

Before they assembled, Morton positioned a constable in what had been Welch's room to note down everything he heard. Then the charade was ready to begin.

Jim Savage supposed, as he pulled on his pyjamas over his underwear, that Morton knew it would be a charade, given the temperaments of those involved. At the same time he was sure it would help prove or disprove his own theory about the murder. It was a theory that he was deliberately not discussing with Jemma. If she came to the same conclusion he would be delighted. But he did not want to propel her into it, and anyway she was developing her own ideas. Eventually they would combine them, though whether the police would be interested was another question. Morton had made his attitude abundantly clear several times. It was the Savages' duty to pass any relevant facts to him. He was under no obligation to tell them anything.

After he had put on his dressing-gown, Jim slipped his new red notebook into a pocket—it was as well he'd brought several—and the two of them went from the servants' wing to the main house again. Jemma was wearing a yellow kimono with deep sleeves.

“Surely that's not what you had on yesterday?” Jim asked.

“Dead right, Daddy. I want to see if anyone notices.”

As they reached the corridor Gilroy appeared, looking surprisingly suave in a blue-and-white-spotted dressing-gown and royal-blue velvet slippers embroidered with a coronet. Dee had on the same red satin housecoat that Jemma recalled. And the same white ruffle of lace showed beneath its hem.

“Now, Lady Gilroy,” Morton asked, beginning a routine that he intended to follow with everyone, “what was your first action on Saturday morning?”

“At about seven I came through from our suite in the west wing to the State Room”—Dee Dee indicated its door—“to play the part of Mrs. Sketchley. The maid arrived with the morning tea as I got there. So I took the tray in and waited.”

“And Lord Gilroy?”

“He was asleep when I left him. His tea was taken separately.”

“Actually,” Gilroy said, “I never saw any of the action. This was what I was wearing, of course.” He surveyed his apparel with satisfaction. The monogrammed and crested slippers were a particular joy to him, specially made by a shop on Jermyn Street, London's top location for gents' outfitters.

“You took no part?” Morton asked, kicking himself for having invited someone irrelevant to participate and feeling sick at the sight of the slippers.

“'Fraid not.”

“You'd better go back to your suite then. Both of you. And Lady Gilroy, we'll say the notional time now is six forty-five.” He made a show of setting his watch, which the others followed. “Just before seven the maid will start taking round trays and at seven you come through.”

“And what d'you want me to do?” Gilroy was not giving up.

“Whatever you actually did.”

“Oh. Right. Well, I didn't hear my wife go out, woke up when I heard the screams, thought, thank God that's underway, and went back to sleep.”

“Then do just that, sir.”

The Gilroys departed regally. Morton turned to Savage and was about to go through the same procedure when Jim asked if he could hang around. “If you don't mind, we'd like to watch the others. That's what we were doing yesterday.”

“Have a theory, have you?”

“Hardly as much as that, Inspector.”

Before Morton could challenge this, Hamish and Dulcie came up the stairs. Dulcie had a short fawn coat on over her lace-frilled night-dress, while the striped legs of Hamish's pyjamas protruded from beneath a lightweight woollen gown held in with a tasselled cord. It struck Jemma that he looked remarkably unglamorous. She would have been far from thrilled if a lover had visited her in that gear. However, both he and Dulcie were unquestionably wearing what they'd worn yesterday. They were dispatched to the Pink Room, on the other side of the State Bedroom from Welch.

“This is a pantomime,” Dulcie muttered as they departed, and Jemma had to agree with her. For a group of adults to be wandering around in mid-afternoon in their nightwear, stone-cold sober, was surreal.

“Maybe,” Morton said angrily. “But give it a chance.”

Next came Priscilla, again in a lace-edged night-gown, though with a blue ribbon threaded through the lace. Probably not the one I saw outside Welch's door, Jemma decided, although she might not have spotted the strand of blue from a distance. She was still puzzling over that glimpse of a woman at about seven-ten on Saturday morning, and still keeping it to herself. Priscilla had slept in a small bedroom beyond the Chinese Room, so off she went, after a few gushing remarks.

Finally Loredana herself appeared in a slinky cream silk gown which hid her night-dress, and which Jemma thought she remembered. She took a quick look at Jemma and said at once, “But you weren't wearing that, were you?”

“Is that right?” Morton intervened.

Jemma nodded. “I wanted to see how observant people are. I'll go and change.”

“How silly!” Loredana commented nastily. “As if we haven't all got eyes in our heads. It's time your daughter grew up, Mr. Savage.” She walked off vexedly to the Chinese Room.

“I think she was trying out an idea,” Jim apologized.

Morton was tempted to add, “and wasting police time,” but refrained. He and Jim were now alone at the head of the great staircase and an incongruous pair they made, with Morton in his blazer and dark trousers and Jim in a frayed brown woollen dressing-gown that ought to have been replaced several Christmases ago. Jemma sometimes commented that if he dressed like that it was no wonder Pauline had left him, but he refused to throw it away. None the less he felt pretty stupid standing there in it now. In fact, he wondered if it wasn't part of Morton's plan to make them all feel embarrassed and likely to say things they did not intend.

“So what did you do first thing yesterday morning?” Morton demanded.

Jim had no problem recollecting this. “I woke up, heard footsteps in the passage, which was probably the maid. Then I went to the bathroom across the passage and saw her delivering tea-trays.”

“What time was that?”

“Perhaps seven-oh-five or seven-oh-six. You must remember, Inspector, that none of us knew when the action would start.”

This was a point that had not been emphasized before. Of course the Gilroys had known when the screaming would begin. So had the maid. But not anyone else. Yet, as Morton now appreciated, it had somehow become accepted as a fixed point in the morning's action, around which Welch's murder might have been planned.

“But you knew when the tea would be brought?” Morton argued.

“Yes. But not when the ‘murder' would be discovered.”

Morton grunted acknowledgement of this, asked Jim to go his room, and went downstairs to make sure the maid was ready to start.

He found Tracy in fierce argument with Dodgson.

“They're not going to drink the tea, so what's the point in making it?”

“It's a re-enactment,” Dodgson was insisting in his high-pitched voice. “If the police want it like it was, then we do like it was. Anyway, I made the tea, didn't I?”

“You did?” Morton said, catching the words as he came into the kitchen.

“Who's that?” Dodgson started as though addressed by a ghost. “Oh, it's you, sir. Yes. I'm just reminding Tracy here that I made each teapot myself and she took them up in turn.”

“And who had which tray?”

Tracy gazed along the row of nine trays. “Well”—she pointed to the most elegant, flower-patterned teaset—“that's always Lord and Lady Gilroy's. Then there was a separate one for Lady Gilroy as Mrs. Sketchley. The Wedgwood ones always go to the Chinese Room. Welch had the ugly blue.” She pointed to the most ordinary of the tea-sets, a small chunky blue pot and a far from elegant cup and saucer. “Wouldn't give him anything better.”

“Common as dirt, that man,” Dodgson added, quivering slightly, so that Morton wondered if he had some ailment.

“And had it been used when you brought it down again?”

“Yes.” Tracy was positive about this. “The cup was dirty, though he hadn't drunk much tea. Like I told that Mr. Savage.”

“Told him what?” Morton reacted with annoyance.

“I was telling him about the teacups and how I thought they'd all been used, but one hadn't.”

“You realize that evidence ought to be given to the police?”

“Well, it isn't evidence, is it?” Tracy didn't like being criticized.

“All material facts are evidence. Who did not drink their tea?”

This puzzled her. She had to look carefully along the line of trays. “I can't honestly remember,” she confessed at last. “But one cup was clean.”

“Not Welch's?”

“Nope. Not his.”

“And what else happened?”

“That schmuck McMountdown came wanting coffee, 'cos he doesn't drink tea.” Tracy made a face. “He and that woman he's having it off with make a right pair; as selfish as you like, the both of them.”

Morton picked up on this fast and began finding out just how much the two servants knew about Hamish's affair with Loredana. But Tracy could not say for sure whether Hamish had spent the night in Loredana's room or not. When she'd left the tray outside the Chinese Room, it had been Loredana's voice that called out “Thank you,” though she did recall that Hamish had come down the back stairs, which were closer to the Chinese Room than the main staircase. And also, Morton thought to himself, less observed by other people than the ones leading to the Great Hall.

Shortly after this interrogation Tracy began delivering tea-trays to the rooms. She took Dee Dee's first and repeated the action of giving a tray to her. Next she took trays to Adrienne's room and to Welch, calling out, “Your tea's outside,” as she put the tray down on the little table in the alcove outside Welch's door. Finally she served those nearest to the east wing. Jim and Jemma heard her and replayed their own actions of Saturday morning, coming out to the passage.

“No other footsteps going past,” Jim commented.

“And no woman in a night-dress,” Jemma added, looking along towards Welch's door. The re-enactment time was seven-ten.