Sheer Folly (27 page)

“Do you regard him as a suspect?”

Boyle frowned. “Not on such information as I've got already. But, of course, there's no knowing what I'll—we'll dig up. Nor there's no knowing what'll set some people off, and Mrs. Fletcher did say Rydal insulted Pritchard, along with everyone else.”

 

Boyle was
about to summon Pritchard—or rather invite him to step into his own study—when the troops from Devizes arrived at last. They consisted of a detective sergeant, a detective constable, and two uniformed constables, all damp. The rain was coming down in torrents by now.

The inspector wanted to send one of the uniformed pair to relieve PC Endicott who was still out there on the hillside in the storm, guarding the site of the explosion. “And the other to the grotto entrance, don't you think?” he asked Alec. “You said you couldn't see for dust, but when that's settled, and in daylight, it ought to be searched, as well as the hole.”

Alec nodded, forbearing to point out in the presence of Boyle's subordinates that all the suspects had visited the cave in the past few days, so any evidence of their presence was unlikely to be meaningful.

The two men stood stolidly waiting for instructions. After a moment of thought, Boyle said gloomily, “The only thing is, how the devil are they going to find their posts in the dark? One of the outdoor servants'll have to guide them.”

“Ask Barker,” Alec suggested.

“Mr. Barker's eating his supper, sir,” protested the maid who had shown the policemen into the room.

“Can't be helped,” said Boyle curtly. “Take these fellows along, and tell Mr. Barker there'll be a detective following in a minute or two to collect the timetables you should all have made out. When he arrives, take my compliments to Mr. Pritchard and tell him we'd like to have a word with him in here.”

With a doubtful shake of her head, the girl took the constables away.

The junior detectives were eyeing Alec askance.

“This is Mr. Fletcher. He's a guest here. As he's . . . connected with the police, he's lending a hand. Unofficially.” Boyle went on to explain to DS Gaskell that he wanted him to go over with the servants their statements about the household's movements that morning. He was to make sure they not only made sense but didn't contradict each other. “And see what they can tell you about the victim's chauffeur, the bloke that was caught in the collapse,” he added.

“Pity we can't talk to him yet,” Alec said as Gaskell departed.

“That doctor's a bit quick with the sedatives, if you ask me! It'll be interesting to see if the servants agree with what the nobs told you about what they were doing when,” Boyle remarked to Alec. To the detective constable, he said, “I hope your shorthand is up to scratch. I want a verbatim record of the interviews I'm going to be doing. Got plenty of pencils and an extra notebook?”

Alec thought regretfully of DC Piper, his usual note-taker, who was never caught without a supply of well sharpened pencils. He could only hope Gaskell got on half as well with servants as Tom Tring, the massive and superlatively competent detective sergeant who was his right arm.

Pritchard came in. He moved more slowly than earlier and looked tired, but he asked with unabated courtesy, “What can I do for you now, gentlemen?”

“First,” said Boyle, “I'm looking for a bit more information about all these people you've got together in your house. It's
what you might call a mixed bunch, if you don't mind me saying so, and I don't properly understand how they fit together, so to speak, or what they're doing here.”

“I'm not surprised you're confused,” Pritchard said with a weary smile. “I'm none so clear on the subject myself. But let's see if I can help. It all starts with my sister-in-law, I suppose.”

“Mrs. Howell. She's been living with you for a long time?”

“Several years. Her husband, my partner, died soon after my wife and I moved to Appsworth Hall, and naturally Glenys invited her to stay while she decided what she was going to do next. Daffyd left his half of the business to Owen, his only son, but Winifred got their house and a good deal of money.”

“She told us she wasn't living on your charity.”

“Well, not from necessity. But after she sold the house for a pretty penny, she couldn't decide where she wanted to live so she stayed on. Then Glenys died—and Winifred stayed on.” He shrugged wearily. “I like having Owen about the place, and his mother's a capable manager, so . . .”

Alec wondered how much the inestimable Barker had to do with Mrs. Howell's capable management.

Boyle finished Pritchard's incompleted sentence. “So Mrs. Howell is what you might call a permanent resident? You're on good terms?”

“Good enough. Most of the time. The reason I've gone into all this is that she's responsible for the presence of some of my guests. Not that she'd invite anyone without consulting me.” His tone suggested a sudden doubt as to whether it was just a matter of time before his sister-in-law overstepped this particular boundary. “Owen went up to London over this government contract business, meetings at the Ministry of Health and so on. Sir Desmond kindly invited him to dine at his house, and there he met Lady Ottaline, of course. Lady Beaufort and Miss Beaufort were also dinner guests. He wrote to Winifred about them. She was all agog to meet them—”

“Why was that, sir?”

“She's a bit of a . . . She fancied the notion of entertaining
titled people. In the normal way, she has to make do with the vicar, the doctor, our solicitor, business associates, a few old biddies from the village—that sort of people. Of course I wouldn't have presumed to invite them to stay just because Owen had casually made their acquaintance. Then it turned out that Sir Desmond had to come down to take a look at the works. It seemed easiest to keep Winifred happy by saying we'd be delighted if he brought his wife. To tell the truth, I was surprised when she accepted. I suppose she just happened to be at a loose end this weekend.”

Boyle grunted.

Alec thought it more likely that Lady Ottaline had heard about Lord Rydal's pursuing Miss Beaufort to Appsworth. “What about the Beauforts?” he asked.

“I'm not entirely clear about them, though I'm very glad they're here. Delightful guests. As is Mrs. Fletcher,” he added, with a nod to Alec, who noted with amusement the omission of Lucy. Lady Gerald Bincombe could be a prickly companion. “I only wish Lord Rydal hadn't offered to drive them down. Once he was here, I felt I had to offer hospitality for the night—it was a foggy evening—and he seemed to assume he'd been invited to stay as long as they did.”

“Mrs. Howell didn't kick up a fuss about an unexpected guest?” Boyle asked, possibly with memories of Mrs. Boyle's feelings in like circumstances.

“What, with a genuine earl under her roof? Even if it's actually my roof. . . . No, she was thrilled. So thrilled she put up with rudeness—. Well, if the Czar of Russia treated his peasants and workers like that, I for one don't blame ‘em for having a revolution. I can tell you, if I spoke to my factory hands that way, I'd have 'em out on strike within the hour.”

“Bad language?”

“No, not that. It was more as if he'd learnt by heart all the rules about acting the gentleman but didn't really grasp what it was all about. I can't explain properly. Maybe Mrs. Fletcher, being a writer, can describe what he was like. I'd've kicked him
out—asked him to leave—a dozen times if it wasn't that Winifred wouldn't have it.”

“She didn't mind how he behaved?”

“Far as she was concerned, he was a lordship so whatever he did was all right by her, right up until it came to meeting his fancy woman in the grotto. That she wouldn't stand for. I'll say this for Winifred: She's a snob, but she was brought up Chapel, and she's never turned her back on it, no matter that all the nobs go to Church. She'll have the vicar to dinner, but that's as far as it goes.”

“Not . . .” Alec hesitated, trying to word his question tactfully, then decided there really wasn't a tactful way to put it. “You wouldn't say there was a touch of religious mania?”

“Certainly not.” Inevitably Pritchard took affront. “I'm Chapel myself.”

Boyle made no attempt at tact. “Yet you put pagan statues in your grotto, and some Papist idol Mrs. Howell was carrying on about. An evil place, she called it.” He glanced for confirmation at Alec, who nodded.

“Evil?” Pritchard was startled and worried. “She never liked it, but she's never said anything like that before. It does sound as if she's got some sort of bee in her bonnet. Sounds to me as if the explosion and Lord Rydal's death have been too much for her nerves. I wonder if I should call the doctor to her?”

“Couldn't hurt,” said Boyle, “unless she takes it into her head that you're conspiring against her.”

“Conspiring?” Now he seemed bewildered.

“To get her out of the way. She made a serious accusation—”

“Against me? Surely she can't imagine I blew up my own grotto! If you knew the time and effort I put into restoring it—to say nothing of the money—and the fun I had, the fun I've had showing it off, too! All those years of perfecting and peddling plumbing—not that I regret a moment, plumbing's important, but the grotto was . . . artistic. I don't suppose any real artist would think much of it, but it was my own creation. And Winifred claims I blew it up? She
must
've gone round the bend!”

“Unless she was trying to protect her son,” Boyle proposed, his face more than usually blank.

“No, that's going too far! I'd as soon believe I did it myself, walking in my sleep, as Owen. He helped me build it, and he'd no cause to want to murder Lord Rydal, neither. If that's what Winifred thinks, she's even madder—. But she wouldn't have told you that. You've made it up out of your own head.” He gave Alec a reproachful look. “Heads.”

“We have to explore every possibility, Mr. Pritchard, especially when an allegation has been made.”

“Well, if Winifred's suddenly convinced herself the grotto's evil, and on top of that it was being used for immoral purposes, maybe she did it herself!”

“That's another possibility we have to explore.”

“Come to think of it, she never did like the hermit business. She never could see it was just a bit of fun. If it wasn't popery, she'd say, it was sacrilege. I never could persuade her it was either both or neither.”

“That's another thing I haven't quite got the hang of,” said Boyle. “This hermit business. You hired the Canadian just to play hermit in your grotto?”

“Not exactly.” Pritchard showed a sudden unexpected touch of shiftiness. “In the summer I hire someone from the village to play the part. You'd be surprised how many visitors we get. I don't usually bother before Easter, but when . . . Armitage wrote to ask permission to take a look at the old documents in the muniments room, I told him he could come and stay and pay for his keep by dressing up as the hermit in the grotto if anyone happened to turn up to see it.”

“There's the curious coincidence of his name, too,” said Alec.

“What? Oh, yes, quite a coincidence, isn't it?”

“The name?” Boyle asked, genuinely blank this time.

Pritchard seemed disinclined to answer, so Alec explained, “The name Armitage is derived from the word hermitage, I believe.”

No police detective could let such a fishy coincidence pass
without question. “I hope you asked him for references,” Boyle said.

“Certainly.” Pritchard recovered his composure. “I'm a businessman, Inspector. He showed me his passport and a letter from his university. Perfectly satisfactory, I assure you. He's been here for several weeks, apart from occasional trips to London to look things up in the big libraries.”

“Could he have met Lord Rydal in London?”

“He wasn't interested in high society. ‘A great waste of time,' he told me more than once. Frankly, I should've thought Rydal had much the same opinion of libraries. It doesn't seem likely they'd meet, but they might've run into each other somewhere.”

“Neither of them acknowledged having met before when Lord Rydal arrived here?”

“Not by a flicker of an eyebrow.”

“Was Lord Rydal ever insulting to Mr. Armitage?”

“What you have to understand,” Pritchard said patiently, “is that he insulted everyone, though I must say Lady Gerald gave as good as she got. Except I never heard him being rude to Lady Beaufort. After all, he wanted to marry her daughter.”

“What about Miss Beaufort herself? Surely he wasn't rude to her!”

“But he was. Very odd I thought it, when he was courting her.”

“Odd! I'd call it downright peculiar. Are you sure?

“Yes. The young ladies were giggling about it.”

“Oh, then they were just joking about,” Boyle said large-mindedly. “The nobs have their ways.”

“I don't think so.” Alec remembered what Daisy had said. He hadn't taken it very seriously at the time, but he was once again reminded that dismissing her theories was frequently a mistake. “My wife told me Rydal simply didn't realise how offensive he was.”

Boyle nodded. “Mrs. Fletcher said to me she thought he had never been taught to consider anyone else's feelings. I don't suppose you know anything about his childhood, Mr. Pritchard?”

“Not a thing.”

“If he acceded to the earldom at an early age,” said Alec, “it could be that he was brought up by servants and perhaps dependent relatives, who were afraid to cross him.”

The inspector was scornful. “Sounds like something one of those psycho-doctors would say. I can't see it makes any difference one way or the other. If someone goes around offending people, they're not going to worry about whether he's doing it on purpose or can't tell the difference.” He reached for Alec's notes on the dinner-table alibis. “Let's see here. You claim you were alone in here for half an hour this morning.”