Ten Lords A-Leaping: A Mystery (Father Christmas) (24 page)

“Worried? Frightened? Threatened? Anxious? I ask this of all of you,” Blessing added, his biro hovering over his pad.

Lucinda made a rude noise. “Oliver fforde-Beckett? Don’t be ridiculous.”

“He seemed quite himself, Detective Inspector.” Jamie directed an annoyed frown at Lucinda. “I don’t see my cousin often, usually at family gatherings or at the Leaping Lords events we do a few times a year. We travel in different circles on the whole. Anyone else think him a bit off these last days?” He looked around at the others encouragingly, but received only noncommittal shrugs.

“And he remained on the estate the whole time?” Bliss picked up the questioning.

“Except for our lunch in the village, as far as I know,” Jamie responded. “And, of course, the trip to Plymouth, to the airfield, yesterday morning.”

“Then did anyone visit him here?”

“I wouldn’t think so.” Hector replied. “Gaunt?”

“No, my lord. Not that I was made aware of.”

“We prefer a quiet life when we’re down here in August, you see, Inspector. We entertain few visitors. I do a little constituency business. The Leaping Lords fund-raiser was a rare exception, which we were pleased to do,” he added, nodding at Tom, “but most of the estate staff, except for a few of the gardeners from the village to keep the weeds at bay, have a fortnight’s holiday when Lady Fairhaven and our son
are in residence. Oh, and a daily girl or two comes in. So, you see, Inspector”—Hector seemed to be losing his train of thought—“life’s quite uneventful, really, down here.”

“
Was
quite uneventful, Hector, darling,” Marguerite said.

“Thank you, Mummy,” Hector responded evenly.

“My lord, there was the trespasser …” Gaunt prompted Hector
sotto voce
.

“Yes! Thank you, Gaunt. Inspector, we have been troubled a few times by a trespasser. I believe he’s … importuned Mrs. Gaunt when she’s been working in the kitchens. Is that not correct?” He glanced at Ellen, who nodded in the affirmative. “Perhaps you should be concentrating your efforts in that direction, Inspector.”

“Anything you tell me will be given due consideration,” Bliss responded impassively, glancing down at his colleague’s notebook. “So, despite Lord Morborne’s unannounced appearance Wednesday, nothing happened that you would say was out of the ordinary.”

“There was that policeman, Hector,” Jane remarked.

“Yes,” Jamie chimed in. “You were seeing him off when we arrived Thursday.”

“Oh, yes.” Hector frowned. “I can’t think what he wanted.”

“You told me it was about the police presence at the nomination meeting next weekend,” Jane said.

“Yes, that was it.”

“PC Widger, sir?” Blessing turned a page in his notebook.

“I believe so, yes. Yes, it was. New to the village.”

“Are you sure he wasn’t here examining the vehicles on the estate, Lord Fairhaven? There’s an ongoing investigation into a recent hit and run in the area.”

“Oh! Yes, you’re quite right. That’s why Widger was here. I’d forgotten. I told him he was welcome to look around. There was only mine and Oliver’s in the front drive anyway. Gaunt, you had parked the van next to the stable block. Mother?”

“Yes, he looked at mine, too.”

“I’m surprised he didn’t drive down in that ridiculous pink Cadillac he spends ten thousand pounds a year to garage in London,” Dominic remarked.

“How do you know he spends ten thousand?” Jamie looked faintly aghast.

“It’s a guess.”

“Well, as it happens, Olly started out in his Cadillac,” Jamie continued. “He told me at lunch in the pub. But it had engine problems near Salisbury, so he hired a car.”

“Olly in a nasty little hire car, imagine!”

“Is any of this relevant?” Lord Fairhaven sighed, appealing to the inspector.

“I would like to move on,” Bliss said evenly, placing his hands behind his back. “Yesterday evening, Lord Morborne left Eggescombe Park around …”

“Around ten thirty, sir.” Blessing looked up from his notebook.

“Yes.” Hector picked up the story. “That would be correct. You see, Inspector, despite the size of this house, we don’t really have the facilities to have large parties to stay, so I arranged for those who wished it, to stay overnight at the Pilgrims Inn. Several did. So Oliver went off with them … to continue drinking, I expect.”

“And none of you joined him.”

“It had been a rather long day, Inspector. Leaping Lords events usually have an early start.”

“Olly’s a bit of a night owl.” Jamie sipped his tea. “Wouldn’t you say, Georgie? Part of his job, really.”

“Who saw him last?” Bliss asked.

“I haven’t the faintest,” Hector replied peevishly, looking around. “Does it matter? Gaunt, I think. Didn’t you go after them with a torch?”

“It was quite dark, my lord, despite a full moon.”

“You were expecting him back, then,” Bliss continued. “He would need a light to walk back in the dark.”

“I had no idea he hadn’t returned until Lady Kirkbride informed me that his bed didn’t appear to have been slept in. He didn’t tell you he had other plans, did he, Georgie?” Hector addressed his wife. “Oliver knew the security code to get in. I asked Gaunt not to bolt the doors so Oliver could return without having to make a fuss and wake up the household.”

“Then, Detective Inspector,” Marguerite said, placing her cup on a table next to her, “where was Oliver most of the night?”

“Sergeant?” Bliss prompted his deputy.

Blessing flipped through his notebook. “The Duke of Warwick and Baron Pownall were the last to see him, around one in the morning, before they went to their rooms in the—”

“And then—what?—he vanished?”

“I was coming to that, Your Lordship. According to the bar manager, Lord Morborne left the Pilgrims Inn with a Miss Janice Sclanders, a barmaid, at about one thirty.” He glanced up from his notebook. “We have contacted Miss Sclanders. She lives with her parents in a cottage in the village,
but as it happens her parents are away in Cumbria to attend to the birth of a grandchild so—”

“What an impossible
pig
!” Lucinda lifted her glass to her mouth.

“You mean, he was with this woman?” Hector thundered.

“Hector, don’t be obtuse.” Dominic crossed his legs. “My question is why he left this woman’s cottage so early. It had to be early for the vicar to find him at—what was it?” He flicked a glance at Tom. “Sunrise? He could have had a very nice lie-in.” He smirked and dropped his voice theatrically. “Don’t tell me our Olly had some regard for the proprieties?”

“I doubt he got much sleep.” Lucinda drained her glass.

“Have the decency to shut up, would you? The pair of you!” Hector glared. Bonzo raised his head and yawned.

Bliss waited a beat until tempers had simmered. “Miss Sclanders says they were awakened by thunder—around four thirty, is her reckoning. There was quite a lot of thunder and lightning over southeast Dartmoor last night—not surprising, given the heat we’ve been having. It even woke me in Totnes. Lightning almost continuous, too, according to the Met.”

“You mean, Inspector”—Dominic’s voice was laced with sarcasm—“that Olly forgot his brolly and had to make a dash for home.”

“No.” Blessing responded for his superior. “In fact, what very little rain there was fell only on that patch of the moor, not on the surrounding countryside.”

“Are you sure it didn’t fall on a plain, in Spain, Inspector?”

“Have you been drinking?” Hector leveled his gaze at Dominic.

“Tea, Hector. I’m drinking tea.” He held up the cup. “Then perhaps Oliver did have some regard for proprieties.”

Bliss twitched and shifted his body. “I’m afraid I have no idea of Lord Morborne’s regard for proprieties. According to Miss Sclanders, he spent some few minutes texting—”

“At four thirty in the morning?” Jamie interrupted.

“California. Then he told Miss Sclanders that …” He looked to Blessing. “What was it exactly?”

Blessing licked his thumb and flipped back several pages, “That he had—and I quote—‘a rendezvous with’ ”—he looked up from his notebook—“ ‘a lady.’ ”

The word fell on the assembled like fine rain. All except Lucinda, who ran her finger absently around the lip of her empty glass. “Then he was a pig twice over. Imagine leaving some woman’s bed with the announcement you’re expected at another’s.”

“I’m not sure Miss Sclanders is the type to care. She wasn’t expecting to become Lady Morborne,” Bliss remarked. “She barely knew who Lord Morborne was.”

“She does now, I daresay.” Marguerite spoke impatiently. “But I think you’re missing the inspector’s point, Lucy. Are you certain”—she turned her attention to Bliss—“he didn’t say ‘woman’?”

“No, my lady, she was quite certain Lord Morborne said ‘lady.’ ”

“In any case,” Blessing added, “the word
woman
would only expand the numbers in the category slightly.”

“You can’t possibly mean—” Lucinda began. Tom felt her stiffen with a new alertness. But Jane interrupted:

“The word is also generic, Inspector. It can refer to any adult female.”

“Yes,” Bliss conceded blandly, “that’s true. But I need to consider any information given me. Lord Morborne left Miss Sclanders’s cottage in the direction of Eggescombe Park and he was found in the Eggescombe Park’s Labyrinth. I’m sure of the six women present at Eggescombe—and present here this afternoon—all of you are ladies.” He smiled thinly. “But four of you are
Ladies
, you understand.” He nodded to each in turn. “Dowager Lady Fairhaven, Lady Fairhaven, Lady Kirkbride, and you, Lady Lucinda.”

“But that’s nonsense! What would my wife, my mother …” Hector spluttered. “… be doing wandering around the grounds in the middle of the night?”

“I don’t know, my lord. That’s what I would like to find out.”

“
Rendezvous
? The word is outrageous! These woman are
family
, for God’s sake!”

“
Rendezvous
does not mean ‘assignation,’ ” Blessing muttered into his pad, but Hector heard him:

“I should bloody hope it doesn’t!”

Tom exchanged a glance with Jane. He sensed they shared a thought born of an earlier discussion: There were five, not four, Ladies at Eggescombe.

“Inspector,” Tom began, mulling the words over in his mind so as not to unnecessarily shine a light on anyone, “Lord Morborne’s remark about having a rendezvous with a lady may have another meaning—and it may explain why he was in the Labyrinth at such an early hour. You’ve noticed, I’m sure, the sculpture at the Labyrinth’s centre. It’s the Virgin
Mary, of course. The Virgin is sometimes referred to as the Lady. We have Lady chapels in our churches, for instance. Lord Morborne’s remark may simply have been ironic.”

Bliss appeared to digest this, while Blessing looked up from his pad and asked, “But why rendezvous with this ‘lady’ at all? And why at that particular hour?”

Tom not only felt Jane’s eyes upon him, but sensed a sharpened interest in the others. Keeping his focus on Blessing, whose brow was beginning a familiar furrowing, he said truthfully—for the words were true: “I really couldn’t say.”

Blessing opened his mouth as if to pursue another enquiry, but Bliss, shifting his stance, interrupted with a bark: “Well, statues can’t shift themselves, so I’m afraid I must ask you all—lords, ladies, and gentlemen—about your movements between the hours of midnight and six this morning.”

“What movements, Inspector?” Hector snapped. “We were all asleep, of course.”

“None of you was disturbed by the thunder and lightning on the moor? Lord Morborne was. PC Widger, apparently, too, and a number of others in Abbotswick. It would have been the talk of the village but for …” Bliss cleared his throat.

“The noise and light woke me,” Jane answered. “I’m not sure of the time. I went to the window, thinking I should pull the window shut against any rain, but I saw nothing worth noting, other than the grounds and gardens suddenly flashing with light.”

“I slept through it,” Jamie said. “Jump days are usually long days. They tend to take it out of one.”

“My husband would sleep through Armageddon,” Jane added.

“I’m the same as Jamie,” Hector said. “Slept like a top.”

“I take medication to sleep, Detective Inspector.” Georgina looked grave. “I wasn’t aware of any storm. Or anything else, for that matter.”

“No one awoke?” Bliss’s tone was testy. “No one, but for Lady Kirkbride, went to the window to look out? No one nipped down to the kitchen to get a cup of cocoa to get them back to sleep and ran into someone in a corridor or on the stairs. No one—”

“Are you suggesting that someone from this household is responsible for Oliver’s death?”

“No, my—”

“Because surely the solution is that someone followed Oliver from the village in the early hours of the morning, someone with some … 
animus
against him—and God knows he’s offended enough people in his life—and … well, you know …”

“My lord, I am conducting an investigation and am making no accusations. I am only interested at this time in people’s possible movements during the night. Those people could be here in the Hall or over in the village.”

“Well, I was with my wife,” Hector continued gruffly. “I heard nothing until Jane knocked me up about six thirtyish. I had just come out of the shower.”

“I was with mine,” Jamie added.

“Your Ladyship?” Bliss turned to Lucinda.

Tom’s eyes rose, above Bliss’s head, to the massive overmantel and its elaborate alabaster carving of the Wise and Foolish Virgins. He waited with dread while Lucinda hesitated over her answer. Was she delaying to taunt him?

“Your Ladyship?” Bliss prompted.

“I was with Dominic.”

Blessing looked up from his notebook, instantly alert. “The entire night?”

“I joined my
brother
,” Lucinda replied with hauteur, “for conversation after the party and fell asleep on the daybed in his room. I’m not sure how well I slept—I had drunk a little more than I should—and perhaps the thunder did disturb me. I can’t recall.”

“I slept through it all,” Dominic said.

“Lady Fairhaven?” Bliss turned to Marguerite.

“I’m at the dower house, Inspector, some distance from here.” She favoured him with a charming smile. “So I can’t really help you. And Mr. Sica was with me.”