The Stately Home Murder (15 page)

“That's right,” agreed Edith. “Nobody at all.”

“Did you go right into the library—to the very far end?”

“Oh, yeth, sir.”

“Passed the farthest bay?”

“Yeth, sir. Because of the General.”

“The General?”

“Yeth, sir. He gets very dusty if you leave him over the day.”

“Ah, you mean the bust …”

Edith looked as if she hadn't liked to mention the word in front of three gentlemen. She nodded.

“And what time would that have been?”

“Nine o'clock, sir. After I cleared the breakfasts.”

“Thank you, Edith. That's all.”

Edith looked relieved and went. In the distance at the top of the great balustraded staircase they caught a glimpse of Cousin Gertrude tramping across the upper landing.

Mr. Ames was waiting for them in the great hall. He looked older in broad daylight.

“We've just been checking a few facts,” said Sloan truthfully. “The family and so forth.”

“One of the oldest in the county,” said the vicar. “Hereditary beacon keepers to the Crown for Calleshire since the reign of Queen Elizabeth the First …”

Sloan hadn't meant that sort of fact.

“She was afraid of the Spanish coming, you know, Inspector.”

“Really?”

“The old Norman tower above the keep has a flat roof.” The vicar smiled a clerical smile. “The Norman invasion, you remember, had been a successful one. A highly successful one.”

“Yes, sir”—stolidly.

“A beacon fire lit there could be seen from the roof of Calle Castle, which is some way inland. They in turn would light a beacon fire there and so on.”

“I see, sir, thank you.”

“And then there was Charles the Second.”

Sloan was not interested in Charles the Second.

“He,” said Mr. Ames, “was afraid of the Dutch. Now George the Third …”

Sloan had come about murder not history.

“He was worried about the French. Napoleon, you know.”

“I don't think the historical side concerns us, Vicar.” It was, after all, as Superintendent Leeyes had said, the twentieth century.

“And then,” said Mr. Ames, unheeding, “there was 1940 and the Germans. We had a really big beacon all ready for firing then. Bert Hackle's father—old Hackle—he used to keep lookout …”

“Quite so, sir. Now if we might come back to the more immediate past—like Friday.”

With police-like patience he set about taking the vicar through all the details of his abortive visit to the house following Osborne Meredith's message. Mr. Ames obediently detailed his story for the second time.

He had had a message, he had come up to the house, he had not seen Meredith in the muniments room or anywhere else.

“The documents chests,” said Sloan suddenly. “Were they shut or open?”

The vicar screwed up his eyes the better to remember. “Open,” he said eventually. “That's what made me think Meredith would still be about somewhere.”

“Did you see anyone else while you were here?”

“Dillow—he said he thought Meredith had gone home as he wasn't about—and Miss Cremond—Miss Gertrude Cremond, you know. She was cleaning the chandelier in here.”

They all looked upwards.

“A very lovely piece,” said Mr. Ames. “French crystal.”

“Was she alone?” asked Sloan.

The vicar nodded. “Miss Cremond,” he murmured diplomatically, “is in total charge of all the Ornum china and glass. Lady Eleanor helps her with the flowers, but Miss Cremond handles all the rest herself.”

“I see, sir.”

“It was all still down on the table when I saw her,” said Mr. Ames. “Hundreds of pieces.”

“A day's work,” agreed Sloan, turning to go.

As he did so he stopped in his tracks.

Sloan would not have described himself as a sensitive man. If he thought of himself at all it was as an ordinary policeman—warts and all. But at that moment—as he stood with Crosby and the vicar in the great hall—the atavistic sensation came to him that they were being watched.

It was a very primitive feeling.

The hairs on the back of his neck erected themselves and an involuntary little shiver passed down his spine. Primeval reactions that were established long before man built himself his first shelter—let alone medieval castles.

Sloan let his gaze run casually round the great hall. It was not long before he spotted the peephole up near the roof in the dim corner behind and beyond the minstrels' gallery. He drifted slowly towards the door under the gallery and so out of sight of the peephole.

Once there, he changed to a swift run, going up the vast staircase as quickly as he could, his sense of direction working full blast.

He kept right at the top of the stair and chose the farthest door. He flung it open on a small, paneled room.

There was nobody there.

But in the opposite wall, low down, was a little window giving not to the out-of-doors but to another room. He stepped across and peered through it.

He was looking down at the great hall. From where he stood he could see the vicar still talking to Crosby. The constable was standing listening in an attitude of patient resignation. Sloan straightened up again and stepped back into the corridor.

And somewhere not very far away he heard a door closing gently.

12

Charles Purvis was being put through his paces by the press and he was not enjoying it.

For one thing, though, he was deeply thankful. With the help of Dillow he had at least managed to bottle up all the reporters in the same room. The thought of a stray one happening upon Lady Alice was too terrible to contemplate.

“Gentlemen,” he began, “I can give you very little information—”

“Can we see the Earl?” asked one of them immediately, mentioning a newspaper that Purvis had only seen wrapped round fish.

“The Earl is not at home.”

“You mean he isn't here?”

“No,” said Purvis, “just not at home.”

“You mean he won't see us?”

“His Lordship is not available,” insisted Charles Purvis. He had a fleeting vision of a subheading “No Comment from Earl of Ornum.” (What the reporters wrote, in fact, was, “Earl Silent.”)

“Do we understand, Steward, that the body was in the armor all day on Saturday and Sunday while visitors were being shown round?”

“I believe so,” said Purvis unhappily as the reporters scribbled away. (“Little did those who paid their half crowns at the weekend know that …”)

“How do you spell ‘archivist'?” said somebody.

The man from the oldest established newspaper told him.

“When are you open again?” asked another man.

“Wednesday,” said Purvis cautiously, “I think.”

“That your usual day?”

“Yes.” (They wrote, “‘Business as Usual,' Says Steward.”)

“That means you won't actually have closed at all?”

“Yes.” (“‘We Never Close,' Says Earl's Steward.”)

“I reckon this is the first stately home murder, boys.”

Purvis winced and the others nodded.

“This Earl of yours …” The voice came from a man at the back.

“Yes?”

“He's not much of a talker, is he?”

“A talker?” Charles Purvis was discovering the hard way that stonewalling is an underrated art—not only on the cricket pitch but everywhere else, too.

“That's right,” said the reporter, who had been doing his homework. “He's been a member of the House of Lords for thirty years.”

“Yes?”

“I've looked him up.”

“Oh?”

“He's only spoken twice. On red deer.”

“That's right.”

“Both times.”

“It's his subject.”

There were hoots of merry laughter at this.

Purvis flushed. “He has his own herd, you know, and …”

But the reporters were already on to their next questions.

“Our art man,” said a crime reporter, “our Old Art man, this is, tells me you've got a Holbein here.”

“That's right,” confirmed Purvis.

“What's the Earl doing taking in washing when he's got a Holbein?”

Purvis hadn't expected the interview to go like this. “It's of a member of the family,” he retorted, stung. “That's why.”

(“Steward says Holbein would have been sold long ago but for sentimental reasons,” they wrote.)

“Our new art man,” said another newspaperman, “says the Earl's nephew has just had an exhibition. Murton's the name. William Murton.”

“Oh?” This was news to Charles Purvis. “I didn't know that.”

“One of the smaller galleries,” said the man, “but quite well written up.”

“The other nephew,” a bald man informed them gratuitously, “Miles Cremond, is with the Pedes Shipping line.”

“Is he now?”

“And our city editor,” he went on, “says they're pretty ropey these days.”

“Now is the time for all share-holding rats to leave the sinking ship?” suggested an amiably cynical man near the door.

“Pretty well,” admitted the bald chap.

“Has he got any other good tips, Curly?”

“Buy the rag and see,” suggested the bald man. “Money well spent, they tell me.”

They were surprisingly well-informed.

They had already sucked the reference books dry. They had taken in a visit to a gratified Mrs. Pearl Fisher at Paradise Row, Luston, on their way to Ornum. (The whole street had ordered copies of tomorrow's papers.) They had attempted to suborn Edith, the housemaid, at the back door of Ornum House before coming round to the front, and they had got nowhere at all with Superintendent Leeyes—and all before breakfast, so to speak.

“The family,” said a man with a disillusioned face, whose paper specialized in what it was pleased to call “human interest.” “Can we have some pictures?”

“No,” said Purvis.

“They've got a son and a daughter, haven't they?”

“Yes”—tightly.

“Some pictures would be nice. Family group and so forth.”

“No.”

“I think we've got one of Lady Eleanor on the files anyway.”

Purvis blanched.

“Some charity performance somewhere.”

Charles Purvis breathed again.

“She's not engaged?” suggested the reporter hopefully.

“No.”

“Nor opened a boutique or an antique shop or anything like that?”

“No.”

“No family secrets passed down from father to son on his twenty-first birthday?”

“No.”

“No secret rooms?”

“I'm afraid not.” Purvis was genuinely regretful. If there had been a secret room in Ornum House he would willingly have taken them to see it. Anything to divert their questioning.

“Sure?”

“The tax-rating people would have found it,” said the steward bitterly.

“The victim's sister,” said a young man with long hair and a red tie. “What's happened to her?”

Purvis relaxed a little. “We don't know. We think she's visiting friends, but we don't know where.” He looked round the assembled company. “That's really where we could do with your cooperation, gentlemen. She probably doesn't know about this terrible business …” Out of the corner of his eye he saw the “human interest” man writing rapidly, “… and the police hope that she will read about the death and get in touch with them.”

“Will do.”

Charles Purvis doubted very much if Miss Meredith ever read either the “human interest” paper or the one with which the young man with the long hair and the red tie was associated, but sooner or later she would hear.

To Purvis' distress the newspaper of which his Lordship had been a loyal reader all his life had also sent a reporter. He, too, had a question.… It was like treachery.

“The weapon, Mr. Purvis, can you tell us what it was?”

He shook his head. “I understand the weapon has not yet been found.”

He was wrong.

The weapon had been found.

On the upstairs landing Inspector Sloan had met up with the team from the forensic laboratory, a taciturn pair of men who knew a bloodstain when they saw one. They had seen one on the spine of a book in the library and now they were looking at another.

They were all in the armory. One suit of armor had gone—
the
suit of armor—and the gap stood out like a missing tooth. The armory itself looked like a gigantic game of chess after a good opening move.

Detective Constable Crosby had began by working from quite a different premise—that one of the hundred and seventy weapons listed in the catalogue would be missing. So he and Mr. Ames had been conducting a bizarre roll-call.

“One anelace.”

“Present.”

“One voulge.”

“Yes. A very early piece,” said the vicar with satisfaction. “Not many of them about.”

“A tschinke?”

“That's right. The tenth Earl brought that back with him from abroad. It's a sort of sporting gun.”

Crosby eyed it warily. If that was the sort of souvenir that came from foreign parts he would stay at home.

“He was an ambassador,” said the vicar.

“I know.” Crosby moved his finger down the list and said cautiously, “A pair of dolphins.”

“Both here. Lifting tackle, you know, for guns.”

Crosby didn't know. “Three bastard swords,” he continued.

“All here.”

At the third attempt, “A guardapolvo.”

“Yes.”

“A Lucerne hammer.”

“Yes.”

Crosby hesitated. “A spontoon.”

“Yes.”

“A brandistock.” Crosby looked up from the list. “What's that?”

“A weapon with a tubular shaft concealing a blade …”

Crosby lost interest.