The Stately Home Murder (21 page)

To know that Cousin Gertrude had been cleaning the chandelier one would have had either to see her doing it or see the pieces of crystal on the table and know that this was one of the duties arrogated to herself by the formidable Miss Cremond. Or, perhaps, as a very long shot, have talked to someone who had mentioned it.

But if William Murton had been in the house on Friday after all, why hadn't he said so?

There was one simple and very sinister to that question. Was it because William Murton had seen that same figure and not only known it not to have been Judge Cremond but had—dangerously—recognized it?

“Apikestaff …” Superintendent Leeyes was saying.

“I beg your pardon, sir?” Cousin Gertrude was as plain as a pikestaff; was that what he meant?

“A pikestaff,” repeated Leeyes irritably. “Was he killed with something fancy from the armory?”

“No, sir,” dully. “The armory's locked. It'll have been something more modern than that.”

Dr. Dabbe still hadn't established what by the time Sloan got back to the
oubliette
.

It was a macabre setting for murder. Death went well with bare stone and it was the little crowd of modern men who looked incongruous.

Crosby was there and a considerably shaken Bert Hackle. He it had been who had led the police search party to this part of the house, who had given a quick jerk at the
oubliette
grating without considering for a single second that there might be anything at all within—still less the crumpled heap that had been William Murton.

The Reverend Walter Ames was somehow also of this party. Sloan didn't know whether he hadn't gone home after this morning or had gone and come back again and he was too busy to care.

Dr. Dabbe was still the central figure in the drama with the others playing supporting roles. Doctors, realized Sloan, were like that.

All three professions had something to tell the police inspector.

Rather like
The Ballad of Reading Gaol
, thought Sloan, who in his day had been what is known as “good at school.” His schooling had been of a vintage that had included—nay insisted—on the learning of verse by rote.

“Murton …” began Detective Constable Crosby, “shouldn't have been in the house at all by rights.”

(“The governor was strong upon the regulations act.”)

“If he'd stayed at home,” said the law flatly, “he'd have been all right.”

“The deceased,” pronounced Dr. Dabbe, “was attacked from behind and died very quickly.”

(“The doctor said that death was but a scientific fact.”)

“He struggled,” observed medicine, “but it didn't do him any good.”

“God rest his soul,” murmured the Reverend Walter Ames.

(“And twice a day the chaplain called, And left a little tract.”)

“Perhaps,” suggested the church gently, “in the fullness of time we shall be better able to see his life in true perspective.”

Was this man of God comforting him, too, wondered Sloan? RC. Bloggs couldn't properly be blamed for this death, but could he, Sloan? The superintendent would blame everybody, he always did, so that, working for him, you had yourself to work out where real responsibility lay.

As for perspective it was like looking down the wrong end of a telescope. Far away lay a greatly diminished figure …

Dr. Dabbe was going now. “I've seen all I need here, Inspector. Send him back to Berebury and I'll be getting on with the post-mortem for you.”

“Thank you, Doctor.”

The pathologist poked a bony finger towards the
oubliette
.

“Forgotten,” he said pungently, “but not gone.”

He should have worked all this out before now.

Before William Murton died.

Sloan took Crosby with him to see their Ladyships upstairs. Now that the house was really full of police he thought he could leave the
oubliette
for a while.

Lady Maude answered his knock and the two policemen trooped in. It was quite impossible to tell if any hasty harbinger of bad tidings had told the two old ladies about their great-nephew William. Sloan himself had broken the news to the Earl and Countess first, and then to the rest of the family. As he had expected, Lord Henry and Lady Eleanor had been most upset.

With the two old ladies, though, it was as if a lifetime of keeping the upper lip stiff meant that it could no longer bend.

“William …” he began tentatively.

Lady Alice inclined her head. “Millicent has told us. We expected something, you know. The Judge was about.”

The chair Sloan had been given was hard and straight-backed. He twisted on it uncomfortably, unsure of what to say next. “He shouldn't have died …”

The old, old face was inscrutable. “We've all got to die, Mr. Sloan—some of us sooner than others.”

“Yes, your Ladyship,” he agreed readily, “but he was young.”

Sloan was struck by a sadder thought still. Perhaps, seen from Lady Alice's vantage point, a lost middle age was not something to mourn and that, as for old age—you could keep it.

“Poor boy,” said Lady Maude. She, Sloan was sure, would have a lace-edged handkerchief somewhere and would shed a private tear for the dead William.

Lady Alice was made of sterner stuff.

She leaned forward. “Tell me, Mr. Sloan, do you read Boccaccio?”

“No, your Ladyship.” He had a vague recollection that was the name of one of the authors that some public libraries did not stock, but he was probably mistaken.

“He put it very well for us all.”

Sloan waited.

“‘Many valiant men and many fine ladies,'” she rumbled, “‘breakfasted with their kinsfolk and that same night supped with their ancestors in the other world.'”

Sloan cleared his throat. In a way, that wasn't so very far removed from what he had come about.

“Your Ladyship, can you remember Friday afternoon?”

“Of course.”

“Teatime?”

“Yes?”

“How many cups were there on the tea tray?”

But in the end it was Lady Maude who remembered, not Lady Alice at all.

“Only two, Mr. Sloan, because we hadn't invited Mr. Meredith, you see.”

Sloan and Crosby were walking down the great staircase together.

“We know when, Crosby.”

“Yes, sir.”

“We know where, Crosby.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And now we know who, Crosby.”

“Yes, sir.”

The dialogue was as rhythmical as their steps down the stair treads.

“We still don't know why.”

“No, sir. Murton …”

“William Murton had to die.”

“Yes, sir.”

“He came up to the house on Friday evening though he told us he didn't …”

“Yes, sir.”

“And saw something.”

“It didn't do him any good.”

“Ah, but he thought it was going to, though,” said Sloan sadly. “He made the mistake of thinking he was on to a good thing.”

“And so he came up to the house today …”

“Tricky business, blackmail,” murmured Sloan ruminatively. “I don't think our William can have been quite up to it. He should have stuck to the Earl. He would have seen him through.”

There was somebody coming along the upper landing behind them and hurrying down the stairs after them. A man's voice called out, “Inspector!”

Sloan turned.

Charles Purvis was descending on them as quickly as he could. “Inspector!”

“Yes?”

“I've just been taking the Young Masters Art Society round. They'd arranged to come and I forgot to cancel them what with one thing and another …”

“Yes?” prompted Sloan.

“So when they came just now rather than send them away I took them round myself.”

Quite obviously Charles Purvis hadn't heard about the dead William Murton yet.

“They'd come all the way from London and anyway they didn't know about Mr. Meredith …”

“Well?”—expectantly.

“They've just got to the Holbein—the picture called The Black Death.”

“Of Judge Cremond?”

“That's right.”

“Well?”

“They say it's not a Holbein at all.”

17

Sloan would have given a great deal not to have been interrupted at that precise moment.

The very last thing he wanted to do at this minute was to talk to his colleague Inspector Harpe of Berebury's traffic division.

Inspector Harpe, who was known throughout the Calleshire constabulary as Happy Harry because he had never been seen to smile—he maintained that there had so far never been in anything to smile at in traffic division—had actually telephoned him at Ornum House and was asking for him urgently.

One of Sloan's own constables brought him the message. One of the first acts of the police posse from Berebury had been to take over the telephone. Another had been to encircle the house. Lady Alice Cremond would have had a phrase for that.

Stoppin' the earths.

That was what he was trying to do now. Now he had got onto the right scent at last.

Inspector Harpe soon drove all huntin', shootin', and fishin' analogies out of his mind.

“That you, Sloan?” he asked guardedly. “About this other business—you know …”

“I know.”

“There was an accident just before dinnertime today at the foot of Lockett Hill—near the bottom by the bend—you know …”

“It's a bad corner.”

“You're telling me. We've been trying to get the county council to put a better camber on it for years, but you know what they're like.”

“I do.”

“They say it's the ministry, but then they always do.”

“And the ministry say it's the county,” condoled Sloan.

“That's right—how did you know? And everyone blames the police. It was a fatal, by the way.”

So someone had died while “they” were fighting about improving the road.

“And what happened?” Sloan prompted him. Happy Harry wasn't the only one with a fatal on his hands today.

“We had this call and my nearest car was practically at Cullingoak—it couldn't have been farther away, Sloan, if it had tried.”

“That's how it goes,” agreed Sloan. He hadn't time to be standing here commiserating with his colleagues. “So …”

“By the time it got from Cullingoak to Lockett Hill …”

With blue tower light flashing, two-tone horn blaring, and every child on the route shouting encouragement.

“By the time it arrived,” said Harpe, “the garage—
the
garage—if you know what I mean …”

“I know.”

“They were there.”

“Damn.”

“Sloan, I trust those boys. They're good lads for all that I shout at them.”

“Quite, but that doesn't help, does it?” It might hinder, but Sloan didn't say so.

“They must find out some other way,” insisted Harpe.

“How?” said Sloan automatically.

In a case like this it was not enough just to prove—or have events prove for you—that someone was guiltless. Oh, it might be all right in a court of law … what was it called in England? The accusatorial system: Has this person been proved by the prosecution beyond reasonable doubt to have committed whatever it was you were accusing him of?

Or her?

But as far as he, Sloan, was concerned, give him the other approach—the Continental one—any day of the week.

The inquisitorial outlook.

Who committed the crime? Just as with Inspector Harpe's traffic division crews, so it was here at Ornum now. Events had proved that William Murton was not likely to have been guilty of the murder of Osborne Meredith, but those same events had not revealed the true sequence of events.

Yet.

“How,” he repeated. “Someone must have told the garage where to go. Someone must have been telling them each time or they couldn't have been getting there so quickly.”

“I know,” mourned Harpe. “I've done my best. I've been reading up all those incidents …”

Incidents was a good word.

Even in his present hurry Sloan could appreciate it. It covered everything from a flying bomb to an allegation of conduct unbecoming to a police officer and a … with an effort he brought his mind back to what Happy Harry was saying.

Before he mixed his metaphors.

“And one thing struck me,” went on Harpe, “as common to them all. Until now.”

“Oh?” Only long training kept Sloan's ear to the telephone. He wanted so badly to throw it down and bring his mind back to Ornum.

“Each time the breakdown van got on to one of those accident jobs so mysteriously …”

“Yes?”

“It was out of working hours. Take last night, for instance, at Tappett's Corner …”

“But not today surely,” said Sloan. “Today's Monday. Isn't it?”

He wouldn't have been unbearably surprised to learn that they had run over into Tuesday—Sunday seemed so long ago.

“That's right. Today spoils it.”

“It'll have to wait,” said Sloan pointedly. He would ring off in a minute and pretend afterwards that he'd lost the connection.

“I'll have to tell the Old Man,” said Harpe unhappily.

“I'm afraid so.”

“You don't think it'll stop him screaming for help over your business?”

“He's probably doing it already,” said Sloan.

Charles Purvis took him along to the long gallery as soon as he put the telephone down.

“I'd clean forgotten about them,” admitted the steward. “I never gave them another thought.”

“Who are they?”

“They call themselves the Young Masters Art Society and they're doing a European picture tour taking in as many …”

“Old Masters?”

“That's right. As many Old Masters as they can. They've already done one trip doing the public collections, galleries, and so forth.”