The Stately Home Murder

Inspector Sloan, whose who hobby was growing roses—rather than growing girls—said, “That must have been very nice, sir.”

“Pure Victoriana, of course.”

“Naturally, sir.” He coughed. “This is your home, I take it?”

“Well, now, Inspector, that’s a good question.” William Murton’s eyes danced mischievously. “It’s like this. By virtue of long residence I’m a protected tenant here…”

That, decided Sloan privately, must have caused a certain amount of chagrin in some quarters.

“So,” went on Murton, “it would be downright foolish of me to leave, wouldn’t it?”

“I see what you mean, sir.”

“So I stay. After all”—gravely—“my family have lived here a very long time.”

“Quite so.”

“And there’s nothing wrong with being a cottager, you know. My father was a cottager.”

“So,” said Sloan impassively, “you use this for a weekend cottage.”

“Got it in one, Inspector.”

“You come down every weekend?”

“Not quite”—tantalisingly—“every weekend. Just… er… every now and then.”

“Why this particular one?”

Murton shrugged a pair of surprisingly broad shoulders. “The spirit moved me. I didn’t come down to do poor Ossy in, if that’s what you mean.”

“You knew him, of course?”

“Oh yes. We were all brought up together as children, you know. Like puppies. Miles’ parents were abroad a lot and mine couldn’t provide for me properly”—he grimaced—“so…”

“So,” concluded Sloan for him, “you had the worst of both worlds.”

Murton looked at him curiously. “That’s right, Inspector. I was brought up half a gentleman. You think as children that the world’s an equal place. It’s later when you realise that Henry gets the lot.”

“Disturbing,” agreed Sloan.

“Especially when you’re older than he is and you can see his father had the lot, too. And all your father had was this.”

“Quite so, sir.”

“That’s what’s made me into a sponger.”

“A sponger?”

“A sponger, Inspector, that’s what I said. I don’t earn my keep like Cousin Gertrude cleaning chandeliers for dear life and I don’t stay on the fringes like Laura, hoping for pickings.”

“I see, sir.”

“And I don’t stand around praying for miracles like that efficient ass Charles Purvis. I’m a plain hanger-on.”

“I see, sir. And for the rest of the time you do what?”

“This and that,” he said easily.

Sloan could find the proper answer by picking up the telephone. He said instead, “Now, as to Friday…”

William Murton hadn’t a great deal to tell him about Friday.

Yes, he had originally intended to come only for the weekend.

Yes, he had come down on Friday afternoon.

By train.

About half-past five.

He had spent Friday evening at the cottage.

Alone.

Saturday he had stayed in bed until teatime and the evening he had spent in The Ornum Anns.

At least twenty people would confirm this, including Ebeneezer Lambert down the road.

If the Inspector should by any remote chance happen to see old Lambert he might tell him that he had lost his bet and owed him, William Murton, Esquire, a fiver.

And not to forget the esquire. We might not all be Earls, but there was no law yet against us all being esquires, was there?

And if the Inspector wanted to know who he thought had done it…

The great-aunts.

“In fact, sir,” said Crosby, as he drove Inspector Sloan from the cottage up to the House, “we aren’t short of suspects, are we?”

“No.”

“That chap ran right through the lot for us. Did you notice, sir?”

“He didn’t mention Dillow,” said Sloan, “and he didn’t mention Mr. Ames.”

“The Vicar?” said Crosby. “I hadn’t thought of him.”

“You should think of everyone, Constable. That’s what you’re here for.”

“Yes, sir.”

“He came to the house at about the right time on Friday afternoon,” said Sloan. “He told us so.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And he knows about armour.”

“He doesn’t look like a murderer.”

“Neither did Crippen.”

This profound observation kept Constable Crosby quiet until they reached Ornum House.

Dillow was at hand as ever.

“The Vicar is in the Great Hall, gentlemen, waiting your arrival. Mr. Purvis is in the morning-room interviewing the Press…”

“The Queen is in the Parlour eating bread and honey,” muttered the incorrigible Crosby, irritated by all this formality.

“Very good, sir,” murmured the butler smoothly, not at all put out.

Sloan reflected that an irrepressible police constable must be child’s play to a man who had worked for that eccentric millionaire Baggles.

“And, sir, Edith, the housemaid—you indicated you wished to speak to her—is available whenever you wish.”

“Now,” suggested Sloan. “I just wanted to know when she last went into the Library.”

Dillow produced Edith immediately. She was willing and cheerful, but not bright.

“Yeth, sir”—she was slightly adenoidal too—“Saturday morning, sir. There was nobody there then.”

This was clarified by Sloan into no body.

“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 look-out…”

“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, panelled 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 armour 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 stone-walling is an under-rated 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 specialised 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 armoury. One suit of armour had gone—the suit of armour—and the gap stood out like a missing tooth. The armoury itself looked like a gigantic game of chess ofter 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.”

“Onevoulge.”

“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.

The Vicar pointed. “You can jerk the blade forward.”

“We call it a flick knife,” said Crosby laconically. “Next. A godentag. What’s that?”

“A club thickening towards the head,” said Mr. Ames, indicating it with his hand, “and topped with an iron spike. Hullo, it’s not hanging quite straight—someone must have—”

“Don’t touch it,” shouted Crosby, dropping the list and making for the wall.

Mr. Ames’ hands fell back to his side, but he went on looking.

So did the pair from the Forensic Laboratory—only they looked through a powerful pocket lens and they looked long and hard.

“Blood,” said the senior of the two, “and a couple of hairs.”

Inspector Sloan turned to the Vicar. “What did you say it was called, sir?”

“A godentag,” said Mr. Ames. “Taken literally it means ‘Good Morning.’ ”

Detective Constable Crosby caught the affirmative nod from the laboratory technician to Inspector Sloan and interpreted it correctly. “If that’s what did it, sir, shouldn’t it be ‘Good Night’?”

Charles Purvis had been as good as his word. He came down to the armoury to tell Sloan that the four guides were waiting for him in the Oriel Room.

“They’re all there except Hackle and he’s working in the knot garden if you want to see him, too.”

Inspector Sloan hesitated. A knot garden sounded like a Noh play. “Where’s that?” he asked cautiously.

“Just this side of the belvedere,” said the Steward, trying to be helpful. “By the gazebo.”

“And the Oriel Room?” said Sloan, giving up. It was like learning a new language.

“I’ll take you there,” said Purvis. He hadn’t finished with the Press—he didn’t suppose you ever finished with the Press—but he had done what he could.

The Oriel Room had been a felicitous choice on the part of Purvis. It was a room that was never shown to the public, while still not being quite the same as the Private Apartments. Mrs. Mompson, Miss Cleepe, Mrs. Nutting, and Mr. Feathers were there and Dillow was plying them with coffee.

Pseudo-privilege for pseudo-guests.

The thin Miss Cleepe declined sugar, the tubby Mrs. Nutting took two spoonfuls.

“I know I shouldn’t,” she said, “but I do like it.”

As usual, Mrs. Mompson remained a trifle aloof. “Poor little Miss Meredith,” she said with condescension. Mrs. Mompson called other women “little” irrespective of their size. “I do feel so sorry for her.”

“I feel more sorry for Meredith myself,” said Mr. Feathers practically. “Not the sort of end I’d fancy.”

Mrs. Nutting shivered. “Nor me. We must help the Inspector all we can.”

It wasn’t very much.

Sloan took them through the previous Saturday and Sunday—not so many people on the Saturday, but then there never are—but Sunday was crowded. They wouldn’t be surprised if Sunday had been a record. (It wouldn’t stay that way for long if it had been, thought Sloan. Not after tomorrow’s papers came out.)

Mr. Feathers had noticed nothing out of the ordinary in the Great Hall. Miss Gertrude Cremond had been along to see the chandelier in daylight, and expressed herself pleased with it. It wouldn’t need doing again for the season, otherwise all had been as usual.

Mrs. Nutting reported one small child had got under the four-poster while her back was turned, but had been extricated (and spanked) without difficulty.

“Otherwise,” she said cheerfully, “just as usual. Same sort of people. Same questions.”

Miss Cleepe, as angular as Mrs. Nutting was curved, twisted her hands together. The Long Gallery had been much the same. The usual difficulty of parties made up of people who really cared about painting and those who neither knew nor cared.

“It’s so trying if you sense that they’re bored,” she said, “but the Holbein always interests them.”

“After you’ve told them what it’s worth,” said Mr. Feathers brutally.

She sighed. “That’s so. They always take a second look then.” She put down her coffee cup. “And of course they always ask about the ghost. Always.”

Mrs. Mompson, who had for some time been trying to engineer an exchange of pictures between the Long Gallery and the drawing-room, said, “That picture doesn’t get the light it should in the Long Gallery.”

“It is rather dark,” agreed Miss Cleepe. “It’s such a low narrow room; and the bulb in its own little light was broken. Dillow’s getting another for me.”

“I’ve always said that over the fireplace in the drawing-room is where that picture should be,” declared Mrs. Mompson. “Where everyone could really see it properly.”

“I don’t know about that I’m sure,” said Miss Cleepe nervously. “After all, too much light might be bad for the picture.”

“It’s practically in the half dark in the Long Gallery where it is. Halfway from each window and not very good windows at that.” Mrs. Mompson had over the fireplace in the drawing-room at present an eighteenth-century portrayal of the Goddess of Plenty, Ceres, that she had long wanted to be rid of. The Goddess had been depicted somewhat fulsomely and Mrs. Mompson did not think the artist’s conception of that bountiful creature quite nice.

“I think,” she went on, “the Holbein would be seen to real advantage over my fireplace.”

Miss Cleepe flushed. To lose from her showing ground the most valuable item in the House and the ghost at one fell swoop was more than she could bear.

“Oh, dear!” she fluttered. “Do you really? I should be very sorry to lose the Judge. Very sorry. I always feel he’s a real interest to those to whom the other pictures mean nothing.”

Inspector Sloan made no move to stop them talking. The policeman’s art was to listen and to watch. Not to do. At least not when witnesses were talking to each other, almost oblivious of an alien presence in their midst. Almost but not quite.

Mrs. Mompson, who had no wish for an immediate ruling on the subject of the Holbein from Charles Purvis, said firmly, “Nothing, I assure you, Inspector, out of the ordinary happened in the drawing-room while I was in charge.”

Sloan, who would have been surprised if it had, nodded.

“One young woman went so far as to finger the epergne,” she went on imperiously, “but I soon put a stop to that.”

“Quite so, madam. Thank you all very…”

Miss Cleepe had not done.

In a voice that trembled slightly she said, “I really don’t think I could possibly manage the Long Gallery without the Holbein.”

Sloan was ringing back to base. Base wasn’t very pleased at his news.

“Someone,” declared Sloan, “has tried to get into the Muniments Room since we sealed it up yesterday.”

“They have, have they? What for?”

“I don’t know, sir. I’d arranged for the County Archivist to come over and start going through the records. When Crosby went up there with him he found someone had had a go at the lock.”

“There’s something in there,” said Leeyes.

“Yes, sir.”

“And someone’s still after it.”

“Yes, sir. They haven’t got it though. The locks held.”

“Just as well,” grunted Leeyes. “By the way, Sloan, I’ve just had the Ornums’ lawyer here. He’s on his way out to you now. Watch him.”

“Yes, sir.”

“One of those clever chaps,” said Leeyes resentfully. “Said he was representing the Earl’s interests. Representing them!” Leeyes snorted. “Guarding them like a hawk, I’d say.”

Sloan was not surprised. People like the Ornums went straight to the top and got the very best. He said gloomily, “I suppose the Earl will be another of those who know the Chief Constable personally, too…”

They were the bane of his existence, those sort of people, assuming that acquaintanceship was an absolution.

“Be your age, Sloan.”

“I beg your pardon, sir?”

“The Earl wouldn’t be bothered with people like the Chief Constable.”

“Not be bothered with the Chief Constable?” echoed Sloan faintly.

“That’s what I said. The Home Secretary, Sloan, was his fag at school, and the Attorney-General’s his wife’s third cousin, twice removed.”

“Oh, dear.”

“Exactly.” Sloan heard the Superintendent bring his hand down on his desk with a bang just as he did when he was standing in front of him. “So if there’s any arresting to be done…”

“Yes, sir.” Sloan took the unspoken point and tried to check on something else. “The rules, sir, aren’t they different for peers of the realm?”

“I don’t know about the written ones, Sloan,” said Leeyes ominously, “but the unwritten ones are.”

“Yes, sir”—absently. He was thinking about the Tower of London. He and his wife, Margaret, had gone there on their honeymoon. Was it just a museum still or were there dark corners where extra special prisoners lay?

“You could call it a case,” said Leeyes judicially, “where a wrongful arrest isn’t going to help the career of the police officer making it.”

“Quite so, sir.” He cleared his throat. “I’m nowhere near that stage yet, sir, but we think we’ve found the murder weapon. A club called ‘Good Morning.’ ”

“A club called ‘Good Morning,’ ” said Leeyes heavily. “You wouldn’t by any chance be trying to take the micky out of a police superintendent called Leeyes, would you, Sloan, because if you are…”

“No, sir”—hastily. “It’s number forty-nine in the catalogue and its other name is a godentag. The Forensic boys have found blood and hair on it but no fingerprints. Dr. Dabbe hasn’t seen it yet, of course, to confirm that…”

“That reminds me,” interrupted Leeyes. “Dr. Dabbe. He’s been on the phone with his report.”

“Oh?”

“These pathologists,” grumbled the Superintendent. “They upset everything.”

“Why?”

“You said, Sloan, that the butler took Meredith his tea at four o’clock and collected the empty tray at five.”

“That’s right, sir. He saw him at four but not at five. And Lady Eleanor saw him just before teatime.”

“Teatime, perhaps,” said Leeyes, “but not tea.”

“Not tea?”

“Nothing had passed deceased’s lips for three hours before death. Dr. Dabbe says so. Killed on an empty stomach in fact.”

“Somebody ate Meredith’s tea,” said Sloan, turning back the pages of his notebook.

“Very likely, but not Meredith,” pointed out the Superintendent with finality. “Dr. Dabbe says so.”

13

« ^ »

So somebody got him in between Dillow taking him his tea and him getting his teeth into it?” concluded Constable Crosby succinctly. He was still in the armoury though the Vicar and the laboratory people had gone.

“That’s right.” There were more elegant ways of putting it, but in essence Crosby was right. “Though after Meredith had made his celebrated discovery and telephoned the Vicarage in Ornum.”

“Do we know when that was, sir?”

“Mrs. Ames thinks it must have been about half-past three.”

“Then we’re getting nowhere fast,” Crosby said, disappointed, slinging his notebook down on the table that Dillow had provided for them in a corner of the armoury. (It was of inlaid walnut and quite unsuitable.)

“Oh?”

“William Murton was seen to get off the 5:27 P.M. Luston to Berebury slow train at Ornum Station on Friday afternoon and I still think he did it,” said Crosby all in one breath.

Sloan regarded his constable with interest. “You do, do you? Why?”

“He’s a painter for one thing.”

“That’s not a crime. Yet.”

“What I mean, sir, is that he’s a bit of an oddity.”

“Nor is that.”

“Suddenly he isn’t short of money any more.”

“Meredith wasn’t a rich man,” countered Sloan, “and the connection with this case and money is—to say the least—obscure.” It would be there, of course—it nearly always was once you’d ruled out lust—but Sloan couldn’t see where it lay.

“Yes, sir.”

“Did you arrange for him to be watched?”

“Yes, sir. P.C. Bloggs is tailing him.” He paused. “London came through on the blower.”

“Well?”

Crosby sucked his lips. “From what they can make out he’s in dead trouble with a woman.”

The nearest Constable Crosby himself had ever come to being in trouble with a woman was being late off-duty, thus missing the start of the big picture.

There was something almost paternal in Sloan’s tone. “If every man who was that, Crosby, committed a murder, we’d never get a rest day.”

Crosby played his last card. “The Earl thinks he did it.”

“I know. It’s the best circumstantial evidence we’ve got that the Earl didn’t do it himself. Not that William Murton didn’t.”

“The Earl?” echoed Crosby, shocked. “You don’t think he did it, do you, sir?”

“No, as it happens, I don’t, but he’s a suspect like everyone else.”

All people being equal, but some being more equal than others.

Especially earls.

It was a natural step from there to Lord Henry.

“That’s another thing I’ve checked,” said Crosby, “without any joy.”

“What is?”

“His young Lordship’s car. There is some blood down between the fan blade and the radiator. I’ve told those two vampire chaps—”

“Laboratory technicians”—mildly.

“Them. They’re going to have a look when they’ve finished with the ‘Good Morning.’ ”

“He could have put it there,” pointed out Sloan.

“Yes, sir”—briefly. Crosby flicked back the pages of his notebook. “There are no fingerprints on the ‘Good Morning’ by the way.”

“I hadn’t expected there would be.”

“And Mrs. Morley, the housekeeper, said she bandaged Lord Henry’s hand for him after he cut it. Friday, it was. In the morning.”

“I see.”

“She saw the wound.”

“Doubting Thomases,” said Sloan bitterly, his mind darting back to his Sunday-school days. “That’s what we should be called, isn’t it? Not coppers.”

“I couldn’t say, I’m sure, sir,” murmured Crosby. “Anyway, Mrs. Morley said it was quite a nasty cut. He couldn’t have held a cricket bat.”

“Or a godentag?”

“Not according to Mrs. Morley, he couldn’t. She wanted him to have the doctor. Right across the palm, it was, and the index finger.”

“And he got it from a motor car, not from squeezing a dead man into a metal suit of armour?”

Crosby’s case rested on Mrs. Morley and he said so.

“I see,” said Sloan. “So you think Lord Henry is out as a suspect, but William Murton still in?”

“Except that he got off the 5:27 all right,” repeated Crosby, “because the Station Master saw him himself.”

“And have you checked that he didn’t nip up the line and get on at the station before?”

“Not yet,” replied Crosby in a nicely shaded manner which implied he had been about to do so.

“I should,” advised Sloan. “What size shoes does he take?”

Crosby stared. “I didn’t notice, sir.”

“I did. A nine, at least.”

“He’s a big chap,” agreed Crosby cautiously.

“Too big for a lady’s shoe, size six and a half, anyway,” observed Sloan, turning back the pages of his own notebook. “And the Countess and Lady Eleanor both take a five.”

“Handy, that.”

“Handy?”

“They can share,” said Crosby. “Like my sister does.”

“Crosby, people like this do not share shoes.”

“No, sir.”

“Assuming”—severely—“that the person who left a heel mark in the Muniments Room did so inadvertently, and I think they did.”

“Yes…”

“That means Miss Gertrude Cremond, Mrs. Laura Cremond, or Mrs. Morley went in there and turned everything upside down.”

“Unless it was an outside job, sir.”

“Crosby,” Sloan controlled a sigh. “We both know this wasn’t an outside job.”

“Yes, sir.”

“So one of the three went in there…”

“After Meredith was killed, sir, or before?”

“Well, he’s hardly likely to have stood by and watched, is he now?”

“No, sir.” Crosby scratched his forehead. “Miss Gertrude Cremond’s big enough to have dotted a small man who was sitting down at the time, for all that she’s not young.”

“True.”

“Mrs. Laura Cremond isn’t.”

“No. Neither was Lady Macbeth.”

“Pardon, sir?”

“Lady Macbeth. Another small woman. She got someone killed.”

“Secondhand, you mean, sir.”

“Precisely.”

“You think she might have egged on the Honourable Miles, sir?”

“Goaded would be a better word, Crosby.”

“Yes, sir.” He paused and said carefully, “I don’t think he would have thought of it on his own.”

“No.”

“Mrs. Morley would have had to have got Dillow to do it for her,” went on Crosby. “For all that she’s got biggish feet for a woman she doesn’t look the club-swinging sort.”

“There is another possibility…”

Crosby sighed. He wasn’t good at assimilating more than two or three at a time.

Inspector Sloan tapped his notebook. “That the attack on the Muniments had nothing to do with the murder of Meredith.”

Crosby had not thought of this. “Coincidence?” he said doubtfully.

“Not exactly. Just two things happening on the same day.”

“Matching up with the two separate discoveries, sir?” suggested Crosby brightly. “The one about the earldom…”

“Which may or may not be true…”

“And the one Meredith made on the Friday afternoon…”

“Which we know nothing whatsoever about…”

“That he tried to get in touch with the Vicar to tell him?”

“Well done, Constable. Now, can you tell me the only significant thing that we know about Friday afternoon so far?”

“No,” said Crosby promptly. “Nothing else happened apart from Meredith finding out something…”

“Let’s put it another way,” said Sloan patiently. At this rate they’d have to call in outside help, whether Superintendent Leeyes wanted it or not. “What change in routine was there on Friday afternoon that we already know about?”

Crosby gave a short laugh. “The only thing that was different that we know about for certain sure…”

“Yes?”

“The two old birds upstairs…”

“Lady Alice and Lady Maude.” There were moments when he would have welcomed more sophisticated assistance, too. This was one of them.

“Lady Alice and Lady Maude”—Crosby tacitly accepted the emendation. “They didn’t ask the deceased to tea like they usually did on Fridays.”

“Exactly, Crosby.”

“You mean that is important, sir?”

“I mean”—grimly—“that that’s the only positive pointer we have so far. That and the fact that William Murton has been in Ornum for all of forty-eight hours without asking his uncle for money, which I understand practically constitutes a record.”

“That is unusual,” admitted the Earl of Ornum. He was in the Private Apartments regaling a tall thin individual with something from a decanter and thin biscuits. “I think it is… er… pretty well accepted that William only retreats to Onrum when his… er… other commitments become very pressing.”

The Earl had introduced Sloan and Crosby to the bleak-looking man. He was, it transpired, Mr. Adrian Cossington, the Senior Partner in the old established law firm of Oaten, Oaten and Cossington, and if his ascetic appearance was anything to go by, he had long ago done with all human desire and feeling. His pleasures, if any, looked as if they were confined to wrestling with “nice” legal points, or perhaps advising against the indulgences proposed by his clients.

He was obviously opposed to the Earl of Ornum saying anything to anyone at all at this stage—but especially to Inspector Sloan.

“Don’t be silly, Cossington,” said the Earl testily, showing more courage in dealing with the solicitor than Sloan would have dared to have done. “The fellow’s got to find out who killed Meredith, hasn’t he?”

“Certainly, my lord, nevertheless your own responsibilities in the matter are confined to—”

“Dammit, man, there’s such a thing as justice.” He turned. “Isn’t there, Inspector?”

“I think so,” said Sloan cautiously. Asked point-blank like that he wasn’t sure that there was.

“In your own interest, my lord,” protested Cossington.

“We are not considering my interest, Cossington, we are considering law and order.”

That was different.

Sloan, who wasn’t sure about justice, was absolutely certain about law and order. You’d got to have it or you were barbarian.

The Earl was taking his stance. “I can’t have my own Librarian and Archivist killed in m’own House, Cossington, now, can I?”

That was what rankled, thought Sloan irrelevantly. From the Earl’s point of view it was “touch my servant and you touch me.” That was how it would have been in the old days. The first Earl would have had his own following, half servant, half army. Vassals, obedient to him unto death. And the Earl would have been obedient to the King, would have taken an oath of obedience at the King’s coronation.

Every Earl at every Coronation.

Even now.

It had a name, that oath. He would remember it in a moment. An odd word… “fealty,” that was it.

The solicitor had started to explain to the Earl that narrow line between obstructing the police in the execution of their duty and those tenuous circumstances in which no man need offer evidence that might incriminate himself.

Sloan wasn’t listening. He was looking across at the thirteenth Earl of Ornum with new eyes. He, Charles Dennis Sloan, Detective Inspector in Her Majesty’s County Constabulary of Calleshire, was the natural heir and successor to the Earl in this matter of law and order. Where once the Earl had kept unruly villains obedient so now did he. Sloan, too, had taken an oath of allegiance. And he hadn’t realised until now how ancient was his duty.

The Earl of Ornum hadn’t been listening to the solicitor either. “Purvis tells me you’ve asked the County Archivist in, Inspector.”

“Yes, my lord. With your permission…”

His Lordship nodded. “Meredith wouldn’t have liked it, but that can’t be helped. Not now. Possessive lot, these archivists. Always wanting to build their own empires. Never prepared to lend a hand with anyone else’s.”

“Was there anything here that anyone hankered after then?” asked Sloan suddenly. It was something he should have asked before.

The Earl thought for a moment. “Some items are always being asked for on loan.”

“Which are they, my lord?”

The Earl waved a hand. “Some very early Court stuff, which seems to have survived. Records of Oyer, Terminer, and Assize. That sort of thing.”

One lecture, that’s all they’d had when Sloan joined the Force, on the history of the legal system in England. And he hadn’t listened anyway.

“The old Courts of Gaol Delivery, you know,” said his Lordship. “Going back a good bit now, of course. Not many of them about these days. Things have changed since then.” A faint gleam of humour crept into the melancholy countenance. “Now we have you, Inspector, and Cossington over there instead of just me.”

Justice instead of rough justice?

Sloan wasn’t sure. He cleared his throat and came back to the point. “These records, my lord, are they worth stealing?”

“Nothing is worth stealing, Inspector.”

Sloan flushed. “I’m sorry, my lord. I meant…”

The whole atmosphere in the Private Apartments had changed subtly. “They have a value, Inspector…”

“Yes, my lord, I’m sure…”

“But too high a value to have a price.”

“I see, my lord.”

“No, Inspector, you do not see. The County Archivist would like them for his empire. He sees himself as the true representative of the Common Man—to whom he probably thinks they should belong anyway. The Ratepayer incarnate.”

“Quite so…”

“What was it that French fellow said…”

“I couldn’t say, my lord…”

“Property is theft.”

It was not a police point of view. Nor an English one, if it came to that. Property was respectable in the police world. Men without property were like gamblers without a stake, a rootless, drifting menace. Men with nothing to lose.

“The Inns of Court would like them for their empire,” went on his Lordship, “because they see themselves as a profession and they think a profession can have a body. It can’t. It’s only as good as the worst of its members.”

“Yes, my lord.” As far as the aristocracy was concerned professions were doubtless new jumped-up callings.

“One of the universities wants them for their empire because they think they represent the Intellectual Man and that that is sufficient reason. It isn’t.”

“No, my lord.”

“The Intellectual Man can be swayed by Intellect…”

“Yes, my lord.” Sloan had thought that was the whole idea.

“Dangerous, that.”

“Very possibly, my lord.” Was that the aristocrat pronouncing on the meritocrat?

“Brains,” pronounced his lordship oracularly, “are all very well in their way. That right, Cossington?”

Mr. Adrian Cossington was far too clever to admit to having any at all and merely murmured, “A point of view, my lord, a point of view.”

In a moment, thought Sloan, he’s going to say, “My country, right or wrong.”

But he didn’t.

Instead the Earl said, “That’s when you get political arithmetic creeping in, Inspector.”

“Do you, my lord?” Sloan didn’t know about political arithmetic, but he did know that the Earl was trying to convey a philosophy to him, a philosophy that did not encompass murder.

“The greatest good of the greatest number.”

“I see, sir.” Wasn’t that known as “the common weal,” or was that something different?

“And, Inspector, because they are of historical value I may not sell them to the highest bidder.”

“No, my lord?”

“My country which bleeds me white does not allow me the freedom of the marketplace.”

Sloan was more aware now of Cossington stirring in the background.

“All I may do, Inspector, is to retrench against a taxation system whose only aim is to deprive me of my inheritance.”

“Those Court records,” said Sloan, policeman not politician, “would they have been in the Muniments chests?”

“In the ordinary way,” agreed the Earl.

“But not on Friday?” Sloan’s view of Ornum was blinkered to Friday.

The Earl shook his head. “They’ve been on loan to the Greatorex Library since the beginning of June.”

“Who all knew this?”

“Anyone who cared to read the papers,” said his Lordship blandly.

“Cor,” said Constable Crosby expressively as they left the Private Apartments, “he’s agin the government if you like.”

Inspector Sloan’s mind was elsewhere. He was wondering if hounds felt the same sense of disappointment as he did now when they had been following a scent that turned out to be false. For a moment he had thought he had been on to something.

Crosby waved a hand. “And he calls this being bled white.”

“All things are relative, Crosby.”

Just how relative, though, was all this to a handful of police constables getting a few shillings’ palm oil from a greedy garage proprietor every now and then?

“I’d like to have his sort of money all the same,” persisted Crosby.

“No, you wouldn’t.” The mental dichotomy between this investigation and the other was almost too much. They were at the extreme opposite ends of the scale.

But it was the same scale.

He knew that.

And so did Superintendent Leeyes.

“Try me,” said the constable cheerfully, “that’s all I ask, sir.”

Sloan looked across at Crosby, trying to see in him the lineal descendent of those early Earls of Ornum. Crosby suppressing tear-aways on motorcycles or calming over-excited yobboes on a Saturday night or pounding the beat mid-week, but that image, too, had faded now.

“I want to see Lady Alice again,” he said abruptly.

As before, Lady Maude opened the door and led the way to her sister.

“Just one more question, your Ladyship,” he began.

The lorgnette hovered above the Cremond beak again. “Well?”

“Who all knew you hadn’t invited Mr. Meredith to tea on Friday?”

From where Sloan was standing the lorgnette magnified the beady eyes.

“Just,” said her Ladyship balefully, “Mr. Meredith.”

14

« ^ »

Miles Cremond looked as if he could have eaten any number of extra teas at any time. His overweight was of the solid, long-standing variety. He was very willing to talk to Inspector Sloan and Constable Crosby. He didn’t often get an audience who hung on his every word like they did.

“Came down for the cricket,” said Miles, sounding faintly aggrieved. “Not for all this business. Always come for this match. ’S’tradition.”

Sloan listened carefully. What he was listening for was a clue as to why the murder had happened exactly when it did.

“I mean to say,” Miles went on, “the poor old chap never did anyone any harm, did he?”

“Not that I know of, sir.” Sloan went on to establish that Thursday was the first time Miles and Laura had heard about the archivist’s doubts about the earldom.

“A lot of nonsense, I’m sure, Inspector,” said Miles warmly. “ ’Course Uncle Harry’s the right chap. It stands to reason…”

Sloan didn’t know if primogeniture was reason.

“The rest’s history, isn’t it?” said Miles.

“I couldn’t say, sir, I’m sure.”

“A lot of families chop and change in the succession, I know, but we’ve been luckier than most.”

“Really, sir?”

“Because of this thing about battles, what?”

“What thing?”

“Never getting there,” said Miles. “Whenever there’s been a war the Cremonds always seem to have been either too old or too young to fight, what?”

“The General…” said Sloan suddenly, remembering the bust in the Library.

“That’s right. Him, too. I think one of the other Cremonds got to Blenheim, but his gout held him back from the actual fighting, what?”

“Quite so, sir.” Where Sloan came from, the word “what” was a simple interrogative. This man used it like a full stop. “Now, about Friday, sir…”

“Yes?”

“Where were you at the material… at teatime on Friday?”

“Had a quick cup with the others.”

“The others?”

“Uncle Harry, Aunt Millicent, Henry and Eleanor, Cousin Gertrude, and m’wife. I didn’t stay with them more than five minutes. I wanted to get out-of-doors and Cousin Gertrude wanted to get back to her chandelier, so we went.”

“What sort of time would this have been, sir?”

He frowned. “I must have been heading for the ha ha by ten past four.”

“I beg your pardon, sir?”

“The ha ha.”

“That’s what I thought you said.” Sloan tried it out for himself. Tentatively. “The ha ha?”

“That’s right, Inspector.”

“And what”—cautiously—“did you do when you got there?”

“Walked round it.”

“I see, sir.” It was like one of those radio parlour games where everyone else knew the object. He suppressed an urge to say, “Can you eat it?” Instead he murmured, “Did you see anyone while you were there?”

Miles Cremond frowned again. “Purvis. He was talking to Bert Hackle by the orangery.”

Sloan sighed. It was altogether too simple to suppose that you kept oranges there. “Anyone else?”

“No, Inspector.”

“And when did you get back?”

“Late.”

“Late? Late for what?”

“Dinner, Inspector. I’d hardly left myself time to change. M’wife was waiting for me and we went down together a bit late.”

“And you were walking all the time, sir?”

“Yes, Inspector.”

“Round the ha ha?”

“Yes.”

“Very funny,” said Crosby not quite inaudibly enough.

“What’s that?” Miles Cremond jerked forward.

“Nothing, sir,” interposed Sloan smoothly. “Now, was there anything else you can tell us about Friday?”

But the Honourable Miles Cremond couldn’t think of anything out of the ordinary that had happened on Friday, or any other day for that matter.

The whole business was a complete mystery to him, what?

So it was too, apparently, to his wife, Laura.

She did, however, think any discoveries of Osborne Meredith’s about the earldom were perfectly absurd.

“Perfectly absurd,” she repeated for good measure.

“You didn’t take them seriously, you mean, madam?”

“I didn’t, Inspector.”

“It seems,” said Sloan mildly, “as if someone did.”

There was no denying that someone—someone wearing a woman’s shoe, size six and a half—had taken them seriously enough to have a real go at disturbing the muniments.

He said so.

“But,” protested Laura, “but you couldn’t take all this away and give it to someone else.” She waved a hand in a comprehensive gesture that included House, park, and—somehow—earldom.

“I couldn’t,” agreed Sloan. “There would have to be a successful claimant through the Law Courts.”

“But,” she wailed, “we don’t even know who the claimant would be.”

“No?” Sloan would have to try to work out the significance of that later. “Mr. Meredith would presumably have known.”

It seemed Laura Cremond had not thought of this.

“He might,” suggested Sloan, “have been the only person who did know.”

She lifted her head sharply at this. There was nothing Cremond about her at all, noted Sloan. Just the touch of fast-fading handsomeness and a good hairdresser.

“You mean,” she ventured cautiously, “that now he’s dead we may never know?”

“I couldn’t say, madam, at this stage. He may have left a written note.”

“No”—quickly.

Too quickly.

“No, madam?”

“I mean”—she flushed—“not that anyone knew about.”

“He might have communicated the result of his researches to someone outside the family.” Sloan’s eyes drifted downwards in the direction of her shoes. He said austerely, “Tell me again about Friday afternoon, madam, please.”

She was beginning to look flustered. “There’s nothing to tell, Inspector. I went to my room after tea-—there wasn’t anything else to do really. Cousin Gertrude had gone off to finish her chandelier, Uncle Harry always has a little sleep just about then, and my husband had gone for a walk.”

“Lord Henry and Lady Eleanor?”

“They went down to Ornum village to see their old nanny—she’s not been well.”

“And the Countess?” It was like a roll-call.

“Aunt Millicent?” Laura Cremond said waspishly, “You can’t really have a conversation with Aunt Millicent.”

“No”—Sloan supposed you couldn’t. Any more than you could talk to a butterfly. He murmured, “I see, madam. So you went to your room?”

“That’s right, Inspector.”

“And stayed there?”

“Yes, Inspector.”

Sloan looked down at her for a long moment, and then said soberly, “I think you have had a lucky escape, madam. A very lucky escape indeed.”

Talking to Lady Eleanor Cremond was a refreshing change. Sloan could quite understand why Charles Purvis was smitten.

She was all that a good witness should be.

Simple, direct, sure without being categoric.

“I saw Ossy just before four o’clock,” she repeated.

“Alive and well?”

“Very well, Inspector, if you know what I mean. Almost excited.”

“About what?”

“He didn’t tell me. We just chatted for a moment or two, then I took a book and went away.” She paused. “He was a real enthusiast, you know.”

“Yes.” That hadn’t saved him. Almost the reverse, you might say. He watched her closely. “His tea?”

“No, I didn’t stay for that. I asked him to join us as he wasn’t going up to the great-aunts, but he said he had something he wanted to do and he was expecting Mr. Ames any minute.”

Teatime on Friday had suddenly become immensely important.

Lady Eleanor, though, was thinking about luncheon today.

“You must be famished,” she said, looking at her watch. “I’ll get Dillow to bring you something. Where will you be?”

“Thank you, that would be kind, your Ladyship. The armoury…”

“You don’t want to eat there, Inspector.” She thought for a moment. “I know the very place. The gun room.”

The gun room it was. As appropriate a murder headquarters as anyone could meet.

“They’ve got weapons on the brain here, that’s their trouble,” grumbled Crosby, looking round the small room, which was literally lined with guns. “Look at ’em. I should have thought they’d have got enough downstairs without this little lot.”

“With one notable exception,” Sloan reminded him. “Those downstairs are ornamental. These are for use.”

The guns showed every sign of having as much loving care expended on them as did the china.

“Those deer that the Earl’s so keen about,” said Crosby.

“Yes?”

“Does he shoot them?”

“He breeds them first,” said Sloan.

“Then he shoots them?”

“I expect so.”

Crosby scratched his forehead. “Funny lot, the aristocracy, sir, aren’t they?”

“Government by the best citizens, Constable, that’s what it means.” Sloan took out his pen and got back to business. “It’s one weapon on one brain that’s our trouble, you know.”

Dillow brought them welcome beer and sandwiches, and was word perfect about what he’d said before.

“No, sir, I was not aware until I took tea to their Ladyships upstairs that Mr. Meredith was not taking tea with them as usual on Fridays.”

“What time would that have been?” Sloan discovered there was one exception to the rule that policemen called all other men “sir.” That was when the other chap got it in first.

“About half-past three, sir. They like it early on account of their taking a short nap after luncheon.”

“Thank you, Dillow.”

The phrase constituted dismissal to a butler and Dillow left them.

They went on working while they ate. Inspector Sloan turned over a fresh sheet in his notebook. Outside the window a peacock shrilled harshly.

“Why doesn’t he shoot them instead?” muttered Crosby indistinctly.

“They’re another sort of ornament, that’s why.”

“Give me the gryphons any day.” Crosby took another sandwich. “At least they don’t make a noise.”

Sloan stared at the blank page in front of him. “Now then, how far have we got?”

“Nowhere,” said Crosby.

“We know who the victim is,” said Sloan patiently. That was a head start on some of the cases he’d been on.“ And we know where we think he was killed.”

“Sitting down at the table at the far end of the Library,” agreed Crosby. “Confirmed as probable by the Forensic people.”

“How nearly do we know when?” The inductive method, that’s what this was called. Crosby didn’t seem much good at the deductive sort.

“After Lady Eleanor and Dillow saw him about four o’clock.”

“But before he’d had time to eat his tea.”

“Unless they’re both lying, sir,” said Crosby assiduously.

“True.”

“We don’t know why he was killed.” Crosby was making good headway with the sandwiches.

“Half-why,” said Sloan, taking one himself while they were still there to take. “He’d found out something somebody didn’t want him to know. Mrs. Ames confirms the telephone call, by the way, but you must check on the Vicar’s movements before five-thirty.”

“I have,” said Crosby unexpectedly. “I had a word with the post-mistress. She knows everything. He was in the village until just before half-past five. She saw him going in and out of houses.”

Sloan nodded. “So we know when—within limits.”

“But we don’t really know why, sir, do we?” Pessimistically.

“We know where.”

“But we don’t know who.” Crosby took the last sandwich. “These are jolly good, sir, aren’t they?”

“They were,” said Sloan sarcastically. He was wasting his time.

“We know who it wasn’t, though, sir, don’t we?” mumbled Crosby, undeterred by a mouthful of sandwich.

“Oh?”

“It wasn’t the Earl and Countess because they were together in the drawing-room from teatime onwards.”

“There might have been collusion between them. They’re husband and wife, remember…”

Crosby frowned. “I shouldn’t care to collude—colluse—what you said, sir—with the Countess myself. Too risky. Anyway, their son’and daughter didn’t leave them until about twenty past four and I bet old Meredith would have got his teeth into his tea by then if he’d been alive to do it.”

“Like you fell upon your lunch just now?”

“Well, sir, he wouldn’t have just sat looking at it, would he?”

“I agree it’s unlikely.”

“And if the Honourable Miles is speaking the truth…”

“If…”

“Purvis and Hackle were together completely outside the house.”

“That leaves…” Sloan started to write.

“Cousin Gertrude, who was on the loose…”

That was one way of putting it.

“Miles himself,” said Crosby. “He could have seen the two others from a window.”

Sloan nodded. “Make a note to ask them if they saw him.”

“William Murton, who may or who may not have been in Ornum.”

“And Dillow,” said Sloan.

“Four suspects,” concluded Crosby, recapping. “Cousin Gertrude, Miles, William, and Dillow.”

“While we’re reconstructing the crime,” said Sloan, “let’s go on with what happened after.”

“After, sir?”

“It can’t have escaped your notice, Crosby, that the body wasn’t found in the Library.”

“No, sir.”

“Well, then…”

“Somebody removed it from the Library.”

“Well done. The murderer, would you think? Or did someone come along and tidy it away just to be helpful?”

“Unlikely, that, sir.”

“Of course it’s unlikely,” snapped Sloan. Sarcasm was a real boomerang of a weapon. He should have remembered that. He went on more peaceably, “The murderer moved it to the armoury…”

“Yes, sir, but they didn’t put it straight into the armour, did they, because of rigor mortis. The doctor said so.”

Sloan tapped his notebook. “Now I wonder when he did that.”

“Dead of night?” suggested Crosby brightly.

“Leaving the body from four o’clock onwards in the Library.”

“Risky,” agreed Crosby.

“But not desperately risky. They don’t strike one as great readers here… Crosby.”

Crosby was engaged in draining the beer bottle to the very last drop. “Sir?”

“Think.”

“Yes, sir.”

“The Muniments come into this somewhere. I wish I knew how.”

“Whoever did the Muniments,” offered Crosby after a little thought, “did them after Meredith had been… er… done.”

“I grant you that,” said Sloan immediately. “Meredith wouldn’t have stood for that. When were the Muniments disturbed?”

“We don’t know, sir.” There was positively no beer left now.

Sloan dropped his pen onto his notebook. “There’s no end to the things we don’t know. What we want, Crosby, is someone who went into the Library that evening.”

“Or someone who saw the murderer carrying the body to the armoury,” said Crosby helpfully.

Sloan looked at him for a minute and slowly picked up his pen again. “We’ve got that, haven’t we, Constable?”

“Have we, sir?”

“Don’t you remember?”

Crosby stared. “No, sir.”

“Someone saw somebody in the Great Hall, don’t you remember?”

“No, sir.”

“Just before dinner, Crosby, on Friday”—with mounting excitement. “After the dressing bell had gone. While everyone in the House could reasonably be expected to be dressing for dinner in their own rooms.”

Light began to dawn on Crosby’s face. “You don’t mean…”

“I do. Lady Alice Cremond saw…”

“Judge Cremond…”

“Exactly.”

“But he’s a ghost.”

Sloan sighed. “Do you believe in ghosts, Constable?”

“No, sir.”

“Neither do I. I’m prepared to bet that what the old lady saw—without her lorgnette, mind you—was not a sixteenth-century ghost at all, but a twentieth-century murderer carrying the body of a small man.”

It was Police Constable Albert Bloggs who disturbed them.

Dillow brought him to the gun room.

“He said you were here, sir,” said Bloggs, jerking a thumb at Dillow’s departing back. “I didn’t know whether to come straight here or to ring through to the station.”

“What about, Bloggs?” asked Sloan warily.

“That young chap, Murton, sir, who I was watching…”

“Go on.”

“He’s gone and given me the slip.”

15

« ^ »

Find him,” commanded Superintendent Leeyes briefly over the telephone.

“Yes, sir,” said Sloan.

“And quickly.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Where did he go missing?”

“Here,” said Sloan miserably.

“What!” exploded Leeyes. “You mean he’s on the loose somewhere in that ruddy great house and you don’t know where?”

“Yes, sir. Bloggs tailed him after lunch from his cottage in the village up here to the House, and then Murton went round the back somewhere and Bloggs lost him.”

“Bloggs lost him,” repeated Leeyes nastily. “Just like that. A child of ten could probably have kept him in sight. It’s very nearly Midsummer’s Day, Sloan, it’s not even dusk let alone dark and he lost him.”

“Yes, sir.”

“So I suppose Bloggs went round to the front door and rang the bell.”

“More or less,” admitted Sloan unhappily. He didn’t really see what else Bloggs could have done but that.

“And what has Murton come up to the house for, Sloan? Have you thought about that?”

“Yes, sir.” Sloan had in fact been thinking about very little else since Bloggs had arrived at the gun room. “I don’t know, sir, but I’m worried.”

“So am I,” said Superintendent Leeyes from the detached comfort of his own office in Berebury Police Station. “Very.”

The Countess of Ornum poured a second cup of coffee for Mr. Adrian Cossington. It was practically cold and he hadn’t asked for it anyway, but he didn’t complain. Luncheon had been over for some time and a general move away from the drawing-room was in the air.

“I’d like you to take a look at the herd, Cossington,” said the Earl. “A good year, I think after all. You sometimes get it after a bad winter.”

“Certainly, my lord. I shall look forward to that.” The very last thing the City solicitor wanted to do was to plod across the Park after the Earl hoping to catch a glimpse of the fleeting shy creatures. Legally speaking—and Mr. Cossington rarely spoke or thought otherwise—deer were not particularly interesting to him. Being ferae naturae there was no private property in them or common law crime in killing them.

“Just the thing after a meal, a good walk in the Park,” observed the Earl.

“Very pleasant, my lord.” Cossington was still automatically considering the legal aspects of deer. The only remedy against having your own deer killed was to prevent trespass in pursuit of them or to punish the trespasser.

The Earl rose. “When you’ve finished your coffee, then, Cossington.”

The solicitor hastily swallowed the trepid fluid. Ordinarily he liked a certain amount of sang froid in his clients, but the aristocracy were inclined to carry things a little too far.

“Are you coming, too, Henry?” asked his father.

“Er… no. ’Fraid not. Got to get the car straightened out, you know. Thanks all the same.”

“Eleanor?”

“All right, I’ll come.”

Cousin Gertrude got to her feet and said heavily, “Well, this won’t do. I’ve got work to do.”

“Poor Gertrude,” said the Countess sympathetically, “you’re always so busy.”

“Someone’s got to do the flowers,” she said. “They haven’t been touched since Friday what with one thing and another.”

“Mostly one thing, what?” blurted Miles.

She ignored him. “Hackle brought some fresh flowers in this morning. That’s one thing you can say for the month of June. There’s no shortage of flowers.”

“And no shortage of vases,” observed the Countess, “so that’s all right.”

“Quite,” said Gertrude stiffly. “Quite.”

Mr. Adrian Cossington felt constrained to say something about the murder. “Are you making any changes in… er… routine since… er… yesterday’s discovery, my lord?”

The Earl stared. “Changes? Here?”

“Yes, my lord.”

“No.”

Cossington tried again. “The public, my lord. Are they still to be admitted as usual?”

“Certainly.”

“Is that wise, my lord?”

“Wise?”

“The murder…”

“If they want their vicarious bread and circuses, Cossington, I see no reason to stop them.”

“You’ll have a good crowd.”

“You think so? Good.”

“Culture vultures in the Long Gallery,” said Lord Henry.

“Eager beavers in the Great Hall,” chimed in Lady Eleanor.

“And aesthete’s foot by the time they get to Cousin Gertrude in the China Room,” added Lord Henry.

“How disgusting that sounds,” said the Countess. She turned to a hitherto rather silent Miles and Laura. “What are you two going to do?”

Laura said that she had a splitting headache and was going to lie down, and that Miles was going out for a walk.

“He needs some air,” she said.

“Just like Friday,” observed Cousin Gertrude.

“Not like Friday at all,” retorted Laura.

Gertrude grunted. “No, of course not. That was exercise he wanted then, wasn’t it?”

“He got it,” said Laura pointedly, “but not by killing old Mr. Meredith.”

“Just by walking in the Park, what?” said Miles.

The Countess made a vague gesture in the direction of the coffee pot, but no one took her up on this. “Has anyone remembered to feed the little man from County Hall?”

Lady Eleanor said, “I told Dillow, Mother. And about the police.”

Mention of the police started Adrian Cossington off again. “My lord, are you sure that it is prudent to open the House again so soon…”

“I think,” said the Earl, encompassing a whole philosophy, “one should always carry on as usual.”

“A few changes might well be indicated, my lord. As your legal adviser…”

“When it is not necessary to change,” quoted the Earl sententiously, “it is necessary not to change. I think you may take it, Cossington, that things are back to normal now.”

They weren’t.

Not from the view of Sloan and Crosby and the luckless Bloggs.

Sloan had barely got back from the gun room when a police motorcyclist arrived from Berebury with a sheaf of reports.

The pathologist’s official one, marked “Copy to H.M. Coroner”: the facts of death in the language of Academe. Brutality smoothed down to detached observation.

A note from aforementioned H.M. Coroner appointing Thursday for the inquest.

A dry comment from the Forensic Laboratory: the blood from the spine of the book in the Library complied with all the accepted tests with that of the deceased. The hairs on the instrument known as Exhibit B…

“What’s Exhibit A?” said Sloan suddenly.

“A for armour,” said Crosby, who had done the labelling.

And B for blunt instrument? Sloan didn’t ask.

Exhibit B resembled that of deceased under all the known comparison indices. So did the blood on Exhibit B. An attempt had been made to wipe it clean. There were no fingerprints.

Two reports from London whence enquiries had been put in hand about Miles Cremond and William Murton.

The Pedes Shipping Line was nearly on the rocks. It was suspected that the name of the Honourable Miles Cremond was included on the Board of Directors solely to lend an air of credulity to the operations of the Company. If, the writer of the report put it graphically, the Inspector was thinking of making an investment, the South Sea Bubble would be a better bet.

William Murton lived at the address stated, which was a bed-sitter-cum-studio, and apparently possessed two characteristics unfortunate in combination—expensive tastes and a low income.

“Living it up without having anything to live on,” said Crosby, who wouldn’t have dared.

“Except his uncle,” said Sloan. “I reckon he lives on him.”

“I don’t know why he lets him, sir, honestly I don’t. My uncle…”

“It’s called noblesse oblige.”

It would seem, went on the compiler of the report, a man with a taste for a good phrase, that William Murton pursues his career in fits and starts and nubile young ladies all of the time.

Near the bottom of the sheaf was a scribbled note from Inspector Harpe of Traffic Division begging Sloan to come to see him as soon as he possibly could.

Sloan slipped that one into his inside jacket pocket.

If there was anything approaching Natural Selection in troubles it was their tendency to multiply at the wrong time.

There was also a communication from the policeman who had interviewed the executors of the late Mr. Beresford Baggles to the effect that Michael Joseph Dillow had worked for Mr. Baggles until the latter’s death from apoplexy. Dillow had been left the sum of five hundred pounds by Mr. Baggles, being in his employ and not under notice at the time of Mr. Baggles’ death.

The legacy had not yet been paid out owing to the difficulties encountered by the executors on the discovery that Mr. Baggles’ considerable collection of the works of the artist Van Gogh were fakes (which discovery had occasioned the apoplexy), but that Dillow would be receiving it as soon as the estate was wound up.

“Van Gogh,” murmured Sloan. “That’s the chap who cut off his ear, isn’t it?”

P.C. Bloggs, who in another day and age would doubtless have had both his ears chopped off for him, remained silent.

Crosby sniffed. “Funny fellows, painters.”

Which brought them back to William Murton.

“It’ll take an army to find him in this place,” said Crosby, thinking aloud. “There’s I don’t know how many rooms…” ,

“Just under three hundred,” said Sloan.

“And what’s to stop him dashing from one to the other while you’re searching?”

“Nothing,” agreed Sloan wearily. “Nothing at all. However, reinforcements are on the way.”

On the terrace outside the gun room window a peacock shrieked derisively.

Bert Hackle was carrying a wooden board. “Will this do, Mr. Purvis?”

The Steward measured it with his eye. “That’s about right, Bert, thank you. Now let’s see if it’ll fit.”

Charles Purvis had in his hand a stout sheet of white card on which he had been labouring for a tidy effect. On it had been printed as neatly as possible armoury 2/6d extra.

“Very nice,” said Hackle, who was a great admirer of the Earl.

“It’s not the same as a printed notice, of course,” murmured Purvis, standing back to see the effect, “but there isn’t time to have it done properly by Wednesday.”

Hackle jerked his shoulder towards the top of the armoury stairs. “Reckon they’ll let us in there again b’Wednesday?”

“His Lordship does,” Charles Purvis looked round. “Now to find something to put the board on.”

“What we want,” said Bert, “is a proper stand.” By rights Bert Hackle shouldn’t have been in the Great Hall at all in his gardening boots, but as there had been Hackles in Ornum village almost as long as there had been Cremonds in Ornum House—though not so well-documented—he was privileged in his own right. He creaked across the floor looking for something suitable. “If we was to lean it up against this we’d be all right.”

“Not if Mr. Feathers saw us,” retorted Purvis smartly. “That’s his best piece of ormolu on malachite, that is.”

Hackle, whose interest in minerals was confined to the rocks in the rockery, tried again. “What about that box thing?”

That box thing was satinwood inlaid with ivory and contained the ceremonial trowel with which his Lordship the eleventh had cut the first turf for the first railway line to link Luston and Berebury. (It had been a singularly happy occasion as his Lordship, being the owner of all the suitable land in between these two places, had been able to name his own price. And had.)

“Much better,” said Purvis. “Now, if you’ll just heave that table a bit nearer the doorway.”

Standing on the table and propped against the satinwood box the notice was now eminently readable.

Mr. Robert Hamilton did not accord with Inspector Sloan’s conception of the Common Man.

The County Archivist was exceedingly spry, erudite, and helpful.

Inspector Sloan, being in the position of having a force too meagre to be worth deploying, had taken it with him to the Muniments Room. Insofar as the murder of Osborne Meredith had a focal point it was in this part of the house.

“Ah, Inspector…” Mr. Hamilton looked up. “Come in. I don’t think we can say you’ll disturb anything any more than it’s been disturbed already.”

“No. Have you had any visitors here, sir, so far?”

“Yes, indeed, Inspector. A Miss Gertrude Cremond came along to see if she could help, a Mrs. Laura Cremond, who thought something of hers might be in here, and the butler.”

“Dillow?”

“Is that his name? He left me something to eat in the Library, but I asked him to bring it here instead.”

“Not William Murton?” Sloan described the missing man. “You haven’t seen him?”

Hamilton shook his head, while Sloan glanced round the room.

“Someone,” observed Mr. Hamilton profoundly, “was wanting to impede research here.”

“Yes.”

“It’ll take a week or more to go through”—Robert Hamilton waved a hand at the chaotic papers—“and restore even the semblance of order—quite apart from finding whatever it is I’m supposed to be looking for in here.” He cocked his head alertly. “You can’t give me even a small clue as to what that can be?”

Sloan shook his head. “All we know is that someone stirred them up and that someone tried to get in here last night after we’d sealed the door.”

“Ah, well there’s no wilful damage that I can see, and that’s something—for there’s as pretty a collection of documents here as you could hope to find. Nor theft, I should say at a quick guess.”

“No.”

“Someone ignorant,” added Mr. Hamilton. “Someone plain ignorant.”

“A woman,” said Sloan. “We have reason to believe it was a woman.”

“Ah,” said the archivist, “that explains it. They seemed to be aiming at mayhem.”

“I think,” said Sloan slowly, “that they were aiming at making it difficult for anyone to prove that the Earl of Ornum isn’t the Earl.”

“Yes,” said the archivist unexpectedly. “The poor fellow wrote me about that a week or so back.”

“He did?” Sloan sat up.

“He was mistaken, of course,” declared Mr. Hamilton. “I can assure you, Inspector, the succession is perfectly sound. Perfectly.”

“But Mr. Meredith thought…”

“He made a common mistake. He was misled by a case of mort d’ancestor in the family. Tricky, of course.”

“You mean…”

“And he was also a wee bit confused about socage.”

Sloan was aware of Crosby’s head coming up like a pointer.

“Socage,” repeated Sloan carefully.

“That’s right, Inspector. Common socage. Meredith was all right in his facts, but a bit out in his inferences. He was,” said the utterly professional Robert Hamilton, “an amateur. A good amateur, mind you, I will say that, but not a trained man.”

“He hadn’t told anyone he had been mistaken,” said Sloan, trying to assimilate the news and place it in the pattern of the crime.

“Now, Inspector”—Hamilton smiled faintly—“there’s not many people in a hurry to do that, is there?”

“True,” agreed Sloan. Better though, perhaps, to admit a mistake and keep your skull intact. “This socage, Mr. Hamilton…”

“The tenure of land other than by knight-service.”

Why was it, thought Sloan, that no one would explain things to him in words that he understood?

“Knight-service?” he echoed wearily.

“That’s right,” said the amiable Mr. Hamilton. “Estates like these came directly from the crown in the beginning in return for services rendered… usually men at arms in times of war.”

That explained the armoury if not the gun room.

“You see, Inspector, in theory all land belongs to the King or Queen as the case may be.”

“Not still?” said Sloan, thinking of his roses, and his neat semidetached house in suburban Berebury.

“Yes.” The archivist chuckled. “I daresay you’re of an age to have done your own knight-service yourself, Inspector.”

Sloan hadn’t thought of it in that light before, but…

“Not quite the same thing,” admitted Hamilton, “but not all that far away. That’s where the Earldom came in. Men who brought their armies with them to the King’s wars. They were made Earls—”

“The rest,” interrupted the unconscionable Constable Crosby triumphantly, “were churls.”

It was not often that Charles Purvis was caught on the wrong foot. He was a naturally competent man, unobtrusively given to attending to detail. Even the distraction of admiring the adorable Lady Eleanor from afar did not normally cause his work to suffer.

But, as it was subsequently agreed, a murder in the House was enough to put any man off his stroke, to drive less important matters out of mind.

So it was that when a coach drew up at the front door of Ornum House at exactly three o’clock he was all prepared to send it away. True, it was not quite the same as the sort of coach that usually came to the House on open days. It was infinitely more luxurious; and it did not proclaim the fact in letters a foot high.

Charles Purvis saw the coach from the Great Hall and as Dillow for once did not seem to be about he went himself to the door.

“I’m very sorry,” he began firmly, “but the House is not open today…”

“Mr. Purvis?”

Charles Purvis found his hand being crushed in a vice-like grip.

“I’m Fortescue, Mr. Purvis. Cromwell T. Fortescue. You wrote me…”

“I did?” Purvis blinked.

“You sure did. You wrote me, Mr. Purvis, to say we might see the Earl’s pictures today. We’re the Young Masters Art Society.”

Hot on the wheels of this coach came another one.

Nothing like as luxurious as the first, it had been commandeered by Superintendent Leeyes to convey as many of his Force as he could drum up to Ornum House to assist Inspector Sloan in the hunt for William Murton.

It took their concerted efforts, directed by Inspector Sloan and aided by Police Constables Crosby and Bloggs, about an hour to find him.

In the oubliette.

Dead.

16

« ^ »

He can’t be,” bellowed Superintendent Leeyes.

“He is, sir. I’m very sorry…”

“I should think so, Sloan. You haven’t heard the last of this. If Bloggs hadn’t lost him…”

Sloan forbore to point out that Constable Bloggs had been watching William Murton for a totally different reason.

“And, Sloan, if you had got on to him quicker then this wouldn’t have happened…”

“No, sir. Dr. Dabbe says that’s not so. He thinks he was killed as soon as he got to the House.”

“Just after Bloggs lost him,” pointed out Leeyes inexorably.

“It means, sir, that someone was ready for him.”

“I know that, Sloan. You don’t have to tell me.”

“No, sir.”

“Ready and waiting,” snapped Leeyes.

“Yes, sir.”

“With”—on a rising note—“three able-bodied policemen actually in the house at the time.”

“Yes, sir.” It was no good explaining that Ornum wasn’t a house but a House, that it wasn’t a two up and two down jerry-builder’s delight. Or that medieval dungeons were sound-proofed as a careless in-built extra.

“That doesn’t make it look any better on paper either,” grumbled Leeyes.

“No, sir.” Nothing could make that poor distorted face look any better now either, Sloan knew that.

William Murton, half gentleman, half painter, father but not husband, nephew but never heir, penniless but never properly penurious, had gone to another world where presumably all things were wholly good or wholly bad.

“And who killed him, Sloan? Tell me that.”

Sloan backtracked. “Up until this afternoon, sir, we had four suspects for the murder of Mr. Osborne Meredith. William Murton was one of them.”

“We are not, I hope,” remarked Leeyes coldly, “playing elimination games.”

“No, sir. Leaving out Murton…”

“Suicides don’t strangle themselves as a rule.”

“Quite so, sir”—hastily. “As you say, leaving out Murton we would have had three suspects for the first murder.”

Sloan wasn’t a bardolator—wouldn’t even have known the meaning of the word—but he had once been to see a performance of Macbeth. It had been the insouciant irony of the cast list that he had remembered, could quote to this day:

Lords, Gentlemen, Officers, Soldier, Murderers, Attendants, and Messengers.

Give or take a soldier or two he reckoned they’d got the lot at Ornum today.

First and Second Murderers, there had been in the play?

Was there going to prove to have been a First Murderer for Osborne Meredith and a Second Murderer for William Murton? Doubtful.

Or a First and Second Murderer for each as in the play?

A husband and wife? That most committing of all partnerships at law. My wife and I are one and I am he, the books said. With Miles and Laura Cremond it would be the other way round. There was no doubt there who wore the kilt.

Three suspects were two too many for Superintendent Leeyes and he said so.

“Can’t you do better than that, Sloan?”

“Not at the moment, sir. Miss Gertrude Cremond, Mr. and Mrs. Miles Cremond, and Dillow could all have committed the first murder.”

“And which did?”

“I don’t know, sir. Of course, the second murder puts a different complexion on things…”

As soon as the word was out of his mouth Sloan wished he had chosen another one instead.

Any word but complexion.

William Murton’s had been hideous. A mottled reddish-blue with swollen tongue protuberant between discoloured lips.

Dr. Dabbe, recalled at great speed from Berebury, had been terse.

“Strangulation,” he had said at his first glance. “Not more than two hours ago at the outside. Something thin pulled over his head from behind and then tightened. I don’t know what. I’ll have to tell you later.”

Sloan didn’t know what either. The instrument of death had disappeared between swollen, engorged folds of skin. He hadn’t realised the frightening vulnerability of the human neck. That a large and powerful young man like William Murton could be done to death with a quick twist of something thin round the throat seemed all wrong.

After luncheon.

Everyone in the house had dispersed after luncheon. Sloan had established that easily enough.

Then what?

Enter First Murderer for Second Murder?

“And why kill him anyway?” The Superintendent’s question came charging into his train of thought.

“I don’t know…” began Sloan—and stopped.

He did know.

Something at the back of his mind told him.

It teased his subconscious. Still nominally listening to Superintendent Leeyes, he flipped back the pages of his notebook. Somewhere this morning—it couldn’t only have been this morning surely—it seemed aeons ago—William Murton had said something to him which…

He found the place in his notebook.

“I don’t,” William Murton had said, and he, Sloan, had written down, “earn my keep like Cousin Gertrude cleaning chandeliers for dear life. I’m a sponger.”

How did William Murton, who was supposed not to have come up to Ornum House at all on Friday, know that Cousin Gertrude had been cleaning a chandelier all day? Something must have put it into his mind.

Not just “a chandelier,” of course, but the Great Hall chandelier.

That same Great Hall where towards evening the ancient and ageing Lady Alice Cremond had seen what she fondly took to be the ghost of her long departed ancestor, Judge Cremond.

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—recognised it?

“A pikestaff…” 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 armoury?”

“No, sir,” dully. “The armoury’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, realised 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? P.C. 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.”

“It’s not the same,” said Sloan promptly. If he had learnt anything from his twenty-four hours in Ornum House it was that.

“No,” agreed Charles Purvis. “That’s what they say.”

They went back up the stairs, Constable Crosby two paces behind them.

“I was just taking them round the Long Gallery,” went on Purvis, “telling them what little I did know about the pictures—it’s not very much actually because that’s not my line. I’d told them about Mr. Meredith, though, and explained that they’d have to make do with me when we got round to the Holbein.”

“Halfway down on the right-hand wall in a bad light?”

“That’s right. It doesn’t do to put your best picture in full sunlight.” Charles Purvis might not know as much about the paintings as Osborne Meredith, but he had been trained in how to care for them. “You keep it away from daylight as much as you can. Certain sorts of artificial lights are better…”

Inspector Sloan halted suddenly on the staircase.

Constable Crosby didn’t and all but cannoned into him from behind and below.

“Miss Cleepe.” cried Sloan, bringing his hand down on the banister in a great smack. “She told us this morning…”

“Miss Cleepe?” Purvis merely looked bewildered., “Miss Cleepe didn’t tell us anything.”

“A walloping great clue,” declared Sloan solemnly, “and we none of us spotted it. Did we?”

“No, sir,” said Constable Crosby.

“No, Inspector,” said Purvis wonderingly. “Miss Cleepe? Are you sure you mean Miss Cleepe?”

“Miss Cleepe. Crosby, it’s in your book what she said.”

Crosby obediently turned back the pages in his notebook, licking his thumb as he did so. “Would it be the bit about the Holbein, sir?”

“Of course it’s about the Holbein,” snapped Sloan testily. “Can’t you see, Crosby, that all of this is about the Holbein? It always has been. Right from the very beginning, only we didn’t know.”

“No, sir”—staidly. Crosby ran his finger down the page. “Where do you want me to start?”

“They were talking about the Long Gallery being rather dark,” said Sloan, “and then Miss Cleepe said something about—”

“I’ve got it, sir. Here. It was after that bit about the ghost. Miss Cleepe said, ‘It’s such a long, narrow room, and the bulb in its own little light is broken. Dillow’s getting another for me.’ ”

“The light over the picture was broken,” breathed Purvis. “Of course.”

“I should have spotted that,” said Sloan. “It was a break with normality and so it was significant.”

“There is this special light over the picture,” agreed Purvis. “It’s meant to show it up without injuring it. It doesn’t get a lot of light otherwise.”

Constable Crosby made a credible attempt at imitating the refined tones of Mrs. Mompson by raising his voice to an affected squeak and reading from his notebook, “ ‘It’s practically in the half dark in the Long Gallery where it is. Halfway from each window and not very good windows at that.’ ”

Sloan said, “Are you feeling all right, Crosby?”

“Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.”

Charles Purvis said slowly, “Someone put a broken light bulb in so people shouldn’t get a good view of the picture.”

“That’s right.”

“Most people wouldn’t know the difference between the one that’s hanging there and the real thing. I wouldn’t for one—you’d have to be a real expert.”

“We aren’t concerned about most people,” said Sloan, “are we? We’re concerned with one person.”

“Osborne Meredith.”

“Precisely.”

“The real expert,” agreed Purvis. “The only person who would know.”

“Other than The Young Masters,” said Sloan softly.

“You mean they come into this, too?”

“I shouldn’t be surprised.”

Charles Purvis grasped the balustrade of the staircase. “This is all getting very complicated, Inspector.”

“On the contrary,” said Sloan. “It’s getting simpler and simpler all the time. I now know what Mr. Hamilton should be looking for in the Muniments Room. Crosby…”

“Sir?”

“Assemble everyone in the Private Apartments, please, while I see The Young Masters and the Archivist.”

Though it was teatime there was nothing of the drawing-room tea party about the gathering in the Private Apartments now. True, people were drinking tea, but they were drinking it thirstily because they needed it. They were not eating at all because they were not hungry.

The only person, in fact, to touch the food, noted Sloan, had been Cousin Gertrude. With her, the shock over William Murton’s death had taken a different form. She had forgotten to take off the gardening apron in which she had been doing the flowers. A pair of scissors poked out of the apron pocket and a piece of twine drooled down the front.

William Murton’s death had driven the Countess to even greater heights of absentmindedness. She was pouring tea as if her life depended on it, but the hand that held the teapot shook so much that as much tea went in the saucer as in the cup. Dillow made one or two deft attempts to field the wavering stream, but in the end he went away for more hot water and clean saucers.

Mr. Adrian Cossington was very much taking a back seat, but Laura Cremond had been badly affected by the news. She was sitting—unusually docile—beside Miles on a small chiffonier. Her face had a pinched, frightened look and she never took her eyes off Inspector Sloan’s face.

He and Crosby were seated near the door. If he leaned a fraction to his right, Sloan could see through the window and down to the main door of the house. There were two figures in blue standing where once footmen in powder had waited—only these two figures were policeman and their different duty was to let no one pass. There were other figures, too, at all the other exits from Ornum House, but only Sloan and Crosby knew this.

Mr. Ames had gone across to the Church, otherwise everyone was in the house.

Lady Eleanor looked as if she had been crying and Lord Henry as if his hand was hurting him. Dillow came back with more hot water for the Countess.

“I knew someone was going to die what with the Judge walking and everything,” said Cousin Gertrude gruffly. “Didn’t think it would be William though.”

“But why did it have to be William?” asked Lady Eleanor, a husky catch in her voice. “I know he was difficult and odd, but he wouldn’t have really harmed anyone…”

Inspector Sloan shuffled his notes. “I think, your Ladyship, that he came up to the house on Friday evening.”

“I didn’t see him.”

“Nobody saw him.”

“Well, then, how do you know…”

“I don’t know,” said Sloan, “but I think. I think he came up quietly round about the time you were all dressing for dinner.”

“Nobody much about then,” grunted the Earl.

“Exactly. It’s the one time when you could all be expected to be in your rooms.” He paused significantly. “A fact, incidentally, also appreciated by Osborne Meredith’s murderer.”

There was total silence in the room. The Countess stopped pouring tea and the silver teapot hovered, precariously suspended over a cup. Dillow was going to be lucky to escape scalding.

“But why did he come up like that in the first place?” Lord Henry wanted to know. “He was always welcome, you know. He wasn’t as bad a chap as you might think from talking to him. Didn’t do himself justice.”

“He might,” said Sloan cautiously, “have been in the habit—the bad habit—of coming up here without any of you knowing.”

The Earl cleared his throat. “Very true, Inspector. I think he did. Suspected it myself before now.”

“Harry!” That was the Countess. “You never told me.”

“No need, my dear. As Eleanor says, he was quite harmless.”

“But what did he do here?”

“Nothing, probably. Just have a look round.”

“And where did he go?”

The Earl gave his moustache a tug. “I expect the Inspector has guessed.”

Sloan nodded. “I think so, my lord. I think William Murton was in the habit—the bad habit—of slipping up into the room behind the peephole.”

“To see what he could see,” said Lord Henry slowly.

Sloan turned. “Yes, my lord. Somebody watched me from there this morning, but when I got up to the room they’d gone.”

“Not William surely?”

“No,” said Sloan. “That was somebody else watching me.” Now he knew who that had been, too. There had been two people in the vicinity to choose from.

“William saw something on Friday,” concluded Lady Eleanor shakily.

“Something nasty,” put in Cousin Gertrude, winding twine round her finger.

“Something very nasty,” agreed Sloan. “I think he saw someone carrying the body of Osborne Meredith across the Great Hall to the armoury staircase.”

“How very clever,” observed the Countess inconsequentially.

Her husband turned. “Clever, m’dear?”

“To choose the only time when we would none of us be about.” She smiled sweetly. “That means it must be someone who knows us really well, doesn’t it?”

Perhaps, thought Sloan, one could re-define an aristocrat as a man or woman to whom a fact held no terror.

“I think,” murmured the Earl, “we are already agreed on that.”

“It stands to reason anyway,” said Cousin Gertrude, that firmly entrenched spinster, who, having long ago abandoned feeling, was left only with logic.

Over on the chiffonier Laura Cremond stirred. “I don’t know how you can all just sit here without knowing.”

“Difficult, what?” agreed Miles.

“Perhaps,” said Lord Henry acutely, “the Inspector wants a little suspense.”

What, in fact, Sloan was waiting for was a message from the County Archivist, Mr. Robert Hamilton.

He got it quite soon.

P.C. Bloggs knocked on the door and handed him a note.

It was all he needed now.

18

« ^

Whether Sloan wanted any extra suspense or not he got it with the arrival at the door of the Private Apartments a moment or two later of Charles Purvis and a large genial man who introduced himself as Fortescue.

“Cromwell T. Fortescue of the Young Masters Art Society,” he said, “visiting your House by courtesy of Earl Ornum to see your beautiful pictures.”

The Countess seized another cup and began to pour wildly.

Charles Purvis followed him in and, noticed Sloan, manoeuvred himself into a position exactly opposite Lady Eleanor. It was obvious that he had long ago learned the lesson of the lovelorn, that you can sit opposite someone without seeming to stare whereas if you sit beside them you have to keep turning your head.

Which is noticeable.

The Earl grunted, “You’ve told him about Meredith, have you, Purvis?”

“Indeed, he has, milord,” responded Mr. Fortescue before Purvis could speak. “I am deeply sorry. The whole of our Society would wish to be associated with these sentiments, I know.”

“A message has arrived from Miss Meredith, too,” said Charles Purvis. “She’s seen an early edition of an evening paper and she’s coming back straightaway.”

“Poor dear,” said the Countess. “Charles, will you meet her at the station and see that she doesn’t need anything? She might like to come up here for the night.”

Sloan doubted it, but did not say so. In Miss Meredith’s position he’d have opted for his own little house, where you could at least count the rooms.

“We’ll have to see about the vault, too,” said the Earl.

Death might be the great leveller, noted Sloan silently, but William Murton was wholly family now.

Cromwell T. Fortescue wasn’t used to being overlooked. He said loudly and clearly, “We’re sorry to have arrived at a time like this, my lord…”

The Earl inclined his head.

“And also to be the bearers of such sad news, but Cyrus Phillimore is quite sure of his facts.”

“More bad news?” said Laura Cremond faintly. “I don’t believe it. There can’t be any more.”

“It may not be news, of course,” said Fortescue more tentatively, “but I hardly think the Earl here would subscribe to a deception.”

“Certainly not,” said Adrian Cossington, the solicitor upon the instant, “and should you be inferring this…”

“What,” asked the Earl of Ornum mildly, “is Mr. Fortescue trying to tell us?”

“Among your paintings, Earl,” said Mr. Fortescue, “you have a painting said to be by Hans Holbein the Younger.”

“We have.”

“It’s one of the lesser-known ones because it’s been here since he painted it. One owner, you might say.”

“That is so. My ancestor, the Judge, had it painted in 1532, the year before… before the family tragedy. Holbein was in London then… just beginning to make his name.”

“Cyrus Phillimore agrees with all that,” said Fortescue. “The only thing he doesn’t agree with is that Holbein painted this particular picture. He says it’s a fake.” Dillow pressed a cup and saucer into his hand and the courtly Mr. Fortescue bowed in the direction of the Countess. “I guess it’s not the sort of news that any of you wanted to hear…”

The Countess hadn’t yet remembered to put the teapot back on the tray, but it didn’t stop her talking.

“Tell me, Mr. Fortescue, how long hasn’t it been a Holbein?”

“I couldn’t begin to tell you that, Countess. Only that Cyrus Phillimore says…”

Lord Henry said quietly, “Not very long, Mother.” He turned slightly. “That right, Inspector?”

“Yes, my lord. Not very long.”

“Friday?” suggested Lord Henry.

“Very possibly, my lord.”

“Friday afternoon perhaps…”

“Perhaps, my lord.”

“Ossy’s discovery!” cried Lady Eleanor. “That must have been what Ossy discovered! That the Holbein was a fake.”

“We think so, your Ladyship.”

The Countess of Ornum lowered the teapot onto the large silver tray with a clatter. “You mean the picture was actually changed over on Friday afternoon?”

“Yes, your Ladyship.”

“And that little Mr. Meredith knew about the change?”

“We think he spotted it by accident.”

Cromwell T. Fortescue began, “Cyrus Phillimore says it’s a very good fake…”

Nobody took any notice of him.

“And having spotted it,” said Lord Henry, “he dashed to the telephone to ring up his pal the Vicar to ask him to pop along and confirm his worst suspicions.”

“That’s what we think, my lord,” agreed Sloan. “It would be the natural thing to do before he told your father. After all, it is a pretty serious allegation.”

“I’ll say,” said his young Lordship inelegantly. “He’s worth a pretty packet is the old Judge.”

“And where is he now?” demanded Cousin Gertrude.

Laura Cremond said unsteadily, “I know where the picture is.”

Everyone looked towards the sharp-faced woman who sat beside Miles.

“I say,” said Miles. “Do you? Good.”

She ignored him. “It’s lying under a pile of old maps in the Muniments Room. It’s not damaged at all.”

There was an expectant silence.

“I’m afraid,” went on Laura Cremond, not without dignity, “that I have a confession to make, and it’s very kind of the Inspector to give me the chance.”

Miles looked as if he couldn’t believe his eyes and ears. “I say, old girl, steady on. This isn’t a revivalist meeting, you know.”

“I’m sorry to have to tell you,” said Laura, “that on Friday evening I behaved rather badly.”

“Not as badly as somebody else,” said the Countess sadly.

“Nearly,” insisted Laura. “I’m afraid I disturbed the Muniments.”

“Good Lord!” said Miles.

“I’m very sorry. I just couldn’t bear the thought of Uncle Harry not being Earl any more.”

Cousin Gertrude had finished winding up the twine. “If Laura saw it there,” she said bluntly, “why didn’t she tell us and save all this trouble?”

Laura flushed and her voice was so low as to be nearly inaudible. “I didn’t like to say…”

“You didn’t like to say!” exclaimed Cousin Gertrude scornfully; Gertrude, who had herself never left anything unsaid.

“I thought perhaps Uncle Harry had arranged to…” Laura faltered and began again. “Owners do change pictures over themselves sometimes, you know, and sell the original without saying anything to anyone.”

“I expect,” murmured the Countess serenely, “he will one day.”

Laura was getting to her feet. “I know I did something I shouldn’t, Uncle Harry and Aunt Millicent, and I’m very sorry. Miles and I are going now and we shan’t be expecting any more invitations to stay at Ornum.”

The Earl was keeping to a more important train of thought. “So Meredith was killed because he knew about the fake picture.”

“And to prevent him telling anyone else, my lord.” A steel-like quality crept into Sloan’s voice. He cleared his throat and everyone turned in his direction. If you cleared your throat in the Berebury Police Station they thought you had a cold coming, but it was different here.

Everything was different here.

“It all happened,” he said, “because he wasn’t invited to tea with your Lordship’s aunts like he usually was on Fridays.”

“You’re joking, Inspector,” Gertrude Cremond said.

“Indeed I’m not, madam. I’m perfectly serious. As a rule Mr. Osborne Meredith always took tea with their Ladyships upstairs on Fridays.”

“You could count on it,” said Lady Eleanor.

“Someone did,” said Sloan soberly, “and it was his undoing.”

The Countess of Ornum picked up the teapot again. Dillow peered into the hot-water jug and, apparently finding it empty, picked it up.

“Don’t go, Dillow.”

“Very well, sir.” He stood with the jug in his hand.

“Friday,” said Sloan, “was an exception. Their Ladyships upstairs did not invite Mr. Meredith to tea as he had offended them by his historical researches. They did not, however, tell anyone they hadn’t done so.”

“So poor old Ossy turns up in the Long Gallery just after the Holbein had been changed over,” concluded Lord Henry, “when by right he should have been pinned between Great Aunt Alice and Great Aunt Maude while they told him how things ain’t what they used to be.”

“Quite so.”

“Then what, Inspector?”

“Then,” said Sloan in a voice devoid of emphasis, “he goes to the telephone where he is overheard ringing the Vicar’s wife.” He turned towards Lord Ornum. “Your telephone isn’t exactly private, your Lordship.”

“It’s the draughtiest place in the House,” responded the Earl. “My father wouldn’t have it anywhere else. Didn’t like it.”

“After that,” said Sloan, “I reckon the murderer had about a quarter of an hour in hand. A quarter of an hour in which to decide what to do and to go down to the armoury and pick his weapon.”

Lady Eleanor shivered. “If only I’d stayed talking to Ossy…”

“No, your Ladyship, that wouldn’t have made any difference. He’d have just waited until you’d gone.”

A thought had penetrated Miles Cremond’s brain. “I say, Inspector, you couldn’t go walking through the House with a club, what? Look very odd.”

“Yes, sir, I quite agree. There is one way though in which it could be carried quite easily without being seen.”

Miles Cremond, having had one thought, wasn’t immediately up to another. He frowned, but said nothing.

“And don’t forget,” went on Sloan smoothly, “that Mr. Meredith wouldn’t have known who to suspect of changing the picture. Dillow, I think her Ladyship has finished with the tea tray now. Would you like to take it away?”

“Certainly, sir.” With an expressionless face the butler put the hot-water jug back beside the teapot and picked up the tray.

He was halfway across the room with it when Sloan said to him conversationally, “Did you have any trouble hiding the godentag under Mr. Meredith’s tea tray, Dillow?”

In the end it wasn’t the Countess of Ornum at all who dropped the silver teapot.

It was Dillow.

“That you, Sloan?” Superintendent Leeyes didn’t wait for an answer. “I think it’s high time we got some help in this case.”

“There’s no need now, sir, thank you.”

“Can’t have the Earl thinking we aren’t efficient. I’m going to ring the Chief Constable now and tell him that—”

“I’ve just made an arrest, sir.”

“I think we should ask him to call in Scotland Yard. After all, you’ve had nearly twenty-four hours and—”

“I’ve just arrested Michael Joseph Dillow, sir.”

“Who?”

“The butler.”

“What for?”

“The murder of Osborne Meredith.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, sir. It all fits in.”

“What does?”

“Motive, means, opportunity…” Sloan couldn’t think offhand what else constituted a murder case.

“Motive?”

“Theft, sir. Of a very valuable picture. I think,” added Sloan judiciously, “that he had a bit of really bad luck there.”

“Where?”

“In Osborne Meredith spotting the switch-over just when he did.”

“So”—astringently—“did Meredith.”

“Quite so, sir. Otherwise Dillow had timed things quite well. Meredith was sure to be at the two-day cricket match on the Saturday and Sunday—he would never have missed that if he was alive—and it was highly unlikely that anyone but Meredith would have spotted that the Holbein was a fake. The forgery’s a really expert job.”

“Who did it?”

“Dillow won’t tell us, but I strongly suspect that same hand that did the pseudo Van Goghs which his last employer found he owned.”

Superintendent Leeyes grunted. “But to lessen the risk,” pursued Sloan, “Dillow put a dud electric light bulb in the fitting over the picture. It’s in a bad light as it is and Miss Cleepe is shortsighted anyway and isn’t an expert.”

“Then what?” demanded Leeyes.

“I think he killed him when he took his tea tray in, ate the tea himself, and left the body in the Library.”

“Sloan”—irritably—“there’s something very old-fashioned about all this—butlers and bodies in the Library.”

“Traditional, sir,” Sloan reminded him. “You said we could expect the traditional at Ornum.”

Leeyes grunted again.

“He left him in the Library, sir, while he deflected the Vicar. It’s not the sort of Library anyone uses much in the ordinary way. Then after he sounded the dressing bell”—the only dressing bell Sloan knew was that on his own alarm clock, which went off every morning at seven o’clock, not every evening at seven-thirty, but he was prepared to believe that there were others—“while all those in the House were changing he carried the body down to the armoury.”

“Quite a good time to choose.”

“Very. Except for one thing. William Murton was watching him from the spyhole above the Great Hall. As well as seeing Dillow carrying Mr. Meredith’s body he also saw the chandelier lying on the table—which was what put us on to him having been there.” Sloan discreetly omitted Lady Alice from the narrative. Ghosts were all very well in Ornum House: in the stark, scrubbed police office in Berebury they became too insubstantial to mention.

“What put you on to Dillow?” enquired Leeyes. “That’s more important.”

“Teacups,” said Sloan. “There should have been three on their Ladyships’ tray.”

“Teacups?”

“There were only two,” explained Sloan, “which meant that by the time he took them their tea Dillow must have already overheard Meredith telling the Vicar’s wife that he would be waiting for her husband in the Library and guessed exactly what discovery Meredith had made.”

“Meredith could have told him himself that he wasn’t going up to the two old birds,” objected Leeyes.

“If he did, sir, then Dillow was lying when he said he hadn’t seen him earlier. Six of one, half a dozen of the other.”

“And Murton?”

“William Murton decided that in future Dillow could subsidise his pleasures—he therefore didn’t ask his uncle for a loan this weekend—which I gather was something so unusual as to be remarkable.”

“So he got what was coming to him.”

“I’m afraid so, sir. As soon as he tried it on, probably. He was dealing with a tougher nut than he knew. Than we knew,” Sloan added honestly. Dillow hadn’t gone quietly, but there had been policemen everywhere.

“Hrrrrrrmph,” said Leeyes. “And what stopped Dillow just clearing off with the picture?”

“Michael Fisher, Mrs. Laura Cremond, and me,” said Sloan. “The boy found Mr. Meredith too soon, Mrs. Cremond stirred up the Muniments, and I sealed the door. If I hadn’t I think it would have gone out today under Dillow’s arm.”

“Today?”

“His day off. Bad luck, really. He parked it in the safest place he knew. He tried to break the door down in the night and to lure the Archivist out with food today.”

“Hrrrrrrmph,” said Leeyes again. “And Murton?”

“I expect,” said Sloan, “Dillow suggested he and Murton go somewhere for a nice quiet chat—like the dungeons.”

Inspector Sloan had left Constable Crosby and Constable Bloggs on duty outside the door of the Private Apartments with firm instructions about the Ornum family remaining undisturbed.

The door, therefore, in theory should not have opened at all at this juncture, still less should an incredibly old lady in black have got past them armed with nothing more intimidating than a lorgnette.

But she had.

“Why,” demanded the querulous voice of Lady Alice Cremond, “has Dillow not brought us our tea?”

Detective Constable Crosby turned the police car in that wide sweep of carriageway in front of Ornum House where the coaches of the Earls of Ornum had been wont to go into that wide arc of drive that brought them to the front door.

There was room to have paraded the entire County of Calleshire Force and to spare—but there were only two members of it present: Inspector Sloan and Constable Crosby.

“Home, James, and don’t spare the horses,” commanded Sloan, climbing in.

“Beg pardon, sir?”

Sloan sighed. “Headquarters, Crosby, please.”

“Yes, sir.”

They drove through the Park, past the Folly, ignoring the Earl’s prize deer. Crosby steered the car between the gryphons on the gate finial without a sidelong glance.

Sloan looked at his watch and thought that—with a bit of luck—he’d be home in time to nip round his garden before the light went. Yesterday—was it only yesterday?—there had been a rose—new rose—nearly out. It might not be good enough for showing, but he thought he would try.

You could never tell with judges.

They left the copybook village of Ornum behind and got on the open road.

They were on the outskirts of Berebury when they saw the ambulance.

It was in a hurry. Crosby slowed down and eased to the side of the road as it flashed by in the opposite direction. The sound of its siren was nearly extinguished by the roar of the motorcycle that was following the ambulance at great speed.

“That’s Pete Bellamy, that is,” observed Crosby inconsequentially.

“Well I hope Traffic pick him up.”

“Always follows the blood wagon, does Pete.”

“Say that again, Crosby.”

“About Pete Bellamy, sir? He lives opposite the ambulance station.”

“Where does he work?”

“Some garage in the town, sir. He’s just got himself the bike.”

“So that each time the bell goes down he chases the ambulance.”

“That’s right.”

“Only when he’s not at work of course.”

“That’s right, sir.”

“What’s his dinnertime?”

“I couldn’t say, sir. It is important?”

“And if it’s a smash-up he rings his boss.”

“I expect so, sir. They don’t pay them a lot you know. Not apprentices.”

“And his boss comes out with the breakdown truck on the off chance.”

“They do it in other places,” said Crosby defensively. “Big mainroad counties. Near black spots and so forth. The truck just follows the ambulance.”

“Maternity cases,” said Sloan sarcastically, “must be a big disappointment to them.”

“It’s probably worth it,” said Crosby. “One good roundabout’s worth a lot of swings in the car trade.” He said anxiously, “Is it important, sir? Shall I have to tell him to stop?”

Sloan breathed very deeply. “No, Crosby. Just to drive more carefully.”

He reached into his briefcase for the formal charge sheet.

Presently he read it out to a sullen silent prisoner.

“Michael Joseph Dillow you are charged that on Friday, June 20, last, you did feloniously cause the death of one Osborne Meredith, against the Peace of Our Sovereign Lady the Queen, her Crown and Dignity…”

Sloan paused.

He hadn’t thought of it like that before either.

—«»—«»—«»—

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Catherine Aird had never tried her hand at writing suspense stories before publishing The Religious Body—a novel which immediately established her as one of the genre’s most talented writers. A Late Phoenix, The Stately Home Murder, His Burial Too, Some Die Eloquent, Henrietta Who? and A Most Contagious Game have subsequently enhanced her reputation. Her ancestry is Scottish, but she now lives in a village in East Kent, near Canterbury, where she serves as an aid to her father, a doctor, and takes an interest in local affairs.

—«»—«»—«»—