The Stately Home Murder iscm-3 Read online

  “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?”