Murder at Keyhaven Castle

by Clara McKenna

  Brown warmed in admiration. She was a clever one, this one. Too bad she’s a woman. Miss Kendrick would’ve made a good detective.

  “For now, you leave this with me,” he said, rising from his chair. “We’ll get to the bottom of it. Waterman!”

  The constable responded posthaste to Brown’s shout, arriving readily equipped with pencil and paper. He hastily stuffed them into his breast pocket when Brown held the photo album out to him.

  “See this is locked in the safe.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  When Brown turned back to her, Miss Kendrick was gazing out the bar-covered window behind him. A motley gray pigeon was perched on the window ledge, cooing. “If you’ll oblige me, Miss Kendrick, I still need to ask you a few questions. Just routine, mind you. Please have a seat.” Brown wheeled his chair from behind his desk, and the pigeon fluttered away.

  “First off, since we are discussing Jesse Prescott’s case, I’d like your opinion on something.”

  “Of course.” She lowered herself into the chair, regarding him expectantly.

  “We found articles of interest among Mr. Prescott’s belongings: a wager receipt for the St. Leger Stakes and a ferry ticket to the Island. It’s not surprising Mr. Prescott would wager on the horses in Doncaster. But after making inquiries, we are at a loss as to what would take him to the Island.” Constable Waterman had visited the ferry station and made the crossing but had returned with nothing more than a damp uniform. “I wonder. Does that mean anything to you?”

  If asked, Brown couldn’t have explained why he presumed Miss Kendrick would think of something he hadn’t considered. But then again, she was the one who unearthed the gun, not him.

  “Maybe Lord Lyndhurst would know. I haven’t been to the Isle of Wight yet. So, I wouldn’t know. . . .” She paused. “Wait. Do you know who Pistol Prescott bet on to win the St. Leger Stakes?”

  In answer to her question (he couldn’t fathom what the dead man’s visit to the Island had to do with his pick at the races), Brown slid open a drawer and retrieved the case file. A reminder to contact the ship’s steward’s office to confirm they’d located all of Mr. Prescott’s luggage was clipped to the outside. Brown plucked the small notepad from among the loose papers and flipped it open to find Waterman’s scribble. The pad crackled when Brown pried two of the crinkled pages apart.

  “If I’m reading this correctly, our man bet on Challacombe to win.”

  “Then, Inspector”—Miss Kendrick smiled and slapped the edge of the desk in triumph, the glass inkwell clinking in response—“you should be talking to the baron, Baron Branson-Hill. He lives on the Isle of Wight, and he’s the new owner of Challacombe. That has to be your connection.”

  “Yes, well done, Miss Kendrick.” Brown dropped the notepad into the file and shoved the whole thing back into the drawer. He’d arrange to interview the baron as soon as he finished up here. “Now, to the questions I have regarding your father’s death.”

  Her wide smile faded, her whole body deflating before him like a popped balloon.

  “I do apologize, but—”

  “No, it’s okay. I want to help, Inspector,” she reassured him. “Please ask me anything.”

  “Very well. Let’s begin with where you were when the man cried out.”

  It had been his standard inquiry asked of all the witnesses. But when he posed it to Miss Kendrick, having said, “the man” and not “your father,” he grasped the extent of his mistake. His assumption that the victim had cried out, which according to Dr. Lipscombe was a medical impossibility, not only raised the question of who actually did and why but also required Brown to reestablish everyone’s alibi; the time of death was no longer conclusive.

  “I was alone . . . with Lord Lyndhurst.” To her credit, Miss Kendrick blushed. “We were touring the castle together. He never left my sight.”

  Or her side, no doubt. “And when you arrived in the courtyard, you saw, what?”

  She described the picnic scene, including the arrival of the others, precisely as Lord Lyndhurst had. So, unless they were in collusion and had made up their story, they were both in the clear.

  “From what you told about your father’s will, you are to inherit an immense fortune. And thus, a suspect. I would be remiss in my duties if I didn’t ask. Miss Kendrick, did you kill your father or have him killed on your behalf?”

  Her hesitation startled Brown. If this young lady was capable of such an act of violence, then Brown had investigated his last case. He stared at her in breathless anticipation.

  Finally, she solemnly shook her head. With her focus on fishing a handkerchief from her handbag, Brown released his breath in one long puff.

  “No, of course, I didn’t kill him,” she said, scrunching the handkerchief into a ball and patting it against her cheekbones. “I loved my father. I’m angry, and I’m sad this happened to him.”

  Brown perceived a slight hesitation. “But?”

  “But, I’m ashamed to admit I’m not sure I’m going to miss him.” There wasn’t a more honest woman in all the world. To admit such a thing must’ve cost her. “I also don’t believe Sir Owen killed him either,” she added, before relaying what Sir Owen had confided.

  Brown wasn’t surprised; he’d never been wholly convinced Sir Owen had been his man. He knew the noble to be more the type to ruin a lady’s reputation than one to murder someone. Besides, the man had no motive. But Brown didn’t regret his arrest. Served the bounder right to spend the night in a cell; Sir Owen could’ve saved them all a great deal of trouble if he’d divulged the truth sooner.

  “What about your aunt?” Brown asked, recalling the contents of the telegram she sent.

  Miss Kendrick laughed. “Aunt Rachel? She’s nearly eighty, Inspector, and doesn’t have a mean bone in her body. Plus, she wasn’t even there.”

  “No, the young one, Mrs. Mitchell.”

  “Oh, you mean Aunt Ivy,” Miss Kendrick said, growing serious again and fiddling with a loose string on the hem of her glove.

  Ah, Brown was onto something there then. Miss Kendrick, too, had her suspicions. But he knew better than to press. He’d try a more roundabout approach.

  “Do you know a Mrs. Eugene Smith, staying at the Star Hotel in Southampton?”

  Brown had made inquiries and, with the help of his colleagues in the port city, had tracked down Mrs. Smith, the recipient of Mrs. Mitchell’s telegram. Unfortunately, the woman in question had been out when the Southampton policeman had visited. Brown was waiting on a follow-up.

  Miss Kendrick shook her head. “No, but I did find a stack of letters in Aunt Ivy’s room with Southampton as a return address. I don’t know who wrote them. But why do you ask? Who is Mrs. Eugene Smith? Does she have a connection with the deaths of Jesse Prescott or my father?”

  “We’re making inquiries,” was his tepid reply.

  “You think Aunt Ivy’s a suspect?”

  Miss Kendrick studied Brown’s face, searching no doubt for a chink in his armor. But she wasn’t getting any answers from him. Not yet.

  “Do you think she should be?”

  “No, she’s not capable of killing anyone.”

  “Not even your father?”

  Miss Kendrick winced, and Brown immediately regretted his inflection, his choice of words. No one deserved being murdered, not even the overbearing Mr. Kendrick.

  “You have a point,” she said. “I don’t want to believe it, but I did catch them arguing before we left for the castle.” She rose unexpectedly, shoving the handkerchief back into her bag as she rounded the desk. “If you’ll excuse me, Inspector,” she mumbled as she passed him on her way toward the door.

  Her sudden need to depart unsettled him. “Are you all right, Miss Kendrick?”

  She turned to him. Her failed attempt at a smile pained him more than any frown would have. “Thank you, Inspector. I’m fine. It’s just that a few days ago I’d been so happy. Now, instead of enjoying marital bliss, I’ve been secretly rans
acking my guests’ bedrooms and wondering who in my family killed my father.”

  Brown started to say something reassuring but found he didn’t have the words. Miss Kendrick was right, and it fell to him to prove it.

  * * *

  Mrs. Robinson, neatly adding the cost of her recent purchase of five yards of black crape into her accounts, glanced up at the sound of the side door slamming shut. When Robbie, his arms stacked with kindling, passed her study, she rose to confront him in the scullery. His face was as pale as bleached cotton sheets.

  “What is it, lad?”

  After Mr. Kendrick’s death, the local boy, who came every morning to clean the boots, haul the coal, and clean the servants’ fire grates, refused to enter the house, as if it now be fey. But neither death nor spirits stopped the chores needing doing. Mr. Tims, of course, couldn’t be expected to do such menial tasks. With Ethel now up at Morrington Hall and so many guests to attend, Mrs. Robertson had been at her wit’s end until Robbie offered to stay on an extra day or two and help.

  “Nothing, Auntie.”

  He knelt at his task, filling the kindling box, avoiding showing his face. But perspiration dripped down his temple toward his ear. Such a finely built young man didn’t sweat like that from chopping a bit of kindling. Was his injury giving him trouble? It seemed to be healing nicely. He rose, lifting the last of his load, hoping to pass by unmolested on his way toward the library; the two aunts had let the library fire go out. But Mrs. Robinson would know what was wrong. She blocked his escape, her arms sternly crossed.

  “Don’t tell me it’s nothing. Do I need to send round for the doctor?”

  “I’m fine, Auntie. I don’t need a doctor.”

  “But, Robbie, you look like you saw a ghost.”

  Robbie resigned to her meddling, jostled the wood in his arms to settle the smaller pieces, and stared straight at her. There was more than a little unease in his expression.

  “Not a ghost, very much a living man.”

  “That doesn’t narrow it down, lad. Men have been in and out all day, leaving condolence cards, including the likes of Sir Alfred or Baron Branson-Hill, come with his wife, the baroness. Was it one of the villagers or local merchants, maybe?” Mrs. Robinson suggested. “Been lots of them. Unlike those up at Morrington Hall, Mr. Kendrick spent his money, and he wasn’t one to shun the local shops. But what did this man do to rattle you so? Shall I inform His Lordship? I’m certain he could take the man in hand.”

  “No, Auntie, it’s nothing like that. He gave me a turn, all right, but because I’d seen him before, on the docks when that wee fella died under the horses’ hooves and hoped never to cross paths with him again.”

  “Why? What did this man do?”

  “They were arguing, the wee fella and the man. I didn’t tell the police for I wasn’t certain of it until I saw him again outside.”

  “Good heavens, Robbie, the police?” She thought the lad was done with all that. “What did you not tell them?”

  “That it mightn’t have been an accident.”

  “Why do you say that?” The scullery was suddenly as hot as Mrs. Downie’s oven. Mrs. Robinson laid the back of her hand against her forehead to steady herself. “Tell me. What did you see, lad?”

  “I think I saw the man push the wee fella, Auntie. Like he meant for him to die.”

  CHAPTER 21

  Brown slipped into the Knightwood Oak unnoticed, behind two farmhands who smelled of sweat and soil. The pub was filled with locals, hoping for a good chinwag over Mr. Kendrick’s death, no doubt. Tom Heppenstall, the publican, slapped the towel over his shoulder and shoved the till drawer. When it closed with a hard click, he was already reaching for another glass to fill. Scandal must be good for business.

  Brown surveyed the room. Silas, the broad-shouldered caretaker of the vicarage, sipped a half-pint by the fireplace, his old hound at his feet. In the corner, a rowdy cluster of men passed around bawdy postcards one of them must’ve picked up in Paris. Brown fancied the scantily dressed, wide-hipped brunette he caught a glimpse of. Reminded him of Mrs. Brown when he married her. Moving on, he noted two tables occupied by men drinking ale and eating greasy chips. The lad who worked for the publican busily cleared the third table of its dirty glasses and a platter of what must’ve been shepherd’s pie, considering the smell coming from the kitchen. The man Brown had come for shared the far end of the long, polished, wooden bar with the old fellow Brown had come to know as Old Joe. Broadsheets lay spread out before the old man who was bent over them reading. Jed Kendrick, downcast and staring over at the sleeping hound, nursed a half-finished pint. Brown took a few steps and halted at the sound of china clattering to the floor. At the table beside him, a sopping wet rag dripped water onto the floor as the lad stood over an overturned platter that had slipped from his tray.

  “Oi! Clean that up,” Mr. Heppenstall called.

  The lad lowered the tray to the table and dropped to the floor. With the stack of dirty plates in his hands, he scrambled to his feet, knocking into Brown as the inspector attempted to step around him. Locking eyes with Brown, the publican scowled before yanking the towel free of his shoulder and attacking an invisible stain on the bar in front of him. As Brown continued his approach, Old Joe’s high-pitched muttering grew louder, like a midge buzzing in your ear. It seems Mr. Kendrick didn’t get the message that Old Joe preferred not to share his end of the bar with grockles. Or perhaps it was Brown the old chap objected to.

  “Evening,” Brown said, stepping up to the bar.

  “What brings you here, Inspector?” Silas, the vicar’s caretaker, had left his sleeping dog to lean his elbows on the bar close by. Even Brown knew the man’s penchant for gossip. The vicar, no, the whole village, would learn what was said by suppertime. “Ain’t the Red Stag but a block from the police station?”

  Brown ignored him and addressed the man on the stool beside Old Joe. “Mr. Kendrick? I need to speak to you.”

  “What do ya want now?”

  Old Joe turned a wary eye on Brown, as he and Jed Kendrick spoke over the old man’s head, but he didn’t budge.

  “I think you should come with me to the police station.”

  The American’s response was to motion for the publican to bring another ale. “Unless you’re arresting me, ya can ask me the questions here.”

  Brown glanced around him. The men with the Paris postcards had grown suspiciously still; the lads he’d followed in sipped their pints in a silence that was broken only by the crackling of the small fire in the grate. Silas wasn’t the only curious one about. “I don’t think you’ll want everyone to hear what I have to say.”

  “You don’t think everyone will know anyway?”

  He had a point. Despite stretching out over more than two hundred square miles, the New Forest was a tight-knit place. News regarding the posh Americans, whether it was the flavor of Miss Kendrick’s wedding cake or that her father was found dead at Keyhaven Castle, spread fast.

  “Very well,” Brown conceded, moving around Old Joe to take up the stool on Jed Kendrick’s other side. He didn’t miss how the old man cocked his head to one side, and Silas leaned in. When Mr. Heppenstall asked him if he wanted anything, Brown shook his head (though he sure could use a pint about now) and set his hat on the bar. “Did you or did you not speak with Jesse Prescott on the morning he died?”

  “Ya came here to ask me that?” the American scoffed, his breath reeking of beer. He insistently held up his empty glass, trying to catch the publican’s eye.

  Mr. Heppenstall busied himself with wiping out pint glasses and kept his head down.

  “That’ll be a yes, then. What did you talk about, Mr. Kendrick? How you both wanted your brother dead? How you were going to shoot him with Mr. Prescott’s gun?”

  Mr. Kendrick rolled his eyes, and fishing about in his pockets procured a cheap cigar. When he said nothing, Brown went on.

  “And then it all went wrong, didn’t it? The two of you had a row, a
nd seizing the opportunity, you pushed Mr. Prescott into the oncoming carriage.”

  “What?”

  The American lurched to his feet, his stool clattering to the floor. Old Joe instinctually threw himself over the stack of newspapers in front of him, and Silas’s hound, awoken by the noise, howled.

  “You’re talking out your hat, Inspector.” Mr. Kendrick bit off the tip of his cigar and spat it on the floor.

  “Oi!” Mr. Heppenstall objected.

  “I have a credible witness,” Brown pressed, “that places a man beside the victim moments before Prescott died.”

  When the second person in so many hours, this time Robbie McEwan, nephew to Miss Kendrick’s housekeeper, strolled into his office, offering up evidence in the Prescott case, Brown had to wonder why he bothered leaving his desk at all.

  Because Jed Kendrick isn’t going to arrest himself now, is he?

  Kendrick stuck the unlit cigar between his teeth. “So?”

  “That same witness believes the same man pushed Jesse Prescott to his death. I think that man was you, Mr. Kendrick.”

  Jed Kendrick’s crooked smile, like he’d thought of a private joke, revealed a broken front tooth. “But I wasn’t anywhere near that jockey when he died.”

  “Says you.”

  “Ask my Sammy and little Gertie too, if ya don’t believe me.”

  “Then explain to me how you came to have Jesse Prescott’s gun and wallet in your possession?”

  The American’s lip curled, his eyes narrowing to slivers, and for the first time, Brown thought he might make trouble. Luckily, a whistle from him would bring Constable Waterman running from his post at the door outside.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “They were hidden,” the inspector continued, keeping his attention on the man’s face, and not at the man’s tightening fists. “Quite cleverly, I might add, in a hollowed-out photo album in your travel trunk.”

  “You’d no right to rifle through my stuff.”