by L. C. Tyler
‘My professional view is that it’s a poem,’ I said, handing the sheet of A5 back to him. ‘I don’t handle poetry. The royalties are rubbish.’
‘Robert is trying to tell us something in a deliberately cryptic way. He wanted me to take action only if he was dead. So he tells me that the instructions are here at Muntham Court. If he had still been alive, he could have destroyed this link in the chain and retrieved the letter to his lawyer from me, unopened. Neither I nor anyone else . . .’ he looked pointedly at me at this juncture,‘. . . would have been able to take it any further. Likewise, if anyone had stumbled on this without reading the letter he sent me, they too would have been none the wiser. Somewhere, there’s a third note. My guess is that you need all three to make any sense of it and that it would be possible to put all three together only if Robert was dead.’
‘One small objection,’ said Elsie. ‘Why not just write to you and say:“X is going to bump me off-destroy this letter if they don’t get round to it”? Or why not just take you aside last night and tell you? How difficult would that have been?’
‘I don’t know,’ he said. He opened the paper up again. ‘What does he mean by “not so very far”? What sort of jar gives you everything you crave?’
‘A jar full of chocolates. Creamy ones with a fondant centre. Apricot or orange.’ I was pretty confident on that one.
‘Possibly,’ he said. ‘I’m not sure Robert necessarily shared your tastes in everything. One of the problems with bad poetry, of course, is that the meaning often gets distorted to suit the metre and the rhyme. “Afric” is clearly only there because it scans better than “African”. We could analyse a given word to death, only to discover it was just there for the rhyme.’
Annabelle returned at this point with three steaming mugs on a tray. Ethelred quickly trousered the verse.
‘The McIntoshes and Smiths are still here,’ she said. ‘Ethelred,you should talk to them before they leave. Clive is coming back later today. I’ll try to get John O’Brian to come in too.’
Ethelred looked a bit uncertain. We’d got a couple of possible clues but interviewing all the suspects was clearly a complete waste of time.
‘Please, Ethelred,’ she said. ‘I’m depending on you.’
I swallowed my coffee quickly so that I wouldn’t spit it all over everyone when Ethelred replied. I braced myself for a really creepy response.
‘Of course, Annabelle,’ he said. ‘I’ll do anything I can for you.’
I thought she was going to give him a good scratch under the chin, but she just said: ‘You’ve no idea how grateful I am.’
So was he. Even if she’d entered him for Crufts he couldn’t have wagged his dear little tail any harder.
Bless.
Nine
Elsie was taken away, protesting ineffectually, to conduct further outdoor investigations, and the McIntoshes came to talk to me amongst the palms.
‘I’m happy to tell you all we know if that’s what Annabelle wants,’ said Colin. ‘We’ve obviously already given the police exactly the same information.’ He looked impressively rakish, still in last night’s dress shirt and trousers, though with no tie or jacket. He hadn’t troubled to shave, which also suited him in a funny sort of way. Fiona looked much fresher, possibly having drunk slightly less. She sat alert and ready for anything I might throw at her.
‘We were with you pretty much from when we arrived,’ said Colin in answer to my initial question. ‘We stayed a few minutes longer than we should while we refilled our glasses – I don’t get to drink Lafite very often and I’m not sure when I shall again. Anyway, in the process we lost visual contact with the main party touring the house. We wandered round a bit and explored upstairs, thinking they might have gone there.’
‘Didn’t see a soul until we ran into Elsie,’ said Fiona. ‘Then we joined the others outside the library. Other than a bit of attempted resuscitation, that was our evening pretty much.’
‘Needless to say, neither of us had any reason for wanting to see Robert dead,’ said Colin. ‘Just in case that was your next question.’
‘And it could have been suicide?’ I asked.
‘Oh, yes,’ said Colin. ‘No doubt about that. He could have wound the rope tightly round his neck and then used the pencil to tighten it. But equally somebody else could have done it that way. I can’t help you much with the exact time of death. We all know it was somewhere in the twenty minutes before we found him – probably earlier rather than later. We don’t know how long it took him to die, of course, but it was probably fairly quick – well, that’s what we’ve told Annabelle anyway. For all I know it actually was.’
‘So it could have been murder?’
‘Only if you can get your murderer in and out of the locked room. The other big objection is that there was no evidence of a struggle.’
‘And Robert was quite a strong man,’ I said.
They looked at each other.
‘I’ll tell you what I had to tell the police about that too,’ said Colin. ‘It will all have to come out now anyway, so I can’t see the harm. No, he was not a strong man in any sense. Robert was dying. He had pancreatic cancer. The prognosis is rarely good, but, by the time they found it, there was very little that could be done – and nothing that Robert was willing to have done to him. He probably had six months at the most – say one or two with a reasonable quality of life, and no quality of anything thereafter. He’d come up to London the day before the party, and we’d talked through the results of the latest tests, though he’d known for some time that it was hopeless. We’d discussed it again briefly yesterday evening – at least, he took me to one side during drinks and asked me if there couldn’t be anything they’d missed. Of course, I said that you could never be certain – but frankly we both knew the score. The funny thing is that he took it all very well. It was almost as though it was a relief for him to know for certain.’
‘So, not suicidal?’
‘He didn’t seem depressed, if that’s what you mean. He was actually strangely cheerful.’
‘I see,’ I said. ‘And did Annabelle know?’
Colin shrugged. ‘I assume Robert would have told Annabelle. I never discussed it with her myself.’
‘How were things between Annabelle and Robert?’ I asked.
‘Yesterday? No better, no worse than usual,’ said Colin. ‘You’ll gather they’d both been round the block a few times. It was his second marriage – her third. Always focuses the mind a bit, I think. They seemed determined to make it work. There were differences between them. She was a bit more careful with money than he was – at least over some things. She didn’t stint much on his cash buying this place. Or buying frocks. But she didn’t like to see him wasting it.’
‘On decent wine for his friends, for example,’ said Fiona. ‘God knows how Robert sneaked those bottles into the dining room last night. Annabelle would have gone spare if she’d had the slightest idea what the wine must have cost. They had plenty of other topics for rows of course – it wasn’t just money – but they always seemed to make it up. A bit like us, really.’
‘Nothing like us,’ said Colin. ‘If you were like Annabelle, I’d poison you at the first chance.’
‘Not that we’re suggesting Annabelle had anything to do with Robert’s death,’ said Fiona.
‘On the other hand, if it had been Annabelle strangled . . .’ Colin looked out of the conservatory towards the garden. ‘You have to admit, Robert would have been a suspect.’
‘But it wasn’t Annabelle,’ said Fiona. ‘It was Robert.’
‘Poor sod,’ said Colin. ‘First the bank . . . now this.’
Gerald Smith arrived in the conservatory dressed in a blue striped shirt and pale blue jeans. I realized that I had had little contact with him the previous evening, but was now able to study him properly. Even in jeans nobody would have mistaken him for anything except a lawyer. There was caution behind the friendly smile.
‘We’d arra
nged to stay overnight rather than drive back to Crawley,’ he said rather apologetically, ‘even before . . . what happened . . . so I brought a change of clothes with me.’
It was not an unreasonable thing to have done, but he seemed the sort of person who probably apologized a lot and rarely meant it. So I simply nodded.
‘Jane’s still asleep,’ he said. ‘I’m assuming I can tell you anything you need to know. I didn’t want to disturb her. It was a tough evening for her and she needs some rest.’
‘Tough for all of us,’ I said.
‘Well, yes, but tougher for her having worked with Robert so long.’
‘How long?’
‘Almost ten years, I suppose, by the time she left the bank.’
‘You weren’t out of each other’s sight all evening?’
‘No – not really. What I saw, she saw, and vice versa.’
‘You left the dining room for ten minutes or so, shortly after Robert went out?’
‘Closer to five, I would guess. It took a minute or two to find the loo. OK, maybe seven or eight minutes in total.’
‘And you saw nothing suspicious while you were in the corridor – nobody around who shouldn’t have been there?’
‘Absolutely not. We’d have told the police straight away.’
‘Yes, of course. And you were both with Annabelle during the tour?’
‘Yes . . .’
‘You don’t sound certain.’
‘We left the dining room with her and then took a look at the billiard room, I think it was. Annabelle was in a hurry to move on. Felicity insisted on inspecting some object in a glass case in there. We went over to look at it too and Annabelle was gone when we’d finished. We found her a bit later, outside the library. She looked really worried.’
‘How much later?’
‘I don’t know. The object in the case proved to be some Russian icon. It didn’t look that interesting to me, but Felicity proceeded to give us quite a lecture on Russian Orthodox church history. So I guess it was five or ten minutes later we caught up with Annabelle.’
‘And you told the police this?’
‘Yes. Between you and me, I don’t think they were that interested in who was where. They asked me several times whether Robert had any reason to commit suicide.’
‘And did he?’
Gerald said nothing for a moment, then replied: ‘No. Not really. There was the business of his leaving the bank, of course.’
‘He said he resigned.’
‘I represented him in what might have been a case of wrongful dismissal if the bank hadn’t settled. Actually, they’d have been better going to court. Robert didn’t have much of a case. You remember Nick Leeson?’
‘The guy who brought down Barings?’
‘That’s the one. Robert had allowed somebody much the same freedom to trade with much the same effect, except the bank woke up to it a bit earlier and didn’t quite go under. Still, they lost a packet. The bank wanted to sack them both. I ensured Robert left on reasonable terms.’
‘And the other guy – the trader?’
‘Sacked. Full stop. No money, no references. But I wasn’t representing him.’ Gerald smiled. He clearly thought he was a pretty clever operator, and maybe he was. ‘No, I’d have said they were equally culpable, but he wasn’t as well looked after. I’m surprised in the end he bore so few grudges against Robert.’
‘And the terms on which Robert left would have been enough to maintain this place?’ I asked.
‘I’m good,’ smirked Gerald, ‘but I’m not that good. No, I guess Robert had invested better on his own behalf than he did for the bank. I hope so, for Annabelle’s sake.’
Then I remembered something.
‘Robert gave me a letter to pass on to you,’ I said. ‘If I’d realized you would still be here, I might have brought it with me. But I’ve posted it, unopened, as Robert requested. I don’t know what it is, but apparently it’s not urgent.’
‘How very mysterious. Still, if it’s not urgent . . .’
‘It should be with you on Monday.’
‘We’re going away for a couple of days anyway. I’ll look at it when I return to the office.’
Then another thought occurred to me.
‘By the way,’ I said. ‘Who was the guy fired with Robert? The one who bore surprisingly few grudges under the circumstances?’
‘I thought everyone knew that,’ said Gerald. ‘It was in the papers. He was quite famous for a few days. It was Clive Brent.’
I had arranged to meet up with Annabelle and Elsie in the library. Elsie appeared, hot and distinctly put out after fruitlessly traipsing round the remoter parts of the garden for clues. She seemed to feel she had been sent on a wild goose chase and that she deserved better after her blue serge discovery.
Annabelle asked me what I had found out and I told her briefly that neither the McIntoshes nor Gerald Smith had had much information of note. I did say that the McIntoshes, in their medical capacity, had not ruled out suicide and that I’d been told Clive had left the bank at the same time as Robert.
‘Could Clive have harboured any sort of grudge?’ I asked.
‘Of course not,’ said Annabelle. ‘Robert saw Clive as being one of his closest chums. Robert was trying to find Clive a job, for goodness’ sake. Why would Clive want to kill him now?’
‘I just thought I would ask,’ I said. ‘Maybe, Annabelle, the police are right. After all, how could anyone have got out of this room after killing Robert?’
‘You discovered nothing earlier?’
‘Not a thing,’ I said.
She sighed – but really, I had done all I could.
‘Let’s try to reconstruct the scene,’ said Annabelle, as though we were having difficulty learning something quite simple. ‘Elise – you sit at the desk.’
‘Can’t I be the murderer?’ asked Elsie.
‘No, dear, you’re going to be murdered,’ said Annabelle. And very soon. Now, Ethelred – you stand over there to the left of the fireplace – by that panelling. A little bit further back – yes, just there.’
‘I’m not sure . . .’ I said. Whichever way a killer might have entered, it would not have been from the fireplace.
She looked critically from me to Elsie and back again. I couldn’t see this was getting us anywhere. Then I must have leaned on something because Annabelle suddenly said: ‘Wait a moment! The panelling – it moved.’
I looked. There was a series of oak Tudor roses carved the length of the room. The one closest to me looked a little more worn than the rest – sort of smoothed. Otherwise it was just a regular bit of carving.
‘What did I touch? This?’ I still wasn’t sure I had made contact with anything. I could have done no more than brush against it.
‘Press it again,’ said Annabelle. ‘Press it again – harder this time.’
I pressed harder. Then suddenly part of the panelling gaped. Annabelle was by my side in a moment, sliding the whole panel back to reveal an opening, slightly smaller than a standard door, but allowing access to anyone willing to stoop a little and step into the darkness.
‘It’s a secret passage!’ she said.
‘So it is,’ I said. I looked through the opening into the gloom. ‘I wonder where it goes?’
Annabelle produced a torch from the desk drawer and shone it experimentally into the aperture.
‘It goes some way,’ I said, over Annabelle’s shoulder.
‘Come on, Ethelred,’ said Annabelle. ‘The two of us should check this out together.’
‘Or better still, all three of us,’ said Elsie.
And so, one by one, all three of us stepped through the opening into a stone-floored passageway.
The torchlight showed that the walls on either side were rough, unpolished oak panels. The ceiling was low enough that my hair brushed it once or twice, but not so low that it felt claustrophobic. In a couple of places there were brackets for candles, but there were also electric light fit
tings – black bakelite, maybe dating back eighty years or so to a time that I still think of as ‘early this century’.
We followed the passage for a short distance before reaching a dead end. A quick investigation with the torch revealed a wooden lever, and pulling on the lever opened another panel. We found ourselves in the billiard room, blinking in the sunlight that was streaming through the windows.
Of course, the passage, like everything else at Muntham Court, was a piece of Victorian whimsy. Just as the architect had added Jacobean strapwork to the exterior, he had thought fit to provide a secret passage for the amusement of his client and perhaps of his client’s guests. It was a neat nineteenth-century rationalization of the cramped and twisting secret passages of more ancient buildings. The candles, and later the electric light, would have permitted an entertaining, but completely comfortable, transfer between two of the male strongholds of the house. Its later neglect, demonstrated by the antiquity of the electrical wiring, suggested that the house’s more recent owners had had no use for it.
‘A way in and out,’ said Annabelle thoughtfully. ‘You realize what this means?’
Elsie said nothing but took the torch from Annabelle and retraced her steps, vanishing for a moment round the corner. She quickly returned.
‘Not a way in,’ she said. ‘There must have been a lever, like at this end, but it has broken off at some stage. Can’t get the panel to budge. You can get out of the library this way, but not in – or at least you can get in only if whoever is in the library opens the panel for you.’
‘This is important,’ I said. ‘We need to tell the police.’
‘Yes,’ said Annabelle. ‘We shall tell the police . . . when we need to. But we don’t want them taking over things just yet – they haven’t exactly been Sherlock Holmes. Let’s gather all the information we can first. You still need to talk to the others.’
‘I don’t think I’ll find out much more . . .’ I said.
‘Of course you will,’ said Annabelle. ‘You were so clever finding this passage. You can do anything.’
