The Herring in the Library

by L. C. Tyler

And she gave me a little kiss on the cheek.

  Ten

  ‘So,’ I said to Ethelred, once we were alone together. ‘Let me reconstruct things for you.’

  ‘We’ve just done that,’ he said, a slight note of irritation in his voice. ‘Annabelle made you sit there, then I—’

  ‘Not the murder. I mean the little farce that has just been enacted for our benefit.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘Oh, come on. Ethelred, wonderful Ethelred, just go and stand by that random bit of panelling for no reason at all.’

  ‘Annabelle doesn’t speak like that,’ said Ethelred. ‘You make her sound whiny and high pitched . . .’

  ‘It’s close enough for our purposes,’ I pointed out. ‘I don’t claim to be Rory Bremner. Now, wonderful Ethelred, why don’t you press the random bit of panelling? No, press the totally random bit of panelling harder. Well, I’m amazed! A secret passage in my own sweet little house! And I never suspected. Who would have believed it?’

  ‘She doesn’t talk like that,’ said Ethelred. ‘If Annabelle says she didn’t know about the passage . . . What?’

  ‘Let’s begin with the killer’s footprints on the dusty floor of the passageway,’ I said.

  ‘I didn’t see any . . .’

  ‘Exactly And why didn’t you see any?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said.

  ‘There were no dusty footprints because there was no dust. The passage was as clean as a whistle.’

  ‘That’s why then,’ said Ethelred. ‘What? Why do you keep looking at me like that?’

  ‘You’re a man, aren’t you?’

  ‘When I last checked, yes – though I am a paid-up member of Mystery Women.’

  ‘Joining a club devoted to the promotion of female crime writers doesn’t make you any less obtuse, unfortunately. If you were a woman in fact rather than in fiction you would know about dust and its funny little ways. Some women, not me obviously, dust things daily, because if you turn your back on dust, even for a moment, it sneaks into the room and quietly takes up residence on all horizontal surfaces. A lost passageway should be very dusty and full of cobwebs, not swept so you can eat your dinner off it. That passageway had not been lost for very long at all.’

  ‘Maybe the people who lived here before didn’t tell Annabelle . . .’

  ‘If you were selling a house, would you fail to mention to possible purchasers an interesting little feature like a secret passage-way?’

  ‘No, but . . .’

  ‘Annabelle knew very well that secret passage was there. But for some reason she wanted it to stay a secret for just a bit longer. Now, conversely, she wants people to know about it. Why?’

  ‘Or, alternatively, she really didn’t know, but just happened to ask me to . . . What?’

  ‘You’d believe anything she told you, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘I need to get on with interviewing people,’ he said, switching the subject with no great subtlety. I let it go. We both knew deep down that she was an unprincipled slapper. Soon Ethelred would be forced to admit it to himself or, alternatively, I would have to draw him a picture. One or the other. We could see how things progressed.

  ‘Who do we talk to next?’ I asked.

  ‘I talk to John O’Brian,’ he said. ‘Just me. I’m sure you’d be happier staying here.’

  I weighed up the options: sit on my own in a deserted library full of old dusty books or interrogate a young, muscular hunk of a gardener. It was a tough call.

  ‘So, John,’ I said, ‘how long have you worked for Lady Muntham?’

  John O’Brian swallowed hard and blinked a couple of times in a rather endearing sort of way before replying. He was an outdoors sort of guy and looked uncomfortable indoors, perched on the chintz seat cover in clean, neatly pressed clothes. He had the type of chin that looks good with a day’s stubble on it and the type of body that looks good with as little on as possible. I wondered if I could ask him a question that would involve him having to take off his shirt. Difficult, but not necessarily impossible.

  ‘I’ve worked here since the Munthams moved in,’ he said, swallowing hard. ‘They sacked the old gardener and Lady Muntham recruited me. She needed somebody younger who could be a bit more active in the garden.’

  Which was clearly what she got. ‘And you worked quite closely with Lady Muntham?’ I asked.

  ‘She’s a keen gardener herself. She likes to get out in the fresh air.’ He was looking at the floor as if he had developed a sudden interest in faded, moth-eaten carpets.

  ‘And she would be out in the garden how often?’ I asked.

  ‘Most days, I suppose.’

  ‘So, you’d work side by side, as it were? On hot days, possibly without your shirt on?’

  ‘I’m not sure,’ interrupted Ethelred, ‘that this is terribly relevant. We know that Mr O’Brian works here. It’s what happened yesterday that we need to concentrate on.’

  ‘So, John, what happened yesterday?’ I asked, with a sideways glance at Ethelred. I reckoned I could raise the shirt question again later.

  ‘Like I’ve already told the police,’ said O’Brian, looking up and meeting my eye for the first time. They were nice eyes, now I had their full attention. Baby blue. ‘Like I told the police, I started work at nine as usual. Lady Muntham wanted things looking right for the guests, so I said I’d keep working until all of the jobs were done. I raked the gravel. I mowed the lawns and did some weeding and some trimming. When I was done, there was a load of weeds and cuttings and stuff to take to the heap at the back of the house, then there was the tools to clean and put away, so I kept going until it was almost dark, then I had a wash and went home. This morning, Lady Muntham phoned me and told me that Sir Robert had sadly passed away and that the police were likely to want to ask me some questions.’

  ‘And that was the first you knew of Sir Robert’s death?’ asked Ethelred.

  ‘Yes. It was a bit of a shock, that,’ said O’Brian. ‘I can’t rightly get my head round it.’

  ‘And you saw nothing odd that evening?’

  ‘There were the guests arriving, but I didn’t pay much attention. I’d tidied up at the front of the house already.’

  ‘You saw nobody round the back of the house, near the library?’

  O’Brian paused and looked at me and then back at Ethelred and then back at me.

  ‘Maybe,’ he said.

  ‘Maybe?’

  ‘You’ll have spoken to Mr Brent already?’

  ‘No, he’s arriving later.’

  O’Brian paused again.

  ‘I did think I saw a fellow in the shrubbery round the back,’ he said at last.

  ‘One of the guests?’ asked Ethelred.

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘What did he look like?’

  ‘He was wearing this dark blue suit,’ said O’Brian, frowning.

  ‘Not a dinner jacket?’

  ‘No, a lounge suit. It was blue. Dark blue.’

  ‘In the fading light you could confuse the two.’

  ‘I’m sure it was dark blue,’ insisted O’Brian with a touch of annoyance. ‘Maybe with a faint red stripe.’

  ‘How tall was he?’

  O’Brian clasped his hands together and looked into the distance. ‘How tall? I couldn’t say exactly . . .’

  ‘Quite tall? Short? Average?’

  ‘I’d say . . . average,’ said O’Brian.

  ‘What colour hair?’

  Again, a fairly simple question seemed to trouble him. ‘Difficult to tell – it was getting dark, you see, Mr Tressider,’ he said eventually.

  ‘Blond? Brown? Black?’ asked Ethelred.

  ‘Brown . . . brown-ish . . . maybe blackish brown.’

  ‘Sure about that?’

  ‘Absolutely.’

  ‘What was the man doing?’

  ‘Like I said, just loitering, smoking a cigarette. Filter-tip.’

  ‘No, I don’t think you did say that,’ said Ethelred, m
aking some notes. ‘Did he stay long?’

  ‘I just sort of glimpsed him,’ said O’Brian. ‘Just for an instant. Then he was gone.’

  ‘Did you challenge him? He was, after all, in the Munthams’ garden.’

  ‘I thought he was maybe a guest.’

  ‘But you just said that you don’t think he was a guest.’

  ‘I thought at the time that he was a guest. Later, after . . . when I thought a bit more, I decided he couldn’t have been.’

  ‘On what basis?’

  ‘All of the gentlemen were wearing dinner jackets. So the man couldn’t have been a guest.’

  ‘What time was this roughly?’

  ‘I’m not sure. Round about the time the guests were arriving – could be a bit later.’

  ‘What did you do next?’

  ‘I was taking the last load of cuttings to the heap, soI just carried on.Then, like I say, I had a wash and went home.’

  ‘So, not long before Sir Robert was found dead?’

  ‘Yes, I suppose so.’ O’Brian looked worried again. Each question seemed to be making him more uncomfortable.

  An hour or so before his death, let’s say?’

  ‘You’ll have to ask Mr Brent.’

  ‘Did he see him too?’

  ‘What?’ For a moment O’Brian looked like a cat that had dodged round a corner to avoid a playful terrier and walked into a group of Dobermanns with time on their hands. He certainly wasn’t enjoying being interviewed.

  ‘Did Clive Brent see him too?’ repeated Ethelred patiently. He looked up from his notebook in his usual vague manner that might have been masking a razor-sharp intellect, or more likely just meant that he was working on his shopping list.

  ‘Somebody said Mr Brent had seen him,’ O’Brian said.

  ‘Who said that?’

  ‘I don’t remember.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter. I’ll ask Mr Brent when I see him. For the moment let’s just say it was after the guests had arrived?’

  ‘Yes, after the guests had arrived, certainly.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Ethelred, nose now back in his notebook, amending his shopping list.

  ‘If there’s anything more . . .’ said O’Brian, though he clearly hoped there wasn’t.

  ‘You’ve been very helpful,’ said Ethelred, closing the notebook.

  ‘Very helpful,’ I said.

  I wondered if O’Brian knew what a crap performance he had just given. Probably not, because he smiled at both of us as if a great weight had just been lifted from his shoulders, and walked quickly out of the room.

  ‘So, Clive,’ said Ethelred, ‘thank you for coming back. It means I can talk to pretty much everyone today.’

  ‘I wanted to check how Annabelle was anyway,’ said Clive Brent.

  Today, he was dressed in jeans and a red polo shirt with short sleeves. The first thing that struck me, sitting demurely in the background as Ethelred fired off the questions, was his strange resemblance to John O’Brian. OK, one was the hired help and the other a high-powered banker, but they both had the same sort of rugged, muscled charm. The bare arms were powerful. The eyes in both cases were blue – steely blue in this case.

  ‘Yes, of course,’ said Ethelred, in reverential tones. ‘We need to rally round. Annabelle’s being terribly brave, of course, but it’s hit her very hard.’

  ‘You’ve spoken to most of the others – John O’Brian and the rest?’

  ‘Yes, I’ve spoken to John O’Brian and the McIntoshes and Gerald Smith.’

  ‘What did O’Brian have to say?’

  ‘He was helpful,’ said Ethelred.

  Brent shrugged. ‘He’s always hanging around this place. I don’t think he has a home to go to.’

  ‘He works here,’ said Ethelred, ‘and Annabelle asked him to come in today.’

  Clive Brent nodded briefly at these self-evident facts and looked at his watch. ‘OK, well, perhaps you could ask me whatever you need to ask me?’

  ‘Very well. You’ve known Robert and Annabelle some time?’

  ‘Yes. I’ve been a colleague of Robert’s since – oh, since way back. He was already working for the bank when I joined. For a while he was in Germany and I was in London, then he was in London and I was in Singapore, but we kept meeting up-the way you do. Towards the end we worked very closely together.’

  ‘He was your line manager.’

  ‘If you want to put it like that. He always said to regard him as a chum rather than as a boss.’

  ‘But he was the boss nevertheless?’

  ‘Obviously.’ Brent glanced at his watch again. It was a smart watch.

  ‘And you left the bank together?’ asked Ethelred.

  ‘Obviously.’

  ‘Obviously?’

  ‘I’d assumed he’d told you, though there isn’t much to tell. The bank was pushing us to make the biggest profits we could. As long as the money came in, frankly nobody seemed to care much what risks we took.That’s how things were in those days. When we came unstuck on that gamble on the Singapore dollar, it shouldn’t have surprised them. We’d have made it up the following year, but they were pleased to discover they had grounds for sacking us. It was a stitch-up, but it had all become very public and everyone was trying to save their own skin. The chairman and directors were good at that.’

  ‘Still, Robert stood by you? Took the blame?’

  Brent laughed. ‘Is that what he told you?’

  ‘He didn’t really tell me anything.’

  ‘My dear chum Robert wriggled and squirmed and tried to dump one hundred per cent of the blame on me. Only when it was clear that that wouldn’t wash and that he was going to get sacked anyway did he do the noble thing, including making a token request that I should keep my job. Of course, I didn’t keep it.’

  ‘He was trying to find you another job?’

  ‘So he said. It was a bit vague. Now he’s gone, I don’t even know which bank he’d been talking to on my behalf. It was only to please Annabelle anyway.’

  ‘To please Annabelle?’

  ‘I mean, in the sense that she reckoned I’d been badly treated. She was very . . . well, supportive.’

  Ethelred nodded thoughtfully, but seemed less pleased than he might have been by Annabelle’s thoughtfulness.

  ‘You were the first to arrive yesterday evening?’

  ‘Yes, Robert wanted to talk about these contacts of his. In the end we talked a lot about golf and the weather. Finally he patted me on the knee and told me that he hoped to hear something soon about a job. Then Annabelle pitched up and said the other guests were here. Complete waste of time.’

  ‘And you were with the other guests the whole time until after Robert was found dead?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘The whole time.’

  ‘No, you weren’t,’ I said.

  They both turned to look at me.

  ‘We met in the corridor, Clive,’ I said. ‘You were on your own.’

  ‘Oh, yes, that’s right,’ said Brent. ‘I was taking a squint at a painting – it looked like a Constable – and then realized that the others had gone on. I was only away from them for a couple of minutes.’

  ‘A couple of minutes?’ I said.

  ‘Yes,’ said Brent indignantly. ‘A couple of minutes at the most.’

  ‘And you saw nothing untoward before Robert’s death – no sign of any intruders, for example?’ asked Ethelred.

  Brent’s eyes narrowed a shade. For a moment I thought he was going to pass on that one. He took a breath. ‘I thought I saw somebody in the garden,’ he said.

  ‘One of the guests?’

  ‘No,’ said Brent. ‘Somebody wearing a navy blue pinstriped suit.’

  ‘That must have seemed very odd,’ said Ethelred, frowning and flicking back through his shopping list.

  ‘Odd? Yes, I suppose it was.’

  ‘Did you tell anyone?’

  ‘I didn’t think it was important,’ said Brent. ‘I just caught a glimpse of h
im. I can’t even be sure . . .’

  ‘Old, young?’

  ‘Youngish,’ said Brent slowly. ‘Yes, perhaps thirty.’

  ‘How tall?’

  ‘Quite tall.’

  ‘As tall as I am?’

  ‘Possibly a bit shorter than you are. Say five ten, five eleven?’

  ‘What colour hair?’

  ‘I didn’t really see,’ said Brent.

  ‘Didn’t see his hair?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Wearing a hat then, maybe?’ asked Ethelred.

  Brent thought about this for a while.

  ‘A hat?’

  ‘You weren’t sure about his hair. Neither was O’Brian.’

  ‘Really? What did he say?’

  ‘Just that he’d seen somebody similar.’

  ‘With a hat?’

  Ethelred said nothing.

  ‘Yes, a hat,’ said Brent, at last. ‘I’m pretty sure he had a hat.’

  ‘What sort?’ asked Ethelred. ‘Panama? Trilby? Cap? Beanie?’

  ‘Perhaps a beanie?’ Brent said cautiously. He didn’t sound at all sure.

  ‘A blue pinstriped suit and a beanie?’ I interjected. ‘That must have looked pretty weird on a summer’s evening in the middle of the country.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Brent. ‘That was . . . that was what made me suspicious.’

  ‘But you didn’t tell anyone?’ asked Ethelred.

  ‘No. I’ve told nobody except you.’

  ‘Not even the police?’

  ‘I didn’t remember him until this morning.’

  ‘How did you see him? Were you out in the garden?’ asked Ethelred, his pen now scribbling away.

  ‘No,’ said Brent quickly, trying to read the notes upside down. ‘I saw him through a window.’

  ‘And where was he when you saw him?’

  ‘In the rhododendrons,’ said Brent. ‘He was smoking.’

  ‘You are certain of that?’

  ‘Absolutely. I saw him flick the butt onto the ground.’ He thought for a moment and then added: ‘Filter-tip.’

  ‘Well, we can get him for littering, if nothing else,’ I said.

  Neither of the men found this amusing.

  ‘You’ll need to tell the police all this,’ said Ethelred.

  Brent sighed. ‘Do you think so?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘I don’t see that this intruder can have any relevance. I’m not even sure why Annabelle . . .’