The Murder Cabinet: an Inspector Constable murder mystery (The Inspector Constable Murder Mysteries Book 7)

by Roger Keevil

  “What about the jealousy aspect, guv? How much of that last bit you put forward do you think is actually true?”

  “To be frank, sergeant, very little,” admitted Constable. “It was something of a flight of fancy. A bow at a venture, if you like. But it doesn’t answer my question as to the identity of this ‘Heather’.”

  “Well, she’s got to be one of the other women in the house, hasn’t she, sir?” said Copper reasonably. “If that note was on the hotel’s headed paper, it couldn’t have predated their arrival here.”

  “Good point. Well, at least that narrows it down. Maybe we’ll shed some light on the matter when we get the chance to take up Mr. Daly’s suggestion of checking in the library. But in the meantime, we’d better carry on. His Lordship’s Room is next, I see. That’s Dr. Neal, isn’t it?”

  Perry Neal took a few moments to answer his door. “Oh, Mr. Constable. Come in, come in. You too, sergeant.” He ushered the detectives into the room. “You’ll have to forgive me, inspector,” he said, rubbing his eyes. “But do you know, I must have dozed off. One of the hazards of approaching age, you know. I’d put some music on the radio to relax, and the next thing I know, you’re tapping at my door. And I have no idea what time it is.” He looked at his watch. “Gracious!”

  “Yes, sir, the time is getting on,” agreed Constable. “And it must be very tedious for you, being kept confined here in your room, but I’m afraid I don’t really have any other option but to insist upon it.”

  “But the question is,” asked the minister, “is it proving productive? Are you getting anywhere?”

  “I hope we’re beginning to, sir.”

  “Well, sit down and tell me.” Perry indicated the sofa, and the officers resumed their earlier places.

  “Actually, it’s rather more a case of asking than telling, Dr. Neal,” said Constable. “We’ve received quite a lot of extra information, and what I’m seeking now are the facts which join everything up into a coherent whole.”

  “Such as?”

  “Such as, sir, the fact that you didn’t mention to us that you’d had an encounter with the Prime Minister yesterday afternoon before you even arrived here at the Hall.”

  Perry looked slightly disconcerted. “That’s true, inspector. How on earth did you know?”

  “You were recognised, sir. The vicar had seen you on television recently.”

  “Oh. Is that all? Well, yes, I popped into the church on my way here, but I didn’t tell you because I didn’t think it was relevant. I didn’t want to overburden you with matters that had no bearing on your investigations.”

  “I think I prefer to be the judge of what has a bearing and what doesn’t, sir,” replied Constable bluntly. “Particularly when I’m investigating a death, and death was the topic of the conversation which you had with Mrs. Ronson yesterday.”

  “But how … I don’t see …” Perry’s puzzlement was plain.

  “You were overheard, Dr. Neal. Inadvertently, but that doesn’t alter the fact. And the exchange of words in the church between you and Mrs. Ronson does give me cause to wonder. She spoke of you praying for the forgiveness of sins, I think.”

  “Isn’t that what everyone does in church, inspector?” Perry attempted a light laugh in which Constable thought he could detect considerable unease.

  “It depends on how personal those sins are, sir. How close to home they touch. And I have the impression that what Mrs. Ronson said - on the subject of the death of a mother and child – was rather pointed. Why would that be, sir, do you think?”

  “I … I really can’t imagine, Mr. Constable.” The minister shifted awkwardly.

  “Try a little harder, sir.” Constable’s voice was implacable.

  Perry did not speak for several moments. “I can only think of one case, inspector. There was a child brought to me with some very ordinary symptoms. Nothing unusual at all, so she was sent home to recover. But as it turned out, there was more to the matter than met the eye, and the child died. It was very sad. Nobody was to blame. But the mother was so affected that she died shortly afterwards. And as they were both my patients, I suppose I have to take some responsibility.” A heavy silence fell.

  “A tragic case, sir,” said Constable in sympathetic tones. “Would it have been widely known?”

  “Why should it, inspector?”

  “So why, I wonder, should Mrs. Ronson bring it up now? I don’t suppose it would have been anything to do with the television programme the vicar said she had seen? Which centred on death.”

  “I tell you, I don’t know, inspector,” insisted Perry. He was beginning to sound increasingly agitated. “And I can’t understand why you’re badgering me about something that was dead and buried years ago. Haven’t you got something better to do? Shouldn’t you be more concerned with trying to find out who killed Doris Ronson?”

  “Everything I’m doing is concentrated towards that end, Dr. Neal,” replied Constable calmly. “And will continue to be.” He rose and, Copper behind him, moved towards the door.

  Chapter 12

  “Wouldn’t it be refreshing, sergeant,” said Andy Constable, “to get a few straight answers out of some people instead of these perpetual evasions?”

  “Well, they are politicians, guv,” Dave Copper reminded him. “Isn’t not giving straight answers what they do for a living?”

  “Maybe so,” retorted Constable grimly. “But we’ll have the truth before the day’s out, I swear. Right. Next we have …?”

  Copper consulted his notebook. “Mrs. Marion Hayste, sir. In the Red Room.”

  “Crack on, then, shall we?” Constable tapped at the door.

  “Oh, you again, inspector,” was Marion’s slightly breathless reaction as she opened the door in response to the detective’s knock. “Have you found out anything?”

  “We’ve made some progress.” Constable remained non-committal. “But I’m still piecing together all the facts of the matter. I wonder if we may come in?”

  Marion glanced over her shoulder. “Yes, of course.” She stood back.

  “As far as we can tell,” began the inspector, “you may have been the last person to see Mrs. Ronson alive. You were the last minister in for interview during that long session last night. So just on the off-chance that she may have let something slip regarding your colleagues, I think it might help me to know what you spoke about.”

  “I honestly can’t talk about confidential government matters, inspector.”

  “I fear, Mrs. Hayste, that sometimes matters are not quite as confidential as we would wish. Let me take a guess – was it all about drugs, by any chance?”

  Marion’s eyes widened. “But … how did you know?”

  Constable smiled. “Official secrets aren’t always completely secret, Mrs. Hayste. And I’m afraid that you have had in your midst an investigative journalist who seems to have ferreted out some information about your new drugs initiative for prisons.”

  Marion turned away and looked out of the window for several long seconds. She seemed to be mastering some emotion. Then she turned back to the inspector. “Lewis Stalker again, I suppose?” She sounded angry. “Are you going to tell me he’s been going about, shooting his mouth off as usual about things which are nothing to do with him? You’d think he’d never heard of the Official Secrets Act.”

  Constable was surprised at the vehemence of Marion’s reaction. “Don’t be too quick to blame Mr. Stalker, madam,” he replied. “He’s not the one who told us. And in fact, we did hear from another source about words which passed between yourself and the Justice Secretary. It sounds as if they were on the same subject. As your departmental head, she would certainly have been entirely conversant with your activities, surely?”

  “Dee?” Marion sounded reflective. “Yes, yes, of course she would. She knew all about it.”

  “We’ll be having a chat with her a little later,” said Constable, “so she’ll confirm all this, no doubt.” He smiled. “I say a little later.
I hope I’m not being over-optimistic. We have several of your colleagues to speak to before we get to her. She’s right at the far end of the corridor.”

  “Oh yes. The Blue Room. Very grand.”

  “So I come back to my initial question, Mrs. Hayste. When you spoke to Mrs. Ronson in the library last thing last night, did anything emerge during that conversation which might help me identify her killer?”

  “But I don’t see in what way?”

  “Simply that they and Mrs. Ronson presumably would have a longer history than yourself. You said that you are a fairly new and junior member of the government. So I hoped that, as she possibly knew all your other colleagues better than you, she might have given an indication of any disharmony among them. It’s a long shot, I know, but I hoped you might have been told something.”

  Marion turned her large dark eyes to the inspector. “Nothing, Mr. Constable. Nothing at all.”

  *

  “Brick wall, guv.” Dave Copper closed his notebook with a snap. “I haven’t written down a thing. There wasn’t anything worth writing.”

  “I’m not sure that’s exactly true, sergeant,” contradicted Andy Constable. “We have a couple of extra snippets. For a start, there’s confirmation that this mysterious new policy was something to do with drugs in prisons. Goodness knows what relevance that may have, and it could well have nothing to do with the row which Phil Knightly overheard between Mrs. Hayste and her boss earlier in the evening, but it’s a fact, so maybe it fits somewhere. Secondly, her very reticence flags up a thought in my mind. We’ve been told by a couple of people that she doesn’t appear to have had a lot to say for herself during the course of the dinner last night. Now it could be that it’s just what it appears on the surface – she mentioned that she’s pretty much the most junior of the gathering, so she may simply have been intimidated by the more high-powered people around her. Maybe she’s not the garrulous type. However, she was pretty quick to draw our attention to the fact that Lewis Stalker is. ‘Shooting his mouth off’, didn’t she say?”

  “She did, sir.”

  “Then since I believe the ebullient Mr. Stalker is to be found in the next room along, let’s find out if he’s got anything else he can shoot his mouth off to us about.”

  The door to the Indian Bedroom was flung wide, and Lewis Stalker greeted his visitors with a beaming smile. “Thank the lord! Somebody to talk to! Come in, inspector. You too sergeant.” He bounced over to the television, switched it off, and threw himself into an armchair. “I’ve been reduced to watching daytime soaps to stave off the boredom. I could pretend that I’m doing research for my Culture and Media portfolio,” he said with a chuckle, “but to be honest, it’s all just chewing gum for the mind. Don’t quote me, but I can’t stand the majority of the rubbish they put on television most of the time, although the government is very grateful for the revenue it brings in, so I have to try to be slightly reticent. Doesn’t always work, though, but please don’t give me away. I’m going to have to rely on your discretion.” He grinned frankly, while the detectives exchanged surreptitious looks. “However … sit ye down, both. You’d better bring me up to date with what’s happening, gentlemen, since I shall no doubt be doing the rounds of the studios when this is all over. So, tell all. All the news that’s fit to print, anyway. Isn’t that what they used to say?” He looked expectantly at Constable.

  The inspector drew breath, grateful for the pause in Lew’s flow of chatter. “I’m afraid, Mr. Stalker, that I’m likely to be a disappointment to you. It’s going to be more a matter of asking questions on my part, rather than providing answers.”

  “Oh.” Lew’s face fell. “What a shame. Well, ask away, inspector. What is it you need to know? Although I think I’ve told you pretty much everything I can about yesterday.”

  “Maybe not quite everything, sir.”

  Lew furrowed his brow. “I can’t think of anything I missed out.”

  “Can’t you, sir? Well, let’s see if I can remind you. I think you told us that, as far as you were concerned, you and the Prime Minister had a perfectly normal conversation over dinner last night.”

  “Well, yes, I think so.” The minister sounded more hesitant. “I couldn’t repeat it word for word. And you don’t always recollect exactly what you’ve said when you’ve had a glass or two of wine. Not that I was drunk, of course,” he added hastily. “I hope nobody’s been saying that I was.”

  “Not at all, sir,” said Constable. “But what they have said is that there was something of a sharp exchange between Mrs. Ronson and yourself at one point in the meal. Do you remember that?”

  “I really don’t recall …”

  “Then I’ll help you out, sir,” pressed on Constable relentlessly. “Mrs. Ronson characterised something you had said as ‘indefensible’, we’re told. I think there was mention of guards.”

  “Oh lord, yes. I remember. And Dee Nye came out with that hoary old ‘Quis custodiet’ quote. Oh no, hold on – that was when she was putting Milo down over something he’d said. Ever ready to show off her erudition, is Dee, always eager to express an opinion on what everyone else is doing wrong, and she doesn’t much care who’s on the end of her sharp tongue.”

  “So you wouldn’t want to be in her bad books over anything you’d said, sir?”

  “Not likely! If she’d been a judge in the old days, she’d have had the black cap on before you could say ‘knife’.”

  “So maybe Mrs. Nye will have caught something helpful, guv,” intervened Copper. “She was seated nearby – she might have been paying attention.”

  “It’s possible, sergeant. We’ll have a word with her in due course, see what she has to say. However, we seem to be straying from the point a little, Mr. Stalker. It was what passed between Mrs. Ronson and yourself that I wanted to check on. So, what was it that you’d said that she believed was indefensible? I seem to remember the word cropping up more than once.”

  “The trouble is, inspector,” said Lew, leaning forward confidentially, “I do so many interviews, it’s sometimes a job to remember what I’ve been talking about and when. It could have been anything.”

  “Mrs. Ronson seems to have remembered it only too well, sir, if what we’re told of her attitude towards it is anything to go by. But, unfortunately, she’ll never be able to tell us what it was.”

  “She won’t, will she, inspector?” There was a look in Lew’s eyes which Constable could not define. “That must be very frustrating.”

  “Don’t worry, sir. We’ve plenty of other areas we can explore.”

  “Speaking of which, is there any chance you might be letting us out of our rooms any time soon? I’m starting to feel a little stir-crazy, imprisoned in here.”

  Constable looked around the room. “Rather more a maharajah’s palace than the Black Hole of Calcutta though, wouldn’t you say, Mr. Stalker?” he remarked. “But no, I’m afraid that at this stage, I’d rather everyone stayed put.”

  “Well, someone seems to have had other ideas, inspector.”

  Constable frowned. “What do you mean by that, sir?”

  “I’m sure I heard a door open and close a while back.”

  “When, sir?” asked the inspector sharply.

  Lew shrugged. “Couldn’t say exactly. The passage of time’s all been a bit fluid since you cooped us all up. No proper landmarks, you see. Sometime before my lunch arrived.”

  “Any idea whose room it might have been? Close to, or further away?”

  “I honestly couldn’t tell you, inspector. It might have been anyone, and this corridor’s a bit echoey. I really didn’t pay that much attention. I just remember it registering in the back of my mind.”

  Constable sighed with impatience. “I distinctly remember asking everyone to stay in their rooms for the time being.”

  “Could have been Mr. Knightly, guv,” pointed out Copper. “Either going into someone’s room, or else in and out of those little secret stairs of his. He’ll have been up and
down with trays, won’t he?”

  “I hope you’re right, sergeant. The last thing I need is people wandering about unsupervised, treading all over our crime scene.”

  *

  “Funny, isn’t it, guv?”

  “I can’t say that I’m feeling particularly amused, sergeant,” said Andy Constable.

  “No, sir. What I mean is,” explained Dave Copper, “the exceptionally chatty Mr. Stalker suddenly seems to have very little to say on the subject of his row, if that’s what it was, with Mrs. Ronson. Now, to me, that looks very much as if there’s something he doesn’t want us to know.”

  “Which would be his motive for killing the Prime Minister, I assume?”

  “You can’t rule it out, can you, guv?” retorted Copper reasonably. “And after all, it’s got to be one of them. Isn’t he as good a candidate as any?”

  “You’re right, of course. And the number of jolly and cheerful hail-fellow-well-met murderers we’ve come across in our time certainly supports that. They aren’t all swivel-eyed silent weirdos. Sadly for us, because it would make our job a great deal easier. However, …” Constable squared his shoulders. “Life is as it is, and not as we would wish it to be. So, with that in mind, we’d better press on with our next call.” He looked at the sign on the bedroom door. “Her Ladyship’s Room. Wherein lurks …?”

  “The slightly terrifying Amanda Laye, sir.”

  “So she does. Not a particular happy lady, I seem to recall, when we first spoke to her. And I doubt if the passage of time has done much to remedy that situation. Let’s just hope that Mr. Knightly will have managed to rustle up something for lunch which will have softened her mood. Well, deep breath, and in we go.”

  “Inspector Constable, this is becoming intolerable!” Amanda Laye’s temper had clearly not improved in the way the detectives might have wished.

  “I’m truly sorry …” began the inspector.

  “You simply cannot continue to hold me incommunicado in this way,” swept on Amanda as if Constable had not spoken. “Or indeed any of us. But I in particular have matters that I have to attend to. As I may have mentioned, I have just returned from an extremely important overseas trip. My opposite numbers will have expected me to report my discussions with them and come back with a reaction from our government. This silence on my part will be inexplicable. There may be repercussions.”