by Simon Brett
‘So . . .’ Troubadour Bligh’s gaze moved firmly towards the standing side of the library. ‘. . . we are in no doubt that the murder was committed by someone “below stairs”, an assumption we can readily make because there is only one other group of people who might commit such a crime, and I am delighted to say that we have no foreigners staying at Snitterings this weekend. Though of course that is a slightly unusual circumstance. At most house parties where I am called upon to exercise my amateur sleuthing skills there is at least one unsavoury person of un-British extraction – and normally with a guilty secret in his past.
‘Be that as it may, the question now demands to be answered: which member of the domestic staff had the temerity to kill their noble benefactress? I have checked the scene of the crime for evidence and –’
‘As a matter of fact,’ Twinks interrupted coolly, ‘we can cut through all this wiffle-waffle. I do actually know who –’
‘Honoria!’ Her mother’s use of her proper name silenced Twinks instantly. ‘It is not generally thought good form for members of our class to interrupt the summings-up of common little know-it-all polymathic amateur sleuths in the library.’
‘I beg your pardon, Mater,’ said Twinks, appropriately subdued.
‘You may continue, Mr Bligh,’ the Dowager Duchess announced.
‘Thank you, Your Grace.’ The little man stood between the two social factions, giving each the benefit of his deductive wisdom. ‘As I said, I have checked the scene of this appalling crime and I have found conclusive evidence which will enable me to point a finger at the evil perpetrator.’
Blotto and Twinks exchanged looks. The temptation was strong for them both to burst into a unison cry of ‘Will Tyler’, but the look on their mother’s face strangled that idea at birth.
‘The Dowager Duchess of Melmont,’ Troubadour Bligh continued, ‘was killed by a single blow from a pitchfork driven into her back as she lay on her front on a raked-over vegetable bed in the kitchen garden.’
Oh, shift your shimmy, thought Blotto, we all know that.
But the know-it-all polymathic amateur sleuth was not going to be hurried. He had his own way of conducting his denouements and he wasn’t about to change it for anyone.
‘I examined the marks in the soil of the vegetable bed, and from that gathered a great deal of information about our murderer. Many questions were raised – questions which might not seem relevant to the average intellect, but whose pertinence was instantly recognized by my finely tuned investigative brain. The first question that seemed to me obvious to ask is why the Dowager Duchess should have been in the kitchen garden. It is not an area of the purlieus of Snitterings that she was in the habit of visiting.’
He then spelled out the way that the perpetrator had used Clutterbuck to lure his prey into such unfamiliar territory. Oh, put a jumping cracker under it, Twinks urged silently.
‘Now the murderer, as I say,’ Troubadour Bligh continued at his own pace, ‘left marks in the soil of the vegetable bed which give an exact history of how the crime was committed. Those marks are as much a betrayal of his actions as if he had left fingerprints – or indeed a signed confession.
‘From those traces I can tell the man’s height and many other personal details. I have also been able to track down the device which he used to violate the late Dowager Duchess’s body with the mark of a crimson hand. Minute droplets of the red paint he employed for that evil purpose led me to the instrument of desecration. It was not very well hidden.
‘In fact, the murderer made a very poor job of covering his tracks. Not only did he allow paint to splash on the Rolls-Royce in which the party from Tawcester Towers were driven to Snitterings, he also used the car to imprison the late Dowager Duchess’s Pekinese, Clutterbuck. Hairs from the dog are evident on the interior upholstery of the vehicle.
‘All of which evidence makes the truth of what happened as clear to me as daylight. Our murderer, born into the lower orders of society, is clearly one of those misbegotten creatures who was never content with his station in life and who bore a lifelong resentment towards the upper classes. He is someone who has embraced the evil ideology of Socialism.’
A tremor ran through both factions in the Snitterings library at the mention of this disgusting concept.
‘He is a man without moral scruples or any recognition of his appropriately humble position in society. He knows who he is, and all of you are about to share that knowledge. Unhesitatingly . . .’ Troubadour Bligh raised his hand in anticipation of his customary final denouement gesture. ‘. . . I point my finger at the murderer of the Dowager Duchess of Melmont.’
With the instinct for timing which always brought them to the library just after an amateur sleuth had solved the crime, Inspector Trumbull and Sergeant Knatchbull then appeared. Following the direction in which Troubadour Bligh’s finger was pointing, they immediately arrested Corky Froggett.
7
Wrongful Arrest
‘I don’t understand why you’re making such a fuss,’ the Dowager Duchess of Tawcester complained. ‘It’s not difficult to find another chauffeur.’
‘That is not the point,’ said Blotto, uncharacteristically argumentative to his mother. ‘Corky’s one in a million. He’s as loyal as a spoffing spaniel.’
‘What is more relevant,’ Twinks added, ‘is that he didn’t commit the murder. He’s been wrongfully arrested.’
The Dowager Duchess shrugged. True to her upbringing, she had never had much time for the concept of justice. If people of her class started asking themselves whether life was fair, they would be questioning the entire system of privilege from which they so benefited. So it was not an avenue to be explored. That the wrong person occasionally got imprisoned or hanged seemed to the Dowager Duchess part of the natural order of things. Nothing to get exercised about – particularly when the person in question was a member of the servant classes.
‘I’m absolutely determined,’ Twinks went on, ‘that we get Corky free.’
‘How on earth,’ asked her mother, ‘do you plan to do that?’
‘By tracking down the real murderer and forcing a confession out of him.’
‘And do you know who the real murderer is?’
‘As a matter of fact, Mater, we do,’ said Blotto. ‘He’s one of the Snitterings footmen called Will Tyler.’
The Dowager Duchess lost interest. If it was only another servant . . .
‘What we need to do,’ Twinks announced to her brother when the two of them were alone together, ‘is to see Corky Froggett before he gets taken off to the Tawsworthy clink.’
Blotto looked dubious. ‘I don’t think Inspector Trumbull would be very keen on that idea.’
‘Are you suggesting, me old cucumber sandwich, that I won’t be able to get round Inspector Trumbull?’
Blotto knew his sister better than to say yes to that.
Corky Froggett had been locked in one of the Snitterings extensive range of cellars. Inspector Trumbull, having been neatly twisted round Twinks’s little finger, unlocked the door for the sleuthing siblings. ‘I shouldn’t be doing this,’ he announced. ‘It very much goes against accepted police procedure. So I can only allow you to be with the prisoner for five minutes.’
‘Half an hour,’ Twinks corrected him.
‘Very good, milady. But I will of course have to be present during your conversation.’
‘No, you won’t, Inspector.’
‘Very good, milady.’
‘You go to the kitchen and get yourself a cup of tea.’
‘Very good, milady.’ And Inspector Trumbull went off to do that.
Corky Froggett had been sitting on a chair in the single beam of autumn moonlight that straggled through the cellar’s one-barred window, but he rose to his feet when he saw his visitors and stood in his customary position of attention.
‘Good evening, milord, milady,’ he said in a voice that appeared to have been born directly beneath Bow Bells.
; ‘Well, this is a bit of a gluepot, isn’t it?’ observed Blotto.
‘Don’t worry about it, milord. I’ve been in stickier situations than this. I remember when I was in the trenches and the Hun sent out a raiding party armed to the teeth with –’
‘But then,’ Twinks interrupted, ‘you had a chance of escape. Now you’ve been sewn up like a pin cushion, and there’s a strong chance of your being hanged.’
‘That’s nothing for the likes of you to be concerned about, milady. I can take my punishment as well as the next man.’
‘Yes, but, Corky,’ said Blotto, ‘it’s a bit of a candle-snuffer for you to be taking punishment for something you didn’t do.’
‘That’s just the way up the toast sometimes lands, milord. You can’t go through life worrying about every little crack in the crock-pot.’
‘I’d call being hanged more than a crack in the crock-pot,’ said Twinks. ‘Anyway, I’m delighted you’re being so philosophical about being both feet in the quagmire, but we’re determined to get you unarrested as quick as a lizard’s lick.’
‘That’s very good of you, milady, but I don’t think there’s much chance. That little twinkle-twitterer Mr Bligh seems to have got a cast-iron case against me.’
‘It may look like a cast-iron case, but the one thing it doesn’t take into account is the fact that you didn’t kill the Dowager Duchess, did you?’
‘No, no, I certainly didn’t.’ Corky Froggett was affronted by the very suggestion. ‘If I killed her you can tan my tongue and make it into a luggage strap.’
‘Well, look, if you didn’t do it,’ reasoned Twinks, ‘then there must be a way that we can prove you didn’t do it.’
‘What had you in mind, milady?’
‘Let’s say you had an alibi.’
‘Ah.’
Corky Froggett’s monosyllable was followed by a long silence. Then Blotto found himself in the unusual role of explainer. ‘What my sister means is: Can you prove you were somewhere else at the moment when the murder of the Dowager Duchess was committed?’
‘Um . . .’
‘For instance,’ Blotto suggested, ‘were you with someone else at the time?’
Silence reasserted itself. Then Twinks had one of her brain-busting moments of intuition. ‘I noticed in the library, Corky, that one of the Snitterings cooks was looking at you in a very special way.’
‘“A very special way”, milady?’
‘Yes. Like a mother duck looks at one of her ducklings who dropped off the end of the line and then managed to catch up.’
This metaphor once again silenced the chauffeur.
‘I have done some research below stairs, and I have discovered that the cook’s name is Nancy. What I am suggesting, Corky, is that that was a tendresse between you and this cook Nancy . . .?’ Enduring silence. ‘That in fact, at the time of the Dowager Duchess’s murder, you were in the company of this cook Nancy, snugly ensconced with her in the downstairs linen store?’
The expression on the chauffeur’s face told her that she had won the coconut. But all he said was, ‘If that were the case, milady, it is something I could not reveal, could I?’
‘Why ever not?’
‘Because, milady, to do so would impugn the honour of the lady involved.’
Blotto looked at his sister. ‘Fair biddles, Twinks. Corky’s right. No self-respecting boddo could do that, could he?’
‘Sometimes,’ Twinks observed, ‘the concept of being a gentleman can be taken too far.’
She and her brother were sitting in the Snitterings library, empty now after the drama of Troubadour Bligh’s accusations. Blotto looked puzzled. ‘Sorry, not on the same page, me old biscuit barrel.’
‘What I meant,’ Twinks explained slowly, ‘was that if Corky wasn’t being such a gentleman, he could reveal that he’d been with Nancy at the time of the murder and get himself off the hook.’
‘I can see that, but you have to admit that what he’s doing is rather magnificent.’
‘I don’t think there’s anything very magnificent about getting hanged for a crime you didn’t commit.’
‘No, but it still is the gentlemanly thing to do.’
‘For the love of strawberries, Blotto! Corky Froggett isn’t even a gentleman, so there’s no need for him to be bound by the code of a gentleman.’
It was one of those very rare moments when his sister disappointed Blotto. ‘Corky Froggett is one of nature’s gentlemen,’ he said quietly.
‘Yes, yes.’ A furrow of frustration formed on Twinks’s perfect forehead. ‘Well, all it means is that we’ve got to produce the real coffinator by express delivery. We must find Will Tyler.’
‘And how do you propose setting about that?’
‘First thing in the morning I will examine his living quarters with a pair of fine eyebrow tweezers. See if I can find any clues.’
‘Shall I come and help?’
Twinks made her negative response as gracious as she could. Previous experience had told her that having Blotto with her on a clue-gathering mission was a bit like inviting a herd of buffalo. ‘Anyway,’ she went on, ‘there’s something else you need to do.’
‘Oh? What’s that? Come on, uncage the ferrets, old pineapple.’
‘When we know where to look for Will Tyler, we’re definitely going to need transport to track him down. Tomorrow morning you must go back to Tawcester Towers to pick up the Lagonda.’
A beatific smile settled on Blotto’s face. He’d felt incomplete at Snitterings without his precious motor. Now he would be a whole man again. He thought, to fulfil himself totally, while he was at Tawcester Towers he might pick up his cricket bat too.
8
A Vile Conspiracy
The following morning Corky Froggett was taken in a Black Maria by Inspector Trumbull and Sergeant Knatchbull to Tawsworthy police station. Twinks saw the cook Nancy waving him off, and there was a tear in the woman’s eye. For a moment Twinks contemplated confronting her, asking whether she would risk the hazard to her honour and supply the chauffeur with an alibi. But she remembered what her brother had said and restrained herself.
Blotto himself left soon after. Though the Black Maria was driving virtually past Tawcester Towers, it would have been unthinkable for the police officers to have offered a lift to someone of Blotto’s breeding. So he was driven back home by one of the Snitterings chauffeurs in one of the Snitterings Rolls-Royces.
Though he was unaware of the fact, Blotto too was waved off by a woman with a tear in her eye. Laetitia Melmont watched his departure from her bedroom window. Her match-making ambitions had been merely interrupted by her mother’s death. She still had Blotto in her sights and was determined to bag him. And when Laetitia Melmont had her mind stuck on something, she demonstrated powers of adhesion that made limpets look apathetic. As the nuns at her convent school had discovered over the business of the Jam Roly-Poly
For the next stage of her investigation Twinks once again sought out the Snitterings butler Proops. She found him in his pantry, a man at ease with himself. For a while the murder of the Dowager Duchess had threatened to disrupt the carefully regulated rhythms of the great house. Now that a perpetrator of the crime had been identified – even though it wasn’t the real perpetrator of the crime – life could return to its unhurried normality.
Proops was therefore less than enthusiastic to discover that one of the house guests, Lady Honoria Lyminster, seemed to feel that there were still some aspects of the murder that required investigation. Of course it was not his place to argue with someone of her breeding, but butlerly resentment at what he was being asked to do showed in the slightest of muscular twitches at one corner of his mouth.
Her first request was a strange one. Did he by any chance have a photograph of Will Tyler? Proops was about to point out to the lady that people below stairs were not usually the subject of photographic portraiture, when he remembered that a picture had been taken of the entire staff when the King had vis
ited Snitterings. He found a copy of the print and pointed out the perfidious footman. Twinks saw a tall young man with long hair and an expression of downtrodden resentment. She clicked her eyelids together twice like a camera shutter, and the image was indelibly printed on to her memory.
To Proops’s annoyance, it turned out that that was not all this inconvenient house guest required. Acceding with bad grace to her second request, he summoned a footman to show the lady to the quarters formerly occupied by Will Tyler. This was an area of Snitterings into which someone like Twinks would not normally trespass. The staff accommodation, accessed by the back stairs, was a warren of attics and garrets, none of whose tiny rooms looked out over the front of the house.
As they climbed through the floors, Twinks tried to engage her guide in conversation. Unusually, her efforts went unrewarded. All she received for her pains were monosyllables which managed to keep only just the right side of civility. She was certainly not likely to glean any information about Will Tyler from his fellow footman.
He stopped by a door in the attic corridor and indicated that they had reached their destination. Announcing brusquely that, according to Proops’s instructions, he would stay by the door during her researches, he let Twinks into the room.
The space was cramped, with unpapered wooden walls. It was more like an animal stall than a place for human habitation. For a fleeting moment Twinks began to consider that perhaps she ought to do more work with the poor. But the aberrant thought soon passed, and comforting aristocratic insensitivity reasserted itself.
The room’s only furniture was a bed with a straw mattress and a broken-down chair. Which was just as well, because there wouldn’t have been room for anything else. Hanging from a nail by the door was a spare footman’s uniform, from which emanated the odour of ancient sweat.
The room looked, Twinks supposed, exactly as the room of a servant should look (it was one of the few subjects on which she wasn’t an expert). There was only one discordant element in its decor. On a small shelf above the bed stood a row of books. Instinctively sensing their importance, Twinks moved across to examine them.
