“If I have, it’s for good reason, Richard. Believe me.” Derek suddenly turned on his heel and went, saying over his shoulder, “Good luck with Rodgers. Use the telephone in here if you want. I’ll make sure you’re not disturbed.”
Mr. Stewart stared after him, unable to even walk to the telephone until he’d worked his thoughts straight. He’d put the odds of Derek having told the truth about the death being suicide to be so short that no speculative betting man would have touched them. Yet his mother seemed equally convinced it had been murder. Why did they bear such differing opinions?
The grounds and the gardeners and the glass of whisky didn’t seem to have an answer so, after what seemed an age of standing and getting nowhere, he decided to ring Rodgers and see if he could shed even a speck of light on the affair.
The operator managed to find the number and place the call almost immediately. Rodgers was at the club and the steward, when he heard who was on the line, was more than happy to go and rouse him out.
“Mr. Rodgers?” Mr. Stewart tried to sound more chipper than he felt.
“Of course it is.” The voice at the end of the telephone didn’t seem to be exactly dripping with the milk of human kindness.
“Richard Stewart here. Friend of Derek Temple.”
“I know who you are. Coles informed me. You’re the man who’s damn fool enough not to use the title the good Lord gave him.”
Mr. Stewart was rarely lost for words, but that remark threw him entirely. Resisting all temptation to justify how it had been the feeling that the good Lord didn’t want him to use his title that had decided him in the first place, he took a deep breath and carried on. “I wanted to ask you a few questions about the night Reggie Tuffnell died.”
“Died? You mean hanged himself. Use plain English, man.”
Mr. Stewart took another deep breath and bit his metaphorical lip. If this was evidence of how a Christian gentleman who’d seen both the light and the error of his ways conducted himself, no wonder people were becoming disenchanted with the faith. “There’s sufficient doubt on that score for us to employ a more general term.” He tried to reorganise his flustered wits. “We’re asking all those present at the time whether there was anything at all suspicious about the circumstances concerning his death.”
“Not in the least. Bad egg. Did the decent thing.”
“Bad egg? I was led to understand that you believed in loving the sinner, even if you disapproved of his sin.”
Rodgers was silent for so long that Mr. Stewart thought he’d lost the connection.
“Hello? Rodgers?”
“I’m still here.” Rodgers sounded more thoughtful. “There’s a limit to a man’s patience, Stewart. I may aspire to be among the saints, but I’m not one yet. Some things become too great to cope with.”
“And what were those things? The gambling debts?”
“Yes,” Rodgers said, with a voice so relieved that Mr. Stewart kicked himself for having asked such a leading question.
“Nothing else that tested your patience?”
“Should there be?” Rodgers clearly wasn’t ready to divulge it. “As God’s my witness, Tuffnell should have found a way of settling his debts properly. As it was, he left himself only one honourable way out.”
So much for any theory about Rodgers’s sensibilities meaning he’d be unlikely to have been involved in a murder plot. It sounded as though he was the sort of person who’d have been first in line to carry out a “justified” killing. Which might mean . . .
“Hello? Is that all?”
“I’m afraid not. There’s much more which needs to be clarified. For example, this business with Archdeacon Gray. His bell sounding when he was certain he hadn’t rung it.” Not an important question, maybe, but it gave him time to come up with something more acute. Asking Rodgers whether he’d helped Tuffnell to settle those debts seemed unlikely to get a straight answer.
“It seems obvious to me that Gray rang his bell in his sleep and then said he’d not done it. I suspect he’s going gaga. It’s happened to other men I’ve known, young and old, and I suppose it’ll happen again.”
“Were you there when they found Tuffnell’s body?”
“Of course I was. I had the room just along the corridor. They made such a noise I had to come out and see what on earth was going on.”
“Had you heard anything earlier? In the night?”
“Of course I had. Somebody was stomping about. Probably that heavy-footed clod of a footman going to check on Gray.”
Or someone going to Tuffnell’s room? “What time was this?”
“Some unearthly hour. I didn’t bother to check my watch. No business of mine. Not like there were women in the house and shenanigans afoot.” Clearly Rodgers thought that hanky-panky was his business.
“But surely you’d have been too far away from Gray’s room to have heard the commotion?” And Mr. Stewart recalled his son demonstrating that the route taken that night from the servants’ quarters to the archdeacon’s room, as reported by Hayes, didn’t go past either Rodgers’s or Tuffnell’s room.
“I hadn’t got my tape measure and slide rule out and calculated it so I couldn’t possibly say.” Rodgers sniffed. “I heard something that could have been the footman or someone visiting the bathroom or some clown prancing about their bedroom. Not having the benefit of seeing through walls in the dark, I wouldn’t know.”
No point pursuing that question any further. Mr. Stewart took a deep breath and re-entered the fray.
“Ignore the method of Tuffnell’s death for a moment, if you would, and answer me this. Was there anybody who might have wanted to kill him?” You, for instance, seeing as you seem to think it’s a good thing he’s gone?
Another silence, suggesting Rodgers was weighing his words carefully. “Men he owed money to. Women he’d led astray. None of them would be shedding too many tears.”
“I’d have thought the people he owed money to would have. They won’t get it now, will they?”
Rodgers made a snorting noise. “And serves them right if the debt goes back to the tables.”
Mr. Stewart had taken all he could. “You wouldn’t have had cause to kill him yourself?” It would give distinct satisfaction to bring this man to earthly justice, no matter what heaven had in store for him.
“Don’t be a bloody idiot. I don’t mix myself up with that sort of business. I committed enough sins when I was a boy with that wild crowd, but now I’ve seen the light.”
“But you still accepted the invitation to visit Fyfield? Even if you knew it would involve mixing with that ‘wild crowd’ again?”
“Of course. I couldn’t miss the annual reunion. Anyway, Derek keeps a good cook and an even better cellar. Now, is that all?”
More evidence of Christian sensibilities. Mr. Stewart wasn’t sure that the light Rodgers had seen was the same one Paul had seen on the road to Damascus. And why did he present such a different personality than the saintly one he’d been led to expect?
“I’m sorry if you find this a trial, Rodgers, but there’s too much left unexplained for us to just shut the book.” Mr. Stewart had to try to have something to report back to his fellow investigators. Galling to come to the party empty-handed. “If it was suicide, why was there no note? We’ve been assured that, as an experienced sea captain, he’d have been meticulous about that sort of thing. ”
Rodgers snorted, almost deafening his interrogator. “Stuff and nonsense. Living your life’s not like running a ship. Who said that? The dowager, I suppose. Sounds like the sort of arrant twaddle she’d spout.”
“Do you remember an incident at Oxford?” Mr. Stewart stepped in to halt the latest tirade and changing tack abruptly. “A girl being drowned and Reggie being responsible?”
“Incident? Accident is what you really mean. Fool of a girl larking about.” The outburst continued, against women and inappropriate boating attire and then onto women in general and opinionated women in particular. Mr
. Stewart was wondering if he could be brave enough to just hang the phone up when his very own opinionated woman hove into view, with Derek in her wake. He tried to keep one ear tuned to Rodgers, on the remote chance that he might have something important to say, while trying to listen in on the animated conversation his wife was having with the duke.
“Ask him about the boy who was killed,” Helena said at maximum volume.
Who? Mr. Stewart mouthed.
“Oh, let me.” Mrs. Stewart didn’t quite snatch the phone, but there was no arguing about letting her have control of it. “Mr. Rodgers, Helena Stewart here. This boy the Ambrosians killed at Fyfield, years ago, while they were fooling about in a carriage. Tell me about him and about their involvement. And don’t spare a single detail.”
Mr. Stewart watched, helpless yet lost in admiration while his wife ensured that she was given more information than he’d gleaned in the entire call so far. He looked at Derek, who shrugged, mouthed, I’ll explain, and tipped his head towards the door. It seemed best to leave her to it.
Messrs. Coppersmith and Stewart had time for a walk by the river before having to report to the Stewarts for what Jonty had named “the first council of war.” The grounds would be the best place for clearing heads and thinking straight, rather than trying to do so within the confines of the house. And, as Jonty knew from time spent here previously, there were several stretches of riverbank that would be hidden from the house by the trees—unless some spoilsport had come along in the interim and hacked them down—so a surreptitious bit of hand-holding or arm-linking could be on the cards, rivercraft and their sailors permitting.
“I suppose Hayes will be helping you get ready for dinner again,” Orlando said, once they were well out of earshot of the house. “Tying your tie.”
“I suppose so, as that’s his job.” Jonty glanced along his shoulder at his lover, who wore a scowl and barely seemed to notice the tree shadows that had so enchanted him when they’d first arrived. “And what do you mean by that, precisely? This isn’t just about valeting, is it?”
“I didn’t mean anything.” Orlando looked shifty. Jonty had seen that expression before, back in Bath, when he’d been the object of a chase and had escaped. Just. Orlando—poor, jealous, not very (at the time) emotionally developed Orlando—had been overcome by the green-eyed monster, and it had tainted all he’d seen and heard.
“Didn’t you? Not a case of Jimmy Harding all over again?”
“Of course not.” Orlando was obviously lying. “You just seem unusually pally with him when he dresses you. And you wanted to hear the gossip about him. You asked the dowager’s maid.”
“I was making conversation.” Jonty fought back the rising tide of anger—when would Orlando ever learn? “And how can a valet help a gentleman to dress if they don’t get along with each other? I can’t be doing with this ‘servants should be seen and not communicated with’ nonsense.”
“Hmm.” Orlando avoided his eye.
“Oh, for goodness’s sake.” Jonty kicked at the gravel. Poor Hayes was going to have some hefty scuffs to cope with and he’d done nothing more to deserve them than have a handsome face, a ready wit, and a bit of a brain. And the same could be said of him. “Shall I become the social equivalent of a Trappist monk? Communicating only with you? Maybe you’d come along to my supervisions so I could whisper in your ear and you could pass my comments on to the dunderheads.”
“Don’t be so silly. Why do you always overreact?”
Jonty wondered whether he should tip Orlando down the slope and into the river right now, then nip back to the house and forge a suicide note. He could imitate Orlando’s handwriting pretty convincingly, or maybe it would be better to use that fancy-looking typewriter Derek had lurking in his study and . . . “Blimey!”
“What?” Orlando must have recognised the note of case-related excitement in his lover’s voice, as his scowl had disappeared.
“Just had an attack of the obvious. Why did nobody fake a note for Reggie Tuffnell, and therefore take away some of the element of doubt? If they couldn’t imitate his hand they could have typed it out and nobody would be the wiser.”
“Maybe they were worried about adding entities unnecessarily.” Orlando frowned in thought. Jonty recognised the expression with glee; it meant Orlando wished he’d thought of that first. “Every extraneous bit of business could be seen as a potential weak point. They could trace the machine, for example, and find out Tuffnell couldn’t have used it. When I murder you, it will be an exemplar of simplicity.”
“Don’t change the subject. They could have used the typewriter here. He’d have had access to that. The details, Orlando. That’s what’s the devil in each of these cases. A note that isn’t written and should have been. A note which is written and not used in the normal manner. The lack of logic is aggravating.”
Orlando suddenly stopped, pretended to doff an imaginary hat, and made an exaggerated bow.
“What’s that for, you clown?”
“You showing a sudden and unexpected interest in the importance of logic. Normally you’d be saying something like ‘People are peculiar, and there’s no point in expecting them to behave in a consistently sensible manner.’ Well, wouldn’t you?” Orlando carried on along the path.
“Maybe. But I expect more use of their brain cells from a murderer. What are your current thoughts on Livingstone’s note?”
“If the note was a forgery, then it was either an excellent one or both people who testified to the writing being Livingstone’s would have had to have lied.”
“Come on, down here.” Jonty swerved off the main path, into a little copse. “I’ve been thinking. And before you make a rude remark about that, hear me out. What if the note was real and the murderer got their hands on it, thinking it was just what they needed to make a murder look like suicide.”
“If you were so desperate to get rid of someone, wouldn’t it have been less risky just to talk the bloke back into killing himself?” Orlando almost tripped on a root, then righted himself. “Where are we going?”
“On an adventure. Don’t dawdle.” The path got narrower and trickier to negotiate. “And as for the risk you mention, maybe that would be the thinking of someone who had an immensely logical mind such as yours, but as we seem to have decided that murderers may not be all that bright, perhaps not.”
“Why do your compliments always sound like the worst sort of insults?”
“Because I practice them. Ah, that’s better.” They came out into a clearing, where Jonty slipped his arm across his lover’s shoulder to draw him closer as they walked. “Right. If I were an umpire, I’d be declaring a dead ball at this point. That’s all we say about either of these cases for now.”
“But . . .”
“No. Not another word until we’re ensconced with Mama and Papa. We’ll only end up doing double work so why not just forget about it until then? Look at the blue sky, look at the trees. Look at me. Is the world not alive with beauty?”
Orlando took a deep breath, eased his shoulders, and smiled. “Very much so. You’re right. Although I’m not including you in with the beauty bit,” he added, clearly not meaning it. “Better to discuss things sensibly when we have all today’s information to hand, rather than clutching at straws.”
“What else is there that’s worth clutching at apart from your backside, and there’s no chance of that until we’re home. Or in a nice suite in a hotel.” Jonty grinned. “There’s a leafy patch of woodland not far from here where we used to go and make dens when I was a lad. You don’t fancy strolling in that direction and making a den with me, now? Or making whatever else you fancy. The ground is sure to be dry.”
“Stop it. Lead me not into temptation.” Orlando grinned. “Anyway, we’d get grass stains everywhere and how would we explain them?” He unexpectedly seemed to find his shoes fascinating. “Maybe you should just slip along the corridor tonight? Much more seemly than anything al fresco.”
“Now th
at’s the best idea I’ve heard in ages. Far better than making dens.” Jonty slapped his hands together then rubbed them gleefully. “And if I get caught I’ll say we’re doing an experiment relating to the case. You are a genius boy.”
“And you’re Dr. Predictability,” Orlando said, as they moved on. “It’s always easy to raise your spirits. And other things,” he added, with one of his increasingly rare blushes. “The merest suggestion and you’re ready to leap into action.”
“Steady on. We’re in public.” Jonty cast a quick glance around him, in case anyone was in the offing. “And don’t pretend matters of the bedroom don’t always make you happier, too. Bed plus investigating, multiply by Maths and add the square root of liquorice allsorts and your life is complete.”
“Hmm.” Orlando grabbed a long stem of grass, pulled the seeds off and scattered them. “When I’ve solved that equation, I’ll let you know.”
“You don’t seem convinced.” Something was clearly still vexing Orlando—something that wasn’t, hopefully, Hayes the footman.
“I’m not sure how much fun I should be having with the investigating bit. Not when there’s murder involved.” Orlando flung the stem away. “It feels disrespectful. Not quite ‘done.’”
“I take your point. We need to go this way. Back towards the house.” As they walked, the afternoon sunshine now pleasantly warm on their backs, Jonty took a deep breath, trying to summon up the right words. “I try to think of it as being a job that has to be done. Like clearing up dead shrews from the garden when next door’s cat’s been at them. If you do it with honesty and diligence, then any intellectual enjoyment you get is a bonus.”
“And you get intellectual pleasure from cleaning up dead shrews? I must leave some in your study. Ow!”
“It’s a long time since you’ve deserved a whack, but I’m just the man to deliver some more if need be.” Jonty beamed with satisfaction. “You know what I meant. Honest job, well done. There’s no need to feel guilty.”
Lessons for Suspicious Minds Page 13
