by Jack Treby
‘Of course,’ I said, trying not to sound wary.
‘You put Dottie to bed, didn’t you?’
‘Er...Miss Young and I did, yes. You surely don’t think...?’
The Colonel laughed. It was his full-bodied Labrador laugh. I pitied the person trying to sleep in the room above us. Nobody had thought to fit the Colonel with a silencer. ‘Don’t be daft, Butler. I know you had nothing to do with it. We could all hear you snoring away. Ha ha! But why did you put Dorothy to bed in someone else’s bedroom?’
I didn’t understand. ‘I...I wasn’t aware that I had.’ Dorothy Kilbride had pointed to the room. It was the one next door to my own. There had been a dress hanging on the door of the wardrobe. ‘Whose bedroom was it, then?’
‘Felicity Mandeville Jones’.’
My mouth opened and closed. ‘Good lord.’
‘You didn’t know?’
I shook my head. ‘That was the room Dorothy indicated to us. But she was a bit dazed. Perhaps she made a mistake.’ I jolted as the implications came through. ‘You don’t think the murderer might have been intending to kill Miss Jones?’
‘It’s a possibility. I gather there was some kind of brouhaha last night between her and that Daily Mail chap, Sinclair.’
I nodded. ‘There was an argument. You don’t think Mr Sinclair...?’ I had to stop myself from laughing.
‘We have to consider every possibility.’
If I knew one thing for certain, it was that Anthony Sinclair had nothing whatever to do with the death of Dorothy Kilbride. However, the fact that the Colonel was even considering the possibility was proof positive that he was unaware of the journalist’s death. The body was resting unobserved in the dining room, after all this time. And with a second murderer on the loose, I might even be able to pin the blame for Sinclair’s death on somebody other than me.
‘Goodness knows how Miss Jones will react when she realises she might have been the intended victim,’ the Colonel said. ‘I’m going to let her sleep on for an hour or two. The rest of the household as well. Don’t want to cause unnecessary alarm. The servants are in bed already, apart from Townsend and Hargreaves. Oh and the Doctor’s man. The orchestra have packed up too. They should be heading off about now.’
‘You’re letting them go?’
‘No reason to keep them here They were still playing until well after three o’clock. And the time of death was shortly after that, according to Lefranc. Between half past three and four, anyway. No, the fewer people who know what’s going on here the better. Townsend and I will get to the bottom of it. And our chaps from London will make sure we haven’t missed anything.’
If the police were not involved, there was at least some chance that I might get away scot-free. This fellow Townsend was an unknown quantity, however. ‘Has he been with you long, your valet?’ He wasn’t the man I remembered from before the war.
‘A few years. Since twenty-two, I think.’
‘And he was a policeman before that?’
‘A sergeant yes. Don’t worry, Butler. He’s as solid as a rock. We’ll get all this sorted out soon enough. Are you sure I can’t tempt you to a cup of tea?’
Hargreaves was coming down the mains stairs as I took my leave of the Colonel. Ostensibly I was returning to my room to get properly dressed. Sir Vincent had remained in the drawing room, making notes of events so far, as was his wont. I was determined to get into the dining hall while the house was still quiet. There was at least another hour to go before it got light and it might still be possible to dispose of Anthony Sinclair’s body. If he could be made to disappear completely, there was a chance Sinclair would be blamed for the murder of Dorothy Kilbride and I would be in the clear. That would mean the real murderer went free, of course, but that was a small price to pay if it saved me from the hangman’s noose. Sinclair would have to disappear forever, though, and that would take some doing. Hargreaves would have to help.
The hallway was in darkness as my valet arrived at the bottom of the stairs. ‘I’ve packed away most of your clothes, sir,’ he said. ‘Would you like me to prepare the car?’
I shook my head. ‘Change of plan. I need your help with something.’
‘Of course, sir.’
‘Is there another way into the dining room? I mean, apart from the lounge hall?’ I couldn’t go through there without the Colonel seeing me.
If Hargreaves was perplexed by the question, he was enough of a professional not to show it. ‘We could head through the servants’ quarters, sir, via the back hall.’ He gestured to a faceless wooden door to the left of the main stairs. I recognised it at once. This was the door I had come through after my first trip into the less salubrious parts of Bletchley Park mansion.
‘Get to it then!’ I snapped. We would have to carry the body out of the house through the double doors at the front of the dining hall, as I had originally planned
Hargreaves led the way into the back hall. The place was even darker than the main entrance, with only the bland silhouette of the servants’ staircase visible in front of us. Hargreaves reached to switch on a light, but I stayed his hand. It wouldn’t do to advertise our presence.
‘Do you have a set of house keys?’ I asked, my voice an urgent whisper.
‘Keys, sir?’
‘To open the main doors at the front.’
‘I believe there’s a set hanging up in the butler’s office.’
That was in the opposite direction. I grunted. A detour was unavoidable.
‘It’s this way, sir.’
I followed my man through a second door and then right, towards the kitchens.
‘The servants are all in bed, aren’t they?’ I didn’t want to bump into anybody while we were creeping about like this.
‘So I understand, sir.’
We arrived at the butler’s office without incident. Ordinarily, the room would have been locked, but the butler was away for the weekend with the rest of the staff and he had kindly left it open for us. All the important documents were secured in a small bureau, but a set of house keys had been left on a hook just above the desk.
Now, though, the hook was empty.
‘That’s a bit queer, sir. I’m sure they were here earlier.’
‘Never mind.’ With a sense of trepidation, I retraced my steps to the back hall. Hargreaves followed quietly behind as I opened a door and fumbled along another short corridor, this one adjacent to the servery.
‘Sir, may I ask...?
‘No you may not!’ I hissed. ‘Now be quiet. I don’t want the Colonel to hear us.’ I opened the narrow door and together we crept into the unlit dining hall. It was just as I remembered it. My head was clearing now. It’s amazing how quickly a hangover can disappear when one’s life is at stake. I gestured to the row of chairs along the right hand side and pulled a couple of them back from the table. Hargreaves dutifully followed suit. I crouched down to look for the body and the valet did likewise, though Hargreaves of course had no idea what he was looking for. We both peered at the underside of the table, identical quizzical expressions on our faces. I stood up and strode over to the exterior doors. They were shut, as they had been before, but the door handles had both been pulled down. When I had last been here, they were horizontal. On the carpet, too, there were scuff marks. Someone must have taken the keys from the office and opened the exterior doors.
It wasn’t possible. I stared at Hargreaves in disbelief.
The doors had been opened and the corpse of Anthony Sinclair had disappeared.
Chapter Twelve
There was more blood than I’d expected. It had oozed out to cover the pillows and splattered across the blanket and the headboard. Dorothy Kilbride lay motionless in bed, her head turned to the left, the gaping wound in the back of her neck a shocking sight even in the half light of the table lamp. I brought a hand up to my mouth and had to make some effort to stop myself from retching. This was a woman I had known since my early twenties, though we had not clapp
ed eyes on each other in over a decade. She may not have been the most vibrant human being ever to walk the earth, but Dottie was honest and polite and diligent in her work. It seemed impossible that she was dead; monstrous even. The murder of Anthony Sinclair at my own hands had not provoked anything like the same response.
Standing awkwardly in the doorway, observing her lifeless body, I was hard pressed to make sense of it all.
The guest rooms on the first floor spanned the southern side of the house, an upper and lower landing accommodating the different heights of the billiard hall and various others rooms on the ground floor. Lady Fanny Leon had a suite in the eastern corner and there were further rooms at the front of the mansion, to which most of the male guests had been relegated.
I had returned to my own room from the dining hall, in an understandable state of agitation. Reality seemed to be warping around me. Nothing made sense. Corpses were walking, old friends were dying and I was slowly losing my mind.
I stood silently as Hargreaves fussed, getting me dressed. The valet was doubtless bursting with curiosity – not to say concern – after my peculiar behaviour downstairs, but he knew better than to ask anything while I was so obviously preoccupied. I needed time to think, to straighten things out in my own mind before I could confide in Hargreaves. Above all, I needed to think rationally.
The body of Anthony Sinclair was not under the table where I had left it. Either somebody had moved the corpse, for reasons unknown, or Sinclair had not been dead and had simply got up and moved himself.
The latter possibility was terrifying. If Anthony Sinclair had somehow survived my assault with the poker – and I didn’t believe for a minute that he had – surely he would have caused a fuss, woken the household, phoned the police. He wouldn’t have just got up, fetched the keys to the exterior doors, tidily replaced all the chairs along the side of the table and then walked out of the building. The man was dead. There was no doubt about it. I am not a doctor (as you may have realised) but these things are obvious even to a layman. I had checked his pulse and placed my hand over his mouth to confirm that he wasn’t breathing. Sinclair could not have survived the battering I’d given him.
The other option was equally troubling. If someone had stumbled across the body accidentally, there should have been a similar degree of fuss. A scream, a shout. Some kind of confusion, as there had been when the Colonel had discovered Dorothy Kilbride. Alarm bells ringing, sirens sounding. No one in their right mind would simply move the body and not tell anybody else.
Unless, unless...
I stopped. My head was beginning to throb. There was no making sense of it Perhaps it was better not to try. I sighed. Poor old Dottie, I thought, lying dead in the room next door. It was time to pay my respects. Standing in the frame of the doorway, a few minutes later, I was having second thoughts. My knees were starting to give way beneath me. I grabbed the frame of the door to steady myself.
‘Are you all right, Sir Hilary?’ Townsend enquired, keeping his voice low. The Colonel’s rock-like manservant had been tasked with documenting the crime scene. He had finished taking photographs of the body with a flashbulb camera and was now packing up all the clothes from the wardrobe. Everything in here, of course, belonged to Felicity Mandeville Jones.
That was my fault too. This was meant to be her bedroom. Another cock up. Perhaps if I had managed to steer Dottie in the right direction she would still be alive now.
The flashbulb camera was lying temporarily discarded on the floor alongside the bed. Doctor Lefranc had made his examination of the crime scene and departed some minutes before, to report his findings to the Colonel. I was alone with Townsend. And with Dottie.
‘It is something of a shock,’ I breathed.
‘Had you known Miss Kilbride long?’ the valet asked sympathetically.
‘Lord, yes. Dottie and I went way back. Since before the war.’ She had seemed a permanent fixture in that outer office. There were always flowers over by the window, I recalled. That had been her influence. She’d been interested in horticulture even then. ‘You must have known her yourself for quite a few years.’ The Colonel had said Townsend had been with him since the early twenties.
The valet nodded, closing up the suitcase. ‘It’s a bad business, sir.’ He rose to his feet. He did look rather like a policeman, I thought, though definitely a sergeant rather than an inspector.
‘Do you think she was the intended victim?’
Townsend considered for a moment. ‘It’s difficult to say, Sir Hilary. Judging by the wound on the head, the bullet was fired from the doorway where you’re standing. With the light off, you wouldn’t be able to see who was sleeping in the bed.’
‘But you’d check, wouldn’t you?’ What kind of blithering idiot would fail to make sure they had the right victim? At least afterwards, if not when they actually took the shot.
‘You’d have thought so, Sir Hilary.’
Townsend bent over to pick up the camera, then lifted the suitcase and moved towards me. The household would be waking in an hour or so and Miss Jones’ maid would need access to her luggage in order to dress her. ‘I’m going to lock up the room now, sir,’ the valet said, as I hovered uncertainly in front of him. ‘We’ll put the suitcase in the Colonel’s room for now.’ There was no point disturbing the Honourable Felicity Mandeville Jones. She was probably still asleep. ‘Would you like a moment alone?’
I shook my head. It would serve no purpose. ‘No. I’m finished here.’
‘Very good, sir.’
I backed out of the door and stepped onto the landing. Townsend placed the suitcase outside, in the corridor, then returned to the room and switched off the bedside lamp. I watched as he pulled the door closed and locked it firmly; then he picked up the suitcase and made his way down to the lower landing.
I hovered for a moment, listening quietly from the top of the stairs as the valet deposited the case, locked up his master’s room and continued downstairs to rejoin the Colonel.
Alone now, on the upper landing, I looked back along the corridor. There was something here I didn’t quite understand. Actually, there was quite a lot I didn’t understand. Random facts were sloshing around inside my head like sweets in a glass jar and I was having a devil of a job keeping track of them all. But one thing in particular struck me now, as I gazed at the long row of brass doorknobs.
According to the Colonel, Dorothy Kilbride had been put to bed in a room that by rights should have belonged to Felicity Mandeville Jones. This was the room next door to mine, the one Townsend had just locked up. But when I’d left my bedroom on Friday evening to answer a call of nature, I had heard a thumping noise coming from the next door along. The middle room, not the one where Dottie had met her end. And it was this door that I had knocked on to see if everything was all right. Felicity Mandeville Jones had popped her head out, with tears in her eyes and a bruise on her face. So not only had Miss Jones been forced to sleep in somebody else’s bedroom tonight – because of the mix up with Dorothy Kilbride – she had also gone to bed in a different room the previous evening. Curiouser and curiouser.
Any chance I might have had to reflect on the peculiarity of this was disrupted by a noise coming from the fourth door along. This was the bedroom towards the back of the house that should have belonged to Dorothy Kilbride, but which was now occupied by the supposedly sleeping Miss Jones. The door was being opened from the inside.
It was far too early for anyone to be up and about and – whoever it was – I knew instinctively that I didn’t want to be seen. Luckily my own room was a few paces away. I slipped back inside, but left a small crack open in the doorway. A tall figure was moving furtively along the landing towards the stairs. I waited a beat, then stuck my head out and observed the silhouette descending to the lower landing. I came out of my room, closed the door behind me and watched him from behind as he moved along the lower corridor towards the front of the house.
The figure was not difficult to identi
fy. Even from behind, in the half light, Harry Latimer’s bear-like frame was easily recognisable. He was wearing trousers and a dishevelled shirt. His jacket was slung loosely over his shoulder and his braces were hanging down beside his legs. I followed him down the stairs and across the lower landing, tip-toeing behind him at a discrete distance. Most of the men had been billeted at the front of the house. Harry veered left into the narrow eastern corridor and by the time I’d turned the corner he had already slipped into his own bedroom. If my geography served me right, this was just above the drawing room, where the Colonel was probably still sitting writing up his notes.
I didn’t bother to knock. I flung open the door and stepped inside. The interior light blinded me momentarily.
Harry spun around. ‘Hilary!’ he exclaimed, doing his best not to sound surprised. ‘Didn’t expect to see you again any time soon. The state you were in last night.’
‘I couldn’t sleep,’ I lied. ‘What were you doing, skulking about on the landing at this time in the morning?’
‘Oh, you know, this and that. Winning a bit of dough from an old friend.’ He grinned happily. ‘You owe me fifteen guineas, old man.’
Some people are born lucky. While I had spent the last few hours navigating dead bodies, clutching my head and trying to avoid the hangman’s noose, Harry Latimer had been merrily debauching the daughter of a former cabinet minister; a young woman who was universally respected for her integrity and common sense. It beggared belief. Harry had a huge smile on his face; the proverbial cat that got the cream. ‘I’ll tell you one thing, old man,’ he crowed, his eyes sparking with delight, ‘you were wrong about Anthony Sinclair.’
He nodded his head to the far wall. The two men shared adjacent bedrooms. Harry, of course, knew nothing about the journalist’s death.
