The Murder at Redmire Hall

by J. R. Ellis

  ‘The planning was very careful and discreet and on the night it was a great success.’

  ‘Really, Chief Inspector,’ said Douglas Ramsay. ‘That’s rather an inappropriate way of putting it, don’t you think?’

  ‘I mean, of course, from the murderers’ point of view,’ continued Oldroyd. ‘But’ – here he smiled rather wickedly – ‘Lord Redmire did at least have the satisfaction of seeing his father’s trick bamboozle an audience for a second time before he died.’

  Some winced at this but there was silence.

  ‘Harry Robinson followed shortly after and then the unfortunate Ian Barden. I will return to them later.’ Oldroyd took a drink from a glass of water. ‘And so we come to the resolution of these mysteries and to the revelations.’

  Poppy hid her face against Tristram’s shoulder. A number of people shifted very uneasily in their places. The thunder, which had until this point been far off, now sounded much closer and there was a flicker of light from distant lightning. Outside it seemed almost dark, though it was still only early evening.

  ‘First of all, the Locked-Room Mystery. It has now been performed twice in this country without explanation, and we don’t know how many times it was performed in Italy long ago. Making people or objects vanish and reappear is, of course, one of the foundations of magic. It seems to defy the laws of physics: how can a person disappear from a sealed room like this and then reappear?’

  ‘I take my hat off to you if you can explain it, Chief Inspector,’ said Douglas Ramsay.

  ‘Well, we know that there isn’t really such a thing as magic, so we have to think about what the so-called magician is actually doing. As with all illusions and conjuring, one of the secrets lies in misdirection. Sometimes the magician draws people’s attention to something and then, while they are looking away, performs his trick with a coin or card. In this case we are encouraged to concentrate on the wrong idea: that the person disappears from the room.’

  ‘But surely they do, Chief Inspector,’ said a puzzled Mary Carstairs. ‘Everyone saw Freddy go into that room and then when the door was opened again he’d gone.’

  ‘Exactly,’ replied Oldroyd archly. ‘That’s what you were meant to think, but in fact Lord Redmire never left that room.’

  There were mutterings of ‘No’ and ‘That’s impossible’. James Forsyth laughed, shook his head and said, ‘You’ve completely lost me, Chief Inspector.’

  ‘You mean he was hiding in there?’ said Alistair Carstairs. ‘But that’s incredible. You yourself couldn’t find any hiding places. There were no mirrors or anything.’

  Oldroyd shook his head. ‘No, he wasn’t hiding and nor did he leave the room. There is a third alternative, which took me, slow-witted as I am, a long time to realise. I needed a number of prompts to help me to start thinking on the right lines.

  ‘The first thing that gave me a clue was a present my daughter bought for me. It was a Russian doll, and the concept of one thing fitting inside another somehow resonated in a way I couldn’t define. Obviously there wasn’t another room that fitted inside the first, but it made me consider that somehow, maybe, there was more to the whole thing than the room we were seeing.

  ‘Secondly, when we interviewed Lady Redmire’s niece, Olivia Pendleton, I at last began to form an outline of the answer. Olivia had attended the first performance of the trick, as a little girl of eight, and initially it seemed that she’d been too young at the time to remember anything significant, but she did tell us the apparently inconsequential story of her marble . . .’

  ‘Her what?’ muttered Dominic incredulously.

  ‘This marble, unnoticed by all the grown-ups around her, rolled into the locked room after it had been opened and Lord Redmire was not there. She had not been able to retrieve it then, so she went back to get it when the door was opened for the second time to reveal that Lord Redmire had returned. He was there but the marble wasn’t. She looked all over the floor but couldn’t find it.

  ‘Finally, Bill Mason, one of Harry Robinson’s friends, called me to say he remembered Harry saying in a drunken moment that in the illusion people didn’t leave the room. My first reaction was similar to yours: surely that is exactly what people did? They weren’t in the room when it was reopened, and also the first Lord Redmire actually walked to where we’re standing now after he’d disappeared for the second time. So what Harry said seemed to make no sense at all at that point, but it made me think. And I suddenly realised: yes, as with all the apparently insoluble mysteries of magic, the answer is simple – so simple, in fact, as to be almost disappointing. I came down here with my detective sergeant, went into the room and jumped up and down.’

  Dominic Carstairs’s mouth dropped open, and he looked at Oldroyd as though the man was raving bonkers.

  ‘And what I found made me pretty sure. All we had to do was find the mechanism – and I had a fair idea of where to look.’

  Oldroyd, adopting the heightened manner of the stage announcer, raised his voice, threw up his arms and struck a pose.

  ‘So now, ladies and gentlemen: the Locked-Room Mystery revealed!’

  He pulled back the curtain to expose the door, which he opened.

  ‘Detective Sergeant Johnson, please.’

  Steph came forward and entered the room. Oldroyd shut the door but left the curtain back.

  ‘OK, Jeffries!’ he called out.

  Suddenly there was the sound of some kind of mechanism whirring and then, with a faint rumbling noise, the door moved away to the left. A small section of plasterboard moved across and then another door appeared and came to rest exactly where the first door had been. There were gasps of astonishment.

  ‘Now, if I open this door, you’ll see that my colleague is not inside.’ He opened the door to confirm this fact. ‘Because, of course, this is a different room, identical in every way to the first. This is an illusion about two rooms, not one; and so we can see what Harry Robinson meant when he said that people don’t leave the room. The person who disappears doesn’t leave the room they entered: that one moves away and is replaced by this. Little Olivia couldn’t find her marble because it was in a different room.’

  Everyone was paying rapt attention now. Oldroyd seemed to bestride his audience like a charismatic performer of magic tricks himself, except that he was the anti-magician, the one bursting the bubble of illusion. Thunder sounded nearer still.

  ‘But how on earth does it work?’ asked Alex.

  ‘Quite a complicated mechanism, which is why it took so long to construct. The two rooms are mounted on a track like a railway line and they move across on metal wheels. It had to be superbly well built to feel solid. When I jumped up and down hard on the floor, I could just feel a slight movement, which told me that the room was suspended and not on solid foundations.

  ‘Two things that they could never eliminate completely were the noise of the electric motor that propels the mechanism, and the noise of the wheels on the track.’

  ‘Which is why the loud music was played each time!’ said Douglas Ramsay.

  ‘Exactly, and it was just the same nearly forty years ago. This rigid curtain conceals the moving doors and I was suspicious about that from the beginning. Whenever a magician covers things over with cloths, drapes or whatever, you can be sure that something’s going on beneath or behind them.

  ‘The fact that there are two rooms is also cunningly concealed outside. If you look at the extension that was built, it only looks big enough to contain one room. There are very wide stone pillars at each end, but these are false, so that in fact there is just enough space for two narrow rooms and to allow for the movement. The mechanism is operated by a switch in the wall just round the corner in that small corridor. That part was sealed off on the night that we were all here, and would have been on the first occasion too. Whoever is operating the mechanism can hear what is being said here by the locked room and will know when to start the music and to flick the switch to move the rooms.’

/>   ‘Well done, Chief Inspector,’ said Antonia Ramsay. ‘But you haven’t explained how someone can actually get out, which Vivian clearly did. The murderer must have used the same method to murder Freddy.’

  ‘You’re absolutely right. Maybe Detective Sergeant Johnson can explain this. Here she is . . .’ He pointed behind them.

  In a curious echo of that evening many years ago, everyone turned and was amazed to see not a triumphant Vivian Carstairs this time, but a smiling Stephanie Johnson.

  ‘Again, it’s quite simple,’ she said, taking her cue from Oldroyd. ‘You remember there is a trapdoor in the floor of the room, which leads to a cavity where there’s wiring and stuff and a concrete base. When the room moves across to its other position, this hole in the floor is no longer over the concrete base and it is possible to get out, down beneath the room, and exit through a small door concealed in the wooden panelling of the wall in that corridor where the control switch is.’

  Oldroyd took up the story once more. ‘So, on the night Lord Redmire met his end, the murderer waited underneath and climbed quickly up into the room when it had moved across. As he or she was part of the team behind this performance, Redmire might have been puzzled by this, but he wouldn’t have sensed danger until it was too late and the knife was in his back.’

  ‘Oh, Daddy!’ exclaimed Poppy, and burst into tears again.

  ‘The murderer would have acted very swiftly and as quietly as possible, though I’m pretty sure the walls of those rooms will be soundproofed. Even if Lord Redmire had cried out, he wouldn’t have been heard. The murderer exited by the same route before the room shifted back. So, instead of appearing to great acclaim, Lord Redmire, I’m afraid, returned to view as we and the startled TV audience saw him.’

  Oldroyd paused and again raised his arms melodramatically, signalling the end of part one of this extraordinary exposé.

  ‘So now, ladies and gentlemen, having finally explained the locked room and how it was used for murder, we come to the second question in this incredible case: who was responsible for the murders of Lord Redmire, Harry Robinson and Ian Barden?’

  He felt more like Hercule Poirot than ever as he looked around at each person with his penetrating grey eyes. Everyone was now totally transfixed, but Dominic Carstairs made a last desperate attempt to slow Oldroyd’s terrifying momentum. How dare this upstart play such games with the Redmire family? It was outrageous!

  ‘Oh, so it’s Cluedo now, is it?’ he said contemptuously. ‘We know the crime was committed in that bloody room with the knife, so who was it? Maybe it was the Reverend Green or Colonel Mustard? Do we all have to make a guess? Can’t you just tell us who it was without all this ridiculous pantomime? You are putting a lot of stress on my mother, who is—’

  ‘Shut up, Dominic; I’m finding all this fascinating.’ The dowager Lady Redmire raised an arthritic hand, silencing her son.

  Before Oldroyd could continue, there was a flash of light and a crash of thunder that shook the house. The drumming of torrential rain could be heard outside and on the roof. It was the perfect atmosphere for the next revelations.

  ‘We were already pretty sure that Harry Robinson’s technical knowledge was vital and that he was disposed of as soon as his usefulness was over. He knew too much. But the interesting question then was why he got involved in the first place. The answer was money. Harry Robinson had given indispensable help to Vivian Carstairs when the illusion was initially constructed, and for those services, and to buy his silence, he was paid a handsome salary and a generous pension when he retired. It was clear when my colleague and I visited his cottage and saw the expensive furniture and artwork there that he had financial resources beyond those normally available to a retired jobbing mechanic. Harry Robinson lived well. The problem was that his old employer was dead, while the present Lord Redmire was under financial pressure and probably regarded Robinson’s pension as excessive. Neither did he share his father’s sense of gratitude to his old employee. I suspect that Robinson didn’t know what was really being planned and that was why he was got rid of so quickly after the first murder. I think he was probably told that if he shared what he knew about the trick, Lord Redmire would be pleased with him and would leave his pension untouched. And I think that was agreed. Anyway, no need to speculate. We can shortly ask the other people involved – the people who devised this fiendish piece of theatre and who cleverly persuaded Lord Redmire and Harry Robinson to play their parts before murdering them. We know, of course, that no one here committed the actual murder because we all watched it together, but that doesn’t mean that no one here was involved.’

  He stopped and stared menacingly at the people before him. The spotlights cast shadows on his face, giving him a devilish appearance. Poppy clung on to Tristram and refused to look at Oldroyd. Tristram was very pale. Dominic on the far left with Mary and returned Oldroyd’s menacing look. Mary tried to look calm but was frantically twiddling with her necklace. Lady Redmire sat forward in an armchair near to Oldroyd, utterly still and slightly bent over. Alex Davis and James Forsyth sat on the far right, Alex looking at the floor and James frowning with his arms tightly folded. Antonia sat in the centre with Douglas, who was shaking his head slowly while she looked calmly and with some defiance at Oldroyd. Alistair also looked tight-lipped at the detective, who seemed to have morphed yet again into the family nemesis. Katherine seemed to be near to tears. The suspense was overwhelming.

  ‘So, Miss Carstairs,’ said Oldroyd.

  Poppy swung round. ‘No!’ she cried. ‘It wasn’t me. Why would I kill my own father?’

  ‘Maybe because he wouldn’t give you what you wanted and you also knew his gambling was steadily eroding your inheritance. You had to stop it going any further. You were also overheard having a furious row with your father just before he was murdered.’

  ‘That doesn’t mean I . . . No!’ shouted Poppy.

  Tristram had noticed the twinkle in Oldroyd’s eye. ‘Calm down, darling. I don’t think he’s serious. This is the bit at the end when he goes through all the suspects.’

  ‘You’re right, Mr Benington, although you are also a suspect. Lord Redmire refused to help you with your gambling debts but you knew that if he was out of the way your girlfriend would inherit a lot of money, which would be extremely useful. We also have witnesses to a furious row that you had with Lord Redmire at the Red Hot Poker Club.’

  Benington shrugged his shoulders. ‘True,’ he said. ‘But I didn’t kill him.’

  Oldroyd sniffed and walked on slowly, stopping at Alex Davis and James Forsyth. He nodded his head.

  ‘Well, Ms Davis and Mr Forsyth, you are a very likely partnership in this crime. Both of you were badly treated by the victim, one in love and the other in money. How strange that you ended up as partners while both being, as it were, the ex-partners of Lord Redmire. Or maybe it wasn’t so fortuitous after all. Maybe the purpose from the beginning was to plan your revenge together.’

  Alex looked away from Oldroyd in disgust, and Forsyth laughed. ‘Well, you’re still stuck on that scenario. You make it sound like a third-rate romantic thriller, Chief Inspector. You’ve certainly got imagination.’

  ‘Maybe, but if that “scenario”, as you put it, is not accurate, Mr Forsyth, then perhaps you planned Redmire’s death alone. What a useful legacy he left you in his will, which could have been a motive in itself! But I did find myself wondering why Redmire had left you that money, given that your friendship had long since foundered on the ruins of your joint business venture. I think we know the answer, and her name is Astrid – although that is unlikely to be her real name.’

  Forsyth went pale as people turned round to gaze at him. Oldroyd pushed on relentlessly.

  ‘We know all about how you blackmailed Lord Redmire after you’d discovered his link with a London call girl.’

  There were some gasps at this.

  ‘James?’ said Antonia.

  ‘It’s true,’ he said. ‘How did you find
out?’

  ‘The most likely explanation for why Redmire left you that money was that he was forced to, and then we discovered a series of payments to an account that we traced to you. The question then was: what hold did you have over Redmire? This is when we had a stroke of luck, which you often get in this line of work as a reward for your effort. The private detective you used got very suspicious when he read about Redmire’s death, so he called us and explained how you’d employed him to track Redmire to the call girl.’

  ‘Well done.’

  ‘That’s routine hard-graft policing. It’s what the police do every day to earn their money.’

  ‘However, no matter how bad it looks, I didn’t kill him,’ insisted Forsyth. ‘Why would I if I was getting money out of him?’

  ‘Maybe because you knew his money was running out so you “cashed him in”, as it were, for your legacy in the will.’

  Forsyth shook his head.

  Oldroyd turned to fix his gaze on Dominic Carstairs, who drew back as if a poisonous snake was approaching him.