The Stately Home Murder

by Catherine Aird

“Michael Fisher, Paradise Row, Luston,” said Constable Crosby, reading aloud from his notebook.

  “Just chance that he opened the visor. Otherwise”—the Earl gave another tug at his mustache—“otherwise we might never have found him, what?”

  “Possibly not, milord,” said Sloan. In fact the late Mr. Meredith might very well have begun to smell very soon, but in a medieval castle there was no knowing to what an unusual noisome aroma might have been attributed.

  Drains, suspected Sloan.

  “Of course,” went on his Lordship, “that suit might have acted like one of those Egyptian things …”

  “Mummy cases?”

  “That’s it. He might have … er … dried up.”

  “He might,” agreed Sloan cautiously. He would ask the pathologist about that. A mummified corpse was certainly one that stood the least risk of being found.

  “Should never have thought of looking there for him anyway. Not in a hundred years.”

  “Quite so,” said Sloan. “Now when did you last see Mr. Meredith yourself, milord?”

  “Just been talking to m’wife about that. Friday, I thought,” he said, adding, “Millicent thinks it was Thursday.”

  The Countess of Ornum had a high, bell-like voice. “Days are so alike, aren’t they, Inspector?”

  Sloan said nothing. They might very well be for the aristocracy. They weren’t for police inspectors.

  “I thought it was Thursday, but it may have been Friday.” The Countess looked appealingly round the room as if one or other of the numerous pieces of furniture could tell her.

  “I see … er …” Sooner or later the nettle of how to address this vague doll-like woman would have to be grasped. He added firmly, “Milady.”

  He doubted if she even heard him.

  “It isn’t,” she said, fluttering her eyes at him, “as if anything happened on either day.”

  “No, milady?”

  She smiled. “Then I might have remembered.”

  It was rather like interviewing cotton wool or blotting paper.

  “It would be very helpful, milady,” said Sloan formally, “if you could remember.”

  “I know.” She gave him a sweet smile. “I will try. Such a nice man.”

  “Indeed?” said Sloan, unmoved. It was no great help to him that the deceased had been a nice man.

  “Everyone liked him,” said the Countess vaguely.

  Someone patently hadn’t, but Sloan did not say so. Instead he turned back to the Earl. It was easier.

  “The pathologist will be here presently, milord, and the police photographers and so forth, after which we will be removing Mr. Meredith to the police mortuary at Berebury.”

  “Quite so, Inspector.” Another tug at the mustache. “Purvis will give you all the help you need. Unless it’s a bearer party you want. Then there’s Hackle and Dillow and m’nephew.”

  “Your nephew?”

  “Miles. M’brother’s boy. Staying with us. Hefty chap.”

  “And where would I find him?” Sloan would want to interview everybody in time—but especially the hefty.

  His Lordship withdrew a watch and chain from his vest pocket. “Silly mid on.”

  Sloan could hear Crosby snorting by his side. “Where?” he said hastily.

  “The cricket field. Playing for Ornum against Petering.”

  “I see, sir.”

  “Blood match, you know. Meredith would never have dreamt of missing it ordinarily.”

  “Keen on the game, was he, milord?”

  “Very. That’s how he got the job here in the first place.”

  “Really?”

  “Team needed a bowler. M’father took on Meredith.”

  “As librarian?”

  The Earl looked at Sloan. “As a bowler, Inspector. By the time he got past being a bowler no one else knew where to find anything in the library.”

  “I see, sir.” Sloan himself had started as a constable and worked his way up, but things were obviously done differently here. He cleared his throat. “And Lord Cremond, milord? I shall have to have a word with him in due course.”

  “Henry? He’s at the match, too. Scoring.”

  “Scoring?” That didn’t sound right for the son and heir.

  “Cut his hand on Friday,” said the Earl, “so he couldn’t play.”

  “It was Thursday, I think,” said the Countess.

  Detective Constable Crosby, who had made a note, crossed it out and then—audibly—reinstated it.

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” intervened Sloan quickly. “Nothing serious, I hope.”

  “No, no.” The Earl stroked his mustache. “Caught it on some metal somewhere, he said.”

  “I see, sir. Thank you …”

  “I blame myself about Meredith,” said the Earl unexpectedly. He had a deep, unaccented staccato voice. “This is what comes of having the house open. I knew no good would come of it in the long run but, you know, Inspector, there’s a limit to the amount of retrenchment …”

  “Quite so, milord.”

  “Though what my father would have said about having people in the house for money …”

  Sloan prepared to go. “For the record then, Mr. Osborne Meredith was your librarian and archivist, milord?”

  “That’s right.”

  The Countess waved a hand vaguely. “He was writing a history of the family, wasn’t he, Harry? Such a pity he won’t be able to finish it now.”

  “Yes,” said the Earl of Ornum rather shortly.

  “My brother’s called Harry, too,” said Detective Constable Crosby chattily.

  Inspector Sloan shot him a ferocious look.

  “Mr. Meredith had just made such an interesting discovery,” said the Countess of Ornum, undeflected. “He told us all about it last week.”

  “What was that, milady?” asked Sloan.

  The pretty, vague face turned towards him. “He’d just found some papers that he said proved that Harry isn’t Earl of Ornum after all.”

  5

  “What was that you said, Sloan?”

  Inspector Sloan said louder and more clearly into the telephone, “Burke’s Peerage, sir, please.”

  Superintendent Leeyes, still at Berebury Policy Station, grunted. “That’s what I thought you said. And is that all you want?”

  “For the time being, sir, thank you. I’m expecting Dyson for the photographs any minute now and Dr. Dabbe is on his way over from Kinnisport.”

  Leeyes grunted again. “And all you want is a Peerage?”

  “That’s right, sir. No …” Sloan paused. “There is something else, please, now you ask.”

  “And what may that be?”

  “A dictionary.”

  “A dictionary?”

  “Yes, sir. Unless you can tell me what muniments are.”

  He couldn’t.

  The two policemen had made their way with difficulty to where the telephone stood. Without the aid of the butler, Dillow, the way had seemed long and tortuous.

  And, at one point, doubtful.

  That had been when they had turned left and not right by the largest Chinese vase Sloan had ever seen.

  “Can’t think why they didn’t pop the body into that, sir,” said Crosby gloomily. “Saved us a lot of trouble, that would.”

  “There’ll have been a reason,” murmured Sloan.

  That was one thing experience had taught him. There was a reason behind most human actions. Not necessarily sound, of course, but a reason all the same.

  “This chap with the cut hand,” said Crosby, “we’ll have to have a word with him, sir.”

  “We shall have to have a great many words with a great many people before we’re out of here,” said Sloan prophetically. “This way, I think …”

  He was wrong. By the time they had taken two more turnings they were lost.

  They were in part of the house where the chairs were not roped off with thick red cord, where no drugget lay over the carpet. And on the various piec
es of furniture that lined the corridors were small, easily removable ornamental items.

  “Do you mind telling me what you are doing here?” It was a thin voice, which seemed to materialize out of the air behind them.

  Constable Crosby jumped palpably, and they both spun round.

  A very old lady whose skirt practically reached her ankles was regarding them from a doorway. She was hung about with beads, which swung as she talked. Round her sparse gray hair and forehead was a bandeau and her hands were covered in the brown petechiae of arteriosclerotic old age. In her hand was the receiver of a hearing aid, which she held before her in the manner of a radio interviewer.

  “You may have paid your half crown, my man, but that does not give you the run of the house.”

  “Lady Alice?” divined Inspector Sloan.

  The thin figure peered a little farther out of the doorway. “Do I know you?”

  “No,” said Sloan.

  “I thought not”—triumphantly—“because I’m not Alice. She’s in there.”

  “Lady Maude?” hazarded Sloan.

  She looked him up and down. “That’s right. Who are you? And what are you doing here?”

  “We’ve come about Mr. Meredith,” said Sloan truthfully.

  The beads—by now confused with the wire from the hearing aid to her ear—gave a dangerous lurch to starboard as she shook her head vigorously. “That man! Don’t mention his name to me.”

  “Why not?”

  But Lady Maude was not to be drawn.

  She retreated into the doorway again. “I never want to see him again.”

  “You aren’t going to,” muttered Crosby, sotto voce.

  “Not after the things he said.” Lady Maude’s voice had the variable register of the very deaf. “My sister and I are most upset. He used to take tea with us. We do not propose to invite him again.”

  The door closed and Sloan and Crosby were left standing in the corridor.

  “Dear, dear,” said Crosby. “Not to be invited to tea. That would have upset the deceased a lot, I’m sure.”

  “But not, I fancy, enough to drive him to suicide,” murmured Sloan, trying to take his bearings from the corridor.

  “It means something though, sir, doesn’t it?”

  “Oh yes, Constable, it means something all right, but what I couldn’t begin to say. Yet.”

  “No, sir.”

  “Now to find our way out of here.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Lead on, Crosby,” he said unfairly. “After all, you are a detective constable.”

  Charles Purvis, steward to the thirteenth Earl of Ornum, had no difficulty in finding his way about the great house and in his turn reported to his superior in much the same way as Sloan had done to his.

  “I’ve arranged for the postmistress to ring us as soon as Miss Meredith gets back to The Old Forge, sir.”

  His Lordship nodded. “And the boy?”

  “Michael Fisher? I took the liberty of slipping him a pound, sir.”

  “Good. Don’t like to think of a man lying dead in the house and us not knowing.”

  Purvis said, “We’d never have found him.”

  “No.” The Earl waved a hand. “The boy’s mother—what happened to her?”

  “Mrs. Morley gave her tea and the inspector can see no reason why they shouldn’t all go back in the charabanc with the rest of the party.”

  “Thank God for that,” said his Lordship fervently. “The boy sounds a terror.”

  “He is,” said Purvis briefly. “I’ve just been talking to the coach driver. He’s all ready to go, but he’s two short.”

  “Not the boy and his mother?”

  “No. A Miss Mavis Palmer and her boyfriend. Last seen three hours ago in the folly.”

  “Were they?” said the Earl thoughtfully. “Well, get them found, Charles. And quickly. The sooner that particular coachload is off the premises the better. And then come back here. There are one or two other matters which need attending to.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The Earl tugged his left-hand whiskers. “Charles.”

  “Sir?”

  “You’ll have the press here by morning.”

  The young man nodded. “I’d thought of that. Dillow is going to put them in the morning room and then get hold of me as quickly as he can.”

  “Then there’s my cousin and Eleanor.”

  “Miss Gertrude is still in the china room, sir. I don’t think the last of the visitors have quite gone yet. And Lady Eleanor is … er … cashing up at the front door.”

  “They’ll both have to be told.” The Earl waved a hand. “The house is full of police.”

  This last was an exaggeration. Inspector Sloan and Constable Crosby had already been swallowed up by the house. And there would, in any case, have been room for the entire Berebury division in the great hall alone.

  “Yes, sir,” murmured Purvis, who was not paid to contradict the Earl.

  “And my aunts.”

  “We’re all right for the moment there, sir. They won’t have been out yet. The visitors have hardly gone.”

  “If I know them,” declared Lord Ornum, “they’ll be abroad any minute now. On the warpath. Looking for damage.”

  Purvis moved over towards the window. “We’ve got a little time anyway, sir. They’ll wait until that coach has gone.”

  The Earl sighed heavily. “And then, Charles, you’d better find out exactly where my nephew William has been all this week.”

  Purvis hesitated. “I think he’s down, sir …”

  The Earl sighed again. “I thought he might be.”

  “Someone told me that he was in The Ornum Arms last night,” said Purvis uneasily.

  “Bad news travels fast.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Then slip down to his cottage and tell him I want to see him, will you, there’s a good chap. I think we’d better keep him in the picture in spite of everything.”

  “Very well, sir.”

  The Earl lifted an eyebrow. “You don’t agree?”

  Charles Purvis said carefully, “He’s a very talkative young man, sir.”

  “He gets that from his father.”

  “Yes, sir, but it might do some harm …”

  “He’s my sister’s boy, Charles. I can’t have him kept in ignorance of trouble here.”

  “No, sir.”

  “After all”—a gleam of humor crept into the Earl’s melancholy countenance—“we always hear when there’s trouble there, don’t we?”

  “We do indeed,” agreed Charles Purvis grimly.

  The first of the experts in death had arrived at Ornum House by the time Inspector Sloan and Constable Crosby got back to the armory. They were the two police photographers, Dyson and his assistant, Williams.

  Dyson was standing by the door lumbered about with his equipment.

  “Nice little place you have here, Inspector.”

  “And a nice little mystery,” rejoined Sloan tartly.

  Dyson looked up and down the two rows of armored figures. “Make quite a pretty picture, this will.”

  “I’m glad to hear it.”

  “The lab boys will think I’ve been to the waxworks or something.” Dyson walked forward. “Which is the one that didn’t get away?”

  “Second on the right,” said Sloan, “but we’ll want some of the total setting, too.”

  “A pleasure.” Dyson assembled his camera and tripod with a rapidity that belied his flippant approach. His assistant handed him something, there was a pause, and then a quick flash. “Don’t suppose these chaps have seen anything brighter than that since Agincourt or something.”

  Sloan was inclined to agree with him. There was an overall gloom about the armory that had nothing to do with the presence of the dead.

  Williams, Dyson’s assistant, was rigging up some sort of white sheet to one side of the suit of armor for the tilt, circa 1595. He had persuaded Crosby to stand holding one end.

 
; “Need the reflected light,” explained Dyson.

  Sloan nodded. Dyson never complained about his conditions of work. If he needed anything he brought it with him. He and Williams were self-sufficient members of the police team.

  They moved their tripod in front of the suit.

  “Inspector?”

  “Well?”

  “Open or shut?”

  “Open and shut,” said Sloan. “Crosby’s done the headpiece for fingerprints.”

  “Close-helmet,” said Dyson.

  “What?”

  “Close-helmet,” repeated Dyson. “That’s what it’s called. Not headpiece.”

  “Oh, is it?” said Sloan in neutral tones. “I must remember that.”

  There was another bright flash. Then Williams moved forward and lifted the visor. Inspector Sloan was surprised again at the sight of the dead face.

  “I remember,” said Dyson improbably, “when I was an apprentice photographer on the beach at Blackpool, people used to put their faces into a round hole like this …”

  “Oh?”

  “And we’d take a picture and they’d come up riding on the back of a sea-lion.”

  “They did, did they?” said Sloan, “Well, let me tell you—”

  “Or a camel, sir,” interposed Constable Crosby suddenly. He was still holding one end of the sheet. “I’ve been photographed riding on the back of a camel.”

  Sloan snapped, “That’s enough of—”

  “This chap reminds me of that,” said Dyson, unperturbed. “Sort of stepping into a set piece, if you know what I mean, Inspector. Just the round face visible.”

  “I know what you mean. Now get on with it.”

  “Right-oh.”

  But for the fact that their subject was dead, the pair of them might have been taking a studio portrait.

  “Back a little.”

  “A bit more to your right, I think.”

  “What about an inferior angle?”

  “Good idea.”

  “Hold it.”

  Quite unnecessarily.

  “Now a closeup.”

  “Just one more, don’t you think?” Dyson turned. “Anything else, Inspector?”

  Sloan grimaced. “I should think the only thing you two haven’t done is to ask him to say ‘cheese.’”

  “No need,” said Dyson ghoulishly. “The face muscles contract anyway when you’re dead, and you get your facial rictus without asking.”