The Stately Home Murder

by Catherine Aird

  “No, sir.”

  “Just before dinner, Crosby, on Friday”—with mounting excitement. “After the dressing bell had gone. While everyone in the house could reasonably be expected to be dressing for dinner in their own rooms.”

  Light began to dawn on Crosby’s face. “You don’t mean …”

  “I do. Lady Alice Cremond saw …”

  “Judge Cremond …”

  “Exactly.”

  “But he’s a ghost.”

  Sloan sighed. “Do you believe in ghosts, Constable?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Neither do I. I’m prepared to bet that what the old lady saw—without her lorgnette, mind you—was not a sixteenth-century ghost at all, but a twentieth-century murderer carrying the body of a small man.”

  It was Police Constable Albert Bloggs who disturbed them.

  Dillow brought him to the gun room.

  “He said you were here, sir,” said Bloggs, jerking a thumb at Dillow’s departing back. “I didn’t know whether to come straight here or to ring through to the station.”

  “What about, Bloggs?” asked Sloan warily.

  “That young chap, Murton, sir, who I was watching …”

  “Go on.”

  “He’s gone and given me the slip.”

  15

  “Find him,” commanded Superintendent Leeyes briefly over the telephone.

  “Yes, sir,” said Sloan.

  “And quickly.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Where did he go missing?”

  “Here,” said Sloan miserably.

  “What!” exploded Leeyes. “You mean he’s on the loose somewhere in that ruddy great house and you don’t know where?”

  “Yes, sir. Bloggs tailed him after lunch from his cottage in the village up here to the house, and then Murton went round the back somewhere and Bloggs lost him.”

  “Bloggs lost him,” repeated Leeyes nastily. “Just like that. A child of ten could probably have kept him in sight. It’s very nearly Midsummer’s Day, Sloan, it’s not even dusk let alone dark and he lost him.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “So I suppose Bloggs went round to the front door and rang the bell.”

  “More or less,” admitted Sloan unhappily. He didn’t really see what else Bloggs could have done but that.

  “And what has Murton come up to the house for, Sloan? Have you thought about that?”

  “Yes, sir.” Sloan had in fact been thinking about very little else since Bloggs had arrived at the gun room. “I don’t know, sir, but I’m worried.”

  “So am I,” said Superintendent Leeyes from the detached comfort of his own office in Berebury Police Station. “Very.”

  The Countess of Ornum poured a second cup of coffee for Mr. Adrian Cossington. It was practically cold and he hadn’t asked for it anyway, but he didn’t complain. Luncheon had been over for some time and a general move away from the drawing room was in the air.

  “I’d like you to take a look at the herd, Cossington,” said the Earl. “A good year, I think after all. You sometimes get it after a bad winter.”

  “Certainly, my lord. I shall look forward to that.” The very last thing the City solicitor wanted to do was to plod across the park after the Earl hoping to catch a glimpse of the fleeting shy creatures. Legally speaking—and Mr. Cossington rarely spoke or thought otherwise—deer were not particularly interesting to him. Being ferae naturae there was no private property in them or common law crime in killing them.

  “Just the thing after a meal, a good walk in the park,” observed the Earl.

  “Very pleasant, my lord.” Cossington was still automatically considering the legal aspects of deer. The only remedy against having your own deer killed was to prevent trespass in pursuit of them or to punish the trespasser.

  The Earl rose. “When you’ve finished your coffee, then, Cossington.”

  The solicitor hastily swallowed the trepid fluid. Ordinarily he liked a certain amount of sang froid in his clients, but the aristocracy were inclined to carry things a little too far.

  “Are you coming, too, Henry?” asked his father.

  “Er … no. ’Fraid not. Got to get the car straightened out, you know. Thanks all the same.”

  “Eleanor?”

  “All right, I’ll come.”

  Cousin Gertrude got to her feet and said heavily, “Well, this won’t do. I’ve got work to do.”

  “Poor Gertrude,” said the Countess sympathetically, “you’re always so busy.”

  “Someone’s got to do the flowers,” she said. “They haven’t been touched since Friday what with one thing and another.”

  “Mostly one thing, what?” blurted Miles.

  She ignored him. “Hackle brought some fresh flowers in this morning. That’s one thing you can say for the month of June. There’s no shortage of flowers.”

  “And no shortage of vases,” observed the Countess, “so that’s all right.”

  “Quite,” said Gertrude stiffly. “Quite.”

  Mr. Adrian Cossington felt constrained to say something about the murder. “Are you making any changes in … er … routine since … er … yesterday’s discovery, my lord?”

  The Earl stared. “Changes? Here?”

  “Yes, my lord.”

  “No.”

  Cossington tried again. “The public, my lord. Are they still to be admitted as usual?”

  “Certainly.”

  “Is that wise, my lord?”

  “Wise?”

  “The murder …”

  “If they want their vicarious bread and circuses, Cossington, I see no reason to stop them.”

  “You’ll have a good crowd.”

  “You think so? Good.”

  “Culture vultures in the long gallery,” said Lord Henry.

  “Eager beavers in the great hall,” chimed in Lady Eleanor.

  “And aesthete’s foot by the time they get to Cousin Gertrude in the china room,” added Lord Henry.

  “How disgusting that sounds,” said the Countess. She turned to a hitherto rather silent Miles and Laura. “What are you two going to do?”

  Laura said that she had a splitting headache and was going to lie down, and that Miles was going out for a walk.

  “He needs some air,” she said.

  “Just like Friday,” observed Cousin Gertrude.

  “Not like Friday at all,” retorted Laura.

  Gertrude grunted. “No, of course not. That was exercise he wanted then, wasn’t it?”

  “He got it,” said Laura pointedly, “but not by killing old Mr. Meredith.”

  “Just by walking in the park, what?” said Miles.

  The Countess made a vague gesture in the direction of the coffee pot, but no one took her up on this. “Has anyone remembered to feed the little man from county hall?”

  Lady Eleanor said, “I told Dillow, Mother. And about the police.”

  Mention of the police started Adrian Cossington off again. “My lord, are you sure that it is prudent to open the house again so soon …”

  “I think,” said the Earl, encompassing a whole philosophy, “one should always carry on as usual.”

  “A few changes might well be indicated, my lord. As your legal adviser …”

  “When it is not necessary to change,” quoted the Earl sententiously, “it is necessary not to change. I think you may take it, Cossington, that things are back to normal now.”

  They weren’t.

  Not from the view of Sloan and Crosby and the luckless Bloggs.

  Sloan had barely got back from the gun room when a police motorcyclist arrived from Berebury with a sheaf of reports.

  The pathologist’s official one, marked “Copy to H.M. Coroner”: the facts of death in the language of academe. Brutality smoothed down to detached observation.

  A note from aforementioned H.M. Coroner appointing Thursday for the inquest.

  A dry comment from the forensic laboratory: the blood from the spine o
f the book in the library complied with all the accepted tests with that of the deceased. The hairs on the instrument known as Exhibit B …

  “What’s Exhibit A?” said Sloan suddenly.

  “A for armor,” said Crosby, who had done the labelling.

  And B for blunt instrument? Sloan didn’t ask.

  Exhibit B resembled that of deceased under all the known comparison indices. So did the blood on Exhibit B. An attempt had been made to wipe it clean. There were no fingerprints.

  Two reports from London whence enquiries had been put in hand about Miles Cremond and William Murton.

  The Pedes Shipping Line was nearly on the rocks. It was suspected that the name of the Honorable Miles Cremond was included on the board of directors solely to lend an air of credulity to the operations of the company. If, the writer of the report put it graphically, the inspector was thinking of making an investment, the South Sea Bubble would be a better bet.

  William Murton lived at the address stated, which was a bed-sitter-cum-studio, and apparently possessed two characteristics unfortunate in combination—expensive tastes and a low income.

  “Living it up without having anything to live on,” said Crosby, who wouldn’t have dared.

  “Except his uncle,” said Sloan. “I reckon he lives on him.”

  “I don’t know why he lets him, sir, honestly I don’t. My uncle …”

  “It’s called noblesse oblige.”

  It would seem, went on the compiler of the report, a man with a taste for a good phrase, that William Murton pursues his career in fits and starts and nubile young ladies all of the time.

  Near the bottom of the sheaf was a scribbled note from Inspector Harpe of Traffic Division begging Sloan to come to see him as soon as he possibly could.

  Sloan slipped that one into his inside jacket pocket. If there was anything approaching natural selection in troubles it was their tendency to multiply at the wrong time.

  There was also a communication from the policeman who had interviewed the executors of the late Mr. Beresford Baggies to the effect that Michael Joseph Dillow had worked for Mr. Baggies until the latter’s death from apoplexy. Dillow had been left the sum of five hundred pounds by Mr. Baggies, being in his employ and not under notice at the time of Mr. Baggies’ death.

  The legacy had not yet been paid out owing to the difficulties encountered by the executors on the discovery that Mr. Baggies’ considerable collection of the works of the artist Van Gogh were fakes (which discovery had occasioned the apoplexy), but that Dillow would be receiving it as soon as the estate was wound up.

  “Van Gogh,” murmured Sloan. “That’s the chap who cut off his ear, isn’t it?”

  P.C. Bloggs, who in another day and age would doubtless have had both his ears chopped off for him, remained silent.

  Crosby sniffed. “Funny fellows, painters.”

  Which brought them back to William Murton.

  “It’ll take an army to find him in this place,” said Crosby, thinking aloud. “There’s I don’t know how many rooms …”

  “Just under three hundred,” said Sloan.

  “And what’s to stop him dashing from one to the other while you’re searching?”

  “Nothing,” agreed Sloan wearily. “Nothing at all. However, reinforcements are on the way.”

  On the terrace outside the gun room window a peacock shrieked derisively.

  Bert Hackle was carrying a wooden board. “Will this do, Mr. Purvis?”

  The steward measured it with his eye. “That’s about right, Bert, thank you. Now let’s see if it’ll fit.”

  Charles Purvis had in his hand a stout sheet of white card on which he had been laboring for a tidy effect. On it had been printed as neatly as possible ARMORY 2/6d EXTRA.

  “Very nice,” said Hackle, who was a great admirer of the Earl.

  “It’s not the same as a printed notice, of course,” murmured Purvis, standing back to see the effect, “but there isn’t time to have it done properly by Wednesday.”

  Hackle jerked his shoulder towards the top of the armory stairs. “Reckon they’ll let us in there again b’Wednesday?”

  “His Lordship does,” Charles Purvis looked round. “Now to find something to put the board on.”

  “What we want,” said Bert, “is a proper stand.” By rights Bert Hackle shouldn’t have been in the great hall at all in his gardening boots, but as there had been Hackles in Ornum village almost as long as there had been Cremonds in Ornum House—though not so well-documented—he was privileged in his own right. He creaked across the floor looking for something suitable. “If we was to lean it up against this we’d be all right.”

  “Not if Mr. Feathers saw us,” retorted Purvis smartly. “That’s his best piece of ormolu on malachite, that is.”

  Hackle, whose interest in minerals was confined to the rocks in the rockery, tried again. “What about that box thing?”

  That box thing was satinwood inlaid with ivory and contained the ceremonial trowel with which his Lordship the eleventh had cut the first turf for the first railway line to link Luston and Berebury. (It had been a singularly happy occasion as his Lordship, being the owner of all the suitable land in between these two places, had been able to name his own price. And had.)

  “Much better,” said Purvis. “Now, if you’ll just heave that table a bit nearer the doorway.”

  Standing on the table and propped against the satinwood box the notice was now eminently readable.

  Mr. Robert Hamilton did not accord with Inspector Sloan’s conception of the common man.

  The county archivist was exceedingly spry, erudite, and helpful.

  Inspector Sloan, being in the position of having a force too meager to be worth deploying, had taken it with him to the muniments room. Insofar as the murder of Osborne Meredith had a focal point it was in this part of the house.

  “Ah, Inspector …” Mr. Hamilton looked up. “Come in. I don’t think we can say you’ll disturb anything any more than it’s been disturbed already.”

  “No. Have you had any visitors here, sir, so far?”

  “Yes, indeed, Inspector. A Miss Gertrude Cremond came along to see if she could help, a Mrs. Laura Cremond, who thought something of hers might be in here, and the butler.”

  “Dillow?”

  “Is that his name? He left me something to eat in the library, but I asked him to bring it here instead.”

  “Not William Murton?” Sloan described the missing man. “You haven’t seen him?”

  Hamilton shook his head, while Sloan glanced round the room.

  “Someone,” observed Mr. Hamilton profoundly, “was wanting to impede research here.”

  “Yes.”

  “It’ll take a week or more to go through”—Robert Hamilton waved a hand at the chaotic papers—“and restore even the semblance of order—quite apart from finding whatever it is I’m supposed to be looking for in here.” He cocked his head alertly. “You can’t give me even a small clue as to what that can be?”

  Sloan shook his head. “All we know is that someone stirred them up and that someone tried to get in here last night after we’d sealed the door.”

  “Ah, well there’s no wilful damage that I can see, and that’s something—for there’s as pretty a collection of documents here as you could hope to find. Nor theft, I should say at a quick guess.”

  “No.”

  “Someone ignorant,” added Mr. Hamilton. “Someone plain ignorant.”

  “A woman,” said Sloan. “We have reason to believe it was a woman.”

  “Ah,” said the archivist, “that explains it. They seemed to be aiming at mayhem.”

  “I think,” said Sloan slowly, “that they were aiming at making it difficult for anyone to prove that the Earl of Ornum isn’t the Earl.”

  “Yes,” said the archivist unexpectedly. “The poor fellow wrote me about that a week or so back.”

  “He did?” Sloan sat up.

  “He was mistaken, of cou
rse,” declared Mr. Hamilton. “I can assure you, Inspector, the succession is perfectly sound. Perfectly.”

  “But Mr. Meredith thought …”

  “He made a common mistake. He was misled by a case of mort d’ancestor in the family. Tricky, of course.”

  “You mean …”

  “And he was also a wee bit confused about socage.”

  Sloan was aware of Crosby’s head coming up like a pointer.

  “Socage,” repeated Sloan carefully.

  “That’s right, Inspector. Common socage. Meredith was all right in his facts, but a bit out in his inferences. He was,” said the utterly professional Robert Hamilton, “an amateur. A good amateur, mind you, I will say that, but not a trained man.”

  “He hadn’t told anyone he had been mistaken,” said Sloan, trying to assimilate the news and place it in the pattern of the crime.

  “Now, Inspector”—Hamilton smiled faintly—“there’s not many people in a hurry to do that, is there?”

  “True,” agreed Sloan. Better though, perhaps, to admit a mistake and keep your skull intact. “This socage, Mr. Hamilton …”

  “The tenure of land other than by knight-service.”

  Why was it, thought Sloan, that no one would explain things to him in words that he understood?

  “Knight-service?” he echoed wearily.

  “That’s right,” said the amiable Mr. Hamilton. “Estates like these came directly from the crown in the beginning in return for services rendered … usually men at arms in times of war.”

  That explained the armory if not the gun room.

  “You see, Inspector, in theory all land belongs to the King or Queen as the case may be.”

  “Not still?” said Sloan, thinking of his roses, and his neat semidetached house in suburban Berebury.

  “Yes.” The archivist chuckled. “I daresay you’re of an age to have done your own knight-service yourself, Inspector.”

  Sloan hadn’t thought of it in that light before, but …

  “Not quite the same thing,” admitted Hamilton, “but not all that far away. That’s where the Earldom came in. Men who brought their armies with them to the King’s wars. They were made Earls—”

  “The rest,” interrupted the unconscionable Constable Crosby triumphantly, “were churls.”