It was not often that Charles Purvis was caught on the wrong foot. He was a naturally competent man, unobtrusively given to attending to detail. Even the distraction of admiring the adorable Lady Eleanor from afar did not normally cause his work to suffer.
But, as it was subsequently agreed, a murder in the house was enough to put any man off his stroke, to drive less important matters out of mind.
So it was that when a coach drew up at the front door of Ornum House at exactly three o’clock he was all prepared to send it away. True, it was not quite the same as the sort of coach that usually came to the house on open days. It was infinitely more luxurious; and it did not proclaim the fact in letters a foot high.
Charles Purvis saw the coach from the great hall and as Dillow for once did not seem to be about he went himself to the door.
“I’m very sorry,” he began firmly, “but the house is not open today …”
“Mr. Purvis?”
Charles Purvis found his hand being crushed in a vice-like grip.
“I’m Fortescue, Mr. Purvis. Cromwell T. Fortescue. You wrote me …”
“I did?” Purvis blinked.
“You sure did. You wrote me, Mr. Purvis, to say we might see the Earl’s pictures today. We’re the Young Masters Art Society.”
Hot on the wheels of this coach came another one.
Nothing like as luxurious as the first, it had been commandeered by Superintendent Leeyes to convey as many of his force as he could drum up to Ornum House to assist Inspector Sloan in the hunt for William Murton.
It took their concerted efforts, directed by Inspector Sloan and aided by Police Constables Crosby and Bloggs, about an hour to find him.
In the oubliette.
Dead.
16
“He can’t be,” bellowed Superintendent Leeyes.
“He is, sir. I’m very sorry …”
“I should think so, Sloan. You haven’t heard the last of this. If Bloggs hadn’t lost him …”
Sloan forbore to point out that Constable Bloggs had been watching William Murton for a totally different reason.
“And, Sloan, if you had got on to him quicker then this wouldn’t have happened …”
“No, sir. Dr. Dabbe says that’s not so. He thinks he was killed as soon as he got to the house.”
“Just after Bloggs lost him,” pointed out Leeyes inexorably.
“It means, sir, that someone was ready for him.”
“I know that, Sloan. You don’t have to tell me.”
“No, sir.”
“Ready and waiting,” snapped Leeyes.
“Yes, sir.”
“With”—on a rising note—“three able-bodied policemen actually in the house at the time.”
“Yes, sir.” It was no good explaining that Ornum wasn’t a house but a House, that it wasn’t a two up and two down jerry-builder’s delight. Or that medieval dungeons were soundproofed as a careless in-built extra.
“That doesn’t make it look any better on paper either,” grumbled Leeyes.
“No, sir.” Nothing could make that poor distorted face look any better now either, Sloan knew that. William Murton, half gentleman, half painter, father but not husband, nephew but never heir, penniless but never properly penurious, had gone to another world where presumably all things were wholly good or wholly bad.
“And who killed him, Sloan? Tell me that.”
Sloan backtracked. “Up until this afternoon, sir, we had four suspects for the murder of Mr. Osborne Meredith. William Murton was one of them.”
“We are not, I hope,” remarked Leeyes coldly, “playing elimination games.”
“No, sir. Leaving out Murton …”
“Suicides don’t strangle themselves as a rule.”
“Quite so, sir”—hastily. “As you say, leaving out Murton we would have had three suspects for the first murder.”
Sloan wasn’t a bardolator—wouldn’t even have known the meaning of the word—but he had once been to see a performance of Macbeth. It had been the insouciant irony of the cast list that he had remembered, could quote to this day:
Lords, Gentlemen, Officers, Soldier, Murderers, Attendants, and Messengers.
Give or take a soldier or two he reckoned they’d got the lot at Ornum today.
First and Second Murderers, there had been in the play?
Was there going to prove to have been a First Murderer for Osborne Meredith and a Second Murderer for William Murton?
Doubtful.
Or a First and Second Murderer for each as in the play?
A husband and wife? That most committing of all partnerships at law. My wife and I are one and I am he, the books said. With Miles and Laura Cremond it would be the other way round. There was no doubt there who wore the kilt.
Three suspects were two too many for Superintendent Leeyes and he said so.
“Can’t you do better than that, Sloan?”
“Not at the moment, sir. Miss Gertrude Cremond, Mr. and Mrs. Miles Cremond, and Dillow could all have committed the first murder.”
“And which did?”
“I don’t know, sir. Of course, the second murder puts a different complexion on things.…”
As soon as the word was out of his mouth Sloan wished he had chosen another one instead.
Any word but complexion.
William Murton’s had been hideous. A mottled reddish-blue with swollen tongue protuberant between discolored lips.
Dr. Dabbe, recalled at great speed from Berebury, had been terse.
“Strangulation,” he had said at his first glance. “Not more than two hours ago at the outside. Something thin pulled over his head from behind and then tightened. I don’t know what. I’ll have to tell you later.”
Sloan didn’t know what either. The instrument of death had disappeared between swollen, engorged folds of skin. He hadn’t realized the frightening vulnerability of the human neck. That a large and powerful young man like William Murton could be done to death with a quick twist of something thin round the throat seemed all wrong.
After luncheon.
Everyone in the house had dispersed after luncheon. Sloan had established that easily enough.
Then what?
Enter First Murderer for Second Murder?
“And why kill him anyway?” The Superintendent’s question came charging into his train of thought.
“I don’t know …” began Sloan—and stopped.
He did know.
Something at the back of his mind told him.
It teased his subconscious. Still nominally listening to Superintendent Leeyes, he flipped back the pages of his notebook. Somewhere this morning—it couldn’t only have been this morning surely—it seemed aeons ago—William Murton had said something to him which …
He found the place in his notebook.
“I don’t,” William Murton had said, and he, Sloan, had written down, “earn my keep like Cousin Gertrude cleaning chandeliers for dear life. I’m a sponger.”
How did William Murton, who was supposed not to have come up to Ornum House at all on Friday, know that Cousin Gertrude had been cleaning a chandelier all day? Something must have put it into his mind.
Not just “a chandelier,” of course, but the great hall chandelier.
That same great hall where towards evening the ancient and ageing Lady Alice Cremond had seen what she fondly took to be the ghost of her long departed ancestor, Judge Cremond.
To know that Cousin Gertrude had been cleaning the chandelier one would have had either to see her doing it or see the pieces of crystal on the table and know that this was one of the duties arrogated to herself by the formidable Miss Cremond. Or, perhaps, as a very long shot, have talked to someone who had mentioned it.
But if William Murton had been in the house on Friday after all, why hadn’t he said so?
There was one simple and very sinister to that question. Was it because William Murton had seen that same figure and not only known it not to have been Judge Cremon
d but had—dangerously—recognized it?
“Apikestaff …” Superintendent Leeyes was saying.
“I beg your pardon, sir?” Cousin Gertrude was as plain as a pikestaff; was that what he meant?
“A pikestaff,” repeated Leeyes irritably. “Was he killed with something fancy from the armory?”
“No, sir,” dully. “The armory’s locked. It’ll have been something more modern than that.”
Dr. Dabbe still hadn’t established what by the time Sloan got back to the oubliette.
It was a macabre setting for murder. Death went well with bare stone and it was the little crowd of modern men who looked incongruous.
Crosby was there and a considerably shaken Bert Hackle. He it had been who had led the police search party to this part of the house, who had given a quick jerk at the oubliette grating without considering for a single second that there might be anything at all within—still less the crumpled heap that had been William Murton.
The Reverend Walter Ames was somehow also of this party. Sloan didn’t know whether he hadn’t gone home after this morning or had gone and come back again and he was too busy to care.
Dr. Dabbe was still the central figure in the drama with the others playing supporting roles. Doctors, realized Sloan, were like that.
All three professions had something to tell the police inspector.
Rather like The Ballad of Reading Gaol, thought Sloan, who in his day had been what is known as “good at school.” His schooling had been of a vintage that had included—nay insisted—on the learning of verse by rote.
“Murton …” began Detective Constable Crosby, “shouldn’t have been in the house at all by rights.”
(“The governor was strong upon the regulations act.”)
“If he’d stayed at home,” said the law flatly, “he’d have been all right.”
“The deceased,” pronounced Dr. Dabbe, “was attacked from behind and died very quickly.”
(“The doctor said that death was but a scientific fact.”)
“He struggled,” observed medicine, “but it didn’t do him any good.”
“God rest his soul,” murmured the Reverend Walter Ames.
(“And twice a day the chaplain called, And left a little tract.”)
“Perhaps,” suggested the church gently, “in the fullness of time we shall be better able to see his life in true perspective.”
Was this man of God comforting him, too, wondered Sloan? RC. Bloggs couldn’t properly be blamed for this death, but could he, Sloan? The superintendent would blame everybody, he always did, so that, working for him, you had yourself to work out where real responsibility lay.
As for perspective it was like looking down the wrong end of a telescope. Far away lay a greatly diminished figure …
Dr. Dabbe was going now. “I’ve seen all I need here, Inspector. Send him back to Berebury and I’ll be getting on with the post-mortem for you.”
“Thank you, Doctor.”
The pathologist poked a bony finger towards the oubliette.
“Forgotten,” he said pungently, “but not gone.”
He should have worked all this out before now.
Before William Murton died.
Sloan took Crosby with him to see their Ladyships upstairs. Now that the house was really full of police he thought he could leave the oubliette for a while.
Lady Maude answered his knock and the two policemen trooped in. It was quite impossible to tell if any hasty harbinger of bad tidings had told the two old ladies about their great-nephew William. Sloan himself had broken the news to the Earl and Countess first, and then to the rest of the family. As he had expected, Lord Henry and Lady Eleanor had been most upset.
With the two old ladies, though, it was as if a lifetime of keeping the upper lip stiff meant that it could no longer bend.
“William …” he began tentatively.
Lady Alice inclined her head. “Millicent has told us. We expected something, you know. The Judge was about.”
The chair Sloan had been given was hard and straight-backed. He twisted on it uncomfortably, unsure of what to say next. “He shouldn’t have died …”
The old, old face was inscrutable. “We’ve all got to die, Mr. Sloan—some of us sooner than others.”
“Yes, your Ladyship,” he agreed readily, “but he was young.”
Sloan was struck by a sadder thought still. Perhaps, seen from Lady Alice’s vantage point, a lost middle age was not something to mourn and that, as for old age—you could keep it.
“Poor boy,” said Lady Maude. She, Sloan was sure, would have a lace-edged handkerchief somewhere and would shed a private tear for the dead William.
Lady Alice was made of sterner stuff.
She leaned forward. “Tell me, Mr. Sloan, do you read Boccaccio?”
“No, your Ladyship.” He had a vague recollection that was the name of one of the authors that some public libraries did not stock, but he was probably mistaken.
“He put it very well for us all.”
Sloan waited.
“‘Many valiant men and many fine ladies,’” she rumbled, “‘breakfasted with their kinsfolk and that same night supped with their ancestors in the other world.’”
Sloan cleared his throat. In a way, that wasn’t so very far removed from what he had come about.
“Your Ladyship, can you remember Friday afternoon?”
“Of course.”
“Teatime?”
“Yes?”
“How many cups were there on the tea tray?”
But in the end it was Lady Maude who remembered, not Lady Alice at all.
“Only two, Mr. Sloan, because we hadn’t invited Mr. Meredith, you see.”
Sloan and Crosby were walking down the great staircase together.
“We know when, Crosby.”
“Yes, sir.”
“We know where, Crosby.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And now we know who, Crosby.”
“Yes, sir.”
The dialogue was as rhythmical as their steps down the stair treads.
“We still don’t know why.”
“No, sir. Murton …”
“William Murton had to die.”
“Yes, sir.”
“He came up to the house on Friday evening though he told us he didn’t …”
“Yes, sir.”
“And saw something.”
“It didn’t do him any good.”
“Ah, but he thought it was going to, though,” said Sloan sadly. “He made the mistake of thinking he was on to a good thing.”
“And so he came up to the house today …”
“Tricky business, blackmail,” murmured Sloan ruminatively. “I don’t think our William can have been quite up to it. He should have stuck to the Earl. He would have seen him through.”
There was somebody coming along the upper landing behind them and hurrying down the stairs after them. A man’s voice called out, “Inspector!”
Sloan turned.
Charles Purvis was descending on them as quickly as he could. “Inspector!”
“Yes?”
“I’ve just been taking the Young Masters Art Society round. They’d arranged to come and I forgot to cancel them what with one thing and another …”
“Yes?” prompted Sloan.
“So when they came just now rather than send them away I took them round myself.”
Quite obviously Charles Purvis hadn’t heard about the dead William Murton yet.
“They’d come all the way from London and anyway they didn’t know about Mr. Meredith …”
“Well?”—expectantly.
“They’ve just got to the Holbein—the picture called The Black Death.”
“Of Judge Cremond?”
“That’s right.”
“Well?”
“They say it’s not a Holbein at all.”
17
Sloan would have given a great deal not to have been
interrupted at that precise moment.
The very last thing he wanted to do at this minute was to talk to his colleague Inspector Harpe of Berebury’s traffic division.
Inspector Harpe, who was known throughout the Calleshire constabulary as Happy Harry because he had never been seen to smile—he maintained that there had so far never been in anything to smile at in traffic division—had actually telephoned him at Ornum House and was asking for him urgently.
One of Sloan’s own constables brought him the message. One of the first acts of the police posse from Berebury had been to take over the telephone. Another had been to encircle the house. Lady Alice Cremond would have had a phrase for that.
Stoppin’ the earths.
That was what he was trying to do now. Now he had got onto the right scent at last.
Inspector Harpe soon drove all huntin’, shootin’, and fishin’ analogies out of his mind.
“That you, Sloan?” he asked guardedly. “About this other business—you know …”
“I know.”
“There was an accident just before dinnertime today at the foot of Lockett Hill—near the bottom by the bend—you know …”
“It’s a bad corner.”
“You’re telling me. We’ve been trying to get the county council to put a better camber on it for years, but you know what they’re like.”
“I do.”
“They say it’s the ministry, but then they always do.”
“And the ministry say it’s the county,” condoled Sloan.
“That’s right—how did you know? And everyone blames the police. It was a fatal, by the way.”
So someone had died while “they” were fighting about improving the road.
“And what happened?” Sloan prompted him. Happy Harry wasn’t the only one with a fatal on his hands today.
“We had this call and my nearest car was practically at Cullingoak—it couldn’t have been farther away, Sloan, if it had tried.”
“That’s how it goes,” agreed Sloan. He hadn’t time to be standing here commiserating with his colleagues. “So …”
“By the time it got from Cullingoak to Lockett Hill …”
With blue tower light flashing, two-tone horn blaring, and every child on the route shouting encouragement.
“By the time it arrived,” said Harpe, “the garage—the garage—if you know what I mean …”
The Stately Home Murder Page 16
