“Sergeant!” Thackeray’s sudden shout was unusually urgent.
Cribb left the desk as it was and ran to the staircase, mounting it in threes.
“In here!” The Constable was at a door at the top of the stairs. Cribb followed him through a dressing room to a second door. “It was locked,” Thackeray explained, “so I put my boot to it.” The splintered door frame showed the result.
Cribb walked to the bed and gently peeled back the sheet from Isabel Vibart’s body. It was unclothed, and blood had been washed from the wounds below the left breast, ugly stab wounds, all the more offensive for being cleaned and exposed as gaping punctures in the otherwise flawless flesh.
After carefully examining the bruised neck and left shoulder and the hands and fingernails, Cribb replaced the sheet without a word.
Thackeray waited, his brain in a ferment of questions he dared not put to Cribb. Who would want to stab Isabel Vibart, if this were she? How long had she been dead? Who had cleaned her wounds? Why were the servants in such high spirits when they left the Hall? What had this to do with the shot dogs? Or the death of Quinton?
Cribb’s reaction began at a more practical level.
“Whoever did this had a rare amount of blood on his clothes.” His eye lighted on a linen basket in the corner of the room. “Take a look in there.”
Thackeray drew out a pair of heavily bloodstained sheets and spread them across the floor for Cribb to examine.
They manifestly confirmed the Sergeant’s deduction. He turned to look at the still-open safe in the wall.
“Theft?” murmured Thackeray, as he replaced the sheets in the basket.
“Could be.” Cribb was already at the window, examining the sill. “But the murderer came through the door, in my opinion.” He tapped his nose with his forefinger as though it might lead him independently to the vital clue. Then he surprised Thackeray. “She was a very handsome woman, and I’m sorry she was knifed, but she’s likely to distract us at the moment. It’s Quinton’s murderer I need to find. If Jago’s half the detective he ought to be, he’ll know who murdered Mrs. Vibart. We’ve barely twenty minutes now, Thackeray.
Carry on the search for evidence of Matthew Quinton.”
Really! With a scarcely veiled shrug of the shoulders, Thackeray went off to search the other bedrooms. If he found a corpse in each one, he doubted whether it would impress Cribb in his present mood. He heard him return downstairs.
It was methodical, Thackeray reasoned, to go to the farthest room first and work back towards the staircase, so he followed the corridor as far as he could and opened the door facing him, not without a discreet knock. Rarely had he seen such disorder in a respectable house; he might have stepped into a common lodging house in H Division. An unmade bed was piled with newspapers and sheets of music. The Canterbury which should have held the music, a fine papier-mache rack inlaid with mother-of-pearl, was empty and upside-down on the washstand, among shaving mugs and empty wine bottles. Thackeray stepped into the room, taking care not to crush a china dog lying in his path, but denting a copper kettle with his other foot. Scarcely a foot of flooring was not occupied by discarded clothes or ornaments ousted from the mantelpiece. The drawers, when he examined them, were practically empty; all the clothes, he supposed, were scattered about the room. Even the organ-a deuced eccentric item of furniture for a bedroom, but supposedly the occupant was a devoted musician-served as a coathanger, for a nightshirt was suspended on one candleholder and a tall hat on the other. He pulled open the hinged doors at the front and peered into the mechanism.
Pianos had been known to harbour vital evidence on occasions; why not organs? This one, though, had nothing more sinister than dust and dead flies. Thackeray brushed his sleeve, took a last look in the wardrobe, and abandoned the room.
He moved to the next, D’Estin’s, by the size of the suits in the wardrobe. By contrast, exceedingly tidy-fit for an officer’s inspection. He had to search to find any personal items other than clothes. On top of the chest of drawers was a gun case, empty. The case of butterflies on the mantelpiece had long lost its ornamental quality; as he moved it to look behind, a fritillary and its pin dropped to join the other casualties at the bottom of the case. He gave his attention to the suits, feeling (with a slight twinge of shame) into the pockets for letters. They contained nothing but handkerchiefs and small change. D’Estin was either singularly careful or totally friendless.
The next bedroom had obviously been unused, so after a cursory search Thackeray moved on to one which had certainly been slept in. The bedclothes were still flung back, and would remain so now that the servants had gone away.
Under the bed was a portmanteau, which he dragged out in some expectation. He soon unfastened the straps and pulled back the lid. There was a framed picture inside, face downwards. Quinton? He turned it over. Blondin. He was in Henry Jago’s room.
Thackeray was never sure afterwards why he felt an impulse when he got up from his knees to lift the pillow of Jago’s bed. But he remembered for the rest of his career the shock of discovering there a large bundle of five-pound notes. There must have been a hundred on the mattress, loosely tied with string. A hundred fivers! Jago, he knew, came from a well-to-do family, but how could he possibly have taken so much to Radstock Hall? And why? It was equivalent to six years’ pay! He dropped the pillow.
“Sergeant!”
Cribb came up like a surfacing dolphin. “Found something?”
Gingerly, Thackeray lifted the edge of the pillow again, ready to admit to hallucination. The bundle remained there.
He almost whispered, “Jago.” For the present he was stunned by the monstrous implications.
Cribb packed up the notes and riffled the edges speculatively across his palm. Then he put them in his pocket. “Precious little time,” he said. “Better look at the next room.”
Thackeray gladly went, tacitly agreeing that, whatever his discovery meant, there were dangers in trying to account for it. If corruption were involved, it was as contagious as cholera.
When three chief inspectors could be brought to trial, what were the chances of a sergeant and two constables?
Ten minutes later he sat glumly on the window seat at the head of the stairs with Cribb, having found none of the evidence they needed.
“It’s in this place somewhere,” Cribb said, “and all together. I’ve done every deuced room downstairs, including the servants’ quarters. Even felt the panelling in the hall.
These old buildings-” He broke off and galloped downstairs, watched in amazement by Thackeray. Then he commenced reclimbing the stairs on his hands and knees, tapping each one. “Should have thought of it,” he shouted up as he worked. “Tudor building. Priest’s hole. There was a Catholic priest who spent his life touring the country constructing the things. They’d use the roof as a chapel and have a hiding place for the priest close by. Usually in the stairs.” He tapped at the wood with increasing agitation as he neared the top of the stairs. They sounded consistently solid. He reached the last stair, thumped at it like a bailiff, and then straightened up, more surprised than disappointed. “Set of blasted Protestants,” he said as he sat with Thackeray again, surveying his reddened knuckles.
He withdrew his watch, studied it, and shook his head.
“Can you ride a horse?” he asked unexpectedly.
“A horse? I’ve sat in a saddle once or twice, Sarge, but I can’t claim to have much experience.”
“Must be a pair of hacks in the stables,” Cribb explained.
“You remember D’Estin and company riding out to the Meanix fight?”
Like a scene from his childhood. “Certainly, Sarge.”
“We can give ourselves another twenty minutes, then.”
Thackeray said nothing. Personally he doubted whether twenty minutes more at Radstock Hall were worth saddle soreness for a week. He put his hands on the edge of the window seat to raise himself for a further search, although he did not know where. As he did so, there was
a sound from inside, a dull thud.
“Did you look in here?” demanded Cribb.
Thackeray nodded. Of course he had. Wasn’t it an obvious place? “Just bedding, Sergeant. Sheets and pillowcases.
I lifted them all out. There’s nothing else in there.”
“I believe you,” said Cribb. All the same, he pulled back the hasp that secured the lid of the window seat and lifted it.
There was nothing inside.
Thackeray blinked. “It’s impossible! There were sheets-”
“False bottom.” Cribb was already on his knees groping at the sides of the interior for a release catch. “It opened up and they slid underneath.”
But in spite of his methodical probing of the sides and bottom, the trick would not work for Cribb. The chest, which was about five feet in length, two feet wide and the same in depth, was built of solid oak. It would not be easy to smash one’s way through.
“Give me your hat.”
Mystified, Thackeray handed over his bowler. Cribb dropped it into the window seat and closed the lid. Then he opened it. The hat was still there.
“Blast!”
He slammed the lid down again and lifted it a second time. There was the hat.
“When you got up,” Cribb said, “you must have set the thing in motion. That was when we heard it. Sit down again.”
Thackeray obeyed.
“Now get up.”
Thackeray put his hands along the edge to pull his considerable weight forward and upward. But when he rose and the lid was lifted, the hat remained obstinately in position like a cat by the milk cart.
“I think I know what it was, Sarge,” said Thackeray on a sudden inspiration. “Close the lid.”
Cribb did so, and the Constable then began feeling and pressing the brass hasp. After a moment there was a distinct movement from inside.
“I felt it go, Sarge!” he said in excitement. “You turn the staple to the right.” He lifted the lid and confirmed that the hat had actually vanished. Then he tried manipulating the hasp again. “It won’t work unless the lid is closed.”
“Get inside, then,” Cribb ordered without hesitation.
“Wedge something against the bottom when I try to force the lid open again.”
Thackeray climbed in, feeling like the passive partner in a music-hall turn. It was not easy wedging a six-foot frame into a space designed for five. The lid came down. He waited in the darkness, uncertain what to expect, while Cribb fiddled with the hasp on the outside. The air was musty.
Cribb lifted the lid. “It won’t turn. Can you force your feet against the end and take your weight off the floor?”
In darkness again, Thackeray braced against the sides to suspend himself clear of the floor. To a muffled shout of triumph from outside, it swung downwards beneath him. He lowered one foot into the cavity. Three feet down it touched something dome-shaped. His hat.
“Are you all right?” called Cribb.
“Yes, Sarge. I’m standing in the lower part now, but I can’t see what size it is.”
“Take off your boots and wedge them against the base to stop it closing when I force open the lid.”
He did so, crouching clear of the hinging mechanism.
“All right, now!”
An inch-wide strip of daylight severed the blackness above him. He leaned on the hinged base as Cribb strained to widen the gap. After a moment the combined force of the two men overcame the work of the Tudor carpenter. To the sound of splintering wood, the lid swung back. Thackeray stood upright inside with his face at the level of the lid.
“What’s inside, then?” Cribb demanded.
Thackeray crouched and retrieved his crushed bowler hat and a set of pillowcases and handed them to the Sergeant.
He bent again. “There’s something else.”
It was an overcoat, an ulster, heavily stained with blood.
Some stains were old, some fresh enough to be still slightly damp. Cribb felt the coat pockets and took out a long straight-bladed dagger. “Anything else in there?”
Thackeray smiled as he bent in the darkness. Cribb’s question graphically reminded him of a badly brought up nephew at the bran tub. He groped and came up with one of his own boots and a leather valise. It was thick with documents.
There was one other object at the bottom of the cavity apart from his second boot-a cross-cut saw. Cribb was too engrossed in the papers to take it from him.
“Hadn’t we better get after Jago now, Sergeant?”
“Jago? Oh, yes.”
Cribb had seen all that he needed of the documents.
They were deposited with the other finds back in the broken seat cavity, ready to be picked up later as court exhibits.
A setback awaited them at the stables. No horses.
“There must be a paddock,” decided Cribb. “Find yourself a saddle, Constable.”
Thackeray selected the best-upholstered one he could from a selection hanging on the stable wall and stumbled inexpertly after the Sergeant, who already had a saddle slung across his shoulder. They followed hooftracks to a small, fenced clearing. Two grey stallions under a tree regarded their approach indifferently, their tails flicking at flies.
“Ever saddled a horse, Thackeray?” Cribb asked as they let themselves through the gate.
“If I’m honest, no, Sarge.”
“Nor have I. Always a first time, eh?”
“Undoubtedly.”
“I’ll take the brute on the right, then.”
“Very good, Sergeant.”
“They don’t look so friendly now we’re near, do they? I’d go so far as to say that mine looks positively vicious.”
“Shall we saddle one between us, Sarge? Take them one at a time?”
“Capital suggestion. Whoa, there! Nasty animal. Better try the other one. I think if you could hold its head. .”
Ten minutes later the horses, still unsaddled, watched the law retreat, limping and defeated.
“These fights never start on time,” Cribb was saying.
“I’ve no doubt we’ll be there before it’s got very far.”
The noon sun bore down heavily as they made their way across the fields towards Rainham. The blister on Thack-eray’s right foot was now troubling him more than the hoof kick on his shin. It was going to take at least an hour to reach the station. Then they had to get to London Bridge, find out where exactly the fight was to be staged, and take the first available train there. Jago could be beyond help by then.
“What’s that?”
Ahead of them a flock of birds had taken flight simultaneously, plainly disturbed by something. Cribb took out his field glasses.
“Curious. Take a look. Moving along the line of the hedgerow. If I didn’t know better, I’d say it was a bobby’s helmet.”
Thackeray looked. “But it is, Sarge! It’ll be the Rainham man on his tricycle. He’s coming along the lanes. We can intercept him by the gate there!”
Both men forgot their soreness and sprinted for the lane.
The helmet, uncannily smooth in its progression, threatened to glide past altogether. They shouted as they ran, and the constable came to an emergency stop some fifteen yards past the gate.
“What, what, what?” he said, still seated aloft on his Harrington Desideratum with fifty-inch solid India-rubber-tired wheels.
“Criminal Investigation,” panted Cribb. “Sergeant Cribb and Constable Thackeray, investigating a series of murders.
We need your machine.”
“Murders? Machine?” repeated the bewildered tricyclist.
“Hurry, man! We’ve got to get to London.”
“Wait a minute,” said the constable. “Don’t I-”
“If you don’t dismount at once, sir, I shall be forced to knock you off your machine!”
The constable still looked extremely sceptical, but there was a note of determination in Cribb’s voice anyone would have heeded. He clambered down. “I feel sure that I’ve seen you-”
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“Your bicycling stockings, if you please,” intervened Cribb.
“What? Good Lord! Not my stockings!”
“Help him, Thackeray! Get them on yourself.”
Before another minute had passed, the constable of Rainham was seated barefoot on the verge, and Thackeray had taken his place in the saddle.
“Sorry to leave you like this,” explained Cribb. “Events demand it. If you walk up to Radstock Hall, you’ll find Mrs.
Vibart’s body in her room. She’s been stabbed. We’re on our way to make the arrest. We’ll leave your velocipede at the station.” He stepped up onto the back axle of the Desideratum and gripped his assistant’s shoulders. “Pedal away, Thackeray!”
CHAPTER 15
The first intimation of anything exceptional that afternoon in Groombridge was a sound carried on the wind, too faint even to be noticeable when there was a flurry of dry leaves along the street. But it persisted and was heard increasingly clearly, allusive as the resonance in a seashell. Tricks of acoustics in the uneven landscape produced a confusion of sounds supplanting each other from moment to moment: the unmistakable grate of carriage wheels; snatches of music-hall choruses; clattering hooves; unexpectedly clear conversations.
Most of the inhabitants were in the High Street peering towards Tunbridge Wells before the first vehicle appeared. A cart, with men walking beside it. Disappointingly commonplace. But next to turn the distant bend and come fully into view was a gleaming park phaeton with several passengers, and riders in attendance. It was the leader of an extraordinary parade of London life several hundred yards in length that gradually emerged from among the trees lining the road. Broughams and hansoms trundled in formation towards the village as though it were the cabstand in Pall Mall. Members of the gigmanity drove among them, their silk hats flashing intermittently as they passed under the avenue of beeches. Alongside rode numerous horsemen, and a few bicyclists endeavouring to maintain balance and conversation. Most impressive of all, choking the road as far back as one could see, trooped up to a thousand men of the labouring class. A number of others, practised from street urchin days, adhered to the sides of the larger carriages. The huge majority relied on chorusing and good-natured swearing to relieve their footslog. More formidably, sections towards the front carried cudgels ripped from trees along the route. In the thick of them rode the gentry, serene and unperturbed as travellers on a mediaeval pilgrimage.
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