The Stately Home Murder iscm-3

by Catherine Aird

“I don’t know, sir. I’d arranged for the County Archivist to come over and start going through the records. When Crosby went up there with him he found someone had had a go at the lock.”

  “There’s something in there,” said Leeyes.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And someone’s still after it.”

  “Yes, sir. They haven’t got it though. The locks held.”

  “Just as well,” grunted Leeyes. “By the way, Sloan, I’ve just had the Ornums’ lawyer here. He’s on his way out to you now. Watch him.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “One of those clever chaps,” said Leeyes resentfully. “Said he was representing the Earl’s interests. Representing them!” Leeyes snorted. “Guarding them like a hawk, I’d say.”

  Sloan was not surprised. People like the Ornums went straight to the top and got the very best. He said gloomily, “I suppose the Earl will be another of those who know the Chief Constable personally, too…”

  They were the bane of his existence, those sort of people, assuming that acquaintanceship was an absolution.

  “Be your age, Sloan.”

  “I beg your pardon, sir?”

  “The Earl wouldn’t be bothered with people like the Chief Constable.”

  “Not be bothered with the Chief Constable?” echoed Sloan faintly.

  “That’s what I said. The Home Secretary, Sloan, was his fag at school, and the Attorney-General’s his wife’s third cousin, twice removed.”

  “Oh, dear.”

  “Exactly.” Sloan heard the Superintendent bring his hand down on his desk with a bang just as he did when he was standing in front of him. “So if there’s any arresting to be done…”

  “Yes, sir.” Sloan took the unspoken point and tried to check on something else. “The rules, sir, aren’t they different for peers of the realm?”

  “I don’t know about the written ones, Sloan,” said Leeyes ominously, “but the unwritten ones are.”

  “Yes, sir”—absently. He was thinking about the Tower of London. He and his wife, Margaret, had gone there on their honeymoon. Was it just a museum still or were there dark corners where extra special prisoners lay?

  “You could call it a case,” said Leeyes judicially, “where a wrongful arrest isn’t going to help the career of the police officer making it.”

  “Quite so, sir.” He cleared his throat. “I’m nowhere near that stage yet, sir, but we think we’ve found the murder weapon. A club called ‘Good Morning.’ ”

  “A club called ‘Good Morning,’ ” said Leeyes heavily. “You wouldn’t by any chance be trying to take the micky out of a police superintendent called Leeyes, would you, Sloan, because if you are…”

  “No, sir”—hastily. “It’s number forty-nine in the catalogue and its other name is a godentag. The Forensic boys have found blood and hair on it but no fingerprints. Dr. Dabbe hasn’t seen it yet, of course, to confirm that…”

  “That reminds me,” interrupted Leeyes. “Dr. Dabbe. He’s been on the phone with his report.”

  “Oh?”

  “These pathologists,” grumbled the Superintendent. “They upset everything.”

  “Why?”

  “You said, Sloan, that the butler took Meredith his tea at four o’clock and collected the empty tray at five.”

  “That’s right, sir. He saw him at four but not at five. And Lady Eleanor saw him just before teatime.”

  “Teatime, perhaps,” said Leeyes, “but not tea.”

  “Not tea?”

  “Nothing had passed deceased’s lips for three hours before death. Dr. Dabbe says so. Killed on an empty stomach in fact.”

  “Somebody ate Meredith’s tea,” said Sloan, turning back the pages of his notebook.

  “Very likely, but not Meredith,” pointed out the Superintendent with finality. “Dr. Dabbe says so.”

  13

  « ^ »

  So somebody got him in between Dillow taking him his tea and him getting his teeth into it?” concluded Constable Crosby succinctly. He was still in the armoury though the Vicar and the laboratory people had gone.

  “That’s right.” There were more elegant ways of putting it, but in essence Crosby was right. “Though after Meredith had made his celebrated discovery and telephoned the Vicarage in Ornum.”

  “Do we know when that was, sir?”

  “Mrs. Ames thinks it must have been about half-past three.”

  “Then we’re getting nowhere fast,” Crosby said, disappointed, slinging his notebook down on the table that Dillow had provided for them in a corner of the armoury. (It was of inlaid walnut and quite unsuitable.)

  “Oh?”

  “William Murton was seen to get off the 5:27 P.M. Luston to Berebury slow train at Ornum Station on Friday afternoon and I still think he did it,” said Crosby all in one breath.

  Sloan regarded his constable with interest. “You do, do you? Why?”

  “He’s a painter for one thing.”

  “That’s not a crime. Yet.”

  “What I mean, sir, is that he’s a bit of an oddity.”

  “Nor is that.”

  “Suddenly he isn’t short of money any more.”

  “Meredith wasn’t a rich man,” countered Sloan, “and the connection with this case and money is—to say the least—obscure.” It would be there, of course—it nearly always was once you’d ruled out lust—but Sloan couldn’t see where it lay.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Did you arrange for him to be watched?”

  “Yes, sir. P.C. Bloggs is tailing him.” He paused. “London came through on the blower.”

  “Well?”

  Crosby sucked his lips. “From what they can make out he’s in dead trouble with a woman.”

  The nearest Constable Crosby himself had ever come to being in trouble with a woman was being late off-duty, thus missing the start of the big picture.

  There was something almost paternal in Sloan’s tone. “If every man who was that, Crosby, committed a murder, we’d never get a rest day.”

  Crosby played his last card. “The Earl thinks he did it.”

  “I know. It’s the best circumstantial evidence we’ve got that the Earl didn’t do it himself. Not that William Murton didn’t.”

  “The Earl?” echoed Crosby, shocked. “You don’t think he did it, do you, sir?”

  “No, as it happens, I don’t, but he’s a suspect like everyone else.”

  All people being equal, but some being more equal than others.

  Especially earls.

  It was a natural step from there to Lord Henry.

  “That’s another thing I’ve checked,” said Crosby, “without any joy.”

  “What is?”

  “His young Lordship’s car. There is some blood down between the fan blade and the radiator. I’ve told those two vampire chaps—”

  “Laboratory technicians”—mildly.

  “Them. They’re going to have a look when they’ve finished with the ‘Good Morning.’ ”

  “He could have put it there,” pointed out Sloan.

  “Yes, sir”—briefly. Crosby flicked back the pages of his notebook. “There are no fingerprints on the ‘Good Morning’ by the way.”

  “I hadn’t expected there would be.”

  “And Mrs. Morley, the housekeeper, said she bandaged Lord Henry’s hand for him after he cut it. Friday, it was. In the morning.”

  “I see.”

  “She saw the wound.”

  “Doubting Thomases,” said Sloan bitterly, his mind darting back to his Sunday-school days. “That’s what we should be called, isn’t it? Not coppers.”

  “I couldn’t say, I’m sure, sir,” murmured Crosby. “Anyway, Mrs. Morley said it was quite a nasty cut. He couldn’t have held a cricket bat.”

  “Or a godentag?”

  “Not according to Mrs. Morley, he couldn’t. She wanted him to have the doctor. Right across the palm, it was, and the index finger.”

  “And he got it fro
m a motor car, not from squeezing a dead man into a metal suit of armour?”

  Crosby’s case rested on Mrs. Morley and he said so.

  “I see,” said Sloan. “So you think Lord Henry is out as a suspect, but William Murton still in?”

  “Except that he got off the 5:27 all right,” repeated Crosby, “because the Station Master saw him himself.”

  “And have you checked that he didn’t nip up the line and get on at the station before?”

  “Not yet,” replied Crosby in a nicely shaded manner which implied he had been about to do so.

  “I should,” advised Sloan. “What size shoes does he take?”

  Crosby stared. “I didn’t notice, sir.”

  “I did. A nine, at least.”

  “He’s a big chap,” agreed Crosby cautiously.

  “Too big for a lady’s shoe, size six and a half, anyway,” observed Sloan, turning back the pages of his own notebook. “And the Countess and Lady Eleanor both take a five.”

  “Handy, that.”

  “Handy?”

  “They can share,” said Crosby. “Like my sister does.”

  “Crosby, people like this do not share shoes.”

  “No, sir.”

  “Assuming”—severely—“that the person who left a heel mark in the Muniments Room did so inadvertently, and I think they did.”

  “Yes…”

  “That means Miss Gertrude Cremond, Mrs. Laura Cremond, or Mrs. Morley went in there and turned everything upside down.”

  “Unless it was an outside job, sir.”

  “Crosby,” Sloan controlled a sigh. “We both know this wasn’t an outside job.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “So one of the three went in there…”

  “After Meredith was killed, sir, or before?”

  “Well, he’s hardly likely to have stood by and watched, is he now?”

  “No, sir.” Crosby scratched his forehead. “Miss Gertrude Cremond’s big enough to have dotted a small man who was sitting down at the time, for all that she’s not young.”

  “True.”

  “Mrs. Laura Cremond isn’t.”

  “No. Neither was Lady Macbeth.”

  “Pardon, sir?”

  “Lady Macbeth. Another small woman. She got someone killed.”

  “Secondhand, you mean, sir.”

  “Precisely.”

  “You think she might have egged on the Honourable Miles, sir?”

  “Goaded would be a better word, Crosby.”

  “Yes, sir.” He paused and said carefully, “I don’t think he would have thought of it on his own.”

  “No.”

  “Mrs. Morley would have had to have got Dillow to do it for her,” went on Crosby. “For all that she’s got biggish feet for a woman she doesn’t look the club-swinging sort.”

  “There is another possibility…”

  Crosby sighed. He wasn’t good at assimilating more than two or three at a time.

  Inspector Sloan tapped his notebook. “That the attack on the Muniments had nothing to do with the murder of Meredith.”

  Crosby had not thought of this. “Coincidence?” he said doubtfully.

  “Not exactly. Just two things happening on the same day.”

  “Matching up with the two separate discoveries, sir?” suggested Crosby brightly. “The one about the earldom…”

  “Which may or may not be true…”

  “And the one Meredith made on the Friday afternoon…”

  “Which we know nothing whatsoever about…”

  “That he tried to get in touch with the Vicar to tell him?”

  “Well done, Constable. Now, can you tell me the only significant thing that we know about Friday afternoon so far?”

  “No,” said Crosby promptly. “Nothing else happened apart from Meredith finding out something…”

  “Let’s put it another way,” said Sloan patiently. At this rate they’d have to call in outside help, whether Superintendent Leeyes wanted it or not. “What change in routine was there on Friday afternoon that we already know about?”

  Crosby gave a short laugh. “The only thing that was different that we know about for certain sure…”

  “Yes?”

  “The two old birds upstairs…”

  “Lady Alice and Lady Maude.” There were moments when he would have welcomed more sophisticated assistance, too. This was one of them.

  “Lady Alice and Lady Maude”—Crosby tacitly accepted the emendation. “They didn’t ask the deceased to tea like they usually did on Fridays.”

  “Exactly, Crosby.”

  “You mean that is important, sir?”

  “I mean”—grimly—“that that’s the only positive pointer we have so far. That and the fact that William Murton has been in Ornum for all of forty-eight hours without asking his uncle for money, which I understand practically constitutes a record.”

  “That is unusual,” admitted the Earl of Ornum. He was in the Private Apartments regaling a tall thin individual with something from a decanter and thin biscuits. “I think it is… er… pretty well accepted that William only retreats to Onrum when his… er… other commitments become very pressing.”

  The Earl had introduced Sloan and Crosby to the bleak-looking man. He was, it transpired, Mr. Adrian Cossington, the Senior Partner in the old established law firm of Oaten, Oaten and Cossington, and if his ascetic appearance was anything to go by, he had long ago done with all human desire and feeling. His pleasures, if any, looked as if they were confined to wrestling with “nice” legal points, or perhaps advising against the indulgences proposed by his clients.

  He was obviously opposed to the Earl of Ornum saying anything to anyone at all at this stage—but especially to Inspector Sloan.

  “Don’t be silly, Cossington,” said the Earl testily, showing more courage in dealing with the solicitor than Sloan would have dared to have done. “The fellow’s got to find out who killed Meredith, hasn’t he?”

  “Certainly, my lord, nevertheless your own responsibilities in the matter are confined to—”

  “Dammit, man, there’s such a thing as justice.” He turned. “Isn’t there, Inspector?”

  “I think so,” said Sloan cautiously. Asked point-blank like that he wasn’t sure that there was.

  “In your own interest, my lord,” protested Cossington.

  “We are not considering my interest, Cossington, we are considering law and order.”

  That was different.

  Sloan, who wasn’t sure about justice, was absolutely certain about law and order. You’d got to have it or you were barbarian.

  The Earl was taking his stance. “I can’t have my own Librarian and Archivist killed in m’own House, Cossington, now, can I?”

  That was what rankled, thought Sloan irrelevantly. From the Earl’s point of view it was “touch my servant and you touch me.” That was how it would have been in the old days. The first Earl would have had his own following, half servant, half army. Vassals, obedient to him unto death. And the Earl would have been obedient to the King, would have taken an oath of obedience at the King’s coronation.

  Every Earl at every Coronation.

  Even now.

  It had a name, that oath. He would remember it in a moment. An odd word… “fealty,” that was it.

  The solicitor had started to explain to the Earl that narrow line between obstructing the police in the execution of their duty and those tenuous circumstances in which no man need offer evidence that might incriminate himself.

  Sloan wasn’t listening. He was looking across at the thirteenth Earl of Ornum with new eyes. He, Charles Dennis Sloan, Detective Inspector in Her Majesty’s County Constabulary of Calleshire, was the natural heir and successor to the Earl in this matter of law and order. Where once the Earl had kept unruly villains obedient so now did he. Sloan, too, had taken an oath of allegiance. And he hadn’t realised until now how ancient was his duty.

  The Earl of Ornum hadn’t be
en listening to the solicitor either. “Purvis tells me you’ve asked the County Archivist in, Inspector.”

  “Yes, my lord. With your permission…”

  His Lordship nodded. “Meredith wouldn’t have liked it, but that can’t be helped. Not now. Possessive lot, these archivists. Always wanting to build their own empires. Never prepared to lend a hand with anyone else’s.”

  “Was there anything here that anyone hankered after then?” asked Sloan suddenly. It was something he should have asked before.

  The Earl thought for a moment. “Some items are always being asked for on loan.”

  “Which are they, my lord?”

  The Earl waved a hand. “Some very early Court stuff, which seems to have survived. Records of Oyer, Terminer, and Assize. That sort of thing.”

  One lecture, that’s all they’d had when Sloan joined the Force, on the history of the legal system in England. And he hadn’t listened anyway.

  “The old Courts of Gaol Delivery, you know,” said his Lordship. “Going back a good bit now, of course. Not many of them about these days. Things have changed since then.” A faint gleam of humour crept into the melancholy countenance. “Now we have you, Inspector, and Cossington over there instead of just me.”

  Justice instead of rough justice?

  Sloan wasn’t sure. He cleared his throat and came back to the point. “These records, my lord, are they worth stealing?”

  “Nothing is worth stealing, Inspector.”

  Sloan flushed. “I’m sorry, my lord. I meant…”

  The whole atmosphere in the Private Apartments had changed subtly. “They have a value, Inspector…”

  “Yes, my lord, I’m sure…”

  “But too high a value to have a price.”

  “I see, my lord.”

  “No, Inspector, you do not see. The County Archivist would like them for his empire. He sees himself as the true representative of the Common Man—to whom he probably thinks they should belong anyway. The Ratepayer incarnate.”

  “Quite so…”

  “What was it that French fellow said…”

  “I couldn’t say, my lord…”

  “Property is theft.”

  It was not a police point of view. Nor an English one, if it came to that. Property was respectable in the police world. Men without property were like gamblers without a stake, a rootless, drifting menace. Men with nothing to lose.