Hollow Crown

by David Roberts

  ‘No, sir, she did not. I offered her Betsy – one of the housemaids – to help her dress, but she said she had no need of anyone.’

  ‘I see. Dear me! What a . . . Look, I think the best thing is if we all go down and wait in the drawing-room for the police to arrive. There’s nothing else we can do here. Pickering, lock the door and keep hold of the key until the police arrive.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Lord Edward, may I have a brief word with you?’

  Scannon led Edward into a small room he used as a study, closed the door and began immediately to abuse him. ‘For God’s sake, what the devil did you do to the poor girl last night to make her take her own life? Or did you put something in her drink and do it for her? And what about the letters? Did she give them to you?’

  ‘No, I . . . ’

  ‘I told Weaver I thought you’d make a mess of things but, by God, I never imagined it would come to this! To have one of my guests die and the police crawling all over the house. And what do we say about why you were interrogating the woman in the middle of the night, eh, Corinth? What do you say to that? My God . . . ’

  ‘Steady on, Scannon, this is nothing to do with me . . . ’

  ‘Nothing to do with you that the moment you start talking to this bloody woman she dies!’

  ‘I had a perfectly reasonable conversation with her about the letters – a conversation we were going to continue today. There was no hint that she would take her own life and I certainly don’t believe she did. Either she took an overdose of her sleeping draught by mistake or someone murdered her and probably took the letters.’

  ‘You don’t mean the stuff she had stolen was actually in her bedroom and you didn’t get hold of it?’

  ‘How could I? I wasn’t going to knock her about until she parted with them, was I?’

  ‘Well, for God’s sake, we ought to search her room before the police arrive.’

  ‘That’s not a good idea, Scannon,’ Edward said evenly.

  ‘Why not? Are you yellow?’

  ‘No, Scannon, but . . . ’ they heard the front door bell pealing, ‘it’s too late and in any case it would have been totally irresponsible.’

  ‘But what do we tell the police?’

  ‘I have been thinking about that. I believe you ought to telephone Joe Weaver and get him to speak to Mrs Simpson. She must be told what has happened straight away and that we have no alternative but to tell the police the truth and trust to their discretion. We don’t need to give them any details about what the letters were – just that Molly had stolen them and I was trying to get them back without causing a scandal.’

  ‘Without causing a scandal . . . pfff! I suppose this isn’t a scandal?’

  ‘If we don’t tell them what I was doing here, they’ll think of all sorts of motives for her killing herself – if that’s what they decide happened – and when, as is inevitable, they find we have been concealing the obvious motive, it will all get horribly messy. What sort of man will they send us?’

  ‘Inspector Lampfrey. He’s all right,’ Scannon said, calming himself with an effort. ‘I’ll go and ring the Chief Constable as soon as I’ve spoken to Lampfrey and impress on him how important it is to keep all this as quiet as possible . . . So, we’ll just say Molly was an old friend of both of us and we were trying to persuade her not to be a damn fool. But heavens!’ Scannon was looking aghast. ‘It’s just struck me. If she was murdered, someone here – someone in this house did it. And the letters . . . where are they? They may be half-way to Fleet Street or even America by now.’ He buried his face in his hands. ‘Oh Christ! The King will blame me for this and . . . ’

  At that moment, there was a knock on the door and Pickering entered. ‘Inspector Lampfrey has arrived, sir, and he would be grateful for a word with you.’

  ‘Yes, of course,’ Scannon said and, throwing one further look of disgust at Edward, went out of the room. Edward sighed and then rubbed his forehead with his hand as if to wipe away sweat. It was a gesture he often made at moments of extreme pressure and he had no idea he made it. Then, pulling himself together, he followed his host out of the room.

  He hesitated in the corridor and then, instead of going downstairs, he made his way back to his room. He didn’t know if it was callous of him but he felt he could not meet the policeman until he had shaved and dressed. Fenton was not in the bedroom but he had laid out his clothes on the bed. Edward was about to go to the bathroom at the end of the passage when he saw that the screen in the corner of his room had been moved to reveal the door which it normally concealed – the door which connected his room with Molly’s. On an impulse, he went over to it and tried the handle. It was unlocked. He knew he ought to have been surprised but he was not. There was no key on his side of the door. He hesitated and then turned the doorknob and entered Molly’s room. He noticed that there was no key on Molly’s side of the door either. A screen, similar to the one in his room, blocked his view. He peered round it and was once again shocked to see the body on the bed. The foolish but so very much alive woman, whom he had threatened and cajoled the night before, was now so very dead.

  A tide of sadness swept over him. He knew it would be only a matter of seconds before the police were in the room so he looked about him for some obvious hiding place in which Molly might have secreted Mrs Simpson’s love letters. He opened the cupboard. One thing struck him immediately. The bottle of veronal she said she had kept in it was not there now. He glanced round the room but there was no sign of it. He saw a small brown leather attaché case – hardly bigger than a lady’s handbag – in the corner of the room. He went over and tried to open it but it was locked. He thought for about half a second and then, hearing the sound of approaching feet, took up the case and returned with it to his own room, closing the door behind him. He thrust it under the bed as if the very sight of it made him feel as guilty as an Egyptian tomb robber. It was odd that robbing a dead person seemed so much worse than stealing from a live one. He replaced the screen and then sat on the bed and thought. Someone had opened the door connecting his room and Molly’s between the time Fenton had tried it – say six o’clock the previous evening – and when he woke up. That person could only be Dannie. He supposed it was just possible someone had opened the door from Molly’s side but for what possible reason? No, it had to be Dannie.

  He grimaced. It occurred to him that he had probably left fingerprints on the door handle in Molly’s room but there was going to be so much to explain anyway he really couldn’t worry about it. He heard the door to Molly’s room open and the sound of feet as one or possibly two police officers went over to examine the body. He cursed. They would soon notice that the door connecting her room to his was unlocked. What if they searched his room before he could remove the attaché case? He was beginning to wish he had left it where it was. Was it safe under his bed? He looked around the room but, big though it was, there weren’t many obvious places in which to hide an object as bulky as a handbag. He went over to the fireplace and peered under the chimney piece. He thought he could see a ledge there. Yes! He could feel there was. Without further ado, he removed the case from under his bed and stuck it up on the ledge, managing to get some soot on his hands and dressing gown as he did so.

  Then he marched out of his room, past a police constable on guard outside Molly’s room, who looked at him with some surprise, and into the bathroom where he shaved and washed himself and his dressing gown sleeve as thoroughly as he could. Twenty minutes later, bathed – the water had been almost cold but nonetheless welcome – shaved and dressed in a suit of heather mixture, he walked downstairs with as much of an air of innocence as he could muster.

  Inspector Lampfrey was cool but not hostile. In fact, his courtesy was rather alarming. Only a fool would have heard his slow Wiltshire burr and put him down for a country bumpkin. The silence with which he listened to Edward’s account of his conversations with Molly suggested not disbelief but ironic detachment, as if he had heard
every story ever told but was quite prepared to hear them again. As Edward completed his account of what had happened the previous night, there was silence. Lampfrey regarded him with clear grey eyes which seemed to weigh him up and judge him. He was glad that, on reflection, he had decided to tell the truth – though not quite the whole truth. He doubted whether he could have withstood for long the disconcerting habit the Inspector had of leaving long silences after a question had been very fully answered. It encouraged the witness to tell more than was wise or reveal himself through some inappropriate joke or comment about someone else.

  While he was waiting to be interviewed by the Inspector, Edward had had another word with Scannon. The latter had spoken to Joe Weaver and then to the Chief Constable who had been told why it was necessary the press should be kept in ignorance of Molly’s death for as long as possible. They were bound to find out sooner or later – there would have to be an inquest for one thing – but, if the coroner was able to find that she had died of an accidental overdose of veronal, there wouldn’t be much of a story. In the meantime, it was agreed that every assistance was to be given to Inspector Lampfrey short of telling him in detail the contents of the stolen letters. Edward would never have agreed to anything less. He was in an awkward enough position as it was, without putting himself absolutely in the wrong by withholding information from the police. There was one thing he held back from the Inspector and that was finding Catherine Dannhorn in his bed when he had got back from his late-night interview with Molly.

  He had not had a chance of talking to Dannie. Rather annoyingly, he had discovered, when he had gone down to breakfast, that she had ridden out early with Boy Carstairs and had not yet returned and, it was to be supposed, remained in ignorance of Molly’s death. However, he assumed she would not volunteer that she had been in his bed instead of her own. In fact, there were several reasons for his deciding to be silent on this one point – perhaps too many reasons to be entirely convincing. He had been told as a child that if one decided to make an excuse for behaving badly, then one should limit it to one. The more excuses one made, the less weight they carried. But, of course, he wasn’t actually lying; merely being gentlemanly. Gentlemen do not talk about their sexual adventures. But this wasn’t it exactly. He also did not wish to seem promiscuous, unscrupulous or unprincipled. He might not have much respect for middle-class morality but he fancied the Inspector would look at him with those cool eyes of his and find him wanting. What this all boiled down to was that he was embarrassed. It was not like him to jump into bed with a woman he had only known a few days and whom he had never spoken to at any length, let alone kissed. His escapade, as he termed it in his own mind, was lust pure and simple. Could lust be pure, he wondered? He wasn’t certain it was even simple now he came to think about it. His feelings for Dannie were surely more complex than lust, weren’t they? He had been hit by a thunderbolt; he was obsessed, he was captivated – all these; but he was not ‘in love’. He was almost sure he was not in love.

  ‘I see,’ Lampfrey said after a pause which seemed to stretch out until kingdom come. ‘So when you left Mrs Harkness at . . . ’ he consulted his notes, ‘twelve fifteen, she did not seem to you suicidal?’

  ‘No, she was upset – no, not upset exactly but nervous, strung up. But she specifically said to me that we would continue our conversation in the morning.’

  ‘That certainly doesn’t sound like a suicide but I suppose she might have lain awake worrying, or slept but woken in the middle of the night and decided to end it all.’

  ‘It’s more likely she woke and mixed herself another sleeping draught and overdid it. I knew her quite well in Africa, as I told you, and she wasn’t the suicide type. She had great guts and, even after her husband’s death, she never gave way to depression. By the way, here’s one odd thing. Mrs Harkness said she had a bottle of veronal in the cupboard – I had asked her if she would manage to sleep. In my brief inspection of the room, I didn’t see it. It certainly wasn’t in the cupboard. I looked.’

  The Inspector grunted. ‘We found nothing – no bottle – just the flask.’

  ‘When will we know for sure what killed her?’

  ‘Dr Fisher says we will have his report by tomorrow evening at the latest. Speaking of her husband – you said she had a lover? Was it certain – what was his name . . . ?’

  ‘Douglas Davenant.’

  ‘No, I mean the husband.’

  ‘Oh, Raymond Harkness.’

  ‘Yes. Do we assume it really was suicide?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘She and the lover didn’t “bump him off”?’ The Inspector seemed pleased with his attempt at American slang. He enjoyed going to the pictures and the films of Edward G. Robinson were favourites of his.

  ‘No, certainly not. Her grief – or rather her shock – was very deep. That was why I wanted to take her away.’

  ‘Very commendable.’

  ‘And don’t forget, she finished with Davenant.’

  ‘Mmm. Well, I’m sure you’re right, Lord Edward. You knew her well.’

  ‘I did but, as I said to you, we were never lovers. I just felt sorry for her. She was a fool with men. Some women seem to have a talent for picking rotters and there were plenty to choose from in Kenya. I think her affairs were a sort of despair. Happy Valley! What a misnomer. That place destroyed many a happy marriage.’

  ‘Very public-spirited of you,’ the Inspector said and then added, in case Edward thought he was being sarcastic, ‘I mean it.’ He paused again. ‘So you haven’t found these letters then?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘But she said she had them with her?’

  ‘That’s what I understood her to say.’

  ‘My men have been through the room with a fine-tooth comb and they aren’t there so we must assume they were either stolen or she left them elsewhere – hid them.’

  ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘Mr Scannon says she gave him nothing to put in the safe. They had a burglary here last year – some diamonds were stolen from a guest – and since then, Mr Scannon tells me, he has insisted house guests give him anything of value to be locked in the safe.’

  ‘She would not have trusted Mr Scannon – or anyone else – with the letters. She told me her flat in London had been ransacked quite recently and, since nothing had been stolen, she believed whoever had done it had been looking for the letters.’

  ‘But they didn’t find them?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Did she have any idea who might have searched her flat?’

  ‘She thought it might have been someone acting for the letters’ owner.’

  ‘Hmm. I suppose that is the obvious conclusion. So these papers are a motive for murder?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Right, thank you, Lord Edward. You have been very helpful. Oh, by the way. I suppose you won’t have any objection to one of my men searching your room?’

  ‘Whatever for?’

  ‘Well, I believe your story but you can understand that I would be failing in my duty if I did not establish that you had not taken the opportunity of removing the letters at some time during the night. Please don’t think, Lord Edward, that I am picking on you, so to speak. We will search the whole house. We must be thorough.’

  Edward tried not to gulp but he saw the Inspector look at him speculatively.

  ‘Yes, I understand. Um, Inspector, I’m now going to seem to you to be very foolish.’

  ‘My lord?’

  ‘Just before you arrived I did remove a handbag, or small attaché case, from beside her bed. It was wrong of me, I know, but I thought, if it did contain the papers we were talking about, I could return them to their rightful owner without a fuss.’ He was sweating and he felt like a murderer under the Inspector’s gaze. ‘It was idiotic of me. I see that now,’ he babbled.

  ‘And did the handbag or small attaché case contain the letters?’

  ‘It was locked. I hid it . . . I hid it in the chim
ney meaning to examine it later.’

  ‘Well, I think the best thing we can do is to retrieve it and open it, don’t you, Lord Edward?’

  The Inspector examined the rather sooty bag which now lay on the table at the foot of Edward’s bed. ‘I really don’t see much point in testing this for fingerprints after being covered in soot,’ the policeman said, examining the case closely. ‘Presumably there must be a key to the case?’

  ‘I haven’t seen it,’ Edward said, still feeling like a schoolboy found out in some prank, ‘else I would have used it.’

  ‘It’s just a toy lock. Sergeant, pass me your penknife, will you?’

  ‘Sir,’ said the Sergeant, who was even more taciturn than the Inspector, handing over a stout penknife.

  The Inspector selected the spike designed – but, as far as Edward knew, never used – for taking stones from horses’ hooves and wiggled it in the tiny lock. After a few moments it sprung open and the Inspector opened the bag. It was quite empty. Lampfrey looked at it in silence for a minute and then felt in the lining and passed his hand along the bottom of the bag.

  ‘Nothing here,’ the Inspector said with some disappointment. ‘Do I have your word of honour that you have not opened this bag, Lord Edward?’

  ‘You have my word, Inspector.’

  ‘Hmm, ah well. Someone was there before you.’

  ‘Or perhaps Mrs Harkness had hidden whatever was in the bag somewhere safer, before she went to bed.’

  ‘You didn’t notice the bag when you had your late-night interview with Mrs Harkness?’

  ‘No. I’m sure I would have done had it been where I found it this morning, on the floor beside her bed. It must have been in a cupboard or somewhere.’

  Edward was now uneasy again. He thought he knew what had happened. Dannie must somehow have entered Molly’s room during the night – he had told her himself she had taken something to make her sleep – searched her room, found the bag and removed the papers. He did not dare think that she might have harmed the sleeping woman. It was bad enough to think that she had used him to gain entrance to Molly’s room. And what did she plan to do with the letters? Return them to Mrs Simpson? He hoped so. After all, as far as he knew, if she owed anyone loyalty it was Lord Weaver. Hadn’t he heard she had been his mistress? God, what a mess. He must speak to Dannie before she was interviewed by the police.