‘Now,’ said Hickory, ‘if there was noise from here—’
‘Noise made in the course of nicking something—’
‘—then Sam Barton could easily have heard it. Let’s have a good look. You go round—gently, now—to the far end, down there. I’ll take this side of the arch.’
It was less than five minutes before Medway made an exclamation of discovery. Not ten feet from the archway that divided the room was a table which, even from the most cursory inspection, seemed to have something missing from it. On it there were five clocks, and an irregular-shaped space on which the dust sat thinly and lightly. Something had been removed.
‘Splendid!’ said Hickory. ‘Measure the area and make a rough outline. If we find that clock, we’ll know where it came from. I wonder: could there be a catalogue of the collection?’
He lumbered up to a shelf at the far end of the room, and came back with a slim, leather-bound volume.
‘Privately printed in Bristol, in eighteen-forty-seven. Ah—with some handwritten additions at the back. I’d be willing to bet the collection hasn’t been added to since that particular noble collector died. Now—this is going to be a bit of a fag. Would you like—?’
‘No,’ said Sergeant Medway. ‘Why don’t you put WPC Hillier on to it. She’s bright and very thorough.’
‘Good idea. Right, I’ll go and send her along.’ Superintendent Hickory stood in the corridor and looked along the great, dark expanse that stretched in the direction of the older parts of the house. ‘This place gives me the same feeling I get when I go to London with the wife and she decides to “do” Oxford Street,’ he said gloomily, and set off at a modest pace, his bulk forcing up squeaks of protest from every other floorboard.
Sergeant Medway completed his measurements of the vacant place on the table, and was just beginning to get his things together when he saw through the window Sam Barton—also carrying a sketch-pad and pencil—approaching across the lawns towards the Blenheim Wing. The architect, Leoni, had been generous of entrances to his massive extension, and Sam’s nearest one was through the Music Room at the far end of the ground floor, and up the elegant stairway which Parsloe and Nazeby had used in all their comings and goings. Medway waited in the corridor to intercept him.
‘Just the man I want,’ he said.
‘Come inside, man,’ said Sam, and they passed along into his bedroom. Peter Medway sat on the chair, and Sam sat on the bed. There was an expression on Sam’s face that the Sergeant did not know how to interpret. It was—almost—quizzical. It puzzled him.
‘Now, this noise you heard—when was it?—about one o’clock.’
‘At one, man. I turned on the light, had a drink of water, and looked at my watch. It was two minutes to one.’
‘I see. And the noise itself: what sort of noise was it?’
‘That’s what I couldn’t get at for your boss-man. Like it’s difficult to describe, ’specially as I was half asleep. It was heavy. Sort of a thump, you know?’
‘Followed by anything?’
Sam considered.
‘Could have been footsteps. Very faint, like pretty far away. But I wouldn’t swear to them, man.’
‘And you didn’t think to investigate?’
‘No, I did not.’ Sam’s accent and intonation seemed to become more British, and somehow less of an act, as he explained. ‘This house is great, but I don’t suppose you’ve slept in it. At night it becomes something out of Hollywood in the ’thirties—spooky noises, creaking boards, curtains billowing—all that stuff. And then, we’d just had a party. If there were people around, it could have been the party continuing. Or just Chokey coming up to bed: he’s just seven or eight doors down. No—I went right back off to sleep . . . Man.’
‘So this happened here, right here in this room?’
Sam’s quizzical expression returned, and his mouth widened into a grin like a concertina.
‘Yes, sir. Right here in this room.’
‘You see,’ Medway began, rather awkwardly, ‘we have to make sure where you were because if you were here you could have heard something being stolen, for instance from the clock room over there. Whereas if you were elsewhere . . .’
‘Yes?’
‘But you have always, since you came to Chetton, slept in this room?’
‘Yes, man: just where my haversack came to rest. But you’re not going to believe that, are you? You’d like to have me down the other end of that corridor, and right over near the main stairs, isn’t that it? Snuggled up beside Dixie is where you think I was.’
‘Well, I—’
‘Why do you and your boss-man want to make me Dixie’s lover, man?’
‘Well, er, you hadn’t exactly settled down in this room . . . and Dixie is the only unattached woman guest . . . and you did come here with her.’
‘Not bad,’ said Sam, nodding his head with approval. ‘Quick thinking. But the fact is that since I set foot in this place everyone has assumed I’m Dixie’s boyfriend. I expect that’s what gave you the idea, not those reasons you’ve just thought up. So just get this clear, man: I was not in Dixie’s bedroom on Saturday night; I have never been in Dixie’s bedroom—not here at Chetton, nor back at her home in Stepney, nor anywhere. I’ve never been in Dixie’s bed, and I’ve no ambitions to get there.’
‘Then what, if I may ask, are you doing here?’
‘I’m a student of architecture,’ said Sam.
CHAPTER 11
THE HOUSE OF COMMONS
‘The young man,’ said Hickory next morning, slamming down the phone, ‘was telling nothing but the truth.’
He had phoned through a query about Sam to Scotland Yard the night before, and they had come up with a report that tallied at every point with Sam’s description of himself.
‘Student of architecture at Kensington Poly. He’s been doing some work with a firm of architects that specializes in these neo-Queen Anne buildings in sensitive areas where a square glass tower block would be out of place.’
‘Sort of mock-period stuff?’
‘That’s it. And a very good idea too, if it means fewer of these concrete and glass jobs. They say they’re all the rage. So that explains the interest in Chetton. He told his family he’d met up with Dixie when she’d been visiting Haig Street to check up on her in-laws’ house. He’d wangled an invitation down here: he’d wanted to see it for a long time, he told them, but it was hardly ever open to the public.’
‘Hmmm,’ said Sergeant Medway. ‘All this really proves is that he’s smart enough not to lie about something he knew would be checked up on. It doesn’t prove he’s not Dixie’s boyfriend, for instance.’
‘Apparently there’s no talk of that, either in Stepney or in Clapham. As far as I can see, he’s got a perfectly plausible reason for being here, and everyone jumped to the wrong conclusion. Whether you put this down to the Spenders’ views on blacks or the Spenders’ views on Dixie I don’t quite know. But the situation at the moment is that Sam Barton’s connection with the Spenders is a completely casual one. Now—what’s come in today?’
He rummaged around on his desk among papers that had been put there that morning, and finally seized on something with a satisfied ‘Ahhh’. He clearly found it absorbing, and Sergeant Medway could only wait respectfully.
‘Now that is something. They’ve found the agency that Parsloe and Nazeby used. They were sent particulars of a variety of jobs where both butler and cook were required. Last week they telephoned and accepted a job in Ireland. They agreed to take up residence on the second. That’s Saturday.’
‘Ireland?’ said Peter Medway, wrinkling his forehead. ‘Why Ireland? It’s all slums and peasants, isn’t it?’
‘Don’t show your ignorance, young man,’ said Hickory, easing himself back painfully in his chair to see if there were any position in which he could sprawl. ‘Where you have slums and peasants you also have nobs. Half the lusher sort of aristocrat has one of his homes in Ireland. Though in f
act it wasn’t one of those that they took the job with. It was a writer.’
‘Good God! A writer with a butler and a cook?’
‘Thriller writer, name of Carleton Milnes. Never heard of him? I bet the old Earl read him. Enormously successful. Fast, exciting stuff. He’s very right-wing. Says the nation’s lost its backbone, so he’s gone to live in a tax haven. It’s tax free for writers in Ireland, you know.’
‘Good heavens! What an odd idea!’
‘I believe they claw it all back from the authors by the tax they levy on whisky.’
‘What do we do? Alert the Irish police?’
‘You don’t know much about Ireland, do you, Peter? There’s no power on earth can alert the Garda. They’re still looking for Shergar, that lot. The best we can do is send a message to Cork, Waterford and a few other places, and hope that something positively shoves itself under their noses. But of course, if this pair are the ones we’re after, then Ireland’s probably the last place on earth they’ll go to.’
Hickory shuffled through the pile of papers on his desk, glancing at some of the reports, then shoving them to one side.
‘Still nothing from Canada on this Raicho character. Not surprising, I suppose. We only telexed yesterday, and he and his mother could have moved fifty times since the last address our Phil had for them. Could have left the country, come to that.’
He placed a paperweight on the little pile of papers he had made, and he was about to settle down to a slow, rural consideration of what his next move would be when his eye was caught by something outside the window.
‘Good Lord. Look at that.’
He heaved himself up, and he and Peter Medway went to look. The Pink Damask Room overlooked the courtyard and the overgrown lawns and gardens beyond. Making purposefully towards the lawns, carrying or wheeling scythes, clippers and lawn-mowers, were most of the younger members of the party at Chetton, led by the new Earl of Ellesmere himself.
‘A noble working party,’ said Hickory, fascinated. ‘Anyone would think he’d been in Dartmoor and got into the habit. Do you think this means the family has decided to pull together?’
• • •
It didn’t mean that at all. In fact, as soon as breakfast was over, Phil had sensed the beginnings of an Atmosphere. All except Sam had wandered back to the Green Drawing-Room, bored and disgruntled. An air, heavy and sticky as a butcher’s shop, hung over the room. The Countess was querulous, and Dixie was quarrelsome. And, with all of them there with nothing to do, it could only be a matter of time before one of them—would it be Digby, or would it be Trevor, needled into it by Michele?—started probing him about his intentions. And Phil was by no means ready yet to reveal his intentions.
‘Well!’ he said, gazing out of the windows at the Dutch Garden. ‘I must say the ancestral acres could do with a bit of attention.’
‘We paid off the gardeners,’ said his mother. ‘What was the point? It wasn’t as if we was going to keep the place.’
‘Bit short-sighted,’ said Phil. ‘You want the place looking its best if it’s going to be sold.’
Cunning Phil. Several of them perked up, and cast looks at their partners. He had not actually said he was selling the place, but he virtually had, hadn’t he? Selling the place meant oodles of ready money—money waiting to be shared around—provided the weighty obstacle of Dixie were got over first. Phil had always been so openhanded in the past . . .
‘Not that I’m criticizing,’ Phil resumed. ‘Still, it doesn’t give a good impression, having the plants all dusty and dying like that. You don’t suppose any of the old gardeners are camped out in the potting shed, do you, Ma?’
The Countess giggled. She loved Phil in his jokey mood.
‘Oh, go on with you,’ she said.
‘Then there’s those lawns we passed as we drove in yesterday,’ went on Phil. ‘Out beyond the courtyard place. They looked like a hippie’s haircut. There must be tools somewhere.’
‘There’s nasty little sheds all over the shop,’ said the Countess. ‘Full of beetles and cockroaches and I don’t know what. I know because your Dad did something now and then—till he saw it was too much for one.’
‘Not too much for nine or ten, though,’ said Phil. ‘What about you nippers watering the Dutch Garden, eh?’
‘Yippee!’ said Cliff.
‘Great!’ said Gareth.
‘And make sure that more goes on the plants than goes on each other—right? You keep them in order, Karen, love. Then the rest of us can set to and do something about the lawns and hedges.’
Trevor looked at his brother with the sort of open-eyed amazement he used when the Social Security people suggested various unpaid activities for the benefit of the community.
‘Give over, Phil! We’re on holiday, or we were. I haven’t mowed an effing lawn in my life.’
‘Nothing to it, little bruvver,’ said Phil. ‘You just point the thing forward and go. It’s a fine day, or haven’t you noticed? Your tan needs a bit of working on, or you’ll never get a part in Evie Goes to Botany Bay. Come on, Joan, come on, Digby. And you, Chokey. Ma will make us all a cuppa and bring it out for elevenses.’
And such was the charm of Phil’s personality that his mother agreed. And such was the strength of his position that the rest of them allowed themselves to be chivvied outside too. Even Trevor, after a few low words from Michele, stirred from his seat under the picture of Sir Rupert Spender to which he bore such a striking resemblance (Trevor was posing under it, to be precise, and thinking of various film scenarios in which the resemblance could be put to some use), and then strolled outside and let himself be caught up in the general activity. The children danced on ahead and showed them the sheds and outhouses where the gardening equipment was housed. Around the far end of the Blenheim Wing they found Sam, sketching a detail of a window cornice. He finished the sketch in a couple of strokes and joined the gang. Finally the little battalion filed its way on to the lawns.
It wasn’t, admittedly, the whole party. Dixie had said she had too much to do, but she’d come out later and watch. Chokey had pleaded rheumatics, but said he’d keep an eye on the children. The Countess had one of her little dozes. By mid-morning the kids were hosing and squealing and splashing outside the West Front, while on the other side of the house a real improvement was to be observed in the dishevelled state of the lawns. The men were attacking these, while Joan made peppery little snips at the ornamental hedges around the courtyard, and Michele drifted around in an enormous straw hat, apparently hoping someone would come along and photograph her in soft focus.
They didn’t have a lot of time to talk to each other. Michele did come over and chat to Trevor, but it was clear to everyone what that was about: Michele had decided that Trevor was too full of the milk of human kindness, and had taken on herself the role of screwing his courage to the sticking place. In the event, Trevor was the first of them who managed to have a word with Phil. After Michele left him he did a couple of lengths of one of the small lawns with his hand mower, leaning on it more than pushing it, and trying to look like Sebastian Flyte on one of his better days. Then, when Phil passed him just over the hedge, mowing one of the big lawns, and seated high on a motor mower looking rather like a Master of Foxhounds, Trevor shouted to him:
‘This’ll push the price up, eh, Phil? Nothing like polishing the silver before you take it up Petticoat Lane.’
‘I hate seeing things that’ve been let go,’ Phil shouted back, not stopping. And, to do Phil justice, he had always been a great little handyman in the old days, back in the terrace house in Stepney.
Digby was cleverer, and waited for a pause in the action. He conducted his mowing in a very neat and natty fashion, wiping his forehead now and then to show how much it was taking out of him, and even slipping his handkerchief surreptitiously under his armpits. Nobody had ever before been aware of Digby having armpits. But when the Countess appeared in the courtyard with a tray of tea things, Digby made sure
he strolled up for refreshments alongside Phil.
‘Satisfying work,’ he said. ‘Joan and I have really fallen for this house.’
‘It’s a humdinger,’ said Phil.
‘Pity so few have been able to see it in the past,’ said Digby.
‘Oh, I expect a lot more will get to see it in the future,’ said Phil.
Digby, though his heart bounded with hope, realized in a moment that this was not at all as categoric as he had hoped.
‘I suppose you’ll be letting us know your intentions in the course of time?’
‘Oh, sure.’
‘Because Joan’s naturally interested.’
‘I’ll be telling you as soon as it’s decent. Like I said to Lillywaite, with Dad not buried it’s just not on to talk about it.’
‘Oh, quite,’ said Digby.
‘Not the done thing at all.’
‘Oh, absolutely,’ said Digby, heartily.
• • •
It was not only at Chetton itself that the future of that great monument to how much could be made out of monopolies under the wisest fool in Christendom was canvassed that day. In the early afternoon the subject was raised in the Palace of Westminster, where that Tuesday the Minister for the Arts was filling in at Question Time before the Prime Minister came down to give the House a series of mini-lectures disguised as answers to questions. It was Sir Geoffrey Watton-Payne who, faithful to his promise to Mr Lillywaite, brought up the subject in the private-notice question.
‘Is the Minister aware of public disquiet about the fate of Chetton Hall, one of the pearls of Jacobean domestic architecture?’
Yes, the Minister was aware, and shared the Hon. Member’s concern.
‘Would the Minister suggest to the Chancellor that the solution adopted recently in the case of Teesdale Manor, in which the Exchequer accepted the house and contents in lieu of death duties, and made a special grant to the National Trust to cover the considerable cost of the upkeep, could well be the most appropriate way of ensuring that this architectural treasure did not fall into unsuitable hands?’
Corpse in a Gilded Cage Page 13
