'Ingenious,' mused the AC. 'But whatever possessed Sir Jasper to come up with such a damn fool idea?'
'It does seem foolish on the face of it, sir. But whatever else he was, he clearly loved the Manor and especially the gardens. Over the centuries they seem to have become almost a sacred trust, handed down from one generation to the next. He needed an heir he could rely on to care for them, and setting up the contest gave him a chance to find out more about his relatives and what they really thought of the place, and of him. He was also obsessed with puzzles and probably had an excessive regard for those who could solve them. Looked at like that, it makes a sort of sense.'
'Humph! That's the upper classes for you. Mad as hatters, half of 'em, and sexually incontinent into the bargain. So it appears the woman Matthews still cares for the child of her shame. That's rather surprising, isn't it?'
Felix inwardly grimaced at this Victorian sentiment. 'It's not so unusual in my experience, sir. She's all she's got in the world, and no doubt Charlotte was taught to hate her father, although she clearly takes after him — highly intelligent, somewhat eccentric, and completely amoral.'
'Has she got a record?'
'Yes she has, sir. We'd discovered enough to suspect Matthews but we knew she must have had an accomplis — someone with brains and probably with small hands. My dabs man, Sergeant Yardley, had noticed some dusty marks from a small pair of gloves. They could only have been made by one of the murderers. Charlotte filled the bill on both counts but we knew almost nothing about her. We went to the address she'd given us during questioning and found a very nice detached villa with the door answered by a maid. She said her mistress was away – we knew that, of course – but it turned out that she was only waiting for her to come back before giving notice. She was about to get married herself, which was fortunate, as she had nothing to lose by telling us what she knew.
'What she knew, as it turned out, was quite a lot. Charlotte had apparently done very well at her rather expensive school but had come home to care for her ailing guardian, of whom she seems to have been fond. It was only when the old lady died that she began to kick up her heels — men staying overnight, wild parties, fast cars. She has a passion for cars and usually owned at least one. What little money there was soon ran out, and not wishing to relinquish the house she took work as governess to a wealthy family, trading on her apparent background and obvious intelligence. That didn't pay well enough for her, so she began indulging in a bit of prostitution on the side. Then the child she was looking after died. They decided it was an accident at the time, but now one is given to wonder. Nobody wanted her after that, so she moved back home and acquired a select clientele of "gentleman friends," thoroughly scandalizing her maid. One of her regulars was a forger, and she began working with him, at one point doing three months for uttering fivers. We suspect they still associate, though he denies it, and it's probably he who provided her with a false birth certificate. That's unfortunate for him, as we'll be watching him now.'
'Hmm, a thoroughly bad lot, and ungrateful too,' mused the AC. 'A psychopath, would you say?'
'That I wouldn't know, sir. She's certainly a talented liar, and behaved completely calmly after the killing of her father. I'd say it was almost certainly she who pulled the trigger, as I suspect Matthews would have baulked at it when push came to shove. I've no doubt also that it was Charlotte who came up with the very clever murder plan. Her talents seem to lean towards the technical, including some medical knowledge, and she will have realised that a body can't cool to lower than the temperature of its surroundings. The degree of cooling of a body is, of course, the principal means of determining the time of recent death. Roughly it cools one and a half degrees for every hour after life has flown. By arranging the murder to coincide with dinnertime on the Saturday evening, when no-one would be around to hear the shot, and then preventing Sir Jasper's body from significantly cooling for a few hours they could make the time of death appear much later than it actually was.
'Matthews knew that Sir Jasper was in the habit of going down to his hiding place at dinnertime to spy on his relatives, so Charlotte had only to wait behind the door of the maids' room and put his own gun to his head as he passed through. Any mess could be readily cleaned up in there as it's all tiled. They then sat him in the deceased Lady FitzGreville's old wheelchair, adjusted it to resemble a library armchair – thereby dealing with the problems of rigor mortis and blood pooling – and wheeled him into the airing cupboard, putting the electric fire from Sir Jasper's study in there for good measure. We've tried it ourselves and it stays at a toasty ninety degrees. The whole thing would have taken minutes, making it easy to do without provoking suspicion. Matthews was ostensibly tidying Joan FitzGreville's rooms at the time, and Charlotte could always claim to have been working on a puzzle clue. Both then made sure they were seen chatting to someone in the entrance hall, Charlotte having slipped down the backstairs to avoid the main staircase to the great hall.
'In the small hours of the morning, when everyone was finally asleep, they fetched Sir Jasper out of the maids' room, wheeled him across to the library and arranged him in the chair where he was found. By careful timing they were able to make it look as though death had occurred between about twelve o'clock at night and two in the morning, thereby misleading poor Benyson, who could not have been expected to know about the airing cupboard. He did, however suspect that something was wrong, perhaps unconsciously noting a slight dessication of the corpse. He naturally did the autopsy as soon as possible after the body was discovered – we were waiting for the result – so any accelerated decomposition would have been scarcely noticeable.
'For good measure, the murderers also slipped forged notes under a couple of bedroom doors in the hope of creating an almighty row in the small hours of the night. It worked rather well. So much so that almost everyone in the house had an alibi for the period of one o'clock to well past two o'clock in the morning. The aim, of course, was to suggest that Sir Jasper had died by his own hand. They had previously doctored the murder weapon to make it look like suicide. They were even helped by the propensity of the small son of one of the relatives to wander about at night. Since neither he nor anyone else had heard a gunshot between twelve and one o'clock, that only left the period of one o'clock to two, when the noise and disturbance would be assumed to have hidden it. One way and another, they must have felt that fate was on their side. The tragedy to my mind is that Charlotte might have done very well for herself if she'd stayed straight.'
'Doubt it.' said the AC. 'Bad blood will out, even if it's blue. How did you get onto them?'
'I couldn't quite believe Sir Jasper would have killed himself, sir, not at that juncture anyway. We'd come to the view – Sergeant Rattigan and I – that if it was murder, the murderer was probably a servant, or had the help of one. Unfortunately, the only servant who seemed remotely to qualify was Matthews. I was a little concerned about her responses when I interviewed her but I had to allow for a certain amount of nervousness, given the circumstances, and more importantly there seemed no way in which she could have been involved. One must remember that the whole investigation was predicated on an incorrect time of death. Once I was able to stand back from the case a little I began to see that it simply couldn't have happened then. But how was it done? A domestic incident with some faulty central heating probably put me in the right frame of mind, and then I met a pair of urchins begging pennies for Guy Fawkes night. That gave me the clue I needed. When we were children, the servants used to make our guy and hide it in the airing cupboard until November the fifth. Being kids, we knew it was there, of course. I remembered there was a nice, capacious airing cupboard in the maids' room adjacent to Sir Jasper's apartment and consulted Dr Benyson on the possibilities inherent in keeping a body artificially warm. He told me what was needed to be done by the murderers to take advantage of that. I also remembered Joan FitzGreville saying she'd dreamt of her mother coming to see her. No doubt she'd been uncons
ciously aware of the sound of the wheelchair moving about. I have to say I'm very concerned for the welfare of that lady. She's quite alone with those two.'
'The creature wouldn't murder her half-sister as well, surely?' frowned the AC.
Felix shook his head doubtfully. 'You haven't met Joan, sir.'
Chapter Seventeen
'Any problems?' asked Nanny as Charlotte joined them at their table.
'No, all transferred. Surprisingly easy, really.' She turned to look out the window. 'I say, what a view! Look, Joan, you can see the whole of Mount Fuji. Isn't that marvellous?'
'What's marvellous about it?' said Joan sulkily.
'You must surely know about Mount Fuji, Joan! It's very famous. It's an active volcano and sacred and everything. It's a sort of symbol of Japan.'
'A volcano! Will it blow up? Volcanos blow up!'
'I should hardly think so; it last erupted about two hundred years ago. Besides, it's miles away.'
'Well I don't like it! I'm sick of Japan and I'm sick of travelling. Did you get the tickets?'
'Yes, three first class to Liverpool. Here's your chequebook back. Eat up now, and we'll go and start packing.'
'Oh good,' said Joan. She stabbed doubtfully at her plate. 'I don't know that I want this really. What is it?'
'It's fugu, dear,' said Nanny. 'It's Japanese for fish. You like fish, don't you?'
'Yes,' said Joan. 'I like fish.'
The End
A Strange Manor of Death (The Inspector Felix Mysteries Book 3) Page 18
