by Issy Brooke
He reached the end of the corridor. Behind him were the private family bedrooms but now he was on a longer, wider passageway that was much more lavishly decorated. This was the South Wing proper, where guests were accommodated. Outside the nearest door was a pair of shoes; a servant had polished them in the night and now they were gleaming and ready to be collected when the occupant arose. He spotted movement at the far end of the corridor, and got ready to be a smiling host but quickly saw that it was only the black-clad figure of Smith, Adelia’s lady’s maid. She was walking towards him with a jug in her hands.
She was about thirty feet away from him when she turned her head as she passed the farthest guest bedroom door. From this angle, Theodore could not see if it were open or closed.
But it must have been open, because Smith, usually so cool and calm and reserved, saw something within. And it made her drop the jug, and scream and scream and scream.
THEODORE WAS THERE in a flash, his housecoat flapping like a cloak. “Stay back!” he commanded.
“Damn right I’m staying back!” Smith howled, pressing herself on the opposite wall.
Theodore stood in the open door and surveyed the scene. Very few things could make the unflappable Smith scream, but a dead man in a pool of blood was certainly one of them.
“What a curious thing!” Theodore said. He spun around. “Smith, you need to do a few things for me. Find a maid to clear up the broken jug. Send someone to fetch a policeman – no, wait, only Inspector Prendergast will do. And have a tray of tea sent up to my wife, if you will.”
Smith gaped at him. “Tea?”
“Yes. I thought it would be a nice gesture.”
“Gesture?”
“Smith! Collect yourself, woman!” He snapped his fingers and it did the trick. She blinked back her tears rapidly and set about the tasks she had been given. He did know, in a small part of his brain, that arranging for tea to be sent to Adelia was hardly of high importance but he reasoned that Smith needed to be busy. And anyway, everyone liked a nice pot of tea. Adelia would need the familiar comfort of it when the news broke.
As it was already breaking.
Smith’s screams had roused the household of residents and guests alike. Doors were opening and various heads were poking out. Theodore thought quickly. Here was a dead man, and one thing was obvious: surely the killer was still in the house! And wasn’t he a private investigator with numerous cases under his belt? This moment then could be his finest hour. He would gather everyone together to prevent anyone from leaving, assess the situation, and have identified the killer by the time the police arrived.
He almost clapped his hands with glee.
“I need everyone to go into the breakfast room immediately!” he called. It would be the only one with a fire already laid, and they might as well have some food to hand while they waited for him to solve the case. “Don’t bother to dress.”
“But what’s happened?” came a clamour of voices. Some of the men began to emerge from their rooms. Theodore pulled the door closed so that no one could see inside.
“I say,” Montgomery said. He was the closest. “That’s Halifax’s room. Is he all right?”
“No. He’s dead,” said Theodore. There was no point sugar-coating it. “So you are all suspects now, I’m afraid. Everyone needs to congregate in the breakfast room and I will be down to speak to you all as soon as I can. The police are on their way,” he added, as it would soon be true, and he didn’t want anyone to think they had a chance of running off.
It took another ten minutes of repeating himself to persuade everyone to do as he had asked. Adelia appeared at the far end of the corridor and added her voice to his, for which he was profoundly grateful, especially considering that she didn’t quite know what was going on. As soon as everyone had been ushered, muttering, to the ground floor, Theodore opened the door to Bablock Halifax’s room once again.
There he was, and he was quite dead. Theodore breathed in deeply, trying to detect any unusual smells in the air. He’d encountered air-borne poisons in one case and it was still fresh in his mind. But the room smelled only of hair oil, cigar smoke, and something which he recognised from his early medical training – blood, and the general sweaty funk of a body in a room which had not had its windows opened lately.
Halifax was lying face down on the carpet and he was still dressed in the clothes that he had worn for the meal the previous evening, though his jacket had been flung onto the bed. The back of his head was broken and smashed, and blood had pooled all around. It had congealed and soaked into the rug.
This must have happened not long after everyone had retired to bed.
Clues, clues. He had to find the clues. So what had hit Halifax? Theodore scanned the room without touching anything, but no blood-stained weapon was immediately obvious. He picked his way closer to the corpse and force of habit made him bend to check for a pulse. As expected, the cold clammy neck yielded no sign of life.
Theodore inched back to the door and looked at the room again. Halifax was facing away from him. The killer had crept in without being noticed, then, and struck violently from behind. Halifax would barely have known what was happening. There did not appear to be any other damage to the body, just the marks on the head.
Someone had deliberately killed Bablock Halifax, and it had to be to do with the fossil business. That meant the suspects were quite clear: George Montgomery, Samuel Froude – or his brother-in-law, Alfred Pegsworth.
Theodore closed the door firmly and rushed down to the breakfast room to tell everyone the news. He burst into a tense gathering, and announced, “Bablock Halifax has been murdered!”
Everyone stared at him in absolute horror.
Eventually Adelia spoke.
“My dear. Perhaps you could not look quite so delighted about it?”
Five
Theodore could barely contain himself. He ordered the footmen to guard the doors of the breakfast room and went out to meet Inspector Prendergast as soon as he heard that the policeman had arrived at Thringley House. He accosted the younger man in the entrance hall.
“Prendergast! You’re looking well! Come along, dear chap. I have everyone in the breakfast room. You’re an inspector now, hey? I knew you’d do it. I heard about the promotion straight away, of course. Always thought you were the right man for the job. Told the commissioner that many times. And you’re going to be the guest of honour at this charity dinner my wife’s been talking about! Well done! Jolly well done!”
Inspector Prendergast looked slightly confused. He gave Theodore a brief smile of greeting but did not follow him. Theodore stopped and turned around.
“Lord Calaway, no one has told me what’s happened except that someone’s dead. I have a doctor waiting outside in the carriage; do I need to bring him inside?”
“A doctor? It’s a bit late for that! Yes. Chap is very dead. Very dead indeed. His head’s all bashed in, in fact. I say, isn’t this the first case you’ve run as inspector, then? It is! What larks!”
Inspector Prendergast winced and bit his lip. “Yes, sir, it is my first case.”
“Oh – sorry, yes, I ought to not shout so loudly about that. Don’t want anyone to lose confidence in you! I have perfect confidence in you, by the way. I’ve watched you grow up. I’m very proud of you and I don’t mind saying it.”
“Thank you, sir.”
It was true. Prendergast was one of the new breed of middle-class career policemen. He had been educated to a reasonable standard, but had started his early working life as a bobby on the beat, being exposed to all the very worst that the rough streets of cities and towns could throw at him. His intellect and natural instincts for culture meant that he enjoyed the theatre and the arts, and could discuss both pigeon racing with a rural farmer and horse racing with a lord. Theodore sometimes felt a pang of envy for the man. It seemed to Theodore that Prendergast had the very best of all worlds.
He told the inspector what he knew so far and desc
ribed how the victim had been found that morning. “Sorry to say, I don’t actually know who the killer is, yet,” he said, with a feeling of faint embarrassment.
“Why would you, sir?”
“Well, it is my job. And this is my house. Anyway, this Bablock Halifax was clearly bopped on the head last night by person or persons unknown, from behind, with some sort of blunt instrument. I should be grateful to get a closer look at the wound as soon as I am able to. That will tell me more. I think he died pretty much straight away – there’s no sign that he tried to crawl around or shout for help or anything. Smack – dead. Just like that.” Theodore mimed what he thought had happened, although he regretted that he not got dressed yet. Flailing one’s arms around in a housecoat probably lacked a certain gravitas.
“Who is this Bablock Halifax?”
“He’s one of a party of businessmen who are all staying here while they work out the final details to their fossil-hunting venture. They want to run trips.”
“Trips?”
“Yes, you know, they intend to take parties of folks out to cliffs and so on, give them all hammers and let them bash these fossils out of the – oh. Oh!”
“Hammers?”
“Hammers. Hammers! I quite see your point, yes,” Theodore said, even though Prendergast hadn’t exactly made a point. “Anyway, so the suspects, to my mind, are naturally the other men in the business. It’s all run by a chap called Samuel Froude. He’s got the cash behind it, you know. George Montgomery is the brains. He knows all about fossils. Ah! So he’ll have the hammers. Top suspect, perhaps? And then there’s ... well, this is a little awkward. The other fellow involved is my brother in law. Alfred Prendergast.”
“What does he bring to the business?”
“He’s not part of the business as such. He carries bags and so on,” Theodore said somewhat clumsily. He knew he ought not to be embarrassed by the familial connection and he would never have admitted it openly. He said, “But anyway, those are the suspects though naturally we’ll need to look at the servants too.”
“We?”
“Well, yes. You and I. I’d very much welcome your advice in this case.”
Prendergast stared at Theodore for a long time. Theodore revisited his words and it began to dawn on him that he was, in fact, taking completely the wrong sort of stance.
“I mean to say,” Theodore mumbled, “That I am utterly at your service and wish merely to offer any assistance that I am able to. Command me, and I shall do it.”
Inspector Prendergast burst out laughing. “Steady on, now, my lord – that’s going a little far! Come, now. I have always appreciated your guidance and patronage. Without your help, I should never have been accepted at the club. Perhaps I should not have been promoted so quickly too; certainly if I listen to Inspector Ingram, that’s his feeling.”
“But no one listens to Inspector Ingram. That’s the whole problem.”
Prendergast smiled briefly. “That’s as may be. I cannot comment. Anyway, I owe you a great debt. Furthermore, you are something of a local celebrity, you know. We all follow your exploits down at the stationhouse. One of the men has started a board where he pins up all the news reports about you. Let’s work together. How does that sound?”
“I should be honoured!”
“Marvellous. Is there a room where we might conduct some interviews? I shall follow your guidance in this particular matter, and begin with speaking to these business associates that you mention. However, let me call in one of my constables, who can begin taking statements from your servants too.”
Theodore sprang to the task immediately.
SAMUEL FROUDE WAS SHOWN into the interview room first. He glared at Theodore. “What’s going on?”
“Lord Calaway is here as a courtesy,” Inspector Prendergast said with heavy emphasis on Theodore’s title. “After all, this is his house.”
Froude did not sit down. He stood by the door, his arms hanging by his sides. By now, everyone was fully dressed. Froude was wearing a solid tweed suit in thick wool, as if he intended on travelling. “Isn’t he a suspect like the rest of us?”
“Good God, man, why would I be a suspect?” Theodore spluttered.
“For the same ridiculous reason that I am, I suppose. You are here.”
“Please, Mr Froude, do sit down. I need to ask you about Mr Halifax so that we might come a little closer to understand why someone might want to do him harm,” Prendergast said. “And you knew him well.” Reluctantly, Froude sat at the small table that had been set up in the receiving room. Theodore sat alongside Prendergast, but moved his chair back a little to signal that Prendergast was directing things and that he was merely an observer.
“Halifax was a liar, a chancer and a charlatan,” Froude announced. He leaned back in his chair, extending his long legs and folding his arms tightly over his chest. “Did I know him well? Unfortunately I did, and I hated the man. Make of that what you will.” He almost snarled at them, challenging them to arrest him and cart him off.
Inspector Prendergast wrote it all down and showed no surprise or emotion. “I see. What role did he play in this business of yours?”
“No real role of any use. Ha!”
Inspector Prendergast wiped his pen nib and put it down carefully. “Mr Froude. Tell me exactly how you met Mr Halifax and how he came to be a part of your business. Were you not partners? I understand that all four of you were equally involved.”
“There is nothing equal about any of this and I had certainly made errors of judgment that were about to be rectified. Look: the whole thing started off between just me and Montgomery and that was how it ought to have stayed. I was duped by Halifax, through Montgomery, and that’s the long and short of it. I met the chap one night and I must have been drinking, for he spoke easily and plausibly about the contacts that he had in the business world. We were in an exclusive sort of place in London and he knew all the right people – or so it seemed. Montgomery vouched for him. They knew each other, you see. So you ask him. At first I resisted but Montgomery won me over in the end, and now I wonder why. Montgomery was insistent. There’s something between them, you know. Montgomery almost made it a condition that I brought Halifax in. We were fools, the pair of us, but me especially – yes, I am enough of a man to admit my faults. I wanted to ditch him at the very earliest opportunity.”
“You do realise that gives you a clear motive, don’t you?” Prendergast said. “Tell me exactly all your movements last night.”
Froude shrugged. “Yes. I know I have a motive, which is why I thought I’d be straight with you right from the start. You’d only find out how I felt sooner or later, and then I’d look suspicious indeed. As for last night, my alibi is sitting right there – Lord Calaway himself. I stayed in the dining room with him and the others after dinner, and then we all went up to bed. I am fairly sure we all walked up the stairs together. Our rooms are all along the same corridor.”
Prendergast nodded. Theodore had shown him the scene before the interviews had begun, and he was familiar with the layout. Halifax’s room was at the far end. Then came the room where Montgomery was staying, followed by Froude, then Pegsworth.
“I went into my room,” Froude went on. “I can provide no alibi from this point onwards, of course. I did not sneak out again but how can I prove that to you? And there you have it. Arrest me or let me go.”
“Who do you think killed Halifax?” Prendergast asked.
“What a question! Do I look like a detective?”
No one spoke.
Froude sighed. “Obviously, I didn’t do it. I have too much to lose. As it is, the scandal attaching to this matter might be too much to weather – only time will tell. But the list of people that didn’t like Halifax is longer than the list of people who did.”
“He seemed personable enough to me,” Theodore said. “Loud, but not offensively so.”
Froude shot him a look of pure hatred and it quite took Theodore aback. He said, in a menacing
tone, “Had you not seen the way he spoke with your own wife, Lord Calaway? Last night, at the dinner, he was crass and it quite made my skin crawl. I wouldn’t have stood for it and I am surprised you did. A day longer here and you’d have been hunting the chap down yourself, I can assure you. Lady Calaway is a precious gem of whom you ought to take more care.” He sat up straight. “There. I’ve told you everything. May I leave?”
“No.”
“Excuse me?”
“I mean,” said the inspector, “Yes, you may leave this room. But as for leaving Thringley House – no. Not a soul may leave this place until we have solved the case. Thank you for your time, sir. I shall speak to George Montgomery next.”
GEORGE MONTGOMERY GAVE them no more information than Froude had done. He was markedly evasive, however, when Inspector Prendergast raised the matter of how and why Montgomery had introduced Bablock Halifax to Froude and the business.
“I was convinced by him,” he said at first. “Halifax did know a lot of people and he was good with organising things. He said he could arrange for us to meet the right investors and I believed him.”
“Did you really?” Prendergast said. “Because I am getting the impression that Mr Halifax was notorious for being a man of hot air and little substance. Did you not realise you were being duped by him?”
Theodore marvelled at Prendergast’s assumption. No wonder he was making a good detective. It reminded Theodore of Adelia’s skill in seeing beyond the outward forms of people’s words to the substance within.
“Well, yes, that was true,” Montgomery said. “I realised it in the end. But the thing is – well, look, Lord Calaway, you’ve met the man yourself – he’s easy going, he’s personable, he’s fine company when one’s in one’s cups, and all of that. He does get people relaxed and gets them happy and then they agree to invest, you know? It’s a valuable skill. He does know a lot of people; it’s just that some of them don’t wish to be known by him perhaps. But he’s agreeable, more agreeable than Froude or even me. It’s only when the drink wears off and one tries to have a sensible conversation with him that one begins to see that he’s all smoke and mirrors. He was all smoke and mirrors. Past tense! By heaven, I can’t believe he is gone. And the fact is ... the fact was ... well, I believed him. I did see some value in him. Maybe I am a poor judge of character. I am far better with rocks and minerals, you know.”
