Rules of Murder

by Julianna Deering

  Twin tears rolled down her cheeks, and he slipped one arm around her shoulders.

  “There now,” he said as he blotted her face with his linen handkerchief. “I never meant to make you cry. Fancy you coming all the way here from America just to have everything turn out perfectly awful, and here I am making it all the worse. Don’t you mind me. You said yourself I never say anything meant to be taken seriously.”

  She couldn’t help smiling at that, and he gave her shoulders a gentle squeeze.

  “I’ve always liked your uncle,” he added. “And seeing that he’s your uncle, he must be all right.”

  “We just have to let the police figure it out,” she said. “And pray they do it quickly.”

  “Ahem.”

  Drew and Madeline looked up to see Dennison standing in the dressing room doorway.

  “I beg your pardon, sir,” he said, “but your presence is required in Mr. Parker’s study.”

  Drew sighed. “Tell him I’ll be there straightaway.”

  Feeling her cheeks turn warm, Madeline moved out from under his arm. “Do they want to speak to me, too?” she asked as Drew helped her to her feet.

  “They haven’t said, miss,” Dennison replied.

  “I’d best toddle along then,” Drew told her, releasing her hand with another little squeeze. “I don’t want you to let all this worry you. It will be sorted out one way or another.”

  Drew knocked at the study door and was immediately admitted. Mason sat in his usual place behind the desk, and across from him, in the chair that had been Rushford’s the night before, sat a tall, stoop-shouldered man in a brown overcoat.

  “Chief Inspector, this is my stepson, Drew Farthering,” Mason said. “Drew, this is Chief Inspector Birdsong of the Hampshire Police.”

  The other man stood. “Good morning, Mr. Farthering.”

  “How do you do, sir?”

  Drew shook Birdsong’s hand. It was a hard hand, a workman’s hand, a fair match with the inspector’s craggy, mustached face.

  “I’m sorry to have to trouble you at this difficult time, Mr. Farthering,” Birdsong said. “I realize the family is in mourning, and I’ll be as brief as possible.”

  “Sit down,” Mason told them both. “Please.”

  “I’ve read Constable Applegate’s notes from last night,” the inspector said as he made himself comfortable, “and Mr. Parker here has confirmed them. I’d like you to tell me what happened from the time Mr. Lincoln and Mrs. Parker left the party last night.”

  Again Drew repeated everything he remembered, the fireworks and the thunderstorm and the blood-soaked body under the mackintoshes in the greenhouse.

  “How do you suppose someone let off a shotgun not thirty yards away from you and the young lady without your hearing it?” Birdsong asked, his gimlet eyes narrowing.

  “It must have been the fireworks, just as I told Jimmy, er, Constable Applegate. I do remember one sounding particularly loud at the time. It could have been then.”

  Birdsong nodded. “And who was in charge of the fireworks, Mr. Farthering?”

  “I believe it was Peterson, our head gardener, and one or two of his men.”

  “I see. Would they be the only ones to have access to them?”

  “No,” Drew said. “Just about anyone could have, I suppose. He set it all up in the afternoon so it would be ready for the party.”

  Again, Birdsong nodded. “And does anyone on the estate have a gun of any sort?”

  “As best I know, Peterson has a shotgun, and my stepfather has a little Webley he brought back from the war.”

  “I’ve shown him that,” Mason put in. “It hasn’t been fired in years.”

  “And that’s all?” the chief inspector asked.

  “As best I know,” Drew confirmed.

  “And when did you last see the gardener’s shotgun?”

  Drew crossed his arms over his chest, considering. “I don’t know if I could say for certain. Ages ago, I expect. Do you think that’s what was used on Lincoln?”

  “We have to consider every possibility, sir,” Birdsong said. “Do you recall when you saw it last?”

  Drew shook his head. “I couldn’t tell you the date. It was last summer, I believe. He had it out to deal with some moles that were making a mess of the rose garden. I don’t believe he ever fired it, though.”

  “Are you aware that it was missing?”

  Drew sat up straighter. “No. You say it was missing. Does that mean it’s been located since?”

  Birdsong nodded. “Thrown in the brush at the edge of the woods. Wiped clean, of course.”

  “What does Peterson say?”

  “According to Applegate, he claims it was locked in the shed as usual. He didn’t even know it was gone.”

  “You don’t think he would have done such a thing, do you?” Mason asked.

  “It doesn’t seem likely, sir,” the chief inspector replied. “And Applegate checked his hands last night. None too clean, mind you, but nothing to indicate he’d fired a gun, and no reason to. But it’s early days yet.”

  “Then who do you think killed Lincoln?” Drew asked.

  “We’ll come to that in time, Mr. Farthering. For now, I’d like you to tell me about you and Mr. Lincoln. Not the best of friends, were you?”

  Drew stared at Birdsong in disbelief. “I didn’t kill him, if that’s what you mean. I’m not saying I feel any great bereavement over his passing, but I’ve never thought murder a very sporting way to settle an argument.”

  “So you did argue.”

  “I suppose you could call it that,” Drew admitted. “If I wanted the man gone that badly, I could have simply ordered him off my property.”

  “Certainly,” Birdsong agreed. “Although that wouldn’t be much in the way of defending your family honor, now, would it?”

  A protest sprang to Drew’s lips, but then he smiled, knowing the inspector was watching for a reaction from him. “I have yet to see anyone’s family honor improved by premeditated murder.”

  “You know it was premeditated, do you?” Birdsong asked, and Drew still smiled.

  “As well as you do, Inspector. He had to have known somehow when that last burst of fireworks was to be let off so he’d know when to fire. None of the single bursts would have covered the sound of the gun.”

  “Very true, very true,” Birdsong murmured. “Very well then, Detective Farthering, who is it you think is most likely to have killed Lincoln?”

  “I suppose the obvious candidate would be my—would be Mrs. Parker.” Drew glanced at his stepfather’s drawn face and hurried to add, “But I don’t think she did it, sir.”

  “According to Peterson, she was the one who gave order for the fireworks.”

  “We almost always have them at summer parties,” Mason put in. “Everyone knows that.”

  “Lincoln was blackmailing her,” Birdsong reminded him. “More than one woman has found that cause enough for murder.”

  “I’m sure you’ve seen the note,” Drew said. “She said she wasn’t paying anymore. She didn’t care what Lincoln made public. Why kill him now?”

  “And why was he blackmailing her?” the inspector asked.

  Feeling a sudden tightness in his chest, Drew again glanced at Mason. “He, uh, Lincoln found out that I wasn’t her son. I suppose he meant to tell me about it, if she didn’t pay.” Would Mason have told Birdsong as much already?

  “Did she ever adopt you legally, Mr. Farthering?” the chief inspector asked.

  Mason must have told him or he would surely have had a great many more questions. “I don’t know,” Drew admitted, looking to his stepfather.

  Mason shook his head. “I don’t believe so. No.”

  “So,” Birdsong mused, “if you weren’t legally her son, that might affect your inheritance later on, mightn’t it?”

  Drew felt the hot blood rise in his face. “If you would care to check, Chief Inspector, Farthering Place and everything in it, as well as a go
od portion of Farlinford Processing, was left to me by name under the provisions of my father’s will twelve years ago, and held in trust until I reached majority in 1929. It has always been my assumption that my mother’s separate property would go to her husband unless she made a particular bequest to me.”

  “And did she?”

  “A few items, but nothing of great monetary value. Our solicitor’s office would be glad to provide you with the details. It’s Whyland, Montford, Clifton and Russ in London.”

  “I’ll be certain to check with them, sir,” Birdsong replied, and a bit smugly, Drew thought.

  “Dennison will get you the number.”

  “I don’t wish to appear unfeeling, Mr. Farthering, but do you think Mrs. Parker took her own life?” The chief inspector gave the question a veneer of solicitousness.

  Drew glanced at his stepfather. There was a glistening film of sweat on Mason’s upper lip.

  “Dr. Wallace says it could have been an accident.” Drew wasn’t sure he sounded all that convincing even to himself. “If she were upset and all, she might easily have taken more of the Veronol than she realized.”

  “And was she upset, Mr. Farthering?”

  His stepfather’s words came back to him again: “She was, quite understandably, upset by what’s happened.” It was such a little bit of a thing. . . .

  “I don’t know,” Drew answered truthfully. “When I saw her last, she was a bit on edge, but then what woman isn’t with a houseful of guests?”

  Drew decided not to say anything more. Not at this point. There was no need to cast suspicion on his stepfather over what may have been no more than a misunderstanding. He’d ask Mason about it himself when he had the opportunity. The man deserved that much from him.

  “And when was it that you saw her last, sir?”

  Drew hated it, this game of cat and mouse, but he supposed it had to be done. There had been at least one murder, and the murderer had to be found.

  “It was after Miss Parker sent Lincoln packing.” Drew gave the chief inspector a knowing glance. “I’m sure it’s in your notes. He went off to talk to Mrs. Parker, and they both left the party straight off. I didn’t see either of them again.”

  “And you feel sure Mrs. Parker wouldn’t have killed Lincoln?”

  Drew had to think for a moment. “Not sure, perhaps. But I would never have thought so.”

  “We’ve taken a cast of the shoes Mrs. Parker was wearing last night, as well as Lincoln’s. It appears Mrs. Parker walked across the lawn toward the greenhouse, then hurried to catch someone up before she got there. They both stopped a moment, evidently exchanged a few words, and afterward she went back into the house.”

  “So she never actually went inside the greenhouse?” Mason asked.

  “It doesn’t seem so, no,” Birdsong said. “Not last night.”

  “Thank God for that,” Mason breathed.

  Drew looked at his stepfather. Could he have been wondering about Constance all this while? Wondering if he were married to a murderess? “I trust her,” he had said just the day before, but did he really?

  “The other set of footprints belonged to Lincoln, I suppose,” Drew said, but Birdsong shook his head.

  “They were definitely made by a man’s dress pumps, the size of Mr. Lincoln’s but not the same style.”

  Drew knit his brow. “Any clues as to whose they might be?”

  “None as yet, but we did find something rather interesting when we removed Mr. Lincoln’s shoes to make a cast of them.” He lifted one eyebrow. “There’s a mark down the back of his left stocking where he must have backed into one of those little tables in the greenhouse. Looks like it had recently been painted.”

  “Nothing too odd in that, is there?”

  “No, except there was no corresponding mark on the back of the shoe, and by rights there should be.”

  “Our Mr. Lincoln was provided with a new pair of shoes.”

  “It appears so.”

  None of them said anything for a moment.

  “Anything else untoward about Lincoln’s body, Inspector?” Drew asked.

  “Not that we’ve come across yet. Nothing apart from him being blown to bits and all.”

  “Yes,” Drew observed, “that would certainly be untoward.”

  “Anyway, those footprints were all over around the greenhouse, what your man Peterson hadn’t spoilt with tramping about.” The chief inspector turned to Mason. “I understand, sir, that there was a death at Farlinford Processing last week, as well. A Mr. McCutcheon, one of the research scientists, and acute benzene poisoning, was it?”

  “Yes,” Mason said. “Evidently he was doing an experiment with it and had a spill. He should have known not to work with the stuff in a closed room like that. The vapors overwhelmed him almost at once. Ghastly thing, I’m sure. We had to clear everyone out of the building as a precaution.”

  “And what day was that, Mr. Parker?”

  “Last Thursday, the twenty-sixth.”

  “And you were where at the time, sir?”

  “At my office, as usual,” Mason told him. “Mr. Rushford and I were there discussing business when we heard the commotion, but he was dead by the time we got to him.”

  “And you, Mr. Farthering?” Birdsong asked.

  “I was at the seaside,” Drew said. “Just came home this Friday night.”

  “Did you know this McCutcheon, sir?”

  “No,” Drew said. “Never met the man to my knowledge.”

  “He’d been at Farlinford almost three years,” Mason said. “I’d met him, but not too much more than that. Not much more than to say good morning and to ask how the work was coming. Research and development was always Lincoln’s father’s specialty, when he was still with us. But he and Rushford and I didn’t usually work with the men directly.”

  “This Mr. Rushford, sir, he is your partner as well, I take it?”

  Mason nodded. “He’s the head of our financial department. He sees to our investments and mortgages and that.”

  The chief inspector jotted something in his notebook. “And what is your job, may I ask?”

  “I suppose you’d say I’m rather over everything at Farlinford. I make sure we have money to operate our plants and refineries and ship our products to our distributors with enough to spare for research and some outside investments that, in turn, bring more money into the company so we’re able to start the process all over again.”

  “What about young Mr. Lincoln?” Birdsong asked. “What was his position at Farlinford?”

  Drew opened his mouth and then shut it again at the chastening look on his stepfather’s face.

  “He didn’t really have a formal position in the company,” Mason told the inspector. “I mean, he had an office, the one his father always had, and he was, of course, a director, taking his father’s place, but he seemed fairly content to collect his share of the profits in the company and leave it at that. He really wasn’t in the office all that much, not on a regular basis.”

  “Was he acquainted with Mr. McCutcheon?”

  “I suppose it was quite possible that they had met,” Mason said. “Not that I know of, though.”

  “Lincoln never did much at Farlinford besides eye the secretarial pool,” Drew put in.

  Birdsong consulted his notes once more. “There was another death at your company, wasn’t there, Mr. Parker?”

  “We’ve had some accidents now and again, as does any industrial concern, but the last one was well over five years ago. A pump exploded and—”

  “I mean a murder, sir. At your offices in Canada.”

  “Oh.” Mason nodded, his face grave. “That was a sordid business. A young Chinese girl was found dead in a storage closet.”

  Birdsong’s businesslike expression remained unchanged. “Beaten and then strangled to death, I understand.”

  Mason looked a bit white around the mouth. “Turned out her uncle worked for the company, sweeping up and such, and was displ
eased to find a white man had been keeping her as his mistress. Killed her to save face, they suspected.”

  “I never heard about that,” Drew said.

  “It was well before I came to Farthering to live, fifteen years ago or more now.”

  “What happened to the murderer?”

  “Sentenced to hang,” Mason said. “And then, because of some uncertainty in the evidence, the sentence was commuted to life in prison.”

  Birdsong shuffled through his papers. “He was killed in a prison brawl a year ago.”

  “Ah,” Mason said, and then he clasped his hands in his lap and said nothing more.

  “What does any of this have to do with what happened last night?” Drew asked the chief inspector. “Do you think there’s a connection between this incident or McCutcheon’s death and Lincoln’s?”

  “No,” Birdsong said. “I shouldn’t think there’s any connection, but it’s early days yet. Early days. Now, if you will kindly start at the beginning, Mr. Farthering. When you came home and found Mr. Lincoln in your room . . .”

  The chief inspector questioned Drew and Mason for some while longer, mostly repeating the same questions but slightly rephrased, noting, Drew was certain, any variations, any hesitations in the answers. Before Drew was absolutely determined to strangle the man, it was over.

  “I’d like to see this gardener of yours,” Birdsong said. “This Peterson.”

  Mason rang the bell. A moment later, there was a knock at the study door.

  “Come in, Dennison.”

  Dennison complied. “Something you wished, sir?”

  “Send Peterson to me.”

  “In here, sir?”

  “Yes, please. At once.”

  Raising his eyebrow a disapproving quarter of an inch, Dennison bowed. “Very good, sir.”

  Before long, Peterson shuffled to the study door, peering inside like a wary old badger at the mouth of a trap. Eventually he bared his head, revealing lank, greasy curls shot with gray, and then took two steps inside.

  “Afternoon, Mr. Parker. Mr. Drew.”

  “Good afternoon, Peterson,” Mason said. “Chief Inspector Birdsong would like to ask you a few questions about last night.”

  Peterson nodded his head, worrying his worn cap in his hands.