Georgette Heyer

by Why Shoot a Butler?

‘Was it, Humphrey? Very much the same thing, I feel. There was a very unpleasant scandal. Something to do with cards. But the young man drank, which probably accounted for his erratic habits. His father would never have anything more to do with him. I don’t know what became of him, except that he died.’

  ‘That finishes him off, then,’ said Frank. ‘Does the objectionable Basil have – er – erratic habits?’

  ‘Not that I am aware of, my dear.’

  Sir Humphrey laid down the paper. ‘Nowadays the papers contain nothing but sensational descriptions of most unpleasant crimes,’ he said severely. ‘Do you young people feel like bridge?’

  Upon the following day Felicity, having shopping to do for her mother in Upper Nettlefold, decreed that Frank should accompany her. His suggestion that the expedition might be conducted by car was sternly contradicted. Wolf, said Felicity, must be taken for a walk.

  Wolf was Felicity’s Alsatian. When fetched from the stables he evinced his satisfaction by bounding round his mistress and barking madly for the first hundred yards of their walk. Exercising him was not, as Frank knew from experience, all joy, as he was not in the least amenable to discipline, had to be caught and held at the approach of any motor vehicle, and had a habit of plunging unadvisedly into quarrels with others of the canine race.

  The narrow main street of the town was, as usual upon a weekday, crowded with cars whose owners had parked them there while they shopped. Wolf exchanged objurgations with an Airedale seated in a large touring-car and Felicity, her attention attracted towards the car, announced that it belonged to Tony Corkran. At that moment a slim, fair-haired girl in tweeds came out of the confectioner’s with a young man at her heels.

  ‘There is – Joan!’ Felicity said and darted across the street.

  Frank followed, basely deserting Wolf, who had obvious designs on a butcher’s shop.

  Felicity turned as he came up. ‘Oh, Frank, whatever do you think? Joan says their butler’s been murdered! By the way, this is my cousin, Frank Amberley, Joan. He says he knows you, Mr Corkran. I say, how thrilling about Dawson, though! How did it happen? Frightfully ghastly, of course,’ she added, as an afterthought.

  ‘Your butler?’ Frank said, released from Mr Corkran’s hearty handshake. ‘Oh!’

  ‘Beastly, isn’t it?’ said Anthony, a young man of engaging ingenuousness. ‘What I mean to say is – one moment the fellow’s murmuring, “Will you take hock, sir?” and the next he’s been bumped off. Bad business, what?’ He regarded his erstwhile school-friend with the respect due to Higher Beings. ‘Of course, I know these little contretemps are everyday matters to you brainy johnnies at the Bar. Still – not nice, you know. Definitely a bad show.’

  ‘Definitely,’ Frank agreed. He was frowning slightly. His cousin accused him of lack of proper interest. ‘No. By no means,’ he said. ‘I’m quite unusually interested. How did it happen, Miss Fountain?’

  The fair girl said shyly: ‘Well, we don’t know very much yet. It was Dawson’s half-day and he seems to have gone off in the Baby Austin. Basil keeps it for the servants because the manor’s such a way from the town and there aren’t any buses near us. We didn’t know a thing about it till a policeman turned up late last night and told Basil they’d found a man dead on the Pittingly Road, and he’d been identified as Dawson. He’d been shot. It’s rather awful. Because he’d been at the manor for simply ages, and I can’t imagine anyone wanting to shoot him. Basil’s dreadfully upset about it.’

  ‘An old retainer, in fact?’

  ‘Oh, rather!’ said Anthony. ‘Stately old fossil. Frightfully keen on the done thing. Pretty grim.’

  Joan gave a little shiver. ‘It’s horrid. I – I hate it having happened. I mean – Dawson wasn’t our retainer, really, because we took him on with Collins when Uncle Jasper died, but all the same it’s a beastly thing to happen, and it makes it seem pretty heartless to go on with the dance on Wednesday.’

  ‘Yes, but my dear old soul, we can’t sit and gloom about the place forever,’ objected her betrothed. ‘I don’t mind telling you that Brother Basil’s getting on my nerves already. After all – a poor show, and all that sort of thing, but it’s not as though it was his best friend, or what not.’

  ‘Darling, it’s not that,’ said Joan patiently. ‘I keep on trying to explain to you what Basil feels about dead things. He can’t bear them. You will insist on thinking he’s a callous sort of he-man just because he looks the part, and he isn’t. It’s one of the things I like about him.’

  ‘But dash it all,’ expostulated Anthony, ‘he shoots and hunts, doesn’t he?’

  ‘Yes, but he doesn’t like being in at the death, and I bet you’ve never seen him pick up the birds that have been shot. Don’t say anything about it, because he’d hate anyone to know. He wouldn’t even bury Jenny’s puppies for me. Wouldn’t touch them.’

  ‘Well, anyway, I think all this mourning’s a bit overdone,’ said Corkran.

  Joan was silent, she looked troubled. Felicity had begun to say: ‘It isn’t particularly enlivening to have one’s butler shot…’ when she was interrupted by a disturbance in the middle of the road. ‘Oh, good Lord! Wolf !’ she cried.

  Wolf, emerging from the butcher’s shop, had encountered a bull-terrier. Mutual dislike had straightway sprung up between them, and after the briefest preliminaries battle was joined. As Felicity spoke a girl ran forward and tried to catch the bull-terrier. Mr Amberley joined the fray and grabbed Wolf by the scruff of his neck. The girl’s hands grasped the bull-terrier round the throat. ‘Hold your dog!’ she panted. ‘I’ll have to choke Bill. It’s the only way.’

  Mr Amberley glanced quickly up at her, but her face was bent over the dogs.

  The bull-terrier had acquired a satisfactory grip on Wolf’s throat, but his mistress ruthlessly squeezed his windpipe and he had to let go. Mr Amberley swung Wolf back and held him.

  The girl clipped a leash on the bull-terrier’s collar and at last looked up. ‘It was your dog’s fault,’ she began and broke off, staring in a startled way at Mr Amberley and growing rather pale.

  ‘It usually is,’ said Frank coolly. ‘But I don’t think your dog’s hurt.’

  Her eyes fell. ‘No,’ she said and would have moved away had not Felicity come up.

  ‘I say, I’m most awfully sorry!’ Felicity said. ‘I ought to have had him on the lead. I do hope he hasn’t hurt your dog?’

  The other girl smiled rather scornfully. ‘Rather the other way round, I should say.’

  Felicity was surveying her with friendly interest. ‘Aren’t you the girl that’s living at Ivy Cottage?’ she inquired.

  ‘My brother and I have taken it furnished.’

  ‘Are you going to stay long? You are Shirley Brown, aren’t you? I’m Felicity Matthews. This is my cousin, Frank Amberley.’

  Miss Brown bowed slightly, but she did not look at Mr Amberley.

  ‘I rather wanted to get to know you,’ persevered Felicity. ‘I’m awfully glad we got ourselves introduced. There are practically no young people in this benighted place. Do you know Miss Fountain?’

  The girl shook her head. ‘No, I’m afraid I don’t go out much. My – my brother is rather an invalid.’

  ‘Oh, bad luck!’ sympathised Felicity. ‘Joan, this is Miss Brown, who is living at Ivy Cottage.’

  ‘May I suggest,’ interposed Frank, ‘that you are obstructing the traffic?’

  Felicity became aware of an indignant motorist who was violently sounding his hooter. She drew the rather unwilling Miss Brown on to the pavement. ‘Have you heard the news?’ she asked. ‘The Fountains’ butler has been murdered! Isn’t it awful?’

  ‘No, I hadn’t heard. Are you sure he was murdered?’

  ‘He was shot through the chest, you see,’ said Mr Amberley gently. ‘Seated at the wheel of an Austin Seven.’

  ‘I see,’ Shirley said.

  Mr Corkran was puzzled. ‘Yes, he was. But how the devil did you know all that?’

/>   ‘I found him,’ said Mr Amberley.

  He created a sensation; only the dark girl at his side betrayed neither surprise nor incredulity. There was something rather tense in the way she held herself, but her eyes, travelling from Joan’s shocked face to Felicity’s eager one, were indifferent to the point of boredom.

  ‘I thought,’ said Mr Amberley, interrupting the fire of questions, ‘that you might as well know now as later.’

  ‘Oh, did you?’ said Felicity witheringly. ‘Go on, tell us how it happened!’

  He threw her a mocking glance. ‘I’m reserving my evidence for the inquest, loved one.’

  Shirley Brown stiffened slightly. She said, as though jesting: ‘The whole truth and nothing but the truth, in fact.’

  ‘I see you know all about the procedure,’ said Mr Amberley.

  She gave him back look for look, but said nothing. The two dogs, who had been snarling softly all the time, created a diversion by attempting to lunge suddenly at each other’s throats. Shirley twisted the bull-terrier’s leash round her hand and stepped back. ‘I mustn’t wait any longer,’ she said. ‘I have some shopping to do. Goodbye.’

  Joan watched her walk away down the street. ‘What a queer sort of a girl!’ she remarked.

  ‘Oh, I don’t know! Rather nice, I thought,’ said Felicity. ‘Look here, we can’t stand here for ever. I’ve got to go to Thompson’s and Crewett’s. Come with me? Frank, for God’s sake hold on to Wolf. I shan’t be more than five minutes.’

  Left to their own devices the two men began to stroll down the street together.

  ‘I say, Amberley, there’s something damned odd about this murder,’ Anthony said.

  ‘Well, don’t tell it to the whole of the town,’ recommended the rudest man in London.

  ‘Yes, but joking apart, you know, why should anyone want to take a pot-shot at a butler? Respectable old blighter, been at the manor umpteen years. The thing just isn’t done. I mean, I could think of a lot of people who might get shot – gangsters, and cabinet ministers, and all that push – but not butlers. After all, why shoot a butler? Where’s the point?’

  ‘I’ve no idea,’ said Frank discouragingly.

  ‘There isn’t one,’ Anthony declared. ‘That’s what makes the thing look so fishy. I’ll tell you what, Amberley; it’s all very fine to read about mysteries, but in real life – no. Cut ’em right out.’

  ‘I will.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Anthony, suddenly gloomy. ‘But if you were staying at the manor you wouldn’t be able to. The whole place is stiff with mystery.’

  ‘Oh?’ said Frank. ‘Why?’

  ‘Damned if I know. There isn’t anything you could put your finger on, so to speak, but it’s there all right. For one thing there’s Brother Basil.’ He lowered his voice confidentially. ‘Between ourselves, he’s a bit of a dud. I’ve got no time for him at all. Bit awkward as things are. If it weren’t for Joan I don’t mind telling you you wouldn’t catch me staying at Norton Manor.’

  ‘Because of its mystery or because of its host?’

  ‘Bit of both. Mind you, I don’t say there’s anything wrong with the house. It’s the people in it. Like a lot of cats snooping round in the dark. Look here, don’t repeat this, but it’s an absolute fact that you can’t do a darned thing but what you get the feeling that you are being watched. It’s getting a bit on my nerves.’

  ‘Are you being watched?’

  ‘I don’t know. Shouldn’t be surprised. Brother Basil’s got a valet who’s always popping up out of nowhere. Another one of the leftovers from the old regime. Now if he’d been murdered I shouldn’t complain. Nasty piece of work, I think, and so does Joan, but Brother Basil likes the fellow.’

  ‘What, by the way, is wrong with Brother Basil?’ asked Frank.

  ‘Wrong with him? Oh, I see what you mean. I don’t know: sort of fellow who drinks his bath water. Damned bad-tempered – I don’t mind telling you Joan has a pretty thin time of it with him. Full of spurious joie de vivre, don’t you know? One of these hearty blokes. Calls you old boy and slaps you on the back.’

  Frank jerked his thumb downwards in a certain Roman gesture.

  ‘Quite,’ agreed Mr Corkran. ‘I knew you’d feel the same about it. There’s another thing too…’

  What this might be was not divulged, for at that moment the two girls joined them. Joan Fountain, who had finished her shopping, was ready to go home. As she shook hands with Amberley she said: ‘Felicity has promised to come over after dinner. I do hope you’ll come too.’

  ‘Thanks, I should like to,’ Amberley said, somewhat to his cousin’s surprise.

  When Joan and Corkran had driven off, Felicity said that she hoped her cousin didn’t mind having to go to the manor. ‘I practically had to accept,’ she explained. ‘Apparently things are pretty dire since the murder. Basil’s got nerves or something, but Joan says he’s always better when there are visitors. Do you mind awfully?’

  ‘Not awfully,’ Frank replied.

  Felicity glanced shrewdly up at his profile. ‘I believe you wanted to go.’

  ‘I did,’ said Mr Amberley.

  Three

  They reached Greythorne again to find an inspector from Carchester waiting in the drawing room. He knew Mr Amberley of old and took no pains to disguise the fact that he did not like him. He put a number of questions to him and sniffed at the answers, which he wrote down in his notebook. Having informed Amberley that he would be required to attend the inquest at eleven o’clock on the following morning he took his leave, saying pointedly that after the inquest he did not expect to be obliged to bother Mr Amberley further in the matter. There was some justification for his unfriendliness, for he had once worked on a case with Mr Amberley, who had entered into it almost by accident and stayed to bring about a particularly neat conviction. The inspector had not enjoyed that case; in fact, he had been heard to say that he never wanted to set eyes on Mr Amberley again.

  Out of deference to Sir Humphrey’s dislike of such topics the murder was not discussed at Greythorne. Frank played tennis with his cousin during the afternoon and in the evening motored her to Norton Manor, which was situated seven miles to the east of Upper Nettlefold and about three from Greythorne.

  The manor was a house dating from the early eighteenth century. It presented a gracious facade of stone and old red brick, and stood in a small park through which the river Nettle wound its way under overhanging willows. Inside, the house had the finely proportioned rooms of its period, but was furnished in a heavy style that spoke ill for the late Mr Fountain’s taste.

  Amberley and his cousin were admitted by a tight-lipped man of medium height who was fulfilling the duties of the deceased butler. As she stepped into the hall Felicity said: ‘Good evening, Collins,’ and hearing the name Amberley looked him over quickly.

  The valet was in no way remarkable. He had a lean, somewhat unhealthily pale face and kept his eyes discreetly lowered.

  Felicity was speaking sympathetically to the man about Dawson’s murder. She thought that since he had worked with the butler for several years he must feel his loss considerably and was consequently a little dashed by his calm answer.

  ‘You are very kind, miss,’ Collins said. ‘A very tragic affair, as you say. But though naturally I should not wish such a thing to have happened, Dawson and I were never what one could call really friendly.’

  He moved towards one of the doors that opened on to the hall, and feeling rather snubbed Felicity followed him. She gave him her cousin’s name, and for a moment the veiled eyes lifted to Amberley’s face. They were cold eyes, expressionless, uncomfortably remorseless. They were swiftly hidden again. The valet opened the door and announced the guests.

  Joan and her fiancé and a large man with a handsome, full-blooded countenance, were gathered round the fire. Amberley was introduced to the large man and sustained a crushing hand-clasp. Basil Fountain was boisterously pleased to welcome visitors to the house. He was one of those me
n who radiated goodwill. Amberley could understand and appreciate his friend Corkran’s revulsion. Fountain’s personality was indeed hearty, but under it lay a certain irritability which flared up under small provocation. He bustled about, offering drinks, pulling up chairs, chaffing Felicity in the most cheerful way, but when his step-sister did not immediately obey his command to bring her friend near to the fire he spoke roughly, with a flash of temper that was as uncontrollable as it was transient.

  He was soon smiling again. He said: ‘You know Corkran, don’t you? He’s going to become one of the family, as I’ve no doubt he told you,’ and laid an affectionate hand on Anthony’s unresponsive shoulder.

  He was obviously of a hospitable nature. He pressed refreshment upon his guests, offered cigars and cigarettes, and brought Felicity a cushion. Not until he was perfectly satisfied that everyone was quite comfortable did he broach the subject which must necessarily be engrossing the greater part of his attention. He turned to Amberley and said simply: ‘I’m particularly glad you came over with your cousin tonight. I understand it was you who found poor Dawson.’

  ‘Yes, I found him, but I’m afraid I can’t tell you much about it,’ Amberley replied.

  Fountain clipped the end of his cigar. There was trouble in his face; he looked all at once like a man who cannot shake off the memory of a bad nightmare. ‘I know,’ he said. ‘He was shot, wasn’t he? You didn’t see anyone or find anything? Any clue, I mean.’

  ‘No,’ Amberley answered. ‘Nothing.’

  Joan leaned forward. ‘I wish you would tell us just what you saw,’ she said. ‘The police gave us such a bald account, and we feel in a way responsible, because he was our servant.’

  ‘Yes, tell us what you can,’ said Anthony, ‘and then no more.’ He smiled across at Joan. ‘It’s no use worrying so much, darling. Much better not think about it.’

  Fountain looked at him with quick impatience. ‘It’s not easy to forget the murder of one of your own staff,’ he said. ‘You take it very lightly, but he was not your servant. It is a most horrible thing to have happened.’ He gave a little shiver. ‘I can’t get it out of my mind. The fellow being done to death like that – cold-bloodedly!’ He seemed to feel Amberley’s gaze upon him and looked up. ‘You think I’m taking it too hard? Perhaps I am. I don’t deny it has upset me.’ He struck a match and held it to the end of his cigar; Amberley saw the flame quiver. ‘I can’t make out what happened,’ Fountain said jerkily. ‘The police spoke of road-bandits. Was he robbed?’