The Bloody Tower

by Carola Dunn

  “You’re welcome to stay. I’m afraid I’ll have one or two questions for you after I’ve heard from Dr. Macleod.”

  “Naturally, I’ll do anything I can to assist you. This is a terrible business. Poor Crabtree, of all people!”

  “Let’s get on with it, then,” said Macleod impatiently. “I have sick people waiting for me.” He didn’t look very well himself, tired and jumpy. Perhaps he’d been up half the night with his patients.

  “By all means,” said Alec. “Do sit down, Doctor. I take it this is a suitable place for me to use, General, at least for the present?”

  “Yes, yes, do make use of the desk. This room is the Chief Warder’s lair. You’ll see his Wait Book there by the inkstand. Poor Crabtree!”

  Alec went to sit behind the desk, while Carradine, the doctor, and Webster took three of the leather-seated chairs. Piper and Ross had moved to one side, standing against the wall, Piper ready with notebook and one of his supply of well-sharpened pencils.

  “First of all, Doctor, can you give me some idea of the time of death?”

  “I’m no expert. He’d been dead for several hours. Somewhere between ten and two, I’d say. The former is not a medical estimate. I’m assuming he turned up on time with the King’s Keys.”

  “Yes indeed,” Carradine confirmed. “But why—”

  “We’ll get to that later, if you don’t mind, sir. Two A.M., Doctor?”

  “That’s the latest possible, in my opinion. No doubt the police surgeon will narrow it down for you.”

  “Possibly.” In Alec’s experience, police surgeons came in two varieties: those who were as vague as Macleod, or vaguer, and those who gave a precise time within a quarter hour, without any possible justification by the evidence. “Any chance that he didn’t die instantly?”

  “None. He broke his neck. The partizan was a gratuitous extra, but if he was not dead already, that wound would have caused fatal bleeding.”

  “Did both occur at the same time, roughly?”

  “With a number of Special Constables about, I was not permitted to move the body, scarcely to touch it. It was cold, but rigor was scarcely beginning to set in, possibly due to the chilling effect of lying on cold stone. And that’s all I can tell you.”

  “Very helpful. The police surgeon should be able to give us an answer, or the pathologist. We may have one or two more questions for you later, Doctor, but this gives us somewhere to start. Thank you for your time.”

  With an abrupt nod, Macleod stalked out.

  “Damn rude,” the general muttered. “What Fay sees in the blighter, I cannot understand. But there, I’m only her father.”

  Alec tactfully ignored this aside, which didn’t seem to have anything to do with the case. “Now that we have some idea of the time,” he said, “I’d like my men to interview all the Yeoman Warders, with a view to eliminating as many as possible as soon as possible. Where would you suggest as a suitable place?”

  “They’d better go across the way to the Warders’ Hall. They’ll find a list of yeomen pinned up in there. Many of them will be there already, and they have my permission to send for the rest as needed. Fairway’s on duty out there. He’ll direct you.” He nodded towards Piper and Ross, then turned to his aide. “That had better go in the Daily Orders, Webster.”

  Webster made a note as the detective constables departed.

  “You say Crabtree was on time with ‘the King’s Keys.’ What exactly does that mean?”

  “Mrs. Fletcher didn’t tell you about the ceremony she came to see last night?” Carradine asked dryly.

  “She mentioned it, of course.” Alec grinned. “Either she didn’t go into detail or I didn’t listen as closely as I should have.”

  “Doubtless,” Webster put in unexpectedly, “Mrs. Fletcher reserved a full description until she had witnessed the event.”

  “She knows I prefer an eyewitness report to hearsay. I take it, General, you witnessed Crabtree doing something with these keys at ten o’clock last night?”

  “He handed them over to me, at the door to the King’s House, after locking the gates. It’s the end of the ceremony. What I can’t make out is why he then went off down those steps. He’d finished his duties for the day.”

  “He didn’t need to come back here to his office?”

  “No,” said Webster, “and his quarters are in the opposite direction, next to the Yeoman Gaoler’s House. It wasn’t a pleasant night for a stroll.”

  “Perhaps he was going to the Warders’ Hall,” Alec suggested.

  “The men do gather there in the evenings for a pint or two,” Carradine conceded, “but Crabtree didn’t drink. He told me, when I was considering him for the position of Chief Yeoman Warder, that he’s—that he was a teetotaller and usually spent his evenings reading the Bible. I couldn’t make him Chapel Clerk because he was a nonconformist, but he was willing to turn out for church parades.”

  “Mightn’t his religious propensities have offended his fellow yeomen?” Alec asked.

  “Oh no. He was a student, not a teacher, he assured me, and he considered every man must find his own route to salvation. I’d have heard complaints if he’d tried preaching, I assure you. The men wouldn’t have stood for it. No, a quiet man, he was, but very well respected.”

  A most unlikely victim of murder, Alec thought. Digging out a motive was going to be difficult, unless Piper and Ross came up with a completely different picture of the man.

  7

  No, thank you,” said Daisy, regarding with dismay yet another cup of hot, sweet tea. Besides disliking sugar in her tea, she was about to drown in the stuff. She swung her legs off the sofa. “Truly, I’m completely recovered.”

  “Your colour is much improved,” observed Mrs. Tebbit, “though I do think the glass of brandy would have effected a quicker recovery.”

  “The brandy didn’t go to waste, Aunt Alice.”

  “Daddy swallowed it with one gulp.”

  “What a shocking thing to happen,” twittered Miss Tebbit for the hundredth time, “and when you were our guest, too.”

  “Poor Mr. Crabtree!”

  “If only it had been that horrid Rumford instead.”

  “What a very unchristian thing to say, Brenda,” Miss Tebbit said reprovingly, then spoilt the effect by adding, “At least, I think it must be, mustn’t it?”

  “Not really, Aunt Myrtle.”

  “Because we’re wishing even harder that it wasn’t Mr. Crabtree than we’re wishing it was Mr. Rumford who was murdered.”

  “I wish you wouldn’t use that horrid word, Fay.”

  “But it was murder, Myrtle. No good closing our eyes to the facts,” said Mrs. Tebbit.

  “It looked to me like murder,” Daisy cautioned, “but I could be mistaken. The police may decide otherwise. The general did say he wouldn’t tell the Yard I’m here, didn’t he?”

  “He promised.”

  “Daddy always keeps his promises.”

  “But I don’t see why you didn’t want your husband to come.”

  “We’re desperately keen to meet him.”

  “He must be frightfully dashing. . . .”

  “. . . To catch a viscount’s daughter.”

  “Now that,” said Mrs. Tebbit roundly, “is an appallingly vulgar remark!”

  Fay and Brenda glanced at each other, then looked in appeal at Daisy, who nodded. They were profuse in their apologies.

  “You see, we have met two or three lords’ daughters before . . .”

  “Though none of them was half as nice as you, Mrs. Fletcher.”

  “. . . But never a policeman.”

  “I believe that is about to change,” announced Mrs. Tebbit, who was seated by the window of the small downstairs sitting room, watching comings and goings on Tower Green in a way she would surely have condemned in the girls. “Here comes Mr. Fletcher.”

  “Oh blast!” said Daisy.

  They heard the doorbell ring, the maid’s footsteps in the hall,
the click of the front door’s latch, the murmur of voices. The girls sat up straighter, their gazes fixed on the sitting room door.

  It opened and the maid announced, “Detective Chief Inspector Fletcher, ma’am.”

  Alec looked very tall and stern standing on the threshold, but Daisy hoped the glance he flashed her held as much concern as exasperation. He ought to know by now that it wasn’t her fault if she had a tendency to stumble across bodies. It was Fate, that’s what it was, and she didn’t like it any better than he did.

  He advanced into the room. “Good morning, Mrs. Tebbit. Good morning, ladies.”

  “You are already acquainted with my daughter, Mr. Fletcher. These are my young cousins, Fay and Brenda Carradine.”

  “Gosh, are you going to question us, Mr. Fletcher?”

  “Too thrilling!”

  “We do hope so.”

  “Not that we know anything.”

  “But we’ll do anything we can to help.”

  Alec’s lips twitched. “I expect I’ll want to talk to you all. However, since my wife was first on the scene—weren’t you, Daisy?—I must have a word with her first. In private,” he added as Fay and Brenda folded their hands in their laps and settled back with the obvious intention of catching every word.

  “We’ll go up to my room,” Daisy proposed.

  “Oh no,” Miss Tebbit exclaimed, jumping up, “dear Mrs. Fletcher, you mustn’t move after such a dreadful shock. We’ll go upstairs.”

  “And what about your poor old mother’s aged legs, Myrtle?”

  “If you must mention them, Mother, there’s nothing wrong with them whatsoever. Come along, girls.”

  “So old-fashioned,” sighed Mrs Tebbit, following the others. “But perhaps she’s developing a trace of a spine at long last.”

  Alec saw her out and closed the door firmly behind her before coming to join Daisy on the sofa. He took her in his arms and gave her a comforting and altogether most satisfactory kiss.

  When it came to an end, she asked hopefully, “Do I look pale and interesting, darling?”

  “Not at all. You’re your usual robust self, and I’d like to know why, when you’re obviously in the thick of things, you left it to me to break it to the Super that you’re here.”

  “I hoped if the general didn’t mention me, Mr. Crane might send someone else and need never know I found the body. Is he very upset?”

  “More resigned, I think, love, though he put up a bit of a show. All right, let’s start at the beginning and get your part over with. First, why on earth were you wandering about Tower Green at that time in the morning?”

  “I woke up early and suddenly wanted more than anything else in the world to see the twins. So I wrote a note of explanation to Mrs. Tebbit and sneaked out. A disgraceful breach of etiquette, but I didn’t think she’d really be offended. She’s marvellous.”

  “She’s quite a character. Mother always disapproved of her, although she played bridge with her. Go on.”

  “You’ve seen the steps, haven’t you? They’re the shortest way out, from here. We didn’t use them going down last night because of the fog. Was it foggy at home? I suppose it was just near the river, but you could barely see your hand in front of your face, so we decided the steps were too steep and dark and slippery to be safe. This morning it was sunny. From the top I saw a red bundle. I thought one of the yeomen had dropped his cape. I’d gone down a couple of steps before I realized . . .”

  “That he was still wearing it.”

  “Yes. I saw the hat—they call it ‘a bonnet’—and his beard, and then the partizan. I don’t know why I noticed that last.”

  “I expect you didn’t want to see it, which is perfectly understandable. Did you go on down? Did you touch anything?”

  “I know better than that, darling!” Daisy said tartly. “I guessed he was dead, from the angle of his head. If not, I wouldn’t have known what to do to help him, anyway, so it seemed best to go for help. Poor old Crabtree! He was a bore, but a nice old bore.”

  “Ah, that was it. I was sure you’d told me something about him. You knew right away who it was?”

  “I could see his beard. It’s rather conspicuous. Rumford, the Yeoman Gaoler, has a similar growth, but nowhere near as grey. Besides, I’d seen Crabtree in his red cape just the night before, doing his bit at the Ceremony. He kindly walked me back to the house.”

  “Which way?”

  “Up those steps. He had a lantern of sorts. All you could see of the gas lamps was a fuzzy ball of light that didn’t illuminate anything. It was frightfully eerie, particularly with Rumford waiting in the murk at the top, coughing like a foghorn.”

  Alec frowned. “This Rumford character keeps popping up. What did he want?”

  “I don’t know. He and Crabtree stepped aside to exchange a word or two, so I didn’t hear what they said. Crabtree seemed a bit irritated, but not at all alarmed. He came back to me, Rumford went off coughing, and—”

  “Which way did Rumford go?”

  Daisy thought. “I couldn’t swear to it, but I think along the wall. Not down the steps; certainly not the way we went, which would be the quickest way to his house, and much the easiest in the fog.”

  “How do you know where he lives?”

  “He’s the Yeoman Gaoler, darling, so he lives in the Yeoman Gaoler’s House. It’s right next door to the King’s House, on the west side of Tower Green, opposite those beastly steps. Come to the window and I’ll show you.” She pointed out Rumford’s front door. “As his title implies, his predecessors kept prisoners in the house, but then, there don’t seem to be many spots at the Tower that didn’t house prisoners at some time or other. Even this house.”

  “Is this relevant, Daisy?”

  “Sort of. After all, he’s second in command of the Yeoman Warders, so I presume he’s next in line for the Chief Warder’s job. And he was wandering around in the fog last night, perhaps luring poor Crabtree to his doom. And he’s not a very nice man.”

  Alec grinned. “I can’t arrest him for murder just because you don’t like him.”

  “The thing is, no one seems to like him, which suggests he has some serious character flaw, doesn’t it?”

  “Or an unfortunate manner. Don’t worry, Piper and Ross are interviewing the Yeoman Warders now. We’ll find out where your sinister Mr. Rumford was at the time the deed was done.”

  “What time was that?”

  “Daisy, you know I can’t tell you—”

  “Oh, come on, darling, I promise I shan’t go around asking people what they were doing between the hours of ten and whatever.”

  “No.” Alec sighed. “Your ways of ferreting out information are rather more subtle—and don’t interpret that as permission to meddle! The police surgeon examined the body just before I came here. He puts it somewhere between eleven and three. Not before eleven, certainly, and probably later. That fits pretty much with the opinion of Dr. Macleod, who examined the body earlier but in less detail, besides being no expert. The autopsy should be more precise, with luck, especially if we can find out when Crabtree last ate.” He paused as a maid brought in a tray with tea and biscuits.

  “Miss Tebbit thought the gentleman’d like tea, madam.”

  Daisy thanked her. She set the tray on a table and went out.

  “Miss Tebbit, not Mrs. Perhaps she is beginning to think for herself. Perhaps the Tower inspires her. Pour your own, will you, darling?”

  Alec filled two cups and handed one to Daisy.

  “No, thanks! I must have drunk about a gallon already. I’ll take a biscuit, though. I’m ravenous. I haven’t had breakfast. Please make a note of the time, in case I’m murdered.” She shuddered. “Sorry! The Tower is so full of horror stories, I must be getting a bit blasé.”

  “My fault.” Alec gave her a one-armed hug, to the imminent danger of the cup of tea in his other hand. “I shouldn’t have mentioned that particular aspect of the investigation. I don’t suppose you noticed whic
h direction Crabtree went after handing over the keys?”

  “No. General Carradine was asking me where Fay and Brenda had got to. They went with me to watch the ceremony, you see, and their aunt, too—”

  “Their aunt?”

  “Mrs. Duggan, the one who brought them up and then married an officer, the man who happens to be in charge of the garrison at present. The girls decided to escort her home because of the fog. The Officers’ Quarters are on the far side of the White Tower.”

  “So the Carradine girls were also wandering about the place in the night.”

  “You can’t suspect them, darling. They’re just a pair of rather silly, though quite nice, girls. Besides, they weren’t gone more than half an hour. A couple of young officers escorted them home. I didn’t see them, and the girls didn’t mention their names.”

  “So now we have two unknown officers wandering about the place in the night!”

  “There are soldiers about all the time. They change the guard at regular intervals, though they’re marched from place to place by the sergeant of the watch, not wandering freely. But it doesn’t seem likely to me that the feud has anything to do with the murder.”

  “Great Scott, what next? What feud?”

  Daisy explained about the ill feeling between the general and the colonel who had stolen his sister-in-law, and how it had spilled over into relations between garrison and warders. “I don’t think it was ever very serious, though. In any case, Mrs. Tebbit sabotaged it by inviting the Duggans to dinner last night. That’s why Mrs. Duggan was with us at the ceremony.”

  “Damn the ceremony! Carradine says the keys were put into his hands at ten o’clock. Does that agree with your recollection?”

  “It always happens at ten. Duke of Wellington’s orders. It will still happen at ten in a hundred years, or a thousand, for all I know. Tradition is sacrosanct.”

  “We have to find out what Crabtree was doing between ten and eleven, or later.”

  “Fay and Brenda might have seen him.”

  “Yes, I’d better talk to them now, while I’m here.” He finished the last of his tea and got up to ring the bell.