by Carola Dunn
“You will see Mrs. Tebbit, won’t you, darling? She’ll be so disappointed if you don’t.”
“My job does not include giving old ladies a thrill! But yes, I’ll have to ask her a few questions at some point. No hurry. I just hope she doesn’t insist on chaperoning the girls.”
“Gosh, no,” Daisy agreed with a giggle, “I can’t imagine trying to interview them with her sitting in—and butting in.” She gave him her guileless look, the one that so often encouraged people to tell her their inmost secrets. “I’m sure she’d be satisfied if I stayed with them.”
“Unfortunately,” Alec said, grimacing, “you’re probably right.”
“I won’t say a word, and I’ll take notes for you.”
When the maid arrived, he told her to ask the young ladies to join Mrs. Fletcher and himself. Fay and Brenda bounced in a few minutes later.
They sat down and regarded Alec with eager expectation.
“Can we really help, Mr. Fletcher?”
“What do you want to know?”
“I gather you two young ladies were out and about after the Ceremony of the Keys?”
“Yes, we took Aunt Christina home.”
“But we didn’t push Mr. Crabtree down the stairs.”
“We liked him.”
“He was a nice old buffer.”
“Not like—”
Alec broke into the double act. “But did you see him?”
“Not after he went off with Mrs. Fletcher.”
“To take the keys to Daddy.”
“Did you see anyone else out and about?”
“We couldn’t see much at all.”
“Visibility was extremely limited,” said Brenda grandly.
“One could have got lost crossing the parade ground.”
“So we went round the side.”
“Keeping close to the wall of the White Tower.”
Alec consulted his map.
“And we heard footsteps behind us.”
“So we hurried up.”
“ ‘Like one, that on a lonesome road—’ ”
“ ‘Doth walk in fear and dread—’ ”
“ ‘Because he knows, a frightful fiend—’ ”
“ ‘Doth close behind him tread.’
” “Fay looked back.”
“And it was only one of the warders.”
“All she could see was his silhouette against the last lamp.”
“But I could tell, because he was wearing their fancy dress.”
They glanced at each other.
“Which was odd, come to think of it.”
“They usually change into mufti as soon as the public leaves.”
“At five o’clock.”
“Except the Chief Warder, because of the Keys.”
“He has to stay dressed up for that.”
“And the Byward Tower guard does, too, come to think of it.”
“You and your aunt went straight from the ceremony to her residence? No stopping on the way?”
“There isn’t anywhere to stop,” said Fay.
“We walked pretty briskly because of the cold.”
“Even before the frightful fiend.”
The yeoman they saw couldn’t have been Crabtree, Daisy thought. The old man couldn’t have caught up with them after going with her to the King’s House.
Alec’s frown suggested he had come to the same conclusion. “You didn’t notice where your frightful fiend went?”
“No, we lost him after the White Tower.”
“We could hardly see the lamp on the Officers’ Quarters building.”
“Where Aunt Christina and Uncle Sidney live.”
“Uncle Sidney sent a couple of officers to escort us home.”
“Or rather, they volunteered.”
“Do you know their names?”
Fay and Brenda exchanged an amused look.
“Oh yes, Mr. Fletcher, we know all the officers.”
“They were Lieutenant Jardyne and Captain Devereux.”
“Thank you.”
“Do you think they might have seen the murderer?” asked Brenda, wide-eyed.
“On their way back?”
“After they left us here?”
“It’s always possible. I take it you didn’t see anyone as you walked back from your aunt’s?”
“Not a soul.”
“The fog was thicker than ever.”
“Thank you,” Alec said again. “That’s all for now. I may have more questions for you later.”
“Anytime!”
The girls departed, but the door had not quite closed behind them when Fay turned to ask, “Mr. Fletcher, are you going to interrogate Aunt Alice—Mrs. Tebbit?”
Brenda’s face appeared over her sister’s shoulder. “Because she’s simply dying to be interrogated.”
“Does she have something specific to tell me?”
Fay glanced back at Brenda, who said, “I don’t think so.”
“But you never know.”
“Aunt Alice is a dark horse.”
“It’s no use trying to guess what she might have to say.”
Alec looked at Daisy, who shrugged and gave a slight shake of her head. It seemed to her unlikely that the old lady, a recent arrival at the Tower, could know anything useful.
“Please tell Mrs. Tebbit,” he said, “that I may need to speak to her later. If she has specific, relevant information to offer, a message to the Warders’ Room in the Byward Tower will reach me.”
“Right-oh.” They disappeared.
Alec asked apprehensively, “Is that what the twins are going to be like when they’re older? Reading each other’s mind and finishing each other’s sentences?”
“I’ve heard that some twins develop their own private language. But perhaps that’s only identical twins.”
“Let’s hope!” He stood up. “Next stop the Duggans, I think. He’s a colonel?”
“Lieutenant colonel. Risen from the ranks, I gather.”
“In a Guards regiment? I’d have said it was impossible! Surely unprecedented. ‘The Gentlemen’s Sons,’ they call themselves, or used to. Before Waterloo, the other regiments called them ‘Hyde Park Soldiers,’ but they gave a good account of themselves there.” Alec had a degree in history, specializing in the Georgians. “And in our latest little shindig, too.”
“He must have done something truly spectacular, not merely competent.”
“It would have been a field commission, probably a lot of officers killed in his unit. I’d have thought they would have made him transfer to a different regiment, though. And then to keep promoting him, even if he never makes it to full colonel! Hmm, this could make him easier to deal with, or harder.”
“I wouldn’t have said he’s the sort to stand on his dignity. I see you have on your RFC tie.”
“Every little bit helps. I’m off. You’re free to go home to Oliver and Miranda, love. If you think of anything else you need to tell me, it can wait until I get home this evening.”
“Right-oh,” said Daisy. “I’ll pop up and say good-bye to the Tebbits. Only think, if I’d waited until a decent hour this morning to do just that, someone else would have found poor Crabtree.”
Mrs. Tebbit brushed aside Daisy’s apologies for her unceremonious early departure. “Young women are excessively maternal these days,” she said. “In my young day, one left babies strictly to the nurse. Oh, don’t look at me like a dying cow, Myrtle. I don’t suppose it would make a ha’p’orth of difference to you if I had turned myself into a milch cow for your benefit.”
“Mother, how can you!”
“With the greatest of ease. Has your husband left the house already, Mrs. Fletcher?”
“Yes, I’m afraid so. The girls mentioned that you wanted to speak to him, but he has to deal with the basic stuff first. He’ll come and see you later. Was there some specific information you wanted to give him? Because I could probably pass it on.”
“No,” said Mrs. Tebbit regre
tfully. “I did think . . . But after all, it wasn’t Crabtree who was making a nuisance of himself; it was the other fellow, the one who looks just like him.”
“Rumford?”
“That’s the one. A nasty piece of work if ever I saw one.”
“Making a nuisance of himself to you, Mrs. Tebbit?”
“Certainly not. To Arthur. However, since Rumford has not been murdered, it’s of no significance.”
Miss Tebbit was shocked—again. “Mother, surely you wouldn’t have told the police about Cousin Arthur and that horrible man!”
“I was of two minds about it,” Mrs. Tebbit conceded. “It would have been a great bore to have to move back to St. John’s Wood so soon if Arthur had been arrested. I’m happy not to be faced with that choice. Well, Daisy, you have presented your apologies very prettily, and by now you must be more anxious than ever to dandle your infants. Off you go.”
On her way downstairs, Daisy tried to decide whether Mrs. Tebbit had been speaking merely for effect, as she was wont to do. In any case, her information seemed irrelevant as well as unreliable, and not worth relaying to Alec.
8
Alec stepped out of the front door of the King’s House and paused to look around. To his right, just beyond the window of the room he had left a moment earlier, stood a sentry. The window was closed because of the drizzle, now falling in a determined way, but had it been open, he could scarcely have failed to hear every word spoken within.
Glancing up, Alec saw a gas lamp above the front door. However dark the night or thick the fog, a sentry posted there would surely have noticed anyone leaving or entering the house that way.
There was no back door, since the house was built directly against the wall surrounding the inner bailey—the Inner Ward, as they called it. The door farther along, under the balcony terrace, was probably the servants’ entrance. It, too, was lit by a lamp and at present within full sight of the sentry. But on a foggy night?
His gaze turned on the Guardsman, Alec contemplated the stiff figure. Staring straight ahead in the prescribed fashion, was he conscious of anything but boredom? Under Alec’s scrutiny, whether aware of it or not, he shifted his weight uneasily from foot to foot. Suddenly, without warning, he performed a precise turn, marched several paces away from Alec, turned again with knees raised high and a great deal of stamping, and returned to his post. Before he turned again to face forward, his eyes met Alec’s.
All Alec saw there was curiosity. Had the man taken his little walk just so as to examine the observer?
Checking his wristwatch, Alec saw that it was not the hour, nor the half hour, nor even the quarter. The Royal Flying Corps had not gone in for much fancy marching, having more important matters on their minds, so he didn’t know if the gyrations took place at regular, prescribed intervals. If not, anyone sneaking out of or into the King’s House would have risked coming face-to-face with a Hotspur Guard.
He considered asking the sentry. The man was once again rigid, his gaze fixed on the middle distance directly ahead of him. Better not to present him with the dilemma—To speak or not to speak—when Colonel Duggan could supply the answer.
There were sentries all over the place, including at the top of the fatal stair. That was presumably not a regular post, or the murder could not have taken place. But the Tower was not only a tourist attraction; it was still a military fortress and a prison—Daisy had said German spies were kept here, and shot here, during the War—and the repository of a vast fortune in jewels. It was well guarded.
Therefore, the fog had played an important rôle in this murder.
Alec walked past the sentry and along the row of attached houses facing Tower Green. The one next door was very narrow and lower than its neighbours on either side, as if squeezed in between. Then came three more, Victorian brick, without half the charm of the King’s House’s Tudor half-timbering. They were yeomen’s residences, he had been told. Halfway between the end of the row and the front door of the King’s House, a lamppost stood on the other side of the paved way, on the edge of the lawn. Another lamp was attached to the corner of the end house.
Daisy and the Carradine girls had both mentioned being barely able to see one lamp from the next last night.
Alec stopped at the corner and turned to look back diagonally across Tower Green. On the west side beyond the King’s House were more yeomen’s houses. If he remembered correctly, the second was the home of the Chief Warder, the victim.
From his front door, Crabtree had had a choice of routes to the spot where he was found. He could have gone round the top of the Green, past the site of the scaffold, and down the broad steps towards the Bloody Tower. But then, why turn aside to the shortcut? In any case, on a dark, foggy night, the alternative would have been much more attractive, round the lower edge of the Green with houses on his right all the way, then down the shortcut steps. That was obviously the way he had chosen, assuming he had come from his house.
His duties of the day finished, why would he have left its shelter on such a foul night? “Who knew he was going to be out and about?” Alec said aloud.
“That’s the big question, Chief?” DS Tring, with the soft tread peculiar to men whose bulkiness is largely muscle, had come up beside him unnoticed, the rumble of his deep voice the first sign of his arrival. “He didn’t have to make a final round before turning in?”
“I understand he finished his duties at ten, and that it was his custom to go home and read the Good Book, rather than carousing with his mates in the Warders’ Hall. He was a widower, no children.”
“Ah.” Tom Tring ruminated. “You don’t reckon someone just happened to spot him and seized the occasion to give him a shove?”
“No.”
“No, it don’t smell that way to me. For one thing, there’s that bloody great pike—beg pardon, partizan—sticking out of his back.”
“Not to mention the fog.”
“Malice aforethought.”
“Who knew he was going to be out and about?” Alec repeated. “Who wanted to get rid of a man who was, by all accounts, inoffensive and well respected?”
“The man who expected to step into his shoes? But it’s not that important a position, is it? It’s not like he has the key to the Crown Jewels?”
“Not to my knowledge, but my knowledge is not yet very extensive. It’s something we’ll have to check. I believe the choice of Chief Warder is up to the Resident Governor, though, and he might have any number of reasons for passing over the second in command. I doubt anyone could count on inheriting the post.”
“Unless he has some sort of hold over the Governor.”
“Blackmail? We can’t count it out. So far, there doesn’t seem to be anything we can count out. The first thing I’d like to do is count out the residents of the King’s House.”
“That’d be the Governor’s place, where Mrs. Fletcher was staying?” Tom’s eyes twinkled. “I can see it’d make life easier if they were eliminated.”
“You know Daisy didn’t do it,” Alec said ruefully. “I know Daisy didn’t do it. But that’s just why we have to prove it. In our present state of ignorance, she has as much motive and opportunity as anyone else.”
“But not means, Chief. Where’d she have got hold of a partizan?”
“Difficult, but not impossible, alas. Each yeoman is supposed to keep his at home when not in use. Apart from ceremonial parades, they’re used only in certain duty posts—at the main gates, for instance, and the Wakefield Tower, where the jewels are kept. As each man is at a given post for a week, he often leaves his weapon there, rather than lug it back and forth. There are usually a few standing about at the entrance to the Warders’ Hall. A partizan isn’t something a visitor can casually walk off with unnoticed, so they don’t take any particular care.”
“More’s the pity,” said Tom mournfully. “Would have been nice if we could limit our suspects to the yeomen.”
“No such luck. But there is one oddity: The Carra
dine girls report a yeoman, or someone in yeoman’s dress, following them around the back of the White Tower yesterday evening.”
“No idea who?”
“Too foggy. Look here. . . .” Alec pointed out the sentry, the doors to the King’s House and the late Chief Warder’s house, explaining his observations and deductions.
“So you want me to have a word with the servants at the King’s House?” Tom proposed. “Good job, too. I could do with a cuppa.”
“You’ve finished on the steps, I take it.”
“Everything fingerprinted and photographed and gone off to the Yard for developing. Body on its way to the pathologist. The officer of the watch kindly let me leave sentries posted top and bottom until you’re done with the scene. Incidentally, he mentioned that the guards on duty don’t use these steps, being they’re too steep and narrow to march properly. From the Guard House, they go round by the others, which is why no one found him before Mrs. Fletcher. Here she comes now.”
Daisy came out of the King’s House, raising her red umbrella. In the moments before she noticed Alec and Tom, Alec saw her assessing gaze move from point to point that he himself had noted and had just described to Tom. Inevitably, now that the shock had subsided, her curiosity was aroused. Thank heaven she was eager to get home to the twins.
She saw them and came towards them. “Hello, Tom.”
He tipped his hat. “Morning, Mrs. Fletcher. Stirred up another hornets’ nest, haven’t you?”
She smiled at him, having long ago learnt that the twitch of his moustache hid a teasing grin. “So much for early to bed and early to rise. Alec, I’ve been thinking.”
“You surprise me.”
“Don’t be beastly, darling. The thing is, it wasn’t the sort of night for hanging about on the off chance of a certain person turning up. Someone must have known Crabtree would be there at that time.”
“We did get that far ourselves.”
“Congratulations! I suppose you also worked out that the obvious person is Rumford, the Yeoman Gaoler? The one who spoke to Crabtree earlier, when he was taking the keys to General Carradine? He could have been making an appointment.”
