“I shall see that a patrol is put on the corridors,” I promised. “And as to your suggestion, Claude, yes, we shall shortly summon the servants and question them rigorously.”
“Have you any conception how many there are?” said Pelham with his usual want of charm.
“That is immaterial,” said I.
“Thirty-seven are permanently in service here,” he insisted on telling me. “Twenty more have been hired for the week. To that figure must be added a further thirty or so who are visitors—the retinues you brought with you. I make that eighty-seven at the very least.”
“Then have them assemble in the Hall in fifteen minutes,” I retorted crisply.
He glared, reddened and marched out.
I glanced at the clock on the mantelpiece. Half past ten. “Unless you have anything germane to impart to me, ladies and gentlemen, I shall now confer with Inspector Sweeney.”
That worthy officer, when I received him in the anteroom, was anxiety personified. With his toes turned inwards and a tortured look on his features he gave the impression that he needed urgently to shake hands with an old friend, as the saying goes.
“Not a living soul came in or out of the main gate tonight, Your Royal Highness. It was shut and bolted.”
I assured him that nobody held him personally to blame. “I sent for you, Sweeney, because I shall require your help in investigating this brutal crime.”
“Me, sir?” he said, performing a terrified jig.
“You’re an inspector of police.”
“I’m no detective, sir. Bodyguarding is my specialty. I think we should call in the criminal investigation boys.”
“Allow me to be the judge of that,” I told him brusquely. “What has happened is desperately unfortunate, for Lady Drummond, for her honored guests and not least for me. We can’t have it broadcast to all and sundry that I was within an ace of being murdered tonight—because that is what the press will make of it if the word gets out.”
“Jesus, Joseph and Mary!” muttered Sweeney, transparently thinking not of me, but his career as a Royal bodyguard.
To reinforce the point I sketched a small, but vivid, word picture. “Imagine Her Majesty the Queen opening The Times tomorrow morning. No, Inspector, this is not a case for the common police. You and I are going to solve it together and bring the murderer to account.”
“Begging your pardon, if we do, sir, it’s bound to come out. There would have to be a trial.”
“Not necessarily.”
“I don’t follow you, sir.”
“Better if you don’t,” I said cryptically.
It was necessary for me to stand halfway up the main staircase to address all the assembled servants, and I had to concede that young Pelham had made a valid point. Normally one has no conception how many domestics are involved in a house party because they are never seen en masse. The scale of the investigation came home to me forcefully when I looked down on those serried ranks, the liveried staff to the fore, and behind them so many white caps that I thought of Cowes and felt a touch of mal de mer.
I didn’t need to inform them of what had happened, of course. The electric telegraph is nothing to the buzz of servants’ tongues. I ordered them on pain of instant dismissal without character to say not one word more—except to me or Sweeney—of what had happened. They were not to speak of it to a living soul, now or ever after. I said that we should require from each of them a precise and complete account of their movements between nine and ten that evening. Those untutored in writing were instructed to obtain assistance. The statements would be collected by the house steward and handed to Sweeney by midnight.
After dismissing them I beckoned to Colwell and told him to send four men to the breakfast room to remove the body after I had examined it.
He cleared his throat in the way senior servants do when some impediment to duty is exercising them.
“Well?” I asked.
“May I be so bold as to enquire the destination of the deceased, Your Royal Highness?”
“His destination?” I knew very well what he meant, but I couldn’t resist saying, “That’s a question for a higher authority than I, Mr. Colwell. Try St. Peter. Or were you merely asking where the men should take the body?”
“That was my meaning, sir.”
“I suggest somewhere removed from the house, some outbuilding that will serve as a temporary mortuary. What’s that place beyond the kitchen garden?”
“The game larder, sir.”
“Ah.”
“There is a harness room attached to the coach house that is not in use, sir.”
“Well, then. You’ve answered your own question.”
“Yes, sir.”
He still seemed reluctant to move, so I said, “Is there something else?”
Colwell cleared his throat again. “If I may venture to make a suggestion, sir . . .”
“What?”
“You asked me to send four men to the breakfast room.”
“Yes.”
“That would involve conveying the gentleman’s remains through the state rooms to the main entrance and down the steps. If, instead, sir, we lowered the dumbwaiter to the scullery, the men could carry their melancholy burden through the tradesmen’s entrance without further inconvenience to the guests.”
It was a fine point of decorum, weighing respect for the dead against the sensibilities of the living. As a means of conveyance for a corpse, and a gentleman’s corpse at that, the dumbwaiter was hideously inappropriate. However, since Osgot-Edge was already in there, he might as well be removed at the most convenient level.
I gave my consent. “We’ll do it as tastefully as the circumstances allow. I shall proceed to the breakfast room with Inspector Sweeney and examine the body there, at the top of the shaft.”
“Very good, sir.”
“You will assemble your men in the scullery and when the signal is given, er . . . what is the signal?”
“There is a speaking tube, sir.”
“I shall give the instruction down the tube and you will lower the dumbwaiter.”
With that settled, I snapped my fingers at Sweeney, who was edging towards the cloak room, and we returned at once to the breakfast room. There, I instructed him to close all the doors and raise the dumbwaiter.
My confidence drained as Sweeney hauled on the rope. Suppose, after all, this had been a practical joke, and Osgot-Edge was poised to leap out, alive and smiling. Or suppose the merry jester had contrived to escape, leaving the dumbwaiter empty. I would look pretty silly after my solemn speeches to all and sundry. I’m sure it was this uncertainty that stopped me from feeling a proper sense of grief or regret at his passing. I couldn’t shake off the suspicion that I was being duped.
So you will understand why I breathed a sigh of relief—no, let’s be truthful, I practically cheered—when the corpse came into view with the knife still protruding from the chest. It was propped up in a sitting position in the cramped space, but it looked decidedly more dead than it had by match light.
“God help us,” said Sweeney in a whisper.
I ordered him to withdraw the knife from the body.
“Is that wise, sir?” he asked. “Shouldn’t we be leaving it for the police to see?”
“Sweeney, you are the police.”
“That is a fact, sir.”
“Do you have a handkerchief?”
He was silent for a moment. “What would I be wanting with a handkerchief, sir?”
“You wipe the blade with it. We don’t want to ruin our clothes. Take the one from his top pocket, then. Keep it ready in your left hand and withdraw the knife with your right.”
He braced himself and grasped the hilt. The blade came out easily. He wiped it clean and handed it to me.
So far as I could judge, it was a bone-hand
led kitchen knife, used, presumably, for cutting meat or vegetables. I ought to say much used, for the blade had been worn to a virtual spike. It was extremely sharp. No great strength would have been required to have plunged such a weapon into a man’s chest, so I could not exclude the possibility that a woman had committed the crime.
“We must ask the cook whether this is one of her knives,” I told Sweeney.
“I’ll attend to that at once, sir.”
“No you won’t. Not yet. Go through the pockets.” Starting with the jacket, he made a painstaking search of Osgot-Edge’s clothes, handing each item to me. Truth to tell, the harvest didn’t amount to much: another handkerchief, a pencil and some loose change.
“Are you sure there’s nothing else in the top pocket? No slip of paper?”
He pulled out the lining to show me.
I decided to tell him about the pieces of paper found with Queenie Chimes and Jerry Gribble. “I was half expecting to find another scrap with ‘Wednesday’ written on it,” I admitted. “It’s a good thing we didn’t.”
“It is and it isn’t,” he said with Irish logic. “If it was there it would raise the unpleasant possibility that Miss Chimes and the Duke were murdered; but as it isn’t, we don’t have much to go on.”
“Come now, we’ve hardly begun our inquiries,” I said with my usual optimism. “Can you use a whistle?”
His blue eyes regarded me with mystification.
I reached for the speaking tube and handed it to him, I’ve never been obliged to whistle for anything.
Comprehension flooded over his features. He pulled the whistle from the tube and blew on it.
I took it from him. “Colwell, are you there?”
The answer came up, “Your Royal Highness?”
“We have finished up here.”
“Very good, sir.”
The ropes tightened, the pulleys squeaked and Osgot-Edge went down like the setting sun.
“Is the scoundrel apprehended?” was the question that was flung at me when I returned to the drawing room. It came from the Chaplain.
The tense faces of the guests regarded me in a way that I didn’t find at all agreeable. It was as if they blamed me for what had happened. Obviously they had worked themselves up into a frightful lather. Even Alix looked faintly skeptical of my authority.
I informed them that inquiries were vigorously underway. Written statements had been demanded from all the servants, and by the morning we expected to have a list of possible suspects. Meanwhile it would be sensible if each guest appointed a trusted servant from his own retinue to stand guard outside his bedroom door for the night.
“I’ve arranged that anyway,” said Holdfast. “I think we should issue them with weapons from the gun room.”
“Oh, do you?” said Amelia. “And what do you suppose will happen if one of us is compelled to visit the bathroom in the night?”
“Forget the guns,” said Bullivant. “Better issue us with jerries instead.”
It was a measure of the crisis that nobody smiled.
The guns were rejected by common consent. Presently the footmen arrived with the candles to escort us to our rooms. Holdfast took out his watch. “Good Lord, it’s almost Thursday already.”
While the party was starting to disperse, Alix chose her moment to draw me aside. “Bertie, I insist that you send for the police. This isn’t the time to play your detective games.”
I reminded her that Sweeney was a policeman.
She said, “Sweeney wouldn’t recognize a clue if it turned a double somersault and bit him on the nose. He’s a bodyguard, not an investigator.”
I said, “I hope you haven’t spoken in these terms to anybody else.”
“Of course not! They’d panic if they knew. You’re trifling with their lives, Bertie—with all our lives. There could be another murder in the night.”
“My dear, I’ll make you a solemn promise. If anyone else is killed tonight I shall send for the detective police at once.”
“That will be too late for the unfortunate victim.” It was no use arguing with her. I said, “I think I shall sleep in your bed tonight.”
Just as I hoped, she was derailed by the remark. We’ve had separate rooms for years. “Where do you propose that I should sleep?”
“Next to me.”
“Bertie, how could you—when a murderer is at large?”
“I think you misunderstand me, my dear,” I said piously. “My thoughts are exclusively devoted to the personal safety of the lady I love and cherish more than any other.”
Her lip trembled as it does when I remember our wedding anniversary. No more was said about sending for the police.
There was a diplomatic cough from somewhere behind me. I turned and saw Colwell the steward and took a few steps towards him, well out of Alix’s earshot.
“Did you convey the body safely to the coach house?”
“Yes, sir. I have locked the harness room.”
“And have the servants produced their statements?”
“Almost all have been handed in, sir.”
“Excellent. Give them to Sweeney as soon as possible. Tell me, do some of the servants live out?”
“There are some from the village, yes, sir.”
“Are they discreet?”
“I believe I can vouch for them, sir. We had an unfortunate incident last year and it was kept from the village. We pride ourselves on a very loyal household.”
“That may be so,” I said, “but tonight’s affair is rather more sensational than some boy shot by accident. Mr. Osgot-Edge was murdered, no question of it.”
“I still have confidence in my staff, sir.”
“Good, but it may be prudent to issue a further warning to anyone leaving the house.”
“No one is going off duty tonight, sir.”
I gave an approving nod. Colwell was a credit to his office. He lingered, glancing about him to see if he could be overheard.
A warning pulse started beating in my temple. I said, “Is there some other matter that you wish to bring to my attention?”
“There is, sir. We made a rather disturbing discovery when we removed the body from the dumbwaiter. A piece of paper, tucked under his leg. I took the precaution of pocketing it before anyone else had an opportunity to read it. In view of the scrap of paper I found on Monday evening when Miss Chimes collapsed, I thought this may be relevant to the investigation.”
“What did it say?”
“I have it here, sir.” He handed me a piece of newspaper. And of course you are correct, reader. It had been cut from the Times and the word printed on it was “Wednesday.” But that was not all. Something else had been added by hand, in black ink, so that the message in its entirety read: Wednesday’s Corpse.
I was forced to conclude that I was dealing not with one murder, but three. Wednesday’s Corpse implied that the deaths labeled Monday and Tuesday had been planned and executed by the same evil assassin.
Thursday
CHAPTER 10
I believe it was about 1:30 a.m. when Alix said, “Bertie, if you don’t mind, I would like to get some sleep tonight.”
I told her not to be such a killjoy.
“But I can scarcely breathe! I really must object.”
“My dear, you never used to. In fact I was given to understand that you found it quite agreeable.”
“Yes, but not in bed. How much longer are you going to be?”
“I suppose I’ve finished,” I said, reaching for an ashtray to extinguish the objectionable cigar butt. “I thought it would help me concentrate, but I can’t say I’ve reached any rational conclusion.”
She grasped the bedclothes tightly and made a performance of turning over. “Murder isn’t rational. Kindly turn out the lamp, would you?”
; I obliged. But I remained sitting up in the dark, unable to rest until I had made more sense of the evenings appalling discovery. Queenie Chimes had not, after all, collapsed from natural causes; she had been poisoned. Jerry Gribble hadn’t committed suicide; he had been shot. Osgot-Edge had been stabbed, and the murderer had claimed all three like a sportsman bagging game.
I shuddered.
Murder isn’t rational, Alix had pointed out, yet calculation must have played a part in these killings, for the pieces of newspaper had clearly been cut from the Times beforehand and left like calling cards. The killer was boasting: Look at my tally—a murder a day. Be sure and credit the deaths on Monday and Tuesday to me as well as Wednesday, won’t you?
I couldn’t imagine why anyone should want to murder three innocent people—a trio so different as a pretty actress, a middle-aged Duke and a poet. Admittedly Queenie and Jerry were lovers, so they may have been killed as a brace, if you’ll pardon my persisting with the sporting idiom. But I could think of no other connections.
Well, you’ll have gathered the direction my thoughts were taking. It seemed to me that the victims had been picked off like prey, impersonally, for no other reason than that they happened to be guests in Desborough Hall at this time. Such callous slaughter is not unknown. I can’t expect my twentieth-century reader to have heard of the East End murders committed in 1888 by a seeker of publicity known to the press as Jack the Ripper. At the time they made a considerable sensation. He wrote letters challenging the police to catch him, but up to now he is still at liberty. I tell you candidly, sitting in that darkened room, I could foresee a campaign just as brutal and alarming as the Ripper’s—in fact more alarming, because it was aimed not at streetwalkers, but people of refinement.
If this murderer is a publicity seeker, I told myself, then my conduct in the case is amply justified. Silence catches the mouse. He wanted the world to know about these daily killings and the telltale scraps of newspaper left beside the bodies. I frustrated his plan. Not even my fellow guests are fully aware of what he has done. So I have trapped him into adding something to his calling card.
Wednesday’s Corpse.
Bertie and the Seven Bodies Page 9
