Murder at Maddingley Grange (22 page)

He got up and ruminated for, in the absence of physical clues, the intelligence must be brought into play. As always when stymied Derek imagined himself in the shoes of the Master. What would Holmes do? No sooner had the question been posed than the answer was vouchsafed and in a trice Derek was back in the Vuillard room and strangling the life out of Offenbach's “Barcarolle.” But clarification did not come quickly. “Pale Hands I Loved” and “O! Silver Moon” had also given up the ghost before the direction of his next step was disclosed. “I must,” said Derek aloud, returning the tormented instrument to its case, “question Martin Lewis.”

He pulled out his half hunter. Eleven-thirty. High time all decent folk were up and about. Of course there was nothing, he mused as he crossed the landing, to actually link the face at the window with the fracas on the stairs. Yet connection there must surely be. Two such remarkable occurrences in one evening could not be mere coincidence. He arrived at the door of the Watteau room and knocked firmly.

There was no response. Derek waited a moment, then tried the handle. Locked. He rapped again and put his lips to the jamb. “Lewis?” Even less response. Derek pursed his lips. If people thought they could escape interrogation by cowering behind locked doors, they had better think again.

He raised both fists and thundered on the panels. From behind them came a faint cry. But Martin did not appear. Eventually Derek decided to desist—the man was bound to emerge at lunchtime—and turned his attention to the landing and the mystery of the butler's “phantom.”

Derek discounted, as any perceptive investigator was bound to do, the glaring red eyes and hooked claws. When questioned, the butler had still been in a highly nervous state and probably anxious to curry sympathy from his employers, perhaps hoping that allowance might then be made for his bizarre nocturnal behavior. So…eliminate what must surely be impossible (a second ghost levitating through the floorboards) and whatever remained,
however improbable
, must be the truth.

Gaunt had been standing in front of the Burne-Jones stained glass and staring down the length of the landing at its companion piece when the apparition had materialized. Now Derek approached the second window and studied it closely. It featured a woman with a large loose knot of gamboge-yellow hair, a full jaw and heavy-lidded, rather vacant eyes. Her skin was milky, almost pale blue, and she carried a sheaf of arum lilies. Like most of the Pre-Raphaelite females, she looked half asleep.

But Derek had no time to waste on the appreciation of aesthetic nuance. Pausing merely to ascertain that the window was no more and no less than it purported to be, he turned his attention to the walls and floor. Here difficulties immediately became apparent.

The skirting board ran, on one side, the complete length of the landing and on the other side as far as the stairs without any crack or join, making the existence of a secret panel very unlikely. Also between the two doors on Derek's left hand (Mr. and Mrs. Gibbs and the Savilles) and those on his right (Mrs. Gibbs senior and Laurel) were half-moon tables rimmed with gilt filigree holding miniatures and other bibelots. Neither of these, Derek knew, being so quickly on the scene in question, had been at all disturbed. Nevertheless, he determined to leave no square inch unexamined and, starting by the window, began to push and peer at the faded terra-cotta wallpaper.

He moved the tables out and back again but was forced, after ten minutes' scrupulous examination, to concede defeat. There was no secret panel in either of the walls. On to the carpet, squinting through his magnifying glass, pressing the thick pile and hoping to discover a furrow, maybe around four feet square, indicating a cunningly concealed trapdoor. But no such luck.

Derek stood up, rubbing his aching knees and facing, head on, a rather alarming conclusion. Given the impermeability of walls and floor, the interloper could have emerged only from one or the other of the Gibbses' bedrooms. And appreciating that creeping through a room with two sleepers would be twice as hazardous as creeping through a room with one, Derek was inclined to plump for the old lady's.

He was about to effect an entry when Martin's door opened and the suspect himself peered out. With a bay of satisfaction Derek galloped along the landing. The door slammed shut. Thwarted, he sniffed round the keyhole till the sound of running water convinced him he was wasting his time and then, not wishing to let the grass grow, pounded back the way he had come and into the Degas room.

The first thing that struck him as he entered was the smell. Or rather smells. There seemed to be several, all struggling for supremacy. The most attractive came from a shallow turquoise bowl full of potpourri. This was underscored by a pungent warm stabley odor, which could have been horse liniment, in its turn nuzzling up to the powerful scent of aniseed balls.

Derek inhaled deductively and began to look around. The place must be teeming with clues, and, almost certainly, it harbored somewhere the phosphorescent sheet, for chummy would hardly hamper his escape by carrying it with him. In an armchair Derek found a long roll of bright pink linenlike material stuck with bones at regular intervals and flaunting vivid pink laces. He examined it closely but, unable to see how it was in any way germane to the proceedings, rerolled it and put it back. On the bedside table was an empty biscuit tin, an up-to-date copy of
Old Moore's Almanac
and
That's the Spirit! Necromancy for Beginners
by Iris Wendover.

The bathroom held a no-nonsense bristle toothbrush with a bone handle, a can of dentifrice, a punitive wire hairbrush and a small unlabeled glass jar containing a thick, yellowish substance that could well have been bear grease.

Derek returned to the bedroom, sat down and thought hard. There was a real problem here and no mistake. A two-pipe problem if truth be told, but he was loath to light up in that confined space, fearing that, even if he opened all the windows, revealing traces of Bulwark would still remain, fighting it out with the potpourri and horse liniment and aniseed balls.

It seemed there were two places where the phantom could have hidden. Behind the floor-length curtains or in the wardrobe. The curtains were a bit on the skimpy side and certainly when drawn would not have concealed a largish male figure. There was also the chance that the old lady might have decided to reopen them, thus making discovery and subsequent capture (for Derek could not see Mrs. Gibbs chirruping nervously and fainting away) fairly certain. No— the wardrobe was the place.

This was a large rosewood affair without legs, nearly seven feet tall. It had double doors decorated with ebony and silver. Derek opened one and stepped inside. More liniment overlaid by mothballs. Lots of clothes suitable for a short squat elderly lady, some of which he had seen already, more rolled-up pink things with Day-Glo laces and several pairs of knickers the length and circumference of airport wind socks draped over a bar hanger. But of chummy's spoor no sign.

Derek slid the hangers back and forth and tapped hard on the unyielding wood but had to emerge frustrated, still minus his sheet and still without a clue. He checked under the bed and on the bed and searched the tallboy before coming, reluctantly, to the decision that he might have been mistaken in his previous assumption and that it was the Hogarth suite that he should be investigating. He prepared to leave, stopping at the door for a final reconnaissance. And then he saw it. On top of the wardrobe, dead center. A flat white folded thing.

Trembling with excitement he placed the only chair in the room, a lyre-backed Hepplewhite with cream and lemon satin upholstery, by the side of the wardrobe, put his muddy shoes firmly on the seat and climbed up.

He gripped the rim of the wardrobe with his right hand and stretched out his left arm as far as it would go. Not quite far enough. He went round the other side and repeated the procedure. Same result. Snookered at both ends, Derek gnashed his teeth. He was determined to get hold of the thing and, even as he gave a little jump to lengthen his reach, imagined himself stepping onto the terrace when everyone was gathered for lunch and suddenly, dramatically flinging his sheet before them with a cry of: “What price your phantom now?”

He jumped again, a little higher. His fingers brushed the cloth. One more elevation should do it. Derek crouched to get plenty of spring. Then, in midair, the thought struck him that what he should have done was to place his chair at the front of the wardrobe where it would have been simplicity itself to reach the sheet (a pristine, unillumined flannelette).

Even as he took aboard this apprehension his fingers grasped the folds of fabric and he dropped back, pulling it all with him, hitting the chair with one foot, his other going through the delicate center strut of the lyre and snapping it in half. Swathed now in folds of white, Derek staggered and fell backward, hitting his head hard against the wall. To his alarm, far from providing the support one might reasonably expect, it gave way and he felt himself falling. Unable to see he flailed around on his back, pulling at the sheet and kicking away the chair. Finally he unraveled himself, got to his feet and stood staring at what was before him. A couple of feet from the wardrobe, directly beneath a silver and opal wall sconce, a door had swung open.

Eyes bulging, mouth agape, almost choking in excited disbelief, Derek stood looking at it. He dropped his sheet— how trivial its discovery seemed now—and stayed very still for a long moment, holding his breath and glowing with self-esteem. He had done it!
He had found the secret passage
.

A plane climbed into the blue, unfurling a stream of sudsy curd. Sheila Gregory and Simon paused in their combined efforts to coax a croquet ball through the nearest hoop and tilted back their heads to watch. The silver plane drifted higher and higher. And farther and farther away.

How uncomplicated, Simon thought, how orderly and clear everything must seem from that celestial viewpoint. Now that the weekend was upon him, now that everyone was well and truly here and all the machinations were afoot and there was no turning back, Simon suddenly felt monstrously encumbered and experienced a stab of envy for the unshackled man with his head in the clouds.

“Ohhh…I've hit it the wrong way.”

“So you have.” He brought his attention back to Sheila and left his arm around her waist as they walked over the warm velvety grass to retrieve the ball. Rosemary, two shots ahead, gave a little cry of chagrin and came tittuping back to join them.

“You'll never guess what I've done, Simon.”

“So tell us,” said Sheila.

“I gave such a swing with my mallet I've knocked my hoop clean out of the ground.”

“Oh dear,” said Simon.

“You're supposed to be hitting the ball,” said Sheila. “Not the hoop.”

“You've been playing for nearly half an hour, Mrs. Gregory,” responded Rosemary. “Won't your husband be feeling neglected?”

“I shouldn't think so. He's probably off hunting the prowler. Won't your mother be feeling neglected?”

“I shouldn't think so. She's very independent. And we spend so much time together she welcomes a break from my company.”

“She must. I would myself.”

“And I'm quite old enough to venture out without her. I was nineteen last month.”

“Only nineteen?” Sheila removed her tortoiseshell sunglasses, the better to study the infant phenomenon. “But surely…” She tailed off with the implication that only an excess of good manners halted a more formal declaration of disbelief.

“Perhaps you need stronger glasses, Mrs. Gregory? I understand in middle age…” Rosemary's laugh tinkled frostily.

“Let's go and sort out the problem, shall we?” Simon strode off, fluttering prettiness and svelte seduction in steamy pursuit. He picked up the hoop and rammed it back into the turf. “There we are.”

“Ohhh…” said Rosemary, rosy-tipped fingers brushing his sleeve. “I simply
adore
practical men.”