The Stately Home Murder (10 page)

“No?”

“He's been dead these two hundred and fifty years.”

“A ghost?” Sloan sighed. There would have to be a ghost, he supposed, in a house like this, but Superintendent Leeyes wouldn't like it all the same.

The lorgnette described an arc in the air on its way towards the Cremond nose. “That's right. Mark my words, young man, someone's going to die soon.”

Lady Maude chimed in like a Greek chorus of doom. “The Judge always gets uneasy when someone in the family is going to die.”

The Reverend Walter Ames, Vicar of Ornum and Perpetual Curate of Maple-juxta-Handling, was not a preacher of long sermons at any time.

On this particular evening in June he took as his text “unto him that hath shall be given” (a point on which in any case he could seldom think of much to say), said it with celerity, and hurried across from the church to Ornum House.

He reached the armory just as Inspector Sloan got back there.

“I've just heard the sad news,” said the vicar somewhat breathlessly. “Terrible. Quite terrible.”

“Yes, sir.” Inspector Sloan took a quick look round the armory. Dr. Dabbe was engaged in contemplating the armor rather as an inexperienced diner pauses before he makes his first foray into a lobster. Detective Constable Crosby was still prowling round the walls looking at the weaponry.

“I thought something was odd,” went on the vicar, who was gray-haired and patently unused to hurrying.

“You did, sir? Why was that?” asked Sloan.

“I blame myself now for not doing more at the time, though I don't see what more …”

“For not doing what?” asked Sloan patiently.

Mr. Ames took a deep breath. “It's like this, Inspector. Meredith sent me a message asking me to come to see him …”

“When would that have been, sir?”

“Friday afternoon. He rang my wife—I was out at the time—and told her that he'd made an important discovery and he wanted my opinion on it.”

Sloan looked up quickly. “What sort of discovery, sir?”

The clergyman shook his head. “Ah, he wouldn't say. Not to my wife. And not over the telephone. We … er … still have a … er … manual exchange here in Ornum, you know. Er … a womanual exchange, Inspector, if you take the point.”

Sloan did.

“He just left a message with my wife,” went on the vicar, “asking me to come up to the house.”

“And did you, sir?”

“Oh yes, Inspector. That was what was so odd.”

“What was so odd?”

“When I got here I couldn't find him.”

“What time would that have been, sir?” It was, Sloan thought, for all the world like a catechism.

“About half-past five. He told my wife he would be working in the muniments room after tea, and that I would find him there. But I didn't.”

“What did you do then?”

“Glanced in the library—I didn't see him there either—and came away again.”

“Then what?”

“I decided I'd missed him after all and that I'd call at The Old Forge on my way back to the vicarage. Which I did.”

“But he wasn't there,” agreed Sloan.

“Quite so. No reply at The Old Forge.” The vicar averted his eyes from the armor. “At the time I thought I would be seeing him at the cricket on the Saturday and Sunday—a two-day match, you know, the Ornum versus Petering one—so I didn't go back to his house again.”

“But he wasn't at the cricket,” persisted Sloan.

“No,” admitted Mr. Ames. “I must confess I was surprised about that—though it is now painfully clear why he wasn't there.”

“Did you do anything more?”

The vicar shook his head. “I'm afraid not. I realize now that I should have done, but it rather slipped my mind.” He looked round at Dr. Dabbe, his silent assistant, Burns, and Constable Crosby, and said apologetically, “I fear that I underestimated the importance of poor Meredith's discovery—whatever it was.”

Sloan nodded. “I daresay you did, sir.”

“Meredith often got excited about his work, you know, Inspector.” Clearly this was going to take a good deal of expiation on the vicar's part.

“I understand, sir. You thought he was crying wolf.”

“I think”—very fairly—“that we all tend to exaggerate what is important to us and to diminish what others regard as important.”

But it was after all that that Mr. Ames really began to assist the police in their enquiries.

Not in the usual sense.

“I thought that this would be the particular suit of armor,” he said, “as soon as I heard about the tragedy.”

“Why?” demanded Sloan sharply.

“It disarticulates more easily than the others.”

“You don't say,” murmured Dr. Dabbe, who hadn't yet been able to disarticulate it at all.

“Who all would know that?” asked Sloan.

“Everyone,” said the vicar blithely. “It's the one I demonstrate on when people come. A most interesting piece if I may say so. Poor Meredith. A real expert in his own field, you know.”

“It's a question of the post-mortem, Vicar,” intervened Dr. Dabbe, anxious to get on in his own line of expertise.

“Quite so. Now, you've got the skull off, I see.”

Someone had also almost got Meredith's skull off, too, and Mr. Ames winced visibly at the sight.

“Yes,” agreed Dabbe, “but that's not enough for the coroner.”

“Of course not.” Mr. Ames nodded rapidly. “What you want to do is to get down to the … er … ah … um …”

“Body,” said Dabbe.

“Ere … quite so. Well, it's not difficult.”

“Can I get this off for a start?” asked the doctor.

“The pauldron? Only if you remove the besaque …”

Detective Inspector Sloan motioned to Crosby and they both stood aside for a few moments, the better to relish the edifying situation of someone using long words that the doctor did not understand.

Dr. Dabbe leaned forward and caught his sleeve on a protruding hook as he did so. He swore under his breath.

“Ah, you've found the lance rest then, Doctor.” That was Mr. Ames.

“Let us say,” murmured the pathologist pleasantly, “rather that it found me.”

“Perhaps it might be as well to start with the gauntlets and couters. Then we can get the vambraces off.”

“That will be a great help, I'm sure.”

“Well, you'll be able to see the hands and forearms,” said the vicar practically, “but the breastplate and the corsets are really what …”

“I beg your pardon?”

“The breastplate and corsets …”

“Corsets?”

“That's right.”

“So that's where it all began …”

“The corselet was a sort of half-armor,” explained Mr. Ames academically, “but these are true corsets.”

“Well, well, well …”

“Made in pairs, usually hinged, and tailored to fit.”

“You don't say. And that?”

The vicar coughed. “The codpiece, and now”—hastily—“to get the gorget off …”

The figure of an elderly man in a dark gray suit was beginning to emerge.

Blood had run down the back of the neck and onto the collar and suit, and had dried there.

As the vicar deftly loosened the corset, the body started to keel over.

8

Drawn together by the unexpected, the family had stayed together in a group in the sitting room of the private apartments. They were still there when Charles Purvis got back from Ornum village with William Murton.

Murton made a little mock bow towards them.

“You wanted to see me?” he said. There was the faintest of ironic stresses on the word “wanted.”

“Thought we'd better put you in the picture, William,” the Earl said gruffly. “Something of a mishap …”

“Yes?”

“Meredith's been found dead in the armory …”

“In a suit of armor, actually,” added Lord Henry quickly. “In the suit we called Grumpy. Do you remember Grumpy?”

William Murton nodded. “I remember Grumpy all right.” He frowned. “Second on the right on the way in.”

“That's right,” said the Earl heavily.

There was a slight pause, then:

“Poor Ossy,” said William. William Murton was a strange admixture of physical characteristics. He was heavier than the Cremonds but he, too, had the Cremond nose. With it, though, he had a flamboyance of manner missing in the others. “Somebody put him there, I take it?”

“Quite so,” said the Earl.

“When?”

“Nobody seems to have seen him since Friday.”

“I came down on Friday,” said William, “seeing as you probably don't like to ask.”

“When on Friday?” said Laura Cremond harshly.

William turned towards her with an expressionless face. “In the afternoon, Laura. When did you come down?”

She flushed. “Thursday.”

“We came down for the match,” mumbled Miles.

“Match?” said William Murton, looking round at everybody. “Match?”

“You know,” said Miles eagerly. “Ornum versus Petering.”

“Tiddledywinks?”

“Cricket.”

Laura Cremond said, “He's teasing you, Miles.”

“Cricket,” said William, slapping his thigh. “Of course. That reminds me—I had some money on that.”

Miles stared at him. “Money on a cricket match?”

“That's right, old boy.”

“But people never …”

“Gents don't,” said William. “People do. Who won?”

“We did.”

“Good. Thought you would. Old Lambert owes me a fiver then.”

“Ebeneezer Lambert never backed a winner in his life,” observed the Earl sadly. “Same in my father's day. Poor judge of horses.”

“And men,” said William.

“Men?”

“He was a friend of my father's, you know.”

“Quite so,” said the Earl.

“You could have almost called them colleagues,” went on William bitterly, “seeing how Lambert was a saddler and my father was a groom.”

“Quite so,” said the Earl again.

“Only colleague isn't quite the right word when it comes to following a trade, is it?”

“Craft,” said the Earl mildly. “You worry too much about the past, William. It's all over now.”

“Me worry about the past? I like that! You've all got a full-time man here doing nothing much else except poke about into family history. And if that isn't worrying about the past I don't know what is.”

“Only we haven't got him any more,” said Lord Henry diffidently, “have we?”

William turned towards his cousin. “No more you have. Met with a nasty accident, did he?”

“So it would seem,” said Henry. “The police are down in the armory now. Then they want to see us all.”

“It's a pity,” observed William to no one in particular, “that it should happen just when Ossy was getting on so well, isn't it?”

“Very.”

“Or was I misinformed?”

“No.”

“There are those,” added Murton meaningfully, “who might say that meddling with the past is downright dangerous, aren't there?”

“There are,” agreed Lord Henry, “and who's to say they aren't right?” Alone of the rest of the family Miss Gertrude Cremond was not in the sitting-room. She was still presiding over the room devoted to the display of fine china.

Detective Inspector Sloan found her there by the simple process of following the route that the public took through the house. It was, he decided, rather like playing one of those games based on the maze principle. Each time he came to a dead end—in this case either a locked door or a thick, looped cord—he went back two paces and cast about in another direction.

Eventually he came to the china. It looked very beautiful in the long light of an early summer evening—which was more than could have been said for Miss Gertrude Cremond. She was shorter and squarer than the Earl, but still unmistakably a Cremond.

She had the nose.

She could not remember when she had last seen Osborne Meredith alive.

“He wasn't really interested in the china, Inspector. Not as an expert, I mean.”

“I see, miss, thank you.” Some unmarried ladies Sloan called “miss,” some he called “madam.” There was a fine distinction between the two, which he wouldn't have cared to have put into words and had nothing to do with age.

“But if I can help you at all in any other way …” said Miss Cremond.

“You deal with the china yourself, do you?”

“All of it,” she agreed. “And the flowers. Lady Eleanor helps me with the flowers when she is at home. As a rule we do those on Tuesdays and Fridays. We have fresh flowers in all the public rooms when the house is open.”

“Fridays you'll be busy,” he said.

“Always.”

“This last Friday, can you remember what you did in the afternoon?”

“The great hall chandelier,” responded Miss Cremond promptly. “It took a long time—in fact I came back after tea to finish it off. You must have it hung back if the public are to be admitted. It would soon get broken if not.”

“Quite so, miss. And afterwards?”

She frowned. “It took me until it was time to change. Dillow hung it after dinner.”

“I see, miss, thank you.” He paused. “If you should remember noticing anything at all unusual about Friday evening I should be glad to be told.”

“Of course, Inspector.”

Sloan began to go. “Lady Alice tells me that she saw Judge Cremond on Friday evening.”

Subconsciously he had expected a light laugh and an apology for an eccentric old lady. What he got was:

“Oh, dear.” And a worried look came over Miss Gertrude Cremond's plain face. “That's a bad sign, I must say.”

“Well, Sloan?”

Sloan was back on the telephone to Berebury police headquarters.