The Stately Home Murder (23 page)

“We think so, your Ladyship.”

The Countess of Ornum lowered the teapot onto the large silver tray with a clatter. “You mean the picture was actually changed over on Friday afternoon?”

“Yes, your Ladyship.”

“And that little Mr. Meredith knew about the change?”

“We think he spotted it by accident.”

Cromwell T. Fortescue began, “Cyrus Phillimore says it's a very good fake …”

Nobody took any notice of him.

“And having spotted it,” said Lord Henry, “he dashed to the telephone to ring up his pal the vicar to ask him to pop along and confirm his worst suspicions.”

“That's what we think, my lord,” agreed Sloan. “It would be the natural thing to do before he told your father. After all, it is a pretty serious allegation.”

“I'll say,” said his young Lordship inelegantly. “He's worth a pretty packet is the old Judge.”

“And where is he now?” demanded Cousin Gertrude.

Laura Cremond said unsteadily, “I know where the picture is.”

Everyone looked towards the sharp-faced woman who sat beside Miles.

“I say,” said Miles. “Do you? Good.”

She ignored him. “It's lying under a pile of old maps in the muniments room. It's not damaged at all.”

There was an expectant silence.

“I'm afraid,” went on Laura Cremond, not without dignity, “that I have a confession to make, and it's very kind of the inspector to give me the chance.”

Miles looked as if he couldn't believe his eyes and ears. “I say, old girl, steady on. This isn't a revivalist meeting, you know.”

“I'm sorry to have to tell you,” said Laura, “that on Friday evening I behaved rather badly.”

“Not as badly as somebody else,” said the Countess sadly.

“Nearly,” insisted Laura. “I'm afraid I disturbed the muniments.”

“Good Lord!” said Miles.

“I'm very sorry. I just couldn't bear the thought of Uncle Harry not being Earl any more.”

Cousin Gertrude had finished winding up the twine. “If Laura saw it there,” she said bluntly, “why didn't she tell us and save all this trouble?”

Laura flushed and her voice was so low as to be nearly inaudible. “I didn't like to say …”

“You didn't like to say!” exclaimed Cousin Gertrude scornfully; Gertrude, who had herself never left anything unsaid.

“I thought perhaps Uncle Harry had arranged to …” Laura faltered and began again. “Owners do change pictures over themselves sometimes, you know, and sell the original without saying anything to anyone.”

“I expect,” murmured the Countess serenely, “he will one day.”

Laura was getting to her feet. “I know I did something I shouldn't, Uncle Harry and Aunt Millicent, and I'm very sorry. Miles and I are going now and we shan't be expecting any more invitations to stay at Ornum.”

The Earl was keeping to a more important train of thought. “So Meredith was killed because he knew about the fake picture.”

“And to prevent him telling anyone else, my lord.” A steel-like quality crept into Sloan's voice. He cleared his throat and everyone turned in his direction. If you cleared your throat in the Berebury Police Station they thought you had a cold coming, but it was different here.

Everything was different here.

“It all happened,” he said, “because he wasn't invited to tea with your Lordship's aunts like he usually was on Fridays.”

“You're joking, Inspector,” Gertrude Cremond said.

“Indeed I'm not, madam. I'm perfectly serious. As a rule Mr. Osborne Meredith always took tea with their Ladyships upstairs on Fridays.”

“You could count on it,” said Lady Eleanor.

“Someone did,” said Sloan soberly, “and it was his undoing.”

The Countess of Ornum picked up the teapot again. Dillow peered into the hot-water jug and, apparently finding it empty, picked it up.

“Don't go, Dillow.”

“Very well, sir.” He stood with the jug in his hand.

“Friday,” said Sloan, “was an exception. Their Ladyships upstairs did not invite Mr. Meredith to tea as he had offended them by his historical researches. They did not, however, tell anyone they hadn't done so.”

“So poor old Ossy turns up in the long gallery just after the Holbein had been changed over,” concluded Lord Henry, “when by right he should have been pinned between Great Aunt Alice and Great Aunt Maude while they told him how things ain't what they used to be.”

“Quite so.”

“Then what, Inspector?”

“Then,” said Sloan in a voice devoid of emphasis, “he goes to the telephone where he is overheard ringing the vicar's wife.” He turned towards Lord Ornum. “Your telephone isn't exactly private, your Lordship.”

“It's the draftiest place in the house,” responded the Earl. “My father wouldn't have it anywhere else. Didn't like it.”

“After that,” said Sloan, “I reckon the murderer had about a quarter of an hour in hand. A quarter of an hour in which to decide what to do and to go down to the armory and pick his weapon.”

Lady Eleanor shivered. “If only I'd stayed talking to Ossy …”

“No, your Ladyship, that wouldn't have made any difference. He'd have just waited until you'd gone.”

A thought had penetrated Miles Cremond's brain. “I say, Inspector, you couldn't go walking through the house with a club, what? Look very odd.”

“Yes, sir, I quite agree. There is one way though in which it could be carried quite easily without being seen.”

Miles Cremond, having had one thought, wasn't immediately up to another. He frowned, but said nothing.

“And don't forget,” went on Sloan smoothly, “that Mr. Meredith wouldn't have known who to suspect of changing the picture. Dillow, I think her Ladyship has finished with the tea tray now. Would you like to take it away?”

“Certainly, sir.” With an expressionless face the butler put the hot-water jug back beside the teapot and picked up the tray.

He was halfway across the room with it when Sloan said to him conversationally, “Did you have any trouble hiding the godentag under Mr. Meredith's tea tray, Dillow?”

In the end it wasn't the Countess of Ornum at all who dropped the silver teapot.

It was Dillow.

“That you, Sloan?” Superintendent Leeyes didn't wait for an answer. “I think it's high time we got some help in this case.”

“There's no need now, sir, thank you.”

“Can't have the Earl thinking we aren't efficient. I'm going to ring the chief constable now and tell him that—”

“I've just made an arrest, sir.”

“I think we should ask him to call in Scotland Yard. After all, you've had nearly twenty-four hours and—”

“I've just arrested Michael Joseph Dillow, sir.”

“Who?”

“The butler.”

“What for?”

“The murder of Osborne Meredith.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, sir. It all fits in.”

“What does?”

“Motive, means, opportunity …” Sloan couldn't think offhand what else constituted a murder case.

“Motive?”

“Theft, sir. Of a very valuable picture. I think,” added Sloan judiciously, “that he had a bit of really bad luck there.”

“Where?”

“In Osborne Meredith spotting the switchover just when he did.”

“So”—astringently—“did Meredith.”

“Quite so, sir. Otherwise Dillow had timed things quite well. Meredith was sure to be at the two-day cricket match on the Saturday and Sunday—he would never have missed that if he was alive—and it was highly unlikely that anyone but Meredith would have spotted that the Holbein was a fake. The forgery's a really expert job.”

“Who did it?”

“Dillow won't tell us, but I strongly suspect that same hand that did the pseudo Van Goghs which his last employer found he owned.”

Superintendent Leeyes grunted.

“But to lessen the risk,” pursued Sloan, “Dillow put a dud electric light bulb in the fitting over the picture. It's in a bad light as it is and Miss Cleepe is short-sighted anyway and isn't an expert.”

“Then what?” demanded Leeyes.

“I think he killed him when he took his tea tray in, ate the tea himself, and left the body in the library.”

“Sloan”—irritably—“there's something very old-fashioned about all this—butlers and bodies in the library.”

“Traditional, sir,” Sloan reminded him. “You said we could expect the traditional at Ornum.”

Leeyes grunted again.

“He left him in the library, sir, while he deflected the vicar. It's not the sort of library anyone uses much in the ordinary way. Then after he sounded the dressing bell—the only dressing bell Sloan knew was that on his own alarm clock, which went off every morning at seven o'clock, not every evening at seven-thirty, but he was prepared to believe that there were others—“while all those in the house were changing he carried the body down to the armory.”

“Quite a good time to choose.”

“Very. Except for one thing. William Murton was watching him from the spyhole above the great hall. As well as seeing Dillow carrying Mr. Meredith's body he also saw the chandelier lying on the table—which was what put us on to him having been there.” Sloan discreetly omitted Lady Alice from the narrative. Ghosts were all very well in Ornum House: in the stark, scrubbed police office in Berebury they became too insubstantial to mention.

“What put you on to Dillow?” enquired Leeyes. “That's more important.”

“Teacups,” said Sloan. “There should have been three on their Ladyships' tray.”

“Teacups?”

“There were only two,” explained Sloan, “which meant that by the time he took them their tea Dillow must have already overheard Meredith telling the vicar's wife that he would be waiting for her husband in the library and guessed exactly what discovery Meredith had made.”

“Meredith could have told him himself that he wasn't going up to the two old birds,” objected Leeyes.

“If he did, sir, then Dillow was lying when he said he hadn't seen him earlier. Six of one, half a dozen of the other.”

“And Murton?”

“William Murton decided that in future Dillow could subsidize his pleasures—he therefore didn't ask his uncle for a loan this weekend—which I gather was something so unusual as to be remarkable.”

“So he got what was coming to him.”

“I'm afraid so, sir. As soon as he tried it on, probably. He was dealing with a tougher nut than he knew. Than we knew,” Sloan added honestly. Dillow hadn't gone quietly, but there had been policemen everywhere.

“Hrrrrrrmph,” said Leeyes. “And what stopped Dillow just clearing off with the picture?”

“Michael Fisher, Mrs. Laura Cremond, and me,” said Sloan. “The boy found Mr. Meredith too soon, Mrs. Cremond stirred up the muniments, and I sealed the door. If I hadn't I think it would have gone out today under Dillow's arm.”

“Today?”

“His day off. Bad luck, really. He parked it in the safest place he knew. He tried to break the door down in the night and to lure the archivist out with food today.”

“Hrrrrrrmph,” said Leeyes again. “And Murton?”

“I expect,” said Sloan, “Dillow suggested he and Murton go somewhere for a nice quiet chat—like the dungeons.”

Inspector Sloan had left Constable Crosby and Constable Bloggs on duty outside the door of the private apartments with firm instructions about the Ornum family remaining undisturbed.

The door, therefore, in theory should not have opened at all at this juncture, still less should an incredibly old lady in black have got past them armed with nothing more intimidating than a lorgnette.

But she had.

“Why,” demanded the querulous voice of Lady Alice Cremond, “has Dillow not brought us our tea?”

Detective Constable Crosby turned the police car in that wide sweep of carriageway in front of Ornum House where the coaches of the Earls of Ornum had been wont to go into that wide arc of drive that brought them to the front door.

There was room to have paraded the entire County of Calleshire Force and to spare—but there were only two members of it present: Inspector Sloan and Constable Crosby.

“Home, James, and don't spare the horses,” commanded Sloan, climbing in.

“Beg pardon, sir?”

Sloan sighed. “Headquarters, Crosby, please.”

“Yes, sir.”

They drove through the park, past the folly, ignoring the Earl's prize deer. Crosby steered the car between the gryphons on the gate finial without a sidelong glance.

Sloan looked at his watch and thought that—with a bit of luck—he'd be home in time to nip round his garden before the light went. Yesterday—was it only yesterday?—there had been a rose—new rose—nearly out. It might not be good enough for showing, but he thought he would try.

You could never tell with judges.

They left the copybook village of Ornum behind and got on the open road.

They were on the outskirts of Berebury when they saw the ambulance.

It was in a hurry. Crosby slowed down and eased to the side of the road as it flashed by in the opposite direction. The sound of its siren was nearly extinguished by the roar of the motorcycle that was following the ambulance at great speed.

“That's Pete Bellamy, that is,” observed Crosby inconsequentially.

“Well I hope traffic pick him up.”

“Always follows the blood wagon, does Pete.”

“Say that again, Crosby.”

“About Pete Bellamy, sir? He lives opposite the ambulance station.”

“Where does he work?”

“Some garage in the town, sir. He's just got himself the bike.”

“So that each time the bell goes down he chases the ambulance.”