A
lec, Tom and Ernie, expecting the dull, skimpy sandwiches which were usually their lot in similar situations, had been agreeably surprised by the contents of the tray a footman bore into the library. Fragrant steam rose from generous slices of pork pie. Each plate was adorned with a heap of colourful pickles: onions, beetroot, cucumber, cauliflower and carrot. A bowl of cherries and a sponge cake awaited their pleasure. A pitcher of lemonade and several bottles of beer completed the provisions.
Ernie Piper, about to go in search of Lord Carleton, sat down again and rubbed his hands together.
“That's something like!” said Tom approvingly.
“Cook says there's plenty more where that came from, Mr. Tring.” The footman turned to Alec. “And Mr. Baines said to ask you, sir, would you be wanting wine with your dinner?”
“Thank you, no, this will do us very well.”
“These big places,” said Ernie, “they usually seem to think coppers live on air.”
“We don't hold with police in the house,” the footman informed him, “but no more don't we hold with murdering Lord Fotheringay,
as pleasant and harmless gentleman as you could ask for. 'Sides, anyone can see Mrs. Fletcher's a real lady.”
“The best,” Ernie agreed blithely, reaching for his plate. “Always right, Mrs. Fletcher is.”
The footman looked interested and hopeful.
“That will be all, thank you,” Alec said firmly. “Piper, in precisely five minutes you will be going to fetch Lord Carleton.”
“Yes, Chief!” said Ernie, his fork already on its way to his mouth.
Â
Denzil, Viscount Carleton was married to a niece of Lord Haverhill. According to Lady Eva's papers, he did not take his marriage vows very seriously.
He was nothing loath to admit as much. “Oh yes, I have a mistress. Charming woman I've kept for many years. Should have married her years ago and be damned to the bloodlines, but by the time I realized I ought to be thinking of providing an heir, she was a bit past child-bearing. So I married Adela, and she's given me children. Thing is, she hasn't a thought beyond them. I'm not complaining, mind. These days, my dear friend provides companionship and not a lot of the other, if you know what I mean.”
“Are you saying you wouldn't have minded Lady Eva making your liaison public, sir?”
“I'd have been extremely angry,” Carleton said coolly. “All she'd have accomplished would have been to humiliate both my wife and my friend. But, to do Lady Eva justice, I don't believe she'd have done it. I've never heard of a rumour emanating from her. She's ⦠she was like one of those inland seasâeverything goes in and nothing comes out.”
“You couldn't be certain of that.”
“No, but if you're suggesting I killed her to stop her talking, you're wide of the mark. I didn't know she knew. Since, apparently, she did, I can't imagine why she should publish the news now after holding her tongue for decades.”
“She found out quite recently.”
“Oh, she did, did she?” For the first time, the viscount lost his lackadaisical air. “That new maid of Mabel's! I said she had a sly look. I wonder howâ”
“However Lady Eva's discovery came about, you claim she never spoke to you on the subject?”
“Not a murmur, and her manner towards me yesterday was no different from the last time we met, which, I may say, we did rarely. She had many nieces and nephews and no especial feeling for my wife. Poor Adela is much too dull to have caught her interest.”
On this point Alec could not shake him, and questions on his whereabouts at the times of the two deaths yielded nothing either to damn or to exculpate himself or anyone else.
As Carleton stood up to leave, he said, “I'm sure I can count on your discretion. What I have told you is in confidence and must not reach my wife.”
“We shall do our best, but I can make no promises.”
“Butâ”
“I need hardly remind you, sir, that this is a murder investigation. And that our information came in fact from Lady Eva, not from you. I shall not reveal it to your wife unless it proves absolutely necessary.”
“Under what circumstances ⦠?”
“I cannot foresee possible circumstances,” Alec said firmly. “Again, thank you for your help, Lord Carleton.”
The look the Viscount gave him was acrimonious, but he left without further protest.
Piper did not. “Have a heart, Chief, just a quick bite of cake! Sarge'll've finished it before I get another chance.”
“You watch your cheek, young fella-me-lad,” Tom advised him indulgently.
Alec relented. Since the second murder he had been driven by a sense of urgency, a dread that yet another victim would perish beneath his nose, but Ernie was working hard and the ninety seconds it would take him to scoff a slice of cake was neither here nor there.
“What d'you reckon, Chief,” said Tom, “did he know she knew?”
“I think not. But I think he'd be capable of turning quite nasty if she had threatened him in any way.”
“Yes, he started off as if butter wouldn't melt in his mouth, but he was definitely hot under the collar when he left. Still, he seemed to me too to be telling the truth. And you never know, what he said about who he talked to at tea-time may help when we put it together with what the rest say.”
Ernie, having demolished his cake in thirty seconds flat, quickly returned escorting John Walsdorf. A small, slight man, he gave an impression of neatness despite ill-fitting and slightly shabby evening dress. His eyes, behind steel-rimmed glasses, were wary. Alec did not regard the wariness as a sign of guilt. He had dealt with plenty of honest, well-behaved foreigners who feared the police, often with good reason: either the police in their own countries were repressive and violent or they had had an unfortunate experience with a xenophobic British officer.
“For the record,” he said, “your name is John Walsdorf?”
“For the record, my name is Johan Walsdorf. I have not legally changed.”
“Call yourself what you want, sir,” said Tom, in much the same indulgent tone he had used to Ernie Piper. “It's a free country.”
Walsdorf flashed him a smile of singular charm. Perhaps that was what had attracted Lady Fotheringay's niece to the penniless refugee, Alec reflected. Which wasn't to say the man had no other good qualities, nor that the shortage of young men in England since the War had no part in her decision to marry him. Alec had long ago faced the probability that Daisy would never have given a middle-aged, middle-class copper a second glance if so many young men of her own class had not been killed in the trenches.
He started with the usual questions about sounds in the night.
Walsdorf explained that he and his wife slept up at the top of the house, near the nurseries, as Jennifer liked to be near their daughter.
“Also, because we are not quite family, you understand. It is better to be out of the way. Thus it is not likely we will hear someone who goes to Lady Eva's room. I sleep soundly always and get up early.”
“At what time, sir?”
“At six-thirty.” Too late to see anything useful. “At seven I go downstairs.” He hesitated, and Alec was sure he was pondering whether to give or withhold some piece of information. “In this house,” he went on, “the library is not much used, especially when the weather is good, but I like to write letters while all is quiet. I did not know of the death of Lady Eva until Mrs. Fletcher came to the library to telephone to the police.”
“I gather you helped her with that, for which I thank you.”
“It is nothing. Such is a job for a man, I think.”
A sentiment Daisy would have heartily disagreed with though Alec suspected she might have been glad of it in practice.
Walsdorf had not come down to tea. He had still not succeeded in notifying all the wedding guests of the changed circumstances, so he had stayed in Lord Haverhill's study making phone calls and sending wires. Lucy, at the instrument in the butler's pantry, had broken in upon one of his calls to send for the doctor, when Lord Fotheringay was taken ill.
“I cannot believe one would be so foolish as to kill Lord Fotheringay,” Walsdorf said angrily. “To me is unconceivableâis this correct?âis not possible to want Rupert in place of his father, who was a sympathetic, innocentâno, no, this is the wrong wordâa
harmless
man. If you find next Rupert dead, you may arrest me. Lord Fotheringay I would never hurt. For Lady Eva, I do not care one fig.”
“Lady Eva seems to have been interested in you, however.”
“Lady Eva was interested in everyone, but in me not much, because I am not of the society.”
“Nonetheless, she made a note of your having been born in Germany.”
Walsdorf looked at him in astonishment. “But how the deuce did she know this?”
“It's true?”
“It is true,” he said quite calmly. “My mother was not well. My father took her to Baden to try the waters and there I was born. My birth was registered in Germany, then my parents returned to Luxemburg and registered my birth there also. I am a citizen of Luxemburg. I have lived always in Luxemburg. Yet when the Germans invaded my country, they wanted to make me fight for them. This is why I have come to England.”
“Lady Eva could have made it very awkward for you if she'd told people you were born in Germany.”
“During the War, perhaps. Some might have imagined that I was a spyâthis is why I told no one but Jennifer. Now it matters little. To the English, a foreigner is a foreigner. In any case, Lady Eva has not told. Someone would have mentioned to me.”
“Lady Eva never mentioned to you that she knew?”
“Never a word. I wonder how she found out? It is very strange, this.”
“It is odd,” Alec agreed. “Piper, any hint of how she found out?”
“I think she got it from some diplomat, sir, but it wasn't very clear.”
“Your Foreign Office investigated all aliens in England during the War,” said Walsdorf. “This is natural, but it is wrong that they gossip. The police are more careful, no?”
“Much more careful, though in a murder case we cannot promise to keep secrets. I'm afraid you will be uncomfortable if word of your country of birth gets about.”
Walsdorf shrugged. “Now it is nothing. We cannot stay here longer with Rupert and Sally giving the orders. The Reverend and Mrs. Timothy offer to us a home, Jennifer and Emily and me. I do not think they will withdraw only because I was by chance born in a German spa town. These are good people.”
Alec wondered whether to enquire about the antagonism between Walsdorf and Lieutenant Colonel Rupert Fotheringay. He decided to wait and see if Daisy could elucidate. If it was genuine, it gave Walsdorf a strong motive for
not
murdering the late Lord Fotheringay.
Walsdorf innocent might be a good source of information. As an outsider with an inside view, and a shrewd kind of chap, he must see the family more clearly than its own members could. His present disgruntlement made him the more likely to talk. But Alec decided to postpone that, too, until he had spoken to everyone and formed his own impressions. He sent Walsdorf off, followed by Piper in search of Mr. Montagu Fotheringay.
As soon as the door closed behind the two, Tom said, “He's shielding Mrs. Reverend Timothy.”
“What? What do you mean?”
“Remember, Chief, we were a bit puzzled about her turning up outside the victim's bedroomâas Mrs. Fletcher reportedâseeing she slept on the floor aboveâaccording to Mrs. Walsdorfâand likely couldn't hear the maid screaming. I know you noticed Mr. Walsdorf hesitated when he talked about coming down here early. It's my guess he saw her then. If she was up and about, she could have heard the racket, and maybe it was a guilty conscience kept her up and about. Then she bribed him to keep quiet about seeing her by offering him and his family a home.”
“What a nasty, suspicious mind you have, Tom! I dare say a vicar's wife is used to early rising. And aren't their children here? She probably went to check that they weren't raising Cain. Besides, neither she nor the vicar is on Ernie's list.”
“Ah,” Tom ruminated.
“We'll have to ask her, of course. But Daisy did say, if I recall correctly, that she asked Nancy to check that Lady Eva really was dead and offered the key to her room to the Rev. Timothy. Obviously she trusted them.”
“You know how Mrs. Fletcher is, Chief. She takes a liking to someone, she sort of overlooks anything that points in their direction. And the vicar is Miss Lucy's brother.”
Alec sighed. “Yes, Daisy does tend to take people under her wing. I thought this time it was just Lucy and Bincombe ⦔