The library, Easter Saturday, saw five men playing a hand of cards after lunch and the conversation
turning to literary matters. Mr. Stewart turned it to murder mysteries, singing the praises of Doyle and Collins. Matthew sat contentedly listening to the conversation, chipping in with the expert viewpoint of the successful publisher. Rex was astounding everyone by saying how much he’d enjoyed “The Story of a
Fierce Bad Rabbit” when a stifled snort emerged from behind
The Times
.
Jonty slapped the person who was reading it. “You’ll excuse Orlando, he’s an Oxford man originally
and we still haven’t knocked all the stupidity and rudeness out of him.”
Rex inclined his head. “You should see the college rivalries we have at home. Makes Oxford against
Cambridge look like ‘The Story of Miss Moppet’.”
“You need to see the varsity rugby match, Rex—less Beatrix Potter than something out of the Old
Testament. Samson himself would have quailed to see some of the forwards I’ve had to face, even if he’d had his ass’s jawbone to hand.”
“I understand the cricket’s like that, too.” Rex’s eyes lit up. “A veritable case of smiting them ‘hip and thigh’.”
Everyone appreciated the joke—this was as quick as any wit the Stewarts usually displayed.
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“Touché, Mr. Prefontaine.” Mr. Stewart rose, bowed and doffed an imaginary cap. “I know that my
wife has an excellent eye for a guest and she hasn’t disappointed us so far. One day I’ll take you to Lord’s and you can see if any of the England bowlers match up to Delilah’s boyfriend.”
“Talking of Delilah, Papa, are the rector and his family coming to dinner on Monday?” The living of
the parish was in the gift of the Stewarts and, while the present incumbent had been chosen for his true Christian qualities, his wife was still on probation. He had a sister of perhaps thirty, whose marital prospects were scuppered by a lack of both suitable introductions and reasonable dowry. Mrs. Stewart was a sight too keen to try and play matchmaker for her, and Jonty had an awful feeling she was lining up Matthew or Rex as potential altar fodder.
“Not this year. They have another invitation, which might be as well.” Mr. Stewart cast a small
sideways glance at his guests, a glance that his son acknowledged with a wink.
“I rather think that…” No one found out what Orlando thought, the butler interrupting with an
announcement that tea was served. And such a tea it proved, marked by huge quantities of exquisite
pastries and cakes, with a side helping of faux pas.
“Mr. Prefontaine,” Mrs. Stewart inquired, smiling, “I do so worry about that leg of yours. I was
watching you all strolling down to the village and I couldn’t help wonder how it happened. Have you
always had a problem with it?”
To everyone’s immense relief he simply beamed at his hostess and tapped the offending limb. “I’m so
pleased you asked. People never do, you know, they just try to guess. It’s no secret. I was out riding, took a fence, or perhaps I should say I tried to take the fence, but the horse had different ideas. She and I had a distinct parting of the ways, meaning my poor leg had an altercation with a tree trunk. It came off the worse and the doctors could do nothing for it. It might have been poetic justice if they could have used that tree to make me a false limb, except they reckoned it was the wrong sort of wood. So here I am like Captain Ahab from the left knee down and only a mountain ash to blame, not a white whale.” He began to laugh.
Matthew smiled affectionately at this brave young man. “Was it long ago?”
“When I was eighteen, although I won’t say how many years back that was. It was truly a blessing in
disguise. For two years I couldn’t be made to dance with debutantes or cousins or any other annoying
young women. I could get on with my studies, play cards and fish. What more could a man want?”
Mrs. Stewart remembered, aloud, what her beloved Jane Austen had said about a single man in
possession of a good fortune and what he must be in want of. Luckily she didn’t then go on to draw a
parallel between Elizabeth Bennett and any young ladies in the vicinity of the Old Manor, being hastily distracted by her husband.
“Tell Orlando about how your charity is getting on.”
Mrs. Stewart beamed, launching into a lengthy description of the work her foundation did with
‘unfortunate young girls’. “We help them learn to be nursery maids or cooks within reputable houses or
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teachers in church schools, earning themselves a good reference in the process. It’s rewarding to furnish these lasses with a decent future and a reputable past at the same time. Although we always need money to help provide for them when they first set out into the respectable world. I wonder whether any of you gentlemen would like to help?” She turned to Matthew. “You look like the sort of young man who’d
appreciate a fallen woman.”
Jonty bit his lip. He pinched his leg. He thought about the back of his neck, anything to try to stop laughing. He would have succeeded had he not caught Rex’s eye—the man was clearly in the same
situation. It was no use, they both exploded into laughter at the same time, Mr. Stewart joining in as well and the giggles spreading through the company.
“Mama,” Jonty wheezed. “You’ve excelled yourself there.”
“I think I rather have. Mr. Ainslie, will you ever forgive me? I meant to cast no aspersions on your
character.”
“Ma’am, there is nothing to apologise for or forgive. I haven’t laughed so much in years, truly. This has been an Easter without comparison for me and I’m honoured to have shared it with you all.”
“Such a gracious speech, young man, I do appreciate it. You really must teach my youngest son some
of your charming manners. This calls for champagne, the very best we can rouse out, Richard.”
It arrived, it proved magnificent and they drank many a toast. Supper was a simple meal and the party took to the drawing room earlier than normal. At last the Stafford case got the discussion it had been due, the warm glow of champagne and port loosening tongues all round.
They explained the background and details patiently to Rex, everyone chipping in at odd times and
confusing the poor chap to the extent he had to get out his handkerchief and make a sign of surrender.
“I’m more confused now than when I tried to read Chaucer in his original form. Orlando, would you
do the honours and tell me the story simply, like Miss Potter does?”
Orlando rose to the challenge, one no harder than drumming algebra into even the most obtuse of his
students. He bowdlerised the link between Matthew and Alistair Stafford then skirted round the
connections between the victims, the culprit and the Stewart family. It was all presented in terms of the honour of the old school—if this astute young man subsequently put two and two together, they weren’t going to help him with his addition.
The discussion ranged over the detective processes used, the road towards denouement, and Rhodes’s
repeated words on and, according to the police, after arrest.
Do what you will with me in regards to the
murders, only let everyone know that Andrew Nicholls did not commit suicide. He’s innocent of everything.
Rex listened, eyes aglow with the puzzle laid before him and quickly coming to the nub of the case.
“So you reckon that Taylor saw Rhodes in between your two meetings and somehow that gave him a bit
more pep when he faced you again? Then his confidante turned on him and gave him what for. Makes a lot of sense.”
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Lessons in Power
“That’s how the police see it.” Jonty felt troubled, a small knot of doubt in his stomach. Missing
pieces of the jigsaw—there’d be no peace until he had every one of them in place. “I’m sure there’d been some contact before that. It wouldn’t surprise me if Taylor believed we’d been put onto him that first time, to beat him up or something. He was more frightened than he had any right to be. Anyway, while I’m fairly certain that Rhodes killed Jardine, the more I think on it, the more I’m unsure about Taylor. I’d love to see my housemaster hang for a double killing—and I appreciate that’s not at all a Christian attitude—but I just don’t see why he should kill Taylor. Strikes me they’d have been on the same side, and the man posed no risk to the precious memory of Andrew Nicholls.”
Rex looked out the window, a habit they’d all noticed he adopted when he was deep in thought. “Yet
he admitted to the crime.”
“He did, but it was peculiar, the words he used when he confessed, and I’ve been over it an awful lot in my mind since then. I even wondered whether he couldn’t actually remember whether he’d done the
deed or not. You know, showing early signs of the same memory loss which affects his aunt at times. But he seemed too much in possession of his faculties for that.” Jonty’s fingers drummed on the chair arm, a tattoo of doubt and unease.
“And the police said he was the second person to visit Taylor that morning?” Rex kept his eye fixed
on the grounds.
“Assuming that he was the man with the limp, and we have no real reason to doubt that, yes.” Jonty
was adamant about this—he’d have no other lame men admitted into the case. Except Rex, who was
proving a notable bloodhound.
“So if Rhodes didn’t kill Taylor, did a third person come along or do you think he was already dead
when your old housemaster got there?”
Jonty nodded, schoolboy enthusiasm lighting up his face. “That’s what we’ve recently concluded,
haven’t we, Orlando?”
“Jonty, who’s known in police circles as the man who doubts all alibis, has convinced himself that
Simon Kermode wasn’t actually at mass. He was making his way to see Taylor, whose head he smacked in, then returned to his mother, who’s covering for him. Dr. Stewart made that theory up all from his own little bonce.”
“Well it makes perfect sense, doesn’t it? Matthew, don’t you agree?” Jonty took his appeal to Caesar.
Matthew started out of deep concentration. “Sorry, Jonty, I was just piecing it all together. Your
theory makes more sense than Rhodes killing him, but the question remains. Why did the man then admit to it?”
Rex’s handsome face puckered into a grin. “I had a friend who always owned up to all the naughty
things that had gone on. He’d be punished and then the culprit would be shamed into owning up and my pal
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would be treated like a king for his altruism. He said that being locked in his room was small beer
compared to all the treats he got afterwards. Until his mother got wise, that is.”
And all further chance of speculation as to whether this could apply to Rhodes ended as Mrs. Stewart
decided that all the talk was going round in circles and made them go out and get some fresh air, “like sensible lads”.
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Chapter Eleven
Easter Sunday dawned bright and clear. The rain had left a sheen on everything which the dazzling
spring sunshine highlighted, giving it a clarity that was breathtaking. Orlando prepared for church with more enthusiasm than normal—the Old Manor hadn’t worked any magic on Jonty’s reticence in bed, but
maybe Easter communion would. The great festivals in the church year always affected him, infusing him with a joy which almost shone in his face. Joy and peace were what he needed more than ever.
Jonty rose from confession and absolution with the façade of high spirits firmly in place and the signs of gnawing pain still there for anyone who knew him well enough to recognise them. He seemed
particularly pensive during the readings and even the huge meal which followed their return from church, a piece of roast beef about the size of Hertfordshire with more Yorkshire pudding than would sink a
battleship, didn’t entirely break him from his thoughts. There was one last thing to try.
The Tudor walled garden at the back of the library was Jonty’s favourite haunt. As a boy he’d escaped from his brothers there, hiding in a nook he’d discovered amongst the stems of an old vine, or had taken his books out onto the lawn to read and dream. He’d loved it ever since, regarding it as a magical place, the portals of which once crossed would lead the wanderer into another time and place. He could even
convince himself that he’d been transported back to the time when the garden was newly planted, or
perhaps when it’d been left to become overgrown, a time when even the Bard himself might have been
encountered wandering among the lavender beds and caressing the roses.
He’d taken Orlando there, the first time they’d visited the house, back in the previous August,
showing him the lavender walks, where their senses had been assaulted by the vivid hues, lavish scents and the incessant humming of the bees among the flowers. A “bee-loud glade” it had certainly been. Jonty
believed the garden was at its best in spring, when the clarity of the blue sky was unparalleled at any other time of the year, or in the autumn when the moist smell of the earth and grass filled the nose with delight, but Orlando vowed that summer had to be the most lovely time in that most lovely of places.
It felt almost like summer when the four men wandered into it, a bright, warm spring Sunday
afternoon with just the type of azure sky which Jonty said was perfect for the setting. They found the lavender walks, too early in the year for any but the most adventurous of bees, but still sweet smelling and sensuous. They rubbed the leaves of the shrubs, drank in the heady scents, immersed themselves in their surroundings. Orlando had a chess set and board under his arm, to set up on his favourite bench by the old
Charlie Cochrane