Ten Lords A-Leaping (16 page)

‘Oh, yah. Poor old Daddy-in-law. It’s so tragic. We’re absolutely devastated. Now, what do you want? I haven’t got very long, actually, what with a lunch date and absolutely heaps to do now with the funeral and all that and the move to Shapely Bottom. Can’t see how I can help.’

‘I want to know your movements on the night before the late Lord Poulteney’s hunting accident.’

‘Oh, really – not again. I gave all that to some frightful flatfoot simply ages ago. You know, the village bobby, or whoever they sent me.’

Milton’s voice was even. ‘I have seen the statement you gave to Detective Inspector Hill. However, you appear to have omitted to tell him about your visit to the tack room in the middle of the night.’

‘How dare you!’ She flushed a violent red. ‘It’s absolutely not true.’

‘You were seen.’

‘You’re making it up.’

‘Lady Poulteney, calling me a liar is not the best way of convincing me that you speak the truth.’

This non sequitur was delivered so crisply and authoritatively that she backed down instantly. ‘Oh, sorry. Didn’t mean that. I was just upset.’

‘I have first-hand evidence that a woman answering to your description came out of the tack room at about four a.m.’

‘Oh, so it wasn’t anyone who knew me. So they must have been mistaken.’

While Amiss had described Vanessa as ‘medium-thick’, this piece of stupidity was more than Milton could have hoped for. ‘Thank you for as good as admitting you were there. And even if you hadn’t, I think you would have found it difficult to convince a jury that two women with straight blonde hair, of medium height and wearing an overcoat identical to yours were likely to have been on the premises of Shapely Bottom Hall that night.’

‘But whoever said I was is just a wicked liar trying to blame me for whatever they did themselves.’

‘Won’t wash, I’m afraid. They couldn’t have known about your coat.’

She fiddled with her engagement ring for a minute. ‘Well, all right then. I was there. I went to look for a brooch I thought I’d lost earlier that day.’

‘You went out in the middle of a January night to look for a brooch?’

‘Yes. It might have got trodden on in the morning by the grooms and it’s my favourite brooch, and it was only at around half past three in the morning that I remembered I’d had it on when I was in the tack room and hadn’t seen it afterwards.’

‘Did you find the brooch?’

‘No. I mean yes.’

‘And did you mention to your husband the following morning your relief at having found it?’

She looked as hunted as a fox in a cul-de-sac with the hounds coming round the corner. ‘Er, I don’t remember.’

‘Please stop insulting my intelligence, Lady Poulteney. Considering what later emerged about your father-in-law’s saddle, it is inconceivable that if you’d been in the tack room innocently you wouldn’t remember whether or not your husband knew you’d been there. And it would be very hard to convince a jury that you wouldn’t have mentioned your uncomfortable expedition.’

‘Jamesie and I weren’t speaking that morning.’

Milton sighed. ‘It will be very easy to check, ma’am. I can send a police officer round to see your husband now to get his story and hold you here, incommunicado, until he’s given it.’

She began to cry. Neither Milton nor Pooley was hardhearted, but they were completely unmoved. After a few minutes she got tired of snuffling and blew her nose.

‘Now, Lady Poulteney, why don’t you simply tell me what happened?’

‘You’ll accuse me of trying to murder Daddy-in-law.’

‘The case looks pretty straightforward, I’m afraid.’

‘No, it’s only those horrid sabs trying to blame me for what they did.’

‘Look, Lady Poulteney, it’s perfectly simple. Either you tell me what happened – what actually happened – or I charge you now with the attempted murder of your late father-in-law. That will give us plenty of time to discuss at leisure if, having failed on this occasion, you hired a hitman or perhaps even yourself killed Lord Poulteney and in the process murdered seven others.’

This provoked hysterics.

Milton sighed. ‘Detective Sergeant Pooley, please open the door so that witnesses can see that we are not actually assaulting Lady Poulteney, apologize to them for the noise and tell them we hope it won’t last long.’

It didn’t. When she realized that the screaming and wailing were having no effect, she ceased them abruptly, sat up straight and said, “Very well. I’ve been making an idiot of myself but I was frightened. But please promise you won’t tell my husband if I tell you the truth.’

‘I can’t make promises, but I won’t tell him anything unless it is necessary.’

She gazed intently at her gold-buckled, patent-leather clad feet. ‘I went to meet a man.’

‘Who?’

‘Oh, dear, this is so embarrassing.’

‘Less so than being arrested, I imagine.’

‘There’s no need to be horrid. If you must know, it was one of those awful sabs. We had a date.’

‘Just tell us the story.’

She attacked it with a rush. ‘I was out riding the afternoon before and I got off near Wreckett’s Brook because I thought Betty might have picked up a stone. When I was looking at her hoof this fellow came up and we sort of started to talk. Anyway, he asked me if I’d like to meet him that night and it didn’t seem any harm to say yes. I didn’t mean to turn up.’

‘But you did.’

‘Well, I was upset that night. Really furious that Daddy-in-law was getting ready to propose to Lady Flexingham and really fed up with Jamesie, who wouldn’t talk about it. He just lay there snoring away – he’s an absolutely ghastly snorer – and I love Shapely Bottom so much and I know just what I want to do with it and I was really cross. So I thought it was all too beastly and I thought the hell with them, I’d go and meet this fellow just to spite them.’

‘What time was this?’

‘About two-thirty. We’d said we’d meet at three. So I got the key from the nail beside the side door and when I went into the tack room he followed me.’

‘Who was he?’

‘He said his name was Stu and that he was a sab.’ She saw Milton’s face. ‘Yes, yes. I know. You’ll think I’m awful and I hate those people, but he was exciting in a sort of sultry way and…’ She hung her head again. ‘You can’t imagine how boring Jamesie is. I mean, he’s awfully nice, but he’s really boring.’

‘So then?’

‘Well, I don’t have to spell it out, do I?’

‘I’m afraid you do, ma’am.’

‘Oh, well, if you must know we had sex a couple of times and then I went back to the Hall.’

‘Leaving him in the tack room?’

‘Yes. But he promised to lock up afterwards.’

‘After what?’

She wriggled. ‘He said he’d paint a few slogans. What could I do? I couldn’t tell anyone and I made him promise he wouldn’t do any real damage. And I was really relieved when it looked as if he hadn’t done anything. But I suppose it must have been him who did that to Daddy-in-law’s saddle.’

‘But you didn’t report that afterwards.’

She spread out her hands in dumb entreaty.

‘Lady Poulteney. You may have been leaving a would-be murderer on the loose.’

‘Well, I wouldn’t have known where to find him anyway.’

‘You didn’t see him again?’

‘Absolutely not. I mean, it’s not as if he’s the sort of person you have an affair with. He was very common.’

The telephone rang. ‘Yes, sir. OK. Now.’

He stood up. ‘I’ve got to go to a meeting now. Lady Poulteney. I would like you to tell Sergeant Pooley everything you remember about this gentleman. He will then type your statement and give it to you to sign and you may then go for the time being. We will have to check out aspects of your account.’

Relief overcame her. ‘Oh, gosh, thank you.’ And almost humbly, ‘Will it take very long?’

‘Perhaps half an hour,’ said Pooley.

She looked apologetically at Milton. ‘Would it be awful to ask you if I can make a phone call to the restaurant to say I’ll be a bit late?’

‘Not at all, Lady Poulteney. Ellis, when you’ve finished taking details, show her ladyship to a telephone.’

As he left the room she said to Milton, ‘I’m sorry for being such a silly-billy, telling lies and all that, but I was terrified. I mean, what would Jamesie think if he knew what I’d been doing? I’d never hear the last of it.’

‘Well, let us hope, Lady Poulteney, that there will be no need for him to know. But I can make no promises. However, I would like to make one thing clear. The only way you can be proved innocent is if this gentleman can be located and will corroborate your story. If that doesn’t happen, you will remain high on the list of suspects for attempted murder at least. So for your own sake I recommend you to be as helpful as possible to Sergeant Pooley. Now, if you’ll forgive me…’ He nodded dismissively and left the room.

By its sheer preposterousness, the Cavalry Club lifted Amiss out of his gloom. As he climbed the staircase to the bar, past the vast canvases of heroes riding boldly into battle with sabres flashing, horses perspiring and officers urging their men forward in dozens of forgotten encounters of imperial days, he felt his troubles to be minor by comparison.

To his regret, the room overlooking Piccadilly to which Beesley took them to lunch bore no resemblance to an officers’ mess, for – as a member of the gentler sex – Jack Troutbeck was barred from the main dining room.

‘One has to accept casualties in time of war,’ announced Beesley. ‘I agree that the thing to do is to just get on with it. Just like Reggie would have wanted.’

‘And turn our reverse to our advantage,’ said the baroness. ‘How many of ours have we lost?’

Beesley’s forehead puckered as he looked down the list. ‘I make it five: Reggie, Connie, Robbie, St John Fostock and Tuffy Dreamer. Joe Taylor was an anti and Campden and Wilson were don’t knows.’

‘Hmmm. Not good. Still, it could have been much worse. Bertie has a pacemaker.’

‘Good God, I didn’t know that.’ Beesley’s jaw went slack. ‘How did he escape?’

‘He tells me it must have happened when he went out to have what he described as “a quiet word with a bishop”.’

‘What a blow to the tabloids,’ said Amiss. ‘A dead duke would have had their cup of joy running over.’ He saw Beesley looking at him with incomprehension and continued hastily: ‘Funny thing. One of the papers said this morning that six of them were life peers. Isn’t that odd?’

‘You’re not thinking,’ said the baroness. ‘There’s nothing funny about that. We tend to be older than the hereditary lot. That’s why the media are so daft when they go on about new blood. Life peers are usually pretty old blood. Not, of course, that we’re necessarily any the worse for that.’

Amiss noticed that she seemed in curiously high spirits, brought on by that combination of adversity and adrenaline on which she always flourished.

‘So what next?’ asked Beesley. ‘What should we do?’

‘Propaganda war. Robert will draft a letter of the are-we-men-or-mice? variety.’

‘If you were mice, there wouldn’t be a problem,’ said Amiss sourly. ‘They’d be making you a protected species instead of murdering you. Look, before you go on – and I see where you’re heading – may I just remind you that these people aren’t just murderers. They’re crazy. Do you really want to put your heads above the parapet so they can more easily be blown off?’

‘Not heads above the parapet. More leading the men over the top.’ Tragedy seemed to be a great rejuvenator for Beesley. ‘Can’t risk a collapse in morale. Got to show fighting spirit, leadership. Just like all the chaps who inspire us in this club. Swords out, break into a gallop, and up and at ’em.’

‘What we want to avoid is the Charge of the Light Brigade.’

‘Don’t like this defeatist talk. Surprised at you, young man. That’s what comes of ending military service. Encourages cowardice.’

The baroness responded to Amiss’s mutinous glare. ‘Lay off, Tommy,’ she declared briskly. ‘Nothing cowardly about young Robert here. We’ve seen action together before and I can tell you he played the white man. And he has a point. Even people in the front line should take sensible precautions.’

‘Like checking under your car before you get into it,’ said Amiss. ‘Some nutter tried to blow up a research scientist that way a few years ago.’

But the baroness’s attention had wandered. ‘Good. So you’ll draft a letter to be signed by… what do you think, Tommy? Us, Bertie, Sid and a few more of the boys?’

‘Well, keeping the numbers down will certainly make it easier for the assassins,’ said Amiss.

‘All right, all right. We’ll make it harder for them and increase the number of targets to a few dozen. You and I can get down to rounding them up, Tommy, starting this afternoon. Now, what about some brandy? And I hope there’s no nonsense about barring pipes from the dining room.’

Chapter 17

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Pooley’s eyes were shining with triumph. ‘Looks as if our hunch was right, sir. There was a “Stewart” and a “Stuart” booked in Rutland for disturbing the peace during Lord Poulteney’s Hunt and looks as though the “Stuart” ’s our man. He’s young, dark and the best of it is he was also booked for possession of an offensive weapon, i.e., a Stanley knife, which, as you’ll remember, was given by the lab as the most likely kind of knife to have done the damage.’

‘So why in hell didn’t they follow that up after they heard about the saddle?’

‘They did, but he denied everything and produced a girlfriend in London who said they had been together all night in her camper van.’

Milton thought for a moment. ‘Bring the girl in.’

‘What about him?’

‘Get him when you’ve already got her.’

Pooley nodded obediently and turned towards the door.

‘One more thing, Ellis.’

‘Yes, sir?’

‘It was your hunch, not ours. Well done.’

‘One of the aspects of my job I most dislike is bullying the inadequate,’ said Milton, as he and Pooley sat in Amiss’s living room late, two evenings after the murders. ‘But it worked. The girlfriend was a pathetic washed-out creature who seems to have joined the sabs for a social life, the way girls in the Home Counties join the Young Conservatives. She got so upset when I told her that her pal Stuart had been having it off in the tack room, that he had tried to murder someone and that she would be charged with being an accessory after the fact if she didn’t cough up the truth smartly that she burst into tears and blubbed everything out immediately. It was made easier by the fact that he isn’t really her boyfriend. He just deigns to screw her occasionally when it’s convenient.’