The Stately Home Murder (11 page)

“Dr. Dabbe has had a look at the body now, sir.”

Superintendent Leeyes grunted. “Well?”

“Depressed fracture, base of skull.”

“Not suicide then.”

“No, sir. Not accident either. Not unless someone popped the lid—I mean, the helmet—back on again afterwards, stood him in the right place, and dusted the floor all round.”

“Murder then.”

“I'm afraid so. Hit,” said Sloan pithily, “very hard on the back of the head with an instrument which may or may not have been blunt.”

“I suppose,” rejoined Superintendent Leeyes, “that we could have expected the traditional at Ornum.”

“Yes, sir. As to what did it …”

“If you mean weapon, Sloan, for heaven's sake say so.”

Sloan coughed. “We're a bit spoilt by choice for weapons, sir.”

“Are you?”

“There are one hundred and seventy-seven, sir, not counting two small cannon at the front door.”

“I don't think”—nastily—“we need count the cannon, do you, Sloan?”

“No, sir.”

“What other sort of weapons do you have … er … on hand?”

Sloan took a deep breath. “What you might call assorted, sir. Very. Everything from a poleaxe to a partisan.”

“A what?”

“A partisan, sir. Of blued steel.” Sloan hesitated. Offering information to the superintendent could be a tricky business. “It's like a halberd.”

“Is it, Sloan?”—dangerously. The only partisans known to the superintendent were his enemies on the watch committee. (The only place, if it came to that, where there was a resistance movement.) “I take it that a halberd is like a partisan?”

“No, sir—I mean, yes, sir.”

“Then you'd better find out exactly which one it was that killed him, hadn't you?”

“Yes, sir.” He cleared his throat. “Constable Crosby's started going through the catalogue now.”

“Catalogue?” echoed Leeyes. “And do you propose, Sloan, looking the murderer up in
Who's Who
or some such similar publication?”

“No, sir”—patiently. “A catalogue of the weapons was made by the vicar, a Mr. Walter Ames, who's something of an authority on arms and armor.”

“Is he indeed?”

“And Crosby's going through it now.”

“I see.”

“The trouble, sir, is that the family's been armigerous …”

“Been what?”

“Armigerous.”

“Where did you get that word?”

“The doctor used it, sir.”

“That,” said Leeyes severely, “doesn't mean you should.”

“It's a heraldic term, sir, not a medical one. It means the Ornums have been entitled to bear arms for a very long time. Like”—suddenly—“like police are allowed to carry truncheons.”

It was not a happy simile.

“Truncheons,” said Leeyes trenchantly. “What have truncheons got to do with it?”

“They are weapons we're entitled to carry, sir. In the same way the Ornums were entitled to bear arms in the old days. That's why there is so much of it about in the armory—to say nothing of the fact that the twelfth Earl was a great collector.”

“It seems to me,” said his superior officer pontifically, “that you are confusing arms with weapons. It's a weapon you want, Sloan. And quickly.”

“Yes, sir.”

“What other long words did the doctor use?”

“He said he thought the deceased had been dead for roughly forty-eight hours.”

“Friday.”

“Yes, sir.”

“No one saw him alive on Saturday, I suppose?” The superintendent had no more faith in medical than in any other considered opinion.

“Not that I've heard about,” said Sloan carefully. “Teatime on Friday seems to have been the last occasion he was seen.”

“And how long had he been in the armor?”

“Dr. Dabbe couldn't say, sir, but he thought he hadn't been put into it until after rigor mortis had passed off.”

“That means the body must have been parked somewhere, Sloan.”

“Or just left, sir, where it was killed.”

“Where was that?”

“I don't know, sir. Not yet. It's big house.”

“Not,” sarcastically, “a room for every day of the year?”

“Not quite, sir, but …”

“But you haven't quite mastered the geography yet, eh, Sloan? Is that it?”

That was one way of putting it.

Not a way Sloan himself would have chosen, but Superintendent Leeyes was not a man with whom to argue.

Instead of arguing Sloan said formally, “I have already interviewed some of those persons present in the house and warned them that I shall wish to talk to them again …”

A noncommittal grunt came down the line.

“I have also instigated enquiries about the present whereabouts of the deceased's sister and am endeavouring to establish who was the last person to see him alive …”

“The last but one will do nicely for the time being, Sloan.”

“Yes, sir.”

“These people in the house …”

“The Ornums and their servants, sir.”

“I see. That's the Earl …”

“And his wife, his cousin, his two aunts on his father's side, his son and his daughter, his nephew, and his nephew's wife.”

“Ha! The extended family, Sloan.” The superintendent had once read a book on sociology and felt he had mastered that tricky discipline.

“I beg your pardon, sir?”

“Nothing, Sloan. Just a technical term.”

“I see, sir. There is also an additional nephew.”

“Oh?”

“A Mr. William Murton.”

“Makes a change from Cremond, I suppose,” observed Leeyes.

“His mother was a Cremond. She married a groom.”

“She did what?” The superintendent, who dealt daily with sudden death, larceny, road traffic accidents, and generally saw the seamy side of human nature, was not easily shocked, but there were some things …

“She ran away with her groom,” said Sloan. “Mr. William Murton, the Earl's nephew, is the outcome of the union.”

“And where does he come in?”

“I couldn't say, sir. Not yet. He has a cottage in Ornum village which he uses—mostly at weekends. The rest of the time he lives in London. I understand he paints.”

The superintendent didn't like that.

“And,” pursued Sloan, “there is also the Earl's steward, a man called Charles Purvis. He lives in a little house in the park and comes all over a twitter whenever he looks at young Lady Eleanor.”

“Like that, is she?”

“No, sir”—repressively—“she is not. Apart,” he went on, “from this … er … one big happy family”—Sloan didn't know if this was the same thing as an extended one or not—“there are the servants.”

“Loyal to the core, I suppose?”

“Well …”

“Above suspicion?”

That was not a term Sloan had been taught to use.

“Trusted to the hilt, then,” suggested Leeyes, who in his youth had been grounded in heroic fiction.

“No …”

“Been with them all their lives?” The superintendent was rapidly running out of phrases associated with family servants.

“No, sir. Oddly enough, not. The cook has. Started as a tweeny at twelve and worked her way up, but the housekeeper has only been there a couple of years and the butler rather less. About eighteen months. The other girl—I don't know what you'd call her …”

“I'd call her maid-of-all work,” said Leeyes promptly.

“She's been with them about three years. That's the indoor staff. Outside there are two men and a boy looking after the park and gardens. One of them—Albert Hackle—comes in on open days to show off the dungeons.”

“Perhaps,” said Leeyes, “there'll be someone in them soon.”

Sloan said sedately that he would see what he could do and rang off.

What he wanted to do next was to find the parts of the house where Osborne Meredith had spent his working time. The library and the muniments room.

Stepping away from the telephone, he met Lord Henry. He asked the young man to lead him to the rooms.

He wished he had gone there sooner.

The library was apparently in perfect order.

The muniments room looked as if it had been hit by a tornado.

9

Detective Inspector Sloan didn't step very far into the muniments room.

Just far enough to see that the disarray was not that left by an exceptionally untidy scholar.

It was not.

From where he stood he could see that it had been carefully calculated. Sheets of manuscripts lay disarranged on the floor, documents of every sort were strewn all over the place. A great chest lay open, its contents distributed far and wide.

“Phew!” whistled Lord Henry over Sloan's shoulder.

“Don't come any farther, my lord,” warned Sloan. “I'll need to take a proper look round the room first.”

“It's a bit of a mess.”

“Quite so.”

Typical English understatement, that was. Sloan's gaze swept the room and noted that the disturbance had every appearance of being systematic. It looked as if every drawer had been opened, every deed unrolled. Long scrolls of paper covered all the surfaces, and, sprinkled over everything like some monstrous oversize confetti, were dozens and dozens of filing cards.

“Poor Ossy,” murmured Lord Henry quietly. “I hope he didn't see this. A more orderly man didn't exist.”

“Those filing cards …”

“All the deeds, documents, and depositions,” said Lord Henry, “recorded and cross-referenced. It took him years.”

Sloan nodded. “The room was never locked?”

“No. This part of the house isn't ever shown to the public.” Lord Henry was still looking at the room as best he could round the police inspector. “That's a funny thing, though.”

“What is, my lord?”

“The room isn't kept locked, but the document chests always were.”

Together they peered at the iron-banded chests. Keys were clearly visibly from where they stood, still in the locks.

“Who had the keys to them?” asked Sloan automatically.

“Just my father and Ossy.”

“I see.” Sloan made a mental note about that. The contents of the deceased's pockets would be recorded by the police in due course. Just at the moment they were inviolate behind a portion of armor called a tasset.

Lord Henry frowned. “Ossy would never have left them open like that—or even with the keys in. They're much too important for that.”

“He might not have had the choice,” Sloan reminded him.

“No, of course not. I was forgetting.” Lord Henry's gaze rested on the disheveled room. “There's another extraordinary thing, Inspector, isn't there?”

“What, my lord?”

“All this confusion …”

“But no actual damage.”

This was quite true. Disorder reigned supreme, but none of the papers appeared to be torn or defaced.

“Just as if someone only wanted a muddle,” said his Lordship perceptively.

“These documents must have value,” began Sloan. “It stands to reason …”

“To an antiquarian perhaps, Inspector. But not an intrinsic value like the pictures or the books or the china.”

Sloan shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “If there was anything missing …”

Lord Henry said carefully, “Then only Ossy would be able to tell you.”

“And he can't do that now.”

“No.” The younger man paused. “Moreover, Inspector, if he were here to tell us, it would take him a very long time indeed to put this room to rights—even though we may think nothing's been damaged. Months. Years, perhaps.”

Sloan could see that for himself.

“Presumably,” he said, going on from there in his mind and thinking aloud, “this room would otherwise have told us something useful.”

“But what?” asked Lord Henry, surveying the muddled muniments from the door.

Sloan decided that their message—if any—would have to wait for the time being.

He turned his scrutiny to the floor. There was no blood immediately visible. Mr. Osborne Meredith did not appear to have been killed here. And whoever had created this disturbance had been careful not to stand on any of the papers.

Or had they?

Sloan dropped to his knees and looked along at ground level. There was an imprint of sorts on one piece of paper.

A heel mark.

A heel mark so small and square that it must have come from a woman's shoe.

Detective Constable Crosby was asking Charles Purvis the Earl's name.

He did not know it, but this—like matrimony—was not something to be taken in hand lightly.

“It's for the coroner,” he began. “I need to know the full name of the occupant of the premises in which the deceased is presumed to have met his death.”

“The full name?” said Charles Purvis dubiously.

“The full name.”

“Henry,” said the steward. “The eldest son is always called Henry.”

Crosby wrote that down.

“Augustus.” After the Duke of Cumberland—or was it the Roman General?

Crosby wrote that down too.

“Rudolfo.”

“Rudolfo?”

“The tenth Earl was invested with a foreign order. He was the English ambassador to the country at an awkward time diplomatically and … er … carried it off well. Saved the situation, you might say. He called his own son after their reigning monarch of the day—that went down well, too. The name has been kept.”

“I see,” said Constable Crosby laconically. “That the lot?”

Purvis stiffened. “By no means. There's Cremond, too.”

“That's the surname, isn't it?”

“As well.”

“As well as what?”

“As well as being a Christian name.”

Crosby wasn't sure what Purvis meant and said so.