The Dr Benjamin Bones Omnibus

by Emma Jameson

  “Don’t try and make me get ahead of myself.” Gaston sipped his tea. “Nothing good ever came of getting ahead of one’s self.” In an apparent effort to prove this, he took a deep breath and cleared his throat unhurriedly before going on. “It’s actually a story of theft gone wrong.”

  “Do you mean Lady Maggart’s theft? The way she was selecting family heirlooms for auction and replacing them on the cheap?” Ben asked.

  The special constable gave a startled chuff. “What? How did you know about the furniture? Have you been holding out on me?”

  “Not at all. I heard a rumor, that’s all. But I’ve been too busy with patients and, er, other things to follow up.” Ben felt a touch embarrassed. Those other things had, of course, been his highly unsatisfactory conversation with Lady Juliet and a subsequent trip to the Sheared Sheep. All in all, the pub was a friendlier place these days, and a night away from the wireless and his charts should have been pleasant. In reality, he’d been too angry with Lady Juliet over her bizarre capitulation to Ethan to do what he came to do—make a friend. Instead, he’d done a slow burn over two pints and left without saying much of anything to anybody.

  “Tell us,” Mrs. Cobblepot pleaded. “I don’t even know who Mr. Collins is, and I’m on tenterhooks. Tell us!”

  “He’s the butler, as I said, and quite vain,” Gaston replied. “I thought he was part of the domestic gentility, as it were—one of those blokes whose dad was a valet, and his dad before him, and so on and so forth, straight back to the Plantagenets. But when the detectives put the handcuffs on him, he bawled bloody murder like a stevedore shorted his wages.” He took another sip of tea. “Haven’t heard swearing like that since I was in the trenches.”

  “How did his sister handle his arrest?” Ben asked.

  “Mrs. Tippett was shocked, of course. Would have fallen to her knees when they led him out, I think, if not for the rector. He comforted her. Led her back to St. Gwinnodock’s to pray.”

  “Sounds like she’s softened on the God-botherer. So she wasn’t named as part of the conspiracy?”

  “No. Her and her brother didn’t get on well enough for him to include her, apparently.” Gaston reached for the teapot to refill his cup, became aware of his own sister’s threatening stare, and gave in. “Right. Here’s the bare bones, if you must have them.

  “It was all to do with auctioning baronial heirlooms and replacing them with imposters. But it wasn’t Lady Maggart’s idea,” Gaston said, gaze flicking to Ben. “Mr. Collins cooked up the scheme with Bobby. Turns out the lorry Bobby drove belonged to a company connected to dodgy antiques dealers. They knew Lord Maggart was too ill to have much of an idea what was happening. They banished him to the ground floor. Told him he was too weak for the stairs, even though he can manage them fine. It’s his head that soft, not his limbs.

  “At any rate,” Gaston continued, “Mr. Collins told Lady Maggart he’d cut her in if she turned a blind eye. She denies it, of course. She says she thought the items were being sent off for appraisal and cleaning, then returned in due course. As if anyone sends out a four-poster for cleaning.” He chuckled. “The staff was in the dark, too. Mr. Collins put it about that the heir to Fitchley Park, Lord Maggart’s cousin, wanted to take early possession of certain items. He said Lady Maggart was insulted by the process, as she was entitled to the house and all it contained for as long as her husband lived. So the staff pretended not to notice the disappearing items or the occasional inferior copy that came back.

  “Then Bobby did what low criminals do. He let greed overtake him,” Gaston said, probably appropriating Dirk Diamond’s wisdom again. “He told Mr. Collins that since he was doing most of the work and taking most of the risk, they should split the profit eighty-twenty rather than fifty-fifty.”

  “Sounds like the sort of renegotiation that ends in a cut throat,” Ben said. He was so engrossed, he’d neglected his toast and tea, both of which had gone cold. “Did you happen to notice if Mr. Collins is left-handed?”

  “He opens doors with his right,” Gaston said. “Otherwise, I couldn’t say. But I can say Mr. Collins is a hot-tempered man. He took a knife from the kitchen and killed Bobby in a fit of passion. Then he set about covering his tracks.”

  “Seems like it would have been easier to get rid of the body than to strip it naked and put it in a disused room,” Ben said.

  “Aye. But according to my sources,” Gaston said, clearly meaning Private Dick Academy, “it’s a typical failing of the criminal class to commit murder without any thought for what comes next. Most killers act on impulse, never troubling to plan what they’ll do after the deed itself, so concealment is carried out in a state of terror.”

  “I suppose so.” Ben thought of the boot boy’s wheelbarrow. If they’d loaded up clothes for burning in the woods, why not a body? “You said Mr. Collins went back to his roots, so to speak, raging against the detectives when they took him into custody. How much did he confess before he turned belligerent?”

  “None of it.” Gaston seemed surprised by Ben’s question. “I could hear him howling about his innocence from the back of the car as they took him away.”

  “Then how did this all come about, Clarence?” Mrs. Cobblepot said. “How did the police reckon the butler did it? Besides that phrase, I mean.”

  He wagged a finger at her. “You pushed me to get ahead of myself. Didn’t I tell you nothing good ever comes of that?” To punish her, he picked up the teapot and poured that second cup with exaggerated slowness.

  “Now,” he said after taking a sip. “As I mentioned at the beginning, a conspiracy was afoot. But a chain is only as strong as its weakest link. Mr. Collins ordered Kitty and John—the boot boy—to help him. John is delicate and simple. He went to the Cow Hole and told Mrs. Richwine he needed to report a murder. Bobby’s murder. Poor lad said he couldn’t bear the weight of it another day.”

  Ben winced. “Really? I met him, you know. He seemed rather desperately shy. I can’t imagine him keeping mum for so many days and then striking out to the village to confess.”

  “You know the mind of a murderer, do you?” Gaston asked. “You can fathom what it’s like to be intimidated, and take part in the cover-up, and endure the simmering guilt till it boils over?” He shook his head. “The wee daft lad cracked, and I’m glad of it, because it’s caught out Mr. Collins and set Helen free. I just hope he doesn’t have too bad a time of it.”

  “Who? Collins?”

  “No. I hope he has a very bad time of it, indeed. John,” Gaston replied, as if Ben were the simple one. “He’s behind bars in Plymouth, as well as Collins. Kitty, too. With any luck, the courts will deal gently with them. But the poor lad, being feeble-minded, will have a hard row to hoe.”

  “I imagine he will.” It was probably too much for Ben to hope the guards would be gentle with a young man like John. More likely, they would deal gingerly with the intimidating detainees and terrorize the meek ones.

  “I should ring them and schedule a visit. Since John lives in Barking, I’m not out of bounds to consider him a patient. Perhaps if someone in authority knows they’ll have to answer for John’s welfare, they won’t behave too badly.”

  “Good idea,” Mrs. Cobblepot said. “But what about Lady Maggart? Will she be arrested?”

  “She’s under house arrest,” Gaston said. “I’m not sure what comes next. She’ll be made to answer for the value of the items sold, I reckon. Can’t imagine Lord Maggart’s heir will overlook a missing chunk of inheritance. But why are you so po-faced, Dr. Bones? Are you fretting because you didn’t get to play Sherlock Holmes?”

  “Not in the least. I need to keep up with my actual duties,” he replied, thinking of Mrs. Garrigan, who was making a rapid recovery. “So the Bobby Archer case is closed, and the butler did it. Remarkable. Lady Juliet will be overjoyed.”

  “You should be the one to tell her,” Mrs. Cobblepot said, rising to busy herself at the sink. “Ring her up.”

  “Or go
by the manor,” Gaston suggested. “Look in on Old Robbie. Ask after Lady Victoria’s heart, er, thingy. Plenty of reasons not to avoid the place. Nothing good ever came from avoiding a place.”

  Ben lifted both eyebrows, but neither of them saw it. Back turned, Mrs. Cobblepot scrubbed a convenient patch of filth. Gaston’s gaze wandered along the floor and up a wall in a successful effort not to look Ben in the eye.

  He cleared his throat. Though his irritation with Lady Juliet persisted, and threatened to grow stronger if he allowed himself to brood on it, a few days’ space had done him good.

  “I suppose I’ve seemed a bit cross with her,” he said. “But I was just, er, caught up in taking care of my patients. And going to Plymouth, if you’ll recall. To do that thing we should all have been more discreet about.”

  During Ben’s appearance in court, he’d been cautioned against discussing the trial and scolded as Birdswing’s representative for what the judge had called “an unpatriotic display of curiosity and gossip.” It would have been no good to explain about the birds singing and all that. Therefore, Ben had taken his lumps with good grace, promising to discourage his fellow villagers from speaking openly of the trial until the war was over.

  “I’m glad to hear you weren’t actually cross,” Mrs. Cobblepot said, still scrubbing industriously. “But in my experience, a perceived falling out can be every bit as painful as the genuine article.”

  “It’s like I told the lads,” Gaston said, gaze still halfway up a wall and holding. “Choose your words carefully, or your words will choose you.”

  That made no sense whatsoever, as far as Ben was concerned, but he had no intention of pursuing Gaston’s mangled meaning down the rabbit hole. “Thank you both for your advice,” he said, standing. “I know it’s kindly meant. I also know that for a number of years, I’ve conducted my own affairs with some success, on balance. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m off.”

  “Where to?” Mrs. Cobblepot sounded startled.

  “Belsham Manor.”

  An Open Door

  Ben had set off with the idea of simply telling Lady Juliet about Mr. Collins’s arrest. That would break the ice, and then he could revert to his usual posture of interjecting sardonic remarks as she reacted. It felt like an absurdly long time since he’d heard her bemoan a failure, crow over a victory, or insult the village of Barking, and this would allow her to do all three.

  But as he drove from Birdswing proper to Belsham Manor, he remembered that Ethan would probably be knocking about. The Sheared Sheep wouldn’t open for another few hours, after all. The man was quite likely to question why Ben hadn’t simply picked up the phone, perhaps followed by some insinuation about the best man winning, et cetera. Ben’s hand had only just stopped aching, and he didn’t want to injure it again.

  He’ll try to paint me as jealous, which is outrageous, he thought. It’s the principle of the matter. A woman like Lady Juliet shouldn’t allow a bounder to dictate terms to her. Marriage doesn’t enter into it, not when justice is at stake. When we said our vows, Penny and I left out the bit about “obey.” I thought women went off that old chestnut around the time of Jack the Ripper.

  As he reached the manor, a plausible excuse for his visit finally occurred to him. Old Robbie was finally on the mend, so that wouldn’t wash, and if he turned up out of nowhere to quiz Lady Victoria about her heart trouble, she’d think him mad. But those photos of the Bobby Archer crime scene were still in Lady Juliet’s possession. Surely it was his duty as a good citizen to collect the pictures, review them, and turn them in to the authorities.

  Bertha answered his knock at the door. Once again, she wore her feminized chauffeur uniform.

  “Hallo, Bertha. Still at your apprenticeship, eh?”

  “Yes, sir.” She took his hat and coat. “Well, not today, as it happens, but I like to wear this. Quite flash. Does your leg trouble you?” she added, meaning his cane.

  “No more than usual. December is hard on the joints, that’s all. I can show myself in. I know the way.” Giving her a pleasant nod, Ben headed for the parlor. He hoped to find Lady Juliet alone and Ethan elsewhere. Instead, he found Lady Victoria sitting by the window. The book on her lap was closed, and she was staring into space.

  “Sorry. Terribly rude of me to blunder in,” he said, feeling a fool.

  “Dr. Bones! It’s lovely to see you.” Lady Victoria’s smile was too brilliant to be feigned. “And never mind the apologies, you’re always welcome. To what do we owe the honor?”

  “Lady Juliet has some photos taken by Father Rummage on the day of Bobby’s murder,” Ben said. “She was kind enough to develop them and look them over. I’ve come to collect them at last.”

  “Of course.” Rising, Lady Victoria put aside her book and reading glasses. “Only Juliet is engaged at the moment. I’m not sure how long she’ll be….”

  Ben felt the fool all over again. He’d walked out on their last conversation, avoided her for days, and finally deigned to turn up in his own good time, with an excuse that didn’t involve the word “sorry.” How egocentric, assuming Lady Juliet would rush out to see him. Perhaps she was enjoying a late breakfast with Ethan. Or a champagne brunch. In bed.

  “She’ll be delighted to see you,” Lady Victoria continued. As always, she sounded gracious, but Ben thought he detected some sort of hesitation. “I realize you’re a busy man, but you’ve come all this way, and there’s the petrol to consider, isn’t there? Let me ring for tea. We can discuss the new du Maurier, if you’ve read it. She isn’t a native Cornishwoman, but she’s viewed as something of a favorite daughter, all the same.”

  “Ah. Well. That’s very kind.” Ben cleared his throat. “But I shouldn’t like putting you to any trouble. Perhaps when Lady Juliet’s in the village next, she could leave the photos with Mrs. Cobblepot?”

  “That would be no trouble. Only—” Lady Victoria twisted her hands. “Do you know? I think she left them in the dining room. Can you believe it? She had them in a manila envelope, very neatly labeled with the word ‘confidential’ written in black ink, and she left them on the table. I can’t think why. Perhaps she meant to pop by Fenton House with them later. Shall we go collect them?”

  Ben stared at her. It didn’t trouble him that she was obviously lying. Polite people lied all the time, including him. His recent effort to keep Mrs. Garrigan calm on the way to St. Barnabas had only solidified his belief that while the truth may set you free, a good lie could save your life. No, what troubled him was the lie’s nakedness and her apparent desperation for him to believe it.

  “I can fetch them myself,” he said, wondering if that’s what he was meant to say next.

  “No, no, we’ll walk together. It seems like ages since we’ve spoken.” Lady Victoria took his arm and slipped hers in it, as if they might stroll down a moonlit beach. “They say on the wireless that bacon, butter, and sugar will be rationed first. Thank goodness Mr. Morton started his scheme in October. We’ve all grown accustomed to buying what we’re permitted according to his ledger. Do you suppose the Ministry of Food will force every community to use ration books? I don’t see why we should, when we have a perfectly good system already in place. Why, ARP Warden Gaston could simply ask your neighbor, Mrs. Parry, to submit a weekly report on who served what for dinner. She does know these things….”

  And so Lady Victoria went on, without pause and completely out of character, until they reached the dining room. Ben wasn’t at all surprised to find it spotless, with no trace of a manila envelope labeled “confidential.”

  “Oh, dear. I think the maids have already been through,” she said, circling the table as if double-checking for something that clearly wasn’t there. “Perhaps someone returned it to Juliet’s bedroom. I’ll look there next. Is the door behind you closed?”

  Ben looked behind him and was surprised to see no door, only a wall decorated with the usual chair rail. “What do you mean?”

  “The door to the back passage. Sure
ly Juliet’s mentioned it.”

  “Er, Lady Victoria. I feel as if things have taken a turn for the, well, atypical. Did you bring me to this room for something other than the photos?”

  “I’ll take that as a no,” she said cheerfully. “For me, the door is quite visible when the curtains are closed and the wall sconces are doused. Look at the floor.”

  Ben looked at his feet, expecting to see nothing but feet, and wondering how to go about delicately asking Lady Victoria if he might check her vital signs. Instead, he saw a faint sliver of light emanating from beneath a door-sized section of the wall.

  “Sir Thaddeus’s staff called it the Master’s Way. A secret passage, if you like,” Lady Victoria said. “He claimed to want one because the oldest homes in these parts had them, in the days of Cromwell. Cavaliers fleeing Roundheads would take refuge with sympathizers, who hid them in secret chambers, just as wreckers used to hide out under pubs and churches.”

  Ben suffered a rare moment of déjà vu. Then he remembered a snippet from a dream, a flash of white walls and a lino floor.

  “Someone left the light on inside,” Lady Victoria said. “Perhaps it isn’t open, per se, and merely looked open to me because of the light spillage. That’s what Juliet would call it, now that she’s planning a dark room. The pastime requires a light-tight room, as she’s told me a hundred times. Press in the middle of the chair rail. No, harder—there!”

  The mechanism clicked, and the cunningly disguised door opened inward, revealing a hall that was nothing like the stark passage in Ben’s dream. This looked like any other part of the house, with wallpaper, sconces, and a polished floor.

  “Remarkable.” He turned back to Lady Victoria. “Thank you for showing it to me. But—”

  “You can travel unseen from here to the library,” she cut across him. “You need only put your palm against the left wall and follow it. Mind the stairs, they’re steep. You’ll see the door to the library not long past the stairs, but don’t try to enter. Juliet and Ethan are inside.”