Lessons for Suspicious Minds

by Charlie Cochrane

  “Oh.” Jonty felt suitably abashed. The investigation into the ex-royal mistress’s death had been one of their more unusual cases, and one of Orlando’s shining moments.

  “You realise the risk you run, Alexandra?” Mr. Stewart suddenly cut in. His voice was calm, but he was evidently holding back some strong emotion. “Flushing out a murderer, as you so neatly put it right at the start of this conversation, is a risky business. Have you considered that it might precipitate further violence, as it did in Jennifer Johnson’s case? The lads can look after themselves, but I wouldn’t want to see anything happen to you. Or anyone else in this household.”

  Orlando nodded, his look of glee at Jonty getting his comeuppance soon covered up with a suitably grave expression. “Discretion might be the better part of valour, as the saying goes. What would we gain by finding justice for the dead man if we were to put your life at risk?”

  “Discretion might be the right course sometimes, but in this instance it’s stuff and nonsense. I can look after myself as well as you can. Do your menfolk know that I sleep with a loaded pistol at my side, Helena?” The dowager tapped her goddaughter’s hand.

  “I don’t think even I knew that, my dear, so how they were to have been privy to the secret, I couldn’t begin to imagine. What a forward-thinking woman you are.”

  “Then do you take my commission?” Alexandra briefly glanced at Jonty and his father, but her words were aimed at Orlando.

  “We do. If we can have free rein.” Orlando kept his eyes fixed on the dowager, although Jonty—and maybe everyone else—knew he was addressing her son.

  Everyone looked at the duke, whose face bore an unreadable expression. Eventually, he said, “You do. Let’s clear this, if we must.”

  An ugly silence descended on the room, broken by Mrs. Stewart, who spoke in her most tactful manner. “And Richard . . .”

  “Yes, my dear?” Mr. Stewart seemed like a gladiator who’d been addressed by an overconfident lion.

  “Don’t go dogging the lads’ footsteps and trying to hog all the fun to yourself. I’m sure Orlando will let you join in the sleuthing, but at the slightest hint of monopolisation I will have you sent out of the room.”

  Jonty had to try to remove a nonexistent speck of dirt from his trousers, setting his face as near to stone as he could make it. From the corner of his eye he caught Orlando trying hard not to laugh, failing, and having to pretend to sneeze.

  “I promise to behave myself.”

  “Glory be!” The dowager threw her hands into the air. “Then there’s a first time for everything. Now, Derek, our guests could do with a touch of port or brandy.”

  Amidst the palaver with decanters and glasses, Jonty caught Orlando’s eye. The game was afoot—two games, on the same day.

  Bliss.

  “Are we content, Dr. Coppersmith?” Jonty, warm from the port and just slightly dishevelled from an encounter with the family’s Irish wolfhound, stood in Orlando’s doorway in the guest corridor to say his goodnights. Although, as usual, the loquacious toad couldn’t just say see you tomorrow and have done with it. Not when five hundred words would suffice.

  “We are. Two mysteries. What more could a man want?” The man he loved to share his bed with him, obviously, but neither of them would be getting that comfort tonight. They’d managed a bit of room hopping at the Old Manor—where nobody seemed to bat an eyelid—and when they took a two-bedroom suite at a hotel, but neither of them was going to risk a pyjama-clad slink along the corridor at Fyfield.

  Maybe Jonty was feeling the same reluctance to part for the night.

  “The nature of the cases not worrying you?”

  “No!” Orlando avoided Jonty’s gaze but was unable to avoid the disapproving sniff. “Sorry, shouldn’t have been so abrupt. No, I’m fine.” It wasn’t quite true, and he knew that his lover would know it.

  Jonty leaned his head against the doorframe, clearly weighing up whether he was being told the truth and how far to pursue it if he wasn’t. Orlando had seen that determined look before.

  “As you wish.” Jonty stifled a yawn. “I shall see you in the morning. Breakfast and then interrogating the chambermaids?”

  “Something like that. Sleep well.”

  “I will. My head will hit the pillow and then it’ll be morning tea time.” Jonty slipped away to his room, leaving Orlando, unmoving, staring at the door. Sleep wasn’t going to be easy to find, with dormant memories of his family, and his father in particular, cruelly awoken more than once today and now dogging his thoughts. He was far too used to having Jonty’s cold feet in the small of his back or his gentle snoring in his ear.

  Maybe he could lull himself to sleep by dreaming up a plan of campaign to solve what seemed like two impossible problems.

  Next morning, after a surprisingly good night’s sleep (that second glass of port must have made all the difference), Orlando woke to the sounds of birds in the trees and a footman at the door with morning tea. Both were welcome, especially when the footman turned out to be polite and quite handsome. Orlando had seen several servants down the last few years, from the scared and spotty to the handsome and hubristic. When he and Jonty were guests at the Old Manor, they were looked after by a Welshman with a cockney accent and a Scottish name who’d evidently been selected for his forward-thinking attitude and absolute discretion. On the rare occasions when a shirt ended up on the wrong bedroom floor or a bed for one had clearly been occupied by two, he didn’t bat an eyelid, and the shirt was discreetly returned to the rightful wardrobe.

  Thank goodness there’d been no such occupation or evidence this morning, because this lad appeared eagle-eyed and ready to pounce on anything.

  Orlando declined the offer of being helped to dress—only Jonty was allowed that privilege—and took his tea over to the window seat. The grounds were emerging as the early morning mist burned off and, just as predicted, the shadows from the avenues of trees streamed across the lawns in the other direction.

  Opening the window, Orlando leaned out for a better look at the walls. Nothing for a man to scale, so unless Tuffnell had been on the ground floor, his killer (should he have been killed) must have come from inside the house.

  He studied the grounds again, down towards where the Thames was hidden by the last of the mist. Taking a man for a walk to a convenient and quiet bridge, then throwing him into the river might be a farfetched way of committing a murder, but at least it seemed feasible. If your victim couldn’t swim in the first place, or you’d drugged him, then that would make drowning more likely. Even somehow manoeuvring the note into his jacket, a sort of picking his pocket in reverse, must be doable. But how did you hang somebody? No one would quietly put his head into a noose, and one had to assume—even though he always told the dunderheads never to make assumptions without evidence—that if Tuffnell had somehow been drugged to make him more receptive to being strung up, the doctor would have noticed the fact.

  Maybe it would all prove to be a mare’s nest, leaving him and Jonty to go off and enjoy themselves, with two deaths that were definitely suicides behind them.

  A blackbird whistling harshly on the terrace seemed to issue a reprimand. That wasn’t the spirit, admitting defeat so early in the race.

  Breakfast helped. Any man would have found his mental processes enhanced by so excellent a sausage and so supreme a plate of scrambled eggs. There was no mention of suspicious death around the table; clearly once the commission had been delivered, it was being left up to the detectives to sort it out. At one point Mr. Stewart had begun to say something that might have related to Reggie Tuffnell, but stopped abruptly. While Orlando couldn’t be sure, he suspected either a fork or a foot had been jabbed into the man’s leg by Mrs. Stewart.

  Jonty appeared to have slept well, and was turned out beautifully.

  “Did you have the footman help you dress?” Orlando asked, as the breakfast party broke up.

  “He brushed my jacket and trousers. And maybe helped with th
e right-hand cufflinks—you know how I struggle with those.” Jonty wore a not-very-convincing innocent look on his face, as they made their way along the corridor towards the staircase down to the servants’ quarters.

  Orlando waited until they were out of earshot of their hosts before asking, “And?”

  “And what?” Jonty stopped to admire a statue of Apollo that left little to the imagination.

  “I recognise that look on your face. Mischief. Out with it.”

  “I was just thinking it’s a blessing it’s this Hayes lad we have to question first.”

  “Hayes?”

  “Edward Hayes. The footman who helped me dress. He has a solid, reliable name that suggests a solid, reliable chap. The reliability goes without saying or he wouldn’t have lasted long at Fyfield.”

  “Is he the one who brought my tea, as well?”

  “Not having the power of second sight, I can only say, ‘I assume so.’”

  No wonder there was a mischievous glint, then. Jonty wouldn’t have missed how handsome the man was.

  “There’s an intelligent twinkle in the lad’s eye which suggests there’s more to him than his position would imply.”

  “Just like that lad Covington?”

  “Exactly. Maybe they put something in the water in Berkshire. Makes its sons have an extra spark of wit about them.” Jonty gave Apollo another look up and down, then moved on. “That something in the water produces handsome lads too. And don’t pretend you hadn’t noticed that for yourself. Hayes acted as valet for Tuffnell,” Jonty added, as they reached the green baize door. “I hope Hammond will let us have him all to ourselves. I don’t want the official line on this.”

  “Amen to that.”

  Hammond did let them have Hayes to themselves, although it clearly pained him to do so. It was bad enough, his tight-lipped smile seemed to say, that the son of a lord—even a lord who refused to use his title—had ventured below stairs, but to be handing over what was surely the butler’s responsibility to a footman was beyond the pale.

  Hayes appeared delighted to be involved, even if he was most likely going to have to catch up with his duties once he returned to the servant’s quarters. He led the way back up the stairs to the ground floor and along the corridor, unfortunately in the other direction from the far-from-coy Apollo.

  “This is the Grey Room, sir.” Hayes opened a door to reveal a pleasant, sun-filled bedroom—spotlessly clean but somehow lacking in the sort of character the other Fyfield rooms possessed. “Nobody’s stayed here since Captain Tuffnell died. People have long memories.”

  “They do.” And that lack of occupancy might explain the atmosphere—the Grey Room had had the soul knocked out of it. Orlando walked over to the window. “Are many of the guest rooms on the ground floor?”

  “Only a couple. They say it dates from when the present duke’s grandfather lived here. He had a brother who couldn’t manage the stairs.”

  “Could Captain Tuffnell manage the stairs?” Jonty seemed unable to drag his eyes away from the sturdy four-poster bed frame.

  Hayes stood, like a soldier standing easy on parade, by the fireplace. “I believe so, although nobody takes that into account anymore. These are some of the nicest rooms in the house, and guests always seem happy to stay in them.”

  “And you acted as valet for him?”

  “I did. He struck me as being such a nice, true gentleman. Very sympathetic.”

  “Sympathetic towards what?” Jonty paused in the middle of prodding and poking the bed frame.

  “To me.” Hayes looked at the painting of a young lad, which hung over the fireplace. “We’d buried my little brother not a sennight before and that painting took me aback a bit. He listened to my story, even though I shouldn’t have burdened him with it. Did me a power of good to tell someone.”

  “Of course it would,” Jonty said, softly. “Had your brother been ill?”

  “He had, sir. Eaten away from inside. He was in terrible pain towards the end. Captain Tuffnell said an old friend of his had been in the same boat, so desperate that he’d taken his own life. How it had been a peaceful, dignified end after much suffering. I appreciated his understanding—not the sort of quality my gentlemen always have.”

  “No. Exactly.” Orlando shivered. Hanging couldn’t have been a peaceful, dignified thing, especially for those who found the body.

  “Hayes, we would entirely understand if this brings back memories which are too painful. We could ask Hammond about that evening.” Jonty, pale, leaned against the bedpost as if to steady himself.

  “No, that’s fine. I can talk about him now and it doesn’t hurt.” Hayes produced a smile. “And I’m honoured to be helping you.”

  “Back to the case, then,” Orlando continued. “Did you valet for anybody else during that visit?”

  “Yes. For Mr. Rodgers, who had the other room along this corridor.”

  “Is that next door?” Orlando’s ears pricked up. Had this Rodgers been close enough to hear any unusual noises that night?

  “Three along, sir. There’s the bathroom which these two rooms share, then a closet for linen, then the Brown Room.”

  “A veritable rainbow.” Jonty had torn himself away from the bed and was making a tour of the room, knocking on the walls, opening the wardrobe door, taking a swift look up the chimney. “Nowhere here for somebody to lie in wait. Are there any secret corridors or priest holes at Fyfield?”

  Hayes didn’t seem to find the question unusual. “Not that I know of, sir.”

  “How many guests were staying that night?”

  “Maybe eight? It was a bucks’ party, all friends of the duke. And four of them brought their own valets so a dozen people in total.”

  “Any idea of the connection between them? Other than a few days of shooting or playing cards or whatever they were up to?” Orlando rattled the window frame—the sash could have easily been opened from outside if it had been left unsecured.

  “No cards, sir. Mr. Hammond said they’d made a point of not indulging in gambling.”

  “Ah.” Jonty was back at the bed again, eyeing it uneasily.

  Better deal with the potential means of entry—somebody had to apply logic to the case. “Was there any sign that somebody had come in through the window?”

  “Not that I remember, sir. The window was shut, and I don’t recall seeing any mud or the sort of mess we get when there’s children staying here and they play about a bit. But then we had our minds on other things so maybe it was there and we just didn’t notice.”

  “So what exactly happened the night Captain Tuffnell died? After everyone had retired for the night, I mean,” Orlando added.

  “A bit of a farce, sir. With the bells and all.”

  “The bells?” Orlando and Jonty said in unison, sounding like they were in a farce themselves.

  Hayes nodded. “It was my duty to stay up and answer any bells that rang that night. About two o’clock I heard one sound so I rushed straight up to the Blue Room, where Archdeacon Gray was. That time of night there’s always a worry somebody’s been taken ill. Only it wasn’t him who’d rung, he said.”

  “Let me just get this straight. You’d have gone and looked at the bell board first, presumably, to make sure you got the right room?” Orlando had fished out his notebook and was taking all this down. Sometimes the unconsidered trifle of a clue was the key one, so better to snap them all up.

  “I didn’t need to, sir. I knew it by the sound, of course.”

  Jonty stifled any question of Orlando’s with a wave of his hand. “We’ll explain later. So when you got to the Blue Room, Archdeacon Gray said he hadn’t rung.”

  “Eventually, sir. I knocked several times, but there was no answer.”

  “Is that the usual way of things here, knocking before entering even when the bell’s rung?” How different from the Stewarts’ arrangements, where the jangling of the bell served as the equivalent of enter having already been spoken.

 
“Oh, yes, sir. The mistress is very particular on that point.” Hayes looked guilty. “I did try the handle when there was no answer, just gently like, but the door was locked, so I come down and fetched Mr. Hammond, who wasn’t best pleased, him having a bad night with toothache. But I didn’t want to go unlocking the thing without permission nor did I want to leave it, in case the gentleman was unwell.”

  “Do people often lock their doors at night?” Orlando thought of all the occasions when he and Jonty had slipped the lock, just in case anyone happened to barge in and find them in flagrante delicto.

  “Some of them do, although it’s not common. Maybe their own houses aren’t as orderly as Fyfield.” Hayes grinned. “Mr. Hammond said we had to go in, so he came along with the keys.”

  Orlando tapped his notebook. “And you went in. What then?”

  “We found the archdeacon dead to the world, sir. We had to shake him awake.” Hayes smiled conspiratorially. “I think he’d had a touch too much port the night before. That last little nightcap’s the thing to knock some of them out for the count. When he did wake, he was hopping mad, cursing me for being twelve kinds of a fool and saying he’d know if he’d rung or not, and he definitely hadn’t. I didn’t realise clergymen knew some of the words he used.”

  “And you were absolutely sure that he had rung it? There couldn’t have been a mix-up?” That seemed the most likely solution to this mystery within the mystery.

  “I can’t deny the evidence of my own ears, sir, and the Blue Room’s always one of mine. Unless the guests have brought their own servant, I have care of the gentlemen who stay there—and it’s usually a gentleman’s room. I could hear that bell in my sleep and know it, all right.” The angry flush on Hayes’s cheeks didn’t go well with his shock of red hair. “I know every one of my bells, learned them all as soon as I came here.”