“That’s one bit of definite evidence to go on, anyway. What’s just come through makes the whole business more crackpot than ever. First of all, the Yard. Peplow’s dabs aren’t in Records, and they’ve never heard of him. They’re trying to track him down at Somerset House, and doing a check on the high-class robbery boys for a possible link. Longman’s working on his trail from Heathrow last week. And Interpol’s checking round, but nothing’s come along from them yet.”
He broke off to light a cigarette.
“Anything from the Argentine people?” asked Toye.
“Yeah. I’m just coming to that. Their police and the British Consulate say Peplow turned up out there in ’37, and has lived there ever since. Didn’t even come over for the war. He’s never been back as far as anyone knows until he gave out about a couple of weeks ago that he was making a business trip to London.”
“What about his passport?”
“He had a valid British passport when he first went out there, and has had it renewed by the Consul each time it ran out. No difficulty there.”
“What’s he been living on? Has he got a record?”
“No criminal record, barring getting mixed up a few times in brawls down-town in the early days. They say he lived pretty rough at first, taking any job he could get. Then he seems to have got a bit of money together, gone into real estate, and done quite well for himself. No known criminal contacts or dicey political entanglements, and his affairs with women seem to be all very temporary and casual.”
Toye sat staring at Pollard, unwinking as an owl behind his horn-rims.
“But can they know for sure he’s never been back here? He can’t suddenly have decided to come over and try his hand at a break-in, just out of the blue. It doesn’t make sense.”
“Echoes of Lord Seton last night. I’ve got an idea those words are going to be a sort of theme song running through the whole bloody case. No, of course they can’t know for sure. Peplow’s made trips to the States like that one last spring. It was perfectly above board on the face of it: an American firm negotiating for a factory site in Buenos Aires, but it could easily have been cover for something criminal. He could have nipped across here on a faked passport, too. The Yard’s asked the F.B.I. to make enquiries, but it’s a forlorn hope after all this time.”
There was a pause. Pollard doodled absently on a piece of blotting paper.
“In some ways,” he resumed, “the gen about the chap himself from the Consul is the most interesting thing. Peplow seems to have been a bit of a lone wolf, although an accepted member of the British colony in B.A. Not what you’d call popular: keener on trips into the wilds than the cocktail round, and cagey about his affairs. But occasionally he’d whoop it up, and splash a terrific party which usually ended in people doing the craziest things, just for the hell of it. A latent reckless streak, the Consul called it. Ties up with this Brent business and its fancy touches.”
Toye gave a slight sniff. “If Peplow was in on an art treasures racket,” he said, in the tone of one determined to stick to down-to-earth probabilities, “why Brent, for heaven’s sake? You’d think he’d have aimed a bit higher, coming all that way.”
Pollard completed his doodle. “Not necessarily. That sort of market functions on supply and demand, like any other. Brent’s got a fine collection of miniatures which aren’t for sale. Somebody with plenty of lolly and no scruples could be building up a secret collection to gloat over, and particularly fancy the Charles II one. I don’t think it need follow that Peplow had a local contact, more’s the pity.”
Toye asked if Strickland had pulled anything off with the dabs.
“Peplow’s are on the outside of the panel in the right position for opening the thing. Looks as though he must have been down here last week, doesn’t it?”
“Didn’t he wear gloves?”
“No. Staggering, isn’t it? He must have been completely confident, or incredibly slapdash. But the interesting thing is that whoever shut the panel on him went at it like a bull at a gate, and was wearing gloves — rubber ones. And the same glove prints are on the showcase with the royal miniature in it.”
Toye whistled under his breath. “Peplow’s accomplice bobbing up again?” he asked.
“Or Lord Seton, realising that Peplow’s a goner, slams the panel after fetching a pair of rubber gloves, and checks up on the showcase.”
“Leaving the American visitors or somebody going round the house to find the body?”
“This is it. Can you see him deliberately fixing it so that a woman guest to his house would almost certainly be bound to discover it? A pretty damnable thing to do to any woman. After all, he’s the eighth Earl.”
Toye nodded slowly in agreement. “It hadn’t struck me that way, sir, but you’ve got something there.”
Pollard looked at his watch. “Time we made tracks for Brent. Get the car, will you, while I throw a few scraps to the Press boys. I gather they’ve massed outside.”
A small crowd of newsmen surged forward as Pollard came out, their cameras at the ready. There was a babble of demands for information and protests at continued exclusion from Brent. When would the police ban be lifted?
“When we’re through with the place,” Pollard told them. “Be your age, chaps. What chance would we have of picking up anything useful after you lot had milled through it?”
“Aw, hell,” exclaimed disgusted voices. “We wanna picture with the spot marked X. That’s what the public wants. Be a sport, Super.”
“Let me have one of those guide books, and I’ll mark X for you myself, if that’s all you want.”
“All we want!” shouted an indignant chorus. A fusillade of questions broke out.
“Who’s this guy Peplow, anyway?”
“What’s this guff about a royal miniature?”
“Why didn’t they find the body till midday yesterday?”
“Who’s the American dame who spotted it down the hole?”
“Give me a chance to make myself heard,” Pollard said, “and I’ll tell you what I know. And damn little it is at this stage.”
They subsided, scribbling madly as he reiterated the bare facts and added a few picturesque but unimportant details about the priest’s hole and Peplow’s equipment. He went on to emphasise the absence of the Setons and Mrs. Giles Tirle at a public dinner on Tuesday evening.
“What about the Earl’s brother being in the States?” someone asked suggestively.
“America keeps popping up in this business, wouldn’t you say?” tried someone else.
“I wouldn’t personally,” replied Pollard, “but then I didn’t miss out on geography at school. The Argentine’s quite a way from the States.”
This raised a laugh. He made a swift mental note to enquire immediately into the activities of Giles Tirle.
“Cut-throat competition, this Stately Homes racket,” came a voice from the back row. “What are your views on advertising stunts by the owners?”
“I haven’t any. If anyone’s interested, the chap who actually spoke to Peplow, and took his message to the coach driver is staying at the Cliffside Hotel.”
The newsmen dispersed enthusiastically and collectively. Just like a shoal of fish in an aquarium tank, moving in perfect unison, Pollard thought. The car came round from the back of the police station, and he got in beside Toye.
They were admitted to Brent by a woman in an overall, who looked at them uneasily, and escorted them to Peggy Blackmore’s office without speaking. Uncertain about how to announce them, she flung the door wide and flattened herself against it.
Peggy Blackmore got up quickly from a desk littered with papers. A buxom fifty with a mop of naturally curly hair, she tended to become dishevelled when under stress. Her face was shiny, and she had a crumpled appearance.
“I’m afraid Lord Seton isn’t in his office yet,” she told Pollard when he had introduced Toye and himself. “He rang through just now to say he’d be in by eleven unless the — unless you wanted to see him
before then.”
“Eleven will be quite soon enough,” Pollard told her. “I’m afraid it was very late when we left here last night. You know, I expect, that there had been a fresh development?”
She nodded. “It’s all so awful,” she said shakily. “Like a nightmare you can’t wake up from. If you only knew how Lord Seton and all of them have worked to make opening the house a success, and now this happens… Is there anything I can do for you at the moment?”
Pollard explained that he had come to examine the public rooms for further traces of anyone having hidden there, and to talk to everyone who had been on duty or slept at Brent on Tuesday.
“As you’re free just now,” he said, “may I start with you? Are you about when the visitors are here?”
Peggy Blackmore shook her head. “I don’t take parties round. I’m working in here during the afternoons.”
“All the same,” Pollard said, “I’d like to have a look at the dead man’s photograph, and the description of the clothes he was wearing. We know that he came out here on the second Blennerhasset coach, and think he probably paid an earlier visit last week.”
She gave both documents careful attention, but shook her head decisively. “I’m as sure as one ever can be that I’ve never seen that man in my life. You don’t even know what the other one looked like, I suppose? The one who killed him, and escaped afterwards, I mean?”
“Not yet!” Pollard replied truthfully. He glanced at his watch. “We’ll be back at eleven, then, to see Lord Seton. Thank you for being so helpful.”
As he retraced his steps in the direction of the screens, followed by Toye, he reflected gloomily that the gist of the conversation about Peplow which he had just had was likely to be repeated ad nauseam in the course of the day. He stopped at the foot of the magnificent late-sixteenth-century staircase.
“Put in by the Elizabethan builders when they inserted the first floor,” he remarked. “I’d like to have seen the hall as it originally was… Now then, a mob of scouts is blocking the staircase, and the Blennerhassets are jammed in this passage, waiting to go up. The passage, I think, runs back to where you turn left into the eighteenth-century wing, as on the other side. Yes, here we go. Cudwinkle would have been photographing an Adam fireplace in one of these rooms. There’s a splendid specimen in here, see? He comes out again with his camera and gadgets, and Peplow, who must have been at the back of the queue, asks him to give the coach driver the message. The next moment the queue starts moving, taking Cudwinkle along with it. What does Peplow do? I rather think he goes back on his tracks, having realised that his party is the last of the day, and no one will be following on.”
Opening a door on the right of the passage Pollard walked into the hall, and came to a standstill. Bridget Seton was standing on the hearth, against the background of a great mass of delphiniums mounting up like blue flames. She was wearing a plain white frock, and holding a single spike in her hand. Inevitably a composite memory of the virgin martyrs of Renaissance painters flashed into his mind, only to be discarded as he came towards her. There was no rapturous expectancy in her lovely face, only withdrawal and a hint of sadness.
“I do apologise, Lady Seton,” he said. “I had no idea you were in here. May I introduce myself? Detective-Superintendent Pollard of New Scotland Yard, and this is Detective-Sergeant Toye, who is working with me.”
She greeted them both courteously. “Please don’t apologise. Am I in your way? My husband told me you would be here today, and what a terrible situation we have to face.”
“On the contrary,” Pollard told her, “we should be glad of your help. That newel stairway over there: is it blocked, or a possible way up to the gallery?”
“Yes, it’s perfectly usable, but we cord it off in case of an accident to a visitor.”
“If I remember rightly, there’s a NO WAY notice on the outside of the gallery door upstairs. Does that mean it isn’t locked?”
“Yes. We don’t lock it in case of fire, but try to keep visitors out, as a child could easily fall over the balustrade. Do you think —?” She broke off and looked at him unhappily.
“Yes,” he said. “I think that is probably the route by which the man got to the priest’s hole without being seen. Will you excuse me for a moment?”
After sending Toye to bring in Strickland and Boyce to investigate the newel stairway, he returned.
“Would this be a convenient time for you to spare me a few minutes?” he asked.
“Perfectly convenient. Shall we sit here?”
She slipped red cords from a pair of Chippendale chairs. Pollard eyed them anxiously.
“I’m a fair weight,” he said. “Is it an undue risk?”
“I don’t think so.” She smiled at him.
Waiting for her to be seated he moved the second chair slightly to see her full-face, wondering why her beauty was so disconcerting. Sitting down himself, he told her what was known about Raymond Peplow’s movements on Tuesday. As he finished she began to twist her hands restlessly.
“This awful business is simply the result of my being so incompetent as a guide,” she said miserably. “Any of the others would have noticed that the man was missing at the end of the tour. I’m not a regular guide, you see: I’m so hopeless at it. I’m only called on in an emergency.”
“I don’t think you quite appreciate all the facts, Lady Seton,” Pollard told her. “Peplow came down from London with the clear intention of carrying out a robbery here. He brought housebreaking tools, and food and whisky, and even an air cushion, which suggests that he had decided on the priest’s hole from the start. The message to the coach driver ensured that if he was missed by the guide it would be assumed that he had joined his friends. The fact that a less experienced guide took him round was neither here nor there.”
To his surprise he realised that she was unwilling to be absolved from responsibility, and speculated as to why she should nurse a guilt complex. He suddenly remembered Diplock’s remarks about the lack of a direct heir. Brent’s an extraordinarily dominating place, he thought. I suppose she feels she’s failed it.
Faint sounds and a couple of flashes from the far end of the hall.
“I’ve just remembered,” Bridget Seton said anxiously. “There was a man who looked as though he was going to step over the red cord and go up. I called out to him, and he stopped.”
“Can you remember what he looked like?” Pollard asked.
“He was tall and thin, with a very noticeable Adam’s apple, and kept on asking questions.”
“Then he certainly wasn’t Raymond Peplow,” he said cheerfully. “I’d like you to look at this photograph and description, and see if it recalls anyone in your party.”
After a careful examination she handed them back.
“No,” she said. “I’ve absolutely no recollection of ever having seen this man. But I go quite blank when I’m faced with a lot of people to take round. He could perfectly well have been in my party.”
Pollard passed on to the latter part of Tuesday. “I know that you and your husband and sister-in-law were out for the greater part of the evening,” he said. “Do you happen to know who was at home?”
“Emmett certainly was. As we were going to be out late he said he would have a look round outside before going to bed. Sometimes in the summer we get hooligans out here from Crockmouth in the evenings. Emmett’s wife and daughter were at home, as far as I know, and my husband’s sister, Lady Arminel Tirle.”
“How about dogs?” Pollard asked. “I met your spaniels last night. They were in the house, I expect?”
“Yes, with my daughters’ ex-nanny, Mrs. Pringle. I’m so sorry, I forgot to mention her. She is one of our resident staff. The Emmetts have a bull terrier, and Lady Arminel has a dachshund.”
“Thank you.” Pollard made a note. “I’ve nearly finished these tedious questions. Can you remember at what time you got home from Fulminster?”
“I can remember exactly, as it happens. We
remarked on how late it was: ten minutes to twelve.”
“You went to bed as soon as you got in, I expect?”
“My husband did. I had a hot bath first. I find it helps me to get off to sleep after a busy day.”
Pollard’s pen checked. “Were you up and about for long, Lady Seton? I’m asking you this just in case you noticed anything suspicious without realising its importance at the time.”
To his astonishment she looked quite guilty. “I was, rather. I dozed off in my bath. It’s a bad habit of mine which worries my husband, but fortunately he was asleep when I eventually got back to our bedroom. It was nearly one o’clock. But I’m quite sure I didn’t notice anything in the least unusual.”
Pollard saw that he must visit the first floor of the Setons’ private wing and see the lie of the land.
“Would it be convenient for me to see Mrs. Pringle?” he asked.
“Certainly. Shall we go and find her now.”
He delayed deliberately, turning over the pages of his notebook. “May I just see if there’s anything else that I want to ask you?”
Toye and the others had gone out quietly some minutes earlier. The great hall was very still.
“Lady Seton,” he said, looking up at her suddenly, “when did you last go down into the priest’s hole?”
She made a quick movement of revulsion. “That horrible place? I’ve never been in it in my life.”
CHAPTER SIX
Pollard found Mrs. Pringle cagey, and realised that she was having difficulty in squaring him with her image of a policeman. Moreover, their surroundings were inhibiting. Lady Seton had installed them in the privacy of the dining room, and they sat formally at one end of the highly-polished table, the other end of which was laid for lunch. Mrs. Pringle, diminutive and birdlike, kept darting glances at him. When not actually speaking she kept her lips firmly closed.
Patiently Pollard extracted the information that she had a bed-sitting-room on the first floor, but preferred to sit in the kitchen when her employers were out for the evening, as it was handier for the telephone.
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