The Incident at Fives Castle

by Clara Benson

  ‘I guess so. Goodnight, then,’ he said, and went off, staggering slightly and seemingly having no curiosity as to why Mrs. Marchmont had been ferreting about in an old chest.

  Angela’s head was spinning a little too after all the whisky, but she turned back to the object of her investigation. The man was lying on his back with his knees bent—presumably to allow him to fit into the chest, since it was not quite big enough for him to lie stretched out. Grimacing, Angela took hold of his right ankle and lifted his leg. It unbent easily, and she spent a minute or two examining the sole of his boot, then lowered the leg gently back into the chest. As an afterthought she looked at his hands too, and shook her head slightly.

  When Freddy returned with Lord Strathmerrick and Henry Jameson, they found her standing by the window looking out.

  ‘It’s stopped snowing,’ she said as they came in. ‘I hope it’s not too thick to get through to the village and fetch the police.’

  ‘That might not be a problem for the moment,’ said Henry Jameson, crossing the room to look inside the chest. ‘Yes, that’s him all right.’

  Lord Strathmerrick joined him and the two men stared at the body. The Earl looked grave.

  ‘I don’t suppose he still has—?’ he said quietly, throwing a significant look at the Intelligence man.

  Henry bent down and felt in the man’s pockets, then shook his head. The men exchanged glances, and the Earl cleared his throat.

  ‘I—er—understand you were all engaged in some sort of game,’ he said, then wrinkled his nose. ‘What is that smell?’ he said. ‘Has somebody been sick?’

  ‘It was Gus,’ said Freddy. ‘He ate something that disagreed with him. The poor little chap has gone to bed. Where are Gertie and Priss? They were supposed to bring some hot water to clean it up.’

  ‘I saw them going upstairs a few minutes ago,’ said Henry. ‘They seemed to be going to bed.’

  ‘Well, of all the—’ said Freddy.

  ‘Yes, yes, well, never mind that for the present,’ said Lord Strathmerrick. ‘I should like to know who put this body here. I understand you were all hiding in the cupboard. Did you see anything at all?’

  Angela, uncomfortably conscious that women of her age did not generally hide in cupboards drinking whisky out of the bottle, blushed a little.

  ‘We heard him come in,’ she said. ‘We thought it was Bobby and so we all kept very quiet. Whoever it was sounded as though he were carrying something heavy. He opened the chest, dumped his burden into it and then went out.’

  ‘And you have no idea who it was?’ said Henry.

  Angela and Freddy shook their heads.

  ‘Can this room be locked?’ said Jameson. He went to the door. ‘Ah, yes, I see there’s a key here.’ He turned to Angela and Freddy. ‘Very well, there’s nothing any of us can do at present. It’s past two o’clock and I imagine you must both be tired, so I advise you to go to bed. I understand the telephone is still out of order, and as you so rightly say, Mrs. Marchmont, it will be difficult to get to the village with the snow lying so thickly, so I suggest we leave things as they are for now and try to decide what to do tomorrow morning. In the meantime, I shall lock this door so nobody can get in.’

  Angela recognized the voice of authority when she heard it, and smiled, for at that moment Henry Jameson reminded her very much of his brother.

  ‘Very well,’ she said. ‘We shall leave things in your hands.’

  ‘And please,’ added Henry as Angela and Freddy went out, ‘don’t say a word to anyone about this. I imagine the news will get out soon enough, but I’d rather it didn’t come from either of you.’

  They promised not to say anything and went off, leaving the billiard-room in the charge of Henry Jameson and Lord Strathmerrick.

  ‘Do you suppose they’ll clear up Gus’s mess?’ said Freddy as they emerged into the hall. Angela was about to go upstairs but he put a hand on her arm to stop her. ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘Why, to bed, of course,’ said Angela. ‘It’s late and I’m very tired and—quite frankly—a little on the squiffy side after all that whisky.’

  ‘Never mind that,’ said Freddy. ‘Come and compare notes.’

  She followed him reluctantly into the drawing-room, which was quite empty and lit only by the dying embers of the fire. He switched on a lamp and sat down.

  ‘Now, tell me what you found out from the body,’ he said. ‘Don’t tell me you didn’t take a good look at it when I went out, because I shan’t believe you.’

  ‘I didn’t find out anything much,’ she said. ‘I did take a look, but I was only trying to find out whether the professor was the mysterious man whose footprints the boys and I followed this afternoon.’

  ‘And was he?’

  ‘No,’ she said.

  ‘Can you be certain of that?’

  ‘I think so, yes. The professor had fairly small feet and the soles of his boots were straight-ridged, whereas the footprints we were following this afternoon had a criss-cross pattern and were much larger, and the right boot looked as though it had a nail or something stuck in it. Our quarry this afternoon must also have had a graze or a cut on his hand from a rusty bolt, but the professor had nothing of the sort.’

  ‘So who was the man you followed?’ said Freddy thoughtfully.

  ‘I don’t suppose he was anyone of interest at all,’ said Angela. ‘There’s no reason to assume he has anything to do with this business. What I should like to know, however, is: when did the professor get here and what happened to him after he did? He must have arrived this evening—probably during the dance, or surely he would have made himself known.’

  ‘We don’t know that he didn’t,’ said Freddy. ‘The servants might have seen him—or even one of the guests.’

  ‘Well, he obviously never got a chance to pay his respects to Lord Strathmerrick before someone took a pot-shot at him,’ said Angela.

  ‘It seems not,’ said Freddy. He felt in his pockets. ‘Damn—I seem to have left my notebook upstairs.’

  ‘You’re not going to write a story?’

  ‘Of course I’m going to write a story,’ he said. ‘Why, the man was world-famous. This is going to be the most enormous scoop for me—once they let me publish it, at any rate.’

  Angela had not thought of it in this light. Naturally the death of the eminent Professor Klausen would be big news.

  ‘Dear me,’ she said. ‘After all the trouble he took to keep the meeting quiet, Mr. Jameson must be feeling pretty sick that the professor has gone and got himself murdered. The papers will be dying to know what was going on here at Fives Castle.’

  ‘So they will,’ said Freddy. ‘You are going to help me find out, aren’t you?’

  ‘We’ll see,’ said Angela. ‘At present all I want is to go to bed.’ She stood up.

  ‘I did think Priss might wait up,’ said Freddy wistfully.

  Angela made an impatient noise.

  ‘Am I imagining things, or is everybody in this house misbehaving except for me?’ she said.

  Freddy glanced at her sideways.

  ‘If you feel inclined to throw yourself into the fray at all, do let me know. I’m always happy to oblige,’ he said lightly.

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous, Freddy, I’m not that drunk,’ she said, and went out.

  ‘Crushed again,’ said Freddy to the empty room. He finished his cigarette and then decided to go and risk a knock on Priss’s door.

  ELEVEN

  ‘But this is terrible,’ said Aubrey Nash.

  ‘It most certainly is,’ said Lord Strathmerrick soberly.

  It was early on New Year’s day and Aubrey, the Earl, Henry Jameson and Sandy Buchanan had gathered in the billiard-room to discuss what to do next. They all looked very tired: the Ambassador and the Foreign Secretary had been roused from their beds after only a few short hours’ sleep, while Jameson and Lord Strathmerrick had not been to bed at all. The unfortunate Professor Klausen was still in the chest, since
nobody could decide where else to put him; besides, rigor mortis had now set in and it would be difficult to extricate him for a while without causing damage to the body. The lid had been lowered to give him decent concealment, and the men did their best to ignore the presence of the chest, although nobody could resist darting the occasional glance at it.

  ‘How did it happen? We were waiting for him. How come somebody got to him first?’ said Aubrey.

  ‘We don’t know,’ said Henry Jameson. ‘We’ve spoken to the servants, and nobody saw him arrive. It’s pretty clear he had only recently got here, though, given that he was still wearing his overcoat and boots when he died.’

  ‘He must have arrived during the dance,’ said Sandy Buchanan. ‘It would have been easy enough to sneak in then without anybody seeing him. I suppose that was his intention—to arrive without any fanfare. Drat his secretiveness! If he’d only let us know he’d got here, he might be alive now.’

  ‘I suppose the fellow who did it has escaped now,’ said the Ambassador. ‘He must have done it and then slipped out unseen and escaped through the snow.’

  ‘I’m not so sure of that,’ said Henry. ‘It was snowing rather heavily when the dance ended, and all the villagers went off home very quickly. The snow had stopped by the time the body was discovered. Now, I went out at first light and couldn’t find any tracks leading along the path to the village. Of course, he might have gone in a different direction, but the drive is pretty well impassable as you know, and most of the other ways out would have required him to wade through deep snow across the meadows, or to find his way through the woods in the pitch-black.’

  ‘Might he have escaped along the village path while it was still snowing?’ said Buchanan. ‘His tracks would have been covered then.’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ said Jameson. ‘I followed the path as far as I could, but had to turn back as I came up against an obstacle: the snow has brought down a tree and a good deal of earth from the bank on one side of the path. Quite a landslide, in fact. I spoke to one of the groundsmen, and he knew all about it—said that one or two stragglers from the party had been trying to get home just after one o’clock but had found the fallen tree and had had to come back to the castle. Now, since most of the people who passed along that way last night must have done so shortly after midnight, I think we can assume that the landslide happened some time between then and one o’clock. However, according to Mrs. Marchmont and Mr. Pilkington-Soames, it was well after two o’clock when our mystery person came into the room while they were hiding in the cupboard, and presumably deposited Klausen in this chest. By that time the path to the village was blocked.’

  ‘Are you saying that he is still here at Fives Castle?’ said the Earl.

  ‘I think there’s a good chance of it, yes,’ said Henry.

  ‘Then we must start a search immediately,’ said Aubrey Nash. ‘If what you say is true, Jameson, then we are quite cut off, so if we hurry we may catch him before he escapes with the plans.’

  Sandy Buchanan had been regarding Henry Jameson with a shrewd expression, and now he spoke up.

  ‘Are you quite sure it was an outsider, Jameson?’ he said.

  Henry turned to him with a smile of understanding.

  ‘Not necessarily, although we can’t say it wasn’t either,’ he replied, and repeated what Angela had told him about her, Gus and Bobby’s adventure of the day before.

  ‘I see,’ said Buchanan thoughtfully. ‘So someone came to the castle yesterday and took a somewhat circuitous and complicated route when he might have easily come straight along the path. Presumably, then, whoever it was wanted to avoid being seen.’

  ‘I dare say it was Klausen himself,’ said Lord Strathmerrick. ‘I shall question the boys and ask them to describe the tracks. If their description matches that of Klausen’s boots then we know it was probably him. I won’t ask Mrs. Marchmont, as we don’t want her to suspect that there might be a connection between this business and that of the footprints.’

  ‘I’d be surprised if she doesn’t already suspect it,’ said Henry. ‘She’s no fool.’

  ‘Look here, Jameson,’ said Sandy Buchanan. ‘What do we really know about this Marchmont woman? You tell me she worked for Intelligence during the war, but how can we be sure that she hasn’t changed sides in the meantime? I mean, don’t you think it’s rather odd that she happened to get herself invited here just now, at a time when things are all supposed to be hush-hush?’

  ‘She’s meant to be a friend of Gertie’s,’ said Lord Strathmerrick, ‘but as far as I can tell, they only met a couple of months ago, through this Pilkington-Soames fellow. Are you suggesting that she scraped the acquaintance in order to get invited here?’

  ‘I shouldn’t be a bit surprised,’ said Buchanan. ‘It would be easy enough, after all. Gertie’s a smart girl but she’s a trusting sort. I can well imagine that she might invite a new friend up to Fives on the spur of the moment, never dreaming for a second that she had been manipulated into it.’

  Henry Jameson liked Angela, but was wise enough and experienced enough to know that attractiveness and charm did not necessarily denote trustworthiness. He considered the matter.

  ‘All I can tell you is that her integrity and loyalty were unquestionable ten years ago,’ he said cautiously. ‘I don’t know what she’s been doing since then, but I should be surprised if she has changed that much.’

  Aubrey Nash now spoke.

  ‘Well, I guess I know her better than anyone here,’ he said firmly, ‘and I can assure you that she’s straight up.’

  ‘Oh,’ said the Earl. ‘She’s an old friend of yours, is she?’

  ‘I should say so,’ said Aubrey. He coughed. ‘As a matter of fact we were once engaged to be married.’

  The others regarded him in surprise.

  ‘Good Lord,’ said Sandy Buchanan. ‘Why didn’t you say so before? When was this?’

  ‘A long time ago. It’s not important—didn’t last long as a matter of fact, but I can tell you now that I’m not in the habit of getting tangled up with spies.’

  ‘I don’t suppose for a second you are,’ said Buchanan, ‘but have you seen much of her since your engagement ended?’

  ‘We saw each other quite frequently for a while after I got married—she and Selma were good pals, you see. I hadn’t seen much of her in recent years, though.’

  ‘Then, I beg your pardon, but my point still stands,’ said Buchanan. ‘Unless you can tell us exactly what she’s been doing recently, how can you be so sure she’s innocent? She might have been nobbled in the meantime. The other side have all kinds of underhand methods for influencing people, you know.’

  ‘Because I know her,’ said Aubrey, ‘and I can’t believe it of her.’

  ‘This is a little beside the point,’ said Henry Jameson. ‘We know that neither she nor Freddy Pilkington-Soames murdered Professor Klausen, because several witnesses were in the cupboard with them at the time.’

  ‘We don’t know that she didn’t take the documents, though,’ said Buchanan. ‘You say she was alone in the room for several minutes after the body was found. She could easily have rifled through his pockets and stolen them.’

  ‘I won’t believe it,’ said Aubrey stubbornly.

  ‘Well, then, what about Pilkington-Soames?’ said Buchanan. ‘No doubt he could have found an opportunity to do it. It would have been the work of a moment to find the documents and take them. I must say, he looks the type. There’s something rather louche about him, don’t you think? I certainly shouldn’t trust him myself. For one thing, he appears to be trying to seduce every woman in the house.’ He stopped short as he realized that some of his listeners might not take too kindly to this insinuation.

  ‘I take it you’ve had a good look at the body,’ said Aubrey, addressing Jameson after a short pause.

  ‘As far as I could,’ replied Henry. ‘It seems clear that he was shot through the heart with a small-calibre gun of some sort.’


  ‘And nobody heard it?’

  ‘Obviously we haven’t questioned everybody yet, but there was a lot of noise last night, what with one thing and another, so it might easily have gone unnoticed. Besides, we don’t know where the killing took place. Presumably it wasn’t in here or the ball-room, but it might have been almost anywhere else, far out of earshot.’

  ‘Surely not that far out of earshot,’ said Aubrey. ‘Remember he had to bring Klausen’s body here to dispose of it. Dead bodies are heavy, and the farther he had to carry it, the more likely he was to be discovered.’

  ‘True enough,’ acknowledged Henry.

  ‘We shall have to hunt for bloodstains,’ said the Earl, but Henry shook his head.

  ‘I don’t suppose there are any,’ he said. ‘It looks to me as though the bleeding was all internal. Look.’

  He opened the lid of the chest and all four men stared down at what it contained, wearing expressions that ranged from sympathy to distaste.

  ‘Yes, I see what you mean,’ said Buchanan. ‘There’s not much blood at all, is there? Is there an exit wound?’

  ‘I haven’t looked yet,’ said Henry. ‘We’ll have to wait until the rigor wears off now before we can get him out and take a good look at him. Until then he can stay here. We don’t want news of this getting out and spreading all over the castle if we can help it.’

  Just then there was a soft knock at the door and Claude Burford entered the room, accompanied by Gabe Bradley, who was looking somewhat the worse for wear and slightly shame-faced.

  ‘Ah,’ said Aubrey. ‘Our first witness. You don’t look too clever, Gabe.’

  Gabe muttered something about feeling under the weather, but Claude could not wait for him to finish.

  ‘I came here as soon as I heard. Is it true about Professor Klausen?’ he demanded, looking from one serious face to another as though to seek confirmation in their eyes.

  ‘I’m afraid so, Claude,’ said Lord Strathmerrick. ‘And if that weren’t bad enough, he doesn’t seem to be carrying any documents with him.’