by Evelyn James
Genevieve appeared not to have slept since the discovery of Harvey. She looked to have lain wide awake, fretting about the possibility of being considered a murder suspect. Her eyes were darting back and forth, starting at any hint of a footstep on the stairs that might indicate a policeman’s arrival to arrest her.
“I really talked some rot, I know, but I am not a murderer,” Genevieve insisted to Clara. “I would never have harmed Harvey. He was family.”
“Where were you when everything happened?” Clara asked her.
“In bed. Asleep. I never heard a sound. My room is some distance from where Harvey was…” Genevieve clutched a trembling hand to her mouth. “I keep thinking that someone among us all killed him, murdered him. Perhaps it was by accident; a wild, fearful shot in the dark. Or maybe it was by design. That scares me the most.”
“Try not to upset yourself,” Clara told her gently. “The investigation is barely begun. It will soon become plain who is innocent and who is not.”
“I am innocent,” Genevieve repeated, assuming Clara was suggesting otherwise.
“I never said you were not. Besides, I believe you stated you were going to wing the intruder with a shotgun blast?”
“Yes,” Genevieve nodded. “I never would have thought of using the revolver. It is not my sort of weapon. And you can do such damage with a thing like that. A shotgun, at a distance, would be unlikely to kill someone, but would give them a nasty shock.”
Clara saw her point.
“Be assured, I am looking into this matter also and will find out the truth, even if the police do not,” Clara promised. “As long as you are innocent, you have nothing to fear.”
“Thank you Miss Fitzgerald,” Genevieve breathed deeply.
Then she gave a start as they both heard a voice echoing up the staircase and the tread of feet.
“They are coming!” Genevieve hissed dramatically, rather like she was in a stage play. “I am going to my room and will be locking the door!”
She started to disappear, then turned back to Clara.
“Protect us, Miss Fitzgerald, please!”
Clara watched her disappear speedily around the corner of the hallway, before looking back to the main stairs. Inspector Park-Coombs appeared at the top a second later. He looked worried, which was never a good sign. There was a police constable behind him and, carried in a handkerchief, he was holding a gun. Even at a quick glance, Clara was fairly confident it was the same gun that had once been proudly sitting in the display case downstairs.
“Hello again Clara,” Park-Coombs said as he neared her. “I don’t suppose you know where Richard Howton is?”
“The study,” Clara pointed down the corridor. “I will show you.”
She led the inspector to where she had last seen Richard. He was still stood by the window staring out into the grounds. His hands were clasped behind his back and he tipped his head forward like a man deep in his own unhappy thoughts.
“Richard Howton?” Inspector Park-Coombs addressed him.
Richard turned around.
“Might this be your revolver which went missing?” Park-Coombs held out the gun towards Richard.
Richard stepped forward and gave it a brief look.
“Yes, Inspector. That is my Webley.”
“It seems to have recently been fired. I hear it was still loaded when put in the display case?”
“Yes,” Richard answered simply. “In a rather superstitious moment, I decided it should retain the last bullet ever loaded into it. Barring that one bullet, the gun was empty. I developed a morbid obsession about the fact I heard of the Armistice a second before I fired that last bullet. I found myself unable to remove it. It seemed… poignant.”
The inspector made no comment on this oddity.
“Who knew the gun was still loaded?” Park-Coombs asked.
“Anyone who cared to read the label in the display case. My father is very thorough about recording the history of the objects in this house and he types out notices to be displayed next to them. He wrote up the story of the last bullet in my revolver and mounted it in the back of the case.”
“Anyone could know the revolver was loaded, then,” Clara observed.
Richard shrugged.
“I suppose, over these last three years, quite a number of people have visited the hall as guests and read the notice. It was not a secret,” Richard’s eyes wandered to the revolver, a strange look coming into them. “I never thought my revolver would ever be fired again. I feel as if some sort of private bond has been broken. As if this will herald a time of terribleness for the family.”
“It is just a gun,” Clara reminded him. “The bullet had no more magic to it than any other. It was a thing, made in a factory by very ordinary hands. Don’t fear the future over something so mundane.”
Richard had turned grey. Clara’s words had not reached him. He stared at the gun as if it was the catalyst for the end of the world. It might as well have been pointed at him for the horror in his face.
Inspector Park-Coombs flicked his moustache side-to-side with a twitch of his nose.
“We will be taking the gun with us. It is evidence,” he said.
“Yes, Inspector,” Richard’s voice sounded dry and distant. “Take it, the thing only fills me with dread now.”
The inspector nodded solemnly, then he left the room, handing the revolver to his constable.
“Get that to the station, Riley.”
The constable took the gun carefully and departed in a hurry. Clara appeared by the inspector’s side.
“Curious lot, this family,” Park-Coombs remarked to her. “Rather obsessed with death.”
He cast his eyes around the corridor they were in. The walls were lined with old paintings of people long dead, some were family members, others were strangers. They were interspersed with landscapes, but even they seemed to be harking back to a time long gone. The sensation of mortality was not helped by various cases of stuffed animals that had infiltrated the hallways of the house when the great hall became overwhelmed. Dead pheasants strutted alongside wide-eyed hares, and a great number of squirrels. Some had been placed into whimsical scenes of tea parties or duels, dressed in the fashions of the day. It was all extremely grim.
“Superstitious too,” Park-Coombs pointed to a rabbit’s foot, ancient and moth-eaten, that hung from the picture frame of a painting depicting the hall. “Folks like this spend too much time lost in their own worlds. They stop living and moving forward, too impaled by the memories of the past. I’d clear the whole place out.”
“Probably that is why people like you and I do not have titles and live in great houses,” Clara smiled at him.
“Hmm,” Park-Coombs made the sound almost under his breath. “You can see why in a place like this people would start to believe in ghouls.”
“You’ve heard the story of Harvey’s resurrection, then?” Clara asked.
“At great length, from various members of the family and also the more talkative servants. What is your take on it?”
“Harvey played the hoax for a reason and knowing full well the family would believe in it. I still haven’t worked out his motive, but I have a good idea who within the house was assisting him.”
“Faking one’s own death, just so you can play-act as a ghost, is pretty bizarre. I swear there is a streak of insanity running through these noble families,” Park-Coombs twitched his moustache again and dropped his voice. “A little too much inbreeding.”
Clara was amused.
“Harvey certainly went to great lengths to scare his relatives. I don’t think he intended to genuinely die, however.”
“No, I would guess not. And we still don’t know why he came into the hall. It’s all very sinister, however. A man who can think up something like that must have considerable darkness in his soul.”
Clara had no response to that observation. Instead, she asked;
“Do you think Richard a suspect?”
&nb
sp; “The gun is his,” Park-Coombs stated the obvious. “Many would consider that proof enough.”
“But you?” Clara asked.
“Hmm, I rather think a man like Richard would not pick up a weapon he knew would be linked to him so easily.”
Clara was glad to learn the inspector was thinking along the same lines as her.
“My thoughts exactly, and I feel this event was all prearranged by someone who knew Harvey was going to enter the hall. Just the act of getting the gun required time, not something done in haste when faced by an intruder,” Clara paused. “Richard said he saw someone going into a room where Harvey was shot. I don’t think Richard is lying when he says he saw another intruder about the hall and they gave him the slip.”
“He would like us to think the murderer is an outsider,” Park-Coombs pointed out bluntly. “No one, especially not an aristocrat, wants a member of their family labelled a killer.”
“It would explain the gun in the bushes,” Clara replied.
“I could also argue that Richard threw the revolver from his study window. The bushes are in a direct line and it would not be so hard a throw.”
“Just bear with me on this one,” Clara countered. “It will only take a moment to look at the room Richard mentioned and to see if anything can back his story.”
Park-Coombs huffed to himself, but he made no further argument as Clara led the way to the murder scene.
The servants had worked hard on the rug and floorboards to remove the unsightly blood stain, but Clara could still see a vague outline and thought that the rug would certainly need to be replaced. The floorboards might be sanded and freshly waxed to remove the mark from them, but it would take considerable effort. Better to just get a new, larger, rug to hide the spot.
“Richard’s bedroom is on the far side of the stairs,” Clara explained. “He came along and saw someone disappear into one of these four rooms near where the body was. Since Harvey fell close to the two rooms on our right and Richard was able to step past the body to follow the intruder, I would suggest we narrow our inspection to these two rooms on our left.”
Clara opened the doors to both rooms. One, as she had noted before, was a forgotten bedroom, the other was being utilised for storing items not wished to be displayed, but still wanted within easy reach. This included empty trunks, wooden skis, some wintry paintings and a dusty full silver dinner service. The room was so full of such items that it was impossible to reach the window on the far wall easily. Park-Coombs shook his head.
“No one came through here,” he pointed to the dust on the floor which was unmarred but for their own footsteps. “Clearly this room is not on the cleaning rota.”
They exited the room and went into the one next door. This had the feel of the realm of a ghost. The bed was still made as if awaiting its occupant and the old mementoes of a forgotten life sat silently watching Clara and the inspector as they entered. There was a nasty damp patch on the ceiling and Clara recalled what Diana had said about many of the bedrooms no longer being habitable. She wondered, if she were to touch the old bed, whether it would fall to pieces in her hands. There was a draught in the room and Clara shivered.
“The window is just a little open,” Park-Coombs spotted. He went to the window and lifted it up to its full height. He was going to look outside, so he let go of the window, the pane instantly crashed down to within an inch of being closed. “The sash is worn. The window won’t hold open.”
“Which explains why I did not see an open window when I was pushing the doors of these rooms open to let in light,” Clara came to the window. “That drainpipe just outside would be fit for climbing, if you were nimble.”
Park-Coombs snorted. He did not do a lot of climbing.
Clara cast her eyes about the room further. The marks of the intruder might be minimal, but she was sure they would be there. She stepped forward and hesitated.
“A leaf, Inspector,” she picked up the orange leaf, still damp from the dew outside. “Fallen off the intruder’s shoe.”
“Or blown through the gap in the window.”
“Why was the window open at all?” Clara argued. “This room is damp enough as it is without leaving the window ajar all year round.”
Park-Coombs could not object to that. He started to look around the room with fresh eyes. Like the other room, this one was rarely cleaned and there was a thin veneer of dust over the surface of the furniture. However, there was a large rug on the floor which, though also dusty, did not show footprints like bare boards might. Park-Coombs traced the path an intruder would make from window to door.
“Look at that,” he said, somewhat amused. “I think you may be right, Clara.”
Clara joined him to look at a spot on the rug. There were indentations in the pile, as if something heavy had stood there. They both looked around them and Clara pointed out a small round table, now stood against the wall.
“Does that not look awkward there?” she asked the inspector.
Inspector Park-Coombs went to the table and examined it.
“Finger prints in the dust,” he observed, before picking it up and moving it back to the rug. It fitted the indentations perfectly. “So, in the dark our intruder stumbles into this table which would have been blocking the direct route to the door, and they moved it to one side.”
Park-Coombs smiled.
“Well, well, Clara, someone did come in from outside.”
“More importantly,” Clara replied. “Richard Howton was not lying.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
Clara headed downstairs and to the back of the hall. It took her a while to figure out which window connected to the room upstairs where they had found evidence of an intruder. The windows had a tendency to look all the same from the outside, but when she noticed the large drainpipe, she knew she had found the right one. She had been hopeful of glimpsing footprints in the ground below the window. Unfortunately, this part of the hall had a gravel path running flush with the walls. There was no trace of footprints. Only some torn tendrils of ivy still clinging to the wall, and a broken piece of drainpipe, indicated where the intruder had been.
Clara turned her back to the hall and looked out across the grounds. The grass had been wet last night, but the autumn sun had dried it and with it any lingering tracks left by someone running away. Clara was disappointed. The killer had evaporated into the night, like the demon Harvey had pretended to be.
She was about to go back inside and continue questioning the family, when she heard the crunch of feet on the gravel path. Looking right, she was in time to see Jimmy and Charlie coming around the corner of the house with big rakes. They both looked sombre and were silent as they trudged along. Clara moved from the wall and stood in their path. The brothers paused moodily, clearly not appreciating her presence.
“I think you both have some explaining to do,” Clara placed her hands on her hips and faced them squarely. Her tone was stern. “You lied to me.”
The brothers exchanged a look with each other. Charlie started to open his mouth, a squeak of an excuse coming out.
“He seemed dea…”
“Don’t even try that one,” Clara interrupted him sharply. “Because I won’t believe a word of it. If this had all been a genuine mistake, Harvey would not have been masquerading as a dead man. You witnessed him drown, you told me you pulled him ashore and informed Mr Crawley. You carried him to the house. And in all that time, you really want me to believe you could not tell he was alive? He may have fooled those who never came near him, but not the two men who carried him. You had to know he was alive.”
The under-gardeners dropped their heads in unified shame.
“You both served in the war. You know what a dead man looks and feels like,” Clara persisted. “It is time you admitted the truth.”
“What truth?” Jimmy muttered petulantly.
Clara sighed crossly, annoyed she was going to have to spell things out for him before he would confess.
“The truth that you helped Harvey to fake his own death. For what purpose I don’t know, but you were key members in the hoax. You could witness the ‘drowning’ and report it to Crawley, who was also involved in the plan. Then you would make sure you carried Harvey to the hall, preventing anyone not initiated in the scheme from touching him and realising he was still alive,” Clara glared at them both. “There are policemen here. If you will not confess to me, I can soon enough tell them what you did and have you confess to them. You were involved in a conspiracy with Harvey, I am sure the inspector would like to hear about it.”
The two men dropped their heads lower and shuffled their feet.
“Did we commit a crime?” Charlie asked.
“That very much depends on Harvey’s intentions. What did he hope to gain by this charade?”
“We really don’t know that,” Charlie quickly replied. “I swear to that. So will Jimmy. Harvey asked us for help and we gave it.”
“We owed Harvey an awful lot,” Jimmy interrupted.
“Because he saved Charlie’s life,” Clara nodded. “I do understand your loyalty to him.”
“It was more than loyalty, we owed him,” Jimmy insisted. “He asked a favour and we were glad to help him.”
“What precisely did he ask you?”
Jimmy glanced at Charlie and the brothers started to clam up again. Clara was growing impatient.
“I am going to fetch a policeman!” she declared.
“No, miss, please!” Charlie begged, almost dropping his rake. “Our mam would break her heart if we got in trouble with the police.”
“Then talk to me!” Clara demanded. “You owe Harvey nothing now, except to help me find his killer. You want justice for him, don’t you?”
The two brothers nodded simultaneously.
“Well, it seems his faked death was intrinsically linked to his murder, one way or the other. Explaining how he played this hoax might help solve the question of who killed him too.”
“What happened to Harvey, miss? All we know is he is dead,” Charlie looked bleak.