by Evelyn James
Betty gave a wail.
“I killed him! I pulled the trigger and he fell to the floor! I was so shocked! I bent down and told him to get up, and he didn’t move! Then I heard someone coming down the hall and I panicked! I was near all these old rooms and I thought I would hide in one. I stumbled through the nearest door, but I could hear the person behind me running and I thought they had seen me.
“It was awful! I stumbled into this small table and quickly moved it aside, then I ran to the window and just grabbed at it and, to my amazement, it flew up! I have never moved so fast as in that moment! I climbed out the window and was lucky there was a drainpipe below. I clambered down it and ran as fast as I could when I hit the ground. I threw away the gun at the nearest patch of bushes. I should have taken it with me, I suppose, but I didn’t know what to do and I was so upset!
“Please, please understand, I never, ever meant to kill my poor Harvey!”
Betty scrunched the handkerchief in her hands and her face contorted into a picture of anguish.
“I told myself he wasn’t dead,” she gulped in air as she spoke. “I told myself I had stunned him. I believed that too, until you came Miss Fitzgerald and told me the truth.”
Betty snuffled and gasped, her throat tight with her intense feelings of guilt, remorse and terrible, terrible grief.
“You… can… arrest me… now,” she held out her hands, each word requiring a moment to squeeze out through the sorrow. “I did it!”
Inspector Park-Coombs twitched his moustache. He looked downcast and Clara knew exactly how he was feeling, because she was feeling just the same. Betty had been ill-used. Whichever way you looked at it, Harvey had played a cruel hoax on her as much as the family and had brought her to the brink of despair. He didn’t deserve to die for it, but it was easy to see how Betty had been pushed to the limit by his actions and had struck out without thinking. After all, Angelica had been driven to madness by the events of the last few days. Surely what Betty had done had also been an act of madness?
“The constable will escort you to the station,” Park-Coombs said to Betty. “Then we shall need all this in a statement and I shall have to press charges.”
“I understand, Inspector,” Betty had calmed a fraction. “I shall not protest anything.”
Betty rose with a surprising amount of dignity and the inspector walked her to the door of the library, where she was handed over to the constable’s care. Once they were gone, Park-Coombs turned to Clara.
“Not an arrest I take any pleasure in,” he muttered.
“The shame of it all is that Harvey was doing this masquerade for Betty. Admittedly, he did clearly court the American heiress under his mother’s instructions, but only until he could figure out a way to change her mind about his marriage to Betty,” Clara shrugged.
“What a mess,” Park-Coombs grabbed up the gun from the floor. “Sometimes I wish I hadn’t solved a case.”
He put the gun on the table.
“At least his lordship will be relieved it was a not a member of the immediate family,” he said.
“Cold comfort,” Clara remarked. “But the matter is resolved. We know how and why Harvey was killed and also the mechanics of the charade he played on his family. It will not make things any better, but at least we understand.”
“Hmm,” Park-Coombs stared at the gun thoughtfully. “Has it crossed your mind that things would have been a lot simpler if Harvey had actually been a corpse returned from the dead?”
“Now you are being silly, Inspector.”
“You know, some of the lads were quite worried they might find a hoard of the undead on the estate. I really despair,” the inspector huffed. “I blame it on watching too many of these horror movies that are on at the picture house nearly every week.”
“How do you explain the reaction of the Howtons?” Clara chuckled.
“Oh,” Park-Coombs considered for a moment. “That is due to too much heritage.”
He wafted his hand about at the books on the shelves, some of them several centuries old.
“Yes, too much heritage. A man must live in the present and always be looking forward,” he was satisfied with his answer and looked it.
Clara smirked to herself.
“As you say, Inspector,” she said.
They walked to the gun room and replaced the revolver in its case. It looked slightly sinister on its own, without its partner.
“Harvey was a fool. A clever fool, but a fool nonetheless,” Park-Coombs said. “He made life extremely complicated for himself. Whatever happened to just talking to people?”
“Some people will not be talked to,” Clara thought of Angelica.
“Well, he paid a high price for his jest,” Park-Coombs stroked his moustache. “The newspapers will have a field day with this one. Just the sort of thing to whet their appetite.”
“If Angelica had not lost her mind already, I fear this would have done it,” Clara agreed.
Chapter Thirty
Clara was packing her bags when Lord Howton found her in the guest bedroom.
“Miss Fitzgerald, I would like to thank you for your efforts in this affair,” Lord Howton stood in the doorway, hands in his pockets, looking somewhat baffled by the whole business, but, nonetheless, satisfied. “My wife and I would like to extend a final dinner invitation to you and the inspector, as an acknowledgement of your work and discretion. Will you accept?”
Clara closed the lid of her suitcase. She was looking forward to getting home and being among sensible, sane people who did not believe the dead could rise from their graves. However, she could see Lord Howton was offering a genuine gesture of thanks and it would be rude to decline for no good reason.
“Of course I will accept,” Clara answered. “I am sorry the outcome was not a happier one.”
“I am not so much sorry for us,” Lord Howton said, “excepting Angelica, but I am sorry for the girl, Betty. I think she was ill-used.”
Lord Howton became downcast.
“I have already decided that I shall pay all her expenses. I know of a very good barrister I hope to persuade to represent her. I think there are many mitigating circumstances and she should avoid the death penalty,” he confided.
“I think that is a very generous thing to do,” Clara nodded. “And, I agree, this was an extreme situation. Betty did not mean to kill Harvey.”
“No, that has been explained to me,” Lord Howton walked across the room and picked up a little trinket box that sat on a dresser. “While Harvey is at fault in all this, I find myself questioning my own actions, or rather my failings. I clearly did not make him feel at home here. He would not have gone through this ridiculous charade had that been otherwise.”
“There was a lot of bitterness about Harvey,” Clara said. “Bitterness instilled by his mother, as much as by the rivalry between him and Richard.”
“They were like brothers as boys,” his lordship sighed heavily. “I should not have allowed the tension between their mothers to destroy that. I had a duty to Harvey, but I overlooked it. I might excuse myself by saying I was extremely busy, my father’s death placed great burdens upon me, and I discovered the estate was in an alarming degree of debt. But that does not really excuse me.”
“You are in debt?” Clara said in surprise. “I thought the Howtons were the wealthiest family in the country?”
“On paper,” Lord Howton gave her a wane smile. “On paper, when our assets are put together, we are indeed the wealthiest. But the wealth is tied up in land and things, not actual money in the bank. I have worked these last two decades to reduce that shortfall and make the estates profitable again. It is still an ongoing process.”
“So, the inheritance from your father..?” Clara asked.
“I inherited many debts and a title,” Lord Howton answered. “Angelica’s inheritance proved very disappointing to her.”
“Harvey thought she had a fortune, it was why he kept in her good graces.”
“She convinced him of that, I know it and I suppose I should have disillusioned him,” Lord Howton gave a gruff snort. “But, I was annoyed by his attitude to his mother and I rather felt it would serve him right if he discovered all his efforts had been in vain one day. If only I had not been so churlish these events might not have occurred.”
“The reason Angelica wanted Harvey to marry an American heiress was not just one-upmanship over the rest of the family, it was because she knew without such a wife he would be thrust into poverty.”
“There would always be a place for him here,” Lord Howton promised. “He was my brother, after all.”
“But he would have been reliant on your charity, much like his mother. Oh, now I see why she was so angry about his marriage to Betty! It was not just pride, it was the desperate knowledge that one day her son would be penniless because she had connived to fool him over her own situation!”
“Our lies always come back to haunt us,” Lord Howton nodded sadly.
“Is Angelica still the same?” Clara asked tentatively. Insanity was always something to tiptoe around.
“Her condition is unchanged. The doctor can give me no firm answers as to whether she will recover or not. I hope for the former, I hate to think of her spending the remainder of her life in such a state.”
Clara could not say for sure what would be the better option for Angelica. It all depended on precisely where her mind was at the moment. If it was somehow at peace, restful, then would it be a kindness to rouse her when all that awaited her was great despair and unhappiness?
“Naturally I shall see that everything that can be done, is done for her,” Lord Howton continued. “My wife feels very aggrieved about the situation too. I think she feels she, in part, drove Angelica to this state. She now feels guilty over her antagonism towards her. She has said she will tend Angelica as dearly as if she were a beloved sister. I think she looks upon it as a penance.”
Clara could not help feeling that the Howtons were a very troubled family, with a lot of anguish and anger running among them. But she said nothing.
“While I am thinking of things, I should pass on the appreciation of your assistance felt by my children. I am certain they will express their gratitude to you at some point, but just in case, rest assured they are very grateful of your actions in this matter.”
Clara wondered if they would have felt so grateful to her had one of them proven to be the killer. She couldn’t help feeling that everyone was most relieved that the killer was someone outside of the family.
There was a sudden heavy thud outside the window. Clara walked across the room and peered out into the grounds. A cluster of workmen were stood about Harvey’s mausoleum and were in the process of removing its roof.
“You have wasted no time!” Clara said, somewhat amazed by the rather unseemly haste with which the monstrosity was being removed.
Lord Howton joined her at the window.
“It was never really meant to house him,” he said. “It was a prop in his game and it seemed wrong to leave it standing. It is a reminder of all the bad things that have happened these last few days. Worse, it is a reminder of the cruel prank Harvey played on us. No, I thought it best it go sooner rather than later.”
Clara could see the logic, but she still thought it was a very sudden thing to do under the circumstances. The next moment, her curiosity got the better of her sense of priorities.
“Excuse me a moment, Lord Howton.”
Clara headed downstairs and outside. The autumn wind whipped leaves about her legs and there was a chill in the air that made her regret not grabbing for her coat as she hurried outside. Oh well, she would not be long.
She walked to the mausoleum and paused near the group of estate workmen bringing about its destruction. They had so far removed a portion of the roof and were adjusting their ropes to remove the next portion. One man was up a ladder, using a chisel to work lose the cement holding the roof stones in place.
“I would like to look inside,” Clara declared to them.
All the workmen turned and stared at her in astonishment.
“Look inside?” an older man stepped forward and looked Clara up and down as if she was a mad woman. “Whatever for?”
Clara smiled at him.
“I want to know how he did it,” she answered. “What went into the mausoleum in the place of Harvey Howton.”
The older man now looked around him at his crew, clearly astounded by Clara’s request.
“Actually,” one of his workmen piped up. “I was wondering the same.”
The workman on the roof put down his chisel.
“I hadn’t liked to say before,” he spoke, “but I had been thinking the same and had been somewhat concerned at what we might find. Now, as we know Harvey was never in this here tomb, I have to ask myself, who is?”
“You lot are not suggesting there is another body in this here crypt?” the head workman glowered at his men.
“Would it be so hard to switch a dead tramp for himself?” the rooftop workman pondered. “Don’t we all remember there was that vagrant wandering about just a few days before Master Harvey’s supposed accident. But we saw no more of him after the funeral.”
“Tramps move on,” the head workman grumbled.
“I am just pointing out, how it might have been done. Got to be said, Master Harvey was clearly not averse to getting his hands dirty.”
“It is one thing to pretend to be dead and another to kill a man to act as your corpse,” the head workman declared sharply. “That is a very dangerous thing you are saying up there, George!”
“Master Harvey was clearly up to no good,” George, the man on the roof, stuck to his guns. “What was he doing sneaking about the hall at night when everyone was abed? I heard tell he was going to kill his mother!”
“That is silly gossip!” the head workmen snapped, trying to stop the unhealthy talk.
“Is it?” George said. “Then what was he about, then?”
“The laundry maid told me that she heard he was going to smother his lordship in his bed and then Master Richard, so that he could miraculously be discovered alive and inherit the estate!” said the young workman on the ground.
The head workman was growing red with indignation at the talk. Clara decided to intercede.
“Whatever Harvey intended, it cannot be done now. All I want to know was what he substituted for himself in that coffin,” she said. “Could we take a look?”
“I’m not opening it!” George announced, hastening to clamber down his ladder. “I’m not being confronted by a dead tramp!”
“For crying out loud!” the head workman snarled. He wrenched the chisel and hammer out of George’s hands and set to work on the door of the mausoleum himself.
The cement that held the front piece of the tomb in place slowly chipped away and fell to the grass. A carving, halfway between a lion and a gargoyle, accidentally broke loose in the process, but it hardly mattered now. The weird, meaningless script on the stone would soon be gone, along with it the ugly decorations, purloined from a dozen cultures in a mismatched fashion. A stone suddenly jerked loose and was pulled free. More followed, the plaster that had masked their joins cracking and crumbling to dust. The more that the mausoleum was hacked down, the plainer it became how cheaply and shoddily it had been put up in the first place. It would probably not have lasted a year or so exposed to the English seasons.
“Who put up the mausoleum?” Clara asked George who was now stood beside her.
He shrugged.
“Some men Harvey had hired. He didn’t get any of us estate workmen to do it.”
Clara could see why. Had the estate workmen put up the tomb they would have learned of the poor quality of its component parts and would have wondered why Harvey was allowing his final resting place to be built so crudely. Harvey didn’t need those sort of questions circulating about the estate.
The last of the stones that comprised the door came free a
nd Clara was able to step inside. She glanced up suspiciously at the roof, now missing a section, just in case it looked in danger of falling on her. She noted at once that the inside of the tomb was built of wood, the walls were not made of stone like the external ones, but plastered and painted to look like it.
“Yes, I noted that when we pulled down the first piece,” the head workman saw her gazing around. “This place is just a façade, nothing more.”
But there was a coffin. It stood in the middle of the mausoleum on a plinth. It was elegant and stylish, paid for by Lord Howton and therefore the one thing in this place that was not a stage prop. Harvey had no doubt smirked at seeing his brother pay a fortune for this smart coffin when he was not actually dead.
“Open it carefully,” Clara said to the head workman who was about to insert a crowbar under the lid of the coffin. “It might as well be reused.”
He caught her tone and called out for a screwdriver instead. Then he carefully removed the screws that held down the lid of the coffin. Once they were all gone, he paused and looked at Clara.
“Don’t lose your nerve now,” Clara said. “I don’t think he killed any tramps. Harvey was not a murderer.”
She placed her hands under the lid on one side, the head workman placed his hands under the other and then they lifted together.
The coffin revealed its ‘corpse’. It was full of red bricks. Just enough to give it the right weight when carried. Sitting on the top was a scrap of paper. It had been glued to several bricks so it would not move. There was a message on it from Harvey;
“If you expected to find me dead, you’ll have to try harder!” It stated in bold letters.
Clara sighed to herself.
“Sorry old boy, but I won’t.”