“Did you do anything more?”
The vicar shook his head. “I’m afraid not. I realize now that I should have done, but it rather slipped my mind.” He looked round at Dr. Dabbe, his silent assistant, Burns, and Constable Crosby, and said apologetically, “I fear that I underestimated the importance of poor Meredith’s discovery—whatever it was.”
Sloan nodded. “I daresay you did, sir.”
“Meredith often got excited about his work, you know, Inspector.” Clearly this was going to take a good deal of expiation on the vicar’s part.
“I understand, sir. You thought he was crying wolf.”
“I think”—very fairly—“that we all tend to exaggerate what is important to us and to diminish what others regard as important.”
But it was after all that that Mr. Ames really began to assist the police in their enquiries.
Not in the usual sense.
“I thought that this would be the particular suit of armor,” he said, “as soon as I heard about the tragedy.”
“Why?” demanded Sloan sharply.
“It disarticulates more easily than the others.”
“You don’t say,” murmured Dr. Dabbe, who hadn’t yet been able to disarticulate it at all.
“Who all would know that?” asked Sloan.
“Everyone,” said the vicar blithely. “It’s the one I demonstrate on when people come. A most interesting piece if I may say so. Poor Meredith. A real expert in his own field, you know.”
“It’s a question of the post-mortem, Vicar,” intervened Dr. Dabbe, anxious to get on in his own line of expertise.
“Quite so. Now, you’ve got the skull off, I see.”
Someone had also almost got Meredith’s skull off, too, and Mr. Ames winced visibly at the sight.
“Yes,” agreed Dabbe, “but that’s not enough for the coroner.”
“Of course not.” Mr. Ames nodded rapidly. “What you want to do is to get down to the … er … ah … um …”
“Body,” said Dabbe.
“Ere … quite so. Well, it’s not difficult.”
“Can I get this off for a start?” asked the doctor.
“The pauldron? Only if you remove the besaque …”
Detective Inspector Sloan motioned to Crosby and they both stood aside for a few moments, the better to relish the edifying situation of someone using long words that the doctor did not understand.
Dr. Dabbe leaned forward and caught his sleeve on a protruding hook as he did so. He swore under his breath.
“Ah, you’ve found the lance rest then, Doctor.” That was Mr. Ames.
“Let us say,” murmured the pathologist pleasantly, “rather that it found me.”
“Perhaps it might be as well to start with the gauntlets and couters. Then we can get the vambraces off.”
“That will be a great help, I’m sure.”
“Well, you’ll be able to see the hands and forearms,” said the vicar practically, “but the breastplate and the corsets are really what …”
“I beg your pardon?”
“The breastplate and corsets …”
“Corsets?”
“That’s right.”
“So that’s where it all began …”
“The corselet was a sort of half-armor,” explained Mr. Ames academically, “but these are true corsets.”
“Well, well, well …”
“Made in pairs, usually hinged, and tailored to fit.”
“You don’t say. And that?”
The vicar coughed. “The codpiece, and now”—hastily—“to get the gorget off …”
The figure of an elderly man in a dark gray suit was beginning to emerge.
Blood had run down the back of the neck and onto the collar and suit, and had dried there.
As the vicar deftly loosened the corset, the body started to keel over.
8
Drawn together by the unexpected, the family had stayed together in a group in the sitting room of the private apartments. They were still there when Charles Purvis got back from Ornum village with William Murton.
Murton made a little mock bow towards them.
“You wanted to see me?” he said. There was the faintest of ironic stresses on the word “wanted.”
“Thought we’d better put you in the picture, William,” the Earl said gruffly. “Something of a mishap …”
“Yes?”
“Meredith’s been found dead in the armory …”
“In a suit of armor, actually,” added Lord Henry quickly. “In the suit we called Grumpy. Do you remember Grumpy?”
William Murton nodded. “I remember Grumpy all right.” He frowned. “Second on the right on the way in.”
“That’s right,” said the Earl heavily.
There was a slight pause, then:
“Poor Ossy,” said William. William Murton was a strange admixture of physical characteristics. He was heavier than the Cremonds but he, too, had the Cremond nose. With it, though, he had a flamboyance of manner missing in the others. “Somebody put him there, I take it?”
“Quite so,” said the Earl.
“When?”
“Nobody seems to have seen him since Friday.”
“I came down on Friday,” said William, “seeing as you probably don’t like to ask.”
“When on Friday?” said Laura Cremond harshly.
William turned towards her with an expressionless face. “In the afternoon, Laura. When did you come down?”
She flushed. “Thursday.”
“We came down for the match,” mumbled Miles.
“Match?” said William Murton, looking round at everybody. “Match?”
“You know,” said Miles eagerly. “Ornum versus Petering.”
“Tiddledywinks?”
“Cricket.”
Laura Cremond said, “He’s teasing you, Miles.”
“Cricket,” said William, slapping his thigh. “Of course. That reminds me—I had some money on that.”
Miles stared at him. “Money on a cricket match?”
“That’s right, old boy.”
“But people never …”
“Gents don’t,” said William. “People do. Who won?”
“We did.”
“Good. Thought you would. Old Lambert owes me a fiver then.”
“Ebeneezer Lambert never backed a winner in his life,” observed the Earl sadly. “Same in my father’s day. Poor judge of horses.”
“And men,” said William.
“Men?”
“He was a friend of my father’s, you know.”
“Quite so,” said the Earl.
“You could have almost called them colleagues,” went on William bitterly, “seeing how Lambert was a saddler and my father was a groom.”
“Quite so,” said the Earl again.
“Only colleague isn’t quite the right word when it comes to following a trade, is it?”
“Craft,” said the Earl mildly. “You worry too much about the past, William. It’s all over now.”
“Me worry about the past? I like that! You’ve all got a full-time man here doing nothing much else except poke about into family history. And if that isn’t worrying about the past I don’t know what is.”
“Only we haven’t got him any more,” said Lord Henry diffidently, “have we?”
William turned towards his cousin. “No more you have. Met with a nasty accident, did he?”
“So it would seem,” said Henry. “The police are down in the armory now. Then they want to see us all.”
“It’s a pity,” observed William to no one in particular, “that it should happen just when Ossy was getting on so well, isn’t it?”
“Very.”
“Or was I misinformed?”
“No.”
“There are those,” added Murton meaningfully, “who might say that meddling with the past is downright dangerous, aren’t there?”
“There are,” agreed Lord Henry, “and who’s to sa
y they aren’t right?” Alone of the rest of the family Miss Gertrude Cremond was not in the sitting-room. She was still presiding over the room devoted to the display of fine china.
Detective Inspector Sloan found her there by the simple process of following the route that the public took through the house. It was, he decided, rather like playing one of those games based on the maze principle. Each time he came to a dead end—in this case either a locked door or a thick, looped cord—he went back two paces and cast about in another direction.
Eventually he came to the china. It looked very beautiful in the long light of an early summer evening—which was more than could have been said for Miss Gertrude Cremond. She was shorter and squarer than the Earl, but still unmistakably a Cremond.
She had the nose.
She could not remember when she had last seen Osborne Meredith alive.
“He wasn’t really interested in the china, Inspector. Not as an expert, I mean.”
“I see, miss, thank you.” Some unmarried ladies Sloan called “miss,” some he called “madam.” There was a fine distinction between the two, which he wouldn’t have cared to have put into words and had nothing to do with age.
“But if I can help you at all in any other way …” said Miss Cremond.
“You deal with the china yourself, do you?”
“All of it,” she agreed. “And the flowers. Lady Eleanor helps me with the flowers when she is at home. As a rule we do those on Tuesdays and Fridays. We have fresh flowers in all the public rooms when the house is open.”
“Fridays you’ll be busy,” he said.
“Always.”
“This last Friday, can you remember what you did in the afternoon?”
“The great hall chandelier,” responded Miss Cremond promptly. “It took a long time—in fact I came back after tea to finish it off. You must have it hung back if the public are to be admitted. It would soon get broken if not.”
“Quite so, miss. And afterwards?”
She frowned. “It took me until it was time to change. Dillow hung it after dinner.”
“I see, miss, thank you.” He paused. “If you should remember noticing anything at all unusual about Friday evening I should be glad to be told.”
“Of course, Inspector.”
Sloan began to go. “Lady Alice tells me that she saw Judge Cremond on Friday evening.”
Subconsciously he had expected a light laugh and an apology for an eccentric old lady. What he got was:
“Oh, dear.” And a worried look came over Miss Gertrude Cremond’s plain face. “That’s a bad sign, I must say.”
“Well, Sloan?”
Sloan was back on the telephone to Berebury police headquarters.
“Dr. Dabbe has had a look at the body now, sir.”
Superintendent Leeyes grunted. “Well?”
“Depressed fracture, base of skull.”
“Not suicide then.”
“No, sir. Not accident either. Not unless someone popped the lid—I mean, the helmet—back on again afterwards, stood him in the right place, and dusted the floor all round.”
“Murder then.”
“I’m afraid so. Hit,” said Sloan pithily, “very hard on the back of the head with an instrument which may or may not have been blunt.”
“I suppose,” rejoined Superintendent Leeyes, “that we could have expected the traditional at Ornum.”
“Yes, sir. As to what did it …”
“If you mean weapon, Sloan, for heaven’s sake say so.”
Sloan coughed. “We’re a bit spoilt by choice for weapons, sir.”
“Are you?”
“There are one hundred and seventy-seven, sir, not counting two small cannon at the front door.”
“I don’t think”—nastily—“we need count the cannon, do you, Sloan?”
“No, sir.”
“What other sort of weapons do you have … er … on hand?”
Sloan took a deep breath. “What you might call assorted, sir. Very. Everything from a poleaxe to a partisan.”
“A what?”
“A partisan, sir. Of blued steel.” Sloan hesitated. Offering information to the superintendent could be a tricky business. “It’s like a halberd.”
“Is it, Sloan?”—dangerously. The only partisans known to the superintendent were his enemies on the watch committee. (The only place, if it came to that, where there was a resistance movement.) “I take it that a halberd is like a partisan?”
“No, sir—I mean, yes, sir.”
“Then you’d better find out exactly which one it was that killed him, hadn’t you?”
“Yes, sir.” He cleared his throat. “Constable Crosby’s started going through the catalogue now.”
“Catalogue?” echoed Leeyes. “And do you propose, Sloan, looking the murderer up in Who’s Who or some such similar publication?”
“No, sir”—patiently. “A catalogue of the weapons was made by the vicar, a Mr. Walter Ames, who’s something of an authority on arms and armor.”
“Is he indeed?”
“And Crosby’s going through it now.”
“I see.”
“The trouble, sir, is that the family’s been armigerous …”
“Been what?”
“Armigerous.”
“Where did you get that word?”
“The doctor used it, sir.”
“That,” said Leeyes severely, “doesn’t mean you should.”
“It’s a heraldic term, sir, not a medical one. It means the Ornums have been entitled to bear arms for a very long time. Like”—suddenly—“like police are allowed to carry truncheons.”
It was not a happy simile.
“Truncheons,” said Leeyes trenchantly. “What have truncheons got to do with it?”
“They are weapons we’re entitled to carry, sir. In the same way the Ornums were entitled to bear arms in the old days. That’s why there is so much of it about in the armory—to say nothing of the fact that the twelfth Earl was a great collector.”
“It seems to me,” said his superior officer pontifically, “that you are confusing arms with weapons. It’s a weapon you want, Sloan. And quickly.”
“Yes, sir.”
“What other long words did the doctor use?”
“He said he thought the deceased had been dead for roughly forty-eight hours.”
“Friday.”
“Yes, sir.”
“No one saw him alive on Saturday, I suppose?” The superintendent had no more faith in medical than in any other considered opinion.
“Not that I’ve heard about,” said Sloan carefully. “Teatime on Friday seems to have been the last occasion he was seen.”
“And how long had he been in the armor?”
“Dr. Dabbe couldn’t say, sir, but he thought he hadn’t been put into it until after rigor mortis had passed off.”
“That means the body must have been parked somewhere, Sloan.”
“Or just left, sir, where it was killed.”
“Where was that?”
“I don’t know, sir. Not yet. It’s big house.”
“Not,” sarcastically, “a room for every day of the year?”
“Not quite, sir, but …”
“But you haven’t quite mastered the geography yet, eh, Sloan? Is that it?”
That was one way of putting it.
Not a way Sloan himself would have chosen, but Superintendent Leeyes was not a man with whom to argue.
Instead of arguing Sloan said formally, “I have already interviewed some of those persons present in the house and warned them that I shall wish to talk to them again …”
A noncommittal grunt came down the line.
“I have also instigated enquiries about the present whereabouts of the deceased’s sister and am endeavouring to establish who was the last person to see him alive …”
“The last but one will do nicely for the time being, Sloan.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Th
ese people in the house …”
“The Ornums and their servants, sir.”
“I see. That’s the Earl …”
“And his wife, his cousin, his two aunts on his father’s side, his son and his daughter, his nephew, and his nephew’s wife.”
“Ha! The extended family, Sloan.” The superintendent had once read a book on sociology and felt he had mastered that tricky discipline.
“I beg your pardon, sir?”
“Nothing, Sloan. Just a technical term.”
“I see, sir. There is also an additional nephew.”
“Oh?”
“A Mr. William Murton.”
“Makes a change from Cremond, I suppose,” observed Leeyes.
“His mother was a Cremond. She married a groom.”
“She did what?” The superintendent, who dealt daily with sudden death, larceny, road traffic accidents, and generally saw the seamy side of human nature, was not easily shocked, but there were some things …
“She ran away with her groom,” said Sloan. “Mr. William Murton, the Earl’s nephew, is the outcome of the union.”
“And where does he come in?”
“I couldn’t say, sir. Not yet. He has a cottage in Ornum village which he uses—mostly at weekends. The rest of the time he lives in London. I understand he paints.”
The superintendent didn’t like that.
“And,” pursued Sloan, “there is also the Earl’s steward, a man called Charles Purvis. He lives in a little house in the park and comes all over a twitter whenever he looks at young Lady Eleanor.”
“Like that, is she?”
“No, sir”—repressively—“she is not. Apart,” he went on, “from this … er … one big happy family”—Sloan didn’t know if this was the same thing as an extended one or not—“there are the servants.”
“Loyal to the core, I suppose?”
“Well …”
“Above suspicion?”
That was not a term Sloan had been taught to use.
“Trusted to the hilt, then,” suggested Leeyes, who in his youth had been grounded in heroic fiction.
“No …”
“Been with them all their lives?” The superintendent was rapidly running out of phrases associated with family servants.
“No, sir. Oddly enough, not. The cook has. Started as a tweeny at twelve and worked her way up, but the housekeeper has only been there a couple of years and the butler rather less. About eighteen months. The other girl—I don’t know what you’d call her …”
The Stately Home Murder Page 8