The Stately Home Murder

by Catherine Aird

  “A roving eye,” said the Earl warmly, “that’s what that young man’s got. And no money to go with it.”

  “But he hasn’t got any children, dear, surely.”

  “Their mothers say he has.”

  “No!”

  “I understand,” said the Earl drily, “that there have been several unsuccessful attempts to get him as far as the altar.”

  “You mean …” A wave of comprehension swept over Millicent Ornum’s face.

  “I do. Paternity and maintenance.”

  “Well, really, Harry, I do think that’s the …”

  “Mother, there’s no use making a fuss now,” Eleanor interrupted her realistically. “After all, it comes from our side of the family.”

  “Eleanor!”

  “Well, it does. Aunt Elizabeth wasn’t known as Bad Betty for nothing.”

  This was too much for the Countess. She appealed to her husband.

  “Harry, I don’t need to remind you that your father would never have her name mentioned in this house as long as he lived.”

  “True, my dear, very true.” The Earl’s hand sought solace by his mustache. “Perhaps he was wiser than we knew. It does seem to lead to trouble. Shall I apply a similar interdiction?”

  But by then his wife had caught up with an earlier imputation.

  “Eleanor.”

  “Yes, Mother?”

  “William’s mother was not on our side of the family.”

  “She was …”

  “She was on your father’s side, which is different.”

  This being true of all families, noble and otherwise, Eleanor did not debate it. “Yes, Mother,” she said obediently.

  “I must say it’s not like William not to be on his beam ends by the time he comes down to Ornum,” Lord Henry changed the subject with the deftness of long experience.

  “I don’t like it,” reiterated the Earl. “I don’t like it at all.”

  Lord Henry, who lacked a mustache to tug, instead fondled the tassel of the chair cushion. “Laura and Gertrude don’t exactly hit it off, do they?”

  “Never have,” said his father. “Difficult woman, Gertrude.”

  “Laura’s no peacemaker either,” said Eleanor.

  “Rather not,” agreed Henry. He cleared his throat. “She and Miles were late for dinner on Friday.”

  “I noticed,” said the Earl heavily.

  “And she went to bed uncommonly early.”

  “I know.” A permanent air of melancholy seemed to have settled on the Earl of Ornum.

  “They’re staying on—Miles and Laura, I mean,” said the Countess, “because of this business about poor Mr. Meredith, and Dillow’s not having his day off today because of all the reporters coming.”

  There was a moment’s gloomy silence, and then:

  “There’s something else, isn’t there?” said Lady Eleanor.

  Her brother looked up. “What’s that?”

  “Something that no one seems to have thought about,” said Lady Eleanor. “We all think poor Ossy was murdered because he knew something.”

  “Yes …”

  “What we don’t know is why someone went to all that trouble to put him in the armor.”

  “To stop him being found,” said Lord Henry promptly. “His sister is away. He isn’t going to be really missed for ages.”

  “Exactly.” Eleanor waved a hand. “That’s what I mean. He might not have been found for days.”

  “So?”

  “So the delay was important. That’s right, Father, isn’t it?”

  The Earl sighed. “I’m afraid so, my dear.”

  “Why?” asked Lord Henry immediately.

  “I don’t know.”

  Every now and then Millicent Ornum came into the conversation with a remark that proved she had been listening.

  She did so now.

  “I expect,” she said brightly, “it’s because of something that hasn’t happened yet.”

  11

  Inspector Sloan telephoned Charles Purvis, the steward, at Ornum as soon as he could.

  “You’ll be having some visitors at the house today,” he said.

  “If you mean the press,” responded Purvis promptly, “they’re here now.”

  Sloan hadn’t meant the press. “No, the vicar. I want him to be there when we open up the armory again, and some people from our forensic laboratory. They’ll want to examine the library and the muniments room and so on …”

  “Very well, Inspector. I’ll see that they are allowed in.”

  “And the county archivist.”

  “Ah …”

  “With the Earl’s permission, that is. We’ve asked him to come over from the county record office at Calleford to examine the muniments for us.”

  “He’ll come all right,” said Charles Purvis cheerfully. “Like a shot.”

  “Oh?”

  “He’s been trying to get a really good look at them for years, only Meredith would never let him.”

  “Really?” Sloan tucked that fact away in his mind, too. “And I would like to see the four regular guides to the house, please. The ones who took people round this weekend.”

  Purvis promised to arrange this with them straightaway. “About eleven o’clock suit you for that, then, Inspector?”

  Sloan said that would do very nicely and rang off.

  Then for the second time P.C. Crosby drove him out to Ornum. On this occasion they stopped first in the village itself.

  Cremond Cottages was a neat little row of four dwellings, with the initials H.C. carved into a small tablet in the middle over the date 1822. Though it was by no means early by the time they knocked on the door of number four, William Murton had not yet shaved.

  “Ah, gentlemen, good morning, and welcome to my humble home.” There was the faintest of ironic stresses on the word “humble.” He ushered them in. “I thought you’d be along sooner or later.”

  The downstairs rooms of the cottage had been knocked together into one and decorated in a manner more redolent of town than country. There was a painting hanging over the fireplace that Sloan took to be an abstract. There was a large eye in one corner of it; the rest was an unidentifiable mixture of color and design.

  Constable Crosby saw the picture as he entered the room and took a deep breath.

  Sloan said swiftly, “Is that your own work, Mr. Murton?”

  The artist nodded. “My grandmother—my paternal grandmother, needless to say, was fond of texts on walls. She had this one hanging over her bed.”

  “This one?”—faintly.

  “Well, the same thing in words. I prefer to express the idea in paint, that’s all.”

  “I see,” said Sloan cautiously. He took a second look at the painting.

  “You’ve recognized it, of course,” said Murton ironically.

  Sloan, who only knew what he didn’t like in modern art, said, “I don’t know that I have, sir.”

  “Thou God Seest Me.” There was no mistaking the mocking tone now. “Reaction against all that traditional stuff up at the house, you know.”

  “Quite so.” If the painting was anything to go by, it was a pretty violent reaction.

  “And over there …” Murton pointed to where an excessively modern wall bracket in the shape of a nude female figure—just this side of actionable—supported a light fitting.

  Constable Crosby’s eyes bulged and his lips started to move.

  “Over there,” continued Murton, “my grandmother had ‘There’s No Place Like Home’ worked in embroidery.”

  “Did she?”

  “Set tastefully in a ring of roses.”

  Inspector Sloan, whose who hobby was growing roses—rather than growing girls—said, “That must have been very nice, sir.”

  “Pure Victoriana, of course.”

  “Naturally, sir.” He coughed. “This is your home, I take it?”

  “Well, now, Inspector, that’s a good question.” William Murton’s eyes danced mischi
evously. “It’s like this. By virtue of long residence I’m a protected tenant here …”

  That, decided Sloan privately, must have caused a certain amount of chagrin in some quarters.

  “So,” went on Murton, “it would be downright foolish of me to leave, wouldn’t it?”

  “I see what you mean, sir.”

  “So I stay. After all”—gravely—“my family have lived here a very long time.”

  “Quite so.”

  “And there’s nothing wrong with being a cottager, you know. My father was a cottager.”

  “So,” said Sloan impassively, “you use this for a weekend cottage.”

  “Got it in one, Inspector.”

  “You come down every weekend?”

  “Not quite”—tantalizingly—“every weekend. Just … er … every now and then.”

  “Why this particular one?”

  Murton shrugged a pair of surprisingly broad shoulders. “The spirit moved me. I didn’t come down to do poor Ossy in, if that’s what you mean.”

  “You knew him, of course?”

  “Oh yes. We were all brought up together as children, you know. Like puppies. Miles’ parents were abroad a lot and mine couldn’t provide for me properly”—he grimaced—“so …”

  “So,” concluded Sloan for him, “you had the worst of both worlds.”

  Murton looked at him curiously. “That’s right, Inspector. I was brought up half a gentleman. You think as children that the world’s an equal place. It’s later when you realize that Henry gets the lot.”

  “Disturbing,” agreed Sloan.

  “Especially when you’re older than he is and you can see his father had the lot, too. And all your father had was this.”

  “Quite so, sir.”

  “That’s what’s made me into a sponger.”

  “A sponger?”

  “A sponger, Inspector, that’s what I said. I don’t earn my keep like Cousin Gertrude cleaning chandeliers for dear life and I don’t stay on the fringes like Laura, hoping for pickings.”

  “I see, sir.”

  “And I don’t stand around praying for miracles like that efficient ass Charles Purvis. I’m a plain hanger-on.”

  “I see, sir. And for the rest of the time you do what?”

  “This and that,” he said easily.

  Sloan could find the proper answer by picking up the telephone. He said instead, “Now, as to Friday …”

  William Murton hadn’t a great deal to tell him about Friday.

  Yes, he had originally intended to come only for the weekend.

  Yes, he had come down on Friday afternoon.

  By train.

  About half-past five.

  He had spent Friday evening at the cottage.

  Alone.

  Saturday he had stayed in bed until teatime and the evening he had spent in The Ornum Arms.

  At least twenty people would confirm this, including Ebeneezer Lambert down the road.

  If the inspector should by any remote chance happen to see old Lambert he might tell him that he had lost his bet and owed him, William Murton, Esquire, a fiver.

  And not to forget the esquire. We might not all be earls, but there was no law yet against us all being esquires, was there?

  And if the inspector wanted to know who he thought had done it …

  The great-aunts.

  “In fact, sir,” said Crosby, as he drove Inspector Sloan from the cottage up to the house, “we aren’t short of suspects, are we?”

  “No.”

  “That chap ran right through the lot for us. Did you notice, sir?”

  “He didn’t mention Dillow,” said Sloan, “and he didn’t mention Mr. Ames.”

  “The vicar?” said Crosby. “I hadn’t thought of him.”

  “You should think of everyone, Constable. That’s what you’re here for.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “He came to the house at about the right time on Friday afternoon,” said Sloan. “He told us so.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And he knows about armor.”

  “He doesn’t look like a murderer.”

  “Neither did Crippen.”

  This profound observation kept Constable Crosby quiet until they reached Ornum House.

  Dillow was at hand as ever.

  “The vicar is in the great hall, gentlemen, waiting your arrival. Mr. Purvis is in the morning room interviewing the press …”

  “The Queen is in the parlor eating bread and honey,” muttered the incorrigible Crosby, irritated by all this formality.

  “Very good, sir,” murmured the butler smoothly, not at all put out.

  Sloan reflected that an irrepressible police constable must be child’s play to a man who had worked for that eccentric millionaire Baggies.

  “And, sir, Edith, the housemaid—you indicated you wished to speak to her—is available whenever you wish.”

  “Now,” suggested Sloan. “I just wanted to know when she last went into the library.”

  Dillow produced Edith immediately. She was willing and cheerful, but not bright.

  “Yeth, sir”—she was slightly adenoidal too—“Saturday morning, sir. There was nobody there then.”

  This was clarified by Sloan into no body.

  “That’s right,” agreed Edith. “Nobody at all.”

  “Did you go right into the library—to the very far end?”

  “Oh, yeth, sir.”

  “Passed the farthest bay?”

  “Yeth, sir. Because of the General.”

  “The General?”

  “Yeth, sir. He gets very dusty if you leave him over the day.”

  “Ah, you mean the bust …”

  Edith looked as if she hadn’t liked to mention the word in front of three gentlemen. She nodded.

  “And what time would that have been?”

  “Nine o’clock, sir. After I cleared the breakfasts.”

  “Thank you, Edith. That’s all.”

  Edith looked relieved and went. In the distance at the top of the great balustraded staircase they caught a glimpse of Cousin Gertrude tramping across the upper landing.

  Mr. Ames was waiting for them in the great hall. He looked older in broad daylight.

  “We’ve just been checking a few facts,” said Sloan truthfully. “The family and so forth.”

  “One of the oldest in the county,” said the vicar. “Hereditary beacon keepers to the Crown for Calleshire since the reign of Queen Elizabeth the First …”

  Sloan hadn’t meant that sort of fact.

  “She was afraid of the Spanish coming, you know, Inspector.”

  “Really?”

  “The old Norman tower above the keep has a flat roof.” The vicar smiled a clerical smile. “The Norman invasion, you remember, had been a successful one. A highly successful one.”

  “Yes, sir”—stolidly.

  “A beacon fire lit there could be seen from the roof of Calle Castle, which is some way inland. They in turn would light a beacon fire there and so on.”

  “I see, sir, thank you.”

  “And then there was Charles the Second.”

  Sloan was not interested in Charles the Second.

  “He,” said Mr. Ames, “was afraid of the Dutch. Now George the Third …”

  Sloan had come about murder not history.

  “He was worried about the French. Napoleon, you know.”

  “I don’t think the historical side concerns us, Vicar.” It was, after all, as Superintendent Leeyes had said, the twentieth century.

  “And then,” said Mr. Ames, unheeding, “there was 1940 and the Germans. We had a really big beacon all ready for firing then. Bert Hackle’s father—old Hackle—he used to keep lookout …”

  “Quite so, sir. Now if we might come back to the more immediate past—like Friday.”

  With police-like patience he set about taking the vicar through all the details of his abortive visit to the house following Osborne Meredith’s message. M
r. Ames obediently detailed his story for the second time.

  He had had a message, he had come up to the house, he had not seen Meredith in the muniments room or anywhere else.

  “The documents chests,” said Sloan suddenly. “Were they shut or open?”

  The vicar screwed up his eyes the better to remember. “Open,” he said eventually. “That’s what made me think Meredith would still be about somewhere.”

  “Did you see anyone else while you were here?”

  “Dillow—he said he thought Meredith had gone home as he wasn’t about—and Miss Cremond—Miss Gertrude Cremond, you know. She was cleaning the chandelier in here.”

  They all looked upwards.

  “A very lovely piece,” said Mr. Ames. “French crystal.”

  “Was she alone?” asked Sloan.

  The vicar nodded. “Miss Cremond,” he murmured diplomatically, “is in total charge of all the Ornum china and glass. Lady Eleanor helps her with the flowers, but Miss Cremond handles all the rest herself.”

  “I see, sir.”

  “It was all still down on the table when I saw her,” said Mr. Ames. “Hundreds of pieces.”

  “A day’s work,” agreed Sloan, turning to go.

  As he did so he stopped in his tracks.

  Sloan would not have described himself as a sensitive man. If he thought of himself at all it was as an ordinary policeman—warts and all. But at that moment—as he stood with Crosby and the vicar in the great hall—the atavistic sensation came to him that they were being watched.

  It was a very primitive feeling.

  The hairs on the back of his neck erected themselves and an involuntary little shiver passed down his spine. Primeval reactions that were established long before man built himself his first shelter—let alone medieval castles.

  Sloan let his gaze run casually round the great hall. It was not long before he spotted the peephole up near the roof in the dim corner behind and beyond the minstrels’ gallery. He drifted slowly towards the door under the gallery and so out of sight of the peephole.

  Once there, he changed to a swift run, going up the vast staircase as quickly as he could, his sense of direction working full blast.

  He kept right at the top of the stair and chose the farthest door. He flung it open on a small, paneled room.

  There was nobody there.

  But in the opposite wall, low down, was a little window giving not to the out-of-doors but to another room. He stepped across and peered through it.