‘Did he really?’ said Antrobus. ‘And after he sang the Sash, did he go on to sing ‘The Wearing of the Green’? Did he dance an Irish jig? What did he look like, this Orange William? Did he have a sprig of shamrock in his cap?’
‘Sir—’
‘It’s all right, Constable. Take no notice. It’s just that I’m in a questioning mood this morning, and your singing Loyalist seems rather too good to be true. When a man’s committed murder, he usually slinks away. But your Irishman seems to have treated the company in The Farmer’s Arms to a complete music hall turn. It doesn’t ring true, and it makes me think that someone very clever is taking us all for a ride… . But you did well coming up here to tell me. Will you go, now, and question the late Mr Littlemore’s valet, Albert Stead? Find out what he remembers about the events of this evening. And the girl who fainted on the landing. See what she has to say.’
‘Sergeant,’ he said when Roberts had left the room, ‘go and examine the body of the Fenian in the harness room. When I’ve finished talking to Dr McArthur, I’ll send him to you to extract the bullets. And after he’s done that, examine the body from our point of view. You know the kind of thing I mean.’
Dr McArthur, who had been waiting impatiently for Antrobus to emerge from the gun room, accosted him immediately. ‘Come into the writing room, Inspector,’ he said, ‘there’s something I must tell you immediately – something about Miss Arabella Cathcart.’
‘Were you a guest here last night, Doctor? Your name doesn’t appear on my lists.’
David McArthur sighed. It was clear that this police officer could not be hustled into hearing what he was not yet ready to hear.
‘No, Inspector, I was not a guest. I was summoned here at eleven o’clock last night. A footman came down to the village to fetch me. I am – was – Mr Ambrose Littlemore’s physician. By the time I arrived here, all that was necessary had been done. You see, one of the guests was a distinguished woman doctor, whom I know quite well. She is a friend of ours. I met her when I was studying at the School of Medicine in Edinburgh in the late sixties. My wife met her there, too, when she was a nurse at the old Royal Infirmary.’
‘You are talking about Miss Sophia Jex-Blake, aren’t you? Well, she is also a friend of mine and, I may say, a colleague, too. So, Doctor, what do you want to tell me about Miss Arabella Cathcart?’
They had entered the writing room, a chamber designed to resemble a chantry chapel. This whole sham castle, thought Antrobus, is an affront to architecture.
‘It is only just over a month, Inspector,’ said McArthur, ‘that Miss Cathcart was released, cured, from Frampton Lunatic Asylum. She had been incarcerated there, initially as a criminal lunatic, for fifteen years.’
‘What had she done?’
‘She stabbed a young woman in the back with a pair of scissors. The young woman died.’
‘And Mr Littlemore, too, was stabbed in the back with a pair of scissors. Her scissors, so I am given to understand.’
‘Yes.’
‘And what is your stance in this matter, Dr McArthur? Are you accusing her, or defending her?’
‘I believe that Miss Cathcart would have left Frampton Asylum cured, Inspector. Ignorance of modern medicine breeds fear and prejudice, but the curative processes employed by Dr Samuel Critchley have produced quite triumphant results. There are risks involved, of course, but they are worth taking. So I beg you not to jump to the obvious conclusion—’
‘I never jump to obvious conclusions, Doctor; no detective ever does. But that name, Critchley… . Somebody told me about him. He inserts electrodes into the brain. Thank you for telling me all this, Dr McArthur. Let me assure you once again that I will not view Miss Cathcart with a jaundiced eye because of your revelation. I must leave you now, as there’s much to be done.’
‘Can I be of any use?’
‘Yes, Doctor, indeed you can. I wasn’t able to contact a police surgeon before I came here, so I’d be obliged if you’d examine the body of the so-called Fenian, and extract the bullets for me. We know that the man was shot twice, but not from the same rifle. Sergeant Maxwell is waiting for you.’
The body of the dead Fenian had been carried into the castle yard, and laid on a table in the harness room attached to the stables. Sergeant Maxwell stood beside the table, clutching his bowler hat to his chest. Villain he may have been, this Fenian man, but he had been shot first in the leg by Bob Freeman, and then through the heart by an unknown assailant. Only those who had suffered such a leg wound could know the appalling agony that followed it. The second fatal shot would have delivered the man from insufferable pain.
Insufferable! Maxwell’s mind reverted to his time in Abyssinia, and the searingly hot March day at Gallarbat in ’89, when his company – C Company of the Oxfordshire Light Infantry – had been routed by rebel fanatics, and the Emperor John IV had fled. Maxwell had suffered a leg wound much the same as the Fenian man’s, and had thought that he would die of the pain. But he hadn’t died. He had been invalided out of the army, where he had been a corporal drill instructor, and had joined the county constabulary as a uniformed constable. He had soon progressed to the detective branch, and had transferred to the City of Oxford Police in ’92.
He awoke from his reverie when the door of the harness room opened to admit Dr McArthur, who was carrying his Gladstone bag. He looked tired and drawn, but greeted the sergeant cheerfully enough.
‘So this is our murderous intruder, Sergeant,’ he said. ‘He looks an ugly, ill conditioned brute. Help me off with his clothes, will you? I’ll examine the wounds, and then extract the bullets.’
With some difficulty, because of what McArthur called ‘adhesions’, they removed the dead man’s outer clothing, and laid it aside. The body lay in a pool of congealed blood. In life, the Fenian had been a strong, muscular man. The massive bicep of his right arm was almost entirely covered by a tattoo, consisting of a coat of arms, the inscription ‘Ashanti 1874’ and the motto Semper Fidelis.
‘Perhaps he came from Exeter,’ said McArthur. ‘I think that’s their town motto.’
He opened his Gladstone bag and produced a case of surgical instruments. Sergeant Maxwell said nothing, but he thought, that’s the badge of the Devonshire Regiment. They fought in the Ashanti war of ’73 to ’74, and this beauty must have been there. ‘Always Faithful’, that’s what the Latin means. A rum kind of Fenian, this ex-soldier who records his military history on his arm for all to see. What was the doctor saying?
‘Yes, it’s gone straight through the heart, and unless I’m very much mistaken, it will have passed right through his body. You should find both the spent cartridge and the bullet itself somewhere around the spot where he was shot.’
With a sudden powerful movement the doctor turned the body over. Maxwell flinched as he saw the great gaping wound in the man’s back.
‘It’s always like that, you know, Sergeant. A neat bullet hole in the front, and a massive injury at the back. That’s what a .303 bullet does to the human body. Now let’s look at the leg. Ah! You see? There’s the bullet, lodged in the knee joint. It will have shattered both tibia and fibula on impact, rendering the limb useless.’
Using a probe and a pair of tweezers, Dr McArthur extracted the bullet, and dropped it into a tin bowl.
‘The cause of death is quite obvious, Sergeant,’ he said, ‘but I had better perform a full post mortem examination. No, you don’t have to be present! After that, I suggest that the remains be buried this evening in the churchyard here. As you will have certainly noticed, dissolution is beginning to set in. Here, inhale from this flask of spirits of hartshorn, to clear your olfactory passages. If Mr Antrobus is willing, I’ll arrange all that is necessary with the sexton.’
Declining the smelling salts, Sergeant Maxwell gathered up the dead man’s clothes and boots, and hurried from the room. A Fenian, hey? Fenian, my foot! He’d go and find PC Roberts, and see what he’d learnt from Albert the valet, and the swooning maid.
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Maxwell found PC Roberts in the writing room. He was sitting at a desk in the window, reading through the entries in his notebook. Maxwell asked him how he was progressing.
‘I interviewed Albert Stead, the valet, Sergeant,’ he said. ‘He was very upset. He seems to have been devoted to Mr Littlemore. He told me that his master had been in good spirits before dinner, and had showed no signs of agitation. Apart from that, there was little that he could tell me.’
‘And the fainting maid?’
‘She’s one of three housemaids, Sergeant. Doris Collins. I know her quite well, as she lives with her parents in the village, and comes to work here in the evenings. She had been to check on the state of the candles in Miss Cathcart’s bedroom while the company were still at dinner. Miss Cathcart was lying on the bed, apparently asleep. She had dined earlier, in her room. On the way back through the gallery Doris had seen Mr Littlemore sitting on that throne-like chair. She thought it odd that he should have been there, and asked him if he was all right. It was then that she realized that he was dead, and fainted clean away.’
‘Well, Constable,’ said Maxwell, ‘there’s not much to be learnt from those two, but I’ll tell the guvnor what they said. I’ve brought the dead man’s clothes with me to examine. Maybe you’d like to do the job yourself?’
PC Roberts examined the blood-stained jacket, carefully searching the pockets. Then he turned his attention to the trousers.
‘There’s nothing in any of the pockets, Sergeant,’ he said. ‘No money, no papers, not even a handkerchief. That’s odd, to my way of thinking. The shirt could have done with a wash. He wore boots, but no socks. The boots— Hello, Sergeant, look at that!’ Stamped into the sole of each boot were the words: HM Prison Birmingham.
‘Prison issue, given to an indigent prisoner on discharge. So our so-called Fenian’s an old lag. Well, that’s interesting. Now, where’s that gamekeeper? Bob Freeman?’
‘He’s still in the gun room, Sergeant. Oh, I meant to ask you, talking of old lags, did you catch that foreign fellow you and Mr Antrobus were after?’
‘What foreign fellow? What are you talking about?’
‘Polonius, I think that was the name.’
‘Oh, him. No, we never caught him. Slippery customers, foreigners.’
‘Now, Robert Freeman,’ said Sergeant Maxwell, ‘you say that you aimed for the man’s legs, in order to bring him down without killing him. How did you know that you’d be successful?’
‘Well, Sergeant, I’ve been a gamekeeper for most of my life. I’m no stranger to guns. I knew the Fenian was coming, you see, so I loaded a rifle beforehand.’
‘I see. So when you go out hunting – you’ve got deer and boar here, haven’t you? – you shoot for their legs. All those spindly little legs. Most hunters aim for the flank. Why should you be different?’
In spite of his nervousness at being questioned, the gamekeeper could not help smiling.
‘Years ago, Mr Maxwell, I was in the county militia. That’s where I learnt to shoot like a soldier. And that’s what I did last night.’
Maxwell picked up the rifle from the table, and felt its weight in his hands. Seven pounds, lighter and better balanced than the old muskets, and relatively easy to aim. He looked at the gamekeeper, who stood wretchedly near the open door of the gunroom. He’s a decent man, he thought, a man who can’t cope with the fact of having shot a man to incapacitate him, only to see that man killed by a second shot from another rifle, another .303 Lee Enfield.
‘You’ve done nothing wrong, Mr Freeman,’ said Maxwell. ‘Why don’t you try to get some sleep? If this matter comes to trial, you’ll be needed as a witness, but that’s not the same as standing in the dock.’
From somewhere in the house someone began to sound a gong. Even though the Master had been murdered, his family and guests required their breakfast.
When the gamekeeper had gone, Maxwell turned his attention to the gun racks. There were five Lee Enfield rifles still secure in their slots; an empty sixth slot showed where Robert Freeman’s rifle had been fixed. The sergeant proceeded to make a close and careful inspection of the five rifles. In keeping with responsible practice, they were all minus their bolts. Squinting down the barrels of the first four, Maxwell saw that they were quite clean. The fifth rifle, though, had clearly been fired recently, and not cleaned with a ‘pull-through’.
Maxwell placed the rifle back carefully in its rack. Somewhere in this room there would be a locked drawer, in which the bolts were kept. He could use one of his own pick-locks to open it and examine the bolts, but there was no need. Whoever had fired the fatal shot, the shot that had killed the Fenian, had almost certainly been someone who lived in Hazelmere castle.
10
The Espied Spy
‘Sir,’ said Sergeant Maxwell, ‘while all these gentlefolk are having their breakfast, let you and me go for a stroll in the pasture. Walls have ears.’
It was the dawn of a beautiful September day, and the strong sun had driven away the morning dew. They walked through the rough grass until by unspoken consent they stopped at the place where the Fenian man had fallen dead. Maxwell dropped to his knees and carefully examined the area. If the bullet had passed right through him, then it would be here, somewhere in the topsoil. Yes! There it was. And over there, gleaming in the morning sun, was the brass shell case.
‘Well done, Sergeant,’ said Antrobus. ‘You haven’t opened your mouth since we left the house. Did Dr McArthur extract the bullet from the Fenian’s leg?’
‘He did, sir. And he wasn’t a Fenian. He had a big patriotic tattoo on his arm, showing that he’d served in the British Army in the Ashanti War. And his boots, sir, were prison issue: Birmingham Gaol. Whatever reason he had for coming here, it wasn’t to steal rifles.’
‘No, and Orange William never held much credence with me. It’s all been staged. It’s Oakshott! He’s laughing at us, that prim, fastidious little man; he’s taunting me – me – by deliberately sailing close to the wind—’
‘There’s more, sir,’ said Maxwell. ‘I examined all the rifles in the gun room, and found that another one had been fired, and the person who fired it hadn’t had time to clean it. Bob Newman fired the first shot from the rifle that he’d pre-loaded. Somebody else – somebody in the house – fired the second shot that killed the so-called Fenian. It was an inside job, sir. All this business of Fenians and Loyalists is a smoke-screen.’
‘You’re right, Sergeant. And so was PC Roberts. It was a diversion to bring the family running out of the house while that man stabbed his uncle to death. He’s trying to blame it on the aunt!’
Sergeant Maxwell fixed his attention on a point somewhere in the woodland adjoining the pasture. He removed his black bowler hat, and clutched it to his chest. Antrobus prepared to be chastised.
‘With all due respect, sir,’ said Maxwell, ‘you’re drawing wild conclusions which could get us both into trouble. I grant you the diversion, because that’s what it clearly was. But how do you know it was caused by Dr Jeremy Oakshott? You’ve not interviewed him yet, sir. Just because you don’t like him doesn’t mean he’s guilty.’
Inspector Antrobus sat down on the grass, and lit one of his Richmond ‘Gem’ cigarettes. He inhaled deeply, coughing out the smoke in short bursts. He looked up at his sergeant, who was still gazing into the wood.
‘“She sat, like patience on a monument, smiling at grief.” Do you know who said that, Sergeant?’
‘No, sir.’
‘It was Shakespeare. Well, not Shakespeare himself, but one of his characters. But there’s no need for you to stand there like a monument. I take your chiding in good part, because you’re right. I need to talk to Oakshott, and to that colonel. And when I’ve done that, I’ll take great pleasure in renewing my acquaintance with Miss Sophia Jex-Blake.’
‘We meet again, Inspector,’ said Jeremy Oakshott, ‘and once again under the most melancholy of circumstances.’
Oakshott seem
ed to have aged since Antrobus had last seen him. His face was pale and drawn, and his eyes red-rimmed. His hands trembled, as though he had received a profound shock.
‘As though’? The man’s uncle had been murdered only hours ago. And if that wasn’t bad enough, he would surely know that he was the prime suspect. It was common knowledge that he would inherit his uncle’s fortune, which was enormous. No wonder that he seemed on the edge of a nervous breakdown.
‘Melancholy indeed, Dr Oakshott,’ said Antrobus. ‘Pray let me offer my condolences. I hope you will not be offended if I ask you to account for your own movements last evening?’ Was it guilt at his own blind condemnation of the man that made him speak so civilly?
‘We were all at dinner, Inspector. At twenty to ten, I asked my uncle to fetch a jewelled dagger that he had been given as a present, in order to show it to Colonel Scott-James, who had an interest in such matters—’
‘How did you know that it was twenty to ten, sir?’
‘What? Oh, I happened to look at my watch. I am a little short-sighted, and could not see the time on the mantel-clock. Uncle was not sure where the dagger was to be found, so I offered to go with him.’
‘Did you indeed? And what happened then?’
‘We went upstairs—’
‘Which stairs did you use? You once told me that you are a professional scholar, used to sifting detail. Please try to be more precise in telling me your story.’
Jeremy Oakshott flushed with anger. Really, this man was insufferable.
‘I resent your tone, Antrobus,’ he said hotly. ‘You are scolding me as though I was a recalcitrant little boy. You have never liked me, and I know that you have been prying into my past. I have complained about you to the Rector of my college, and I understood that he had spoken to your superintendent.’
‘I am sorry if I have offended you, sir,’ said Antrobus. ‘I can assure you that personal animus does not enter into the matter. I am merely following the procedures that any detective must employ in order to get at the truth. Please continue your account. By which stairs did you mount to the first floor?’
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