‘By the main stairs. That was the nearest way to reach Uncle’s room. When we got there, we went through the bedroom and into the dressing room, where there is a large Indian cabinet. We looked through the drawers, but could not find the jewelled dagger. “Go down and make my excuses, Jeremy,” he said. And then …’
‘Yes, sir? And then what?’
‘He said that he’d go and look in on Aunt Arabella, to see if she wanted anything. She had not been very well that day.’
‘And did he?’
‘I don’t know. I left him, and made my way along the gallery. It was then that I heard what sounded like a shot. No, not “sounded like”: it was a shot. I hurried downstairs as fast as I could. This time, I used the servants’ staircase, which is accessed from a door at the end of the gallery. Hearing voices in the gun room, I ran down the kitchen passage and out on to the terrace, where I joined the others. And it was in that period of time after I left Uncle and the maid Collins screamed, that – that someone stabbed Uncle in the back.’
Antrobus remained silent for a while. Oakshott was a bold, inventive man. If he had planned to murder his uncle, he would quite brazenly state that it was he who had asked Mr Littlemore to fetch the dagger, and equally brazenly announce that he had offered to go with him. All done in the open, and then told to him. And even now, he was casting suspicion on his Aunt Arabella by saying that his uncle had proposed visiting her moments before he was murdered with her scissors. Had any of that account been true?
There were other possibilities. Oakshott could have accompanied his uncle to his room and immediately stabbed him to death. He could then have dragged the body out into the gallery, propped it up on the great throne-like chair, and then made his way downstairs by the servants’ staircase. Oakshott could have concealed a loaded rifle beforehand in one of the many cupboards lining the walls of the kitchen passage. There was a door leading out of the silver-room directly on to the terrace, and from a hidden vantage point there, he could have waited for the first shot to be discharged before firing his fatal shot. He would just have time to replace the rifle in its rack, but not to clean it.
That hypothesis suggested other possibilities. The ex-felon posing as a Fenian could have been in his pay, lured by some subtle argument to come running across the pasture at the right time for him to fall into a trap. The letter from Orange William could have been Oakshott’s composition. And Orange William himself, boasting of his assassination, could be another of Oakshott’s dupes. What if—
‘Thank you, Mr Oakshott,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry that you took offence at my methods of questioning.’
Oakshott did not seem to hear him.
‘I buried my friend Michael Sanders in Botley Churchyard the other day,’ he said. ‘And now I must arrange the obsequies of my poor uncle. How I wish that I could just be going about my quiet pursuit of learning at Jerusalem Hall! I’ll go now, if you don’t mind, Inspector, and see how my poor Aunt Arabella is bearing up to the loss of Uncle.’
He gave Antrobus a perfunctory bow, and left the room.
‘I tried to keep everybody calm, Inspector,’ said Colonel Scott-James. ‘We heard the shots, and Lord Arthur Farrell and I ran down to see what was afoot. We found the gamekeeper in a blue funk, but managed to get the story out of him.’
‘Was Dr Jeremy Oakshott there, Colonel?’
‘Yes, he was there. He spoke up for the gamekeeper. Said he was a pukka sahib, you know. Bit of a milksop, but decent at the core. Oakshott, I mean. It’s a mystery, though. The Fenian was shot twice, once by Freeman, and then by somebody else. Must have been hiding in the shadows. A third party. But you’ll find out all that, Inspector. As for Ambrose Littlemore, well, who could possibly have stabbed him?’
‘Could it have been Dr Oakshott?’ asked Antrobus. He treated the Colonel to a smile, hinting that his question was not meant to be taken seriously.
‘What? No, because he was there with us, on the terrace. I can’t think who could have done it. Mind you, Oakshott’s the heir, you know – he’ll come into hundreds of thousands of pounds by his uncle’s death. But there, as I’ve told you, he couldn’t have done it. He was there with us, on the terrace.’
‘My dear Detective Inspector, I am delighted to see you again!’
Antrobus had found Miss Jex-Blake sitting at a table in the cavernous library of Hazelmere Castle. She looked out of place surrounded by the black oak shelves full of unread books, beneath the gimcrack plaster ceiling with its fan-vaulting copied from that in Gloucester Cathedral. She had been sipping a cup of coffee, but on seeing Antrobus she hastily put it down on its saucer, and half rose from her chair in unconscious defiance of the usual convention.
‘My pleasure likewise, ma’am,’ said Antrobus, bowing gravely. It was a gesture of affectionate regard. Miss Jex-Blake was wearing a morning dress of some dove grey material, with plain white linen collar and cuffs. She looked just as he had last seen her, with her fair hair parted in the middle, her pleasant face animated by a welcoming smile.
‘Come here, sir,’ said Sophia, ‘and sit on that chair. I have been waiting patiently here since breakfast, hoping that you would seek me out. How are you? How are you managing?’
‘I’m very well, thank you, ma’am. Keeping active, as they say.’
‘Do they? Well, you’re a little more hunched in the shoulders than when last I saw you. You would benefit from a long period of bed-rest, but I know that you would find it insufferable.
‘Now, are you going to tell me what you’ve found out so far about the murder of my host, Mr Ambrose Littlemore? And about the other man, the one who was shot dead in the grounds? The girl who brought me this coffee told me as much as she knew, or thought she knew.’
Antrobus did not reply, and his face grew stern beneath the close black beard. For a moment, Sophia wondered whether she had presumed too much in speaking so familiarly with this Crown Officer of the Law. After all, she had only known him for a couple of months.
‘Oh, Miss Jex-Blake,’ he said at last, ‘I am very ill at ease with this case. Before ever these murders occurred – yes, both deaths were murders – I have had the uncanny feeling that one man, one wicked, cunning man, has been leading me by the nose, planting clues for me to find, turning up at the scene of another murder so that I would suspect him, and then ensuring that he had a water-tight alibi to frustrate my attempts to catch him out in his villainies.’
‘Does this wicked man have a name?’
‘He’s secretly laughing at me, leading me from place to place, as though saying, “Look here, look there!” knowing that I will find nothing. I’m the hunter hunted, the espied spy. He anticipates my every move—’
‘And does this wicked man have a name?’ Sophia repeated. ‘Tell me about him. Tell me the whole story. There may be ways in which I can help you. I have done so before.’
James Antrobus told her all about Jeremy Oakshott, the tragic death of Vivien West, and the fate of her killer, Margaret Meadows, who had ended her days in a Cheshire asylum. He told her about the brutal murder of Michael Sanders, and how Oakshott had contrived to be in the village on the very night of the murder, and how Sergeant Maxwell had discovered that he had been in the sight of others for the whole day and night.
‘So you have made up your mind that that pleasant, gentlemanly scholar, Dr Jeremy Oakshott, is a brutal cut-throat? Incidentally, how did you find out about this Margaret Meadows? The girl who murdered Vivien West?’
‘I visited the incumbent of the little town where those three had lived in their youth – Vivien, Oakshott, and Michael Sanders. He introduced me to a retired wardress of the asylum in question, who told me the truth about that poor girl’s death.’
Antrobus gave Sophia a full account of his visit to Henning St Mary, his conversations with the young Rector, Hezekiah Daneforth and the indomitable Miss Probert.
‘Hmm… . Most interesting. And what about the man in the grounds?’
‘I have info
rmation about him, ma’am, but I’ll keep it to myself for the moment. The story of the so-called Fenian will only cloud the issue.’
He stopped speaking, and after a few moments’ silence, he muttered, ‘For these and all my other sins that I cannot now remember—’
Sophia held up a hand to stop his mock confession.
‘I think I can see a solution,’ she said. ‘I am going to prescribe you some steel drops, to be taken in coconut water. You are seriously run down, Mr Antrobus, which is why you are becoming obsessive about Dr Oakshott. You want to run about, probing and questioning, but you can’t exert yourself physically as you used to do. Meanwhile, let us be done with this obsession, and look at some interesting facts.’
Antrobus suddenly felt more like his own self. Ever since his visit to Henning St Mary he had felt tired and wasted. Now, the brisk, no-nonsense words of his doctor friend were already beginning to have their effect. Yes, he would take the steel drops, and anything else that she cared to pour down his throat.
‘I want you to concentrate for a moment, Mr Antrobus, on the death of Mr Ambrose Littlemore. I spoke to the local constable, a young man called Roberts, who had established to his own satisfaction that Mr Littlemore had been stabbed in his own room, and had then walked into the gallery, where he had collapsed into the great chair. It was a very sound interpretation of the facts. People who have been stabbed in the back, as I told him, often do not realize what has happened to them, and will often walk some distance before they collapse. What do you think of Roberts’s reasoning?’
‘I think it’s worth considering. But an alternative reading of the evidence – the bloodstains in the passage, and so on – could be that the killer dragged the body of Mr Littlemore out of his room and into the gallery, placing the body on the chair.’
‘Why?’
‘To give the impression that the murder had taken place in the gallery. He had openly announced that he was going to accompany his uncle upstairs in order to search for the jewelled dagger, so he wanted to distance the crime from his uncle’s room.’
‘You are still obsessed with poor Dr Oakshott. You want him to be guilty because you don’t like him. I have myself manhandled the corpse, and can assure you that it would be no easy task to drag it along the gallery. For one thing, Mr Littlemore was possessed of large skeletal mass. He looked frail and thin, but he was very heavy for his age and physical makeup; he weighed, at a guess, twelve stone. And secondly, the wound in the back would have begun to bleed profusely, and the assailant would have noticed this. When I first examined the body, it was sitting in a pool of scarcely congealed blood. Yes, I think that PC Roberts’s view of the matter is the right one.’
Miss Jex-Blake opened her reticule and brought out a little leather-backed notebook. She donned a pair of gold-framed spectacles, and read one or two pages of what were evidently her own notes on the case.
‘Have you examined Mr Littlemore’s body yet?’ she asked.
‘Not yet. Dr McArthur is conducting a post mortem on the remains of the Fenian here, in the stable wing. He’s doing that for form’s sake, having first extracted a bullet from the man’s leg. Later this morning I shall have Mr Littlemore’s body conveyed in a closed van to Oxford mortuary.’
‘Hmm… . Well, I expect you know your own business best. And when do you plan to release the guests? Myself, the Scott-Jameses, and Lord Arthur Farrell?’
‘You are all free to go. All I will need are your addresses, in case I have to contact you. Have you been a guest in the house, ma’am?’
‘No. I’m staying with Dr and Mrs McArthur, here in the village. They are old friends. I came up here last night to dine, and to help persuade my unfortunate host to contribute to a worthy charity that I support. After the shooting and the stabbing, I remained here to look after Miss Cathcart. More of that later.
‘Now, I have examined the dead body of Mr Littlemore, and have noted down my conclusions. I used my fingers and a probe from my instrument case to make my examination. The weapon – a large pair of tailor’s scissors – was still in situ when I first saw the body in the gallery. Someone, presumably PC Roberts, removed them when the body was laid on the bed. They had been placed on a towel, and put on a small table near at hand.’
Antrobus thought, I did not know my own business best. I should have done all this myself. I should have taken McArthur with me to examine Mr Littlemore’s body first. The Fenian was a mere diversion. But my obsession with Oakshott threw me off course. What was she saying now?
‘The blow, delivered to the right side of the body, had been a very powerful one, Inspector, penetrating the thoraco-lumbar fascia, glancing off the pelvic bone, and then passing through the intercostal space between two of the floating ribs, rupturing the heart. Part of that statement is based on physical exploration, and the rest is a description of likelihood, based on personal knowledge of the body’s structure.’
‘A very powerful blow, then?’
‘Yes, indeed. The assailant was almost certainly standing behind Mr Littlemore when he struck the blow. And now let me tell you about Miss Cathcart. After her cousin’s death she was in a state of collapse, which could have had very serious consequences without medical attention, which I was able to give. I had observed Miss Cathcart’s difficulty in holding things like drinking glasses; she needed to hunch her right shoulder forward in order to make her grasp more effective. I recognized this condition as being one of the results of electro-convulsive brain therapy, a risk of nerve and muscle damage that a bold practitioner of such a therapy is prepared to take. I knew at once that this lady must have been a patient of the distinguished mental specialist, Dr Samuel Critchley—’
‘Critchley! He was the doctor who ministered to that wretched woman Margaret Meadows, the woman who murdered Vivien West. As a result of his tender ministrations, she died within hours of his sending galvanic shocks through her brain.’
‘You express the matter too dramatically, Mr Antrobus. Dr Critchley is a most distinguished man, with a European reputation. But the point I am making is this: if anyone were to suggest that Miss Cathcart repeated her earlier delinquency by stabbing her cousin to death, then they will be wrong. As a result of the shocks given to her brain, she is incapable of delivering any kind of blow. For her, stabbing anybody is a physical impossibility. She can scarcely lift either arm above waist height.’
So much for Oakshott’s attempt to implicate his aunt, thought Antrobus. He had declared that his uncle had wanted to visit Miss Cathcart in her room, where, presumably she had stabbed him, or failing that, accompanied him back to his own room, and stabbed him there. But Miss Jex-Blake had shown that this could not possibly have happened. He took her point about being obsessive: he had almost yielded to persecution mania. But he would not let Oakshott out of his sight.
‘Now, Inspector Antrobus,’ said Sophia, returning her notebook to her reticule, ‘are you prepared to give me free range in making enquiries? Will you support me if I come to you with fresh evidence? This afternoon, I am going back to Oxford to stay the week with Elizabeth Wordsworth at Lady Margaret Hall. We can meet there, if we need to confer.’
‘I give you carte blanche, ma’am. What do you propose to do?’
‘Well, first, I will visit Dr Samuel Critchley. There are certain things I’d like to discuss with him. And then, I will go down to Henning, and ask some questions there. There were some things in your account of your visit there that rang alarm bells—’
‘Indeed, ma’am? And what alarm bells were they?’
‘Not another word, Inspector. I will write you a prescription for steel drops, which any chemist will make up for you. Farewell, until we meet again!’
11
The Dappled Partridge
Jeremy Oakshott stood with the other mourners among the monuments in Hadleigh churchyard, and watched as the coffin of his Uncle Ambrose was lowered into the grave. The vicar, the Reverend Matthew Parkinson, had just told them that they were mere
sojourners here on earth, destined to achieve fulfilment somewhere else.
Man that is born of woman hath but a short time to live, and is full of misery. He cometh up, and is cut down like a flower; he fleeth as it were a shadow, and never continueth in one stay.
An inquest on Uncle had been opened and adjourned on Monday evening, following a post mortem examination at the police mortuary earlier in the day. Both necessity and decency decreed that he should be buried today, Wednesday. It was surprising how many people had turned up for the funeral. Poor Aunt Arabella was in full mourning, hardly recognizable beneath her long black veils. Mary McArthur stood beside her, and behind them her husband David, who throughout the service had thrown her a number of anxious glances. But Aunt Arabella had borne up surprisingly well, once the initial shock of Uncle Ambrose’s death had passed.
It was time to cast some earth upon the coffin. It was the custom, but it seemed crude and barbaric to him, a gratuitous attack upon someone who had already endured the ultimate assault.
The service of committal continued. It had literary merit, but was dreary beyond measure. He and his aunt were Uncle Ambrose’s only living relatives. Apart from the McArthurs, the other black-clad figures thronging the churchyard were business acquaintances of his uncle, directors of the railway and engineering companies in which Ambrose Littlemore and his father before him had invested a considerable competence, and reaped a vast fortune. There were other people watching the burial, the family servants, and farming folk from the village, standing among the trees at the far side of the graveyard.
The committal came to an end, and the company began to leave the churchyard. For a moment, Oakshott thought that he saw the tall man with tinted glasses in the throng. Who was that fellow? He seemed to be everywhere. The two gravediggers emerged from behind some tall headstones, and Oakshott gave them a half-sovereign each. The vicar approached the McArthurs, and he heard them arranging a rubber of whist for Thursday evening. Thus life went on.
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