Escapade

by Walter Satterthwait

“Must’ve been, absolutely right. Higgens had already spoken with Carson, of course. So four-twenty, let s say, four twenty-five. Promised my wife I’d be back at four-thirty.”

  Marsh nodded. Sergeant Meadows wrote something.

  “Do you think, Lord Purleigh,” Marsh said, “that you could estimate the time of your arrival at Mr. MacGregor's, and the time of your departure?”

  “Arrival? Three-thirty, thereabouts. Departure? Four o’clock, I’d say. Spent half an hour there. Chatting and what not.” He paused. “Sounds about right.”

  “Thank you. Now. As to the other incident of yesterday. That mysterious rifle shot, out on the lawn. Have you any idea who might have been responsible for that?”

  “But that was Chin Soo.” Lord Bob looked at me, puzzled. “We’d agreed on that, I thought.”

  “I thought it was,” I said. “I don’t think so now.” I explained what I’d already explained to Inspector Marsh, what I’d explained earlier to Doyle. “So it makes more sense,” I said, “that whoever fired the rifle was someone who was already here at Maplewhite.”

  “Rubbish,” said Lord Bob. “One of my guests, you mean? Rubbish. Why should the guests start potting at each other? This isn’t Afghanistan. No bloody Pathans on the guest list here.” He turned to Lady Purleigh. “Sorry, my darling.”

  He turned to Marsh. “Not that I’ve anything against Pathans, mind. Resourceful chaps, I hear.”

  Marsh gave him another quick smile. “Yes,” he said. “So. Given the assumption that the individual firing the rifle was not in fact Chin Soo, you have no idea who he may have been. Or at whom he may have been firing. Is that correct?”

  “Not a clue,” said Lord Bob. He turned to me. “Where’s this bloody Chin Soo then? Sorry, my love. You saying it was all a false alarm? Eh? Made a compete arse of myself in front of the guests— sorry—babbling about some lunatic magician doesn’t even exist? That what you’re saying?”

  “He exists,” I said. “But maybe not in the immediate vicinity.”

  He stared at me. “That’s pretty thick, Beaumont. Sent the tenants out for nothing, did I? Made the poor devils go tromping through the forest for no reason at all?”

  Lady Purleigh patted her husband’s forearm. “Robert. Mr. Beaumont was merely doing his job.”

  “And he had to do it here, did he?” He scowled at me and crossed his legs. He put his elbow on the arm of the chair and his chin on his fist and he looked away. Beneath the bushy white mustache, his mouth was as thin as a razor scar.

  “Excuse me,” said Inspector Marsh. “Lady Purleigh. Returning for a moment to that rifle shot. Do you happen to recall where you might have been at the time it was fired?”

  “Hang on,” said Lord Bob, turning to Marsh. His beetle eyebrows were lowered. “You’re not suggesting my wife fired the damn thing?”

  “Certainly not. But as I told you, I must determine where everyone was situated at the time of the events in question.”

  The beetles danced upward. “Wanted to know about my father’s death, you said.”

  “And so I do.” Marsh smiled. “But a rifle was fired on the same day that the death occurred. This seems to me to be at the very least curious. I shouldn’t be doing my job properly, my Lord, if I didn’t make some attempt to account for it.”

  “Hmph,” said Lord Bob. He uncrossed his legs, then crossed them again the other way. “Rum sort of job,” he said. He glanced from me to Marsh. “Both of you.”

  “And perhaps,” added Marsh, “Lady Purleigh saw something at the time which might help us determine the individual responsible.”

  “I’m afraid I shall disappoint you, then, Inspector,” said Lady Purleigh. “I saw nothing. Nothing that might help you, at any rate.

  I was in the conservatory with Mrs. Blandings, the housekeeper, going over the arrangements for dinner. "We heard the shot, both of us—it was quite loud—and we crossed over to the window. It surprised me, the shot. As Robert has told you, shooting is no longer allowed here.”

  Marsh nodded. “And what did you see, milady?”

  “I saw Robert riding his motor bicycle toward the garden. Everyone else was still under the copper beech tree by the walk, gathered around one of the benches. I learned later, of course, that Miss Turner had fainted. And then one of the men began running down along the lawn, in the same direction Robert had gone, toward the rear of the garden. I recognized him as Mr. Beaumont. He disappeared into the woods as well, and I rang for some servants and asked them to run down to the copper beech. To make certain that no one had been hurt.”

  Marsh asked her, “What did you think had happened?”

  “I hadn’t the faintest idea, really. I did wonder about poachers, because of the shot. But they’ve never dared come so close to the house before. Even so, I was concerned.”

  “I thank you, Lady Purleigh,” said Marsh. “And I thank you, Lord Purleigh. I think that should do us for the moment. I am most grateful for your help.”

  Lord Bob looked surprised. “That it, then?”

  “For the moment,” said Marsh. “I really must beg your forbearance, both of you. These things inevitably take longer than anyone would wish them to. But I assure you that I'll attempt to finish it as quickly as I can. And it will, I promise you, be finished. Come what come may, time and the hour runs through the roughest day. Macbeth.”

  “What about the others?” said Lord Bob. “The guests. They’re all roaming about, wondering what’s happening. You wanted to speak with them, did you?”

  “Very much so, yes. I should be very grateful, Lord Purleigh, if you’d ask Miss Turner to join us for a few moments.”

  “Miss Turner?” said Lord Bob. “Why Miss Turner?”

  Marsh smiled. “No particular reason,” he said. “I select her entirely at random. So we profess ourselves to be slaves of chance, and flies of every wind that blows. The Winter’s Tale.”

  Chapter Thirty-two

  When Lord Bob and Lady Purleigh had gone, and the three of us had sat back down, Marsh turned to me and smiled and said, “So. Beaumont. What are your thoughts?”

  “I don’t buy the pigeons,” I told him.

  He chuckled. “Lovely. You Americans. And what are your feelings regarding Lord Purleigh himself?”

  “I like him. But he inherits.”

  “Yes. The old bees die, the young possess their hive.”

  “There’s no son,” I said. “What happens to this place when Lord Purleigh goes?”

  “Maplewhite, you mean? It would be held in trust somehow, I imagine. Depending, of course, on the marriage settlement between him and Lady Purleigh. But most of it, I expect, and possibly all of it, would ultimately go to the daughter. And ultimately, on her death, to her children, should she have any. With a life interest, perhaps, to her husband.”

  “It all goes to Cecily.”

  “Cecily?”

  “To Miss Fitzwilliam, yes.” He smiled. “You don’t suspect Cecily Fitzwilliam of murder, do you?”

  “Not yet.”

  He smiled. “And Lord Purleigh?”

  “Not yet. What about you?”

  Another smile. “Oh, it would be foolish of me to venture an opinion at this stage, don’t you think? Opinion’s but a fool, that makes us scan the outward habit by the inward man. Timon of Athens. But I do hope that Lord Purleigh was not responsible.”

  “Why?”

  He looked at me. “Yes, of course. As an American, you wouldn’t know, would you? Well, things become rather complex in that event. He’s a lord now, you see. A peer. And, as such, he cannot be tried in a normal court of law. If an inquest returns a verdict of wilful murder, he can be tried only by the entire House of Lords, in special session. An elaborate procedure. The King himself becomes involved.”

  “Messy.”

  “Very. If in fact he is guilty of murder, it would be far better for everyone concerned, and doubtless more easily accomplished, for him to be declared insane, and then tucked away somewhere warm
and cozy.”

  “I don’t think he’s insane.”

  Marsh smiled. “He is, you know, if he expects me to believe that his father mistook his own head for a pigeon.”

  “It could still be suicide. Maybe he’s right. Maybe the Earl was crazy. The guy was running around in his pajamas, remember, pretending to be a ghost. And he was stealing junk from people’s rooms and hiding it away like a pack rat.”

  “According to Miss Turner.” He smiled. “And, even if she’s telling the truth, none of that constitutes evidence of a predisposition toward suicide.”

  “I notice you didn’t mention Miss Turner’s theory to Lord Purleigh.”

  “Naturally not. I must speak with Miss Turner first.”

  “There’s something else about Miss Turner you should know.” “Yes? And what might that be?”

  “Someone tried to kill her, it looks like.”

  He raised his eyebrows. “Indeed.” He turned to Sergeant Meadows. “Thicker and thicker grows our plot, eh, Sergeant? We have a proper vichyssoise here.”

  The sergeant said nothing, which is what he’d been saying all along. He looked down and wrote something in his notebook. Maybe vichyssoise.

  Marsh turned back to me. “And when did this happen?” “While she was in the Earl’s room last night.” I told him about the knife she’d found in her bed, told him about my checking the bolster this morning.

  “A knife,” said Marsh, nodding thoughtfully. “Purloined, you think, from the Earl’s collection of weapons. Not a rifle, not a pistol.”

  “The ammunition’s been locked up.”

  “Since yesterday afternoon, Lord Purleigh said. Intriguing. That would suggest that the knife was stolen from the collection at some time afterward.”

  “Or before, by someone who likes knives better than guns.”

  “Of course,” said Marsh. He made a sour face. “Not vichys-soise. Lamb stew. Carrots and celery and onions, and a gravy like cement. Thickness is all. How I should have preferred a simple, unadorned broth, limpid and clear.” He looked at me. “You haven’t told Lord Purleigh of the knife.”

  “I wanted to talk to you first.”

  Someone knocked at the door.

  “Miss Turner, no doubt,” said Marsh. “A turnip for the pot.” He looked toward the door. “Come in,” he called out.

  MISS TURNER TOLD her story well. She was calm today, and straightforward. Her voice was level and detached even when she described her visit from the ghost on Friday night, and when she described finding the knife in her bed last night.

  “Can you think of anyone,” Inspector Marsh asked her, when she finished, “who would have reason to harm you?”

  “No,” she said. “Not harm me. Not really.”

  She was wearing the gray dress she’d worn when I first met her. Her hair was drawn back. She seemed less stiff now than she'd been that first time, in the drawing room. But she’d gone through a lot this weekend—a lecherous ghost, a snake, an advance from Sir David, a visit to a dead man’s room, a dagger in her bed. After all that, talking to a London cop and a Pinkerton man in broad daylight was probably pretty small potatoes.

  But now Inspector Marsh had seen her hesitate. He might be delicate, but he didn’t miss much. “Not harm you, you say. Not really. Please, Miss Turner. Has anyone displayed any sort of hostility toward you? Any sort at all?”

  She glanced at me again, then looked back at Marsh. Well. As I told Mr. Beaumont, there was an incident yesterday morning. Involving Sir David Merridale.”

  “Yes?”

  She told him pretty much the same thing she’d told me last night, in Mrs. Corneille’s room.

  Marsh nodded. “And do you believe that Sir David was so frustrated by this rejection that he crept into your room? And plunged a knife into what he believed to be your sleeping form?”

  “No,” she said quickly. “I don’t really.” She sat slightly more upright in her chair. “You asked me about hostility, Inspector. I was merely answering your question.”

  “For which I thank you. Now. Has anyone else evinced hostility toward you? At Maplewhite?”

  “No.”

  “Getting back to this apparition you witnessed on Friday night.”

  “Yes,” she said. “The Earl.”

  “Miss Turner, have you ever actually seen the Earl?”

  “Not before Friday night.”

  “Disregarding Friday night. Had you ever visited the Earl in his quarters? Had you ever met him?”

  “No.”

  “Did you perchance see him after he died?”

  “No.”

  “Then how can you be so certain that the figure in your bedroom was the Earl?”

  “I’ve seen his portrait.”

  “His portrait,” said Marsh.

  “This morning,” said Miss Turner. “I asked one of the footmen whether a portrait of the Earl existed. One did, he told me. In the Great Hall. I went there and examined it. It was dated 1913, only eight years ago. It was the same man. If you placed a wig on him, and a false beard, he would be indistinguishable from the figure in my room.”

  Marsh smiled. “But so, I daresay, would anyone in a wig and a false beard. Sarah Bernhardt, say.”

  “And had I discovered a wig and a false beard under Sarah

  Bernhardt’s bed, then I should be persuaded it was she, and not the Earl, who visited me on Friday.”

  “And you are willing to testify—in a court of law, for example, under oath—that you did discover the beard and the wig under the Earl’s bed?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where are these items now?”

  “In Mrs. Corneille’s room. Mr. Beaumont suggested, last night, that Mrs. Corneille keep them there.”

  “Have you discussed them with anyone besides Mrs. Corneille and Mr. Beaumont? With Lord and Lady Purleigh, for example?” “No,” she said. “Mr. Beaumont suggested that we should not do so.”

  “Mrs. Corneille is a good friend of Lady Purleigh’s, so I understand.”

  “I believe she is, yes.”

  “And she agreed to this.'

  “Yes.”

  Mrs. Corneille hadn’t wanted to, and she hadn’t agreed until I reminded her that the servants seemed to know about everything that went on in Maplewhite. Someone had already tried to kill Miss Turner, I pointed out. I told her it would probably be safer for everyone, including Lady Purleigh, if we kept a secret or two for a while.

  Marsh nodded. “What of this- knife you found in your bed? Where is that at the moment?”

  “Also in Mrs. Corneille’s room.”

  He nodded again. “All right. Tell me this, Miss Turner. Do you often receive ghostly visitations?”

  “No.”

  “Ever had one before?”

  “No.”

  “This was your very first?”

  “It wasn’t a ghostly visitation, Inspector. As I’ve explained, it was a man. It was the Earl.”

  “And yet Mr. Beaumont tells me that when he and Mr.

  Houdini met with you on the following midday, while you were riding, you denied having seen any ghost whatever.”

  She glanced at me. Her face flushed slightly. It could have been anger, it could have been embarrassment. “Yes,” she said. “I did.”

  “You told him, in fact, that you’d dreamed the ghost, did you not?”

  “Yes.”

  Marsh raised his eyebrows. “Could you explain to me, then, exactly why you said that?”

  “I was confused. I hadn’t slept. I knew that I’d caused a disturbance, and I felt that the best thing I could do was ignore it and move forward.”

  “Deny that it had ever happened, in fact. Claim that your ghost had been a dream.”

  “Yes.”

  “And yet now you claim that he was not.”

  “No. No more a dream than the false beard and the wig.”

  “Excuse me,” I said.

  Marsh turned to me. “Yes?”

  “Could I ask
a couple of questions?”

  “But my dear chap, of course. We’re confreres, are we not? Lead on.”

  “Miss Turner, did you know any of these people before you came here? Any of the guests?”

  “No.”

  “The Earl? Lady Purleigh? Lord Purleigh? Anyone except Mrs. Allardyce?”

  “No. None of them.”

  “Did you ever hear anything about this ghost? Before you came here?”

  “No.”

  “Then you really don’t have any reason to make all this up, do you? No reason to bring along a phony beard and a wig from London, and then plant them in the Earl’s room?”

  “No,” she said to me. For the first time this morning, something like a smile moved quickly across her lips. It disappeared in an instant. “No reason at all,” she said to Marsh.

  Marsh was smiling at me, and his smile was more permanent. “Thank you, Beaumont, for eliciting that valuable piece of information. And I thank you, Miss Turner. I do very much appreciate your candor. You’ve been both forthright and most lucid.” He stood up.

  Miss Turner glanced at me and then stood. And then it was my turn to stand.

  Miss Turner said to Marsh. “Did you wish to speak with any of the others?”

  “Not as yet, thank you. Please inform all of them that I look forward to meeting with them shortly.”

  She nodded to him, nodded to me, and then turned and walked away. When she left the room, Marsh said, “Time to take a peek at the Earl’s room, I think.”

  I LED THE way, through the halls and up the stairways. Marsh walked along beside me. His hands behind his back, he held his head upright and he peered curiously, left and right, at the furniture and the bric-a-brac as we passed. Sergeant Meadows followed behind, his notebook and pen at the ready.

  Marsh didn’t say anything until he started climbing the last set of stairs. Then he turned to me and he said, “You’re fond of the girl. Miss Turner.”

  “I think she’s telling the truth,” I said.

  “Obviously you do.” He smiled. “But which is cause and which is effect? Are you fond of her because she tells the truth, or do you believe she’s telling the truth because you’re fond of her?”