The Devil's Brew (Hilary Manningham-Butler Book 3)

by Jack Treby

  Freddie had said he had told Miss Bunting all about my inquiries into the death of Giles Markham. Perhaps that was why she was creeping about in the dead of night. It would be just like the damned girl to go off investigating on her own. If so, I would have to put a stop to that at once. Well, perhaps not at once, but certainly first thing in the morning.

  I sighed. My feet were getting cold now, lingering in one place. Carpets were an unknown luxury on this floor. I would hurry back to bed. Whatever Miss Bunting was up to, I would find out soon enough.

  Maurice was in good spirits the following morning. ‘Looking forward to getting home, eh?’ I said.

  ‘Indeed, Monsieur.’ He had called early – at eight thirty – so I would be up and dressed in plenty of time to join the others for breakfast.

  ‘I can’t wait to get out of this place as well. As soon as the formalities are out the way. What time’s the train?’

  ‘Four o’clock, Monsieur. We will need to leave by half past one.’

  ‘Very good. Can’t come quickly enough, so far as I’m concerned.’ Some of the other guests would be heading down to the village ahead of time, to attend the local church service, but I had no intention of joining them. A hearty breakfast would do far more to lift my spirits than some wizened cleric. Besides, it would be a Catholic service and they could go on for hours. ‘Have you had breakfast yet?’ I asked my man, absently.

  The valet frowned. ‘Yes, Monsieur.’ He did not sound pleased to be reminded.

  ‘Not the world’s greatest cook, that German woman.’

  ‘No, Monsieur.’

  ‘Still. You can’t go wrong with a few eggs and a bit of toast.’

  ‘You would not think so, Monsieur,’ Maurice commented drily.

  I laughed. ‘Not everyone can be Michelin starred, Morris. Your standards are too high, that’s your problem. It’s asking for disappointment.’

  ‘Yes, Monsieur.’

  ‘Oh, I’m thinking of having another quick word with that Green fellow after breakfast,’ I said. ‘If I can find him.’

  Maurice had knocked out my shoes and placed them in front of me by the bed. ‘Do you think that is wise, Monsieur?’

  ‘Probably not.’ I dipped down to ease my feet into the shoes and then quickly tied the laces. ‘But it might be the last chance I’ll get. I owe it to Freddie to have one last stab at it.’

  ‘Yes, Monsieur.’

  I stood up and let Maurice fuss for a moment, removing some imagined dust or hair from the shoulders of my jacket. He stepped back with a nod of satisfaction. I must admit, having the granite faced fellow attending to me as usual made for a welcome start to the day. There is something rather pleasing in a well-oiled routine, especially when one is away from home.

  I pulled open the door and stepped out onto the landing. The sun was hovering just above the roof towards the front of the hacienda, sending a wide arc of light down into the courtyard. I raised a hand to shield my eyes. From out in the front yard, I could hear the sound of a motor vehicle pulling up and, as I made my way towards the back stairs, following the smell of warm bread wafting up from the dining room on the far corner, I saw Mrs Weiman crossing the courtyard from the front entrance.

  ‘Good morning, Mr Buxton!’ she called up in greeting. ‘I hope you slept well.’

  ‘Very well, thank you,’ I lied, reaching the far corner and waving a hand down at her. Now was not the time to complain about the mattress.

  ‘You couldn’t give Steven a knock, could you?’ she asked. ‘I think Doctor Rubio has just arrived.’

  I stifled a yawn and nodded. Perhaps this would be a good time to have that private word with him. People often tend to be less guarded first thing in the morning. Catesby’s bedroom was just past the back stairs, on the other side of that short hallway where Miss Bunting had disappeared last night. ‘It’s this one, isn’t it?’ I gestured to the door as I moved onto the far landing.

  ‘That’s right,’ Susan Weiman agreed, before disappearing out of view below me.

  I passed along the corridor to the requisite door and gave a quick but solid knock. It wasn’t locked and the door shifted inwards slightly. There was no response from inside, not even a groan. ‘Rise and shine, Mr Catesby!’ I called out.

  I pushed the door open a crack. Light was fluttering in from the far windows. The shutters must have been left open during the night. Not that the room would get much light even during the day. There was nothing but trees and the mountainside to the north of the hacienda.

  Behind me, a babble of voices broke out in the courtyard.

  Maybe he was awake already, I thought. Perhaps he had opened the blinds, slipped out the far door and headed down to the bathroom.

  It was only as I moved forward to get a proper look that I realised my mistake. Steven Catesby was lying in bed, neatly tucked up, his eyes closed and his expression blank. The bedsheets were covered in blood.

  Chapter Eight

  As I moved further into the room, the gash across his neck became horribly visible. I let out a silent yelp and brought a hand up to my mouth. My God. Catesby’s throat had been slit open. For a moment, I simply stopped and stared. I didn’t know what else to do. His pyjamas were stained red, as were the sheets and pillows in the area surrounding his head. It was a dreadful sight. The poor man had been butchered in his own bed. A cut throat razor lay abandoned on the wooden floorboards. It too was slicked with blood. I shuddered, looking down at the thing. Someone had crept into his bedroom in the middle of the night and slit his throat. There did not look to have been any sort of struggle. That was odd, I thought, my mind struggling to reassert itself through a fog of incomprehension. Why hadn’t Catesby woken up? And, come to that, why hadn’t anybody heard his death throes?

  I drew in a breath and moved back to the door, cursing the fates that had placed me in this position once again. Why did I have to be the one to discover the body? It was hardly fair. There were lots of other people in the house. But there was no point crying about it now.

  I turned to grab the handle of the door, but as I did so a glint of light from the far side of the room attracted my attention. I strode across to the windows to take a look. Something was twinkling up at me from underneath one of the open shutters. I peered down at it and let out a low howl. I recognised the object. It was an earring with a small flower motif. I picked it up without thinking, my mind juddering in sudden horror. The earring belonged to my secretary, Miss Bunting. I had seen her creeping about in this part of the house in the early hours of the morning. My hand went to my mouth again. She must have been in here last night. I stared back at the body and the stained bedsheets. No, it was not possible. Miss Bunting had not met Steven Catesby before this weekend. She could not be responsible for his demise. But the evidence was there in my hand. The girl had definitely been in his room.

  I pocketed the earring and crossed numbly back to the door. I don’t know why I kept it. Self-preservation perhaps or a feeling that somehow I must have got it all wrong. Perhaps it was somebody else’s earring. For all I knew, it might be a common design. But whatever the truth, I did not wish to remain in that bloody room a moment longer.

  I stepped out onto the landing. Gunther Weiman was standing in the courtyard below, conversing with two grim looking officials. I peered down at them from the balustrade. One was a policeman, the other a doctor. The latter fellow was carrying a small medical bag in his left hand. A third individual, some distance behind, was peering suspiciously through some of the archways which encircled the plaza; another policeman, judging by the uniform, a strange looking fellow with alarmingly prominent eyeballs.

  Gunther Weiman glanced up and raised a friendly hand to me; then he caught sight of my expression. ‘Mr Buxton, is everything all right?’

  I took a lungful of air. ‘No, no I’m afraid it isn’t,’ I said. I gestured back towards the bedroom. ‘You’d better come and see.’

  Doctor Manuel Rubio flexed the dead arm and peered down
at Steven Catesby’s bloodied throat. ‘I am not a pathologist,’ he confessed, gazing sadly at the corpse. His accent was light, his voice soft but authoritative. ‘The time of death is not easy to determine. But rigor mortis has set in, so he has certainly been dead for some hours.’

  General Julio Tejada grunted. ‘He was killed in the middle of the night?’ The policeman was standing at the far end of the bed. He was a large, intimidating fellow with a chubby face, thick eyebrows and slicked back hair. He was dressed in military fatigues and carried a thin wooden cane in his hand.

  ‘It looks that way, general,’ Doctor Rubio replied. His tone was deferential, not to say a little nervous in the other man’s presence.

  Tejada looked away and noticed me hovering by the door. I had been obliged to remain in the room while a preliminary examination was carried out. ‘You!’ he snapped, aiming his stick at me. ‘What is your name?’

  I stepped forward hesitantly. ‘Er...Buxton. Henry Buxton.’

  ‘You knew this man?’ He gestured to the corpse.

  ‘Mr Catesby? No. Well, I met him on Friday evening. I’m just a house guest.’

  The general’s bushy eyebrows coalesced into a sceptical frown. ‘What were you doing in his room?’ Every question was a bark, like a smack to the jaw.

  ‘I was...Mrs Weiman asked me to give him a knock.’ The reply sounded flaccid, even to my own ears. ‘He was...late for breakfast. The door wasn’t locked. I put my head around and saw him lying there.’

  General Tejada eyed me suspiciously. ‘Why did you enter the room? You could see he was dead from the doorway.’

  ‘I...I don’t know.’ That was the God’s honest truth. ‘I suppose I couldn’t quite believe it. I just...stepped in, the door closed behind me. And then I was straight out again.’

  ‘You didn’t touch anything in here?’

  ‘No, nothing,’ I lied.

  The general continued to stare but this time I held his gaze. What was he getting at me for? I wasn’t the criminal here. I was just reporting what I had found.

  ‘And the shutters were already drawn back?’ He swept his swagger stick across to the windows leading out onto the far terrace.

  ‘Yes. I presume he left them open. It was quite a warm night.’

  Tejada scrunched his lips. ‘That is for me to determine. The other man, the banker. Did you know him?’ We had passed the late Mr Talbot on the way up the stairs. Gunther Weiman had been with us at that point, but he had not had the stomach to linger in the bedroom.

  ‘No. At least...’

  ‘Not before this weekend,’ the general finished for me. His tone was bordering on the sarcastic. ‘Was that an accident?’

  ‘I believe so. He fell down the stairs.’

  ‘And you discovered his body as well?’

  ‘Er...well, yes. I heard him fall.’

  ‘An unfortunate coincidence. Two men dying within a few hours of each other and you discovering both the bodies.’

  ‘Yes, it’s been rather an unfortunate weekend, so far.’

  The policeman snorted, glancing back at the bed. ‘I do not believe in coincidence.’ That was one thing at least we had in common.

  Doctor Rubio was examining the dead man’s eyeballs, though to what end I could not determine. The man had the air of country GP rather than a pathologist. He made quite a contrast to the grim general.

  ‘We will be taking statements from all the house guests shortly,’ Tejada barked, without looking back. ‘Do not leave the building. That is all.’

  ‘Right,’ I agreed, edging towards the door.

  The boggle-eyed deputy was crouching down by the side of the bed with a flashbulb camera, taking a photograph of the razor on the floor. The handle was free of blood, I noticed, if not the blade itself. I wondered if they would find any fingerprints on it.

  The general caught my gaze and growled. ‘You will leave now, señor. This is a crime scene not a circus.’

  ‘Yes, of course.’ I spun around and hurried away.

  Gunther Weiman was standing in the corridor outside with his back to the door. I brought myself up abruptly. He was gripping the balustrade with both hands but his head was bowed. His face, beneath that striking white hair, seemed pale and withdrawn. I stopped beside him at the rail, looking down across the empty courtyard. The other guests would be settled in the dining room now, having their breakfast. We could hear their voices drifting quietly up through the open doorway out of sight beneath us. ‘Does the rest of the household know what’s happened?’ I asked.

  ‘No, not yet,’ he said. But they would have a sense that something was up. They must have seen the policemen clomping up the stairs. ‘I should go and tell them.’ His voice sounded strained, which was hardly surprising in the circumstances.

  ‘This is a dreadful business,’ I muttered.

  ‘All that blood.’ He shuddered. I couldn’t blame him for not wanting to linger in the bedroom. ‘How could somebody do that? To Steven, of all people.’

  ‘I wish I knew.’ There was a brief, awkward pause. ‘Doctor Rubio seems a little out of his depth in there,’ I observed, finally.

  Weiman glanced across at me. ‘He is a family doctor. He was not expecting this. He came here to provide a death certificate, not to investigate...’ His voice trailed away.

  ‘A murder,’ I finished for him, reluctantly. That was the truth of the matter. A murder had been committed. I shut my eyes. Another trail of bodies. Why was it that I kept finding myself in the middle of this sort of thing? Bloody Frederick Reeves, dragging me down here. Weiman had more reason to be upset than I did, though. He must have known Catesby for years. ‘Come on,’ I said. ‘We’d better go downstairs. General Tejada asked me to tell everybody they’re not to leave the building until the police have taken statements from everyone.’

  Weiman nodded and released his grip on the balustrade. We shuffled along the landing towards the back stairs.

  ‘I didn’t like him,’ he blurted out suddenly. ‘Steven. I never liked him. I always tried to, for my wife’s sake, but we never really got on.’ He came to a halt at the top of the stairs. ‘I know it’s wrong to say that now, but it is the truth. He was a difficult man to be around. But I would never have wished....’ He closed his eyes. ‘Mein gott. What am I going to tell Susan?’

  The smell of warm bread would normally have lifted the coldest of spirits; but nothing that morning could have ameliorated the mood of shock and horror at the breakfast table as the guests and staff learnt of the death of Steven Catesby and the gruesome manner of his demise. Susan Weiman was distraught and Jane Talbot, who was already grieving for her own husband, now found herself in the peculiar position of having to comfort our hostess. It didn’t help that the man’s bedroom was directly above us. We could all hear the heavy, clomping footsteps of Tejada and his underling as they examined the chamber in the finest detail. Arthur Montana shook his head as Gunther Weiman outlined the dreadful truth, but continued with his breakfast regardless. He didn’t even flinch at the mention of the razor. I had offered to speak in Weiman’s place, but the German had insisted – rightly – that it was his responsibility. Ricardo Gonzales was busily comforting his wife, who was struggling not to cry. I doubted Consuela Gonzales had spoken more than a dozen words to Mr Catesby the entire weekend, but the woman’s natural sympathy was showing through and, in the circumstances, I could not blame her for such a public display of grief. As soon as Weiman had finished speaking, I passed on the general’s instruction that no-one should leave the house. Any excursions that had been planned for this morning would have to be postponed.

  ‘We should light a candle for him,’ Anita Montana declared, at the mention of church. ‘We should pray for him.’ I hadn’t realised the Italian woman had a religious bent. She was not exactly dressed like a nun.

  ‘We will, honey,’ Arthur Montana agreed. ‘He’s with God now.’

  The conversation continued in this stilted fashion for several minutes but was final
ly cut short when the general thumped out of the bedroom and onto the landing above. We listened in silence as he and Doctor Rubio descended the back stairs and stopped in the hallway to examine the second body. Now it was Susan Weiman’s turn to provide comfort to Mrs Talbot.

  I caught the eye of Freddie Reeves and we moved away from the table. I offered him a cigarette from my case as we shuffled out onto the side terrace. We stood for some moments there, our backs leaning against the outer railing, gently puffing away.

  ‘It really is murder then?’ Freddie asked at last.

  ‘No doubt about it,’ I confirmed, in a low voice.

  ‘Christ.’ He took another drag from his cigarette. ‘So someone crept in and slit his throat? With a cut-throat razor?’

  ‘It looks like it.’ Had it been his own razor, I wondered now, or had the murderer brought it with him? Doubtless that was something General Tejada would be able to determine. The policeman was moving about on the other side of the dining hall, waving that damned swagger stick of his all over the place. The house guests were doing their best to ignore the activity, as Doctor Rubio set to work examining the body of George Talbot. After a moment, Tejada moved to the far door and gestured for Gunther Weiman to join them. The German took a deep breath, squeezed his wife’s shoulder, and strode out into the back hall.

  ‘I’m sure the police will sort everything out,’ I said. At the very least, they appeared to be going through all the right motions.

  ‘I wouldn’t be too sure about that,’ Freddie whispered, tilting his head confidentially. ‘General Tejada’s not exactly the most helpful bloke I’ve ever met.’

  ‘You’ve met him before?’ I coughed.

  The other man gave a half smile. ‘Yes. Didn’t I tell you? He was the one who investigated Giles Markham’s suicide.’

  ‘Tejada did?’ I boggled in surprise.

  ‘Yes. That’s why the minister’s so het up about involving the police in anything else. After that business with Giles, he’s desperate to keep a low profile.’