02 - Murder at Dareswick Hall

by Margaret Addison

  ‘Robert, go and finish polishing the silver.’ The entrance of the newcomer had been unobserved by both Robert and Lane who jumped up from their seats at the servants’ table. There was a sternness in Crabtree’s voice that indicated that it was a command and that his instructions were to be immediately adhered to. With an apologetic look at the sergeant, Robert disappeared and the butler turned a face red with indignation on the sergeant.

  ‘I don’t know what the boy’s been telling you but he didn’t kill Lord Sneddon.’

  ‘Well, he certainly denied doing so,’ began Lane. He felt at a distinct disadvantage being in the servants’ hall. This was Crabtree’s domain where he ruled supreme. The sergeant’s presence was unwelcome here. Even the young maids who had giggled when they first saw him, impressed by his good looks and easy charm, had turned their backs on him at the butler’s entrance. Only old Mrs Gooden had stubbornly ignored Crabtree’s outburst and poured Lane another cup of tea.

  ‘Well he couldn’t have done it even if he had wanted to,’ said the butler. ‘Besides myself, all the servants’ bedrooms are in the attic. The male and female servants’ corridors are separated by a door which is kept locked at all times and to which only Mrs Hodges has a key. As a consequence of what happened to poor Mabel while Lord Sneddon was visiting, Mrs Hodges also took the precaution of locking the door to the attic at the top of the stairs on the women’s side. Likewise I did the same on the men’s side to prevent Robert doing anything stupid at night or Ricketts pilfering the silver or anything else of value. So you see, sergeant, Robert, together with the rest of the staff, was effectively locked in.’

  ‘I see. And who is this Ricketts fellow, the one that you don’t trust? I’m somewhat surprised you keep someone in your employ who you consider untrustworthy.’

  ‘He is not an employee of Dareswick. He came with Lord Sneddon as his valet.’

  ‘Came as his valet rather than is, or rather was, his valet?’

  ‘I do not think that he knows the first thing about what the role of being a valet entails.’

  ‘I see, most intriguing, I’m sure the inspector will want to have a word with him in due course.’ With one last look around, Lane left the servants to their duties. The thing that struck him most, as he made his way through the green baize door, was how afraid they all were.

  ‘So it looks as if they’re ruled out,’ said Deacon, once Lane had returned to the study and filled him in on his various conversations with the servants.

  ‘Yes, they were locked in for the night, so unless that old stick Crabtree or the housekeeper did it, they’re in the clear. And I don’t mind telling you, sir, I’m relieved. That boy Robert’s a loose cannon to be sure, highly strung. Just the sort of lad, in fact, to do something stupid like bump off Sneddon and then think about the consequences later. He’s definitely one to act in haste and repent at leisure, that boy.’

  ‘Can’t say I’d blame him on this occasion,’ said the inspector, getting up from the table to stretch his legs. ‘He was the poor girl’s young man, you say.’

  ‘Not as such, no, sir,’ the sergeant said, sadly. ‘They hadn’t got as far as courting or walking out together, or whatever you want to call it. In fact I’m not sure Mabel knew how Robert felt about her, he was awfully shy around her, Mrs Hodges, the housekeeper, told me when he wasn’t there. Trying to pluck up the courage to ask her out on her next day off, I think he was. And then of course it was too late. What is a crying shame though, sir, is that he would probably have been quite happy to take both her and the baby on, you know, made an honest woman of her and brought up the baby as his own. But she wasn’t to know that, was she? All the servants feel that they let her down somehow but they weren’t to know, were they? She never let on, see.’

  ‘A tragic story indeed, Sergeant’, agreed Deacon. ‘And it certainly gives us a motive as to why the servants may have wanted him dead even if they couldn’t have done the deed themselves.’

  ‘That’s not all, sir. It was a great shock to them Sneddon turning up when he did. None of the servants had any inkling that he would be Miss Isabella’s mysterious guest. Mrs Hodges said she thought even the baron and the children didn’t know who Isabella was bringing with her. Didn’t know even if it was going to be one of her girlfriends or a gentleman. Josephine Atherton insisted that two bedrooms be got ready just to be on the safe side, one in the women’s corridor and one in the men’s.’

  ‘I see, so it was likely to have been just as much of a shock for the Athertons as it was for their servants,’ the inspector said thoughtfully, pausing to look at the picture above the fireplace, an oil painting of a pheasant.

  ‘You could say that,’ agreed Lane. ‘Apparently Mr Hallam was right livid when he discovered who his sister’s guest was, made rather a scene about it he did. His father demanded that he behave himself. There was also talk in the servants’ hall that Miss Josephine had had rather a soft spot for Sneddon. There had been some speculation as to whether there would be a wedding.’

  ‘In which case the servants weren’t the only ones to have had ill feelings towards Sneddon. I’m beginning to wonder whether anyone liked him. Rather insensitive of Isabella Atherton to have brought him to the house, I’d have said. Shows a certain disregard for the feelings of her sister and her father’s servants. Still, she at least must have seen something in the man to get engaged to him.’

  ‘Either that or she just wanted to be a duchess,’ said Lane, cynically. ‘If I remember rightly, Lord Sneddon was the Duke of Haywater’s only surviving son, wasn’t he?’

  ‘He was indeed. The duke’s two older sons both died in the war and now his youngest one has been murdered. It just goes to show, Lane, you can have all the riches and titles in the world but still it all boils down to luck, which the poor duke appears to have had very little of.’

  ‘Do you think that could have been a motive for his murder, sir? Should we be looking to see who’s next in line to the dukedom?’

  ‘Possibly, and yes, of course we should look into that. But I have a feeling the murderer’s closer to home than that. You heard what old Crabtree said. The French windows in the library are stuck, so it’s unlikely Sneddon let his murderer in. Also, it looks as if Sneddon’s decision to come to Dareswick this weekend was rather last minute, although of course we’ll have to check with Isabella Atherton, so it’s unlikely that anyone else knew he’d be here.’

  ‘Oh, sir, there’s something else that I almost forgot to mention.’

  ‘And what is that, Lane?’ enquired Deacon, looking interested.

  However, as it happened, the inspector had to wait a while for an answer. For just at that minute there was a loud knock on the door and an eager young constable entered hardly waiting to be admitted.

  ‘Well, what is it, Constable?’ Deacon said rather offhand, resenting the disturbance.

  ‘Sir, Walsh and I were just making a thorough search of the deceased’s room like you told us to, before you joined us, like –.’

  ‘Yes?’ Deacon said, irritably.

  ‘Well, we’ve found something, sir, me and Walsh. He said as how you’d better come and see for yourself, how you wouldn’t want us to move anything without showing you first.’

  ‘Right, Constable, lead the way….’

  Chapter Seventeen

  ‘Mrs Gooden told me what happened,’ said Mrs Hodges, as she and the butler relaxed for a few minutes in the housekeeper’s sitting room to enjoy their mid-morning cup of tea. ‘How the sergeant came down here and found out all about what had happened to poor little Mabel and the grudge Robert held against Lord Sneddon.’

  ‘Yes, I came as soon as I realised what was going on. That inspector’s a clever fellow. He’d kept me out of the way in the study answering his questions. I had stupidly let slip in front of his lordship that I’d sent Robert to see if Brimshaw had driven Miss Josephine anywhere, you know, when we found out she’d disappeared. His lordship hit the roof about it and, of course, the
inspector wanted to know why Robert had been dismissed so suddenly.’

  ‘Ah, well, no harm done,’ said the housekeeper, taking a sip of tea. ‘They now know that Robert can’t have killed Lord Sneddon, not with us having kept all of the doors to the attic locked at night.’

  ‘But that’s just it, Mrs Hodges,’ said Crabtree, his face at last showing the worry that he had kept bottled up inside all morning, ‘and I’d only say this to you. I locked the door last night, I know I did because I distinctly remember doing so. But this morning when I went to open it, slightly later than usual I grant you because of all the to-do with Lord Sneddon, I found it was open.’

  ‘Open?’

  ‘Yes. Well, what I mean is that it was closed but unlocked.’

  ‘So….’

  ‘So Robert could have done it. He could have crept out in the night and killed him, and no one would have been any the wiser.’

  ‘Ah, the poor boy,’ wailed Mrs Hodges, clutching at her teacup, the tea within it now lukewarm and quite forgotten.

  ‘Well, that was rather unexpected, sir,’ said Lane as both he and Deacon came back into the study and closed the door behind them.

  ‘It certainly puts a different complexion on things,’ agreed the inspector settling himself down on the sofa while the sergeant took out his notebook and started scribbling down some notes on their discovery. ‘It opens up another motive, certainly. If he was doing that, it makes me wonder what else he may have been doing. We never did think very much of his moral character, did we, Sergeant, but even we didn’t think he would stoop so low.’

  ‘Do you think someone may have found out what he was doing?’ enquired the sergeant. ‘You know, caught him in the act. Even the baron might have thought twice about letting his daughter marry such a rogue. Talking of the baron, he’s got quite a temper on him, hasn’t he? Look at the way he laid into that poor butler of his for not sending the footman away. I’d say he’s not a man to cross. I reckon even Sneddon would have come out the worst in a fight with him.’

  ‘So do I, Lane, so do I. I say, this makes me keen to meet this so called valet of his, Ricketts, didn’t you say the chap’s name was? I wonder whether they were in it together. It would make more sense if they were. I can’t see old Sneddon carrying out the deed himself, can you? He wouldn’t have had the opportunity to snoop around for a start. Whoever did that would have had to do it while everyone else was busy downstairs, the baron and his family and guests in the dining and drawing rooms, and the servants occupied with waiting on them.’

  ‘It would still have taken some nerve, sir. If this Ricketts fellow had been caught coming out of one of the women’s rooms he’d have found it hard to come up with a decent excuse. More likely as not they would have called us in.’

  ‘Well, he must have been very good at it because as far as we know he wasn’t caught. Unless the murderer caught him, of course, but no, that doesn’t make sense, otherwise it would be Ricketts we would have found dead draped over the desk in the library, not Lord Sneddon.’

  ‘Shall I get the fellow in now, sir, see what he has to say for himself?’

  ‘Yes… no, on second thoughts let’s leave him for a bit. He’s not going anywhere so let’s leave him to fret for a while wondering what we know. Then maybe he’ll be more cooperative when we do speak to him. You had better get one of the constables to keep an eye on him, though. We don’t want him to scarper before we’ve had a chance to interrogate him.’ Deacon moved over to the fireplace to study the picture of the bird again. ‘You know, Lane, this painting really is jolly fine. Quite the thing for a country squire to have in his study. Now let me see, I think we’ll have the Honourable Hallam Atherton in next. We’ll give the Honourable Isabella Atherton a little more time to compose herself, I think. And we never did find out from their father the identity of the guests staying here. We’ll ask this Hallam fellow and also find out what he really thought of Sneddon.’

  Deacon sat down on the leather settee to collect his thoughts. There would be a short delay before the sergeant returned. Not only did Lane have to brief one of the constables stationed in the hall to keep an eye on the whereabouts of Lord Sneddon’s valet, but the guests and members of the household were still holed up in the garden room, which was located a little distance from the study.

  Deacon decided to put the time to good use. Now, what were his first impressions of the murder scene? Thinking it over, as he did now, he found the location of Sneddon’s body worried him. If the man had come across Josephine and Brimshaw as they had prepared for flight and had as a consequence become embroiled in a fight with the chauffeur, a theory he himself had put forward to Lane, then surely there would have been signs of the furniture having been knocked out of place or even overturned in the ensuing struggle. And Sneddon’s body would have been found lying on the floor not seated in a chair drawn up to the desk. It was a nonsense to suppose that Brimshaw and Josephine would have taken the time to drag Sneddon’s body over the carpet and position him in the chair. What was the point of it? They would have been much better to arrange his body in one of the wing chairs by the fire where its presence would have been hidden from anyone passing the door or going into the library for a book. It could not even be argued that they had tried to disguise the murder as a suicide. The little gold letter opener had been left protruding from Sneddon’s back for all to see the cause of death.

  So what had Sneddon been doing at the desk? An empty glass and half empty whisky decanter had been found on the occasional table beside one of the armchairs near the fire. Sneddon had obviously sat there drinking. What had made him move away from the warmth of the dying fire to the writing desk? He sighed. It was yet something else that he and Lane would need to find out if they were to solve this case. There was something else niggling him too. It had struck him as soon as he had laid eyes on Lord Sneddon’s body. He had meant to mention it to Lane at the time but he had been distracted by other things. Oh well, it would have to wait now. They needed to get on with interviewing the household and guests, find out where everyone was, and who the last person was to see Lord Sneddon alive.

  Rose paced the garden room wondering what to do. The police had spoken to the baron and now she supposed they would want to speak to Hallam and Isabella. It would be a little while before they asked to speak to her surely, so plenty of time for her to decide what to say and do. She looked over to where Isabella was sitting on the settee, her face pale and white. It would have made another woman look faded and drawn. On Isabella it only accentuated her beauty, making her look fragile and vulnerable. Perhaps the police would take pity on her. Oh, how she hoped so. Then it wouldn’t be so awful what she had to tell them. They may be reluctant to jump to the obvious conclusion if Isabella looked delicate. They would think she was distraught by her fiancé’s death rather than merely shocked. They would want to help her and lessen the ordeal of being interviewed. They would not see the hidden steeliness of her character or think that a woman such as Isabella could be quite ruthless when it came to self-preservation. A woman would see that, Rose felt, a woman such as herself who Isabella was not trying to impress. Perhaps things would be alright after all. Perhaps she wouldn’t be faced with having to make a choice as to whether or not to tell the police what she knew.

  But wouldn’t she then be guilty of withholding evidence? She knew it was her duty to tell the police what she knew of Isabella being blackmailed by Sneddon. But if she did she would be giving Isabella a clear motive for wishing him dead. She remembered her promise to Josephine to say nothing to anyone of the blackmail business. But Josephine hadn’t known then that Sneddon was going to be murdered. She had promised to sort it out, but where was she now? She had abandoned her sister and, anyway, Isabella had not known that Josephine had undertaken to rescue her from her awful predicament. What if Isabella considered a future with Sneddon too awful to endure? What if she had thought that death was the only way out; either her own, or Sneddon’s? And, once she had dec
ided on that course of action, she had carried it through? Whichever way she looked at it, Rose felt that she could not just hand Isabella over to the police on a plate. They might not bother to search for another motive for Sneddon’s murder, and how would she feel then? But on the other hand she did not wish to be guilty of withholding evidence or of obstructing the police from their enquiries or whatever it was called. So really there was only one thing for it, she must forewarn Isabella.

  She walked unhurriedly over to the sofa as casually as she could and sat down next to Isabella. She leaned towards her slightly and hoped that to a casual observer it would appear only that she was trying to express her condolences. Isabella did not help. If anything she looked annoyed by Rose’s unexpected appearance beside her, and made to shift her seat and move a little away to the other end of the sofa. Rose put out her hand and touched her lightly on the forearm both to get her attention and to prevent her from moving. Isabella flinched slightly and looked furious, but at least her eyes were now turned to look at Rose.

  ‘Listen, I know Lord Sneddon was blackmailing you,’ Rose said in a hurried whisper. ‘And I’m afraid I’m going to have to tell the police.’ Isabella’s eyes grew wide at this and she looked positively scared. ‘I have to, don’t you see?’ Rose carried on urgently. ‘They’re bound to find out. They’ll find your letters in Sneddon’s possessions if nothing else, and it will look bad for you. But if you tell them about it first, then perhaps it won’t look so awful. Do you understand what I’m saying?’ No word escaped Isabella’s lips, but Rose thought she could just about make out the barest of nods. It would have to do, she had done her best. It was now up to Isabella whether she followed her advice. She did not look up, afraid that Cedric’s or Hallam’s eyes would be on her, staring at her curiously. Unless they were blind, they must be wondering what she was talking so urgently to Isabella about; unless they were too wrapped up in their own thoughts, of course.