Ted put his head in his hands briefly. ‘Oh God. Look, he’s caused trouble for Dolly. Showing up, selling things, picking fights. He always seems to be in six places at once and none of them where he should be. I may have had to warn him off once or twice. That’s why he’s pointing the finger at me now. To get his own back.’
Guy nodded and absorbed this but then apparently ignored it. ‘In which case, there was opportunity for you to hire Billy Masters to kill Mr Curtis.’
Ted laughed now, whether out of nervousness or relief, no one could tell. ‘Why would I do that? Adrian was a good friend of mine. I practically grew up with him.’
‘Yet he opposed your marriage to Miss Meyrick and had no compunction about telling you so. It was your very closeness that meant he could hurt your chances of seeing it through. Perhaps you needed him out of the way. Or perhaps he threatened to expose the sordid workings of the 43, which would have made it impossible for you to marry your fiancée.’ It was a long speech for Guy and he drew breath at the end, wishing he could pull out his handkerchief to wipe his brow.
Ted shook his head. ‘You’ve gone off on completely the wrong track.’
Nancy intervened. ‘Yes, Guy, I think this is going too far. You can’t start making accusations against my guests. We had better end this here. Besides, Mrs Windsor will be here soon to start serving supper.’ Everyone stirred at this, albeit a little stiffly, having been held in rapt attention for several minutes.
‘No,’ said Pamela, and Nancy looked up at her sharply. ‘Sergeant Sullivan must do this. It’s important that each and every one of us is without question proved to be in the clear.’ She paused. ‘If each of us is in the clear, that is.’
‘Oh God, Woman. This isn’t a game—’
‘I know,’ said Pamela. ‘That’s exactly why I’m insisting this is done properly.’ She had stood her ground and won possession of it. ‘Sergeant Sullivan, please. Continue.’
‘Thank you, Miss Pamela. You were alone, Lord De Clifford, according to your statement. But here’s the most difficult thing for me: Louisa was in the kitchen and she would have either seen you go into the boot room or heard you once you were there but she didn’t. Don’t you see? I want to rule you out but I can’t.’
Everybody held their movements stone still.
‘He wasn’t alone,’ said Clara. ‘I was with him, in the dining room. We were…’
Now she hesitated, waiting for a cue from the man who had come to sit beside her.
‘You had better tell him, Clara. I’ll face the music.’
‘We were kissing. We couldn’t say anything about it because of Dolly.’ She blushed and pulled an apologetic face at Ted. ‘I liked you once, you know.’
‘I know,’ said Ted, shamefaced. So, he was guilty – but not of murder.
CHAPTER SEVENTY-ONE
Pamela came over and whispered to Louisa. ‘I think you had better give us a few minutes to calm down. Why don’t you go off. I’ll come and find you shortly.’ Louisa nodded and she and Guy slipped out of the library through the passage that led to the kitchen.
‘I had better see if Mrs Stobie needs a hand, if you can wait for me.’ Louisa had been able to do her usual bedtime duties in the nursery earlier but she was not sitting easily in this strange space between being a servant and present at the dinner, where neither she nor Guy were exactly guests.
‘Isn’t Ada working tonight?’ asked Guy.
‘Goodness, are you showing off your policeman’s memory? I’m impressed.’
Guy grinned.
‘Yes, she is. She’s pregnant now so working as much as she can before she has to stop. It’ll be hard for her and Jonny when the baby comes, with only his wage coming in.’ Louisa stopped herself short. ‘But yes, you’re right. They won’t be needing my help. What do you want to do?’
‘I’d like to take a look at the rooms where the party took place, to see for myself where everyone was and map out the evening as far as I can.’
Louisa cast a glance at the door to the kitchen, as if Mrs Windsor would overhear them. She wouldn’t approve. ‘All right but let’s walk there quietly.’
In the hall the two fires had embers still glowing and there were lamps switched on, waiting for the return of the master and mistress of the house. But the rooms that led off it – the drawing room, morning room, dining room, smoking room and the telephone cupboard, which was not actually a cupboard but a very small room with a chair and side table crammed in it – were all in darkness. Louisa shivered in spite of her wool cardigan; the rooms in this house seemed to leak warmth as soon as nobody was in them. They went into the drawing room, Louisa switching on a single light so the yellow walls glowed like a faded sunset. Guy noticed the French windows, beside which Nancy’s typewriter sat on the table, almost tucked out of sight behind the screen.
‘That extra clue,’ he said. ‘It could have been typed up at some point during the treasure hunt, when everyone was coming and going. No one has mentioned it but perhaps Monroe never thought to ask.’
‘I don’t think he asked much,’ said Louisa. ‘He’d got his culprit; the only answers he was looking for were the ones that said he’d done a good job.’
‘You know policemen too well. Anyone would think you’d been spending time with one.’ They caught each other’s eye in the half light. ‘And those French windows. It would have been easy enough for Miss Morgan to slip out and back in again. What’s out there?’
‘Just the garden.’
‘Is there another set of French windows leading to another part of the house?’
Louisa thought carefully. ‘No, only the back door from the kitchen leads out.’
Guy put his hands in his pockets and gave the room a final once over. ‘Everybody started in here and left to find the answer to the first clue. Do you know what that was?’
Louisa nodded. ‘A whip. They might have looked in a number of places for one. The boot room, the stables, Lord Redesdale’s study even. Miss Pamela would know he keeps one in there, not one he uses. Sentimental value.’
Outside, an owl hooted, soft and low. Guy reacted and Louisa remembered how it felt to be a city person out here in the country, with its mysterious sounds.
‘When you went to the dining room and found Miss Pamela and Mr Curtis in there, they had both completed the first clue and been given their second, you think?’
‘Yes,’ said Louisa, glad the shadows hid the flush of shame she felt again at remembering her part in that night’s events. ‘Each clue had an object as its answer and I saw Mr Curtis put a fork in his pocket when he left the room.’
‘The fork wasn’t in his pocket when he was found later,’ mused Guy, ‘presumably because he’d handed it in to Mr Atlas and Miss Morgan, after he’d had the argument with Miss Long. Assuming he simply rejoined the game and came back in here to get his third clue.’
Again, Louisa showed that she agreed with this.
‘It’s at that point that he left and went to the bell tower, we think?’
‘I can’t say for certain,’ said Louisa. ‘After Pamela came to find me in the kitchen, immediately after she had overheard the row, I stayed there. I didn’t know where Dulcie had got to but I couldn’t go looking for her. She didn’t want anyone to see her eye and start asking questions, so she said she would stay out of the way.’
‘But we know she was waiting to meet Billy Masters, if not Mr Curtis.’ Guy went quiet and Louisa felt the chill working its way into her bones. She’d have liked to have gone to stand by the dying fire in the hall at least but didn’t want to disturb Guy’s thoughts.
‘How long was it between Dulcie leaving and you hearing her screams?’ he asked.
‘I couldn’t say exactly but I think it was about three-quarters of an hour.’
‘The question is: where was everybody in that time?’
Then light flooded the room and they both looked up to see Pamela standing in the doorway. She had switched on another lamp and was watc
hing them both with a curious expression on her face. Had she been listening?
‘You have remembered about Nancy and the clocks, haven’t you?’ she said.
Now they knew what was to happen next.
CHAPTER SEVENTY-TWO
While Pamela went to fetch the others from the library, Louisa went around the ground floor switching the lights on. She could only cross her fingers that Lord and Lady Redesdale would not return until well after midnight and that Mrs Windsor, believing them all to be in the library, would be in her own sitting room with Mrs Stobie to see in the New Year with a glass of sherry. There had been no sight or sound of Charlotte since she had flounced out but it was possible she would return at any minute. They would just have to take the risk of upsetting her again. This mattered too much.
Nancy came in first, her eyes shining from the wine drunk over supper. ‘Are we really going to do this?’ she said.
Guy nodded. ‘I’d like to, I think it’s the only way for us to get to the truth.’
‘I think the others will do it except for Sebastian, who can’t be moved to do anything he doesn’t want to do.’
‘Fine, I’ll play the part of Mr Atlas,’ said Guy, which made Nancy hoot with laughter.
‘Sorry,’ she said, ‘but it’s not what one would call good casting.’
Guy decided to ignore this. ‘Miss Cannon, perhaps you could be Miss Curtis, as she is still elsewhere?’
Louisa gave a nod and continued to busy herself in the drawing room, straightening out occasional objects. She didn’t want to stop and think about what they were doing.
Clara, Phoebe, Ted, Oliver and Pamela all came in together, the earlier tension having dispelled a little, though Ted flashed a look of anger at Guy. He wasn’t quite over having been brought so close to such a serious accusation earlier.
Everybody sat down on the sofas but the cold got to them fast. ‘Are there any blankets in here?’ said Clara. ‘Honestly, these English houses. Do you not believe in comfort at home?’
‘Farve doesn’t,’ laughed Nancy.
Sebastian came in last, smoking a cigarette. ‘I fail to see what’s so humorous,’ he snarled at Nancy. She started to reply but he cut her off. ‘I take no pleasure in remembering the death of my good friend.’
‘Except for the money it means your fiancée will now inherit,’ snapped Phoebe.
Sebastian regarded her placidly. ‘We’re not engaged.’
‘I’m not sure Charlotte knows that.’ Phoebe spoke with the tenor of someone who had been watching Miss Curtis more closely than might have been deemed comfortable for either of them.
‘She does.’ Sebastian sat in an armchair and crossed his legs. ‘We broke up after Christmas.’
‘Then why have you come tonight, you bastard?’ Ted tried a jocular tone but didn’t quite pull it off.
Sebastian made a small grimace. ‘She’s not in a good way. I thought I’d better keep an eye on her.’
Guy gave a cough. ‘I’d like to start this, if I may. The only time in the evening where we know exactly what was happening when was at half past one. Because that’s when the clocks were changed.’
‘Back to one o’clock,’ said Nancy.
‘The old party-time trick,’ noted Clara. ‘I can’t say it works seeing as we all know you do it.’
‘Hooper doesn’t,’ said Nancy. ‘I thought it would give Charlotte a bit longer when he came to collect her to take her back to the Watneys.’
‘Did anyone see you do it?’ asked Guy.
‘I don’t think so. Everyone was all over the house. I don’t know who was where, when.’
‘You changed the clocks in the hall and in here, is that right?’
‘Yes,’ said Nancy.
‘Could you do it, as you did before, and perhaps you’ll remember if you saw anyone.’
Nancy went out into the hall to change the clock and returned a minute or two later to the drawing room. ‘I remember Seb and Phoebe were in here, and Charlotte, too. She’d just got her second clue and brought it back.’
‘Miss Fischer and your lordship, do you think this was the time you were in the dining room?’
Clara put a hand to her face and looked at Ted. ‘Yes, I think it probably was.’
‘Were you in there for some time?’
‘We’d both gone in there for our second clues. I think I was given the one Adrian had just had – with the fork as the answer – and Ted was looking for a napkin ring.’
‘That was Miss Pamela’s second clue, which she had completed,’ pointed out Louisa.
‘So that means that Mr Curtis must have been given his third clue by this time, and left the drawing room already,’ said Guy. He chose not to mention what he believed that third clue to have been. ‘In that case, I need Lord De Clifford and Miss Fischer to go to the dining room. Mr Watney, can you recall your clues?’
Oliver looked pale. ‘Yes, I knew the answer to the first but hadn’t yet found a whip. It took me some time.’
‘Why?’ said Pamela. ‘You know where to find one, our house is not so different from yours.’
Oliver took a shuddering breath. ‘The truth is, I had no desire to partake in this idiocy. I decided to retire to the telephone cupboard.’
Pamela looked at him sympathetically. ‘Did you telephone anyone up?’
‘No,’ said Oliver. ‘I read the telephone directory. I found it most calming.’
The more Guy knew of the upper classes, the more eccentric he found them. ‘If you could return to the telephone cupboard, please sir.’
Reluctantly, Oliver took himself off.
* * *
Guy removed his glasses and rubbed his eyes. The strain of it was exhausting him and the early dinner that Mrs Stobie had given him seemed a very long time ago. He could have done with a glass of wine but none had been offered.
‘Right, so it’s half past one. Lord De Clifford and Miss Fischer are in the dining room, and they are in there for some time. Mr Watney is in the telephone cupboard, where he also remains. Mr Atlas and Miss Morgan are in here. And you come in, Miss Nancy, to change the clock back by half an hour. Did anyone see you do it?’
‘The two of them were talking, Phoebe was on the sofa with her legs up and she was looking at Seb as he mixed some more drinks, so I’m not certain they noticed me.’
‘Could you change the clock as you would have?’
Nancy picked the carriage clock off the mantelpiece and with her back to the room changed it in a trice before replacing it. It now said one o’clock. ‘I thought I’d make it as real as possible,’ she said.
‘What happened then?’
‘Seb gave me my next clue, and I headed off to Farve’s study to work out the answer, which I thought had a matchbox as something to do with it.’ She looked at everyone. ‘Fine, I’ll go in there now.’
‘Wait.’ Louisa stepped to the side to interrupt Nancy. ‘You said Miss Charlotte was with you when you heard the screams.’
‘Yes, I came back and picked up the next clue, which Phoebe gave me. Charlotte was in here too, so we both went to the morning room together. We’d decided to solve our clues together.’
‘How did you get there?’ asked Guy.
‘Through there, of course,’ said Nancy, pointing to an inner door that joined the two rooms.
‘So you didn’t go through the hall. And are you also saying that Sebastian wasn’t in here when you returned the second time?’
‘I think that was when he had come to meet me,’ said Pamela. ‘He found me in the smoking room and said that now it was officially my birthday, he wanted to give me a present.’
‘Yes,’ said Guy. ‘This was in your statement. In the hall he took a box out from under a table there that he’d hidden earlier. It had a brooch in it and it was this that he gave you. You noticed the time then, didn’t you?’
‘Yes, it said it was quarter past one in the hall but I knew that Nancy would have changed the clocks, so really it was quarter to t
wo.’
Sebastian stood up. ‘Does anyone else want a drink? I’m not sure I can listen to more of this.’
Without waiting for an answer, he left the room.
* * *
‘Sorry, Miss Pamela,’ said Louisa. ‘But you need to go into the hall. And Miss Nancy…’
‘Fine,’ snapped Nancy, ‘I’ll go to the morning room.’
Phoebe was left alone with Louisa and Guy. She perched on the edge of the sofa, a lit cigarette in one hand, a nearly empty glass of wine in the other. Her pretty mouth was set in a thin line.
‘Miss Phoebe,’ began Guy, ‘we need you to say what happened now, truthfully.’
‘It wasn’t much,’ she said. ‘You’ve heard most of it. After Nancy was in here and must have changed the clock – she was right, I didn’t notice – Adrian came and was handed his next clue. He left quickly – he wasn’t in a good temper, which isn’t surprising given what we found out later about his row with Dulcie. Then Charlotte came in, I suppose to get her clue, too, though I wasn’t concentrating much.’
‘Was she in here for long?’
‘A few minutes, I suppose. She said that it was after one and so Seb should give Pamela her present. They both left the room and I took the opportunity to step outside.’
‘Did you have a coat with you?’ Louisa, feeling the cold now quite badly, remembered that it had been a late November night and not much warmer.
‘I had a wrap. I had to wander off a bit though, to find somewhere I could … you know, without being seen. I didn’t want anyone to see me through a window.’
‘How long were you out of the room?’
Phoebe took the last two drags of her cigarette and stubbed it out. ‘I hadn’t thought about this before but now that you say it, it is odd. Because I was gone for at least twenty minutes but when I came back into the room the drawing room clock showed that it was only a little after quarter past one. I don’t know why I noticed but I did. As if I’d only been gone a few minutes. I expect I just put it down to Nancy’s party time trick.’
‘Had anyone been into the room while you were out?’
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