Mistletoe and Murder

by Carola Dunn

  “Stop! You mustn’t go in there, Victor. This is a matter for the police.”

  “He’s dead? Calloway’s dead?” Fists relaxing, the captain shook his head like a bewildered bull whose chosen victim has just jumped a fence. His shoulders slumped. “Then Mother will never be vindicated.”

  “To be honest, Uncle Vic,” said Miles, still pale but with a touch of colour returning to his cheeks, “I don’t think Grandmama cares much any more.”

  “Little you know! Did you know she still sleeps with a miniature of my father under her pillow? To you she’s just a wrinkled old lady, but inside she’s still young and pretty and in mourning.”

  Alec never would have expected such a flight of fancy from the seaman. What on earth was going on? He vaguely remembered Daisy recounting some tragic story from old Mrs. Norville’s past, but he hadn’t paid much attention. It didn’t do to ignore Daisy’s apparently idle chatter, he thought. Then he reminded himself that it was Christmas Day, and he was on holiday. He wasn’t going to have anything to do with investigating Calloway’s death, dammit!

  All the same … “I’d better make sure the poor devil’s not lying there slowly bleeding to death,” he said to Tremayne. “I won’t touch anything but his wrist.”

  Miles gave him a puzzled look. “But … ,” he started, then fell silent as Alec frowned at him.

  Something else Daisy had told him: She had mentioned his profession to young Miles, and sworn him to secrecy when she discovered that Lord Westmoor had not passed on the information to his poor relations.

  Alec went into the dimness of the tiny chapel. In spite of himself, he kept a lookout for footprints; and though he saw none, not even Miles’s, he kept to one side so as not to leave his own. The Reverend Calloway lay prone before the simple altar. He might have been performing a profound obeisance before his Lord, were it not for the knife hilt protruding between his shoulderblades.

  His head was turned away from Alec. The arms were caught beneath the body, as if he had been on his knees praying when he was struck down. He was wearing his funereal black suit, his overcoat folded over the back of a pew, next to the burnt-out lantern. Mortifying the flesh, Alec thought wryly, or warmed by the fervour of his devotions.

  Alec bowed his head briefly towards the crucifix, but when he knelt, he was kneeling beside the fallen man, not before the altar.

  Against the black cloth, the wide patch of blood around the knife was hard to make out. The base of the haft was stained. Alec thought a fair amount of blood must have welled out immediately, but not spurted. The murderer would have blood on his hands, but probably not his clothes.

  The blade had gone in high on Calloway’s back, between the shoulderblades, slanting downwards but too high, Alec guessed, to hit the heart. Nevertheless, when he reached beneath the body for the wrist, he knew before he touched it that the man was dead.

  No pulse. Cold, and rigour well advanced. Soon after midnight, probably.

  Dammit, he was not going to start detecting!

  But he couldn’t stop his mind working. As he started to stand up, he saw the dark pool of congealed blood by Calloway’s open mouth, spreading under his cheek pillowed on the cold stone. The knife must have nicked a lung. Perhaps it had severed the spinal chord, paralysing the man. That would explain why he had not struggled in his death throes, why he was laid out so neatly.

  There was something oddly familiar about that knife hilt. Alec stooped to take another look. Yes, if he was not mistaken, it was the seaman’s knife Belinda and Derek had found yesterday in the secret passage.

  Where had they left it?

  DAMMIT, HE WAS NOT GOING TO START DETECTING!! This was one for the local police.

  He hurried out of the chapel, using his handkerchief to pull the door shut behind him. “Where’s the nearest police station?” he asked.

  “Calstock,” Tremayne told him. “It’s …”

  The captain interrupted. “Calloway’s dead, then, Fletcher? I searched half of India for that man, talked him into coming home when he was all set to retire over there, put up with his prudish ways for weeks on end …”

  “Why?” Alec asked bluntly.

  “Why? Because …”

  “The less said the better, Vic,” Tremayne interrupted in his turn, and repeated, “This is a matter for the police.”

  “I’ll go and fetch them,” Miles offered.

  “Are you sure you feel up to it, my boy?” his grandfather asked with concern.

  “Yes, perfectly. I’ll be better with something to do.” He looked at Alec. “I suppose … I suppose I’ll have to tell them it’s murder.”

  “It’s difficult to see how it could be accident or suicide,” Alec agreed dryly, “or even self-defence. But just report a violent death, and make sure they bring a doctor.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I believe Dr. Hennessy is away for Christmas,” said Tremayne. “You can say I suggest they ring up county police headquarters in Bodmin for advice. Don’t tell them any more than you absolutely must.”

  “Yes, sir.” Again the young man glanced at Alec, who nodded. From the family’s point of view, if not from that of the police, the canny old solicitor was quite right. “Right-oh, then, I’m off.” He strode off up the path, back the way they had come.

  “Wait!” Alec called. He turned to Tremayne. “Does he go near the house?”

  “No, the public footpath skirts the garden on the river side. There’s a hairpin bend, then another gate into the garden, then a rather steep slope up to the top before it straightens, meets the farm track, and then runs on to Calstock. Why?”

  “Never mind!” Alec shouted to Miles, waved him on, watched him go past the gate, then said to Tremayne, “Because I don’t want the children hearing about this.”

  “Gad, no!” Captain Norville, who had been standing in gloomy contemplation of the chapel, swung around. “Nor the ladies, by Jove.”

  “We’ll have to tell them something,” Tremayne argued, “the ladies at least. We must agree on a story before we go back to the house. Something which won’t spoil Christmas for everyone.”

  “They’ll find out soon enough when the police arrive,” Alec pointed out. “Better to tell them the truth in the first place. Tell the ladies Calloway’s dead, anyway, and Miles has gone for a doctor. Let them assume natural causes. I don’t think anyone was sufficiently fond of him for his demise to spoil their Christmas dinner.”

  “It’s spoilt mine!” the captain muttered.

  “Very well,” said Tremayne, “we’d best get back and break the news before they start to wonder what is going on.”

  “I’ll have to stay,” Alec said reluctantly, “to make sure no one goes in and disturbs the evidence. With any luck, Miles will bring a bobby back in time for me not to miss my dinner.”

  “I’ll stay,” grumbled the captain. “Can’t leave a guest of Westmoor’s out here.”

  “Sorry, I wish I could let you, Captain. But I’m afraid it looks as though you and your family are going to be the chief suspects.”

  “Me? I wanted him alive. His death has ruined everything!”

  “Fletcher’s right, Victor. Unaccustomed as I am to criminal practice, I can see that all of us, even I, shall be under suspicion. Come along, now, we must go and break the news of the reverend gentleman’s demise. We don’t want to keep the ladies in suspense.”

  “Do please try to keep it from the children,” Alec begged.

  “Of course,” said the captain gruffly.

  “And if there’s a key to the chapel, I expect the police will want to lock it up until they can examine it properly.”

  “I’ll send someone with the key.”

  They tramped off. Alec strolled up and down in front of the chapel. He hadn’t done guard duty for years, but waiting was still a not infrequent part of his duties, usually in far less pleasant surroundings. Birds sang in the trees, and a pair of rust red squirrels chased each other, leaping from branch to branch
like trapeze artists. Somewhere in the distance, a peal of bells rang out in joyful clamour: the end of the morning service in Calstock, probably.

  There would be no church service at Brockdene today. The intended celebrant had bled to death or choked on his own blood—but Alec was not going to speculate on the precise medical cause of his departure to a better world, nor on who had sent him there.

  He took his pipe from his pocket … and put it back again. Much as he longed for a smoke, it would somehow be disrespectful to the dead, a feeling he had encountered before. To distract himself, from that and from the irrepressible instinct to detect, he took a turn around the chapel.

  Patches of evergreen bushes, laurels and rhododendrons, grew on each side, but there was room to pass between thicket and wall. Behind the chapel, the ground fell away abruptly in quite a high cliff, fifty or sixty feet, with a mud flat at the bottom. The river was a muddy brown after the gale and heavy rains, turbulent, with quite a bit of debris racing seaward on what looked like an ebb tide. The opposite bank, bordered with yellowed reeds, was much lower, a gentle hillside dotted with red Devonshire cattle.

  “Alec!” It was Daisy’s apprehensive voice. “Alec, where are you?”

  “Here. Coming.” He hurried round to the front.

  Daisy flung herself into his arms and hugged him tightly. “Gosh, darling, I was afraid you’d been done in, too.”

  “Too? I suppose the captain couldn’t keep his mouth shut.”

  “So Calloway has been murdered. How dreadful! Captain Norville and Mr. Tremayne just told us he had died.”

  Alec groaned. “And I’ve just told you he was done in!”

  “Give me credit for a little nous, darling. If he’d popped off from a heart seizure or something, the captain would have stayed to wait for the doctor. If you stayed, it meant there was something suspicious about his death, and you didn’t trust the captain not to mess about with your clues.”

  “Not my clues. I’m on holiday. I managed to stop Miles giving me away, so don’t you breathe a word of my profession. Where are the children?”

  “I caught them sneaking out right after you left. I made them promise not to come this way, and Derek said they’d go up the hill to the Prospect Tower. It’s to be a giant wigwam, I gather. They were both wearing the Red Indian costumes we brought them. Bel’s adorable in the beaded jacket and the squaw feather, with her ginger braids! Poor Nana was to be a buffalo, but she likes to be chased, and they won’t hurt her. How was he killed?”

  “Stabbed with … Dash it, Daisy!”

  “You might as well tell me, darling. It won’t be a secret once the local bobby arrives.”

  “I hope we can keep it from Belinda and Derek. And I had hoped for a peaceful, if not merry, Christmas dinner before it’s generally known.”

  “Well, I shan’t tell anyone. Especially Mother. Oh heavens, she’s going to be simply livid! Livider, I mean, if there is such a word. Let’s put off telling everyone as long as possible. We’ll persuade the bobby not to come up to the house till after dinner, so only—let’s see—four of us will know. Besides the murderer. Who do you think stabbed him?”

  “I’m trying hard not to think about it,” Alec pointed out.

  “No one was exactly keen on the poor chap,” Daisy mused. “I’m afraid no one will really mourn him. I wish I knew why Captain Norville invited him in the first place.”

  “He said something odd,” Alec revealed reluctantly. “He said, ‘Then Mother will never be vindicated.’ And then he talked about her still mourning her husband.”

  “But he wasn’t. Her husband, I mean. I knew you weren’t listening when I told you about Mother’s letter. Or was he?”

  “Great Scott, Daisy, what the dickens are you talking about?”

  Daisy held up her hand. “Hush a minute. Let me think. This does rather change things. Surely ‘vindicated’ in that context must mean … Darling, I rather think I know what Calloway was here for!”

  “Must I beg for enlightenment?”

  “No, why should you?” She wrinkled her nose at him. “You’re absolutely determined not to investigate so you have no reason to want to know. In any case, it’s all hearsay and guesswork, not evidence.”

  “I give you fair warning, a second murder is about to be committed,” Alec growled.

  “Keep your hair on, darling, I’m rather fond of that black thatch of yours. Right-oh, I’d better start from the beginning.” She narrated Lady Eva’s tale of the events leading up to the drowning of Albert and his eldest brother, Viscount Norville, the sixth earl’s heir.

  “A sad story. Presumably they quarrelled because the viscount wouldn’t lend his support. But that leaves the native girl still in India. We’re talking about the old lady known as Mrs. Norville?”

  “Yes. She arrived a few months later, with two babies. Can you imagine, darling? She came all that way to join him only to find him dead. Simply ghastly! She claimed to be married, though without proof I don’t suppose there was the slightest chance of the earl’s believing her. Or admitting to believing her, rather.”

  “Not a chance, even if it were true. Yet all these years later, she’s living here in his house.”

  “He gave her an allowance and let her live at Brockdene to keep her quiet. He even let her use the family name, but she was never acknowledged as part of the family, and Victor and Godfrey were considered illegitimate. Assuming they’re really Albert’s sons, they’re the present earl’s first cousins. And I believe we can assume that they’re not only Albert’s sons, but legitimate sons.”

  “Very probably,” Alec said, “though their chance of proving it must have died with Calloway.”

  “You agree then?” Daisy crowed. “Calloway was the clergyman who married Albert to his native girl, and the captain brought him home to swear to the marriage!”

  “It’s a reasonable deduction. But whom does that leave with a motive for murdering the man? They should all have been as happy as larks at the prospect of being legitimized.”

  “Unless Calloway changed his mind. He found a great deal to disapprove of—Mrs. Norville’s idols, and the carols, and the mistletoe—and I’m sure he was in two minds about the whole business. That was why … Listen, there’s the Chapel clock chiming twelve. The other chapel. I hope Miles gets back in time for Christmas dinner. I’d hate to miss it.”

  “Why don’t you go on back to the house, love?” Alec suggested. “It might be a good idea to check on the children’s whereabouts. I wouldn’t put it past them to start out in one direction and somehow end up here in the woods, without ever realizing where they were heading, of course! They could always blame it on Nana.”

  “Yes, hunters must follow where the buffalo leads. Perhaps I ought to go and see what they’re up to. Are you going to present the local bobby with our deductions?”

  “Based on hearsay, and possibly nothing to do with Calloway’s death? If he’s got any gumption, he’ll find out for himself, or his superiors from county headquarters will. Besides, I don’t want anyone wondering why I’m so keen on making deductions—which I was absolutely determined not to do. You witch, Daisy!”

  “Don’t blame me, darling. Detection is not only your profession, it’s in your blood. Oh, here’s the key to the chapel. The captain asked me to bring it. He was very impressed by your anticipating the police wanting to lock up.” She went off, laughing, up the path.

  Needless to say, before she was out of sight, Alec’s mind drifted back, willy-nilly, to what she had revealed of the Norvilles’ history, and to its bearing on the murder. Unlike some of her wilder theories, her guess as to Calloway’s function in the scheme of things seemed pretty sound. It would have to be confirmed, but that shouldn’t be difficult. The captain could have no reason to deny it, rather the reverse, as it would tend to exculpate himself and his family.

  Unless, as Daisy suggested, Calloway had changed his mind because of the many offences against his particular puritanical dogma. In that
case, might not Captain Norville have lost his temper and assaulted him?

  Alec remembered the captain’s fists clenching when Tremayne caught at his sleeve. Fiery temper or the automatic defensive reaction of one whose life had taken him to dangerous parts of the world? Even in a fury, the captain seemed more the sort to face his adversary and knock him down, clergyman or no, rather than stabbing him in the back.

  On the other hand, those dangerous places included many where an insult to one’s honour or that of one’s family cried for retaliation in any possible shape or form. Perhaps in the course of the captain’s travels, the code of the English gentleman had worn thin. In any case, like a policeman, a merchant marine captain hardly qualified as a gentleman, to say nothing of his being a poor relation, presumed illegitimate—and the man was also half Indian. What sort of oriental mores had Victor learnt at his mother’s knee?

  Luckily, Alec reminded himself, it was not his business to delve into Captain Norville’s psyche. And here at last came Miles and not one but two policemen, pushing bicycles.

  “Sergeant Tilton, sir, and Constable Redkin. This is Mr. Fletcher, Sergeant. He’s a guest at Brockdene.”

  Tilton was a defeated-looking man not far shy of retirement age. Redkin, judging by the faint fuzz on his cheeks and his spick-and-span uniform, was a new recruit.

  “A guest?” Tilton enquired suspiciously. “Might I ask, zir, what keeps you ’anging about ’ere at the zene of the crime?”

  “I stayed to make sure no one entered the chapel, Sergeant. Are you in charge of the case?”

  “Aye, for now I am. The gales brung down the telephone lines all around Bodmin. ‘Tis on the edge o’ the moor, exposed like. Bessie at the exchange zays the lines east and down river are all right.”

  “Then what about ’phoning Plymouth?”

  The sergeant stared at him in outrage. “’Tis not my place, zir, to go a-letting the Devon police know what’s ’appening ’ereabouts. I’d zooner call in Scotland Yard, that I would.”

  Alec and Miles carefully didn’t look at each other. The constable’s eyes widened. “Lor, Sergeant, you going to call in the Yard?”