Mistletoe and Murder

by Carola Dunn

  “I’m not at all sure of the legal niceties, sir. But I’m not taking formal statements at present, so if you want to sit in …”

  “There’s no need, Grandfather, honestly. I didn’t murder Mr. Calloway, and I haven’t anything earth-shaking to tell Mr. Fletcher. Nothing about the family. Just now I think Mother’s hand probably needs holding more than mine does.”

  The old man shook his head. “These modern young ladies … Well, as you wish, my dear. Ah, here’s Miles. Perhaps you’ll let him ‘hold your hand.’ Miles, my dear boy, I believe you have enough law to stop your sister incriminating herself.”

  “But I haven’t done anything!” Felicity insisted. With an irritable gesture, she opened the glass-paned door to the corridor. “Oh, all right, Miles can come if Mr. Fletcher doesn’t mind.”

  “Miles may come,” said Alec, at which Mr. Tremayne returned to the library, closing the door behind him. “I have a few questions for him on the same subject.”

  Miles nodded. They followed Felicity to the dining room and all sat down at the long table.

  “You first, Miss Norville, and let’s start with what you have to tell me, before we go on to what I want to ask you.”

  Felicity’s sulky face made her look very like Jemima. “It’s just that I’ve been meeting someone, a man, at the chapel. But we hadn’t arranged to meet on Christmas Eve. He had something else on, with his family, that he couldn’t get out of.”

  Alec hadn’t expected anything like this revelation. It opened up all sorts of possibilities. “His name, please.”

  “I can’t see what that has to do with anything. I told you, he couldn’t come last night.”

  “If he wasn’t here, he has nothing to fear. Who is he?”

  “Oh lord, Flick, it wasn’t …” Miles shut his mouth abruptly as Alec gave him one of the icy looks which made subordinates jump to attention and chilled the souls of malefactors. He turned it on Felicity.

  “Well, if you must know, I suppose you’ll find out somehow. He had to land at Brockdene Quay, and someone’s bound to have seen him. It was Cedric Norville,” she said defiantly.

  “One of the Helstone Norvilles?”

  “The eldest son,” Miles confirmed, clearly shocked.

  “Second in line to inherit the earldom,” said Alec. “As long as Calloway didn’t spill the beans.”

  “He didn’t know about Calloway; I didn’t tell him.” She was lying, Alec thought. “Anyway, he had no way of knowing Calloway was going to the chapel in the woods. We didn’t know ourselves till a couple of hours before.”

  Though true enough, that was irrelevant. If Cedric Norville had come to meet Felicity, or come in hopes of meeting Felicity, found Calloway in the chapel and discovered who he was … But what about the knife? How could Cedric have obtained the seaman’s knife Belinda and Derek had found in the secret passage?

  “So you see,” Felicity went on, “Cedric had nothing to do with it. What was it you wanted to ask me?”

  “It was obvious from your expression, when your father and brother mentioned the Helstone Norvilles, that you knew something about them,” Alec said dryly. “I didn’t guess you were so intimately acquainted, but as they are obvious suspects, I wanted to find out what you knew.”

  “Now you know,” said Felicity, rising with languid grace.

  “Not so fast. I have a few more questions. First, you knew the earl’s son was killed in the War. Cedric Norville told you, I assume? Why didn’t you tell your family?”

  “Isn’t that obvious?” she drawled. “They’d have wanted to know how I found out.”

  “All right. Now, taking your word for the moment that you didn’t meet Cedric Norville yesterday, I don’t suppose you saw anyone, or anyone saw you, between say half past eleven last night and five this morning?”

  “Jemima might have,” Felicity said indifferently, “though she was fast asleep when I went up. She’s sharing my room while ‘his lordship’s guests’ are with us. No one else, unless they crept into my room and gazed entranced upon my sleeping form.”

  “Unlikely, I agree. Did you happen to hear any unusual sounds in the night—doors closing, floorboards creaking, and such.”

  “Not a thing. I slept like a log. But if I had heard anything out of the way, I’d have assumed it was Jemima making her ghostly rounds. I doubt I’d have opened my eyes to check whether she was gone. I don’t care.”

  “I dare say,” Alec said, his dry tone bringing a slight flush to Felicity’s cheeks.

  “In any case, I didn’t wake till morning. One way or another, I’ve missed quite a bit of sleep. I had some catching up to do.”

  Alec changed tack. “Are you aware of what Belinda and Derek found in the secret passage?”

  “The seaman’s knife? Yes, I was there when they showed it to my father. I’m afraid he wasn’t very enthusiastic. But why … Oh gosh, is that what … ?”

  “Mr. Norville wasn’t very enthusiastic? Why was that?”

  “He said it wasn’t at all rare.”

  “I see. And come to think of it, Captain Norville said the carving of dolphins and sea serpents on the hilt was typical of a seaman’s knife. So the weapon which killed Calloway may simply be similar to that one. I’d appreciate it if you’d keep that under your hat, by the way. I wouldn’t want the children to find out.”

  “No, of course not.”

  “Have you seen it since then?”

  “Not consciously,” said Felicity, frowning. “Daddy told Derek to leave it on the hall table. I doubt I’d notice whether it was still there. There’s usually quite a bit of clutter; but as we don’t have the post or newspapers delivered, we don’t have the usual reasons for checking the table. I suppose the children might have taken the knife to play with and dropped it in the grounds. Anyone could have picked it up, one of the gardeners, or a tramp.”

  Or Cedric Norville, Alec thought. “Are you meeting Cedric tonight?”

  “No! Not till … till New Year’s Eve.”

  “Thank you, Miss Norville, that will be all. For now.”

  “That’s all?” Felicity seemed more confused than pleased. “Right-oh, then. You’re putting Miles through the ‘third degree’ next?”

  “Yes, it’s his turn to be grilled,” Alec said, with a grin. Let her think he believed her. Of one thing he was tolerably certain: she expected Cedric Norville to meet her at the chapel tonight.

  11

  The night was clear. The air had a frosty feel when Alec and Miles took up their positions on either side of the chapel by the river. As Alec had expected, Miles was quite willing to assist in the apprehension of Cedric Norville. After all, if his sister’s young man turned out to be the murderer, the Brockdene Norvilles would be freed from suspicion.

  Alec had managed a brief, preliminary interview with each of them in the course of the evening. Now, waiting in the cold, unable to walk about for fear of alerting his quarry, he had plenty of time to think over those interviews.

  Miles had provided more information about the Helstone Norvilles. The Mr. Norville of that branch of the family was Lord Westmoor’s second cousin, the grandson of the fifth earl’s younger brother. He had another son besides Cedric, and two or three daughters. They lived on a small estate belonging to the earl, just across the river from Brockdene, in Devon.

  “Under other circumstances,” Miles had said wryly, “we might have been good neighbours and even friends. As it is, I’ve seen them occasionally in Calstock and received a distant nod—never the cut direct, I’ll give them that—but there was no closer communication. Until Flick ‘took up with’ Cedric. I suppose they met last summer. I wish she hadn’t been meeting him secretly, especially at night, but I can’t blame her for not telling the parents.”

  “They would have forbidden the association?”

  “I don’t know about that. It seems to me it’s jolly difficult nowadays to stop girls doing exactly as they please. But they would have been upset. After all, the Helsto
ne lot have been gently snubbing us for decades. We’re not quite respectable, you know.”

  “So Cedric’s parents would have been even more upset?” Alec hazarded.

  “Indubitably,” Miles confirmed. “I say, suppose his father discovered they were meeting at the chapel, came over, found a clergyman there, assumed he was going to marry them secretly, and killed the messenger, so to speak?”

  “A nice theory, if a little far-fetched.” At that moment, Alec had caught Daisy’s eye—she was still taking notes—which had reminded him of his occasionally unwarranted dismissal of her wilder conjectures. “Mind you,” he said hurriedly to Miles, “I’ve seen too many far-fetched theories turn out to be the truth to dismiss it outright. I’ll keep it in mind. By the way, why didn’t you tell your parents about young Lord Norville’s death?”

  “Partly because by the time the medicos finished with me I simply didn’t want to think, let alone talk, about the War. Mostly because it could only upset everyone, make a long-standing grievance more grievous, if you will. I mean, it was one thing as long as we had little to gain by proof of Gran’s marriage, but if Uncle Victor should have been Westmoor’s heir …”

  “Yes, I see what you mean.”

  “I’m all for a quiet life, though I don’t seem to be having much luck that way.”

  “No. I have to ask, where were you between eleven thirty and five last night?”

  “Sleeping the sleep of the just. My grandfather had my bed, and Flick helped me set up a camp-bed in the room for myself.”

  “I take it you and he can’t give each other alibis?” Alec said resignedly.

  “’Fraid not. Grandfather takes some mixture for the rheumatics which puts him out like a light, and I learnt in France to sleep like a log absolutely anywhere—except when I’m having nightmares, which I didn’t last night. And I’m afraid it’s even more unlikely that anyone ‘crept into my room and gazed entranced upon my sleeping form’ than it was with my sister. Dash it, sir, how is it one can go on cracking asinine jokes when a man was murdered just a few hours ago?”

  “It’s a defensive mechanism. I was in the Flying Corps, not the trenches, but from all I’ve heard …”

  “Yes, we went on joking in the teeth of Hell. You’re right, how else would one come through? The fact is, no, I have no alibi. I doubt you’ll find many for that time of night.”

  “I know.” Alec had sighed, and then proposed the expedition upon which they were now engaged.

  Having secured Miles’s assent, he saw the old lady next. Not that he thought her physically capable of trotting down to the chapel and stabbing a man in the back. However, as Daisy pointed out, her history was fundamental to the murder, and all they knew of it was a mixture of gossip, hints, and speculation. Alec needed to hear it from her own lips.

  She had came in quietly, as was her wont, giving Daisy a shy smile, not commenting on her presence. Alec settled her in a chair with her inevitable handwork, and asked for her full name for the record.

  “My childhood name was Surata, but when I went to the mission school they called me Susannah, and that was the name on my marriage certificate. I am Mrs. Albert Norville.”

  She spoke with a gentle steadfastness. It seemed to Alec that, faced with that unassuming moral courage, the sixth Lord Westmoor must have found it difficult to deny her.

  “Tell me about your marriage, Mrs. Norville.”

  “We were young. We fell in love,” she said simply. “The Reverend Calloway married us secretly. He was not then so … uncompromising. Albert believed that the English in India were far more prejudiced against mixed marriages than those at home. He was sure his family would accept me when his tour in India was over and he brought me here. Then Victor was born. Albert’s father found out and sent for him.”

  “Why did you not go with your husband?” Alec asked, wondering how things might have been different if the couple had arrived together.

  “By then I was expecting our second child. Albert would not let me travel. He would go ahead and prepare the way. Once his parents understood that we were married, not … cohabiting, all would be well. He was an optimist, my Albert. He was going to write to me when all was settled; and when the baby was old enough to travel, I would join him.”

  “I see. It sounds like a sensible plan, but it was hard on you, waiting.”

  “I had faith in Albert, but it seemed a long wait. At last the letter came. He had not yet seen his parents, but his eldest brother, who he had hoped would be sympathetic, was dead set against us and had tried to take and destroy the marriage certificate. Albert had it safe. I was to come at once. Once his parents met me, he was quite sure they must love me as he did. Love is blind, Mr. Fletcher.”

  “Very often.” But he was perfectly aware of Daisy’s “’satiable curtiosity,” and her penchant for meddling, and though she drove him mad sometimes, he loved her anyway. Still, Albert’s refusal to see his wife’s dark skin as an insuperable bar to his parents’ acceptance was in its way admirable. “So you set out,” Alec prompted.

  “Yes. Godfrey was scarcely a month old, my poor boy. Albert had told me to go to his family’s solicitor in London, who would tell me where to find him. But all he could tell me was that Albert was dead.”

  Her tone had remained so soft and even that Alec was startled as well as dismayed to see slow tears rolling down her cheeks. After half a century, the memory still hurt. The reminder of his grief when Joan died shot a pang of anguish through him which left him feeling somehow disloyal to both his first wife and Daisy.

  Though he usually had a spare handkerchief on him when he was interviewing suspects, he hadn’t expected to need one today. Fortunately Daisy came to the rescue. Mrs. Norville dabbed her eyes and continued her story.

  “Our marriage certificate had disappeared. I don’t know whether Lord Norville took it, or it was lost when Albert drowned, or if someone destroyed it when his body was found. Of course, without proof Lord Westmoor could not accept me as his son’s wife, but he was generous. He gave me a home here and an annuity from the estate which continues even since he died, and he paid for Victor and Godfrey’s schooling. If prices had not risen so since the War … but it is the same for everyone, isn’t it?”

  Agreeing, Alec noticed that Daisy was about to say something. He gave her a “not now” look and said to Mrs. Norville, “Then Captain Norville turned up with Mr. Calloway.”

  “Such an unhappy man.” The old lady sighed. “It was very dear of Victor to go to such trouble to find him for my sake, but though I would not tell him so for the world, I’m not sure it wouldn’t have been better to let bygones be bygones. Such turmoil, even before this terrible business!” She sighed again. “Still, Victor found himself in India with time on his hands, and he never was one to let sleeping dogs lie, dear boy.”

  “Speaking of sleeping, ma’am, I have to ask where you were between eleven-thirty and five last night, and whether you saw or heard anything out of the ordinary.”

  Mrs. Norville had nothing to report. Alec escorted her back to the library and returned with Dora Norville and Jemima.

  The younger Mrs. Norville had been so upset, she said, by Calloway’s disastrous effect on her plans for a traditional jolly Christmas that she had had to take a powder to help her sleep. She had been dead to the world (“Oh dear, what a dreadful thing to say!”) the moment her head touched the pillow and had not woken till broad daylight.

  Jemima truculently proclaimed that Felicity’s boy-friend had killed Calloway, with Felicity’s help, and she didn’t blame him a bit. Naturally this led to an immediate outcry from her mother, wanting to know what she was talking about.

  Alec managed to extract an admission from Jemima that no, of course she hadn’t seen him do it. Since playing the ghost, she had been strictly forbidden to set foot outside the bedroom after lights out. Pressed, she conceded that she hadn’t actually observed Felicity leaving their shared room during the night. With Dora Norville wringing her
hands and demanding explanations, it was impossible to continue questioning the two. Alec had let them go.

  He had been following them to select his next victim when Daisy said, “Darling, before you go any further, I should tell you …”

  “Not now, Daisy. I still have three to see before dinner, not counting your mother, who just might have seen or heard something. I can’t even attempt the servants till Tom and Ernie arrive. And I have to ask Bel and Derek if they moved the knife from the hall table.”

  “I’ll do that, if you like,” she offered. “They’ll be more likely to think it’s just a matter of whether they’ve been naughty, not connected to Calloway’s death.”

  “Yes, please, love. Why don’t you see if you can find them now, and I’ll speak to Lady Dalrymple.”

  “Good idea. Mother is bound to be obstreperous if she sees me helping you.”

  They had grinned at each other and parted company.

  Assured that she was a possible witness, not a suspect, Lady Dalrymple was comparatively cooperative, if having nothing to report could be described as cooperation. She did wonder aloud what was the advantage of having a chief inspector from Scotland Yard on the case if he had not yet managed to make an arrest. Alec forebore to point out that he’d only been on the case for a few hours.

  Daisy returned. “The children are over in the old house,” she reported, “hunting for another treasure map. Godfrey’s there. He doesn’t seem to mind them messing about with his precious cabinets.”

  “He has other things to worry about. What about the knife?”

  “Derek admitted to taking it out of its sheath for another look, on his way up to bed last night. They both swear, cross their hearts and hope to die, that they left it on the hall table.”

  “That doesn’t get us any further then. Whereabouts in the old house is Godfrey? Not conveniently in the Hall, I suppose.”

  “No, up in the Drawing Room, in the Tower. He seems to use it as a den, or office. Did you want him next?”

  “Yes, before he hears of Felicity’s misdeeds and gets distracted. It’ll waste less time if I go to him, I suppose. How do I get to the Drawing Room?”