by Bill Kitson
‘Devotion beyond the call of duty. Sit down and I’ll pour you a drink.’
After several minutes of frustration, Tony eventually extracted a promise that a detective would ring him back. We waited, sipping the excellent whisky. Within the allotted time span Rathbone appeared with a salver. I was gnawing contentedly on a ham sandwich when the phone rang. Tony told the caller briefly what had happened then mentioned that most of what he knew was second hand. ‘To be honest, it was a friend of mine who discovered most of this, he’s the one you should be talking to. Yes, his name’s Adam Bailey. Yes, that’s the one. I’ll put him on now if you like.’
Tony held out the receiver. ‘It’s Detective Constable Pratt. He’s the only one on duty, apparently. Sounds like a decent sort of chap and he recognized your name, which is a help.’
I took the handset. ‘Adam Bailey,’ I said.
‘DC Tom Pratt,’ the caller told me. ‘Sir Anthony’s given me a rundown about what’s happened. The problem is all the roads are blocked. We need somebody on the spot to act in loco parentis, so to speak. Would you be prepared to do that?’
‘Yes, I suppose so, but you have to remember I’m no detective. I don’t know what to look for; what questions to ask, or much about police procedure.’
‘You’re the closest we’ve got. You’ve done some crime reporting as I remember, and your factual reports seem to be accurate. I read War in the Hills and that seemed a good piece of reporting.’
‘OK, I’ll do what I can. First things first; what do you want us to do about the body? It’s dark now but I suppose we ought to get it shifted soon to avoid possible predation.’
Out of the corner of my eye I noticed Eve shudder. I grinned at her, hoping that I hadn’t repulsed her too much.
‘Normally I’d disagree, but in this case I suppose you’re right. Is there any chance you could take some photos of the body before you move it?’
‘I can do that. We’ll have it indoors within the next hour. I’ll pass you back to Sir Anthony now whilst I make a start on finding my camera and organizing a stretcher party. Will you tell him what you need regarding witness statements and so forth? I suppose you want me to do some sort of brief examination to try and establish a time of death? Can you give me any guidance as to what to look out for?’
I listened to Pratt’s instructions before passing the phone back to Tony. I’d only had chance to eat one sandwich. In view of the task ahead of me my stomach rebelled at anything further at this stage. ‘I’m off to sort out a camera and get some pallbearers,’ I told Eve. ‘When Tony comes off the phone will you tell him where I’ve gone? I don’t suppose you do shorthand, do you?’
Eve smiled. ‘Naturally, doesn’t everyone?’
‘That’s great news. You can stay here, rest your leg, and act as liaison with the police. When we get back we’ll have to interview everyone and you can take notes; then we can type up their statements.
The dining hall had emptied by the time I walked through; although no attempt had been made to clear the debris of the Christmas dinner. Rathbone was waiting in the kitchen; alongside him was a tall, strongly built man I was told was Cathy Marsh’s husband, Frank.
‘Do you know of anything we can use as a makeshift stretcher to carry the body on?’ I asked. ‘I know it’s an unpleasant task but we have to get it indoors as soon as possible.’
‘Yes, sir,’ Marsh answered, ‘we do have a stretcher. It’s in the gun room. I can go fetch it.’
‘Good, I’m going to need some powerful torches if you have them as well. I’m afraid I have to take some photos of the corpse in situ. I’ll go get my camera and meet you back here in five minutes.’
Tony had not joined the waiting members of staff when I returned to the kitchen. I took the torches from Marsh. ‘Tell Sir Anthony I’ve gone to take photographs of the body as the police requested. We need a place to move Beaumont to; the stables will be the best place so don’t forget the key. One of you must get it from Ms Samuels. She’s with Sir Anthony in the study at the moment. And don’t waste time. I want this job over and done with as soon as possible.’
I left without giving them chance to question the orders I’d barked at them. I wasn’t about to enter an argument with them. I was tired and not a little angry at the seeming lack of co-operation I had received from the moment we had discovered Beaumont was missing.
I set the four torches in the snow around the head of the corpse to give some additional light and attached the flash to the camera. I took photographs of the corpse from every angle and at every distance I thought would be helpful. Fortunately, the camera was a sophisticated one so I hoped the results would be good enough when the film was developed. It took over twenty minutes, by which time Tony had joined me, together with Marsh and Rathbone. All three of them looked mournful enough to get work as pallbearers. Marsh and Rathbone opened out the stretcher; a venerable and stout one with sturdy carrying handles and a canvas litter.
‘If you two take a leg apiece and lift his lower limbs onto the stretcher first, then Tony, if you grab his arms and lift the chest region, I’ll put my hands under his shoulders and lift there,’ I instructed them.
They all looked marginally relieved they hadn’t been allocated the messy end to deal with. We got him onto the stretcher easily enough; although when I lifted the body by the shoulders the head was resting against me and I finished up in a fairly gory mess. I could tell by what little I had chance to see of the injury that the back of Beaumont’s head had taken the brunt of the attack. The skull appeared to have been crushed. We got the body to the stables but I insisted on taking several close-up shots of the crushed skull before we left the makeshift mortuary. Even though I had remained calm throughout I was more than happy when Tony locked the stables door; leaving Beaumont lying in state in a room that, I discovered later, had once been home to a Grand National winner.
I followed the other three back inside the castle. I was shocked to see how bloody my clothing and hands had become; so too were the others, to judge from the way they avoided looking at me. ‘Is there another way upstairs?’ I asked Tony. ‘I’d rather avoid everyone until I’ve had chance to get cleaned up.’
He showed me a servants’ staircase I hadn’t noticed earlier that ran from a door at the end of Rathbone’s pantry. I wondered how we’d come to miss it during our earlier search. I was in my room about to start washing my hands when the door opened. I glanced over my shoulder to see Eve hobble in. ‘You shouldn’t be walking around, you ought to be resting that leg,’ I told her.
She sat on the bed. ‘I came to see if you’re OK,’ she said quietly.
‘I will be when I get cleaned up. At the moment I feel like Lady Macbeth. How are things downstairs?’
‘All the others are in the sitting room at Tony’s order. They’re staring at each other as if the person next to them is Jack the Ripper.’
‘Hardly surprising, I suppose. I can’t say I feel too much sympathy for them.’
I turned to the washbasin and took the soap from the dish and began washing the blood from my hands. I went to replace the soap on its shell-shaped receptacle and stopped. I peered at it closely. ‘That’s odd,’ I said, half to myself.
‘What’s odd?’ Eve asked.
‘Here, on the soap, what do you think that is?’
Eve hobbled across and stood looking over my shoulder. She was wearing a gently musky scent that I found mildly disturbing. She looked at the bar of soap I was holding, ‘Those bits, you mean? What do you think they are?’
‘They feel like grit to me,’ I said, having rubbed one of them between my fingers. ‘That’s strange; I wonder how they got there?’
‘Have you been handling stone at all?’
‘No, you were with me until we went out to photograph and move the body. That’s just what we did; which to my mind seems to indicate that the grit was mixed with the blood. That’s the only way I can think that it could have got onto my hands.’
; ‘What you’re saying is that whoever murdered Beaumont hit him over the head with a stone?’
Eve was still standing close to me. I picked up the towel and began drying my hands. ‘You’ve got blood all the way up the sleeve of your sweater.’ She took my hand and was pointing to it when the door opened. I suppose to anyone looking from a few yards away it must indeed have looked as if we were holding hands.
‘I came to see if you were all right,’ Polly said. ‘But I see you have company,’ – her lip curled – ‘of a sort. I didn’t realize your preference was for jailbirds.’
I winced as the door slammed into the frame. Fortunately, both were of solid oak otherwise I reckon they’d have splintered into matchwood under the force of Polly’s ill-tempered departure.
‘Oh dear, I think I’ve spoiled her little scheme,’ Eve said.
I looked at her in mild surprise. The Eve I’d met yesterday would have been raging with fury by now. ‘Does that upset you?’ I asked.
‘Not in the slightest,’ she replied. ‘More to the point, has it upset your plans?’
‘Certainly not, contrary to popular belief round here.’ Eve grinned as I continued, ‘I have absolutely no plans. Not for Polly or anyone else. What was the jailbird crack about?’
We were suddenly both aware that we were, to all intents and purposes, still holding hands. Eve didn’t seem in any hurry to let go and I wasn’t either. ‘That woman should have a Government Health Warning tattooed on her forehead,’ Eve said, ‘that or a skull and crossbones.’
‘What is it between you two?’ I asked. ‘She hasn’t a good word to say about you and she certainly isn’t at the top of your popularity poll.’
‘I think she detests me because I’ve been moderately successful in life,’ Eve said thoughtfully. ‘I think she believes I did it on the back of father’s money but that isn’t true. Everything I have is down to what I’ve earned. I resent her influence over Harriet. I don’t think it’s a healthy one and I dislike the way she uses people, men in particular; then casts them aside when she’s had what she wants from them.’
I released her hand and turned to take my bloodstained sweater off. ‘There, and I thought you were fighting over me,’ I joked.
Eve’s reply was so quiet I didn’t hear it, but I was looking into the mirror and I’ve always been a fairly good lip reader. Maybe I got it wrong. The mirror was a little distorted but as far as I could tell Eve had said, ‘Maybe that’s true also.’ Or perhaps that was just wishful thinking on my part. It was only later that I realized Eve hadn’t answered my question about Polly’s jailbird statement.
Tony was waiting for us at the foot of the staircase when we reached the ground floor. To all intents and purposes we must have looked like an old married couple as we came down the flight of shallow steps. The handrail was on the wrong side to be of any use to Eve, so I offered her my arm for support; which she was glad to accept.
‘Adam, I want a word in my study; Eve can wait in the sitting room with the others,’ Tony said tersely even before we’d finished our descent.
I let him go a couple of paces before I spoke. ‘You’ll have to wait a while,’ I told him.
Whether it was my tone or the fact that I’d contradicted him that pulled him up I wasn’t sure. He turned and for the first time I saw a tinge of anger in his cheeks. ‘We need to start work as the police have asked,’ he told me shortly.
‘Yes, I accept that; but Beaumont’s dead. A few minutes here and there isn’t going to make any difference to him. In the meantime if you want me to try and find out what happened to him and if you’re serious about me investigating this curse business; we’ll do it my way, thank you. The first thing I’m going to do is find a suitable walking stick for Eve to use. She insists on walking about when she should be resting, so at least we can get her a bit of help. Secondly, I want to know how young Charlie is after his ordeal. Then, when we do start taking statements, I want Eve in the study taking notes. She and I are the only ones who do shorthand.’
I’m not sure if anyone had ever spoken to Tony that way before. I wanted to get the ground rules straight before we started. I also wanted to see if his annoyance would flare into anger.
Tony smiled. ‘Sorry,’ he said mildly. ‘I was getting above myself. The whole mess has got to me a bit, I’m afraid. You see to Eve, then come along and we’ll make a start, shall we? Doing it your way,’ he added.
I was pleased that my opinion of Tony had been so rapidly endorsed.
‘You were a bit hard on him, weren’t you?’ Eve asked as I helped her choose a walking stick of the right length.
‘I want to run this my way; that was one reason. I also wanted to test a theory.’
‘What, another theory?’ Eve arched her eyebrows in ironic mock surprise.
‘Yes, believe it or not I have more than one. I just wanted to see how Tony reacted to having his orders countermanded so abruptly.’
‘And the theory?’
‘If there is truth in the Rowe family madness legend, then Tony isn’t affected by it; he’s as sane as you or I.’
Having been put to rights over procedure, Tony was keen to show his compliance. When Eve and I returned to his study he had drawn three more chairs up around his desk. Two of them placed alongside his own and the third on the opposite side facing the others. Tony indicated his own seat. ‘You sit there, Eve, it will be more comfortable for you to take notes there. Adam and I can sit on either side of you and ask the questions.’
‘That sounds fine by me,’ I agreed, noting that Tony had even supplied Eve with a shorthand notebook and pencil during our brief absence.
We interviewed each guest in turn; then all the household staff. I was forced to point out to three of the witnesses that their statements would be handed to the police and asked them to reconsider the omissions in their account of their activities. The witnesses were the only ones to be embarrassed by this as Tony, Eve, and I already knew the information they had left out. Neither Lady Charlotte, Harriet, nor Polly Jardine had thought it prudent to mention visiting my room the previous night.
By the time Rathbone, the last to account for his movements, had departed, we were no nearer discovering the identity of Beaumont’s killer than we had been when we started. Tony commented on this fact as he watched his butler leave the study, ‘Well I don’t see that’s done us any good at all,’ he said.
‘Not directly, I agree. However, if we come across any inconsistencies later, these statements will prove a valuable reference point.’
‘What’s next, Adam?’ Eve asked.
‘First of all Tony ought to ring DC Pratt and tell him what we’ve achieved. Then I think we ought to have another look at Beaumont’s room. It just might give us some clue as to what he was up to going out in that blizzard last night. I’m still puzzled as to why he went all the way to the chapel to meet someone when they could have met just as secretly nearer to hand; unless there was a particular reason for the meeting place being at the chapel.’
‘What reason could there be for that?’ Tony asked.
I was aware that Eve was looking at me as I replied that I had no idea. I was also aware that she thought I was telling less than the truth.
Chapter Eight
Our inspection of the dead man’s room and personal effects had an oddly disturbing effect. ‘I feel rather like a grave robber,’ Eve confessed as she was checking the drawers in Beaumont’s bedside cabinet.
‘I know what you mean,’ – Tony turned from the wardrobe where he had been going through Beaumont’s clothing – ‘it’s all a bit distasteful.’
I looked up from the papers I was studying; documents I’d taken from the dead man’s briefcase, ‘Think of yourselves as detectives,’ I advised them. ‘This is a job they have to do on a regular basis.’
I returned to my perusal of the paperwork. For the most part the documents referred to business meetings, contracts, and tenders which seemed to have no relevance to Beaumont’s mur
der. In the last pocket of the briefcase however, I came across one document that had me staring at the intricate wording with a mixture of alarm and uncertainty. I placed this carefully back where I had got it from; then shovelled all the other papers into the main body of the case. I closed the lid and snapped the locks. ‘I think we’ve done about all we can for tonight,’ I told the others. ‘I’m worn out. I think what I should do is take Beaumont’s briefcase to my room and look at the contents in the morning when I feel fresher. Tony, will you ring Pratt and update him with the current situation, please?’
Tony looked more than a little relieved at the thought of getting out of the room. ‘No problem, Adam. I don’t wonder you’re tired, I’m only sorry it’s been such a lousy Christmas Day for you. That wasn’t the intention when we asked you here. As for that,’ – he pointed to the briefcase – ‘like you said earlier, there’s nothing we can do for Beaumont tonight that won’t wait until tomorrow.’
‘I agree, Tony,’ Eve said with a suspiciously innocent expression. ‘We ought to let Adam catch up on his sleep if he can. After all, he didn’t get much last night. Let him take these to his room and hope he doesn’t get interrupted.’
I looked at her closely then said, ‘OK, I’m off. Don’t forget to lock up, Tony.’
After reaching my room I placed the briefcase on the dressing table, walked across to the window, and sat in one of the armchairs to wait for my visitor to arrive. Five minutes passed before the door opened. ‘Don’t you ever knock?’ I complained.
‘I would have done, but I knew you were expecting me,’ Eve replied.
‘How did you work that out?’
‘You might have fooled my brother-in-law with your tiredness act, but you didn’t fool me for a second. You knew that; and knew I’d be coming to ask you about your theory as to why Beaumont went to the chapel,’ she paused, ‘and to have a look at whatever it was you found so interesting in his briefcase.’
‘It appears I didn’t fool you,’ I agreed. ‘I don’t suppose you brought a corkscrew with you?’