Decorated to Death

by Dean James

  Trevor might have simply been teasing me, with some justification, but I rather wished, later that evening, that he had not been so prophetic.

  CHAPTER NINE

  I spent what remained of the morning and the entire afternoon working quite happily at the computer. All the conflict I had witnessed at Blitherington Hall had set my creative juices flowing (only metaphorically, you must realize), and I had sat down at the computer feeling quite energized. I had been thinking about a new pen name, one which I would use for a series of cozy mysteries, and the events of the past few days had given me some ideas for Diana Dorchester’s first foray into crime.

  By the time I realized that I must stop work in order to get ready for dinner at Blitherington Hall, I had sketched out the plot, made lists of the characters, their traits, appearance, and motives, and knocked out two rough chapters. There’s nothing more satisfying than writing when one hits a streak of inspiration like this.

  A glance at the clock, however, warned me that I must stop if I wanted to present myself at Blitherington Hall on time. Reluctantly I shut down the computer and filed away the pages I had printed. Taking the stairs two at a time, I went into the bathroom to take my evening pill, only half an hour late.

  Ten minutes later I was correctly attired. Lady Prunella was a stickler for evening dress, and I really didn’t mind indulging her, in this at least. I could say, with all honesty, that my black suit only enhanced a rather saturnine appearance, admiring the effect in my mirror (yes, we can see our reflections—it’s only Hollywood nonsense that we can’t).

  The Jag purred along the quiet village High Street as I made my way toward Blitherington Hall. Had the evening not been more than a bit damp, and I not on the edge of being a tad late, I might have walked. The walk from Laurel Cottage to Giles’s estate was not a long one, and I was feeling restless enough at the moment to have welcomed the physical exertion.

  But I didn’t want to appear for dinner wet and bedraggled, not to mention late, hence the Jag. I parked in the forecourt of the Hall and retrieved an umbrella from the back seat I could have made a dash to the front door, but I preferred a more stately approach.

  I raised the knocker and let it fall, and in a moment Thompson opened the door. Standing aside, he waited for me to enter.

  “Good evening, Thompson,” I said, furling the umbrella and passing it over to him.

  “Good evening, Professor,” he said, taking the umbrella and tucking it in the crook of his arm in absent-minded fashion. “Sir Giles and Lady Prunella await you in the library.”

  “The library? Of course, the drawing room is still off limits, isn’t it?” I smiled.

  Thompson nodded, then tottered off, my umbrella dangling, forgotten, from his arm. I followed him to the library, where he opened the door to announce my presence.

  The quiet hum of conversation paused only for a moment as I stepped into the room. Giles stood with his mother and Cliff Weatherstone near his desk, while Piers Limpley, Dittany Harwood, and Moira Rhys-Morgan huddled together on a sofa on the other side of the room.

  “Good evening, Lady Prunella, Giles,” I said. “Weatherstone.” The latter, I was pleased to note, looked decidedly underdressed in a sports jacket and a shirt with no tie. Lady Prunella regarded him with disfavor. Giles, on the other hand, looked quite distinguished in his evening dress. The boy really was becoming more polished and sophisticated.

  Lady Prunella noted my appearance and beamed at me. “Good evening, Simon,” she said, and I almost fell backward with the shock. I couldn’t remember her ever having addressed me by my first name before. “I am delighted that you were able to join us this evening.” The not-so-subtle emphasis on the word “you” amused me, especially as I noticed Weatherstone react to it He moved a few steps away from Lady Prunella and Giles.

  “Dear lady,” I said, “as ever it gives me great pleasure to be invited to dine at Blitherington Hall.”

  The wattage of Lady Prunella’s answering smile left little doubt that my stock was riding high at the moment Weatherstone stalked off to sulk by himself in the corner. Giles paid no attention to him; instead, he smiled his own greeting at me.

  “Good evening, Simon,” he said. “We shall go in to dinner as soon as Mr. Harwood deigns to join us.”

  He had raised his voice slightly, but the trio on the sofa either did not hear him or chose not to acknowledge what he had said. I glanced at my watch. It was ten minutes past eight so Harwood was not unpardonably late, but Lady Prunella was a stickler for punctuality. If we were lucky, however, Harwood might have decided to dine in his room.

  As I chatted with Giles and Lady Prunella about various innocuous village affairs, I kept my eye on Weatherstone and the rest of Harwood’s entourage. Weatherstone kept to his corner, manifestly ignoring us all, while Limpley, Miss Harwood, and Mrs. Rhys-Morgan continued to whisper, in some agitation, amongst themselves.

  While Lady Prunella chattered on about something to do with the flower quota at St. Ethelwold’s Church, I tuned my ear toward the conversation on the sofa.

  “Tomorrow,” Piers Limpley was saying, “we must avoid confrontation at all costs. Whatever you do, Dittany, my dear, stay out of Zeke’s way. The situation must simply not get any more out of hand than it already is. Zeke was in such a temper this afternoon, there’s no telling what he might do.”

  “Frankly, Piers,” Dittany hissed back at him, “I don’t give a rat’s arse what Zeke does, at this point. I tell you, I have had it up to here”—she gestured with her left hand somewhere above her head—“with his tantrums and his insults. He is impossible to work with. I’m thinking of going back to London tomorrow. You can all get along perfectly well without me.”

  “Oh, no, Dittany,” Moira Rhys-Morgan said, distressed. “Please don’t talk like that. You know how it would upset Zeke if you weren’t here. He does rely, after all, on your color sense. He won’t admit it the poor dear, but that is the one area in which he always defers to your good taste.”

  “Don’t you think so, Simon?” Lady Prunella said, claiming my attention.

  I had no idea what she had just said to me, and I glanced at Giles for a clue. He had realized, clever boy that he was, that I had not been paying attention to his mother’s meanderings, and he waited a moment to see what I would do. Then, taking pity on me, he responded, “Now, Mummy, you know it isn’t cricket to ask Simon to try to coerce Letty Butler-Melville on your behalf in such matters. He can’t spend his time running back and forth between the two of you, like some diplomat working on rapprochement between nations at war.”

  “Really, Giles,” his mother huffed, “you do sometimes tend to exaggerate things unreasonably.”

  I smiled to ease the sudden tension. “Nevertheless, dear lady, Giles is correct. It would never do for me to interfere in such matters. I should not want you, nor the vicar’s good lady, ever to despise me. Besides, I must as ever, yield to your expertise.”

  Somewhat mollified, Lady Prunella paused to give it some thought. I glanced at my watch again; it was nearly eight-thirty.

  Where was the wretched man? I wondered. How much longer must we wait for him?

  Giles must have been thinking along the same lines, for he too checked the time. “I say, Limpley,” he called to Harwood’s assistant, “where the devil can Harwood be? We should go in to dinner before Cook has to put everything back in the oven.”

  Piers Limpley rose from the sofa. “I beg your pardon, Sir Giles,” he said. “I suppose we have all quite lost track of the time. I can’t think where Zeke might be. I spoke to him around seven-thirty, in his room, and he was already dressed for dinner. I reminded him of the time, and he assured me he had not forgotten.” He shrugged.

  Moira Rhys-Morgan frowned. “I spoke to him a few moments before that” she said. “I believe it was his intention to check something in the drawing room before joining us here.”

  “That was a bit over an hour ago,” Giles pointed out.

  Dittany
Harwood emitted a snort. “Then he’s probably still in the drawing room, tinkering with something. Sometimes he simply loses track of time, especially if he gets an idea to change something.” She stood up. “I suppose I should go and tell him that we’re going in to dinner.”

  “No, no, dear,” Moira Rhys-Morgan said, getting up from the sofa in a hurry. “Let me do that” She turned toward Giles and Lady Prunella. “I beg your pardon, Sir Giles, Lady Prunella. I’ll see what is keeping Zeke, and we’ll be right along.”

  She hurried out the door, and the rest of us followed her at a leisurely pace, proceeding through the hall to the doors of the dining room, not far from the drawing room. Mrs. Rhys-Morgan had paused to try the doors of the drawing room, but finding them locked, she knocked and called out, “Zeke! Let me in.”

  She waited, then knocked again. Moments passed, but there was no response. As we all watched in silence, she headed for the front door.

  “Wait, Mrs. Rhys-Morgan,” I called, and she paused. “It’s probably still raining. No need to go out and get wet.” I turned to Giles. “Who has the key?”

  “Harwood, most likely,” Giles said. “He insisted that we turn over any keys to him. Limpley, do you have the key?”

  Limpley shook his head. “No.”

  “Is there no duplicate key somewhere?” I asked Giles.

  “There is a master key,” Giles said. “Thompson has it.” He strode over to a bellpull near the door leading to the servants’ quarters and the kitchen and pulled it. A few moments later, Thompson came through the door. “Yes, Sir Giles?” he said.

  “The master key, Thompson,” Giles said. “Do you have it with you? We need to open the doors to the drawing room. Mr. Harwood seems to have disappeared.”

  “Quite, sir,” Thompson said, as if missing guests were an everyday occurrence at Blitherington Hall. “If you will give me a moment, sir, I shall retrieve the key.”

  “Of course,” Giles said. “We shall await you here.”

  No one said a word as we waited for Thompson to return with the master key. I could sense, however, that someone in the group was humming almost like an electric wire with anticipation. Limpley, Dittany, Mrs. Rhys-Morgan, and Weatherstone all stood close together, in a clump, and I couldn’t isolate which one of them was emanating such tension. Body language gave no one away.

  At last Thompson returned with the key, and Giles almost snatched it from his hand. I was close upon Giles’s heels as he inserted the key into the lock and twisted it. Opening the door, he stepped inside the drawing room. I was right behind. Before either Giles or I could make sense of what we were seeing, the others had crowded in behind us.

  A collective gasp issued from those standing behind me. Then Moira Rhys-Morgan began to scream.

  CHAPTER TEN

  An arresting tableau met our horrified eyes. The room was still in considerable disarray from the efforts at redecorating, but there was an oasis of deadly order amidst the confusion. Zeke Harwood sat upon Lady Prunella’s best sofa, the one piece of furniture I remembered seeing still in the room earlier in the day. He was carefully arranged in death to appear as if he were enjoying an audience with a dowager duchess.

  The murderer, apparently not content with a careful arrangement of the corpse, had daubed Harwood’s face and hands with the red paint that had earlier caused Lady Prunella such distress. The red contrasted sharply with the dark blue of Harwood’s suit, and the murderer had dripped red paint in strange designs all over the garment.

  Harwood’s legs were demurely crossed at the ankles. A long swatch of fabric lay draped across the sofa next to the body. One red hand caressed it, as if Harwood were pointing out its virtues to his hostess.

  Moira Rhys-Morgan had ceased screaming and begun whimpering instead. Two bodies pushed past Giles and me and approached the corpse. Piers Limpley and Dittany Harwood went to render aid to their fallen leader. Moira Rhys-Morgan quickly joined them. Alas, I knew they were too late. Harwood was beyond any human help now. I know dead people when I see them.

  Before either Giles or I could stop them, Limpley and Miss Harwood were attempting in vain to rouse Harwood, clasping his hands and checking for a pulse. Mrs. Rhys- Morgan, standing between them, reached out to touch the dead man’s face. Cliff Weatherstone quickly joined them, attempting to draw Mrs. Rhys-Morgan away. Lady Prunella chose that moment to launch into hysterics herself, calling our attention to something that had previously escaped our notice.

  “The wall! Look at the wall!” Lady Prunella wailed. Someone—the murderer, perhaps? Or the victim?—had begun to paint one of the walls with the same red paint that now decorated the corpse.

  While Giles turned to his mother, I moved forward to stop the others from disturbing the scene any further. “Step away from there,” I ordered them in a loud, firm voice. Starting with surprise, they did as they were bade. Harwood’s hands dropped down at his sides. I’d have to remember their original position in order to inform the police.

  Piers Limpley was about to protest, but I cut him off. “There’s nothing you can do for him now,” I said. “He’s beyond your help. We must leave him as he is, and summon the police. It’s a matter for them now.”

  “Police?” Limpley squeaked out the word.

  “Oh, Piers, don’t be an idiot,” Dittany said, not bothering to hide her withering contempt. “You don’t think Zeke painted himself and then committed suicide, surely? Obviously someone did this to him.” Suddenly overcome, she turned away.

  “Oh, my poor dear Zeke,” Moira Rhys-Morgan said, her voice husky with the tears she had been shedding. “What monster did this to you?” She turned and hid her face in Cliff Weatherstone’s comforting shoulder.

  “All of you, please come out of the room now,” I said, once again raising my voice. Giles led his mother out of the room, having at last succeeded in getting her to stop babbling about the red paint on the walls. Cliff Weatherstone shot me a look of extreme dislike, but he took Moira Rhys-Morgan gently by the arm and escorted her from the room. Limpley and Dittany followed them, the latter glancing back over her shoulder one last time before I shut the door behind us.

  Giles had left his mother in order to get to the telephone and summon the police. “We might as well go into the dining room,” I said, moving forward to escort Lady Prunella. “If nothing else, we could all do with a stiff drink while we wait for the authorities to arrive.”

  I tugged an unresponsive Lady Prunella along with me, and the others trailed behind, unprotesting. Thompson appeared on cue as I seated Lady Prunella at her accustomed place, and the others found chairs and sat down. “Brandy for everyone, I think, Thompson,” I instructed the butler.

  “Very good, sir,” Thompson said, as if nothing untoward had occurred. “And I shall instruct Cook to hold back dinner.”

  Giles came in, and I beckoned him to my side. “Do you have the key, Giles? We should lock the door until the police arrive.”

  He patted his trouser pocket “Already done, Simon.” He expelled a long breath. “What a disaster.” He leaned closer. “Who do you think did it?”

  We both glanced around the table at the assembled company. With the exception of Moira Rhys-Morgan, quietly sniffling into a handkerchief, no one appeared to be mourning Harwood’s demise. Limpley, Dittany, and Weatherstone had all taken up their linen napkins from the table to wipe ineffectually at the red paint on their hands.

  The paint on the corpse was still tacky, and if one of the three of them was the murderer, it had been quite clever to get hands on the body in order to explain any stray daubs of paint.

  I thought back to our time in the library, before we had discovered the corpse. Had anyone displayed telltale signs of red paint? Not that I could recall.

  With the doors to the drawing room locked, I wondered how the murderer had gained access to Harwood. Through the French windows from the terrace, of course.

  I leaned toward Giles. “Did you happen to notice whether the French windows we
re open?”

  Giles shook his head. “I’m afraid I never noticed them, Simon.”

  “That must be how the murderer got in and out. There’s no other way.”

  Giles gave me an odd look. “Perhaps one of us should go take a quick look.”

  I thought it over. “Better not,” I said. “We can’t take the risk that one of these people would report it to the police. As it is, I’ve no doubt they’ll all be loudly protesting their innocence. After all, why would one of them want to kill Harwood?”

  “Other than the fact that he was a right bastard, you mean?”

  The dark humor in Giles’s query made me smile. “One of them has to have done it. Unless, of course, someone came in from outside through the French windows. In that case, anyone could have done it.”

  Thompson entered the room, bringing with him the village bobby, the rather aptly named Police Constable Peter Plodd. Dear Plodd would never win any prizes for quick thinking, but he did know his procedure. “Evening, your ladyship, Sir Giles.” He made a respectful bow in the direction of Lady Prunella. “Ladies, gentlemen. If you’ll all remain seated here, and no talking about what you’ve seen, please. Detective Inspector Chase and his team are on the way.”

  “Arrest this woman!” Moira Rhys-Morgan pushed back her chair so hard it fell over with a great thump. She waved a finger in the direction of Lady Prunella. “She did it! She threatened poor Zeke. Everyone heard her.” Then, overcome with emotion, she covered her face with her hands and commenced sobbing.

  Plodd cleared his throat as he eyed the wailing woman with great distaste. “If you please, madam, do try to calm yourself. You’ll get your chance to speak to the officer in charge.”

  Weatherstone, who seemed to have appointed himself as Mrs. Rhys-Morgan’s attendant, righted her chair and encouraged her gently to sit down again. He kept patting her arm reassuringly, and her sobs decreased in volume, if not in quantity.