Decorated to Death

by Dean James

  Harper had at last managed to control himself, and Robin stared thoughtfully into space for a long moment, while Giles and I waited in silence.

  “Very well,” Robin said. “It seems the most expedient way to get everything out in the open. Either Harper and I spend hours questioning all the suspects, trying once more to break them down, or we give this idea of yours a go.”

  “I don’t think you’ll be sorry,” I said. “Now all we need to do is get everyone here, into the library. Will you call Jessamy Cholmondley-Pease and get her here? I assume the others are easy to round up.”

  Robin reached for the phone. Jessamy was at home, and though she protested at first, she eventually agreed that she would present herself at Blitherington Hall within the half hour.

  Next, Giles summoned Thompson and asked him to inform his guests that Detective Inspector Chase required their presence in the library within the half hour. “Very well, Sir Giles,” Thompson said.

  While we waited, Harper and I arranged chairs for all the suspects. Harper, when the time approached, stationed himself near the door, the only exit from the room, in readiness, should he have to prevent someone from attempting to leave.

  “A point of procedure, Robin,” I said, as if struck by a sudden thought. “How shall we do this? What do you think best?”

  “Oh, give over, Simon,” Robin said. “I suppose I should speak first, tell them I expect their full cooperation and all that, then turn it over to you.”

  “Thank you, Robin,” I said. “It really is very good of you.”

  Giles had a word with his mother, whom he summoned to the library ahead of the rest. He explained the situation to her and impressed upon her that she must not speak unless called upon. She agreed, quite meekly for her.

  A knock at the door heralded the first arrival, and within five minutes they had all assembled and seated themselves in the chairs provided. I stood to one side and watched as Robin greeted each of them. I could sense heightened pulse rates, but none of them seemed frightened—with the possible exception of Jessamy, the last to arrive. She collapsed into a chair and gazed about as if disoriented.

  “Good morning, ladies and gentlemen,” Robin said. “Thank you for all complying so promptly with my request. We have new information that will, I believe, allow us to wrap up this case quite quickly. But there are some items remaining that need to be cleared up. I’ve asked you all to be here together so that we may do this as a group.” He turned and indicated me. “Professor Kirby-Jones has kindly agreed to assist me by taking us through the evidence. I would ask that you all listen attentively, and if he asks a question, to answer truthfully.”

  He stepped aside, and I took his place in front of Giles’s desk, facing the assembled group.

  “Thank you, Detective Inspector,” I said, beaming at them all as if I were addressing a group of new students. “We shall proceed forthwith, and I must ask you to bear with me as I go along. As Detective Inspector Chase said, there are some items we must address and try to clear up, so that we may see the picture more clearly.”

  No one made any verbal response to this, though Jessamy continued to twitch about in her seat, as if she found it somehow painful. The others regarded me passively, Cliff Weatherstone being the only one to exhibit any vestige of interest in what was about to take place.

  “Very well, then,” I said. “Let us start with motives, then. There must be a motive for any crime, however trivial. Harwood was not a particularly likeable chap, at least in my observation, but mere dislike is not usually a motive for murder.” I paused to strike a reflective pose. “No, it must have been something stronger. To begin, let us take the case of Cliff Weatherstone.” Cliff jerked upright in his chair, and Dittany Harwood turned to examine him with slitted eyes.

  “Cliff has very successfully, and for a number of years, directed the victim’s television program, ‘Tres Zeke.’ Yet, I discovered, Harwood was on the point of dispensing with Cliff’s services when he left England for the States. While he went off, no doubt, to further fame and fortune in America, Cliff was going to be left behind, perhaps disgraced and looking for a new job.” Cliff shot me a look of active dislike. I merely smiled. “It was through Cliff I discovered that, contrary to the image Harwood had created, our late unlamented was not, in fact, gay, and his unwelcome attentions to his handsome producer were nothing more than an act. An act which, over time, became increasingly difficult to bear, and that, coupled with the fact that he was about to be fired, might have made anyone long for revenge.”

  “I didn’t kill him!” Cliff could no longer restrain himself. He popped up from his seat and waved one arm about. “He was a bloody bastard, and I hated him, but I didn’t kill him.”

  “I don’t believe I said that you did,” I observed mildly. “Do sit down again, there’s a good chap.”

  Cliff subsided into his chair.

  “Thank you. No, I said you might have longed for revenge. Tell me, Cliff, it was you, wasn’t it, who hired the chap to throw paint on Harwood at the book signing?”

  Cliff’s mouth opened and closed, then he found the ability to speak. “Yes, I arranged that stunt, but I didn’t kill him.”

  “I shall repeat myself,” I said. “I didn’t say you killed him. But you did manage to annoy and embarrass him, didn’t you? And had not someone else stepped in and killed him, no doubt you would have continued your campaign of irritation.”

  Cliff clamped his mouth shut and said not another word.

  “Just as I thought,” I said. “We’re after someone who’s more bite than bark.” Cliff glowered at me. “Now let us turn to the next person on our list Jessamy Cholmondley-Pease.”

  “Me?” Jessamy squeaked. “I didn’t kill him. I didn’t even know him, except from the telly.”

  “Now, Jessamy, you know that’s not true,” I said in pitying tones. “As much as it pains me, I’m afraid I must reveal your past in front of these people.” I shook my head. “Though I suspect, of course, that it was no secret to most of them.”

  “What do you mean?” Moira Rhys-Morgan demanded. “I’d never seen this woman before we came to this god-forsaken house.”

  “No, I doubt you had, but surely Zeke must have told you about his wife? After all, that’s one of the reasons he couldn’t make an honest woman of you. That and the fact that he had convinced his public he was gay.”

  Moira paled, sitting as still as if she had turned to stone. No one else said a word.

  “Yes, poor Jessamy, I’m afraid we’ve discovered that you were still legally married to Harwood. I wonder, does Desmond know about any of this?”

  Gasping for breath, Jessamy shook her head.

  “He’ll know soon enough,” I said. “I wonder how he’ll react when he discovers that he wasn’t really married to you all these years? And, moreover, that you have a grown daughter you probably haven’t seen in almost thirty years?”

  Jessamy turned to look at Dittany, christened Desiree, but Dittany steadfastly refused to look at her mother.

  “Oh, it’s all true,” Jessamy wailed, facing me once again. “He was an ’orrible man, Zeke was, and I never should’ve left the poor tyke with him. I can’t blame her for not speaking to me. But it wasn’t me what killed him. I swear it!” Her accent had completely deteriorated under stress.

  “But you must have wanted him dead,” I said. “Particularly when he turned up here. You must have been quite worried, as soon as Lady Prunella had announced it in the village, that once he was here, Zeke might let it slip to your so-called husband.”

  “He, he threatened me,” Jessamy said between sobs, “but he were just playing with me. He liked being nasty, the bloody bastard. He couldn’t afford for anyone to know he was married to me, neither, but he was being bloody-minded anyway.”

  “Yes, I think we can all agree that he was quite a nasty man, in many ways. But before we proceed further, you must answer one question for me, Jessamy. I want you to think back to the time in London
, before you left Zeke. Did you ever tell him about the secret stairway here at Blitherington Hall? How it worked, where it was, and all that?”

  Jessamy stared at me, puzzled. I could almost see the tiny gears in her brain grinding away. “Oh, then that’s how—” she clamped a hand over her mouth and stared at me with frightened eyes.

  “How what, Jessamy?” I said. “What were you going to say?”

  Tears were streaming down her face. “Please don’t make me answer that, please don’t.”

  “I’m afraid you must,” Robin Chase said, gently. “You can’t hold anything back now, Mrs. Cholmondley-Pease.”

  It took her a moment to get her sobbing under control, but at last Jessamy spoke. “I did tell Zeke about it, back in London. He liked hearing about such a grand house and all the little secrets such a posh family had. I never thought nothing about it, because I never planned on coming back to this village. And I never expected Zeke to show up here, neither.”

  “Did you ever make use of the staircase yourself these past few days, Jessamy?”

  Her eyes grew wide. “Yes, I did, just once.”

  “When was that?” I asked.

  “That afternoon,” she said. “Before Zeke was killed. I had been trying to catch him alone, but he was always busy. I kept watching from the hallway, and when I saw everyone else leaving the drawing room for a break, Zeke didn’t come out. I knew he wouldn’t let me in the drawing room, so I nipped upstairs and sneaked in the bedroom. No one saw me. I thought they had all gone outside or into the dining room for tea.”

  “And did you talk to Zeke?”

  She nodded. “He was just as nasty as I expected, but I told him if he said anything about him and me still being married, it would embarrass him as much as me.”

  “Did he seem surprised when you popped out of the wall like that?”

  “No,” Jessamy said. “He’d remembered about the secret stairs, he said, and he had already used them a couple of times himself. It was why he kicked up such a fuss about which bedroom he wanted. He wanted to be sure to have that room, just so he could use those stairs.” “Do you think he told anyone else about them, Jessamy?”

  “No, he didn’t,” Jessamy said. “He didn’t want them to know, in case he wanted to spy on them while they was working and they thought he wasn’t around.”

  That could be a problem.

  “Are you sure about that, Jessamy? Think very carefully.”

  Her face crumpled, and she began to cry again. “What is it, Jessamy? You must tell us, you know.”

  Jessamy sobbed some more, then thrust out her hand, pointing. “She knew. Oh, God forgive me, she knew. She saw me coming out of the wall in Zeke’s bedroom.”

  She was pointing at her daughter, Dittany.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  While Jessamy mumbled “I’m sorry” over and over, like a mantra, Dittany steadfastly ignored her.

  “Ah, yes, Dittany,” I said, turning to face that young woman directly. “Or should I say, Desiree? After all, that was the name you were christened with, wasn’t it?”

  “It’s no use, you can’t stick me with this,” she said coolly, ignoring my jibe about her name. “I have an alibi, and so do Piers and Moira.” She jerked her head in the direction of her mother. “That’s who you want, right there. I’ll bet she’s got no alibi.”

  Jessamy cried all the harder at this accusation, though what she expected from a daughter she had abandoned so long ago, I had no idea.

  “True, I doubt Jessamy has an alibi for the time of the murder,” I said agreeably. “The murder had already taken place by the time you, Piers, and Moira joined Sir Giles and Lady Prunella in the library. And I’m afraid, Miss Harwood, that you have no alibi after all.”

  “Don’t be bloody ridiculous,” she said. She was defiant, but beneath that I could feel the first real stirring of fear.

  “Tell me, Miss Harwood, do you recognize this telephone number?” I recited the digits of her home number to the room.

  Dittany’s eyes narrowed. “Yes,” she said, “that’s my number. It’s ex-directory, though. How did you get it?”

  I ignored her question. “What do you think would happen, Miss Harwood, if I asked Detective Inspector to take out his mobile and call your number? Would the phone ring in your flat?”

  She did not answer.

  “Or would it, Miss Harwood, ring here at Blitherington Hall? Shall we put it to the test?”

  “There’s no need,” she said.

  “Then you will admit that you used Call Divert to have your phone calls forwarded here to Blitherington Hall?”

  Her head snapped up at that. “It wasn’t I who did that, you fool! It was my bloody flatmate, before she left on holiday. She got it all wrong, the silly cow. She was supposed to divert the calls to my mobile.”

  “Oh, really,” I said. “That’s an interesting point. If your flatmate hadn’t made such a mistake, you might have come up with a better alibi for yourself, one that couldn’t be so easily broken.”

  She glowered at me as I strode back and forth in front of the group. “You see, this is how I believe it was done. Once Miss Harwood realized the mistake her flatmate had made, she decided to put the mistake to good use in her alibi. This way, she could use her mobile, call her flat in London, and the call would be diverted back to Blitherington Hall. Disguising her voice, she would ask to be put through to Miss Harwood, and once the call was put through to her room, she could leave the mobile on and the extension in her room off the hook while she proceeded with the rest of the plan. When she was done, she came back to the room, ended the call, and finished getting ready to join everyone downstairs in the library.”

  I beamed at them. “Quite clever, wasn’t it? The police had already confirmed that such a call had been put through to her room here at Blitherington Hall, but eventually, I’m afraid, they would have discovered that the call had originated with your mobile, Miss Harwood, if they had dug that deep. And I’m quite certain that they would have.”

  She regarded me in stony silence. Jessamy stared at her daughter in horror, her worst fears confirmed. Tears continued to stream down, but at least she no longer sobbed loudly.

  “And so, there you have it,” I said. “Once Miss Harwood had established the phone connection she would use as her alibi, she could nip down the hall to her father’s room, let herself in, sneak down the secret staircase, then surprise her father in the drawing room.

  “There was, however, quite a lot to do to pull this off. She had to strike her father over the head, not once, but several times, and she also used two different blunt objects. That was rather an odd fact, I thought. She then had to arrange her father on the sofa where we found him and dab him about with the red paint. Moreover, she had to go up and down the secret stairs with a drop cloth to erase any footprints, or so she hoped. Finally, she had to cover the two murder weapons with that same red paint and hope not to get any telltale paint on herself.”

  I paused and regarded my audience. Dittany was watching me warily, unsure of whether to speak and risk giving something away. Piers shifted uneasily in his chair, but Moira remained still and stone-faced.

  “Yes, there was quite a lot to do, even though, if I’ve calculated correctly, Dittany had about twenty minutes in which to do it. She could have already been hiding behind the panel in the drawing room while Lady Prunella was arguing with Harwood. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if she were the one who made the anonymous call to the police to inform them of the time Lady Prunella left the drawing room. I had thought it was Jessamy, but I think it more likely it was Dittany.”

  She squirmed a bit at that but still refused to speak. “Even if Dittany were already behind the panel and popped out as soon as Lady Prunella left, she still had quite a lot to accomplish before she had to be back upstairs to get ready for dinner. It’s just possible, but I don’t think that’s quite the way it happened.”

  “But that must be it, Simon!” Lady Prunella
could contain herself no longer and hopped up out of her chair. “I say, well done, Simon. You’ve solved it.”

  “Thank you, Lady Prunella, but I’m afraid your kudos are a trifle premature.”

  Crestfallen and confused, she sank back into her seat.

  “You see,” I said confidingly, as if I were speaking to Lady Prunella alone, “Dittany did not act alone.”

  “Oh, come off it, man,” Piers spoke up, attempting a skeptical tone and failing miserably. “I mean to say, who would have helped her do such a thing?”

  “Really, Mr. Limpley, were you going to sit there and let Dittany take sole blame for the murder? It’s not the gentlemanly thing to do. And you don’t seriously believe that she wouldn’t shop you, and Mrs. Rhys-Morgan, the minute she got the chance?”

  “You can leave my name out of this,” Moira said hotly. “I had nothing to do with this.”

  “I do wish I could believe that, Mrs. Rhys-Morgan,” I said. “But I’m afraid it won’t wash. I don’t believe you actually struck one of the blows, but you were there, and you helped, probably by applying the paint to the corpse, or by painting the murder weapons with the red paint after they had been used. I’m not sure which, but I’ve no doubt you were involved.’’

  Moira did not attempt any further denials.

  “I kept wondering, you see, why two different weapons were used. The killer might have tried with one weapon, found it unsatisfactory, then picked up another. But that seemed rather sloppy, given the other details. That was what made me wonder whether more than one person was involved. As soon as I thought of that, I began to see how it might have been done.”

  I faced Piers Limpley and pointed an accusing finger at him. “It was you, Limpley, and Miss Harwood who struck the actual blows, wasn’t it? Come now, admit it. You wouldn’t want Mrs. Rhys-Morgan to take the blame for something she didn’t do.”

  I had counted on his affection for Moira to play upon his chivalric instincts, and he did not let me down.