Ten Lords A-Leaping: A Mystery (Father Christmas)

by Benison, C. C.

  “Do they now.” Bliss spoke with barely suppressed fury.

  “Lord Fairhaven,” Tom interjected. He had been thinking of something Hector had said earlier. “You said a moment ago that Roberto did not see you on the terrace—not surprising given the darkness. But your tone seems to suggest that you might have seen him.”

  Hector flicked him a hateful glance. “I saw many things. The moon, the stars, the—”

  “Roberto in the motion lights in all his nearly naked glory?” Marguerite suggested.

  “Mummy, don’t be vulgar.” He placed his coffee cup on a side table. “All right, I did glimpse him. What of it?”

  “And was he alone?” Bliss asked.

  Hector shifted slightly in his seat. “I can’t be certain. The motion sensors only light intermittently. I heard voices. Thought I did.”

  “And—again—you didn’t care to mention this earlier?” Bliss glared at him.

  “I wasn’t certain. I couldn’t think it mattered. It was some good time before dawn, which is apparently when Olly met his maker.”

  “Male voices?”

  “They were at some distance, Inspector, but, yes, I would say so.”

  “Distinguishable?”

  “Well, one of them was Roberto’s. I think that should be clear by now, Inspector.”

  “The other, then.”

  “I have no idea. From the terrace it sounded like murmuring. There was, however, a sound like someone punching at someone else. The only word I could distinguish was one I won’t repeat in this company, and I don’t know who said it.”

  “Roberto’s torso appeared bruised when Tom and I visited his studio with the kids yesterday,” Jane remarked.

  Tom added: “You, too, have bruises on your chest, Dominic. They were noticeable at the pool yesterday afternoon. Lucinda claimed you had walked into an open wardrobe in the dark.”

  “Did she? Well, there you go.”

  “I don’t think Lord Fairhaven and the late Lord Morborne were the only two men exchanging blows this weekend,” Tom added.

  “Why would I be exchanging blows—as you put it—with Roberto?”

  “You were attracted to him, and he wasn’t attracted to you.” Marguerite shot him a look of disbelief.

  “Nonsense,” Dominic snapped, raising his glass to his mouth.

  “Did Roberto say nothing about these marks to you, Lady Fairhaven?” Bliss asked.

  “He wasn’t given to that sort of thing. I noted them, but assumed they were the consequence of his work, stone flying about and the like, although …” She regarded Dominic coldly now. “Of course, Roberto had been fine-polishing these last few days. No great chips of marble flying about, I shouldn’t think.”

  “Again, nonsense. A complete fabrication.” Dominic took another sip. “I spent, as I said yesterday in this company, Saturday night and Sunday morning in Lucy’s room, or, rather, she in mine. Together, at any rate.”

  Tom caught Lucinda’s eye. She had been sitting still, head bent, hair falling forwards like a curtain, concentrated on her hands in her lap, pushing rhythmically at the skin below the cuticles. Now, as she raised her head, her hair swept back and revealed once again the remarkable violet eyes, which had glazed with craving during their interlude of ill-considered passion. As they locked onto Tom’s, a soft pleading crept into their folds. But he felt no want of retaliation. He had been victim of a cruel and stupid jest, yes, but the jest had precipitated something much, much crueler. His faith demanded he turn the other cheek, and he did, in his mind’s eye, but he returned her gaze not with disdain or contempt, but with sorrow and pity and deep, deep regret. It was too late for discretion, however. Now he had to speak, though he would pay a price. He felt Hector’s eyes upon him, Hector who had witnessed Lucinda’s night movements and hazarded a guess at her destination, but he ignored Hector and looked instead at Madrun, his housekeeper and inconstant keeper of secrets. Would she keep this one? Could it be kept at all? It was her disillusionment, he thought, that would affect him most immediately and most keenly. He took in a cleansing breath, held it a moment, and he said with a rush of air:

  “I have to tell you, Inspector, that it’s not true that Lady Lucinda spent the entire night in her brother’s room.”

  “Yes?” Bliss flicked him a distracted glance.

  “She didn’t spend it with Dominic, because—” He looked again at Lucinda who had returned to a fascination with her hands. “—because,” he said again, feeling the blood creeping up past his collar as other eyes bored into him, “she spent it with me, in my room.”

  Bliss blinked. “You don’t say. And what,” he addressed Lucinda, “were you doing in Mr. Christmas’s room?”

  “Don’t be obtuse, Inspector.” Lucinda looked up and cast him a gelid eye.

  “That doesn’t mean I—” Dominic began, but Tom cut him off:

  “There’s a little more. As I later came to realise, after a cryptic conversation by the pool yesterday, Lucinda and Dominic had a certain wager—”

  “Must you? Really? Must you, Vicar?” Lucinda’s voice was weary.

  “—a wager,” Tom continued with grim determination, conscious of Madrun’s eyes boring into him, “to see who might successfully bed a person of his or her choice before the night was through. I believe the notion was entertained some time Saturday evening, after Mr. Sica arrived and was introduced. Lady Lucinda soon enough won the bet.” Tom could feel his face burning. “But I don’t believe I’m incorrect in believing an attempt was made to even the score when, later, together, they observed Mr. Sica lit up by lightning from the moor crossing the lawn.”

  “Tom, I am disappointed.” Lucinda tossed her hair back. “I didn’t think you were the kiss-and-tell sort.”

  And now, the atmosphere grew heavy with a new anxiety. All eyes shifted to stare at Dominic and Lucinda, who received their scrutiny with the wary defiance of children caught with their fingers in the biscuit tin.

  “Well, I lost the wager. What of it?” Dominic waved a dismissive hand. “There’s no proof that I strangled Oliver.”

  Bliss gestured to the tie Tom was holding. “This may well provide proof once we send it for analysis.”

  Dominic rested his eyes on the tie a moment. His mouth sagged. The scrape of a coffee cup set on a saucer sounded loudly. “Gaunt was to have taken care of that,” he said at last, his voice bleak. “I feel rather let down.”

  “Oh, Dominic, don’t!” Lucinda cried.

  “Is there any point now, Lucy? Perhaps it’s best I appeal for clemency.”

  “I must caution you,” Bliss began. “You don’t have to—”

  Dominic waved his hand dismissively again. “It wasn’t something I set out to do. God knows I’ve always loathed Oliver. He’s a bully and a boor and a vulgarian and a thief—and, it seems, a rapist and worse. Does anyone disagree? I thought not, though most of you don’t know he’s been plundering the Morborne estate by selling works from Great-Great-Grandfather’s impressionist collection and siphoning the money into his own corporation.

  “At any rate, if I visited Baissé at Christmas or half term—after my father died—and Olly was there, he would make my life miserable. One time he locked me in a rubbish bin. You might imagine the heat in the West Indies. I nearly asphyxiated. I never forgave him. I suppose some clever quack would say he was merely taking out his hatred of my mother on me. I don’t know.” Dominic shrugged. “I do know he was almost an adult when he was behaving this way, and I was a child.

  “Anyway, as I say, I didn’t intend any confrontation—or perhaps I should say another confrontation—with my dear cousin. I knew he was disposing of the estate assets and I knew that if I made sufficient fuss in London, I should be able to put a stop to these outrages. There are trust laws limiting his power to dispose of the estate’s assets.”

  “Although,” Hector interjected, “some might view it as quicker to simply remove the CEO—as Oliver was, in effect—from the family Trust, in a sort
of hostile takeover.”

  “Hector, I had no desire for the title.”

  “Nonsense. You’ve been the presumptive heir to the marquessate since Fred died. Only Oliver’s having a child—a legitimate child, I should say—would set you back a spot. And Oliver was about to have one, wasn’t he?”

  “I’ve always lived with the expectation, Hector, that Oliver’s rampant heterosexuality would one day channel itself into some form of conventional domesticity, so you’re very much barking up the wrong tree.”

  “Hector,” Marguerite said, “do be quiet.”

  “It’s called ‘motive,’ Mummy.”

  “I didn’t have a motive.” Dominic glared.

  “Everyone has a motive. Wouldn’t you agree, Inspector?”

  “I think,” Tom interposed, “what Dominic is saying is that he was driven by opportunity and strong emotion.”

  “Thank you, Vicar.” Dominic affected a little bow. “Afterwards—after my … visit with Roberto—I wandered into the Labyrinth, I don’t know why really. I didn’t really like to return to my bedroom, having lost the wager—or at least not being able to match Lucy’s success. The night air was lovely and fresh and I remembered Marguerite’s—or was it Roberto’s?—suggestion to Oliver to have a look at the new artwork in the Labyrinth. So I did. There was a bit of lightning in the distance still, but I thought, as sunrise wouldn’t be long, to wait and see the marble in the blush of early morning. There are, as all of you know, a series of benches at the centre of the Labyrinth, and I must have nodded off on one of them for a while, as the next thing I remember seeing was someone’s back silhouetted in the glow of a torch. Oliver. I recognised that ghastly hat of his. He was shining the light on the statue. He didn’t see me or, rather, he hadn’t. I watched him a moment in a sort of—I must say—thrall of loathing. He didn’t contemplate the image of the Madonna as a connoisseur might. And it is a remarkably beautiful work. Oliver reached up with his free hand—the statue is to scale and the pedestal not tall—and began, if you will, if you can bear to hear it, my lords, ladies, and gentlemen, stroking the figure’s breasts—her cold marble breasts.”

  Dominic’s thin lips curled in revulsion. “Aghast as I was at this pervy schoolboy antic, there was worse to come: I heard him unzipping his trouser fly.”

  “Oh, God,” Jane’s murmur broke the appalled silence.

  “Oh, God, indeed, and I shortly realised he was unzipping not, shall we say, to have a slash, though pissing on an exquisite work of art wouldn’t be beneath him, as he has pissed, metaphorically, on the priceless works of art that Great-Great-Grandfather so assiduously assembled early last century.

  “ ‘What are you doing,’ I called out. He didn’t seem the least startled to hear a voice come out of the gloom, but then it’s never been easy to perturb Oliver in any sense. He’s as coarse as gravel. Without turning, he told me—as he’s told me before—to—” Tom watched Dominic’s lip curl again. “—fuck off.”

  Dominic paused, seemed to stare into the middle distance, as if revisiting the scene. “I quite simply saw red—the rose madder of Jeanne Darlot’s hat in Renoir’s Two Sisters on the Terrace, now I think of it. You must know the work. No? Never mind.

  “The tie was still in my hand, dangling in my palm. I had taken it, by the way, from behind a bowl, here, in this room Saturday before I went up to bed, intending to return it to Jamie, but I promptly forgot it until Roberto crossed the lawn outside. He said he had found it ‘interesting’ that I was wearing it as a belt. Well, never mind now.” He paused again, mouth twisting. “I don’t think I knew what I had done until some time afterward. I seem to have no memory of … garroting Oliver. I did garrote him, didn’t I? I must have. Strange word, garrote. Spanish, I believe. And then, in a moment it seemed, there was Gaunt. Right in front of me. Good old Gaunt. A good man, really, even if he did rather let me down. I know he must have tried. He did try, didn’t he?”

  Tom nodded sadly. “Yes, he did. Gaunt, I think, was very much the compleat servant, almost from another age. Other than Lord Fairhaven, you’re the only person in this room he’s been in service to.”

  “He used some other tie. Fancy having the same tie with him, a Shrewsbury tie. What an unexpected flourishing of happenstance. He told me he had taken the tie away—Jamie’s tie—laundered it—however one launders ties, only he would know—and returned it to Jamie’s things. But …” He looked around blankly.

  “Gaunt dropped Jamie’s tie in the Labyrinth,” Tom explained. “Startled by the sound of another person—Anna. I expect,” he continued gently, “he didn’t want you to be concerned, so he substituted the one he had.”

  And at what sacrifice, Tom wondered. Gaunt waited years to assemble evidence to shame Oliver for an ancient crime and then, good servant that he was, he sacrificed his needs to his onetime master’s son’s.

  “And will he be all right, Gaunt?” Dominic asked.

  Tom looked to DI Bliss and replied, “No one is sure. He had a very bad fall.”

  “A fall, eh? I must say the House of Morborne has had rather a fall this weekend, hasn’t it? Hasn’t it, Lucy, darling? I had no idea when you coaxed me down to Devon that the title Marquess of Morborne would pass to me so suddenly. Of course, I had no idea that it would all go so terribly, terribly wrong, and so soon. Sorry, darling.

  “And I’m very sorry, Marguerite.” He turned to the dowager countess, who sat rigid but for a tiny quiver in her throat, staring, her eyes black pools of anger. “I had to know what Roberto had said to the police. Nothing, as it happened—which was oddly kind, though I know he had no love for Olly, either. But he was really only biding his time. He said he would have to speak up, eventually—if the police came after Hector, for instance—your son. He wouldn’t want you hurt. It was terribly easy. He was cleaning his hands in that sink. Water had pooled on the floor. You must get the drain fixed, you know. And there was that radio, so close, on the shelf. It was an impulse. Another one, I suppose. Can you forgive me?”

  “Of course I can’t forgive you.” Marguerite retreated deeper into the couch. “You’re a monster—as was your cousin.”

  The bronze clock struck the half hour at her last words, a reminder of time passed in this unhappy atmosphere. Tom’s eyes went to the sliver of terrace visible through the French doors, vague and dusky as the sun, long vanished behind Eggescombe Hall, now dipped below the horizon. Past the dark shroud of trees, an ice-blue southern sky was shot with the last of the pinks and golds and wisps of cloud. A summer day’s passage into summer night usually held for him a hint of mystery, and he longed to be walking some wooded path alone with his thoughts. Once more ’tis eventide—the words of the hymn flitted through his mind—and we, oppressed with various ills, draw near … It was but the craving of a moment for Bliss broke the silence, and his reverie, with a question of Lucinda:

  “You two weren’t together the entire afternoon, by the pool, as you claimed earlier?”

  “No.” She sighed. “I’m afraid not. Dominic went off on his own. He didn’t tell me where he was going. I thought he’d gone to climb the Gaze Tower again. I was immersed in a magazine. When Gaunt arrived with drinks, I told him Dominic was probably up the tower. And, of course, silly man, Gaunt dutifully climbed the tower, silver tray with drink in hand.”

  “And saw what Dominic later claimed he’d seen: the murderer in the stable yard, near Roberto’s studio,” Jane said.

  “That, too, is unforgiveable,” Marguerite intoned.

  “Is this why I found you outside the Gatehouse earlier?” Tom asked Lucinda. “You seemed unusually concerned about Gaunt.”

  Lucinda flinched. “Dominic, please, your fingers are digging in too much.” She edged away and addressed Tom: “Yes, it … it had all become too much. I knew that Gaunt knew what had happened in the Labyrinth with Oliver, you see—Dominic told me everything when he got back that morning. He was shaking, weren’t you, darling? It was horrible, but I knew Dominic didn’t seek to ki
ll horrible, nasty Olly deliberately, did you? And besides”—she shrugged—“Oliver’s death seemed to solve so many problems that …”

  Her mouth formed a little moue. “But with Roberto dead, it was simply too much. Really, Dominic, it was. I was certain Gaunt understood something about Roberto’s death, too, you see. He had been up the Gaze Tower. Afterwards, when he did fetch Dominic his drink, he behaved oddly. And when he—” She gestured to Blessing. “—asked us about our movements, Dominic said we’d been together poolside but for a few minutes when he’d climbed the tower. Where he claimed to have seen Gaunt. I went—”

  “To warn him? Did you go to the Gatehouse to warn Gaunt, Lucy?” Dominic asked in a voice now high and brittle. “You didn’t need to. Gaunt and I had a nice cup of tea earlier. He was very understanding. Good old Gaunt.”

  “I don’t know what I was intending to do.” Lucy shifted uneasily. “Was it to warn him? I don’t know. Dominic, you seemed so unaffected by Roberto’s death. I thought—”

  “That I might do it again.”

  “Oh, Dominic, don’t say that!”

  Dominic’s eyes were large and bright. “Well, Inspector, what shall I do? Shall I say ‘I’ll come quietly, Officer’ and hold out my hands for the cuffs? Or do we use handcuffs in this country? Perhaps I got that from American television. Or I could make a noisy mad dash for it. What do you think? Would that do? The terrace doors are wide open. The evening light is sublime. I could disappear into it, couldn’t I? Or at least try. Would that give you a satisfying ending? Of course, you’d probably catch me. Still, a breath of this fresh country air would be wonderful. What do you think?”

  “Lord Morborne,” Tom answered. “I think the inspector will agree with me that it’s entirely up to you.”

  Dominic looked at him and smiled.

  The Vicarage

  Thornford Regis TC9 6QX

  15 AUGUST

  Dear Mum,