‘So it’s quite possible then that the servant was murdered in mistake for his master,’ the inspector mused.
‘Very possible I would have said, Inspector,’ said Cedric. He turned his attention to his wife, who all the while had been standing at the window, looking out at the pitch darkness. He was aware that she had been following their conversation, betrayed by the slight tilt of her head. ‘Darling, you have been awfully quiet. What do you think?’
Rose turned and faced the room. She found that it was not only her husband that was waiting on her reply, for both the inspector and sergeant were looking at her expectantly.
‘I agree with you that it is certainly possible in theory that one was mistaken for the other,’ she said slowly, choosing her words with care. ‘Of course I had never met the major until this evening, and to my knowledge I don’t believe I had ever laid eyes on Masters when he was alive, so I cannot comment on the similarity in their appearance. It is not that, however, that interests me.’
‘Oh?’ said the inspector, sounding intrigued. ‘Pray tell me what does interest you, Lady Belvedere?’
‘Simply that the major was at pains to hide the fact that he may have been the intended victim,’ answered Rose. ‘That reason he gave for not telling you about the jacket did not ring true. There is something about his servant wearing his jacket that worries him. I think he was being truthful when he said the man wore the jacket without his permission. It startled him, I think, and now he is afraid.’
‘If that is the case, why not tell us?’ said Inspector Newcombe. ‘If the major is in danger as both you and your husband suppose, why does he not tell us so that we might protect him?’
‘It is possible that he is not certain,’ said Rose. ‘It might be that he merely harbours a suspicion. I think he is the sort of man who would think very carefully before he acted or said anything. We must remember that he has had an awful shock. He will want to think over what has happened before he decides what to do.’ She paused a moment before adding: ‘There are of course two other possible reasons for his not wanting us to consider him the intended victim.’
‘Oh, and what are they?’ asked Inspector Newcombe, raising an enquiring eyebrow.
‘Motive. Perhaps Major Spittlehouse has something he is hiding, which he does not wish us to discover.’ The inspector gave a puzzled frown and Rose attempted to clarify. ‘What I mean is that someone might have wanted to kill the major for a reason he would rather not disclose.’
‘Because it would put him in a bad light, to use his phrase?’ said Cedric.
‘Exactly.’
‘And what is the other reason?’ asked the inspector. ‘You said there were two.’
‘It just occurred to me that it is possible that he is protecting the murderer.’
There had been some more speculation concerning the major’s reticence on being interviewed, and then the evening had wound up naturally enough and almost of its own accord for the Belvederes. Cedric had chanced to look at the clock on the mantelpiece and discovered that it was well past midnight. It had been a long night, and an eventful one, and everyone appeared tired and fatigued. It was not, however, the end of the evening for the policemen, who intended to return to Bichester police station to write up a report and to review the evidence that had been gathered in the few hours since the corpse’s discovery.
Cedric had offered to put them up at Sedgwick Court, but they had politely declined, though the offer of the use of the library for their interviews had been gratefully accepted. The village hall might well have proven more suitable for such an office, but the former facilitated Rose’s involvement in the investigation and, though this was not expressly mooted as a reason for adopting Sedgwick Court as their village headquarters, it was present in all their minds.
It was a weary earl and countess who mounted the grand staircase and made their way to bed. The servants, without exception, had retired for the night. Manning had done his rounds as soon as the policemen had made their departure. The other servants had gone to their quarters some time before, tired after an exhausting day of preparation for the bonfire festivities, coupled with the unexpected, and most probably unwanted, task of supervising the village children and adults following the removal of the firework display to Sedgwick Court.
To Rose, the house seemed eerily silent save for the sound of their own footsteps, which themselves were muffled to some extent by the thick pile of the carpet. She knew that should she speak, her voice would echo around the walls of the great hall and be unbearably loud in the quietness. She glanced at her husband, who appeared to be struck by the same thought, for his manner was subdued. Apart from squeezing her hand he said nothing, and they proceeded up the stairs in a companionable silence, each lost in their own thoughts. Rose reminded herself that the events of the evening had been an even greater blow for Cedric than for herself, that he must still be reeling from the shock of it all. The bonfire festivities had been a long established tradition at Sedgwick, one that had been going on for centuries without major mishap. Tonight had been the exception. Never again would the villagers be able to look at the effigies without the knowledge that once one had been a murdered man. Would the children’s enthusiasm to make the guys be diminished, she wondered, when they discovered that the guy they had assumed had been made by a group of girls had in fact been a body? It was quite possible of course that the judging of the guys had become so tainted and associated with death that it would no longer be held.
As she lay in bed that night, Rose thought of Major Spittlehouse’s reluctance to mention the tweed jacket and what it might signify. Was it possible that the murderer had assumed that the man he had killed was the major and not his servant? Had Masters really been killed in error? And why had he been wearing his employer’s jacket? All these thoughts whirled around in her mind as sleep eluded her. She thought of Mrs Masters, a woman whom she had never met, and who was even now a guest in her mother’s house. How had she taken the news of her husband’s violent death? Was she tossing and turning in her bedclothes as Rose was now, unable to get to sleep? And Daphne Spittlehouse, what was she really thinking and feeling? Masters had been wearing her brother’s jacket. How did she feel knowing that there was a possibility that her brother had been the intended victim?
Rose sat up with a start. The Spittlehouses’ will. How had she forgotten about that? She remembered Daphne’s anguished visit, the way she had told her about the provisions of her parents’ will. Her brother had been the sole benefactor. His sister would only receive her inheritance at his discretion. In the meantime, she had been given what she perceived to be a relatively meagre allowance, which might be withdrawn without notice on her brother’s whim. Daphne Spittlehouse had been a desperate woman in fear of losing the man she loved. Surely only for that reason had she taken the unusual course of confiding her troubles to a stranger. And Rose had been unable to help. Cedric’s pleading of Daphne’s cause to her brother had fallen on deaf ears. The major had been steadfast in his belief that Daphne would not receive a penny from him if she were to marry Archie Mayhew, a young man he considered rather worthless and thoroughly unsuitable as a suitor for his sister.
Tomorrow Inspector Newcombe would tell Major Spittlehouse that it was possible that he had been the intended victim rather than his servant. It was a fact of which she was certain the major was already fully aware, even if he had not yet admitted it to himself. The question was, would Major Spittlehouse advise the police of the strained relations between himself and his sister? Would he provide them with a motive for why she might wish him dead? Rose thought it unlikely. The major was the sort of man who would deal with any threat to himself in his own way. They all knew him to have been fond of his servant. He would want justice for him; he would not let his murderer go unpunished. Despite the warmth from the fire, which was still glowing in the hearth, Rose shuddered. It would feel like a betrayal of trust, but she was determined to mention the provisions of the Spittlehouses’
will to the inspector, if only for Daphne’s safety.
Chapter Eighteen
Daphne awoke the following morning in the certain knowledge that something terrible had occurred which had the most awful ramifications. Her recollections of the previous evening, however, were rather hazy on account of her brother having given her something to make her sleep. She had taken it without protest, and now her thoughts and memories were rather jumbled, so that she had the odd feeling of not knowing quite what was real and what she had dreamt.
The appearance of Biddy, the maid-of-all-work, with her morning cup of tea informed her that the situation regarding the Masters’ was forever altered. For it should have been Mrs Masters bringing her her tea and opening her curtains to let in the day, not the maid, who was little more than a child and looked as if at any moment she might spill the tea on to the eiderdown, and then where would they be?
Daphne sat up in bed and grabbed the offending cup and saucer to prevent a catastrophe from occurring. It was only when she was satisfied there would be no spilt tea that she noticed that the little maid’s eyes were swollen and red from recent crying, and that she appeared to be snivelling. Her uniform looked none too clean either. There was a reason, Daphne supposed, why Biddy rarely ventured upstairs into the bedrooms. She was, however, sufficiently moved by the girl’s distressed appearance as to comment on it.
‘Are you frightfully upset by all this, Biddy?’ She asked tentatively. ‘It must have been an awful shock.’
‘Oh yes, ma’am,’ cried the maid, a fresh bout of tears threatening to erupt and spill down her cheeks. ‘Mr Masters was awful kind to me, he was. He used to make me laugh something rotten with all his jokes and his tricks that he’d learnt in the army. Mrs Masters was forever after him for distracting me from my work. She used to tell him that she had little enough help in the house as it was, without him keeping me from my chores. She didn’t mean anything by it, of course. It was just her way.’ She paused to dab at her face with a handkerchief, which to Daphne’s eyes looked distinctly soiled. ‘It’s a crying shame what’s happened to him. Who could have done such a thing? And he the kindest person you’d ever be likely to meet.’
‘I don’t know,’ said Daphne, rather alarmed by the maid’s display of emotion. ‘Where is Mrs Masters now? Is she still at South Lodge?’
‘Yes, ma’am, as far as I know. She’s taken it awful hard, she has, or so I’ve been told and I’ve no reason to doubt it. She was that fond of him, it makes you weep. They meant everything to one another, they did. Never had any children, they didn’t. I don’t know how she’ll cope without him.’ Biddy sniffed. ‘It won’t be the same for me either, not having him here to tease me and make me laugh.’
‘Was she so very fond of him?’ said Daphne, more to herself than to the maid, who had already left the room. She realised that until now she had never given much thought to her servants’ feelings. She had only ever thought of them as the couple that did for her and her brother. Mrs Masters was an appendage of Masters’, that was all. She had never considered that they might have emotions or personalities. She had thought that Mrs Masters would be upset by what had happened to her husband, it was only natural that she would be. But that the woman might possess great wells of emotion that resembled her own feelings for Archie had not occurred to her.
Archie! The name set a fire in her stomach and sent her pulse racing. During all of this she had not once thought of Archie. Last night, when Lady Belvedere told her of the discovery of the body and during the endless hours she had waited for Linus, she had thought of nothing very much, only that she was afraid. She should have thought of Archie, searching for her among the crowd in vain. What had he thought when he couldn’t find her? Had he been rushing around tearing his hair out, sick with the worry of it all? She saw him now, running towards Sedgwick Court, stumbling on the stones on the makeshift path from field to Court, out of breath, his eyes wild, his actions clumsy. Where was he now? Had he returned to Bichester, or was he perhaps waiting outside her window for a sign that she was there?
She threw aside her bedclothes, almost upsetting the cursed cup and saucer in the process, and tore to the window. It overlooked the front garden, and beyond that she caught a glimpse of the street. Archie was nowhere to be seen. He was not leaning against the cherry tree staring up at her window. She turned, with a quite ridiculous feeling of sadness, and blindly felt for her dressing gown, which hung from a hook on her door. She wrapped it about her, as if it were a blanket, and paused to stare at the clock on her bedside table. It was quite a shock when the hands informed her it was past ten o’clock. She crept out on to the landing and peered over the banister. All was quiet. Her brother must be in his study. With deft steps, she began to descend the staircase, her eyes focused on the telephone on the table in the hall below.
The morning had brought another fine day, cold but with pale sunshine that fought its way through the gaps in the curtain. These were the days that Rose usually enjoyed. They involved brisk walks followed by afternoons in front of the fire. Today, however, everything was marred. The good weather seemed inappropriate in light of the tragedy that had occurred the previous evening. It had the effect, however, of lifting her spirits sufficiently that the thoughts that had haunted her last night, making sleep impossible, had diminished in their magnitude. They were no longer insurmountable, or at least solely her responsibility, for the realisation had struck her that she might confer with Cedric.
She glanced over at her husband, whose sleep seemed untroubled, and traced the profile of his face gently with her fingers. Since their marriage, she had enjoyed this intimacy of waking up beside him and staring at his profile unchecked. The novelty of doing such a thing had yet to wear off. She still marvelled at his handsome features, at the jawline that looked chiselled even in sleep, and the fair hair that lay ruffled and untidy on his pillow. It contrasted sharply with his daytime habit of wearing it neatly slicked back.
They should have been lying there talking about the success of the bonfire festivities, marvelling at the inventiveness of the children in compiling their guys, laughing at those that had borne a striking resemblance to people in the village. Instead, Rose felt a reluctance to waken her husband, and an inclination to lie there and watch him sleeping for as long as possible. Wakefulness would only bring him troubles and cause his forehead to frown. She knew Cedric well, knew that he would consider himself partly responsible for what had happened, though the notion was quite ridiculous. But it had been his bit of wasteland on which the festivities had been held, and Sedgwick Court had provided the refreshments and contributed heavily to the purchase of the fireworks.
Even Rose felt that she bore some responsibility, for it was she who had judged the guys. She had paused and stopped before the dead man, had leant forward and touched his face. It was ludicrous of course, but there it was, lurking at the back of her mind, refusing to be quashed.
That morning she breakfasted with her husband, instead of indulging in the married woman’s privilege of taking her breakfast in bed. She had a particular reason for wishing to eat with Cedric. It was not only the enjoyment of his company that drew her, wonderful though that was, nor a wish to allude to the horrors of last night. Rather she wished to speak to him about Daphne and, in particular, the provisions of her parents’ will and her brother’s response to her intention to marry a young man of whom he thoroughly disapproved.
‘You think it gives her a motive for wishing Major Spittlehouse dead?’ said Cedric, tucking in to his kippers and kedgeree. It was a relief to Rose to note that he had lost none of his appetite. She herself nibbled on a piece of toast.
‘Yes. I’m not really suggesting that she would do such a thing but, if it is determined that the major was the intended victim, it might be worth finding out what happens to their parents’ money in the event of Major Spittlehouse’s death. I am assuming that, as next of kin, the majority of his estate would go to her.’
‘Well, I can�
�t see the major being very forthcoming on the matter, particularly if his manner today is anything like it was yesterday,’ said Cedric, through a mouthful of kipper.
‘I’ve thought of that. Daphne might tell us. She doesn’t share her brother’s natural reticence,’ said Rose, sipping her coffee.
‘I’ll say she doesn’t, telling you all about her parents’ will and her brother’s meanness towards her regarding money. She’d never met you before and there she was spilling the beans on her family’s personal matters.’
‘She thought I might be able to help her,’ said Rose, slightly defensively. ‘I felt absolutely rotten that I was unable to do so, though really it was not my fault.’
‘Of course it wasn’t. And instead you had me do your dirty work,’ replied her husband, not without humour. ‘I don’t think I have ever felt quite so awkward. Still, the major’s face was quite a masterpiece; I can still picture it. I thought he was going to blow a gasket.’
‘The problem is that Daphne Spittlehouse told me all about it in confidence,’ said Rose, a serious note creeping in to her voice. ‘I don’t remember her swearing me to secrecy, but I think she would take a pretty dim view if I blurted it all out to the police. I know I would in her place. Yet I feel that I have a duty to tell them, don’t you?’’
‘Yes, and we have already established that the major is unlikely to volunteer the information. He’ll just sit there all tight lipped like he was last night and say nothing. Of course,’ said Cedric, ‘it would look much better for Daphne if she were to mention it herself. The police are bound to ask her if she can think of any reason why anyone might wish her brother dead.’
‘And you suggest that she tells them she has the biggest motive of all?’ Nevertheless Rose pondered the proposal seriously for a moment, her forehead creasing in contemplation. ‘I can’t quite see Daphne doing that. It would be like offering herself up as the main suspect. You saw how nervous and agitated she was last night. The major was definitely worried about her.’
Murder on Bonfire Night Page 17