Death of an Unsung Hero

by Tessa Arlen

  “Do what you want, you fools, there’s nothing you can prove.” Edgar Bray, supporting himself with his stick, sneered at them as Harry marched him into the stall they had occupied just minutes ago. “It was the coward and deserter Hector who rode the horse to kill my brother, he had all the motive in the world. And it was Sir Winchell Meacham who shot Hector, not I. What a bunch of interfering idiots you all are.”

  “Would you please stop scoffing and sneering, Mr. Bray, it makes you look quite common. And I wouldn’t be quite so quick if I were you, we know a good deal more of your story than you think we do,” Clementine said. “But I only have the energy to tell it once, so I think we will wait for Colonel Valentine.” She had to lean up against the wooden wall of the stall nearest to her for her legs felt boneless, and her hands were shaking.

  Another sneer. “That old codger, and what do you think he will do?”

  “Why, arrest you for the murder of your brother and Private Hector,” said Clementine, and turned to put her arms around her daughter, who, white-faced and weeping with fear, needed her mother to tell her that everything would now be quite all right. “There, there.” She took her clean handkerchief from her pocket and wiped the tears from Althea’s pale face. “You are quite safe, thanks to your friend Dolly. I am so sorry I didn’t warn you about Mr. Bray before I left, it was so silly of me. I worried about you all the way home, my darling.” She kissed her daughter’s wet cheeks over and over again.

  And then turning to her son, she said in a murmur, “Harry would you please look inside the boot of Mr. Bray’s motorcar? I think you will find something there that will be most useful to us and I am rather curious to hear what you think of it. Don’t bring it in here; put it in the Daimler so we can take it up to the house.” She looked across the aisle of the stable to Mr. Bray, who was standing silently in his stall, watching her through the bars. Yes, I see that you are looking a little less sure of yourself now, Mr. Bray, and then her chest felt tight as she thought of this creature manhandling her daughter, making use of her all these days as he sat in their house and engineered his alibis for two murders, quite confident that he would go home as Sir Edgar Bray, to run his estates and lucrative coalfields. “It was not Private Hector alias Lieutenant Carmichael who rode Dolly up to the kitchen garden, Mr. Bray; it was you, wasn’t it? How clever you must have thought you were.”

  * * *

  I don’t know how they do it, Mrs. Jackson thought, as she offered ham sandwiches hastily made for a ravenous Lord Haversham and as ballast for her ladyship, who was already sipping her second glass of brandy. The family was gathered in the drawing room at Iyntwood with Colonel Valentine. You would never think from the pleasant way they have of chatting together that they have a dangerous murderer pinned down in a corner of this lovely room.

  “Clemmy, you have kept us in suspense for far too long,” Lord Montfort said. He kept his back to their erstwhile guest, who had been handed over to Haversham village’s stolid police constable who was standing guard of Mr. Bray. “I simply can’t wait to hear what you have to say.” He turned to his son. “Your mother is such a dab hand at wrapping things up, Harry.”

  “Actually,” Lady Montfort finished her sandwich, took a sip of brandy, and smiled across the room toward Mrs. Jackson, “Mrs. Jackson is the dab hand; I am merely the one who sits by in amazement. You see it was Mrs. Jackson who very cleverly discovered that Lieutenant Carmichael was not Lieutenant Carmichael but someone else entirely. Isn’t that so, Jackson?” The housekeeper smiled that this was so but she said nothing at all. “I wish you would tell this part, Jackson, I still get rather confused about who is who.”

  Mrs. Jackson was never one for the limelight, but she couldn’t bear to think that this part of the story might be muffed as her ladyship was clearly exhausted and brandy on an empty stomach does sometimes have a somewhat paralyzing effect on continuity. So she readily pitched in with a clear account of what they had learned not only through discovery but from their conversation with Private Glenn. So clear, in fact, that she noticed with some satisfaction that even Colonel Valentine was nodding as she laid the complicated events of the Battle of Beauville Wood before him.

  “So it was really Private Hector who came to our hospital, calling himself Lieutenant Carmichael and suffering from a confusing array of shell-shock symptoms, m’lord,” she said as she described the events of the past few days, culminating in the murder of the man they had all known as Lieutenant Carmichael. She turned to address Mr. Bray directly: “Private Hector was the son of your estate steward at Brayley, you all three grew up together, didn’t you, sir?” It was clear by Mr. Bray’s face that he saw where this was going. “When Private Hector left the battlefield at Beauville Wood he had assumed the identity of a second lieutenant. Did he come home to you at Brayley, sir?”

  “What if he did?” Bray asked. “It proves nothing, I had no idea he had run off. All he was to me was the son of my steward.”

  “Sir Winchell was right in one respect then, we were harboring at least one rascal after all.” Lord Montfort did not look at Mr. Bray in his chair. “And right from the start this was a ruthless plan to eliminate Captain Bray by a couple of cowards.”

  Mr. Bray lifted his head from sneering at a very fine Persian carpet and said something indescribably vulgar.

  “There is a good deal more to the story than that, my lord.” Mrs. Jackson stood quietly in the middle of the room, basking in their evident admiration—it was better by far she thought than a double brandy on an empty stomach. “Her ladyship should tell the next part.”

  “You know as well as I do what transpired, Jackson,” Clementine encouraged.

  “But I like the way you tell it, m’lady,” she said.

  “Very well then, I will continue, but first here is to a first-class brain that got us started down the right path in the first place: to Mrs. Jackson.” And everyone lifted their glasses to the elegantly composed woman standing among them before turning expectant eyes toward Clementine.

  “From the start Mr. Bray’s plan was to get rid of his inconvenient brother, and for that he needed the help of Private Hector, or, as he had most usefully become, Lieutenant Carmichael. And just as equally Private Hector needed Mr. Bray’s help, too, because the moment Captain Bray’s memory returned Hector would be court-martialed and probably shot for cowardice and impersonating an officer, and Mr. Bray would have to surrender complete control of his brother’s estate and everything that went with it. When Hector came back to Brayley it was then that they hatched their plan to be rid of Captain Bray. It does seem a tiny bit unfair,” she smiled at Althea, “that Mr. Bray spent all his adult life running an estate he would never inherit, as his brother enjoyed himself in London. But that is the way with entails, isn’t it?”

  “I didn’t collude to have my brother killed. I didn’t need to. He was incompetent, incapable of running the estate.” Edgar Bray spoke for the first time without sneering. “I brought Brayley back from nothing, single-handedly, while he gambled away the family money in London. And then he went off to war and obviously couldn’t even cope with that. I knew that I would have to keep running things, even if he regained his memory. I had no reason to kill him. But it is evident that Hector did.”

  Clementine continued with her story as if he hadn’t spoken. “The war came. Sir Evelyn Bray became Captain Bray and joined the regiment of the Gloucestershires and his younger brother, Edgar Bray, stayed at home and ran the estate just as he had always done. Two years later, Edgar Bray was informed that his brother was missing in action and believed dead after the Battle of Beauville Wood. Finally he would inherit! A triumph short-lived because not days later another telegram informs that Captain Bray was alive, but unlikely to recover from amnesia. This was not perfect but at least Edgar Bray could continue in control of the estate and with time have complete control if his brother remained so incapacitated.

  “But Captain Bray was in the capable hands of Major Andrews and littl
e by little was beginning to regain his memory. We wrote to you with such evident enthusiasm for your brother’s future, Mr. Bray. How upsetting that must have been: the estate would revert back to Captain Sir Evelyn Bray, and after all your hard work you would be left out in the cold.”

  Mr. Bray scowled at her across the room. I can’t imagine why I ever thought he was a good-looking man.

  “On the day that Edgar Bray motored over to be reunited with his brother, the man known to us as Lieutenant Carmichael had organized everything quite beautifully. Edgar Bray would park his motorcar on Brook End Lane right by the gate into Dolly’s pasture. Captain Bray was predictably ensconced in his favorite part of our grounds, contentedly digging over the potato bed. Staff and patients at the hospital were all gathered for their one o’clock luncheon. It was the perfect time for Edgar Bray to arrive in the kitchen garden, murder his brother, and then return to his broken-down motorcar.

  “As arranged, Hector alias Carmichael brings Dolly down to the pasture, tacks her up with bridle and a saddle brought along by Edgar Bray, and off he goes on Dolly to the kitchen garden. He murders his brother and returns to his car, where he releases Dolly and simply sits there to wait. Then an hour or so later along comes our impersonator Hector-Carmichael with Althea, to find Mr. Bray sitting helplessly in his broken-down motorcar. Althea unclogs the carburetor that Hector has very competently clogged, and Mr. Bray motors on to our house, where all he had to do was play the part of the bereaved brother and charming guest.” And flirt with my daughter.

  “Very clever,” Mr. Bray said over his shoulder. “None of it plausible, none of it even remotely possible. You forget that I am incapable of moving at anything other than a snail’s pace. How you imagine I could get up on the back of that clod of a cart horse and get her there and back to the kitchen garden I have no idea. But I am quite sure you will dream up something, Lady Montfort.” Mr. Bray’s expression was derisive, but lines of tension deepened across his forehead.

  Clementine took the merest sip of brandy from her glass. “I already have,” she murmured and nodded to her son.

  “Never taunt a woman, Bray, it is not only ill mannered but foolish,” Harry said as he left the room and returned a moment later with a curiously constructed saddle and a long girth. “Poor Dolly,” Harry said as he set the saddle over the back of a wing chair. “It must have been very uncomfortable for her to wear this thing perched on her back. It is clearly made for a large horse; I imagine you usually ride an Irish Hunter, Mr. Bray, but not one with a barrel quite as wide as our Dolly’s.” He patted the pommel and smiled at a man who was no longer sneering. “No need to look away, old chap, I know you recognize the saddle because I found it in the boot of your motor. Fire away, Mama.”

  “I happened to mention to Private Glenn during our visit to him this afternoon that I had no idea how you could have made the distance from your motorcar on Brook End lane to the kitchen garden, since it is easily three miles just one way. And he told me that three miles was nothing to a man who regularly spent the day in the saddle as he went about estate business. Of course you didn’t really need to gallop Dolly all the way there and back, but you were probably a bit worried about your motorcar being discovered even though your accomplice had assured you it was left on a very lonely stretch of road.

  “Dolly was thundering along at such a rate that the sound of her hoofbeats on that hard ground through the wheat field was carried all the way across the field to the top of Holly Farm barn. And young Walter Howard woke up from his noonday nap and saw you. Dolly is remarkable only in that she is the only gray Shire horse for miles around, you see.” Clementine walked over to the saddle and lifted two long, narrow leather straps that ran through the ring on the pommel, and Mrs. Jackson turned to Mr. Hollyoak, who was standing holding the brandy decanter, and gave him a look that said, This is what happens when you trespass on the sensibilities of a protective mother.

  “We did a sort of run-through of Dolly’s journey that day with Lord Haversham. Even riding with one hand, we knew that your friend Hector-Carmichael could not have been the one riding Dolly because he had made sure to establish an alibi with Lady Althea, and his twenty-minute trip to the pasture was not near time enough for him to ride up to the kitchen garden and back again. You must have a very good saddler, Mr. Bray. This one has been adapted most cleverly for a man who has lost the strength of his right leg.”

  She stood and admired the saddle in front of her. “So, your right leg is held firmly in place across the upper part of your leg by this sturdy strap and then once held in place this block here gives support to it.” She picked up what looked like a long leather rein. “For stability, this strap runs from the back of the saddle under the upper leg and through a ring on the pommel. When you pull it you exert pressure on the horse’s right side. Quite ingenious because you can release the strap to come off the horse, which is important in an emergency, and the lower strap gives support if the horse jumps sideways. All you needed then was the help of your friend Hector to tack up Dolly with an extra-long girth to encompass her broad belly, and his help to mount. And then off you went. You were quite able to dismount without help by the boot of your motorcar when you returned, put the saddle into it, and then send Dolly back into her pasture. I have to congratulate you on insisting you do your own dirty work by murdering your brother.”

  Colonel Valentine, Lord Montfort, and Lord Haversham clustered around the saddle. They were all riding men and saw exactly how the straps worked.

  “Yes, clever but not unusual; I knew quite a few fellas after the Boer War who having lost a leg didn’t give up hunting, thanks to a good saddler. Don’t know why we didn’t think of it sooner!”

  Lord Montfort’s brows rose at their chief constable’s understandable arrogance and asked his wife, “But how did you work all this out?”

  “Well I didn’t really, Mrs. Jackson did. She discovered the connection between Captain Bray, his brother, and this Private Hector, who came to the hospital masquerading as Lieutenant Carmichael. From there we discovered that Mr. Bray here had ridden Dolly from Brook End Lane to the kitchen garden. And since he was particularly coy with us about not being able to hunt or ride, it took us longer than it should have done to work out how he had accomplished that. And then it occurred to us when we were with Private Glenn that since Mr. Bray had had his motorcar adapted, he might have devised some method of being able to ride a horse. The only man who had the time to ride up to the kitchen and back again on Dolly was Mr. Bray. Corporal Glenn confirmed two things: one, that Private Hector had indeed stolen Lieutenant Carmichael’s identity that night in Beauville Wood, and the other was that Mr. Bray did all his business around his estate on horseback even after his hunting accident.”

  “And the murder weapon?” Harry asked.

  “Harry, would you borrow Mr. Bray’s walking stick for a moment please, I want to show it to Colonel Valentine.”

  Harry delivered Mr. Bray’s stick into Valentine’s hands. And the old man swished it through the air a couple of times. “Ah, yes. Hmm, yes I see! A particularly sturdy stick, rather heavy; I will ask the coroner to look it over. Feels like…” He swung it up and down, causing Mr. Hollyoak and Mrs. Jackson to wince as he narrowly missed a priceless piece of jade. He inspected the stick’s end, slipped off the rubber cap that stopped it sliding, and took it to the table lamp. “Um, yes, see here, Lord Montfort, there appears to be a metal rod running down the length of the wood—a most formidable weapon. And what about this Hector fella, Lady Montfort, what happened there?”

  “Well, Hector was just as unscrupulous and unpleasant as Mr. Bray here. And he had something on Mr. Bray as his direct accomplice to murder. I am guessing that he wanted money, or perhaps something Mr. Bray did not want to part with. Bray probably arranged to meet him after dinner on our lake bridge on the night Sir Winchell came to dine with us. Hector thought it was a meeting to discuss terms, and so it was because Mr. Bray shot him.” She smiled around th
e room.

  “During dinner we provided Mr. Bray with the perfect dupe for his plan to get rid of his friend Hector and make sure he was not relying once again on his leg as his alibi. After all, you can still shoot someone even if you cannot run, walk very far, or ride a horse. Sir Winchell Meacham is a particularly unhappy man, with two sons recently killed in the war, and our hospital at Haversham Hall shelters officers whom he considered to be cowards. After dinner Mr. Bray took the opportunity of encouraging Sir Winchell to drink more port than he should and also spent a few moments stirring him up into a state about the malingerers at the hospital. It doesn’t take much to push Sir Winchell into a temper about our hospital, and when he does I am afraid he does sound awfully violent. Sir Winchell, always true to character, threw a paddy and stormed off into the night to walk home. And just after he left, Mr. Bray made his way to the bridge where he met Hector and shot him, leaving him right there by the side of the drive, where not minutes before Sir Winchell had stamped along it in a fury about the injustices of life. Well done, Mr. Bray, for quick thinking and making the very best out of a situation.” The look she was given in return was a particularly unpleasant one. And Colonel Valentine decided it was time to remove their culprit.

  “So Sir Winchell is completely in the clear, poor old chap,” said Lord Montfort as Edgar Bray was taken from the room by the village constable, who had never spent such an entertaining evening in his life.

  “He most certainly is, because Walter Howard not only saw Mr. Bray galloping Dolly up to the kitchen garden to murder his brother, he also saw, from the other side of his barn, Sir Winchell fishing on the river. Sir Winchell fished from the footbridge all day, and so he could not have gone up to the kitchen garden to kill Captain Bray. So I would say Sir Winchell was wholly in the clear, wouldn’t you, Colonel?”