Murder At Wittenham Park

by R. W. Heber

  Rutherford overheard the remark and was nettled by it. “Safeguarding a possible scene of crime,” he said stolidly.

  Jemma shot a “What do we do next?” glance at her father and he took up the conversation.

  “Would you object to my standing by the next door along for a few minutes, officer?”

  “For what purpose, sir?”

  “My daughter is trying to jog her memory.”

  Rutherford stared at them both with extreme suspicion. “Like how?” he demanded.

  “I’m trying…” Jemma gave up petulantly. “Oh, forget it. We’ll just go to our own rooms. If you’ve no objection.”

  Rutherford watched them go down the corridor, convinced that there was a lot more in this situation than met the eye, then resumed his sentry duty.

  Once they were out of earshot, Jim said, “Never be bad-tempered with a cop, darling. You ought to know that.”

  “I wasn’t,” Jemma hissed at him. “Whose side are you on anyway?”

  “All right.” Jim gave way resignedly. “You weren’t, but it still doesn’t.”

  “Doesn’t what?”

  “Pay to be rude to cops.”

  “Oh, get lost, Daddy.” Jemma went to her room.

  Very soon afterwards she reappeared, darting out of her door as if disturbed. Rutherford glimpsed movement out of the corner of his eye and turned just as she retreated again. That girl was up to something, he decided. He pulled out his official notebook, recorded the time as ten forty-one, and wrote down carefully, “Miss Savage behaving in suspicious manner in corridor.” He was not surprised when she came out again and entered her father’s room. He would warn the inspector that they were both up to something.

  In her father’s room Jemma was back to being excitedly positive, their dispute forgotten. “It was that door. I’m sure it was.”

  “Welch’s?”

  “Yes, Welch’s. Who else?”

  “I doubt if that young constable is going to be flattered at reminding you of a woman in a night-gown.”

  Jemma giggled. “Daddy, you’re a fool.”

  “And how many women were there in night-gowns or dressing-gowns at seven-thirty this morning? Lady G, the curious Priscilla, Loredana, Adrienne Welch. What about the others?

  “Loredana’s was hidden by her dressing-gown. Dulcie had slung a coat over her shoulders. She wasn’t wearing lace. I wasn’t.”

  “So it was only three?”

  “The night-gown I saw had lace round the bottom.”

  “Well, if this becomes serious,” Jim said, “we’ll be having a fashion parade.”

  “I think all the women would be suspects. Priscilla Worthington took Welch a mug of ‘poisoned’ cocoa. It could have been poisoned for real. She told us he tried to rape her.”

  “Stranger things have happened.”

  “He had his eye on Loredana, too. Perhaps he had a go at her.”

  “That still leaves his lawyer, Dulcie. Why should she want to kill her own client?”

  “There you have a point, Daddy. Why should she? It’s not the quickest way of getting one’s fees paid.”

  “So, apart from the servants, that leaves only us. What motives do we have?”

  “To make a story for my magazine?” Jemma laughed. “I think we’re clean.”

  “Then I have to make a confession,” Jim said, more seriously. “Welch took me aside before dinner. He was quite aggressive. ‘I know who you bloody are,’ he said. ‘And if you know what’s good for you, you’ll keep out of this.’”

  “He didn’t! You’re joking!” Jemma was horrified and instantly concerned.

  “Scouts honour. There must have been some kind of scam in this land deal. I imagine that Lady Gilroy told him what my profession is, or rather was, in order to keep him under control. Something like that.”

  “So what did you say?”

  “Told him I was never influenced by threats. Anyway, it hardly means I would want to kill him. Rather the other way around, I’d have thought.”

  Jemma laughed. Her father’s dry humour always amused her. She answered in the same vein. “So I poisoned him to save you, Daddy.” She clapped her hands. “Perfect. Everyone has a motive.”

  “Except the servants and the McMountdowns.”

  “Oh, they’ll all turn out to have one.”

  The noise of vehicles outside interrupted them. Jim looked down from the window. An ambulance and a larger police car were in the drive.

  “Things have started to happen. Let’s go down again,” he suggested.

  As they descended the stairs, two ambulancemen with a stretcher were waiting in the hall, while a uniformed police inspector gave instructions and the rest of the guests stood in a cluster at the library end of the hall, watching. The men went upstairs. When they came down again, carrying Welch’s corpse, zipped up inside a black body-bag, they were followed by a white-coated man carrying a video camera and escorted by a sergeant. The police had clearly been carrying through their procedures with exemplary speed.

  Adrienne, who was being supported by Dee Dee Gilroy, burst into tears, while the rest stood in momentary silence. Not out of respect for the dead, Jemma realized, but because the bulging body-bag forced everyone to understand the reality of a death. Then subdued chattering broke out until the inspector, the two silver stars of rank glittering on the shoulder tabs of his shirt, raised his hand.

  “Ladies and gentlemen.” He had a burring, North Country voice, and dragged out some of the syllables. “We may not have the results of the post-mortem until tomorrow, though I’m hoping for it sooner. Until then I would be appreciative if you could make yourselves available throughout the course of the day.”

  “But officer,” Hamish spoke up complainingly, like an indignant shareholder determined to be heard at an Annual General Meeting, “my wife and I are leaving after lunch.”

  “Have you anything else planned, sir?”

  “Not precisely,” Hamish admitted. “We have things to do at home.”

  “I’m afraid they will have to wait, sir.” The inspector was not giving an inch. “As they would have done if this weekend had gone according to plan. A detective inspector will be here shortly. He will need to talk to everyone here.”

  “My God!” Dee Dee whispered to Gilroy. “You won’t be able to take them to Blenheim. All they are going to do is eat and drink!”

  7

  AS BUCK GILROY welcomed the latest police arrivals into his study, he felt he was being forced to rehearse the same scene again and again, like an actor who could never get it right. He had spent the entire morning being interviewed by policemen. First by Constable Rutherford, then Rutherford’s sergeant, then the inspector with the North Country accent. Now it was an officer in a dark-grey suit, who had asked the guests “to make themselves available” with a firm politeness that suggested that he had cells ready and waiting for every one of them, Gilroy included. He had introduced himself as Detective Inspector Morton and the plain-clothes sidekick with him as Detective Sergeant Timmins.

  Except that Morton was perhaps ten years the older and Timmins wore a blue blazer and slacks, they were remarkably similar in appearance: tall, broad-shouldered men with chunky faces, who would feel totally at home in a riot. They were exactly what the gangling Constable Rutherford hoped to be, but never would.

  Gilroy wondered if they always worked as a team, like Barnum and Bailey or Abercrombie and Fitch. The two names had that sort of ring to them. More practically, he prayed that this was as high in the pecking order as the police representation was going to reach. In an Agatha Christie thriller the chief executive of the whole force, known as the chief constable, would have been round in seconds. In practice the chief constable was the only policeman in Oxfordshire whom Gilroy knew and the last one he wanted to see now, since that would signal a major crime to everyone, not least the press.

  In the last hour or so a fearsome newspaper headline had rooted itself in Gilroy’s seldom agile brain. “
Murder at Wittenham Park,” it read. And with it had come the realization that he had to retrieve that bloody contract. Had Welch signed it or not? If he had, was it enforceable? Either way, he was faced with disaster when the Lloyds call for cash flopped onto the mat on Monday morning. If Welch had signed, who would now pay for the land? If he hadn’t, where on earth was the money to be found? Gilroy sighed to himself in this deeply unpleasant reverie. When a man stares bankruptcy in the face the last thing he wants is to be interviewed by the police equivalent of the Chicago Bears.

  “You were saying, sir?” Morton prompted, taking note of the sigh and wondering why Lord Gilroy seemed so troubled.

  “Oh yes. Well, the murder weekend was a scheme to make more use of the house.” He explained its details. “Funny thing is that Welch was slotted as the murderer.”

  “Whereas it’s him who’s been murdered, you mean?” Sergeant Timmins suggested, deftly opening a mile-wide trap for Gilroy to fall into.

  “Was he?” Gilroy’s worst fears were confirmed and his expression showed it.

  “You seemed to imply that, sir.” Morton defended his assistant, again noticing Gilroy’s agitation.

  “Did I? Well I never intended to.” Gilroy saw the ground opening in front of him just in time. “No, what I meant was that it’s odd that the man playing the murderer should end up dead.”

  “Quite so,” Morton said drily.

  “Was he murdered? God, I do hope not.”

  “We have to wait for the pathologists to tell us how he died. You sound as though it matters to you?”

  “It does. The publicity would be appalling.”

  “He was not a personal friend?”

  “No.” Gilroy managed to restrain himself from being more vehement.

  “And when did you last see Mr. Welch?”

  “After dinner last night. We had a business discussion in my study. He wanted to buy some land from us.”

  “At what time did that end?”

  “Well…” Gilroy tried to reason this out. The meeting had been so inexorably painful that the last thing he wanted to do was recall it. “Dinner was over around nine. We all met in my study about half an hour later.”

  “There were several of you?”

  “He brought his lawyer along. Mrs. McMountdown.”

  “For a murder weekend?”

  “Welch was using the weekend to negotiate, not play cops and robbers.”

  “I see.” Morton nodded, trusting Timmins to get all this down in writing and reflecting that Police Constable Rutherford had been correct. There must be more to this than met the eye. “And when did the meeting end?”

  “Around ten or ten fifteen. That was the last time I saw him.”

  “And what did you do after that, sir?”

  “Had a brief discussion with the lawyer about amendments to the contract and went to bed.”

  “So who would have been the last person to see him?”

  “The lawyer would have spoken to him again. His wife might have done, although she was sleeping in another room. Otherwise I haven’t a clue.”

  A stupidly appropriate phrase, Morton thought, thanked him for his help and asked if they could have a room to use for interviews. Gilroy offered the study, but was relieved when they declined and accepted a former staff sitting-room off the kitchens.

  “And what d’you make of his lordship?” Morton asked his sergeant once they were alone.

  “Worried about something, sir. And he didn’t much like the deceased.”

  “Hated his guts, from the look on his face. Well, let’s get on with it.” Morton studied the guest list. “We’ll start with this McMountdown woman. What a name to have to live with!”

  “Don’t forget Rutherford saw the father-and-daughter pair behaving suspiciously and taking notes.”

  “I’ll see them later. Now go and fetch the lawyer.”

  It took very little time after Dulcie was brought in for Morton to realize that she regarded her late employer’s business affairs as sacrosanct. Anticipating what was going to happen, she had dressed in a neat short-skirted fawn suit with a velvet collar. Her mop of hair was firmly brushed back and she had used her make-up sparingly.

  “Did you see Mr. Welch again? After your final meeting with Lord Gilroy?” Morton asked.

  “Yes.” Dulcie spoke decisively. “I took some papers to his room for him to read.”

  “A contract for the sale of land by Lord Gilroy, I believe.” Morton exceeded his brief fractionally, because he felt sure that if Welch had been murdered, the land deal would turn out to be relevant. But it was unwise of him. Dulcie cut him down.

  “It would not be proper for me to comment on uncompleted business, Inspector. I’m sure you understand that.”

  “If it had any bearing on the deceased’s death it could.”

  “That would be hard to imagine,” Dulcie said quietly. “At all events, I discussed the documents with George, gave him my advice, and left them with him.”

  “What time was that?”

  “Twelve minutes past eleven.”

  “You can be as precise as that?”

  “Yes.” Dulcie decided to explain why. “George was drinking whisky. For some reason he’d been brought a mug of cocoa and he offered it to me. I like a hot drink before going to bed. Then I thought I might need to do some more work, checked the time, decided it was too late, and took the mug with me.”

  “To your room?”

  “Yes. Where else?”

  “And you didn’t see him again?”

  “Not alive.”

  “Do you know if anyone did?”

  “No. But there were a lot of goings-on in the night.”

  “Such as?”

  Dulcie smiled thinly. “My apologies. That statement was hearsay. I slept right through to when the maid started screaming at seven-thirty, though she must have knocked on my door when she left the early-morning tea outside earlier.”

  “So who told you about these ‘goings-on’?”

  “Just about everyone. They were part of the plot.”

  “You don’t know who was moving around during the night?”

  Again the thin smile. “Afraid I can’t help there.”

  “One final question, Mrs. McMountdown. Did Mr. Welch have any reason to take his own life?”

  “Not that I’m aware of. He had problems, who doesn’t. But this weekend was likely to solve them.”

  Morton did not ask for an explanation, merely thanked her and she left.

  “Bloody lawyers,” Timmins remarked. “Never give away anything.”

  “Not if they can help it,” Morton agreed. “And she does know what was going on and she didn’t like it. Let’s look at the guest list again.” He paused as Timmins handed it across. “Nearly lunchtime. I suppose we can fit in one more.”

  “Why not try the father and daughter, sir? Their notes could be useful.”

  Morton acquiesced and a few minutes later Jim and Jemma were facing the two policemen across the battered old rectangular oak table of the servants’ sitting-room.

  “What were your roles in the ‘murder’ plot?” Morton asked genially, varying his approach. “Seems most of the guests weren’t interested.”

  “They were beastly,” said Jemma. “We were the only ones who tried, except for Priscilla Worthington. No one else even pretended to be keen.”

  “And you played…?”

  “I was the reporter and Daddy was the detective.” She caught sight of the guest list that Timmins had in front of him. “But you already know that!”

  “I prefer people to tell me in their own words. And when did you last see Welch, Mr. Savage?”

  “Having coffee after dinner.”

  “Did he appear completely normal?”

  “He was in a foul temper, actually.” Jim said. “Swore at Mrs. Worthington and demanded a bottle of whisky in his room.”

  “As the detective,” Morton said, unable to keep a note of cynicism out of his voice,
“I assume you kept notes?”

  “Fragmentary ones.”

  “May I see them?”

  Jim fished into his coat pocket for his notebook and passed it across the table. Morton read through the few entries. “So Welch was shouting at someone before dinner. Who do you suppose that was, Mr. Savage?”

  “We never discovered.”

  “The first clue referred to a row after dinner, not before.” Jemma said.

  “Hmm.” Privately Morton was contemptuous of amateur detectives and had not forgotten Rutherford’s description of these two’s activities in the bedroom corridor. “And after dinner you overheard another conversation in Lord Gilroy’s study. Quite a bit of eavesdropping, eh?”

  “We were playing our parts,” Savage said, starting to feel annoyed. Why was this man needling him? “This was an Agatha Christie—style weekend.”

  “And you continued playing them even after Mr. Welch was dead?”

  “I’m afraid I don’t understand you.”

  “You were attempting some kind of re-enactment outside Mr. Welch’s room this morning.”

  “That was my fault,” Jemma said quickly, fearful of being ridiculed but determined to retain her one piece of information. “I thought I’d seen someone outside his door earlier. But I was wrong. It was the door of the next room along.”

  “And who did you see?”

  “It must have been Lady Gilroy. She’d been using that bedroom for the murder.”

  Morton was not sure that he believed this, but it fitted Rutherford’s description of what they had been doing. He shifted his line of questioning.

  “What is your profession, Mr. Savage?”

  Savage told him, mentioning his redundancy.

  “You had any prior knowledge of Mr. Welch?”

  “He was under suspicion of insurance fraud a few years ago.”

  “Is that why you came on this weekend, then?”

  “I told you, I’m retired.”

  “Daddy’s an Agatha Christie buff,” Jemma said, irritated by this attack. “Don’t you listen to what people tell you?”

  “Experience has taught me never to take anything at face value,” Morton said quietly. “What is your profession?”