Landed Gently csg-4

by Alan Hunter

  ‘Your full name, sir?’

  ‘Henry Ainslie Charles Feverell, sixth Baron Somerhayes.’

  ‘Of Merely Place in the county of Northshire, sir?’

  ‘Yes… magistrate of that county.’

  Why was he looking at Gently while he gave these details, as though they constituted a wistful joke?

  ‘We would like you to tell us, sir, what you know about the deceased, and how he came to be staying at Merely Place.’

  Somerhayes crossed his legs with deliberation and addressed himself to the task. He had nothing significant to tell them, but he gave it in precise detail. The deceased had been introduced to him in the tapestry workshop six weeks previously. He had been invited there by Mr Brass, following a lecture given by Mr Brass at the American Air Force base at Sculton. According to the deceased’s account of himself, he was the only son of a newspaper proprietor in the town of Carpetville, Missouri, USA, and his age was twenty-three. He had had artistic training and was enthusiastically interested in the tapestry workshop. He had subsequently paid a number of visits during which he had taken weaving lessons from Mr Brass, who had been very favourably impressed by his pupil’s ability, and his general popularity had led Somerhayes to invite the young man to spend his Christmas leave at the Place.

  ‘He was a complete stranger to all the residents, sir, as far as you know?’

  ‘A complete stranger.’

  ‘None of the residents or staff are American, sir, or to your knowledge have been to that country?’

  ‘None of them are American, and I would be surprised to learn that any of them except myself had been to America.’

  ‘When were you in the States, Henry?’ interrupted Sir Daynes in surprise. ‘Thought you were attached to the Paris Embassy when you were in the Diplomatic Service?’

  ‘I was there as a very young man,’ agreed Somerhayes. ‘But that was before the outbreak of war. During the war, as you know, I worked in the Foreign Office. It was while I was there that I had occasion to visit the United States.’

  ‘And of course… never had anything to do with this feller or his family?’ Sir Daynes sounded embarrassed at having to put such a tendentious question.

  ‘I did not have that pleasure.’

  ‘Of course not… too busy, eh? Didn’t get around much.’

  ‘I made a few excursions in the neighbourhood of Washington, but my acquaintance was confined to members of the embassy and their families and friends. I had no opportunity to visit the state of Missouri.’

  ‘Naturally… understand! Just have to get these things straight, y’know. Go on with what you were telling us, Henry… feller obviously a complete stranger.’

  Sir Daynes relapsed into some throat-clearing and Somerhayes, unmoved, proceeded to relate the events leading up to the tragedy. He had sent his car to pick up Earle at Merely Halt on the evening of the 23rd. The young man had arrived at some time after eleven, when the rest of the household had retired. Somerhayes had ordered him some supper and chatted with him while he ate it. He had been in high spirits, talking gaily of his experiences in London and of a certain ‘amusing old buffer’ — here Somerhayes’s strange little smile again found Gently — who had travelled down with him. They had retired together to the north-east wing, where Somerhayes had given him a room in his own suite. In the morning Earle’s high spirits had continued. He had begun the day by going round with a piece of mistletoe and kissing, it was understood, every female member of the household, including the housekeeper, who was fifty-nine. Later on he had gone to the workshop in the company of Mrs Page and Mr Brass, and had made a start at setting up a low-warp machine on which he was purposing to weave a cartoon, or pattern, of his own design. During the afternoon he had accompanied Mrs Page on a walk through the park to the folly, and during the evening he had made one of a party in the north-east wing, which was in communal use during the holiday.

  ‘He was full enough of horse-play then, as I can testify,’ grunted Sir Daynes. ‘Young devil led me a caper or two.’

  After Sir Daynes had left with Lady Broke and Gently, Earle had wanted to continue with the fun. In view of the morrow, however, the party broke up shortly after midnight. The tapissiers had retired to their quarters in the south-east wing, which adjoined the workshop, Mr Brass to his rooms in the south-west wing, and shortly afterwards, Mrs Page to the suite she occupied in the north-west wing.

  ‘So that for a short time there were yourself, Earle and Mrs Page alone in the… where was it?’ murmured Gently from his corner of the hearth.

  Somerhayes paused directly in his statement. ‘The yellow drawing room, Mr Gently. Yes, that is perfectly correct, though the three of us were together for only a few minutes while my cousin finished some Sauternes she was drinking.’

  ‘Would you remember the conversation?’

  ‘I’m not certain that I would. I believe Lieutenant Earle was describing to us the advantages of a visit to Missouri, which he would have liked to have persuaded us to make. But as I said, my cousin did not remain with us longer than it took her to finish her drink.’

  ‘After which Lieutenant Earle and yourself were left together?’

  Somerhayes looked Gently straight in the eyes.

  ‘Yes,’ he said.

  They had sat by the dying fire until Somerhayes had been called away by Thomas, his butler-valet, with some question about the laying-out of presents in the wing breakfast room. When he returned to the yellow drawing room Earle was still there, and they had had a night-cap together. Then Earle had gone up to his room, at about one a.m., and Somerhayes had followed him ten minutes later, after giving some final instructions to Thomas.

  ‘Was Thomas there, sir, when the deceased retired?’ enquired Dyson quickly.

  Somerhayes shook his head. ‘Thomas was busy in the breakfast room. I returned to him there after seeing Lieutenant Earle go up. As you probably know, in this wing one passes the stairs to the first floor on the way from the yellow drawing room to the breakfast room.’

  ‘And you left Thomas in the breakfast room when you retired, sir?’

  ‘Yes. I left him putting out the silver.’

  Dyson nobly restrained himself from jumping down his distinguished informant’s throat, but it was with a visible effort.

  ‘Like that, sir, you were the last person to see him alive?’ he suggested carefully.

  ‘I was,’ replied Somerhayes flatly, without the suspicion of an evasion.

  ‘Hrrmp, hrrmp!’ interrupted Sir Daynes. ‘Apart from the criminal, of course, apart from the criminal. Suppose the young feller did go up to his room, Somerhayes? Bed wasn’t slept in, y’know.’

  ‘I cannot be positive, Sir Daynes. He expressed the intention, and I last saw him ascending the stairs.’

  ‘Didn’t you hear him moving about when you went up? Room only one away from yours, eh? Passed your door when he was on his way out of the wing?’

  Somerhayes did not reply immediately. His expression a blank, he seemed to be running over in his mind every minute detail of the night before.

  ‘No,’ he said at last. ‘I can be of no help to you on that point. I heard nothing from his room when I went up, nor later when I was in bed. Being tired, I went to sleep quickly, and I remembered nothing more until I was wakened by Thomas at ten minutes past seven.’

  ‘Feller might never have gone to his room, then?’

  ‘As you say, Daynes, he might not.’

  There was a small commotion by the hearth as Gently searched the pocket of his ulster and produced a crumpled pamphlet. It was a visitor’s guide to the Place, of which a small pile still lay on a side-table in the great hall.

  ‘If you don’t mind… I’d like to get these premises clear in my brain.’

  He opened the guide on the table and turned the pages with clumsy fingers. On the verso of the cover was printed a plan of the state apartments, in shape a large rectangle, its width two-thirds its length. At each corner were four smaller rectang
les representing the wings. They were connected to the central block by narrow anterooms or galleries. In the centre of the state apartments, facing east, was the great hall, with galleries running round its three inner walls. From the inner end of the hall, at almost the exact centre of the block, the flight of marble stairs descended from the gallery-level.

  ‘All this isn’t used at all… it just connects the four wings?’

  Gently poked at the enormous central block, which dwarfed its four appendages.

  Somerhayes smiled bleakly. ‘It was not built for utility, Mr Gently. The state apartments were designed to house visiting royalty and the first baron’s collection of pictures and antiques. In a more spacious age they were certainly in frequent use, but I believe there is no record of the family having inhabited other than the wings. Today, I’m afraid, the state apartments are no more than a museum which in summer we open to the public. At other times they are merely an insuperable inconvenience to the poor inhabitants.’

  ‘Going round the clock… who lives where?’

  ‘Going round the clock, we have first the south-east wing, in which the tapissiers and the outdoor staff have their quarters — it has entry, you see, into the coach-houses and stabling, part of which has been turned into the tapestry workshop. Next at that end is the south-west wing where Mr Brass has rooms, and above him the indoor staff. In that wing are also the kitchens. Coming to this end, we have, first, the north-west wing, which is my cousin’s sacred domain, and second the north-east wing, in which we are now, and which Thomas and myself inhabit. In the usual way all meals are taken in the kitchen wing, but it was decided that over Christmas my own suite would be used, and so the yellow drawing room here was the scene of last night’s party. I trust you can find your way about now, Mr Gently?’

  Gently nodded broodingly. He placed a stubby finger on the top of the great stairs.

  ‘That’s about equidistant from each of the four wings.’

  ‘The landing of the marble stairs is, I believe, the geometric centre of the house.’

  ‘In fact it’s the logical place for a rendezvous… don’t you think?’

  Somerhayes said nothing, but his eyes never left Gently’s face.

  ‘We’ve got to ask ourselves why he went there — at that time of night. It isn’t just round the corner… see here, there’s four or five rooms to go through after you’ve left this wing, not to mention the gallery on the north side of the hall. What was he after, unless he’d arranged to meet someone?’

  Somerhayes shook his head slowly. ‘I can suggest no reason…’

  ‘And what was the object of the meeting, which was presumably clandestine?’

  Again the head shook, unhurriedly but with determination.

  ‘Gad, Gently, you’ve got something there,’ broke in Sir Daynes. ‘If the feller went to meet someone, must have been clandestine. D’you think he was a bad ’un, and this tapestry fal-de-lal was just a blind?’

  ‘Be a good way of getting in, sir,’ put in Dyson, with interest.

  ‘Damn it, yes — confounded clever. And not above some of the johnnies we’ve had to deal with.’

  It was Gently’s head that was shaking now. ‘He comes from a US camp, you know…’

  ‘That’s just the point, man,’ exclaimed Sir Daynes. ‘Who’s going to check his credentials, when he turns up at an Air Force lecture? Feller’s genuine — take him at his face value — and all the time he’s a crook, infiltrating his way into a country house. It’s been done before, I tell you. There’s no end to the tricks these johnnies get up to.’

  ‘But surely they’d know their own officers at the camp?’

  ‘Not necessarily — not at Sculton. Place is a staging-post, men in and out the whole time. And the whole business fits in… You’ve got a motive there to play with. Feller lets his accomplice into the house, say — they quarrel about the division of the loot — accomplice fetches him one with the truncheon, and clears off sharp without touching anything. There you are, man, in a nutshell. Answer to the whole confounded mystery.’

  Gently shrugged his bulky shoulders. ‘Just one minor objection. Did they happen to know who you were talking about when you phoned Sculton Camp this morning?’

  Sir Daynes gave him the look he usually reserved for defaulting constables…

  They could get little more out of Somerhayes. For the benefit of the record he repeated his description of the finding of the body, of his suspicion about the injury, of the search he had made with Thomas, and the subsequent phoning of the police and Sir Daynes. And all the time Gently had the curious impression that he had been constituted as some sort of special audience, that he was a gallery to whom Somerhayes was playing. But why? And with what object? — the circumstances remained a mystery. Somerhayes’s last look, like his first, was an unclassifiable smile aimed at the man from the Central Office.

  ‘Hmp!’ grunted Sir Daynes, as the door closed behind his lordship. ‘What do you make of it all, Gently, what do you make of it? Can’t say I like the way things are shaping — damn feller Somerhayes doesn’t seem to realize his position.’

  ‘He was the last person to-’ Dyson was beginning complacently, but he discreetly ended there as he caught the expression on the baronet’s face.

  ‘Confound the man!’ Sir Daynes turned to stare gloomily into the fire. ‘What a blasted kettle of fish to turn up on a Christmas Day, eh? I feel like a drink… I feel like some of that 1905 cognac.’

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Leslie Brass, dressed in green Harris tweed with a red line, seemed to bring a current of vitality with him into the room, which Somerhayes had chilled and enervated. One only had to catch a glimpse of his strong features with their Semitic nose and twinkling green eyes to be impressed by a feeling of warmth and energy — the ginger beard suited Brass; it seemed to grow out of his personality like an overplus of good spirits. When he sat down, the chair creaked under his massive but boyish frame.

  ‘Leslie Edward Brass, thirty-seven, artist — this isn’t the first time I’ve given the police my particulars! — late of Kensington, W8, now of Merely Place, Northshire — servants’ wing, if you want to be precise.’

  Nothing was going to make this serious for Brass. He grinned irreverently at the whole of the set-up. Policemen might impress the bourgeois, but from Brass they just bounced off — his piratical spirits surrounded him like an envelope of India rubber.

  ‘What do you want to know — if I did for our young friend?’

  Dyson tried to quell him with a might-take-you- at-your — word look, but it was a pure waste of talent.

  ‘We’d like you to tell us what you know of the deceased, Mr Brass, and everything you can remember about last night.’

  ‘I can tell you straight away that I’ve got nothing for you.’

  ‘We’d like it in the form of a statement, sir, if you don’t mind.’

  Brass didn’t mind. He was a born raconteur. Without further prompting, he launched into a racy account of his meeting with Earle at the Sculton lecture, of his amusement at the young man’s gaucherie and enthusiasm, of the American’s impact on the small, closed world of the Place.

  ‘My trained seals didn’t know what to make of him at first — he spent half his time chasing the females, and the other half telling us how to weave tapestry. Lucky for him he was a natural charm-boy. We could have hated his guts if he hadn’t been. But he soon found out he didn’t know much, and he never minded admitting it. Had ’em all eating from his hand, he did, by the time he’d spent a couple of days with us. And as I’ve said before, many a time, he had some real, hard talent in him. If I could have kept him with me a few years, the name of Earle would have meant something in the dovecotes. But he wouldn’t have stopped over here, so it didn’t signify. He’d got some wild ideas about setting up a tapestry workshop in the States, as though you could learn tapestry in five minutes — then he’d got another idea about transplanting me to Carpetville, Missouri. The kid was full of n
otions. It’s a pity they’ve gone to pot.’

  ‘Feller never had a quarrel with any of the whatd ’you- call-’ems — tapissiers?’ enquired Sir Daynes from over his commandeered cognac.

  Brass made a gesture with his white, conical fingers.

  ‘You couldn’t quarrel with a kid like that. He had a born sweetness of disposition. You could rib the lights out of him — I often did — and he’d never dream of taking offence. As far as he was concerned, it was a world without malice. You could club his feelings as somebody clubbed his head, and he would just think it one hell of a lark.’

  ‘Mmn.’ Sir Daynes didn’t seem to favour the parallel. ‘You can’t suggest anyone who might have had it in for him?’

  ‘Not a soul, I’d say. Unless it was Hugh Johnson.’

  ‘Johnson? Who’s he?’

  ‘A Welsh griffin we’ve got in our outfit. But don’t make a mistake — Johnson wouldn’t have brained the kid. He was just a bit sore because Earle put his nose out of joint. Johnson’s a fine designer, and I’ve been grooming him for stardom. Then Earle came along and I spent a lot of time on him, as a result of which dear Hugh decided to be huffy.’

  Sir Daynes was obviously interested. His knitted brow betrayed the fact. ‘Suppose this Welshman didn’t threaten him — nothing of that sort?’

  ‘Good heavens, no! You mustn’t start suspecting our Hugh.’

  ‘But he’d got it in for him?’

  ‘In the mildest possible way.’

  ‘Hmn,’ said Sir Daynes, and visibly made a note.

  Brass continued his statement, which as far as it went corroborated that of Somerhayes. When the party broke up he had left Earle with Somerhayes and Mrs Page. He had gone to his rooms at the other corner of the huge establishment, and as far as he could testify, a quiet and heilige night was had by all. He was wakened by Thomas in the morning at between twenty and a quarter to eight. He found Somerhayes in the hall, about to cover the body with a blanket.

  ‘Did you form any impression of his… um… state of mind at the time?’