‘No. I’m expecting Jim Milton and Ellis to look in tonight.’
‘I may join you. I want to know what’s going on.’
***
The bell rang. Plutarch, who was curled up on the baroness’ lap, opened one eye and grunted. Amiss got up and opened the door to Milton and Pooley.
‘You’ve met Jack?’ Milton nodded. ‘Good to see you again, Lady Troutbeck.’
‘Hello.’ Pooley sounded hesitant.
‘Good grief, Ellis, just because your gaffer’s here doesn’t mean you have to get all formal with me. You’d better put him out of his agony, Superintendent, by calling me by my first name.’
‘I would be honoured, Jack.’ Milton managed a creditable bow. ‘And I am Jim.’
‘Jack and Jim. There should be a verse about them. Perhaps Brother Francis could oblige.’ Amiss ushered his guests to seats and set about getting drinks. ‘Something along the lines of “Here come Jack and Jim, with their dear doggy Tim,” might fit the bill perhaps.’
He handed them their glasses and sat down again. ‘I haven’t had a proper update from you for days. Is it still one mad whirl of fanatics of one kind or another with dozens of victims and hundreds of suspects?’
Milton groaned. ‘I don’t ever want to deal with another murder unless it’s the kind Ellis likes reading about with six suspects in a snowbound country house and one—and only one—corpse on the library carpet.’ He yawned, shook his head vigorously and took a sip of whisky. ‘OK. Now, as you know, we’ve got the revolutionary Trots who sent the letter bombs, but we’re pretty certain they had nothing to do with the murders, so research into animal activists continues. You won’t know about the new lot of crazies who believe that to keep a domestic animal is to practise slavery.’
Amiss looked over at Plutarch, who was stretching luxuriously on the baroness’ stomach and chest. ‘They’ve got it the wrong way round.’
‘What exactly do they want?’ asked the baroness.
‘I have been told they believe that all domestic animals should be freed instantly to go back to their natural state, whatever the consequences.’
‘Even though that means that they’re being run over in their thousands on the roads and hunted down and eaten by each other,’ added Pooley.
‘I see,’ said the baroness. ‘So if I’ve got a goldfish, a budgie, a cat, a cheetah, a lamb, and a fox—I open the back door and let them all get on with it?’
‘That’s about it.’
‘Well, that should eradicate domestic pets in no time at all.’
‘They say that’s not their concern.’
‘By the same logic, presumably they are in favour of fox-hunting and are perhaps therefore the murderers of Beatrice Parsons?’
‘Ah, no. There’s a flaw in that argument. The only animals who are not allowed to hunt are us.’
‘Us?’
‘Man.’
‘Because?’
‘Because of our record as exploiters.’
‘Oh, God.’ She rubbed her eyes energetically. ‘Come back, Professor Moriarty, Raffles, Fu Man Chu, and those happy days when one had master criminals who could read, write, and reason, so that at least there was some possibility of getting into their thought processes. These people are an intellectual insult.’
‘Mind you,’ interjected Pooley, ‘we’re not taking these weirdos seriously. They seem to be in their infancy as a batty pressure group and are so fixated on the domestic pet issues I don’t think they are up to speed on wildlife.’
‘That’s reassuring. For now, I’ll look forward to the moment when they come to release Plutarch into the wild. That should take a few of them out of circulation.’ With that she sat up straight, removed the cat from her chest, and dropped her onto the sofa beside her. Plutarch emitted a growl of protest but rapidly reassembled herself into a posture suitable for sleep and closed her eyes again.
‘I don’t know how you dare,’ said Pooley respectfully.
‘Got to show ’em who’s boss.’
‘I’ll report you to the antislavery group,’ said Amiss absently. ‘Proceed, Jim.’
‘Now to move smartly across the spectrum to the loonies on the prohunting side.’
‘What? Us?’ asked the baroness.
‘No. Haven’t you heard of the Master of the Species Group?’
The baroness groaned, picked up her glass, and took a mighty swallow. ‘Get me some more, Robert, will you? This whole world is going mad.’
‘Well, they’re old-fashioned white supremacists but are as well what would these days be called speciesist. Their basic line appears to be that animals are put on earth to have anything done to them that we wish to, even if it involves torturing them to death for our amusement. They demand the abolition of all legislation protecting animals, whether it be against bull-baiting, cock-fighting, or experimentation. Their guru is that clown the Admiral Lord Gordon, who made, I understand, a particularly idiotic intervention in the second reading debate.’
‘He’s a guru?’ Amiss’ voice rose incredulously.
‘The mad right tend not to demand much of their gurus in the way of intellect. He’s an admiral, he encourages them in their yobbish opposition to everything that stands between them and their oikish desires to satisfy their nasty appetites and by wittering on about old values, foreign influences, and the spirit that was old England, gives them the illusion that they are in some way principled.’
‘Are they suspected of blowing up Parsons?’
‘Only by Ellis.’
‘Well, I know it’s far-fetched…’ Amiss and Milton grinned at each other. ‘But it is possible that they murdered the first lot to gain sympathy for the cause and discredit the animal activists and blew up Lady Parsons…oh, I don’t know, just for the hell of it, or maybe by mistake, or maybe they intended to get your group…’
‘It doesn’t work,’ said Milton firmly. ‘This crowd is just another lot of thugs who have been enjoying themselves keeping the police bogged down on the streets of London trying to keep the peace. They haven’t got the mental equipment to think subtly or undertake a complicated operation.’
‘So it’s back to Dolamore’s lot.’
‘He’s been released. Charlie’s mad with frustration and will keep tabs on him closely, but there’s just no evidence.’
‘So we can’t let go of the possibility of mass murder as cover. Now, of the nineteen murder victims, we can find a discernible motive for murder in only four cases. One was Lord Poulteney, but that doesn’t wash any more. One was the Marquess of Havercroft, who had recently dumped his mistress of twelve years when his wife died in order to marry a model. One was Baroness Sedgewick, who has a drug-addict son whom she’d cut off without a penny. And the fourth was Lady Parsons, who had recently brutally and publicly sacked a young barrister from her chambers in a manner that probably ensures that his career is ruined. However, while I think any of these suspects might conceivably have hit their targets over the head with a blunt instrument, I simply can’t think they had the skills or the resources to commit these murders themselves or rent a murderer. Quite apart from anything else, how would they have acquired the necessary knowledge and access to the House of Lords?’
Amiss was following him intently. ‘In any case, why should anyone who wanted to murder one of the first eight have murdered the others?’
‘Only as a cover-up. But one has to investigate every possibility.’
‘I do feel for you.’ Amiss went round the gathering with the whisky and the water and sat down again.
‘But of course there is the alternative and much more likely scenario, to wit that they were trying to kill more of the prohunting crew but the cancellation of that meeting saved you.’
The baroness nodded. ‘Seems much more likely, except that since the meeting was cancelled because Bertie was enduring a plague of animal activists, it was hardly them.’
Milton shook his head. ‘What we have here is a whole lot of different groups
, not a tightly disciplined army. I doubt if the crowd in the Lake District have much to do with the London mob, except when they come down for a day to cause a bit of trouble. The odds are it was just coincidence. After all, for several weeks everyone exercised about the wickedness of fox-hunting has been seizing every single opportunity to demonstrate outside the homes of relevant peers. Look at the trouble you had the other day at St Martha’s.’
‘But if they’d been meaning to do for us, why wouldn’t they have taken the bombs away when we failed to show?’
‘Lack of opportunity? Needless risk? How would they have known the meeting was cancelled anyway?’
The baroness tickled Plutarch absently. ‘What about the further complication of a murderer who might have wanted to knock off any of those of us who were due to be in the committee room that morning?’
‘Only four are credible, though it has been suggested that you and Robert were engaged in a tug-of-love battle over Plutarch.’
‘Oh God,’ said the baroness. ‘One should never joke with the constabulary.’
‘Not when the constabulary are of the intellectual sophistication of the solid citizen who interviewed you. He said he didn’t think it likely, but that stranger things had happened and there was no way of knowing what you were likely to get up to.’
‘Including blowing myself up in order to ensure I blew Robert up too.’
‘He thought you’d find a way round that. Anyway, it’s not entirely your fault. Robert had compounded it by making a similar feeble joke to a not-much-brighter constable from the Met.’
She glowered. ‘That’s what I hate about the current era. You can’t say the simplest thing or make the most obvious joke without halfwits or idealogues getting the wrong end of the stick. Bugger the lot of them.’
‘So who are the credible ones among our number?’ asked Amiss.
‘Your pal Beesley’s son is very hard up, and they don’t get on. Lord Pragg’s partner in their defunct garden-antique business has had a grievance against him for a long time and is known to have been furious when he inherited the title. Lord Gobbitt won a massive libel action against an historian who accused him of being a KGB spy, and he made him bankrupt. And the Earl of Cleveland seems to have contracted AIDS through his frolickings with Filipino bar girls and has passed it on to his wife.
‘However, only one of these injured parties seems remotely to be the kind of person one might imagine being able to organize vengeance on this scale, or with so little concern for others, and that’s the historian, who is very close to neo-Nazi groups. Oh, and of course there’s also the Duke of Stormerod.’
‘I tipped you off about that,’ said the baroness.
‘Indeed you did. Although I don’t know yet if it’s relevant.’
‘I forgot to tell you,’ she explained to Amiss, ‘that Bertie let drop to me a few weeks ago, apropos of Reggie, that like him he was thinking of getting married again.’
‘Before we go on with this,’ said Amiss, ‘I have a question. Other than Bertie Stormerod, how many, if any, of those of us who were to meet in that committee room had pacemakers?’
Milton looked at him approvingly. ‘Very good, Robert. Only Lords Pragg and Goss.’
‘Right. So they couldn’t have been targets, since Pragg is a cross-bencher and Goss is Labour. So only Bertie comes into the category of a target that could just have been missed through a piece of bad luck on the murderer’s part. Now, if his marriage were the reason to kill him, presumably it means a son could supplant the existing heir.’
‘Yes. He’s an American first cousin once removed.’
‘Murderous sort of fellow?’
‘Stormerod says he’s a perfectly nice chap who lives in a mid-Western town in America, makes a reasonable living which Stormerod augments pretty generously and has shown little interest in the estate, let alone the title.’
‘Hmm,’ said the baroness. ‘I don’t wish to appear cynical, but you’d have to be an awfully high-minded person not to mind about a dukedom, a Scottish castle, the Buttermere estate, the pictures, and all the rest of the Stormerod family’s ill-gotten gains.’
Milton nodded. ‘I agree, but we’ve had Frederick Sholto thoroughly checked out by the FBI, and he hasn’t budged from job or home in the last year. His neighbours consider him a model citizen and he’s a pillar of the local church.’
‘Hmph,’ said the baroness. ‘That’s always bad news in America.’
‘No, this is a sensible church. Episcopalian.’
‘Did he know Bertie was thinking of getting married again?’
‘The duke said he wrote and told him so some time ago and Sholto wished him well.’
‘Well, he would, wouldn’t he? He’d hardly threaten to murder him.’
‘That’s why I’m sending Ellis to America to see him.’
Chapter Twenty-Four
Westfield, Virginia was a small town like thousands of others in America, right down to the neat white fences. Sholto’s pleasant roomy house—clapboarded, painted white, and with a verandah—closely resembled those of his neighbours. Like his ducal relative, the man who opened the front door had heavy lids and a very large nose, but there the resemblance ceased. Dressed in blazer, white shirt, and grey trousers, of average height with thinning brown hair and with a pleasant face, his ordinariness was a bit of a disappointment to Pooley, whose fertile imagination had been weaving fantasies of murder plotted at long distance.
He shook hands heartily and waved Pooley into the living room. ‘You are very welcome. Coffee? Coke?’
‘Coffee, please.’
‘Excuse me a minute while I get it. My wife’s not here, unfortunately. She’s at work, so she couldn’t be here to greet you.’
Pooley sat back and closed his eyes until Sholto reappeared with a tray with coffee and what he averred were the best cookies in Virginia.
‘OK,’ he said, when the civilities were concluded. ‘Now, can you explain why you’re here? I’m a mite confused as to how those terrible goings-on in London have anything to do with me. Especially since, as I’m relieved to know, Cousin Bertie hasn’t been hurt.’
‘No. But there is a possibility that he could have been a prime target who escaped twice through good luck.’
‘Making me the prime suspect? Yeah, sure. No, don’t apologize. That’s OK. Of course it must look that way. Though I’d be real upset if Cousin Bertie saw it like that.’
‘Not at all. He spoke most warmly of you and told us we were wasting our time.’
‘Knew he would. Bertie’s a good guy. Understands that though all that land and money and title would be tempting to most people, it isn’t to me. If it comes it comes, as the Lord’s will. If it doesn’t, it doesn’t.’
‘You’re completely indifferent?’
Sholto scratched his head. ‘I just let things take their course. Look at it this way. I’m a patriotic American. I like where I live, I like my neighbours, and my wife and I are happily married. I manage the local supermarket, and I enjoy the job. She teaches first grade and loves it. Between us, we make enough to live decently and Cousin Bertie’s generosity has meant that we’re a lot luckier than most. My kids had the brains, I’m proud to say, to go to Ivy League universities, and Cousin Bertie provided the money. We can afford a new car every few years, a little boat for weekends on the lake, and once or twice we’ve taken a foreign holiday.’
‘Recently?’
‘You mean did we go over to London to mow down a whole lot of lords in an effort to see off Cousin Bertie? ’Fraid not. We haven’t been out of here since two years ago when we went over for the funeral of Cousin Amelia to pay our respects to Cousin Bertie at his time of tragedy.’
‘I see, sir. But forgive my asking—and I don’t mean to be offensive. I’m just trying to clear things up.’
Sholto nodded. ‘Sure.’
‘It’s just that most people would find it incredible that you’d settle happily for what you’ve got when you could hav
e what the duke has.’
‘I’ll tell you what, Mr Pooley.’ He shook his head. ‘That sounds much too formal, and we’re not formal here in Westfield.’
‘Call me Ellis.’
‘And call me Fred, please. Now look here, Ellis, I may have lived in a small town most of my life, but I’m a keen observer of people, and I’ve seen enough of the harm money can do to see the downside as well as the upside. Now, take my boy. More coffee?’
‘Yes, please.’
Sholto emptied the pot into Pooley’s cup and sat back. ‘My boy Joe worked hard, and now he’s an engineer and I don’t know that he’d have done that if he was sure he was going to be rich. As it was, he wasn’t dazzled by being the heir to the heir, if you know what I mean, because I’ve always pointed out we’re a long-lived family and that even if I did succeed it probably wouldn’t be until I was seventy and he was nearly fifty. So that kept him sensible. And you see, if I inherit tomorrow, it’ll probably be the end of what should be a satisfying career, because I could hardly insist Joe make his way as he is now rather than coming with me to England and living the life of an aristocrat. It’s just the same with my daughter, Peggy, who’s going to be an attorney, all going well. Pretty girl. Nice girl. I’d like someone to marry her because they loved her, not because her old man was loaded.’
‘And your wife?’
‘She’s not crazy about coronets. She’s had the odd little fantasy maybe, but mostly she’s not interested. She says, “Fred. What do we really want that we haven’t got?” And especially since Cousin Bertie made his offer some months back, whatever happens we’ll have a very comfortable old age.’
‘Sorry. What offer?’
‘Oh, didn’t he tell you? Here, hang on. I’ll find it.’
The Sholto house was so tidy and free of paper that within a minute he had located in the neat bureau a handwritten letter dated the previous April:
My dear Fred,
This is not an easy letter to write. But I think I know you well enough to believe it will not distress you too much
Ten Lords A-Leaping Page 19