by Jack Treby
‘I don’t know,’ I admitted, sitting down next to her. The mattress was as hard as stone. ‘I don’t know what to think.’ I downed the whisky in one.
‘If there was a witness. And blood on his shirt...’
‘Yes, it does seem pretty damning.’ I let out a heavy sigh. I hadn’t been able to see the blood clearly but whoever had killed Mr Catesby was bound to have got some of it onto their clothes. ‘Mind you, that blood could just have easily have been from the whipping he got yesterday. Those kind of wounds do have a habit of reopening, if you don’t look after them properly. And I doubt a man like that would have many clothes to change into.’ I stared down at the tumbler in my hand. ‘It’s strange, though. Green didn’t strike me as the violent type at all. Quite a mild mannered fellow, I would have said, when I spoke to him yesterday. I can’t picture him creeping into that bedroom in the dead of night. I suppose he might conceivably have mangled the generator.’ Green could have been the figure I had seen stealing away from the outhouse, though it might just as easily have been somebody else.
‘What about Mr Talbot, falling down the stairs?’ Miss Bunting asked. ‘Could he have been responsible for that?’
‘No. No, I don’t think so. Somebody would have noticed a coloured man wandering around the house. And, now I come to think of it, he wasn’t anywhere near the place when it happened.’ I had seen him myself, some minutes before. ‘He was out working on the road. Freddie and I passed him by when we were coming back from the village. Him and that overseer fellow.’ Miss Bunting screwed up her face at the mention of Mr Langbroek. ‘And Mr Talbot fell down the stairs shortly after that, so there wasn’t time for him to steal away and visit the house. In point of fact, it’s only what you saw, coming along the balcony, that gives us any real evidence of foul play where Mr Talbot’s concerned.’
‘I suppose I might have been mistaken,’ Miss Bunting conceded, back-tracking slightly. She too had finished her whisky. ‘It might have been an accident after all.’
‘General Tejada certainly seems to think so. You notice he didn’t blame Green for Mr Talbot’s death. But I don’t believe it can have been an accident. It’s too much of a coincidence, especially with his brother suffering the same fate. Unless of course it was Mr Catesby who pushed Talbot down the stairs.’ That had been my first thought, yesterday evening. Maybe it had been a tit for tat thing: Catesby had murdered one man and somebody else had taken revenge for the killing. ‘No, there’s far more to all this than meets the eye. Did you see how the house boy reacted?’
‘Moses? Yes, he was very upset. The poor thing. I suppose any boy would be, seeing something like that.’
‘I think there may be more to it than that. Don’t forget, he was the one who acted as go between when Green first asked to meet me.’
‘Perhaps the two of them are related,’ Miss Bunting suggested. ‘Do you suppose it was Moses who told him about you in the first place?’
‘It must have been. Though how he knew about my connection to Giles Markham I have no idea.’
‘Moses was there when we were introduced, on Friday afternoon. He must have overheard us talking.’
‘And passed it on to Green? Yes, I suppose so.’
‘Crumbs. So if Freddie hadn’t invited you here, none of this would have happened.’ Miss Bunting shuddered. ‘Mr Green wouldn’t have slipped away from the road, he wouldn’t have been whipped and he wouldn’t have taken his revenge.’
‘If that’s what did happen.’ I gazed across at the girl suspiciously. She seemed remarkably keen to pin the blame on the coloured man. That in itself could not help but provoke my own suspicions. ‘But it doesn’t feel right to me,’ I said. ‘There are far too many random events.’
‘I’m sure you’ll get to the bottom of it.’ She beamed. ‘Freddie says you’ve had quite a bit of experience of this kind of thing.’
I grunted. ‘Freddie talks too much.’
‘You wouldn’t think he was a diplomat.’ She laughed. ‘But he’s a sweetie really. He means well.’
‘I wish I could say the same for the other guests. If Green wasn’t responsible for Mr Catesby’s murder, then it must have been one of them who killed him. It certainly wasn’t a burglar.’
‘No, I don’t suppose it could have been, if nothing was taken.’
And, sad as it was to admit it, my prime suspect was Miss Emily Bunting herself. ‘One of the guests must have been clomping about the house last night, in the early hours.’
Miss Bunting had her eyes fixed firmly on her lap. Her hands were gripping the empty whisky glass. ‘Yes, very probably,’ she agreed.
‘You didn’t hear anything?’
‘No. I slept the whole night through. I did hear somebody snoring rather loudly, but nobody wandering about.’
‘And you didn’t get up yourself? A call of nature, anything like that?’ I peered at her keenly, alert for any signs of falsehood.
‘No. No, I rarely do in the night,’ she said, her eyes lifting but darting sideways as she spoke. She was a surprisingly bad liar, I thought. That in itself was rather odd. I glanced at her hands. There was no blood there, of course, but it would have been a simple matter to wash it off; and, from what I could remember, she had been wearing a short-sleeved dress last night.
I scratched my cheek, not quite sure how much further I wanted to probe; but there was no point skirting the issue entirely. I slid a hand into my jacket pocket and pulled out the earring. ‘I...found this, this morning. On the floor. I wondered if it was yours?’ I held out the small, flower shaped earring and Miss Bunting’s eyes lit up.
‘You found it! You clever thing! I was looking for that this morning. I thought it must have come off somewhere.’ She placed her empty tumbler on the bedside table and took the earring from me with every appearance of delight.
‘I’m afraid the clasp is a little buckled.’
‘Oh, I’m sure I can straighten it out. Where on earth did you find it?’
‘Er...out on the landing.’ Even now, I did not have the nerve to confront her directly. Some part of me refused to believe the young woman could possibly be a murderess.
‘I must have lost it when I came up to bed last night.’
‘Easily done, I’m sure. You...didn’t pop in to see Freddie at all? Last night I mean?’
Her eyes glittered mischievously. ‘Mr Buxton, whatever are you suggesting?’
‘Oh, nothing of that sort, I assure you!’ I coughed in embarrassment. ‘I’m just...I’m trying to get a picture of where everyone was last night. Helps to narrow things down.’
‘You really are a detective,’ Miss Bunting observed with glee. ‘Freddie was right. All that bumbling around is just an act. You know exactly what you’re doing!’
I coughed again. ‘I only wish I did. Look here, are you absolutely sure you didn’t get up at all last night?’
‘Yes, I’m sure.’ She frowned momentarily, perplexed at the repeated question. For a moment, I thought she might be on the cusp of telling me something; but if she was then she thought better of it.
‘He’ll hang you know. Mr Green. Whether he’s guilty or not.’
Miss Bunting rose to her feet and peered out through the open shutters. ‘Yes, I know,’ she whispered sadly.
‘I wonder who the witness was? The man who saw him leaving his room? I suppose it must have been one of the other labourers.’ That was a lead that might be worth pursuing.
‘It could be,’ she agreed, turning back to me. ‘Hilary, you must find out the truth of this.’ The girl placed a gentle hand on my arm. ‘Find out the truth, for all our sakes.’
The workers’ accommodation was crude but solidly constructed, a small row of connected wooden buildings with corrugated iron roofs on the west side of the estate. A small, rather pleasant garden ran the length of the block, with a bed of flowers on one side and a long row of trees on the other. It was Sunday afternoon and several men were sat out under the porch, angrily discussing the e
vents of the last few hours. The dark mood was understandable but I was glad the workers had had the good sense to vent their spleens in private. Whatever Mr Weiman had said to them, it had managed to calm them down, for now. Indeed, but for the raised voices from the men, it would have been rather a tranquil scene. A woman was taking in washing from the line, before the afternoon downpour, and a little boy, no more than four or five, was clinging to her skirt tails.
All eyes turned to look at me as I appeared through the trees. A couple of the men pulled themselves reluctantly to their feet. There was no hostility in their bearing, just concern about who I was and what I wanted. I doubted they would have been anywhere near as calm had I been another one of Tejada's thugs. One of the workers raised a hand in greeting. ‘Can I help you, mister?’ he asked, as I came forward. He was a burly fellow in a checked shirt.
‘Yes. I’m sorry to interrupt. Your day of rest and everything.’
The man frowned, moving forward to meet me. He had a muscular torso but a thoughtful air. ‘There hasn’t been much rest today. Have they taken Joseph away?’
I blinked. ‘Er...no. Not yet. They’ve locked him up in one of the store houses. Sorry, who are you?’ I confess, I was not really used to conversing with labourers, especially not in such fraught circumstances as these. But the fellow seemed friendly enough. Despite his thick set frame, his presence was not in the least intimidating, though neither was he overly deferential. Just the type of fellow Mr Montana would really dislike, I thought.
‘Nathan,’ he introduced himself. He was the man I had seen holding back that other worker out on the lawn. A sensible fellow, by the looks of it. ‘Joseph did not kill anyone,’ he told me, without preamble. ‘He is an innocent man. He would not harm a fly.’
‘That’s what I’ve come to find out.’
Nathan looked me up and down with curiosity. ‘You’re an Englishman?’ That much would be obvious from my voice.
‘Yes. The name’s Buxton. Henry Buxton. It was...my fault Joseph got whipped yesterday afternoon. Well, indirectly. He sent me a note, asking to meet me and then ran away from the work party so we could talk.’
‘He should not have done that,’ Nathan said. His voice had a deep timbre to it, slow but authoritative. ‘Mr Langbroek looks for any excuse to beat us. He is not a kind man.’ Langbroek was the overseer, of course, and “not kind” was something of an understatement.
‘And Mr Catesby? What did you think of him?’
‘God rest his soul. He was not kind either, but he was at least fair. He did not approve of Mr Langbroek.’
‘Did he not?’ That was interesting.
‘Mr Catesby would not see a man beaten for no reason.’
‘No. Although he did have Joseph Green whipped.’
‘As I said, mister: he was fair but he was not kind.’
‘The general...the policeman...he spoke to you? When he came over here?’
Nathan’s head dipped briefly. He could not disguise his fear of the man. Tejada had been less than polite to a house full of Europeans and North Americans. How badly would he behave when confronted with men he considered racially inferior? ‘He came,’ Nathan confirmed unhappily. ‘He spoke to Joseph and to me.’
That was the nub of it. ‘The general claims that he has a witness, who saw Green leave his room last night. Was that one of the people here?’
Nathan shook his head. ‘I was the witness. We share a room. Four of us. But the general did not understand what I said to him. He did not listen to me. I told him truthfully, Joseph got up once in the middle of the night, to go to the bathroom.’ He indicated a small outhouse, attached to the far end of the main property. ‘He was gone two or three minutes and then he returned. That is the truth. But all the general wanted to hear was that he had left the room. He had already made up his mind. He said I must have fallen asleep and imagined Joseph had returned quickly, but I did not.’ An understandable bitterness had crept into his voice.
‘I’m sure you didn’t,’ I agreed. ‘And you shared a room with him? So there’s no way Joseph Green could have crept into the main house and killed anyone, without you knowing about it?’
‘He could not and would not,’ Nathan agreed. ‘I do not sleep well. I would have heard him if he had left.’
I nodded unhappily. It was just as I had feared. Tejada had got the wrong man. And, given the conversation I had just had with Miss Bunting – and the fact that she had tried to pin the blame on Green – every indication available to me suggested the real culprit was my own secretary. And if that was the case, then my life – once again – was about to fall apart.
What the hell was I going to do? I rubbed my eyes absently. If I publicly accused Miss Bunting of killing Steven Catesby, or even just laid out the evidence against her, would anyone believe me? They would only have my word about the earring and, if I admitted removing evidence from the crime scene, Tejada would probably lock me up for perverting the course of justice. Even if he did believe me, and Miss Bunting was arrested, it would mean the end of my career. David Richards would not forgive the damaging publicity if one of our own clerks turned out to be a murderess. And if I testified against her, Miss Bunting would have no reason to conceal all that she knew about me – the fact that I was a woman – which would end my career and expose me to public humiliation. Oh, I dare say I would get through it. I could run away and set up a new identity as I had done before; but I was getting too old now to keep going through the same routine. And what would Maurice do? I doubted I would get him on a boat back to Europe. He was terrified of water. So I would lose him too. On the other hand, if I did nothing, then Joseph Green would hang and I knew now without a shadow of a doubt that he was innocent. Could I keep quiet, let him die, just to protect my career; and allow Miss Bunting to go free? It would be easy enough to do. Tejada already had his man, so far as he was concerned. All I needed to do was keep mum and there would be no backlash whatever. No-one would ever guess the truth and my career would be saved. It may sound despicable, even to consider such a course of action, but until you find yourself in such circumstances, you never know for certain how you are going to react. Self-preservation can often take precedence over moral considerations, even with the most upright of citizens. In my case, however, there was a further complication. I had already confided my suspicions to Maurice and I knew exactly what he would expect me to do. I could just picture him, lecturing me sternly; and, even in my head, as the voice of my conscience, I knew he was right. I could not allow an innocent man to hang. Joseph Green could not be made to pay for somebody else’s crime. The question was, how the devil could I prevent it? What evidence could I possibly uncover that would satisfy a narrow-minded brute like General Tejada?
‘Mister?’
I had been standing silently for some moments in the garden. Nathan had been too polite to interrupt, but now a perplexed voice startled me from my reverie. ‘Mister?’ he said again, tugging at the sleeve of my jacket. It was the house boy, Moses. I had been so caught up in my own thoughts I had not even seen him arrive.
‘Don’t bother the nice gentleman,’ Nathan scolded him gently.
I blinked. ‘Sorry, I was miles away. That’s quite all right. Moses, what are you doing here? Does Greta know you’re away from the house?’
The young lad shook his head. ‘She will be very angry. I ran away from the cottage. I wanted to see where Joseph was being held. But Mr Langbroek, he would not let me. So I came here.’ The boy’s eyes were puffy and red, from where he had been crying. A strong bond clearly existed between him and Joseph Green.
Nathan was looking down at the lad disapprovingly.
‘You shouldn’t have run away,’ I scolded him, saving the other man the bother. ‘I’d better take him back to the house. You’ve been very helpful, Mr...’ I stopped, suddenly realising I didn’t know the man’s surname. ‘You’ve been very helpful, Nathan.’
‘It was my pleasure.’
‘I’ll...I’ll do what
I can for Joseph. But I can’t make any promises.’
‘I understand.’
‘And as for you, young man.’ I glanced down at the boy with mock severity. He was small for his age, I thought. At fourteen, he should have been fully grown, but the lad was barely more than five feet tall. Perhaps that was as big as he was going to get. ‘You’re coming with me.’ I grabbed him by the ear, rotated him around and propelled him forward towards the path leading back to the hacienda. He laughed and wriggled free from my grasp, running a few paces ahead and then stopping. He turned back and waited for me to catch him up. I waved a hand to Nathan, who had returned to the porch, and then strode across to join the youngster. Moses stared up at me as the two of us disappeared between the trees. ‘You’re really going to help Joseph?’ he asked me eagerly.
‘I don’t know if I can,’ I admitted. There was no point getting the boy’s hopes up. The pathway ahead of us was short and heavily covered. ‘But the more I find out about things, the better the chance that we might be able to do something.’ I stopped just before the end of the trees and turned to face the boy. ‘The best thing you can do, young man...’ I wagged a finger at him. ‘Is to tell me everything you know about Joseph Green. And about Matthew.’
Moses frowned seriously. He rubbed his eyes, which still looked rather red. ‘They were brothers, mister. They were very close.’
That much I already knew. ‘And what about you? Are you related to them?’
‘No, mister.’ He shook his head emphatically. ‘But they are my family. I grew up here.’ The boy gestured back to the workers’ cottages. ‘This is my home.’ It was obvious he felt a greater affinity to these labourers than he did to anyone at the hacienda. I could hardly blame him for that.
‘Your parents worked here, did they?’