The Bloody Tower

by Carola Dunn

  When she awoke next morning, she was desperate to see her babies. Not that she believed dreams foretold the future; she just wanted to see them.

  Though it was still very early, she thought the posterns at least might be unlocked by now. She got up and dressed. To sneak out would be very bad form, but she couldn’t help herself. She tore a page out of her notebook and wrote a grovelling apology to Mrs. Tebbit, whose maternal feelings were probably not strong enough to help her understand. With any luck, she might be amused.

  Slipping down the stairs, Daisy left the note on the hall table, unbolted the door, and stepped out.

  A brisk, blustery breeze had driven off the fog, thank heaven. Passing the sentry posted near the Resident Governor’s front door, she thought he gave her as much of a strange look as was consonant with his duty. Ignoring him, she made for the shortcut stair.

  As she reached the top step, she saw a scarlet heap at the bottom. Puzzled, she started down. Then she realized the scarlet was a Yeoman Warder’s cape.

  And the yeoman was still inside it.

  And sticking out of the middle of his back was a partizan.

  6

  Unbelieving, Daisy stared downward. The yeoman’s head was turned at a strange angle, not only suggesting he was well and truly defunct but also revealing the edge of a beard still rampant in death.

  The Chief Warder! He might have stumbled or slipped on the steps in the fog last night, but the partizan was proof of dirty work. Even if Crabtree had been carrying it, he could hardly have stuck it in his own back. Who could have wanted to kill the kindly, boring old buffer?

  Ought she to go down and see if he needed help? No, her first-aid skills were minimal, and she was practically sure it was too late. Besides, she didn’t want to see.

  Shock struck. Daisy nearly sank down on the nearest step, but she had to go for help before the Tower community awoke and started its daily routine. She forced her leaden legs to carry her up the few steps she had descended.

  She couldn’t get back into the King’s House without rousing the household. The modern lock on the front door had clicked shut automatically behind her. The sentry on guard beside that door was the only person in sight. His job was to stand as still and silent as a lead soldier, responding to no overtures from the wandering public, until he was relieved. What would he do when faced with a hysterical woman reporting a murder?

  Daisy was going to find out. She had no choice.

  Alec gazed down at his son in his arms. Busy sucking on his bottle, Oliver gazed back, his wide eyes just the same shade of blue as Daisy’s. He snuffled like a little pink pig with a squashed nose. His chin was practically nonexistent and his scalp showed through the fine down on his head. Were all babies so unattractive? Belinda, for instance: Alec couldn’t remember his beloved daughter—elder daughter—ever looking so . . . so unfinished.

  He glanced over at Miranda, snuffling at her own bottle on Nanny’s arm. She stopped suckling for a moment and blew a bubble. He hoped that when they were a little older he’d be able to tell which was the boy and which the girl without asking.

  The cook-housekeeper peeked around the door, then came in, breathing heavily after climbing to the second floor. “Telephone, sir. It’s the Yard,” she said importantly, but in a hushed voice so as not to startle the babies. “That Mr. Crane.”

  Alec groaned. “Thank you, Mrs. Dobson.” He detached the bottle from Oliver’s mouth and laid him carefully in his cradle, where he promptly set up a banshee howl.

  “Poor lamb!” Nanny’s severity was aimed at Alec, not the howler. “They don’t like interruptions. That’s why we don’t care for daddies in the nursery.”

  “Sorry.” Alec fled. He’d rather deal with his superintendent, happy or unhappy, than with an unhappy baby.

  As he crossed the landing, he heard Mrs. Dobson beg in a tentative voice, “Couldn’t I finish off giving him his bottle, Nanny?”

  Down in the hall, Alec picked up the telephone. “Hello, Fletcher here.”

  “This is Crane. We have a situation, a deuced awkward situation.”

  “Sir?”

  “Murder at the Tower.”

  Alec’s heart plunged into his slippers, then bounced back a little. “The Tower of London? Surely that’s the City force’s territory, sir.”

  “Alas, no. It’s still a royal palace. You’re a historian, aren’t you? You know how much trouble the monarchy had with the City of London through the ages. They’ve never let the City police near the place. But all the Yeoman Warders are sworn Special Constables of the Met, three dozen of them or so, and their top chap seems to have been bumped off.”

  “The Resident Governor? Great Scott!”

  “No, no, the Chief Warder. That’s bad enough, isn’t it? He was a Special, too.”

  Bad enough indeed, but not Daisy’s host, thank heaven. Still, Daisy had spent the night at the Tower. Superintendent Crane must be ignorant of that fact, or he would surely have mentioned it—not to say raved about it. However, he was bound to find out. Alec decided the information had better come from him, and sooner rather than later.

  “I see, sir. I . . . I’m afraid Daisy stayed at the King’s House last night. The Resident Governor’s residence.”

  There was a long silence at the other end of the wire. Then Crane’s voice arrived with a note of cautious hope: “I must have misunderstood you, Fletcher. Tell me you didn’t say Mrs. Fletcher stayed at the Tower last night.”

  “I’m sorry, sir. I did. She did.” Part of Alec wanted to rush to Daisy’s side, to comfort and protect; another part wanted nothing whatsoever to do with any murder case she’d managed to get herself mixed up in; and there was a bit left over that wanted to wring her neck. “In the circumstances, I expect you’ll prefer someone else handling the investigation, sir.”

  “Not on your life!” Superintendent Crane exploded. “If you can’t control your own wife, who the devil else do you suppose has the slightest chance? Get over there immediately.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You’ll have a battalion of Hotspur Guards to contend with, too, and their lieutenant colonel. You can guess how those chaps’ll feel about civilian interference. I’ll send your sergeant—Tring, isn’t it? And I suppose you’ll need a DC or two. The place may be swarming with Specials,” he added dryly, “but I imagine they’ll all be suspects.”

  Alec breathed a silent groan. “DC Piper, please, sir.” It wouldn’t hurt to have a detective constable who thought Daisy was the cat’s pyjamas, just in case any of the Yeoman Warders considered her a suspect. “And Ross, if he’s available.”

  “All right, you shall have them. A police surgeon is on his way. Now get on with it. And Fletcher, for pity’s sake, don’t upset General Carradine. Just remember, he’s not only a general; as Resident Governor, he represents the Crown.”

  Crane rang off. Alec dashed back upstairs to finish dressing. He put on his Royal Flying Corps tie, hoping it might smooth his way with the military. After a quick word with Mrs. Dobson in the hall, he was opening the front door when the telephone bell sounded again.

  “I’m glad I’ve caught you, Fletcher. I’ve just reported to the AC, and he tells me there’s another general at the Tower.”

  This time, Alec let his groan be heard. “Who’s that, sir?”

  “Sir Patrick Heald, Keeper of the Regalia. Bad luck that he’s in residence at present, as he lives mostly at his country house. Officially, he’s a member of His Majesty’s Household. And he’s a friend of the Assistant Commissioner.”

  Alec took the tube to Mark Lane. At this hour, the trains were crowded, but probably quicker than driving. As he made his way up from the depths, a breathless voice behind him called, “Chief!”

  He was pleased to see Ernie Piper. The young DC’s phenomenal memory for detail would help him keep straight the names of the dozens of Yeomen Warders they were going to have to interview. With him was DC Ross, whose much longer stride accounted for Piper’s puf
fing and panting.

  “We been chasing you up I dunno know how many steps, Chief.”

  “Good practice. According to my memory and my wife, the Tower of London consists mostly of steps. Morning, Ross.”

  “Good morning, sir.” Ross hadn’t worked with Alec often enough to address him as Chief. “Mrs. Fletcher’s involved in the case?”

  “Peripherally, I trust. She was staying with the Resident Governor last night. I doubt she had anything to do with the victim—the Chief Warder, I gather.”

  “I wouldn’t give you odds on that, Chief! Mrs. Fletcher’s bound to know exactly what’s going on,” said Piper.

  “We’ll see.”

  Hadn’t Daisy said something about the Chief Warder, when she was telling him about her tour of the Tower? He couldn’t for the life of him remember what. Not for the first time, he wished he’d listened to her more closely.

  They walked down the hill under spitting rain and a sky that threatened worse to come. A gusty wind blew scraps of paper about their feet. Alec passed on what little information he had from Superintendent Crane, mostly concerned with not offending the eminent gentlemen involved.

  “I should warn you also,” he added, “that many, if not most, of our suspects are likely to come from the ranks of colleagues of ours.”

  “Colleagues, sir?” Ross exclaimed.

  “All Yeoman Warders are Special Constables of the Metropolitan Police. By the way, don’t for pity’s sake call them Beefeaters, unless you want more murder done. My wife says they regard the term as an insult.”

  “They must get insulted a lot, then,” observed Piper. “Most people don’t know any better.”

  “I didn’t,” Ross admitted.

  “Well, you do now. You two are going to have to handle initial interviews with them, and I don’t want any missteps. Besides, every single one is a sergeant major, so they outrank you. Think you can cope?”

  “If you can cope with a couple of generals, Chief, and one of them a Sir into the bargain, me and Ross’ll manage a few dozen sergeant majors, never fear.”

  “All right. To start with, we want some idea of the character of the victim—at least, how the others regarded him—and as many alibis as possible for the time of death, to weed them out a bit.”

  “Do we have a time of death, sir?”

  “Not yet. With luck, the doctor will get there before us. If not, we’ll surely be able to narrow it down. Actually, for all I know, he was in bed and his wife hit him with a frying pan.”

  “Shouldn’t think so, Chief. If it looked like being that simple, they’d’ve told the Super so and he wouldn’t have sent you, even with Mrs. Fletcher being there.”

  “He didn’t know she’s there.” Alec saw Piper and Ross exchange a glance, and realized he sounded irritable. They were not to blame for Daisy’s association with yet another murder case. “No, you’re right, Ernie. It must be more complicated than that.”

  They reached the bottom of the hill. At the ticket office, a grimfaced Yeoman Warder in blue was posting a notice informing the public that the Tower was closed today to anyone not on official business.

  Alec accosted him. “We’re on official business. Police. I’m Detective Chief Inspector Fletcher.”

  The man came to attention and gave a crisp army salute, an odd effect combined with his fancy dress. “Sergeant Major Liston, sir. Glad to see you, and I hope you catch the sodding bastard what did it! General Carradine is expecting you, if you’ll just come with me, gentlemen. Oh, half a tick. I better give you some of our visitors’ guidebooks. They have a plan of the Tower, so’s you can find your way about.”

  He popped into the ticket office and brought them three green brochures. Among the advertisements for Sapon soap, Beefeater gin, Mazawattee tea (“It’s British-grown!”), and Thos. Cook & Son was a plan of the Tower.

  “We won’t make you pay your tuppence for the guidebook, sir.” Liston led them onward.

  Beneath the royal arms carved in stone, two sentries of the Hotspurs guarded the first archway—the Middle Tower, according to the brochure. They didn’t challenge Liston and his companions. No doubt they had seen the yeoman go out with his notice, but Alec wondered whether anyone who managed to filch or copy a suit of the picturesque Tudor uniform would be able to march in without question. Or out, for that matter.

  As they walked across the moat bridge, he said, “Tell me about the Chief Yeoman Warder. I don’t even know his name.”

  “Crabtree, sir. He was regular army, sir, like the rest of us, done our twenty years afore we get a billet here. Crabtree was Regimental Sergeant Major, so it weren’t no surprise when he got picked for Chief Warder, nor there weren’t no grumbling, neither, for a nicer bloke you never met. It fair flummoxes me who’d want to do him in.”

  “Married?”

  “A widower, sir, no children. His better half died in the ’flu.”

  Alec, who had lost his first wife in ’18, in the influenza pandemic, felt an instant kinship with the victim. Yet he had a feeling that what Daisy had said of him was uncomplimentary. Was Liston’s encomium a case of nil nisi bonum? Alec hoped so, because if it were true, if Crabtree really had no obvious enemies, he had no starting point for the investigation.

  “Can you show me on this plan where the body was found?” he asked.

  The yeoman pointed. “Hereabouts. It’s just a staircase, so it’s not shown, not properly.”

  “What exactly happened?”

  “I didn’t see, there being a ruddy horde of Hotspurs posted all around by the time I got there, but what I heard was, he was found at the bottom of the steps with a partizan stuck through him.”

  “A partizan?”

  “One of them halberds—pikes—we carry when we’re on guard duty or on parade.”

  “I don’t suppose you know whether it was his own.”

  “Couldn’t’ve been. His is a mace with a model of the White Tower on top, wouldn’t stick into nobody. Not likely he have anyone else’s with him, neither, but s’posing he did, he’d have a ruddy hard job stabbing hisself in the back!”

  “His back, was it?”

  “That’s what I heard, sir.”

  Alec tried to imagine a man holding a pike missing his footing on steps, perhaps tripping over the pike, and somehow falling in such a way that the pike followed him down and impaled him. He didn’t see how it could happen. He dismissed the speculation, for the present. Very likely the medical evidence would rule it out anyway.

  He noted that Piper, while keeping up with their brisk pace over the bridge, had his notebook out and, with typical thoroughness, was writing down everything Liston said.

  They came to the Byward Tower. Again, a pair of Hotspur Guards stood sentry outside the massive gate, closed except for a postern door. Alec and his men followed their guide through and found themselves in the gloom under the arch. A yeoman was on guard within, his partizan in his hand.

  “The ’tecs from the Yard, Mr. Fairway,” said Liston.

  Fairway sketched a salute. “And a good thing, too. The general’s in the Warders’ Room, sir,” he told Alec, pointing to a door on the left.

  Liston knocked on the door, then opened it. “It’s the police, sir.”

  The circular room, its ceiling vaulted, had narrow cross-slit windows high in the walls. It was well lit by a gasolier and warmed by a coal fire. As Liston ushered in the detectives, three men stood up.

  Alec recognized one immediately from Daisy’s description. He couldn’t remember his name, though, only that she had called him “Jeremy Fisher,” after Beatrix Potter’s frog. The one who had been sitting on the corner of the big desk, swinging his foot and resting one hand on a black bag, wore the uniform of a major in the Medical Corps. He was the only one Alec was really interested in talking to at present, but the man behind the desk was not to be brushed off. Obviously in command, he came round and shook hands, saying, “I’m General Carradine. Dr. Macleod and my assistant, Webster. We’re ve
ry glad to have you.”

  “DCI Fletcher, sir.” Alec had met a good many generals in his time. To his relief, Carradine was not the red-faced, blustering sort. In fact, he had a shrewd look in his eye, which could make him easy to work with—or hard to trap. With any luck, he’d have an unshakable alibi. “I’ve brought these two detective constables with me, and my sergeant, Tring, should be arriving any moment, as well as a police surgeon.”

  “Liston, you’d better get back to the Middle Tower and make sure they have no trouble getting in.” He raised his eyebrows at Alec. “Fletcher, eh?”

  “My wife has been a guest of yours, sir. I did suggest to my superintendent that he should send someone else, but he insisted.”

  “I’m sure he sent the best man for the job. Mrs. Fletcher is being well cared for, I assure you. You never saw such a flock of women hovering with tea and hot-water bottles.”

  “Why? What’s wrong with her?”

  “She did find the body, my dear fellow,” said the general reproachfully.

  “Great Scott!”

  “A bit of a shock for a gently bred lady, naturally, though she refused to see Macleod. Oh, but of course, you didn’t know. She asked me not to mention her presence when I rang up the Yard.”

  Alec decided it was best, for the present at least, not to enquire into what the devil Daisy had been doing wandering about the Tower before anyone else was up and about. “I see,” he said, not seeing at all.

  “You’ll want to see her, of course.”

  “Of course, sir, but first I must talk to Dr. Macleod. Doctor, I take it you’ve examined the body?”

  Macleod grimaced. “Not pleasant, but I dealt with a great deal worse in France.”

  “No doubt. When you’ve told me your conclusions, I must see it for myself.” He turned back to the Resident Governor. “I gather the scene is under guard, sir?”

  “I had Colonel Duggan post some of his men to keep people away. The Tower is ultimately under my authority. And all that goes on here is ultimately my responsibility as well, which is why I would like to be present while you talk to the doctor. However, it’s for you to decide.”