“The lower orders are not famed for the size of their brains,” Sir Roderick said.
“Perhaps not,” Blackstone said, biting back the comment that small brains were not the exclusive prerogative of the working class. “But most of them have a very strong instinct for self-preservation. And it would have taken a very fool-hardy servant to run a risk like this one.”
“Would it, indeed?” Sir Roderick asked sceptically.
“Yes, it would. We no longer hang people for theft in England — and, for all I know, they don’t here, either — but I wouldn’t give this robber much of a chance of survival once the Count got his hands on him.”
“So you’re saying that it wasn’t one of the servants?”
“Yes.”
“Then the Count is right, and it was one of the peasants from the village who committed the crime.”
Blackstone shook his head, almost despairing of getting through to Sir Roderick.
“How would a peasant get his hands on the key?” he asked. “Come to that, how would he gain access to the house? Why would he want to steal the golden egg rather than the hundreds of other valuable things which are lying round just asking to be stolen? And if he had set his heart on the egg, how would he have known which of the dozens of bedrooms he’d find it in?”
“Perhaps one of the servants…”
Blackstone drew the shape of a circle in the air. “If it can’t be the servants, according to you, it must be the peasants, and if it can’t be the peasants, it must be the servants,” he said wearily. “We’re chasing our own tails here. And the reason we’re doing that is because you won’t recognize the obvious truth, even when it’s right under your nose.”
“From the very beginning, you’ve been determined to prove that it was one of your betters who was responsible for this terrible crime,” Sir Roderick said. “I regret to say it, Blackstone, but I’m afraid you’re prejudiced.”
“So you’re saying they couldn’t possibly have done it?”
“You must understand that these are all extremely honourable people,” Sir Roderick exploded. “Besides,” he added, after a moment’s thought, “I doubt if any of them need the money.”
“Doubt?” Blackstone asked, pouncing on the word.
Sir Roderick looked uncomfortable. “Men of breeding are not always as rich as they like to appear,” he admitted. “And I do remember once, when a certain Lord X… but I’m sure that was the exception, rather than the rule.”
“In other words, you think they’re honourable men — but only as long as they can afford to be,” Blackstone summed up.
“I didn’t say that.”
“But it’s what you meant. If you really want to get the Faberge golden egg back—”
“But of course I do.” Sir Roderick shuddered. “It would be simply unthinkable not to.”
“…then you’re going to have to cast all your prejudices aside, and start looking at the facts.”
For an instant, it looked as if Sir Roderick would strike him, then the Assistant Commissioner sighed and said, “How do you suggest I conduct the investigation?”
“We’ll have to question all the guests.”
“That’s unthinkable.”
“It is if we admit we’re questioning them because we suspect them,” Blackstone agreed. “If, on the other hand, we make it seem — you make it seem — that we’re only asking for their help in finding the guilty party, they’ll find it very difficult to refuse. And there’s something else you could do.”
“What?” Sir Roderick asked, suspiciously.
“You’ll be with them at times when I’m excluded from their company,” Blackstone said. “Over meals, and in the smoking room, for example. You’ll be able to listen to them when they’re relaxed — perhaps when they’re drunk. If you pay particular attention, you might be able to pick up some clues.”
“You’re asking me to spy on my fellow guests?” Sir Roderick asked, outraged.
“You may be being treated like a guest, sir, but you’re not one,” Blackstone reminded him. “You’re here to do a job. And you’ll only be spying on the guilty party. As far as the rest of them go — the ones who haven’t committed any crime — you’ll be doing no more than taking a polite interest in their conversation.”
Sir Roderick laughed with what seemed, for once, like genuine amusement. “You certainly have a persuasive manner and a way with words about you, Blackstone,” he admitted. “Do you suppose that — given time — I might actually grow to like you?”
“Do you, sir?”
Sir Roderick thought about it for a while. “No,” he said finally. “I might come to respect you — in some ways that’s already started to happen — but I’ll never like you.”
“Well, respect’s certainly a good enough basis for us to be able to work together on the case,” Blackstone said.
“Work together!” Sir Roderick repeated. “You seem to have got hold of the wrong end of the stick entirely, Blackstone. We will certainly not work together, as you put it, but if you continue to make suggestions, I will consider them carefully, and may sometimes see the merit in them.”
“That’s all I ask,” Blackstone said. That’s all I can bloody ask! he thought.
“For instance, I have now considered your suggestion that I ask the other guests if they would be willing to answer a few questions. I can see no harm in it at all, though, to be honest with you, I can’t believe that anyone as important as the Grand Duke Ivan would submit to the process. And as far as the Count’s concerned, I think he probably feels that he’s answered enough of your questions already.”
“Perhaps you can start with someone who’s likely to be agreeable,” Blackstone suggested.
“Have you got anyone specific in mind?”
“Major Carlton. He’s British. Besides, since you know him, he’s likely to want to do anything he can to help you.”
“Good point,” Sir Roderick agreed. “I’ll talk to young Georgie first, and see how it goes from there.”
Blackstone took a deep breath. “It will, of course, be necessary for me to attend the interrogations.”
“Now that is quite out of the question,” Sir Roderick said. “Even an amenable chap like young Georgie would object to the presence of a… of a…”
“Of a peasant?” Blackstone suggested.
“We have no peasants in England,” Sir Roderick replied pedantically. “I was going to say, ‘In the presence of an obvious social inferior’.”
“I need to be there,” Blackstone said stubbornly. “I need to be there — and you need to find a way to make sure that I am.”
“Perhaps if we could contrive some reason for your being in the room — find some way to make you blend into the background — it might just be possible,” Sir Roderick conceded.
“Maybe I could be polishing your boots for you,” Blackstone suggested facetiously.
Sir Roderick shook his head, missing the point completely. “No, that would never do,” he said. “Boots, as far as I know, are polished somewhere in the servants’ part of the house.”
“Or maybe, if I got down on my hands and knees, you could use me as a footrest,” Blackstone suggested.
“Is that meant to be funny, Inspector?” Sir Roderick demanded. “Because if it was, I fail to see the joke.”
“Sorry, sir,” Blackstone said. And he meant it. He had got more from Sir Roderick than he’d ever dared hope — he’d be a fool to lose all that just for the sake of letting the Assistant Commissioner know what he really thought of him.
“Perhaps you could be there to serve the drinks,” Sir Roderick said. “Yes, the guests would probably accept that. Never having had to deal with policemen before, they’d probably see you as some kind of butler. Would that sort of arrangement suit your purposes?”
“It would suit them perfectly,” Blackstone said. He swallowed hard, as he knew would be necessary if he were ever to force the next words out of his mouth. “Thank you, sir.”<
br />
Chapter Nine
The Count had referred to the room he’d graciously set aside for the interviews as the ‘small’ library, which, Blackstone assumed, meant that somewhere else in the vast house there was also a ‘big’ library. If such a thing did indeed exist, he thought, it must be a breathtaking sight, since even in the ‘small’ library, there were more books than he — a fair frequenter of libraries himself — had ever seen before. Yet despite all the volumes it housed, the room had no aura of scholarship about it. In fact, given the precise and regimented way in which the books had been placed, the Inspector had the distinct impression that they were there more to fill up shelf space than actually to be read.
Sir Roderick surveyed the library. “Don’t see any sort of drinks cabinet,” he complained. “Strange, don’t you think?”
“I certainly do,” Blackstone agreed. “What’s the point of a library if you can’t have a drink in it?”
“Well, exactly!” Sir Roderick said, taking the statement at face value. “But it does leave us with a bit of a problem, doesn’t it? We need to come up with some sort of excuse for you to be in the room when I’m talking to these people, and we can’t have you serving drinks if there are no drinks to serve.”
“That would seem logical,” Blackstone said.
Sir Roderick walked over to a large mahogany table which was situated close to the door, and sat down.
“We’ll just have to improvise, won’t we?” he said. “Used to be quite good at this sort of thing.” He furrowed his brow, as people of limited imagination often do when they’re supposed to be thinking. “Got it!” he continued. He waited for a moment for Blackstone to ask what exactly it was he’d got, and when it became plain that the Inspector was about to do no such thing, he added sulkily, “Don’t you want to know what my idea is?”
“Of course, sir,” Blackstone said, deadpan.
“When people arrive, you go to answer the door as if you were some kind of major-domo. You show them in, then you just hang around on the fringes, and see what you can pick up from the conversations.” Sir Roderick beamed. “Not a bad plan for the spur of the moment, eh?”
Brilliant! Blackstone thought sarcastically. It makes the man who planned the Charge of the Light Brigade seem like an amateur. But he contented himself with saying, “Yes, that would probably work.”
There was a knock on the door, and Blackstone opened it to admit Major George Carlton. The Major bounced, rather than walked, into the room — a little like a happy puppy eager to greet its owner. Sir Roderick stood up and offered the Major his hand, but Carlton was having none of that, and instead threw a bear hug round the reluctant Assistant Commissioner.
“Wonderful to see you again, Uncle Roderick,” George Carlton said enthusiastically.
Uncle Roderick? Blackstone echoed silently.
The Major broke away from Todd, and turned to face Blackstone. “He’s not my real uncle,” he said, as if he could read the Inspector’s mind. “As a matter of fact, he’s my dear old godfather.”
“I’m sure Blackstone’s not interested in details of such a personal nature,” Todd mumbled, clearly embarrassed by his godson’s exuberance. “Why don’t you take a seat, Georgie?”
“Right-ho,” the Major said, turning the chair opposite Todd’s around, and straddling it. “What would you like to know, Uncle Roderick?”
“Perhaps the first thing I should ask you is why you’re still here?” Sir Roderick said, doing his best to sound professional with the man who had just embraced him so heartily.
“Why shouldn’t I still be here?” Carlton asked, clearly puzzled.
“Well, according to the reports I’ve had so far, His Royal Highness’ whole party left the morning after the robbery.”
“Oh, I see what you’re getting at,” Carlton said, as enlightenment dawned. “You’re wondering why I didn’t leave, too.”
“Precisely.”
“I didn’t leave because I wasn’t with the Prince’s party.”
“You weren’t? Then what are you doing here?”
“You remember my mother’s sister, my Aunt Sarah, don’t you?” Carlton asked.
“I can’t say that I do,” Sir Roderick replied.
“No, thinking about it, you probably wouldn’t,” Carlton said. “Fact is, she married the Count’s father some time back in the Stone Age. That makes the Count my cousin, so you could say that my visit is of a family nature.” He turned to Blackstone again. “I should explain,” he said.
“I’d very much appreciate it if you would,” Blackstone replied, finding it almost surprising that, unlike most of the people he’d met in the house so far, Carlton was not treating him as if he were invisible.
“I was with General Kitchener in the Sudan, last year,” Carlton said. “Got myself caught up in a cavalry charge just before the main Battle at Omdurman. The whole business was a terrific blunder, though I suppose, in a few years’ time, they’ll be calling it a glorious charge, and writing all kinds of bombastic poems about it.” The boyish glow drained from his face as thoughts of the charge returned to him. “We lost seventy cavalrymen in under two minutes. I knew most of them. They were good men. Solid men.” He sighed, and some of his colour slowly returned. “Anyway, the upshot was that I was wounded myself. Only a scratch really, not worth bothering about, but the doctors insisted that I recuperate before I rejoined my regiment. So that’s what I’m doing here. Recuperating!”
“And you had no idea that His Royal Highness was planning to visit this estate?” Sir Roderick asked.
“Good heavens, no. Could have knocked me over with a feather when I was told — one of the Prince of Wales’ feathers!” Carlton chortled at his own joke. “Fact is, from what I’ve heard about Tum-Tum, he’s a pretty impulsive fellow, and he’s likely to turn up anywhere at any time.”
Sir Roderick scowled. No doubt he disliked the idea of his godson referring to the Prince of Wales in such a disrespectful manner, Blackstone thought — especially in front of one of the ‘other ranks’.
“The reason I’ve asked you to come and talk to me before I speak to any of the other guests, Georgie, my boy,” Todd said, “is that I thought I’d get a sight more sense out of a solid British chap such as yourself than I ever would out of these Russkies.”
Carlton looked thoughtful, rather than flattered. “You should not underestimate any of the guests at this house party, sir, nor indeed, the Count and his family. I’ve found them all to be damned intelligent — and damned good company, to boot.”
“Yes, I’m sure you have,” Sir Roderick said hastily. “Certainly never meant to disparage anyone here, especially since…”
He said no more, but his eyes — as they glanced at Blackstone — confirmed that he’d just committed the same cardinal sin as his godson had, and while it was all right to run down the foreign aristocracy in front of people of quality, it was certainly not proper to so when one of the underclass was present.
“Tell me about the night of the robbery,” Sir Roderick said.
“There was quite a party,” Carlton said. “Must have been at least fourteen courses at dinner. There was dancing afterwards — the French lady, Mademoiselle Durant, is an absolute wizard on the pianoforte. His Royal Highness seemed to be enjoying himself, though, of course — given his tremendous girth — he hasn’t personally danced for years. The party broke up around three o’clock, I would estimate, and then we all went to bed.”
“Was the Prince drunk?” Blackstone asked.
“Damn you, Blackstone, how dare you be so impertinent!” Sir Roderick growled.
“We need to know,” the Inspector said levelly.
Sir Roderick was turning purple. “It’s none of your damn business whether or not—“
“The Prince was not drunk,” Major Carlton interrupted. “From what I’ve heard, he very rarely is.”
“And the rest of the party?” Blackstone asked, pressing his advantage while he had one.
“It’s jolly hard to tell with the Russians,” Carlton admitted. “They have cast-iron stomachs and rarely show the effect, however much they drink. The Duc de Saint-Cast was obviously a little worse for wear, though, and to tell you the truth, I was a little squiffy myself.”
“Where did you spend the night?” Blackstone asked. “On the same floor of the house as the Prince?”
Major Carlton laughed. “Good heavens, no! I’m nowhere near important enough to be placed close to the Royal presence. I had quarters in the other wing of the house.”
“So you heard nothing?”
“No. Apart from the cavalry charge in my head, brought on, I must admit, by over-indulgence on my part, I didn’t hear a bally thing.”
“So what’s the next thing you do remember?”
“Waking up with a hangover in the middle of complete bloody pandemonium,” Carlton said. “The servants were all running around like headless chickens, the Count was bellowing at the top of his voice — he can be very excitable when roused — and the Hussar Guards had already formed a tight cordon around the house.”
Blackstone was thinking back to what he and Captain Dobroskok had said when they’d been together in the coach.
“Are you quite sure that no one has left the area since the ‘incident’ occurred?” Blackstone had asked.
“No one at all has left,” Dobroskok had replied, glaring at him.
“The Prince of Wales left.”
“I naturally did not include him in my statement. Nor did I include—”
“Nor did you include who?”
“Nor did I include the Prince of Wales’ entourage.”
“I quite understand that you were feeling a little the worse for wear,” Blackstone said to Carlton, “But were you up and about in time to see both coaches leave?”
“Yes, as a matter of fact, I was up for that, and I have to say they were going at a hell of a rate when they…” The Major paused, then frowned. “I’m sorry, did you say both coaches?”
“Yes.”
“Then I’m afraid you’re in error, old chap. There was only one coach which left that morning.”
Blackstone and the House of Secrets (The Blackstone Detective series Book 3) Page 7