A Picture of Murder

by T E Kinsey

  ‘But you did approach Basil Newhouse once Cheetham had gone?’

  ‘Of course. Basil and I were old pals. He’d worked with us since our earliest days in the theatre. I fell out with Cheetham, not the whole company. I wanted to congratulate him on the superb performance he gave in my story.’

  ‘Was he pleased to see you?’

  ‘Basil Newhouse was the very spirit of bonhomie. He was pleased to see everyone.’

  ‘When did he leave the pub?’

  ‘I’m afraid I have no idea, Inspector. I congratulated him, we reminisced briefly about the old days, and we assured one another that we should like to work together again in the future. Then I left him to his adoring public and took myself off to Bedfordshire.’

  ‘Do you recall what time that was?’

  ‘Two-ish?’

  ‘And what about the next evening?’

  ‘Much the same, but without dear Basil. I . . . ah . . . went to bed shortly after Cheetham and his ladies departed.’

  ‘At around one o’clock, then,’ said the inspector, still making his meticulous notes.

  ‘If you say so,’ said Orum. ‘I confess I didn’t trouble to look at the clock.’

  ‘Did anyone see you go up?’

  ‘Did anyone . . . ? Are you suggesting I might not be telling you the truth, Inspector?’

  ‘No, sir, but corroboration would be helpful.’

  ‘Dinah might have noticed.’

  The inspector looked up from a brief re-examination of his notes. ‘You seemed a little uncertain a moment ago.’

  ‘I did? When?’

  ‘When you mentioned retiring for the night.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Orum. ‘Yes. I was trying to make up my mind whether it was worth the bother of telling you about my small misadventure. I decided it was too insignificant to trouble you with. Not germane to the case.’

  ‘I should appreciate being given the opportunity to judge its pertinence for myself, sir, if you wouldn’t mind.’

  ‘Of course, of course. It was merely something that didn’t happen. It had actually been my intention to take a walk before retiring last night. I find it clears my mind and helps me to sleep sometimes. I didn’t go straight upstairs, you see. I left the pub by the side door and made to stride out into the chill night air, but I clattered into something in the dark and barked my shins. I was so annoyed that it quite spoiled the mood I was hoping to create within myself. I turned on my heel and limped back indoors.’

  ‘And went straight to bed,’ said the inspector.

  ‘In high dudgeon.’

  I filled the ensuing pause with a question of my own. ‘What did you fall over?’ I asked.

  ‘Some damn fool had left a bi—’ Orum paused for a moment, looking perplexed. ‘A bicycle lying in the yard,’ he concluded.

  The inspector finished his note-taking and looked around.

  ‘Thank you for your time, sir. I think I have everything I need now,’ he said. ‘There doesn’t seem to be much chance of Miss Caudle returning. Would you be kind enough to let her know that I shall still wish to speak to her, please, sir?’

  ‘Of course, Inspector. I’m happy to help in any way I can.’

  ‘Thank you. I shall bid you good day. Will you be staying here at the pub?’

  ‘I’ve booked my room until Saturday,’ said Orum with a smile. ‘The village’s Bonfire Night celebrations are something to behold, so they say. I should like to experience the joy and excitement of a country Samhain before I return to the city.’

  ‘Very good, sir,’ said the inspector. ‘I might call upon you again if I need any further clarification of events.’

  ‘It would be my pleasure to see you.’

  We stood to leave.

  Outside, the inspector turned to Lady Hardcastle. ‘Sarwin?’

  She nodded towards me. ‘I defer in all matters Celtic to my tiny Welsh associate,’ she said.

  ‘Samhain is the Irish festival to mark the beginning of winter,’ I said. ‘It actually falls on the first day of November – Lady Hardcastle and I were talking about Nos Galan Gaeaf only the other day.’

  He looked blankly at me. ‘I get the feeling you’re teasing me, Miss Armstrong,’ he said.

  ‘It’s the Welsh version,’ I said. ‘An ancient festival to mark the end of the light and the coming of the darkness. In our modern world it’s All Hallows’ Eve.’

  ‘So why did he say it was tomorrow?’

  ‘Because, my dear inspector,’ said Lady Hardcastle, ‘he’s a pretentious old fool who doesn’t know what he’s talking about. He’s playing a role.’

  ‘He does seem a little . . . affected in his manner,’ he said.

  ‘Doesn’t he just. And he forgets to do it sometimes. He wasn’t nearly so flowery when we spoke to him yesterday. It’s an act. A sham. Mummery and artifice, Inspector.’

  ‘And all that nonsense about being reluctant to tell me anything before trotting it out like a music hall monologue. There’s something not quite right about that fellow.’

  ‘He’s a cold-blooded one,’ I said, ‘for all his flowery pretension. It’s one thing biffing your pal on the conk in the heat of the moment, but there’s something altogether more sinister about the way he’s following Mr Cheetham around and taunting him.’

  We walked in contemplative silence back to the house, but not before the inspector had taken a good look around the yard at the side of the pub.

  Back at the house, the film folk were still closeted, Edna was still scrubbing the floor, and Miss Jones was reluctantly starting preparations for dinner in the ‘contaminated kitchen’. Dewi and Dora had been recalled to The Grange to help the staff there deal with an undisclosed domestic emergency resulting from the rebuilding of the burned-out kitchen.

  I made a pot of tea.

  In the dining room, Lady Hardcastle was standing at the crime board, making notes on the ‘timeline’ at the bottom of the blackboard.

  ‘. . . and we still have these huge gaps here . . .’ She pointed to the empty space between two and five in the early hours of Wednesday morning. ‘And here . . .’ She indicated a similarly blank space between two and six today.

  ‘We do,’ said the inspector. ‘Then again, if we knew precisely what had happened between those times, we’d not be making notes on your blackboard; we’d be arresting the killer.’

  ‘True, true,’ she said. ‘I can’t get away from the idea that it was one of the film folk, though, you know.’

  ‘Why’s that?’

  ‘Euphemia was killed in the house. In a locked kitchen. The only people who had access to her were here in the house with her.’

  The inspector thought for a moment. ‘But if it’s poisoned apples, they wouldn’t have had to get to her. Where do you get your apples?’

  ‘Ah, yes,’ I said, ‘I’ve been meaning to mention that. We don’t usually have apples in the house. We used to, but Miss Jones got fed up with no one eating them and cancelled the order.’

  ‘So how did you come to have a bowlful?’

  ‘It seems Dora Kendrick is partial to apples and was disappointed that we had none. She brought some from The Grange.’

  ‘I see,’ he said, and made a note. ‘I don’t suppose you know where they get their apples?’

  ‘I couldn’t say for certain,’ I said. ‘They have a few apple trees in the grounds, but they might just as easily have bought them from Weakley’s in the village.’

  ‘What’s this Dora Kendrick like?’ he asked.

  ‘You would have spoken to her at The Grange when the trumpeter died at Clarissa Farley-Stroud’s engagement party.’

  ‘Ah, yes, I remember her. Impudent girl. Given to affected displays of emotion when she thought it might be to her advantage.’

  ‘That’s the one,’ I said.

  ‘Wasn’t she carrying on with one of the musicians?’

  ‘I congratulate you on your powers of recall, Inspector,’ I said.

  ‘I have my moment
s,’ he said. ‘Do you think this Kendrick girl capable of murder?’

  I paused for a moment. ‘I teased her about it when I found out that she was the source of the apples,’ I said. ‘But I can’t say I was being serious.’

  ‘Did she have anything against Euphemia Selwood?’

  I paused again. ‘Well . . .’ I said ‘Perhaps . . .’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘The musician she was “carrying on with” at the party has been one of our houseguests. Barty Dunn. They ignored each other at dinner last night while Barty was flirting with Euphemia.’

  ‘I’ve known men and women kill for less,’ he said.

  ‘True,’ I said. ‘And she did supply the deadly fruit.’ Then a sudden realization hit me. ‘Oh, but it could have been anybody – the door wasn’t locked.’

  ‘How do you know?’ said Lady Hardcastle.

  ‘Before I came up to wake you, I threw the bolt to make sure Edna and Miss Jones didn’t blunder in on the body. When I let Edna in later, she said that she thought the lock was broken because she couldn’t unlock the door. I didn’t check it – I assumed it was simply that the door hadn’t been locked in the first place. But that would mean that it had been unlocked all night. Anyone could have got in.’

  ‘Or out,’ she said. ‘It’s a big house. There are plenty of places to hide. Someone could have been lying in wait. Or was trapped when the film folk came home and hung around in the kitchen for so long. The murderer might have been doctoring the apples when they arrived and then, oh, I don’t know, stolen into the larder to hide until they’d gone to bed and he could sneak back out through the side door. Well, there goes my hypothesis.’

  ‘We should keep an open mind,’ said the inspector. ‘Very little can be ruled out at this stage. For myself, I’d put a small wager on Orum at the moment. There’s something about that fellow that I don’t trust.’

  ‘Oh, he’s definitely a cad,’ she said. ‘But if that were a crime, half the chaps I’ve ever met would be in chokey.’

  ‘I dare say you’re right, my lady,’ he said. ‘I was just—’

  The ringing of the telephone derailed his train of thought.

  ‘Excuse me,’ I said. ‘I’d better answer that.’

  I returned a moment later.

  ‘It’s a call for you, Inspector,’ I said. ‘A Sergeant Williams. He says it’s most urgent.’

  ‘He’s the duty sergeant back at Bristol. Steady chap. If he says it’s urgent, then it must be urgent. Excuse me, ladies.’

  He went through to the hall.

  ‘Do you know what I wish?’ said Lady Hardcastle while we awaited his return.

  ‘Do you . . . Do you still wish you were a polar bear?’

  She laughed. ‘No.’

  ‘Do you wish someone would invent a self-fitting corset? One day those laces will do for you.’

  ‘I wish someone would decide that the wretched things had suddenly gone out of fashion, certainly. But no. I wish someone would invent some sort of truth drug. Oh, oh, or a mind-reading device. Does your man Jules Verne have anything like that? I find questioning these people so wearisome. I’ve had a lifetime of people lying to me. It would be lovely to talk to someone and know for certain whether they were telling the truth. And what the truth really was if they weren’t.’

  ‘That would be rather splendid, wouldn’t it,’ I said. ‘Although we usually managed to get at the truth rather effectively in the old days.’

  ‘In the end, yes. I always suspected it was a combination of things, you know. First there was the shock. Imagine yourself a foreign agent, captured out of the blue by who knows who, on information from who knows where. You’re sitting there in some dank cellar, awaiting interrogation. You steel yourself, but you know you’ll prevail. You’ve been questioned by the shrewdest of men. You’ve endured beatings from the toughest. And in walks a tall, staggeringly beautiful English lady—’

  ‘You?’

  ‘Of course it’s me, silly. All elegance and charm and cheerful politeness. “This is going to be a piece of cake,” you say to yourself. “This idiot woman doesn’t stand a chance.” And then her assistant arrives – a tiny little Welsh woman with a cheeky smile – and you say, “Well, if this is all they can muster, I’ll be out of here in no time and all my secrets with me.” But then crash-bang-wallop, a flurry of fists and elbows and you’re lying face-down on the table with your arm in some fiendish Chinese hold. You feel as though it might be torn from its socket.’

  I laughed. ‘And that was the moment when you switched on the charm,’ I said. ‘You won their trust and they all but fell over themselves in their eagerness to tell you all about it.’

  ‘Exactly so. Torture is overrated, I feel. It helps to be able to offer a credible threat of physical unpleasantness, but people do love to talk. Most especially about themselves and how clever they are.’

  ‘True. But perhaps I should give Mr Orum a bit of a tickle. You know, just to let him know we mean business.’

  ‘Perhaps you should.’

  Our musings were cut short by the return of Inspector Sunderland.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ he said, ‘but I have to return to the city.’

  ‘Oh dear,’ said Lady Hardcastle. ‘Nothing terrible, I hope.’

  ‘Nothing “terrible”, no, but one of my other cases is getting a bit lively. It looks like we might be able to nab a gang of counterfeiters if we’re nimble. We’ve been working on this one for a couple of months and we’ve got word they’re setting up their presses in an abandoned warehouse down by the docks.’

  ‘Then we shall detain you no longer,’ she said. ‘You must be away. Although if you happen upon a couple of convincing-looking fivers while you’re there, it’s Armstrong’s payday soon . . .’

  ‘A tenner a week?’ said the inspector with a laugh. ‘I’m in the wrong game.’

  ‘One can afford to be generous when it’s fake money,’ she said.

  I gave a sarcastic smile. ‘They’ll never find your body, you know,’ I said.

  The inspector took a final sip of his tea. ‘Well,’ he said. ‘I ought to be on my way. I’m sure they can collar the gang on their own, but I do like to be in at the kill, as it were.’

  ‘Of course, Inspector,’ said Lady Hardcastle. ‘We quite understand. Is there anything we can do to help in the meantime?’

  ‘Just carry on as you are, my lady,’ he said. ‘I know I can rely on you two.’

  ‘Thank you, you’re most kind.’

  ‘There’s one more thing, though,’ he said with a smile.

  ‘Name it, dear,’ she said.

  ‘Do you mind if I help myself to another slice of that cake?’

  Chapter Eleven

  Inspector Sunderland left with an extra piece of cake – ‘. . . for my wife, you understand; she’s partial to fruit cake’ – and our good wishes. Lady Hardcastle remained in the dining room to ruminate. I tidied away the tea tray and went to the kitchen to see if there was anything I could do to help there.

  ‘Not really,’ said Miss Jones when I made my offer. ‘I reckon I has it all under control. I can’t say as I’m not a little worried about our safety, mind.’

  ‘Because of the murders?’ I said.

  ‘Of course. Two dead already. It could be any of us next.’

  ‘If there is a “next”,’ I said. ‘But so far it’s been the two actors dying like their characters in the moving picture.’

  ‘I knows what you’re sayin’, but we’s all been in a movin’ picture now, a’n’t we? What if the murderer doesn’t just hold a grudge against The Witch’s Downfall, but against everythin’ to do with the kinematograph? Lady Hardcastle filmed me guttin’ a fish on Tuesday. What if you all wakes up tomorrow to find me hollowed out and stuffed with thyme and bay leaves? With my head on a dish for our ma’s cat.’

  ‘We’ll find whoever’s responsible long before your mother’s cat eats your head for supper,’ I said.

  ‘Just see you do,�
�� she said. ‘I don’t go in for none of that superstitious nonsense, but if there’s a madman on the loose with a thing in his head about movin’ pictures, we’ve all got to watch out.’

  ‘I hadn’t thought of it like that,’ I said. ‘I’ll mention it to Lady Hardcastle. And what about you, Edna? Are you concerned?’

  ‘Me, dear? No. I i’n’t nearly interestin’ enough to attract the attentions of no murderers. And she filmed me dustin’ the bannisters. So unless you finds me stabbed through the heart with a feather duster, I reckons I’ll be all right.’

  ‘Right you are, then,’ I said. ‘We’ll cross you off the list of possible victims. And what about work? Are you coping well enough without your assistants?’

  ‘’T i’n’t so bad now we’s only got two guests,’ she said. ‘We’ll do just fine without they two from The Grange. I could live a long and happy life without either of ’em clutterin’ up the place, to be truthful. Dewi’s a nice enough lad, but he’s mostly only any use for fetchin’ things off high shelves. And that Dora. Well. Useless article. And so rude with it. ’T wouldn’t break my heart if I never saw her again.’

  ‘Shall I get Lady Hardcastle to pass word to The Grange that we have no further need of them?’

  ‘It’s up to you, Miss Armstrong, of course. But don’t keep ’em on on my account.’

  ‘Right you are,’ I said. ‘I’ll see what Lady Hardcastle thinks. Our guests are leaving on . . . on . . . Actually I’m not sure if it’s Saturday or Sunday now I come to say it out loud, but it’s not long, anyway.’

  ‘They’s no trouble. Keeps their rooms tidy. I can cope.’

  ‘Splendid. And how’s your Dan? How’s he coping?’

  ‘There’s another useless article. Let’s just say it’s not just the extra few bob a week that’s makin’ me grateful for the extra hours workin’ y’ere.’

  ‘He’s a trial?’ I suggested.

  ‘He’s a pain in the bloomin’ backside, is what he is. All he does is moan and complain. It’s a relief to be out of the house. Although he don’t make that no easier. You’d think a man of his age would know how to boil a ham, or even push a broom round, wouldn’t you? I works here all day – I’m not sayin’ I minds, mind – and I get home to find . . . What do you think I finds?’