Murder at the Spring Ball: A 1920s Mystery

by Benedict Brown

  “What about my son?” Grandfather continued. “Does anyone know where Maitland has got to?”

  There was some polite laughter then, but the truth of the matter was that I hadn’t seen my uncle all night. The main Cranley clan had gathered in front of the stage by this point and Belinda was quick to snag the first glass of tipple.

  “Well, I’m sure he’ll be here in a moment.” Grandfather carefully climbed down from the stage, took the empty bottle and held it up to his audience. “This champagne was given to me on the day that I married my beloved wife Katherine over fifty years ago. We promised that we’d drink it when the time was right. Somehow, though we attended the weddings of our three children and the christenings of all five of our phenomenal grandchildren, that moment never arrived.”

  Uncle Maitland still hadn’t turned up and I could see that Grandfather was dragging out the proceedings. My cousin George finally strolled over from wherever he had been hiding and, in the crush for everyone in the family to get a glass of the historic libation, got bashed into by Maitland’s son.

  “Honestly, Francis!” he immediately bellowed. “You’re clumsier than a clown.”

  His flute had smashed into a hundred pieces on the glossy floor and, with the champagne all served, he had to settle for an unhistoric replacement from Todd. Aunt Belinda had long got tired of waiting and was already knocking back her drink. Finally, my uncle appeared from the hall and, once he had collected his champagne from grumpy Aunt Winifred and shouted at his children about nothing in particular, the toast could commence.

  With great empathy in his eyes, Grandfather raised his glass towards his loved ones. “That’s what I wanted to bring you here to express. Please, don’t wait your whole lives for something you could already be enjoying today. Learn from my mistakes. Embrace this beautiful world we share and-”

  It was at this moment that Belinda collapsed into a chair with a painful moan. She was clearly suffering and put her hands to her head like someone had drilled a hole through it.

  “That’s the spirit, sis!” Uncle Maitland raised his drink to her. “Cheers.”

  The glass was at his lips when my grandfather let out a deafening shout. “Stop! Don’t drink that.”

  He tore the glass from his son’s hand, then ran to attend to his elder daughter. Aunt Belinda had not passed out in a drunken slump, her body was convulsing and her eyes were open. Tidal waves of agony passed through her body and despairing cries went up from the people around her as she fell to the floor.

  George Trevelyan had lost his smug grin and ran over to see his mother. “She’s dying,” he screamed, his eyes searching the room for help.

  He would find no solace and it was down to our grandfather to confirm the inevitable.

  “She’s dead.”

  Chapter Nine

  I’ve read plenty of mystery stories. I devoured every Sherlock Holmes tale when I was first at boarding school and, were I more intelligent, insightful and brave, I’d like to think I’d make a first-rate detective. Dickens himself sets up many of his stories as puzzles to be solved, but nothing had prepared me for the moments after Aunt Belinda’s death.

  Silence.

  That was the first stage. Ten seconds of silence in a crowd of sixty people. No one moved, no one said a word, but it lasted an eternity and was only broken when George fell to his knees in front of his mother’s lifeless body.

  I made the mistake of looking straight at the dead woman. It was a sight too ghastly to bear but I couldn’t turn away. Her eyes were wide open and I could see the fear she must have experienced in her last moments of consciousness. Her skin had turned an unnatural shade of blotchy red so that she looked like a ripening plum. I’d never loved my aunt, but still wished there was something I could do to save her from such a fate.

  As most of the room remained in a state of shock, my grandfather burst into action. “Fellowes, remove every last drop of the champagne and place it under lock and key. Band leader, play something light but not too fast.”

  Despite the unimpressed murmuring from the crowd, the band began to play a gentle lullaby and I could feel the soothing impact of the music wash over us.

  “Everyone else, I’d recommend you also stop drinking, just to be on the safe side.” He raised his own flute to his nose then and sniffed the contents but did not reveal what he had discovered. “I have to assume that whatever killed Belinda was in the champagne alone, but we shouldn’t take any risks.”

  He issued more orders, first for Todd to call the police and then to the rest of us to stay where we were in order to preserve any evidence. All of a sudden, as if aware of his own limitations, he froze in his tracks. For one sickening moment, I was worried that he would meet the same end as his daughter, but his hesitation passed and he climbed onto the stage.

  He looked one last time over the faces of every guest, as if memorising their reactions. The crowd had become more agitated by now. Several elderly relatives had retreated to the chairs at the side of the room, which, unhappily, brought them closer to the body. My brother was the only person there who seemed less than distraught, as his beloved for the night was crying on his shoulder.

  “The police will be here before long.” Grandfather’s voice had taken on an official tone and I could see the different forces at battle within him.

  On the surface, he was calm and focussed, as he attempted to record the full range of evidence that the scene held. But there were moments when his distress broke free. A small jerk of the head in his daughter’s direction told me that he was struggling to process what had happened. A glance down at the floor suggested that there was sorrow welling up inside him, but he wouldn’t let it show.

  He descended from the stage to speak to his footman and the band played on. “Halfpenny, when Todd and Fellowes return, the three of you will ensure that nobody leaves. Christopher, come with me.”

  He’d marched halfway across the room before I came to life and followed him. The previously jubilant revellers parted as if he were Moses and they were the Red Sea. I noticed that Marmalade was missing, I hadn’t seen him since he’d arrived in fact and it would be the first thing I’d tell the police when they got there. If any savage soul was capable of killing a party or a person, it was him.

  My grandfather was waiting for me in the corridor, his face harrowed and drawn. The public mask he had been wearing had slipped clean away.

  “I’m going to be honest, Christopher,” he said once we were far enough from the ballroom not to be overheard. “I don’t know whether I have it in me to cope tonight. For all the differences there were between us, I loved Belinda and I can’t tell you whether I’ll be able to keep going for much longer.”

  I realised then that any fear I had felt towards him had disappeared. I reached up to put my hand on his shoulder and, in a strange reversal of our normal roles, attempted to comfort him. “I can see that, Grandfather. But I know how strong you are.”

  I thought he might need to nip into one of the salons for a minute alone or call on Fellowes to provide a dram of whisky. I doubt he knew himself what he really required but he showed no more signs of anguish. He nodded, pulled his shoulders back and continued down the corridor towards the drinks room.

  I’ve never counted all the rooms in Cranley Hall but I can tell you that there is one for every occasion. The drinks room was a little way along from the grand salon and was primarily used by the staff for storing and preparing refreshments on occasions such as this one. As a result, it hadn’t been used in a very long time and I had never set foot in it, outside of the odd game of hide and seek.

  “Wait.” Grandfather held his hand out to bar the door before I could step inside and trample any evidence. He removed a pair of white cotton gloves from his pocket and slipped them on. I had to wonder if he was carrying them to complement his outfit or because his detective’s instincts had never left
him.

  We scanned the room from the doorway, though I failed to spot anything out of the ordinary. Beside the window was a small table with a plain white cloth draped over it. The walls on either side held locked cabinets which contained various tools, glasses and paraphernalia for serving. Fellowes would have poured the champagne here, but there were no traces of white powder, unusual objects, or hidden trapdoors. In the mystery novels I’d read, these were guaranteed signs of foul play.

  Happy with his initial sortie, Lord Edgington stepped over the threshold and began a closer examination. Far faster than I could manage, he sought out a popped cork which was lying at the bottom of the thick velvet curtains. He crouched to inspect the floor around it, then raised it to his eyes.

  As he’d invited me along on the mission, I felt I could at least ask a question. “Sorry, Grandfather, what are you looking for?”

  He didn’t answer at first, but, rotating the cork steadily between his gloved finger and thumb, he held it to the light. “What do you notice?”

  I didn’t like to be put on the spot and felt quite nervous. “Well… um. Nothing?”

  “Exactly.” He let this word sit between us, as if it revealed a great deal. I wondered whether I had time to pop to the petit salon for a chocolate éclair whilst he was thinking. “There are no holes or unusual indents. It is in every way a typical cork from a bottle of Veuve Clicquot champagne, which tells me far more than I was expecting to find out at this point.”

  I tried to keep up with him. “Do you mean that no one tampered with the bottle?”

  I could already sense a shift in the old police officer. The emotion he’d shown just moments earlier had been shut away in some dark chamber of his heart and he was focussed on the task at hand.

  “That’s right. Assuming that the champagne was poisoned, we’re left with far fewer options for how it came about.” He paused and looked up at me. “Either the bottle was already infected fifty years ago – the probability of which seems low – or the poison was added this evening, after the cork was popped.”

  I’d been carrying a dark thought with me ever since I’d seen Belinda collapse, and felt compelled to let it out. “It couldn’t be the delphiniums, could it?”

  Grandfather looked at me like I had the wits of a stickleback. “No of course not. Where would you get such an idea?”

  My thoughts came out in a jumble. “You said yourself that delphiniums can be toxic. Wasn’t that why we wore gloves to handle them?”

  “Yes, but-”

  Now that I’d started, I had to get all my fears out in one go. “I thought perhaps that, with so many together, the scent or pollen or what have you could turn to poison.”

  Pocketing the cork in his waistcoat, Grandfather stood up to explain how far from the truth I’d already led us. “Delphiniums contain high levels of alkaloids. They’re toxic, but not poisonous enough to kill so quickly or violently. Depending on the amount you ingested, you’re more likely to get an upset stomach than keel over dead.”

  I felt awfully silly, but that didn’t stop me talking. “So what did kill Aunt Belinda?”

  I could see him consulting the book of poisons he kept neatly filed in the library in his head. “There are very few substances which would act so swiftly and many of them are only available in far-flung places. Indigenous South Americans use arrows tipped with poison extracted from Chondrodendron plants to incapacitate their prey. There are also a number of venomous sea creatures which could provide you with a suitable weapon, but I think it was something far simpler and more readily available.”

  I assumed that he was considering one of the famous poisons that crime novelists love to make use of. Arsenic, strychnine or…

  “Cyanide, I’d say.” He rid his mouth of the words as though they had a bitter taste to them. “A short intense death. I’ve heard people say that it’s painless, but it doesn’t look that way to me. And this is not the first time I’ve seen what it can do.”

  He took the cork from his pocket and held it to his nose.

  I fell for it and instantly had to ask, “What can you smell, grandfather?”

  “Champagne, of course, boy.” He looked displeased with me once more. “We’ve already established that the poison was added after the cork was popped. To discover how that was possible, we must talk to our first witness.”

  Chapter Ten

  We left the drinks room and crossed paths with Todd on his way back to the ballroom.

  “The police say they’ll be here within the hour,” he told us. “The local lot might make it earlier but they’re sending someone from Scotland Yard. Some inspector who lives nearby.”

  “Jolly good,” Grandfather said as he strode along with the gait and motivation of a much younger man. “Help Halfpenny keep the guests in order. I’ll send Fellowes along once I’ve spoken to him. Oh, and lock the drinks room door until the police arrive, we don’t want any stray gawkers to interfere with the evidence.”

  “Crime, Milord?” Todd had a rather innocent expression on his face just then. “So you do think it’s murder?” There was a quickness to the man that told me he’d make a far better assistant than I could.

  “It looks that way. Though you should try to play it down if our guests are getting agitated.”

  The two men swapped places and carried on along the corridor in different directions.

  We found Fellowes in the kitchen. I did not consider it the obvious choice of location to store a lethal substance, but I’m sure he had his reasons. Chief among them, no doubt, was the chance to break the bad news to his colleagues.

  I was surprised to discover that Cook and two of the maids were in tears.

  “But none of you liked her.” It was rather clever of my grandfather to have noticed this fact.

  Shamefaced, Cook attempted to explain. “Yes, but… Well, no one should have to die like that, should they?”

  Grandfather extended one hand to comfort her. “My daughter and I butted heads like mountain goats. She was not an easy person to like, but I never stopped loving her. Which is why I’m determined to get to the bottom of what happened here tonight.”

  Fellowes was oddly shy during this exchange. He was leaning against the sink looking like a deflated balloon and was yet to let out a squeak. He displayed none of his usual poise or arrogance and I had to wonder what was going on in that strange head of his.

  “Where have you stowed the champagne?” my grandfather addressed him and, with one finger, the butler pointed towards the staff dining room.

  Grandfather tightened his grip on his amethyst-topped cane. “We’ll talk in there if you don’t mind.”

  Fellowes bowed mutely and the old policeman spun on his heel for us to follow. Delilah must have heard her master as she came scurrying out of her basket to accompany us. The room was locked and Fellowes produced the key to reveal the dim chamber with the drinks trolley just inside.

  Grandfather got straight to work, putting his nose into the bottle and examining any sediment at the bottom of each glass before calling me over. “What can you smell?”

  I thought this might be another of his tricks but gave one of the glasses a good sniff. “Well…” I hesitated over my answer. “It smells like… Yes, it smells just like champagne.”

  He actually rolled his eyes at me then. “Apart from the champagne, man!”

  “Oh!” I chuckled at my evidently silly reply and tried again. “Well… apart from the champagne… Not much.”

  He crossed his arms in front of his chest and reflected upon this. “I assumed as much. In actual fact, only certain people can smell cyanide. I spent some time as a young officer familiarising myself with various poisons and so it jumps straight out at me.”

  “What does it smell like, Milord?” Fellowes, who had been standing discreetly in the corner, was quick to enquire. “If you don’t mind
me asking.”

  Lord Edgington raised one brow a little. “Cyanide smells like cyanide, though the fact that it is prevalent in bitter almonds makes many people think of them.” He bent low for one last look at the deadly, bubbly delight. “Even if poor Belinda had been capable of smelling it herself, she’d been drinking since before the party began and was in no frame of mind to worry about it. The speed with which she died might also suggest that she had a large concentration of the substance in her glass or simply that the killer used a lot of cyanide to begin with.”

  He straightened up again and Fellowes and I watched as waves of thoughts, theories and observations passed through him. After some moments like this, he clicked his fingers and pulled a chair up at the table.

  The staff rarely used their dining room, as the kitchen was so much warmer. It was a drab, dark space with no decoration or comfort. Grandfather’s golden retriever seemed happy to be there with her master and settled on the floor by his feet.

  “Sit down, please, Fellowes.” The cold singularity of thought which was evidently controlling my grandfather at this time was impressive. He was focussed solely on his task and I could see how such a skill was vital to his detective work.

  The butler hovered beside the table for a moment and then did as instructed. I decided to remain standing and leaned against the wall beside a cupboard filled with plain white crockery.

  “I need you to tell me what happened between the time you opened the champagne and the time you served it.”

  Now that the question had been asked, Fellowes appeared to rediscover some of his confidence.

  “Yes, Milord. Of course.” He needed a moment to assemble his thoughts. “I took the bottle from the cellar to warm a little after the guests arrived, but didn’t open it until shortly before the toast.”

  “You opened it in the drinks room, is that correct?”

  Fellowes darted his eyes away from his interrogator who sat, as is only right for the lord of the manor, at the head of the table. “That’s correct. I thought it best to do so, given the lively display of dancing taking place in the ballroom. Such precious wine doesn’t want wasting.”