I followed him all the way to his suite of rooms, where he took up his old spot in the armchair beside the window. I could see his transformation reversing before my eyes. When he sat back in that chair, his stature reduced down and I watched his confidence fade. He was folding himself away for easy storage and, if I hadn’t done something about it, he might have given up altogether.
“Please don’t do this, Grandfather,” I pleaded with him. “You can’t stop now. Blunt isn’t going to work out what’s going on here, but you will.”
His gaze possessed that singularly distant quality that I’d seen in him every time my family had visited since I was six. He looked off across the grounds, over the lake and out towards the woods.
When his reply came, he sounded only vaguely aware that there was anyone around to hear him. “He might get lucky. Maybe there’ll be another murder and it will make it easier to catch the killer.”
My voice was broken through with tears and I shouted at the great Lord Edgington for the very first time. “That’s our family you’re talking about! What if this lunatic goes after my mother next?”
At school we were taught from a young age that such open displays of emotion are a sign of weakness and only women and feeble men would ever allow themselves such hysteria. I don’t like my school and think this is a stupid attitude to have, so I felt no great shame.
With my face all red and my nose running, I moved closer to him. “There are hardly any suspects and you know them all well. This should be easy for you.”
He shook his head and looked straight through me, but said nothing. It made me want to storm about the place breaking old vases and pulling one of his precious Turners from the wall.
“Don’t you have some sort of oath to seek out the truth? Why did you join the police in the first place if you won’t search for your own children’s killer?” Gripping hold of the arms of his chair, with my face right next to his, I was screaming with absolute rage.
For a few moments, the only sound was the rattling of plates on the dresser as my words rebounded about the room. I took another step closer, and he looked at me at last.
“I joined the police because I never wanted any of this.” He looked around the room at his fine possessions, then cast his gaze off through the window. “It was never supposed to be mine in the first place. My brother was set to inherit Cranley. He’d been prepared for it from birth. Like your cousin George, I was wild and carefree back then and my parents despaired of me. I told them I didn’t want to live the way they did. I wanted a life of my own.”
I would have asked more about this time in his life but, in that same weary manner, he had already continued with his story.
“I joined the police because I thought I could make a difference, instead of simply living off this estate and the people who work for us. You have to understand that the last century was a time of grand ideas. I read Voltaire and Engels and saw the world through a very different lens from that of my family. As a young man, I couldn’t bear the idea of getting rich from another man’s labour or having servants wait on me. In the police, I was nobody and I liked it that way. I rose through the ranks, not because of who my father was or my family’s wealth, but because I was good at the job.”
I found myself caught up in his story and, when he came to an abrupt halt, I was hungry to know more. “So, what changed?”
He shook his head and I had to assume I’d failed to understand the point of his tale. “My fool of a brother was killed in the Transvaal Rebellion. He’d been in the army for years, but always safely away from the action until Westminster decided that a future lord should have a company of men. He got himself and half of those under him slaughtered, left poor old Clementine without a husband and their sole daughter fatherless. In time, my parents passed Cranley on to me.”
His words dried up once more and I could tell that, despite his criticism, he still mourned his older brother. “My parents demanded I leave the police but I wouldn’t give in. If you’re ever in such a position, you must know that you don’t always have to do what is expected of you. I’m a lord and a copper. I worked my way up to become a superintendent of the Metropolitan Police, but I also took on the duties required of me here.
“My parents were wrong to think that I couldn’t do both and I was wrong to think that being the Marquess of Edgington was an indignity. I have tried to run this house and protect the wards of our estate with compassion. And I pray, with every fibre of my being, that whoever finally succeeds me will do the same.”
He had become more confident as his speech went on, but his voice still sounded as though it could give way at any moment. I wanted to shout and scream at him to make him see sense. I wanted to pull him up by the lapels and make him listen to me but I knew it would do no good.
So instead, I leaned down to his level and spoke in the softest tone I possessed. “You said it yourself; you’re a copper; present tense. You never stopped, and I’m not going to let you rot away in that ugly old chair. You’ve got a job to do and a killer to catch.”
He looked down at the armchair with its fraying fabric and lumpy seat. “I suppose it might have seen its best days.” He spoke as if this was the most convincing part of my argument.
I smiled. “But you haven’t, so stand back up and let’s get to work.”
Chapter Nineteen
Grandfather got changed into another of his grey morning suits and we set off towards the armoury. He wanted to have a professional inspection of the room – after my entirely amateurish poke around – but Alice accosted us in the hall.
“I’m so sorry to disturb you, Lord Edgington,” she said, all flustered. “I wouldn’t want to bother you at a time like this, only-”
“Spit it out, girl.” Some of his quick anger had returned to him, but he saw how upset she was and lowered his voice. “Tell me what the problem is.”
Alice looked at me then and, from the expression she wore, I was worried that I’d been a bit too obvious with my longing looks at her at the ball. I was sure she was about to denounce me to her employer as a blackguard and a bounder.
“It’s Mr Fellowes, Milord. There’s something wrong with him. He’s been in bed half the morning. He barely had the strength to lay out the dining room for breakfast and Cook’s made him lie down. He says it’s nothing, but I really think we should send for a doctor. He looks awfully sick.”
I noticed that she smoothed out the stronger notes of her Irish accent, and I could tell how nervous she was. Even in an unconventional house like Cranley, it wasn’t typical for a maid to address a lord. With Fellowes incapacitated, the usual order of things was at risk of falling apart.
Grandfather’s moustache curled in. “Take me to his room, this instant.”
My lovely Alice turned on the spot and scuttled away down the corridor, like a mouse escaping from an elderly cat. Grandfather had found his strength of will once more, but could not maintain the pace and she soon had to slow down. She gave me a shy smile and, despite the two corpses and our ailing butler, I couldn’t help feeling a little cheered that I was not in her bad books after all.
As we cut back through the hall, I saw no sign of Blunt, but his minions were hard at work. There were even more officers there than the night before. In every room we passed, they were picking through drawers and taking books from their shelves, in search of some elusive piece of evidence.
We took the servants’ stairs to the hidden away corner of the house where Fellowes and the other household staff had their rooms. It was a dark, gloomy spot, little more than a basement really with one small window permitting a meagre allowance of light to shine through. Alice knocked on the door at the end of the corridor and entered.
“No!” Fellowes instantly wailed. “What did you bring him down here for?”
With no windows open and the curtains drawn, the room smelled like death itself. Coo
k was sitting at the bedside with a bowl of cold water and a flannel. Her patient was writhing in agony even as we entered.
“I’ve told him we need a doctor,” the gaunt-cheeked chef explained. “He won’t listen to me though so I sent Alice to fetch you. I hope it’s not an imposition, Milord.”
“Never mind that now.” My Grandfather went straight over to his retainer, unafraid of what terrible infectious disease might be ripping through him. “Tell me exactly how you’re feeling.”
Fellowes was as white as a cloud and just as clammy. The sweat was dripping off him as he clutched his bedclothes between two clenched fists. “It’s my stomach. It feels like I’ve been swallowing glass in my sleep.”
“When did it come on?” I wasn’t sure what medical knowledge my grandfather possessed but his brusque and aggressive bedside manner was still a lot milder than that of the terrifying matron at school.
Fellowes swallowed before answering and Cook took this as a sign that more fluids were needed. She plied him with some steaming-hot elixir from a chipped china mug.
“In the night, I suppose.” He moaned out again. “Didn’t think too much of it until this morning when I could hardly stand.”
Grandfather stooped over the sick butler and produced a small, electric torch from his pocket to examine his pupils, before moving on to check his pulse. “Give me your hand.” When Fellowes was slow to respond, he barked at him once more. “Come along, man. Quickly.”
With great effort, Fellowes raised his right hand a few inches off the bed and Grandfather seized it. He held the flaccid wrist in silence for a few moments before delivering judgement. “Well, I imagine you’ve got a fair bit of vomiting to get through. The good news is that, if it was going to kill you, it would have done so by now.”
He smiled then, as though this made everything better. “I’ll call my doctor, but, from the look of things, you’ll recover before long.”
“Doesn’t feel that way now,” Fellowes peered around the room for a moment before clutching his stomach and closing his eyes.
“One last question,” Grandfather said. “How long ago did you come down here?”
Fellowes looked rather nervous then. He studied the old man’s face and I thought he was trying to work out how much trouble he would get into by telling the truth. “Less than an hour. I’m sorry I can’t attend to my duties, Sir, but I’m sure that Halfpenny can cover for me and Todd at a push.”
My grandfather looked pensive for a moment before replying. “You needn’t worry about that, old friend. We’ll manage without you for a couple of days.”
It was quite touching to see the affection which the two men had for one another and I wondered yet again about the history they shared, which I was not privy to.
“Alice, fetch some bicarbonate and keep the infusions coming. Ginger tea, garlic juice, anything that you think will ease his pain.” He nodded, satisfied with his plan, then rose to leave. “Come along, Christopher.”
I was beginning to see that my main task as Lord Edgington’s assistant was to fulfil the role Delilah usually occupied. As his lazy old golden retriever spent most of her time asleep by the hearth in the kitchen, it was my job to scamp along happily after Grandfather.
“Very interesting, don’t you think?” he asked once we’d left the staff quarters behind.
“Yes, very interesting,” I agreed, though I hadn’t a clue what he was referring to.
“Perhaps it was just an accident of course, or he helped himself to a few more cakes last night than he should have. But if the killer wanted Fellowes out of the picture, why not use the cyanide again?”
I hadn’t considered until this moment that our butler had been poisoned. “Well…” I began, hoping that something clever might come to me. “Perhaps he ran out. Perhaps the fiend used all his cyanide up last night and there was none left for anyone else.”
Ducking into the empty smoking room, he froze on the spot. His face was clouded over with a fog of questions. It was something of a thrill to see his mind running with ideas.
“I suppose it’s possible, but that seems rather foolish, considering…” He never finished that sentence as, just then, a new idea occurred to him. “More importantly, of course, we have to find out what it was that Fellowes saw that would have made him a threat to the killer.”
He took a seat near the unlit fire, where Cora had sat the night before. The smoking room still smelt like the inside of a pipe as no one had cleared the ashtrays. The vases of our flower arrangements were almost as pungent and I couldn’t help but feel proud of the colour they still provided to the musty old room.
Salacious ideas from boy’s own adventure magazines filled my head. “You said yourself that Fellowes was hiding something. He went out of the room after the champagne was opened for far longer than made any sense. How do we know he wasn’t working with the killer and the blighter double-crossed him?”
My grandfather waved the idea away with one hand. “Don’t be ridiculous, Christopher. If you can’t make a sensible suggestion, don’t say anything at all.”
This was the kind of thing my father always said to me. I didn’t like it from him and I couldn’t stand it from Grandfather either.
“Well, you’re supposed to be the master detective!” I raised my voice to quite a level. “Why didn’t you grill Fellowes a little harder yesterday? Come to think of it, why were you so kind to Cora this morning? And George for that matter?”
His steely eyes shot towards me then and I was petrified. For a softly spoken, modern-thinking man, he had an awful lot of anger boiling beneath the surface and I was worried he would shoot it straight at me.
Instead, he took a deep breath and replied at half his usual volume. “You don’t catch flies with vinegar, dear boy. And, besides, some questions don’t need asking. Some things are clear and it’s better not to upset the applecart if it can be avoided.”
I found myself shouting a line back to him that my English literature master had scrawled across the last essay I’d submitted.
“‘You’re mixing your metaphors!’” It wasn’t the strongest of ripostes.
“Is that a crime?”
“No, but failing to investigate a suspect because you can’t imagine them being involved in a murder is tantamount to one.” I don’t know why I was getting so angry. Perhaps it was because we’d been investigating all morning and I’d only eaten one measly cream horn.
He let out a sigh and, remaining calm, asked for my opinion. “Go on then, tell me what you think happened and how Fellowes could have been part of this terrible plot you’re so convinced of.”
I was a little shocked to be honest as I didn’t have a clear idea of what I wanted to say.
“Well, it’s obvious, isn’t it?” I waited to see whether he would explain what was obvious so that I didn’t have to. “The killer can’t be anyone in the immediate family. It would have looked very odd if he was the only one not drinking just before we all died. Even George spilling his champagne couldn’t have covered his guilt.”
“So that reduces our suspect list nicely.” Grandfather made it sound like I was really onto something.
“Exactly. It means we’re only left with Fellowes, Clementine, Marmaduke and Cora.”
He slumped down in a chair then and I could tell he was thinking over the enigma that lay before us. “Go on, who’s your money on?”
Everything had been happening so quickly that I’d lost track of the possibilities. I took a moment to remind myself why I was angry.
“It has to be Cora.”
“I see,” he replied, with all the calm in the world. “Why?”
“For the reasons you laid out already. Her grandfather was supposed to inherit Cranley and, as there was no male heir, you took his place. All of this should have gone to her father and, eventually, she would have been a very wealthy woman. Sh
e was nowhere to be seen when the champagne was being served and very much in the vicinity of the armoury when Maitland was murdered. I hardly think Clementine can offer her a reliable alibi and you can’t deny that Cora completely failed to explain any of that when I asked her.”
He rolled his shoulders and raised his chin before responding. “I can’t, but I don’t have to. Cora has other reasons for keeping her counsel and we’ll interview her in good time.”
There was no point in pursuing my theory with him if he wasn’t going to listen. I clearly hadn’t learnt my lesson though, as I instantly offered up another suspect.
“Fine, then if it wasn’t her, it must have been Marmaduke Adelaide.”
He actually laughed at me then. He tipped his head back and had a good chortle at my expense. “Why on Earth do you say that?”
“Because the boy’s a savage, he has criminal connections, he hates me and I doubt that you’re his father’s favourite person after you arrested him so many times. Add all that to the disappearing trick that Marmalade performed last night and it spells guilty.”
I thought that the terrier of Scotland Yard might at least be interested in this theory, but he barely even considered it.
“Why do you call him Marmalade?”
I sat down in the chair in front of him and leaned forward to reply. “Well, his name is Marmaduke Adelaide and he’s got ginger hair.”
“A little obvious, though, isn’t it? Surely you could have come up with something more creative.”
Not knowing how to respond to this, as I’d always thought it a particularly witty piece of word play, I went on the offensive once more. “You’re totally missing the point. Marmaduke physically assaulted me two days ago. There’s no blacker soul than his and I think he’s the killer.”
He raised one eyebrow. “Along with Fellowes?”
That stumped me again. “No… Or actually, yes.” New ideas were forming by the moment and I decided to see where they would take me. “Last night, Adelaide threw the stone at the drinks room window to give Fellowes the sign to make himself scarce, then ran upstairs to poison the champagne. He wasn’t in the house today when Uncle Maitland was killed, so someone else must have been involved and Fellowes is the only person I know here with a shady past that you make a point of never talking about.”
Murder at the Spring Ball: A 1920s Mystery Page 11