Grandfather’s eyes flicked across to his sister-in-law who was feeding Delilah bits of jam-covered scone and showed no interest in our conversation.
He kept his voice steady as he replied. “You know that’s not what I think of you.”
Cora’s stare hardened. “So then why are you here? What do you want from me?”
“I need you to tell me where you were just before I gave my toast last night and again this morning when Maitland was killed.”
Like a gunslinger from the American west, she fired straight back at him. “Just asking that question proves you don’t believe me.”
The ferocity of Cora’s words had startled her grandmother. Peering around the other faces at the table, as if she couldn’t work out where she knew us from, Clementine distracted herself by pouring some more tea from the pot.
It was Grandfather’s turn to raise his voice. “That’s not why I’m asking. I may not consider you a suspect, but I still need to know where you were and what you were doing at the time that the murders were committed.”
She looked down at her hands, as though considering what they were capable of. When she eventually spoke, her voice was a distant breeze, barely audible over the hum of the natural world which surrounded us. “You already know, don’t you?”
The unmown grass swishing in the air, a pair of bumblebees inspecting a patch of cranesbill geraniums, the brook which ran behind the house and a blackbird tossing leaves about in the middle of the orchard; they were all far louder than her whispered question.
My grandfather looked back at her without hesitation. “I believe I do. But until I hear you say the words, I can’t be sure.”
Her head drooped. The determination faded away and she pulled a breath deep down inside her before replying. “I was with Fellowes on both occasions.”
“Thank you, dear child. Thank you for your honesty.” Grandfather clearly found some shred of relief in her answer. Despite dismissing my theory, perhaps the possibility of Cora being the killer had been weighing on his mind all along.
He held his hand out for her to hold, but dear, batty Clementine took it instead. To contrast with the sad moment we’d just experienced, Grandfather couldn’t hold back his laughter as the old woman looked affectionately at him.
“Oh, Clemmie.” His mirth soon infected the rest of us. “For all your quirks, I can’t deny that you’ve always had a sense of humour.”
His face curled up in a broad smile but his words didn’t connect with the old lady. She pulled her jam-stained hand back, as if afraid he was mocking her. To compensate, Cora leaned over to hug her grandmother and Clementine’s usual cheerful expression reshaped her face.
Grandfather wasn’t to be distracted and returned to the matter at hand. “I’ll need you to tell me the exact circumstances of what happened last night. Did you throw a stone to get Fellowes’s attention? Were you waiting for him in the garden? Did any of that actually occur?”
Cora glanced down at the table, clearly still reluctant to go into details. “Yes, it did. I was acting like a spoilt child and couldn’t wait to have Reginald to myself, so I interrupted his duties for a few minutes. He came outside and we hid beneath the steps to the petit salon to… well, I think that’s a part of the story I can keep to myself.”
She giggled like a little girl and Grandfather asked his next question.
“Did you see anyone else when you were out there?”
She took a moment to prepare her answer. “No, though we did hear someone running up the steps immediately after we arrived. He was positively sprinting. I think it must have been a man from the sound of his footsteps. I can’t imagine any of the women running like that in their ball gowns.”
“And afterwards?”
“I went in through the offices on the lower floor so that no one would see the two of us together. I stopped at the first mirror I could find, to make sure I didn’t look a total mess and then went back upstairs.” She let out a lascivious laugh and something finally clicked in my brain. “By the time I got to the ballroom, Reginald was serving drinks and the toast had begun.”
Forgive my naivete, but it had taken me until now to understand what my chic, pretty cousin and our uncouth butler had been doing together. The revelation of a romantic entanglement between a servant and a member of my own family sparked a feeling of shock. The snobbery that had been hammered into me during the decade of my elite education rushed to the surface and, in the voice of my vitriolic headmaster, I thought, How dare they do such a thing!
Of course, this unease was quickly kicked from my head to make way for the realisation that, if Cousin Cora could fall in love with Fellowes without my Grandfather instantly disowning her, perhaps there was hope for Alice and myself. And as joyful as this made me, I couldn’t help wondering where Cora’s explanation fitted in with what we already knew of Belinda’s murder.
We now had the confirmation that she had thrown the stone against the drinks room window. It followed, therefore, that Fellowes had opened the champagne, then gone outside to meet Cora and do… whatever men and women do when they’re alone together (I have to admit, this is not something I’m entirely clear on. I did once ask my father, but his cheeks turned scarlet and he said, “It’s awfully complicated, old chap. My advice would be to get a book from the library.”)
So they were kissing, etc. when the killer slipped into the drinks room to put the cyanide in the champagne. The two of them finished up outside with the hugging and whatnot, Fellowes brought the champagne into the ballroom and Cora stumbled in, shortly after. Which was all well and good but it didn’t get us any closer to identifying our culprit.
No doubt going through a similar thought process to my own, Grandfather allowed her story to stew in his mind before formulating a response.
“Now, my dear, I’m sorry to tell you that Fellowes is in trouble. The police found out about his past and they’re going to pin the blame on him. It’s not because they have evidence, or he has any motive for murder, but because he’s the easiest fit.”
Cora bridled at the accusation. “They can’t do that.”
“They can and they will. They’ll say that he’s a disgruntled servant who couldn’t stand being ordered around anymore. They’ll find out from our relatives how rude he can be and the police will use whatever they come across to paint him as a violent, confrontational man. Blunt won’t listen to me, and there’s little I can do to control him. If you don’t tell the police about your relationship, I suspect that Reginald will at best spend his life in prison and worst book a trip to the gallows.”
Seizing hold of her belongings, Cora shot up to standing. “I must go, I should never have left the house this morning, not with the state that Reginald was in. I’d gone to check on him, you see, but when we heard people screaming outside, he feared that someone would notice I was missing and he begged me to leave.”
“Wait one moment. Did you see anyone else?” my grandfather followed up with. “Last night when you returned to the house or earlier this morning? Any of the other suspects perhaps?”
She thought for a second, her brow becoming furrowed. “Well, yes actually, I did. As I was leaving the servants’ quarters this morning, that boy was there.”
“You mean, Todd?” My grandfather asked, jerking his head back in the direction of the house.
“No, the tall boy with red hair who was at the ball. The one the police were after.”
“Marmal-” I began and then felt a bit silly and corrected myself. “Marmaduke Adelaide.”
“If you say so,” Cora replied, but I could see her mind was seven miles away with her stricken lover. She was already drifting towards her car. “He was lurking around and it was odd because we rather caught one another. He knew I wasn’t supposed to be there and I knew the police were looking for him. It was a stalemate and so he smiled, shook his head cheerily and got ou
t of my way.”
“Thank you, Cora,” my grandfather had to shout across the garden for the words to reach her. “I hope you can explain away any queries the police might have.”
Once she had gone, the old man fell into a silent fog of thought. He put his hands together and stared at a point beyond the end of his nose for some time. There wasn’t much I could do but wait. As there was no food left, Delilah took the opportunity to stretch her legs and went bounding across the messy garden after a wood pigeon.
“You haven’t drunk your tea, dear boy,” Great-Aunt Clementine kindly pointed out, so then I felt obliged to sip at the cold, milky brew. It tasted like bathwater but I showed my appreciation all the same.
I wondered how anyone thought it was a good idea to allow a person of her age and impairment to live all on her own with a staff of just five full-time servants. She was not exactly compos mentis. Her long white hair was fixed on the top of her head in a fashion which was far too young for her. Though she’d shed her eccentric ensemble from the previous evening, the outfit she now wore was tatty, creased and in a dull, floral fabric which looked older than she was.
In fact, everything about her was noticeably dishevelled, I doubt she’d brushed her teeth in a week, her fingers were black and grubby, as if she’d been foraging for food in Cranley Woods, and I couldn’t help worrying about the old girl. Drinking her disgusting tea was the least I could do.
She patted me on the hand once my cup was empty and said in her high, almost choral tone, “What a good boy you are. I’ll pour you some more.”
Luckily, this was the moment that Grandfather came back to us. “I don’t suppose you’ve got a clue what went on this morning at the house, have you, Clemmie?”
She looked a little concerned, perhaps fearing that she’d done something wrong and was about to be told off. “There was a ball, wasn’t there?”
“No, that was yesterday.” My grandfather attempted to hide his impatience.
“What was yesterday?”
“The ball!” My grandfather failed to hide his impatience.
“So then why were you asking about this morning?”
He groaned and appeared ready to give up when she spoke again.
“It was a lovely evening, I danced and sang and talked to so many wonderful people. Someone complimented me on my singing you know?”
“Yes, thank you. We were there. Though I wouldn’t put much stock in a compliment from Inspector Blunt.”
She rolled her eyes. “Not that scruffy little policeman, this was a man in a smart dinner suit, with a chiselled jaw and pure black hair like Rudolph Valentino’s. He popped up in the petit salon and startled me.”
I couldn’t say the words right then, so my grandfather said them for me. “Christopher’s father? Was it Walter you saw?”
In much the same carefree manner with which she’d entertained us in the smoking room the night before, she waved one hand through the air and said, “Well you know that I’m not good with names. He came rushing up the steps from the garden and it was quite a shock, as I’d dozed off for a moment. That’s why I sang to him; to calm us both down.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
I can’t say I’d seriously entertained the possibility of my father’s involvement in the crime until that moment. And, obviously, the fact that he was in the garden did not make him a murderer. What was troubling was that he hadn’t told us anything about it. He said he’d been on the terrace to get some air, not to traverse the house. So what was he doing out there?
“Todd, climb into the back seat please,” Lord Edgington told his chauffeur when we returned to the car.
The adventurous young fellow didn’t look too happy about this and I could see the excitement fade from his eyes.
“Oh, come along, man,” Grandfather yelled. “You can take the car out another day, but I need to talk to my grandson.”
He did as instructed, leaving me free to occupy the luxurious passenger seat – which Delilah immediately made more cramped by landing with a thump on my lap. A look of elation on his face, Grandfather pulled a pair of his own leather driving gloves on and started the engine.
“I want you to stay calm, boy.” He told me as we pulled out of Langford House and onto a country lane. “Just because your father has been hiding something from us, it doesn’t mean that he was plotting to kill you, me and our entire family.”
I nearly swallowed my tongue just then. “Thank you, Grandfather. But such a thought hadn’t entered my mind.”
“Jolly good.” The words came out as both apologetic and judgemental. As if he was sorry to promote such a dark hypothesis, but a little disappointed that I hadn’t struck upon it myself.
Though I may have been slow, my grandfather had certainly set the ball rolling. My brain was storming with the evidence of my father’s wickedness. I saw him running around the house to put the cyanide in the champagne in order to inherit Grandfather’s estate for himself, before slipping back into the ballroom. I imagined how he could have accessed the armoury in order to murder his brother-in-law and continue with his plan. I thought about his dark moods over the last few months as investment after investment in the City tumbled. Could my distant but gentle father really be capable of murder?
Accepting that he was willing to kill his wife, sons and wider family was not an easy thing to do and so I distracted myself by focussing on my grandfather’s words.
“It’s that Adelaide boy loitering in my house that concerns me.”
This came as a surprise and so I told him just that. “When I said that Marmaduke was involved, you told me I was being foolish.”
He made a short hmmm before replying. “No, I told you that we couldn’t jump to conclusions and condemn a man based on the idea he was a born monster. If your school chum is involved, it’s because he thought he could get something out of it or someone forced him to do it. I can tell you for certain that savage bloodlust played no part in these murders. The killer may have taken advantage of the circumstances, but he had a calculated plan. I still don’t think that a boy like Marmaduke Adelaide could be the person we’re looking for.”
As he spoke, my grandfather was paying more attention to this discussion than the speed we were travelling at. I could see from the steel dashboard that we were shooting along at way over sixty miles per hour. My father had never broken forty in our Bentley and was so protective of his favourite toy that he got nervous taking it out of the drive.
As the wind attacked my hair, I experienced a mix of fear, excitement and nausea. To be perfectly honest I’m not sure that humans are designed to travel at such a clip and it’s probably not too healthy for the brain. I clung onto Delilah for dear life.
“Perhaps that’s it!” I was beginning to think that detective work came to me naturally after all. “Perhaps someone forced Marmaduke to come to the ball and poison us. His father is the obvious suspect, but George brought him; maybe he’s involved.”
My grandfather didn’t respond so I continued. “What if George owes Mr Adelaide a chunk of dough-”
“Must you really use slang, Christopher?” he interrupted. “There’s a perfectly good word for money, it’s money. I do find such linguistic barbarity offensive.”
I tried to board my train of thought once more. “Oh… Sorry, Grandfather. But suppose that George is in debt to Horatio Adelaide – a man you arrested more than once – who sent his son to the ball to get even? Marmaduke could have acted as a lookout while George did the deed. We know he spilt his champagne. If it weren’t for Belinda’s impatience, he’d have been the only one not to drink.”
Grandfather bit his lip and pushed the Aston Martin faster along the smooth tarmacadam road. The sunlight cut through the trees we were passing under and the warm breeze seemed to will us back home to Cranley.
“Weren’t you the one who pointed out how obvious hi
s guilt would be if George was the only man left standing as we dropped about him like flies?” He had to shout to be heard by this point and I thought his choice of simile rather insensitive considering the bombardment Todd was enduring in the back seat. “And besides, if it was money George was after, he could have killed me and been done with it. I’m not going to suggest that his mother was an easy person to get along with, but I refuse to believe he would have murdered her and our whole family without necessity.”
Todd leaned forward from the back seat. He looked oddly green. “Milord, are you sure you want to be driving like that? There’s a bend ahead and you’re pushing seventy.”
Unruffled, Grandfather looked back over his shoulder with an enigmatic smile. “Oh, have some faith, man. It’s not the first time I’ve driven an automobile, you know!”
He put his head down like a racing driver as we approached a twisting chicane. I felt like closing my eyes, but it was impossible to look away. Sadly, my grandfather didn’t have any such qualms and turned to address me.
“I should never have locked myself away from the world for all those years. There is so much to do and I’ve so many wonders still to experience. My dear Katherine wouldn’t have wanted me to surrender like that.”
“Grandfather, the road!”
He winked at me and we flew through the bend with barely a tap of the brake.
“This is the stuff!” he said, before emitting a joyful whistle.
When we pulled up at the house, Todd and I remained in our seats in traumatised silence. Grandfather did not seem concerned.
“Todd,” he muttered, climbing from the vehicle to gaze at it with appreciation. “If you happened to hear anything that the boy and I were discussing, I’m sure you’ll keep it to yourself. There’s a good chap.”
He dusted down his cuffs and turned towards the house with Delilah at his heel. “Come along, Christopher. There’s a fugitive on the premises and the matter of some murders to solve. We’ve no time to waste.”
Murder at the Spring Ball: A 1920s Mystery Page 13