Murder at the Spring Ball: A 1920s Mystery

by Benedict Brown

  It was cold out and, though I could cower against the building to avoid the worst of the perpetual downfall, large drops occasionally splashed down upon me from the edge of the roof. It was enough to make a spy give up and go back inside!

  My commitment to the investigation held out though and, while I did get a little sleepy at one point, my watch finally bore fruits.

  “You mustn’t worry so much, Reg,” Cora told him and I wish that I hadn’t got distracted by a rather affectionate robin who had landed down beside me. “The old man adores you. And, though I may say so myself…” She let out a rather wicked laugh just then. “…he’s putty in my hands!”

  Fellowes joined in with the laughter and I heard a kissy noise that turned my stomach. The two of them were thrilling in their crimes and the deaths of my aunt and uncle.

  “All I’m saying is that we don’t want to do anything to compromise our position.”

  I heard the bed springs flex then and imagined that my scheming second cousin was cuddling up to her partner. “You’re such a worrier, Reg. Just stay calm and everything will turn out fine.”

  There was some more smacking of lips and I felt a bit guilty for listening into such a private moment, then remembered they were most likely murderers and didn’t feel so bad.

  As they enjoyed their time together, I processed the evidence against them once more. Fellowes was the one with primary access to the champagne. He’d left his post unnecessarily – I’m sorry, but butlers aren’t generally granted kissing breaks in the middle of an important function – and he even lied about hearing the gardeners call his name when first challenged on the issue.

  Cora on the other hand, stood to gain more than any other person without a glass of champagne. Though her elderly grandmother was the next in line to the family fortune, she was Clementine’s only direct heir and would easily have gained control of the inheritance. With Fellowes help, Cora must have planted the cyanide in the bottle. Which means that Maitland spotted them together and he was about to tell us when she shot him dead from the armoury, only to use the sleepy old woman as her alibi. As my parents descended to find out what had happened, the not entirely incapacitated Fellowes nipped upstairs to plant the crossbow. It all made sense!

  I’d answered Grandfather’s big outstanding question for certain now. All the pieces had fallen into place and so I let out another triumphant, “Yes!”

  “Chrissy?” Cora asked through the window. “Is that you out there?”

  I swallowed hard, feeling dreadfully silly. Richard Hannay would never have made such an amateurish mistake!

  “Um, yes. It’s me.” I searched through the winding corridors of my brain for something to explain why I was outside their window, in the rain, whilst they were in bed together. “I… You see… There was a robin out here. Awfully friendly chap. He’s gone now, but I wasn’t listening to your conversation. I promise.”

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Despite this minor setback to my otherwise sterling detective work, I returned to the relative warmth of Cranley Hall. I couldn’t decide whether to head back to my room to update my notebook on my findings, or search out Grandfather to reveal the terrifying truth I had discovered. In the end, the choice was made for me.

  “Chrissy,” the old man’s voice boomed out of the ballroom as I passed.

  Until now, there had been chairs blocking the entrance, which the police had put there to stop anyone contaminating the crime scene. Of course, if anyone had the authority to barge through them it was former-Superintendent Edgington. When I looped back and stepped inside, he was standing in the middle of the room, apparently in a daze.

  I didn’t like to say anything as he looked so distant that I was afraid he was sleepwalking and I know how dangerous it can be to wake a somnambulist. I read a newspaper article once about a woman in East Grinstead who beat her husband to death with a chair leg after he attempted to wake her. I wouldn’t be trying that.

  It turned out, though, that Grandfather wasn’t sleeping at all. He glanced around the ballroom inquisitively, as though deciding what new furnishings to buy. Furthermore, he wasn’t alone. I hadn’t spotted him at first, but Todd was standing near the French windows and Halfpenny was sitting beside the door to the grand salon, looking bored.

  “One moment, Chrissy,” Grandfather told me. “We’re working through something. I’ll explain when I can.”

  Just then, dear, sweet Alice bustled past me from the corridor. She was apparently quite drunk all of a sudden.

  “Excellent acting, Alice.” Grandfather beat his hands together in appreciation. “Really quite remarkable stuff.”

  “Thank you, Milord,” she replied in a voice that was as melodic as any Celtic harp.

  “Stay in character, though. I need to maintain the atmosphere if we’re going to work this thing out.”

  I was surprised to see Cook appear in the doorway, pushing a drinks trolley with a host of champagne flutes on board.

  “I’ll put these over here shall, I, Milord?” she asked, as she came to a stop near her employer.

  “Jolly good, Cook.”

  To complete the tableau, the two gardeners came in from the hall in the slow, apologetic manner they adopted whenever Grandfather was present.

  Our host looked about between his staff. When no one else joined us, he explained, “We’re a couple of suspects short. Marmaduke Adelaide remained outside on the terrace, whilst my dear sister-in-law was asleep in one of the neighbouring rooms.”

  It was at this point that I finally realised what was going on. They were re-enacting the events of Aunt Belinda’s last moments on Earth.

  Grandfather stepped forward to direct. “So, we all took a glass.”

  Todd, the two gardeners, Alice and Halfpenny – who were standing in for our suspects – seized their glasses from the trolley and Cook mimed the pouring of the champagne.

  “No, not like that, Cook,” Grandfather admonished. “Fellowes had already poured out the glasses in the drinks room by this point. In fact, you can go back to the kitchen if you’re busy.”

  “Perfect,” she replied with a grin. “I’m making a cottage pie for supper and I must get on.”

  “Your own recipe?” Grandfather enquired, sounding quite excited.

  “That’s right. Beef and peanuts.”

  “Delightful! Off you pop then.”

  After our seasoned chef had left the scene, the old man turned his attention to Todd. “Right, at this moment, I was making my speech, but Belinda didn’t wait for the toast to drink her champagne and it was soon after that-”

  Todd clutched his neck and, wandering back towards the row of chairs at the side of the room, collapsed with a noisy imitation of a death gurgle.

  “No need to be quite so graphic, thank you, Todd.” My grandfather’s moustaches scrunched together in disapproval.

  Unperturbed by the critique that his employer had provided, Todd bolted upright on the floor. “Actually, Milord, this doesn’t make any sense. I can’t be Belinda.”

  His concentration broken once more, Grandfather let out a huff. “And why’s that, my man?”

  “Because I was there on the night.” Todd spoke as if the significance of this fact should be wildly apparent. “If I’m Belinda, who’s playing me?”

  Grandfather rolled his eyes to the ceiling. “Yes, that’s an admirable point, Todd. But we’re mainly focussed on the suspects to the murder here. As fine a job as you did behind the bar, I think we can manage without a stand in. Now, if it isn’t too much trouble, be a good chap and die.”

  Todd gave a cheerful smile, emitted another stomach-churning noise from deep in his throat and collapsed once more.

  Grandfather continued with the re-enactment. “So, George rushed over to his mother, we all thought she had imbibed a little too freely and then…”

  He ca
me to a sudden halt. Looking about at the various players, he was whispering something to himself, but I couldn’t work out what it was. We waited expectantly for him to reveal what he had discovered. Instead, he peered around the room, spinning slowly on the ball of one foot.

  “No, it’s no good,” he finally declared, after everyone was tired of holding their positions like statues and our dead body had opened his eyes several times to see what was going on. “I appreciate your help, but you can all go back to your regular duties. I shall seek you out again if anything else occurs to me.”

  “We have every faith in you, Milord.” Old Halfpenny, who has always been a bit of a bootlicker, bowed low before ushering the others out of the room. I had no doubt that he was enjoying his role at the top of the household staff in Fellowes’s absence. From what I’d heard in the servants’ quarters, it didn’t sound as though he would maintain this lofty position for much longer as Fellowes was clearly on the mend.

  Whether or not Grandfather had learnt anything from this piece of theatre, yet another clue to our culprits’ guilt had clicked into place in my brain. Seeing the events unfold for the second time, I remembered Cora claiming that, having taken her time to check her appearance in a mirror, she entered the ballroom to find that the toast had started. But on both the night of the ball, and now in Grandfather’s re-staging, she had been the first of the two to appear. So why lie?

  I’ll tell you why! Because their whole story from beginning to end was one elaborate concoction. There was no opportunity for anyone else to poison the champagne because Fellowes was the poisoner all along. Cora made sure that the job was in progress before running along to the ball to be seen there when the supposed killer was supposedly doing the deed!

  Gosh! My skills of deduction had improved beyond recognition. What an incredible job my grandfather had done training me in such a short time. He’d still shown signs of his famous abilities, of course, but, in his dotage, he was simply too trusting. He’d been taken in by Cora and Fellowes’s innocent act, but I refused to be so easily led.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Once the others had left, I was at a quandary over how to present my discoveries to Grandfather. Luckily, he made it easy.

  “What is it that I’m missing?”

  It was the perfect moment to reveal the truth, but discretion is the better part of valour and all that, so I had to phrase it diplomatically. “Don’t blame yourself, Grandfather. It’s not your fault that you haven’t found the killer.”

  He looked a little confused. “Finding the killer isn’t necessarily the problem. It’s in piecing every scrap of evidence together that things get complicated. I could prove to you that several of our suspects had the means and opportunity to carry out the killings. And I have no doubt that the evidence I have already assembled would be enough to convince a jury, but there are still so many question marks and contradictions to account for.”

  His answer had knocked the wind out of me a little and I posed a question of my own. “Oh yes?” I tried to sound cool and disinterested, as though I weren’t checking to see whether he’d worked out something that I’d failed to. “Like what for example?”

  His answer came out in a torrent as he zipped about the room, retracing the steps of our suspects at the ball.

  “For one thing, we don’t know what Maitland saw on the night his sister was killed.” I thought, I do, but I let him continue. “There’s also the question of how the killer managed to plant the crossbow in your parents’ bedroom without being caught after the second murder.” Transparently obvious! “And why he only put Fellowes out of action temporarily instead of sending him to the mortuary.”

  His erratic journey came to a stop at the place where Aunt Belinda had breathed her last, and he threw his arms in the air in frustration. “I don’t even know for certain why my children were killed. Most investigations begin by focussing on the victim, but I’ve been so set on the idea that this whole thing came about because someone was after my money that I’ve ignored the basic tenets of police work.”

  He crashed down in the nearest chair and buried his head in his hands. I felt awful for him and realised that it was my job to help him along to the solution. Perhaps I’d never tell him that I’d discovered it first. He could have all the glory and I’d enjoy the satisfaction of making an elderly chap feel less bleak about the world.

  “Why don’t we go back to the beginning and think about everything we know about Belinda, Maitland and our suspects?”

  He didn’t look up at me immediately but, when he spoke again, his voice was calmer. “That’s a grand idea, Christopher. Really, top notch.”

  “Why don’t you start with Cora and Fellowes?” I suggested, as subtly as a fox.

  He was up on his feet and back to his old self, but instantly brushed aside my idea. “No, no. We’ve already ruled them out. That would just be a waste of time.”

  I felt like screaming. Of all the stubborn, pig-headed people I’d ever met, he had to be the worst!

  “Let’s start with Belinda as you suggested before.” He breathed in to steel himself for what he was about to do. “Though we believe every glass of champagne was poisoned, the killer might have predicted that she would be the first to drink. So, why would anyone want her dead?”

  “She wasn’t the most popular person in the family and she’d been jealous of me for helping you prepare the ball when…” I never finished that sentence as I realised that it might well implicate my father in the crime.

  Luckily, Grandfather had his mind on other things. “No, it has to be something bigger. You’re right that she was unpopular. Belinda had the most impressive skill for making enemies. Even my staff couldn’t stand her. But she wasn’t close enough to anyone outside the family to warrant murdering.” It was odd to hear him speak of his daughter in such unfavourable terms. “If anyone had something against her, it was George.”

  A thought sprang to mind. “You’re right. We know that Belinda had stopped paying her son’s debts. Perhaps he was seeking revenge.”

  Grandfather stroked the long, white hair on one side of his jaw. “Yes, and I have to say, I wasn’t entirely convinced by what your cousin had to say for himself. You were right about George, he’s not the kind soul I believed him to be. He assaulted a sixteen-year-old boy and, though he might claim that he was sticking up for you, I do not believe it for one moment. We know he would gain from the death of his mother, that there was no risk of him drinking the poison after he dropped his glass and that he is in debt to a potentially dangerous adversary.”

  I was carried along on the wave of his ratiocination and almost forgot about my own infallible theory. “So you’re saying he’s our man?”

  He thought for a moment then shook his head. “No, it’s not enough. We haven’t found a shred of physical evidence to link him to either of the murders and I think it would be a stretch for him to have poisoned Fellowes, unless he was working with an accomplice.”

  “Then what about the Adelaides?”

  “Nope. That’s a dead end, I’m sure of it. As George told us himself, Horatio Adelaide has spent the last three decades keeping his distance from violent crimes. It wouldn’t make sense for George to kill anyone on his behalf.”

  It was good to see him recover his vigour and I urged him on once more. “It seems like you’ve ruled him out then. So that’s one down. And Clementine surely can’t have been involved.”

  He turned away from me abruptly and marched from the room. I was rather tired of chasing around after him, and positively fed up of my supposed mentor ignoring my ideas, but I followed him anyway.

  “Haven’t you learnt anything from me, Christopher?” he down the hall. “We can never rule out a suspect until we have concrete evidence that they were in no way involved.”

  I drew alongside him as he stepped into the library. “But you just did the very same th
ing with Cora and Fellowes!”

  “Yes, but only because I have concrete evidence that they were in no way involved.”

  I groaned then as, even by our family’s standards, he was becoming eccentric.

  I had to wonder whether he’d slept at all the night before, as the room we’d entered was covered with scraps of paper. There were hundreds of the things, taking up every inch of carpet, floorboard and desk and I had to walk over them to sit down in my usual armchair. I took a peek at the notes around me, but the handwriting was practically illegible.

  I continued to lay out the evidence. “Great-Aunt Clementine is a thousand years old and can barely look after herself. She surely wouldn’t have had the physical or mental capacity to carry out such an elaborate scheme.”

  His distaste for his sister-in-law flared up and he let out a snorting laugh. “Ha, that’s just what she wants you to believe!”

  I really felt like waving the white flag at this point, but responded all the same. “You can’t mean that, Grandfather. Didn’t you see how grubby she was when we went to her house? She was covered in dirt and the place was an absolute pigsty. I really don’t think she could have been involved.”

  “Prove it!” the belligerent old man declared, in a rather school-boyish manner.

  “I’m sorry?”

  “You heard me.”

  I tried to think of some concrete evidence to rule out his far-fetched theory but failed. “I can’t prove it,” I had to admit. “There’s no way to say she’s undeniably innocent.”

  “Exactly!” He sat down rather proudly on the overlapping notes on his desk. “Do you understand what I’m saying now? We can’t rule out anyone until we can rule them out. And that’s been the problem with this case from the beginning. Too many suspects, too many avenues of thought. Even Maitland, may God rest his soul, can’t be excluded altogether from the investigation.”