Amelia gave him a glare and said, “There should be eight of us, sir. The Chaplain asked me to give you his apologies. He has to take his Scripture class at the village school.”
“Eight it is,” said Holdfast after a glance around the room. At bottom he was a sound fellow and a good support.
“Splendid.” I launched into my announcement, putting it to them in a positive manner that brooked no interference. The investigation, I informed them, was already well advanced. Statements had been collected from the servants, and Inspector Sweeney (who was at my side, looking pale) had spent much of the night comparing them. We were now about to begin the second stage of our inquiry, namely the questioning of the present company. It was imperative that they remain in the house for the rest of the day.
The moment I stopped talking, Pelham inquired, “What have you learned so far, Your Royal Highness? Have you found any clues?”
“Clues? What are they?” cried Lady Holdfast, lifting her feet off the floor and staring about her as if they were cockroaches.
“Ignore him,” said Amelia. “He reads the police reports in the newspaper and he wants to impress you all.”
“Actually, a clew,” Pelham insisted on telling us and spelling the word, “is a ball of thread. Anyone who knows the classics must remember the clew that Ariadne gave Theseus to unwind behind him as he went through the labyrinth at Crete. So in its modern rendering, Lady Holdfast, a clue—c-l-u-e—is anything that guides or directs one in an intricate case. Proper detectives always look for clues.”
“Oh. Have you discovered any?” asked Lady Holdfast, trying to sound calm again. “Do tell us, Your Royal Highness!”
I was cautious. For one thing I didn’t want to alarm people by telling them about the pieces of paper found with each of the bodies and the significance I attached to them; for another, I meant to deprive the murderer of the attention she (or he) was seeking. In that way, we might lure her (or him) into the open. So I said, “We are far advanced with our investigation and we only require your help to bring it to a swift conclusion.”
“You can speak frankly to us,” said Pelham.
“That is exactly what I have done.”
“And we support you to a man,” said George Holdfast. “Who do you want to question first, Bertie?”
“Our hostess,” said I.
Amelia turned pink.
“And, in due course, each of you,” I added.
“Don’t leave out the Chaplain, will you?” said Pelham. “He could be a vital witness. He was here last night, remember, and he was at the table on Monday when Miss Chimes collapsed. He’s as warm a suspect as anyone else.”
“Fie on you!” said Lady Holdfast. “A man of the Church?”
“The Chaplain will be invited to assist us,” said I. Then Alix quietly added, “And Claude Bullivant?”
“Claude?” I said. “Isn’t he here? I thought we were all present.”
“Oh, my word!” cried Lady Holdfast. “What’s happened to Mr. Bullivant?”
“We counted eight,” said Amelia, “But we must have included Inspector Sweeney.”
Her brother said, “Then where the devil is Bullivant? Did anyone tell him about the meeting?”
George Holdfast asked, “Has anyone seen him since last night?”
Miss Dundas cleared her throat to speak. I cut in gallantly, “Yes, I saw him in the small hours. I expect he overslept, like me. Better send a servant up to his room.”
So we adjourned. The man sent to rouse Bullivant returned shortly to report that he wasn’t in his bedroom. I was unperturbed. Bullivant wasn’t earmarked as the next victim of our killer; in no conceivable way had he “far to go.” But it did cross my mind that he might have come to grief climbing over balconies by night. So I ordered a search of the immediate grounds. Another mishap, from whatever cause, would not be good for morale.
Amelia lingered in the morning room, waiting to be questioned. Catching her eye, I said, “It’s a fine morning. Why don’t you put on a coat and we’ll take a walk outside?”
I turned to Sweeney and instructed him to stay with Miss Dundas.
“Shall I question her, sir?”
“Better not. Just guard her like a crock of gold, Sweeney.”
“Depend upon it, sir.” And he couldn’t resist adding, “Protection duty is my proper function.”
So I stepped outside the house with its pretty owner and escorted her slowly along the gravel path that led past the croquet lawn to a rock garden. “This is a fine pickle, Amelia,” I said without preamble. “What’s behind it?”
She looked up at me uncertainly, her hazel-green eyes glistening moistly. I must say she appeared a picture of fragility in her black coat with beaver trim and matching hat. “I wish I could understand.”
I said sternly, “You had better try. The plain fact is that you invited a number of guests to your house and three of them are dead. They were not killed at random. They were chosen victims. If I understand it right, you prepared the guest list.”
She took a quick, frightened breath, yet still had the temerity to say, “It was sent to Marlborough House for your approval, sir.”
“I know that,” I said curtly. “The names were your choice, were they not?”
She hesitated. “Well, yes.”
“No one else influenced your choice? Your brother, possibly?”
“Marcus? No, I didn’t consult him. The list was my own absolutely.”
“Hm.” This was becoming more damning by the moment. Time for a smoke, I thought—one reason why I’d suggested an interview outside. I put a match to a Tsar that I had ready in my pocket. “You had better tell me why you chose this particular set of people.”
We walked on for some distance before she replied, “They had to be guests who would meet your approval, sir.”
A pretty low punch. I refused to let it wind me. “That wasn’t the only criterion, surely?”
She said, “As it was a shooting party, I nominated the guns first. Your name was top of the list. Then I selected several gentlemen I considered worthy to stand with you, old friends who shot here when Freddie was alive. Sir George, Wilfred, Claude and Jerry. All distinguished people. Marcus had to be included to act as host. Oh, and the Chaplain attends all the social events at Desborough. Really it was quite obvious who should come. I did include another neighbor on the original list.”
“The V.C.?”
“Colonel Roberts, yes. He’s new in the county. I met him at the Hunt Ball. Knowing that he was a sportsman and a gallant soldier, I thought he might be suitable, but you struck him out.”
“So I did. Thirteen on the list. That was tempting the fates. I did your Colonel a good turn, as things turned out. He might have been dead by now.”
She shivered. “Don’t! It’s too horrible to contemplate.”
We had come to a bench overlooking the croquet lawn, so I suggested we sit down. “Now you can tell me how you selected the ladies. That is, apart from Alix and Lady Holdfast.”
“Who does that leave? Queenie Chimes and Isabella Dundas. Well, sir, I first met Queenie at the Church garden party. It was well known locally that she came to stay at Jerry Gribble’s house for occasional weekends, and the poor man really wasn’t himself without her. As for Isabella, I wanted to include a lady of character, someone with sand in her boots, so to speak. She gave a very impressive lecture at the Beaconsfield Geographical Society last January and I was introduced to her afterwards. We corresponded and she accepted my invitation. Without disrespect to the other ladies, I felt that her presence would add intellectual weight to the female side of the party.”
“But you didn’t know her before last January?”
“I’d read about her in the magazines, that was all.”
“You bear her no ill will?”
�
�Quite the contrary! Why do you ask?”
“No matter. And you say that your acquaintance with Queenie Chimes was slight?”
“I met her on three or four social occasions in this neighborhood.”
“You didn’t disapprove of her morals?”
“Sir, if I had, I would not have invited her to Desborough. I’m not a prude.” She looked away, across the croquet lawn. “I believe I know what you’re thinking. But if I’d wanted to do away with Queenie for some unfathomable reason, I’d be a fool to do it in my own house in full view of all those guests. And I wouldn’t have dreamed of shooting poor Jerry. He was a darling, one of our oldest and best-loved friends.”
“Since you’ve mentioned Jerry,” I said, “was there any breath of scandal locally about his liaison with Queenie?”
“I couldn’t say. I don’t listen to gossip.”
“I was thinking of people who knew the wives he divorced and may have felt angry that he should now take up with an actress.”
“Plenty have behaved worse than that,” she replied. “It wasn’t as if he was still married.” Then she shot her hand to her mouth. “Oh, dear! I mean nothing personal, sir, really, I don’t.”
I shook my head. “You won’t embarrass me, Amelia. But I shall expect you to answer a personal question with the same candor. Was there ever any suggestion that Jerry might marry you after Freddie died?”
Her cheeks turned scarlet. “Jerry? He was twice my age.”
“He was twice Queenie’s age.”
“I was speaking for myself.”
“Ah, but from Jerry’s point of view, you were his neighbor, a pretty widow he’d known for years. It would be strange indeed if he hadn’t given some thought to your future. May I have an answer to my question? Did he ask you to marry him?”
There was a pause, followed by a sigh. “It’s painful to speak of. He didn’t propose. He said after two marriages he had a horror of front pews. He wanted me to live with him, to live in sin. Of course I refused. I made light of it, and we remained friends. He was charming about it. I don’t know to this day how serious he was. Please, I wouldn’t want this mentioned to anyone else. I was never Jerry’s lover.”
Her statement impressed me. Jerry’s maxim about the front pew sounded so typical of the things he trotted out. But if I believed Amelia, my theory ran aground. If she hadn’t been jealous of Queenie Chimes and angry with Jerry, what motive had she for killing them?
Stumped for the moment, I moved obliquely to the matter of the other victim. “If you were to take a lover, he would have to be a younger man?”
She stood up. “I’d like to walk on, if you don’t mind. It’s cold sitting still.”
“Such as your poet,” I said, flicking the ash from my cigar.
She didn’t deny it, which was a point in her favor. Instead she asked, “Sir, perhaps you will tell me what is behind that observation?”
“Certainly. I happen to know that Osgot-Edge visited your room the night before he died.” I saw the muscles flex at the side of her face. “Suppose, for the sake of argument, you had killed the other two, and Osgot-Edge found out and was profoundly shocked that the lady he loved could be capable of murder—”
“You are wrong!”
“—then you had a motive for killing him as well.”
“I did not!” Her eyes managed to glisten with tears and burn like beacons at the same time. “Yes, he was my lover. That is the only thing you said that is true. Wilfred was a kind, courageous, gentle-hearted man. Whoever killed him is a demon.” With that, she broke into a fit of weeping and ran away from me.
This was dreadful. I had overstepped the mark. I couldn’t allow the interview to end tike this. I tossed away the cigar and ran after her. “Amelia!”
Unhappily, my running is usually done astride a hack. The lady was too fast for me. She ran up the steps of the house and through the door before I reached the staircase. She was still sobbing pitiably.
I pounded up the steps after her, sounding like a bulldog with bronchitis, through the hall and into the morning room. Six pairs of eyes stared at me.
“Next?” said Marcus Pelham.
CHAPTER 13
“Has Bullivant appeared yet?” I asked.
Inspector Sweeney gave me a persecuted look, then told me not only that the search for Bullivant had been unproductive, but that people were becoming agitated.
“Probably he went for a long walk,” I said. “I dare say he’ll appear for luncheon.”
“Might I have a private word with you, sir?” Sweeney asked. Before we had withdrawn to the far end of the room he said, “I wouldn’t describe myself as a detective, sir—”
“I know that,” I said through gritted teeth, “but you don’t have to broadcast it to all and sundry. Keep your voice down.”
“This Lady Holdfast, sir. She’s acting like a guilty person, saying over and over that she wants to leave the house as soon as possible. She’s giving her husband the devil of a time, sir.”
“Pure nerves,” I told him.
“I’d be nervous myself if I’d murdered three people, sir. She has a wild look in her eye. I wouldn’t care to meet her with a dagger in a dark room.”
“That may be so, Sweeney, but I need something more to go on than a wild look.”
“I thought I’d mention it.”
“And you have.”
“You could question her next, sir.”
“And give her the excuse to leave? No, she’ll have to wait. Return to your bodyguarding. That’s what you do best. Leave the conduct of the case to me.”
I fingered my watch chain and thought what on earth shall I do next? Interview another suspect. Young Pelham will do. But when I crossed the room, he had gone.
“If you’re looking for Marcus, he went up to see what he could do for Amelia,” Alix informed me without looking up from her needlework. “She was plainly distressed when she came in.”
The notion of Marcus Pelham comforting his sister was so unlikely that it warranted investigating. Instead of sending for him, I went upstairs myself, just as I approached Amelia’s room, the door opened and Pelham emerged. He closed it, hastily, I thought. “How is your sister?” I inquired.
“Resting. She wants to be quiet for a while. She seems wrought up. I promised her she wouldn’t be disturbed before luncheon.”
“How thankful she must be.”
He frowned at me. “Thankful?”
“To have a dear brother to comfort and protect her,” said I with a straight face. “You had better escort me downstairs, hadn’t you, seeing that I was the instrument of her distress? I want to put some questions to you anyway. Let’s see how you stand up to the inquisition.”
He grinned sourly.
I took him through a different part of the garden, past borders where forlorn chrysanthemums lingered into the autumn on stems with shriveled leaves. “Where does this lead?” I asked.
“I couldn’t say.”
Ungracious pup. “Have the good manners to address me properly, would you? Surely you know the garden well?”
He shook his head.
I warned him, “You’re testing my patience, laddie.”
“It’s true,” he said defiantly, and then added tamely as I conveyed my displeasure with a look, “Sir. I’m as much of a stranger here as yourself. This is the first year I’ve been invited to shoot at Desborough. I wasn’t welcome when Freddie was alive and I’m only here now because my sister needs a man to act as host.”
“What was Freddie’s objection to you?”
“He found out that Amelia was paying off my debts from time to time. Bloody Freddie would cheerfully have seen me in the poorhouse.”
“How did the debts arise? Do you gamble?”
“Not to excess.” Sensing, correctly, that I would
erupt if I heard one more boorish word from him, he added “sir” as an afterthought and volunteered some information. “This may seem difficult to credit, but my sister and I had a strict upbringing. Our father was an archdeacon. In the last century there was money to burn in our family, huge estates, rents, all a gentleman could want. Then one morning, out of the blue, Grandfather Pelham—Sir Hugh, as he was—heard the call of God. He renounced his life as one of the gentry and studied to become a parson. He found the scriptures difficult to master, so he was never admitted to holy orders, but he made sure that my father and my three uncles all wore the cloth. The Pelham estates were given to the Church because the Bible tells us not to lay up treasures upon earth.”
“That’s a text I’ve pondered more than once,” said I. “I’m not much of a theologist, I admit, but I would have thought that handing over one’s inheritance to the Church of England would put the Church itself in danger of laying up treasures. No, I take it as an injunction to spend generously while one has the means, don’t you?”
Young Pelham wasn’t much of a theologist either. He sidestepped the question. “Well, enough was provided for my school fees and Oxford and then I was supposed to take holy orders myself, but I rebelled. I wasn’t suited for preaching, damn it.”
“That is evident.”
“I’m with my eighteenth-century ancestors in spirit.”
“In spirit, but not in funds.”
He nodded.
I said, “How thoughtful of your sister to have married a rich man like Freddie Drummond!” Provocative, I grant you, but the sarcasm rolled off this young man. We walked on in silence for a stretch and entered a walled vegetable garden. I may have appeared quiet, but as we strolled among the ranks of savoys I was busy revising my opinion of Marcus Pelham. Until then I had put him down as a man unhealthily infatuated with his own sister and jealous of any fellow who showed the slightest interest in her. Apparently I had been mistaken. The interest wasn’t incestuous. It was pecuniary. He was afraid of someone marrying her and putting a stop to the payments.
I said, “Don’t you have any private income at all?”
Bertie and the Seven Bodies Page 12