Bertie and the Seven Bodies

by Peter Lovesey

  “Accidentally shot, sir. On that occasion there was no ques­tion of deliberate murder. The boy happened to stray ahead of the beaters. One of the guns heard something in the thicket and took a shot at what he supposed was a wounded bird.”

  “Who fired the shot?”

  “I didn’t witness the incident, sir.” He had his back to me, pouring from the decanter. Interesting, isn’t it, how much you can tell about a man’s state of mind by looking at his back?

  “But you know who fired it?”

  “The members of the shooting party resolved to treat the incident as a closed book after the boy was buried.” He handed me a glass. “The poor lad was an orphan so we laid him to rest in the village churchyard the next day.”

  “I must insist that you answer my question, Padre. Who was it who shot the boy?”

  He sighed. “Sir, in all humility I beg of you to respect the confidentiality of this information. It was Mr. Bullivant.”

  “Bullivant?” I got up and walked to the window. “I should have guessed. Things are beginning to fall into place. Who else was of the party—Jerry Gribble?”

  “Jerry, yes.”

  “Freddie Drummond, of course?”

  “Er—yes.”

  “Osgot-Edge?”

  “Yes.” You’d have thought every “yes” was a slate from the roof of his church.

  “Any other guns?”

  “No, sir,” he said with relief.

  But I hadn’t finished. “And the ladies, apart from Amelia? Miss Chimes, perhaps?”

  “No, sir. There were no other ladies present.”

  “How dreary. I do think a complement of ladies makes for a more agreeable atmosphere, don’t you?”

  He didn’t answer. Perhaps it wasn’t a fair question, though I’ve known parsons who would have answered strongly in the affirmative.

  Returning to matters more pressing, I said, “Well, Padre, how soon can we have the funeral?”

  Dinner was destined to be a subdued occasion that evening, so I had no qualms about telling them between cours­es that we would bury Osgot-Edge on Saturday at noon in the village churchyard. The ladies—that is to say, Amelia and Miss Dundas—immediately fell to debating what they would wear. Marcus Pelham quizzed me on the formalities—the need to obtain a death certificate from a doctor and the difficulties atten­dant on employing an undertaker. Fortunately I was able to pass on the reassurance that the Reverend Humphrey Paget (who had murmured something about a choir practice and taken to his heels after the interview with me) was hand in glove with Dr. Perkins and Mr. Hibbert, the gentlemen who fulfilled those offices in the district. Osgot-Edge’s death would go down as heart failure and he would be buried in a nightshirt buttoned to the chin. The Chaplain, the doctor and the undertaker were not unused to cooperating to cause the least embarrassment to the families of the departed. In country districts such as this, death had an inconvenient habit of occurring during bouts of inebria­tion or infidelity that would have caused no end of humiliation to the bereaved had our resourceful trio not combined to cir­cumvent it.

  George Holdfast then remarked, “And Bullivant? Will he be buried at the same time?”

  I said, “Between ourselves, George, I think it unlikely that we will succeed in raising him. As I mentioned to the Chaplain, the sensible procedure may be to say the burial service at the top of the well.”

  “And block it up after?”

  “Exactly.”

  Amelia broke off her description of a crepe bonnet to say, “Nobody has used it for years.”

  Holdfast said, “What’s your source of water, then? Are you on the mains, my dear?”

  “I’ve never enquired.”

  “Might be prudent to find out.”

  To finish the evening on a less depressing note, I sug­gested a few rubbers of bridge. How often have I been grate­ful for my pack of playing cards when more boisterous enter­tainment is unsuitable to the occasion. One has to say it: the Royal Family is so numerous that Court mourning is practi­cally the norm. And when one is obliged to show respect each time some European Grand Duke gives up the ghost, it’s no wonder that I can deal the cards as smoothly as a Mississippi sharp.

  Seeing that we were five in number, Pelham said with more tact than I thought he possessed that he would go and look for Sweeney for a game of billiards, leaving Holdfast and yours truly to get up a four with the two ladies. I partnered Isabella Dundas, who seemed to understand my calls like the sounds of the jungle, and we lost only one rubber all evening. There was no acrimony from the other side, either. In fact, Amelia’s good humor was quite restored, for Holdfast repeatedly praised her play and claimed that all the mistakes were his own. I’m sure it was a tonic for us all to pass two hours without once referring to the dreadful events of recent days.

  We had a final drink and some warm sausage rolls soon after midnight and sent for the candles. Cheery good nights were exchanged, though I have to say that we sounded awfully like provincial actors speaking lines.

  Upstairs, it was comforting to see a light under the door to the rooms Alix had so recently occupied. I dismissed the foot­man and went in to have a few words with Sweeney, whom I discovered to be mother-naked, a curious, hairy specimen of manhood among the pink bed hangings and cornflower-blue walls. He grabbed his nightshirt and apologized.

  “Not at all,” I told him. “I never knock on bedroom doors, so it isn’t the first time, although I will say I’ve made prettier dis­coveries. I hope you gave young Pelham a pasting.”

  “The billiards, sir? Not at all. I should have played him for matchsticks. He’s a regular demon with the cue. Did you learn anything over the card table?”

  “Quite the reverse. Miss Dundas and I gave a lesson in bridge to Sir George Holdfast and Lady Drummond, if that’s what you mean.”

  “I’m glad to hear it, sir. Actually I was enquiring about the case.”

  “The investigation? That’s over, Sweeney. Didn’t you hear? Bullivant killed the others and then did away with him­self. What is more, I have now deduced the motive. Would you be interested to hear it?”

  “I’m all ears, sir.”

  “I wouldn’t have said so when I opened the door just now.” I got a sheepish grin for the quip. It was slow in coming, but no matter. I used the time to settle into an armchair and light a cigar. “Be seated, man. You don’t have to stand on ceremony now. You can get into bed for all I care. Now, the key to this case is a very unfortunate incident that happened a year ago. It was mentioned to me first by Osgot-Edge after Jerry was shot. Pelham gave me the gist of the story and later the house steward referred to it obliquely, but I had to prize the crucial facts from the Chaplain this evening. A boy was accidentally shot and killed at last year’s shooting party. By Claude Bullivant. Did you know that?”

  “I did not, sir.”

  “The lad was without parents, so the Chaplain was per­suaded to conduct a funeral with all speed and in the utmost pri­vacy, and the members of the shooting party pledged themselves to regard the incident as a close secret. And of course the ser­vants were instructed on pain of dismissal not to mention it to anyone. Bullivant must have spent some sleepless nights, but as time passed and nothing more was said, it seemed that the acci­dent really had been successfully swept under the carpet. So suc­cessfully, in fact, that Lady Drummond had no qualms about holding another shooting party at Desborough this autumn and inviting me as her principal guest and Bullivant as one of the guns. So we all arrived expecting a fine week of sport, and on the first evening one of the party was poisoned—Miss Queenie Chimes, the Duke of Bournemouth’s doxy. And who was seat­ed on her left at dinner? Claude Bullivant.”

  Sweeney’s face was a study,

  “Why was the lady murdered?” I mused. “Have you any suggestion, Inspector?”

  “None, sir.”

  I sha
med him with a shake of the head. “You must tell me what you think of mine, then. There was rather more to Miss Queenie Chimes than met the eye. She was a scheming young woman, an adventuress, as Her Majesty the Queen would put it, and I’ll tell you how I know. I have it from Marcus Pelham that before Miss Chimes met Jerry she con­trived a meeting with Marcus and invited him to the Lyceum. Did I tell you she was an actress in Irving’s company? Well, he was presented with tickets on several other occasions and she met him for supper after the performance each time. However, I have Pelham’s word that it wasn’t a romantic fling, and I believe him. Queenie was pumping him for information, Sweeney. He put it down to natural curiosity. I’m convinced he was mistaken. Somehow or other that young woman had learned about the shooting accident. Someone had talked. So this minor actress, trying to exist on the paltry money Irving pays his underlings—and Irving is notoriously close—this hard up, scheming little supernumerary saw a way of putting the information to profitable use.”

  “Blackmail, sir?”

  “Pray allow me to continue. She befriended Marcus, thinking that he would be her entrée to this year’s shooting party, but inconveniently for her plans, Marcus isn’t a lady’s man, so she had to look elsewhere. She settled on Jerry, who had chalked up two marriages and two divorces and still hadn’t learned to resist the flutter of eyelashes. In no time she was at his side wher­ever he appeared. And when the invitations to the shooting party were sent out, Queenie was on the list.”

  I paused. “What I am about to say now is conjecture, Sweeney, but I think you will agree that it provides a credible explanation of the ghastly events that happened later. I believe this artful young woman must also have made some sort of approach to Claude Bullivant and thoroughly alarmed him. Months ago, before she met Jerry, I think she tried her damnedest to win her way into Bullivant’s affections, and when that didn’t work because he guessed what she was up to, she threatened to expose him as the man who shot an innocent youth and failed to report it to the proper authorities.”

  Mystification had been creeping over Sweeney’s features. “What I don’t understand, if I may interrupt, sir, is why Miss Chimes went to all these lengths just to get an invitation to a shooting party.”

  Policemen can be deplorably dense on occasions. “It wasn’t just a shooting party. She heard that I—the Prince of Wales—was being invited.”

  “Oh.”

  His mouth still stood open like a crocodiles, but I kept my temper and explained, “She saw it as a way of insinuating her­self into my company. She’d calculated that a Royal patron could work wonders for her prospects as an actress. Without men­tioning anyone in particular, she wouldn’t have been the first to benefit from my interest in the stage, I’m bound to admit. Does that explain it to your satisfaction?”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “Let us examine the consequence. When Bullivant learned to his horror that Miss Chimes was being invited to Desbor­ough, he was in ferment. He was convinced that she would blurt out the story of what happened last year, to the extreme embar­rassment of himself and all the others who had helped to con­ceal the incident from public knowledge. He could foresee the effect upon me, Sweeney. I was certain to be outraged at finding myself embroiled in a scandal through no fault of my own. I would be compelled to leave at once. And Bullivant would become a social pariah.”

  “What did you say, sir?”

  I sighed. “A pariah, Inspector. An outcast. Society is not merely founded on family, school and so forth. It requires con­sent. I could rattle off a dozen names of people of impeccable pedigree who have forfeited that consent by misconduct of var­ious kinds that has become public knowledge. They are pariahs. When invitation lists are drawn up, their names are not includ­ed. If they ask to join our clubs we blackball them. If they appear in public, at the races or the theater, we cut them. That is the prospect Bullivant faced—through one interfering actress. Understandably, he was beside himself with anger and humiliation. So he decided to silence the woman. He obtained some poison and brought it with him to Desborough. He slipped it into her food or her drink at the first opportunity, at dinner on Monday evening, when he happened to be sitting next to her. She col­lapsed, as you know, and died on the way to the doctor’s, in Jerry Gribble’s arms. And the next morning, Jerry himself was shot through the head. Can you account for it now?”

  “Mr. Bullivant killed them both?” said Sweeney, in mani­fest disbelief

  “Yes, and I’ll tell you why. I think Jerry didn’t tell me the truth when he got back that night. He said that Miss Chimes died without recovering consciousness. I believe she did speak. Before she died, she managed to tell him that Bullivant must have poisoned her, and why. What a terrible accusation! No wonder Jerry was in such a distracted state. And no wonder he concealed the truth from me. He decided to confront Bullivant with it at the first opportunity, which was in the morning, after breakfast. They must have walked or driven away from the house to discuss it. And when Bullivant realized that Jerry knew he had committed murder, he took a gun from his pocket and shot him. Two deaths.”

  “Two deaths,” Sweeney echoed. “And two to go.”

  “Let us consider the next, then. Osgot-Edge must have been killed for the same reason. He was one of the party last year. He was part of the conspiracy. Osgot-Edge was a shrewd fellow, Sweeney. After two mysterious deaths, he must have been deeply suspicious. Unfortunately, he made the same mis­take as Jerry, attempting to take the matter up with Bullivant. It sealed his fate. Bullivant plunged a knife into him the same evening. And with Osgot-Edge’s death, each of the guns from last year had perished, except Bullivant himself.”

  Sweeney gave a long, low whistle. “That is a fact, sir. There’s no denying it.”

  I said, “You can go through the survivors: Pelham wasn’t invited last year because Freddie couldn’t stand the sight of him; George Holdfast went down with shingles; and I was at Sandringham.”

  “Speaking of the late Lord Drummond, sir, do you think his death could have been murder?”

  “No, no. He was gored by a bull last winter. Pure accident. Any other questions?”

  “Well, sir, there’s Mr. Bullivant’s death.”

  “Yes?”

  “How do you account for that, sir?” He was being fearfully obtuse, and I let him know it with my tone of voice. “Obviously suicide. He knew that I was on the trail and getting closer by the minute. There was no escape, so he jumped.”

  There was an interval of silence.

  Sweeney said finally, “It’s a peach of a theory, sir. Beautiful.”

  “It’s more than a theory, Sweeney. It’s the explanation.”

  “The explanation, yes.” He lowered his eyes as if some­thing embarrassed him and fingered the hem of his nightshirt.

  I said, “Out with it, Inspector. Have you thought of a snag?”

  “Not at all, sir. Not a snag. More of a loose end. It’s the lit­tle pieces of paper. I’m trying to think why he left them beside the bodies.”

  “Well, I suppose as some sort of distraction, to deflect us from the truth.”

  “But they fitted the rhyme, sir—which you cleverly iden­tified. Monday’s corpse is fair of face. If the theory—pardon me, the explanation—is right, Mr. Bullivant poisoned Miss Chimes to keep his secret safe. He wasn’t expecting to kill the others. That happened later, when they tumbled to what had hap­pened.”

  “That is correct.”

  There was another pause. “Well, sir, I may be out of order here, but it seems to me that the person who left those bits of newspaper must have known on Monday that he was going to kill his second victim on Tuesday and his third on Wednesday.” He hesitated. “And another on Thursday.”

  I stared at him, stunned. He was absolutely right.

  He added, “And so on.”

  Friday

  CHAPTER 16

 
“And so on.” The force of those words, spoken so softly in Sweeney’s Irish lilt, as if on a note of apology, was devastating. My beautiful explanation was in ruins. The murders hadn’t been contrived to silence people who found things out; they must have been premeditated, intricately and cold-bloodedly planned. Alix’s words came back to taunt me: “Oh, Bertie, you don’t really believe Claude Bullivant was a murderer? He was killed like the others.”

  I suppose if I were asked which of my personal qualities has contributed most to such successes as I have chalked up as a detective I would have to say in all modesty my quicksilver reac­tions. When I am blown off course—and it happens to the best of investigators—I refuse to be run aground. I instantly reach for the tiller, so to speak, and chart a more promising course.

  “Sweeney,” I said, “you and I must act at once, or I fear the murderer may strike again.”

  “You’re right, sir.”

  “Of course I’m right. It’s past midnight and this is Friday. Another day, and another victim—unless we prevent it. Friday, Friday—what does that suggest?”

  “Would you be thinking of the little verse, sir?”

  “I would, Sweeney, I would. ‘Friday’s child’—Friday’s corpse—‘is loving and giving.’ Which of the party could be so described? That is the burning question.”

  “No doubt about it, sir.”

  “You have the answer?”

  “No, sir. It’s the burning question, that’s for sure.”

  I sighed. Plainly it was too much to expect that my bog trotting assistant would have a constructive idea in his head. He’d picked a hole in my hypothesis, but ask him for a thought of his own and he was stumped. He fingered his left ear lobe as if it might assist his mental process.

  “Well now, there aren’t many of us left to choose from,” I pointed out with the patience of an old nanny. “Lady Drummond and her brother Marcus, Miss Dundas, Sir George Holdfast and myself. I don’t include you.”

  “Thank you, sir.”