“You think so? Good.”
“Culture vultures in the Long Gallery,” said Lord Henry.
“Eager beavers in the Great Hall,” chimed in Lady Eleanor.
“And aesthete’s foot by the time they get to Cousin Gertrude in the China Room,” added Lord Henry.
“How disgusting that sounds,” said the Countess. She turned to a hitherto rather silent Miles and Laura. “What are you two going to do?”
Laura said that she had a splitting headache and was going to lie down, and that Miles was going out for a walk.
“He needs some air,” she said.
“Just like Friday,” observed Cousin Gertrude.
“Not like Friday at all,” retorted Laura.
Gertrude grunted. “No, of course not. That was exercise he wanted then, wasn’t it?”
“He got it,” said Laura pointedly, “but not by killing old Mr. Meredith.”
“Just by walking in the Park, what?” said Miles.
The Countess made a vague gesture in the direction of the coffee pot, but no one took her up on this. “Has anyone remembered to feed the little man from County Hall?”
Lady Eleanor said, “I told Dillow, Mother. And about the police.”
Mention of the police started Adrian Cossington off again. “My lord, are you sure that it is prudent to open the House again so soon…”
“I think,” said the Earl, encompassing a whole philosophy, “one should always carry on as usual.”
“A few changes might well be indicated, my lord. As your legal adviser…”
“When it is not necessary to change,” quoted the Earl sententiously, “it is necessary not to change. I think you may take it, Cossington, that things are back to normal now.”
They weren’t.
Not from the view of Sloan and Crosby and the luckless Bloggs.
Sloan had barely got back from the gun room when a police motorcyclist arrived from Berebury with a sheaf of reports.
The pathologist’s official one, marked “Copy to H.M. Coroner”: the facts of death in the language of Academe. Brutality smoothed down to detached observation.
A note from aforementioned H.M. Coroner appointing Thursday for the inquest.
A dry comment from the Forensic Laboratory: the blood from the spine of the book in the Library complied with all the accepted tests with that of the deceased. The hairs on the instrument known as Exhibit B…
“What’s Exhibit A?” said Sloan suddenly.
“A for armour,” said Crosby, who had done the labelling.
And B for blunt instrument? Sloan didn’t ask.
Exhibit B resembled that of deceased under all the known comparison indices. So did the blood on Exhibit B. An attempt had been made to wipe it clean. There were no fingerprints.
Two reports from London whence enquiries had been put in hand about Miles Cremond and William Murton.
The Pedes Shipping Line was nearly on the rocks. It was suspected that the name of the Honourable Miles Cremond was included on the Board of Directors solely to lend an air of credulity to the operations of the Company. If, the writer of the report put it graphically, the Inspector was thinking of making an investment, the South Sea Bubble would be a better bet.
William Murton lived at the address stated, which was a bed-sitter-cum-studio, and apparently possessed two characteristics unfortunate in combination—expensive tastes and a low income.
“Living it up without having anything to live on,” said Crosby, who wouldn’t have dared.
“Except his uncle,” said Sloan. “I reckon he lives on him.”
“I don’t know why he lets him, sir, honestly I don’t. My uncle…”
“It’s called noblesse oblige.”
It would seem, went on the compiler of the report, a man with a taste for a good phrase, that William Murton pursues his career in fits and starts and nubile young ladies all of the time.
Near the bottom of the sheaf was a scribbled note from Inspector Harpe of Traffic Division begging Sloan to come to see him as soon as he possibly could.
Sloan slipped that one into his inside jacket pocket.
If there was anything approaching Natural Selection in troubles it was their tendency to multiply at the wrong time.
There was also a communication from the policeman who had interviewed the executors of the late Mr. Beresford Baggles to the effect that Michael Joseph Dillow had worked for Mr. Baggles until the latter’s death from apoplexy. Dillow had been left the sum of five hundred pounds by Mr. Baggles, being in his employ and not under notice at the time of Mr. Baggles’ death.
The legacy had not yet been paid out owing to the difficulties encountered by the executors on the discovery that Mr. Baggles’ considerable collection of the works of the artist Van Gogh were fakes (which discovery had occasioned the apoplexy), but that Dillow would be receiving it as soon as the estate was wound up.
“Van Gogh,” murmured Sloan. “That’s the chap who cut off his ear, isn’t it?”
P.C. Bloggs, who in another day and age would doubtless have had both his ears chopped off for him, remained silent.
Crosby sniffed. “Funny fellows, painters.”
Which brought them back to William Murton.
“It’ll take an army to find him in this place,” said Crosby, thinking aloud. “There’s I don’t know how many rooms…” ,
“Just under three hundred,” said Sloan.
“And what’s to stop him dashing from one to the other while you’re searching?”
“Nothing,” agreed Sloan wearily. “Nothing at all. However, reinforcements are on the way.”
On the terrace outside the gun room window a peacock shrieked derisively.
Bert Hackle was carrying a wooden board. “Will this do, Mr. Purvis?”
The Steward measured it with his eye. “That’s about right, Bert, thank you. Now let’s see if it’ll fit.”
Charles Purvis had in his hand a stout sheet of white card on which he had been labouring for a tidy effect. On it had been printed as neatly as possible armoury 2/6d extra.
“Very nice,” said Hackle, who was a great admirer of the Earl.
“It’s not the same as a printed notice, of course,” murmured Purvis, standing back to see the effect, “but there isn’t time to have it done properly by Wednesday.”
Hackle jerked his shoulder towards the top of the armoury stairs. “Reckon they’ll let us in there again b’Wednesday?”
“His Lordship does,” Charles Purvis looked round. “Now to find something to put the board on.”
“What we want,” said Bert, “is a proper stand.” By rights Bert Hackle shouldn’t have been in the Great Hall at all in his gardening boots, but as there had been Hackles in Ornum village almost as long as there had been Cremonds in Ornum House—though not so well-documented—he was privileged in his own right. He creaked across the floor looking for something suitable. “If we was to lean it up against this we’d be all right.”
“Not if Mr. Feathers saw us,” retorted Purvis smartly. “That’s his best piece of ormolu on malachite, that is.”
Hackle, whose interest in minerals was confined to the rocks in the rockery, tried again. “What about that box thing?”
That box thing was satinwood inlaid with ivory and contained the ceremonial trowel with which his Lordship the eleventh had cut the first turf for the first railway line to link Luston and Berebury. (It had been a singularly happy occasion as his Lordship, being the owner of all the suitable land in between these two places, had been able to name his own price. And had.)
“Much better,” said Purvis. “Now, if you’ll just heave that table a bit nearer the doorway.”
