Standing on the table and propped against the satinwood box the notice was now eminently readable.
Mr. Robert Hamilton did not accord with Inspector Sloan’s conception of the Common Man.
The County Archivist was exceedingly spry, erudite, and helpful.
Inspector Sloan, being in the position of having a force too meagre to be worth deploying, had taken it with him to the Muniments Room. Insofar as the murder of Osborne Meredith had a focal point it was in this part of the house.
“Ah, Inspector…” Mr. Hamilton looked up. “Come in. I don’t think we can say you’ll disturb anything any more than it’s been disturbed already.”
“No. Have you had any visitors here, sir, so far?”
“Yes, indeed, Inspector. A Miss Gertrude Cremond came along to see if she could help, a Mrs. Laura Cremond, who thought something of hers might be in here, and the butler.”
“Dillow?”
“Is that his name? He left me something to eat in the Library, but I asked him to bring it here instead.”
“Not William Murton?” Sloan described the missing man. “You haven’t seen him?”
Hamilton shook his head, while Sloan glanced round the room.
“Someone,” observed Mr. Hamilton profoundly, “was wanting to impede research here.”
“Yes.”
“It’ll take a week or more to go through”—Robert Hamilton waved a hand at the chaotic papers—“and restore even the semblance of order—quite apart from finding whatever it is I’m supposed to be looking for in here.” He cocked his head alertly. “You can’t give me even a small clue as to what that can be?”
Sloan shook his head. “All we know is that someone stirred them up and that someone tried to get in here last night after we’d sealed the door.”
“Ah, well there’s no wilful damage that I can see, and that’s something—for there’s as pretty a collection of documents here as you could hope to find. Nor theft, I should say at a quick guess.”
“No.”
“Someone ignorant,” added Mr. Hamilton. “Someone plain ignorant.”
“A woman,” said Sloan. “We have reason to believe it was a woman.”
“Ah,” said the archivist, “that explains it. They seemed to be aiming at mayhem.”
“I think,” said Sloan slowly, “that they were aiming at making it difficult for anyone to prove that the Earl of Ornum isn’t the Earl.”
“Yes,” said the archivist unexpectedly. “The poor fellow wrote me about that a week or so back.”
“He did?” Sloan sat up.
“He was mistaken, of course,” declared Mr. Hamilton. “I can assure you, Inspector, the succession is perfectly sound. Perfectly.”
“But Mr. Meredith thought…”
“He made a common mistake. He was misled by a case of
“You mean…”
“And he was also a wee bit confused about socage.”
Sloan was aware of Crosby’s head coming up like a pointer.
“Socage,” repeated Sloan carefully.
“That’s right, Inspector. Common socage. Meredith was all right in his facts, but a bit out in his inferences. He was,” said the utterly professional Robert Hamilton, “an amateur. A good amateur, mind you, I will say that, but not a trained man.”
“He hadn’t told anyone he had been mistaken,” said Sloan, trying to assimilate the news and place it in the pattern of the crime.
“Now, Inspector”—Hamilton smiled faintly—“there’s not many people in a hurry to do that, is there?”
“True,” agreed Sloan. Better though, perhaps, to admit a mistake and keep your skull intact. “This socage, Mr. Hamilton…”
“The tenure of land other than by knight-service.”
Why was it, thought Sloan, that no one would explain things to him in words that he understood?
“Knight-service?” he echoed wearily.
“That’s right,” said the amiable Mr. Hamilton. “Estates like these came directly from the crown in the beginning in return for services rendered… usually men at arms in times of war.”
That explained the armoury if not the gun room.
“You see, Inspector, in theory all land belongs to the King or Queen as the case may be.”
“Not still?” said Sloan, thinking of his roses, and his neat semidetached house in suburban Berebury.
“Yes.” The archivist chuckled. “I daresay you’re of an age to have done your own knight-service yourself, Inspector.”
Sloan hadn’t thought of it in that light before, but…
“Not quite the same thing,” admitted Hamilton, “but not all that far away. That’s where the Earldom came in. Men who brought their armies with them to the King’s wars. They were made Earls—”
“The rest,” interrupted the unconscionable Constable Crosby triumphantly, “were churls.”
It was not often that Charles Purvis was caught on the wrong foot. He was a naturally competent man, unobtrusively given to attending to detail. Even the distraction of admiring the adorable Lady Eleanor from afar did not normally cause his work to suffer.
But, as it was subsequently agreed, a murder in the House was enough to put any man off his stroke, to drive less important matters out of mind.
So it was that when a coach drew up at the front door of Ornum House at exactly three o’clock he was all prepared to send it away. True, it was not quite the same as the sort of coach that usually came to the House on open days. It was infinitely more luxurious; and it did not proclaim the fact in letters a foot high.
Charles Purvis saw the coach from the Great Hall and as Dillow for once did not seem to be about he went himself to the door.
“I’m very sorry,” he began firmly, “but the House is not open today…”
“Mr. Purvis?”
Charles Purvis found his hand being crushed in a vice-like grip.
“I’m Fortescue, Mr. Purvis. Cromwell T. Fortescue. You wrote me…”
“I did?” Purvis blinked.
“You sure did. You wrote me, Mr. Purvis, to say we might see the Earl’s pictures today. We’re the Young Masters Art Society.”
Hot on the wheels of this coach came another one.
Nothing like as luxurious as the first, it had been commandeered by Superintendent Leeyes to convey as many of his Force as he could drum up to Ornum House to assist Inspector Sloan in the hunt for William Murton.
It took their concerted efforts, directed by Inspector Sloan and aided by Police Constables Crosby and Bloggs, about an hour to find him.
In the
Dead.
16
« ^ »
He can’t be,” bellowed Superintendent Leeyes.
“He is, sir. I’m very sorry…”
“I should think so, Sloan. You haven’t heard the last of this. If Bloggs hadn’t lost him…”
Sloan forbore to point out that Constable Bloggs had been watching William Murton for a totally different
