state of the Stepney Ox after the Ebony had dealt with him?
“Not very likely,” the Sergeant retorted, getting to his feet and clapping the field glasses back into their case.
“Don’t forget Jago’s had a week’s paid instruction in self-defence from a professor in the art. Fellow should be able to look after himself. Besides, the Ebony won’t want to fell him too early. We’ll do our best to get there before the claret flows. If we don’t, the Yard will foot the doctor’s bills.”
With that touching assurance Cribb marched decisively to the driveway and headed towards the front entrance of Radstock Hall. Thackeray, shaking his head in disbelief, picked up his cape and bowler and followed.
When the Sergeant’s repeated knocking and ringing brought no response, he stood sceptically scratching his side whiskers.
“Why doesn’t the pesky woman come?” he said aloud, backing away from the door to look for signs of life at the windows.
Thackeray remained silent. He knew Cribb’s moods too well to venture any suggestion.
The Sergeant gave one more tug at the bell, frustrated as any front-door pedlar. Then he stalked huffily across the lawns towards the back of the building, Thackeray ambling behind. While Cribb tried the kitchen door, his assistant decided to examine the woodshed. It was fastened by a simple latch, which yielded easily.
Thackeray gave a long, low whistle. Cribb turned from the lock he was struggling inexpertly to ease open with a piece of wire.
“What is it?”
“Dogs, Sarge. Two ruddy great wolfhounds with bullets through their brains.”
Cribb went to see for himself. The bodies lay just inside the door across the threshold, as though they were too heavy to drag any further into the hut. No attempt had been made to cover them.
“Not long dead,” said Cribb. “Why should anyone do that?”
“Could be that Mrs. Vibart has quit Radstock Hall for a while, and they’ve no further use for the guard dogs,” ventured Thackeray. “It’s a savage way to treat dumb animals, but these people ain’t over sentimental.”
“We’ll break into the house,” decided Cribb. He stepped across the bodies and picked up a short stump of wood. The subtle art of springing locks with wire could be practised some other time. He returned to the kitchen area and selected a window. Then he shattered the glass and felt for the catch.
Opened, the window was wide enough to admit a slim man.
Thackeray looked on dubiously.
“I’d better make a back for you, Sarge.”
A steady and substantial back. Cribb stepped from it through the window into the kitchen and unlocked the door to admit Thackeray. “You’re probably right,” he told the Constable. “It’s ten to one now that there isn’t a living soul in the house, but we’d better anounce ourselves just the same. And take off your hat.” He passed from the kitchen along a short passage to the entrance hall. “Looks as central a place as any,” he said, and then cupped his hands to his mouth and shouted, “Hello, there! Mrs. Vibart! Hello! Is anyone there?”
The words must certainly have been heard through the building. The two intruders waited while the resonance died away.
“Theory confirmed, then,” said Cribb. “An empty house.” He took out the watch from his waistcoat. “That gives us almost an hour to find the evidence I want before we need to get off to London. Papers, mainly-contracts, diaries, training programmes-anything to prove Quinton was here. I’ll take the rooms downstairs and you can go up.
Try all the bedrooms. It’s unlikely they’ve left any of his clothes in a room, but we can’t neglect the possibility.”
Cribb began downstairs by opening all the doors in sight, found the morning room and went straight to the writing desk. It was locked, a handsome piece of furniture, a satinwood davenport banded with rosewood, which Cribb without hesitation splintered at the lock with a paperknife. He need not have bothered; it contained a dozen or so sheets of paper, ink and a few sachet cards. The side drawers at first promised more. One yielded a large bound account book.
He opened it on the desk lid and began thumbing through the pages. If there was evidence there, it was going to take time to find. On a first inspection the accounts seemed restricted to housekeeping expenses and servants’ wages. He delved into the lower drawer, but there were only ancient copies of
“Sergeant!” Thackeray’s sudden shout was unusually urgent.
Cribb left the desk as it was and ran to the staircase, mounting it in threes.
“In here!” The Constable was at a door at the top of the stairs. Cribb followed him through a dressing room to a second door. “It was locked,” Thackeray explained, “so I put my boot to it.” The splintered door frame showed the result.
Cribb walked to the bed and gently peeled back the sheet from Isabel Vibart’s body. It was unclothed, and blood had been washed from the wounds below the left breast, ugly stab wounds, all the more offensive for being cleaned and exposed as gaping punctures in the otherwise flawless flesh.
After carefully examining the bruised neck and left shoulder and the hands and fingernails, Cribb replaced the sheet without a word.
Thackeray waited, his brain in a ferment of questions he dared not put to Cribb. Who would want to stab Isabel Vibart, if this were she? How long had she been dead? Who had cleaned her wounds? Why were the servants in such high spirits when they left the Hall? What had this to do with the shot dogs? Or the death of Quinton?
Cribb’s reaction began at a more practical level.
“Whoever did this had a rare amount of blood on his clothes.” His eye lighted on a linen basket in the corner of the room. “Take a look in there.”
Thackeray drew out a pair of heavily bloodstained sheets and spread them across the floor for Cribb to examine.
They manifestly confirmed the Sergeant’s deduction. He turned to look at the still-open safe in the wall.
“Theft?” murmured Thackeray, as he replaced the sheets in the basket.
“Could be.” Cribb was already at the window, examining the sill. “But the murderer came through the door, in my opinion.” He tapped his nose with his forefinger as though it might lead him independently to the vital clue. Then he surprised Thackeray. “She was a very handsome woman, and I’m sorry she was knifed, but she’s likely to distract us at the moment. It’s Quinton’s murderer I need to find. If Jago’s half the detective he ought to be, he’ll know who murdered Mrs. Vibart. We’ve barely twenty minutes now, Thackeray.
Carry on the search for evidence of Matthew Quinton.”
Really! With a scarcely veiled shrug of the shoulders, Thackeray went off to search the other bedrooms. If he found a corpse in each one, he doubted whether it would impress Cribb in his present mood. He heard him return downstairs.
It was methodical, Thackeray reasoned, to go to the farthest room first and work back towards the staircase, so he followed the corridor as far as he could and opened the door facing him, not without a discreet knock. Rarely had he seen such disorder in a respectable house; he might have stepped into a common lodging house in H Division. An unmade bed was piled with newspapers and sheets of music. The Canterbury which should have held the music, a fine papier-mache rack inlaid with mother-of-pearl, was empty and upside-down on the washstand, among shaving mugs and empty wine bottles. Thackeray stepped into the room, taking care not to crush a china dog lying in his path, but denting a copper kettle with his other foot. Scarcely a foot of flooring was not occupied by discarded clothes or ornaments ousted from the mantelpiece. The drawers, when he examined them, were practically empty; all the clothes, he supposed, were scattered about the room. Even the organ-a deuced eccentric item of furniture for a bedroom, but supposedly the occupant was a devoted musician-served as a coathanger, for a nightshirt was suspended on one candleholder and a tall hat on the other. He pulled open the hinged doors at the front and peered into the mechanism.
Pianos had been known to harbour vital evidence on occasions; why not organs? This one, though, had nothing more sinister than dust and dead flies. Thackeray brushed his sleeve, took a last look in the wardrobe, and abandoned the room.
He moved to the next, D’Estin’s, by the size of the suits in the wardrobe. By contrast, exceedingly tidy-fit for
