“I suppose,” rejoined Superintendent Leeyes, “that we could have expected the traditional at Ornum.”
“Yes, sir. As to what did it…”
“If you mean weapon, Sloan, for heaven’s sake say so.”
Sloan coughed. “We’re a bit spoilt by choice for weapons, sir.”
“Are you?”
“There are one hundred and seventy-seven, sir, not counting two small cannon at the front door.”
“I don’t think”—nastily—“we need count the cannon, do you, Sloan?”
“No, sir.”
“What other sort of weapons do you have…er… on hand?”
Sloan took a deep breath. “What you might call assorted, sir. Very. Everything from a poleaxe to a partisan.”
“A what?”
“A partisan, sir. Of blued steel.” Sloan hesitated. Offering information to the Superintendent could be a tricky business. “It’s like a halberd.”
“Is it, Sloan?”—dangerously. The only partisans known to the Superintendent were his enemies on the Watch Committee. (The only place, if it came to that, where there was a Resistance Movement.) “I take it that a halberd is like a partisan?”
“No, sir—I mean, yes, sir.”
“Then you’d better find out exactly which one it was that killed him, hadn’t you?”
“Yes, sir.” He cleared his throat. “Constable Crosby’s started going through the catalogue now.”
“Catalogue?” echoed Leeyes. “And do you propose, Sloan, looking the murderer up in
“No, sir”—patiently. “A catalogue of the weapons was made by the Vicar, a Mr. Walter Ames, who’s something of an authority on arms and armour.”
“Is he indeed?”
“And Crosby’s going through it now.”
“I see.”
“The trouble, sir, is that the family’s been armigerous…”
“Been what?”
“Armigerous.”
“Where did you get that word?”
“The doctor used it, sir.”
“That,” said Leeyes severely, “doesn’t mean you should.”
“It’s a heraldic term, sir, not a medical one. It means the Ornums have been entitled to bear arms for a very long time. Like”—suddenly—“like police are allowed to carry truncheons.”
It was not a happy simile.
“Truncheons,” said Leeyes trenchantly. “What have truncheons got to do with it?”
“They are weapons we’re entitled to carry, sir. In the same way the Ornums were entitled to bear arms in the old days. That’s why there is so much of it about in the armoury—to say nothing of the fact that the twelfth Earl was a great collector.”
“It seems to me,” said his superior officer pontifically, “that you are confusing arms with weapons. It’s a weapon you want, Sloan. And quickly.”
“Yes, sir.”
“What other long words did the doctor use?”
“He said he thought the deceased had been dead for roughly forty-eight hours.”
“Friday.”
“Yes, sir.”
“No one saw him alive on Saturday, I suppose?” The Superintendent had no more faith in medical than in any other considered opinion.
“Not that I’ve heard about,” said Sloan carefully. “Teatime on Friday seems to have been the last occasion he was seen.”
“And how long had he been in the armour?”
“Dr. Dabbe couldn’t say, sir, but he thought he hadn’t been put into it until after rigor mortis had passed off.”
“That means the body must have been parked somewhere, Sloan.”
“Or just left, sir, where it was killed.”
“Where was that?”
“I don’t know, sir. Not yet. It’s a big house.”
“Not,” sarcastically, “a room for every day of the year?”
“Not quite, sir, but…”
“But you haven’t quite mastered the geography yet, eh, Sloan? Is that it?”
That was one way of putting it.
Not a way Sloan himself would have chosen, but Superintendent Leeyes was not a man with whom to argue.
Instead of arguing Sloan said formally, “I have already interviewed some of those persons present in the house and warned them that I shall wish to talk to them again…”
A non-committal grunt came down the line.
“I have also instigated enquiries about the present whereabouts of the deceased’s sister and am endeavouring to establish who was the last person to see him alive…”
“The last but one will do nicely for the time being, Sloan.”
“Yes, sir.”
“These people in the house…”
“The Ornums and their servants, sir.”
“I see. That’s the Earl…”
“And his wife, his cousin, his two aunts on his father’s side, his son and his daughter, his nephew, and his nephew’s wife.”
“Ha! The extended family, Sloan.” The Superintendent had once read a book on sociology and felt he had mastered that tricky discipline.
“I beg your pardon, sir?”
“Nothing, Sloan. Just a technical term.”
“I see, sir. There is also an additional nephew.”
“Oh?”
“A Mr. William Murton.”
“Makes a change from Cremond, I suppose,” observed Leeyes.
“His mother was a Cremond. She married a groom.”
“She did what?” The Superintendent, who dealt daily with sudden death, larceny, road traffic accidents, and generally saw the seamy side of human nature, was not easily shocked, but there were some things…
“She ran away with her groom,” said Sloan. “Mr. William Murton, the Earl’s nephew, is the outcome of the union.”
“And where does he come in?”
“I couldn’t say, sir. Not yet. He has a cottage in Ornum village which he uses—mostly at weekends. The rest of the time he lives in London. I understand he paints.”
The Superintendent didn’t like that.
“And,” pursued Sloan, “there is also the Earl’s Steward, a man called Charles Purvis. He lives in a little house in the Park and comes all over a twitter whenever he looks at young Lady Eleanor.”
“Like that, is she?”
“No, sir”—repressively—“she is not. Apart,” he went on, “from this… er… one big happy family”—-Sloan didn’t know if this was the same thing as an extended one or not—“there are the servants.”
“Loyal to the core, I suppose?”
