Crosby wrote that down too.
“Rudolfo.”
“Rudolfo?”
“The tenth Earl was invested with a foreign order. He was the English ambassador to the country at an awkward time diplomatically and… er… carried it off well. Saved the situation, you might say. He called his own son after their reigning monarch of the day—that went down well, too. The name has been kept.”
“I see,” said Constable Crosby laconically. “That the lot?”
Purvis stiffened. “By no means. There’s Cremond, too.”
“That’s the surname, isn’t it?”
“As well.”
“As well as what?”
“As well as being a Christian name.”
Crosby wasn’t sure what Purvis meant and said so.
“Twice,” said Charles Purvis.
“You mean he was christened Cremond as well as having it as a surname.”
“That’s right.”
“Cremond,” Crosby looked incredulous, “and Cremond?”
The Steward coughed. “That dates back to the middle of the eighteenth century when…”
Crosby wasn’t listening. “William Edward Crosby Crosby,” he said under his breath, for size.
“I beg your pardon, Constable?”
Crosby turned back to his notebook, and read aloud, “Henry Augustus Rudolfo Cremond Cremond?”
Name of a name of a name, that was…
“That’s right,” agreed the Steward and Comptroller. “Thirteenth Earl Ornum of Ornum in the County of Calleshire, Baron Cremond of Petering…”
“There isn’t,” said Detective Constable William Edward Crosby of 24 Hillview Terrace, Berebury, with tremendous dignity, “any room on the form for that.”
Sloan methodically sealed the door of the Muniments Room and went back next door to the Library. This was a very fine room.
It was divided into six small bays all lined with books—three bays on either side of the centre. The right-hand three each ended in a window and a window seat with a view over the Park. The left-hand three consisted entirely of bookshelves with a sliver of table down the middle. At the far end was a bust of Lord Henry.
“My great-great-grandfather,” murmured Lord Henry.
Sloan shot a swift glance from the bust of Lord Henry and back again. There was no discernible difference between the two.
“Army,” said Lord Henry by way of explanation. “Too young for Waterloo. Too old for the Crimea.”
Sloan advanced. Apart from the neckwear, the bust might just as well have been Lord Henry. It was as near a replica as he’d seen.
“Mr. Meredith worked here, too, I take it,” he said generally.
Lord Henry nodded. “Spent nearly all his time between the Library and the Muniments, though he was always popping down to have a look at the pictures, too.”
“As to Friday,” said Sloan, “if he’d been working here then, what sort of traces would you have expected to find?”
“None,” said his Lordship promptly. “He wasn’t that sort of scholar. When he’d finished with a book, he’d put it back in its right place.”
Sloan wasn’t surprised. From what little he’d seen of the body that had emerged pupa-like from the chrysalis of the armour, he’d have said Meredith was a neat, dapper little man.
Lord Henry carried on, “He was quite mild about everything else, but it was as much as your life was worth to spoil the order on the bookshelves.”
This wasn’t perhaps the happiest of comparisons, and Lord Henry’s voice trailed away.
“I see,” said Sloan, moving down the three bays.
Everything was utterly neat and tidy. At the end by the door a small stack of papers on the table there was the only testimony that the room had ever been used at all. The first two bays seemed normal enough. Sloan paused at the third.
The casual observer—the untrained eye—would probably have seen nothing.
Sloan did.
What he saw was on the spine of Volume XXIV of
Blood.
This, then, was in all probability where the Librarian and Archivist to the Ornum family had met his death.
Sloan stepped carefully round the thin table and measured a few distances with his eye. The photographers would have to come back and bring the lab boys with them. In the meantime…
At a quick guess the deceased could have been sitting at the inside end of the table, which ran the length of the bay. He had been hit from behind—the pathologist had told him that much—and from above. The height of the book with the blood on it confirmed that.
Lord Henry cleared his throat. “This the spot, then?”
“I think so,” said Sloan. There was nothing much else to point to it. The table might have had blood on it and been wiped clean. There might be drops on the floor. The Library carpet was Turkey red, which didn’t help… and any derangement of chair and table had long ago been made good. And marks of scuffed heels on the pile of the carpet would have…
“The cleaning arrangements in here…” began Sloan.
But he had asked the wrong man.
“Not really my department,” said his young Lordship frankly. “Dillow will know.”
“I see,” said Sloan. He wouldn’t mind another word with the butler. “Where would I find him now?”
“It’s easier than that.” Lord Henry drifted across the Library and tugged at a green silk sash. “He’ll find us.”
It was, in fact, simplicity itself.
“Thank you.” Sloan wasn’t sure about the paths of righteousness, but those of some people could be made very smooth indeed. He cleared his throat. “By the way, my lord, your injury…”
“Silly thing to do.” Lord Henry’s bandaged hand was still drooping down like a limping dog’s paw. “I cut it on Friday morning fiddling about with my car.”
“Were you alone at the time?” enquired Sloan pertinently.
“Oh yes, Inspector. Nobody else here really cares about cars. I caught it between the fan blade and the engine.”
“I see.”
“Trying to tune her up a bit and all that…”
The Library door opened. “You rang, my lord?”
“Ah, Dillow, the Inspector wants another word with you.”
The butler, professionally expressionless, turned expectantly to Sloan.
“Friday,” said Sloan. “Friday afternoon. You said you brought Mr. Meredith his tea here.”
“That is correct, sir. At four o’clock. I collected the empty tray a few minutes before five.”
“Did you see Mr. Meredith then?”
“Not the second time, sir. The tray was on the table by the door and I just collected it…” The man hesitated. “In fact, sir, I’m afraid I assumed Mr. Meredith had gone home because the Vicar called about half an hour later, asking for him, and he said he’d tried the Muniments Room and he wasn’t there. I took the liberty of telling him that Mr. Meredith must have gone home then, though of course I realise now that…”
“Quite so,” said Sloan. “And after that?”
“After, sir?”
