“When did you next come in here?”
Dillow frowned. “Yesterday morning sometime, sir, it would have been. Just to see that the room had been put to rights. Though Mr. Meredith was such a tidy gentleman that I knew nothing would need doing.”
“And did it?”
“No, sir, not that I recollect.”
“Whose job is it to see that the room had been tidied?”
“Mine, sir, to see it had been done. Edith’s to… er… do it.”
“Edith’s?” The nuances of the division of labour among domestic staff were lost on Sloan. Now if it had been police work…
“She’s the housemaid, sir, but…”
“Yes?”
“On open days, sir, we all tend to devote ourselves to the rooms which are Shown.”
“I see. And the Muniments Room?”
“I didn’t go in there, sir, at all. Mr. Meredith liked to deal with that himself. It’s a small room and when any cleaning was done in there Mr. Meredith always arranged to be present himself so that nothing was disturbed.”
“The Muniments Room? Turned upside down? Look out, Dillow, you’re spilling that soup.”
“I beg your pardon, my lord.”
“I should think so. Henry, who the devil would want to play about in the Muniments Room of all places? Nobody ever goes in there.”
“Couldn’t say,” said the son and heir. “But somebody has… er… did. And you can’t go and see because the Inspector has sealed it up. And the Library.”
The dining-room at Ornum House that evening was scarcely more festive than the armoury. The Earl of Ornum sat at one end of the table, the Countess at the other. Ranged round the table were the rest of the family.
Dillow hovered.
William Murton, whose summons to Ornum House had, in fact, gone on to include a meal, took an immediate interest. “That means something, doesn’t it? I mean, you wouldn’t go to the bother of stirring up the papers without a reason, would you?”
“I wouldn’t,” responded Henry.
“But,” asked Laura Cremond, “what was there in there that mattered anyway?”
“Search me,” said Lord Henry frankly. “Never could make head or tail of those papers myself. All that cramped writing. In Latin, too, most of it. Still, I expect it meant something…”
“Your inheritance,” said his father drily.
“It must have meant something to somebody else, too,” pointed out Miles Cremond, who always followed his wife’s conversational leads. “Else they wouldn’t have messed it about.”
Cousin Gertrude, who was a considerable trencher-woman, looked up from a bit of steady eating and said, “Does that mean that now no one can prove that Harry here isn’t Earl of Ornum?”
There was a small silence.
The Earl of Ornum crumbled some bread and wondered why it was that plain women so often went in for plain speaking.
“Well,” demanded Gertrude Cremond, “can they or can’t they?”
Millicent, Countess of Ornum, was always equal to a straight question.
“Poor Mr. Meredith,” she said tangently, “to be killed
“Ossa on Pelion,” murmured Lord Henry, upon whose education a great deal of money had been expended.
“Too terrible,” said the Countess.
“To be killed by someone he knew,” observed her daughter quietly.
“Eleanor! Surely not.”
“Unless some total stranger happened to walk in, take a dislike to his face, and kill him.”
“But,” protested Millicent Ornum, “he had a nice face. Crinkled but pleasant. Not the sort of face you’d take a sudden dislike to at all.”
Eleanor sighed. “Exactly, Mother.”
“So it wasn’t his face,” drawled William Murton.
“It must have been something else then, what?” said Miles Cremond with the air of one reaching a studied conclusion.
“Yes, Miles,” said Lord Henry kindly. “We think it was.”
“So if Ossy’s dead and the papers are all messed up then no one can prove anything?”
“A veritable nutshell, old chap. There’s just the one small point…”
“What’s that?”
“Who did for Ossy.”
A baffled look came over Miles Cremond’s face. “Yes, of course.”
“It’s no use our pretending,” said Cousin Gertrude bluntly, “that it doesn’t make any difference to any of us whether Harry here is Earl of Ornum because it does.” She looked round the table. “To every single one of us.”
There was a chorus of protest.
“Yes, it does,” insisted Gertrude. “Henry here’ll kill himself one day in that sports car of his. Always trying to make it go faster and faster.”
“I say, Cousin Gertrude, steady on.”
“That means Miles would come in to the title and you can’t tell me that wouldn’t please Laura.”
Laura Cremond’s thin face went a sudden pink. “Really, Gertrude, I don’t think that remark is in the best of taste.”
“Neither is murder.”
“Are you suggesting that Miles and I killed Mr. Meredith?”
Gertrude Cremond was equal to a frontal attack.
Not for nothing had she stood foursquare against the opposing centre forward on the hockey field. “No,” she said, “but you were both late for dinner on Friday evening, weren’t you?”
“Well, I must say that sounds remarkably like an insinuation to me.”
“Merely an observation,” remarked Cousin Gertrude, unperturbed. “Why were you both so late?”
“Miles went for a walk and I waited for him to get back before I came down. That’s why.”
“Did you go for a walk, Miles?”
“What? Oh, me? Yes, rather.”
“Where?”
“Where? Oh—in the Park, you know. Actually I went round the ha ha. To get in training for the match, what? No exercise to speak of in Town, don’t you know.”
“Never touch it myself,” said William Murton, looking with close interest from one flushed face to the next.
“Touch what?” said Miles.
“Exercise.” William patted his tummy. “Went to seed early myself. Less trouble.”
Cousin Gertrude rounded on him as if he’d been a wing half coming up fast on the outside. “There’s no need for you to talk, William. You’d miss your uncle Harry here more than anyone.”
“True.”
“You may not touch exercise,” she went on tartly, “but you’re certainly not above touching him for money when you need it.”
“Granted.” He made a mock bow in her direction. “But you will be pleased to hear I’ve turned over a new leaf. My… er… touching days are gone.”
This produced total silence. The Earl and his son exchanged a quick glance.
“Truly,” said William. “I haven’t asked you for a loan this trip, Uncle Harry, now have I?”
