11
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Inspector Sloan telephoned Charles Purvis, the Steward, at Ornum as soon as he could.
“You’ll be having some visitors at the House today,” he said.
“If you mean the Press,” responded Purvis promptly, “they’re here now.”
Sloan hadn’t meant the Press. “No, the Vicar. I want him to be there when we open up the armoury again, and some people from our Forensic Laboratory. They’ll want to examine the Library and the Muniments Room and so on…”
“Very well, Inspector. I’ll see that they are allowed in.”
“And the County Archivist.”
“Ah…”
“With the Earl’s permission, that is. We’ve asked him to come over from the County Record Office at Calleford to examine the Muniments for us.”
“He’ll come all right,” said Charles Purvis cheerfully. “Like a shot.”
“Oh?”
“He’s been trying to get a really good look at them for years, only Meredith would never let him.”
“Really?” Sloan tucked that fact away in his mind, too. “And I would like to see the four regular guides to the House, please. The ones who took people round this weekend.”
Purvis promised to arrange this with them straightaway. “About eleven o’clock suit you for that, then, Inspector?”
Sloan said that would do very nicely and rang off.
Then for the second time P.C. Crosby drove him out to Ornum. On this occasion they stopped first in the village itself.
Cremond Cottages was a neat little row of four dwellings, with the initials h.c. carved into a small tablet in the middle over the date 1822. Though it was by no means early by the time they knocked on the door of number four, William Murton had not yet shaved.
“Ah, gentlemen, good morning, and welcome to my humble home.” There was the faintest of ironic stresses on the word “humble.” He ushered them in. “I thought you’d be along sooner or later.”
The downstairs rooms of the cottage had been knocked together into one and decorated in a manner more redolent of Town than country. There was a painting hanging over the fireplace that Sloan took to be an abstract. There was a large eye in one corner of it; the rest was an unidentifiable mixture of colour and design.
Constable Crosby saw the picture as he entered the room and took a deep breath.
Sloan said swiftly, “Is that your own work, Mr. Murton?”
The artist nodded. “My grandmother—my paternal grandmother, needless to say, was fond of texts on walls. She had this one hanging over her bed.”
“This one?”—faintly.
“Well, the same thing in words. I prefer to express the idea in paint, that’s all.”
“I see,” said Sloan cautiously. He took a second look at the painting.
“You’ve recognised it, of course,” said Murton ironically.
Sloan, who only knew what he didn’t like in modern art, said, “I don’t know that I have, sir.”
“Thou God Seest Me.” There was no mistaking the mocking tone now. “Reaction against all that traditional stuff up at the House, you know.”
“Quite so.” If the painting was anything to go by, it was a pretty violent reaction.
“And over there…” Murton pointed to where an excessively modern wall bracket in the shape of a nude female figure—just this side of actionable—supported a light fitting.
Constable Crosby’s eyes bulged and his lips started to move.
“Over there,” continued Murton, “my grandmother had ‘There’s No Place Like Home’ worked in embroidery.”
“Did she?”
“Set tastefully in a ring of roses.”
Inspector Sloan, whose who hobby was growing roses—rather than growing girls—said, “That must have been very nice, sir.”
“Pure Victoriana, of course.”
“Naturally, sir.” He coughed. “This
“Well, now, Inspector, that’s a good question.” William Murton’s eyes danced mischievously. “It’s like this. By virtue of long residence I’m a protected tenant here…”
That, decided Sloan privately, must have caused a certain amount of chagrin in some quarters.
“So,” went on Murton, “it would be downright foolish of me to leave, wouldn’t it?”
“I see what you mean, sir.”
“So I stay. After all”—gravely—“my family have lived here a very long time.”
“Quite so.”
“And there’s nothing wrong with being a cottager, you know. My father was a cottager.”
“So,” said Sloan impassively, “you use this for a weekend cottage.”
“Got it in one, Inspector.”
“You come down every weekend?”
“Not quite”—tantalisingly—“every weekend. Just… er… every now and then.”
“Why this particular one?”
Murton shrugged a pair of surprisingly broad shoulders. “The spirit moved me. I didn’t come down to do poor Ossy in, if that’s what you mean.”
“You knew him, of course?”
“Oh yes. We were all brought up together as children, you know. Like puppies. Miles’ parents were abroad a lot and mine couldn’t provide for me properly”—he grimaced—“so…”
“So,” concluded Sloan for him, “you had the worst of both worlds.”
Murton looked at him curiously. “That’s right, Inspector. I was brought up half a gentleman. You think as children that the world’s an equal place. It’s later when you realise that Henry gets the lot.”
“Disturbing,” agreed Sloan.
“Especially when you’re older than he is and you can see his father had the lot, too. And all your father had was this.”
“Quite so, sir.”
“That’s what’s made me into a sponger.”
“A sponger?”
“A sponger, Inspector, that’s what I said. I don’t earn my keep like Cousin Gertrude cleaning chandeliers for dear life and I don’t stay on the fringes like Laura, hoping for pickings.”
“I see, sir.”
“And I don’t stand around praying for miracles like that efficient ass Charles Purvis. I’m a plain hanger- on.”
“I see, sir. And for the rest of the time you do what?”
“This and that,” he said easily.
Sloan could find the proper answer by picking up the telephone. He said instead, “Now, as to Friday…”
William Murton hadn’t a great deal to tell him about Friday.
Yes, he had originally intended to come only for the weekend.
Yes, he had come down on Friday afternoon.
By train.
About half-past five.
He had spent Friday evening at the cottage.
Alone.
Saturday he had stayed in bed until teatime and the evening he had spent in The Ornum Anns.
