the roof in the dim corner behind and beyond the Minstrels’ Gallery. He drifted slowly towards the door under the gallery and so out of sight of the peephole.
Once there, he changed to a swift run, going up the vast staircase as quickly as he could, his sense of direction working full blast.
He kept right at the top of the stair and chose the farthest door. He flung it open on a small, panelled room.
There was nobody there.
But in the opposite wall, low down, was a little window giving not to the out-of-doors but to another room. He stepped across and peered through it.
He was looking down at the Great Hall. From where he stood he could see the Vicar still talking to Crosby. The constable was standing listening in an attitude of patient resignation. Sloan straightened up again and stepped back into the corridor.
And somewhere not very far away he heard a door closing gently.
12
« ^ »
Charles Purvis was being put through his paces by the Press and he was not enjoying it.
For one thing, though, he was deeply thankful. With the help of Dillow he had at least managed to bottle up all the reporters in the same room. The thought of a stray one happening upon Lady Alice was too terrible to contemplate.
“Gentlemen,” he began, “I can give you very little information—”
“Can we see the Earl?” asked one of them immediately, mentioning a newspaper that Purvis had only seen wrapped round fish.
“The Earl is Not at Home.”
“You mean he isn’t here?”
“No,” said Purvis, “just Not At Home.”
“You mean he won’t see us?”
“His Lordship is not available,” insisted Charles Purvis. He had a fleeting vision of a subheading “No Comment from Earl of Ornum.” (What the reporters wrote, in fact, was, “Earl Silent.”)
“Do we understand, Steward, that the body was in the armour all day on Saturday and Sunday while visitors were being shown round?”
“I believe so,” said Purvis unhappily as the reporters scribbled away. (“Little did those who paid their half crowns at the weekend know that…”)
“How do you spell ‘archivist’?” said somebody.
The man from the oldest established newspaper told him.
“When are you open again?” asked another man.
“Wednesday,” said Purvis cautiously, “I think.”
“That your usual day?”
“Yes.” (They wrote, “ ‘Business as Usual,’ Says Steward.”)
“That means you won’t actually have closed at all?”
“Yes.” (“ ‘We Never Close,’ Says Earl’s Steward.”) “I reckon this is the first Stately Home Murder, boys.”
Purvis winced and the others nodded. “This Earl of yours…” The voice came from a man at the back.
“Yes?”
“He’s not much of a talker, is he?”
“A talker?” Charles Purvis was discovering the hard way that stone-walling is an under-rated art—not only on the cricket pitch but everywhere else, too.
“That’s right,” said the reporter, who had been doing his homework. “He’s been a member of the House of Lords for thirty years.”
“Yes?”
“I’ve looked him up.”
“Oh?”
“He’s only spoken twice. On red deer.”
“That’s right.”
“Both times.”
“It’s his subject.”
There were hoots of merry laughter at this. Purvis flushed. “He has his own herd, you know, and…”
But the reporters were already on to their next questions.
“Our Art man,” said a crime reporter, “our Old Art man, this is, tells me you’ve got a Holbein here.”
“That’s right,” confirmed Purvis. “What’s the Earl doing taking in washing when he’s got a Holbein?”
Purvis hadn’t expected the interview to go like this. “It’s of a member of the family,” he retorted, stung. “That’s why.”
(“Steward says Holbein would have been sold long ago but for sentimental reasons,” they wrote.)
“Our New Art man,” said another newspaperman, “says the Earl’s nephew has just had an exhibition. Murton’s the name. William Murton.”
“Oh?” This was news to Charles Purvis. “I didn’t know that.”
“One of the smaller galleries,” said the man, “but quite well written up.”
“The other nephew,” a bald man informed them gratuitously, “Miles Cremond, is with the Pedes Shipping line.”
“Is he now?”
“And our City Editor,” he went on, “says they’re pretty ropey these days.”
“Now is the time for all share-holding rats to leave the sinking ship?” suggested an amiably cynical man near the door.
“Pretty well,” admitted the bald chap. “Has he got any other good tips, Curly?”
“Buy the rag and see,” suggested the bald man. “Money well spent, they tell me.” They were surprisingly well-informed. They had already sucked the reference books dry. They had taken in a visit to a gratified Mrs. Pearl Fisher at Paradise Row, Luston, on their way to Ornum. (The whole street had ordered copies of tomorrow’s papers.) They had attempted to suborn Edith, the housemaid, at the back door of Ornum House before coming round to the front, and they had got nowhere at all with Superintendent Leeyes—and all before breakfast, so to speak.
“The family,” said a man with a disillusioned face, whose paper specialised in what it was pleased to call “human interest.” “Can we have some pictures?”
“No,” said Purvis.
“They’ve got a son and a daughter, haven’t they?”
“Yes”—tightly.
“Some pictures would be nice. Family group and so forth.”
“No.”
“I think we’ve got one of Lady Eleanor on the files anyway.”
Purvis blanched.
“Some charity performance somewhere.”
Charles Purvis breathed again.
“She’s not engaged?” suggested the reporter hopefully.
“No.”
“Nor opened a boutique or an antique shop or anything like that?”
“No.”
“No family secrets passed down from father to son on his twenty-first birthday?”
“No.”
“No secret rooms?”
