“I’m afraid not.” Purvis was genuinely regretful. If there had been a secret room in Ornum House he would willingly have taken them to see it. Anything to divert their questioning.
“Sure?”
“The tax-rating people would have found it,” said the Steward bitterly.
“The victim’s sister,” said a young man with long hair and a red tie. “What’s happened to her?”
Purvis relaxed a little. “We don’t know. We think she’s visiting friends, but we don’t know where.” He looked round the assembled company. “That’s really where we could do with your cooperation, gentlemen. She probably doesn’t know about this terrible business…” Out of the corner of his eye he saw the “human interest” man writing rapidly, “… and the police hope that she will read about the death and get in touch with them.”
“Will do.”
Charles Purvis doubted very much if Miss Meredith ever read either the “human interest” paper or the one with which the young man with the long hair and the red tie was associated, but sooner or later she would hear.
To Purvis’ distress the newspaper of which his Lordship had been a loyal reader all his life had also sent a reporter. He, too, had a question… It was like treachery.
“The weapon, Mr. Purvis, can you tell us what it was?”
He shook his head. “I understand the weapon has not yet been found.”
He was wrong.
The weapon had been found.
On the upstairs landing Inspector Sloan had met up with the team from the Forensic Laboratory. A taciturn pair of men who knew a bloodstain when they saw one. They had seen one on the spine of a book in the Library and now they were looking at another.
They were all in the armoury. One suit of armour had gone—
Detective Constable Crosby had began by working from quite a different premise—that one of the hundred and seventy weapons listed in the catalogue would be missing. So he and Mr. Ames had been conducting a bizarre roll-call.
“One anelace.”
“Present.”
“Onevoulge.”
“Yes. A very early piece,” said the Vicar with satisfaction. “Not many of them about.”
“A tschinke?”
“That’s right. The tenth Earl brought that back with him from abroad. It’s a sort of sporting gun.”
Crosby eyed it warily. If that was the sort of souvenir that came from foreign parts he would stay at home.
“He was an ambassador,” said the Vicar.
“I know.” Crosby moved his finger down the list and said cautiously, “A pair of dolphins.”
“Both here. Lifting tackle, you know, for guns.”
Crosby didn’t know. “Three bastard swords,” he continued.
“All here.”
At the third attempt, “A guardapolvo.”
“Yes.”
“A Lucerne hammer.”
“Yes.”
Crosby hesitated. “A spontoon.”
“Yes.”
“A brandistock.” Crosby looked up from the list. “What’s that?”
“A weapon with a tubular shaft concealing a blade…”
Crosby lost interest.
The Vicar pointed. “You can jerk the blade forward.”
“We call it a flick knife,” said Crosby laconically. “Next. A godentag. What’s that?”
“A club thickening towards the head,” said Mr. Ames, indicating it with his hand, “and topped with an iron spike. Hullo, it’s not hanging quite straight—someone must have—”
“Don’t touch it,” shouted Crosby, dropping the list and making for the wall.
Mr. Ames’ hands fell back to his side, but he went on looking.
So did the pair from the Forensic Laboratory—only they looked through a powerful pocket lens and they looked long and hard.
“Blood,” said the senior of the two, “and a couple of hairs.”
Inspector Sloan turned to the Vicar. “What did you say it was called, sir?”
“A godentag,” said Mr. Ames. “Taken literally it means ‘Good Morning.’ ”
Detective Constable Crosby caught the affirmative nod from the laboratory technician to Inspector Sloan and interpreted it correctly. “If that’s what did it, sir, shouldn’t it be ‘Good Night’?”
Charles Purvis had been as good as his word. He came down to the armoury to tell Sloan that the four guides were waiting for him in the Oriel Room.
“They’re all there except Hackle and he’s working in the knot garden if you want to see him, too.”
Inspector Sloan hesitated. A knot garden sounded like a Noh play. “Where’s that?” he asked cautiously.
“Just this side of the belvedere,” said the Steward, trying to be helpful. “By the gazebo.”
“And the Oriel Room?” said Sloan, giving up. It was like learning a new language.
“I’ll take you there,” said Purvis. He hadn’t finished with the Press—he didn’t suppose you ever finished with the Press—but he had done what he could.
The Oriel Room had been a felicitous choice on the part of Purvis. It was a room that was never shown to the public, while still not being quite the same as the Private Apartments. Mrs. Mompson, Miss Cleepe, Mrs. Nutting, and Mr. Feathers were there and Dillow was plying them with coffee.
Pseudo-privilege for pseudo-guests.
The thin Miss Cleepe declined sugar, the tubby Mrs. Nutting took two spoonfuls.
“I know I shouldn’t,” she said, “but I do like it.”
As usual, Mrs. Mompson remained a trifle aloof. “Poor little Miss Meredith,” she said with condescension. Mrs. Mompson called other women “little” irrespective of their size. “I do feel so sorry for her.”
“I feel more sorry for Meredith myself,” said Mr. Feathers practically. “Not the sort of end I’d fancy.”
Mrs. Nutting shivered. “Nor me. We must help the Inspector all we can.”
It wasn’t very much.
Sloan took them through the previous Saturday and Sunday—not so many people on the Saturday, but then there never are—but Sunday was crowded. They wouldn’t be surprised if Sunday had been a record. (It wouldn’t stay that way for long if it had been, thought Sloan. Not after tomorrow’s papers came out.)
Mr. Feathers had noticed nothing out of the ordinary in the Great Hall. Miss Gertrude Cremond had been along to see the chandelier in daylight, and expressed herself pleased with it. It wouldn’t need doing again for the season, otherwise all had been as usual.
Mrs. Nutting reported one small child had got under the four-poster while her back was turned, but had been extricated (and spanked) without difficulty.
“Otherwise,” she said cheerfully, “just as usual. Same sort of people. Same questions.”
Miss Cleepe, as angular as Mrs. Nutting was curved, twisted her hands together. The Long Gallery had been much the same. The usual difficulty of parties made up of people who really cared about painting and those who neither knew nor cared.
“It’s so trying if you sense that they’re bored,” she said, “but the Holbein always interests them.”
“After you’ve told them what it’s worth,” said Mr. Feathers brutally.
She sighed. “That’s so. They always take a second look then.” She put down her coffee cup. “And of course they always ask about the ghost. Always.”
