went.”
“What sort of time would this have been, sir?”
He frowned. “I must have been heading for the ha ha by ten past four.”
“I beg your pardon, sir?”
“The ha ha.”
“That’s what I thought you said.” Sloan tried it out for himself. Tentatively. “The ha ha?”
“That’s right, Inspector.”
“And what”—cautiously—“did you do when you got there?”
“Walked round it.”
“I see, sir.” It was like one of those radio parlour games where everyone else knew the object. He suppressed an urge to say, “Can you eat it?” Instead he murmured, “Did you see anyone while you were there?”
Miles Cremond frowned again. “Purvis. He was talking to Bert Hackle by the orangery.”
Sloan sighed. It was altogether too simple to suppose that you kept oranges there. “Anyone else?”
“No, Inspector.”
“And when did you get back?”
“Late.”
“Late? Late for what?”
“Dinner, Inspector. I’d hardly left myself time to change. M’wife was waiting for me and we went down together a bit late.”
“And you were walking all the time, sir?”
“Yes, Inspector.”
“Round the ha ha?”
“Yes.”
“Very funny,” said Crosby not quite inaudibly enough.
“What’s that?” Miles Cremond jerked forward.
“Nothing, sir,” interposed Sloan smoothly. “Now, was there anything else you can tell us about Friday?”
But the Honourable Miles Cremond couldn’t think of anything out of the ordinary that had happened on Friday, or any other day for that matter.
The whole business was a complete mystery to him, what?
So it was too, apparently, to his wife, Laura.
She did, however, think any discoveries of Osborne Meredith’s about the earldom were perfectly absurd.
“Perfectly absurd,” she repeated for good measure.
“You didn’t take them seriously, you mean, madam?”
“I didn’t, Inspector.”
“It seems,” said Sloan mildly, “as if someone did.”
There was no denying that someone—someone wearing a woman’s shoe, size six and a half—had taken them seriously enough to have a real go at disturbing the muniments.
He said so.
“But,” protested Laura, “but you couldn’t take all this away and give it to someone else.” She waved a hand in a comprehensive gesture that included House, park, and—somehow—earldom.
“I couldn’t,” agreed Sloan. “There would have to be a successful claimant through the Law Courts.”
“But,” she wailed, “we don’t even know who the claimant would be.”
“No?” Sloan would have to try to work out the significance of that later. “Mr. Meredith would presumably have known.”
It seemed Laura Cremond had not thought of this.
“He might,” suggested Sloan, “have been the only person who did know.”
She lifted her head sharply at this. There was nothing Cremond about her at all, noted Sloan. Just the touch of fast-fading handsomeness and a good hairdresser.
“You mean,” she ventured cautiously, “that now he’s dead we may never know?”
“I couldn’t say, madam, at this stage. He may have left a written note.”
“No”—quickly.
Too quickly.
“No, madam?”
“I mean”—she flushed—“not that anyone knew about.”
“He might have communicated the result of his researches to someone outside the family.” Sloan’s eyes drifted downwards in the direction of her shoes. He said austerely, “Tell me again about Friday afternoon, madam, please.”
She was beginning to look flustered. “There’s nothing to tell, Inspector. I went to my room after tea-—there wasn’t anything else to do really. Cousin Gertrude had gone off to finish her chandelier, Uncle Harry always has a little sleep just about then, and my husband had gone for a walk.”
“Lord Henry and Lady Eleanor?”
“They went down to Ornum village to see their old nanny—she’s not been well.”
“And the Countess?” It was like a roll-call.
“Aunt Millicent?” Laura Cremond said waspishly, “You can’t really have a conversation with Aunt Millicent.”
“No”—Sloan supposed you couldn’t. Any more than you could talk to a butterfly. He murmured, “I see, madam. So you went to your room?”
“That’s right, Inspector.”
“And stayed there?”
“Yes, Inspector.”
Sloan looked down at her for a long moment, and then said soberly, “I think you have had a lucky escape, madam. A very lucky escape indeed.”
Talking to Lady Eleanor Cremond was a refreshing change. Sloan could quite understand why Charles Purvis was smitten.
She was all that a good witness should be.
Simple, direct, sure without being categoric.
“I saw Ossy just before four o’clock,” she repeated.
“Alive and well?”
“Very well, Inspector, if you know what I mean. Almost excited.”
“About what?”
“He didn’t tell me. We just chatted for a moment or two, then I took a book and went away.” She paused. “He was a real enthusiast, you know.”
“Yes.” That hadn’t saved him. Almost the reverse, you might say. He watched her closely. “His tea?”
“No, I didn’t stay for that. I asked him to join us as he wasn’t going up to the great-aunts, but he said he had something he wanted to do and he was expecting Mr. Ames any minute.”
Teatime on Friday had suddenly become immensely important.
Lady Eleanor, though, was thinking about luncheon today.
“You must be famished,” she said, looking at her watch. “I’ll get Dillow to bring you something. Where will you be?”
“Thank you, that would be kind, your Ladyship. The armoury…”
“You don’t want to eat there, Inspector.” She thought for a moment. “I know the very place. The gun room.”
The gun room it was. As appropriate a murder headquarters as anyone could meet.
“They’ve got weapons on the brain here, that’s their trouble,” grumbled Crosby, looking round the small room, which was literally lined with guns. “Look at ’em. I should have thought they’d have got enough downstairs
