Laura Cremond said unsteadily, “I know where the picture is.”
Everyone looked towards the sharp-faced woman who sat beside Miles.
“I say,” said Miles. “Do you? Good.”
She ignored him. “It’s lying under a pile of old maps in the Muniments Room. It’s not damaged at all.”
There was an expectant silence.
“I’m afraid,” went on Laura Cremond, not without dignity, “that I have a confession to make, and it’s very kind of the Inspector to give me the chance.”
Miles looked as if he couldn’t believe his eyes and ears. “I say, old girl, steady on. This isn’t a revivalist meeting, you know.”
“I’m sorry to have to tell you,” said Laura, “that on Friday evening I behaved rather badly.”
“Not as badly as somebody else,” said the Countess sadly.
“Nearly,” insisted Laura. “I’m afraid I disturbed the Muniments.”
“Good Lord!” said Miles.
“I’m very sorry. I just couldn’t bear the thought of Uncle Harry not being Earl any more.”
Cousin Gertrude had finished winding up the twine. “If Laura saw it there,” she said bluntly, “why didn’t she tell us and save all this trouble?”
Laura flushed and her voice was so low as to be nearly inaudible. “I didn’t like to say…”
“You didn’t like to say!” exclaimed Cousin Gertrude scornfully; Gertrude, who had herself never left anything unsaid.
“I thought perhaps Uncle Harry had arranged to…” Laura faltered and began again. “Owners do change pictures over themselves sometimes, you know, and sell the original without saying anything to anyone.”
“I expect,” murmured the Countess serenely, “he will one day.”
Laura was getting to her feet. “I know I did something I shouldn’t, Uncle Harry and Aunt Millicent, and I’m very sorry. Miles and I are going now and we shan’t be expecting any more invitations to stay at Ornum.”
The Earl was keeping to a more important train of thought. “So Meredith was killed because he knew about the fake picture.”
“And to prevent him telling anyone else, my lord.” A steel-like quality crept into Sloan’s voice. He cleared his throat and everyone turned in his direction. If you cleared your throat in the Berebury Police Station they thought you had a cold coming, but it was different here.
Everything was different here.
“It all happened,” he said, “because he wasn’t invited to tea with your Lordship’s aunts like he usually was on Fridays.”
“You’re joking, Inspector,” Gertrude Cremond said.
“Indeed I’m not, madam. I’m perfectly serious. As a rule Mr. Osborne Meredith always took tea with their Ladyships upstairs on Fridays.”
“You could count on it,” said Lady Eleanor.
“Someone did,” said Sloan soberly, “and it was his undoing.”
The Countess of Ornum picked up the teapot again. Dillow peered into the hot-water jug and, apparently finding it empty, picked it up.
“Don’t go, Dillow.”
“Very well, sir.” He stood with the jug in his hand.
“Friday,” said Sloan, “was an exception. Their Ladyships upstairs did not invite Mr. Meredith to tea as he had offended them by his historical researches. They did not, however, tell anyone they hadn’t done so.”
“So poor old Ossy turns up in the Long Gallery just after the Holbein had been changed over,” concluded Lord Henry, “when by right he should have been pinned between Great Aunt Alice and Great Aunt Maude while they told him how things ain’t what they used to be.”
“Quite so.”
“Then what, Inspector?”
“Then,” said Sloan in a voice devoid of emphasis, “he goes to the telephone where he is overheard ringing the Vicar’s wife.” He turned towards Lord Ornum. “Your telephone isn’t exactly private, your Lordship.”
“It’s the draughtiest place in the House,” responded the Earl. “My father wouldn’t have it anywhere else. Didn’t like it.”
“After that,” said Sloan, “I reckon the murderer had about a quarter of an hour in hand. A quarter of an hour in which to decide what to do and to go down to the armoury and pick his weapon.”
Lady Eleanor shivered. “If only I’d stayed talking to Ossy…”
“No, your Ladyship, that wouldn’t have made any difference. He’d have just waited until you’d gone.”
A thought had penetrated Miles Cremond’s brain. “I say, Inspector, you couldn’t go walking through the House with a club, what? Look very odd.”
“Yes, sir, I quite agree. There is one way though in which it could be carried quite easily without being seen.”
Miles Cremond, having had one thought, wasn’t immediately up to another. He frowned, but said nothing.
“And don’t forget,” went on Sloan smoothly, “that Mr. Meredith wouldn’t have known who to suspect of changing the picture. Dillow, I think her Ladyship has finished with the tea tray now. Would you like to take it away?”
“Certainly, sir.” With an expressionless face the butler put the hot-water jug back beside the teapot and picked up the tray.
He was halfway across the room with it when Sloan said to him conversationally, “Did you have any trouble hiding the godentag under Mr. Meredith’s tea tray, Dillow?”
In the end it wasn’t the Countess of Ornum at all who dropped the silver teapot.
It was Dillow.
“That you, Sloan?” Superintendent Leeyes didn’t wait for an answer. “I think it’s high time we got some help in this case.”
“There’s no need now, sir, thank you.”
“Can’t have the Earl thinking we aren’t efficient. I’m going to ring the Chief Constable now and tell him that —”
“I’ve just made an arrest, sir.”
“I think we should ask him to call in Scotland Yard. After all, you’ve had nearly twenty-four hours and—”
“I’ve just arrested Michael Joseph Dillow, sir.”
“Who?”
“The butler.”
“What for?”
“The murder of Osborne Meredith.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, sir. It all fits in.”
“What does?”
“Motive, means, opportunity…” Sloan couldn’t think offhand what else constituted a murder case.
“Motive?”
“Theft, sir. Of a very valuable picture. I think,” added Sloan judiciously, “that he had a bit of really bad luck there.”
“Where?”
“In Osborne Meredith spotting the switch-over just when he did.”
“So”—astringently—“did Meredith.”
“Quite so, sir. Otherwise Dillow had timed things quite well. Meredith was sure to be at the two-day cricket match on the Saturday and Sunday—he would never have missed that if he was alive—and it was highly unlikely that anyone but Meredith would have spotted that the Holbein was a fake. The forgery’s a really expert job.”
“Who did it?”
“Dillow won’t tell us, but I strongly suspect that same hand that did the pseudo Van Goghs which his last
