“Half a crown if you want to go into the House,” she said firmly. “Gardens and the Park only, a shilling.”
They were rescued—just in time—by a competent-looking young man who introduced himself as Charles Purvis, Steward and Comptroller to the Earl of Ornum.
“That’s all right, Lady Eleanor,” he said. “These two gentlemen have come to see me. They’re not visitors.”
She nodded and turned to give change to the next arrivals.
The Steward led the two policemen through the Great Hall—Mr. Feathers was saying his piece there to a fresh party—and then down the spiral staircase.
“We closed the armoury at once, Inspector—you’ll watch your step here, won’t you…”
Sloan was going to watch his step in Ornum House all right. He had his pension to think of.
“Shall I go first, Inspector?” offered Purvis. “It’s a bit tricky on the downward flight.”
It wasn’t only going to be the staircase that was tricky either. Sloan could see that already.
“Hang on to the rope,” advised Charles Purvis. “As I was saying, we closed the armoury at once but didn’t tell more people than was absolutely necessary.”
“Not Lady Eleanor?” said Sloan.
“No, she doesn’t know yet.” Purvis turned left at the bottom of the staircase and led the way down the dim corridor. “We felt it would only cause comment to close the entire house at this stage.”
A body in the armoury of a Stately Home was going to do more than cause comment, but Sloan did not say so. Instead, he murmured something about not letting those which were in the house out.
“The earlier parties will have gone by now,” said Purvis regretfully. “The armoury is the last of the rooms on exhibition because relatively few people are interested. They mostly don’t come down here at all, but go into the Park next.”
They passed the dungeon and the well head and found Bert Hackle standing guard at the armoury door.
“There’s nobody here now, Mr. Purvis, but me. Mr. Dillow—”
“The butler,” put in Purvis.
“That’s right,” said Bert Hackle. “He’s taken all those that were in here along to the kitchen with Mrs. Morley.”
“Thank you, Hackle.” Purvis opened the armoury door and walked in, the two policemen at his heels.
At first glance it did not seem as if anything was amiss.
All was still and the room resembled a museum gallery as much as anything. There were eight suits of armour, each standing attentively facing the centre of the room as if alert for some fresh call to arms. Sloan regarded them closely. The visors were down on all of them, but one at least was more than a mere shell.
“Which…” he began.
“The second on the right,” said Charles Purvis.
Sloan and Crosby advanced. A little plaque on the floor in front of it read armour with tilt pieces, circa 1595.
Sloan lifted the visor very very carefully. There might be more fingerprints than those of Michael Fisher here. The visor was heavier than he expected but, just as the boy had done, he got it up at last.
Inside was the face of a man verging on the elderly and more than a little dead. Inspector Sloan touched his cheek though he knew there was no need. It was quite cold. He looked back at the Steward.
“Do you know who…”
“Mr. Meredith,” supplied Charles Purvis, adding by way of explanation: “Our Mr. Meredith.”
“Our Mr. Meredith?”
“Librarian and Archivist to his Lordship.”
“You know him well then?”
“Oh yes,” said the Steward readily. “He comes—came—to the House most days. He was writing a history of the family.”
“Was he?” Sloan tucked the fact away in his mind. “Where did he live? Here?”
“No. In Ornum village. With his sister.”
Sloan lowered the visor. It was just like banishing an unpleasant fact to the back of one’s mind. At once the room seemed normal again.
Crosby got out a notebook.
“Mr. Osborne Meredith,” said Purvis, “and his address was The Old Forge, Ornum.”
“If he came here every day,” said Sloan, “perhaps you could tell me the last day you saw him here.”
The Steward frowned slightly. “Not today, I know.”
Sloan knew that too. That cheek had been too chill to the touch.
“I don’t recall seeing him yesterday either, now I come to think of it,” went on Purvis, “but he might well have been here without my seeing him. He came and went very much as he wished.”
Sloan waved a hand in a gesture that took in the whole house. “Whereabouts in here would you expect to see him?”
“He spent most of his time in the Library and in the Muniments Room.”
“Did he?” said Sloan, adding ambiguously, “I’ll be checking up on that later.”
Purvis nodded. “But how he came to be down here in the armoury, and in this, Inspector, I couldn’t begin to say at all.”
“And dead,” added Sloan.
“And dead,” agreed Purvis sombrely. “His Lordship was most distressed when he was told and said that I was to give you every possible assistance…”
“He came and went,” observed the egregious Detective Constable Crosby, “and now he’s gone.”
If anything, Dr. Dabbe, the Consultant Pathologist to the Berebury Group of Hospitals, was more put out by the news than the Superintendent had been.
But for a different reason. Because it was Sunday afternoon and he was sailing his Albacore at Kinnisport.
“Send him along to the mortuary, Sloan,” he said from the yacht club telephone, “and I’ll take a look at him when I get back.”
The tide must be just right, thought Sloan. Aloud he said, “It’s not quite like that, Doctor. The body’s at Ornum House.”
The medical voice sounded amused. “What are you expecting, Sloan? True blue blood? Because I can assure you that—”
“No, Doctor. It’s not like that at all.” The telephone that the Steward had led him to was in a hallway and rather less private than a public kiosk. “We’re treating it as a sudden death.”
The sands of time having run out for one more soul.
“Well, then…” said the doctor reasonably.
“He’s in a suit of armour for the tilt, circa 1595,” said Sloan, “and I not only don’t know that we ought to move him, but I’m not at all sure that we can.”
Then, duty bound, Sloan telephoned Superintendent Leeyes at Berebury.
“I’ve been wondering what kept you,” said that official pleasantly. “And how did you find the man in the iron mask?”
“Dead,” said Sloan.
“Ah!”
“Dead these last couple of days, I should say—though there’s not a lot of him visible to go by, if you take my meaning, sir.”
Leeyes grunted. “I should have said a good look at the face should have been enough for any really experienced police officer, Sloan.”
“Yes, sir.” If the deceased had happened to have been shot between the eyes, for instance. “So?”
“I’ve sent for Dr. Dabbe, sir, and I’d be obliged if I might have a couple of photographers and a fingerprint man—”
“The lot?”
