Seven
Theodore had sought out the inspector as soon as he got back to Tavy Castle after escorting Adelia and the maid to the railway station. He wanted to make amends and get back onto the man’s good side so that he could assist in the investigation. He was sure that once they had a jolly, heart-to-heart, manly kind of chat, the inspector would be sure to recognise Theodore’s superior knowledge and expertise in the matter.
As he walked briskly up the driveway, Oscar Brodie joined him. He must have been lurking in the hedges around the gatehouse, waiting for Theodore to come past. The notion unsettled Theodore slightly. Young men in the twenties ought not to be hiding in the undergrowth, unless they were dallying with young ladies, which again they ought not to be doing either but such behaviour was marginally more understandable.
“The police are here again!” Brodie said breathlessly.
“So I see.”
“But he slipped and fell, the steward, didn’t he, or so they said, so why are they back?”
“I suppose they need to make sure it was an accident. I am glad to see them, in truth, because there is more to this than meets the eye. Why do you think Knight was in the ice house in the first place?”
“I told you, I never go down there.”
“That wasn’t the question.”
Brodie had a long, loping stride and he had drawn ahead by half a pace. He slowed, and answered more thoughtfully. “Mr Knight was a controlling sort of man,” he said in the end. “He had the keys to the ice house and he would go there to check on the stuff there. I know it was just rocks, just the old lapis and stuff, but I personally think he must have kept something of his own down there. Something private, you know? I wouldn’t have thought it was of much significance but you know how the servants can be. They own one thing and somehow it seems like the most important possession in the world.” Brodie laughed in a sneering sort of way.
Theodore ignored the young man’s arrogant ignorance and said, “That would explain why he was there. And depending on what this private thing was or is, that could potentially also explain why he was killed for it. It might not have been a thing of no significance.”
“But was he really killed?”
“I just don’t know.”
“Are you going to speak to the inspector?”
They had reached the main doors. Theodore could see a policeman wandering off around the side of the house and he started after him. “Yes, I am.”
“May I come with you?”
Theodore was finding the young man’s incessant talk a barrier to his own thoughts. He wanted to be clear-headed and he was wrapped up in thinking about the death. Rather snappily, he said, “No but thank you for the offer.”
It had been a request rather than an offer. Brodie stopped walking, and Theodore wondered if he had upset the lad. He seemed more than a youth of fifteen than a man in his early twenties. But it couldn’t be helped. The death of the house steward was more important than an unformed young man’s finer feelings. Theodore went off around the side of the house, and entered the castle from one of the back doors.
He found Inspector Wilbred in the kitchens, enjoying a tankard of small beer with the cook and the other servants.
That sight immediately put Theodore’s back up. But he bit his tongue. Perhaps Inspector Wilbred was simply doing the same sort of investigating that Adelia was so good at – talking to people on their own level, making connections, and winkling out information that way.
“Not a problem,” the inspector was saying as Theodore slipped in. “Tell Midgley that it was I what sent you to him, and remind him of what he owes me if he gives you any lip, and he’ll be sure to sort you out a discount on your meat.”
“A discount that won’t be passed on to Lady Buckshaw’s account, I am sure,” Theodore said and everyone jumped in alarm. The gathered servants melted away to their jobs immediately. Even the cook looked awkwardly towards the range and started to edge away.
“Lord Calaway, ah, good to see you, good to see you.”
“Is it? Never mind. So, how goes the investigation?”
“It’s all done, near enough, sir. All done. Chap’s lying in the mortuary with a big old lump on the back of his head, and we’re just having one last check around the grounds in case anything suspicious turns up.”
“Such as?”
“Well, we won’t know till we see it. That’s the nature of policing, see. True policing, I mean, not armchair-detectoring like you do. True policing is all long hours of tedious observation and hard graft, it is, topped off with years of experience and a little bit of cleverness and cunning.”
“Is it your cleverest policeman who is currently walking around the ice house, hitting the bushes with a stick?”
“As I said, checking for clues. But he won’t find any because there’s nothing to find. Fellow slipped, bashed his head, died. One thing I’ve learned in my many years on the job, sir, is that most crime isn’t.”
“Isn’t what?”
“Isn’t crime, sir, at least, not the way you read it in the magazines. In the stories, sir, you get a fiendish criminal, likely twirling his moustache, cackling to himself in shadowy corners, plotting a crime and carrying it out with much maniacal laughter and then running off into the night – until he’s caught by a trail of clues he’s left behind. In real life, sir, what happens is an ordinary citizen is going about their ordinary business and
