The Herring in the Library (13 page)

‘You don’t suspect Gerald of murder?’ she said suddenly.

‘Are you suggesting that your fling with Robert, years ago, could be a motive?’

‘No, of course not. It would have to be more than that, wouldn’t it? More than just that I had once slept with Robert?’

I thought she had implied she had slept with him a lot more than once. Still, I felt I could set her mind at rest.

‘It would need to be a lot more than that, surely?’

There was a long pause.

‘Yes, of course. It’s silly of me even to think it,’ she said.

‘And he had no opportunity,’ I said.

‘No. I was with him the whole evening.’

‘There you are. You know that it couldn’t be him.’

‘I’ve wasted your time,’ she said, standing up. ‘I am really, really sorry.’

‘It’s OK,’ I said.

‘Sorry,’ she said. She stifled a final sniffle, gave me a brave smile and clutching her handbag to her body, she walked primly from the room.

After she had gone I wondered what had troubled me about
that
conversation. Yet again, I felt that I had been told only part of a story, and that the most significant part had been held
back.

My interview with Dave Peart was necessarily brief.

‘Am I getting paid for my time here or what?’ he demanded. ‘My dad says Saturday should be time and a half. All day.’

‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘You’ll have to ask Lady Muntham.’

‘If it’s down to Her Ladyship, I know the answer to that one then. Tight cow.’

He folded his arms and looked at me defiantly.

‘Maybe you could just tell me briefly what you were doing yesterday?’

‘Already told the bloody police, ain’t I?’

‘Yes, you’ve told the police,’ I said, ‘but it would help if you also told me.’

‘Huh! I don’t have to tell you nothing, mister.’ He made a noise halfway between a laugh and a snort and looked fairly pleased with himself until he noticed the resultant snot
on his shirtfront. ‘Bugger.’

‘Quite right,’ I said, trying to ignore what he was doing with his thumbnail. ‘You don’t have to tell me about anything that you noticed. But I suppose you’re not
really the observant type?’

‘Didn’t say that,’ he said, rubbing off the last of the yellow mucus with the tip of his forefinger. With a well-practised flick, he launched it towards a distant part of the
floor.

‘So what did you do and what did you see?’

He sighed, as though I had tricked him, then he said: ‘In the morning, up till dinner-time, I helped John in the garden, see? We was weeding and pruning mostly. Then I helped a bit in the
kitchen and with laying the table. I got sent home at tea-time to change – I borrowed a jacket from Dan – he’s my brother – but the trousers didn’t fit, so I took my
dad’s, ’ cause he only wears his suit for weddings and when he’s up before the magistrate, and I reckoned he wouldn’t miss them. Didn’t look too bad in that get-up.
Proper little waiter, I was. So, like you know, I served the soup, then the main course and it was all rush, rush, rush – a bit like those cooking programmes on the telly, but without so much
bad language. I did pretty well, though I say it myself. Might go in for waitering full-time – it’s got to pay better than this job anyway. Well, Her Ladyship doesn’t ring for the
dessert, does she? Didn’t exactly bother us if it got cold. Unappreciative toffee-nosed whatsits, as Mrs Michie called them. So we waited and we chatted and we waited a bit more. After a
while Mrs Michie says: “I wonder what’s keeping them?” Later on the police turned up. Didn’t get home until almost two in the morning, did I?’

‘Did you see any sign of an intruder?’

‘I was running around the place so fast I wouldn’t have noticed a dozen intruders.’ He laughed but this time wisely decided against a derisive snort.

‘Did you see anyone wandering around the garden in a blue suit?’

‘I ain’t never seen nobody wander round the garden in no blue suit.’

A quadruple negation seemed conclusive, so I moved on.

‘You really saw nothing all day?’ I asked.

‘Wouldn’t say that.’

‘Wouldn’t you?’

‘All right – I really will tell you something, Mr Amateur Detective. Mrs Michie sent me out in the afternoon to get some carrots from the kitchen garden. OK? John was in the
greenhouse with Her Ladyship. They’d have had more privacy in the potting shed if they were planning to get up to that sort of thing – but the greenhouse being glass, it didn’t
leave much to the imagination. They didn’t notice me pulling carrots ten feet away from them. I bet
he
got time and a half.’

‘Did Lady Muntham and Mr O’Brian often . . .’

‘As often as they could. But don’t take my word for it. Ask anyone in the village pretty well.’

‘And did Sir Robert know?’

‘Can’t say, rightly. Don’t see how he couldn’t. But then I don’t see how John didn’t know about that Brent fellow – took him a while to twig to that
one.’

‘Clive Brent?’

‘That’s the one. Big green Jaguar. He parks it on the bypass sometimes and walks up. Thinks nobody won’t notice.’

‘I see,’ I said.

Dave Peart laughed. ‘You wouldn’t credit what goes on at this place,’ he said. ‘You would
not
credit it.’

Young Dave Peart,’ said Mrs Michie, wiping her large red hands on a tea cloth, ‘has a vivid imagination. It comes of those magazines he’s always reading – I
know where he keeps them in the potting shed, under the growbags. He thinks those bags are too heavy for me to lift, but they’re not. Sex. That’s all that boy can think of. I
wouldn’t set too much store by what Dave Peart tells you.’

‘There’s nothing going on between Lady Muntham and John O’Brian then?’

‘Nothing that I know of.’ Her face, perhaps through long and careful practice, was completely expressionless. She pushed a strand of greying hair behind her ear and stared at me with
her unyielding, almost colourless eyes. It was my move.

‘And Clive Brent?’ I asked.

‘He’s a slippery customer, that Mr Brent.’

‘Meaning?’

‘Acts like he’s got some sort of hold on this family. Marches in. Demands to see him. Demands to see her. He’s just the bursar of that school down the road. And only
part-time.’

I paused, my pen hovering above the paper, then wrote nothing.

‘So, yesterday, you started work at nine?’ I asked.

‘Worked nine in the morning until ten at night, with scarcely a break. That’s not even legal, that’s not. Then I had to hang around answering questions from the
police.’

‘Were you in the kitchen all that time?’

‘Pretty much. I had Gill Maggs – she comes in from Findon Valley – to help me in the morning, then Dave Peart in the afternoon, not that he’s much use to anyone, even
when his mind’s partly on the task at hand. It would have been good to have Gill back in the evening, but Her Ladyship wouldn’t hear of it – this is costing enough without that,
she said. So it was just me slaving away in the kitchen and the boy spilling soup over people in the dining room.’

‘The food was lovely,’ I said, perhaps a little too late.

‘Was it now?’ she said. ‘Well, that’s good to know.’

‘I really enjoyed the . . .’ I began. Then I realized that I couldn’t remember a thing we had eaten. ‘The . . . starter,’ I concluded lamely.

She looked me straight in the eye and said nothing.

‘Did you notice anything odd during the afternoon or evening?’ I continued. My pen was still poised above the blank page.

‘There was nothing to notice, not in the kitchen. Where I was all day. Cooking. The
starter
and everything. It was soup, by the way, in case you were still wondering what
you’d been eating.’

‘It was delicious,’ I said, though I could remember only how it was served, not which variety it was. Better to move the conversation on. ‘You didn’t see any sign of a
man wearing a blue pinstriped suit – maybe with some sort of woolly hat? Standing over by the shrubbery.’

‘With a woolly
hat?’

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘In the middle of summer?’

‘A couple of people say they saw him.’

‘After how many glasses of wine would that have been?’

‘John O’Brian reckons he caught a glimpse of him.’

Mrs Michie pulled a face. She seemed more inclined to believe John O’Brian’s word than most other people’s, but she was still doubtful. ‘He said nothing to me. When did
John see him?’

‘Just before he went home, I think.’

She made the same face again, just in case I hadn’t fully appreciated it the first time, and shook her head. ‘He popped in to say goodnight, but he didn’t say anything to
me.’

‘Maybe he didn’t think it was important.’

‘An intruder in the garden? Not important? How do you make that out then?’

‘He thought at first it might be a guest.’

‘Not in a woolly hat.’

‘I suppose not,’ I said.

‘Funny John never mentioned that to me.’

‘Do you think I’ll be able to speak to Gillian Maggs?’ I asked.

‘She won’t be in until Monday. Gill was gone by lunchtime, though. She couldn’t have seen anything.’

‘Do you have her phone number by any chance?’

Mrs Michie eyed me up briefly. ‘Her Ladyship’ll have that, I reckon. Is it really worth bothering Gill?’

‘Probably not,’ I said. ‘Probably not.’

Twelve

As my old dad always used to say: ‘If you want to catch a villain, you’ve got to think like a villain.’ Of course, as a fruit and veg stallholder, he was
rarely called upon by the Essex Constabulary to catch villains, so that was one bit of advice I always took with a pinch of salt. Still, somethings were true even though my old dad said them, and I
tried to get myself into the mind of a murderer as I sat in the library and worked through the series of events.

There were plenty of ways into the library before it was locked – Muntham Court that evening had not been exactly Fort Knox. The problem with Shagger’s death being
murder had been getting the killer out of the locked room again. It was a shame that the solution to such a classic problem was anything as naff as a secret passage, but it did mean that a killer
could have made their escape and even hidden in the passage until things had quietened down. But, it would have been no casual intruder, because locating the opening mechanism had not been that
easy – even for somebody of Ethelred’s mighty intellect, aided by the helpful and knowledgeable hints of the owner of the house. So, it had to be somebody who already knew the house
well and who knew that Shagger would take a break halfway through dinner and head for the library . . .

It was the last bit that puzzled me. Why would anyone expect a host to abandon his guests and then sit around in the library, obligingly waiting to be murdered? Unless, of
course, they had actually arranged to meet Shagger at some appointed hour or after some agreed signal – that made a lot more sense. Prior to his departure, Shagger had stood up, spouted a
load of crap and then cleared off. But surely, if you wanted to slip away for a few minutes without arousing suspicion couldn’t you just say you needed to speak to the cook or fetch more
wine?

I went over to the relevant piece of woodwork and pressed, just as Ethelred had done. Various Victorian cogs and pulleys whirred away efficiently behind the panelling and the
outline of the entrance appeared. Like the lack of dust, the lack of noise was telling. This was a well-maintained Victorian mechanism – not some long-unused and rusty piece of ironwork. I
ran my hand over the panelling. It felt good to the touch. It was well-polished 0ak that would yield plenty of fingerprints – mine for the most part, I realized, though possibly still with
odd traces of the murderer’s.

Time to go through a few drawers.

Most of what was in Shagger’s desk was of minimal interest. Ethelred hopefully still had the poem safely stuffed in his pocket, and would remember to take it out before he
sent the trousers to the cleaners. The middle drawer was now just a receptacle for high-class stationery. Then, nestling at the bottom of the lowest drawer I found something really interesting. Had
Shagger been hiding this from his wife? And why? I flicked through it and it proved quite rewarding. I tried cramming the whole thing into my handbag but it was a bit of a tight fit, so I tore out
the relevant pages and stuffed them well down amongst the many useful things that my bag usually contains.

Back to the secret passage then.

Taking a torch with me, I pushed the panelling to one side as before and stepped into the gloom. I pulled the panel closed behind me. It clicked into place. It felt sort of cosy
once you were inside. The sounds from the house were muffled. I tiptoed along the stone floor as I reckoned the killer must have done. I found the lever at the far end. Another well-maintained
piece of machinery opened the panelling for me. I was in the billiard room. I pushed the woodwork closed. I had travelled from the library to the billiard room in total secrecy and in about thirty
seconds. Had I bolted the library door, there would now be no way back in, other than breaking a window or finally locating that elusive oak bench. I checked the billiard-room windows – they
were fastened but not locked. I gave one a push – it had a rubbish catch and swung open with minimal pressure. If I could have been arsed, I could have completed my reconstruction by jumping
out of the window onto the lawn and making a break for the shrubbery.

Instead, I walked round by the corridor (which I noticed took slightly longer) and back in through the library door. In my absence somebody had been sitting in my chair, and it
wasn’t Goldilocks.

Ethelred and a badly dressed woman looked up at me from where they were seated. She already looked cross but I reckoned I could wind her annoyance up a notch or two.

‘No, Ethelred,’ Felicity Hooper said, looking in my direction. ‘This really is the last straw. I’m willing to talk to you, but I am not being
interrogated by some panel of . . . of . . . Well, I’m not. That’s all there is to it.’

‘Elsie’s just passing by,’ said Ethelred with more hope than genuine conviction.