The Stately Home Murder (17 page)

“I see.”

“She saw the wound.”

“Doubting Thomases,” said Sloan bitterly, his mind darting back to his Sunday-school days. “That's what we should be called, isn't it? Not coppers.”

“I couldn't say, I'm sure, sir,” murmured Crosby. “Anyway, Mrs. Morley said it was quite a nasty cut. He couldn't have held a cricket bat.”

“Or a godentag?”

“Not according to Mrs. Morley, he couldn't. She wanted him to have the doctor. Right across the palm, it was, and the index finger.”

“And he got it from a motor car, not from squeezing a dead man into a metal suit of armor?”

Crosby's case rested on Mrs. Morley and he said so.

“I see,” said Sloan. “So you think Lord Henry is out as a suspect, but William Murton still in?”

“Except that he got off the 5:27 all right,” repeated Crosby, “because the station master saw him himself.”

“And have you checked that he didn't nip up the line and get on at the station before?”

“Not yet,” replied Crosby in a nicely shaded manner which implied he had been about to do so.

“I should,” advised Sloan. “What size shoes does he take?”

Crosby stared. “I didn't notice, sir.”

“I did. A nine, at least.”

“He's a big chap,” agreed Crosby cautiously.

“Too big for a lady's shoe, size six and a half, anyway,” observed Sloan, turning back the pages of his own notebook. “And the Countess and Lady Eleanor both take a five.”

“Handy, that.”

“Handy?”

“They can share,” said Crosby. “Like my sister does.”

“Crosby, people like this do not share shoes.”

“No, sir.”

“Assuming”—severely—“that the person who left a heel mark in the muniments room did so inadvertently, and I think they did.”

“Yes …”

“That means Miss Gertrude Cremond, Mrs. Laura Cremond, or Mrs. Morley went in there and turned everything upside down.”

“Unless it was an outside job, sir.”

“Crosby,” Sloan controlled a sigh. “We both know this wasn't an outside job.”

“Yes, sir.”

“So one of the three went in there …”

“After Meredith was killed, sir, or before?”

“Well, he's hardly likely to have stood by and watched, is he now?”

“No, sir.” Crosby scratched his forehead. “Miss Gertrude Cremond's big enough to have dotted a small man who was sitting down at the time, for all that she's not young.”

“True.”

“Mrs. Laura Cremond isn't.”

“No. Neither was Lady Macbeth.”

“Pardon, sir?”

“Lady Macbeth. Another small woman. She got someone killed.”

“Secondhand, you mean, sir.”

“Precisely.”

“You think she might have egged on the Honorable Miles, sir?”

“Goaded would be a better word, Crosby.”

“Yes, sir.” He paused and said carefully, “I don't think he would have thought of it on his own.”

“No.”

“Mrs. Morley would have had to have got Dillow to do it for her,” went on Crosby. “For all that she's got biggish feet for a woman she doesn't look the club-swinging sort.”

“There is another possibility …”

Crosby sighed. He wasn't good at assimilating more than two or three at a time.

Inspector Sloan tapped his notebook. “That the attack on the muniments had nothing to do with the murder of Meredith.”

Crosby had not thought of this. “Coincidence?” he said doubtfully.

“Not exactly. Just two things happening on the same day.”

“Matching up with the two separate discoveries, sir?” suggested Crosby brightly. “The one about the earldom …”

“Which may or may not be true …”

“And the one Meredith made on the Friday afternoon …”

“Which we know nothing whatsoever about …”

“That he tried to get in touch with the vicar to tell him?”

“Well done, Constable. Now, can you tell me the only significant thing that we know about Friday afternoon so far?”

“No,” said Crosby promptly. “Nothing else happened apart from Meredith finding out something …”

“Let's put it another way,” said Sloan patiently. At this rate they'd have to call in outside help, whether Superintendent Leeyes wanted it or not. “What change in routine was there on Friday afternoon that we already know about?”

Crosby gave a short laugh. “The only thing that was different that we know about for certain sure …”

“Yes?”

“The two old birds upstairs …”

“Lady Alice and Lady Maude.” There were moments when he would have welcomed more sophisticated assistance, too. This was one of them.

“Lady Alice and Lady Maude”—Crosby tacitly accepted the emendation. “They didn't ask the deceased to tea like they usually did on Fridays.”

“Exactly, Crosby.”

“You mean that is important, sir?”

“I mean”—grimly—“that that's the only positive pointer we have so far. That and the fact that William Murton has been in Ornum for all of forty-eight hours without asking his uncle for money, which I understand practically constitutes a record.”

“That is unusual,” admitted the Earl of Ornum. He was in the private apartments regaling a tall thin individual with something from a decanter and thin biscuits. “I think it is … er … pretty well accepted that William only retreats to Ornum when his … er … other commitments become very pressing.”

The Earl had introduced Sloan and Crosby to the bleak-looking man. He was, it transpired, Mr. Adrian Cossington, the senior partner in the old established law firm of Oaten, Oaten and Cossington, and if his ascetic appearance was anything to go by, he had long ago done with all human desire and feeling. His pleasures, if any, looked as if they were confined to wrestling with “nice” legal points, or perhaps advising against the indulgences proposed by his clients.

He was obviously opposed to the Earl of Ornum saying anything to anyone at all at this stage—but especially to Inspector Sloan.

“Don't be silly, Cossington,” said the Earl testily, showing more courage in dealing with the solicitor than Sloan would have dared to have done. “The fellow's got to find out who killed Meredith, hasn't he?”

“Certainly, my lord, nevertheless your own responsibilities in the matter are confined to—”

“Dammit, man, there's such a thing as justice.” He turned. “Isn't there, Inspector?”

“I think so,” said Sloan cautiously. Asked point-blank like that he wasn't sure that there was.

“In your own interest, my lord,” protested Cossington.

“We are not considering my interest, Cossington, we are considering law and order.”

That was different.

Sloan, who wasn't sure about justice, was absolutely certain about law and order. You'd got to have it or you were barbarian.

The Earl was taking his stance. “I can't have my own librarian and archivist killed in m'own house, Cossington, now, can I?”

That was what rankled, thought Sloan irrelevantly. From the Earl's point of view it was “touch my servant and you touch me.” That was how it would have been in the old days. The first Earl would have had his own following, half servant, half army. Vassals, obedient to him unto death. And the Earl would have been obedient to the King, would have taken an oath of obedience at the King's coronation.

Every earl at every coronation.

Even now.

It had a name, that oath. He would remember it in a moment. An odd word … “fealty,” that was it.

The solicitor had started to explain to the Earl that narrow line between obstructing the police in the execution of their duty and those tenuous circumstances in which no man need offer evidence that might incriminate himself.

Sloan wasn't listening. He was looking across at the thirteenth Earl of Ornum with new eyes. He, Charles Dennis Sloan, Detective Inspector in Her Majesty's County Constabulary of Calleshire, was the natural heir and successor to the Earl in this matter of law and order. Where once the Earl had kept unruly villains obedient so now did he. Sloan, too, had taken an oath of allegiance. And he hadn't realized until now how ancient was his duty.

The Earl of Ornum hadn't been listening to the solicitor either. “Purvis tells me you've asked the county archivist in, Inspector.”

“Yes, my lord. With your permission …”

His Lordship nodded. “Meredith wouldn't have liked it, but that can't be helped. Not now. Possessive lot, these archivists. Always wanting to build their own empires. Never prepared to lend a hand with anyone else's.”

“Was there anything here that anyone hankered after then?” asked Sloan suddenly. It was something he should have asked before.

The Earl thought for a moment. “Some items are always being asked for on loan.”

“Which are they, my lord?”

The Earl waved a hand. “Some very early court stuff, which seems to have survived. Records of Oyer, Terminer, and Assize. That sort of thing.”

One lecture, that's all they'd had when Sloan joined the force, on the history of the legal system in England. And he hadn't listened anyway.

“The old Courts of Gaol Delivery, you know,” said his Lordship. “Going back a good bit now, of course. Not many of them about these days. Things have changed since then.” A faint gleam of humor crept into the melancholy countenance. “Now we have you, Inspector, and Cossington over there instead of just me.”

Justice instead of rough justice?

Sloan wasn't sure. He cleared his throat and came back to the point. “These records, my lord, are they worth stealing?”

“Nothing is worth stealing, Inspector.”

Sloan flushed. “I'm sorry, my lord. I meant …”

The whole atmosphere in the private apartments had changed subtly. “They have a value, Inspector …”

“Yes, my lord, I'm sure …”

“But too high a value to have a price.”

“I see, my lord.”

“No, Inspector, you do not see. The county archivist would like them for his empire. He sees himself as the true representative of the common man—to whom he probably thinks they should belong anyway. The ratepayer incarnate.”

“Quite so …”

“What was it that French fellow said …”

“I couldn't say, my lord …”

“Property is theft.”

It was not a police point of view. Nor an English one, if it came to that. Property was respectable in the police world. Men without property were like gamblers without a stake, a rootless, drifting menace. Men with nothing to lose.

“The Inns of Court would like them for their empire,” went on his Lordship, “because they see themselves as a profession and they think a profession can have a body. It can't. It's only as good as the worst of its members.”

“Yes, my lord.” As far as the aristocracy was concerned professions were doubtless new jumped-up callings.

“One of the universities wants them for their empire because they think they represent the intellectual man and that that is sufficient reason. It isn't.”

“No, my lord.”

“The intellectual man can be swayed by intellect …”

“Yes, my lord.” Sloan had thought that was the whole idea.

“Dangerous, that.”

“Very possibly, my lord.” Was that the aristocrat pronouncing on the meritocrat?

“Brains,” pronounced his lordship oracularly, “are all very well in their way. That right, Cossington?”

Mr. Adrian Cossington was far too clever to admit to having any at all and merely murmured, “A point of view, my lord, a point of view.”

In a moment, thought Sloan, he's going to say, “My country, right or wrong.”

But he didn't.

Instead the Earl said, “That's when you get political arithmetic creeping in, Inspector.”

“Do you, my lord?” Sloan didn't know about political arithmetic, but he did know that the Earl was trying to convey a philosophy to him, a philosophy that did not encompass murder.

“The greatest good of the greatest number.”

“I see, sir.” Wasn't that known as “the common weal,” or was that something different?

“And, Inspector, because they are of historical value I may not sell them to the highest bidder.”

“No, my lord?”

“My country which bleeds me white does not allow me the freedom of the marketplace.”

Sloan was more aware now of Cossington stirring in the background.

“All I may do, Inspector, is to retrench against a taxation system whose only aim is to deprive me of my inheritance.”

“Those court records,” said Sloan, policeman not politician, “would they have been in the muniments chests?”

“In the ordinary way,” agreed the Earl.

“But not on Friday?” Sloan's view of Ornum was blinkered to Friday.

The Earl shook his head. “They've been on loan to the Greatorex Library since the beginning of June.”

“Who all knew this?”

“Anyone who cared to read the papers,” said his Lordship blandly.

“Cor,” said Constable Crosby expressively as they left the private apartments, “he's agin the government if you like.”

Inspector Sloan's mind was elsewhere. He was wondering if hounds felt the same sense of disappointment as he did now when they had been following a scent that turned out to be false. For a moment he had thought he had been on to something.

Crosby waved a hand. “And he calls this being bled white.”

“All things are relative, Crosby.”

Just how relative, though, was all this to a handful of police constables getting a few shillings' palm oil from a greedy garage proprietor every now and then?

“I'd like to have his sort of money all the same,” persisted Crosby.

“No, you wouldn't.” The mental dichotomy between this investigation and the other was almost too much. They were at the extreme opposite ends of the scale.