The Stately Home Murder (5 page)

They passed the dungeon and the well head and found Bert Hackle standing guard at the armory 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 armory 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 armor, each standing attentively facing the center 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
ARMOR 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 armory, and in this, Inspector, I couldn't begin to say at all.”

“And dead,” added Sloan.

“And dead,” agreed Purvis somberly. “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 armor 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?”

“Yes, please, sir. And if they'll ask Lady Eleanor to tell the steward when they arrive—”

“Lady who?”

“Lady Eleanor, sir. His Lordship's daughter. She's on duty at the door.”

“Is she? Then she'll probably send them round the back anyway,” said the superintendent, “when she's taken a good look at them.”

“Yes, sir”—dutifully. Then, “The deceased is a Mr. Osborne Meredith, librarian to the Earl.”

“Ha!” Triumphantly. “What did I tell you, Sloan? Librarian. He got the idea from a book, I'll be bound. Mark my words, he'll be one of these suicides that's got to be different—”

“Different,” conceded Sloan, at once. “This is different all right, but as to the other, sir, I couldn't say. Not yet.”

4

Detective Constable Crosby was still keeping watch in the armory when Charles Purvis and Inspector Sloan got back there.

“I've just checked up on the other seven suits of armor, sir,” he said virtuously.

“Good.”

“All empty.”

“Good,” said Sloan again, slightly startled this time. Honest as always, even with himself, Sloan admitted that this was something he wouldn't have considered. He'd got a real eager beaver on his hands in young Crosby. Surely Grand Guignol himself wouldn't have thought of seven more men in seven more suits.

“And,” went on Crosby, “on the ways into here.”

“There's just the one, isn't there?” said Sloan.

“That's right, sir. The door.”

Purvis, the steward, seemed inclined to apologize for this. “That's because we're below ground level here, Inspector, and so we can't very well have windows. Nor even borrowed light. It's all artificial, the lighting down here.”

Sloan looked round. In a fine imitation of medieval times, flaming-torch-style lighting had been fixed into basket-type brackets high up on the walls.

“The lighting's not very good,” said Purvis.

“Effective, though.”

Purvis nodded. “Most people are glad to get back upstairs again.”

Sloan went back to the second suit of armor on the right. “Tell me, had anyone mentioned to you that Mr. Meredith was missing?”

“No, Inspector. We—that is, I—had no idea at all that everything was not as usual. We shouldn't have opened the house at all today had there been any suggestion that …” His voice trailed away.

“Quite so,” said Sloan.

“Complete surprise to us all.” He ran his hand through his hair. “Nasty shock, actually.”

“You said he lived with his sister.”

“That's right. His Lordship has gone down to Ornum to break the news.”

“Himself?”

Purvis looked surprised and a bit embarrassed. “Not the sort of job to delegate, you know. Come better from him anyway, don't you think? Take it as a gesture, perhaps.”

“Perhaps.”

“Then get the vicar to go round afterwards. Helpful sort of chap, the vicar.”

“Good,” said Sloan, content that the ground was also being prepared for him. A visit from a humble policeman shouldn't come amiss after all that.

“Though, as to the rest”—the steward waved a hand to embrace the armor—“I can't understand it at all. It's not as if it was even his subject. It's Mr. Ames who's the expert.”

“Ames?”

“The vicar. Bit of an enthusiast about armor. If we get any visitors who're really keen we ring him up at the vicarage and he comes in.”

Sloan looked round the armory. “There's never a full-time guide here, then?”

“No. Hackle brings people as far as the door when he's finished showing the dungeons and so forth—you need a man there because of the
oubliette
—and then they find their own way out in their own time.”

“I see.”

Purvis pointed to an arquebus hanging on the wall. “Not everyone's subject.”

“No.”

“But Mr. Ames catalogued this collection years ago, and he always comes in if special parties come.”

“Special parties?”

Purvis nodded. “As well as the ordinary visitors we have what you might call specialist groups. People who are interested in just one facet of Ornum House. Parties come to see the armor and I tell Mr. Ames. It's the same with the pictures and books and manuscript records. Take next week, for instance. I've got a party who call themselves The Young Masters coming down to see the pictures on Monday. Arranged it with Mr. Meredith so that he could …” Purvis came to a stop when he saw where his sentence was getting him. “Oh, dear, I'd forgotten all about that.”

Sloan looked at the suit of armor that contained the late Mr. Meredith and said, “What other … er … specialty of the house do you have?”

“The Ornum collection of china,” replied the steward, not without pride, “is thought to be one of the finest still in private hands.”

“I see.” Sloan scratched his chin. “Before I see his Lordship, do you think you could just give me some idea of the setup here?”

“Setup?” said Purvis distantly.

“Who all live here, then …”

“Well, there's the family, of course …”

Constable Crosby got out his notebook and started writing.

“There's his Lordship,” said Purvis, “and the Countess and their children.”

“Lady Eleanor?” said Sloan.

“Lady Eleanor is their only daughter,” said Charles Purvis, a curious strangled note creeping into his voice.

“And who else?”

“Lord Cremond, his Lordship's son.”

“And heir?” enquired Sloan.

Purvis nodded. “His only son.”

“I see. That all?”

The steward smiled faintly. “By no means.”

“Oh?”

“Then there's his Lordship's cousin, Miss Gertrude Cremond.”

“Quite a family.”

“And,” went on Purvis, “his Lordship's aunts, Lady Alice and Lady Maude. They are, of course, rather … er … elderly now.”

Sloan sighed. That, being translated, meant eccentric.

Purvis hadn't finished. “His Lordship's nephew, Mr. Miles Cremond, is staying in the house just now, with his wife, Mrs. Laura Cremond, and then, of course, there are the indoor staff … Dillow, the butler, and so on.”

Sloan sighed again

“Do you want me to go on?” asked Purvis.

“Oh yes,” said Sloan grimly, pointing to the suit of armor. “No man could have got into this contraption on his own. I can work that much out from here.”

“I know,” said Purvis flatly. “That's why we sent for you.”

Mrs. Pearl Fisher was sitting in the biggest kitchen Sloan had ever seen in his life.

She was by no means the only person in the room, but she contrived—by a subtle alchemy that would have done credit to some first lady of the stage—to give the impression that she was.

She was sitting at a vast deal table and she was drinking tea. Teas (2/-per head) were available to visitors in the Old stables, but this pot was obviously on the house. It was being administered by the housekeeper, Mrs. Morley, a lady who looked as if she had only just stopped wearing bombazine. A personage whom Sloan took to be Mr. Dillow, the butler, hovered at an appropriate distance.

“I don't know that I'll ever get over the shock,” Mrs. Fisher was announcing as Inspector Sloan and Crosby went in.

“The tea will help,” Mrs. Morley said drily.

Mrs. Fisher ignored this. “Sent me heart all pitter patter, it did.”

“Dear, dear,” said Mrs. Morley.

Histrionically, Mrs. Fisher laid her hand on her left chest. “It's still galloping away.”

“Another cup of tea?” suggested Mrs. Morley.

Both ladies knew that there would be brandy and to spare in a house like this, but one of them, at least, was not prepared for it to be dispensed.

“It can bring on a nasty turn, can a sight like that,” offered Mrs. Fisher.

Mrs. Morley advised a quiet sit.

Mrs. Fisher said she thought it would be quite a while before her heart steadied down again.

Mrs. Morley said she wasn't to think of hurrying. She was very welcome. Besides, the police inspector would want to hear all about it, wouldn't he, sir?

Sloan nodded. Crosby got out his notebook.

“I shall never sleep again,” declared Mrs. Fisher. “That face; I tell you, it'll come between me and my sleep for the rest of my born days.”

“Tell me, madam—”

“Them eyes,” she moaned. “Staring like that.”

“Quite so. Now—”

“He didn't die today, did he?” she said. “I know that much—”