Inspector Fletcher looked out of place. He was wearing his best uniform, buttons polished, boots gleaming, but he still hopped uncertainly from place to place until Powerscourt suggested he sit down on the sofa next to the fire. Inspector Miles Devereux looked relaxed in an old tweed suit and had parked himself in an armchair by the bookcase. Inspector Grime was wearing an old and rather shiny suit but he looked at home in the first-floor drawing room with the paintings of Lady Lucy’s ancestors on the walls. Powerscourt himself was leaning on the mantelpiece, with a drawing of the strange mark on the dead men’s chests in his hand.
‘Thank you all so much for coming,’ he began. ‘I thought it would be helpful if we all heard how everybody else is coming along. Perhaps you’d like to start, Inspector Fletcher?’
Fletcher had made notes in the train on what he was going to say. ‘I think it fair to say, my lord, that the picture at the Jesus Hospital is far from clear. We know that somebody broke in during the night, or hid himself away the evening before, and murdered Abel Meredith. Or he was killed by one of the other inmates. One of the old men heard noises but did not see anything. So far we have not received any reports of strangers being seen in the immediate vicinity of the hospital. We know that Warden Monk was operating a racket of some sort with the old people’s wills, but that does not seem to be an adequate motive for murder.’ Inspector Fletcher paused and looked round at his little audience. Lady Lucy gave him a smile of encouragement.
‘We know from you, my lord, that the dead man, Abel Meredith, may have been used as a courier by the secret service to travel to Germany to bring back information, and our own inquiries in Marlow tell of at least one trip to Hamburg which may have involved him acting as a messenger. I have to say that we have no idea if he was taking messages or instructions from England to Germany or vice versa or both. It is possible that his intelligence activities led to his death, though I cannot see how at the moment. We know, largely thanks to the activities of Johnny Fitzgerald, that there has been a lot of anxiety about the changes proposed to the constitution of the Silkworkers by Sir Peregrine Fishborne. We know that Sir Peregrine was staying at the hotel on the island in the Thames, the Elysian Fields, on the night before the murder. We know that he was accompanied by a masseuse called Frankie who was a regular visitor to his suite at the hotel.’
There was a snort or two from the other Inspectors at this moment. Lady Lucy looked demurely ahead.
‘We do not know much for certain about what time he left in the morning, though the girl says he was usually away by seven o’clock. There is always the possibility that some internal feud between Meredith and another resident of the hospital led to his death, though I have to tell you that there are doubts about whether any of the old boys would have the strength to work the knife with sufficient force to cause death in the manner inflicted. And I would remind you that the knife used in the Jesus Hospital may also have foreign connections. One of the doctors thought the wound was caused by a weapon called a kris, commonly found in places like Ceylon and Thailand. Inquiries continue into the past life of Abel Meredith and the other residents. My colleague and I have had one interview with Sir Peregrine in his office. It was the only time in my professional career, my lord, where the suspect has ordered tea for himself but not for his visitors.’
Inspector Miles Devereux was next into the lists. He spoke as if he were describing an afternoon in the hunting field.
‘I would have to agree with my colleague that the picture concerning the murder in the Silkworkers Hall is not clear either. One of the interesting things about the victim is that there is a long spell missing from his career as described in Who’s Who. The subjects, you will recall, make out their own entries. Fifteen years of his early adult life are simply not accounted for, and so far all attempts to fill in the blanks have failed. I, too, have had dealings with Sir Peregrine’s people. Twice now I have been to interview the Silkworkers Secretary about the ballot in the livery company. On both occasions the Secretary was accompanied by a rather disagreeable lawyer who tried to make my life as difficult as possible. They have told me one important fact. Sir Peregrine is going to win the ballot. Not all the votes have arrived yet, but most of them have and they believe that he already has enough support to carry the day by the required majority. His principal opponent in the company was, of course, the dead man. Sir Rufus was bitterly opposed to the plans. So, in two of the locations we have opposition to Sir Peregrine which might have been enough to derail his scheme. I expect we will hear the same story from Norfolk.’
Inspector Grime had been making notes as his colleagues spoke. Now he shut his notebook and put it in his breast pocket. ‘Well, gentlemen,’ he began, ‘in some ways we have more information about the killer in Allison’s School than we do for the other places. But I should tell you first of all that Allison’s School, with its twelve votes, also voted in favour of Sir Peregrine’s plan. We know that the murderer came to Fakenham the evening before on the train. He could have come from more or less anywhere. We do not know where he spent the night. One suggestion is that he passed it in one of the outbuildings of the school, such as the cricket pavilion, which were not usually locked. We know that he entered the school disguised as a postman early the following morning. I think he must have brought the postman’s uniform with him. The murderer entered the main school corridor at a time when it was full of boys and bumped into some of them. One of those boys claims he spoke with a South African accent. After the murder, our suspect disappears. And there may have been a personal link with our friend Sir Peregrine as well. His car was seen at his house at Melton Constable on the day before the murder. He attended a meeting with the headmaster and the bursar at the school the evening before the killing. Once again, the subject was the Silkworkers’ vote. The bursar was opposed to any changes to the statutes. Once he was out of the way, the headmaster voted for the changes in exchange for some new buildings. I am grateful to you, Lord Powerscourt, for that last piece of information.’ Inspector Grime paused for a moment and wiped his glasses. His sergeant always maintained that the more suspects he had in his sights, the more cheerful he became.
‘Up in Norfolk, my lord, we have not one suspect, Sir Peregrine, but two, or possibly three. Let me explain. We have heard of the masseuse called Frankie plying her trade at the Elysian Fields. We have no masseuses but we have a victim with two mistresses. One, Mrs Hilda Mitchell, is married to a stonemason who went away before the murder and has not been seen since. He is definitely a suspect. His wife, like the other lady, was collected up by the deceased, Roderick Gill, at church functions. He was known in cynical circles as the Groper in the Vestry. It seems you weren’t safe at innocuous events like the Harvest Festival and the Christmas carol service. Mistress number two, Maud Lewis, is a widow with considerable property left by her late husband. She was going to marry Gill and leave her money to him. She has two sons, both in their twenties, both of whom regard Gill as a bounty hunter of the worst sort. When I interviewed the two of them separately at their homes recently their alibis stood up well until it came to a chess game they had supposedly played the evening before the murder. Both of them have different accounts of who won. To sum up, you could say we have a surfeit of suspects, the cuckolded stonemason, Sir Peregrine, one of the two sons of Mrs Lewis. I don’t know which one I’d back in the Fakenham murder stakes myself.’
‘Well done, Inspector, well done everyone,’ said Powerscourt with a smile. ‘Can I ask you all the same question? Do you think Sir Peregrine is the murderer? Inspector Fletcher?’