‘It’s this, my lord,’ said Inspector Clayton earnestly. ‘We’re always reading how unstable these Russian places are. Only last month, I read in the paper the other day, there were hundreds of Russians killed by their own soldiers and that in the centre of St Petersburg itself. Mightn’t Mr Martin just have met a load of ruffians who robbed him and killed him because he was a foreigner?’
‘Nothing is impossible, Inspector,’ said Powerscourt, reluctant to say he thought they were playing for higher stakes than robbery and casual killing.
‘Anyway, my lord, that’s as may be. Now it’s my turn.’ Clayton looked down briefly at the papers on the little side table beside him, as if he had written out what he was going to say. ‘Mrs Martin died from a fall from the tower of this house into the moat below. She hit her head on the stone wall of the footbridge on the way. That, according to the doctors, was probably what killed her. As far as we know, on the day of her death Mrs Letitia Martin was alone in this house. There is a housekeeper cum cook, married to a butler cum handyman cum coachman, who live in one of the little cottages opposite the tower you’ll probably have seen on your way in, my lord. Kennedy, they’re called. Their daughter in Tonbridge has just given birth to their first grandchild so Mrs Martin gave permission for them to go and spend two days and nights with the new arrival. We can find no record of anybody else coming to visit her. Constable Watchett, who is an expert woodsman, is checking through all the surrounding area to see if he can find any traces of any intruder. So far, not a thing.’
Inspector Clayton paused for a moment. ‘We know,’ he went on, ‘that she was in the habit of reading, or writing letters or working on the household accounts in the next library bay to this one, the one with the rope across it, my lord. We can have a look in there in a moment. We know from the doctors that she probably died somewhere between three and six in the afternoon. We have no idea if she went up to the tower on her own, or if some unknown visitor came with her. The unfortunate thing is that Mr and Mrs Kennedy went away on the Tuesday. Poor Mrs Martin died on the same day. The Kennedys did not come back until early evening on the Thursday. As they were the last people to see her alive, so they were the first to find her dead. They thought she had slipped. They said she sometimes went up there to look at the view or watch the birds. She could have slipped. But after his contact with the Foreign Office, my lord, our Chief Constable quickly discarded that theory. Or she could, of course, have jumped, the despatch of the Kennedys to the new granddaughter a perfect pretext for an uninterrupted suicide. But come, enough of this speculation. Let me take you up to the tower before the light goes, my lord.’
Inspector Clayton led the way up one flight of stairs at the end of the library. ‘Constable Watchett probably told you he doesn’t approve of houses on water, my lord,’ he said, continuing along a corridor that led into a bedroom and then a small chapel, perfectly equipped with pews and altar and crucifixes. ‘He doesn’t approve of higgledy piggledy houses either, as he puts it, houses where all the stairs aren’t in the one place.’
They had now entered a long elegant drawing room with French tapestries on the walls and one or two expensive-looking pictures. Looking out of the window Powerscourt saw the moat again, from a different angle this time, beguiling, seductive, mysterious. Inspector Clayton had stopped at the bottom of another staircase, this one in stone.
‘We don’t know, my lord,’ he said, ‘if she came the way we have just come, or if she came in from the other direction with the big bedroom, but she must have gone up this stone staircase.’
He made his way up the steps, pausing to push open the wooden square at the top.
‘Was this locked normally?’ Powerscourt asked.
‘No, it wasn’t, my lord. There seemed little point, really. Nobody could reach the tower without going through the house and if anybody came with a young family Mr Kennedy would always lock the door before they arrived.’
Now they were out on top of the little tower, on a platform not more than twelve feet square. To the west lay the cottages and other outbuildings that came with the estate. To the north, the large lawn and the lake behind. To the east and the west, the woods that formed part of the Weald of Kent. Clayton tiptoed across to the point where the West Bridge lay almost directly beneath them. ‘The doctors think this is where she must have gone from, my lord,’ said the Inspector, peering down at the water. ‘The parapet is dangerously low, as you can see. I expect the coroner will say something about it at the inquest. They’re always very good at trying to close stable doors after the horses have bolted.’
‘Do they think she stood on the parapet and jumped? Or toppled over and fell?’ Powerscourt was feeling the pull of the water again. Heights, even heights as low as this, had always unsettled him.
‘They don’t think it would have mattered. Her body would have crumpled – the doctor’s words, not mine – and the head would have shot forward to strike the stone wall that is the side of the footbridge. They think that is what killed her.’
‘You mean the doctors aren’t sure?’
‘The poor woman was in the water for over forty-eight hours. They think the blow from the bridge did for her, but she drowned as well, if you see what I mean, just to be on the safe side, perhaps. She was floating face down in the moat when the Kennedys found her, Kent’s answer to Ophelia.’
Powerscourt looked closely at Inspector Clayton. Police inspectors were not, in his experience, known for familiarity with the works of Shakespeare and the paintings of Waterhouse and Millais. He wondered suddenly if Letitia Martin had known about Tamara Kerenkova, waltzing round the state rooms of St Petersburg with her, Letitia’s, husband. Had that, perhaps, been resolved between them? Or had Martin’s return to the Russian capital, in his wife’s view, been the final betrayal of their love? Had the terrible irony been that Martin had, in fact, kept true to this imagined promise of fidelity to his wife? For he had not been in touch with Tamara on his return to St Petersburg, a fact that had given Tamara considerable disquiet. Powerscourt stared down into the water for answers that never came. He tried to imagine the despair Letitia Martin might feel if she thought Roderick had returned to her, only for him to betray her once again.
‘You look very pensive, my lord,’ said Clayton. ‘Does anything strike you about the circumstances up here?’
‘Only how short a distance you have to fall to kill yourself, Inspector. She could have slipped, of course. Or, as we both know, been pushed. I was trying to imagine how Mrs Martin might have felt about her husband going back to Russia. She probably knew about the mistress, not necessarily the name but of her existence. Wives usually do. Now, it seems, he is going back to her. Any stories he tells his wife about the extreme secrecy, only the Prime Minister knowing the full story and all that, will all sound like special pleading to her. After he goes, and then dies, she grows increasingly miserable. It’s a double betrayal, first his going off to see that woman again, and then not being alive to be reproached for it. Her unhappiness deepens,
‘. . . for many a time
I have been half in love with easeful Death,
Called him soft names in many a mused rhyme,
To take into the air my quiet breath:
Now more than ever seems it rich to die,
To cease upon the midnight with no pain.’
‘John Keats, my lord,’ said Inspector Clayton proudly. ‘Stanza six if my memory serves me.’
‘It serves you very well, I think, Inspector,’ said Powerscourt. ‘Let me step back a little, as it were, from this fanciful speculation about Mrs Martin’s state of mind. Was it wet that day? Would the stones underfoot have been slippery?’
‘It was wet, my lord. If there had been two people up here the rain would have washed away any traces of their feet, if you see what I mean. Do you wish to stop up here a little longer, my lord? Or shall we go down and I’ll see if I can persuade the constable to make us some tea?’