“Yes, sir. Mornings, I raked the coals and got a new one started.”
“The Earl hasn’t walked since the accident?”
Blink, blink. “No, sir.”
“He had a wheelchair. He could use that by himself.”
Blink. “For short distances, yes, sir.”
“He could get in and out of it himself?”
“On some days, sir. Some days he required assistance.”
“Did you give him the gun, Mr. Carson?”
The pale hands clenched at the lapels of his coat. “The gun, sir? No, sir, I never did, sir. I swear on my life I didn’t.”
“You know that the gun was kept in the Great Hall.”
“I heard you say so, sir, to Lord Purleigh.”
“You haven’t seen it there?”
“Not to notice it, sir. I know very little about guns.”
“How do you think it got to the Earl’s room?”
“I can’t imagine, sir.” He shook his white head. “For a fact, sir, can't.”
“Could the Earl have gone down the stairs by himself? In the wheelchair?”
“No, sir. When he came downstairs, I needed help with the chair. It’s very heavy, sir.”
“When was the last time he came downstairs?”
“Last week, sir. It was a sunny day, and the Earl wanted to see the gardens.”
“Did he go anywhere near the Great Hall?”
“No, sir. Briggs helped me with the chair, getting it downstairs, and I rolled it out to the gardens myself.”
“Was someone with him all the time?”
“I was, sir. The entire time. Near to half an hour. And then Briggs helped me get him back up to his room.”
“Okay,” I said. “What happened today?”
“When, sir?”
Bit by bit, I got it out of him. At four o’clock, as usual, Carson had brought the Earl his afternoon tea. As usual, the door between the anteroom and the Earl’s bedroom was shut. As usual, Carson waited in the anteroom for the Earl to ring a bell by his bedside, signaling that he was ready for the tea. No bell rang. At a quarter after four, Carson heard the sound of a gunshot. He ran to the Earl’s door, tried to open it, discovered it was locked. He tried his own key. It wouldn’t work. He pounded on the door. No answer. He ran into his room, used the emergency telephone to call Higgens. A few minutes later, Higgens arrived, with Lord Bob. The two of them couldn’t open the door. Lord Bob went off for help.
“Okay,” I said. “When you heard the gunshot, did you know what it was?”
He blinked. “I wasn’t quite sure what it was, sir. But a gunshot is what it sounded like. It was very loud, sir, even through the door.” “Did the Earl usually lock his door?”
“No, sir. He never did.”
“Where was the other key? The one that was in the lock this afternoon?”
“In his cabinet, sir. The bottom drawer.”
“And you’re sure you heard the shot at a quarter after four?” “Yes, sir. I’d just looked at my watch, sir.”
“Why look at your watch?”
“It was getting late, sir. Most times, the Earl rang for tea by ten minutes past four.”
“Mr. Carson, I’ve heard that there’s been some bad feelings between the Earl and Lord Purleigh.”
He blinked. The hands stirred. “Bad feelings, sir?”
“I heard that the Earl didn’t like what Lord Purleigh planned to do with Maplewhite, after the Earl was gone.”
He shook his head earnestly. “Oh no, sir. They had their disagreements, sir, as you might expect. It happens in every family, doesn’t it, sir? But there were no bad feelings, sir.”
“No arguments, no fights?”
“Oh no, sir. Nothing like that.”
Just then, I heard a noise coming from the hallway outside Carson’s room. The stomp of heavy feet, the mumble of male voices. I got up from my chair and went to the door.
Chapter Nineteen
Walking out into the hallway was like walking into a Mack Sennett movie. It was crowded with people who seemed to be rushing in a dozen different directions at the same time. They all stopped rushing when I came out, and they all looked at me and I looked at all of them. There were a couple of burly uniformed cops, and two other burly men in black suits carrying a rolled-up stretcher. A short man in a gray suit held a doctor’s bag. There was a tall thin man in a brown suit, with the strap from a bulky camera hanging around his skinny neck. And there was a tall man in a vested, military-looking black suit who had square shoulders and a square jaw and wavy gray hair that swept back from a nice widow’s peak above a square forehead and a pair of pale gray eyes. He looked like someone who had wandered into the wrong movie, and who resented it. He was the one who did the talking.
“And what have we here?” he said to me.
“Phil Beaumont,” I told him.
He nodded crisply, once. “You’ll be the Pinkerton.”
“I already am,” I said.
After a moment, he smiled bleakly. His must have practiced that smile, because he did a good job with it. “Superintendent Honniwell,” he said. “Lord Purleigh has put us into the picture. We’ll carry on from here.”
“Fine.”
He nodded crisply toward the door I’d just closed. “The valet’s room?”
“Yeah.”
He nodded again. “You may go, Beaumont. I may have some questions for you later.”
“Swell. There’s one thing, though.”
He smiled faintly, to let me know he was humoring me. Or maybe he was letting himself know. “Yes?”
“The gun. The Smith and Wesson. You’ll be checking it for prints?”
“Of course.”
“Lord Purleigh’s prints are on it.”
He pursed his lips. “Lord Purleigh and Sir Arthur have already apprised me of that fact.”
“Right. Well, I don’t know how good your laboratory people are, but you could tell them to look for prints under the ash.”
He raised one of his handsome gray eyebrows. “Under the ash?” “When we broke open the door,” I said, “it blew ash from the fireplace all over the room. It was on the gun before Lord Purleigh picked it up. His prints will be on top of the ash. If you find any prints under the ash, they belong to whoever used the pistol.”
“I expect,” he said, “that our technicians are quite capable of making that determination on their own.” He turned back to the rest of them. “Proceed, gentlemen. Touch nothing until I arrive.” In a jumble, the others began shambling and shuffling toward the Earl’s room. Honniwell reached for the knob to Carson’s door, then stopped and looked at me as if he were a little bit surprised to find out I was still in the same universe that he was.
“You may go, Beaumont,” he told me.
“Thanks,” I said, and went.
I went back to the drawing room. It was empty. Even better, no one had bothered to clean up after the tea party. There was still food lying untouched on the tables. I had just finished wolfing down my second smoked salmon sandwich, and I was reaching for the third, when two servants came into the room. They were carrying large metal trays. One of them was Briggs.
“Mr. Briggs,” I said. “Could I talk to you for a minute?”
Briggs glanced at the other servant, looked back at me, and said, “Certainly, sir.” He set his tray down on one of the tables and came over to where I was standing.
I said, “You’ve heard about the Earl?” It was probably impossible to keep it a secret from the servants.
“Yes, sir,” he said. “A great tragedy, sir.”
“I was just wondering, Mr. Briggs. Do you know anything about any visitors the Earl might’ve had in the past few days?”
For the first time, Briggs’s pale, pinched face showed some expression. His glance darted over to the other servant, who was very busy being busy, and then it darted back to me. His small eyes narrowed with that slow appraising slyness that mothers and employers hate but Pinkertons love. “I’m sorry, sir,” he told me. “I couldn’t say.” He glanced at the other servant again, in case I hadn’t gotten the message.
“Okay, Mr. Briggs,” I said. “Thanks. See you around.”
“Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.”
Superintendent Honniwell was already in the Great Hall when I got back there. He stood facing the table, where Doyle, Lord Bob, and the Great Man were all sitting. The Winchester rifle was gone. Honniwell ignored me as I sat down next to the Great Man. His hands were clasped behind him and he was summing up.