“We’ve just been checking a few facts,” said Sloan truthfully. “The family and so forth.”
“One of the oldest in the County,” said the Vicar. “Hereditary Beacon Keepers to the Crown for Calleshire since the reign of Queen Elizabeth the First…”
Sloan hadn’t meant that sort of fact.
“She was afraid of the Spanish coming, you know, Inspector.”
“Really?”
“The old Norman Tower above the Keep has a flat roof.” The Vicar smiled a clerical smile. “The Norman invasion, you remember, had been a successful one. A highly successful one.”
“Yes, sir”—stolidly.
“A beacon fire lit there could be seen from the roof of Calle Castle, which is some way inland. They in turn would light a beacon fire there and so on.”
“I see, sir, thank you.”
“And then there was Charles the Second.”
Sloan was not interested in Charles the Second.
“He,” said Mr. Ames, “Was afraid of the Dutch. Now George the Third…”
Sloan had come about murder not history.
“He was worried about the French. Napoleon, you know.”
“I don’t think the historical side concerns us, Vicar.” It was, after all, as Superintendent Leeyes had said, the twentieth century.
“And then,” said Mr. Ames, unheeding, “there was 1940 and the Germans. We had a really big beacon all ready for firing then. Bert Hackle’s father—old Hackle—he used to keep look-out…”
“Quite so, sir. Now if we might come back to the more immediate past—like Friday.”
With police-like patience he set about taking the Vicar through all the details of his abortive visit to the house following Osborne Meredith’s message. Mr. Ames obediently detailed his story for the second time.
He had had a message, he had come up to the House, he had not seen Meredith in the Muniments Room or anywhere else.
“The documents chests,” said Sloan suddenly. “Were they shut or open?”
The Vicar screwed up his eyes the better to remember. “Open,” he said eventually. “That’s what made me think Meredith would still be about somewhere.”
“Did you see anyone else while you were here?”
“Dillow—he said he thought Meredith had gone home as he wasn’t about—and Miss Cremond—Miss Gertrude Cremond, you know. She was cleaning the chandelier in here.”
They all looked upwards.
“A very lovely piece,” said Mr. Ames. “French crystal.”
“Was she alone?” asked Sloan.
The Vicar nodded. “Miss Cremond,” he murmured diplomatically, “is in total charge of all the Ornum china and glass. Lady Eleanor helps her with the flowers, but Miss Cremond handles all the rest herself.”
“I see, sir.”
“It was all still down on the table when I saw her,” said Mr. Ames. “Hundreds of pieces.”
“A day’s work,” agreed Sloan, turning to go.
As he did so he stopped in his tracks.
Sloan would not have described himself as a sensitive man. If he thought of himself at all it was as an ordinary policeman—warts and all. But at that moment—as he stood with Crosby and the Vicar in the Great Hall—the atavistic sensation came to him that they were being watched.
It was a very primitive feeling.
The hairs on the back of his neck erected themselves and an involuntary little shiver passed down his spine. Primeval reactions that were established long before Man built himself his first shelter—let alone medieval castles.
Sloan let his gaze run casually round the Great Hall. It was not long before he spotted the peephole up near the roof in the dim corner behind and beyond the Minstrels’ Gallery. He drifted slowly towards the door under the gallery and so out of sight of the peephole.
Once there, he changed to a swift run, going up the vast staircase as quickly as he could, his sense of direction working full blast.
He kept right at the top of the stair and chose the farthest door. He flung it open on a small, panelled room.
There was nobody there.
But in the opposite wall, low down, was a little window giving not to the out-of-doors but to another room. He stepped across and peered through it.
He was looking down at the Great Hall. From where he stood he could see the Vicar still talking to Crosby. The constable was standing listening in an attitude of patient resignation. Sloan straightened up again and stepped back into the corridor.
And somewhere not very far away he heard a door closing gently.
12
« ^ »
Charles Purvis was being put through his paces by the Press and he was not enjoying it.
For one thing, though, he was deeply thankful. With the help of Dillow he had at least managed to bottle up all the reporters in the same room. The thought of a stray one happening upon Lady Alice was too terrible to contemplate.
“Gentlemen,” he began, “I can give you very little information—”
“Can we see the Earl?” asked one of them immediately, mentioning a newspaper that Purvis had only seen wrapped round fish.
“The Earl is Not at Home.”
“You mean he isn’t here?”
“No,” said Purvis, “just Not At Home.”
“You mean he won’t see us?”
“His Lordship is not available,” insisted Charles Purvis. He had a fleeting vision of a subheading “No Comment from Earl of Ornum.” (What the reporters wrote, in fact, was, “Earl Silent.”)
“Do we understand, Steward, that the body was in the armour all day on Saturday and Sunday while visitors were being shown round?”
“I believe so,” said Purvis unhappily as the reporters scribbled away. (“Little did those who paid their half crowns at the weekend know that…”)
“How do you spell ‘archivist’?” said somebody.
The man from the oldest established newspaper told him.
“When are you open again?” asked another man.
“Wednesday,” said Purvis cautiously, “I think.”
“That your usual day?”
“Yes.” (They wrote, “ ‘Business as Usual,’ Says Steward.”)
“That means you won’t actually have closed at all?”
“Yes.” (“ ‘We Never Close,’ Says Earl’s Steward.”) “I reckon this is the first Stately Home Murder, boys.”
Purvis winced and the others nodded. “This Earl of yours…” The voice came from a man at the back.
“Yes?”
“He’s not much of a talker, is he?”
“A talker?” Charles Purvis was discovering the hard way that stone-walling is an under-rated art—not only on the cricket pitch but everywhere else, too.
“That’s right,” said the reporter, who had been doing his homework. “He’s been a member of the House of Lords for thirty years.”
“Yes?”
“I’ve looked him up.”
“Oh?”
“He’s only spoken twice. On red deer.”
“That’s right.”
“Both times.”
“It’s his subject.”
There were hoots of merry laughter at this. Purvis flushed. “He has his own herd, you know, and…”
But the reporters were already on to their next questions.
“Our Art man,” said a crime reporter, “our Old Art man, this is, tells me you’ve got a Holbein here.”
“That’s right,” confirmed Purvis. “What’s the Earl doing taking in washing when he’s got a Holbein?”
Purvis hadn’t expected the interview to go like this. “It’s of a member of the family,” he retorted, stung. “That’s why.”
(“Steward says Holbein would have been sold long ago but for sentimental reasons,” they wrote.)
“Our New Art man,” said another newspaperman, “says the Earl’s nephew has just had an exhibition. Murton’s the name. William Murton.”