“I feel more sorry for Meredith myself,” said Mr. Feathers practically. “Not the sort of end I’d fancy.”
Mrs. Nutting shivered. “Nor me. We must help the Inspector all we can.”
It wasn’t very much.
Sloan took them through the previous Saturday and Sunday—not so many people on the Saturday, but then there never are—but Sunday was crowded. They wouldn’t be surprised if Sunday had been a record. (It wouldn’t stay that way for long if it had been, thought Sloan. Not after tomorrow’s papers came out.)
Mr. Feathers had noticed nothing out of the ordinary in the Great Hall. Miss Gertrude Cremond had been along to see the chandelier in daylight, and expressed herself pleased with it. It wouldn’t need doing again for the season, otherwise all had been as usual.
Mrs. Nutting reported one small child had got under the four-poster while her back was turned, but had been extricated (and spanked) without difficulty.
“Otherwise,” she said cheerfully, “just as usual. Same sort of people. Same questions.”
Miss Cleepe, as angular as Mrs. Nutting was curved, twisted her hands together. The Long Gallery had been much the same. The usual difficulty of parties made up of people who really cared about painting and those who neither knew nor cared.
“It’s so trying if you sense that they’re bored,” she said, “but the Holbein always interests them.”
“After you’ve told them what it’s worth,” said Mr. Feathers brutally.
She sighed. “That’s so. They always take a second look then.” She put down her coffee cup. “And of course they always ask about the ghost. Always.”
Mrs. Mompson, who had for some time been trying to engineer an exchange of pictures between the Long Gallery and the drawing-room, said, “That picture doesn’t get the light it should in the Long Gallery.”
“It is rather dark,” agreed Miss Cleepe. “It’s such a low narrow room; and the bulb in its own little light was broken. Dillow’s getting another for me.”
“I’ve always said that over the fireplace in the drawing-room is where that picture should be,” declared Mrs. Mompson. “Where everyone could really see it properly.”
“I don’t know about that I’m sure,” said Miss Cleepe nervously. “After all, too much light might be bad for the picture.”
“It’s practically in the half dark in the Long Gallery where it is. Halfway from each window and not very good windows at that.” Mrs. Mompson had over the fireplace in the drawing-room at present an eighteenth-century portrayal of the Goddess of Plenty, Ceres, that she had long wanted to be rid of. The Goddess had been depicted somewhat fulsomely and Mrs. Mompson did not think the artist’s conception of that bountiful creature quite nice.
“I think,” she went on, “the Holbein would be seen to real advantage over my fireplace.”
Miss Cleepe flushed. To lose from her showing ground the most valuable item in the House and the ghost at one fell swoop was more than she could bear.
“Oh, dear!” she fluttered. “Do you really? I should be very sorry to lose the Judge. Very sorry. I always feel he’s a real interest to those to whom the other pictures mean nothing.”
Inspector Sloan made no move to stop them talking. The policeman’s art was to listen and to watch. Not to do. At least not when witnesses were talking to each other, almost oblivious of an alien presence in their midst. Almost but not quite.
Mrs. Mompson, who had no wish for an immediate ruling on the subject of the Holbein from Charles Purvis, said firmly, “Nothing, I assure you, Inspector, out of the ordinary happened in the drawing-room while I was in charge.”
Sloan, who would have been surprised if it had, nodded.
“One young woman went so far as to finger the epergne,” she went on imperiously, “but I soon put a stop to that.”
“Quite so, madam. Thank you all very…”
Miss Cleepe had not done.
In a voice that trembled slightly she said, “I really don’t think I could possibly manage the Long Gallery without the Holbein.”
Sloan was ringing back to base. Base wasn’t very pleased at his news.
“Someone,” declared Sloan, “has tried to get into the Muniments Room since we sealed it up yesterday.”
“They have, have they? What for?”
“I don’t know, sir. I’d arranged for the County Archivist to come over and start going through the records. When Crosby went up there with him he found someone had had a go at the lock.”
“There’s something in there,” said Leeyes.
“Yes, sir.”
“And someone’s still after it.”
“Yes, sir. They haven’t got it though. The locks held.”
“Just as well,” grunted Leeyes. “By the way, Sloan, I’ve just had the Ornums’ lawyer here. He’s on his way out to you now. Watch him.”
“Yes, sir.”
“One of those clever chaps,” said Leeyes resentfully. “Said he was representing the Earl’s interests. Representing them!” Leeyes snorted. “Guarding them like a hawk, I’d say.”
Sloan was not surprised. People like the Ornums went straight to the top and got the very best. He said gloomily, “I suppose the Earl will be another of those who know the Chief Constable personally, too…”
They were the bane of his existence, those sort of people, assuming that acquaintanceship was an absolution.
“Be your age, Sloan.”
“I beg your pardon, sir?”
“The Earl wouldn’t be bothered with people like the Chief Constable.”
“Not be bothered with the Chief Constable?” echoed Sloan faintly.
“That’s what I said. The Home Secretary, Sloan, was his fag at school, and the Attorney-General’s his wife’s third cousin, twice removed.”
“Oh, dear.”
“Exactly.” Sloan heard the Superintendent bring his hand down on his desk with a bang just as he did when he was standing in front of him. “So if there’s any arresting to be done…”
“Yes, sir.” Sloan took the unspoken point and tried to check on something else. “The rules, sir, aren’t they different for peers of the realm?”
“I don’t know about the written ones, Sloan,” said Leeyes ominously, “but the unwritten ones are.”
“Yes, sir”—absently. He was thinking about the Tower of London. He and his wife, Margaret, had gone there on their honeymoon. Was it just a museum still or were there dark corners where extra special prisoners lay?
“You could call it a case,” said Leeyes judicially, “where a wrongful arrest isn’t going to help the career of the police officer making it.”
“Quite so, sir.” He cleared his throat. “I’m nowhere near that stage yet, sir, but we think we’ve found the murder weapon. A club called ‘Good Morning.’ ”
“A club called ‘Good Morning,’ ” said Leeyes heavily. “You wouldn’t by any chance be trying to take the micky out of a police superintendent called Leeyes, would you, Sloan, because if you are…”
“No, sir”—hastily. “It’s number forty-nine in the catalogue and its other name is a godentag. The Forensic boys have found blood and hair on it but no fingerprints. Dr. Dabbe hasn’t seen it yet, of course, to confirm that…”
“That reminds me,” interrupted Leeyes. “Dr. Dabbe. He’s been on the phone with his report.”
“Oh?”
“These pathologists,” grumbled the Superintendent. “They upset everything.”
“Why?”
“You said, Sloan, that the butler took Meredith his tea at four o’clock and collected the empty tray at five.”
“That’s right, sir. He saw him at four but not at five. And Lady Eleanor saw him just before teatime.”
“Teatime, perhaps,” said Leeyes, “but not tea.”
“Not tea?”
“Nothing had passed deceased’s lips for three hours before death. Dr. Dabbe says so. Killed on an empty stomach in fact.”