A thought had penetrated Miles Cremond’s brain. “I say, Inspector, you couldn’t go walking through the House with a club, what? Look very odd.”
“Yes, sir, I quite agree. There is one way though in which it could be carried quite easily without being seen.”
Miles Cremond, having had one thought, wasn’t immediately up to another. He frowned, but said nothing.
“And don’t forget,” went on Sloan smoothly, “that Mr. Meredith wouldn’t have known who to suspect of changing the picture. Dillow, I think her Ladyship has finished with the tea tray now. Would you like to take it away?”
“Certainly, sir.” With an expressionless face the butler put the hot-water jug back beside the teapot and picked up the tray.
He was halfway across the room with it when Sloan said to him conversationally, “Did you have any trouble hiding the godentag under Mr. Meredith’s tea tray, Dillow?”
In the end it wasn’t the Countess of Ornum at all who dropped the silver teapot.
It was Dillow.
“That you, Sloan?” Superintendent Leeyes didn’t wait for an answer. “I think it’s high time we got some help in this case.”
“There’s no need now, sir, thank you.”
“Can’t have the Earl thinking we aren’t efficient. I’m going to ring the Chief Constable now and tell him that—”
“I’ve just made an arrest, sir.”
“I think we should ask him to call in Scotland Yard. After all, you’ve had nearly twenty-four hours and—”
“I’ve just arrested Michael Joseph Dillow, sir.”
“Who?”
“The butler.”
“What for?”
“The murder of Osborne Meredith.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, sir. It all fits in.”
“What does?”
“Motive, means, opportunity…” Sloan couldn’t think offhand what else constituted a murder case.
“Motive?”
“Theft, sir. Of a very valuable picture. I think,” added Sloan judiciously, “that he had a bit of really bad luck there.”
“Where?”
“In Osborne Meredith spotting the switch-over just when he did.”
“So”—astringently—“did Meredith.”
“Quite so, sir. Otherwise Dillow had timed things quite well. Meredith was sure to be at the two-day cricket match on the Saturday and Sunday—he would never have missed that if he was alive—and it was highly unlikely that anyone but Meredith would have spotted that the Holbein was a fake. The forgery’s a really expert job.”
“Who did it?”
“Dillow won’t tell us, but I strongly suspect that same hand that did the pseudo Van Goghs which his last employer found he owned.”
Superintendent Leeyes grunted. “But to lessen the risk,” pursued Sloan, “Dillow put a dud electric light bulb in the fitting over the picture. It’s in a bad light as it is and Miss Cleepe is shortsighted anyway and isn’t an expert.”
“Then what?” demanded Leeyes.
“I think he killed him when he took his tea tray in, ate the tea himself, and left the body in the Library.”
“Sloan”—irritably—“there’s something very old-fashioned about all this—butlers and bodies in the Library.”
“Traditional, sir,” Sloan reminded him. “You said we could expect the traditional at Ornum.”
Leeyes grunted again.
“He left him in the Library, sir, while he deflected the Vicar. It’s not the sort of Library anyone uses much in the ordinary way. Then after he sounded the dressing bell”—the only dressing bell Sloan knew was that on his own alarm clock, which went off every morning at seven o’clock, not every evening at seven-thirty, but he was prepared to believe that there were others—“while all those in the House were changing he carried the body down to the armoury.”
“Quite a good time to choose.”
“Very. Except for one thing. William Murton was watching him from the spyhole above the Great Hall. As well as seeing Dillow carrying Mr. Meredith’s body he also saw the chandelier lying on the table—which was what put us on to him having been there.” Sloan discreetly omitted Lady Alice from the narrative. Ghosts were all very well in Ornum House: in the stark, scrubbed police office in Berebury they became too insubstantial to mention.
“What put you on to Dillow?” enquired Leeyes. “That’s more important.”
“Teacups,” said Sloan. “There should have been three on their Ladyships’ tray.”
“Teacups?”
“There were only two,” explained Sloan, “which meant that by the time he took them their tea Dillow must have already overheard Meredith telling the Vicar’s wife that he would be waiting for her husband in the Library and guessed exactly what discovery Meredith had made.”
“Meredith could have told him himself that he wasn’t going up to the two old birds,” objected Leeyes.
“If he did, sir, then Dillow was lying when he said he hadn’t seen him earlier. Six of one, half a dozen of the other.”
“And Murton?”
“William Murton decided that in future Dillow could subsidise his pleasures—he therefore didn’t ask his uncle for a loan this weekend—which I gather was something so unusual as to be remarkable.”
“So he got what was coming to him.”
“I’m afraid so, sir. As soon as he tried it on, probably. He was dealing with a tougher nut than he knew. Than we knew,” Sloan added honestly. Dillow hadn’t gone quietly, but there had been policemen everywhere.
“Hrrrrrrmph,” said Leeyes. “And what stopped Dillow just clearing off with the picture?”
“Michael Fisher, Mrs. Laura Cremond, and me,” said Sloan. “The boy found Mr. Meredith too soon, Mrs. Cremond stirred up the Muniments, and I sealed the door. If I hadn’t I think it would have gone out today under Dillow’s arm.”
“Today?”
“His day off. Bad luck, really. He parked it in the safest place he knew. He tried to break the door down in the night and to lure the Archivist out with food today.”
“Hrrrrrrmph,” said Leeyes again. “And Murton?”
“I expect,” said Sloan, “Dillow suggested he and Murton go somewhere for a nice quiet chat—like the dungeons.”
Inspector Sloan had left Constable Crosby and Constable Bloggs on duty outside the door of the Private Apartments with firm instructions about the Ornum family remaining undisturbed.
The door, therefore, in theory should not have opened at all at this juncture, still less should an incredibly old lady in black have got past them armed with nothing more intimidating than a lorgnette.
But she had.
“Why,” demanded the querulous voice of Lady Alice Cremond, “has Dillow not brought us our tea?”
Detective Constable Crosby turned the police car in that wide sweep of carriageway in front of Ornum House where the coaches of the Earls of Ornum had been wont to go into that wide arc of drive that brought them to the front door.
There was room to have paraded the entire County of Calleshire Force and to spare—but there were only two members of it present: Inspector Sloan and Constable Crosby.
“Home, James, and don’t spare the horses,” commanded Sloan, climbing in.
“Beg pardon, sir?”
Sloan sighed. “Headquarters, Crosby, please.”
“Yes, sir.”
They drove through the Park, past the Folly, ignoring the Earl’s prize deer. Crosby steered the car between the gryphons on the gate finial without a sidelong glance.
Sloan looked at his watch and thought that—with a bit of luck—he’d be home in time to nip round his garden before the light went. Yesterday—was it only yesterday?—there had been a rose—new rose—nearly out. It might not be good enough for showing, but he thought he would try.
You could never tell with judges.