THE 999 CALL, MADE by an incoherent Albert, came into the Cambridgeshire Constabulary minutes later, which enterprise gauged Albert as a probable nuisance drunk and reacted accordingly.
Nonetheless, minutes later the Parkside Police Station dispatched one Constable Porter of Newton Coombe, a member of the Special Constabulary whose day job was pastry chef for the St. Germaine restaurant on Silver Street.
As Porter drove up to the imposing Gothic gate and saw the brass plaque announcing Waverley Court, he began to think he might be out of his depth. Wanting a break from the monotony of petits fours, Porter had been finding police work met the bill. Until now. There was such a thing as too much excitement. Careening up the long drive to the house, he had time to think that if some nob really had got himself killed, he, Porter, didn’t want to be the first and only man on the scene.
A surly, olive-complexioned man admitted him at the front door. As Porter reluctantly entered the armored hall, gazing about him in wonder, a blonde man tumbled out of a nearby door, collapsing into his arms as he gasped, “Murder! Cellar! Murder!”
Albert, grabbing the constable by the lapels, nearly dragged him to the top of the cellar stairs. Porter hesitated, reluctant to go down and muck up a crime scene, and instead tried to calm Albert, who reached ever more hysterical pitches with each passing minute. Eventually wrenching himself free, Porter called for backup. A higher layer of law-and-order appeared twenty minutes later in the form of Detective Chief Inspector St. Just and Detective Sergeant Fear of the Cambridgeshire Constabulary.
“What’s all this then?” the larger detective asked as he stomped in, brushing past Paulo, precisely as if he were there to break up a pub fight. A barrel-chested man with legs like tree trunks, St. Just was the same height as his subordinate but gave the appearance of being twice the size.
Constable Porter made sure Albert was safely propped against the wall before leaving him to come forward.
“Bloke says it’s a murder. In the cellar, he says. Says it’s his brother. That’s about all I can get out of him.”
“You’ve not gone down to look?”
“I did not want to disturb a crime scene. No, Sir.”
“Let’s hope the poor bugger really is dead, then.”
The poor bugger really was dead, and he’d been dead awhile. St. Just thought it was little wonder the man who said he was his brother was in such sad shape. The body in the wine refrigerator or whatever it was called was a mess, the skull thoroughly crushed in. The face itself, however, was intact: In profile, it retained the aristocratic, pampered visage of what the coroner would undoubtedly describe as a well-nourished, middle-aged man. The corpse wore a satin dressing gown, the legs of striped pajamas visible beneath.
“Look at that, Sir,” said Fear.
St. Just looked where Fear pointed, following the trail of splattered blood, to a dark, round, spiked object, apparently thrown into the nearest corner of the enclosed cabinet, with no attempt made at concealment. What in hell was it?
“Get forensics out here.”
Fear was already punching numbers into his mobile, but finding he could get no reception through the two-foot-thick walls. He started to run back up the stairs.
“Tell Porter or whatever his name is to keep everyone out of this cellar,” St. Just called after him. “Let’s leave it to forensics. Then tell him to round up the rest of the inmates for a chat. Come on. I want a look around this palace.”
The snow, while pockmarked by sleet, lay otherwise undisturbed, except for their own prints and a set of rabbit tracks leading away from the house. St. Just thought with a sigh of his long-planned ski vacation in the Pyrenees, scheduled to begin the next day.
The pair circled the manor carefully, eventually arriving back at their departure point at the front door. The wind by this time had died down, the sun making its first reluctant appearance over the treetops.
“No one’s been out here, then,” said St. Just.
“Looks like. Perhaps whoever it was used a snow-blower to cover up the tracks.”
St. Just was never certain when his Sergeant was serious.
“Without waking the house? I think that highly unlikely.”
“Maybe the rabbit did it, then,” said Fear. “But it wasn’t someone casually wandering by.”
“It wasn’t an intruder, that’s for certain. The area had a light, steady snow and it stopped well before midnight. No one’s been on this grass, no one except the rabbit. Ah, here’s Malenfant now.”
They watched as a tall man with slicked-back dark hair approached, his face wrapped to the eyes in a gaily striped college scarf of blue and orange.
“Good morning, Dr. Malenfant,” said St. Just. “What do you have for us?”
“The victim was in fairly good health, until he died, that is. He’d recently had surgery, within the past few months. Judging by the scars: clogged arteries, poor circulation, your basic white-collar executive’s disease. Still, no reason to think he wouldn’t live forever, the poor bugger. That kind of procedure is routine these days. The weapon is interesting.”
“Yes, what is that thing?”
“It’s called a morning star. Medieval, of course. It’s like a mace but with the enhancement of the spiked ball being attached to its handle by a length of heavy chain. The weapon was apparently taken from that ghoulish display in the hall. At a guess, someone waited in one of the many little alcoves of the cellar for the victim, then jumped out at him, and whoosh. Would take no strength at all, really.”
“So, male or female…”
“Certainly, not a problem either way. You finding anything out here?”
“Rabbits,” said Fear. “Whoever did this, it looks like they came from inside the house.”
“Let’s go and see which one of our rabbits looks most wide awake,” said St. Just.
Sir Adrian looked wide awake-excited by the novelty of police in the house, if anything-when St. Just and Fear found him and his wife in the study.
St. Just thought it a handsome room, although insistently upper class in a way that rendered it not quite authentic: The real thing was often worn to the nub by centuries of use or neglect. He looked more closely now about Sir Adrian’s study and thought it all had just that bit too much a whiff of the new about it, apart from the linenfold paneling, which he imagined had been there since the year aught. That beautiful piece of workmanship was interspersed with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves weighted down by reference works of all kinds-glossaries, atlases, dictionaries-as well as brightly colored hard-bound copies of Sir Adrian’s books translated into what looked like several dozen languages.
Sir Adrian himself was resplendent in a ruby dressing gown tied with a gold cord and with a white cravat at the neck. His wife wore a velvet robe, but, unlike her husband, seemed thrown off balance by the rude awakening to the day. St. Just saw her stealing a glance in one of the room’s mirrors and surreptitiously attempting to smooth her hair.
Sir Adrian grunted his way to his desk and picked up an old-fashioned pocket watch, staring at the time as if he couldn’t believe his eyes, before turning the full force of his gaze on St. Just. Violet perched on the edge of a sofa next to the fireplace.
“I hope you’re not going to drag out this interview the way Constable Stool would do,” Sir Adrian said.
“I beg your pardon?”
“Constable Stool. My fictional detective. The plodding village bobby of Saint Edmund-Under-Stowe, my counterpoint to the razor-sharp Miss Rampling.”
“I’m afraid I’m not familiar with your books, Sir Adrian.”
Sir Adrian looked at him, displeased. What kind of idiot had the Superintendent sent out here?
“Then you are in the minority, Sir. Now, you’ll need a complete inventory of what’s missing, won’t you?”
“I wasn’t aware anything was.”
“Stands to reason. Whoever broke in here and did this, they were thieves after money and goods. Ruthven was in their way.”
“In the cellar, Sir?”
“The perfect spot to break into the house.”
“Possibly. But there’s no sign of forced entry, and no indication anyone was on the grounds last night.” Nor any earthly reason for Ruthven to be in the cellar in the middle of the night, he added to himself.
“Nonsense. You simply haven’t looked carefully enough. Do you have any idea who I am, man? This was no random crime. They’ll be back, you see if they aren’t. I shall telephone the Superintendent myself and demand that Scotland Yard be brought in.”
St. Just had somehow been expecting this; he was quite used to people demanding Scotland Yard be brought in, for every case ranging from a housebreaking to a missing cat. What struck him was that Sir Adrian seemed more upset by the invasion of his property by an interloper than by the loss of his son. St. Just had had more than his share of delivering bad news to parents, and felt he had seen every possible reaction to grief. The death of a child was the only occasion he knew likely to make grown men weep openly, unashamed. Here there were only bluster and anger-another, not uncommon, reaction. But the bulbous blue eyes were dry. Surely the violent loss of one’s son rated at least a token show of unbridled grief?
“It doesn’t appear to be what you would call an ‘outside job,’ Sir Adrian,” he repeated calmly.
“Nonsense. Of course it was. What else could it be?”
“There’s not a trace of disturbance in the snow outside that can’t be accounted for by my own men. No one broke into this house last night.”
“Nonsense, he-”
Then Sir Adrian paused thoughtfully, in mid-flow, as though St. Just had just set him an interesting puzzle. Folding his pudgy fingers across the expanse of his gown, he said:
“Perhaps they formed a pact to do him in, what do you think?”
“Who?”
“The entire household, of course. That was in fact one of my more innovative plots in 12:40 from Manchester, which came out- oh, about ten years ago.”
St. Just was taken aback. Even he, who seldom read mystery novels, had heard of the plot of Murder on the Orient Express.
“But, Sir Adrian… Surely Dame Agatha thought of that one first.”
“Of course she did. But my book was better.”
No blushing violet here, thought St. Just. And what a strange, detached way to discuss anyone’s death, let alone that of a family member who happened to be a son, let alone one who so violently had been killed.
The thought of violets, however, turned him to Violet as-with any luck-a more useful source of answers to his questions.
“Now, Mrs…”
“Lady Beauclerk-Fisk. As of last week,” interjected Sir Adrian.
“I see. Well, er, congratulations. How sad this unhappy event should impinge on that happy one. But Lady Beauclerk-Fisk, perhaps you can give me some background on the situation here at the house. For example: What about the staff? How many are there?”
Sir Adrian may have thought it strange he was not asked-after all, he would know better than Violet-but she spoke right up, and Sir Adrian sat beaming as she got nearly all the answers right.
“There is Mrs. Romano, her son Paulo Romano, and Watters, the gardener. What is his Christian name, Adrian?”
“I’m not sure. William, I think. We’ve always simply called him Watters. Been with me for yonks.”
“That is the entire staff?
“Yes,” answered Violet. “Mrs. Romano gets in help from the village, of course, and a professional team to take care of the grounds.”
Violet looked apologetic. Possibly she was thinking of the days when grand houses could lay claim to throngs of servants scurrying about the backstairs like mice.
“Would you describe for me what went on in this house yesterday evening, and during last night?”
As she gave a somewhat edited account of last night’s dinner, Violet studied him, sizing him up. He was a handsome man with a full head of thick, dark-brown hair just turning white at the temples. Cornish, judging by the name: Celtic, at any rate, judging by his broad, open face and muscular build, but he was unusually tall for someone of that stock. The slight beak of his nose might owe something to the French pirates and smugglers who had long terrorized the villagers at the farthest Western reaches of England’s coastline. His hazel eyes seemed to survey the world calmly from under an overhanging thatch of untamed eyebrows, but those eyes gleamed in a way that suggested they didn’t miss very much.
“And after dinner?”
“Drinks. Conversation. We had an early night, given all the excitement.”
“You stayed upstairs all night, then?”
“Yes. I read for a while before… No, wait: I’d lost a diamond earring during or after dinner. I went downstairs to look for it.”
“What time was this?”
“Midnight or so. I couldn’t really say.”
“You saw nothing out of the ordinary?”
“Nothing.”
“My men will need to interview everyone in the household. If you can provide us with a room to work in for the time being?”
“I think the-”
Sir Adrian answered for her.
“The conservatory would be best. It’s not as much used in the wintertime as the rest of the house.”
St. Just looked at him doubtfully.
“I imagine that will be all right, Sir. If not, we’ll let you know. Sir Adrian, can you add anything? Did you hear anything, see anything out of the ordinary?”
“Not at all. But let me think about it. What luck for you, eh? Having a professional detective writer, right here on the spot?”
“Yes, how lucky. I would warn you, Sir Adrian, to take extraordinary care until this case is resolved.”
“I?” He appeared genuinely baffled. “Whyever should I take care?”
Because you’re an appalling, mean-spirited jackass, thought St. Just, who felt he had seldom come across a more likely candidate for murder, especially murder done by his nearest and dearest. In her narration, Violet had mentioned the means by which the family had been collected here, while somehow avoiding laying the blame for the scheme in her husband’s lap, where it clearly belonged.
“No reason in particular,” St. Just responded blandly. “But it stands to reason: There is a murderer in this house. Every inmate of this house should be on his or her guard.”
“Just like in one of my stories. Oh, I say, that’s jolly good.”
So it was that St. Just, Fear, and Lillian came to be sitting, framed by elephant’s ears, drooping ferns, and African violets, in the humid confines of Sir Adrian’s conservatory. It was perhaps a half hour later, by which time Mrs. Romano had shifted into high gear to cope with the unexpected situation, providing coffee and a minimum of hand-wringing, for both of which St. Just was grateful.
“You and your husband-you had children?” St. Just asked Lillian now.
He was sitting opposite her in a surprisingly comfortable chair upholstered in a zebra-striped fabric. The room as a whole might have been plucked from the sound stage for Out of Africa. Sergeant Fear peered out on the proceedings from beside a potted palm tree. St. Just wondered if Sir Adrian had chosen the room for its inappropriateness, but decided the old boy might be disappointed in that. The setting was so relaxed and calming, it was ideal for an interrogation of suspects. At this preliminary stage, at any rate. St. Just wondered if he should bring up the idea of themed interrogation rooms with the Chief Constable. Perhaps not.
Lillian was dressed for the day in impeccable black with a Peter Pan collar, so right for those occasions when one’s husband has just been found bludgeoned to death. Altogether, St. Just was having a hard time getting a handle on her. She seemed no more put out over the situation than had been her father-in-law.
“No. No children. Most unfortunate.” But she did not look particularly regretful; she might have been talking about her rose garden doing poorly that year. “Ruthven couldn’t-”
Instinctively, St. Just held up a hand to forestall any too-intimate revelations.
“That’s quite all right, Mrs.-”
“Oh! Oh, I didn’t mean that,” she said. “No, no, I mean he was quite capable.” She gave a strained little laugh, as if to assure the Inspector that her husband was quite as good as anyone else’s, thank you very much. “Good heavens. No, no, everything quite all right in that department. It’s just that he couldn’t abide children.”
“I see. You had been married-how long?”
“Oh, twenty years or so.”
St. Just reminded himself again that the reaction to the sudden death of one’s nearest and dearest can take many forms. Her demeanor was just odd, since indifference was not generally one of those reactions.
“Can you think of anyone who would want to harm your husband?”
“No one.” Now she began straightening what he supposed was her engagement ring, which rode high atop a plain wedding band- the diamond, the size of a small almond, had not surprisingly shifted heavily on her finger like a capsized boat. “Well everyone, I suppose, really. But no one really.”
“Everyone?”
“Everyone who did business with him, I mean. Ruthven was a brilliant businessman. Well, everyone’s heard of him-everyone who reads the financial news.” She seemed to pause here to consider whether he and Sergeant Fear were the types to peruse the daily financial news, looking for stock tips. Uncertainly, she went on, “He and I sometimes appear together in the society pages, as well. Used to appear, I suppose I must say now.” As it occurred to her these two stalwart policemen were even more unlikely to scan the Royal Doulton ads, she said, “Well, in any event, when one is enormously successful, one tends to make, well, enemies. Among the small-minded or jealous.”
“Disgruntled employees? Wronged partners? Unhappy stockholders? That sort of thing?”
“Yes. Quite. In fact, I remember there was one man-oh, wait, he committed suicide, that’s right.” Metaphorically snapping her fingers at the memory lapse regarding this unfortunate, she went on, “But you do see what I mean. There are the weak and there are the strong. I’ve always felt the weak to be far the more dangerous, when aroused. Don’t you agree?”
Marie Antoinette couldn’t have said it better, thought St. Just.
“It’s a possible theory, of course. But the fact is there is no sign of a break-in from outside. The man-or woman-who murdered”- and he used the brutal world here calculatedly, looking for a reaction, but still there was no one at home-“who murdered your husband almost certainly came from within the house.”
This made her sit back in her chair, nearly upsetting her cup of coffee from its saucer. Her hand shook as she set the drink on a rattan side table.
“One of us? Here?” She looked around her, as if an axe-wielding in-law might jump out from behind the curtains at any minute. “But that’s quite impossible. There’s been some mistake.”
“I don’t think so. Now,”-and here Sergeant Fear took his cue, opening his black policeman’s notebook to a fresh page, smartly snapping back the used pages with the attached black elastic- “about last night. How did you spend the evening?”
“How did I?”
“You. You and your husband. The family. Whatever you can tell me may be of help.”
“Oh. Well. We had dinner together en famille, you know, except for this young friend George brought with him. Natasha. From outside. He brought her in from outside.”
St. Just hid a smile. Apparently, having found the outsider in their midst, she was preparing to hand her over, hog-tied, to the police at the first opportunity.
“And how did this dinner go? Was it pleasant? Tense?”
“Oh, I suppose you’d say rather tense. You see, it was at the dinner Sir Adrian broke his news about his wedding.”
“You had none of you known about it before?”
She shook her head. “Hard to believe, I know, but the fact of his remarriage came as a total shock to us all. We only knew when we arrived here he was engaged to be married, not actually married. He’d even sent an invitation to his former wife, Chloe. An extraordinary show of spite, even for him.”
Just then, an electronic noise erupted from behind St. Just. He turned to see Fear scrambling to retrieve his mobile from his inner pocket. Incredulously, St. Just recognized the tune as the first notes of “Jingle Bells.”
“Sorry, Sir.” Fear blushed, punching madly at the buttons of the machine. “Emma.”
With a sigh, St. Just turned back to Lillian.
“How was the news about Sir Adrian’s wedding received, exactly- other than being a source of shock?”
“We were, well, surprised, Detective Chief Inspector. In his fifties, Sir Adrian had had the typical midlife crisis. Undesirable types of women friends, very young women-you know the kind of thing I mean. We had survived all of that somehow. Violet came as a surprise. Not a welcome surprise exactly, but-oh, I’m saying this so badly…”
“But it could have been worse?”
“Yes,” she said, nodding gratefully. “That’s it exactly, Detective Chief Inspector. It could have been far worse, I suppose.”
Sergeant Fear noted that she used St. Just’s full title at every opportunity. Probably a question of status; she seemed the type to like titles.
“Did your husband express any particular worries? Apart from this wedding news?”
“Not really. Except… my husband was not in excellent health, but I wouldn’t call that a great worry. He’d had surgery recently for his heart, but the doctors assured him he’d live to see 100 if he took proper care. He took the warning frightfully seriously. Oat bran and vitamins. Started going to the gym again, that sort of thing. Quite tiresome, really, arranging the menus around oat bran. And now, it’s all for nothing.” She sighed. “Anyway, Sir Adrian came to see him in hospital. Quite nice of him, really, given that his own health is poor.”
“The visit was out of character?”
She considered.
“Rather. But Ruthven is-was-his favorite. Really, Sir Adrian seemed quite agitated, until he’d talked with the doctors himself.”
“I see. Well, just to prepare you: We’ll have a team looking through your husband’s things, and taking some of his belongings away for analysis, I would imagine. Did he happen to travel with a computer?”
She nodded, already appearing to lose interest in the conversation.
“It would be best if you made arrangements to stay in another part of the house for now. We will need you to remain nearby in case there are further questions that arise.”
This didn’t please her. The green eyes narrowed beneath the penciled brows.
“That’s quite out of the question. I have obligations in London.”
Involving menu arrangements, no doubt, thought St. Just.
“You’re to go nowhere without my permission, Mrs. Beauclerk-Fisk. I hope I am making my position clear.”
“Well, I don’t know… and I suppose now there’s the funeral to think of, too.”
Either the woman was innocent or completely stupid. He found himself inclined toward the latter view.
“The remains won’t be released for some time. I am requiring that you stay available to us. We are likely to have additional questions once I’ve had the chance to speak with the rest of the family. Good day to you.”
She wasn’t used to being dismissed, either.
More gently, he added, “Again, I am sorry for your loss.”
He would have sworn she was going to ask, “What loss?”
Once she had carried herself off, he turned to Sergeant Fear.
“Make sure the I.T. people have a go at downloading the contents of the victim’s computer, and right away. When you get back, we’ll have a look at the rest of the family. By the way, what was that infernal noise just now?”
“Emma got hold of my mobile and reprogrammed the ring, Sir. I can’t figure out how to change it back.”
Emma was Fear’s four-year-old.
“She’s jealous of the new one on the way,” Fear went on, again madly pushing buttons, which seemed only to stir the instrument to new musical heights. “Says she ‘don’t want no stinkin’ sibling.’”
“Then get the I.T. department to look at it, too, for God’s sake. Now, hop to it. We’ve got to make damn sure, Sergeant, they’re not all out there trading alibis.”