It was in the middle of breakfast when the telephone call came. Before then, Christmas had proceeded at the Manor with all its customary detail and ceremony.
Quite early in the morning Gently had been awakened by the sound of stirrings about the house and by distant, smothered laughter. Then he had heard the sound of bells ringing in the direction of Upfield-cum — Merely, nearly two miles off, and Gertrude, looking rather red and mischievous, had knocked on the door to ask him if he wanted to go to early morning service.
‘Are Sir Daynes and Lady Broke going?’
‘Oh yes, sir. Sir Daynes will read the lesson.’
‘Righto — run the bath. I’ll have my cuppa afterwards.’
The bath was run and Gertrude departed, after exchanging a merry Christmas with him. By the time he had dressed she was at his door again with tea and a hot mince pie.
‘I beg your pardon, sir…’
‘What is it, Gertrude?’
‘Well, sir, just come and see what’s happened outside your door!’
Gently duly went to see, and there surely never was a more demure Gertrude than the one who pointed out the little sprig of mistletoe that was pinned to the transom. Gently sent the baggage about her business in the approved fashion and appeared below stairs with a Christmas twinkle in his eye.
Then followed the drive through the dull and frosted Christmas morning, with the slated sky hanging low over the shallowly undulating fields and still, sepia groups of trees. The ploughed land looked pale under the frost; the smoke rose straight from the chimney of cottage and farmhouse. On their way they met nobody except the labouring postman, red-faced and steaming in spite of the nipping air, and for him Sir Daynes pulled up to bestow a Christmas box and the compliments of the season.
‘Wonder where Henry went this morning,’ observed the baronet as they were returning. ‘Usually comes to Upfield. Felt sure I’d see the feller.’
‘He’s probably gone to Wrentford,’ suggested Lady Broke. ‘It’s a good deal nearer to the Place, Daynes.’
‘Blasted high church!’ returned Sir Daynes irrelevantly.
In the breakfast room a notable fire was blazing, and a Christmas ham, breadcrumbed and frilled, occupied a place of honour on the well-furnished table. But first came the presents, in which Gently had not been forgotten, and then the opening of cards and letters and the cables from Singapore and Toronto. Then the plum porridge was brought in, the same with which the Man-in-the-Moon had erstwhile burnt his mouth, and finally Sir Daynes inserted a knife into that monstrous and delicate ham. At which point, with malicious timing, the telephone rang.
‘Damn!’ said Sir Daynes, and laid down the carvers.
Minutes later he returned, to stand uncertainly in the doorway.
‘What is it, Daynes?’ enquired Lady Broke anxiously. ‘Surely they’re not going to call you out today?’
Sir Daynes shook his head. He seemed at a loss to find words. Then he came into the room and stood staring curiously at Gently.
‘Of all the blasted things to happen!’ There was something like a tremor in his customarily aggressive voice. ‘That impertinent young American who was going to set the Manor alight… well, he’s dead. They found his body this morning. Seems as though he took a tumble down the stairway in the great hall… I’ve just been talking to Henry Somerhayes, and he’d like both of us to come straight over.’
‘I’d sooner have kept you out of this.’
Sir Daynes was driving viciously, and the Bentley was his car for the job.
‘The press have only got to get a smell of you, Gently, and they’ll dream up all sorts of nonsense.’
Gently nodded gloomily. ‘In addition to which he’s a United States citizen.’
‘Exactly, man. There’ll be trouble enough without adding fuel to it. In a way it’s a damn good job it’s Christmas. They won’t be able to print a line until the day after tomorrow. But you can see what they’ll make of it — “American Serviceman Found Dead in Peer’s Country Seat”. What would be the use of telling them that you were simply a guest of mine?’
Gently nodded again. He felt numbed by the whole business. In a short while he seemed really to have got to know Earle, to have acquired a personal interest in the boisterous young man. And he had been so young. Young, ardent and with all of a fascinating world just opening to him… ‘Either I go on the paper when I come out or else I don’t.’ How long would it be before a cable silenced the festivities in far-away Missouri?
‘D’you think he was drunk last night?’
‘No… not when we left.’
‘He may have got high after that. The post-mortem will tell us something.’
‘I don’t think he drank a lot. He didn’t drink on the train coming up.’
Sir Daynes snorted, as though he felt Gently might have supported such a useful proposition. They whirled through the Place gates and soared zestfully up the serpentine carriageway. The great yellow-brick front of the Place began to reveal itself through the groves of holm oak that Repton had planted there with such apparent casualness.
‘Just one thing, Gently.’ Sir Daynes flashed him a warning look. ‘We’d better get it straight — there’s been no suggestion of foul play. Personally I can’t think of anyone at the Place who’d want to do this young fellow an injury, and I don’t want you poking around as though someone had. You don’t mind me being frank?’
Gently shook his head.
‘Good,’ said Sir Daynes with satisfaction. ‘This is going to be a delicate business, and I want to handle it in my own way.’
Two cars stood parked on the terrace as the Bentley came sweeping up, both of them Wolseleys of the type favoured by the local constabulary. Under the restrained portico stood a constable, slowly rocking on his heels, looking like an icicle in spite of his buttoned-up topcoat. He marched stiffly down the steps and opened the door for Sir Daynes.
‘Woolston, is it?’
‘Yes, sir, that’s me.’
‘What the devil is the meaning of this cavalcade, Woolston?’
The constable looked bewildered. ‘It’s Inspector Dyson, sir. He’s got the surgeon and Sergeant Turner with him.’
‘What the blasted hell for? Someone pinched the Crown jewels? And get inside that door, man. You can guard it quite as well in the hall.’
Up the steps strode Sir Daynes, Gently and the squashed constable in his wake. The hall, unlit today, looked shadowed and gloomy, but just as they entered there was a hissing flash, and a lurid light reached momentarily to the distant corners. At the foot of the stairs stood a group of six men in an irregular semi-circle, one of them playing with a camera and tripod. In the centre of the semi-circle lay a still, dark, sprawling starfish, near it a navy blanket, which had apparently been used as a cover. Sir Daynes stormed up to this group like a lion pouncing on its prey.
‘Dyson!’ he barked. ‘Dyson! What in the blue blazes is all this tomfoolery?’
A tall, thin-faced man with buck teeth spun round as though he had been bitten.
‘Ah — ah — I beg your pardon, sir?’ he stammered.
‘This!’ fulminated Sir Daynes, with an inclusive sweep of his arm. ‘What is it, man? What are you playing at? Why have you got these fellows here?’
Poor Dyson gaped and swallowed and ran a tongue over his divorced upper lip. ‘I–I — we were called in, sir. Matter of routine…’
‘Routine be beggared! Do you have to turn out a homicide team to take particulars of an accidental death? Why, man, a blasted constable would have done. Wasn’t I there, living right next door? Why didn’t you get in touch with me?’
‘Well, sir… Christmas Day…’
‘Don’t talk to me of Christmas Day, Dyson!’ Sir Daynes was withering in his wrath. ‘As far as the police are concerned there’s only one day — a twenty-four-hour day — and I happen to be the chief of police in these parts. Now get these men out of here. When they’re wanted, I’ll send for them. You stay here — and you, Dr Shiel. The rest of you get back to your duties or your Christmas pudding — whatever it was you were pulled away from.’
‘But, sir-’
Dyson made a desperate effort to get a word in.
‘You heard my orders, Dyson!’
‘Sir… Dr Shiel…’
‘I have already asked Dr Shiel to remain.’
‘But, sir… the circumstances…’
It looked rather as though Dyson was going to catch another blast from the Broke thunderbox. Sir Daynes’s chin came up and his eyes sparkled pure fire. But just then a slim figure detached itself from the outskirts of the group and intervened between the inspector and his fate.
‘Excuse me, Daynes, but I believe we cannot dispose of this matter quite so simply.’
It was Somerhayes, his handsome face pale, a dry flatness in his cultivated voice.
‘Eh, eh?’ Sir Daynes turned from the flinching Dyson. ‘Henry — didn’t see you there, man. Damn it, I’m sorry this place has been turned into a bear garden for you — blasted mistake, man. I’ll soon have them out.’
‘There has been no mistake, Daynes.’
‘What? Of course there’s been a mistake.’
‘No, Daynes. The inspector came at my request. You will appreciate that as a magistrate I had no option but to take what steps seemed necessary.’
Sir Daynes stared at the nobleman as though he had taken leave of his senses. Somerhayes managed to summon up a frosty smile.
‘I omitted to tell you on the phone, Daynes, that I had some doubt as to the way in which Earle came by his injuries.’
‘Doubt?’ echoed Sir Daynes.
‘Yes. I could not feel certain in my mind.’
‘But you said he’d taken a tumble, and if that’s where you found him, by George’ — Sir Daynes poked a finger at the spreadeagled body — ‘then he did take a tumble. You aren’t going to tell me that somebody pushed him?’
‘No… I don’t think he was pushed.’
‘Then what are your doubts about?’
Slowly and without emotion Somerhayes pointed to the skull. The body was lying on its face, the head twisted to one side. Clearly visible at the upper part of the back of the skull was a broad, depressed fracture running in a vertical line. Sir Daynes stared at it grimly, making sure he was missing nothing.
‘Well? What’s so mysterious about it? Didn’t he fall far enough?’
‘To fracture his skull — yes. But what caused a fracture like that?’
‘Why, man, the answer’s obvious. He struck it on a stair. With eighteen or twenty marble stairs to pick from, it’s a wonder he had any skull left.’
Somerhayes shook his head. ‘There are two things against it, Daynes. The first is the vertical line of the fracture. I cannot think how he could have fallen to have struck his skull backwards and sideways against a stair-edge. The rest of the skull, you will observe, has only abrasions.’
‘Balderdash!’ snorted Sir Daynes. ‘Why shouldn’t he have struck his head sideways? Anything’s possible when a feller comes careening down one of those things.’
‘It may be.’ Somerhayes made the ghost of a bow. ‘The second point, perhaps, will seem more convincing. It occurred to me when I first saw the body, and Dr Shiel has come to the same conclusion independently. We find it difficult to understand how this comparatively broad fracture could have been caused by impact with one of these comparatively sharp stair-edges.’
‘That is certainly so, Sir Daynes,’ put in the police-surgeon, a gaunt-featured Scot, promptly. ‘I cannot see at all how the laddie could have done it. If there had been some railings, now, or a good stout ornamental flim-flam of some sort at the foot… but as ye see, the stairs just swell out till they reach the sides of the nook. Nothing’s here at all to make a dunt like that.’
‘That’s a matter of opinion!’ Sir Daynes’s square jaw set in an obstinate line. ‘You can’t say for certain that a stair-edge wouldn’t do it. He might have had a particular type of skull. A blow with anything might have sunk it in like that.’
‘No, sir, no, sir.’ The Scot sucked in air through his lips. ‘That’s clean against all the tenets of a very exact science. I will give you my opinion now. I’ll not move from it in a court of law. It’s a blunt weapon like a club or bortle that put out the light of yon poor fellow, and no amount of chaffering will make it into a stair-edge.’
Sir Daynes blasted this rebel in silence for a moment, but the Scot, seasoned to the attacks of many a defence counsel, was no apt subject for brow-beating. The baronet turned his attack on the imbecile Somerhayes.
‘I suppose you’ve got something tangible to support this — this flimsy piece of medical evidence?’
Somerhayes silently shook his head.
‘No idea who’d want to do it — no evidence about how it was done?’
‘Nothing, Daynes, I’m afraid. Naturally I conducted a brief inquiry among the inmates of this establishment, but nothing relevant has come to light. As far as I can discover the lieutenant was very popular with my household, including the domestic staff. I, personally, found his society refreshing, and he was a great favourite with the tapissiers and our chef d’atelier. I am unable to imagine any motive whatever for his death.’
‘Hah!’ exclaimed Sir Daynes triumphantly. ‘And neither am I, Henry — neither am I. It’s the most preposterous piece of twaddle I ever heard of. A man everyone likes takes a tumble down some stairs, and because he cracks his skull one way and not another everybody starts assuming there’s been foul play. Blasted morbidity, that’s what I call it. And you heard nothing — found nothing?’
‘No, Daynes.’
‘Not even a club or bortle?’ Sir Daynes gave the Scot a leer.
‘Nothing of the sort has been discovered about the immediate scene of the tragedy. My butler-valet, Thomas, found the body when he was passing through the hall shortly after seven this morning. He immediately aroused me, and together we searched the hall and the galleries for any indication suggestive of what had occurred. We were both familiar with the precise disposition of the contents, but we could find nothing unusual or out of place.’
‘Of course you damned well couldn’t! What would you expect to find after a feller falls downstairs?’ Sir Daynes rubbed his hands with the air of one who was restoring rationality where madness had reigned. ‘Let’s be cool about this, Henry. We’d all been making merry last night. If that young feller wasn’t used to hard liquor, it’s ten to one he finished up a bit uncertain on his pins. Do you remember him drinking after we’d gone?’
‘Yes,’ assented Somerhayes, after a pause.
‘Hah! And strong stuff at that?’
‘The last drink we had was an 1905 cognac.’
‘There you are — what more do you want? A vintage cognac, on top of all the other stuff we’d been putting away. The wonder is you didn’t have to carry him to bed, not that he tripped over his feet at the top of the stairs. No, no, Somerhayes, I appreciate your anxiety about this. You’ve tackled the business like a good feller and a conscientious magistrate. But I assure you you’re making too much of it. The shock of the thing has unsettled you, man. Now I’ll just get an ambulance along and give the coroner a tinkle, and we’ll try to get this affair out of our minds…’
Sir Daynes came to a halt, his eye falling on Gently. The forgotten Central Office man had apparently been doing some exploring, for he was now in the act of descending the great marble stairway. He looked woodenly at the baronet and then at Somerhayes, and Sir Daynes, who knew his Gently, felt a sudden uneasiness creep over him.
‘This hall… is it cleaned out often?’
For some reason, a pin might have been heard to drop.
‘Not at this time of the year.’ Somerhayes’s voice sounded flatter than ever. ‘In summer when the visitors come it is cleaned several times a week, but now, perhaps not more than once a fortnight.’
‘Would it have been last cleaned recently?’
‘Yes, I think two days ago, in preparation for Christmas.’
Gently nodded his mandarin nod. He seemed quite unaware of the pregnant silence.
‘So that if, out of six objects in the hall, five had a thin layer of dust and one had not, you would say that that one had been wiped at some time less than two days ago?’
Somerhayes’s head slowly sank in acknowledgement.
‘Damn it, man, what is all this?’ erupted Sir Daynes fiercely. ‘What the devil six objects are you talking about?’
Gently pointed up the stairway. Seven pairs of eyes followed his outstretched finger. On two oval panels, hung on each side of the marble doorway, were displayed six antique japanned-and-gilt truncheons.
‘It’s the lowest one on the left-hand side… Do you think we might have it sent to the lab?’
‘Blast you, Gently!’ roared Sir Daynes. ‘I thought I asked you to keep out of this business?’
Gently hunched his shoulders and looked down at the sprawling figure at the foot of the stairs.
‘There was somebody else who asked me to keep in,’ he replied expressionlessly.