Chapter Eight
EIGHT
“No!” Captain Norville rushed towards the open chapel door. When Tremayne caught his arm, the force of his charge swung him round, fists bunching. “Let go of me!”
“Stop! You mustn’t go in there, Victor. This is a matter for the police.”
“He’s dead? Calloway’s dead?” Fists relaxing, the captain shook his head like a bewildered bull whose chosen victim has just jumped a fence. His shoulders slumped. “Then Mother will never be vindicated.”
“To be honest, Uncle Vic,” said Miles, still pale but with a touch of colour returning to his cheeks, “I don’t think Grandmama cares much any more.”
“Little you know! Did you know she still sleeps with a miniature of my father under her pillow? To you she’s just a wrinkled old lady, but inside she’s still young and pretty and in mourning.”
Alec never would have expected such a flight of fancy from the seaman.
What on earth was going on? He vaguely remembered Daisy recounting some tragic story from old Mrs. Norville’s past, but he hadn’t paid much attention.
It didn’t do to ignore Daisy’s apparently idle chatter, he thought.
Then he reminded himself that it was Christmas Day, and he was on holiday.
He wasn’t going to have anything to do with investigating Calloway’s death, dammit!
All the same … “I’d better make sure the poor devil’s not lying there slowly bleeding to death,” he said to Tremayne. “I won’t touch anything but his wrist.”
Miles gave him a puzzled look. “But…,” he started, then fell silent as Alec frowned at him.
Something else Daisy had told him: She had mentioned his profession to young Miles, and sworn him to secrecy when she discovered that Lord Westmoor had not passed on the information to his poor relations.
Alec went into the dimness of the tiny chapel.
In spite of himself, he kept a lookout for footprints; and though he saw none, not even Miles’s, he kept to one side so as not to leave his own.
The Reverend Calloway lay prone before the simple altar.
He might have been performing a profound obeisance before his Lord, were it not for the knife hilt protruding between his shoulderblades.
His head was turned away from Alec. The arms were caught beneath the body, as if he had been on his knees praying when he was struck down.
He was wearing his funereal black suit, his overcoat folded over the back of a pew, next to the burnt-out lantern.
Mortifying the flesh, Alec thought wryly, or warmed by the fervour of his devotions.
Alec bowed his head briefly towards the crucifix, but when he knelt, he was kneeling beside the fallen man, not before the altar.
Against the black cloth, the wide patch of blood around the knife was hard to make out. The base of the haft was stained. Alec thought a fair amount of blood must have welled out immediately, but not spurted. The murderer would have blood on his hands, but probably not his clothes.
The blade had gone in high on Calloway’s back, between the shoulderblades, slanting downwards but too high, Alec guessed, to hit the heart. Nevertheless, when he reached beneath the body for the wrist, he knew before he touched it that the man was dead.
No pulse. Cold, and rigour well advanced. Soon after midnight, probably.
Dammit, he was not going to start detecting!
But he couldn’t stop his mind working. As he started to stand up, he saw the dark pool of congealed blood by Calloway’s open mouth, spreading under his cheek pillowed on the cold stone.
The knife must have nicked a lung. Perhaps it had severed the spinal chord, paralysing the man.
That would explain why he had not struggled in his death throes, why he was laid out so neatly.
There was something oddly familiar about that knife hilt. Alec stooped to take another look. Yes, if he was not mistaken, it was the seaman’s knife Belinda and Derek had found yesterday in the secret passage.
Where had they left it?
DAMMIT, HE WAS NOT GOING TO START DETECTING!! This was one for the local police.
He hurried out of the chapel, using his handkerchief to pull the door shut behind him. “Where’s the nearest police station?” he asked.
“Calstock,” Tremayne told him. “It’s…”
The captain interrupted. “Calloway’s dead, then, Fletcher? I searched half of India for that man, talked him into coming home when he was all set to retire over there, put up with his prudish ways for weeks on end…”
“Why?” Alec asked bluntly.
“Why? Because…”
“The less said the better, Vic,” Tremayne interrupted in his turn, and repeated, “This is a matter for the police.”
“I’ll go and fetch them,” Miles offered.
“Are you sure you feel up to it, my boy?” his grandfather asked with concern.
“Yes, perfectly. I’ll be better with something to do.” He looked at Alec. “I suppose … I suppose I’ll have to tell them it’s murder.”
“It’s difficult to see how it could be an accident or suicide,” Alec agreed dryly, “or even self-defence. But just report a violent death, and make sure they bring a doctor.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I believe Dr. Hennessy is away for Christmas,” said Tremayne. “You can say I suggest they ring up county police headquarters in Bodmin for advice. Don’t tell them any more than you absolutely must.”
“Yes, sir.” Again the young man glanced at Alec, who nodded. From the family’s point of view, if not from that of the police, the canny old solicitor was quite right. “Right-oh, then, I’m off.” He strode off up the path, back the way they had come.
“Wait!” Alec called. He turned to Tremayne. “Does he go near the house?”
“No, the public footpath skirts the garden on the river side. There’s a hairpin bend, then another gate into the garden, then a rather steep slope up to the top before it straightens, meets the farm track, and then runs on to Calstock. Why?”
“Never mind!” Alec shouted to Miles, waved him on, watched him go past the gate, then said to Tremayne, “Because I don’t want the children hearing about this.”
“Gad, no!” Captain Norville, who had been standing in gloomy contemplation of the chapel, swung around. “Nor the ladies, by Jove.”
“We’ll have to tell them something,” Tremayne argued, “the ladies at least. We must agree on a story before we go back to the house. Something which won’t spoil Christmas for everyone.”
“They’ll find out soon enough when the police arrive,” Alec pointed out.
“Better to tell them the truth in the first place. Tell the ladies Calloway’s dead, anyway, and Miles has gone for a doctor.
Let them assume natural causes. I don’t think anyone was sufficiently fond of him for his demise to spoil their Christmas dinner. ”
“It’s spoilt mine!” the captain muttered.
“Very well,” said Tremayne. “We’d best get back and break the news before they start to wonder what is going on.”
“I’ll have to stay,” Alec said reluctantly, “to make sure no one goes in and disturbs the evidence. With any luck, Miles will bring a bobby back in time for me not to miss my dinner.”
“I’ll stay,” grumbled the captain. “Can’t leave a guest of Westmoor’s out here.”
“Sorry, I wish I could let you, Captain. But I’m afraid it looks as though you and your family are going to be the chief suspects.”
“Me? I wanted him alive. His death has ruined everything!”
“Fletcher’s right, Victor. Unaccustomed as I am to criminal practice, I can see that all of us, even I, shall be under suspicion. Come along, now, we must go and break the news of the reverend gentleman’s demise. We don’t want to keep the ladies in suspense.”
“Do please try to keep it from the children,” Alec begged.
“Of course,” said the captain gruffly.
“And if there’s a key to the chapel, I expect the police will want to lock it up until they can examine it properly.”
“I’ll send someone with the key.”
They tramped off. Alec strolled up and down in front of the chapel.
He hadn’t done guard duty for years, but waiting was still a not infrequent part of his duties, usually in far less pleasant surroundings.
Birds sang in the trees, and a pair of rust red squirrels chased each other, leaping from branch to branch like trapeze artists.
Somewhere in the distance, a peal of bells rang out in joyful clamour: the end of the morning service in Calstock, probably.
There would be no church service at Brockdene today. The intended celebrant had bled to death or choked on his own blood—but Alec was not going to speculate on the precise medical cause of his departure to a better world, nor on who had sent him there.
He took his pipe from his pocket … and put it back again. Much as he longed for a smoke, it would somehow be disrespectful to the dead, a feeling he had encountered before. To distract himself, from that and from the irrepressible instinct to detect, he took a turn around the chapel.
Patches of evergreen bushes, laurels, and rhododendrons, grew on each side, but there was room to pass between thicket and wall.
Behind the chapel, the ground fell away abruptly in quite a high cliff, fifty or sixty feet, with a mud flat at the bottom.
The river was a muddy brown after the gale and heavy rains, turbulent, with quite a bit of debris racing seaward on what looked like an ebb tide.
The opposite bank, bordered with yellowed reeds, was much lower, a gentle hillside dotted with red Devonshire cattle.
“Alec!” It was Daisy’s apprehensive voice. “Alec, where are you?”
“Here. Coming.” He hurried round to the front.
Daisy flung herself into his arms and hugged him tightly. “Gosh, darling, I was afraid you’d been done in, too.”
“Too? I suppose the captain couldn’t keep his mouth shut.”
“So Calloway has been murdered. How dreadful! Captain Norville and Mr. Tremayne just told us he had died.”
Alec groaned. “And I’ve just told you he was done in!”