Chapter Eleven #2
Alec managed to extract an admission from Jemima that no, of course she hadn’t seen him do it.
Since playing the ghost, she had been strictly forbidden to set foot outside the bedroom after lights out.
Pressed, she conceded that she hadn’t actually observed Felicity leaving their shared room during the night.
With Dora Norville wringing her hands and demanding explanations, it was impossible to continue questioning the two. Alec had let them go.
He had been following them to select his next victim when Daisy said, “Darling, before you go any further, I should tell you…”
“Not now, Daisy. I still have three to see before dinner, not counting your mother, who just might have seen or heard something. I can’t even attempt the servants till Tom and Ernie arrive. And I have to ask Bel and Derek if they moved the knife from the hall table.”
“I’ll do that, if you like,” she offered. “They’ll be more likely to think it’s just a matter of whether they’ve been naughty, not connected to Calloway’s death.”
“Yes, please, love. Why don’t you see if you can find them now, and I’ll speak to Lady Dalrymple.”
“Good idea. Mother is bound to be obstreperous if she sees me helping you.”
They had grinned at each other and parted company.
Assured that she was a possible witness, not a suspect, Lady Dalrymple was comparatively cooperative, if having nothing to report could be described as cooperation.
She did wonder aloud what was the advantage of having a chief inspector from Scotland Yard on the case if he had not yet managed to make an arrest. Alec forebore to point out that he’d only been on the case for a few hours.
Daisy returned. “The children are over in the old house,” she reported, “hunting for another treasure map. Godfrey’s there. He doesn’t seem to mind them messing about with his precious cabinets.”
“He has other things to worry about. What about the knife?”
“Derek admitted to taking it out of its sheath for another look, on his way up to bed last night. They both swear, cross their hearts and hope to die, that they left it on the hall table.”
“That doesn’t get us any further then. Whereabouts in the old house is Godfrey? Not conveniently in the Hall, I suppose.”
“No, up in the Drawing Room, in the Tower. He seems to use it as a den, or office. Did you want him next?”
“Yes, before he hears of Felicity’s misdeeds and gets distracted. It’ll waste less time if I go to him, I suppose. How do I get to the Drawing Room?”
“I’ll show you, darling. You haven’t explored the old house yet, have you?”
“No,” he grumbled, “and I’m not likely to have a chance now. But I’d rather you stayed here and headed off any attempt to tell Godfrey about Felicity’s misdeeds. I don’t need a note-taker for the amount of information I’m getting from these interviews. Tell me how to find Godfrey.”
She gave him directions. “If the children are still there,” she said, “you’d better send them to me. It’s nearly time for their supper, anyway.”
Crossing the Hall, Alec had scanned the display of weapons on the walls, looking for a gap.
Polished blades glinted in the wavering lamplight.
Nothing was obviously missing, but it was hard to be sure.
He wondered whether there were—or had been—any seaman’s knives on show.
The maids who polished them would surely know.
It was something for Tom to ask about tomorrow.
He had a way with female servants, in spite of his deep devotion to Mrs. Tring.
But Derek’s knife was gone from the hall table. It was almost certainly the murder weapon.
Would that rule out the man Alec and Miles were now lying in wait for, or might Felicity have taken it to show him, perhaps to illustrate the amusing tale of the children’s adventure?
Or might she have taken it with every intention of his using it to kill Calloway?
Or might she have killed Calloway herself?
If she was in love with Cedric Norville, she might have wanted the clergyman out of the way for Cedric’s sake.
But if she expected to marry him, she might have murdered for her own sake.
It was infinitely preferable, Alec supposed, to be a countess than to be merely the sister of an earl, to find herself once again and forever a poor relation.
At this point in his musing, Alec had reached the Drawing Room. There was no sign of the children, but Godfrey was there, seated at a small Queen Anne writing-desk on a mahogany stand.
Apologizing for disturbing him, Alec noticed that the sheet of writing paper in front of him was blank. “I hope Belinda and Derek haven’t been a nuisance. Where have they got to?”
Godfrey gave him a vague look. “Got to? Belinda and Derek? Oh, they wanted to know about secret drawers. I told them to try the walnut escritoire in the South Room. Mrs. Fletcher was asking them about the seaman’s knife they found.
It’s really of no value, of no importance whatsoever.
It doesn’t matter if they have lost it. There is no need to search for it. ”
Alec didn’t tell him the knife had already been found, in Calloway’s back.
It had been a mistake to disclose that tidbit to Miles and Felicity.
Still, with any luck they’d keep it under their hats for the children’s sake.
If the murderer was the only other suspect who knew, he just might say something which would give him away.
Coming to the question of alibis, Godfrey Norville had no more than anyone else, since his wife had taken a sleeping powder.
No sounds of doors or footsteps in the night had roused him from his slumbers.
He expressed indifference towards Calloway’s diatribes, seeming far more upset by his son having withheld his knowledge of the death of Westmoor’s heir.
“I take no newspapers because I am in general uninterested in news of the modern world,” he said, “but Miles should have known that that would interest me. The earl is my first cousin, after all. I can scarcely believe that Miles was so inconsiderate, so secretive. To think that Victor could have been Lord Westmoor’s heir, and I after him! ”
The fuss Godfrey Norville was making now quite justified Miles’s reticence, Alec thought. He thanked the man, returned to the East Wing, and asked Tremayne to join him in the dining room.
The old man was clearly upset by the mess his daughter’s family had got themselves into, but he remained a canny lawyer.
Though he obviously would have liked to claim to have lain awake all night and thus to be certain Miles had not left the room, he forbore.
He refused to give his opinion of Calloway or to say whether he had been told of the clergyman’s purpose in coming to Brockdene.
He would not even specify his reasons for not telling his daughter about Lord Norville’s death.
“Tomorrow,” he said, “I shall walk into Calstock and attempt to telephone a colleague in Plymouth who has something of a criminal practice. I fear I may not reach him because of the holiday, but I must insist that you take no formal statements until Butterwick is able to be present.”
“I cannot compel anyone to give me a statement, sir,” Alec pointed out.
“I fear I ought to have forbidden everyone to give you any information at all until then, but my position is invidious. I am a servant of the law and must not obstruct the police. I am also under suspicion, as are all members of my family. Yet I cannot believe any of them committed this horrible crime! Why should they?”
And he had no more motive than the rest for that horrible crime. Alec had let him go and called in the captain. Of all the family, he seemed the most likely to have murdered Calloway.
Captain Norville had slept like a babbie, confident that the good Lord would tell the reverend gentleman to do what was right, which was, obviously, to swear to the marriage he had performed.
“Aye, I would have been cross as a bear with a sore head if he’d told me he’d changed his mind, but not a cross word would I have said, for there was always a chance he’d change it back.
You learn patience at sea, Fletcher, especially in the sailing ships where I learnt my trade.
The wind and waves are fickle, but I’ve always got where I was going in the end. ”
“Until now.”
“Until now,” he sighed. “There’s no fetching a man back from heaven.”
He didn’t sound like a murderer, but Alec again recalled the ready fists when Tremayne had stopped him rushing into the chapel.
And now Alec was back at the chapel, awaiting the arrival of the suspect with by far the best motive for murdering Calloway.
The stars shone down through the leafless branches.
Somewhere in the distance an owl hooted.
The nip of frost in the still air made Alec long to stamp his feet and beat his hands together, but the slightest sound would carry far on a night like this, with no breeze to rustle the bushes.
Longing for his overcoat, left off so as not to hamper his movements, he hoped they would not have long to wait, less for his own sake than for Miles’s. Cold could trigger excruciating pain in the phantom limb of an amputee.
No breeze, but a rustle came from the carpet of autumn leaves on the far side of the path.
Alec stared, straining to see by the faint starlight.
No figure appeared. Had Cedric Norville spotted them?
If he stood behind a tree he’d be quite safe as long as he kept still.
The carefully laid trap would turn into a test of endurance.
Another rustle. A badger strolled across the path, its black-and-white striped face obvious once it had left the striped shadows under the trees. Alec almost laughed aloud: Mr. Brock of Brockdene, come to see what was going on in his domain.
The badger raised its long muzzle, sniffed the air, and scuttered off among the trees. The waiting recommenced.
It seemed an age, but the manor’s Chapel clock had chimed no more than two quarters when Alec heard the regular crunch of footsteps approaching along the path from the Quay. A dark figure in a trench-coat and golf cap passed Alec and turned towards the chapel.
“Felicity?”
Miles stepped out from behind the chapel, his electric torch beam playing on the newcomer. “Norville? You’re Cedric Norville, aren’t you?”
Cedric flicked on his own torch, shining it on Miles’s face. Alec, approaching stealthily from behind, saw his shoulders slump. “And you’re Miles Norville. I suppose Felicity sent you to tell me she’s givin’ me the bird. Funny, I’d have expected her to have the guts to do her own dirty work.”
Gripping the young man’s arms from behind, Alec enquired, “Does that go for murder, too?”