Chapter Seven
I’ve talked before about ‘uproar’ when deaths are announced and, usually, that’s the case.
The reaction of the other eight people in the room, though, was more difficult to describe.
There were shocked gasps, of course, and Dotty’s hand flew to her mouth, but no one seemed especially upset.
Curiously, Bridgewater and Sidwell-Plant seemed to be more affected than their wives – once you allowed for their instinct towards stiff-upper-lippedness, at least – though perhaps they were considering the legal and financial implications of a sudden death at their client’s weekend retreat.
Strangest of all was that Clarice, though obviously jolted, didn’t appear to be in any great distress. Then again, given her relationship with her late husband, maybe it wasn’t strange at all. I’d have been glad to be rid of him if he were my husband.
Patience rose and helped Clarice to an empty chair.
‘How did he die?’ asked Bridgewater.
‘I’m not entirely certain,’ said JB. ‘Emily? Florence? I wonder if you’d be good enough to come with me while I check on the . . . while I—’
‘Of course, JB,’ said Lady Hardcastle, quickly.
‘Why them?’ said Sidwell-Plant. ‘Shouldn’t we leave it for the authorities? Send your man Crawford ashore to fetch a doctor so we can do things properly.’
‘Robert makes a good point,’ said Bridgewater. ‘One doesn’t like to be indelicate in the presence of the ladies, but in the case of sudden death we should also inform the police. As he says, we need to do things properly.’
JB held up his hands. ‘I understand your concerns, gentlemen, but there’s nothing to worry about.
The ladies have some experience with sudden deaths and I’d appreciate their advice before we involve the authorities.
I’m a little out of my depth and I want to be certain of a few things, so that when we bring the doctor and the constable out here in the boat I can have most of my i’s dotted and my t’s already crossed. ’
Lady Hardcastle and I crossed the room together. The two professionals shrugged in an as-you-wish sort of way and JB led us out of the drawing room.
He headed for the stairs and took us up to the second floor.
‘Crawford says he’s in one of the empty rooms up here on the third floor. We use it as a storeroom.’
‘There’s a third floor?’ I said. ‘We only searched three floors when we were looking for the missing jewels.’
‘That’s right. First, second and third floors.’ He paused a moment and then gave a dry chuckle. ‘I forget you Brits do things differently. You call this the second floor, don’t you?’
‘We do,’ said Lady Hardcastle. ‘And we’ve been doing it that way since at least the fifteenth century, so I don’t suppose there’s much chance of us changing.
A more interesting question for students of language would be why you choose to do things differently.
Your early settlers took the language with them along with their goods and chattels – one wonders what made them change this little detail. ’
‘Makes more sense, I guess.’
‘Well, yes, but when did good sense ever have any influence on language. This one?’ She indicated an open door.
‘This one. I warn you, if what Crawford says is correct, it’s not going to be a pretty sight.’
Lady Hardcastle and I exchanged puzzled glances and followed JB through the door. He turned on the electric light.
We had searched the room earlier when we were looking for the missing jewels and almost nothing had changed since then.
Dining chairs, rugs and a couple of occasional tables competed for space with tea chests and packing cases in the medium-sized room.
But now, sticking out from behind a stack of boxes was a pair of trousered legs.
We moved further into the room to investigate.
Everett, it became quickly apparent, had not died from natural causes. His shirt front was stained with blood, which had come from a large wound in his chest. The cause of the wound was lying beside him: JB’s prized narwhal tusk.
‘You neglected to mention he’d been murdered,’ said Lady Hardcastle as she knelt to inspect the wound.
‘I didn’t want to alarm the others,’ said JB. ‘It’s like I said to them: you deal with this sort of thing all the time.’
‘In a manner of speaking. But they’ll have to know.’
‘I disagree. I think we can keep this from them until the police get here. No need to alarm anyone – it’s bad enough that the ladies have lost those expensive pieces of jewellery.
I overheard you talking about that as though you think it’s a practical joke, so if you see no need to make them think there’s a thief in their midst, I reckon there’s even less need to make them think there’s a murderer in their midst. And if we tell them, we’ll alert the killer, too. Best to keep it all low-key.’
‘The killer will know that we know,’ I said, pointing to the tusk. ‘It’s not as though we could mistake the damage that thing did for a heart attack.’
‘One wonders why they left it with the body,’ said Lady Hardcastle. ‘Actually, if it comes to that, one wonders why they didn’t do a better job of concealing the body itself. They must have known someone would find it.’
‘How often does anyone need to come in here?’ I asked.
‘Hardly ever,’ said JB. ‘It was just chance that I sent Crawford up to grab something tonight, otherwise we might not have come in here for weeks. Months, maybe.’
‘Which would have given the killer time to make a better job of disposing of both poor old Everett and the murder weapon.’
Lady Hardcastle checked her watch and then continued with her examination of the body. She untucked his shirt and inspected the skin around his torso, lifting him slightly to look at his back.
‘One of our dear friends is a police surgeon,’ she said as she neatened him up.
‘He’s taught me a few things over the years.
From the progress of rigor mortis and livor mortis I’d say he died sometime around three o’clock.
There’s still a tiny bit of flexibility in the limbs, do you see?
And the blood hasn’t pooled completely – you see there’s still some pinkness here?
’ She indicated his side. ‘Things would look very different if he’d died sooner. Although . . .’
JB raised an eyebrow. ‘Although?’
‘Well, the other thing Dr Gosling – Simeon – taught me was that none of this is exact. It’s more of an estimate, but if one bases that estimate on two or more of the indicators it becomes a little more reliable.’
‘What other indicators are there?’
‘Body temperature is a good one. It has problems of its own, of course, but if one uses it in conjunction with the others, one can get a reasonably precise idea of the time of death. I don’t suppose you have a thermometer?’
‘I’m sorry, no. I’ve never had much use for one.’
‘Well, quite – who does? So for now we’ll work on the assumption that he was killed at three this afternoon and work from there.’
‘But not here,’ said JB. ‘There’s no blood on the floor.’
‘I agree that he wasn’t killed here,’ I said. ‘There’s no sign of a struggle and the body is very neatly laid out – he’s obviously been moved.’
‘But the lack of blood doesn’t tell us anything. The tusk would have stopped his heart immediately. If the heart’s not beating, there’s no bleeding. Some would seep out through the wound, but that’s been soaked up by his shirt.’
‘I see,’ said JB. ‘But the other things say he was killed someplace else, right?’
‘Agreed,’ said Lady Hardcastle. ‘Given the choice of murder weapon, I’d suggest we start in the long gallery.’
As we left the storeroom, JB produced a key from the pocket of his dinner jacket and locked the door. He caught Lady Hardcastle’s puzzled expression. ‘Crawford gave it to me. I wasn’t carrying it on the off chance.’
We went down to the first floor and into the long gallery, whose main door was opposite the bottom of the stairs.
Inside, all seemed in reasonable order as we made our way to the end, where the narwhal tusk had been on display until earlier in the afternoon.
‘Is anything amiss?’ asked Lady Hardcastle.
JB looked around. ‘I’m not sure. It looks a little . . . off, I gotta say. Like things have been moved and not put back exactly right.’
My eye was caught by the carpet near one of the wingback chairs. There were dents clearly marking where the chair usually stood, but the feet were now a few inches away.
‘That chair’s been moved, certainly,’ I said. ‘Give me a hand?’
JB helped me lift the chair out of the way and we found that it had been carefully placed to cover a small bloodstain at the very edge of the carpet.
Closer examination revealed that what must have been a much larger stain had been wiped from the stone floor.
The killer had made a reasonable job of cleaning up, but there were still faint traces.
‘From the way it’s smeared,’ I said, ‘I’d say Everett’s body was dragged through his own blood before the killer picked him up. Did you look at the back of his jacket?’
‘I confess I didn’t,’ said Lady Hardcastle. ‘I’d warrant there wasn’t a great deal of blood, though. The tusk punctured his heart, as far as I could tell, so he’d have died very quickly – not enough time for him to bleed very much.’
‘How did he miss these stains on the floor?’ asked JB. ‘He took pains to mop up, but he didn’t do a very good job.’
I pointed towards the window. ‘The weather was quite gloomy all afternoon, so if the lights weren’t on in here, the floor would have been illuminated only by the limp light coming in through the windows. The killer probably couldn’t see the floor well enough to see what they’d left behind.’
‘They’d have got blood on their own clothes,’ said Lady Hardcastle. ‘And there’ll be a rag or cloth somewhere that they used to wipe the floor.’
I nodded. ‘Incriminating. If we find them.’