Chapter Fourteen
Patience left us to finish our lunch and we were thereafter uninterrupted, save for a visit from Crawford, who asked if we would like tea or coffee.
Lady Hardcastle gave him her winningest smile. ‘I should love a pot of tea, Crawford. Thank you. Florence?’
‘Tea would be perfect, thank you.’
‘Tea for two, then,’ said Lady Hardcastle. ‘Would you mind awfully bringing it up to my room? We shall adjourn there to keep out of everyone’s way for a while.’
‘Very good, m’lady. Would you care for something sweet? Peg makes a lovely Madeira cake.’
‘Oh, that would be delicious, I’m sure. Tea and cake, please.’
He left, and a few moments later we made our way down the hall and round the corridor to Lady Hardcastle’s room.
She sat on the bed with her notebook and I sat in the comfy chair, wishing it were higher up so I could look out of the window.
By the time Crawford arrived with the tea tray, Lady Hardcastle had reviewed most of her notes and I was standing to get a better view of the now calm sea.
‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘Just pop it on the desk and I’ll take care of it.’
With a ‘Very good, miss’ and a little bob of the head, Crawford was gone.
I poured two cups of tea and handed one to Lady Hardcastle.
‘What assumptions need challenging, then?’ I asked.
‘All of them, I think.’
I tried not to sigh. ‘Starting with . . . ?’
‘Means, motive and opportunity.’
‘No, that’s three things. Pick one.’
She didn’t try not to sigh. ‘Means, then.’
‘Everyone had the means. Even us. The two murder weapons were on display in the long gallery and we all had access to them all the time.’
‘That’s fair, I suppose. So we can accept our assumption that everyone had easy access to a weapon.’
I nodded.
‘Motive next,’ she said.
‘JB has no obvious motive for killing Everett. But Sidwell-Plant was intent on exposing Bridgewater’s embezzlement and that would cause a scandal that would harm his financial interests. By killing him he avoids the ruinous revelation, leaving him to deal with Bridgewater privately.’
‘Very well. Clarice?’
‘She has a clear motive for getting rid of her awful husband, but no reason I can think of for killing Sidwell-Plant. I can think of problems with opportunity, too, but we haven’t got to that part, yet.’
‘Indeed. Bridgewater?’
‘Similar to JB,’ I said. ‘Other than Everett’s general awfulness, he has no clear motive there. But killing his old friend Sidwell-Plant might save him from doing bird for fraud. Risky, though – a few years in the clink would always be preferable to a few seconds at the end of a rope.’
‘Quite. Dotty?’
‘Ignoring whether I think it’s likely that she’d do anything of the sort, her motives are the same as her husband’s: none, and keeping the fraud secret.’
‘Agreed. Patience?’
‘Of them all, she was the most furious at Everett’s treatment of Clarice.
She offered her a place to stay if she left him and said she could set her up with a new manager.
I could easily see Patience losing her rag and running Everett through if he taunted her in the long gallery.
And of all of them she also has a strong motive for killing the husband who was effectively holding her captive in a marriage she was no longer committed to. ’
Lady Hardcastle nodded. ‘On motive alone, she’s the strongest candidate so far. What about Wilson?’
‘I can’t see he has any motive at all. He barely knows any of them so he hasn’t had time to foster any grudges. He seems like an honourable sort of bloke so he might have wanted to free Clarice and Patience from their awful husbands, I suppose.’
‘We’ve seen people kill for flimsier reasons. And last of all, Lily.’
‘We’re excluding the Crawfords?’
‘Actually, you’re right – we’re challenging assumptions. But Lily first.’
‘I can’t imagine any real motive for either murder. She witnessed the incident in the sitting room and she was shaken by it, so that might count, I suppose. But she had no reason to kill Sidwell-Plant, as far as I know.’
‘Fair enough. Crawford?’
‘None that I can think of. There’s the smuggling, but I don’t know what harm either man could do to that. And the same goes for Peggy – she just doesn’t have a reason.’
Lady Hardcastle reviewed her notes. ‘Patience has a strong motive for both, and Wilson has a possible motive for both, but the rest either have no motive at all or a motive just for one. And that leaves opportunity.’
‘Which we’ve been chasing since Friday. No one seems to have had a proper chance to kill both men except Patience. Do you think she actually could be the killer?’
‘As we always say: anyone could be a killer. Oh, and she’d also have benefitted from the jewellery thefts on Thursday evening.
I see practical difficulties, mind you. Moving Everett’s body wouldn’t have been easy for her, but she’s resourceful and I’d imagine she’s quite strong, too.
I just don’t see it. I mean, why here? Why now? ’
‘It doesn’t make a huge amount of sense.’
We lapsed into silence for a while as she stared at her notes and I munched on another slice of Madeira cake.
At length she spoke up. ‘The simplest thing is to assume that our assessment of motive is broadly correct, and that our error is in our belief that no one apart from Patience had the opportunity. There’s something we’re missing – some infuriatingly simple thing we’ve overlooked – but I’m blowed if I can think what it might be. ’
‘You know there’s someone we haven’t talked to about everyone’s whereabouts.’
‘There is?’
‘Of course. Thanks to a dim-witted assumption on our part, we haven’t asked Clarice what she noticed on both days.
We thought – well, I thought, at least – that because she can’t see anyone, she wouldn’t be able to tell us anything.
But we know that Clarice notices things without having to see them. We should go and talk to her.’
‘As soon as I’ve finished my cake and nipped to the WC.’
We decided to begin our search for Clarice in the most obvious place: her room.
Lady Hardcastle knocked.
‘Oh, do push off, JB, there’s a good chap,’ said a familiar voice.
‘It’s not JB, dear, it’s us,’ said Lady Hardcastle.
There were sounds of movement from within, then a key turned in the lock and the door opened.
‘Friendly faces at last. Well, I assume you have friendly faces. You might be old boots for all I know, but you have friendly voices at least.’
We entered.
‘She’s an old boot,’ I said, ‘but I have a beguiling Celtic beauty.’
‘She’s not wrong,’ agreed Lady Hardcastle. ‘Has JB been bothering you?’
Clarice shut the door behind us. ‘He’s been fussing over me ever since Edgar died. It’s just avuncular concern – nothing sinister – but it’s getting on my nerves a tad. Do tell me you haven’t come to fuss.’
‘We have not,’ I said. ‘We’ve come to ask you for help.’
‘Me? You need a violinist for your ragtime band?’
‘Actually, that would be a splendid idea,’ said Lady Hardcastle. ‘Flo plays the banjo, you know. We could take the nightclub circuit by storm. But no, it’s not that. We’re looking for witnesses.’
Clarice laughed. ‘And how do you think I might be able to help there?’
‘You observe more in other ways than most people see with their fully operational eyes. We thought you might have noticed things that completely passed everyone else by.’
Clarice paced carefully to the edge of the room and found the comfy chair. ‘If you can find somewhere to sit, please help yourselves. The bed is fair game, and there’s an upright chair by the desk but it’s not terribly comfortable.’
She settled into the armchair while Lady Hardcastle and I sat together on the edge of her bed.
‘Before we begin, dear, there’s a piece of quite distressing information we’ve been withholding,’ said Lady Hardcastle. ‘It was at JB’s request, but that doesn’t excuse us, I don’t think. It’s that—’
‘Edgar didn’t die of natural causes,’ interrupted Clarice. ‘I know. JB told me this morning. I’m not surprised, to be honest. Actually, I’m surprised it didn’t happen sooner. He had a way of making people want to kill him.’
‘Ah, well, that makes things simpler, then. So, it seems reasonable to us that both Edgar and Robert Sidwell-Plant were killed by the same person. The problem is that everyone except Patience has an alibi for one or both of the murders. At least that’s what we believe.
But our beliefs are based only on what everyone has told us about where they were and who they saw, so we were wondering if you had any of your unique observations to add. ’
Clarice thought for a moment. ‘Like what?’
‘Sounds or smells, perhaps. You upbraided JB when he mentioned his belief that your other senses were enhanced, but you went on to say you pay more attention to them, so what have you noticed over the past few days that the rest of us would have missed?’
‘I see. So, what do you know so far?’
We ran once more through the list of runners and riders and their movements as we understood them, from the evening when the jewellery went missing to the afternoon of Sidwell-Plant’s murder.
Clarice sat in silence again while she thought all that through.
‘I’m sure more things will come to me later,’ she said after a few moments, ‘but a couple leap immediately to mind. Do you remember when Lily Thacker arrived from the mainland on Vickerman’s boat? She’d been out in the fresh air for some time but her clothes didn’t smell as though she had.’
‘What did they smell of?’ I asked.
‘Fish stew.’
‘Vickerman’s is a fishing boat,’ said Lady Hardcastle. ‘Perhaps she’d brushed against something on the trip over.’
‘Perhaps,’ said Clarice, ‘but she didn’t smell of the outdoors.
I thought it odd, but it seemed rude to point out that she smelled of fish so I kept my counsel.
The only other thing I can quickly think of is that I distinctly heard the slight squeak of soft-soled shoes passing by my door yesterday afternoon, shortly before my clock struck four. ’