Chapter Twenty-Seven #2
“No, that’s going too far! I’d as soon believe I did it myself, walking in my sleep, as Owen.
He helped me build it, and he’d no cause to want to murder Lord Rydal, neither.
If that’s what Winifred thinks, she’s even madder—.
But she wouldn’t have told you that. You’ve made it up out of your own head.
” He gave Alec a reproachful look. “Heads.”
“We have to explore every possibility, Mr. Pritchard, especially when an allegation has been made.”
“Well, if Winifred’s suddenly convinced herself the grotto’s evil, and on top of that it was being used for immoral purposes, maybe she did it herself!”
“That’s another possibility we have to explore.”
“Come to think of it, she never did like the hermit business. She never could see it was just a bit of fun. If it wasn’t popery, she’d say, it was sacrilege. I never could persuade her it was either both or neither.”
“That’s another thing I haven’t quite got the hang of,” said Boyle. “This hermit business. You hired the Canadian just to play hermit in your grotto?”
“Not exactly.” Pritchard showed a sudden unexpected touch of shiftiness.
“In the summer I hire someone from the village to play the part. You’d be surprised how many visitors we get.
I don’t usually bother before Easter, but when …
Armitage wrote to ask permission to take a look at the old documents in the muniments room, I told him he could come and stay and pay for his keep by dressing up as the hermit in the grotto if anyone happened to turn up to see it. ”
“There’s the curious coincidence of his name, too,” said Alec.
“What? Oh, yes, quite a coincidence, isn’t it?”
“The name?” Boyle asked, genuinely blank this time.
Pritchard seemed disinclined to answer, so Alec explained, “The name Armitage is derived from the word hermitage, I believe.”
No police detective could let such a fishy coincidence pass without question. “I hope you asked him for references,” Boyle said.
“Certainly.” Pritchard recovered his composure. “I’m a businessman, Inspector. He showed me his passport and a letter from his university. Perfectly satisfactory, I assure you. He’s been here for several weeks, apart from occasional trips to London to look things up in the big libraries.”
“Could he have met Lord Rydal in London?”
“He wasn’t interested in high society. ‘A great waste of time,’ he told me more than once. Frankly, I should’ve thought Rydal had much the same opinion of libraries. It doesn’t seem likely they’d meet, but they might’ve run into each other somewhere.”
“Neither of them acknowledged having met before when Lord Rydal arrived here?”
“Not by a flicker of an eyebrow.”
“Was Lord Rydal ever insulting to Mr. Armitage?”
“What you have to understand,” Pritchard said patiently, “is that he insulted everyone, though I must say Lady Gerald gave as good as she got. Except I never heard him being rude to Lady Beaufort. After all, he wanted to marry her daughter.”
“What about Miss Beaufort herself? Surely he wasn’t rude to her!”
“But he was. Very odd I thought it, when he was courting her.”
“Odd! I’d call it downright peculiar. Are you sure?
“Yes. The young ladies were giggling about it.”
“Oh, then they were just joking about,” Boyle said large-mindedly. “The nobs have their ways.”
“I don’t think so.” Alec remembered what Daisy had said. He hadn’t taken it very seriously at the time, but he was once again reminded that dismissing her theories was frequently a mistake. “My wife told me Rydal simply didn’t realise how offensive he was.”
Boyle nodded. “Mrs. Fletcher said to me she thought he had never been taught to consider anyone else’s feelings. I don’t suppose you know anything about his childhood, Mr. Pritchard?”
“Not a thing.”
“If he acceded to the earldom at an early age,” said Alec, “it could be that he was brought up by servants and perhaps dependent relatives, who were afraid to cross him.”
The inspector was scornful. “Sounds like something one of those psycho-doctors would say. I can’t see it makes any difference one way or the other.
If someone goes around offending people, they’re not going to worry about whether he’s doing it on purpose or can’t tell the difference.
” He reached for Alec’s notes on the dinner-table alibis.
“Let’s see here. You claim you were alone in here for half an hour this morning. ”
“That’s right. I had some accounts to make up. I came straight here after breakfast and was here when Mrs. Fletcher and Lady Gerald came to fetch me to give them a tour of the house.”
“Mrs. Howell said she was alone in her bedroom all morning and saw you walking towards the grotto.”
Pritchard sighed. “Then I don’t know whether to hope she was hallucinating or making it up. Either way, it’s a sad state of affairs.” He sat there with his hands on his knees, looking tired and worried. “I don’t know what I’m going to say to Owen.”
“I’d rather you didn’t discuss this with anyone for the moment, sir.” Boyle glanced at Alec. “Any more questions, sir?”
“Not for the moment. Thank you for your cooperation, Mr. Pritchard. I hope this will prove a momentary aberration on the part of your sister-in-law.”
The moment the door closed behind Pritchard, Boyle said, “I don’t think he did it, do you?
But this Mrs. Howell’s another kettle of fish.
Sane or not, she had it in for both Mr. Pritchard and Lord Rydal, not to mention the grotto itself.
Then there’s this Armitage fellow. Something dodgy about him being here in the first place, if you ask me.
All the way from Canada to look at some fusty old papers!
Out walking with Miss Beaufort, he claims. Walking out, more like, I shouldn’t wonder. After her money.”
“Miss Beaufort is an extraordinarily beautiful young woman,” Alec informed him, “and I have a vague memory of my wife mentioning that she and her mother are far from well off.”
“Oh,” said Boyle, disconcerted. He rallied. “At any rate, Armitage wanting to marry her, him a professor—if he’s telling the truth about that!—and her courted by a rich lord. Stands to reason he’d want to get his rival out of the way.”
“But Miss Beaufort also says they were walking the entire time. Why would she back his story if he’d destroyed her chance of an excellent marriage?”
“Because Lord Rydal insulted her. Strange, that. What do you reckon to this theory of Mrs. Fletcher’s, sir?”
“About Lord Rydal’s upbringing? I think she may well be right, and you may well be right that it doesn’t make any difference to us. Except insofar as it’s always useful to understand the victim.”
“I daresay.” Boyle sounded unconvinced. “Seems to me it’s more important to know he was rude to everyone than why.
It gives us a lot of people with reason to dislike him, but the ones with the best motive and opportunity are Armitage, with or without Miss Beaufort as accessory; Mrs. Howell, assuming she’s batty; and Lady Ottaline Wandersley, that he wanted to throw over for Miss Beaufort, as your good lady told us. ”
The door opened, and Alec’s “good lady” appeared.
“Darling, I’ve been thinking,” she announced.