Chapter 8
Alec stepped out of the front door of the King’s House and paused to look around.
To his right, just beyond the window of the room he had left a moment earlier, stood a sentry.
The window was closed because of the drizzle, now falling in a determined way, but had it been open, he could scarcely have failed to hear every word spoken within.
Glancing up, Alec saw a gas lamp above the front door. However dark the night or thick the fog, a sentry posted there would surely have noticed anyone leaving or entering the house that way.
There was no back door, since the house was built directly against the wall surrounding the inner bailey—the Inner Ward, as they called it.
The door farther along, under the balcony terrace, was probably the servants’ entrance.
It, too, was lit by a lamp and at present within full sight of the sentry. But on a foggy night?
His gaze turned on the Guardsman, Alec contemplated the stiff figure.
Staring straight ahead in the prescribed fashion, was he conscious of anything but boredom?
Under Alec’s scrutiny, whether aware of it or not, he shifted his weight uneasily from foot to foot.
Suddenly, without warning, he performed a precise turn, marched several paces away from Alec, turned again with knees raised high and a great deal of stamping, and returned to his post. Before he turned again to face forward, his eyes met Alec’s.
All Alec saw there was curiosity. Had the man taken his little walk just so as to examine the observer?
Checking his wristwatch, Alec saw that it was not the hour, nor the half hour, nor even the quarter.
The Royal Flying Corps had not gone in for much fancy marching, having more important matters on their minds, so he didn’t know if the gyrations took place at regular, prescribed intervals.
If not, anyone sneaking out of or into the King’s House would have risked coming face-to-face with a Hotspur Guard.
He considered asking the sentry. The man was once again rigid, his gaze fixed on the middle distance directly ahead of him. Better not to present him with the dilemma—To speak or not to speak—when Colonel Duggan could supply the answer.
There were sentries all over the place, including at the top of the fatal stair.
That was presumably not a regular post, or the murder could not have taken place.
But the Tower was not only a tourist attraction; it was still a military fortress and a prison—Daisy had said German spies were kept here, and shot here, during the War—and the repository of a vast fortune in jewels. It was well guarded.
Therefore, the fog had played an important r?le in this murder.
Alec walked past the sentry and along the row of attached houses facing Tower Green.
The one next door was very narrow and lower than its neighbours on either side, as if squeezed in between.
Then came three more, Victorian brick, without half the charm of the King’s House’s Tudor half-timbering.
They were yeomen’s residences, he had been told.
Halfway between the end of the row and the front door of the King’s House, a lamppost stood on the other side of the paved way, on the edge of the lawn.
Another lamp was attached to the corner of the end house.
Daisy and the Carradine girls had both mentioned being barely able to see one lamp from the next last night.
Alec stopped at the corner and turned to look back diagonally across Tower Green. On the west side beyond the King’s House were more yeomen’s houses. If he remembered correctly, the second was the home of the Chief Warder, the victim.
From his front door, Crabtree had had a choice of routes to the spot where he was found.
He could have gone round the top of the Green, past the site of the scaffold, and down the broad steps towards the Bloody Tower.
But then, why turn aside to the shortcut?
In any case, on a dark, foggy night, the alternative would have been much more attractive, round the lower edge of the Green with houses on his right all the way, then down the shortcut steps.
That was obviously the way he had chosen, assuming he had come from his house.
His duties of the day finished, why would he have left its shelter on such a foul night? “Who knew he was going to be out and about?” Alec said aloud.
“That’s the big question, Chief?” DS Tring, with the soft tread peculiar to men whose bulkiness is largely muscle, had come up beside him unnoticed, the rumble of his deep voice the first sign of his arrival. “He didn’t have to make a final round before turning in?”
“I understand he finished his duties at ten, and that it was his custom to go home and read the Good Book, rather than carousing with his mates in the Warders’ Hall. He was a widower, no children.”
“Ah.” Tom Tring ruminated. “You don’t reckon someone just happened to spot him and seized the occasion to give him a shove?”
“No.”
“No, it don’t smell that way to me. For one thing, there’s that bloody great pike—beg pardon, partizan—sticking out of his back.”
“Not to mention the fog.”
“Malice aforethought.”
“Who knew he was going to be out and about?” Alec repeated. “Who wanted to get rid of a man who was, by all accounts, inoffensive and well respected?”
“The man who expected to step into his shoes? But it’s not that important a position, is it? It’s not like he has the key to the Crown Jewels?”
“Not to my knowledge, but my knowledge is not yet very extensive. It’s something we’ll have to check.
I believe the choice of Chief Warder is up to the Resident Governor, though, and he might have any number of reasons for passing over the second in command.
I doubt anyone could count on inheriting the post.”
“Unless he has some sort of hold over the Governor.”
“Blackmail? We can’t count it out. So far, there doesn’t seem to be anything we can count out. The first thing I’d like to do is count out the residents of the King’s House.”
“That’d be the Governor’s place, where Mrs. Fletcher was staying?” Tom’s eyes twinkled. “I can see it’d make life easier if they were eliminated.”
“You know Daisy didn’t do it,” Alec said ruefully. “I know Daisy didn’t do it. But that’s just why we have to prove it. In our present state of ignorance, she has as much motive and opportunity as anyone else.”
“But not means, Chief. Where’d she have got hold of a partizan?”
“Difficult, but not impossible, alas. Each yeoman is supposed to keep his at home when not in use. Apart from ceremonial parades, they’re used only in certain duty posts—at the main gates, for instance, and the Wakefield Tower, where the jewels are kept.
As each man is at a given post for a week, he often leaves his weapon there, rather than lug it back and forth.
There are usually a few standing about at the entrance to the Warders’ Hall.
A partizan isn’t something a visitor can casually walk off with unnoticed, so they don’t take any particular care. ”
“More’s the pity,” said Tom mournfully. “Would have been nice if we could limit our suspects to the yeomen.”
“No such luck. But there is one oddity: The Carradine girls report a yeoman, or someone in yeoman’s dress, following them around the back of the White Tower yesterday evening.”
“No idea who?”
“Too foggy. Look here. . . .” Alec pointed out the sentry, the doors to the King’s House and the late Chief Warder’s house, explaining his observations and deductions.
“So you want me to have a word with the servants at the King’s House?” Tom proposed. “Good job, too. I could do with a cuppa.”
“You’ve finished on the steps, I take it.”
“Everything fingerprinted and photographed and gone off to the Yard for developing. Body on its way to the pathologist. The officer of the watch kindly let me leave sentries posted top and bottom until you’re done with the scene.
Incidentally, he mentioned that the guards on duty don’t use these steps, being they’re too steep and narrow to march properly.
From the Guard House, they go round by the others, which is why no one found him before Mrs. Fletcher. Here she comes now.”
Daisy came out of the King’s House, raising her red umbrella.
In the moments before she noticed Alec and Tom, Alec saw her assessing gaze move from point to point that he himself had noted and had just described to Tom.
Inevitably, now that the shock had subsided, her curiosity was aroused.
Thank heaven she was eager to get home to the twins.
She saw them and came towards them. “Hello, Tom.”
He tipped his hat. “Morning, Mrs. Fletcher. Stirred up another hornets’ nest, haven’t you?”
She smiled at him, having long ago learnt that the twitch of his moustache hid a teasing grin. “So much for early to bed and early to rise. Alec, I’ve been thinking.”
“You surprise me.”
“Don’t be beastly, darling. The thing is, it wasn’t the sort of night for hanging about on the off chance of a certain person turning up. Someone must have known Crabtree would be there at that time.”
“We did get that far ourselves.”
“Congratulations! I suppose you also worked out that the obvious person is Rumford, the Yeoman Gaoler? The one who spoke to Crabtree earlier, when he was taking the keys to General Carradine? He could have been making an appointment.”
“And can you explain why he should want to meet on the steps in the small hours of a foggy night when their houses are next door to each other?”
“Oh!” Daisy was crestfallen. “I didn’t know Crabtree was Rumford’s next-door neighbour.
Some of the yeomen’s houses are in the casemates, actually inside the outer walls.
But the view is the inner wall across a narrow lane.
I suppose it’s logical that their chief should have a nice view of the Green. ”