Chapter 9 #2
“Oh but what?” Alec said encouragingly.
“It may have been my imagination. I did wonder if I heard a cough, before I heard the footsteps.”
“Is that significant?”
“Probably not. Only, the next building is the Tower’s hospital, so he might have been going to ask for cough mixture.”
Daisy had said something about a cough. The yeoman waiting at the top of the fatal stair for a word with the victim had been coughing, and he, too, had been wearing his costume at an unlikely hour.
The hospital was not labelled on the brochure’s plan, Alec saw, doubtless because it was of no interest to tourists. It would have to be looked into.
“That seems very likely,” he said. “Did you notice the time when you reached home?”
“No,” she said, absurdly guilty, as though she should have guessed she was going to be interrogated on that point.
“I didn’t look at the clock. Sidney might have noticed.
It must have been shortly after ten, because the ceremony is always exactly on time.
For fear of disturbing Wellington’s ghost,” she added with an unexpected touch of whimsy.
Alec smiled. “The Iron Duke was quite a martinet, they say, but I should have thought you had plenty of other ghosts here.”
“We do,” she retorted, “if you believe everything the yeomen tell visitors. And another was added to their number today, I’m afraid. Mr. Fletcher, you will catch the murderer, won’t you?”
“I expect so. We usually do, and in a closed community such as this, it’s largely a matter of sifting information. So the more information we have, whether it seems relevant or not, from as many people as possible, the sooner we’ll get there. You’re being extremely helpful.”
“I’m happy to help. I like your wife so much. Such a comforting person.”
As a reason for assisting the police with their enquiries, it was not what Alec would have chosen. He reminded himself with relief that Daisy was safely on her way home to the twins and unable to meddle further.
“Tell me what happened next, after you got back here. Ten o’clock on a foggy night and your nieces were on the wrong side of the Inner Ward.”
“Sidney was in—a commanding officer has most irregular hours!—and he said at once that he’d walk the girls back. But some of the boys, the younger officers, were here for cocoa, and—”
“For cocoa?” Astonishment diverted Alec from his purpose.
“Some of them really are boys, you know. And there’s such a temptation in the evenings, when they’re off duty, to drink too much alcohol in the mess. So I always have cocoa and biscuits available for any who want it. I think of their mothers.”
“Admirable!”
“Well, Sidney jokes about it, but it can’t hurt, can it?”
“On the contrary.” Alec, who already liked Mrs. Duggan, in spite of his duty to be objective, warmed still further to the little lady.
He hoped he was not going to have to arrest anyone near and dear to her.
“A thermos bottle of cocoa kept me going through many a cold flight. But to get back to last night . . .”
“Naturally, all the boys at once volunteered to escort Fay and Brenda. Sidney said two were sufficient, and he sent Captain Devereux and Lieutenant Jardyne. I said to him later that it would have been better not to pick Lieutenant Jardyne, because he is quite dotty about Fay and apt to make a bit of a nuisance of himself, but Sidney said, and of course he was quite right, that Captain Devereux would keep him in order. Captain Devereux sometimes seems a little thoughtless, but he’s really very reliable. ”
“Both officers returned for their cocoa?”
“As a matter of fact, Lieutenant Jardyne didn’t. I heard Captain Devereux tell one of the others he’d gone off in a sulk.”
Another loose end wandering about in the fog!
With any luck, Jardyne had gone back to the mess and got drunk in company.
Suppose he hadn’t, though. Suppose he had met Crabtree and quarrelled with him .
. . . It was difficult to imagine what a youthful officer and a mature Yeoman Warder might find to quarrel about.
He’d worry about that later, if necessary.
More to the point was that he’d have had somehow to provide himself with a partizan.
Malice aforethought, Alec and Tom had concluded.
He asked Mrs. Duggan, “Do you happen to know which regiment Crabtree served in?”
“Yes indeed, because it was the Hotspurs.”
Aha, the plot thickens! Alec thought. “Did your husband go out again?” he asked.
“Not last night. Sometimes on a fine evening, we take a stroll along the walls, but yesterday was a night for sitting by the fire. He had no duties to call him out. Sidney is most conscientious about performing all his duties to the letter, and beyond. You see—I expect someone has told you—he started out as a common soldier and was commissioned in France.”
“So I’ve heard. How did that come about?”
“Well, he was already a warrant officer before the War. He earned the Military Cross. I think it was in ’15.
Then he saved an officer’s life at risk of his own.
He won’t tell me about it—he says it would give me nightmares, but he got the DCM for it, so he must have been very brave, mustn’t he?
” She giggled, suddenly looking remarkably girlish.
“But the significant part is that the man he saved was the son of a field marshal, who was terribly grateful.”
“I see.”
“And so many officers were killed over there, or put permanently out of action, that Sidney was given a temporary commission. The field marshal made his commission permanent and has helped him rise through the ranks, though in a different Guards regiment. He’ll never be a full colonel, not in the Guards, he says, but that’s all right.
He’s going to retire soon anyway, so even this horrible murder can’t harm him.
Besides, it’s not as if he’s in charge of the Tower. That’s Arthur’s pigeon.”
“Very true,” said Alec. He took his leave and went in search of the lieutenant colonel.
He found Captain Devereux waiting for him, still lounging against the doorpost, smoking. The rain was falling more gently now. A break in the clouds had produced a magnificent rainbow over the Royal Chapel of St. Peter ad Vincula and the site of the scaffold.
“We are told a rainbow is a symbol of a covenant,” Devereux murmured. “One wonders just what is being promised us.” Even as he spoke, the bright arc faded.
Alec was reminded of Crabtree’s search for a meaning for Plague following on the heels of War. He doubted the captain would turn to Bible study for an answer.
“Did you know Crabtree before he became a Yeoman Warder?” he asked.
“Good Lord, yes! He was my drill sergeant major when I was a wet-behind-the-ears sublieutenant. But I assure you I didn’t hold it against him for a decade and then push him down the stairs.
In fact, I wouldn’t be alive today but for one or two tricks he taught us.
” His momentary earnestness carried conviction.
“If there’s anything I can do to help you catch the bastard who killed him, Chief Inspector, I’m your man.
” The habitual mockery returned: “I can at least be your Virgil. Let me show you the way to Colonel Duggan’s office. ”
“I’m no Dante,” said Alec, accompanying him down the steps. He couldn’t claim to have read the Inferno or whatever it was—and he wondered whether Devereux actually had—but at swapping vague references, he could hold his own. “Reports in verse are frowned upon at the Yard.”
Devereux laughed. “An educated copper with a sense of humour,” he marvelled. “What is the world coming to?”
“No doubt we shall find out in due course. Would you mind telling me how you spent yesterday evening?”
“As you will no doubt find out, Chief Inspector, if you haven’t already, I was watch officer.
That means I slept fully dressed on a damn uncomfortable cot in the Guard House, with men tramping in and out past my door at all hours, just in case the sergeant of the guard came across something he couldn’t cope with.
A most unlikely contingency, and one that did not occur last night, leading me to the conclusion that no one noticed the Chief Warder’s body. ”
“A reasonable conclusion. So you were safely tucked away in the Guard House all night, with numerous witnesses.”
“Oh, no, I’m afraid not,” said Devereux sardonically. “The watch officer’s room has its own door to the outside. One is expected to sortie at some point during the small hours to make an unannounced inspection.”
“Which you did?”
“Which I did.”