Chapter 10 #3
Penelope walked closer to the lawn, to where she could see the house clearly.
She almost stood on another set of shoe prints, but caught herself just in time.
“He was standing over here, it seems.” She looked at the house.
“Perhaps staring at the house.” She looked upward at the thick overhanging branches shading the spot.
“He would likely have been shaded sufficiently so that anyone in the house, looking out this way, wouldn’t have spotted him. ”
With Morgan trailing them, Barnaby and Stokes came up and crouched to study the fresh set of prints.
After a moment, Barnaby nodded and rose. “He stood here for some time, facing the house.”
Stokes grunted and straightened. “That’s why these prints are more deeply indented.”
After glancing at the house, Barnaby stepped carefully forward, placing his shoes over the prints so that he was standing in the exact same spot, facing in the same direction as the murderer had been. He studied the house. “From here, I can see through one of the library windows.”
“Into the library?” Penelope asked.
“If I had a spyglass, yes. I can see movement without a glass, but to make out anything inside the library clearly, one would need a spyglass.”
“I wonder if any guest has a spyglass in his possession,” Penelope said.
“Or,” Stokes said, “if there’s one in the house that’s been moved or gone missing.”
“That’s a question we can ask the staff.” Barnaby stepped free of the prints and looked at Stokes and Penelope. “No time like the present.”
They left Morgan to watch over the site and strode quickly back to the house.
By luck, they found Gearing in the front hall, replacing the large vase of flowers on the central table.
Penelope smiled at the butler. “Gearing, is there a spyglass in the house? One that’s small enough to carry about on one’s person?”
They all saw the surprise that flared in Gearing’s eyes. “A spyglass, ma’am?” There was an odd note in his voice as well.
Studying him, Penelope tilted her head. “Yes, but what’s strange about that query?”
Gearing colored faintly. “It’s just odd you ask that, ma’am.” He nodded toward the library. “There’s one in there. Let me show you.”
They followed Gearing into the long library, and he led them to the mantelshelf. Halting before it, he pointed at the small, collapsible brass-and-walnut spyglass standing at one end.
“That glass is usually always there, in that spot. But when Milly, the parlormaid, came in to dust yesterday morning, it was gone. She told me straightaway and showed me, and we looked all over this room, thinking one of the guests had picked it up and put it down somewhere else, but we didn’t find it.
” Gearing drew in a breath and continued, “And then, late yesterday afternoon, after you had left, Milly came in to straighten and dust, and there it was. In that spot. She called me to see, and it was just sitting there”—Gearing gestured at the glass—“as you see it now. So we reasoned that one of the guests had borrowed it and taken it away and used it for whatever they needed it for, then brought it back.”
Gearing looked at Barnaby and Stokes, who was busy jotting notes.
When Gearing’s gaze moved on to Penelope, she nodded. “I think that’s exactly what happened, Gearing.” She smiled at the butler. “Thank you.”
Stokes shut his notebook, tucked it away, then reached out and picked up the spyglass. To Gearing, he said, “We’re officially borrowing this for now. We’ll return it—into your hands—once we’ve finished with it.”
Gearing was puzzled, but half bowed. “Of course, sir.”
Barnaby shared a glance with Stokes, then said, “We’ll be heading off to the inn shortly, Gearing. If we’re needed, send for us there.”
Gearing bowed again. “Indeed, sir.”
He followed them out of the library and headed down the hall, returning to his duties.
Meanwhile, with poorly concealed eagerness, Penelope, Barnaby, and Stokes walked briskly across the front lawn to where, they were now quite sure, the murderer had stood and watched something happen in the library.
They reached the trees, ducked under their cover, and made their way to the critical spot.
Barnaby placed his shoes in the prints again, then raised the spyglass to his eye.
After barely a second, Penelope impatiently demanded, “What can you see?”
“Strange,” Barnaby replied. “I can see a vase. Very clearly. It’s perfectly framed by the window.”
After a moment, he lowered the glass and looked at Penelope. “It’s that Chinese vase on one of the display shelves among the bookcases on the other side of the library, opposite the windows.”
Penelope’s face cleared. “I remember it.” She started back toward the house. “Let’s go back and examine it.”
There was no one about to see them reenter the house. They went into the library, and Penelope went straight to the large white-pink-and-green vase. As Barnaby had said, it sat on a shelf directly opposite the window through which he’d been looking.
Stokes had paused to look about the front hall. He joined them with, “Obviously, it’s easy enough to move about this house without being seen.”
Penelope reached for the vase, carefully lifted it, brought it to her, and peered inside.
“Hmm.” She frowned into the vase. “There’s always dust in these things.
” Tilting her head, she studied the vase’s interior.
“And in this case, the coating of dust within has been disturbed relatively recently. Not as if someone cleaned, mind you. More like something—a packet of some sort, perhaps—had been placed inside, then taken out.”
She straightened and offered the vase to Stokes. “If you look carefully, you’ll be able to see the marks.”
Stokes accepted the vase and looked, tilting the porcelain this way, then that. Eventually, he nodded. “I see what you mean. There are straight lines streaked in the dust on either side.”
As he handed the vase to Barnaby, Barnaby observed, “Given what the other victims told us of the places Monty stipulated for leaving their payments, this vase certainly fits his bill.”
After studying the vase, Barnaby returned it to the shelf.
“Except”—Stokes was looking out of the window toward the distant trees—“this time, Monty made a mistake. He didn’t realize he could be seen from outside.”
Penelope added, “And several witnesses say he came in and moved around the room, chatting to them, before he went outside.” She looked at the vase. “I wonder if he approached the vase?”
Barnaby had been studying the various groupings of chairs.
“Recalling where all the chairs were when we arrived—before we moved those four—then if he did approach the vase, he would have been between the vase and those sitting in the armchairs, so he would have been able to remove a packet from inside the vase without any of those others seeing.”
Stokes checked the angle from the window to the vase. “But with that spyglass trained on him, the murderer would have seen Underhill’s arm move, at the very least, and most likely seen him take the packet from inside the vase and slip it into his pocket.”
Barnaby was assessing the various possibilities. He grimaced. “All the guests were here from the evening before. The murderer had plenty of time—literally the entire night—to place his payment in the vase with no one the wiser.”
Penelope was staring at where the spyglass had sat only feet away from the vase.
Slowly, she nodded. “And when he left his payment, he realized what Monty hadn’t—that the window would allow him to keep watch and see who picked up the packet.
See who his blackmailer was.” She pointed at where the spyglass had been.
“And the spyglass he needed to do that was right there, waiting for him to take and use.”
Stokes looked deadly serious. “We need to stop and think”—he met Barnaby’s and Penelope’s gazes—“and put together everything we’ve heard and learned before we race ahead.”
Barnaby nodded, and more reluctantly, Penelope did, too.
“So,” she said, “let’s head to the inn. We can start sorting through all the information from our interviews before we break for dinner.”
At the Red Lion, Penelope led the way into their private parlor, and Barnaby and Stokes followed.
As Stokes shut the door, Penelope said, “What I want to know is what possessed Monty to use his own house to collect payments?” She dropped onto the settle facing the fireplace and looked at Barnaby and Stokes as they joined her.
“Up to this point, he’d been so careful.
Surely, arranging for payments at Patchcote Grange was a risk? ”
Barnaby sank onto the cushion beside her.
“I think you just answered your own question. He’d operated for years without a hitch, and he’d grown complacent.
” He glanced at Stokes as he claimed the nearby armchair.
“There’s also the possibility that Monty didn’t see the Grange as his home but rather as Pamela’s house and, therefore, just another ton venue. ”
Stokes added, “He favored crowds for confusion, and there were so many people in the house, he might have felt it was safe enough. Comfortable enough for him. Thirty guests and family, plus just as many staff, and probably more visiting staff, and for all the victims knew, any one of the entire cohort could have been the blackmailer.”
Penelope wrinkled her nose. “I suppose, at least with the payments being left outside, in the orchard and on the croquet lawn, they might have been picked up by literally anyone.”
“Don’t forget,” Stokes said, “that occasionally, he used third parties, and several victims were aware of that. There was no reason for his victims to imagine the blackmailer was one of the company, much less their host.”