Chapter 4
L ater that day, Barnaby was sitting at the table in the dining room, with an array of dishes representing breakfast and lunch combined spread before him.
He’d just finished reading the black-bordered front-page article in The Times , announcing the murder of the Earl of Moran in respectful yet somehow lurid terms, and Penelope, seated opposite, had finished her slice of toast slathered with marmalade and picked up her teacup to take a sip when the front doorbell pealed.
And pealed again.
Then the knocker was plied.
Startled, across the table, Barnaby locked gazes with Penelope.
They heard Mostyn’s hurried footsteps cross the front hall, and a second later, Stokes’s rumbling tones reached them.
Then Stokes came striding rapidly toward the dining room.
From the way Penelope’s eyes widened, she, like Barnaby, recognized that this was not Stokes arriving to join them in continuing their interviews.
Penelope broke eye contact and swung to face the doorway as Stokes loomed, filling the space.
He hadn’t even stopped to remove his greatcoat.
“Who’s dead?” Penelope demanded.
That was the only viable explanation for the intensely grim look on Stokes’s face.
“Winslow, the earl’s butler, was found dead this morning.”
“A heart attack?” Barnaby asked.
“No such luck,” Stokes ground out. “Judging from the scant details I have thus far, he was poisoned. Findlay’s already on his way there.” Stokes tipped his head toward the front hall. “Coming?”
Penelope was already out of her chair and making for the door.
“Silly question.” Barnaby rose and followed.
They were forced to descend from the carriage in Park Lane because the wrought-iron gates to the Moran House drive were closed, with a bevy of constables pacing before them, ostensibly to deter a horde of hovering reporters from making a run at the front or side doors.
Barnaby took Penelope’s arm, and with Stokes on her other side, they put their heads down and strode rapidly toward the gates.
Unfortunately, several of the newshounds recognized Stokes and rushed toward them, yelling their questions—mostly “Who’s the murderer, Inspector?”—as they came.
Two constables raced forward and intercepted the reporters before they reached Stokes, and the three investigators managed to slip between the gates, manned by another constable, before being accosted.
As they walked up the drive, Stokes glanced behind them and muttered, “The Commissioner wants to keep the press as far away as possible, far enough that they don’t hear about this latest development immediately.”
Barnaby nodded, and they went up the steps, and Stokes rapped on the door.
Seconds later, they were admitted to the house by a tall, pale, and rather frightened footman.
As soon as the footman had shut the door behind them, Stokes demanded, “Where’s the body?”
The footman swallowed. “Upstairs, sir—Inspector. In the attics. I’ll…er, show you the way.”
They followed the footman deeper into a warren of corridors to what was plainly the servants’ stair. The footman waved them up, and they swiftly climbed to the attics on the third floor.
On the uppermost landing, they encountered a teary-eyed Mrs. Pratchett. The previously unflappable woman was wringing her hands. The instant she saw Penelope, Mrs. Pratchett all but wailed, “Lord save us, ma’am! What’s to become of us?”
Deciding to take the question literally, as she stepped off the stairs, Penelope briskly asked, “Who of the family have been told of Winslow’s death?”
“That’s just it, ma’am.” Mrs. Pratchett’s fingers tightened even more. “They’re all still abed. Mr. Christopher, Lady Victoria, and the dowager.”
Penelope cast a swift look at Barnaby and Stokes, then instructed Mrs. Pratchett, “Go downstairs and rally the staff so they can cope with their duties over the rest of the day. Much will go on as usual. If any of the family wake and ring for their attendants, their maids or their valet will need to tell them Winslow has died.”
Mrs. Pratchett, her gaze locked on Penelope’s stern face, drew in a deep breath, then nodded and bobbed a curtsy. “Yes, ma’am. I’ll see to it.”
Before she could step past them and start down the stairs, Stokes asked, “Who found Winslow?”
Mrs. Pratchett’s face fell. “I did, Inspector. We’d left him until late—well, he’s not young, and we all thought, what with the drama of last evening and him being last up to bed after locking up, that he was due a little sleep-in, so as the family weren’t up and about and needing him, we let him be and got on with our usual chores.
But then it was getting on for eight-thirty, and he still hadn’t come down, so I came up…
” She teared up and, on a half sob, waved along the corridor.
“And I found him…like that. Horrible, it was.”
“Did you touch anything in the room?” Stokes asked.
Mrs. Pratchett shook her head. “I didn’t need to.
” Again, she waved farther down the corridor to where the door to a room stood open.
“You’ll see. As soon as I saw him, I knew he was gone.
” She sniffed, then raised her head and added, “I closed the door and went straight downstairs and sent Jeffrey—the footman who would’ve opened the door to you—to send one of the constables outside to Scotland Yard. ”
Stokes inclined his head. “Thank you. That was precisely the right thing to do.”
Mollified, Mrs. Pratchett sniffed again, then offered, “Your man—the medical one—arrived a few minutes ago, and I brought him up. He’s in there now. No one else has been up here since I found Winslow and went downstairs.”
Penelope nodded reassuringly. “You did just right.” She gently pushed the housekeeper toward the stairs. “Go down, now. The staff will need your direction.”
Mrs. Pratchett dipped in a curtsy, straightened, and started down the stairs, her footfalls heavy on the wooden treads.
Penelope turned and, with Barnaby and Stokes at her back, hurried down the narrow corridor to the open door.
The room was the last along the corridor, tucked under the eaves and, given Winslow’s rank, no doubt slightly larger than the other servants’ rooms.
As she halted in the open doorway, Penelope saw what Mrs. Pratchett had meant. There was no need to go any closer to see that Winslow was definitely dead.
He was a pathetic sight, his features fixed in a rictus suggesting horrendous pain, the bedclothes soiled and massively disarranged. He’d clearly thrashed about in extremis.
Findlay, who’d been standing by the head of the bed, glanced their way. “Poison, obviously. And I would wager it was strychnine.”
From behind Penelope’s left shoulder, Stokes heaved a heavy sigh.
Glancing back, she saw him draw out his notebook.
“The poison virtually every household has tucked away somewhere.” Stokes shook his head.
She grimaced. “Especially with the rat infestation being what it currently is.”
Barnaby leaned against the doorjamb to her right. “Any hint as to when he ingested it?”
“Or how?” she added.
Findlay sucked his teeth in thought, then offered, “Assuming it is strychnine, then given the way it acts, I’d say he must have consumed the dose close to the time he got to bed.
Say, in the hour before.” Findlay looked at Stokes, then at Barnaby and Penelope.
“But I assume you three were here later than I was last night.”
Stokes nodded. “Into the small hours. We left at what?” He looked at Penelope and Barnaby. “Two o’clock?”
“About that,” Barnaby said. “And after seeing us out of the front door, Winslow would have completed his rounds and locked up before he came up here.”
Findlay waggled his head. “That fits well enough. He ate or drank something before he came upstairs.”
He sighed and waved them back, out of the room and into the narrow corridor. “I’ll have the men from the morgue take the body out. I’ve already sent for them.”
Stokes pulled a face. “There are reporters by the dozen in Park Lane. See if you can go out via the mews. The fewer people who learn of this second death in Moran House, the better for all concerned.”
Findlay grunted. “The morgue men and I are all for avoiding the press. We’ll do our best.”
Penelope turned and led the way down the servants’ stairs. Halfway down, she glanced over her shoulder at Barnaby and Stokes, who were following her. “Why kill the butler?”
From behind Stokes, Findlay said, “It might have been an accident.”
“Faint hope, my friend,” Stokes muttered.
They reached the small foyer at the bottom of the stairs and parted from Findlay, who headed for the back door and the mews beyond.
As they tacked through the corridors, making for the front of the house, Barnaby said, “Accident or murder? Was poisoning Winslow a deliberate act? If so, by whom?”
“Or,” Penelope replied, her tone grim, “was the poisoning a deliberate act but Winslow wasn’t the intended victim? If so, who was?”
From behind them, Stokes growled, “Indeed.”
Penelope emerged from the maze of corridors into the rear of the mansion’s foyer.
The lower flight of the mansion’s grand staircase rose beside them, and with Barnaby and Stokes at her back, she made for the front door, but as they cleared the side of the staircase, they found Christopher Fitzhugh distractedly pacing.
He swung to face them, and from the way his features eased on sighting them, it was them he was waiting to waylay.
Gone was his debonair defiance of the small hours. Christopher looked ashen and shaken, his movements less assured, his overall appearance one of nervous uncertainty. “Thank God you’re still here!”