Chapter Sixteen #3
‘We’ll see,’ said Lady Hardcastle. ‘On Sunday, Wilson and Lily performed the same going-out-for-a-walk act, having played the part of couple-reluctantly-forced-together-by-an-impish-host so well. We all heard them go out, and then all saw them come back. It didn’t matter that they didn’t have so many witnesses that time, because we all just expected that what had happened on Friday had happened again: Wilson had gone for a long walk – this time with Lily – and had come back some time later.
But, as before, they didn’t do anything of the sort.
This time they both went up to the mezzanine room, where Lily waited while Wilson went up to the second floor and then walked in his soft-soled shoes—’
‘I heard him pass my door,’ said Clarice.
‘You did. He went first to the long gallery to take one of JB’s knives. Then walked past your door to the Bridgewaters’ room, where he waited for Sidwell-Plant, who had been summoned to a meeting by another note signed “GB”.’
‘Of all the damn nerve,’ said Bridgewater.
‘Wilson stabbed Sidwell-Plant, but this time he left the body where it fell – all the better to implicate Bridgewater, one presumes – then retraced his route back to Lily in the mezzanine room. They bided their time in their hiding place, then came back through the kitchen like young lovers returning from a first walk. I’ve not said so already, but another of my presumptions is that Lily and Wilson were lovers long before this weekend.
But that’s by the by. So, anyway, they pulled their little dumb-waiter trick and, hey presto, they had alibis for all the crimes and now the finger of blame points squarely at GB, who summoned both victims – for want of a less melodramatic way of putting it – to their appointments with death. ’
No one said anything for a few moments.
‘That’s all well and good,’ said Patience eventually, ‘but why on earth would they do such a thing?’
‘This is what troubled Florence and me for quite some time. Between you, you all had decent motives for at least one of the crimes, but Wilson and Lily were just bystanders. Patience, you were incensed by Everett’s bullying, Clarice was the victim of that maltreatment – you might both have wanted Everett dead.
Patience, you wanted to be free of your loveless marriage, so you could easily have wanted Sidwell-Plant dead.
Bridgewater, you knew Sidwell-Plant was going to blow the gaff on your embezzlement from JB’s many accounts—’
‘Now look here,’ blustered Bridgewater.
‘—and so silencing him would save your job and your wealth. The same thing gave you a motive, Dotty, and both of you would benefit from the insurance pay-out from the stolen jewels. But Wilson and Lily? It wasn’t until I remembered all those things about them not being who they seemed that I began to wonder, but I still couldn’t put it all together. ’
There was a familiar snickety-click from the end of the table, and I turned to see JB holding an intricately engraved, pearl-handled Colt Peacemaker revolver.
He was pointing it towards Wilson and Lily.
‘I knew you two would figure it out for us,’ he said.
‘Thank you, Emily and Florence. Now, what say you varmints – I’ve always wanted to call someone a varmint, must-a read one too many penny dreadfuls over the years .
. . What say you two varmints put your hands on the table where we can see them, while Robert and Granville fetch some rope so we can tie you up till the police get here. ’
‘Just a moment,’ said Lady Hardcastle. ‘I haven’t quite finished.’
‘Sure you have,’ said JB. ‘You’ve explained it all just right. These two stole the jewellery and murdered Everett and Sidwell-Plant. It all makes perfect sense.’
‘Well, you see, dear, it does and it doesn’t.
All weekend it’s been obvious that this is a bit of a mismatched group.
You have your old friends – your business pals and your musicians.
But then you also invited these two frauds’ – she pointed at Wilson and Lily – ‘and us.’ She indicated herself and me.
‘You had an explanation for Wilson – he was looking for a piece for your collection. Lily was here to take photographs – although, as I say, I never once saw her with a camera in her hands. But what about us? Why were Florence and I invited this weekend? We’ve known you for a while, it’s true, and you definitely wanted to show off your new place to get thoughts on its potential as a hotel, but why this weekend in particular?
Why bring us with this group and not with people we already knew from the rest of your wide circle of friends?
And then it dawned on me: we have a reputation for solving murders.
We’ve been involved in many cases over the past few years so we have more experience than most. You knew of our relationship with the Bristol police and our friendship with the police surgeon there.
We were invited because we knew enough about murder to be able to estimate the time of death.
Wilson’s alibi only works because we know when both men were killed.
It’s only because we were able to say that Everett died at three on Friday and Sidwell-Plant at four on Sunday that Wilson was in the clear.
We were encouraged to investigate further, but I suspect he imagined his plan so well thought out that we’d never crack it – the important thing was our confirmation of the time of death.
Without our testimony, the blame couldn’t be laid at Bridgewater’s door, could it, JB? ’
‘Well, I must say, I deeply regret underestimating you, my dear,’ said JB. ‘I thought I had it all figured out.’
‘Wait,’ said Bridgewater. ‘You mean JB is behind all this?’
‘I rather fear so,’ said Lady Hardcastle.
‘I said that Sidwell-Plant knew about your embezzlement, but he knew a great deal more about JB’s accounts than he ever let on.
JB, I believe, is very close to bankruptcy.
It’s supposition at this point, but when you add the fact that the Crawfords haven’t been paid for a few months – we overheard them when we went out for our walk yesterday – to what everyone’s been saying about how keen JB is that this hotel plan should be a success, it’s not a massive leap to suppose that he has very little free cash and that everything is tied up in this venture. I can’t prove it—’
‘Oh, I can,’ said Patience. ‘There’s a copy of the accounts in our safe at home.’
‘Make sure the police get them, dear. Do you remember what he said in the long gallery on that first day when we were talking about how tidy everything was? He said, “I can’t stand mess and disorder. I have to straighten everything up, ‘sort it all out’ as you fellas say.” He needed to sort everything out.
He knew Everett was a bullying monster – you all did.
He needed sorting out. He knew Bridgewater was embezzling and he knew Sidwell-Plant was about to turn him in.
And he couldn’t have that – he couldn’t have a scandal ruining the neatness of his business affairs. So he hired Wilson and his girlfriend—’
‘Wife,’ said Lily.
‘I do beg your pardon, dear. He hired Mr and Mrs Wilson – presumably not their real names – to come and clean up for him. He knew well that payments from his accounts could be scrutinized and traced, so he offered payment in the form of jewellery which could be stolen from his solicitor and accountant. He loves Clarice like a daughter and couldn’t bear to see her so mistreated, so Everett had to go.
Sidwell-Plant was going to cause a scandal, so he had to go, too.
But Bridgewater had to face punishment for the embezzlement somehow, so why not implicate him in the murder of his friends and let him hang?
Even if Wilson was as ignorant of the fort as he claims, JB could have told them about the dumb waiter and the mezzanine room and explained how they could be used to commit the crimes.
I wonder if the Wilsons were supposed to slip away before the police got here.
They had decent alibis – backed up by Florence and me – and the local police would surely swallow the ham-fisted evidence of the notes found on the bodies.
But the storm put paid to that and here we all are. ’
‘That’s all very well,’ said Patience, ‘but how would that help the business? Surely theft and murder would be just as big a scandal as accounting fraud.’
‘Just as big, but a great deal more glamorous,’ said Lady Hardcastle.
‘We’ve learned over recent years that the public absolutely loves a murder.
The minor scandal of a boring old fraud would turn his target market against him, but stolen jewels and a couple of murders?
People would flock to Guardians Rock to see where it had all happened. ’
‘Well,’ said JB, ‘it looks like I really did underestimate you.’ He turned the gun towards me and Lady Hardcastle.
I tried really hard not to sigh. Villains expect terror and obedience when they begin waving weapons about, so weary insouciance tends to irritate them and I try to keep it in check if I can. But. I mean. Really.
I looked around at my fellow diners. Obviously Lily and Wilson were quite pleased with themselves. With their employer now back in charge after a brief attempt at disruption by Lady Hardcastle, they might get away with it after all.
The Bridgewaters were staring nervously at their plates. Clarice had her head cocked, listening for any sounds that might tell her what was going on.
Patience, who had been picking up another bread roll when the revolver appeared, was looking at me. She flicked her eyes towards JB. I hoped with all my heart that she wasn’t planning something foolhardy.
Lady Hardcastle made no attempt not to sigh. ‘Honestly, JB, how does this help? The game is over, the jig is up. Do you plan to shoot us all?’
‘I haven’t decided yet,’ said JB, ‘but I’m pretty certain I won’t have to.
I’m going to have to take out you two smart alecs, of course.
But Patience will keep her mouth shut if she wants to keep hold of her money.
Clarice will come around to the idea that I arranged things out of a fatherly love for her, so she’ll keep quiet, too.
Dotty . . . well, no one will believe Dotty Dorothy, the village simpleton.
I reckon I can turn things around.’ He waved the gun.
‘You know, this beautiful revolver was made for me at the instruction of Samuel Colt himself. He gave it to my father as a christening gift for his firstborn son, and when I came of age, my father gave it to me—’
‘I know one isn’t supposed to interrupt the villain of the play when he’s making his climactic speech, JB dear,’ said Lady Hardcastle, ‘but that’s a Colt Single Action Army revolver, first made in 1873.
From the look of it, that one is a much later model – I’d say 1890s at the earliest. You were born, if memory serves, in 1851, and Mr Colt died, I believe, in ’62, so no part of your story can possibly be true. ’
‘And yet it’s the story I tell. And if I tell the story, then the people I control will believe the story and defend the story.
The truth is whatever I decide it will be.
The investigation will be perfunctory and our story will be swallowed whole by the police, the press and the country at large.
Like you say: people will lap it up. We’ll be booked solid for years to come. ’
‘I foresee a slight problem with your plan,’ said Bridgewater. ‘You see, you’re not the only one here who’s armed.’ He produced a nickel-plated pistol from beneath the table. ‘I have this spiffing little Colt 1911. Put your peashooter down and we’ll have no more talk of massacres.’
JB levelled his own gun at Dotty. ‘I have a better idea. Why don’t you put your peashooter down and we’ll have no more talk of me spraying your beloved wife’s brains all over my newly decorated dining room. Assuming the bullet can find any brains in there, of course.’
‘I say,’ said Dotty, ‘there’s no call for that.’
JB laughed. It was a proper, eyes-closed, head-thrown-back guffaw, and it afforded Patience the perfect opportunity to fling her bread roll at his face.
It did him no harm, of course, but it distracted him sufficiently that I was able to pick up the table knife from beside my plate and throw it into his chest.
That really got his attention, and he turned the gun back to me. ‘You little bi—’
A Colt pistol makes a terrifyingly loud noise in a small room, but it was oddly reassuring – if I’d heard the sound and was able to be mentally complaining about it, I wasn’t dead.
Nor was JB, but he wasn’t at all well. With a knife in his chest and a bullet wound in his shoulder, he looked as though he might soon go into shock.
He dropped his gun on the table and Lady Hardcastle quickly scooped it up before standing and rushing to JB’s end of the table.
She laid him down and began to administer first aid.
‘Can I have napkins, please,’ she said. ‘The bullet went straight through but it’s made a bit of a mess – I need to stop the bleeding.’ She looked at the knife. ‘That didn’t go in very deep, dear.’
‘I just wanted to startle him,’ I said. ‘I didn’t throw it hard enough to kill him.’
She pulled the knife out, and JB seemed not to notice.
‘Is it safe to do that?’ said Patience. ‘I thought you weren’t supposed to pull knives out.’
‘It’s fine,’ said Lady Hardcastle. ‘It barely pierced the skin. My Flossie knows what she’s doing.’ She applied pressure to JB’s shoulder and the bleeding seemed to be slowing. ‘While I’m doing this, can somebody stop those two, please?’
Amid all this confusion, Wilson and Lily were attempting to make a break for the dining room door, but Clarice had the situation in hand.
With the timing of a virtuoso musician, she swept her cane behind her chair and tripped Wilson as he tried to run past her.
Lily fell over him and the fight went out of them both once they saw Bridgewater’s pistol pointing at them.
‘Dotty, my angel,’ he said, ‘there are shackles and chains in JB’s collection in the long gallery. I fancy I saw some darbies in there, too. Would you be an absolute poppet and fetch them for me. Let’s secure these scoundrels before they get up to any more mischief.’
Dotty stood and placed her napkin neatly on the table. ‘Of course, darling. I’ll be back in a jiffy.’