The small party was then led off into the main hall, a draughty, well-proportioned, high-ceilinged space, though one that some already found lugubrious even without the baleful influence of the present tragedy. On its walls the Colonel had mounted the stuffed heads of every imaginable wild beast, from a magnificently antlered Highland stag and an enormous grey elephant from the Indian hill country to a hybrid flock of smaller and friskier creatures, all of them mementoes of his travels in happier times. At the top of the broad central staircase, which arched out in both directions to two banistered galleries, an Egyptian mummy stood erect in its garish gilt coffin and, when the Colonel escorted Trubshawe past it, and noticed the bemused interest the policeman momentarily took in it, he remarked:
‘My wife’s. Given her by some archaeologist cousin of hers. He – how shall I put this? – he, um, salvaged it from a dig he was directing in Luxor in – let me see – must have been in ’31.’
He then made one of his typically lame efforts to lighten an awkward situation.
‘As I say, it’s my wife’s mummy. What you might call my mummy-in-law. Ha ha ha!’
‘Most amusing,’ said Trubshawe politely.
(To be honest, it was a joke which Roger ffolkes had made to absolutely every stranger who had ever crossed the threshold of his house and by now it was as old and creaky as the mummy itself.)
The Colonel turned into the right-hand gallery past two guest bedrooms connected by a shared, in-between bathroom, then went right again into a narrow corridor at the end of which a spiral staircase led up to the spartan stone corridor along which the servants were variously quartered. It was there that, like a skein of ribbon whose festive curlicues had been neatly ironed out, the spiral staircase straightened itself into a short flight of steps at the very top of which, opposite the last step, loomed the attic door.
Even before the Chief-Inspector had reached that last step, he could see that a heinous crime had been committed inside the room. Not only had the door been forced to give way but it was still jammed against some large, inert object which prevented it from being opened more than a crack, an object which was all too obviously a human body, lying on the floor in a pose as random as a throw of dice. And from under the door a trickle of congealing blood had formed a blot of incongruously vibrant colour against the landing’s drab flagstones.
Trubshawe wasted no time on that blood. Gingerly, so as not to disturb the corpse more than he had to, but aggressively nevertheless, because he wouldn’t otherwise have been able to get into the room at all, he shouldered the door open as far as it would go, stepped over the now visible remains of Raymond Gentry and entered the room.
The attic was of a stark, cell-like austerity, higher than it was long except where its ceiling sloped down to the half-way mark of the wall furthest away from where the Chief-Inspector was now standing. And it was sparely equipped, its furniture consisting, for all in all, of a badly chipped wooden table with its own rickety cane-bottomed chair and, in a corner, one sad and solitary armchair. The latter’s fabric, which would once have been described as chintzy, had suffered so much wear and tear that yellowy-white stuffing protruded unappetisingly from all over its faded surface and the chintz itself had become so worn it was next to impossible to figure out what might have been its original pattern.
There was also, above and behind the armchair, the attic’s one and only window, which was oblong and glassless and traversed vertically by a pair of parallel iron bars.
It was, though, the sight of the dead Raymond Gentry which transfixed everyone’s attention. Wearing the arresting combination of jet-black silk pyjamas and a bathrobe of a fluffy white towelling fabric, he lay stretched across the floor, his sickly, effeminate features warped out of shape by a grimace of indescribable horror. Seeping through his two hands, as they desperately clutched his own neck, rivulets of blood snaked about his long, tapering fingers like so many exotic ruby rings.
Hunkering down to inspect the body, Trubshawe carefully unbuttoned Gentry’s ripped and seared pyjama jacket to examine the bullet wound, an act that made Don shrink back in revulsion.
Then he got to his feet, took a gnarled old pipe out of his pocket, shoved it unlit into his mouth and turned to the Colonel.
‘I presume this,’ he said gravely, ‘is exactly how you found him?’
‘Indeed it is. Nothing’s been moved or even touched. Am I right, Don?’
‘Say what?’ mumbled the young American, still shaken by his brusque exposure to the grisly details of Gentry’s wound.
‘I said, this is exactly how we found him?’
‘Yeah, that’s right. Just as he is now. Pushed up against the door.’
‘And already dead?’ asked the Chief-Inspector.
‘Oh yes,’ said the Colonel. ‘No doubt about that at all. We did ask the Doctor to take a look at him, but he was well past saving. From what Rolfe told us, though, he’d only just been killed. Which makes sense, because of course I had heard the shot myself.’
‘I see,’ said Trubshawe thoughtfully. ‘Now, on our drive back, Mr Duckworth gave me his version of how you two made the discovery. I’d like to run it past you, Colonel, if I may, to assure myself there’s no discrepancy in your accounts.’
‘Yes, of course. Go ahead.’
‘Well, what I gathered from Mr Duckworth was that you were drawing a bath when you heard the firing of a shot.’
‘A shot followed by a scream. A scream, Chief-Inspector, that positively froze my marrow, and I’m no stranger to screams.’
‘A shot and a scream that you immediately knew could only have come from the attic. Have I got that right?’
‘Yes, I heard them both overhead. That’s how I realised they couldn’t have come from the servants’ quarters, you see, because they all sleep in adjacent rooms further along the corridor. The attic is the only room in the house located directly above our bedroom.’
‘So you instantly rushed out of your bedroom –’
‘Well, not quite instantly. I did have to slip on a few more clothes than I happened to be wearing at the time.’
‘Slipping on some extra clothes, you rushed out of your bedroom into the gallery, then up these steps we’ve just climbed and –’
‘If I may interrupt you again, Chief-Inspector?’
‘Yes, Colonel?’
‘So that we’re all in agreement about everything, I think you should know it was as I was starting to climb the steps that I collided with Don, whose bedroom happens to be the closest to them.’
‘Quite so. That chimes exactly with what Mr Duckworth told me. Then, if I understand aright, you both observed blood seeping under the doorway and decided you had to break into the room at once?’
‘You got it,’ said Don. ‘The first, I dunno, three or four times we put our shoulders to the door, it just wouldn’t budge. But, you can see for yourself, the wood’s really old and damp, some parts of it are rotten through – here, look, if you pick at it with your finger it just flakes away – so, anyway, we did eventually manage to get it open. Even then, we could only squeeze into the room by clambering over Gentry’s body.’
While Don was complementing the Colonel’s story, the Chief-Inspector bent down to study the door more closely. Now he stood up and said:
‘I note, too, that the door is locked from the inside and the key is still in the lock. Is that also how you found it?’
‘Absolutely!’ exclaimed the Colonel. ‘That’s what’s so dashed extraordinary about this business. Window barred, door locked from the inside, key still dangling in the lock! I never heard of such a thing, as the Scotchman said of the Crucifixion.’
‘And the attic was empty when you entered it?’