‘Yes, yes, I realise the man is lying dead at our feet, but there were times I had half a mind to horsewhip him out of the house and frogmarch him down the front drive! And, when you think of it, if I’d had a whole mind to do it, the young whipper-snapper would be alive today!’
‘Why, then, didn’t you?’ asked Trubshawe quietly.
‘Why didn’t I what?’
‘Horsewhip him? Frogmarch him?’
‘In a word, Selina. As I said, it was she who invited him down and she did seem to have a pash on the fellow. Don’t ask me why. Selina’s always been something of a handful, and more so of late, but she’s our only child and Mary and I dote on her. So I decided I’d just have to grin and bear it – try to grin and try to bear it. Bite the bullet instead of firing it, ha ha ha!
‘That, incidentally, Chief-Inspector, in case you hadn’t understood, was my way of telling you that, sorely tempted as I often have been these past twenty-four hours, I did not kill Raymond Gentry.’
On this declaration of innocence his interlocutor, whose crafty old eyes were already taking in the dingily sinister little room, made no comment.
‘I don’t suppose,’ he said instead, ‘there’s any point in my asking you if there was a murder weapon left lying about?’
‘Nothing either of us could see, no.’
Trubshawe stepped over to the table, pulled at its two drawers at once – he had to give one of them a violent jerk before it would consent to slide scratchily open – and found both to be empty.
‘Queer …’ he murmured.
‘What is?’
‘Oh, just that if the murderer had wanted the thing to look like a suicide, then all he had to do was leave his revolver in Gentry’s hand – and given the infernal trouble he must have gone to over the locked door, barred window and all, that surely would have been an obvious ploy to distract us from the true nature of the crime. By removing the gun, he – or, of course, she – has actually succeeded in drawing our attention to the fact that it was murder.’
He crossed to the window and ran a finger aslant its scabby wooden frame. Then, with that powerful grip of his, he endeavoured to prise apart its two iron bars. Neither so much as wobbled.
Rubbing his now dust-covered palms together, he turned to the Colonel again.
‘Servants above suspicion, are they?’
‘Good heavens, yes. They’ve all been with us for years – or, in the case of the maids, months, which is about as much as you’ve any right to expect these days.’
He reflected a moment.
‘There is Tomelty, of course.’
‘Tomelty?’
‘He’s my chauffeur-cum-gardener-cum-general-thingumabob. Irish. Bit too Irish for my liking. Fancies himself as a real devil, Tomelty does. But, to be honest, if he is a danger, it’s only to the village girls. Mary and I suspect he’s already responsible for having popped a bun or two into some local ovens, but no one was able to prove anything – all the mums kept mum, so to say – and I’m not the type of employer who’ll sack a man on the basis of rumour and tittle-tattle. Especially as, for all his occasional Irish insolence, he’s d**ned good at his job. He’s certainly no murderer.’
‘And Farrar?’ Trubshawe then asked him. ‘Do forgive my bluntness, Mr Farrar, but it’s a question that’s eventually got to be put to your employer and I might as well put it now.’
The Colonel vehemently shook his head.
‘Nothing there for you to worry about. Farrar’s been with me – how long has it been? Three years? Four?’
‘Four, sir.’
‘Yes, four years managing the estate and never so much as a shadow of impropriety. In any event, Trubshawe, this whole line of questioning, if you don’t mind my saying so, is absurd. Not one of my employees could have had any motive for murdering Raymond Gentry, a man they barely met, let alone knew.’
‘Am I to assume, then,’ said the policeman, ‘you share Miss Mount’s view that the murderer must be a member of the house-party?’
‘Oh, and who told you I ever said such a thing?’ Evadne Mount brusquely asked.
‘Why, I think it must have been Mr Duckworth here. Yes, that’s who it was. He told me as Dr Rolfe was driving us back to the house.’
Don’s face creased with embarrassment.
‘It’s true,’ he said to the novelist. ‘I did tell the Chief-Inspector everything I’d heard said in the drawing-room. I thought he oughta know.’
‘Young man, you have nothing to apologise for,’ she replied in a kindly tone. ‘I just like to keep tabs on who said what and to whom.’
Whereupon, tightening her robe about her with a shiver, she wandered off into the room and started cursorily to inspect its few wretched items of furniture.
For a moment or two Trubshawe observed her out of the corner of his eye before asking the Coloneclass="underline"
‘Did you by any chance take a look’ – he pointed down at the body of Raymond Gentry – ‘inside the pockets of his robe?’
‘Certainly not. I already told you, Chief-Inspector, we touched nothing.’
Without further ado, Trubshawe bent down and inserted his hand first into the left, then the right pocket of Gentry’s blood-stained bathrobe.
From the left pocket he came up empty-handed. But, from the right, he pulled out a single sheet of crumpled paper. He bent back up and, without addressing a word to anybody, impassively unfolded it.
On one side of the paper four or five lines, mostly just strings of capital letters, had been typed out. These, he took a few seconds to peruse.
‘Nothing relevant to the case, I assume?’ said the Colonel, trying in vain to squint at the text.
‘On the contrary,’ said Trubshawe. ‘Something extremely relevant to the case. A major discovery, if I’m not mistaken.’
He folded the sheet up and slipped it into his own jacket pocket.
‘Tell me, Colonel, did all your guests share your distaste for Gentry?’
‘None of them could stand the horrible little tick. Why do you ask?’
‘Oh, I have my reasons,’ the Chief-Inspector replied noncommittally.
‘You know, Trubshawe …’
Once more it was Evadne Mount who had cut in.
‘Yes?’
‘Major discoveries are all very well,’ she cavalierly remarked, ‘but sometimes they turn out to be of less significance than minor oddities.’
‘Minor oddities?’
Drawing the tip of her index finger along one of the attic’s floorboards, she held it up for his inspection.
‘Why,’ he said, peering at her fingertip, ‘I see nothing there.’
‘That,’ she said, ‘is the minor oddity.’
Chapter Three
Downstairs in the drawing-room the ffolkeses’ house-guests were looking more dishevelled than ever. Stale cigarette smoke hung in the air, two of the womenfolk, Mary ffolkes and Cynthia Wattis, the Vicar’s wife, had nodded off, faded fashion magazines lying half-browsed on their laps, and even Chitty, who prided himself that his employers had never once had occasion to see him other than unbowed and upright, was starting to flag.
When the Colonel entered, however, followed by the rest of the small investigative party, they all wearily roused themselves, the women adjusting their hair, the men re-knotting the cords of their dressing-gowns, and waited expectantly to hear what the man from Scotland Yard had to say.
It was, however, Roger ffolkes who spoke first. Turning to the Chief-Inspector, he asked:
‘Perhaps now you’d like me to introduce my guests?’
‘Certainly,’ said Trubshawe. ‘Be my guest. Or rather, be my host, what?’
‘Ha, very neat, yes,’ said the Colonel with a half-hearted smile. ‘Oh, and I trust you’ll excuse our varying states of undress. We’ve all been caught a bit off-guard, you know.’