He came to an abrupt standstill, plunged his hand feverishly into the top pocket of the frayed and ancient tailcoat, pulled out, not a silver cigarette case, but a crumpled packet of gaspers, and fumbled one into his mouth.
His wife, ever alert, opened her handbag, extracted a box of matches, lit one and held it, in both hands for steadiness, to the up-and-down jiggling tip of the cheap cigarette.
Stolidly watching the little scene some dozen yards away, PC Williams thought enviously for a moment of the man who could light up whenever he wanted. On duty, keeping a benevolent eye – an eye, to tell the truth, a good deal more benevolent than that of the Bishop of Cirencester – on the nobility and the gentry strolling in the sunshine, no hope for him of the pleasure of tobacco for many hours to come. Especially since he was also keeping a less benevolent eye on the free seats not much further off where a small number of members of the proletariat, not top-hatted though equipped with squashy low-brimmed headwear, awaited the resumption of play.
But then, taking in how much that feverishly puffed-at cigarette must be meaning to a man with uncontrollably trembling hands and twitching facial muscles, PC Williams abruptly found envy was not at all what he was feeling.
‘I can’t even hold down a job,’ he could make out Captain Andrews’ raised voice saying. ‘Not even when I manage to get one. Having to depend on my wife going out to work. Yes, on you working, and working for a pittance. And you talk of cheering me up.’
‘Darling, I don’t mind going out to work. I’m only glad Mr Boultbee found me something to do in his office.’
‘Yes, a piece of charity. From that tight-fisted monster who’s our trustee. And what are you there? A filing clerk, a filing clerk, a filing clerk.’
‘But, darling, Mr Boultbee – and I know he does treat the family trust as if it was his private fortune, not a penny to be spent from it except under duress – does need someone to file away the documents in that office, and it should be someone who’s responsible enough to handle things which could be terribly important. So you can’t really say I’m being paid out of charity. You know you can’t.’
‘All I know is that day after day I feel terrible. I wish to God Jerry had put me out once and for all. Yes, I do.’
He gave his wife, in her sad imitation of the de rigueur extravagant hats and dresses of the strolling ladies of the Upper Ten Thousand, a look that was not far short of being one of hatred.
‘Darling,’ she said, ‘Let’s go in and sit down. Perhaps some champagne…’
When PC Williams had safely seen Captain Andrews and his long-suffering wife, closely followed by the Hon. Peter Flaxman with his lady-of-the-moment and the dandified figure of the French count, enter the isolated little pavilion-like tent, from which earlier he had been able all too clearly to hear the clink of china, the popping of corks, he did not hear again, as he had expected, the murmur of smooth conversation and occasional discreet laughter. Instead, there was an ear-piercing shriek and then voices raised in sharp questioning.
A moment later he found himself summoned with a single imperious gesture by Peter Flaxman. And, still helmeted, as he stooped to enter the tent in his turn, he saw Wilfred Boultbee, City solicitor, trustee of the estates of a dozen of the noblest and richest families in Great Britain, frigid moralist, lying slumped across the long-ago cleared lunch table, his right hand clutching a large white table-napkin. At the solicitor’s side there was standing, distraught and utterly unbishop-like for all his purple vest and immaculate dog-collar, the Right Reverend Dr Pelham Rossiter.
Williams immediately took charge. He noted names, even those of the caterers. He examined the scene, as much of it as there was to be examined, an empty round table with gilt chairs still more or less in their places, a side table on which there remained four or five bottles of champagne together with a dozen or so of wide-brimmed glasses. He ascertained that Wilfred Boultbee was indeed dead and that near the hand clutching, as he was to say later, ‘with demonic strength’ that napkin, there was a worn little tin in which there rested four flat white soda-mint lozenges. He suggested that Bishop Rossiter should sit in a chair in the corner.
‘You’ll be better off resting, your – your Grace,’ he said, thereby showing he had taken in at a glance the purple vest. ‘It must have come as a shock to you. Quite a shock.’
Then, looking at the deflated, trembling man, he decided that, if ever any evidence untainted by afterthoughts was to be obtained it had better be before the bishop was taken away to recover.
‘Sir, your reverence, my lord, could you just tell me what happened? You’d not been in the tent here for as much as a minute – I happened to notice you arriving with – that is, I happened to notice you arriving – before I heard that loud cry, anguished it was, yes, anguished.’
‘Very well, I – I’ll try.’
He managed to look up.
‘I – I – I – He took one of his lozenges, soda-mint lozenges. We’d come back for… Old Belcher for once forgot… He took one from – from that little – that tin he has. And – and – one crunch and – and he gave that terrible cry and was dead. I – I know very well when a soul has gone to the Great Father of us all. My sad task, clergyman… Often at the bedside…’
‘Thank you, your Rev- Grace, my Lord. That was most helpful.’
PC Williams consulted the big silver watch from his pocket, pulled out his notebook, wrote ponderously for a little. Then, stepping to the door of the tent, but not a foot further, he blew his whistle to call for assistance.
So it was that at noon next day Detective Inspector Thompson, shrewd-faced, grey-haired, upright, found himself standing in front of the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, summoned to give an account of his investigation of an affair all but dominating that morning’s newspapers from the stately Morning Post down.
‘I’m afraid it’s going to be a nasty business, sir,’ he said, ‘Baffling, the Daily Mail called it.’
‘I dare say it did, Inspector. But you’re a Scotland Yard officer and we are not baffled at Scotland Yard. I require you to bring the matter to a conclusion in the shortest possible time. Damn it, man, from what I understand the possible suspects inside the locked gates of Lord’s cricket ground comprise almost every member of the Upper Ten Thousand, Dukes and Earls and Cabinet Ministers among them. Unless – certainly the best possible outcome – you find your man is some disgruntled person from the free seats.’
‘Not any chance of that, sir, I’m sorry to say. The luncheon tent in which the tragedy occurred was under the eye all morning of PC Williams, from the Albany Street station, a man I once had under my command. A thoroughly reliable fellow. If anyone unauthorised entered that tent at any time Williams will have seen them. I can promise you that.’
The commissioner puffed out a huge sigh of relief.
‘Well, that would seem to eliminate the majority of the spectators,’ he said. ‘The Cabinet Ministers along with the riff-raff from the free seats.’
He sat in thought for a few moments. Then looked up, eyes bright with hope.
‘The waiters,’ he exclaimed. ‘There’ll have been two or three of them at least in that tent, and you get some pretty dubious characters among such people nowadays with so many unemployed about, a good many of them resentful and undisciplined.’
‘Looking into them was one of my first tasks, sir. And I can say with assurance that both of them – they numbered only two, as a matter of fact – have been vouched for. Elderly men, in service with the catering firm in question from before the war and too old to have been called to the colours.’