“We did, Garnet, but they’ve fizzled out. I’mtrying to persuade Constable Cobb here to go home and get a goodnight’s sleep, and we’ll all start fresh in the morning.”
Cobb was riffling the pile of Marc’s noteslike a deck of cards. “While you were deliverin’ the bad news, Iread through everythin’ you jotted down here, Major, an’ there’sonly one small item I’m puzzled about.”
“Only one?” Marc said.
“Way back near the beginnin’, you mentionsome reference letters from the butler’s betters back inEngland.”
“Yes,” Macaulay said, “I showed them toMarc.”
“I don’t see ‘em amongst these papers.”
Marc looked up quickly. “They’re in a drawerin my room. I glanced at them and then promptly forgot aboutthem.”
“Hard to see why they’d be important,”Macaulay said reluctantly.
“Yeah, we’re cluckin’ at straws, ain’t we?”Cobb said.
“Nevertheless,” Marc said, “we’d be remiss innot going over them line by line. I’ll go and get them.”
Three minutes later Marc returned and droppedhalf a dozen letters on the table. “Let’s start reading. You neverknow.”
They each took a letter and began.
“This fella should’ve beencannon-ized, not murdered,” Cobb muttered. “I don’t believewhat I’m readin’ here!”
“This one’s the same,” Macaulay said. “Yousee why I quit reading these after the first two or three? I justwrote Sir Godfrey and said, ‘Send the paragon to me!’”
Marc muttered his agreement with thesesentiments, but a minute later cried out loud enough to make Cobbjump.
“What is it?” Macaulay said.
“It’s a routine letter from a TheodoreMontgomery about Chilton’s stint at his estate last summer.”
“Sir Theodore? He’s a high-court judge,”Macaulay said.
“Then I guess we ought to believe what he’swritten here at the end of a lengthy paean of praise. Listen tothis: ‘Graves Chilton is the most competent, thoroughly honest andtrustworthy servant I’ve ever had the pleasure of employing. Let meknow when he’s available again. My only complaint is that everyonce in a while the light from a chandelier will bounce off hisbald pate and damn near blind you! (ha! ha!)’.”
“‘Bald pate’?” Macaulay said, as if he hadmisheard the phrase.
“That’s what it says,” Marc replied, thetruth having already dawned upon him.
“What the hell’s goin’ on here?” Cobb said.“Our corpse’s got a head full of orange hair, thicker’n a mink’scrotch!”
“What’s ‘goin’ on’,” Marc said, “is this: we’ve had a butler murdered in his office, but it wasn’t GravesChilton.”
ELEVEN
“That can’t be,” Cobb said. “We searched his roomand it was full of the butler’s belongin’s.”
Macaulay could do nothing but look from Marcto Cobb, bewildered.
“Then we’d better have a closer look,” Marcsaid to Cobb. “We’ve got to start by taking the judge’s comment atface value: the butler who spent several months in his home was abald man named Chilton.”
They went down the hall to the butler’squarters, trying not to appear as dazed as they felt. Once inside,they turned out every pair of trousers, frock coat, morning coatand shirt to scrutinize the labels. Every one of them bore somereference to a London tailor or shop. They tore apart themonogrammed luggage in search of some telltale clue stuffed in apocket or lodged in a crease: with no luck. These wereunquestionably the belongings of one Graves Chilton, even if theman who had most recently possessed them was not.
“Maybe we got the lord’s letter wrong — somehow,” Cobb suggested as he looked forlornly at the thoroughlydishevelled sitting-room.
“I think we’ve got an even more puzzlingmystery on our hands,” Macaulay said miserably.
“Perhaps not,” Marc said. He was standing inthe open doorway of the butler’s bedroom, holding a good-weatherwalking-boot in one hand. “I examined this boot this morning,looking for the maker’s stamp and hoping to find a laudanum bottleor some equally significant piece of evidence inside it. At thetime I took this object here merely to be a black stocking jammedin the toe. But, as you can see, it’s not a stocking, it’s a — ”
“Too-pate!” Cobb cried just asMacaulay gasped, “A hair-piece!”
Marc dangled the limp object between a thumband forefinger. “An expensive bit of wiggery,” he smiled, “tocamouflage a vain butler’s bald head.”
“It must have been hidden there by themurdered man when he found it in the stolen luggage,” Macaulayspeculated. “Either that or he hadn’t got around to needing theseparticular boots.”
“However it got here,” Marc said, “itcorroborates Sir Theodore’s claim. And that means — ”
“We got ourselves a poisonedim-poseur,” Cobb said, grinning.
When they got back to the library, Macaulay and Cobbwaited patiently for Marc to begin making some sense of this new,baffling development.
“Now that we are ninety-nine percent certainwe are dealing with an impostor,” Marc began, “the question arises: how did this come about? And after that: why?”
“Well, I suppose this red-headed chap couldhave stolen Graves Chilton’s belongings, including any papers andletters, way back in England, and then boarded a ship for NewYork,” Macaulay suggested.
“In order to steal the man’s position here atElmgrove?” Marc said sceptically.
“Well, now,” Cobb said, “I reckon it’s acushy enough job hereabouts, but who’d risk robbery or worse justto get a job thousands of miles away in a foreign country?”
While Macaulay may have had some objection toone or two particulars in Cobb’s statement, he had to nod hisagreement with its main point.
“Quite so,” Marc said. “I believe thatexplanation is merely a remote possibility. So, let us assume thatthe real Graves Chilton got as far as New York. We do have a letterin what is purportedly his own handwriting from that city. And I’msure a comparison of that letter with the impostor’s handwriting inthe ledger will tell us one way or the other.”
“What then?” Cobb said.
“The letter you received, Garnet, was pennedin a New York Hotel, wasn’t it? And announced his safe arrivalthere. And told of his seasickness and the likelihood of his beingdelayed, if I remember rightly?”
“It did,” Macaulay said, pulling the letteritself from the pile they had left on the table. “And he appendedhis proposed itinerary, one that would have seen him arrive inKingston from New York State and, I quote, ‘on Tuesday with a viewto my catching the stagecoach there and arriving at Elmgrove thenext day, Wednesday the 16th’.”
He handed the letter to Marc, who perused itclosely. “The writing here is quite distinctive — slanted left andelongated.”
“So he was plannin’ to get here a week agoWednesday?” Cobb said to Macaulay.
“Yes. But he didn’t actually arrive untillate on Thursday, did he? He must’ve got delayed somewhere in NewYork State.”
“Or delayed here in Upper Canada,” Marc saiddarkly. “It’s improbable that anyone would waylay a travellingEnglish butler and steal his clothing and effects in order to carryon and take up the fellow’s duties in Toronto — and do theambushing in an adjacent country. After all, Chilton was headinghere anyway. Why not wait till he got closer?”
“What are you suggesting, then?” Macaulaysaid.
“It seems logical to me that Chilton waswaylaid somewhere between here and Kingston in a move that wascarefully planned by someone who expected him along that route. Andthis someone — our murdered impostor being the most likelycandidate — wished to assume Chilton’s identity for reasons we haveyet to determine.”
“But how would the waylayer know the clotheswould fit?” Cobb asked. “The real Chilton come from England. Ourwaylayer couldn’t’ve seen him till he got here.”
“That may have been a happy coincidence,”Marc said. “All the impostor really required was the monogrammedluggage and the personal papers. He could have been prepared tosupply his own clothing.”