The Sword in the Stone-Dead, page 16
part #1 of Great Vicari Mystery Series
“I—I did, yes. Only for a few minutes. It was a nice night.”
“And then you were seen to pass through the wicket gate in the hedge onto the bridleway.”
“Seen? Who says I did that? They’re...”
“I myself saw you, Miss Fulbright, from the terrace,” Vickery said.
“Well, yes, then I must have passed through the gate. I had quite forgotten. I walked along the path a little way—”
“When you passed through the gate, did you turn left and walk towards the village, or did you turn right and follow the path around the front of the house towards the main road?”
“I—I walked towards the village,” she said.
“Did you meet with anyone, Miss Fulbright,” Vickery asked.
“Of course not! Who would I be meeting in the village?” She made the idea sound preposterous.
“I meant only, did you encounter anyone who would be able to confirm to the police that they had seen you walking in that direction. It would help in establishing your whereabouts at the time of the murder.”
“Oh. No, I passed no one on the path, I’m afraid.”
“And no one saw you return to the keep?”
“I saw no one, but whether they saw me, well, you’d have to ask them, wouldn’t you?” She stared at Vickery, determined not to be caught out again.
“Quite so. I myself did not see you return this morning,” he said.
“Last night, you mean,” Veronica Fulbright corrected him.
“Yes, I must do, mustn’t I? Thank you for your assistance, Miss Fulbright. I am sure that there is nothing to be concerned about, if you tell the Inspector the truth, as you have told it to me.”
“Thank you, Mr. Vickery.”
“You should have Sir Geoffrey’s man have a go at those,” Vickery said, pointing to the dried mud on her brogues.
“Yes, I will. I forgot to put them out for him last night.”
“Easily missed,” Vickery said. “One last question, if you would indulge me further? On the night the crossbow was fired at your brother, were you taking a stroll into the village then too?”
“I—er—think I probably was, yes. I don’t really know my way about the countryside here, so I have taken the same path for my strolls.”
“Thank you, Miss Fulbright,” Vickery said.
Chapter 16
Dickie Bannister was sitting on the bench under the apple tree, clouds of smoke swirling around his head. He was wearing a green tweed jacket, plus-fours and a red wool waistcoat.
“Go on, say it,” Bannister said, as Vickery approached.
“Say what?”
“I look like a bloody gnome sitting here smoking this thing.” He waved his pipe.
“I was thinking Father Christmas,” Vickery said. “May I?” He took a seat next to Bannister.
“I almost cut off the beard, blasted thing only collects bits of food. But Margot is convinced the picture will go ahead without Eleanor Trenton.”
“It was going to go ahead without her anyway. Leo finally took your advice and gave Guinevere to his wife. It was decided before—before last night.”
Bannister nodded. “It’s the right choice. What on earth was he thinking, casting that girl?”
“They say there’s no fool like an old fool.” Vickery wafted smoke away from his face.
“Is the pipe bothering you?”
“It smells like burning hair.”
“Does it? No, that’s the blasted beard!” Bannister batted his chest, smothering the glowing strands of hair. He knocked out his pipe on the heel of his shoe and scuffed the ash into the dirt. “I feel a bit guilty if I’m honest.”
“Why?” Vickery asked.
“Well, I never had a good thing to say about the poor girl. About the way she looked. How she moved. Her voice. It wasn’t her fault she wasn’t Margot McCrae.”
“She was no match for her, that’s true. But you have to admire the way she stood up to Margot. How many times have you seen that?”
“I’ve seen grown men wilt under Margot’s glare,” Bannister said. “If she’d had a few more years—chance to toughen up a bit, so she could take the knocks—who knows? She just wasn’t ready yet. She didn’t belong here.”
“Do you think that’s why she was killed?” Vickery asked.
“Because she was in the wrong place? Or because she wasn’t ready yet? It amounts to the same thing in the end, I suppose. She was in someone’s way, they decided to get rid of her. That makes for a short list of suspects, doesn’t it?”
“Well, I wouldn’t—”
“You know who was missing last night when the clock struck midnight: Leo Fulbright and Margot McCrae.”
“And Artie Delancey,” Vickery said.
“Artie? What would he gain by killing her?”
“Didn’t he believe he was Eleanor Trenton’s understudy?”
Bannister laughed at this, and the laugh turned into a coughing fit. His cheeks were purplish and his eyes were streaming by the time he managed to catch his breath again. He kept shaking his head.
“It’s not that Artie wouldn’t pass, god bless him,” Bannister wheezed. “But I don’t think the world of motion pictures is yet ready for a male leading lady, do you?”
“What I believe is less important than what Artie himself believes,” Vickery said.
“Artie’s not naïve, he wouldn’t have survived in this game if he was. He’s a dreamer, but he doesn’t have any illusions. If he gets to ride a horse in that Guinevere frock, even if no one sees his face, that’s the best he can hope for, and he knows that. He’ll tell you that himself.”
“I wish he would. But I can’t seem to get near him: every time he sees me, he disappears. I can’t help but wonder if he has something to hide.”
“He’s just looking out for himself. He has to,” Bannister said.
“Do you know where he went last night?”
“He’s a grown man, I’m not his mother. I think he was still upset because he’d had a falling out with Teddy. He probably just needed some time on his own. He wasn’t to know he was going to need an alibi, was he?”
“If you speak to him, will you tell him that I’d like—”
“He’ll come and find you when he’s ready, I’m sure of it. Artie’s a good lad, he didn’t murder Eleanor Trenton.”
“You don’t think so?”
“No,” Bannister said. “I know who my money’s on.”
* * *
“How’s the sleuthing going?” Margot asked.
“Badly,” said Vickery. “Too few suspects.”
“Why is that bad? I thought the idea was to narrow down the field until you identify your man. Or woman.”
“The field has been narrowed down to you, Leo, and Artie Delancey,” Vickery said.
Margot seemed unfazed by this. “I don’t really see Artie as a murderer, do you?” She asked.
“I don’t see Artie at all, he’s avoiding me. It’s all most suspicious.”
“Aren’t suspects supposed to act suspiciously?”
“This isn’t a game, Margot, there’s a young woman lying dead under a sheet down there.”
“Artie didn’t kill her,” Margot said. “If he’s acting suspiciously, it’s because he knows something about what happened last night. He’s probably struggling to decide whether he should tell you or not, but he’ll get there, and then he’ll come and tell you.”
“If Artie is innocent, then the murderer is—”
“Either Leo or me, you said. If Eleanor was killed in the heat of the moment after a violent argument, then Leo is your man. If her murder was the result of a coldly calculated plot, then I’m your woman. Otherwise there’s something wrong with your selection criteria, and you need to re-audition your cast of suspects, cast your net wider.”
“How am I to do that?” Vickery asked.
“I have no idea. I saw one of that Rinehart woman’s plays once, couldn’t make head nor tail of it. If I remember correctly, the butler did it.”
“You are the second person to mention the butler.”
“There you are then, he must be guilty. Or innocent. Sometimes the trick is to make the obvious suspect guilty. Or is it the other way round?”
“Now you are just trying to confuse me.”
“Isn’t that what I would do if I was guilty?”
“Unless you were trying to protect someone else,” Vickery said.
“Do you really think I would risk my own neck to save Leo’s?”
“I think you might.”
“So does Leo. You men are terrible romantics.” Margot got up to go. “Oh, and if you want Artie to answer your questions, send your man Malloy after him.”
“He’s not mine.”
“So you would have everyone believe, Benjamin.” She exited.
“Infuriating woman!”
“I heard that!” Came floating back through the open door.
* * *
“I warned her not to defy my brother,” Veronica Fulbright said. “I told her to escape while she still could. She didn’t listen to me.”
“Is that what you were talking about last night?” Vickery asked. “It seemed like a very heated conversation.”
“She said she was going to confront Leo, tell him to stop trying to control her life. She should have listened to me.”
“Then you didn’t threaten her?”
“No! She threatened me,” Veronica said, in her own defence, then realised she had said more than she intended. Vickery raised an eyebrow, and she felt that she had to continue. “Well, it wasn’t a threat, exactly. She just warned me not to interfere in her life. Or she might feel compelled to interfere in mine.”
“Did she say how she might do that?” Vickery asked.
“She saw me with—a friend. Leo doesn’t like me to have friends, he doesn’t approve. Eleanor saw me on the train with someone, just talking.”
“A gentleman friend?”
Veronica blushed. “Please don’t tell my brother.”
“I won’t. And you must not blame yourself, you were not responsible in any way for Eleanor Trenton’s death.”
“But if my brother killed her—”
“If,” Vickery emphasised. “There is some indication that he may have done, but I am far from being able to say that I know the identity of the murderer. There are still many questions I must ask. Do you understand that?”
Veronica nodded, but looked far from convinced.
* * *
“I am sorry to intrude on your grief, Sir Geoffrey,” Vickery said.
Sir Geoffrey was sitting alone in his library, the desk in front of him completely bare. Now that the Inspector had finished with the room, he was trying to make it his own again. He waved Vickery into a chair opposite him.
“Please, don’t feel you must apologise, Vickery. I appreciate the work that you’re doing here. I shall be most relieved if you can bring this matter to a discrete conclusion.”
“How is Eleanor’s brother taking the death of his sister?” Vickery asked.
“Poor Timothy is inconsolable,” Sir Geoffrey said.
Vickery knew this to be far from the truth: The boy had already made a couple of attempts to get into the room to see his sister’s body, and had tried to press the doctor to provide him with all of the grim details of her murder.
“He’s just a child, it won’t have sunk in yet,” Sir Geoffrey said, as if reading Vickery’s thoughts. This acted as a timely reminder not to underestimate him. “It will hit him hard when it does.”
“There are questions that I must ask everyone,” Vickery said.
Sir Geoffrey nodded and indicated that he should proceed. “You want to know where I was at midnight last night. I’ve already told the Inspector: I was watching that Kimball fellow taking the mickey out of Fulbright, he’d got him down to a tee. You know, of course, that there’s no love lost between Fulbright and myself. Kimball was very cruel. But it was massive fun.” He chuckled, but then must have realised that while he had been laughing, his niece was being murdered outside. “I wish I had been more aware,” he said. “That Eleanor wasn’t there. I might have gone to seek her out. I am normally much more attentive, but I thought she was safe here. In my house. With her friends.”
“Do you remember when you saw her last?” Vickery asked.
“I remember us all being at the dinner table. There were no empty chairs.”
“Timothy was there also?”
“Oh, yes, he was there up until dessert. Then Crawley took him off to bed, before the grown-ups got out the brandy and cigars. That must have been after nine. I’m sure you remember better than I.”
“We moved from the dining room into the drawing room around nine-thirty,” Vickery affirmed. “I went out onto the terrace for some air. I don’t smoke these days. Don’t like to be around the smell of the smoke.”
“Bad lungs?” Sir Geoffrey asked.
“Bad memories,” Vickery said. “Do you remember who was speaking to whom in the drawing room?”
“Let’s see—there were a few people I don’t really know. I sat down with that character actor fellow for a while.”
“Dickie Bannister.”
“That’s the chap. What a card! Terrible old gossip, swears like a sailor, absolute hoot! Tears in my eyes, never laughed so much. And if even half of what he said is true—scandalous! You theatricals are a rum lot, Vickery.”
“I’m an ex-theatrical,” Vickery reminded him.
“And yet, here you are,” Sir Geoffrey said.
“As are you.”
“I’m not going to pretend I wasn’t enjoying myself: Fulbright hooked me and reeled me in with all his talk of a British motion picture industry, and spending time with actors has been the tops!”
“You may find it palls with time.”
“I dare say. I’m only doing it for Eleanor, of course.” He looked away, caught out again by his recent change of circumstances. “Well, I suppose that’s all over now, isn’t it?”
“Do you recall when Eleanor left the drawing room last night? Whether she left with anyone?” Vickery asked.
“I’m sorry, no. People were in and out, it was a pleasant evening, and a few people stepped out for a while, like you. I think Linnie Fulbright and her young man slipped off for a moonlight stroll, down by the lake. I do remember Eleanor having quite a heated discussion with Fulbright’s sister. But I don’t think it amounted to much. Veronica seemed a bit upset by it, she slipped out and headed down the servants’ stairs to the kitchen, probably in search of left-over dessert. Did you try the syllabub? Splendid stuff.”
“Just before midnight, when Kimball was standing on the stairs performing, do you recall who was watching?”
“I know Fulbright wasn’t. I don’t think Kimball would have been so bold if he had actually been there. Linette and her young man were there, I remember him laughing out loud, and her trying not to laugh. Your man Malloy was there.”
“He is not mine.”
“My mistake. Veronica Fulbright was there for the start of it: she looked shocked rather than amused. I think she was afraid her brother would come back in and catch us all laughing at him.”
“Back in?”
“Eh?”
“You said she was afraid Fulbright might come back in, not back down. Had he gone out? I thought he had gone upstairs.”
“Oh, he might have done. I could have sworn he went out into the courtyard, but I might be mistaken? Is it important?”
“I don’t know yet. I’m just trying to get an idea of who was where during the course of the evening.”
“Ah, yes, checking alibis and such. I read one of those mysteries, The House at Red Corner or whatever it was. Not really my cup of tea. Much preferred his Christopher Robin.”
“You were telling me who was in the hallway at midnight,” Vickery said.
“Was I? Oh, watching young Kimball, splendid fellow. Yes, well, I know Timothy saw it: he was hiding at the top of the stairs, thought we couldn’t see him, the little scamp!”
“Was he fully dressed?”
“Pyjamas and dressing gown, why?”
“Merely curious, since he was supposed to have gone to bed some time previously.”
“You know how boys are. Doesn’t hurt to indulge them once in a while.”
“What about Artie Delancey?”
“Now that I don’t think should be indulged. Don’t really want Timothy mixing with that sort. No offence intended.”
“I meant, was Mr. Delancey present in the hallway watching Mr. Kimball’s little show?”
“Oh, sorry. Not sure. Didn’t see him there.”
“And Margot Fulbright?”
“She was there. For a little while, at any rate. She went back into the drawing room with an odd sort of smile on her lips. Not sure what that was about.”
“Thank you, Sir Geoffrey, you’ve been most helpful.”
“I hope you catch him, Vickery. Whoever did this terrible thing to my niece.”
“It will be for the police to arrest the murderer,” Vickery said. “I am merely gathering information while people’s memories are fresh.”
“And let me say, you are doing a splendid job, very thorough. Look, why don’t I shove off, and you can use the library, question people here in peace?”
“That’s very kind, but—”
“Don’t usually let people loose in here, you know what people are like with books, using them to prop up wonky bed legs or belting spiders with them...”
“I thought people usually stole them to read,” Vickery said.
“Read?” Sir Geoffrey said. “Well, if they want to do that, they can take what they like. My father bought most of these as a job lot in a house sale. I’ll let you get on.”
Chapter 17
“Mr. Garvin, may I have a word?” Vickery asked. Garvin moved towards the open library door, Linette close behind.
“Alone, if you wouldn’t mind,” Vickery said.
