David Dickinson - Death in a Scarlet Coat

Forty minutes later Johnny and Constable Merrick were ensconced in the Powerscourt drawing room in Markham Square. Powerscourt had insisted they use his house as a base during their time in London.

‘I have no idea what I think after today, young Andrew.’ Johnny had found a bottle of Beaune hiding in a Powerscourt cupboard. ‘Tell me when you reckon it’s wide of the mark.’

Johnny took an unusually small sip, for him, and began. ‘Let’s assume the whole thing’s an alibi. The only person it can be an alibi for is Carlton Lawrence, son of old man Lawrence whose estate was sold recently. Originally it must have been for the Wednesday, the first day of their stay in London. Then it has to be put back a day. Maybe Carlton would have gone back to Boston station on the Wednesday if the date hadn’t been changed. Quite what it is or was an alibi for we don’t know. Most likely it’s the murder. But he couldn’t have murdered Lord Candlesby because he was back in London by then on the Thursday. You can look at his appearance at Boston station on the Thursday in one of two ways. Either he was very unlucky to be seen, or, and this is the more devious option, he went in order to be seen. Maybe he was hanging about the place for quite a while in order that somebody would recognize him and tell the police later.’

‘But if he wanted an alibi, sir, surely it would have been for something happening in Lincolnshire rather than in London. Otherwise why go to London at all? On the other hand why go back to Boston station if it’s in that area that you want to establish an alibi? It doesn’t make sense, sir.’

‘Why do you think Carlton Lawrence went back to Boston?’ Johnny Fitzgerald thought he could hear noises coming from the upper floors.

‘Could it have been a woman, sir? Maybe Mr Lawrence had promised to bring a mistress some enormous great jewel like a diamond?’

‘In that case why didn’t he bring the woman with him? Or make a separate trip? We don’t even know if he was married.’

‘He must have been married, sir; it was his daughter’s wedding in the photographs. Maybe we’re looking at it the wrong way round, sir.’ Constable Andrew Merrick was feeling extraordinarily grown up, conducting conversations involving mistresses and extravagant jewellery in one of Chelsea’s most fashionable squares. ‘He could have been bringing something from London to Candlesby, or he could have been bringing something from Candlesby to London, sir, some legal documents perhaps, that they had forgotten to bring with them. They might have had legal business in London about the sale of their estate.’

‘What was in the briefcase, do you think, young Andrew?’ Johnny Fitzgerald was swirling his wine round in his glass like an expert sommelier.

‘Legal documents, as I said, sir? Money? Maybe he owed some people a lot of money over the forthcoming sale of the estate.’

‘My head’s beginning to hurt,’ said Johnny, ‘and it’s not this wine.’

Screams could be heard dimly from above, followed by a lot of shouting.

‘What’s going on, sir?’ asked Andrew. ‘It sounds as if somebody is being tortured on the upper floors.’

‘Quite right,’ said Johnny. ‘Two people are being tortured. They’re five years old and they’re being put in the bath. That’s what all the fuss is about. I’m their godfather, God help them. I’d better go and say hello in a minute.’

Andrew Merrick thought of Powerscourt and Lady Lucy having children as another astonishing event, like Powerscourt having a Christian name. Surely, he had thought, such exalted beings didn’t go round having children like everyone else, even if they were twins.

‘How about this,’ said Johnny, now about a third of the way down the bottle. ‘Alibi literally means being somewhere else. Or that’s what I think it means. When would you need an alibi for the first murder in this case? As far as we know, you would need it for sometime in the small hours of the morning or even later. On the first day our man is definitely in White’s Hotel, miles away from the murder scene. On the second day, the day of the storm and the murder, he is probably back in White’s, still miles away from the murder scene. Why did they go to such trouble to establish an alibi?’

Constable Merrick had only had one tiny sip of his wine. He thought it was delicious. I’m going to turn into an alcoholic, he said to himself, just like my granny said.

‘I’m not convinced about the second day,’ said Constable Merrick. ‘Maybe Carlton has a twin, or a brother who looks like him. Maybe he was introduced into the party the second day. Remember, the person who served them all breakfast in the morning wasn’t the same person who served their dinner the night before. The staff would assume that the breakfast one was the same as the dinner one when it could be a completely different person altogether. It seems possible to me that Carlton Lawrence was just unlucky. He arranged for the substitute to take his place. He shoots off to Lincolnshire. He kills old Candlesby. Then he hides up until the party come home.’

There was a hesitant sort of knock at the door.

‘Ah, Mary Muriel – she looks after the children, Andrew – how nice to see you. Do come in. May I introduce Constable Andrew Merrick, from Lincolnshire? How are the little ones?’

Mary Muriel smiled. ‘They’re much the same,’ she said, ‘only older. I won’t come in, sir. The fact is that they are asking for you to come and tell them a story now they’re in bed. I don’t know how they found out you were here, sir, but they certainly know it now.’

‘They have their own sources of information, those twins,’ said Johnny darkly, ‘floorboards, banisters, walls.’

He found Christopher and Juliet in bed, well tucked up, but not losing the power of speech just yet.

‘Johnny!’ they shouted in unison.

‘Story! Story! Toad! Toad! Poop-poop! Poop-poop!’

For what seemed like an eternity Johnny Fitzgerald had been reading the twins The Wind in the Willows. He was now, he thought, on the third reading and the twins showed no signs of tiring. He sometimes wondered what the record was for completed readings of the entire book and hoped that the winners received autographed first editions. The arrival of The Wind in the Willows had coincided with the arrival of the Powerscourt motor car and various extracts could be heard being shouted from the back seat by the twins when they were travelling in the rear. A respectable middle-aged lady, walking quietly along the King’s Road in Chelsea, Johnny had been told, had looked most put out when pursued by yells of ‘Washerwoman! A washerwoman!’ coming from the back of a Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost. Johnny remembered there had been trouble the previous time he had read this particular passage. The twins had become overexcited. It was impossible to calm them down. Powerscourt had had to come upstairs and read them some spectacularly boring bits of the Authorized Version of the Bible with list after list of who begat whom and with no fighting at all.

The twins loved everything about The Wind in the Willows, but they especially liked the last battle between Toad and his friends, the Rat, the Mole and the Badger, and the forces of darkness, the stoats and the weasels and the ferrets who had taken over Toad’s ancestral home, Toad Hall. Johnny, on his last reading, had left it at the point where the Toad party, led by Badger, has advanced into the Hall by means of a secret tunnel.

‘Settle down, settle down,’ said Johnny, suddenly realizing that he might possess a secret weapon in the calming-down department one floor below in the drawing room. He sat on the corner of Christopher’s bed and eyed them gravely.