G Malliet - Death of a Cozy Writer

Albert, grabbing the constable by the lapels, nearly dragged him to the top of the cellar stairs. Porter hesitated, reluctant to go down and muck up a crime scene, and instead tried to calm Albert, who reached ever more hysterical pitches with each passing minute. Eventually wrenching himself free, Porter called for backup. A higher layer of law-and-order appeared twenty minutes later in the form of Detective Chief Inspector St. Just and Detective Sergeant Fear of the Cambridgeshire Constabulary.

“What’s all this then?” the larger detective asked as he stomped in, brushing past Paulo, precisely as if he were there to break up a pub fight. A barrel-chested man with legs like tree trunks, St. Just was the same height as his subordinate but gave the appearance of being twice the size.

Constable Porter made sure Albert was safely propped against the wall before leaving him to come forward.

“Bloke says it’s a murder. In the cellar, he says. Says it’s his brother. That’s about all I can get out of him.”

“You’ve not gone down to look?”

“I did not want to disturb a crime scene. No, Sir.”

“Let’s hope the poor bugger really is dead, then.”

The poor bugger really was dead, and he’d been dead awhile. St. Just thought it was little wonder the man who said he was his brother was in such sad shape. The body in the wine refrigerator or whatever it was called was a mess, the skull thoroughly crushed in. The face itself, however, was intact: In profile, it retained the aristocratic, pampered visage of what the coroner would undoubtedly describe as a well-nourished, middle-aged man. The corpse wore a satin dressing gown, the legs of striped pajamas visible beneath.

“Look at that, Sir,” said Fear.

St. Just looked where Fear pointed, following the trail of splattered blood, to a dark, round, spiked object, apparently thrown into the nearest corner of the enclosed cabinet, with no attempt made at concealment. What in hell was it?

“Get forensics out here.”

Fear was already punching numbers into his mobile, but finding he could get no reception through the two-foot-thick walls. He started to run back up the stairs.

“Tell Porter or whatever his name is to keep everyone out of this cellar,” St. Just called after him. “Let’s leave it to forensics. Then tell him to round up the rest of the inmates for a chat. Come on. I want a look around this palace.”

The snow, while pockmarked by sleet, lay otherwise undisturbed, except for their own prints and a set of rabbit tracks leading away from the house. St. Just thought with a sigh of his long-planned ski vacation in the Pyrenees, scheduled to begin the next day.

The pair circled the manor carefully, eventually arriving back at their departure point at the front door. The wind by this time had died down, the sun making its first reluctant appearance over the treetops.

“No one’s been out here, then,” said St. Just.

“Looks like. Perhaps whoever it was used a snow-blower to cover up the tracks.”

St. Just was never certain when his Sergeant was serious.

“Without waking the house? I think that highly unlikely.”

“Maybe the rabbit did it, then,” said Fear. “But it wasn’t someone casually wandering by.”

“It wasn’t an intruder, that’s for certain. The area had a light, steady snow and it stopped well before midnight. No one’s been on this grass, no one except the rabbit. Ah, here’s Malenfant now.”

They watched as a tall man with slicked-back dark hair approached, his face wrapped to the eyes in a gaily striped college scarf of blue and orange.

“Good morning, Dr. Malenfant,” said St. Just. “What do you have for us?”

“The victim was in fairly good health, until he died, that is. He’d recently had surgery, within the past few months. Judging by the scars: clogged arteries, poor circulation, your basic white-collar executive’s disease. Still, no reason to think he wouldn’t live forever, the poor bugger. That kind of procedure is routine these days. The weapon is interesting.”

“Yes, what is that thing?”

“It’s called a morning star. Medieval, of course. It’s like a mace but with the enhancement of the spiked ball being attached to its handle by a length of heavy chain. The weapon was apparently taken from that ghoulish display in the hall. At a guess, someone waited in one of the many little alcoves of the cellar for the victim, then jumped out at him, and whoosh . Would take no strength at all, really.”

“So, male or female…”

“Certainly, not a problem either way. You finding anything out here?”

“Rabbits,” said Fear. “Whoever did this, it looks like they came from inside the house.”

“Let’s go and see which one of our rabbits looks most wide awake,” said St. Just.

Sir Adrian looked wide awake-excited by the novelty of police in the house, if anything-when St. Just and Fear found him and his wife in the study.

St. Just thought it a handsome room, although insistently upper class in a way that rendered it not quite authentic: The real thing was often worn to the nub by centuries of use or neglect. He looked more closely now about Sir Adrian’s study and thought it all had just that bit too much a whiff of the new about it, apart from the linenfold paneling, which he imagined had been there since the year aught. That beautiful piece of workmanship was interspersed with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves weighted down by reference works of all kinds-glossaries, atlases, dictionaries-as well as brightly colored hard-bound copies of Sir Adrian’s books translated into what looked like several dozen languages.

Sir Adrian himself was resplendent in a ruby dressing gown tied with a gold cord and with a white cravat at the neck. His wife wore a velvet robe, but, unlike her husband, seemed thrown off balance by the rude awakening to the day. St. Just saw her stealing a glance in one of the room’s mirrors and surreptitiously attempting to smooth her hair.

Sir Adrian grunted his way to his desk and picked up an old-fashioned pocket watch, staring at the time as if he couldn’t believe his eyes, before turning the full force of his gaze on St. Just. Violet perched on the edge of a sofa next to the fireplace.

“I hope you’re not going to drag out this interview the way Constable Stool would do,” Sir Adrian said.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Constable Stool. My fictional detective. The plodding village bobby of Saint Edmund-Under-Stowe, my counterpoint to the razor-sharp Miss Rampling.”

“I’m afraid I’m not familiar with your books, Sir Adrian.”

Sir Adrian looked at him, displeased. What kind of idiot had the Superintendent sent out here?

“Then you are in the minority, Sir. Now, you’ll need a complete inventory of what’s missing, won’t you?”

“I wasn’t aware anything was.”

“Stands to reason. Whoever broke in here and did this, they were thieves after money and goods. Ruthven was in their way.”

“In the cellar, Sir?”

“The perfect spot to break into the house.”

“Possibly. But there’s no sign of forced entry, and no indication anyone was on the grounds last night.” Nor any earthly reason for Ruthven to be in the cellar in the middle of the night, he added to himself.

“Nonsense. You simply haven’t looked carefully enough. Do you have any idea who I am, man? This was no random crime. They’ll be back, you see if they aren’t. I shall telephone the Superintendent myself and demand that Scotland Yard be brought in.”

St. Just had somehow been expecting this; he was quite used to people demanding Scotland Yard be brought in, for every case ranging from a housebreaking to a missing cat. What struck him was that Sir Adrian seemed more upset by the invasion of his property by an interloper than by the loss of his son. St. Just had had more than his share of delivering bad news to parents, and felt he had seen every possible reaction to grief. The death of a child was the only occasion he knew likely to make grown men weep openly, unashamed. Here there were only bluster and anger-another, not uncommon, reaction. But the bulbous blue eyes were dry. Surely the violent loss of one’s son rated at least a token show of unbridled grief?