Ти Кинси - Christmas at The Grange - A Lady Hardcastle Mystery (Kindle Single)

The hall erupted. Everyone began clamouring at once, and the small group surged towards the inspector with waving hands and wagging fingers. I was braced to defend us if things got rough but it wasn’t needed. Amid the cries of ‘now look here’, ‘wait just a moment’ and ‘you’ve got it all wrong’ was the sound of laughter. Lady Hardcastle was giggling, fit to burst.

‘All right, all right,’ she eventually managed to say. ‘Settle down. Calm down.’

The hubbub subsided.

‘You really are the most frightful bunch of ninnies,’ she said. ‘And I’m very disappointed in you. Disappointed most of all that you thought you could pull the wool over our eyes with this shabby load of old guff. I thought we were pals.’

‘I told you it wouldn’t fool her,’ said Sir Hector from the back of the crowd. ‘Too damn clever by three-quarters, our Emily.’

‘Quite right,’ said Lady Farley-Stroud. ‘I think it’s about time for tea in the drawing room, don’t you?’

Lady Hardcastle nodded her agreement.

‘Inspector?’ said Lady Farley-Stroud. ‘I take it “Julius” isn’t really under arrest?’

‘No, my lady,’ said the inspector. ‘Can’t arrest a man who doesn’t exist.’

‘Jolly good,’ she said. ‘You’ll join us for tea and cake, of course. I’m sure you’ll want to hear Emily taking us down a peg. Or three.’

‘That would be most agreeable, my lady,’ he said. ‘Thank you.’

* * *

The household servants reluctantly retreated downstairs while the rest of us trooped into the drawing room. The table by the wall was already set for tea and people began helping themselves while they waited to hear what Lady Hardcastle had to say.

Eventually everyone was settled and Lady Hardcastle clinked the side of her cup with her teaspoon.

‘I suppose I ought to thank you all first,’ she began. ‘For going to so much trouble to provide us with our own private Christmas entertainment.’

There was a little ripple of applause at this.

‘Now, ordinarily, I’m expected at this point to lay out the clues one by one and explain how I tied them together to find the answer. But in this case, I’m afraid – for reasons that you all know – it has to be a two-part explanation. So let’s start with the “crime”. Footprints on the flowerbed, on the wall and on the windowsill indicated that someone had entered Hattie’s room in the night and made off with her necklace. A thread from an expensive cloth and the details of one of the footprints indicated that it must be someone from above stairs. The cloth was blue so in the end that didn’t help much. It was a nice touch making sure that everyone was wearing a blue suit last night, by the way. Well done on that one. We knew it was neither of the older gentlemen – no offence, Hector and Baden, but we couldn’t imagine you shinning up drainpipes. We eliminated you, Edward, when Armstrong managed to examine the edge of the sole of your shoe.’

‘Oh,’ said Sir Edward, ‘so that’s what the trip was all about. You’re dashed clever, the both of you. Never occurred to me for a moment that I was being sleuthed while Miss Armstrong was lying prostrate on the floor.’

‘I have my moments, sir,’ I said.

‘She does. She’s an absolute marvel,’ said Lady Hardcastle. ‘But that left us only with jovial Julius. In case we were in any doubt, the cigar ash on the carpet sealed his fate. Julius was the only one of you smoking cigars. So I sent Armstrong up to his room and, lo and behold, there was the pearl pendant, plain as . . . as . . . Help me out, dear. I want a plain thing beginning with “p”.’

‘I know you do, my lady,’ I said. ‘But it’s much funnier to watch you flounder.’

‘Hmm,’ she said. ‘It was in plain view, anyway. So it was confirmed that Julius Goodheart had stolen the jewellery, and we invited our good friend Inspector Sunderland to make the arrest.’

‘But how did you . . . ?’ began Hattie Beaufort.

‘I’m coming to that, dear,’ said Lady Hardcastle. ‘That much is what we were supposed to see, and the puzzle we were expected to solve, but it didn’t quite ring true. The first thing to trouble us was the abundance of clues. Footprints, threads, cigar ash. It was almost as if someone had sat down and wondered what evidence a burglar might leave behind. In one way it was far too thorough. In another, though, it was far from thorough enough.’

‘What did we forget, then?’ said Sir Hector. ‘I was quite proud of all that.’

‘You only showed us how the burglar got in,’ said Lady Hardcastle. ‘But how did he get out? I checked the flowerbed quite thoroughly and the only footprints led towards the house. How did he get away without leaving a fresh set of prints? If we were to assume that even a guest at the house would burgle a room through the window, rather than slipping in through the door when no one was looking, then we had to assume he wouldn’t use the door to leave.’

‘I told you,’ said Hector’s sister. ‘I mentioned it quite early on, but no one listened. No one ever listens to me.’

‘The ash was a step too far, too,’ said Lady Hardcastle. ‘What sort of burglar would sneak into a room smoking a cigar? And of course there was Gertie’s passionate plea that we were not to involve the police. The “scandal” story never quite rang true, but if there was never an actual burglary and nothing was missing, then of course the police mustn’t be troubled. It had to be a put-up job.’

‘That’s all very well,’ said Sir Edward. ‘And I have to applaud you for not only solving the “crime” but also for seeing through our little ruse, but I’d be willing to bet you don’t know who Julius really is.’

‘He’s Cornelius Beaufort,’ said Lady Hardcastle. ‘I thought that was obvious.’

‘Well, dash it all,’ said the man we’d been calling Julius Goodheart. ‘I thought I’d played that one to perfection. How the dickens . . . ?’

‘You were magnificent, dear,’ she said. ‘And as far as we noticed, you only slipped up twice. Or perhaps three times. Once was last night just before the show in the ballroom. We were queueing to get out of the library and you went out before Hattie. Julius was a lively cove, but he had always been a gentleman. He would have let Hattie go before him. Between husband and wife, though, all bets are off. Things get a little less formal and they tend not to bother about that sort of thing. It was always first come, first served with Roddy and me when it came to doorways.’

‘You oaf,’ said Sir Edward, punching his cousin in the shoulder. ‘Schoolboy error.’

‘Armstrong noticed the other inconsistency. Prudence Beaufort is absolutely the sweetest tempered little thing, but she howls like a banshee whenever a stranger touches her. Flo saw you holding her in the ballroom during the bean-feast yesterday, and she was as calm and placid as anything. Neither of those things would stand up in court, you understand, but for our purposes they did rather point to you being Cornelius rather than Julius. The third possibly wasn’t your fault, but that of your co-conspirators. When Armstrong went to search your room for the missing pendant she found the room, as we had predicted, to be bare and unoccupied. There was an old sponge bag by the washstand, and the pair of incriminating shoes on the floor, but none of the little things that would indicate that someone had been staying there for a few nights. Clearly “Julius Goodheart” was sleeping somewhere else. Blame the set designers for that one, dear.’

‘I told you she was a clever old stick,’ said Sir Hector. ‘But we gave it our best shot.’

‘You did,’ said Lady Hardcastle with a smile. ‘But I don’t think the world has much to fear from your criminal endeavours.’