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

The suite of rooms occupied by Hattie Beaufort and her children was in this Victorian part of the house and was provided with all modern conveniences. Sir Hector had installed an electricity generator in one of the old outhouses – the Elizabethan piggery, so one of the servants had told me. It was the Victorian wing of the house that most benefited from this wonderful modern invention, and here electric lights lit the passages and the rooms at the merest flick of a switch.

Lady Farley-Stroud was leading the way. She arrived at a door near the end of a passage and opened it without knocking. We followed her inside and found a decently appointed bedroom. The bed looked comfy and cosy, though the covers, in common with the furniture and decoration throughout the house, had clearly seen better days. A fire burned cheerfully in the tiled grate. There was a washstand with a porcelain bowl and jug, a scuffed wardrobe, and a small writing desk with a chair that didn’t match. A jewellery case sat on the bedside table, open and empty.

‘That’s where the necklace was kept?’ asked Lady Hardcastle, pointing to the case.

‘Yes, dear,’ said Lady Farley-Stroud.

‘And this is the window that the thief used?’

‘We believe so, yes.’

Lady Hardcastle examined the window frame. ‘It’s locked,’ she said.

‘Yes, dear,’ said Lady Farley-Stroud. ‘But it wasn’t last night. We snibbed it this morning in case the burglar returned.’

Lady Hardcastle unfastened the lock and lifted the lower sash. She stuck her head out and looked down towards the ground.

‘It’s quite a drop,’ she said as she pulled her head back inside. ‘But the drainpipe looks sturdy enough, and all that decorative brickwork would provide plenty of footholds. What do you think, Flo?’

I crossed the room and leaned out through the open window. The cast-iron drainpipe that ran down from the gutter on the pitched roof above us was very solidly attached to the wall. The wall itself wasn’t uniformly flat. At regular intervals, individual bricks – or sometimes whole courses – were set proud of the surface to give the wall a visual texture that made it look rather striking from the outside.

‘I’m not much of a climber, my lady,’ I said. ‘But I reckon even I could shin up here without any great difficulty.’

‘I agree,’ she said. ‘We need to take a look at that flowerbed down below. The quickest route up here would be across that rose border, onto the water butt and straight up the drainpipe. You never know – they might have left a footprint in the soil. They always do in the detective stories.’

I’d pulled my head back inside by this point and was reaching up to close the sash window when something caught my eye.

‘Hello,’ I said. ‘What’s this?’

I reached down into the window frame and plucked a short length of thread from the protruding head of a nail. I examined it quickly before passing it to Lady Hardcastle.

‘It’s wool,’ I said. ‘A rather fine worsted. Dark blue.’

‘You know your fabrics,’ said Lady Farley-Stroud with a smile.

‘When you spend your working days up to your elbows in carelessly torn clothes in need of repair,’ I said with a pointed glance at Lady Hardcastle, ‘you quickly become familiar with all manner of tailoring styles. And cloths.’

‘She’s a worker of miracles when it comes to dressmaking and tailoring,’ said Lady Hardcastle.

‘I’m not all throwing-knives and kidney punches, it’s true,’ I said, ‘but miracle worker might be a bit of an exaggeration.’

‘Nonetheless,’ she said, ‘I’d have been hard-pressed to identify a thread like this.’

‘It’s not the sort of thing your average fly-by-night cracksman would wear,’ I said. ‘That was pulled from a gentleman’s suit.’

‘Gracious!’ said Lady Farley-Stroud. ‘You can’t mean it. A gentleman wouldn’t steal into a lady’s bedroom in dead of night and take her jewellery. There must be another explanation.’

Lady Hardcastle was beside me now, examining the window frame.

‘Whoever it was,’ she said, ‘and however he came by his expensive suit, the thread was most likely tugged from the knee of his trousers as he knelt here on his way in. And if I’m right, there should be . . .’ She pointed triumphantly to a mark on the inner sill. ‘A footprint where he brought his other leg in and stepped on the sill.

Sure enough, there was a faint impression in the dust on the white-painted window sill.

‘I say, Gertie,’ she said. ‘If we’re going to do this properly – like they do in the stories – I don’t suppose you have a glass I could use?’

‘A looking glass, dear? Whatever for?’

Lady Hardcastle laughed. ‘No,’ she said. ‘A magnifying lens.’

‘Of course, m’dear, of course. Don’t know what I was thinking. Hector has one in his study. Refuses to admit he needs spectacles for reading but he has a lens the size of a tea plate to help him with the newspaper. I’ll get it for you.’

She crossed to the bed and tugged the bell cord.

While we waited for Dora, the housemaid, to answer the bell and then make the round trip to the study in search of the magnifying lens, we carefully examined the rest of the room. It didn’t seem as though anything had been disturbed, although I’m not sure how we would have known that something in an unfamiliar room was out of place. I did, however, spot a little ash on the floorboards near the window. Careful examination revealed a little more at the edge of the carpet.

‘Does Mrs Beaufort smoke cigars?’ I asked.

‘Does she what?’ asked Lady Farley-Stroud.

I pointed to the ash. ‘Cigars, my lady,’ I said. ‘Would Mrs Beaufort have left that ash?’

Both of them peered at the indicated spot.

‘You’re quite the bloodhound this morning, Flo,’ said Lady Hardcastle.

‘Remarkable,’ said Lady Farley-Stroud. ‘No, dear, not to my knowledge. Although one never knows what young ladies are getting up to these days. They’re going out to work, demanding the vote . . . D’you know I saw a woman wearing trousers in Gloucester a little while ago? Trousers! I wouldn’t be shocked to find out that Hattie smokes cigars, but she keeps it a secret if she does.’

By this time Dora had returned with the magnifying lens. Lady Farley-Stroud had exaggerated its size, but it was still a substantial instrument. Lady Hardcastle gripped it by its silver-bound horn handle and studied the foot mark.

‘One doesn’t like to draw attention to the state of another lady’s housekeeping, dear,’ she said, ‘but it’s actually rather a good job your maids don’t dust too thoroughly.’

‘It’s that Dora,’ said Lady Farley-Stroud, wearily. ‘She’s lazy and rude, but we never seem to quite get round to giving her the sack. But she’s done us a service this time, you say?’

‘She has indeed,’ said Lady Hardcastle. ‘Look here. You see where the chap’s damp boot sole has stepped onto the windowsill? He’s left a remarkably complete print in the dust.’

Sure enough, when viewed through the magnifying lens, we could make out almost all the details of the man’s left shoe.

‘It’s a dress shoe rather than a boot,’ I said. ‘Probably an Oxford. Or do you call them Balmorals here? Either way, it would confirm the hypothesis that it was a gentleman’s suit.’

Lady Farley-Stroud looked a little puzzled.

‘It’s smooth, for a start, where a boot might have nails to provide grip on loose surfaces. And see how the sole is narrow and comes to a rounded point?’ I said. ‘It’s not an uncommon shape, but it’s too delicate for a boot. And there – you can see where the sole is cut in to accommodate the stitching of the welt. The sole of a workman’s boot might more usually be nailed on.’