C S Lewis and the Country House Murders (C S Lewis Mysteries Book 2) (14 page)

‘This,’ I said proudly, ‘is a Shakespeare quarto. This edition of
Romeo and Juliet
is, I have now established, from the very first printing of that play. This is what is called a Q1. It came from the workshop of a printer named John Danter in 1597.’

Lady Pamela beamed. ‘That’s makes if very special, doesn’t it? To be that early, I mean?’

Sir William just beamed back at her, so I replied, ‘It certainly does.’

‘There must be very few houses,’ she continued, ‘with so rare and important a book.’ I could hear the clicking inside her brain as she wound her social standing up by several notches.

‘What do you think of it, Mr Lewis?’ Sir William asked.

I handed the volume to Jack, who gently opened the cover and looked at the title page:
An Excellent conceited Tragedie of Romeo and Juliet, As it hath often (with great applause) plaid publiquely
.

‘This really is a jolly good find,’ Jack enthused. ‘It’s what’s called a “bad quarto” of the play.’

‘Oh, dear me,’ said Lady Pamela. ‘Wouldn’t it have been better if it had been a good quarto?’ The gearwheels of social standing, she feared, might be grinding or slipping a cog.

‘It only means,’ explained Jack, ‘that it’s very early. It seems unlikely that the printer of this book was working from Shakespeare’s own copy, but rather he rushed out this volume from a prompt copy or something of the sort. It’s about 800 lines shorter than the second quarto, and it contains a great more in the way of stage directions. Calling it a “bad quarto” is not a value judgment—it just refers to its important historical role in the establishment of Shakespeare’s text.’

Lady Pamela breathed a sigh of relief, and began thinking about which of her friends she could boast to about this find.

The group clustered around and Jack found himself fielding a host of questions. I looked at my friend as he briefly became the centre of attention—a stocky man of medium height with a ruddy face and a balding head. In these social situations Jack was always happy to blend into the background, but he was the Oxford don here, the expert on the subject, and at this moment he was not allowed to blend. His lecture voice rolled across the room as he sketched out the story of the printing of Shakespeare in the same precisely constructed sentences he would have employed instructing undergraduates.

Then Keggs the butler arrived with a large silver tray. There were port glasses and a decanter of port. Behind him came one of the maids with another tray bearing sherry glasses and two decanters containing, respectively, sweet and dry sherry. Lady Pamela had decreed that after dinner the men were to drink port while sherry was appropriate for the ladies.

Lady Pamela began making plans for putting the quarto on display. ‘We’ll have to have a special glass case made,’ she said, ‘so that the book can be shown open. Something lockable, of course, given its value. But I must have a key so that I can come in each day and turn over a page of the book.’

Jack and I drifted over towards one of the tall windows to be followed a few minutes later by Sir William.

‘How is the investigation going, Mr Lewis?’ he asked.

‘We’ve just been hearing the rather sad history of the victim of the murder, Mrs Connie Worth,’ Jack replied.

‘I suppose hers was a difficult life, one way and another,’ Sir William agreed. ‘When she married Charles we all thought she was settled and comfortable at last. Then there was the horrible business of Charles’s disappearing without a trace, and with no explanation. His dog was found brutally killed on the moors, and it was assumed that Charles too had been attacked. But, as I take it you’ve heard, his body was never found. The police took the view that his killer, or killers, had disposed of his body off the cliffs and that it had been carried out to sea.’

‘Which, I understand, created difficulties for Mrs Worth.’

‘Indeed. Legally Charles was not declared to be dead. So his will could not go to probate, and Connie was suddenly penniless.’

‘We were told that another of your wife’s sisters came to her rescue, is that right?’

There was a pause, a hesitancy, before Sir William replied. ‘Ah, yes,’ he finally said, ‘Judith, the youngest. She took on Connie as a companion and friend. They travelled a good deal. Until Judith died. She was a very sweet girl, was Judith—very sweet indeed.’

‘How did she die? A fall, wasn’t it?’

‘Yes, from a hotel balcony in Brighton. Very late at night and very dark—so no one saw what happened. At one stage the police thought it might have been suicide. But there was no suicide note, as I gather is usual in such cases. And no apparent reason for suicide. So the coroner settled on death by misadventure.’

Keggs arrived at that moment with port for the three of us. Sir William offered us cigars that should probably have been banned under the law forbidding the carrying of concealed weapons.

Jack politely refused the cigar and lit his pipe. After a good deal of what actor’s call ‘stage business’ Sir William managed to get his cigar alight, and gave a good impersonation of how his factory chimneys must function.

Then came a scream from the other side of the room. It was Lady Pamela who screamed. She was standing, rooted to the spot, pointing at Douglas’s girlfriend Stiffy—who was doubled over with pain and gasping for air.

As we watched she toppled forward very slowly onto the turkey rug that covered the floor, and then lay very still.

Jack was the first to get to her side. He felt her pulse and commanded, ‘We need a doctor immediately.’

‘I’ll call Dr Henderson,’ volunteered Will, running from the room.

‘It’s happening again,’ moaned Lady Pamela. ‘It’s all happening again.’

Her grim prediction turned out to be horribly accurate. Stephanie Basset, known to us as Stiffy, was dead before Dr Henderson arrived ten minutes later. He bent over her, conducted a swift, decisive examination, and then said, ‘The police will have to be notified.’

There were gasps and murmurs around the room, with Lady Pamela moaning softly to herself, ‘I’ll never live this down . . . never.’

Within half an hour there were three policemen in the room—Detective Inspector Gideon Crispin and Detective Sergeant Henry Merrivale from Scotland Yard and the village bobby, Constable Charlie Nile, all of whom had hurried up from Plumwood in response to Dr Henderson’s summons. Fifteen minutes later a red-faced, puffed Inspector Hyde bustled self-importantly into the room, having driven over from Market Plumpton.

The family and the staff of Plumwood Hall were gathered in small clusters around the large library, talking in subdued whispers or, in the case of the maids, dabbing away tears. One of the younger maids saw this as The End of Civilisation As We Know It and made her own contribution by dropping a cup and saucer—which smashed on the floor, shattering everyone’s nerves in the process.

For the moment I had been left to my own devices. I hovered over my desk at one end of the library feeling puzzled and uncertain. Was this another murder? Or just a remarkable coincidence? If it was a case of murder, how did it connect to the first? Was there, indeed, a homicidal maniac loose in this small community? I had so many questions I could have popped onto one of those radio quiz shows and felt right at home.

From the far end of the room I could hear Jack’s distinctive voice—a fine, sonorous, robust baritone voice with a good deal of carrying power—as he answered questions from Sergeant Merrivale about the course of events during the evening. Jack was speaking in the unhurried, clear way he always did, giving each word its due weight.

So preoccupied was I that I failed to notice the silent arrival of Inspector Crispin at my side. I think I must have jumped when he spoke—possibly setting a new Olympic record for the standing high jump.

‘It was definitely cyanide again,’ said the Scotland Yard man. ‘Officially we have to wait for Dr Henderson’s autopsy, but he assures me there can be little doubt.’

Having landed back on the spot from which I took off, and recovered my breath, I asked, ‘Does that mean this is connected to the murder of Connie Worth?’

Crispin raised one eyebrow in a gesture that was almost sarcastic and had, at the very least, undertones of irony. ‘How could it not be?’ he asked out loud.

He seemed in no hurry to start questioning me, so I asked, ‘Am I still a suspect?’

He turned his cold, steel-grey eyes on me and replied, ‘I’ll be frank—both of these murders are so puzzling that I’m still feeling my way through the fog. At this stage everyone is a suspect—including you, Mr Morris.’

He turned away from me and cast his eyes around the room. Then, in his quiet but commanding voice, he called out to the butler, ‘Keggs, may I have a moment of your time please?’

The butler slid smoothly towards us in the manner that all butlers have—appearing to glide on some sort of anti-gravity device out of one of Mr Wells’s scientific romances.

‘Yes, sir?’ he hooted gently, like an extremely polite ship at sea modulating its fog horn to a respectful tone. I had noticed that Inspector Hyde was always addressed as ‘Inspector’ and Constable Nile as ‘Constable’, but Keggs had apparently decided that the man from Scotland Yard was definitely a ‘sir’.

‘Tell me about the drinks. To begin with—who drank what?’

‘All of the gentlemen drank port, sir. Lady Pamela drank sweet sherry and Miss Bassett drank dry sherry.’

‘She was the only one who drank the dry sherry?

‘That is correct, sir.’

‘Did she always drink dry sherry?’

‘It was her normal after-dinner drink, sir. I have never known her to depart from it.’

‘Was her preference for dry sherry well known?’

‘Indeed it was, sir. On her first night here Lady Pamela offered her sweet sherry, and Miss Bassett announced her dislike for it. I believe the words she used were “I can’t abide the stuff”.’

‘So each night after dinner Miss Bassett drank dry sherry?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘And
only
Miss Bassett drank dry sherry?’

‘Yes, sir.’

Keggs always had a ruddy, flushed complexion (he had that butler-ish port wine look). But under the inspector’s questioning he had gone redder than ever and resembled nothing so much as a tomato struggling to control strong emotions.

At this point Crispin beckoned Sergeant Merrivale across and gave him instructions to have the bottle of dry sherry as well as the glass Stiffy had been drinking from taken for forensic examination.

Jack followed in Sergeant Merrivale’s footsteps and cruised towards us. He was followed in turn by the pocket-sized policeman, Inspector Hyde.

‘Part of a pattern, would you say?’ Jack asked the Scotland Yard man.

Crispin shook his head sadly as he replied, ‘We know so little at this stage. But, as you say, Mr Lewis, it seems most likely part of the same pattern.’

At that moment Inspector Hyde yapped, like a terrier after a bone, ‘In that case, Crispin, why don’t you arrest Morris right here and now—and stem the tide of these murders?’ His petulant tone suggested a terrier with a liver condition who was having a bad day.

Taking a deep breath Inspector Crispin explained slowly and patiently that so far no motive had been discovered for me to commit either murder.

‘That’s where you’re wrong!’ snapped Hyde. Crispin said, “Go on, I’m listening”, and Hyde explained that he’d run into Sir William Dyer in Market Plumpton that morning and questioned him about the case.

‘While you were sitting here cooling your heels,’ he added in the tone of a Napoleonic victory speech, ‘I’ve been uncovering vital evidence—evidence of motive. Sir William told me that the first murder victim, Mrs Worth, had complained to him that she had observed Morris here attempting to purloin valuable volumes from this library—presumably to sell them for his own gain. Morris, of course, denied the charge and claimed that it was he who had found Mrs Worth trying to sneak out a rare and valuable book. The matter was, I gather, never settled, but clearly there was bad blood between Morris and the first victim.’

‘The matter
was
settled,’ said a voice from behind Inspector Hyde’s back. It was Sir William, and he looked anything but happy. At the best of times Sir William Dyer had an unfortunate appearance—rather like a superior and especially cunning rat. At that moment he looked like a rat whose dinner had been interrupted by the irritating behaviour of one of the younger rats. ‘When I mentioned that small matter in conversation this morning, Hyde, I did not expect you to put it to this entirely misleading and improper use.’

‘But you said—’ complained Hyde, in a whine like an out-of-tune steam whistle.

‘What I meant was perfectly clear,’ Sir William continued sternly. ‘I was making a point about the victim’s character. While I have always had the utmost confidence in Mr Morris’s probity—and still have—Mrs Worth, I’m sad to say, was always short of money and not above employing dishonesty in reaching for it.’

‘But you said—’ Hyde repeated, sounding like one of those old folk songs in which the same refrain erupts after every second line.

‘I was trying to shed some light on the character of Mrs Worth. Do you or do you not understand that?’