‘The invitations say “Seven O’Clock”.’
‘They do, Inspector. But, really. Who arrives on time at a party?’ She often played the dizzy socialite when she was unsure of people; she found it kept them a little off guard. Give it a while and she’d be giggling and calling him “darling” and he’d either dismiss her as a fool or be taken in by her warmth and give away far more than he had planned. I’d seen it many times before.
‘Who indeed, my lady,’ he said stiffly. He’d met her before and was clearly not taken in. ‘Now on the off chance that Constable Hancock has been the soul of discretion and hasn’t already told you all the confidential details of the case, I’d quite like to explain everything to you. You’ve been something of an irritation to us down at Bristol CID over the past few months, not to mention a reckless danger to yourself. But I can’t deny that you have an able mind and it’s obvious that you take some manner of pleasure in solving these little puzzles so I’d rather like to see if you can offer any help on this one, most especially since you were actually here.’
Lady Hardcastle seemed slightly taken aback. The Inspector had always been courteous, if a little stern, in his dealings with us, but neither of us had ever thought that he had anything but contempt for our “meddling” (as one of his superiors had called it).
‘Of course, Inspector,’ she said. ‘It would be a pleasure and an honour to help.’
‘Quite so,’ he said. ‘The facts of the case, then, are that Mr Nelson Holloway, the trumpet player with...’ he consulted his notebook, ‘Roland Richman’s Ragtime Revue – whatever happened to a good old sing-song round the piano, that’s what I’d like to know – Mr Nelson was found in the library this morning at about six o’clock by Dora Kendrick, the housemaid, when she went in to open the shutters and tidy the room which had been used by the band during the evening before. Thinking him still drunk, she went to rouse him but on approaching his recumbent form, she found him “stiff and cold” with a “deathly pallor” and “lying in a pool of blood” whereupon she screamed the house down and has had to be sedated by Dr Fitzsimmons.’
‘Is she all right?’ I asked. I’d not seen an awful lot of Dora the day before, but she seemed like a sweet girl.
‘She’ll be fine,’ said Inspector Sunderland. ‘Not so fine, though, is Mr Holloway. The “pool of blood” was actually a tiny trickle from a small laceration on the back of the scalp, but it was enough to frighten the girl. Dr Fitzsimmons and I are of the opinion that he was struck on the back of the head with some sort of heavy, blunt object which split his scalp causing the bleeding but which also did enough internal damage to the man’s brain to kill him, though not instantly. The doctor suggests that he would have been unconscious and breathing when the assailant left him. Death would have occurred some time later, and he estimates that he actually passed at around four o’clock this morning.’
‘So we’ve no idea when the attack itself actually happened,’ said Lady Hardcastle, thoughtfully. ‘But the intention was probably not murder.’
‘Very good, my lady,’ he said, impressed. ‘No, a murderer would have made certain that he was dead. But as to the time, we might be able to narrow it down a little. We have statements from witnesses that Mr Nelson was last definitely seen alive at ten o’clock when the band took its break.’
‘That’s when I last saw him, too,’ I said. ‘Miss Montgomery – she’s the singer – she said that he’d gone off to the library to fetch his secret supply of scotch.’
‘Oh?’ he said. ‘And why would she tell you that, I wonder? Establishing an alibi, perhaps?’
‘Possibly, Inspector,’ I said. ‘But it all seemed perfectly innocent at the time. I’d met her earlier, she’d been searching the library for booze, and she asked me if I could find some for her. She came over during her break to ask me if I’d managed it.’
‘I see. Why you? Why not one of the household servants?’
‘All servants look alike, Inspector,’ I said, indicating my uniform. ‘How would she know I didn’t work here?’
‘Quite so,’ he said. ‘And you didn’t have any luck with your search, I presume?’
I hesitated.
‘She found me a little brandy, Inspector,’ said Lady Hardcastle. ‘But the Farley-Strouds had hidden all the good stuff.’
The Inspector laughed. ‘Always the way in these big houses,’ he said. ‘But anyway, that leads me to believe that Mr Nelson was attacked some time between leaving the ballroom at ten and when the band started again at half past. If he’d been able to return, he would have, I reckon.’
‘Did no one try to look for him?’ I asked.
‘Only the band would have known he was missing, miss,’ he said. ‘And once they’d started playing, there wasn’t much they could do about it. They were already a man short so they couldn’t very well spare another to go searching for the trumpeter, even if he was bringing the scotch.’
‘I suppose so,’ I said. ‘I thought they sounded a little less lively after the break.’
‘That would be why, miss.’
‘Were there signs of a fight in the library, Inspector?’ said Lady Hardcastle.
‘Aside from the dead body by the bookshelves, you mean? Some. The room was in some disarray as though it had been ransacked. My guess is that the killer was looking for something.’
‘And Mr Nelson caught him at it?’
‘Quite possibly. That would certainly account for his being knocked unconscious and left on the deck while the robber fled.’
‘It would indeed,’ she said.
‘So that’s my working hypothesis at the moment,’ he said. ‘And my next task is to try to establish where everybody was during the course of the evening. I need to know everything you can both remember: where you were, who you saw, when you saw them, and anything else you noticed, no matter how unimportant you might feel it. Can we start with you, please, Lady Hardcastle?’
‘Of course. I arrived at about a quarter past eight, as you now know. Sir Hector’s chauffeur, Bert, was kind enough to bring me up the hill. I greeted my hosts, who introduced me to Captain Summers – a frightful bore recently returned from India – and then left me to his oafish attentions. I stayed with him for as long as I thought polite and then slipped away while his eye was roving elsewhere, and circulated. I spoke to Miss Clarissa and her London friends, congratulating the happy couple and whatnot. I had a bit of a wander round, bumped into a couple of the Farley-Strouds’ friends that I’d met at a dinner party when I first moved to the area, and then finally tracked down Armstrong. We chatted briefly, then I was buttonholed once more by Captain Summers whom I managed to outrage.’
‘“Outrage”, my lady?’ said the Inspector, looking up from his notebook.