‘To whom else have you spoken, Inspector?’ asked Lady Hardcastle as she finished off a particularly accurate, if unflattering, sketch of Clifford Haddock.
‘Just you and one or two of the staff so far, my lady,’ he said. ‘The majority of the guests left shortly after you and I didn’t want to waken those that had stayed the night. I thought I’d let them lie in.’
I caught the wicked glint in his eye as well as Lady Hardcastle’s own raised eyebrow.
‘I trust you think I’ve been punished enough now for irritating you in the past,’ she said.
‘More than enough, thank you, my lady,’ he said with a grin. ‘Perhaps we might work together in the future instead of against one another.’
‘In the future, Inspector?’
‘Oh, come now. We both know that whenever anything happens in the village, you’ll be first on the scene with your deerstalker and Meerschaum, hunting for clues and trying to solve the mystery before the clodhopping oafs in the Police Force get a look in. I’d just rather not be thought the clodhopping oaf, that’s all. Perhaps you might consider me “that splendid chap from Bristol whom I really should speak to because he’s a professional detective and it’s his job to solve crimes”.’
She laughed. ‘I never considered you a clodhopping oaf, Inspector, though to be fair, you did arrest completely the wrong man in the Frank Pickering case. Would it have been entirely unreasonable of me if I had thought that of you?’
‘Given what you knew at the time, no, I don’t suppose it would. I was, however, dealing with a particularly sensitive case in the city which involved several children being abducted from the streets. They were about to be shipped off to eastern Europe somewhere for who knows what horrible purpose, and time wasn’t something I could spare. I knew Lovell wasn’t our man but I had to keep the gentlemen of the press quiet for a while, and arresting suspects always does the trick. I’d have caught the Seddons soon enough.’
‘Oh,’ she said, clearly crestfallen.
‘“Oh” indeed, my lady.’
‘But I’m still not clear on the subject of “in the future”. I’ve moved out here for a quiet life in the country. I don’t anticipate becoming embroiled in any further mysteries.’
‘Well, now, my lady, that’s the funny thing. How are you on the subject of statistics and probability?’
‘I get by,’ she said, breezily. ‘I read Natural Sciences at Cambridge, but I like to keep up with new developments in mathematics, too, and I like to think I can hold my own if the subject should turn to statistics.’
‘I rather thought you might. You see there’s a funny thing about this part of Gloucestershire. There’s those as would say that London would definitely be England’s murder capital. Others are sure it’s Birmingham, or Manchester, or Liverpool. Some even suggest my own home city of Bristol. There’s a cluster of villages in Oxfordshire that regularly vies for the title, but have a guess where it really is.’
‘I should suppose, given the devilish twinkle in your eye,’ she said, ‘that it’s here.’
‘It is, as you suggest, my lady, right here. There are more murders per head of population in this part of Gloucestershire than anywhere else in the country. A person is more than twice as likely to be murdered here than anywhere else. Did it not strike you that you’ve been here less than three months and you’ve already seen at least eight people killed? It is eight, isn’t it?’
‘It is now, Inspector, yes.’
‘Most people go their whole lives without knowing of a single murder, and yet you’ve already seen eight since June.’
‘I’d known more than my fair share before I even arrived. Perhaps it’s me.’
‘Yes, of course, my lady, there was your husband. I’m terribly sorry, I didn’t mean to be insensitive.’
She waved a friendly dismissal. ‘Please don’t worry, Inspector. It was a long time ago now.’
He nodded and continued. ‘But no, it’s not you, it’s what they call a statistical anomaly and it’s centred on Chipping Bevington.’
‘I see.’
‘And so I think “in the future” the probability is very high that there shall be more and that you shall be somewhere at the heart of it, meddling and interfering and generally making a nuisance of yourself. But I hope that now you’ll remember to call me, cable me, or even send a trusty carrier pigeon my way before you go trying to get yourself killed.’
‘Right-oh, Inspector,’ she said with a cheeky grin. ‘I promise.’
‘That’s agreed, then. And for my part I promise not to send burly constables to your home when you’d probably rather be resting in bed nursing a hangover.’
‘It was a rather nasty one.’
‘I hoped it might be.’
I was beginning to warm to this Inspector Sunderland.
‘Right then,’ he said decisively. ‘Let’s just start working through them. It’s a tiresome job, but I find thoroughness usually gets results.’
Lady Hardcastle looked at him as though about to remind him of his lack of thoroughness in the Pickering case, but she thought better of it when he returned her stare.
He flipped through his ever-present notebook. ‘Miss Armstrong, would you do me a great service and get one of the staff here to fetch Miss Sylvia Montgomery. Let’s see what she has to say about her visit to the library.
Sylvia Montgomery was only slightly less stunning in her day clothes than in her stage outfit and she sat opposite Inspector Sunderland and Lady Hardcastle, regarding them coolly but without apparent hostility as they asked her about the events of the night before.
‘...and then I slipped out to the library in search of something to drink. I’m not needed during the last couple of numbers in the first set apart from to sway around and look gorgeous, so I usually just nick off at that point. I had a good hunt around, looking in the globe, behind the books, under the chairs, in the window seats. Nothing. Not a drop. So I gave it up as a bad job and that’s when I met you.’ She looked over towards me. ‘I went back in to the ballroom and stayed there until we’d finished. We managed to cadge some half-decent scotch from the birthday girl–’
‘It was her engagement party,’ the inspector corrected her.
‘Was it, indeed? That chinless chap with the wispy moustache?’
‘Mr Woodfield, yes. Heir to the Woodfield Engineering business.’
‘Really? Good for her. If you can’t land a looker, go for the money. Good girl. But anyway, we snaffled her scotch and went off up to the dingy rooms they’d begrudgingly let us have. We drank until about two and then called it a night.’
‘Did none of you wonder what had happened to Mr Holloway?’ asked Lady Hardcastle.
‘At first, yes. Skins was all for looking for him but Roland insisted he’d probably found a doxy to canoodle with and we should leave him to it.’
‘Was he the sort to “canoodle with doxies”, miss?’ said the inspector.
‘He was a man, Inspector. The prospect of canoodling with doxies at parties was what got him to take up the trumpet in the first place.’
‘Fair enough, miss. Understood. What did you all talk about?’
‘When, Inspector?’