‘While you were drinking. I presume you didn’t all sit there in gloomy silence.’
‘Oh, I see. Oh, you know, the usual. How the performance had gone, which numbers worked and which didn’t, what engagements were coming up. That sort of thing.’
‘I see, miss, thank you. My friends here,’ he indicated Lady Hardcastle and me, ‘haven’t seen the library yet and I think it might help for us all to see it in the company of someone who saw it before the crime took place. See how things have changed, if you get my meaning. Would that be too distressing for you, miss?’
She favoured him with a withering look and he shrugged in response and stood. Together we trooped out of the dining room and headed for the library.
The library was a long, rectangular room with three large windows along one of the long walls and a large stone fireplace set in the centre of the other. Apart from that, every other inch of wall space was fitted with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. There were four comfortable leather armchairs, one in each corner of the room, with the empty globe bar beside one of them and small tables set beside the other three. I could see the bloodstain on the polished wood of the floor near the fireplace and when I looked more closely I could see that there was also a bloody mark on the corner of the stone hearth.
‘It looks like he hit his head on the hearth when he fell, Inspector,’ I said.
‘Very good, miss, very good indeed,’ said the inspector. ‘The doctor and I rather think that’s what caused the fatal damage to the man’s brain.’
I felt ever so slightly patronized, but part of me was also rather pleased with the praise.
At the other end of the room was a jumble of instrument cases. A double bass case lay on its side with its red velvet lining ripped out making it look like another bleeding corpse. Round cases of pressed cardboard, like oversized hatboxes, were strewn haphazardly about, lids and leather straps lying chaotically among them.
‘Is that how you left your things, miss?’ said the inspector.
‘I should jolly well say not,’ said Sylvia, walking towards the jumble of cases. ‘Our instruments are our livelihood, Inspector, and we treat them with the utmost respect. Even the cases we keep them in.’ She reached out to tidy them, as though the chaos were an affront.
‘Please don’t touch anything, miss. Our fingerprint expert hasn’t been here yet.’
‘Oh,’ she said, pulling her hand back. ‘Sorry.’
Until now I’d been puzzled by her reaction to the whole thing. The band all seemed to get along well and she’d not appeared to be in the least bit upset by the murder of one of her friends. Even the sight of the bloodstained floor had left her unmoved, but somehow this apparently unimportant mistreatment of the instrument cases had affected her, as though it were the worst violation of all. She looked shocked and anguished for the first time.
‘Please sit down, miss,’ said the inspector, taking her by the arm and leading her to one of the armchairs. ‘I did try to warn you this might be distressing.’
‘Yes,’ she said absently, ‘you did. I’m so sorry, Inspector, you must think me a frightful ninny. I suppose it hadn’t really sunk in until I saw what they did to our things. It wasn’t real somehow. Do you know what I mean?’
‘I do, miss,’ he said solicitously.
‘Wait a moment,’ she said, suddenly much more alert. ‘Where’s Nelson’s case?’
‘I beg your pardon, miss?’
‘Nelson’s trumpet case. Have you removed it?’
‘No, miss, we’ve not touched a thing at that end of the room. Like I say, we’re waiting for the fingerprint man.’
‘I thought you detectives did all that sort of thing yourself,’ she said, clearly having trouble maintaining her train of thought.
‘Some do, miss. We’re trying a new system, though. Specialists, if you get my meaning.’
‘Oh, I see.’
‘Mr Holloway’s case, miss?’ he said, trying to get her train of thought back on the rails.
‘It’s not there.’
‘And it was there last night? He didn’t leave it in his room, perhaps?’
‘No, they unpacked in here. We warmed up here.’
‘Warmed up, miss?’
‘You know, ran through a couple of things, I did my voice exercises.’
‘Ah, like sportsmen.’
‘Just like that, yes. We need to loosen up, get ourselves prepared. And we did that in here. I distinctly remember Nelson getting his trumpet out of its case and putting it on top of one of Skins’s drum cases.’
Inspector Sunderland stepped over to the jumble of cases and peered into them all. Then he cast around the room, trying to see under the chairs for any trace of the case.
‘Hmm, that’s most interesting,’ he said at length. ‘It’s definitely not here now. It looks as though we might have found out what it was the thief was after. But why...?’
‘An empty trumpet case?’ said Lady Hardcastle.
‘Certainly a trumpet case without a trumpet in it,’ he said. ‘But I doubt it was “empty” if it was worth clouting someone over the head for. Did you see anything else in there, Miss Montgomery?’
‘In the case, Inspector? No. A trumpet, a mouthpiece. He usually had a cleaning cloth and little bottle of valve oil in there. Oh, and one of those stick things they poke into the tubes for cleaning. There might have been some brass polish. I saw him using all that sort of stuff at one time or another but I never really looked inside. It’s not the done thing, you know, poking around in another musician’s things. Not the done thing at all.’
‘Fair enough, miss. Thank you. Now, I think the best thing for you would be to take some air.’
He rang the bell and a few moments later, Jenkins appeared.
‘Ah, Jenkins,’ said the inspector. ‘I wonder if I might ask you to find Miss Montgomery here a spot in the garden where she might relax a while in the fresh air. She’s had something of a shock. If you were able to find her a little brandy, I’m sure that would be most beneficial.’
Jenkins looked briefly horrorstruck at the thought of having to treat a mere musician – no better than a tradesman in his eyes – as an honoured guest, but a nod of agreement from Lady Hardcastle persuaded him that it was, after all, something he should just get on with.
‘Yes, sir, of course,’ he said emotionlessly. ‘Will there be anything else?’
‘No, Jenkins, thank you.’
He opened the door for Sylvia who went out into the passage. He made to follow her.
‘Oh, Jenkins,’ said Lady Hardcastle. He stopped at once and turned to face her. ‘We’ll be returning to the dining room presently. Be an absolute darling and have some coffee sent in, would you?’
‘Of course, my lady.’ He had no complaints about helping a proper lady. ‘Luncheon will be served at one, my lady. In the garden since the inspector,’ he paused and looked pointedly at Inspector Sunderland, ‘has commandeered the dining room. Will you be joining us?’
‘I don’t think so, Jenkins. Would Mrs Brown make us a plate of sandwiches, perhaps?’
‘I’m sure she’d be more than happy to, my lady.’