‘Oh, he’s a buffoon of the first water, no question about it. And so terribly old fashioned with it. Quite the relic. But we should perhaps make allowances. England isn’t all he remembers it to be. I think he has a rather romantic notion of what “Blighty” should be like, and all this has quite shattered his illusions.’
‘I dare say,’ said the inspector distractedly as he made some notes in his notebook.
There was a knock on the door and Jenkins entered with a tray of coffee, sandwiches, and some shortbread biscuits.
‘Your luncheon, my lady,’ he said, pointedly ignoring the inspector. ‘Mrs Brown thought you might appreciate some biscuits, too.’
‘She’s very thoughtful, Jenkins,’ said Lady Hardcastle. ‘Please thank her for us.’
‘Yes, my lady. Will there be anything else?’
‘No, Jenkins, thank you.’
‘Very good, my lady,’ he said with a slight bow. He left as quietly as he had entered.
Inspector Sunderland seemed to be on the verge of another tirade, but Lady Hardcastle’s warning glance forestalled him. He went to pour the coffee.
‘Please,’ I said, stepping forward. ‘Allow me.’
‘Oh, I... er... yes, miss. If you insist.’
‘Thank you, Inspector,’ I said as I poured coffee for the two of them. ‘Just doing my duty.’
‘Don’t show off, Armstrong,’ said Lady Hardcastle. ‘Pour yourself one, too.’
I curtseyed. ‘Thank you, m’lady. You’re very generous to a poor servant girl, you are. Very kind and generous. I doesn’t deserve it, m’lady, really I doesn’t.’
‘Are you two a music hall act?’ said the Inspector.
‘No, Inspector, we’re just good friends,’ said Lady Hardcastle and motioned for me to sit with them at the table.
‘Well that told us nothing we couldn’t have guessed for ourselves,’ said the inspector, still gazing thoughtfully at his notebook.
‘I wouldn’t say that, Inspector,’ said Lady Hardcastle. ‘I think it gave us quite an insight into the man’s character.’ She rose and made a few quick notes of her own on the Crime Board.
‘Showed us that he’s a buffoon, you mean? I suppose it did at that.’ He snapped his notebook shut and tucked in to the coffee and sandwiches.
We ate together, making small talk. We’d all noticed that the house had seen better days, that there was a shabby air of faded opulence about it, and Lady Hardcastle explained the rumours about the Farley-Strouds’ shaky financial state.
‘They’re not exactly impecunious,’ she said, ‘but there doesn’t seem to be a lot of spare cash around for decoration and modernization.’
We finished the sandwiches and moved on to the biscuits.
‘I say,’ said the inspector. ‘These are rather nice. Mrs Sunderland makes a lovely shortbread, but nothing like this.’
‘I’m sure Armstrong could get you the recipe if you like.’
The inspector laughed. ‘Tell me, my lady, if you were a policeman’s wife, waiting anxiously for him to come home, never knowing what danger he’d got himself into that day, and you’d made some delicious shortbread for him to have with his cup of tea by the fire, how would you feel if he came home and said, “Here you are, my beloved, I thought you made the finest biscuits in all the land, but I have found a far better recipe. Take these inferior things back to the kitchen and make me some of these others, as prepared by a servant in a manor house I’ve been visiting.”?’
‘You build a convincing argument, Inspector,’ she said. ‘Armstrong, keep that recipe a secret. Do not divulge it to anyone, most especially not the inspector.’
‘Right you are, my lady,’ I said.
‘You two...’ said the inspector, sipping his coffee. ‘Now then, to business. Let us cleanse our investigatory palates by interviewing someone who might actually tell us something. What do you say we talk to someone else from the band. I got the impression that Miss Montgomery wasn’t all that close to them. Let’s see what one of his fellow musicians has to say.’ He consulted his notebook. ‘Let’s go straight to the top; let’s try Roland Richman. He might be able to tell us a little more.’
‘He might, he might,’ said Lady Hardcastle.
The inspector nodded. ‘There’s another reason for talking to Mr Richman.’ He flipped back a few more pages in his notebook. ‘One of the servants says she saw him in the passage outside the library. She can’t remember when and didn’t think much of it at the time because the musicians were supposed to be there, but it does place him near the scene of the crime.’
‘Would you like me to fetch him, sir?’ I said.
‘That would be grand, miss, thank you.’
I had found Roland Richman in the ballroom, tinkling away on the piano. Actually, that’s not entirely fair; he had been playing a rather beautiful piece which had turned out to be one of his own compositions. He had followed me somewhat reluctantly to the dining room and after the usual introductions, Inspector Sunderland had plunged directly into the questioning.
‘You’ll forgive my directness, sir, but I do need to get to the bottom of all this as swiftly as I can. I have a witness who says she saw you...’ he flipped ostentatiously through his notebook, ‘...“hanging about in the corridor outside the library”. She can’t remember when, but perhaps you can?’
Mr Richman laughed. ‘I suppose it did look like I was just hanging about, yes. I was waiting for someone.’
‘Who, sir? And when?’
‘I was waiting for Nelson. I don’t know the precise time, there are so damn few clocks in this place. But it was during our break.’
‘...“during the break”,’ said the inspector, making a careful note. ‘And did you meet Mr Holloway?’
‘No, he never turned up. And now I know why.’
‘Perhaps, sir. Did you look for him at all?’
‘No, we were to meet in the corridor; I didn’t want to go wandering off in case I missed him.’
‘And you didn’t think to look in the library? That’s where he told you he was going.’
‘That’s what he told the others, Inspector. I knew where he was going; he was going to the corridor to meet me.’
‘I see, sir. Did you see or hear anything else?’
‘No, there was the usual hubbub of a party, I saw that servant girl–’
‘Rose, sir,’ interrupted the inspector.
‘Really?’ I blurted in surprise. ‘Good for her. I’m glad she escaped from the kitchen to see a bit of the party.’
‘Lucky girl,’ said Mr Richman unenthusiastically. ‘There were a few others but I was keen to get my meeting over with and get back to work so I didn’t really pay much attention.’
‘What was your meeting about, sir?’ asked the inspector.
‘Band business, I expect. He didn’t say. Just said he needed to speak to me in private. Probably after a rise if I know Nelson.’
‘How long did you wait for him?’
‘Again, Inspector, I have no idea. No clocks.’
‘Quite so, sir. But you eventually went back to the party and played your “second set”, I believe you call it.’
Mr Richman smiled. ‘Our second set, yes. Then off for a nightcap and an early night.’
‘Early night, sir?’
‘We usually turn in about six in the morning, Inspector. We entertain people at night for the most part.’
‘Indeed you do, sir, one forgets that others lead such different lives.’