‘Hmm, you have me there. In that case, I am at a loss,’ she said, capping her pen and closing her journal. ‘But wait. If you expected me to be still safely wrapped in the warm and loving arms of Morpheus, why are you here bearing such a substantial array of jentacular comestibles?’
‘Ah . . . well . . . now . . . you see . . .’ I began awkwardly. ‘Wait a moment, my lady. “Jentacular comestibles”? Really? I despair sometimes.’
‘Not bad, eh? But don’t change the subject. What brings you here with breakfast nosh if I’m supposed to be asleep?’
‘I wanted you to be awake. I thought we ought to confer before our day of investigation. If we were at home, we’d be sitting at the kitchen table together, planning and strategizing. I’m not sure the natives could cope with having me sitting at the breakfast table, so I brought its contents up to you.’
‘Quite right – best not discomfit the natives,’ she said. ‘And we’ll be wanting to talk about them anyway, so it’s doubly important that they not be within earshot.’ She indicated the tray. ‘I take it some of that’s for you?’
‘That was the original plan, my lady,’ I said, extending the tray’s legs and placing it over her lap. ‘But I know how you toffs like to gorge. It’s all the rage nowadays. I’m beginning to wonder if I brought enough.’
‘Hmm,’ she said, tucking in. ‘I’m sure we’ll manage.’
I sat on the monstrosity of a bed, and did my bit to reduce the mountain of food.
‘What are your thoughts, then, my lady?’ I said after a while. ‘Who do you fancy for the sabotage?’
She thought for a moment, then reached for her journal.
‘In the absence of my beloved and much-derided crime board,’ she said, ‘I’ve been reduced to writing things in my journal like some sort of medieval peasant.’
She opened the book and leafed through it, trying to find the relevant page. Meanwhile, I tried not to point out how few medieval peasants would have had a leather-bound journal in which to record their musings. I had moved on to not reminding her how few medieval peasants would have been able to read and write in the first place, when she arrived at the notes she’d been seeking.
‘Here we are,’ she said. ‘I’ve started from the assumption that it’s someone among the household and their guests. If it should chance that none of them is involved, then we shall have to widen our search to the rest of the party guests. Although, actually, if we reach that point, then only a miracle would reveal the killer to us. There were dozens of people at the party, and by the time we’ve included coachmen, chauffeurs, and cabbies, there will be dozens more. If it’s no one from the house, we’re scuppered.’
‘Sunk without trace,’ I said.
‘Quite. So I’ve made a list of everyone here. We begin with our host, Fishy.’
‘I can’t see it, my lady. It wouldn’t make sense for Lord Riddlethorpe to sabotage one of his own motor cars. What would he gain from it?’
‘That’s what I thought, too,’ she said. ‘So we shall put a cross by Fishy’s name for now. Then we have Jake. I can’t see that she has any more motive than her brother.’
‘Agreed,’ I said.
‘Roz? She’s a startlingly unpleasant woman, but she strikes me as the sort who would have a great many imaginatively vicious ideas for settling scores before she resorted to something as crude as mechanical sabotage.’
‘Possibly, my lady, but remember what Uncle Algy said: Mr Dawkins did say something “lewd” and “suggestive” to her at the party. If he offended her enough, she might have decided to take him down a peg or two by sabotaging his car.’
‘Very well, we’ll leave her as a possible. How about Helen?’
‘“Titmouse”?’ I said with a laugh. ‘Hardly.’
‘Sorry, dear, but if I can’t drop Roz, you can’t drop Helen. You know what they say about the quiet ones, and it strikes me she’s probably got a lifetime’s worth of bottled-up rage and resentment just waiting to burst out.’
‘I’ll grant you that. If I were her, I’d have bludgeoned Mrs Beddows to a gory death years ago, but why would that make her attack Mr Dawkins? Why would she sabotage his car?’
‘Perhaps he rebuffed an advance from her just as Roz rebuffed him. Hell hath no fury, and all that. After a day of being belittled by her old “friend”, perhaps he was the straw that passed through the eye of the camel’s needle.’
‘Perhaps, my lady,’ I conceded. ‘No cross for her, then. Next?’
‘We move on to Fishy’s friends now. Harry?’
‘I think we can cross off your own brother.’
‘It might have been a jape that went wrong,’ she said. ‘He’s not a terribly practical fellow, after all. He might not have realized quite how dangerous his little trick was.’
‘Possibly, but I should say that his ignorance of mechanical matters also makes it rather unlikely that he would have managed to work out how to sabotage the brakes in the first place.’
‘Very well,’ she said. ‘To be truthful, I think he would have owned up by now if it were a joke that went wrong. Another cross for Harry, then. Monty?’
‘Again, what would Mr Waterford have to gain from sabotaging one of his own racing team’s motor cars and endangering the life of his main driver?’
‘What if Number 3 were a prototype?’ she said. ‘What if it were one of Fishy’s designs? Perhaps Monty wished to undermine it to promote his own design.’
‘An intriguing possibility, my lady,’ I said. ‘Mr Waterford remains on the list, then.’
‘And then there’s Viktor Kovacs.’
‘The evil Hungarian.’
‘Well, quite,’ she said. ‘It does seem a trifle clichéd, doesn’t it? Still, there’s a reason that clichés become clichés.’
‘He was talking to Lord Riddlethorpe at dinner last night, and it sounded as though he was offering to buy the racing team.’
‘Really? I was down at the other end of the table listening to Jake trying to keep her Uncle Algy under control.’
‘A losing battle, that one,’ I said. ‘I didn’t hear the whole conversation, but Herr Kovacs mentioned an offer “in light of recent events”, and that he’d be prepared to discuss something or other. I’m afraid that’s the point at which Uncle Algy stepped over whatever line Lady Lavinia had drawn for him, and got a telling off. I couldn’t hear the rest.’
‘So you think Viktor might have sabotaged the motor car to destabilize his rival and make him ripe for a takeover? And if that didn’t work, he’d eliminated the team’s best driver.’
‘Best driver?’ I said. ‘Wasn’t Mr Dawkins in third place as they passed us?’
‘My word, you’re right. But everyone said he was an excellent driver. Perhaps there was something else wrong with the motor car after all.’
‘Or perhaps it wasn’t the new prototype?’
‘Oh, lord, I don’t know,’ said Lady Hardcastle with no little exasperation. ‘Cliché or not, I don’t think we can take Viktor out of the running.’
‘I take it we’re not even going to consider Uncle Algy.’