‘What’s this doing here?’ she said as she picked up the photograph of the girls’ school cricket team. ‘He seemed fascinated by it at dinner the other night, and here it is in his room.’
She continued to rummage through the papers. Herr Kovacs seemed to have brought his work with him, and had clearly given Evan instructions that nothing on the desk was to be disturbed. ‘Cluttered’ was the first word that came to my mind, but it seemed scarcely adequate to describe the chaos on the small table.
‘Hello,’ she said. ‘I think we can confirm the meeting hypothesis. Have a look at this.’ She indicated a small piece of paper unfolded on the desk.
Without touching it, I inspected it carefully. It was a piece of Codrington Hall notepaper folded in two. It was of the sort that was placed in every room for the use of the guests. The crease was a little rumpled on one side, as though it had been pushed under the door and had caught on something on its way in. I looked back at the doorway and noticed that one of the floorboards sat a little proud of its fellows.
The paper bore a short message, written in a neat, rounded hand:
We need to talk. Meet me in the coach house at two o’clock. The back door will be unlocked. Come alone. R B.
‘Blimey,’ I said. ‘You don’t think . . .’
‘The only “R B” I can think of is Rosamund Beddows.’
‘That’s easily solved,’ I said. ‘Lady Lavinia and Miss Titmus would know Mrs Beddows’s handwriting in an instant. Should we take the note? We might be able to find out what it means before the police see it and jump to conclusions?’
‘It’s tempting, isn’t it. But I think not. We can’t interfere. We’ll have to do as Fishy says and “let the cards fall where they may”.’
I heard the sound of footsteps in the passage and touched Lady Hardcastle’s arm to attract her attention. I put a finger to my lips and tiptoed to the door. I opened the door a crack and peeped out. I saw the retreating back of Mrs Beddows.
Lady Hardcastle raised an eyebrow in silent enquiry.
‘Mrs Beddows, my lady,’ I said quietly. ‘On her way downstairs.’
‘Gracious, she’s late.’
‘Betty said she was tired and wanted a lie-in.’
‘So she did, so she did. A sleepless night, it seems.’ She stood for a moment in silent contemplation. ‘But we’d best not jump to conclusions ourselves. And we’d better slip away before anyone catches us in here.’
We stole cautiously out of the room. Once safely in the passage and away from Herr Kovacs’s door, we strolled casually back towards the stairs – nothing says ‘these two women are up to no good’ quite so emphatically as seeing them skulking along a passageway.
The door to the servants’ staircase opened ahead of us. Mrs McLelland emerged, followed by one of the housemaids.
The housekeeper was giving the girl strict instructions. ‘. . . but no one – no one – is to go into Herr Kovacs’s room until Inspector Foister and his men have examined it. Do you understand?’
The girl nodded meekly.
‘And take extra care with—’ She stopped talking as she noticed us coming towards her. Lady Hardcastle swept imperiously past, and the two household servants bowed their heads in silence.
We were part way down the stairs before we heard Mrs McLelland’s voice once more in the distance. The sound of it distracted me, so that I was looking the wrong way as Mrs Beddows came sprinting back up the stairs towards us, her head down. She almost bowled me over.
‘I’m so sorry,’ she said breathlessly. ‘Oh, it’s you. Good morning, Emily.’
‘Good morning, Roz, dear,’ said Lady Hardcastle. ‘Someone after you?’
‘What? Oh, I see. No, just need to get something from my room.’
‘Don’t let us detain you, dear. Shall we see you for lunch?’
‘Doubt if we’ll be getting any lunch,’ said Mrs Beddows over her shoulder as she sprinted on. ‘Haven’t you heard? Another of Fishy’s stupid friends has been found dead. The police will be here soon, and we’ll never get any blessed food.’
She was out of sight before Lady Hardcastle could say another word.
Inspector Foister was a great deal less supercilious and dismissive once he had a real murder to work with. He arrived within an hour of Lord Riddlethorpe’s call, and set to work at once. During a thorough examination of the coach house, he left scraps of paper torn from his notebook, upon which he had written instructions for Sergeant Tarpley when he arrived: ‘Take fingerprints’, ‘Sketch blood pattern’, and the like. (I found them when I went for a snoop after he’d gone inside.)
Having diligently catalogued even the minutest details of the scene of the crime, he returned to the house, where Lord Riddlethorpe gave him the use of a small, informal room towards the rear of the ground floor. He called in guests and members of staff one by one, interviewing each of them for up to ten minutes.
I was waiting in Lady Hardcastle’s room when she returned from her own meeting with the newly invigorated inspector.
‘I say,’ she said as she breezed in. ‘He’s a good deal more impressive when he’s got something to get his teeth into.’
‘He seems to be much more interested this time,’ I said, and I told her about the notes I had just seen in the coach house.
‘I’m not sure he’s quite up to the standard of our own dear Inspector Sunderland, but he’d certainly give him a run for his money.’
‘Do you feel suitably interrogated?’ I asked.
‘I’ve been more aggressively questioned – that chap in Bucharest with the rubber cosh and the buckets of iced water was more enthusiastic, for instance – but seldom more thoroughly or thoughtfully.’
‘I shall look forward to taking my own turn,’ I said.
‘I’m glad you said that, dear – it’s your turn now. He asked me to send you in next.’
‘I shall get down there at once. Do I look presentable?’
‘There’s a smudge on your dress from when you were poking about in the coach house,’ she said. ‘But you’ll do for an interview with a police inspector.’
I went downstairs.
The inspector was sitting in a comfortable armchair. Opposite him was a chair from the dining room. He invited me to sit. The room itself was uncharacteristically small for the grand house. Perhaps it had been a study in former times, but now it seemed to be a solitary sitting room. The comfortable chair and its companion table were the only other furniture. There was a family photograph on the table beside an ornate lamp. The walls were panelled in oak, giving more credence to the ‘former study’ idea. A sash window gave a view towards the formal gardens at the rear of the house.
‘Miss Armstrong, isn’t it?’ said the inspector as I sat. I felt uncomfortably prim in the upright chair while he slouched in the armchair with his notebook.
‘Yes, Inspector, that’s right,’ I said.
‘And you work for Lady Hardcastle?’
‘I do, yes.’
He made a note. ‘For how long?’
‘How long have I been working for her? Let me see . . . She first offered me a job as her lady’s maid in ninety-four, so . . . fifteen years.’
‘You can’t have been very old,’ he said as he made a note. ‘What were you, fourteen, fifteen? No one employs a fifteen-year-old lady’s maid.’