‘I found out while I was fetching the picnic,’ I said.
‘Well, that makes things easier to discuss,’ said Miss Titmus. ‘What I was trying to say in my roundabout way was that Roz does have a connection with Fishy’s blessed motor cars because of her and Monty.’
Lady Hardcastle and I exchanged glances, but neither of us commented. As far as we were aware, we were the only ones apart from its author who knew about the incriminating note in Herr Kovacs’s room.
Talking of which . . . ‘Do you remember showing us that picture from your schooldays, Miss Titmus?’ I asked.
‘The cricket team?’ she said.
‘Yes, that’s the one. Have you any idea why Herr Kovacs might have taken it?’
She looked puzzled. ‘No, none at all. How do you know he took it?’
‘We had a quick poke about in his room before the rozzers arrived,’ said Lady Hardcastle. ‘It was on his writing desk.’
‘Good heavens,’ said Miss Titmus. ‘How odd. He did seem rather taken with it, though, didn’t he? Perhaps it was the cricket. Germans are baffled by cricket.’
‘Austrians,’ said Lady Hardcastle.
‘Hungarians,’ I corrected.
‘Just so,’ said Lady Hardcastle. ‘But that must have been it. Cricket. Fascinating game. Roddy played, you know.’
‘Roddy?’ asked Miss Titmus.
‘Oh, I’m sorry, dear. Roderick. My late husband.’
‘Oh, yes. Jake did tell me. When did you lose him?’
‘Ten years ago,’ said Lady Hardcastle. ‘In Shanghai.’
‘An illness?’
‘If only it were that mundane, dear. No, he was shot by a German agent. They thought Roddy was a spy, you see. Only he wasn’t. It was me.’
‘How do you know it was a German spy?’ asked Miss Titmus, now clearly enthralled.
‘Oh, we caught him, Flo and I.’
‘You caught him? I say. What happened to him?’
‘I shot him.’
‘Gracious.’
‘Quite. I’m sure he wouldn’t have understood cricket, either.’
The mood of the conversation rose steadily as the level of wine remaining in the two bottles fell. By the time the sandwiches had gone and the bottles were empty, Miss Titmus was a great deal less concerned about the prospect of her own imminent murder. Her mental energies were, instead, entirely focused on trying to remember the words of a vulgar song she had learned at school.
I told Lady Hardcastle where Miss Titmus’s room was and she steered her back there while I waited in Lady Hardcastle’s room.
‘I’ve taken her boots off and settled her on the bed,’ said Lady Hardcastle when she returned. ‘Remind me to pop back and wake her in time for dinner.’
‘Right you are, my lady,’ I said. ‘First things first, though: how did you come to rip this?’ I held up her tennis skirt. I’d been checking her clothes to make sure she had a dress clean for dinner when I noticed the damaged skirt.
‘Heaven only knows,’ she said. ‘One moment it was whole, the next moment rent in twain. I never saw the doing of it.’
I sighed, then sat in the armchair and began to sew up the rip. ‘Is Miss Titmus all right?’ I asked.
‘She was just a little unsettled, that’s all. We gave her just what she needed.’
‘By getting her sozzled and letting her sing filthy songs?’
‘Just so. And she didn’t actually sing the filthy song – she couldn’t remember the filthy bit.’
‘I suppose so,’ I said. ‘Did she tell you anything useful before I arrived?’
‘Helen? She doesn’t know anything about anything, bless her. Did you gather any useful titbits below stairs?’
‘Not really. Betty told me that Mrs Beddows didn’t make it back to her own room in time not to be noticed. Then she filled in some details about Mrs Beddows’s marriage.’
‘Not an entirely happy one, by all accounts.’
‘Can you honestly imagine Mrs Beddows being happy with anyone?’ I said. ‘Actually, that’s not fair – I’ve no idea what might make her happy. But I can’t imagine her being able to bring herself to show that she’s happy. It’s against her religion.’
‘To be perfectly truthful, I can’t imagine anyone finding happiness in being with her, either. She’s not the warmest of creatures.’
‘All of which means that I wasn’t at all surprised when I found that she and her husband didn’t get along. But I was stunned to my boot buttons that someone else found her appealing in any way.’
‘There’s no accounting for taste,’ she said. ‘Although she is rather attractive in a cold sort of way. And for all we know, she might be a tigress in the boudoir.’
‘A praying mantis, more like,’ I said. ‘Isn’t that the one who eats their mate? I can imagine her doing away with her lovers.’
Lady Hardcastle laughed, but made no comment. She sat at the writing desk and opened her journal.
‘We need to elevate ourselves above social gossip and make a proper effort at working out what’s going on in this blessed house. We’ve been drifting about like a couple of . . . of . . .’
‘I’ve told you before about recklessly setting off on these similes and just hoping for the best,’ I said. ‘But you’re right. If we imagine ourselves worthy of the name “interfering busybodies”, we need to be a sight better organized.’
‘I prefer “amateur sleuth”, dear, to be honest,’ she said. ‘But we do need a plan. What do we know?’
‘We know that Ellis Dawkins died in a car crash on Wednesday,’ I said, ticking the points off on my fingers. ‘We know that the car was sabotaged. We know it was sabotaged in the coach house. And we know that happened in the early hours of Wednesday morning after the party.’
Lady Hardcastle began writing a list in her journal.
‘We know that Herr Kovacs was clubbed to death in the coach house shortly after two on Saturday morning.’
‘So those are our two mysteries,’ she said. ‘We shall assume that they’re related.’
‘That seems fair, my lady.’
‘We don’t know for certain that the sabotage was intended to kill anyone, but if it was, we know that Dawkins was the target.’
‘Because the runners and riders were drawn at the party, and the race card was left in the great hall for all to see,’ I said.
‘Just so,’ she confirmed. ‘And we know that Viktor was lured to the coach house by a note, signed “R B”.’
‘Of which the police are unaware because it was pinched before Inspector Foister turned up.’
‘Hmm,’ she said as she wrote. ‘We know that Viktor wanted to buy the motor racing team, and that Fishy wasn’t interested.’
‘We know that Mr Waterford wasn’t interested, either – Evan heard him say so.’