Ten Lords A-Leaping: A Mystery Part 28

"Are you sure, Marve?" He heard Jamie echo his own concerns.

"A brandy might be the thing in the circ.u.mstances," she responded, "but this will do."

Jamie cast his eyes over the dowager countess's head at Tom, who had let the trowel hover over the cake.

"I say," Max piped up, reading aloud the message piped in white icing on the chocolate sh.e.l.l-HAPPY BIRTHDAY TOM THE GREAT-"how did you get your t.i.tle?"

"I inherited it from my father, Iain the Great."

Maxie peered at him as he pushed the trowel into the moist flesh of the cake. "I very much doubt it."

"Marguerite, this is astonishing. How did you know?"

"I phoned your mothers yesterday when I knew you wouldn't be able to get up to Gravesend."

"And you baked it yourself?" Jamie asked.

"You needn't sound so surprised, Jamie," Marguerite said. "I'm quite capable."

"Would you like a big slice, Max?" Tom asked.

"Apparently"-Marguerite took the filled plate and handed it to Miranda with a ladies-first admonishment to Max-"when Tom was about nine and reading ..."

"The Boy's Book of English Kings," Tom supplied.

"... he was much taken with Alfred the Great," Marguerite continued. "The only king to be so named."

"Better than being 'Unready,' " Jamie grunted, pushing at the cork. "Like Ethelred."

"Can I be Miranda the Great, do you think?" Miranda asked.

"How about Miranda the Good?" Tom suggested.

"By George, I think I shall call myself Maximilian the Magnificent." Max spread his arms.

"You already have a t.i.tle, my boy." Jamie grunted again. "Blast this cork!"

"Daddy had a phase where he was the Great Krimboni."

"That was not a phase," Tom said stoutly, placing a slice of gateau on another plate. "That was a job. At any rate, greatness is behind me. I'm now Tom the Terribly Ordinary or Tom the Distinctly Average ..."

"I think not," Jane countered.

"... or Tom the Suddenly Middle-Aged."

"Nonsense!" Jamie grunted as the cork flew from the champagne bottle with a bang, and the amber liquid poured over the neck. He raised the bottle and regarded them doubtfully, as he realised how ridiculous his next words might be: "Well ... cheers?"

Miranda dropped her plate on the table with an untidy clatter. "What," she said, crossing her arms over her chest in a way that reminded him of her mother, "is going on?"

Tom had hoped to relay the fact of Roberto's death and shoo the children from the room before revealing the dark cause to Jane and Anna, but no sooner had he spoken than Max and Miranda named it with a shared glance: murder. Uncle Oliver's death had brought only a sniffy curiosity from his nephew, but now Max moved to comfort his grandmother with an embrace. Miranda cast her father a troubled frown: murder for her was never fully an abstraction. When circ.u.mstance had forced him to clarify the circ.u.mstances of her mother's death, she had absorbed it piecemeal, doubtful, questioning. But she had been only seven, her eighth birthday but days away that dark November. Now at ten, she could evince an awareness of the implications startling in its maturity.

Jane had gasped at the revelation, but it was Anna's restraint and the flash of fear in her eyes that drew Tom's attention.

Did you hear or see anything then? The words were on his lips, but Marguerite broke away, to make the unhappy phone call to Roberto's father.

"Marve, I can hardly express my sorrow," Jane called after her, "but about John-"

"It will have to wait, my dear, I'm sorry." Marguerite pushed through the door to the corridor. "Come along, you two," she added, addressing Miranda and Max. "We'll ... amuse ourselves in the sitting room. I expect the adults want to have one of those conversations adults like to have."

"John?" Jamie regarded his wife quizzically after the children had reluctantly trotted after the dowager countess.

"I'm sorry, darling," Jane said, "proper introductions have gone missing. It gives me wifely pleasure to say 'I told you so,' but I told you so-this is Anna Phillips, who you knew as Ree Corlett."

Tom watched husband and wife exchange glances until, reaching for Anna's extended hand and beginning the customary greeting, the perplexity lifted from Jamie's expression. "Then it is you who ... I'm so sorry about your brother."

"Jamie," Jane interrupted, "let's catch you up."

Jamie's composure drained like air from a punctured tyre as Anna related her story. "But why?" Jamie's voice was anguished, "why would Olly kill my brother ... his cousin, his friend? Why?"

"Why did Kamran Arouzi take his own life?" Jane glanced at her barely touched cake.

Jamie stared at her. "Do you think there's a connection?"

"I don't know." Jane dropped her plate on the table. "It just came into my head. You said yesterday in the library that of the three great friends at Shrewsbury all were now gone-Olly the last. All of them have died before their time, but what you didn't note-what we haven't taken into account-is that all of them have died in violent circ.u.mstances."

"And John? Where is my brother?" Jamie's eyes roved the kitchen as if seeking him in some hiding place. "What is he playing at? Ree, you can't possibly believe-"

"No, no! At least ... not now. But when I saw Morborne's body in the Labyrinth, I couldn't keep my thoughts from John's manner the last time I saw him, the frightening silence, the coldness. As I was telling your wife and Tom, at that moment I could think of no one else who would want more to do away with Morborne. John had sacrificed himself thinking he was protecting David and me. Instead, he shielded the man who killed his brother. And my brother! And I thought-If he has done this thing, then good! I'll do everything I can to protect him."

"You found something on or near Lord Morborne's body, yes?" Tom asked.

Anna flinched, hesitated. "Yes, how did you know?"

Tom flicked a glance at the Allans. "Lord Morborne was strangled, and not with someone's bare hands. He was strangled with some thing, but so far whatever it is has eluded the investigators. I think," he continued, "you removed something from the Labyrinth because you thought it might point at John."

Anna seemed to consider her reply. "Taking it was simple impulse. It made no sense being there at all, but ..." She paused. "You see, my torchlight revealed a tie, of all things-a man's tie. But Morborne wasn't wearing a suit, and I panicked when I recognised the stripe pattern of the tie. It was a Shrewsbury tie."

"But-"

"I know your objection: How would I know one school tie from another? I went to a comprehensive in Deeside. But I kept one memento from that last summer at Tullochbrae, though I hid it away for years-a photograph of John taken in Shrewsbury School Chapel, wearing a tie."

"But John wouldn't have travelled around with his school tie," Jamie pointed out.

"I do know that," Anna responded with unexpected heat, "but you might imagine my state of mind!"

"Of course, I'm sorry."

"If you'll forgive the question," Tom interrupted, "was the tie around Lord Morborne's neck?"

"No," Anna replied. "I'm not sure if I could have brought myself to touch it, if it had been. It was in a little pile a foot or so away."

Jane frowned. "A reasonably intelligent killer would have taken the weapon away with him surely."

"Perhaps not if he were panicked or frenzied in some fashion," Tom countered, turning back to Anna. "You thought you had heard someone push through the bushes ..."

"Yes."

"And then you heard me. You pushed through, too, and ran ... towards the house, of course, yes?"

"Yes, I sensed that whoever I heard had gone in the other direction, towards the village, so I went the other way, yes, praying no one could see my head above the ha-ha-"

"And went into the Hall through the servants' entrance," Tom continued.

"How did you know?"

"I followed the path you made in the dew on the gra.s.s. Mrs. Gaunt was in the kitchen when I arrived. Was she there when you arrived?"

"I'm not sure. I didn't see her. Did she see me?"

"She says not."

"You know about the tunnel then?" Jane asked.

Anna's lips pinched. "Yes, I can see you know the rest. I've known about the tunnel between the Hall and the stable block for some time. Marguerite showed me, and I sometimes use it if the weather is poor and I'm going from the Hall to the dower house. Sometimes I take it for a lark. As I didn't want to be seen Sunday morning, the tunnel was a natural choice. I thought once I'd landed up at the stable block, I'd take one of the more secluded footpaths that lead back to the village."

"Did you intend to involve Marguerite?"

"No, I didn't. And I'm very sorry I have. Marguerite has had to make some very difficult choices in the last day, which I know is causing her distress."

"I'm not sure I understand," Tom started to say, but Anna, on her own train of thought, continued, "Marguerite saw me come out of the tack room where the tunnel opening is located. She was coming for her early-morning ride. She could see that I was shattered, so-"

"She took you back to hers," Tom finished.

"For strong sugary tea and a little nourishment," Jane added. "Tom and I visited Marve later yesterday morning. Three people had eaten breakfast, though not together-Marve, Roberto, and you."

"And I expect she drove you back to the village," Tom said.

Anna nodded. "As I say, I was shattered. I lay down in the backseat, then slipped out of Marguerite's car and into our cottage. No one saw me, I don't think."

In the short silence that followed, Tom glanced towards the kitchen window, half noting the grey wash of the sky, his mind reviewing Anna's story. "You took the tie with you, of course."

"Yes, I-"

"And hid it in the tunnel. How do we know? Max and my daughter Miranda found it when they were exploring earlier."

Anna frowned. "I couldn't think what to do with it once I had it in hand. I didn't want it to be found, I didn't want to take it back to the cottage where it might ... implicate John. Few know about the tunnel, and some of the bricks are loose, so-"

"Curiouser and curiouser," Jamie interrupted, digging into the right pocket of his trousers, "and I mean it. This is the tie the kids found in the tunnel." He pulled out a roll of tightly wound fabric and unfurled it-its satiny sheen caught the light. Anna recoiled. Tom regarded the striped affair with revulsion. As a murder weapon, it was a disturbing choice, at once the most commonplace of haberdashery and the most lethal.

"It very much looked like my tie," Jamie continued, "but I was sure-as I said earlier-that I had glimpsed my tie this morning in our bedroom when I was dressing. How could my tie have gone walkabout in a few hours, especially to such an odd place as the Egges...o...b.. tunnel?

"Well, it isn't odd, but it is curious, because, you see"-he pushed his hand into his left trouser pocket-"my tie was in our bedroom after all, neatly rolled in one of the drawers.

"There are, it appears," he continued, making a swift unfurling movement with his other hand, "two ties! Now, what do you think about that?"

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE.

"Come, look at them in the window." Jamie moved across the kitchen.

The light was pallid, cooler now since they'd left the stables, but sufficient to better illuminate the ties. In Tom's estimation there was little to distinguish one from the other. Each was a blue so dark it might be black in feebler light. Each had narrow diagonal stripes of yellow and burgundy running down to the left. The fabric of each, oddly enough, appeared to have undergone some stress, the cloth, particularly at the thin end, pulled and stretched, though not so much as to suggest the force, Tom thought, that would surely be needed to throttle a man. The only marked difference was that the tie in Jamie's right hand, no surprise, showed traces of dust, evidence of its recent resting place.

"Tunnel tie." Lord Kirkbride wiggled the one in his right hand. "Bedroom tie." He wiggled the left. "The tunnel tie is the ..." He grimaced. "... murder weapon. It must be. Ree-Anna, I mean-found it next to Oliver's body." He nodded to Anna. "But which one is the one Max brought down to the terrace Sat.u.r.day evening for Tom to do a magic trick? Which one is really mine?"

"The tags are slightly different." Jane turned each tie over. "Same manufacturer, slightly different script in the needlework, I'd say, but-"

"I've never paid any attention to the writing on the tags."

"I thought not. Who would?"

"I'm not sure I could tell you who's made any of my ties. I know where I've bought some of them, but that's no help, I don't think. I might have brought either of these ties with me to Egges...o...b..."

"You'd know where these came from, darling. They're school ties."

"That's true. Mummy would take us to Gorringes to get kitted out, so the tie may have come from there-or it might have come from the shop at the school, but I'm not sure how that might be helpful in identification."

"Forensics might prove useful." Tom continued to study the neckware.

"Cloth has no value for fingerprints," Jane said, "but DNA a.n.a.lysis might be revealing."

"But I know my tie-whichever of these is mine-had been touched by many hands. Mine, yours, Jane's-you handed it to me when we were packing last week-Gaunt when he unpacked our clothes, Max when he retrieved the tie, you, Tom, when Max gave you the tie, yes? Dominic when he was being silly and put it around his waist, Oliver himself when ... well, you know. Perhaps Mrs. Gaunt when she was tidying the next day, and who knows who else? Maxie doesn't seem to remember where he left it. Anyone might have handled it when we were in the drawing room Sat.u.r.day evening toasting Oliver's engagement. I'm not sure how narrowing this will be for investigators.

"And then there's the other tie. Who knows what information it might yield up? And whose d.a.m.ned tie is it anyway? The only other Old Salopian here at Egges...o...b.. is Oliver. And as he's unlikely to shed any light on this ..."

"Still, darling, forensics might yield up something."

"Yes, of course. I must hand them over soon. The police'll be displeased I've kept them this long."

Tom pa.s.sed his eyes from one stripey strip of cloth to the other. A glimpse of his own school tie, still tucked in a drawer at Dosh and Kate's in Gravesend, always brought back to him feelings of nostalgia-because he loved his school days-and relief, because he didn't have to wear the b.l.o.o.d.y silly thing anymore. (Though priesthood had conferred on him a different sort of neckwear.) Outside the school gates most days, he and his mates would whip their ties off and tie them around their heads. Once you were done with your school years, the only occasion to wear a school tie was at an old boys' event, as Jamie had done at Exeter; otherwise school ties fell by the wayside like comic books and roller skates. And yet, someone at Egges...o...b.. other than Jamie, for some reason, was in possession of a Shrewsbury tie. Tom gave them both a last glance before Jamie rolled them back into his trouser pockets.

"Odd," he said, nostalgia replaced by revulsion, "somehow, it all feels like sleight of hand."