Read Online The Stately Home Murder by Catherine Aird - Free Book Online

as he can.”
    â€œThen there’s my cousin and Eleanor.”
    â€œMiss Gertrude is still in the china room, sir. I don’t think the last of the visitors have quite gone yet. And Lady Eleanor is … er … cashing up at the front door.”
    â€œThey’ll both have to be told.” The Earl waved a hand. “The house is full of police.”
    This last was an exaggeration. Inspector Sloan and Constable Crosby had already been swallowed up by the house. And there would, in any case, have been room for the entire Berebury division in the great hall alone.
    â€œYes, sir,” murmured Purvis, who was not paid to contradict the Earl.
    â€œAnd my aunts.”
    â€œWe’re all right for the moment there, sir. They won’t have been out yet. The visitors have hardly gone.”
    â€œIf I know them,” declared Lord Ornum, “they’ll be abroad any minute now. On the warpath. Looking for damage.”
    Purvis moved over towards the window. “We’ve got a little time anyway, sir. They’ll wait until that coach has gone.”
    The Earl sighed heavily. “And then, Charles, you’d better find out exactly where my nephew William has been all this week.”
    Purvis hesitated. “I think he’s down, sir …”
    The Earl sighed again. “I thought he might be.”
    â€œSomeone told me that he was in The Ornum Arms last night,” said Purvis uneasily.
    â€œBad news travels fast.”
    â€œYes, sir.”
    â€œThen slip down to his cottage and tell him I want to see him, will you, there’s a good chap. I think we’d better keep him in the picture in spite of everything.”
    â€œVery well, sir.”
    The Earl lifted an eyebrow. “You don’t agree?”
    Charles Purvis said carefully, “He’s a very talkative young man, sir.”
    â€œHe gets that from his father.”
    â€œYes, sir, but it might do some harm …”
    â€œHe’s my sister’s boy, Charles. I can’t have him kept in ignorance of trouble here.”
    â€œNo, sir.”
    â€œAfter all”—a gleam of humor crept into the Earl’s melancholy countenance—“we always hear when there’s trouble there, don’t we?”
    â€œWe do indeed,” agreed Charles Purvis grimly.
    The first of the experts in death had arrived at Ornum House by the time Inspector Sloan and Constable Crosby got back to the armory. They were the two police photographers, Dyson and his assistant, Williams.
    Dyson was standing by the door lumbered about with his equipment.
    â€œNice little place you have here, Inspector.”
    â€œAnd a nice little mystery,” rejoined Sloan tartly.
    Dyson looked up and down the two rows of armored figures. “Make quite a pretty picture, this will.”
    â€œI’m glad to hear it.”
    â€œThe lab boys will think I’ve been to the waxworks or something.” Dyson walked forward. “Which is the one that didn’t get away?”
    â€œSecond on the right,” said Sloan, “but we’ll want some of the total setting, too.”
    â€œA pleasure.” Dyson assembled his camera and tripod with a rapidity that belied his flippant approach. His assistant handed him something, there was a pause, and then a quick flash. “Don’t suppose these chaps have seen anything brighter than that since Agincourt or something.”
    Sloan was inclined to agree with him. There was an overall gloom about the armory that had nothing to do with the presence of the dead.
    Williams, Dyson’s assistant, was rigging up some sort of white sheet to one side of the suit of armor for the tilt, circa 1595. He had persuaded Crosby to stand holding one end.
    â€œNeed the reflected light,” explained Dyson.
    Sloan nodded. Dyson never complained about his conditions of work. If he needed anything he brought it with him. He and Williams were self-sufficient