Ten Lords A-Leaping: A Mystery (Father Christmas) (40 page)

“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 grass. 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 Eggescombe 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?”

“
C
ome, 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 Saturday 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 Eggescombe.”

“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 analysis 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 Saturday 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 damned tie is it anyway? The only other Old Salopian here at Eggescombe 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 passed 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 bloody 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 Eggescombe 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.”

“Did you not see or hear anything?” Tom asked. They had moved into the back garden, Roberto’s death fresh in their heads.

Anna hesitated. “No.”

“You’re certain.”

“I’d not been in the tack room long when you and Jane arrived. I knew you were coming to tea, but, as I said earlier, I wanted to stay out of the way. I had no idea you would take the tunnel.”

Tom studied her expression. Was she prevaricating? Who at Eggescombe would Anna be most likely to shield from scrutiny? John, of course, her lover. Was she keeping from them his true whereabouts? Had she glimpsed him at the stables? It seemed unlikely, so un-John-like, sneaking about. He gave Anna a small smile to disguise his fervid thinking. It was Hector his mind glanced on next. Hector, whom he had seen dashing across the great hall, then, a little later, arriving out of breath, in the estate office. Granted, he had been in trainers and running kit; it was the queer timing, this run in the noonday sun. If Anna had glimpsed Hector at the stables, would she keep silent? Hector’s mother, the dowager countess, was her great protector.

A silence fell, broken only by the rustle of a rising breeze high in the sycamores beyond the courtyard. If anyone remained
wedded to the notion that a stranger to Eggescombe had brought mayhem this weekend, that notion had died with Roberto Sica. Tom’s mind roved further: Where had Lucinda and Dominic spent the last several hours? By the pool, as they said they were to do? And the staff, Gaunt and his missus? What were their routines and how, on this afternoon, might they have diverged? Even the reclusive Georgina, who seemed to have abandoned her family and guests? Did her migraines preempt any agency? And what of the police? Roberto’s death sent them back to square one, he knew that, despite DS Blessing’s reticence.

He looked again at Anna. “If I may ask, why did you leave Abbotswick this morning and come here? Marguerite said she hadn’t been expecting you.”

Anna pushed a loose strand of hair from her face. “I had to get away. A reporter from one of the London papers was being an utter pest. The others either loitered by the Gatehouse or holed up at the Pilgrims, but this one was nearly camped on our cottage doorstep.”

“Andrew Macgreevy.” Jane’s lips twisted.

“That’s the name. How did you know?”

“He’s sort of my bad penny.”

“He did introduce himself. He professed interest in David’s death.”

“He’s always been a dog with a bone.”

“You know him well?”

“Well, for one thing, he was an ongoing presence during the brief investigation into Boysie’s death and during John’s trial in Aberdeen.”

“And,” Tom added, “he appeared in Thornford last year after an unhappy death in the village.”

“
Him!
” Anna snapped. “Then he’s the man John thought might expose him in the press, and expose us to the red-haired man—to William’s true killer. We lived on tenterhooks for months, but nothing—”

“My wife’s doing,” Jamie said.

“I know he comes across as the worst sort, but Macgreevy has his moments.” Jane worried a fingernail. “He contacted me last year in London, during the incident that Tom mentioned—the one where a young woman was found dead in a taiko drum—saying that he had located John in Thornford. He gave me his word he would not write anything until John had been … restored to us, to the family. And then, of course, John vanished. Andrew’s kept his word in the meantime, but …”

“He must recall a sister and brother at Tullochbrae with a situation similar to yours, Ree,” Jamie said. “He’s put two and two together.”

“Perhaps he can be useful—Andrew, I mean,” Jane murmured.

“Darling, have you lost your mind? I want John to come home of his own accord, not be run to ground by the gutter press.”

“Yes, but my idea is to deflect Macgreevy’s attention—away from John. Not by setting him on some wild goose chase”—Jane addressed Anna—“but towards proof of Oliver’s criminal behaviour. The police seem to have had little success in finding your brother’s killer, haven’t they? And now all their resources have shifted to investigating Oliver’s death. If Andrew had an inkling that Oliver was the hit-and-run driver—”

“But oughtn’t we rightly to tell the police what Anna has told us?” Tom interrupted.

“The vicar’s correct, darling,” Jamie said. “It’s a police matter.”