The Herring in the Library (21 page)

‘Yes, it does. Annabelle knew Robert was going to be murdered and she knew who was going to do it, because she was in on it. She’d told the murderer about the secret
passage. After he had strangled Robert, he slips away into the passage. Annabelle is in the dining room in the full view of half a dozen people when the deed is done, so that’s a perfect
alibi. She then raises the alarm. But she can’t tell anyone about the secret passage because her accomplice could, for all she knows, still be hiding there. Once he’s gone, the
existence of the passage can be made known, but she now can’t admit that she knew about it before and failed to mention it to the police. So she goes through that bit of play-acting. But, she
still has a problem because Gillian Maggs might let slip to the police that Annabelle had been well aware of the passage for some time – possibly also that one or other of her lovers was aware
of the passage too. So, the one person who could give the whole game away then conveniently vanishes. When you start to question the daughter, the daughter vanishes too, having also gone to
“Barbados”.’

‘Yes, they went to Barbados,’ said Ethelred. ‘In the West Indies.’

‘No,’ I said, ‘they went to “Barbados” in inverted commas. Mrs Michie said they hadn’t got the money for that sort of trip. All three of them
are probably somewhere off the coast of Sussex with heavy weights attached to them.’

‘So, who is the accomplice hiding in the passage?’ said Ethelred, with a note of sarcasm that he would regret when I was proved right.

‘Clive Brent or John O’Brian.’

‘If it was Clive Brent, Annabelle knew exactly where he was. By the time the body was discovered he was right beside her. She wouldn’t have needed to lie about the
passage.’

‘John O’Brian then,’ I said, slightly reluctantly. ‘He claims to have left before the murder occurred. But who knows where he was? It all fits
together.’

‘No, it doesn’t fit together at all. If you have just conspired to murder your husband, and if the police are convinced it’s suicide, then surely you’d
say: “Yes, thanks, suicide, I’ll take that.” You wouldn’t spend the next two days trying to persuade everyone it was murder and get the police to open up the case again.
Above all you’d keep the secret passage secret.’

I ran through my argument again. There did seem to be a small flaw in it.

‘Something happened,’ I said, ‘between the discovery of the body and our conversation with Annabelle in the library the following day. Whatever it was caused
her to change her mind about keeping the existence of the passage to herself. If we just knew what that thing was then we’d know . . . well, we’d know a lot more than we do at the
moment.’

Ethelred sighed. ‘Maybe Fiona McIntosh can throw some light on it all this afternoon. In the meantime, I’m going to the post office to buy some coffee,’ he
said. ‘Is there anything I can get you?’

‘You need butter,’ I said.

It was while Ethelred was out purchasing essential groceries that his phone rang. I obviously answered it, but the caller got in the first word.

‘It’s Lady Muntham. Is Ethelred Tressider there?’

A little formal for one of Ethelred’s closest friends?

‘No,’ I said. ‘He’s just popped out. Butter crisis.’

‘Well, when he just pops back, could you give him a message?’

‘Of course.’

‘Tell that evil lying little shit that I never want to see him again.’

‘Is that the whole message?’

‘You can add that he’ll hear from my lawyers shortly.’

‘Got that,’ I said. ‘Have a nice day now.’

I put the phone down. I wasn’t quite sure what Ethelred had done but, whatever it was, I definitely approved.

Twenty-one

‘No,’ I said. ‘I’ve no idea what she meant.’

‘Well, you must have done something right,’ said Elsie. ‘She absolutely hates your guts.’

‘You must have got the message wrong,’ I said.

Elsie said nothing but her smile was deafening.

‘There’s clearly been some terrible misunderstanding,’ I said. ‘I’ll go straight over and sort it out.’

‘I’ll come with you,’ she said.

‘No,’ I said. ‘This time I’m going on my own. Aren’t you needed back in London?’

Elsie shrugged. ‘Fine. You can drop me off at the station first.’

‘It’s not on my way to Muntham Court.’

‘I never claimed it was.’

I drove back from the station as quickly as the traffic regulations allowed. As I turned off the main road onto the gravel drive that led to Muntham Court I felt my heart
beating faster than usual. I couldn’t imagine how the misunderstanding had occurred, but the sooner I saw Annabelle, the sooner we could resolve it. I was ready to counter recriminations. I was ready to laugh about some miscommunication. I was ready to apologize for
anything I had done or indeed not done. By the time I arrived at the house I had rehearsed almost every eventuality other than the one I encountered. The house was shut up. Nothing stirred. Nobody
answered my repeated sounding of the doorbell. I walked round to the back of the house, but the garden too was deserted.

I checked my watch. I could remain here until Annabelle chose to return or I could still just get to London in time for my meeting with Fiona McIntosh. I hesitated a moment, then drove back into
Worthing and parked close to the station. I bought a day return and was soon seated in a train pursuing Elsie’s towards Victoria.

I had arranged to meet Fiona McIntosh in a cafe close to where she worked. For some reason I had expected her to opt for a skinny wet mochaccino or something else that would
demonstrate urban sophistication, but she just asked me to order her a black coffee.

‘I’ve no idea what half of those things up on the board are,’ she said. ‘I suspect the people who work here don’t know either.’

I returned to our table clutching two large mugs.

‘They’re called Americanos,’ I said.

‘I wonder when people stopped drinking coffee,’ she said. ‘So, unless you’ve travelled up to London just to buy me an Americano, what can I do for you in
return?’

‘I just need to know slightly more about the discovery of Robert’s body,’ I said.

‘Well, entering as you did via the window, you beat me to it by a good thirty seconds. I guess you already know at least as much as I do.’

‘I didn’t examine him as closely as you did.’

‘Yes, but you’d probably had less to drink than I had. Quite a lot less, actually.’

‘You would still have seen things I missed. I’m not a doctor.’

‘So you’re not,’ conceded Fiona McIntosh. She put her coffee down and looked me in the eye. ‘Very well, Robert died of asphyxiation as a result of a thin cord being wound
tightly round his neck. No doubt the CSI people would have preferred me to leave it in place, but trying to save lives gets to be a habit unless you’re careful. So, there’ll be no
photographs of the ligature in situ, I’m afraid, and only my hazy recollection of events to help you. I do remember, however, that there was a pencil inserted in the cord, which had first
been used to tighten the noose and then fixed behind Robert’s ear to hold it in place. It’s not the commonest form of suicide, but there are recorded cases. It’s quite effective
if you can get a few minutes to yourself and there are no busybodies around to revive you. With the cord removed, you could see there were slight abrasions of the neck, entirely consistent with the
apparent cause of death. No petechiae on the skin or eyes, as I recall, but that doesn’t really prove anything one way or the other. Death by strangulation, without any doubt at
all.’

‘Annabelle doesn’t . . .’

‘. . . doesn’t like to think it was suicide? Yes, I know. But for it to be murder, as I think Colin pointed out, surely there should have been some sign of a struggle? A chair
overturned would have been good, if slightly clichéd. Everything was, however, remarkably tidy, down to the pen on the desk.’

‘I was thinking – perhaps Robert knew his killer? Perhaps he was overcome before he realized what was happening?’

‘Well, as you are aware, people do tend to know their killers a lot of the time. Strangers may murder you for the cash in your wallet, but the potential for pissing off your friends is
considerable. Still, you’d have to know somebody very well indeed before you’d let them wind a cord round your neck and tighten it with a 3B pencil.’

‘Facetiousness to one side,’ I began.

‘Who’s being facetious? I can’t say I’m into that type of game myself. I don’t think Colin is either, though if he ever brings a length of cord to bed with him,
I’ll probably decline. But some people do get a kick out of asphyxiation, so I’m told. Unfortunately, it’s the sort of game that can go badly wrong.’

‘You’re not suggesting . . .’

‘. . . that a member of the British aristocracy would engage in kinky sex? No, I’m sure that’s never happened before. Especially to one with the nickname
“Shagger”.’

‘Facetiousness, as I said, to one side, there was no evidence . . .’

‘. . . of any sexual practices, deviant or otherwise? You’re quite right. He died with his boots on and his trousers in place. In summary, there was no evidence either that Robert
had resisted or that he had welcomed the killer’s attentions. Where does that leave us?’

‘I don’t know. Where does it leave us?’

She paused, doubtless summoning up the key points from some long-past course on How to Break Bad News.

‘It was suicide, Ethelred. Suicide, pure and simple. Nobody could have got out of that room.’

‘There is a secret passage,’ I said.

‘So, that’s the solution to the locked-room mystery? A secret passage? How boring.’

‘The solutions to most locked-room mysteries tend to be a bit of a let-down. It’s rather like having a conjuring trick explained to you.’

‘Well, that does open up other possibilities, I suppose. Assuming there was somebody who, one way or another, could get the rope round Robert’s neck, they could have rendered him
unconscious in ten seconds or so. They would not have needed to hang around until he was dead – just left him as he was and hopped back into this secret passage and off to the billiard room.
She could have been back with the other guests in no time,’ said Fiona.

‘She?’

‘Or he, of course, but I’m still thinking of Robert not objecting while somebody playfully ties a rope round his neck.’

We both contemplated this image for a moment.

‘Annabelle says she didn’t know the passage was there,’ I said. ‘We discovered it after Robert’s death.’

‘Did Robert know it was there?’

‘I don’t know – one end was in his library, after all.’

‘It’s a shame he can’t just tell us.’

‘Yes,’ I said, thinking of the trail of obscure clues he had laid for me. ‘Yes, it would be good if he could just do that.’

‘Well, if that’s all I can do for you . . .’ Fiona began.

‘Almost,’ I said. I paused, wondering how to get round to the main purpose of my visit. It hadn’t troubled me when Elsie had first mentioned it, but it had weighed on my mind
since.

‘You and Robert saw a lot of each other last year,’ I said.

‘Is that what he told you?’

‘No, I saw the entries in his diary.’

‘I didn’t know he kept one.’

‘Just a simple appointments diary, but “FM” appears quite often.’

‘He was an old friend,’ she said. ‘We would meet up for coffee. Very often we would meet up exactly here. This cafe, this table.’

‘Twice or three times a week?’

‘Yes. He was lonely, Ethelred. He had problems he didn’t seem to be able to discuss with anyone else. Sometimes he just wanted to talk about the past to take his mind off the
present. After the bank sacked him he was a bit of a lost soul. Didn’t he ever drop round and have coffee with you for no apparent reason?’

‘Quite often,’ I said. ‘Decaffeinated.’

‘There you are then,’ she said. ‘And Ethelred . . .’

‘Yes?’

‘It was suicide.’

‘I’ll bear that in mind,’ I said.

I left Fiona to return to her hospital and to her operating list for the afternoon. I had a second visit to pay, close by.

I walked along Euston Road to the British Library. I wanted to consult a paper by Professor Keith Simpson in an old volume of the
International Criminal Police Review.
The Internet is all
very well, but it lacks the authority of a leather-bound tome, read within the hallowed walls of one of the greatest libraries in the world. Professor Simpson had described in detail six cases of
suicide by self-strangulation. In one case a son had narrowly avoided conviction for the death of his mother, so like murder had it seemed. Another case involved the use of a pencil to tighten the
ligature. I also wanted to remind myself of the circumstances surrounding the death of General Pichegru – one of Napoleon’s generals, found strangled under similar circumstances and
another suicide.

Fiona McIntosh seemed as keen to believe that it was suicide as Annabelle seemed keen to believe it was murder. Though it was easy to understand why Annabelle would not wish it to be suicide, it
was difficult to see that Fiona’s conclusions were based on anything other than the medical evidence. Of all the guests assembled that evening, she at least seemed to have no axe, or any
other type of murder weapon, to grind.

Twenty-two

It’s a long trip back to London from Worthing, and it gave me a bit of thinking time. My theory about Annabelle conspiring with John O’Brian obviously needed a bit
more work.

Though I was convinced that Annabelle had lied about the passage, there was another flaw in my argument that Ethelred had generously not pointed out. There is nothing so
irritating for any wife as to find that you have just murdered a husband who only had a month or two to live anyway. Annabelle must have suspected how ill Shagger was, even if he hadn’t told
her the whole story. Calculating bitches don’t chip their nail varnish unless they absolutely have to. Annabelle would have just let things take their natural course, not hastened them with a
bit of rope.

I couldn’t help feeling, though, that this murder had a woman’s hand in it somewhere. Men shoot each other or bludgeon each other to death. Strangulation with a
slender cord wound tenderly round the neck has that feminine touch sadly missing from so many modern-day killings. What I really needed to focus on was which of the women, other than Annabelle,
might have wanted Robert dead. Felicity Hooper was, when you thought about it, the one with the motive – cruelly abandoned and left to the mercies of some backstreet abortionist. Why
shouldn’t she have resented Shagger Muntham’s rise to fame and riches? Why shouldn’t she have earnestly wished him dead? And she had no way of knowing that Shagger was on his way
to the Happy Hunting Ground without her help. So, to conclude, why shouldn’t she have taken the opportunity to strangle him – having first loudly pointed out that the lack of security
at Muntham Court could have allowed any number of murderers in? And, thinking about it, having cleverly ensured that Ethelred and I would remain in the dining room . . .