Unholy Alliance (15 page)

“I’ll set up shop in here, if you don’t
mind,” Marc said, “and call in our gentleman guests one by one,
while Cobb will make himself comfortable in the northeast wing to
interview the staff.”

Macaulay paled. “You’re not going to treat
the Quebecers like
suspects
,” he gasped.

“No, no,” Marc reassured him. “I intend to
treat them as important witnesses who will be assisting us in our
search for the killer. I’ll simply ask them what they saw and heard
last evening, and whether or not they can help us discover what
happened to your wife’s laudanum.”

Macaulay looked much relieved. “I’ll inform
Mrs. Blodgett and Priscilla that for today at least there will be
no formal meals served. I’ll have her prepare cold fare and lay it
out in the dining-room to be sampled whenever we wish.”

“Good thinking,” Marc said. He glanced at
Cobb, then said to Macaulay, “We’ll start our questioning with you,
Garnet.”

“Yes, of course.”

“Tell us about last night after your guests
left this area to go to bed,” Marc began. Cobb dragged his notebook
out of his pocket, fished about for his pencil-stub, and prepared
to take notes (‘prepared’ being all he ever did, as he invariably
relied on his memory and, when he got back to the police quarters,
he would dictate his findings to the police clerk, Augustus
French).

“Well, Marc, after you left to see about Beth
– and I’m delighted to hear that everything is all right at home –
Francis and Bérubé played billiards for a while, while I watched
and tried to help them converse in two-and-a-half languages. As
you’ll recall, Robert and LaFontaine were together in the parlour.
They came out about nine-thirty or so and asked Chilton for a
supply of paper and ink. Very mysteriously, I must say, they then
slipped off to their quarters.”

“Where was Tremblay?”

“According to Chilton, who was in and out
serving us drinks, he had called for a bath. I don’t know if he
actually took one – you could check with Priscilla – as he left us
right after the meal. At some point I presume he went to bed – in a
sulk more than likely.”

“An’ all these French gents was helpin’ you
with yer business adventures, I take it?” Cobb said with a sideways
grin aimed at Marc.

“That’s right, constable. Anyway, by ten
o’clock we were all ready to turn in. I waited like a proper host
until everyone had left this part of the house. All went to their
rooms, except Bergeron, who, you’ll recall, retired early to try
and catch up on his lost sleep. He too may have taken a bath – I’d
instructed Bragg to fire up the boiler and Priscilla to leave extra
towels so that the guests could fend for themselves in there.”

“So, except for Chilton, all the servants
would have been in their quarters by ten?” Marc said.

“Yes. With Phyllis in Kingston attending her
mistress, only Bragg and Finch work on this floor.”

“And Chilton?”

“I watched him begin to tidy up the drinks
glasses, bade him good night, and retired to my bedchamber. His
routine at this point would be to snuff the candles, check the
front and rear doors to see that they were locked and barred, and
then either retreat to his own rooms or go to his office to work
the accounts at his desk – where we found the poor bugger.”

“By ten-fifteen or so, then, this entire
section of the house would have been deserted and in relative
darkness?”

“It should have been, certainly, though I
myself was in my room by then and Chilton was, as we now know,
still up and about.”

“Yes. We can be sure that Chilton did at some
point go to his office, light two candles in there, open up his
ledger, and begin sipping whiskey from a silver flask.”

“That surprises me, Marc, because he gave
absolutely no indication that he was secretly imbibing. You
yourself observed his behaviour. And there was never the slightest
taint of alcohol on his breath.”

“It was
his
flask, all right,” Cobb
said. “I saw his initials – G.C. – on it.”

Marc raised an eyebrow in acknowledgement of
Cobb’s keen observation. “Cobb and I will look for further evidence
of his drinking when we search his rooms in a few minutes.”

“He must have taken those wine-goblets from
the china-cabinet in the dining-room,” Macaulay said.

“Perhaps he was
expecting
company?”
Marc suggested.

“Or if someone did come down the hall and
decide to join him, he could have fetched a second glass in thirty
seconds,” Macaulay pointed out. “Or fetched two glasses if he’d
been drinking his whiskey straight out of the flask.”

“What was drunk from those goblets was
sherry,” Marc said. “We need to trace the possible source of that
bottle.”

“Do you keep
Amount-i-ladle
in yer
wine cellar?” Cobb asked Macaulay.

“I noticed the label on the bottle when I
first arrived here this morning and was checking the body for signs
of life – I didn’t touch anything, just looked – and I can say for
certain that the poisoned wine did not come from my cellar.”

Marc sighed. “That’s unfortunate. We had
hoped that Chilton – who, along with you, would have had the only
keys to the cellar – had obtained the Amontillado there himself,
and that he either did himself in or his visitor distracted him
long enough to pour laudanum into the sherry.”

“Maybe this visitor called fer another
goblet, an’ when the obligin’ butler went off to fetch it, the
bugger doctored the wine.”

“Very plausible,” Marc said. It was a
possibility he himself had not considered. “Nevertheless, we now
face the unhappy prospect of discovering who took the laudanum from
the bathroom shelf and how the Amontillado got into Elmgrove and
ended up in Chilton’s office.”

“If Chilton was a secret tippler,” Cobb said,
“he could’ve brung the sherry here with him. Could’ve been a
partin’ gift from his old master.”

“Right now, that’s the most likely
explanation. But we’ll need to ask everyone concerned about
it.”

“We gonna
ram-sack
the rooms lookin’
fer the missin’ medicine bottle an’ a jug of sherry like the one we
found beside Chilton?”

Macaulay flinched. “We can’t do that, sir! My
guests are gentlemen!”

“What we’ll do,” Marc said, “is ask the
gentlemen themselves to look carefully in their own rooms to see if
the empty vial has been illicitly stashed there. Surely a cold,
calculating killer, which we have here, would not be so
uncalculating as to hide such damning evidence in his own
quarters.”

“Yes, yes, that’s the proper way to go about
it,” Macaulay said gratefully.

“Thank you, Garnet,” Marc said, rising.
“You’ve been very helpful and a pillar of strength in the midst of
this sudden upheaval. Would you mind going into the nearby rooms
and informing the others that I would like to begin interviewing
them individually in about fifteen minutes. They’ll no doubt be
anxious and inquisitive. Please tell them only the essential facts:
that the butler is dead, probably murdered, and that for the time
being all normal activities are suspended. As I meet with them –
here, if that’s convenient – I’ll add such information as I deem
advisable.”

“I’ll go right away. What are you going to do
in the interim?”

“Have a close look at Graves Chilton’s
rooms.”

***

Elmgrove’s butler had been given two rooms for his
personal use. Marc and Cobb entered the small sitting-room first,
furnished simply and illuminated by a narrow window overlooking the
east lawn, now snow-covered. While Cobb turned over cushions and
hunched down awkwardly to peer under the couch, Marc went to the
secretary, rolled up the cover, and began poking about among the
papers inside.

“What’ve ya got, Major?”

“Not much, but it may be significant. There’s
a passenger’s receipt for a steamship ticket from Bristol to New
York – in the name of Graves Chilton. Dated last month.”

“Looks like our victim did arrive here when
he said he did.”

“It would seem so. And here’s a receipt from
The Albany Hotel in New York City, where Chilton told Macaulay he’d
been laid up for a week with the after-effects of
mal de
mer.
”

“That don’t leave much time fer him to get
overland to Kingston an’ be recruited fer any
new-furious
activities at Elmgrove, does it?”

“No, it doesn’t. The man’s troubles must have
started and ended right here in this house.”

“Let’s try the other room. There’s no whiskey
jugs or medicine bottles hidden in this one.”

They went into the bedroom. It was cold, dark
and windowless. Cobb went back out, found a candle and
lighting-kit, and returned. But an initial search of the place
turned up no hard evidence. However, in the wardrobe beside the
bed, Marc found a leather grip and pulled it out.

Cobb opened it. “Empty,” he said. “But look
here. The fella’s initials are set in brass near the handle. He
must’ve carted his belongin’s two thousand miles in this
thing.”

Marc was re-examining the frock coats and
trousers in the wardrobe. “Every one of these has the label of a
London tailor. Mr. Chilton seems to have done very well for
himself, before his fall from grace.”

“Say, what’s that that fell outta one of them
coat pockets?” Cobb said, pointing to a piece of paper at the foot
of the wardrobe.

Marc picked it up. “It’s a letter of sorts.
It must have been stuffed in the lining – I didn’t see it at
first.”

“What’s it say?”

Marc read aloud:

Bellingham House

21
^st
inst.

Gravsie:

I hope the kis we had in the ironing

cubbord last nigt ment as much to you as

it did to me. I must see you agen or my
hart

wil brake

yore lover

Gertie

“Sounds like he hung onto one of them
billy-douches
from some silly maid of his,” Cobb opined.

Marc smiled, but found himself oddly touched
by the letter and its sentiments. “One of his many conquests back
home, I suppose. Macaulay was told that Chilton had a weakness for
the weaker sex.”

“Well,” Cobb summed up their effort, “we got
ourselves a
bone-a-fido
English butler, but no medicine
bottle an’ no fancy booze.”

“Perhaps the poor devil carried that flask of
whiskey around with him in order to face the temptation of the
drink every day. Alcohol can be a devastating addiction.”

“I guess we gotta figure the poison was
brought inta his office by the killer, an’ probably the sherry,
too.”

“It’s not much, but with Garnet’s clear
account of the late-evening events and whereabouts of the guests
and staff, and from what we’ve deduced about the possible sequence
of actions in the butler’s office, we now have a solid base from
which to ask questions of our suspects.”

Cobb grinned. “You like to take yer time
about interrogatin’, don’t ya?”

“Never begin until you know all you can –
”

“In advance of yer questionin’,” Cobb
finished up with a chuckle.

“So, let’s get to it,” his mentor said.

***

As they stepped out into the rotunda and turned
towards the front of the house, they heard the door to the
servants’ wing open. Priscilla Finch came trotting past them
balancing a tray of buns and tarts.

“Miss Finch,” Marc said to her, “could we
have a word, please?”

Priscilla looked as if a word with the
policemen or any other male was the last thing she wished, but she
stopped at the entrance to the dining-room, drew her tray up to her
chest, and waited, dutifully. Her eyes were red and swollen from
crying, and made a vivid contrast with the washed-out white of her
face. All her prettiness had vanished. Obviously the shock of
finding the butler dead and cold in his office had deeply affected
her.

“I know you’ve had a terrible shock, miss,”
Marc said as Cobb gallantly took the tray off her hands (and palmed
a tart as he did so). “But I really do need to know something that
you may be able to help me with.”

“I-I’ll try my best, sir,” she stammered,
unable to control the trembling of her lower lip.

“Mr. Macaulay asked you and Bragg to prepare
the bathroom for possible use later last evening, did he not?”

“Yessir,” she said warily. “We try to be
a-bed or in our quarters before nine-thirty if possible, as we’re
often up a five-thirty or six in the mornin’.”

“Bragg would have made sure the boiler was
full of hot water and you, I presume, would bring up a fresh supply
of towels and soaps?”

“Yessir. I did that about seven o’clock. Mr.
Bragg was to come up a bit later an’ stoke up the stove.”

“Did you place any soaps or salts on the
little shelf above the tub?” Marc asked, recalling, as he did so,
the layout of the room he had been shown on Wednesday.

“Matter of fact, I did, sir. Several bars of
perfumed soap and a big jar of bath salts.”

“Please, think carefully before answering:
did you notice whether or not Mrs. Macaulay’s spare bottle of
laudanum was on that shelf?”

“I don’t haveta think, sir. It was there at
seven o’clock. I recall ‘cause I reached over the tub an’ had to
shunt it aside a bit in order to get the pot of salts to sit there
properly.”

“Thank you, Miss Finch,” Marc said, and
nodded at Cobb to return the tray. Priscilla took it eagerly and
disappeared into the dining-room.

“That was serendipitous, Cobb,” Marc said.
“We now know the laudanum was there at seven. I believe we can take
Miss Finch at her word – for now. So, sometime between seven and,
say, twelve-thirty in the morning, someone in this house slipped
into the bathroom and removed it. All our guests knew where it was
because Macaulay announced its whereabouts at supper, and certainly
the servants would know.”