The Daddy P.I. Casefiles: The First Collection by Frost, J (great novels .txt) 📕

loans at exorbitant rates and, when they couldn’t pay him back, he’d take their houses instead.”

“What does he want with a load of crumbling piles?” I asked, not fully comprehending the point at hand once more.

“He doesn’t care about the houses, he wants to sell the land on for a profit.”

I’d been doing a very simple jigsaw in my head and the pieces finally fitted together. “So you think that George has borrowed money from Horatio Adelaide and, if he doesn’t pay it back, they’ll repossess the Trevelyan estate?”

“There you go, I knew you were smarter than everyone says.” It was hard not to take this as an insult.

“So does that make it more or less likely that George is the one who put poison in the champagne? And if it wasn’t him, what was he really doing before the toast?”

He came to a stop outside the petit salon. “Christopher, you have just succinctly summed up the two doubts I am currently most eager to resolve. You are shaping up to be a most capable assistant.”

This compensated a touch for his previous comment, and a grin stretched out across my lips.

“Now, let’s forget about George for the time being and focus on what happened here last night.”

I clicked my heels together and saluted. “Yes, sir.”

He looked at me like I was missing part of my brain, so I put my hand down.

“Fellowes says that he heard a tapping at the window, which is impossible of course because we’re high above the level of the gardens. As I generally trust the man, let’s see what we can find outside.”

The salon was occupied by Uncle Maitland’s family. His wife Winifred and their children Francis and Eleanor were lucky enough to have had a free run at the breakfast table and were clearly enjoying the cakes I had ordered.

“Good morning, all.” Grandfather shot an absentminded glance in their direction, as we walked past them and out through the French windows.

We descended the steps down to the Italian gardens with their peaceful fountains and neatly laid-out flowerbeds. The air was warm and there were irises and violas flowering wherever I looked. It was the perfect day to investigate a murder, if one had to do such a thing.

In the distance, I could see my uncle bounding towards us on his morning walk. He waved and shouted, but was too far away for us to hear what he said. We went to take a look at the ground beneath the drinks room window. Grandfather stopped still and became rather mysterious for a moment.

“What do you think of that?” he asked, pointing at a small, smooth stone which matched the gravel path that circled the house.

“I think it’s a stone.”

“Oh, come along, Christopher, you can do better than that. What do you make of the fact that such a stone is some five yards away from the path where it normally resides, bearing in mind that a team of gardeners has worked tirelessly to ensure that not a leaf was out of place in preparation for last night’s celebration?” This was a very long sentence, but I managed to follow it.

I looked at the stone, then at the path and then at the window and felt quite proud of myself. “Someone took a stone from the path and threw it at the window to get Fellowes’s attention.”

“Bravo.” He did not inject much enthusiasm into this response and I had to wonder whether he regretted not choosing Big Francis or Eleanor to be his assistant after all.

“Maybe whoever threw it was working with the killer and knew that Fellowes would leave the champagne unattended.”

“Maybe.” He sounded even less convinced now, so I decided to stop offering any more theories of my own. “But if you’re right, and we’re looking for two culprits rather than one, it will make solving Belinda’s murder a great deal more complicated.”

“Can’t we dust the stone for fingerprints and find out who threw it.”

He crouched down to look at it more closely. “Well, we could, but I don’t think that will be necessary.”

“Why not?”

“Well, for one thing, it was a white tie ball and most of our guests were wearing gloves. But, even more significantly, I believe I know who is responsible.”

He’d really impressed me this time and my voice rocketed towards the clouds. “Just by looking?”

He answered with a furrowed brow and a shake of the head. “No, Christopher. I may be an experienced detective, but I can’t see invisible fingerprints.”

“So how do you know who-?”

He didn’t wait for me to finish. “Think about what Fellowes told us. He went outside and there was no one there, yet he was gone for at least five minutes.” He sounded quite amazed by my ability to ignore important evidence. “I felt sure you’d notice that.”

“You mean he met someone down here and it wasn’t one of the gardeners?”

“Correct.”

“But it was one of our suspects.”

“That’s right.”

I did some working out in my head. That didn’t get me far, so I tried it out loud instead. “Uncle Maitland and my father can’t stand Fellowes. Marmalade and George were supposedly together on the terrace. Great-Aunt Clementine was asleep upstairs… which only leaves Cora.”

Standing back up again, he twirled one end of his moustache and regarded me appraisingly. “Well, your reasoning is pretty shoddy, but, you got to the right outcome. Unless of course-”

I was looking forward to discovering his theory, and perhaps getting a little more praise for, in my opinion, my most commendable detective work, when Maitland caught up with us. His face was puffed up from the no doubt arduous stroll he’d undertaken. He looked like a tomato that had been left in the sun for too long. I couldn’t imagine how he’d cope with the walk back upstairs.

“Father, I need to talk to you.” He looked deadbeat and sounded paranoid. I could only assume that he had been kept up half the night by Inspector Blunt. He was dressed, as always, in his tweed