Murder at the Spring Ball: A 1920s Mystery by Benedict Brown (simple ebook reader txt) 📕

carried out a topographical study of every chest and fixing. The armoury had never been designed for storing weapons, it was simply that my family had acquired such an extensive collection over the years that they needed a room of their own. There were two suits of armour by the door which gave the place its name. I walked back to have a closer inspection, as I’d barely looked at them on my first visit that day.

“Grandfather?” I didn’t like to interrupt him but the most extraordinary thought had entered my mind. “What if whoever shot Uncle Maitland was hiding inside one of these when I came in and then slipped out when we were distracted?”

He said nothing for a moment and I felt a little pride to know that he was giving my theory the weighty consideration it deserved.

“You know, Christopher, that is one of the most ridiculous ideas I’ve ever heard. There’s a rather large hole in the visor. You’d have spotted the killer instantly. Besides, he’d have had plenty of time to get away before you arrived, what good would hanging around here have done him?”

“Oh… Um.” I didn’t really have an answer to that. “Well, it was just a thought.”

He continued his examination, bending low to sniff the cigar ash, just as I had. With a twitch of the nose and a sidelong glance, he soon moved on. Pausing to examine the empty space where the crossbow had been, and then its twin on the opposite wall, he made a contemplative clicking sound in his cheeks. Finally, he walked over to the window and angled his head to look out. “Tell me something, boy. Did you actually see this window open when Maitland was killed?”

I thought for a moment. “Well, no, I didn’t. I mean, the shot must have come from this general direction but… well, I suppose I saw the crossbow bolt and assumed the killer was in the armoury.”

He hummed in reply and moved to the side of the window to assess the angle required to fire at Maitland, before turning his eyes up to the ceiling. “Yes, a logical conclusion, I have to admit. And obviously our culprit would have come in here to fetch the weapon, but we can’t be sure that this is where he fired from. The window wasn’t open when you got here, for one thing. Who would have gone to the trouble of closing it, knowing that the whole house would be up in arms as soon as Maitland’s cry rang out?”

I had to hope this was a rhetorical question as I hadn’t the foggiest idea. I was once more inclined to think that my role in the investigation could have been filled by a shop mannequin or perhaps a ventriloquist’s dummy. It seemed that my main function was to make it appear as though my grandfather wasn’t talking to himself.

He took another look around the room and distractedly twisted his long white beard around one finger. Apparently satisfied with his examination, he nodded his head and said, “On we go, Chrissy. Time and tide wait for no man.”

I was desperately low on energy by this point and struggling to stand. “Where are we off to next?”

He spun back around to me. “I think you’ll like this.” He let the words run through my head for a heartbeat or two before putting me out of my misery. “It’s lunchtime!”

Did Dickens himself ever transcribe any two words more beautiful than those? Did England’s immortal Bard strike upon any such moving a couplet? I could have jumped into my grandfather’s arms and given him the sort of warm embrace that has never been a feature of Cranley family interaction.

“That doesn’t mean you can let your guard down,” he said, as he marched away. “I expect you to keep your eyes wide open for evidence. You must remember that anyone could be guilty.”

I practically sprinted down the hallway to the dining room then immediately prayed that Grandfather’s warning would not prove prescient. The only guests who would be joining us for lunch were Mother, Father and my lovesick sibling.

“It’s a rum business, no doubt,” my father announced once we were all sitting down and Albert had mopily rung the bell for lunch.

“Darling,” my mother interrupted, before Father could utter any other such inanity. “Belinda and Maitland are dead. I think it’s a little worse than that.”

He looked stunned that his normally deferential wife would have felt the need to correct him. “Oh… um, quite!”

As he helped himself to a good measure of whisky from the corner cabinet, I noticed that my grandfather was looking at his son-in-law through the corner of his eye. No one else saw it but I realised then that, for all that he’d tried to reassure me, he hadn’t dismissed the possibility that my father was the killer.

This also made me question his attitude towards Cora and George. Had he really been as soft on them as I’d believed or was he lulling them into a false sense of security? And if he had crossed them off our list, who did that leave us with? Fellowes who was already sick at the time of the second murder, a batty old woman who could barely look after herself, a missing bully with few ties to the family and…

It was my turn to look at my father in a different light.

“I just meant to say that it’s a thoroughly…” He was ruffled by the stony atmosphere which, in a few clicks of the mantelpiece clock, had occupied the space around us. “Or rather, it’s really very-”

“Thank you, Walter,” Grandfather interrupted, a half-smile on his face. “I appreciate the sentiment.”

The cheeky blighter was at it again. Lord Edgington of Scotland Yard wasn’t the softy I’d mistaken him for. His years in the wilderness had done nothing to dull his instincts and his skill for manipulation was as strong as ever. With one simple look, he’d defused the tension in the