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

moment whether what he and I had said was actually any different. It was too much of an enigma for me to solve, so I accepted that he was cleverer than me and asked another question.

“But this does mean that George is the likely suspect, doesn’t it?” I didn’t quite achieve the self-assured tone I was aiming for and sounded as though I wanted him to set me straight on the matter.

“Why in heavens would you say that?”

“Because…” I stumbled over my reply. It was hard not to when trapped within my grandfather’s cold, grey gaze. “Because George threatened our family and then fifteen minutes later, we almost died.”

“Why would he kill his own mother to hurt Maitland? Why would he have had poison with him? Just in case he fancied dabbling in a spot of mass murder?” His voice rose with each question.

“Two birds with one stone,” I retorted, feeling unnerved by his lack of faith in my ability to construct even the most basic of motives for our suspects. “He could get Adelaide off his back and inherit Cranley in one go. He was never going to drink the champagne himself; his little stumble made sure of that.”

Having raged at me one minute prior, Grandfather was now beaming. “That’s my boy, we’ll have you thinking like a detective in no time. But there’s one thing you overlooked.”

“Oh, yes!?” I hadn’t calmed down even if he had. “And what’s that?”

He walked over to his chair and took a folio of paper and a fountain pen, which he dipped in a bottle of ink before answering.

“Sorry, the brain isn’t what it was. I need to write these things down sometimes in case they escape me.” I didn’t quite believe him, but he finished the task and looked back up. “You forgot about Maitland himself. How do we know that he wasn’t the one to poison the champagne? Just because someone killed him after, it does not rule him out as a suspect.”

The very concept of this came as a revelation to me. How could I have been so foolish as to ignore Maitland’s potential as a killer?

“I’m not saying he did it, but you at least need to consider the possibility. Perhaps he killed Belinda, while hoping to get rid of the lot of us and, when George worked out what was going on, he shot Maitland for revenge.”

It was all too much for me. I couldn’t keep hold of so many threads at once the way he could and I rather wished he’d let me look at his notes to get a better grasp on the case.

“But…” I attempted once more. “Are you saying that Maitland would have murdered his own children? And Auntie Winifred too?”

He straightened up and pulled the tails of his coat down tight to remove any creases as he considered the question. “Winifred, possibly, but I think you have forgotten something.” A pause, a flick of the eyes to the door, and then he continued. “Maitland stopped your cousins from drinking the champagne. It was just before Belinda collapsed. He made a big noise, saying they were too young for alcohol. They’re older than he was when I first gave him wine and it struck me as odd.”

I was struggling to take in this barrage of new evidence. Whatever the outcome, it seemed increasingly likely that there was a killer in the family. I slumped into my chair and waited for Grandfather to deliver yet more tragic revelations.

“Are we any closer to the truth?” he asked instead.

I let out an exhausted breath. “Aren’t you the one to tell me that?”

Back on his feet, he zigzagged about the room as if searching for an elusive clue. “I know what I know, but I want you to tell me why the story Marmaduke just told us doesn’t provide us with everything we need to identify the killer.”

I admit that I did not possess the swiftest mind in Great Britain. I imagine there was a good hour-long lag for most of the conclusions I formed on the case. My grandfather was the genius and I was the fool who accompanied him, but it was at this moment that I realised what the old man was doing; what he had been doing ever since his birthday. He was trying to teach me. Everything he’d done was designed to lead me to the facts which sprung out at him like a frog from a pond.

“Fellowes!” I replied, once I’d had a good think about it. “If George and Maitland were behind the killings, why would they have poisoned Fellowes?”

Lord Edgington clapped his hands together with unrestrained joy.

“Precisely, my boy! Precisely!”

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Grandfather was at his sparkling best and we talked until the early hours of the morning. he was full of stories from his career and opened my eyes to the endless possibilities in a seemingly simple murder. He told me of cut-and-dried cases where the perpetrator was apparent from the very first moment, yet the guilty party turned out to be someone else entirely.

He talked of the criminals he had known. Some were savage, but plenty were smart. Despite the worlds between them, he came to consider them as acquaintances, or even colleagues. They worked in overlapping circles; different departments in the same organisation.

And yet, for all his spark and candour, when I went up to bed that night, I realised that he had held a lot back from me. He wouldn’t tell me why he trusted Fellowes so implicitly, or share with me his own theories on Belinda and Maitland’s murders. Whether he was training me to be his assistant or not, I found it quite perplexing that every time we found a new piece of evidence on one of our suspects, he would make it sound as though the conclusions I had drawn were preposterous.

Fellowes had lied about who he met when he left the drinks room, and yet Grandfather had made me feel like a fool for