Barnaby offered, “The five in the library saw Monty go out into the hall and turn toward the front door, and Nevin-Smytheand Richard’s aunts saw him go outside. We know that much, but not what happened next.”
A knock on the door was followed by O’Donnell looking inside. Stokes waved at his sergeant to join them, and O’Donnell came in, shut the door, and, looking distinctly weary, plodded over and nodded respectfully to the three of them.
Then O’Donnell looked at Stokes. “I spoke with all the gamekeepers round about. They seemed the most likely to know if any stranger was lurking in their woods, and they all swear there isn’t a one.” He visibly drooped. “I circled the whole estate, went into all the nearby villages, found the gamekeepers of all the surrounding properties, and chatted with the locals as well—the farmers and farmhands. No one has spotted anyone they can’t put a name to, and no one was anywhere they weren’t supposed to be.” His lips twisted, and he met Stokes’s eyes. “Seems a right law-abiding neighborhood hereabouts.”
Barnaby, Penelope, and Stokes understood O’Donnell’s skepticism, but their only interest was in some unknown stranger.
“Thank you for being so thorough.” Stokes dismissed O’Donnell with an appreciative nod. “You’d better join Morgan in the tap and get yourself a good dinner.”
“Aye, guv. I’ll do that.” O’Donnell nodded to them all and dragged himself to the door.
As the door shut, Penelope observed, “So much for our fictional passing homicidal maniac.”
Stokes snorted. “Indeed. But that makes it as good as certain that our murderer is still at the Grange and, given Underhill’s choice of victim, almost certainly one of the guests.”
Penelope nodded. “Even if we imagine that another of Monty’s victims, one not at the house party, somehow realized their blackmailer was him and came down here intending to kill him…” She grimaced. “It’s hard to see that happening, isn’t it?The property is large, so how could someone from beyond its boundaries know that Monty would be in the orchard at that time?”
“Even if they’d been watching the house from the cover of the woods, why be there watching in the first place? Surely not on the off chance that Monty would obligingly wander out alone and walk into the orchard?” Barnaby shook his head. “No. Someone intent on murdering Monty coming from outside the estate doesn’t make much practical sense.”
“Also,” Penelope went on, “if the motive for the murder is Monty’s blackmailing activities—and as yet, we’ve found no other possibility—then a murderer coming from outside the estate implies that person had learned butonly justlearned that Monty was their blackmailer.”
“We’re a bit more than an hour from London,” Stokes observed. “That scenario might be possible.”
Barnaby inclined his head. “But while it’s possible, is it plausible? Given how long Monty had been blackmailing while successfully concealing his identity?” He paused, then added, “I really can’t see it. And we still have the difficulty of someone from outside the estate just happening to be in the right place at the right time to find Monty outside and alone.” He looked at Stokes. “No one’s mentioned Monty taking a regular morning walk around the grounds. Quite the opposite. He told people he was going out to check on some estate matter. As it turned out, that was his code for picking up payments from two different victims.”
“At least two victims.” Penelope arched her brows at Barnaby. “We don’t know what was written on the torn-out page.”
Barnaby tipped his head her way. “True.”
Silence fell as they considered where that left them.
Eventually, Stokes said, “I can’t see any viable alternative to our thesis that the motive for the murder is Underhill’s blackmailing activities. We shouldn’t forget the necessary incitement of violent fury inherent in this murder, and as yet, we’ve found no hint of any other reason powerful enough to have provoked the required degree of rage.”
Penelope pointed out, “Mrs. Hemmings used the word ‘betrayal.’ That’s a powerful emotion and would almost certainly have been in play had our killer just learned that Monty was his blackmailer.”
Stokes was studying his notes. “If we accept that Rosalind Hemmings is effectively alibied by her sister, Regina, who found Monty dead before Rosalind reached the orchard, and as we know Regina couldn’t have struck the lethal blow, then over the relevant time, the members of the company as yet unvouched for by others are Lady Susan, Leith, Percival, Lady Carville, and Cordingley. All three gentlemen were, apparently, in their rooms upstairs. Lady Carville was in the conservatory and was seen there by the young ladies, but no one saw her later, so she remains on our list for now. Lady Susan was the only one outside, supposedly in the rose garden, alone. And the rose garden is on the same side of the house as the orchard, so she’s still a definite possibility.”
Penelope pulled a face. “I truly can’t see Susan being sufficiently enraged to do the deed. She’s too…calculating, and she knows and loves—I would even say is devoted to—Pamela as much as to her own family. The sisters have always been very close. And probably better than anyone else, Susan knows how much Pamela’s status relied on Monty’s. Susan has a similar marriage—one of that sort of convenience—so her understanding of Pamela’s need of Monty is bolstered by her own experience and commensurately deep.” She met Stokes’s gaze, and her lips twisted. “Even if she was profoundly angrywith Monty for vetoing the proposed alliance between Vincent and Samantha, knowing and understanding all that Susan does, would she kill Monty and deprive Pamela of her social crutch?” Penelope shook her head. “I doubt it.”
Stokes faintly grimaced. “Be that as it may, we should check where she, Lady Carville, and the three gentlemen were at the time they heard the scream. We didn’t specifically ask that during our interviews, and the replies might allow us to find others who can corroborate their story and definitively place them at that moment and, thus, rule them out of contention.”
Barnaby nodded. “For instance, Richard says he was on the stairs when he heard Rosalind scream. That’s confirmed by the others who saw him run past the library doorway, and subsequently, they followed him to the orchard. For him to have gone outside, killed Monty, and made it back inside in time to come downstairs at that moment…” Barnaby grimaced. “I suppose it’s possible, but the timing would be very tight.”
“I know we don’t believe Richard is the killer,” Penelope said, “but to be thorough and rule him out, we should check that he did, indeed, leave letters on the hall table, as he says he did. He said he was upstairs writing those letters, and if they do exist, then…if he hadn’t been writing them but, instead, had gone outside and killed Monty, returned to his room, and brought down prewritten letters to serve as proof of what he’d been doing during the critical hour, that suggests a high degree of planning, and we all agree that this murder was a spur-of-the-moment, fueled-by-sudden-fury attack.”
Stokes was nodding. “An excellent point. We should follow up with Gearing about those letters.”
“We still have a good handful of guests to interview,” Barnaby said, “and I agree that our fastest and surest route to identifying the killer lies through proving where everyone wasduring the crucial hour.” He glanced at Penelope. “We might need to interview the staff.”
The look she returned wasn’t encouraging. “At a large house party, at that time of the morning, the entire indoor staff would have been run off their feet. They would have been scurrying here, there, and everywhere and fully focused on their duties. We’ll be very lucky to find anyone who noticed anything useful.”
“That leaves us with our as-yet-to-be-interviewed guests.” Stokes studied his list. “I make it nine we’ve yet to speak with, but they’re all the younger crew.”
Penelope said, “Perhaps we can go faster with them by focusing on the critical times and who they saw where.”
Stokes nodded. “That’s the information we need. Our murderer has to be unvouched for by anyone else from nine until close to ten o’clock.” He looked at Penelope. “And possibly later than that. If your conjecture that he searched the study while everyone else was focused on the orchard is correct, he won’t have been among those gathered at the front of the house, either.”
Barnaby had been thinking. “If our thesis is that the murderer only discovered that Monty was the blackmailer minutes before the murder—thus accounting for the murderer’s eruption of overwhelming rage—then the murderer had no reason to search Monty’s study earlier.” He tipped his head toward Penelope. “We know the study was searched, we believe by the murderer—the page torn out of Monty’s book of victims with the book left for us to find and no money or valuables taken supports that—ergo, the search had to be carried out after the murder. While everyone else was outside.”
