Old Moorhen's Shredded Sporran: The Belchester Chronicles Book 4 Read online

  ‘I know,’ she replied, only catching his last two words, ‘and my bloody head groundsman, too!’

  ‘I meant your language,’ replied Hugo, scandalised all over again – déjà vu with foul language.

  ‘You’re only saying that because you won’t have to bloody well find another one, as well as two maids and four f**king casual outdoor staff. Sodding hell, what a pickle I’m in on the domestic front. F**k it all!’

  At this point, Beauchamp lost his rag for the first time that the household could remember, grabbed his employer’s walking frame, and threw it aside as if it had been made of paper – not a particularly spectacular feat, of course, when one thinks that the things are only aluminium, and weigh virtually nothing. The real surprise was that he flung it with such anger that it landed at the other end of the pew.

  He then put one hand round her mouth, managing to smother an exclamation of ‘shi –’, as Lady A realised what was happening to her. He grabbed her under her pendulous breasts with the other arm, and pulled her backwards off her feet, all the fight seemed to go out of her, and she hung there like a rag doll.

  As he dragged Lady A back down the aisle, he called out to Enid. ‘The door key’s in my right hand pocket. I didn’t leave it in the door in case someone came along and locked us in. Take it, then get Mr Hugo, lock up this place, and get him back to the house and into his bed.’

  ‘Aye aye, Cap’n!’ Enid was on board, and in action mode.

  ‘I’ll phone the police, once I’ve got this drunken old biddy back into her cage,’ were his last words before he left the building.

  Moody may have been furious to be roused from bed for a second time, but he had no idea how lucky he had been the previous evening, when the residents of Belchester Towers had not informed him of the fact that they had discovered all the stolen goods from the robberies.

  He stamped round the bedroom, cursing as he got dressed, thoroughly waking his long-suffering wife, but not matching the level of language that Lady Amanda had sunk to, had he but known it. His body did contain one bone of consideration, however, even if it was the smallest one his skeleton possessed, and he did not turn on the light as he dressed.

  He met Glenister at the station, as they lived in opposite directions, and they proceeded out of the tiny city, north towards their target. ‘I can’t believe there’s a fourth dead body on the property. Is one of those mad old nobs a serial killer?’ asked Moody, still very tetchy, as he considered where he was going – yet again!

  ‘I hardly think so, sir,’ replied Glenister, showing just a smidgen of logic as he added, ‘The first murder took place while they were all away in Scotland, and the place was locked up, to all intents and purposes.’

  ‘Picky, picky, Sergeant. Perhaps the old dear got a helicopter for Christmas. If she’d had access to one of those up there, she could have got down here, committed the murder, and been back in her bed in Scotland, before morning.’ Moody was trying as hard as he could to make this fantastic theory stick.

  ‘You’re presuming that she has already got a helicopter pilot’s licence, and that she arranged the lessons and the test before acquiring this enormously expensive flying machine? And there’d been absolutely no gossip about what she was up to, even up to the present day? Here, where you can’t blow your nose without someone being aware of it on the other side of the city.’

  Moody fell silent, completely defeated, but whatever happened, he was determined to try to pin everything that had occurred at Belchester Towers on to its owner, if it was the last thing he did.

  Beauchamp met them at the front door, crumblies now tidily disposed of, and looked the two detectives up and down. ‘Good wee small hours to you,’ he greeted them, inventively. Glenister looked as tidy as he did on a call in more sociable hours; Moody, not so. His tie was erratically knotted, his top shirt button undone, his knitted tank top on inside out, and he sported one other sartorial faux pas which Beauchamp couldn’t resist mentioning as he took their coats.

  ‘Nice pair of shoes,’ he said in his most polite voice. ‘I’d be willing to bet you’ve got another pair just like it at home.’

  Detective Inspector Moody looked down slowly, genuinely concerned about what he was about to see. Damn and blast it! He’d put on one black lace-up and one brown, and all because he didn’t turn on the blasted light in case it disturbed his wife too much. Well it wouldn’t happen again. He’d put a hundred watt bulb in the ceiling light fitting and see how she liked that when he was called out during the hours of darkness. He wasn’t being caught out like this again.

  Beauchamp retreated to the cloakroom with their outer garments, mouthing, ‘Gotcha!’

  Enid was in the hall when he returned, and the inspector was looking around him as if in search of something. ‘Can I be of assistance, Inspector,’ Beauchamp offered, wondering what it was he sought.

  ‘Where’re Lady Muck and Little Lord Fauntleroy? I’d have expected them to be waiting for us when we arrived.’

  ‘I’m afraid they’re asleep, sir,’ replied the manservant, with a small smile of satisfaction on his face.

  ‘Well, go and wake them, then,’ ordered Moody.

  ‘I can’t,’ replied Beauchamp, baldly.

  ‘Why not?’ asked the inspector, testily.

  ‘Because they’re blind drunk,’ was the reply he received. ‘So you’ll have to deal with just Mrs Tweedie and I for now. You are, of course, welcome to come back tomorrow when they are sober to interview them, but I expect their memories of tonight will be very hazy.’

  If Moody had been a dog, he would have been growling in a threatening manner by now, and seriously considering biting. ‘Then you had better conduct me to where you found the body, hadn’t you?’ His words came out through gritted teeth, while Glenister found it hard to suppress a gleeful grin, and had to conjure up a pretend cough, so that he could put his hand over his mouth to disguise this fact.

  As they walked across the moonlit grass, Moody told Beauchamp that he really should be grateful to the Belchester Constabulary. Although they had been the victims of several crimes, he reckoned many more had been averted. ‘PC Spouph informed me that he made a check of the outside of the house and grounds every couple of days while you were away.’

  ‘It didn’t seem to do much good, did it? Maybe he only sloped off up here for a secret smoke in uniform,’ replied Beauchamp, slightly surprised at such enthusiasm above and beyond the call of duty.

  ‘Spouph is a very conscientious officer in his attention to detail, where his job is concerned. He wants to progress within the force, so he works hard.’

  ‘A most admirable trait. Why is he not with you tonight?

  ‘There was no need, at this preliminary stage, to include a uniformed officer. So, this is the chapel,’ he declared, stating the bleedin’ obvious, in the manservant’s opinion. ‘I’ve never been in here before.’

  ‘It’s been out of use for years, sir. I have the key, if you’ll excuse me.’ Beauchamp opened the door, leaned in to switch on the lights, then stood aside so that they could precede him into the interior.

  When they had entered, Moody asked a little frostily, ‘So, where is this body supposed to be, then?’

  ‘It’s on the altar. Can’t you see …’ Beauchamp’s voice trailed into silence as he entered the chapel and looked to the far end of the aisle where the altar, quite obviously, had nothing but dust and the remains of a tattered altar cloth on it.

  ‘But it was spread lengthwise along the altar with a damned great knife sticking out of its chest, and it was definitely Evergreen the head groundsman. We all saw it. We all identified him.’

  ‘What, two drunks who didn’t know what way was up, a menopausal widow, and you, so distracted by your charges that you’d be willing to bear witness to pink elephants if your employer said she’d seen them?’ Moody, triumphant, was not a pretty sight.

  ‘I’m not having this!’ Beauchamp was as furious again, as he had been with Lady Aman
da earlier, and he marched purposefully down the aisle to examine the altar close-up. ‘There!’ he cried, in a voice of conviction. ‘You get yourself up here, Detective Inspector. This altar cloth, which has obviously been on this altar for decades, has bloodstains on it: not very large ones, but fresh ones, nevertheless.’

  Moody reluctantly took his mismatched shoes for a short walk, and had to agree that there were indeed areas of discolouration that looked remarkably like blood, on what remained of the altar cloth. ‘But we’ll have to get forensics to confirm that. It might not be blood, let alone human. It might represent the last mark made by a rodent that had been involved in a fight and mortally injured.’

  ‘Thank you very much, Mr Grimm. You should have started that story with “Once upon a time …” ’ snapped Beauchamp.

  ‘How dare you, you jumped-up little domestic!’ Moody was furious at being thus addressed.

  ‘I dare to, because I was here earlier with three other witnesses, when there was the dead body of the head groundsman draped across that altar. It may be gone now, but it was there then, and when I present you with evidence of that fact, you decide it’s just the remains of a bit of a punch-up between a couple of mice. Now, get out of her ladyship’s chapel before I throw you out!

  Discretion being the better part of valour, Moody ‘got’, with Glenister in his wake, chuckling as quietly as he could at his boss’s humiliation.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Monday

  Oh, God! Whatever had happened last night to make her head thump so, and her stomach churn like an angry sea. Lady Amanda became aware of daylight filtering through her slightly open eyelids and closed them again as tightly as she could. She felt like she had been charged by an elephant, but had no recollection of the event.

  A quick survey of her body parts informed her that, if she was not mistaken, she had bruised her posterior during whatever the incident had been, and she wished that either Enid or Beauchamp would arrive with early morning tea, to explain everything to her.

  A quick glance at her bedside clock to ascertain the hour, informed her that it was half-past-eleven, and she shot upright with disbelief, an action which resulted in a howl of pain which sounded not unlike that of a wolf.

  A high-pitched scream from elsewhere in the house seemed to suggest that, whatever it was that had happened, Hugo had been similarly involved, and probably felt as wretched as did she, although she couldn’t be sure about the bruising.

  The door slid slowly open to reveal Enid with a cup and saucer in her hand, a look of sympathy on her face. ‘How are you feeling?’ she asked, as she entered and approached the bed.

  ‘Stop shouting,’ whispered Lady Amanda, who was a little sensitive to sound at the moment. ‘What happened?’

  ‘You went on a bit of a bender last night,’ whispered Enid.

  ‘Did I disgrace myself?’

  ‘You did, rather.’

  ‘Oh, bog! I don’t want to know about it yet. Tell me one more thing, though. Did Hugo do the same?’

  ‘He certainly went on a bender.’

  ‘But he didn’t disgrace himself?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘How galling. Thank you for the tea. My tongue’s like a sheet of sandpaper. I’ll be down as soon as I’m capable of walking.’

  ‘Would you like me to stay and help you dress?’

  ‘Yes, please; I would, actually.’

  Enid sat down on the end of the bed, taking care not to shake the mattress too much.

  In Hugo’s room, as the echoes of his scream died away, he sat in his bed with his head between his hands, hardly able to believe that there weren’t little men inside it with jackhammers, working away like billy-o – and probably all wearing donkey jackets, to boot.

  Beauchamp insinuated himself into the room soundlessly, and approached the bed, similarly bearing morning refreshment. ‘Good morning, Mr Hugo,’ he whispered, being rather more used to dealing with hangovers than Enid. His fiancée’s late husband, after all, had been teetotal, but Beauchamp himself had of course worked for Lady Amanda’s parents, both of whom could put it away like good ’uns.

  ‘Beauch …’ Hugo never got any further than the first syllable of the manservant’s name: the first syllable felt like the volume of it had lifted the top of his head from his skull.

  ‘Don’t talk, Mr Hugo. I’ll explain everything to you, and you just drink your tea. I expect you’re very thirsty.’ Beauchamp’s voice had dropped to a whisper. Hugo began to nod his head, then desisted after the first movement. It was just too painful to complete the indication of agreement.

  ‘You and Lady Amanda had decided to stay up and beard the criminal in the chapel, if and when he returned, in the night.’ Thus far, Hugo was okay. It was shortly after that that things became a little fuzzy.

  ‘Then the two of you’ Beauchamp continued, trying to keep a straight face, ‘went on a bit of a toot, and you both got rather squiffy.’

  ‘I can remember feeling rather light-headed, and something chocolaty – maybe even a cup of coffee – then, I’m afraid, the old memory box is completely empty. The next thing I was conscious of was waking up a short while ago, feeling as if I’d been run down by a speeding lorry. Have I missed much?’

  ‘Rather a lot, I’m afraid. Would you like me to fill you in on the details?’ asked Hugo’s visitor.

  ‘I didn’t do anything awful, did I?’

  ‘Not beyond a bit of singing and whistling.’

  ‘Did Manda? Do anything awful, that is?’

  ‘Rather,’ replied Beauchamp, with complete candour, thinking back to Lady Amanda’s rambunctious drunken behaviour.

  ‘Chocks away, then,’ ordered Hugo, cheering up considerably at this news.

  Everyone was silent at breakfast, which was more like brunch, given the time it was. Lady Amanda sat with her head bowed, but when she looked at Hugo, she found he was smiling a secret smile.

  ‘You know, don’t you?’ she challenged him.

  ‘Know what?’ he replied, trying to look innocent of any knowledge whatsoever.

  ‘You do, don’t you? Well, I don’t want to be told just yet, unless there’s anything that I absolutely need to be made aware of,’ she replied.

  It was Beauchamp who spoke. ‘I’m sorry to inform you, if you don’t remember that Evergreen’s dead – murdered – and that, since last night, his body has disappeared.’ At this bit of news of something that had occurred after he had been carted off to bed, Hugo’s mouth fell open in surprise.

  ‘And all the stolen goods that had been in the chapel had disappeared,’ concluded the manservant in a further effort to jog their memories, calmly buttering a piece of toast. ‘Inspector Moody and his sergeant have already called here while you two were sleeping it off, and will be returning today with a forensics team.

  ‘It may gladden your heart to know that the detective inspector turned up here wearing mismatched shoes,’ Beauchamp concluded, thus raising a small smile from both Lady A and Hugo, before silence, once more, held sway in the room.

  After they had eaten and much coffee had been drunk, Enid shooed them both off to bed for a nap, promising to call them when the police arrived.

  This occurred at just a minute past two o’clock, and very frustrated indeed was Detective Inspector Moody at his supposed witnesses’ lack of memory of anything that had happened the previous night. He was also very disconcerted by the way that both of them kept glancing down at his shoes and smiling. Beauchamp had evidently blabbed about his sartorial faux pas, the rat-fink.

  ‘Apparently I did a bit of singing and whistling,’ offered Hugo as some sort of consolation.

  ‘But I remember absolutely nothing since we had cocktails.

  ‘And, apparently, I was drunk to the wide,’ Lady Amanda informed him, almost with pride, now that she had got used to the idea, but had not yet learnt the details of what had actually occurred.

  ‘I simply can’t believe that you remember nothing whatsoever,’
protested Moody, moodily, living up to his name.

  ‘If you want to know what I got up to, you will have to ask Beauchamp and Enid. They were sober. I, unfortunately, had so many cocktails, that they produced a state of alcoholic amnesia about which there is nothing I can do.’

  ‘In that case, I should like to speak to both of your staff, to ascertain exactly what you did do last night. In the meantime, I have a team of officers on their way here to search every nook, cranny and corner, to see if they can’t discover the whereabouts of the body that your staff claim has gone walkabout.’

  ‘And Hugo and I shall be going out,’ Lady A stated, much to Hugo’s surprise.

  ‘Where are we going, Manda?’ he asked, more than ready just to go back to bed, and not get up again until the next day.

  ‘Come with me, and I shall tell you,’ she replied, not wishing to give anything away to the inspector. ‘I shall need your services later, Beauchamp. Please let me know when you are free.’

  In fact, so impatient was she to be off and out, that she was waiting in the hall when both detectives appeared through the baize door, Moody doubled over with laughter, and Glenister having a good chuckle. Lady A sighed. She wasn’t looking forward to learning what Beauchamp had evidently just divulged to them, about her forgotten antics of the night before.

  She was, however, looking forward to her little afternoon jaunt. There was a town about ten miles to the north-west, just at the foot of the gently rolling hills that led inland, that was as picturesque as a film set; a rival, in fact, to Belchester’s charms. Its main street was a steep slope that reduced older cars to first gear, lined with the most beautiful historic buildings which had, over the years, been converted to shops, banks and teashops.

  It was also the location of the ‘later’ nineteenth-century fake castle where Tabitha’s friend lived, and she thought she might just pop in to say hello while they were over there. It couldn’t do any harm to widen the circle of her acquaintances, and would give her someone else to bore with her stories about how old her property was.