In the Crypt with a Candlestick Read online

  Egbert popped his head round the Folly door. The Londoners were standing in surly, homogenous clumps, looking miserable. He shouted out to them all…

  ‘Really sorry about the delay folks! Not sure quite where India’s got to. I’m going to nip back down to the house and check everything’s OK – but do start without me. You must be starving!’

  There was a rumble of protest. The guests had been dragged up here through the rain and the cold, when they would have much preferred to continue in the grand dining room – which, after all, was the whole point of the weekend. Now here they were, stuck up a hill, hungover, hungry, and fully abandoned by their hosts.

  Nevertheless they plonked themselves at the table and began, dutifully, to throw bread rolls at one another and wait for their shrivelled lunch to be finally presented.

  Mrs Carfizzi placed a large, flat dish of grey vegetables onto the middle of the table and gestured to the guests that they pass it around.

  The meat she brought out next was even greyer. Not only that, as the little actor loudly pointed out when spooning the tiniest sliver onto his plate, ‘This smells of farts’.

  That was actually the moment when the mutiny took root. Nobody wanted to be there: not a single person present would not have preferred to be somewhere else. And when someone – again, the little actor – gave voice to this obvious fact, it begged the question: so why the hell were they sticking around? One by one, the guests sniffed their plates and agreed that the food smelled of farts. Enough was enough.

  ‘I vote,’ declared the little actor, ‘that we go back to the house, fetch our cars and fuck off to the pub. What do you all think?’

  As usual, Poppy Rockefeller didn’t seem to think anything. She stared sullenly ahead. But the others thought it was a great idea. ‘Brilliant!’ they cried. ‘Let’s go!’

  And so they did. The children quickly followed, leaving Mrs Carfizzi alone, holding the last of her trays. She glanced around the empty room, noticed the bread rolls lying on the floor, the meat dishes that smelled of farts, and she shrugged. She had left her husband sick in bed. Not only that, there was a passage in Crime and Punishment which troubled her, now she was reading in the original. She wanted to check against the translation. If nobody wanted to eat her food, there was no reason for her to stick around, either.

  ‘Bollocks to this,’ she muttered, and dumped the tray where she stood.

  She was the last to leave the Folly. She didn’t waste any time locking up – what did she care?

  Being quite fat, and a little lame, and physically very lazy, she never quite caught up with the rest of the party, so – for better or worse – she missed out on all the drama that followed.

  CHAPTER 50

  For the second time in twenty-four hours the 12th Baronet Tode swept up the long drive in the same minicab. This time, however, he didn’t stop at the Hall. He asked his driver to take him on to the Gardener’s House instead.

  ‘We owe Derek fifteen quid,’ he informed Alice, when she opened the door. ‘It’s the second time he’s driven me out here today, and I know for a fact my conversation has been getting on his nerves, so do you mind giving him a splendiferous tip? He’s actually one of my best friends. Along with you, Trudy. You’re my best friend.’ He stepped around her and into the kitchen, where he found his grandmother.

  ‘Oh you’re here, are you, Granny?’ he said. ‘That’s nice.’ He sat down in the seat that had been Alice’s, and took a slurp from her wine glass. Grimaced. ‘Crikey, Trudy! Cat’s piss!’ he shouted. ‘Have you got any whisky?’ But she couldn’t hear because she was outside collecting a receipt from Derek. ‘Have you got any whisky?’ He stood up again and started opening cupboards.

  ‘New bottle above the fridge,’ said his granny.

  He thanked her. Sniffed. ‘Somebody around here been smoking doobies? Granny I’m shocked.’

  ‘Don’t be impertinent, Ecgbert.’

  He sat back down again. Looked at his grandmother, complimented her Chinese embroidered jacket, which was exquisite. She was pleased with that. He said: ‘So you’re up to date with the dramas, I take it?’

  ‘I think so. Dominic’s run off to London, leaving behind him a lot of vile and unbelievable accusations. It’s most disagreeable.’ She sipped the tea. ‘You must help me to persuade Alice not to report all this nonsense to the police.’

  Vigorously, he shook his head, spilling whisky on his chin as he did so. ‘WRONG,’ he said. ‘You’ve got everything wrong, Granny. God – that’s very disappointing… Ah. Here you are, Trudy. You’ve made friends with Granny, I see. Not everyone does… I have so much to tell you. But first – was Derek OK? Did you give him a splendiferous tip?’

  ‘Yes I did.’

  ‘Thank you… Sorry to barge in by the way. Are you busy?’

  Alice told him not to be ridiculous. ‘It’s lovely to see you, Ecgbert. Are you all right though? That awful man, Hamish…’

  He said he was in better shape than Carfizzi, but that he hadn’t come here to waste time on small talk. (His grandmother nodded approvingly.) He had information, he said, about his mother’s death. ‘I know who did it!’ he declared. ‘And I have evidence. The game is up!’

  Geraldine said: ‘Dominic seems to think he knows who did it, too. Alice and I were just now discussing what we should do, or rather, not do, with the so-called evidence. Alice, tell him about the letter, and the key and the pot of cream and so on.’

  ‘Forget about the cream. It’s a red herring. I know all about the cream. I’ve spoken to Carfizzi… And by the way he’s going to be absolutely fine. In case you were worrying. Better still, he’s very happy to blame the poisoning on Hamish, if need be. So.’ Ecgbert shrugged. ‘That works quite well, I would have said.’

  ‘Ecgbert,’ said his grandmother sternly, ‘I like very much the way you’re talking. Please pay close attention to me. This is very important. As I said to Alice, we need to…’ She was winking at her grandson, pointing at Dominic’s letter, lying open on the table, and the key beside it, still covered in cream – and then, none too subtly, indicating the wood-burning Aga behind her. ‘We need to make sure we put the evidence in a safe place.’

  Mad Ecgbert ignored his grandmother. From his pocket he brought out a small metal box, slightly larger than an iPhone, with a short electric coil attached to it. He slapped it on top of Dominic’s letter.

  ‘Is it a bomb?’ Geraldine asked.

  ‘By the way, Trudy – really sorry. It was you, was it, who chased after me when I broke in here the other night? I’d sort of assumed it was Granny. Did I frighten you?’

  ‘You did. You scared the life out of me.’

  ‘Point is,’ he said, ‘it was worth it.’ He tapped the hard drive. ‘I’ve got the whole thing backed up on here. Everything. Emails, iMessages, everything. Not only that…’

  ‘Ecgbert,’ Geraldine said. ‘Would you kindly speak the Queen’s English?’

  Ecgbert ignored her. He rummaged beneath his shirt and pulled from his jeans waistband a wad of paper. ‘I’ve printed everything out. All the important bits… I knew it, Trudy. I knew something was up from the moment she went missing…’

  ‘But she never did go missing,’ Alice said. ‘Nobody missed her. Everyone thought she’d gone to Capri.’

  Mad Ecgbert looked at Alice. ‘The last time I saw Ma alive,’ he said, ‘I asked her to come with me to the mausoleum. Actually, I insisted on it.’ Which admission begged various questions. He hesitated to go into the details, but he had no real choice. His shrink had put him up to it: a last ditch attempt, on the eve of her long departure, to trigger a spark of warmth, a flash of maternal feeling. (Emma Tode had been extremely busy at the time. She’d only agreed to come along because he had promised her, in return, that afterwards he would leave her in peace to get on with her packing.)

  So they’d gone together to the mausoleum on the last day she was seen alive, in the place she was found dead…

  ‘I reall
y wouldn’t bother to mention this to anyone else, dear,’ his grandmother said.

  Mad Ecgbert had stood beside his mother. He had gazed at her as she rested her eyes on the shelf where her dead husband lay. As his shrink had instructed, he waited a moment or two and then asked her what she felt. She’d sniffed (surprised by the question) and replied: ‘It’s such a gorgeous place to be buried, isn’t it? I should think Papa’s very happy here.’

  At that moment Ecgbert, who was not a violent fellow, experienced what he described to Geraldine and Alice as ‘a murderous flash’.

  ‘Darling. Honestly,’ tutted his grandmother, ‘these are the sort of personal details that nobody wants to hear. Especially in these circumstances. A little self editing, please…’

  He would have liked to bump her on the head and leave her for dead, he told them. He longed to bump her on the head, actually (he said). Instead, he stepped back. He stepped away from her. He realised, at last, that his rainbow’s end could never be reached because ‘Trudy, it never existed!’ The thing he was seeking from his mother, she simply didn’t have to give. She would never be able to say something she truly felt or believed, because she had never in her life truly felt or believed anything. ‘I had clarity, Trudy! Clarity at last!’ It was as if a great weight had lifted from his chest.

  So he had left her there, in the mausoleum. And she had stood politely and let him leave. They didn’t say goodbye.

  ‘… Anyway,’ Ecgbert said. ‘The point is, I left her alone in the mausoleum on the day everybody thought she was leaving for Capri… on the day she obviously died. And I left the door wide open. My mother had brought the key with her, and she had left the key in the lock.’

  Geraldine nodded. ‘Hm. So. It was serendipity, was it? Whoever it was…’ She glanced at Alice. ‘… Carfizzi, for example – or some other non Tode: Mellors, perhaps? Dominic Rathbone? Those fatuous little twins who never turn up for work? They just happened to be passing by at that moment. They found Emma alone, bopped her on the head, slammed the door, locked it, and put the key in the err – into India’s pot of cream… Sounds good,’ Geraldine said. ‘I’m happy to believe that. Are you Alice? It was probably Mellors, I should think. His father was a ghastly man.’

  Ecgbert shook his head. ‘Everyone around here thinks I’m a halfwit…’

  ‘They most certainly do not!’ declared his grandmother, quite angrily.

  ‘… But I’m the one who’s managed to stitch this thing together. I only came over, really, to make sure Trudy is with me when I tell everyone what happened—’ He glanced bashfully at Alice. ‘After my rotten start this morning. But Granny since you’re around, come along too! I’m going to gather everyone in the Great Hall, celebrities included if they want. And explain more or less exactly what went down. Think Monsieur Poirot, or rather…’ He pulled himself up. ‘Think Sir Ecgbert Tode, Twelfth Baronet, Not as Useless as Everyone Thinks…’

  ‘Ecgbert darling, you are ridiculous. Nobody thinks you’re useless,’ said his grandmother.

  ‘Anyway the point is, I know who dunnit.’ He couldn’t resist adding, ‘And it’s all about THE MONEY! Always is though, isn’t it? Money and power. Isn’t that so, Granny? Mummy changed her mind about stuff just before she died… Honestly, it’s no wonder she got done in.’

  At exactly that moment, a cacophony filled the room. This time it wasn’t coming from the darkest depths of Geraldine, but from an intruder alarm that was linked to the Hall, the Estate Offices, and the police station.

  ‘Holy Christ,’ said Ecgbert. ‘We’d better get over there. Here I am showing off to you girls. Meanwhile a killer is on the loose! What kind of an idiot does that?’

  * * *

  Ecgbert, Alice and Geraldine scampered (or glided) over the silent grass and let themselves into the house via the East Wing. On opening the door they were blasted by another wall of hellish sound, and in front them, careering through the baroque arches, they saw Hamish Tomlinson, with a bundle under his arm. Oliver Mellors followed close behind, shouting at the top of his lungs (or so they assumed: nobody could quite hear it):

  ‘Stop thief!’

  They followed the action as best they could, through the arches, down the Corridor of the Ancients, into the Great Hall, where a vast fire burned in the grate, and the Christmas tree decorations shimmered and shook to the throb of the alarm.

  Hamish Tomlinson was wearing soft leather soles. As he tried to avoid the Christmas tree he lost his footing. Mellors seized the moment, launched himself through the air and landed on top of Hamish, crushing him to the marble floor, sending his stolen booty flying. The alarm stopped. And started again. It seemed to come in waves. In the sudden, short silence, Hamish flailed. But he didn’t stand a chance. Beneath Mellors’s manly bulk, he looked like a weedy grasshopper.

  ‘You thieving bastard!’ panted Ecgbert triumphantly. ‘I always knew you were a shit. And it’s no good trying to escape. We’ve got you now! Well done Mr Mellors! What a show! The police will be on their way any second. So you can just lie there – if you don’t mind Mellors? – and think about what you’ve done…’

  Ecgbert stooped to pick up the fallen treasure. It was nothing much: nothing the Todes would have missed. A Bronze Age shield, possibly for a child: or a very small one, in any case. Dominic Rathbone could have told Ecgbert its value and provenance in a flash. So could Hamish, who had done a little research on the Tode treasures, over the years (though not, apparently, despite his efforts at dinner last night, updated himself on their new motion-sensitive alarm systems).

  The alarm stopped again. And started. Like a child having a tantrum, it seemed to need to pause intermittently to refill its lungs.

  Unfortunately neither Mellors nor Ecgbert knew the code to turn it off. They would have to wait until someone came – the police, Egbert, Carfizzi.

  So they waited. On-Off, it went. On-Off. A minute or two passed, the symphony of torture, drilling intermittently into their brains. It paused once again, and in the silence, fluttering down from high above them, there came a single sheet of paper.

  And then, from the gallery, a bay of rage.

  Seventy foot up, Dominic Rathbone was stretching over the empty space above, reaching in vain for the fluttering sheet. And beside him, India. They were grappling, tussling, yelling.

  Ecgbert cried out. ‘India! He’s going to kill you. Get away from there!’

  Too late. The alarm had struck up again. And Dominic had turned back from the railing, grabbed for India, tried to launch her over the edge, but in the process lost his balance, and launched them both.

  The bodies plunged, flying through the air together, and the paper fluttered slowly behind. It caught on a branch of the Christmas tree, and never landed.

  CHAPTER 51

  The Great North Door was only unlocked on very special occasions. Today wasn’t one of them. Egbert had trudged round the side of the house, to the family’s private entrance. He tapped in the entry code, pulled back the door – and was, as Ecgbert, Geraldine and Alice had been, hit at once by the great wall of sound. Never had he heard so much of it. Tode Hall’s alarm system seemed to be screaming from every room in the house.

  Ahead of him were the stairs that led up to his and India’s private apartment. To the left lay the Red Dining Room, the Chinese Drawing Room and the staff kitchen. To the right, via a long passageway, past artworks and arches, and out of sight, lay the Great Hall. He hesitated, uncertain which way to turn, what to protect first—

  His children. Of course. They were out of harm’s way, up at the Folly.

  India…

  From the Great Hall, more shrill than even the burglar alarm, he heard a scream – two screams – then a third. Three separate voices. Three separate screams, followed moments later by the SILENCE – and the thud… The alarm struck up again, and then, over it, just the one voice, still screaming.

  Egbert sprinted past the artworks and arches, and in the Great Hall skidded to a halt.
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  Before the hearth, with its warm roaring fire, not seeping, not flowing, but gushing over the black and white marble floor, was a river of blood. More blood than Egbert had ever seen. And kneeling in the blood, bent over a mangle of limbs, a splay of long golden hair, was his cousin Ecgbert.

  ‘India?… India!’ Egbert’s feet wouldn’t move fast enough. He splashed through the blood towards her.

  Mad Ecgbert said: ‘I could’ve stopped it…’ he pointed upward, to the gallery above. ‘They were fighting. They were falling through the air…’

  They? Egbert repeated. He had seen the blood, the hair, the tangled limbs, but he hadn’t looked properly. There were two bodies, one on top of the other: India, in a Barbour jacket and wellingtons; on her way to lunch, of course. And beneath her – the crushed remains of her assailant – of Dominic. He was dressed in the suit he always wore for London. All this, Egbert registered. The London suit, because Dominic was meant to be in London. The Barbour jacket because India was meant to be on her way to the Folly. Dominic – what was left of him – had cushioned her fall. Somewhere beneath the flow of blood, the halo of golden hair, Dominic’s skull lay, flattened, its contents spilling onto the floor. Neither body moved.

  The burglar alarm rang on. Ecgbert and Egbert, kneeling side by side in the blood, didn’t register it. They didn’t hear the running footsteps; or notice Mr Carfizzi joining them, his face waxy, his breath smelling of vomit, his Daniel Hanson dressing gown hanging open. They didn’t notice the London guests gathering to gawk behind them, staring at the mess and taking surreptitious photographs; nor did they appreciate Alice covering the children’s eyes, shepherding them and the Londoners back down the corridor again.

  The paramedics arrived with the police. They lifted the two grieving men out of the blood. They separated the broken bodies; placed India’s onto one stretcher and Dominic’s onto the other. And at some point, young Egbert would recall much later, someone took Hamish Tomlinson away in an arm-lock and dumped him in the cells.