Murder at the Spring Ball: A 1920s Mystery by Benedict Brown (romantic novels in english .txt) 📗

curious effect on Cranley Hall. It’s not that he was much more popular than my aunt. He was a dull, pernickety man with little of his father’s charm but… well, to paraphrase Oscar Wilde, ‘To lose one Cranley may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose two looks like a concerted plan of elimination.’

Whereas, the night before, there was a buzz to the house, as curious guests stayed on scene to discover any lurid gossip, those who remained after Maitland’s demise were suddenly drained of energy.

My grandfather seemed to be regressing to his formerly distant self. Though he attended to the necessities when the police arrived, he had no vim about him and suddenly looked his age. They say that losing a child is the hardest thing for a parent to contend with and Lord Edgington had gone one step further.

My parents both looked shell shocked, so my brother took them back to their suite and I stayed behind to help Grandfather. When the police arrived, Inspector Blunt had lost some of his vitriol from the previous evening. He spoke to us in front of my uncle’s body, which was now covered over with a heavy blanket, as if to stop him from floating away.

“And there are witnesses to attest to your presence with the deceased before he was shot?”

My grandfather gave only the faintest monosyllabic answers. “Yes.”

This was something I could help with at last. “Grandfather and I have been together for most of the morning.”

The crumpled little man was almost hesitant. He must have decided that the suffering his former colleague was enduring trumped their longstanding rivalry.

“We’ll keep you informed if we discover anything.” He addressed his comment to the stony path and was yet to look either of us in the eye.

Shrugging his shoulders like he was terribly cold, Blunt wandered inside to interview the staff. My grandfather showed no sign of knowing what to do next. He remained rooted to the spot for several minutes before drifting back towards the house and up the steps. I was afraid to ask what his plan was, but felt myself magnetically pulled along behind him.

I followed him all the way to his suite of rooms, where he took up his old spot in the armchair beside the window. I could see his transformation reversing before my eyes. When he sat back in that chair, his stature reduced down and I watched his confidence fade. He was folding himself away for easy storage and, if I hadn’t done something about it, he might have given up altogether.

“Please don’t do this, Grandfather,” I pleaded with him. “You can’t stop now. Blunt isn’t going to work out what’s going on here, but you will.”

His gaze possessed that singularly distant quality that I’d seen in him every time my family had visited since I was six. He looked off across the grounds, over the lake and out towards the woods.

When his reply came, he sounded only vaguely aware that there was anyone around to hear him. “He might get lucky. Maybe there’ll be another murder and it will make it easier to catch the killer.”

My voice was broken through with tears and I shouted at the great Lord Edgington for the very first time. “That’s our family you’re talking about! What if this lunatic goes after my mother next?”

At school we were taught from a young age that such open displays of emotion are a sign of weakness and only women and feeble men would ever allow themselves such hysteria. I don’t like my school and think this is a stupid attitude to have, so I felt no great shame.

With my face all red and my nose running, I moved closer to him. “There are hardly any suspects and you know them all well. This should be easy for you.”

He shook his head and looked straight through me, but said nothing. It made me want to storm about the place breaking old vases and pulling one of his precious Turners from the wall.

“Don’t you have some sort of oath to seek out the truth? Why did you join the police in the first place if you won’t search for your own children’s killer?” Gripping hold of the arms of his chair, with my face right next to his, I was screaming with absolute rage.

For a few moments, the only sound was the rattling of plates on the dresser as my words rebounded about the room. I took another step closer, and he looked at me at last.

“I joined the police because I never wanted any of this.” He looked around the room at his fine possessions, then cast his gaze off through the window. “It was never supposed to be mine in the first place. My brother was set to inherit Cranley. He’d been prepared for it from birth. Like your cousin George, I was wild and carefree back then and my parents despaired of me. I told them I didn’t want to live the way they did. I wanted a life of my own.”

I would have asked more about this time in his life but, in that same weary manner, he had already continued with his story.

“I joined the police because I thought I could make a difference, instead of simply living off this estate and the people who work for us. You have to understand that the last century was a time of grand ideas. I read Voltaire and Engels and saw the world through a very different lens from that of my family. As a young man, I couldn’t bear the idea of getting rich from another man’s labour or having servants wait on me. In the police, I was nobody and I liked it that way. I rose through the ranks, not because of who my father was or my family’s wealth, but because I was good at the job.”

I found myself caught up in his story and, when he came to an abrupt halt, I was hungry