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

to say what was going on in his brilliant brain, but something had upset him. I couldn’t shake the feeling that we’d gone too softly on George. He may have come up with a good story to spin us, but could we rule him out of the enquiries so quickly? He was a charmer and, as my mother always said, charmers weren’t to be trusted.

Crossing the river and entering Surrey made me feel slightly more positive but it did nothing to brighten up the clouds above me and I shivered all the way home under a waxed leather tarpaulin. I half wished Delilah had come with us as, even if she’d have taken up the remaining inches of space, she’d have kept me nice and warm.

Back at Cranley, Grandfather launched himself from the Talbot without another word. Perhaps he’d forgotten I was even there, as we hadn’t spoken since leaving London. Todd drove me round to the garage and I noticed that Cora’s car was parked beside the house. I remained in the back seat, pondering the conundrum we were faced with, as the chauffeur wiped the raindrops off the bonnet.

“Todd, you’ve waited on Grandfather from time to time over the years,” I said when my thoughts had got me nowhere. “Do you think he’s…” I struggled to choose the right words. “Well, do you think he’s all there?”

Todd dropped the soapy sponge into its bucket and laughed at me. “Yes, Master Christopher. I think of all the people I’ve had the honour of meeting in my life, Lord Edgington stands as the brightest and best. Even when he was shut up in his rooms, he spent every day consuming literature, scientific journals and world news. I wouldn’t worry too much about him on that score.”

I pulled the tarpaulin off me and wished I hadn’t as it burst the humid bubble I’d been trapped within.

“Thank you,” was all I could think to say.

He picked up a chamois leather and looked at me like he was expecting something more.

“Would you mind jumping out?” he asked, when I failed to catch his meaning. “Only I need to close up the boot and give it a polish.”

I didn’t feel like returning to my room, and it was too wet to go back to the woods, so I went for a turn around the house to think. I find that walking often helps clear my mind and stimulate the senses. An old house like Cranley Hall comes in handy for such pastimes when the weather is bad too. I went all the way from the kitchen to the far end of the east wing as I considered the facts of the case.

There were so many questions left unanswered; who was the murderer? for one! And before I could answer that whopper, I’d have to fill in some holes first. The issue my grandfather kept returning to was why the killer would have only poisoned Fellowes but not killed him. The obvious reason was a lack of time or opportunity. Perhaps he’d run out of cyanide, after dumping so much of the stuff in the champagne. Or perhaps it was due to the fact that, whilst people don’t seem too fond of the Cranley family, the kind-hearted murderer was unwilling to knock off an innocent butler.

Of course, Fellowes was a puzzle in himself. He was an ex-convict whose murky past Grandfather had kept hidden, even after Inspector Blunt revealed his criminal record. And I couldn’t see that Fellowes saving the old man’s life twenty years earlier was enough to prove he hadn’t played a part in the poisoning. It was all a bit too convenient; leaving the drinks room like that for the killer to lace the champagne.

Grandfather had gone far too easy on Cora too. What if she’d been working with her beau to steal the inheritance from the rest of us? The two of them in cahoots would have found it easy to silence Maitland with the crossbow, even if Fellowes was laid up with a dicky stomach. Yes! That had to be it. If he’d handled the poison, perhaps he’d breathed in the molecules of it and made himself sick. That sort of thing was always happening in the spy novels that Albert read, rogue substances getting into the population and creating havoc.

Had I just solved the murders where the great Lord Edgington had failed to? It seemed awfully likely, but I couldn’t present the case to him until I had more evidence. I sat down in the petit salon to think things through, then had to get straight back up again a moment later as I knew what was required.

“Yes!” I said out loud as I strode down the corridor in the west wing. And, as such positive affirmation motivates me, I said it a few times more. “Yes! Yes! Yes!”

“Master Christopher, are you all right?” It was lovely Alice. She’d stepped out of the silver room to see what the fuss was about.

I was so sure of myself right then, that I might well have asked that beautiful specimen to marry me. Perhaps luckily, I went with a far subtler, “Indeed. And all the better for seeing you.”

“Oh, Master Christopher, you do like to tease.” She shook her head and returned to her duties, apparently oblivious to the romantic overture I’d made.

I carried on towards the servants’ quarters, but instead of taking the narrow stairs down to them, I went to the kitchen and out through the tradesman’s entrance to skirt around the side of the building. I felt just like Richard Hannay in ‘The Thirty-Nine Steps’, I was a spy on a mission; a wronged man searching for answers.

I didn’t have to creep too far to reach the tiny window of our butler’s quarters, from where I could listen in on his conversation with his lover. To be honest, I had to wait quite some time to get to anything juicy. They talked about the rain, Cook’s complex culinary