CHAPTER 3
At ten minutes past nine o’clock the next morning, Barnaby followed Stokes through the doors of Montague’s offices.
Slocum, Montague’s senior clerk, recognized them instantly. “Good morning, Inspector, Mr. Adair. I’ll let Mr. Montague know you’re here.”
“Thank you, Slocum.” Stokes had his policeman’s mask in place, sober and serious.
Slocum headed for the door to Montague’s office.
Glancing around, Barnaby noted that, like Slocum, all the rest of Montague’s staff working at their various stations around the large outer office had recognized them and had deduced the likely reason for their arrival; all were watching with expectant expressions.
Slocum returned and waved them to the door of Montague’s office. “Mr. and Mrs. Montague will see you immediately, sirs.”
With nods of thanks, Stokes and Barnaby crossed to Montague’s office.
Montague met them just inside the door. He, too, looked expectantly intrigued. “Well met. Come in.”
The three men shook hands, then Barnaby and Stokes turned to greet Violet, who had risen from the chair behind the small desk on the opposite side of the room from Montague’s.
Smiling softly, she pressed Barnaby’s and Stokes’s hands and planted light kisses on their cheeks; she was a close friend of both their wives. “What an unexpected pleasure.” She waved them to the chairs angled before Montague’s desk. “Please, sit.”
She led the way, moving to take the chair to the left of the massive desk. As Montague sank into the admiral’s chair behind it, Violet fixed her gaze on Stokes and Barnaby. “Given the hour, I take it you have a case with which we might assist?”
Since her marriage to Montague several months previously, Violet had divided her days between being Montague’s secretary and being Penelope’s; in both positions, she organized people who had a tendency to become overly immersed in their work. Certainly, Penelope was much happier these days, and Montague was patently more relaxed; he smiled frequently, far more than he ever had.
At Violet’s eager question, Stokes wryly smiled. “Business at the moment must be boring.”
Montague feigned shock. “Business is never boring.” His features relaxed. “However, at times, it can be very predictable.” He scanned their faces. “You do have a case.”
Barnaby nodded. “A murder. Rather an odd one.” He outlined the bare bones of what they knew.
“There’s no reason to suppose that there’s any financial angle,” Stokes said. “The chances are it’s a purely personal motive. However, if you would check to see if there is anything unusual about the Galbraiths’ finances, we could eliminate that prospect with greater certainty.”
Montague was taking notes. He nodded. “It’ll be easy enough. Given who they are, I can ask directly, and discreetly. Slocum will know who the family’s man-of-business is.” Glancing up, Montague met Barnaby’s and Stokes’s gazes. “I should have an answer by tomorrow at the latest. I’ll send word if there’s anything of possible relevance.”
“Excellent.” Stokes rose.
“So what’s your next move?” Violet rose, too, as did Barnaby and Montague.
Barnaby glanced at Stokes. “We’re off to interview the Fairchilds’ staff.”
Stokes grimaced. “Just pray that someone noticed something, because otherwise, as things stand, we have no place to start.”
“No loose thread to tug on to unravel the mystery.” Barnaby cocked a brow at Violet. “Wish us luck.”
Violet smiled, and they parted.
Montague accompanied Stokes and Barnaby to his office door; he watched them cross the outer office and leave, then he called in Slocum and requested the Galbraiths’ man-of-business’s name and direction.
Turning back to his desk, he saw that Violet had again sat in the chair beside it.
Glancing up, she met his eyes. “I do hope Penelope is working on her translation and hasn’t been distracted by the lure of this investigation.”
Dropping into his chair, Montague considered, then humphed. “What are the odds, do you think?”
Violet’s brows rose. “I honestly don’t know. She is making a considerable effort to be stricter over allocating her time. Her ‘balance,’ as she calls it.” Standing, Violet shook out her skirts, then glided back to her desk. “Still, we haven’t had a case—not one we ladies might help with—for some time, and this Galbraith case certainly sounds like one of those.”
We ladies. Montague realized he’d frozen at the words. The instinctive reaction was novel, not something he recognized, much less understood. As, directly across from him, Violet settled again at her desk and gave her attention to the letters that were now her domain, he wondered at his odd feeling… He couldn’t be jealous over the time Violet spent with Penelope and Stokes’s wife, Griselda, could he?
Inwardly frowning, he studied Violet—his wife—as she worked; he drank in the calmness, the sense of serenity and simple contentment she projected, at least to him.
After a moment, he mentally shook himself, picked up his pencil, and returned to the column of figures he’d been checking.
Feeling put out over Violet spending time with Penelope and Griselda, even if they plunged into another investigation, was just plain silly.
* * *
“I’m not yet certain of where the best place to start in this new investigation will be,” Penelope informed Oliver. Holding his hand, she walked very slowly, one step to several of Oliver’s short and still uncertain ones, along the strip of lawn bordering the flower beds in Berkeley Square.
The square and its gardens were a few minutes’ walk from their town house. Noting that Oliver was eager to explore not just their garden but the sights, sounds, and colors of people and carriages, other children, nursemaids, and even dogs, Penelope had decided that whenever the weather permitted, an hour in the square was an excellent diversion. For Oliver, and for her, too.
Restraining Oliver, now a sturdy fifteen-month-old, from diving headfirst into a flower bed sporting a few last daffodils and jonquils among burgeoning pansies and violas, Penelope went on, “Of course, there’s that wretched translation to be finished. Why they couldn’t find a more legible copy of the original I can’t imagine—I’ve had to use a magnifying glass over most of it. And even then, I’ve had to use my imagination in several places.” She frowned. “I might even have to ask Jeremy Carling for a second opinion.”
Spotting a dog being walked on a lead, Oliver chortled and waved. “Ma, ma, ma!”
Which, Penelope knew, translated to Mama, take me over there!
She obeyed; halting, she exchanged a greeting with the dog’s attendant human, a footman from Lord Ferris’s household, who obligingly held the dog, a poodle, so Oliver could clumsily pet it. The dog accepted the attention with a resigned air.
As she and Oliver moved on, Penelope wondered if they should get a dog of some sort. Although they lived in a town house, they did have a decent-sized garden. Putting the notion aside for later discussion with Barnaby, and with her mother and his, Penelope refocused—not on the translation that was plaguing her but on the case that had so unexpectedly fallen into their laps the previous evening. “Who would have thought,” she said to Oliver, “that someone would be murdered at such an event? The premier ball opening the Season, and immediately someone is murdered. Much as I enjoy investigating, I do hope that that isn’t an omen.” She paused, looking ahead, then added, “Especially as we have the coronation coming up later in the year. Not a good time for members of the haut ton to end up dead. Not, I suppose, that there is a good time.”
She’d grown accustomed to talking freely to Oliver, more or less letting her mind ramble and the words tumble out without restriction. Upon reaching the northern end of the long oval that was the gardens, they turned and started back down the other side of the central court, toward where Oliver’s nursemaid, Hettie, sat on a bench enjoying the weak sunshine and a welcome break.
“I suppose,” Penelope went on, “that we—Violet, Griselda, and I—will have to wait for Stokes and Barnaby to establish what leads exist before we can pick one and start following it.” Glancing down, she saw Oliver looking up at her, curious and—at least as she interpreted his look—interested. “There’s nothing that, at present, stands out as an obvious place to start pushing and prodding.”
Oliver smiled a wide, five-toothed smile, then looked ahead and tugged at Penelope’s hand.
“Yes, you’re right. We should get back.” Penelope exhaled gustily. “And I suppose I must spend at least a few hours on that translation, or Violet will shake her head at me, and we can’t have that.” At the mention of Violet’s name, Oliver looked up eagerly. Penelope smiled back. “Yes, I know—you like Violet. But she’s not coming today. She’ll be in tomorrow…” Raising her head, Penelope grimaced. “Blast! I just remembered I have to attend that lecture at the Royal Society this afternoon. I promised Mrs. Fischer that I would be there to lend her and her son my support, and she’ll notice and be upset if I don’t appear.”
Oliver chortled and, with Hettie now in his sights, tugged her on.
“Back to what awaits.” Penelope obliged by walking slightly faster. “Sadly,” she said, keeping an eye on Oliver to make sure he didn’t overbalance, “it seems there’s little prospect of me being able to accomplish anything investigation-wise today. Regardless, I have to admit that I’m thoroughly fascinated by this feud over Lady Latimer’s shoes. And, just between us, I have a niggling suspicion that, somehow, in some way, we will find that the feud and the shoes had something to do with Lady Galbraith’s murder.”
Although Hettie was now only a few paces away, Oliver slowed and—somewhat to Penelope’s surprise—directed a wide-eyed, clearly questioning look up at her.
She blinked. “Why do I think that?” Although Oliver didn’t reply—his grasp of words was not that advanced—he did seem to wait, so she answered, “I suppose because it’s such a curiously odd situation that it really would be terribly disappointing if Lady Latimer’s shoes weren’t involved.”
* * *
Barnaby and Stokes arrived at Fairchild House with Sergeant O’Donnell and Constable Morgan, two of Stokes’s more trusted men, in their train. Leaving the uniformed men in the front hall, Barnaby and Stokes met with Lord Fairchild in his library.
“Terrible business.” His lordship frowned. “And so senseless. I didn’t know Marjorie Galbraith well, but I cannot imagine she would have posed any sort of threat to anybody. She simply wasn’t the type.”
Having foreseen the necessity, Lord Fairchild had already warned his butler that Stokes would need to question the staff.
“Primarily as to what they saw,” Stokes said. “Especially what they saw of Lady Galbraith. Neither Lord Galbraith nor Mr. Hartley Galbraith were with her ladyship around the time she must have left the ballroom, and sadly, her daughters are so overset that we’ve been unable to ascertain anything from them of their mother’s movements beyond that, at some point in the proceedings, she moved from the spot where they had parted from her. As yet, no one has been able to tell us exactly when, or by what route, her ladyship left the ballroom.”
“Are those details significant?” Lord Fairchild asked.
“As we don’t yet know either the when or the how,” Stokes replied, “at this point, we can’t say.”
Lord Fairchild nodded. “Yes, of course. Well, I sincerely wish you both swift success—occurring as it did on what was essentially the opening night of the Season, this has cast something of a pall over the entire haut ton. Any murder would have been bad enough, but to have one of our own taken, and in such an incomprehensible fashion…well, it’s unnerving.”
Stokes glanced at Barnaby, then said, “I’ve brought two experienced officers to assist Mr. Adair and myself, so we’ll keep the disruption to your staff and their duties to a minimum.”
“Thank you. My wife, especially, will appreciate that. She’s still in a state of disbelief bordering on outrage that such a thing could have happened at an event of hers, in our house.” Lord Fairchild summoned his butler and gave orders for the staff to be assembled so that Stokes and Barnaby could question them.
Following the butler, rigidly disapproving but scrupulously correct, Barnaby and Stokes entered the servants’ hall to find the staff already gathered.
Barnaby glanced at the butler, who unbent enough to explain, “Elevenses, sir. We usually come together briefly at this time.”
Halting at the head of the long deal table about which the staff were now standing in their places, Stokes introduced himself and Barnaby, then nodded at the staff to retake their seats. Once they had, Stokes described in plain terms what was known to that point—that Lady Galbraith had left the ballroom and gone outside, onto the path below the side terrace, and that someone had then dropped a stone ball-cum-finial from the terrace balustrade onto her ladyship, killing her. Subsequently, her body had been discovered by Mr. Hugo Adair when that gentleman had gone outside to smoke a cheroot.
Barnaby stepped forward and, with an easy air, explained that Lord Fairchild had given orders that the staff should cooperate with the police and should answer all questions put to them truthfully. He glanced at the butler, who with a brief nod and a terse “Indeed, sir” verified those statements.
Then they got down to business. Stokes divided the staff into three groups—the senior staff, who he and Barnaby would interview, the other males on the staff, who O’Donnell would question, and the rest of the female staff, from whom the engaging, baby-faced Morgan was best qualified to extract information.
A hum of conversation enveloped the room as questions were put and answers were offered and noted. In addition to the inquiries Stokes had mentioned to Lord Fairchild, the questions the investigators put to the staff were also designed to eliminate any member of the staff as a suspect. As it transpired, the latter wasn’t difficult; the previous night’s event had been a major ball, and every staff member had had specific duties and a strict schedule.
Stokes had never before appreciated the logistics of putting on a major ton ball; he was impressed and said so, which somewhat eased the butler’s and housekeeper’s resistance. Subsequently, they grew steadily more helpful, explaining where this staff member, then that, had to have been at any particular time. Given that the butler had been on duty in the front hall throughout the evening, and the housekeeper had been acting as major-general in the kitchen, neither of them had seen anything pertinent, nor could they have been involved in any way. As—according to Hartley Galbraith—the Galbraiths had arrived after nine o’clock and Lady Galbraith’s body had been discovered at eleven o’clock, the period over which the investigators needed to account for the staff and their movements was relatively short.
Eliminating the staff was, in Stokes’s view, a necessary first step; he’d been involved in too many ton cases where the upper class assumed that any villain naturally hailed from some class lower than their own. Masters always looked to their staff, and staff looked to those lower than themselves. From experience, Stokes knew that eliminating all chance that any member of the Fairchilds’ staff was involved in the crime was the fastest way of clearing his path so he could focus on the Galbraith family and their ton acquaintances. In ton murders, the murderer was almost always a member of the same set, if not the same family.
Stokes wasn’t at all surprised that none of the staff were likely to have played any role in the crime, and he was pleased that striking them all from the suspect list was proving so straightforward. What he wasn’t so pleased about was the dearth of information on Lady Galbraith and her movements.
Eventually, the housekeeper looked him in the eye and stated the matter plainly. “We all had things to do, minute by minute, and so all of us were concentrating on what we were doing and not on what any of the guests were doing. We don’t get paid to do that.”
Stokes grimaced but inclined his head in acceptance.
Just then, Sergeant O’Donnell, who had been interviewing the male members of the staff in the far corner of the room, came up, a tall young footman somewhat nervously trailing behind him. O’Donnell tipped his head to Barnaby and to the butler and the housekeeper, then addressed Stokes. “Sir—Robert here remembers seeing Mr. Hartley Galbraith leave the ballroom early in the evening.”
O’Donnell stepped back, exposing Robert to Stokes’s and Barnaby’s now very interested gazes.
After taking rapid stock, Stokes evenly asked, “Are you sure it was Mr. Galbraith?”
Robert swallowed and glanced at the butler. Receiving an encouraging nod, he looked back at Stokes and replied, “I didn’t know it was him then—when I saw him go out onto the side terrace—but I saw him later, when we were ushering the family into the drawing room. The Galbraith family. The man I saw earlier was the younger man—well, he’d be about thirty—who we ushered into the drawing room with the young ladies and the older gent.”
That was as definitive an identification as they could hope for. Stokes glanced at Barnaby.
His gaze resting deceptively gently on the footman’s face, Barnaby asked, “What time was it when you saw Mr. Galbraith go out onto the side terrace?”
Robert blinked, then glanced at the housekeeper. “It was early-ish, soon after the ball started. We were still ferrying about the salvers with glasses of champagne. My tray was empty, so I left the ballroom and headed for the kitchen, and ended up following the gent down the corridor for a little way. I saw him turn off toward the little hall that gives onto the side terrace. When I passed the opening of that corridor, I glimpsed him just starting down the terrace steps.”
Barnaby cocked a brow at the housekeeper. “Can you give us an approximate time?”
The housekeeper narrowed her eyes on Robert. “We did two rounds each footman of the champagne. Was that the first time you came back—after your first tray was emptied?”
Robert nodded.
“Well, then.” The housekeeper looked at Barnaby and Stokes. “That would’ve been a trifle before half past nine. First round went out at ten past the hour, and second from about half past.”
“Right.” Stokes looked at O’Donnell, then looked down the room to where Morgan, with his harem of females, had stopped talking and had been listening, too. Stokes raised his voice and addressed the room at large. “We have a sighting of Mr. Hartley Galbraith leaving the house via the side terrace at just before half past nine. Did anyone see Lady Galbraith leave the ballroom, or see her go outside, via the side terrace or by any other route?”
Silence and a general shaking of heads.
“Next question,” Stokes went on, “did anyone see Mr. Hartley Galbraith talking with anyone in the ballroom before he left the house—in other words, soon after he arrived?”
Again, nothing.
“Did anyone see Mr. Hartley Galbraith return to the ballroom?”
No answer came. The butler shifted. “But he was in the ballroom when, with his lordship and her ladyship, we gathered the family and took them to the drawing room. He was standing with his sisters when we found them.”
Stokes nodded. “All right. Now go back to Lady Galbraith. Did anyone see her speak with anyone earlier in the night—any comment, discussion, argument—before she must have left the ballroom?”
Silence reigned.
Barnaby broke it to ask, “Did any of you notice any other guest leaving the ballroom for the gardens, or returning from that direction, at any time before the body was found?”
Heads shook all around the room.
Barnaby exchanged a glance with Stokes, who nodded, then Barnaby addressed the gathering. “Is there anything else that you noticed, or heard, over the hours of the ball that struck you as odd? Anything at all.”
Several seconds passed, then the butler stirred. “Actually, the one thing that strikes me as…well, unusual, was Mr. Galbraith, and Lady Galbraith, too, going outside so early.” The butler met Stokes’s interested gaze, then looked at Barnaby. “In my experience, it’s unusual for guests to go wandering the gardens that early. They’ve only just arrived, and they have all their friends to find in the crowd and speak with. Normally, they don’t start into the gardens until after midnight, once the ballroom begins to heat up. And it is March, after all—it was chilly outside, and the ballroom hadn’t had time to get stuffy.”
Barnaby inclined his head. “Indeed. That’s a very valid point.”
Stokes looked around the room. “Thank you, everyone—I believe that’s all we need at this point. You’ve been very helpful.”
With a general air of relief—everyone assumed dealing with a police investigation would be an ordeal and was pleased that nothing harrowing had occurred—the gathering broke up.
The butler, now much more at ease, conducted Barnaby and Stokes back through the house to the front door. O’Donnell and Morgan had elected to leave via the kitchen door; while the butler no doubt assumed that was due to them knowing their place, Barnaby suspected that, experienced men that they were, the two officers had gone out that way to get a better look at the layout of the house and grounds.
Waiting with Stokes by the police carriage in the drive for O’Donnell and Morgan to join them, Barnaby started putting the pieces of information they’d gathered together in his mind; to him, cases were like jigsaws, solved by fitting fact after fact into place. “Leaving aside any leaping to conclusions over Hartley Galbraith—whatever reason took Lady Galbraith outside, could she have surprised someone, seen something they didn’t want her to witness, and been killed because of that?”
Stokes grunted. “At this point, anything’s possible. But the question I keep coming back to is why she went outside at all—and, as the butler pointed out, at a time in the proceedings when you toffs don’t generally amble on the lawns.”
Barnaby grinned at the “you toffs.”
O’Donnell and Morgan strode up, and the four climbed into the carriage.
By the time the wheels were rolling, Barnaby had sobered. Across the carriage, he met Stokes’s eyes. “The butler’s observation, which is entirely accurate, highlights even more the oddity of Hartley Galbraith leaving the ballroom so early. What possible reason had he for going outside at that time?” Barnaby frowned. “And he denied it later. Why?”
Stokes returned Barnaby’s gaze steadily. “I suggest we go and ask him.”
* * *
After reporting to the chief commissioner, then enjoying a quick ploughman’s lunch at a public house not far from Scotland Yard, instead of immediately pursuing Hartley Galbraith, Stokes and Barnaby returned to the City and Montague’s offices.
It was early afternoon when they walked in—only a few hours since they’d steered Montague and his team in the Galbraiths’ direction—yet when Montague spotted them walking in the door, he grinned in clear triumph and beckoned them to join him in his office.
“I’ve found something that might be of interest,” he said, as they ambled to the chairs before his desk.
“And we’ve found someone whose finances might bear investigating.” Stokes sank onto a chair. “But”—he waved—“you first.”
“No Violet?” Barnaby asked, taking the other chair.
“She’s upstairs. She’ll be down in a moment.” Folding his hands on his blotter, Montague fixed them with a self-satisfied look. “It’s about Hartley Galbraith.”
Stokes blinked. So did Barnaby.
Montague noticed. “What?”
“Hartley Galbraith was the person we came here intending to point you toward,” Stokes said. “We’ve discovered that he left the ballroom and went out via the terrace early in the evening, but he lied about it later. So what have you found?”
Montague took a moment to digest that news, then refocused. “First, you need to know that since Hartley reached the age of twenty-five, his share of the income from the family’s estate has been split from the income paid to Lord Galbraith. That’s a common arrangement and one I applaud—one doesn’t want to give young men access to their fortunes at too early an age, yet you do want them to learn how to manage money before they marry and have children of their own. The firm who handles the Galbraiths’ interests, meaning the estate of Lord Galbraith, is well known and all is aboveboard there. However, Hartley moved his business to another firm—also a common and reasonable arrangement. Hartley’s chosen firm is less well established, but is reputable and well regarded. Thus far I have only inquired of the Galbraiths’ firm, and while they assure me that there is nothing out of the ordinary with the Galbraith accounts, they have recently been asked by Hartley’s man-of-business for an assessment of Hartley’s share of the estate—essentially an accounting of what he stands to inherit.”
Montague paused, then clarified, “Such an accounting might be thought to be contingent on the details of Lord Galbraith’s will, but with an entailed estate such as the Galbraith estate, the scope of the minimum that Hartley will inherit is defined. It’s possible, therefore, to put a figure on that minimum worth at any given time.”
Meeting first Barnaby’s gaze, then Stokes’s, Montague concluded, “In common parlance, Hartley Galbraith is putting his affairs in order.”
Stokes frowned. “What reason would a gentleman like him have for doing so?”
“In my experience,” Montague replied, “there are only two reasons a gentlemen of Hartley’s ilk seeks to put a value on his fortune. He’s either going into business and requires the backing of some other party and he needs the financials to get that party’s approval—for instance, a loan. Or—and for someone of Hartley’s style and age, this sounds more feasible—he intends to get married and needs the details of his worth to negotiate the settlements.”
Montague paused, then his lips quirked in wry grin. “Indeed, for a gentleman like Hartley Galbraith, you could say that going into business and getting married are more or less the same thing.”
Barnaby snorted.
Stokes looked amused, but he quickly sobered. “So he might be about to offer for some lady’s hand—and something to do with that might have taken him outside.”
“The only other possibility is that he’s making his will,” Barnaby said, “but as he’s not yet thirty, that’s hardly likely.” Barnaby cocked a brow at Stokes. “Shall we go and ask him which it is—business or pleasure, as the case may be?”
Stokes grinned wolfishly. “Yes. Let’s.” He rose.
Barnaby got to his feet. He and Stokes shook hands with Montague, who promised to let them know if any other interesting financial tidbits about the Galbraiths came to light.
Montague rose, too, and watched the pair walk out.
After the door closed behind them, feeling buoyed by a sense of accomplishment, however minor, he turned back to his desk and the investment reports spread across its surface. Sitting again, his gaze went to the smaller desk across the room and the empty chair behind it. Violet would be down soon. He hesitated, then made a definite mental note to tell her of Stokes and Barnaby’s visit, and of the investigation’s new focus on Mr. Hartley Galbraith.