An Invisible Murder Read online

  Inspector Bishop awoke suddenly to the accompaniment of his wife’s elbow buried deeply in his ribs, aided and abetted by an awful racket. He winced, half-sat up, and heard his phone ringing. He glanced at his clock, saw that it was 6.30, and groaned.

  His wife gave him another nudge with her killer elbow. Bishop grunted, got out of bed, and rubbed his side as he galloped downstairs in an old-fashioned set of pyjamas that would have had Myers howling in mirth. ‘Yes?’ he all but bellowed into the instrument.

  ‘Inspector?’ Jenny Starling’s voice came over loud and clear. ‘I’m about to prove who killed Ava Simmons. I think, perhaps, the police had better be here, don’t you?’

  Bishop stared into the phone. He blinked. He opened his mouth, then closed it again.

  He hung up without a word.

  Jenny waited until Bishop and Myers arrived. They rushed into the kitchen like two dogs called late to dinner, their faces a picture of anticipation and anger. By the stove, Jenny was just starting the sausages.

  She looked up and nodded. ‘Inspector. Just in time. See that these don’t burn, will you?’

  Bishop stared at her, then at the pan full of sausages. ‘Where are you going?’ he yelped as she turned and headed for the door.

  ‘To call Basil Simmons, of course,’ she said. ‘He’s coming over. Didn’t I tell you?’

  Bishop swore. He swore about once in a blue moon, and Myers, who’d just begun to obligingly turn over a sausage, stopped and stared at him. Hard. ‘No, Miss Starling,’ Bishop said through gritted teeth, as both his sergeant and the cook gaped at him in amazement, ‘you didn’t tell me. In fact, you told me nothing of what’s been going on,’ he ended on a sweet, sweet smile.

  ‘Oh, well. I’d better explain then,’ Jenny said crisply. ‘But first, let me call Mr Simmons. I want to get it over and done with before any of the others come down.’

  Bishop couldn’t argue with that. He turned, caught a grin on Myers’ face, and swore again. Myers hastily turned back to the sausages. A few minutes later, the cook returned.

  ‘Basil Simmons will be here at nine o’clock. I’ve arranged with the family to use the sunroom. There’s a large tapestry screen there that you can hide behind.’

  ‘And why should I want to hide behind a tapestry screen with Basil Simmons, pray tell?’ Bishop gritted.

  ‘You won’t,’ Jenny said, sounding surprised. ‘You and Myers will be behind the screen; Basil Simmons will be in the front of the room.’

  ‘Doing what?’ Bishop all but bellowed.

  ‘Proving who killed his daughter, of course,’ Jenny said mildly. ‘Really, Inspector, there’s no need to shout. I’m not deaf.’

  Bishop swore again. Most colourfully.

  At nine o’clock, Basil Simmons arrived. Meecham, who was operating on strict instructions from his lordship, showed him straight to the sunroom and left.

  There, Jenny told the gallery owner exactly what to do and what to say. Bishop and Myers, now brought up to date, stood by in grim silence.

  They didn’t exactly approve of the plan. It seemed unduly theatrical and amateurish to their official minds. But they had both been forced to admit that it was probably their only chance of catching their killer.

  Basil barely glanced at them. But his face, as the cook talked, became blacker and tighter. Finally, he nodded. He, too, was not entirely happy with the plan. But he would go along with it.

  At 9.15 exactly, the two policemen retired behind the screen. Jenny also retired, with gratitude, but to her kitchen.

  She hated scenes. She loved her kitchen. Once in the sanctuary of the massive room, she began to cook. She was in the mood for it. For lunch, she would make egg croquettes followed by a bread and cheese pudding. Perhaps a fruit compote too. Busily, she began gathering the ingredients. She never looked at her watch, and she kept her mind firmly away from what was going on upstairs.

  The kitchen, for once, was deserted. Lord Avonsleigh had arranged to keep everybody – save one – busy.

  Jenny had just taken some stale bread from the larder and was beginning to grate it when the door opened. Myers stood at the top of the steps and beckoned her. His face was beatific.

  Sighing, Jenny reluctantly left the kitchen and followed him across the hall. Outside, in the ancient quad, was a police car. And just being bundled inside, heavily handcuffed and looking both terrified and furious, was Malcolm Powell-Brooks.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  The hall clock struck two as Jenny and a very happy Bishop and Myers climbed the stairs, following Meecham to Avonsleigh’s sitting room. It was a sun-filled room, with heavy oak panelling and large, comfortable leather-buttoned armchairs. He and his wife rose as the trio walked in, Meecham standing to one side and closing the door after them. He was already reverting to the archetypal butler – all cool reserve and calm complacency.

  He was not the only one. With the dramatic events of that morning over and the removal of Malcolm Powell-Brooks complete, the whole castle seemed to bask in a lighter atmosphere. The sun seemed to shine a little stronger. The maids seemed to hum a little louder. The dog snored a little happier.

  Lord Avonsleigh rose and offered his hand in congratulations to Bishop, who very nearly blushed. Lady Vee winked at Miss Starling and nodded to the small coffee table. On it, rested the little fairy cakes and butter-cream butterfly cakes that she’d baked less than an hour ago.

  ‘Tea, gentlemen?’ she prompted, and they all took seats grouped loosely around the laden table.

  ‘So, everything went well at the police station?’ his lordship asked by way of openers, and Bishop nodded.

  ‘Powell-Brooks has been charged with the murder of Ava Simmons, my lord,’ he confirmed happily. ‘He’s already talking to his lawyer now.’

  ‘No chance of him getting off, I suppose?’

  ‘No, my lord,’ Bishop said firmly. ‘We overheard everything said in the sunroom between Basil Simmons and our Malcolm, and Myers here took it all down in shorthand. And, of course, we have it on tape, although whether that will be allowed in as evidence, I’m not sure. Lawyers can be tricky. But then there’s the testimony of Anthony Grover, and any other art experts you care to bring in. No, he’s not getting away with anything.’

  ‘You’re on the trail of my missing paintings, I hope?’ Avonsleigh said, and the Inspector nodded.

  ‘We are, your lordship, and I hope we’ll locate them for you. But some, I think, are probably lost forever,’ he warned, wanting to prepare him for the worst. ‘Those sold to unscrupulous private collectors – well, I don’t think they’ll ever come to light again. But I’m sure we’ll track down enough to put the final nail in Mr Powell-Brooks’s coffin. It was very clever, my lord, the way you worked out what the swine was up to.’

  Avonsleigh coughed behind his hand. ‘You’re praising the wrong person, I’m afraid, Inspector. It was Miss Starling who worked it all out.’

  The inspector paused in the act of lifting his delicate teacup to his lips. The Spode china looked like a child’s toy in his massive hands, and Vee felt a fair bit of relief when he carefully returned it to its saucer. The inspector looked at Jenny. Then at his sergeant. Then back to the cook. He sighed.

  ‘All right, Miss Starling,’ he said heavily. ‘I have to admit it, I’m dying to know how you figured it all out.’

  ‘Yes, so am I,’ added Lady Vee eagerly. ‘Oh, I know you told us who and why and how, but you never really explained how you came to, well – know it all.’

  Jenny blushed. ‘Well, it was just a simple matter of thinking things through, that’s all,’ she said, looking and sounding acutely embarrassed.

  ‘Now it’s no good being modest,’ his lordship cajoled, sounding hearty and jolly and determined. ‘Spill the beans, as Roberta would say. We want to hear every last bit of it.’

  ‘In the minutest detail,’ his wife added, leaning forward eagerly on her seat. All four, in fact, were leaning forward, their expressions avid, and Jenny sig
hed heavily.

  ‘Very well. Let’s see. Where do I start? Well, we might as well begin with motives, I suppose,’ she said, settling back in her chair and marshalling her thoughts into order.

  ‘As you know, at first, there didn’t seem to be any motives at all. Ava was dead and nobody, as far as we could tell, would want her so. And then, all in a rush, or so it seemed, everybody suddenly had a reason for wanting her gone. I discovered Elsie was really Ava’s half-sister, and must have felt resentful of Ava’s status. Meecham and Gayle had been cheated out of their farm by Basil Simmons. Janice’s boyfriend was making a big play for Ava. Even Roberta….’ There Jenny paused, aware that she might be about to step into treacherous terrain.

  But her employees both smiled. ‘Go on, Miss Starling, do,’ Lady Vee urged her. ‘We won’t be offended. We’re much too intrigued to take umbrage, I assure you.’

  ‘Yes, well,’ Jenny coughed. ‘Even Lady Roberta had reason to resent her governess. Ava was concerned about the relationship between her charge and Malcolm Powell-Brooks, as she had every right to be, as it turned out. Malcolm set out to learn everything he could about Lady Roberta’s character. In fact, he relied on it. But that comes later. Where was I?’

  Jenny pulled the wings off the butterfly cake on her plate and chewed thoughtfully, unaware that everyone else in the room was straining at the bit, willing her on.

  ‘Malcolm’s motive, or so it seemed, was that Ava was jealous of his art degree from Ruskin and was trying to make trouble, get him fired, that sort of thing,’ she mused slowly.

  ‘Yes, yes, so everyone had a motive,’ Bishop butted in, trying to hurry her along. He was dying to know how an amateur had solved one of the most puzzling cases of his career, and Myers gave him a sympathetic look. He, too, was eager to listen and to learn.

  ‘Yes, but none of the motives seemed, well, really appropriate,’ Jenny said, groping for words. ‘I mean, just think about it,’ she urged them all. ‘Meecham and Gayle had worked here, quite happily, for years. And it was Basil Simmons, not Ava Simmons, who had caused their ill-fortune. Is it likely, I had to ask myself, that they would kill Ava over that?’

  She made no mention of The Lady Beade School. Meecham’s secret was safe with her.

  ‘Hm, I see what you mean,’ Lord Avonsleigh said. ‘It would have been a bit over the top.’

  ‘The same went for Janice,’ Jenny continued. ‘Granted, no girl likes to see her boyfriend make a play for another woman, but Janice is young and pretty and has had many young lads interested in her in the past, and will doubtless have many more buzzing around her in the future. She already has a new boyfriend now, in fact. Barry, I believe, his name is.’ Again, she made no mention of the parlour maid’s little game with the brooch. ‘So was it feasible, I asked myself, that Janice would be so rife with jealousy that she would kill over it?’

  ‘Of course not,’ Lady Vee said. ‘Oh dear,’ she added, ‘how easy it all is with hindsight, and with someone to tell you what to think,’ she added, giving Miss Starling a glowing look. ‘What about Roberta and that dreadful man?’

  ‘Well, again, your ladyship,’ Jenny smiled back, ‘it was all much of the same thing. You yourself told me that you’d had a word with Powell-Brooks and was assured that he wasn’t taking Lady Roberta’s infatuation seriously. And that Ava seemed to accept your reassurances. So why would he feel threatened enough to kill her? No. Everybody seemed to have a motive. But, really, they didn’t add up to much. Which meant that there must be another motive. One I hadn’t seen yet. So, I had to resort to the three mainstays.’

  ‘Mainstays?’ his lordship echoed blankly.

  ‘Money, love and revenge,’ Inspector Bishop explained.

  ‘Exactly,’ Jenny said. ‘But there seemed little hope of finding a motive so well hidden that nobody had even suspected it. But, gradually, piece by piece, tiny clues presented themselves. Some were so general and out in the open that I almost missed them. Malcolm’s insistence that Lady Roberta have the best of everything for instance. The best canvasses, the best paints, the finest studio. At first I assumed it was because of who Lady Roberta was, and because Avonsleigh’s reputation as a repository of fine art needed to be maintained. But, of course, when you put that aside, the fact remained that Malcolm, a fine art expert, had access to the best of everything himself. And was surrounded by some of the finest paintings in the world. Plus plenty of free time. Nobody interrupted him in the studio when Ava was taking Lady Roberta for her lessons. And with so many paintings in the castle, who would notice if one of them were not in its proper place for a short time? All he had to do was go into a little-used room and take a painting to his studio. Who would notice, or even comment? And what did that all add up to?’ she asked, raising an eyebrow.

  ‘An art forger’s paradise,’ Myers supplied, his eyes glittering.

  ‘Yes. And that brought us back to motive. Money. Lots and lots of money. Malcolm was ideally placed to copy the great masters, replace the original with his own copy, and sell on the masterpiece to private collectors. He was making himself a fortune. No wonder he was resentful of Ava Simmons’s interference. If he lost his job here, he lost access to all the paintings. The expensive paints. The old canvasses. That wonderfully equipped studio, with its brand new skylights that he’d just had installed. Oh, yes, he was a clever man all right. He saw at once that nobody at Avonsleigh was sufficiently interested in art to notice or care what he got up to. Er, no disrespect intended, your lordship,’ Jenny added quickly, nodding to George.

  He waved a hand. ‘You’re quite right, Miss Starling,’ he agreed, without rancour. ‘I respect Avonsleigh’s history, of course. Some of my ancestors have been the greatest collectors of art the world has ever known. My great-grandfather was an acknowledged world expert on those French chaps. But I myself never had any leanings that way. I was quite content to keep the tradition up, mind. Have Roberta taught art and keep a resident tutor on staff. What a joke on us that turned out to be,’ he added, a shade bitterly. ‘I wouldn’t have known a Joshua Reynolds from a … from a … Picasso.’

  ‘Oh, I think you might, dear,’ his wife said, a twinkle in her eye. ‘But I quite get your point, Miss Starling. We all are total dunces about art. But what I don’t understand is, how he expected to fool all the others. We do, as you know, play host to several tours of art-lovers every year. Surely they would spot a fake at once?’

  Jenny nodded. ‘Oh yes. But didn’t his lordship say that it was Malcolm who told you when paintings needed cleaning? If you think back, I think you’ll find that several paintings needed “cleaning” just before a tour was due to arrive. Those paintings being his own fakes, of course. With such a huge collection, who would miss some? Besides, artworks do have to be cleaned. If anyone mentioned a blank space, and was told it was being cleaned, no art expert in the world would be suspicious. And after they’d gone, he’d just put the fakes back up again.’

  ‘Clever sod,’ Myers said bluntly, and received a swift kick in the shins from his superior. Myers coloured. ‘Oh, I do beg your pardon, your ladyship,’ he said to Lady Vee, and pulled at his tie, which suddenly felt much too tight.

  ‘Oh, you’re quite right,’ she replied, totally unfazed. ‘He was a clever sod.’

  ‘But it must have put a crimp on him when Basil Simmons’s daughter was appointed governess to Lady Roberta,’ Bishop said thoughtfully, and Jenny nodded.

  ‘Exactly. Not only was Ava concerned about the way he could manipulate Lady Roberta, she was an art buff herself. She must have learned a lot from that father of hers.’ Jenny just managed to stop herself from calling Basil Simmons something very uncomplimentary indeed. ‘And don’t forget, you don’t need to have a degree from the Ruskin to be knowledgeable. Her mentor, Anthony Grover, was an art teacher himself. Ava grew up with art. She studied it intensely. And it wouldn’t have taken her long to put two and two together. No, as soon as she began to suspect, Malcolm Powell-Brooks knew he was going to hav
e to get rid of her.’

  ‘So you think she’d already spotted the fakes?’ his lordship said.

  Jenny nodded. ‘Yes. I’m sure she did. The very first morning I arrived, I saw Ava mid-way on the stairs, and she was studying a painting, very thoroughly. I didn’t think anything of it at the time, of course,’ she added, her voice losing some life. ‘If only I’d had my eyes and ears more open.’

  ‘Miss Starling, you mustn’t,’ Vee said sharply, making the three men, who hadn’t yet caught on, look at her blankly. ‘There was no way you could have known what that rotter was up to. You’d only been here a day or two before Ava was actually killed. We’d all been around Malcolm Powell-Brooks for months, and none of us suspected a thing. You simply must not start thinking that you could have prevented it. Evil men kill, and more often than not, there’s not a damned thing we can do about it.’

  ‘Oh, quite,’ his lordship said, looking as appalled as his wife. ‘None of this can be laid at your door, Miss Starling. Nobody here thinks you could have saved poor Ava.’

  Bishop and Myers quickly added their own reassurances. Jenny sighed, not much comforted.

  ‘Besides, without you,’ Vee continued, ‘that dreadful man would have got away with it. And nobody should get away with murder.’

  ‘Quite,’ her husband agreed. Then paused. ‘Er, about the murder…?’

  Jenny nodded. ‘Oh yes. The murder itself.’

  ‘Ah,’ Bishop said, his massive frame beginning to quiver, like a hunting dog about to be let off the leash. Now they were getting to it.

  ‘That was the hardest part of all,’ she continued. ‘I mean, it all seemed so impossible, didn’t it? The dagger was on the wall, clean and innocent at three o’clock when the family and the colonel and his lady passed it. Then, half an hour later, it was covered in Ava’s blood and Ava herself was dead in the conservatory. And four people, who sat not many yards away and should have seen it all happen, actually saw nothing at all.’