‘That sounds easy enough,’ said Dunn. ‘What shall we do till dinner?’

  ‘I’m going to read my book,’ said Ellie.

  ‘I was going to have a quick kip,’ said Skins.

  ‘I’ll have to find someone else to play with, then,’ said Dunn.

  Ellie patted his arm. ‘Attaboy. Play nice, now. We’ll call you in at dinnertime.’

  Chapter Ten

  The Bilvertons dressed for dinner, and the Dizzies wore their dinner suits. In spite of everything, the atmosphere in the dining room that evening was reasonably jovial, no doubt helped by the generous amount of drink that had found its way to the table. John Bilverton had kept an impressive cellar and Gordon was an unstinting host, so the wine flowed and the conversation with it.

  They had broken up into their usual groups, with Ellie, Skins and Dunn chatting once more with Veronica. She was a keen observer of other people’s characteristics and foibles, with a gift for describing them in a way that was funny without being cruel. She had a wealth of stories about the family, their friends, the staff, the people in Partlow’s Ford, the children at her school, their parents, the other teachers . . .

  Skins, though, was only half paying attention. He’d been watching the comings and goings as people excused themselves from the table, and was on the lookout for the right moment to get up and go snooping. He reasoned that at some point everyone would be sufficiently engrossed in their own conversations that they wouldn’t notice if someone got up and didn’t come back for a while. Then he would slink out.

  Veronica noticed his inattention. ‘Are you still with us, Mr Skins?’

  ‘What? Oh, yes, sorry. Just a bit distracted. Nothing personal.’

  ‘As long as you’re well.’

  ‘Right as rain,’ said Skins with a smile. He looked around. ‘Would you excuse me for a moment, though?’

  Veronica returned his smile and nodded her assent.

  Smoothly and without further fuss or fanfare, he stood up and left the dining room. He didn’t look back.

  They had been sitting near the door to the salon, so he had to take the long way round to get to the hall. The advantage, he decided, was that he’d only have to walk along one side of the echoing hall to get to the study in the corner. It shouldn’t make too much difference, and no one would be listening for footsteps anyway, but he felt safer as he walked beneath the gallery on the balls of his feet. He would have preferred to describe his progress as ‘stealthy’ rather than ‘tiptoeing’, but he couldn’t help feeling that he must look as comical as his children did as they tried to sneak undetected past the dining room at home when they were supposed to be upstairs in bed.

  He reached the study and pushed the door open, looking again at the battered, black-painted lock with its scratched screws and the splintered door jamb as he closed it behind him. The key was still in the lock, and he was reminded once more that they were chasing a murderer who couldn’t possibly have committed the crime. He stared at the lock, wondering how anyone could shoot John in a locked room, then leave without the three women outside seeing anything, and all while the door remained so firmly locked that the women had to break in.

  He realized with a shock that he’d been standing there gawping at the door for a few minutes. He was there to find a will. A will, he remembered, that might not even exist.

  ‘Now then,’ Skins said quietly to himself, ‘if I were an imaginary will, where would I be?’

  He scanned the bookshelves on either side of the fireplace and, as expected, found them to be almost entirely filled with books. There was one shelf of box files all neatly labelled ‘Household’, and a quick inspection revealed that the first two held invoices and receipts for maintenance work carried out on the house. Opening the others, Skins saw that they all contained assorted domestic papers. It was possible John might have stashed a will in there, but it didn’t seem likely. A will was personal – this was all just household stuff.

  He put the last one back and looked at them again. As well as saying ‘Household’, the labels all had a date range and they were not in the right order. It could be that John had been slapdash, but the books on the shelves above were neatly ordered by subject and author. It seemed more likely to Skins that someone else had been through the files and had been careless about putting them back.

  He turned his attention to the desk. When he’d explored the room with Ellie and Dunn the previous evening he’d quickly scanned the desk, and noted that John’s pen was lying on top of a pile of papers. It was still there, exactly as he’d last seen it, so he judged it less likely that anyone else had moved it. Carefully noting the position of the pen and its cap, he lifted them clear and scanned the topmost document. It was something legal, but not a will. He riffled through the rest; they were all incomprehensible court papers. There were several manila folders, each containing what appeared to be John’s handwritten notes on cases he’d recently been involved in at the magistrates’ court. Skins noted the names on the files, but none of them seemed significant.

  The two desk drawers were unlocked. They contained new notebooks, some ink and a few other odds and ends of stationery, but no papers. There were two screwdrivers in the right-hand drawer, as well as an old rag and a cleaning rod. Skins recognized the familiar smell of gun oil – this was obviously where John had kept the pistol that now sat on the corner of the desk.

  He looked around. There was nothing else on the shelves except some framed photographs. On the chimneypiece there was a cricket ball on a wooden stand and what appeared to be a trophy in the form of a gilded biscuit. He got up and inspected them. The ball was to commemorate taking the winning wicket in a staff cricket match, while the trophy had been awarded by a local magazine in 1920 for ‘Best Biscuit Product’.

  Skins sat back in John’s chair. The room was lived in, but it wasn’t chaotic. Nothing was especially neat, but there was order. There were no random piles of tat. He could see no hiding place he might have overlooked. He leaned back.

  ‘Where the bleedin’ ’ell did you pu’ it, you old codger?’

  Skins had worked hard since he met Ellie in 1910 to lose his accent. Or at least to soften it a bit.

  ‘She’s wealthy, ain’t she?’ he’d said to Dunn after his first meeting with her at Weston-super-Mare. ‘Refined and that. She won’t want no gorblimey little bloke from norf London. She hangs about with toffs and la-di-das.’

  In moments of stress, though, or private contemplation, his north London accent came shining through.

  He leaned back a little further, still pondering the location of the alleged will.

  There was a heart-jolting moment as the chair overbalanced and began to topple backwards. Skins reached out and grabbed the desk and just about managed to stop himself from falling.

  Heart still pounding, he sat upright for a moment, contemplating the potential embarrassment of having fallen off the chair and knocked himself unconscious while snooping about in the dead man’s study. Lucky he had those catlike reflexes and was able to grab the desk in time, he thought. He relived the almost-fall in his head. The thrill of the moment when gravity got the better of him, the sudden grab, the feel of the underside of the desk . . .

  The underside of the desk didn’t feel at all how he’d expected it to.

  He reached out and ran his fingers along the wood. What was odd about it? What had he—?

  He pushed the button and a secret drawer sprang open.

  Inside there were yet more files and loose papers, including one document headed ‘Last Will & Testament’.

  He opened it up and began reading.

  Skins returned to the dining table and sat down with as little ceremony as possible.

  ‘Hi, honey,’ said Ellie. ‘How lovely to have you back.’

  ‘Of course it is – I’m a lovely bloke. Was I missed?’

  ‘Not for a second.’

  ‘Oh. I’m not sure how I feel about that. I expected at least one person to look up from their mutton cutlet and say, “Where’s old Skins gone? It’s just not the same without him.”’

  ‘I missed you terribly, of course.’

  ‘Well, that goes without saying.’

  Dunn sighed and shook his head. ‘You two are quite sickening sometimes, you know.’

  ‘You tell us often,’ said Skins. ‘Where’s Veronica?’

  ‘Call of nature. Did you find anything?’

  ‘Many things,’ said Skins. ‘Things of wonder. Things to amaze and delight kings and princes. Things—’

  ‘Skins, mate?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Did you find the will?’

  ‘I found books, household bills, pens, paper, stationery, a cricket trophy, another trophy in the shape of a gilded biscuit, a—’

  ‘I will kill you. Did. You. Find. The. Will?’

  ‘I found a secret drawer in the desk’ – he held up his hand to forestall Dunn’s protest – ‘inside which was a brand-new will.’

  ‘Good work,’ said Ellie. ‘What did it say? What was he leaving them?’

  ‘I haven’t the foggiest,’ said Skins.

  Ellie made a face. ‘How can you not know? Didn’t you read it?’

  ‘I know exactly what he planned to leave them – it was a few grand and an interest in the biscuit company for our Veronica, for instance – but the will was unsigned. Whatever they’re all actually getting will be in the older version, and that wasn’t there.’

  Ellie harrumphed.

  ‘It was all pretty much as everyone’s been saying, though,’ said Skins. ‘Marianne was going to get the house and a big share in the business, so if Gordon was expecting to get the lot he would have been badly disappointed. Elizabeth was getting cash and jewellery, but not much of either. Howard was getting nothing. John specifically mentions that he was excluding Howard in a lengthy paragraph about the boy’s many failings – it would have been an uncomfortable moment at the reading. Meanwhile, Malcolm would have got some cash and some keepsakes, as well as a guarantee that he’d be able to operate Bilver-Tone Records from the chapel no matter who owned the house. Marianne had to agree to that as a condition of getting the place. There was a lot of other guff about what would happen if she refused, and who’d get it then and . . . To be honest I didn’t pay a lot of attention to the details. There was a lot of “thereinafter” and “heretofore” and “notwithstanding” – I glazed over a bit. But then it got back on track. There were a few other bequests to people I didn’t know, but that was about the stretch of it.’

  ‘No real surprises, though,’ said Dunn. ‘It’s pretty much what everyone has been saying. So where does all this leave our list of suspects?’

  Ellie thought for a moment. ‘I’d say it rules Gordon out, and Marianne back in. If Gordon wasn’t getting as much under the new will, he’d want time to work on his pa, try to change his mind. Killing him would do him no good. Whereas Marianne stood to get a fortune as soon as John copped it.’

  ‘But what if they knew it hadn’t been signed yet?’ said Dunn. ‘Everyone assumes Gordon got the lion’s share under the old will. If he knew the new one hadn’t been signed, he’d want to bump the old boy off before he could scribble away his inheritance. Same for Marianne, but the other way round. She’d want to keep him alive until the fortune was hers and then do him in.’

  ‘It rules Howard in, either way,’ said Skins. ‘If he knew it was unsigned, he’d protect whatever he got in the original. But if he thought it was signed, he knew John was prepared to publicly disown him. Money or revenge – both good motives.’

  ‘On the whole, then, it looks like the new will tells us nothing,’ said Ellie. ‘But well done for finding it, Ivor.’

  ‘Thank you kindly, ma’am,’ said Skins. ‘Just doin’ my job.’

  ‘You’ve known me for fifteen years and that’s the best American accent you can do?’

  ‘I thought it sounded just like you.’

  Ellie huffed. ‘Did you? Did you really? And who says, “Thank you kindly, ma’am,” anyhow?’

  ‘I read it in a Western,’ said Skins.

  ‘It was pretty dreadful, mate,’ said Dunn.

  ‘You do better, then, go on.’

  Veronica sat back down and took a sip of her champagne. ‘Better at what?’

  ‘An American accent,’ said Skins.

  ‘Oh, I’m hopeless at accents. I can just about do Oxford, but you’d expect that.’

  ‘From all your wild nights out at the local nightclubs?’ asked Dunn.

  ‘Heavens, no. I seldom go out. Not for want of wanting, mind you – I should love to get out more. There’s something about this stifling place that saps the life out of one and I never seem to get round to it. Even when we’re not flooded in, I feel so trapped. Oh, but perhaps I’ve inherited enough to get me out. Actually, do you know what? Why don’t I get out anyway? I sometimes think I’d rather sleep in my classroom than spend any more time here.’

  ‘Don’t take one of the cots from the chapel, though,’ said Ellie.

  ‘Are they not the comfiest?’

  ‘You can only begin to imagine. I was telling these two earlier that I seriously wondered if the floor would be more comfortable.’

  ‘We’re such terrible hosts. I’m so sorry. I’ll see if we can do something about it.’

  ‘You’re very sweet, but two burly footmen arrived in the chapel this afternoon to take our bags up to the . . . second floor?’

  Veronica laughed. ‘The second floor, yes.’

  ‘Where I grew up that would be the third floor.’

  ‘Which would be logical, but also terribly, terribly wrong.’

  ‘Ivor has tried to explain it many times and it still makes no sense. But Marianne arranged for us to be moved into the guest rooms, so we’re going to be fine.’

  ‘I’m so pleased. Have you had any more thoughts about’ – she looked around to see who might overhear – ‘the case?’

  ‘No,’ said Skins. ‘We keep coming back to the same list of suspects in the same order.’

  ‘What about me?’ asked Veronica. ‘Where do I fit into your list of suspects?’

  ‘Way down at the bottom,’ said Dunn.

  ‘That’s hardly fair. Why not me?’

  ‘Did you kill him?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘There you go, then.’

  ‘I could be lying.’

  ‘You could, but you’ve got no real motive. And you were with Ellie when he was shot.’

  ‘Actually, I was with Betty in the kitchens.’

  ‘Did she do it?’

  ‘No, but—’

  ‘That rules you both out, then. She’s got no motive, either. If she didn’t want him dead you’d be an idiot to rely on her as an alibi. She’d shop you in a heartbeat.’

  ‘She might have wanted him dead, too.’

  ‘Did she?’

  ‘I don’t know. Maybe over that business with Peter?’

  Dunn laughed. ‘The mysterious business with Peter. All right, then, you’re in it together and you’re both back on the list.’

  ‘I just want to be treated fairly, that’s all. You can’t claim to be proper detectives if you’re going to exclude people from your investigations just because you like them.’

  ‘Who said we like you?’

  ‘Everybody likes me once they get used to me. I turn out to be delightful.’

  Dunn laughed again.

  Ellie was distracted by something at the other end of the table. Charlotte and Marianne were deep in earnest conversation. It didn’t seem heated or antagonistic, but it was definitely very intense. She was about to nudge Skins to point them out to him, but at that moment Marianne rose from the table, put down her napkin and swept out of the room. She was the only one of the family who had opted to dress in mourning and her long black evening gown gave her sudden departure an air of intriguing elegance.

  Before Ellie could say anything, they were interrupted by the arrival on their side of the table of Howard, bearing a fresh bottle of champagne.

  ‘I’m so frightfully bored of that lot over there,’ he said. ‘I’ve come to spend some time with our more glamorous guests. Budge up, Ronnie. Make some room.’

  Howard settled himself between Ellie and Veronica and refilled everyone’s glasses. Ellie wondered if he had any idea what his father had written about him in his will.

  ‘How are you feeling, honey?’ asked Ellie.

  Howard shrugged. ‘Honestly? Rather more upset than I would have expected, but the champagne helps. I’m dreading having to tell Kenny, but I’m spared that terrible duty for another day or two. Can’t work out if that’s worse, mind you. Might be better to get it done.’

  ‘The waiting’s often worse,’ agreed Skins. ‘That was the bit that always got to me in the trenches.’

  Howard smiled. ‘Another chap with a wealth of war stories, eh? You and Uncle Malcolm would get along swimmingly.’

  ‘They don’t talk about it much,’ said Ellie. ‘If at all.’

  ‘That’s because no one could possibly ever want to listen to our boring war stories,’ said Dunn.

  Howard raised his glass. ‘To boring war stories.’

  Ellie, Skins and Dunn joined the toast.

  ‘I was brought up on boring war stories,’ continued Howard. ‘Uncle Malcolm never tired of regaling anyone who would sit still long enough with tales of his daredevil exploits.’

  ‘Tired?’ said Ellie. ‘Past tense? He doesn’t do it any more?’

  ‘No. By the time he retired he’d lost his passion for it. Talks endlessly about bally music now.’

  ‘We can do that, too, if you like,’ said Dunn.

  ‘That’s awfully kind of you, but I think I’ll pass, thank you. But how are you all coping under these unfortunate circs? What have you been up to?’

  ‘Oh, you know,’ said Skins. ‘Just mooching about the place. Veronica gave us the tour.’

  ‘I thought I saw you trooping about. I hope she didn’t bore you too much.’

  ‘Not in the least,’ said Ellie. ‘You have a lovely home.’