‘There’s four of us, mate,’ said Dunn. ‘You’ll never—’

  ‘Never get away with it? Oh, I think my pals in the local constabulary will happily accept my story of how the drug-addled musicians my nephew hired for the party broke in to my control room, intent on stealing my expensive kit to pay for their habit. Plucky Veronica tried to stop them, of course, but the bounders shot her. I came upon the scene, wrestled the gun from their devilish hands, and in the ensuing struggle, all three succumbed to fatal bullet wounds.’

  ‘What about Hetty?’ asked Ellie.

  ‘Dear, ambitious Hetty? Tragic accidental overdose of a sleeping draught. Happens all the time.’

  ‘What on earth did she do to deserve to be murdered?’

  ‘She was poking about in here while I was trying to work. The silly girl stumbled upon the latch that opens the escape tunnel. She didn’t realize its significance. Not then, at least. But it was only a matter of time. Bright girl. Had to go.’

  ‘And Marianne?’

  ‘Another bright girl. She was suspicious. John must have confided in her, or let something slip, so when he copped it she knew something was up. Confronted me. Had to suffer an accident.’

  Dunn scowled. ‘You’re m—’

  ‘Mad? Do you know, I used to worry that I might be. Had some terrible doubts about myself in my army days. But I’ve come to realize that actually everyone else is mad and I’m the only sane one. Wars, greed, crime – insanity. The only important thing is beauty. Music, art, Mother Nature. Everything else is insanity and wickedness. The old cocaine sharpens the mind, d’you see? Puts all the senses on alert. Helps me see things much more clearly. Put that box down carefully, lad, by the way. Precious stuff, that. Cost me an arm and a leg, what?’ He gave a little chuckle as he tapped his false leg with his cane.

  ‘Where did you record it all? Where did you fire the shot?’ asked Skins.

  Malcolm turned slightly and waved his pistol back towards the chapel. ‘Had to do it in here – I told you, the loudspeaker is screwed down. Fired the shot out through the door. Bullet’s lodged in one of the ceiling beams. I wondered about getting a ladder and digging it out, but I’m not much good on ladders and I thought it would be a nice reminder of one of my better-laid plans.’

  He turned smugly back just as Dunn threw the contents of the pandan box in his face. Skins rushed towards the temporarily blinded former soldier and tried to wrestle the gun from his hands.

  In the ensuing struggle the gun went off. Ellie screamed as Veronica fell.

  Between them, Skins and Dunn managed to subdue Malcolm. They used Dunn’s tie to secure his hands behind his back, and Skins unbuckled and removed the older man’s false leg.

  ‘You know, just in case you were thinking of hopping it,’ he said as he put the leg out of reach in the corner of the control room.

  Ellie was tending to Veronica.

  ‘How bad?’ asked Skins.

  ‘Got her in the shoulder. I can staunch the bleeding for now, but she’ll need the hospital.’

  Veronica moaned as Ellie applied pressure to the wound, using the torn-off sleeve of her own blouse.

  ‘She could do with morphine, too. Go and see if Doctor Whosit is still here. And let me have a look at that journal while you’re gone.’

  Skins handed her the journal and then, having checked that Dunn had Malcolm under control, set off at a run through the chapel and back to the house.

  He found Gordon, Howard and Dr Hurlston in the drawing room.

  ‘I’m afraid there’ll have to be an inquest,’ the doctor was saying. ‘The coroner has to rule in cases of suicide.’

  ‘I understand,’ said Gordon. ‘That will delay the reading of the will, won’t it?’

  ‘I’m sorry, but yes. There’ll be no death certificate until after the coroner’s hearing.’

  ‘Is that all you’re worried about—’ began Howard, but Skins interrupted him.

  ‘We need the doctor in the chapel,’ he panted. ‘Veronica’s been hurt.’

  ‘Hurt?’ said Howard. ‘How?’

  ‘Malcolm shot her. Call an ambulance – we’ll need to get her to a hospital. And call the police. Doctor? Come with me please. And bring your bag.’

  ‘Uncle Malcolm?’ said Gordon in astonishment. ‘Surely there must be some mistake.’

  ‘No mistake, Gordon. We’ll explain later. Just make the calls, please. Now. Doctor?’

  Dr Hurlston seemed slightly flustered. ‘I’ll . . . I’ll need to get my bag from my car. The chapel, you say?’

  ‘The chapel. Quick as you can, please.’

  The doctor went to the door with Skins following him.

  ‘I can manage, thank you, Mr . . . ?’

  ‘Maloney. I’ll meet you there.’

  Shaking his head at the old doctor’s lack of urgency, Skins left through the other door, going back the way he had come through the dining room and salon.

  Howard followed. ‘I’m coming with you.’

  ‘All right, but don’t throw a fit on me, all right? Have you ever seen someone shot?’

  ‘Where would I have seen—’

  ‘No, of course not. Sorry. There’s a lot of blood, but she’s all right. Ellie used to be a nurse and she’s taking care of her. Just don’t . . . you know . . .’

  ‘Don’t throw a fit. No. Got it.’

  They jogged to the chapel and Skins led the way to the control room.

  ‘How’s she doing?’ he asked.

  ‘I’m still with it, you know,’ said Veronica. ‘You can ask me.’

  ‘Sorry, mate. How are you?’

  ‘In a lot of bloody pain, if you must know. I don’t know how soldiers bear it.’

  ‘Never got shot, me,’ said Skins. ‘Got bonked on the head by a signpost, but never got shot.’

  ‘I’d have bloody shot you,’ growled Malcolm, still lying on the floor. ‘Insolent whelp. I bet you thought you were the life and soul of the regiment. There’d have been a tragic accident in your trench, let me tell you. Accidental discharge of a weapon. Man responsible’s on a fizzer for carelessness, but it was just one of those things. Pity about poor Maloney, but these things happen.’

  ‘Malcolm?’ said Skins.

  ‘Colonel bloody Bilverton to you, boy.’

  ‘Malcolm,’ repeated Skins. ‘Shut your face. I was the life and soul of the regiment, as it happens, but my mate there had a bit of a reputation for putting the boot in. It wouldn’t do to upset him or you’ll spend your first night in the police cells with a broken nose.’

  Dunn, who had never kicked anyone in his life, tapped Malcolm idly in the ribs with the toe of his boot.

  ‘Is the doctor on his way?’ asked Ellie.

  ‘As fast as his fat little legs will carry him,’ said Skins. ‘Gordon’s calling an ambulance, too.’ He looked over at Malcolm. ‘And the rozzers, Malcy.’

  ‘You’ll be smirking on the other side of your face when I’ve finished with you, boy. I know the Duke of Sutherland. And the chief constable.’

  ‘And I know Duke Ellington. Well, not to speak to, but I’ve heard his records. But that wouldn’t help me if I’d murdered my brother and shot my niece in the shoulder.’

  ‘Murdered his brother?’ said Howard.

  ‘What’s that useless drip doing in here?’ spluttered Malcolm.

  ‘We’ll explain everything later,’ said Ellie. ‘For now, will someone please hurry that doctor up.’

  ‘No need, no need,’ said Dr Hurlston. ‘Here I am. Now then, young Veronica, it looks like you’ve been in the wars.’

  Chapter Sixteen

  The ambulance arrived some while before the police, but Veronica had insisted – very much against the advice of Dr Hurlston – that they delay her trip to hospital until she’d heard Ellie’s promised explanation of the events of the weekend.

  With Howard’s assistance, Ellie had managed to persuade all the Bilvertons, as well as the entire band, to gather in the library. They were joined by Dr Hurlston, Inspector Upton of the Oxfordshire Constabulary and a uniformed police sergeant whose name had not been given.

  The room was easily big enough to accommodate the eighteen people, and a good few of them had found somewhere to sit. Malcolm – now free of his improvised restraints and with his artificial leg returned and refitted – sat in an armchair, fiercely guarded by Howard.

  The inspector called for silence and then turned to Ellie. ‘I have to tell you, Miss—’

  ‘Mrs,’ she said. ‘Mrs Maloney.’

  ‘Ah, Irish, eh?’

  ‘American, but the name is my husband’s. He’s English. From London.’

  ‘Is that a fact? Well, well, well. But as I was saying, I have to tell you that I’m wondering why you’ve called us all here. As I understand it from Dr Hurlston, there was a tragic incident here at the house on Saturday. Mr John Bilverton took his own life. There are other things for us to look into’ – he glanced at Malcolm – ‘but I’m not at all sure that the rest is a police matter.’

  ‘If it were suicide, Inspector, I’m sure you’d be right. But we – that is, my husband Ivor, our friend Barty Dunn and I – strongly believe that John Bilverton did not take his own life. We believe he was murdered. Hetty Hollis’s overdose was not accidental, either. Nor was Marianne Bilverton’s fall. And we’re convinced we know who was responsible for everything.’

  She had anticipated the ensuing uproar and protestations from the family and waited patiently while the inspector regained control of the room.

  ‘This is a grave accusation, madam, and one that I am obliged to take seriously. I hope you realize that wasting police time is also a serious matter, and that you could well be opening yourself to civil proceedings for slander if you’re not able to back up your claims.’

  ‘All I ask is that you all hear me out and decide for yourselves. I imagine everyone here remembers the events of Saturday afternoon, but I think it will make more sense to the inspector if we start at the beginning. So, on Saturday afternoon, everyone – all the members of the family and the entire band—’

  The inspector was making notes as she spoke. ‘Band, madam?’

  ‘The Dizzy Heights. We were hired to play at the family’s Midsummer Ball on Friday – or rather they were. I’m married to the drummer – I just came along to enjoy the party. But on Saturday we were waiting for the motor coach to come and pick us all up to take us back to London. The band had been recording in the chapel with Malcolm Bilverton, and towards the end of the recording session the family had come along to listen.’

  ‘The entire family?’

  ‘Everyone. It was raining heavily so there was little for them to do outdoors. Malcolm had suggested earlier that they might enjoy listening to the band, and at about one o’clock John Bilverton brought them all to the chapel.’

  ‘Through the pouring rain.’

  ‘I think they felt that it was worth enduring a drenching. The Dizzy Heights are more than worth getting wet for, and they’re not the sort of family to let even a deluge like that stand in the way of their fun.’

  ‘I see. It was quite the deluge, though, as you say. We’ve not seen flooding like it for years. Not since I was a lad.’

  Ellie smiled. ‘So everyone who was still here was in the chapel. A little before three o’clock, John excused himself and returned to the house to complete some work. There were a few complaints from his children, but he reminded them that he’d already told them of his intention to work that afternoon. He set off in the rain.’

  ‘Alone?’

  ‘Alone, yes. As it approached four, we all decided we were hungry. The cook had left a picnic tea, so Elizabeth, Veronica and I went to the house to fetch it. John had left strict instructions that he wasn’t to be disturbed until after four, so I was standing outside the study, waiting for the clock to chime four before telling him that afternoon tea was served. As I waited, a gramophone record started playing inside the room – Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue”—’

  ‘I’m not familiar with that. Modern, is it?’

  ‘About a year old.’

  ‘Ah. I prefer the old music hall songs, myself.’

  ‘Many do. The music played, then the clock began to chime. As it finished, I heard a loud gunshot from inside the room.’

  ‘The shot that killed John Bilverton.’

  ‘Or so we were expected to believe. But I’ll come to that in due course. Elizabeth and Veronica arrived while I was banging on the door. We tried it, but it was locked from the inside – Veronica went to the butler’s pantry to get the spare key, and Elizabeth waited in the hall while I went outside to try and peer in through the window. I eventually managed it, in part thanks to a wheelbarrow, and saw a figure slumped in the chair. I went back in hoping we’d be able to enter using the spare key, but there was something blocking the keyhole. When we looked we saw there was a key already in the lock on the other side. Between us we managed to break open the door and I slipped in a tiny puddle of water as we tumbled in. I thought nothing of it at the time – the weather was atrocious, after all. And that was when we found John Bilverton, dead in his chair with a pistol on the floor beside him.’

  ‘He’d shot himself, then.’

  ‘So it was meant to appear, yes. Shot himself inside his locked study.’

  ‘There was no sign of anyone else being there?’

  ‘None. He had been drinking Scotch – there was a decanter and a single glass on the desk. There was a cushion from the library on the windowsill, but nothing else was out of place.’

  ‘Did he leave a note?’

  ‘No. We checked.’

  ‘That’s most unusual in cases of suicide.’

  ‘It is, isn’t it? Now, I served in the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry so I felt competent to examine the body.’

  ‘The FANYs, madam? But I thought you said you were American.’

  ‘It’s a long story, Inspector. I was in love with a drummer. I wanted to be near him. I came to England. I volunteered. They were short-handed. They took me on despite my nationality.’

  ‘I see, madam. Sorry to interrupt.’

  ‘That’s quite all right. There was a single bullet wound in the left temple. Mr Bilverton was left-handed. I’ve seen many bullet wounds, but few fatal and even fewer self-inflicted, so I wasn’t completely sure what I was looking at. But when I described it to my husband and his friends – all old soldiers, of course – they said that the marks weren’t what you’d expect from a self-inflicted wound.’

  ‘What do you think, Dr Hurlston? Do you agree with the old soldiers?’

  ‘Well,’ said the doctor, thoughtfully. ‘Actually, now you come to mention it, I suppose they might be right. I had no reason to doubt what I’d been told so I merely confirmed that life was extinct and noted the presence of a gunshot wound to the left temple. The . . . You’ll have to excuse me, ladies, but I need to be blunt here. Despite being stored in the ice house, the body was in the early stages of decomposition. Even so, I was able to examine the wound, and now Mrs Maloney mentions it there was an absence of the sort of markings one might expect from a self-inflicted shot at close range. I was unfortunate enough to see one or two suicides in the trenches myself and, yes, I should have expected stippling around the wound – gunpowder and the like embedded in the skin. If the muzzle of the gun is in contact with the skin one gets a stellate – umm, star-shaped – pattern as the hot gases tear the skin. There was none of that, so, yes, it’s certainly possible that the fatal round was fired from more than a couple of feet away.’

  ‘I see. Continue, please, Mrs Maloney.’

  Ellie nodded her thanks. ‘We shared our concerns with Veronica and she agreed to help us try to find out what really happened that afternoon. This morning we finally pieced everything together.’

  ‘So what did really happen?’

  ‘When he retired from the army, Malcolm Bilverton set up Bilver-Tone Records, which he runs from the chapel. His army pension is generous, but it didn’t come anywhere near to providing the capital he needed when he decided to re-equip the studio with a modern electrical recording system from America. For some reason – whether pride on his own part or reluctance on his brother’s part, we may never know – he didn’t go to John for the money, and turned instead to local businessman Valentine Baisley.’

  ‘Mr Baisley is well known to us. “Businessman” is a generously euphemistic description of that particular gentleman.’

  ‘So we understand. But the result is that Malcolm Bilverton is financially indebted to Baisley. He’s tied to him in other ways, too. At some point Malcolm became addicted to cocaine. I honestly would have expected it to be morphine after losing his leg in battle – a lot of boys got hooked on the stuff after spending time in the field hospitals – but Malcolm’s vice is cocaine. Perhaps he found it elevated his mood. We should have known something was up – he went off a couple of times and reappeared a short time later fizzing with energy and enthusiasm. It wasn’t until we found a box of the stuff in his desk in the chapel that we finally realized why.’

  ‘Where is it now, this box?’

  Dunn piped up from his spot by the window. ‘The box is still in the control room, but most of the cocaine is on the chapel floor, I’m afraid. There’ll be some on Malcolm’s jacket if he hasn’t already snorted it off. I had to improvise a weapon. Sorry.’

  ‘No matter. We’ll be able to tell from whatever traces remain.’

  Ellie continued. ‘So, Malcolm is very much in Baisley’s debt. Which is bad news for him, but was very good news for Baisley when John began serious investigations into Baisley’s many business dealings. He was compiling a dossier and had strong evidence on a number of the shadier aspects of the Baisley empire. Somehow Baisley got wind of it – probably from a powerful member of the Oxfordshire establishment he has in his pocket. Obviously he couldn’t tolerate that sort of risk, even with plenty of bribed officials to dig him out, so he put pressure on Malcolm to “sort things out”.’

  ‘How can you be sure?’

  ‘Malcolm spent his whole life in the army. They say an army marches on its stomach, but it actually marches on a cloud of paperwork. He kept meticulous records of his dealings with Baisley in a journal we found in his control room. He made a careful, detailed note when Baisley said that he wanted John stopped at any cost. It was made plain to him that his own life would be forfeit if he didn’t comply. That, I think, is when Malcolm decided to kill his brother, and he planned it as he would any military operation. The key to his plan was establishing in everyone’s mind that he was alone in the chapel control room listening to his recordings when John died. He began by inviting the band to the chapel on Saturday to make a recording. He suggested that the whole family came down to watch so that they knew what was going on and wouldn’t question his absence later in the afternoon – obviously he would still be in his studio checking that everything had worked. The storm forced him to adapt his plans, but if anything, that worked to his advantage. Now he had the whole family as well as the band in the chapel when John went off to work in the study at three, leaving the house empty but for the servants. We were all out of the way, and we were all able to provide him with an alibi without him having to remind anyone where he was. He let us hear him in the control room with his recordings, then he closed the soundproof door and we all assumed he was in there working on the discs. Once he was sure John was hard at work and we were all enjoying the band, he opened the secret door to the tunnel that leads to the house—’