Action: Trace him. Employment offices? Question other servants.
Son of Colonel Archibald Prescott (if he exists and is legitimate):
Motive: Inheritance of title.
Opportunity: ?
Means: Brought weapon with him
Action: Establish whether he exists. (Note to James: Stop snorting. Have you no romance in your soul?)
Passing Random Burglar:
Action: Any reports of other break-ins in the area? Anyone suspicious seen hanging around?
‘I suggest waiting until after the inquest for most of these,’ Garrick said, rocking on the back legs of his chair as he brooded. ‘We can talk to the staff here about suspicious characters and any recent burglaries – I’ll do that presently. Meanwhile, we could go and experiment with what Mr Alexander Prescott could have seen. We need someone of similar height.’
‘You would do, I think,’ I said. ‘He is the same height as Adrien – I noticed because I thought how alike they were – and you and he are more or less equal.’
The three of us trooped along to the Viscount’s house and found Adrien in discussion about funeral preparations with Grainger the butler.
‘Father sent a message that has just arrived. The funeral will be at Tillingham Hall and my Uncle Frederick is travelling there tomorrow by easy stages. I only hope the strain is not too much for him and we end up with a double interment.’ Adrien took a deep breath. ‘Anyway, Grainger is to leave a skeleton staff here and go with the remainder to the Hall to assist the staff there. The family will all be staying and Father thinks that Arabella – Miss Jordan – and her parents should also come as they are neighbours, as well as the betrothal, of course.’
We drew him aside and told him why we were there. ‘If we can work out what your father might, or might not, have seen, then it will help to establish whether the body had been moved,’ I said, hoping to make it sound less as if we were assessing Alexander’s guilt.
‘By all means. The desk is in exactly the same position as when he was found. If you can manage by yourselves?’ He turned back to the butler before we could answer. ‘Grainger, I require the duplicate cellar books to make certain we need to send no further supplies down to the Hall.’
I remembered that Garrick hadn’t seen the corpse, so I asked him to wait outside while James and I went in, closed the door and studied the room. I placed the chair where I had seen it, with the Viscount on the ground between it and the desk. ‘James, why don’t you come here and be the body?’
He grumbled a lot but eventually came and submitted to me yanking and pushing until I had him in the same position as Lord Tillingham. ‘You are taller and slimmer than he was,’ I said. ‘Your legs are too long – can you bend your knees more?’
Fortunately I couldn’t quite make out what he was saying, because I was trying to decide where to place the two seats on the other side of the desk. When we had come in that morning one had been pulled right up to the desk, presumably by Adrien who was accustomed to sitting on that side of the “partners’ desk”. The other was at an angle and I guessed he had pushed it aside when he had seen the body.
I looked out into the hall. ‘Grainger, how were the chairs placed when Mr Alexander Prescott called that evening?’
‘I didn’t see inside the room, Miss Lawrence. But unless his lordship had moved them they would be facing the desk. Shall I show you?’
‘Yes, please.’
He entered, looked around as though surprised that he could not see James, and placed the chairs about three feet back from the desk, slightly angled towards it, with a gap of about three feet between them. ‘That is how they should have been unless his lordship had moved them.’
‘Thank you, Grainger.’ He went out and I called Garrick in. ‘If we believe Alexander, he had come in response to a message from his nephew,’ I said. ‘What do you think he would do if the study seemed to be empty? Adrien says his father was respectful towards Lord Tillingham as the head of the family.’
‘I think he would sit down,’ Garrick said. He hesitated and then went to the chair further from the door.
‘Why that one?’
Garrick shifted around on the seat. ‘Because it is
angled towards the door and I can see who comes in. If I sat in the other one, then my back would be to the door.’
He took off his hat, set it on the floor beside the chair, crossed his legs and sat back as comfortably as possible.
‘You are the picture of an English gentleman trying not to look put out by finding his host is not waiting for him. What can you see of the body?’
Garrick looked around, then stood up and paced back and forth a couple of times, gazed vaguely at the bookshelves, the desk, the pictures, then sat down again. ‘Nothing.’
‘Try pulling the chair up to the desk,’ I suggested.