A Death in Diamonds

The guests that night had comprised a university professor who had been friends with Clement Moreton since his Oxford days, a widely respected circuit judge and a canon at Westminster Abbey. All were known to each other, but did not socialise as a unit. According to their matching testimonies, each man had been out of sight of the others for a matter of a few minutes, no more.

To Darbishire’s right, an open staircase was set against the wall that divided the living area from the garage. Between hands of canasta, Moreton and the other three men went upstairs once each to use the facilities. There was no lavatory downstairs – no room for one.

Darbishire thought back to the pathologist’s comment from an hour and a half ago.

‘Not my place to do your job for you, but if one of those highfalutin clubmen card players did it, I’ll eat my hat.’

Darbishire’s own visit to the Artemis Club yesterday had proved a disappointment. It sounded a grander institution than it was, physically at least – which was little more than a doorway off a street near Piccadilly, leading up to a few rooms for drinking and gaming and a private dining room. He wondered if Bertie Wooster’s Drones Club was a bit like this. Except that one had a swimming pool, so possibly not.

Anyway, pool or no pool, membership of the Artemis included half the aristocracy and most of the Cabinet. Darbishire knew a thing or two about what went on in those exalted circles and wouldn’t put anything past them. The problem was not where the dean and his guests came from, but the layout of the mews house when they got here. There was simply no way to murder two people upstairs in the way it was done and come down those open stairs without your physical appearance afterwards being observed by all concerned. So, either they were all in it together or the guests, at least, were innocent. They claimed not to know anything about the couple upstairs, but then they would, wouldn’t they?

He climbed the stairs with a heavy tread. He knew what lay ahead.

‘The one thing I don’t get, sir,’ Woolgar said on the way up – and Darbishire was intrigued by what was coming next, because there were at least a dozen things he himself didn’t get – ‘is, you know, the couple . . . Why they didn’t, you know . . . do it.’

‘Mmm.’

Woolgar’s tread on the stairs was heavier than his. The whole house seemed to rattle.

‘I mean, she’s all dressed up. She’s a tart, isn’t she? They’ve got the house to themselves. According to that witness statement, she comes in at ten forty-five, lets the bloke in around eleven. Assuming that witness is reliable, they’ve got a good forty, forty-five minutes to themselves before the clubmen get back . . . But they don’t . . . you know.’

The pathologist had just now confirmed his initial finding that there was no evidence of sexual activity between the couple, as Darbishire had reported to his sergeant.

‘Which suggests they were surprised by someone else before they had the chance to,’ he muttered.

‘Except nobody else came in the front way until the dean and his mates got back,’ Woolgar pointed out, ‘and there’s no sign of forced entry from the back. Forty-five minutes, guv. Longer, if they waited while the others played cards downstairs, and then the dean came up on his own and killed them afterwards for whatever reason. What did they do?’

‘Perhaps they played cards themselves. Or talked philosophy.’

‘D’you really—? Oh. Right. Sorry, sir.’ Woolgar still never quite knew when to take his guvnor at face value. ‘So, what . . . ?’

‘I don’t know, Sergeant.’

By now Darbishire had reached the landing. To his left lay the bedroom used by Clement Moreton. It was spartan and uninteresting, except for the green glass vase that had been taken away for processing by the laboratory. Behind it was a bathroom: small, modern, yellow-tiled and garish, accessed from the landing. Forensics had spent a lot of time in it, because apparently so did the killer or killers, who were unfortunately very good at cleaning up after themselves.

To the right lay the door to the larger second bedroom that ran from front to back, above the garage. This was where the bodies had been discovered. Moreton swore blind, or as much as a churchman ever did, that he never entered this room. His story was that the rental agency told him it was used for storage by the landlord and kept locked. He claimed he tried the door once and the handle rattled uselessly, as he expected it to. He didn’t need the space so didn’t worry. It was why the rent was cheap. The charlady confirmed this story, though she said that when she finally came upstairs a week after the murders, the door had sat ajar, which is what made her curious.

And yet, the room wasn’t filthy with dust and grime when the police first entered. If the char didn’t normally go in to keep it clean, who did? Another question.