Dead Cold Mysteries Box Set #3: Books 9-12 (A Dead Cold Box Set), Blake Banner [reading in the dark TXT] 📗

He nodded and left. I opened the door that connected the drawing room to the dining room and before long, the major appeared. He was neat and spotlessly groomed as ever, but he had bags under his eyes from lack of sleep and his face was drawn and pale. He poked his head around the door, holding a cup and saucer in his hand and frowned at us.

“Up early…”

I smiled. “We haven’t been to bed yet. We went on a little hunting expedition last night. The cops are on their way, with the ME.”

“Hunting, ay?” He kept narrowing his eyes at Armstrong. He took a few steps into the room and then his eyes widened. “Good Lord, are you bound, man?”

Dehan said, “With his own bootlaces.”

Bee came in next, looking about as lively as the major. She peered distastefully at Armstrong and muttered, “Oh dear…” Then she sat and sipped silently at her cup of tea.

Cameron came down a little later, looking disheveled and as though he had slept in his clothes. He was supporting Pamela who had, it seemed, been given a powerful tranquilizer but nothing more serious than that. Sometimes, I told myself, the victim just gets lucky. And then wondered if she would agree.

Finally, Sally came in, looking about as rough as her husband. They were all assembled, sitting around the room much as they had on that first night, only with two notable exceptions. When we had arrived, the major had told us about the murder of Grandfather Gordon. Now the father and the son were dead too.

They all sat and silently watched me and Dehan, and occasionally they glanced at Armstrong. Nobody asked, so when I had finished my coffee I got to my feet and went and stood over by the fireplace.

“It’s hard to know exactly where to begin. The story goes back more than forty years.” I smiled. “So we may as well start at the end. It’s as good a place as any. Let’s begin last night, when you, Major, and Charles Jr., had finished showing us the study. You went to join Bee, and Dehan and I went upstairs. We were surprised, when we reached the landing, to see Mr. Armstrong come in from the storm. We were surprised because when he had brought us back from the village a little earlier in his taxi, he had dropped us at the gate, claiming he would not set foot in this house on account of the fact that Charles Gordon Sr. was, in is words, a thieving bastard.” I paused. “Yet it turned out that Mr. Armstrong not only frequently set foot in the house, but had done so for many years as the gardener. So, logically, his decision not to set foot here was a recent one, even thought Mr. Gordon’s alleged thieving had occurred almost forty years ago.”

I paused. They were all frowning.

I said, “It’s a bit of a mess, but let me try and simplify. According to Mr. Armstrong, forty years ago Gordon Sr. stole his inheritance, but Mr. Armstrong did not complain about it for almost forty years. Then, quite suddenly, very recently, he decided he was so mad about it he would not set foot in the house. And no sooner had he decided that, than he went and set foot in the house, according to him, because he had business to settle with one of the Gordons.”

There was a lot of ass-shifting and a lot of glancing sidelong at Armstrong, who was staring sullenly at the floor.

“Dehan and I assumed that he had come to see Charles Jr. in his study. Charles had stayed there to do some work, as he apparently often did, and as Armstrong must have known, having spent many years working here. But in fact, Armstrong had a very different purpose. He knew, as probably the whole island does by now, that Gordon Sr. kept his Smith & Wesson service revolver in his bedroom. How often had you talked about it in your day, Pam? And you, Sally?”

Sally’s voice was a dry rasp. “More than once,” she said.

I nodded. “And the bush telegraph took care of the rest. It had been common knowledge for a long time. And, for reasons I’ll come to in a minute, Armstrong had special reasons for knowing.

“The point is, when we thought he was going in to see Charles in the study, what he actually did, when we had gone into our own room, was to go up to the master bedroom and get the revolver. He then went down to the tool shed, where he had carefully removed four of the bricks from precisely the right place behind the logs, and he shot young Charles Gordon Jr. in the head.

“He took his time replacing the bricks, and the cement, and then came back into the house. He then put on the show for us of shouting and kicking down the door, but of course, before anybody could get to him, he had entered the room, squeezed the gun into Charles’ hand and dropped it by his side. The perfect closed room murder, exactly like his grandfather’s forty years earlier. And like his grandfather, the only possible explanation would be suicide.

“Later, when we had finished taking your statements and I announced that I knew who had committed the homicide and how, it was Mr. Armstrong who deliberately started a row, by accusing you, Sally, of having an affair with both Gordon Sr. and Jr. While the room was in commotion, he took a syringe and what he mistakenly thought was a lethal dose of sedative from Dr. Cameron’s bag. It was daring in the extreme, but Mr. Armstrong is nothing if not daring, and extreme.

“When everybody went up, after Brown had shown him to his room, he slipped back to Pamela’s room and injected her in