Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 122, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 745 & 746, September/October 2003

He paused again, thinking aloud. “Neat, all sewn up, you might say. Yes, very neat and tidy... Anyway, he got some blood on his hand, panicked, and ran off. Says he felt sure someone was in the church watching him and he thought he might be next. We’ll need a motive, of course. If he did take the dagger from the Hall, then it was premeditated. But I’d feel easier if we knew why he’d done it. Wondered if you...?”

“Oh, yes, Richard. I think we can supply you with a motive,” said Edward smoothly.

And it was at this moment that there came the sound of a shot from the floor above. My three companions all jumped to their feet, looking at each other with total dismay.

Rupert was the first to move. “Grandpa!” he yelled. “That’s from Grandpa’s room!” and he started to the door. Edward and the inspector ran after him. I lingered behind just long enough to cast an eye over the inspector’s belongings abandoned on the table. There was something I had to find out without anyone noticing. Shifty but determined, I picked up his mobile and, one eye on the door, began to scroll through his phone book. I told myself what I was doing was in the interests of justice — and self-preservation.

I scrambled after the others, hurrying up the staircase and along a corridor. Rupert burst into the room at the end and we all gathered behind him, keeping to the doorway. Peering over Jennings’ shoulder I could just make out the body of an old man wearing a camouflage-patterned sweater and dark cord trousers slumped across his desk under the window. A service revolver lay on the floor by his right hand. The wall to his left was spattered with the contents of his head. Edward put an arm around his son and hugged him, both men’s faces white with shock.

Jennings went into action. “Stay back,” he said unnecessarily. He went to the desk and went through the automatic and superfluous gestures of checking the body for vital signs, then abandoned this ritual and noticed the arrangement on the desktop. A large iron key was acting as paperweight for a single sheet of handwritten paper. He looked at it and waved to Edward. “Come and have a look at this,” he said quietly. “Looks like a suicide note and it’s addressed to you.”

Edward went forward and began to read aloud. He needn’t have done this and I wondered why he was involving us all in this way. More showmanship? I thought so.

“My dearest Eddie, forgive me. I killed that friend of Rupert’s. Woman was a strumpet and did not deserve the honour he was about to bestow on her. I came down for a nightcap late last night and heard her planning — with that appalling photographer chap who’s been infesting the place — to defile the family tomb. Couldn’t have that. I got to the church before them and let myself in through the vestry door on the north side using this old key. No one saw me. I hid, and when the chap left the church to fetch something from his car I stabbed the girl with the dagger I’d taken from the display in the drawing room. I waited to terminate his miserable existence as well — I meant to snap his rabbit neck — but he was off like a flash. I couldn’t have caught him. I’m a bit decrepit these days but not as bad as I’ve been making out. In fact, I was faking my condition. I took to my room to avoid meeting this dreadful pair of limpets. I trust Rupert will learn from this fiasco and one day he’ll be able to find a decent girl. God bless you both. ‘Who dies?’ Eh?”

As he read I looked around the room, anywhere but at the poor, shattered body. I took in the military neatness of his arrangements, the bed already made, the books lined up on his bedside table. The only untidy item in the room was a pair of pajamas lying in a crumpled heap on the bed. A discordant note in this precisely organised room. Fearful of what I might find, unnoticed by the others, I edged nearer, put out a hand, and touched them. I looked at the carafe of water and the bottle of pills on the bedside table and I moved around until I could see the label and the contents. What I saw confirmed all my fears.

Hours later, after a sketchy lunch in which no one was interested and a tea tray in the library which seemed to have become the operations room, the police had finally left. Statements had been taken, frantic phone calls made, ambulances, police vehicles, pathologist, and undertaker had gone about their business, and I hoped that in the Islington nick someone had thought to release Theo Tindall.