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

“In your grandfather’s room. All that stuff about his bad heart and being room-bound — no one considered he could have done the killing, but then in his confession he tells the world that it was all a bluff and, stiffening his old sinews, he does a commando-style exercise in the church for the sake of the family honour. Well, the police are happy they’ve worked out the bluff but they didn’t think as far as a double bluff. The pill bottle by his bed, Rupert — it was half empty. He’d been taking whatever it was in there, all right. And what was in there — I looked at the label — was a heavy-duty heart-disease prescription. My aunt had the same thing. So, your grandfather was genuinely a heart-attack victim and there’s no way he could have done what he confessed to. He was owning up to a crime he didn’t commit because he knew who had done it and was taking the blame for someone very dear to him. Paying the bill. For the family. Making sure that Hartest lives, if you like.”

“I don’t know what to say. What can I do?”

He seemed suddenly helpless and disarmingly childlike.

“You know he’s mad, don’t you?” he said. “You’d have to be a bit mad, wouldn’t you, to kill like that and be prepared to let an innocent man — two innocent men — take the blame?”

I considered this for a moment. “No, I don’t think so. Just very focussed and pitiless. You and I couldn’t do it, Rupert — we’re the arty type, remember. But your father could — and did. ‘Who dies?’ Well, Theo Tindall for a start... He was thrown to the wolves. But, just in case the wolves weren’t having any — and Jennings was beginning to make dissatisfied noises — even his own father... Yes, I think so... He told his father exactly what he’d done and, using this knowledge, the old chap cobbled together a convincing confession. He didn’t have much time. He wanted to fire the shot while Jennings was in the house, I’d guess — a police witness right there on the spot. He hurried to write the confession and then thought of a corroborative detail — he got out of his pajamas, leaving them in a heap, and dressed himself up in camouflage gear to make it look credible. But his pajamas were still warm...”

I paused for a moment, mind racing. “Would we be really mean, Rupert, if the thought crossed our minds that this was just what Edward calculated would happen? You know your father best — would he consider it no more than right and just that the old should sacrifice themselves for the young? I think that was in his philosophy and your grandfather’s. They saw you couldn’t find the strength to extricate yourself from what they considered an impossible situation and they acted. I can’t say they were doing it for you because in their thinking the individual is only a link in a chain. They were making sure a six-hundred-year-old chain wasn’t broken.”

“So that’s what I come down to,” said Rupert unhappily. “The weak link in the family chain.”

Lightening my tone, I went on, “As for what you do now... well, you go out and find yourself a respectable girl with a good name, marry her, have several male offspring, and you’ll find he need never kill again.”

I spoke flippantly but his reaction was unexpected.

Rupert smiled a devastating smile, reached out a forefinger, and gently stroked my cheek. “Ellie’s a good name,” he murmured, leaning closer.

I managed to fight down a shudder of fear and even retained my slight dismissive smile. The two Hartest men might have different methods of ensuring my silence — murder or matrimony — and on the whole, Rupert’s method was to be preferred, but in the end they shared the same compelling family motto and the next victim they were planning to ride roughshod over was me. I had decided some hours ago to adopt a motto of my own. Semper vigilans wouldn’t be bad, I’d thought... always on the alert.

“And I think you’re very attractive,” Rupert was whispering. “It didn’t take me long to work out that you were actually a strong girl, dependable, discreet...”

I swallowed and in what I imagined to be a light and friendly tone I agreed with him. “Oh yes. All that. And clever, too. It didn’t take me long to work out that the name ‘Eleanor’ in conjunction with the name ‘Hartest’ is not a lucky combination. Goodbye, Rupert. I’ll keep an interested eye on the announcements column in the Times. I may even turn up at your wedding!”

Truce? Standoff? He wasn’t the tactician his father was. He let me get away.

Back in the safety of my Golf, I turned the key with shaking hand and said a quick prayer when the engine started. Two miles away on the busy, brightly-lit forecourt of an Esso station I stopped and took out my phone.

I dialled a number I’d scribbled down in the library on the inside of my wrist.

“Inspector Jennings?” I said. “Sorry to ring you at home. Ellie Hardwick here.”

In the Hole by Peter Sellers