Doctor Who_ The Banquo Legacy - Andy Lane [58]
After that, I finally managed to question Miss Seymour about her movements of the previous night. I tried to be as tactful as possible, bearing in mind the death of her fiancé, but my mind lagged far behind my tongue and I am sure I offended her more than once, judging by the lapses into silence that she displayed and the regal, almost arrogant gaze with which she occasionally deflected my clumsy questions. In my thoughts I was still staring blindly at a pile of bolsters and blankets piled into human shape. What loomed largest in my mind was embarrassment. I cringed to think that my first action had been to pull the sheet completely off, as if I expected Richard Harries to be hiding at the foot of the bed. It had been John Hopkinson who took the most practical action: checking the cupboards to see if the body had been hidden in there.
Miss Seymour could add little to my meagre store of knowledge, apart from the interesting supposition that Richard Harries’s body either was, or contained, a clue to the murderer. That, she suggested, was the only possible motive for the theft.
As soon as she left, Baker turned to me: ‘Do you think she’s right, sir?’
‘About the body, yes. Although it might just he a red herring. About Hopkinson being innocent? No, I don’t think so. At least, he may well be innocent, but it doesn’t naturally follow from anything she said.’
‘She may have taken it herself, sir.’
Good old Baker, investigate every possibility. ‘Not without help, I don’t think.’
‘Then maybe she had help, sir.’
But there was a difference between theory and wild speculation. ‘Yes, possibly,’ I said, unconvinced. Then I remembered something. ‘Baker, any sign of the Doctor yet?’
‘Ah, no, sir,’ said Baker.
‘I am getting sick and tired of talking to people who claim not to know anything,’ I snapped. ‘Let’s do something practical for a change – let’s search the house.’
Baker’s eyes brightened. ‘Yes, sir!’
We started at the top of the house. The quarters occupied by the scullery-maid and the kitchen maids were sparsely furnished and freezing cold, with threadbare bedding. Improving biblical tracts were fixed to the walls. A single change of uniform hung in each closet, along with a few personal items: Sunday bonnets, worn gloves, a once beautiful pair of dancing shoes. The Doctor was not there.
We then moved down to the next floor, where the various household maids, the cook and the undercooks resided. The rooms were better furnished and more comfortable, but they still had the feeling of places barely occupied apart from during sleep. Still no sign of the Doctor. By the time we got to Simpson’s room I was more circumspect – the man was actually still in the house, after all – but while Baker stood at the door, ready to intercept the butler should he appear, I searched everywhere the Doctor could hide (and, frankly, anywhere Richard Harries’s body might have been hidden). I tried to get some impression of Simpson’s character from his possessions, but all I could tell was that he was almost fanatically meticulous at what he did: his clothes were neatly hung, his loose change was stacked in piles of different denominations (and in date order of minting, I noticed). Beside the coins was a pile of six white squares made of some hard, cold material. Cards for notes, perhaps?
The next floor down contained the various guest bedrooms, and we quickly went through them, taking particular care with Miss Seymour’s and Miss Harries’s rooms that we did not trespass upon their proprieties. We also missed out Sir George and Elizabeth Wallace’s room, as Elizabeth Wallace was resting within and, we assumed, would have alerted us had she discovered either the Doctor or Richard Harries. Apart from that one room we covered the floor from one end to the other, and found nothing. Not hide nor hair of the Doctor. That left the ground floor and the cellars. The first we could afford to treat lightly, as we had spent so much time in its various rooms during the course of the day, and so Baker and I concentrated our efforts on those areas