“He’s a strange one,” sighed Bliss, turning back to Samantha.
“Aren’t you going after him?”
“No. He’ll come back if he wants to ... Anyway, I don’t need him at the moment,” he added, sidling slowly around the room, head back, examining the oak-panelled walls and ornately carved cornice just below the ceiling.
“Are you going to tell him we know it was a pig in the duvet?” she asked, staring at the walls with him.
“Not yet. He’ll only say something clever like: ‘That’s a bit of a swine, Inspector.’”
“Dave ...?” she queried vaguely, still craning.
“What?”
“What are we supposed to be looking for?”
“That!” he cried triumphantly, pointing to a small hole in the panelling high up on the wall.
She squinted. “It looks like a knot-hole in the wood to me.”
“It could be. Let’s get a ladder and find out.”
Jonathon was cowering in a cubby-hole behind the kitchen door when they went looking for a ladder, and they would have missed him had Bliss not thought it a likely place to search.
“Oh there you are, Jonathon,” Bliss started breezily, caught off balance at finding him in such an odd place. But Jonathon wasn’t there. He was miles away and his blank stare said, “Do not disturb.”
“Jonathon,” said Samantha, easing him out of the recess as she soothed one of his hands, “Why don’t you come and sit down and tell us what’s the matter?”
He moved like a man on a ledge, taking little hesitant steps; staring, terrified, dead ahead; gripping Samantha’s hand with white-knuckle force as she led him toward the scrubbed pine table in the centre of the room. “Get a chair, Dave,” she said from the corner of her mouth. “You’ll be alright, Jonathon,” she told him with a concerned kindliness, feeling she should add – don’t worry, you won’t fall. But the look on his face said he had already fallen.
“He’s got a hole in his head, Mum,” said Jonathon, staring right through Samantha and looking deep into the past.
“Sit down ... ” she started, but Bliss gently elbowed her aside. “Who’s got a hole in his head, Jonathon?” he probed gently.
Jonathon’s face turned to Bliss but his eyes continued to hunt the room with the apprehension of a cornered fox. “Daddy has ... Daddy’s got a hole in his head.”
The ambulance had probably been unnecessary. In his catatonic state they could have bundled Jonathon into Bliss’s Rover and driven him to the psychiatric wing of Westchester General with as much speed and less commotion, but Bliss was concerned he might suddenly snap out of the trance and become hysterical.
“I’ve never seen anyone fall apart like that before,” said Samantha as the ambulance pulled away. “What on earth’s happened to him?”
“I think he finally solved the case of the dead captain, and didn’t like the outcome.”
“What outcome? I thought you said Doreen shot him. I don’t understand.”
“Help me find a ladder and we’ll know for sure.”
Arnie caught them in the act as they rummaged through a stack of dusty old planks and beams in one of the outbuildings. “Oy. What’ye doin’ ...?” he began, arming himself with a handy stick, then he recognised Bliss. “Oh ’tis you again.”
“Hello, Arnie – looking for a ladder. Is there one around?”
“Out back,” he said, staring at Samantha, waiting for an introduction.
“Sergeant Holingsworth,” said Bliss. “This is Arnie. He knew the Major; father worked for the Colonel; likes a pint.”
Her smile disarmed the old man and he beamed, toothlessly, as he led them to the rear of the outbuildings and started hacking creepers off a homemade ladder. “Me old man made this,” he wheezed, prompting Bliss to pull out his cell-phone. “I’ll get the station to send a new one.”
Superintendent Donaldson wanted to speak to him, the control room telephonist advised him and put him through to the senior officer.
“Mrs. Dauntsey’s here, Dave,” mumbled Donaldson through a mouthful of chocolate biscuit – making up for the missed dessert. “She insists on seeing you; claims she’s escaped from a nursing home; wants to let you know she shot the man in her attic; says she used the Major’s service revolver.”
“Ask her where he was when she killed him, will you.”
“She said he was in his room in the turret.”
“In his wheelchair?”
“Yes.”
“I guessed as much.”
“Do you want me to have her arrested?”
“No, Guv. But I think somebody should take her to the General hospital to see Jonathon. Confessing may be good for the soul, but those two could keep the Pope boxed in for a month. They should try to get their stories straight.”
“Is that a good idea?” asked Samantha as he closed his phone. “Shouldn’t they be kept apart until we know for sure who did it.”
“But I know already,” said Bliss. “Or I will as soon as the ladder arrives.”
Arnie was still struggling to free the makeshift ladder from the tentacles of a vine. “Don’t bother with that, Arnie,” called Bliss, and waited while the old man got his breath back sufficiently to light his pipe. “Mrs. Dauntsey tells me you took out the staircase from the turret room attic,” he lied, with an expression innocent enough to fool an Old Bailey judge.
“So what if I did?” Arnie coughed through a blue haze.
“Nothing ...” Bliss turned away to conceal a smirk of satisfaction. “I just wondered where it was, that’s all.”
“’Tis over there amongst the stingin’ nettles.”
Much of the spiral wrought iron staircase had dissolved into the ground, and the remainder had been swallowed by vegetation, but its tubular shape had endured and Bliss kicked away some of the nettles for verification. “This is it,” he called to Samantha, then teetered back in fright as a hen flew out of the undergrowth squawking angrily. “There’s a nest here,” he added with obvious astonishment, peering into the void and finding a clutch of brown eggs.
“How did you know there had been a staircase into the attic?” asked Samantha, a country girl, unimpressed by the novelty of a chicken’s nest.
“I didn’t. It was just guesswork – I couldn’t figure how Doreen could have got Tippen’s body up there on a ladder, so I thought: What if there used to be stairs?”
“So it was Doreen who killed him then?”
“Is that the scenes of crime van?” said Bliss, hearing a vehicle’s tyres crunching on the gravel driveway at the front of the house. “Let’s get the ladder, shall we?” he said, striding away.
“Mr. Dauntsey is here under observation,” said the hospital’s resident psychiatrist as Bliss and Samantha sat in his office an hour later. He might have said, “Piss off and stop interfering,” the tone would have been the same. Bliss sized him up: mid-twenties – hoping the moustache will add a few years; still practising to write illegibly; still believing everybody needs a shrink. You haven’t got the faintest idea what’s going on in the real world, mate, thought Bliss, saying, “I think I can help ... ” But the doctor rose with