“Yes, It Was I!”

Hello, and welcome to my 2025 Blogging From A To Z April Challenge! This year, I’ve written you a complete murder mystery novelette. The setting is rural England, a few years after WWI. The extra challenge that I set myself for this story is that the first murder will not take place until the letter “M”–halfway through! And the second murder will happen at “S.” There may be murders after “S,” of course, but they are less structural or foundational or something.

And now, without further ado…

“Yes—it was I!”

 

“Yes—it was I! I killed Jack Grimsby. I killed little Emily Grimsby the day she was born. And I killed that interfering Hettie,” cried Gertrude Sterling. Then she picked up the bowl of sugar cubes and emptied them into her mouth, crunching them horribly, and giggling the while.

“Stop her,” said Crowner. “Oh, never mind,” he added, as she fell to the floor, stone dead.

Penny slid to the floor also. Dr. Camphor rushed to her side. “Poison,” he said, his face drained of color. “But I think she’ll pull through. Let’s get her to a bed—Gertrude’s will do, it’s closest—and bring me my medical bag. Hurry!” His eyes were wild, but as he worked over the patient, his hands were steady.

After a time, Penny’s eyes opened again. “Rupert?” she whispered, holding out her hands to him.

“I’m here, Penny,” he said, huskily.

“Yes yes yes,” said Crowner. “And so am I.” They both looked at him reproachfully. Crowner shrugged. “Thought I should mention that before the talk got too intimate. I do need to talk to Miss Grimsby about her tea with Gertrude Sterling, you know. I have a case to conclude. And the entire household is in the drawing room, waiting to pepper me with questions. But if you need a moment, I can step outside.”

“No,” sighed Penny. “Let’s get it over with. You’ve ruined the mood.”

Crowner nodded sympathetically. “I do ruin moods,” he said. “I consider it part of my job.”

Then Penny related to Crowner all that Gertrude had said to her in that stuffy little sitting room.

* * *

“Crowner—finally!” said Sir Frank when Inspector Crowner came into the drawing room. “Seems like we’ve been waiting hours. Is the girl going to pull through?”

“She’s going to be just fine,” said Crowner. “And I got her statement.” He told them everything Gertrude had said to Penny.

When he was done, there was a long silence. Everyone was in shock.

“So Aunt Gert was my mother,” said Reggie. “And Uncle Jack was my father. And…” he sat down suddenly on a nearby couch. “And I’m not the heir after all. And my mother murdered my father, to protect me. Is that the lot, or is there anything else I should know?” He stared at Crowner, his eyes unfocused.

“No, I think that’s all,” said Crowner.

Reggie sighed. “Good,” he said. “Good.” His eyes closed, and he leaned back almost as if he’d abruptly fallen asleep. Then his eyes flew open again. “Oh, but that also means that mother and father aren’t my mother and father. That has to be considered.”

Sir Frank sat next to him on the couch and gave his arm a squeeze. “My boy,” he said. “You’ll always be our son. You should know that. If Lottie were here, she’d say the same. But all of this has been too much for her.” Frank’s eyes were pained. “Too much for us all,” he muttered. “Don’t worry, my boy. Don’t worry.”

“Thank you, Uncle Frank,” said Reggie.

“What? Uncle?”

“Yes. I will always think of you as my father, but I’d better call you Uncle for now. It will help me to get things clear. And… well, I may be your son, but I’m certainly not your heir. Even if you wanted me to be, the legal position is quite clear.”

Stephen, who had been staring vaguely out the window, suddenly spun around to face his family, his eyes wide. “I’m the heir,” he said. “That right?”

“Right,” said Reggie, smiling wanly. “And you’ll make a better job of it than I ever could.”

Stephen collapsed onto the couch next to Frank and Reggie. Three stunned Grimsby men sat in silence, contemplating their changed circumstances.

Finally, Nigel spoke. “Yes, everything is different—for everyone except me. I’m still in the same position I was before.” And he looked for a moment as if he, too, would collapse upon the couch. But there wasn’t room, and so he elected to collapse on an armchair instead. “I suppose it is nice that no-one is going to hang me,” he said after a moment’s thought. He smiled. “Yes. That’s something, anyway. Good.” He expelled a breath and straightened up. “Well, Crowner had better tell us all about it, don’t you think?”

“Don’t we know enough already?” groaned Sir Frank.

“You may feel that way,” said Nigel. “But I want to know all about clues and things. When he started to suspect Gertrude, and why, and how he got onto this Scotland angle. All of that.” He turned to Crowner. “First question: when did you start to suspect Gertrude?”

Crowner smiled. “It all comes down to that conversation that Kate overheard on the afternoon of Jack’s murder.”

“Conversation? Oh, the mysterious argument. Yes, I’ve heard about it. But I understood that Kate didn’t hear enough to make anything of it.”

“Well, I made something of it. But perhaps you don’t know what Kate heard.”

“I do not,” said Nigel. “But I’m burning with curiosity.”

“Well, first, Jack greeted his visitor—and then immediately fussed about the draft in the room. He wasn’t doing this for his own comfort—a moment before, he’d been writing letters directly next to the open window, obviously enjoying the fresh air.

“Would he fuss about the draft if one of his nephews came to talk to him? Probably not. They’re young, they’re men, and they’re in good health.

“If his visitor had been Penny, he’d just talked to her, and his reaction would probably have reflected that. Plus, I cannot imagine Jack, a practical man, fussing over a draft for the benefit of his healthy and outspoken daughter. He’d expect her to tell him if the draft was bothering her.

“So it looked like his visitor was one of the older members of the household.

“Was it Lottie? That was possible, but he’d just spoken to her, and escorted her up to her room.

“Was it Frank? Possible—he’s an older man, and Jack might worry about him catching a chill.

“Was it Gertrude? On the whole, Gertrude seemed likeliest so far, but Lottie and Frank were also possible.

“I really did consider all the younger people in the house to be tentatively eliminated by the draft business, though I was willing to re-evaluate that later if I didn’t get anywhere.

“The next thing Kate heard was Jack saying ‘…skunk that night.’ Immediately, that suggested the phrase ‘drunk as a skunk.’ Jack was drunk as a skunk on the night under discussion.

“What night could that be? Well, I wasn’t sure, but Jack was famously drunk—it has been quite a topic throughout his visit—on the night of Frank and Lottie’s wedding. Tentatively, therefore, I decided that I’d assume that was the night they were discussing, and see where it got me.

“Next, Jack shouted ‘hey! Peddle that somewhere else!’ He was obviously angry and upset when he said this, even, Kate thought, knocking something over in his excitement.

“And here was where I eliminated Lottie from my list of possible conversationalists. Jack used to love Lottie, and now she’s vague. No-one but an absolute brute would shout at Lottie. And Jack wasn’t a brute. Lottie was out.

“So far, then, it seemed to me likely that someone was telling Jack about something that had happened when Jack was drunk on Frank and Lottie’s wedding night, and Jack was angrily responding that he did not believe it. There was an obvious possibility here, and my mind, which is not an innocent one, immediately leapt to it.

“The next thing Kate heard was Jack saying ‘so that’s who Emily is.’ I couldn’t fit that in, but I had heard that Lottie had made some reference to an Emily on the first night of Jack’s visit, and that it seemed to confuse everyone—except for Gertrude, who seemed more angry or upset than confused. Interesting, but I wasn’t sure what it meant.

“The next remark Kate heard was ‘…inherit all my money—I don’t think,’ and we’re told it was spoken with contempt. Inherit all my money. That really did suggest to me that someone—and Gertrude was the obvious someone here—was telling Jack that he had a male heir, who was entitled to the whole of his fortune. We know from Gertrude’s conversation with Reggie that Gertrude didn’t think much of women inheriting.

“Some time later, Jack said ‘no!…tomorrow… balloon goes…,’ which I filled in as something like, ‘no! Tomorrow, the balloon goes up,’ or ‘I’ll give you until tomorrow, and then the balloon goes up.’ He is threatening here, that is obvious. Tomorrow, Jack plans to do something that will cause a lot of trouble for the person he is speaking to.

“And it is that part that made me think that this quarrel was central to the whole case—because for Jack, there was no tomorrow. Someone made damned sure of that.

“And Lottie’s Veronal was stolen right after the quarrel, which also suggested that the quarrel led directly to the murder.

“Also, the stolen Veronal pointed to someone who was involved enough in Lottie’s care to know that she was taking Veronal, that it was a dangerous drug, and that it was in the basket in Lottie’s sitting room. That could be Frank or Gertrude or Hettie—but Hettie couldn’t have been the one quarreling with Jack, since she caught Kate listening in while the quarrel was still going on. So that leaves Frank or Gertrude.”

“We also know that Gertrude was planning to have a serious talk with Jack about Jack’s will—she told Reggie that she meant to do it. The quarrel was probably that discussion, only it went, from Gertrude’s point of view, horribly wrong.

“And Frank had already had his discussion with Jack about the will, while they were fishing. Would Frank, an hour or two after that sensible and temperate conversation, have a second conversation with Jack, the tone of which is so adversarial that it has Jack frothing with rage? It didn’t seem likely to me.

“And a little point: when the Veronal was stolen, the basket of medicines was moved to the windowsill, as if someone needed a lot of light to look at the labels on the bottles. That indicated poor eyesight. Again, one of the older generation was suggested.

“Of course, this was all supposition. My interpretation seemed sound, but I felt I had to pursue other possibilities also. Besides, I didn’t think—fool that I was—that anything more would happen. I thought the killing was over. Most people don’t like to kill again when the police are crawling all over the place. Of course, sometimes they have to.

“And there was a seemingly fatal flaw in my idea that Gertrude did it. Hettie was just across the hall from her all that night, and she said she hadn’t heard anyone moving around. We tested her hearing, tested it thoroughly. I tried to sneak by her; so did Mug. Mug is an excellent sneaker.”

“Thank you, sir,” said Mug, genuinely pleased.

“But even Mug could not pass that door without Hettie hearing him. We even tried it while she was napping. No good. She was awake and alert at once.”

“And of course there was Stephen’s evidence, too,” said Nigel. “He didn’t hear anyone pass his door, either.”

“Oh, but I saw a way around that at once. You see, I established when I questioned Stephen that everyone in the family knew two things about him: that he was a regular insomniac, and that when he was wakeful in the night no-one could pass his door without him hearing. So anyone planning to murder Jack would take pains not to pass his door. I looked at the map, and realized that anyone could have gotten to Jack without doing so, so long as they went down to the ground floor and then up the servants’ stairs by Jack’s room.

“No, Hettie’s evidence was the problem. She would have heard Gertrude leave her room that night. And I didn’t think she’d lie to protect Gertrude—the only person Hettie was fond of was Lottie.

“So I felt thwarted and confused—until Hettie was killed, and we found all of that money in her pocket. And that made me think.

“It was odd, her manner that day, when she insisted on being interviewed first—flaunting the fact that she had a secret. And then when I actually interviewed her, she didn’t seem to know what she wanted to say. I should have realized then that the main point of insisting on being interviewed first wasn’t so she could tell me something, but so she could taunt someone else who was in the room with the idea that she might tell me something.

“She told me only two things of substance. One, that someone had tampered with Lottie’s medicine the day of the murder; two, that she’d heard nothing in the night.

“And then someone had first given her rather a lot of money and then killed her. One of the two things she told me was therefore probably a lie, and it wasn’t the missing Veronal—that we could establish as a fact, and we did, in fact, establish it. So she had heard something in the night. And Gertrude’s room was right across the hall from where she was sleeping.

“And Hettie’s last words were ‘poor Emily. She never had a chance.’ So Emily was someone dead, and Hettie was dead, and Hettie had lied, and Gertrude was back in my number-one suspect slot. And I needed to know who Emily was, desperately. I knew, as soon as I had that, everything else would fall into place.

“Then I put you all through it. Every single Emily you’d ever known, I needed to know about. And the one that set me on the right track was yours, Sir Frank. You said that when you and Lottie were courting, you decided that if you had a daughter, you’d name her Emily. And it occurred to me that perhaps Lottie had had a daughter, up in Scotland. And so Mug and I went to Scotland, and we found evidence that both Gertrude and Lottie had been with child…and that one of the infants was a girl called Emily. Obviously that was Lottie’s baby—see the plans she and Frank had made about the name. Only Emily never came back home. Lottie came back with a boy—Reggie.

“And so Reggie—the current heir—was not Frank and Lottie’s child at all, but Gertrude’s child. And that was what Jack was going to reveal. And that was why he was killed.”

“Oh,” said Nigel. “And that’s all, is it?”

“Well, there were other things, but they all had innocent interpretations.”

“Such as?”

“Gertrude was very fond of Reggie, for example.”

Reggie groaned hollowly. Crowner nodded. “Yes, I needn’t labor that point. Painful. Besides, Reggie seems like the sort of person people are fond of, even if they don’t happen to be his mother. No real evidence there.”

“Anything else?” Nigel asked.

“She fought hard for the death to be brought in a suicide, and then, once you were arrested, she seemed to think that that ought to end the matter.”

“And me.”

“Yes, she didn’t like you,” said Crowner.

Nigel seemed struck by this. “I suppose she didn’t. I never thought it mattered whether she liked me or not, especially since I also didn’t like her. But it nearly got me hanged. There may be a moral in there somewhere, though I’m hanged–” Nigel laughed nastily “–if I can see what it is.”

“Be more agreeable?” suggested Crowner.

Nigel laughed, somewhat less nastily.