“Mind if I smoke?” he asked no one in particular as he slipped the burnt match back into its box. Five people watched him inhale. He noted the butler’s arched eyebrow. “Relax, Jenkins, your master is unlikely to complain.”
The eyebrow remained raised. The corpse remained spreadeagled on the carpet.
“Quite,” said Jenkins, fingering the black bow tie tethering his wing-collared white shirt.
Fox sensed the butler itched, perhaps twitched, to drop to his knees beside the very late Sir Roger Carstairs and rearrange the limbs in a more dignified fashion.
The tip of a branch tapped the windowpane as if begging for attention. Fox looked out into the garden. A cold wind was troubling the bare trees on the Carstairs estate. The Kentish weather was dull and wet, not unlike the two constables from nearby Sevenoaks who stood in the study, either side of the splintered door, hands behind their backs.
Against the far wall, a cello – its shapely spruce and maple body well cared for – also stood at ease. By its side, the equally shapely Lady Carstairs absent-mindedly caressed the instrument’s thick gut strings with elegant fingertips. An ungallant thought briefly crossed Fox’s mind. He tried to concentrate on the other woman present, Geraldine Carstairs, five foot eight of moodiness slowly waving an empty martini glass, possibly in homage to her father sprawled near her feet.
Geraldine’s bitter witch-hazel eyes raked her stepmother up and down. A wicked stepmother? wondered Fox.
He glanced at his notebook then back at Jenkins. “You’re certain the door was locked from the inside?”
Lady Carstairs answered instead. “Of course it was bloody locked. Roger always did that. What do you take us for?”
Take a pause, Carstairs told himself. He felt cranky. It’d been a swift journey on the express train from Charing Cross station – a short walk from his Scotland Yard office. The result: he’d missed four cups of tea and lunch.
His notebook’s scratchings listed the day’s chronology: 11am, 15 November 1937. The body of Britain’s most honoured conductor Sir Roger Carstairs was found dead in his study by his manservant, wife and daughter after they broke in with help from the estate gardener. Like the door, the windows were locked and the fireplace, remodelled in the modern style, had a narrow flue. In short: no escape for a killer. It was a sealed room smelling of cold ashes in the grate and a hint of Lady Carstairs’ scent, Shocking by Schiaparelli.
A local doctor had visited within the hour and confirmed the body showed no signs of violence. And yet … and yet … Sir Roger had been in bristling, bonny health on the eve of leading the London Symphony Orchestra on a European tour. Partly-packed suitcases were scattered around his bedroom along with “break-a-leg” gifts of champagne-and-snacks hampers and bouquets of flowers. He wasn’t a man ready to embrace death.
As usual, he’d breakfasted then gone into his study at 8am to practice with a baton for precisely 60 minutes.
When, hours later, Jenkins’ rapping on the door failed to raise a response, the gardener was ordered to bring in a pickaxe. The juxtaposition of the conductor’s sudden, mysterious death prior to the grand tour had prompted the local Plod to contact the Yard.
“Fetch the gardener,” Fox told one of the damp constables.
Within minutes, a tall, muscular and lightly bearded man in dark Wellington boots and an even darker mood was ushered in.
Fox caught a quick movement in the corner of his eye. Lady Carstairs had stiffened. Was that body flicker paired with a becoming blush? He filed the thought away.
As the glowering gardener crossed the room to stand protectively by Lady Carstairs’ side, his athletic stride reminded Fox he should exercise more – but not until he’d downed a pint of best bitter and a Scotch egg at a pub prior to catching an evening train home.
Drawing in his stomach, he wondered if anyone in this dour manor house was perky. On cue, there was bustling in the hall. A funhouse mirror version of the gardener hopped into the room. Short, portly and with a full beard, Doctor Philip McGovern’s theatrical entrance was accompanied by a cheery bellow: “Solved!”
“You have a suspect?” queried Fox, so startled he didn’t ask the new arrival’s name. However, you don’t become a detective at the Yard without a gift for observation, and a stethoscope peeking from an overfull Gladstone bag was a clue.
“Don’t be silly,” said the doctor. “That easy part is a copper’s job.”
He crouched down and tugged at Carstairs’ right shirt cuff, revealing a pale bruise on the wrist.
“See,” shouted the doctor. Heads craned. Faces were blank. No, they didn’t see. “When I examined the body earlier, it was unmarked. I took blood samples and went back to my surgery. I’m waiting for the official results but – and books in my library support this – preliminary tests indicate Sir Roger was bitten by a snake.”
“A snake?” came a chorus of voices in the room plus a new one in the doorway.
It’s a French farce, was Fox’s immediate thought. Who the hell is this?
The answer came with the flourish of a business card from the new arrival. “I’m Jerome Bennett, soloist with the London Symphony Orchestra.” Bennett saw Fox’s brow furrow. He added: “I travel the world for events but I’m also the LSO’s principal pianist, old boy.”
“Old Detective Inspector, if you don’t mind. And how do you fit in, Mr Bennett?”
“Roger was my dearest friend.” He stepped closer to the body. A constable caught the pianist’s jacket sleeve, holding him back. Bennett stopped and looked down at the sleeve as though making a mental note to have his clothing sponge-cleaned. “I’ve only just arrived from London. The Evening Standard is carrying this tragic story. Oh, my. Taken so young.”
“For Christ’s sake, he was 65,” snapped Lady Carstairs. “And you loathed Roger’s success. You called him a ‘baton-waving credit stealer’ who hogged the limelight while your talent was undervalued.”
Doctor McGovern interrupted with a soft harrumph. “Stay focused, please. As I said, when I left, Sir Roger’s wrist appeared unblemished. Now, after a few hours wait, signs of bruising and two faint, identical marks are evident.” He struggled upright, fussily adjusting his waistcoat. “Ladies and gentlemen, I present the killer: Bungarus Caeruleus.”
No reaction.
“The common krait,” sighed McGovern. Silence from his audience. “Good God! It’s a highly venomous snake and it’s in this room.”
That caught their attention.
“Tell me about the krait,” said Fox as his eyes flicked from bookcase, to curtains, to dresser, to ceiling.
“You’ll find this clever killing machine across the Indian subcontinent. Certainly not in the Garden of England. Three feet or more in length. Bluish-black with white crossbars. Only hunts at night. Usually the victim doesn’t feel the bite and therefore doesn’t seek help. Then four to eight hours later, their vision suddenly blurs, they can’t speak and they die due to respiratory failure.”
“Ahh, that reminds me,” said Fox, momentarily considering he might die due to hunger without at least a sandwich.
McGovern’s broad face split with a smile. “I’m with you, Detective Inspector. You too see the resemblance. You struck me as a literary man.” Ignoring the surprised look Fox gave him, the doctor outlined the plot of the Sherlock Holmes short story, “The Adventure of the Speckled Band”. In the tale, a deadly Indian snake is trained to shimmy down a bell-rope to enter a locked room, bite the victim and disappear back up the rope to a neighbouring room.
“I was about to mention food, but thanks for the compliment,” Fox said. With the background groan of his tummy rumbling, he added: “Four to eight hours? So, unlike the Holmes story, Sir Roger could’ve been bitten in his bedroom during the night, had breakfast, come into the study, locked the door and then died.”
“A brilliant deduction!” said McGovern. “Now we need brave people to search Sir Roger’s bedroom for the snake.” He watched as the group examined their fingernails and avoided his gaze.
“A moment,” said Fox, holding up his palm as a stop signal. “Let’s consider who’s the most likely to have brought the snake from the subcontinent, snuck it into Sir Roger’s bedroom perhaps inside a travel hamper, then made sure they was well away from the scene of the crime.”
Fox looked from person to person. Not the nervy butler nor cuckolding gardener. Kraits weren’t readily on sale in High Street, Sevenoaks. The alluring wife or the resentful daughter? Perhaps, although neither looked like the travel-covertly-to-foreign-climes-then-bargain-for-a-venous-snake type.
A matchhead popped into sulphurous flame before he lit another cigarette. Turning, he blew smoke in the direction of Jerome Bennett. “You travel the world, you say. Fascinating. Tell me all about it.”
Copyright 2026 GREG FLYNN
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