SPOILERS!!!
As I suspected, the murder victim is Professor Coddington. It happens the night after all the guests arrive. Freddy is up with his grandfather, and Goose appears saying that they could play a joke on Ralph. They carry a tailor’s dummy, intending to make it appear as a ghost, and when Freddy is inside Ralph’s room, he hears a scream. The scream comes from Rose, and that brings everybody to the corridor, and Rose claims that she saw a man in her room. Freddy and the others deny having been in the room as they were playing a joke on Ralph. When Rose returns to the room, she discovers that the pearl necklace is gone, and Freddy and Goose think that whoever took it must have escape through the secret passage. So they go in there and when they go out into the library, they find Professor Coddington’s body, and in his hand he has the pearl necklace. Freddy looks around as Goose goes to find his father. It seems that someone bashed the professor in the head, and he finds that there is a sash weight missing, which means that the killer must have used that to murder the professor.
The police arrive and they interview everybody. Freddy tells the inspector that he and Goose can provide alibis for everybody because when Rose screamed, everybody was there except for Bea and Cynthia because they were sleeping in the east wing. Dr Bachmann and Cedric also sleep in the east wing but they heard the scream. Freddy knows that Cedric was in the west wing because of Kitty, and we understand that he and Kitty are having an affair. Later Bachmann says that he woke up and decided to have a little walk.
Later Valentina and Freddy talk, and he says that the doctor’s alibi is a bit shaky, so Valentina offers to have a look in his room, and they discover that Dr Bachmann has been dismissed from his job at the university for plagiarism, and Dr Bachman discovered that Coddington was the one to accuse him. A servant also saw them argue. So he is the only one who seems to have a motive.
Later the dressmaker, Mrs Dragusha tells Cedric and Freddy that she feels responsible. Everybody seems to agree that the professor didn’t want to steal the necklace; he only wanted to check it. And Mrs Dragusha says that she told Coddington that she thought that the necklace could be fake. The woman’s brother is a jewel dealer, and she knows a little about jewels, and when Rose tried on the necklace, she thought the pearls weren’t genuine. Cedric tells her to call her brother, and the man comes and confirms that the pearls are a forgery. Cedric blames Rose for being careless, especially around a friend couple who she used to lend some of her jewels. They also had the clasp changed last November, and this might have been another possibility for the necklace being changed for the forgery.
Freddy can’t think how anyone could have had the opportunity to kill the professor when everybody was in the corridor after Rose’s scream. Then he discovers the sash weight in a linen cupboard, and as he and Irish look thought it, they also find a door to another secret corridor, which they explore. When they return, they stay inside the cupboard in the dark, and then they start to kiss. Iris and Freddy had a thing in the past, but she is now engaged to Ralph. Then the door opens and the housekeeper and another maid find them, and as luck will have it, Daphne also sees them. Daphne and Freddy are together, so Daphne feels humiliated, and later in the day he tells Freddy so. Then Goose is also upset, and he says that he likes Daphne a lot, so if Freddy is not so keen on Daphne, he should step aside and let him have a go. So Freddy can’t argue with that, but then Daphne notices that Goose is too clingy and realises what has been going on and she is not happy at all, but he tells her that he should give Goose an opportunity. Freddy also talked to Bea, who told her that if he liked Iris, he should go after her, but Freddy says that he is not a good match, and he thinks Iris needs someone stable, albeit boring, like Ralph. I think that Freddy loves Iris, but he also knows himself and thinks he can’t be a good boyfriend or husband.
I don’t know who the killer is. The fact that the sash weight was found in the linen cupboard makes me think that Daphne’s aunt, Lavinia, could be the killer. Cynthia saw her rummaging in the cupboard, and Daphne has told Freddy that Lavinia’s husband embezzled money when he was in India, which was discovered when he died. That scandal even created doubts about Daphne’s father, who had nothing to do with the embezzlement. During the first day’s dinner Professor Coddington told Lavinia that he had been living in the same town in India like her, so maybe he knew about what her husband had been up to and told her about it. Maybe Lavinia thought that if the professor said something, that would harm Daphne’s prospects, and she decided to kill him. But how did she do it?
My Reading Journal 