Ann Granger (23 page)

‘It’ll be nothing but a few bones by now,’ protested Greenaway.

‘Yes, and ask Callow to be very careful not to damage them further in disinterring them. I don’t want him chopping bits off with his spade or breaking any. Tell him to take it to his shed and send word to me or to Sergeant Morris and one of us will come and have a look at it.’

‘It’s a funny old business is police work, if you ask me,’ replied Greenaway. ‘Or the way you do it in London must be. I don’t see Nat Gosling wanting dead cats dug up. Still, I’ll tell Callow.’

*   *   *

My return to The Acorn caused a bigger sensation than my original arrival.

‘Lord bless us!’ cried Mrs Garvey. ‘Jenny! Jenny! Run and put every kettle and pot you can find on to boil. Inspector Ross needs a bath!’

I couldn’t wait for the hot water to begin my ablutions so I went round to the stable yard, stripped off my coat and shirt and, while Morris worked the pump handle, washed my hair and head beneath it.

Meantime, my bath had been set up in a corner of the yard: a large tin tub decorously surrounded by a hedge made of wooden clothes horses draped with blankets so that I’d be shielded from the vulgar gaze.

I climbed into it, and very pleasant it was to sink into the warm water. ‘Morris!’ I called.

His head and shoulders appeared on the other side of the blanket fence.

‘Mrs Brennan has gone missing,’ I said as I applied liberally the large bar of soap provided by Mrs Garvey. ‘But I have learned something of interest.’ I told him about the dead cat.

‘Now consider this, if you will, Morris. Some time ago Brennan arrives on his regular visit. While he’s here the cat is killed, possibly by his terriers. A little later and he’s here again. This time it coincides with Mrs Craven’s lying-in. The baby dies in its cradle. We must seek out the doctor and hear what he has to say about the infant’s death. Brennan leaves and there are no more tragic incidents at the house until he returns yet again. This time, Brennan himself dies, and all these deaths occur at Shore House. The events may be completely unrelated. But I dislike too many coincidences.’

Morris too, as it turned out, had been doing some judicious gossiping. He confirmed that Brennan was held to be a harbinger of ill fortune. ‘Mrs Garvey has been telling me tales of two-headed calves, and sows overlying their litters, not long after he’s arrived on one of his visits. They’re almighty credulous around here, sir. She reckons that last year a potman she used to employ fell off the roof and broke his leg just as Brennan entered the taproom.’

‘What was the potman doing on the roof? Do they keep the ale up there with the chimneys?’

‘No, sir, he was replacing tiles brought down in a storm.’

‘Then he slipped and fell. The pigman wasn’t paying attention to a sow that had just farrowed. The two-headed calf … I don’t know about that. Sounds like the sort of curiosity displayed for a penny at fairgrounds. See here, it seems to me this place brought Brennan bad luck rather than the other way around.’

‘I had a chat with the maid responsible for dusting the hall table, too, sir, and showed her the murder weapon. She identifies the knife as definitely the one that used to be kept there. It was used for opening letters and cutting parcel string. She reckons she knows it by a chip in the enamel. She seemed sensible enough, a woman of a certain age and not a silly girl. All the same, you never can tell. She might have been anxious to look as if she had something important to say. I’ve come across that before,’ finished Morris grimly. ‘Life’s generally pretty quiet around here, I reckon, apart from the occasional accident like a fellow falling off a roof.’

We’d all suffered from a witness’s desire to be in the limelight, if only for a few hours. Yet mistakes could be made in all sincerity. How many times had I heard a witness swear to something that later turned out to be wrong? How often had a fleeing suspect been described by those around as being tall, short, stocky, very thin, wearing top boots and breeches, pantaloons, a frockcoat and shirtless?

‘Well, perhaps we are a step forward,’ I said to encourage Morris.

I recollected time was getting on. ‘Pass me the towel if you would be so good, Sergeant. I am to dine with gentry this evening.’

‘Rather you than me,’ returned Morris, handing over the towel. ‘Mrs Garvey has a boiled ham
and
a currant pudding – and there won’t be any footman standing over me watching to see if I use the wrong knife! Not that I’m suggesting, Inspector Ross, that you’d do anything like that.’

‘Thank you for your confidence, Sergeant.’

Chapter Fifteen

Inspector Benjamin Ross

FOR ALL I was sure Beresford would keep a good table, I couldn’t help envying Morris the boiled ham and the currant pudding in the privacy of the snug. He could eat it at his ease. Although Beresford appeared a decent sort of fellow I was, after all, about to dine with the local squire.

But Beresford greeted me heartily at his door and led me inside down a hallway lined with a motley collection of trophies from sporting expeditions. Glass eyes observed our progress: stuffed birds, a snarling fox and a huge fish. (‘Only plaster, that, the original one rotted,’ Beresford told me.) Assorted paintings and prints covered the walls: hunting scenes, shooting ones, a couple of seascapes and a Royal Navy ship of the line or two. All the accumulated junk, in fact, you’d expect to find in the family home of a country gentleman and landowner.

The dining room, however, when we entered that, held something rather different.

‘Good heavens!’ I couldn’t help but exclaim. ‘That’s a fine collection.’

Above the fireplace at the far end of the room the entire wall was festooned with daggers, swords, dirks and small arms, some, to my eye, looking quite ancient.

‘Oh that,’ said Beresford carelessly, ‘my housekeeper tells me the maid grumbles about having to climb up and dust those. But I can hardly take them down. They represent the family history in their own strange way. My uncle, Sir Henry Meager, has a similar array but more extensive. Beresfords and Meagers have been linked by marriage for centuries. Meagers always send their younger sons to sea. We Beresfords are landlubbers to a man! So a lot of the stuff you’ll see round the place is a testament to that family link.’

‘I wonder…’ I began rather hesitantly.

But he was ahead of me. ‘You are wondering if, by chance, one piece might be missing? I can assure you they’re all present and correct. Believe me, I ran home after – after I saw that fellow Brennan lying dead with a knife in his throat – and searched the whole lot. I quite … you will think this strange…’ Here he faltered to a halt.

It was my turn to read his mind. ‘You quite hoped some pilferer might have taken an ornamental dagger from your collection and the one in Brennan’s neck couldn’t have come from Shore House.’

‘Of course I hoped it, prayed it,’ he returned quietly but with emotion quivering in his voice. ‘Not that it came from here particularly but that it came from anywhere other than there.’

He recovered his sang-froid, met my expression with a quizzical look of his own and added wryly, ‘You see, I place my cards upon the table, Inspector Ross.’

He did and I appreciated his frankness. But I wondered how well Beresford knew each individual piece and its exact position in the warlike display on the wall. Would he realise, for example, if a few had been moved around to disguise a gap?

Speaking of tables, the dining table wasn’t a large one. That was fortunate as my host and I faced one another from either end of it. It seemed a silly arrangement to me since what kind of conversation can be had calling down a length of polished rosewood like that? Perhaps it served a purpose. It put a distance between us and any such gap discourages intimacy. Had Beresford calculated I couldn’t very easily interrogate him (however politely) from this seat? At any rate he had effectively robbed me of my best chance to play policeman. But not all chance. A policeman is always a policeman, even when he isn’t about his duty, as Lizzie would be the first to agree. Sooner or later I had to talk to Beresford about what had happened on his neighbour’s property and tonight remained my best opportunity to do so.

Our relative positions also gave me a chance to study him unobtrusively. He was in his thirties, with short-trimmed light brown hair and square jaw. His nose was short and his complexion ruddy. Later in life when he might have put on weight and become less athletic he would probably turn into a real John Bull. In figure he was well built and clearly used to an outdoor life. He probably spent little time in his own house and the state of it reflected that. I don’t mean it wasn’t clean and tidy but it was full of the inherited knick-knacks of other people. It lacked his own personal imprint. Some people, mostly women, would have said he needed a wife.

The lack of a wife to run his house was underlined by the reappearance of the elderly butler, now attended by a clumsy girl, all elbows and crooked mobcap. She looked as though she might have been directed into table attendance from her normal duties for the purpose of this evening. They removed our soup dishes, the girl rattling the china alarmingly.

When we were alone again, Beresford spoke. ‘I want you to know, Ross, that there is not the slightest possibility that Mrs Craven could have done this awful thing.’

He paused and looked at me expectantly, waiting for my answer.

When I remained silent, he went on, ‘She couldn’t! She’s too weak, too small. She wouldn’t have the strength or resolve either physically or mentally. Why should she do something so – violent? Motive, you fellows call it, don’t you? Well, what motive could Mrs Craven have to attack a labourer,
a rat-catcher
, for pity’s sake!’

‘I’m not accusing Mrs Craven,’ I said. ‘For the simple reason I’m not accusing anyone as yet. But since you ask me to suggest a motive, might I point out that the last time Brennan was in the district, his visit coincided with the birth and soon thereafter the death of Mrs Craven’s child. Perhaps in some way she connects him with that sad loss. In local circles I understand he was believed to bring ill fortune.’

‘Pah!’ exploded Beresford, his face reddening. ‘Farm labourers and their womenfolk might believe that. Lucy Craven wouldn’t. Are you seriously suggesting she might think Brennan bewitched her child? She would have to be crazy to believe it and
she is not that
!’

His voice had been rising. He placed both hands palms flat on the table and leaned towards me aggressively.

We were interrupted at that point by the re-entry of the two servants, bearing between them a joint of roast pork and a pair of steaming vegetable tureens balanced uneasily on a tray carried by the awkward girl. The butler set the pork on a sideboard. Beresford sank back in his chair and waved a hand. It wasn’t clear whether he meant to brush away his tone or indicate to the butler he should proceed. The girl deposited the tureens with a clatter.

‘I eat plainly,’ Beresford in a voice of stiff apology. ‘I hope you don’t mind?’

‘I’m glad of it!’ I told him. ‘After today’s labours I admit I’m quite famished.’

He relaxed and spoke more warmly. ‘Thank you for your help today. We get these fires from time to time in this weather. We haven’t seen much rain for a good while. That helps the farmer get the harvest in but the heath dries out and is like tinder. That’s why I keep my little fire-fighting force at the ready.’

‘Apple sauce, sir? enquired the girl of me and proceeded to daub it liberally over my helping of pork.

‘On the side of the plate, Susan!’ hissed the old man.

The girl was immediately all confusion, just missing my ear with one of her elbows, and dithered as if contemplating somehow removing the sauce.

‘It’s quite all right,’ I soothed her.

When they had left the room, Beresford managed another wry smile. ‘You see I only keep a small staff. I’m a bachelor and don’t need more. I employ a couple; the husband you have just seen. He acts as a butler and general factotum; his wife is cook-housekeeper. The maid is a niece of theirs. She isn’t particularly bright and I employ her for their sakes.’

Beresford was indeed a decent fellow. It was a great pity Lucy Roche had not chosen him instead of the absent James Craven. But perhaps she hadn’t met him early enough. I would consult Lizzie about this. Women know more about that sort of thing.

Beresford was about to reintroduce the subject of Mrs Craven but was clearly anxious not to antagonise me. ‘You must excuse me if I sounded somewhat heated just now. It is a matter very close to me and you’ll have seen I make no pretence about that. You suggested that perhaps Lucy – Mrs Craven – might associate Brennan with the loss of her infant. It’s true she’s taken that loss very hard. They couldn’t persuade her to attend the burial. For a while…’ He hesitated and then set his jaw determinedly and went on. ‘I’m not telling you anything that others won’t tell you. For a while Lucy wandered about the village and the lanes in a distraught state. Everyone pitied her. She would run up to any woman with a baby bundled in a shawl and demand to be shown the child. It upset the local mothers, understandably enough. I believe some of them, or their menfolk, complained to the rector. He took himself off to Shore House to make a fuss. After that Lucy stopped accosting people or, at least, she stopped coming into the village. Her aunts had a hand in that, I fancy, egged on by the rector, who’s more of an old woman than any of them.’

Beresford appeared to think he had perhaps been critical of his neighbours because he added hastily, ‘Good women, the aunts, I don’t doubt, but sticklers for respectability and by nature as dry as dust. Dr Barton, our local sawbones, said it was the shock of losing her child and the aftermath of puerperal fever that made Lucy act so wildly. But she’s all right now. Believe me, I’ve talked to her…’

He looked a little embarrassed. ‘I’ve continued to meet her from time to time on the beach. Quite by chance, of course! I walk my dog there. She likes to walk there too. I don’t think she is very happy with her aunts. Not their fault, of course, but well, they’re a real pair of old spinsters, as I said, who have no idea how to amuse her or comfort her or – or anything.’