Ann Granger (26 page)

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘She’s just looking round the church.’

Higgins’s expression clearly showed what a poor reply that was. Why should Lucy, who lived here and probably saw the church interior every Sunday, suddenly take it into her head to visit the church? Then it occurred to me that Higgins was asking from more than idle curiosity. No doubt she was her employer’s spy in the household. The story about woollen gloves was an excuse to follow and observe us.

If so, I wasn’t about to supply any information for her to take to the sisters. I nodded to her politely and hoped she would walk on. But still she stood there. Her eyes, when I looked up and met their gaze again, held a nuance of mockery.

‘So how do you like it here, then, Miss Martin? You’ve come down from London.’

‘I have, but I’m not a Londoner. I grew up in a small town. I think the countryside here very pretty.’

I knew that wasn’t what her question was designed to find out. She knew I knew it. Now we fenced openly.

‘Quiet as the grave!’ she returned brusquely. ‘I only stay because of my ladies. I’ve worked for Miss Christina and Miss Phoebe for twenty years.’

‘I’m sure they appreciate your loyalty,’ I replied.

‘They deserve my loyalty!’ she said fiercely. ‘They’re a fine pair of ladies. It’s not right that all this trouble should be visited on them.’

‘The police will solve the mystery of Brennan’s murder quickly,’ I snapped.

‘Oh, that fellow’s no loss. A rogue, I reckoned him. I wasn’t speaking of that, or not of that alone. The trouble they’ve had with Mrs Craven, Miss Lucy as she was, it’s been a real burden on them.’

Now, I meant to show Higgins I was as loyal to Lucy as she claimed to be to her ‘ladies’.

‘Mrs Craven has suffered a great misfortune,’ I said firmly. ‘In any case, we ought not—’

The look in Higgins’s eyes turned to open mockery. ‘Oh, Miss Companion! Been here less than a week and know all about it, do you? You’ve been taken in, I dare say, by the young lady’s pretty face and blue eyes. Let me tell you, I’ve known her since she was a baby. An awkward, spoiled, contrary child, she was, and nothing has changed in her. You’ll see. Such tantrums when she couldn’t have her own way and such obstinacy!’

Really angry, I cried out, ‘I won’t allow you to speak of Mrs Craven like this! Nor is it your place to do so. I won’t hear another word. Is this what you call loyalty?’

‘As you please. My loyalty is to the ladies; I owe nothing to Mrs Craven.’

‘You’d better go on to the village and seek out the knitting woman,’ I told her coldly. ‘Since you say you were sent out to do that.’

Higgins said nothing for a moment, only gave me a frosty look. She walked on a few steps, then paused and turned. ‘You don’t know, Miss Companion. You don’t know anything. The trouble didn’t start with that cobbled-together business of the marriage to save her reputation – and her family’s. Did you know they had to take Miss Lucy out of her boarding school, when she was only eleven years old, and find another? The school wrote to Mr Roche and asked him to remove his niece. Her violent tempers were more than they could deal with. Why, she even attacked another pupil during some childish squabble.’

I wanted to order her to be quiet but despite myself I heard myself asking, ‘Attacked?’

Triumph flickered in the mud-coloured eyes. She knew she had won our little battle. I had asked for information.

‘That’s right, miss. She seized a sewing needle and jabbed it into the other girl’s arm. Terrible scandal it was, the other girl’s parents being set to make real trouble. So Miss Lucy was taken away in disgrace and another school bribed to admit her.’

I opened my mouth but nothing came out.

Higgins nodded at me as amiably as if we’d been having some friendly conversation. ‘Well, then, I must be about my business, or there will no woollen gloves this winter!’

She walked off down the road leaving me seething with rage. I glanced towards the church. I had been afraid Lucy would come out with Ben while Higgins had been there to see. At least that hadn’t happened.

I couldn’t sit still beneath the lych-gate. I wanted to stride up and down and drive out my pent-up anger. I walked down the narrow paths between the graves and gradually found myself calmer. That is to say, I was in control of myself but I can hardly say I felt at ease. Could it be true? Had Lucy attacked another girl at her school? I’d wanted to cry out that I didn’t believe it; but I’d seen from the satisfied gleam in Higgins’s eyes that she knew her account would be verified if I enquired further.

Such behaviour couldn’t be excused. An unhappy orphan child, packed off to be brought up by strangers, might be excused the occasional tantrum. But to take up a sewing needle and drive it into a fellow-pupil’s arm? I remembered how she’d picked up stones to throw at Dr Lefebre. A shiver of doubt ran up my spine. Had I indeed been ‘taken in’?

My feet had brought me to the grave of the Craven baby. I stopped and looked down at it. The sight of it sobered me and made me more rational. Lucy was suffering from melancholia; even Dr Lefebre had said so. It had been brought on first by the birth and then by the sad loss of her child, to say nothing of the absence of a husband to whom she was devoted despite, or even because of, the poor opinion others had of him. If she behaved strangely it wasn’t to be wondered at. She needed time and care and support.

Someone else was coming. I looked up, hoping it wouldn’t be Higgins. I didn’t trust myself to keep my temper with the woman. But it was a quite different figure.

Although I’m not superstitious, I have to admit I let out a shriek of alarm. With the upsetting conversation with Higgins only just behind me, and standing in this quiet spot surrounded by the dead, the last sight I needed or expected to see was that of an aged man with a scythe over his shoulder approaching me purposefully across the graves. There was eagerness in every line and determination that I shouldn’t escape him.

The old man stopped when a few feet away and set his scythe on the ground. He touched the battered brim of his hat. I found the gesture reassuring. However the Grim Reaper greeted his victims, it wasn’t, I was sure, in such a servile manner.

‘Good day to you, ma’am,’ said the old man. ‘Jarvis, the sexton, at your service.’

‘Oh, Mr Jarvis,’ I said, relief flooding through me, ‘I’ve heard of you.’

‘Is that so?’ he asked, pleased and surprised.

‘Well, Inspector Ross, the police officer who has come down from London, told us – me – that you had opened the church for him.’

‘That I did, ma’am. Are you wanting to visit the church yourself?’

‘Oh, I’ll see it on Sunday, I don’t doubt,’ I said hastily. ‘I’m Miss Martin and I’ve come to be companion to Mrs Craven at Shore House.’

‘There now,’ said Jarvis happily. ‘I heard someone had come down here for that purpose. What a thing it is to have so many folk from London visiting us all at once!’

He looked past me, down at the earth. ‘I dug that one,’ he said conversationally.

‘Dug…?’ Oh, goodness, he meant the child’s grave.

‘I used to dig most of them,’ Jarvis went on, with a proprietorial gesture at the graves around us, ‘as it was my business to do until my rheumatics got bad. Now I mostly get Walter Wilkes to dig for me. Not that his corners are ever square, but he’s not fit for much else but digging holes, Walter, so I give him the job.’ He eyed the grave in front of us with undeniable satisfaction. ‘That baby’s coffin only needed a little hole so I managed that myself. People of quality like those at Shore House are entitled to have square corners.’

Jarvis turned in stately fashion and stared at the church porch. ‘Is that Londoner still in there, then?’

‘Yes, Mr Jarvis, he is.’

‘He must be powerful interested in monuments,’ observed the sexton. ‘But I dare say they don’t have many churches like this one in London. Well, I’ll not lock up yet, then. I’ll go on back and finish clearing that long grass where the old burials are. That grass grows like nobody’s business. Good day to you, ma’am.’ He touched his hat-brim again, shouldered his scythe and trudged away.

I heaved a sigh of relief and hoped I didn’t have any more unpleasant encounters before Ben had finished talking to Lucy. But here they were at last, emerging from the porch. Lucy looked calm and as if some burden had been lifted from her.

‘Thank goodness for that!’ I said aloud.

Chapter Eighteen

Inspector Benjamin Ross

I ESCORTED the ladies back to the gates of Shore House and returned to The Acorn. I had only just reached the inn when a clip-clop of hooves caught my ear and turning my head I saw, to my great astonishment, Morris entering the yard astride the scruffy pony belonging to the inn. I’d seen this animal grazing in its small paddock. I’d never imagined Morris tackling the business of riding it, even though I knew we had agreed that he should take on the task of interviewing Dr Barton that morning.

It was not that Barton had been directly involved in events at the time of Brennan’s death; but the conviction hadn’t left me that the matters leading up to the rat-catcher’s violent demise had been set in train some time ago. Everything that had happened during the best part of a year Lucy Craven had spent living with her aunts at Shore House was of interest to me. The murderer was familiar with the house, its contents (including the murderous letter knife), and the grounds. The death of the child suggested another mystery. There Barton could help.

Of course, the person I most wanted to find was Mrs Brennan; not only to know that she was safe but because I suspected she knew why her husband had been killed … and when we knew why, we would know who. But her whereabouts remained a mystery even though Gosling had been put in charge of a thorough search. His laboriously written notes on his progress, delivered to me at the inn by a succession of rustic messengers, had not been encouraging. The rat-catcher’s wife appeared to have vanished. I was beginning to fear she’d made her way back to London despite being told to stay in the district. So, in the meantime, we scratched around for clues and it was possible the local doctor might shed some light. It was clutching at straws; but time was passing and with every day gone by the murderer gained in confidence and we became more frustrated.

Morris drew his Rosinante to a halt beside me and slipped easily from the saddle in a manner that quite put my poor equestrian skills to shame.

‘Well, Sergeant,’ I said, ‘you are a man of surprises. I wonder you chose the police and didn’t enlist in the cavalry.’

Morris patted the pony’s neck. ‘Well, sir, you see, my old father kept a donkey and cart. Now, a donkey’s not a pony, to be sure. But we children were forever scrambling on the poor animal’s back and making it canter round with us clinging on. I sort of took to it, if you like. Later on, when I got bigger, I’d beg the coalman or the brewer’s dray driver to let me ride their horses in the shafts or I’d go down to the mews and help the grooms out. I like horses. A horse is a good-natured beast unless he’s been badly treated. As for enlisting in the cavalry…’ Morris shook his grizzled head, ‘I couldn’t do it, not caring for the animals as I do. Horses get shot to pieces and maddened by the cannon fire, just the same as men, only it’s worse for them, to my mind. A man knows, when he takes the Queen’s shilling, what he’s doing, or if he doesn’t, he should. A horse doesn’t get the choice.

‘If you don’t mind, sir,’ went on Morris, after delivering this oration, ‘I’ll just return this one to its field and I’ll join you directly, if you’d like my report.’

‘Join me in the snug,’ I suggested. ‘I’ll ask Mrs Garvey to bring us some fresh coffee.’

In due course, Morris arrived in the snug and we settled down to exchange reports. I told him of my conversation with Mrs Craven. He told me of his visit to Dr Barton, and I’ll let him tell it to you, in his own words, as dictated to me. If I’d left him to write it down himself, I’d have got only the barest outline. Morris, although meticulous in reporting anything a witness might say, has a habit of omitting anything he doesn’t consider ‘proper’ in an official report.

Sergeant Frederick Morris

I asked Mrs Garvey where Dr Barton lived and she told me it was about four miles away. I was preparing to walk there when she suggested I take the pony belonging to the inn. Apparently it’s hired out to anyone in need of an animal, four shillings for the day and two shillings for the half-day. That seemed a lot to me and I fancy she’d added a little to the normal rate because we aren’t locals. But the day is warm. I thought it might look better if I arrived at the doctor’s house properly representative of the police force, by which I mean not dusty and sweating. I know you told me, sir, that Miss Roche had offered us a mount from her stable, should we need one. But then everyone at Shore House would know what I was about, so I agreed to hire Mrs Garvey’s pony. I trust it is an allowable expense.

The potboy caught the pony. I saddled it up and it struck me, as I did, that the beast showed very little life. To tell the truth it seemed half-asleep. I set out and soon began to think I might have got where I was going just as quickly on my own two feet. The pony’s name is Comet and if ever a quadruped had the wrong name, that pony is one. It ambled along and nothing I could do seemed able to make it go faster. There were a lot of flies about and buzzing round the beast’s head and mine. So eventually I pulled a spray of leaves off a hedge, as we were creeping past, with the intention of brushing away the flies. But as soon as Comet caught sight of the branch in my hand, he broke into quite a fast trot. So we got to Dr Barton’s in good time after all.

I found the house easily enough, as it’s on the main road, just set back a little. There was a boy of about twelve years of age, wearing a blue jacket with brass buttons, loitering about outside the door; I enquired of him if the doctor was at home.

‘Is it a birth?’ asks the cheeky young monkey.

I told him it wasn’t his business to know; and repeated my question as to whether Dr Barton was at home.

‘Is it a broken leg?’ was all the reply I got.