Death at Gallows Green (3 page)

“Amelia, I suppose,” he said.

Lawrence sighed, resigned.

“I'll be as circumspect as possible in my inquiry,” Edward said. He looked once more at the huddled figure of his friend. “You saw no one?”

“No one but ‘im,” Lawrence said. He too turned away from the dead gaze. “D'you suppose it's true?”

“What's true?” Edward asked.

“That th' dead takes a pitchur o' th' last thing they see wit' their open eyes. If ‘tis, mayhap 'ee's took a pitchur o' th' one'oo kilt 'im.”

“Mayhap,” Edward said. Gently, he bent down and closed the eyelids of Sergeant Arthur Oliver. Let him dream in peace.

S
ir Charles Sheridan, a leather case in one hand and a wooden tripod over his shoulder, strode down the path in the anxious wake of Mrs. McGregor, who churned like a fervent little tugboat against a surging current. She stopped when they reached the foot of the garden, so unexpectedly that Charles bumped into her.

“Oh dear oh dear oh dear,” Mrs. McGregor said, twisting one corner of her white apron. “I'm sure I don't know wot Mr. McGregor'll say when he finds that murder's been done in th' back garden. He'll be that put out, he will. That's where he allus sets his rabbit snares.”

“I doubt,” Charles said, “that this event is likely to affect the rabbit population.” He set the case down and extended a hand to Laken, while Mrs. McGregor stood behind, her eyes averted from the body. “I came as soon as I got your message, Ned. I'm very sorry. Artie was more your friend than mine, but I remember him with great affection.”

It had been over twenty years since those halcyon days when Charles had spent summers in East Bergholt, just on the other side of the River Stour, visiting his mother's family, the Constables. But he had forgotten neither Artie nor Ned. They had been comrades in grand misadventure from the mill at Dedham to the tidal flats at Mistley and beyond.

“He was a good friend to both of us,” Edward said. The grief was written on his narrow face. “Thank you for coming, Charlie. I thought two pairs of eyes would be better than one.”

Charles positioned the tripod. “And here's another eye, which won't forget anything it sees.” He opened the leather case, unfolded a camera, and fastened it onto the tripod. He had acquired the compact, portable bellows camera in France just a month before. It was the most recent addition to the growing collection of cameras he kept in his London house.

“You'll be at Marsden Manor for a few days?” Edward asked, as Charles draped a black camera cloth over his head.

“For an indefinite period,” Charles said. He peered into the ground glass viewing screen at the back of the camera, adjusting the rack and pinion that operated the helical lens to focus the inverted image of Artie's body, lying on its left side, the neat round hole and matted blood quite evident on the uniform jacket.

“ 'xcuse me, Sir Charles.”

Charles pulled his head out and whirled around, noticing for the first time that Edward was not alone. “Lawrence? What the devil are
you
doing here?”

Lawrence ducked his head. “Well, sir,” he began, “y'see, Sir—”

“He and a young lady companion discovered the body,” Edward put in.

“A young lady?” Mrs. McGregor cried shrilly. She stamped her foot. “F‘r shame! Wot Mr. McGregor'll say t' such wild gooin's-on in the garden, I don't know.”

Lawrence fairly bristled with indignation. “There warn't no wild goin's-on.” He turned to Charles. “ 'Pon my life, sir! 'Twas innocent. I swear!”

“You're acquainted with Lawrence?” Edward asked, frowning. Then, “Of course. He's employed at Marsden Manor.”

“He is my valet,” Charles said. “My acting valet, that is.” His man had given him notice only a fortnight before, and when he arrived for an extended visit at the manor Lady Marsden had insisted upon supplying him with Lawrence. Charles turned back to the body. “I suppose the primary question is whether Artie was shot here or someplace else.”

“Just so,” Edward agreed. “The ground is dry here, and there's a great deal of bramble. No chance of footprints.” He turned to Mrs. McGregor. “Did you hear a gunshot in the last twenty-four hours?”

“Gunshot?” Mrs. McGregor was wry. “Ooh, aye, there be many a gunshot ‘round here. Mr. McGregor's one o' th' gamekeepers at Marsden Manor, y'see. He's allus about wi' his gun, day an' night, he is. I say t' him, ‘Mr. McGregor,' says I, ‘d'you niver think t' lay doon yer gun an' hang up y'r billycock an' be done wi' gamekeepin'?' An' he says to me, ‘Niver,' Mrs. McGregor,' he says, ‘as long as I has me two gud eyes.' There be that many weasels and other varmints hereabouts, y‘see. Th' gamekeeper must keep th' game safe.”

Charles smiled a little. He himself had never been a hunter, and felt it a deep irony that the game was preserved from its natural predators at great effort and expense, only to be slaughtered by the thousands during a hunt. He and Edward exchanged glances.

“When can we see Mr. McGregor?” Edward asked.

“When he's t'home,” Mrs. McGregor said.

“This evening?” Edward inquired.

“Cert'nly. The pore man's got t' have his tea, now, don't he?” She shook her head mournfully, still twisting her apron. “Although how I'm to make it f'r him, I don't know, betwattled as I am 'bout dead men an' young ladies an' wild gooin's-on in th' garden.”

“Tell your husband we'll stop 'round at teatime,” Edward said. “Thank you, Mrs. McGregor. You may go.” He turned to Lawrence. “You, too, Lawrence.”

“You'll remember?” Lawrence asked. He looked warily at Charles. “ 'Bout Mrs. Pratt, I mean.”

“I'll remember,” Edward promised. Lawrence sketched a bow to Charles and made swiftly for the gap in the hedge.

About to return to his camera, Charles stopped. “Mrs. Pratt? The housekeeper at Bishop's Keep?”

Bishop's Keep was familiar to Charles as the home of Kate Ardleigh. He had met the young woman upon her arrival in England and had been quite taken by her, especially by the way she had dealt with her aunts' deaths. She had, in fact, quite surprised him with her courage and common sense. They had seen one another several times since, and he had begun to think that something might come of their acquaintance.

“Yes,” Edward said. “When Lawrence discovered the body, a maid from Bishop's Keep was with him. Can you make a close shot of the chest, Charlie?”

Charles pulled the hood over his head and set to work again. When the camera's focus satisfied him, he inserted the plateholder and snapped the shutter. “From the look of things, I don't believe he was shot here,” he said, emerging from under the cloth. “What do you think?”

“Doesn't seem so to me, either,” Edward said, bending down and putting a finger to the bloodstain on the dead man's chest. “There's grassy debris in the congealed blood, as if he died face down. And yet he was found in this position, lying on his side. There's no blood on the ground beneath or around him, either, although there should have been, if he died here.”

“Are those grass seeds in the blood?” Charles asked.

Edward straightened up. “See for yourself.”

Charles took a folding lens out of one of the pockets of his bulky coat and knelt beside the body. After a moment's close inspection of the wound, he took out a penknife and a small square of oiled paper and scraped a sample of debris from the bloody jacket onto the paper. He folded it carefully and put it into another pocket.

“From the size of the entry wound,” he said, “the weapon appears to have been of rather large calibre. Not likely a rifle, though, since there's no exit wound. Most probably a pistol.” He stood up. “Shot in the heart, it seems.”

“If he wasn't killed here,” Edward said, “he must have been dragged through that gap in the hedge. That's Lamb's Lane on the other side.”

Charles pocketed his penknife, followed Edward to the hedge, and studied the ground carefully. The soil was packed and hard and there were no footprints. But there were indications that something had been dragged through the gap. And on a twig at the height of his elbow, he found something interesting: a triangular flag of faded red cloth about the size of his thumbnail. He repositioned the camera, photographed the cloth, then retrieved it carefully. It went into another piece of oiled paper. “May I take this and the scrapings?” he asked. “You'll get them back.”

Edward nodded. “You're thinking the killer left this scrap behind?”

“Lawrence was wearing a blue jacket,” Charles remarked thoughtfully. “What colour dress was his companion wearing?”

“I'll find out.” Edward jotted something in his notebook. He looked up as a cart, pulled by a brown horse and driven by two uniformed policemen, came to a stop in the lane. “The chaps from Colchester,” he said bleakly, “are here for the body.” Charles began to repack his gear. “I'd appreciate a copy of the surgeon's notes,” he said.

“I'll see what I can do.” Edward put away his notebook. “Would you mind coming with me?”

“To Bishop's Keep?”

Edward's face was grim. “To Gallows Green. Artie's widow has yet to be told.”

B
etsy sat in the corner between the coal box and the fire, her back turned toward the room, her collie dog, Kep, asleep on the floor beside her. In front of her was the doll house. It was two stories and its wooden front and sides were painted to look like red brick, with windows painted on and two clever balconies, a front door that really opened, and a chimney. It had been made for her by her father, and her mother had made the curtains out of scraps from her sewing box and had knitted the parlour rug of the wool left from Betsy's Christmas mittens. Auntie Mabel, who was in service to a great lady in Brighton and earned pots of money and got a new dress every Boxing Day, had sent her a table and chairs, a bed and a sofa, and a little wooden box full of shavings that also contained two red lobsters, a ham, a fish, a pudding, and some pears and oranges that would not come off the plates but made the dining table look utterly splendid. Taken all in all, the dollhouse was much grander than any real home in the entire hamlet of Gallows Green. Betsy, who was not a domestic child nor given to dolls, loved it, not least because she had watched her father make it, and he had permitted her to paint the tiny bricks, as well as the white roses that twined over the front door.

Into this admiring reverie, her mother's voice intruded. “Betsy, Betsy, where are you?”

Kep raised his head. Betsy gravely considered the question. She was probably wanted to run an errand, perhaps to the grocer, to get some starch for Father's shirts. Last time, her mother had given her threepence for a pack of Robin's Starch, and an extra ha'penny for an ounce of Fairley's chocolate drops to be shared with her dolls, Lucinda and lane. Of course, Lucinda and lane had the lobsters, a fish, and a ham, not to mention fruit and a pudding. So Betsy had eaten the chocolate drops, all except one, which she shared with Kep. She thought of offering one to Jemima, her pet duck, but did not, for fear that chocolate might not be good for Jemima's digestion.

“Betsy?” her mother called again, louder now. There was an odd note of urgency in her summons.

Betsy shoved Lucinda and Jane into their bedroom, although it was much too late in the day for naps, and pushed the doll house against the wall. Perhaps she would not get chocolate drops, after all, but humbugs, striped, and flavoured with peppermint. She mentally counted the pence knotted in a bit of cloth behind the loose skirting board in her corner of the loft. Or perhaps she would forgo the humbugs and apply the ha'penny to the hoop she coveted, an iron one with a proper stick with a nail in it, like her friend Baxter's. Girls had wooden hoops, and bowled them with hedgesticks or their hands. Betsy coveted an iron one with a
real
stick.

“Betsy!”

Betsy got up and went into the kitchen, Kep trailing behind her. The kitchen was her favourite place to be, if you didn't count the shed, where her father made things of wood and mended broken crockery and whistled while he sharpened his gardening tools. There were such wonderful things hung on the shed's walls—rakes and hoes and shovels and saws and ropes and pulleys and even a shiny galvanized watering can. It was also where Jemima Puddleduck spent the night with Mr. Browne, whom Betsy had rescued as a tiny owlet from Mrs. Wilkins's fierce gray tabby.

But the kitchen was where her mother reigned, like the Queen (but ever so much younger and prettier, of course) over her empire. With its fresh-painted walls and bright hearth rug, the cheerful coal fire in the stove that had been set into the old fireplace, and the even more cheerful-scented pelargoniums blooming at the casement window, flung open now to catch the May breeze—the kitchen was a palace to Betsy. She scarcely noticed that the ceiling was so low her father had to stoop, or the table so tiny that the three of them sat elbow-to-elbow at their meals. For always at one end of the table was her mother, cheeks shining, and at the other end her father, beard combed and eyes twinkling, and she in the middle, with Kep under her bare feet, and Jemima making small quacks outside the door, and sleepy Mr. Browne nodding on his perch in the shed. No matter that the flagstone floor was cold and damp, or that the eaves were low or the roof merely thatched. To Betsy it was better than Buckingham Palace.