Into the Valley of Death (11 page)

Miss Unwin rose from her chair. “Then I will bid you good day,” she said, “and we will regard this incident as closed.”

She turned, not without an inward fear that Arthur Burch’s shotgun might not stay lowered, and left the crowded and cluttered kitchen.

A moment afterwards she was out in the bright morning sunshine again. With the stout door of the cottage safely behind her, she found herself trembling uncontrollably from head to foot.

But she dared not linger so near the scene of that threat to her life, and, forcing her melting legs to obey her, she set off back up the long narrow lane leading from the ill-kept farm.
Not until she had reached the great oak-tree that marked the turning did her trembling cease.

When at last Miss Unwin got back to the Rising Sun, Mrs. Steadman came down the stairs towards her. With a shock she saw how one more long night had affected the bright-eyed soldier’s wife. Her ramrod uprightness had yielded at last to a definite stoop, and her crab-apple cheeks were blotched with paleness.

But still she kept her dignity.

“Good morning, my dear,” she said. “You were out betimes.”

No shadow of a hopeful inquiry about what progress might have been made. Miss Unwin wished with all her heart that she had something good to tell. But she hardly had, and she was not going to give Jack Steadman’s wife false hope.

“Mrs. Steadman,” she said, “I have been out on the business I came here for, you may be sure of that. But, sorry though I am for it, I cannot bring you any good news.”

“No. Well, if back in May Inspector Whatmough in all his experience couldn’t do better than arrest my Jack, I shan’t expect no miracle from you now, my dear.”

Miss Unwin sighed. “Oh, a miracle is needed, I’m afraid,” she answered. “Three days is a terribly short time. But if anything can be done to make a miracle happen, then I promise you I shall do it. And Mr. Heavitree, too. I know I can speak for him.”

“You can speak
to
him, too, my dear. He’s been sitting in my room upstairs this half hour waiting for you.”

So Miss Unwin hurried away. She did not feel she had learnt anything in her morning’s frightening visit to Arthur Burch, but it had confirmed, surely, that he was a deeply worried man. She would welcome the former detective’s response to that.

In the sitting-room Mr. Heavitree lumbered up from the sofa where he appeared to have been having a quiet doze.

“Well, Miss Unwin,” he said, “I gather you were out early. It was to Farmer Burch’s?”

“Yes, of course.”

She told him in detail then all that she had seen at the cottage and what had happened to her there.

“Yes,” he said when she had finished, “we’ve got Master Burch well scared, no doubt of that. So it only remains to complete the little business I had in mind for him.”

“To complete it, Mr. Heavitree?”

“Yes,” said the old detective cheerfully. “If I’m any judge, what that fellow needs now is a good shock. And that I propose to give him. Only it must wait, I fear, till this evening.”

“But what is it?”

“Why, simple enough. I want him to find that the bumbling old police officer he met yesterday and the not very effective lady writer he frightened off this morning are, in fact, fast friends.”

“Yes. Yes, I see that to discover the two of us together would be a shock indeed to him. But why must we wait till tonight?”

“Ah, because the shock will be all the more effective for being unexpected. I want Master Burch to come innocently to this very house to drink a pint or two of ale, as I hear he still does despite everything nearly every blessed evening of his life. And here I want him suddenly to see the pair of us in earnest conference.”

“Yes. I understand the merits of that. But it will lose us— what?—eight or nine hours. Eight or nine precious hours, Mr. Heavitree.”

“Yes, I like that no more than you, especially as there’s little to be done in the meantime, so far as I can see. But if we’re to get Arthur Burch really quaking in his boots, we’ll have to take every advantage we can. So wait we must.”

“Is there nothing to be done in the meanwhile?”

“Well, one thing I do mean to do, and that’s to keep an eye on our fellow. He may get to thinking about the risk of what
he did at the assizes and then wonder about that former police officer, bumbling though he seemed.”

“And make a bolt for it?”

“Exactly. But if he does, I shall be after him. And when I catch him he’ll break, all right.”

“Good,” said Miss Unwin. “And there is something I think I should do this morning.”

“Oh, yes?”

Then she told her colleague what she had seen and learnt at the ball.

“So I want to know all there is to be known about General Bickerstaffe,” she concluded. “And I think I know the best source to go to.”

“Your naughty little friend, Miss Euphemia Pastell?”

“Her.”

Mr. Heavitree rose to his feet. “Well, each of us to what we can do best,” he said, “and let’s pray we meet with more success than we deserve.”

Miss Unwin was about to wish him equal luck when something that had been in the back of her mind all last evening made her stop.

“Mr. Heavitree, one last thing before you go.”

“Yes, Miss Unwin?”

“It is this: I can quite easily see why someone who was having an illicit affair with Mrs. De Lyall and who wished to keep it secret might be made Alfie Goode’s victim and so might need in the end to murder him. But …”

“Yes, my dear?”

“What I cannot see is how that person would need also to end Mr. Steadman’s life in the way he plans to. How can it be that Mr. Steadman knows something about a murderer which yet allows that murderer to risk letting him stay alive till Friday morning?”

Mr. Heavitree sat back down on the sofa again. “Yes,” he said, “that needs a bit of thinking about.”

For some moments he sat in silence contemplating his
large brown boots. Then he sighed. “You know, my dear,” he said, “I think it must mean that perhaps we’re barking up the wrong tree.”

“Yes,” said Miss Unwin, who had been standing contemplating her neat black shoes, dusty from her walk. “Yes, I too begin to think there may be another tree, that perhaps it is another sort of secret altogether that Alfie Goode found out about. Yet if Mrs. De Lyall was not what he was able to exercise his blackmail over, what else could it be?”

“What indeed? But it may be so. However, I suppose for the present you can do no better than find out what you can about General Bickerstaffe, and I shall certainly keep a watch on Master Burch. Remember this: He must know who persuaded him to give false evidence against Jack Steadman, and with luck and patience we can find that out, too.”

So, shortly after Mr. Heavitree had set out to keep watch on the perjured tenant farmer, Miss Unwin left the Rising Sun once more. She went with no great feelings of optimism. Only three days now till the morning Jack Steadman was to be hanged, and all she could do by way of saving him, it seemed, was to gossip with a thirteen-year-old hoyden.

But she had hardly gone fifty yards from the inn when her attention was attracted by the sound of horses’ hooves clattering out loud and fast on the road ahead. A moment later round the next bend there came at a fast trot a truly magnificent canary-yellow phaeton, two splendid roans in its shafts, a burly coachman in the driving seat, and two footmen, tall and statue-still in their cocked hats and frogged coats, behind.

Who on earth can be driving such a magnificent equipage in this quiet little country town? Miss Unwin asked herself.

In a moment she realised that she might have guessed the answer. As the open carriage came nearer, she recognised, under a flower-bedizened bonnet and despite a thick veil, Mrs. De Lyall.

Now, where can that lady be going in such a hurry? Miss Unwin asked herself again. Her senses prickled with alertness. Could it be something to do with Jack Steadman? Was this hurried journey some consequence of the conversation Vilkins had overheard?

But to her surprise the carriage, instead of hurrying on towards the inn and beyond, came to an abrupt halt almost at her side, its broad-chested horses rearing and stamping.

And then her surprise was redoubled.

Mrs. De Lyall threw back her veil and called out in a loud, imperious voice, “You! You there, miss! I want to talk to you.”

Miss Unwin looked all round her. But there was no one else in the sun-drenched quiet road to whom Mrs. De Lyall could possibly be speaking.

Cautiously she approached the shining yellow phaeton.

“Come nearer, come nearer. Do you think I want every peasant in this wretched place to hear my private affairs?”

Miss Unwin stepped right up to the door of the carriage. Mrs. De Lyall looked down at her.

“Now, my fine miss,” she said, “I have just one thing to tell you. And that is this: Unless I hear that you have left this place before nightfall today, I shall know how to make you go.”

It took Miss Unwin a moment to recover from the shock of this. But it was a moment only.

“Madam,” she said, “I do not think we have been introduced, and I quite fail to understand what it is that you are talking about.”

“I am talking about you, you nasty spy,” Mrs. De Lyall answered. “Don’t think that just because you come down here to poke and pry, others cannot make their inquiries, too. I heard at General Pastell’s ball last night that there was a female detective somewhere about, and I have made it my business since to find out who it is and where she was to be found.”

“And to come and order me out of the town?” Miss Unwin
asked, inwardly sinking at the swiftness of Mrs. De Lyall’s action but outwardly treating her with unswerving calm.

“Yes,” Mrs. De Lyall answered, her high cheekbones reddening with rage. “Exactly that, my fine miss. To order you out of the town, out of the county. And if you have any ideas about not doing as you’re told, I suggest you give the men behind my carriage a good look. They may be dressed in coloured coats and white breeches with wigs on their heads, but let me assure you they can do a man’s business when there’s need for it.”

Miss Unwin managed to prevent herself glancing at the two impassive footmen up behind the phaeton. She had had a good look at them already, and knew them for six-footers.

“Madam,” she said to Mrs. De Lyall, striving to keep the calm in her voice still, “I acknowledge that I am here to make inquiries relating to the murder of Alfred Goode, but I fail altogether to see what interest you may have in the matter.”

“That is none of your business, my girl. Just take heed of what I have said to you. If you are still in the town by nightfall, you can expect some rough handling. That’s all. Coachman, drive on.”

The coachman, who had sat listening impassively to all of this, lifted his whip—higher than was necessary, Miss Unwin thought—and brought it cracking down on the flank of one of Mrs. De Lyall’s splendid roans. The phaeton jerked forward, and in a minute the dust from its wheels was rising up in a cloud in Miss Unwin’s face.

She stepped back into the shade of one of the cottages fronting the road and waited for her heart to beat less furiously.

Then she began to consider.

The first thought that came to her was that she had no intention whatsoever of leaving Chipping Compton. Not while there was any chance of saving Jack Steadman from the rope. Then she thought, with a certain savage pleasure, that the morning had plainly advanced matters towards saving
him, after all. Because if Mrs. De Lyall had gone to the length of threatening her in that way, then she must be a worried woman. Or be closely connected with a worried man.

But who was that man? Was it Captain Brackham, staying at the wretched inn at the gates of her mansion? Or was it perhaps General Bickerstaffe, who had so much more to lose? Or was it someone else she had yet to connect with the lady?

But, whatever the answer, there now seemed a great deal more point in finding out all she could about the Heavy Brigade general.

And there was something else.

Turning, Miss Unwin retraced her steps to the Rising Sun, deep in thought.

There she went round to the back and, as she had hoped, found Vilkins, her arms deep in a wooden tub of soapy water.

“Well,” Vilkins greeted her at once, “you got any further?”

“Yes,” said Miss Unwin. “Yes, I think that quite unexpectedly I have.”

“What you found out then? Not who really murdered Alf Goode?”

“No, not that. Not yet. But I have found out that whoever it is seems to be so worried by what Mr. Heavitree and I have done so far that they have begged Mrs. De Lyall to drive down here on purpose to threaten to have me beaten by her footmen unless I leave the town before tonight.”

“An’ you’re going?”

“What do you think, my dear?”

“Well, so you’re staying. But I should keep your ’ead well under cover if I was you. I’ve ’eard tales about them two, an’ they weren’t such nice tales neither.”

“Yes. Yes, I suppose I had better be careful. But I have done more than be warned off, you know. I’ve had an idea as well.”

“An’ it’s a good ’un?”

“I hope so. I can’t quite think what put it into my head. But
it was something to do with Mrs. De Lyall just now and the men I saw last night buzzing round that over-rich honeypot.”

“ ’Oneypot? I’d call ’er a sight worse nor that.”

“Well, that’s as may be. But one thing struck me about those gentlemen.”

“An’ what’s that?”

“You can’t guess?”

“Never saw most of ’em, did I? So I ain’t got nothink to say.”

“No, you’re right. Well, I’ll tell you. They were all military men. And, much farther down the social pyramid, so once was Mr. Steadman. Well, now, it struck me that in their past in the Army some of those guests at the ball might have been in the same campaign or at the same camp or something of the sort as Mr. Steadman.

“An’ that’s where ’e might of got to know somethink about one of ’em without realising it, like?”

“Now, that is clever of you, my dear.”

“Oh, I got me ’ead screwed on all right, even if it does look a bit funny.”