Ann Granger (18 page)

‘Mrs Williams is a very straight-spoken woman,’ said Gosling. ‘She was very upset about it being young Mrs Craven who had found the body. She told me I couldn’t speak to the lady because she was sleeping, dosed with laudanum. She, I mean Mrs Williams, kept on about it not having anything to do with Mrs Craven and I was not to badger her. Well, I couldn’t speak to her anyway, her being dead to the world on account of the laudanum, but I did say you would wish to see the lady, sir, when you got here.’

‘How did Mrs Williams take that?’

‘Not very well,’ admitted Gosling.

‘It wasn’t Brennan’s first visit to this village,’ I observed next.

‘No, sir. He came regular and pitched his little tent up on the heath. Village people deal with their own rats, mostly, but we do have a few big houses in the neighbourhood. Shore House, for one, and Oakwood House for another. That belongs to Mr Beresford. Then there’s old Sir Henry Meacham about three mile off and a couple of others.’

‘Was Brennan liked?’

Gosling considered this question at some length. ‘I wouldn’t say he was, but there again, I couldn’t say anyone had anything particular thing against him. People were used to him. He was a good customer in here.’

‘A drunkard?’ I remembered Frazer’s remark about the state of the dead man’s liver.

‘Not the sort that causes trouble. He seemed able to hold it. He was a bit unsteady on his feet when he left but no one ever found him lying in the road.’

That seemed a fair enough judgement. Gosling, however, looked a little uneasy. ‘Thing is, sir,’ he blurted, ‘when I said he wasn’t disliked, well, that was true. But people were wary of him and generally left him alone. For a start his two dogs are snappy little beasts so you didn’t approach too near when he had them with him, which he generally did. People are a little suspicious of any stranger in a small place like this and some of ’em thought him a bird of ill omen. Then he didn’t talk much. But he had a way of sitting by the fire and smiling at you, not saying anything, just smiling. After a while, it made folk a bit twitchy, if you know what I mean. It was as if he had some private joke or other that kept him amused.’

‘No one ever asked him what it was?’

‘Shouldn’t think so,’ said Gosling frankly, ‘he wasn’t the sort you would mess with. Big fellow and I dare say quick with his fists if he had to be.’

‘Yet,’ I said, ‘someone was able to come up to him in the garden and drive a knife into his throat.’

Gosling nodded his head slowly. ‘That’s been worrying me too, sir. It was as if—’

‘Yes?’ I urged. ‘You’re a local man, Gosling. You know the way of things here. I value your opinion.’

The constable’s head was so red by now it seemed there was a real danger it would combust. ‘Fact is,’ he burst out, ‘I reckon it was someone he knew and didn’t have reason to fear.’

I nodded. ‘Did he ever quarrel with anyone, either here in The Acorn or in the village, even in what might seem a minor sort of way?’

‘They wouldn’t quarrel with him, sir. They would just keep clear.’

‘Tell me about the ladies at Shore House!’ I ordered abruptly.

Gosling blinked. ‘Very quiet pair of ladies. They’ve been living here about five or six years. The house was empty before that. You don’t see them about much. Their brother, Mr Charles Roche, comes down from London from time to time to visit. A few months ago, Mrs Craven, their niece as we understand it, came to Shore House for her lying-in. Baby died, sir, very sad.’

‘I believe the infant was not stillborn but died some twenty-four hours later?’

‘Don’t ask me,’ said Gosling. ‘You want Mrs Garvey. She’ll know all about it. That sort of thing is women’s business, isn’t it? I did hear tell the poor little soul was found dead in its cradle. Natural causes was what Dr Barton wrote on the certificate and the coroner was happy to accept that.’

‘Talking of women, what of Mrs Brennan? How did she take the news of her husband’s violent death?’

‘Very quiet,’ said Gosling after a moment’s thought. ‘Lye Greenaway took me up on to the heath to the place where they were camped. He’d been there earlier to fetch Brennan to the house. The woman wasn’t there when we arrived. We waited for a while and she came back with an armful of firewood, just bits of fallen branches and so on. It’s not lawful to cut wood in the Forest but picking up odd scraps just lying around is allowed.

‘When she saw me she did take fright a little. The uniform, you see. She thought her man had got himself into some trouble and might have been taken off to gaol. Funnily enough, it seemed to worry her less that he was dead. She only nodded and sighed.’

‘She didn’t ask how he had died?’

‘Well, no, she didn’t. That was strange, if you ask me. I had to tell her it all again, how he’d been attacked but we didn’t know by whom. She took that fairly quiet too, until I told her it had been in the grounds of Shore House. That did scare her. I could see it in her eyes. But she clammed up and said nothing. I told her she must stay in the locality and not go away where we couldn’t find her. There would be an inquest, I told her, and she must appear. It was delayed because police officers were coming from London. She seemed bewildered. I felt sorry for the poor soul. It’s my opinion, sirs…’ Gosling leaned forward confidentially and tapped his scarlet brow solemnly. ‘She’s not quite all right up here, if you follow me. On the simple side.’

Unlikely to impress a jury, then, I thought, or Superintendent Dunn, come to that. ‘I must speak to her, all the same,’ I said. ‘Perhaps you could bring her here?’

‘Do my best, sir,’ said Gosling gloomily. ‘If she hasn’t run off halfway across the county by now.’

We let Gosling go home after that. Mrs Garvey came to ask what we would like to eat. She had a freshly baked steak pie. I realised I was ravenous and told her that would do very well. So in the privacy of the snug Morris and I dined on the pie with boiled potatoes and carrots, followed by a blackberry and apple tart accompanied by a large jug of cream, and all washed down with porter.

‘Mrs Morris will be missing you, Sergeant,’ I said as we tucked in. ‘I am sorry to have brought you away from home.’

‘Mrs Morris’s sister is visiting,’ returned Morris. ‘I shan’t be missed. This is a very good fruit tart, this.’

Mrs Garvey reappeared and asked if all was well. We assured her it was. She then asked if we would like coffee and perhaps a little gin and hot water?

‘There is nothing for settling the stomach and sending you off to sleep like gin and hot water,’ she opined.

Regretfully we declined and at last rose from the snug table and made our way back out into the taproom.

In our absence it had filled up to such a point I don’t think they could have squeezed anyone else in. Tobacco smoke filled the air and also a degree of what I might call country odours such as sour milk. There had been a buzz of conversation but as soon as Morris and I appeared, a dead silence fell and every pair of eyes there turned to us. Word of our arrival had spread and they’d come from near and far to see these exotic persons from the nation’s capital. We were studied from head to toe and our progress across the room to the staircase minutely noted. Still closely observed, we climbed the lower staircase and when we turned a bend in it and were lost to view to those below, we heard an excited gabble of voices immediately break out again.

‘I don’t know about you, Mr Ross, but I feel like a travelling freak show,’ grumbled Morris.

Our room was small but I was relieved to see there were two beds. One was a four-poster and the other a much smaller single bed pushed against the wall. Morris, observing the dictates of rank if not of physical build, made for the single bed. I took possession of the four-poster feeling quite lordly. That didn’t last long. The mattress was both lumpy and damp. I regretted having turned down the offer of gin and hot water.

Morris, after one murmured remark made to the ceiling, ‘Decent young women like that, nursing soldiers, it don’t seem right to me!’ fell asleep at once with his mouth open, breathing noisily.

I made myself as comfortable as possible and hoped I would not wake up in the morning to find myself incapacitated by rheumatism.

*   *   *

Despite everything I slept very well. Perhaps it was the sea air from the Solent not half a mile away. We ate a hearty breakfast downstairs in the snug, which had been set aside solely for our use at any time of the day. I was feeling cheerful and optimistic because I’d be seeing Lizzie again. Also, I have to admit, because the case intrigued me. I wanted to get to grips with it. I knew, too, that a lot rested on my shoulders: the reputation of Scotland Yard, for a start. If I came down here from London and made a complete mess of things, my reception on my return didn’t bear imagining.

We set out for Shore House on foot, giving ourselves good time to observe the countryside and the general topography. We came upon the church after some half a mile.

‘Pretty,’ observed Morris. He glanced round him uneasily. ‘It’s mortal quiet, sir.’

‘It’s a churchyard,’ I pointed out.

‘I mean everywhere. Where are all the people? Not just the dead ones like that lot there.’ He indicated the jumble of burials. ‘I mean the living.’

‘They are at work, I dare say. You’re in the country, Sergeant. They begin the day early. Cows to be milked and so forth.’

‘It don’t seem natural,’ objected Morris. ‘I’d rather be in Limehouse with villains, drunken sailors and riff-raff all around me. At least I’d hear a human voice and have a fair idea what might happen next. Here there’s no way of knowing.’

Like me, Morris felt displaced. We’d both lost our familiar points of reference and had quickly to develop new ones. It wouldn’t be easy.

We reached the house soon enough and it did nothing to improve Sergeant Morris’s poor opinion of country life.

‘It’s a nice enough house, I grant you, pretty big and fit for nobs. But it seems a funny sort of choice for a pair of maiden ladies. What do they do all day?’

‘Unlike you and me, Morris, they like a quiet life.’

‘It’s not natural,’ said Morris firmly. ‘Women like visiting their friends and taking tea and such, gossiping. Why, these ladies can’t see a new face from one month’s end to another!’

We were admitted by the housekeeper, a formidable woman in black whose eyes glittered at us with hostility.

‘You are expected, gentlemen,’ she said, and started towards the door at the end of the hall.

I prevented her with, ‘One moment if you please, Mrs Williams. It
is
Mrs Williams, is it not?’

She nodded silently, her eyes watchful.

‘This is the hall table where normally a Malay knife, called a
kris
, is kept?’ I pointed to the spot.

‘It is, though I didn’t know the proper name for it.
Kris
, you say? It’s used as a letter knife. I don’t know who told you of it.’ Her mouth twitched in suppressed anger. ‘Unless it was Miss Martin.’

‘It does not matter who told me. The knife is missing. Is that correct? At any rate, I don’t see it.’

‘It’s been mislaid,’ said Williams firmly. ‘Now, will you come this way? And if you’ll wait a moment, Sergeant, I’ll take you to meet the staff.’

Morris waited to be led to the kitchen quarters and I was conducted into the presence of the Roche sisters.

I had hoped to find Lizzie with them but she was not in the room and I was disappointed again. I told myself to attend to business and concentrated on the sisters. Lizzie’s description of them in her letter had been remarkably accurate. There they sat gowned alike in violet silk with crocheted collars at their necks. The elder sister’s hair was drawn back severely beneath a lace cap. The younger, Miss Phoebe, wore false ringlets. Either she had dressed her hair in haste that morning, or her mind had been occupied with other matters, because the ringlets had been attached at different levels so that one dangled lower than the other. It gave her a distracted look.

I introduced myself and Williams glided away. I was not invited to sit down and so remained standing before the two ladies like a schoolboy in disgrace. I made some suitable remarks of sympathy with their unfortunate situation and expressed the wish I would be able to get to the bottom of matters soon.

‘I should hope so,’ said Miss Roche icily. ‘It is not our custom, Inspector Ross, to receive police officers in our drawing room.’ She hesitated and then, reluctantly, gestured towards a chair. ‘Sit down. You might as well.’

I accepted the seat so grudgingly offered. ‘If I might ask you,’ I said, ‘to give me your account of what happened that morning? Start, if you would, with the arrival of Brennan at the house. Who sent for him?’

‘Haven’t you spoken to Gosling?’ asked Miss Roche. ‘Hasn’t he told you what happened? Why must we repeat it?’

‘Because, ma’am, I fancy you may be more observant than Constable Gosling,’ I said artfully.

I did Gosling a disservice. He’d struck me as being a competent fellow rather wasted in a backwater. But flattery might get me somewhat further than mere insistence.

‘Oh, very well,’ said Miss Roche sourly. ‘I sent for Brennan because I’d seen a rat up here in the drawing room, in broad daylight, twice.’

I glanced at Miss Phoebe, hoping to draw her into the conversation.

‘I didn’t see it,’ she said. ‘But then, I expect I was reading.’

‘What does it matter whether my sister saw it or not?’ demanded Miss Christina. ‘I saw it. Isn’t that enough? Now then, I sent for the rat-catcher and he came. I didn’t want to watch him at work and went upstairs to my room where I occupied myself with reading my daily chapter of Scripture.’

‘And you, ma’am?’ I asked Miss Phoebe.

‘Oh, I breakfast in my room,’ she assured me breathlessly. ‘I never come down before eleven. I knew Brennan was here. I don’t like him – didn’t like him.’ She faltered. ‘He was such a rough fellow and on his last visit one of his dogs killed the kitchen cat.’ She swallowed nervously. ‘So I stayed in my room.’

I juggled the positions of all these people in my head. The Roche ladies each in their rooms upstairs. Lizzie and Mrs Craven walking to or coming from the church. Dr Lefebre out by the entrance on the road, smoking his cigarette and waiting for a message from the stables.