Fire When Ready (Manor House Mystery) (13 page)

"Thank you, Alfie, but that won't be necessary. I can manage perfectly well." She bid him goodnight and headed for the door, doing her level best not to limp. Just as she reached the door, it opened and a group of GIs stood back to let her pass.

"Leaving already?" one of them asked, with a lurid wink at her.

Elizabeth merely smiled and hurried past them. There was only one American she was interested in, and she simply couldn't wait to see him again.

All the time she thought he wasn't coming back she'd managed to smother her feelings under a blanket of self-righteous assurances that his departure had been the best thing for everyone concerned.

But now things were different. Very different. It was all
she could do not to fling herself around in circles screeching to the heavens in joyful gratitude to the powers-that-be for bringing him back to her.

She might have done that very thing if it wasn't for the dull ache in her ankle and, of course, the sobering fact that if people saw the lady of the manor behaving with such a lack of decorum, they would assume she had quite lost her mind. Or worse, assume that she had imbibed more than her fair share of Alfie's firewater.

Having successfully kick-started the engine on her motorcycle, a maneuver Violet considered utterly crude and inelegant, Elizabeth zoomed out of the car park and up the coast road.

The daylight was fading fast as she sailed up the hill, and the wind whipped at the scarf she'd tucked across her nose and mouth. She barely noticed the cold, however. Her mind was busily replaying the afternoon's events. It had been an enlightening day. She had started out with no suspects, and now she had at least three.

Fred Shepperton had good reason to be rid of the factory. As did Jack Mitchum. But enough to kill in such a horrible way? If it hadn't been for the locked door, she might have thought either one of them capable of setting fire to the place. But it seemed very much as if someone had deliberately seen to it that McNally had died in that fire, unfortunately taking Jessie with him.

What about Nellie? Had she been searching for the threatening letters? If so, it seemed feasible to assume that either she had written them, or that she knew who had and was protecting him.

Cold-blooded murder. It was hard to believe that any one of the suspects was capable of such a heinous crime.
Elizabeth let out her breath into the warm fuzz of her scarf. The fact remained that someone was responsible and had to be punished for the deaths of two innocent people. No matter the cost.

CHAPTER

9

Early the following morning, Elizabeth was halfway down the front steps when she saw a figure peddling a bicycle furiously down the driveway. To her surprise, she saw it was Nellie Smith, and for a wild moment she wondered if Nellie had spotted her in the cottage after all and was coming to confront her about it.

She waited until the young woman had dismounted from her bicycle and leaned it against the wall before going down the steps to greet her.

Nellie's face was flushed from her exertion, and strands of her blonde hair had escaped from her wooly scarf and were plastered to her forehead. She was out of breath, and her words came out in little gasps as she held out a fluttering sheet of paper. "I was wondering, your ladyship, if
you'd sign this petition. I've got a pencil here for you somewhere."

Elizabeth took the paper while Nellie hunted feverishly through the pockets of her thick coat. Quickly she scanned the hand-printed lines and the heavily scrawled signature at the bottom.
Rita
. Of course. "I'm sorry," she said, handing the paper back to Nellie. "I'm afraid I can't sign this."

Nellie's face creased in dismay. "But I cycled all the way up the hill. It's important. We've got to close the factory down or the Germans will bomb the village. And it's ugly, and it spoils the countryside."

"Even if I agreed with you," Elizabeth said evenly, "I couldn't sign it. I'm bound by the councilors' decision and they voted for the factory by a wide majority."

Nellie's eyes narrowed. "There's only five members on the council, your ladyship."

"Well, yes," Elizabeth admitted. "Four to one, however, could be considered a wide majority."

"That factory has already caused the death of two people," Nellie said, obviously having been well-rehearsed by her stalwart leader. "How many more have to die before people come to their senses and get rid of it?"

Elizabeth studied the young woman's face. Was this all an act to cover up her own connection to the tragedy? Deciding it was time to take a risk or two, she said quietly, "Nellie, I happened to see you go into Mr. McNally's cottage yesterday."

The girl's face turned a bright red. Abandoning all effort of observing protocol she muttered, "So what if I did?"

"I was wondering why you felt it necessary to break into the cottage," Elizabeth said, conveniently neglecting to admit she had broken in there first. "After all, if there were
something in there you needed, surely it would have been better to ask permission to retrieve it?"

"I didn't break in," Nellie said defiantly. "The window was open and I went through it."

"Entering someone's private abode without permission is the same as breaking in. I think P.C. Dalrymple would agree with me."
Really
, she thought wryly,
I am becoming quite a hypocrite
. Her only defense was that she was acting under the jurisdiction of her position and the need to apprehend a possible murderer. It didn't entirely soothe her conscience, but it helped.

Nellie gazed at her in alarm, all signs of her rebellion vanishing. "You don't have to tell the bobbies, m'm. I didn't take anything."

"Because you couldn't find what you were looking for? Such as some letters, perhaps?"

Nellie's eyes widened. For a long moment she seemed speechless, then she blurted out, "I don't know what you're talking about."

"I think you do," Elizabeth said gently.

Looking thoroughly shaken, Nellie sank onto the bottom step and buried her face in her gloved hands. "I didn't want anyone to know. That's why I went in there without asking. I just wanted to get them back, that's all. But they weren't there. I couldn't find them. I never touched anything else."

"I'm sure you didn't." Elizabeth seated herself on the step next to the girl. "I won't say any more about you breaking into the cottage if you'll just tell me who wrote the letters."

Nellie looked at her in surprise. "Well, I did, m'm. I thought you knew that."

Cold horror crept down Elizabeth's spine. She hadn't allowed herself to believe that this young person could be
capable of such a vicious act, but to hear her admit she wrote the threatening letters in such a matter-of-fact way made it seem all the more horrendous.

Still unable to accept that Nellie was responsible for the deaths, Elizabeth asked warily, "You wrote the letters to Douglas McNally?"

Nellie nodded, her teeth worrying at her bottom lip. "I know it seems like we hadn't known each other long, but I met him when he first came down here to look for the land to build the factory. He didn't know many people here, and I felt sorry for him. So I went out with him."

Elizabeth stared at her in amazement. "I didn't know that."

Nellie shrugged. "Well, we kept it quiet, see, on account of him being so much older than me. He was sort of funny about that. Didn't want people to think he was robbing the cradle."

"I see." Elizabeth still had trouble picturing the vivacious young girl with the dour Scotsman. "So you knew Mr. McNally quite well."

"Very well." Nellie looked down at her gloved hands. "After he went back to Scotland, we wrote to each other. Really friendly letters, if you know what I mean."

Elizabeth nodded. "I think so."

"Well, anyway, I thought things were going smashing between us, and when Douglas said he was coming back to Sitting Marsh to build the factory, I got really, really excited." She sighed. "I even started thinking about getting married."

"But Mr. McNally didn't feel the same way," Elizabeth ventured.

"That's right. He said he'd had time to think about it while he was away and he decided he was too old for me. He said as how I'd do better with a young chap because we'd
have more in common." She uttered a bitter laugh. "The only young blokes around here are either Yanks or in the army. I'm twenty-four years old. I'll be a bloody old maid before this war is over."

Suddenly feeling ancient, Elizabeth squirmed. "So that's why you wrote the letters Mr. McNally received recently."

"Well, I don't know about recent." Nellie scuffed the snow with the toe of her boot. "At first I was silly about it, and kept writing to him begging him to take me back. Then, when he wouldn't change his mind, I got so bloody mad at him." She glanced up at Elizabeth. "Pardon me, m'm."

Elizabeth was too upset to worry about the girl's curses. "I'm sure you didn't really mean what you said in the letters, though."

Nellie stared at her. "Of course I did."

Now Elizabeth was in a spot. She couldn't admit she knew what was in the letters without also admitting she was actually inside the cottage herself. Searching for the right words, she said hesitantly, "Nellie, people say a lot of things when they're angry. That doesn't mean they would carry out their threats. I'm sure whatever you wrote to Mr. McNally in anger—"

"Just a minute!" Nellie looked quite put out. "I never wrote any angry letters to Douglas. Once I realized he didn't want nothing more to do with me, I stopped writing to him. I wouldn't have given him the satisfaction of letting him know how much he hurt me."

Elizabeth swallowed hard. "So you didn't write and threaten to kill him?" Nellie looked so shocked, she added quickly, "Or something like that?"

"Of course not, m'm. What'd you take me for? No man is worth going to all that—" She broke off, her eyes widening. "What, are you saying someone wanted to kill Douglas?"

"Certainly not." Elizabeth pretended to be appalled. "I wouldn't suggest such a thing. Not at all." She was protesting too much, she warned herself. "No, I was merely thinking aloud, that's all. After all, people do silly things when they're heartbroken."

"You mean women do," Nellie said gloomily. "Nothing like that seems to bother men, do it? Anyway, I wasn't really heartbroken. I reckon it was my pride that got hurt, because after a while I didn't care that much anymore. Of course, I was upset when I heard Douglas had died in that fire. I started thinking about his family coming down to fetch all his things and I didn't want them finding all those dopey letters I'd sent him. I didn't want people in the village finding out I'd made such a fool of myself, begging him and everything."

"So you went looking for them in the cottage."

Nellie nodded. "I didn't find them though. He must have thrown them away. Just shows how little he cared about me."

"Perhaps he just wanted to spare you embarrassment," Elizabeth said, rising to her feet.

"Well, it don't matter anymore, do it?" Nellie looked up. "There's just one thing I don't understand."

"And what's that?"

"How did you know about the letters?"

She should have been prepared for the question, but she wasn't. Seconds ticked by while she sought the right answer. At last she said weakly, "Mr. McNally mentioned someone had been writing to him, but he didn't say who it was. When I saw you going into the cottage, I guessed he was talking about you and that you would want the letters back."

It wasn't exactly a lie, she assured herself, just a slight distortion of the truth. Nellie still looked confused, but apparently decided to accept the flimsy explanation. She got
to her feet, rubbing her hands together. "Well, I've taken up enough of your time, your ladyship."

Elizabeth smiled. "Not at all. I regret that I can't sign the petition, after you came all this way."

"Oh, that's all right, your ladyship." Nellie sat astride her bicycle. "I'm glad I came. It helped to talk about it. I couldn't talk about it to anyone else. Can you imagine what those old biddies in the Housewives League would say if they knew? I'd never hear the last of it."

"Well, rest assured, I shan't mention this to anyone," Elizabeth promised her. "Nellie, don't give up hope of meeting the right man. Sometimes things happen in the most unexpected ways."

"I know." Nellie's smile was wistful. "But sometimes I get lonely, m'm. Since my mum died and my dad got married again I've been on my own. It would be nice to have someone to share things with and take me places."

"I'm sure you'll find someone," Elizabeth said warmly.

She watched the young woman pedal down the driveway on her bicycle, understanding now that Nellie was simply searching for love. Having found it so recently herself, Elizabeth could only wish her well.

Having eliminated one of her suspects, Elizabeth decided her next visit should be to the Shepperton's farm. Fred Shepperton's letter to McNally had made it clear that he was angry with the Scotsman. Although the handwriting in the farmer's letter didn't match that of the threatening letters, it would be a simple matter, even a prudent move, to disguise it.

Fred was repairing the farm's main gate when Elizabeth arrived, and he greeted her with warm surprise. He suggested they retreat to the warmth of the farmhouse, where he proceeded to make her a hot cup of cocoa.

"My wife has gone down to meet Douglas McNally's relatives," he explained, when he carried the tray into the parlor. "They arrived early this morning from Scotland, to collect his things."

Settled on a comfortable chair, Elizabeth removed her scarf and gloves. She wrapped her chilled fingers around the cup and said quietly, "Such a tragic loss. Mr. McNally was a good man."

"To some people, I reckon." The farmer seated himself opposite her on a worn settee. "Is that why you come to see me? To ask about the fire?"

"Well, yes, I was rather curious about it," she admitted.

"I thought so. Word's got around the village that you're asking questions. I thought it would only be a matter of time before you got to me."