“Oh, yes, sir,” said Vickers. “Until very nearly the end of the war the newspapers were rarely without some account of the major’s daring.”
“Very nearly?” I asked. “Had he lost interest as the war dragged into its fourth innings?”
“He was shot down over the channel, I believe, and was rescued at sea by Belgian fishermen. The ordeal cost him an eye.”
“Rather a vital tool of the trade for a pilot, I would expect.”
“My understanding is that the event expedited the major’s retirement to private life.”
“And the papers lost interest, did they?” I said. “Typical fickle Fleet Street.”
“It was apparently the major’s expressed wish to be left alone. He refused all manner of attention from the press.”
“Most intriguing,” I said. “Any idea why?”
“It’s not uncommon for non-professional soldiers to be deeply affected by combat, and pilots in particular had a famously low survival rate.”
“I expect he would have seen rather a lot of carnage for his age. Weren’t fighter pilots typically recruited directly from the nurseries of the nation?”
“It was generally held that young men had quicker reflexes and more acute vision,” confirmed Vickers. “The major, however, was approaching thirty years of age when he became a squadron leader, owing to his unique experience in Balloon Section.”
“Sounds like a regular Allan Quartermain,” I said. “And yet he retires to the life of a recluse while he’s still got one good eye.”
“Mister Puckeridge tells me the major had become increasingly social of late. He had developed a small but loyal group of acolytes at the local pub, and had recently been receiving visits from the vicar.”
“And yet who should discover his body but my Aunty Azalea, who doesn’t leave a house unless it’s on fire,” I said, looking out the window at Tannery Lodge. “This is the rummiest ingredient of this rum cocktail. My aunt is famously hidebound, what was she doing visiting an unmarried gentleman... in his home… without staff… he didn’t have staff, did he, Vickers?”
“He lived entirely alone, sir.”
“...without staff. This is very out of character. My father told me that she sent her regrets to every debutante ball from ‘85 until the beginning of the war.”
“Miss Boisjoly displays an admirable consistency,” said Vickers, somewhat absently, as he gazed about the room as an aid to orienting himself in space and time.
“You know, Vickers, this feudal spirit of yours is positively inspiring, sometimes.”
“You’re very kind to say so, sir.”
“Don’t mention it,” I said. “Do you recall meeting my Aunty Azalea when she came down to Kensington for Christmas in ‘18?”
“It’s possible the event slipped my mind.”
“It’s possible, but it didn’t,” I said. “You didn’t meet her. She spent the entire visit in her room. I only encountered her myself on Christmas morning on the way to the bathroom, and even then she claimed to be an elf.”
“Doubtless she wished to preserve the magic of the moment.”
“Vickers, I was eighteen years old.”
“It is so that Miss Boisjoly is regarded, by some of the staff, as aloof,” said Vickers.
“They do her a disservice,” I said. “She achieved aloof by the age of ten. Before she was my age she was a full-on introvert. Now she’s a master of disguise. She might be in this very room, even as we speak. Consequently, no-one can confirm when she went to Tannery Lodge nor how long she stayed there.”
“That is my understanding.”
“And now this Constable Kimble monument seems to think he can turn that, plus some vague depressions in the snow, into an airtight case for the prosecution.”
“Most distressing.”
“You know what I’m going to do, Vickers?”
“I wouldn’t presume, sir.”
“I’m going to go to Steeple Herding, that’s what I’m going to do.”
“Shall I pack your bags?”
“We’re not leaving, Vickers. I have a duty to defend my aunt’s innocence,” I said. “I’m going to Steeple Herding station to intercept the inevitable Inspector from Scotland Yard.”
“Will there be an inspector from Scotland Yard in Steeple Herding?”
“Inevitably,” I said. “No country constable has the authority to investigate a suspicious death, and it’s been several hours since the prodigious Kimble made his spurious discovery. By now he’ll have wired to London for someone qualified by rank and aptitude to fit up Aunty Azalea for murder.”
Henry, the boot and knife boy, was sent to fetch transportation. Vickers and I had come from Steeple Herding in a Wolesley war ambulance that had found a new lease on life as some sort of farm utility vehicle and occasional station taxi. Its better days were behind it, though, and when it reached the icy incline, still a good mile from Herding House, it shied with an unambiguous whirring sort of complaint, and the smell of well-cooked rubber.
I stood outside, contemplating the treacherous hillside, when Henry returned triumphantly from the pages of a Dickens novel, seated next to a large, avuncular, cloth-capped Little-John holding the reigns of a dappled grey Clydesdale and riding an open landau that had been converted, with the addition of two ingenious skis, into a sleigh, complete with silver bells.
“Compliments of the season, sir,” sang the coachman with a smooth baritone that couldn’t have accompanied the tinkling of bells and whinny of the horse better if it had been scored by Elgar. The boy hopped down from the sleigh, causing it to bounce and jingle as horse and driver puffed clouds of steam into the crisp, clear, winter scene.
“Mister Trevor Barking, sir,” said Puckeridge, who had been waiting faithfully at my side. “Mister Barking is the village blacksmith.”
“I’m very much obliged for the quick service,” I said, pulling myself up onto the bench next to a broadly smiling Barking. “I have pressing business with the next train from London.”
“It’s no bother at all, Mister Boisjoly. Got business of my own at the station, as it happens.” Barking sang a short verse of “ho ho ho” in a tone and tempo that the horse understood as “about you get, high for the station, sharpish,” and we were off at a jangly gallop.
The road between Graze Hill and Steeple Herding was, at the best of times, ambiguous. Beneath a thick layer of snow, it became little more than a pleasant memory of springtime, and Barking and his giant horse chose their path on the strength of scenic value. Once down the hill from Herding House, we were drifting through a narrow dale formed of bluffs rising on either side, topped with an uneven fraternity of snow-cloaked evergreens. The hills flattened and the way narrowed as we entered the remaining forest which ticked and crackled the way sleeping wood will in the winter. Tall, skeletal poplar trees reached toward the washed-out cyan sky as though captured in the moment when they cast off their leaves and instantly regretted it. Holly and cypress poked shoots of green from beneath the snow, serving as a festive reminder that this wasn’t only winter, it was also Christmas Day.
Barking sang another variation of his “ho ho ho” ditty which the horse translated into a subtle acceleration, and the bells jingled in merry accompaniment. The clean, chill air became a light breeze, and it stung the cheeks and watered the eyes and added a haze of blurry sentiment to the seasonal scenery. The increase in speed was in anticipation of an incline, and in a moment we reached the top of the hill that informally demarcated the twin towns of Graze Hill and Steeple Herding, and a great expanse of snow-covered Hertfordshire hove into view like a panorama Christmas card. Little country cottages and barns dotted the silvery landscape, which in turn was divided into oblong fields and pastures by hedgerows hidden beneath deep drifts. The only movement was a long, fleecy chute of steam lingering above the railway tracks, and the locomotive from which it puffed.
“The four-thirty from London,” said Barking, and then ho-ho-hoed us down the hill.
We arrived at the station just as the train was sighing away a head of excess steam, after which all was quiet in that wintry way that is somehow more than merely an absence of sound. The station was of the functional, red brick variety, but with a dollop of snow on top it looked like Santa’s workshop, and indeed the main street of Steeple Herding, a bustling metropolis compared to Graze Hill, brought to mind the enchanted village where the elves live. We waited at the front of the station while, presumably, crowds of holiday visitors disembarked from the train.
“Did you say that you had a passenger to bring back to Graze Hill, Mister Barking?”
“Yes, sir,” said Barking. He looked furtively about at the entirely deserted street of dark, snow-covered cottages. “It’s a detective-inspector, up from London… there’s been a murder.”
“Let us not leap to conclusions, Mister Barking, there are any number of explanations for how a man might come to lie beneath a Christmas tree with a knife in his back. Might have been a freak gift-wrapping accident.”
“I was unaware of the circumstances. Constable Kimble only told me to collect a detective-inspector.”
“Well that’s a happy coincidence,” I said. “That’s who I’ve come to meet as well.”
“Do you know the inspector?”
“Not as such, no, but I’ve met the type,” I explained. “Officious, bull-headed and career-minded. Probably smokes a pipe and takes his meals standing up at a lunch counter. He’ll be anxious to have someone fitted up for the crime by Boxing Day, so you’ll want to have a ready account of your recent activities. Did the constable happen to mention this inspector’s name?”
“Wittersham, I believe.”
“Ivor Wittersham?” I gave the knees a happy slap. “I withdraw my previous statement, Mister Barking, I do know the man. Everything else I said stands, of course, but the inspector and I have locked horns once before, and I can assure you of a scene of much joy and astonishment.”
“You don’t say, sir.”
“Wouldn’t surprise me if there were tears.”
As though instructed by the stage manager, Detective-Inspector Ivor Wittersham, who recently came within a hair’s breadth of convicting my old college chum Fiddles Canterfell of the murder of his uncle, appeared at the door of the station. He was dressed for winter as he was dressed for summer, when I last saw him, in a sidewalk-grey trench coat and low-brimmed fedora. His little leading-man moustache was more lopsided than ever, and he held an optimistically small travel case in his hand. There were no other passengers at all, and the three of us were the only people on the street, which was already darkening under the early winter evening.
“That’s the inspector now,” I said. “Stand by for an emotional spectacle, Mister Barking. You may wish to have a kerchief on hand.” I waved and tannoyed, “Hallo, Inspector.”
Ivor glanced at me without apparent emotion, and then picked his way wearily and warily through the snow.
“Good afternoon, Mister Boisjoly,” said the inspector. “Are you Barking?”
“Not at all,” I said. “Merely excited to see you.”
The inspector fixed me with a look that recalled his appreciation for extemporaneous witticisms, and so I downshifted and said, “A trifle disappointed, though. I assured Mister Barking here of a sentimental reunion, much like a scene from a comédie larmoyante, but in English.”
“I fully expected to see you, Mister Boisjoly,” said Ivor, climbing into the back of the landau. “Constable Kimble wired me the details, including the involvement of a Miss Azalea Boisjoly.”
I hopped down into the snow and then joined the inspector on the passenger seats.
“It’s an uncommon name, I grant you, but my aunt and I are hardly the last of the Boisjoly line. A great-uncle of mine, Captain Algernon Boisjoly, stood only last year in the Mossley bi-election, garnering a record-smashing zero votes.”
“Did he not vote for himself?”
“That’s the very point of the anecdote, Inspector,” I said. “The poor man voted for the Independent Labour candidate, one Roland Lewis Boisjoly, no relation. So you see the value of resisting this urge to take all Boisjolys for a single sample.”
“It was a question of probabilities,” said Ivor, as Barking ho-ho-hoed his horse to action. “I was called away from home on Christmas day, to travel thirty-five miles in inclement weather to look into a suspicious death the principal suspect of which is someone named Boisjoly. I assumed the worst and, indeed, there you are.”
“So I am,” I conceded. “And it’s just this matter of ‘principal suspect’ with which I take issue. My aunt did not murder anyone. She lacks the initiative. I’m not suggesting that we should all strive to emulate the character of your average killer, but one must admit that a certain degree of industry is among the chief qualifications. My Aunty Azalea is more the retiring kind. Wouldn’t say boo to a goose, even if the goose had it coming.”
“Constable Kimble seems to think the evidence quite conclusive.”
“I know he does,” I said. “But the constable hasn’t yet had the advantage of my penetrating intellect, unlike you. The poor, misguided leviathan thinks that a few impressions in the snow amount to a capital case, overlooking the possibility that Major Fleming was dispatched sometime last night, or even earlier.”
“It’s Flaps Fleming that’s been killed?” said Barking, swivelling like a barn owl.
“I’m afraid so,” I said. “Did you know him?”
“Of course I know the major,” said Barking. “And if he’s dead he weren’t killed last night. If he was dead any time before eleven, it must have been a ghost that stood us all a round of Christmas cheer this morning, me and half the village.”
CHAPTER THREE
The Subtle Sign at the Scene of the Crime
The sun had been completely crowded out by evening and grey clouds by the time we returned to Graze Hill, and winter was expressing itself in the form of fat, dopey snowflakes that descended in slow twirls and bumped into one another as they went about their business. Ivor and I disembarked at the bottom of the hill beneath Herding House and Tannery Lodge, and Barking continued into the village, bubbling with the effervescent energy of the gossip with a shiny silver scandal.
We paused at Herding House, partially because it was along the way and partially to store Ivor’s travel bag, and as I followed him back out into the snow I posed the question that had doubtless been on everyone’s mind for hours.
“Do you mind if I have a look at the scene of the crime, Inspector?”
Ivor took out his pipe, tamped down the bowl, and stood watching the darkness descend on Tannery Lodge.
“I’m very much of two minds about that, Mister Boisjoly,” he said, staggering the delivery as he lit his pipe. “In light of your contribution to the affair in Fray last summer, I’m inclined to either grant you some limited role in this enquiry, or have you arrested and held as a public nuisance until it’s complete.”
“I see,” I said, joining Ivor in musing on the house beyond the hill. “Yes, I can easily see the strengths in both approaches. Any danger of a decision in the near term?”
“No, actually, Mister Boisjoly, I’ve elected to allow you to aid in the investigation, but keep in reserve the option of locking you up.”
“A very gentlemanly compromise,” I said, and we set out across the snow, following the tracks of Constable Kimble and, ostensibly, Aunty Azalea. The impressions were easily distinguishable, as the earlier set appeared to have been left by a slight, hesitant woman of a certain age, and the other by a heavyset man wearing snowshoes and carrying a cow in a hamper.
Tannery Lodge was a low, timber-framed, wattle-and-daub cottage that, at high noon on a simmering summer’s day, would have been merely charming. On a darkening Christmas night, surrounded by a glistening white landscape, adorned with a thick cap of snow, and with windows glowing with the promise of a warm fire within, it looked like something the Brothers Grimm might have reser
ved for the exclusive use of gnomes.
We pushed open the door to an orange-hued room that met all expectations, with the notable exceptions of a colossus of a constable, and a dead body beneath a Christmas tree. The interior was otherwise largely to form — a comfortable salon that took up most of the house, a low, beamed ceiling under which Constable Kimble was compelled to stoop, a dying fire in the immense, rough stone fireplace, and a modest scattering of jumble-sale furniture and keepsakes on the walls and mantels.
“Constable Kimble?” said Ivor, losing his hand in that of the constable. “I’m Detective-Inspector Wittersham. This is Mister Boisjoly.”
“We’ve met,” said Kimble. His strong objection to my presence, in light of Ivor’s rank, was limited to a single raised eyebrow of dissent. Having made his views clear, the constable gave us the abridged version. “The deceased is Major Aaron Fleming. Forty-five years old, retired from the military, lived alone, no known next-of-kin. Hero of the Great War. He was a flying ace, sir.”
“Did you know the victim?” asked Ivor.
“Only distantly, sir,” said Kimble, looking down at the body beneath the tree. “I introduced myself when he first moved to Graze Hill, and knocked on his door once or twice a year, in due course of business.”
Ivor bent at the waist to get a fresh angle on the cadaver. “I take it all is as it appears?”
Major Fleming was a tall, thin chap, who approached middle age like a part in a Hollywood adventure. He had a trim moustache, silver sideburns, and of all things an eye-patch over his right eye. He was lying on his stomach in shirtsleeves, braces, and tweed trousers, and he had been neatly and fully subdued by a long, thin blade, like a bayonet, that extended from his back, right above where a hero’s heart once beat.
“No sign of a struggle, sir,” said Kimble. “It would appear that the major welcomed the killer into his home, and was taken by surprise.”
“Was that fire lit when you entered the premises?” asked Ivor.
“Are you asking me if I lit a fire in a crime scene, sir?”
The Case of the Ghost of Christmas Morning (Anty Boisjoly Mysteries Book 2) Page 2