“No offence intended. It’s a cold night. I note, however, that as it’s still burning now, it most likely was lit sometime this morning.”
“I was just coming to that, sir,” said Kimble. “Yes, the major certainly started or rekindled a fire this morning, probably prior to visiting the pub. There are tracks in the snow, leading from here to the Sulky Cow, a public house in the village. There are also tracks returning from the pub.”
“So he left the fire unattended,” noted Ivor.
“It seems that way, yes sir.”
“Is that likely, Constable?” I asked. “This house and everything in it is made mostly of wood. For an ambitious errant spark, it would have been the work of an instant to reduce Tannery Lodge to Tannery Lump of Ash, Drifting in the Wind. Was the major known to be careless in his habits?”
“I couldn’t say, sir.”
“Carry on Constable,” said Ivor. “What else have you determined?”
“When the deceased returned from the pub, he was visited by a Miss Azalea Boisjoly, as I mentioned in my telegram. Hers were the only other tracks.”
I had heard this bit, and so I wandered the room, although occupied as it was with furniture, Ivor, myself, and Mount Kimble, the effect was very much like a leisurely stroll in a crowded telephone box. Nevertheless, I was able to get something of a feel for the character of the departed. There was no war memorabilia to speak of, for instance, and that corresponded neatly with what Vickers had told me about the major’s distaste for matters martial. In fact, apart from a single photograph of five smiling young glamour boys in leather and silk, this might have been the household of a conscientious objector. I recognised Flaps in the team portrait; second from the left, the tallest and most strikingly handsome of the lot, winking roguishly at the camera as though he had licentious plans for it.
At odds with that pacific impression, however, were a large number of books on the abundant subject of human conflict. Mostly military histories, in fact, including all — with the exception of one very conspicuous volume — of the complete works of the colourful war correspondent, Charles à Court Repington.
There was also a door leading to an immaculate kitchen, and another giving way to a small, monastic bedroom.
“When was the most recent snowfall?” asked Ivor.
“Yesterday evening, sir. No one could have visited the house since then without leaving tracks.”
“Have you taken a statement from Miss Boisjoly?”
“She admits coming here this morning,” confirmed Kimble, “but claims it was sometime between seven-thirty and eight o’clock, and that the major was already dead when she arrived.”
“And yet this Barking chap, the one who picked me up at the station, he swears that he had a drink with the victim this morning at around eleven o’clock,” added Ivor.
“He’s not alone in that,” said Kimble. He withdrew his police notepad and opened it to the latest page. “Several of what I understand are regulars of the Sulky Cow — Trevor Barking, Everett Trimble, and Cosmo Millicent, not to mention the landlady, Sally Barnstable — all state that the major stood them a Christmas round this morning between ten and eleven.”
“Could Miss Boisjoly be mistaken about the time?”
“I would say that was self-evidently the case, Inspector,” said Kimble with dark irony. “Either that, or she’s being deliberately untruthful.”
“I think you’re overlooking a third explanation, Constable,” I said.
“If you’re referring to the possibility that the patrons of the pub were all mistaken, sir, I have already ruled that out. Sunrise is at eight o’clock. Miss Boisjoly claims that it was still dark when she visited Tannery Lodge.”
“So what you’re saying, if I read you correctly Constable, is that you subscribe to the theory that this morning, between the hours of ten and eleven, the village pub received a visit from none other than the ghost of Major Aaron Fleming. I applaud you, Constable, on your broad-minded views.” I turned to Ivor. “No offence, Inspector, but this is the kind of progressive thinking that’s lacking at Scotland Yard.”
“No, sir,” corrected Kimble. “That’s not what I’m saying at all.”
“Because ghosts don’t make tracks in the snow?” I said. “They don’t famously stand Christmas rounds, either, but we have to work with the evidence to hand.”
“What is your aunt’s relationship to the deceased, Mister Boisjoly?” asked Ivor.
“I couldn’t say, really. Frankly, I’m surprised they had any sort of contact at all.”
Kimble, however, had more to say on the matter. “Miss Boisjoly told me that she and the major had recently formed a friendship, the grounds of which were physical proximity and a mutual distaste for crowds.”
“Did you find evidence of anything beyond a cordial acquaintanceship?”
“No, Inspector,” said Kimble. “I think it stands to reason that anything in the way of love letters would have been destroyed by the suspect.”
“If I may, Constable,” I said. “I think I can see where you’ve gone wrong. It’s in assuming that my aunt is the sort of woman to go in for these things you call ‘love’ and ‘letters’. Nothing could be further from the truth.”
“The murder was committed sometime since the last snowfall,” said Kimble. “And the only tracks in the snow since that time are those of the victim and Miss Boisjoly.”
“Have you another theory of the crime, Mister Boisjoly?” asked Ivor.
“I recognise I’m just a village constable, sir, and that you’re a detective-inspector from London,” said Kimble, with an implied ‘la-di-da’ prefixing the word ‘London’, “but might I enquire why it is that a civilian — a close relation of the chief and only suspect in a murder — is being consulted on said crime?”
“Fair question, Constable,” said Ivor. “It’s something akin to a debt of honour. Mister Boisjoly’s intervention in another case this summer prevented a serious miscarriage of justice.”
“I understand, sir,” said Kimble, with a delicately nuanced insubordination you don’t expect from your simple country rozzer.
“Pure happenstance,” I lied. “Plus I had the home-field advantage.”
“Do you mean to say you’re not familiar with the village and inhabitants of Graze Hill?”
“I’ve been here about half a day longer than you have, Inspector,” I said. “So we’re both starting on damp turf, and facing a particularly dodgy clubhouse turn in the form of an impossible murder with an impossible suspect.”
“Am I to understand, then, that the sum total of your local knowledge amounts to the contention that your aunt is an unlikely murderer?” said Ivor.
“Surely narrowing the field of suspects is a contribution of incalculable value,” I said. “ But I also note a number of anomalies about the scene of the crime.”
“Such as?”
“Did you notice, for instance, that the bed was neatly made, as though not slept in last night?”
“I took note of that detail,” said Kimble. “The major was of a military background, and his day had already begun before he was killed. Doubtless he made the bed as a matter of daily habit before visiting the pub.”
“Exactly,” I said. “And yet, what about the fire?”
“It’s already been observed that the fire was started this morning.”
“Indeed,” I conceded. “And then left unattended and, I observe, unkempt. Very unlike the rest of the household. The ash is overflowing, as though with the residue of something substantial, recently destroyed by fire.”
“Such as a cache of love letters,” said Kimble with the firm, exasperated tone of one giving an obvious answer for the second time.
“Possibly,” I allowed. “But I would ask you to connect the two points — the house is in impeccable order, maintained by a man of military habits. Nothing out of place. No discarded clothing nor inexplicable dishware under the divan, no books propped up on the bedside table against a bottle of Calvados that
Vickers brought me the night before. So where, then, is volume one of the war diary of Charles à Court Repington?”
“Who?” asked Kimble.
“Charles à Court Repington,” I repeated. “Gentleman rogue and war correspondent, whose memoirs of the Great War are rather cynically entitled The First World War, as though he warmly anticipated a sequel.” I stood aside like a curtain opening on the bookshelf and indicated the conspicuous absence in the otherwise orderly archive.
“Note the binding,” I said, drawing the second volume from the shelf and holding it up for the appraisal of the court. “In particular, the brass corners. It is my contention that if you search those ashes you will find four identical ornamentations, referred to in the trade, unless I’m mistaken, as ‘thingamabobs’.”
Ivor and I turned our privileged attention on the constable, whose expressive eyebrows spoke of the pathos of a proud man obliged to perform a menial task.
“Right,” he said and armed himself with a poker. He crouched before the fire and raked methodically through the ash. Within moments he stood and held up the poker, from which dangled the charred remains of a leather book jacket, still attached to a dull brass thingamabob.
“I’d have found that on my own in good time,” said Kimble.
“Doubtless,” I agreed.
“Now the question is, who put it on the fire,” said Ivor.
“I think we’ll find, Inspector, that the more revealing question is why.”
CHAPTER FOUR
The Affair of the Phantom Farewell
The grim, early evening of winter is utterly stymied by snow. It’s not for a lack of effort — a pale sun is chased from an ashen sky just after tea-time, and darkness does its level best to spread despair across the land. But then a silvery moon conspires with a blanket of purest white to reflect light and goodwill and a general spirit of holly and hope, stars twinkle in the velvet sky, a serene silence reigns, and whatever dark doubt that dusk was hoping to promote is quickly forgotten. The darkness is chased off to, I imagine, March, wherein to dream of rainy days in Spring.
The only sound breaking the silky, forest silence was a clumsy Boisjoly, crunching through the snow, having been ejected from Herding House. It was Ivor’s view that I would be unlikely to make a constructive contribution to the hard questions he intended to put to my aunt.
The road from Herding House to the village centre of Graze Hill is a natural formation between the hill itself and a now frozen canal. The path was therefore distinguishable even and perhaps especially when covered with snow and the tracks of Barking’s ingenious sleigh. I followed the road as it wound around the hill and after perhaps a mile the little cottages, pub, feed store and church that form the heart of Graze Hill came into view, framed by the night sky and lightly veiled with puffy snowflakes. Warmth glowed at the windows and lazy trails of grey smoke lingered above the chimneys, adding the rustic aroma of woodfire to the cold night air.
The Sulky Cow was a low structure of thatch and stone at the entrance to the wobbly main street. Snow was settled on the roof like a woolly hat and gathered like fluffy eyebrows above the window frames at either side of the door, giving the place the demeanour of a wise, old man reacting to surprising news. Beyond this friendly face was a welcoming orange glow and the pother and chatter of pub regulars.
The bustle silenced as I entered and two patrons and a barmaid looked to the door. Doubtless they expected one of their number, and they registered a theatrical, shared anticipation to receive a new entry in the dramatis personae, and the promise of a twist before the end of the first act.
“Compliments of the season,” I said, and pushed the door firmly closed against the cold.
I might have drawn the tavern from memory without ever having been there. The stone of the exterior was also that of the interior walls, the low ceiling was formed of beams and rough planks of oak stained by the years, the furnishings were mismatched tables and milking stools, and the decor was delightfully amateurish watercolour renditions of pastoral Hertfordshire. In the left corner was an oak bar, worn to a warm, glowing finish by centuries of convivial elbows. The right wall was mostly occupied by a generous fireplace of whole found stone. A broad fire of split wood glowed and flickered, and an iron cauldron was suspended over it from a hinged and serrated chimney hook. Mulled wine simmered in the crock and filled the atmosphere with the scent of Christmas cheer.
“Are you that inspector from London?” asked the apple-cheeked woman behind the bar. She was of the full, robust, farm-bred type of woman — the sort who learn to pull a pint and yoke an ox at their mothers’ knee. Barking was there, too, and he was sharing a low table and a large pint with a keen-faced chap of the sort engaged by the makers of shirt collars to appear in magazines holding a tennis racket or scrutinising a billiards table.
“You flatter me, madame,” I said. “Inspector Wittersham is a dashing, Byronic figure, with eyes that flash with lightning intellect and a signature style irreproducible outside the very best mail-order catalogues. I am merely Boisjoly, nephew to Azalea, seeker of truth. Good evening Mister Barking.”
“Evening, Mister Boisjoly,” said Barking, raising his tankard in a toast of welcome. “May I introduce Sally-Ann Barnstable, landlady of the Sulky…” The apple-faced Sally-Ann smiled and waved from behind the bar. “...and this here is Everett Trimble, owner and operator of the feed store…” Everett squinted photogenically and gave me one of those ‘both of us, men of the world’ sort of nods. “...and that…” Barking gestured with his tankard toward an upholstered bench piled with a careless jumble of winter coats, “...is Soaky Mike.”
The careless jumble of winter coats raised its head, revealing it to be a gentleman of advanced years and general air of dreamy contentment, as one who knows what he likes and where to get it. Soaky favoured me with a waggle of his white eyebrows and the lifting of a cup of mulled wine. As though to economise on the action, on the descent the cup stopped at his lips.
“It’s an honour to ring in the season with you,” I said. “Is that a communal cauldron of yule fuel?”
“Help yourself,” said Sally, and put a clay tankard on the bar. I took it to the stove and ladled myself a cup of steaming wine, heady with distillation and cinnamon.
“Is Flaps Fleming really dead?” asked Sally.
“I fear so,” I replied. “I’ve just come from viewing the remains. He looked very peaceful, apart from the knife in his back. I understand that he was surrounded by his dearest friends in his final hours.”
“He was here this morning,” said Sally, giving a brass beer tap a forlorn rub with a despondent dishrag.
“I should be very grateful of your recollections of this morning, as it happens.” I leaned on the bar, implying a zone of confidentiality. “Was this morning’s visit by special arrangement?”
“That’s one bob for the wine, sir,” said Sally. “Special arrangement?”
“It’s Christmas,” I said, withdrawing my change purse and putting a shilling on the counter. “Would you normally be open for business on Christmas Day?”
“The Sulky Cow is always open,” said Sally with a resigned tone, as though long trading hours were an inescapable quality of the human condition. “Especially on Christmas. If it weren’t for the Sulky, the entire population of Graze Hill would have nowhere to go at the best of times.” Sally clasped my coin in her hand and, as she spoke this condemnation, her gaze settled on the three men in the bar. “You’re looking, Mister Boisjoly, at the cream of village society. During the holidays, you see, Graze Hill evacuates all non-essential personnel. Those with farms are minding the cattle. Those without have gone to see in the season with family, so they’ll be pasting bits of coloured paper together, I understand, and baking and eating mince pies.”
“Are you saying that this is the entire Christmas contingent?”
“Very nearly. There’s also Mister Padget, the vicar. He never comes to the pub, of course, but his houseguests are somet
imes here.”
“And Constable Kimble and the domestic staff at Herding House, presumably.”
“We get that Mister Puckeridge in from time to time, but the constable only comes round at the end of the day, to remind us when it’s past locking up.”
“So who was here this morning when the major paid his visit?”
“Them three, of course,” said Sally with a gesture of the chin toward the league of leading citizens. “And the vicar’s houseguests; Flaps’ nephew — bloke named Cosmo Millicent — and some posh bloke with one of those names that don’t know where to stop; Monty McMontague-Mount-Muckity, or some such.”
“Was that the major’s usual cronies?”
“No, thank goodness,” said Sally. “In the summer they were up to the rafters. Flaps telling his stories of daring in the skies over Belgium, his congregation buying him rounds and putting it on the cuff.”
“I understand he was quite the hero.”
“Don’t I know it,” said Sally, nodding earnestly. “Major Fleming is spoken of very highly within these walls, most particularly by Major Fleming.” In the next instant Sally, who had been gazing idly at the barroom, raised herself to her full height, pointed at a scrappy tin pub clock on the wall next to the bar and spoke a clear, unambiguous, “Tut tut.”
The meaning of this “tut tut” idiom appeared to be as plain to Soaky Mike as “ho-ho-ho” was to Barking’s Clydesdale. He glanced at the clock and acknowledged that some agreed period had yet to elapse, and so sheepishly returned the ladle to the cauldron of wine.
I could understand the appeal to the discerning souse. The Sulky Cow clearly took a capacious approach to the preparation of its mulled wine and wasn’t the sort of establishment to sink the ship for a penn’orth of rotgut rum. The base wine may at one point have been a drinkable merlot but it was diluted beyond recognition with cloves, anise, cinnamon, Spanish rum and a silt of orange peels and sultanas. All that, distilled all day over a low heat, had produced a lively dichotomy of sweet and stupefying. It put me in mind of a holdover evening of the all-night debating society at Balliol when we ran entirely out of, in chronological order, beer, wine, and Pimm’s, and were faced with the stark choice of calling it a draw or mixing an antique china vase full of cooking sherry and pineapple juice.
The Case of the Ghost of Christmas Morning (Anty Boisjoly Mysteries Book 2) Page 3