“Why doesn’t he just sell it?”
Ivor recovered his usual, distempered demeanour.
“You’re going to make something of it that isn’t there.”
“Not if you don’t give me a fighting chance, I won’t.”
“Very well.” Ivor put down his cup and straightened his shawl. “Constable Kimble doesn’t technically own the property. The lease — a ninety-nine year lease — was left to him by an uncle, but according to the antediluvian legal mechanism that all these small towns seem to preserve like clutter in the attic, Major Fleming had first right of refusal on the property.”
“Which, presumably, he chose to exercise.”
“Not at all.” Ivor pointed his teaspoon at me in a manner suggestive of a duel. “This is why I say there’s nothing to it. Major Fleming had yet to respond to the option, one way or the other. Kimble wants to take on the property, but the major’s procrastination suited him nicely. You see, the constable wishes to marry.”
“Yes, I could see how a long lead time would be of service to that end,” I said. “Delightful chap, first bloke you’d want on hand if you needed to, say, lift a house so you could sweep under it, but I expect that finding the woman to measure up to him would comprise patience and good old fashioned legwork.”
“Don’t be an ass, Boisjoly,” said Ivor in that flat, uninflected sort of way in which one says ‘Don’t be a teapot’ to a teapot. “He wants to marry Sally Barnstable. Stop it.”
“Stop what?”
“Stop thinking that Constable Kimble and Sally Barnstable conspired to kill the major and fit your aunt up for the crime.”
“I say, that’s uncanny,” I said. “Now I’m thinking of a colour…”
“Sally Barnstable won’t leave her father alone in the pub, so until it’s sold or otherwise disposed of she won’t marry. Kimble can’t raise the capital to do up the farm, which they intend to one day establish as a sort of breeding ground for that absurd little cow.”
“I’ll ask you to withdraw that slur, Inspector,” I said, pouring myself another cup. “More tea?”
Ivor shoved his cup toward me and I topped it up. “What you want, Inspector, is a warm brandy, or a hot cup of that festive petrol from the Sulky Cow.”
“I know,” agreed Ivor. “Kimble’s teetotal. There’s not a drop in the house.”
“I say, really? Inspector, in all candour, are you quite certain that Kimble’s not a crazed murderer?”
“He just doesn’t drink. Perfectly normal.”
“We disagree on many things,” I said, munificently, “let this be one of them. But he also doesn’t go to church. A little odd, that, for an abstemious constable.”
“Yes he does, just not in Graze Hill. He goes to Saint Bartholomew’s in Steeple Herding.”
“Why not alternate? He lives literally on the border.”
“Apparently the locals are somewhat clannish, to hear Kimble tell it. A state of affairs brought on by the railway.”
“The age-old tale of the lover’s triangle,” I lamented. “Two towns vie for the affections of the railway station but, alas, she can have only one. If I’ve seen it once I’ve seen it a thousand times.”
“Worse than that, actually. The residents of Graze Hill were against the railway in its entirety. They felt — correctly, as it turned out — that a railway would undermine the value of the canal, which did most of its business through Graze Hill. For centuries anyone wanting to trade with the capital had to first strike a deal with the village.”
“They’re still not over it?”
“The railway’s only been here twenty years,” said Ivor. “And apparently it attracted everything worth having to Steeple Herding — bank, post office. All but one pub. Twenty years ago it was Graze Hill that was the bigger town.”
“Well, then, they can’t either of them have been a megalopolis,” I observed. “And to this day never the twain shall meet?”
“Not even to attend high mass.”
“Probably because they don’t know what they’re missing,” I mused. “Come for the sacrilegious golden calf, stay for the stoning of Saint Stephen, put to rhyme.”
“The what?”
“Like the calf, it’s something you have to see for yourself. By the way, you can’t think of a word that rhymes with Sanhedrin, can you?”
“Mandolin?”
“I’ll take it under advisement.” I finished the last of my tea, rose, and began battening down the outerwear. “I understand that the major wasn’t so strict about mixing with the great unwashed beyond the borders of Graze Hill.”
Ivor shrugged into his shawl. “Stands to reason. He was the last of the line of local landowners. He had claims to property on both sides of the divide. What’s your point?”
“Did you know he had a solicitor in Steeple Herding?”
“Are you saying there’s a will?” Ivor squinted narrowly at me, as though trying to bring me into focus.
“Will, codicil, secret endowment of an expedition to the North Pole… I don’t know, Inspector, but if you find this solicitor, we can ask him.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
The Debutante Aunt’s Debut
Somehow the walk back to Herding House was roughly twice as far as the outbound journey, an anomaly I put down to the arctic headwind that had since taken up a defensive line. Similarly, the sky had clouded over into a steely, unfriendly grey that looked cold to the touch. The temperature had dropped accordingly, from a mid-day high of perhaps forty Fahrenheit to just a few degrees below a strong reminder to dress for winter in the countryside. The aforementioned packing snow, which had softened and glistened beneath a beaming noonday sun, was now so traumatised by this snap change in the weather that it had developed a hard, cynical shell of treacherous ice.
Such was the state of the terrain when I arrived at the Graze Hill crossroads from which, uphill, stood Herding House, and downhill lay the village. Despite my best efforts at alpine trekking, I was gravity’s plaything, and I slid gracefully backward all the way to the front door of the Sulky Cow.
Sally cast me a wary eye as I entered, but nodded cordially and said “Evening, Mister Borgia.”
“Good evening, Miss Barnstable. Mike, Cosmo.” Soaky Mike and Cosmo were sat at opposite sides of the fireplace, gazing into the flames thirstily and thoughtfully, respectively.
“Cup of your finest seasonal anaesthetic,” I said, snapping a shilling onto the bar. I took my cup to the cauldron, ladled myself a portion, and claimed a stool across from Cosmo. He had his thumbs hooked into the pockets of a green waistcoat under a discreet yellow drape-cut jacket. On the table between us were an abridged version of his stack of blank papers and his thesaurus.
“How are the recollections coming along?” I asked.
“A bit sluggish, at the moment, actually, Anty, but I’ve had rather a topping flash.” Cosmo leaned over his cup, set his hands either side of it, and regarded me with an ‘are you ready for this?’ intensity. “I’ve decided to stay on a bit.”
“At the Sulky Cow?”
“Graze Hill,” he specified. “Well, mainly the pub, yes. The game plan is roughly this — my uncle shared most of his stories with everyone here at one time or another, what? So, if I linger on, I’ll be able to collect them all, put them in order, apply the old thesaurus, and I’m off the races, what?”
“Most ingenious, Cosmo. Now all that remains is the question of copyright.”
“I’ve had a thought about that, too, actually.” Cosmo cast a suspicious eye at Soaky, who was watching the cauldron with a lover’s longing. “I have what’s called a verbal contract, what? All I need to do is make it stick, somehow, and for that what do I need?”
“A witness?”
“A witness, exactly. And who better than an alderman and local business owner?”
“Everett Trimble heard your uncle agree to let you write and sell his life story?” I asked.
Cosmo pursed his lips pensively. “I think it
’s more accurate to say that he was on hand when it was strongly implied. I feel quite confident that he’ll back up my claim.”
“Well, that’s an enormous relief. Why, though, out of curiosity?”
“It’s in the best interests of the town, what? I’ll put it to him as a sort of joint venture. The book — and, in due season, the Hollywood picture — re-ignites interest in Flaps Fleming, in turn raising the profile of Graze Hill and its resident business owners and aldermen.”
“Most ingenious, Cosmo.” I raised my cup of concentrated Christmas in a toast. “Why stop at Everett, though? Why not claim that the entire town heard your uncle’s unequivocal commitment to developing his life story into a Hollywood epic?”
“Verisimilitude,” said Cosmo, tapping his thesaurus. “More believable if it’s one, reliable witness, what? Besides, he’s an impressive force, is Everett Trimble. He knows everything about this town and he’s got a sort of…” Cosmo glanced quizzically at his sources, “...get-things-doneness about him, what?”
“Speaking of valuable resources, did Monty tell you his ghost story?”
Cosmo started at the question, understandably, because in the very instant I posed it a woeful wail came at us from all directions, as though the walls themselves were lamenting the sins they’d heard overheard across the centuries.
“What the devil was that?” said Cosmo.
Soaky Mike laughed slyly and shook his head, like one who knew precisely what the devil that was. Sally clanged out from behind the bar with a metal bucket and stalked across the floor but then stopped at the door to say “I suppose you know this is you’re doing” to me. “She’s been like this all day.”
“Is that Hildy?” I asked.
“As if you didn’t know. Poor thing’s got a historic hangover, thanks to you.”
Soaky Mike chuckled all the more, not so much in sympathy, but rather in bemused reproof of this current generation of milksop livestock.
“Don’t let him near that pot,” Sally added, pulling open the door.
Cosmo and I glanced at the clock and took careful note of the time — six o’clock almost to the second.
“Until when?” we asked in unison.
“Until never!” said Sally like an oath sworn from the dock of Bow Street Magistrates Court. She went out and the door followed her as far as the frame, against which it clapped like a stiff slap across a damp cheek.
“She don’t mean that,” said Soaky, without a moment’s hesitation.
“We’re going to operate under the assumption that she does,” I replied.
“Seems the safer course, what?” said Cosmo, then to me he added the colour commentary, “Soaky’s on probation, apparently. Did you two go on a bender with Hildy last night?”
“That is a gross exaggeration,” I said, coolly. “It was barely a social tipple, between friends, observing the season.”
“Sally makes out like you and Mike took her cow on a wild tear through the fleshpots of Soho. What’s this about a ghost story?”
“It’s a corker, if you haven’t heard it. Voyage with me, now, through the corridors of time, to Christmas morning, 1917…”
“Oh, right, when the squadron came back from the dead to frighten off a pair of unsporting Bosch.” Cosmo had taken up his pencil and was idly practicing dedications on an otherwise blank sheet of paper.
“You speak rather blithely, I must say, about an eyewitness account of a modern miracle.”
“You believe it then?”
“Of course not.”
“No, nor I,” said Cosmo. “Funny thing — I don’t think the major believed it either.”
“But he was, ostensibly, present for the proceedings.”
“Well, exactly.” Cosmo traced a version of his signature that was just his initials in broad cursive. “Monty recounted the ordeal yesterday morning, but the major had never mentioned it, so far as I know, and he appeared to be, I don’t know… humouring Monty.”
“That seems an odd tone for men with a battle-tested bond,” I observed. “They didn’t fall on each other’s necks as brothers reunited?”
“Not as such, no,” said Cosmo, adding a bold underline to his initials, extending from the tail of the M. “Initially, in fact, Uncle Flaps seemed genuinely surprised to see Monty in the flesh. At the risk of belabouring the theme, it was a bit like he was seeing a ghost.”
“Was your uncle not expecting Monty?”
“I’d have thought so. I knew he was coming, so you’d think the major would have.”
“How did you know?”
“Mister Padget mentioned it.” Cosmo spelt out, simply, ‘COSMO!’ and then quickly crossed it out. “Monty wrote to him to reserve a room.”
“But you say that your uncle thought that the major was dead,” I reminded him.
“In so far as that’s how he described the encounter with the Zeppelins, yes.”
“You know what that means, then, I take it?”
“That Monty is a ghost?”
“No,” I said. “Well, possibly. That remains to be seen, of course. No, I mean you’re missing a trick, not including a chapter on spirits.”
“You think I ought?”
“People like ghost stories,” I said. “And it would go some distance in backing up my aunt’s claim to have seen your uncle’s body in the early hours yesterday morning.”
“You still haven’t sorted that out then.”
“I’ve a couple of working theories,” I said, “but they all share the same obscure flaw.”
“Which is?”
“They’re impossible. There’s the timing issue, which I suppose I could budget for by assuming that Aunty Azalea was out of her mind on absinthe, but that still leaves the vexing problem of the footprints in the snow.”
“And this inspector bloke is content to hang fire?”
“Not really,” I said. “I expect if he didn’t have a nasty head cold he’d have nicked my aunty already, but I think he’s willing to keep the investigation open until I’ve thoroughly made a fool of myself.”
“What a nuisance,” said Cosmo. “I was quite hoping for a chance to go through my uncle’s things.”
“Your concern is moving, Cosmo.”
“Oh, right. I’m sure the real killer will be flushed out and all that, of course. It’s just, publishing’s a finicky field, what? It’s a tragedy all round, but it’s also a lovely bit of ballyhoo, as we say in the industry. I need to strike while the iron is hot. Get the manuscript into the hands of discriminating publishers while Uncle Flaps’ murder is still in the headlines, what?”
“Well, here’s a radical suggestion, then, Cosmo — write the thing. What do you want to be going through your uncle’s things for?”
“Background colour. Medals, photographs, letters, commissions, that sort of thing.” Cosmo started a new signature, this time a stacked version of his name in block letters. “Of course, we’d already been through it all, many times, but as mentioned I was a bit remiss with the note-taking. Didn’t know I was under starter’s orders, as it were.”
“Just a tick, Cosmo. Are you telling me that when you visited with your uncle at Tannery Lodge you were shown his memorabilia?”
“Sure. Of course. Why not?”
“Because, Cosmo, it’s gone. Every bit of it.”
The night sky was clear. The wind was still. The temperature had shifted slightly from ‘cold for a winter’s eve’ to ‘cold for a winter’s eve on a dinghy in the North Sea’. The moon shone brightly and the ice-hill that stood between me and Herding House glistened ominously, much as I expect the summit of Everest glistened before George Mallory on his third and final ascent. The hill had gotten higher, since last viewed, and appreciably more slippy, so I approached through the crackling wood, lurching from tree to tree.
“Lead me to the fire, Puckeridge,” I said, shimmying in through the door. “Or, be a good chap, just set me alight where I stand.”
We compromised on a warm brandy i
n the library. Puckeridge brought me a generous snifter the size of a deep-sea diver’s helmet while I shivered to a stop before the fire.
“Thank you, Puckeridge. Is my aunt joining me for cocktails before dinner?”
“Miss Boisjoly has dined, sir...” Puckeridge’s eyebrow twitched and he had to look away momentarily and swallow before continuing. “...with Flight-Lieutenant Hern-Fowler…” had I not known for an absolute certainty that it was impossible, I’d have said I saw a tear in his eye. “...and Mister Padget, sir.”
“My aunt had company? For dinner?”
Puckeridge could only nod energetically to this. In his joy at realising his life’s purpose he had lost the power of speech.
“Well that’s very jolly,” I said. “Are they still in the dining room?”
Puckeridge cleared his throat and composed himself.
“Madame has gone to church, sir. She asked me to tell you that she looks forward to you joining her there.”
“In all seriousness, Puckeridge, when she left, presumably with this Hern-Fowler cove and the vicar, did either of them have a gun to her head?”
“Miss Boisjoly was in very good spirits, sir, and very much looking forward to this evening’s services as, might I add, are the entire staff.”
“The whole household is going, is it?”
“We wouldn’t miss it, sir.”
“Well, then, I suppose I shouldn’t either,” I resigned. “Tell me, Vickers, how did the Arctic survey team get from here to Saint Stephen’s? Dogsled?”
“Mister Barking came by with his sleigh.”
“Excellent. When is the next scheduled departure? Have I time for a quick rotis de boeuf avec son jus or a simple Dover Sole amandine? Doesn’t matter if there’s no more of that Meursault on hand, any Burgundy will do.”
“I can do a sandwich board, sir, but the kitchen staff has already left for church, and I fear that Mister Barking will not be making another journey tonight — he’s verger of Saint Stephen’s.”
“Oh, very well, bring on the bread and water while I dress for the odyssey,” I said. “Incidentally, Puckeridge, speaking as an expert in the two related fields, how long should one expect a bovine hangover to endure?”
The Case of the Ghost of Christmas Morning (Anty Boisjoly Mysteries Book 2) Page 12