“If that’s so, Mister Boisjoly,” said Kimble, “then tonight the Sulky Cow was visited by another ghost.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Six Sinister Secrets
“I shall never be warm again, Vickers.” I made this statement of bald fact under the weight of two down-filled duvets, accompanied by an extensive private collection of hot water bottles.
Vickers was throwing back the curtains, freeing a steely winter daylight to establish a beachhead in the Heath Room.
“I have brought tea, sir,” said Vickers. We both looked around the room in a moment of anticipatory silence. “I have neglected to bring tea, sir,” added Vickers. “I’ll rectify it immediately.”
“Tea is unequal to the task at hand,” I said. “Draw me a scalding bath, and keep the boiling water coming. Then have my mail forwarded to the bathroom.”
“I regret, sir, that you have visitors. Inspector Wittersham and Constable Kimble are in the drawing room.”
“Of course they are,” I lamented. “What time is it Vickers?”
Again we both looked around the room. Even I, on arrival in dairy country, had adopted the native custom of not winding my watch nor remembering where I put it. Vickers looked out the window.
“Just past first milking, sir,” he concluded.
“That explains it. How is the inspector looking, by the way?”
“Decidedly green, sir.”
“I’ll just bet he is,” I said. “He was self-medicated to the gills last night. Very well, Vickers, please inform our guests that I shall be down shortly.”
Puckeridge was rebuilding the ruins of a late, light breakfast of eggs, bangers, blood pudding, épinard au beurre, crêpes au caramel, and an enormous clay urn of coffee poised over a chafing dish on an ingenious tripod. Kimble appeared to have composed a personalised breakfast role of everything but the crêpes, inside a crêpe. Ivor was by the fire, sipping a cup of coffee and, by all appearances, trying to focus on a spot somewhere in St Albans.
“What ho, forces of law and order,” I sang as I fell upon the scene. “Give me a moment to impose my favourite of the deadly sins on this sideboard before we delight in the details of last night’s gruesome slaughter. Blood pudding, Inspector? There are a couple of specimens that look particularly well-congealed.”
Ivor closed his eyes and when he opened them again, some considerable time later, he was squinting at me as though I was an uncomfortably bright light source. I took my plate to the writing desk and tucked in.
“Did you find Cosmo roughly as I left him, Constable?” I asked.
“Mister Millicent was indeed the victim of a violent attack,” confirmed Kimble. “He would have died instantly.”
“I suppose there’s some comfort in that. Any luck with the crime scene? Did the killer drop his wallet or carve his initials into a tree?”
“There was only the body of the victim. Any evidence, such as footprints, were long prior obscured by heavy snowfall.”
“Yes, I noticed that. I could barely see a thing. I’m afraid that my account will be of little use except, as I mentioned, with regards the time of death. I assure you that the clocktower was quite unequivocal — it was five minutes past ten.”
“You couldn’t identify the killer nor, for that matter, the victim, until you were face-to-face,” observed Ivor pettishly, “but you could read the clock some... what was it, Constable, five hundred feet away?”
“Closer to eight hundred.”
“Eight hundred feet, in driving snow, and you could read the clock.”
“It sounds improbable,” I said, “until you account for wind conditions. The snow was whipping in squalls, randomly opening and closing lines of vision. My view of the clocktower was brief but unmistakable.”
“So was ours,” said Ivor. “I had call to look at the clock when we left the pub. It was ten forty-five, and Mister Millicent was with us and, to my very strong recollection, alive.”
“I’m curious what drew your eye to the clocktower.”
“You’ll recall that Mister Barking went to fetch the key to the church from Mister Padget. He came back, some time later, and said that the vicar didn’t answer. But then, perhaps fifteen minutes after that, Millicent and Padget himself joined us in the pub. I found that suspicious, and took note of the time as we left, with respect to Mister Barking’s claim that it had been too late to raise the vicar.”
“How very curious,” I agreed. “Tell me, Inspector, if you were able to make out the clock, why do you find it so unlikely that I could?”
“The pub gives out practically in front of the church.”
“Yes, by about eight hundred feet.”
“I can confirm the time, Mister Boisjoly,” said Kimble. “The clock in the pub and the clock on the church both read ten forty-five when we left. You must have been mistaken.”
“And yet, I’m not,” I mused. “Most peculiar. In fact, not most peculiar — not even a candidate for most peculiar, out of three impossible crimes in as many days. Something else strikes me as notable about your account of last night’s festivities at the Sulky Cow — my aunt was among those present.”
“Apparently Hern-Fowler goaded her into coming,” explained Ivor. “Must have decided, at the last minute, not to kill her to prevent her from exposing him as a spy.”
“Yes, I suppose I may have been partially wrong about that,” I confessed. “But only partially. How did they seem?”
“Loud,” said Ivor. “But your aunt took to the pub like a child takes to a circus. Sudden wealth and freedom from personal commitment appears to have liberated her spirit.”
“Very coyly put, Inspector.”
“I confess it was quite disarming, seeing someone experience a pub for the first time,” said Ivor. “It never occurred to me that anyone might not know what a beer tap was for.”
“Talking of which, I understand that Mister Padget’s presence in the Sulky Cow was something of a novelty as well.”
“Millicent brought him,” said the Inspector. “He was very keen about his plans for his book, and was harassing everyone to recall what they could of Major Fleming’s stories.”
“Did he say what fired this fresh new shoot of productivity?” I asked.
“He seemed to know that his copyright issues had been sorted,” said Ivor. “And he said that he had already written the ending… thanks to you, now I think of it.”
“That’s the second time I’ve heard that. Everett claims that my improvisation of Mister Padget’s Christmas carol inspired Cosmo to new heights of creative output, with specific regard to the epilogue. Do you suppose he thought he figured out who killed the major?”
“We know who killed the major.”
“Indulge me anyway, Inspector. Unless you’ve also figured out with ruthless certainty who stole the golden calf and who murdered Cosmo Millicent.”
“Very well,” sighed Ivor. “Do you recall the words to the carol?”
“Thankfully, no, not very well.”
“Could it have been that bit when Saint Stephen told the Sanhedrin to follow in his footsteps?”
“I sang that?”
“You did.” Ivor nodded solemnly, as though confirming some abiding tragedy. “That couldn’t have been in the original version, surely.”
“You’d be surprised, Inspector. But no, I expect you’re right — I probably invented that bit.”
“Perhaps Millicent had some theory about the footprints in the snow,” proposed Ivor. “Constable, is it possible someone else visited Tannery Lodge, walking in the major’s impressions in the snow to disguise his own?”
“No, of course not,” said Kimble. “Have you ever tried that? It’s almost impossible for a few steps, never mind all the way from the Sulky Cow, over the hill, to the lodge, and back again. I examined the footprints carefully — they were made by one man.”
“At any rate,” I added in a supporting role, “it doesn’t change the fact that Aunty Boisjoly discovered t
he body hours before the major supposedly made those tracks.”
“Assuming she’s telling the truth.”
“I confess, I am proceeding under that assumption,” I said. “Indeed, the key to all three mysteries is that Aunty Boisjoly is the only who isn’t hiding a secret.”
Winter in Hertfordshire can be a fluffy, crisp, shimmering, blue and white celebration of the anticipation of the glad return of Persephone to the realm of living, planting, growing and harvesting. It can also be a bleak, grey, endless twilight of dark clouds and penetrating cold. This particular afternoon gave not a fraction of a whit for the return of Persephone.
I slid and crunched and tripped and cursed down the hill toward the village. Vickers had swaddled me in long underwear and flannels, a wool greatcoat and a mohair scarf composed of the hair of at least a dozen moes, and yet in my very marrow the memory of my time in the snowbank persisted like a war wound.
While, coincidentally, musing on the subject of war wounds, I spotted Monty wobbling toward me up the hill. He was deftly employing his walking stick to put the ice in its place, and he hailed me like he recognised my colours across Portsmouth Harbour.
“Hallo, Boisjoly.”
“Good afternoon, Monty,” I tenored back, and we slid to a stop. “Visiting my aunt? Again? People will start to talk. Although, in light of everything else that’s happened in the last three days, I can’t imagine what they’d find to say.”
“Remarkable woman, your aunt, Mister Boisjoly. Did you know she’d never been in a pub before last night?”
“I’d always assumed,” I said. “Tell me, Monty, do you recall what time it was when you left the Sulky Cow last night?”
Monty nodded confidently. “Twenty-two forty-five on the button.”
“And was Cosmo Millicent among the throng?”
“Everyone was there. Apart from you, of course.”
“You all went your separate ways, I suppose.”
“Hard to say, actually.” Monty looked back toward the Sulky Cow as a visual aid. “Some lingered. Visibility was poor, on account of heavy snowfall. Why do you ask?”
“Oh, just making conversation, as one does,” I said. “Seeking common ground on, say, the weather, the lively, iconoclastic Graze Hill social scene, the brutal murder of Cosmo Millicent. Read any good books, lately?”
“Poor chap.”
“Indeed. Where did you go from the pub?”
“I took Azalea home, and then she sent me back out into the storm.”
“Did she?” I asked. “But you were there when I arrived last night.”
“I mean to say, she asked me to go looking for you,” explained Monty. “I didn’t find you.”
“I appreciate the effort exactly as much as if you had,” I claimed. “Did you see anyone else out enjoying the winter evening?”
“Not a soul.”
“No, of course not,” I said. “What about Christmas Eve, when you first arrived in Graze Hill. I understand that you visited the Sulky Cow.”
“I did.”
“But not your old wingman.”
“I wanted my arrival to be a surprise.”
“So I understand,” I said. “It’s what you told Mister Padget, as you walked home with him that evening, in the company of Cosmo Millicent.”
“I believe so.” Monty regarded me with a circumspectful squint. “Why do you ask?”
“Why does one ask anything, Monty?” I asked. “To hear the answer. Can we count on you for cocktails tonight?”
“I expect so.”
“Excellent. Puckeridge has a case of Veuve Clicquot ‘23 on ice, you won’t want to miss that, and later I’ll be revealing your secret.”
The Sulky Cow glowed weakly in the gloom, compared to its usual warm, receptive blush. Sally was behind the bar and, in contrast to her normally industrious approach to her vocation, she was drinking a whisky straight. She nodded shortly as I came in, but expressed neither grief nor glee in seeing me. Everett was at a table, alone, with a tankard of something about which he appeared to have forgotten, in favour of the study of some bewildering notion that floated before him.
The fire was a dwindling stack of orange embers, and there was no iron pot on the chimney hook.
“I’m sure I’m not the first to point this out, Miss Barnstable,” I said. “Someone’s nicked your mulled wine. Has Hildy been in?”
“Season’s over, Mister Boisjoly. I can heat you up a teapot of muscatel, if you like.”
“I’d rather sleep in a snowbank, on balance,” I said. “Just a whisky, as it comes. You don’t know where Mister Barking is, do you?”
“At the church. He’s taking down the weather vane.”
Sally poured a generous glass of cask-aged barley juice, and I leaned conspiratorially near.
“Do you recall what time you pushed the orphans out into the cold last night, Miss Barnstable?”
“Must have been about quarter of eleven,” she said. “Just after Constable Kimble come round to remind us of closing time.”
“Rather late for you, isn’t it?”
“Like I said, the season’s over. It’s back to normal hours of operation.”
“Where did you go afterwards?”
“Where did I go?” she replied with surprise. “I looked in on Hildy and then went home. Why do you ask?”
“I assume you know what happened last night.”
“You think I had something to do with that?”
“In a word, yes,” I said. “I do think you had something to do with that. You see, Miss Barnstable, I figured out your secret.”
“That a fact?” she said, less as a question and more as a sound to make while affecting to be distracted by a stain on the bar.
“T’is. Want to know how I did it?”
“I’m sure I couldn’t care less.” Sally spoke distantly, conserving her energies for the invisible stain. “You can tell me if you like, I’m not troubled either way.”
“Then you won’t mind waiting until tonight, say, cocktail hour, at Herding House.”
“Got the pub to mind, don’t I?”
“That won’t be a problem, Miss Barnstable — everyone will be there.”
I positioned my whisky and myself squarely in Everett’s line of vision.
“Oh, hullo, Anty,” he said, noticing me with a start, followed in quick succession by his pint, from which he took an unsatisfying swallow.
“What ho, Everett,” I said. “I hope you won’t mind me observing that you’re not your usual voltaic self. Batteries low?”
“Just a little distracted, I suppose. It’s all rather a blow, this.”
“Of course. Terrible tragedy.”
“I say, Anty.” Everett had what appeared to be a flash of inspiration. He leaned across the table toward me. “That carol of Padget’s — is it true that you made up a lot of that yourself?”
“Just the bits that made sense.”
“Well, then, there we are…” Everett was picking up speed, like a freshly cranked gramophone. “You can write it.”
“I can write what?”
“Call it what you like. I wouldn’t presume to suggest, but if you’re at a loss for a title, you could do worse than The Hero of Graze Hill.”
“Are you talking about Cosmo’s book?”
“I’d say it belongs to all of us, in a way.”
“You want me to write it?”
“It’s what he would have wanted,” Everett pronounced solemnly. “And he’d have wanted you to be right quick about it, too. The reading public soon forgets these moments of drama. We don’t seize the moment, there’ll be another foreign skirmish or some American flying a hot air balloon to the moon or someplace, and Flaps Fleming will be forgotten. Let us allow Cosmo Millicent to die for that for which he lived — to tell the story of the Hero of Graze Hill.”
“I take your point. There’s almost no value at all in two brutal murders if the subsequent sensation can’t be spun into gold. I’m not sure I’m
the artist for the art though, in this case, Everett. I specialise in the shorter work — eulogies, rash proposals of marriage, that type of thing.”
“Treat it as you see fit. A series of vignettes, for instance — air battle, air battle, love interest, air battle, couple of stories of Flaps’ childhood — that should probably go at the beginning, but you’d have a free hand.”
“A free hand, you say.”
“It’s the only way. Mind like yours. Needs to soar like an eagle. Float on the vagaries of poetic inspiration.”
“There might be something to that — and I could write the conclusion that eluded Cosmo.”
“There you go,” enthused Everett then, downshifting, said, “What conclusion?”
“Who killed Flaps Fleming, and how,” I said. “Make a topping ending, don’t you think? Although it’ll rather limit the directions in which one could take a sequel.”
“You know who killed Flaps Fleming?” Everett lowered his voice and raised his expectations. “Who?”
“You wouldn’t prefer to wait and read the book?”
“Just a clue.”
“I’ll tell you all, Everett, tonight, over cocktails, at Herding House. You and everyone else.”
“Everyone?”
“Only fair — I’ll be divulging everyone’s secret, including yours.”
Just as my sources had informed me, Barking was balanced on the top third of a complex ladder formation from the ground to the church roof, then to the clocktower, and finally to the dizzying heights at which weather vanes become practical. As I arrived, the tin Hildy slipped her foundations and tipped into his hands.
“You might want to stand back a bit, Mister Boisjoly,” Barking called down to me. “Or take refuge inside the church.”
“Right oh, Mister Barking. You going to be long? I was hoping for a word.”
“Depends very much on how long I need to spend up here on top of this ladder in sub-zero winds having a chat about how long I’m going to be, Mister Boisjoly.”
The Case of the Ghost of Christmas Morning (Anty Boisjoly Mysteries Book 2) Page 17