“Where are you, Inspector?”
“Other side of this snowdrift. I’ve been looking for a way over.”
“I certainly hope that you heard Everett’s confession, Inspector. I very much doubt if I could contrive to get him to repeat it.”
I might have heard a deep sigh. It might have been the wind.
“Yes, Mister Boisjoly, I heard it.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
The Seriously Circuitous Solution
Puckeridge was in his element. He conducted Vickers, the kitchen maid, the cook, Alice and Henry, the boot and knife boy, as though they composed all he needed to mount a full and final assault on Amiens. Champagne corks popped, plates clattered, silver service clanged, syphons fizzed, and a great iron cauldron of mulled wine sloshed on the hearth. Next to the fire, as per my personal request, stood the Christmas tree of Flaps Fleming.
The drawing room was cosy and congested with more guests than it had seen in Aunty Boisjoly’s entire tenure. Ivor, Sally, Soaky Mike, Barking, Padget, Monty and Aunt Azalea chattered and laughed and gossiped with that inimitable, irreproducible spirit of camaraderie that comes at the end of a period of intense, immense distrust. The overwhelming consensus appeared to be that, if one of them had to be a murderer, it was just as well it turned out to be Everett Trimble.
“Another hot cup of hearth and holly, Inspector?” I offered, drawing the ladle from the steaming pot.
“I will, thank you Mister Boisjoly, and I’ll raise it to you.” I filled his cup and, good as his word, he raised it. “I was convinced that your previous success was purely a matter of local knowledge and fleeting luck,” he said. “I confess now, willingly and sincerely, I didn’t expect it to last this long.”
“I return the toast, Inspector, in honour of your talent for faint praise,” I said. “But I admit, there was a bit of luck — once I realised how it was done, it was obvious only one person could have done it.”
“Of course.” Ivor tapped his cup to mine and drank deeply. Conversation waned, then, and an anticipatory silence reigned.
“All right, then, Boisjoly, tell us how it was done,” said Ivor at last.
“How which was done?” I asked. “The murder of Flaps Fleming, hours before he appeared to his friends at the Sulky Cow? The stealthy, acrobatic, and impossible swap of the bronze weather vane? Or the killing of Cosmo Millicent, before my eyes, while he was with all of you at the pub?”
“I think all of them, perhaps, in your own time.”
“Very well,” I said. I distributed more mulled wine and took a speaker’s position before the fire. “Let us begin at the end, with the death of poor Cosmo Millicent. Of course, Mister Barking already knows how Cosmo managed to be drinking in the pub while simultaneously being stabbed in the forest, and I think we should assume that, had they known they were hindering a police investigation, he and Miss Barnstable would have spoken up.”
Sally and Barking looked at each other and then found their hands or shoes more distracting.
“You’ll recall that everyone confirmed that the clocktower, when you left the pub in the company of Cosmo Millicent, read ten forty-five, even though when I looked at it, just after he’d been killed, it displayed five past ten. The explanation is simple — you were all wrong. Mister Padget happened to mention to me that the clock, like many other unwanted gifts to the church, was more chore than it was worth. Each face — north, south, east, and west, had to be wound separately. This also meant that they could be set separately, and were, by the man whose job it was to wind the clocks, ring the bells, and generally keep Saint Stephen’s ticking over.”
I paused here while Barking pursued a regime of facial contortions that suggested that he had something to say in his defence. He finally abandoned the procedure and returned to the analysis of his laces.
“Why did Mister Barking set the clock back?” asked Ivor.
“He didn’t,” I said. “He set it forward. And he did it simply to support his contention that it was too late to call upon Mister Padget, to acquire the key to the church.”
“But, Mister Barking has his own key to the church,” pointed out the vicar.
“Of course he does,” I said. “He’s the verger. This is how he was able to get into the church, change the time on the west-facing clock, and spirit away the tin Hildy.”
“The weather vane?” said Ivor. “But it was on top of the church by this time.”
“No, it wasn’t, was it Mister Barking?”
Barking shook his head slowly.
“Yes it was,” said Sally. “We all saw it — it was the tin cow.”
“They’re both tin, Miss Barnstable. That’s Mister Barking’s secret. I only realised it when I remembered two seemingly insignificant and unrelated details — the golden tinsel on the steps of the church, and Mister Barking’s electroplating enterprise which still has, I believe, some technical issues to work out.”
“The cold causes the tin to expand,” explained Barking with some resentment aimed, presumably, at the laws of physics. “Then when it contracts again in the sunshine, the brass coating cracks and falls off.”
“The municipal budget allocated to Mister Barking for the purchase of bronze with, I think, the clear understanding that he would turn it into cows and heroes, was instead used to finance his industrial innovations,” I said. “The bronze Hildy wasn’t swapped, it simply shed its golden fleece.”
“But, how could we not have noticed?” asked Padget.
“It was dark by then. The moon was behind the clouds. Even Mister Barking only noticed it because he, too, saw the tinsel on the steps before services. To buy time, he hid the original weather vane somewhere in the museum — probably behind the curtain that formed the plinth. Hardly a long term plan, but it served to convince us all that, somehow, the bronze version had been stolen.”
“It nearly worked,” pointed out Barking, with a disarming, child-like insinuation that this constituted some sort of defence.
“It very nearly did,” I agreed. “But then Inspector Wittersham, operating under the advisement of French distillers, committed to searching the museum, and Mister Barking had to act. The clock on the wall of the pub said nine-thirty and when he saw that the clocktower showed only eight-thirty, he set it forward by an hour.”
“Wait — the pub clock was also an hour fast? And nobody noticed?” marvelled Ivor.
“It’s a pub in dairy country in the middle of winter. The sun goes down at just after four and rises at eight. The only pace that matters is that of the cows, and that’s what told me that Miss Barnstable, too, was setting the pub clock ahead by increments, shaving up to an hour off the working day.”
“A cow told you?”
“In a manner of speaking. Puckeridge informs me that dairy cattle are very particular about their routine — milking is done by consultation only and according to a strict schedule. And yet, the first time I saw Miss Barnstable leave to milk Hildy, the clock read seven o’clock. The second time, Hildy was mooing a melancholy moan, which Miss Barnstable tried to attribute to a hangover, on the not entirely groundless assumption that a lifetime Londoner wouldn’t know that a seven hundred pound cow would be largely immune to such a thing. Hildy was calling out to be milked, but the clock read just after six.”
“Miss Barnstable set the clock ahead the first night and third nights?” said Ivor. “Why not the second?”
“Because there was no need, was there Miss Barnstable?”
“You know everything, why don’t you explain it to everyone.”
“Probably for the best,” I agreed. “This is the secret that Miss Barnstable has been keeping. She sets the clock ahead most days for two reasons — it reduces the number of drinks that her father, Soaky Mike, can put away in a day, and it allows her to sneak off early to the forbidden city of Steeple Herding, to spend time with her beloved and betrothed, Constable Kimble.”
“Say, where is the constable?” asked Monty.
“Del
ivering Mister Trimble to the cells,” said Ivor. “He’ll be back shortly.”
“Not immediately,” I corrected. “I asked him to look into something for me. In any case, on the second night, Soaky Mike was denied drink, owing to a tragic misunderstanding for which I feel partially responsible. At any rate, the pub was closing early for Saint Stephen’s night services. There was no need to set the clock ahead, but not doing so allowed me to take note of the apparent discrepancy in Hildy’s routine.”
“We all went home, then, without questioning the time,” observed Ivor. “All but for Cosmo and Trimble. But why did Trimble want to kill Cosmo? And if he had reason to do so, why didn’t he do it sooner?”
“He didn’t have cause, sooner,” I said. “Cosmo could expose Major Fleming’s killer by showing how the seemingly impossible murder was committed.”
“It was the footprints in the snow, wasn’t it, Anty?” enthused Aunt Azalea. “You’re such a clever boy.”
“Thank you Aunty, but that’s really not that clever. It is, nevertheless, what Cosmo concluded, when I, inspired by the story of Good King Wenceslas, raised the subject.”
“But if Mister Millicent was wrong, what cause did Everett have to kill him?” asked Ivor.
“Cosmo was telling everyone who’d listen that he had figured out who killed Flaps Fleming, and that he was saving the unveiling for the final chapter of his book. He also had learned that he didn’t need his uncle’s permission to write the aforementioned book. It is this that he wished to confide in Everett, and it’s this that got him killed.” I spoke ‘this’ with a bit of a topspin and simultaneously withdrew from my breast pocket a copy of Copyright Infringement and Remedy .
“Is that Boodle’s pamphlet on copyright law?” asked Ivor. “In which he explains that you’re safest writing books after your subject has died by causes natural or otherwise?”
“It is,” I confirmed. “It’s also the single piece of evidence that would hang Everett Trimble.”
“How?”
“For that, I would ask that you take another cup of seasonal solvent and bear with me. Feel free to speak amongst yourselves.”
We drained the iron cauldron and, contrary to my clear instructions, conversation was, at best, laboured. Finally the doorbell chimed, Puckeridge performed a pirouette followed by a grande jetée out the door, and within moments he was back and introducing Constable Kimble and guest.
The effect on the assembly was exactly as expected — half of them gasped as they would had they seen a ghost. The other half, very pointedly, didn’t.
Specifically, it was Sally, Barking, and, to a lesser degree, Soaky Mike, who finally managed some variation of “Flaps — you’re alive!” and crowded around the new arrival with such tearful rejoicing that I almost regretted bringing it to an end.
“Anty,” said Aunty, taking matters in hand. “That’s not Flaps Fleming.”
“No, indeed,” I agreed. “This is not Flaps Fleming. This is the man who has been posing as Flaps Fleming for the past six months. Ladies and gentlemen, may I present Josilyn Boodle, solicitor.”
Boodle smiled sheepishly and waved even more sheepishly. In fact if sheep were ever to take to smiling and waving, they would do well to start by imitating his form.
“Hello,” he said.
“Is this true, Mister Boodle?” demanded Ivor.
“Ah, well, only in the purely practical sense, but, yes.”
“Only in the practical sense?” said Ivor, slipping into a higher register that I’d heard from him to date. It suited him, strangely. “In what other sense does one impersonate a war hero?”
“The legal sense, mainly. Since I fully paid off my bar bill, it can’t be said that I was in any way profiting from my innocent pastime. No harm done, and all that.”
“No harm done? We were investigating a murder. You were questioned during the course of that investigation and you chose to say nothing of what I think we all agree was a fairly pertinent detail.”
“In retrospect, yes, of course, you’re quite right, Inspector,” said Boodle. “But you’ll recall, you told me that you had identified the killer. You implied quite plainly that the investigation was largely a formality. I saw no need to further, ehm, confuse the issue.”
“Whatever led you to suspect that Mister Boodle was impersonating the major?” Ivor asked me.
“Apart from the fact that it was the only possible explanation, you mean?” I replied. “I knew that Aunty Azalea wasn’t lying…”
“Thank you, Anty,” said Aunty.
“Goes without saying, Aunty. The only other possibility, apart from an actual ghost, was that there were two Flaps Fleming. However, to answer your original question, Inspector, I received the initial inspiration from an inspection of the body combined with a seemingly drunken aspersion cast by Soaky Mike.”
“About the major’s inability to shift gears with a missing eye?” asked Ivor, incredulously.
“With a missing left eye, to be precise. But the corpse had an eyepatch over the right eye. Possibly because he forgot or because he has poor spatial awareness, Mister Boodle wore his patch over the wrong eye.”
“Oh, very well,” sighed Ivor. “But why Mister Boodle, specifically?”
“Having concluded that somebody must be impersonating Flaps Fleming, it stood to reason that it must be someone with intimate knowledge of the major’s history and habits, but was unknown to everyone in Graze Hill. Mister Boodle was the only possible suspect. He confirmed it himself when he mentioned Cosmo’s literary aspirations. The only way Mister Boodle could have known about the book is if it was he who was playing the hero at the Sulky Cow.”
“But he looks nothing like him,” insisted Aunty.
“Oh, I don’t know,” I said. “He’s tall and thin, and he’s cultivated a military moustache in the style much favoured by the modern flying ace. Add an eyepatch and intimate knowledge of his affairs, and Mister Boodle could easily pass for Flaps Fleming to someone who’s never laid eyes on him in his life.”
“But, we’ve all met him,” pointed out Padget. “At church, at the pub, at his home…”
“I once had two dear friends — to each other, you understand, I couldn’t bear either of them — two dear friends who had a terrible falling out over the soloist in a production of No, No, Nanette, which ran for twelve weeks at Drury Lane.”
“Please don’t, Mister Boisjoly,” said Ivor.
“I assure you it’s pertinent,” I claimed. “Or at the very least a valuable moral lesson for all. These two friends — such close friends, in fact, that I could never remember which we called Giggles and which we called Gander — agreed on everything. The phenomenon was so pronounced, in fact, that it became regular practice to only pose any question to one or the other — they were sure to agree on meat or fish, red or white, or on which horse they would wish to lose their identical pearl collar studs at Sandown.”
“I thought you said there was a point,” Ivor helpfully reminded me.
“I’m getting to it, although I confess that which I’ve provided thus far has been largely background material. This is the bit that will start to resonate, I feel — one day Giggles... or possibly Gander, I’m going to have to ask you to grant me some latitude on that... one day Giggles comes into the Juniper, our mutual club, singing a snappy tune and the praises of the musical he saw the night before, No, No, Nanette.”
“Without Gander?” asked Monty.
“They were friends, Monty, not Siamese twins,” I said. “But indeed, Giggles set about correcting that very oversight, and he’d brought a gift of a box seat for his friend, Gander, for that very evening.”
“How sweet,” opined Aunt Azalea.
“Everyone thought so. Especially Gander. He went, and he, too, naturally, enjoyed the show immensely, except for one key element.”
“The soloist,” guessed Barking.
“Hated her. Came in the next day doing an amusing impersonation of Nanette that made her sou
nd like a startled carthorse.”
“A bit strong,” said Monty.
“He insisted that his interpretation of her performance was uncannily accurate. Giggles, naturally, took offence, and words were had. But, these were old and dear friends, and a compromise was found — Gander gifted Giggles a ticket for that night’s performance, so that he might take the hard, objective view and, if he would be guided by Gander, lay off the opium until after the show.”
“Yes, thank you, Mister Boisjoly, that’s very insightful,” said Ivor.
“Almost there, Inspector,” I alleged. “The next day, Giggles agrees that he had been biased on first viewing and that Nanette was not the finest performance he’d ever seen in London, but the finest performance that anyone had ever seen anywhere, anytime, and that poor Gander must be losing his faculties. It was sad, he said, but he would stand by his old friend, all the way to the sanatorium. Again, an agreement was made, and Gander went that night to Drury Lane to give Nanette one more chance to prove that she wasn’t an exceptionally well-trained hyena in circus makeup. The next day, same thing, except that Gander has expanded his imitation of Nanette to include a dance number on locked knees and a curtain-call resembling Swedish callisthenics.”
“How did Giggles respond to that?” asked Aunty.
“Less than kindly, I’m afraid,” I said. “It came to pass that Giggles had, the previous afternoon, proposed to the lovely Nanette, and she had accepted him.”
“Oh, no,” lamented Aunty.
“It’s always the way. Best of pals ‘til one gets a gal — a sentiment lifted, ironically enough, from the duet which opens act two of No, No, Nanette. Giggles quit the Juniper and settled into the married life. It was fully a year later that the tragic truth came to light — Gander had gone to see a production of Tip-Toes at the Haymarket when who should appear in the role of Roberta Van Renssalaer but Nanette. Nostalgic and curious, he meets her at the stage door with a dozen roses and asks after his old friend. Of course, the girl’s never heard of any Giggles or whatever his real name is, but she’s got a mystery of her own — she always wondered what happened to the girl with whom she used to alternate the title role in No, No, Nanette — one night one of them would play Nanette and the other would play Sue, the next night the other way round.”
The Case of the Ghost of Christmas Morning (Anty Boisjoly Mysteries Book 2) Page 19