Unhappy Returns

by Elizabeth Lemarchand

  ‘I can answer that one. It’s fetched up in a pigeon-hole somewhere. Now, if you could manage to give your mind to what I’m doing my best to tell you, when old Viney died, the diocesan authorities promptly amalgamated the parish with an adjoining one, called Pyrford. Ambercombe church dates from the twelfth century, and as Viney didn’t bother much about repairs, it now needs a packet spending on it. To raise the wind, there’s been a move, especially among Pyrford people, to get a faculty for the sale of some of the Ambercombe church plate. The new joint PCC voted to petition the Consistory Court of the diocese — Marchester, that is — and the case was heard last Wednesday. You can imagine the sensation in court when the plate in question was exhibited, and Ethel Ridd leapt to her feet and insisted that a chalice with jewels stuck in it was missing. The presiding legal eagle consulted the records, and couldn’t find any reference to such a chalice. He questioned a Mrs Gillard, who had been Viney’s churchwarden for years, and she said she’d never seen anything of the sort, and knew nothing about it. Whereupon Ethel Ridd asserted that somebody must have stolen the chalice, and swept out. These were her last recorded words. She was found dead in Ambercombe vicarage, now empty and up for sale, on Friday morning. She used to go in each day to air the place. The P-M puts the time of death as Wednesday afternoon or early evening… I say, you’re held spellbound by all this, aren’t you? I said you would be.’

  Toye concluded that a case to do with church affairs might be interesting, and anyway a nice change from some of the jobs they’d had lately.

  ‘But mightn’t this chalice have been the old gent’s personal property?’ he asked.

  ‘Exactly what I put to the AC just now. Apparently the legal eagle was hit by the same idea, but Ethel Ridd replied that it hadn’t turned up among the Reverend Viney’s things after his death, so it couldn’t have been his own. It seems quite clear that she was considered highly eccentric by the locals, so the Westbridge CID came to the conclusion that the whole business of the chalice was her imagination, and wrote it off as far as any relevance to the murder went. However, there was a surprising development this morning. The Archdeacon of Marchester turned up with a rather curious bit of information. He’s a well-known authority on church plate, and had found a reference to a chalice like the one Ethel Ridd described, and which — this is the important point — had a potential link with Ambercombe. This is the gist of what he told the Westbridge people…’

  As Toye listened to the recorded disappearance of the Tadenham Abbey chalice in 1538, and Archdeacon Lacy’s theory of its subsequent history, his normally impassive face developed an expression of scepticism.

  ‘But there’s not a shred of reliable evidence in all this, sir,’ he protested. ‘It’s just what the Archdeacon thinks, and pretty farfetched at that, to my mind. If this is why Westbridge have asked us to take over, I’d say they’ve got a nerve! Let ’em get on with the job of tracking down any vagrant or stranger who was around last Wednesday: a type who’d break into an empty house to get a roof for the night. They know the lie of the land, and we don’t.’

  Pollard crossed one leg over the other. ‘Again, more or less what I said to the AC. His reaction was to push a list of robberies of church plate at me. I hadn’t registered the fact, but they’ve been going up steadily over the past couple of years, and are interestingly selective. Apparently ecclesiastical high-ups are beginning to make indignant noises at the police failure to recover the swag. This is really why Westbridge is getting help. The AC and others think there’s a remote chance that Ethel Ridd’s murder could tie up with the thefts by way of the Tadenham chalice. It’s to be a sort of dual purpose enquiry: a two for the price of one idea. Anyway, we’re for it, old chap, and we’d better get cracking if we want to look in at home before we take off. Rustle up a Who’s Who, will you? I want to check up on the Venerable Eric Lacy, Archdeacon of Marchester.’

  On the following morning Pollard and Toye breakfasted at their hotel in Westbridge and went straight to police headquarters for a conference with the Chief Constable, Superintendent Canning and Inspector Frost. Pollard at once sensed a discomfited atmosphere which he rightly put down to the failure to trace any vagrant or other dubious character in the Ambercombe area on the previous Wednesday. The tactful approach seemed to be to stress the Yard’s interest in a possible link between Ethel Ridd’s murder and the Tadenham chalice.

  ‘It’s a rum situation,’ he said easily. ‘I’ve never been involved in anything like it before, and don’t mind admitting that I’m feeling a bit out of my depth at the moment. I know how hard-pressed you people are, but I can see us having to come back on you rather a lot.’

  The atmosphere relaxed, and he was assured of the fullest co-operation at all levels. After further discussion it was settled that Inspector Frost should carry on the enquiries into any strangers noticed in the area during the past week, while Pollard and Toye digested the contents of his file and decided on their plan of campaign.

  ‘By the way,’ Pollard said, ‘I’ve looked up Archdeacon Lacy. Obviously he’s an expert on church plate, but what do you make of him as a person?’

  ‘One simply must say that he inspires confidence,’ Colonel Greenaway replied, with perceptible regret in his voice. ‘He definitely hasn’t got bees in the bonnet or even a one-track mind. I’ve been making discreet enquiries, and his stock’s high in the Chapter, and he’s generally thought of as a sound decent chap. You’ll be going over to see him, I expect? A car’s laid on for you, and a room here with a phone, of course.’

  The conference broke up shortly afterwards, and Pollard and Toye installed themselves in their quarters with the file and a set of large-scale maps of the locality.

  As the morning wore on Pollard stretched, clasped his hands behind his head, and eyed Toye quizzically.

  ‘Had another think?’ he enquired, indicating the litter of typescript, photographs and plans on the table.

  Toye grinned a trifle sheepishly.

  ‘Meaning that it’s beginning to look as though there’s no hobo to pull in?’

  ‘This is it. Nobody can say Frost hasn’t been thorough, and it’s suggestive that there’s absolutely nothing to report after they’ve been going it hard for three days.’

  ‘It needn’t mean there’s anything in the chalice yarn, though.’

  ‘True enough. And I don’t think we can take this non-hobo idea any further until we’ve been over and vetted that vicarage ourselves. Let’s go and have a snack and drive out there. The Archdeacon can wait till later.’

  An hour later they ran into the outskirts of Pyrford. It was a still grey day of low cloud, and the landscape lay drained of colour. The dark bulk of the Whitehallow Hills loomed oppressively over the village, dwarfing it to insignificance. It appeared deserted.

  ‘Men gone back to work, and the women all clearing up the meal or having a nice sit down,’ Toye diagnosed.

  They drove on up the hill, passed Ambercombe Barton, and drew up outside the church. Pollard surveyed it with keen interest.

  ‘Don’t let me go in, or I’ll be there till dark,’ he said. ‘We can get to the vicarage through the churchyard, can’t we?’

  Overgrown by bushes at the far end they found a gate hanging drunkenly on one hinge, and made their way into a garden suffering badly from neglect and autumnal decay. Toye produced a key handed over by Inspector Frost, and unlocked the battered front door. A smell of dry rot assailed their nostrils.

  ‘How old empty houses with no damp courses do stink,’ Pollard remarked, making a rapid inspection of the ground floor rooms. He opened a musty cupboard under the stairs and stirred some old newspapers with the toe of his shoe, shutting the door hastily at the sight of a cockroach.

  In the kitchen they forced up the window and let in some fresh air, and managed to work back the rusty cobwebby bolts of the door leading from the scullery into the back garden. The door itself was stuck fast, but Toye eventually managed to open it.

  ‘That�
��s a lot better,’ Pollard said. ‘One thing’s certain, anyway. No murderer came in that way. Frost and his boys have been over everything here with a toothcomb, so we needn’t bother about dabs and whatever.’

  They examined the chalk outline marking the position of the body, and the ringed traces of footmarks on the stone flags behind the scullery door, and made a careful inspection of both rooms, but without discovering anything fresh. The ashes of long-dead fires had been raked out from under the copper, together with fragments of brick and crumbs of mortar. Pollard took off his coat, rolled up his shirt sleeve, lay down on the floor with a grimace and felt inside the firebox itself.

  ‘Nix,’ he said. ‘Wouldn’t it have been super if the old boy had hidden the chalice in there?’

  Getting up, he shook the soot and reddish brick dust from his arm and hand, and hopefully turned on the cold tap over the sink, but no water emerged.

  ‘No hope of a wash,’ he grumbled, and went over to sit on the windowsill. Toye propped himself against the sink.

  ‘You know,’ Pollard said thoughtfully, ‘a chap who’s sleeping rough gets pretty fly at sizing up the possibilities of squatting in an empty house. This one’s got For Sale notices up, and the open windows would show that somebody was looking after it. We’ve Mrs Gillard’s evidence that they were open on Friday morning, so it seems reasonable to assume that Ridd opened up as usual on Wednesday, probably before she went off to Marchester. Suppose you’d been a vagrant who chanced on this place sometime on Wednesday before she came back. What would you have done?’

  ‘Got in by this window, had a look round, decided it would be better than nothing for the night, and gone to ground in that cupboard in the hall when I heard somebody coming along to shut up.’

  ‘So would I, except that I’d have tried to find a less foul cupboard upstairs. But are you sure you wouldn’t have wrenched a chunk of brick from under the coppice, and hidden behind that door, and burst out to bash Ethel Ridd’s head as she was shutting the window behind me here?’

  ‘Quite sure,’ Toye replied categorically. ‘Not unless I was a homicidal maniac, that is. Why, she hadn’t even got a handbag with her. There’s a note in the file that hers was found in her cottage, with several pounds in cash in it.’

  ‘OK,’ Pollard said. ‘I’m with you all the way. But somebody killed her. Why? Could it have been necessary for somebody to shut her mouth? What about? Just for purposes of argument, let’s suppose that the chalice did turn up here, and this somebody had managed to pinch it. After Ridd blurted out about it in court, he might have felt it would be healthier to have her out of the way.’

  Toye leant against the sink in silent consideration, owl-like behind his hornrims.

  ‘It would have been quick work,’ he said at last, ‘getting back from Marchester ahead of her.’

  ‘That could narrow things down rather usefully. And I think he would have to have been a local, to know Ridd’s caretaking routine.’

  ‘We’ve got a list of Inspector Frost’s of locals who can’t bring any evidence of where they were on Wednesday afternoon and evening.’

  Pollard groaned.

  ‘I suppose it’s going to mean grilling the whole damn lot of ’em individually. And this is all pure theorising. If only we’d got one bit of concrete evidence that we’re on the right track… Hell, this window’s murder all right. My bottom’s numb,’ he added, getting up and rubbing his posterior.

  Quite suddenly he stopped, and stared at Toye.

  ‘Look here, where do you suppose that the X of our theory hung about waiting for Ridd to turn up? Surely not in that foul dank scullery, with absolutely nowhere to sit? I’d have sat on the stairs. Comparatively comfortable, not overlooked by any window, and easy to hear anyone coming up to the house. Let’s have a look.’

  Toye picked up the torch and they went into the hall. The staircase, immediately facing the front door, was of stained wood, with a central strip of worn linoleum which it had not been thought worthwhile to take up for the sale of Barnabas Viney’s effects. The short November day was closing in, and the hall was already dusky. Toye directed the beam of the torch on the bottom step.

  ‘Higher,’ Pollard said. ‘More comfortable for your legs.’

  It was on the third step from the bottom, on the left side going up, and close to the wall, that they found traces of reddish grit. With infinite care these were brushed into a sterile envelope, which was sealed and labelled for the forensic laboratory. Toye, always generous in his admiration of Pollard’s achievements, was jubilant.

  ‘Hold on to your hat,’ Pollard cautioned. ‘We shan’t know till they’ve analysed the stuff and compared it with the grit in the wound. But I rather think X sat just there, and put the bit of brick down beside him while he waited. Surely he must have brought a weapon of some sort. Perhaps he thought something on the spot would be safer. Nothing to be traced back to him.’

  They locked up the house and left, this time going down a short drive to a lane connecting the road with Quarry Cottages. Turning left, they found no sign of life at these. Ethel Ridd’s had an official seal on the door, and the lecturer inhabiting the last one had obviously not yet returned from Westbridge. Beyond the cottages the lane became a cart track, deeply rutted and partly grassed over. Pollard and Toye went on as far as the quarry. In the half-light it was an eerie scene of now abandoned activity, with weird-looking pieces of rusting machinery and a stretch of still dark water.

  ‘It’s too dark to see where these paths lead,’ Pollard said, as they retraced their steps. ‘We’d better get back to Westbridge and hand this stuff in, and see if the Archdeacon is free to see us after supper… I must just see if the church is still open while you turn the car. Give me the torch a minute.’

  He ran up the path and flashed the light into the tiny south porch. To his utter amazement a young girl was crouched in abject panic against the door, a massive key in her hand, her face deathly white.

  ‘My dear child, I’m afraid I frightened you!’ he exclaimed. ‘I’m so sorry. It’s only the police, you know. I expect you’ve come over to lock up the church, haven’t you?’

  A vestige of colour crept back into her cheeks.

  ‘It’s all right,’ she said hastily and almost inaudibly. ‘Mother forgot to do it earlier.’

  Pollard’s mind moved quickly.

  ‘Are you Mrs Gillard’s daughter?’ he asked. ‘She’s one of the churchwardens, isn’t she, and you must live at Ambercombe Barton, just down the road?’

  ‘That’s right. Did you want to see the church?’ the girl asked, in an obvious attempt to regain her composure.

  ‘It’s a bit dark now, I’m afraid. I’ll have to come another time. I’ll walk down to your house with you, and my colleague can follow on with the car.’

  Disregarding an incoherent protest, he called out to Toye to pick him up at the farm, and set off, walking with long strides to keep up with the girl’s hurrying steps. Her answers to his friendly questions were monosyllabic, and on arriving at the front gate she bolted into the house like a frightened rabbit, barely pausing to thank him.

  ‘I can understand that I gave the kid a bit of a jolt after what’s happened up here,’ Pollard said, describing the incident to Toye. ‘Odd, though, that she wasn’t reassured by finding that we were coppers. Quite the reverse, I thought.’

  Chapter 5

  ‘They’ve promised to get the tests on the stuff done by tonight if they possibly can,’ Pollard said, coming out of the Westbridge police station and joining Toye in the car. ‘Meanwhile I’ve dodged Frost. Even if there’s a positive result it’ll be risky to call off his hobo hunt. It would alert the Sitter on the Stairs right away.’

  On arriving in Marchester they had a meal in the grill room of the Cathedral Hotel, and afterwards presented themselves punctually at eight-thirty for their appointment with Eric Lacy. Pollard had made a determined effort to bring an open mind to the encounter, but quickly found himself in agreement w
ith the Chief Constable’s assessment of the Archdeacon. Here was a scholar, obviously, but someone far removed from what most people understood by the word. This was an alive chap with plenty of humour and common sense.

  Eric Lacy settled his visitors in comfortable chairs in his study, and supplied them with drinks.

  ‘Well,’ he said, sitting down himself, ‘I seem to have put the cat among the pigeons, don’t I? But I found myself possessing various bits of information which seemed too relevant to the situation to be kept to myself. First of all, the historical evidence about the Tadenham chalice is beyond dispute. Then secondly, I am convinced that poor Ethel Ridd was talking about a chalice that she actually had seen. Thirdly, the unusual one she described corresponds remarkably closely with the Tadenham one, and fourthly, there is the territorial link between Tadenham Abbey and Ambercombe. Finally one might add that burying treasure when times are out of joint has been a practice all through history.’

  ‘May we begin by taking you up on the word “unusual”?’ Pollard asked.

  ‘Certainly. Two things struck me about her description of the chalice she had seen old Viney using on occasions. She said it was small. Pre-Reformation chalices often were. Only the celebrant of a mass received the consecrated wine as well as the bread. The large chalices we’re accustomed to see in churches today for communicating the lay congregation would not as a rule have been in use. Then there was her statement that the one she saw “had jewels stuck in it”. Now this is very interesting. The chaps who listed the monastic treasures for the Crown at the time of the Dissolution knew their job, and recognised “counterfeit gems” as they called them. The stones in the Tadenham chalice were not described as counterfeit, and so were presumably genuine, making the chalice extremely valuable. Hence, no doubt, the uproar when it didn’t reach Henry’s coffers.’