Unhappy Returns

by Elizabeth Lemarchand

  ‘Thank you,’ Pollard said. ‘That’s all very clear. It seems to lead us to Ethel Ridd herself. All we’ve gathered about her so far is that she was seventy-five, considered eccentric, and had religious mania of a sort. Had you any personal knowledge of her?’

  ‘Rather surprisingly, yes,’ Eric Lacy replied. ‘I take it you know about the set up at Ambercombe at the time of Barnabas Viney’s death? Well, when the old boy died there were no surviving relatives, and — quite irregularly — only one churchwarden, a Mrs Gillard, whom you’ll doubtless meet. I felt I must lend a hand, especially over business affairs, and so saw something of Ethel Ridd. I discovered that she had been evacuated to the area from the East End in 1939, become Barny’s housekeeper, and stayed on ever since. She was perfectly compos mentis over matters of daily life, but quite uneducated. Her reading and writing were rudimentary. And the restricted life she’d led at Ambercombe had cut her off from ordinary people to an extent that would make her seem eccentric, quite apart from the religious mania she’d caught from her employer. I’m telling you all this to make it clear that she simply couldn’t have imagined the chalice she spoke of. She just hadn’t the mental equipment.’

  ‘This reference to the chalice that you came across, sir,’ Toye asked, ‘couldn’t Mr Viney have found it, and talked to her about it?’

  ‘Greenaway raised that same question, Inspector, and of course it can never be answered definitely one way or the other. But if he had come on it, I feel sure he would have shown it to me, knowing my interest in church plate. I doubt if he’d have let on if he’d dug up the chalice in his garden — that’s another matter. But I used to go over to see him from time to time, and it’s my opinion that he would have shown me the book if he’d had it. But it wasn’t on his shelves after his death, and I’ve never seen the reference anywhere else.’

  ‘What was the book?’ Pollard enquired.

  ‘A chatty unscholarly little effort called Wessex Abbeys. It was published in 1886 at his own expense by a man called Septimus Ponsonby. He seems to have been one of those nineteenth-century amateur antiquarians of independent means and with an urge to get into print. In some ways the book doesn’t do him justice. He could read sixteenth- and seventeenth-century script, and had dipped into the Tadenham archives, but hadn’t the know-how to make proper use of them. He just lifted odd bits here and there which he thought would interest his readers, like the disappearance of the chalice and the pet monkeys kept by an abbess. Here it is, if you’d care to have a look.’

  It was a small octavo volume bound in red cloth, now much faded, with a gilt title. Pollard glanced through its pages, some of which were spotted with damp, while a few were uncut.

  ‘Picked it up in a junk shop in Salisbury,’ Eric Lacy said, as the book was handed back to him. ‘I’ve checked the extract about the chalice with the Public Records Office. The Tadenham stuff is there, but has never been systematically dealt with. An interesting job waiting for somebody who’s got the time.’

  ‘About Barnabas Viney,’ Pollard resumed after a pause, ‘and your suggestion that he might have dug up the chalice in the vicarage garden. Was he a gardening type?’

  ‘Oh, very much so, until he got too old and feeble. He saw growing your own food as part of the monastic way of life, like carpentry and basic building skills. There’s quite a big kitchen garden behind the house. He was a vegetarian, incidentally, and I expect poor Ethel Ridd had to be one, too. An amazing old boy. Here’s a photograph of him, taken a couple of years ago, when he’d done his half-century at Ambercombe.’

  Toye drew his chair closer to Pollard’s, and they studied the photograph with interest. It showed a very old but still arresting face, square and sunken, with protruding cheek bones and deep clefts running to the corners of an obstinate mouth. The chin was strong and slightly underhung. The eyes under bushy white brows were unexpectedly serene and kindly, with dark circles below them. Thin, unkempt white hair stuck out at random over the head, and formed shaggy sideburns.

  ‘Reminds me of a picture of one of the prophets in Old Testament times,’ Toye commented. ‘I don’t know, though. A bit too peaceful, perhaps.’

  Eric Lacy gave him an approving glance.

  ‘You’re right there, Inspector. It was the peace of the monastic life and the time for prayer that appealed to him — mercifully. What he’d have been like, as a militant in the diocese, I tremble to think.’

  ‘Let’s suppose that Mr Viney actually did dig up the chalice in the vicarage garden,’ Pollard said thoughtfully. ‘Wouldn’t you have expected Ethel Ridd to know about it? Yet I can’t help feeling that if she did she would have blurted it out in court when the ownership of the alleged chalice was being discussed.’

  Eric Lacy considered.

  ‘I agree with you there,’ he said, ‘and I think it indicates that if he had dug it up he hadn’t told her. There were no flies on old Barny, you know. He’d have realised that if the find came to the ears of the diocesan authorities they might have been able to make him hand the chalice over for safekeeping. Not that I know what the legal position would be in a case like that. Then another thing is that Ethel Ridd was very limited mentally. Even if he had started using a chalice that she had never seen before, it might not have aroused her curiosity in any way. And of course there’s the possibility that he might have made the find during his early years at Ambercombe before she arrived in the place.’

  ‘Yes, I see,’ Pollard replied.

  Another pause followed during which he turned over a number of matters in his mind. Mellow and resonant, the nine strokes of the hour from the cathedral clock hung in the air and died slowly away. He came to a decision.

  ‘Mr Archdeacon, I think we should take you into our confidence, knowing that we can rely on your discretion…’

  As he listened to the account of the afternoon’s investigations at Ambercombe vicarage, Eric Lacy’s eyebrows shot up and descended again only very gradually. His long narrow face had a completely absorbed expression.

  ‘But you know, Superintendent,’ he said, when Pollard finished talking, ‘if it turns out that you’re right about the murderer needing to silence Ethel Ridd because he’d stolen the chalice, it narrows down the enquiry very considerably, doesn’t it?’

  Pollard looked at him enquiringly.

  ‘I’m not sure that I’m with you.’

  ‘Well, Ethel Ridd said that Viney used it in Ambercombe church on the morning of the eleventh of June last year. I can’t remember exact times — it’ll all be in the report of the inquest, of course — but after the service she went back to the vicarage, leaving him to put things straight, and to his prayers. When he didn’t appear at lunchtime she went over to the church, and found him lying dead on the floor. The inquest verdict was death from natural causes. His heart had just stopped. After all, he was eighty-eight. It seems reasonable to deduce from what she said in court that she never saw the chalice again, and probably never gave it another thought until the Georgian plate was displayed in the Chapter House. She worshipped old Viney, and was completely bowled over. And, as I’ve told you, she was a very simple, limited person.’

  Pollard sat deep in thought, absently running a hand through his hair. Toye searched briefly in the case file.

  ‘There’s the mention Miss Ridd made of a hiker, who came in during the service, sir, and went out again.’

  ‘Was her eyesight reasonably good?’ Pollard asked. ‘I mean, might she have mistaken a local inhabitant for a hiker?’

  ‘I can only say that I didn’t notice anything wrong with her sight at any time,’ Eric Lacy replied.

  Pollard went on to ask who would have assumed responsibility for the church building and its contents after Barnabas Viney’s death, and learnt that Mrs Gillard would have done so as churchwarden.

  ‘Mrs Gillard?’ he said thoughtfully. ‘And she stated in court that she had never seen the chalice Ethel Ridd was talking about, and knew nothing about it, didn’t she? Well,
assuming that Ethel Ridd really saw it that morning, it disappeared between the end of the service and the vicarage lunchtime, which certainly narrows things down, but unfortunately it’s some time ago… There’s one other matter where you might be able to help us, Mr Archdeacon. Apart from Ethel Ridd and the reporter, did anyone leave the Consistory Court early? Before the lunch break, I mean? If the murderer decided to act because of her remarks about the chalice, he must have got going pretty quickly. She might, for instance, have decided to shut up the vicarage on her way home, to save going out again.’

  Regretfully, Eric Lacy was of no assistance here. He had sat just forward of the front row of the public seats, and had noticed little or nothing of what went on further back. At his suggestion a telephone call was made to the cathedral’s head verger, who came across the green from his house. Here there was definite help, but of a negative kind. No one, Pollard was assured, had left the Chapter House after the exit of Ethel Ridd and the reporter until the Chancellor had risen for lunch.

  ‘The only other thing I can suggest,’ Eric Lacy said, after the verger had been thanked and had departed, ‘is that you ask Robert Hoyle, the Rector of Pyrford and Ambercombe, if he noticed anything at all worth mentioning about the general public present. He’s an awfully sound nice chap.’

  ‘I’ll do that,’ Pollard replied.

  Soon afterwards he left with Toye, feeling that the interview had produced a number of points needing careful consideration. A soft drizzling rain was falling, through which the great towers of the cathedral reared up, dark and impassive. Strange to think, he meditated, that they were standing there looking exactly the same while Tadenham Abbey was being liquidated, and the funny business over the chalice being hatched.

  As they drove back to Westbridge, they made a provisional timetable for the next morning.

  ‘A look round the church first,’ Pollard said, ‘to get old Viney’s death in focus… Stop grinning, blast you. It’s not an excuse to inspect the architecture. Then Mrs Gillard. I want to know how soon she got there, and if he had put things away after the service, or just left them on the altar, where anybody coming in could have picked up the chalice. And as we’re up there, we’ll drop in on this Sandford chap. List C, and Ridd’s next door neighbour. All this hinges to some extent on what the forensic lab report is, of course.’

  ‘I’m dead sure you’re on a cert there, sir,’ Toye said comfortably.

  His optimism was justified. A report was waiting for them to the effect that the brick dust and fragments just tested were identical with the samples found under the copper in the scullery and in the wound in the deceased’s head.

  Cheered by this first definite progress Pollard rang his wife Jane at their home in Wimbledon. They talked discreetly in their usual code.

  ‘I don’t think the car I came to look at is quite such a write-off as I expected,’ he told her. ‘And while I’m down here I’ve decided that it’s worth following up that second car I told you about.’

  Jane expressed keen interest.

  ‘Well, it looks as though the trip could turn out worthwhile after all,’ she said. ‘I suppose it means that you’ll be away longer than you thought, though? Why, oh why didn’t I marry a nine-to-five commuter, I wonder? Great doings here, by the way. Both the twins have been given parts in the nativity play their class is doing at the end of term. Andrew’s to be the Archangel Gabriel, if you can believe it, and Rose the innkeeper’s wife. I’ve been roped in as an auxiliary wardrobe mistress!’

  Inspector Frost was inevitably chagrined on the following morning when confronted with the report from the forensic laboratory.

  ‘My chaps ought to have spotted the stuff,’ he said gloomily. ‘And from the look of it we’ve wasted days over this bloody vagrant business.’

  Pollard attempted consolation.

  ‘We’d never have spotted it ourselves if the idea that the murder could have been a planned job hadn’t suddenly hit us. And it isn’t a conclusive proof of this, by any means. As to all you’ve done about checking up on strangers and where the locals were on Wednesday, it’s giving us a flying start. Our next move is to work through your List C.’ After some further discussion it was agreed to keep the hunt for a vagrant going, but with reduced manpower, keeping alive the public impression that it was still on.

  This matter having been settled, Pollard and Toye drove to Ambercombe and once more parked outside the church. Planks, an assortment of spades and a wheelbarrow close to Barnabas Viney’s grave suggested that Ethel Ridd was to be buried beside the master she had served so devotedly.

  ‘I’d forgotten about the funeral tomorrow,’ Pollard said. ‘We’d better turn up — one of us, anyway, and keep our eyes open. People have been known to give themselves away at funerals before now.’

  He found the church interesting beyond expectation. There was nothing, he thought, looking around, that a comparatively small outlay for these inflationary days couldn’t put right. A hardly altered little Norman building: it would be a crime to let it deteriorate further. Far better to part with a few pieces of Georgian plate… Somebody was keeping the place spotless. Mrs Gillard, perhaps, now that Ethel Ridd was dead. He moved a few steps to admire an artistically lettered and framed list of vicars through the centuries, and wished Jane could see it, lettering being one of her things. Glancing back at the east window, it struck him that the bare branches of the trees made a fascinating geometrical pattern. He wandered round, studying the memorials and examining the carved pulpit and font cover.

  Toye cleared his throat.

  ‘This cupboard, sir. I reckon they keep the plate here, and the communion wine and wafers. Nice job. Decent bit of wood, and a good strong lock.’

  Pollard came down to earth.

  ‘Once again assuming that Ethel Ridd’s chalice stuck with jewels really existed, I wonder if the old boy kept it in here with the rest of the stuff, and somebody managed to get a look inside and decided to lift the thing when there was an opportunity?’

  They inspected the lock with the help of a torch and a lens, but it showed no sign of having been forced at any time, and no scratches suggesting the trying-out of keys.

  ‘Could the opportunity have been when Viney collapsed and died?’ Pollard mused. ‘Rather suggestive, isn’t it? Let’s go and call on Mrs Gillard, and bring the conversation round to what exactly happened? Surely Ridd would have gone over to the farm for help.’

  They went out into the porch. An elderly man in a frayed brown pullover was in the process of measuring out a grave with the help of a young lad. He gave the Yard pair an appraising stare and nodded briefly in response to Pollard’s greeting.

  ‘You’m Scotland Yard, I takes et?’ he said. ‘Tumble business, this yur murder upalong. I only ’opes yer gets ’ooever dunnet.’

  ‘Yes, it is a terrible business,’ Pollard agreed. ‘I can only tell you we’re all out on the job. You’ll get a lot of people at the funeral tomorrow, I expect.’

  ‘’Sright. Strangers gawpin’ an’ tramplin’ all over the churchyard. Newspapermen an’ men from the telly, I shouldn’t wonder. ’T’ain’t seemly, to my mind, an ’er wouldn’t of wanted ’em, pore maid. ’Er funeral’s nobody’s business but Ambercombe’s.’

  When they were safely out of earshot, Pollard remarked that some people would say that the chap had a parish pump outlook.

  ‘But there’s something to be said for living in a community,’ he added.

  Although a Londoner born and bred, Toye agreed.

  At Ambercombe Barton a woman moving with brisk purpose but looking tired and strained came to the door in response to their knock. She introduced herself as Margaret Gillard, and offered to send one of the men to find her husband.

  ‘I don’t think we need bring him away from his work at the moment, thank you,’ Pollard replied. ‘It’s really you we want to see, Mrs Gillard, because of your connection with church affairs here… What a marvellous kitchen, if I may say so,’ he went on, lo
oking around the huge stone-flagged room which yet managed to be both warm and cosy.

  Margaret Gillard was gratified.

  ‘The place is as old as the hills,’ she told him. ‘I don’t know how many hundreds of years there’ve been Gillards here. We couldn’t think of living anywhere else. The central heating’s made all the difference, of course. It’s oil-fired, and not a scrap of trouble, except when it comes to the oil bills these days. Would you care to come down to the other end?’

  At the south end of the room a big modern window gave on to a fascinating patchwork of fields and woodland. A large sofa, comfortable chairs, a television set, budgerigars and a scatter of papers and magazines indicated the family’s living area. Pollard accepted an offer of coffee.

  When Margaret Gillard returned with it, he opened the conversation by asking her not to be irritated by further questions about the previous Wednesday.

  ‘The fact is,’ he told her, ‘that people often forget things that they noticed at the time. I want you to think over your return home once again, if you will, from the time when you turned the corner into Pyrford. Did you notice anybody or anything in the least unusual?’

  ‘I’ll do that gladly,’ she said, ‘but I can’t believe there was anything. I’ve thought and thought…’

  They had stopped in Pyrford to pick up the children, David and Rosemary, who came back from Westbridge Comprehensive on the school bus, getting in about half past four. She and her husband hadn’t liked the idea of their coming home to an empty house, and had fixed for them to have tea with friends.

  ‘And weren’t we thankful we did, seeing what had happened to poor Ethel Ridd,’ Margaret Gillard said with feeling.

  ‘May I cut in here?’ Pollard interrupted. ‘I’m afraid I frightened your Rosemary yesterday evening. She was locking up the church, and I went rather quickly up the path to see if it was still light enough to see anything inside. I saw her back here afterwards, but I’m afraid she was a bit upset.’

  To his surprise Margaret Gillard frowned and made a movement of irritation.