Unhappy Returns

by Elizabeth Lemarchand

  ‘What a funny girl she is: she never said a word to me when she came in. Talk to me about teenagers! She’s been a real trial this year. All nervy and shut up in herself. I often wish I’d had all boys. They aren’t half the worry, for all the noise and mess they make, and tearing their clothes to rags.’

  ‘Well, I do hope she soon got over the fright I gave her,’ Pollard said. ‘Sorry to interrupt you, Mrs Gillard. Do carry on.’

  There was little more to tell. After chatting with their friends for a short time, she and her husband had driven home with the children, and she was certain that they had not met another car, nor passed anyone on foot. Everything had been as usual in the house.

  ‘Mind you, I was dog tired after being in that stuffy Chapter House all day, and trying to follow what they were all saying, but I’m sure I’d have noticed anything out of the way,’ she concluded.

  Pollard had not expected to learn anything new, and began to steer the conversation towards Barnabas Viney’s death.

  ‘One of the things that makes this case difficult is the alternative ways of getting to the vicarage, and getting away again,’ he said. ‘I’d like your opinion on the possibilities, as you must know the lie of the land so well. Could we look at this large-scale map?’

  They all moved to upright chairs at the big kitchen table, and Toye spread out the map. Margaret Gillard agreed that it was odd that a rough sort of man could have come up through Pyrford without being noticed.

  ‘There’s some people down there who seem to live at their windows,’ she said. ‘Of course he could have gone round behind Pyrford church and come up through the woods, or even come down along the top of the Whitehallows. Hikers come that way in summer, but tramps, as we used to call them, never would. There’s nothing to scrounge or steal up on the hills.’

  Pollard seized on the operative word.

  ‘Miss Ridd said something about a hiker looking in at the church on the morning Mr Viney died, didn’t she? That would have been in June, of course.’

  She gave him a quick look.

  ‘Funny you should mention that. I’ll remember it to my dying day. She’d found him lying on the floor in the church, and came running over here like a madwoman, saying that the hiker had come back and killed him. My husband had just come in to his dinner, and we dashed over expecting to find Mr Viney hurt and the place ransacked. It was all nonsense, of course, and after the inquest verdict was death from natural causes, she gave over talking so silly.’

  ‘It must have been a dreadful shock to you,’ Pollard said sympathetically. ‘As churchwarden I expect you were afraid you’d find the plate gone.’

  ‘I was, because with our Patronal coming along on June the twenty-fourth, Reverend Viney had been on at me to fetch the best plate from the bank in good time. You know how old people worry about things. So as I’d been into Westbridge the week before, I’d brought it back. While we were waiting for the ambulance I saw the key was in the lock of the cupboard where everything’s kept, and looked inside, but the plate box was there and nothing was missing. I turned the key and brought it away.’

  Nothing was missing … except, perhaps, a medieval chalice of fantastic value, Pollard thought, watching Toye making a note of this important piece of information. Had the hiker come back, found the old man lying dead — or apparently dead, inspected the contents of the cupboard, and lifted the chalice just used in the service? But didn’t that rule out the theory that the thief was Ethel Ridd’s murderer, alert to the danger to himself of her unexpected remarks in the Consistory Court? Surely only someone local would have reacted so promptly, and had the necessary knowledge of her movements and the local geography to carry out the murder so efficiently, and apparently without attracting a vestige of attention? A casual hiker hardly seemed to fit the bill.

  Pollard was briefly tempted to comment on Ethel Ridd’s reference in court to a missing chalice, but decided against it. If the thief were the murderer, the faintest rumour that the police were taking its existence seriously would almost certainly lead him to further drastic steps. Taking it out of the country, for instance. There was no evidence that Margaret Gillard lacked discretion, but she was certainly forthright in speech… With sudden wry humour Pollard recognised that above all he wanted the Tadenham chalice to be a reality, and to recover it. Quite disgraceful for a CID man investigating a homicide, he told himself severely. He asked a few more unnecessary questions to end the interview on a convincing note, and thanked Margaret Gillard for her help.

  ‘I don’t seem to have done much,’ she said, escorting them to the door. ‘We’ll be thankful when the poor soul’s safely in her grave tomorrow. It’s getting me down being pestered by these reporters, and trying to fix for everything being done decent and proper… There is Mr Sandford,’ she added, as a battered MG shot past, heading for Pyrford. ‘We’ll be having another funeral one of these days the way he drives on these narrow roads.’

  ‘Blast the man,’ Pollard said, getting into the police car a few moments later. ‘We’ve only missed him by about five minutes. We’d better take the Reverend Robert Hoyle next. He’ll probably be trying to think of something to say at the funeral.’

  Chapter 6

  Robert Hoyle stood with his back to the fireplace in his study, frowning in concentration as he rammed tobacco into the bowl of a pipe with his thumb.

  ‘No,’ he said at last. ‘I haven’t the faintest recollection of anybody going out of the Chapter House after Ethel Ridd and the reporter left. But don’t take it that nobody did, all the same. I was concentrating on the proceedings.’

  He sat down, and glanced interrogatively at Pollard as he lit up, looked worried and rather distracted. His desk was littered with pieces of paper covered with jottings, but he had seemed to welcome the interruption of the Yard’s visit.

  ‘Have you been in touch with Archdeacon Lacy recently?’ Pollard asked.

  ‘About his idea that there could be something in what Ethel Ridd said about a jewelled chalice being used by Barnabas Viney on occasions? Yes. He rang me, and seemed tremendously excited. Church plate’s his thing, of course.’

  ‘What was your reaction?’

  ‘Well,’ Robert Hoyle hesitated briefly, and the vestige of a grin twitched the corners of his mouth, ‘I had the decency to put up a show of interest, but frankly it strikes me as pretty far-fetched. I suppose I’m allergic to the subject of church plate at the moment. It’s bedevilled me from the moment I accepted this living. You know all about the move to sell some of Ambercombe’s, and the petition to the Consistory Court? I felt the whole business was humiliating: washing the parish’s dirty linen in public. And now poor old Ethel Ridd’s started another hare.’

  ‘You think she imagined the existence of this chalice, then?’ Pollard asked.

  ‘Yes, I do. Both she and old Viney apparently lived in a sort of religious fantasy world of pre-Reformation days.’

  ‘Where you can help us most, I think,’ Pollard went on, ‘is over Inspector Frost’s List C. This is the list of local people who, purely on paper of course, could have killed Ethel Ridd. They were about during the vital period on Wednesday, November the nineteenth, and can’t produce adequate supporting evidence of their alleged whereabouts. Can you tell us if any of them had known links with her?’

  ‘Up to a point, that’s an easy one,’ Robert Hoyle replied, taking the list proffered by Toye. ‘Naturally I can’t speak of her contacts before I came here last March, but since then the short answer is that she virtually hadn’t any locally. She was living the life of a recluse in the cottage old Viney left her, and only emerged to attend services at Ambercombe, do her caretaking job at the vicarage, and come down here once a week to draw her pension and do necessary shopping. She refused to speak either to me or my wife, although we made all the advances we could. You see, she saw me as representing the authority which had put an end to Ambercombe’s separate identity as a parish. But I’ve never come across any serious hostility t
o her. She was looked on as a sort of comic eccentric.’

  Pollard considered.

  ‘Her chief contact seems to have been with your shop-cum-post office, then?’

  To his surprise, there was a perceptible pause, and he thought he sensed deliberation.

  ‘Yes. It’s run by George Aldridge, my senior churchwarden, and his wife. George led the campaign to sell the Ambercombe plate, and so was in opposition to Ethel Ridd, who was one of the official objectors. But any idea that he murdered her on this score is fantastic, of course.’

  ‘Why didn’t Mr Aldridge stay in court for the whole hearing, sir?’ Toye asked. ‘You’d expect him to, being the senior churchwarden.’

  Robert Hoyle glanced at him with interest.

  ‘I see you’re a church man, Inspector. It’s a fair question. But we’d agreed beforehand that he should push off at lunchtime. His grocery supplier — Snip, it’s called — delivers on Wednesday afternoons, and takes the next week’s order and whatever, and it was important for him to get back to the shop. His wife copes with most of the post office work but has nothing to do with the shop. I was in court all day myself, you see, and Mrs Gillard, the junior churchwarden, was there as well.’

  ‘That seems to dispose of Mr Aldridge, then,’ Pollard said, making a mental note to check up on the time taken over the delivery of the stock. ‘I’ve got another copy of List C here. May we run through it, on the chance of a possible link with Ethel Ridd suggesting itself to you?’

  He read out, with pauses between them, some dozen names, at each of which Robert Hoyle shook his head.

  ‘Miss M. Rook, Laburnum Cottage, Pyrford?’

  ‘Hold it,’ Robert Hoyle said suddenly. ‘I’ve never heard of any contact here, but if Ethel Ridd had one with anybody else down here or in Ambercombe, Martha Rook would hear about it. She’s known locally as the News Chronicle. Heaven only knows how she gets on to things, but she does. Her cottage is opposite the shop.’

  ‘Thanks,’ Pollard said. ‘We’ll pay the lady a call. It’s a type that’s often worth cultivating. Next on the list is Mr W. Sandford, 3 Quarry Cottages, Ambercombe.’

  ‘Bill Sandford. He’s an interesting chap. Ex-rat race. Some relative left him a little money, and he opted out of a London job and came down here. He does part-time lecturing at the Westbridge College of Education to make ends meet, and otherwise goes his own way. He’s an agnostic — or thinks he is — but we get on rather well. He’s a compulsive coat-trailer, though, and used to bait poor Ethel Ridd, I’m afraid. But it’s impossible to think of him killing her. Simply absurd.’

  ‘Mr H. and Mrs M. Redshaw, The Old Rectory, Pyrford?’

  ‘They’re our village plutocrats. A literary pair. Of course you’ll have come across his high-powered thrillers? Mrs Redshaw writes verses full of sweetness and light, which appear in lowbrow magazines for women and little booklets at Christmas. My wife came on a gem the other day, called To a Water Vole. It began “God’s little water whimsy”.’

  ‘Not really?’ Pollard ejaculated incredulously.

  ‘Yes, really,’ Robert Hoyle assured him with a broad grin. ‘She gives little talks on the radio, too.’

  Toye, looking puzzled, made a note that Mrs M. Redshaw wrote verses.

  ‘This is abominable of me,’ Robert Hoyle added. ‘Both the Redshaws are most generous to the parish. It’s just that we’re on different wavelengths. You’ll see what I mean. As to Ethel Ridd, Hugh Redshaw may have used her obvious eccentricities in one of his books, but I’m sure neither he nor his wife ever had any meaningful contact with her, to use that ghastly adjective.’

  ‘You’ve aroused my curiosity,’ Pollard told him. ‘We’ve never interviewed literary types before, have we, Toye? I’ll just finish off these names, and then we’ll remove ourselves.’

  Robert Hoyle had no further information to offer, however, and apologised for having given so little help.

  ‘One never can tell what will turn out to be useful,’ Pollard replied. ‘You’ve been most patient, and I’m sorry to have taken up so much of your time when you’ve a lot in hand. We’ll be along at the funeral tomorrow, if that’s any comfort to you.’

  After giving further reassurances, he left with Toye. They drove to a pub on the Westbridge road, and assessed the morning’s work over sandwiches and beer in a corner of the bar, talking quietly, although there were few other patrons.

  They agreed that both Margaret Gillard and Robert Hoyle gave the impression of being sound and straightforward.

  ‘Both a bit lacking in imagination, perhaps?’ Pollard added.

  ‘Seeing that they both wrote the chalice right off?’ Toye asked.

  ‘Partly that. Their psychological make-up, too. As to the chalice having turned up, the morning’s score is two-nil against, anyway. It makes the theory that the murderer stole it and felt obliged to shut Ethel Ridd’s mouth for good less convincing, doesn’t it? But we did get one or two bits of helpful gen from Hoyle about Ridd and the locals.’

  After further discussion they decided to start off the afternoon’s enquiries with a call on Martha Rook at Laburnum Cottage.

  ‘If she’s one of those who live at their windows, according to Mrs Gillard,’ Pollard said, ‘she may have seen Aldridge’s return from Marchester on the afternoon of the murder, and what he did after the stock was delivered. By the way, did it strike you that Hoyle hung fire just a fraction when Aldridge was first mentioned?’

  Toye had, but did not think it very significant. Rectors and their churchwardens pretty often didn’t see eye to eye, and Reverend Hoyle probably wanted to be fair to the chap.

  ‘Then there’s this Sandford who lived next door to the deceased,’ he went on, a note of disapproval in his voice. ‘He doesn’t sound all that stable to me. Work-shy, to start with. Now if there really was this chalice and somebody pinched it, on the face of it I’d say the job could be right up his street. Much more likely than that the writer couple were in on it.’

  ‘Sandford’s certainly one of our priorities,’ Pollard agreed. ‘I wonder where the hell he was off to this morning? Isn’t there something in Frost’s notes about the days he works at this college in Westbridge?’

  Reference to the file established that Bill Sandford’s working days were Mondays, Tuesdays and Fridays.

  ‘He may have gone off anywhere today, then, seeing it’s a Wednesday,’ Pollard said. ‘Perhaps Martha Rook, alias the News Chronicle, may be able to tell us if he’s come back yet. But as we’re in Pyrford, we may as well see the Aldridges after Rook. The Redshaws, and all the other people on List C who hadn’t personal contacts with Ridd as far as the Rector knows, can wait.’

  Ten minutes later they were on the road again, heading for Pyrford.

  Martha Rook had a diminutive face with close-packed and slightly protuberant features. Her grey eyes were appraising behind steel-rimmed spectacles, and Pollard was instantly reminded of a small animal keenly alive to every development in its surroundings. He estimated her age as around seventy, and her circumstances as comfortable on a modest standard. According to the case file she had spent her entire working life in a grocery store at Westbridge, working her way up from a junior counter assistant to the cash desk. Her snug cottage faced the Village Stores and the Seven Stars across the green, and a Windsor armchair well supplied with cushions was strategically placed in the sitting-room window, so that she could also see all entrants to the village from the main road. A half-finished grey knitted stocking had been left on the chair when she got up to go to her front door.

  ‘Well, I never,’ she remarked briskly as she ushered Pollard and Toye into the room, and stooped to replace a draught excluder in the form of a grotesquely elongated velvet dachshund. ‘Three policemen calling inside a week. That’s a thing I never thought to come my way. Please to take a seat.’

  She indicated a small settee by the fire, and switched on a lamp heavily encrusted with shells before sitting down facing her visitors on the oth
er side of the hearth.

  ‘Rector Hoyle sent you over, I’ll be bound,’ she added unequivocally.

  ‘Quite right, Miss Rook,’ Pollard replied, realising that finesse was not called for. ‘You’ve got about the best view in the village of all the comings and goings, haven’t you? We thought you might be able to help us, as you didn’t go into Marchester on November the nineteenth.’

  ‘No more I did.’ Martha Rook’s tone was regretful. ‘A shocking cold I’d had, and the cough was still on me — a real noisy one. You’ve got to be a bit careful when you’ve topped your threescore and ten, and live on your own like I do.’

  ‘So you were upstairs in bed?’ Pollard asked in disappointment.

  ‘Mercy on you, no! The day I take to my bed, I’ll not be coming down again till they carry me feet first. I had a nice lie-in, true enough, but I was up and doing in time to wave off the coach party. All our outings start from outside the Stars, you see.’

  ‘That’s fine,’ Pollard said. ‘We know you’ve already told Inspector Frost that you didn’t see any strangers about that day, but we’d like you to think back all the same. It’s from midday onwards that interests us. Of course, you weren’t by the window all the time?’

  Martha Rook clearly had no inhibitions on the subject of her observation post. By ten o’clock she had settled down with her knitting, and got a nice bit done that morning.

  ‘Dead as a doornail the village was, with so many off to Marchester,’ she told Pollard, ‘until I’d had my dinner and cleared up, and gone back again with the one o’clock news switched on. Quarter past one the Marchester bus came in, and you could have knocked me down with a feather. There was Ethel Ridd, large as life! Nobody else: just her. Whatever could have happened for her to come away like that, I thought, seeing she’d been so hot against the Ambercombe plate being sold? I was so taken aback that I was a bit slow getting to the door and calling to her to come in and have a bite of something, and she went stalking up the road for dear life, pretending she hadn’t heard. Then nothing else happened until the folk with cars started coming back.’