Poppy Redfern and the Midnight Murders

by Tessa Arlen

  Inspector Hargreaves cleared his throat. “And you saw Miss Newcombe go into her house?”

  “No, their front door is screened from the road by a hedge. I heard her lift the door latch—she called out good night to us and then I heard the door shut.”

  “Door shut.” He repeated as he wrote. “And you think that Miss Wantage and the sergeant followed you down Smithy Lane?”

  “I know they did. I walked on ahead and had already turned right onto Streams Lane when they reached the smithy—where the Wantages live.” He looked up from his notes, his eyebrows raised. “I looked back,” I said. “I could see them quite clearly against the white plaster walls of the house.” I did not say that they had been locked in each other’s arms.

  “And the rest of your patrol, how long did it take you to reach the churchyard?”

  No need for hesitation now. “Forty minutes, no stops, and we were walking at a fast pace.” I nodded down at Bess, who was sitting upright at our feet, her long ears pricked forward as she considered the policeman.

  “You didn’t check your watch, or the church clock as you walked past the graveyard?”

  “The church clock hasn’t kept time for years. But I was home a little after midnight; I checked my watch then.” He flipped his notebook shut and tucked it and his pencil into the inside breast pocket of his rumpled suit jacket.

  “You didn’t see Miss Newcombe in the churchyard as you walked up the hill?” And just like that, the tenor of our interview changed.

  “See Miss Newcombe?” The thought was an unwelcome one. “No, I didn’t.”

  “And, as you say, you saw or heard nothing unusual? Not as you were walking up Water Lane toward the churchyard?”

  “I would have said if I had.” I looked directly into his face.

  “Miss Newcombe was a friend of yours?”

  “Not really. I knew her, though; she grew up in the village. I didn’t go to school here . . .” I stopped, at a loss to explain how isolating my girlhood had been.

  “Haldean, wasn’t it?” He said the name of my pretentious girls’ boarding school—a place where I had spent ten miserable years, which had successfully separated me from the other children of my age in the village. His expression made what he was thinking quite clear: a Haldean girl would not run around with a baker’s daughter.

  Part of me wanted to say that it wasn’t the difference in background that had made my grandparents send me away to school quite as much as their belief that growing up without brothers or sisters would make me an even more shy child than I already was. They had hoped that the company of other girls of my age and background would bring me out more. But I am a natural loner, so if anything, Haldean simply made me more of one.

  “Doreen and Ivy are at least two years younger than I am.” I sounded stiff, defensive even, and flushed with embarrassment.

  “If you remember anything at all, however trivial it might seem, please get in touch with Constable Jones.”

  He picked up his hat and in two strides was out of the drawing room and into our cramped hall, where he barked his shin on an oak settle. I followed him. There had been one question nagging away at me all morning—I might as well ask it. “Chief Inspector Har—”

  “It’s just plain ‘inspector,’ Miss Redfern.”

  “Did anyone else see her last night after eleven o’clock . . . I mean apart from her . . . ?” I couldn’t bring myself to say the word.

  The deep lines from his nose to the corners of his mouth and his pouchy eyes gave him the look of a tired basset hound, but his expression was kind. “Her murderer? It’s too early in our inquiry to know—we won’t have the time of her death for a day or two.”

  The glance he cast my way, as we said good-bye, was thoughtful. I’m certainly on his list of suspects, I thought as I closed the front door.

  * * *

  —

  AFTER A VERY late lunch—tinned sardines on toast, with gooseberries and custard to follow—I did the washing up and then walked up through Granny’s vegetable garden at the back of the lodge to the old orchard. I opened the gate and Bess scampered through and made for our favorite tree. I dropped two threadbare cushions and a string bag with books and pencils on the grass. Then I picked a couple of ripe apples from a branch overhead and we settled ourselves under its shade.

  “Now, Bess, not on my stomach, please—goodness, your breath is fishy.” Bess had finished off the remains of my lunch and was ready for her apple. “Who on earth would want to kill Doreen?” It was a question I had been asking myself all day, and no answer had come to me. “I suppose there are plenty of people who could have killed her—but who on earth would want to kill a very pretty, rather spoiled, and, to be frank, awfully silly girl like Doreen?” A flicker of guilt—she didn’t deserve to be judged unkindly, but then she wasn’t a particularly kind girl either.

  Doreen had always concentrated on what made her happy before she had considered others. It was the inevitable flaw of being pretty and popular. I finished my apple and gave the core to Bess, who had watched every bite as I had nibbled it down to a treat.

  Then we settled down and I reached for an old school exercise book. It fell open to two closely written paragraphs of a novel I have been working on for months about a newspaper reporter who works in London during the Blitz.

  “I wonder what Ilona would make of murder in a backwater like Little Buffenden if she had to report on it,” I asked Bess. I couldn’t imagine that someone as assertive as Ilona would have politely provided answers to unimaginative questions from a dull provincial policeman without throwing in an opinion or two of her own. She would have had Hargreaves gratefully thanking her for her observations as he wrote them down word for word. As a newspaper reporter who is used to handling tricky situations, Ilona is supremely confident in dealing with the police. She also lives a sophisticated life of enviable independence in an elegant service flat in Piccadilly. In short, Ilona Linthwaite is the sort of woman I long to be, and the heroine of my novel.

  Ilona, in some form or another, has been with me for years: my imaginary playmate when I was very young—she was always the one who dared me to be naughty! My confidante throughout my years at Haldean. During the classes I disliked the most—algebra, geometry, and math—I would sit silently at my desk, with a “listening” face, as Ilona and I escaped into a world of fantasy adventures. Now, no longer content with merely imagining “What if . . . ?” I had decided to write a novel, and who better to be its protagonist than my alter ego?

  I flipped to the back of my exercise book and wrote down a timetable of my patrol through the village. And then I jotted down the highlights of my last conversation with Mrs. Wantage.

  “What time did Ivy get home from the dance at the base last night?” I had asked her.

  “When her dad told her to be home.” Mrs. Wantage’s daughter was not the one lying murdered under a laurel hedge in the churchyard. “That Joe Perrone walked her home and she was in by eleven.”

  I counted on my fingers. Doreen had been safely home at ten to eleven. So, what was she doing out again after she had said good night to her friends?

  My fingertips did more addition. Doreen must have left the safety of her house, and then she went to, or was taken to, the churchyard. That meant she went up Smithy Lane to the edge of the green and then on up the High Street to the church—a twenty-minute stroll, less if she was walking fast. My next thought brought me upright from the grass, toppling a sleeping Bess. I had walked past the churchyard at about twenty to twelve. Was Doreen already dead or—the thought appalled me—about to die, as Bess and I sauntered past just feet away?

  Pull yourself together! I told myself. If Doreen was fighting for her life we would certainly have heard something—Bess most certainly would. Doreen must have been killed after that; it must have been around midnight, when I was safely back at the lodge.
<
br />   FOUR

  Just a moment, darling, before you run off to change. Your grandfather and I have something we want to talk to you about.” Granny opened her mending basket and searched for gray wool to darn Grandad’s already much-mended socks. I hovered in the drawing room doorway. I knew exactly what was coming next.

  “I know how important it is for you to keep yourself usefully occupied and to do your bit for the war effort, but it would be madness for you to continue patrolling the village at night after this terrible thing has happened.” She glanced at my grandfather as he put his newspaper to one side. “I will have a word with the vicar and he will find someone else to do the job. A big strapping lad; that’s who they should have had in the first place.” Her voice was quiet with conviction, her customary vagueness gone. “I am sorry, my darling, it is all most unfortunate, but there it is.”

  “There are no big strapping lads in the village, Granny. They are all off at the war.” I cast a hopeful look at Grandad. It was he who had so wholeheartedly supported my ARP training, but Granny held her own quiet authority, especially where I was concerned. I made myself wait respectfully. The last thing I wanted was to be gated in the lodge night after night.

  My grandfather took a sip from his glass of port and settled himself more comfortably in his chair. “Both your grandmother and I are not prepared to let you patrol the village at night, my dear.” He put down his glass on the table next to his chair and shot us each a look that was both triumphant and playful. “Alone, that is.”

  Optimism flared briefly, but Granny’s pale brows were arched almost to her hairline, and she sighed as she ran her darning needle through the heel of her husband’s sock. “I am quite sure she should resign from ARP night duty until this awful business has been cleared up at the American airfield, Jasper.”

  “I don’t think we should jump to the conclusion that Doreen Newcombe was killed by her American friend, Alice. That is a job for Wickham CID.” Grandad’s voice was loud in its emphasis. He frowned, and so did Granny, and her frowns last longer. He went on with less volume. “Would you agree to her continuing if she had one of my Home Guard to escort her?”

  “I can’t imagine for one moment that either Mr. Edwards or Mr. Wilson would be of any use if someone waylaid them on a dark night. They are both over sixty!” Grandad cleared his throat, steepled the fingers of both hands together, and waited courteously to make sure Granny had finished her objection. “It would be utter folly,” she finished.

  He nodded in apparent agreement. “I wasn’t referring to Private Edwards or Sergeant Wilson, my dear, but to Corporal Ritchie. He’s an alert and fit young man—”

  “Who couldn’t join up because of his asthma,” Granny pointed out. “And Sid has always been rather a timid boy—not his fault, of course.”

  “Nothing timid about Sid Ritchie: a year in the Home Guard has done wonders for his morale—”

  “But any sudden shock might bring on an asthma attack, and what would he protect Poppy with, a cricket bat, perhaps, or maybe a popgun?”

  Grandad, looking pleased with himself, was now ready to give us his news. He swirled the port in his glass; took a long, appreciative sniff; and smiled at us both before he took a sip. His smile transformed him into a younger Jasper, one who had charmed my grandmother into marrying him fifty years ago. “Why, with his Sten gun, of course! Sid and several others of the Guard have spent the last two days at Wickham GHQ being trained in the use of small arms. They got back this afternoon. The Little Buffenden and Lower Netherton Home Guard are now fully armed!”

  “Sid Ritchie with a machine gun?” Granny put down her mending. “Good heavens above, but would he have the pluck to use it in . . . real life?”

  Grandfather’s laugh was courteous, as if she had made a joke. “What a strange question. Of course he would use it in ‘real life.’ Corporal Ritchie will be well equipped to escort Poppy until the CID have discovered who committed this terrible murder. That is, of course”—he cleared his throat—“if you are in complete agreement that she may continue her duty, if she has an armed escort.”

  My grandmother pulled a needleful of yarn through the sock and looked first at me and then at her husband. The mention of duty had its effect—the Redferns abide by duty to king and country first and foremost. “If he has a proper gun and knows how to use it . . . then I suppose . . .”

  I didn’t wait for any more objections to be raised, but I was careful not to look too triumphant. “Don’t worry, Granny, most of my patrolling is done at dusk, and we are off duty before midnight, when everyone in the village is tucked up for the night.”

  “It’s not the village I am worried about.”

  * * *

  —

  “THAT GUN LOOKS frightfully heavy, Sid.” I reached out to touch the cold gleam of the gun’s metal barrel.

  Sid lifted his shoulder to move the weapon away. “Crikey, whatever you do, don’t touch it, Miss Redfern. It’s a submachine gun and it’s loaded. This thing could bring down an elephant.”

  He looked so terribly serious standing at the bottom of the vicarage garden carrying this menacing-looking weapon on a perfect summer evening that I had to turn my head away. I’ve known Sid for most of my life; he is only a year or two younger than I, but I have always felt decades older. He is an earnest young man who suffers from a complete deficit of wit.

  “It would be better if you briefed me on patrol, Miss Redfern, because I promised Mum I would be home by eleven pip emma.”

  “Pip emma?” Since he joined my grandad’s Home Guard, Sid’s vocabulary has been larded with military jargon.

  “Royal Air Force for ‘p.m.’; ‘a.m.’ would be ‘ack emma.’” Sid imitated what I supposed he fondly imagined were the flat, clipped tones of the fictional fighter pilot and hero of The Boy’s Own Paper: Squadron Leader James Bigglesworth, known affectionately to his fans as Biggles, who performs acts of heroic derring-do in his Spitfire fighter plane, or “Spit,” as Biggles devotees call it.

  “Right then, Corporal Ritchie, here is your brief: we patrol the entire village and surrounding area twice: once as a reminder about blackout and then again when everyone leaves the pub at closing time—they get a bit careless after a pint or two.”

  I had only half his attention. “Would you put the dog on your other side, Miss Redfern?” He blew his nose. “I’m allergic to dogs and cats—they give me asthma.”

  “Enough of this Miss Redfern business. It’s Poppy, all right? And you can tell her yourself. Just say ‘down’ very firmly and she’ll leave you alone. That’s the way,” I added, as Bess lost interest in someone who bleated like a sheep and ran on ahead. “Where was I? Right, we usually reach the Wheatsheaf by ten o’clock, and then continue to end our patrol at the Rose and Crown by eleven. Another once around the village and then up Water Lane to the church. That’s it—nothing to it, really.”

  “Unless there’s a raid.” He tightened both hands on his gun, and I had to bite my cheeks and look away to keep from laughing.

  We were halfway down the High Street with the village green on our right. I could see the Rose and Crown on its far side: there were several elderly men sitting outside the pub on wooden benches, their backs against stone walls still warm from the day’s sun.

  “The Rose and the ’Sheaf will be chockablock tonight because of what happened to Doreen—they can’t stop talking about it; it’s disgusting how they gossip.” Sid’s usually mild expression was wrinkled with disapproval. I couldn’t have agreed with him more: all talk, all day, throughout the village and its surrounding farms, had been of Doreen’s violent death.

  “Cripes.” Sid blushed with embarrassment. “And here’s Mr. Newcombe. You’ve got to hand it to him, Poppy, he’s all about duty.”

  Ordinarily our baker reminds me of a robin. He has bright, shiny eyes and often puts his head to one side when he’s listening to you
, but the man who was cycling toward us had none of the sprightliness of a cheery bird. His face was haggard and he seemed to slump forward over the handlebars of his bike as he neared us.

  Mr. Newcombe would have been baking his first batch of bread on the night when Doreen was killed, I thought as he drew level with us. I lifted my hand in greeting. “Good evening, Mr. Newcombe. I am so sorry . . . about Doreen.”

  “Thank you, lass.” The baker stopped and stood astride his bike. He couldn’t bring himself to look at us; he gazed up the village street to the haven of his bakery. “I am not sure it has quite . . . well, you know, sunk in . . . yet. The house is empty and quiet, but Mrs. Newcombe told me we must carry on, as if she was still with us. She’s right, of course . . . and the village has to eat . . .” He put his right foot on the pedal.

  “Mum said she would pop round and look in on Mrs. Newcombe, with her condolences,” Sid said, staring at his boots, so he wouldn’t have to see the pain on Mr. Newcombe’s face.

  “Thank you, Sid, that’s kind of her. Beryl will appreciate it. Best be getting on.” He pushed down with his right foot and cycled on.

  “Whoever killed Doreen was off his rocker,” Sid said as the baker disappeared inside his shop. “She was such a gentle, pretty girl. Why would someone want to do something like that to her?” He adjusted the strap of his gun. It looked completely out of place hanging off his round shoulders.

  Sid is quite good-looking: he has a well-shaped head, a nice straight nose, and lots of dark brown hair slicked down carefully with Brylcreem. He would be almost handsome if he didn’t look quite so . . . well, I have to say it: daft. His large brown eyes are by far his most attractive feature, and now they were swimming with tears. “I wouldn’t mind getting my hands on that Yank; I can tell you that for nothing. Doreen was a wonderful girl, she was . . . the sweetest in the world.” His voice broke and he dashed tears from his eyes with the sleeve of his jacket. I reached out and patted him on the shoulder as he struggled to pull himself together.