by Tessa Arlen
I folded the last frock. It was a lovely rose-and-cream georgette silk with a flared skirt. As I carefully shook out the skirt, a folded piece of paper dropped out of its pocket.
I picked it up. It was folded in four and the words “To My Doreen” encircled in a lopsided heart were printed in ink on the outside quarter. The last thing in the world I wanted to do was read a love letter to Doreen Newcombe. It was, most probably, from Brian Chambers, who had asked her to marry him on his last home leave and had died weeks later at El Alamein. I turned the folded paper over. On the other hand, this letter might be from someone else, written recently—perhaps days before Doreen had been murdered.
I don’t know how long I stood there, holding the folded paper, trying to decide whether I should read it or not.
“It’s pandemonium out there.” I jumped as Mrs. Ritchie, the village schoolmistress, and Mrs. Angus put their heads around the door. “It seems that all their boys”—Mrs. Ritchie jerked her head toward the raised voices behind her in the hall—“need size eights and there are only size tens, nines, and sixes. Mrs. Martin asked if you would go through the box of shoes set aside for summer and see if there are any winter ones mixed in. I’ll give you a hand if you like.” She came into the room and I thrust Doreen’s letter back into the pocket of the dress and laid it on top of the others in the drawer.
“Of course we can have a look, but I think they are mostly canvas shoes.” I closed the drawer and helped her tug out an old lidless trunk from behind Mrs. Martin’s desk.
“We’ve already been through that trunk; there’s nothing in there for winter.” Mrs. Angus looked tired and dispirited. Doreen’s mother arriving with her daughter’s clothes had reduced Little Buffenden’s already keyed-up mothers to a collective hopelessness.
The rest of the afternoon passed without any of the usual arguments that desperate mothers on the lookout for clothes for their children were often reduced to.
“I am utterly relieved to report that after three years of war, the mothers of Little Buffenden can now manage to attend a clothes swap without any serious fallings-out,” I said to Granny as I sank down into the sofa and kicked off my shoes.
“And I am sure it was because you were there to help smooth things along, my dear. Thank you.”
“Or perhaps they were all on their best behavior because Mrs. Newcombe donated Doreen’s entire wardrobe to the clothes swap. It was heartrending to see her, Granny. She is so completely devastated.”
Granny’s head bent over her knitting as she counted stitches. “Yes, there is nothing more terrible than the loss of a child.”
* * *
—
MRS. NEWCOMBE’S FACE as she had walked away from the village hall, and a love letter to a dead girl, made me a preoccupied companion as Sid and I turned into Streams Lane that night. On our last loop of the night’s patrol I was still lost in my thoughts. I couldn’t decide whether to retrieve the letter from the village hall storage room and hand it over to Inspector Hargreaves, or just leave it in the pocket of Doreen’s dress, where it might be read by its next wearer. I made intermittent mm-hm noises throughout Sid’s lecture on ground artillery as I argued with myself.
We were almost to the wooden bridge in the lane when Bess, who had run on ahead, started to bark: loud and staccato—her alarm bark.
“Strewth.” Sid put his hands over his ears. “What a bloomin’ racket—it goes right through your head. Can’t you get her to be quiet?”
I hurried forward to the edge of the deep stream that bisected the farm’s cow pastures. Leaning out over the bridge, I shone my torch down into the water—trying to train its beam in the direction of her frantic barking. I couldn’t see Bess, but her yelps were coming from underneath the wooden bridge, which amplified them like a loud-hailer. It was futile to call out to her, but I did anyway. “Come, Bess,” I shrieked over a further volley. “Come, Bessie, good girl.” I whistled, but it only served to increase her volume, making me even more anxious. Something was not right. “She won’t come.” I turned in panic to Sid. “I think she’s stuck—maybe she’s caught up in the weeds. You have to help me, come on.”
“No flippin’ fear of me going down there. That water must be freezing. I don’t want to catch pneumonia, thank you very much.” I pushed him out of my way and scrambled down the side of the steep bank to land booted feet in the water. It was extraordinarily cold. Crouched low, I trained the beam of my torch under the bridge, cursing its ineffectual light.
The water was swirling around my legs, fast and strong. I still couldn’t see Bess, no matter where I shone my torch. Panic almost submerged reason: she weighed only twenty pounds; she could be caught in the swift current and swept downstream. “Bess,” I called into the darkness, wading forward, water up to my knees. “Bessie, come on, girl.” For the life of me I couldn’t see her, but her shrill barks bounced off the bank and the wooden roof of the bridge overhead in short, sharp bursts.
I shook my worse-than-useless torch in exasperation. What a ridiculous thing it was! And then its feeble beam picked out the outline of my little dog’s head, her long ears pricked forward. She appeared to be standing on a large boulder yelling at something with such intensity that her forepaws came up off the boulder with each effort.
Bending under the low beams of the bridge, I sloshed toward her, the leather soles of my boots slipping on the round stones of the stream bed. As I got closer I could see that her ruff was up from the base of her neck, down her spine, to her tailless rump, which was wagging in furious agitation.
“Bessie, how on earth did you manage to get up there?” The water was frothing around the base of her boulder and was well over my knees. I slipped on the slick stones of the stream bed and went down on one knee, making me gasp with shock: the water was like ice. I reached out an arm toward her, but she completely ignored me.
“Why on earth do I bother?” I shouted at her in frustration. “You are the most obstinate and annoying dog.” I righted myself and took two more wading steps, and then I saw why she was so upset.
In the light of my torch, not three feet away, a bloated white face, its head pillowed on the pebble bed of the stream, turned to gaze up at me. Long dark hair streamed like ribbons in the current. How I managed to keep walking forward I simply don’t know. I took two more steps until I was half crouched over the submerged body of Ivy Wantage.
Bess scrambled around on her boulder until she was as close to me as she could get. “It’s all right, Bess, good girl. You found her, didn’t you?” The little dog squirmed up into my arms and covered my face in kisses. She was soaking wet. “Good girl, clever girl. Well done.” I dropped my face into her ruff to block the sight of Ivy’s drowned face. “Oh, Bessie, oh, Bessie.” I was shivering all over. Holding her in my arms, I started to back up.
Above us on the bridge I heard Sid’s booted feet pacing up and down. “Sid,” I called. “Sid, come down here, quickly.”
“No fear, Miss Redfern.” I’ve noticed that Sid always becomes more Biggles when he doesn’t want to do something. “I can’t bally well get wet at this time of night—I’ll get bronchitis. Wait a mo’; can’t you just pick her up and bring her back?”
Pick her up? My shock at finding Ivy was so great that for a moment I imagined that Sid was suggesting I carry her heavy, waterlogged body up onto the stream bank.
“Sid, it’s Ivy. I’ve found Ivy!”
“Ivy? What the heck is she doing down there at this time of night? It can’t be her. She went over to Lower Netherton to see her auntie yesterday evening.”
“Is he really this dim?” I said to Bess. I could feel my self-control beginning to snap—my voice was almost strident. “Ivy’s dead, Sid. She is lying under the bridge in the stream drowned, and she is dead.” Nothing would make me shine a light on her poor face again.
“Who?” he wailed, and, God forgive me, I cursed in a way
my grandmother would have been mortified to hear.
“How many bloody people do you think are under this damned bridge with me? I’m talking about Ivy Wantage, for Pete’s sake. She is down here drowned in the stream.”
Silence, and then: “Well, you had better get out of there.”
However dense he was determined to be, his advice to get out from under the bridge was sound. Tucking Bess under my arm, I turned and waded forward. Seconds later I was being helped up the bank by Sid. His face was ashen in the light of my torch.
“Is it really Ivy?”
I was drained, utterly exhausted. All I could do was nod. “Good girl, Bessie, good dog,” I kept saying. A warm tongue licked my hand. The familiar comforting gesture helped me to gather my wits.
“Sid, run up to the farm and tell Mrs. Wilkes to phone Constable Jones. Tell her that Ivy Wantage is lying under the footbridge. Tell her that Ivy is dead.”
He started to panic. “Oh no! She can’t be. You are sure she is . . . dead?” He raised both hands and shook them in distress.
“I am quite sure, Sid. Now, go . . . run. I have to stay here with Ivy.”
“I can’t leave you here, Poppy. Major Redfern would have my guts for garters.”
“For heaven’s sake, Sid, just go!” And off he went. I could hear him half running, half walking along the footpath to the lane. As his footsteps disappeared into the night, I noticed that he had slowed to a walk.
* * *
—
IT SEEMED TO me, as we sat on the bank of the stream, that Bess and I kept vigil forever. Cold, lonely minutes ticked silently by as the moon came out from behind the clouds and shone down on us. What had Sid told me the RAF call a full moon? A bomber’s moon. I almost laughed. “All we need right now is an air raid, Bess.” I was on the edge of hysteria.
How long had Ivy been under the bridge? Perhaps she had never reached her aunt’s house; maybe she had been here since last night. And why hadn’t her aunt reported her missing when she didn’t arrive in Lower Netherton? I remembered that Mrs. Wantage’s sister was a silent woman not given to much chat; possibly she had assumed that Ivy had decided not to visit after all—she probably didn’t even have a telephone in her cottage.
Bess stiffened in my arms and her ruff came up as she growled, pricking her ears forward to listen. Mr. Wilkes’s voice broke the silence, then I heard the higher pitch of his wife’s, and it sounded as if their cowman, Percy, was with them too. Constable Jones’s West Country burr lifted above the others—he always put Rs in where they didn’t belong. “Yurr two come along ur me. No, Sid, norrt you. Yurr stay here with Mrs. Wilkes.” Their voices fell silent. And in my shivering shock I heard another voice, cool, calm, and supremely collected: Blimey, dahling, you Little Buffenden people are in a pickle now. Looks like you have some sort of lunatic loose in the village.
I got up and stood swaying on cramped wet feet. Ilona was dead right. Another thought came to me. It didn’t matter who had written to Doreen and encircled her name with a heart. If it was Brian, he was long past caring about this world. I had no right to conceal the letter; I must take it directly to Inspector Hargreaves.
SEVEN
Mrs. Wantage did not come the next morning to make beds and run the vacuum cleaner around our house complaining about dog hair. The lodge was miserably still and silent as I made my way downstairs at half past ten that morning to make my report to Detective Hargreaves.
“I think my granddaughter is still suffering from shock, Detective, so I hope you can make your questions brief. I can’t imagine why this couldn’t wait until tomorrow.” Granny’s gentle voice still managed to make her point.
“Granny, I’m fine. Really I am.”
“You are very far from fine, my dear. And the inspector has agreed to keep this meeting brief, haven’t you, Inspector?” Hargreaves nodded his heavy head. His doleful hound face wore a concerned expression as he flipped open his notebook.
“Just briefly, in your own words, Miss Redfern, tell me what happened last night.”
“Whose words would she be likely to use, I wonder.” Granny had not been this acerbic for years: violent murders in a small community do more than lengthen the gossiping queue at the local shops.
I took a sip of the hot tea she placed in my hands; it was sickly sweet, but I made myself drink it. Then I related the events of the previous evening, being careful to keep my account concise and clear, the same facts that I had given to Constable Jones last night.
When Hargreaves had finished writing, I asked, “How was she killed, Inspector?”
“She was strangled . . . same way as Miss Newcombe.”
“With what?” It was out before I could stop myself. Granny made a moue of disapproval.
“With a tie—looks like an American Air Force tie, or something closely like it.”
Something closely like it? It was either an American Air Force tie or it wasn’t. The Americans were apparently far better kitted out than our Royal Air Force, or any of us, for that matter. An American Air Force tie would have been the first thing investigating police would have noticed.
“Do you know how long she had been there . . . under the bridge, when I found her?”
“Too soon to say with any accuracy, but judging by her appearance, a day, maybe two.”
Her body just left there under the footbridge in the middle of the stream. I ducked my head so Granny wouldn’t see my tears and call the interview to a halt.
“What on earth was the girl doing out at night, alone? I heard she was supposed to be visiting Mrs. Wantage’s sister in Lower Netherton.” Granny was incredulous.
I kept my head down so I would not have to meet their eyes. As far as I knew, when Ivy went out at night, she was not alone; she went out to meet Joe Perrone.
Inspector Hargreaves must have caught my expression. “Anything you would like to say, Miss Redfern?”
I cleared my throat. “On the night after Doreen was killed, as I came up Church Hill on the last part of my patrol, I saw Ivy. She was with Joe Perrone.”
“Were you on your own, and what time was this?”
“I am not quite sure of the time, but it was a bit before midnight. I had just said good night to my Home Guard escort, Sid Ritchie.” Granny’s sharp exhalation was audible. “I was just a few yards from our house,” I explained to her.
“And did you speak to Miss Wantage and Sergeant Perrone?”
“Yes, briefly. Ivy had brought flowers to put in the place where she thought Doreen had died. She was very distressed and so I walked her home. The sergeant came with us, at least as far as Smithy Lane where it Ts into the road to the gate guard for the base.” Granny drew in a breath; there would be more to come on this later.
I waited for Hargreaves to write all this down, and then I told him about the letter that had fallen out of Doreen’s dress pocket. He didn’t say a word but jammed his hat on his head and opened the front door, motioning me to join him before Granny had time to object. I tried not to catch her eye as we disappeared through the front door, but I knew she would be waiting for me when I got back.
We drove over to the village hall, and I unlocked the storage room door.
“Why do you have a key to the storage room?” he asked.
“It’s my grandmother’s key. She organizes the clothes exchange and the jumble sale with Mrs. Martin and Mrs. Ritchie.”
“Who else has a key?”
“You will have to ask Mrs. Martin.”
I pulled open the drawer, lifted out the top frock, and slipped my hand inside the pocket of its skirt. There was nothing there. In my surprise I looked down into the drawer at the neatly arranged skirts and dresses.
“It’s not here,” I said.
He thumbed his hat back on his head and looked at me as if assessing how much the shock of my finding a murdered body had addle
d my wits.
“You’re sure you put it back in the pocket of this dress?”
“Yes, I was interrupted, and I pushed it back in the right-side pocket of this skirt, until I decided whether I should bother you about it.”
“Why wouldn’t you bother me?”
“Because it might have been a letter from her fiancé. He was killed in North Africa a few weeks back.” I felt his eyes on me and looked up. He was watching me, and his expression was no longer kindly. I struggled on. “I-I-I thought that it was private business and then . . . I thought it might have something to do with her murder.” I felt hot and incredibly stupid—it was so wrong of me to have concealed evidence.
“Did you read it?”
“No.”
“What made you change your mind?”
“Finding Ivy . . .”
“You finally understood, quite rightly, that this situation wasn’t yours to judge. Who interrupted you when you were standing here with the letter? Names, please.”
“Mrs. Ritchie, the local schoolmistress—she always helps Mrs. Martin for the exchange and the jumble sales—and Mrs. Angus . . .” I didn’t add “the butcher’s wife,” because it sounded so melodramatic.
“I would be grateful if you would not try to do my job for me, Miss Redfern.”