Poppy Redfern and the Midnight Murders

by Tessa Arlen

  I raised my head again and looked toward the fence. I couldn’t see Ponsonby at all, and this made me nervous. The last thing in the world I wanted was to turn around and find him standing behind me.

  There was a spinney of birch trees on my left. Perhaps he was in there? If he was, he was most certainly watching me. Sweat broke out on my upper lip and my scalp prickled with fear. The thought of being watched by this man made my mouth as dry as cotton. Pull yourself together, I instructed. It was too late to worry about being caught by a man who had apparently vanished into thin air. I took a long breath to steady my nerves, switched on my torch, and shone it into the opening of the sett. It was quite empty.

  I took off my helmet and inched forward on my stomach until my head and shoulders were inside its opening. A few more inches farther in and I noticed that the tunnel widened—considerably; its sides appeared to be squared off with small sharp chops in the clay and sand walls. There was an unnatural look to the squared-off walls. No animal could possibly have excavated these runs. Tunnels created and used by badgers would be more rounded, brushed smooth by the countless passings of hairy bodies. This passageway looked man-made, or at least enlarged by man. And if it was, then Ponsonby could easily have crawled through it just minutes before my arrival. I turned my torch upward; I could see the roots of the beech tree arching overhead, providing a strong support for the roof. This was an entrance into the airfield, created from an old badgers’ lair and made useful.

  I desperately wanted to follow Ponsonby, but not into this airless passage. A trickle of sweat ran down the side of my cheek and my hand trembled, causing the frail beam of light to dance along the tunnel as it stretched away into darkness. Was it my imagination, or did a cool shower of sand from the roof sprinkle down on the crown of my head? I had only my shoulders in the entrance, but before I could stop myself, I was inching backward until I was lying outside in the blessed cool night air, sweat dripping and chest heaving as if I had run for miles.

  We often wonder if there is a limit to what we expect of ourselves when it comes to physical discomfort. I had just met mine. Nothing at all would ever make me venture into that network of dark tunnels. If Ponsonby had gone into the sett, even now he might be worming his way back down the main tunnel toward me! I must retreat as far away as I could so that I could watch to see if he reemerged.

  Doing my best to be calm, I crawled and slithered on my belly into the shelter of the spinney and lay there, watching the entrance to the sett. I waited as the moon went behind a bank of cloud and emerged again. And just as it was about to repeat the whole business a second time, my tired eyes picked up on an outline above the entrance to the sett: the head and shoulders of a man as he emerged from the darkness of the bank below and got slowly to his feet. It was a fleeting moment, and then the shape sank below the brow of the bank and disappeared.

  Ponsonby had gone into the tunnel! I waited a good few minutes until I judged he had retraced his steps into the wood and then crawled toward the sett. Ignoring its entrance, I went over the top of the bank above it and forward toward the American airfield.

  Six yards, ten, I have no idea how many feet I crawled. I made my painful way on bruised knees until I came up close on the wire fence stretching away to my left and my right. I rolled over onto my side and looked around me, and as the moon swung out from behind a bank of cloud I saw the back entrance of the badgers’ den: a dark shadow half-concealed by a thick gorse bush, and as I had hoped, it was on the other side of the fence. My hands shook with the excitement of my discovery: Ponsonby had used the abandoned sett to gain entrance to the airfield! He had widened it knowing that the roots of the tree would provide an overhead fortification that would prevent the tunnel from caving in.

  I pressed my face against the wire of the fence. Smooth concrete runways shone pale in the moonlight, and squatting on their surface were the hulking silhouettes of American bombers. They were large machines, about the size of our RAF Lancasters. I smiled as I remembered facts and figures about the great British Lanc that I had had to listen to as Sid and I had walked our patrols together. What did the Americans call their bombers? Fortresses—we had seen them fly over the village most nights, escorted by the smaller, swifter Mustang fighter planes: the type that Griff flew. On the ground the bombers looked massive, so heavy it was impossible to imagine them airborne. I pressed my cheek up against the wire of the fence. There appeared to be even larger planes farther back on the field, but however hard I squinted and pressed my face against the fence, two gorse bushes obstructed my line of sight. Frustrated, I turned and made my way back to the wood. I knew that if I wanted to find out what Ponsonby was up to at the airfield, then I had to follow in his footsteps and brave the black stuffiness of the tunnel to reconnoiter on the other side of the fence, as he had done. But a more exciting thought brought me to a standstill as I retraced my steps through the wood: if a human body could crawl down the badgers’ tunnel, then what was Ponsonby’s secretive business at the American airfield? The first word that came into my head was: “spy.” But, more important, if the tunnel was a viable thoroughfare, then anyone could come or go from the American base without being seen, whether there was a curfew and a heavily patrolled perimeter or not.

  I couldn’t decide which was the greater discovery: that Ponsonby made a habit of trespassing in the American airfield, or that anyone from the base, or the village, could come and go undetected.

  TWELVE

  I almost missed Sid’s company as I set off on my patrol the following night with Bess. At least if he had been with me I wouldn’t have been drawn into a conversation with Fenella Bradley. Both the Bradley sisters were on home leave from their arduous life in London, and whereas they might condescend to talk to me, they would never have deigned to pass the time of day with the local schoolteacher’s son beyond a polite hullo.

  “’Lo, Poppy!” Betty hailed me as we met up on the village green. Betty is the more agreeable of the two Bradley girls: she’s not quite as full of herself as Fenella. But, honestly, a little bit of Bradley goes a long way.

  “What are you up to, Pops?” Fenella chimed in as she gazed thoughtfully at my helmet. “Patrol? I mean, is it really necessary?” She shook her head and giggled. “I simply can’t imagine an air raid in Little Buffers, can you, Bets?” Betty shook her head.

  So, we were safe, then—no air raids likely to happen in dear old Buffers! I smiled and nodded my hullos and said absolutely nothing.

  “Do you have time to join us for a drink before your patrol?” Betty asked. “We are meeting a couple of American chaps at the Rose. Why don’t you come along for a quickie with us—they are such fun!”

  “She actually has an American boyfriend, don’t you, Pops?” Fenella as usual was immaculately turned out—her shining black hair was arranged around her shoulders in soft waves, her perfectly plucked eyebrows arched as she looked me over. “Half the village are dating Americans, apparently—hasn’t been so much going on in our dear little village for centuries.”

  I couldn’t believe that she could refer to girls dating Americans without mentioning the horrifying incidents that had every one of us on edge. There is something remarkably cold about Fenella. I wondered if she had been staying up at Bradley Hall when Doreen and Ivy had been murdered. And since I found my dislike of her almost overwhelming, I wondered if she might possibly have a motive for murdering the prettier members of our village community.

  “How’s life in London?” I said the first thing that came into my head, and it was stupid of me to ask, because of course now I would have to put up with all sorts of bragging about nightclubs and ripping-good times at the Admiralty with senior officers. Talk to Fenella for two minutes and you would think this war had been arranged exclusively for her social life.

  I was right. After a rundown of her busy and exciting nightlife, she ended with, “For heaven’s sake, Poppy, you simply can’t stay here buri
ed in this little backwater for the duration. There must be something we can find for you to do in London—the Admiralty is desperate for help.” Her cool blue gaze rested briefly again on my helmet as she tried to think of what that something could possibly be.

  By the time she had finished making me feel thoroughly inadequate, my duties as ARP warden particularly futile, and yes, let’s admit it, utterly green-eyed about her fabulously exciting London life, we had reached the pub. I was glad to see that neither of the two Americans the Bradleys were meeting was Griff, but rather Captain Maxwell and the tall, Nordic-looking Captain Peterson with the colossal shoulders and white-gold hair of a Viking, both of whom I had met at the Reaches dinner party and who had come to our last Sunday lunch.

  It was gratifying to be greeted with such enthusiasm; it certainly gave Fenella something to think about.

  “Miss Redfern—Poppy!” Captain Peterson cried as he got to his feet to tower over everyone standing at the bar. “Great to see you again—we were just saying what a delicious lunch we had at your place. Now, what’ll you ladies have?”

  “Unfortunately, Poppy can’t stay,” Fenella put in hurriedly. “She’s on duty!”

  Peterson had engulfed my hand in his and was still holding it. “Perhaps when you are off duty some night, you would join us for what you Britishers call a ‘pint’?”

  I said how lovely that would be, and then, wishing them all a pleasant evening, I left. More than anything I wanted to mull over my conversation with Griff earlier today when I had rashly filled him in about my adventure in Bart’s Field when I had tailed Mr. Ponsonby.

  “You followed Ponsonby?” He hadn’t looked too pleased. “What made you do that?”

  “He had no idea I was following him—I stayed well back.”

  “But he could be the Buffenden Strangler”— his name for our murderer.

  “I am quite sure he isn’t! But he was behaving suspiciously. Don’t you want to know where he went?” I have to say I was surprised at his rather cross response. After all, this was real news and I wanted a good reaction, not this cautionary elder-brother stuff.

  “Where?” He folded his arms and frowned.

  “He went under the perimeter fence of the airfield.”

  Now I had his attention—though most fighter pilots like to think they have ice in their veins and are capable of a perfect poker face, Griff’s head whipped round in a most gratifying manner. “Under the fence?”

  I gave him a detailed rundown of the exciting events of last night in Bart’s Field.

  “A badgers’ den?” he said as I ground breathlessly to a halt. “Are you sure? That would be a tight fit . . . for a man.” He looked skeptical, almost disappointed.

  “Do you have badgers in America?”

  “We do. They’re mean little things.” I felt a moment of childish victory: here, for the first time, was something we English had, albeit a badger, that was bigger than its American version.

  I drew myself up and looked him squarely in the face. “Our badgers are far from little—in fact, they are large. Most of them weigh in at fifty pounds, the males even more.” I stretched my arms wide. “And their dens are extensive. But what is far more interesting is that this sett looked as if the underground passageways had been widened—widened by a human with a spade, not an animal with claws.” I felt sure that this would get the response I was looking for, but Griff was being careful now: his face was quite expressionless. The sort of concentrated blankness when someone is determined not to reveal that they are thinking hard. “Ponsonby definitely went into the sett, because I saw him come out,” I added, so he would understand the single-minded intention of my quarry.

  He collected himself and smiled his undeniably charming smile. “Poppy.” He put both hands on my shoulders and looked into my eyes. “A man has strangled two girls in Little Buffenden. Neither you, nor I, are quite convinced that it was Perrone, and yet you followed this Ponsonby into a wood, on your own, at night. Don’t you see how crazy that was?”

  I stepped back so his hands fell away.

  “So, are you going to do something about him, or not?”

  “You said he was a bird-watcher, right?”

  “So, why would he crawl down a man-altered badger tunnel into your airfield, d’you think? Don’t you see that if he can get in and out, anyone else can too? I think that’s significant.” I was not only irritated by his dismissive attitude; I was confused by his feigned disinterest.

  “Yes, it was a great find, it really was.”

  How bloody patronizing could he be? I did my best not to get too hot under the collar. He took my silence as acquiescence.

  “I want you to promise me you won’t follow this man again.” His face was so set, so closed up, that I had difficulty believing that this was my friend Griff O’Neal, the man who had positively egged me on to start my own clandestine murder inquiry.

  He turned away to search for a stick for Bess, leaving me feeling as if my find was a threat to my personal safety and nothing more.

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake!” I erupted with my hands on my hips. “Don’t tell me that a man who has probably spent weeks scrambling in and out of your airfield might be the Little Buffenden Strangler, because that doesn’t make sense at all.”

  “It most certainly does! Could you please find it in yourself to just stay away from this man—for me?”

  “Bloody hell!” I said, because I was furious. “There has to be more to this than your stay-away-from-him-for-me answer. There must be a reason. Could you find it in yourself to tell me why?”

  But he was having none of it. He smiled at me and shook his head—his hands in his pockets, his face regretful. And I ungraciously stumped off with a miserable Bess trailing at my heels.

  “I don’t know why I bother with this stupid investigation,” I said to Bess as we clattered over the bridge. “I think I’ll just stick to writing.”

  * * *

  —

  I GAVE GRIFF a wide berth; or rather, he gave me one. They were running missions day and night now as we stepped up our air raids on Germany. I heard their planes take off some afternoons as I hid out in the orchard and wrote about Ilona. It only took me three chapters to restore my sense of equilibrium and stop huffing over Griff’s unreasonable and stodgy reaction to my triumphant find. When I had written away all my annoyance, I was ready to continue with my investigation. I needed fodder for my plot and I needed to find out more about my next suspect, Percy Frazer, and his dubious history. I went in search of Mrs. Glossop. If anyone knew about Percy, it would be our garrulous postmistress.

  Once again, I was met with reluctance—this time from our village scandalmonger, of all people. She wasn’t just reluctant either. “No, we don’t talk about Percy Frazer, Miss Redfern, because by and large he did his time, and his is a sad story. The past is the past; best leave it at that.” Mrs. Glossop is the last one to let a subject drop. So, I waited her out.

  “Well, I suppose there’s no harm done in telling you that Percy was only a little lad—about eight years old he must have been—when he found his dad, as dead as a doornail, in the woodshed.” I remained silent, and true to form, she redoubled her efforts.

  “Ned Frazer was a drinker and a mean one. One Friday night, when he had been paid by whoever was stupid enough to give him work, he drank it all away at the Rose and Crown. Nothing unusual in that, and neither was there anything unusual in him going home to take his miserable temper out on his wife. Many’s the time Mary Frazer wouldn’t come into the village because Ned had given her a black eye. But that particular Friday evening, after he had come back from the pub, he must have decided to clean his shotgun, because he shot hisself—right through the head—and it were poor little Percy who found him.”

  I sort of knew all this about Percy’s dad. There were two schools of thought in the village: either he had committe
d suicide in a fit of drunken despair, or he had accidentally shot himself cleaning his shotgun. Mrs. Glossop, I remembered, favored the second group: her view of most men was that they were a feckless and rather careless bunch who would dwindle away and die without the strength of a strong and practical woman in their lives.

  I kept my face impassive and she fixed me with her uncompromising stare and continued with her story. “Mary Frazer had always been a bit of a strange one herself. Perhaps a life of poverty married to a brute of a man who one day ups and leaves you destitute can unhinge you. Anyway, she took to wandering, and when Percy found her, would refuse to come home. She was often found miles from where they lived, wandering haphazardly around the countryside, talking to herself, with no idea of who she was or where she was. Sometimes she would disappear for days. In the end, the Wilkes family looked out for Percy, who was slow for his age—he never did learn to read or write. A timid, undersize boy he was, poor mite. When his mum died of the pneumonia, Percy was about seventeen. The Wilkeses took him in and he lived permanently in that little one-room cottage next to their cow barn and helped them around the farm.”

  She paused to serve Mrs. Angus, who had come into the shop for twenty Senior Service cigarettes for her husband. “Poor Percy,” Mrs. Angus pitched in. “I think he’s as touched in the head as his mum was.”

  “Percy most certainly isn’t touched!” When Mrs. Glossop sticks up for someone, you had better think twice about taking an opposing view. “I’ll have you know there is nothing wrong with Percy. He was and still is a shy man, never has two words to say to anyone. And yes, he might be a little bit slow, but he is a decent, hardworking individual.” Having settled Mrs. Angus’s incorrect thinking, Mrs. Glossop turned back to me. “But the thing about Percy was he was never interested in girls of his age—or any age, come to that. At least we thought that was the case.”