by Tessa Arlen
Oh, you don’t know the half of it, I thought.
“Haven’t been into the Wheatsheaf before. Shall we have a drink?”
I walked with him up the path feeling self-conscious and, for some reason, annoyed, not just with him, and with Sid for stranding me, but with myself too. An awkward situation had become even more so because for some reason I couldn’t get over the fact that Griff had evidently been seeing something of Fenella Bradley. He had even used her favorite term for the village: Little Buffers. And why not? I thought as I ungraciously said I would have a glass of sherry. It was hardly as if there was an understanding between us, and his behavior toward me was almost brotherly. We were evidently, in his mind, simply friends.
Just keep things light, I told myself. Light, as if I couldn’t care less.
He brought over our drinks and set them down on the table. “You know, back home, when we go out to a bar for a drink and we sit down at a table, they come over to you, take your order, and bring you your drinks. When we first went into the Rose we all sat down and waited and waited.” He laughed. “And then Mrs. Pritchard called out, ‘There’s only two of us serving, so come on up to the bar and tell me what you want,’ and she laughed that big, loud laugh of hers. And we realized that it was our mistake and we weren’t being ostracized.”
“Yes, well, England is very different from America.” I didn’t mean it to come out in quite such a prissy way: it was the strain of trying to make small talk, when I wanted to take Ilona’s suggestion and just ask him outright about Fenella. But I knew I would never be able to say with light unconcern: So how was lunch at the Bradleys? It would come out like a nosy question from a disapproving maiden aunt.
“Any developments?” He raised his glass and took a sip.
“None at all.”
“Oh, I see.” He cleared his throat. “So, that was Sid Ritchie. You know, I think he rather likes you.”
“No, he doesn’t,” I snapped, abandoning my decision to keep things light and breezy. “I have known Sid all my life. He is just a boy from the village.”
“Takes himself pretty seriously.”
“No, he doesn’t. He’s a very sweet boy—he’s just not as casual as you are.”
The landlady called closing time and I leapt to my feet. Being polite in a pub with half the farmers’ wives and their Land Girl friends in the area enjoying a night out and covertly gossiping about us was a strain, and I felt tired and dispirited.
“Something’s up,” said Griff as we got outside, and he stopped to put on his cap. “Come on, out with it.” I was already marching up the lane, as far away from the farmers’ wives coming out of the pub as I could get.
“Hold up a minute, Poppy.” He caught up with me. “Something’s wrong. Won’t you tell me what it is?”
“Nothing’s wrong.”
“Well, yes, there is something. You’re all stiff and starchy, which is far worse than just being mad. C’mon, let’s get it out in the open. Are you about to announce your engagement to Sid Ritchie?” He laughed uproariously at the idea. And I bit my lip. “That wasn’t okay,” he said. “I’m sorry, really I am. What have I done to offend you? I know it’s something.”
Ilona wouldn’t have had any trouble speaking out—she would have done so days ago—but I don’t have her wonderful confidence. “You were seen on what was possibly the night of Ivy’s murder. In your car, on the road to Lower Netherton, stopping to give someone who looked like her a lift.”
“I didn’t give Ivy a lift anywhere.” Was it my imagination or did his answer come too quickly, too defensively?
“A dark-haired girl was seen getting into your car. Not many young women with dark hair in our village, and, come to think of it, not many red sports cars around here either.”
“You’ve been listening to village gossip about me?”
“It was you who encouraged me to listen to it—so that we could identify the Little Buffenden Strangler. ‘We are in a perfect position to investigate,’ remember? ‘You know everyone in the village and I know everyone on the base.’”
“Seems to me you just added two and two and made five. Are you seriously accusing me of being Ivy’s killer?”
“Why don’t you just tell me who you stopped to give a lift to? Oh, by the way, you were all confined to the base when you were seen. That’s sort of interesting, don’t you think?” I had tried to keep my voice neutral, as if I was merely following up on a new clue, but I am a redhead after all, and the last bit came out more harshly than I had intended. I might have crossed Griff off my list of suspects, but I was quite sure that he was seeing Fenella Bradley and now he was lying about it.
He went very quiet. I couldn’t see his face, but I could feel how angry he was. After a long pause he said, “Well, in that case, you’re running a bit of a risk, aren’t you?” His voice was ice.
We were standing glaring at each other in the dark, and Bess, who had been loitering in ditches, came racing up to see what the holdup was.
“I just want to know who you gave a lift to,” I said. “If it was Ivy, then . . .”
“Then what?”
“Then I’ll have to take it further.”
“Take it further to who? God, you English!” He was furious now. “You are so darned self-righteous, aren’t you? Well, lemme tell you something: it’s none of your darn business who I gave a lift to. Okay?”
“I’m so glad we cleared that up,” I said. “It’s none of my damned business what Ponsonby was doing in your stupid airfield either, is it? Not that you would have known about it if I hadn’t told you. And now it’s none of my business who you gave a lift to on the night Ivy was strangled with an American officer’s tie. How arrogant can you be? You’re right—it is none of my business—so I’ll say good night. I’m tired and I want to go home. Come on, Bess.” I pushed him to one side and whistled to Bess, who simply gazed at me as if I was a complete idiot.
Not waiting for her, I marched off, seething with rage.
“Hey! Wait up!” Griff called after me. “C’mon, don’t be mad!”
“Come, Bessie, come on, girl.” And to my utter relief she peeled away from Griff and ran up the lane toward me. “What a good girl, Bessie,” I said, relieved that I didn’t have to go back for her. “Let’s go home and have a nice ginger biscuit.”
TWENTY-FOUR
A large bunch of roses was waiting for me in the kitchen when I came down to breakfast. An almost overwhelming mass of them, filling the whole ground floor with their fragrance, which mingled, quite unpleasantly, with the smell of Camp coffee. Granny was arranging them in several vases.
“What a sweet young man your lieutenant is.” She smiled gaily at me. “He must have been up with the lark to pick these; look, they are still dewy. The last of the roses before the frosts come. Don’t they smell exquisite?”
I filled the kettle at the kitchen sink and put it on the hob. “Lovely,” I said and reached into the pantry for the oatmeal. It would be a complete waste of time to tell her that Griff was not my young man.
“And he left a note for you.” Granny, at her most winsome, put down an envelope next to the cups and saucers on the kitchen table. “Your grandfather has asked him over this evening. Did you know that Griff plays bridge? We were talking about getting up a four.”
“I can’t play bridge this evening, but I bet the vicar would love to make up a four.”
“Of course you can, Poppy; it’s Tuesday and one of your nights off.”
“No, Granny, I swapped with Sid. I am on patrol tonight. I have the night off tomorrow.”
She put the last rose into the vase. “When Jasper invited him for bridge it was quite touching how pleased he was. I’m sure it wasn’t simply because he wanted to play cards with us. He wants to see you, dear.” I said nothing, which is dangerous because Granny always interprets my silences with unerring
accuracy. “Apart from this business with Fenella trying to insinuate herself, has he offended you in some way, or has there been a misunderstanding?”
“I would rather not see him at the moment, that’s all.”
“I would be most surprised if Griff had behaved improperly. He really doesn’t strike me as the type.” She was pushing for an explanation. I couldn’t tell this kind, innocent soul, who came from a generation who were chaperoned everywhere before they were married, that I almost wished Griff would behave “improperly.”
“No, Granny, his manners are perfect.” And I thought how horrified she would be to know that the police would certainly want to ask him a few questions about his being out and about when all the Americans were confined to their base on one of the nights before Ivy Wantage was murdered.
She nodded, her eyes thoughtful. “One hears such distressing things these days about our young women and some of these American GIs. But Griff is a gentleman, even if he is sometimes perhaps a little too informal. Was it Oscar Wilde who said, ‘The English and the Americans are two peoples divided by a common language’?”
“I think it was George Bernard Shaw.”
“Who? No, it wasn’t him—it was probably Winston Churchill. Whoever it was, it is an apt observation. If there has been a misunderstanding, the best thing to do would be to sort things out and not let them fester.”
As I might have said before, Granny firmly believes that a woman alone is a sad woman, and her generation loves to pair people off. I could see where she was headed with Griff and me.
“I think I want time to think it all through.” I needed to have a conversation about Griff’s more puzzling behavior with a worldlier woman. Someone like Ilona. Not the Ilona who lived in my head but a real-life woman of the world. Someone who most certainly did not exist in our little backwater.
I spent a wretched morning helping Granny in the garden, storing the last of the root vegetables for winter, and weeding around the Brussels sprouts. For all her matchmaking tendencies, she is an understanding woman and she kept any further advice about Griff and me to herself. We were washing our hands in the scullery when Grandad put his head around the kitchen door and told us that Inspector Hargreaves wanted to speak to me in the living room.
Hargreaves was standing in the window in deep thought, watched by an alert Bess. He asked me to sit down and then produced his battered old notebook.
“Can you tell me where you were the night before last?” He waded in without any preliminary explanations.
I must have looked witless because he went on to say, “Not last night, but the one before that.”
“That would have been Sunday—my night off. I was here with my grandparents.”
“You are quite sure?”
“Yes, quite.”
“You did not leave the house at any time?”
Now I was alarmed. “Will you tell me what this is about, Inspector?”
“At half past midnight, last Sunday, a young woman in ARP uniform arrived at the house of Mr. and Mrs. Arthur Anstruther and announced that there was an air raid expected in the area. She told them to take a blanket and a torch to their air-raid shelter, which happened to be in the cellar of their house. They are an elderly couple.” His eyes as he watched me were expressionless, his voice quite neutral. “They stayed in their damp and very cold cellar for nearly an hour, and then, having heard neither the air-raid siren announcing a raid nor the all clear, they judged that it was safe to come back upstairs.” He paused, because even a man as stoic as the inspector is entitled to enjoy his moment of drama. “Where . . . they found . . . that they had been robbed.” He opened his notebook, thumbed through some pages, and read, “All Mrs. Anstruther’s jewelry, Mr. Anstruther’s antique gun collection, and a valuable painting which was hanging in their drawing room had been taken, as well as a few other household items of no particular value.” He gave me a long, appraising stare as he finished his list of stolen articles. “The ARP warden they described was a young woman, about twenty years of age and quite tall. She was well-spoken, and Mr. Anstruther, despite his years, said he could clearly see that she had red hair. Now, Miss Redfern, I would have said that this was an accurate description of yourself. What time did you and your grandparents retire for the night?”
I just sat there staring at him. I couldn’t for the life of me remember anything about Sunday night. And I was so taken aback by the description of me, as a robber, that my mind refused to cooperate.
“I can’t remember what time we all went to bed,” was all I could come up with, and then gathering my wits: “But I most certainly never left this house, so it wasn’t me who went to the Anstruthers’ house. I don’t even know them, so I have no idea where they live.”
“They live in the area.” He looked down at his notes again. “Does your grandfather drive a Humber?”
“Yes, he does, along with about a dozen people that we know of.”
“This would be an old Humber Tourer, very like the make and year of the car at the bottom of your drive. A 1928 model, I believe it is.”
“I’m at a loss, Inspector. It wasn’t me who went to the Anstruthers’ house and robbed it.” I was feeling quite panicky now. This was like a bad dream. I would wake up in a moment and have breakfast with Granny.
“You didn’t leave the house after your grandparents had gone to bed and drive over to the Anstruthers’ house in your grandfather’s car? I only ask because someone saw what looked like a Humber Tourer leave the village on the night in question.”
“Who saw it?” I asked in desperation. “No one in Little Buffenden is up and about after closing time at the pub.”
“I think for the moment I would rather you told me about your movements after you and your grandparents retired for the night.”
“I went upstairs to my room. Read for about an hour or so, and then drifted off to sleep. I did not go anywhere.”
The inspector sighed. Returned to his notes and stared at them regretfully. “I need a little more than that, I’m afraid.”
Golly, darling, you are in a pickle. I suggest you ask him to take you over to these Anstruther people—and make sure you wear your ARP regalia so that they see for themselves that it couldn’t possibly have been you. Only way to clear up this silly confusion. I was so grateful for Ilona’s cool, stay-calm-and-carry-on observation that I nearly thanked her out loud. Instead I reiterated her logical suggestion to Hargreaves, leaving out, of course, her asides to me.
“Would you be willing to go to their house and say only what I tell you to say?” he asked, quite clearly relieved that I was willing to clear my name. “I want you to replay what they said happened. Will you do that and abide by their reaction?”
I thought of two elderly people alone and scared at the thought of an air raid and wondered how keen or acute their observations might be. They could be a geriatric old pair for all I knew, with no ability to remember anything accurately.
“When would you like to do this?” I asked, wondering if I should talk to Grandad first. I might be getting myself into a frightful mess.
“Tomorrow night at eight o’clock. Can you make yourself available then, Miss Redfern? I would like to believe that this is just some sort of bizarre coincidence. With your help, I am quite sure that they will say that the person who came to their house bears no resemblance to you whatsoever.”
I hesitated. I had made this suggestion and now I felt that I had impetuously involved myself in what could be a very complicated situation. “Yes, I think I might be prepared to cooperate,” I said, “but I think it would be wise to ask my grandfather what he thinks.”
When Grandad came into the room, his bushy old brows were down, and Granny, standing at his right shoulder, was clearly determined not to be excluded. Inspector Hargreaves went through his statement again. “Your granddaughter suggested that she accompany me over to
the Anstruthers’ house in her uniform . . . to see if they can identify . . .”
My grandfather looked alarmed. “Arthur Anstruther has to be almost ninety. I can’t imagine that either his eyesight, or his hearing, is particularly keen. Gertrude Anstruther is perhaps the more reliable of the two, but she is getting on in years, too. What about their housekeeper?”
“There was no housekeeper at the house. It was her night off.”
“I don’t want my granddaughter to involve herself,” said Granny. “It sounds like the worst sort of a muddle. Two elderly, frightened people—how reliable can their memories be after one hour in a cold, damp cellar? Suppose they say that Miss Redfern looks exactly like the woman who came into their house? What then? Will she be arrested on the say-so of two people who might not be quite compos mentis?”
“I am investigating a robbery, Mrs. Redfern. Your granddaughter fits their description and is the only female ARP warden in the area. Also, a Humber identical to the one owned by your family was seen leaving the village after midnight on the night in question.” He laboriously read out the details of my grandfather’s car.
Grandad grunted. “Mm, well, yes, that does sound like my car. But I know my granddaughter was not driving it. She was here with us all evening and then we all went to bed.”
“I think it would be a good idea for us to go over to the Anstruthers’ and clear this up,” Hargreaves said with finality, and he flipped his notebook shut. “I think it would be better to do this tomorrow evening, which will give them an opportunity to prepare themselves. I will pick you up at half past seven if you will be ready,” he said to me.
I nodded as my grandfather chimed in, “And I will accompany my granddaughter.”
“I wouldn’t have it any other way, Major Redfern.”
* * *
—
“ARE YOU KIDDING me?” Griff was sitting in our living room at the green baize card table, opposite the Reverend Fothergill, with my grandparents on either side of him. I looked at my watch. It was nearly half past eleven; surely they weren’t still sitting here playing bridge at this time of night? I stayed in the doorway, holding my ARP helmet in my hands, trying not to look resentful. It seemed that my possible arrest for robbery had been discussed among the four of them very thoroughly while I was patrolling the village. There is no privacy in this wretched house, I fumed.