by Tessa Arlen
Mr. Fothergill put his hand of cards facedown on the table. “This is far more fascinating than bridge,” he said as he stood up to escort me to the sofa and then sat down on it with me. “Poppy must have a double somewhere. And who on earth said they saw her drive off that night in your old Humber?” He laughed, a rather patronizing laugh, I thought. “Has anyone told the inspector how hard you are on the clutch, Poppy? I mean, just the sound of crashing gears in the dead of night would be a complete giveaway.” I managed to curb a cold reply that I was no longer sixteen, which was when he had taught me to drive.
“The inspector wouldn’t say who saw my car being driven out of the village. I walked out with him and asked him, and he refused to tell me.” Grandad was still irate. “It’s preposterous that Poppy has been pulled into this!”
“Of course it wasn’t Poppy,” said Granny. “It could have been anyone—most people in the village know that Jasper leaves the keys in his car.”
“Do you, Jasper?” the vicar asked, and Grandad pursed his lips and frowned.
“I always manage to mislay them if I leave them in the house,” he explained. “It is easier to keep them in the ignition. You should know, Cedric; you borrow the ruddy Humber often enough.” I could tell Grandad was worried; he rarely barked at the vicar.
“I think Poppy was framed,” Griff said, and his fellow bridge players looked puzzled. “Someone wanted to incriminate her for a crime they committed.” Griff had finally stopped trying to catch my eye. “But why? It’s the most incredible thing I ever heard.” He came over to the sofa and sat down on my other side. “Who would have thought that someone in this village could possibly be capable of such dubious activities? It all looks so peaceful and respectable on the outside.” I almost laughed: who was Griff to talk about dubious activities?
“Yes, I see your point. But why would someone impersonate Poppy?” The vicar was clearly enjoying this conundrum. “I am trying to think of who covers ARP in the Ponsford area. Where exactly do the Anstruthers live?” he asked Grandad, who was staring into his whiskey glass as if looking for answers there.
“What? Oh, about a mile and a half outside of Ponsford village to the west. You know how small Ponsford is: couple of farms, a village shop, and that tiny little church. Who is the vicar there, Cedric?”
“Nigel Fosdick. His parish extends to include Middle Ponsford, about two miles away, and Upper Ponsford, which is on the other side of Ponsford. Together the three villages have a population of about thirty families. I remember the Anstruthers’ house now. It’s an old Georgian farmhouse, quite isolated.”
Grandad poured everyone another round: whiskey and soda for the men and sherry for Granny and me. “I could find out who their Air Raid Precautions people are from my roster. In those small areas they sort of survive on an honor system for blackout: outlying areas are rarely the target of an air raid. We only have Poppy and now Sid because of the airfield.”
A hand touched my elbow and I half turned to Griff. “Did you leave the house at all that night?” he asked.
I shook my head.
“How often do you drive the Humber?”
“Occasional trips into Wickham, so, rarely.”
“But you can drive it, can’t you?”
“Yes, of course I can.” I slued my eyes over to the vicar and his disparaging description of my changing gears. “Mr. Fothergill taught me.”
“I think the best thing to do would be to go over to the Anstruthers’ and let them identify you as the woman who didn’t come to their house.”
“But they might be confused; they could say anything.” I sighed because I had wanted to avoid any conversation with him at all. I felt myself being drawn back into our old relationship.
“Just because they are getting on in years doesn’t make them fools.”
“Grandad knows them. He said that they are very elderly: he’s nearly ninety and in bad health, and she’s in her late eighties. They might take one look at me and say, ‘Yes, that’s the one,’ simply because of the uniform, and I would be arrested and charged with robbery.”
A derisive snort. “It’s fantastic: what could you possibly gain by stealing jewelry, antiques, and a valuable painting? I mean, where would you keep the stuff, and how would you sell it? Surely anyone who knows you at all would find the whole thing a complete joke.”
Really? I wanted to say. Do you think of me as such a lame duck that I wouldn’t know what to do with stolen artwork? When of course I wouldn’t have a clue.
“If it is a joke, it’s a pretty spiteful one,” I said, and then because I was fed up with what I felt was their rather lofty attitude—another male club had formed right there in our drawing room—I appealed to my grandmother. “What do you think I should do, Granny?”
She shrugged her shoulders. “Darling, it’s a joke as you said, and a spiteful one. There is a reason you have been impersonated.” Her shrewd eyes caught mine. “Why would someone want to incriminate you?”
To get you out of the bloody way, that’s why, Ilona put in her tuppence worth.
Of course, that’s it, I realized. The same thing had obviously occurred to Granny, though she was puzzled as to why anyone would want to incriminate me.
“I think I should do it,” I said.
“I’m going to come with you.” Griff rose to his feet as if he were ready now.
“Thank you, but there is no need. Grandfather is coming with me.” I stood up too. “I’m awfully tired. So, if you will all excuse me, I’ll say good night.”
I was halfway to the door when Griff caught up with me and opened it, his face serious. “You are still mad at me, aren’t you?” When he said “mad,” I supposed he meant angry. Americans have this way of using words we use in a different context.
“Not at all. I have never been saner.”
TWENTY-FIVE
As soon as I had finished breakfast, I left Mrs. Wantage banging about in the kitchen and biked over to Sid’s house to remind him that he was on patrol tonight. Like everyone in the village, Sid is nosy, so I was subjected to an in-depth interrogation.
“The police can’t suspect you of robbing those old people, Poppy,” he said as soon as he was satisfied that all I had told him was accurately represented. “And don’t worry, I hadn’t forgotten I’m on patrol tonight. The forecast says light showers, but I’ll wrap up warmly and take a brolly.”
“Better put on some of your Foster’s rub,” I said quickly, just to see what he would say.
“Don’t use that stuff anymore,” he told me. “Dr. Oliver says it doesn’t do any good at all. Just keep warm and dry, he told me. Exercise is good for lung conditions, he says.”
“What about your bronchitis?”
“Poppy, there is a war on, you know. We all have to make sacrifices.”
A thought occurred to me. “How does everyone know about the robbery?” I was embarrassed that the entire village knew that I was Hargreaves’s favorite suspect.
“Mrs. Glossop’s niece married the curate over in Upper Ponsford. You know these small hamlets just live on gossip,” he added smugly, as if cosmopolitan Little Buffenden was exempt. “Anyway, the minute they meet you they will know it wasn’t you.” His gentle brown eyes as they gazed into mine were clouded with concern.
“Fingers crossed, then.” I lifted the pedal of my bike and caught, out of the tail of my eye, the lace curtain of Mrs. Ritchie’s front parlor window twitch back into place. I lifted my hand to wave hullo. But there was no further movement in the window.
“I have to go in now and give Mum a hand with washing up,” Sid said. “Then I’m going to start on my new model: it’s an Avro Lanc.”
“Super,” I said, knowing there was more to come, and there was.
“You might not know this, Poppy, but the Avro Lanc—”
“Good heavens, is that the time? I must r
un.”
And before he could say another word, I pushed down on the pedal and sped off on my way down Water Lane and turned a sharp left into Streams Lane.
* * *
—
AUDREY WAS HELPING her mother in the kitchen when I knocked on their door later that morning.
“You’re up and about early,” Audrey said. “Cuppa tea?”
“No, thank you, but I was wondering if you could spare a moment?”
She carried a tray of china over to the Welsh dresser in the corner of the kitchen, and Mrs. Wilkes picked up a broom and started to sweep the floor. I helped Audrey to put away the dishes.
“You didn’t happen to see Grandad’s old Humber go past your house last Sunday night, did you, Audrey?”
She shook her head, but Mrs. Wilkes looked up from her sweeping. “Would it have been very late in the evening? I mean more like half eleven or twelve?” she asked.
I couldn’t believe my luck. “Yes, that would be about right.”
“I can’t put my hand on my heart and say it was your grandad’s car, though, Poppy. A car did go past our drive at about that time. There was a bright moon and the size and shape would be about right. Mrs. Glossop said that the police were asking about it too. They can’t honestly think that it was you who robbed that old couple in Ponsford.” She laughed and shook her head. “That’s the trouble these days. Too much crime and not enough coppers. No wonder they’re having so much trouble about who killed those poor girls and attacked our Audrey.”
If Mrs. Wilkes was right, then whoever took the Humber had driven over to Ponsford the back way, via Streams Lane. But why would they take the long way around, instead of leaving directly from our lodge and driving south in the direction of Wickham, cutting at least two miles off the journey? Audrey moved closer to me to hang up the last cup on its hook.
“Seems like whoever ‘borrowed’ your grandfather’s car to go over to Ponsford wanted to be seen driving it. I think someone’s playing a little game with you, Poppy, don’t you?” She raised her eyebrows and, moving closer to me, said under her breath, “Ever thought that it might be because you are doing your own investigation into you know what?”
If she was right, and she might very well be, then the Little Buffenden Strangler was aware that I was investigating and was trying to either discredit me or get me out of the way. The thought was unnerving. I thanked them for their time and left them to chew over the details of the Ponsford robbery, and who, if it was not me, it could have been.
* * *
—
OUR TRIP TO the Anstruthers’ came at the end of a day that felt as if it would go on forever. Grandad insisted on driving me over in the Humber, but Detective Hargreaves overruled him and we all piled into his battered Ford. It was already dark as we pulled up into a weedy patch of sparsely graveled drive in front of a very dark Georgian house sitting in the middle of a scruffy garden.
Hargreaves turned to Grandad and me, sitting silently in the back of his car.
“If you would wait here, Miss Redfern, I’ll go in and tell them we are here, and then I will come out for you. I would prefer you to wait here in the car, Major Redfern. If you know the Anstruthes, I don’t want to confuse them.” He might as well have said that he didn’t want my grandfather hailing them as friends and then introducing me as his granddaughter.
He was gone for only a few minutes. When he came back for me, Grandad gave my hand a squeeze. “Best foot forward,” he whispered. “You have nothing to worry about.”
Hargreaves stopped me outside the front door. “I will go in first. You wait in the hall; then when I wave you in I want you to enter the room and just say these words: ‘There is an air raid warning for this area. You must go to your shelter at once. Take only a blanket and a torch.’ That’s all I want you to say, am I clear?”
I blushed to the roots of my hair and said it was. I already felt like a felon.
“Please repeat those words to me.”
I repeated them, and pushed open the front door. He left me standing in a darkened hall, with a wide oak staircase going up to the upper floors of the house. I felt alone and scared, as if I was about to be convicted of shameful crimes I had not committed. I looked around me: there was an old leather-canopied butler’s chair, a relic of the days when the gentry had scores of servants who waited at their beck and call. The only other piece of furniture in this ill-lit and drafty cavern was a low table for the daily post. A tall clock in a corner ponderously ticked minutes into hours. Far away in the distance toward the back of the house, I could hear the clash of plates and cutlery, a pleasant domestic sound that did nothing to quiet my fluttering nerves. Dinner was imminent. I imagined Mr. and Mrs. Anstruther sitting down to their potato-and-carrot pie after we had gone, tutting over the atrocious behavior of the younger generation. I can’t believe that old Jasper Redfern’s granddaughter has turned out so badly, can you, dear? What a terrible shame, I imagined them saying as they sipped a glass of wine and laced into their meager dinner.
What am I doing? I asked myself, skulking out here like a common criminal, already guilty of anything anyone wants to pin on me. My job was to help people—I took what I did seriously. I had trained in the dangerous East End of London. It was time to stop being so accommodating and speak up for myself—no matter how carefully I had been instructed by Hargreaves to say something that would possibly incriminate me. The man probably wanted this pathetic little felony put to bed so he could close his dossier.
Hargreaves appeared on the threshold of the drawing room door and beckoned me in.
“Just walk into the room and say what I told you to say—if you don’t get the words exactly right I don’t suppose it will matter that much.”
I walked ahead of him into the room. Taking him at his word, I would say what any properly trained warden would say. I imagined that I was back in the dockland area of East London. I had been trained to be very specific in time of danger.
“There is no need for alarm,” I said to the two elderly people sitting in their chairs like obedient children. I lowered my voice. “We believe that there will be an air raid in this area.” I spoke clearly and slowly. “Do you know where your designated shelter is?”
To my surprise, a quiet, well-modulated voice answered me. “We have been instructed to go to our cellar.” I turned my head to the elderly woman sitting in a high-backed wing chair. Her face was tranquil, her gaze steady. This old lady was as present and in command of her faculties as Hargreaves and me.
“Right then. I think it would be a good idea to take some blankets and a torch with you.” She met my direct look and nodded.
A querulous old voice from the chair on the other side of the empty fireplace shouted, “Yes, that’s the one, I’m quite sure of it, wicked girl.” An old man—no, an ancient, wraith-like creature—with a plaid blanket across his knees lifted a shaky hand and pointed a long pale finger at me.
“No, my dear, it is not the young woman who came here the other night. Inspector, there is no need to go any further. This is certainly not the young woman who came to our house. The other one was much more strident. I felt as if I was being harassed and bullied when she pounded on our front door. This young woman . . .” She paused and smiled. “This young woman has been trained to help people. Haven’t you, my dear?”
Mrs. Anstruther rose from her chair and came to my side. Mild blue eyes gazed into mine. She was wearing a pair of pince-nez; her gray-white hair was piled on top of her head in a pouf. She nodded as she looked into my face, as if she recognized me from another time and place.
Her husband bent forward over a walking stick placed between his legs. “No, Gertrude, no!” His voice was petulant, and he pounded on the floor with his stick. “You should be ashamed of yourself, young woman. Utterly ashamed of yourself.” His pale, soft face was puckered with anger.
“There, the
re, Arthur. Don’t you see the difference? The other woman sounded like someone from a bad play. Overrehearsed and completely unbelievable. Surely you remember?”
He shook his head, his thin hands trembling on the rug over his knees. “I can’t see her hair. The other one had red hair, long and curly.” He rapped the floor with his stick again and frowned at his wife. “Gertrude, will you leave this to me? This woman told us to go down to the cellar. When we came back the house was stripped, practically empty.”
“My dear, I am quite sure that this is not the same woman.”
“Strapping young redhead, she was. Is this girl’s hair red?”
“I have no idea; she is wearing a helmet.”
“The young woman who came that night was not wearing a helmet?” asked Inspector Hargreaves, striving for more clarification from an elderly couple who were now arguing about helmets and hair.
Mrs. Anstruther walked over to her husband, stood behind his chair. She patted him into silence. “Yes, Inspector, she was wearing an ARP helmet just like the one this young lady is wearing. But her hair was down, loose around her shoulders. It was a rather strident shade of red.”
Hargreaves turned to me. “Would you mind loosening your hair, miss?”
I wanted to say that I never wore my hair loose when I was in uniform, but I took off my helmet, unpinned my hair, and then put it back on.
“That’s the one, all right,” cried the old man. “Isn’t it, Gertrude? That’s the one, right enough. Wicked girl coming here and stealing people’s things.”