Olive Bright, Pigeoneer

by Stephanie Graves

  Your London secret is no longer your own. I’m willing to safeguard what I’ve discovered, for a price. You have one week to leave £2 under the loose tile in the corner of the Fox and Duck WC, and it will go no further.

  There was nothing written on the back, and the words on the front looked misshapen and tentative, as if they’d been written by a child.

  “This is blackmail,” Olive said slowly. Only yesterday she’d overheard that very word in a heated conversation between Mr Forrester and Harry Danes.

  She glanced at her friend, whose beseeching look had switched to one of exasperation.

  “You’re hot on the case, Sherlock.”

  Ignoring her, Olive said, “Where did you get it?”

  “It was pushed through the mail slot, bold as brass. Aunt Eloise was having a chat and a cuppa with Lady Camilla, who’d stopped in to pick up the blankets for the refugees, and when they came through from the kitchen, it was sitting on the rug in the hall. The envelope was marked the same as this, with my name in great leaning capital letters.” She stared distastefully at the blackmail note, a wrinkle forming over her nose. “It’s not handwriting I recognise, which I suppose is rather the point.”

  “What about the neighbours?” Olive quizzed. “Did anyone see who delivered it?”

  “The doctor’s next door, and he was out. The Darlings are on the other side, and while the prodigal sister was likely at home, I doubt we’ll get any help from that quarter. She keeps to herself.”

  Probably working on her next novel, Olive thought, her eyes skimming the note again. Your London secret. She peered at her friend. “If it really is only your modelling,” she said carefully, “then what does it matter if it comes out? The consequences couldn’t possibly be worse than giving in to a blackmailer, particularly if Leo already knows.”

  Margaret paled, her features pinched. “There is something else,” she said, carefully straightening her skirt. “But please don’t ask me what it is.” Her voice broke, but she took a deep, steadying breath and went on. “I know I came to you for help, and it’s killing you not to know, but honestly, why can’t it be my secret? Aren’t I entitled to a bit of privacy?” Her lower lip jutted, a perfect crescent of pink.

  “That depends on what you’ve done,” Olive said quietly, refolding the note and handing it back. When Margaret looked at her crossly, she elaborated. “For instance, if you’ve killed someone, I’d say there are people who have a right to know—your family, your fiancé, random villagers, fearing your murderous ways will be turned on them.”

  Margaret surged to her feet, going eye to eye with Olive, and quietly ground out the words, “I did not kill that woman.”

  “It was only an illustrative example,” Olive insisted. “And you must admit, it looks rather suspicious.”

  “Only to you! No one else overheard my argument with Miss Husselbee, and I daresay if the blackmailer thought her death could be pinned on me, he or she would have mentioned that and attempted to extort more money, although two pounds is really quite greedy.”

  “I would think,” Olive said consideringly, “the price would depend on the secret. And two pounds is rather a lot . . .” She let her words trail off and slowly raised a single eyebrow, trying for a balance of curiosity and discretion.

  Margaret’s hand went unerringly to the locket nestled at her throat. “Oh, give over! You’re not going to convince me to tell—even if that is the most sensible way forward. And if that means you won’t help me, then I’ll hunt down the blackmailing devil on my own,” she vowed, then turned to stalk off. Thoroughly exasperated, Olive laid a ready hand on her arm and gave a sharp tug.

  Clearly, now was not the time to press her about the locket; that would have to wait.

  “If I left it to you, you’d leave the two pounds and hang about the pub, dashing into the WC between every occupant—not, I daresay, a very pleasant task. We need some clues, Watson.” George’s lopsided smile flashed, bittersweet, in her thoughts, but Olive shifted it aside to get on with things. “The pub was actually a stroke of genius. It muddies the water. Anyone in the village could wander into the pub’s WC at any time; it will be nearly impossible for you to keep track.”

  Margaret’s shoulders slumped as she considered this. Olive stared at the grey headstones standing sentry over mouldering bones. Miss Husselbee would shortly be relegated to their number.

  She frowned. “Did Miss Husselbee tell you how she came to discover your secret?”

  Margaret looked uncertain and chose her words carefully. “A friend, she said.”

  “A friend in London?” Olive prompted. Getting a nod, she went on, “Then, unless you’re famous in London—or infamous—Miss Husselbee was likely the only one in the village who knew your secret. I don’t believe she would have told anyone. . . at least not on purpose.”

  Margaret huffed in disbelief.

  “It’s possible,” Olive said slowly, “that she wrote about you.”

  It would have been perfectly in character for Miss Husselbee to wring out her disapproval with Margaret while doing her duty for Britain. As to the mysterious page left in the typewriter, with its mention of festering evil . . . that couldn’t be Margaret, surely. Whatever it was, that particular sin had apparently been discovered recently, which likely meant it hadn’t been mentioned in any of the Sergeant Major’s previous entries. Olive now suspected those had fallen into the hands of a blackmailer.

  “Wrote about me? You don’t mean in those diaries she did for Mass Observation?” Margaret’s mouth had opened on a little o of horror.

  Olive pulled her back to the bench, now willing to risk a collapse, and sat facing her. “Was the confrontation by the river the first time Miss Husselbee approached you about your”—she winced—“sordid past?”

  “Yes,” her friend confirmed grimly. “But not for lack of trying. I’ve been avoiding her.”

  “She must have found out about it some time ago, and no doubt promptly wrote a scathing report for Mass Observation. Her April diaries were never submitted, and now they’re missing,” Olive said carefully. “I suspect someone got hold of those pages and recognised the opportunity for blackmail. Which means you might not be the only victim.”

  “That is not a comforting thought.” Margaret tapped the sole of her shoe against a fallen leaf, pressing it into the moist earth.

  “Hardly,” Olive agreed. “Particularly given that someone is dead.”

  Margaret’s eyes and mouth widened simultaneously. “You don’t think . . . ?”

  “It makes sense. If the Sergeant Major had confronted someone with a bigger secret than yours, or a bigger temper”—she winked, dispelling Margaret’s ire before it blossomed—“he or she might have decided to get rid of her, snatch the evidence intended for Mass Observation, and use the extraneous tittle-tattle to make a little cash on the side.”

  “The beast! What should we do?”

  Margaret was looking at her intently, without a whiff of doubt that Olive would make this go away. Why couldn’t Aldridge have just a modicum of that trust? She thought of the little notebook, dumped back into her hands with the bossy directive that it be taken to the police. It might be best if she kept it a little while longer, in the interest of helping Margaret. Surely, it held a clue.

  “We need to narrow the field of suspects as best we can,” Olive said emphatically.

  “Well, work fast. I’ll pay to keep my secret, and I’ll find a way to go on paying if that’s what’s required.” Her fists clenched in her lap. “But eventually, I’ll discover the identity of the blackmailer, and then I will do murder.”

  This announcement didn’t even faze Olive; she was busy thinking of George, and desperately hoping his father was not capable of the crimes she suddenly suspected him of.

  * * *

  “Yes, I’d like to speak to Captain Jameson Aldridge, please.” Olive clutched the receiver as she stood in the dark of the hall, waiting for him to pick up. She’d buzzed home, enjoyin
g the roar of sound that followed her up and down the lanes, and made straight for the telephone, feeling entirely justified. Yesterday Aldridge had been smugly convinced that Margaret was the murderer, but today, Olive thought winningly, she may as well have proof to the contrary. It was entirely likely that Margaret’s blackmailer and Miss Husselbee’s murderer were one and the same, thereby leaving her friend in the clear. She couldn’t fathom how Mr Forrester fit into things. Was he another victim or a criminal? She tapped her foot and worried at a hangnail, as the waiting went on for some time.

  “Aldridge here.” His voice was gruff and abrupt and startled Olive so thoroughly that she straightened suddenly, tugging at the line and nearly knocking the telephone off the table. She took a deep breath, schooling her brain to speak cryptically in case anyone was lurking nearby.

  “Hello, Jamie,” she said, wishing she could trade her coquettish manner for a straightforward “You were wrong.”

  A beat of silence and then, “Hello, Olive.” The unspoken words hummed over the phone lines between them: This had better be important.

  “Do you remember our argument yesterday?”

  “There were several. To which are you referring?” His voice was both wary and impatient, as if he dreaded what she would say but wanted to get it over with.

  “The one regarding a friend of mine,” she clarified.

  “I remember.”

  “Well, she’s lately received a letter.”

  “The sort that involves secrets and money?” he asked wryly.

  “The very same,” she said, tipping up her chin. As she straightened a crooked frame on the wall, she wondered if he was reading between the lines and now understood that Margaret couldn’t possibly be the murderer.

  “In that case, I’d advise you to leave it alone, and her to go to the police.” Olive blustered objections, but he cut right through them like a knife through Victoria sponge. “If her character is as good as you’ve insinuated, she has nothing to worry about.”

  Olive stood in silence in the dim hallway; she’d suddenly realised that beneath the burning desire to prove him wrong had lain a kindled hope that he might see his way around to helping her.

  “You can always be depended upon,” she said through clenched teeth, “for advice.” She felt a fool. He’d made it quite clear he wasn’t concerned over, or invested in, any village shenanigans, murder included, so long as they didn’t touch Station XVII. Fine. Good. That meant she no longer needed to trouble herself asking his opinion—and certainly not his permission.

  “Can I assume we’ve managed to come to an understanding?” he asked pleasantly.

  “Certainly,” she agreed, smiling. Let him assume whatever the hell he wanted. She hung up with a violent clatter, then growled in frustration. After a moment, she took a deep breath, straightened her shoulders, and walked calmly down the hall on her way upstairs.

  “Is that you, Olive?” Harriet called, prompting her to peer around the door of the parlour, where her stepmother reclined, trouser-clad legs extended under a lap desk appointed with pen, paper, and a fortifying cup of tea. Her feet, tucked into trim sapphire-blue slippers, looked fragile somehow.

  “Did you need something?” Olive said, her smile fighting against her clenched jaw muscles.

  “No, dear. I only wanted to make certain you hadn’t been ambushed in the hall and weren’t fighting for your life.”

  Olive sighed, leaning back against the door. “I’m sorry. That wasn’t particularly well done of me. I rang up Jamie to clarify a few things.”

  Harriet nodded in understanding. “Not the answers you wanted, then?”

  “Quite.”

  Harriet lifted her teacup and took a sip. “Don’t be too hard on him. War is not conducive to budding romance. The pair of you just have to work harder, because life is infinitely brighter when you find that one person who makes your heart stutter.”

  Olive felt certain she flushed to the roots of her hair. Getting along with Jameson Aldridge—or whatever his name was—was work enough. If they added romance—the legitimate sort—they were liable to kill each other.

  Harriet was not expecting a response, so Olive made her escape, fleeing upstairs to her room and tapping the door closed. She slipped her hand beneath the mattress and unearthed Miss Husselbee’s notebook. She tossed it on the bed, flopped down beside it, and turned on her stomach to go through it yet again. Aldridge might not be inclined to involve himself in the village’s little dramas, but he was an outsider. Her entire life was wrapped up in its goings-on, and lately too many of them were suspicious. Miss Husselbee’s machinations had somehow touched her mother, Margaret, Dr Ware, George’s father, and who knew how many others. Her only intention was to help undo a bit of the damage; the police could handle the rest, and she could get back to worrying about everything else.

  * * *

  Other than the lovely red tomato that Jonathon had proudly carried in from the garden, dinner was a grim affair. Over modest plates of shepherd’s pie, her father had filled them in on the results of the day’s inquest, quickly summarising the proceedings that had led to a ruling of death by misadventure. A cake made with Spam and potatoes, it had been determined, was certainly someone’s idea of a joke, and the foxglove, which grew wild in many village gardens, had most likely been collected in error, in lieu of the intended edible herb. The guilty party, the judge had allowed, was likely apprehensive about coming forward now that the “cake” had proved to be fatal. Clearly, no one thought it odd that it had been served on a plate belonging to no one, kept in the village hall.

  “So that’s an end to it,” he said, discreetly scraping his plate clean.

  Olive grimaced, unable to do more than push the chunks of meat and vegetables around her plate. As she shifted her gaze around the table—from her father’s plate, to Harriet’s, and around to Jonathon’s—she marvelled at their ability to dissociate a meal of tinned meat and potatoes tucked into a gummy pastry crust from a cake, recently confirmed as the cause of death in a police investigation, made of the same basic ingredients.

  A murder weapon.

  The words resonated in her mind, prompting gooseflesh to cover her body and a shiver to crawl its length. Wanting only a cup of tea and a biscuit, she leaned back in her chair.

  “That can’t possibly be an end to it,” she insisted. “Someone quite obviously wanted her dead and went to a lot of trouble to target her specifically.”

  “Olive,” Harriet protested. “Accidents do happen.”

  She swivelled her head to look at her stepmother, her eyes blazing with certitude. “This particular accident shouldn’t have happened—not here. The entire Pipley WI, not to mention half the village, was instructed on the identification, uses, and risks of the plant, which has grown wild in our gardens and woods for ages. But within a year of the lecture and our efforts for the Oxford Medicinal Plants Scheme, there’s been a murder by foxglove.”

  “It’s coincidence, nothing more. As troubling as it is to accept.” The low rumble of her father’s voice should have been reassuring, but it wasn’t.

  “If it was truly an accident or coincidence, then where did the cake disappear to? I dared Jamie to try it, and he was willing, but when we came in—when I dragged him to the refreshments table, that is—it was gone. An entire cake, missing only one slice, whisked away, no one seeming to know by whom. No one else was given a chance to taste it, or they, too, would be dead.” She stopped, and her words echoed back at her, shaking her composure. Jamie would be dead. Her hands began to tremble with shock, moral outrage, and . . . something else.

  “You’re seeing conspiracies where there is only happenstance and tragedy,” her father said firmly. His demeanour, however, communicated quite clearly that it was simply easier to accept the inquest ruling and pretend that there wasn’t a murderer living among them.

  “What if I found evidence that proves otherwise?” She wasn’t yet ready to admit that she’d purloined a pocket notebook
off a dead woman and subsequently burgled her home and ransacked her desk, but if needs must . . .

  Jonathon’s head whipped up with interest, but Olive kept her eyes on her father. His own had narrowed curiously as he leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms, exposed to the elbows by rolled shirtsleeves, over his chest. “You? You’re already sufficiently out of your element at the manor, with little enough time for all that’s expected of you there and here. How on earth do you think you’d manage to root out a murderer?” He held his hands up in front of him, as if to clear the air of such foolishness. “It doesn’t matter, because even if such a thing was within your grasp, no one would thank you for challenging the verdict.”

  “Isn’t anyone else concerned with the injustice?” she demanded.

  Her father leaned forward and propped his elbows on the table. “Verity Husselbee was a busybody, and she had plenty of enemies—probably too many with means, motive, and opportunity. The authorities might have agreed that a thorough investigation would drain their resources when they’re already stretched to their limits with tasks laid on by the government and the military. She’s got no family to object, and the killer—if there was one—is likely now done with murder. It could have been decided,” he said gravely, “to sweep this under the rug.”

  Harriet’s eyes were shiny with tears, but she didn’t argue. Jonathon kept his eyes downcast as he manoeuvred a scatter of spilled salt into the shape of an arrow.

  “But that’s horrible,” Olive protested, feeling sick despite her still-empty stomach.

  “There will always be those sacrificed for the greater good, my girl,” he said, the lines on his face seeming more pronounced. “And in these dark days, the stakes are much higher.”

  Olive knew he was thinking of Lewis, who’d gone off to war with the greatest of intentions. An academic at heart, he never could stand to see any creature being bullied or abused, so naturally, the rise of the Nazi regime had enraged him. When it had been discovered he could speak Greek and was quite skilled at tracking and foraging and, most surprising of all, hand-to-hand fighting, they’d sent him up into the Pindus Mountains of Greece, near Parnassus. In his first letter home he’d told them he couldn’t believe his luck—the old Gods were with him. She desperately hoped they were. As far as she was concerned, the stakes were enormous, but this was Pipley.