by Ann Granger
‘I intend to walk down to the post office in the village and post my letter of condolence,’ I said. ‘I can take yours with me, if you wish.’
Aunt Parry brightened at the thought of an excursion of any sort. ‘Then I shall come with you, my dear.’
This had certainly not been my intention. ‘It is a fair distance and, although it is downhill going there, returning will be uphill,’ I warned. ‘Also, the path is narrow and treacherous underfoot in places.’
She dismissed this with a wave of her pudgy paw. ‘Oh, I was quite a walker when I was a girl.’
Possibly so, but that was a long time ago. I had never known her walk anywhere. ‘I’ll ask Mrs Dennis if she can find another walking stick,’ I said, resigning myself to the non-stop litany of complaint that must surely accompany our visit to the post office.
Mrs Dennis produced a second walking stick, a much smarter item than the stout country stick Jessie had offered me. It had a silver knob as a handle and I guessed it belonged to Mr Hammett. I must make sure we didn’t lose it.
It wasn’t long before Aunt Parry began to complain about the path. I had made another attempt, before we set off, to persuade her to stay behind. But it had been in vain. Now, however, she was very discontented and, somehow, it seemed all to be my fault.
‘I cannot think why you should choose to walk to the village along this dreadful track, Elizabeth. It is quite overgrown and the brambles catch at my skirts. Oh! There! I am caught up again and you will have to release me.’
I managed to free her from the entanglement and off we set again. Of course, before we’d managed another couple of yards, she was caught up again, or an overhanging branch had knocked her hat askew. It took us at least three times longer to reach the junction with the main road than it had taken me alone. When we reached it at last and came to the Dawlish sisters’ cottage, I hoped they would be indoors. But no, there they were, side by side on the wooden bench by the road, watching us approach with their sharp eyes. They made no movement at all, but sat there in their black apparel, looking like nothing so much as a pair of basalt urns in a graveyard.
‘Is it much further to this post office, Elizabeth?’ demanded Aunt Parry, wheezing to a halt. She was perspiring freely.
‘It will take perhaps another twenty minutes, but there are no more brambles or undergrowth to hinder us,’ I assured her. Alone, it would have taken me ten minutes at the most, but I had no hope my companion would quicken her pace.
‘Twenty minutes!’ she exclaimed in horror. ‘I cannot walk another twenty minutes without a rest. You shall take both letters to the post office, Elizabeth, and I shall wait for you here.’ She pointed her walking stick at the bench where the sisters sat. Not waiting for my reply, she marched imperiously towards it and, to my amazement, the sisters shuffled along, one to either end of the bench, leaving a space between them. Aunt Parry lowered herself on to the bench, stood the walking stick before her on the earth and folded her hands over the silver knob. The effect now was of a mantelshelf garniture, a clock, perhaps, and a pair of vases either side of it. None of the three spoke.
‘I shall be back as soon as possible, Aunt Parry,’ I promised. I looked towards Cora Dawlish, but she stared straight ahead and did not even seem to see me. Tibby Dawlish had a ghost of a smile about her lips, but otherwise she made no move. I nodded to them in greeting. They did not return it. Well, I thought to myself, I fancy Mrs Parry is fully their equal when it comes to holding her ground.
I set off at the best pace I could for the village. When I reached it, I couldn’t fail to notice the change in people’s attitude towards me. Whereas, on my first visit, they had been curious and smiling; now they turned their heads away from me as I approached and hurried to the further side of the village’s main road. The postmaster was polite but stony-faced. He said a brusque, ‘Good day, ma’am!’ on my entry, and took my letters from me with no more than a nod. A mother with a little daughter, who had been buying something in the shop, caught her child’s hand and dragged her away from my unlucky presence.
I thanked the postmaster, to which he returned only another nod. I left the premises with, I hoped, a confident step. But I was very angry. The Dawlish sisters have done this! I thought. They have spread the word that wherever I go, I bring death with me. They would not say I was a murderer. They dared not accuse me of that. Besides, I had no reason to break into a house I had only visited for the first time that day, and shoot dead the householder. No one would have believed them. No, it was something much more difficult to refute: superstition. I made bad things happen. There are countries in the world where that is called ‘the evil eye’.
I walked back as fast as I could to where I had left Mrs Parry, to find her still enthroned on the bench as I had left her. But the Dawlish sisters had gone. It was as well. I was annoyed enough to have accused them outright of spreading their nonsense with malicious tales about me.
‘I hope you haven’t been bored sitting here, Aunt Parry,’ I said. I did my best to sound cheerful.
‘Oh, no,’ she replied serenely. ‘It has been very pleasant.’
‘Did you have any conversation with the two women in black?’
Aunt Parry looked vague. ‘Oh, no, not a word. You mean the two old countrywomen who were here? They just got up, after you left, and went into their cottage.’ She paused. ‘I think I perhaps they were overawed by my presence.’
‘I dare say they were,’ I agreed, though I didn’t for a moment believe it. ‘Are you ready to set off home?’
She rose to her feet with the aid of the walking stick and off we went again. We reached the point where the track leading up to The Old Excise House branched off the main road, and had barely turned on to it when disaster struck. Aunt Parry exclaimed, ‘Oh!’ She lurched forwards and collapsed into a heap on the ground.
‘Aunt Parry!’ I cried out in alarm. I thought perhaps she had suffered some form of heart attack. The day was warm and she had been taking more exercise than was normal for her. But no, she had turned her ankle on the uneven turf. Now she sat there in a welter of skirts and glared up at me.
‘I knew we should not have come this way! I don’t know why you insisted on taking this path, Elizabeth. Help me up!’
But this I couldn’t do. Even with the help of the walking stick and my arm she could not get to her feet; and her weight was such that I couldn’t lift her.
She sank back on to the ground and ordered: ‘You must go and find some help, Elizabeth. Go back to that cottage and ask if there is not some strong fellow who can be sent to aid me to my feet.’
I really did not want to do this. Silently I cursed my bad luck. If I had been a village woman, I might even have thought the mishap had been wished on us by Cora Dawlish, the self-declared witch, as a revenge on Mrs Parry for commandeering the bench. I quickly reminded myself that is also how ‘witchcraft’ works. Someone offends the witch. Someone else falls sick, or breaks a cherished possession. I would not fall into that trap, but I would need to fetch help. If I continued all the way to The Old Excise House there was only Jacob Dennis to call on, and I doubted he could haul Mrs Parry upright. The Dawlish sisters’ cottage was the nearest habitation and so back there I must go. It was very mortifying.
Accordingly, I set off back to the cottage and walked up the path through the untidy front garden and raised my hand to knock at their door. Before I could do so, Tibby Dawlish opened it. She must have seen my approach through her window. She stood before me, short, solid, glittering with her jet beads and her eyes fixed on me mockingly. I quickly lowered my hand, and opened my mouth to explain my reason for calling. But she forestalled me a second time.
‘Well, now, truth-seeker’s wife,’ she said. ‘You are in need of help, are you? And you have come to us, as indeed you must.’ She gave a curious little smile, her lips turning upward, but her dark eyes malicious. ‘All come to us eventually.’
It was at that moment, and it did only last a second or so,
that I felt a tremor of fear. There was something of triumph in her attitude, as if the sisters had indeed played some deliberate practical joke on me, and were enjoying its success. I reminded myself again that if Aunt Parry had tumbled, it was because she was unused to walking, was overweight, and the turf uneven beneath her feet. Tibby and Cora Dawlish had not ‘magicked up’ the accident. I would not allow them to play with my brain. They had seen me leave with Mrs Parry and almost immediately I had come back alone and to their door. Only one thing could have brought me: some accident.
‘I am sorry to disturb you,’ I said firmly, ‘but the lady with me has fallen and I need someone strong to help her to her feet. Is there some man nearby who could help?’
Even as I spoke, I knew the answer and who it would be. I had spotted a movement in the background. My eyes had become more accustomed to the dim interior of the cottage and seen that there was a door ajar into some further room. Someone stood there and was listening. As I ceased speaking, the door opened widely and Davy Evans stepped into the room, ducking his head beneath the low lintel.
‘Mrs Parry taken a tumble, has she?’ he asked in his familiar manner. ‘I’ll come along with you.’
Tibby Dawlish said nothing, only stepped aside to allow him to pass. The door was closed immediately behind him.
It took only a few minutes to get back to Mrs Parry. She still sat as I had left her, brushing away bothersome flies and muttering in an ill-tempered way.
‘Well, now, m’dear,’ said Davy, stooping over her. ‘This is not a path for a fine lady like yourself to go walking along.’
He could not have said anything better. Mrs Parry threw me a look of triumph. ‘Indeed, it is not!’ she said. ‘Be so good as to lend me your arm, young man.’
She raised her hand as if he should take it, but instead he bent down, slipped one muscular arm about her waist, ordered her to ‘Just take a good grip on my shoulder, m’dear!’ and hauled her to her feet with ease. Her hat fell off during this process. I picked it up; and remained, with it in my hand, transfixed by the incongruous sight of Davy Evans and Mrs Parry, locked together like a courting couple.
‘How’s the ankle, then?’ asked Davy. ‘Let me take your weight now, go careful!’
Aunt Parry tried the ankle and grimaced. ‘I have twisted it somehow.’
‘We’ll get you home, never fear,’ he promised her. He looked towards me. ‘Could I ask you, Mrs Ross, to just hand me the walking stick the lady dropped?’
Gritting my teeth, I retrieved the silver-headed cane and handed it to him.
‘Off we go,’ he said cheerfully, and added in a wicked whisper in Mrs Parry’s ear, ‘locally they do call this path Lovers’ Lane!’
Now, at last, I thought Aunt Parry might snap some retort to put him in his place. But no. She gave a girlish laugh, practically a giggle, and off they went down the path, Davy knocking aside the encroaching vegetation with the stick held in his free hand, the other still firmly clasped round the lady’s waist.
As The Old Excise House came into sight, Mrs Parry at last decided it would be fitting to detach herself from Davy’s embrace. ‘Thank you very much, young man!’ she said briskly. ‘I think I can manage to go the rest of the way, using that cane, and with Mrs Ross’s help. Elizabeth! Give him something for his trouble.’
‘Oh, no trouble for me,’ said Davy with a broad grin. ‘’Twas a pleasure to be of service to you, ma’am.’ He turned his dark eyes on me. ‘And to you, Mrs Ross.’
At least he hadn’t addressed me as the ‘truth-seeker’s wife’. He turned and set off briskly the way we’d come, not seeing – or ignoring – the coin I had taken from my purse.
‘An obliging young fellow,’ observed Aunt Parry, ‘though what is usually called “a rough diamond”, I believe.’
Rough he certainly was, I thought. But if any kind of diamond, it was one with a deep flaw running through it.
Our unorthodox arrival had been spotted from the house. Nugent, Mrs Dennis and Jessie all came running out. Nugent and Mrs Dennis helped Mrs Parry indoors, but Jessie remained at the gate, her hands twisted in her apron, and gazing wistfully in the direction Davy had taken. However he did not look back and was almost immediately lost in the tunnel of trees shielding the path to the village.
I went up to my room and took off my balmorals. I felt hot, tired and troubled. I was also, I realised, very angry. It was hard to decide at which target to aim my anger. I had a choice: Mrs Parry, the churlish postmaster, the Dawlish sisters, in particular Tibby, and Davy Evans.
‘Oh, Ben,’ I whispered, ‘do come quickly. I need you here desperately.’
It was at that moment I realised how afraid I was. I had been out of temper because I had not wanted to make this trip in the first place. I was cross with Aunt Parry on that account; and because she would walk to the village although I had warned her about the path. I was angry with Tibby Dawlish, because she had again mocked me, and I had been forced to seek help from her. I was angry with Davy Evans, because there was something deeply untrustworthy about him, no matter what Mrs Parry might choose to think. But I hadn’t, until this moment, been afraid. I sat down on the little chair by the window to gaze out at the sea in the distance. The tide was nearly out. Jacob Dennis was down there, digging in the mud again. Fishing bait, I decided, something that lived in the mud, worms, eels, or such. I didn’t like the turmoil of my feelings and I wanted very much to explain them to myself before Ben arrived and I must explain them to him.
The news of Sir Henry’s gruesome murder had shocked me. The notion of a murderer on the loose would make anyone uneasy. The Dawlish sisters had ‘rattled me’, as Ben would say. And what was Davy to them? Did he lodge with them? Was he related in some way? I had known, in my heart, that when I knocked at their door for help, it was Davy Evans I was about to call on. Nevertheless, until this moment I had not felt personally threatened. But now I was aware of something monstrous out there. For the second time that day, words of Shakespeare came into my mind, although from a different play.
By the pricking of my thumbs,
Something evil this way comes.
Chapter Seven
You see what a fuss is made when a person of importance dies? They have brought a detective from London!
Inspector Ben Ross
It is not often that anyone asks a police officer if he is happy in his work. Perhaps it is because they might find it disturbing, should he reply that he was.
‘By Jove, sir or madam, I love it! There is nothing as satisfying as chasing a burly cut-throat down a dark alley; or supervising the removal of a bloated corpse from the Thames!’
No one has ever put the question to me, at any rate. If I were asked, I might have answered that I was satisfied I was doing a necessary job; and I tried to do it to the best of my ability. I could have added that I was proud to work out of Scotland Yard and that I shared my work there with some men of courage and intelligence, for whom I had a high regard.
Not that the Yard is without its share of constables of modest ability who are unlikely to attain high rank. I regret to say that Constable Biddle, Bessie’s swain, is one of those. It is a pity because, if he does eventually marry Bessie (or when his redoubtable mother allows him to marry her), he will need an income on which they can live, and promotion would help him in that. On the other hand, Biddle is hard working, conscientious, and loyal. He and Bessie should do very well.
Which brought me, as the train rocked southwards out of London, to thoughts of my own marriage. At that moment, I could honestly say I was very happy indeed being the officer sent to inquire into the death of Sir Henry Meager. Dunn disapproved of the interest my wife took in my work. I confess that from time to time it worried me because of the risks involved. On the other hand I had no reason at the moment, I told myself, to think my wife might be in any direct danger. But she was, like it or not, involved. She had been present at the dinner party in Sir Henry’s home on the fateful evening. Anything she
might be able to tell me about that dinner party, and those who attended it, would be useful. She is observant and shrewd. I trust her judgment. In any case, I should have to interview her as a witness. That wouldn’t be difficult since she would tell me all about it anyway and probably throw in a few suggestions of her own. Although she and Mrs Parry had not been long in Hampshire, Lizzie would certainly have taken a good look round her environment and made some decisions. I would hear about those, no doubt. All in all, when I climbed down from the train and felt the sea breeze on my face, I was feeling optimistic.
I was also pleased to reacquaint myself with Inspector Hughes at Southampton. I apologised, when we met, for appearing to be trespassing on his turf. He had, of course, requested help from the Yard, but it was important in these circumstances not to appear to imply I was there because he couldn’t cope.
‘Not at all!’ he told me earnestly, in his soft Welsh tones. ‘I’m delighted to see you.’
I don’t know when Hughes left his Welsh valleys for the south coast of England, but he had never lost his accent. People say the same of me. I am a Derbyshire man, and still sound it after years in London. I wondered whether, like me, Hughes was a collier’s son.
‘You will be thinking we have not made much progress in our inquiries,’ he was saying. ‘But we are run off our feet here, see? Travellers bound for all parts of the globe begin their journeys here; and every kind of thief and confidence trickster comes here hopeful of rich pickings. Then there are the warehouses storing goods imported from everywhere you can think of, and they are a target for gangs of thieves.’
‘In London, what they call the society Season is about to begin and we see much the same sort of thing,’ I told him.
Hughes nodded sympathetically. Then he became businesslike. ‘Now then, this case of murder, well, it’s going to take some sorting out. The victim is a gentleman of some consequence and results are expected! I can lend you a man, if you need one, but I can’t be overseeing it myself.’ He smiled and added, ‘I have taken a room for you at the Acorn Inn, where you stayed before. I trust that’s all right?’