Murder Near Slaughter

by L. A. Nisula

  “Most certainly not.”

  “And you hardly look like their normal run of female visitor.”

  “Thank you for that.”

  “But it does make one curious as to why you were calling there. It can’t have been for the conversation, or the hospitality, and I doubt either one of them has given a farthing to any cause that didn’t involve liquor.”

  I considered what was the wisest answer to give her, but as Miss Hayworth had known all about our body already, and I was fairly certain that meant either that Miss Dyer already knew about him or would as soon as she got home depending on whether Miss Hayworth had learned of it before or after Miss Dyer had left for her painting, the truth seemed safe enough, or at least the general outlines of it. “I wanted to get a look at them. We’re staying at Oakwood Cottage.”

  “I’m sorry. Not about the cottage, which is quite nice, but about the rest of it.”

  So she did know. “Thanks. I was trying to see where the body might have come from, and that seemed a likely place, so I wanted to see what the residents were like. Miss Hayworth had told me there was money and a title, so I wanted to know what I’d be facing if I went to Sergeant Harris with the theory.”

  “Sergeant Harris wouldn’t know what to do with a theory if he found one in the middle of his desk, neatly laid out and wrapped in shiny paper with a bow on it.”

  “So I’ve noticed. He’s convinced Mrs. Albright and I managed to fit killing him in between coming down here, searching for Mrs. Otway to let us into the cottage, and searching for lunch.”

  “Oh my.” She worried at her lower lip for a moment then asked, “Do you have an alibi?”

  “Several, not one of which he’ll listen to.” And then something in her tone made me stop walking and stare at her. There was something under her words, not concern, or not only, more like guilt. “You left him outside their kitchen door, didn’t you?”

  Miss Dyer stopped and gave me a rather sheepish grin. “I was wondering if I ought to say something. I suppose I should have. Considering it was Mr. Hoyt, it seemed like a lovely symmetry. And an excellent lesson for them, and Lord Hector’s father would certainly see that they were well represented in court. He’s gotten his son out of all sorts of lesser jams. And I rather liked the idea of panicking them a bit. I never thought they would move him, though. I didn’t think they’d go to the trouble or manage to coordinate the process. I am sorry he ended up in your parlor. That was never my intention.”

  I had almost hoped she’d say she hadn’t. If she had put the body there, there was less of a chance that either Lord Hector or Mr. Briggs had killed him. “Where did you find him?”

  She answered readily. “In our front garden. Someone had tipped him right over the wall. He was just sprawled out there at the most awful angles. We were getting ready to go to the village to buy some stamps for Nora, she had some articles to send out, she’s a writer, you know.”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “Oh, historical analysis is her main interest. Her latest is on some paintings found on a wall in Pompeii and how they expand our knowledge of the role of women in the Roman Empire. And she writes on all the sort of almost scandalous modern things that sell better and pay better. She has a very good short piece on rational dress in the next issue of Woman’s World.”

  While that was all very interesting, I nudged her back in the direction of Mr. Hoyt’s corpse. “Was he wet when you found him?”

  The change of topic didn’t bother her. “Wet? You mean like he’d been out in the rain?”

  I shrugged, hoping I didn’t make it sound too important. “Or dumped in the river.”

  She knew what I meant at once. “Oh, that was us. We didn’t mean to dump him in the river, but on the lawn. It’s much harder to dispose of a corpse than they would have you believe. No, he wasn’t wet when we found him.”

  That made it easy to ask the next question. “What do you remember about finding him?”

  “Everything. I think it’s burned in my memory. We were just going out the front door when we spotted him. I ran over and checked for a pulse in case he’d had some sort of a fit. Nora ran out into the lane to see if there was anyone who could help. There wasn’t. And by then it was quite clear that he was dead, and we knew he hadn’t been killed in our yard or we would have heard it. He looked like he’d been in some sort of a fight, and we hadn’t heard anything like that. We were just talking about how we were dreading having to go speak to the sergeant when I realized we could just pass him along. He wasn’t killed in our garden, so there wasn’t anything there that would help figure out what had happened, so there didn’t seem to be any harm in making him someone else’s problem. So we got the wheelbarrow and rolled him down the lane to the lodge and dumped him out. I had planned to leave him on the front stoop there, but the steps were too high, and anyway I don’t think they use the front door regularly for anything but storing the post, so I tipped him out of the wheelbarrow near the kitchen door, just where the terrace almost meets the riverbank. I thought that was the end of it, but the ground must be slanted there since he slid downhill and landed facedown in the river. That wasn’t intentional, but it didn’t seem to hurt him, and I know those two keep bottles in the water there when they haven’t enough room for them inside, so I knew they would find him pretty quickly. Then we took our wheelbarrow and brought it back home and then went on to the village for the stamps.”

  Her story did seem to account for the facts as I knew them, although it did make it even less likely that Lord Hector or Mr. Briggs was the killer. Unless of course they’d killed him and left the body in Miss Dyer’s front garden, then decided to move him farther away when he returned. “What did you mean a lovely symmetry? Was there some trouble between them?”

  “Not as far as I know. It wouldn’t surprise me if they’d never been introduced. Lord Hector rarely goes into the village. No, I meant they’re the same type. I suppose you noticed when you were up there that Lord Hector and Mr. Briggs are hardly gentlemen, and they frequently invite down ladies from London who aren’t ladies, if you understand what I mean.”

  I nodded, wondering if I ought to shock Miss Dyer by calling a spade a spade, or perhaps a jade a jade would be a better analogy, but she was still speaking, so I waited to hear the rest.

  “And Mr. Hoyt, well, it’s quite well known that he has ladies in every village in the area, including Lower Slaughter, Donnington, Barton, and I think the governess up at the manse, although that’s unconfirmed gossip. I don’t know why Mrs. Hoyt never divorced him. There’d be a bit of a scandal surely, but the sympathy would all be on her side. Most particularly as anyone who wasn’t sympathetic would be assumed to be one of his ladies. Showing them the wages of sin and all that. I really didn’t mean to get anyone else involved.”

  “And Miss Hayworth?”

  “Oh, Nora was rather against the idea. She only helped because I insisted. You certainly can’t blame her for any of it.”

  I sighed. “We’re going to have to tell the police.”

  “I suppose I knew that would happen. And it will make us look involved, won’t it? Although I suppose we are, but only with moving the body, I assure you. We had nothing to do with the murder, and no motive to do him in.”

  I wasn’t prepared to take her word on the motive, but I knew I wouldn’t get more from her on that subject, so I changed the subject. “Do you want to go to Sergeant Harris, or would you rather I did?”

  “Why don’t we wait for the Scotland Yard man to come down?”

  “Has one been called?”

  “I would think so. Mr. Hoyt does have some standing in the area, and well, you’ve met Sergeant Harris. Would you trust him to investigate your murder?”

  I considered telling her that I wouldn’t trust anyone but myself to investigate my murder, but that seemed to lead to interesting if lengthy questions about pronouns and investigating things postmortem, so I merely shrugged.

  “It should be amusi
ng anyway. We haven’t had anyone from Scotland Yard down here in ages. The last time was the scandal about the church funds being stolen two years ago, but that was in Chipping Campden and it turned out they weren’t stolen at all. Mrs. McBride had put them somewhere safe, then went in hospital and forgot to tell anyone she had.”

  I smiled as I imagined the poor detective who’d been sent down to investigate that. “Do you remember who they sent?”

  “I think he was named Hamilton, but he was such a very normal sort of fellow, it’s hard to remember.”

  That sounded like the Inspector Hamilton I knew, and he was the sort of person who would see that sort of investigation as a nice break rather than a waste of time. “I wonder if he’ll be sent here again.”

  “I don’t know how it works, do you?”

  I shrugged. “I’m from London, so no, I don’t.”

  By then we were at her front gate. Miss Dyer swung the gate open without dropping either her easel or her paint box. “Would you like to come in for some tea?”

  “No thank you.”

  “You’re wondering how to ask if we’re going to tell Sergeant Harris about our part in Mr. Hoyt being moved. We’re going into town this afternoon anyway, we’ll stop by and see him then, all right?”

  “That would be best. Especially if you can get to him before Lord Hector, so you’re seen as the one doing your duty and all that.”

  “An excellent motive to see we do it quickly. I’ll tell Nora you said hello.”

  I thanked her and watched her walk up the path, then turned towards the village myself. I had traced the corpse from Mrs. Foster’s sitting room to the river, but he hadn’t been killed there. I had hoped that figuring out how he got from the river to the cottage would point in some useful direction, but it seemed quite obvious that that wouldn’t be the case. So where had Mr. Hoyt been before he ended up in Miss Hayworth’s and Miss Dyer’s front garden? I considered the problem as I walked.

  Whoever had moved him there wasn’t going to tell me unless I asked just so, and even then it was completely possible they would deny it, so simply asking wouldn’t give me my answer. Then what would? Behavior, of course. Who didn’t act as they normally did? It would take a bit of time and effort to move a corpse, and as much as a murderer would try to look like there was no change to their routine, there would be something off. How would I figure that out? I didn’t know the rhythms of life in the village. I wouldn’t know if someone was behaving strangely.

  Except I did know of one person, or group of people I ought to say, who had behaved very strangely that day. And if a body had been moved twice, who was to say it hadn’t been moved a third time? Mr. Elliott and his shop. I had thought it was odd that no one had come down when we’d rung, and that no one had been minding the counter just when they’d be expecting mid-day business, but finding a corpse would surely explain that. I would have to find out if there were any motives there, but by my own logic, it was unlikely they had killed Mr. Hoyt. Had it been their own victim they’d been hiding, self-preservation would have sent someone running down the minute they heard the bell in an effort to get rid of whoever was there.

  So this was not their corpse, but if they could describe what they saw and why they thought moving it was a good idea, I might get some idea of where he started out. Perhaps I would even get lucky and one of them would have noticed something useful, a leaf on his shoe from a tree that only grew in one yard or something equally helpful. It turned my steps towards the cheese shop.

  Chapter 9

  THIS TIME WHEN I ENTERED MR. ELLIOTT’S SHOP, there was a man behind the counter doing some sort of inventory. He looked up as soon as I entered. “Good morning, miss. How can I help you?”

  The service certainly seemed much better this time around. “I just wanted to see if anyone was here.”

  “Of course we’re here, miss. Every day.”

  “No one was here the last time I came, and it was around this time.”

  “I find that hard to believe. It’s nearly lunchtime. Why would we leave the counter when everyone will be coming to get their sandwiches and pasties?”

  “That’s what I wanted to know. We were waiting for the key to our cottage and came in here and there was no one.”

  “I’m sorry, miss. We must have been in the back. Did you see the bell on the counter?” He seemed genuinely confused and trying to help.

  “Yes, and I rang it, twice, once while standing in the door to the back room.”

  “My clerks are out making deliveries, but I will be certain to have words with whoever was supposed to be here. I’m the owner, you see. And I certainly will not allow such shoddy service to stand. What day was this?”

  “Yesterday.”

  That got a reaction from him. He stood very still, and I could see his mind shift from trying to placate a difficult customer to trying to figure out how much of the truth I knew and how dangerous it would be for him. When it became clear I’d be waiting forever for an answer, I decided to push a little bit more.

  “We’re staying at Oakwood Cottage, my friend and I. We were looking for Mrs. Otway so she could give us the key when we came here.”

  I could tell he understood the importance of that. I wasn’t only trying to figure out why I hadn’t been able to get lunch, but had been the one to find his body.

  “I assure you, I have no idea how the body ended up in your cottage.”

  I didn’t doubt that. It must have been quite a shock when he realized the body he’d moved had moved again. “But he was here, wasn’t he? When Mrs. Albright and I were trying to get your attention at the counter, you were upstairs trying to figure out what to do with him.”

  “I don’t know...”

  I wasn’t going to let him get away with that. If ever someone was guilty of something, it was him. “I heard you.” No need for him to know that it had been a buzz of voices, nothing distinct.

  “All right, all right. He was upstairs. But none of us killed him.”

  “Then why didn’t you go for the police?”

  “Because we knew we’d be suspects. You see, he and I had a long-running— you wouldn’t call it a feud seeing as it was strictly professional—but it was known that we had exchanged words on more than one occasion.”

  “About what?”

  “His business. He used to be the local representative for Mrs. Quimby’s Quality Tinned Goods and seemed to take it as a personal affront that every shop in his home village didn’t stock them. I tried to tell him we were going for a more genteel atmosphere, to appeal to the walkers and such, but he wouldn’t hear of it, and there were words exchanged, frequently and publicly. I know it sounds ridiculous, but it was well known in the village that he tried to steer people away from my shop for years. It was such a relief when Mr. Reynolds took over the route. All he needed was one firm refusal and the mention of a letter to the corporate office and he saw reason.”

  That was quite a bit I hadn’t known before, and the possibility of more suspects. “Why did Mr. Reynolds take over the route? Did Mr. Hoyt have problems with other clients?”

  “Oh no, Mr. Hoyt inherited the pub. Well, his wife did, so naturally it was his as well. Her father owned it, and as she was an only child, it came to her to run it. I think he liked the idea of being the benevolent host, not that he was. And she liked the idea of him being in one place where she could see him. Not that he was.”

  It seemed everyone in the village knew about Mr. Hoyt’s indiscretions. I wasn’t sure if that made for more suspects or less. “What do you mean?”

  Mr. Elliott shrugged. “Perhaps I shouldn’t say.”

  A fine time for him to decide to be discreet, although it was most likely the same gossip I’d already heard from the ladies in town. I reminded myself of the real purpose of my visit. “But why leave him outside of Mulberry Cottage?”

  “But we didn’t leave him at the artists’ cottage!” Mr. Elliott said, sounding shocked enough that I believed him readily
.

  “Then where did you leave him?”

  “Do you mean he ended up there? I wouldn’t like to bother them. I mean I wouldn’t have. They’re two of my best customers, always needing something for sandwiches and the like. No, I left him in the churchyard. It’s not that far, and there isn’t anything by the gate except for a few plants, so I wasn’t bothering anything there. It seemed perfect.”

  “The churchyard?” Clearly, he wasn’t concerned about bothering the vicar then. Perhaps he didn’t buy much cheese.

  “I thought the vicar wouldn’t be bothered by a corpse. I mean the churchyard is full of them and quite a few were put there by him. I mean, not that he...”

  “I know what you mean.” It made a strange sort of sense. It also meant I had to figure out how Mr. Hoyt had gotten from the churchyard to the front garden of Mulberry Cottage. I didn’t think the vicar would engage in moving corpses, but then I hadn’t met him. Just because Lord Hector disapproved of him didn’t mean he was a fine, blameless member of the community. Perhaps it was just the sort of thing he would do, especially if he found the residents of Mulberry Cottage to be too scandalous for the parish. I’d simply have to ask him. And even if I was correct and he hadn’t moved the body on to its next station, perhaps he had seen something, something that hadn’t seemed important at the time but that would make sense once he knew the part the churchyard had played in this mess.

  Thinking of Lord Hector reminded me of something else. “Did you notice if he had anything in his pockets?”

  “His pockets?”

  “A wallet, a notebook, anything like that?”

  “You mean normal sorts of things? I didn’t think to look. I was trying to figure out how to get rid of him. And if you think any of my staff would have stolen...”

  “I didn’t mean that at all. It was just something someone mentioned. How did you get him to the churchyard?”