by L. A. Nisula
“Then that’s a good place for us to start.”
While we finished our tea, we discussed what sorts of information we could try to get, although as we didn’t really know who would be there when we were, it was difficult to plan beyond how to get our companions to tell us who was rumored to have done what and how reliably, easy enough for me, as Miss Hayworth and Miss Dyer already assumed I was going there to work on the case, and easy enough for Mrs. Albright, as Mrs. Otway loved nothing more than a good gossip. I gave her enough details of Lord Hector’s troubles that she would have something to offer in return, and she promised to divulge as little information as she could get away with. Then the conversation began to stray to more relaxing matters and we ended up discussing which of the various village bakeries we’d tried so far we wanted to continue to patronize.
After breakfast the next morning, I put on my navy blue walking suit with a simple straw hat I’d added a bit of dark ribbon to, and Miss Hayworth’s black coat, then left Mrs. Albright sorting through both of our trunks for any sort of black accessories to pair with her grey dress and started for Mulberry Cottage. It was a damp, overcast sort of day, so I didn’t need to worry about getting too warm as I walked in my borrowed wool coat. I wondered what that would do for the memorial. Would people take the weather as an excuse not to come, or the memorial as an excuse to be indoors for at least part of the day? The latter certainly seemed preferable as far as investigating was concerned.
By now, I’d made the walk to Mulberry Cottage so many times it seemed to have gotten shorter, and I’d barely started thinking about it when I was within sight of the Eybry cottages. As I passed Trillwell Lodge, I noticed the steam landau was still parked outside, crookedly and halfway through the front gate. As I got closer, I was able to see that Lord Hector, or perhaps Mr. Briggs, had tried to drive it through the gate and into their front garden for the night, only to get stuck part-way through when they discovered the gears controlling the steering stuck out too far. Fortunately, they’d stopped then. If they’d tried to continue, the armrests of the seats in back would either have knocked down the fence or been torn off themselves, depending on which was more sturdily constructed. I also found myself wondering how a vehicle such as the landau was rented. Was it by the hour? The day? Not that it was my problem. If Lord Hector and Mr. Briggs hadn’t wanted to go all the way back to Stow-on-the-Wold to return it, they would have to figure out how to pay for it. At least the memorial was only in Eybry so there would be no suggestion of us needing to take it there.
As I turned towards Mulberry Cottage, I began wondering if perhaps laziness wasn’t the only reason. Returning the landau would be an excellent, or at the very least a decent, excuse to avoid attending a function where they would normally be obligated to attend, Lord Hector holding a title and all, but where they would also not be welcome. Still, though, not my problem.
As I opened the front gate and started up the path to Mulberry Cottage, the door opened, telling me at least one of the residents had been waiting for me to arrive. It was Miss Hayworth, wearing a grey dress with purple trim and a black shawl over it. She waved as I approached and when I was at the door said, “I see you noticed the landau hasn’t moved very far.”
I nodded. “It might have been better for it if they hadn’t moved it at all.”
“I’m quite sure it would have been. Mr. Khan had been asking them all evening if they could clear the road for the milkman. Lord Hector compromised by moving it down by the ford where the lane bends in a little. Mr. Briggs decided it would be better in the front garden somewhere around midnight. At least, that’s when we heard it slam into the gate. He might have decided much earlier and only got up the energy to do it around then. Still, it seems to be in one piece, the landau; I mean, I doubt it did the gate any good. Then Lord Hector tried to get it out, but you saw how good he was with the controls, and he almost launched it forward and probably would have gone straight through the front of the house if he hadn’t given up when he did. So now the residents of Trillwell Lodge are stuck there until someone can figure out how to move the thing.”
I almost wished I’d been there to see it. “While it piles up late fees, no doubt. At least it gives them an excuse for not going to the memorial.”
“Yes, I suppose it is better to be talking about a stuck landau than saying how rude they were for not coming in one breath and how glad everyone is that they didn’t in the next. The coat seems to have worked out quite well. That was good you had something dark to wear with it. Helen will be down in a minute. We had a caller this morning, and that delayed her.”
“A caller?” I wondered if it could be in any way related to the case.
“Lord Hector actually came through with his little scheme and climbed out over the fence around Trillwell Lodge to come tell us about it.”
“He sold the painting?” I asked. That was the only scheme I could think of, although I was sure he had plenty of other schemes that we didn’t know about.
“That’s the one,” Miss Dyer said as she came downstairs wearing a dark grey wool suit with some hastily-added black ribbon trim on the jacket. “He sent his aunt a telegram to tell her about it last evening. Can you imagine?”
Miss Hayworth shook her head. “I do wonder where he got the money for that, and why he didn’t bring the landau back as he was doing it, but she did wire him the money to buy it.”
“And you got the money?” I asked.
“We did,” Miss Dyer said. “And the correct amount too. He had the receipt from the bank showing how much she had sent him, so he didn’t even try to scam her out of a bit more.”
I was a bit surprised myself. Giving them the correct amount wasn’t terribly shocking if he was truly grateful for their help, but not asking his aunt for a little extra for himself seemed like the sort of thing he would consider a wasted opportunity. “So he must have been truly appreciative of us getting him out of jail. I can’t see him being that honest otherwise.”
Miss Dyer went to retrieve a pair of black gloves from the table by the door and brought a second pair for me. “I suppose he isn’t completely horrible when he’s not drunk or hanging about with Mr. Briggs.”
I smiled at that, but decided to be diplomatic and not comment.
Miss Hayworth was pinning on her hat and didn’t turn. “I think finding a dead body shocked some sense into him.”
“So our little prank had some good results after all. Perhaps we should let Inspector Wainwright know.”
Miss Hayworth smiled at that. “I’ll leave it you, shall I? Were you ready, Miss Pengear?”
“For the memorial? Yes. For Inspector Wainwright? You’re on your own with that.”
“Punishment for interfering with the scene, I suppose? Fair enough,” Miss Dyer said as she grabbed the keys from the table and led the way out.
The walk to the Eybry village hall where the memorial was to be was a silent one. First because we spotted Lord Hector as we were coming down the path, standing by his rented landau, staring at the spot where it was wedged into the gate, clearly hoping for some sort of inspiration. From where we were, I could see that the landau wasn’t stuck on anything, merely stopped at a point where it couldn’t go any further forward without causing serious damage to itself and the gate. As I’d gotten the impression Lord Hector had very little knowledge of steam-powered vehicles, it was as good as stuck there. At least he had the sense to try and figure it out and not sit inside pushing random levers as he had when he’d driven us back. He did not seem to have noticed us, so we pretended not to have seen him and didn’t do anything to draw attention to ourselves, like talking.
Once we’d crossed the footbridge near the ford, we seemed far enough away not to be concerned with Lord Hector, but then the rest of the village began appearing around us, all heading the same way, so conversation was limited to Miss Hayworth and Miss Dyer greeting people they knew, introducing me, and me being pleased to meet a variety of people whose names all blur
red together.
The village hall was large enough to accommodate the entire village and several extra people, which was a good thing as it seemed most of the village and a good part of the neighboring villages had come. I wondered if it was cynical of me to think it was curiosity about the murder that brought so many people out and not concern for Mrs. Hoyt. As we entered, I spotted Mr. Reynolds standing off to the side, glancing at his watch with the look of someone trying to figure out what was the absolute least amount of time one had to spend before one could leave without looking like one was running out the door. I wondered if that meant he was trying to avoid having anyone connect him and Mrs. Hoyt, or if he simply thought the memorial was a waste of time and interfering with his rounds. Mr. Burton was there too, nodding pleasantly at people and looking as if he were wondering when he could leave himself. I could almost feel Inspector Wainwright glaring before I spotted him, alone in the far corner by a potted palm, nursing a cup of tea and watching the room.
“I suppose we should have expected him,” Miss Hayworth murmured as she touched my arm and steered me towards a sort of receiving line to our left where the other new arrivals were lined up. We took our place at the end of the line, which had been positioned to fit as many people as possible into the small space of the entryway but did not afford much of a view of anything but the line, and waited our turn.
“That’s Mr. Morton, the vicar,” Miss Hayworth murmured, nodding towards the gentleman at the front of the line greeting guests as they passed. He was younger than I would have imagined, barely old enough to have finished university, I would have thought. His greetings seemed pleasant but quick, although whether that was on his part or reflected the guests’ hurry to see the recent widow, it was hard to tell. As we moved forward in the informal receiving line, I could see his expression seemed strained when he met some of the arrivals, as if he weren’t sure what he ought to be saying, even though he seemed to be saying roughly the same thing to everyone. There were too many people in the entryway with us to make private conversation possible, and as I could clearly hear bits and pieces of the conversations around me, I was sure everyone would be able to hear if I asked Miss Hayworth or Miss Dyer anything, so I tried to remember whom the vicar had seemed uncomfortable speaking to so I could ask if they knew why later, and stayed silent.
When it was our turn, the vicar had just finished speaking to a woman in full mourning and a man beside her who hadn’t bothered to change out of his work clothes, merely put a coat on over them. It had been one of the strained conversations, although the vicar had been conducting all of his conversations in a low voice that did not carry at all. Quite a good trick, I thought. He turned to our group with a pleasantly bland expression that turned into a warm smile when he saw us and greeted us in the same quiet tone.
“Miss Hayworth and Miss Dyer, how kind of you to come. I’m sure it will be a great comfort to Mrs. Hoyt that even those in the village who... did not frequent the pub admired Mr. Hoyt and wanted to pay their respects.”
“We did want her to know we were thinking of her,” Miss Hayworth said.
“And this is Miss Pengear,” Miss Dyer added, giving me a little nudge forward.
“Mrs. Foster’s temporary lodger. How nice of you to come. Oh, but you were the one who found him, weren’t you?”
I was very tempted to say something about not being the first, but it hardly seemed the place or the company.
Mr. Morton smiled wryly. “Well, the one who found him and summoned the police, I suppose I should say. And the one to allow them to begin the process of discovering who did this terrible thing. I was thinking of putting something along those lines in my next sermon, but I wasn’t sure how to phrase it.” He glanced at Miss Hayworth and Miss Dyer as he said it, although it didn’t seem to make either of them uncomfortable.
“I believe there was someone else staying at Oakwood Cottage as well?”
“Yes, Mrs. Albright. She’s coming with Mrs. Otway.”
“How very kind of you both.” He turned to Miss Dyer. “What about Lord Hector?”
“He has a steam landau to return. Once he extracts it from his front gate.”
“Then he was released? That’s a relief. Aunt Harriet was threatening to come down and make me intervene on his behalf before I’d even unpacked. I don’t know how she manages to send so many telegrams.” He turned back to me. “Lord Hector is my fourth cousin twice removed, I think, or fifth cousin four times removed. Somewhere along the line our families were related, quite possibly on the wrong side of the blanket I would think, and Aunt Harriet thinks that means I’m to look out for him. I think she expects the marquess to be grateful and our family invited everywhere.”
I wondered if that explained Lord Hector’s view that the vicar was interfering. If so, it seemed he wasn’t wrong, although it didn’t seem to be the vicar’s fault precisely, more a sense of self-preservation against even more interfering relatives.
“She does not realize what a task looking out for him is, though. Perhaps I’ll go down and have a word with him so I can tell her honestly I did something.”
“He already owes a day’s rental on the landau stuck in his front gate,” Miss Dyer informed him.
“Then tomorrow is soon enough to call. He should have it extracted and returned by then.”
“One would hope,” Miss Hayworth answered.
“But I’m sure you’ll want to see the other guests. Thank you again for coming.”
We took that as a sign we ought to move on and did so.
Once we were out of earshot, Miss Dyer murmured, “Poor Mr. Morton. Mrs. Hoyt must not want to greet all of the ladies who are rumored to have had relations with her husband, so she got him to do it.”
“And he probably knows more about which ones really did than she does,” Miss Hayworth added.
“Is that why he seemed a bit strained when he was greeting some of them?”
“It is. The couple in front of us was the Folletts from Barton. When Mr. Hoyt still had his route, she used to come to Eybry twice a week to do her shopping, or so she said. No one seems to have encountered her in the shops. That was before we came here, of course, so there’s no way to know if it’s true or not.”
Miss Dyer nodded. “And I would think there’s a fair number of women here hoping to make someone jealous or wanting a bit of intrigue attached to themselves. Like Miss Harkin over there. I know for a fact that she’d never met Mr. Hoyt, but she’s wearing full mourning and that veil, which she’s trying to have look like she’s covering her face even though everyone knows it’s her.”
“She’s been trying to annoy her family for months now,” Miss Hayworth explained. “They completely disapprove of her young man. Probably because he served five years for stealing from his last employer and she wants him to work for the family business.”
While that was all very interesting, it wasn’t getting me any closer to finding the murderer. “Who else was rumored to be friendly with him?”
“There’s Mrs. Greene by the tea urn. She was one of his early conquests. And Mrs. Childs with the green ribbon on her hat. That was when he used to go to Brockhampton even though the shops there didn’t stock Mrs. Quimby’s.”
“Is there anyone more recent? Someone who might have had a reason to, well, to kill him now?” I asked as quietly as possible so no one standing nearby would hear me. I had the feeling this was the sort of place that would consider it one thing to gossip about commonly known things and quite another to start talking about murder.
Both Miss Hayworth and Miss Dyer scanned the faces without saying anything for a moment. “Now that you mention it,” Miss Hayworth said, “there haven’t been many specific rumors since he took over the pub. Plenty of innuendo, and I would be shocked if he’d stopped collecting conquests when he took over, but who they are isn’t as obvious.”
Miss Dyer nodded. “I think it’s understood he uses the pub as a meeting place, but it’s hard to tell who’s going the
re for something to eat and who’s going to meet him. Mrs. Todd was a pretty reliable rumor, though. She did go to the pub quite regularly, despite there being two pubs with better food closer to her cottage. That’s her. Dark grey skirt, black jacket, black gloves.”
It was hard to pick out one black jacket from another as everyone seemed to be in half-mourning, but after a bit of looking, I spotted a woman I was fairly sure was one of the ones I’d spoken to in Mr. Burton’s shop, the one who’d reminded me of Mrs. Parnell. “Moving towards the sandwich tray?”
“That’s her,” Miss Dyer confirmed.
So that was why she had taken such an interest in me that day. I tried to scan the room without being obvious, hoping to see one of the other women who had been with her. “What about the one by the flowers? The arrangement with the rather sad-looking lilies?”
“That’s Mrs. Dexter,” Miss Dyer said when she’d spotted the woman in question. “I think she’s new in the area.”
“Moved into Fallwood Cottage last year, I think. I don’t know much about her, and there haven’t been any useful rumors, although whether that’s because there isn’t anything or she’s simply good at being discreet, I don’t know.”
So if she was one of his women, he was still carrying on, or had been before his murder. I kept scanning the faces, hoping to see one of the other ladies who’d spoken to me about the murder. I’d barely looked at a quarter of the room when I spotted the woman who’d come into Mr. Elliott’s shop our first afternoon, when we’d been looking for Mrs. Otway and before we’d known there was a body, and had been singularly unhelpful in finding Mr. Elliott. “And who’s that going towards the seating area?”
Miss Hayworth looked in the direction I was indicating. “Oh, that’s where we ought to be paying our respects. Mrs. Hoyt.” She and Miss Dyer started to cross the room. They both paused when I didn’t follow.