They Rang Up the Police: A classic murder mystery set in rural England (Inspector Guy Northeast Book 1)

by Joanna Cannan

  Guy said firmly, “You can answer a few plain questions.” He didn’t altogether like the look of Ames and he wondered why Delia Cathcart had engaged him. The man was very dark and, though a dark type was to be found here and there among the fair-haired, blue-eyed people of the county, his height, handsome features and reckless bearing disowned that persistent strain of early British blood. Half a gypsy, Guy thought, and perhaps a wizard with horses, but all the same he wondered that a lady engaging a groom hadn’t preferred a more obviously respectable type of man. He asked, “How long have you worked for Mrs. Cathcart?”

  “Miss Cathcart, I works for.”

  “Well, how long have you worked for Miss Cathcart?”

  “Eighteen months.”

  “Was she satisfied with you?”

  “Satisfied? Ar,” said Ames with a look that the detective described to himself as sly.

  “Are you married?”

  “Wot the ’ell ’as that got to do with you?”

  “Look here,” said Guy quite pleasantly, “I’m a police officer and don’t you forget it, my man.”

  The groom’s eyes dropped. He said sullenly, “I bin married over three year.”

  “Where do you live?”

  “In the cottage t’other side of the lane. Brick cottage with a slate roof wot wants seeing to, only they’re that mean.”

  “What time do you get here in the mornings?”

  “Eight o’clock.”

  “Were you here to time on the morning that Miss Cathcart was missing?”

  The groom hesitated for a moment. Then he said, “Nearer a’ past it was that morning. On account of ’aving overslep’, it was.”

  “When you came, did you see anything of Miss Delia Cathcart?”

  “Miss Delia? No, I didn’t. The first of ’em as I sets eyes on was Miss Sheila. She comes out and asks if I seen Miss Delia, and I says, no.”

  “On the mornings when you arrived punctually — did you ever see Miss Delia then? Since she’s been sleeping out on the lawn, I mean.”

  “No, that I didn’t. I takes care to keep well on this side of the ’edge. I knows my place,” said Ames with a sardonic grin.

  “And did you ever hear anything of her? Anything like the latch of the gate falling, or her footsteps on the drive?”

  “No, I didn’t. I’d be getting on with my job, not listening for ’er fairy footsteps. One or two mornings I’ve caught a glimpse of ’er at ’er bedroom winder, trying to dress mutton up to look like lamb.”

  “But that particular morning you didn’t see her?”

  “No. It was only by chance that I ever seen ’er. I’ve no call to look towards the ’ouse. Old maids like them three ain’t no treat to me.”

  Guy said, “You don’t speak very respectfully of Miss Cathcart.”

  “Well, ’oo are they?” asked the groom. “Biscuits they was before they come ’ere. ’Owsoever, I ’adn’t no complaint and nor, I reckon, ’ad she.”

  “All right,” said Guy. “I think that’s all for the present except a routine question: where were you during the evening — the Friday evening, that’ll be.”

  There was a tiny pause. Then, “At the Dog and Duck, I reckon, till closing time. Then ’ome.”

  “I wonder what made you oversleep,” said Guy.

  “There was a chap standing drinks. Won a prize in a plowing match, ’e ’ad. Reckon ’twas the beer.”

  “I see,” said Guy. “That’s all then. Good day.” Conscious of the nostalgic smell of stables, he walked across the yard, past the midden and along a grass-grown drive to a five-barred gate, from which he could see the groom’s cottage, hung with clematis, on the opposite side of the lane. Behind the thorn hedge a haggard woman in a blue apron was taking washing from a line.

  Guy crossed the lane and walked up the garden path. The sun was beating down on the fertile half-acre; the air was heavy with the scent of clove carnations, reminiscent, soporific and warm. He thought of police stations that smelled of disinfectants and offices that smelled of ink and he sighed as he walked between a row of peas, heavy with lily-green pods, and runner beans, just showing their scarlet blossoms, twisting and twirling upwards towards the sun.

  “Excuse me, are you Mrs. Ames?”

  The haggard woman turned. She was as dark as her husband, but she looked years older. Her swarthy skin was engraved with lines of discontent and weariness; an attempt at a smile disclosed a mouthful of broken, rotting teeth.

  “Yes,” she said. “What is it?”

  She had a gentle voice and the accent of another county — Dorset, perhaps, or Devon. Guy said, “I’m a police officer investigating the disappearance of Miss Cathcart. I’ve just been talking to your husband.”

  She turned away and took a garish overall off the line before she answered.

  “What did ’e tell you?”

  “He couldn’t help me much,” said Guy guardedly. “From my point of view it’s a pity he overslept that morning. Why didn’t you call him, Mrs. Ames? You were up, weren’t you?”

  “I was up at six sharp. Saturday’s my day for the rectory washing. Wash, wash, wash. You can do too much for men,” said Mrs. Ames bitterly.

  “So you jolly well let him sleep?” said Guy, catching the mood of the exasperated wife.

  “That’s it. Served him right, it did. Them as stays up half the night can’t expect to rise in the morning. Why should I wait on ’im? There’s others as gets the fire kindled and a cup of tea brought up to them.”

  “Quite right,” said Guy. “But all the same, he wasn’t as late as all that, was he? I mean, coming in at night. The Dog and Duck closes at ten thirty.”

  “At the Dog and Duck, was he? Huh!” said Mrs. Ames through her pinched nostrils.

  “Well, that’s what he told me.”

  “I daresay he did. But the Dog and Duck doesn’t stay open till three o’clock in the morning. I like a glass of beer myself, but it isn’t beer that he stays out after.”

  Hell has no anger like a woman scorned, thought Guy, and he thought that probably in a few hours this mood would pass and Mrs. Ames would remember that Tom, or Dick, or whatever his name was, was her lawful husband and had given her a bottle of scent on her birthday. Striking while the iron was hot, he said, “Who is the woman?”

  “Anyone ’e can get ’old of. ’E ain’t particular,” said Mrs. Ames, viciously tugging down a pajama jacket.

  “Village girls?”

  “Ah, and not only them, I reckon. There’s a funny lot round ’ere. Old maids, what would do anything to get ’old of a man, even to sleeping out in gardens.”

  “D’you mean Miss Cathcart?”

  Mrs. Ames picked up her washing basket and bag of pegs. “I don’t name no names,” she said virtuously.

  “It’s wiser not,” Guy agreed. “Well, Mrs. Ames, I see you want to get on, but there’s one thing more. From your upstairs windows you can’t see over the stable roof, I take it, but you can see the drive, can’t you? You didn’t notice any suspicious looking characters hanging about that morning, or anything funny?”

  “Not that I knows of. First thing I heard of anything being wrong was when Stanley come ’ome for dinner. ’E says, ‘They’re in a rare stew this morning. Old Delia’s missing.’”

  “Well, I must get on, too,” said Guy. “Thank you for answering my tiresome questions.”

  “You needn’t worry,” said Mrs. Ames, walking along the garden path with him. “She’ll turn up all right. I expect she got tired of being single. Some folks don’t know when they’re lucky,” she added wearily.

  Guy went out of the little green gate and, turning to his left, along Lovers’ Lane until it joined the high road, which ascended to the Green, where thatched cottages, once occupied by laborers, had been enlarged out of all proportion and converted into desirable old world residences. He located Mr. Hislop’s house, Fairview, and then crossed the Green to the Dog and Duck, where he lunched on bread and cheese, washed down by a pint
of bitter. The landlord of the Dog and Duck was a depressed old man, who had been groom at the Hall, he said, in the days when Lord Danvers had kept twenty or thirty hunters. Oh yes, he agreed, Miss Delia Cathcart rode well, but he could remember Marley Grange before them Cathcarts came there. It was the dower house of the hall then, and the Dowager Countess had lived and died there, and the Cathcarts were good people, but of course they weren’t the same class: they’d made their money. The shameless snobbery still obtaining in agricultural areas, took Guy a long way back; all honor, he said, to those who got on in the world, but Mr. Hogmore was right; with jumped-up people, you never knew where you were. Hogmore agreed. Now take these Cathcarts — no girls ever stayed any length of time with them, and look how Miss Delia had served old Black — her groom he was, and she’d sacked him for no better reason than because that good-for-nothing fellow, young Stanley Ames, had caught her eye. Hogmore wouldn’t want to be in Ames’s shoes, ha, ha. And now Miss Delia had gone off no one knew where nor wherefore and there’d been a police message on the wireless and goodness knew what would come to light. Hogmore wasn’t one to gossip, but he knew where he’d start looking for Miss Delia.

  Guy said that he wasn’t one to gossip, but he’d heard remarks passed about a certain Captain Willoughby; what sort of a fellow was he? Captain Willoughby, Hogmore said, was as nice a gentleman as you could wish to work for, as openhanded as they are made. Tied up to the wrong woman he was; Hogmore’s niece was cook at Lane End Farm and she could tell some tales. Mrs. Willoughby was as jealous as a cat, and carried on something awful if the Captain so much as looked at another girl. Bad all round it was, Hogmore considered, when married persons couldn’t agree.

  Guy agreed. Even a worm would turn, as the old saying went, and you couldn’t blame the man if he had gone off with Miss Cathcart. Did Mr. Hogmore think there was any truth in that tale?

  Hogmore wasn’t naming no names, but that was about it. He’d always set his face against scandal and slander, but, between him and Guy and the bedpost, he blamed Miss Delia. No doubt she’d made the running, and the Captain, well, he was only a yewman being when all was said and done. Mr. Hogmore rambled off into a discourse on the frailties of yewman beings, and Guy, who was feeling sleepy and stupid after his pint of bitter, sat listening to him till the clock in the Norman tower of Marley church struck two. Then he paid his small bill and walked back across the Green to Fairview.

  Mr. Hislop’s house had once been a humble cottage with the decent name of Watkin’s Pightle, but all that was changed now. A Tudor-style wing thatched with Norfolk reeds had been added; a garage to match had been built at the wrought iron gates; a gravel drive swept where once a mossy little path had wandered between marigolds to the door. Mr. Hislop was house proud and a great gardener; the rose beds, the gravel and the turf were weedless, and when Guy rang the bell the door was immediately opened by a spruce manservant in a white linen jacket, who sharply enquired, “Yes, sir?”

  Guy shook off his postprandial lethargy. He asked for Mr. Hislop and was shown through a spotless hall into the garden. Mr. Hislop was gardening. He was tying dahlias to stakes. He had a hard, withered little face, and was wearing a Panama hat, gardening gloves and overalls. When he saw Guy, he stepped out of the dahlia bed and said testily that he never bought anything at the door.

  Guy explained himself. Mr. Hislop was obstructive. He said that if a silly woman chose to give way to her nerves, he didn’t see what it had to do with his chauffeur. If Funge was going to answer questions, he said, he should answer them in his own time and not in the time for which Mr. Hislop paid.

  Guy referred to Mr. Hislop’s duties as a citizen and after a sharp argument received permission to interrogate the chauffeur at the back door. He walked past impeccable dustbins and found Albert Funge sitting in the kitchen with his feet on the table, drinking tea.

  When Funge heard that Guy was a police officer, he took his feet off the table and tried to please. He was a short young man with oily hair that smelled of violets and from his conversation it was evident that he thought himself a cut above the majority of the young men of Marley Green. He admitted that on the night preceding Miss Cathcart’s disappearance he had had a few words with her, “but,” he added, “I’m not like some of ’em round here; if I had noticed anything out of the way like, I should ’ave notified the police.”

  Guy said, “I understand that the unpleasantness arose through your lady friend not getting in to time. Miss Cathcart told her off, and then you chipped in, and Miss Cathcart threatened to report you to your employer. Mr. Hislop seems rather a particular sort of gentleman. What would have happened if Miss Cathcart had written to him?”

  “Nothing much. Mr. ’Islop don’t ’old with women. In any case, it wouldn’t ’ave troubled me. There’s always plenty of jobs for smart chaps what can speak nice and ’ave got the clothes.”

  Guy’s dislike for Funge deepened. He said, “You don’t seem to have spoken nice to Miss Cathcart.”

  “People gets what they asks for. She’s got a bullying way with ’er. Gets your back up.”

  “I know what you mean,” said Guy amiably. “Miss Cathcart doesn’t seem to be very popular in the village, but of course it doesn’t follow that anyone wished her harm. Now you seem to be an intelligent observant sort of a fellow. As you walked down the drive that night, did you notice what lights were on at the Grange?”

  Funge considered. “One came on — that ’ud be Jessie’s. I reckon there were two or three on before.”

  “You didn’t stop about then — to see if your young lady was all right, I mean?”

  “No, I didn’t. I went ’ome.”

  “Straight home?”

  “I say,” said Funge, “what are you getting at? I didn’t ’ave nothing to do with Miss Cathcart’s disappearing act, if that’s what you’re suggestin’.”

  “I’m not suggesting anything,” said Guy innocently. “But if you’d hung round a bit, you might have noticed some little thing. Where do you live?”

  “Number two, Council Cottages. Down beyond the church there.”

  “And did you notice what the time was when you got in?”

  “It was eleven to the tick. I know that’s right, because Mother’s got a lovely mi’ogany clock, and she sets it by the wireless of an evening and it always keeps good time.”

  “That’s all then,” said Guy. He wished Mr. Funge and the manservant, who, with his head bent over the sink, had been listening curiously, good day, and then he walked off along a path at the side of the house, which led him into the drive. Mr. Hislop was waiting for him.

  “Well, Detective Inspector? Did you discover any important clues?” he asked sarcastically.

  “I didn’t expect to,” said Guy, his slow Wiltshire voice as pleasant as ever. “But Funge was one of the last people to set eyes on Miss Cathcart, so he had to be questioned.”

  “Waste of the ratepayers’ money,” snapped Mr. Hislop. “In any case, you couldn’t have believed what he told you. Man’s a born liar.”

  “Really? Then I rather wonder that you go on employing him. I’m told that, just now, first-rate chauffeurs are two-a-penny.”

  “I shan’t be employing him when his month’s up. I gave him notice last Wednesday. Found him out in a lie. Can’t bear liars. That’s why I can’t stand women.”

  “What did he lie about?” asked Guy, wondering if he would get an answer, but Mr. Hislop, with a grievance to air, had forgotten about the ratepayers’ money.

  “Last Saturday — wait a minute, was it Saturday? Yes, it was the day that neurotic woman chose to walk off — well, last Saturday he went into Melchester with the shopping list as usual, and he had the cheek to give his young woman a lift in my car without my permission. Friend of mine — good man, good gardener, but can’t grow dahlias — well, he saw them and told me of it, and when I questioned Funge he denied it. Born liar.”

  “This was on the afternoon of the Saturday?”

 
“No, the morning. Come to think of it, what was the young woman doing out? Skivvies don’t get out in the morning. There you are, you see. You can’t trust women.”

  “Quite right, sir, you can’t,” said Guy cheerfully. “And in the end — did Funge admit it?”

  “Yes, he did. Started to defend himself, but I wouldn’t listen. ‘If you’ll tell one lie,’ I said, ‘you’ll tell another.’”

  “I don’t blame you,” said Guy. “Well, Mr. Hislop, I must get on. I don’t suppose I shall need to trouble you again. This all seems quite satisfactory.”

  He went out through the iron gates and, under the cover and shade of a group of elm trees, stopped to make a few entries in his notebook. There was one more visit he wanted to pay before returning to Melchester, and some small boys, who were playing stump cricket, were able to direct him to Lane End Farm. It was about a mile away, they said, down Pitcher’s Lane and, in answer to another question, yes, the next bus but one to Melchester did go from the crossroads at ten minutes to five.

  Guy set off down Pitcher’s Lane, which wound between tall hedges bordering pastures and hayfields. He wasn’t a man who allowed his work to nag at him, and he found plenty of interest in a walk which a townsman might have found boring. He noticed that the hay had no bottom, admired a sow, coveted a mare and foal, was shocked by a rabbit warren and the state of the hedges. Presently he came to a five-barred gate, where a rutted track led up to a comfortable farm house standing among outbuildings. He turned up the track and made his way to the front door, which was standing open. From three different directions three Cairns, a Jack Russell and two spaniels flew at him.

  Guy liked dogs and dogs liked him, and he had made firm friends with all six by the time that his knock was answered. Mrs. Willoughby came to the door herself, and when he told her that he was investigating Miss Cathcart’s disappearance, she beckoned him into a small front room shabbily furnished as an office.

  Mrs. Willoughby was tall and dark. She had large velvety brown eyes, a discontented mouth and a sallow complexion. She wore an orange smock over a black satin skirt, black satin shoes with rubbed toes, and no stockings. She indicated a chair, took a low stool herself, and produced cigarettes from a crumpled yellow packet. She said in a deep voice, “This is a ghastly thing, Mr. Northeast, or should I call you Detective-Inspector? I don’t think I can. I shouldn’t feel I was talking to an individual. I’m like that. I’ve no use for facades. I must speak soul to soul. Of course, it’s all these horses.”